Tomorrow we will have an unusual celebration of Independence Day– unlike any other in American history. Because there are a lot of people who feel that freedom, independence and equality are under threat right now from the people leading our own government. I thought about writing a post about this unprecedented national dilemma for the…
Margaret Hoover interviews Canadian American journalist Danielle Crittenden this week on Firing Line about the heartbreaking loss that she and her husband, David Frum, faced in 2024 when their 32-year-old daughter, Miranda, died suddenly from complications from a 2019 surgery. Her new book, Dispatches from Grief: A Mother’s Journey through the Unthinkable, chronicles how…
In the old days, magazines such as Cosmopolitan and Good Housekeeping were filled with articles about current events as well as fiction by some of the nation’s best authors. Taking a look at some of these articles reveals what was on people’s minds a long time ago. Emphasis was placed on cultivating character in pre-1950…
The story in brief: The death of a young Marine Corps lieutenant in 1907 became a national sensation when his mother, his sister and his ghost challenged the Navy’s suicide verdict. For the American press and its readers, the lieutenant’s mother, Rosa Sutton, came to represent every mother who had lost a son in the…
“Governmental actions should be neither secret nor unjust. . . . If we cannot get justice through the courts, every newspaper in the United States shall have the facts as we have them and then see what the opinion of the world will be.” Rosa Brant Sutton A Soul on Trial Revised edition just released…
He called himself Andy. He was an American Army captain from southwestern Virginia on a journey in the French countryside. When he picked up his pen with its fine point on August 21, 1917, to write to Rose Sutton Parker, he had apparently just traveled into the country by auto from one of the finest…
I came across an article about Thanksgiving in the 1930s thanks to journalist Julie Chang. She notes that, for those who could not afford to dine in an elegant hotel or club, making recipes from scratch compensated for inflated food prices during the Depression. And many Americans remained optimistic despite their troubles. At that point,…
From the time she was a young child, Jane Hall had an interest in Native American culture, particularly that of the Hopi Tribe, a northeastern Arizona sovereign nation. My mother adored her childhood home in Arizona; she had learned about the Hopi from her father, Dick Wick Hall, who spent time with the tribe as…
My grandsons are now teenagers, no longer the little boys they were when I first wrote this post in 2018. Since then I moved to California to be nearer family. In addition to unexpected medical adventures, a lot of my time has been spent sorting through boxes of family papers that have some interest outside…
The November 21, 2022, New Yorker cover, “Low Tide” by Barry Blitt, features a huge grey elephant on a red surfboard looking less than confident about the future. How different his mood from a fellow pachyderm that appeared on the December 31, 1938, cover of the magazine, a gleeful pink elephant by Rea Irvin (1881-1972).…
October 2020 Alice is inside today. I don’t usually name plants but this one reminds me of the resilient lead played by Ellen Burstyn in the movie Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. Usually Alice is on the balcony of my 5th floor apartment; the 97° heat and sharp gusts of northeast wind make that perilous.…
For the last several months I’ve been preoccupied with planning a move across the U.S.A. to the East Bay. (Obviously not with writing posts on this blog. That should change soon.) Both of my daughters and grandsons are permanently in California. So I’ll start a new adventure living in Oakland near Lake Merritt in…
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