Lady Liberty's Welcome Mat

"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"--Emma Lazarus (1849-1887), author/activist, from her poem, The New Colossus, used as an inscription at the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor.

Donald Trump should have the words from this poem hanging on a wall at the White House, in large, glowing letters, to remind him and members of his administration that America is, and has always been, a nation of immigrants.

Cloris Leachman's Lapse Of Memory

While listening to the BBC News on New York's public radio station WNYC-AM 820, I heard that the TV actress June Lockhart (Lassie and Lost in Space) had died at the age of 100. The mention of her death brought to mind the time I had proofread Cloris Leachman's memoir, Cloris, for Kensington Books in 2008 or 2009 and pointed out a factual error.

In the manuscript, Leachman said that she replaced June Lockhart as the mother on Lassie. For verification, I went to The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network TV Shows, 1946-Present by Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh (Ballantine Books, 1979). I found out it was the other way around--Lockhart had replaced her on the show.  I then corrected the error with my red pencil, citing the source of the correct information. 

Leachman, in her 80s when the memoir was about to come out, obviously had a lapse of memory. (The book, it should be noted, was actually ghostwritten by her ex-husband, the film director George Englund, who later died in 2017.)

**I previously wrote about this subject for the blog on February 17, 2021. To see this blog post, click on "Cloris Leachman" in the Labels section below.