June 24, 2022: Roe v. Wade overturned What Does One Generation Owe Another?

photo courtesy of Ellen Walker
Margaret Sanger with Lena Levine, founders of what would become Planned Parenthood.

by Ellen Walker
guest commentary

On this dark day for women’s rights to reproductive health, choice, and privacy, I cry for American women of reproductive age, but I also weep more private tears for my mother, Lena Levine, who joined Margaret Sanger as a young medical intern and worked with her in the early days of what would become The Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

She devoted most of her life to giving women control over their bodies, from decriminalizing contraception to educating women about their sexual and reproductive rights. My tears for her are guilty ones: I, and my generation, were unable to hold fast to those principles of equality and justice for women which her generation fought so hard to establish and secure. read more

A plea for real gun control The question is whether leaders "have the guts to act"

photo by Karen Laslo
At the July 2 Chico Certified Farmers’ Market, someone hung T-shirts and printed on each shirt the name of a child killed in the May 24 school massacre in Uvalde, Tex.

by George Gold
guest commentary posted June 14

There’s an epidemic in America that came, not from a laboratory test tube and not from some animal-to-human transmission, but that was created here, by us.

Guns are everywhere and they’re being used to kill people. They’re killing us in schools, supermarkets, even cemeteries. So is this the best we can do? The level of anger that seemingly is coming from so many parts of our society is frightening. But we have to start somewhere.

In an era of disinformation, any lie can find traction in the circles of the very people who are already angry about the unfairness of life. They then take their frustrations out on the rest of us with their guns. Life isn’t fair, but perhaps we can work to make it … umm … more fair. read more