These topics are very important, but I've addressed them repeatedly and want to change the subject this week.  I expect you might feel the same.  I do want to acknowledge, though, that our current protests are historic, in that elected leaders are not allowing policemen and other "conservatives" to attack the demonstrators' right to free speech.  Our grandchildren are picking up the protest signs we dropped after Richard Nixon's 1968 election, and genuine reform in the criminal justice system may be within sight.  I hope so. Read More 

Under our almost totally Republican officialdom, Florida government becomes more and more arbitrary, inefficient, and chaotic.  I hope that voters who put such unwarranted faith in buzz words – especially Jeb's "People First!" and Rick Scott's "Let's Get to Work!"– will rewind to the days of Lawton Chiles and Bob Graham, when accountability and transparency meant something.  It's not just that today's Tallahassee folks are inefficient:  it seems they deliberately aim their poor service at poor people. Read More 

I've been going through more than a half-century's worth of photo albums, picking out favorites of Hubby to use in a video at his memorial service, whenever the pandemic drops to the point that we can have it.  Of course this makes me sad – not only for his loss, but also because I miss the people who cannot hug me right now, as well as those who never will again.  This is especially true of the many aunts and uncles who nurtured him and me, with not an unkind person among literally dozens of them.  Would that we had that generation back again! Read More 

Thanks so much to those of you who told me that you were glad to see my return last week.  Of course I continue to miss Hubby terribly, and I know that I shall for a long time.  I also know, though, that he would want me to return to my writing life.  He supported it for so long that he deserves some return on his investment, even though it may be a widow's mite.  And I hope you will forgive me if I continue on themes closely related to him and our 54-year marriage.  Read More 

I've started this column dozens of times, mostly from my lonely bed around three or four in the morning.  This is the first daytime attempt, though, and my major goal is not to allow tears to flood the keyboard.  I still don't know a way to begin other than with those sentences that I've begun and then rejected during my mind's midnight rambles.  The computer says that the last column I wrote was April 13, and my beloved Hubby died on April 19.  It will have been more than a month by the time that you read this, and I nonetheless melt down regularly.  Read More 

The nation's biggest deficit may not be financial, either personal debt or public debt, but instead is attention deficit.  My elders predicted it back in the days of black-and-white television:  They feared that movies, radio, the new TV, and electronic devices they couldn't even envision would lead to a world in which everyone would insist on being entertained all the time.  Playtime creativity would disappear as kids sat like zombies in front of the TV; even adults would dumb down as they became passive receivers instead of active doers.  Read More 

There still are a few things on my list of observations about our current crisis, but I'm depressed and tired of thinking about it -- and especially about the Idiot-in-Chief.  In addition to the new global hell that we all are going through, I have my personal hell, as Hubby has regressed because of the pandemic.  I stopped him from watching the news a long time ago, but he sees the changes in the hospital and has become very anxious and paranoid.  Read More 

It's hard to know what to say right now, as almost everything that can be said has been said about our history-making times.  Still, a few thoughts that may be worth more thought.  I wrote last week about possible positive effects of the global pandemic, but I didn't put that in terms of an epistemological concern that Hubby has had for decades, and I shall take this opportunity to explore it.  Read More 

Last Friday was the official publication date for my new book, but like everything else in our brave new world of global pandemic, it was – as the country song says -- "not exactly what I had in mind."  I wanted a big launch in DC, preferably at the Belmont-Paul House.  It's named for Alva Vanderbilt Belmont, who gave millions of dollars to win the vote for women, as well as Woman's Party leader Alice Paul.  She lived there during the campaign for the 19th Amendment that fully enfranchised all American women for all elections, no matter in which state they lived.  Read More 

That is a sign on many British roads used to indicate a lane ending, a roundabout, or other change in traffic patterns.  I have changed my priorities in this column.  I intended to skip discussion of the pandemic this week:  after all, I first wrote about it when it was just a rumor that the Chinese government was trying to censor, and I've followed it since.  Read More