Pass the Olives

A Jumble of Opinions on Living, Thinking, Reading, and Making Things

Deja Vu All Over Again: Sexism

It’s gratifying that my granddaughters can take the rights for granted that women won in the 1970s, but I’m afraid they will disappear if the feminists and their work is forgotten. Sexism is so pervasive, even when people are trying to “do the right thing.” I had a discussion a month or so ago on an email discussion list for copy editors and publishers about addressing invitations to women. The woman […]

Continue Reading →

Orientation to College: Why College?

Orientation to College: A Reader on Becoming an Educated Person is a wonderful, wonderful book even if I did write it myself (with help from Betsy and Jane). It’s a collection of essays on the reasons for going to college; the nature of learning and how we develop personally, even as adults; and the relationships between learning and the workplace. What it doesn’t discuss is the unrealistic dreams parents have for […]

Continue Reading →

Pass the Olives

In my junior year at Abraham Lincoln High School in Des Moines, Iowa, my art teacher, Larry Hoffman, drew a caricature of me in my year book. I was dressed in the Helen of Troy costume I had worn to our Grand Beaux Arts Ball (a picnic in a city park by the Des Moines Art Center) and using a long handled brush to paint a single perfect olive in […]

Continue Reading →

The New Neighborhoods

Neighborhoods like the one you, or your parents, or your grandparents probably grew up in are still alive and well but are in high-rise buildings, the suburbs, urban renewal, and housing complexes. Our old neighborhoods were, where our grandparents and great grandparents lived, were relatively stable with generations of the same families living on the block, and if not on this block the next one over. It was a place […]

Continue Reading →

About Pass the Olives

In my junior year at Abraham Lincoln High School in Des Moines, Iowa, my art teacher, Larry Hoffman, drew a caricature of me in my year book. I was dressed in the Helen of Troy costume I had worn to our Grand Beaux Arts Ball (a picnic in a city park by the Des Moines Art Center) and using a long-handled brush to paint a single perfect olive in the […]

Continue Reading →