Though male legislators in state after state in America continue to write laws restricting a woman’s right to end a pregnancy, some of our sex continue to insist gender has no place when considering a candidate for public office.   Can they really be so complacent? Inequality lies

I’ve never been one who enjoyed meetings.  I hated staff committees when I was a teacher.  When I was in politics, my assistants complained we never had enough time to hammer out strategy.  Now that I’m in the retirement center, I avoid meetings with the passion of one threaten

When I served in local politics,  I, and some of my predecessors, worked hard to shut down a local nursing home in the eastern corner of the county.  It was rickety and posed health hazards for the residents, but it had an antebellum grandeur and its patients, who had lived there ma

Isabel Allende has many fans, though I’m not among them.  Nonetheless, I did stop to scan a short article she’d written for AARP Magazine. (“Beads, Books and Bijoux,” by Isabel Allende, AARP, Dec 2015/Jan 2016, pgs. 60-61.) In it, she reveals that creating jewelry enhances he

Leslee Urdwin has finished a movie about rape, Daughter of India. Jyoti Singh was a 23 year-old medical student in New Delhi, India who was attacked on a private bus and, after being brutalized by a group of young men, was murdered by them.   One of the offenders died while in polic

I subscribe to Vanity Fair because it gives me a glimpse of a world I cannot enter, the realm of the entitled and the pretenders.  Sometimes their antics amaze and amuse and sometimes, they confirm what I already know: that people everywhere are pretty much the same, except some make

One of my blog readers is a baby boomer. We’ve never met but sometimes he comments on a blog, particularly in support of  women’s issues.   Being curious,  I emailed him one day to ask how he came to be so sensitive to the goals of feminism.  His answer: “I’ve got daughte

“There is no good answer to being a woman,” writes Rebecca Solnit in a recent essay. (“The Mother of All Questions,” by Rebecca Solnit, Harpers’, October 2015, pg. 5) Expanding on that thought she explains, a mother is under the gaze of society’s judgment. Too much or too

We all know the stereotype: brainy girls are the homely sidekicks of the buxom, brainless blondes whom boys can’t get enough of. Watch the TV series, Big Bang, for a classic example.   The pairing of beauty with the brain dead isn’t in accordance with nature, however. (Click) De

Though a staunch defender of the First Amendment, I’ve experienced moments of discomfort because of it. While in politics, I questioned the legitimacy of Rap lyrics that encouraged the brutal treatment of women, for example. If the subject were race, I pointed out, the writers could