If you’re old like me, you remember the 60s. Bellbottoms. Cool. Illegal pot. Bitchin’. Flower power. Groovy. Communes. Mellow. Rainbows in chalk. Dig it. The peace sign. It’s a gas. The twist. Cool. Students for a Democratic Society. Far out. And “let’s make the world a better place to live…

We need something fun, bold, unique — In the grocery store, my mother asked the customer service clerk where the baking powder was. The clerk glanced in the direction of my father in his lieutenant’s uniform, grumped about all those “air forcers” buying up all the baking powder, turned away, and answered somebody else’s question. Two airmen…

The death of “The Pill” — There’s been a lot of talk lately about the next move by the right-wing members of the Supreme Court and the Republicans in Congress to outlaw birth control. The constitutional right to contraception recognized by the Supreme Court in 1965, in Griswold v. Connecticut, is under attack, as is the…

Let’s discuss recovery — A day before E. Jean Carroll was awarded $5 million in a civil suit against Donald Trump for sexual abuse and defamation, I wrote about my own rape: My first sexual experience. On my 18th birthday. In a cornfield he drove into on the way back from the movies to…

Me and E. Jean Carroll — E. Jean Carroll and I are both 79 years old, both alumnae of Indiana University, both journalists — and both rape survivors. During her civil suit against Donald Trump, ongoing now, Carroll described her rape by the ex-president in 1996, which occurred in a dressing room after he asked her…

Some suggestions for the new billboards now going up — Moveon Political Action is putting up billboards in Florida that Trump can’t help but see, since he will for some time be traveling back and forth from Mar-a-Lardo to his various and sundry criminal and civil trials. One of the billboards is above. Here’s another:

Now that Politically Speaking is no more, where will we publish our Medium articles on politics and social issues? — Every (former) writer at Politically Speaking is now looking for alternative publications for their Medium articles on politics and social issues. I’ve used a search mechanism not yet available to Medium writers to find publications that in the last 30 days have accepted articles on politics or social issues. …

Florida Republicans are legislating against any talk about menstruation until after many girls have begun their periods — Florida State Rep. Stan McClain has introduced a bill that would make it illegal for teachers and their students in grades 1 through 5 to talk about menstruation. Menstruation — for all you guys who don’t know this — commonly begins about age 12 but not unusually begins as early…

No more music festivals or wine and cheese jamborees for us — When COVID-19 vaccines first became available in Oregon, back in December 2020, I decided I wouldn’t get one. That year, I’d given in to medical opinion and gotten a flu shot for the first time in years — and almost immediately had come down with a case of flu that…