You might feel the same way. If you have land, whether it’s a postage stamp area in front of your urban apartment or a massive suburban lawn requiring a riding mower, you probably do what most of us do. You try to make it as pretty as possible with as little effort as possible. Maybe you care for it yourself or, if the lawn is too big, you pay a lawn service to fertilize, spray insecticide and weed killer, and then mow it into beautiful chevron rows.

And perhaps because you love flowers, you select beautiful flowers and shrubs from a big box store, plant them in beds along the house’s foundation and maybe by your mailbox, and leave it at that. That’s what most of us know how to do to beautify our properties.

I don’t blame you. It’s all I knew until a few years ago. However, what I’ve learned since is that many of the plants, shrubs, and trees sold at big box stores are not only nonnative and some are invasive. That means that they take over native habitats, provide insects and pollinators with little or no food, and squeeze out native plants. In other words, they turn a healthy buffet into a fast-food haven.

Butterfly bush (Buddleja davidii) is a great example of this. Butterfly bush is a fast-growing, deciduous shrub native to Asia, widely cultivated for its fragrant, nectar-rich flower spikes that attract butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds. People love it. I’ll admit that I’ve planted it and thought I was helping the ecosystem. However, not only is it highly invasive, it offers little value as a host plant for caterpillars and can displace more beneficial natives. Fortunately, some states have banned its sale and hopefully, more will join in.

Instead of butterfly bush (Buddleja davidii), nourish your pollinators and hummingbirds with butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa), New England aster (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae), or Joe-Pye weed (Eutrochium species), to name a few.

How I discovered the truth about gardening

When I ran across entomologist, ecologist, and conservationist Doug Tallamy and his bestselling book, Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants my understanding of gardening and lawn care turned upside down. I’m not sure where I found it or why I read it, but it changed my life. I’m hoping it, or one of his other books, might change yours too.

In Bringing Nature Home, I learned that all the investment we make to develop and maintain the perfect lawn is destroying the local ecosystem. Pesticides and herbicides don’t only kill “bad” insects, they kill pollinators and other beneficial insects, too. In many regions, maintaining thirsty lawns requires water that could be conserved.

Here are five lessons I learned from this book:

1. Native plants are the foundation of local ecosystems
   Tallamy argues that native plants evolved alongside native insects, birds, and other wildlife. They provide the food and shelter those species need in ways many exotic ornamentals cannot.

2. Backyards matter more than people think
   Conservation is not only about national parks or wilderness areas. Millions of private yards, gardens, and suburban landscapes together form enormous potential habitat corridors.

3. Insects are essential, not just pests
   Caterpillars, bees, moths, and countless insects are the base of the food web. Birds especially depend on insects to raise their young. Eliminating bugs harms the larger ecosystem.

4. Small choices create large environmental change
   Replacing lawn space with native shrubs, trees, and flowers, reducing pesticides, and planting even a few key species can significantly increase biodiversity over time.

5. Homeowners have the responsibility and power to make a difference
   Tallamy’s central message is hopeful: ordinary people can become active stewards of nature. You do not need to own a forest preserve to help restore ecological balance—you can begin at home.

What is a native plant?

A native plant is defined as a species that naturally occurred in your state or ecological region before large-scale modern human introduction. Native plants usually have long relationships with local pollinators, insects, birds, soils, and climate patterns. Those relationships often make them more ecologically valuable than introduced ornamentals.

A plant from China or Japan is, by definition, not native to North America. A plant found in the American desert is typically not native to the East Coast. In fact, something native to one side of your state might not be native to the side you live in. What’s most important is to learn about the ecoregion in which you live. Here are some of the characteristics that define an ecoregion:

• Climate – temperature, rainfall, humidity, frost, and seasons.

• Soils – fertility, drainage, acidity, texture, and organic matter.

• Landforms – mountains, plains, coasts, valleys, and underlying geology.

• Water systems – streams, wetlands, groundwater, flooding, and watersheds.

• Plant communities – forests, prairies, marshes, savannas, bogs, and shrublands.

• Wildlife communities – animals and insects adapted to those habitats.

• Natural processes – fire, drought, storms, erosion, and ecological change over time.

Just because you see a native wildflower on a hike in the mountains, doesn’t mean it can or should survive in the coastal area where you live. The trick is learning your ecoregion’s characteristics and planting based on that.

Three steps you can take right now

How do we put these lessons into practice? Here are three important steps to get started.

Step 1

The first step is to make an inventory of the plants in your yard. If you know what a plant is called, even the common name, you can look it up at the North Carolina Extension Gardener Plant Toolbox, LadyBird Johnson Wildflower Center Native Plants Database, or the Missouri Botanical Garden Plant Finder to find out more about it.

However, these resources will not necessarily tell you if a plant is native or nonnative to your ecoregion. For that, you’ll need to consult a local resource. A web search for your state’s native plant organization will probably help you with that.

To identify plants I don’t know, I use Picture This. It’s an app known for accuracy and fast identification. I use it every time I’m in the garden to remind myself what I’ve planted and identify volunteers to determine if I should leave or pull them. In addition, Picture This provides detailed care information, disease diagnosis, origin, and toxicity warnings. Here are some other resources, including some free, options you might consider: PlantNet, LeafSnap, Plantora, and Plant.id.

Step 2

After you know what you’re dealing with in your yard, develop a plan to remove nonnative invasive plants. Start with the most invasive or with the easiest to remove. However, be sure to research how to remove them. Some trees, such as Tree of Heaven (Ailanthus altissima), which should be called Tree of Hell, loves to be cut down. For your effort, it can trigger aggressive root suckering and many new shoots. So, to avoid making the problem worse, find out before you cut!

Step 3

Incorporate native plants into your garden/yard planning:

1. Plant native trees, shrubs, and flowers
   This is the single biggest step. Native plants support native caterpillars, pollinators, and birds in ways most imported ornamentals do not. If space is limited, start with one native tree or replace part of a flower bed. Even one native plant in a pot on your apartment’s patio can have impact. According to Tallamy, planting a native oak, willow, cherry, or other highly productive native tree is a great first step because these trees support the most life. If you’re not ready to plant a tree, identify one or two flowering native perennials (plants that come back every year) and plant them in groups of three or five in a small garden area. I promise you, when they appear on their own next year, they will inspire you to learn more. Take your time. You don’t have to do it all at once.

2. Shrink the lawn and diversify the yard
   Although you may love it, traditional turf grass offers little wildlife value. Convert portions of lawn into planting beds, meadows, layered borders, or small habitat zones. You don’t have to get rid of all of it, even a modest reduction in grass can make a real difference.

3. Stop routine pesticide use
   Insecticides, herbicides, and broad chemical treatments often kill the very organisms that keep nature functioning. Tolerate some leaf damage, hand-pull weeds when possible, and use targeted treatment only when truly necessary.

Don’t worry about perfection. Make progress instead.

I’ll be the first to admit that becoming a native gardener is not an easy task. Garden centers often make native plants surprisingly hard to identify. Read tags carefully and double-check your native plant sources to make sure you’re getting a native plant.

Especially in the early days, you’ll probably have to pull out as many invasive plants, if not even more, than the natives you plant. Don’t give up!

Even after six years of being intentional about native planting, I still have nonnative and even some invasive plants in my yard. It’s a slow process that requires study, dedication, and hard work to learn. I guarantee you, you will make mistakes, and you might encounter resistance from your family or even an HOA.

Family members might resist cutting down a favorite Bradford Pear (also called Callery pear). “But it’s so pretty in the spring!” they might exclaim. And yes, that might be true. But their flowers don’t support native insects nearly as much as native trees do. In addition, they spread with abandon and displace native wildflowers, shrubs, and young trees. And those are only a couple of the issues with nonnative, invasive trees like Bradford Pears.

Homeowners Associations (HOAs) often have strict rules about the look of your yard and expect well-trimmed grass and limited vegetation. More homeowners, however, are fighting back and, as a result, some of the rules have started to change. Native gardens don’t have to be chaotic and messy. Through careful planning, you can incorporate native plants that enhance, rather than detract, from the beauty of your home. Just be planful and advocate for native plants.

Whether it’s true or not in every case, the old adage is that when you plant natives, the first year they sleep, the second year they creep, and the third year they leap. The moral of the story is that restoring your ecosystem takes time and patience. But I can guarantee that the first time you see a Monarch butterfly land on the butterfly weed you planted, it will be all worthwhile.

Put yourself on the map

After you’ve converted even a small plot of land to natives, I encourage you to include your accomplishment on Doug Tallamy’s HomeGrown National Park Biodiversity Map. It’s a nationwide effort to showcase your commitment to restoring nature and inspire others to take action. By adding your garden to the map, you contribute to a growing movement that regenerates biodiversity and strengthens local ecosystems. Together, our individual efforts create meaningful change!

Although Wendy might still not love working in our gardens, she loves the native habitat we’ve created. With the exception of the Monarch caterpillars (I had to go into the garden to get those), these photos were all taken from our sunroom window within about 15 minutes of each other on one September morning. What an incredible gift for all our labors!

Start with one tree, one bed, or one pot. Nature knows what to do next.

Yours in peace,

Annette

Leave a comment

On a balmy August evening, Anne and I sat on the floor in the family room discussing how to arrange our furniture when it finally arrived. We looked forward to having more than an air mattress on the floor to sleep on. As we talked, several whitetail deer quietly approached the house. When they saw us there through the sliding glass door, they stopped.

Mesmerized by their closeness to us—our eyes locked onto theirs. We could see their tiny radar-dish ears straining to catch any sound emanating from inside the house. Their nostrils flared as if they were trying to extract our scent through the glass. Still uncertain what to do, they continued to stare at us. Whether we were dangerous or not, we were intruders, and they wanted us to know it.

The people who built the house three years earlier—a young couple with two toddlers in tow—had hammered the last nail, decorated the kids’ rooms with brightly colored murals, stacked dishes in the cupboards, and arranged silverware in the drawers. Their dream house was finally ready. To celebrate their hard work and its completion, they decided to spend a weekend in a rented cabin in the Northern Michigan woods, the whole family together before they began their new life on the farm.

They never got to enjoy their new home. A faulty kerosene heater in their vacation cabin exploded, killing the entire family.

The man’s parents, who lived about ten miles away from the new house, took possession of it, but left everything exactly the way it had been when their son and his family drove off to their getaway cabin. The parent’s grief was so deep, they couldn’t bear to do anything with it. The deer had no reason to fear humans because, for as long as they could remember, no humans had been around this house.

After the reality of this tragedy sank in and three more summers passed, the parents finally decided to rent out the house. Anne and I saw the ad on the first day of the listing in the local paper. We jumped on it. It was exactly what we were looking for. A small house in the country that was close enough to my job yet far enough away for us to live a private life.

After we told them that we wanted to rent it, they told us its story. They wanted to make sure we were comfortable living there given the circumstances. Because even though the family was miles away when they died, the parents believed that their spirits were still on the property, and maybe inside the house. We told them we would be honored to move in, and we promised to take good care of it. They agreed to rent it to us.

Through the autumn and a long Michigan winter, we watched for signs of haunting, of the spirits our landlords believed would be sharing the house with us. The only inexplicable occurrence, a thermostat that repeatably turned itself down, kept us wary but not afraid. We settled in, and before long, it felt like home.

When spring finally arrived, when crocuses poked their white and purple heads out from the blanket of snow, I began planning a garden. Not a vegetable garden. I wasn’t into that. I wanted to plant flowers. An empty garden bed, one the family created on the driveway side of the house in anticipation of their first summer, seemed like the obvious place.

The problem with it was that the bed faced north. At that time in my life, I didn’t know anything about native plants, but I knew that most flowers, native or not, needed sun, and this plot didn’t get much. I knew a little about annuals such as pansies and impatiens, because my mom had planted them in the front garden of the house I grew up in, but that was about it. Perennials, even the popular non-native bulbs like bearded irises and tulips, intimidated me. So, I did what we did in the days before the internet, I went to the local garden center and asked a human being.

The man I approached suggested coleus. I had never heard of coleus, but I liked the look of the ones they had for sale so, taking his suggestion, I bought ten plants.

I planted them on a late May afternoon, after the snow had melted and last year’s corn stalks had been plowed under the earth in preparation for this year’s crop. I planted them with no experience with how they would grow, or if they’d even survive. But survive they did. Within a few weeks, they’d settled in and spread their beautiful leaves upward and outward to fill the small garden plot.

One day in late June, I saw a car pull up into the long dirt driveway.

We didn’t get many visitors, so I rose from my chair to greet them. It was our landlords—the parents of the family who died. We hadn’t seen them much over the winter, which we appreciated, but they arrived this summer day to check in on us.

When I approached them, I could see that the woman was crying. And not just tears running down her cheeks. She was convulsed in tears. I stood there not sure whether to move closer. Her husband, a hard-working, strong, silent-type farmer, came around the front of their truck and awkwardly put his arm around her.

When she regained some control, the first thing she choked out was, “Flowers! You planted flowers!”

“Yes, I did,” I said, still keeping some distance. “I hope it was OK.”

“There’s, there’s life here.” She exclaimed as she stared at the beautiful red, pink, orange, and green foliage of the bed of coleus. “I can feel life for the first time.”

She wiped her nose with an old bandana her husband handed her. “Thank you,” she whispered.

On impulse, I moved closer and gave this grieving mother a hug. “I’m glad you like them,” I said.

“I do,” she replied. “I do.”

They didn’t say much more.

I’m not sure what motivated their visit that day, but soon after that, they stopped by again and told us that they were moving a horse and a couple of cows into the paddock. We didn’t need to do anything with them, they told us. They’d take care of them, but they wanted us to know that they’d be stopping by each morning and evening.

At the first freeze that next fall, the coleus shriveled up, and a few days later, after yet another freeze, I dug them up. We’d enjoyed their beauty, and, as quietly as the deer, they helped a mother grieve and reminded her that life goes on, even after a loss that defied words.

After our second winter, the owners told us that they would not be renewing our lease.

“Now that there’s life here again,” she paused, and then she added, “Now that you brought life here,” A slight smile clashed with her still sad eyes, “We’re ready to move in ourselves. I hope you understand. You’ve been good tenants, and without you, we never would have been able to consider living here. Thank you.” she said.

Anne and I moved that spring and never saw the parents again. A couple of years ago, I drove by the property to reminisce about those times. The house was gone. It’d been replaced with a larger one with a two-car garage and a swing set out back. I don’t know if the same family still owned it. I suspect the parents had already passed on by then.

What I do know is that those flowers, a few coleus plants on the side of the house, brought healing simply by being there, growing big for a novice flower gardener who didn’t know what to expect and for a grieving mother who’d once imagined a lifetime of beauty in that yard.

I hope you’re enjoying your spring, wherever you are. I’ll be writing more about flowers, with a focus on native habitat gardening, in upcoming posts. Thanks so much for reading!

Yours in peace,

Annette

Note: the photos in this piece are stock representations but not actual photos from the house.

Leave a comment

Fluvanna is a medium to high security women’s prison, which houses 1,200 residents, located about an hour from my home in Richmond, Virginia. I went there, not as a resident, I’m happy to say, but as a guest of Proximity for Justice.

Proximity for Justice is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that believes:

To build safer communities, we must first open prison doors to allow the outside world to meet those most affected by incarceration.

That’s what took me into prison—to attend a TEDx event organized by Proximity for Justice. They had invited 100 community members, including regional leaders from Charlottesville, Richmond, and Washington, DC, policymakers, judges, attorneys, law enforcement and corrections officials, fair-chance employers and local business leaders, community advocates, philanthropists, and TED members to listen to speeches by 30 residents of FCCW interspersed with 15 by community and criminal justice system professionals.

The Experience

We were asked to arrive early—before 8 am. I was nervous about what we were about to experience and having to drive an hour at a time when my brain is typically still in a fog, was not my idea of a good time. I was relieved, however, that our preapproval meant we glided through the entry process. We were told not to wear jeans because that's what the residents would be wearing. I was happy I remembered that, so there’d be no confusion.

We were also told that all we could bring in to the prison was our driver’s license, which they kept for us when we checked in, and one car key. No phones, watches, or other electronics. Not even a pen or paper. Deprived of my devices, I felt almost as naked as I would have if they’d strip-searched me. That’s an exaggeration, but it reminded me of how dependent I am on being able to record, take notes, check messages, and know what’s happening in the world. Without them, all I could do was listen, which I guess was part of the point.

A few minutes after entering the gymnasium where the event was being held, the staff led the prison residents in. We learned through subsequent conversations with several of the residents that they had been told only that morning that they’d be allowed to interact with the guests, shake our hands, and sit with us throughout the event. That, in and of itself, was earth-shattering to some. Many of the women receive no regular visitors, and for those who do, the visits are often fraught with tension and dis-ease. For some, we were the first outsiders, except for prison staff, they had interacted with in years. One woman told me she couldn’t get over seeing all the clothes. Seeing people dressed up in professional or even casual attire beyond jeans and t-shirts captivated her.

I could tell from the bright smiles and friendly hellos that for most women, whether they were speakers or guests of speakers (each resident who spoke was allowed to invite one other resident to support her), they loved interacting with us. Some were, of course, shyer than others. While some, like the woman serving multiple life sentences for murdering her husband over twenty-five years ago, relished in the attention.

The Women and their Stories

By the time the talks began, I’d already learned that the residents had been preparing for this day for over a year. They applied almost eighteen months earlier, went through a selection process, and once chosen, were then coached on their five-to-10-minute speech. Or perhaps I should say, “performance.” In addition to standard speeches, we heard rap performances, spoken word poetry, a violin concerto, and songs.

Some women talked about the crime that got them there, like Ashleigh who, at age 17, described how she fell victim to a controlling boyfriend who encouraged her to kill her mother because she didn’t like them being together. “I’m my own person now,” she said. She no longer feels led by others. In prison, she learned who she is and how to stand up for herself.

Others talked about life in prison, like Kelley, who goes by “Turtle.” She shared a poetic speech about memories she’d created in many of the rooms of the prison. She shared how her daughter’s Girl Scout troop had come to the room we were in, the gymnasium, and how that allowed her to witness her daughter growing up. She described some of the many murals she’d been allowed the paint around the prison and how much it meant to her that little kids visiting their parent loved the “fishies” she painted on the visiting room wall.

Some talked about their involvement in recovery programs in prison, how they’d earned their GED or associate’s degree, or in some cases, even a masters. One became a certified optician and hopes to become licensed and open her own practice when she’s released.

Several talked about dog training. Women who participate in the dog training program at FCCW are taught how to train the dogs and the dogs, in turn, offer the trainers solace and companionship (the dogs even sleep in the women’s cells with them), in addition to teaching them about discipline and responsibility, something that many of the women hadn’t learned in their lives outside. For some women, the dog program is a life saver. One resident shared how she wants to become a professional dog trainer when she’s finally able to leave prison behind her.

Virginia abolished parole in 1995, so none of the women incarcerated after that are eligible for parole. They might receive 15% off their sentences for good behavior, but that is moot for someone with multiple life sentences. One woman, Jean, was 64 years old when she shot and killed her husband twenty years earlier while he sat in their living room. She said she’s being released in three years after serving a total of twenty-three of the twenty-eight-year sentence.

Senior citizens can apply for geriatric release if they are age 60+ with 10+ years served or 65+ with 5+ years served, which essentially means the Department of Corrections no longer has to pay for their care as they age in place. I don’t know on what basis Jean is being released, but she’s told us that she’s looking forward to spending time with her grand and great-grandchildren and learning how to use a smart phone.

At the other end of the spectrum, juvenile offenders tried as adults might also be considered for parole. Women who were juveniles when they were arrested were plentiful in the room with us that day. When I commented to one older woman about how moved I was by the presentations I’d heard so far, she said, “What till you hear the young ones. They’re coming up next.”

Sure enough. The “young ones”—one woman who was only thirteen when she committed the crime that got her there—spoke about what it was like to grow up in prison. Not surprisingly, we heard that many of their lives before prison included child sexual abuse, intimate partner violence (IPV), addiction, broken homes, gangs, mental illness, prostitution, and foster care. Some, if not all of these young women, never had a chance.

Sadly, prison life has provided them with more stability than they’d previously experienced. I don’t know what life on the other side will be like for those who get there. Getting out isn’t guaranteed. Less than 5% of people of all ages who apply for parole in Virginia each year receive it, so many of these women will live a good part, if not all, of the rest of their lives inside the walls of FCCW.

As I listened to the women’s stories, I was struck by how well each and every one of them presented. There was not a single “um” all day. I was also impressed with how confidently they engaged with the guests who had come to hear them. For people who have such limited interactions with strangers that was particularly remarkable.

Feeling Unsettled by their Crimes

As the day went on, there was something unnerving happening inside of me that I couldn’t put my finger on—something deeper in their stories and in my response to them. As I’ve reflected on it, I realized that it had to do with how sincerely I believe in people’s ability to change. After twenty years working in the addictions recovery field, I thought I could trust my honesty detector. I’ve listened to alcoholics who claimed to be sober only to discover they’d starting drinking again and addicts who insisted they were clean even when a drug test proved otherwise. Those experiences taught me to listen more to how something is being said than to the words being spoken.

After hearing so many wrenching stories, I found myself questioning which of these women had, in truth, turned their lives around. Could I trust what they said about who they had become in prison and that, if released, they would live crime-free lives?

My Unitarian Universalist faith calls me to affirm the inherent worth and dignity of every person. I’ve tried to live into that, even when confronted with a person whose actions are contemptible. But can I do it? Do I truly believe in every person’s inherent worth? Do I believe that someone who can do a despicable thing, like so many of these women have done, can change? Do I believe Bryan Stevenson, the founder of the Equal Justice Institute, who says that “each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done?”

I realized how unsettled I was with these questions when I returned home and spent the next day researching what got each of these women into prison in the first place. I read one tale of a women, Erin, now a published writer and award-winning poet who has already served 25 years of a life-without-parole (LWOP) sentence for killing her husband, ostensibly for his life insurance. I read about how another woman doused her husband in gasoline and set him on fire. Three of the speakers were part of a group of four who beat and killed a teenage friend of theirs just a few miles from my house. One participated in a drive-by shooting. Another in a gang-related shooting. A licensed attorney took hostage the managing partner of the law firm that had fired her, tortured him and his wife in their own home, and killed them both. In another crime against a former employer, a woman murdered a family of four who owned a restaurant from which she’d been fired. Another killed her thirteen-year-old special needs adopted daughter after abusing her for years. Two more killed children in their care. And the stories go on.

I stepped away from my computer feeling nauseous and uneasy. This is not what I thought I would learn. I found myself troubled by my own assumptions. I expected to discover that most of the women were acting in self-defense as victims of intimate partner violence (IPV). After all, isn’t response to abuse the primary reason women are driven to kill? I didn’t expect the viciousness with which many of these women attacked their victims.

At first glance, the White women seemed to have committed calculated crimes of passion, while the women of color were more prone to have been involved in other crimes that resulted in death. Were these my own biases creeping in or was this an indication of the role race plays in convictions and sentencing?

I sat with my wife and discussed my findings with her. She shared my surprise that many of the murders appeared premeditated, rather than the result of rage in the moment, as might be the case in response to abuse. We struggled with the tension between the victims’ suffering, their family’s losses, and the perpetrators’ inherent worth and dignity.

I decided that, before I could answer my question about whether I agreed with Bryan Stevenson, I needed to understand what the research actually shows about race and sentencing. This is what I found.

Research about the Role of Race

Research conducted by The Sentencing Project and the National Black Women’s Justice Project documents that the women incarcerated in state prisons don’t arrive there in equal numbers or under equal circumstances. Nationally, Black women are 50% more likely than White women to receive a LWOP sentence, and in states that have been willing to share their data, Black women represent more than half of all women serving life sentences.

Virginia locks up Black residents at 4.1 times the rate of White residents, and Black inmates are nearly twice as likely as White inmates to carry mandatory minimum sentence—the kind that eliminate judicial discretion and foreclose any possibility of mercy. Virginia didn’t share its gender- and race-disaggregated life without parole data with these national researchers, which means the full picture remains deliberately obscured.

According to the Prison Policy Initiative, Virginia’s incarceration rate of 115 women per 100,000 residents means that it incarcerates women at a higher rate than nearly every other country on the planet. Canada, for example, incarcerates women at a rate of only 15 per 100,000. The women bearing the heaviest weight of that distinction in the U.S. are disproportionately Black.

The results of my research raised another question entirely. Maybe the savagery I uncovered in the White women’s stories wasn’t a coincidence. Maybe it was a threshold.

Anything less than these gruesome crimes and the White women might have pleaded down, claimed self-defense, or walked. By virtue of their race and economic circumstances they could hire attorneys, rather than rely on overworked court-appointed ones. Those attorneys could present the perpetrators more sympathetically to juries who might feel less inclined to convict a White woman in the first place.

Women of color seldom have these options. Implicit racial bias sees them as guilty before they even present their case. Without, in many cases, the money to afford a good attorney or a quality education to help them know what they’re facing, BIPOC (Black, indigenous, people of color) women are less likely to succeed in court. At least four of the BIPOC women who gave TEDx talks were convicted of felony murder, where a death occurs during the commission of another felony, allowing a murder conviction without proving intent to kill. None of the White women received a felony murder conviction. What does this say about our justice system?

The ACLU of Louisiana reports that of 3,278 prisoners serving LWOP for nonviolent offenses, 79% were convicted of nonviolent, drug-related crimes such as possession or distribution, and 20% of nonviolent property crimes like theft. And in that nonviolent LWOP population, 65% are Black, 18% are White, and 16% are Latino.

This data did not surprise me. I’d studied it before. But the research took on new meaning when I applied to women I’d actually met in person. It caused me to question whether some of the BIPOC TEDx speakers deserved the harsh sentences they received, and whether White women are wandering the streets after getting away with their crimes. This is a scary prospect in both cases.

What this Day Taught Me

This day taught me more than I expected about myself and my prejudices. I’m grateful for that. The experience of meeting, hearing from, and reading about these women will stay with me for a long time. They’ve given me much to think about.

When I first posed the question about whether I believe Stevenson’s adage, I wasn’t sure of the answer. I’m still not. Do I believe that these women—the ones who set their husbands on fire, the ones who killed children, the ones who tortured and killed their employers—are more than the worst thing they've done? I don’t know. Do I believe in their inherent worth? I don’t know that either. The best I can say is that it’s complicated.

I do, however, believe that all women deserve a chance. Some of these women were caught in circumstances they didn’t have the resources, skills, or abilities to get out of it in any other way. Prison has strengthened them and given them the opportunity to be different people.

That’s why I firmly believe many women should have the right to prove themselves to a caring parole board. The 30 women who delivered flawless and impactful TEDx talks at this event are evidence of that. They’ve worked incredibly hard to get to this place and, whether or not I trust fully in their rehabilitation, I believe that, at the very least, they deserve to have a glimmer of hope in their lives—something to work toward.

I strongly support the return of parole to Virginia. This is only one step in reforming the justice system to ensure that all people are treated equally and fairly without discrimination. The women I met in FCCW deserve this. And I’m sure that many of the other 1,200 women incarcerated there and around the state deserve it, too.

Whether you share Bryan Stevenson's conviction or, like me, are still wrestling with it, what are you called to work on to support incarcerated people in your community? It’s a question these women deserve an answer to.

If you’d like to watch news coverage of the event, visit: CBS19 Charlottesville: TEDx At Fluvanna Correctional.

Yours in peace,

Annette

Leave a comment

Wendy and I joined them for part of that walk and met them again later that evening for a second, quieter encounter. The day unfolded as a kind of collective pause—not born of conflict or agitation, but shaped by intention, presence, and open-hearted attention. Peace in motion.

The walk is led by Venerable Bhikkhu Paññākāra, a senior Buddhist monastic whose vision for this pilgrimage goes well beyond symbolism. His leadership is grounded in the belief that peace is not merely an abstract ideal but a lived practice, one made visible through discipline and repetition. The nineteen monks embodied that conviction simply by walking, day after day, through towns and cities much like ours.

From the beginning, Venerable Paññākāra has encouraged the people they meet along the way to adopt a daily practice that centers peace in ordinary life. One of the simplest and most foundational instructions he offers is this: each morning, write the words “Today will be my peaceful day.” This exercise is not rhetorical. The writing itself—the movement of the hand, the shaping of the words, the intention behind them—invites mindfulness, compassion, and equanimity into the day ahead.

Walking with Intent

What distinguishes this pilgrimage from other public gatherings is not the length of the route—approximately 2,300 miles from Fort Worth, Texas, to Washington, D.C.—nor the number of days the monks have walked (108), but the quality of attention they bring to each step and ask others to bring to their own lives.

Walking is the medium of the message. According to the mission and vision of the Walk for Peace, this simple, universal act was chosen because walking transcends borders, cultures, religions, and ideologies. It symbolizes humility, equality, and shared humanity. Each step affirms nonviolence, compassion in motion, mindfulness, and responsibility for the world we share. Participants are invited not to debate peace, but to embody it.

Venerable Paññākāra has said that the walk itself does not create peace. Only the people they meet along the way can do that by choosing peace in their own hearts and actions.

The core values of the walk reflect this understanding: nonviolence in thought, word, and deed; compassion expressed through action; unity without requiring uniformity; mindful presence; and responsibility for one another, the environment, and future generations. Walking for peace is, at its heart, about turning intention into action.

A Different Kind of March

Richmond is no stranger to public demonstrations. In the past year alone, the city has hosted multiple No Kings and anti-ICE marches, many carrying legitimate demands for justice, free speech, humane treatment of immigrants, and other pressing concerns. I have participated in those marches. I have felt their urgency, their anger, and, at times, their desperation.

Although there was camaraderie among participants, the energy was often oppositional—focused on what we were resisting or demanding. Even when signs espousing violence toward the President or other leaders made me cringe, they did not stop me from leading chants of “No Justice, No Peace” as we marched in opposition to the current federal administration.

The Walk for Peace through Richmond was different. Not detached from reality but attuned to possibility. Walking with the monks felt like an invitation to notice something beyond reaction—to pay attention to what emerges when the posture is not resistance, but presence. I liked what that experience stirred in me.

Richmond’s Response

As Wendy and I walked with the procession from Manchester toward City Hall, the tone was unmistakable. There were no megaphones, no shouted demands, no sharp rhetoric. Instead, there were steady footsteps, quiet conversations, and genuine curiosity from people lining the sidewalks.

While waiting near a fire station where the monks had stopped for lunch, I struck up a conversation with five young adults standing nearby. They told me they were close friends—had been friends since middle school—and members of the same Unity church. They had come because they wanted to experience the feeling of peace the monks carried with them. They had participated in other marches, they said, but this one felt different. They were glad they were there.

I remember thinking what a gift it was for a group of young adults to experience peace not as an idea, but as a shared, embodied moment—perhaps in a way they hadn’t before.

As the walk continued downtown, people didn’t brace for confrontation, as is often the case at protests. They didn’t yell or jeer. They simply opened space in their routines to witness what was happening when peace became the public language. One participant held a sign that read, “We need this.” I couldn’t have agreed more.

The crowd grew as the monks approached City Hall. Estimates put the number of people who came out to witness the walk in the thousands. Local coverage described cheering, clapping, tears, and flowers offered along the route. Even Richmond police officers handed blossoms to the monks as they passed.

City leaders welcomed the monks at City Hall. Mayor Danny Avula and Governor Abigail Spanberger both spoke briefly, acknowledging the significance of the moment. Governor Spanberger issued the first gubernatorial proclamation of her administration, declaring it Walk for Peace Day in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

That proclamation framed the walk not as a fleeting event or political statement, but as an invitation—to practice peace intentionally and publicly, even in a time of fragmentation. As the Governor observed, “Peace is a daily practice that begins within and radiates outward to families, communities, and nations.”

Presence on Lombardy Street

Later that afternoon, Wendy and I crossed the city ahead of the monks so she could photograph them in front of the school where she works as librarian. When we met them again on Lombardy Street, the mood was quieter but no less intentional. Familiar faces, including some of Wendy’s coworkers, had gathered. People spoke softly, gestured kindly, and paused as the procession passed.

There was no momentum toward conflict—only toward calm. Strangers exchanged small, neighborly greetings. It was a form of togetherness that didn’t require agreement on any issue, only a shared willingness to be present and peaceful. In a season when public life so often fractures along hard lines, that felt remarkable.

Walking the Talk

This walk was not a momentary diversion. Its values echo through every community it touches. By emphasizing nonviolence, compassion, unity, and mindful presence, the monks invite people of all backgrounds to consider peace not as a slogan, but as a way of living. Their intention is not to convert anyone to a particular faith or ideology, but to remind us that peace begins within each person and radiates outward.

As we walked that afternoon, I kept returning to Venerable Paññākāra’s daily practice: “Today will be my peaceful day.” The instruction is disarmingly simple. Yet it carries weight. It reminds us that peace is a choice we make as the day unfolds, not something that appears only after conflict has been resolved.

Peace took to the streets of Richmond on February 2. It arrived on foot, without demand or decree. It moved at a steady pace, teaching what it means to show up, to witness, and to let presence become a public posture. Now that the monks have reached our nation’s capital for their final two days of events, I find myself wondering how this experience might shape the way I show up in the future.

The Walk for Peace has caused me to rethink the energy I bring—and encourage others to bring—to public demonstrations. I’m curious to discover where this reflection leads as I suit up for the next protest march.

Could that, too, be a walk for peace?

For more about the monks, their journey, and their vision of peace, visit Walk For Peace.

Yours in peace,

Annette

Leave a comment

According to the festival’s website:

The Cape Fear Women’s Birding Festival is designed to bring together women birders in a safe and supportive environment. Our goal is to provide a space for beginning birders to develop field identification and bird photography skills, and to allow women birders of all skill levels to meet each other, share information, discuss equipment and trips, and explore the diverse and majestic avian ecology of the lower Cape Fear region.

To be honest, we didn’t know what to expect. We had our pre-conceived notions, of course. The attendees would be retired, sporting gray hair and khaki pants, wearing wide-brimmed sun hats with hair pulled back in a ponytail or braid, a pair of binoculars glued to their eyes, and a well-worn field guide bulging from a jacket pocket. They would be able to identify the most obscure bird by its call a hundred yards away and have no time or patience for amateurs.

Of course, except for having my hair pulled back (it’s too short for that) and being able to identify bird calls at any distance, that description would fit me on a lot of days. Oh, and replace the binoculars with a camera and a long lens. Then it’s me.

But were we ever wrong!

This festival drew women from various age groups, professions, and interests. Some were beginners like us and others were champion birders. Several professional photographers joined other hobbyists like me to discuss ideas for capturing the perfect bird photograph.

Even though we knew our bird identification skills would never rise to the level of some of these women, we loved their passion. And the best part? Despite the constant rain, drizzle, and otherwise unpleasant weather, no one complained. People just donned their raincoats, covered up their cameras, and went out in search of birds.

We had such a good time on this mid-winter escape that when the opportunity came up to go again, we jumped on it. Unfortunately, when we registered last summer, we didn’t think about the fact that it would be inauguration weekend for Virginia’s first female governor, Abigail Spanberger. We regretted missing that, but with a promise of better weather than last year, we looked forward to the weekend.

And it did not disappoint. We gathered at a seaside resort on Wrightsville Beach for the opening session. One hundred and fifty women birders all in one place! The birds didn’t have a chance. We later learned that only twenty-five had returned from last year, so this was a relatively new crop of birders, mostly hailing from the Carolinas and Virginia, but some from farther away. And they were ready!

On Friday evening, two presenters regaled us with tales of hummingbirds and coastal birds. Did you know that people actually band those little hummingbirds so other people who study them can identify a previously banded bird and learn something about their travels? They’ve even starting to outfit them with tiny radio transmitters so scientists can track their migrations and habits. Mind-blowing!

The most useful and surprising thing I learned is that the birds I would have previously grouped together as shorebirds or water birds fall into several broad categories, referred to, in scientific terminology, as the Order—large groupings based on evolutional relationships (the birds listed here frequent the Atlantic Coast. Depending on where you live, you might have different examples):

• Shorebirds (Waders), such as Sanderling, Ruddy Turnstone, Black-bellied and Semipalmated Plover and American Oystercatcher. They’re the ones you see running along beaches and probing mudflats.

• Seabirds, such as Laughing Gull, Herring Gull, Great Black-backed Gull, Ring-billed Gull, Common Tern, Brown Pelican, and Black Skimmer. Seabirds (notice I never said, “seagull,” that’s the surest sign of an amateur! No bird is a seagull. Sorry, Jonathan!). Seabirds feed mostly offshore but gather near beaches, piers, and inlets.

• Wading Birds. These are the Herons (Great Blue, Tri-colored, Green, and Little Blue), Egrets (Great and Snowy), Ibises (Glossy and White), and Spoonbills. (Roseate). These are the strikingly tall birds you see stalking fish and crabs in shallow water, especially salt marsh creeks, lagoons, and tidal pools.

• Waterfowl, such as American Black Duck, Red-breasted Merganser, and Black Scooter. You usually see waterfowl in bays, sounds, inlets, nearshore water diving for their food.

• Marsh Birds, such as Clapper, King, and Virginia Rail, Common Gallinule, Seaside and Nelson’s Sparrow, and Marsh Wren. These are secretive birds (and so are prime targets for birders to add to their life lists), who live deep in salt-marsh grasses.

• Coastal Raptors, such as Osprey, Bald Eagle, Peregrine Falcon, Northern Harrier, and Red-tailed Hawk. You’ll find them soaring in the sky or hanging out in dunes, coastal forests, marsh edges, and on bridges and powerlines.

I doubt I’ll ever learn to reliably distinguish a Laughing Gull from a Herring Gull or a Snowy Egret from a White Ibis without the aid of Merlin Bird ID, but knowing the category (Order) they fall into helps me to feel a little less ignorant when I have them sighted through my camera lens.

Enjoy these photos from the weekend.

Many of the women at the Birding Festival can hear a sound and instantly tell you what it is—not just the Order, but all the way down through the Family and Genus, to the specific Species. They will call it out as if they just won at Bingo. “Bingo! That’s a Yellow-rumped Warbler!” Bingo! That’s a Black-crowned Night Heron! “Bingo! That’s a Sharp-shinned Hawk!”

The best I could do was look where they pointed and try to distinguish the bird from the foliage or other birds that surrounded it. This is one that stood out.

The Power and Peril of How We Sort

This trip got me thinking about the usefulness of categories—about how humans gravitate toward categorizing things. Humans categorize because it’s how the brain manages complexity. Categorization not only reduces complexity, it supports our learning, and helps us make decisions efficiently.

In the case of birds, it helps us learn about a particular species and how it differs from another species. Through categorization, we can recognize patterns and even predict behavior and characteristics. Once you recognize something as a “bird,” you already know it likely flies, has feathers, and lays eggs. Knowing what species of bird it is, tells you even more about its nesting habits, food preferences, and how they rear their young.

Categorization also helps us distinguish predator from prey and know if we’re in a safe or unsafe environment. A male Northern Cardinal, with its bright red plumage, is easily identified by a Red-tailed Hawk, and therefore knows to hide when a hawk is heard or seen nearby. Categories turn a messy world into patterns that can be understood, shared, and acted upon.

What happens, though, when we apply categories to humans? It doesn’t matter if you’re from Somalia, Mexico, the Philippines, or Canada, if you prefer hamburgers or dal, if you wear flannel shirts or kimono, if your skin is midnight dark or porcelain white, or if you speak Russian, Swahili, or K’iche’, humans around the globe are all one species: Homo sapiens. Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and bonobos (Pan paniscus) come close, sharing 98-99% of our DNA, but they are not Homo sapiens.

I’ve discovered that I have more Neanderthal DNA than 94% of 23andMe genetic testing customers, but that’s still less than 2%. Homo neanderthalensis lived in Europe and western Asia until about 40,000 years ago and interbred with early modern humans, but they were not Homo sapiens.

Throughout the course of human history—about 192,000 years—117 billion Homo sapiens have been born and 109 billon have died. That leaves 8.3 billion (8,300,000,000) of us who are still alive at this moment. And, unlike birds, WE ARE ALL ONE SPECIES. Despite this, we often treat others who are different from us, who are outside our experience, as another species that we have to protect ourselves from. We categorize the unfamiliar as dangerous and build stories about why.

Challenging a Myopic World View

As I learned more about birds, I began to ponder what birds had to teach us humans about categories and differences. This led me to wonder what the most common bird species in the world today is. Surely, it’s the House Sparrow or European Starling, I mused. They’re all over my yard, attacking my favorite Eastern Bluebirds, scarfing up seeds like there’s a BOGO sale at Wild Birds Unlimited, and bullying every other bird species they encounter.

What I discovered, however, is that I had once again fallen victim to a myopic world view. These are the birds I know, the ones I see every day—so of course I assumed they must rule the skies around the world.

Because one of my personal commitments to anti-racism/anti-oppression work is to challenge my limited perspective, what I learned after researching the question didn’t exactly shock me, but it did delight me. Are you ready? The most common wild bird species in the world (excluding the domestic chicken) is one I’d never even heard of—and I’m guessing you haven’t either: the Red-billed Quelea.

A member of the weaver family (Ploceidae) found in sub-Saharan Africa, the Quelea form enormous flocks that feed mainly on grass seeds, sometimes devastating crops like millet. I’ve never seen a Quelea. They don’t frequent my neighborhood. And yet they exist in the billions. Audubon estimates that about 1.5 billion Quelea are alive today—roughly one Quelea for every 5.5 Homo sapiens on the planet.

Because I had never heard of the Quelea, I felt confident the birds in my backyard must dominate the planet. How often do I do the same with people—assuming the small patch of world I inhabit is the whole map?

As I watched YouTube videos of millions of Quelea descending on a field or outsmarting a predator, I caught myself thinking about how easily we humans decide what we think we know about people we’ve never met.

I see this instinct everywhere—in how we talk about immigrants and refugees, in the shorthand we use for people who vote differently than we do, worship differently than we do, or come from places we’ve never visited. It’s tempting to let a headline, a preconception, or a stereotype stand in for millions of complex lives. I do it too, catching myself forming opinions long before I’ve done the slower work of listening and learning about people’s experiences, motivations, and cultural expressions.

What might change if we approached unfamiliar people the way birders approach an unfamiliar species—not with fear, but with curiosity and patience?

What if, instead of shouting Bingo, we paused long enough to admit we don’t yet know what we’re looking at, but commit ourselves to finding out?

Maybe my real work is remembering how often I’ve been wrong before—and letting that humility open the door to seeing birds and humans more clearly next time. Will you join me?

Yours in hope,

Annette

Leave a comment

I’ve since learned about Keith “Pooter” Porter, killed in Los Angeles on New Year’s Eve by an off-duty ICE agent. I’ve also heard about others who were shot but survived—Luis David Nico Moncada and Yorlenys Betzabeth Zambrano-Contreras, shot in Portland this past week, and Marimar Martínez, a U.S. citizen, shot five times by a U.S. Border Patrol in Chicago in October.

Ms. Good’s death was not an anomaly. It was part of a campaign of sanctioned aggression by federal officers against anyone who opposes them. Even though I believe this to be true, I can’t be certain that all of these people were innocent victims. I don’t have enough information to know. What I do know is that the Department of Justice ultimately dismissed all charges against Ms. Martinez and Anthony Santos Ruiz, who was in the car with her. That says a lot.

I also know that the various videos I’ve watched about Ms. Good’s shooting have led me to believe, based on what I can see with my untrained eye, that she was pulling away from, not toward, the ICE officer. I also know that ICE officers have no authority to pull someone over for anything except immigration enforcement. But I don’t know if I’ve seen all the evidence. And that really is the point. Jumping to conclusions before a thorough investigation by local and state law enforcement working with federal officials has been conducted puts us all on a dangerous path (for more about ICE’s authority, read this excellent analysis from former law enforcement officer, Kramer Hammy posted by ).

It is up to us to demand that every case is exhaustively investigated, that the evidence is released to the public, and that those responsible are held accountable. Every time. And it is up to us to call out officials who try to sway public opinion, who defend their officers without considering the evidence, and who draw conclusions before these investigations happen.

That’s what I meant when I ended my last post by saying “we will be fighting for you.” After reading that post, several readers then asked: what does fighting actually look like?

Let me start by saying that I’m sorry I used the word “fighting.” I abhor the use of violent language to convey a nonviolent message, and yet, it’s so easy to fall into using war language that describes what we’re up against. However, we are not at war, as much as those on the far right like to make us believe. Instead, we are in an existential moral and ethical struggle to determine who we are as human beings, how we treat each other, and what our obligations as members of civil society are.

Gandhi described it as Satyagraha (sa-riagr-ahhuh) - meaning “truth-force” or “soul-force,” emphasizing moral power rather than physical coercion. In Gandhi words:

I believe that no government can exist for a single moment without the co-operation of the people, willing or forced, and if people suddenly withdraw their co-operation in every detail, the government will come to a standstill.

It is our responsibility to ensure that the truth is ultimately told in every case and that our government is as committed to this truth as we are. For that to happen, we need to demand that the government work with, not against, the people.

This is a guide for responding when federal agents kill someone in this country. In Chicago. In Texas. In Los Angeles. In Minneapolis. Or in your community.

Because it keeps happening.

And we need to learn strategies that motivate us to show up even when the victim doesn’t look like us or live near us. We also need to learn sustainable strategies that don’t have us living in a state of constant outrage or hiding in our beds because we can’t face it.

The Real Pattern We Need to Disrupt

The Trace is now tracking shootings connected to immigration enforcement. As of this writing, there have been at least four deaths in five months. How many more will there be by the time you read this?

The pattern isn’t just the killings. It’s our selective attention. It’s the way some names trend while others disappear. It’s the way we demand accountability in one case while ignoring similar cases elsewhere.

If we’re going to challenge this violence, we have to speak up for all of the victims. That means building habits of response that aren’t dependent on whether the death happened in our state or whether the victim’s story resonates with us personally.

Build a Practice of Accountability

This is the hard part. We can’t sustain outrage for every injustice. But we can build a response practice that doesn’t require peak emotional activation when an incident happens to have impact.

Here’s what one example of a sustained response could look like (Note: it is only one example. You might already be involved with others. If you are, I hope you will share them in Comments).

1. Track what’s happening

• Follow The Trace’s reporting on ICE-related shootings

• Set up Google alerts for “ICE shooting” and “CBP shooting”

• Identify and get on the mailing list for immigrant rights organizations in your state

• When you hear the name of someone who’s been shot, learn their story— who they were, not just how they died

• Find out where detention centers (List of ICE Detention Facilities) are in your state. (Note: local jails are also regularly used for immigrant detention) and learn about conditions there and any protests or others actions being help there.

2. Know how to reach your US Representative and Senators

You can look them up here, if you don’t already have their numbers in your contacts: https://www.congress.gov/members. Congress might seem powerless, but I’m not ready to count them out yet. They’re starting to resist and that resistance is getting stronger every day. By calling your legislators, even those who agree with you, you are giving them your support and that matters.

Find out which committees your legislators serve on. If they sit on any of these committees, your voice carries extra weight:

• House Judiciary Committee

• Senate Judiciary Committee

• House Committee on Homeland Security

• Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs

What to say: Don’t just express outrage. Make specific asks. Below are some ideas, but craft your own message. You can also download the 5 Calls app for suggestions.

“I’m a constituent calling to urge [Representative/Senator Name] to demand:

1. Congressional hearings on the use of deadly force by ICE and CBP agents

2. Independent federal investigation of all deaths and shootings involving immigration enforcement

3. Public release of body camera footage in all cases where federal agents kill civilians

4. A public accounting of every death and shooting involving ICE and CBP agents, including names and circumstances

5. Policy reform requiring de-escalation training and restricting use of deadly force”

3. Make it routine

Set a monthly reminder to check The Trace’s tracker. If there’s been a new death, make calls to your legislators. Track which representatives respond and which ignore you. Vote and organize accordingly.

This isn’t about staying perpetually outraged. It’s about building a habit of demanding accountability that doesn’t depend on our emotional responses to a particular incident.

4. Support the Long-Term Work

Your financial support matters. Consider monthly giving of whatever you can sustain. $10/month to three organizations signals you’re in this for the long haul. Organizations can plan around sustained funding in ways they can’t with crisis donations.

National organizations doing accountability work:

• The Trace - tracking gun violence in ICE operations

• American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) - immigrants’ rights division

• The Marshall Project - nonprofit journalism about criminal justice

• National Immigration Law Center – advancing immigrant rights

• Southern Poverty Law Center – immigrant justice program

If You Have Particular Skills

You’re a journalist:

• Cover every death, not just the ones that trend. Keep names in circulation past the first news cycle

• Push for FOIA requests on use of force policies

• Educate readers about the role of ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) and what authority they do or do not have

• Connect harmed families with legal resources

You’re a lawyer:

• Offer pro bono work with immigrant rights organizations

• Initiate FOIA requests in your jurisdiction

• Connect with organizations challenging ICE and CBP practices

• Know the civil rights attorneys doing this work and support them

You’re in education:

• Teach about this, being mindful of changing policies in your district. Connect current events to civil rights history. Use my previous piece if it’s helpful

• Pay attention to student behaviors, especially after highly-charged national incidents, that might indicate the need for counseling support to sustain or restore their wellbeing

You work in healthcare:

• Make an extra effort to connect with and reassure immigrant patients who are afraid in the current climate

• Document injuries from enforcement actions

• Know your rights when treating undocumented patients and connect with organizations conducting “know your rights” training to help educate others

You work in tech:

• Support secure communication for organizers and legal observers, especially helping them learn to use secure tools and apps

• Help organizations build their digital infrastructure so they can effectively get the word out to their constituents

• Be thoughtful about what tools and data you build or provide to law enforcement

• Educate the public about how privacy is being exploited by law enforcement and what the risks are

You’re a photographer, videographer, writer, or artist:

• Document enforcement actions in your community

• Create work that humanizes victims, not just their deaths

• Support legal observers with your skills

• Write or create art the connects with others and encourages their involvement in resistance efforts

Do what you can but do something

Pick one thing from this list. Just ONE. Do it this week. Then decide if you’ll do it again next week.

• Pick 2-3 organizations to support monthly

• Set one recurring reminder to check for new deaths and make calls

• Choose one skill you have and offer it to one organization

AND/OR

• Support someone else who’s involved with resistance (cook them dinner, send an encouraging message). A friend of mine who’s visiting Minneapolis watched the kids of a local organizer so they could attend the vigil/protest on the night of Good’s death. How might you support other activists?

The goal isn’t martyrdom. It’s sustainability. Take care of yourself so you don’t burn out before the long fight ahead. Process your own grief and anger in therapy, with friends, through art. Get out in nature and let it heal you. Remember that it’s OK to laugh. People who burn out in the first month, don’t help anyone in in the next.

What Remembering Actually Requires

I wrote about remembering names in The road to freedom is littered with bodies. Here’s what that means in practice:

• Say the names of those killed out loud: Silverio Villegas González (9/12/2025), Keith “Pooter” Porter (12/31/2025), Renee Nicole Good (1/7/2026)

• Mark anniversaries of their deaths, the deaths of Civil Rights Movement veterans and those killed by law enforcement. Put these dates and others that call to you on your calendar and make a note of them to friends or in your faith community. Light a candle. Say a prayer. Here are a few historical anniversaries to get you started:

  • Emmett Till – 8/28/1955

  • James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner – 6/21/65

  • Jimmie Lee Jackson – 2/18/1965

  • James Reeb - 3/8/1965

  • Viola Liuzzo – 3/25/1965

  • Martin Luther King, Jr. – 4/4/1968

  • George Floyd – 5/25/2020

• Support families of those killed when funds are established

• Push back against the erasure that happens when some deaths trend and others don’t

Remembering is part of accountability too. You can’t demand justice for people you’ve already forgotten.

The Long View

Lynda Blackmon Lowery marched at fourteen and kept fighting until she died at seventy-five. JoAnne Bland is still fighting today, sixty years later. This work is measured in decades.

Our outrage right now matters. But it will fade - that’s how human emotions work. What can we build in response to the outrage instead? Habits, commitments, monthly donations, routine calls, sustained pressure.

The federal government is counting on our attention span being short. They’re counting on us forgetting Silverio Villegas González’s name or Renee Good’s story by the time the next person is killed. They’re counting on geographic distance and demographic difference keeping us from connecting the dots.

Let’s prove them wrong.

We’re not starting from scratch. People like Viola Liuzzo and Jimmie Lee Jackson and James Reeb already showed us what the cost of justice is. People like Lynda Blackmon Lowery showed us it requires showing up again and again, for years, for decades.

It’s our turn to exert our moral authority in the spirit of Satyagraha.

What are you going to do this week? Share in the comments what action you’re committing to. Whose name are you going to remember?

Leave a comment

When Lynda Blackmon Lowery, author of Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom, shared her motivation for wanting to go on the march, she wrote:

I wanted to go and show George Wallace what he had done to me. I wanted him to see my swollen face and my bandaged head. I wanted to let him know that he wasn’t going to do that to me ever again.

I had the honor of knowing Ms. Lowery, as part of my work with the Living Legacy Project, an organization I co-founded and recently retired from, that teaches Civil Rights Movement history by taking people to the places where these stories happened.

Each time I met Ms. Lowery and her younger sister, JoAnne Bland, who was also on the Edmund Pettus Bridge that day, they greeted me like a long-lost friend. Their warmth and welcome inspired me long before I heard them recount their stories from that fateful day to a new group of pilgrims we brought to meet them.

Ms. Blackmon Lowery died on December 24^th, 2025, a life cut short by illness at just 75 years old (“Civil Rights icon remembered in Selma”). But her contributions to the most effective civil rights campaign in US history will not be forgotten, partly because of the work of her sister in the creation of Foot Soldiers Park, an organization whose mission is to “honor our civil rights past by fighting for Selma’s future.”

Martyrs of the Voting Rights Campaign

People died in the fight for voting rights. Alabama State Police shot and killed Jimmie Lee Jackson, a young Black man from nearby Marion, Alabama, on February 18, 1965. His murder was, in fact, a major catalyst for the Selma to Montgomery March. Organizers wanted to deliver Mr. Jackson’s body to Governor George Wallace, just like Ms. Blackmon Lowery wanted to deliver herself.

On March 9^th, two days after the event known as Bloody Sunday when Ms. Lowery was beaten, several local White men attacked three White Unitarian Universalist ministers, James Reeb, Clark Olsen, and Orloff Miller. A couple of days after the attack, Rev. Reeb died from his injuries.

A few days after Rev. Reeb’s death, President Lyndon B. Johnson delivered a historic nationally televised address to a joint session of Congress, presenting the Voting Rights Act. He invoked Reeb’s memory and the “outrage of Selma,” declaring the right to vote as fundamental to American democracy and calling for immediate legislative action.

On the day that the historic march reached Montgomery, Viola Liuzzo, a White civil rights volunteer from Detroit who had been shuttling marchers between Montgomery and Selma, was shot and killed by Ku Klux Klan members on Route 80. Within 24 hours of her murder, President Johnson went on television to announce the arrests of KKK members responsible for the attack and demand an immediate Congressional investigation of the KKK. Ms. Liuzzo’s murder also moved Johnson to petition Congress to expand the Federal Conspiracy Act of 1870 to make murder of civil rights activists a federal crime.

However, the FBI, under the leadership of J. Edgar Hoover, actively worked to turn the American public against her.

The FBI criticized Ms. Liuzzo’s involvement in Selma, saying she was “out of her place” and should have stayed home with her children. As a result of the FBI’s smear campaign, including insinuating that she only went to Selma to meet men, a Ladies’ Home Journal survey showed that only 26 percent of readers approved of Mrs. Liuzzo’s mission in Selma. Her husband Jim and the children became victims as well, besieged with hate mail and phone threats.

Liuzzo’s children, who I also have the honor of knowing, were threatened and taunted, and a cross was burned on their lawn, prompting the need for round-the-clock guard for the next several years. Investigations indicate that the FBI smeared Ms. Liuzzo to deflect attention from the fact that an FBI informant, Gary Rowe, was in the car with her killers, and there’s a strong indication that he might have been the shooter.

For more about Ms. Liuzzo’s murder and subsequent smear campaign read From Selma to Sorrow, The Life and Death of Viola Liuzzo and watch the documentary, Home of the Brave).

History Repeats Itself

And that brings us to today. On January 7, 2026, Renee Nicole Macklin Good, a 37-year-old mother to a six-year-old boy, was shot and killed by ICE agents in Minneapolis, a few blocks from her home and less than a mile from where George Floyd was killed by police in 2020.

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem is calling Wednesday’s fatal shooting involving a federal agent self-defense against “an act of domestic terrorism. Ms. Good is being described by the FBI as a terrorist who set out to kill ICE agents. All indications are that this wife, mother, writer, and poet, did nothing of the sort (“Renee Nicole Good, murdered by ICE, was a prize-winning poet. Here’s that poem”). She attended the protest as a legal observer, who was probably terrified by the aggressive actions of the Federal agents, and reacted by trying to drive away. Yet, she’s being smeared by the same government agency that smeared Viola Liuzzo some sixty years earlier.

In order to control their warped narrative, today’s FBI has cut off The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA), the agency whose job it is to investigate this death. The BCA has been informed that they will no longer be part of the joint investigation (“BCA cut off from shooting investigation; agency ‘reluctantly’ withdraws”).

Governor Tim Walz has said they will seek accountability and justice.

From here on, I have a very simple message: We do not need any further help from the federal government,” Walz said. “To Donald Trump and Kristi Noem: You’ve done enough.

The question is if anyone will listen.

One in a growing line

It’s important to note that Ms. Good is not the first person killed by ICE in the past year. According to The Marshall Project, federal officers have fatally shot at least three other people in the last five months.

In September, Silverio Villegas González, a father originally from Mexico who worked as a cook, was killed while reportedly trying to flee from officers in a Chicago suburb. In December, a border patrol agent killed a 31-year-old Mexican citizen while trying to detain him in Rio Grande City, Texas. And on New Year’s Eve, an off-duty ICE agent used his service weapon to shoot a man in Los Angeles, California, according to CBS News. Authorities said the man had raised a rifle at the officer.

Why don’t we know their names and their stories? Could it be that they were all immigrants and not considered worthy of news coverage? Just as Jimmie Lee Jackson’s murder by State Police brought little public attention, and it wasn’t until the murder of James Reeb, a White minister, that the President decided to act, are we repeating the familiar narrative that it takes the killing of a White person for outrage to surface?

The assassination of Ms. Good and the smear campaign to discredit her is beyond reprehensible. We have a responsibility to be outraged and demand accountability. But let’s also call government officials to account for all the deaths that have occurred under their watch. Most news stories don’t even report the names of some of these victims.

TheTrace.org investigates gun violence in America and is now tracking gun incidents connected to the current immigration crackdown. You can read their report and stay up-to-date here: How Many People Have Been Shot in ICE Raids? I encourage you to donate to support their work, as I’ve done.

No human life is less or more valuable than another, whether it’s National Guard troops who were ordered to occupy Washington DC, an undocumented immigrant in Chicago, Texas, or Los Angeles, or a White poet from Minneapolis.

Let’s remember all their names. Let’s honor the tremendous sacrifices of people like Lynda Blackmon Lowery and JoAnne Bland, who have dedicated their lives to making sure we remember the Selma story, by ensuring that today’s victims are not forgotten and that Federal officials and law enforcement agents are held accountable.

Rest in peace, Renee Nicole Good, Silverio Villegas González, and those whose names we have yet to learn. We will be fighting for you.

Leave a comment

My Top Five Six

In previous years, selecting my top five books of the year presented a quandary for me. Because I wasn’t reading as much as I wanted, I had a limited number of books to choose from. In fact, last year, I disappointed even myself by not creating a year-end list.

This year, retirement has blessed me with considerably more time to read. In the five pre-retirement months of 2025, I completed only three or four books, and they were mostly work-related. In the seven months since retirement, I’ve finished over twenty—a delightful mixture of novels, memoir, and nonfiction. I feel blessed by the gift of reading retirement has afforded me.

In today’s post, I’ll highlight the five, well, OK, six books that topped my list and comment on a number of others that are worth a look.

You’ll find all the books in Annette’s Wanderings Bookshop.org bookstore (Disclosure: I am an affiliate of Bookshop.org and I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. Please support independent bookstores).

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

Gail Honeyman

No question that this is my favorite book of the year—maybe of the decade. Full disclosure: I listened to it rather than read it, and I highly recommend the audio version. The narrator is outstanding. It’s laugh-out-loud funny and, at the same time, will probably cause a few tears to roll down your cheeks. Don’t let this one sit too long in your TBR (to-be-read) pile.

Song in a Weary Throat: Memoir of an American Pilgrimage

Pauli Murray

When I first learned about Pauli Murray (1920–1985)—lawyer, priest, poet, and activist—and began to explore her life, I was stunned. Her lifelong fight for civil rights and human dignity rivals that of any major social justice leader of the past century, leaving me wondering how I’d never heard of her. Dr. Murray lived an extraordinary life whose impact continues to resonate today. Though the memoir is long, it is well worth the commitment.

The Great Alone

Kristin Hannah

My wife Wendy and I traveled to Alaska this summer to celebrate our 15th wedding anniversary, my 70th birthday, and my retirement. This was the book I read on the flight home, and I’m so glad I did. Hannah’s gripping story of a family seeking a fresh start in the harsh Alaskan wilderness tests both the bonds of love and the limits of survival. I loved it not only for her vivid evocation of places we had just visited, but also because, as in all her books, she writes straight to the heart.

The Nightingale

Kristin Hannah

After finishing The Great Alone, I looked for what I hadn’t yet read by Kristin Hannah and chose this World War II novel centered on two French sisters whose divergent paths—one focused on survival, the other on resistance—reveal the extraordinary courage of women in wartime. The novel offers a sobering lens on contemporary attacks on immigrants and challenged me to reflect on my own role as a resister. Would I have the courage to do what these sisters did?

The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World

Robin Wall Kimmerer

I loved Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass, so I knew I would love this reflection on the humble serviceberry, a tree I recently planted in our back yard. This lyrical exploration of reciprocity, ecology, and the economics of generosity, uses the serviceberry as an entry point into rethinking our relationship with the natural world. It’s a quick read, but one that caused me contemplate my own relationship with possessions and how I might better share the things I have.

Searching for Solid Ground: A Memoir

Reggie Harris

Full disclosure, the author of this book, Reggie Harris, is a dear friend of mine. However, even if he wasn’t, I would be including this as one of my favorite books for 2025 because, like Harris, I love the power of music to inspire change. I’ve studied it in the Civil Rights Movement, witnessed its power in protest movements, and been inspired by it in my own life as an activist. Harris does a fabulous job of weaving his story through music, activism, and racial justice work. This is well worth a read.

Other Notable Books

So, those are my top six. I hope you pick a couple of them to dig into in 2026. I also enjoyed a number of other books this year, which I’ve noted below (in alpha order by title).

Some of these books fall outside my usual reading genres, chosen either to support authors I know or because I served as moderator for James River Writers events, where those authors were speaking. That role has consistently pushed me to read beyond my comfort zone—and I’m often surprised and delighted by the results.

All Creation Waits: The Advent Mystery of New Beginnings

Gayle Boss

My wife and I read a story from this book at dinner each day in December and enjoyed every one. In this book, you’ll embrace the ancient wisdom of Advent through the extraordinary lives of 25 northern hemisphere animals as they prepare for winter. It’s a wonderful gift for people of all ages, including yourself!

America the Beautiful?

Blythe Roberson

In this humorous, sharp-eyed road-trip memoir, the Blythe Roberson examines American landscapes, politics, and identity while traveling cross-country in a borrowed Prius. I always love a good travel narrative, especially one that travels to places I know.

As You Wish

Nashae Jones

This is a warm, character-driven contemporary YA novel by a local Richmond author about unexpected romance, self-discovery, and the courage required to embrace the life one truly wants.

The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times

Jane Goodall and Douglas Abrams

I began following the work of Jane Goodall when she first appeared in National Geographic magazine in the early 1960s. In honor of her passing in October 2025, Wendy and I listened to this interview-based book about how hope can be cultivated even amid climate crisis, social upheaval, and personal despair. It’s a little long but a great way to renew your spirit when hope feels far away.

Culpability (Oprah’s Book Club)

Bruce Holsinger

This literary thriller by the first author I’ve known who’s had an Oprah Book Club pick, delves into ethical considerations of AI and how it might impact our daily lives, including the lives of our those we love. It explores interesting questions about families, relationships, and technology. Certainly timely.

The Drive in ’65: An Epic Road Trip. A Journey of Discovery

Sandra Lynne Reed

What can I say—another travel narrative! In 1965, two sisters from Alaska pack up their five children and their mother-eight people in a nine-passenger van and travel North America for fourteen weeks. My family traveled to a lot of the same places in the 60s, so I loved how this book sparked my own memories.

The Girls Are Never Gone

Sarah Glenn Marsh

A supernatural YA thriller in which a teen podcaster investigates a supposedly haunted house while confronting grief, friendship, and the thin line between truth and legend. This novel, by a local Richmond author who relishes ghost stories, had me believing!

The Jackpot

David Kazzie

In this thriller by another local Richmond author, an ordinary man wins the lottery and is immediately swept into chaos involving criminals, bad luck, and the unforeseen costs of sudden wealth. This book is much too violent for my taste but definitely got me thinking about that it might mean to win the lottery.

Lies About My Family

Amy Hoffman

This memoir, by one of my former writing mentors, weaves personal history, queer identity, and family mythologies into a witty, reflective narrative about what it means to belong. It’s a powerful read, especially for anyone contemplating writing a family memoir.

Look Away No More

Carol Owens Campbell

In this novel of manners and war, passion and first love, decorum and protests, based in the 1970s, Tally McCall, a sorority girl and history scholar in Georgia is searching for purpose in a troubled world. I’m fairly ignorant of the sorority scene so much of this felt like exploring another culture, but it’s an interesting journey of a young girl looking beyond sorority life.

Magic Hour

Kristin Hannah

This novel about a feral child found in the wilderness and the psychologist who must uncover her story forces a family to confront loss, hope, and redemption. Another Kristin Hannah novel. Not my favorite, but I’ve talked with others who loved it.

On Tyranny

Timothy Snyder

On Tyranny is a call to arms and a guide to resistance, with invaluable ideas for how we can preserve our freedoms in the uncertain years to come. What more can I say? A necessary read for these times.

Paper Girl: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America

Beth Macy

In this intimate blend of memoir and reportage, and Barack Obama’s top pick of 2025, Beth Macy returns to her Ohio hometown to examine how economic decline, the loss of local journalism, and political polarization have reshaped the community that once sustained her. I’m still reading this one but plan to finish it before the end of the year.

Rehearsal for Reconstruction: Port Royal Experiment

Willie Lee Rose

This historical account of the Port Royal Experiment, the attempt at reconstruction that occurred in the Sea Islands of South Carolina during the beginning of the American Civil War, focuses on a woman I’ve studied and might still write about, Laura M. Towne, the founder of the first school for freed people during the war.

Spying on the South: An Odyssey Across the American Divide

Tony Horwitz

A fascinating narrative nonfiction travelogue retracing Frederick Law Olmsted’s journeys through the American South, blending humor, history, and sharp cultural observation. I liked this more than I thought I would.

Tall Water

S.J. Sindu

A reflective graphic novel exploring identity, family, and love against a backdrop of shifting cultural expectations, following characters whose lives intersect around long-held secrets. I struggle reading graphic novels but will remember this one.

This Tender Land

William Kent Krueger

A Depression-era odyssey following four orphans who escape a cruel boarding school and journey downriver, encountering danger and grace as they search for belonging and freedom. Touching story.

Winter Garden

Kristin Hannah

A dual-timeline family drama in which two adult sisters uncover their mother’s harrowing past in wartime Russia, learning how stories—told and untold—shape love and resilience. Another Hannah book that friends loved more than I did, but still good.

The Women

Kristin Hannah

Set during the Vietnam War, The Women follows a young nurse whose service in Vietnam profoundly shapes her identity, friendships, and understanding of courage. This is gruesome in parts, but I found the gore necessary to get a glimpse of these amazing women.

I left off a couple books that I didn’t think were worth sharing (don’t you want to know which ones?), but I included everything else, even if I didn’t love it.

I appreciate the friends and family members who recommend books to me, especially my brother, Jarrett, who’s a voracious reader, my librarian wife Wendy, and my librarian friend, Charlotte D. It always pays to make friends with big readers, librarians, writers, and bookstore owners! In fact, the most effective marketing of any book is from recommendations from others who’ve read it.

What did you read that you loved this year? And feel free to include my memoir, Living Into the Truth: A Daughter’s Journey of Discovery in your list! LOL!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Leave a comment

Which raises a question I’ve been sitting with for a while now: If I’m not writing regularly, am I still a writer?

Over those two and a half years, I serialized two memoirs on Substack, Accidental Mentors: Inspirational Stories of Women Who Shaped My Life by Just Being Themselves, and Living Into the Truth: A Daughter’s Journey of Discovery (which I’ve since published in print and e-book formats), and published one inspirational series: Thirty Days of Hope, one beloved (at least by me) short-story, “A Big Job for a Little Bear,” and a fair number of posts on other topics, including in my Wandering WordsWomen series.

All that being said, in the twenty-seven weeks since I officially retired from paid employment, I’ve published to Substack only once every three weeks on average—a far cry from my pre‑retirement pace.

There’s no question that this new freedom has pulled me away from my laptop. I’ve been on the road about a quarter of that time, including long trips to Alaska and Northern Michigan. I’ve taken a digital photography class, which taught me more about F-stops and ISO than I will ever master, but it was still fun. I’ve read almost twenty books (look for my 2025 Review of Books coming before the end of the year).

I’ve streamed TV shows, movies, and YouTube videos with abandon (purchasing YouTube Premium is the best investment in all of the streaming world, in my opinion), played video games, and struggled to complete the daily NYT word puzzles and weekly news quiz. I’ve attended plays and concerts, including the Richmond Folk Festival. I’ve participated in protests, called my legislators, and hosted election postcard parties. I taught a virtual class about self-publishing and moderated a writing panel on setting as character.

I’ve studied Spanish on Duolingo. I’ve gone out to lunch with friends. I’ve spent a little (probably far too little) time working in the garden. My wife and I decorated for the holidays (inside and out) and even decorated for Halloween—a first for us! And I’ve stepped up my cooking contributions to the household, preparing dinner three times per week (give or take), a task akin to extracting my own teeth with a pair of rusty pliers.

When I’ve spent time with my laptop, it’s often been consumed with learning the newly-free photo editing, drawing, and layout software, Affinity by Canva. It’s the hardest software I’ve pushed myself to learn in a long time and, for anyone who knows me, you know that’s saying a lot. It’s not because it’s badly designed software, but because it’s so powerful. Affinity feeds my budding interest in graphic design and, at the same time, supports my self-publishing and photography goals, so it’s worth it. But there is a lot to learn!

The question persists: Does all this mean I’m no longer a writer?

Is my commitment to writing, to engaging with my 500-plus Substack subscribers and to creating original work melting with the rare snow that blanketed my home in the Virginia Piedmont over this past week?

My answer is a clear and emphatic no!

To begin with, my social circle and volunteer activities are richer because they’re filled with writers. I love spending time with writers, reading about writers, and thinking about writing. Writing is not only something I do at a keyboard; it’s a way I move through the world.

I also firmly believe that writing and supporting writers is an act of resistance. Writers keep ideas and culture alive outside corporate and government interests. Writing strengthens people’s ability to think critically, question power, and imagine alternatives.

By supporting independent voices, we preserve truth, memory, and civic engagement in ways that those with wealth and power depend on suppressing. That’s why I include writing and building writers community on my list of ways I’m fighting against this increasingly authoritarian political climate.

Completing what I started

When people ask me what I’m doing in my retirement, I usually begin by listing the writing projects that hold prominent places in my plans. In fact, my wife Wendy and I have dubbed 2026 the “Year of Completion,” a year focused on completing writing projects we’ve started over the past few years. Here’s my list:

• Publishing Accidental Mentors: Inspirational Stories of Women Who Shaped My Life by Just Being Themselves

• Re-publishing my out-of-print title, Resistance, with new content about protest actions and other forms of resistance in the current political climate

• Publishing the story of Earth Bear: A Big Job for a Little Bear

• Publishing a Thirty Days of Hope inspirational book

• Offering one or two virtual seminars on the process of self-publishing

In addition to my own projects, I’ve promised to help Wendy design and prepare a poetry manuscript of hers for publication.

It’s an ambitious list, but most of the content for all these projects is already drafted. However, they all need editing, revising, expanding, permissions, layout, photo editing, cover designs, promotion, etc. These tasks are different from creating brand‑new content, but they are very much part of the writing life.

I still worry if my paid Substack subscribers are getting what they paid for

About 10% of my Substack subscribers have chosen to be paid subscribers, a gift for which I’m profoundly, and humbly, grateful.

Still, during this slower posting period, I’ve wrestled with questions of value. I’ve felt pressure to produce, as if subscribers might be calculating the cost per newsletter to decide whether their investment is worthwhile. In a time of rising prices, growing layoffs, and other fiscal challenges, I get it.

But writing this post clarified something important for me. My paid subscribers aren’t paying for my individuals posts, or at least, I hope you’re not.

I’m not an independent reporter/journalist like with almost 200,000 subscribers or an historian like Heather Cox Richardson, with—and I’m not exaggerating—millions of subscribers. My newsletter is not designed to be a news outlet, a skills course, or anything else that one might typically invest in. My purpose hasn’t changed since I began:

I write about the things I love, including travel, nature, connecting with others, and things I’m trying to understand better, especially those that will make the world a better place.

I don’t put paywalls on my posts that limit what you can access. Whether you’re a paid subscriber or not, you have access to the same content.

So why be a paid subscribers at all?

Paid subscribers are, in effect, my sponsors. Much like an advance from a traditional publisher, your support helps cover the real, upfront costs of independent publishing, including:

• My website hosting and maintenance (WordsWomenPress.com)

• Book design software (such as Atticus.io)

• Cover design support

• Editing and proofreading

• ISBNs and barcodes

• Aggregator fees

• Expanded distribution fees

• Advanced reader copy production

• Ads and other promotional activities

• Book launch events

• Business licenses and legal fees

• Bookkeeping software

• And many other necessary expenses

Not very glamorous stuff but essential for any author who is publishing their own books. In a perfect world, an author might make these costs back through books sales, but the reality is that a typical self-published book sells 100–250 copies in its lifetime. With consistent marketing, authors can reach 250–1,000 or, in some cases, more copies. However, even with robust books sales, a book, whether it’s independently or traditionally published, rarely pay for itself. That’s simply the economic truth of publishing.

So why publish at all, especially as an independent publisher?

I have three reasons that push me to pursue these independent book projects:

1. Without independent publishing, our reading choices would rest almost entirely in the hands of the Big Five publishers—large corporations that decide which voices reach the public. I deeply value a free and diverse press and refuse to surrender that power to a small group of gatekeepers.

2. I value having creative license to create the books I imagine on a timeline that suits my needs. It pleases me to have full authority over content, cover design, title, pricing, and release schedule.

3. I want my words out in the world, now and after I’m gone. If even a handful of people find inspiration in them, the work that went into them is worth it.

Your valued support

If you’re not yet a paid subscriber and feel like this is the kind of work you’d like to support, I’d love to have your sponsorship ($5/month or $45 per year). In addition to knowing that you’re supporting independent publishing, paid subscribers receive:

• E-book copies of any or all of my published books (if paying monthly, after you’ve paid for a year), and

• One hour of virtual consultation per year on writing memoir, using Substack, self-publishing, or anything else I know something about I can help with.

In addition, premium sponsors ($155 per year) receive two additional hours of virtual consultation per year.

Subscribe now

If you’re already a paid subscriber, and you haven’t received these perks, email me at annette@annettemarquis.com, let me know what help you’re interested in, and, if it’s something I’m knowledgeable about, I’ll be sure you receive it.

I hope you know that your investment has been put to good use and will be invaluable going into 2026, my “Year of Completion!” Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Convincing you or myself?

When I started this post, I wanted to convince you that I’m still a writer, even though I haven’t posted or written much lately. I also wanted to document that I was providing value for my paid subscribers. I now realize that the real goal was to convince myself on both points. I’ve succeeded in that. I hope you agree.

If you’re also a writer, what are you working on in 2026? I’d welcome hearing about your plans, including links to any books, stories, etc., you have already published, your Substack, and/or website.

If writing is not your thing, what is one goal you have for new year that you might want to share with the world?

Next week, I’ll share what I read in 2025 and make a few recommendations for your TBR (To Be Read) list! Keep your eyes out for that!

Thanks for reading and for loving writers!

Leave a comment

As many of you know, my wife, Wendy is also a writer. She’s a poet who is challenging herself to delve into prose with her Substack newsletter, Furrow and Fire. I encourage you to check out her posts. She’s a wonderful writer that infuses all she writes with her poetic sensibilities.

This week, we both decided to write about embracing darkness, an appropriate theme for this time of year. I thought you might enjoy reading her reflections as well as mine. We even quoted the same Paul Simon song. Bet you can guess which one!

Here’s Wendy’s post:

Furrow and Fire

Taking Time to Dwell in a Deeper Dark this Winter

My earliest memories of darkness spark with fear and wonder…

Read more

6 months ago · 1 like · 1 comment · Wendy DeGroat

And here’s mine.

Hello, Darkness, My Old Friend

Visiting Alaska this summer taught me to appreciate the night in a way I never had before. That’s because it didn’t get dark. Not really. The sun would slip behind the horizon but, even at 2 in the morning, it would feel more like perpetual dusk. I know that because I looked. In Anchorage, when I got up in the middle of the night to make a bathroom run, I peeked out the window from behind the blackout shades. In Denali, Wendy and I started a two-hour hike at 9:30 pm.

In Talkeetna, I convinced Wendy to take a walk around town at 12:30 am—just to bathe in perpetual light.

Russians call this phenomenon Belye Nochi, or White Nights, when the sun lingers near the horizon through late spring and early summer, leaving the nights washed in twilight instead of darkness.

But what surprised me most, wandering through that endless twilight, was how much I missed darkness. I missed the relief I feel when I step outside into a dark night—relief from visual stimuli, harsh sunlight, and the heat of a summer’s day. Darkness offers a pause between days that includes both a sense of safety and mystery signaling us to rest, reflect, and dream. Until the Alaska trip, I didn’t know how much I hungered for that.

As I write this, except for a few places that don’t embrace Daylight Savings time, most of America has slipped back into standard time. Tonight, darkness will settle in by 5:30 or so here in Virginia, and each day until the winter solstice on December 21, mornings will brighten a little later and evenings darken a little sooner. We’ll lose nearly two minutes of daylight each day until the Earth’s steady orbit turns the Northern Hemisphere back toward the sun again. That’s a day I look forward to every year.

Maybe after my time in Alaska, though, I’ll come to cherish this season of darkness in a whole new way. I already love walking beneath a full moon, when the trees shimmer in silver light and the path ahead glows just enough to guide me forward. I love scouting for nocturnal creatures slipping from their hidden shelters, drawn by hunger or curiosity, into the soft mystery of the night. And I love the way a cool breeze brushes my skin, offering gentle relief from the heavy breath of a Virginia summer.

After experiencing several weeks of endless light, I’ve come to see that darkness, too, is part of the Earth’s rhythm—a necessary counterbalance, reminding us that rest and renewal require their own kind of illumination. In that rhythm, I find a quiet lesson about balance, about learning to welcome both the brilliance that reveals and the shadow that restores.

Wanting to honor my newfound appreciation for darkness, I looked for a way to celebrate it back home. That’s why I surprised my wife Wendy by offering to decorate for Halloween this year. She was elated at the prospect, as Halloween is one of her favorite holidays. We kept it simple, just a few witches in our yard and spider webs on our door, but it was enough to bring us into the spirit.

I even donned a witch costume and cast my own shadow on the earth. Spooky!

But light and dark don’t stay in perfect balance for long. Even though the light slowly returns by January and February, it’s then that I have to guard myself against the pull of seasonal depression. The short, cold, colorless days can close in around me like the long shadow of winter itself.

Last February, I escaped to St. Petersburg, Florida, imagining sunny afternoons outdoors with good friends—shedding winter layers, breathing in semi-tropical air, and taking slow walks with my camera to capture birds and other creatures, who like me are drawn to the sun. But the weather had other plans. When I later noticed that all the photos I took were of what we ate and drank, I had to laugh. So much for my search for warmth and light. Still, maybe that’s the lesson winter keeps offering—that light isn’t always something to find outside ourselves, but something we learn to kindle within.

I know I have work to do to embrace winter in all its forms. Almost twenty years ago, I moved back to the South from Michigan, so I no longer had to, in the words of an old friend, “shovel my weather.” And yes, it’s much warmer here in south-central Virginia than it ever was in Traverse City, when those winter winds came howling off Lake Michigan and straight through me.

But I still shiver when the temperature gets much below 60 degrees, and that adds to my distaste for the winter months. I’m hopeful that by embracing the darkness, I’ll find ways to stay warm, reflective, and joy-filled this winter. That’s my plan, anyway. I’ll let you know how it goes.

One more thought. Do you think it’s cheating on my commitment to embrace winter if I just scheduled a February trip to Puerto Rico for Carnaval Ponceño? I’m interested in your opinions!

Leave a comment

Its mix of beaches, marshes, forests, and wetlands supports over 400 species year-round and many more during migration season. In addition, Monarch butterflies gather in Cape May on their extraordinary migration to Mexico. Combined with favorable coastal winds and many designated viewing sites, such as the Hawk Watch Platform at Cape May Point State Park, it offers unmatched opportunities to witness massive migrations.

Let me be clear, though, Wendy and I do not consider ourselves “birders.” We don’t maintain life lists or travel great distances to see a particular bird, and, quite frankly, neither of us is very good at identifying birds, by sight or by sound. However, we do gravitate toward birding events, are fascinated by the lives of birds, feed birds in our backyard, and participate in eBird, the Cornell backyard bird count. To most outside observers, we are birders. We’re just not very good at it. At least, I’m not.

I do love photographing birds, however. Sadly, I’m also not very good at that either, although I’m getting better, and I have gotten lucky a few times and captured some beauties, like this bluebird I captured through my study window a couple of years ago.

Unfortunately, the winds were not in our favor during our visit to Cape May. The weather was beautiful, 65-75 degrees, sunny skies, and calm winds. Birds and butterflies, we learned, are not too keen on making the 17-mile long flight from Cape May to Lewes, Delaware, without the wind at their backs. In fact, one of the naturalists we talked with said that the more experienced birds skip Cape May entirely, preferring land routes over the Appalachians to the more treacherous sea crossing. Make sense to me!

Still, according to BirdCast.info, 28.5 million birds have crossed at Cape May so far this autumn. From American Redstarts to Warblers, Indigo Buntings, and raptors of all kinds, birds are on the move.

October 8th, just a few days after we left Cape May, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, using the US weather surveillance radar network between sunset to sunrise, reported the highest night of bird migration it had ever recorded: 1.25 billion birds had migrated across the Eastern and Central US! 1.25 BILLION birds in one night!

If you’re interested, you can enter your county and state in the Migration Dashboard on Birdcast.info to see how many birds are flying over your head tonight. Chances are you won’t see any of them in the sky. Most fly at night almost two miles above our heads.

Flying from 15 to 600 hundred miles per day, depending on the species and the conditions, they take advantage of colder air temperatures, which reduce the danger of overheating and allow birds to fly further without having to stop and cool down. And, dark skies tend to hold fewer predators, although today’s increasing light pollution seriously impacts migration patterns and safety.

Regardless of whether I see them, knowing they are there gives me hope for the world. Granted, bird populations have declined significantly in the last fifty years. According to a Cornell Chronicle report from 2019,

If you were alive in 1970, more than 1 in 4 birds in the U.S. and Canada have disappeared within your lifetime.

Habitat loss, destruction of native plant habitats, free-roaming cats, collisions with buildings and glass, pesticides reducing insect prey, power-line/tower/wind-turbine impacts, and other causes seriously impact bird populations.

And, still, birds haven’t given up. They still mate, reproduce, and go on about their lives no matter what we throw at them. They are intrepid (mostly) little creatures.

Here are a few actions we can take that will help protect birds in our neighborhoods:

• Keep cats indoors.

• Grow native plants.

• Avoid pesticides and herbicides.

• Apply decals, patterns, or screens to large windows.

• Turn off night-time lights during migration seasons.

• Reduce plastic use and pollution.

• Participate in citizen science projects like eBird or Project FeederWatch.

• Support bird conservation organizations.

• Advocate for habitat protection and environmental policies.

For more about steps you can take to mitigate bird loss, read more about the study and ways we all can help Bring Birds Back.

Birding for a Better World

While in Cape May, we visited Barrier Island Books & Art, a funky new and used bookstore right across the street from Dockside Dave’s Seafood Market, where Wendy devoured her birthday lobster roll and I joined in with a delicious crab roll. Not surprisingly, the bookstore had a lot of books about birding. However, Wendy was surprised to see one written by one of her work colleagues, Peter Cashwell, The Verb To Bird.

Two other bird books caught my attention, The Feminist Book Club’s Birding for a Better World: A Guide to Finding Joy and Community in Nature by Molly Adams and Sydney Golden Anderson and Birding to Change the World: A Memoir by Trish O’Kane. I had to buy them both!

In this tumultuous, destructive, unethical, violent time, I need birds. I need birds for solace, for humor, for beauty, and for inspiration. Learning that others had used their love of birds to augment and support their commitments to social justice gave me all the permission I needed to embrace my identity as a birder.

Adams formed the Feminist Bird Club in 2016 in order to:

Make birding and the outdoors inclusive and affirming to people who may not have safe access to it, and leverage people’s passion for the environment and social justice to help create lasting social change.

In Birding for a Better World, Adams and Anderson close each chapter with a writing prompt to help readers think more deeply about their experiences with nature and how they are formed by these experiences. For example, readers are encouraged to reflect on the following:

What terms or concepts are important to you when you envision worlds more just, livable, connected, and joyful? Define them here. We’d love to learn how you define better futures for everyone.

Page 28

And this one:

Locate yourself within the complex network of life. Where are you? Who came before you? Who are your teachers (human and nonhuman)?

Page 124

In a few short years, Feminist Bird Clubs have sprung up in cities across North America and in the United Kingdom, including one in my town of Richmond, Virginia. I’m excited to go birding with a diverse group of socially conscience people from my community. I’ll let you know how it goes.

You can find out if there’s a chapter near you at this link: https://www.feministbirdclub.org/chapters-and-sibling-clubs. If you don’t find one, I’m sure they’ll help you form your own.

In Birding to Change the World: A Memoir, author O’Kane shares how birds who showed up after their home was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina gave her hope and inspired her to become a passionate birder, community organizer, and environmental educator. I haven’t finished this one yet but I’m enjoying it so far.

We all have a lot to learn from these beautiful, flighty creatures. I hope you’ll join me in appreciating all that birds have to offer us.

One more tip, if you don’t know about the app, Merlin Bird ID, I strongly encourage you to install it on your phone. In addition to offering a ton of info about birds and how to identify them, you can turn on the recorder and let it tell you what birds are singing in your backyard, in your local park, or while traveling to far away places. It’s an incredible free tool (although if you can, it’s great if you can donate to the Cornell Lab. They do an awesome job!) that will amaze and delight you. At least it does me!

Bird photos I love

I didn’t have much success photographing birds in Cape May. So, with the exception of this first one, I’ll share a few of my favorite bird photos with you from our trip to Alaska earlier this year.

I hope you take the time to enjoy the birds in your community. They have a lot to teach us, while at the same time, bringing relief from stress and occupation with the state of the world.

Happy birding!

Leave a comment

Why do I feel more positive about Davis v. Ermold? First, there’s no disagreement among lower courts about Obergefell v. Hodges. In addition, Kim Davis’s petition centers on a procedural issue rather than the constitutionality of same-sex marriage itself. And finally, even Justices Thomas and Alito, who wrote in 2020 that Obergefell created “a problem” for people with religious objections, stopped short of calling for it to be overturned outright.

However, it’s also true that, according to the Movement Advancement Project, twenty-four (24) states still have both statutory and constitutional amendment bans on same-sex marriage, three (3) states have constitutional amendment bans only, and five (5) states have statutory (i.e., legislative) bans only. That’s thirty-two (32) states that, if given their druthers, would ban our marriage.

Only nineteen (19) states, (plus D.C.) have affirmatively codified marriage equality in state law or their state constitution as of today: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington.

These numbers don’t make me feel safe. They don’t reassure me that, in this political climate, our marriage will stand. We once thought Roe was settled law, too. But instead, the Court ruled in 2022 that “the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives.” Is that’s what’s in the cards for Obergefell? And, even if we’re somehow immune to changes in the law because we’re already married, will future generations have the freedom to love that we currently enjoy?

If your state is not listed above as already safe, I encourage you to join with organizations such as the National LGBTQ Task Force and the Human Rights Campaign who are demanding that same-sex marriage be codified before it’s too late. And yes, that includes Wendy’s and my home state of Virginia. In the words of Urvashi Vaid who’s been called “the most prolific LGBTQ organizer in history, “There are things to do.” And I’d add, “It’s time to do them!”

If you’re looking for inspiration, watch this new, short documentary about Urvashi Vaid: https://www.therearethingstodo.com/

In the meantime, I want to share with you a story that happened eleven years ago today, October 7, 2014, when marriage equality came to Virginia. If you’ve read my memoir, Living Into The Truth: A Daughter’s Journey of Discovery, you’ll be familiar with this piece. If you haven’t read it, I hope you enjoy this slightly modified excerpt (you can purchase the full memoir wherever books are sold).

Closet—Do Not Enter

Wandering through the cluttered aisles of an antique mall I almost never visited, my phone lit up. A text from my friend Jeanne burst onto the screen in all caps: “THE SUPREME COURT JUST LET IT STAND—SAME-SEX MARRIAGE IS LEGAL IN VIRGINIA!” For a moment, the world around me froze. Over the past decade, one state after another had opened the door to marriage equality, but Wendy and I had promised each other we’d wait until we could marry right here, in our home state. We hadn’t expected that day to come anytime soon. And yet, there it was—history, glowing in the palm of my hand.

As soon as I heard the news, and before I could chicken out, I called Wendy at work—not something I often did, especially around lunch time. As a high school librarian, she usually had a library full of students and no time to talk. I thought she might make an exception for this call, though. When she picked up the phone, the impatience in her voice told me that I’d better get right to it, so I did.

“You wanna get married in the morning?” I asked with an impish lilt.

Her pause was palpable as she digested my out-of-the-blue question. The library sounds muted for an instant. I felt my heart skip a beat.

“Yes!” she said, her enthusiasm unmistakable. “Oh, my God! I can’t believe it!” Her words spilled out in a rush as if she’d been holding her breath. “But I gotta go,” she continued. I could hear students’ animated voices rising in the background. “We’ll talk when I get home.” And with that, the line went dead.

I stared at the phone in my hand, my face reflecting back on the now black screen. The person I saw there was no longer a secretive, closeted young woman afraid of exposing herself to the world. Instead, I saw a confident, almost-60-year-old lesbian who refused to let others define her or be influenced by their judgements.

My parents taught me how to live in the closet by their example. Their secrets about their children’s parentage and the shame surrounding it instilled in me the feeling that I couldn’t live my life in the open, that hiding my true self, especially those parts that others might object to, was a prerequisite to a happy, or at least safe, life.

All that was behind me now. I could no longer keep my secrets, and I would no longer keep theirs. When I met Wendy in 2009 and we fell in love, all pretense was gone. She lived her life out in the open—at work, with her parents, her church community, and her extended family. Even if I was inclined to return to the closet, which I wasn’t, we made a mutual decision to live our life as publicly as we could. Wendy has too much integrity to cover up who she is, and when we became a couple, we celebrated it with all who knew us, regardless of how they felt about our love.

Less than two years after meeting, we did what was unthinkable for most of my life—we held a church wedding. With the brief exception of sitting around a campfire at my friends’ ceremony in Long Island many years before where I imagined the two parts of me—the visible and the closeted parts reuniting into one being who lived and loved openly—marriage, especially legal marriage, was never in my vision for myself. Why wish for something I couldn’t have? But even more central was the question that had driven so much of my life: why stand out, why show people who I was in such a visible way, especially because they might not like it?

Although I had been out at work and in my public life for fifteen or more years at that point, standing and declaring my love in front of a church filled with people still seemed a step too far. All that changed when I met Wendy. I finally felt ready to take that next step, or, in this case, giant leap, into married life.

Our wedding represented so much more than the typical commitment ceremony. The 150 people in attendance included Wendy’s family, her parents, brother, aunts, and cousins and the largest gathering of my family ever assembled, with my brother, nephews and nieces, and cousins on my mom’s side who I hadn’t seen in years. My work colleagues from as far away as Seattle and Wendy’s from across town came to celebrate with us, and of course, several church friends from our Unitarian Universalist congregation where we held the wedding joined us.

The ceremony and reception that followed was a public statement that our love could not be denied by anyone, legally or not. It was an affirmation of the community that held us, and it was a call to them to help us survive the inevitable discrimination and prejudice we would experience in our lives together. In lieu of wedding presents, we asked guests to donate to Equality Virginia or the Gay Community Center of Richmond (Now Diversity Richmond) raising over $6,000 for these two organizations. We wanted to help make it possible for all people, not just us, to celebrate their love. Little did we know that four years later, the world would tilt on its axis, and marriage equality would be available to us in Virginia.

Making It Legal

When we approached the Henrico County Clerk’s office the morning after my romantic lunchtime proposal to apply for a marriage license, we had no idea what to expect. We arrived before they opened and waited in the parking lot for a few minutes before excitement and nervousness got the better of us. Surprised to find the county administration building open and people already passing through security, we took our place in line. No one entering looked like a gay or lesbian couple on a similar mission. We were the first and only. At least as far as we could tell.

As we reached the clerk’s office on the second floor, Wendy and I looked at each other and smiled before Wendy pulled the door open.

“We’re here to apply for a marriage license,” one of us—I don’t remember which one—said to the woman behind the counter.

“Fill out those forms,” she replied, pointing to a table with pink and blue forms secured on various colored clipboards. “It doesn’t matter which one you complete. Either color will work,” she went on. I could see the smirk on Wendy’s face and feel the one on my own.

Being the butchier of the two of us, and because I’ve never liked pink, I picked up a clipboard with a blue form. Wendy, who loves pink, gravitated to that one.

The office had gotten a little busier in the few minutes it took us to complete the forms, so as we approached the counter again, this time with forms in hand, we waited behind someone dressed in a suit, probably an attorney. When he completed his business, we handed our pink and blue forms to the clerk. She accepted them without a smile, and I wondered how she felt about this new wrinkle to her work, specifically, how she felt about same sex couples getting married. I couldn’t help it. I’d spent a lifetime wondering how people perceived me—judged me—and just because I lived my life out in the open now, didn’t mean that worry disappeared.

For the next several minutes, we waited while she attempted, with wrinkled brow and pursed lips, to plug our information into their computer system. Two other women hovered over her shoulder, watching her every keystroke. Perceiving our apprehension, one of them attempted to reassure us, “The computers haven’t been updated yet, and we have to cover for her when she goes to lunch, so we have to know what to do.”

We nodded. So maybe the stress-filled faces were just that—people trying to figure out how to do their jobs now that they were being asked to do something new. That’s what I wanted to believe.

When the clerk finally handed us our license, she didn’t say congratulations. In fact, she didn’t say anything. Wendy took the license, and we turned to leave—Wendy to her left toward the door we came in and me, for some unexplained reason, to my right. As I approached the door in front of me and reached for the handle, I stopped short. Printed in bold letters at about eye level were the words, “CLOSET” and beneath that “DO NOT ENTER.” Without skipping a beat, I said, apparently loudly enough that others heard, “Whoops, wrong door. I just came out of there.”

People burst out laughing. From the resolute businesspeople in line to the harried clerks behind the counter, people laughed. We did too. The tension that permeated the room just moments before broke apart as if a glitter bomb had exploded above us and rained down on everyone.

We left the building still laughing, our eyes wet, knowing that on their first full day of granting same-sex marriage licenses in Virginia, the staff at the clerk’s office would have a story to tell around the dinner table that night.

“That’s going to be something they’ll remember,” one man shouted across the parking lot as he waved his hand at us.

I was glad to bring other people joy on our joyous day!

An hour later, we stood in the botanical garden we loved, illuminated by late-morning light spilling through the trees. Six dear friends surrounded us—one smiling from an iPad—and in just six minutes, it was done. It felt as if our church wedding four years earlier had paused mid-vow, and this was the moment we finally finished it.

This time, when we kissed, the light that bathed us seemed to stretch far beyond the Commonwealth of Virginia—reaching toward every place where love still waited to be recognized.

Leave a comment

If you missed them, you can read prior posts here:

Note: if your email provider truncates this message, just click the link at the bottom of the message to read the dramatic conclusion!

On my first camping trip, the nuns at my Catholic boarding school took the junior and senior classes to a nearby farm. I remember the campfire, the guitar strumming, and the big tents packed with rowdy teenage girls. I loved being out in nature and especially loved being away from dorm life. I knew camping would become part of my future. I just didn’t know how.

In college, my first girlfriend and I went camping numerous times at, among other places, Hocking Hills State Park in Logan, Ohio. By then we had our own gear, though I don’t remember the details—only how much I loved sleeping outdoors. We hiked from the campground to Old Man’s Cave then on to Cedar Falls and finally to Ash Cave before returning to camp. Hiking what is now known as the Grandma Gatewood Trail (named in 1981, after native-Ohioan and the first solo female thru-hiker of the Appalachian Trail), we loved to explore the incredible formations we saw along the way: Devil Bathtub, Eagle Rock, Old Man’s Cave, Turtle Rock, and Sphinx Head, to name a few.

On one hike, we discovered a hidden waterfall and pool below the trail—a perfect hideaway for two teenage girls to swim in. Each visit to Hocking Hills meant returning to this secret sanctuary we liked to believe was ours alone.

In the 1980s, my life partner, Anne, and I camped regularly, including a memorable trip to Baxter State Park in Maine. It was a cool August night. Cuddled in our sleeping bags on the floor of our roomy four-person LL Bean tent, Anne had just dozed off when I saw flashing lights through the tent ceiling. “Northern Lights!” I shouted, jolting her from her slumber.

I scrambled out of my sleeping bag and dashed outside certain I’d see the Aurora Borealis. I looked up. I looked around. Clouds, illuminated only by a sliver of a moon, hung heavy over the trees. No other lights were visible in the night sky. I stood there in my pajamas deep in the Maine woods trying desperately to make sense of what I saw, or rather what I wasn’t seeing.

“It was a firefly,” Anne grumbled, as she stuck her head out of the door. “Caught between the rain fly and the tent. It was just a firefly.”

“What?” I shouted back at her. “A firefly? You gotta be kidding me.”

“No, you silly woman. Now come back to bed,” she said as she crawled back inside, her laughter muffled but obvious as I sheepishly skulked back into the tent.

I never lived that one down. And Anne and I never saw Northern Lights together. Years later, I stood in awe on my deck in Northern Michigan as the Aurora Borealis blanketed the sky. It looked nothing like a firefly.

As we got older and less agile, camping mostly meant one week a year at the Michigan Women’s Music Festival. Camping with thousands of lesbians in the Michigan woods made all the discomfort of sleeping on the ground more than worth it. Later we bought a pop-up camper with a softer mattress, and tent camping faded into memory.

In 2015, Wendy and I bought an egg camper, ‘Idgie,’ with a stove, fridge, and table/bed. By 2018, we upgraded to a sleek Winnebago Travato, complete with solar power, shower, and writing desk. Blissful but expensive, we adventured in “Wanda” (Wendy and Annette) three years before we sold her at the end of the pandemic for a surprising profit.

A Tent, Really?

So, with no van, no trailer, and new cars that couldn’t tow, what are outdoor lovers to do? Surprising to me and astonishing to some of our friends, the idea of tent camping resurfaced as an option. I don’t know which one of us brought it up, but soon, Wendy and I purchased a roomy tent big enough to hold both our cots and a little toilet for those middle-of-the-night emergencies. A tent would allow us opportunities to travel economically, enjoy campfires, and spend quiet times in the woods and on the beach together.

Our new roomy tent was perfect—until I tried setting it up alone. Smaller pop-up tents I tested were easier, but too low to crawl into and too small for a cot. I began exploring other options—state park cabins, KOA cabins, renting RVs, etc.—but the idea of tent camping kept nagging at me.

My friend, Sharon, a skilled world traveler and solo camper, pointed me to the NEMO Switch —a two-person tent that’s easy for one person to put up, (almost) tall enough to stand in, a wide and tall door to get in and out, and a surface area big enough for my cot and toilet. I fell in love! She even found a “pristine” model online for half the regular price (I later discovered that Nemo doesn’t sell it anymore, so, sadly, if you’re tempted, buying it used appears the only way to get one).

I spent the next couple of weeks assembling the rest of my camping gear: cooler, tarp, cot, sleeping pad, sleeping bag, pillow, telescoping tarp poles, camp chair, kitchen and fire accessories, and all the other basics to stay warm and comfortable out in the wild!

Setting Out!

When I set off on my 3-4 week adventure on September 1, I felt confident that I had everything I needed to camp and, should I choose to do so, could make this work. I hoped! But I figured the worst thing that could happen is that, if I couldn’t handle it, I’d throw everything back in my car and check into the nearest hotel. It didn’t seem too big a risk.

After my exploratory drive through Pennsylvania and Ohio (see my September 18^th post, Reflections on America’s History, for more about this), and spending time with friends in Ann Arbor and Jackson, Michigan, I headed north into the Michigan woods. I still didn’t know where I’d end up, or if I even had a modicum of the nerve it would take to attempt real, live camping. As I pushed into what is affectionately known to Michiganders as “The Tip of the Mitt,” I knew I had to try—even if only for one night. But where?

Because I’d never spent much time on the Lake Huron side of the “mitten,” I decided that that’s where I wanted to end up. I quickly discovered, however, that two state park campgrounds in northeastern Michigan were closed for renovation. That was almost enough to dissuade me from camping at all, but I pressed on.

Google Maps reminded me of a campground I’d heard about years ago, back in my RV camping years, which sounded intriguing. With a mile of Lake Huron shoreline, two hundred acres of woods, a well-equipped park store, bathrooms, beautiful views, and only five minutes to Mackinaw City, Mackinaw Mill Creek Camping, offered everything I needed for a safe, low-risk, camping experience. I smiled when I read on their website, “We even have sites for those just wanting to pitch a tent.” That’s me!

Picking a camp site is always part of the adventure. With over 300 sites and most of them spoken for, it took a while to identify a site that would work for someone “just wanting to pitch a tent.” I wasn’t thrilled with the site itself, but I couldn’t complain. First, it had electricity so I could plug in my extension cord and surge suppressor to easily charge my devices. Secondly, and even more importantly, it was only a short walk to the Lake Huron shore, visible from my site through the trees.

I pulled into my site, took a deep breath, opened the backseat door, and began to unpack. A picnic table provided a perfect surface to lay everything out. Mimicking an instructional YouTube video I’d watched, I dropped the tent bag on the ground and got to work.

Because the poles were color-coded and the tent attached to them without having to thread them into tent sleeves, the tent frame went up in just a few minutes. Even positioning and securing the rainfly posed no real challenge. I hammered the tent stakes into the ground making it appear like I knew what I was doing. In fact, I even assured a woman in a large fifth-wheel across the way who offered her help that I was fine. Thank you very much.

Then I was stumped. How do I get two telescoping poles attached to the tent’s long awning to stand up on their own? I struggled with the poles unsuccessfully for a few minutes before flopping down into my camp chair defeated. That’s when I saw two neatly wrapped guy lines next to the tent bag, which after emptying, I’d placed back on the picnic table.

Although I didn’t know how they would help or what to do with them, I figured they must be the answer. And they were. After some fiddling, the poles finally stood tall and I felt triumphant. I’d done it!

Now all I had to do was cook dinner over a Bunsen burner, make a campfire, and, when the stars blanketed the sky, crawl into my cozy sleeping bag (laying on top of two pads--one inflatable and one cushy—on my elevated cot!).

For three nights, I slept comfortably and warm in my great tent, enjoyed roaring campfires, woke up to stunning sunrises, and took peaceful walks on the quite Lake Huron shore (except Saturday night when the Annual Richard Crane Memorial Truck Show held their famous Parade of Lights across the Mackinac Bridge. They made a huge ruckus, even several miles away!).

When I returned home to Virginia, still feeling flummoxed by guy lines and, especially why they’re called that, I did some research. I discovered that “guy line” originates from the French word “guie,” meaning “guide,” which was later adopted by the Dutch as “gei,” now known as “guy.” Clearly, I needed something to guide me. I’m glad they were there!

I’d reclaimed tent camping as a viable travel option and, at $29 a night for a site with electricity, an inexpensive way to explore this beautiful continent. Maybe, one day, I’ll even see Northern Lights outside my tent instead of just a firefly!

Leave a comment

But I’m going to start today with reflections from my second day on the road through Pennsylvania and Ohio—the hardest emotional day of the trip. In some ways, this day provided a transition from a world overrun with negative news to the natural beauty I hoped to encounter. These stops were especially timely as we honored the 24^th anniversary of 9/11 last week at the same time as we witnessed the presence of armed National Guard troops in our cities, political assassinations, and attacks on free speech.

America Attacked - Shanksville, PA

The sign says that to hear the wind chimes the wind must be blowing at 15 to 20 mph. On this calm September day, only a flock of Goldfinches interrupted the solemness of the space. The 93 foot tall wind chimes, respectfully named The Tower of Voices, were silent, much like the voices of the 40 heroic people who died on September 11, 2001, when their plane crashed into this Pennsylvania field (listen to the chimes here).

As the sun peeks over the surrounding trees, I scan an area awash with wildlife. A family of wild turkeys with a brood of at least fifteen baby chicks scrounges for treats on the side of the road. A herd of eight whitetail deer grazes peacefully in the once assaulted field. A flock of Canada geese squawk overhead, circle the field, and land in a nearby marsh.

I’m not used to being up and out at sunrise. It seemed like today was one of the days when I needed to be. The people on Flight 93 had risen much earlier—long before the sun peeked over the horizon—to board their 8:00 a.m. flight in Newark on their way to San Francisco. When they did, they, of course, had no clue that this would be their last sunrise.

At 10:03:11, United Airlines Flight 93 crashed into a field near a reclaimed coal strip mine. Local residents of Shanksville said that the sound of the ill-fated plane was deafening as it roared much too close to their homes. I wonder what the deer, turkeys, Canada geese, and all the other creatures that call these fields and woodlands home heard that day. How many of them also died in the crash? As far as I know, no one ever countered them among the dead.

Upon leaving the Tower of Voices, I park at the Memorial Plaza and Crash Site. There I walk alongside the field that had been assaulted by hijackers. The site of the crash is marked with a large rock, a 17.5-ton sandstone boulder. This boulder was placed in 2011 at the boundary of the impact site as a memorial to the passengers and crew who fought back against the hijackers.

Paul Murdoch Architects and Nelson Byrd Woltz, Landscape Architect, who designed the memorial, said they knew visitors would want to know the exact place of impact. They were right. I wanted to know. There was something bizarrely settling in knowing, in seeing, the exact spot where the massive plane collided with the earth.

A surviving grove of Hemlock trees stands strong along the edge of the crash site. It serves as a reminder that like these trees bound together by a shared root system, the passengers of Flight 93 are united by their shared destiny.

A wall of names adjacent to the field honors the intrepid forty. Between the wall and the rock is a Ceremonial Gate, which only family members and park officials are permitted to cross to enter the impact site. The gate is constructed from hewn hemlock beams with forty cut angles, one for each passenger and crew member who died.

The walk from the Memorial Plaza to the Flight 93 National Memorial Visitors Center resembles the sacred ground of a battlefield. This is by intention. The designers wanted visitors to remember the gravity of what happened here. The approach to the Visitors Center takes visitors on the direct path of the flight as it descended into the field.

Of all the displays telling the story of the flight and its aftermath most moving to me are the audio recordings of voice mail messages left by two passengers and a flight attendant to their families. The first passenger tried to comfort those who were listening by minimizing her fear “A little something’s happening on my flight,” she said, her voice shaky and weak. She told them she loved them, but she didn’t want anyone listening, expect perhaps the people who knew her well, to know how serious the situation actually was. They soon found out.

Another woman starts out calm while reporting there were hijackers on the plane but then bursts into tears. She recovers enough to share, in a matter of fact way, the combination to the safe in her bedroom closet, where she keeps her important papers.

The third recording, this one from a flight attendant, clearly states, in a voice much like she might instruct passengers to prepare for landing, that the plane had been hijacked,. She said she is trying to remain calm but also says her goodbyes because things don’t look good.

I can’t even begin to imagine receiving a call like that—the desperate helplessness that would follow it. Did the families already know what had happened when they listened to the messages? Or was this their first clue? I imagine their anguish either way.

Despite the conspiracy theories surrounding them, the 9/11 attacks will always be a watershed moment for the people of the United States. For a day, a week, even as long as a month before the retaliatory attacks on Afghanistan, we came together as one people, united in our identity as Americans.

As I drive away, tears well up inside me. Would we ever again feel as interconnected as we did after being attacked? Why does it take a horrific event such as this to come together? If something like this happened today, would we be as united? The answers elude me as I ponder what it means to be an American and continue my journey.

A Different America – The Lincoln Highway and Mr. Rogers

After leaving the Flight 93 Memorial, I meander along US 30, know as the Lincoln Highway, the first transcontinental highway in the United States, designed in 1913 specifically for automobiles to drive from New York City to San Francisco. I stop at the Lincoln Highway Experience, a visitors center in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, and, with unbelievable willpower, resist the piece of homemade apple or cherry pie included with my admission fee.

While there, I examine photographs of quirky roadside attractions, like the Coffee Pot restaurant, shaped like a giant coffee pot, Haines Shoe House in York, a five-story building shaped like a giant boot, and Mister Ed’s Elephant Museum & Candy Emporium in Orrtanna, featuring a life-sized elephant statue named Miss Ellie and over 12,000 elephant figurines.

I see images of then Lieutenant Colonel Dwight D. Eisenhower, who in 1919, made the arduous 3,000-mile journey as part of a military expedition, The First Transcontinental Motor Convoy. The challenges he encountered on this journey—muddy, rutted roads, broken bridges, frequent mechanical breakdowns, and slow progress that sometimes required soldiers to push or tow vehicles by hand— served as inspiration for his support of an interstate highway system and the passage of the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956.

As I drive this iconic road, I imagine a different America, a different world, than the one that made 9/11 possible. My imagination, or should I say my longing, for a different America peaks a few miles down the road from the Lincoln Highway Experience when I stop at the Fred Rogers Institute at St. Vincent College. Yes, that Fred Rogers! Apparently, he was born in Latrobe and referred to it as his “first neighborhood.” I was a little too old for Mr. Rogers Neighborhood, which started in February 1968. I knew, however, that he stood for peace, so I stop to pay my respects.

In touring the exhibits about his life, I fumble with the video screen that ran video clips from iconic Mr. Rogers shows. Without intentionally selecting it, I watch Mr. Rogers in a prime-time show addressing parents after the Robert F. Kennedy, Sr. assassination. In it, he expresses alarm over the unfiltered violence children were exposed to through the media, stating,

I’ve been terribly concerned about the graphic display of violence which the mass media has been showing recently. And I plead for your support of your young children. There is just so much that a very young child can take without it being overwhelming.

Who, I wondered, could say those things today and be taken seriously? And, at the same time, I longed to hear his voice speaking to all of us about today’s news.

America Attacks – Kent State University

My final stop of the day took me to Kent, Ohio. I’ve long intended to visit Kent State University but whenever I passed nearby, I decided I was in too much of a hurry to stop. Today, I want to rectify that.

Kent State is the site of the May 4th (1970) massacre when the Ohio National Guard opened fired on peaceful protestors. Allison Krause and Jeffrey Miller joined three hundred others on Kent State’s campus protesting the expansion of the Vietnam war’s Cambodian campaign. Two other victims, Sandra Scheuer and William Schroeder, were observing the protest between classes.

Twenty-eight National Guard soldiers fired 67 rounds over 13 seconds at unarmed students who stood no closer than 60 and as much as 400 yards away from them. In addition to the four who died, nine other students were wounded that day—one of these permanently paralyzed. These young people stood up for peace and were gunned down, not in Vietnam, but here on a college campus in the United States.

As I park my car and look around, I try to remember news reports of the day to place the National Guard troops and the students they were trying to control. I remember a hill, but I can’t remember if the guardsmen shot up the hill or down it. Only after a reading the historical markers, make a stop in the visitors’ center, and have a chance encounter with Dr. Sara Koopman, Assistant Professor in the School of Peace and Conflict Studies, could I envision the scene as it unfolded.

Dr. Koopman describes herself to me as a geographer with a focus on peace. Who knew such a specialty existed? I certainly didn’t. Sitting on a park bench adjacent to the concrete memorial talking with a student, she interrupts her conversation to point out to me that the students’ names are not on the memorial itself, but rather on a plaque in the ground hidden underneath some bushes. This clearly doesn’t please her.

I ask Dr. Koopman how today’s Kent State students are dealing with seeing National Guard troops roaming our cities. She tells me that most students walk by the memorials every day and either don’t know what happened here or don’t give it another thought. She’s working hard to change that, but it’s an uphill climb.

Even after my conversation with Dr. Koopman, who has created an app that marks key sites and includes statements from those who were there that day, it takes me several tries to locate the markers placed at the exact spots where each student fell. That’s because they died in a parking lot and, without close inspection, the concrete markers look like they were placed there for utility access of some sort.

After I know what I’m looking for, I make a point of visiting and photographing each one.

The National Park Service states:

This site is considered nationally significant given its broad effects in causing the largest student strike in United States history, affecting public opinion about the Vietnam War, creating a legal precedent established by the trials subsequent to the shootings, and for the symbolic status the event has attained as a result of a government confronting protesting citizens with unreasonable deadly force.

When I raise my concern with Dr. Koopman about the Administration’s attacks on history and whether they would try to remove Kent State’s designation as a national historic site, she acknowledges that she hadn’t heard anything yet. “We’ll see,” she said, “there’s no telling.”

As the sun slipped lower in the sky, I know I still have a ways to go to my hotel in Cuyahoga Falls, so

I do not take the time to find the newest markers that Dr. Koopman told me were just installed in 2021 to honor the nine “blood brothers” who were wounded that day. They’ll have to wait for another visit.

Heading to my final destination for the night, I express my gratitude to the universe for the freedom I have to travel and for the incredible people who have kept and are keeping these stories alive. I also say a prayer that the forty people who died in Shanksville, those intrepid souls who built the Lincoln Highway, Fred Rogers, and the killed and wounded at Kent State will never be forgotten.

I hope you’ll make a similar pilgrimage one day. It matters that we remember.

Leave a comment

In those days, I relied on the sleek, trend-setting Motorola Razr for mobile communication. I loved that flip phone for all the things we used to, and in some cases still do, love about mobile phones—superb design, convenience, and functionality. Although it had camera capabilities, I can’t remember ever using it as a camera. Instead, I had an equally slick Canon PowerShot SD400.

This little camera went with me everywhere, including to Hattiesburg, Mississippi, in September 2005, when I volunteered at a Red Cross shelter to provide mental health support for victims of Hurricane Katrina.

The people in the shelter had lost everything and had much to grieve, including loved ones—human and animal—who had died or gone missing. But after these loses, many of them grieved most over the loss of family photos.

Armed with my Canon PowerShot and a compact portable printer I had fortuitously thrown in my suitcase when I packed for the trip, I offered to take photos of the families I met there. Before long, word had spread throughout the chaos of the shelter and people queued up to get their photos taken.

Kids especially fell in love with this little camera. When I arrived at the shelter for my shift one day, a group of kids ran up to me and told me that they had rehearsed a play for me to video record. They, of course, wanted it recorded “right now!” When I told them I had to check in with the other volunteers and spend a little time with my adult clients, their disappointment was hard to contain. But they waited as patiently as they could until I gave word that I was ready.

After their performance, I held the tiny screen out for them to see what they had produced.

“Again!” one shouted. “Show it to us again!” They adored watching themselves as they fought for position to get the best view.

And on and on it went for the remainder of my shift that day and every day that followed.

As I returned to New Orleans and the Gulf over the next year and beyond, my faithful PowerShot accompanied me. In November, 2005, I took it into New Orleans for the first time where I captured unimaginable devastation even ten weeks, then six months, then a year, then two years later, and beyond.

When a new job and other disasters eventually prevented me from continuing Katrina disaster relief trips, I retired my trusty camera. By then I had an iPhone and no need to carry a second device. For the past fifteen years, my Canon has lived on my personal altar as a reminder of the power and resilience of people facing inconceivable challenges.

Even to this day, I consider this camera sacred. It captured lives grasping for some semblance of humanity at a time when all had been lost. The camera, and more importantly, the people whose images it captured, gives me hope, especially in this time filled with disasters of our own making.

I don’t know where the people I photographed are today. I looked up one of the children who I developed a special connection with and found that, on Facebook, she describes herself this way.

She has 2,444 friends and a good job in technology. I’d say she made it through the storm!

I pulled the camera off my altar yesterday, dusted it off, and for old times sake, turned it on. I didn’t expect a response after all these years, so I was shocked to discover that the old girl still has life. It fired right up! The battery crashed pretty quickly, but I smiled anyway.

Digging through a box of cables—you know, the one we all have with every cable we might need some day—I was equally surprised to find the battery charger. The camera’s all charged up now. Maybe I’ll take it on my next trip and see what it’s like to leave my iPhone behind.

In the meantime, here are a few of the children and families I had the privilege to photograph (or, in the case of these ones I’m in, my camera photographed in someone else’s hands) twenty years ago next month. I pray they’ve found health and happiness in whatever life they were able to create after Katrina uprooted everything they had known.

I’ll end with this incredible sunset over Lake Pontchartrain, Louisiana, eight months after the storm.

Leave a comment

In hope and love,

Annette

Order your copy of Living Into the Truth: A Daughter’s Journey of Discovery. Available wherever books are sold. For more information, visit wordswomenpress.com.

“Kivas are for boys and men only,” he says, “Girls aren’t allowed in kivas.”

A silent scream erupts filling me with rage. I look up at him towering over me and give him my best stink eye. That isn’t fair!

Maybe I even cried out loud—I’m not sure. All I remember is my profound disappointment and bewilderment.

As I looked longingly down at the hole, a small circular opening in the floor, which I now understand is called a Sipapu, a Hopi word for “place of emergence” and represents the entrance to and emergence from the underworld, I couldn’t understand why the fact that I was a girl would limit my access.

I already knew boys and girls were treated differently. I had to wear a shirt while my brother could expose his chest to the world whenever he wanted. I even had to wear a dress sometimes, instead of shorts or pants that allowed me to play freely. But I’d never before been told I something I wanted to do was reserved for boys only.

This visceral memory is more complicated than it felt that day. Women are no longer restricted by the National Park Service in visiting Mesa Verde kivas, but at night, after the park has closed, Pueblo people might still use a kiva for ceremonial purposes. At those times, kivas are once again the purview of men. Women might be invited in to view a particular ceremony but generally are not allowed in this male-centered sacred space. I respect these traditions even if I don’t understand or agree with them. But then, on that summer’s day in 1960, I only knew the hurt of exclusion, and I hated it.

By the time my high school guidance counselor told me my college major didn’t matter because I was just going to find a husband and start a family, I’d experienced too many incidents like this to count. I honestly didn’t know that girls had other career options besides being a teacher, nurse, nun, or human service professional. I never considered becoming a photojournalist, park ranger, or even a writer—all professions I might have pursued—because no one ever showed me examples of women in these roles.

Even at age 70, I continue to be shocked by women, born long before me who found ways to do what they wanted to do. Gerda Taro, regarded as the first woman war photographer, covered the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s. Why didn’t I learn about her in history class? Why did I have to wait until Hollywood released the movie, Lee, in 2024 to learn about Lee Miller, a model turned war photographer in World War II?

Except for a few such as Emily Dickinson, Jane Austen, and the Bronte Sisters, women writers rarely appeared on syllabi in my high school and college classes. Even if they did, I learned little, if anything, about the authors themselves and what inspired them to write. They weren’t held up to me as models I could emulate.

My wife and I have a daily dinner ritual where we read about one unconventional woman each night. To do that, we use the three-volume card set, Women Who Dare. The series is published by Pomegranate in collaboration with the Library of Congress. These cards focus on women who defied expectations, flouted expectations, and achieved success in areas like literature, activism, world exploration, science, and sports, which were historically considered male-dominated. Many of the women profiled lived in the 19^th or early 20^th century where it took more than gumption to pursue the lives they lived.

More often than not, when one of us holds up a card for the other to guess who it depicts, we fail. Even women whose stories we’ve heard are hard to identify. If we know something about them, we haven’t seen the photo chosen for the card. As we read about their lives, I’m humbled by their courage, inspired by their actions, and angered by their invisibility.

I know the fight is far from over. When Susan Faludi published her treatise, Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, in 1991, she presented evidence that demonstrated the existence of a media-driven "backlash" against the feminist advances of the 1970s in the United States. Little did she know then that the backlash we experienced in the 1980s would feel like a ripple on the shore as compared to the tsunami we’re experiencing today.

From attacks on women’s bodily autonomy to Turning Point USA’s women’s summits, which encourage young women to embrace faith, family, and domesticity over career ambitions, societal pressure against feminist progress is rampant.

Project 2025, MAGA’s blueprint (despite the denials) to centralize executive power, represents a profound rollback of reproductive justice, civil rights, and protections that have empowered women for decades. It includes a federal policy overhaul that curtails women’s rights and bodily autonomy by effectively outlawing access to abortion through revived restrictions, dismantling emergency abortion protections, and rolling back FDA-approved reproductive medications. The plan enshrines a strict binary definition of sex under Title IX, erasing gender identity recognition and undermining anti-discrimination safeguards. Additionally, it targets gender-affirming care via sweeping executive orders, while dismantling DEI efforts that have historically supported gender equity.

But still, I have hope!

When Wendy and I visited Alaska earlier this summer, we were overcome by the natural beauty, but even more astonished by the number of women—mostly young women—in leadership roles introducing us to these wonders. Every adventure we went on, from the National Park Service guided hike at Exit Glacier, the bus tour at Denali National Park, Wendy’s sea kayak tour, and The Sea to Tree Tour, a full-day natural history excursion offered by the Center for Alaskan Coastal Studies, were led by women. Even the skipper of the small ferry we took across Kachemak Bay to the tidal pools and Peterson Bay Field Station was a woman.

And these women know their stuff! They are environmental scientists, naturalists, boat captains, dog mushers and trainers, public servants, and National Park Service Ranger/Educators. Some, like the woman who led our excursion into Denali National Park, live year-round in Alaska. In fact, she has lived for fifteen years in a small cabin with no running water and limited electricity. And she loves it!

The women we met are not constrained by societal norms to get married (to a man) and settle down and raise children. They might choose to do that, but they’re freed from the expectation to follow this one and only path. Instead, they’re pursuing their passions, just like the women depicted on the Women Who Dare cards, except these modern adventurers have each other as role models and friends. They don’t have to fight in the same way to pursue their dreams. At least, I hope they don’t.

I’d like to think that the work we did in the second wave of feminism in the 1960s and 70s to fight for women’s rights and opportunities helped these young trailblazers follow their dreams. I hope that young girls in elementary and high schools today see these women and think, “I want to do that when I grow up!” And, better yet, I hope they have the support and encouragement from powerful women like these to follow their dreams.

Hang in there. I know somedays, with each passing news cycle, it feels like all is lost, but the next time you feel that way, remember the Women Who Dare and today’s women of Alaska. We WILL overcome!

Leave a comment

In hope and love,

Annette

Order your copy of Living Into the Truth: A Daughter’s Journey of Discovery. Available wherever books are sold. For more information, visit wordswomenpress.com.

She smiled back. “Congratulations! Enjoy your trip,” she said as she continued toward the furs, antler art, and Native Alaskan jewelry displayed in the various booths ahead of her.

Despite our brief connection, and even though I’d been telling people that our trip to Alaska was partly designed to rack up my fiftieth state, it was in that moment, standing on the main street in a town fabled to be the inspiration for the TV series, Northern Exposure, connecting with a fellow traveler, that I claimed my accomplishment.

Originally the site of a Tanaina village, Talkeetna was established as a mining town and trading post in 1896. Alaska didn’t become a U.S. state for sixty-four more years—not until 1959, when I was already four years old. By that point, I don’t think that I’d ventured outside of my birth state of Michigan, but within the next year, I would travel from Michigan to Colorado by train through five new states: Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska and finally Colorado—all states I’ve visited many times since. By the time I was seven, I’d traveled to at least fifteen states and lived in three of them, putting me well on track to reaching a goal of visiting all fifty states—a goal I would never even consider setting for many years to come.

So how did it happen that I’ve had the opportunity to visit all fifty states, in most cases multiple times, in my seventy years? Here’s the condensed version.

When I was five, my mom married my dad, and we moved to Denver. He had recently taken a job as a traveling salesman for Daisy Air Rifles and had a territory that included Colorado, Montana, Wyoming, and North and South Dakota. We spent summers traveling with him, enjoying the splendor of the Rocky Mountains, visiting ghost towns, attending powwows, and learning about cowboy culture.

When I turned seven, he transferred to the home office, which, about the time we moved to Denver, had relocated from Plymouth, Michigan to Rogers, Arkansas. Mom couldn’t imagine living in the South, in Arkansas of all places, but somehow, we managed to adjust.

While in Arkansas, we traveled with Dad to Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Tennessee, and Missouri. We also made annual pilgrimages back to Michigan to see family, revisiting Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana. I added Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York to the list when we visited an uncle and his family in Upstate New York—their home in Watertown and camp in the Thousand Islands.

Between my sophomore and junior year of high school, I convinced my parents to send me to a Spanish language camp in Bemidji, Minnesota. Dad drove me there, passing through Missouri and Iowa, before entering a new state for me, Minnesota. Hard to imagine in these times, but after the month in Bemidji, I took a Greyhound bus all by myself back to Arkansas. It was my first solo adventure, and I fell in love with the freedom it offered.

As a sign of my teenage independence, I bought a pack of cigarettes from a machine at some deserted bus station along the route and smoked them all the way home. I must have smelled like an ashtray when my mom picked me up at the gas station in Rogers that doubled as a bus station, but she never said anything. She was just happy—and probably relieved—to have her sixteen-year-old daughter home.

That same summer, Dad took us to one of his favorite cities, New Orleans, so I added Louisiana to my growing list. The Mississippi River begins as a trickle flowing out of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota. That summer, I stood at both ends of the mighty river and imagined the route it traveled through ten states: Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, and finally flows in the Gulf in Louisiana.

I continued to develop my comfort level with independent travel in my last two years of high school as I flew alone several times between Detroit, Michigan and Fayetteville, Arkansas, on visits home from the Catholic boarding school I attended in Michigan. In those days, the airline didn’t offer escorts for minors so even with plane changes in St. Louis, I was on my own.

When I won a month-long scholarship to a congressional seminar in Washington, DC, in my senior year of high school, I had no qualms about flying alone to DC and back to Detroit. A week after I returned to school, my entire class boarded a bus for a class trip to DC, so I got to ride through Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, states I’d flown over but never visited on the ground.

After graduating from the Naval Academy in 1975, my brother moved to Pensacola, Florida. I visited him during a college break adding Florida to my list.

My first work conference, the 1977 National Drug Abuse Conference in San Francisco, introduced me to the beauty and wonder of California, a state I’ve visited many times in the years since.

In 1979, I moved to Boston for graduate school and once you’re in New England, it’s easy to explore not only Massachusetts, but Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, and Rhode Island. Discovering New England became a passion and a pastime.

When I moved back to Michigan after grad school, I joined the annual migration of Michiganders down I75 to Florida for trips to Disney World. That added Kentucky and Georgia to my list.

On one of those excursions, I learned that my mother had taken ill in Arkansas, and I needed to go to be with her. To reach her from Florida, I drove across two states I’d never visited but have spent a lot of time in since in my work with the Living Legacy Project, Alabama and Mississippi.

In the late 1980s, my brother, who’d moved from Pensacola to San Diego, transferred again, this time to Honolulu. I couldn’t pass up a trip to the beautiful state of Hawaii, so my partner Anne and I visited him on Oahu, took a brief excursion to Maui, and spent a week on Kauai.

All but four of the states that remained (and yes, I’d begun counting by this point), Arizona, Utah, Washington, Oregon, Nevada, and North Carolina, were soon checked off by my annual participation in the Unitarian Universalist Association’s General Assembly, which meets in a different city around the country each June, and which I attended for twenty-three of the twenty-four years between 1993 and 2017.

My work as a computer software trainer in the late 1990s and early 2000s took me to New Mexico and Idaho, and gave me the chance to revisit other states like Nevada and Louisiana that I’d visited only once or twice, but wanted to spend more time in.

By the early 2000s, I knew I had only two states left, South Carolina and Alaska. When presented with a job opportunity as a District Executive with the Unitarian Universalist Association in 2006, I was excited that it would require me to travel extensively though the Southeast, especially North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia, and the ever-elusive South Carolina.

For the next several years, I drove interstates and back roads throughout the Southeast, visited big cities and small towns from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina and Tennessee to the South Carolina Lowcountry, from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia to the Outer Banks of the North Carolina coast, and, in doing so, reclaimed the South as my home.

That left Alaska. I really didn’t think I would ever get there. I’d convinced myself that seeing the forty-eight contiguous states plus Hawaii (and Puerto Rico) was enough. But then an opportunity arose to visit a friend of Wendy’s who works at the University of Alaska in Anchorage. We had given up on going to Hawaii (a place I’d been, but Wendy hasn’t) after two failed attempts (one because of COVID and one for chemo), so Alaska seemed like an appropriate post-retirement adventure.

I dreaded the long flight and feared the hiking terrain might be too much for me to handle. But Wendy’s enthusiasm is contagious, and I allowed myself to get excited too. I’m very glad I did.

I’ll be writing more about Alaska in future posts but suffice it to say, I found Alaska to be breathtakingly beautiful, expansive, wild, and fascinating in myriad ways that delighted me and caught me by surprise.

And now I can safely say that I’ve visited all fifty states, lived in seven of them, and stayed overnight in all of them at least once.

So why does it matter?

I’ve asked myself that numerous times over the years. Many people don’t have the financial resources to travel. Many others have family or other responsibilities that prevent them from traveling. Still others have disabilities or illnesses that impact their freedom to travel. And some people prefer to stay home, never having developed the skills or temperament to travel. So why does it matter that some of us choose to travel?

The first time I can remember considering the question about how important travel was to me was not that many years after we moved to Arkansas. I’m guessing I was in the fifth grade, but it might have been earlier. A friend, recounting her own boring summer, commented on how much I’d traveled with my family. “I’ve never even left the state,” she lamented.

I’m sure I didn’t hide my shock. “You’ve never left the state?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Rogers, the town we lived in, is in Northwest Arkansas, just under eighteen miles south of the Missouri line and a little more than thirty miles east of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma.

Those distances to the state borders were as engrained in me as the alphabet. They represented something much larger than the random statistics they seemed to describe. How was it possible that someone, even a twelve-year kid, hadn’t ever left the state when the borders were so close? The whole idea struck me as incomprehensible. Little did I know then that my travel experiences were far from the norm.

In my nascent imagination, those adjacent state borders symbolized a gateway to adventure, opportunity, and discovery. In fact, in every journey north, we had to pass through a tiny village named Gateway at the Arkansas/Missouri border. Every time we approached this portal to adventure, questions fueled my anticipation:

• What new thing will we see today?

• What experiences lie beyond the next curve in the road?

• Who will we meet?

• Where will we spend the night?

• What will we eat?

• What surprises are in store?

As a child, I couldn’t have been happier than when I was on the road. Travel powered my creativity and satiated my curiosity. As an older adult, I’m content to explore closer to home, but, at the same time, I rarely hesitate to embrace a road trip.

Each state in this magnificent country of ours (and despite its current political climate, it’s still a magnificent country) offers lessons in culture, history, and natural beauty. From the bayous of Louisiana to the South Carolina Sea Islands, from the Colorado Rockies to the rocky coastline of Maine, from the prairies of Nebraska to the deserts of Nevada, every state offers a PhD in anthropology, environmental science, history, cultural differences, linguistics, geology, economics, political science, and so much more. And it’s all there for the taking.

I believe that if everyone had the opportunity to travel, to meet people from different parts of the country and the world, to understand and appreciate their struggles and contributions, we would live in a much healthier, kinder, more compassionate world.

I’ve been lucky. I know that. But I’ll never stop advocating for people to find ways to travel to new places, step outside of their comfort zones, place themselves in other cultures, and experience the world through other people’s eyes. I can assure you that we will all be better for it.

I’d love to know how many states you’ve been to, and even more importantly, what role travel has played in who you are.

Leave a comment

In hope and love,

Annette

Notes

If you’re interested in tracking your journey and connecting with others who are traveling to all fifty states, you might consider joining the All Fifty States Club.

Order your copy of Living Into the Truth: A Daughter’s Journey of Discovery. Available wherever books are sold. For more information, visit wordswomenpress.com.

My 10^th birthday party was a pool party at a local motel where we knew the owners. I still remember receiving a pink case filled with hair rollers and a Mr. Potato Head. I loved it (well, not the hair rollers so much!)!

For my 15^th birthday, I left the chaos behind and opted for a quiet gathering at the home of one of my friends. I think that at that party we celebrated—perhaps a little too much—with beverages we concocted from their parents’ liquor cabinet.

In all three cases, I worried about whether anyone would show up, but they always did, and, once they arrived, I was able to relax into the celebration.

My late partner Anne shared with me one of her most painful childhood memories—a birthday party where no one came. Apparently, kids—or more likely their parents—in a wealthy Chicago suburb didn’t like the fact that a middle-class, liberal minister and his family had infiltrated their closed community. They responded by boycotting their child’s birthday party. The devastation Anne felt never left her even years after suffering this embarrassment and disappointment.

In today’s world, kids seem to have birthday parties every year. Places such as Skyzone, Dave & Busters, and a myriad other restaurants and entertainment venues have made kids’ birthdays big business. These parties always feel a little forced to me—like if the birthday kid doesn’t jump and run around screaming and hollering, it’s not a real birthday. At the same time, maybe these annual events offer a little recognition in a world that can sometimes forget to tell kids how loved they are.

I like that I had to wait for a big celebration every few years, though, rather than expecting one every year. It made each one feel more special—like turning 5 or 10 or 15 really meant something, rather than feeling like I was owed something just for making it through another year.

Even in the off years though, we still had Marquis Chocolate Cake, a rich three-layer chocolate-on-chocolate delicacy made famous at my dad’s restaurant, the Marquis Toll House. My mom made it every year and never failed to let me lick the beaters. Twice! For the batter and the frosting! That’s the thing I most looked forward to every year! I still dream about it, but it’s been years since I tackled the recipe (if you’re interested in trying it yourself, email me, and I’ll be glad to send you the recipe).

My wife Wendy and I moved into the house we live in now in December of 2019—three months before the pandemic shut everything down. We talked several times about hosting an outdoor party in our new yard, but, even after the pandemic ebbed, we weren’t invested enough in it to make it happen. Or maybe we just needed a reason.

Well, this year we found a reason. And, no, it wasn’t for my birthday. Even though I had my 70^th birthday on May 5^th, I didn’t feel driven to make a big deal of it. A quiet dinner at home was enough for me. That’s because I knew that in a few short weeks I’d have an even bigger reason to celebrate. My retirement! Now that is something I really wanted to celebrate!

I’ve known a lot of people who slip into retirement quietly—without a lot of fanfare. I respect that choice, but it wasn’t mine. Even though I’d cut back to part-time work ten years ago, after fifty years of working for someone else at something, retirement still felt hard-earned.

I’d been counting the days for over a year, and I knew that when the time finally came, I would want to celebrate it. My question was, “Would anyone else?” Just like with those early birthday parties, my anxiety rose about whether anyone would come.

Anne’s story, augmented by my own unresolved abandonment issues, convinced me that my retirement party would inevitably flop. I knew my dear friend, JMJ, from Brooklyn would be there. I knew my brother and his wife were coming from Maryland. And I knew Wendy’s folks, who live nearby, would come. After that, I had no idea.

It didn’t help that when I sent out email invitations, I didn’t ask for an RSVP. I told myself that didn’t want people to feel obligated one way or the other, but it was really just a way to avoid the anxiety that would arise when no one responded—as I was sure would happen. Without RSVPs, I could hold out hope that someone would show up—on a whim at least.

Of course, my worry was for naught. Almost sixty people—church members, neighbors, family members, colleagues, and friends—eventually showed up to celebrate with me on what turned out to be a beautiful 70-degrees-and-sunshine Virginia spring day.

A few played corn-hole or toured my gardens, but mostly people just talked—sometimes with people they knew, other times with strangers. It was wonderful to see my worlds collide in this way. I gave away buttons Wendy made based on the sign I carried at the first protest march I attended in 2025, and I loved seeing who scarfed them up. Liberals and conservatives alike seemed to appreciate the message.

And together we devoured an entire half-sheet cake without a moment’s hesitation.

As the day wrapped up, I couldn’t help but feel celebrated, honored, and loved.

I asked people who attended to write notes to me with their advice and good wishes. Those, plus the almost twenty happy retirement cards I received, will help me stay focused on what’s important in this next chapter—stay true to myself, do what I’m called to do, and say “yes” only to things that I want in my life. Two weeks into retirement that feels pretty good so far!

This experience has taught me, or maybe reminded me, why it’s so important to celebrate each other. I so appreciated each and every card I received that I’ve made a commitment to myself that I will send more cards the old fashioned way—through the United States Postal Service. To that end, I just mailed hand-written thank-you cards to people who, even though I said no gifts, attended the party with gifts in hand.

I also sent over 30 thank-you cards to people who donated in my honor to the organization I retired from, the Living Legacy Project (there’s still time if you want to receive a personal thank-you card, too!!). Their gifts—some large and some small—meant a lot to me. They told me that they saw me and wanted to honor what was important to me. Who can ask for more recognition than that?

Celebrating each other matters. Especially in these times when everything seems to be upside-down and inside-out, I believe that we can bridge our differences by stepping up our random acts of kindness. It makes a difference when others feel seen—just as it makes a difference to us when you and I feel seen.

As I write this, I’m reminded of the greeting from Zulu culture, Sawubona, which translates to “we (my ancestors and I) see you.” We all need to be seen, acknowledged, and loved.

One of the common responses to Sawubona is Sikhona, which means, “I am here to be seen.” Dr Tracy Brown interprets this to mean, “I commit to showing up as my authentic self…to be fully present as I share myself with you.”

Imagine what a gift that would be if all of us committed to seeing each other and being seen by each other?

That’s how I felt at my retirement party.

As we traverse the difficult terrain we find ourselves in, I encourage you to consider celebrating those who are close to you and, while you’re at it, invite others to celebrate you, too. Whether that’s a once in a lifetime celebration like a retirement, or an annual birthday or anniversary, find ways to genuinely celebrate each other.

I’m convinced we will all be better for it.

In hope and love,

Annette

Leave a comment

Order your copy of Living Into the Truth: A Daughter’s Journey of Discovery. Available wherever books are sold. For more information, visit wordswomenpress.com.

In the midst of what has been a rather full time (more about that a little later), I had the honor of participating with host Lily Wood in a podcast called NPE Stories. The podcast episode, “Annette's Story: Living Into the Truth,” is described this way:

Raised in a devout Catholic family, Annette grew up believing her father had died before she was born. Decades later, a series of emotional discoveries unraveled everything she thought she knew about her identity. Her journey explores loss, secrecy, and the power of living one’s truth.

I hope you’ll take the time to listen to it. I enjoyed participating in it and I hope it’s helpful to others.

What is an NPE?

But before you do, you might very well be wondering, “What the heck is an NPE?” As Lily explains at the beginning of each podcast episode, NPE is a term that stands for “not parent expected” or in genealogical terms, “non-paternity event.” It’s used for people who have found out the life-changing news that their parent wasn’t their biological parent, or in my case, that the deceased parent I believed to be my biological parent wasn’t. You’ll find more about my NPE story in Living Into the Truth: A Daughter’s Journey of Discovery.

If you’re an NPE—even if you didn’t know that’s what it was called—there’s a growing body of resources available to help you process this discovery, decide whether you want to connect with your birth family, and find support if and when you do. You’ll find Facebook groups, podcasts like NPE Stories, therapists, books, etc. Let me know if you’d like help connecting to this vibrant and helpful community. I’m happy to share resources with you.

News and Updates

In the two years I’ve been writing on Substack, this has been the slowest I’ve been publishing new content. I’ve had times when I published every day, sometimes five times a week, sometimes once a week, sometimes twice a month, but, over this past month? Nada.

I’m not one to use the “I’m so busy” mantra that has infected our society. In fact, several years ago, I vowed never to answer “Busy” when someone was kind enough to ask, “How are you?” I’ve mostly kept that promise. I don’t value busyness. In fact, I think that being over-busy is a sign of dis-ease in our society, but that’s a whole another essay.

But lately? Well, let’s just say that I’m in the process of handing off a job that I’ve held as a solo employee for six years (and active volunteer for eleven years before that) and that has shattered all my previous understandings of “busy.” Even when I’m not visibly working—when I’m stretched out in my recliner watching something on Netflix—my brain feels like one of those plastic whirly-gigs you get at the county fair during a high-wind event. I’m constantly adding things to my task list as soon as they whip through my brain because if I don’t, I know they will fly away and be lost forever.

A Quiet Milestone Birthday in Momentous May

This past week, on top of everything else, I celebrated my 70^th birthday. Born on 5-5-55, I chose to celebrate this birthday quietly because, even though it’s a big one, at the end of this month—on 5-25-25—I’m hosting a party to celebrate my retirement. My wife Wendy has referred to this month as Momentous May. It certainly fits that billing!

• On May 1^st, the new Executive Director of the Living Legacy Project started work.

• May 5^th was my 70th birthday.

• On May 8^th, I drove to Rochester, NY, to give the official response to a lecture on a woman I hope to write more about in my retirement, Laura M. Towne. If you’re interested, you can watch the lecture and my response (at the 1 hour mark) here: Deconstructing Mythologies of Unitarian Anti-Racism: To Uplift The Race (Lecture 2 of 3).

• On May 13^th, I’m finishing up a four-session memoir class I’m teaching for Diversity Richmond.

• On May 16^th, Wendy and I will be at Virginia Tech for our niece’s graduation.

• On May 25^th, is my retirement party (if you’re anywhere near the Richmond, VA area, you are invited. Let me know you’d like to celebrate with me, and I’ll send you the address.

• May 29 is my last day of work.

Phew!

Later this summer, we’re visiting friends in Anchorage and using that as a home base to explore the Kenai Peninsula and Denali. While we’re there, I’ll be offering a worship service at the Anchorage Unitarian Universalist Fellowship and doing a book reading (because I guess I can’t just enjoy a vacation! HA!).

When we return home, I’ll probably collapse—at least for a while! After that, I’ll be on to some new adventures, which will include doing more to promote my recently published memoir, Living Into the Truth: A Daughter’s Journey of Discovery (including developing the audiobook version), publishing my long-promised memoir, Accidental Mentors: Inspirational Stories of Women Who Shaped My Life by Just Being Themselves, and starting a new writing project (or two)!

I also plan to be doing more traveling than I anticipated when I made my retirement plans, first to Michigan to see friends and family, then to Cape May, New Jersey, to celebrate Wendy’s birthday and witness the Monarch butterfly and hawk migrations, and and finally, to Ajijic, Mexico, with my brother and sister-in-law for the Day of the Dead celebrations. I’ll have much to share with you during and after all that!

Setting Expectations

I’m officially letting myself off the hook for writing anything coherent over the next few weeks. I promise that I’ll write when the spirit moves me. I appreciate your understanding in advance.

Other Incredible Writers and Resources

In the meantime, I invite you to enjoy an incredible writer, who plans to publish more actively on Substack with the release of her latest book, The Dry Season, you can find her at https://substack.com/@melissafebos.

And of course, my wife Wendy always has something thoughtful and creative to say. You can find her at https://substack.com/@wendydegroat.

Furrow and Fire

A poet and teacher-librarian contemplates what to cultivate in her next chapter and muses on this one, exploring purpose, belonging, wonder, creativity, human rights, aging, fear, loss, gratitude, faith, nature, tech, money, & more.

By Wendy DeGroat

And finally, if you haven’t yet joined QStack, the LGBTQIA+ Directory, platform, and community of queer newsletters on Substack, this is a great time to do that. Especially, as we move toward Pride month during this time when our lives and rights are under assault, subscribing is a great way to support the LGBTQIA+ community of writers.

Qstack | The LGBTQIA+ Directory of Substacks

Qstack ❤️🍊💛💚💙💜 | The LGBTQIA+ Directory, Community & Platform on Substack - SUBSCRIBE for bi-monthly updates of queer links, interviews, and stories.

By Mr. Troy Ford

In hope and love,

Annette

Leave a comment

Rosa took the quarter into the palm of her hand, and said somewhat incredulously, “I just went to the Pauli Murray Center in Chapel Hill this past week.” A question, unspoken, “How did you know?” hung in the air. We didn’t know, but the coincidence made the gift even more powerful.

After inspecting the coin on both sides, Rosa looked up and asked, “Is this a real quarter?” Doubt oozed from her lips as if we had handed her a key and told her it unlocked the gates of heaven.

“Yes, it’s real,” Wendy replied.

“With George Washington on the flip side and everything,” I inserted.

“Annette gave them out at her recent book launch because they have the name of Pauli Murray’s memoir on it,” Wendy said as she pointed to the letters on the coin spelling out “Song in A Weary Throat.” Rosa squinted to see the tiny type.

“We thought you might like one.” Wendy added.

Rosa thanked us and slipped it into the pocket of her dress before moving on to greet other guests.

This Pauli Murray quarter, produced by the United States Mint, is part of a four-year series of commemorative quarters, called American Women Quarters. The US Treasury released the first set in 2022 and the last set a couple of months ago. They are real spendable quarters. In fact, I received one as change just the other day—remarkable that I was spending cash to begin with, and, even more remarkable that Pauli Murray found her way into the change I received.

Ove the past few years, I’ve purchased all four proof sets of five quarters each celebrating American women, and, in addition, we bought two bags of 100 Pauli Murray quarters to pass out to others at my book events (Living Into the Truth: A Daughter’s Journey of Discovery is available wherever books are sold).

I don’t remember how I learned about this series, but I’ve loved receiving them each year and learning about the women depicted on them. I’ll admit I knew only about half of the twenty, so I had to research the others (each name below is linked for more information). How many do you know?

2022

Maya Angelou - Poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist. *I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings* opened a new space in American literature for Black women’s voices.

Dr. Sally Ride - Physicist and first American woman in space. Later became an advocate for STEM education, especially for girls.

Wilma Mankiller- First female Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation. She focused on improving the lives of her people through health care, education, and self-governance.

Nina Otero-Warren - Suffragist and advocate for bilingual education in New Mexico. She was also the first Hispanic woman to run for U.S. Congress.

Anna May Wong- Hollywood’s first Chinese American film star. A trailblazer in the 1920s and ’30s, she confronted racism on and off the screen.

2023

Bessie Coleman - First African American and Native American woman pilot. She barnstormed across the country in the 1920s, inspiring a generation to fly.

Edith Kanakaʻole - Hawaiian cultural icon. Through hula, chant, and education, she preserved and passed on Native Hawaiian traditions.

Eleanor Roosevelt - First Lady, diplomat, and architect of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. She redefined the role of First Lady as a force for justice.

Jovita Idar - Journalist and activist in early 20th-century Texas. She fought for Mexican American civil rights and founded educational and feminist organizations.

Maria Tallchief - America’s first major prima ballerina and a member of the Osage Nation. She brought classical ballet to a new level of popularity in the U.S.

2024

Dr. Pauli Murray - Civil rights lawyer, Episcopal priest, and gender justice pioneer. Co-founded the National Organization for Women and influenced Thurgood Marshall’s legal arguments.

Patsy Takemoto Mink - First woman of color in Congress and co-author of Title IX, which advanced equity in education for women and girls.

Dr. Mary Edwards Walker- Civil War surgeon and only woman to receive the Medal of Honor. Also a fierce advocate for dress reform and women’s rights.

Celia Cruz- Afro-Cuban singer and the undisputed “Queen of Salsa.” Her music and style inspired generations, and her catchphrase “¡Azúcar!” became a cultural rallying cry.

Zitkala-Ša (Gertrude Simmons Bonnin) - Yankton Dakota writer, musician, and activist. She advocated for Native American rights and helped secure U.S. citizenship for Indigenous people.

2025

Ida B. Wells - Journalist and fierce anti-lynching crusader. She co-founded the NAACP and documented racial violence at great personal risk.

Juliette Gordon Low - Founder of the Girl Scouts of the USA. She envisioned an organization where girls could build courage, confidence, and character.

Dr. Vera Rubin - Astronomer whose research confirmed the existence of dark matter. A woman of science whose discoveries reshaped what we know about the universe.

Stacey Park Milbern - Disability justice advocate and community organizer. A queer Korean American, she co-founded the disability justice movement and transformed the conversation on access.

Althea Gibson - First Black athlete to win a Grand Slam title. She broke the color barrier in tennis and golf, opening doors for future champions.

The DEI Backstory

I suspect that most of you didn’t know this series existed, and to tell you the truth, I’m a little nervous about telling you. I’m afraid if the word gets out, they’ll fall victim to the DEI-scare that has engulfed our country. It’s only a matter of time.

The process for creating the series was initiated under the Circulating Collectible Coin Redesign Act of 2020, which authorized the U.S. Mint to issue up to five new quarter designs each year from 2022 through 2025, each featuring a prominent American woman. The selection of these women was overseen by the Secretary of the Treasury, who consulted with several key organizations, including:​

• The Smithsonian Institution’s American Women’s History Initiative​

• The National Women’s History Museum​

• The Congressional Bipartisan Women’s Caucus​

In 2021, the U.S. Mint also invited the public to submit recommendations for potential honorees through a web portal established by the National Women’s History Museum, ensuring a broad and inclusive pool of candidates. ​The women selected for the program were chosen based on their significant contributions to the United States across a wide spectrum of accomplishments and fields.

The description of the quarters reads like an example taken from a DEI training manual:

The American Women Quarters reverse (tail) designs honor a diverse group of notable American women who made significant contributions in a variety of fields, including suffrage, civil rights, abolition, government, humanities, science, space, and the arts. The women honored are from ethnically, racially, and geographically diverse backgrounds.

Even the portrait of George Washington on the obverse was designed by a woman. According to the series description, the George Washington depiction on the head of the coin was “originally composed and sculpted by Laura Gardin Fraser as a candidate entry for the 1932 quarter, which honored the bicentennial of George Washington’s birth.” If the coins have to depict Washington—and I’m pretty sure they do—then this was a fabulous choice for a designer.

How can this obvious DEI effort survive the current administration? I’m not convinced it will. In fact, I’ll be honest with you that I’m finding it hard to hold out hope. At the same time, I will not give up believing in the power of strong women!

Stories of accomplished women, people of color, people with disabilities, LGBTQ people, and all other types of diversity matter. They help us connect with ourselves, help us to know who we are and what we can achieve. They help us survive challenging times when discrimination decimates everything in its path.

At the April 5^th Hands Off March in Richmond earlier this month, I carried a sign which spoke to my commitment to DEI. It said, “Diversity is our Strength; Equity is our Duty; Inclusion is our Promise.”

That summarizes one of my core beliefs—something for which I will not waver (see This I Believe for more).

I encourage you to demand that these stories be told, that the Administration does all it can to uplift, rather than expunge the stories of people who have overcome obstacles to accomplish their dreams. They are true American heroes.

And while you’re doing that, I hope you’ll order your own sets of quarters. Show your support for women and women’s history. The 2022 Proof Set is already sold out at the Mint. I’d be shocked if they restocked it, but you can still get it from other coin vendors. To buy the 2023, 2024, and 2025 coins (including holiday ornaments) from the Mint, visit https://www.usmint.gov/coins/coin-programs/american-women-quarters-program/.

Enjoy them, pass them around, put one in your pocket that speaks to you, and let these women’s stories inspire you to speak out for what you believe in.

In hope and love,

Annette

Leave a comment