Jane Shortall writes: Pulling on a woolly hat, scarf, gloves, heavy jeans, rubber boots and a waxed jacket, on that wild morning, I went out and walked the legendary Bull Wall in Clontarf, a long, long seafront walk, loved by the citizens of Dublin for hundreds of years. This is the area where the High King of Ireland, Brian Boru, was slain in a battle against the Danes in 1014. On that particular morning, I felt I was battling too.

Joan L. Cannon writes: A writer doesn't write, darn it, for him or herself; that labor goes to satisfy a reader, or more accurately, multiple readers. Maybe we don't expect to make a living at it, much less get rich doing it, but we bother in the hope that there will be a few minds elsewhere that might crack open far enough to let us in, and if they do, that they may enjoy themselves or learn something from what that poor benighted scribe tapped out on a keyboard. The ultimate dream reward is to elicit a response.

Stanford political scientist Andrew Hall found that contentious primaries that receive heavy media coverage and voter attention tend to produce nominees who do less well in the general election. But, if the primary has not generated much attention, then the primary winner is less affected — and sometimes even helped — in the general election.

Ferida Wolff writes: Three years ago I noticed a couple of geese outside of a shopping center. I wondered if they were lost. They seemed to be scouting around looking for something, which I thought might be the rest of their flock. After a few days they had settled onto a garden display and it looked as if they were making a nest. The landscapers delayed planting until the geese left.

California's chief of workforce development, is trying different tactics to keep senior workers on the job: offering a flexible work schedule, promoting work-life balance and creating the first government-wide employee management survey to assess the needs of workers. The idea is to find out who is leaving — and why.

Several tracking apps were marketed to individuals for the purpose of tracking or intercepting the communications of an intimate partner to determine if that partner was cheating. About one-third of the websites marketed their tracking apps as surreptitious, specifically to track the location and intercept the smartphone communications of children, employees, or intimate partners without their knowledge or consent.

Julia Sneden wrote: I remember that when I was small, my mother baked bread every week despite a killer schedule as a graduate student and teacher, never mind running a household that included two children, two grandmothers and a great aunt. She did have what was the 1930's most modern bread-making appliance, a large, galvanized tin tub with a handle that protruded from the lid to turn the large, reverse-S dough hook inside. In practice, she would always knead by hand because she said she needed to "feel the dough."

While we may never again see the Dowager launch a new zinger or Lady Mary raise a fresh eyebrow, we can look forward to seeing Downton's talented and hardworking cast for many years to come. Find out what's next for Downton Abbey's cast members, where you can see them, and how far their new roles are speculated to take them from their Downton Abbey characters.