This will be an unusual column.  I've had some minor catastrophes in the last few days, and so I'm tired and not in a mood to think creatively.  Also, as it happens, a few days before misfortune struck, I came upon notecards from nearly fifty years ago.  Yes, I am trying to clean out files, but at a snail's pace.  It's a dreadful job, rewinding bits and pieces of your life.  Read More 

I'm glad I lived to the internet age, as it provides so many topics to ponder that I would not know about without it.  Yes, I still read the New York Times and the Tampa Bay Times (most days and always when it is in print), but I nonetheless see things online that are worth sharing.  You can read some below, but first I want to tell you about an opposite experience. Read More 

About five or six years ago, I wrote that the Cuban crisis, which began when this 70-something woman was in high school, finally was over.  I based this on the fact that my Arkansas sister went there with the Little Rock Chamber of Commerce.  I said that when Arkansans report enthusiastically on their trip to Cuba, everything is over but the shouting.  These farmers and business folks aimed to sell small tractors and rice to Cubans.  Yes, Arkansas is a big rice producer, and the Cuban diet depends on it.  They were developing a market that would benefit both nations. Read More 

You know that I call this column "In Context" because its chief purpose is to put current issues in the context of the past.  Once in a while, though, I intend to convey a point that needs a lot of background to put the point in its context.  This is one of those.  I've been reading "Clan of the Cave Bear" -- and yes, I know that this bestseller was popular in the 1980s, but I was busy.  That was the decade in which I published my first two books, one on immigrant women and the other on women during World War II.  Everything I read – and there were hundreds of books – was related to those topics. Read More 

when you don't have to check the news repeatedly to keep up with Donald Trump's latest atrocity.  Not that he isn't trying, but since the many attacks that his supporters have perpetrated on journalists, the media isn't cooperating with free publicity anymore.  Things have calmed down to the point that public life is kind of boring, which is the way it should be.  Read More 

As its number implies, HR 1 was the highest priority of the House when the new congressional session began in January.  Six months later, this biggest voting-rights bill since 1965 is dead, killed by the loss of the similarly numbered Senate bill.  We Democrats didn't have enough votes to overcome the obstruction led by Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell, so now the legislation is tossed.  Yet it's not too late to retrieve the big bill from the bin and get the important things done by passing separate parts --- the ideas with which the public almost entirely agrees. Read More 

The quick and nearly unanimous passage of a bill to create Juneteenth as a new federal holiday is an amazing marker of the real change voters made last November.  We pushed out an archaic administration that was deep into denial and replaced it with a realistic one that acknowledges historical facts.  As you doubtless now know – but may not have known until recently – Juneteenth recognizes the time that slaves near Galveston, Texas, became aware that they were free.  Read More 

Last week I used "BBQ" as a reminder of things I wanted to write about.  I covered birds/bees and books before running out of space for "q."  It was there to remind me of the only part of the US Constitution – or more technically, the Bill of Rights – that never has been litigated, challenged or even debated.  Now largely forgotten, the Sixth Amendment forbids the quartering of troops in civilian homes. Read More 

That's my reminder for things to write about this week -- along with "L," which doesn't work as an acronym.   The first two usages of "B" actually are one – "birds and bees."  There could be a third, "butterflies," and even a fourth, "books."  I find such word association helpful when there's no electronic device, or even a pencil, nearby for jotting down ideas.  Such as when I'm sitting on a porch.  I recently did a lot of porch-sitting at my daughter's home in Manassas, Virginia, looking up from my book now and then to think about what was going on in the natural world.  Read More 

The headline in Daily Kos read, "Virulent anti-immigrant zealot announces bid" for the Pennsylvania governorship.  Even before I opened it, I said to myself, "Whatta want to bet that it's a man and his name is from one of the ethnic groups that came near the 1924 congressional cutoff of mass immigration?"  Sure enough, he's Lou Barletta.  Earlier, as a city official, he pushed an anti-immigrant ordinances that the court struck down.  The lawyer for that expensive case?  Kris Kobach. Read More