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
Confessions of a Catholic (Who Doesn't Believe in Confession)
Rose Madeline Mula writes: "As I sat at Mass one recent Saturday afternoon, I thought the officiating priest said something about “Fake News” and the current political climate. Was he sympathizing with Donald Trump? My first instinct was to walk out. But since I hadn’t heard the context of his remarks, I wasn’t sure. So I stayed, recalling another Mass, at another church, during another era of political contention, when another priest declaimed from the pulpit that it was our responsibility to vote for George Bush. I was furious!" more »
Extreme Diversity in the Songs of Spitsbergen's Bowhead Whales
Almost all mammals communicate using sound, but few species produce complex songs. Two baleen whales sing complex songs that change annually, though only the humpback whale has received much research attention. This study focuses on the other baleen whale singer, the bowhead whale. Members of the Spitsbergen bowhead whale population produced 184 different song types over a 3-year period, based on duty-cycled recordings from a site in Fram Strait in the northeast Atlantic. Nor is it known if individual bowhead whales maintain the same song throughout their lifetime or if they switch within and/or between years. more »
Federal Reserve Research, Warning: Don’t Infer Regional Inflation Differences from House Price Changes
House price growth has varied significantly nationwide since the end of the Great Recession in 2009: In some metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs), prices have grown as quickly as 7 percent annually, while others have seen prices decline almost as quickly, with many more MSAs falling somewhere in between. Since households spend more on housing than any other good or service, we would expect that inflation rates would show the same variation. They do not. more »
March for Our Lives Was a Rally in the District of Columbia, A Response to the Mass Shootings That Catalyzed Support for Gun Regulation
Jo Freeman writes: March 24 had a milder flavor than most protests, in part because the teenagers who organized it had parental approval and lots of adult support. Even the cops were cool; police would prefer to be the only ones to carry guns. The DC National Guard blocked the streets and cops directed traffic elsewhere. If the issue of gun violence had not been so grave, it would have felt like a celebration rather than a protest. Staff from the Democratic National Committee and volunteers from the League of Women Voters asked participants to sign statements that they would register to vote. The DNC passed out stickers to young people with the year they would reach voting age. more »
