Everyone knows that the story of the month – several months, now – is sexual harassment. The story behind the story, though, is that of female judges. I hope you noticed the one who sentenced notorious abuser Dr. Larry Nassar to so many prison terms that he will die behind bars. She is Judge Rosemarie Aquilina – a woman whose father was Maltese and whose mother was German. She became a citizen at age twelve and graduated from Michigan State University (MSU), where Nassar was a sports star, in 1979. But it’s being a woman that makes all the difference.  Read More 

You have energized women in a way that hasn’t happened since the 1970s. Your vulgar language and shameless behavior has brought grandmothers back to the streets, along with their daughters, sons, and more. Last weekend’s marches brought back memories of when I was young, and Hubby joined me in Tallahassee parades organized by the National Organization for Women and other groups that aimed to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment to the US Constitution. We never achieved that -- but we won every battle of the war.  Read More 

So much of life is two steps forward and one step back, all the while forgetting that we have walked this path before. This is especially true of public life, where experienced people are put out to pasture by term limits, and youngsters think they are inventing new wheels. Specifically, I speak of a Times editorial last week, “Move faster to clean up leaky tanks.” The subhead read in part: “Thousands of underground petroleum tanks are buried across Florida, endangering the drinking water supply because the state doesn’t make their cleanup a priority.”  Read More 

In America, that is. At least, the most important outside of government, a private entity funded with small donations from members. That would be the League of Women Voters, which after a century or so, continues to pull us out of our mire. You think there’s fraudulent voting now? Try looking back a century or so, when politicians openly bought a virtually all-male electorate with free drinks at saloons in exchange for their vote. Party bosses gave or withheld public employment depending on how someone voted. They picked up your garbage or didn’t, again depending on what they perceived as your political leanings. And no one thought that was wrong.  Read More 

Mostly odd. Ideas that have been on my desk long enough. First off, Hubby reads a lot of magazines. He takes them out of a rain-proof cooler on the deck, turns on his little water fountain, drinks his morning coffee, and reads. The habit keeps him up with what’s current so well that he showed me this item a couple of weeks ago -- even though it is from the January 2018 issue of Wired.  Read More