I’m a lucky American. Thanks to my wife Colleen’s job as a travel agent, in the last two weeks I’ve been to Europe and back. I was able to tag along with Colleen, as I often do, when she took a group of tourists to France’s Bordeaux wine country. While I was gone things looked […]

Kansans overwhelmingly voted, 59% to 41%, to maintain the state’s constitutional right to an abortion in a referendum held on Aug. 2, 2022. The referendum’s result, by which voters made their opinions directly known on abortion, highlights the disconnection between public opinion and restrictive state abortion laws passed by many conservative state legislatures after the Supreme Court […]

For generations, American chestnut trees (Castanea dentata) fed people and wildlife throughout eastern North America. Up to 4 billion chestnut trees populated woodlands from southern Maine to northern Florida, and west to the Mississippi River. These “Redwoods of the East Coast” filled the forest canopy, towering up to 100 feet with a girth of 9 […]

Comedian Carl Reiner was good at living well — and he lived well until the age of 98. I recently watched his 2017 HBO documentary, “If You’re Not in the Obit, Eat Breakfast.” It introduces viewers to several people who are flourishing in their 90s — running races at 100, doing yoga at 98, playing […]