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A personal story about a WWII bomber pilot—and what his sacrifice teaches us about civic responsibility, truth, and defending democracy today.

What “Becoming the Blizzard” means—and how ordinary citizens can organize, push back on disinformation, and strengthen American democracy.

I’m writing a few days out from the midterms, setting down for posterity more than anything what it feels like to live in such times. The country - perhaps the world - is holding its breath, waiting for Tuesday…and the days after. Even at my work, where we’re careful to steer clear of politics generally, it’s crept into the conversation. And it’s occasionally more about the aftermath than the actual event. I saw a clip of Donald Trump attacking a reporter from Reuters after b

My husband and I disagreed over whether our Shapiro yard signs were vandalized or if a deer had slashed through them. I find the deer hypothesis unlikely. They have been in our yard for months; the deer even longer. I typically put political signs up against the house, so if they’re messed with, the security cameras will catch it. My husband has been flirting with trouble for weeks, gradually moving them further toward the street. Deer don’t dally by the pavement; they’re to

Courtesy of the Official White House Gallery Autocracies don’t happen in a vacuum. One individual does not take power and hold it alone. So, when an autocratic government enfolds a country, whose fault is it really? There were two people in this current administration that I wanted to get under the hood and figure out psychologically what made them tick to understand where we are as a nation: Stephen Miller and the man himself, Donald Trump. To that end, I read Hatemonger: St

This is a challenging week, and I'm both physically and mentally exhausted, so the post I had planned for today isn't ready. But maybe that's okay, because this might set it up in a way that I hadn't anticipated, so look for it next week. The post below, in the meantime, is a re-print of a swan song post to a blog I did a couple of years ago about aging. It was meant to be sort of silly and making fun of the aches and pains of being a mid-60's year-old woman, and I for the mo

On January 20, 2025, I had the day off because it was MLK Day. It also happened to be the day Donald Trump took office for the second time. I stayed far away from the television and all social media that day, choosing to stay curled up in an armchair in my room reading Rush vocalist Geddy Lee’s autobiography My Effin’ Life instead. It turned out to be an interesting choice to read on that specific day since he begins by providing some background on his parents and their exper

“It’s the economy, stupid.” – James Carville I went back to work recently. That was always the plan to be honest: I would take six months off to write the book and then find a part-time job to help stretch out my retirement savings and help keep us flush to afford the things we wanted to do – like live sporting events and concerts. I like my job for the most part. I mean, as I’ve always said about working, it’s called work for a reason, but there is a lot to be grateful for

“The first reality—and perhaps the most worrying—is that we are using tools that are fundamentally beyond human comprehension. We have a name for this: the interpretability problem. Nobody—including the scientists and philosophers at OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic—can precisely explain why a massive neural network chooses the specific combination of weighted parameters that results in an AI’s response to a prompt.[1]” AI is the thing that finally pushed all thoughts of the E

Do Democrats really hate America? I analyze the claim that we do.

After a trip to Target, I was so exhausted I fell asleep on the floor in the livingroom I want to take this time to commemorate the passing of Gloria Steinem. Not because she was my role model exactly. In some ways, and at some times in my life, she was my nemesis, but she was a looming presence for much of it. In some ways, she loomed larger over how I managed my life than the mother who raised me, so her passing forced me to take stock on my life and career to-date. I canno

Maybe I should stop to answer the question why I felt like I could or should write a book about the current administration. I am not a politician, an academic, a reporter, a current or former staff member, or even a relative of the president. I am just a citizen, like you, like all our neighbors, our co-workers. No less, but no more. I have the advantage of having been raised by a WWII veteran whose PTSD prompted me to learn about that war to gain insight into the man I saw,

By US gov - US gov, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2130620 Living in Montana in the 60’s came with a certain resignation. There was a gallows humor everyone had about the Cold War. The joke was that we didn’t need to worry about a nuclear war with the Soviet Union because it would be over for us in a flash. The state was sparsely populated with people, but had a lot of rattlesnakes, antelope, and missile silos. We accepted the fact that the Rus

I don’t look back on my 20s with a lot of fondness. I wish I did. I hope most of you do. I mean, on the surface it’s a great time to be alive: there’s no arm flab yet, no wrinkles around our eyes, no grey in the hair. The things I spend hours on now to just “maintain,” like arm strength and overall stability (trying to watch me do some of the strength exercises meant to help with that is hilarious – the Leaning Tower of Pisa has nothing on me!), but that was all taken for gra

I’m going to swerve off course a little this week because I’ve been pondering my experience in New York recently when I went into the city to see Rush. It has me thinking about a large worry that I’ve had, which is how we heal as a nation after such a divisive period that admittedly started before the Trump presidency, but has been ratcheted to a new level in recent years. And, while it has been spurred on by a leader who insults just about anyone who crosses him, many of us

Chuck Schumer met with MS NOW, as reported by Ali Vitali this past week, as he came out of meetings where Democrats had been workshopping “doomsday” midterm election scenarios, ranging from misinformation to physical interference at the polls. That’s admittedly chilling. Vitali’s report spoke to the worry that Democrats have that there is a balance to strike: to plan for worst-case scenarios but not scare people away from voting. I share that fear, but the very fact that the

The President wants you to believe that elections that he and his party lose are rigged. His own evidence doesn't prove that.

I couldn’t do it. After literally two decades of being a loyal fan of anything Westeros, I could not get through the first episode of the new season of House of the Dragon (the last season of the OG Game of Thrones being somewhat of an exception). I haven’t even tried past that. Was it the violence I’d lost my taste for? It’s true, I don’t much care for animals dying, even mythical dragons, but I ruled that out when I had Alien: Romulus on in the background a couple of night

@agodissart went on Threads on the 4th of July and posted, “DemoRATS stay home! No watching fireworks or eating a hot dog off the grill. These activities are for patriots only!” When I see those sorts of provocative posts, I often assume they were bot generated “rage-bait,” and I looked at this user profile, and I can’t really tell if that is the case here or not, but whatever it is or isn’t, it’s echoing something I’ve heard many times before, dating all the way back to when

What a strange time to be celebrating America’s 250th birthday. Many of us aren’t in the mood for a party. The American promise seems further away than ever right now. While it may seem bizarre for the country to be so obsessed with the disaster at the Reflecting Pool considering everything else going on in the world, I get it: it just encapsulates the state of the country right now. Yet did our 200th birthday come at a better time? I was a teenager living in a small town, so