Summer, in the minds of many Americans, begins with Memorial Day and ends with Labor Day, with a nod to Flag Day in June and a great celebration of Independence Day in July. There’s nothing in August, although the 26th of that month marks the enfranchisement of women in all states.  Read More 

An interesting thing happened this legislative session that I know of only because of one e-mail; it got no attention from my several electronic news sources nor in print. (Not surprisingly, as our one daily newspaper is less and less informative.) But it seems that Planned Parenthood had more success in the recently concluded legislative session than Displaced Homemakers, which is a first ever in feminist causes. Some background:  Read More 

I remember when Earth Day began in 1970. We lived in Massachusetts, and it was common to see soap bubbles in waterways because few municipalities had sewage systems adequate to dissolve the excessive phosphate that manufacturers put into detergents back then. The previous year, petroleum pollution on Lake Erie was so bad that water near Cleveland literally caught on fire. Richard Nixon, who was president then, was a paranoid politician who played dirty tricks on his opponents and richly deserved his ultimate fate -- but he did have enough sense to establish the Environmental Protection Agency in response to those of us who protested on behalf of Mother Earth.  Read More 

Especially if I’ve had a bad day, I read P.G. Wodehouse before going to sleep. It makes me smile, and I drift off more easily. A quick synopsis, in case you don’t know Wodehouse’s humor: His focus is on empty-headed, upper-class Brits during the Roaring Twenties. Jeeves, butler to Bertram Wooster, regularly untangles the complex knots in which these aristocrats find themselves. Bertram is a young gentleman with no visible means of support, yet inexplicably has no money shortage – despite his domineering Aunt Agatha, who follows him from continent to continent, despairing of his future.  Read More 

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had come home early from a scheduled trip with allies abroad because she was “tired?” That’s the excuse that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson gave for skipping an important meeting. He had been to Asia and arrangements had been made for him to go on to Europe, but he ducked out because he was, in his staff’s words, “fatigued” and “tired.”  Read More 

Congratulations to State Representative Dan Raulerson of Plant City, who was one of six Republicans in the Florida House wise enough and courageous enough to join with all Democrats in voting against a measure proposed by House Speaker Richard Corcoran, also a local guy who represents Land o’Lakes. Raulerson’s vote nevertheless was in vain, as Corcoran intimidated enough of his fellow Republicans to pass it 73-46, one vote over the required two-thirds majority. It will be up to senators now to stop this latest bit of dangerous foolishness.  Read More 

The more we forget. I wrote this column in my head last week, eating lunch at the convention center (their food is pretty good, by the way) during the annual fundraiser for the Hillsborough County Commission on the Status of Women (COSW). Composed of volunteers, it is nonetheless an official county entity, with members appointed by the Board of County Commissioners (BOCC). Although I’ve served on a number of such entities, I’ve never been sure that any agency under the aegis of government should hold fundraisers, let alone at $75 a plate -- but I’ve had that debate with myself for decades, and we’ll let it go.  Read More 

That maxim has been attributed variously to Thomas Jefferson, Tom Paine, and other revolutionaries of the American Revolution, as well as to Henry David Thoreau. He lived later, but advocated civil disobedience as a response to the human slavery that was legal in many states. The version of the maxim that I like best, however, is from our Stephen Colbert: “The government that governs best governs least – and by that standard, we have set up a fabulous government in Iraq.”  Read More 

What is the rate of evolution? Is anyone attempting to measure this? Specifically, when I was a kid in Arkansas, it was routine for dogs to chase cars on our unpaved, rural road. Sis and I were talking about this when she was here recently, recalling how she accidentally killed a dog who ran out to capture her car – when she was heavily pregnant and was rushing me to the doctor to sew up a deep cut I got on a rusty fence. I still have the scar, but the car incident wasn’t as bad as it could have been: the homeowner came out and said it was her son-in-law’s dog, and she never liked him anyway.  Read More 

Since November, there have been six special elections for vacancies in state legislatures, and Democrats have won five of the six. The latest was in Delaware last Saturday, when Democrat Stephanie Hansen, an attorney, defeated her Republican opponent, a realtor, by an astonishing 17 percentage points. This is a real reversal of the longtime rule for special elections, in which Republicans were more likely than Democrats turn out their loyalists and win. Indeed, Republicans in Florida won many of their gains during the 1970s, when that party started being a serious contender in the South, because of special elections in which a tiny minority of registered voters can pull off an election.  Read More