Like many people my age, my parents were away fighting World War II when I was little. My mother left me on the farm where she grew up to be cared for by my grandparents and aunts and uncles. For me, it was a wondrous, free time of exploration with little adult interference. When I…
Just try to get a post-surgery antibiotic. It’s easier to cross the River Styx. I understand the reasoning behind the notion of “antibiotic stewardship” and being careful about prescribing antibiotics for viruses. Any sensible person would agree that antibiotics shouldn’t be given if the patient can recover without them. But who bothers to…
Thank you, Dr. Michel Accad, for tweeting the article about the problems with the polio vaccine in Africa. My concern over the positioning of Vaxxers vs. Antivaxxers is that there are anomalies with vaccines, some serious. The discussion is almost always centered around autism. Can we put aside the shaming and simply look at some…
Jim Cox has written and maintained the Midwest Book Review since before I was publishing books in the early 1990s. He, like many of us our age, has seen the print industry change remarkably with the influx of online conversations where most anything goes because writers don’t have to look their victims in the eyes…
I wrote this review of Allucquere Rosanne Stone’s book many years ago when it was first published. As I struggle with the adversarial nature of discourse today, wondering how we could have travelled down this road so far without becoming aware of the dangers of our thinking, I am reminded of those who saw the…
