How often have we, as discerning readers found that the reported norm does not fit what is true for ourselves? I had a few women contact me, asking me to write about menopause. I asked them to answer one question, “Have you noticed any changes in your sexual response in relation with menopause?”
Simply stated, menopause means a pause in menstrual cycles. Once cycles cease, a woman is said to be peri-menopausal. Pre-menopause can be classified when a woman first begins to experience changes to her cycles. It can take several years. The entire experience can be called Menopause, and it's not nicknamed, “The Change” for nothing. No woman can predict her symptoms, the severity, how many years it will last or if hormone replacement therapy is a worthwhile solution. Women can experience menopause in their 40s, 50s and into their 60s. Diet, stress, smoking, medication, surgeries, and especially cancer treatments can bring on menopause.

In the 1920s and 1930s, anybody who was anybody tried to figure out how to rid the world of war. Collectively, I'd say they got three-quarters of the way to an answer. But from 1945 to 2014, they've been ignored when possible (which is most of the time), laughed at when necessary, and on the very rare occasions that require it: attacked.

What a flock of idiots the leading thinkers of a generation all must have been. World War II happened. Therefore, war is eternal.  Everyone knows that.

But slavery abolitionists pushed on despite slavery happening another year, and another year.  Women sought the right to vote in the next election cycle following each one they were barred from.  Undoubtedly war is trickier to get rid off, because governments claim that all the other governments (and any other war makers) must go first or do it simultaneously. The possibility of someone else launching a war, combined with the false notion that war is the best way to defend against war, creates a seemingly permanent maze from which the world cannot emerge.

A long list of prominent individuals has signed, a number of organizations will be promoting next week, and you can be one of the first to sign right now, a petition titled "Call For Independent Inquiry of the Airplane Crash in Ukraine and its Catastrophic Aftermath."

The petition is directed to "All the heads of states of NATO countries, and of Russia and the Ukraine, to Ban-ki Moon and the heads of states of countries on the UN Security Council." And it will be delivered to each of them.

The petition reads:

"Set up an impartial international fact finding inquiry and a public report on the events in Ukraine to reveal the truth of what occurred.

"Why is this important?

"It's important because there is so much misinformation and disinformation in the media that we are careening towards a new cold war with Russia over this."

That's not hyperbole. It's the language of U.S. and Russian politicians and media.

Black ’hood, white cops. “Get the fuck on the sidewalk.”

And so it begins, and begins, and begins. An African-American boy dies for walking in the street — for yet one more insanely small transgression. Protesters cry for justice. The legal bureaucracy hunkers down, defends itself, does what it can to paint the deceased 18-year-old, Michael Brown, as a bad guy. Sides harden in the media. Once more it’s us vs. them. Nobody talks about making things right; nobody talks about healing.

But we can’t talk about healing — yet. We can’t talk about Ferguson, Mo., and the standoff between angry residents and the heavily militarized police, now two weeks old, without talking about institutional racism. In a healthy, free society, the idea of a “standoff” like this would be absurd, because the police aren’t a separate entity, controlling that society on outside orders, like an occupying army. In a healthy society, police serve the community; they’re part of it.

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Here in Kabul, Sherri Maurin and I are guests of the Afghan Peace Volunteers’ recently formed live-in community for young women. Hollyhocks in the garden reach as high as the second floor of our living space. Rose bushes, morning glories and four-o-clocks have bloomed, and each day we eat tomatoes, mint and green onions plucked from the well-cared for garden. The water source is a hose and tank outside, (there’s no indoor plumbing) so that’s where dishes and clothes are cleaned. The latrine is also outside, --and unfortunately we’re sharing it with playful neighbourhood cats, but otherwise Zarghuna, Zahidi and Zahro complete almost every detail of housekeeping, each day, by 7:00 a.m.

Two additional rooms are filled with sewing machines and tables used by a group of local seamstresses.