Still Advocating
Writings of a retired educator, advocate, & baby boomer

Still have the Y-K glasses we used to toast in the new millennium   In 2000, we had just survived the Y-2K fiasco (there was some concern all computers would crash because they wouldn’t recognize the new century). I was foolishly hopeful that a person of integrity and intelligence would be the next president. I remember reading about George W. Bush in a magazine at the doctor’s office. How could a man who had basically failed at everything in his life, from his businesses and

The years I was busy raising kids, 1977   I loathed “Tricky Dick” Nixon. The war and draft continued to ramp up. Despite his proclamation that “I am not a crook,” he was. In 1972, the Democratic slate of Senator George McGovern and Sargent Shriver lost in a landslide to Nixon and fellow crook Spiro Agnew, who was forced to resign in 1973 due to corruption and taking cash bribes in the White House. Thankfully, Agnew was replaced by Gerald Ford, so when Nixon was forced to resi

Not me but could have been - University of Michigan circa 1966   My nineteen-year-old granddaughter Maya, who is a sophomore in college, broke my heart when she said she didn’t remember anyone but Trump since she became aware of politics. I assumed she remembered some of Obama’s presidency, but she claims her earliest actual memories were of Trump coming down the golden escalator and of watching in disbelief in her “pants suit” when he defeated Hillary Clinton. Perhaps the tr

Finally reproduced her cake in 2015 A few months after my mother died, I decided to bake her chocolate cake from scratch. My...

It is my first “where were you when this happened” memory. On November 22, 1963, when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, I was...

Thanksgiving 1989 My children would probably say that I am a lot like my mother (pictured above). By the time they were old enough to...

Part One: My Childhood At my writers’ group, we talked about a challenge suggested by Nina Raskin: Think about who sat at your table from...

This memoir is dedicated to my writing group I was born with black hair. Unlike my beloved cousin Annette, my mother didn’t have to cover...

Nutcracker on Ice 1993 Published in ChicagoNow, December 17, 2019 Nothing says holidays for me better than hearing music from The...

Published in ChicagoNow, June 18, 2019 Today Sir Paul turns 77. Yikes! I still remember, as if it were yesterday (pardon the pun) the...