Dissent is patriotic ... do not tread on me

By Elizabeth Flater

“I love my country

by which I mean

I am indebted joyfully

 to all the people throughout its history

 who have fought the government to make right.”

-Ani Difranco 

 

Somehow, the American Flag has evolved into a right wing symbol. The way I see it, the most patriotic Americans are those that have actually fought for the values in the Declaration of Independence that we celebrate today. On this 250th anniversary of the United State’s Independence, I lift my glass to Abolitionists, Freedom Fighters, Suffragists, Reproductive Justice Advocates and those fighting for LGBTQIA+ freedom. To me, they are the face of patriotism. The blue stripes in the flag represent vigilance, perseverance and justice. The time for these values is nigh. The United States flag and patriotism do not belong exclusively to the Republican party.

 

I don’t know about you, but there’s something rising in me these days that makes me feel more patriotic than I ever have before. But it’s not for the reasons one might assume. I want our country to be the country we claim to be—the one the founding fathers spoke into existence, even when they themselves weren’t fully living into those ideals. I want a country of liberty and justice for all, where all (wo)men are created equally and endowed with unalienable rights.

 

 I want to be among the people whom “whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

 

I am not proud of where we are headed on a federal level. I feel betrayed by the elected officials that have kowtowed to Donald Trump and Project 2025. 

 

At the same time, I am more grateful than I have ever been for:

- Women that fought for the right to vote, bodily autonomy and so many other rights

- Black leaders that have and continue to stand up and fight for equality 

- Laborers who wouldn’t back down until the labor laws were improved

- LGBTQIA+ community that have fought for their rights

- Immigrants who have advocated for reform

 

One thing we’ve learned over the last 10 years is that these rights are not all guaranteed, and in many cases, they are revocable. Some equal rights have yet to be achieved. Some communities are yet to be protected equally under the law. Women all over this country are fighting for their bodily autonomy and medical care, when we may have thought this fight had already been settled.  

 

In 1751, Christopher Gadsden designed the Don’t Tread On Me flag with a rattlesnake as it’s symbol. During the Revolution, Benjamin Franklin said the rattlesnake is the perfect symbol for this idea, because a rattlesnake will never start a fight. But, once it is provoked, it will never back down. It’s a symbol of vigilance and a defender. The tea party took it on as their symbol when they were gaining popularity in 2009, to protest government spending and federal overreach. It is now often seen at different rallies and political events of the populist right. 

 

I think it’s time to reclaim the American flag and the Don’t Tread On Me mentality. Liberty does not belong to Republicans when they are trying to tell women what they can and cannot do with their bodies.  Freedom is not telling transgender people where they can use the restroom or drag queens, where they can read stories in public. The pursuit of happiness does not involve stoking fear in immigrant communities. Life does not belong to Republicans, when they repeatedly, over decades of time, refuse to implement common sense gun reform that the majority of Americans support. 

 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that we, the American people on the 250th anniversary of our freedom from Oligarchic rule, now find ourselves sliding backwards in our quest for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. 

 

Dissent is patriotic. 

 

Do not tread on me. 

 

Happy semiquincentennial to all the patriots who have fought the good fight, and who continue the American legacy of never backing down in the pursuit of freedom and justice for all.  

 

"She never wounds 'till she has generously given notice, even to her enemy, and cautioned him against the danger of treading on her." 

— Benjamin Franklin

 

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Our most important news

By JoAnne Young

I attended a newswriting seminar years ago in which one of the speakers said something I have carried with me to this day. The speaker was a newspaper columnist who said: The most important news of the day to people is what is said around the dinner table. 

So, fellow believers in Mayhem, here is the news of the week as reported at my house. 

 

My dahlias are looking great. My gazanias are being nibbled down by the rabbit living in my yard. It has chewed the petal tips off two bright yellow blooms and chomped on the leaves of some, reducing them to nubs. I thought the occasional foxes in the neighborhood may have kept the bunnies at bay, but they must have found a good hiding place. 

 

Our young grands were here this week, ages 11, 9 and 7, to stay with us while attending the Lincoln Children’s Zoo camp, a good dose of animal love eight hours a day for five days. They brought home news of Pebbles the penguin, Zuri the cheetah, Allie the giraffe, and that peacock roaming the grounds who is “the nice one.” 

 

I will admit to having not been a fan of zoos, for the most part because I feel badly for creatures sentenced to a cage rather than roaming the wild. But I understand the idea of zoos as places of conservation and protection and breeding arks for endangered species. I appreciate that Ellie, Max and Aila got close to penguins and giraffes and, my favorites, the goats, with those strangest of eyes that give them a 320-degree field of vision. And back home to Denver they went this weekend with stuffies from the gift shop, a snake and a red panda, and a tracking bracelet for Kira the gorilla, who is roaming free in Africa, somewhere near Rwanda. 

 

Other things I learned at the dinner table: 

* The 11-year-old only likes homemade pesto, not the Costco brand (with imported Italian basil), which I think is pretty good, and much easier than growing and picking my own Nebraska basil and buying pine nuts and fresh garlic cloves, red pepper flakes and grated parmesan cheese. Is Italian basil better than Nebraska basil? 

* Video games require kids to be hyper focused and can release high doses of dopamine. After a while, withdrawal can result in irritability, agitation and exhaustion. 

* Showers are boring. I couldn’t disagree with this one. They would be less boring if we could read in the shower, or use a new, wonderful soap fragrance each time, or have someone else wash our hair. 

* Benji (the star of the Benji movies) is safe to watch because Benji doesn’t die, and that particular little dog is smarter and more daring than any police detective and accomplishes everything without guns or other weapons. Suspend belief. 

* I could do all my birthday and Christmas shopping for these three grands at the zoo’s gift shop. Good to know.

 

Watching the kids this week at several of Lincoln’s colorful parks filled with slides and tire swings and some kind of new-fangled seesaw made me daydream about a playground for adults with tall slides and wide swings and high teeter-totters just for fun rather than for exercise. 

 

Electronic devices and screens were a constant source of attention this week. The kids don’t have phones but do have iPads that are used for reading, watching shows and playing Subway Surfers. Their father has put barriers on the iPads to limit access and time spent on all but the reading device. I had to make sure they were charged and the proper codes entered at the proper times. 

 

I have to admit my smart phone is somewhat addictive. It is programmed to be, with ever more updates to draw me to it. Lately, it lights up when I walk near it, to show me any new notifications that I just must see. It won’t be long until it will be calling me by name when I walk into the room. And my Ring doorbell will shout out, Hey, someone is walking by your front door.

 

A friend was telling me this week how much she likes to go the pool because it doesn’t change, it doesn’t update. It feels, looks and smells the same way it did when she was a kid. Comforting and relaxing and warm. 

 

Good news for parents whose adult children have moved across the country (that’s us). We had a visit from our daughter this past week, and tomorrow our oldest son will come from Los Angeles for a couple of days, and our youngest son is moving back to our area from Florida a few days later. 

 

Finally, our family news is thankfully not filled with politics this week, but as our country’s 250^th birthday approaches, I would like to give a shoutout to Supreme Court Justice Elana Kagan for her dissent in a decision that allowed Homeland Security to end temporary protected status to migrants from Haiti and Syria. She put Trump’s most racist and inflammatory remarks about Haitians into permanent record, and blasted her conservative colleagues (Huffpost, June 25), who said none of Trump’s or Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s were “overtly racist” or did not reflect racial bias. 

 

Kagan put those racist statements in the record: Trump said Haitians “probably have AIDS,” Haiti is a “shithole” country, Haitians are “poisoning the blood” of America, and Haitian immigration is like a “death wish for our country.”

 

The statements by the president are so repellent and racially inflected, Kagan said, that the majority declines to put them in print. But they “fairly shout, in their racial overtones and undertones alike, that race entered into the president’s resolve to remove Haitians from this country. ... Haitians are Black. The references—of filth, disease and primitiveness—are shot through with racial stereotypes and tropes.” 

 

There are better things to fill up our family news, but we can’t avoid the messy news from outside our neighborhood infiltrating our private lives. We have to keep those other dinner tables in mind. They need our attention, too. 

 

Wishing you and yours all good news in the next week and beyond. 

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Hope Is a Choice

 By Marilyn Moore

Did your family have a designated family worrier?  Mine did, or at least, that’s how I saw it.  It was Aunt Marie, my mom’s sister, the oldest of the six siblings.  Aunt Marie kept track of everyone, which was mostly wonderful, because we all knew she was looking out for us.  She knew who was ill, who was hurting, who was getting married, who was having a baby, whose car had broken down, who had a new job and who needed a new job, whose crops were doing well and whose were faltering.  She knew it all….and if there were a reason to worry, Aunt Marie did so.  She also stepped in to help, anyone on the above list or anyone else who might just need a little boost.

When Aunt Marie died, my mom took over that role.  I don’t think it weighed her down; for her it was a part of caretaking.  Somehow or other, she just knew…who needed help, who needed prayers, who needed a phone call or a visit or a card or a plate of cookies or tomatoes from her garden.  

My mom was the last of her siblings to die, and I don’t think a member of my generation has stepped into that role…though perhaps one of the cousins has done so.  While I’m not the family worrier, I do notice that I tend to worry about “things” more than I did ten years ago.  Perhaps when I was working there simply was not time to notice all the things that could go wrong; now, I seem to have more time for worry. 

I think there’s a negative connotation to the word “worry,” and I tend to not use it, choosing words like “fret” or “concern.”  Not sure there’s much difference….I envy my friend Mary, whose approach to “things that go wrong” is intentionally thinking, “It’s probably just something little, something easily fixed.”  Mine is exactly the opposite.  

I can go in thirty seconds from a leaky pipe that means a part of a ceiling will need to be replaced to a leaky pipe that means the entire second floor will collapse into the first place and the house will be destroyed.  I can go in thirty seconds from a growth on my eyelid that my ophthalmologist assures me is non-cancerous and easily removed to a malignancy that has penetrated my eye and will cause permanent blindness.  I can go in thirty seconds from being a week past the oil change date on my car to total engine failure.  And all of these are magnified twenty-fold when it’s two o’clock in the morning.  Eventually, reason takes over, I get more information and make a plan of action, and the thing about which I’ve been fretting (for days or weeks or longer) is resolved, and it moves off my 2 a.m. worry list. 

(I do not downplay the seriousness of some of these reasons for worry, either for myself or others. I’ve received the phone call telling me I had cancer; somehow, I never thought I would hear my name and the word “cancer” in the same sentence, but it happened, and it’s happened to many of my friends, too.  I’ve known people whose homes were destroyed, who literally started over.  I was with my mom when she got the phone call in the middle of the night that my dad had died, and I know others who have experienced the same.  The death of a child is a parent’s worst nightmare; it’s happened to people I know and love.  Sometimes, the things we worry about do happen, and it’s awful….and worrying didn’t help….but how can you not.)

More recently, I’ve been worried about our country, about the institutions that are intended to be the bedrocks of our democracy, institutions like free and fair elections, voting rights, balance of powers among three branches, equality before the law, freedom to speak and protest and petition, due process, birthright citizenship.  These are big things, and big worries…way more than a leaky pipe and an oil change. Big enough that it’s hard to figure out what one person might do….and wearying to think about the effort it takes to combine the efforts of the millions of people who are also worried, also fretting.  

And then, Michelle Obama, in her magnificent speech at the opening of the Obama Presidential Center, addressed it head on.  We have choices.  Her words: 

And that's why, folks, we simply don't have the luxury or time to be cynical or complacent, to wring our hands in despair, to wait for someone else to fix the problem.

Y'all, hope is all we have.

Because hope is the essential spark that lights the fire of change. But hope is a choice. Whether or not we use our voices to speak up is a choice. Voting is a choice. Being a decent human being is a choice. Believing that we still hold the power to build a country that reflects us all is a choice.

So, whether it’s a leaky pipe, a hard medical diagnosis, or an assault on a democratic value, we have choices.  I have a choice.  And the choice is to figure out what action one person can take that makes the desired outcome more likely rather than less likely.  As for the assaults on democracy, I can choose to vote.  To speak. To write.  To contact members of congress.  To campaign for candidates who reflect my deeply held values.  To support financially those agencies that support, defend, and advocate for those who are threatened and intimidated.  Those are not glamorous acts, but they are acts of citizenship.  When enough of us do them, we move the needle in the right direction…we bend the arc toward justice.

And when I’m tired of worrying, I read again the words of Mary Oliver, author of, “I Worried.”

I worried a lot.  Will the garden grow, will the rivers flow in the right direction, will the earth turn

as it was taught, and if not how shall 

I correct it?

Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven,

can I do better?

Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows

can do it and I am, well,

hopeless.

Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it,

am I going to get rheumatism,

lockjaw, dementia?

Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing.

And I gave it up.  And took my old body

and went out into the morning,

and sang.

                    Mary Oliver    

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Summer is calling … cell phones or fireflies?

By Mary Kay Roth

The twinkle of a firefly at twilight.  A meteor shower at midnight. The scent of basil from our garden. A snapdragon that snaps.  The taste of fresh mulberries plucked with purpled fingers.

 

As the warm days of summer are fast upon us, I risk sounding like an old curmudgeon when I remember a childhood crowded with kiddie pools during the day and playing kick-the-can into the night. Drawing sidewalk masterpieces with chalk.  Watching ants laboriously build anthills. Roaming undeveloped lots in search of wildflowers and snakes.

 

Fast forward to one of my granddaughter’s birthday parties this year, held at a cabin in the woods – not a rustic cabin, mind you, more of a glamping cabin – when a hike at dusk came to an abrupt end. 

 

Some of the young party goers were scared. And, no, they didn’t see spooky bats or spiders.  Instead, the girls simply feared: THE OUTDOORS. 

 

“We’re just taking a simple nature hike,” my daughter told them.

 

One little girl countered: “I’m scared of nature.  I don’t like nature.”

 

When they returned to the cabin, all was calmer with games and grilling out. But a few girls never really participated, too upset because there was no Wi-Fi access in the wilderness.

 

With June, July and August looming ahead, I think about that birthday party as I walk through the neighborhoods of Lincoln and notice empty sidewalks and empty streets.

 

Where are all the kids these days?

 

Richard Louv, author of the book Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder tells the story of interviewing a child who said he liked playing indoors more than outdoors “cause that’s where all the electrical outlets are.”

 

A child’s experience of being nervous around nature is a product of a larger issue among twenty-first century children, Louv says.  “Childhood has moved indoors. Children’s use of space has changed from being primarily outdoors to indoors, increasingly adult supervised, and full of screens.”

 

Trust me, I have no hate of technology.  My grandchildren continually surprise me with accumulated knowledge – at early ages – thanks to the internet and online documentaries and accessible info everywhere. 

 

But good grief, folks, it’s June.  

For my grandchildren that translates into walks in parks and fireflies at night.  Making mud pies in their backyard. Reading books curled up in the curve of a tree stump. Camping beside a Nebraska lake. Bicycling on summer afternoons – not driving – to find an ice cream stand. Helping raise chickens in the backyard.  

 

A glorious family in our neighborhood started a yard business and their kids – of all ages – are outdoors all summer, mowing, laughing, helping.  Another mom I know created a summer poster with “a taste of nature” on every day.

 

However, I fear these families are the exception, as screen vs. green time seems dangerously out of whack. 

 

Although technology used within healthy limits can offer benefits to children, it has come with a cost. Children are heavier and unhappier as obesity and anxiety are on the rise – and growing evidence suggests children’s excessive screen use is linked to a range of adverse outcomes that impact physical and mental health. 

 

In contrast, research on green time increasingly and consistently demonstrates that nature-rich environments promote well-being and healthy development. 

 

Admittedly, today’s kids have an alluring reason to be indoors: Television, smartphones, video games, computers, reels, social media. Recent research from the Kaiser Family Foundation found that young people ages eight to eighteen spend an average of more than seven to thirteen hours a day with eyes locked on a screen. 

Louv calls this problem "Nature Deficit Disorder," pointing out the ultra processed entertained kids are immersed in. 

 

 He also stresses that we must begin by looking at their parents.

 

When I walk around Holmes Lake every morning, I’m often heartened by children fishing along the banks of the water. Just as likely, however, their parents are sitting beside them, glued to their phones. Taking my grandkids swimming these days, I’m often one of the lone adults in the pool playing beside children – while so many parents and grandparents linger ashore, on towels or beach chairs, lost in texting.

 

I want to tell those parents to grab a fishing rod – or cannonball into a lake, holding hands with their child.

 

I also want them to understand that nature play is more than just fun, it’s a critical component of a child’s development. 

 

Outdoor activities help kids stay active and healthy. build strength, coordination and balance.  Time in nature has been shown to reduce stress, anxiety and depression in children – provide a peaceful and calming environment, fostering emotional resilience. Nature is a limitless source of creative inspiration for curious young minds, and a natural classroom for exploration and learning.  

 

Finally, nurturing a love for nature at a young age instills a sense of responsibility and care for the environment, making kids more likely to become environmentally conscious adults.

 

Let’s not minimize that last benefit.

 

While kids need nature, nature also desperately needs kids.

 

People don’t protect what they don’t care about or what they don’t know. So, young people not only reap benefits from experiencing nature, but also grow up to be advocates for a healthy planet.

 

And in this age of climate change, mass extinction and environmental degradation, there has never been a greater need for champions of our Earth. 

 

Donald Trump, a tyrant who has launched an unprecedented assault upon the environment, has instigated a blitzkrieg of actions to undo rules protecting clean air, water and a livable climate.  Deleting a swath of green policies, he has frozen climate spending, set about rewriting pollution standards for cars, trucks and power plants, endangered sprawling tracts of land now earmarked for new oil and gas drilling, opened up vast expanses of national forests for cutting timber. 

 

But you can’t lay all the blame on Trump. While smarter countries around the world institute bag-less grocery stores, water-efficient toilets, small energy-efficient cars, as well as major initiatives to keep the world green – countless Americans whine when they take away their plastic grocery bags, insist toilets flush with a gigantic burble and demand SUVs for perhaps the one vacation they take per year.  

 

The health of the global environment is contingent on people actively protecting and advocating for a sustainable planet.

 

So, bring on kids who understand and love nature – who don’t run inside when it rains, but jump in the puddles –who celebrate summer by running through sprinklers, making clover chains, taking flashlight hikes at night. 

 

Set your watches for summer solstice this year – June 21 – the perfect moment for digital detox and screen limitations. 

 

Go outside. Explore local trails, have a picnic, play hide-and-seek. Plant a flower seeds. Climb a tree. Let the grass tickle your bare feet, smell the earth beneath you and look up at the clouds above. 

 

Outdoors is beckoning.  Answer the call. And leave your dang cell phone behind.

"OMG, the baby puked!"

by Karla Lester

Life is full of the unpredictable. 

For anyone with a queasy stomach, this blog is not for you. For anyone who has spent even one moment with a child, you’ll be fine. This is real life, folks. 

My family has a lot of inside family jokes from our trips and one liners from movies. We constantly quote movie lines from National Lampoon’s Vacation. Our most famous inside family joke is from March of 2008, LPS Spring Break for our oldest.

It was a time of transition in life and I was running on what felt like empty. It was only two months before I was leaving my pediatric practice to officially launch my nonprofit, Teach a Kid to Fish, when our family of 5 headed to San Diego for “vacation”.

As any parent knows, all the planning in the world can’t possibly account for what happens when traveling with kids. It’s humbling, to say the least. It’s also not relaxing. Let’s get real. We are the quintessential overcommitters at our house. We had committed to the trips and the memories. Clark Griswold has nothing on us. As you read on, you’ll find we are more like Cousin Eddie. 

Katherine was 7 years old, Audrey 4 ½ and Andrew was 19 months. I recently happened upon a video made on a camcorder, if you can believe it, of the trip. I have so much compassion for our sweet family when I watch that video. We were definitely doing our best trying to take care of Andrew who started to get sick on day 1, and stay on track with planned activities to Legoland, Coronado Island, Sea World and the world famous San Diego zoo. In the video, Katherine is going through the differences between African and Indian elephants and naming everything. Audrey is wearing her all pink beach outfit, putting sunglasses on and lipstick. Andrew is toddling around. They’re so adorable. They’re now 25, 22 and 19 and I would go back in a second if I could. 

On the plane ride there, Andrew, who had a cough and a slight fever, really declared himself. Illness will either declare itself or it will go away. As a pediatrician and Mom, this may not have been my finest moment. Andrew started vomiting as we were getting off the plane. We were stripping his clothes off and ours as much as we could so that by the time we reached Avis, he was in just a diaper. I would give him tylenol and pedialyte and he would rally and act like his 19 month old self. Then, start up with symptoms again on and off during the trip. 

As a pediatrician Mom, which overall is a big positive, but not always and when in San Diego, not of great benefit, the only option would have been to go to the Emergency Room and he wasn’t to that point. Kids rally. Andrew rallied and we headed to the San Diego zoo as planned the next day. Things were going swimmingly at the zoo, the kids cracking up at the balls of hippo poop plopping out of hippo butts at the hippo pool. 

We got to the line for the Skyfari Aerial tram, which was very popular per the long line. As we were waiting, the line stopped moving. There was a hold up for some reason. Then we hear behind us, “Great. It stopped. We are going to be late. We will never get there in time. We are going to miss it. I can’t believe this. We’ll never make it!”

Then, “Mom, chill out. Relax. Stop. It’s okay.”

I glanced back to see what Chicken Little looked like to find a middle aged woman with her adult daughter and two kids. This lady was the Chicken Little, the white knuckler of the century. 

Chicken Little said to us, “Your family of 5 is going to need two cars. You’ll have to be divided up.” She was counting up the number of people in front of her. Her panic was getting stronger as she was deciding whether or not to get out of line and walk all the way through the zoo back to wherever they needed to be. 

It was pretty hot and humid and Andrew was getting feverish. As Chicken Little got into full panic mode, Andrew looked back over Dad’s shoulder, right towards Chicken Little and right onto the asphalt in front of Chicken Little and vomited. 

Chicken Little exclaimed, “Oh my God! The Baby Puked!” 

Then she turned to her daughter and said, “Let’s go.” Chicken Little pivoted on her heel and ran off. As they say, a baby vomiting right in front of her at the zoo wasn’t on her bingo card. Chicken Little had a whole lot of things on her bingo card, but she couldn’t have predicted that. 

Cut to the camcorder video of the scene of our young family at the condo after “OMG, the baby puked!” I want to tell my younger self to get prepared for the future OMG, the baby puked moments coming up in life and in my career. It seems like there have been and are so many unpredictable moments. Good and bad. 

We are facing them everyday with the Weekend at Bernie’s President who shows posters of his larger than skyscrapers pool while bombing Iran, gutting Medicaid, and ICE and detention center crimes against humanity. 

OMG! Are you frickin’ kidding me? The baby puked again! 

Getting a new diagnosis.

OMG, the baby puked!

Losing a job.

OMG, the baby puked!

There’s no predicting the chaos of life. Life declares itself. It is full of unpredictability and lack of control. Rigidity, panic ensues in the everyday and yet, to have the capacity for the OMG, the baby puked moments, we all must shore up our energy and live in the moments of joy that happen in between.  

I hope Chicken Little made it to wherever she needed to be by the time she needed to get there. 

Stop.

Take a pause.

A change of plans is fine.

Embracing 39 with a camera lens: Losing the lashes, holding onto the lessons

By Anna Swartzlander 

Apparently, the age of 39 has not been good for women in my family. 

My mom reports her 39th year was one of the roughest years she has endured … (I will not divulge her secrets as they are hers to tell.)

One of my dear cousins took her life at the age of 39. 

And my grandma was right around 39 the year she left without a word to her husband or children to take a weeklong vacation all by herself, bringing back eccentric souvenirs from South Dakota that my grandpa always hated. Call it a midlife crisis – or perhaps an epiphany. 

To be fair, I didn’t acknowledge this perilous female family history as I entered my 39th year. However, I should have had an inkling when my part-time job – seeing hospice patients – was restructured and I was “let go” a month after my 39th birthday.  I have a great full-time job, so I’m fine, but this was the first time I had lost a job since age 16 when Wagner’s Food Pride fired me for “stealing cigarettes.” (Which, by the way, was a false allegation. I can’t smoke cigarettes; they make me faint.) 

Despite this small setback, I continued into my 39th year without angst or despair (just the heavy cloak of despondency I have worn since November 5th, 2024). I was mostly unfazed about being a year closer to 40 and was ready to conquer the year of 39 – head-on. 

Midway through 39, however, that changed – in fact, following in my family’s female footsteps I made some of the biggest blunders of my life.  And although I will not air them here, I can tell you, they were some doozies. 

Quickly, my unassuming depression (mostly due to the state of our country), turned into scary sadness, anxiety and panic. I not only had to worry about new viruses (such as the Hantavirus), brain amoebas (more common due to global warming), and nuclear wars (dying alone in my house) – now I had additional worries: How I was going to trudge through the tangled web of complications I had created?  How was I going to overcome the sense of feeling overwhelmed and embarrassed?

To put it simply: I was not in a good place. And I got stuck there, the depression festering for weeks and months. 

If I wasn’t a single mom with bills to pay, I just might have run away like my grandma.   

Instead, I woke up one morning and started making changes. It was a tedious process and took determination and resolve I didn’t know I had. I started to eat healthier. Bike again. Start a fabulous new book series, Dungeon Crawler Carl, which may have helped more than anything. I listened to music. I took time for me. 

And I booked a photo shoot, not the “Professional Businesswoman” photo shoot,  but the Fifty Shades of Grey photo shoot. The kind of pictures you don’t show mom. 

In conservative circles, these types of photos may be referred to as “smut.” Photography studios call it “boudoir.”  Interestingly enough, the term boudoir comes from the 18th-century French verb bouder, which literally translates "to sulk" or "to pout" and was used tongue-in-cheek to describe a small, private sitting room where a woman could retreat to be alone or vent her frustrations.

Well, I was sure ready to vent my frustrations.

With a gallon of gas and a gallon of milk costing five dollars apiece in this unsustainable economy, coupled with the fact that I am the sole financial contributor in my household, and tripled with the fact that my mistakes were going to be costly ones – I decided to do the irresponsible thing, and book an intimate photo session for myself. I had always wanted to do this as a wedding present for my future husband. Seeing that marriage was not in the cards for me anytime soon (perhaps ever), I decided to book it for myself.

This was an all-inclusive photo shoot. I had professional hair and makeup done. I was adorned with fake eyelashes for the first time in my life. There were several costume changes, a few immodest ones. There were multiple sensual poses that I performed in full fanfare in front of a stranger. (I will add, this studio thankfully only has women photographers.) 

I was miles outside my comfort zone. At first, I was nervous and self-conscious. But gradually I started to have fun and gain self-assurance. It was an experience that I urge all women to partake in at some point in their lives, the cost of milk be damned. 

When I saw the pictures, I could not believe my eyes. Gazing at this woman – whose eyes were mine despite the accentuated lashes – I didn’t see the mistakes that were made. Instead, I saw strength and independence.  I saw a woman who was figuring out life in her own way – even if, as my mom has told me so many times, “Anna, you always have to learn the hard way.”

Observing the woman in the photos, I felt happy, despite my many flaws and regrets. I felt a sense of pride for this woman – beyond the physical, but the soulful part, the heart, the core of her spirit. I saw a woman who has accomplished much, despite setbacks and heartbreak and 12 years of being a single mom. I saw a woman who is trying the best she can. 

Finally, I saw the person I have become after 39 years – and it wasn’t half as bad as I thought. 

After the shoot, I sat in my car for a long time reflecting on what I had just done (and will probably never do again, especially if gas prices keep rising). My first instinct was to rip off those false eyelashes and immediately scrub clean my made-up face. I was coaching my daughter’s softball team in a few hours and I had never coached wearing any makeup, let alone full glitz. But I ended up taking a selfie of my beautified face and sent it to my co-coach, jokingly asking her if I should show up to the game with full cosmetics. She answered enthusiastically, “Ow Ow!!!!! Yes, girl!” with an added fire emoji. 

So, I showed up to coach my sixth-grade daughter’s team in full glam. The girls’ reactions were surprised and mixed. But mostly they agreed I looked better without the theatrical appearance (which I guaranteed them was not my new normal). 

However, there was confidence in doing something completely atypical and unconventional. I felt a sense of resilience by showing them that you don’t have to conform to any rules, you don’t have to live in a box, you can break the mold, you are worthy of joy in whatever shape that comes. Sometimes, you can treat yourself as a diva and wear lavish eyelashes, even when you have a softball game to coach. 

Although a photo shoot will not solve deep, emotional issues, the experience somehow helped me realize that I am going to be okay. I am resilient. I can accomplish whatever it is that life calls for, even if outside my comfort zone.

I still have a good portion of my 39th year left. And to be honest, I am a lot more hesitant about tackling it head-on (like I am used to doing everything). But I also know I will figure it out. Who would have thought that risqué pictures would show me I am more than an age or a mistake or a label. The experience has allowed me to see myself as everything that I am. I am 39 years of trauma and loss and heartbreak and sorrow. And I am 39 years of happiness and wonder and fortitude and love. 

Those spiderly lashes have come off, but the lessons remain. I choose not to be broken by societal norms, men or my own mistakes. I realize there will be more miscalculations. But there will be just as many triumphs. The one thing that I have faith in is that I will persist. This year will not break me.

I am practicing acceptance and learning to embrace 39-year-old Anna. 

In a time of uncertainty and instability, urgent reminders

By JoAnne Young

 

This will haunt us for years to come. It may haunt our children and their children.

We wonder, is it too late? How long can we carry on? 

 

One historian, beyond Heather Cox Richardson, has written about our descent into authoritarianism and those other words we’d rather not see in writing. Timothy Snyder, a history professor at the University of Toronto and formerly at Yale, has expertise on European history, Ukraine and democracy. In 2017 he wrote On Tyranny Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. I found it important and disturbing at the time. Even then, though, I had no idea how important. Then wandering through a bookstore in Savannah, Georgia, in February, I stumbled onto a graphic version of the book published in 2021, even more readable than the original. 

 

Many of you may be familiar with On Tyranny and know how profound its lessons have become. We are much farther down the road Snyder warned us about nine years ago. I realized reading the graphic edition, illustrated by Nora Krug, (Guggenheim and Fulbright fellowships) how I needed to review Snyder’s lessons, and continue to keep his words handy. 

 

In interviews, Snyder highlighted three lessons that were at the top of the list in his mind. 

 

* Do not obey in advance. 

 

 Speaking with Amanda Lang on the Canadian podcast WONK, Snyder said that’s exactly what Amazon’s Jeff Bezos did in October 2024 when he abruptly ended the Washington Post’s practice of endorsing presidential candidates close to election day, thus blocking the newspaper’s endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris. 

 

     It was a teaching moment for second term Candidate Donald Trump. 

 

 “ ...  doing what Trump wants in advance only makes it more likely that Trump will have power, and only teaches him that you are easy to intimidate,” Snyder said. “You are giving him the authoritarian power he would not otherwise have.” 

 

* Defend institutions. 

 

Institutions such as courts, newspapers, the law, universities, help us to preserve decency. They do not protect themselves. They fall one after the other unless each is defended from the beginning. It is a vain hope, Snyder writes, for an institution to think a gesture of loyalty would bind the new system to them. The Washington Post has lost millions of dollars and at least 250,000 subscribers since Bezos’ decision, and has laid off a third of its staff, causing more subscriber desertions. 

 

* Beware the one-party state.

 

Nebraska should take this lesson to heart. The state has a Republican trifecta in its governor,  elected Constitutional officers (auditor, attorney general, treasurer, etc.), and Legislature. Its one-house Legislature at this time has 33 Republicans on the 49-member roster of senators, a supermajority, which can easily sustain a Republican governor’s vetoes, and break a filibuster. 

“A party emboldened by a favorable election result or denying an unfavorable one, might change the system from within,” Snyder writes. 

 

Snyder warns about defending the rules of democratic elections. This state’s voters in a recent primary chose a Trump supporter as its Republican candidate for Secretary of State, the office in charge of elections and state rules and regulations. Scott Petersen won the primary against Secretary of State Bob Evnen with 54.6% of the vote. 

 

Petersen has said he supports “meaningful voter ID with citizenship verification.” He also supports protections for poll challengers and observers, expanding post-election audits, data sharing and cleaning up voter registrations. 

 

Elections get “cooked” at the state level, Snyder says, before voters start paying attention. Bureaucratic burdens make it harder for people to show up. 

 

* I paid particular attention to lessons 9 and 17: Be kind to our language and listen for dangerous words. 

 

 Politicians feed their clichés to television, where they are repeated. Each story is “breaking” until it is displaced by the next. “So we are hit by wave upon wave but never see the ocean.”

 

More than half a century ago, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and George Orwell’s 1984 warned of domination of screens, suppression of books, narrowing of vocabularies. Snyder suggests being alert to words that refer to extremists and terrorists, and the use of patriotic vocabulary. 

 

He does offer some hope, saying people are learning and capable of reacting. We shouldn’t be wanting to go back to 2015 or even 2024. We should be looking to start new things. There are always surprises in store, both positive and negative, he said, like a prism in which we don’t see all the colors but they are there. 

 

The March 28 No Kings protests after the killings by ICE of Renée Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, suppression of the Epstein files and the Iran war, were said to have drawn more than 8 million people, the largest single-day total in American history. 

 

Individual acts of courage are important. Elect people who understand the need for policies based on the public good, and who understand congressional responsibility. Support media that are physically present locally. Focus on the notion of what our country is supposed to be about. 

Be as courageous as you can. 

 

We have learned that the Constitution is not enough on its own to protect our democracy. 

 

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