Elise Sereni Patkotak

I was only there long enough to change planes for Berlin but oh my… it is true that there is no accent like an English accent. Hubby, hubby Continue reading →

From London to Berlin and tomorrow on a boat that is essentially my floating hotel. First trip I’ve been on in almost fifty years of travel where I will unpack once for the entire trip. My floating hotel simply follows me from city to city. What a pleasure to do it this way. And why did it take me so long to figure it out. Continue reading →

Who ever thought flying to Germanh would be welcomed relief from America. But today it is. I need a break. I need to not see Day-Glo Orange man again for a long, long time. And for those of you out there wondering, I will never refer to him as president. He will never represent me or anything I stand for. Continue reading →

My family has been blessed to have all kinds of people in it – straight, gay, bisexual, biracial. We’ve even had a cat lover or two and one strange individual with a David McCallum obsession. And despite being only a couple of generations from our very Catholic immigrant grandparents, my family has never even blinked at it… well, except for one cousin we’ll call Joe (every other male in our family is called Joe in honor of the Giuseppe who first arrived on these shores so this won’t identify him except we all know who he is). He seems to Continue reading →

I’m heading to Germany for a cruise down the Elbe River from Berlin to Prague. I need this break. It’s been a hard year losing so many of my little family so quickly. I will post as the trip progresses and will still be doing columns that appear in the paper every Wednesday and here every Thursday. This is the only week I think I’ll miss if all goes well.

So if there isn’t a new post every day, figure that means I’m having a very good time on my trip. Continue reading →

No other words to say except, thank god. It’s over. The best person won and we can only hope the country will pull together now and forget the hideous presidential campaign of 2016. Continue reading →

Yep, out long national nightmare is ending… or just beginning, I guess, depending on your point of view and whether your candidate wins or loses. But no matter what happens, we have at least six weeks before the 2020 presidential campaign begins so please enjoy this moment of peace and quiet.

And for god’s sake, get out and vote or shut up for the next four years. If you don’t participate, you don’t get to have a say. Continue reading →

I heard on public broadcasting show Marketplace that a Chinese company has bought Dick Clark Productions. Yes, that Dick Clark, the epitome of white, middle class America through most of the fifties and sixties.
But wait, there’s more. One of the productions the Chinese bought with the company was the Miss America Pageant.
I’ll just let that sink in. Continue reading →

Raise your hand if you think Chris Christie knew absolutely nothing about the bridge closing when it happened.

OK, now all of you out there with your hand up, please promise me you won’t reproduce. We do not need that level of stupidity in the gene pool. We have Donald Trump for that. Continue reading →

So we elected Obama before Hillary.  Think about that. Hillary is at the very top tip of the baby boomers. Obama barely qualifies as one. So maybe the problem in our election cycle this year is that we disturbed the rhythm of Mother Nature by electing them out of their proper order. It should have been Hillary first and then Obama so that he could lead the way into the next generation of politicians running for office. Instead, we elected him first and now… no matter who wins on Tuesday… we will be going backwards to two seventy year old Continue reading →