Novel excerpts: My herbalist father

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On this Father's Day, 2023, I'd like to share two excerpts from my forthcoming novel about the Chinese immigration experience through Angel Island in the early 1900's (Bridge Across The Sky, Atheneum Books for Young Readers, Fall 2024) that were inspired by memories of my father.

The opening stanza of the novel is based on the only story I ever heard my father tell about his younger days.… [more]

The Company We Keep: Abortion

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This is the first of a series of posts I'll be making about how political positions we hold compare with the policies of the other countries of the world. Often, the propaganda of the political parties within this country can give us a distorted view of what's normal, and the "echo chambers" that we create for ourselves through our social media circles and our choice of news sources can distort that view even more.… [more]

Twin Monarchs Chess Problems

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I've invented, or maybe just reinvented, a new kind of chess problem that is (I hope) immune to being solved by chess engines. It involves one or both sides having two kings!

Other than that, all the other rules of the game stay the same, so these problems still feel like normal chess problems. They just involve these two extra rules dealing with the new situations that can arise when you have two kings:

  1. The only way to checkmate a player is to checkmate both kings simultaneously.
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What We Can Do, 2021

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I normally post these guides to political action in election years, but the lesson of the last four years is that there are serious problems in this country that require ongoing action. So here are my recommendations for groups to support and — perhaps even more importantly — actions that we can take to continue mending the fabric of our society.… [more]

What We Can Do – Georgia 2021

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As you probably know, the 2020 elections are not over yet. Two contests remain: the two Georgia Senate seats, which will determine which party controls the Senate for the first two years of the Biden/Harris administration. In those two years, we can either witness actual grownups begin to govern this country again for the good of all, or watch Mitch McConnell obstruct everything we need to be doing.… [more]