Part of our continuing series on regrets. Click here and here for previous stories.

Unlike so many younger people, I didn’t grow up knowing I was queer. It was less common to be aware of things like that in the 1950s. Also, although I knew I was different from other kids, our family was one of those with the wrong kind of secrets. That was enough reason to feel different. 

      I was a literate child—awkward, silent and always with my face in a book. I read indiscriminately, from my parents’ crammed bookshelves, the children’s section of the library and the regular fiction section. 

      After school, my sister and I would walk down the hill to the library. I would pick a book off the shelf, pretty much at random. We would take our books and sit in the heavy wooden chairs at the heavy wooden tables polished to a whisper, with the faint smell of bubblegum and paper like dried grass on a hillside, and the golden sunlight that streamed in the windows at a slant, crowded with dancing dust motes. A safe place, full of books. 

      I knew about sex. …

      Trump and his cronies don’t care about facts and science in their queer bashing, but we’ve always been here and we aren’t going anywhere.

      Science writer Josh L. Davis leads LGBTQ+ tours at the Natural History Museum in London. His charming and informative presentations have become popular on YouTube and they have inspired “A Little Queer Natural History” (University of Chicago Press, 128 page), a beautifully illustrated book celebrating the “non-heteronormative biology and behaviors that exist in the natural world.”

      Gorgeous photographs accompany stories of hermaphroditic fish, lesbian gulls and male swan couples raising chicks, as well as spotted hyenas in female-centric colonies. Davis provides evidence of the prevalence of homosexual activity among gorillas, giraffes and sheep. …

      Google the greatest inventions of our time, say the last 75 years, and you’ll find all sorts of wonderful, important techy stuff. Stuff like the Internet, of course, and the integrated circuit, the smartphone, the MRI scanner, the laser, the personal computer, the Global Positioning System.  

      All great, all important, all have significantly changed the world and our lives. Transformative, all of them. We use them, we depend on them, but of course we have absolutely no idea how they work.

      But what about the more mundane stuff that’s been invented during our lifetime, the simple things, the not-particularly-technical inventions that have simply made our day-to-day existence so much more pleasant? . . .

      As I head toward my 75^th year of life I have been thinking a lot about the “what ifs.” 

      What if my parents had divorced before I was born? What if my mother had not died when I was 12 but lived to be a grandmother?  What if I had been born a boy and been chosen to take over my father’s general contracting company? 

      What if I had drowned when I was three and had toddled into the ocean, fortuitously saved by my Auntie Peg? What if I had been a straight-lace instead of a hippie? What if I had married the first love of my life, or the second or the third? …

Part of our continuing series on regrets. Click here for previous story.

Occasionally we excerpt something we come upon that might be of interest to readers of this website. We had not previously seen the substack published by Don Moynihan, a political science professor at the University of Michigan. Here’s how he describes his work: “I spend a lot of time studying, teaching, and thinking about how governments function and how to make them better.”

Prof. Moynihan also has proven quite good at understanding how governments can be made much, much worse.

The post from which we took this excerpt, DOGE Mismanagement Principles, also contains sections headed: “Don’t fire the guys taking care of the nukes” and “Don’t fire employees, unfire them, and then fire them again.”

Don’t fire the guys collecting the money

      Governments can’t function without revenue, so ensuring that the agency that collects taxes can do its job is pretty fundamental to maintaining state capacity. . . .

      In some ways Kendrick Lamar last Sunday was dressed more like me and my buddies in the 1960s and 1970s than were any of the 58 previous Super-Bowl halftime-show performers (some of whom, in fairness, were in marching bands).

      Lamar was outfitted in blue-jean bellbottoms, sneakers, a black shirt, a baseball cap and a letter jacket. He had a raggedy, as best I could determine, beard.

      And the performance Lamar gave—with Samuel L. Jackson as a black Uncle Sam, supposedly tasked with asking him to tone it down—seemed more angry and more political than any previous Super Bowl halftime show, angrier and more political than we had thought the billionaires who own the NFL would allow. He referenced jazz-poet and musician Gil Scott-Heron’s line that the “revolution will not be televised” but insisted that it was about to be. At one point an American flag, formed by dancers, was split in half by Lamar. . . .

      The moral and ethical crater that the Trump-administration bulldozer has dug through the heart of our democracy isn’t likely to concern his voters. They long ago bought into the propaganda that the "Deep State" stole the 2020 election. Many, and possibly most U.S. voters, also have swallowed the lie that immigrants = criminals.

      Yet the resistance to Trump – Democrats, Independents and Never Trumpers -- must find a way to erode his less fervent support nationwide quickly if they hope to so much as slow this country’s march into autocracy and possibly worse.  I believe there’s a path, but time is short.

     And it’s a path requiring planning not righteousness, and it must be targeted to Republicans and Independents not just those already convinced of his malevolence. . . .

      Trump’s foes won’t succeed by rallying in front of Washington, D.C., buildings. They won’t succeed by claiming the moral high ground. They won’t succeed by standing up for health, science or human rights. This is sad, but it is true.

      However, those trying to stop the real steal – of our democracy – might succeed if they focus on what likely will be the growing economic pain of Republican voters in Red States. . . .

      I’ve signed up to go to my first protest demonstration on Monday. I’ll stand on a corner waving a sign. Earlier this week, I made my first financial donation to a Trump-fighting group. I’ve started regularly calling the office of my (cowardly Republican) senator.

      I’m beginning to try to answer the question, at least for me, of what can we do?

      Of course, for these last four weeks, it’s been easier to say, what can we do? How can we possibly deal with the onslaught that seems never-ending? With the accumulating day-to-day nightmarish realities? The zone indeed has been flooded, and we have felt overwhelmed. Recent national surveys report that nearly half of those who identify as Democrats say they feel “exhausted.”

      So, it’s been easy to tune out, which I have done. . . .

By Jane S. Gabin

      Regrets. I’ve had a few.

      One would be rushing to complete my education. For some reason, I was raised to believe that it was better to graduate in three years rather than in four. So, at the age of 27, I found myself with a Ph.D. (in English) but little experience.

      My culture also said, if you are not married, then nothing else matters. So, I stayed in school forever, it seemed, waiting for something or someone miraculous to occur.

      I remember the day I was standing at the kitchen window contemplating my future. And I wept. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted, but I knew what I didn’t want. I was on track to become a secondary-school English teacher; somewhere along the way I was expected to “meet someone” and marry, then have children.

      But I saw myself pushing a baby carriage on the streets of Flushing, NY. And that was my vision of hell. . . .

Who would have thought it might seem necessary to stand up, speak up—and sing out—to protect democracy here, in the United States of America?

Words and music by Bill Weeden, David Finkle and Sally Fay.

Click here to view.

      I was raised by wolves. My older brother, Charlie, was a psychopath, and my parents, with the support of a lot of alcohol, went to some trouble not to notice that. So, for my entire childhood I was at the mercy of a soul-less monster who liked to control and hurt and rape more vulnerable people. Particularly his two little sisters.

      Our parents, who should have protected us, instead turned their faces away. I understood this as permission. We learned very early that there was no use in complaining. Our parents would just laugh at us, would deny that anything was happening. “Go ahead,” they were telling him. That’s what their denial meant. “Go for it. Just do it where no one can see.”

      And he did.

      Charlie would kill us, eventually, if we didn’t get away from him. I knew this. I also—didn’t know. . . .

      A couple of weeks back, I had a computer issue. I don’t remember now exactly what kind of computer issue it was, but it was something I couldn’t fix on my own.

      Although I tried. I re-booted, several times. I Googled answers, followed prompts, checked in with support groups, went to help websites, had a chat with an automated chatbot and still wasn’t able to fix the problem. I had considered downloading ChatGPT, but instead I took the easier way out: I did what I had promised myself I wouldn’t do but I’ve done time and time again: I asked my kid.

      Listen, don’t judge me. I am, in fact, better with tech than a lot of people my age. Well, some people my age. . . .

Melvis Acosta is a journalist, friend and former student of mine. (He helped Neil Offen and me set up this website.)  Both Melvis and I happen to be serious, exuberant, music lovers. But—there being a half-century between us—we are serious and exuberant about very different kinds of music. So we decided—in the name of open-mindedness, conciliation and respect—to each give a serious listen to an album selected by the other person, to which we had not before listened.

     I proposed that Melvis undertake Bob Dylan’s 1965 album, Highway 61 Revisited. Melvis suggested that I dive into To Pimp a Butterfly from 2015 by Kendrick Lamar. This was before the recent Dylan film, A Complete Unknown, and before Lamar’s recent Grammys triumphs. And we are posting this just before Kendrick Lamar’s performance half-time at the Super Bowl.

Click here for an edited version of the online conversation that ensued,.

— Mitchell Stephens

       It’s been six months since our beloved black Labrador, Layla, died. I miss her every day, but particularly when events are overwhelming. Since Jan. 20, I have wished daily that she was here to soothe my anxiety and distract me. Life is a little empty without herWe rescued Layla when she was just over a year old. She was a beautiful dog, with a glossy black coat and warm, intelligent (and often pleading) brown eyes. She had been a stray for at least a month during the winter. Someone found her and took her to an animal shelter in Hickory, NC. There, she languished for at least another month until a Labrador rescue group rescued her a few days before she was to be euthanized. We adopted her from her foster mom in March 2012.

      Our previous dog, also a Labrador, had been the sweetest, most submissive and gentle dog I’ve ever known. So, we told the rescue group we preferred a calm, medium-energy dog.

      Layla was the energetic opposite. On her first day home with us, she zoomed around our backyard at top speed, enjoying every minute—and we thought, “oh, oh.” She definitely had a wild streak. Or as I preferred to say, she was a spirited life force. …

Here’s some of what we have seen recently that might be of particular interest to our generation. (Apologies for any pay walls.) Send us what you have seen at WritingAboutOurGeneration@gmail.com.

• What Matters More for Longevity: Genes or Lifestyle? Dana G. Smith, New York Times, Jan. 5, 2025.

• The end of Generation Rock, The music of the baby boomers survived into the 21st century, with stars still performing in their eighties. Can it last? Fergal Kinney, New Statesman, Oct. 9, 2024

• Inside your body, aging unfolds at remarkably different rates, Gretchen Reynolds, Washington Post, Nov. 25, 2024.

• Why Alzheimer’s Scientists Are Re-thinking the Amyloid Hypothesis, Joshua Cohen, Undark, Jan. 7, 2025.

• The Most Important Conversation to Have Before You Die, Dana G. Smith, New York Times, Nov. 27, 2024.

• The Unspoken Grief of Never Becoming a Grandparent, Catherine Pearson, New York Times, Nov. 11, 2024.

Click for more

      Visiting MASS MoCA’s campus of repurposed industrial mill buildings in North Adams, MA, is always a delight with its Sol LeWitt wall drawings, James Turrell light installations, Louise Bourgeois marble sculptures, Anselm Kiefer leaden beds and Laurie Anderson’s multimedia explorations, along with new large-scale exhibitions of lesser-known artists. 

    I just recently visited one of its performing arts spaces to preview a work-in-progress of a new theatrical collaboration between two renowned interdisciplinary artists, Eiko Otake and Wen Hui. Using movement, text and video, they explored the suppressed histories of war on a personal and societal level. …    

Here is a short excerpt from a fine column in the Washington Post by the novelist Anne Lamott:

      I think we need and are taking a good, long rest. Along with half of America, I have been feeling doomed, exhausted and quiet. A few of us, approximately 75 million people, see the future as a desert of harshness. The new land looks inhospitable. But if we stay alert, we’ll notice that the stark desert is dotted with growing things. In the pitiless heat and scarcity, we also see shrubs and conviction. . . .

      Lacking obvious flash and vigor might make it seem as if there is no resistance. But it is everywhere you look . . . .

      I don’t drink alcohol anymore.

      Well, that’s not completely true. Very occasionally—maybe every three, four weeks or so—I’ll have a small glass of wine, maybe half a glass. Very occasionally, I might have a sip or two from my wife’s wine glass, if wine is something that really goes with what we’re eating.

      But, in general, I’ve pretty much stopped. After my heart attack, the rehab nutritionist told me to stop. (The humane cardiologist, however, advised that yes, I should stop but yeah, maybe a small glass every few weeks won’t kill me.)

      It may be for other, different reasons, but I sense I’m not the only one who has stopped, and particularly not the only one in my age group. More and more friends, it seems, aren’t drinking anymore.  . . .

      For many years, I had a copy of Martin Neimüller’s poem First they came, taped on my office door. I was a young college professor when I first came upon his poem which begins,

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist

      I am what is called a “red diaper baby,” the child of Communists who were targets of the red baiting of the 1940’s and 1950’s, hunted down by Senator Joe McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee and often jailed or fired from jobs. I learned at an early age about the silence of bystanders and consequences of being a target of government led persecution.

      The poem goes on to say, “Then they came for the socialists; then they came for the trade unionists, then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I wasn’t a Jew, and then they came me for and there was no one left to speak out for me.”

      I used this poem as a way to underscore the consequences of remaining on the sidelines, silent, uninformed or disinterested, when the lives of others are in jeopardy, and to point out that under an authoritarian government, everyone is in danger of moving suddenly from a sense of belonging to the reigning regime, to being scorned and excoriated as “other,” an outcast and thus judged guilty for the woes of the country. . . .

      The election was not stolen. He won. And it has become clear—in the days since the inauguration—that we still don’t know how to deal with a democratically elected president who has no commitment to honoring and protecting the mechanisms of democracy.

      It is also clear that this time he came prepared.

      Might the courts rein him in? Perhaps they might have if the legal proceedings against him had started earlier in the interregnum between his terms. But it seems too late for that.

      And, yes, he and his minions and advisors will overreach, press their luck, screw up. But there now is a reasonable chance that our much vaunted, if a bit sluggish, system of government will be altered—in the direction of a more powerful executive, in a less deliberative, less democratic direction.

      For now, in its early stages, this seems one of the greatest threats American democracy has faced since the Civil War, larger even than that represented by Joe McCarthy (from whom Donald Trump, significantly enough, had only “one degree of separation”: McCarthy’s counsel, become Trump’s mentor, Roy Cohn). . . .