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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. Medical experts warn that we are facing a frigid, dark, brutal winter as the Coronavirus expands its frightful death march across the country. More than 300,000 American…
Read MoreLazarus 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 driveway – 22 years and many adventures after its birth on the auto assembly line. (Spoiler alert: this story has a happy ending.) Lazarus, a.k.a. my husband’s…
Read MoreThank 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 bank loan, and was duly informed she needed her husband’s signature in order to get the loan. Mind you, the doctor was earning a substantial salary…
Read More“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 in Columbia. It’s fun, it’s important, it’s a great networking opportunity, and it’s the longest-running event in the nation honoring Professor Hill for her courage in shining a light, through her…
Read MoreMickey 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 high excitement. I loved watching my Detroit Tigers take the field at Tiger Stadium, where Al Kaline and other superstars played the game. Each season,…
Read MoreI 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 travel. I want my grandchildren to be able to safely return to school. I want to see my family and friends close up—not…
Read MoreWhat 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…
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