Elise Sereni Patkotak

I have searched my brain for a long time – and yes, there is enough left there for the search to be long – looking for a way to get over my frustration now turning to anger over holiday travel. I have relatives and friends who are traveling and all have the same argument. They know how to travel safely while the rest of the country is apparently filled with the idiots Dr. Fauci was actually addressing who don’t. In other words, the travel advisory, like so much else in this pandemic, is meant for everyone else but me.

This Continue reading →

The scene playing out on our national stage is, to put it mildly, embarrassing. Having our current president act like a spoiled child who has been told no more treats is certainly not anything we ever wanted to see. I think we all had hoped America was a bit above that. Certainly we hoped America was not at a point where we’d see press conferences with a sweaty elder who had black ink running down the side of his face spewing falsehoods like spittle.

But here we are. And what, you ask, should we do about it. Well, I may Continue reading →

I rarely watch TV that hasn’t been dvr’d because, quite frankly, most advertisements make me want to run screaming from the room while pulling my hair out to lessen the pain in my head from the noise.

But thanks to covid and politics, I have been in the position of watching live tv on occasion. And I have just one question.

Am I the only one who has noticed the dichotomy between what is being said and what is being shown on most medical commercials? A pill will be advertised to cure some disease most of us have never heard Continue reading →

Let me just say that as this epidemic rages on, I am eternally grateful that pot got legalized before covid took hold. Continue reading →

It’s over. OK, maybe not completely over but for most reasonable people the presidential race is in the rearview mirror and the only important thing now is how the heck to share a 24 lb. turkey over Zoom.

I realize that for some, this election will take some time to put behind them. They fought for candidates that didn’t win and that’s never fun. They are now faced with senators, representatives, a president and a vice president that they feel do not represent them. And all I can say is, welcome to America. This is how it works. Get used Continue reading →

So this is my question. When men reach powerful positions, does all of their intelligence head south leaving nothing for the brain? Does oxygen follow their intelligence south? Is there simply no air left in their brains that allows for rational thought? Or is it their ego that is slurping up all that oxygen leaving none for simple logic? You’ve got to admit that current events would certainly support that concept. Why else would any powerful man think he could keep a sexual picadillo private? Do all powerful men think that they are the exception in the Me Too era? Continue reading →

I asked for a mail in ballot. I initially thought I wanted to vote by mail. Being over a certain age and with a wild variety of health issues, it just seemed safer. But the more I thought about it, the less I liked the idea. Not because of voter fraud or fears of what someone in the post office will do to my ballot – I mean, get real. I have yet to see a mailperson who seemed to want to do anything but deliver the mail and get home to his or her family. While Alaska has certainly Continue reading →

I don’t know if it’s possible to explain to young women today just how different the current world is than the world in which I grew up. The death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg – RBG! – has started me down the path of memories of that world. Despite coming of age in the sixties, I was still a product in many ways of the fifties.

I grew up at a time when women had very limited options in life. Most women accepted that their lives would follow a well-worn path – grow up, maybe work a few years in Continue reading →

I was speaking to a friend of mine recently who retired from teaching, very reluctantly, a few year ago. She loved what she did. I imagine she was like a lot of teachers you know. Dedicated to her work. Putting in more hours than ever recorded taking care of the paperwork required by the multiple agencies funding education. She took extra classes to get her master’s because it made her a better teacher and was the only way she could reach a compensation level even slightly in alignment with the amount of time, energy and love she put into her Continue reading →