Most of us know who will get our vote in the presidential election, and, therefore, whose campaign we may contribute to. But what about the down ballot? Particularly in other states.

Last week, I watched the Oscar-nominated movie, Zone of Interest. It’s a Holocaust movie unlike any other Holocaust movie I’ve seen. And, trust me, I’ve watched more than my share of Holocaust movies. They are fodder for Jewish angst. What partially distinguishes this movie is that there are no images of concentration camp internees, no glimpses inside the gas chambers, no heart-wrenching cries of children torn from their mothers’ arms as they debark the trains upon arrival at Auschwitz.

Super Tuesday is over and now our attention is focused on the November elections. The dye is firmly cast and the race will all but surely be between former president Donald Trump and current President Joe Biden. Polls show the race as close; pundits are floating various theories about the outcome.

We have good news and bad news.

Bad news first.

While I was walking through a beautiful flower garden last week with my five-year-old granddaughter (in a land far away from New England), she asked to pick one of the pink blooms. Just one, she insisted. I, of course, gave the standard line about how if everyone picked even just one, soon there would be none for people to see and enjoy.

On Sunday, March 3rd, Leading Ladies will have our first appearance at a brewery. We will be at Night Shift in Everett with a table full of materials designed to encourage the young patrons to register to vote and show up at the polls. We of gray and white hair are bringing along some younger souls to give us added credibility.

Nonpartisan, according to Merriam Webster Dictionary, means “not partisan, especially: free from party affiliation, bias, or designation.” Disinterested, dispassionate, equitable, impartial and indifferent are a few of the suggested synonyms. Leading Ladies was founded with the promise that we would be nonpartisan by not endorsing any candidate or political party. We would take a stance on issues, however, and those positions might sometimes, and even often, ally with particular candidates, and even one party, more than another.

Everyone has an opinion about statistics. There are those who stake their lives on them and those who ignore them summarily. Mark Twain is famous for reputedly saying, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics,” though he attributed the words to British Premier Minister Benjamin Disraeli.

“The reality is that people with mental illness account for a very small proportion of perpetrators of mass shootings in the U.S., says Ragy Girgis, MD, associate professor of clinical psychiatry in the Columbia University Department of Psychiatry and the New York State Psychiatric Institute, in a recent issue of the Columbia Psychiatry News.

This week, it is difficult to think or write about anything other than the war in the Middle East. 

Tracy Kidder doesn't walk by homeless people on the street anymore. He doesn’t act as if they are invisible. He makes eye contact. He speaks to them. And he usually gives them money.

Statistics out last week about childhood poverty are staggering. The child poverty rate, calculated to include the impact of government tax and spending programs, was 9.7 percent in 2020, 5.2 percent in 2021, and 12.4 percent in 2022. To put that in numbers, according to John Cassidy in The New Yorker, “the number of children living in households under the poverty line went from 7.2 million in 2020 to 3.8 million in 2021 to nine million in 2022.”

Many of us are watching our children and grandchildren head off to school this week, some for the first time. Those of us in the Northeast can be pretty sure (and yes, we've know about the problem in Ludlow, MA, but it's an outlier) that the shelves in school libraries will not be emptied of books that depict characters with two mothers or fathers, or boys or girls questioning their sexual…

The son of a friend of ours lives in a western mountain state where he hunts for elk and deer. He then butchers the felled animals and feeds his family with the meat. His wife only eats the meat he has provided – other meat only if she knows how it was sourced. The deer and elk are hunted during…

Is anyone else gobsmacked to learn that our Supreme Court Justices are not required to abide by any written ethics rules, not even those imposed on all other federal judges? 

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.