I thought long and hard about posting my last essay. In fact, I’d written it and then let it sit, like a chicken marinating in the fridge. And based upon some of the comments I’ve received, my hesitation about the post was based on a solid foundation. I hesitated to post it because I feared it might sound as if I was plopping an entire marinated chicken on a plate already overflowing with food. The metaphorical plate belonging to a woman, of course. To all women. Because I don’t know one woman whose plate isn’t more than full. And many

I had a telephone conversation with a family member the other night, someone I haven’t connected with in a long time. We’ve always been on opposite sides of the political aisle, and although our past political conversations were often passionate, just as often, they were punctuated by laughter and gentle ribbing. We often ended our conversations by agreeing to disagree. Yet, during the past few years, we hadn’t found a successful way to talk with each other. But for me, hope springs eternal. Unfortunately, hope seemed to fly out of the window the other night. What struck me most during

If you donated money to the Republican National Committee, are you at all curious about how it’s being spent? According to a report in the New York Times, both parties typically spend donations and energy on “turning out voters — funding extensive organizing operations that knock on doors, run phone banks and track voters.” But this election cycle, according to the article, chances are your GOP donation is being spent on law suits and other so-called “election integrity efforts.” No matter that there is no legitimate study or source proving that our elections are anything but secure and legitimate, since

First, let me be crystal clear: here in America, we must settle our differences at the ballot box. Never with violence. Ever. Assassination attempts are always horrifically, terribly wrong. But I’m curious: is anyone really surprised? Surprised that in a nation where there are more guns than in any other country in the world—more guns than people—that someone would turn to using a gun to settle a perceived score? So then, is anyone really surprised how difficult it must be to protect presidential candidates from those millions of weapons, unless you lock the the candidates in a heavily-guarded, secret and

I’ve been interested and active in politics for a long time, starting as a little kid when my mom took me to my first protest rally. It stuck. Some of my young family and friends recently have asked me, “Do you think we can win?” I think they’re asking me because I’m old. Which is fine because it’s true. And it’s nice that those early and long-ago lessons from my mom are still with me. Last night, I attended the Harris/Walz rally at Fiserv Forum along with 15,000 other wildly enthusiastic people, including a young friend who’d asked me that

When I was a kid, the nightmare I had over and over again always began the same way: I’m eating a bowl of Cheerios at the Formica-topped table in my mother’s kitchen. Her pretty, white ruffled curtains, encouraged by a gentle breeze, float in and out of open windows. A loud bang, like an unexpected gunshot, jolts the spoon out of my hand, the milk sloshing from my bowl and spilling across the table. The noise is coming from the closed door leading to our basement, and it grows louder with each rhythmic thud, the thumping in my chest doing

I was fresh out of college when I first read the book, The Handmaid’s Tale, which is now also a TV series. It depicts the US as a police state ruled by Christian fundamentalists who oppress women while surveilling and regulating the lives of its citizens. When I read it, I was struggling to reconcile my Catholic upbringing with my staunch feminist beliefs. My Catholic feminist mom was struggling with the same. Given that the church we both attended back then was widely regarded as the most liberal in Milwaukee, we were in good company among plenty of Catholics who

Just about every woman I know has told me the same thing: “I’m so tired.” Women who are young mothers. Women who are retired. And women in between each of those stages of life, all saying and feeling the same thing: “I am so, so tired.” I feel the same. And this sentiment is not going unnoticed. Books, articles and podcasts offer similar antidotes to wake us from our communal slumber: Take more bubble baths and naps. Schedule more massages. Demand that your husband/partner/co-worker/boss do more, and/or expect less. In one article offering 50 Ways to Better Self-Care, I found

There are two things I wouldn’t want to be right now: an employee at Twitter or a pollster. Especially a pollster. They sure got it wrong–again. To be fair, the reasons why are becoming more clear. For one thing, right wing media aggregated the polls showing Republicans in the lead, and they spread those “results” far and wide. The mainstream media fell for it as well, and the polling certainty that Republicans would win spread faster and wider than manure on a Wisconsin cornfield in the spring. And just how did pollsters get it so wrong? I think that maybe,

Inflation and crime. Did anyone think we’d make it through several years of a worldwide pandemic and the resulting economic shutdown without repercussions? If COVID is why we are where we are, moving forward, perhaps the questions we should be asking are: what’s been done to recover from these problems? Are the measures working? And who has the best plans to continue our recovery? Let’s start with inflation. The GOP candidates running for office say inflation has been caused by Dem’s “overspending” on measures to jumpstart our stalled economy. Huh? How can that be true when inflation is happening all