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Baby Bust
When I was growing up, American women had lots and lots of babies. Most of my friends came from families with at least three children, and often four or…
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Keeping the Newsroom Lights On
Newspapers are disappearing. Since 2005, more than 3,200 print newspapers in the United States have vanished, and they continue to disappear at a rate of…
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Bishop Budde Has Her Say
The country sat up and paid attention on Inauguration Day when the Right Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde, the Episcopal bishop of Washington, looked Donald…
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Doing the ‘Haka’
The video has gone viral, and it’s easy to see why: a young woman who is the youngest member of New Zealand’s Parliament performing the scary ‘haka’ dance…
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Roar!
My excellent daughter-in-law recently lent me one of her favorite books titled Roar by the Irish writer Cecelia Ahern. It quickly became one of my…
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A Towering Woman of Achievement
I saw a poll the other day saying that fewer Black Americans plan to vote in this year’s upcoming presidential election than voted in 2020. (Six months…
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When Good People Don’t Pay Attention
A century ago, a charismatic charlatan in Indiana by the name of D.C. Stephenson “set in motion the [Ku Klux] Klan’s takeover of great swaths of America.”…
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Don’t Trust Anyone Over 30
When I was in my 20s, the mantra of freewheeling young people was, “Don’t Trust Anyone Over 30”. And we didn’t. The median age of the U.S. today is 38.8,…
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Babies – and Baby Steps
A British woman I know, who lives in California, recently gave birth to her first child. Her employer, Google, granted her six months of paid parental…
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Dr. Sue Rex: Teacher Extraordinaire
Sue Rex never wanted to be anything but a teacher. From her childhood days in Pennsylvania instructing her “classroom” of dolls to her decades as a…
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Sister Fidelma Is on the Case
Another “Sister Fidelma” mystery (#34 in the series) will be published in July, and this makes me happy. For nearly three decades I’ve been an…
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“About Blimmin’ Time”
A few months ago, a dear friend of mine in New Zealand phoned to give me some exciting news: her country had just made history as female lawmakers in…
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Saying No to Holiday Stress
Years ago, when I was a newspaper reporter working full-time and raising two young children as a single mother, I went to see my doctor. I was tired and…
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Using Our Voice
I recently finished an engrossing historical novel called “Snow Flower and the Secret Fan” by Lisa See, in which the author introduces her readers to nu…
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Truth-Telling Women
Have you noticed lately how many truth-tellers — commonly known as “whistleblowers” — in this country are women? A star example is Cassidy Hutchinson, the…
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Meeting Julia Child
In 1979 I met Julia Child, the iconic “French Chef” of television and cookbook fame. She and her husband, Paul, came to a reception in Cambridge,…
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The Juggling Act Continues
The cri de coeur from U.S. Supreme Court nominee Kentanji Brown Jackson at her confirmation hearings earlier this spring pierced my heart, too. “I’m…
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Ask a Woman to Run
One of my granddaughters is a topnotch volleyball and basketball player at her middle school. Her younger sister is a crackerjack softball player and also…
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Play Ball!
When I was a kid growing up in suburban Detroit, I loved to watch my Detroit Tigers play baseball. I couldn’t wait to tune in to their games on television…
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Women’s Voices in the New Year
Traditionally, the new year is viewed as a time of rebirth. We’ve taken stock of our losses and are ready to begin our lives anew – with vim, vigor, and…
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2021: Win, Lose, or Draw?
The year 2021 was a mixed bag for women, with momentous gains notched alongside disheartening losses. On the plus side, we saw the first woman - who is…
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Thanks to Our Mentors
The poet Maya Angelou mentored Oprah. At her Chicago law firm, Michelle Robinson mentored the young Barack Obama, who later married her. In Hollywood,…
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Taking a Look at Women's Parity
Women are 51 percent of the population, yet we are still less than one-quarter of our country’s leaders. Ms. Magazine has done a compilation of…
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What Does a Leader Look Like?
What does a leader look like? Organizational psychologists will point to well-known workshop exercises where executives are asked to draw a picture of an…
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And the Numbers Are…
After a four-month delay caused by the pandemic, the U.S. Census Bureau last week released detailed 2020 population data for all 50 states and certain…
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Pin-Stripe Suits and Fedoras
There is an old saying in journalism that goes like this: “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.” This is amusing to journalists because it is…
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Prime Time for Child Care – Finally
For half a century, U.S. policymakers ignored child care. Families (read: women) were essentially on our own as we struggled to maneuver both home and…
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Happy Birthday to SC Women in Leadership
Last week I went to a birthday party. It was a glorious spring day at Boyd Plaza in downtown Columbia, where South Carolina Women in Leadership (SC WIL)…
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The Pandemic and Our Brains
I don’t know about you, but I have had trouble concentrating during this pandemic. I used to be able to sit down and read or write for hours at a time. No…
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"A rose by any other name..."
“…would smell as sweet,” remarks Juliet Capulet in William Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet.” I imagine Juliet is correct but, actually, I have no idea…
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The Waiting Game
So now, in this new year, it’s a waiting game. As COVID-19 has killed close to 400,000 Americans, we wait to receive the vaccines that cutting-edge…
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Christmas 2020
Yuletide is supposed to be a time of joy, peace, and goodwill. Christmas 2020, however, will be a Christmas like none we’ve seen in more than a century.…
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Lazarus Rises Again
This is the story of Lazarus, a vehicle that has risen from the dead more times than its Biblical namesake and which continues to reside proudly in our…
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Thank You, RBG
In 1971, I interviewed a young doctor in Michigan who had been working as an ER physician but wanted to open her own medical practice. She applied for a…
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“I Believe Anita Hill!” Goes Virtual in 2020
Since 1991, thousands of women (and supportive men) from all over South Carolina have attended the now iconic “I Believe Anita Hill!” annual celebration…
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Mickey Mantle and Me
When I was a kid in the late 1950s, the exhortation to “Play Ball!”, which heralded the start of Major League Baseball each spring, put me in a state of…
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I want my life back
I want my life back. I want to see movies again on the big screen. I want the public library to reopen. I want to eat at bustling restaurants. I want to…
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Hush…Hush Sweet Charlotte
Charlotte had been wearing widow’s black for nearly eight months when she began, involuntarily at first, to think about Harold. Dashing, charming Harold.…
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What Would Grandpa Bill Say?
America in 2020 is a scary time to be a journalist. To be on the front lines, reporting on the social and racial unrest in the United States today, is a…
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As I Was Saying…
As the Covid-19 pandemic rages, many of us have learned to work virtually, engaging in teleconferencing and staying glued to our digital devices. The U.S.…
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John Wayne and the Virus
When I was 12 years old, I met John Wayne. He graciously gave me his autograph, which sprawls across an entire page of the red leather autograph book I…
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Domestic abuse in the age of Covid-19
Imagine having an abusive partner. Now imagine being confined to your home for weeks on end with your abuser. This is the double menace that domestic…
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Women in the Time of COVID-19
Back in 1965, future British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher famously declared, “If you want anything said, ask a man. If you want anything done, ask a…
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Navigating the Second Wave
In 1970, I read the The Feminine Mystique, the blockbuster book published seven years earlier by Betty Friedan that explored the idea of women finding…
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Women, Girls, and Climate Change
Climate change is all around us. Last week, it was Storm Ciara that tore across the United Kingdom and brought dangerous levels of rain, wind, snow, and…
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Putting Women in Charge
Last month I read an article titled, “The Future Is Young and Female.” Soon after, I saw a photo of Finland’s new prime minister, Sanna Marin, who is 34…
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Silence Is Not the Answer
“I am 57 years old and I have not begun to get over that day of murder,” says Michael Fechter. Fechter, who lives in California now, was a high-school…
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I didn’t just lose Carlotta that day
It has been 42 years since that October afternoon in 1977 when Carlotta Hartness and her friend Tommy Taylor were shot to death near a baseball park in…
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Inspector Gamache, Je T’aime
J’adore Armand Gamache. That would be Chief Inspector Gamache, head of homicide in the Sûreté du Québec, the provincial police force of Québec, Canada. My…
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Men and Guns
And so, the killings continue apace. In the month of August alone, 53 people died in mass shootings in the United States. The final carnage last month…
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The Unsettling Truth
If you are a white man, you have an excellent chance of being elected/appointed to a governing board at one of South Carolina’s 10 public universities. If…
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Needed: more leaders who look like me
If I lived in Colorado, nearly half my state legislators would look like me. But because I live in South Carolina (and despite our state being 51.5…
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Where are all the female college presidents?
In the next few months, a new president will be appointed to lead the University of South Carolina. Considering the school’s 218-year history, odds are…
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Well Done, Ms. Athill
The last volume of Diana Athill’s multi-part memoir was published in 2016 when she was 99 years old. She died last month in London at age 101. You are…
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Hear Us Roar
Women of “a certain age,” as the French say, will remember the powerful song by Helen Reddy called “I Am Woman (Hear Me Roar)”—a 1971 hymn to gutsy,…
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Journalism in the “Year of the Woman”
I read an article the other day entitled “25 Dying Professions to Avoid”. Journalism was one of them. For people in my profession, that disturbing…
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Reprise: Anita Hill (and Christine Blasey Ford)
I still believe Anita Hill. I believe Christine Blasey Ford. Each and every one of my female friends also believe these brave women. Truly, as a colleague…
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Captain Marvel and the "Year of the Woman"
The promotions have already started for Captain Marvel, a live-action film featuring the fictional female superhero from Marvel Comics that will be…
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Lifelong Learning for “Seasoned Adults”
I am a “seasoned adult,” which, in lifelong learning parlance, means I am over 50. And, I want to “thrive in life’s second half,” as the Osher Lifelong…
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Back to the Motor City
Perhaps Thomas Wolfe was wrong. Maybe you can go home again. Last month I travelled to the Detroit area, where I grew up, for a nephew’s wedding. And lo…
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The High Cost of Mother’s Day
My youngest granddaughter, Sylvie, gave me a sneak preview last week of her gift to her mother for Mother’s Day. It was a charming booklet, hand-drawn in…
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When Women Win Elections, Does Everyone Win?
What pops into your head when someone mentions Iceland, that beautiful island nation in the North Atlantic? That it’s a land of creeping glaciers,…
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Don’t bet against the kids
And so, will our children finally lead us out of the wilderness of gun violence, which is literally slaughtering our young people before our eyes? Have we…
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#MeToo Comes of Age
The #MeToo movement that erupted in Hollywood last fall and then exploded nationwide shows no signs of diminishing. It is, in fact, continuing to…
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‘Flâneuse-ing’ Our Way Through France
To be a “flâneur” in 19th-century Paris, first of all, one had to be male. From the French verb “flâner,” a “flâneur” was “one who wanders aimlessly.”…
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The Eagle Huntress– or, What Girls Actually Can Do
My two youngest granddaughters are six and eight years old. They are (ahem) smart, verbal, and athletic. By no means do they appear to believe boys are…
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Frances Oldham Kelsey: Nevertheless, She Persisted
Eight years ago, when I was touring New Zealand, I walked into a travel agency and was greeted politely by the middle-aged receptionist. With her short,…
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Headaches, Heartburn, and Women's Health
In the 1950s and ’60s, when I was growing up, few women worked outside the home. In my high-school class, I had just one girlfriend whose mother was in…
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Lobbying for Climate Change Solutions
With a little more than two weeks left in the year, 2016 remains on track to be the hottest in our 136 years of modern data-keeping, according to NASA,…
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A Message Straight from the Heart
We recently observed national Domestic Violence Month, and, for a change, The Palmetto State received some (relatively) good news: We are no longer the…
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When Someone Shows You Who They Are
Political analysts tell us next month’s presidential election will be decided by the women of America. This is fitting because if she is elected on…
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Sexual Harassment Redux
A quarter of a century seems like a long time. And yet, 25 years after the famous Anita Hill hearings that electrified the nation, the scourge of sexual…
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Women (and Men and Kids) Tip the Scales
If you like to watch old movies on cable TV or Netflix, you’ll probably notice how thin most of the actors are. Not painfully thin, just normally thin—the…
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The Joy of Reading
A month or two ago, a video made the rounds on social media showing a little girl sobbing her heart out when she learned from her grandmother that Barack…
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Misogyny and Sexism: Coming right up!
If Hillary Clinton receives the Democratic Party nomination for president in 2016, brace yourself for misogyny and sexism galore. For ambitious women, it…
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Friends forever
Our long-distance friendship began in the late 1950s when we were both schoolgirls in the elementary grades. Names and addresses of potential “pen pals”…
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Wonder Woman: Back in Business
It’s less than a week ’til Christmas, but there is still time to rush around and buy a Wonder Woman doll or other Wonder Woman paraphernalia online or at…
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Guns and Abortion
Southerners love their guns, and they are more likely to own firearms than folks living in other regions of the United States, according to a 2013 Gallup…
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Well behaved women seldom make history
“History is written by the victors,” Winston Churchill once said. He also could have said that history is written mainly by men. This fact plays out in…
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All the big jobs are up for grabs in the Palmetto state
Rock Hill, South Carolina GENTEEL and friendly is the image of South Carolina—until the political season rolls round. Then no holds are barred. This year,…
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Breaking the Silence
Can a new campaign persuade the Pentagon to reconsider its attitude? LAVENA JOHNSON was a bright 19-year-old from Missouri who joined the army in 2005 to…
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Gone into the ether
A huge theft of unencrypted data infuriates taxpayers Her hopes of joining a Romney administration now vanished, Nikki Haley, the Republican governor of…
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Trappist monks: Rest in silence
A beautiful and profitable idea According to the ancient rule laid down by St. Benedict in the sixth century, monastic communities must be…
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Hello, Sunshine!
How not to sell a state that’s feeling the pinch IT’S a great day in South Carolina, and if you don’t believe it, ask Governor Nikki Haley. On September…
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Aviation and the South: Advantage Dixie
After carmakers, weak unions are attracting the aircraft business. In 1983, Nissan became the first foreign carmaker in America’s South when it opened an…
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Thank You, South Carolina
Thrills and Spills in the South The television comedian Jon Stewart has a recurring segment entitled “Thank you, South Carolina” on his popular “Daily…
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Five hundred more days? The drive to replace South Carolina’s governor is accelerating
Columbia, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford is a man alone these days. The Argentine lover whom he calls his “soul mate” still seems to be in Argentina.…
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You can keep your money
Columbia, South Carolina A backlash against stimulus plans MARK SANFORD, South Carolina’s penny-pinching governor, has been called a rising star by…
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Drought: The Parched Country
Columbia SC America's south-east has been wracked by more than a year without much rain After 18 months of sunny skies and scorching heat, crops are…
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Defence fraud: Creative billing
If your scam is brazen enough you can still hoodwink the Pentagon—for a while Everyone knows about the $400 hammer and the $600 lavatory-seat, but these…
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The Democrats: The Politics of Fish
Columbia, South Carolina April 26 marked the first of many showdowns between the rivals vying for the Democratic nomination for the presidency next year.…
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Sub-standard
Should tax money go to deprived children, or to a museum piece? ONE day this spring, a group of youngsters travelled in battered yellow school buses to…
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Laying Ghosts: Hate, Reconciliation and Secession
For years, South Carolina has floated near the bottom of national rankings for education, income, growth and so on. It has got rather used to it by now.…
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Your woman or your rooster?
Columbia, South Carolina A hard choice, it seems, for some South Carolina politicians South Carolina is a rather traditional, male-minded place, with a…
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A voucher scheme brings back unwelcome memories
Columbia, South Carolina In 1984, Mark White, then governor of Texas, gave South Carolina’s Governor Richard Riley a pair of cowboy boots. Mr. Riley…
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Yes, he did: Strom Thurmond’s Daughter
Columbia, South Carolina And all the laws did not prevent him It often happened in the segregated South a century or two ago: a powerful white man…
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