Elise Sereni Patkotak

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 →

Ah, the US Post Office. Those of us of a certain age wax nostalgic over the mailman – and they were all men back then – who delivered the mail right to your home. They usually knew you and your family members by name because they’d been doing it for so long. For others, mail delivery has always come in a truck that stopped at the end of the driveway to put the mail into the box there. And for others, mail delivery meant going to the post office to meet and greet friends and pick up your mail.

Having Continue reading →

Conway is leaving the White House. The rats are starting to desert the sinking ship. Continue reading →

Bedlam was a real place. There was a time in British history when it was second only to St. Paul’s Cathedral as a place to visit in London. For a nominal fee, the general public was allowed to enter Bedlam and view its patients. It was considered one of the best shows in town and was so cheap that even Londoners put out the money for multiple visits because you never knew what the show would be that day.

Patients were often naked and chained to beds and walls and each other. The treatments prescribed were in some ways barbaric Continue reading →

So just exactly what is it that we expect from our police? Yes, I fully understand that they should not be racist. Seriously, that should just be a given. They should also not be prone to violence in their policing duties. Yes, there may be times when the only answer is a drawn gun. But that should never be the answer to a call for help with a social services or mental health situation. In fact, why the hell are we asking the police to respond to those things in the first place?

A person experiencing a mental health crisis Continue reading →

I like to think that I am handling this isolation thing very well. Then I realize that I have not only adopted another dog, but I have also embarked on major house renovations. I guess boredom caused me to look around my house and think of all kinds of fun things to do.

I mean, seriously, how many NCIS reruns can one possibly watch before the need to buy a new washer arises – or before you realize that you want new windows. Or a new roof. Or a new anything that will keep me from staring at the same Continue reading →

The race riots of the sixties were my coming of age story. For the first time, a lot of us were exposed to a level of racism we hadn’t know existed anymore in our wonderful, post-World War II America. My parents had mentioned the prejudice their parents endured when they immigrated from Italy at the turn of the 20^th century. But aside from what I learned in school about the Civil War, I knew nothing. I mean really nothing about the issues facing African Americans in America.

The closest I ever came to a conversation with my parents on Continue reading →