This past week my housemate and I took off with two dogs for the Oregon coast for a three-day celebration of my ninetieth birthday. We’d done the same thing in June for my housemate’s eightieth. As we waited for the ferry, my housemate fell. Shaken up and bruised but okay, we continued. We took […]
Author Archive | Judy
The Perfect Storm
The Week of August 18th, 2023 carried an interesting debate among liberal columnists on the causes of Trump populism. In the article, MAGA: Are Elites to Blame? David Brooks of the New York Times argues that the chief cause of MAGA is economic—that meritocracy and globalism has confined prosperity to the educated class. Zach Beauchamp […]
FEAR
As Trump indictments come raining down, we are witnessing the futile efforts of lawyers to deal with his out- of-control threats against those who have criticized him, including the judges. They have little chance of succeeding, because fear has worked for him all of his life, and will work for him again. Fear works. […]
What Has Happened to Us?
I’ve just finished reading Imperfect Heart: a Journal, a Book club, and a Global Pandemic, a good writer friend’s* as yet unpublished chronical of the Covid pandemic. A blend of non-fiction and fiction, the book opens in April 2020 at the start of the pandemic, leads up to the January 6th attempted coup, and ends […]
Testing the Strength of Our Democracy
Today, I’ve been watching the arrest of Donald Trump. For half of the nation it marks the strength of the system in bringing a criminal and dangerous leader to justice. For the other half, it is a major miscarriage of justice, a victory for a system turned criminal. The latter half cried for protest, but […]
Lessons From the Debt Limit Victory
The ease with which President Biden and House Speaker Kenneth McCarthy reached a deal on the debt limit and the speed with which it passed through both houses of Congress gives us a rare view of democracy as it should work. Ross Douthart, in today’s New York Times (June 6, 2023) credits this success […]
Saying Goodbye to Another Basenji
This week we said goodbye to Dex, Mr. Dexterity with Pips. The second of our aging trio, Dex was fifteen. Too big to show, he was sent from our breeder friend in Santa Barbara back in 2007 to join Jetta, Larra, and Eva, previous gifts from the “basenji farm.” Dex was one of our […]
Motherhood & Freedom
Sunday is Mother’s Day, the twenty-four-hour period of required respect for the women who shaped us, and which, for today’s women, is life’s greatest cause of ambivalence. In my day, motherhood was the default occupation, the expected role of adulthood. Today women are urged to remain “free” to develop themselves, their careers, their interests and […]
Biden and the Democrats
Biden has declared his candidacy for President. I find that event both reassuring and sad. It’s reassuring because it acknowledges that he is the only available candidate who can beat Trump. It’s sad because Democrats remain tepid toward the President, conceding unenthusiastically that he is the candidate with the best chance of winning, but […]
Hyper-Individualism in the University
If you want to discover the values of an institution, ask what it rewards. In the university, tenure is the reward, and it’s earned by publication of research. The order of names on a piece is of vital importance. Individual accomplishment, therefore, is prized over teaching, administrative service or any other community activity. […]
The University in a Polarized Nation
Law students at Stanford University have been shouting down professors and other students, and the scene apparently has been repeated at other top-rated law schools around the country. That the uncivil behavior of polarization has reached universities does not come as a surprise, but it is, nevertheless, upsetting. I grew up in the […]
The Cause of It All
Anyone you talk to will be happy to tell you the root cause of today’s social, economic and political ills, and I’ve certainly done my share of that. However, I’ve spent most of my time pointing at the liberal’s contribution to these upheavals. It’s time to turn to the other side of the coin—the hyper-individualism […]
