In 1965, Tom Lehrer recorded the song “Pollution,” purporting to give advice to a foreign traveler visiting the US. If you visit American city You will find it very pretty Just two things which you must beware Don’t drink the water and don’t breathe the air. At the time it seemed funny, since usually it… Read More

Let me tell you how it will be There’s one for you, nineteen for me ‘Cause I’m the taxman, yeah, I’m the taxman The Beatles, who had grown up poor, weren’t very happy to discover once they were making oodles of money that the British government was going to take most of it. Not sure… Read More

There are many poets whose work I cherish. For instance, Robert Frost. I can easily recite all four stanzas of “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening” and most of “The Road Not Taken,” although I don’t recall ever intentionally trying to memorize them. I love anything by e. e. cummings. I don’t know any… Read More

Faithful readers of Retrospect may recall my story on the prompt Beaches, which included memories of two spring break trips I took three decades apart: a 1961 trip with my parents and sisters to Fort Lauderdale shortly after the movie Where the Boys Are came out; and a 1992 trip to Maui with my future second husband… Read More

Hillary. Rodham. Clinton She has been a woman I admire since 1992. There is so much I could say about her, but like the speaker “who needs no introduction” and then gets one anyway, it just doesn’t seem necessary. Everyone knows about her, and all the truths and lies that have been attached to her… Read More

They smilin’ in your face All the time they want to take your place The back stabbers. . . . What follows is not the only story of betrayal that has occurred in my life, but let’s just say that it’s the only one that I’m willing to make public. Putting out on the internet… Read More

I lived in my first — and only — apartment building the summer after my sophomore year of college. I had snagged a great summer job working for Houghton Mifflin Publishing Co. in Boston. My dear friend Kit, who was part of my Comstock Hall crowd, had a job as a research assistant for a… Read More

This might be one of the scariest things I’ve ever done! A new beginning as a website owner/administrator is not something I ever expected. It feels a little like riding on this ferris wheel. When John and Patti announced that Retrospect would cease operations on December 31, 2018, I felt bereft. It had been such… Read More

To everything there is a season. . . . The first time the prompt Turning Points appeared was in August 2016, and I wrote Universe ablaze with changes about the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. That event was a major turning point in my life, setting me on the political course that I have followed ever since.… Read More

I am not an easy person to buy presents for. I know that, and I discourage family members from buying me things. Because I hardly ever like them. They will invariably be the wrong color, or the wrong size, or the wrong shape, or just not something that is useful to me. Even jewelry, I… Read More