We write about human rights every week and suggest actions we can all take, so we didn’t expect to be surprised by what might be said at last week’s Community Conversation at The Cabot about “Making Our Community Safe for Transgender Youth.”

Owning one’s own home has always been part of the American Dream. Finding a place in your price range can often require some compromise. Then making an offer and having your credit rating checked. Next is hunting for the best deal on a mortgage and coming up with the down payment. For those of us who are lucky, that down payment often includes loans or gifts from parents and grandparents.

As I was sitting in my doctor’s office at Lahey in Danvers two days ago, finishing up a discussion about the state of my thyroid gland, she and I paused to listen to an announcement on the PA system. “There is an external situation. Everyone is advised to shelter in place. No one should leave the building until clearance is given.”

Recent conversations with friends have made it clear that many of us don’t fully understand the difference between Plan B and Plan C in pregnancy management. With the overturning of Roe v Wade and the more recent ban on medication abortion pills…

Here’s a frightening statistic to try to swallow with your evening vitamins. Boston’s Back Bay residents have a life expectancy of 92 years while residents of Roxbury, just four miles away, can expect to live only 59 years. What we know is that factors such as access to health care, affordable housing, and clean air have a lot to do with the difference in these two outcomes.

In a conversation over the holidays, one of my sons reflected on a job he had scooping ice cream at a chichi organic ice cream store in Berlin. He remarked that he didn’t think it was fair that he was expected to get there a few minutes early in order to don his work apron and wash his hands, but he wasn’t allowed to clock in – and, thus, get paid – until after those tasks were completed. That didn’t sound right to him. His passive/aggressive response was to get there as close to clock-in time as possible – or even a little late – and then grab the apron as he clocked in.

We admit it. It takes a lot to shock us these days. Five days to elect a Speaker of the House? Crazy, but just another day in the new reality. Shirtsleeve weather in December? Getting to be routine. Veterinary tranquilizer mixed with fentanyl the new street drug? Alarming, but far from shocking.

Everyone loves a good imposter story. Think of The Great Imposter, the 1961 film starring Tony Curtis and loosely based on a biography of Ferdinand Waldo Demara by Robert Crichton. Demara, a high school dropout, successfully impersonated – at least for a time – a Trappist monk, a prison warden, a Royal Canadian Navy doctor hailed as a “miracle doctor,” a New England teacher, and then the FBI agent assigned to track him down. How can we help but admire the chutzpah and talents of this guy?!

An ad pops up between my turns on Words with Friends. It is a quiz about food insecurity. I search for the icon which will let me skip the ad and get back to my game.

The polls closed last night but it will be days before the final tallies are in. We know there are already some disappointments as well as a few encouraging results, but we need time to dissect and analyze the outcomes.

Leading Ladies refrains from endorsing particular candidates, but we do clearly support certain causes and positions. Indeed, our mission expresses our commitment to equal access for all to education, health care (including a woman’s right to choose), housing, food, jobs, and political representation, regardless of one’s ethnicity, race, religion, or sexual identity. We are also committed to common sense gun laws, humane immigration policies, and the sustainability of our planet.

Turning a key for the first time to open the door of a house that is all yours — not a rental, not your parents’, not a pad shared with roommates — well, that feels pretty special.

As the likes of Herschel Walker and his aggrieved son throw slings and arrows at each other while simultaneously singing Donald Trump’s praises, it can be tempting to question whether our election process is worth our time.

“Young people today just don’t know how to work hard.”

“Too many teens and young adults have been spoiled. That’s why there are so many unfilled jobs in restaurants and stores.”

A dear friend is lying in a hospital bed in a local rehabilitation facility after falling and fracturing her pelvis and shoulder. She is totally immobilized, unable to stand, walk, go to the bathroom, even roll over or use the commode. She is in constant pain.

Pew Research released its latest findings on the opinions of 5,074 American adults on several questions regarding how the government should support families.

As we try to reckon with the reality of life after Roe v. Wade, we feel obligated to become well-informed about the options that remain available to our sisters living in states where surgical abortions will no longer be legal.

Those of us who live in Massachusetts can get a bit self-satisfied, okay, smug, about our state’s superior progress and positions on important issues. Take, for example, the right to choose. The undoing of Roe v Wade will not overturn the legality of abortion in Massachusetts. Here, the right to choose to continue or terminate a pregnancy is assured. And then look at guns. Massachusetts outlawed the sale of AR-15-style guns and, in 2021, a bill was filed to prevent the manufacturing of such weapons in Massachusetts, thereby encouraging Smith and Wesson, the country’s second largest gun manufacturer, to relocate its headquarters in Tennessee.

Watching the January 6 hearings is must-see television, as frightening and disturbing as the images and testimony are. Nothing conveys the gravity and scope of what transpired more than viewing these hearings, where all the information is presented together, with new evidence and first-person narrative to put it all in perspective.

This week’s attack in Uvalde, Texas was the 199th mass shooting of 2022. That averages 10 such attacks a week, according to Gun Violence Archive, an independent data organization. The Archive defines a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people are shot or killed, excluding the shooter. In Uvalde, 19 children and two adults were killed, the deadliest incident so far this year. It should be noted that other groups, such as …