Doris O'Brien is a retired college Speech teacher and banker. She has published two books of humor (Up or Down With Women's Liberation and Humor Me a Little) and for many years contributed light verse to the Pepper 'n Salt column of the Wall Street Journal. She is an avid writer of letters to the editors.
Doris celebrated her 50th wedding anniversary in the same year she welcomed her first grandchild. She now lives in Pasadena with a great view of the San Gabriel mountains — and the annual Tournament of Roses Parade.
She can be reached by e-mail: witsendob at (@) gmail.com
Two Crucial Issues' Hearings: Campus Sexual Assault, The Roles and Responsibilities of Law Enforcement. & Social Security: Still a Key Foundation of Economic Security Working for Women?
According to the Census Bureau, retired women are nearly twice as likely as retired men to live in poverty... Instead of living the worry-free ideal, they struggle to make ends meet — to pay for grocery bills and keep their homes heated in winter. And their experiences stand in stark contrast to the national trend of seniors living in the middle class." "Time and again, I have heard from far too many survivors of campus sexual assault that they have felt re-victimized by the process of trying to seek justice for the crime committed against them. This inescapable fact must be fixed," Senator Kirsten Gillibrand stated more »
Culture Watch: Historical Memories, Both Collective and Individual, in Three Compelling World War II Books
Serena Nanda writes: Central to all three is the importance of women in keeping their families together under the most agonizing conditions of exile in Germany and France during WW II. Although similar in setting, narrative and characters, each book provides different perspectives on history, demonstrating that historical memories are both collective and individual. A love affair with "the enemy" is central in each story, causing us to deeply reflect on the impact of war on human relationships. more »
Building Lasting Support For a Controversial Social Issue: "You forget the message, but you remember the messenger"
Reseachers Michael LaCour and Donald Green began by identifying California precincts that had supported the ban on gay marriage, eventually settling on an especially conservative area of Southern California. They then used voter rolls to invite every voter in those precincts, as well as their housemates, to participate in an Internet survey on politics, including only two questions about support for same-sex marriage. more »
Meet the Women of Caucus Leadership for 114th Congress; Domestic Violence in Professional Sports
Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH): "I believe that as you look at your policies, the sanctions [for witness tampering] should be as severe as those for underlying violent acts because that is what it [discouraging victims from reporting violence] is, it is witness tampering. If you put those sanctions in place, it will make it very clear that if someone is a victim of domestic or sexual violence, neither the coaches nor the players, nor anyone else, should be interfering with their ability to come forward or interfering with the support that they need as victims of a crime." more »
