This site, started in 2013, contains a variety of short and longer poems, along with some essays and travel narratives. Some were written for a specific occasion or about a specific person or place. Others were intended to be more general and to have a longer shelf life. I post irregularly, but try to get an entry in at least every month or so. From time to time, I “prune” the blog to remove outdated entries and to update some which would be clearer with a few style changes. I hope an entry here or there may resonate with your experiences. Enjoy!
Letter Excerpts: Election Work 2020-2024
Starting in 2005, my sister Sally took over a small farm in northern Maryland that my parents had left as part of their inheritance. Sally had never farmed full-time before. Her lifelong interest in gardening was scant preparation for this late-life career transition. Especially for the first few years, Sally struggled. She wanted to run the farm as a biodynamic one, which entails paying special attention to the cycles of seasons, sun, and moon. She gradually got an acre or two into biodynamic production, renting the rest of the land to nearby more conventional farmers. The work was more than full-time, with scant occasions for the travel she had enjoyed earlier in her varied careers. We kept in touch through phone calls and through letters—her internet access was spotty at best.
For a biodynamic farmer, “cross-quarter days” are especially important in deciding planting and harvest schedules. These correspond to the days we celebrate as Halloween (Samhain), Groundhog Day (Imbolc), May Day (Beltane), and mid-summer, around August 1 (Lammas).
This November, I’ll post letters for six years’ worth of cross-quarter days, encapsulating multiple changes in government, a global pandemic, and major changes in our respective personal circumstances.
As it happens, late October is also important in the American electoral calendar. Today, I’ve put in excerpts from Halloween letters for the electoral seasons of 2020, 2022, and 2024, when I was actively involved as a non-partisan poll worker and Sally was tied up at the farm. I hope they’ll provide an interesting time capsule and perhaps some impetus for reflection as our 2026 electoral cycle nears completion.
Saturday, October 31, 2020 (Samhain/Hallowe’en)
From Jinny, in Cary, NC, to Sally, in Taneytown, MD
Dear Sal,
My last shift as a nonpartisan early voting poll worker for this year’s national election is finally over. I’m worn out. The stresses of trying to help keep myself, my coworkers, and voters as safe as practical during a pandemic competed with the excitement of participating in a historic electoral contest. I’d previously worked in both the primary and general elections in Wake County, North Carolina in 2018, and then in the primary election here in 2020, held just before covid changed our elections and our lives.
As the 2020 general election season approached, local boards of election throughout North Carolina (and elsewhere) worried about having an adequate staff of poll workers—many poll workers trend older and would thus be more vulnerable to covid and its complications. Boards of Election officials lost sleep over staff retention, staff training, and staff safety. In Wake County where I live, media ran lots of public service announcements seeking temporary poll workers. Our early voting site was fortunate that over half our primary cycle’s workers signed up again, even one fortyish former basketball center who was still on a waiting list for a heart transplant.
Before voting started, we had a full day of general, then on-site training. We had enough experienced workers to integrate the “newbies” quickly. Turnout was not too heavy for the first few days; by the time we started to get really busy, we worked together well. We typically rotated among different tasks—greeters, voter check-in (with access to computerized offline county voter rolls), voting booth assistants, help desk workers, ballot box assistants, and a shift supervisor. We also had remote access to a county-wide “help line” via secure telephone.
Because of the pandemic, the voting site, though in the same Student Center at North Carolina State University where I’d worked the primary, had been shifted to a larger room with more space and better ventilation. A couple dozen of us were assigned to a voting site in one of the large ballrooms at the student center. Early voting started on Thursday, October 15 and ran through today, before an interval to prepare for Election Day next Tuesday. Officials at our site moved Chris, our former basketball star, to a “help desk” station that involved the least direct contact with large numbers of early voters.
Each morning before the polls opened, a designated worker placed a half gallon pump spray bottle of hand sanitizer on a stand at the entrance to the ballroom. Someone regularly refilled the bottle so there was always enough sanitizer for anyone who wanted it. We also had boxes of the pale blue face masks you see people wearing in hospitals.
Due to extended early voting hours and to minimize worker risks, there were two shifts. I chose the earlier one, carpooling with a neighbor to arrive at the site at least half an hour before the first voters began to check in. Each morning, we got disposable plastic gloves, hospital-style face masks, and individual plastic face shields to minimize our chances of viral infection. No one is sure yet exactly how infection spreads, so we were cautious. Poll workers regularly wiped down and sanitized voting booths. I was impressed with how much “PPE” (personal protective equipment) our county election officials had been able to obtain and distribute in the months since the pandemic’s start.
Each shift got short breaks and one longer meal break, with about an hour’s overlap between the two shifts. Nearly everyone packed snacks and a lunch–most area restaurants and snack bars were either closed or “take out only.” As far as I know, none of our workers got covid. Some of the time, the weather was pleasant enough to go outdoors on breaks.
Over the 17 days of early voting, we’d get the occasional “in your face” voter. He (or more rarely she) would deliberately come to the voting site without a mask and refuse the offer of one at the entrance. Once he/she reached the check-in station, they’d lean far forward over the voter check-in table, spit out their name and address, and then smirk, as if to say “I dare you to tell me I’m being inconsiderate.” Because we were on a college campus, we had lots of younger voters. They were among my favorites, giving me a vicarious thrill through their excitement at casting their first ballot. I saw a lot of “NC State” themed face masks on voters of all ages. I only processed a couple of people I knew—one a member of a Cary discussion group gone dormant due to the pandemic, another a local cousin. I’m glad I had a chance to participate. I’m very relieved that neither I nor any of my coworkers got sick.
With so much up in the air because of the pandemic, our procedures adapted a couple of times during the voting period to improve safety and convenience. As far as I could tell, everyone who came through “my” line while I was processing voters was legitimate. Turnout was very high. The numerous state and local races provided additional motivation for people to show up. (Also, just maybe, because of the pandemic, there were a lot fewer other choices of how to spend your time?) Many people this cycle voted by mail, with the number of mail-in ballots increasing several fold from prior, non-covid cycles. Once the initial tallies of election results are done, I plan to write up a blog post about my experiences and the overall effort here in Wake County. This may be more information than you need, but I hope to convey both the tension and the excitement of seeing a part of the 2020 general election from a front row seat. …
Will stop here. Please take good care!
Love, Jin
(See “A Post-Election Day View,” on jinnyoccasionalpoems.com for Wake County 2020 preliminary voting totals, put onto blog on November 9, 2020).
(Between 2020 and the 2022 mid-terms, I relocated from North Carolina to California. It took me a while to learn my way around and to acclimate to voting culture and procedures, “California style.” Below is an excerpt about some of my 2022 experiences as a general election poll worker.)
Monday, October 31, 2022 (Samhain/Hallowe’en)
From Jinny in San Diego, CA to Sally in Taneytown, MD
…I’ll be participating as an early voting and election day poll worker in this year’s midterm elections, though the length of the early voting period where I’ll be stationed is a lot shorter than the two-plus weeks I spent in North Carolina—basically just an extra-long weekend. California has had mail-in ballots for several election cycles already, so the expectation is that a pretty high proportion of ballots will be cast that way, especially since concerns about covid have not yet entirely disappeared.
I’ve been through a two-day training regimen at an area library, along with workers for several other early voting sites. Our site leader seems to be a retired military officer with a good bit of prior experience running elections. The number of languages used for printed ballots is higher than I’m used to, with several Asian languages as well as English and Spanish. Perhaps because I’m new to the temporary electoral workforce, perhaps because I was just too dumb to request a voting site near where we live, I’ll have a long commute for the several days of early voting—to a county park in Carlsbad about 20 miles north of Tierrasanta. Should give me more than my fill of freeway driving.
Soon I’ll need to buckle down and research what candidates and issues I want to support via my own ballot. California allows “ballot initiatives,” some generated by the state legislature, others certified if a certain proportion of registered voters request them. Some of the issues seem important to me; others mainly seem like some disgruntled partisan wanted to stroke his/her ego by getting verbiage onto the ballot. …
Please take good care!
Love, Jin
(The 2024 Presidential campaign was both brutal and confusing. A late-summer shift from a Biden-Trump contest to a Harris-Trump contest left many of us feeling somewhat frustrated and confused. I had again signed up to be a non-partisan poll worker. This cycle, I would participate in both the primary and the general election at polling places much closer to home. Below is an excerpt about my 2024 poll working experiences in the general election.)
Thursday, October 31, 2024 (Samhain/Hallowe’en)
From Jinny in San Diego, CA to Sally in Taneytown, MD
…Not sure how closely you’ve followed the presidential campaign. I’m slightly hopeful that we’ll avoid another Trump presidency and the worst of his previous excesses. At the same time, I’m somewhat discouraged that we’re not likely to move as quickly as needed to rein in our over dependence on fossil fuels, with their negative impacts on environment and health, no matter who wins the election. When I tried to do my own post-mortem on the one Trump-Harris presidential debate in mid-September, I journaled that “Both candidates seemed, either directly or indirectly, to acknowledge the outsized role that fossil fuels (and fossil fuel industry campaign contributions) play in our national politics. As evidence, I’m reminded of the extended discussion of fracking in Pennsylvania, one of our so-called ‘battleground states.’” Ah, well.
Tomorrow I’ll start work at one of our area’s late-opening voting centers—in the auditorium of a Catholic school nearby. I worked the primary there in the spring. I’ll have a short set-up day tomorrow, then four days of increasingly long shifts, including about 15 hours next Tuesday on Election Day itself. Our work crew is diverse and generally congenial. Hope we’ll have good turnout and few problem voters.
Time for me to get some rest—the alarm will go off early. …
Please take good care!
Love, Jin
Posted in Everyday Wonders, holidays, Uncategorized
Tagged covid-19, democracy, early voting, election, mail-in ballot, poll worker
Migratory Humans
Since moving to southern California several years ago, I’ve become increasingly interested in the migratory patterns of the birds that use the “Pacific flyway” and of the Western monarch butterflies who arrive from further north each winter to shelter in groves in some of our beach towns. Some birds and butterflies travel thousands of miles from summer breeding or feeding grounds to winter havens, enduring many hazards along the way. I have yet to become a competent enough viewer of either birds or butterflies to fully appreciate the stamina and skill of these lofty migrators, yet finding even a small group of overwintering butterflies can thrill me.
Lately I’ve also been thinking about the migrations that occur among humans, sometimes planned, at other times due to natural or manmade disasters. My interest was piqued by a recent announcement that a government migratory camp for farm workers established during the 1930’s is about to become a California state park. Back then, much of the central U.S. had become a “Dust Bowl” of howling windstorms, lengthly droughts, and failing farms. The Sunset Migratory Camp (often called the Weedpatch Camp) in Kern County housed hundreds of Dust Bowl migrants in the late 1930s. It is a primary symbol of the 1930s ‘Okie’ migration, during which hundreds of thousands of displaced families from Oklahoma, Texas, and neighboring states moved to California’s agricultural valleys. (You can read more about the camp at https://dustbowlcamp.org/ and see a cabin picture at https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2013631386/.) The camp is now operated by Kern County; state park officials are working on “historical evaluations, site restorations, and educational programs before the formal transition of the property.” The camp was a partial impetus for John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath, and was also the subject of some iconic period photographs of migrant children by Dorothea Lange.
Isabel Wilkerson’s comprehensive 2010 work, The Warmth of Other Suns, describes a different migration—the “Great Migration” of millions of African-Americans from the U.S. South. Wilkerson uses both statistics and stories to chronicle the outflow of about 6 million blacks from the South to cities of the North, Midwest, and West during the period 1910-1970. Fleeing legal discrimination, harsh conditions, threats, and harassment during “Jim Crow,” individual workers and sometimes entire families left the South in search of better opportunities and safer lives. By 1970, when the migration ended, over half of U.S. blacks lived outside the South, in contrast to barely 10% when the mass movement began. The rate of migration ebbed and flowed, based on changing economic conditions and the severity of oppression at different periods. However, it ended only when civil rights for blacks began to be better enforced in the South in the wake of both social pressure and legislation.
A more temporary, more idyllic migration came to my attention as I learned some of the history of the new-to-me city of San Diego: a summertime exodus to the beaches of Coronado Island during the early part of the 20th century. Between 1900 and 1939, thousands of locals and neighbors from inland came to Coronado Island. The most well heeled stayed at the luxurious Hotel del Coronado. (The hotel is open, after recent renovations, if you are interested.) Those of lesser means could migrate to a “Coronado Tent City,” set up each summer south of the hotel. Hundreds of temporary red-and-white-striped canvas tents and palm-leaf covered cottages stretched along the beach. For fees ranging from $1.50 to $6.00 per week, travelers could rent platform enclosures with beds, linens, electric lights, and running water, with convenient access to shops, a public library, and restaurants. At its most popular, the tent city attracted up to 10,000 patrons per year.
Unfortunately, much modern migration is for reasons less pleasurable than summer vacations. Per the most recently available statistics: “Global international migrants increased from 220.5 million in 2010 to an estimated 304 million by mid-2024 (about 3.7% of the world’s human population), while annual global migration flows reached roughly 35 million people per year.” Globally, “the United States remained the leading destination country, hosting 52 million immigrants (of a total population of roughly 340 million).” The proportion of immigrants in the U.S., though at a relatively high level historically, is dwarfed by Qatar (76.7% migrant) and the United Arab Emirates (74% migrant). It is estimated that there are currently between 45 and 65 million immigrants in countries of the European Union, ranging from a high of just over 50% of the population in tiny Luxembourg to a low of under 3% in Poland.
Migrants sometimes relocate in order to gain employment and to better their economic conditions. Estimated financial remittances sent by migrants back to their countries of origin have surged dramatically in recent years, projected to reach a total of $905 billion in 2024 ($685 billion going to low- and middle-income countries). This amount surpasses the combination of both foreign direct investment and foreign aid. Migrants may also relocate to flee armed conflict or natural disasters: In 2024, global displacement reached a record 123.2 million people, including 36.8 million sheltered by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees and 73.5 million persons who are internally displaced, living in their countries of origin, but not in their original home regions.
Blaming migrants will not solve anyone’s “immigration crisis.” If the best available current research is to be believed, our ancestors were all migrants at some point. Per Wikipedia, “Modern humans (Homo sapiens) evolved in Africa around 300,000 years ago. Following early localized movements and smaller, earlier waves, a major global migration out of Africa occurred roughly 60,000 to 70,000 years ago, leading to the peopling of Asia, Australia, Europe, and the Americas.”
We humans are never likely to become as skilled at migration as either birds or butterflies. However, if we want to survive and thrive as a species, it might behoove us to become both more compassionate and more skillful in how we treat the current migrants among us.
Posted in Quandaries and Rants, travel, Uncategorized
Tagged emigration, internally displaced, migratory humans, remittances, UNHCR
Wapakoneta Hometown Heroes
During a recent extended visit to a part of Ohio where a grown son and his family live, I spent a few days of non-family time in the town of Wapakoneta. Created in 1833 from former Indian lands after the forced removal of remnants of the Shawnee tribe, Wapakoneta prospered in the 19th century as a railroad transit point for farm goods. Over time, it developed a range of local industries as well. “Wapak” still functions as a market hub along the I-75 corridor south of Toledo. As county seat of Auglaize County, it also conducts the business of local government. In addition, the town attracts tourism because of its most famous former resident, “first on the Moon” astronaut Neil Armstrong. At one edge of town, there’s a substantial museum to the U.S. space effort that culminated in Armstrong’s walk on the moon. Wapakoneta is justly proud of this hometown hero, who returned to Ohio after his NASA career. Armstrong lived out most of his forty-three post-walk-on-the-moon years in the state. On an earlier occasion, I’d visited the Armstrong Air and Space Museum and was impressed with its scope.
On this year’s Wapakoneta visit, though, I mainly wanted to spend some quiet time enjoying a slower pace of life and exploring other parts of town. I checked out the vintage downtown with its imposing 19th century buildings that now housed a variety of small shops and restaurants. Early in my stay, I had coffee and chocolate on one building’s back terrace overlooking the Auglaize River. Then I set out to explore.
Not long before this Wapak visit, I’d come across a description of “The Temple of Tolerance,” an outdoor art installation created over a period of about twenty years, spearheaded by local historian and storyteller Jim Bowsher (see jimbowsher.com for overall photos). It took me a little while to locate the place, tucked behind a house on a quiet residential street. Bowsher’s “temple,” completed in 1999, has an international reputation but has fallen into partial disrepair following Bowsher’s 2024 death. The site is still open to the public, with a small donation box to help with upkeep. When I visited, a record-breaking rainy August had made some of the pathways through the elaborate site rather soggy. The weeds had sprouted faster than efforts could contain them. Still, the nearly 2-acre site had a reverent feel to it. There was ample evidence the place had not been totally abandoned. The site contains more than 100,000 pounds of massive cataloged field rocks, glacial boulders, and historical artifacts. How anyone could have had the stamina and vision to assemble some of the massive stone constructions was a wonder. Still, I was most impressed by a few placards that looked hand lettered, describing Bowsher’s attitude toward life.
Another day as I walked through an area near downtown, I passed a modern single story building with an outdoor rustic sign announcing “Homeless Books, established 2017.” I’m a part-time writer and an avid reader, a big fan of book stores, large or small. Intrigued by the sign, I checked for its opening hours—only Sunday afternoons or “when the open sign is up.” I was there on a Tuesday, with no prospect of being around until the following Sunday. It seemed possible the shop would remain a mystery. However, I figured there might be ways to find out more. The next day, I was able to locate a contact phone number for the store. The owner picked up and gave me time to state my purpose in calling. Once I’d given my name and identified myself as a fellow book lover from outside the area, she seemed willing to talk further.
Unfortunately, the owner told me, I’d missed the Sunday afternoon time slot, the only time during the week when the store was now regularly open. However, she’d be at the site later that afternoon to do some work on the building. She’d be glad to give me a quick tour.
I wondered, what kind of book store can possibly make a profit if it’s only open one afternoon a week? Turns out, the “profit” Frances Springer was interested in wasn’t expressed in money, but rather in encouraging reading, literacy, and curiosity among the people in this largely rural county. I only learned a small part of the Homeless Books story in my brief visit, and hope I have represented it accurately here:
Frances had grown up in the area and was always interested in books. However, as a somewhat slow reader, she couldn’t always finish the books she got out of her local library before their due dates. As she grew up, she nourished the dream of later creating an environment where other readers, whether fast or slow, would have access to books without having to worry about a due date. What started in 2017 as a small, mobile operation serving rural readers later found an additional home in the building I’d happened upon in Wapakoneta.
Frances stressed that what she was running was not a traditional book store, nor was it a traditional library. “You do not have to turn books back in,” she told me. “You do not have to be quiet.”
She runs the small, local operation using donations of books, furnishings, and volunteer time from area residents. Sometimes she also gets small infusions of cash. She puts in multiple hours each week collecting, preparing, and organizing the books and keeping the shop’s space welcoming and accessible. There are areas for certain kinds of books—the mystery section is in what used to be the “cooler” when the building was a flower shop—but there’s no strict organization. You might find two seemingly unrelated items right next to each other on a shelf or table.
Frances told me that news of the existence of her shop and her educational mission gets spread mainly by word of mouth, though she has a small online Facebook presence. On a recent Sunday, she had over a hundred visitors at the Wapakoneta store during the four hours the shop was open. Frances does what she can to discourage commercial use of her inventory. She has a hand-printed flyer describing the purpose and limits of her operation. The quantity of books, puzzles, vintage books, and magazines available for the taking varies depending on the store’s inventory. When I visited, there was an abundance of material, so limits were accordingly higher.
Homeless Books was certainly a place I’d enjoy spending part of a Sunday afternoon. I came away with six books, a puzzle, and a magazine, most to be redistributed to family or Little Free Library locations before I crammed my suitcase for the plane ride home.
I was very glad to have had a glimpse of Frances’s unique “business model.” I hope to convey some of its magic now that I’ve returned to the more urban environment where I usually live.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
When I’d opted to spend a few days in Wapakoneta, I expected to find plaudits to Neil Armstrong, along with memorials and tributes to the numerous Wapakoneta residents who’ve served honorably in our nation’s military. What I didn’t expect was my exposure to two other “hometown heroes,” people whose mission was neither outer space nor the battlefield, people who wanted simply to nurture our shared humanity. Bowsher and Springer, each in their own way, have tried to make their hometown a more welcoming, more inclusive place. I’m much the richer for their efforts.
Coming of (Nuclear) Age
On August 6, 1945, at 8:15 a.m. local time, the first atomic bomb used in warfare exploded over Hiroshima, Japan. Three days later, a second atomic bomb detonated over Nagasaki. Historians and pundits continue to debate the utility and morality of this launching of the “nuclear age.”
No one was sure ahead of time what the bombs’ impact would be. Within a week of the second drop, Japan had surrendered, its emperor announcing the end of the war over the radio. At least 100,000 mostly civilian deaths occurred during the first few days after the attacks. Over the next months, some survivors developed mysterious sets of sometimes lethal symptoms. These got grouped into a generic category, “radiation sickness.” Longer term, cancer rates among survivors remained higher than among non-exposed populations, with leukemia deaths peaking several years after exposure, and deaths from cancerous tumors, “solid cancers,” showing up later.
In 1945, if Americans thought at all about the implications of nuclear warfare, their musings were likely tinged with relief that this costly, horrific war was finally over. Surviving soldiers and sailors could begin returning home; families could begin reconstituting peacetime lives. Those who’d lost loved ones during the war could mourn, console each other, gain some sort of closure. Few outside the scientific community were ready to consider what a nuclear-armed and/or nuclear-enabled world might become.
As the longer-term damage of nuclear radiation became clearer, public opinion changed. John Hersey’s lengthy article about the bomb’s impact on Hiroshima was important in advancing the transition. Hersey had spent several weeks in the springtime of 1946 interviewing A-bomb survivors in person. The resulting article filled the entire August 31, 1946 issue of The New Yorker. His piece was widely disseminated via print and radio. It was published in book form as Hiroshima. Hersey provided extensive profiles of six survivors: a personnel clerk, a private clinic doctor, a tailor’s widow who was mother to two young children, a German Jesuit priest, a Red Cross Hospital surgeon, and a Japanese born Methodist pastor, Kiyoshi Tanimoto. Hersey’s writing captured the human toll of the bombing in ways that photos, films, and statistics had not. One scene that especially moved me, generations later, was an interaction between Pastor Tanimoto and a dying neighbor:
“After five days of ministering to the wounded in [Asano] park, Mr. Tanimoto returned to his parsonage… While he was at work, a Miss Tanaka came and said that her father had been asking for him. Mr. Tanimoto had reason to hate her father, the retired shipping company official who, …[j]ust before the bombing, had said openly to several people that Mr. Tanimoto was a spy for the Americans. At the moment of the bombing, Mr. Tanaka had … received serious flash burns, but was able to walk home. He took refuge in his Neighborhood Association shelter and from there tried hard to get medical aid. He expected all the doctors of Hiroshima to come to him, because he was so rich and so famous for giving his money away. … Now he was very weak and knew he was going to die. He was willing to be comforted by any religion.
Mr. Tanimoto went to help him. …The old man smelled very bad, and he moaned constantly. He seemed to recognize Mr. Tanimoto. Standing at the shelter stairway to get light, Mr. Tanimoto read loudly from a Japanese language pocket Bible. … Mr. Tanaka died as Mr. Tanimoto read the psalm.”
When World War II ended, the U.S. had a monopoly on nuclear weapons, but this ascendancy did not last long. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), using its own technology plus information from spies, developed its nuclear capacity and successfully detonated an atomic bomb in August, 1949. The nuclear arms race was on. It has not yet ended.
In December of 1953, U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower gave a speech at the United Nations lamenting the increasingly expensive nuclear arms race and its potential for widespread harm. He suggested the possibility of peaceful uses for atomic energy. In this “Atoms for Peace” speech, Eisenhower urged the development and advancement of civilian uses for atomic energy. His talk was part of the effort that eventually led to the creation of the International Atomic Energy Agency in 1957.
At the time Eisenhower gave his talk, the USSR had constructed the world’s first nuclear power plant in Obninsk, the “science city.” Completed in 1951, the plant was connected to the electric power grid in 1954. The first nuclear plant in the U.S. came online in 1958 in Pennsylvania. Since then, enthusiasm for nuclear energy has waxed and waned. Three highly publicized nuclear power plant disasters—Three Mile Island in the U.S. in 1979, Chernobyl in the then USSR in 1986, and Fukushima in Japan in 2011—have slowed or reversed the impetus toward wider use of civilian nuclear energy. Several countries who formerly used nuclear reactors have phased them out. Australia and Ireland now explicitly forbid nuclear power plants.
As of 2026, there are eight acknowledged nuclear-armed nations: the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom (England), France, China, India, Pakistan, and North Korea. It is widely supposed that Israel possesses nuclear arms, though Israel does not explicitly admit it. The current conflict between the United States and Iran is characterized in part as an effort to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
Also as of 2026, per the trade group world-nuclear.org, civilian nuclear power produces about 10% of global electricity from over 400 reactors in 31 countries. (At its maximum, prior to both Fukushima and the increasing use of renewables, nuclear energy had produced about 17% of the world’s electricity.) Though the U.S. has the largest capacity, it is France that generates the highest proportion of its electric power through nuclear energy—65%.
By this year’s anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, nearly all of its survivors will have died, either from radiation-related illnesses or from old age. Some of the few living hibakusha continue to advocate for the abolition of nuclear weapons, though the memory of their long ago catastrophe often gets sidelined by more current global problems.
Yet the “nuclear genie” unleashed in 1945 cannot be put back in the bottle. The potential for both military and civilian uses of nuclear energy will be with us for at least as long as humans exist on earth. Will we come of nuclear age in time to use nuclear energy wisely?
My First 4th of July Parade
The year 1959 marked the end of the “fabulous fifties.” Eisenhower was finishing his second term as president. In January, Alaska had become our 49th state. Hawaii was about to become our 50th. The previous July, our family had moved about a mile across our small town to a new, much larger house built by my residential contractor father. We loved the additional space. We were pretty sure we’d finally “arrived” in the middle class. In 1958, we’d missed participating in the July 4th celebrations in our new neighborhood by just a few days, though we’d observed as guests. In 1959 we’d get our first chances to take part in traditions centered on what we all called “the Hall,” next door to our new house. The neighborhood made a big local deal of its 4th of July celebrations.
I was twelve years old. I’d just finished elementary school. I looked vaguely like the girl in the iconic 1953 Norman Rockwell painting, “The Shiner”—I had braids and typically wore my clothes without much attention to fashion. (See https://www.thewadsworth.org/highlight-rockwell/) However, instead of a black eye, I had eyeglasses. Like the girl in the illustration, I tended to be bossy and was somewhat adventurous.
Since our move, I’d reveled in an abundance of nearby kids about my age, a welcome contrast to our prior neighborhood. What I knew then about our new surroundings was basic—a congenial, close knit community with mostly stay-at-home moms, lots of children, hardworking dads, a mix of older and newer houses.
The 4th festivities started with a morning of children’s games on the lawn belonging to my friend Ann Miller’s family. Mrs. Maier, nine-time mom, organized the activities. If it wasn’t rainy or too hot, Mr. Miller would give a bunch of us kids a hayride in a big wagon pulled behind his farm tractor. Rain or shine, the final game of the morning would be a “turtle derby,” for which we’d been“training” captured box turtles for weeks.
Once the games were over, it was time for our neighborhood parade, a back-and-forth route along a short stretch of two-lane road near the Hall. We’d all rush home to get into our costumes, assemble our small floats or decorated bikes, then line up behind whichever parent had been designated to lead us. My 1959 memory is that my mom decided that this year of “two new states” would be perfectly represented by two little red wagons with my 5-year-old twin brothers in them, each wagon decorated with an Alaskan or Hawaiian motif. A big cardboard plaque attached to the side of the wagon would give the relevant new state’s name. My 7-year-old sister and I would pull the wagons. We wore matching white blouses, blue skirts, and red hair ribbons.
The rest of the parade was mostly bicycles (manually powered), their spokes and handlebars threaded with red, white, and blue crepe paper. We probably had a Statue of Liberty, her flowing robe much too easy to trip over. The parade sometimes halted briefly if a younger child had a crying fit or a neighborhood dog wandered onto the road. I don’t remember if there were prizes. The main point was just to have fun. When I checked with my brothers for their memories of this particular parade, their recollections were hazy at best. One thought there’d been a bubble-topped police car at one end of the quarter mile parade route to divert cars while the parade was going on. He seemed to think there had been a decorated pony one year, but he wasn’t sure which year.
Over the years, children grew up, new families moved in, the number of participants waxed and waned, but there was always a parade. After a post-parade potluck picnic at the Hall, then an afternoon baseball contest between the married and unmarried men, families would return home. After dark, a few folks would set off sparklers in their yards. Others would watch the closest large-scale fireworks displays out screened back windows, safe from ravenous mosquitos. Since 1959, I’ve walked in other parades, but none quite so memorable as this first one long ago.
As the 1950’s receded, the bucolic Norman Rockwell images many associated with American life gave way to soberer pictures. By 1964, Rockwell had stopped publishing his illustrations in the era’s popular weekly, the Saturday Evening Post. Chafing at their editorial limitations, he instead placed his equally iconic “The Problem We All Live With” in Look magazine (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Problem_We_All_Live_With). He’d painted a stylized image of first grader Ruby Bridges and the U.S. marshals who accompanied her as she integrated a formerly all-white elementary school in New Orleans in 1960.
The next decade witnessed a series of political assassinations plus civil rights marches and protests. Other concerns were increasingly overshadowed by American involvement in a costly and destructive war in far-off Vietnam. By the end of the 1960’s, I’d finished high school, then college, and gotten married. I had my first full-time job, in Baltimore near a large steel mill. When I went to visit my parents in my former home town, I had trouble talking with them. Sometimes we all assiduously avoided politics, at other times we got increasingly frustrated about each other’s views.
Succeeding decades brought their own triumphs and traumas. On a personal level, I helped raise two children to adulthood, helped mitigate and largely avoid a potential “Y2K” computer software disaster as the century turned, survived a health crisis and the deaths of my parents, became a grandparent. Globally, U.S. military involvement in Vietnam ended, but was later followed by involvement in Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Iran. After the former Soviet Union collapsed in the 1990’s, many areas of Eastern Europe experienced a renewal of freer, more democratic forms of government. However, authoritarian regimes persisted in all the world’s regions. Authoritarian tendencies resurfaced in parts of Western Europe and here in the U.S.
Not long before she died, my history-buff mother self-published a history of Elkridge, Maryland, the small town where she’d lived most of her 80-plus years and raised us children. Elkridge, it turns out, was much older than I’d been aware of growing up. It traces its history back to the early 18th century. It first prospered as a tobacco port, becoming a town in 1734, before Baltimore even existed. A century later, the area I’d moved to in 1958 became an enclave of summer homes for wealthy Baltimore lawyers and their families, escaping the oppressive summer city heat. They conducted lawyerly, increasingly vehement debates about slavery, states’ rights, national government, democracy. Once the Civil War broke out, neighborly communication diminished. After the war, relations between Southern and Northern sympathizers were strained. The Hall, formally named “Elkridge Assembly Rooms,” was built starting in 1870 as part of an effort to reknit this local community torn by conflicting regional allegiances.
As the U.S. celebrates its 250th anniversary in 2026, some of the triumphs and traumas of past periods are resurfacing. My Maryland sister-in-law informs me that the “Hall 4th” festivities will again take place this year. Its neighborhood parade may get photographed by parents and relatives, but is unlikely to make much of a splash on social media. Still, my hope is that the neighborliness embodied in such small, local celebrations will help us navigate some of the divides we can too easily fall prey to. Seeing each other face to face, sharing games, a small parade, a festive potluck, may be a partial antidote to an era when it’s easy to become inflamed by seemingly valid online arguments and highly selective choices of “facts.”
Though 1959 is long gone, “the Hall,” its 4th of July parade, and its legacy persist.
Reflecting
Sometimes glints of sunlight on a clear surface reflect images from
Monuments to two long-ago Presidents at either end of the pool:
The first was elected as our nation formed, the other as
It fractured, prompting battles and skirmishes by soldiers
From opposing sides, sometimes too nearby for comfort.
For those old enough to remember the 1960’s, or those who’ve
Seen the videos and heard the stories, ghosts of the hundreds
Of thousands of marchers persist, their songs about overcoming
Traumas from our checkered past still resounding across the water.
Echoes of a dream not yet fully realized rustle through the trees.
The pool was built during the 1920’s, just after the completion of
The Lincoln Memorial. Perched atop a marshland, it was filled
With over 6 million gallons of water. Over time, it gradually sank into its
Soft underlayment, cracking and eventually leaking so badly that
Half a million gallons of water disappeared each week. In the early 2000’s,
A multi-million dollar project shored it up, reduced leaks, and filtered
Its water, without eliminating algal blooms or the need for regular cleaning.
As we approach a milestone anniversary of our experiments in democracy,
The pool, after a quicker facelift, again suffers from algae and debris.
The trees still rustle, the sunlight still glints. We reflect on what may be needed
To shore up our civic life, to fulfill some of our unrealized collective dreams.
May the wisdom of a Washington or a Lincoln help guide our way forward.
Serendipitous Synergy
Our city has lately had more bad news than we’d like. A hate crime at an area mosque on Monday took five lives, including those of the perpetrators, two teen gunmen. It could have been much worse. Police arrived on the scene and secured the area quickly. A mosque security guard and two congregation members gave their lives while helping prevent a wider tragedy. Nearly 150 children at the affiliated school were first hidden via a lockdown protocol, then safely evacuated. Still, the tragedy shook a community already somewhat on edge because of active and pending military deployments in our Navy and Marine heavy town.
The mosque where the attack occurred is near a major freeway, so many of us know the location. An impromptu shrine has been set up to commemorate the victims. An online fundraiser has helped provide material aid for their families. A Tuesday evening vigil brought many in the community together to mourn and to call for a reduction in the hateful rhetoric that has helped provoke such events.
Contributing to the fundraiser and watching coverage of the Tuesday vigil helped ground me a little, yet as this week has unfolded, I’ve needed something more positive to focus on. A fortuitous combination of circumstances has provided a boost.
It starts with an area non-profit that works tirelessly to provide nutritious food to those in our area with unmet food needs. Since learning of its programs a couple of years ago, I’ve become a supporter and fan. I like their approach. Their small window sticker adorns our aging car: “Feed People, Not Landfills.” Using a whole combination of approaches and funding sources, Feeding San Diego is able to improve area nutrition while reducing area solid waste. They have a small staff and a whole army of regular or intermittent volunteers, including me.
Next came a near neighbor, whose mature lemon tree outdid itself in fruit this year. Early Monday, I’d noticed a wheelbarrow and a beach umbrella across our alley, with a hand lettered sign that I had to get closer to to read: “Please take some; bags included.” I gathered a few lemons for our family to use, but barely made a dent. When the wheelbarrow was still nearly full on Monday evening, I lugged a couple of 5-gallon buckets across the alley and “harvested” about half the remaining lemons. I thought I might have an outlet for extra lemons, but needed to check before I took even more.
I’d signed up to attend a volunteer appreciation breakfast on Tuesday morning at a nearby elementary school where I sometimes assist with semi-monthly food distributions. The school serves mostly military families whose pay is not always enough to cover all their needs. I knew the school’s outreach coordinator slightly and could check with her at the breakfast about whether a set of organically grown lemons would be a useful addition to the school year’s final food distribution on Wednesday. She said yes!
So, Tuesday evening I went back across the alley and filled multiple bags with nearly all the remaining lemons. This morning I checked with the volunteers who assemble food packets at the school—they’ll incorporate the lemons into this month’s produce, along with plums, pears, and avocados. A nice variety.
Our neighbor is thrilled that her lemons will not go to waste; I’m happy that I was able to connect a one-time source with appropriate recipients; the food distribution volunteers were happy to package the additional produce; some families will have extra fruit for the coming holiday weekend. A win-win-win-win?
Perhaps the old tag line needs revising: When life hands you lemons, share!
The Mixed Messages of May Day
When I’ve lived or traveled outside the U.S. on May 1, I’ve sometimes been exposed to celebrations, speeches, parades, or other activities in connection with May Day as “International Labor Day.”
As I began searching for the origin of this holiday, I came across multiple mentions of the “Haymarket Incident,” and/or the “Haymarket Massacre,” a series of demonstrations and events in support of an 8-hour work day, centered on Chicago in 1886. The events of early May, 1886 were part of a larger global movement of workers advocating, sometimes at considerable risk, for better working conditions and shorter work hours. In 1889, the “Second International,” a loose-knit network of socialist and workers’ rights groups, sought to establish May 1 as International Labor Day. A holiday on this date is currently recognized throughout much of Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Africa. The U.S., Canada, Australia, and a few other countries host their ”labor day” on a different date, perhaps to distance it from such “socialist” origins.
A different context for “May Day” is its use as an international distress signal. Per Wikipedia: “Mayday is an emergency procedure word used internationally as a distress signal in voice-procedure radio communications. It is used to signal life-threatening emergencies, primarily by aviators, mariners, and emergency responders. It is shouted three times consecutively—‘Mayday, Mayday, Mayday’—to signify grave danger, such as engine failure, fire, or sinking, requiring immediate assistance.” It seems plausible that the call originated with the French expression “m’aider” (help me) back in the 1920’s when the majority of air traffic flew between the airports of Paris and London; the term was easier to distinguish on staticky radio channels than the alternate expression “SOS.”
Starting as far back as Roman times, probably even earlier, spring festivals have been held around the beginning of May, continuing even through the medieval period we sometimes call the “Dark Ages.”
The earliest “May Day” I remember occurred in 1954, on Saturday, May 1. I was a first grader at our elementary school in a small town in Maryland. We were putting on a festive pageant, for which I’d been chosen as a “princess” to represent our class. I was one of a dozen or so members of our “May Court.” The festival would also include a May Pole dance, with classmates weaving patterns using ribbons draped from a central pole. There’d be lots of food booths, midway style games, and much silliness as we enjoyed a day outdoors, free from the strictures of weekday classwork.
For part of April, we princesses practiced walking at a stately measured pace down concrete stairs to the lower level of the school playground, then over to a slightly shady spot at the playground’s edge. For the actual festival, a recording of “Pomp and Circumstance” would play over the school’s public address system and we’d all be costumed in pastel colored taffeta gowns. The coronation of our “May Queen,” one of the sixth grade princesses, would be the culmination of the afternoon fair.
In 2026, the Women’s March in the U.S. is organizing a nationwide day of action on Friday, May 1 (May Day), encouraging a “No Work, No School, No Shopping” strike to protest against political and corporate power. Per their website: “We are taking collective action and demanding a nation that puts workers over billionaires.”
I’m conflicted about how to spend this year’s first of May—rising inflation, threats to workers’ rights, voting rights, civil rights, plus a tense international situation would all seem to call for some sort of protest. So, though my marching days are mostly over and my retiree’s impact on the paid workforce is minimal, I’ll abstain from purchases or housework on this year’s May 1. This Friday, I’ll not be part of a homemaker’s “second shift,” either. The “no housework” injunction will require some pre-planning plus extra chore work by my husband.
And because it is also true that early May in this hemisphere is often the loveliest time of the year, I’ll spend as much time as practical outdoors, enjoying the fresh greenness of springtime.
View of a Ship: U.S.S. Murtha and the Artemis II Retrieval
Over the weekend, many of us in the San Diego area got to rejoice vicariously in the successful retrieval of the four Artemis II astronauts and their space capsule by Navy divers and personnel of the U.S.S. John P. Murtha (LPD 26). Hundreds of hard-working sailors got to experience the retrieval in person.
Those of us with internet access could view a NASA feed of the descent of the space capsule and its splashdown off the southern California coast. Both the internet and local television channels covered some of the process of securing the capsule and then transferring astronauts and capsule to the Murtha.
It took a while after the 5:07 PDT April 10 Pacific Ocean landing of the Orion capsule to fully stabilize it, a while longer to transport first the astronauts and then the capsule to the nearby Murtha, where preliminary medical checks were done on the astronauts and the capsule was secured for transport back to San Diego. All went well despite stronger than expected ocean currents. The capsule will be inspected and then transferred to the Kennedy Space Center for further analysis.
Per the San Diego Union-Tribune’s lead article: “An imposing ship built to wage war docked in San Diego on Saturday morning in the name of peace and human exploration, delivering the capsule that Artemis II astronauts rode to a flawless landing a day earlier.”
Since moving to San Diego about five years ago, I’ve lived close to a large military housing complex, but know little of the lives of the naval personnel there. When I recently visited the U.S.S. Midway Museum in San Diego’s harbor, I got ample evidence of the confined, somewhat claustrophobic quarters of the floating village that constitutes a large ship. A few glimpses of an area naval base from a passing trolley, a brief “float by” of publicly accessible areas of San Diego’s harbor, have done little to dispel for me the mystery of how our Navy functions. So it was special to see a little of a naval operation in “real time.”
You could perhaps say that my relation with the U.S. Navy began a long time ago, even before I was born. My late father was stationed on the U.S.S. Cabot (CVL-28) in the Pacific theater during the latter part of World War II. It seems likely that he spent a little of his service in port in San Diego, but he rarely talked about his Navy time. All we, his children, got as evidence were a few pictures of his immediate crew and a favorite close-up photograph of him wearing his Navy whites and cap (covering the baldness that had come early to this unintended sailor). When I visited the Midway, I got to see a larger ship, but one of similar vintage to the one where Dad had served.
In 2026, getting to be a virtual witness to the services rendered by the crew of the Murtha was especially welcome. Amid all the turmoil and uncertainty of operations in the Middle East, it was reassuring to be witness to a more peaceable use of naval expertise.
After the Artemis crew’s return to Houston, I relished part of the brief speech delivered by astronaut Reid Wiseman as he posed with his teammates: “It’s a special thing to be a human and it’s a special thing to be on planet Earth.”
Amen.
Thousands Upon Thousands: No Kings 3/28/2026
A clear, warm day in San Diego.
A grandson offered a ride to the nearest trolley stop.
Fellow trolley passengers shifted positions so we could have seats.
Swarms of people converged on Waterfront Park–
All ages, incomes, ethnicities, many with hand-crafted signs.
Speeches, then moving together, or standing, or just sitting, taking it all in.
Two young men had positioned themselves in the shade of an old building,
Handing out cups of free lemonade to anyone parched enough to want some.
I treasure pictures I snapped with my phone, capturing memories to help cope
With any further travesties while we work to reanimate our democracy.
