It’s impossible to follow the news without daily amazement. As more and more voters make it clear that they idolize Donald Trump, my Republican friends look shell-shocked. Their party is coming apart at the seams, with revered leaders openly bad-mouthing fellow Republicans. South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham allowed himself to be quoted saying that his party has gone “bat… crazy.” Of course Graham said this at a Washington press club dinner where liquor flows -- but he has not attempted to (as the jargon goes) “walk it back.”  Read More 

Everyone knows there was a time, not so very long ago, when WASPs – white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestants – ran everything. Older Jewish people remember when they were not welcome in certain clubs or communities, and a generation or two prior to that, the same was true of Catholics, especially Irish and Italian Catholics.  Read More 

I’m not sure if I told you, dear reader, that Hubby’s goal during his recovery from heart surgery was to go on the paid-for, no-refund cruise that we had arranged for our 50th anniversary. We got married on February 8, 1966 -- and yes, I was a child bride. The ground was covered with snow for our tiny little wedding in suburban Washington. The Army had transferred Hubby there from Massachusetts, and I dropped out of graduate school at Brandeis University to go with him.  Read More 

Some of the guys in the presidential parade have “suspended” their march. I absolutely abhor that word usage, with its implication that they are merely pausing to regroup and may return to the trail. Ben Carson gets little credit from me, but at least he did use the verb correctly when he suspended his campaign because some of his Iowa workers had a serious car accident. He planned to return and did – but meanwhile, many people assumed that he intended the current lingo and thought he had quit. Not that I mind, but his campaign did lose some of that also overused word, “momentum.”  Read More 

You may remember that I wrote a couple of months ago on the origins of Tampa’s street names. John Jackson was the federally employed surveyor who first put Tampa on the map in 1847, and he named most of its streets for Democratic presidents or Democratic nominees for president. There are a few exceptions, and the two street names that I could not definitely explain were Marion and Whiting.  Read More 

The good news is that South Carolina’s Republican governor, Nikki Haley, took a shot at fellow Republican Donald Trump in her response to the State of the Union speech; the bad news is that she apparently knows no American history. Her seeming courage in protesting Trump’s anti-immigrant politics also is diminished by the fact that she is herself the daughter of immigrants. Her parents are from India, not the Mexico of Trump’s demons, but the skin color is similar – and not white enough for The Donald.  Read More 

With thanks to those of you who have inquired, Hubby is recovering from two heart valve replacements and complications in his lungs. He was in Tampa’s VA Hospital, most of it in ICU, from December 23 to January 6. As was the case when was there in September, the medical staff took good care of him -- but the VA administration remains terrible, especially on caretaker issues such as scheduling, parking, and food availability. Food sales in particular could make an actual profit, and I can only conclude that its executives are clueless. They also think that wives have no lives.  Read More 

This is going to be a gripe fest. If you don’t want to read any negativity, please turn the page.


My older brother long has said that he would cheerfully return to the simpler times of the 1950s and 1960s when we were kids. I disagree and remind him that because I was born female, I know that the fifties were not fair – and my friends who are racial minorities or gay or otherwise outcasts back then certainly do not want to return to those “happy days.”  Read More 

I’m risking my respiratory health to get out a dusty paper file that dates to the late 1980s or early 1990s. I published my first book (Foreign and Female) in 1986, and we spent much of 1988 in Europe. That included Christmas in a house we rented from a Dutch family in the Algarve section of Portugal, on its southern coast. I noticed then how differently the holiday season is celebrated in various European countries, all of which were ostensibly Christian.  Read More 

I’ve always admired the writing of Morris Kennedy, long associated with Mother Trib. Now that their corporate owners have de-prioritized thoughtful writers as full-time staff members, it is a special treat to read pieces from him and other such reporters. I was especially pleased to see Kennedy’s tribute to the late Dr. John Betz in last Sunday’s Tribune editorial pages.  Read More