This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (3,070) on Friday, September 22, 2023. Since writing about AI (artificial intelligence) software last week, I have discovered something of a “development” in the world of publishing with regard to AI. Amazon, by far the world’s largest bookseller, is asking publishers/authors: Did you use AI • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (3,070) on Friday, September 15, 2023. For the past few months, it seems, the world has divided itself into three warring camps: those who believe that AI (artificial intelligence) is the greatest thing since sliced bread; those who think AI is a moral abomination and • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (3,070) on Friday, September 8, 2023. I came across this quotation the other day: When wealth is passed off as merit, bad luck is seen as bad character. This is how ideologues justify punishing the sick and the poor. But poverty is neither a crime • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (3,070) on Friday, September 1, 2023. People should be careful about what they say, about the words that they use. That’s a bit of age-old wisdom that good parents teach to their children. Sometimes people say crazy things, and everyone who hears what they say • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,845) on Friday, August 25, 2023. Whatever your politics—and that’s a topic I generally try to avoid addressing directly in this newsletter—if you take the time and effort to read the indictment delivered last week against the former president by the district attorney of Fulton • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,845) on Friday, August 18, 2023. This year, at my house, has been officially declared The Year of the Tomato. Home-grown tomatoes take a prominent place in our garden each year. They are planted carefully and with a real sense of anticipation. We have • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,845) on Friday, August 11, 2023. The limerick has been a part of my very limited poetry knowledge for as long as I can remember, but I have just recently encountered the clerihew. That is a four-line, semi-nonsense poem that usually is biographical. That is, • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,845) on Friday, August 4, 2023. My recent reading has taken me into the Book of Exodus and the story of the descendants of Abraham in Egypt. This story was first written down nearly a century before the time of Christ, and in oral tradition, • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,845) on Friday, July 28, 2023. A question that frequently comes my way these days is, “How are the bees doing?” My typical response, unless the inquirer desires more details, is a simple, “They’re doing well.” During July and August in my region, bee • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,845) on Friday, July 21, 2023. A couple of Saturdays ago, I made the “supreme sacrifice.” Saturday is my day to meet some of my friends for breakfast, and we get there as soon as the restaurant opens at 7 a.m. But on this • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,845) on Friday, July 14, 2023. College admissions procedures have, once again, become big news. A recent Supreme Court decision has “outlawed” some “affirmative action” procedures by those who determined who gets in and who doesn’t at certain colleges and universities. I have put some • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,845) on Friday, July 7, 2023. If you search for “the most spoken word in the English language,” as I did recently, you will come up with a variety of interesting results. I had a particular candidate in mind, and I wanted to see if • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,845) on Friday, June 30, 2023. And here I was thinking that some things would be pretty obvious to any reasonably intelligent person: One of the big news stories of the spring was that two Supreme Court justices had accepted money from an individual for • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,845) on Friday, June 23, 2023. We have all heard this message many times before: Exercise, in almost any amount, is good for your body. The research is also increasingly pointing to the fact that exercise is good for your mind. Study after study shows • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,845) on Friday, June 16, 2023. The public discourse these days has created an equivalent to “climate change.” It’s “doom.” But what if climate change doesn’t mean doom. What if it’s something different, something we never seem to consider. Author and historian Rebecca Solnit has • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,845) on Friday, June 9, 2023. It is something that during the majority of my working life I would have disdained and dismissed with disgust. The people who practiced it, I would have said in my youthful and middle-aged arrogance, were lazy, unmotivated, and a • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,845) on Friday, June 2, 2023. Some years ago, I had a colleague—a man I liked and deeply respected—who asked me to read and edit an article that he was writing. He was a good writer, and I willingly took on the task. As I • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,845) on Friday, May 26, 2023. The New York Times recently reviewed a book a few years ago that I have not read but whose title I certainly agree with: Love Your Enemies. The book is by Arthur C. Brooks, who is among other things • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,845) on Friday, May 19, 2023. This newsletter will have something special for its readers during the month of June. First, in each weekly edition, we will present one of the chapters of my latest book, Women With Words: Female Journalists and Writers (Heads and • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,845) on Friday, May 12, 2023. Sometimes you have to simply accept responsibility. That happened to me last week when my website crashed and burned. The technician employed by my hosting service, the guy who took my call, was a terribly nice fellow, but it • Read More »