December 29, 2022 — As a freelance writer, what do I do when a client assigns me a project with a certain subject matter—say, climate change—on which we might have conflicting views? This is an important question for me, because I am (to use common, though very imprecise and inaccurate, terminology) a “conservative” working in the overwhelmingly “liberal” business of publishing. When...
December 4, 2022 — I grew up thinking that my ethnic ancestry was all Polish. I knew, of course, that no one is 100 percent of any ethnicity, and everyone has a diverse genealogical tree if you go back in time far enough. But no one in my family seemed to know of any specific nationality in our tree beyond Polish. All I knew...
December 11, 2021 — As far back as I can remember, I've always been an independent thinker—a rejecter of group-think—and this has resulted in perpetual feelings of being an outsider. Even in kindergarten, I was aware of thinking and doing things differently, compared with most of the other kids. I was made aware of these differences when the other kids made fun of me...
October 29, 2021 — My favorite time of year is autumn through winter. I have lived in the Chicago area my entire life, and I intensely dislike the heat of summer. I like being cool and sometimes even cold. So, when the daily weather begins to cool in October and becomes colder in November, I am happy. The sometimes extremely bitter cold of...
October 9, 2021 — When we go to sleep at night, we assume that we will wake up in the same world in the morning. We will be in the same bedroom, the same house, the same city, the same world, the same universe, and we will be in the same body. We simply take it for granted that all these things will...
December 17, 2019 — The three physical dimensions of space (length, width, height) are combined with time as a fourth dimension to form the four-dimensional continuum of space-time. This continuum is a type of ubiquitous “fabric” that permeates the entire universe. The force of gravity around very massive objects, such as stars, warps the fabric of space-time. Thus, there is a kind of...
August 9, 2019 — My UFO story began at about 10:00 pm on the hot Saturday night of August 24, 2019. I was driving along a quiet rural road with farms and fields on either side, coming home from a yard party at the home of a friend in Peotone, Illinois (about 45 miles southwest of Chicago). I had a nice time at...
March 3, 2019 — The 1920s were a fascinating time in American history. It was an era of social liberation, especially for women, that many Americans today are not aware of. It was when the Sexual Revolution began—before retreating back into the closet, and later reemerging. Most people today probably think that women’s lib originated in the 1960s. However, 40 years before...
January 17, 2019 — For many people, life seems to amount to little more than a constant struggle with personal problems. Some of these problems are imposed on people from the outside (other people or external situations), other problems are generated by the individuals themselves, and still other problems arise from internal biochemical mechanisms beyond the individuals' control. The most horrific...
December 19, 2018 — Humans have probably been wondering about the existence of some kind of god ever since the first members of the Homo genus walked upon Earth more than 1 million years ago. It is natural for a large-brained, cognitive species to look out at the world and the sky above and wonder… where did it all come from?, how far does...
June 20, 2018 — My favorite genre of fiction literature and motion pictures has always been horror. From Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories to Anne Rice’s novels, and from F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu to Rob Zombie’s The Devil’s Rejects, I am immensely entertained by tales of horror. I am not sure why. I can’t say that I am frightened by such stories, because...
February 8, 2017 — My first two editing jobs were at encyclopedia publishers—Standard Education Corporation, where I began to work in 1993, and World Book Publishing, where I worked from 1997 to 2003. I subsequently did freelance work for World Book for many additional years. Educational writing and editing require a strict adherence to verified facts combined with an ability to present those facts...
February 1, 2017 — I never had any intention of becoming a writer. Because I could always draw well, I originally wanted to become an artist. By the time I got to college in 1979, I had turned that natural talent into the more practical goal of pursuing a degree in communications design (graphic design). I grew bored with that after two years, and...