Florida Republicans are legislating against any talk about menstruation until after many girls have begun their periods — Florida State Rep. Stan McClain has introduced a bill that would make it illegal for teachers and their students in grades 1 through 5 to talk about menstruation. Menstruation — for all you guys who don’t know this — commonly begins about age 12 but not unusually begins as early…

No more music festivals or wine and cheese jamborees for us — When COVID-19 vaccines first became available in Oregon, back in December 2020, I decided I wouldn’t get one. That year, I’d given in to medical opinion and gotten a flu shot for the first time in years — and almost immediately had come down with a case of flu that…

Home protection gone bad — Most people who buy guns do so “for protection.” This is understandable. If somebody breaks into my apartment at midnight with the intention of raping or killing me, grabbing my gun and shooting the intruder will keep me safe. I can keep myself safe if my gun is already loaded…

I would have died — I was born two months premature in 1943, sixteen years before neonatal intensive care in Florida. In telling the story of my birth, my mother said the medical staff at the hospital inspected me — no fingernails or toenails, almost no suck reflex — shrugged, and ignored her questions. …

And another word that says, “No, only one” — One word tells me you have more than one wife — or more than one TV, house, … whatever. This one word tells me that your first wife may find “the other woman” in a house she didn’t even know you own watching an even bigger TV than is in…

Line spacing, indents, font changes, text decorations — no problem — If you write poetry, you’re already aware that Medium does not make it easy for you to publish your poems the way you write them. Three problems, in particular, are troubling: line spacing, indents, and font changes. The poem above, for example, looks like this when you type it into…

A “No AI” badge is now available for you to add to your stories — A smaller version of the badge you see above is now available for Medium writers. You can add the badge to a story to tell your readers that you, not ChatGPT, wrote a story. You. Not ChatGPT. Not Jasper AI. Not Ryter, Writesonic, Quillbot, Copy AI, Hypotenuse, Copysmith, Frase, Growthar…

A “No AI” badge tells readers no AI text generator wrote a story — Hello. I’m Katharine Valentino, creator of the “No AI” badge you see pictured above (a smaller version is available at the end of this story). A writer puts the smaller version of the badge on a story to assure you that the story was written by them and not by…

An unfond memory of childhood and how it reflects on today’s gun culture — When I was in first grade 73 years ago, my friend Johnny and I walked to and from school together every day. Walking to school was carefree; walking from school was careful. We had to be careful to take a different route each day, and even then we were sometimes…