• Columns,  Savvy Senior

    The Savvy Senior: What’s the Difference Between Alzheimer’s and Dementia?

    By Jim Miller

    Dear Savvy Senior, What’s the difference between Alzheimer’s disease and dementia? My aunt has dementia, but they don’t know if she has Alzheimer’s disease, which is very confusing to me.

    Trying To Understand

    Dear Trying,

    Many people use the words “Alzheimer’s disease” and “dementia” interchangeably, but they are not the same thing. In fact, you can have a form of dementia that is completely unrelated to Alzheimer’s disease. Here’s what you should know.

  • Columns,  Grace Anne Stevens

    Grace Anne Stevens: My Transgender Life – Hi! I’m the Bride’s Dad

    Grace Anne Stevens

    By Grace Anne Stevens

    It all seemed to be happening so quickly.  It was only about a year ago, that my oldest son told me that my daughter, Stella, had visited him with her new boyfriend, Rob.

    This was a first-time event for the family, that has already worked through not only the split up of their parents in 2001 and my own transition in 2011.  Given that Stella is 38, and we had not experienced this with her before, none of us was quite sure what to make of it.

    I got to meet Rob last summer and was pleasantly surprised last Thanksgiving when this kind of old school young fella, started asking everyone in the family – one at a time, and secretly – that he was “thinking about marrying her, and was seeking permission from each of us.”    Do people actually do this anymore?

  • The Twist Podcast

    The Twist Podcast #70: Calling Dolly Parton, Baby Jails, Miss America Meltdown, and Our Secret Agent President


    Join co-hosts Mark McNease and Rick Rose as we take a look at the headlines, consider who we’d like to play us, America’s newest baby jails, the great Miss America meltdown, and Trump’s KGB handler comes to the White House.

    Enjoy The Twist on LibsyniTunesSoundCloud, Stitcher, YouTube, and right here at The Twist Podcast page.

    Copyright 2018 MadeMark Publishing

  • Book Reviews,  Columns

    Book Review: Tin Man: A Novel, by Sarah Winman

    By Terri Schlichenmeyer
    The Bookworm Sez

    Tin Man: A Novel, by Sarah Winman
    c.2018, Putnam
    $23.00 hardcover / $22.95 paperback Canada

    The picture reminds you of a thousand things.

    You recall the day it was taken: the smell of the air, the background sounds, food and drink, laughter and the sense that this was forever. You’ve seen that photo many times throughout the years, but it never fails to remind you of the best of times. Or, as in the new book “Tin Man” by Sarah Winman, it may represent the worst.

  • Columns,  Savvy Senior

    The Savvy Senior: Simple Gadgets That Can Help Older Drivers


    By Jim Miller

    Dear Savvy Senior,

    Are there any specific auto gadgets you can recommend that can help senior drivers? Both of my parents are in there eighties and still pretty good drivers, but due to arthritis and age they’re very stiff, which causes them some driving problems.

    Researching Daughter

    Dear Researching,

    To help keep senior drivers safe and prolong their driving years, there’s a plethora of inexpensive, aftermarket vehicle adaptions you can purchase that can easily be added to your parent’s vehicles to help with many different needs. Here are some good options.

  • Latest

    It’s a Mega Goodreads Giveaway! 100 (Yes, 100) Kindle Copies of ‘Black Cat White Paws: A Maggie Dahl Mystery’ Available

    Goodreads Book Giveaway

    Black Cat White Paws by Mark McNease

    Black Cat White Paws

    by Mark McNease

    Giveaway ends July 10, 2018.

    See the giveaway details
    at Goodreads.

    Enter Giveaway

    Enter from now through July 10 for a chance to win one of 100 Kindle editions of “Black Cat White Paws: A Maggie Dahl Mystery.” Prefer to purchase it outright? It’s just $1.99 through July (regular $3.99). The reviews are trickling in and it’s set to be a crowd pleaser.

     

  • Columns,  Stephanie Mott

    Stephanie Mott: Good Tidings of Great Joy

    Stephanie Mott

    By Stephanie Mott

    “A great many of us, myself most definitely included, have placed our faith into battle after battle where we have tried anything but love.”

    The 10th Verse of the 2nd Chapter of the Gospel of Luke says, “And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.”

    However, the United States is currently on a runaway train, racing toward an increasing inevitable crash in a place that is more like frightening senselessness and imminent pain. This, of course, for all people who have historically been marginalized and oppressed (and murdered, and enslaved, and incarcerated, and separated from their children, and turned away from the table).

    So, whatever happened to good tidings and great joy?

  • Latest

    LGBTSr Exclusive Giveaway: 20 Kindle Editions of ‘Black Cat White Paws: A Maggie Dahl Mystery’

    Okay, make that 18 free copies! Congrats to Robin and Larry who got their early bird copies.

    Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) has a new tool for authors to get the word out. I’ve purchased 20 Kindle editions of my new mystery, Black Cat White Paw: A Maggie Dahl Mystery, and I’m just waiting to send them out to the next 18 claimants. Love a good cozy-esque mystery set in an idyllic river town? Love cats? This book’s for you. All I would appreciate in return for a free Kindle edition is an honest review on Amazon.

    Just email me at LGBTSr@outlook.com and I’ll send a download link to the first 18 respondents. It’s just like buying a Kindle book directly from Amazon. No in-between, no gathering of personal information. Just click, open, and read.

    Mark/Editor

    About Black Cat White Paws

    In Black Cat White Paws, recently widowed Maggie Dahl finds herself faced with challenges on all fronts: life alone in a new town, running a business she and her husband had dreamed of and started together, and now pursuing a killer. Her sister Gerri moves from Philadelphia to Lambertville, New Jersey, to support her sister and start a new life of her own. Together the women search for a murderer, helped in critical ways by their neighbor’s cat. A black cat with white paws. A cat whose independence sets it all in motion and sees it through to the end.

    Black Cat White Paws finds Maggie moving from New York City to Lambertville, an idyllic river town with artists, restaurants, incredible landscapes, and enough local characters to populate a murder mystery. Join Maggie, Gerri, Checks the cat, and a cast of colorful small town natives just as eager—and as shocked—to find a killer in their midst.

  • Columns,  Grace Anne Stevens

    Grace Anne Stevens: My Transgender Life – The Measure of a Man

    Grace Anne Stevens

    Grace Anne Stevens
    My Transgender Life

    As the month of June 2018 is coming to a close, I am reflecting on my gratitude to have spent half this month traveling, between my 10-day boat and bike adventure in Bordeaux France and a 5-day seminar/adventure in Toronto.   As I review some of my pictures, there is one that captures me and takes me on another one of those time traveling trips I often find myself on.  The picture is of a fruit stand in Bordeaux.

    As I am drawn into this scene of a fruit stand on the street, that is still making my mouth water, I find myself tripping back over 50-60 years ago to my old neighborhood on Avenue J in Brooklyn, when each block seemed to have an outdoor fruit stand similar to this one.


    If you wanted anything, you had to ask the vendor for what you wanted.  This is a long distance from today, where you pick what you want, bag and weigh it, and probably could not find help when you need it in today’s supermarkets.

  • Latest

    Featured Book: Beowulf for Cretins, by Ann McMan

    Read the review by Velvet Lounger HERE.

    About Beowulf for Cretins

    English professor and aspiring novelist, Grace Warner spends her days teaching four sections of “Beowulf for Cretins” to bored and disinterested students at one of New England’s “hidden ivy” colleges. Not long after she is dumped by her longtime girlfriend, Grace meets the engaging and mysterious Abbie on a cross-country flight. Sparks fly on and off the plane as the two strangers give in to one night of reckless passion with no strings attached, and no contact information exchanged.

    Back home at St. Albans, the college rocks Grace’s world when it announces the appointment of a new president, the first woman in its 165-year history. Cue Abbie—and cue Grace’s collision course with a neurotic dog named Grendel, a fractious rival for tenure, and a woman called Ochre, in what very well might be Grace’s last real shot at happiness.

  • Book Reviews

    Book Review: Beowulf for Cretins by Ann McMan, Reviewed by Velvet Lounger

    The following review first appeared at the Lesbian Reading Room

    By Velvet Lounger

    Beowulf for Cretins, by Ann McMan
    Print Length: 320 pages
    Publisher: Bywater Books (June 26, 2018)

    Take one rather lost and lonely English professor and sit her next to a gorgeous, intellectual and amusing woman on a flight to San Francisco. Bring them back together for a madcap costume party that evening, and make both of them brave enough to step out of their comfort zones and “go there.” That’s the basic plot of Ann McMan’s wonderful short story “Falling from Grace” in her anthology “Sidecar,” which led to the idea of “Beowulf for Cretins.”

    Don’t worry if you haven’t read “Sidecar” (although if not, why not?) as the slightly amended story is repeated as chapter one of the full-length version. And once Grace and Abbie go their separate ways the morning after the party, with no contact details, not even last names shared, then surely it will take an act of fate, or possibly an act of God, to make their paths cross a second time.