Articles

Sandra Smith writes: Egrets. Add an R and it becomes regrets. Is it possible to speak of regret, birds, women friends, and youth in the same post? We sat in the shade under the awning with other visitors and took turns using the viewing scopes to spy on courting rituals, egret eggs, and fuzzy babies. An hour passed quickly and it was time to leave. more »

The US Supreme Court decision allowing for-profit businesses to opt out of the contraceptive mandate in the new health care law has raised questions about what the ruling might mean for businesses, for future challenges to the contraception mandate, and even for the future of church-state law. The Pew Fact Tank posed these questions to Robert Tuttle, one of the nation’s experts on church-state issues such as: Are there other aspects of the Affordable Care Act that are likely to face religious-liberty challenges? more »

Joan L. Cannon reviews: After too many novels whose focus seems (if the reader is honest with herself) to be on the sexual antics and sensations involved with falling and being in love, this is a welcome rendition that allows for how real people after the flush of youth must behave. It seems likely that it would take a writer of Quinlen’s reputation to be allowed to have her two main characters act as they do. You will believe it all, and really root for a happy ending. more »

Roberta McReynolds continues her cake decorating saga: Holding the frosting nail in my left hand, I examined the blob with a critical eye, noting it tended to resemble a hunchback slug more than the emergence of a rose bud. I brushed it off into the bowl and tried again. This time I made a giant amoeba, with all the charm one could expect from a protozoon sagging upon a frosting nail.be impossible for one of my classmates; her homework for last week was flawless. The… more »