The town of Occidental has changed a good deal since Doris Murphy first moved there more than half a century ago, something she herself has had a hand in doing. It’s reason enough for a community-wide party tonight to celebrate here 100^th birthday.

When Joe Murphy first brought Doris from San Francisco to Occidental, he showed her the 18 acres of redwood-sheathed ridgetop he had purchased nearby.  For more than two years thereafter, Doris recalls, their weekends were spent traveling to the remote property and constructing the solid green and white house with its large stone fireplace, where  she has lived fulltime since about 1960.

Doris was born and raised in Portland, Oregon, but hitch-hiked south to San Francisco after graduating from Reed College in 1938. There she met Joe Murphy, the influential leader of the Hod Carriers Local 38 union, and a high-profile organizer for the International Workers of the World. But Doris insists that meeting Joe did not inspire her to change her politics.

This picture of Doris and Joe Murphy adorns the cover of Love and Labor, the lively autobiography she published just a few years ago, at the age of 96. Her lifetime of  energetic participation in the town of Occidental will be celebrated in the new Occidental Center for the Arts on Thursday March 11, starting at 6 pm.

Economist Helene Jorgensen thought she had good health insurance, until she got really sick. Having survived both her illness and her direct dealings with hospitals, laboratories and insurance companies, she has written a bluntly critical account of her experiences, both economic and medical, titled Sick and Tired.

In her analysis of the American employer-based heath insurance model, which Jorgensen describes its development as a fluke of history.

That, in turn, fostered the development of the current “fee for service” medical system, which Jorgensen sees as vulnerable to corruption, and horribly wasteful.

Coming from a European perspective, the Danish economist shares in the general distain for a health care system that excludes millions of citizens. But she says the reform measures most widely under discussion in Washington would do little to fix a deeply flawed system.

In our fast-paced, materially-driven society, the idea of living more simply and slowly runs counter to prevailing norms. That may be why it’s catching on.

People have many different reasons for embracing the concept of voluntary simplicity, and author Duane Elgin (right)  sees them all as valid and interlocking, part of a “garden” of motivations that all serve a greater common cause.

The virtues of living simply and eschewing material goods are sometimes associated more with the Oriental teachings of Confucius and Buddha, although they were also embodied by such western figures as John the Baptist and St. Francis of Assisi. Today, says Elgin, the precepts of voluntary simplicity have taken hold in a big way in Northern Europe.

Duane Elgin, MBA and MA is an internationally recognized, visionary speaker and author.  His books include:  Voluntary Simplicity, The Living Universe, Promise Ahead, and Awakening Earth.   He will appear at Copperfields Books in Sebastopol at 7 pm on Monday, March 8, with a presentation titled,  "Voluntary Simplicity: Toward a Way of Life That is Outwardly Simple, Inwardly Rich."

Poisonings, both accidental and criminal, have been happening for centuries. But the science of investigating those deaths is barely a hundred years old.

As she began to research the history of forensic medicine in Jazz Age New York, science writer Deborah Blum, author of The Poisoner's Handbook,  says she was struck by the number and variety of toxic substances that were being used.

Many of those historic toxics are no longer in wide use, but that doesn’t mean we are any less vulnerable to poisons now, Blum (left) says. In fact, the chemistry of modern-day poisons is more complex than 90 years ago.

Forensic examinations and laboratory analyses have become central to a growing list of popular network television dramas. But Blum has no complaints about them.

Even in patients with advanced Alzheimer’s Disease, familiar music from long ago can awaken memories and prompt interactive behaviors. But how does that happen? A U.C. Davis researcher is working to unravel the neural mechanisms within the brain.

Much of the research that has been done so far on how music stimulates the brain has used musical samples that are not particularly stimulating. Dr. Petr Janata, associate professor of Psychology at the UC Davis Center for Mind and Brain, says that a new round of studies should work with recognizable samples, and could discover that the brain encodes different types of music in different ways or areas.

That’s one area of research that Janata hopes to explore himself, along with expanding the studies he’s done on Alzheimer’s patients to include different age groups.

Dr. Peter Janata will discuss his research into “Music, Memories and the Brain"  in a public presentation Friday, Feb. 19 at 8 pm in the Glaser Center in Santa Rosa, a benefit event for the Sonoma County Bach Society.

You can read more about research into the associations between music, memory and Alzheimer's Disease in this Wall Street Journal article.