Beginning next year in California, gun shops will be required to keep logs of ammunition sales. Gun rights groups have long fought laws on ammunition saying it is a way around the second amendment. But as Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan reminded some 25 years ago, “guns don’t kill people, bullets do.” California already has more anti-gun laws than most states and now it is going after ammunition. For people like me who do believe guns need to be restricted in order to save lives and life altering injuries, such laws are welcomed. But what is even more welcome is the Continue reading “Guns, Ammo and 3D”
One Billion Without Toilets
This piece is about a subject we shun, open defecation, but the article it stems from touched my heart and I think it will touch yours. Andrea Bruce, now a freelance photographer was on a National Geographic assignment and her photographs on the subject of open defecation were on exhibit at a photo festival in Perpignan, France in early September. Yes open defecation sounds like a topic we don’t want to know about, yet what it means is important to anyone who cares about the welfare of Continue reading “One Billion Without Toilets”
40% Struggle To Meet Basic Needs
In the midst of a booming stock market, low unemployment and despite a thriving economy 40% of US families struggle to meet at least one of life’s necessities. That means paying for food, rent, utilities or healthcare. The Urban Institute, a DC based non profit research organization which studies economic and social policy found that the difficulties where mainly among low income families or those with health issues. The study also revealed that these problems Continue reading “40% Struggle To Meet Basic Needs”
The Women of Artsakh
Since 1988 and to the present day there has been a war in Nagorno-Karabah, a disputed territory in the southern Caucasus Mountains. Although internationally Nagorno-Karabah is recognized to belong to Azerbaijan, Armenia also claims it because of ethnic ties and because it is an Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan territory. The resulting war has deprived the little country which now calls itself Artsakh, of men. While it is a very patriarchal society women have had to step in government, courts, universities all the while being mothers and whatever roles they have had to take on. The result shows what women can do and it is sufficiently impressive Der Spiegel ran an article about them. The women did not ask for this, they are not feminists and do not talk about gender parity. They stepped in because there was a Continue reading “The Women of Artsakh”