For the first time in my life, I'm trying to ignore it.  With the loss of my husband, a brother, and a sister this year, I just can't do what I ordinarily do.  Therefore, I hope you perhaps you, too, might want a change from the Holly and Jolly, and I'm going to write the column I would have written were it an ordinary week.  LaGaceta wants it early, so some things may have changed by the time you get this, and I trust that you will understand if that turns out to be true.  With Trump running the government by tweet, you know how quickly news can be outdated.  But hang in:  I'm going to end this with a cheerful tale from the past that I've been intending to tell for a while.  I hope it makes you smile. Read More 

Two days before the Electoral College met, the fascists who call themselves the Proud Boys finally got around to doing what they had threatened to do much earlier and marched on Pennsylvania Avenue – while 1600's Current Occupant was up in New York.  Bad planning, that.  It was much, much smaller than past marches on Washington, and no one paid a lot of attention -- least of all the Electors who were intent on doing their civic duty back in state capitols.  Read More 

I couldn't be more thrilled with President-Elect Biden's economic team.  It's what I've been waiting for all of my life.  As a not-really aside, I want to tell you that I got the highest grade in an introductory economics class of 55, 50 of whom were young men.  The professor took the opportunity to shame the guys, greatly embarrassing me in those pre-feminist days.  As women have risen in the field, I've sometimes regretted that I didn't swim against the tide and become one of these pioneers, but I don't regret it for very long.  Making it as a female historian was hard enough, and in economics, I would have been miserable most of the time.  Hubby was similar in leaving math and physics for lower-paid philosophy, and these decisions were basic to more than a half-century of happiness. Read More