Category: Culture

  • Mountain Con

    I was bummed because I’ve been missing all the con goodness. But at least the fall one is coming up in Utah. So if you live around here, you’ll see me on Saturday at Mountain Con. Some great writing workshops and will meet up with a few fellow writers.

  • This Fiction Friday comes to you from the east coast

    Long, long day today. Vladimir interviewed while I recieved a tour of the city and was shown three houses. We certainly have a lot to think about, and there is a lot I want to write about the trip. Georgeous. Revitalizing artsy city. Smooth air. 80 degrees. Tired. Very tired.  

  • Japanese short stay students

    We have a student visiting us from Japan right now. We’ve had several in the past. This one is the same age as my middle daughter. Cultural differences between our society and Japans are very real. In some ways, the Japanese way of raising kids makes hosting them easy for us. None of our students have been very used to…

  • More corporate talk

    Great excuse for a new post: long comment by my mom in my last post. It’s a good read and further demonstrates the corporate problem. In a lot of sectors, the free market no longer works because consumers no longer have a choice. This is especially true in health care. IF we are employed, our employer…

  • Corporate Aristocracy

    “The for-profit health insurance situation in America is an embarrassment and a disgrace.  We need to provide as a country basic and essential health insurance coverage for all Americans, without the profit motive.” – Dr. Joseph Scherger I’m not sure if I’ve said this on my blog, but I’ve said it in real life. I think…

  • Before there were internet romances…

    there was the bus.  I was talking to my city bus riding daughter yesterday about men on the bus. She has an admirer that is too old for her. She is a nice girl, and we’re trying to figure out a way to nicely but firmly tell this guy she isn’t interested. Her incident reminded…

  • The mind/body connection

    There has been an interesting discussion about complementary and alternative medicine between bloggers Lynn and #1 Dinosaur. One thing I’d like to point out in this discussion is why the mind/body connection is not alternative medicine. By alternative medicine, I mean therapies that patients pursue that have little to no scientific backing. It is not because doctors or…

  • The gap in my posting

    I guess I just started up again, like I hadn’t left a huge 6 week gap in my posting. For a while, in fact, I had thought that maybe I was going to leave off blogging completely. This was the it. My site would, until I needed the intense fan/author interface when I got published,…

  • Homemaking, medicine, polygamy and strong women.

    Sometimes, I wish there was less I wanted to do. For instance, I don’t decorate my house much, nor sew, nor do lots of crafty stuff that I actually think is fun. I enjoy this kind of thing. I want a pretty house decorated with things I made and kids dressed fantastically in clothes I…

  • The Abuse of Russian Women

    Recently, I watched part of a Russian documentary on mail order brides with my husband. He told me what the rest of it had shown. My initial reaction when he told me what he was watching was that it would be about how evil America was for exploiting these women. He said, no, actually, it…