President-Elect Donald Trump Dear Elector, Our country is on the verge of succumbing to a real threat to our democratic system of government. That threat is called Donald Trump. It should be apparent to everyone that this man’s ambition is to be a strongman, dictating his preferences on social, global and political issues. While he […]
I found out Thursday night that it’s no longer a man’s world. And I was pretty happy about it. The Palm Beach County chapter of the National Association of Women in Construction (Are you still with me? Twelve words in that title) met at a small restaurant in West Palm Beach, and I was the […]
This is a bit late, but I have to talk about the great concert I heard Saturday night (Dec. 10) in Lake Worth. The Symphonic Band of the Palm Beaches did its annual Christmas performance, and it was anything but a tired rendition of the same old stuff you hear year in and year out […]
Leonard Pitts December 2016 Dear Friends and Family, This will be the most un-Christmas-like letter you will ever receive. Because, sorry to say, I don’t think we have much to celebrate on this, our No. 1 holiday in the United States. Why? We, as the electorate, have voluntarily chosen to regress decades with our political […]
Bing Crosby The subject for discussion today may not seem important, but to The Grammar Grouch, it certainly is annoying. Most important, it’s a phraseology that is becoming ever more prevalent. Most important? Surely I meant most importantly. No, damn it, I didn’t. And the only reason anyone would think the ly has to be […]
House Speaker Paul Ryan About a week ago, a letter-to-the-editor in the Palm Beach Post made me laugh out loud. “GOP’s shell game with Obamacare” was the title the paper slapped on. Herewith: “So, let’s see if I have this right. Republicans want to repeal Obamacare and replace it with something, but they don’t yet […]
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. This week is a big one for important anniversaries in the Palm Beaches and on a national level, two of them involving assassinations. We began the week by celebrating the birthday on Sunday of the person who contributed the most to this country’s civil rights movement, the Rev. […]
Dear Rep. Ryan, Dear Rep. Ryan, Someone suggested sending a Valentine card to the Wisconsin home of Rep. Paul Ryan, Speaker of the Republican-controlled House, calling on him to pull back the reins on his plans to push for privatization and paring of social programs that benefit the vast majority of people in the […]
Marco Rubio I became a member of Palm Beach Indivisibles this week, and at least some of us wrote a letter to Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, a Republican lackey (sorry for the redundancy), decrying President Trump’s (ooh, it hurts to say that) deplorable choices of leaders for his administration Dear Sen. Rubio, Donald Trump […]
Have I become a more astute writer in the past decade or so, or has the writing community become more sloppy? Did I in decades past make the same mistakes that I continually see these days in newspapers and other media? I hope not, but maybe 10 years of copyediting late in my career made […]