It’s not surprising that academic researchers have tried to define and even quantify love, but it is somewhat surprising that they only have been doing so since tentative explorations in the 1970s and more substantially in the 1980s. Leading researchers on the subject Clyde and Susan Hendrick devoted a chapter to “Love” in Liking, Loving, […]
In its 10th consecutive year, the Providence Children’s Film Festival, February 15-24, offers 27 different feature films and short film packages at a number of venues throughout the city, including the Avon Cinema, the Gilder Center for the Arts, the Metcalf Auditorium, the Woodman Center at Moses Brown, the Providence Athenæum and the RISD Auditorium, […]
Still the second leading cause of death in the United States, cancer is evolving to become a disease of socio-economic status, according to a major report published Jan 8 by researchers at the American Cancer Society. Cervical cancer, which is highly preventable by HPV vaccination, is about twice as likely to kill women in poor […]
There is an old joke that there are three kinds of people: Those who make things happen, those who let things happen, and those who ask, “What happened?” This is a play about that third group. The three characters in This Is Our Youth at Burbage Theatre inspire a certain affectionate empathy in me, since […]
Keeping calm while carrying on – quite a lot of carrying on, really – is the theme of The Night Watch, the Gamm Theatre’s US premiere of Hattie Naylor’s adaptation for the stage of Sarah Waters’ novel set in London during World War II and its immediate aftermath. The first act is set in 1947 […]
It is difficult to summarize or even explain what Thom Pain (based on nothing) is about: a one-man monologue with surreal references to everything from Shakespeare (repeatedly) to the Song of Songs. Much of the material involves a somewhat central narrative about a child and a remarkably literal shaggy dog story, to which the monologist often returns after his […]
Since 2008, federal law has required “parity” for most health insurance coverage of mental illness (including substance abuse) on the same terms as physical illness, and many states including Rhode Island impose additional requirements on nearly all health insurance coverage even in cases that would be exempt from federal rules. The Affordable Care Act of […]
Life expectancy is not supposed to decline in wealthy First World countries. As I wrote two years ago reporting that 2015 saw the first decrease since 1993 at the height of the AIDS epidemic (“American Life Expectancy Unexpectedly Declines”, Jan 11, 2017), “Life expectancy is a measurement that summarizes almost everything about quality of life […]
[See also, “News Analysis: RI to Legalize Recreational Cannabis,” Jan 16, 2019] The more I talk to people on both sides of RI Governor Gina Raimondo’s proposal to legalize recreational cannabis, the more pessimistic I become that anything at all can be passed by the General Assembly: the proposal is almost custom-crafted to displease everyone and […]
Four public high school girls and an intelligent, caring teacher study and rehearse Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. This may seem nothing very unusual, but that play is a classic story of cliques forming within small groups, politicking for advantage. Its subject, the Salem witch trials of 1692-1693, were driven in large part by the testimony […]