Now people carry little wallet-sized things around in their pockets. I refer to mine as a camera since I am still wedded to my landline. Other people call them phones, but chatting on them seems to be the last thing people use them for. The Seattle Times article pointed out that behavioral scientists are warning that verbal communication may soon become as dead as the dodo because so many people text or instant message instead of actually talk on their “phones”. My sons don’t even check their voice mail because, I guess, thumbs have overtaken vocal cords. And as for sending cards and letters, mail can sit in their mail boxes for a week before they open the box.

I come from a family of letter writers. Before telephones, how else would people keep in touch with those in other towns or countries? And after the invention of telephones, things didn’t change much since long-distance calls were costly. I also come from a family that kept things. I wouldn’t say that they were hoarders; they just had houses with big attics and big basements so there was lots of room for lots of things. And now I have some of those things including boxes of cards and letters. I threw away all the Danish letters since I can’t read Danish (but I kept the stamps). I threw away a lot of envelopes since they were taking up space (but I kept the stamps). I would like to write about stamps, but this is an article about talking and writing.

When I was in Jr High, I started to write to penpals: a Cuban refugee in Paramus, New Jersey, five girls in England, one girl in France and one in Cameroon, a boy in Turkey and another in Japan. Catherine was crazy about the Beatles and proud when her brother’s band, Lee Paul and the Wheels (her brother was one of the Wheels), played in Liverpool’s Cavern where the Beatles got their big start. (Out of curiosity, I decided to google Lee Paul and the Wheels, and imagine my amazement when they turned up!) Jane went to boarding school in Wales. Penny and I exchanged whatever was the latest fad every Christmas. (She sent me black nail polish with white heart and bulls eye decals and patterned stockings, along with other trendy gifts.). Guven wrote about sneaking cigarettes and Takashi about the pressures of the Japanese education system. I’m still writing to Val and Claudine, but, I must admit, just by Facebook messaging now. I have visited each of them twice. My penpals opened a window on the world for me and started me on a lifelong habit of looking forward to the mail carrier’s visit.

Going through old letters, I love the way the voice of the writer comes through - as if they were talking to you. I have made the acquaintance of my great-grandfather who wrote: “It is 7pm. Christian is down from Everett. He, Mama and Anna went to Church and have probably gone to take in a movie. We have had a fine day, almost a summer day [January 18, 1931]. I worked in the garden from 10am to 4pm, then I changed my rags and took a two hour nap. Now Jerry, that’s our new dog, and I are keeping vigil alone in the big house.” “[May 17, 1935] Many thanks to you, Sep, for the cigars. You know my weakness, if I could die with a cigar in my mouth, I would call it a fine death.” Now I feel like I know him. A string of emojis will never do that.

I find that kind of voice in the books like Letters of the century : America, 1900-1999, and Don Mayer’s entertaining Riding Kid Writes Home: The Remarkable Adventures of a Teen-Age Cowboy in the Years of the Great Depression, which tells the story of Don’s uncle through letters and interviews. Last week, I wrote about Letters from Dachau: A father’s witness of war, a daughter’s dream of peace. After her parents’ deaths, Clarice Wilsey found a box of letters in their attic written by her father, a doctor with the 116th Evacuation Hospital, who was present at Dachau immediately after the liberation. I have just discovered the delightful Dearest Ones: A True World War II Love Story by Rosemary Norwalk. The author Rosamunde Pilcher called it “charming…an intimate memory of a time that has gone forever”. I concur.

Right now, The Correspondent by Virginia Evans is enjoying a long stay on the best seller lists and sparking interest in other epistolary novels. Maybe it will encourage some people to become correspondents!

Call a friend or take up pen and write some letters. Your stamps support the United States Postal System. Your cards and letters will bring joy to others. It’s a good thing to do, and maybe, fifty years from now, someone will come upon your letter in a desk or a box or tucked into a book.

I didn’t hear first-hand stories of World War I although some great-uncles went “over there”. One, my Great-Uncle Jack Cariello, is the only relative who was killed in a war. He was a singing waiter and a tailor.

He arrived in France in June, 1918, Private First Class, Medical Detachment, 361st Infantry. He was killed September 27, 1918, when he was decapitated by a shell. He was buried in American Cemetery, Epinonville, Meuse, France.

My grandfather started “over there” but became deathly ill during basic training. I don’t know the nature of his illness, but my great-grandmother had to hastily take a train from Montana to somewhere on the east coast. She bustled into the camp hospital and told my grandfather that she wasn’t going to put up with him dying so he eventually recovered. And that was the end of his army experience.

Memorial Day is a federal holiday in the United States for honoring and mourning those who died in the performance of their military duties while serving in the United States Armed Forces. Great Uncle Jack, as you can tell, isn’t the only family member I remember on Memorial Day - even if he is the only one to officially qualify for remembrance.

I think of my grandfather - the same one who only got as far as the East Coast of the United States during World War I. When Pearl Harbor and Manila Bay were bombed in 1941, my grandfather was tying up some loose ends with his business before returning to the States. He left it too long and ended up being interned first at Santo Tomas in Manila and then Los Banos. Escape from Los Banos: The Most Daring Prison Camp Raid of World War II by Bruce Henderson tells the story of what the internees endured. The author featured a few people’s stories, and two of stories were of my mother’s cousin, Margaret Whitaker, and her future husband, Martin Squires. Septimus Thomas Bodley Whitaker, my grandfather, is listed at the end of the book among the approximately 2100 internees at Los Banos.

Going home was hard for my grandfather. He had lost his house and business in Manila. He had lost his money. His family (my grandmother, mother, and aunt) had come back to Seattle to put my mother through her senior year in high school and then settle her at the university before returning to the Philippine Islands. War broke out, and they never went back so my grandfather didn’t lose his family, but five years later, everyone had changed. Everyone told him “you’re home now. Forget about what happened.” But he couldn’t forget. The only people who could understand what my grandfather was feeling were other internees. I found this letter he wrote to an old friend who stayed in Manila - it was returned as undeliverable. “July 29, 1945 - Dear Roy, Have thought about writing to you many times but have had one thing or another to do since coming home - A few days ago I met Bob Humphries on the street -- he is running a dry cleaning outfit and doing fairly well - Looks fine and hopes someday to go back to P.I. - Had a visit from Herb, he has gained 60 pounds. I still have some beri beri and need new teeth -- have made no money yet but have done a lot of work around the place and am really feeling more like my old self every day. I have thought of all the nice food your Mrs sent in to us when we were together [in the internment camp]. Please let me know what she might like me to mail over from here and I’ll do it. I can send 11 lbs by parcel post. Anything like - Cosmetics - Canned goods - Candy - etc etc.”

Grandpa never really felt like his old self. He didn’t regain his health. All of his plans to start a new business state-side failed. Now we would say that he suffered from PTSD. He died in 1955, aged 62 years, 4 days.

My friend Clarice’s father never wanted to talk about his war experiences either. After her parents’ deaths, Clarice found a box of letters in their attic written by her father, a doctor with the 116th Evacuation Hospital, who was present at Dachau immediately after the liberation. In her book, Letters from Dachau: A Father’s Witness of War, a Daughter’s Dream of Peace, she shares some of the letters he wrote home to her mother. “Emily, we are ‘sweating, stinking, existing’ in The Hell-on-Earth Dachau...The atrocity reports are true - and more!” He told his wife to tell the world what happened. “All I ask is that you ‘instill’ it into as many thousands of others as you can - till maybe we can get millions to see it.” In the event, Clarice’s parents didn’t tell the world. They didn’t even tell their family - or just as little as possible. It was too hard to talk about. Now Clarice is telling the world through her book and as a speaker with Seattle’s Holocaust Center for Humanity.

Like Clarice, Judy Bentley came across a pack of letters - more than 200 - written by her parents and other family members while her father was serving in Europe. Exerpts from a memoir that her father had written filled in what the censors would have blacked out in her 25 Sugarland Road : Letters of Love and War, 1943-1945. Like my grandfather and Clarice’s father, Judy said in an interview :

“They talked very little about the wartime experiences, especially my father. He did not glorify war, nor did he brag about his wartime service. The two stories they both repeated were of kindness. At the time of giving birth, my mother was living with a sister’s family, and her brother-in-law just dropped her off, alone, at the door of the hospital. A very kind nurse kept her company during the birth, and she never forgot that.

The other experience Dad talked about was a brutal basic training episode in Tennessee when the soldiers were tired, wet, cold, pushed beyond their limits in a rainstorm, and they were told to take shelter wherever they could find it. A farm woman welcomed them into her home, with warm food, blankets, and shelter. Dad never forgot that kindness; his mother wrote to the woman, thanking her for her care.

So, the wartime experiences they talked about were of kindness. Only in reading my father’s memoirs did I find out what he had left out of his letters home.”

On this Memorial Day, remember those who perished. Even in those who survive war, a part of them may have died. Visit a cemetery. Decorate graves.

“They shall grow not old,

as we that are left grow old:

Age shall not weary them,

nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun

and in the morning

We will remember them.”

- Robert Laurence Binyon, “For the Fallen”, 1914

Peace and peas (or chickpeas) come together in a book titled Jerusalem. It is about Jerusalem, but it is also a cookbook by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi. I’ve been following Ottolenghi’s career ever since my husband and I were on our honeymoon in London. We stayed in Notting Hill and around the corner was a lovely little bakery - or was it a restaurant? I don’t remember now, but I do remember the amazing desserts in the window, and I have always regretted not going in and buying something. Yotam Ottolenghi is Jewish, and his head chef and co-author, Sami Tamimi, is Muslim. The were born the same year and in the same city, Jerusalem.

For decades, Jerusalem has been in the news. You don’t need me to tell you what has been happening there, and in the Middle East in general. Ottolenghi and Tamimi write about the never-ending violence. “Four thousand years of intense political and religious wrangling are impossible to hide. Wherever you go - in Jewish parts in the city center or within the walls of the ancient Old City - people are zealously fighting to protect and maintain what they see as their piece of land, their endangered culture, or their right to a certain way of life. More often than not, this is pretty ugly. Intolerance and trampling over other people’s basic rights are routine in this city. Currently, the Palestinian minority bears the brunt with no sign of it gaining control over its destiny, while the secular Jews are seeing their way of life being gradually marginalized by a growing Orthodox population.” The authors go on to write that it is sad that people with so much in common (hummus! baba ganoush!) stick together in their little groups where “dialogue between Jews and Arabs, and often among Jews themselves, is almost nonexistent”.

Of course, coming together over a meal doesn’t always work well. Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi wrote about the hummus wars. Was it the Arabs or the Jews who first made hummus? Who makes the best hummus? Hummus provides countless opportunities for debate.

Peace is such a huge topic. We wish and hope and pray for it so fervently, but again and again, history repeats itself and violence breaks out. Will the world ever live in peace? Will disagreements between nations be solved without resorting to war? What is it that draws mankind to war?

There have been times when peacemaking has worked. This isn’t one of those times. There isn’t peace at home with constant assaults on the values that have defined the United States. There isn’t peace around the world with the rise, once again, of nationalistic governments, here and abroad. I am writing this before going on a trip - who knows what may happen in the next few weeks. In the Middle East? In South America? In Asia? In Africa? What about Greenland? Cuba?

In the United States of Trump, we have seen our country backing out of treaties, insulting world leaders, and showing in so many ways that we are no longer a beacon of democracy and freedom. What can we do to regain pride in the United States? Celebrate the good news that we see every day when people protest against injustice. Support those who work to safeguard the freedoms and the ideals that we hold dear and that made up the Constitution. Vote. Be involved. Refuse to countenance a president who refers to a whole political party as his enemy, to anyone who disagrees with him as his enemy, even to the Pope.

“Finally, words from another bumpersticker: “Who Would Jesus Bomb?”

If you asked my mother what her hobbies were, the first thing she would say is that she liked to read. Most of my early memories of my mother are of her curled up in her chair with a book or of her reading to me. She liked to read mysteries and books by her favorite author, Angela Thirkell, known to us as Angela. My mother sent Angela a Christmas card one year, and got a lovely card back. In Angela’s next book, there was a mention of someone who lived in “Seattle, Washington USA”. Unfortunately, he was named Abner, not Mrs Petersen.

My mother was born in Seattle. She lived in Madison Park with her parents and her dog, Turk. She went to McGilvra School with her cousins Art, Joey, and Ann. The one story that she told the most was about a party that she and her friend, Billy, went to. Back in the 1920s, it was popular for children to have costume parties. They would wear homemade costumes or store-bought costumes – made of crepe paper. Who thought that putting little kids in paper costumes was a good idea? They could catch on fire or tear. Poor little Billy with his crepe-paper costume – he spilled cocoa on it and it disintegrated. Mother was not going to be seen walking home with a boy in his underwear. She made him walk half a block behind her.

She didn’t like being told what to do – and this lasted all of her life. There were incidents involving carrots which reappeared at every meal and which she steadfastly refused to eat.

When she was almost 9, along came a baby sister; and a year later, the family moved to Manila. My grandfather had a brother who had gone to the Philippine Islands and made his fortune. My grandfather didn’t make his fortune, but, like most ex-pats, the family had a house boy, a cook, a driver, a guard, laundresses, and an amah (or nanny) for my mother and another for my aunt. My grandfather liked to go to the horse races, and when he would win, he’d bring the money home in a paper bag. He would grab handfuls of money and toss them about. Hilarity would ensue.

It was while the family was living in Manila that my Mother developed some interests and habits that remained a part of her life. She loved to take some of the horse race winnings and buy Asian antiques. She designed clothes that a seamstress would stitch up. And every afternoon, everyone would take a siesta. In her last years, Mother was famous in the retirement home for her post-lunch siestas.

Late in 1939, my grandmother, aunt, and mother came back to Seattle for what was supposed to be a year. The threat of war kept them in Seattle while my grandfather waited a little too long to close up his business. He spent the war in Japanese internment camps. It was a hard time for the family. The wartime rent restriction act meant that they had to wait until the people who were renting their house voluntarily moved out. So they lived in what they called the “henhouse” with my mother’s grandmother and aunt and sometimes another aunt along with various round-the-clock nurses. But my mother also remembered those years for all the ritzy parties in the Highlands where an aunt and uncle lived.

In 1946, my mother was introduced to a handsome man-about-town by his sister Yvonne. After a few dates, Mother asked him if he’d like to marry her. He said “Well...yes!”. She said she would think about it. They got married on May 10, 1947, and I was born later the next year.

Mother admitted that she wasn’t a baby person, but said that I was “surprisingly good”. She added that she wouldn’t have put up with anything else. My earliest memories are of her listening to Mary Margaret McBride on the radio and of reading to me: The 101 Dalmations, The Borrowers, Madeleine, Babar, Winnie the Pooh. Later, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Wind in the Willows, Stuart Little, and all of the books by E Nesbit that the library had.

We used to take walks down to the lake to feed the ducks and then come back home for a cup of tea in a pretty china cup with a little silver demitasse spoon to stir the sugar. When my father would be working in the evening, we would have a soup and sandwich dinner in front of the tv which I thought was a great treat.

Mother liked finding antiques and designer clothes at “the stores” - Goodwill, Salvation Army, Value Village – with her sister, Mary. She liked polishing silver, refinishing furniture, and looking at decorating books and magazines. She always had long, polished fingernails and wouldn’t step out of the house without her lipstick on and her jewelry. Even up to her last year.

People sometimes share with me their memories of my mother’s elegance and of her sense of humor. It’s not as though she told jokes, but she had a sense of the absurd. It’s something we shared. We would be watching tv, and one of us would start to laugh and then the other would join in. Soon, we were gasping for breath. I miss that. Mother told me about one time when she was in her 20s riding on a bus and reading a P G Wodehouse story called “Strychnine in the Soup”. She started to laugh and laugh and laugh while the other riders looked at her in amazement.

I hope that she is somewhere where she can laugh again.

April showers bring May flowers. And weeds. Which are sometimes as pretty as the flowers, but have gotten a bad rap because of their habit of spreading. Everywhere.

When I first got interested in gardening, I read that Prince Charles (now King Charles III) enjoyed weeding. I imagined him wearing his crown, kneeling in the dirt, pulling out the weeds one by one. I also enjoy weeding. It is a contemplative pursuit where I can just focus on each weed and “be here now” which is usually hard for me to do. And then I look around, and I have cleared a whole bed of its weeds. The bonus for those of us who like to weed is that in a few weeks, we get to do it again!

There is a section on mindful gardening in How to be Content where Dr Arlene Unger writes that dirt has a bacterium in it that is thought to trigger the release of serotonin. Another good reason to get out there and weed and plant. Enjoy the beauty of May flowers and their sweet scent, encourage beneficial insects and listen to their humming and buzzing, be content in your garden.

Later, I began to think about the adventures Christopher Robin and his friends had in the Hundred Acre Wood. As a child, I loved everything about the two Winnie-the-Pooh books: the humor, the distinct characters of all the animals, the depictions of nature and the seasons. My mother read the books to me often, and they helped shape my view of nature. A bridge over a stream calls for a game of Pooh-sticks. A tree is someone’s home. A path leads to discoveries.

Maybe the path leads to an enchanted castle as it would in E. Nesbit’s magical books. My mother loved E. Nesbit’s books and would read them to me on lazy, summer afternoons or blustery, winter afternoons accompanied by tea cups or cocoa mugs. The children in the books would head out in the morning with a basket full of sausage rolls and two types of cake and ginger beer in stoneware bottles, and they wouldn’t go home until dinnertime. They would walk until they were hot and dusty and ready for a picnic, or an adventure. The freedom that they enjoyed!

I had freedom, too. We all did. We could go off to play with friends in the neighborhood. We were trusted to be at someone’s house where a mother would be available in case a band-aid was needed, but the mothers never hovered. We made up our own games. One summer, my friend Ginger and I played at being mermaids. We made up elaborate mermaid stories as we sat on rocks in her family’s rockery with the sprinklers keeping us cool (and appropriately wet). Our adventures didn’t quite measure up to those in books, but we were outside and we were pretty much on our own.

I also had the freedom to be bored. Other than mealtimes and reading out loud times, I was expected to entertain myself. If there wasn’t anyone around to play with, I would moan: “I’m booored. There’s nothing to dooo”. And what would my mother say? “Spit in your shoe.” “But I don’t want to spit in my shoe!” So obviously, I had to find something else to do. Make a miniature fairy garden. Write up clues for a treasure hunt to entertain my parents. Train my stuffed animals to do circus tricks.

That’s how I raised my children (although I never told them to spit in their shoes). I taught them how to cross the street safely, and then let them walk to a stream about half a mile away where they could build dams and do whatever their imaginations suggested. Of course, one time, not long after we had moved to Mercer Island, my seven year old announced that he was going for a walk after school. The sun was close to setting, and he still wasn’t home. I bundled the four year old into the car. We drove to the stream, we drove to the park, we drove around the neighborhood. Then I called the police. They found him about half a mile away, on his way home. He had decided to walk to the library, a few miles away. As the police car drove up, I greeted my son with the words “Wasn’t it exciting to get a ride in a police car?” Not expecting Mommy to applaud him for his adventure, he was tearful. But he did continue to be independent and adventurous.

I have just a few more books on the themes of nature, adventure, and freedom to share with you. My younger son grew up to love “messing with boats” as Ratty in The Wind in the Willows did. But there is nothing to match Arthur Ransome’s books such as Swallows and Amazons for independence. The children in his books spend the whole summer messing with boats, camping out on their own, having amazing adventures, and learning invaluable lessons. Allowing my son take sailing lessons and go sailing with friends when he was a teen set him on a lifetime path which led him to volunteering with Northwest Seaport. Letting him be bored led to him figuring how to take things apart and put them together again which he did with the old, wooden boats that he works on. And now he works as a tankerman, traveling to ports in Washington, California, and Hawaii to fuel large ships.

Richard Louv, in Last Child in the Woods, wrote about how “in nature, a child finds freedom, fantasy and privacy, a place distinct from the adult world, a separate peace”. Let children connect with nature, develop their imaginations, and be free from the over-committed, over-watched lives of today.

Here are more books on this topic: The Happiest Kids in the World: How Dutch Parents Help Their Kids by Doing Less by Mae Acosta and Michelle Hutchison and The Danish Way of Parenting: What the Happiest People in the World Know About Raising Confident, Capable Kids by Jessica Joelle Alexander and Iben Dissing Sandahl. They are a perfect fit for my previous article on the happiest countries in the world where I wrote: “I have been to Denmark four times now, and one thing that struck me was - you guessed it - how happy people were. Babies smiled and cooed. Children played.” That’s what we should all wish for our children. Let children be children.

“Here is your country. Cherish these natural wonders, cherish the natural resources, cherish the history and romance as a sacred heritage, for your children and your children’s children. Do not let selfish men or greedy interests skin your country of its beauty, its riches or its romance.”

Remember those hopeful days that gave birth to the first Earth Day, April 22, 1970? According to Earth Day Network, “Earth Day 1970 achieved a rare political alignment, enlisting support from Republicans and Democrats, rich and poor, city slickers and farmers, tycoons and labor leaders. The first Earth Day led to the creation of the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the passage of the Clean Air, Clean Water, and Endangered Species Acts.”

Now the spirit of the earth is grieving. Do what you can to save the earth from selfish men and greedy interests.

I’ve always been a city girl. I preferred walking on a sidewalk than a forest path. But one day, I discovered a tree. My husband and I were house hunting, and we were drawn to a magnificent Victorian house. Even more than the house, though, I was drawn to a huge, old maple tree. It was calling out (not really, but this is what I imagined): “Buy the house! Save me from death by chainsaw!” We didn’t buy the house, but we often walk by it to check up on the tree.

There are tree lovers (or tree huggers) and the kind of people who will engage in lengthy litigation because they demand that a neighbor removes trees that block their view or drop leaves on their property - or sneak onto the neighbor’s property to cut down said trees. I sympathize with people who buy a house with a view only to have the view disappear, but which was there first? The tree which, in the way of trees, was bound to grow or the objecting neighbor? When my extended family sold the family house in Seattle, they created a covenant protecting certain specimen trees on the property. I don’t imagine we have any legal recourse if an owner cuts down any of the trees, but every time I am in the area, I drive by to check up on them. Unfortunately, we couldn’t do anything about the buyers subdividing the property and building a new house in the area where the blackberry and raspberry canes were!

The city of Seattle made a Tree Canopy study in 2016. They found that there were only 6,338 trees with a trunk diameter of 30 inches or greater left in the city. At that time, the citywide tree cover was 28.6%. The 2021 Tree Canopy Assessment showed a decline from 28.6% to 28.1% in 2021, a loss of 255 acres. The city has goal of 30% coverage by 2037. Would (wood?) that it be so.

I hope that if you are a tree lover/hugger, if you care about the interconnectedness of humans and nature, if you are concerned with protecting our natural resources, you will read some of these books. And if you have never felt the pull of remarkable trees, read these books and you will look at trees in a new way.

In light of some recent news concerning the dismantling of the U.S. Forest Service, I would like to draw your attention to The big burn : Teddy Roosevelt and the fire that saved America by Timothy Egan. This is the story of a huge fire that moved through national forests in Washington, Idaho, and Montana, and the forest rangers aided by nearly ten thousand men who attempted to fight the fires. Equally dramatic, though, is the story of President Teddy Roosevelt and his chief forester, Gifford Pinchot, and the creation of the U.S. Forest Service. The book’s publisher wrote: “Pioneering the notion of conservation, Roosevelt and Pinchot did nothing less than create the idea of public land as our national treasure, owned by every citizen.” I will let that sit with you.

Meetings with Remarkable Trees by Thomas Pakenham

The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben - the illustrated edition, of course!

Lab girl by Hope Jahren. “A beautifully written memoir about the life of a woman in science, a brilliant friendship, and the profundity of trees. Terrific.”—Barack Obama

The overstory : a novel by Richard Powers. “The best novel ever written about trees, and really just one of the best novels, period.” ―Ann Patchett

When we are constantly bombarded by disturbing news, it is good to step away for a while. We need time to be calm, to be nourished, before we re-enter the fray. Try “forest bathing”. Many years ago, a member of my Church who was from Japan introduced us to the concept. This is the explanation from the Shinrin-yoku organization: “[It is] the medicine of simply being in the forest. Shinrin-yoku is a term that means “taking in the forest atmosphere” or “forest bathing.” It was developed in Japan during the 1980s and has become a cornerstone of preventive health care and healing in Japanese medicine.” Forest bathing is not about “doing” as much as it is about “being”. Breathe in the scents of the damp earth, the green smell of the woods. Let the calls of the birds and the buzzing of the bees calm you. Take time to look at wildflowers and rocks and streams.

If there is no forest handy, or if the day is too wet or too cold to go out, click on this link: https://www.tree.fm. You will see lovely photos of trees and hear forest sounds from around the world, recorded by people who live near these beautiful forests. Just click on the word “tree”, super-imposed on the photo, to go to another picture and another recording. Aaah....

Nature plays an important part in Japanese culture. Every spring, there are celebrations of the cherry blossom season. You may not be going to Japan this year, but there may be some lovely spots where you live where you can enjoy the flowering trees. When I lived in Seattle, I would walk along Lake Washington Boulevard a few blocks from home or go to the Arboretum. The “quad” at the University of Washington is now a not-so-tranquil destination for hundreds of selfie-taking visitors, but when I was a student, classes would sometimes take place under the trees.

In Japan, a lot of care is given to traditional pastimes. Think of the Japanese tea ceremony, flying kites on Boys’ Day, displaying dolls on Girls’ Day, doing sumi painting, or arranging flowers. There is a lovely little book on ikebana: Heaven and Earth are Flowers : Reflections on Ikebana and Buddhism by Joan D. Stamm.

The publisher has this to say about it: “Stamm’s lush, elegant voice weaves childhood memories of her mother’s joy at a just-bloomed morning glory with meditations on the symbolic importance of bamboo, of pine, of the lily. She takes us with her on her travels to Japan as she learns the essential principles of ikebana, and lets us join her as she teaches flower arranging to women in a nursing home who, though they won’t recall tomorrow the rules of arrangement or even the flowers’ names, nonetheless partake in the joy and love that celebrates all living things, however briefly they endure. And, when Joan shows us the natural symmetry of a blossom, we find that we too have regained our balance.”

Whether you go to the forest or the mountain, a river or a deserted beach, let nature fill your senses.

In the excellent biography, Georgianna, Duchess of Devonshire, Amanda Foreman wrote about eighteenth century British politics (and much more). “Although women did not have the vote, were barred from the House of Commons, and could not hold an official position, Georgianna was a passionate contestant in the political arena. She devoted herself to the Whig party: campaigning, scheming, fund-raising, and recruiting for it right up to the day she died.” In return she was pilloried by society as in this quote from the Morning Post, April 8, 1784: “Ladies who interest themselves so much in the case of elections, are perhaps too ignorant to know that they meddle with what does not concern them, but they ought to at least know, that it is usual, even in these days of degeneracy, to expect common decency in a married woman.”

But still they persisted.

One of my favorite books, The Semi-Attached Couple by the Honorable Emily Eden, deals with women in political life, something the author knew well. It was written in 1829, but not published until 1860. Emily Eden is often compared to Jane Austen (with good reason) so along with campaigning in a local election, the characters do find time to fall in love. This is a delightful book, written with wit and humor, that gives the reader a view of nineteenth century women one doesn’t often see.

Another book that was published at about the same time (1866) was Miss Marjoribanks by Mrs Oliphant. It is a less accessible novel, a bit of a slog to get through, but also interesting for its view of women and politics. I have been trying to trudge through a biography of Mrs Oliphant (Mrs Oliphant: A Fiction to Herself by Elisabeth Jay), and came upon this: “As a girl she had discovered that it was perfectly possible for a woman to play an active role in politics when she had helped to collect signatures for the women’s petition to Parliament at the time of the Anti-Corn Law agitation. Moreover, having been brought up in a family which had been ‘tremendously political and Radical, my mother especially and Frank’ [her husband], convinced her that married women did not need the vote to make their views tell. For the rest of her life she clung tenaciously to the view that, in marrying, men and women became ‘one flesh’ and entitled therefore to only one vote.” Hmmm....

Finally, I’ll round out my choice of nineteenth century English novels which feature women and politics by mentioning the Palliser novels by Anthony Trollope (or watch the delightful BBC mini-series from 1974). The six Palliser novels are also known as the Parliamentary novels. The plots involve British and Irish politics with most of the male characters being members of Parliament. Some of the women cannot help but follow politics and try to influence various outcomes.

So women, some women, were always interested in politics, and in the United States, on June 4, 1919, Congress passed the 19th amendment. It was ratified on August 18, 1920, and women were granted the right to vote. And now there are forces at work to disenfranchise many voters, not something new, but perhaps more likely to succeed in this political climate. One effort to do that centers around the SAVE Act. If passed, it would require U.S. citizens to prove their citizenship in order to register to vote. Along with a government-issued photo ID, they would have to provide a passport or birth certificate. Right there, how many people have a passport? No passport? You have to pay $165 and jump through a bunch of hoops to get it. How many can find their birth certificate? And if you do, your name on your government ID has to match the name on your birth certificate so what happens to all those women whose ID has their perfectly legal married name on it?

There has been much talk in the past years about the part that women can play in shifting the balance of power in our government. I am waiting for that shift. I am not so naive that I believe women will all vote for candidates who support equal rights, who value the truth, who will protect the earth and fight for the marginalized. No, they won’t all vote the way I would like them to, but I would protect their right to vote (no matter how misguided they are!). This year, everyone should reflect on the long, hard battle that was fought so that women would be allowed to vote. Don’t waste that right! It might not be around for much longer.

worry about – in our personal lives, in the world around us. It’s hard to be happy,

and it’s hard to have hope, but for our well-being, we need both.

A long time ago, when my son was four, he used to say to me, “Don’t

worry, Mommy, be happy”, and that made me happy. What was the use of

fretting about this or that? I remembered the song by Bobby McFerrin, and what

my son used to say, when I read that there are two days when you shouldn’t worry.

One day is yesterday. Don’t worry about what went wrong, about what you said

or didn’t say, about what you did or didn’t do. You can’t change what happened

yesterday. (I would add, however, that if you wronged someone, you should take

today to make amends for yesterday. I would add that there are things you can

make right.) Remember that you’re not perfect and learn from what went wrong.

The other day you shouldn’t worry about is tomorrow. Don’t fret about what

might never happen. Be prepared for what will come tomorrow - study for the

test, buy food for the dinner party - but try not to worry. Worry will not change

anything. Be happy.

I guess that, according to the writer, you can worry today. But I would say to you

be aware, be prepared, be informed, but don’t obsess about things beyond your

control. Don’t worry. Be happy.

Sometimes I feel guilty about being happy. How can I be happy when there is so much

misery in this world? So much hate? So much fear? If I am going to stand up to the

hate, if I am going to be an advocate for justice, if I am going fight for the rights of

others, I cannot be paralyzed by worry, I cannot be despondent. I have to be able to

feel joy, to be grateful for the good things in my life, to be happy.

So whenever I need not to worry so much, I think of my son saying “Don’t worry,

Mommy, be happy”.

Hygge (pronounced “who-guh”), the “Danish art of coziness”, has been getting a lot of attention lately. The Danish Tourist Bureau says that “hygge means creating a warm atmosphere and enjoying the good things in life with good people. The warm glow of candlelight is hygge. Cozying up with a loved one for a movie – that’s hygge, too. And there’s nothing more hygge than sitting around with friends and family, discussing the big and small things in life. Perhaps hygge explains why the Danes are some of the happiest people in the world.”

I have been to Denmark four times now, and one thing that struck me was - you guessed it - how happy people were. Babies smiled and cooed. Children played. People were friendly and helpful. Of course things can’t always be rosy - the “Nordic Noir” mysteries paint a darker picture - but the Scandinavian countries have something to teach us.

I call the newest photo “Happy Danes” - although only two of the group are Danish. This was taken in May of 2019, after a four hour lunch. Food and hospitality are a big part of life in Denmark. My father’s cousin served a smorrebrød - courses of open-faced sandwiches while toasting each other with snaps (aquavit), followed by a cheese board, followed by coffee and dessert. What a wonderful memory.

On that last trip to Denmark, I picked up a book on hygge at a little free library in Copenhagen. The author, Bronte Aurell, wrote: “Hygge and food go together. Setting the scene for creating a hyggelig atmosphere usually involves some kind of food. When we give our time and our love and we share the moment, hygge magically appears between us and allows us to forget about the world outside. We remove the outside from the equation by ignoring it, putting the phone in a different room and not watching the news. In hygge, there are no politics, no dangers, no sadness. It may only be afternoon fika - but in those pockets of time, both bellies and hearts feel full.”

(Fika is the Swedish word for coffee break, but fika isn’t just a coffee break as we know it; it’s a moment to slow down and appreciate the good things in life. Very hyggelig.)

On cold Spring days, start a fire in your fireplace, light some candles, snuggle under a fluffy blanket, make a cup of tea or coffee or cocoa, and read a book that will comfort and cheer you. You might try The Finnish Way: Finding Courage, Wellness, and Happiness Through the Power of Sisu by Katja Pantzar. The author claims that sisu is one of the reasons why Finns are so happy. What is sisu? It is “a unique Finnish form of resilience and perseverance in the face of adversity”. It sounds like a quality we might want to cultivate.

Here are the top 20 happiest countries for 2026:

Finland

Iceland

Denmark

Costa Rica

Sweden

Norway

Netherlands

Israel

Luxembourg

Switzerland

New Zealand

Mexico

Ireland

Belgium

Australia

Kosovo

Germany

Slovenia

Austria

Czechia

The United States comes in at No. 23 and Canada has dropped to 25. For 2026, Afghanistan is once again the unhappiest country in the world, ranking last (No. 147). Sierra Leone is the second unhappiest country at No. 146., followed by Malawi, Zimbabwe, and Botswana.

I hope you will get some inspiration from the happy Nordic countries!

Patrick lived in the fifth century. He was born in Roman Britain. When he was about 16, he was captured by Irish pirates and taken as a slave to Ireland, where he lived for six years before escaping and returning to his family. For some reason (I probably would not have done this), he returned to Ireland as a missionary. In later life, he served as an ordained bishop. By the seventh century, he had become the patron saint of Ireland.

Patrick isn’t the only Irish Saint. Another is named St. Ciarán. He was born around 516 in County Roscommon. When my husband and I were in Ireland on our honeymoon, we visited the Monastery of Clonmacnoise which had been founded by St. Ciarán in 544. Sadly, he died of the plague about seven months after starting to build the monastery. He was just in his early thirties. The monastery at Clonmacnoise became one of the most important centers of learning and religious life in Ireland.

Various legends are connected to St Ciarán. One of the most famous relates that it was his cow which supplied the parchment for the Book of the Dun Cow, one of the oldest and most important Irish literary collections, compiled by a Clonmacnoise scribe in 1106. (Of course, that was almost 600 years after the cow must have died.)

So now that you have read this, put on your funny hat, your “Kiss Me, I’m Irish” pin, and have some green beer.

When I saw the Facebook post back in 2018, “If all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote ‘Me too.’ as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem.”, and I looked at all the friends and acquaintances, women and men, who responded “me too”, I was shocked. So many stories. So many ways in which people were hurt, were damaged.

The little girl I knew in school who was a victim of incest, whose mother abandoned her and her sisters, leaving them with the father who was abusing them. My sorority sister who has suffered a lifetime of PTSD after being sexually abused by her brother. Her family was upset that she was “tearing them apart” when she finally brought up the subject as an adult. Her brother said “Oh, sorry”. Another was raped outside of Suzzalo Library on the University of Washington campus, and then, years later, she was attacked in the parking lot of a museum. She suffered about 40 cuts to her face, neck, and chest. So many others.

Some experiences were less horrific but still so wrong. Being groped on the bus, bosses making inappropriate comments, being propositioned while walking with a friend for Heaven’s sake. Well, yeah, that happened to me when I was 17, and I thought it was pretty funny that this man kept trying to convince me to “faire amour dans le foret” (we were in France). But it could have been quite nasty with a different man. Did he really think I would say yes? I thought about other experiences I’ve had, ones that angered me, others that just made me roll my eyes and think “What a jerk!”

I’ve been lucky compared to so many others, but no one should put up with these things. No one should excuse them. Boys will be boys? Locker room talk? If I were a man, I’d be pretty insulted. Most men I know like and respect women. I hope that they speak up when other men make demeaning comments about women. The problem doesn’t rest solely with men. What about the mothers who tell their daughters they are making up stories? What about the mothers who blame the fact that their sons raped a girl on the victim? What about the women who buy into the myth that women who are raped are “asking for it”?

I am glad that so many people feel they can speak out about what has happened to them. Holding secrets for a lifetime only causes more damage, but even now, victims are attacked as liars, attention seekers, crazy, unreliable, vengeful. The problem is that there are some liars and attention seekers. In 1955, 14 year old Emmett Till was brutally murdered. His crime? He whistled at a white woman. Only he didn’t. Recently, the woman who accused him admitted that she made it up. (Read a new book in the Library The Blood of Emmett Till by Timothy Tyson.) Nothing is simple, but, as a society, we can’t go back to secrets and cover-ups.

What happened next? Here is an excerpt from a 2018 article by Jessi Hempell in Wired magazine:

“On its surface, #MeToo has the makings of an earnest and effective social movement. It’s galvanizing women and trans people everywhere to speak out about harassment and abuse. It’s causing everyone to weigh in on systemic sexism in our culture. In truth, however, #MeToo is a too-perfect meme. It harnesses social media’s mechanisms to drive users (that’s you and me) into escalating states of outrage while exhausting us to the point where we cannot meaningfully act.....And before any of us can muster the focus to take action, we will certainly be confronted by the next outrage-inspiring meme—another Trump comment; another vicious act of nature in a heavily populated place; another violent atrocity.”

How have things changed? The same year, 2018, we were all following the story of Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford. She reluctantly came forward with her story of his attempt to rape her when she was 15 and he was 17. Are any of us surprised by what happened next? The rush to support Kavanaugh was a GOP stampede led by the President of the United States who said about Kavanaugh: “I’m not saying anything about anybody else, but I want to tell you: Brett Kavanaugh is one of the finest human beings you ever have the privilege of knowing or meeting,” and about Ford:”I have no doubt that, if the attack on Dr. Ford was as bad as she says, charges would have been immediately filed with local Law Enforcement Authorities by either her or her loving parents. I ask that she bring those filings forward so that we can learn date, time, and place!” This was not surprising, was it? Nor were reports such as this from the Los Angeles Times (September 23, 2018): “Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, one of 11 Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, all of them men, suggested last week that Ford’s accusation was false. Kavanaugh, he said, is a “good man,” too honest and straightforward to be doubted. “I know how he stands up for what he believes and what’s right,” Hatch said. “And frankly, if you were going to believe anybody, you’d believe him.” Another Republican on the panel, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, told Fox News that Ford would be treated respectfully, but he still expects to voted for Kavanaugh’s appointment once she testifies” - whatever she had to say.

In all of this, where were women’s voices? They were loud and strong on the Democratic side as you would imagine, but I combed the news for reports of Republican women saying “Wait a minute, shouldn’t we look into this? What’s the problem with having the FBI doing a background check on Kavanaugh? Confirming someone to serve on the Supreme Court for life is a big deal.” We know how that ended.

The next year, E. Jean Carroll, the advice columnist for Elle magazine accused President Trump of raping her in a department store dressing room in 1995 or 1996. Finally, on May 9, 2023, a New York jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation against Carroll. And in November of 2024, was re-elected to serve a second term as President of the United States.

Now we are in the midst of the Big Beautiful Jeffrey Epstein Brouhaha. Details of Epstein’s machinations are horrifying. His tentacles reached throughout the upper echelons of government and industry. Some men have had their reputations ruined by their connections to Epstein, others will follow as more files are (selectively) released, and some will be shielded from exposure. Free to continue to exploit, harass, assault.

Isn’t it about time for something to change?

And here are a few books which touch on this (touchy) subject:

Nobody’s Girl by Virginia Guiffre

The Blood of Emmett Till by Timothy Tyson

Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape by Susan Brownmiller. Written in 1975, this book made me rethink everything I thought I knew about rape.

Here we are, in the middle of Women’s History Month. When I recently read an article about ingrained sexism, I mentally nodded my head. I prefer to think that when women show a sexist bias towards other women, it is due to conditioning. I have to admit to once thinking that priests and ministers had to be male - because they were male and because the Churches said they had to be male. And when my sorority sister told me she was planning to go to Law School, I asked her “Do they allow women in Law School”? But that was then, and this is now, and things have changed, right? Well, not as much as they should have.

The Equal Rights Amendment would be the 28th Amendment to the Constitution and would ban discrimination on the basis of sex and guarantee equality for women under the Constitution. Sort of a no-brainer, but the proposed amendment has been fought over since 1972 when Congress passed the Equal Rights Amendment. Sure, it was passed by Congress, but under the Constitution, constitutional amendments aren’t valid until they are ratified by three-fourths of the states - that’s 38 states. And wouldn’t you know it, not even 38 states were willing to ratify ERA until Virginia became the 38th state in 2020. It doesn’t count though because time has run out - although there is an argument that Congress’s imposed deadline to ratify the ERA has not lapsed because the time frame is not included in the amendment’s text. There have also been attempts by five states (Idaho, Kentucky, Nebraska, Tennessee, and South Dakota) to rescind their ratification. So much for progress.

So here’s the thing: It has been over 100 years since women were finally allowed to vote. It has been over 50 years since Congress passed the Equal Rights Amendment. Isn’t it about time? Isn’t it about time for this country to realize that equal rights for women should not be considered as some outlandish idea?

One of the problems in getting to equality is... women. Remember Phyllis Schlafly? As organizer of the “STOP ERA” campaign, she opposed feminism, gay rights and abortion, and successfully campaigned against ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. STOP, I discovered, was an acronym for “Stop Taking Our Privileges”. Schlafly argued that the ERA would take away gender-specific privileges such as “dependent wife” benefits under Social Security, separate restrooms for males and females, and exemption from the draft. She spoke for many dependent women - who still seem to be worked up about sharing restrooms although the issue now is sharing restrooms with trans women. We certainly can’t put all the blame on old, white men.

Sometimes, I just don’t understand women. Women who would vote for a man who regularly denigrates women and brags about forcing his attentions on them. Women who proudly promise to obey their husbands and take a subservient, unequal position in their marriage. (I do a mental eye roll every time I think of a wedding I went to many years ago.)

Churches are one of the places where women are often viewed as less than equal, and that is just fine with most of the women. I have been reading about the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the country, and Beth Moore, “one of the most popular evangelists in the world” according to Kate Bowler. (Bowler wrote about Beth Moore in The preacher’s wife : the precarious power of evangelical women celebrities). Bowler went on to say, “Outside the Southern Baptist Convention, who can name another Southern Baptist right now?”, but despite that, as a Southern Baptist, Moore, like all SBC women, is not allowed to preach to adult men. That seems to be okay with the majority of Evangelical women, but since the 2016 election, Beth Moore had been consistently speaking out and finally broke with the Southern Baptist Convention in 2021, over the denomination’s blind support of Donald Trump and their treatment of women. Will other Evangelical women follow?

Isn’t it about time for women to support women? Isn’t it about time for women to have equal rights? In fact, isn’t it about time for everyone to have equal rights?

My book recommendations:

The moment of lift : how empowering women changes the world by MelindaGates

Half the sky : turning oppression into opportunity for women worldwide by Nicholas D. Kristof