Women’s Equality Day commemorates the August 26, 1920, certification of the 19th Amendment, which prohibited the federal government and the states from denying citizens the right to vote on account of sex. It was a monumental achievement, although discriminatory laws and practices continued to keep many women of color from the polls. The National Archives describes it as securing the vote for “some, but not all” women.

It’s incredible to me that it was ever a question and even more incredible that it’s still being challenged today, 106 years later.

In case you missed it, some Christian nationalists and advocates of biblical patriarchy are advocating household voting where families cast a single ballot through the male head of household, effectively disenfranchising women from individual voting. A fringe viewpoint? Perhaps, but our current Secretary of Defense recently reposted a video that espoused this view.

In August 2025, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth reposted a video featuring pastors who advocated repealing the 19th Amendment and replacing individual voting with household voting. A Pentagon spokesperson later said Hegseth supports women’s right to vote but did not explain why he shared the video.

And reports indicate that “this notion is gaining more traction in the Republican Party.” According to The 19^th, “several figures within the Republican Party have flirted with the idea of repealing the 19th Amendment.”

Even though this might still be a minority position, many of us never believed Roe would be overturned, so we have to stay vigilant.

That threat made me wonder not only how securely women’s rights are protected, but also how accurately we remember the women who fought for them.

Did Sojourner Truth ask “Ain’t I a Woman?”

Sojourner Truth’s seminal speech, dubbed “Ain’t I a Woman?,” in which she compares herself to men, came to mind. When I looked it up to read the full speech, I was shocked to learn that no contemporaneous account records her saying those memorable words. Instead, I discovered that those words were put in her mouth by a white suffragist, Frances Dana Gage, twelve years after Truth delivered the speech on May 29, 1851, at the Woman’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio.

According to The Sojourner Truth Project, “Frances Gage changed most of Sojourner’s words and falsely attributed a southern slave dialect to Sojourner’s 1863 version.”

Sojourner Truth did not speak in this dialect. In fact, Dutch was Truth’s first language. She began learning English only after she was sold away from her Dutch-speaking owners to another New York family.

Born Isabella Baumfree, she was later known as Isabella Van Wagenen, after a family who took her in when she “walked away” from slavery at the age of 29.

In 1843, at age 46, Isabella Van Wagenen had a divinely inspired vision. She renamed herself Sojourner Truth, left New York City, and set forth on her life’s work of “testifying of the hope that was in her.

https://www.nationalabolitionhalloffameandmuseum.org/sojourner-truth.html

So, what did Truth really say at the Akron Woman’s Rights Convention and how do we know? Of course, there were no audio recordings of her speech. However, her journalist friend, Marius Robinson, an editor of The Anti-Slavery Bugle and one of the convention’s secretaries, published the earliest substantial account of Truth’s remarks several weeks later. The Sojourner Truth Project reports that Robinson and Truth reviewed his account before it was published. That makes it more credible than Gage’s version, although it cannot be considered a verbatim transcript.

Frances Gage was also at the convention in Akron, and, in fact, presided over the convention at which Truth spoke. By giving Truth a stereotyped Southern Black dialect in an account published the New York Independent on April 23, 1863—twelve years later—Gage created a version that historians now regard as unreliable.

Historian Nell Irvin Painter, who wrote a definitive biography of Sojourner Truth, Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol, asserts that Truth almost certainly never said the famous line “Ain’t I a Woman?” (or “Ar’n’t I a woman?”). Painter argues that Gage’s version, published twelve years after the speech, transformed Truth into a stereotyped “colorful force of nature” and was written partly in response to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s romanticized—and factually unreliable—portrayal of Truth published earlier that month.

Gage’s account claims that Truth bore thirteen children and saw most of them sold into slavery. Historical accounts identify five children, another indication that Gage’s version is unreliable.

What do you think? Here are the two versions, published by The Sojourner Truth Project for you to compare:

Marius Robinson’s transcription: Published June 21, 1851, in The Anti-Slavery Bugle

Frances Gage’s version: April 23, 1863, issue of the New York Independent

Truth and Gender

In what is probably the more accurate version of her speech, Truth dismantled conventional ideas about what women could do and what they deserved. Drawing on her experience as a formerly enslaved Black woman, she challenged both sexism and the narrow definition of womanhood that excluded women like her.

Recovering her actual words matters. Gage may have helped turn Truth into an icon, but she did so by giving her a voice that was not her own. Honoring Sojourner Truth requires more than repeating a memorable slogan. It requires listening and interpreting what she said for today: women’s rights belong to women because they are human rights.

It’s a simple notion. We are all equal. Sojourner Truth knew that 175 years ago. And yet, it’s still a terrifying notion for so many. That struggle over who gets to define womanhood continues today, as people are still denied the freedom to understand and express their own gender.

On Women’s Equality Day, that remains a fitting charge—to defend every person’s right to be heard, to define themselves, and to participate fully in public life.

May you have a happy Women’s Equality Day. I pray that someday we can rest knowing our rights to express ourselves, no matter who we are, are secure.

Yours in peace and beauty,

Annette

Within minutes—maybe five, maybe ten—the couple gets back in their car, backs up, and heads on to the next stop on their journey.

This happens while we sit in our truck waiting. To keep the mosquitoes at bay, we leave our windows up and the air conditioning running. As we wait, I try to imagine what I’ll experience in this sacred place. The other couple’s quick exit makes me wonder how much any of us can understand about this place without someone to help us see what is here.

We’re fortunate that our visit will be led by an Anishinaabe Knowledge Keeper who leads interpretative tours to deepen understanding and appreciation of this site. She’s the one we are waiting for.

Our Winnipeg-based friend, Charlotte, had toured this land with this guide before and was so impressed that she wanted to share the experience with us. When the temperatures soared to over 33 degrees Celsius (90+ F) on the day we’d originally planned to go, it came as no surprise that our guide cancelled our tour. Hot sun and granite outcroppings do not make a great combination. But a couple of days later, we were delighted when the temperatures moderated enough that the tour was back on.

When a car pulls up next to ours, we quickly put on mosquito jackets and head nets and step out of the truck. I’m sure it looks more like we’re planning to enter the Amazon jungle than a roadside park in Manitoba, but we’re determined not to let the dive-bombers of the North distract our focus.

Our guide, who introduces herself as Diane, leads us along the same trail I’d seen the other couple traverse: a boreal forest of jack pine, spruce, fir, aspen, moss, and low-growing shrubs.

After a short walk, we emerge from the forest into an open area—a broad expanse of glacier-smoothed rock. We stop at a large boulder resembling a welcome table in a church. On this boulder, visitors have left small bundles, strips of cloth, and other items.

“This is the place to make an offering of tobacco, if you have one,” Diane explains.

We do not, but Charlotte leaves a small gift of sage she had thoughtfully prepared.

Diane tells us that, as we proceed, we can take as many photos on the tour as we like, but no video. “It’s important that people don’t take our teachings and try to share them with others when they don’t know what they mean,” she says.

From there, we cross the weathered granite landscape of the Canadian Shield, the vast region of ancient Precambrian igneous and metamorphic rock surrounding Hudson Bay, to the first petroform. This grouping of rocks covered in moss appears in the shape of a turtle, a creature I’ve long felt a kinship with.

“The Turtle is our living calendar,” Diane says. “The Turtle works with the phases of the moon.”

She goes on to tell the story of how the turtle represents the land masses known today as the Americas and reminds us of our connection to the ancient peoples who traveled before us.

According to Diane, it’s impossible to accurately date the creation of the petroforms. Estimates range widely, from several hundred to several thousand years ago. Some may date to Manitoba’s Woodland period, when pottery became increasingly common and communities continued to travel seasonally along established waterways.

It’s suspected that, because of its proximity to three rivers—the Winnipeg, the Whiteshell, and the Rennie—this site, Manitouabee, which in Anishinaabemowin means “Where The Spirit Sits,” may have been used for ceremonial and spiritual gatherings. These waterways connected Manitouabee with other communities and supported travel and trade throughout the region.

Although archaeological methods cannot identify precisely when the petroforms were created, Ozawa Giizis Ikwe (Yellow Sun Woman), Migizi doodem (Bald Eagle Clan), the woman we know as Diane Maytwayashing, identifies them as the work of her Anishinaabe ancestors and is clear about their purpose.

On her website, she writes:

These stones are set up into various shapes of turtles, water serpents, thunderbird, and sacred women beings – sky woman, spider woman, and a woman giving birth. The Anishinaabe people say that these stone formations align with the star constellations, and for this reason it is the stars that gave the people these instructions of how [we] must live our lives in balance with Mother Earth.

whiteshellpetroforms.com

As we pass a ceremonial circle created in more recent times, she describes how Anishinaabe people gather here today to light fires in each of the four directions, drum, dance, share food, and connect with one another and the natural world. Together, they draw on the healing power of a place where their ancestors also gathered for ceremony, community, and spiritual guidance.

Diane tells us that when a spiritual teacher first brought her here nearly thirty years ago, she had no idea that such a powerful place existed. On her website, she writes about this experience:

It was a powerful feeling – as though I were stepping into another dimension. This special place forever changed my life. It felt as though I stood at the gateway to a Great Spiritual Domain, and that is just what happened that day. I stepped into a Spiritual Domain.

whiteshellpetroforms.com

What is a sacred place?

The deeper we get into this land, I find myself wondering: What makes a place sacred? Isn’t all land sacred? What makes this place special? Is it really the ancient petroforms, or is it something else, something not defined by the simple arrangements of these rocks? Maybe, in fact, the rocks represent the sacred that is infused in the surrounding landscape.

As Ozawa Giizis Ikwe guides us through the stories and teachings of this place, she makes the presence of earlier generations palpable. Through her words, I begin to sense the sacredness present in the land.

I can feel the energy of generations blowing through the trees and across the granite landscape. Standing there, I try to imagine the people who might once have gathered on this land. The smell of smoke from the ceremonial fires wafts up into the trees. Several decorated clay pots rest beside a cooking fire, one pot holding a mixture of moose, wild rice, broth, and rendered fat, while others boil animal bones to extract their rich grease. Fish from the nearby lakes hang on wooden racks in the smoke to preserve them for later.

In my imagined scene, people move between the fires in soft garments of smoke-tanned hide. Dyed porcupine quills trace bright geometric patterns along their moccasins, leggings, and the edges of dresses; shells, bone pendants, and small pieces of copper sparkle as their wearers turn in the firelight.

This is what is sacred about this land: generations of Anishinaabe people have come here—and continue to come here—to pray and fast, seek spiritual guidance, and pass along their stories and teachings. They remind us that the spirit is infused in all things, and as human beings, we are called to show respect, open ourselves to learning what the land has to teach, and encourage others to do the same.

Earlier this week, I attended a brilliant local production of one of my favorite musicals, the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar. In the song, “Hosanna,” Jesus responds to the religious leaders who want silence from the crowd with:

If every tongue were stilled

The noise would still continue

The rocks and stones themselves would start to sing!

Lyrics by Tim Rice; music by Andrew Lloyd Webber

When I heard that familiar Biblical reference, I couldn’t help but be transported back to the petroforms. The rocks and stones of the Bannock Point Petroforms, the place “Where the Spirit Sits,” have indeed continued to sing through the centuries and will continue for centuries to come. Whether we hear what they are telling us depends entirely on our willingness to listen.

Yours in peace and beauty,

Annette

In Part 2, we continue west toward Thunder Bay, following the lake even when the road occasionally pulled us away from its shoreline.

Best-laid plans

Sometimes even the best-laid plans take an unexpected turn. That was the case with camping. We’d originally planned for six nights of camping on this trip. We’d gathered our camping gear, found perfectly sized crates to store it in the back of the truck, and felt confident that we had everything we needed for comfortable tent camping experiences, including cots, sleeping pads, and even a portable toilet to use inside the tent.

Our plans began unraveling, however, before we ever pitched the tent. We canceled two nights at Hocking Hills State Park on our return trip so we could spend more time with the daughter of a dear friend who had been part of my life for more than fifty years and had just died.

Then, as we left Traverse City for Mackinaw City, where we expected to camp, the weather turned ominous. A red warning flashed across my phone: severe thunderstorms and two-inch hail. Rather than set up camp in the middle of that, we opted for shelter of the hotel variety.

That left us with two nights at Rainbow Falls Provincial Park for our long-awaited camping experience. And, yes, I’ll admit, I picked this park partially because of its name. Right on Superior’s northern shore, this campground boasted everything we’d dreamed about when dreaming about this trip—a small, quiet, beautiful campground with lapping waves to lull us to sleep.

Unfortunately, we discovered that the mosquitoes and black flies were not lulled to sleep by anything. After Wendy counted 50 bites, we decided we were not out to prove what rugged outdoor people we were. So, we did what other reasonable people would do—we pivoted and secured a hotel for our second night.

It’s important at this juncture to remember that we were out in the middle of the Canadian wilderness. It’s not like there was a Holiday Inn Express every few miles. When I looked at the map ahead of us, there were three motel choices. Two were right on the Trans-Canada Highway and one was a few miles south, nearer to the water. Even though the bugs had driven us from the our campsite, I wasn’t ready to give up the lake entirely. So we headed for the one tucked closer to the Superior shore.

The town that time forgot

The hotel, the Red Rock Inn, gave us the impression that the last time it had been updated was before I was born. I’ve since discovered that this hotel has an incredible history that includes housing the Canadian Veterans Guard as they watched over a German prisoner of war camp in the 1940s. Over the years, the building has housed a bank, pharmacy, dentist’s office, library, local bar, and even a school. In addition, the Live from the Rock Folk Festival brings a burst of energy to this town of less than 1,000 residents each August.

But I missed all that. Instead, I groused about the lack of an elevator and air conditioning, the saggy bed, tin-can shower, tissue stuffed to fill a hole in the screen, and a step so high to get into the bathroom that it required a step stool.

I don’t think I’d stay there again, but if I found myself in similar circumstances, I hope I’d be more curious about the place’s history. You never know what you might discover.

Written in stone

Leaving Red Rock, our attention returned to something that had fascinated us all along the Superior shore—the rocks themselves. From the colorful stones of Pebble Beach on the eastern shore to the amethyst deposits farther north, they appeared in every imaginable size and hue—some small enough to fit in a pocket, others as large as tractor-trailers. Their colors and patterns reflect the extraordinary variety of ancient rock that surrounds the lake, shaped first by volcanic forces and glaciers and then, over countless years, by Superior itself. Waves tumble broken fragments against one another, gradually rounding and smoothing their edges until, in some places, they gather by the thousands to form entire beaches.

Sometimes the rocks form shapes so distinctive that they become part of legend, as is the case with the formation known as Indian Head in Ouimet Canyon Provincial Park.

According to legend, a long time ago, there was a giant named Omett. He helped Nanabijou make mountains and lakes. Omett fell in love with Nanabijou’s daughter Naiomi. One day, Omett was moving a mountain when part of it fell off and killed Naiomi. Omett quickly hid Naiomi. Nanabijou desperately looked for his daughter. When he sensed something underground, he sent a thunderbolt that split open the ground, creating the canyon and revealing his daughter at the bottom. He buried her there and to punish Omett he turned him into stone and put him on the canyon walls to watch Naiomi’s grave forever.

Legend gives the canyon one story, its unusual geology tells another. The canyon that houses this unique feature is a massive gorge measuring 328 feet deep and 492 feet wide. The area features complex ecosystems where Arctic plants grow at the bottom of the canyon, despite being 1,000 miles from their typical tundra habitat.

As we moved closer to Thunder Bay, we couldn’t resist the pull of the amethyst mines advertised on the roadside. Amethyst is the official mineral emblem of Ontario and is a draw for anyone who loves purple—like us.

We chose to visit the Diamond Willow Amethyst Mine, in the Municipality of Shuniah, a multigeneration family-owned business that seemed a little less commercial than a couple of the others. Neither of us had ever been rockhounding, so we didn’t know what to expect, but this place made it easy. They handed us a bucket and trowel and directed us to an area where mini bulldozers had deposited various piles of rocks from the mine earlier that day. All we had to do was sift through them to find our treasures.

Kids were built for this work—scrambling over piles and turning over rocks. We were not, especially on a hot Ontario day. Even so, at the end of our excursion, we were happy with the $10 quarter-bucket of beautiful purple rocks we’d discovered.

Reliving history

The final leg of our portion of the Lake Superior Circle Tour took us to Thunder Bay, which sits at the northwest corner of the lake. We had left the wilderness and were back in civilization. Over 120,000 people call Thunder Bay home, so after days when forest, rock, and water had dominated the landscape, traffic lights, chain stores, and busy streets felt strangely jarring. Yet even here, Lake Superior remained impossible to ignore.

Our escape into the wilderness offered quiet and solitude. The city presented the opposite. But that didn’t stop us from exploring it. We love walking around cities almost as much as we do hiking forest trails. In this case, we discovered that the downtown area is currently being revitalized. There are a few restaurants and coffee shops, but it will take more time before it’s a vibrant city center. I hope it makes it.

Only 36 nautical miles from Thunder Bay and clearly visible from the downtown area sits Isle Royale National Park (a US national park), which I fell in love with after hiking there many years ago. However, because it crosses an international border, there’s no direct public ferry service from Thunder Bay. For me, its familiar silhouette on the horizon was another reminder of how this enormous lake connects places that seem worlds apart.

Just south of Thunder Bay sits Fort William Historical Park, an early-19^th-century fort, which served as the inland headquarters of the North West Company, the world’s largest fur trading enterprise with posts stretching across North America. At Fort William, the waterways we had been following became not scenery but transportation routes, the highways of an earlier era.

When we entered the park, we first encountered an Anishinaabe encampment, home to some of the local Ojibway who continue to practice the old ways.

Here we learned something I didn’t know about the use of birch in building canoes and wigwams. I always thought that in order to use the birch, you had to cut down the trees and then strip the bark. However, in the early spring, Ojibway people cut a slit in the bark, insert their hands between the bark and the trunk, and pop it off. Harvested carefully, the tree can survive. In twenty years, the bark can grow back, restoring the tree for the next generation. If only everyone considered the needs of those who will come next. What a different world it would be.

As we continued into the fort, we heard the piercing notes and resonant hum of a bagpipe as a man dressed in a tartan kilt and Glengarry cap approached the square. We listened for a while and engaged him in conversation about the challenges of learning to play the bagpipes, not the least of which is finding a place to practice out of earshot of anyone else.

In other spots around the fort, we watched women prepare a meal, examined furs readied for shipment, greeted voyageurs as they returned to the fort, and even shot a musket (albeit with no ball for the gunpowder to propel).

Although all that was interesting, Wendy had her heart set on taking a river trip in a birch-bark canoe (actually, for safety reasons, a modern replica of a birch-bark canoe). The park had advertised tours, but we quickly learned that each tour required a minimum of three guests. I wasn’t confident I could get in and out of a canoe safely, but I said I’d go if there were no other options. But even with the two of us, we had to wait for someone else to approach. No one did.

Before long, Wendy took matters into own hands. She headed back into the fort and within minutes came out with five additional guests following her like ducks on the river. I couldn’t help but laugh. Relieved of my obligation to accompany her, I stayed ashore and photographed their journey.

From the river to the lake

A half hour west of Thunder Bay, the roar of a waterfall known as the “Niagara of the North” greeted us before we even left the parking lot. We needed no trail marker to point the way. The sound itself drew us toward the thundering cascade.

What better way to end our Lake Superior Circle Tour than beside Kakabeka Falls, knowing that the Kaministiquia—the same river Wendy had paddled the day before—would carry all that rushing water onward to Superior. Like the hundreds of other rivers and streams threaded toward its shores, the Kaministiquia fed the lake that had shaped every day of our journey.

Letting the road be our guide

Everywhere we went on this journey, we felt the pull of Lake Superior and the rugged country surrounding it. But some of our best moments weren’t on the itinerary at all. They came from changing course, lingering longer than expected, or following a roadside sign to a place—like the amethyst mine—we hadn’t even considered before leaving home.

That, for us, is the joy of a road trip. We may choose the route, but if we leave enough room for the unexpected, the road begins making choices of its own. Along Lake Superior, we let both the road and the lake guide us. I can’t imagine a better way to travel.

Yours in peace and beauty,

Annette

On a map, the St. Marys River looks like a calm passage connecting Lake Superior and Lake Huron. But at Sault Ste. Marie, the river is anything but calm. Instead, it drops twenty-one feet through the St. Marys Rapids before emptying into Lake Huron. Without the Soo Locks, this drop would make navigation between the two massive lakes impossible.

Experiencing this passage between the lakes seemed the right place to begin our Lake Superior Circle Tour.

Aboard a tour boat, we first entered the MacArthur Lock. There we watched the lock fill as we felt the water quietly lift us. The change was almost imperceptible at first. Water gathered beneath us as the walls seemed to sink. Gradually, our boat rose to meet the level of the lake beyond.

Later, after crossing into Canada, we returned through the Poe Lock. This time, the water slowly drained away lowering us to the level where we had started. It was an engineering marvel accomplished with surprising gentleness.

But it was the Burns Harbor freighter that demonstrated the sheer scale of these lakes.

According to our tour guide, the freighter was nearly a thousand feet long and eighty feet wide, a floating wall of steel passing through the lock with inches to spare. Yet even a vessel of that size was dwarfed by the vastness of the Great Lakes, especially Superior.

Seeing that colossal ship made it hard to imagine First Nations people and French-Canadian voyageurs venturing across these massive waterways in birch-bark canoes—mere specks against the immensity of the waters around them.

As I watched the Burns Harbor continue down the St. Marys River toward Lake Huron and cities beyond, I began to understand the scale of the journey ahead. Any body of water vast enough to engulf a ship like that was going to challenge everything I thought I knew about a lake, even this Superior lake.

Following the Northern Shore

Our journey would carry us north and west along only part of Lake Superior’s immense shoreline. The Lake Superior Circle Tour is a 1,300-mile loop through Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ontario. During my years living in Michigan, I visited many of the state’s stops along the route, from Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore to the Keweenaw Peninsula. In the 1980s, I crossed the lake for a week of hiking at Isle Royale National Park and later took my mother on Ontario’s Agawa Canyon Train Tour. Even so, the Canadian shore of Lake Superior was a landscape I’d yet to explore.

With Winnipeg as our eventual destination, my wife and I followed the Circle Tour from Sault Ste. Marie to Thunder Bay—a 434-mile stretch that gave us seven unhurried days to explore nearly a third of the entire route.

The moment we crossed into Canada, the tension of the long drive seemed to drain away, replaced by a quiet sense of anticipation for all that lay ahead.

Taking a breath at Batchawana Bay

From our first stop at the Voyageurs Inn, a recently renovated 11-room motor lodge, we only had to gaze across the two-lane Trans-Canada Highway (Ontario Highway 17) onto Batchawana Bay to grasp the immensity of the lake we had come to experience.

Lake Superior is known for its unpredictable waters. Shipwrecks ranging from the Invincible, lost in 1816, to the Edmund Fitzgerald in 1975 helped earn the waters around Whitefish Bay their grim reputation as the “Graveyard of the Great Lakes.”

Years earlier, while crossing from Copper Harbor to Isle Royale National Park, I was unnerved to hear our ferry captain say he had never seen the lake so rough. We arrived safely (after emptying our stomachs along the way) and learned that later crossings had been canceled. Fortunately, the lake had a full week to settle before we had to take our chances on this wildly erratic lake to return to the mainland. For that, I was grateful.

This was the image I held of Lake Superior—whitecaps, churning waters, and waves striking its rocky shores. When I saw the calm, smooth waters of Batchawana Bay, I found it hard to believe it was the same lake. The sky and water joined into one endless panorama. A cloud bank generated by the lake itself—a lake so large it creates its own weather—resembled a mountain range off in the distance.

As the lapping waters lulled us to sleep, I couldn’t wait for morning to begin our exploration in earnest. Before we could hit the road, though, we couldn’t resist indulging in one of the inn’s deservedly renowned homemade apple fritters with its sugary crust and gooey middle overflowing with baked apples and cinnamon.

Later that day, when we offered a second fritter to a group of provincial park service staff at a stop forty-five minutes north, one exclaimed, “Is that from Voyageurs?” When we replied in the affirmative, the group scarfed it up with both reverence and enthusiasm—its reputation clearly established with these young rangers.

Pancakes, an old woman, and a very big bird

If you look at an aerial photo of Pancake Bay, you might be deceived by its three miles of sandy beaches and think you’re in the Caribbean. On closer inspection, though, the tree line behind the beach tells a different story. Dominated by sugar maples, yellow birch, balsam fir, and eastern white cedar, this northern Ontario boreal forest supports an abundance of wildlife from moose to mosquitoes, as this sign aptly warns.

During the 1700s and 1800s, French-Canadian voyageurs traveling toward Sault Ste. Marie welcomed the sight of this long, sandy shoreline, where they could beach their canoes and rest before finishing their journey. At what was likely their final stop before reprovisioning, they used their remaining flour and salt to fry up some delicious galettes, a kind of fried bread similar to a pancake. According to local tradition, those improvised meals gave Pancake Bay its name, although the bay’s remarkably flat, pancake-like appearance may also have played a part.

As we continued north, Lake Superior seemed to reveal a different character around every bend. At Alona Bay Scenic Lookout, we stopped before a panorama of turquoise water so clear that large, colorful rocks created a mosaic in the lakebed below. The lake’s exceptional cold and scarcity of nutrients limit the growth of algae and phytoplankton, producing remarkable clarity and visibility averaging twenty-seven feet under the surface.

Of the seven provincial parks we explored, Lake Superior Provincial Park was our favorite. With fifty-two miles of shoreline unfolding through beaches, cliffs, waterfalls, and forests, it deserves far more than a brief stop. If I’m able to return to the region, I’ll make a beeline for this park and give myself time to take it all in.

Along one of the trails we hiked, the Old Woman River Trail, I came across a tree gently cradling a large, polished rock that gleamed like a gazing ball. I’m continually amazed by the ways trees and rocks accommodate one another, each adapting to the other without losing their own identities. If only humans could learn to do the same.

Old Woman Bay takes its name from a massive cliff said to resemble the profile of an elderly woman. I didn’t see myself reflected in the rock face, but I was drawn to its beauty nevertheless. The water remained eerily calm during our visit, yet it was easy for me to imagine Lake Superior’s waves pounding against the base of the massive cliff.

Throughout the route, signs introduced us to the Group of Seven, the Canadian landscape painters who traveled through this same Algoma country a century before us. Where we tried to capture the shoreline through photographs and words, they used vibrant color, simplified forms, and bold brushwork to interpret the rugged forests, rock, and water of the Canadian Shield.

By evening, the grandeur of the landscape gave way to one of the route’s more playful landmarks. For our second night on the tour, we veered slightly away from Lake Superior to the town of Wawa, Ontario.

What do you do when a new route for the Trans-Canada Highway misses your small town by only a couple of miles? If you are Wawa, you build a giant goose to lure people in. And it worked! Unveiled in 1960, the Wawa Goose Monument, 28 feet tall, 22 feet long, with a wingspan of 20 feet, now in its third iteration, is one of the most photographed roadside monuments in North America.

Day 3: Winnie the Pooh, waterfalls, mosquitoes and black flies

We started our third day by hiking to majestic Magpie Falls just north of Wawa and ended it on the peaceful, rocky shores of Lake Superior at Rainbow Falls Campground.

Perhaps because Lake Superior continued to appear so still, we found ourselves drawn to the rivers and waterfalls that revealed the landscape’s more turbulent side. Middle Silver Falls, Magpie Falls, and the Aguasabon Falls and Gorge sent water tumbling, plunging, and surging through the ancient rock.

Between waterfalls, the road offered an unexpected detour into literary history. As we continued our way northwest, we had to stop in White River to pay homage to the real birthplace of one of my favorite literary characters, Winnie the Pooh.

A plaque there told us that in 1914, Lieutenant Harry Colebourn bought a black bear cub in White River and named her Winnie after his hometown of Winnipeg. After taking Winnie with him to England, Colebourn left her in the care of the London Zoo when his regiment was sent to France. There Winnie became a favorite of young Christopher Robin Milne, whose stuffed bear—and later A. A. Milne’s beloved stories—took her name.

Beauty, boulders, and bugs

Our campground lay only steps from Lake Superior’s northern shore, a setting we had anticipated as one of the highlights of the trip. Instead of a sandy beach like Pancake Bay, the water met a rugged sweep of massive boulders. Islands of every size dotted Schreiber Channel, and beyond them stretched an immense expanse of blue.

Sadly, black flies and mosquitoes shattered the peace of the shoreline, so, with nothing to prove about our rugged outdoor skills, one night of camping was all we could tolerate. Despite the bugs, we stayed long enough to enjoy both sunset and sunrise in that remarkable place—as did this photogenic dog, who posed as though it belonged there.

A preview of coming attractions

By the end of our third day, Lake Superior had already shown us sandy beaches, turquoise bays, sheer cliffs, thundering waterfalls, and a boulder-strewn shore. Yet the lake itself remained strangely calm, still holding back the wilder face I knew it possessed.

In Part 2, we’ll dig for amethyst, step into the past at an old fur-trading post, and witness the power of the “Niagara of the North.”

Yours in peace and beauty,

Annette

As the crowd waited for the sun to drop lower in the sky, children played on the lawn and adults chatted with each other or sat quietly taking in the scene. By the time the guest conductor finally appeared on the stage, the crowd was ready.

Directly across the James River within view of this new waterfront park sits another dock: Ancarrow’s Landing. In the decades before the Civil War, that dock served as part of the massive slave trade that made Richmond one of the largest sources of enslaved Africans on the east coast of America.

In deference to that history, the symphony didn’t begin with “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Instead, it opened with a solemn version of “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” a hymn of faith, endurance, and liberation, often called the Black national anthem. Written as a poem by James Weldon Johnson in 1900 and later set to music by his brother J. Rosamond Johnson, this hymn became, and still serves today, as a powerful song of hope and collective memory for African Americans.

The juxtaposition of the setting along with the symphony’s musical selections, which also included “The Star-Spangled Banner,” a tribute to the Tuskegee Airmen, “America the Beautiful” (written, by the way, by a lesbian English professor, Katharine Lee Bates), and the requisite John Phillip Sousa, showed so much about the complex history of this country we call the United States of America.

Here’s a quick look at the fireworks over the James River later that evening with “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” once again serving as the accompainment.

As we mark the 250^th anniversary of the founding of this country, I’ve felt the tension, as I’m sure many of you have, between pride, prejudice, and patriotism. Should we celebrate this anniversary.? Should we ignore that it’s happening? Or should we use it as an opportunity to call on America to fulfill its promise?

Learning to be an American

Every day in my Catholic elementary school in Arkansas, we pledged our allegiance to the USA. As a child, I took pride in our country. I learned that it was a democratic nation formed on the premise that all men [sic] are created equal. I learned that it was the greatest country on Earth, and I believed it.

As the nuns introduced me to US and Arkansas history, I discovered that I loved the stories of the American Revolution, the pioneers, and the conquering of the West. When I was five and six, my family lived in Colorado and spent our summers exploring the western states. As a result, by the time I could read about history in school, I’d already encountered American Indians, attended pow-wows, and visited the cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde. I knew that immigrants, mostly from Europe, had decimated the Indian populations, but I didn’t know enough to understand the immorality of their actions. Instead, I relished learning about the history of this great nation.

As I grew a little older, I came to understand that the history of the United States is much more complicated than it appears on the surface. This understanding grew when I learned that Black people couldn’t stay overnight in my town without risking being attacked because of the color of their skin. I then learned that we didn’t have to deal with school desegregation like other communities near us because there were no local Black schools. People in my town were grateful for that. I became curious about Mexican migrant workers who worked in nearby chicken plants and why none moved to the sundown town (a term I learned much later) in which I lived, but, again, all I heard about it was how lucky we were.

I was also intrigued by poor White people. The woman who cleaned our house twice a month lived in a sharecropper’s cabin outside of town. My family marveled at the fact that she had no electricity or running water and had to get a ride with the property owner into town because she had no means of transportation.

I knew White kids in my junior high school who lived in broken-down shacks at the edge of the town dump. Scavengers, my friends and I called them. We fantasized about what treasures they might find among the town’s discards, especially when we threw something away we thought they might like.

But even with all these inequalities around and within me, I was taught that if you worked hard enough, pulled yourself up by your bootstraps, you could make it in America. Anyone who didn’t was lazy, unlucky, or ill.

As an adult, I learned how very wrong this conviction was. In order to pull oneself up by your bootstraps, you first have to have boots. Inequality of opportunity is not a personal choice. It’s a societal condition that requires societal solutions.

The promise has never aligned and yet, we keep trying

Despite what some might have us believe, America’s moral compass has always been skewed. We enslaved millions of people stolen from their home countries in Africa. We annihilated Indigenous tribes to claim land that was not ours. We relegated African Americans and other people of color to second-class, or more likely, third-class citizenship. We excluded Chinese people, imprisoned Japanese Americans, attacked Muslims, and once again, have declared a war on decent, hard-working immigrants.

A few years ago, I produced and narrated a video for an anti-racism workshop series I was a part of leading. The video focuses on America’s history of racism, especially on Black Americans. In it, I stressed how with every attempt to systemize discrimination against people of color in this country, there has been and continues to be strong multiracial resistance movements to counter those attempts. Americans do not sit idly by when rights are being denied. That’s the America I love—one willing to fight for the rights of all people, to ensure that the American dream is available to all.

If you’re interested in watching this (38 minute) video, I’ve posted it here.

Unfortunately, racism didn’t end in 2021 after I published the video. So much more has happened since then and continues to happen every day that’s not documented in this film. However, it may be cliché, but I still believe that, in the oft-quoted words of Theodore Parker, a 19th-century Unitarian minister and abolitionist, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

What if?

The United States is different from many other countries in one fundamental way. This country is based on a civic national identity rather than inherited ancestry. It defines belonging through citizenship, law, and shared public ideals. According to Yoni Appelbaum in his article, “How America Gave Up on Its Own History,” published in The Atlantic earlier this month, “America defined itself as a democratic government ‘of the people, for the people, by the people.’ As a nation, we espouse ‘commitment to a common creed—of equality, rights, and opportunity.’”

Despite what the neo-Nazis chanted at the 2017 Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, we are not a nation built on “blood and soil.” Applebaum goes on:

Americans defined their nation in this way, by their commitment to a common creed—of equality, rights, and opportunity—and to a corresponding set of democratic ideals that they were modeling for the world. In practice, they generally fell short of those principles, sometimes seeming to pursue their abnegation more than their fulfillment. But the white men who built their fledgling republic around an idea, instead of around a common ancestry, opened the possibility that any who subscribed to its creed could become a citizen. Over time, other Americans demanded that the nation live up to its ideals and recognize their equality. For more than two centuries, our creedal nationalism has been a source of strength, binding together Americans of diverse faiths and backgrounds.

What would it mean to change the narrative so that we lived up to our ideals, to our common creed? What if our priorities shifted from attacking immigrants to ending food and housing insecurity and addressing the growing climate crisis? What if we made it possible, and, in fact, even encouraged people to come to and stay in this country as long as you worked or studied hard and contributed to the collective good? What if we built and supported immigrant-rich communities where everyone, including American citizens, had what they needed to not only survive but thrive.

I’m confident that if we did this, we would flourish as a country, and, because America would be making moral choices, the world would thrive too. It’s what I believe is meant by “in order to form a more perfect union” stated in the Preamble of the US Constitution. We can’t stop working on it. We can’t let those who are determined to change the very essence of this country win.

Pride in our principles

I believe that America still has the potential of being/becoming a model for the world. Our religious pluralism, racial diversity, ethnic heritage, interests, and politics is our strength. It’s the ideal on which our country was built even as we failed and continue to fail time and time again to live up to that ideal.

I believe that progress never happens in a straight line. Instead, although it’s a mostly horizontal line, it contains loops, breaks, knots, repairs, and upward bends, stitched together in places where the nation has to mend itself.

For many of us, this feels like a hopeless time. Those of us who’ve spent a lifetime fighting for racial equality, civil and human rights, women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, disability rights, and immigrant rights, have watched much of this work evaporate in the last eighteen months. However, I refuse to believe that we should give up. We must have faith that this country has a strong enough foundation to withstand even these overwhelming assaults on it. We have come a long way, and although we still have an even longer way to go, I believe that we will mend ourselves and move forward again, no matter how long it takes.

Creating the nation we want America to be requires us to lift up and celebrate the good things, the moral things, that give up hope in future possibilities.

As we approach July 4^th 2026, I encourage you to think about what parts of this country’s history you are able to celebrate. Maybe it’s the freedom fighters of the American Civil Rights Movement. Maybe it’s the 19^th century abolitionists. Maybe it’s the climate activists who are risking everything to stop global climate change. Maybe it’s the suffragists who chained themselves to the White House gate to secure women’s right to vote. Maybe it’s the American inventors and innovators who designed everything from the electric light bulb to the internet.

Maybe it’s Black Lives Matter activists, members of the American Indian Movement, and immigrant rights activists. Maybe it’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people who have tried to teach us all that “love is love” and we all have a right to express who we are without constraint. Maybe it’s disability activists who make it possible for more people to participate in everyday activities. Maybe it’s the people who had the foresight to create our national, state, and local parks and preserve the wonder of American geography.

I love all these things and the people behind these movements, actions, and events. These are the things that make me proud to be an American. What resonates for you?

After you’ve reflected on the things that make America special to you, I encourage you to find something to do that honors the good in our country. Here are a few suggestions:

1. Attend one of your community’s 250^th events, enjoy the parades and fireworks, go to a farmers’ market, or spend time at your local history museum. As you do, look for the goodness in the people you see rather than focusing on the attributes that separate us.

2. Invite your neighbors, regardless of their political affiliation, to a backyard barbeque to celebrate what it means to be good neighbors.

3. Visit a national park or other places with complicated histories such as monuments, battlefields, cemeteries, schools, courthouses, former plantations, labor sites, immigration sites, protest sites, LGBTQ+ landmarks, tribal lands, or local civil rights sites and be a witness to the acts of courage that took place there.

4. Invite your friends, family, or faith community to watch Refuge, a documentary that “unmasks hate in America — and makes room for understanding” by chronicling “an unlikely friendship between a Muslim and a white supremacist” and in doing so, “reveals deep wisdom about humanity.”

5. Honor an ancestor, elder, or predecessor who endured. Choose one person—family member, activist, teacher, neighbor, writer, immigrant, queer elder, enslaved person, Indigenous leader, labor organizer—someone whose life says, I was here too. Learn, write, or tell their story as part of the anniversary.

Celebrate the promise of America without pretending the promise has been fulfilled. Whatever you do, celebrate it in a way that’s true to you. That is the best definition of what America is to me and the most American kind of observance there is. In the comments, please share what you decide to do and what it will or did mean to you.

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Happy 250^th anniversary! May the next 250 years be filled with resilience, promise, opportunity, and hope for a better future for all Americans.

Yours in peace and promise,

Annette

When I was growing up, watching the evening news and reading the local newspaper was as much a ritual as having dinner. But, in those days, once Walter Cronkite signed off with “And that's the way it is” at the end of each broadcast, and all that was left to be read in the newspaper were the comics and classifieds, we went on to other things. Today, news is blasted at us 24/7 and, even with great intentions to not let it get to us, it’s next to impossible to ignore.

So how do we absorb the news without being overwhelmed by it? Last Sunday, a friend of mine gave a brief talk at our Unitarian Universalist congregation about how to watch the news. I was so taken by it, found it so helpful, that I asked her if I could share it with you.

Before you read her guidance, I want to point out that Regina is not just anybody with an idea. She’s a twenty-three-year U.S. Army veteran who served as both a journalist and public affairs officer, a former university professor who taught literature, writing, and military history, and a former middle-school math teacher. In addition, she’s been a Buddhism practitioner for over 20 years and a Unitarian Universalist for 30 years. She knows from whence she speaks.

I hope you find her words as valuable as I do.

Regina Largent’s Guide to Watching the News

I was asked how I watch, read, or listen to the news without getting too upset. Detaching from news through a Buddhist lens is really about practicing non-attachment and cultivating equanimity.

Here are some approaches:

First, recognize the nature of news itself

News is designed to provoke reaction — fear, outrage, hope. Noticing this is the first step. I ask myself: “Am I consuming, or am I being consumed?”

• Before turning on the news, take three slow, deliberate breaths. This simple act shifts you from autopilot to intentional witness.

• In the Zen tradition, this is called “setting intention” -- you are choosing to engage, not being pulled in by habit.

Next, I practice the observer mind.

When watching the news, I try to observe my reactions without being swept up in them. What RAIN meditation calls “recognizing.”

The RAIN Method has 4 parts:

R – Recognize: Name what you feel. “This story is making me angry.” Naming the emotion engages the prefrontal cortex and reduces amygdala reactivity—both neuroscience and the Buddhist concept of clear comprehension back this.

A – Allow: Don’t push it away. Let the feeling be present without amplifying it.

I – Investigate: Ask gently: “Where do I feel this in my body? What belief is being triggered?” This act mirrors the Vipassana practice of body scanning.

N – Nurture: Offer yourself compassion, the same you’d give a friend. Place a hand over your heart to activate what neuroscientist Rick Hanson calls the “being with” circuit.

Then, I try to apply impermanence.

Every story on the news — however urgent — is subject to change. (And my 22 years in the Army as a journalist and Public Affairs officer taught me that the first report is always incorrect.) Today’s crisis becomes tomorrow’s footnote. Holding this truth gently doesn’t mean apathy; it means you can respond wisely rather than reactively.

After watching a distressing story, pause and mentally ask: “Where will this story be in five years?” This is not dismissal — it’s the practice of impermanence in action.

Set intentional limits

The Buddha taught the Middle Way — neither total withdrawal from the world nor being consumed by it. I give myself defined windows for news consumption. (I record & then watch & fast forward or stop it.) I try to be a conscious participant, not a passive absorber.

• In Buddhist practice, dāna (generosity) includes deliberately giving your attention. Treat your attention as a precious offering — not something to be taken from you.

• Set a timer for your news window — 20 or 30 minutes. When it ends, close the browser or turn off the TV. Bow slightly to mark the close of this period of attention. Structure creates space: News in, pause, life in.

Always return to the breath.

After watching something disturbing, a few minutes of mindful breathing can be an anchor in the present moment — the present moment is the only place where I actually have agency. (I cannot act in the past or future.)

Another thing I try to do is distinguish compassion from suffering

One can care deeply about the world without taking on its suffering as one’s own. Buddha’s first observation is that “dis--ease“ exists. But we do not have to suffer from a second arrow we shoot into ourselves.

Mettā (loving-kindness) meditation helps — sending compassion outward without drowning in it. The Bodhisattva ideal is precisely this: being in the world, responding with care, but not being destabilized by it.

After a difficult story, close your eyes and begin mettā or loving-kindness meditation in expanding circles:

• Start with yourself: “May I be safe. May I be at ease.” (This is not selfish — you cannot pour from an empty vessel.)

• Expand to those directly affected in the news story: “May those suffering be safe. May they be at ease.”

• Expand further to those causing harm: “May they be free from the conditions that lead to suffering.” (This is the hardest circle and the most transformative.)

• The Dalai Lama describes this practice as lo-jong (mind training) AND, it doesn’t mean approving of harm; it means refusing to let hatred take root in your own mind.

The final part is to ask the key question.

The Buddha often tested the usefulness of a thought or engagement with this question: “Does this lead to liberation, or does it lead to more entanglement?” News that moves you to skillful action has value.

News that only stirs anxiety or ill-will can be released.

The goal isn’t indifference — it’s engaged equanimity: caring about the world while remaining rooted in your own stillness.

Please be sure to share your thoughts and ideas about how this practice of engaged equanimity, caring about the world while remaining rooted in your own stillness, might work for you and what other practices you’ve incorporated that allow you to stay in control of your news absorption.

Leave a comment

Yours in peace,

Annette

In all three cases, I’d been lucky. They’d all been found early, were all Stage 1, were apparently unrelated to each other, and were successfully removed through surgery. No lymph node involvement. No fuzzy margins. Still, given my body’s propensity for growing tumors, after my third diagnosis, my oncologist recommended that I undergo a preventative course of chemo. I wasn’t thrilled with the prospect, but I understood.

My wife and I cancelled our planned trip to Hawaii to celebrate our tenth anniversary, which was already three years late. Cancelled the first time in 2020 due to COVID, we had pulled out all the stops on this trip. But, sadly, it wasn’t to be.

As I prepared for what was going to be a dismal summer, I searched for something that would motivate me and give me hope as I endured this course of treatment. When I looked at the calendar, I realized that my treatment was going to run about sixty-five days. Hmmm, I asked myself, what else had the number sixty-five in it?

If you’re a new subscriber, you might not know that Accidental Mentors: Inspirational Stories of Women Who Shaped my Life Without Even Trying is a micro-memoir collection I began writing when I turned 65. It focuses on sixty-five women who have impacted me in large and small ways throughout my life. Here’s a brief statement about this project’s focus:

My goal in sharing these stories and reflections is to remind us that we are but a collection of interactions, influences, and inspirations. My hope is that in reading these short pieces, you will be reminded of how important each interaction we have is. Just like a monarch butterfly laying eggs on a milkweed plant, what you leave behind is just as important as what you take with you.

When I realized the intersection of sixty-five days and sixty-five stories was calling to me, I accepted that this was not a coincidence but a sign. I took a deep breath and designed my Substack website.

I decided I would start publishing Accidental Mentors as a serialized memoir on the day of my first infusion and continue to publish it concurrently with my course of chemo. I reasoned it would give me something positive to focus on—something other than the toxins coursing through my body. I was mostly right about that.

Publishing every day, however, while undergoing chemo, was not sustainable. I backed off to five days a week, and then four, but eventually, I finished my chemo, and as stubble began to appear on my shaved head, I eventually wrapped up publishing the serialized version of Accidental Mentors on Substack.

So, why am I rehashing this old history, you might ask. I’m excited to announce that (finally) I’ll be releasing Accidental Mentors in print and eBook formats this fall. I’m currently working on the interior design and am thrilled with the results. Each of the women I profiled will receive a two to four page spread focused on one lesson I learned from them. In some cases, they were formal mentors/teachers/family, but in most cases, they were women who crossed my path and left me with something, that unbeknownst to them, I could use to be a better person.

I admit that I haven’t consistently applied every lesson, but I have used them to challenge myself to grow, rethink beliefs I held on to, and inspire me to take risks to do the hard things. I hope this collection inspires you to remember your mentors—accidental and intentional—and maybe take the time to thank them for the gifts they gave you.

How to get your copy of Accidental Mentors

If you are or have been a paid subscriber or if you’re one of the women highlighted in the book, it’s already yours. As I get closer to mailing, I’ll send you a form to make sure I have your current address, know how you’d like the book inscribed, and whether you’d like to order additional copies. You might also consider purchasing one (or more) to give to one of your accidental mentors as a way of thanking them for their inspiration.

If you choose to become a paid subscriber before December 31^st, 2026, I’ll mail you an autographed print copy of Accidental Mentors (or e-book if outside the US or Canada) as soon as it’s available (if paying monthly, after you’ve paid for a year).

Subscribe now

Accidental Mentors will also be available for purchase directly from the WordsWomen.com, through Bookshop.org, your local independent bookstore, or wherever books are sold.

Reviewing Year Three on Substack

More than I expected to, but not surprisingly given our current state of affairs, I wrote a lot about resistance in some form or another this past year. How could I not? But I tried to address it from different than the usual perspectives. In posts such as Birding for a Better World, Watching the Sun Rise and Other Forms of Resistance, and Restoring Native Habitat, I wanted to remind us that embracing nature is a form of resistance.

In My Sacred Canon, I wrote about how a simple Canon PowerShot camera changed people’s lives including mine, in The Day Love Became Legal I wrote about marriage equality, in Signs of Life, about finding a way through grief.

If you’re interested in catching up on these and anything else you missed, you can find all my previous posts in my website’s archive: https://www.annettemarquis.com/archive. I hope you enjoy them.

What’s in Store for Year Four

On May 29^th, 2026, I’ll be celebrating the first anniversary of my retirement. It’s been a wonderful year in so many ways. I still wonder at the expansiveness of time, the freedom to choose how I spend my days, and the gift of creative energy that’s no longer muted by work stress and Zoom calls. I’ll admit that some of this year, I’ve just sat gazing at the birds or binge-watching mindless TV, but even then, it felt like a tremendous gift.

My wife, Wendy, who continues to go to work every day, has been incredibly generous with figuring out how to make the finances work on a reduced income and making sure we have time to be together despite her busy work schedule and her own creative time.

Speaking of Wendy, WordsWomen Press, LLC, the small indie press I formed a couple of years ago, will be publishing her book later in 2026, What Doesn’t Burn: Imagining Richmond’s Grace Arents in Poems. This documentary poetry collection tells the story of a Progressive era woman whose philanthropy and social reform work made a lasting impact in Richmond, Virginia, and explores her relationship with the female companion with whom she shared her life.

It’s an important book that tells the complicated life of a powerful woman at a time when women had to fight even harder to be heard. Watch for more, including the cover reveal on June 20th, the 100th anniversary of Grace’s death, coming soon.

Wandering WordsWomen Travels

In addition to these book projects, Wendy and I will be traveling through Ontario to Manitoba via the northern shore of Lake Superior this summer. I can’t wait! I’ve driven the southern shore many times, but never the northern shore. I can only image that it is even more remote, wild, and beautiful. I’ll let you know what I find.

Thank you for supporting my work

This past year, I published a total of twenty articles, or an average of one every two and half weeks. While that’s not nothing, with all my newly found time, my writing rhythm has been less steady than I thought it would be. I’m deeply grateful to those of you who stayed with me anyway. Although not unexpected, retirement has been a big transition. Figuring out how to shape a new life and creative practice from the ground up has been both exciting and challenging.

As I move into Year Two of retirement and Year Four on Substack, I’m beginning to understand what kind of structure helps me write consistently and well. That means I fully expect that you’ll be hearing from me more regularly in the coming year. I have stories, reflections, and questions I want to explore with you, and I’m excited to return to the page with renewed commitment.

How you can help

If my writing has meant something to you, there are three simple ways you can help sustain and help others discover it:

1. Read and comment on my newsletter. Comments not only help more people find my writing, they also create the kind of thoughtful community that makes writing online feel connected rather than solitary. You can practice right here:

   Leave a comment

2. Read my memoir, Living Into the Truth, and leave a review on Amazon and/or Goodreads. Reviews genuinely matter in helping readers decide whether to pick up a book. I always encourage people to buy through independent bookstores or Bookshop.org when possible, but reviews on Amazon and Goodreads still make the biggest difference in visibility.

   

3. Become a paid subscriber to this newsletter. Paid subscriptions directly support the time it takes to research, write, and continue sharing this work. If you’re considering it, see “How to get your copy of Accidental Mentors” above for one of this year’s special subscriber benefits.

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THANK YOU!

And to those of you who are already subscribers, especially paid subscribers: just thank you. Your support has given me both encouragement and the confidence to keep writing through a year of transition. I’m deeply grateful that you’ve chosen to invest in this work and walk alongside me as a reader.

Yours in peace and gratitude,

Annette

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

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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?

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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.

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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!

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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!

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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

10 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!

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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!

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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.

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

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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!

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