Donald Trump’s promise to revive the coal industry gives a false hope to miners who haven’t seen a paycheck in a while.  Fossil fuels are on their way out and coal, being the dirtiest, is already feeling the effect.  Oil will be around a while longer, but if I were a young inves

I was going to write about oil today, until I came across a scathing article about Ivanka Trump.  At the  Berlin conference on women entrepreneurship, which she attended as a guest of German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, the audience booed when she responded to a question about her fa

A jealous boyfriend murders his pregnant lover and is charged with a double homicide. Two lives are lost, are they not? 38 states believe this is the case and have enacted fetal homicide laws.  (“Some Form of Punishment,” by Nina Liss-Scultz, Mother Jones, May/June 2017 pgs. 48-5

Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, shows us a world where women’s roles can change overnight as might soon be the case in Turkey. Tayyip Erdogan, his power rooted in the conservative Islamist AK Party, has recently managed constitutional changes that make him a  near

Yesterday, I sat down in the midst of a circle of women at the retirement center.  Mine had been a long day and I was inwardly chortling about an email I’d  received from a young woman. Laughter is best when shared, so I told my companions about my invitation to a writer to appear

“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” historian John Dalberg wrote at the end of the 19th century. A truism today, but scientists have begun to wonder if power is to blame for corruption or if people who seek power have aspects of character that are corr

I’ve never been clear how Hillary Clinton, who left the Secretary of State’s office with a 65% approval rating, could fall into disgrace the moment she decided to run for President of the United States.  (“Hillary: Should she just go away?” The Week, April 21, 2017, pg. 17.)

The political upheaval that put Donald Trump into the White House has left me pondering.  Why did so many women ignore his sexists attitude when they voted for him? Why do his supporters remain loyal, insisting he is fulfilling his promises, when by any objective measure, he has betr

Shooting stars are noted for a sudden burst of light that soon disappears. Their conduct is a metaphor for the lives of many in the public eye.  Still, actors, musicians, politicians and the like, all  strive to leave their mark upon the world.  Are we mortals foolhardy in our immo

Chided by a woman on Facebook for my blog of 3/20/17, she informed me that the terms “alt-right” and alt-left” belong to the Nazi era and had no place in a discussion about the extreme right and left in American politics. Her comment revealed she’d done little reading on the s