I've known it.  The first stage is the sweetest: when your eyes find each other and lock…when the sight of your love walking in the room makes your stomach muscles clench…when one touch is enough to make you shiver with anticipation and delight.  Then there is the deep reward/… Read full post »

Anybody who watched the original Star Trek in their teens was inculcated with the idea that a post-racist, post-poverty future society was possible.  To a child that was raised in a time that featured the real possibililty of mutual assured nuclear destruction, conflicts over civil rights and a… Read full post »

It's been almost two weeks now since three F3 tornadoes roared through central Massachusetts.  Four people lost their lives, others are still in the hospital, homes were lost, businesses destroyed.

It was just luck that my husband and I weren't among them.

He was in Sturbridge, a half mile from… Read full post »

I've just finished reading "What's Gotten Into Us?" by Mckay Jenkins and it was quite the (depressing) wake up call.   Aside from contemplating the assortment of unpleasant chemicals that each and every one of us is toting around in our tissues, it has also made me think about our American… Read full post »

    Last night I was awakened by the loud snap that indicated that a mousetrap had fulfilled its function.

  We get deer mice like the picture above (or white-footed mice, I can't tell them apart) in the house in wintertime.  They come in when it gets cold, and… Read full post »

What a wierd coincidence it seems that the anniversaries of all three of the United States' space exploration tragedies cluster together within the space of a week.

Apollo 1: January 27, 1967. Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee all died in a fire during a ground-based test. (On the ground! … Read full post »

I didn't enter the recent cookie challenge because my best holiday recipe is a candy.

I end up making four or five batches of this every Christmas, because I have certain friends and relatives who love it so.  Last year I traded a batch for a venison roast--both the hunter and… Read full post »

We all know the rationale behind Thanksgiving.  Immigrants are grateful to God for survival and a good harvest, and hopefully also grateful to those earlier immigrants who taught them how to grow corn.

So, as a representative atheist, to whom do we give thanks for our good fortune?

First of all,… Read full post »

Insomnia, while a vile, will-sapping, murderous, castrating, tit-crushing bastard bitch--does have its uses.  Some people write novels, others clean house, stargaze or listen for owls.  Recently I woke up at 3 a.m. thinking about fresh tomatoes.

I have three 4X8 raised beds in my back yard… Read full post »

So Glenn Beck had an old-fashioned big tent revival meeting at the Lincoln Memorial.  One open salon blogger was there, and thought it was wonderful.  A sense of community.  An affirmation of patriotism.  Bringing the country back to God.

I get that.   Blogger in questio… Read full post »

I have a granddaughter. Let's call her Jo.   She's four.  Like most little girls, she has been deluged since the womb with princess foo-foo stuff.

I resist this trend...quietly.  Unlike my campaign to rid the world of the abomination of the Disney Pooh.  Real Pooh or none at all,… Read full post »

This is an addendum to the post, More More More--Stop!

I misspoke calling this sea glass.  It's not.  It's a type of glass called Sea Opal.  The function manager at work loves this type of glass. Read full post »

So here's what we have: measurable increase in atmospheric carbon, observation of methane hydrates  sublimating from the arctic sea floor, acidification of the oceans, spreading dead zones on the sea floor at the mouth of every major river, and a confederacy of the rich and powerful doing their… Read full post »

I was recently introduced to enhanced tinkering by a coworker I shall call Madelaine.

Madelaine and I work for a science museum.  Before she came--after a twenty-plus year stint at a major museum that has lost its collective mind--I pretty much noodled along, keeping the planetarium running, hel… Read full post »

I was raised by my mother to be an environmentalist.  When I left Hockessin, Delaware for Boston University in 1968, she sent me with a stack of petitions supporting solar power. 

My father, on the other hand, was a public relations guy for the Dupont Company,  and although he appreci… Read full post »

I am prey to sudden enthusiasms.

Case in point: a couple of years ago I became enthralled with making sterling silver jewelry.  I made dozens of clever earrings, started scouting the internet for semi-precious stones, made necklaces for my daughter and neices (very successfully...one neice calls… Read full post »

In this time of war, disease and economic disaster, it may seem inappropriate to mourn an animal. 

I am not blind to the pyrrhic dance the Israelis and Palestinians continue to engage in.  I have not forgotten the plight of Africans, struggling with bad governments, civil war and AIDS.&nb… Read full post »

I'm not particularly fond of Halloween.   Just another "open your pockets" commercial pseudo-celebration.  The froth of the christian zealots is amusing...Pat Robertson's website is warning about candy that has been "prayed over by witches" and "attracts real demons".  (tee hee)&n… Read full post »

I've been watching the House of Representatives on Cspan in their discussion over Representative Wilson and his refusal to apologize to that august body.  My conclusion: they are all a bunch of self-serving, petty...how can I put this respectfully...I guess I can't: insert your preferred perjora… Read full post »

I lived in Boston for a few years in the late lamented 60's.  Coming from Hockessin, Delaware...which in those days was still sufficiently rural that I could ride my horse for a couple of miles in the forest in most directions...I was amazed and enthralled at City Life.  Since it… Read full post »

I work in a science museum.  It's a nice place, lean on staffing out of financial necessity, but with a sincere commitment to the visitor....as much as an aging infrastructure with interesting budget problems allows.  It's my ideal job (except for the crappy pay) because unlike my in my pr… Read full post »

So, I went to the dentist to have a filling replaced.   As he's chipping away, assisted by a pleasant but somewhat breathless young woman, he casually remarks to his assistant that their last patient's third daughter just got married.  "So he's happy--he's all done!"

"Yes," the assistant c… Read full post »

I like to read in the bathtub.  This morning I was happily persusing the August issue of Scientific American when I read an op-ed piece about producers of genetically modified seeds.  Monsanto and other producers will not release seeds to researchers unless they sign a release form agreeing… Read full post »