Many of you may have read my essay on Salon.com. I know so because a couple of you wrote me and expressed an interest in what the van looked like. Well, here she is. In her finer days - like back in 2009, she cleaned up well. But in two years she’s gone downhill. The defroster doesn’t work. The brakes need replacing and there’s about $800 worth of work that needs to be done to get her on the road again. It’s still a comfortable place for me - more …

(Photo from Oprah Winfrey’s Company - HARPO)
After Oprah Winfrey’s half-sister Patricia tracked her down and explained how she and her children pieced together a lifetime of puzzle pieces about the mother who gave her up for adoption, Oprah was impressed by one thing - that her half-sister hadn’t sold her out to the media, to the tabloids when she discovered she was Oprah’s half-sister.
In a world where everyone is after a piece of Oprah, or her money, or what she can do for them, or give them - someone …

Technology changes. People don’t. People have remained pretty much the same since early recorded history. The technology and the speed and way at which things get done may change - but human nature is human nature. This photo of newspaper headlines was posted in the street-corner window of a newspaper office (Brockton Enterprise). Brockton, Massachusetts, December 1940. Reproduction from color slide. Photo by Jack Delano. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress. The entire series of photos may be viewed here.
In case you don’t remember, when we were teenagers and …

Dennis and Michael Moss are my new heroes. They get it. When the father/son duo decided to enter the lucrative bagel cutting invention market a couple of years ago, they did what those who have gone before them failed to do. They noticed a pattern, then they entered an already glutted bagel cutting device market with a new invention and a new take on an old problem.
By taking into account patterns of human behavior and examining the how/why of cutting accidents, they created something people might actually USE. Sure, the …

US and Swedish officials aren’t talking about what have been responsible for the massive bird and fish kills in at least three different locations, but the conspiracy theory community worldwide is secretly ecstatic as the warnings they’ve been posting for decades are suddenly becoming real. Christian fundamentalists are referring to the Bible’s prediction of “fear of what is falling out of the skies.” Sites like PrarieGhost are listing incidents throughout history where everything from frogs, blood and other items have fallen out of the sky.
Prairie Ghost reports:

In 1833, something …