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
Are Genes Ownable? Challenging Patents on Breast and Ovarian Cancer Genes in the Supreme Court
"Women should not have to compromise their health because a private company controls their own genetic information," said Sandra Park, staff attorney with the ACLU Women's Rights Project. "Patients deserve the best available care, including access to testing and options for second opinions before making serious decisions about their health. These patents prevent them from getting that." more »
Red and Fuschia Vegetable Towers, a Hori Hori Trowel and Other Gardening Tools; What Plants Talk About
We make way too many trips to some of our local favorite nurseries for plants; it's usually, "Oh, I just need another tarragon ... lobelia ... thunbergia ... scabiosa ... " and, in no time, the car back-back is laden with new purchases. But tools are more of an investment and we choose carefully and, in some cases, for a lifetime of use. Here are some favorites. more »
A Sandy Hook Mother's Appeal for Commonsense Gun Responsibility Reforms
I’m here at the White House today because I want to make a difference and I hope you will join me. My name is Francine Wheeler. My husband David is with me. We live in Sandy Hook, Connecticut. David and I have two sons. Our older son Nate, soon to be 10 years old, is a fourth grader at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Our younger son, Ben, age six, was murdered in his first-grade classroom on December 14th, exactly 4 months ago this weekend. more »
Drawing Surrealism at the Morgan Library: The Exquisite Corpse Will Drink the New Wine
Some of the most striking surrealist drawings were exquisite corpses, a game that involved collaboration and chance. In the game — the name of which derives from a sentence created when the surrealists first used the process to write poetry: The exquisite corpse will drink the new wine — each participant made a drawing on a section of a folded sheet of paper without seeing the others’ drawings. The resulting hybrid creatures generated by the game influenced surrealist imagery, reappearing in artists’ individual works. more »
