Safely Aging in Place in Rural America
U.S. News – Dec. 12
Looking out the window of her home in the small, coastal city of Manzanita, Oregon – where only about 600 people permanently reside, and many more vacationers visit – Leila Salmon describes the scene before her: “I’m looking right now at Neahkahnie Mountain, which goes right down to the ocean and the rainbow that just came out over the ocean and the mountain.” … Having a strong support network is critical to aging in place – particularly in a rural area, says Cassandra Ford, an associate professor of nursing at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, who has lived in rural areas and worked with rural populations as a nurse and researcher for much of her career. “Sometimes that can be family, sometimes that can be friends, sometimes that’s neighbors,” Ford says.
A Possible Break in One of Evolution’s Biggest Mysteries
The Atlantic – Dec. 12
Once upon a time, before India knew Asia, when alligators sunned themselves on shores north of the Arctic Circle, a small, timid, dog-like creature tentatively waded into a river. Fifty million years passed. The continents wandered and crashed, and the ocean reconfigured itself … In a fossil-hunting trip to the South I took with Alabama state paleontologist Dana Ehret, ancient whales were on our minds, strewn, as they were, across the Alabama farmland—fossils that Melville claimed, “slaves in the vicinity took … for the bones of one of the fallen angels.”
“Can Men And Women Be Friends?” Is A Question We Need To Stop Asking & Here Are 4 Reasons Why
Bustle – Dec. 12
Among all the age-old questions explored in movies and around dinner tables, few are more popular than: Can men and women really be friends? And the fact that we’re still asking it says a lot about our culture. Of course men and women can be friends, and every reason someone might believe otherwise is fraught with sexist, heteronormative assumptions … Fortunately, most people don’t buy into this notion that a friendship between people of the “opposite” sex is impossible. A University of Alabama study last year found that the majority of people believe it is — which is encouraging, but it comes with a major caveat.
Can studying religion help us make sense of ‘Pizzagate’
Al.com – Dec. 13
Last Sunday Edgar Welch drove from his home in North Carolina to Washington, D.C. and walked into the Comet Ping Pong pizza restaurant armed with an AR-15 assault rifle, a revolver, and a folding knife. He came to save the children he believed were trapped in a sex trafficking ring run out of the basement of the restaurant. (By Michael J. Altman, assistant professor of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama. He teaches and writes about religion in American culture, politics, and history.)
The stigma: Why mental illness matters
Al.com – Dec. 12
Stigma develops from the abnormal. Any difference from what society dictates as normal leads to the unaffected majority marginalizing and dismissing the affected minority. (By Codie Harris, a journalism student at the University of Alabama).
Tuscaloosa Symphony Orchestra Christmas Spectacular
Tuscaloosa News – Dec. 13 (Photo gallery)
The Tuscaloosa Symphony Orchestra performs in Moody Music Hall Monday night.