Posts from March 2021

Something Old, Something New

LightGramsMarch 25, 2021Volume 25, Number 12 Humanity’s first powered flight occurred on December 17, 1903 when Orville Wright launched their crude aircraft, the Wright Flyer I, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The first powered flight on another planet will happen within a month, and it will fittingly carry a swatch of fabric used on the…

Tampering With My Vaccine

LightGramsMarch 18, 2021Volume 25, Number 11 Steve Brandenburg has been a pharmacist for 23 years; he knows about safe handling practices of medications designed to protect or restore the health of patients. But on the evenings of December 24 and 25 of last year, he rendered a box of vials of COVID-19 vaccine either less…

An Unseen Universe

LightGramsMarch 11, 2021Volume 25, Number 10 A story carried by Reuters last month caught my attention. Kit Yates, a math expert at London’s Bath University, projected the number of COVID-19 virus particles in the world at the height of the pandemic. I won’t list all the steps he went through, but the bottom line of…

Reunited With His Heart

LightGramsMarch 4, 2021Volume 25, Number 9 Teresa Ferrin works at a thrift store in Phoenix, Arizona. While working her shift earlier this year, a fellow worker brought in a piece of cardboard with military medals attached. Among the medals was a Purple Heart, given to women and men of the U.S. Military who are wounded…