The Pandemic and Our Brains

March 18, 2021

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 longer. Now I’m up and down, checking my phone too often, doing things in short bursts, and, occasionally, forgetting why I walked into…

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“A rose by any other name…”

February 19, 2021

“…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 because I suffer from anosmia, the clinical term for the inability to smell. I’m not sure if I was born this way—a condition called congenital anosmia— or whether the allergies I…

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The Waiting Game

January 14, 2021

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 technology has given us in record time to help stanch this awful pandemic. Several million lucky folks – mostly health care workers and residents/staff of long-term nursing facilities –…

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Christmas 2020

December 17, 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…

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Lazarus Rises Again

November 20, 2020

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…

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Thank You, RBG

October 15, 2020

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…

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“I Believe Anita Hill!” Goes Virtual in 2020

September 18, 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…

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Mickey Mantle and Me

August 20, 2020

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,…

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I want my life back

July 16, 2020

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…

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What Would Grandpa Bill Say?

June 18, 2020

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…

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