Recent Posts
A Shout Out to Harvard
and all the others who are standing firm! In the past week the Trump administration has, in a letter dated 11 April 2025, threatened Harvard University with (1) blocking over $9 billion in funding, (2) micromanagement of its admissions and hiring policies and decisions, (3) removal of international students from their undergraduate and graduate programs – and more. The pretense for this appears to be an accusation that Harvard has not addressed antisemitism on campus and that Harvard has not cooperated in removing Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs and policies from its academic and administrative universe. (Which, by the…
Bring the Prisoners Back from El Salvador!
Below is my letter to my senators and representative sent today… please feel free to copy it. Please send it or something like it to your congresspeople. This is just too much like the early days of Hitler’s Reich where people suddenly started to disappear into thin air never to be heard from again. We must stop this now. In this country your right to say pretty much anything you want is protected — no matter how reprehensible what you say may be. Here, you have a right to a hearing, a trial, a lawyer — no matter what truly…
Banning Books at the US Naval Academy
I read a post on the New York Times website this morning about (1) the banning of books by the Trump administration from the shelves of the service academy’s libraries. (This particular article focused on the Naval Academy, but this is happening at all of them as part of the purge of all things relating to DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) and (2) a retired Navy Commander and graduate of the Naval Academy, William Marks, who is pushing back by partnering with a local (Annapolis) bookstore to provide free copies of the banned books to midshipmen who want to read…
Properly Maintaining Your Patriarchy…
It is hard to develop and maintain a really solid patriarchy unless you know without doubt who the men are and who the women are. It is equally difficult to fully support a white supremacist state without viciously suppressing people of color. Current politics being what they are, many of us are spending hours listening to news and expert opinions. We spend more time reading books and papers and blogs written by pundits, academics and people with tons of experience in government. We are trying to understand what is going on around us, but none of our efforts seem to…
Let’s Talk About “Normal”
I have been reading a great deal about Donald Trump and his appointees and their activities to blow up LGBTQ+ rights, Civil Rights, scientific research, health care, our economy, foreign aid, and all our global alliances – and pretty much everything else. a few days ago I was reading pages from the Department of Education website. Trump may be planning to do away with that agency, but in the meantime they are proudly posting about all of the “wonderful” things they are doing to save money and protect people. In this reading I came across what seemed to be myriads…
International Women’s Day
Here is to all of you who are celebrating Women’s History Month in the US and International Women’s Day here and around the world! I had an acquaintance many years ago (think 1980 or so) whose birthday is today. When I said something about how cool it was that it was International Women’s Day, she would respond with an eyebrow raised and a bit of a tilt to her head: “Yeah. It’s great. But the men get the other 364.” Still… it is a day for women and men who support women and equality for women to reflect and act…
2025 Meet 1984
There are things in life that you never expected you would have to deal with. Things that take precedence over the things you wanted to do or planned to do. Some of those are unavoidable. I live in a place that has recently experienced raging, huge wildfires. Many people lost their houses or sustained a great deal of damage to their houses or businesses Everything stops for them as they need to turn their focus to damage control and rebuilding their lives. This was an unexpected result of something no one foresaw. Maybe someone should have, but it has more…
Dr. Rosalind Franklin – Women in Science
Although the women I am going to discuss here have been recognized for their accomplishments recently – in their own time they were ignored and their work was taken over by their male colleagues who integrated that work into their own. This resulted in all of the credit going to the men and none to the woman who did most or a significant amount of it. Historic Women in Science You May Not Know Much About Dr. Rosalind Franklin The first person that comes to mind for me in this category is Rosalind Franklin (1920-1958). You may have heard of…
Open Letter to Canada
3 March 2025 Dear Canada I want to sincerely apologize for the behavior of members of the US Government – most notably our current President and Vice President. I also wish to apologize for the members of the Cabinet and the many, many Republican members of Congress who either support this horrible behavior or are too cowardly to criticize it, let alone stop it. I am deeply sorry and totally embarrassed for my country. You have been our friends for so long – both literally and figuratively. I grew up in the suburbs of Detroit. Half of the change in…
Mary Church Terrell and more
Historical Women You May Not Know Much About Mary Church Terrell (1863 – 1954) was an African American woman born in Memphis, TN to Robert Church, a real estate investor and his wife Louisa Ayers who owned and ran a hair solon. Mary’s parents sent her at the age of eight to the Antioch College Model School in Ohio in order to get a better education than Memphis could provide. After graduation from that school, Mary attended Oberlin College, also in Ohio, where she earned an undergraduate degree in Classics in 1884, and a graduate degree in Education in 1888….
Matilda Gage and More
Historical Women You May Not Know Much About Matilda Gage’s life and accomplishments are described on a web page from the National Women’s History Museum in a post by Ashley Angelucci. She begins: Famously referred to as “the woman who was ahead of the women who were ahead of their time,” author, activist, and lecturer Matilda Joslyn Gage worked tirelessly to advocate for abolition, women’s rights, and Native American rights. While her opinions were considered extremely radical for her time, Gage paved the way for the women’s movement and social progress in the United States. Matilda Gage’s book, Women, Church…
Women’s History Month
These are tumultuous political times which include the real threat of turning back the clock and reversing much of the progress that has been made in the United States in areas such Civil Rights, LGBTQ+ Rights and Women’s Rights over the past 65 years. This is more than disturbing it is a crisis of large proportion. Challenging, fighting back, and resisting are required — in whatever ways one can. The Trump administration’s insistence on removing all Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) statements and activities from the government raises fears of loss of funding and/or visibility for celebrations of diversity and…
Why Teach a Person to Fish When You Can Just Throw a Fish at Them?!
According to Reuters (Feb 19, 2025) Trump is considering giving back to taxpayers 20% of the money Elon Musk’s DOGE will “save” the government by cutting programs. (see below) This should amount to approximately $5000 per taxpaying household if Musk achieves his goal of cutting $2 trillion from government expenditures. The same article indicates that Trump is considering using another 20% to pay down the National Debt. Each 20% according to the reporting represents about $400 billion dollars. Here are some of my thoughts (1) If this money is savings that can be used to pay off the national debt…
Intersectionality
A friend of mine recently observed that the Feminists of the first wave in the 1800s and the Abolitionists appeared to have worked closely together in order to achieve the dual goals of freeing slaves and expanding the rights of women. But currently it appears that various groups of marginalized people (and their allies) often work at cross purposes. Why is that? I nominate the idea of intersectionality taken too far as the likely candidate. Intersectionality is defined by Merriam-Webster as …the complex, cumulative way in which the effects of multiple forms of discrimination (such as racism, sexism, and classism)…
Thoughts About Dobbs v. Jackson
Cisgender, straight, Christian, White men in positions of power, you need to get over the idea that you are something special – entitled to the first choice of resources, the best jobs, the supreme place in society. Overturning Roe merely reflects your displeasure that the women you let into law schools, medical schools, anchor desks, governmental posts and board rooms are now doing as good a job as you do – or better. This makes you very nervous, I imagine. You are thinking you better get them under control again – or at least give them massively difficult choices. Overturning…
Sexual Orientation and Tennis
Congratulations to gay and lesbian couples everywhere – and to the Supreme Court (1). And what does that have to do with tennis? First, I need to say that this feels like life in a time warp. Not 35 years ago in my home state of Massachusetts I knew a lesbian couple who were really in love, but never lived together because one of them had children and knew that if they did live together, her ex-husband would have sued for full custody and never let her see her children again. And no court in the Commonwealth would have ruled…
Guns and People with Mental Health Disabilities
There is news from Capitol Hill which underscores the notion that there is more to fear in Washington, DC than just the the White House. According to an article in the NY Times on February 15, 2017. Congress has acted to reverse and Obama administration rule requiring the Social Security Administration to add about 75,000 people, currently on disability support, to the national background check database and deny them gun purchases. These individuals suffer schizophrenia, psychotic disorders and other problems to such an extent that they are unable to manage their financial affairs and other basic tasks without help. An…
Emotions Are Like Dogs
Emotions are Like Dogs: On the Difference Between Emotional Regulation and Stuffing It When I think about emotions and emotional regulation, I often think about a dog who was my friend. Her name was Tasha and she was half Siberian Husky and half German Shepherd. She and I shared a living space for sixteen years and she was just about the best possible companion. She loved to run outdoors and at the time we lived in the woods in a small town so she could range wherever she wanted. She would always come home after a good play in the…
Cooking Slowly – A Tale of Ever-Changing Times
There is an old adage that if you put a live frog in a pot of water and heated it gradually, that frog would just sit in the water and not jump away (even though it could) until the water boils and it is thoroughly cooked. It may or may not be true (no one has really tried it since the late 1880s), but either way it is an excellent metaphor for certain things. Some authors have been concerned about the replacement of people with robots, automatic tellers, and other types of automation in the workplace because of the associated…
Addictive Internet Games
The Washington Post online had an interesting piece recently about teens addicted to online games and the havoc such an addiction or obsession can cause in a person’s life. There is, of course, a lot of research and concern about this issue. The author, Caitlin Gibson, quotes psychologist Kimberly Young, founder of the Center for Internet Addiction. As saying the number of kids affected by such an addiction might (modestly) be estimated at “… 5 percent. But 5 percent of American kids is a lot.” The article points to some resources, such as the Center for Internet Addiction and a…
Hyperbolic Geometry and Daily Life
This story begins with an almost unbearable 10th grade Geometry class — unbearable because of the attitude of the teacher. He shall remain nameless, but if he reads this (unlikely to say the least), I’m hoping he will recognize his part. It was 1963 and I was a good and reasonably devoted student. Our teacher, however, stated often that girls just couldn’t learn math very well, so he walked around the class during exams whispering hints and answers to them. However, the powers of the universe (whatever you believe them to be) provided, as they often do, recompense for this…
Continue to Make Your Voice Heard!
Protests must continue and grow ! Continue to express your concern about the lawless actions of the Trump administration! Say NO to murders in Minneapolis! Say NO to ICE tactics! Say NO to Trump and his cronies shredding of the Constitution and the rule of law! For more information on upcoming events and protests, please use the links below! https://www.fiftyfifty.one/ https://www.mobilize.us/ https://www.nokings.org/ https://events.pol-rev.com/
Karen Ortiz
Meet Karen Ortiz. Ms. Ortiz, whose ethnic background is Puerto Rican, is a graduate of Columbia University and the School of Law at Fordham University. She is currently an administrative judge at the New York office of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), and she has extensive previous experience as a Legal Director for New York City Transit/MTA and a guest lecturer at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. The EEOC, which is charged with enforcing federal laws focused on preventing discrimination in the workplace, has recently been subjected to the wrecking ball wielded by Donald Trump and Elon Musk…