It’s overwhelming inside the sports betting parlor of the Mirage Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas on the the first weekend of the NCAA college basketball national championship tournament. Eighteen giant TV screens are on a two story curved wall. Across from that wall is the wall with all the teams playing, and the various point spreads and odds in yellow, orange and red lights. There are dozens of low slung black arm chairs in a semi circle where bettors pay to sit, order drinks and watch every game simultaneously. They are surrounded by hundreds of standing bettors. Most everyone had a drink in one hand, a cell phone in the other, and a betting sheet. The room is pulsing with testosterone. The crowd seemed to be 98 per cent male. The few females included the waitresses who tried to navigate the crowd with small trays loaded with beers and cocktails. The men were all ages. Twenty and Thirtysomethings wearing backward baseball caps and college tee shirts, and middle aged men looking over their reading glasses at the betting sheets. You are at the center of the American sports betting world.

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The parking lot of the middle school was packed. I found a spot around in the back after moving some pallets to clear a space. It was the meeting of the Bucks County Democratic Committee which was to vote on whether or not to endorse a candidate for congress from the 1st district and other offices. I was there as an advisor to Rachel Reddick, one of three first time candidates running for the nomination. There were tables set up in the hallway by the candidates recruiting people to work on their campaigns. Rachel still wasn’t told if the candidates would be permitted to address the committee members before they voted.

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It’s been among the top news stories for weeks. Thousands of people are sick, and flooding emergency rooms. Children are dying from severe cases. It’s one of the worst seasons in the last ten years. Doctors are repeatedly advising people to get the flu vaccine, even though the latest CDC study says the vaccine is only 36% per cent effective against the most common strain called H3N2. It sounds like a robot character out of Star Wars. I got vaccinated, as I have for the last several years, and hoped for the best. Three years ago, hope wasn’t good enough. I got the flu. Okay, one year of bad luck. Won’t happen again. No so fast.

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I first saw Rachel Reddick on Facebook when she was announcing her candidacy to run for the 8th Congressional District seat in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. I was concerned about the direction of the country, and the dangerous and daily madness of the Trump Administration. The wave of women deciding to run for public office to stand up against both political and sexual harassment was rising, and thousands of women were jumping in. According to Emily’s List, which trains pro-choice women to run for office, the number of Democratic women running for the US House of Representatives is up 350% from 41 women in 2016. More than 26,000 have contacted Emily’s List about running this year. So, who was this Rachel Reddick? (more…)

It’s like escaping a fridge prison. The winter in the northeast is cold and dark. Even days that are lit by bright sunshine are a tease. It looks so inviting when you look outside, until you open the door. So, when you get a chance to break out, you make a run for it.  We had a chance this week to spend time on vacation in Arizona. It was in the corner of the country that wasn’t gripped by freezing temperatures, snow, ice, and thousands of sliding vehicle accidents that reached into the Deep South. There is no better feeling than sitting at a pool in the sunshine and 75 degrees, and checking your phone to see it’s 28 in Philadelphia.

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This is the time of year when Hollywood releases the serious movies the studios believe will be in the running for the Academy Awards. Two of them, “The Darkest Hour” and “The Post” resonate vividly today when we could all use a reminder of what political and journalistic courage really looks and feels like. The movies examine critical weeks when the free world was on the brink of a catastrophic defeat, and one of the pillars of American democracy was threatened by the very people we elected to defend our most basic freedoms. They tell the stories of individuals who found themselves at a place and time when they had to make decisions under tremedous pressure that would change the course of history.

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As a year ends, it’s the time to look back on what’s happened during that last 12 months. Much will be written about 2017 as one of the most traumatic years in recent history. But as we look forward to 2018, we will be remembering the anniversary of the year that shook and changed the country and the world forever, 1968. Fifty year anniversaries are always a big deal, for marriages, birthdays, class reunions, and historically significant events. 1968 was full of such events, and a very significant personal one.

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Now we have the “word police”. It would be laughable, if it weren’t so frightening.  The Washington Post reports that the Centers for Disease Control has banned seven words for use in any future budget proposals. “Vulnerable”, “entitlement”, “diversity”, “transgender”, “fetus”, “science-based”, and “evidence-based.” The Department of Health and Human Services spokesman says, “The assertion that HHS has “banned words” is a complete mischaracterization of the discussions regarding the budget formulations process.” The Post also reports similar guidance has been issued at the State Department. Employees there have been told to call sex education “sexual risk avoidance”. That phrasing usually refers to abstinence-only education. Comedian George Carlin listed the seven dirty words you couldn’t say on television or radio back in 1972. Just think of how much fun he would have with this list.

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Who could have imagined this year? Many predicted deeper division, fear and anger. Compromise and accommodation would be seen as weaknesses. We didn’t know what to expect each morning when we turned on our phones or laptops. There would be bizarre, childish, and even threatening tweets from the president. We would be jolted awake by the latest mass shooting or attack in places on the opposite ends of the cultural spectrum. The madness raining down from a window in Las Vegas on a country music concert. A man walking down the aisle of small country church in Texas murdering whole families. A man driving a truck down a New York City bike path leaving behind death and twisted metal on a sunny fall afternoon. The cascade of sexual harassment and assault victims coming out of the darkness, standing up to the rich and powerful when the dirty, secret world was finally exposed by journalists doing the profession proud.

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It was a story about a stamp that got my attention. It was written by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Elizabeth Becker in The New York Times opinion column “Vietnam 67”. It was about a commemorative stamp Australia issued for Veterans Day honoring Austrailan war correspondent Kate Webb. Webb quit her newspaper job, and flew to Vietnam during the height of the war to cover one of the biggest stories of her generation. She was hired by UPI. She was captured by the Viet Cong, and wrote a book about her 23 days in captivity. She was also the first wire service reporter to reach the US embassy in Saigon as it was being attacked during the Tet offensive in 1968. Becker also covered the war in Vietnam and Cambodia. She was the first to report that Pol Pot was head of Khmer Rouge in Cambodia which killed over a million people in a sweeping policy of genocide. Becker went on to write about other women correspondents who fought their way to the front lines, to prove they could cover the big story just like their male counterparts, and wouldn’t be relegated to covering soft feature stories. They were in the vanguard of the womens’ movement for equality in the workplace.

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