News and Views

I recently read a very interesting book, “The Measure of a Nation“. The author compared the United States to thirteen other large, developed democracies (Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, Portugal, Netherlands, Korea, Spain, and the UK) on several factors, including health, wealth, crime, education, equality, freedom and democracy. There is a general […]

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My mother just had surgery today for a detached retina. I was at her house on Friday last week when she mentioned to me that she couldn’t see out of one side of her eye. There seemed to be a curtain over it. That sounded like the classic symptom of a detaching retina, and I […]

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The US Department of Energy has published an app that will calculate how much it costs to fuel an electric car vs. a gas car. They created a concept called an eGallon which shows how much it would cost to drive an electric car the same distance as a similar gas car would go on […]

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We arrived back in Phoenix last night around 6:00pm. The pilot announced that it was 111 degrees as we were approaching the airport. What a shock after three weeks of temperatures in the 60s! It was a great trip. We met a lot of friendly and helpful French people, who don’t deserve their reputation of […]

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Driving in France has one big advantage over driving in England,at least for an American: they drive on the right side of the road here. It’s really not bad driving here, and the French drivers are competent and disciplined. Road signs can be confusing. For example, what would you make of “Interdict sauf” followed by […]

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After the other women returned to the US yesterday, Gisele and I drove to the small town of Bayeux in Normandy. Today we went to Omaha Beach, the first landing point on D-Day, June 6, 1944. We first went to the American Cemetery near the beach. I didn’t expect to be as moved as I […]

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