Recently, I wrote that if corporations are people, they need to be better Americans. (blog 8/15/14)  They need to pay their taxes, for example.  Allan Sloan’s new article in Fortune explains one way some companies are shirking their duty.  (“Positively Un-American,” by Allan

One of my favorite pastimes when I was a teenager was to cruise Sunset Boulevard, starting from the beach at Santa Monica, California and following the winding road all the way to where it ended at the Los Angeles railway station.  The scenery along the route was varied.  The low be

I shocked a few friends when I announced that I’d sold my home and would be moving into a retirement center.  They weren’t surprised because they thought I was too young.  My grey hair and sagging jowls say otherwise.  So why the eyebrows lifted to form a question?  I suspect

Oh, that a reasonable woman can think so wrongly!  Rebecca Traister pens a opinion piece for The New Republic that criticizes prominent women in the Democratic Party for failing to challenge Hillary Clinton’s potential bid for President of the United State. Elizabeth Warren and Kri

The question on the 6th grade science test in Louisiana required students to fill in the blank:  “Isn’t it amazing what the ____ has made!”  “Lord” was the answer the teacher expected but her student was Buddhist. He got the question wrong and was hauled before the class t

I picked up my phone today on the first ring.  Bob Bidleman’s son was calling and I doubted it meant good news.  Bob was in his mid 80’s, in frail health and living in a facility in southern California. I’d last contacted him a few months earlier to give him the news that Woma

While I was in public life, a judge appeared before me and my fellow commissioners to complain that he’d sentenced a man to 10 consecutive weekends in the county jail but that our facility was so overcrowded, the offender had been turned away each time.  The judge glared at the 5 c

On October 26, 1971, Claire Booth Luce — former member of Congress, Ambassador to Italy, advisor to Presidents, author of several books and the successful play, The Women, as well as being a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Honor  —  found herself on a platform wit

Unlike the past when technology eliminated some jobs but created others, the trend in innovation today is toward job elimination. (“In the Future, Will There be Any Work Left for People to do?” by Geoff Colvin, Fortune, June 16, 2014, pgs. 193-200.)  According to writer Geoff Col

In a recent Vatican sermon, Pope Francis chastised childless couples for pursuing personal happiness and showering affection on their pets.  (“Pope Francis: Criticizing childless couples,” The Week, June 20, 2014, pg. 17.)  I had to smile because his remarks seemed to imply that