I’m the child of farmers, and it’s in my blood to dig dirt. My mother and grandmothers and great-grandmothers, though, grew vegetables because they needed them to feed their big families. My generation is fortunate to enjoy gardening as a hobby, not a necessity, and I grow flowers for birds and butterflies. The few fruit trees we have are for fun more than food – and that’s a very good thing because this has been a very strange year for them. You may remember that the winter was exceptionally warm and the spring exceptionally dry, so the lychee and mango trees bloomed much too early and then lost their buds in the spring drought. I was sure they would bloom again when the summer rains came, but they haven’t. In retrospect, I think it was because late spring not only was dry, but also uncommonly hot. I even took a picture of the TV screen when the map showed 100 degrees in Brandon, something that never has happened in the 45 years we’ve lived here. Read More
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.
Swimming Pools
August 14, 2017
It will take a while to get to swimming pools because that needs a lot of context, so please hang in. You may remember that I’ve said I’m cleaning my study. I’ll be doing that for months. In lieu of writing another book this year, I’m going through files and boxes with the aim of throwing out dust-and-mold collectors. Most is old research material and much of it now is available on the internet, so lots of paper goes into the recycling bin. Read More
It’s Complicated
July 31, 2017
The most important lesson to be learned from the failure of “repeal and replace” hasn’t been sufficiently spelled out. The main message we should get is simply: Things are complicated. Modern society is complicated. Economics is complicated. Healthcare is complicated -- and because health is individualized, it demands attention to a great variety of details. Thus the reason that many Republicans gave for their initial rejection of Obamacare was that the bill was long, and as my neighbor averred, “no one even has read it.” Read More
I’m Going to Try to Emulate Joe O’Neill
July 24, 2017
He gets away with writing short paragraphs, and I hope to do the same in this column. You may remember I said recently that my friend Susan MacManus stole my thunder by writing about Tampa’s ethnic pioneers in government in her new book, Florida’s Minority Trailblazers. Because I can’t write about Representative Elvin Martinez et al, I intend to introduce some non-Tampans from this book, which is based on Dr. MacManus’ interviews with precedent setters. Hence: Read More
Random Thoughts
July 17, 2017
No kids on Noah’s ark. Him, his wife, three adult sons and their wives. Why no children? What does this say about Genesis? It’s hardly the way to generate generations. Read More
LaGaceta’s 95th Anniversary
July 10, 2017
Once again, I’m a week behind, but that’s the way historians work: Our analysis, by definition, is after the fact. So last week, when I wrote about Betsy Ross and the 4th of July, I said that I would follow up with thoughts on the 4th of July edition that marked LaGaceta’s anniversary. Well, actually, the 4th of July edition came out on Friday, June 30, but… Read More
The Flag, the Fourth, and Female Fame
July 3, 2017
Okay, I’m a few days behind on this. It was June when I wrote my last column; my head still was stuck on Father’s Day; and when Gene reminded us LaGaceta columnists to get our work in early for the 95th anniversary edition (more on that next week), I didn’t think ahead to the 4th of July. But I have thoughts ready for Independence Day. You’ve read all your life about the Founding Fathers who signed the Declaration of Independence in a hot Philadelphia hall on July 4th, 1776. No mothers were invited to this birth of a nation, but they nonetheless labored nearby. Without women, you know, history ends. Read More
Southern Mountain Road Trips
June 26, 2017
The historical image of the South has so concentrated on Charleston, New Orleans, Virginia’s Dismal Swamp, and other low-lying areas that many Americans forget we also have mountains. Tampans are less likely to take that view because so many of our affluent families have sought refuge from summer heat over the years in North Carolina. Relatively few of us, however, go to Tennessee or north Georgia. These areas are indeed part of the Great Smokey Mountains, and Hubby and I renewed our acquaintance with them last week, when we vacationed with family at a lake house south of Knoxville and drove back through the mountains north of Atlanta. Read More
Belated D-Day
June 12, 2017
Hubby observed D-Day by watching – again – The Longest Day, as well as other World War II stuff on the History Channel. I remember my excitement when the History Channel began, naively thinking this would be an opportunity to acquaint Americans with some of the many outstanding women who are neglected by historians, but no such luck. The channel is pretty much a subsidiary of the Pentagon, just replaying old war clips. And there are a lot of those, as the Defense Department always has been willing to throw a disproportionate amount of money at photography. This began with the Civil War and has continued. During World War II alone, hundreds of thousands of soldiers were assigned to the MOS (military occupational specialty) of photography. Read More
A Little Dream That Died…
June 5, 2017
A recent column on the upcoming Constitutional Revision Commission (CRC) focused on the status of women on the 36-member body. To review: one woman in 1968; five in 1978; ten in 1998, and for 2018, twelve. Big whoop. Today I want to drop that aspect of “progress” and explore ideas I might have proposed had we been in the visionary place in 2018 that, back in 1998, I thought we could be. Read More