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
Doris writes a weekly column for LaGaceta, the nation's only trilingual newspaper, which has pages in English, Spanish, and Italian. Begun in 1922 for Tampa's immigrant community, it continues to thrive more than a century later. Her column is titled "In Context," as it aims to put contemporary issues in the context of the past.
Linda Vaughn’s Legacy and the UN’s Interest in Women
March 16, 2015
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
It Will Be a Long Time Yet Before the Past is Truly Past
March 9, 2015
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
NAFTA, Newspaper Renewals, and the “White House Boys”
March 2, 2015
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