My Family Story: The Complicated Life of Alice Jenkins (1873-1898)

Content Note: slavery, white privilege, sexism One of the few family history things that I knew growing up was that my great-grandmother, Harriet Hackney, was from rural Tennessee. She died before I was born so I didn’t know her personally, just through stories that my mother shared with me about her ‘Nana.’ The general impression […]

An Essay About St. Patrick’s Day and My Not-So Irish-American Cultural Heritage

Irish American Pittsburgh

Growing up in a working class Pittsburgh suburb, I knew two things to be true about my family – we were Roman Catholic and we were Irish (with a little German.) We were Irish Catholics and celebrated St. Patrick’s Day robustly. St. Patrick’s Day is also my younger brother’s birthday. Robustly meant lots of green […]

Robert E. Lee Was a Cousin of Mine

This weekend, a lot of rhetoric flowed exhorting us to respond to a horrifying display of white supremacy in Charlottesville, Virginia. One thing that resonated with me was the exhortation by some of my black friends to me, as a white woman, that I need to collect my people. The only people who should be […]

Argo and Lincoln – Must See Movies

So Argo took Best Picture and Lincoln took Best Actor. Neither won for director. That’s done so now I can discuss my opinions free of Oscar speculation.  These are two of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time, not just this year. The acting was top notch – the ensemble casts and supporting […]