Biden

Biden’s Challenge

  When asked about his advanced age, President Biden’s response was, “Watch me.” On March 7th, he gave a ninety-minute performance that should have silenced the nay-sayers of both parties. The media, for the first time, was excited—even astonished?—by the speech. He dared to confront the enemy: “…When you get to be my age, certain […]

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Pres Biden

The MAGA Challenge

Last week I wrote a blog on MSNBC’s talent for blowing trivia into outrage, but before I could post it, the District of Columbia Appeals Court ruled that Trump is not above the law, that his plea for Presidential immunity isn’t valid. With that event, the case charging him with insurrection took a giant leap […]

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2024: A Critical Challenge

  Everywhere I hear sighs of relief as we close the door on 2023. That is certainly true at our house. Starting in January 2023 when I broke my leg, followed by the loss of two dogs and a broken hip—this time my housemate’s. a rough year. Beyond our doors, the nation moved closer and […]

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Two Tough Old Crones

  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 […]

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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 […]

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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. […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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Motherhood

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 […]

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