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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 dangerous place to be. Just ask the freelance photographer who was blinded in one eye while covering a demonstration; the television reporter and his…
Read MoreHush…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. Her first love, her lost love. But that had been a lifetime ago – 31 years, to be precise. She shoved out of her mind the staccato flashes of the handsome, blond…
Read MoreAs 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. Supreme Court has done likewise. On May 4, because of the pandemic, the high court kicked off an historic two-week teleconference session that was largely considered a success. But guess…
Read MoreJohn 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 carried with me to Los Angeles on a family vacation in the late 1950s. It was a time when the Hollywood actor was the embodiment of…
Read MoreDomestic 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 violence victims in South Carolina – and everywhere else – face today: a lethal virus outside and a dangerous abuser inside. This is today’s reality in the age of…
Read MoreWomen 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 woman.” Years earlier, Eleanor Roosevelt opined that “Women are like tea bags. You never know how strong they are until they are in hot water.” We are all in…
Read MoreNavigating 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 personal fulfillment outside of their traditional roles. That same year, I joined a “consciousnessraising” women’s group in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where I was living at the time, and also became…
Read MoreWomen, 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 ice. People died. Travel chaos reigned for days. Last month, it was hundreds of deadly wildfires in Australia, massive blazes fueled by three years of drought that experts…
Read MorePutting 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 years old. She was surrounded by the party leaders of her country’s coalition government. All are women, and four of the five are under the age…
Read MoreSilence 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 classmate of Carlotta Hartness and Tommy Taylor, young teenagers who were randomly murdered in Columbia back in October 1977. Terrible violence was inflicted upon Carlotta. I…
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