Editor’s Note: Although none of us in the last few decades has lived through a global pandemic, there’s something familiar in the mood of it that makes me want to sum up my life, assess it as if I’ve been here before, in proximity to death, as if it’s my last chance, which I…
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…
[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…