Opinion

Dear Annie: Please give me your opinion. I am an 84-year-old widow. I have one child, a son, and one grandchild in town. My other children live hours away. I no longer drive. I am financially independent and have someone to come clean twice a month, drive me to run errands, go to the doctor, do grocery shopping and take me to the beauty shop.

The Heritage Foundation has been issuing its doorstoplength “Mandate for Leadership” books since Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980. But this is the first one that has inflamed The New York Times into painting it as a manual for autocracy.

YIMBY sounds nice. YIMBY stands for “Yes in My Backyard.” It’s a positive- sounding rejoinder to NIMBY, “Not in My Backyard.” The NIMBY label is being used to stigmatize defenders of zoning laws, with the goal of bulldozing the rules.

Thank-You Notes Never Out of Style Today’s column was prompted by a young man, age 10, who asked me recently, “Do I have to send a thank-you note when someone gives me a gift?” In these high-tech times, when text messaging and email are the preferred methods of written communication, my answer, in a word, was yes. It’s right; it’s proper; it’s good for you.

Dear Annie: It has recently come to my attention that my middle adult son has molested my adult daughter when she was 8 years old. She broke down and told me tearfully last week.

Accepting the Best Actor Academy Award for his role as Robert Oppenheimer, Cillian Murphy dedicated his Oscar to “the peacemakers” in our post-atomic bomb world. That struck a chord close to home.

President Joe Biden -- in his State of the Union address -- once again tried to present himself as a “fiscally responsible” president. “And, by the way, the first couple of years, we cut the deficit,” he said, according to the White House transcript of his speech.

Spousal and Survivors Benefits for Men In the past 27 years, I bet I have written hundreds of columns explaining spousal and widows benefits that are available to women on a husband’s Social Security account. And usually if I have enough space, I try to squeeze in a line that says the same benefits are available to husbands and widowers, even though I know those benefits to men are rarely paid.

Joe Biden’s weaknesses are obvious, but the State of the Union last Thursday and the president’s $7.3 trillion budget proposal this week are reminders of just how tough he can be. Biden isn’t simply an old politician, he’s an old-fashioned one -- the kind who believes in buying the vote.

Dear Annie: I come from a long history of family dysfunction. Child abuse, toxicity and abandonment are all I ever knew growing up. I developed severe complex PTSD and borderline personality disorder coming into my preteen years. I remember the blame was solely on me for my severe depression, suicide attempts and deep-seated suffering from my adoptive parents.