Philadelphia's Franklin Institute is displaying in an exhibition titled Galileo, the Medici and the Age of Astronomy, one of those gorgeous brass instruments that resemble jewelry: an armillary sphere. All ages can participate in Science in Play, a…

Rose Mula writes: iPod — Do You? My tiny pink marvel can hold hundreds of songs, so I’ll be able to add many more oldies but goodies. If it’s true that exercising your brain cells can stave off Alzheimer’s, my grandniece’s gift has made me immune. So tha…

The week ahead Holds lots of dread: I have to buy a bathing suit. I’d be a dope To have much hope Of finding fit (don’t mention cute). In fact if my long search is fruitless I may well have to dive in suitless. Julia Sneden writes and rhymes about…

Ferida Wolff writes: My husband and I went on vacation to a place both foreign and familiar to me — the Middle East. The foreign aspect was that I had not been in that part of the world before. The familiar part had to do with my paternal family. My…

Julia Sneden writes: "While it is often left to the populace to vote on bond issues creating new schools, the need for school maintenance and repair seems to me to be every bit as vital. Too often it is shoved aside for other matters, buried so…

Jo Freeman writes: Log Cabin Republicans are very dedicated, stalwart Republicans, who refuse to be run out of their party despite a hostile atmosphere. They have occasionally found allies among some of the other outsiders in the party, but not witho…

Dermatologist Cynthia Bailey writes: As a California dermatologist, I spend most of my time treating people with skin cancer. I teach my patients to enjoy being outdoors and keep their skin safe. Today, sun protection information is complicated by vi…

Diane Girard writes: "It's like a religion — you believe in it, or you don’t. I believe that not everyone can become rich. However, some of us may manage to live out our lives without losing all our savings. I plan to be one of those people beca…

Jeanne Hubbell Asher writes: "Aspects of the estate sale are rich subjects for high drama, theater of the absurd or sometimes a farce.  Perhaps the sales could best be described as improvisational with deeply moving personal sagas tempered with,…

Jo Freeman reviews The Wrong Side of Murder Creek: A White Southerner in the Freedom Movement: To those of us who were civil rights activists in the 1960s, Bob Zellner and Constance Curry were legends in their own time. Not big legends like Stokely Ca…

Lords of Finance, apart from being a wonderful lesson in international monetary economics and finance, is a page turner. No Room for Doubt will appeal especially to our readers as it shows how one remarkable senior woman who overcomes the odds and achi…

Margaret Cullison writes: "I met one of my most memorable friends at a time when I needed a good friend. I’d just moved to the San Francisco Bay area and, while still unpacking the moving boxes, my husband told me he wanted a divorce. After thir…

John Malone writes: "It wasn't until we began sailing in weekend races at the Pymatuning Yacht Club and won the handicap trophy that Papa stopped trying to be in control and let me handle the boat my way. We were notorious for having loud argume…

Jo Freeman writes,  "What began with a bang is ending with a whimper. But the groups that organized the Iraq invasion protests aren’t going out of business; they're expanding their agenda."

Roberta McReynolds writes: Mom withdrew into a prison of continuous sorrow, leaving her surviving young child isolated in a world lacking the nurturing and affection I needed to thrive. A full circle of generational grief had been completed and anoth…

Joan L. Cannon writes: "We have more words than most other modern languages. Of course we don’t need to know them all and couldn’t use them all (though I think Nabokov may have tried). Yet, that richness makes maximum precision almost always poss…

Julia Sneden writes: "Perhaps it's human nature to look around and wish for something you don't have. The alternative would lend to a kind of smugness that is at the very least unattractive, and at the most, would lead to a kind of stasis. If th…

Jo Freeman reviews Women Making America, covering women’s history from the Revolution to the present day. Chock full of colorful images, it swoops high and low, sometimes mapping the forest and sometimes looking at a tree.

Tam Gray writes: "Tennis Ball lettuce, Moon and Stars watermelon and Telephone peas in 1943; Ernest's garden in Garden City, LI; the First Lady's kale, shallots and fennel and a culinary historian's theory, ""The more democratic our Pre…

Rose Mula writes, "No one who has ever heard it can forget the poignant, Passau du tempu ca Berta filava, or "The time for Bertha to weave is ended,” roughly equivalent to “Make hay while the sun shines,” but probably means that synthetic fib…

Kristin Nord writes: Drifters, gamblers, adventurers, dreamers and an astonishing roster of wildlife. This is the last great frontier, to a great extent, and it lives up to that billing with its unfolding stories.

The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry should appeal to all readers of literary fiction; Roseanne McNulty's story becomes an alternative, secret, history of Ireland. Henry Alford is witty and literate, but somehow he has allowed his talents to be diff…

The Private Patient by Baroness P.D. James holds our interest by the discovery of not just the who-dun-it, but the complex motives behind the actions. Anyone who loves dogs and brilliant descriptive writing will find Sawtelle rewarding. Wallace Stegne…