It’s definitely the “holidaze,” inviting feelings and emotional hairballs of all kinds! It’s been a rumbling year, pulling me toward some memories I wish to forget. The season lurks around us, with longing for what is lost and wanting more of whatever we don’t have.... Continue
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Albert Camus wrote of fiction as, “the great lie through which we tell the truth.” So what are the “great lies” and what are the “truths” they tell? Now, to be sure, 'great' is in the mind of the beholder. But the “great lies" referred... Continue
Notwithstanding the work of 30 global environmental conferences and Sonoma County’s strict recycling rules (‘No tampons in the blue can’), climate change is definitely coming. But not to worry. Our planet has gone through many climate changes in its 4.5 billion-year history, each of which... Continue
Donald Trump, who has demonstrated neither interest in nor aptitude for knowing and understanding world history, has seized on the word “communism” as a favorite pejorative to define many of his most prominent political enemies. He insists in countless email messages that, “Known Communists, like... Continue
The student of history quickly learns that new technologies do more than support the operation of culture, they transform and replace it. From the wheel to the plow, from the printing press to the iMac computer, society and everyday lives take on the characteristics of... Continue
Hilary Campbell is a New Yorker magazine cartoonist who just happens to have been born and raised in Sonoma. Continue
What to do? In my 50 years as a psychotherapist, this is the first time I remember seeing so many pervasive, glaring divides in relationships. Yup, politics has exacerbated our disagreements. The holes in families, friendships, work relationships and society remind me of Swiss cheese.... Continue
Why there is something instead of nothing continues to be a subject of debate. Although visible matter, the matter we can see and detect with our instruments comprises only 5% of the observable universe, it occupies nearly all of our attention. It appears that most... Continue
Gangs of armed, masked men, in all hours of the night or early morning, loudly knocking on the doors of houses or apartments, demanding entrance and brutally throwing people down – men, women and children no matter how young – and yelling at them to... Continue
Icon: A person or thing widely admired for having great influence or significance in a particular sphere, a symbol representing an idea or object, a sacred image in Eastern Christian churches, or a stylized picture on a computer screen that represents a function. ~ Merriam... Continue