Mostly odd. Ideas that have been on my desk long enough. First off, Hubby reads a lot of magazines. He takes them out of a rain-proof cooler on the deck, turns on his little water fountain, drinks his morning coffee, and reads. The habit keeps him up with what’s current so well that he showed me this item a couple of weeks ago -- even though it is from the January 2018 issue of Wired.  Read More 

By which, yes, I mean the time between Christmas and New Year’s. It’s a time for relaxing and enjoying the toys you got as gifts, a time for visiting with friends and family. We often went to Arkansas or to Georgia to see our big families during this period (especially because my Georgia sister’s birthday is New Year’s Eve, and they belonged to clubs that had fantastic parties), but we are increasingly reluctant to face the holiday traffic jam on the way to Georgia.  Read More 

I was moving around in computer files, trying to find a good idea for a Christmas column, and thinking how badly I need to re-sort files and put documents in their proper folder. Filing has been the bane of my life, both in paper and in e-versions. I love it when everything is nice and neat and easily located, but somehow things don’t stay in the right place for long. Anyone have an intern who can help?  Read More 

With “tax reform” looming over the nation, we are very fortunate to have our own Kathy Castor as the only Floridian on the conference committee that will determine the devils in the tax details. Everything I’ve read about the bill indicates that it is primarily a reverse Robin Hood, stealing from those at the bottom to further enrich those at the top, so we surely need the well-informed, conscientious person that Kathy is. Even conservative media such as the Wall Street Journal warn that this is not real tax reform, much less simplification, but instead is another Christmas tree loaded with presents for the businesses who hire the best-connected lobbyists. A number of reputable analysts assert that it is the beginning of the GOP’s longtime goal of eliminating Social Security and Medicare. Charities are worried about negative effects on them.  Read More 

We held the unveiling of this year’s Riverwalk honorees last Friday, with a standing-room-only crowd on the water side of the convention center -- and an extraordinarily hot first-day-of-December sun beating down on us. This was our fifth year, and with bronze busts of six historical figures each year, there now are thirty. They all are on the east side of the River, running from the History Center through Waterworks Park, and Mayor Bob indicated that we might consider doing thirty more on the west side, which currently is under re-development.  Read More 

Hubby and I were privileged recently to help Tampa native Lula Joughin Dovi celebrate her 95th birthday. Lu’s name may be familiar to you because, despite her advanced age, she continues to practice her profession of journalism by occasionally writing a column for LaGaceta called “Tracks.” She answers her e-mail promptly, continues her lifelong support of Democrats, especially women, and manages just fine alone in her four-bedroom Carrollwood home, complete with a nice garden. A few years ago, I helped her assemble an autobiography of her fascinating life in and out of Tampa, and I decided for this week’s column to just quote from the first chapter. It will be longer than usual, but I hope you find this picture of Tampa almost a century ago to be as interesting as I do. So in Lu’s voice:  Read More 

I’ve had this fantasy for a long time, and the current times seem right to upgrade it from dream to vision. Let’s try reversing traditional gender roles for a decade, especially in government. Let men stay home and care for the next generation that phony politicians tout as so important. Let them change diapers, buy groceries, cook meals and do laundry, attend to doctors’ appointments and PTA meetings, run car pools and volunteer at schools. Most of the guys who set educational policy now haven’t been in a school in years, nor seriously talked with kids or helped with homework.  Read More 

My friend Amy Scherzer sent me via my friend Betty Castor a copy of the BBC’s magazine, “History.” Probably more than half of the TV that Hubby and I watch is produced by BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation), but I didn’t know they published a magazine on history. I’m sure Amy wanted me to see it because this issue was largely devoted to women, with cover stories entitled “Games of Queens” and “The Killing of Lady Jane Grey.”  Read More 

Yes, I know I should have written this for last week’s column or maybe even the week before that, but we historians like to wait until things have settled. It turned out that no one chose to disrupt Halloween with genuine horror, which many feared. The date, however, meant more to me than Halloween as usual, as it was the 110th anniversary of my mother’s birth on a Minnesota farm. On October 31, 1907, she became the oldest of my grandparents’ eventual twelve children. Their parents had been immigrants from German-speaking provinces before there was a united Germany. Except for one family branch, they came from farming lands near the Baltic Sea, close to modern Denmark and Poland.  Read More 

I noticed a pundit recently refer to California as “a very blue state” – and that is true, as Democrats hold virtually all of its top offices. In 1992, California became the first state to elect women to both of its US Senate seats, and Diane Feinstein and Barbara Boxer are Democrats. Boxer retired at the last election and was replaced by Kamala Harris, a Democratic woman and an African American. When I published Women in American Politics in 2012, all of the congressional districts around Los Angeles and San Francisco were represented by Democrats, most of them women.  Read More