“Are you sure you should still be going to Alaska?” Those were the first words my mother said to me yesterday when I called her. She turned seventy this year and still lives in the rural hinterlands where I grew up. She’s fully vaccinated, but less than fifty percent of the...
Like most people who leisure travel on the regular, I’m jonesing to get on an airplane and . . . go somewhere. I’m also concerned about potential exposure to the novel coronavirus because I am not interested in contracting COVID-19, mild case or not. The last few days I’ve...
It seems weird to think that Mr. Pretty and I had just come back from Jamaica at this time last month, and now the entire world is shut down in response to a global pandemic. While I’m entering my fourth week of working remotely (I’m referring to my dining room as my satellite...
When impeached U.S. President Donald Trump started boasting about his kick-ass response to the coronavirus epidemic and then put world-renowned epidemiologist and science proponent Mike Pence in charge of the federal task force to prevent the spread of COVID-19, I had an inkling that strategy...
How do 24 innocent people get executed over accusations of witchcraft? Most (mostly women) were hanged, one guy was pressed to death, and several others died in jails under terrible conditions. The accused–like the guy who was pressed to death–were tortured into confession, and...
It’s Labor Day here in the States. While my mom was in a union for a very long time, as was my stepfather, my closest connection to unions is through Mr. Pretty. He’s not in a union himself, but the people he works with are union. In fact, almost the entire airline industry runs on...
This past weekend was Earth Day, and I marked the occasion by participating in Philadelphia’s March for Science. I hear that the crowd stretched about 12 city blocks, and that there were probably a little over 10,000 people. It seems kind of insane that we’d have to march in protest...
People are, apparently, freaking out over the fact that a United gate crew refused to allow a couple of girls to board a plane in Colorado because they were wearing leggings. Folks are losing their minds because they’re seeing this as some kind of body shaming-child sexualizing death march back...
My jaw swung open when I read a headline last night that the U.S. was banning electronics in cabin baggage on flights coming to the US from eight majority Muslim countries. The airlines impacted are Royal Jordanian, Egypt Air, Turkish Airlines, Saudi Arabian Airlines, Kuwait Airways,...