In August, I went on vacation in Scotland for nearly three weeks with my son, Expresso, and his wife, Attenderella. In planning our vacation, I had two requests—that the people speak English and that the weather be cool. I desperately wanted to escape the heat dome hovering over the South of France that drove temperatures into the nineties. Attenderella lobbied for Scotland because she was infatuated with Outlander, a Netflix series that features a very sexy hero, Jamie. Without having watched the series, I could not share her enthusiasm, but I agreed with her selection of Scotland, especially after discovering

The other night, I watched the Netflix movie Don’t Look Up. The plot involves an astronomer and his student who go on a media tour to tell everyone that a comet is scheduled to hit and destroy the planet in six months. (Warning: I’m going to give away the ending.) Is it a shooting star or death from above? (Photo by Jacob Dyer, Unsplash) In the movie, a significant number of people don’t believe the science is accurate. Various scientists at prestigious institutions challenge the astronomers’ conclusions. Elected leaders avoid dealing with the threat and instead argue over culture war

Introduce the topic of climate change at a party, and tempers can quickly flare. One person thinks the earth is simply going through another cyclic climate change that has nothing to do with how humans have used and abused resources. Others argue that climate change with higher temperatures is real but good for the planet. They say that, statistically speaking, we’ll see fewer winter deaths. Energy costs to heat buildings, including homes, will be lower. Agricultural yields will increase. Fewer droughts will occur, and biodiversity will be greater. Other pluses are that frozen regions of the earth might be available

As a student, I avoided any biology class out of fear I would have to cut up a frog. Consequently, my knowledge of anatomy is rudimentary. Even that may be an exaggeration. One piece of information I have picked up is that the autonomic nervous system regulates processes that are not under our control, such as heart rate, blood pressure, and digestion. The system also regulates our breathing, but unlike the other processes, we can override that regulation by concentrating on our breathing. Various patterns of breathing that alter the normal pattern can activate the body’s relaxation response and increase

Feeling lonely is a universal human experience. The painful emotion can strike us at any age, regardless of our gender, income level, background, or achievements. In that moment of loneliness, we feel disconnected from others, untethered, and isolated. The feeling is uncomfortable and distressing. Lonely in France I can write about loneliness with a certain level of expertise since I’ve had some recent (and painful) experiences with the feeling. As some of you may know, at age eighty, I moved to France after my husband passed away. My deep roots in the community where I lived for thirty years were

A three-day weekend alone stretched out ahead of me. Expresso and Attenderella went off to enjoy a weekend gift I'd given them long ago—a night in the Cévennes, a cultural region and range of mountains in south-central France. They stayed in a glass pyramid-type accommodation at a romantic resort where they could sleep under the stars. They had a private hot tub near their tent and a communal one inside the main building. Breakfast with homemade goodies and carafes of coffee and tea were included. Expresso and Attenderella’s tent was beautiful During that weekend, their two teenagers were fully engaged in doing what

Human beings are social animals. Some of us—the extroverts—need a lot of contact with humans. One extrovert I talked to said that he doesn't feel he exists unless he is with another person or in a group. He also confided that interpersonal exchanges energize him. Another extrovert told me that he whiles away time whenever he is alone until he is back among friends or colleagues. He works as a salesman and sometimes talks to a hundred people daily. He loves it. Others of us—introverts—prefer less interaction with others. I definitely fall into this category. In contrast to my extroverted

I live alone, though not by choice. My husband passed away two years ago, automatically changing my status to widow. After he died, I picked myself up and moved to the South of France, where I could be near my youngest son and his family. I’ve always tried to make lemonade when life has given me lemons. However, being widowed was more like the delivery of a truckload of lemons rather than one or two in my grocery bag. With so many lemons, I was forced to make lemonade, lemon meringue pie, lemon cookies, and lemon curd cheesecake. Over the

Now and then, I find a gem on the internet that causes me to pause, reread, reflect, and reread again later. What follows is one of those gems. I found it in Maria Popova's review of Neurosis and Human Growth, the second edition of a book written by Karen Horney, MD. Karen Horney, MD (Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons (cropped), CC BY-SA 4.0) Dr. Horney, now deceased, is still internationally recognized for her accomplishments in psychoanalysis. She was born in Germany at a time when women were discouraged from becoming physicians. Fearing the Nazis, she moved to the United States,

You have undoubtedly heard of the current workers’ strike in France, particularly if you’ve been considering vacationing here. The strike was triggered by a proposed, and quickly instituted, mandated increase in the pension age from sixty-two to sixty-four, which is lower than the norm in Europe. Striking in France is culturally linked to Émile Zola’s epic novel Germinal and the French Revolution. Since then, any opposition to anything has been (and is today) used to organize a strike. Unlike in the US, strikes are woven into the daily fabric of life in France. Law Stuck Down the Throat of French