Doris O'Brien is a retired college Speech teacher and banker. She has published two books of humor (Up or Down With Women's Liberation and Humor Me a Little) and for many years contributed light verse to the Pepper 'n Salt column of the Wall Street Journal. She is an avid writer of letters to the editors.
Doris celebrated her 50th wedding anniversary in the same year she welcomed her first grandchild. She now lives in Pasadena with a great view of the San Gabriel mountains — and the annual Tournament of Roses Parade.
She can be reached by e-mail: witsendob at (@) gmail.com
Congressional Hearings, Bills Passed and Introduced: Combat Online Predators Act, End Banking for Human Traffickers Act, Developing Maternity Care Quality
Bills Introduced: The importance of reducing the rate of maternal mortality and morbidity among Black women; A bill to address the use of opioids and substance use disorders with respect to pregnant women and babies; A bill to prohibit the pricing of consumer products and services that are substantially similar if such products or services are priced differently based on the gender of the individuals for whose use the products are intended or marketed or for whom the services are performed or offered; a bill to require the secretary of Veterans Affairs to provide child care assistance to veterans receiving certain training or vocational rehabilitation. more »
Jo Freeman Reviews Hope's Kids, A Voting Rights Summer
Jo Freeman reviews and writes: Alan Venable was one of Hope’s kids. A junior at Harvard, he joined 18 students from Brandeis University and four from other Boston area schools to go to Columbia S.C. for ten weeks. After two weeks, six of them moved to Calhoun County. When they started canvassing only 490 blacks were registered to vote in that county. They registered 114 in July, under the very restrictive registration rules typical of the Southern states, which were generally applied to blacks but not to whites. When the VRA became law on August 6, it removed the literacy test. Another 500 registered in the next two months. more »
A Better Understanding of How, Where, and Why Cancer Develops: Genomic Analysis of 33 Cancer Types Completed
The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) final paper details genomic alterations in 10 key signaling pathways that control the stages of the cell’s life cycle, growth, and death. The researchers found that 89% of tumors had at least one significant alteration in these pathways. About 57% of tumors had at least one alteration that could be targeted with currently known drugs and 30% had multiple targetable alterations. These findings will help researchers explore treatments with more tailored approaches, such as using a combination of drugs to target multiple pathways at the same time. more »
Faithless Pictures; The Complex Relationship Between Image and Reality
“The number of pictures increases, but what we see decrease”, says Sean Snyder, one of the artists. Society is in the midst of a technological revolution. The stream of images and the balance of power are now changing because of the ubiquity of the smartphone camera and the immediacy and reach of social media. These are new times, and art is posing new questions. In each their own way, the works presented at the “Faithless Pictures” exhibition address the vast amount of imagery that surrounds us, the visual torrent that seemingly represents our lives, our times, our world – the news clips, holiday photos, and flickers from the depths of the internet that meet us in a fragmented world of half illusion and half reality. more »
