By Marlene Parkin Issue #22 • July/August, 1993 Many of the quilts of yesterday took a lifetime to make. Perhaps the mystical part of quilts—the aspect that makes them almost human—is the countless hours of work and devotion it took to create a masterpiece of the heart. Beyond their beauty and usefulness,...

By O. E. MacDougal Issue #154 • July/August, 2015 There was a time when it was thought that a defining difference between humans and animals was: we use tools, they don't. But, in the last few decades, it's been discovered that many animals are tool users. Before we go further, let's define...

By Tom Kovach Issue #79 • January/February, 2003 A person recently wrote to a large Midwest newspapers' advice column asking for information about outdoor privies. It seems that this person's family inherited a log cabin from out of the 1930s and it came with no indoor plumbing. Instead there was an...