Living with a Chinese Curse

It is believed that the phrase “May you live in interesting times” originated in China. But it didn’t start there. It likely happened when a British diplomat in the 1930s described that time as an era of turbulence, danger, and chaotic change.

That certainly suggests our own time of danger and chaos, caused by a regime that can only be called dangerous, chaotic, and crazy. It’s an unprecedent and frightening time that belies our history, our Constitution, and threatens our future, as well as the world’s.

It’s a time when our president is so mentally deranged that he attacks the Pope, uses ugly profanity in public, spews extreme vitriol aimed at anyone he sees as a threat, defies the Congress and the courts, and advances emotional and physical violence against women, immigrants, children, peaceful protesters, and even U.S. citizens.  He has a compulsion for self-adulation, the latest being the building of a huge arc de ’Trump that looks like the Brandenburg Gate, and a portrait of himself as Jesus Christ. On and on it goes.

No wonder Representative Jaime Raskin has introduced a bill to remove the president under Section 4 of the 25th amendment, which already has support from numerous members of Congress who signed as co-sponsors when he threatened to destroy “a whole civilization” on Truth Social. The challenge is to get most of the president’s cabinet to declare him unfit and to have two-thirds of the House and Senate to agree. It’s a long shot and some have said it won’t happen till Hell freezes over.  But it seems to me that it’s beginning to look like Hell has already frozen over.

Rep. Raskin has already demanded that the White House physician conduct an immediate, comprehensive evaluation of the president’s cognitive fitness, with full public disclosure of the result.

The impacts of the president’s policies are Draconian.  For example, cutting the budget for the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has had profound consequences for healthcare globally. The agency provides clinical guidelines, monitors infectious disease outbreaks, supports health worker training, and deploys staff to combat infectious diseases. The CDC also works with other countries to stop threats at their source. According to the CDC cuts in resources and staff have resulted in the departure of over 30% of its workforce while significant budget cuts have eroded expertise in epidemiology, lab science, and communication, diminishing the nation’s ability to respond to emergencies and leading to fears of increased preventable disease.

Further, cuts in vaccine development, medical research that could reduce the mortality rates for cancers, chronic diseases, and dementia, as well as healthy longevity means that people will experience illnesses that could have been treated or cured, and many of them will die prematurely.

Here’s another important example. The Trump administration has resulted in the dismantling and weakening of numerous environmental protections and public health standards because the administration is promoting coal production and relaxing regulations for the fossil fuel industry.  Under the EPA Administrator deregulatory efforts are ensuring “regulatory relief” to businesses enthralled with profits at the expense of clean water and clean air. The agency is also repealing prior legal actions that regulated gas emissions from cars and trucks, as it reverses climate policies that were put in place to decrease air pollution.

Further, the EPA is removing protections for millions of acres of wetlands that were in place under the Clean Water Act. The list goes on. The Interior Department has begun weakening regulations that controlled mining and oil drilling, including removing protections in place in the Gulf of Mexico. Environmental research is also threatened with dissolved funds. 

FEMA is also a disaster itself due to prioritizing corporate profits over public health. Originally intended to support state and local responses in the event of climate change induced disasters, which are occurring more frequently, the Natural Resources Defense Council point out that “This is not reform, it is sabotage. There will be ”more suffering.

And the Forest Service, which controls 154 national forests and 20 national grasslands covering 193 million acres, is at risk. In a New Yorker magazine story environmentalist Bill McKibben shared this: “Sound science is anathema to the Trump Administration.”  He cites the shutting of the Service’s nine regional offices and the removal of its headquarters in Washington, D.C. to Utah, where Senator Mike Lee wants to sell huge tracts of lands to developers.  “Gutting the Forest Service couldn’t come at a worse time,” McKibbens said. “This winter was the hottest ever recorded across the Western U.S. and that has left the mountains in the West, where Forest Service lands are primarily concentrated, with the smallest snowpacks in recorded history, which is linked to wildfire danger.”

There’s so much more one can cite, but here’s a final chilling one. At this writing, it seems a Supreme Court Justice may be retiring. That would give Donald Trump the chance to seat another conservative justice for a lifetime appointment.

If that doesn’t feel like a Chinese Curse, I don’t know what will. As a Chinese writer said in 1627, It might be "better to be a dog in times of tranquility than a human in times of chaos." 

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Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro.

An Homage to Libraries and Librarians

A little girl learning to read sits in a chintz chair in her bedroom, The Tale of Peter Rabbit in her hands. She found the story in the local library, thrilled that she can read and follow the tale page by page.

That little girl was me. Being excited that I could read, that story launched my weekly visits to the library.  Later, when I could read more advanced books, I took out at least two books a week and immediately sat in my chintz chair to start reading them. Soon I graduated to biographies of important women like Martha Washington and Abigail Adams along with other interesting biographies about heroic girls and interesting women.  I have loved reading ever since.

Our library was a great place to go. It was full of promising tales, both true and fictional. I remember creeping along the shelves, my hands touching the dark wood, as I searched for books I might want to read, first in the children’s section and later among the young adult shelves and then marveling at the seas of adult offerings. 

I was thinking of this lately because last month was National Library month which celebrates the critical role libraries and librarians play in expanding our knowledge, encouraging our curiosity, and facilitating our attempts at research, which comes in handy when there is something you desperately want to know more about, or  simply want a good book to curl up with on winter’s snowy days.

 I recalled long drawers of index cards that told me where to find a pre-internet book. If I wasn’t successful a librarian would help me, which often led to a conversation about what I wanted to read.

Later, when I began to visit historical libraries that had long rows of tables with green glass lamps where serious scholars worked, I was fascinated by how intense they were.   And I have been lucky enough to visit amazing libraries in several countries, like the Trinity College library in Dublin where the Book of Kells resides. Written more than 1200 years ago, it is known for the beauty of its stunningly illuminated borders on the manuscript pages that people wait in line to see.

There’s also the Bodleinan libraries in Oxford, England, comprised of 23 libraries. Lots of historic European libraries are amazing. They are beautiful, both for what’s inside but also for their exquisite architecture. They’re worth a visit if not a pilgrimage.

But you don’t have to go abroad to see a world-famous library. The New York Public Library is known for its huge research collections, its marble lions at the entrance on Fifth Avenue on Manhattan and its Beaux Arts architecture. It houses the Gutenberg Bible, the Declaration of Independence, and the real Winnie the Pooh doll!

One historic library to note is the Pack Horse Library that was established as part of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration (WPA) to help lift America out of the Great Depression in the 1930s. It was an interesting initiative, because it provided roving horseback libraries to boost employment and literacy.

It’s not only libraries I admire. Librarians are among the special people who make libraries work. And they go all the way back as far as 276 – 194 BCE, a Greek mathematician and astronomer was the head librarian at the Library of Alexandria in Egypt. Some other famous librarians include Benjamin Franklin, who founded the Library Company of Philadelphia and served as its

first librarian. Lewis Caroll was also a librarian before he wrote Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.  And the artist Marcel Duchamp worked as a librarian in Paris.

Thankfully there are also activist librarians, like the ones who refuse to remove banned books from their shelves and even showcase them. Barbara Gittings was a radical librarian who promoted LGLBTQ+ literature. She also created the first gay caucus in the American Library Association. And Effie Lee Morris, an early 20th century librarian advocated for library services for children, the visually impaired, and minorities, becoming the first Black person to hold an administrative position in the San Francisco public library.

It’s no wonder librarians are special people who quietly go about their work in support of learning, literacy, and legacies.  Some of them are heroic, like Belle da Costa Green, who was a prominent librarian and manuscript expert in the 20th century who passed as white while curating J.P. Morgan's rare book collection. She hid her identity to navigate a racist society and became a powerful cultural force, serving as the first director of the Morgan Library & Museum.

So, I’m belatedly thankful for librarians and libraries, especially in these difficult times that call for solace and quiet pleasure. Reading new works by favorite authors, or new ones, is like comfort food. They soothe us, perhaps inspire us to be courageous, and often gives us hope. As writer Neil Gaiman has said, "Libraries are the thin red line between civilization and barbarism.”

Albert Einstein was right about libraries too: “The only thing that you absolutely have to know, is the location of the library.”  Next time you visit a library, give the librarian a high five or say Thank You.  It’s well deserved and bound to make their day.

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Elayne writes from Brattleboro, Vt.

Looking Back in Gratitude

 In 1964 Barbara Streisand sang the song “People.” It began like this: “People who need people are the luckiest people in the world.” That line seemed to me to include an oxymoron: People who need people, it seemed to me, were lonely and sad, not lucky.

 As I looked back on the troubling year that concluded just over a month ago, I realized how many of us mourned or experienced the cruelty, lack of compassion, and increasing violence we were subjected to, along with hateful rhetoric and policies that hurt so many of us. Too many of us felt helpless given the lies, gaslighting, and moral corruption leading us to a seeming abyss.

It blinded us to all the goodness and small acts of kindness surrounding us. Yes, we spoke up, protested, and participated in acts of resistance. Some of us wrote about the evil that was engulfing us as the year progressed. But we neglected to write pieces that honored the ordinary, extraordinary people whose actions generated hope, revealed kindness, caring, and communal support, and made us all feel better.

The more I thought about that, the more I felt the lyrics to Streisand’s song needed editing if they were to be relevant in these times.  I felt guilty that I had neglected to tell simple stories about good people who remind us daily about the power of good deeds and simple heroic actions.

So, in a mea culpa, I think the lyrics are a bit off base now. It’s people who help people, who hold or hug them in various ways, who are the kindest people in the world. As I was contemplating this, an abundance of human-interest stories started showing up on social media that reminded me of the goodness of human connection and caring, even when offered in small ways.

Suddenly I wanted to thank just some of the people who made this a better world in 2025.  Many of the stories I saw on videos or read about on social media moved me to tears, others to smiles.  There was the bus driver who stopped his bus to lift a disabled woman into the bus and seat her
gently before he folded her retrieved wheelchair and set it next to her locked, and ready to go..

Then there were the police officers who bought a kid on their beat a new bike when his couldn’t be fixed. Or the two cops – a male and a female – who rescued a small child who’d been abandoned in an empty house. Before calling for help, they sang to her, cuddled her, and gave her a stuffed animal she embraced. I suspect that child will recall those two people when her full story is told years later.

There were videos of irate clergy, store clerks, voracious food vendors, feisty women, and brave street witnesses who successfully shooed away ICE bullies in heroic ways, despite knowing that they could be in trouble.

Stories about teachers and school administrators, medical personnel, fierce mothers and fathers, and persistent grannies were matched by men and women who saw a need for help in grocery lines and pulled out their wallets with a smile. Similarly, there were waitstaff in diners who served food to families who looked hungry without presenting a tab. I wanted to give each of these people Emotional Emmy Awards. 

Stories like this are all around us.  Here’s one example posted by someone on the organization Upworthy’s website.

“One time, my dad and I were leaving the grocery store around Christmas time and there was a guy outside asking for money to buy some stuff for his kids. My dad asked him if he could give him groceries instead of money, and the guy said yes, so my dad gave him one of everything we bought. My dad hadn't gotten his paycheck because the company he worked for was going through a tough time, but he didn't care, he saw an opportunity to help someone, and he did. Another time, he gave 50 bucks to a guy who said he needed to buy medicine for his kids. I said he was probably going to spend the money on alcohol or something, but my dad said, 'whether he was lying or not says something about HIS character, but hearing someone in need and choosing not to help when I have the means to says something about mine.' I never "forgot that.”

Those folks exemplify everyday people who make a difference because of their kindness, compassion, and generosity, and they stand with major philanthropists like MacKenzie Scott, Melinda French Gates, Oprah Winfrey, Dolley Parton and Taylor Swift, and their male counterparts.

I wish I could share my gratitude with every person who acts with kindness, no matter their social status, this year and every year. The song “People” ends like this: “But first, be a person who needs people.” I would end with this: First, be a person who helps people.  

As Upworthy puts it, just “Do good recklessly!” You won’t regret it.

Gendercide: Misogyny Makes a Major Comeback

In 2025 the National World War 2 Museum declared on their website that “The concept of genocide has fundamentally altered international law, history, and global geopolitics forever, transforming the way we understand mass violence in the modern world.”

The word, coined by a Polish Jewish Lawyer in response to the Holocaust, referred to a historic practice as it relates to post war actions. Derived from the ancient Greek word meaning race or tribe and the Latin word for killing, as in homicide, infanticide, and femicide, the lawyer added that “genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation. It signifies a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves.” 

After the Department of Education declared women-dominated professions like nursing, teaching, social work, and other careers did not align with their definition of a “professional degree,” which “distinguishes programs that qualify for higher loan limits, not a value judgement about the importance of programs.” Tell that to any healthcare professional worthy of recognition, respect, benefits, and professional pride.

Take nursing for example. According to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, “nursing is the nation's largest healthcare profession, with nearly 4.7 million registered nurses (RNs) nationwide. Of all licensed RNs, 89% are employed in nursing.”

Here’s a Facebook post by one of them.  “Can you imagine obtaining three college degrees, three national certificates, obtaining thousands of hours in clinical practice before even entering the work force, and then holding people’s lives in your hands, caring for them during the hardest moments in their lives, diagnosing and prescribing for them. And then being told that you aren’t a professional.”

The president’s recent verbal attacks aimed at women journalists reveals another disrespected sector where females often prevail.  His rants against them are staggering. They include telling a reporter to be “quiet, Piggy,” followed by calling another reporter ugly, and third one  a "terrible person."

 It seems the perfect time to coin another new word: Gendercide. By that I mean the disappearing of women from professions, public squares, politics, pulpits and tables of decision-making.  It’s pure Handmaids Tale, and it’s designed to send women back to the suburbs of post WWII where, as Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote in her 1898 book, Women and Economics, “Women were going mad all for the good of the gold ring” in her era.  Or as Betty Friedan said after WWII, they were dying from “the problem that had no name.”

The reason for disappearing women isn’t just born of ridiculous politics. It’s noteworthy that several healthcare professionals are mandated to report sexual abuse, and female reporters ask tough questions.

The problem of female oppression and dismissal or removal is even bigger.  It resides in sex assault and trafficking of women and girls, because its survivors courageously share their stories.

It’s part of the tragedy of domestic violence. The United Nations reported in 2024 that 50,000 women were killed that year because of the violence perpetrated by someone they lived with or knew.  The report noted that’s one death every ten minutes.

Child marriage is still legal in 34 states in America with some exceptions like judicial or parental approval, and the disappearance and murder of indigenous women and girls remains a silent crisis that includes homicide, sexual assault, and trafficking. On some reservations murder rates are more than ten times the national average.

The discrimination against and silencing of women have a long history and continuity that includes abuse and violence. It goes back to ancient history. Philosophers in ancient Greece and Rome believed women had no place in politics or public discourse.  Pilgrim puritanism treated women and girls harshly, demanding obedience. In colonial times girls were married by age 14 and those who weren’t wed by 25 were socially humiliated. (Even as late as the 1960s women were pitied if not married in their early 20s). How about the Salem witch trials of the 17th century. And Joan d’Arc who was burned alive because men were fiercely afraid of her.  

In Victorian times married women were the legal property of their husbands and had no control of their finances whether by owning land or inheritance. They couldn’t vote or appear in court as a witness. At the turn of the century Edith Wharton’s novels about the Gilden Age reveal these conventions for a fin de siècle generation. Later, suffragists were beaten and force-fed in filthy prisons for wanting women to vote.

Today, women who face the fear of dying or imprisonment if they have an abortion, miscarriage, or high-risk pregnancy are disposable.  Some male legislators have suggested that women who have abortions be executed.  That’s how far we’ve fallen into the legacy of patriarchy and its desperate hatred and fear of women. Whether affluent or poor, single or married, white or black/brown, we are all at risk of Gendercide - the killing of women professionally, economically, emotionally, spiritually, and physically.

In these times, we must realize the context and connection throughout women’s history and understand how it relates to our lives and our place in the world now. It only takes one nurse’s, one teacher’s, one social worker’s, one victim’s testimony to see that we need a new word: Gendercide.

We must say it, explain it, and refuse it.

A Christmas Wish List

As a child I never wrote to the North Pole hoping Santa would deliver my requests. I knew it was a long shot, but it seemed worth a try. As an adult I don’t keep To Do Lists, a Bucket List, a shopping list, or any other kind of list. 

But this year I have a list as long as my left arm.  I know it’s a long shot that any of my current wishes will be granted, but it seems worth a try and it’s at least a catharsis. And there’s so much to wish for.

For example, I wish the right-wing legislators could wake up and realize that someone they love could be among the millions of people who will be extremely ill or die for lack of healthcare and vital research that could save lives. What if it were one of their kids or grandkids or other loved ones who will perish from the lack of cancer research, or vaccines, or expert medical attention. Do they really think they are under a magic umbrella that prevents them from growing morbidity and mortality?

I wish there were enough good politicians who could save generations of kids whose learning is becoming indoctrination as curricula morphs into indoctrination.  And I wish institutions of higher education would find the courage to push the bullies back instead of burying the purpose of Socratic learning and vigorous debate.  I also wish the media could grow a spine and act like they get the importance of a Fourth Estate that shares current events and their implications honestly and without shackles.

I wish Americans would have a collective epiphany about the beauty and importance of pristine National Parks and the Arctic and Alaskan wilderness. I also wish they will resist more self-adulatory parades, ballrooms, bunkers, and monuments like the Arch d’ Triumph. I wish they would resist mightily, increasing seven million marchers to 70,000 in time for a free and fair mid-term election.  I hope they realize what we are facing and that they have the power to stop the insanity of encroaching disaster.

I wish that Americans could fight to keep agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA), USAID, the Voice of America(VOA) going as well as NPR, PBS, and cultural venues like the Smithsonian Museum, along with historical sites and monuments. I also wish the Kennedy Center and the Gilded Age ballroom would not be named after Himself.

I desperately wish that the evil being perpetrated on America’s streets against immigrants, people of color, and legally resident people, including citizens, would cease and all the wannabe warriors would be held accountable for their cruelty. The brutal militarization on our streets and in our neighborhoods and communities must end.  So should the so-called detention centers which are, in fact, concentration camps where cruelty and deprivation of food, healthcare, legal aid, and more prevail.  The cruelty extends to children, the disabled, pregnant women, and the elderly and disappeared.  How could any of us not wish the nightmare to end.

I wish that we could always remember and resist the carnage and genocide going on right now in places like Gaza, Sudan, Congo and elsewhere.

I deeply wish that we could learn to be honest, compassionate, humane, kind human beings who reject violence, barbaric practices and places, and dystopian ideals, actions and leaders. I’ve noted lately that we could learn some lessons from the animal world. Just notice how they behave in times of trouble, threats, grief, and joy.  Note how they bond with people who love them, people who save them, people who play with them, exemplified by the late Jane Goodall and others like her. (I learned in Africa what a small place we hold in the cosmos, and that we have many lessons to learn.)

So now I wonder who and where the elves are, who will work hard to fulfill this, and other necessary wish lists.   They must be out there, among us.  Would that we come together in strength, hope, solidarity, and full humanity so that we don’t have to plead again to sit on Santa’s lap, or write letters to the North Pole, or Congress, young or old.

As Albert Einstein once said, we must, "Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning," to which I would add, and not stop being a writer of wish lists.

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Elayne Clift writes and wishes from Brattleboro, Vt.  www.elayne-clift.com

Why Gen Z Gives Me Hope

 While researching what Gen Z means, I had to understand the generation that was born between the 1990s and 2010.  I learned that they succeed Millennials and precedes Gen A (Alpha). Thankfully there’s a quote for every generation. This one, which originated with Walt Disney, seemed illustrative of Gen Z: “The Way to Get Started is to Quit Talking and Begin Doing.” Gen Zers want to act vs. eternally debating or studying issues related to governance.

I became interested in understanding this cohort because they seem to be showing up everywhere in political studies and generational discourse. What I learned gave me hope. For example, a study conducted this year by Tufts University about Gen Z Americans and democracy was enlightening.

The study explained that “Young Americans represent both the present and future of political leadership and participation in the United States, despite the current dissatisfaction with democracy in the United States. There is an overwhelming consensus among young people that democracy itself is fundamentally valuable; a majority have strong commitments to its core principles.”

The study points out that Gen Zers have grown up during a troubling time, and not just in American life. They have experienced a global pandemic, economic instability, major political shifts, increases in school shootings, activist movements related to racism, climate change, and the rise of social media and digital platforms as means of primary communication. 

Those factors don’t mean that people born between 1990 and 2010 are a monolithic generation. But their diversity, digital connection, education, and aspirations provide them with a collaborative identity, similar experience, and often an agreed upon ideology that informs the unique ways that they approach democracy.

AI helped me understand this generation. On my first search for more information the first thing to pop up online was a helpful list of key differences between Gen Z and prior generations. They include such facts as these: Gen Zers are “Digital Natives,” having never lived in a world without the internet. They are more cautious about economic matters with a view to securing their futures. They are prone to anxiety and stress given the pressures of daily life and political uncertainty. They also value authenticity, transparency and interpersonal relationships and feel globally connected in ways that helps them explore interesting career paths. To be succinct, they live in a uniquely modern world involving innovation, participation, and engagement in entirely new ways.

I wanted to write about Gen Z, not only because they show promise for the future when our current political nightmare ends, but because there are signs that this generation is already capable of making the world a better place for everyone, no matter what country they live in.

Recently, examples have been written about Gen Z efforts and actions in other countries that reveal a commitment to social justice, humanitarian governance, and  competent, compassionate, humane leadership by politically astute emerging leaders ready to work for the principles upon which our own country was built. The countries where activism is happening, and working are diverse and widespread.

In a string of articles showcased by apnews.com Gen Z activity in several countries, including Madagascar, where young protesters took to the streets to demonstrate for safe, reliable water and electricity across the country, and an end to corruption. Their actions led to the president dissolving the government. In a public speech he declared that the protesters’ demands were heard, as part of an apology for the failure of his government. Talk is cheap, but the protests clearly had an impact.

In Morocco, over a dozen cities saw young people using social media to mount a movement aimed at improvements in public health and education systems that authorities couldn’t ignore. Again, corruption was an umbrella theme aimed at political parties. In Kenya GenZ protests against police brutality and poor governance erupted throughout the country commemorating similar protests a year ago to oppose tax hikes. Current unrest in Peru was focused on the country’s pension system, and other youth movements took place in Indonesia and the Philippines.   

These examples are not just about idealistic youthful protests that will go nowhere. They are a distinct sign that a generation of young people have had enough political abuse and corruption worldwide. They are ready and willing as one protester said, “to get our nation[s] back.”

Historian Timothy Snyder, wrote a recent Substack post about “Youth Protest in Serbia” especially for. American readers.  In it he states that “Protests have to do with a basic concern with the rule of law. This is why it’s so annoying when photos in our media are tagged as ‘anti-government protests.’ People in Serbia are protesting for good government!”

He points out that the protests there were student-led but coordinated with the public. They included various actions that needed to be taken and articulated specific demands.  Community and sectoral coordination were important while people were urged to participate in governance. In other words, the protests were strategic, important, and productive, not random acts of ire.

It seems to me that Gen Z is learning, preparing, and waiting to take us into a sensible, sane, democratic future. It won’t be soon, or easy, but there is promise in their protests. Gen Zer Greta Thunberg helps sound an optimistic note.  “Being young is a great advantage, since we see the world from a new perspective and we are not afraid to make radical changes.”  I welcome her enthusiasm, courage, and world view.

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Why Civilized Nations Embrace Art, History, and Culture

It wasn’t bad enough when the president took over the Kennedy Center.  It got worse when he signed an executive order in March that accused the Smithsonian Institution of being influenced by a “diverse, race-centered ideology” because of an exhibit at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The exhibit noted that race was a factor in “maintain[ing] systems of power, privilege, and disenfranchisement.” The solution, the president concluded, was to rewrite U.S. history, as New York Times essayist David Firestone said.

Subsequently Trump ordered the Interior Department to remove descriptions from national monuments and parks that “inappropriately disparaged Americans past or present” and instead focus on the “greatness of our nation (as he sees it) and the achievement of the American people.”

Further, the president told the Smithsonian Secretary, who oversees all operations of the Institution, that he was launching “a comprehensive internal review of selected Smithsonian museums and exhibitions” in time for next year’s 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

The review was said to be a “constructive and collaborative effort” that addresses the “curatorial process, exhibition planning, and ”narrative standards.”  It’s interesting to note that museums to be especially scrutinized address African American history and culture, Native American history and culture, and the National Portrait Gallery (who’s in, who’s out). These are among the most popular and highly visited museums in the Smithsonian system.  A Phase Two part of this “constructive effort” is planned. One can only wonder what’s next?

This is heartbreaking because the Smithsonian Institution is the world’s largest museum, and education and research complex.  It encompasses 21 museums, 14 education and research centers, and the National Zoo. Founded in 1846 by Englishman James Smithsonian, it was meant to “preserve heritage, discover new knowledge, and share our resources with the world.”

It’s no surprise that among the president’s areas of disinterest are art, history, and culture. Nor is it surprising that he wants to erase the truth of our history, the power of art, and the relevance of various cultural heritages, traditions, and rituals so that he can create them in his own image and control the narratives that are vital to our country and the world. He dislikes the connections that can be drawn from the overlap of art, history and culture. They bore him and more importantly they threaten him. He senses that art can be a powerful interpreter of life, build bridges, and connect different cultures that transcend barriers of language, politics, and geography.

Think about the storytelling that emerges from visual art and artifacts as they highlight social issues. Look at Norman Rockwell’s Four Freedoms, Picasso’s Guernica, refugee photography, protest art, and more.

As Nancy Reyner wrote in the New York Times, “Art has always held a significant place in society, influencing and reflecting the culture and community it emerges from. From ancient cave paintings to contemporary digital are, the impact of art is profound and far reaching.”

She adds that “art plays a crucial role in forming and expressing cultural identity. It captures the essence of a community’s belief, traditions, and experiences preserving them for future generations,” adding that it a powerful tool for social activism.  Is it any wonder Donald Trump is terrified of art?

Then there is history as prologue. There are lots of important lessons to be learned from the past. It’s useful to know, for example, about the threat of fascism in this country as well as Hitler’s Germany, along with past and current oligarchies. It’s important to understand what happened when the stock market crashed in 1929 and how the New Deal helped the country recover from the Great Depression. Slavery and racism are fundamental to our history, and so is Native American history and culture. There’s the McCarthyism scare, the Cuban Missile crisis, the Vietnam War protests, the birth of the Civil Rights movement, the emergence of the Woman’s Movement and so much more.

History opens doors to critical context for positive or dangerous events. It helps us to have crucial perspectives that influence our values, beliefs, attitudes, assumptions, and behaviors.  History also helps us build empathy as we begin to understand a changing world by opening critical thinking about really important issues that we face – like now.

Culture is another influence that the president would like to ignore or destroy, because understanding other people’s way of life threatens autocracy. It connects various people and communities as we begin to share, learn, and celebrate our similarities together. We become aware of flawed prejudice; we overcome stereotypes and dismiss negative myths about The Other.  We begin to realize that we are no longer living in tribal villages; we’re part of a global, diverse community that enhances our country, our relationships, and our experiences when we interact in relevant ways.

Mr. Trump and his acolytes and functionaries wish they could simply disappear these truths because they threaten their power, their dysfunctional world view, and their agenda. The day will come when that agenda fails.  Perhaps we can then join the civilized nations, throughout time, that have understood and embraced the place of art, history and culture in their daily lives. They have demonstrated the extraordinary part these three humanities play in national identity, and the quality of life for their citizens. We must do the same.

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 Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro, Vt.  www.elayne-clift.com

Food for Thought as the School Year Begins

I remember the days when school was about to begin for another year.  Kids went to the Five-and-Dime store to buy new pencil holders, good erasers, and tablets, before carefully covering their new schoolbooks with brown paper bags from the grocery store. Sometimes we got new saddle shoes too. It was exciting, and thankfully our parents didn’t have to worry about funding cuts that would affect our school district.

What a far cry from now, when deep and damaging cuts to essential school-based programs that would affect millions of people. The recently proposed cuts were unimaginable and cruel, but not surprising given this administration’s priorities and policies.

The pending crisis in education became obvious when Mr. Trump appointed Linda Marie McMahon as Secretary of Education, with Congressional approval. A former professional wrestling promoter with a bachelor’s degree in teaching French, McMahon has  no relevant experience that qualified her for a job running a massive organization that requires management, fiscal, organizational, and policymaking expertise. She has none of those skills and appears to have no interest in education and less interest in the people who need and benefit from educational objectives, programs, and sufficiently prioritized budgets.

The trouble started when the Trump administration took steps to dramatically reduce the size of the Department of Education by firing DOE employees. When a federal judge tried to have the fired employees returned to their jobs, the Supreme Court majority blocked the order with a temporary pause.

Justice Sonia Sotomayer was joined in a 19-page opinion by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.  In it they called the court’s decision “indefensible” and wrote that it “hands the Executive the power to repeal statutes by firing all those necessary to carry them out. The majority is either willfully blind to the implications of its ruling or naïve, but either way the threat to our Constitution’s separation of power is "grave.”

In June the Trump administration announced a seven billion dollar cut to state and local schools. Sixteen state attorneys general reacted to that cut by suing the administration for “unconstitutionally” ending over a billion dollars in mental health related grants created to help after mass school shootings.

The $7 billion in federal spending cuts for education included five important grants that fund summer and after-school programs serving millions of students nationwide. Other impacted programs included almost $4 million for migrant education, over $2 billion for professional development, almost $9 million for English-learner services, and over a billion dollars for before-and.-afterschool programs.

National education Association president Becky Pringle reacted with shock. “Withholding billions in promised federal education funding that students need, and states had planned to use to support children in their states, is a cruel betrayal of students, especially those who rely on critical support services,” adding that “Schools are already grappling with severe teacher shortages, burnout, and under-resourced classrooms.” The fact that teachers would be expected to fill the gaps in teacher shortages and classroom supplies and would be denied training is an outrage. 

To put a human face on these cuts, imagine being a migrant child who has been in school for years and now wants to graduate from high school but can’t pass the necessary academic standards. How would you like to be an educator who wants to help student achievement by furthering your training, but you are denied that opportunity. Wouldn’t you like your child’s school to have upgraded technologies like computers?  How about having literacy and other educational services available during non-school hours via after school or summer programs, particularly if you live in a rural area where schools have low performance records. These educational benefits, and necessities, help kids reach their potential and shape their futures.

Keeping children safe and cared for outside of routine school or summer hours is another benefit derived from educational programs. It’s not hyperbole to say that investing in educational opportunities and programs make a ton of difference for families, communities, and this country’s future. 

Interestingly, the Education Department released $1.3 million in previously held grant money for after-school programs just days after ten Republican senators sent a letter begging the Trump administration to allow frozen money to be sent to states. Withholding those funds would have meant some school districts and nonprofit organizations would have had to close or drastically scale back their educational programs this fall.

In addition to the released funds paying for programs before and after the summer the release of those funds will provide childcare for low income working parents or provide childcare options in rural areas. Beyond that, children can receive help with reading and math, as well as in science and art.

In July the remaining $5.5 billion cut was restored due to growing pressure on the administration from the public and professionals. Let’s hope that continuing pressure by parents, teachers, education administrators, and others will impact the administration, and Linda McMahon, enough to care about our kids, and  realize that education in all forms is  critical for all of us.

On this and other urgent matters, we need to keep the pressure up. It obviously works!

Mourning the Loss of Public Service Media

It’s 1950 and my family has become TV owners. A console with a little black and white screen faces the couch in our tiny den, where every day we kids watch shows that seem utterly ridiculous now. But then Captain Kangaroo, Howdy Doody, The Mickey Mouse Club and Superman held our attention just like soap operas did for adults. 

We were too old to visit Mr. Rodgers Neighborhood , which was launched in 1968, although we caught glimpses of it. (I loved the character Lady Elaine).  It was a dramatic change from the silly children’s shows, thanks to Fred Rogers, and  National Educational Television (NET), which later became PBS. To this day, Mr. Rogers’ show is recognized as the forerunner to educational programming for kids that proved to be hugely beneficial to children’s development, as Sesame Street does still, adored by children and many adults.

Following PBS, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) was established in an act of Congress. Its mission, along with that of PBS, was to provide quality programming often overlooked by commercial broadcasters. It focused on education, history, culture, nature, science, public affairs, and children's content. PBS has been going strong all these years, and the thought of losing it is painful.

Thanks to the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 which President Lyndon B. Johnson signed, NPR was created by the CPB and went on air in 1971 with coverage of a Senate committee hearing on the Vietnam War. It went on to programs like Morning Edition and All Things Considered which became extraordinarily popular. As NPR grew, it reached  across the country via nationwide satellite distribution which eventually opened up bureaus around the world. It has continued for decades as it provides quality news and cultural programming along with serving as a public service to rural communities.[1]

In July the Trump administration declared that it was ending funding for CPB, which funds PBS and NPR. The Senate passed the measure supporting that goal immediately. Followers of public broadcasting, editors, and journalists were stunned, and deeply troubled, at the thought that over a billion dollars, which had been appropriated by Congress for two years, would disappear.

They realized immediately, on the heels of the disastrous floods in several parts of the country, that people who rely on public broadcasting for emergency information in rural areas could be in grave danger.  Editors feared that they could be taken off the air at a moment’s notice. Listeners panicked when they couldn’t turn on their TVs or radios for lack of electricity.  Consumers were outraged, both at the practical consequences of such a move as they realized that they were watching “freedom of the press being eroded in plain sight,” as Edward Helmore, a Guardian writer, put it in a July essay, noting that “The US media is now in a deep crisis similar to the creeping autocracy in places like Hungary and other repressive regimes.”

New York University journalism professor Adam Peneberg adds that “journalist are scared. They’re afraid of a president who would gladly crush dissent, rewrite the rules and laws, and weaponize power to punish his critics.” He asks them to “imagines a world in which your mailbox is filled with death threats, your home address is leaked online, and fake 911 calls send armed police to your door.”

In a piece called “How Will the Fourth Estate Approach Trump’s Second Term” published in January, Peneberg quotes a colleague, James Devitt. “Trump’s war on media, calling journalists ‘the enemy of the people” isn’t new. Presidents have long bristled at being held accountable.” Devitt goes on to wonder if current and future challenges to the free press could prove existential. It seems to me that we’re already there, and yes, it's frightening.

According to the German Marshall Fund of the United States, in 1787 Thomas Jefferson wrote: “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”

That quote speaks to the vital function of public media as well as independent journalism, both of which are the foundational cornerstones of democracy.  

While the media environment is constantly changing as is the public’s diminishing trust in media sources, that trust has not waned when it comes to PBS, NPR and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Most of us still rely on their dedication to accurate, independent, fair and transparent news, sound political discourse, and factual information as well as entertainment, and exposure to cultural issues.

As Mahatma Gandhi said, “Freedom of the press is a precious privilege that no country can forego. … The Fourth Estate is definitely a power, but to misuse that power is criminal.”

I hope we can realize that we too are a powerful force; one that uses our power to ensure that truth, integrity, decency, and a democratic society prevail. The time to use that power is now.

 Author Note: CPB has announced that it will be shuting down at the end of the year.

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Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro, Vt. www.elayne-clift.com

[1] Informationon on PBS, CPB, NPR in paras 1-2 gleaned from AI.

Art and Travel: Jouneying to New Places and Possibilities

Summer always reminds me of the sheer joy of traveling whether to new places, or to nearby venues or even back to favorite spots.

All my life I have disagreed with Henry David Thoreau who thought it wasn’t “worthwhile to [travel] around the world to count the cats in Zanzibar.” The joy of travel has been in my blood since I was a child when our family summer vacation was a trip to visit our Canadian family. Our favorite stops included the gorges in Ithaca, the Thousand Islands, and Niagara Falls, especially when they were lit up with rainbow colors at night.  Each of these places were natural works of art, although at the time I didn’t think of it that way.  They were simply beautiful.

Later I realized that Mark Twain, was right. Travel is “fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” He suggested that it “would be well if an excursion could be got up every year and regularly inaugurated.” I agreed wholeheartedly so in my early twenties I took my first solo trip to Europe eager to explore the world.

In Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum I was awed by paintings that reflected the country’s history and culture in vivid portraits and painted landscapes that brought to life the homes and people of a country I knew little about. London’s National Gallery introduced me to England’s history and the people who experienced it via exquisite art, while Paris offered an endless array of gorgeous art and sculpture. In Florence, I marveled at Michelangelo’s David and contemplated perfection in his veined hands.

It wasn’t only museums that educated me as I traveled for work and pleasure. Sometimes I saw a landscape that Anzel Adams might have photographed. Other times it was a place that became a living museum, introducing me to the culture and traditions of a country.  In Portugal wall tiles were beautiful works of art.  I visited a small Peruvian village reknown for its hand-woven tapestries. Guatemalan women wore their beautiful weaving and embroidery, and South African beaded works were worn or displayed in gift shops. 

One day in France my husband and I stopped in a gallery in the ancient town of Vesely. The owner told us that his father had sculpted an extraordinary exhibit in a park we’d seen. Hand-carved wooden figures, called The Slaughter of the Innocents, commemorated the French deaths of WWII.  He lives in Auxerre,” his son told us, next to the Cathedral.  Auxerre was our next stop and that is how we came to meet Francois Brochet, whose powerful work was moving. An elegant man with the hands of a sculptor, I loved the soulfulness of his art.  Before we parted Francois escorted us to his garden to reveal more sculptures. Pointing at the blue sky above the hedgerow, the cathedral loomed. “You see,” he said, “I don’t need to go far for inspiration. It is here in my backyard.” 

Another travel event occurred in the northern region of Romania called Bucovina, which once belonged to Ukraine, where my grandparents had emigrated from to escape early 20th century pogroms. Bucovina is known for its painted monasteries. Bible stories are painted inside and out because 15th century peasants weren’t allowed inside churches. We were staying in a host home and in the morning their English-speaking daughter took us to the village. The little houses were painted in various colors and horse-drawn carts clopped across the cobblestone streets making their way among outdoor markets. It was a live portrait full of history, culture and village life.

 An elderly woman emerged from the fog wearing a babushka, apron, and big black shoes. She looked like my grandmother whom I’d never met but had seen in pictures. I suddenly burst into tears. Here I was in what could have been the shtetl where my ancestors lived and my mother was born. So began a pilgrimage connecting me to my parents’  birthplace, for the woman in the village was our host family’s grandmother. Suddenly we too were family, eating Romanian mamalika in the kitchen, enjoying photos, and listening to stories of dictator Ceausescu time.  Our parting was emotional. I had visited somewhere I’d never imagined and experienced a living portrait of painted monasteries, village landscapes, and a family whose home might have been my ancestors.

Museums share stories that help us understand other cultures, often while providing historical context that informs our worldview, but nothing compares to the living art all around us, especially as we explore and experience new places and people.  I have been blessed to travel on every continent and each new place offers a new palate, a new picture, and a new perspective. As I grow older, I embrace those opportunities and memories.

I can’t imagine having missed it all.  Nor can I imagine how Henry David Thoreau, and others like him, consider it useless.  To my mind, Hans Christian Andersen said it best and most succinctly: "To travel is to live."

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Author note: This essay is adapted from one that appeared in Artscope Magazine, May 2025.

Elayne Clift travels from Brattleboro, Vt.  Her book “Around the World in 50 Years: Travel Tales of a Not So Innocent Abroad” was published by Braughler Books in 2019.

A New Eugenics Wave: Trying to Make Disability and Disease Disappear

Back in the 1980s when I was a budding journalist publishing articles related to women and health while working as Program Director for the National Women’s Health Network, I had the privilege of interviewing Judy Heumann and her collaborator Ed Roberts. Judy was known by then as the Mother of the Disability Movement and Ed was called the Father of Independent Living.

Judy, who died in 2023, had contracted polio as a child who then spent the rest of her life in a wheelchair.  She was denied the right to attend school because she was considered a fire hazard at the age of five. That was the seed that led to her life’s work. Determined to work with other disabled people, she helped found the Berkeley Center for Independent Living and the World Institute on Disability with Ed, who also had polio at the age of fourteen. It left him completely paralyzed and on a respirator for the rest of his life.  Undeterred, Ed fought to attend UC Berkeley, and ultimately became the first student to use a wheelchair there, let alone a respirator.

Their stories opened my mind to justice issues as no one else had. Together Judy and Ed changed the lives of all disabled people by helping to institute laws like the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA), and much more. They weren’t afraid of shocking people, and they knew how to mobilize the media. In 1990 they led a demonstration in which thousands of activists abandoned their wheelchairs and mobility aids, many of them crawling up the eighty-three steps of the U.S. Capital building. The youngest one among them was eight years old.

A recent article in The Guardian noted that the day after Donald Trump was sworn for a second term was the day that the accessibility page and all assisted living content was removed from the White House website. Live interpretation (ASL) was removed from the White House and various federal agencies too.

Additionally, words like “diversity,” “women,” “accessibility” and “disability” were listed as reason to reject grant applications at the National Science Foundation, scaring other agencies and research institutions. That was followed by the order to dismantle the Department of Education, with over 1300 employees fired, and seven regional offices were closed. Special education and rehabilitation services along with the department’s office of civil rights were affected – after Linda McMahon, Trump’s Secretary of Education, promised that those programs would not be affected.

As the Guardian pointed out, early intervention programs and post-high school transition programs, including those that help with employment for disabled workers, are being slashed. They even went so far as to scrub the Special Olympics.  Services like speech, physical and occupational therapy have been cut. So were funds for ramps and braille materials, along with the idea of preferential seating and more. Some have called the treatment of disabled people “the canary in the coal mine.”  After all, Hitler started his elimination campaigns with disabled people. 

What’s happening here now smacks of Eugenics, which was first passed in the U.S. in 1907 in Indiana. Eugenics laws targeted disabled people in schools, institutions, and jails.  Sterilization was mandated for “criminals, idiots, rapists, and imbeciles” in the state. Another law passed that year called for compulsory sterilization for those with “heredity diseases, which included deafness, blindness, epilepsy, and a lot of other conditions. In 1930s Germany mandatory abortions were also required if a parent had one of the identified conditions.

In the U.S. it remains legal in at least 31 states and Washington, D.C. to forcibly sterilize people because of a 1927 SCOTUS decision that upheld sterilization in Virginia. That decision has never been overturned.

This is the stuff of nightmares, and horror stories. It’s a shameful piece of American history, and a frightening example of what can happen when dictators and oligarchs take over a country and massacre their laws, ignore their courts, and extort institutions of learning, law, and civil rights. It’s beyond Draconian and Dystopian.  It’s just plain evil.

Alongside these travesties it bears illuminating what is happening at the same time in the health sector.  An April post on Bluesky by someone named Josh Marshall made the case that “most of the country has little idea of what has happened at NIH or through it the entire ecosystem of biomedical research in the U.S.” Marshall reminds us that cancer research has been put back decades along with other research about treatments and cures for other illnesses that lead to disability or death.

“It’s real, and it’s happened so quickly that most of the country doesn’t know it yet [including] the biomedical research world outside of NIH. … The prospect of more lifesaving cures and treatments [is] bleak,” Marshall says. So is life for disabled or otherwise comprised Americans, including children, elders, and those with chronic illnesses or disease, all because of political extremism led by totally incompetent people with no relevant experience or an ounce of empathy.

The canaries in the coal mines are sounding alarms. We must stay alert and actively resist in whatever ways we can. Our lives and our loved ones depend on us.  As Dylan Thomas famously said, “Do not go gently into the night.  Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

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Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro, Vt. 

Remembering the Gifts of Black Culture, Creativity and Science

Each February, National Black History Month, we remember an essential part of our national history. It’s one that includes the racism that led to slavery, oppression, segregation, violence, and the marginalization that continues today.  But it’s also a time to recognize the gifts that Black contributions have made creatively, culturally and scientifically to American life and beyond.

From jazz, blues, gospel and hip-hop music to the visual arts, theater, dance, film, and plays, we have grown from the work of people like Louis Armstrong, Nina Simone, and so many others whose musical gifts have given us so much. Playwrights like Lorraine Hansberry and August Wilson have told us through their stories what life was like for people who were marginalized and persecuted because of their skin color. Talented actors like Sidney Poitier and Cicely Tyson along with directors like Spike Lee and Tyler Perry illuminated stories that changed us.

Others like the dance icon Alvin Ailey and dancer/choreographer Judith Jamieson  showed us the power of dance while  painter Faith Ringgold and photographer Chester Higgins, to name just a few, helped challenge social norms as they depicted the struggles and achievements of other Black individuals, sharing the complexities of Black history and culture.

The recent death of Nikki Giovanni, a renowned African American poet, reminds us of other Black women poets, writers, and iconic changemakers. Writers like Zora Neale Hurston, who became a significant black woman writer of the early 20th century with her autobiographical novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, about the effects of misogyny and racism for Black women of her generation.

Pulitzer Prize winning novelist, Alice Walker, is best known for her 1982 novel, The Color Purple, which explored female African-American experience as well. Walker also wrote about the taboo topic of female genital cutting in her novel, Possessing the Secret of Joy, a tribute to her courage as part of the black feminist movement.

Toni Morrison saw books as “a form of political action.”  Her first novel, The Bluest Eye, tells the story of a young black girl obsessed with white standards of beauty. Her later novel, Beloved, based on a true slave narrative, won a Pulitzer Prize for revealing the evils of slavery.

In I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou shared the story of her childhood rape.  Reading black authors Langston Hughes and W.E.B. DuBois aided her recovery. In the 1950s, she joined the Harlem Writers Guild meeting James Baldwin and other great authors. She wrote and read the inaugural poem, “On the Pulse of Morning,” for President Clinton.

Audre Lorde was another iconic figure. A self-described “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet,” her work championed women breaking their silence, never better than in The Cancer Journals when she was post-mastectomy.

Gwendolyn Brooks, poet, author and teacher, dealt with personal celebrations and struggling people. Awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1950 she was the first African American to receive the Pulitzer Prize. She was also the first black woman to be a poetry consultant to the Library of Congress.

In the realm of science, among the most recognized names in science are the Black women who worked for NASA on the space program. Katherine Johnson, a mathematician, was one of them. She calculated the path for the spacecraft that put the first U.S astronaut in space and applied her math skills to  advance electronic computers.

Mary Jackson, an engineer and mathematician joined the NASA Langley Research Center in 1951. She was the first African American female engineer to work at NASA where she worked on a 60,000 horsepower wind tunnel capable of blasting models with winds approaching the speed of sound.

Dorothy Vaughan, a computer scientist and mathematician, applied her math skills to computers at the NASA research center and became the first African American woman to be promoted to supervisor.  

Dr. Mae Jemison, a physician, engineer, and astronaut was the first African American woman to travel to space in 1992.  She was a science mission specialist and a co-investigator on a bone cell research experiment conducted during her eight-day mission.

But not all Black scientists of note are female or space experts. Let’s not forget George Washington Carver who founded a research lab where he worked to discover over 300 uses for peanuts and hundreds more uses for soybeans, pecans and sweet potatoes.

Much later, Emmett W. Chappelle, an American scientist made valuable contributions in the fields of medicine, philanthropy, food science, and astrochemistry. His achievements led to his induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for his work on bioluminescence, in 2007.

George R. Carruthers, however, was a space physicist and engineer who worked for NASA. He perfected a powerful ultraviolet camera for NASA to use when it launched Apollo 16.  Inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2003, he was awarded the National Medal for Technology and Invention in 2011.

There are so many others in all sectors to honor this month and so many more who have yet to grace us with their work. For now, let’s be mindful of those we’ve been lucky to be touched by as we look ahead to who are yet to come.

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Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro, Vt

From Chattel to Child to Red-cloaked Mother

Throughout the ages it’s been true. Now, here we go again. Sexism and misogyny 3.0. With the second reign of Donald Trump women will continue to be ignored, excluded, trivialized, objectified, assaulted, shamed, and afraid.

In the truly old days women became chattel when nomadic societies ceased to be mobile and agrarian. Before yielding to land ownership, life meant that everyone in the family and community had respectable tasks. Men hunted, women planted, and no one was treated as a lesser being. When land was claimed and “owned,” everything changed. Men became warriors who fought each other for everything that was on the property, including livestock, tools, furnishings, and women, along with children, who were regarded as a husband’s personal property.

Fast forward to modern times and notice how women are still treated as chattel. Here’s a true example, shared by Catherine Allgor, Ph.D. at the National Museum of Women’s Art in 2012.  A woman applies for a mortgage to buy a house. She is older than her husband, is senior to him in their careers and earns more money. She has bought houses before, her spouse has not. Still, in the transaction, she is listed as “wife,” and as such she is subjected to the legal practice of coverture, a term that still exists since colonial times.

Based on English law, coverture meant that no female had a legal identity. A child was covered by her father’s identity, and a wife’s identity relied on her husband’s, which is why till relatively recently wives assumed her husband’s surname. Before that, wives were considered to be “feme covert,” a covered woman who did not exist legally. (Sound familiar?) Originally that meant that females couldn’t own anything, had no rights to their inheritances, or their children. They couldn’t work, enter a contract, or have bodily autonomy because husbands had the legal right to rape.

Coverture, Allgor explains, is why white women weren’t allowed to vote until 1920. They couldn’t serve on juries until the 1960s, and marital rape wasn’t a crime until the 1980s. In my personal experience during that decade, I was denied in-state tuition when I earned my master’s degree, because although I met every requirement for it, including being co-owner of a house, the college argued that I wasn’t legally a resident of Maryland because I didn’t earn half of our family income.  It took me seven years to win the case against them.

Women are still infantilized and treated as children. It occurs in the workplace, the marketplace, the academy, religious institutions, and in homes when others, often men in domestic settings, treat women as errant children. Infantilizing women is linked to objectification because it sets up an unequal power and control situation. Women in various settings threaten the androcentric paradigm that has us locked into various, unrelenting forms of patriarchy. Examples include using demeaning nicknames, suggesting that women don’t understand a topic, using physical gestures like a hug that they wouldn’t use to greet women vs. men All of these gestures and words are meant to convey to women that men have superiority over the person who is subjected to these differentiations.

In 2018 the Harvard Business Review published an article written by four female researchers that revealed that words used in the business sector choose different ways to describe women vs. men in significant ways. Their research found that even young females are often described as “bossy” while that term is not applied to boys. In adulthood being called “ambitious” is an insult for women but not for men. … “The problem is that the words used to evaluate women differ from those used to evaluate men which reinforces gender stereotyping,” say the authors. “Similarly, people are more likely to use [words] like “superb,” “outstanding,” “remarkable,” and “exceptional” to describe male job applicants. In recommending female applicants, people used fewer superlatives but less specificity.” Then fact is: Words matter.

The incoming president and his pals play all these cards in spades.  Name calling, put downs, sexual transgressions and more will not suddenly quiet down or disappear. The likelihood is they will be exacerbated by an overblown sense of superiority and adoration by Donald Trump’s second win. Every bit of misogyny and sexism women have had to endure in the past will be more pronounced and dangerous by this administration and its rightwing collaborators.

Consider the fact that women have been robbed of bodily autonomy, lifesaving reproductive healthcare, and policies that are geared to breeding rather than being. Already women are dying from preventable crises during pregnancy and miscarriage. That is nothing short of state sponsored femicide. Women, like words, matter, but not in the incoming administration.

 An article in The Brooklyn Rail published in 2017, shortly after the last election Donald Trump won, captures the shocking reality that links the political situation ahead of us to the chillingly relevant book The Handmaid’s Tale, which suggests “parallels between a fictional totalitarianism, and the policies and ideological proclivities of Donald Trump’s administration. In many ways, these comparisons make sense: the world of The Handmaid’s Tale contains the brutal objectification of women, widespread loss of civil rights, the manipulation of facts to control the political narrative, and an authoritarian state that fetishizes a return to religious or   traditional values.”

Is it any wonder that the red cape symbolizes what women have feared since Roe v. Wade was overturned? Will history prove to be prologue?

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Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro, Vt.

Beware the Return of Nuclear Power Planats

 As I sat down to craft a holiday commentary, I was distracted by the death knoll of the Fourth Estate, “the last firewall between democracy and autocracy,” as one commentator put it after the Washington Post and the LA Times announced they would not run their planned pre-election endorsement of a presidential candidate.  It was a stunning blow to the principle of a free press, guaranteed by the Constitution, violated now by billionaire bullies Jeff Bezos, who owns the Washington Post, and Patrick Soon-Shiong, owner of the LA Times because they were afraid to upset Donald Trump.

Then another worry gnawed at me. It also involved Jeff Bezos, one of many mega-moguls deeply committed to the re-emergence of nuclear power plants to support their own interests. Bezos is part of a group of investors who have invested in a Canadian company that supports nuclear fusion for start-ups and has raised about $20 million dollars. Microsoft founder Bill Gates is also invested in nuclear energy because like Bezos he wants to be sure he has sufficient electricity to power his mega-business.

According to Nucnet.org, pro-nuke researchers have claimed a “watershed moment” in the development of nuclear fusion technology after “a powerful magnet that [could] hold the key to future generations of unlimited energy” was tested. MIT researchers called it a record-breaking event that opens a clear path to fusion power, “hailed by some as ‘the holy grail of clean energy.’”

Let’s remember the three largest nuclear accidents that have occurred as nuclear energy is being positioned as a scientific miracle. The 1979 Three Mile Island accident at a power plant in Pennsylvania caused a cooling malfunction that  led to part of a reactor core melting down, releasing  radioactive gas.

The 1986 Chernobyl accident was the result of a flawed reactor design operated by inadequately trained personnel, according to World Nuclear.org, which tends to whitewash health and other effects of  nuclear disasters.  Steam explosions and fires ensued releasing radioactive material into the environment. Deposits of radioactive materials spread to many parts of Europe. Thirty people died within weeks of the event and 5000 cases of thyroid cancers were reported, while over 350,000 people were evacuated. It was the largest controlled radioactive release into the environment ever recorded for a civilian operation.

In 2011 the second-largest nuclear accident happened after Japan suffered an earthquake on its coast. A tsunami followed affecting the power supply and cooling capability of three reactors and several spent nuclear fuel storage pools. The result was the release of radioactive material into the air and water, with over 100,000 people being evacuated from their homes. A decade later several towns remained off limits and recently Japan has had to deal with radioactive contamination in wastewater.

Today the United States is the world’s largest producer of nuclear energy and accounts for over 30 percent of global nuclear electricity generation. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, in 2022 the U.S. had 55 operating nuclear power plants working in 28 states. Since then, some have been closed because of safety concerns, and the one in California is slated to discontinue operating in 2025.

The U.S. National Regulation Commission (NRC) licenses plants for 40 years and plant owners can apply for renewal up to 20 years, but  there is no limit on the number of times a license can be renewed. The NRC has approved license renewals for more than 75 percent of U.S. reactors, many of which have been running for 40 years already. One plant in Florida is seeking renewal of a plant that’s already 60 years old.

According to a staff attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council ( NRDC) nuclear team, “These aging nuclear reactors cannot complete economically with other low carbon energy sources … or with investments in energy efficiency. … New nuclear power plant designs are not proven to be safe, reliable, or economically viable.)   

The NRDC also worries about nuclear proliferation due to renewed and new nuclear power projects. They point out that countries capable of enriching uranium and reprocessing plutonium can manufacture nuclear warheads. Several countries have already stored materials and equipment that could be diverted to secret nuclear weapons programs. It’s frightening to note that the U.S currently stores over 90,000 metric tons of nuclear waste disposal.  Most of it is kept where it was generated with no permanent disposal solution. 

The NRDC also notes that “with sea levels rising and increasing frequency and severity of extreme weather events, both operational and decommissioned nuclear plants that store nuclear waste on-site are at risk.”  Already, 55 of 61 U.S. cites are not designed to withstand flooding hazards, which could create a situation like Japan’s disaster.

Jeff Bezos and his billionaire friends don’t mind putting us in danger so that they can realize more obscene profits. They don’t need to worry that word will get out about looming problems with nuclear plants that could feed their need for massive electricity. They know how to ensure it never appears in the major newspapers.  Just buy them up and tear them down.

After all, what’s the worst that could happen?

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 Elayne Clift writes and worries from Brattleboro, Vt. 

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.

My initial reaction was blurted out in staccato texts to friends who were in the same state as I was: “Stunning!” “Horrific!” “Devastating!” “Dangerous!” Then I entered an emotionally strange place that felt like a Venn diagram in which anxiety and numbness meet in the center of a space that felt more like despair. Now I’m asking myself how and why the shock of the election happened.

It started with questions.  How could a 34-time convicted felon and a man who was found guilty of sexual assault be able to run for president? Why was the Justice Department so slow in moving forward on his trials? How could the Supreme Court grant him carte blanche to do whatever he wanted to if he were president again? How could people vote for someone who lies incessantly, whose language is vile, whose racism and misogyny are so blatant, who dreams of being a dictator, not be enough to stop him?

Then I moved to what I fear most.  People like Elon Musk, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Steven Miller, the authors of Project 2025, and other-like minded tyrants taking control of every government agency and firing thousands of career civil servants.

I worried about what it would mean to close or limit agencies like the EPA, the Department of Education, NOAA, and FEMA and to ignore the ever-worsening climate crisis.

I thought about a country with such a broken, for-profit healthcare system that would result in skyrocketing illnesses and deaths (with no data to prove it), and millions of people suffering as a result. I wondered how bad it would get without vaccinations, fluoride, Medicaid, reduced Medicare, and no insurance.

I thought of the women who will have no agency over their own lives, and I imagined the women who would die because they couldn’t get reproductive healthcare when they were in crisis or who would be jailed for having a miscarriage. I worried about a reprise of the Comstock Act that would ban abortion nationally and deny women any form of birth control (except sterilization, which some young women have already resorted to).

I worried about people of all ages who would be rounded up, separated, and held in the equivalent of prisons indefinitely. I really worried about revenge politics, roundups of opposition leaders and activists, the disappearance of news outlets, and random violence. As Robert Reich said in a piece in The Guardian the day after the election, “Countless people are now endangered on a scale and intensity unheard of in modern America.”

I also worried mightily about our lost standing in the global community and the threat of an expanded war in the Middle East while Ukraine is handed to Putin who can then march into the NATO countries to start a Third World War with nukes.

Then I began to question what kind of a country we have been historically, culturally and now presently. How did we allow this to happen? I came to this conclusion:  We are a country conceived and birthed by smart, visionary, educated men who were elite white supremacists wedded to racism, misogyny, religious singularity, patriarchy, and conformity.

What we are seeing now, it seems to me, is the underbelly of an America that has always flourished, and has grown in modern times, driven by color, caste, economic advantage or disadvantage, religious beliefs, ethnicity, power, and corrupted politics, all of which have divided us into Us and Them. That makes for a dangerous, disquieted and increasingly binary way to live. It stokes fear, limits compassion and clear thinking, and people like Donald Trump rely on it for their own gains.

As an Instagram post said the day after the election, “America has showed its true character and it’s heartbreaking,”

So where do I go from here?  My answer begins with my belief that resistance doesn’t die, it re-emerges when it is vital to survival. Early Americans knew that when they threw tea into Boston harbor. Slaves resisted in various ways including dancing and drumming. People stood up to McCarthyism and to an American fascist movement in the 1930s and 40s. We started labor movements and unions to protect workers, and we made sure women could vote by refusing food and enduring forced feeding. We resisted a war in Vietnam and successfully ended it. It’s in our DNA in huge numbers when things get bad because ultimately,  most of us refuse oppression, discrimination, exploitation, and evil and choose instead to embrace freedom and democracy. 

There are some among us who don’t get that yet, but they will soon see how powerful and effective it is.  Paraphrasing Billy Wimsatt, Executive Director of the Movement Voter PAC the day after the election, we have what it takes to meet and overcome this moment as our elders and ancestors did under unthinkably difficult circumstances. We can draw on their strength and wisdom as we chart our way forward and join what is likely to be one of the largest resistance movements in history.

For now, we must take a breath and remember all we did together to avert this outcome. In that spirit let’s comfort each other as we regroup before continuing the fight for a compassionate country grounded in equality, justice, and sustainable freedom and democracy.

Coming to Grips with Violence in America

Like so many others, I experienced huge relief when Vice President Kamala Harris emerged as the Democratic candidate for President in the forthcoming election. Watching her reveal her strengths as a competent politician, experienced leader, and likeable person lifted my hope for the future of this country, in both the short and long term.

My relief that we could return to political sanity, however, was tempered by the anxiety I’ve borne for months, fearing a reprise of violence once the election is over, no matter the results. I worry that we could see another insurrection at the Capital (or worse), and multiple acts of violence in a variety of other venues. It wouldn’t be the first time. The capital riots were stunning and terrifying but not all that surprising given the source. But the fact is our history is rife with political violence. The number of examples I found in researching the topic was stunning.

 One source revealed that the New York City draft riots of 1864 were the largest popular insurrection in American history. “Hundreds of young men poured into the streets to protest the federal draft lottery. The riots soon turned violent” and led to an uncontrolled mob burning homes, offices and other properties. The riots continued for four days until 4,000 federal troops ended the destruction and death.

And in 1898 2,000 armed white men spurred on by white supremacists rioted in Wilmington, North Carolina trashing the office of a Black newspaper, which resulted in dozens of Black people being killed. The mayor resigned along with several Black local leaders while thousands fled the city.

A hundred years later we saw political violence in the 1960s and 1970s, usually around social issues like civil rights, minorities, and abortion. And in the 21st century we actually experienced a nearly successful takeover of the United State government.

But America’s violent underbelly was present long before these kinds of acts. It was there from the beginning when we treated Native Americans so viciously, and it was there when we were wedded to slavery and lynching Black boys and men. Racist violence seems to be in our DNA. Just think about the brutal murders of everyone from Emmett Till to Martin Luther King, Jr. to George Floyd and all the others, male and female, in their homes, their cars, their beds, or just jogging down the street.

Violence in America also reveals itself in the form of sexual violence and abuse, whether in our local churches or in Hollywood, in bedrooms and workplaces, in department store changing rooms, schools, sports teams – the list is endless. The National Institutes of Health reveals that

“Family and domestic violence including child abuse, intimate partner abuse, and elder abuse is a common problem in the United States. Family and domestic health violence are estimated to affect 10 million people in the United States every year. It is a national public health problem, and virtually all healthcare professionals will at some point evaluate or treat a patient who is a victim of some form of domestic or family violence.”

Then there’s the epidemic of gun violence in America. Johns Hopkins University frames the problem as a public health emergency. “Firearm violence is a preventable public health tragedy affecting communities across the United States.” They reported that in 2022, over 48,000 people died by firearms in the U. S. That’s an average of one death every 11 minutes.  Almost 27,000 people died that year by firearm suicide and another nearly 20,000 died by firearm homicide. Then there were the unintentional gun injuries and deaths often caused by children or police.

There is violence in America’s prisons, violence against asylum seekers, continuing violence in the form of antisemitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, racial profiling, and discriminations in everything from jobs, housing, restrooms and more. Each of these arenas of violence deserves legal, political, economic and human rights reform. 

There is another form of violence that is gender-based. It has been part of this country in largely invisible ways that often involve emotional vs. physical harm.  Take, for example, the fact that women did not get the right to vote until 1920, and that took a kind of activism that few could endure. Suffragists were tortured in prison for the right to have their voices heard and it took them decades to be granted that right – if they were white. 

In the 19th and 20th centuries women like Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Clara Barton, and Jane Addams were considered ill, weak, hysterical or crazy and subjected to a brutalizing rest cure or incarcerated in mental asylums either by their husbands or by a male psychiatric establishment that killed them spiritually, and occasionally physically.

Today women still struggle to be recognized as competent leaders and professionals, to earn equal pay, to secure childcare, to avoid domestic or elder abuse, to escape sexual harassment, and to live autonomous lives, which includes the right to control their own bodies. All of that is a form of violence, based on power and control, aimed at women.

Taken together, these examples of violence in America remind us that there is so much work to be done to end the scourge of various violent oppressions. The time to start is now.

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Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro, Vt. 

Life in a Dysfunctional World

 Remember what it was like before our lives were ruled by algorithms, AI, autopay, QR codes, social media, virtual chats, usernames and passwords?

I remember when you could go to a store and a well-trained person was on hand to assist you if you couldn’t find what you were looking for. My dad owned a small haberdashery in a town where the customer was always right, the prices were fair, and the proprietor kept his patrons happy. It was a time when you paid your bills by check, queries were handled in person or by phone and disputes were quickly resolved, although they were infrequent.

By the time I went to college times were changing.  My father lost his business when box stores began appearing and being on your own took over. The chain stores quickly became ubiquitous, dotting the landscape with giant square buildings competing for customers.  

When I went to graduate school the Information Age with all its ramifications began taking shape. Precursors to cell phones excited folks even though giant computers were frustrating students who used them to do research that involved inserting stacks of cards into big machines.

Fast forward to the 21st century and you will understand the frustrations of living in an impersonal, stressful, infuriating new world. It’s one in which computers and corporations have taken over our lives and made artful obfuscation a new art. I experienced this in its highest form recently and my frustrated reaction makes Lady McBeth look relatively normal.

Here’s an example. When my husband and I traveled abroad I chose Air France to fly to Europe because I am terrified to set foot on a Boeing aircraft. Confirmation of our flights revealed in the fine print that our return flight was operated by Delta. That’s an American company I didn’t trust prior to Boeing planes scaring me out of the skies. I choose my Airlines carefully. It shouldn’t be up to the airline to decide which carrier I use.

When we boarded, we found ourselves ushered to Row 43, the last row in a huge jumbo jet, in front of the toilet. We had booked Row 22 and now there was no way to change seats. Why allow passengers to choose their seats if they can be arbitrarily changed?  The same thing happened on another internal Air France flight.

But the kicker was that our return flight was cancelled at the last minute, leaving us with a six-hour delay, and the need to overnight in a Boston hotel having missed our pre-paid bus to our car.

This was followed by numerous calls to Air France customer service, in which I encountered a stubborn virtual assistant. I persisted, voice raised, because by European Union law, we were entitled to a full refund for our return tickets.  It took threatening legal action before I finally received an email that the refund would be issued within 60 days. (It was).

Then I received my Verizon phone bill, which had overcharges of $220. To get credit, I talked to five agents over weeks, explaining that the international plan I’d purchased never worked. Additionally, despite not having signed up for the daily plan, my husband received twelve texts on his cell which shouldn’t have been there.

“Oh,” said the first agent, “he should have been on airplane mode.”  I explained that he hardly knows how to use a cell phone.  Each agent I spoke to read me the same script about customer care blah blah blah and assured, indeed promised, that those charges would be removed, and I’d be called back in a few days before my bill was due. None of them called.  It was all smoke, mirrors and lies. You’d think Donald Trump was the CEO.

When we moved house two years ago, Comcast gave us the wrong email addresses and landline number after I’d printed 500 business cards and alerted family and friends of our new contact information. We also went through hell trying to access everything from bank accounts to credit cards to companies who were paid by autopay because their websites wouldn’t recognize our usernames or passwords.  All this was followed by a hack that rendered me the “mad lady in the attic.”

There’s no end to this kind of dysfunction which holds us hostage in a dystopian tech world gone mad. Sadly, the future looks bleak given corporate power, lack of regulatory policies, and a frightening explosion of artificial intelligence.

I need all the strength I can muster to face the increasingly unfriendly world. But right now, I have to stop writing. Staples has finally called back to say my new laptop is ready.

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 Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro, Vt. 

Your Vote is Your Voice: It Matters More Than Ever

A little while ago I became so frustrated by the need for an effective media campaign on the part of the Democratic administration and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) to ensure that Donald Trump isn’t elected again that I wrote to the White House communications director and the Chief of Staff. I pointed out that there is a difference between political messaging and behavior change communication grounded in a methodology that has proven to be successful. As a communications professional (see bio line) I knew from my training and experience that a media advocacy and social marketing campaign aimed at persuasion was called for.

That’s when I decided to mount my own campaign on social media, various blogs, and my listserv, asking anyone who saw my posts to share them widely.

My idea was grounded in some essential elements of a successful behavior change strategy which could be easily replicated as bumper stickers, lawn posters, T-shirts, whatever, in the attempt to make the message simple, succinct, relevant, repetitive, actionable, and targeted to various audiences, – all components of a behavior change effort.  I also used the essential elements of a consistent visual and a tag line which would vary slightly each time I released another banner.  

I began posting the banners recently; the first three are Vote for Democracy; Vote to Defeat Tyranny, and Vote for Freedom. The visual is a headshot of Joe Biden. Each month between now and the election I will be posting variations on the overall theme of the importance of voting in November.  The idea is that we must maintain our democratic form of government and defeat the insanity of a second Trump term, irrespective of our personal politics – (if you would like to receive the messages to share, please message me on my blog:  www.elayne-clift.com/blog )

To that end I researched the Republican document, Project 2025, because so few people realize its horrific implications should Trump be elected.

Project 2025 proposes overhauls to every federal agency and office.  These project plans circumvent Congress and the courts. Prepared by 34 authors including Ken Cuccinelli, Peter Navarro, and Ben Carson, along with 31 other hard right Trump devotees, the “Mandate” has 30 chapters and is over 900 pages.  The introduction offers a “Conservative Promise” as the opening salvo of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project, launched by The Heritage Foundation and their many partners in 2022. Its chapters lay out copious clear, concrete, terrifying policies and rules for White House offices, Cabinet departments, Congress, agencies, commissions, and boards.

Here are the four guiding principles of the Plan articulated in the Introduction:.

1.  Family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children.

2. Dismantle the administrative state and return self-governance to the American people.

3. Defend our nation’s sovereignty, borders, and bounty against global threats.

4. Secure our God-given individual rights to live freely—what our Constitution calls “the Blessings of Liberty.” the principles that by consensus guide the crafting of this document:

Numerous sections go on to share the mandate’s ambitions, goals and specific objectives. These include “Taking the Reins of Government,” beginning with pages and pages of details, including how the Executive branch of government, i.e., the White House staff and offices, and various commissions and councils would be established, staffed, and run.

Some of the agencies subject to terrifying changes, if not total obliteration, include the National Security Council, the National Economic Council, the Office of Science and Technology, and the National Space Council. Other sections pontificate on Gender Policy in ways that demean and diminish women and girls, Civil Rights and Liberties that are severely limiting and racist, Cyber Security and Intelligence agencies in which career civil servants with necessary expertise would be replaced by political appointees.  FEMA, Department of Defense, along with departments that establish public health, immigration and education policies would be dangerously revamped, while the media, foreign policy, and the climate crisis would be severely curtailed. We’ve already seen signs of threatening changes in all sectors. Each of these section and more, including the “General Welfare” section, offer shocking visions that should alarm every American.

As a BBC News report revealed in June, “Project 2025 calls for firing thousands of civil servants, expanding the power of the president, and dismantling [several] federal agencies.”  Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA), who is launching a counter project to stop Project 2025 said in the report, “Project 2025is more than an idea, it’s a dystopian plot that’s already in motion to dismantle our democratic institutions, abolish checks and balances, chip away at church-state- separation, and impose a far-right agenda that infringes on basic liberties and violates ”public will.”

The threat to our democracy doesn’t get clearer than that. So although no one can be expected to plow through this deranged and dangerous document, it’s important to be aware of its specific plans and the impacts each American will be subjected to should Donald Trump win this election. Our fundamental freedoms, our ability to live in a country free of restrictions designed by the lunatic fringe, our safety – indeed our lives, our respect in the global community, and our hopes for peaceful resolution of conflicts that could avoid an unimaginable third world war are on the ballot this year. Our future, and that of our progeny, depends on each of us being fully informed and voting for a future of safety, sanity, and sustainability irrespective of party affiliation.

Please take the time to become familiar with what is at stake and share it widely.

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 Elayne Clift has a master’s degree in communication. She was Deputy Director of a global Health Communication project for five years, and taught Health Communications at the Yale School of Public Health.  She writes from Brattleboro, Vt. 

Were We the Lucky Ones?

A docudrama, We Were the Lucky Ones, streaming on Hulu recently inspired me to consider this question: Were Americans in my generation the lucky ones, post WWII? In the story a real family scattered across Europe during the pogroms against Jews in the war. Miraculously they managed to survive and to reunite with their loved ones.

Now I wonder if those of us who have lived in America since the 1940s may be the lucky ones. We have lived in a post-war period of democracy, freedom from fear, and peace for the most part, without the obscenity of war and dictatorship on our doorsteps. We have never had to experience the terror of autocratic regimes. Most of us can’t even imagine what that is like. We have been able to trust our families, friends, and neighbors, and to receive uncensored information free of propaganda, to travel freely across state lines and to other countries without being impeded or interrogated. We have never had a government that destroyed the basis of our republic in the document called the Constitution. Most of us were able to live decent lives and to sleep soundly at night.

Admittedly the “good old days” weren’t all good. They were rife with racism, antisemitism, sexism, discrimination, and fear of the Other. We lived in a time when America flirted seriously with fascism, schools were segregated, domestic violence and sexual abuse were hidden. We lived to see the development of nuclear weapons and suffered the threat of the Bay of Pigs, when Russian threatened us with missiles from Cuba. There were race riots and a war we never should have been in, political assassinations of some of our beloved leaders, terrorist attacks and later an insurrection, and so much more that never should have happened in “the land of the free and the brave.” 

But still we were mostly the lucky ones. We never headed to bomb shelters, most of us could feel safe in our homes, and we proceeded with our lives under the protection of the Constitution. It was safe to send our kids to school, to go to a café, a concert, a grocery store, and to worship in a variety of religious environments.

We could choose our politicians in free and fair elections and vote them out of office when we needed to.  When necessary, we protested what we believed was wrong in our local communities and nationally, peacefully and without fear of being silenced or arrested. We chose whether or when to start families, we read the books we wanted to. We trusted our friends and neighbors to look out for each other, and most of all we felt free.

Those freedoms could now become fading memories.  What looms large in November is a clarion call for civility, compassion, humanity, intelligent leadership, sound judgement, and continuing democracy.  Our country cannot afford to lose its standing in a global world or risk the hideous thought of a nuclear war because we have felons and fascists in charge who admire the likes of Mr. Putin and other autocrats and dictators.

Unless we act appropriately, the idea of American exceptionalism will be nothing more than a memory embedded in the jargon of despair. In the past, Americans have managed to come together in critical times in ways that revealed our character and upheld the principles of this country. We have demonstrated to the world our capacity for cohesion, compassion, sound judgement and right action. Now is the time to reclaim that spirit by making a commitment to disavow a dystopian future.

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. 

We need to make sure that they too are the lucky ones who remain free of oppression and disaster,  the lucky ones who reunite with the spirit of this country in hard times, and the lucky ones who build a new and secure future together. That means doing the right thing in November for the loved ones in your life.

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Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro, Vt.

Communal Living Makes a Comeback

Some years ago, when I turned fifty, I gathered with my BFFs (Best Female Friends) to celebrate the milestone that each of us would reach that year.  It was a joyous and somewhat raucous Croning Celebration at a beach house that led to many more such times over the years. At one of our meetups, we got the idea that when we were old, we should have a Crone cottage together, staffed by a cook, a housekeeper, and a gardener (who some suggested could double as a toy boy). We would each have our own room but share communal space and camaraderie. It was a great idea, and we thought it was an original one, but that proved not to be true.

We’d forgotten that convents had preceded us. In the Middle Ages life was tough for females and convent living was a way out. There was a kind of freedom there, intellectually, educationally, and even politically, at least within the church, and sometimes the wider community. According to the National Museum in Zurich, Medieval nuns were not all living a simple ascetic life. Catherine of Sienna (1347 – 1380) is an example of women who evaded marriage (and childbearing). She chose to enter a convent and became an important voice in matters of church policy.

Later I learned about Beguines. They were part of lay religious groups for women in northern Europe during the Middle Ages. They led spiritual lives but didn’t join religious orders. The first group, comprised of upper-class women, started living communally in the late 12th century. They engaged in social and economic problems and supported themselves by nursing, sewing, and lace-making.While promising chastity while living with other similarly dedicated women they were free to return to the wider community and to marry, which would end their affiliation. Some claim, perhaps glibly, that these women were “the world’s oldest women’s movement.” Several of these women’s groups still exist in Europe, some of which are UNESCO World Heritage sites.

More recently, given housing costs and the cost of elder care, along with the challenges of finding one-floor living and the growing problem of homelessness, isolation and the need for support and friendship, the idea of group housing is becoming attractive again, especially for women.

In the UK, co-housing communities exclusively for women are becoming popular. An article in The Guardian last year revealed that a group of women in their fifties to nineties had set up such a community near a theatre, a patisserie, and other amenities in a suburb of London. As one of the women told the reporter, brothers, sons and lovers were welcome as visitors, “but they can’t live here!”

Many of these women, who live in individual apartments, work, volunteer, or remain active in the larger community in various ways. As the reporter noted upon visiting the women, “No one here bears any resemblance to the stereotypes of senior citizens.” Added a resident, “You can’t define us as old!”

These women fiercely reject the notion that they are a commune. They simple refer to their living arrangement as co-housing among a group of women who are “fiercely opposed to ageism and paternalism.”

A friend of mine lived happily with seven other professional women in two large houses for several years. Their ages varied but they could all relate to the various reasons for co-housing.  Last year they’d had enough of American life given the political situation, so they moved to France, where they now live in two houses again. Each is well-traveled, unafraid of new adventures, and clever about reinventing themselves. The have found or developed ways to work there – one is fluent in French and the others get by -- and they enjoy exploring their new country and making new friends. This model is unusual because it means adjusting to a different culture, and not everyone over fifty would find that inviting or viable, but it speaks to the array of ways to live in a shared-housing community.

My Crone group is now well past fifty and our Crone cottage hasn’t happened. It’s no longer likely to become a reality, but we still think about it so who knows?

One thing is certain: It’s an idea that is growing and it makes a lot of sense. As one woman who has managed co-housing settings told The Guardian, “People who are attracted to co-housing usually want purposeful closeness to their neighbors as a big part of their lives. It’s not just about alleviating loneliness – it allows people to become part of an ecosystem of families and individuals.”

Almost two years ago my husband and I moved from a rural setting to a smaller home closer to town and we really got lucky. The street we now live on feels like a co-housing community.  The individual little houses that we and others inhabit all make living on one floor possible, we are all in the same age group, and our neighbors are wonderful people who all look out for each other. I sometimes refer to it as a geriatric hippy commune (we’re all liberals), but really, it’s simply a great way to be in community as well as a participant in an ecosystem of families.

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