I write this on Labor Day, knowing that LaGaceta had its Labor Day edition last week.  Historians are like that:  we want to examine things after they have happened, and we seldom speak prior to an event, even a scheduled event.  So I wanted to see how our local paper, the only one we have, dealt with this day.  Because the Tampa Bay Times no longer prints on Mondays, that meant going to the e-version, where I found what I expected:  zilch.  Read More 

The day before I was scheduled to do an internet interview with Mayor Jane and Congresswoman Kathy, my dear friend Mitzi Anderson knocked on the door.  She has been with the Mango Post Office forever, and she held a sheet of stamps that honored the 19th Amendment.  As you know, this was added to the Constitution on August 26, 2020.  It ensured all American women of the right to vote, no matter in what state they lived.  I wrote about this long political fight recently, so I won't rehash.

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It's a shame that the root of "authoritarianism" is "author."  Very few authors are authoritarians in the political sense of the word; instead, we generally are open-minded, and we seldom respond well to those who issue commands.  I suppose the word originally conveyed "authority" in the sense of credence and expertise, a person who knew what she/he was talking about and was to be respected because of that.  In political usage, however, "authoritarian" has come to be personified by guys who are proud to follow orders and are empowered by uniforms, armor, and weapons.  We recently have seen a lot of such authorities beating and shooting unarmed civilians, both in America and abroad. Read More 

The media has done a fairly good job of raising awareness that this month is the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which ensured the right of American women to vote in all elections.  You may be confused, however, by the exact date, as different ones are being used.  Some reporters are using August 18, but those of us in the field always have used August 26.  The reason for the disparity is not a lazy error, but instead reflects the many complexities of amending the US Constitution.  Read More 

One of the first things I did after Hubby died was to re-read the diary I kept in the summer of 1970.  In our new travel trailer, we went from Massachusetts up to Canada, down to Minnesota, and across the Upper Plains and Rockies to California, where we made long visits in Sacramento, San Francisco and Los Angeles.  Then it was the Southwest, the Lower Midwest, Southeast, and back up the East Coast just before school started in September.  I took lots of photos that were developed into slides; I bought my own slide projector and movie screen; and then I enlivened my high-school American history classes with travel pictures. Read More 

When our daughter interned at the law library of the US Supreme Court, she took Hubby and me to see some things that are not open to the public.  One area was where justices (and other senior employees) could go to relax, a basketball court in the dome of the magnificent building.  They call it "the highest court in the land." Read More 

My good friend Dr. Gary Mormino, Florida's most eminent historian, frequently sends me printouts from microfilmed newspapers of a century or so ago.  Our local papers, including the Tampa Tribune and the old Tampa Times, never have been digitalized, and it was only recently, after the St. Petersburg Times became the Tampa Bay Times, that we have any electronic access to even that chronicle of our past.  So Gary spends his days reading old microfilm, a task that yours truly never would undertake.  Read More 

I first met Congresswoman Kathy Castor when she was six years old.  She was riding in the back seat of her mother's car, along with her younger sister and brother.  I was pregnant with my daughter, who now is 46, and we were headed to a feminist convention in Orlando.  Because of this longtime family closeness, I sometimes hesitate to give Kathy the public praise that she is due – but I've decided that I'm over that.  She is a model for legislators everywhere and at every level, and I'm going to talk today about just two of her many achievements. Read More 

And that includes the names of military bases -- or "posts" or "forts" or "camps," as the Army calls its facilities.  The Navy has both "bases" and "ports", and only the Air Force – which didn't begin until after World War II -- uses "base" exclusively.  But because the media has dubbed the issue of renaming military installations as "bases," that's what we will use.  The larger point is that names are far from inviolate and frequently change with time. Read More 

·      Re re-opening:  next time around, let's keep the bars and nightclubs closed and instead open the libraries, museums, and art galleries.  A very different sort of patron goes there, and space in these venues naturally encourages social distancing.  To say nothing of holding down the cost of law enforcement.  When's the last time you heard of a shoot-out at a library or museum?

·      Re Republican objections to mailed ballots, isn't this the way Wall Street has run stockholder elections forever?  You get a little card in the mail and can return it or not.  Big corporations do not want your physical presence at the annual meetings they are required to have.  It's just hypocritical for the Fraudster-in-Chief, who grew up in this milieu, to claim that voters must be physically present.

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