brushfire"This, yes, this, it was always like this." -Stanley Koehler
REFLECTIONS OF AN EMPTY NESTER
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Early the morning after the 2016 presidential election, my cell phone rang. The name of a friend I hadn't heard from in a while lit up on the display. “Hey Debbie, what’s up?” I said. “I just needed to call someone today,” she said. “Someone who understands the way I feel.” Suddenly it made sense. We live in a wealthy, conservative suburb in a state that voted red for the first time since 1988. As liberals facing a Trump presidency, we found ourselves even more adrift. My husband and I put up Obama signs in 2008 and 2012, but we hesitated to post a Hillary sign in 2016. Not that we weren’t with her; we were. But this election seemed more polarizing than ever. Debbie and I checked in on each other over the next day or so. Looking back, I realize her impulse to reach out reflected a feeling many of us shared, waking up one morning to a country that suddenly seemed alien. To go from Obama — to this? It was unconscionable. Many of us found comfort in a new Facebook page called Pantsuit Nation, a tribute to — well, you know who. Then emerged a private — later changed to secret — local page with members inviting other members into our growing ranks. As it turns out, Debbie and I and our husbands weren’t so alone after all. There were a lot of us, hiding in plain sight in our tony little town. Men and women joined, but mostly women. Women who resisted. Women who persisted. Women who offered advice and counsel, from help with an LGBTQ bullying issue to analyzing the intricacies of the emoluments clause. Even though many of us were strangers, we knew it was a safe space to voice our concerns, share our ideas and, above all, get organized. What started as commiseration, shared adoration of Barack Obama and a mutual distaste for — well, you know who — quickly evolved into action. The power of the page was put to an early test. Less than a week after the election, a brouhaha developed over an announcement on the intercom by a local high school principal responding to complaints from students who felt intimidated by Trump supporters. Unfortunately, in his call for unity and pledge to make the school a safe place, the principal forgot to include straight white Christian students. A student reported home to her mother, who contacted the superintendent with accusations of inappropriate, divisive and unlawful behavior. Chastising the principal — who happens to be Muslim — was not enough. She also sent an email encouraging recipients to attend the school board meeting the following evening to voice their concerns. Imagine her surprise when more than 100 community members did in fact flock to the meeting. But they weren’t the people she invited; they were members of the Facebook page, summoned with one post to show their support for the principal. As of this writing, nearly 1,500 people have joined this page in a town of 45,000. Organizers of a local peace march scheduled to coincide with the women’s march in Washington, D.C., hoped for a showing of 40 participants. They ended up with 1,200. There are daily calls to action and weekly emails with a list of meetings and events. Task forces have formed, from healthcare to the environment to civil rights. Members worked behind the scenes to promote an education panel on raising global leaders and met with school administrators to discuss diversity plans. They have protested — unpaid — against the immigration ban and defunding Planned Parenthood, rallied against racism at a neighboring school district, and hosted postcard and letter writing parties. Planning is underway for the town's first pride march. New friendships blossom at weekly coffees and frequent meet-and-greets. My husband and I, having lost several friends to post-election divisiveness, attended one simply to make some new ones. And this is only the beginning. As concerned as I am for the state of our democracy with every passing news story, I am every bit as heartened by the power of what we the people are capable of. I experienced it in sheer physical numbers when I attended the women’s march in D.C. I experience it daily from my home every time I go online, deriving comfort and strength from my comrades-in-arms. They are smart, sassy, witty, compassionate and driven. And they are only now recognizing their collective power, finding their voice and marshaling their resources. I am proud to join their ranks. We are a force for the future and we are not alone.
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In an episode of the HBO miniseries “Big Little Lies,” a dark comedy-drama based on the book by Liane Moriarty, parents discover their 16-year-old daughter's secret independent school project is to auction off her virginity online to protest sex trafficking. While the parents applaud their daughter's social conscience — she plans to donate the money to Amnesty International — they try to explain why putting her virginity up for the highest bidder is unacceptable.
Her response? “Colleges look for passion projects now. It’s not just about your GPA and being captain of volleyball.” Social satire aside, there's a lot of truth to the first part of this statement. As for the second part, unfortunately colleges care about those things too. This was a tough message to deliver to high school students and their parents in attendance at a college fair last month. I attended the annual event as an alumna representative of Princeton University. Visitors to my table had a lot of questions about majors, clubs and activities, summer and travel abroad programs, grade point average and test cut-offs, costs and financial aid (this last from the parents). “I have a 3.8 GPA,” one girl told me. “Should I even bother to apply?” I looked at her mom and dad, who smiled and waited for my response. “Isn't it sad we live in a world where you even have to ask that question,” I said. “That's an awesome GPA. You should be very proud." Likely she won't bother. Most of the kids who stopped by my table, many of them sophomores and even freshmen, were just browsing. They picked up a brochure and asked a few questions out of politeness and casual interest. Had I answered this student honestly, I would have cautioned her to not take it too personally if she applied and wasn't accepted, because admission to many elite colleges these days is as elusive as winning the lottery. It's a sign of the times that many people were fooled last year into believing a satirical op-ed in the New York Times stating Stanford's admissions rate had fallen to an all-time low of zero was real. As parents, we tell our children to dream big. We quote Norman Vincent Peal and say, “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars.” Meanwhile, colleges and universities send mass mailings to students who test well in the PSATs, hiking their expectations while raking in admissions application fees. The result for them is a high ranking in the U.S. News & World Report. The result for a vast majority of their applicants — 95.3 percent from Stanford's 2016 admissions pool — is a crushed dream. Don't get me wrong. I do believe students should dream big and reach high. The high schools in my town yield impressive college admissions, with students accepted to Ivy League colleges and yes, even Stanford. I didn't attend the collage fair to tell them to lower their expectations and be realistic. I attended to offer advice based on what I learned as a parent after three times through the process, from logistics to big-picture items. Students and their parents may not remember what I said about Princeton, but hopefully they'll take to heart the message I really hoped to convey — that a dream school isn't the one most out of reach; it's the one most likely to help you attain your dreams. Colleges may be seeking students with a passion, like the character in “Big Little Lies,” but not every 17-year-old has discovered theirs yet. Each does have something that sets them apart, however. In several cases, I discovered this in a five-minute conversation, from the boy who attended a marine biology camp to the girl who said her hearing impairment inspired her to volunteer with the hearing-impaired community. Another girl talked about how her food allergies led her to seek legislative change. A boy interested in finance clearly had an eye for numbers — he was the only one who noticed I was handing out outdated brochures with last year’s statistics. One girl said she was interested in journalism, but her schedule next year wouldn't allow her to work on the school newspaper — both an academic class and an extracurricular activity — and enroll in an additional AP science course. She wanted my recommendation on which to drop. “Do what feels right to you,” I said. “Stick with what you love. The rest will fall into place.” “Good answer,” her mother said. I don't know if it was, but it was the only answer I had. A version of this appeared in the April 6, 2017 issue of the Grosse Pointe News. “Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited.”
This statement was made by Justice Antonin Scalia when he wrote the majority opinion to the 2008 Supreme Court ruling on District of Columbia v. Heller. The decision was controversial because it granted citizens the right to own guns for personal self-defense, overlooking the amendment's opening language about “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state” — i.e., the importance of protecting states from the tyranny of the federal government. The individual right to bear arms is now the law of the land. The “unlimited” access to guns is what the National Rifle Association conveniently forgets. Yet in his opinion, Scalia went on to say the Second Amendment is “... not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.” He wrote: “Nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.” And yet here we are. News is like food. There's junk food and there's healthy food. We all know the difference between the two. Junk food is easy to consume. It's pre-packaged and takes little effort. Healthy food, on the other hand, requires planning and forethought. Occasionally we have to go out of our way to find the right ingredients. We also need to read labels carefully to discern if the food is as healthy as it purports to be. Ultimately, though, we’re responsible for our own choices. Blaming the media for feeding us fake news is like blaming Hostess Twinkies for making us fat.
Junk news of the Twinkie variety has a misleading URL, no byline, pop-up ads and headlines that are nothing more than click bait. They’re easy to spot — and avoid. The vast majority of mainstream media, on the other hand, is producing accurate, verifiable news reported by trained, reputable professionals, many with years of experience. These journalists follow a code of ethics that includes principles of truthfulness, accuracy, objectivity, impartiality, fairness and public accountability. Individual print, broadcast and online news organizations follow this code as well. For a news story to be “fake,” the journalist and news organization employing that journalist must conspire to intentionally deceive the public. Accusing an organization or individual of such a practice is like accusing your bank of cheating you or your accountant of not following tax laws when filing your taxes. Often it’s our own practices that are at fault, not the industry. Stop drawing conclusions from a headline without delving into the article. That’s like filling up on unhealthy snacks because you’re too lazy to make a meal. Stop sharing articles online unless you know it’s from a credible source. Would you push food on your guests if you didn’t know where it came from? And enough with the anonymous videos. You might as well be ingesting poison. The “fake news” claim is a blatant attempt to delegitimize the mainstream press. If you question the facts, go to the sources. Look for non-partisan viewpoints. Read a peer-reviewed, empirical study in a professional journal. Don’t just watch one television station or subscribe to one newspaper or magazine. Widen your list of online news sources. Question what you read. Dig deeper. Something isn’t “fake” just because you don’t like what it says. Journalists aren’t biased just because they're presenting a point of view that doesn't align with yours. And remember: an opinion piece is just that — somebody else’s opinion. In general, we have become a country of lazy consumers blaming the media for what it feeds us when we should be making healthy, wise choices for ourselves. |
Mary Anne BrushJournalist, fiction writer, wife and mother |