So did you notice that the NRA (National Rifle Association) had strict gun control at its recent convention in Nashville? Not only were attendees prohibited from bringing weapons to the event center, the guns that were for sale from vendors also were incapable of being tested by potential buyers. No ammunition was available, and the event organizers even went beyond that to insist that sellers remove the firing pins from guns. This meant that even if a guy managed to slip a bullet past security, no gun there could shoot it.  Read More 

The most remarkable thing about the recent swearing-in of Mayor Bob Buckhorn and the Tampa City Council, I thought, was Imam Junaid Khan of New Tampa’s Islamic Society. He was on the agenda after the choir from St. John’s Progressive Missionary Baptist Church, as well as “words of wisdom” from Father Len Plazewski of Christ the King Catholic Church and from Rabbi Mendy Dubrowkski of South Tampa’s Chabad Chai. “Mendy” turned out to be a male name, so there was no gender diversity, but with a benediction by Pastor Bart Banks from the same church as the choir, there was plenty of religious diversity.  Read More 

Dr. Dee Jeffers, who specializes in the health of women and babies, sent an excited e-mail announcing that US News had named Frontier Nursing University as the Number One school in nurse midwifery – coming in ahead of Yale, Penn, Columbia, and other such well-known institutions. Her husband, Dr. Charles Mahan, former head of the State Department of Health and a founder of the USF College of Public Health, long has served on its board.  Read More 

My friend Linda Vaughn, a USF graduate whose life was based in Tallahassee, died last week. Her pancreatic cancer was misdiagnosed as celeriac disease, and by the time that she came here to Moffitt, it was too late. She died back in Tallahassee, sooner than anyone expected. But I wouldn’t impose this personal grief on you except for the fact that I’ve long used her as a teaching tool: her work as a lobbyist offers case studies of how a good cause can defy the political odds – and also how a victory too easily achieved can turn into a loss.  Read More 

I’ve never met him, but I’m grateful for Robert Trigaux of the Tampa Bay Times. Year after year, he writes enlightening stories in the business pages that one never finds elsewhere. Last Sunday’s was on the huge amount of fraud in Florida, much greater than that in any other state. A handy map used red dots to represent every 100,000 consumers who charge that businesses defrauded them. Our Florida was a sea of 14 bright red dots: twelve covered the peninsula; the dots skipped the counties around Tallahassee but added two more at Pensacola. Residents of this area proudly refer to themselves as living in “LA,” by which they mean “Lower Alabama.”  Read More 

Because I peruse the Sunday newspaper advertising sections, I noticed recently that a grocery store had a box of fresh blackberries for less than $3. This may sound inconsequential, but it has meaning. First you should know that blackberries grow in only a fairly narrow band of the United States. It was too cold for them in Massachusetts, where Hubby and I bought our first home, and it’s too hot for them in Florida, where we have lived since 1972.  Read More 

I have been sick. I don’t know if it’s this year’s version of the flu or a flare-up of an old ear problem that has been making me nauseous, but I’m grateful for President Obama’s recent advocacy of precision medicine. We so much need to have personalized medical tests and records that can create precise treatments designed for each differing individual. The funding that the National Institutes of Health will get for this, however, is in the hundreds of millions, while the Pentagon continues to get hundreds of billions to wage war. I saw a small story in Sunday’s news that some 4,000 troops are headed to Kuwait. Why?  Read More 

I read the comics in both local papers religiously, including the very small one that recently appeared in the Times called “Stone Soup.” I was especially grateful for last Sunday’s, as it gave me a light opening for this week’s heavy column. Two preteen girls were quarreling over which TV show to watch when they happened to catch the news about children being bombed in the Middle East. The last panel showed the sisters crying and embracing each other.  Read More 

As if she didn’t have enough to do in her busy life, Betty Castor volunteered to lead the program committee for the Athena Society this year. The first one, for October, was on Title IX of the 1972 Education Act. That may sound boringly legalistic, but this federal law gave female students equity with male ones in all educational programs, including athletics.  Read More 

Most people who read “In Context” care about history, so I want to tell you about an exceptionally interesting event that soon will occur in Lakeland. The Florida Conference of Historians meets on the beautiful campus of Florida Southern College during the weekend of February 13-15. The fifty-page agenda is almost astonishingly ambitious, with presenters from as far away as Canada, Panama, and even a princess from Saudi Arabia.  Read More