This edition of LaGaceta will come out on New Year’s Eve, so like last week’s on Christmas Eve, I don’t expect many readers. If you are one, please let me know: your message will brighten the comparatively molasses-paced early days of January. Those of us who take Christmas to heart are busy, busy, busy, with shopping and wrapping, decorating and card-sending, baking and cooking – until the 26th, when it comes to a crashing halt. Especially in an election year, the inbox is empty compared with just weeks earlier, and for me, there won’t be a trip to Washington and an inauguration to anticipate.  Read More 

At bedtime most nights, I do the newspaper crossword puzzle. I feel increasingly justified in spending time this way because neurologists are saying that such mental exercise is good for the brain. Crosswords are words, of course, and Hubby and I enjoy talking about words. We have frequent conversations on etymologies and usages, and we are glad to be native English-speakers because that language has by far more words than any other. It offers lots of choices for nuance and precision.  Read More 

You may have wondered why I wrote about the end of Daylight Savings Time and the coming of Thanksgiving last week, instead of joining my male colleagues in commentary on this traumatic election. It was because I knew in advance that Hubby and I would be driving home from Georgia on Election Day, November 8, as my nephew’s funeral was scheduled for Monday, November 7. I write my columns on Mondays, so I sent in a re-worked column from November of 2013 before we left. During the days since that devastating Tuesday, I’ve dreaded the thought of writing about our national turn towards fascism.  Read More 

Mayor Bob Buckhorn and attorney Steve Anderson, who heads the volunteer project for the Riverwalk’s Monument Trail, each made another fine speech when the 2016 honorees were unveiled last week. By city ordinance, they must have been dead for at least fifteen years; thus far, the committee of historians has chosen only people who died several decades ago. The point is to revive Tampa history and put it in the context of today.  Read More 

That is one of my favorite lines from Prairie Home Companion’s Garrison Keillor – along with “Exploding Christmas trees were no news to Mother.” I had a mother like that, a fellow Minnesotan who worried ceaselessly about the next possible catastrophe, Christmas trees included – even though in her non-electric youth a century ago, she had enjoyed real trees with lighted candles. I guess Grandma and Grandpa had more nerve than Mom. And it worked out, as my German-speaking grandparents reared twelve children with no crises.  Read More