February 2018

26 Feb

Posted at 06:00h in Uncategorized
Last week, appalled and disgusted after the Parkland, Florida high school shooting, I wrote that I had nothing more to add to what I‘d already said and written about guns, and god knows we're all tired of repeating ourselves on an issue that should have been dealt with intelligently ages ago. But I'm not done, after all.

19 Feb

Posted at 06:00h in Uncategorized
It’s a teeth-gnashing decision when major news breaks just as you’re on deadline with another story, but if you don’t somehow squeeze the latest in, a whole week will have elapsed before you can address it.

12 Feb

Posted at 06:00h in Uncategorized

I have been virtually inarticulate with anger, nauseated with rage, over the revelations that Rob Porter, White House secretary and special aide to White House Chief of Staff Marine General John Kelley, had a long history of apparent violence against women. A former wife. Two ex-wives, in fact. Two ex-wives plus a former girlfriend. As I write this, news breaks that a fourth woman may have come forward. I’ve been so livid over this, and over the White House reaction, that I couldn't find my way “in” to write about it. So many, too many, elements of disgust. Some commentators focused on Porter’s lack of a security clearance despite his handling of the most sensitive classified documents—because the FBI wouldn't grant clearance to a man with a history of such violence. We now know the White House knew about Porter months ago. This man is now dating Hope Hicks, a former...

05 Feb

Posted at 06:00h in Uncategorized

On January 22, the world lost a great writer. That word, ”great,” is tossed around like cheap confetti, but in this case it's the unadorned truth. This country, too, lost one of its sharpest consciences, a citizen who ceaselessly reminded us that freedom was everyone’s birthright and fighting to keep it was our job, yours and mine. This writer was political in the deepest sense—not through jargon but through her own esthetic genius and the sweat of her craft. Ursula Kroeber Le Guin was born in 1929 in Berkeley, California. She died at age 88 in Portland, Oregon, where she had lived for many decades. She’s survived by her husband of 63 years, historian, writer, and superb gardener, Charles; and their three grown children, two daughters and a son. She's also survived by 23 novels, 12 collections of her more than 100 short stories, five books of essays, 13 books...