Editor’s Note: In critical cases of COVID-19, the elderly have the best chance of survival by means of a ventilator. What’s particularly frightening in the current pandemic in the US is the inadequate number of hospital beds as well as ventilators. The following article about a stopgap treatment option for the critically ill, using…
By Tom Engelhardt Reprinted from TomDispatch.com As I turn 75, there’s no simpler way to put it than this: I’m an old man on a new planet — and, in case it isn’t instantly obvious, that’s not good news on either score. I still have a memory of being a camp counselor in upstate New…
[Reprint of an article I first published in January of 2011] By Don Pelton 5:30 AM, the first day of the new year, still dark out. I peer out the bedroom window and see a small circle of new snow glistening in the light from the motion-detector on the well house, probably set off…
I just ran across this Amazon book review I wrote back in 2001, of Katie Hafners’ The Well: A Story of Love, Death & Real Life in the Seminal Online Community. The WELL, started by Stewart Brand and Larry Brilliant in 1985, was one of the first online virtual communities. For a time in…
Don Pelton It occurred to me recently, as I was cutting a couple of pieces of watermelon for my dear wife and me (giving her the larger piece) that in a long marriage (we’re at 52 years and counting) we exchange the “Gift of the Magi” more or less everyday. In a thousand small…