With no clean finish to COVID, I'm searching for a bookend to this period of my life. As I review other befores and afters, I keep returning to the one date I can’t forget: Sept. 11, 2001.
The Manhattan Project ushered in not only the nuclear age but the Anthropocene, the epoch in geological time that denotes humans' transformation of the Earth's chemistry, climate and biodiversity.
In Ethiopia, physical closeness was a natural expression of friendship and love. When I came to California and put my arm around my sister in public, she said "People will think we are lesbians."