Ed and I were at Tanglewood in July to hear the Boston Symphony Orchestra perform Brahm’s Symphony No. 2 in D, and pianist Eric Lu “tickle the ivories” on Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in F minor. Next to the larghetto movement in the program, I jotted “Music heals—exquisite!”

Tanglewood is the summer home of the BSO, and though they do have indoor concerts there, every Friday, Saturday and Sunday, the orchestra and their guest artists perform in what’s known as The Shed—an open bandshell that seats close to 5,000 people beneath a canopy. The lawn that fans out from the bandshell can accommodate another 15,000 music lovers. It’s not unusual for both the seats and the lawn to be packed.

Obviously, the lawn is a weather-dependent gamble you take, but only twice in 32 years have I had to pack everything up and seek standing-room shelter under the canopy. Well worth the magic that is a night on the lawn at Tanglewood. You can rent chairs, but most people bring their own. Just add the easy-to-assemble roll-up table we purchased twenty years back, pack a cooler with salad, sandwiches, a bottle of wine (don’t forget the candle for evening performances!) and you have all the ingredients for an afternoon or evening of enchantment. And that’s BEFORE the music starts.     

Tanglewood is where I saw legendary violinist Joshua Bell perform Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D major, a piece as famous for its technical challenges as for its soul-stirring beauty. And that night, Bell was on fire! He made the concerto come alive as I have never heard any recording do. The audience was with him heart and soul every note of that piece. We knew he was crushing it and he knew it, too. When the final note faded, the thousands gathered went wild, applauding and cheering for ten minutes. However technically perfect any recording is, it could never be this. A flawless synergy between performer, music, and audience.

Show Me a Story

Long—and I mean long, about 2400 years—before there were movies, there was theatre, the acting out of a story on a stage before a live audience. Theatre emerged from a combination of oral storytelling, choral singing, and dancing—all popular draws in the world of ancient Greece where the art was born. In fact, it was the Greek poet and performer Thespis who invented acting (hence the word “thespian”) in 534 BCE when he stepped out of the chorus one day and began telling the story of the song—a tragedy—as a character of this tragedy would and acting out the part of that character. Tell me a story became show me a story.

And theatre has never looked back.

In Shakespeare’s time, his plays performed in the original Globe Theatre drew something like 20,000 people each week. Today, London’s West End boasts more than three dozen theatres, and the larger London area has over 200 indy playhouses, similar to Off Broadway venues in the U.S. Speaking of the States, Midtown Manhattan is home to 41 designated Broadway theatres which, for the week ending July 12, drew 272,464 attendees for the 32 shows currently playing.

And Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, reconstructed in the 1990s within “a stone’s throw” as they say of the original Globe site, still draws the crowds. Almost thirty years after it opened its doors in 1997, The Bard’s timeless works continue to play to packed houses (including the “groundlings” who stand through 2 ½ to 3 ½ hour performances!) May through October.  

When movies first appeared, many predicted this new storytelling technology would be the death knell of theatre, but it wasn’t. Theatre works a kind of magic—a symbiotic relationship where the actors feed the audience whose reactions in turn drive the actors. In the very best theatrical performances, you feel this when the audience rises as the curtain falls and explodes in wave after wave of applause. The standing ovation. This doesn’t happen at the end of a movie. We watch a movie. A film may stir our feelings—sometimes deeply—but there’s no direct emotional interaction with the characters. The screen actors can’t hear us. There is a slight but critical distance in a film completely lacking in a theatrical performance—a performance that literally will never happen again in quite the same way.

Don’t Miss the Original. There Are No Duplicates.

The prints are lovely—a daily reminder of a work of art that spoke to something deep within us—but they can never deliver the emotional impact of viewing the original. Hence, there are paintings in The National Gallery and the Tate Britain I visit every time I’m in London. Among them The Execution of Lady Jane Grey by Paul Delaroche, achingly sad in its depiction of the teenage queen being led, blindfolded, her hands outstretched, to the chopping block, a victim in the dynastic struggle between Protestants and Catholics in Queen Mary I’s England.

Another must-see for me is Mark Gertler’s The Merry-Go-Round. Painted to show the artist’s horror at the events of World War I, I have always viewed the manic, frightening faces of the merry-go-round’s riders as a warning of the rise of fascism that would drag us into World War II, a dark and dangerous threat that has raised its murderous head yet again today.

Perhaps my favorite, though, is John William Waterhouse’s The Lady of Shalott. As I noted in my December 2025 post, the painting captures perfectly the profound despair we suffer when we believe all hope is truly gone.

Standing before these original masterpieces, so evocative of the human condition that transcends time and place, I always long to tell people as they whip from painting to painting, snapping a quick shot of each one, “Slow down, take in the entire composition—the colors, the brush strokes, the emotion of each work. Better to really see ten paintings than to photograph a hundred.” What are the odds they will even give those hundred photos more than a cursory glance? If they review them at all.

Books Deserve Our Full Attention  

I’m a voracious reader. The New York City Public Library has only a slight edge on my book collection. Okay, that is blatant hyperbole, but I do love books.  

When Gutenberg invented the printing press nearly 600 years ago, he opened up the world of literature, philosophy, science, history and much else to the common people. A treasure trove of knowledge and imagination lay within anyone’s reach for the price of a book. And if that price was too dear, public libraries evolved to loan the printed word for free. But, as I said in last month’s post, Americans are reading less—a lot less. Forty-four percent of American adults did not read a single book last year. And while audio book sales have not yet eclipsed print book sales (believe me, the research on this question turns up many contradictory stats—audio book sales are booming/audio books sales have dropped in the past year), one of the reasons most frequently cited for listening to books rather than reading them is multi-tasking. You can listen to a book while cooking dinner or cleaning the bathroom or walking the dog. Yes, you can listen to it, but you can’t really take it in. You can’t flip back a few pages to reread a passage in light of new developments. You can’t pause to ponder the author’s meaning or the characters’ interactions, or process complex information in the case of nonfiction.   

As it turns out, there is nothing quite like the real thing. Not a musical recording that captures the energy and soul of a live performance, or a film that reproduces the synergy between actor and audience in the theatre. Not a single art print that prompts the profound emotions a great painting stirs. Nor an audio “book” that permits the reader to plumb the author’s text.  

Nothing, Nada. They are precious. We must protect them. We must actively support them.

(NOTE: I took this month’s post title from the wonderful organization of the same name. Founded by Margaret McNamara sixty years ago, Reading Is Fundamental is the very definition of a labor of love. Eager to put books into the hands of every child in underserved communities—free books they could take home and keep—McNamara started buying used titles with her own money while tutoring children in Washington, DC. Her efforts really took off when the Ford Foundation gave her a grant of $150,000. And the good work she began continues today as RIF provides 100 free books, through a reading app called Skybrary, to any child, anywhere in America, who wants them. Thank you, Margaret. Your work has never been more essential than it is today.)

Every year, on the last day of our London trip, we make three stops: Foyles on Charing Cross Road, possibly the most magnificent bookstore in the world—six enormous floors stuffed with books (and that’s not counting the very tasty café where we always pause for lunch and the events auditorium above that). Then, it’s on to the Waterstones flagship store in Piccadilly Circus, said to be the largest bookstore in Europe, before winding down the day at Hatchards, London’s oldest bookshop founded in 1797.  At each of these—every one a bibliophile’s dream—Ed and I both grab a hand basket, arrange a time and meeting place, then diverge to sift through the offerings (some 200,000 titles each at Foyles and Waterstones, and 100,000 titles at Hatchards) and load up our favorite finds. When time’s up, we go to the main counter—where we do a quick check to make sure we’re not buying any duplicates—and arrange to have our purchases shipped to the States. We’re like two kids set free in a candy store. And man, do we stuff ourselves! This year, though, the shipping costs to the States charged by Waterstones and Hatchards—in retaliation for Trump’s tariffs—almost doubled the price of each book, so we had to put our marvelous finds back on the shelves and then order them online from Alibris at home—thanks a lot, Rumpy!

But our disappointment was soon assuaged when we received the Foyles books two days after our return (they ship amazingly fast!). Twenty-four new titles in all! Never mind that our modest three-bedroom home is already bursting at the seams with books, one of the oldest among them Caddie Woodlawn, by Carol Ryrie Brink, the story of a spirited, untamable ten-year-old tomboy running wild with her brothers on the Wisconsin prairies during the Civil War. A book my mom found at the local library tag sale. A treasured tome I had read at least ten times before I was Caddie’s age.

Never mind that our TBR piles will undoubtably last us well into our second century on the planet. As a woman reading to her toddler in the Foyles café remarked when we told her of our annual book spree, “Why, of course. You don’t wait until you run out of groceries to buy more.”        

Exactly.

Priorities, Priorities!

In our house, reading is fundamental. So what if the sofa’s a tad threadbare. Or the dining room chairs are a bit scuffed up (OK, maybe more than a bit). We must have books! Reading is pleasure, reading is discovery, reading is knowledge. Reading is power! The power to understand the world around you. Its people. The tangled web of their deeds and interactions (good and bad). To grasp in all its complexity the human condition. How we got here. Why things are the way they are. Who is behind this progressive reform or that racist atrocity. Where we may be headed.   

Sadly, though perhaps not surprisingly, the U.S. ranks 36^th in literacy in the world, and even that statistic carries a caveat: Of the 79% of U.S. adults deemed literate, the vast majority of these read at or below a sixth-grade level. And an astonishing one in five adults are functionally illiterate. Their inability to read or write leaves them woefully unable to navigate daily life. Medical forms. Job applications. Legal agreements. Written instructions of any kind. Reading IS fundamental.  

The Gift of a Lifetime

My mom was a woman who had her problems. A talented artist in the era of “No wife of mine is going to work outside the home,” time hung heavy on her hands, so she read to me and read to me and taught me how to write the alphabet. By age four, I was reading on my own. Simple children’s picture books soon gave way to Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White and The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner. By age 7, I was enjoying Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women (with a bit of help from Merriam-Webster). I never received a greater gift than that of literacy. When I have owned nothing else, I’ve always had shelves of books.

And I passed it on to my children, that lovely lifetime gift. A rainy day would find the three of us snuggled together on the sofa, a stack of storybooks on the coffee table, whiling away the afternoon as I read aloud the tales they had chosen. When the Scholastic book orders arrived each month in their classrooms, I could always spot my kids’ books when I arrived to pick them up—the largest pile in both cases. On the day my son left home at age 18 to teach English in China, he took my dogeared copy of John Steinbeck’s East of Eden. I was thrilled when I saw it peeking out of his backpack. In recent years, he has set himself a to-be-read list of books that any college literature major would recognize. When he’s home for the holidays, he selects one for us to read (or re-read) and discuss. This past December it was George Orwell’s Keep the Aspidistra Flying. Sharing books. Talking books. Exploring the past, present, and the imagined future.Reading IS fundamental.

And yet, reading for pleasure—or knowledge—has taken a precipitous drop in America. Forty-four percent of adults in the U.S. did not read a single book in the past year.

Sound Bites and Earbuds and Screens, Oh My!

Walk down any street. Survey the patrons of any coffee shop, subway car, or other place where people congregate. What do you see? Faces absorbed in screens, eyes glazed over, not the least sign of acknowledgement that those around them exist. Add those little white earbuds and the barrier is complete. Sadly, the future appears to promise only more of the same. The screen time for one-year-old kids now averages 53 minutes a day. By age 3, those screens consume almost three times that amount—a seriously sizeable chunk of the day for a toddler struggling to grasp the workings of the world around them.  And many parents aren’t reading to their kids. We now have a generation of adults who, themselves having grown up on screens, are less inclined to read, and so regard reading as “a subject to learn” rather than a pleasurable or enriching activity.

Their children are adopting the same attitude. Even for those reading at or near grade level, the culture of social media has left its dark mark. Kids today get their info in sound bites and blurbs. They cannot attend to something as “huge” as an entire book. All those pages and pages! Some educators are tossing in the towel and giving kids bits of books. Excerpts. But our world—if we are to save it—demands its citizens be able to grapple with complexity.

Books Tell Us Where We’ve Been and Where We May Be Headed    

If books like John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath have something to say about where we’ve been, George Orwell’s 1984 has sounded the warning of where we may be headed since its publication in 1949. It depicts a future society held in blind obedience to The Party and its leader Big Brother, described in the book by one adherent as “the embodiment of The Party”, suggesting BB is more a myth than a real person—a convenient mechanism to control people through fear. And man, does it work. Citizens are constantly monitored via two-way telescreens, hidden cameras and microphones—never mind the host of civilian informers—as they go about their lives (beneath posters that remind them every minute Big Brother is Watching You). Anyone can be arrested by the Thought Police for even contemplating unapproved ideas. Offending The Party or Big Brother doesn’t end well, I assure you.

When our “Dear Leader” was elected the first time in 2016, following Obama, a president who gave us The Affordable Care Act and brokered the deal with Iran that prevented them from further nuclear weapons development—without spending billions or closing the Strait of Hormuz or killing a single soul—well, when that happened, there were enough concerned citizens, enough thoughtful readers still left in America to send sales of Orwell’s 1984 into the stratosphere. The book’s publisher, Signet Classics, reported sales increased nearly 10,000 percent in the days just following Trump’s first inauguration.

But now a decade has passed. The number of Americans who read for pleasure has dropped. As I noted above, more than forty percent of Americans read no books last year. And the number of Americans who read newspapers has also declined—by nearly two-thirds. Even cable TV news shows and websites are feeling the pinch these days. So where are people getting their news? Social media and video networks. TikTok and YouTube. We get our news in snippets and soundbites. Just like our kids.  

As Vibhas Ratanjee noted in his article for Forbes: “Perspective comes from wandering across history, fiction and biography—where ideas collide and recombine into something new. Reading teaches us to hold ambiguity and to wrestle with contradictions.” 

We desperately need a thinking population, a nation of people who can evaluate, compare and contrast, make connections. Who can read!

Only We Can Prevent This

For me, the most terrifying scene of the future world ever conceived came, ironically, not from a book, but from the 1960 film adaptation of H.G. Wells’ post-apocalyptic 1895 novel The Time Machine that I happened to see on an oldies movie channel when I was 12 (don’t worry, I ran right out to the library, checked out the book and later bought a copy—I wanted to know the whole story).  

In the scene that broke my heart, and still brings tears every time I watch the film, the main character, the Time Traveller, witnessing the sorry state of the far future, asks the Eloi if they have any books. Yes, they assure him. They have books. But as it turns out, the single shelf of books they show him crumbles to dust at his touch. Long neglected. Now gone. Forever.  

There are plenty of greedy, soulless people out there counting on your ignorance to make their deadly dreams come true. Don’t let them get away with it. Read. Read. Read.  

READING IS FUNDAMENTAL!

[This post first ran several years ago. I am reposting it now because: 1) Yours truly is taking some much-needed vacation time to recharge and, well, just plain be happy. You remember happy, right? 2) We must never forget our history–the cruel injustices visited upon innocent Americans because they were the “wrong” color, the “lesser” gender, or had the “wrong” sexual orientation. Yes, the arc of the moral universe is indeed long, but it’s up to all of us–all good, honest, caring people–to bend that arc toward justice. I’ll see you next month. Take care.]

When I was three years old, my mom sent me to a nursery school run by a former teacher in her home. As I had no siblings (yet) and all the kids in my neighborhood were teens and pre-teens, my mom thought the preschool would help me to overcome my shyness. The problem was, the other 7-8 kids were a year older, which doesn’t sound like much, but that one year difference feels mighty big when you’re a measly three. They mostly ignored me, but I was used to playing on my own, so not unduly stressed about the situation.

One of my favorite toys was a miniature wooden train set. I had one like it at home, but this set had twice the track. And I loved the accessories that went with it—the little painted wooden houses, the bridges, the cars of red, blue and green. I could make a whole story in a world of my choosing inside my head. Just like I did at home. If I could get my hands on it. A highly popular toy, it was usually monopolized by the boys.

But one morning, I saw my chance. The train set was wide open! I knelt on the floor and quietly went about the business of linking cars together from engine to caboose. I was almost there when a hand swooped down and snatched the blue car from my grasp.

“You can’t play with this!”

Startled, I looked up to see John R. towering above me, a menacing, satisfied sneer on his face as he placed a firm foot on a section of track.

The shock of that moment. I have never forgotten it. Outwardly, I ventured no response. I didn’t punch or slap him, didn’t yell or try to wrestle the stolen car from his grip. I didn’t even call for the teacher. But in the moments after he grabbed that train car, I burned with indignation. Who was he to take that car from me! I had every right to play with the train set and he had no right to stop me!  

I never told the teacher, or my parents, but for the remainder of that year, I sat behind an armchair in the living room and watched the other kids play. Then I went home and copied the games/activities I had seen them enjoying. My mother discovered this from talking to the teacher, but neither of them knew why. Only I did, and I never revealed the reason. 

Of course, many other injustices would happen to me over the years, perhaps the most egregious being the failing grade I received in a graduate seminar because I strenuously ignored the professor’s blatant attempts to seduce me during our requisite weekly one-on-one sessions. As payback, he “rescheduled” my final project presentation on the day it was due, leaving only a note in my department mailbox that same morning to say our meeting had been moved up from 9:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m., knowing I would not get the note until I was on my way to see him. When I found the message at 8:45, I rushed to his office, project in hand, to find him standing in the doorway, ready for the scene he’d set up. “You’re late!” He shouted. “I’m failing you!”

Seeking redress for this outrage, I went to see the ombudswoman. While admitting it was a not an uncommon complaint about this instructor, she let me know that “many just go along with it, until the semester ends,” then added, “He does publish more than anyone else on the faculty.” My faculty advisor ruled that he couldn’t fail me while refusing to accept my project, and got the course expunged from my record (the money was not refunded). But it tagged me in the department as someone who “doesn’t go along to get along.” The kiss of death.

And yet, the seizing of the little wooden train car remains the most vivid of all these affronts. It was my first real, solid end-to-end memory, and it both shaped who I would become and revealed to me who I was. Those who were bigger, those with more power, more money, more cruelty in their so-called hearts—bullying others they believed weaker, inferior; grabbing what wasn’t theirs; cutting a trail of misery everywhere they went—I would take them on in whatever way I could. Justice, not only for myself but for all others who suffered unfair treatment. It was my first solid core value. It has guided me through my life.

The year following the train-set incident, a friend from my new preschool at the local YWCA slept over. As we lay in the dark that night, we talked briefly about racial prejudice. I have no memory of what touched off the topic, maybe stories about the “color bar” in the South—Whites Only signs everywhere—I’d seen on the nightly news, a program that always accompanied our family dinners. I said it was terrible how mean white people were to colored people (we were still a few years shy of Stokely Carmichael and his term black power). Maureen considered this. “I don’t really care for the Negro much,” she said, “but I do love the Indians. It makes me sad that they are treated so badly.”

Honest to god, those were her exact words. I can’t recall what came after that, but I do know that I was: 1) startled and unhappy that my friend didn’t “care for” Black people, and 2) surprised to learn that Native Americans (a term we did not have at the time) were also the victims of prejudice. I had only seen the “happy” portrayals of these indigenous folks sharing that wonderful first Thanksgiving with the “kindly” pilgrims.     

This not-fairness thing was almost bigger and wider than it was possible to grasp. Almost. But I would come, bit by bit, to understand the enormity of injustice out there.

The Only Child in School That Day: The Courage of Ruby Bridges

In kindergarten, I witnessed a rarity on the nightly news—a story about a little girl just a year older than me. Her name was Ruby Bridges and she lived in a city familiar to me only through a postcard my parents had of the place they’d honeymooned—New Orleans.

Though the Supreme Court had ruled segregated schools unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education in May 1954—shortly before Ruby Bridges was born—the backlash, especially in the South, was fierce. Fierce enough that six-and-a-half years later, Ruby was the first Black child in New Orleans to attempt to integrate a “white school.” She was accompanied by a cadre of U.S. Marshals to protect her from the white crowds who heckled and threatened her every step of the way, right up to the schoolhouse door, many of them parents! People with children of their own, who would never for one minute tolerate their kids being treated that way.

As children, we rely on adults to keep some kind of order. To be fair or, if failing that, at least not malicious. But that day, I learned how brutal injustice could be. Later, I would discover that all the teachers at William Frantz Elementary School had stayed home that day—to register their hostility to desegregation. All but one—Barbara Henry, a white teacher who had recently moved to New Orleans from Boston. She alone volunteered to teach Ruby. In fact, Ruby would be Henry’s only student that year. The school literally kept all the white students hidden from Ruby’s view. She was not allowed to go to the cafeteria or the playground at recess, and U.S. Marshals accompanied her to the restroom. They also continued to walk Ruby to school as the angry crowds remained for months, hurling racial epithets and death threats at the six-year-old.

But Ruby Bridges, with Barbara Henry’s support, did not give up. Eventually the protests stopped and many of the white parents let their kids return to the school. In her second year, Ruby was taught in a classroom with other students, she ate in the cafeteria, went out to the playground, and—surprise!—life went on.

Four Little Girls on A Sunday Morning: The 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing

I had just started third grade when a white man planted a box of explosives under the steps of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church—a Black church and a hub of civil rights activities—in Birmingham, Alabama on a Sunday morning. The explosives went off during the morning services, killing four young girls who were attending Sunday school and injuring many others. In the violence that erupted afterwards between police and furious members of the Black community, two more Black children were killed. Outrageously, it would be fourteen years before Ku Klux Klan leader, Robert Chambliss, was convicted of murder for the church bombing. His partners-in-crime, Bobby Frank Cherry and Thomas Blanton would not be convicted for another twenty-four years!

In third grade, too, I would encounter the word empathy and immediately grasp its meaning: The ability to emotionally understand what other people feel, see things from their point of view, and imagine oneself in their place. Thirty-two years later, I would buy my children Christopher Paul Curtis’s wonderful book, The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963, the story of a Black family who travels south to visit Grandma in Birmingham, Alabama and arrives there just in time for the church bombing. It was Curtis’s first novel and it catapulted him to national prominence, winning both the Coretta Scott King Honor Book Award and the Newbery Honor Book Award. Today, sadly, The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963 ranks high on many banned books lists.

Bloody Sunday: All They Wanted Was Their Civil Rights

I would be just shy of my 10^th birthday when the world witnessed another horrifying injustice. What would come to be called “Bloody Sunday” took place on March 7, 1965, as some 600 civil rights activists began the 54-mile march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama to demand of Governor Wallace that their full rights as American citizens, enumerated in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, be recognized and respected. As with Brown v. Board of Education a decade earlier, large swaths of the South had simply chosen to ignore the new law.

Led by Hosea Williams from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Amelia Boynton Robinson, a local civil rights activist, and John Lewis of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the marchers passed through Selma without incident, but as they crested the Edmund Pettis Bridge (named for a Confederate general), they got a good look at what awaited them. A throng of Alabama state troopers, billy clubs in hand, blocked the road at the bottom of the bridge, backed by county sheriff deputies, and a crowd of locals waving Confederate flags, rooting for a bloodbath.

The marchers continued cautiously, but as they neared the troopers, they were ordered to disperse or there would be serious consequences. Williams offered to talk. No dice. When the marchers did not move, the troopers rushed in, beating them mercilessly and choking them with tear gas. Lewis was knocked down repeatedly (he suffered a skull fracture that day) and Robinson was severely battered. Seventeen marchers were hospitalized and 50 more required treatment for injuries. 

Film of the brutal attack was rushed to the networks. An outraged nation reacted swiftly, organizing sit-ins and demonstrations. Their cries for justice did not go unheeded. A federal court intervened and, at last, protected by National Guard troops, the marchers made it to Montgomery, with Martin Luther King at the helm (he had been in Washington, DC, conferring with President Johnson on Bloody Sunday, intending to join the march the next day).  

In August, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed by Congress and signed into law, 94 years after the Fifteenth Amendment had granted Black people the right to vote. The arc of the moral universe is, indeed, long, but Bloody Sunday made me understand that it is up to us to see that it bends toward justice.

They Were Dancing and Laughing, and the State Said You Can’t Do That: Stonewall 1969         

I was about to enter high school when the Stonewall Uprising occurred. The Stonewall Inn, a popular Greenwich Village gay bar in an era when same-sex relations were outlawed in every state but Illinois, was a target of frequent police raids. Part of New York’s campaign to rid the city of “sexual deviants.” But on June 28, 1969, the police got more than they bargained for. As they entered the bar in the early morning hours, their attempts to harass and arrest patrons met with unflagging resistance. That resistance spilled into the streets. As word spread, hundreds, then thousands joined the protest. Over the next six days, the clash between riot police and LGBTQ+ people and their allies would rage unabated. But when the tear gas finally cleared, what would become known as the Gay Pride movement had come into being.

It had been a long road. Before the Stonewall Uprising, the possibility of justice for LGBTQ+ folks looked pretty grim. It wasn’t enough that they weren’t bothering anyone, that they had their own clubs to dance and mingle in. If the attitude toward Black people had been that they could exist as long as they knew their place and kept to it, the official take on gays was they had no right to exist. A Chicago group, The Society for Human Rights, founded in 1924 to advocate for gay rights, enjoyed a brief moment of attention before political pressure shut it down.  

A quarter century later, another gay rights activist, Harry Hay, founded a more enduring organization—the Mattachine Society—to make Americans rethink their bias against and fear of homosexuals (especially gay men). The Los Angeles-based org sprouted chapters across the country, but the times were still less than hospitable. A 1950 Senate report, “Employment of Homosexuals and Other Sex Perverts in Government” equated homosexuality with mental illness, concluding that LGBTQ+ people were “security risks” to the country. President Eisenhower later banned them from working for the government or any of its contractors. A 1952 publication of the American Psychiatric Association declared homosexuality a “sociopathic personality disturbance.”

The Stonewall Uprising radically altered the landscape. A year later, what would come to be called America’s first Gay Pride parades took place in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York where thousands of LGBTQ+ folks and their allies marched, chanting: Say it loud, gay is proud! Today, Gay Pride Parades are annual events in many countries.

In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association finally deleted homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses, and the next year the first openly gay candidate won a seat on the Ann Arbor, Michigan City Council.

I was a sophomore at Michigan State when the university hosted a “Wear Jeans if You’re Gay Day.” Since this was 1975 and all anyone wore was jeans, it meant that only people who were terrified of being thought gay would make the effort to choose some other garment. I’m happy to report that on a campus of over 50,000 people, I saw no one that day wearing other than denim. It was the era of solidarity. And though it would take another forty years for Obergefell v. Hodges to make same-sex marriage legal across the U.S., the tide had turned.

The Shocking Notion That Women Are People, Too: Roe v. Wade and the Women’s Movement

I would be a senior in high school when Roe v. Wade at last made abortion legal for women. Before that ruling, women were forced to carry unwanted pregnancies to term. Though the advent of “the pill” in 1960 had radically changed women’s lives, back-alley abortions still posed significant risks. And women were still expected to be subservient to men. The happy housewife. The docile helpmate. The all-sacrificing mommy. A woman’s sexuality also remained an unseemly and potentially dangerous thing. Women were still the ones on the hot seat when it came to convictions for rape: Had she “asked for it” in her style of dress (male judges could decide her clothing was too provocative), or by her manner (too flirtatious)? I will say right here, no woman asks to be raped, but the prevailing attitude of the male-dominated judicial system kept many rape victims, already severely traumatized, from reporting the crime.   

The women’s movement that arose in the late 1960s imagined a new destiny for their half of the population. Took to the streets to say we demand control over our bodies, our options, our lives. Women would no longer go to college to get their “Mrs. degree”—the term used for women enrolled in higher education where it was assumed they were “husband shopping” for a man with a bright, monied future. Instead, they began running for political office in numbers, increased their presence in the legal system. They worked outside the home, not because economic necessity demanded it but because they wanted to use their talents and intelligence to create a fulfilling life as an independent adult. Roe v. Wade made so much of that possible. It was a momentous victory.

In This Dark Era of Reaction, John Lewis Still Guides Us

And now, so many of our gains for freedom and justice in the past 65 years have been or are being rescinded. In 2013, the Supreme Court kneecapped the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in its Shelby County v. Holder ruling that waived the need for preclearance of new voting or redistricting laws in states and jurisdictions with a history of voting discrimination (as identified in the VRA). Some two dozen states didn’t waste a moment in passing legislation that has restricted Black voters from exercising their rights—changes in voter ID laws and registration  mail-in voting, limited polling places and voting hours in Black neighborhoods.

SCOTUS struck again when it overturned the right to abortion guaranteed by Roe v. Wade in its June 2022 Dobbs decision. Instantly, a raft of reactionary laws were enacted in states across the nation, severely limiting or banning abortion, in some instances even in cases of rape, incest, or endangerment to the mother’s life. To enforce these draconian measures, some states have raised the possibility of legally preventing women from traveling to another state where abortion is legal. So far, thankfully, this proposal has met with a resounding “hands off” from the DOJ who filed a “Statement of Interest” in the matter, proclaiming that: The Constitution protects the right to travel across state lines and engage in conduct that is lawful where it is performed and that states cannot prevent third parties from assisting others in exercising that right. 

Book bans, laws against providing transgender healthcare or teaching Black history, threats to overturn gay marriage—we are living in a dark era of reaction, bordering on fascism. High on injustice and white male supremacy, low on freedom and civil rights.

It’s been 65 years since John R. grabbed that blue car from my hand and told me I couldn’t play with the train set. Sixty-five years of witnessing the wounding injustice to others, of suffering it myself on several occasions, of fighting for a world of true equality, freedom, and justice. Sixty-five years of hope, celebration and, now, deep concern as attacks on our rights mount once again.

In Barbados this past January, talking with our Bajan friend Tyrone, the subject of justice came up and I mentioned the powerful, lifelong effect that moment at age three has had on me. Thinking it was a stressor—emotional baggage that was weighing me down—Tyrone encouraged me to let it go. But as I explained to him, I don’t want to let it go. Far from being a recollection of defeat, it remains a moment of clarification—what I stand for—of identity. It is precious to me. It is me. As the fabulously courageous John Lewis said: When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have to speak up. You have to say something. You have to DO something.

[Note: In 2016, I wrote a post The Kindness of Strangers where I shared stories of strangers who had assisted me at various critical moments—not life-or-death scenarios, fortunately—going out of their way to lend a much-appreciated helping hand. This month’s post includes several new stories in that same vein, but it also contains a tale of strangers stepping up on a larger scale. People banding together to help entire communities of other people who are under attack in this, American democracy’s darkest hour.]   

The morning of the March 28 No Kings protest dawned bright in my little corner of the world, but one step outside proved all that glitters is not warm! It’s rare you’ll catch me quoting AI, but they nailed it here: Given the wind speeds and temperatures, the wind chill factor during this period made it feel noticeably colder than the actual air temperature, likely in the teens to low 20s. It. Was. Frigid! But democracy must be saved, so Ed and I layered up and walked down to the main intersection of town where the crowds already stretched east to west and north to south as far as the eye could see, with more arriving every minute.

As the first 1,000 or so folks to make the scene had taken up spots on the sunny side of the street, the organizers now directed us to line its shady opposite. To be sure, ours was a good spot, right at the heart of the action. And our fellow protestors were a pleasure to chat with. We whipped up the passing cars to honk their support, doing the call-and-response chants that are always a morale booster:

Tell me what democracy looks like! THIS is what democracy looks like!

Hey, hey, ho, ho, Donald Trump has got to GO!

No hate! No fear! Refugees are welcome here!

The people united will never be defeated!

BUT, we were on the shady side of the street and after forty-five minutes, I seriously began to worry about my hands which were now numb. Staying the duration, I feared, might mean frostbite with its risk of permanent nerve damage. So, I handed Ed my sign and went into the candy store right behind us to warm up for a bit. I was talking to the man behind the counter about the extreme cold and trying to flex my fingers when another customer approached me. “Here,” she said, “Use this.” It was a hand warmer, one of those little heat packs you can slip inside a glove. In fact, she had been wearing it in her glove.

I’d heard about these wonder-warmers from a neighbor last October but had never tried one. Well, let me tell you, they are a wonder. In under ten minutes, my hands were completely restored to normal. I returned the pack and thanked the woman profusely. She just nodded, smiled and left. I remained another five minutes, then went back to the curb and finished the last half hour of the rally, so grateful to this stranger, this fellow human being for her awesome kindness. Indeed, the people united will never be defeated.    

Flying into the Unknown

I love to travel, but flying has always been a mixed bag for me. Great when it goes well: the plane leaves on time, your luggage arrives when you do, and they throw in a free G&T or two on the flight. But when it doesn’t go so well…

We like to visit Barbados in the winter. Put away the holiday decorations, ring in the New Year, and get out from under the snow for a bit. The only teensy-weensy, tiny catch is that we usually have to rise at 2:30 in the morning to shower, dress, get to the airport and deal with all that entails. I would like to mention here I am NOT an early riser. I mean I do get up at 8:00 a.m. at home, but it has to be an emergency for me to schedule an appointment before 10:00, so the middle-of-the-night rise-and-shine time to make a Barbados flight is a testament to how much I love the place and its people. 

One of those people, Tyrone, is a cab driver. We happened to get him randomly in the airport queue a year or so before the trip I’m recounting here. We had enjoyed talking to him on the ride to our condo, and so called him that same trip to take us to Harrison’s Cave—an amazing limestone cave system formed over thousands of years that reveals the island’s geological origins. More pleasant getting-to-know-you chat and relaxed laughs on the ride to and from. Which led to Ed texting him our arrival time on this trip: 2:00 p.m. Could he pick us up? Great, Tyrone responded. See you then. If only…

Our nine a.m. flight was canceled. As was an 11:00 a.m. and a 2:30 p.m. flight. The first plane had some sort of mechanical problem, discovered after everyone was boarded, so we had to unload all the carry-on luggage and trot back to the terminal, where the next two flights were also cancelled because the Barbados airport could not handle the jumbo planes of the later flights, and the airline didn’t have any other plane type available at those times.

Through all this, Ed kept Tyrone updated. Finally, at 6:30 that evening, a plane that would work was free! We, the exhausted airport refugees, up since the middle of the night, stranded in the vast (and mind-numbingly boring) wasteland of an airport with nothing to do for twelve…long…hours, stumbled onto the plane.

Ed had sent a final text to Tyrone before we left Boston but we hadn’t yet heard back from him and now we were on airplane mode and there was no reason to expect someone who had been working all day, to drive out to the airport to meet us in the middle of the night.

But he did. Meet us. When we exited the Barbados airport nearly an hour past midnight, the taxi queue was empty, but Tyrone was there. In that moment, he became more than a friendly cabbie. He became a friend. A man with a good heart. A person we could trust.   

Communities Under Siege

What I’ve described above are acts of kindness performed by one person in the aid of another, but as anti-democratic forces increasingly engulf our country, the kindness of strangers has mushroomed to include people banding together to protect and aid whole communities under attack, as happened this past December when Trump and his Gestapo-like henchmen, ICE, surged into Minneapolis and began rounding up immigrants mercilessly. Almost 4,000 immigrants were arrested, more than half of them simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Termed “collateral” arrests, these people were not themselves targets of ICE, but happened to be noted by ICE agents while they were pursuing someone else. Noticed for having the “wrong” skin tone, or a name like Jorge or Lucia.   

While the White House bragged that the people ICE arrested in Minnesota were “dangerous criminal illegal aliens…murderers, rapists, gang members, and terrorists,” a quick fact check of the actual statistics paints a very different picture:

Data from early 2026 shows that 70.8% to 74.2% of people detained by ICE had no criminal convictions. Zip. Nada.

Of the 25% to 30% arrested who have a record, most of their offenses amounted to no more than a traffic violation. So you get ripped from your home, your family and community, carted off to a detention center, and possibly booted out of the country for switching lanes without signaling or having a broken taillight.

And the percentage of those arrested who actually have committed a violent crime? Around five percent. That’s it. That’s what all the suffering comes down to. That’s what Renee Good and Alex Pretti had to die for. That’s why children were ripped from their families and parents were deported, leaving their kids orphans. In this merciless, racist witch hunt, being in the wrong place at the wrong time can totally wreck your life.

Kindness Gets Organized

In Minneapolis, the number of “strangers” prepared to extend kindness mushroomed as ICE’s presence in their city stretched on and on, and their innocent neighbors were rounded up, imprisoned, deported. Neighbors Helping Neighbors, a grassroots organization, was born to both protect and aid immigrants—accompanying them to medical and legal appointments, bringing them groceries, helping them make rent. Founded by a group of friends, the organization quickly blossomed. By January, it had over 500 members, with another 2,000 applicants awaiting vetting.  

Across the country, in Hillsboro, Oregon, a city in the state’s most diverse county, ICE was doing what they do best. Instilling terror. Arresting people randomly. Breaking up families. Ripping apart lives. Fear engulfed the city. School attendance dropped. People were terrified to leave their homes. Terrified to stay in their homes. It was an unsustainable situation. An intolerable stress load. In other words, a moment that cried out for the kindness of strangers.

And they stepped up. Some forty people from Hillsboro and its neighboring towns joined together and made it their mission to:

1) Track ICE’s movements and alerting people to their whereabouts each day. Outside the elementary school? At the steps to the courthouse? In a neighborhood on the north side? In the parking lot of a shopping mall?

2) Deliver food and other necessities to people too scared to leave home. Or too broke to buy even the basics. Perhaps the family’s primary breadwinner had been detained or shipped off to god-knows-where.     

In both Minneapolis and Hillsboro, ICE asked, indeed expected “real Americans” to turn in their immigrant neighbors. Those who have no scruples, no heart, imagine everyone else to be the same, but the good people of these cities and many others—Chicago, Denver, New York, among them—have come together to help their neighbors. Alert them to danger. Make sure they are housed, fed, and able to get whatever medical care they need.

But the greatest gift these neighborhood orgs deliver is the assurance: You are not alone. We are with you.

It was the great 20^th century playwright, Tennessee Williams who wrote the famous line “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers” for his heroine Blanche DuBois in Streetcar Named Desire. His words speak a truth far beyond any one place or time, beyond any one person or group of people. A truth that has never been more critical in my lifetime than it is today. We must recognize our common humanity and stand by one another. We are ALL depending on each other.

The days are getting longer. The skies are growing bluer. The sun is shining brighter. Time to muck out those dark corners of the mind, vanquish the cobwebs, let in the light. And the joy.

According to the Whirlpool Corporation, “Spring cleaning is an annual deep cleaning tradition that allows you to get a fresh start for the upcoming season.” Who knew that a home appliance company would nail it so precisely, or wax philosophical? Or have a blog?!

 So, let’s get on with it. We’ve got LIVING to do!

Clean Out the Cobwebs   

First, absolve yourself of all guilt regarding the 100 things you meant to do over the winter, the past year, the last decade, but for various reasons haven’t yet gotten around to. They’ll keep, LOL. 

Seriously, though, how many things can you do at a time? One. How many things can you conceive of doing in that time? Zillions. For the sake of your own sanity, know your priorities—the activities and people who matter most to you—then do what you can as best you can. And move on. The greatest time-waster in life is beating yourself up for what you haven’t (yet) accomplished.

Forgive yourself, too, for whatever mistakes you feel you’ve made. Doing X when you should have done Y. Taking Job A when you think you might have been happier in Job B. Failing to look before you leaped. Case in point: I recently ordered a series of theatre tickets for our upcoming jaunt to London. Using a ticket sales site that’s worked well for me over the years, I later discovered I could have gotten a better deal on several plays by going directly to the theatre’s website. The difference for the four plays involved totaled close to $200. Bummer. But now I know, and for the remaining plays I booked, I compared prices and got the best deals. Okay, lesson learned. No need to beat myself over it. Just move on.         

Mend Fences and Make a Fresh Start

Had a falling out with a friend or family member? Now’s the time to mend fences. Yes, you may get rebuffed—ouch—but the chances are good that the other person has been fretting over the rift, too, wanting to make things right but fearing rejection. My guess is your overture will be greeted warmly by a very relieved pal or relative. And if not, then it’s down to that person. You will have done your best.      

If there’s a dear friend you’ve been out of touch with for a while just because life gets soooo crazy-busy, give them a call. Now. Ten to one, they’ll be truly happy to hear from you. A friend you’ve had for 10, 20, 50 years? They are precious. Don’t wait.     

Clear the Decks and Create Space for What You Love   

I don’t know about you, but I get around 2,000 emails a day. Yes, each day. Much of it truly good stuff. Petitions to sign. Letters to my senators and reps, both state and national. Support for environmental concerns, civil rights, healthcare, public education, the rule of law, voting rights, animal welfare (to name but a few) and the groups that champion these essential causes. Like I said, all good things, but I struggled to keep up last year. Reading every message left me scant time for any other kind of reading and squeezed the hours available for working on my current novel. Or house and garden projects. Playing my guitar. Or just goofing off. Daily, I wistfully recalled the peaceful pre-MAGA years of Obama when the emails—and the threats to our democracy—were far, far fewer. When I had time to write, time to relax with friends and family. Time, period.

Solution: Now I deal with about half that load, mostly while watching All in with Chris Hayes, and allow myself to simply mass-dump the rest for that day. I mean, how many times do I need to petition my House and Senate members to get rid of Pete Hegseth? Surely, 3-4 times a week will do.     

If you can’t entirely offload an onerous or time-eating task, at least develop a plan to lighten that load. Make room for what is most important and let joy play a major role in that choice.  

Let Light into the Dark Corners

Anxiety about the present. Fear for the future. It’s a scary time out there. Even the folks who say they don’t want to know, they know (which is why they’re trying so hard to shut out what’s happening).           

Instead of fretting—which changes nothing and raises your blood pressure—turn those worries into action. Sign up to help with voter registration drives. Volunteer to make phone calls and/or write postcards to voters for candidates who champion democracy and civil rights, healthcare and public education. In 2020, I was one of over 40,000 volunteers who donated time and effort to getting Georgia Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock elected to the U.S. Senate. I wrote 300 postcards to voters telling them how Ossoff and Warnock would strive to make their lives better and asking for their vote. Just three lines per postcard. They both won. It felt GREAT! [With the all-important 2026 midterm elections in mind, I’ve appended a list of links to volunteer ops like this at the end of the post. Check it out.]

Another way to banish the blues? Get up on your feet and into the street! The recent No Kings protest held in over 3,300 locations across the country was the largest single-day action ever in U.S. history. More than 8 million Americans gathered to say NO! to Dictator Don and the fascists. Joining in such demonstrations both conquers fear and changes outcomes. We would never have gotten the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or the Voting Rights Act of 1965 if millions of ordinary Americans had not taken to the streets—again and again—to say ALL of us are human beings, deserving of full rights and freedoms.

Open the Windows Wide and Bask in the Serenity   

The idea of this post began back in early March. After a spectacularly harsh winter—banks of snow five feet high, roads and walkways that more nearly resembled an ice rink, our democracy dangling by a thread, the threat of world war in the wings—the temperature suddenly shot up to a sunny 60 degrees. The next day, it topped 70! The ice and snow melted.  Oh, what a difference a day can make. I was out for a walk, basking in this welcome reprieve from the dark and cold, when it came to me: I want a saner life. And on the heels of that, the realization: I (and only I) can give that to myself. One cannot change the times one lives in—though we can each take actions to create a better, more humane world—but we can choose what to keep and what to let go of. What we want to spend our hours, our days, and ultimately our lives doing. What will give us the joy and strength to stay the course whatever comes.

Volunteer Opportunities to Turn Out the Vote in 2026

https://turnoutpac.org/postcards/  Progressive turnout project: Postcards to Swing StatesScroll down to Program 2 “Get Out the Vote”  (starts May 26)

https://www.lwv.org/about-us/membership-local-leagues    Our vote is our power. Through our votes, elections make our voices heard. The League protects and empowers millions of voters every year to ensure that our elections are fair, accessible, and representative of all Americans

https://postcardstovoters.org/   Postcards to Voters are friendly, handwritten reminders from volunteers to targeted voters giving Democrats a winning edge in close, key races coast to coast. Sign up and they’ll send you an email with instructions. 

https://www.activateamerica.vote/   Scroll down the page until you see Impact Key Races/Reach Out to Voters for info on postcard writing and phone-banking opportunities.

https://www.fairfight.com/   Scroll down the page and learn about Fair Fight’s work, then click on Become a Volunteer, which takes you to a page where you can choose how you’d like to help elect pro-democracy candidates.