Lawrencia Ann Bembenek was a tall, striking young woman. She could have chosen nearly any career, but she wanted to follow in her father’s footsteps. He had briefly worked for the Milwaukee Police Department, and from a young age she wanted to become a police officer.

The youngest of three girls, she grew up Catholic in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in the 1960s. She ran the hurdles on her high school track team and took up the flute, graduating in 1976. For a couple of years, she attended junior college before working as a waitress and model. …

The first polio epidemic hit the US in 1894. Twenty years later, typhoid vaccination became common in this country.

In 1948, the first measles vaccine was tested. In 1967, the first mumps vaccine was licensed by the FDA and within five years, 11 million Americans were vaccinated — most of them children.

As vaccines were developed, schools were among the first on board. Until the rise of charter schools and homeschooling in the 1990s, nearly all American children attended public schools and even those who went to private school got their shots.

Those vaccinations include diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus or DTaP…

I can’t even muster up an Open Letter to one of the more recent, annoying situations in my life. It’s not hard to find them.

I bought a new-used car recently, so there’s plenty of fodder at the Car Dealership with their free bottles of water and trade-in deals while I know all these guys in khaki pants and embossed, collared T-shirts are chortling in back rooms about the thousands they just made off me.

“Hey Zack, can you believe she bought that huge, gas-guzzling lemon for eighteen five and thinks she’s getting a deal because I threw in a…

POST-APOCALYPTIC ADVICE

Dear Wealth Hoarders,

I can’t afford to move to New Zealand and burrow below ground until I find a clear spring and, fingers crossed, a ring that will make me invisible and immortal.

But you can, and despite many warnings from all the great works of fiction about what money and power does to a man, you aren’t listening.

What I can afford is a shipping container and some land in Oklahoma and believe me, I’ve considered my bunker options.

I’m sure it’s doable. After all, my brother-in-law has cobbled together something bunkerish for his new forge. He’s a blacksmith…

Like anything you will ever do for money, there is a learning curve and writing for a living is a bumpy rollercoaster ride for the first few months. It’s like any other small biz or work-for-yourself venture: writing for money takes grit.

I earn about $3,000 a month working 25 hours a week as a writer. I’ve been doing this for a year and a half and during the first year, I went down the wrong path.

Can you make a living this way? I believe you can, but it helps to have some talent and the best advice —…

The Darwin Awards began in 1985 as an official commemoration for individuals who either died or sterilized themselves in idiotic ways, thus removing themselves from the human gene pool.

How did the father of evolution, Charles Darwin, come into play?

The award winners took themselves out of the evolutionary competition for reproduction.

It’s impossible to win if you happened to remove anyone else from the gene pool when you went to the other side, however.

In 1993, Wendy Northcutt began a website that eventually turned into multiple books. To win, a nominees must:

1. Be documented by a valid media source…

We love our cars but they are destroying the biosphere.

I just bought a new car. It gets 23 mpg, and I got it used because I’m cheap. Its main purpose is to camp and tow a boat. I wanted to buy an electric vehicle, but there aren’t any that will tow. I can’t really afford a new electric car anyway, and used ones are hard to come by.

As individuals, we feel invisible in our paltry contributions to fixing climate change, which is part of the reason I went ahead and got the car I wanted.

As communities, we…