What happens when an essential part of the social safety net frays or disappears? A conversation with my son, Jotham, a lawyer who’s handling some Workers’ Compensation cases, got me…
Rarely, one comes to a novel from watching a movie based on it. Even more rarely does a very faithful movie – a superb film – lead to…
Some years ago, I read The Alexiad by the Byzantine Princess Anna Comnena (1081-1151). Her history of her father’s reign, including the uninvited visit to Constantinople by the…
Werner Herzog’s fascinating documentary on the Chauvet Cave paintings, ‘Cave of Forgotten Dreams’, asks many questions but suggests answers to very few. How could people 30,000 years ago…
My father read widely on archaeology all his years. On his bookshelves I recall a book whose title, if not its contents, fascinated me: The Mute Stones Speak. Those words…
Everyone’s heard the phrase, ‘rich as Croesus’. Very few know that Croesus was the last king of the Lydians 2600 years ago. A lecture on March 30th at…
‘Bird, Meet Cousin Alligator’. So reads the headline on a fascinating Nov. 4 Harvard Gazette story on Assistant Professor Arkhat Abzhanov. A professor of organismic and evolutionary biology, Abzanhov is…