"Long, too Long America" - Where Now America?

from Wheatley's Turning to One Another: Simple Conversations to Restore Hope to the Future. 

I. Direst Fate

From when I was a young teenager, I've had an ongoing love for Walt Whitman. In tough times, especially, I'm draw to poetry. Poets tend to see with a clarity I admire. So it won't be too much of a surprise that since the presidential election occurred, I've been rehearsing a line from "Long, Too Long America" from Leaves of Grass.  Whitman writing about the United States during the Civil War contrasted the country's civic prosperity prior to the war with it during the war. He said, 

"But now, ah now, to learn from crises of anguish, advancing, grappling with direst fate and recoiling not."  

I love the conflict between naming the situation as direst fate and yet commanding fellow citizens to not recoil.  Now, that tension feels very contemporary. Very much the moment. 

A similar 'direst fate' is before us today, a crises for certain. No, we are not in an actual civil war although those words have been threatened prior to election result and for the moment our sovereignty seems intact. Certainly, though the influence of oligarchs on our political and now on our governing party should cause all citizens in this country grave concern. With their extraordinary wealth, dubious morality, alignment to Russia, and questionable capacity to love or even respect this country and its laws, the influence of digital oligarchs such as Elon Musk on Trump and those he will share power within his cabinet is highly alarming. 

Timothy Snyder (2024), Yale historian writes in On Freedom that "Putin’s genocidal undertaking was supported by the wealthiest digital oligarch, Elon Musk...Musk and others wax nostalgic for the racial purity of an imagined past" (p. 157). Musk, like Trump, is a serial liar and pundit of ignorant, fanciful mistruths.  Snyder again writes, "Putin says Ukraine does not exist, and Elon Musk boosts the lie; hydrocarbon companies claim that global warming is not a problem, and Elon Musk boosts the lie; Trump says that he won the election of 2020, and Elon Musk boosts the lie. These lies then grow within us thanks to mental vulnerabilities that machines find and exploit" (p. 106). Snyder states, "Like the Czechoslovak communists, the Silicon Valley libertarians first promised a brave new world, then told us that there were no alternatives, then invited us to live inside a screen. Like the communists, they passed from great certainty about utopia to total nihilism about everything, to a world in which “everything is shit.” And then they ask us if we are not, perhaps, living in a computer simulation ourselves—or, in an older language, inside Plato’s cave. Unfortunately, wealthy and important people who speak of simulations are searching for an excuse to be irresponsible. If we decide that we are not real, that life is elsewhere, we can drop into a cave where morality has no sense and freedom is impossible" (p. 70). 

Currently, Trump has nominated 6 billionaires to cabinet level positions. Together, the billionaires Trump nominated are worth at least $344 billion which according US News and World Report is "higher than the GDP of 169 countries." To imagine their interests and yours will be aligned, is to be mistaken. Elon Musk has used Twitter to amplify lies that feeds his wealth and forwards a very Pro-Russia agenda.

II. Recoiling Not

Where do we stand considering such threats?  Those of us who read the landscape before us with clear trepidation and yet know that silence cannot occur must not recoil. As women in red states are dying due to draconian laws, we cannot recoil.  We cannot take a pause while more and more women die because they have been denied necessary health care. Had these women lived where I live (in NJ) they would be alive today.  That is a fact.

In NJ, the last few weeks, our forests have been burning. That burning has occurred up the east coast in New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts all due to drought. This burning comes a few weeks after a rapid succession of hurricanes that also marched up the east coast destroying mountain towns in western North Carolina happened. At the same time, on the west coast, flooding from torrential storms is changing the landscapes of northern California and Oregon.  And all of this is in just a 6-week period.  Trump's nominee to head the EPA is Lee Zeldin.  Zeldin said in a Fox News interview that he would prioritize efforts to "roll back regulations." Zeldin is a climate denier, just like Musk.

Across the globe, the people of Ukraine are fighting for their sovereignty, their right to be self-governing and have the final say about their laws, their lives. Recently, a Russian oligarch claimed that Ukrainians do not actually know that they are really Russians and if it takes killing a million Ukrainians or even 5 million Ukrainians to get them to understand this, so be it. This is genocide. We should be appalled and moved to action. Just wait though, and this idiocy will soon be a talking point that some members of our Republican party, including the president-elect, will be mouthing as they attempt to convince you that this untruth is an old truth, and that Putin really has sovereignty over a country that is not Russia.  

I'd love to remain silent and turn my eyes away from all the dying: young women in red states, Ukrainians, our Earth.

I'd love to practice 'self-care' and dim my responsibilities to this country, but forests, less than 5 miles away from my home have burned and the smell of smoke is becoming so common, not exceptional.

I'd love to lower my eyes and stop seeing trash islands in the Pacific, rising ocean waters, declining ice masses, increasing temperatures, droughts and floods, burning forests, declining species, and disappearing land, but I can't find the apathy needed to do so.

III. Which Way America?

In 1955, Allen Ginsberg in "A Supermarket in California" asked Walt Whitman, "Where are we going?"  He mused,         

        "...Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage? 

         Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?" 

And perhaps similar questions are before us, if we are still brave enough to ask: "What America did you have" when you voted or failed to vote in November?  Will we have a future without democracy? Where are we going?  What world will we be leaving our children? Grandchildren? What country will be here across these next four years?  Will we be a Republic? Will we grow immune to young women unnecessarily dying when health care elsewhere in the country would easily save them?  Will life expectancy in the United States continue to decline? Will we turn blind eyes to the world beyond us?  Will we even ask such questions? 

Snyder closes his book with some important advice:

"We can recognize reporters as the heroes of our time. Paying for newspaper subscriptions is a start. Too often, we profit from the reporting of others without rewarding them. Subscribe to media that offer investigative reporting, and post to social media items that are reported by a human. Support campaigns to tax social media companies to fund local reporting. Without solidarity, we fail to see others’ travails as like our own, and so we lose the ability to see ourselves. Choosing a way to express solidarity makes us freer—and helps us to resist frustration and demoralization. Deliberate in organized settings. Pick a civil society organization to join, and another (if you can afford it) to support financially. Try to listen. Remember that neighbors might have had worse luck. Help others vote. Listen to those whose families’ historical experiences are very different from your own. Find organizations that allow you to help others. If you have the means, pay off someone else’s medical debt." (p. 233). 

Do not turn your eyes away.

We need one another. As Margaret Wheatley said so well, "We can turn away, or we can turn toward. Those are the only two choices we have."

Two choices.

Which choice will you make?

Works Cited

• Ginsberg, Allen. (1956/2023) "A Supermarket in California" in Howl and Other Poems. Macon, GA: Mercer Books.
• Snyder, Timothy. (2024). On Freedom. New York: Penguin.
• Wheatley, Margaret J. (2009). Turning to One Another: Simple Conversations to Restore Hope to the Future. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.
• Whitman, Walt. (1881). Leaves of Grass. from https://whitmanarchive.org/published-writings/leaves-of-grass.

 

25 Reasons I'm Voting for Kamala Harris and 82 Reasons I'd Never Vote for Donald Trump

Kamala Harris from 2024

Why I am voting for Vice President Kamala Harris:

1. Vice President Harris has a written and an evaluated plan to boost the US economy and according to the Wall Street Journal her plans are better for the USA than anything proffered by Trump.

2. Vice President Harris is mature, job-ready, experienced, and youthful with a clean medical record allowing her to be physically, intellectually, and socially fit to be president. 

3. Vice President Harris has helped deliver the largest investment in public education in American history, provide nearly $170 billion in student debt relief for almost five million borrowers, and deliver record investments in HBCUs, Tribal Colleges, Hispanic-Serving Institutions, and other minority-serving institutions. 

4. Vice President Harris cast the tie-breaking vote to pass the Inflation Reduction Act, the largest investment in climate action in history. This historic work is lowering household energy costs, creating hundreds of thousands of high-quality clean energy jobs, and building a thriving clean energy economy, all while ensuring America’s energy security and independence with record energy production.

5. I trust Vice President Kamala Harris to make informed decisions based on her work as attorney general, senator, and vice president.

6. Vice President Kamala Harris is pro-labor. Vice President Harris serves as the Chair of the White House Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment. In doing so, she has helped advance dozens of policies to make it easier for workers to organize, to raise wages, and to strengthen workers’ bargaining power. As senator, Harris was the lead sponsor of legislation to strengthen Occupational Safety and Health Act protections against heat stress on the job. She also was the lead sponsor of legislation to establish a Domestic Worker Bill of Rights to provide domestic workers with basic protections and rights on the job, as well as legislation to strengthen whistleblower protections on the job. Labor historians generally concur that the Biden administration has the second-strongest labor-friendly record, after Franklin D. Roosevelt.

7. The AFL-CIO, the largest umbrella organization for U.S. unions, gave Harris a lifetime score of 98% on her Senate voting record. Walz got a 93% rating for his votes from the AFL-CIO when he served in the House of Representatives. 

8. Vice President Harris has been vocal in her disagreement with the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade and allowed states to set their own policy on abortion legality. In stark contrast, Trump has repeatedly taken credit for the overturning of Roe and giving states decision-making authority on abortion because he appointed three conservative justices to the Supreme Court with the explicit goal of overturning Roe. 

9. Since the Dobbs ruling, 14 states have banned abortion with very few exceptions and several other states have limited abortion availability to very early in pregnancy. Women are dying because of Trump's engineering the overturn of Roe v. Wade.

10. As Vice President Kamala Harris has led economic recovery bailing the country out after Trump's mishandling of the pandemic.

11. Vice President Harris has built a broad coalition of support. More than 200 Republicans who worked for former President George H.W. Bush, former President George W. Bush, Sen. John McCain and Sen. Mitt Romney endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, saying democracy would be "irreparably jeopardized" by another Trump administration. 

12. Vice President Harris has vowed to fight to cut taxes for more than 100 million working- and middle-class Americans. 

13. Vice President Harris will provide first-time homebuyers with up to $25,000 to help with their down payments, with more generous support for first-generation homeowners.

14. Vice President Harris has set an ambitious goal of 25 million new business applications by the end of her first term — over 10 million more than Trump saw during his term.

15. Vice President Harris will expand the startup expense tax deduction for new businesses from $5,000 to $50,000.

16. Vice President Harris will protect Social Security and Medicare against relentless attacks from Donald Trump and his extreme allies. She will strengthen Social Security and Medicare for the long haul by making millionaires and billionaires pay their fair share in taxes.

17. Vice President Harris’ call for reproductive freedom includes access to contraception, and her support on this issue extends back to her time before she became Vice President. Since the Dobbs decision, the Biden-Harris Administration issued executive orders reiterating support for contraception and directing various federal agencies and regulators to assure that access to the full range of contraceptive services and supplies is safeguarded.

18. While in the Senate and as Vice President, Kamala Harris has been a champion on improving maternal health, with a particular focus on eliminating persistent racial and ethnic disparities. Recently, has called for insurance coverage of IVF.

19. After becoming Vice President, the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) of 2021, which the Administration supported, allowed states to extend postpartum coverage under Medicaid from 60 days to 12 months. Since it took effect, nearly all states have adopted the extension.

20. Vice President Harris is an excellent role model for children and adults alike. She is humble and truthful. She uplifts people, not tears them down. In a recent Pew poll, "64% of voters say “even-tempered” describes Harris very or fairly well. By comparison, only half as many (32%) say this about Trump." 53% also said Harris is a good role model.

21. Vice President Harris is a planner who is not afraid of working hard and does so. 

22. Vice President Harris is working for our vote. She does not feel, or act entitled to our votes.

23. Vice President Harris supports the US in NATO. Harris centers relationship building, and promised in her Democratic National Convention acceptance speech to “stand strong” with NATO allies.

24. Vice President Harris supports Ukraine. She has pledged continued aid for the eastern European nation on the principle that Putin would continue marching into Europe if allies relent on Ukraine.

25. Vice President Harris loves the United States of America and understands its histories and promises. She has never proclaimed that she will be “a dictator from day 1” as Trump has done.

Donald Trump from 2024, Dallas.

Why I will never vote for Donald Trump:

1. As president, Trump repeatedly failed to uphold his sworn duty to our Constitution.

2. As president, Trump incited an insurrection on January 6, 2021. 

3. As president, Trump failed to support his own VP against a violent mob. When Trump was told by an aide of Pence’s evacuation, prosecutors say Trump responded: “So what?” 

4. Two hundred ten defendants from 40 states and the District of Columbia who were charged for their participation in the January 6th insurrection have said they were answering Donald Trump’s calls when they traveled to Washington and joined the violent attack on the Capitol.

5. As president, Trump made up statistics about voter fraud to convince followers to storm the Capitol.

6. As president in a single year, Trump decimated reproductive rights and access to family planning in the U.S. and around the globe. 

7. As president, Trump nominated three conservative Justices to the Supreme Court who all lied during their Senate confirmation hearings saying, "Roe was settled law," only to later overturn Roe.

8. While in office, Trump’s Administration rewrote the rules governing the federal Title X program, the federal family planning program that supports contraceptive access for people with lower incomes. Title X funds have never been used to pay for abortion services, but Trump’s Administration rewrote the regulations to disqualify family planning clinics from participating in the program if they also offered abortion services (with separate funding); 

9. While in office, Trump’s Administration prohibited participating clinics from offering referrals to abortion services at other clinics to pregnant patients seeking abortion information. These changes resulted in a reduction of about 1,300 of the 4,000 sites participating in the network of clinics receiving federal support from the Title X program. 

10. While in office, Trump’s Administration provided federal family planning funding through Title X funds to clinics that did not provide contraceptive methods, which had been a requirement of the program until that time. The Biden-Harris Administration reversed the Trump Administration changes to the program. Project 2025 calls for the restoration of the Trump-era rules and focusing the program on fertility-awareness based methods (FABM).

11. As president, Trump and his administration protected Brett Kavanaugh from facing a full FBI investigation in the wake of serious allegations that he sexually assaulted two women – once in high school and once in college – during his controversial 2018 Senate confirmation to become a supreme court justice.

12. As president, Trump and the FBI “misled the public and the Senate” about the scope of the investigation it did conduct into the sexual assault allegations by falsely claiming that the FBI had conducted its investigation thoroughly and “by the book”.

13. As president, Trump gave states the okay to defund Planned Parenthood.

14. As president, Trump’s Administration issued multiple regulations that placed restrictions on the availability of funding for contraception. 

15. As president, Trump failed to unite the country after vowing to do so.  

16. As president, Trump inherited a superb economy in 2017 when he took office and left office in January 2021 after a sharp contraction of economic activity and huge job losses. 

17. As president, Trump divided the country increasing harm to minorities, LGBTQ, and women, 

18. As president, Trump mismanaged the pandemic causing citizens to die. 

19. As president, Trump told Americans the pandemic was not serious by asserting his “hunches” about data. 

20. As president, Trump assured people that everyone would be tested even when there were very few tests available. During that time, he secretly sent COVID-19 tests to Putin.

21. As president, Trump told people that we are very close to a vaccine when it is was a year away. 

22. As president, Trump mistakenly asserted that goods as well as people from Europe would be forbidden from entering the United States.

23. As president, Trump recklessly recommended citizens inject bleach into their bodies to kill COVID-19.

24. As president, after every presidential statement regarding COVID-19, “clarifications” were needed. He is unclear, untutored, and misinformed often.

25. As president, Trump gave a national address meant to calm the country in the face of COVID -19 that had the effect of taking the stock market down over 1,000 points.

26. As president, Trump's mismanagement of COVID -19 crisis led to a 14.8 percent unemployment rate in 2020. Biden-Harris reduced that rate to 4.1% by September 2024.

27. As president, Trump publicly supported dictator Putin over his own policy advisors. 

28. As president, Trump's 2017 tax cut was expensive and eroded the U.S. revenue base.

29. As president, Trump's 2017 tax cut was skewed to the wealthy, ignoring the rest of America. According to the Center on Public and Policy Priorities "Households with incomes in the top 1 percent will receive an average tax cut of more than $60,000 in 2025, compared to an average tax cut of less than $500 for households in the bottom 60 percent, according to the Tax Policy Center (TPC)."

30. As president, Trump’s Prescription Drug Executive Order failed to help patients, unlike the Biden-Harris who negotiated the reduction in prescription costs. "...for the first time in history, my Administration is announcing that Medicare has reached agreements on new, lower prices with the manufacturers of all 10 drugs selected for the first round of drug price negotiation. When these lower prices go into effect, people on Medicare will save $1.5 billion in out-of-pocket costs for their prescription drugs and Medicare will save $6 billion in the first year alone. It’s a relief for the millions of seniors that take these drugs to treat everything from heart failure, blood clots, diabetes, arthritis, Crohn’s disease, and more – and it’s a relief for American taxpayers."

31. As president, Trump came to office having repeatedly refused to release his tax returns, even after a leak indicated that he may have paid no taxes for eighteen years. (ACLU)

32. Contrary to JD Vance's erroneous statements about Trump was a pacifist and there were no wars during his presidency, Trump was hawkish. "Trump massively escalated the country’s existing wars in multiple theaters, leading to skyrocketing casualties. In Afghanistan, he substantially upped the amount of airstrikes, leading to a 330 percent increase in civilian deaths. In Yemen, he escalated both U.S. counterterrorism activities and support for the devastating Saudi-led war against the Houthis. According to the United Kingdom’s Bureau of Investigative Journalism, there were 2,243 drone strikes in just the first two years of Trump’s presidency, compared with 1,878 in the entire eight years of the Obama administration." (from here)

33. As president, Trump signed three executive orders in 2018 that restricted the labor rights of approximately 950,000 federal government employees who belong to unions. In 2020, he signed another measure, known as Schedule F, that The Washington Post described as “designed to gut civil service job protections.”

34. The AFL-CIO, the largest umbrella organization for U.S. unions has given Sen. Vance a 0% rating for his Senate votes as of mid-2024. Among other things, Vance opposed the nominations of several judges and government officials with pro-labor track records.

35. On November 4, 2019, President Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement, an agreement among 195 nations to cut their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. The United States stood alone among major emitters in the world in its efforts to repudiate the agreement.

36. As president, Trump and his administration's deregulatory agenda extended into the rules that protect our nation’s air and water and address climate change. Brookings tracked the administration’s deregulatory actions and counted 74 actions that the administration took to weaken environmental protection.

37. As president, Trump was a serial liar. According to the Washington Post, Trump told 30,573 lies during his presidency.

38. Candidate Trump in a highly publicized conversation with Tesla, SpaceX and X CEO Elon Musk, praised Musk for firing employees who spoke out on workplace problems and attempted to unionize. 

39. Candidate Trump according to those who worked for him say he is the most dangerous person and unfit to serve as president.

40. Candidate Trump is now a legally defined sexual predator.

41. Candidate Trump is a convicted felon. Trump is the first former US president convicted of felony crimes (34).

42. Candidate Trump is a serial liar. CNN clocked more than 40 lies by Trump in two rallies in Pennsylvania. He lies at each rally.

43. Candidate Trump is a misogynist.  A jury in 2023 found him liable for sexual abuse and defamation against journalist E. Jean Carroll.  Jill Harth said Trump pushed her against a wall and put a hand up her dress at Mar-a-Lago in 1993. Reporter Natasha Stoynoff said Trump assaulted her in 2005 while she was working on a story about his marriage to Melania. Carroll said Trump raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room.

44. Candidate Trump is a racist.  "I believe this, it’s in their genes,” Trump said during a rant against immigrants. “And we got a lot of bad genes in our country right now,” he added. Eugenics, a deeply flawed and dishonest scientism convinced people, including the Nazis, that criminality and poverty were all inherited.

45. Candidate Trump has promised to remove Temporary Protected Status and deport the Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, after weeks of spreading baseless claims that the Haitian population was eating pets 

46. Candidate Trump's rhetoric is dangerous for Americans. Trump and Vance's rhetoric led to bomb threats at Springfield schools.

47. Candidate Trump now warns that migrants have already invaded the United States, which he uses as a means to justify a second-term policy agenda that includes building massive detention camps and conducting mass deportations.

48. Candidate Trump has been charged with a criminal conspiracy over his attempt to overturn his loss of the 2020 election.

49. Candidate Trump has publicly stated that women should be prosecuted for securing abortions. 

50. Candidate Trump expressed that states could restrict access to contraceptives.

51. Candidate Trump is weak, unstable, and mentally unfit to be president. He amplified false claims about Haitian immigrants in Ohio eating pets. He peddles conspiracy theories and rumors.

52. Candidate Trump is too old to be president. If reelected in November, Trump would end his term just a few months short of his 83rd birthday, making him two years older than President Joe Biden is now. A Marquette Law School poll released in Oct9ober, 2024,  found that 61 percent of registered voters agreed that Trump is "too old to be president.

53. Candidate Trump has ‘concepts’ of plan.  His campaign, like his thinking, is lazy.

54. Candidate Trump demonstrated his mental incapacities at the September debate with VP Harris. In a recent rally in Pennsylvania "last night in Montgomery County, northwest of Philadelphia, Trump got bored with the event, billed as a “town hall,” and just played music for almost 40 minutes, scowling, smirking, and swaying onstage."

55. Candidate Trump demonstrated the ease with which he can be triggered at the September debate with VP Harris. He is unfit.

56. Candidate Trump demonstrated his contempt for immigrants, legally in the USA at the September debate with VP Harris. He is unfit.

57. Candidate Trump demonstrated his contempt for women at the September debate with VP Harris. He is unfit.

58. Candidate Trump supports outlawing gender-affirming care for minors at the federal level, according to his “Agenda 47”.

59. Candidate Trump supports banning transgender athletes from competing on teams that match their gender identity.

60. Candidate Trump supports asking “Congress to pass a bill establishing that the only genders recognized by the United States government are male and female — and they are assigned at birth.”

61. Candidate Trump has vowed to roll back Title IX protections for transgender students enacted in April 2024 by the U.S. Department of Education “on day one,” if he’s reelected. 

62. Candidate Trump has repeated baseless disinformation about trans women and girls participating in sports including in response to the Paris Olympics and at the Republican National Convention.

63. According to the ACLU, "A second Trump administration would strip LGBTQ people of protections against discrimination in many contexts, including employment, housing, education, health care, and a range of federal government programs. "

64. At a Moms for Liberty summit, Candidate Trump lied, saying, “Think of it, your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation…. The school decides what’s going to happen with your child.” The statement is a false misrepresentation of the highly regulated process of transgender health care for minors in the United States. No children are going to school and receiving surgery there for gender dysphoria.

65. Candidate Trump had the Bipartisan Border bill killed for political gain. His interest is not for what is best for the country, but rather what advantages himself.

66. Candidate Trump is a whiner. As President Obama so aptly said at a rally in Pennsylvania, “Donald Trump is a 78-year-old billionaire who has not stopped whining about his problems since he rode down his golden escalator nine years ago. You’ve got the tweets in all caps. the ranting and raving about crazy conspiracy theories. the two-hour speeches, word salad. It’s like Fidel Castro just on and on. Constant attempts to sell you stuff. Who does that? Selling you gold sneakers and $100,000 watch, and most recently, a Trump Bible. He wants you to buy the word of God: Donald Trump edition! It’s got his name right there next to Matthew and Luke.”

67. Candidate Trump is incoherent speaker at his public rallies. He slurs words. As the NY Times reported, “He rambles, he repeats himself, he roams from thought to thought — some of them hard to understand, some of them unfinished, some of them factually fantastical. He voices outlandish claims that seem to be made up out of whole cloth. He digresses into bizarre tangents about golf, about sharks, about his own “beautiful” body. He relishes “a great day in Louisiana” after spending the day in Georgia. He expresses fear that North Korea is “trying to kill me” when he presumably means Iran. As late as last month, Mr. Trump was still speaking as if he were running against President Biden, five weeks after his withdrawal from the race.”

68. Candidate Trump failed to be endorsed by former GOP President, George W. Bush.

69. Candidate Trump failed to be endorsed by former GOP Vice-President, Dick Cheney. Cheney said, "In our nation's 248-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump." VP Cheney endorsed Kamala Harris.

70. Candidate Trump failed to be endorsed by his former Vice President Mike Pence.

71. Candidate Trump failed to be endorsed by Mark Esper who served as U.S. secretary of defense between July 2019 and November 2020. Esper endorsed Kamala Harris.

72. Candidate Trump failed to be endorsed by Jim Mattis, a retired four-star general, who served as secretary of defense from January 2017 to January 2019. Mattis endorsed Kamala Harris.

73. Candidate Trump failed to be endorsed by John Kelly, a former Marine Corps general, who served as Trump's White House chief of staff. Speaking to CNN in October 2023, Kelly described Trump as "a person that has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about." Kelly endorsed Kamala Harris.

74. Candidate Trump failed to be endorsed by Mark Milley who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff between October 2019 and September 2023. During his retirement speech, Gen. Milley said Trump was a "wannabe dictator." Milley endorsed Kamala Harris.

75. Candidate Trump failed to be endorsed by John Bolton who served as U.S. national security adviser from April 2018 until September 2019. Bolton endorsed Kamala Harris.

76. Candidate Trump failed to be endorsed by former Attorney General Bill Barr.

77. Candidate Trump failed to be endorsed by Anthony Scaramucci, who served as Trump's White House communications director. Scaramucci endorsed Kamala Harris.

78. Candidate Trump failed to be endorsed by Olivia Troye, Homeland Security adviser. Troye endorsed Kamala Harris.

79. More than 200 Republicans who worked for former President George H.W. Bush, former President George W. Bush, Sen. John McCain and Sen. Mitt Romney endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, saying democracy would be "irreparably jeopardized" by another Trump administration. 

80. Candidate Trump says the United States has “long been taken advantage of” by “so-called allies.” He does not support NATO.

81. Candidate Trump refused to answer whether he wants Ukraine to be victorious over Russia.

82. Candidate Trump stated he will be a dictator from Day 1.

Listening to a Trump Voter

I was listening to a pro Trump voter today who said he is voting for Trump because he knows “he will support me 200%. He will have my back.” I imagine he’s right. As a white conservative man he is likely safe in Trump country. 

Many of us are unsafe under Trump. 

I am so sad to say that Trump’s rhetoric will likely continue to cause harm to my only child. I wish this was hyperbole, but it is not. Trump’s incendiary rhetoric incites individuals and mobs to act with violence against people and institutions and he targets explicitly. We all saw this on January 6. Many of us experienced it more personally though. For example, his anti-Asian tirades when he was president caused all in my home grave concerns. For example, my daughter walking one afternoon in Oakland NJ during the Pandemic was called a f***ing Ch##k and told to go home to China. The white man who yelled this had a white wife  and two children in the truck as he yelled this filth out the window. This violent rhetoric was unprompted. She was 17 and traumatized and it was Trump’s repeated rhetoric that normalized this too common behavior since he became president. Yes racists lived in the US before Trump. But his speech green lights this racist and misogynist behavior every time he demeans people of color l, women, and Trans-people. 

So the gulf between the man I listened to today and me is very wide.  As a voter I’m always concerned by those not insulated from violence the former president incite by their religion, wealth, orientation, gender and race. Such dimensions influence my vote. I wonder though if he could say the same. 

6 Books I’ll Be Reading this Fall

I am anticipating reading 6 books that are or will be newly published this fall. Here’s the list:

1. Yuval Nosh Harari’s Nexus 

Harari asks, “How is it that we have the most sophisticated information technology in history and we can no longer hold the conversation? We can no longer talk with each other.”

2. Richard Powers’ Playground (Booker Prize Finalist)

Full disclosure: each book he writes, I read. This will not be an exception and in what I have read I wonder if this will not be a return to his interest in climate. 

3. Rachel Kushner’s Creation Lake (Booker Prize Finalist)

A friend is reading this now and via her enthusiastic recommendation, it’s now on my list. I hear it’s a spy story and of course, more. 

4. Eavan Bolsnd’s Citizen Poet

I adored this Irish poet’s poetry and was so sad when she passed. This is a collection of essays. Cannot wait to dig in. 

5. Ta-Nehisi Coates’ The Message

Three essays on writing and the need to disentangle ourselves with nationalism. I’ve enjoyed all of his former books like so many. 

I 

6. Haruki Murakami’s The City and Its Uncertain Walls

Like Powers, this is an author ✍️ I read. Kind of like an immediate default. I can’t wait to see where we travel. This was published in Japan in April. Will be published in English this December. 

Freedom

Lately, Donald Trump in rally remarks keeps mentioning communism attempting to align that ideology with Vice President Harris and Governor Walz.  I have found this attempt at sleight of hand ironic given that a definition of communism is the absence of individual and societal freedom. The current iteration of the Republican Party, headed by Donald Trump, is the anti-freedom party as they have wildly supported grave restrictions of women to have bodily and economic freedom; to restrict citizens to have freedom to vote; and have unequivocally placed idolatry above country. 

In Bobbie Kennedy’s Day of Affirmation speech that he gave on June 6, 1966 in Cape Town, South Africa, he said, “And the denial of freedom, in whatever name, only strengthens the very communism it claims to oppose.” 

Millions this past week watched VP Harris accept the nomination to run for President of the United States. She stood below a banner declaring freedom to be the central commitment of her platform and that of the DNC. She warned citizens that our fundamental freedoms are at stake. 

This November 5th, the vote you cast or fail to cast directly influences these freedoms:

Freedom to control the decisions about one’s body. 

Freedom to vote. 

Freedom to love who you love “openly and with pride.”

Freedom to express one’s gender without the fear of harm or death. 

Freedom to live in peace—free from gun violence. 

Freedom to read what you want without government ordering the removal of books from schools and libraries. 

Freedom to live on a clean planet. 

Donald Trump would have us believe that freedom is best served by electing an autocrat. He has repeatedly claimed he knows best and that only he can solve what ails us. This is the starting utterance of every autocracy.

This contest between freedom with its responsibilities, and autocracy with its gross limitations of citizens’ freedoms couldn’t be clearer. 

#VoteBlueToSaveAmerica

#WomenForHarris

8 Years

At the Paterson Falls (acrylic, ink, pencil, papers)

Yesterday I photographed at the Paterson Falls. After all of the tumultuous storms we’ve been having, the falls were powerful, awe-inspiring. Being in Paterson, once again, had me remembering William Carlos Williams’ Paterson. I first read it in its entirety with Rob. Prior to that (like Joyce’s Ulysses) I read parts. Rob loved to read aloud and what I recall most about Paterson was hearing so much of the book. I went back to see if I could find a section that was in mind, but not recalled with fidelity. 

No defeat is made up entirely of defeat—since
the world it opens is always a place
              formerly
                               unsuspected. A
world lost,
              a world unsuspected,
                               beckons to new places
and no whiteness (lost) is so white as the memory
of whiteness     .

8 years ago today, Rob died. I will tell you that I never imagined what 8 years out might feel like. During those beginning years, placing one foot in front of the other took effort. The lines from Williams quoted here (from The Descent), remind me that in great loss, there is the possibility for new spaces to open up, in part because of the holes left by grief and loss, in part because the pulse to live is so very strong. At the falls yesterday, I thought of how some slim memories endure, while the greater majority of living and remembering the last 8 years flow with a force not too dissimilar to those falls after much rain.

2.10.2016

Edges (Nome, Alaska)

The days get muddled together when I recall. 8 years is a long time in many ways especially when I think of all the living that has happened from then to now.  On this past Saturday, I would remember the hospital room, the quietness of the floor so early in the morning, the oncologist. I would recall all of this and more, almost to the minute. 

5 a.m. and the interstate was more abandoned than not. A lone truck in the far right lane. It’s light cutting through the still darkness. By 6 a.m., I had coffee in hand for both of us and was making my way upstairs to the 3rd? or was it the 4th floor of the hospital?  Three hours later the oncologist who was supposed to be away surprised us. I don’t recall his exact words, but he said something about consulting with his partners, a cat scan, spread, and how Rob who only a few weeks earlier had a prognosis of at least another year of life, was now terminal. Less than 4 weeks, he would be dead. 

This past Saturday, I was sipping a second cup of coffee when the date hit me. February 10. 9 a.m.  I had come home from a client the afternoon before suddenly feeling miserable, certain I had caught a bug. Sore throat, achy, headache behind the eyes. The body knows what consciousness cannot always grasp. I went to sleep early, waking Saturday morning and feeling off. And then I remembered. That is what grief is. Years can pass and in the space of an ordinary day, a sip of coffee, a date and time , and 

     the knees 

fall out from under.

Six Works by Black Authors to Read

A few books authored by Black writers that I’m looking forward to reading this February, including a most anticipated book (James) that will be published March 19, 2024.

1. The Trees: A Novel by Percival Everett —I’m reading this now. A tough opening of a book that tells of a series of brutal murders that take place in Money Mississippi. At each crime scene there is a second body of a man who resembles Emmett Till.

Shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize
Winner of the 2022 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award
Finalist for the 2022 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award
Finalist for the 2023 Dublin Literary Award
Longlisted for the 2022 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction

2. James by Percival Everett (published in March, 2024)— Oh what I would have given to have this book all those years ago when I taught Huck Finn.  This is an insightful retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn — all told through the eyes of Jim, an enslaved man making a bid for freedom on the Mississippi alongside Mark Twain’s Huck. I always thought Jim was the moral center of the novel. 

A most anticipated book of 2024.

3. Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward — What now feels like a few years ago, one of my book groups went on a reading spree of Ward’s books. Her fiction is often brutal and somehow at the same time compelling—connecting the past to the present.  Her novels are intriguing and so language-rich. This is a story of enslavement as told by a teenage girl, Annis.

4. Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adejei-Brenyah —a debut story collection about growing up Black in the USA.

5. Survival Math: Notes on an All America Family by Mitchell S. Jackson—This summer I spent nearly a week in Portland, Oregon and this account of what Jackson terms, the Other America, surely resonates. The title of the work comes from the calculations Jackson and his family made to survive. 

6. Spectral Evidence: Poems by Gregory Pardo — One aspect of this book of poems that caught my interest was the poetic focus on MOVE, the militant separatist group that was bombed by Philadelphia government in 1985. Last year, a painting of mine was selected to be the cover to a memoir by one of the few survivors of that bombing. The narrative biography, Osage Avenue: Coming of Age in the Summer of MOVE by Tony Gervasi was riveting, tragic, especially given the immense loss he suffers.  I’m curious as to how this history translates to poetry. 

One Addition to Better Writing in Grades 2-8

Article 4th graders were Writing About 

Often I see hardworking teachers trying to ensure their students compose clear, meaningful writing by relying on mnemonics, like R.A.C.E. (Restate question, answer question, cite evidence, explain evidence) and failing.  The issue with this strategy is that the single most critical aspect of writing, especially for younger learners is missing! Most students are able to restate the question and then they offer an answer and this is where the essays fall apart. The ‘answer’ almost always is incorrect, unclear, or vague. As a result, the ‘evidence’ that follows is usually wrong or unclear as well or at best too obvious. If an explanation follows it most often is an attempt to summarize what has been previously stated and given the absence of clarity, it too offers little to the reader. 

This is a recipe for failure. What is missing? The key term has not been defined or explained. I cannot overstate how critical this is. If children fail to define the term they are writing about, often what follows is a mess. 

Strategy in Action 

I had the opportunity last week to observe learning in a great 4th grade classroom in NJ. Students were engaged in writing an essay about how Yolanda Renee King is an activist. The teacher smartly provided early feedback to her students saying that they had not yet included evidence of what Ms. King had done and instead focused their writing on her grandfather, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  As I read students’ drafts, I noticed that all had neglected the critical step of defining the topic, in this case what an activist is. I mentioned this to the teacher and she regathered her students for some quick instruction. 

Seated in a circle, I asked the students to explain what an activist was. As the term was defined in the article they had read, students with some guidance were able to paraphrase quickly. Within a minute or two, we determined what an activist was and how Ms. King was an activist. I then asked them to insert that explanation of what an activist is into their essays—as the second sentence. We listened to a few students who read their revisions. Last, we discussed how this explanation of the key term now provided a guide for everything else that would follow. Their essays now could explain how Ms. King campaigned for change (environmental and gun control)  in order to make the world a better place. 

Focus on Thinking First

Without a definition to guide the composing, students often make a lot of syntax (sentence) errors and teachers spend considerable instructional time helping students correct those errors. What needs to be attended to initially is the students’ reasoning once a definition of the key term has happened. In this 4th grade classroom, because students had clarity about the topic, writing quality improved. Once clarity occurred, syntax errors were reduced as students focused on explaining how Ms. King was an activist by using the definition to guide the evidence they selected and their explanation. They made less errors simply because they understood what their argument was.

Instead of blindly following a formula that too often leads to error making, students stated an idea and expanded on it. What a difference this brief shift in instruction made in the students’ confidence and performance. 

Grade 3 Reading Challenge: A Key Action to Take

Developing reading stamina helps third graders comprehend grade level text. Reading stamina is the ability to read increasingly longer texts with ease. It develops through consistent (daily) practice. Building  to 30-minutes of sustained reading daily ought to be a goal both schools and parents champion. Parents and teachers can invite children to chart the number of minutes of reading they do each day until they build up to and then maintain a minimum of 30-minutes. This practice of charting motivates and allows children, parents, and teachers to track progress. 

For grades 2-5 students, reading series books is a great way to develop stamina. Once a child has read the first book in the series, that reading allows them to be familiar with the reoccurring characters in the series. This knowledge allows for three important things: 

1. Readers fall into the next book quickly due to familiarity. This helps readers finish books. 

2. Readers tend to want to keep reading to see what happens next in the series.

3. All of this practicing builds reading stamina, develops vocabulary, and increases confidence. 

Here are links to series books: https://www.whatdowedoallday.com/multicultural-early-chapter-books-for-kids/

https://multiculturalchildrensbookday.com/multicultural-reading-resources/diversity-book-lists-for-kids/diversity-books-by-genre/diverse-easy-readers-early-chapter-books/

Measuring Reading Stamina

How is my child doing? This is often a question parents have. We want to know if our child is making progress and reading at grade level. Oral reading fluency tests quickly help a parent, a child, and the teacher answer that important question!  Words correct per minute has been shown, in both theoretical and empirical research, to serve as an accurate and powerful indicator of overall reading competence, especially in its strong correlation with comprehension.  - Hasbrouck & Tindal (2006).  

An easy and quick way to formally assess reading is to take a timed sample of a child reading a grade level passage and compare the performance (number of words read correctly per minute) with published Oral Reading Fluency Target (ORF) Rate Norms (Hasbrouck & Tindal, 1992). Grade level norms are listed below in a chart. 

MAZE is the assessment offered from grade 2 and higher that will provide educators and parents with a quick, free fluency and comprehension assessment. The materials and instructions can be downloaded from here:

 https://dibels.uoregon.edu/materials/dibels.