Page 5 - Barbara Leedom News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Barbara Leedom: Opting out Barbara Leedom People want to secede. They want their places to get out of the places they are. If you’ve heard anyone on Cape Cod wanting to secede and be its own country or state, they better have good reasons. How could we go it alone without support from the feds and our Massachusetts? Geology experts and climate change non-deniers believe our Cape may sink. Sinking into the ocean is not the same as succession. Succession is opting out, going it alone, being a new state or no state at all. Scary thought, but thousands of people want to do just that. Sinking is...

Barbara Leedom: Viruses' Borrowed Life Wicked Local A friend asked me to write simply about the bad names I’ve been calling COVID-19 for the past nine months. He asked me to be gentle. I asked what he meant by being gentle. “Calling things awful names does not give us any information about viruses.” I hadn’t thought gentle when I’d called the pandemic virus a malevolent microbe and a vicious, vehement virus and other wordy epithets. So I said I’d do research and beware of junk theories. I would also pass my writing by two doctor friends.

Barbara Leedom Epictetus (AD 55 - AD 135) Fall has fallen onto our Cape. One of the first leaves to change color is poison ivy. Those three leaves on a stem are a lovely scarlet now. It’s got to do with urushiol, an oil that causes allergic reactions. Now who would know urushiol? An app called PlantFinder does. Like so much else in life, answers are complicated. We hunkerers are living in a mysterious, uncertain, wonderous time. We watch and listen for answers only to be regaled with more questions. This is not a bad thing. Scientists love to ask questions – why this, why now? When will ...