So I can't see what will be happening in Ukraine by the time you read this.  It could be serious:  it could be the first military invasion of a European nation since World War II.  I ask myself how we got to this point of renewed authoritarianism in Russia -- as well as in Turkey, North Korea, and other places where the thugs don't even pretend not to be thugs.  In part it is because we good guys in the US and the UK allowed Donald Trump and Boris Johnson to signal that Hitler-like hatred again was okay. Read More 

Recognition of women's contributions to American history is so long overdue that I guess I should be grateful for anything.  Yet I wonder who made the decisions about the new images of women on quarters (presumably the Treasury Department, which authorizes coinage), and why they don't ask the opinions of historians specializing in women's history.  At least they didn't ask me, although the reference desk at the Library of Congress has given my name to other inquiring institutions. Read More 

January 6th always will have another meaning now, beyond the traditions of Epiphany.  I was pleased to join about a hundred people – maybe two hundred – in front of the Sam Gibbons Federal Courthouse on that date.  Hubby and I adored Sam and his Martha, and I'm sure they would have approved of this vigil.  It was scheduled for sundown, and after holding signs and waving flags at the edge of the streets, we lit electric candles and sang "America the Beautiful" and other love songs to our country.  Read More 

As always, it's important to notice what didn't happen:  the predicted pile-ups of undelivered gifts didn't happen.  The Post Office delivered 99% of its packages on time, while privately owned FedEx was nearly as efficient, at 97%. Read More 

I know I said last week that I was going to write about Jimmy Carter's book addressing violence, but I looked at the calendar and realized that this is not an appropriate week for it.  I continue to believe in peace and good will – as does he, even though much of the world argues against it.  Someday it will happen:  we will have a democratic global government that assures peace and safety for everyone.  I won't live to see it, but I'm sure that it will happen.  Either that, or we disappear as a species.  There simply is no other choice.  Read More 

Among the things that are easy to miss on the international scene is that women are playing important roles in diplomacy.  Actually, we have been for some time, as I discovered when I wrote a chapter on diplomats in my Women in American Politics (2010).  What recently reminded me of this unheralded phenomenon, though, was an Associated Press story on a meeting of top diplomats from the US, the UK, and the EU about Russia's threatening behavior towards Ukraine. Read More 

When Little Rock's racial integration was a hot topic, I was an Arkansas teenager who was elected to go to church conference in Illinois.  I was aghast to discover that people there assumed I was a racist and treated me with scorn.  The same was true a decade later, when I arrived for graduate school in Massachusetts.  Even though this was Brandeis, a Jewish university dedicated to tolerance, the underlying assumption was that because I was from the South, I was dubious. Read More 

Among the many books Hubby left on his shelves was a well-reviewed one published in 2015 called "SPOR."  The reasons for that name (and the name of the author, too) are complicated, so I'm going to skip that.  You can look it up yourself if you are so inclined.  It is a history of ancient Rome that ends at the beginning of the Christian era, and it was very slow going at first.  Indeed, I was at about page 300 of the 600-page tome before it picked up enough to stop being an insomnia cure.  Nonetheless, I made a few notes that I want to share, things that I'd not known or really grasped before. Read More 

I began this column at a Holiday Inn in Lake City.  For the first time ever, I drove alone to Columbus, Georgia.  It was for a memorial service for my older sister, and I hope it will be the last of four such recent family events.  I've made this trip to Columbus, which is on the Alabama border, upwards of fifty times.  My sister and her family lived there when Hubby and I moved to Tampa in 1972, and we always spent at least one annual holiday there – Easter, Thanksgiving, and especially New Years, as her birthday was December 31.  Read More 

I depend on a news site, Daily Kos Elections, for information that takes a long time to be picked up by the mainstream media – if it ever does.  Perhaps by the time you read this, our lazy local paper's partner, the Miami Herald, will have looked around its own backyard and told you what Daily Kos has been telling me.  As of Monday, the top two of many contenders in the recount for Florida Congressional District 20 were separated by five votes.

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