Pandemic has disproportionate effect on women

June 9, 2020

We have all felt the immediate effects on our lives and the lives of our loved ones during this pandemic. Even though we are all in this together, our lives have been and will be affected differently in the post-pandemic world. In 1918, the Spanish flu disproportionally affected young men. The deaths from the flu, along with World War I casualties, was the cause for a shortage of men in the work force in the immediate years following. This catastrophe was an important catalyst for the women’s movement that eventually won us the vote. After the war, there was an increase of women ...

Time to wake up about Trump

June 5, 2020

“He brings the Bible, holds it high, puts it down, lies.” Remember those inspirational words now-President Donald Trump spoke, mocking U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz while he campaigned for the office of president? The base loved it. He was telling the established “political elites” like it was. Sen. John McCain a hero? “He’s not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.” More words of inspiration that any veteran who’s ever served could cling to, knowing their service to country wouldn’t go unnoticed from a future ...

On racial issues, will we ever manage to learn from our past?

June 2, 2020

Will this country learn? I ask that question because the foundations of the present violence appear to me the same as the Chicago riots, and the Los Angeles riots. A majority white nation where all the power centers such as political legislators, civilian powers brokers, economic powers brokers, and criminal justice power brokers rest mainly with people who are absorbed by self-interest. The second issue is the income inequality, excusive punitive policing in non-white areas, school resource and education inequity and daily emotional stress non-white communities experience at the ...

Driver’s tests in the late 1950s

May 21, 2020

For driver’s education, most of us had straight-arrow, hard-line, strict-disciplinarian, cut-you-no-slack instructors. We learned everything in the book, such as all the hand signals, which we had to use on the road. Also, we learned with an on-the-column, below-the-steering-wheel stick shift, clutch pedal, non-power-steering car. We had to be able to stop, hold the car on steep hills and then start forward without rolling backwards, smoking the clutch plate, spinning the drive wheels or killing the engine. Another test was backing up long distances and parallel parking the car within ...

Big difference between being inconvenienced, rights infringed

May 19, 2020

EDITOR: I want to get my hair done, my eyebrows waxed, I need a pedicure, I miss getting a massage, I want my cleaning lady to come back and help me wash the windows and screens, I want to go to the Tap Room on Fridays at 5:05 p.m. and see my friends and then go out to dinner. To quote a Queen song, “I want it all and I want it now.” We used to play that song for our girls when they were little and the whining was becoming a bit much. I feel like there are a lot of whiners out there who need a refresher course on being responsible adults and continue doing what science says will ...

Convinced crimes were committed

May 15, 2020

President Richard Nixon resigned before he was impeached because he covered up a plan to steal the opposing parties’ campaign plans. The scandal was named Watergate. The Democratic party, with the full knowledge of former President Barack Obama, used its surveillance tools to spy on the Trump campaign and then covered it up for three years with their Russia hoax. President Trump calls it “ObamaGate.” Obama can’t be impeached and he probably can’t be prosecuted, but he should be completely exposed and disgraced in history. Those who committed crimes — James Comey, Sally Yates, ...