Posts Tagged ‘belief’
Survival in an Indifferent Universe
#cancer #grief #disaster #god #tragedy My mother, my sister-in-law, my best friend, and my ex-wife died of cancer. Universe Cancer is evil. Like anything else, it wants to thrive. Growth, normally, is regarded as a good. Cancer is uncontrolled growth. It thrives by destroying the cells that support life, love, and thought. Nothing continues to…
Read MoreCoronary Bypass Surgery Commonplace and Life Extending for Many.
#bypasssurgery #coronary #openheart Coronary bypass surgery has been around for more than 50 years. Yet to the patient, most of whom experience the procedure only once, undergoing the operation can give rise to anxiety. The survival rate is actually very high. Less than 5 percent mortality in the first thirty days and less than 8…
Read MoreWidow Maker — The Left Main Coronary Artery
I have had high cholesterol all my life – stratospheric – in the mid-300 range. I also can not tolerate statins. Lipitor, Mevacor, Crestor, Zetia, etc. I tried them all. At one point, I signed up with the lipid clinic. Under a doctor’s direction, I started taking massive dosages of statins. My cholesterol totals were…
Read MoreCatholic Growiing Up — Doubtful Growing Old
#catholic #religion #mass #catholiceducation #childabuse I was raised Catholic. I look back in amazement to my boyhood when reasoning, educated adults imposed pointless regimentation on children in the name of religion. The Church, gratefully, has changed over the years. But in the early and mid-twentieth century, adults often invoked faith to justify the harsh treatment…
Read MoreViral Mythology Explores How Myths Are Created and Broadcast
The subtitle to Viral Mythology, by Marie D. Jones and Larry Flaxman, reads “How the truth of the ancients was encoded and passed down through legend, art, and architecture.” The authors present an ambitious explanation of how and why the ancient myths and those we create today continue to roll forward in time often without…
Read MoreThomas Jefferson’s Enlightenment by James C. Thompson – A Review
Thomas Jefferson’s Enlightenment James C. Thompson is published by Commonwealth Book Publishers of Virginia which was founded by the author in 2009. According to their press announcement Commonwealth “publishes three-dimensional stories about ideas—where history, philosophy and art meet.” The book succeeds on all on all three counts, but the achievement is virtually negated because of…
Read MoreMystery Deepens When the Author is Truthful in Every Detail
The article that follows was published several months ago on a web site that promotes articles for authors of mysteries and thrillers. For the last several weeks, I have been reviewing books for Norm Golden’s web site bookpleasures.com. Many of the books I am asked to review are an initial effort by the author.…
Read MoreTwo Poems — One Explained; a Second Challenges Explanations
I have been writing poetry since I was a boy in elementary school. There have been times where poetry came easily, flowed right out of the daily events in my life. At other times, I felt as though I was hammering words into place, pounding the lines into shape in the hopes that I would…
Read MoreAdoption Was an Unwed Teenage Mother’s Option Before Out Patient Abortion Became Available
#adoption #1950s #teenagepregnancy Adoption was a commonplace practice in the 1940’s and ‘50’s before the introduction of the pill and outpatient abortion service. The children who lived next door to my family when I was a boy were adopted, all four of them. Kids in the neighborhood thought nothing of it. If questioned, parents responded…
Read MoreInflation Persists as a Concern for Folks in Retirement on a Fixed Income.
I worked in the financial services industry for over 40 years, the last fifteen of which as a Financial Advisor for Merrill Lynch in Winston-Salem, NC. My novel, Deadly Portfolio, builds a story around Matthew Wirth, a retiring financial advisor who, in preparing for his own retirement, is turning his practice over to junior partner,…
Read More