Book Review: Birth: The Surprising History of How We Are Born by Tina Cassidy

The main lesson I got from Tina Cassidy’s Birth: The Surprising History of How We Are Born (2006) is that in the history of people being born, attempts to make it easier and/or more “scientific” have in many cases exacerbated the mortality rates for both mother and child. At different times in history it was…

Book Review: A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush by Eric Newby

A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush (1958) is a short book about an extraordinary journey taken by author Eric Newby and his friend Hugh Carless.  With very little training and inadequate supplies they venture into a remote region of Afghanistan to climb Mir Samir, a nearly 20,000 foot mountain. It is surprising that they…

Book Review: A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley

So you have an aging, ruthless patriarch on the verge of madness deciding on a whim to divide up his property among his three daughters precipitating a descent into tragedy. The story of course is William Shakespeare’s King Lear, but also the basis of Jane Smiley’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel A Thousand Acres (1991) set in…

The Cutty Sark

I remember from my younger days a series of sugar packets with images of historic sailing ships.  I was always intrigued by these wooden ships and in my lifetime ended up visiting many of them … the Charles W. Morgan, the U.S.S. Constitution, and the one with the funny name, the Cutty Sark. The news…

Mets Week in Review: 14-20 May

This week the Mets host two storied teams each with a devoted following of fans worldwide. First the Cubs, a team with a history of losing a lot, and then the Yankees, a team with a history of winning way too much. I’m afraid I was too busy to make too many notes during the…