https://wanderingholyokes....
Summer 2023- One month western whirlwind – Wandering Holyokes
Early morning in North Cascades National Park This is the first summer in quite some time that we have traveled west. We were invited by our friends Gary and Nonnie to meet them in Rocky Mountain National Park for a week in early August. That invitation sparked a discussion that led to us planning a..
October 17, 2023 (Tuesday) - by Heather Cox Richardson
This morning, the Ukrainian military launched a surprise attack on two Russian airfields in occupied Ukraine, using a longer-range missile system secretly supplied in the last few weeks by the United States. The Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMS, has a range of about 100 miles, or 161 kilomete..
September 20, 2023 - by Heather Cox Richardson
The fight over how we conceive of our federal government was on full display today. The Biden administration announced the creation of the American Climate Corps. This will be a group of more than 20,000 young Americans who will learn to work in clean energy, conservation, and climate resilience whi..
September 18, 2023 - by Heather Cox Richardson
Headlines this morning said that “Congress” is in crisis. But that construction obscures the true story: the Republicans are in crisis, and they are taking the country down with them. The most immediate issue is that funding for the government ends on September 30. The Senate, controlled by Democrat..
September 17, 2023 - by Heather Cox Richardson
Friday, September 15, was the fourth anniversary of these Letters from an American, although they did not then have a title. When I posted a roundup of what I thought was going on in the government on Facebook that day, I had no idea it was going to be anything other than a marker for the future.
September 15, 2023 (Friday) - by Heather Cox Richardson
At 10:22 this morning, a Jewish temple in Birmingham, Alabama, blew the shofar, and churches rang their bells four times. It was at that moment, sixty years ago, that a bomb ripped through the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. It was Youth Day in the historic brick church on Sunday,..
September 9, 2023 - by Heather Cox Richardson
At the Group of 20 (G20) meeting today in New Delhi, leaders announced plans for a new rail and shipping corridor that will connect India and Europe through the Middle East. This ambitious plan is part of Biden’s larger vision of creating high-quality infrastructure projects and the development of e..
August 23, 2023 - by Heather Cox Richardson
Yesterday, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo met with the ambassador from the People’s Republic of China, Xie Feng, in advance of her trip to Beijing and Shanghai next week. China’s economy has been slowing down alarmingly recently, with falling consumer prices, a deteriorating real estate sector and..
August 22, 2023 - by Heather Cox Richardson
Law professor Bruce Mann’s 2002 book on the early history of American debt, Republic of Debtors, explained how early Americans redefined bankruptcy to excuse defaulting on commercial debt as a result of the volatility of market forces, while retaining the old idea that defaulting on personal debt wa..
August 18, 2023 - by Heather Cox Richardson
Do you remember last April, when the president of South Korea (formally the Republic of Korea, or ROK), Yoon Suk Yeol, sang “American Pie” at the U.S. state dinner held in his country’s honor? That was part of a historic shift in global, and U.S., foreign policy.
August 17, 2023 (Thursday) - by Heather Cox Richardson
Philip Stephens of Financial Times today pointed out how much global politics has changed since 2016. That was the year of Brexit and Trump, when those calling for national sovereignty and iron-bound borders seemed to have the upper hand, and it seemed we were entering a new era in which nations wou..
August 16, 2023 - by Heather Cox Richardson
[There is a discussion of rape in paragraph 12.] Three big stories today. First of all, the Democrats are taking a victory lap on the anniversary of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), a law that has transformed the U.S. economy and for which not a single Republican voted.
August 14, 2023 - by Heather Cox Richardson
It has been a day full of news, not all of which I will have the space to put into this letter. But before I get to the extraordinary news of tonight’s indictment of former president Trump and 18 others on 41 criminal counts, including racketeering, for their attempt to overturn the results of the 2..
August 12, 2023 - by Heather Cox Richardson
In Marion, Kansas, yesterday morning, four local police officers and three sheriff’s deputies raided the office of the Marion County Record newspaper; the home of its co-owners, Eric Meyer and his 98 year old mother, Joan Meyer; and the home of Marion vice mayor Ruth Herbel, 80. They seized computer..
August 11, 2023 - by Heather Cox Richardson
As I try to cover the news tonight, I am struck by how completely the Republican Party, which began in the 1850s as a noble endeavor to keep the United States government intact and to rebuild it to work for ordinary people, has devolved into a group of chaos agents feeding voters a fantasy world.
August 10, 2023 - by Heather Cox Richardson
“Good Lord, Who Among Us Hasn’t Paid For A Clarence Thomas Vacation?” David Kurtz of Talking Points Memo asked this morning. Kurtz was reacting to a new piece by Brett Murphy and Alex Mierjeski in ProPublica detailing Justice Thomas’s leisure activities and the benefactors who underwrote them.
August 9, 2023 - by Heather Cox Richardson
New York Times journalists Maggie Haberman, Charlie Savage, and Luke Broadwater yesterday reported that in a memo dated December 6, 2020, Trump lawyer Kenneth Chesebro laid out a plan to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election that he acknowledged was “a bold, controversial strategy” ..
August 6, 2023 - by Heather Cox Richardson
On August 6, 1880, Republican presidential candidate James A. Garfield gave one of his most famous speeches. Then a congressional representative from Ohio, Garfield was in New York City to make peace with Roscoe Conkling, a Republican kingmaker who hated him and his insistence on clean government.
August 4, 2023 - by Heather Cox Richardson
Army Chief of Staff General James McConville, the 40th person to hold that position, retired today. Because Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) has put a hold on military promotions for the past 8 months, there is no Senate-confirmed leader to take McConville’s place. There are eight seats on the Joint ..
August 3, 2023 - by Heather Cox Richardson
In a special election today, voters reelected Tennessee state representatives Justin Pearson and Justin Jones, whom the Republican supermajority in the state house voted on April 6 to expel for their participation in a demonstration in favor of gun safety. “Well, Mr. Speaker, the People have spoken,..
August 2, 2023 - by Heather Cox Richardson
There have been more developments today surrounding yesterday’s indictment of former president Trump for conspiring to defraud the United States, conspiring to disenfranchise voters, and conspiring and attempting to obstruct an official proceeding as he tried to overturn the results of the 2020 elec..
July 31, 2023 - by Heather Cox Richardson
At Ukraine’s request, Saudi Arabia will host peace talks with up to 30 countries next month about negotiating an end to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The meetings will include the United Kingdom, Poland, and the European Union, as well as the United States. Brazil, India and South Africa—all three m..
https://wanderingholyokes....
Summer 2023- One month western whirlwind – Wandering Holyokes
Early morning in North Cascades National Park This is the first summer in quite some time that we have traveled west. We were invited by our friends Gary and Nonnie to meet them in Rocky Mountain National Park for a week in early August. That invitation sparked a discussion that led to us planning a..
July 29, 2023 (Saturday) - by Heather Cox Richardson
I had intended to write about Bacon’s Rebellion today, since on this date in 1676, Nathaniel Bacon published the Declaration of the People of Virginia, outlining the rebels’ demands —and, let’s be honest, also because I am giddy with relief at finishing the final stages of the new book and eager to ..
July 28, 2023 - by Heather Cox Richardson
On Wednesday, soldiers of the presidential guard overthrew Niger’s democratically elected president, Mohamed Bazoum, and replaced him with a military general, Abdourahmane Tchiani. Niger gained independence from France in 1960, and after a series of upheavals, the country established its current dem..
