Maura Casey's Blog

Every time I think that we in the United States are going to hell in a handbasket, which some days is several times an hour (despite the fact that I don’t know what a handbasket is), I think about a tour my sister Claudia and I took last February.

From different parts of the country, we had traveled to Rochester, NY, to attend the funeral of our cousin Betsy, who was small in stature, but big in personality. The family matriarch, Betsy had passed unexpectedly,

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As we had time before the family gathering, Claudia and I decided that Betsy wouldn’t have minded if we used the time to drive to 17 Madison St. to visit the home of another strong woman - the suffragist and icon of women’s rights, Susan B. Anthony. She lived there between 1866 and her death in 1906. The house was in her sister Mary’s name, the tour guide said. Mary knew that otherwise, her dedicated sister probably would have sold it at the risk of homelessness to put the money into the cause of women’s suffrage.

Sisters just know.

Claudia, right, and me, left, at the home of Susan B. Anthony

Claudia has a college degree in history, and I have read avidly about Anthony and her lifelong, essential partner in women’s rights, Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Neither of them would have achieved as much alone as they did as a team. So my sister and I knew about as much as the tour guide as we walked through the house, but there is something so moving about seeing the furniture Anthony used, of sliding your hand along a railing she might have touched, and being in the house from which she was arrested in 1872 for the crime of being female and voting. I have had this feeling before; my friend Colleen Jenkins, the great-great granddaughter of Stanton, has allowed me the thrill of sitting at the great woman’s writing desk.

It is so easy when we know how everything turned out to minimize the suffering, the exhaustion, the frustration early feminists experienced fighting for a cause and a basic right they knew they would probably never live to see. Voting, the suffragists believed, was key for women. It is one reason that every year on Election Day, hundreds of women visit Anthony’s grave in the city’s Mount Hope Cemetery to leave their “I voted” tags on her grave, so much so that the cemetery has covered her gravestone in plexiglass to keep all the stickers from damaging it.

Voting is still crucial. We wouldn’t be in this mess with a would-be autocrat in office if more people had shown up at the polls and voted for Democrat Kamala Harris, who got 7 million fewer votes than did Joe Biden in 2020. Or if they voted for the Democrats in Congress who lost by a few percentage points, and lost control of both the Senate and the House.

We can’t stay home this year.

This election year, we have to show up.

I’ve been reading a Substack called the Byline Times out of the United Kingdom (thank you, Mary Hawking, for the recommendation!). It gives an alternative, independent view of United States politics. It holds up a mirror to what is happening in America and reports the current administration’s impact on the world with a critical eye. Yes, it can be depressing reading.

One column a few days ago was titled, “Will the ‘real America’ please stand up,” by former British diplomat Alexandra Hall Hall. (The double name stems from an error on an 1800s birth certificate.) She writes, “It is not enough for many Americans, genuinely appalled by the Trump administration, to say that they personally did not vote for this. … It is not enough for many Americans to say that the Trump Administration does not represent what they personally believe America to be as a country. The world can only deal with what America is, right now, as a country.” And she goes on to list a dozen odious things the Trump administration has done. And she concludes,

“Look in the mirror, America. … If the ‘Real America’ is not this, then it needs to do more than just say so. It needs to BE so.”

We don’t have to live like this. We don’t have to live ashamed and appalled concerning what one president is doing, then throw up our hands and say he doesn’t represent us.

We need to stand up.

We need to vote as though our country and the world depend upon it, because they do.

We all have material items that are laden with emotion. They possess us more than we possess them. The necklace that mother wore. A grandfather’s pipe. Once, an attorney told me, “I have seen multimillion-dollar estates held up in a fight over a teacup.” She was dead serious, and I believed her. Some things simply tug at the heartstrings. Their market value has nothing whatsoever to do with their true meaning.

With that said, let me tell you about my great-grandfather’s lamp.

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My mother’s grandfather, Mike Murray, bought it in the years after he left County Mayo, Ireland, in haste; he was smuggling guns for the Irish resistance to British rule and the authorities found out. Oops. He left to avoid arrest, arrived in America in 1884 and moved to Buffalo, N.Y. It was a happening place, then the eighth-largest city in the country and, in 1897, one of the first urban areas to get electricity.

Soon after, Mike bought the large, Tiffany-style lamp with a stained-glass shade 18 inches in diameter. It was beautiful.

My mother did her schoolwork under the lamp in the 1930s. Thirty years later, she heard her Aunt Ceil say she was going to sell it to a junk dealer for $10. Mom gave her $10 instead and brought it home. After she died in 1978, it passed to me. I was proud to display it.

Until an accident in May, when its glorious lampshade was smashed.

The lampshade after the accident

I had set up a large, folding wooden screen behind me in my office during a day of zoom meetings. The meetings had just concluded when a strong gust of wind came through a nearby open sliding glass door. It hit the screen, which toppled over, crashing onto the lamp, shattering several of the beautiful panels and severing parts of the metal structure that held them.

It had been in the family for more than a century, but took only seconds to destroy.

I. Freaked. Out.

It had been a tangible connection to both my mother and my great-grandfather. My mother adored him. On his deathbed, alone of his many children and grandchildren, Mike wanted my mother by his side, the little girl he called, “my Janie.” She never forgot his big, blacksmith’s hand holding hers, and how her presence somehow soothed him in his final hours.

Looking at the broken glass left me breathless with shock.

The thought that came to me, over and over, was this: Who can restore a 125-year-old lamp with not merely stained glass, but glass panels that curved as well?

I gathered the shards and carefully placed them in a box. Then I called Gwen Basilica, a gifted stained glass and mosaic artist, and asked her if she knew anyone who could help.

She sent me the name of a 60-year-old business, Glass Source Studios, about a 90 minute drive away in Seymour, Connecticut. When I arrived at the shop, staff assured me that such a restoration project was an ordinary problem to them. The shop already had stained glass on hand, called slag glass for its swirling patterns, that perfectly matched that of my lamp. But they had many other projects ahead of mine in line.

I didn’t care. Just the idea that someone out there had the old-fashioned skill needed was a relief. A few weeks ago I was able to pick up the lamp and hear the saga of the repairs. The broken frame that held the glass took hours to carefully solder together. To shape the glass properly, the staff created exact molds. They then fired each piece of glass in a kiln using the specially created molds to match the exact curve of the original glass. When the glass cooled, they were able to slide the pieces back into the repaired frame.

The restored lamp. Isn’t it pretty? Behind it is a 1925 Number 5 Underwood typewriter once used in a Chicago secretarial school

I brought the lamp home in triumph and plugged it in.

It lit up for one second. Then there was a flash, a popping sound, smoke, and all the electricity went out in the barn where I have my office.

Turns out the wiring in the lamp, which is many decades old, became brittle and started to fall apart in the absence of the lampshade.

I thought ever so briefly about watching YouTube videos and wiring it myself, but in the interest of not burning down the barn I asked a professional to do it instead.

This week, I got the lamp back for real - fittingly, on my birthday. (Let’s just say I am younger than the lamp!)

I plugged it in - no spark, no popping sound, no smoke - and saw the lamp light up in its original, turn-of-the-20th century glory.

Some material things are worth more than money, especially when they intertwine with love and memory. And sometimes, they glow.

One of the molds made for firing the glass

Original parts of the lamp. Check out the condition of the wiring.

For most of the last week I have journeyed through a foreign land: Iowa.

It is a state with vistas so wide you can see what the weather will be like next week just by squinting towards the horizon. I got a glimpse of the Iowa of potluck suppers, endless acres of corn and soybeans and ordinary people who genuinely want to know how ARE you when they ask.

Really.

This is the third year I attended the Okoboji Writers and Songwriters Retreat, where I was honored to teach workshops in writing memoirs and commentary. The retreat is held on the shores of the lovely Lake Okoboji, a three-hour drive from Des Moines, the state’s capital, in the heart of Iowa’s Great Lakes district. For someone like me who grew up on two of the real Great Lakes, Erie and Ontario, this would ordinarily be a source of mirth. But for Iowa, these lakes really are great, and they are inarguably beautiful. It is all a world away from my home in New England.

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But I am still a newshound. Between saying hello to old friends and making new ones, I wanted to know which way Iowa would go in the coming midterm elections that will decide control of the U.S. Congress - and whether or not a Democratic Congress will be elected to stop Donald Trump in his corrupt, erratic, wrecking-ball of an administration.

A cloudy day driving between cornfields from Des Moines to Okoboji, Iowa.

Iowa may be the canary in the coal mine of what the future of our country looks like, of whether the Republican madness that has made our national and foreign policy an utter shambles will continue.

Iowa may be a red state now, with Republicans controlling the state legislature, governor’s office and all seats in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, but it was not always thus.

For example, until 2016, when Donald Trump first ran for president, Iowa voted for the Democratic candidate in six out of seven presidential elections. But voters in this “Midwestern nice” state have voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump since he first ran in 2016, and in 2024, the margin for Trump was more than 13 percent.

Voting for Republicans became increasingly common rather than the ballot-splitting that once gave Iowa one Democratic senator and one Republican senator, as well as seeing each house of the state legislature controlled by the opposite party. Now it’s a sea of red.

The result? The legislature has reduced aid to schools, passed a law in 2023 that resulted in the banning of 450 books and gave even more money and power to the agricultural interests that are destroying the state’s topsoil and poisoning its water. (Iowa is more 84 percent farmland.)

The state now has the second-highest incidence of cancer in the country and the water flowing into capital city of Des Moines has such a high level of nitrates that I was told to avoid drinking tap water in my airport hotel.

But change is in the air, helped along by Trump’s bizarre insistence on tariffs and a trade war with Canada that have destroyed the export market for soybeans, corn and pork that the state depends upon. The war with Iran, begun on a whim, has doubled the price of diesel and has hammered farmers.

So could red Iowa turn blue?

I asked Art Cullen, co-owner of the weekly Storm Lake Times, for his take. Cullen won a Pulitzer in 2016 for his forceful editorials on Iowa issues. Wise journalist that he is, he measures the political climate in part from customers of the Veterans of Foreign Wars posts.

“The boys at the VFW are all pissed off,” Cullen said.

Still, he thinks that the state legislature will remain in Republican hands, although the Senate and one or two congressional seats may go to the Democrats. But if they flip, the margins will be close. “Democrats who assume Josh Turek [the Democrat running for Senate] will win, should buckle up,” he said.

Cullen said politics in Iowa often depends upon which side of Interstate 35, which bisects the state north and south, you are talking about. “West of I-35 is a little slice of Texas,” he said. “It’s deep red.”

Mostly, what he is hearing from voters lately is a longing for civility. “We just want our old Iowa back. Banning books and shaming gays have gone too far,” is a common sentiment, he said.

I am all for MAGA Republicans having a change of heart. It’s late in the day, though, with too much of the country having for years defended and emulated the harshness, cruelty and indefensible actions of our irrational and corrupt president.

But with less than five weeks to go, I’m praying for the return of Midwestern nice.

Sunrise on Lake Okoboji

When my two kids were young, the cartoon movie “Atlantis: The Lost Empire” (2001) featured an elderly, female radio operator named Wilhelmina Packard. At various points throughout the movie, Wilhelmina would say, slowly and sardonically, “We’re all gonna die,” between puffs of a cigarette. It was darkly funny; for awhile it was our automatic response whenever we faced a problem, big or small.

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So naturally it was the first thing that came to mind when reading about the latest of humanity’s house of horrors: the news that artificial intelligence bots, algorithms, computer programs, whatever you call the critters, escaped their cages and did “unpredictable” things. They clustered together, hacked into other companies and then worked at covering their tracks like kids who took the car without getting permission. Headlines predicted the end of humanity within a decade.

Cue the deadpan, “We’re all gonna die.” Thanks, Wilhelmina.

I’ve added this to my list of things about which to be outraged, write and protest about: climate change, the war in Ukraine, the Iran war, conventional war, nuclear war, the cruel and evil idiots in charge of the Pentagon, the White House, vaccine policy, a Congress that works a day a week on naming post offices and little else - the list is as long as my arm.

But it is absolutely impossible to have our hair on fire. All. The. Time.

We just can’t. And shouldn’t.

For me, personal traditions and routines offer comfort and stability in a world that always seems on the brink of collapse. I wake up before the sun rises. I meditate, sometimes writing down insights as I do. Before turning in at night I sit with my cat, Kiko, Queen of the Barn, for her evening cuddle. I gaze at the stars and track the rise of the autumn and winter constellations (here’s looking at you, Orion).

The breath of autumn lingers in the morning now. I am beginning to hear the sound of geese flying south. This weekend I spent time on one of my personal traditions that harkens back to spring.

The land we live on has been farmed for 300 years, soon after colonists first came to New England. Remnants of a narrow, old carriage road wind through a forest that has grown up on part of the property. There are a few old foundations beside it, which were once, perhaps, small cabins. Somebody many decades ago planted daffodils beside them - plants now so shaded by the canopy of trees they no longer have enough sun to bloom. But I recognize their leaves.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

I love daffodils. They are beautiful and remind me of my mom, gone these 48 years. So my spring tradition is to keep an eye out for daffodils in unclaimed corners. Where the flowers grow in spring, I hammer in wooden stakes, or, in a pinch, long sticks with yellow ribbons attached so I can find them in autumn. Then I dig up the bulbs and replant them months later.

That’s what I did this week, wandering around brushy corners on and off the property digging up bulbs. My system didn’t work as well this year as I had hoped. Some of the stakes had collapsed during summer storms and I had to dig more than a few holes to find the bulbs.

One site in particular was a puzzle. I had marked this spot two years ago when I noticed a riot of gorgeous, ruffled blooms, unclaimed, off a lonely country road. Last year, despite my best efforts, I couldn’t find them again in the fall. When I saw them blooming again this past spring, I tried to mark the site more clearly so I could find it again. Alas, the area was so overgrown the stake was impossible to find. But I remembered a rotting log near the blooms. I found the log, dug around for 15 minutes until the white bulbs gleamed from the black, rich soil. I filled half a bucket with my treasures.

Today I will bring buckets of daffodil bulbs to my daughter Anna’s house. We will plant them with the help of her dancing daughters, Ellie and Riley, along with other plants I’ve dug up on our property - black-eyed Susans, blue irises and coneflowers. Despite every worry, every moment of bad news, planting in autumn with an eye toward spring is a sign of faith in the future, of choosing joy instead of near-constant anxiety.

So, yeah, Wilhelmina’s right. We’re all gonna die. But not today.

One of my yellow-taped sticks was barely visible in the undergrowth. Nonetheless, I found it, and the bulbs it marked.

“The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.” That’s long been one of my favorite quotes from the great Gloria Steinem. I wish it were chiseled in granite somewhere. Maybe it should be in skywriting.

Steinem’s passing last week brought back memories that I have not thought about for years. One was how privileged I feel to have met her several times when I was on the editorial board of The New York Times, and had the chance to engage in conversation with her. She was kind, always, and a good listener. She was just, well, nice.

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Her passing also reminded me of how much has changed since I was born nearly (yikes!) 69 years ago. How women once faced obstacles at every turn because of their gender. And how Steinem’s sense of injustice and determination to work for change made the world better.

Obviously, we do not live in a perfect world. And yes, there is more to do.

But then, barriers were everywhere.

In childhood I was desperate to get a job to loosen the control of my tight-fisted father and have more options over my life. So I spent part of my 14th birthday in 1971 at Buffalo City Hall, getting “working papers,” the only way one could get a job so young. I got my parent’s signatures and returned to hand it in and obtain a stamped work permit.

Then began the task of seeking a job, mostly by looking through the extensive classified ads in the newspaper, printed in tiny agate type under “WANTED.” Except that the ads were divided into two categories “Men’s jobs” and “Women’s jobs.” The want ads for men’s jobs sometimes went on for pages. Women’s jobs were far fewer, mostly for secretarial work.

Even before I turned 14, I looked into delivering the newspapers like my brother Seamus had. There were two daily newspapers in Buffalo then, morning and evening, and they were always looking for teenagers to deliver the papers. But both banned girls from the job. The term “paperboy” meant just that.

Steinem and other feminists questioned and argued, protested and pushed back at every turn. It wasn’t long before it became illegal to forbid women from applying to jobs just because they were considered “male jobs,” or for that matter, keeping men from applying to an occupation like nursing, thought of as a “woman’s job.”

Photo by Dwayne joe on Unsplash

That and a lot of other things changed.

When I was in graduate school at The American University in the early 1980s, the journalism department chair, Laird Anderson, recalled for me how his marriage sparked a legal fight with the state they lived in. He and his wife, Florence Ashby, married in their 30s. They both had established careers, she as a college professor of mathematics at Montgomery College in Maryland, he as a journalist.

Yet the state required Laird’s wife to take his name. Without it, she might not have been able to vote or to apply for credit. This was not uncommon at the time and was a throwback to common law practice of “coverture,” where a married man and woman were considered one person: that of a man. Ashby objected. So did Laird. Together they went to court. The judge granting Ashby the right to keep her name marveled that any husband would request such a thing.

The with such laws was Hawaii, which changed them in 1976 (NY Times article; gift link). By the time I married n 1983, few questioned my decision to keep my name. (After I told my then-fiance, Pete, I had no intention of taking his name, he gamely said, “You’ll always be Maura Casey to me.”)

Finally, I was reminded of how such laws and customs denied women the ability to be “seen,” even by their descendants. I read my grandmother’s 1963 obituary this week and was struck by the headline: “Mrs. William Casey, Leader in Women’s Activities, is Dead,” The first line did mention her name, Elizabeth, but in the list of her children, only my father’s name belonged to him. His sisters were listed as “Mrs. Paul R. Locke and Mrs. Robert L. Davis.” Had my children read it, they would not have the foggiest idea that the names referred to their late great-aunts, Margaret and Joanna.

Steinem helped change laws, traditions, expectations, society - and me. I’m not sure what kind of a person I would be today had she not been born. The changes she and other women helped foster allowed me to have a journalism career beyond my imagination when I was a teenager desperate for a job.

And my search for work? I couldn’t find a job until I was 15. At the age of 16 I got training and worked as a nurses aide for five years while putting myself through college.

But, I always dreamed big dreams. Steinem helped me realize them.

One of the best headlines I scanned after Dolly Parton’s death sounded like it came from The Onion, the famous satirical news site: “Apocalypse Draws Near As Last Remaining Universally Beloved Human Being Passes Away.” In fact, it was from another satirical news site, The Babylon Bee, published out of Jupiter, Florida.

Successful satire always has a ring of truth. For one moment, nearly everyone (including me) applauded a single decision of Donald J. Trump: that all flags be flown at half-mast for a week in a nationwide sign of mourning. Great Britain’s King Charles asked the troops at the Changing of the Guard to play Dolly’s feminist anthem, “9 to 5.” New York’s Empire State Building gleamed in pink in tribute to her, as did landmarks in her native Tennessee.

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There is a simple reason that nearly everybody loved Parton. It wasn’t just that she was a generous multimillionaire. It was that she was kind. And she pulled off something most people (including me) find difficult: She had a moral compass, but avoided being judgmental.

She was the fourth of a dozen children and when asked about anti-trans legislation, she said, “I’ve got transgender people. I’ve got gays. I’ve got lesbians. I’ve got drunks. I’ve got drug addicts all within my own family. I know and love them all and I do not judge… that is God’s business.”

Photo by Wes McFee on Unsplash

After Whitney Houston’s rendition of Parton’s, “I will always love you,” earned her millions, Parton quietly invested in a Black section of Nashville that developers had ignored. Calling it “the house that Whitney built,” she said, “I am just going to be down with her people, who are my people as well.”

And her 31-year literacy project, the Imagination Library, has resulted in the monthly distribution of more than 300 million books to children from newborns to age 5. It has been one of the single greatest efforts to encourage reading the country has ever seen.

Yet what her death made me think about wasn’t just Parton, whom I admired but never met. I began to think about other Earth angels, other “Dollys” that I have been blessed to know.

We all have met them.

For example, I have a Dolly in my life, a fellow journalist named Roberta. (I’m not using her last name because she would hurt me. but, YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE.) I met her at a journalism conference in 2008. Upon meeting me, she decided that we would have to be friends. I thought her intention was a little bizarre, but later it felt more like divine intervention.

The New York Times was about to eliminate my job, and I didn’t know what would come next. I blurted out the news to Roberta, who waved her hand dismissively and said, in essence, “We got this!” Then she rolled up her sleeves. Roberta is a natural networker, and over the following four years just from the personal contacts she had and the phone calls she made on my behalf, I got enough writing and editing jobs to replace my Times salary.

A Dolly also appeared in my life when I was driving, late on a cold, damp night on Route 495 in Massachusetts. I had my sleeping 2-year-old daughter Anna in the car when I heard the sickening thump of a flat tire. As I pulled over. I tried to quell a sense of panic. Rain poured down in sheets. Then headlights appeared in my rearview mirror above a Georgia license plate. “The axe murderer has arrived,” I thought, but such was not the case. A man appeared at my locked door, and said, “If you will just pop open the trunk, I’ll change your tire.” Ten minutes later the spare tire was on. As he waved goodbye, soaked through, and I rolled down my window to thank him, I asked why he stopped on such a terrible night. “Because whenever I needed help, someone was there to help me,” he said, smiling.

A Dolly passed our house one day when my husband and I were trying to cope with a tree that had unexpectedly toppled in our yard. He parked, introduced himself as Steve, took a good look, and said, “I’ll be right back.” He came back with a huge chain saw and helped us all afternoon with the chore of cutting and stacking wood. And refused payment.

Dollys are kind. Dollys are helpful and thoughtful when they don’t have to be.

Dollys make the world better and make us feel better about the world.

The best thing to come out of the truly awful loss of our national treasure, besides donating to Parton’s Imagination Library, is this conviction: We can each be a Dolly, too. No big hair needed.

Any aspiring writer, or any current writer who wants to recharge skills and meet great people in a beautiful setting, should join me at the Okoboji (Iowa) Writers’ and Songwriters’ Retreat Sept. 27-30. The retreat takes place on beautiful Lake Okoboji, an 8-mile long bit of heaven in the Great Lakes region of Iowa. It offers dozens of different workshops and although I have taught memoir writing and opinion writing at previous retreats and will so again this year, I love filling gaps in my schedule by taking classes from inspiring teachers. Come one, come all!

Two weeks ago, I drove 450 miles to the island and area around Lake Ontario where I spent portions of every summer between the ages of 8 and 22. In my book, “Saving Ellen: A Memoir of Hope and Recovery,” I renamed my beloved island East Cliff Island precisely because if you google it, absolutely nothing, zero, nada will come up. (Since there are over 13,000 islands in the United States, it was no easy task to make up a name that hasn’t already been taken!)

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As I explained to a crowd of 30-35 people for a book reading at the Wilson Community Library on the mainland, I renamed some places in my memoir as a protective gesture. I have seen so many corners of New England change, and not for the better, after publicity.

I also slightly altered some names of neighbors in my book because I wasn’t sure, for example, that Grace Cone’s descendants wanted to hear that their great-great grandma used to sunbathe in the nude when she was 89, or that the descendants of old Charlie McGahon would want to know that he used to spike my lemonade with gin when I was 10.

An island view of sunset on Lake Ontario

Despite my attempts at camouflage, residents of the island and on the mainland alike figured out exactly who and what I was writing about. I wrote about them, about our shared beloved island and town. And about a time and place decades ago when my family found peace around the vast and beautiful freshwater sea that the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) appropriately called, “The lake of shining waters.”

I’ve lived in New England for more than four decades, far from where I grew up in Buffalo, New York. I rarely experience being among people who knew my family from years ago or who knew me as a teenager. The gift of the evening was speaking before members of an audience who could nod when I recalled my mother’s sense of humor, or my sister Ellen’s determination.

But the experience of staying on the island for several days, of renting a lakeside cottage my kind friend Marge had arranged, was also moving. I spent my formative summers on the island with my mother. During that time before the responsibilities of adulthood, of long and languid days, Mom and I would talk and talk. Sadly, I can remember few specifics from all those conversations. But I remember very clearly how they made me feel - supported, encouraged and loved. So as I walked around the tiny island with no roads or stores, with just a sidewalk going down the middle and scattered cottages on either side, the years fell away. I could almost hear my mother’s voice as the wind rustled the leaves of the trees.

My book also indirectly provided an answer this summer to a decades-old mystery that my mother and I regularly puzzled over.

Before Mom’s heart trouble made it impossible for her to walk too far, sometimes we would take our boat to the mainland, tie it up and drive or walk the mile or so into town for groceries or books from the library. When we went back, we would often cut through the old part of the town cemetery, where we would always pause by a grave that my mother had first noticed and pointed out to me.

It was an old. heart-shaped tombstone with just three words: “Our Little Mabel.” That was it. No dates. No names of parents. No hint as to when little Mabel had died, or the struggle that took her young life. The pain of those three words made a deep impression. So Mom and I never passed by without stopping to straighten out the grave a little, and say a prayer for Mabel and her family.

After Mom died, and was buried in the same cemetery, I continued our tradition. I rarely visited Mom without visiting little Mabel. I wrote about it in my book, “Saving Ellen.”

I never thought the mystery would ever be solved. But then I got an email whose address I didn’t recognize. It was from a member of Mabel’s family, her great-nephew, Tom Kay.

“I nearly dropped my Kindle when I read that line in your book,” about his grandmother’s sister, Mabel Wilson. “Thanks for taking care of the gravesite,” Kay wrote.

Mabel, Kay wrote, died of pneumonia in 1905, at the tender age of 2. The heart-shaped tombstone that always tore at the heartstrings of my mother, and still does of me, is more than 100 years old.

He, too, was driving to the area, but was sorry to say he would miss my book reading by a week. He sent me a picture of Mabel as a baby, before her passing would break her parents’ hearts - and any who stopped by her grave. A crack had formed on one part of the grave, Kay said, and he and his brother had plans to fix it.

It was a fitting ending to an emotional visit for me. On the island I could feel the presence of my mother once more. And, at last, I knew the identity of sweet little Mabel, who is still loved and remembered after all these years.

Mabel Wilson

I learned a marvelous word the other day that exactly describes the American leadership in Washington. The word is new for me, and it is wonderful because it offers one succinct definition showing why America is weaker today than it was on Jan. 19, 2025. It shows why President Donald Trump is not just the termite-in-chief gnawing at the very foundations of our democracy and American leadership. He isn’t simply running a kleptocracy, a form of government in which those in power, particularly him, use a position to steal for personal gain.

That’s far too limiting.

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No, my friends, the word of the week is kakistocracy: Government run by the least qualified people, in this case almost all men, most of whom are also the most unscrupulous.

Kakistocracy: Government run by the least qualified people who are often also unscrupulous.

The word fits exactly the circus happening in the Trump Administration. Exhibit A is the Iran war, which lately reminds me of a story a friend told me last month about her first teaching job 50 years ago, in a poor Arizona school.

During class one day, a black widow spider dropped on a student’s desk. The student smacked the black widow with whatever he had at hand to to kill it. Mission accomplished, but the spider had an egg sac. Hundreds of baby black widows erupted from it and began crawling everywhere.

Iran is the black widow. Trump is the clueless student who thought he could finish off the spider in one blow, only to face consequences he never expected, but should have - like venomous spiderlings crawling everywhere.

Iran’s theocratic, dictatorial regime is far stronger today than it was before Trump ordered our military to attack Feb. 28. The fact that the Israeli and U.S. military killed its senior leadership did nothing to weaken Iran. Instead, Trump’s act motivated Iran to exercise control over 20 percent of the world’s oil by taking control of the Strait of Hormuz; it exposed how weak our hugely, even insanely expensive military is; and sparked Iranian determination to torment one more American president.

Which Iran is an expert at doing.

Public portrayal of Trump in Iran.

And there isn’t much Trump can do about it without enormous humiliation or prolonged cost: Give up or send in ground troops.

All the repercussions from this war were obvious to anyone who wasn’t an idiot, which Trump and his misogynous Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, appear to be. Hegseth thought the war was a fabulous idea. But he apparently doesn’t know how to count and has probably fired anyone who did, particularly if they had the misfortune of being female or black, since Hegseth has repeatedly nixed promotions of female or black officers.

Now, incredibly, the American military is running low on long-range, precision missiles. When Trump confronted Hegseth about the issue, Hegseth, like the weasel he is, blamed others.

Late last week and over the weekend, after Trump once again claimed, for the umpteenth time, or maybe pleaded, that the Strait of Hormuz was about to be reopened, Iran released a list of demands.

They included releasing billions of dollars in frozen Iranian assets, a total withdrawal of forces, paying for all the damage our bombs have created, lifting the US naval blockade, ending aggression against Iran and its allies in Lebanon, Palestine, Yemen and Iraq…. AND…AND…. Agree never to insult Iran again.

Asking Trump to stop insulting anyone is like asking him to stop breathing. Or, maybe, to give all his money to the poor and become a hermit. Not gonna happen. Immature name calling, bluster, attention-seeking and playground behavior is the way this 80-year-old juvenile makes his way in the world. He won’t stop insulting people until he can no longer speak or has departed this mortal coil.

In a list of unreasonable demands, this one is the dealbreaker for the Blatherer in the Oval Office.

And in a country and culture that craves respect as much as Iran does, this is the one condition the leadership may want the most.

They also want Trump to shut his mouth. Good luck with that.

I don’t know where living in and observing our American kakistocracy leaves those of us who, like me, feel their heads explode when we read the daily news. I am burdened with compulsively reading three or four newspapers every day. It would help my mental health a lot if I could stop and ignore the whole thing. But it feels irresponsible to walk away.

Instead I take deep yoga breaths, walk our two dogs, dig up more potatoes (Pete absolutely planted too many this year), pick flowers for the kitchen and try to find moments of serenity.

And, at the very least, get a belly laugh at the idea that serious negotiators amidst a war would demand that Trump stop hurling insults.

At the end, they were clearly worn out, tattered remnants of what they once were.

They had bloomed only six weeks or so ago, white flowers wafting in the breeze. But now, the stems were yellow and the leaves were as ragged as the ears of an alley cat.

We could delay no longer. It was time to harvest the potatoes, a sign that midsummer is upon us.

My farmer husband Pete and I had planted the fingerlings in May, taking a chance on a spate of good weather - although, truth be told, spring had been a bit cold.

Pete knows his Irish wife loves potatoes, so he always obliges me. Besides, they sell well at farmers markets. He chose several kinds from the Maine Potato Lady, the company where he usually orders his tubers. Some were repeats. Magic Mollies, the purple potatoes that are a perennial favorite of customers, arrived in all their deep violet glory.

They delighted a customer a few years ago at the market, where she lifted the potatoes and said they reminded her of home. And where was home? “Peru,” she said, smiling, where the oldest archeological record of potatoes exists, dating from 2500 BC. But they were cultivated long before then, and astonishingly, her country is home to more than 3,000 varieties of tubers.

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Fortunately for me, Pete just chose four kinds, and beside Mollies, he chose Red Thumbs, which look exactly as the name implies. He also ordered Organic Banana potatoes, with a rich yellow skin, perfect for mashing. Then my favorite, Pinto Gold, a cross between yellow and red potatoes, with mottled red and gold skin, looking a lot like Peruvian varieties.

When we planted them all, they rested snugly in the narrow ditches Pete dug before we carefully covered them with soil.

Magic Mollies. Aren’t they gorgeous?

Now it was time for them to roll out of their warm, dirt beds and all I could think of was the work that awaited us. What can I say? I may be descended from Irish peasants, but I’m a writer. The only calluses I have come from typing.

I’ve pulled back from farming in recent years. It’s Pete’s thing, really, and I do wonder sometimes about a second career that seems to use up every single minute of the very nicest months of the year from May to October. Still, it keeps him moving. And occasionally he could use a little help.

Like the task of digging potatoes.

It never seems to matter that I stay active in walking three to five miles a day, or that I work out in karate class twice a week. Farming - the digging, the pulling, the carrying, the grunt labor of it all - always seems to use different muscles. Pete is out in the fields for hours. His stamina astonishes me. I can’t possibly keep up with him. So it takes me awhile to get into the routine of things.

Pinto Golds

Sometimes, the weather doesn’t help. Two weeks ago, I dug up half of one row of Magic Mollies. It wasn’t long before I felt utterly beat, but the humidity and heat were both high that day. After awhile, I gave up, put my pitchfork to one side, hauled the full bushel baskets to our barn and dove in our pond. The pond, 15 feet deep, is always cold from its many springs and felt delicious. Plus, it’s a great way to get the dirt out from under one’s fingernails. Not to mention the dirt on my arms and legs. Ferreting out potatoes is not a white-collar job.

I was glad I wore gloves when I got done digging.

So I wondered how long my energy would hold out last week when I began to turn over a row of Pinto Golds, pulling up the wilted plants and shaking off the loose earth. But the weather was sweet, with low humidity and a good breeze, and I soon made headway.

I was amazed at how prolific the potatoes were. Unlike the other varieties with a more modest harvest, the Pinto Golds had 20 potatoes or more attached to each plant. If they were teenagers, I would tell them to use birth control. But the potatoes were gorgeous, and I filled one bushel basket after another. After two hours I had finished the row and filled five bushel baskets. And I was utterly filthy. But the pond was waiting, and as I put away the pitchfork, I had to admit, farming gives me a sense of accomplishment that few tasks do.

Don’t tell Pete.

Two announcements: For those interested, particularly my Buffalo peeps, I will be at the Wilson Community Library, 265 Young Street, Wilson, NY, this coming Tuesday, August 4, at 6:30. There I will do a reading from my memoir and among other things, explain why I renamed the town “Newcott” in my book, “Saving Ellen: A Memoir of Hope and Recovery.” (I promise I had a good reason). I’d love to see you there! RSVP to the library at 716-751-6070.

And any aspiring writer, or any current writer who wants to recharge skills and meet great people in a beautiful setting, should join me at the Okoboji (Iowa) Writers’ and Songwriters’ Retreat Sept. 27-30. The retreat takes place on beautiful Lake Okoboji, an 8-mile long bit of heaven in the Great Lakes region of Iowa. It offers dozens of different workshops and although I have taught memoir writing and opinion writing at previous retreats and will so again this year, I love filling gaps in my schedule by taking classes from inspired teachers. Come one, come all!

I am being forced to join a paperless society. I don’t like it one bit. 

There. I’ve said it. Yes, I know it’s good to save trees from being mowed down. I agree that using less paper spares landfills mountains of trash. 

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But I miss reading newspapers on, well, paper, instead of squinting at my phone. 

And I would rather not rely on the internet alone to get my bills. I am beginning to long for the day that I could hold a bill in my hand. Write a check. Put a stamp on an envelope and mail it. 

I spent an hour of my life recently that I will NEVER get back fighting with my wireless phone service provider.  The bill is in my name. Despite this, when there is an issue, the wireless company, Verizon, texts my husband, who texts me.  Absurd. The few times I have tried to sign in to get information on the bill I get a message saying that I need the permission of the “administrator” – my husband. This is maddening. He has a long, melodious Italian name; I have a short, sprightly, Irish name. The bill is addressed to me, not him. I do not seek his permission on this or anything I can think of. 

A few days ago, Verizon texted my husband, who texted me, that we hadn’t paid our bill on time.

I then called the company. I told them I hadn’t gotten a bill that month. “Your bill is now online,”  the company representative said. I told her the company needed to take my husband off the bill as the “administrator” and by the way, I wanted to keep getting a paper bill. The woman on the phone clucked  sympathetically and said, in so many words, if I wanted to continue the quaint habit of getting a paper bill it would now cost me an extra $5 a month. 

Seriously? So I have to read my bill on the internet or pay for the privilege of getting it the old-fashioned way?

Photo by Tasha Kostyuk on Unsplash

I pointed out to the company rep that reading my bill online would require the permission of my husband, like this is some techno-version of the 1850s where married women didn’t even have the rights to the 20 pounds of clothes they were often compelled to wear. She tried to fix the problem, to no avail. Then another representative tried, too. How complicated could this be? Frustrated, I hung up, still wondering why I couldn’t still get a paper bill in the mail as I always had.

It turns out that this is a thing. There’s no law against companies charging to send paper bills. More and more businesses are turning to it as a way to cut costs and milk customers even more. Banks, credit card companies and other  wireless phone companies are in on the act. 

The movement to drop paper has even affected my husband’s transactions at the farmers market, now in full swing  as we approach the middle of summer. Our state used to distribute coupon books to the elderly at senior centers to give them more to spend at farmers markets. Each small booklet held five $3 coupons. Customers could use the coupons like cash to purchase fruit and veggies. They got fresh food; Pete deposited the coupons like checks in his farm account. 

A few years ago the state forced customers to use a mobile app to get the same benefits the paper coupons once provided.  Which, to me, begged the question. What if you can’t afford a smartphone? Or get confused about how to download yet another app? Eventually the state offered the option of getting a plastic card with the benefits loaded on. But it is clear that technology is herding us all in the same direction - more apps, more staring at computer screens, more passwords to remember and email spam to delete. 

More living life online. 

Last year, on an out-of-state business trip, I ordered breakfast at a diner which offered a variety of local and national newspapers for customers to read while waiting to be served.  It was a dimly remembered, but entirely relaxing few minutes to leaf through pages of a sports section or an editorial page rather than peering at my phone. It spared me the irritation of trying - again - to remember one or more obscure passwords for a website, or navigate the occasional, dreaded, two-factor sign-ins that make me want to pitch my phone out the nearest window, wondering whether I own it, or it owns me. 

It was a 1990s experience and no permission was needed. 

After hanging up on Verizon,  I wormed into the corners of the company website to figure out why my husband was affixed as the lord of a cell phone bill that has always been addressed to me. I finally found the problem. Turns out that it wasn’t an anti-feminist plot; someone checked the wrong permissions box when we signed up for our plan years ago. I unchecked the box. Now, rest assured, I can read the bill without Pete’s imprimatur.  The marriage is saved.

But I still can’t get a paper bill in the mail for free.