The day before I was scheduled to do an internet interview with Mayor Jane and Congresswoman Kathy, my dear friend Mitzi Anderson knocked on the door. She has been with the Mango Post Office forever, and she held a sheet of stamps that honored the 19th Amendment. As you know, this was added to the Constitution on August 26, 2020. It ensured all American women of the right to vote, no matter in what state they lived. I wrote about this long political fight recently, so I won't rehash.
Doris writes a weekly column for LaGaceta, the nation's only trilingual newspaper, which has pages in English, Spanish, and Italian. Begun in 1922 for Tampa's immigrant community, it continues to thrive more than a century later. Her column is titled "In Context," as it aims to put contemporary issues in the context of the past.
Authoritarism in our time
August 24, 2020
It's a shame that the root of "authoritarianism" is "author." Very few authors are authoritarians in the political sense of the word; instead, we generally are open-minded, and we seldom respond well to those who issue commands. I suppose the word originally conveyed "authority" in the sense of credence and expertise, a person who knew what she/he was talking about and was to be respected because of that. In political usage, however, "authoritarian" has come to be personified by guys who are proud to follow orders and are empowered by uniforms, armor, and weapons. We recently have seen a lot of such authorities beating and shooting unarmed civilians, both in America and abroad. Read More
Happy 100th birthday! The beginning
August 17, 2020
The media has done a fairly good job of raising awareness that this month is the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which ensured the right of American women to vote in all elections. You may be confused, however, by the exact date, as different ones are being used. Some reporters are using August 18, but those of us in the field always have used August 26. The reason for the disparity is not a lazy error, but instead reflects the many complexities of amending the US Constitution. Read More
Summer of 1970
August 3, 2020
One of the first things I did after Hubby died was to re-read the diary I kept in the summer of 1970. In our new travel trailer, we went from Massachusetts up to Canada, down to Minnesota, and across the Upper Plains and Rockies to California, where we made long visits in Sacramento, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Then it was the Southwest, the Lower Midwest, Southeast, and back up the East Coast just before school started in September. I took lots of photos that were developed into slides; I bought my own slide projector and movie screen; and then I enlivened my high-school American history classes with travel pictures. Read More