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Elayne Clift is a writer,lecturer, workshop leader and activist. She is senior correspondent for Women's Feature Service, columnist for the Keene (NH) Sentinel and Brattleboro (VT) Commons and a contributor to various publications internationally. Her latest book is ACHAN: A Year of Teaching Thailand (Bangkok Books, 2007). She is also the editor of Women, Philanthropy and Social Change: Visions for a Just Society (UPNE/Tufts U., 2007). She lives in Saxtons River, Vt. and invites readers to visit her website: www.elayneclift.com
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, November 22, 2024 Taking Stock of Election Shock
Usually around this time I begin thinking about writing my cheery Christmas letter to share the highlights of another year in the life of our family. This year is different. I'm still trying to grasp what just happened and what it will mean for all of us.
SHARE Monday, November 4, 2024 Taking Care of the Caregivers
As changing demographics challenge the world, we need to realize that caregivers are a special group of people, usually women, but also men, who deserve to be respected, protected by labor laws, and free from isolation and fear.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 16, 2024 Kamala Harris is in Good Company as She Moves Forward
As Vice President Kamala Harris has proven since she began campaigning to be president, she is no neophyte in the world of politics as some proclaim. Nor is she a potted plant: She has an amazing presence, a strong intellect, an impressive resume, and refreshing charm as she campaigns calmly and with dignity. She joins a distinguished group of accomplished women who precede her as capable, courageous change makers.
SHARE Thursday, July 4, 2024 Another "Day That Will Live in Infamy"
Let's get right to it: The shocking decision by the Supreme Court has us non-Trumpers in a place of deep anxiety and overt fear. We know that our lives and our kids' futures will be forever changed by a court that has become so outrageously biased and openly political that it is not hyperbolic to charge them with the end of our democracy as we've known it.
SHARE Friday, June 14, 2024 Were We the Lucky Ones?
We stand now on the precipice of a giant sink hole that would take years to dig out of, if not generations. We owe it to our progeny to leave them a world in which we proved again our resilience and our love of freedom.
(9 comments) SHARE Wednesday, May 22, 2024 Being Jewish and American in Troubling Times
It is painful for me that my president is unwilling to end American collaboration with what is clearly ethnic cleansing and yes, genocide in Gaza and the West Bank. Like many Jews and others I cannot fathom why he won't end the massacres by withholding all funds for Israeli military equipment that keeps the carnage going.
SHARE Thursday, April 18, 2024 Just How Broken is Our Healthcare System?
A young woman dies in childbirth for lack of proper perinatal care. An elderly man can't afford meds to control his chronic conditions, so he rations them. A child is misdiagnosed in the emergency room. A patient waits months to see her doctor about a troublesome symptom. Stories like these abound.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, November 3, 2023 Are We Facing the End of Free Speech?
Let us remember that our voices are not weapons. They are instead our monuments and our roadmap to a sane future for all of us. No one should be punished for raising them.
SHARE Wednesday, November 1, 2023 The Power of Hope and the Promise of the Parkland Generation
Ever since David Hogg, Emma Gonzales, and other high school student leaders began organizing against gun violence when their Florida school experienced a massacre in 2018 that killed 17 people and injured 17 more, I've clung to the belief that if we could get to the Parkland generation as political leaders, we just might save our country. I believe that now more than ever.
SHARE Monday, October 30, 2023 A is for Absent: America's Teacher Shortage
I am ever grateful for having been educated in a time when they represented the finest members of the teaching profession and I fervently hope that children will fly again once the reasons for our educational crisis are adequately resolved.
SHARE Sunday, September 10, 2023 The Recovered Joy of Summer Travel
All my life I have disagreed with Henry David Thoreau: Unlike him, I think it is "worthwhile to go around the world to count the cats in Zanzibar." That's why inveterate travelers find the return to post-pandemic travel an exhilarating experience.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, August 11, 2023 Choosing Freedom: A Political Imperative
In his 1941 State of the Union address, FDR said that there was "nothing mysterious about the foundations of a healthy and strong democracy." He noted that he looked forward to "a world founded upon four essential human freedoms."
SHARE Tuesday, June 27, 2023 Balfour's Big Blunder and Today's Israel
As a Jewish American, like many others, I am heartbroken by what is happening to Palestinians because of the excessively rightwing government now in power in Israel, a country that was founded because of atrocities committed against them.
SHARE Friday, April 14, 2023 Growing Older in Challenging Times
Also, with age comes a certain clarity. I know who I am, for better or worse. I'm clear about things I feel passionately about, and what I won't tolerate. I think I'm measurably wiser than I once was. I try to be less judgmental. Even though I rant a lot, I'm fundamentally a nice person.
(14 comments) SHARE Monday, April 3, 2023 Where is Artificial Intelligence Leading Us?
Ten years ago, I wrote a column called "Are We Headed Toward a Robotic World?" At that time battle robots and alien creatures in movies were imbued with artificial intelligence, an oxymoron if ever there was one, Star Trek and films about robotic warfare were addicting audiences who liked watching battling weird-looking warriors try to destroy each other.
SHARE Saturday, March 11, 2023 What Would Socrates Say? A Look at America's Education Crisis
I watch our education system crumble into something worse than second rate. It's a system that is being destroyed by political ideologies that influence laws, curricula, teacher qualifications, and students' futures in profoundly troubling and negative ways.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, January 1, 2023 Where is Abigail Adams in Today's Political Discourse?
In all the talk about encroaching autocracy in America and elsewhere, politicians, pundits, media personalities and others need to remember the words and wisdom of the revolutionary first First Lady, Abigail Adams, who admonished her husband to "remember the ladies."
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, December 16, 2022 The Wandering Souls of Migration, Immigration and Asylum Seeking
According to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), "record numbers of migrants [from just Central America] risked their lives in 2022 to cross the treacherous, remote jungle region bridging Central and South America." More than 151,000 migrants came to the U.S. in less than a year from countries around the world.
SHARE Saturday, December 3, 2022 Maternal Mortality, Abortion, and Race: A Dangerous Trifecta
Much has been written in the literature of public health about America's shocking maternal mortality rate. Occasionally media reports the alarming rate when there is a hook. Advocates concerned with women and health illuminate the problem in reports and at conferences. But in light of the SCOTUS Dobbs decision on abortion, new urgency arose in addressing U.S. maternal mortality and its causes because of the link between reprod