

Literature and Poetry
Ferida Wolff's Backyard: Creepy Spider Webs
Ferida Wolff Writes: "Creepy as they may be, spider webs are pretty amazing. They have an artistic quality about them, and a variety of purposes. Not only do they catch insects for food but they provide help for the spider to travel from one place to another, they protect a spider’s dwelling space and also provide safety for an egg sac. Hopefully, not near my garage." more »
Jo Freeman Reviews: Justice, Justice Thou Shalt Pursue: A Life’s Work Fighting for a More Perfect Union By Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Amanda Tyler
Jo Freeman Reviews: This book features a selection of Ginsburg’s legal writing. In the first section, there is one appeals court brief and two transcripts of oral arguments before the Supreme Court. All on gender equality, they illustrate Ginsburg’s strategy of arguing cases where men were the legal losers in the belief that the court would be more sympathetic. Moritz concerned a section of the IRS code that allowed women, widowers and divorced men to take a tax deduction for the care of dependants. The plaintiff was a never-married man who was caring for his mother. Frontiero v. Richardson concerned the different standards for servicemen and women to get benefits for their dependent spouses. Weinberger v. Wiesenfeld challenged a portion of the social security law which permitted widows but not widowers to collect special benefits to care for minor children. more »
Jo Freeman's Review of "Frankly, We Did Win This Election" By Michael C. Bender
Jo Freeman Reviews: This “inside story of how Trump lost” the 2020 election shines a light on his entire presidency. Indeed, he filed papers for his re-election campaign the day he was inaugurated in 2017, so the two were never completely separate endeavors. TrumpWorld was a hornets’ nest. Everything revolved around the King Bee, as the worker bees tried to push, kick and sting each other to get close. ..." more »
Jo Freeman Reviews: Lady Bird Johnson: Hiding in Plain Sight
"When she became First Lady as a result of JFK’s assassination on November 22, 1963, Bird began a taped diary. A few years after her death in 2007, the LBJ Library made the 850 entries public. This book is heavily dependent on that diary, interpreted and expanded by an experienced author with a research team. Consequently, it is 95 percent about her 62 months as First Lady, with minimal material on her earlier and later life." "Life with Lyndon was a political as well as a personal partnership, though Bird was always the junior partner. She had family money; he had family connections. Together they elected him to Congress in 1936 and the Senate in 1948. She used her inheritance to buy an Austin radio station in 1943 and a TV station in 1952. The fact that her husband was in the Senate didn’t hurt when it came to getting licenses and advertising revenue. He made the couple powerful; she made them rich."
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