Local artist Donna J. Magrath is a native New Yorker who came South for a relationship that didn’t survive but gave her an opportunity to fall in love with a place she has called home since 2012. New York’s loss is Columbia’s gain!
Magrath’s ancestors included Russian immigrants
a passionate advocate for equal justice
Magrath’s creativity as an artist finds expressions
in varieties of forms,
but her authenticity, courage, and perseverance in her art deserve celebration.
Magrath’s latest work: the East Wing of the White House and Rose Gardenbefore demolition
The East Wing contained the Office of the First Lady and played a key role in the visibility of women in the White House, according to The 19th. News.
But, of course, if the Office of the First Lady is gone, no one will notice she’s not there.
Hear ye, hear ye: all those who have ears, listen to a message from moderate conservative political commentator David Brooks:
“All my life I have had a certain idea about America. I have thought of America as a deeply flawed nation that is nonetheless a tremendous force for good in the world. From Abraham Lincoln to Franklin D. Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan and beyond, Americans fought for freedom and human dignity and against tyranny; we promoted democracy, funded the Marshall Plan, and saved millions of people across Africa from HIV and AIDS. When we caused harm – Vietnam, Iraq – it was because of our over-confidence and naivete, not because of evil intentions.
Until January 20, 2025, I didn’t realize how much of my very identity was built on this faith in my country’s goodness — on the idea that we Americans are partners in a grand and heroic enterprise, that our daily lives are ennobled by service to that cause. Since January 20, as I have watched America behave vilely — toward our friends in Canada and Mexico, toward our friends in Europe, toward the heroes in Ukraine and President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office– I’ve had trouble describing the anguish I’ve experienced. Grief? Shock? Like I’m living through some sort of hallucination? Maybe the best description for what I’m feeling is moral shame: To watch the loss of your nation’s honor is embarrassing and painful.”
David Brooks is not a writer I follow with fervor nor is he one I deliberately avoid as a conservative policy wonk; but in the May, 2025, issue of The Atlantic he wrote a piece called “Everything We Once Believed In” which captured feelings I’ve personally struggled to express since the November, 2024, election. As we remember the lives lost by those serving in the U.S. military at home and abroad on this Memorial Day weekend, I challenge us to also remember why they served.
Here’s a Dylan song dedicated to all members of the four branches of American guv’mint: executive, legislative, judicial and muskratSam.
It ain’t no use to sit and wonder why, guys If’n you don’t know by now And it ain’t no use to sit and wonder why, guys It’ll never do somehow When your rooster crows at the break of dawn Look out your window and we’ll all be gone You’re the reason we’re a-traveling on Please think twice – cause you ain’t right.
And it ain’t no use in turning on your lights, guys Those lights we never knowed And it ain’t no use in turning on your lights, guys We’re on the dark side of the road But we wish there was somethin’ you would do or say To try and make us change our minds and stay But we never did too much talking anyway Please think twice – cause you ain’t right.
So it ain’t no use in calling out our names, guys Like you never done before And it ain’t no use in calling out our names, guys We can’t hear you anymore We’re a-thinking and a-wondering’ walking down the road We once loved a country, its freedoms untold We gave you our hearts but you wanted our souls Please think twice – cause you ain’t right.
Although NCAA women’s basketball takes center court in our home during the month of March every year, Pretty and I also welcome an annual springtime celebration of Women’s History in March. Basketball bracketology should be discussed by experts, and neither Pretty nor I qualify. We were, however, both teachers at one point in our lives and did learn how to develop a lesson plan.
My plan today features a civics lesson Americans have either forgotten and/or not been taught, so think of this as a brief refresher course that is not sanctioned by anyone and won’t require a registration fee. Hang on to your recliners, my friends. This is high drama. The United States government is structured with three separate but interdependent branches: the legislative (Congress), the executive (President and Cabinet), and the judicial (Supreme Court and federal courts), each with specific powers and responsibilities. Being a contrarian, let’s work backwards as we consider three women who have been leaders in each equal branch under the Constitution.
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s parents, Johnny and Ellery Brown, had a front row seat at their 51 year old daughter’s confirmation proceedings to be appointed the first Black woman to the United States Supreme Court during the Senate Judiciary Committee’s public hearings in April, 2022. Their faces remained noncommittal, even stoic, when their daughter’s faith, views on pornography, questions of character were attacked by the Republican Senators in the room.
The confirmation hearings that began with President Joe Biden’s nomination of Judge Jackson had a zoo-like quality with the zookeeper a/k/a Chairman Dick Durbin doing his best to maintain order – decorum was out the window. Johnny and Ellery Brown had undoubtedly seen worse behavior as natives of Miami growing up in the Jim Crow South but as public school teachers in Washington, D.C., they had also seen the impact of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s which gave their children more opportunities for success. Judge Jackson was born on September 14, 1970, in Washington, D.C. She was confirmed to the Supreme Court by the Senate with a 53-47 vote on April 07, 2022, and was sworn in on June 30th. of that year.
When Judge Jackson was 27 years old in 1997, a woman named Madeleine Albright, who then President Bill Clinton had nominated to become the first female Secretary of State, went through her own Senate confirmation hearings in an atmosphere much less combative than the circus Judge Jackson was forced to endure. Republican Senator Jesse Helms who chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee led then United Nations Ambassador Albright through the process that ended in a unanimous Senate vote to confirm. Wow. Those were the days.
Madeleine Albright was born on May 15, 1937, in Prague, Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic). In 1939 the Nazi occupation forced her family to become refugees in England, but they returned home after World War II; only to flee again when the communist coup occurred. Her father Josef Korbel had been a member of the Czechoslovakian diplomatic service and sentenced to death by the communist regime. The second time her family fled Madeleine and her mother Anna took a ship to Ellis Island in November, 1948; Josef joined them later. They eventually settled in Denver, Colorado, where Josef accepted a position at the University of Denver. These European immigrants had found a home.
Madeleine Albright’s storied career represents to me the best of America. To be “the first” woman in any field, to be known as a woman who “tells it like it is,” to successfully navigate the political land mines of our nation’s Capitol to serve our country in an ever changing world – these are accomplishments we celebrate; but to achieve as an outsider, a refugee, merited our highest honors including the Presidential Medal of Freedom bestowed by President Barack Obama in 2012.
Madeleine Albright died on March 23, 2022, following a long battle with cancer. The first woman ever called Madam Secretary of State left us as the first Black woman battled for her position on the Supreme Court in a contentious, even embarrassing at times, public hearing while her parents, husband, daughters, brother and the American people watched. The coincidental timing was remarkable to me.
Nancy Pelosi was born on March 26, 1940, andserved as the 52nd. Speaker of the House of Representatives, having made history in 2007 when she was elected the first woman to serve as Speaker. She made history again in January, 2019, when she regained her position second-in-line to the presidency – the first person to do so in more than six decades.
Pelosi was the chief architect of generation-defining legislation under two Democratic administrations, including the Affordable Care Act and the American Rescue Plan. She led House Democrats for 20 years and previously served as House Democratic Whip. In 2013, she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame at a ceremony in Seneca Falls, the birthplace of the American women’s rights movement. In 2024, she was awarded by President Biden the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.
Pelosi has represented San Francisco in Congress for 37 years, currently serving as Speaker Emerita of the House and as the Representative for California’s 11th. Congressional District, but it is one picture of her during Trump’s first presidential term that occupies a place of honor in my office as the recipient of the Sheila R. Morris Calling It Like She Sees It Award.
Speaker Pelosi at a cabinet meeting during the first Trump administration
I had a vision of hope for the future when I heard Judge Jackson’s answers to the questions posed three years ago during her confirmation process, a glimmer of hope for equality and fairness for my granddaughters. I felt that same spirit of hope in the legacy Madeleine Albright left, her persistence in pursuing freedom for all nations from the position of an immigrant in this country, the world peace she strived for. Jackson. Albright. Pelosi. I salute all three of these warrior women during Women’s History Month for their shared destiny of becoming a “first” in the judicial, executive, and legislative branches of government in the United States of America – three women who broke not only glass ceilings in government but also understood that real power belongs to those willing to serve for a greater good.
Three years ago today, February 24, 2022, Russia without provocation invaded Ukraine. I know it – you know it. On March 16, 2022, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed a joint session of the United States Congress to ask for America’s help, and I published this pieceon that day.
In listening to an emotional virtual appeal by Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy to the Congress of the United States this morning, I felt the despair of this leader who had watched his beautiful country together with many numbers of its men, women and children obliterated by an evil neighbor for reasons known only to that neighboring country’s president and his supporters.
If President Zelenskyy could sing, and I don’t know whether he can, he could have closed with some of the words and music of “I Look to You,” singing along with the American gospel group Selah from their album Hopeofthe Broken World:
“As I lay me down, heaven hear me now. Winter storms have come and darkened my sun. After all that I’ve been through, who on earth can I turn to? I look to you, I look to you. After all my strength is gone, in you I can be strong. I look to you. And when melodies are gone, in you I hear a song. I look to you.
I don’t know if I’m gonna make it. Nothing to do but lift my head. My levees are broken, my walls have come crumbling down on me. The rain is falling, defeat is calling, I need you to set me free. Take me far away from the battle – I need you to shine on me.”
The people of Ukraine are looking to us and our Allies around the globe for help to stop not only the physical crumbling walls but also the assault on our vision of freedom and our democratic way of life. Make no mistake, as President Zelenskyy has consistently reminded us, the destruction of Ukraine is but the beginning of a world war against securing the blessings of individual liberty for all people and for their posterity.
I have a dream, Zelenskyy said to the Congress today, but I also have a need to reclaim the skies over Ukraine, to stop the senseless bombing of my citizens and our homes. The Ukrainian President is looking to us.
Yes. We see you, we hear you, we feel your pain. We will respond with gratitude for your fight against a common enemy to serve a greater good.
We Americans suffer from long term memory loss – the lessons we painfully absorbed about world wars, global conflicts, political corruption, identifying our enemies, supporting our friends – all 20th. century instructional tools we have conveniently forgotten in this 21st. century have now come home to roost in a new administration that seeks to say No to the needs of our Allies and Yes to the demands of our enemies. Shame on our leaders, shame on us for electing them.
I'll Call It Like I See It 
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