Loading
AmeriCorps Montgomery

"locals serving locals for 23 years."

Posts by Paul Costello1

This element is critical to human flourishing — yet missing from the news

July 12, 2023 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
Off

Hope: The 3 Things needed to Grow and Thrive | SCA

By Amanda Ripley Contributing columnist Washington Post March 30 2023

At a cocktail party in a crowded Washington living room some years ago, I met a magazine editor who was working on a high-profile new book. It would transport the reader into the future, he told me, describing in vivid, terrifying prose all the catastrophes that might happen because of climate change: unbreathable air, dying oceans, hunger, drowning.

Would it offer people any hope? I asked.

“It’s not my job to give people hope,” he said, sounding vaguely disgusted. I got the sense that hope was for the weak. And that by asking my question, I was weak, too.

A year later, his book ended up being a bestseller. So, I figured, maybe he was right. Maybe hope is not our job. But then, I couldn’t help but wonder, whose job was it?

Last summer, I wrote a piece in this newspaper admitting that I have been selectively avoiding contact with the news, even though I’m a journalist myself. Traditional news coverage, I had slowly come to realize, was missing half the story, distorting my view of reality. It frequently overlooked and underplayed storylines and dimensions that humans need to thrive in the modern world — with the three most notable elements being hope, agency and dignity.

Amanda Ripley: I stopped reading the news. Is the problem me — or the product?

That column sparked an unexpected response. I heard from thousands of readers caught in the same struggle — wanting to be informed about the world but not bludgeoned into fatalism. Many of you reported that you had taken matters into your own hands. One man, after listening to devastating stories on the radio, does his own Google searches to find examples of people trying to solve the very same problems. Then he shares the links he has found with his friends and family on Facebook, basically doing a job reporters don’t want to do.

Others urged me to check out alternative sources they had found, including the Progress Network newsletter, which curates stories of human cooperation and ingenuity, and the 1440 daily briefing, which attempts to strip bias from the news. Still others said they have sought refuge in sports, hyperlocal news, Wordle and, for one reader, medieval history.

This year, with your help, I’d like to revisit each of the missing elements, starting with the most controversial of the three.

The word hope sounds gauzy and fey, like rainbows and sunsets. It feels like a gateway drug to delusion and denial. “I don’t want your hope,” climate activist Greta Thunberg said at the World Economic Forum in 2019. “I want you to panic.”

But rainbows and sunsets are explicable phenomena, the scattering of sunlight in the distance, and it turns out that hope is, too. For more than 30 years, scientists have been researching hope and deconstructing its building blocks. And it’s surprisingly tangible. “It’s important to say what hope is not,” Rebecca Solnit wrote in her book “Hope in the Dark.” “It is not the belief that everything was, is, or will be fine.”

So what is it? Hope is more like a muscle than an emotion. It’s a cognitive skill, one that helps people reject the status quo and visualize a better way. If it were an equation, it would look something like: hope = goals + road map + willpower. “Hope is the belief that your future can be brighter and better than your past and that you actually have a role to play in making it better,” according to Casey Gwinn and Chan Hellman in their book, “Hope Rising.”

Decades of research have now proved that hope, defined this way, can be reliably measured and taught. Using 12 questions, called the Hope Scale — a version of which you can take yourself here — more than 2,000 studies have demonstrated that people with stronger hope skills perform better in school, sports and work. They manage illness, pain and injury better and score higher on assessments of happiness, purpose and self-esteem. Among victims of domestic violence, child abuse and other forms of trauma, hope appears to be one of the most effective antidotes yet studied.

Still, there is resistance to hope, even among those who know it best. For a long time, Hellman, a psychologist by training, did not think giving people hope was his job, either. At conferences, he would wave people off when they asked him how to build their capacity for hope. “I don’t do hope. I study it,” he’d tell them.

I recognize myself in this story. As a journalist, trying to look smart in story meetings, it always felt safer to remain skeptical. It was easier to pitch stories about buffoonery than about progress. It’s a strange trick of the mind, especially because it’s the news media’s relentless negativity that has led so many people to give up on institutions — or on journalism. Cynicism feels protective, even when it’s not.

Martin Baron: We want objective judges and doctors. Why not journalists too?

About a decade ago, Hellman decided to stop sitting on the sidelines — partly because of his own life story. All through high school, he had been homeless, always on the precipice of catastrophe. And specific people had helped him imagine another life and feel as if he was capable of getting there (remember: goals + road map + willpower). So he decided he had an obligation not just to study hope but to teach it.

So far, he and his colleagues at the Hope Research Center at the University of Oklahoma at Tulsa have trained more than 22,000 government employees in Oklahoma, California and Washington to cultivate hope on purpose — not just among individuals but across entire systems, in welfare programs, school districts and prisons, among other places. They have found that it reduces burnout and improves outcomes for workers and those they serve. “It literally is strategic planning,” Hellman says. “Hope is the process. Well-being is the outcome.”

As it is, when journalists try to do hopeful stories, they often end up insulting our intelligence — with stories about small acts of kindness, often involving animals. There is no goal or road map.

But if this other, more muscular kind of hope is critical to human flourishing, then why can’t journalists make it part of their job? It would mean asking totally different questions, just as doggedly as ever: What are realistic goals, in the face of a wicked problem? What are some of the ways other communities have tried to get there? And how did they manage to press on, even when things didn’t go as planned?

What would it look like if careers were made (and prizes won) based on this kind of inquiry and storytelling? We might see fewer column inches just describing (over and over again) the alarming rise in depression among teens — and more stories such as this one by Anya Kamenetz, investigating a surprising remedy that has been shown to reduce psychological distress. When it comes to crime coverage, we might become as obsessed with declines as we are with spikes. Why are homicides down 31 percent in East St. Louis over the past four years, when they remain high in so many other places?

When it comes to climate change, there is hope, defined this way, at least, and there always was. Humans still have enormous control over what happens to our planet. In the past five years, we have cut expected warming almost in half. The world is on track to add as much renewable energy generation in the next five years as it did in the past 20, according to the International Energy Agency. There’s much more to be done, of course, but getting there requires rigorously reported stories that help us visualize a road map. Why not report out hope, the same way we report out dread?

I know it is difficult for some in my field to make this shift. The more hopeless news you consume, the harder it is to see hope in the wild — and no one consumes more news than journalists. But the research also shows that it is possible. “Hope is malleable,” says Matthew Gallagher, a clinical psychologist who studies hope at the University of Houston. “It’s not a static thing, like how tall you are. It can change.”

For journalists, hope is a defiant way of being in the world: ever on the lookout for what is but always alert to what might be.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/03/30/amanda-ripley-hope-news/


Hope is a virtue, not a feeling. And it’s practical, too.

July 12, 2023 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
Off

By E.J. Dionne Jr. Columnist|Follow Washington Post July 11th 2023

Hope is summoned so often in speeches and sermons that invoking it invites the very cynicism and resignation it is meant to answer. The word can seem to be a crutch to get past some unpleasantness, a deus ex machina contrived to move humanity from a terrible here to a delightful there with no effort, discipline or commitment.

But hope is a demanding virtue, not a sunny disposition. It accepts reality, acknowledges obstacles and insists, as the bard of hope Barack Obama put it, “that something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it and to work for it and to fight for it.”

This aspiration became so central to Obama’s political life that the word itself came to be seen as partisan. Campaigning in the 2010 midterm elections, Sarah Palin, the GOP’s vice-presidential nominee two years earlier, coined a memorable dismissal: “How’s that hopey changey thing working out for ya?”

But hope, like faith and love, is not the possession of any party or politician. And here’s something else about hope: It’s practical.

Amanda Ripley: This element is critical to human flourishing — yet missing from the news

If hope isn’t exactly in the air these days, the work it does is on a lot of thoughtful minds. Two books published in the past year — one by an economist, the other by a theologically inclined humanities scholar — bring home why hope is central to policymaking and decent politics.

Carol Graham, my colleague at the Brookings Institution, has made the study of well-being her life’s work as an economist. Nodding to the reality that “The Power of Hope” reflects an unusual preoccupation within a discipline often referred to as “the dismal science,” Graham opens her first chapter with nice understatement: “Hope is a little-studied concept in economics.”

It shouldn’t be, she argues, because hope is relevant to so many of the outcomes economists seek, including upward mobility, a well-trained, dedicated workforce, better health and the economic growth that flows from all of them. Hope’s opposite, despair, is now an enormous, measurable problem.

“Despair in the United States today is a barrier to reviving our labor markets and productivity,” she writes. “It jeopardizes our well-being, longevity, families and communities.”P

To pick a simple example Graham discusses: Nurturing hope matters to the success of job training and education policies because “they will not be taken up if people do not have hope in their own futures.” That’s because hope is not just a belief “that things will be better in the future,” but also confidence in “the ability to do something about that future.”

The good news is that well-being issues are working their way into the public debate, reflected in Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy’s report on loneliness, isolation and lack of connection as a public health crisis. Murthy argued that the choices government makes in transit, parks, libraries, family leave and technology can all build social as well as physical infrastructure to foster community — and, yes, hope.

The choices we make about the structure of the economy matter, too. Graham cites the celebrated work of Anne Case and Angus Deaton on “deaths of despair” among working-class Americans from suicide, alcohol-related diseases and drug overdoses. The loss of hope typically followed the loss of well-paying jobs and the collapse of communities.

Deaths of despair, Case and Deaton found, were especially common among lower-income Whites. Black Americans, perhaps from their long experience overcoming discrimination and oppression, showed measurably higher rates of resiliency. But Graham notes that in recent years, suicide rates have been rising sharply among young Black Americans, and deaths from drug overdoses among Black men have shot up, too. Restoring hope is a moral and policy imperative across racial lines.

Henry Olsen: I found hope for democracy in an unexpected place

It’s also an imperative in our politics, as Wake Forest University scholar Michael Lamb argues in “A Commonwealth of Hope,” a fascinating revisionist view of the political thought of St. Augustine. Contrary to a popular perception of Augustine as an otherworldly thinker who accents “darkness and pessimism,” Lamb sketches a persuasive portrait of a thinker who “encourages a realistic hope for a better form of community not only in heaven but on earth.”

Lamb’s Augustine grasps “both the limits and possibilities of politics” — wisdom demands we always keep both in mind — and he is thus “an especially valuable, if unlikely, ally in our contemporary moment.”

Like Graham in the policy sphere, Lamb highlights the high cost of despair in politics, which he argues “can license apathy or fatalism, encouraging citizens to withdraw from politics rather than stretch toward difficult political goods.”

His valuable warning: “When despair becomes a habit — a vice — it can further entrench the social and political problems that prompted pessimism in the first place.”

Democracy cannot work if citizens are demoralized and demobilized by such despair. You don’t have to be a sucker for the hopey changey thing to see why we need a rendezvous with hope — in our individual lives and in our common life, too.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/07/09/politics-hope-carol-graham-michael-lamb/

How Supreme Court decisions are activating a generation of young voters

July 11, 2023 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
Off

By Tamia FowlkesJuly 9, 2023 at 7:00 a.m. EDT




Aaron Satyanarayana was disheartened by the recent Supreme Court ruling against affirmative action. His girlfriend, Maxine Ewing, is worried about the fallout from the court’s decision to block President Biden’s plan to forgive student loan debt.

And Cam Kuhn was livid that a majority of the justices sided with a website designer who refused services to LGBTQ+ people on religious grounds.


Cam Kuhn said he remembered when the Supreme Court guaranteed a national right to same-sex marriage in 2015. Now, “I want to believe that the Supreme Court is not political, but it’s very hard,” he said. “I think what everybody is feeling right now is we’re tired of the government telling us how we should live our lives.” (Tom Brenner for The Washington Post)

The young voters plan to make their objections known at the ballot box next year, viewing the court’s actions as out of step with the issues and values important to them and their peers.

For many voters under 35 years of age, especially those on the left, the Supreme Court has become a political issue in the same way that climate change, gun violence and immigration have over the course of the past two decades, some political scientists and organizers have said.

Conversations with more than a dozen young voters from around the country who recently visited Washington for the Fourth of July suggest a sense of frustration, even resignation for some, but also a renewed understanding that their votes could impact which justices sit on the federal bench.

Democrats and liberals have viewed the high court as an institution that historically protects the rights of marginalized groups. But Republican politicians and activists on the right have remade the court: President Donald Trump, backed by a GOP Senate, appointed three justices to create a conservative majority.

Over the past five years, trust in the Supreme Court to “do the right thing” all or most of the time has decreased by 10 percentage points among 18- to 29-year-olds, according to a poll released by the Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School.

The court’s recent rulings, along with last year’s decision striking down the right to abortion established in 1973’s Roe v. Wade, could prompt more young people to be active in next year’s presidential and congressional elections, some observers predict.

“They are [angry] because government continues to give them the short end of the stick, they’re going to turn out and vote. And in this case, it could not be more clear that there’s two sides and the contrast could not be more stark,” said Antonio Arellano, a spokesman for NextGen America, a liberal advocacy group and political action committee.

Some, like the 24-year-old Satyanarayana, say this moment calls for more than just casting a ballot.

“It’s not the time to kind of isolate or dissociate from reality or the work that has to be done in political and social movements,” said Satyanarayana, who recently moved to D.C. from New York. “And as somebody who has been so averse towards door-knocking and canvassing my entire life, these three decisions and Dobbs are shifting my mind-set.” Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was the case in which the court ruled that there was no constitutional right to abortion.

Ewing, 24, who is from New York, generally shies from political debates but had much to say about the court’s decision to block Biden’s plan to forgive up to $20,000 in student-loan debt for borrowers.

“They are setting up a generation and future generations for failure, and it’s going to impact everyone,” Ewing said as she and Satyanarayana stood on a shaded stretch of grass on the National Mall. “What’s going to happen when none of us can buy houses? What’s going to happen when none of us can buy anything?”


Aaron Satyanarayana is motivated by the Supreme Court’s recent ruling against affirmative action, while Maxine Ewing is concerned about what happens after the court’s decision to block President Biden’s plan to forgive student loan debt. (Tom Brenner for The Washington Post)

Young voters, who overwhelmingly supported Democratic candidates in last year’s midterms, were credited with helping to stop an anticipated Republican wave in Congress. Democrats held onto the Senate, and while the GOP won the House, it did so with a slim majority. A Washington Post analysis of census turnout data indicates that 26 percent of voters under 30 turned out in 2022, which was down from 2018, but still notably higher than any midterm election between 2002 and 2014.

And in the spring, college-aged voters in Wisconsin headed to the polls in droves to elect Janet Protasiewicz, flipping the state Supreme Court’s majority from conservative to liberal, in a bid to protect abortion rights there.

The state’s young voter turnout led the nation in November’s midterm elections, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Still, turnout among young voters continues to lag behind older voters. Rick Hasen, UCLA professor of law and political science and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project, said organizers should seek to expand the number of young people on the voter rolls.

“The kind of political action that should be targeted at young people, the very first thing to think about even more than getting people to show up at the polls is getting them to register in the first place,” Hasen said.

Supreme Court was drawn into last four elections, and likely again in 2024

The court also ruled that a Colorado graphic artist could refuse to create wedding websites for same-sex couples, citing her religious objections.

Kuhn, 34, identifies as a member of the LGBTQ+ community. He said he vividly remembers the day in 2015 that the court guaranteed same-sex couples the right to marry in Obergefell v. Hodges, citing itas the moment he started to pay attention to the Supreme Court.

“I felt so supported by my country,” he said.

Now, almost a decade later, Kuhn struggles with the Supreme Court’s “swing in the other direction.”

“I want to believe that the Supreme Court is not political, but it’s very hard,” Kuhn said. “I think what everybody is feeling right now is we’re tired of the government telling us how we should live our lives. Let us have our freedoms, let us love who we want to love, let us go to college where we want to go to college, let people have their reproductive rights.”

Kuhn, who lives in Little Rock, said he hopes to join organizing efforts for LGBTQ+ issues and student loan forgiveness ahead of next year’s election. Although Kuhn would like to see newer figures in the Democratic Party run for president, such as Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer or California Gov. Gavin Newsom, he plans to support Biden in 2024.

“He is the right person, especially with us potentially facing Trump coming back,” Kuhn added.

Christian Blanks has always described himself as conservative. But as he and his mother, Bari, paused in front of the Supreme Court, they expressed their doubts about the Republican Party’s ability to capture their vote.


Christian Blanks always described himself as conservative, but recent anti-trans legislation in his home state of Louisiana has left him “more on the left.” However, he added, “if it’s just really primarily going to be Joe Biden versus one of the radical right-leaning candidates running, I’m not even gonna bother, because where I vote … it’s always conservative folks that win.” (Tom Brenner for The Washington Post)

Blanks’ sister is transgender and has spent most of her life under attack in their home state of Louisiana. Amid sweeping changes to laws governing diversity and inclusion programs in schools and access to abortion, Louisiana legislators made repeated efforts this year to ban gender-affirming medical care for young transgender people and sought to enact a bill barring discussions about gender and sexuality in schools.

“I used to be kind of a conservative first, but then after all of these, you know, kind of Bible-pumping, senators and candidates have come about, I just, you know, I’ve definitely become more on the left,” Christian said.

Bari thinks the Supreme Court, which for decades was seen as protecting the rights of marginalized groups, is now “influenced by career politicians.”

“Aside from the fact that the country is more polarized than it’s ever been, I think the right-leaning GOP and the infringement on the right to privacy and personal rights is deplorable,” she said.

But Christian added that Democrats would need to put forward better options to earn his vote in 2024. “If it’s just really primarily going to be Joe Biden versus one of the radical right-leaning candidates running, I’m not even going to bother, because where I vote in Louisiana, it’s always conservative folks that win.”

Top GOP lawyer decries ease of campus voting in private pitch to RNC

According to an April survey by the Marist Poll, 50 percent of 18 to 29-year-old voters disapprove of the job that Biden is doing. The poll also found that 61 percent of young people don’t want Trump to return to the Oval Office.

Voters under 30, who backed Biden by a wide margin according to exit polls conducted by Edison Research and AP VoteCast, were hopeful that he would make good on his promise to protect abortion access, cancel student loan debt and defend LGBTQ+ rights. But after the recent Supreme Court decisions, many now consider voting for Biden to be a matter of survival.

“I felt like after Roe v. Wade, it just went downhill from there. And I feel like that was the starting point of like, really seeing how bad things could get,” said 21-year-old Faye Ipaye, a student at Bowie State University. “I feel like young people don’t have a lot of trust in them. … We’re going to like have to just pick the lesser of the two evils.”


Temi Dosunmu, Angela Adoyo and Faye Ipaye outside the Capitol. (Tom Brenner for The Washington Post)

Organizations like NextGen America are trying to make sure that disillusionment doesn’t turn into disengagement. It aims to increase national voter turnout on college campuses and among voters 18 to 29 years old, using social media to deliver messages about voting resources, as well as Supreme Court rulings and their impact.

Although young voters have consistently leaned left, organizers warn that Democrats shouldn’t take that support for granted.

Clarissa Unger, chief executive of the Students Learn Students Vote Coalition, a nonpartisan voter education network working to increase turnout among college students, said Generation Z voters don’t bind themselves to parties but respond to candidates who demonstrate an understanding of their lived experiences.

“Both parties have an opportunity to make a direct appeal to young people and to bring them into the fold, and I think it’s to either party’s detriment to not do so,” Unger added.

A study by Tufts University’s Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement estimated that 8.3 million youth became eligible voters in 2022, with 46 percent representing communities of color.If mobilized, this diverse group brings with it a set of policy priorities shaped by identity and informed by national struggles like the covid-19 pandemic and the social justice movement that grew from the police killing of George Floyd, said Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, the center’s Newhouse director.

According to data from the Education Data Initiative, over 15 million millennials have student loan debt — more than any other generation — carrying on average a balance of $33,173 per borrower. Many are waiting, with fingers crossed, for Biden’s loan forgiveness agenda to succeed.


Estefani Marchena, shown with boyfriend Chase Campos-Tapia, said when she took out loans to attend the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, she didn’t think ahead to how much it might cost to pay them back. “I’m just like, I’ll figure it out later when I graduate,” she said. (Tom Brenner for The Washington Post)

For borrowers like Estefani Marchena, a 21-year-old senior at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, said when she took out the loans, she didn’t think ahead to how much it might cost to pay them back. “I have loans, but I’m just like, I’ll figure it out later when I graduate,” she said. Marchena said she never knew much about Biden’s loan forgiveness plan, and did not imagine a possibility in which it would happen. But now she thinks it could have been helped.

Marchena hopes to attend graduate school next year, pursuing a master’s degree in public health. She wants to make health-care resources more accessible for minorities and people with disabilities. “I think there’s still a lot of change that needs to be made,” she said.

In 2024, she is certain she will cast a ballot for Biden, along with her boyfriend, Chase Campos-Tapia. Marchena said she voted for Biden in 2020 because it was “the lesser of two evils.” In an ideal world, she said, her choice would have been Bernie Sanders. “You have to be smart. I think, slowly, you have to make change to get more Democratic people in office,” she said.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

By Tamia FowlkesTamia Fowlkes is a general assignment reporting intern at The Washington Post. She recently graduated from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. Before joining The Post, she worked at USA Today Network, “The Rachel Maddow Show” on MSNBC, WISC-3 TV News, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the Wisconsin State Journal and Isthmus. 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/07/09/supreme-court-decisions-young-voters-student-loan-forgiveness-lgbtq/

The photos of Frederick Douglass that helped him fight to end slavery

July 10, 2023 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
Off

In a rare, salted-paper photograph, Frederick Douglass wears a sophisticated high collar, an elegant three-piece suit and a short salt-and-pepper Afro, coifed with a part down the middle of his scalp. Douglass, who would become one of the most photographed people of the 19th century and one of the country’s most powerful orators, appears in the faded photo with a righteous gaze, in a pose that the writer and activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton described as “majestic in his wrath.”

This photograph, taken in 1860 and unique in style among the dozens of images often seen of Douglass, is showcased in the exhibit “One Life: Frederick Douglass,” which opened last month at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery.

At 88, he is a historical rarity — the living son of a slave

The exhibit traces Douglass’s trajectory, in photographs, records and writings, from enslaved man to fugitive, fierce abolitionist and presidential adviser, highlighting how he carefully constructed his enduring image using every available medium of his time.


Douglass, seen around 1845. “He wanted to create a dialogue with his photograph,” curator John Stauffer said. (Onondaga Historical Association Museum & Research Center)

“Douglass, in the larger sense, cultivated an immensely powerful voice in different registers. One was as speaker, one was based on his photographs and prints, one was through his activism and one was through his writing,” said Smithsonian guest curator John Stauffer, a professor of English and African and African American Studies at Harvard University.

“He believed a photograph was an accurate representation of the figure,” Stauffer said. “He always dressed up for his photography, much like he did for his speeches. He wanted to create a dialogue with his photograph that he provided with his speeches. It was a form of representation he hoped would convince people to follow him in advocating for equality.”

Frederick Douglass had nothing but scorn for July Fourth

Douglass was born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey in 1818, on a Maryland plantation owned by Edward Lloyd V, a former governor of Maryland and U.S. senator. The Smithsonian exhibit includes the original leather-bound ledger containing the names of babies born on that planation. On the left displayed page, in black ink and large script, overseer Aaron Anthony wrote: “Frederick August son of Harriett Feby 1818.” No father was mentioned; some historians suspect it was Anthony.

In September 1838, Frederick Bailey escaped enslavement, changing his name to Frederick Douglass. A 19th-century flier in the exhibit depicts a painting of a young Frederick escaping barefoot — though in the real-life escape he wore shoes. The illustration is headlined: “The Fugitive’s Song,” which was composed and dedicated to Douglass. The caption reads: “Frederick Douglass, A Graduate from the ‘Peculiar Institution.’ For his fearless advocacy, signal ability and wonderful success in behalf of HIS BROTHERS Ind. BONDS. And to the FUGITIVES FROM SLAVERY in the UNITED STATES & CANADA.”

On Sept. 15, 1838, Frederick married Anna Murray, a free Black woman who had lived in Baltimore and helped him escape enslavement, financing his escape by selling a bed made of feathers. The couple went on to have five children together.


Douglass in a daguerreotype circa 1841, the year he was hired as a speaker for the American Anti-Slavery Society. (Collection of Greg French)

The Smithsonian exhibit, which runs through April, includes one of the first known photographs of Douglass, taken in 1841. The image, tucked inside a worn frame encased with a red silk lining, shows a young Douglass with his thick black curls piled high, his jaw square and an intense stare. It was captured a year after the first commercial daguerreotype studio opened in the country, the National Portrait Gallery says, when the exposure time for such a machine “could run up to 15 seconds.”

The searing photos that helped end child labor in America

Douglass was hired that year as a speaker for the American Anti-Slavery Society, moving with his young family to Lynn, Mass., near Boston. For the next 60 years, Douglass would make his mark on the world, becoming one of the most powerful voices against the cruel institution of chattel enslavement. He wrote hundreds of essays, a novela, three autobiographies and thousands of speeches.

“When he escaped from slavery, he dated his birth to the day he escaped from slavery,” Stauffer said. “So, he felt like, ‘I’m playing catch up. I have to make up for all these lost years.’ He was a workaholic. He read voraciously. He got caught up on this kind of canon of what any educated person needs to read. He was passionate about it.”


An oil painting of Douglass, circa 1845, when he published his first autobiography. (Mark Gulezian/National Portrait Gallery)

Douglass knew one of his greatest tools was public speaking. For those who could not attend his speeches, he published them in his newspaper or in pamphlets. William Lloyd Garrison, the editor of the Liberator newspaper, advertised and published Douglass’s 1845 autobiography, “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.”

Frederick Douglass delivered a Lincoln reality check at Emancipation Memorial unveiling

The autobiography was a hit, making Douglass so famous that he had to flee to Great Britain to avoid being enslaved again as a fugitive. Abolitionists helped buy his “freedom,” and Douglass returned to the states two years later, in 1847, as a free man. He moved to Rochester, N.Y., where he founded the North Star, an anti-slavery newspaper whose name referred to the light “that helped guide those escaping slavery to the North,” according to the Library of Congress. Douglass, in the initial issue, called it “the STAR OF HOPE.”

In 1855, Douglass published his second autobiography, “My Bondage and My Freedom: Part I. — Life as a Slave. Part II. — Life as a Freeman.” An original copy of that book, published during the period when violence had erupted between pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions vying for control of the new territory of Kansas, lies beneath a glass case in the Portrait Gallery.


John White Hurn took the most photographs of Douglass — and also helped him flee after the Harpers Ferry raid. (Collection of Greg French)

One of the most striking photos in the exhibit shows Douglass with a shock of white hair, growing like a painted line in his black Afro. The photograph was taken by John White Hurn, most likely on Jan. 14, 1862, according to curators. Douglass had given a speech at the National Hall in Philadelphia, located a block from Hurn’s studio.

Hurn, a telegraph operator who had helped Douglass flee again in 1859, after his abolitionist ally John Brown’s raid at Harpers Ferry, went on to photograph Douglass again in 1866 and 1873. Hurn took as many as nine photographs in all, the most of any Douglass photographers.

‘Unflinching’: The day John Brown was hanged for his raid on Harpers Ferry

After the Civil War began in 1861, Douglass wrote to President Abraham Lincoln advocating that he free all enslaved Black people in America and provide them with arms to fight against the Confederacy. The two met, at the White House, on several occasions.

The Smithsonian exhibit contains an original copy of a letter dated Aug. 29, 1864, in which Douglass asked the president to send a Black agent to conduct “squads of enslaved people northward.” Douglass demanded that the Union Army provide food and shelter for the Black freedmen. Lincoln listened. Days later, the Union army marched to victory in Atlanta.

Frederick Douglass needed to see Lincoln. Would the president meet with a former enslaved person?

“He said in his speeches this is a golden opportunity to destroy slavery and remake the United States as a true democracy,” Stauffer said. “He charged Lincoln: ‘End slavery right now. Free them and arm them. They know the South far better than anyone else.’ Had Lincoln and his administration heeded that advice, I actually think the war would have lasted far less than four years. Lincoln and his generals — some of them had been racist — realized the only way they could win this war was with the support of Blacks.”

Douglass wrote many of his powerful speeches at his home, Cedar Hill, in Southeast Washington, which he bought in 1877, defying laws that prohibited African Americans from buying property in the area. The home, now part of the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site, will reopen to the public Tuesday, the National Park Service announced, after closing in 2020 for the pandemic and renovations.

The reopening ceremony will include a dramatic performance of Douglass’s 1852 speech “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”


Douglass, in an engraving from 1883. (Jen Harris/National Portrait Gallery)

Stauffer said one of his objectives in collecting the photographs in one exhibit was to help people feel the weight of Douglass’s legacy.

“He was the preeminent writer and widely known in his day as the greatest orator in the 19th century,” Stauffer said. “It captures Douglass’s significance as a leader. He had an unmatched orator style. He was blessed with musicality; he had a musical voice. He could adjust the range. He was a wordsmith. He was dedicated to giving speeches that would keep audiences on their seats, wanting to follow every word.”

Frederick Douglass died Feb. 20, 1895, just hours after his public makeup with Susan B. Anthony

Douglass knew, he said, that “words are one of the most potent weapons one could have in trying to achieve equality and the true vision of democracy.”

By DeNeen L. BrownDeNeen L. Brown, who has been an award-winning staff writer in The Washington Post Metro, Magazine and Style sections, has also worked as the Canada bureau chief for The Washington Post. As a foreign correspondent, she wrote dispatches from Greenland, Haiti, Nunavut and an icebreaker in the Northwest Passage.  Twitter

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2023/07/01/frederick-douglass-speech-smithsonian-national-portrait-gallery/

How the fight against LGBTQ+ books in Montgomery County became a national issue

July 10, 2023 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
Off

By Nicole AsburyJuly 5, 2023 at 7:00 a.m. EDT

For the past few months, hundreds of Muslim and Ethiopian Orthodoxparents have called on Maryland’s largest school system to restore an opt-out provision for books that feature LGBTQ+ characters.

These new advocacy groups in Montgomery County say they prize inclusion. They align with the school system’s general diversity and equity efforts in their children’s schools and laud Superintendent Monifa B. McKnight for a speech she delivered against hate. They have pushed for underrepresented groups like themselves to be reflected in the school’s curriculum and accommodations for their religious holidays and practices.F

But these groups, which turned out more than 500 people at a rally last week in Rockville, diverge from progressives on this issue.

They say elementary school students should be able withdraw from lessons featuring books that can lead to conversations about sexual orientation and gender identity— topics they say should be handled by parents at home. Some parents describe the books as “sexual content” and point to “Pride Puppy,” a book for pre-K students that has a scavenger hunt that directs students to look for people like noted LGBTQ+ rights activist Marsha P. Johnson, who parents targeted for her occasional sex work, as well asitems like underwear and leather. Three families have also filed a lawsuit against the school system.

“None of us are anti-LGBT; none of us hold any hatred toward them. We recognize they have a different value system,” said Raef Haggag, a parent of a rising second grader in the school system and former computer science teacher. “We want to be able to introduce our children to these sensitive topics which are intertwined with our faith in a very sensitive way.”

A deep blue county officially raises its Pride flag for the first time

Montgomery County — a deep blue, culturally diverse suburb of D.C. — has long highlighted its inclusionary efforts. The books are a part of a supplemental curriculum introduced during the 2022-23 school year to diversify its English Language Arts curriculum. Students have repeatedly requested books and curriculum that represent LGBTQ+ identities over the years, according to four former and current student representatives on the county board of education.

The school system put an opt-out provision in place when the books were introduced, schools spokeswoman Jessica Baxter said. But that guidance shifted in March. Montgomery school officials say that Maryland law doesn’t allow students to withdraw from school lessons, except for a portion of the state’s health education curriculum on family life and human sexuality. Because the books are part of the English Language Arts curriculum, no exemptions are allowed. A spokesperson for the Maryland State Board of Education agreed with that analysis.

But the religious and conservative groups say the school system can still provide the allowance, because of a school policy that promises “feasible and reasonable accommodations” to religious beliefs and practices.

Pushback against the books and their lessons began publicly in January when Lindsey Smith — the chair of the Montgomery chapter of Moms for Liberty — spoke against them at a school board meeting,calling the books and their lessons “indoctrination, not education.” When the opt-out provision was revoked in March, she and other parents began hosting silent protests holdingsignsduring school board meetings and eventually speaking on the topic during each meeting.

The school system’s decision also led to some complaints from Muslim parents, who contacted the Maryland office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Montgomery County Muslim Council — both advocacy groups. The two entities began organizing parents to speak at school board meetings, and as opposition grew, outsiders joined the fight, with national conservative groups and media following the issue.ADVERTISING

For Smith, the additional support was a relief.

“For us at Moms for Liberty, we’ve only had 50 to 100 people there,” said Smith, a mother of three in the school system who lives in Damascus. “So it was encouraging to know we were not alone, to be honest.”

But as the movement has grown,there have been divisions. The groups that have organized Muslim parents in the county have distanced themselves from and saythey have no affiliation with Moms for Liberty,a controversial national parental rights advocacy group.

“They’re supporting the Muslim community. They’re supporting parents because they also want the right to restore opt-out,” said Zainab Chaudry, the director of the Maryland Office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. “But their ideology, their views, their positions are antithetical to what our communities stand for.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center recently categorized Moms for Liberty as an extremist group. Smith has deferred comments about that designation to the national organizers behind Moms for Liberty.

Some Montgomery parents want to opt out of new books featuring LGBTQ characters

As the fight in Montgomery has gained national attention, Chaudry and leaders of other local groups have tried to keep the focus on the county’s parents and students and have denounced other groups trying to make their efforts a political cause.

“The message can be undone immediately and it can be completely switched,” said Hisham Garti, the outreach director for the Montgomery County Muslim Council.

Some individuals hope the issue will galvanize more Muslims in the political arena. Sameerah Munshi, 22, a part of Coalition of Virtue, explained that the group was co-founded by a Howard County resident with the Montgomery book issue in mind, but plans to expand to other issues and give Muslim Americans a platform to use their faith as a tool in politics.

Despite the opposition, there is support for the school system’s policy and use of the books in its curriculum from the teacher’s union, some school board members and students. Some parents have similarly formed their own group, called the Coalition for Inclusive Schools and Communities, and launched their own petition to show support.

The school system reinforced its policies in an email to parents last week. “There is no content instruction on gender identity and sexual orientation in elementary school. The books include a diversified representation of people. Inclusive books support a student’s ability to empathize, connect, and collaborate with diverse peers and encourage respect for all,” the message said. Italso repeatedthat no opt-out would be provided to families and giving advance notice before the books are read “will not be possible.”

The incoming student representative on the school board, Sami Saeed, delivered remarks at a May board meeting that spoke of how there is “overwhelming support” for the books and the elimination of an exemption. After he spoke, he said a few parents approached him after and were surprised by his position as the first known Arab student member on the board. “A lot of [the parents] expressed to me that when I went against what they were thinking, it was almost like a shock,” Saeed, a rising senior in the school system, said.

But after hearing from more parents on both sides of the issue, he said he would be supportive of notifying them in advance of the books being read so they can talk about it with their kids at home, but not allow them to skip the lessons.

By Nicole Asbury Nicole Asbury is a local reporter for The Washington Post covering education and K-12 schools in Maryland. 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/07/05/montgomery-county-lgbtq-book-opt-out/

What Gen Z wants in the workplace Companies adapt to a new generation of employees

June 27, 2023 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
Off

By Britt Peterson  WP June 16 2023 Magazine 

Ayobami Balogun, 23, thought she would work at Microsoft for the rest of her life.

As an immigrant from Nigeria and the oldest of five children, she had chosen a career in software engineering because it would provide financial stability and manageable hours. Growing up, Balogun had watched her parents work multiple jobs as home aides for people living with special needs while she helped take care of her siblings. After several internships while she was a student at Ohio State University, Balogun accepted a full-time job in 2020 upon graduating.

Everything seemed to be falling into place — until March, when she lost her job in companywide layoffs.

Balogun was not too worried, however. Along with her severance package from Microsoft, she already had two side hustles — an Airbnb business and an events company called BeBs that she runs with her best friend. Being laid off also gave her the chance to think about what she really wants in her career — the first time she has had time to do so. “I don’t want to be the only Black person or the only woman on my team,” she said, explaining that she is looking more intently at a company’s values, particularly when it comes to diversity, equity and inclusion, during her job search. “I feel like that’s scary.”


Balogun works from home managing her businesses to supplement her income after being let go from Microsoft. (Megan Jelinger for The Washington Post)

Balogun’s resilient self-confidence and determination are common traits for Gen Z — often defined as people born between 1997-2012 — who have begun entering the workforce. They are more diverse, tolerant, educated and socially committed than past generations, yet they also report higher levels of stress, mental illness and poverty. And as one of the largest generations — they make up one-fourth of the U.S. population — they have tremendous potential to transform not just the job hunt process but also the industries they’re entering.

“I would like to be able to afford some things, but I don’t want to be attached to the material grind,” said Griffon Hooper, a University of San Diego graduate who is working at a dive shop while applying for jobs in his chosen field: nautical archaeology. “I’m not interested in sacrificing 30 years of my life for a handshake and a golden watch. And I don’t think a lot of people are anymore.”

“What Gen Z wants is to do meaningful work with a sense of autonomy and flexibility and work-life balance and work with people who work collaboratively,” said Julie Lee, director of technology and mental health at Harvard Alumni for Mental Health, and an expert on Gen Z health and employment. Gen Z is less afraid to ask for the things that everyone else really wants and needs, which sometimes is stereotyped at work as being entitled and narcissistic.

“During the time I entered the workforce, I didn’t feel empowered,” Lee said. “I didn’t feel that I was able to ask for those things.”

Workplaces seem to be listening. According to several recruiters and hiring managers from companies on the Top Workplaces list, Gen Z is making an impact on the way they conduct their jobs and on their office culture, from the significant to the small-bore.


Griffon Hooper, a University of San Diego graduate, is working at a dive shop while applying for jobs in nautical archaeology. (Sandy Huffaker for The Washington Post)

“We started the Gen Z word of the week,” said Suzanne Hawes, chief human resources officer at the intellectual-property law firm Sterne Kessler, who says 4 of her 14-person team are Gen Z. “Every week they’ll present something to me and see if I already know it, and if I don’t already know it they’ll explain it to me … and they give me huge kudos when I can use it in a sentence.”

So far the words have included the fire emoji and the term “clout.” Hawes said: “I was like, I know what ‘clout’ is! But it’s all these new interpretations.”

Gen Z has been indelibly molded by continuous political and economic upheavals. Many of them grew up in the aftermath of the attack on the World Trade Center in New York City that led to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, followed by the Great Recession, a global pandemic, demonstrations about racial issues and a governmental insurrection, to name a few. Maintaining trust in authority and the institutions meant to manage society, as a result, can be tough.

“There’s this feeling of betrayal,” admits Kevin Lu, 23, who wants to work in the burgeoning field of climate technology. “I feel like so many times continuously throughout this generation’s life, they are promised a certain thing only to get it detoured or pushed back.”


Jordan McCullar, center, works at a computer at Hager Sharp in D.C. (Tom Brenner for The Washington Post)

Billie Gardner, 24, has already experienced these upheavals personally. During her senior year in college, she won a competitive fellowship to work on Joe Biden’s presidential campaign only for a pandemic to squander all plans and her job. She moved back home to Idaho and worked at a Lululemon while she searched for a new job and socialized with friends via Zoom.

In early 2021, after applying to different positions for months, Gardner got another fellowship and moved to D.C., where she continued to work nights and weekends at a Lululemon outlet to support herself; toward the end, she was hired by a nonprofit organization called Represent Us. The job paid well, and Gardner loved the work, but when donor networks shriveled during the pandemic she lost her job, again. “I had no idea what I was going to do,” she said. “I was calling my parents. … I was like, ‘Mom, do I sell this couch I just bought?’”

And yet, despite all the ups and downs, Gardner remains focused on finding a job that aligned with her values, and where she would feel welcome and supported. “What’s important for me is that not only am I a fit for the job, but is the job a fit for me,” she said. In interviews, she paid attention to who was in the room — how many women, how many people of color — as a clue for the company’s actual commitment to diversity. “The makeup of the organization is important to me almost as much as the work I’m going to be doing,” she said.

Jenny Fernandez, a professor at Columbia Business School and an executive coach who frequently works with Gen Z leaders, described the generation as both realistic and idealistic. “They’re not willing to compromise [on job security], they want to be paid,” she said. “At the same time, they have options, and they know they have options.”


Christopher Barnes works as his dog Leo hangs out in his cubicle at the SCLogic in Annapolis, Md. (Amanda Andrade-Rhoades for The Washington Post)

Despite the severe loss of jobs during the pandemic, Gen Z actually has more opportunities than any group of recent graduates going back to before the Great Recession. Companies are often competing for them, instead of the other way around, and that, combined with the exigencies of the time they were born into, lends a certain empowerment. As Bianca Alvarado, a 23-year-old junior publicist at a marketing firm in Los Angeles who spent months looking for a job after graduation, said: “People my age don’t take any bulls—. … We’re doing our best to rise above all the mistakes of past generations and fix things more urgently.”

During the job-application process, Gen Z has the digital tools to research companies on a level previous generations couldn’t. Alvarado recalled watching a TikTok video on job interviews that instructed her to always have a question ready. Once hired, they are activists. A majority of them view capitalism in a negative light, but they’re actively working to improve the system. More pro-labor than past generations, Gen Zers are leading union drives and making educational TikToks about unfair labor practices.

They are also focused on more collective and holistic notions of stability: How can our jobs and careers help build long-term security for our communities, the world around us and our lives outside the workplace? Several people interviewed for this story emphasized the importance of working for companies invested in environmental sustainability — in other words, contributing to planetary stability. “I’m not going to work for a company that might be harming the climate in a very obvious way,” said Balogun, echoing the 67 percent of Gen Zers who believe that the climate should be a top priority, according to a 2021 Pew Research Center survey.

Forbright Bank, a Chevy Chase-based full-service bank with a stated mission to “accelerate the transition to a sustainable and clean energy economy” and a slew of employee incentives for climate-friendly choices like riding a bike to work and using solar electricity at home, would appear to be the kind of workplace that would draw Gen Z talent — and that does seem to be the case. Out of 180 new employees the bank hired last year, 40 were Gen Z, according to Randi Killen, executive vice president of human resources. “The Gen Zers really get excited about the possibility to work for a company that aligns with their values,” Killen said.

Gen Z also reports new interest in jobs that contribute to one’s personal stability, both mental and physical. Emma Choi, 23, who lost her podcast hosting job in the recent layoffs at NPR only to be quickly rehired as a producer for the NPR show “Wait, Wait … Don’t Tell Me!,” had always wanted to be an English teacher until continuous school shootings dissuaded her. “There’s already so many factors to put into what you want to do and where you want to work — now you have to put in your personal safety, too,” she said.


Emma Choi had wanted to be an English teacher, but school shootings dissuaded her. (Sophie Park for The Washington Post)

Mental safety is also a major priority. Gen Zers have higher reported rates of mental illness than previous generations, and youth suicide rates have shot up over the past decade — and all of that was even before the pandemic, which doubled anxiety and depression symptoms among young people globally, according to a 2021 study published in JAMA.

Young people, aware of the potential consequences of overwork and burnout, are making very different choices than past generations when it comes to work-life balance. Jillian Fan, 22, earned a degree in science, tech and international affairs with a minor in math from Georgetown University in 2022. The isolation of a pandemic and the relentless pressure at school contributed to a burnout so severe she moved back home to Reston, Va., for nine months, visiting family in Taiwan, baking and attending therapy sessions.

Initially, Fan, who felt “incredibly privileged” to be able to take the time off without immediate financial pressure, applied to jobs in her major, but her dream of going to culinary school lingered. “I’ve already spent six months doing nothing and the world hasn’t ended, can I perhaps do the wrong thing? I can make … mistakes,” she realized. She began casting a wider net in her job search and now works three part-time jobs, one at a bakery and two at local food-justice nonprofit groups, all work she loves and can imagine doing for the rest of her life.


Jillian Fan earned a degree in science, tech and international affairs with a minor in math from Georgetown. (Amanda Andrade-Rhoades for The Washington Post)

Although Gen Z has only been in the workplace for a couple of years, work is already changing in response to their new demands. In studies, Gen Z tends to be split when it comes to remote work: Some appreciate the flexibility and lack of a commute, while others, having already spent years at home in tiny apartments and group homes or with their parents, are very ready to return. “For the past three years, my entire life was virtual,” said Gardner who recently started a new job as a government relations associate at the Council on Foundations in D.C. When they offered her the choice between working fully remote or hybrid. “I was like, hybrid, please!”

Jordana Coppola, the chief people officer at OTJ Architects, a D.C.-based firm, said that her office now works to be sensitive both to people who need to stay home and people who want to come in. “You have these students that maybe have recently graduated and they moved to D.C. to take this job, and they’re in their apartment by themselves,” she said. “And they’re lonely. … We really work hard to make them feel connected.”

Gen Z’s need for meaningful work has also required some offices to be more transparent about the purpose of what they’re asking their more junior employees to do, as well as providing clear pathways to advancement. “The other thing that Gen Z is looking for … is what your organization can offer them as far as growth and development. What are the mentorship opportunities going to be, what kind of professional development is going to be available for them,” said Erin Federle, vice president of human resources at Decision Lens, a software company headquartered in Arlington. Because the company is small, it has a harder time creating internal job-training programs — so instead, they’ve begun paying for employees to take courses outside the company, as well as focusing on building internal mentoring relationships.


Suzanne Hawes works at a computer while meeting with some Gen Z members of the team at Sterne Kessler. (Andre Chung for The Washington Post)

Recruiters also described a new need to be direct about a company’s values and even politics — not just in the workplace generally but starting at the interview stage. “[Younger job-interview subjects] will ask about what kind of initiatives the firm is doing to increase representation and inclusion,” said Hawes, of Sterne Kessler. All the companies interviewed for this story insisted that diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as environmental sustainability, had been priorities before Gen Z started demanding them. But it’s clear that at least when it comes to selling their values, companies are held to a higher standard now than ever before.

“I just feel like this generation is going to make huge strides for the workplace,” Hawes added. “They’re not afraid to ask for what they need and want. … They’re pushing for impressive changes, things that, as a Gen Xer, I didn’t think were possible. So I’m absolutely here for it, as they would say.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/06/16/gen-z-employment/

National test scores plunge, with still no sign of pandemic recovery

June 27, 2023 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
Off

By Donna St. George June 21, 2023 at 12:05 a.m. EDT WP

National test scores plummeted for 13-year-olds, according to new data that shows the single largest drop in math in 50 years and no signs of academic recovery following the disruptions of the pandemic.

Student scores plunged nine points in math and four points in reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), often regarded as the nation’s report card. The release Wednesday reflected testing in fall 2022, comparing it to the same period in 2019, before the pandemic began.

“These results show that there are troubling gaps in the basic skills of these students,” said Peggy G. Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), which administers the tests. The new data, she said, “reinforces the fact that recovery is going to take some time.”

The average math score is now the same as it was in 1990, while the average reading score is the same as it was in 2004.

Hardest hit were the lowest-performing students. In math, their scores showed declines of 12 to 14 points, while their highest-performing peers fell just six points. The pattern for reading was similar, with lowest performers seeing twice the decline of the highest ones.

Students from all regions of the country and of all races and ethnicities lost ground in math. Reading was more split. Scores dropped for Black, multiracial and White students. But Hispanic, Asian, American Indian and Alaska Native students were described as “not measurably different.”

Most of those tested were 10 years old, in fourth or fifth grade, at the onset of the pandemic. They were in seventh or eighth grade as they took the tests.

“This is more than alarming,” said Carey Wright, former state superintendent of education in Mississippi and a member of the National Assessment Governing Board, which sets policy for the tests. “Thirteen-year-olds are in high schools, and their futures depend on being able to recover from this.”

“We really need to be concerned about what is happening here,” Wright said.

Mark Miller, a junior high school math teacher in Colorado who also sits on the governing board, similarly called for urgency. Researchers and policy analysts need to help identify the most effective practices for schools and teachers, he said. “It’s like the alarm has gone off,” he said.

Enrollment dropped, education slipped, in the pandemic

The exams tested basic skills — multiplying a three-digit number by a two-digit number, for instance, or identifying a character’s feelings in a short reading passage.

They are designed to capture long-term trends, with the reading test going back to 1971 and the math exam back to 1973. After student progress for many years, their scoresbegan to decline after 2012, with steeper drops after the pandemic’s onset.

“These latest results provide additional evidence of the scale, the pervasiveness and the persistence of the learning loss American students experienced as a result of the pandemic,” said Martin West, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and member of the governing board.

West pointed out that many students had been attending school entirely in-person for just over a year when the tests were given — and had not yet experienced the full benefit of a second in-person school year.

“One of the things they [the results] tell us is that the period of recovery that we all know is needed hadn’t begun by the start of the 2022-23 school year,” he said.

Many school districts around the country launched academic interventions in 2022-2023, including high-dosage tutoring. But researchers have said that the scale of interventions is far less than the need in many places.

Fewer students show understanding of history and civics

Carr said the data, combined with that from earlier testing, showed “signs of risk for a generation of learners.” The first stunning backslide was reported last September, with results for 9-year-olds nosediving to levels unseen in decades.

She cautioned that the results were national in scope and that various state and local results could be different. Carr and others have said academic decline is part of a broader picture that includes worsening school climate and student mental health.

The national sample of 13-year-olds included 8,700 students from 460 schools in each subject, according to the NCES, part of the Education Department. More than 80 percent of the schools tested in 2019-2020 were tested again in 2022-2023.

The share of students who reported “never” or “hardly ever” reading for fun jumped by 9 points, to 31 percent.

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona weighed in on the results in a statement, saying the administration has long recognized it would take “years of effort and investment” to make up for the toll of the pandemic and “the 11-year decline that preceded it.”

School systems have committed nearly 60 percent of covid relief funds to efforts that advance academic recovery, he said, including teacher hiring, tutoring, and high-quality after-school and summer programs. Several states are returning to pre-pandemic achievement levels on state tests, he said.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/06/21/national-student-test-scores-drop-naep/

Work Advice: The unwritten workplace rules we wish someone had told us

June 27, 2023 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
Off

Washington Post Karla L Miller June 25th 2023

In response to a recent query about unwritten workplace rules, here are some of the best tips I received from new workers and the people who train them.

“Dress conservatively until you know what is considered suitable. Regulate your language likewise.” — Susan Van Hemel, Fairfax, Va.

After acing the button-down formality of the interview process, don’t get too comfortable too quickly in your attire or your attitude.

After four years of emailing and texting with professors almost as if they were peers, “I found myself being too informal when sending emails or speaking during client calls,” Cristina Sabia, a new employee of New York-based communications agency MikeWorldWide, said in an email. By observing and seeking advice from more experienced colleagues, Sabia has started using “positive neutral language” and a “collective tone of voice” with clients, saying “we,” “our” and “our team” instead of “I” and “my.”

Pay attention to whether your colleagues typically address clients with honorifics and surnames or just first names. And never presume to use a nickname unless your client or colleague uses it first in their signature or self-introduction.

“It’s okay to question management … [but] know that people don’t want criticism from day one.” — Erin Wilson, Lancaster, England

You may be bursting with ideas on better processes or new tools that your employer should adopt to be more efficient and productive. But learn the reason for the current approach before you offer what you assume are new solutions. “Remember, they may have been tried before and not worked out,” said Van Hemel of Fairfax in an email.

Later on, don’t assume prior experience applies to your current situation. “When I changed jobs in midcareer, I was careful to ask my supervisor, ‘In my old job, I would handle [a situation or personnel issue] this way. Is that how it’s handled here?’” said Kathy Larson of Columbia, Md., in an email.

“Build up your professional capital early.” — Lauren Milligan, Chicago

In school, you may have grown accustomed to completing your assignments and collecting grades automatically, with no need to strive for extra credit. In most workplaces, that gets you a C at best.

While you want to avoid being taken advantage of or doing unpaid work, “there will be times when staying late or going beyond the job description can pay off well,” Lauren Milligan, career advancement coach and founder of ResuMAYDAY, said in an email.

And when your assignment is done, “never watch someone else work. Even if you don’t know how to help, ask,” Janet Gannon of Brunswick, Ga., advises her internship-bound students.

“I’d rather answer 10 clarification questions up front than [hear] ‘Oh, I wasn’t sure.’” — Kally Lavoie, Gainesville, Fla.

You might hate seeming as though you don’t know what you’re doing, but according to managers I heard from, even “dumb” questions are better than wrong guesses. Listen to the instructions, give it a shot — but then ask before you reach the point of no return.

“Provide good news fast and bad news faster.” — Tom Wells, Olney, Md.

Smart managers expect new hires to make mistakes, and to come clean when they do.

“I don’t expect perfection,” says Jason O’Toole, a Boston-area poet and risk manager for an acute psychiatric hospital. “I do expect that mistakes will be made. I do expect you to ask questions and to be honest about poor outcomes. You should expect the same honesty from me. I want you to succeed, and it’s my job to give you the tools to do so.”

“Be nice to people at all levels.” — Jody Carlson, Fairfax, Va.

Regardless of rank, titles or seeming niceness, treat everyone you meet as important and deserving of respect.

“Resist getting pulled into office gossip or inside jokes. Not knowing who the main players are, or everyone’s history, you might end up getting on the wrong side of an Important Person,” Milligan said in an email. “A good way to deflect gossip is with a neutral, ‘I’m still getting the lay of the land.’”

D.C. paralegal Jody Carlson’s advice to summer associates and interns: “Word gets around as to who’s a jerk and who’s nice to work with.” That can determine whether they’re invited back full-time.

Annabelle Baugh, a senior content marketing specialist at Exposure Ninja in Britain, wishes someone had given her a heads-up on “avoiding multitasking, like checking your emails or doing other work” during virtual meetings. You may think you look busy; colleagues think you’re tuned out. “By maintaining eye contact with the camera, you are also showing respect and consideration for your colleagues in the meeting,” Baugh said via email.

“‘Always start as you mean to go on.’ That means being intentional early on based on the long game.” — Kamela Lupino, Minn.

Of course you want to make a good impression. Just make sure the expectations you’re setting are ones you’ll be able to fulfill.

“If you’re an introvert, don’t start as if you’re hyper-extroverted when that’s not going to be sustainable. If work/life balance is important to you, don’t work all hours out of the gate and think pulling back later won’t have ramifications,” said Kamela Lupino, director for the HR consulting firm Kincentric in Minneapolis.

All this mindfulness about how you’re dressing, speaking and behaving, not to mention staying vigilant for unwritten rules, can be exhausting. “Anticipate that you’ll be ‘drinking from the fire hose’ for at least three months,” Lupino said in an email. “Plan for self-care (eating well, exercising and plenty of rest) to maintain stamina, even if it means scaling back on some other less essential activities for a while.”

Reader query: Early in your career, what do you wish your established colleagues had done to help you adjust to a new job? What helpful gesture from a senior colleague made the transition easier for you? Let me know at karla.miller@washpost.com.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/06/22/workadvice-workplace-rules/

Medgar Evers battled for civil rights. His home shows what it cost him.

June 27, 2023 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
Off


Myrlie Evers-Williams sits in her family’s onetime home in Jackson, Miss., feet from a bullet hole in the wall from June 12, 1963. (Rory Doyle for The Washington Post)

Washington Post June 14th A4 Deneen Brown


JACKSON, Miss. — The violent threats against civil rights leader Medgar Evers from white supremacists in Mississippi were escalating in 1963. The phone at the family’s home in Jackson rang off the hook with hate. Racists had thrown a firebomb through the living room window.

Evers, a fast-rising civil rights leader in Mississippi, had led a successful economic boycott against White businesses in Jackson that refused equal service to Black people. He had gone undercover in overalls to investigate the lynching of Emmett Till.

Evers had just given a televised speech on civil rights. But this was Mississippi, and he knew that his work could get him killed.

So did his wife, Myrlie.

“I knew each and every day when he walked out of these doors, we might not see him again,” Myrlie Evers-Williams, 90, told The Washington Post this month, during an interview at that family home in Jackson.


Medgar Evers in August 1955. Evers challenged segregation at the University of Mississippi, then became a leader with the NAACP. (AP)

On June 12, 1963, a white supremacist assassinated Evers in the driveway. He was 37.

Monday’s 60th anniversary of Evers’s assassination comes as hate crimes have increased in the United States, school districts ban books on racism and state legislatures outlaw the teaching of “critical race theory.” Evers-Williams, who herself became a force for civil rights, wants to preserve her late husband’s legacy — and impress upon the country that his work for justice is not done.

“I truly believe there are still problems in terms of race relations,” she said. “As I move around the country, and I do quite a bit, I see the ugliness of it undercover.”

More than ugliness:

“It is an evil. Evil has a way of staying around. Evil has a way of disguising itself, which means those of us have to be watchful, in the best way possible, to work with each other to see that evil does not rise again.”

Who killed Martin Luther King Jr.? His family believes James Earl Ray was framed.

She presses the lace tablecloth on the dining room table in the three-bedroom, one-story rambler. The walls here are painted pale green, the living room window framed by family photos, a black piano and white sheer curtains. Behind her, there are velvet blue sofas and props from the film “Ghosts of Mississippi,” based on the events leading to the final trial of her husband’s assassin.


A bullet from outside pierced the kitchen wall and left a dent in the refrigerator. (Rory Doyle for The Washington Post)

Over her left shoulder is a black-and-white photograph taped to the wall. It’s one the police took that night in 1963. It shows the hole from the bullet that pierced the outside wall of the house and the kitchen wall and left a dent in the refrigerator.

The house, once filled with love, still bears witness to what happened.

The fight of Medgar Evers

Medgar Evers was born in 1925 in Decatur, Miss., the third of five children. When he was about 12 years old, Evers witnessed a Black man named Willie Tingle, a friend of his father’s, being dragged behind a wagon for allegedly insulting a White woman, according to an NAACP report. Tingle was then shot and hanged. A young Evers passed the tree where the lynching happened each day.

When Evers was 17, he enlisted in the Army, fighting in France and Germany in World War II, then returned to Mississippi. When he and his brother Charles attempted to vote in Decatur, a White mob blocked them at gunpoint.

The ‘Mississippi Plan’ to keep Blacks from voting in 1890: ‘We came here to exclude the Negro’

In 1948, Evers enrolled in Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College, where he majored in business administration, was on the debate team, played football, ran track and became editor of the campus newspaper and yearbook. He met fellow student Myrlie Louise Beasley on her first day.


Medgar and Myrlie met at college, married in 1951 and moved to a historically Black town before settling in Jackson. (The Myrlie Evers-Williams Collection at Pomona College)

They married in 1951 and after graduating moved to Mound Bayou, a historically Black town in Mississippi, where Evers worked as an agent for a Black-owned insurance company, selling policies to sharecroppers. He saw firsthand the poverty and despair of Black people who lived in the Mississippi Delta, and organized a boycott against segregated gas stations. “Don’t buy gas where you can’t use the restroom,” read the bumper stickers he passed out.

Determined to gain equal rights for Black people, Evers launched a campaign to desegregate public institutions in Mississippi. In 1954, he applied for admission to the University of Mississippi law school, which rejected him because of his race.P

More on civil rights history

The NAACP national office noticed Evers’s work. That year, the organization named him its first field secretary in Mississippi. He and his family moved to Jackson, where Evers led protests, sit-ins, read-ins and “direct action” to desegregate libraries, buses, beaches, movie theaters, train stations, the state fair and White-owned business on Jackson’s Capitol Street. He led rallies, economic boycotts and drives to register Black voters. He launched a system of “citizenship schools” across the state to help prepare Black voters for literacy tests, to increase those registered to vote. He worked to bring national attention to injustices Black people suffered in Mississippi.

“He would often bring his ideas and plans, most always home, to me to listen to, knowing full well I was shaking in my shoes for his life,” Evers-Williams recalled. “I was born in Mississippi. I knew the state.”

The Everses had bought their home in Jackson from Black developers who were planning a bold experiment in the Deep South: a neighborhood for middle-class Black people, built in the middle of a White suburb.

Evers had designed the house with safety in mind. The front door did not face the street, tucked instead under the carport — providing cover, as he saw it, from potential snipers. When returning home, he would exit the passenger door directly into the side door of the house.

“It took bravery to purchase here,” Evers-Williams said. “It took bravery to move in.”


“I truly believe there are still problems in terms of race relations,” Myrlie Evers-Williams said. (Rory Doyle for The Washington Post)

On May 20, 1963, Evers gave a 17-minute speech on WLBT, a Mississippi news station known for supporting the views of segregationists. He had demanded fair airtime to respond to then-Jackson Mayor Allen Thompson, who had recently given a speech opposing desegregation.

“The Negro has been here in America since 1619, a total of 344 years. He is not going anywhere else; this country is his home,” Evers said. “He wants to do his part to help make his city, state, and nation a better place for everyone, regardless of color and race. Let me appeal to the consciences of many silent, responsible citizens of the White community who know that a victory for democracy in Jackson will be a victory for democracy everywhere.”P

More on Black history

Viewers called in, demanding the station take him off the air. Eight days later, the family’s house was firebombed after Evers organized a sit-in at the F.W. Woolworth lunch counter in Jackson.

The next week, five days before Evers’s death, a driver tried to run him over as he left the NAACP office.

An assassination, and a long search for justice

It was just after midnight on June 12, 1963, when Evers pulled his Oldsmobile into the house’s driveway, just outside the side door where Evers-Williams was sitting 60 years later. He had with him a stack of sweatshirts declaring “Jim Crow Must Go.”

But Evers broke his routine that night: He parked behind his wife’s vehicle, not under the carport, perhaps tired after attending late meetings. He got out of the car on the driver’s side. A White man, who had hid several yards away in a honeysuckle bush, raised a high-caliber rifle and fired.


Medgar Evers was arriving home late when a White supremacist shot him, the bullet passing through Evers and through a window. (Associated Press)

The shot blasted a hole in Evers’s back, passed through his chest and pierced the outside wall of the house. The bullet shot through a kitchen wall, bounced off a refrigerator and landed in a cabinet.

Evers fell near the steps of the house. Inside, Evers-Williams and their three children had stayed awake to watch President John F. Kennedy deliver a major televised speech on civil rights. She “ran for the door,” she recounted to a newspaper later that month, praying “that he was just wounded, that it would not be fatal.”

She opened the door and found the man she calls “the love of my life” lying facedown. Their two older children pulled their baby brother off the bed and crawled to the bathroom, following the safety rules their father had taught them. When they heard their mother scream, they came running back and screamed, too: “Daddy, get up! Please get up!”

MLK’s famous criticism of Malcolm X was a ‘fraud,’ author finds

Across the street, the force of the shot also had injured the shooter when his rifle recoiled. One of the Everses’ neighbors fired a warning shot in the air in response. The shooter dropped the weapon and fled, according to FBI records.

Medgar Evers was pronounced dead at the hospital 50 minutes later, galvanizing civil rights protests across the country.


Myrlie Evers leans down to kiss her late husband’s forehead before the casket was opened for public viewing at a funeral home in Jackson. With her is her brother-in-law Charles Evers. (AP)

Byron De La Beckwith VI, a fertilizer salesman and member of the Ku Klux Klan and the White Citizens’ Council, an organization developed to support mass resistance to integration of public schools, was arrested 10 days after the murder, connected to fingerprints on the rifle’s scope. According to an FBI report, he “had been asking around to find out the location of Evers’s home for some time before the shooting.

The Ku Klux Klan was dead. The first Hollywood blockbuster revived it.

Twice in 1964, all-White juries deadlocked on the charges against Beckwith.


Men hurl rocks at a line of police blocking an intersection in Jackson on June 15, 1963, as mourners demonstrated following Medgar Evers’s murder. (AP)

In 1989, prosecutors reopened the case, based on evidence published in the Clarion-Ledger newspaper that a secretive, pro-segregation state agency had helped Beckwith’s attorneys screen jurors at trial.

On Feb. 5, 1994, more than 30 years after Evers’s murder, Beckwith was found guilty of it. He was sentenced to life in prison, where he died in 2001.

The rifle he used to kill Medgar Evers went on display at the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum.

A family civil rights legacy

The Evers family home is now a museum, too: the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument, run by the National Park Service. So many years later, Evers-Williams can still feel Medgar’s presence inside it.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is image-9-1024x778.png

Evers’s name is ever-present in Jackson: at the airport, a library, a boulevard and murals that loom larger than life — accomplishments attributed to Myrlie, who continued his work.


President John F. Kennedy, center, visits with Myrlie Evers-Williams, left, widow of civil rights leader Medgar Evers. Also pictured: Reena and Darrell Evers, children of Medgar and Myrlie; Charles Evers, far right, brother of Medgar. (Cecil W. Stoughton/White House Photographs/The Myrlie Evers-Williams Collection at Pomona College)

The determined father who took Linda Brown by the hand and made history

Only hours after Evers’s murder, Evers-Williams had gathered the fortitude to lead a mass meeting at Pearl Street AME Church in Jackson, rallying the crowd to continue the fight. She traveled the country thereafter giving speeches on civil rights. A year after the murder, she moved with her children to California, where she eventually ran for Congress and became a commissioner of public works for Los Angeles.

In 1976, she married another civil rights activist, the late Walter Williams. The next year, she was elected chair of the NAACP.


President Barack Obama embraces Myrlie Evers-Williams during her visit in the Oval Office in 2013. Evers-Williams delivered the invocation at Obama’s second inauguration. (Pete Souza/White House Photograph/Myrlie Evers-Williams Collection, Pomona College)

In 2013, Evers-Williams became the first woman and first person who was not a member of the clergy to give the invocation at a presidential inauguration, speaking at President Barack Obama’s second.

This summer may be the last time she visits the house, she said. She pressed the lace tablecloth on the dining room table. She explained how, after what had happened here, she willed herself to go on.

“I certainly didn’t want Medgar to be forgotten overnight,” Evers-Williams said. “I wanted the movement to continue. I didn’t want people to back down, because that would have been a slap in his face. And I felt that is what he would have wanted me to do. For the rest of my life, everything I did was based on what I thought he would have wanted.”


The Evers family home in Jackson, Miss., is now the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument, run by the National Park Service. (Rory Doyle for The Washington Post)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2023/06/11/medgar-evers-assassination-civil-rights-myrlie-evers/

Which poems help in hard times? Here’s what readers told us.

June 27, 2023 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
Off

In her May 25 Thursday Opinion essay, Josie Glausiusz explained how poems offered her an anchor as she lost her 12-year-old son to brain cancer. “With just a word or a phrase, a poem can reach the hidden places that prayers or well-meaning advice cannot,” Glausiusz wrote. Describing the group she started on WhatsApp, called “Poetry Is Medicine,” she related how finding and sharing a poem with family and friends each day brought comfort and connection to her and others.

Her essay prompted many readers to share the poems that they turn to in difficult times, and particular lines that resonate. Here’s a sampling of what they sent. Comments have been edited for length, clarity and style.

Joe O’Malley, New York. The first few lines of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “Carrion Comfort” always help kick me out of a funk: “Not, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee / Not untwist — slack they may be — these last strands of man in me.” After my parents died, I turned to memorizing difficult poems in my mourning and started a YouTube channel devoted to poetry. Now, we’re discussing Shakespeare’s sonnets on there. Hopkins is still No. 1 because the difficulty of memorizing his poems still helps me distract myself from myself.

Lauren E. Persons, Parma, Ohio. I remember feeling the incredible gravity of William Wordsworth’s poem “The World Is Too Much With Us” on 9/11. My mother was very ill, and I was teaching. We were trying to help our students make sense out of something that made no sense. I hurried to the hospital to make sure my mom was okay. When I got to her room, my mother lifted her head from the pillow and said, “The world is too much with us; late and soon …”P

Jennifer Hall Lee, Altadena, Calif. When I read “Theories of Time and Space” by Natasha Trethewey (I read her work almost weekly), I anticipate the last part because I understand how we are always being changed. It helps me see that things pass: “Where you board the boat for Ship Island / Someone will take your picture / the photograph — who you were — / will be waiting when you return.”

Tim Zuellig, Bartlett, Ill. During times of mental duress, in a lifelong struggle with depression, I always read the epic poem “Letters to Yesenin” by Jim Harrison. It is a series of letters from Harrison to the long-dead Russian poet Sergei Yesenin, who hanged himself. I find it to be a call back to Earth, to nature and to love of other humans. In the end, thankfully, Harrison decides against suicide with the line: “My year-old daughter’s red robe hangs from the doorknob shouting stop.” There are so many great lines. I’m going to read it again today.

Sam Kirk, Oaklyn, N.J. “Go Now” by Gary Snyder is a poem I turn to often. It’s an account of Snyder’s wife’s illness and death from cancer, and particularly of the physicality of it. Snyder, known for his connections with Buddhist thought, refers to the concept of attachment, associated with the root of all suffering. The line that always gets me is: “This is the price of attachment / Worth it. Easily worth it.”

Rik Myslewski, San Francisco. I am not a spiritual man. I do not nurture my pain, emotional or otherwise, nor respect it as a teacher or guide. Life simply is. How much pain am I experiencing? How much joy? Just the right amount. So “Beerbottle” by Charles Bukowski speaks to me: “All manner of nudges set us to burning or freezing / What sets the blackbird in the cat’s mouth is not for us to say.” Life is luck, struggle, love, work and wonder. No more, no less, it seems to say. That is immensely comforting.

Nancy Van Der Weide, Aberdeen, S.D. One of the poems that helped me most was “Prayer to Persephone” by Edna St. Vincent Millay. The narrator appeals to the queen of the Greek underworld to help a beloved trapped in hell. My husband came back from Iraq different. In the years after his return, he became angry, scared and uncomfortable with everyday, free life in his country. Within three years, he was unreachable. He saw danger everywhere and could not trust anyone. In a misguided attempt to protect us, he disappeared from our lives. These lines in the poem “She that was so proud and wild, / Flippant, arrogant and free, / She that had no need of me, / Is a little lonely child / Lost in hell …” describe my experience exactly of watching him fall out of the world I am in.

Donald P. Butler, Houston. I belong to the Houston chapter of Death Café, and I love and collect modern religious poetry, especially poetry that deals with impermanence. The late, wonderful Mary Oliver had a poem called “Sometimes” that had these lines: “I don’t know what God is. I don’t know what death is. / But I believe they have between them some fervent and necessary arrangement.”

Ruthann Bates, Chevy Chase, Md. When my husband was in a hospice, I brought him a copy of Edgar Allan Poe’s poems. I read to him “The Raven,” which has wonderful images and language. When one of our kids came in and saw what we were doing, he said there was a “Simpsons” Halloween episode where James Earl Jones narrated the poem. We pulled it up on his television and watched it — hilarious. It was a wonderful respite from a very sad and difficult time.

Lori Anne Gross, Houston. When I have had to say goodbye to my many dogs over the years, I have reached for Rudyard Kipling’s poem “The Power of the Dog.” It helps me connect to my grief, brings up fond memories of happy times and, in a funny way, lessens my sense of loss, the inevitability of it all, and the cyclical nature of loving and losing dogs whose lives are much shorter than ours: “So why in — Heaven (before we are there) / Should we give our hearts to a dog to tear?”

Cassandra K. Conroy, Beaufort, S.C. My sister and I shared a love of trees. When she was diagnosed with terminal cancer, I discovered “Trees” by W.S. Merwin to read to her. Since then, I have sent it to so many others that I keep printed copies on hand to include in notes of encouragement. It ends: “They have stood round my sleep / and when it was forbidden to climb them / they have carried me in their branches.”

Julie Buyon, Egremont, Mass. The poem I share most often with the people I work with as a patient advocate is Wendell Berry’s “The Peace of Wild Things.” Among the lines that remind us not rush to meet bad news are: “I come into the peace of wild things / who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.” I lost my dad to cancer when I was 2, and my greatest fear with my own three cancer diagnoses was that my kids would grow up without their mom. I reread this poem every year before I have annual medical imaging.

Sheila Finkelstein, Boynton Beach, Fla. When Sam, my beloved husband of 47 years, was in a coma in the hospital, the poem I read many times, over several days, was E.E. Cummings’s “I Carry Your Heart With Me.” I would lie beside him in the hospital bed, hugging him and reading or whispering it in his ear, usually concluding with my own summation, “Your heart is in my heart; my heart is in yours.” The final time was when I gave Sam “permission” to feel free to leave us just before the feeding tubes were disconnected to move him into hospice. Sam died in my arms as I continued to remind him he would always be with us. When I comforted our beloved grandchildren, I reassured them that they were in Poppy’s heart as he was in theirs. I still have the vivid image of my youngest grandson, 8 years old at the time (15-plus years ago), walking around the house during shiva. He kept patting his heart repeating, “Poppy’s right here. Poppy’s right here.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/06/19/readers-poems-help-hard-times/