Category Archives: Personal history

E.O. Wilson

Posted on Monday 27 December 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

The great evolutionary biologist and author E.O. Wilson died on Sunday. He was 92. He  had been publishing new books right up to the end, with Tales from the Ant World in 2020. Several of his earlier books, from On … Continue reading →

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Christmas Eve and Family Traditions

Posted on Friday 24 December 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

No links political or scientific today. Instead I’ll indulge on what’s happening now, and what happened in my childhood, on Christmas Eve.

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Union Square; Going for the Kill; the Need for a Villain

Posted on Tuesday 21 December 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

Perhaps from time to time I’ll move the “endpiece” discussion to the *top* of the post. So: Today we visited Union Square in San Francisco, on this the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year. (Which means the shortest … Continue reading →

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Ls&Cs: Theocrats, School Boards, Libraries, Shocked Parents; The Sound of Music

Posted on Monday 20 December 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

How shocked parents are fighting back against school boards and public libraries; how other parents respond; how and when abortion became so important to the Christian right; and about the usual Republican gerrymandering. With an endpiece about The Sound of … Continue reading →

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Not at This Year’s Worldcon, Again

Posted on Saturday 18 December 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

This weekend is this year’s World Science Fiction Convention, in Washington D.C., and again I am not attending, as I have not attended any conventions at all since when Worldcon was near me, in San Jose, in 2018. Tonight, beginning … Continue reading →

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Ls&Cs: Writers’ Blogs; The Secret in the Diary

Posted on Sunday 5 December 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

I should have established that the context for yesterday’s piece about Republicans and Democrats was not about partisanship, but as another example of a counter-intuitive notion, how things have changed over the decades and centuries, so that what might seem … Continue reading →

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L&Cs: The Ethics of Transplants

Posted on Sunday 28 November 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

Today six and a half of us took five hours to buy two Christmas trees. The piece here was in the New York Times today, posted online four days ago. It’s relevant not just because I went through the transplant … Continue reading →

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Family History Mystery

Posted on Tuesday 26 October 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

–Solved. Glacier Lake, 1965.

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Personal History: View from the East Coast of England

Posted on Thursday 21 October 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

This is one of my two favorite photos that I’ve taken in my entire life. This is a photographed snapshot. It’s a view from the east coast of England, when I visited the place my parents lived in the 1950s … Continue reading →

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Personal History: World Fantasy Con Badges

Posted on Sunday 17 October 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

One more set of badges with commentary for today, then I’ll move on to other things, and catch up on links and comments. Today: badges from World Fantasy Conventions.

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