Year of the Jackpot reminds us that certain combinations of simultaneous cyclical phenomena are winning combinations, but other combinations are decidedly losing combinations, and we are increasingly gambling for high stakes.
About Martha Sherwood
Martha Sherwood is a biologist, freelance writer, artist and social commentator, officially retired from all of the above occupations and more but still very active in the community of Eugene, Oregon, where she was born and lived most of her life.
Be sure to visit Martha's Artists Gallery linked below.
The Novel of My Mother’s Past – And Mine
This task occupies me as I sit at home conscious of my own mortality, quarantined due to an epidemic which purports to be particularly dangerous to old people like me, knowing that all I bequeath to the next generation as stories and the lessons to be learned from them must be recorded.
Has America Lost the Cold War?
The entire world’s economic apparatus is being besieged in China and is unable to extricate itself. It’s not so much a physical as virtual captivity, and not Moscow in flames so much as an entire tinder-dry virtual network waiting for a savvy saboteur or even a clumsy idiot to ignite a conflagration.
The Grief of Downsizing
As I get older, the rate at which things go obsolete is increasing, leaving things for which one worked very hard with no value. In this case, it is not so much the material objects which are to be lamented, as intellectual property which will be lost if the material objects are not preserved.
Immunological Paralysis: A Reason for Concern?
Could vaccinations trigger immunological paralysis? Vaccinations fool the immune system into thinking you are suffering from a serious bacterial or viral illness, although your body does not become acutely ill. Getting sick soon after receiving a flu vaccination suggests this is possible.
Three Bronx Cheers for Oregon’s Bottle Bill
Energy costs of trucking bulky items to Portland, sorting them in a mechanized facility, and shipping them to China where they might be turned into consumer items and resold to us, perhaps proudly bearing a “green” label, greatly exceed those of the local reuse and recycling of sixty years ago.
The Cloven Hoof in Birkenstocks
I coined this term about a year ago as a descriptor for a person or entity whose superficial trappings of progressive liberalism conceal a corrupt, harmful, downright diabolical core.
The Gilded Age and the Mylar Age
Bubbles and balloons, however, eventually burst and our present economic conditions have the semblance of a gaudy Mylar balloon from the Dollar Tree, one, perhaps, with a smiley face on it, already beginning to show signs of deflation from having been too long on display.
A Moderate Conspiracy Theorist
Information channels on which we rely conspire, not entirely to suppress inconvenient truths challenging the dominant paradigm and its bottom line but to present those viewpoints in a biased way which leads people to reject them and hold them in contempt.
Satires, Hoaxes, and Art Forgery
What is a hoax, and when does it cross the line between legitimate satire and a deliberate attempt to capitalize upon, or sway public opinion by, a piece of manufactured evidence which the creator knows to be fictitious?
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