The Great Divide: It’s Not Inevitable

By David Westphal and Geneva Overholser

One of the dominant themes of political life these days is the ever-growing division between urban and rural Americans. Thomas Edsall described it this way in The New York Times: “A toxic combination of racial resentment and the sharp regional disparity in economic growth between urban and rural America is driving the upheaval in American partisanship.”

This topic sometimes makes its way to our dinner table discussions, where we try to understand what is driving rural and urban citizens so strongly apart. It hits home for us partly because of our journalism careers at The Des Moines Register, which for many decades was arguably the pre-eminent American newspaper covering farming and rural life. Iowa ranks secondonly to California in the value of its farm production, and even with population declines over the years, more than one-third of its residents are still classified as rural.

Chronicling this rich agricultural footprint was a huge part of The Register’s mission. The farm sector was both a major source of the newspaper’s advertising revenue (mainly classified ads) and a primary focus of news coverage. And it resulted in one of the rare daily newspapers that was delivered to homes in all of the state’s counties. It was, The Register boasted on its front pages, “The Newspaper That Iowa Depends Upon.” (At one point, the Sunday Register claimed a statewide circulation of more than 500,000 — a majority of the state’s households.)

Although vestiges of that time remain — the Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa (RAGBRAI) still draws thousands of riders each year — the newspaper’s statewide reach is long gone, a result of demographic, cultural and economic changes that have hit newspapers nearly everywhere. According to a recent NiemanLab report, The Register’s combined print and digital subscriptions have fallen precipitously, to below 40,000.

What did it mean when, for half a century, most Iowans were reading The Register? What was the impact of a newspaper that covered both rural and urban Iowans? It’s impossible to know with any certainty, of course. Consider this a thought experiment — one with some relevance to the divisions our nation is facing today.

In his book, “Covering Iowa,” William B. Friedricks wrote:

“Beginning in the 1870s, but really from the 1920s on, when its circulation began to take off, The Register sought to appeal to all Iowans. In so doing, it became a unifying force within the state. In an age when tensions between farmers and merchants, politicians and professionals, rural and city people, and even men and women were increasing, the paper provided a common meeting ground for all Iowans. It held the attention of the state’s various constituents by providing special sections to appeal to certain groups: it offered detailed coverage of agriculture; campaigned for programs of statewide interest, such as the promotion of good roads; and identified the views of Iowans on important issues in the Iowa Poll. Through such efforts, the Register brought citizens of the state together, and in many ways helped define what it meant to be an Iowan.”

It’s not the case, of course, that rural residents were all big fans of The Register. The newspaper routinely spotlighted problem areas in the farming sector such as damaging environmental practices or safety issues. It regularly chronicled the amount of federal subsidies farmers were receiving. The decidedly liberal orientation of The Register’s editorial pages was not a big hit in many rural homes.

But one thing we think is true: A great many farmers, agribusiness people, and small-town political and business leaders believed that, through The Des Moines Register, they were being seen — by the state’s political and business leaders and by ordinary Iowans across the state. Even as they in turn could see the lives of urban Iowans.

Throughout much of the 20th century, Iowa was the antithesis of the sharp rural/urban divide that now defines our politics. From Harold Hughes to Dick Clark to John Culver to Tom Harkin, Iowa fielded some of the most liberal politicians in Washington, often with robust support from rural voters. In 1984, Harkin’s first Senate victory, a majority of rural counties voted for him. And in that same election, about 40 percent of Iowa’s urban counties backed Republican Ronald Reagan over Democrat Walter Mondale for president.

There was a striking open-mindedness in the electorate, with voters gravitating to candidates and issues without the bindings of tribalism. That fluidity was still in evidence in Barack Obama’s two presidential victories, with nearly two dozen rural counties supporting his 2012 successful re-election bid. Not so today, of course. In the last two presidential elections, all of Iowa’s rural counties have voted for Donald Trump.

In an editorial after the 2020 election, The Register lamented the state’s new pattern of “us vs. them” voting, which it said is permeating politics at all levels. “The risk for Iowa,” the editorial said, “is that it feels as if the state’s historical rural-urban divide is now on steroids, pushed to a new extreme…”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, we find ourselves believing that The Register’s decline, and its retreat from a statewide footprint, is a significant part of this story. Again, impossible to prove. But perhaps examining what has been lost, or nearly lost, from the paper’s report could shed some light.

At one time, The Register had full-time correspondents in eight Iowa cities beyond Des Moines. It had stringers in all 99 counties. It had a fleet of cars that reporters and photographers would use to drive across the state to cover athletic contests, cultural events and spot news developments. The Register was wonderfully innovative. In the 1920s it was one of the early newspapers to purchase airplanes for covering spot developments around the state. At one point, according to George Mills’ book, “Things Don’t Just Happen,” the editors employed carrier pigeons to fly film of an execution at the state prison in Fort Madison to Des Moines. (The pigeons never arrived.)

Three examples of The Register’s statewide orientation:

● Farm and agribusiness coverage. For much of The Register’s life, it had a daily page or more of farm news. The Sunday Farm/Agribusiness section, though, was the showcase, filled with rural-Iowa stories and, not coincidentally, pages of classified ads for farm equipment, livestock, auctions, and so on. The farm/business staff was stocked with some of the best journalists in the room. But that room was only part of the story. The Register’s Washington Bureau arguably had the strongest farm coverage of any DC staff — from reporters like Nick Kotz, Jim Risser, George Anthan. One of the byproducts of their coverage was to make Iowa more internationalist, showing how the state’s multibillion dollar farm exports tied the state to a global economy.

● Political coverage. For nearly 50 years, The Register’s political coverage has been recognized mainly for its chronicling of the Iowa Caucuses and the bellwether Iowa Poll. But day in and day out, reporters like Jim Flansburg and David Yepsen would reflect the local and regional politics of the state, traveling to county conventions, steak fries and other political events across Iowa. Former Gov. Robert Ray once remarked that he had a significant advantage over other governors. Because of The Register, he said, he knew what Iowans across the state knew.

● Sports coverage. For many years, and even today, The Register’s sports coverage has been anchored in its dispatches on the University of Iowa and Iowa State University. Almost as important, though, was its commitment to statewide high school sports. The Register sought to print the scores of every football and basketball game from the state’s 400-plus high schools, and would produce weekly columns and features on high school athletes. Every Friday night in football season, a reporter and photographer would travel to a “Spotlight Game,” often played in one of Iowa’s small towns. They would produce a short story and single photo that sent quite a message: What happens here on a Friday night, miles away from Des Moines, matters to us.

Coverage like this was possible, of course, only because the newspaper’s statewide orientation worked as a business model. It doesn’t anymore. The Register, once with a full-time news staff of 225, now has fewer than 50 reporters and editors. It still tries to cover farming and rural Iowa, but with a reach and strength reduced by orders of magnitude. This is true not just of The Register. Coverage of rural matters has vastly declined in recent decades, even in newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post that could well afford it.

Nearly 25 years ago, Robert Putnam published “Bowling Alone,” in which he argued that “social capital” was in sharp decline in the United States, a result of dwindling participation in civic life — not just in bowling leagues but in community organizations, in churchgoing, in voting participation and yes, in newspaper readership. A Cornell University professor, Suzanne Mettler, said that because of these “cross cutting relationships … people had a sense that we’re all in this together; we’re all citizens of this country with a common project, even if we differ on policy issues.”

There may be many contributors to our current us-vs.-them climate. The internet. Social media. Extremist cable channels. Talk radio. Growing income disparities. A nation that becomes ever-less rural. But, as Putnam argued, a primary cause may also be the weakening of institutions like the newspaper that brought people of different backgrounds into contact with one another.

Last weekend on NPR, Atlantic writer McKay Coppins, who has studied the impact of newspaper closures and downsizing, said this: “There’s a pretty big body of research that shows that when a local newspaper vanishes or is dramatically gutted, it tends to correspond with lower voter turnout, increased polarization, a general erosion of civic engagement. It makes it easier for misinformation to spread, for conspiracy theories to spread.”

And that makes it a nationwide problem because newspapers are in fast decline virtually everywhere, with scant prospects for a turnaround.

So what is the case for optimism here, particularly in addressing the urban/rural divide?

1. Ultimately, the hope is that digital news can help provide solutions. One early attempt: the year-old Rural News Network, which includes about five dozen news sites and organizations that focus wholly or partly on rural issues. Organized by the Institute for Nonprofit News, the network is anchored by the Daily Yonder in Kentucky and Investigate Midwest in Illinois (including its Iowa Watch newsroom), and seeks reporting partnerships among its participants. This is an initiative that merits the support of charitable foundations and wealthy benefactors, and should grab the attention of national newspapers and TV networks for partnership possibilities. Then there is the growing list of local and regional digital sites, such as Julie Gammack’s Iowa Writers Collaborative, which offer increasingly rich reporting on their diverse populations.

2. The New York Times, the Washington Post and TV newsrooms — those still with working business models — should return to the time when they gave much broader coverage to farming and rural issues. They are certainly on the case covering the pitched, ideological political battles taking place in rural states, and rightly so. But there is so much more to farm and small-town life, and the big news organizations would do themselves, and the country, a favor by better reflecting it.

Rural and urban Americans seem increasingly to find themselves utterly foreign to one another. In looking back at The Register’s (and perhaps some of Iowa’s) best years, we are reminded that this is not an unsolvable problem.

To the hills, conclusion

Crested Butte, Colorado

Part 3

Mont Blanc is the grandest hike I’ve ever taken. But it’s the memories of our all being together on it that I most cherish. There is no companionship quite like the companionship of a long hike. Looking out for one another. Having a good talk first with one fellow hiker, then another. Sharing beauty that can’t be captured in words. Prevailing together over blisters and cold and fatigue. Celebrating together the successful finish of a hard day.

From our early family hikes through many sibling expeditions to my kids and now grandkids, our family have followed in my father’s footsteps. Decades ago, my brother brought his family out to join ours at a friend’s cabin in Marble, Colorado, for several fine days of hiking. As a baby, our Paris-born daughter rode in a backpack through Eastern Europe’s Tatra Mountains and Julian Alps, as passersby called out “die kleinste Alpinistin!” Years later, back in Hot Springs, my dad gave her a quartz crystal and led her on a hike on the mountain where he found it. Long after she and I survived that thirsty Grand Canyon descent, we climbed Mt. Washington together. She was married in the Tetons, and David and I hiked all through the mountains of the Northwest on our way from California to her wedding. Their home is in Utah now: Hiker heaven.

By a stroke of good fortune, all of our kids lived in California during our five years in L.A., opening up wondrous hiking opportunities. Our son lived nearby, in Long Beach. We’d drive up to Angeles Crest most weekends, scaling one San Gabriel peak or another. The three of us climbed 10,000-foot Mount Baldy together and hiked in the Eastern Sierra. With our younger daughter, we’ve delighted in Northern California hikes in Point Reyes, Mount Tamalpais, Muir Woods, the Berkeley hills, Mount Diablo.

Our littlest grandkids commandeered our hiking poles last summer on walks in Crested Butte. In a few months, we’ll be back on the trails with all of them in Maine.

Hiking is especially fine for the particular companionship of marriage. From the Sawtooths, the Bitterroots and the Uintas to the Adirondacks, the Green and the White mountains, from Grandfather Mountain to the slopes of Mount Rainier, David and I have hiked untold miles together. We seek out hikes when we travel abroad, even if they’re not the trip’s focus — up Arenal in Costa Rica, down Samaria Gorge in Crete, through hilly tea plantations in Kerala, India, and in the mountains towering above rice paddies in Sapa, Vietnam.

Last month, in New Zealand’s splendid Southern Alps, we hiked on the slopes of Mt. Cook, at Arthur’s Pass and in Mount Aspiring National Park, all in preparation for the big one: the Routeburn. What a hike.

Shortly after we returned home, we each turned 75. That was my father’s age when he took his last hike up North Mountain, across from his house on Ramble Street in Hot Springs National Park.

For his birthday, I got David a book about Patagonia.

To the hills

On the Tour du Mont Blanc

Part 2

What is it that draws us to the long, hard hikes? Some of it is testing yourself against the difficulty. Some of it is knowing that, the deeper in you go, the more the wildness envelops you, the more dramatic the beauty, the greater the chance of encountering a fox, a bear, a marmot, an eagle. The farther from everything ordinary.

Powerful as Kilimanjaro was, Africa’s most remarkable hike for me was in the Ruwenzori mountains, along the border between Congo (where I was living) and Uganda. European explorers associated this range with Ptolemy’s Mountains of the Moon, because water runs from its slopes to the Nile. The Ruwenzoris are as mysterious as they sound, with mosses of every hue carpeting the ground and creeping up the trees, and towering plants that Dr. Seuss might have imagined. Our guides brought along a goat to roast for our Christmas dinner, later exchanging it for a piglet in a little village we walked through. (I appreciated the piglet’s slower pace for the rest of that long day.) In the third and highest hut was a guestbook in Flemish (from the days of Belgium’s colonialization), which Lowell Thomas had signed. The 10-mile massif, craggy, snowy, glaciated, towered above.

On our recent hike along New Zealand’s Routeburn Track, a most unlikely fact emerged: Of our group of 31, three of us had hiked in that fabled range, deep in equatorial Africa.

As the long days on the gorgeous Routeburn loosened the knots in my mind, I thought of other multi-day treks I’ve taken: The Jotunheimen of Norway, where a stream was so swollen that I have nightmares still of the terror I felt before throwing myself over it. The wild and rugged Pyrenees, and the two bird species we saw that are found only there. The Cotswolds, with their sheep pastures and their steeples beckoning from each storybook village. Machu Picchu, where our sure-footed guides carried everything from the portable toilets to our tents and woke us each morning with coca-leaf tea. The blazing-hot hike down into the Grand Canyon from the North Rim with my older daughter, when the water source we’d been told about didn’t show up. The Grand Traverse des Alpes across Switzerland, alpenglow out the window of each lovely inn.

But the granddaddy of them all was the Tour du Mont Blanc.

The idea of our trekking around Mont Blanc originated on a Blue Ridge hike with our younger daughter. (Another gift of hiking: You may find your teenager talking to you.) As we descended from the parkway past one lovely waterfall after another, I mentioned an article I’d seen in an in-flight magazine about a hike around the Mont Blanc summit. “I want us to do that,” our daughter said — but there had to be other kids along. Miraculously, given college schedules and two families’ busy lives, we gathered all three of our kids plus an uncle, an aunt and two cousins. It was a splendid trip, from the tough but beautiful first day ending at a little French inn with crème brûlée cooling on the window sill to our last celebratory night in Courmayeur, Italy.

David and I loved the hike so much that we returned a few years later to complete the 10-day loop, from Italy through Switzerland and back into Chamonix.

To the hills

Hiking the Routeburn Track

Part 1

Maybe it’s because our father loved mountains — and hiking — that I do, too. Growing up in a national park probably helped. You can climb Hot Springs Mountain from right behind the Fordyce Bathhouse on Central Avenue. On some Sundays, we’d take the scenic drive home over West Mountain, up Whittington Avenue from Dad’s church. Every now and then, he’d take us further into the Ouachita Mountains to hike. We’d camp in an old canvas tent and play cards by lantern light. He’d fry fish for breakfast. We’d find box turtles and tarantulas.

Dad once told me he hoped that, if he ever got old and crotchety, he’d just run up a mountain until his heart stopped. His heart stopped without that, but he hiked right up until the end.

If Dad and Hot Springs got me started, why has hiking remained so important to me? I was telling a friend about our recent trip hiking New Zealand’s Routeburn Track, and I found her looking puzzled. “Why do you like hiking so much?” she asked.

Part of it, of course, is the beauty. Hikes are almost always in lovely places.

I spent a summer during college as a salad girl in Glacier National Park. Six days in a row slopping together blue cheese dressing and stashing little glasses of tomato juice into ice chips for waiters to pick up, then off in a Red Jammer to Grinnell Glacier or Gunsight, the Garden Wall or Granite Park. Heart-stirringly beautiful, all of it. In grad school, I wrote to newspapers all over the Rockies, hoping to land a job amid mountains. As a cub reporter in Colorado Springs, I joined in the griping about our $110/week paychecks: “Do they think we can EAT Pikes Peak?” But I loved living alongside its majestic immensity.

The Rockies were my “local” range in those years: the San Juans and the Sangre de Cristos, the Gore and Collegiate ranges. The ghost towns and the sheepherders, high in their silent reaches. Later, living in D.C., it was the Blue Ridge we’d turn to. L.A. offered a magnificent array, from the Santa Monica mountains to the San Gabriels to the Eastern Sierra. Now, in New York, it’s the Catskills we hike each spring and fall, and Acadia in the summer — thanks to my sister, who has climbed every peak in the park.

Just the presence of mountains nearby — knowing they’ll be there when you can find the time to go to them — is heartening. The promise of a lift up out of the dailiness of life. The simple act of placing one foot in front of the other, again and again and again. The silence — and the creak of a giant tree, the scrunch of pine needles underfoot. Day hikes in our local ranges have fed our souls, soothed our worries, strengthened us.

The big hikes add other elements: The uncertainty, sometimes fear, about the degree of challenge. The grit-your-teeth dedication as you keep on going at it, even as your goal seems to recede into the distance. The relief and satisfaction when you’ve done it.

For years, “I climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro” was my go-to offering when a meeting leader asked that we “tell something surprising about yourself.”

I was 26 when I made that five-day trip on Kilimanjaro. Three of our small group were teenaged boys; they were the ones who didn’t make it to the top. I think they didn’t want it badly enough. You have to believe it’s your only chance. Otherwise, the headaches, the exhaustion, the vomiting, and the scree at the top that robs each stride of half its gain, will prevail.

After I hiked Kilimanjaro, Dad wrote me, “I have news for you: If you climbed Kilimanjaro because it’s there, it still is.” Grandmother wrote, “I don’t understand why anyone would want to walk up a huge mountain.”

Plague notes: Journal entries and correspondence from a singular time

Part 3

April 21, 2020

First day outside for a month. Needed to mail birthday cards. I felt I was hurtling downward in the elevator. Such a sensation of speed! Briefly thought they’d sped up the elevator, (BQE traffic average gone up from something like 11 mph to something like 50 – why not ;-). But then I realized, no, my life had slowed down, is what happened. I’m so unaccustomed to movement.

Jose was there, no mask, seemed a bit portlier (could I be transferring my many lost pounds onto him?). Keith there, too, wearing a mask. Both seemed as ever. Out the door — felt like walking out when you’re traveling: a new city to see. Strange, exciting.

More vehicle traffic than I’d expected from looking out the window. But it was 6:30 am, probably a kind of rush hour. And more than I’d expected meant a cluster of three or four taxis, vans, trucks; long space, then another cluster.

The butcher still has a sign instructing peeps to line up down Amsterdam, not 87th, only two people allowed inside at a time, must be wearing face coverings. And there were packages of toilet paper in the window. At the butcher!

Kirsh bakery all shut up. Sad sign saying they’d closed due to the virus, protecting everyone’s health, a GoFundMe available for us to help support the staff, they are HOPING to reopen when the crisis passes. Good luck. Though I will do a contribution.

Picked up our mail and Diane’s — and came shooting up the elevator shaft and back home.

Who knows when I’ll go out again? No more family birthdays til June ;-)

April 25, 2020

Email to Sharon:

Dear one,

We three O sibs are all writing — a gushing stream of family recollections, and then responding to one another. Quite something. It’s been fun, engaging, sometimes unsettling. I do feel like I’m lagging. Re the virus, I’m completely out of the woods, of course, but at first I did a bit too much – 3-and-a-half hour board meeting, plus lots of grandkid time, trying to help out our completely overworked and stressed-out kiddos. Anyway, I’ve sort of zigged and zagged in recovery but am definitely gaining strength. Cough sticking around annoyingly, though.

So many things are going to pass out of our lives. It’s mind-boggling. One small thing (not small to me, but small in The Nature of Things): I think you know we all had our tix to go Maine in July – all except Paul, that is. I guess I knew it was already pretty clear we weren’t going to get to go. But none of us had stated it. Then Nannerl said yesterday that Islesford demands that anyone coming onto the island stay quarantined at home for 14 days. That is, we’d all have to remain there, in the house, on the island, for two weeks, and meanwhile couldn’t go hiking or biking or climbing in Acadia. Not gonna happen. When we told Laura yesterday while FaceTiming with Petra, Laura’s face absolutely fell. It seemed she was so counting on it — as a kind of North Star, a break from this impossible two-working-parents-at-home-with-two-little-kids gig. Which is so hard too on Nell and family. Aaargh. My heart aches for them all. Every now and then one or another is clearly on the verge of tears or other emotional overload.

Still, everyone is healthy, and they all love one another. It will work out. But it does all look so endless, doesn’t it? And so ill-defined as to what happens AFTER…whatever after might mean.

We think we will finally venture out next Tuesday (gorgeous today, but the park would be too crowded). Lord knows we need to.

David has painted our bedroom, and it looks lovely. I’ve gotten out lots of memorabilia boxes and am aiming to make further contributions to the O sibs gush (and I hope simultaneously, or occasionally, also attending to whatever writing it is that I most want to do, but don’t know the identity of!).

I’m grateful that you’re keeping your spirits generally up (or making it look like it?;-), keeping something of a schedule, keeping in touch with J and me and I’m sure others. It does seem everyone is reaching out more than usual, sequestered as we all are.

Further cases in Ingleside, I wonder?

Let me know how you are.

Love you,

GO

April 28, 2020

First day walking in the park since March 22. First day out, period, really. Luminously beautiful day, blossoms , blooms and spring-green buds abounding. Yet it was a constant challenge – if not downright unpleasant. Too many people. I was constantly plotting a way to avoid them. Unnerving.

As David said, we’re so used to being safe inside. That’s part of it. But there really were way too many people.

Next time we’ll pick an ugly day or a very early hour – or dinnertime? Or try Riverside again.

Good news today though: Looks like our City MD can do antibody testing. I may try it someday next week.

April 30, 2020

Email to friends:

I am completely out of the woods, though still dogged by fatigue and a cough. Looks like I can get a test soon for antibodies. I’m eager to do that, despite the fact that nobody seems to know what exactly “immunity” might mean with this beast of a virus. Eager for David to have one, too. Surely he was exposed to it!

Paul is doing amazingly well — in a time when no restaurant jobs are available and no meetings permitted. Thank goodness Arizona has more services available than we’d ever have thought. Our other kids are worn-out, over-extended — and making it. I am so grateful that all four of them are such loving parents. We had a long FaceTime today with James and Nell, reading through a wonderful book about volcanoes and listening to James repeat: Stromboli! Vesuvius! Nyiragongo! Krakatoa! and point with his little cute finger at the map, locating these mysterious (raging and fiery and wonderfully scary volcanoes — “that one erupting!”). One page showed animals running from a violent eruption. Another showed dinosaurs standing by an ancient volcano. I asked James, do you suppose the dinosaurs ran from the volcanoes, too? He said: NO, GoMa, they died.

Working on this sibling memoir project today, I saw a letter from my mother’s cousin, written to me in Zaire, reporting that she had read to my grandmother my letter about climbing Kilimanjaro (speaking of volcanoes). My grandmother replied: I can’t understand why anyone would want to climb such a high mountain.

Yesterday I came across a letter from my Dad, in which he told me: Neve, if you climbed Kilimanjaro because it was there, you aren’t finished, because it’s still there.

Love to you wonderful women,

Geneva

May 4, 2020

Zoom board meeting with NU-Q. Funny to talk to all the Qataris, way over there on the other side of the world where I can no longer go. Felt jittery afterward – too much real world intruding on my seclusion. Suddenly decided I needed a walk. Tamped down all the anxiety I felt after our first excursion, last Tuesday. (Way too many people out, impossible to keep distance. I jumped into the bushes like a creature hunted.)

This time was lovely. Plenty of peeps, but not too many. Mostly either elderly or parents of young children. Nobody jumping in front of me, spitting in front of me, casting his droplets all over me ;-). Walked in my customary haunts. Beautiful tulips on the way over. Gorgeous redbuds strikingly abloom in the park. Walked by the now-removed swings in the pinetum. Tried to take the little wooded path just west of the Great Lawn, but a fellow photographing was standing in the middle of the narrow way.

Regular path over to the theater, then right where the waffle seller isn’t, thought I’d visit the turtles. Too many people on the viewing dock. So to walk around the Great Lawn. But then realized it was open, headed into the lush green expanse sparsely dotted with folks. Strode right out into the middle and flung myself upon the soft-firm ground. Cast off my mask. Took in the clean blue sky. Sang my song of grateful praise, for the beauty of the earth.

Walked back by our bench: “In love and gratitude.” On my way out of the park at 85th and CPW, heard a good snippet. Woman A with two dogs on the path spies woman B, calls out, “Well hi, Marilyn!” “Hey! How are you?” says Marilyn. “I’m fine. Well, you know…as fine as you can be, considering,” says Woman A., “how are you?” “I survived,” responds Marilyn. “You’re surviving?” says Woman A, not sure she heard. “I survived,” repeats Marilyn. “IT!”

Home safe, into the building, Perez complaining about how hard things are with his commute. I’ll bet all the doorman feel that way.

May 5, 2020

Hard evidence, at last:

May 15, 2020

Email to Sharon:

How are you? Can you go out walking now that this lovely weather is here? Even on that lovely short trail near you? Or is the footing bad. I forget. And maybe too many people too?

I’ve had a couple of minor setbacks of late. Some of it seems virus-related; others I know have gone through something like this. Recurring (though intermittent) fatigue and lingering cough. On top of that I got a dang bladder infection and was put on a very strong antibiotic that gave me headaches and constipation. Those are predicted side effects but doc said it was worth it unless things got worse. I seem to have adjusted, because I’m feeling better today.

Meanwhile I’ve just been plain old blue. Our sibling recollection thing has been surprisingly unsettling for me. Kicks up all the old ways that I have felt slighted – always the little sister. I realize this is unseemly and even ridiculous, but it turns out I’ve felt it sufficiently that it didn’t matter that I realized all that. Must be partly because of All That’s Going On — and the fact that nobody knows for how long it will. Not to mention of course the utter degradation of our democracy. And of our earth. In any case, I had to beg off sibs Zoom today.

All good here otherwise;-). I’m reading Savage Beauty, biography of Edna St. Vincent Millay. David now painting hallways. Beautiful walk today in Riverside Park.

Please let me know how you are.

Love, GO

May 16, 2020

Need to sing more. Found suggestions good for harmonizing:

Anything by Simon & Garfunkel has fantastic, tight two-part harmonies. Recommended ones, however, would include:

  • The Sound Of Silence
  • El Condor Pasa
  • America
  • The Boxer
  • Bridge Over Troubled Water
  • Scarborough Fair / Canticle
  • Cecilia
  • Mrs. Robinson

Another band possessing fantastic two-part harmonies is The Beatles. Recommended tracks, in this case, would be:

  • Something – George Harrison (lead) and Paul McCartney (harmony)
  • I Saw Her Standing There – John Lennon (harmony) and Paul McCartney (lead)
  • Here Comes The Sun – George Harrison (lead) and Paul McCartney (harmony)
  • Come Together – John Lennon (lead) and Paul McCartney (harmony)
  • We Can Work It Out – John Lennon (harmony) and Paul McCartney (lead)
  • I Wanna Hold Your Hand – John Lennon (lead/harmony) and Paul McCartney (lead/harmony)

Beach Boys: I get around. Surfin USA. Good Vibrations

Crosby Stills & Nash, Simon & Garfunkel, some of The Decemberists (Down By the Water is a nice male/female harmony).

Mamas and the Papas. California Dreamin

Beatles. Michelle. Here, there and everywhere

Red Hot Chili Peppers. Californication. Otherside.

Yardbirds. For your love

The Eagles: Hotel California

Dylan. Knockin on Heaven’s Door

Ben Harper and Jack Johnson: High tide or low tide

Rockapella. Sweet Home Alabama, Basket Case, Stand By Me

Grateful Dead. Sugar Magnolia. Uncle John’s Band

Spirituals:

· Steal Away

· Give Me Jesus

· We Shall Overcome

· Swing Low, Sweet Chariot

· Every Time I Feel The Spirit

· Joshua Fit de Battle of Jericho

· Lord, I Want To Be A Christian

· I Want Jesus to Walk with Me

· He Never Said A Mumbalin’ Word

· Deep River/Shall We Gather at the River

May 17, 2020

Email to Arthur:

Thanks for your good wishes. I felt sad about our not joining you all on Friday.

I’ve been feeling a little blue. (I know: Who isn’t?) There are so many reasons for that, of course, from the virus to climate change to the demolition of our democracy to just some plain old personal sadness. When Friday came around, I was a bit overwhelmed by all of this stuff piling up and didn’t feel strong enough to join in a vigorous sibling talk.

Since then, I’ve been getting better rest and going out on long walks, and generally feeling stronger. I’m grateful for your love and looking forward to talking to you and to Susan Friday. (Please let her know.)

Love,

Neve

May 19, 2020

Locusts, next?

This AM I took my final mean-antibiotic pill. No more bladder infection. Uveitis is dormant for the moment. Less fatigue lately and cough quieting a bit.

Feeling grateful.

Then I flossed my teeth — and a crown fell off🤪.

Dentist can’t see me for a week. I’m lucky he can see me at all, with so many offices closed.

May 24, 2020

Can’t let things pass without noting outrageous failures in U.S. dealings with coronavirus. Beginning with the idiocy of telling people not to wear masks, lack of available testing – and extending all the way to CDC smushing together testing figures – that is, those testing for the active virus and those testing for antibodies. And excusing that by saying states were confused. ACK!

June 5, 2020

Email to siblings:

Dear ones,

I hate this but I’ve got some kind of awful bug. Came on yesterday afternoon. Abdominal pain, low fever, nausea, that familiar slamming fatigue. I don’t know whether the dratted virus makes me more susceptible to all these things that keep popping up or not. But I’m gonna try to join in at the beginning of our call and see how long I can last. I fear not long.

Hardest decision is go to doc or trust my healing. Opting for latter right now.

Love to all, talk soon (briefly?)

go

Later on June 5

Email to fellow Wellesley alums re virtual 50th reunion celebration set for the following morning:

Fri, Jun 5, 2020, 7:26 PM

Dear colleagues,

I am in the ER at Mt Sinai with acute appendicitis. Surgery tonight. No way I can be there tomorrow for our panel. I am so so sorry. With Karen and Nancy, you’ve got journalism covered (hoping someone can relieve Nancy of chat moderation).

With deep regrets (multiple!),

Geneva

Plague Notes: Journal entries and correspondence from a singular time

Part 2

April 1, 2020

Feeling very odd, yesterday and today.  That stoned feeling you get when a bad cold is coming on.  Not unpleasant.  A little floaty and blurred.  I’ve been coughing and sniffling – but honestly I’ve done that, to various degrees, ever since we came back from India.  

Then last evening, I had that bit of fever.  I could tell from how hot my eyes felt in the back.  It was very low – not even 100 degrees.  I went to bed early and slept a long time – woke up with considerable muscle pain and took an aspirin, went back to sleep.  The muscle pain seems very like what I’ve had in my hip previously, especially when I’ve sat on the couch too long.

This morning, reading our breakfast poem, I felt short of breath.

So if I add all this up it could freak me out. And yet each of these things has various possible explanations.  Including perhaps fantasy, right?  Being scared is enough to make you short of breath, after all.  This is what Nell talked about – all the mind games as you try to assess your symptoms and their “progress.”

No diarrhea.  A cough that is sometimes dry but often not – often productive.  Nasal stuff.  All of those are atypical for the dreaded thing.  

We got our exercise bike yesterday, and assembled it.  Fits perfectly in the spot in the kitchen/DR where D’s desk had been.  Took the little (my former) glass desk apart and put it under our bed.  Put Diane’s plants in the living room.  Hoping they can withstand the radiator heat.  Trying to keep them off the most direct spots.  

Had a lovely little FaceTime near dinnertime, with James.  He sat alone and didn’t fiddle with the phone.  Didn’t even have a copy of the book we were reading him – the one we’d sent along for us to read together. And though we’d only read it once, he remembered it, and when we’d come across the goose, he’d honk, the goat, he’d maaa.  Then we sang Old MacDonald, and he was wonderfully boisterous.  It was such a treat. Such a gift.  

April 2

Email to Laurisa:

Well, thanks to you, I had a videoconference with my doc this AM.  I’m so grateful!  It just happened all off a sudden, there she was, signaling me to pick up for a videoconference.  “Tell me your symptoms,” she said in her brisk New Yawk way, “too much email back and forth wastes time.”  I told her my symptoms: 100 degree fever in the afternoons for three days, coughing, muscle aches at night and a weird floaty/zingy/disoriented/not unpleasant feeling.  And tired.  Very tired. She said, well it sounds like you may have the virus.  If all goes well, you’ll have a mild case.  It takes about 14 days.  You’re doing the right thing.  Get lots of rest, drink lots of water, Tylenol when your muscles ache.  Try to stay away from David.  Carry on.

That was essentially it.  

Email to family and friends:

Dear ones,

I have been having some mild symptoms for a few days, and figured I had a cold. Out of an abundance of caution, as we say these days, I had a video conference with my doctor this morning.  She listened to what I’ve been experiencing, and said I may well have the virus.  She was not at all alarmed. We agreed that it sounds like a mild case.  She recommends I continue doing what I have been — resting a lot and drinking lots of water.  Staying inside. Take Tylenol for muscle aches. Might last 14 days, she said. I had a good long sleep last night. If anything I think I may have had the thing for several days and won’t have too many more to go.  

Please don’t worry overmuch about this.  I am sure I am going to be okay.  

Love,

Geneva

April 3

Email to Laurisa:

My symptoms are SO mild.  It’s almost embarrassing.  I think we all had this notion that — you got this, you die!!!!!  I mean, we read about people feeling no symptoms, or people with mild to moderate cases, but I didn’t picture this. That I, a 72-year-old, could just feel exceedingly tired, cough a bit, have low fevers, feel a bit floaty and blurred.

I am mostly just so so tired.  I just want to lie (or sit) and read.  I do have a kind of shallowness of breathing.  Hard to say a whole sentence without taking a breath.

Anyway, I think I must be able to count at least six days in, so maybe not much more than a week more.  My fever has been getting less and less already.

Thank you for having me talk to my doc. I feel reassured that she was so quickly responsive.  I’ll never forget the look of her there, all white-robed and brisk, barking at me from the screen!

Tell me how you are.  I am going to be absolutely fine.

Later on April 3, another email to Laurisa:

I think the smell thing freaked me out, but then I reasoned that you lose your smell with colds.  I definitely seemed to be having a cold.  And sometimes you get fevers.  It sounds sillier than it felt.  I surely didn’t imagine this is what the dreaded virus would feel like!  I still can’t wrap my head around it, though I wouldn’t say I have any doubts now that I have it.

But I really do clearly have a mild/moderate case.  I just sleep and sleep.  I have a low fever every now and then.  I’m not very hungry but David feeds me good soups and the like.  He leaves them at our bedroom door. He is very loving and I am loving not having to think about anything but getting well. He gets back to everyone to let them know how I’m doing. I had to miss the O sibs Zoom today.  I just couldn’t do it.  It actually frightened me to think of having to summon up the energy to do that!  I don’t want to Zoom with anyone now for a while.

Nell is SO MUCH better!!! That heartens me, since it was just a week ago that she had the test.  For now I’m just keeping my head down (literally, most of the time) and devoting myself to beating this thing.  I think my body is doing a really good job of it.  David is doing well, no signs so far.  I really don’t want him to get it.

April 4

David, bless his heart, is playing “For Geneva” on the piano, and I’m having a “lime rickey.” He brings me this sweetened lime and fizzy water to cheer me in the afternoons

Nobody seems to know what to make of this virus. I had no idea that having such difficulty digesting things was part of it.  Though for others, it’s diarrhea.  It seems to rear its head in so many different unwanted ways, and the only clear mutual signal is absolute slam-the-head-to-the-bed exhaustion.  I’ve never felt so wasted.  

That first feeling of horror when I couldn’t smell the hand cream?  And then, when Nell got sick? I thought the world was over.  That’s what the message is.  Until it isn’t.  For the lucky ones of us.  You get it, you get through it.  God willing.  I just told David that, if a man could love me as much as to write a song like that for me, I had to live.

And Lord knows, it’s the truth. So much to live for. Watching Ben’s video of hide and seek (gawd, I wrote “sick”) — that moment when James shoots up from behind a chair, shouting: “Don’t find us, Daddy, don’t find us, Daddy!”  “James didn’t think that through thoroughly,” David said as we guffawed. And Petra, trying on all the voices and special effects available on Marco Polo to cheer us all up. Oh my goodness, I’m a lucky girl.

I know it.

But this is trying, trying stuff. To feel so depleted. And to wonder – surely this can’t be all? To wonder if, still, for all the relative moderation of your symptoms — if somehow it will turn to the horror that robs so many of their very breath.

I don’t think so for a moment.  Not now.

PS: But I am mindful, often when I can’t sleep, sometimes in the night, that I want this to be me:

“Often, the virus doesn’t start out feeling deadly, said Katrina Hawkins, an intensive care doctor at George Washington University Hospital in the District. Many patients experience mild symptoms for about a week, then recover.”

And not this:

“But in a small fraction of cases, the disease takes a sudden, dramatic turn. A dry cough and shortness of breath will give way to acute respiratory issues and dangerously low blood-oxygen levels. The body’s immune system unleashes a storm of protective cells and other molecules that can overwhelm vital organs, sometimes causing more damage than the virus itself.”

The same story says some 60 percent of deaths in New York are men.  I am even more mindful that I do not not not not  want to give this to David.

April 6, 2020

Another day, another…dilemma.  The sore eye is not pinkeye. It’s uveitis, come back to haunt my right eye, this time.  Good news is I know what to do, so the drops resume.  Let’s hope they work.  I’ll talk to Dr. Llop again in two or three days, she said at our teleconference.

Had more energy today, marginally.  But cough seems a little stickier, voice gookier.  Maybe a touch more breathless, but who’s to say.

Nell has been the essence of sweetness.  Sending me pictures of turtles. A kind of honey I should order.  Podcasts I might like.  And videos and photos of her sweet children.  What a lovely woman she is. What a loving daughter.

It’s a strange thing to be this sick but to have it mostly be about just being so dang tired.  Lethargic.  Listless.  Not moved to do anything. ANYthing.  But I realize I’m lucky if that’s the worst of it. My fevers seem mostly to have gone away. Lots of aches last night, but the Tylenol takes care of them.  Actually, I’m not sure about the fevers.  Both the last two nights I woke up in great sweats.  I thought I was too warm, but I don’t think that was it.  So maybe the fevers come in the night.  I sort of hope that’s right, since I read somewhere that it’s the fevers that really work the body up to resist the virus. 

It’s odd how little is agreed upon about it.  My doc didn’t seem to know that red eyes, pain in the eye – this is sometimes a symptom.  I found quite a bit about it once I started having it. 

Oh well. Back to listlessness, not all bad.

April 8, 2020

I didn’t write yesterday, and I’m not writing today.  But I finished “Middlemarch.” And I determined that all those sirens are not coming for me, thank the good lord. (Next up to reread: Anna Karenina.)

April 9, 2020

I want so badly to be able to size this thing up.  I fall so far short of doing it, even to myself, in moments of quiet reflection.  It seems one of the hardest things that has happened to me – to us.  It also seems preposterous that I could be getting away so easily if this is indeed COVID-19, and I am indeed 72.  Which both seem to be true.

There are moments when the terror of it pushes through the fatigue and listlessness. One afternoon in particular, when the weight on my chest seemed to be strengthening and I lay in the gloomy room on (yet another) rainy day and listened to the sirens, feeling the pain in my eye:  I thought hard about what really would happen, if this seemingly mild to moderate case of mine turned suddenly wrong.  All the normal ready-for-the-hospital notions seem ridiculous in  the harshness of this virus.  Who needs books or chargers or extra underwear when the question is whether you can breathe?  David would not be able to come with me in the ambulance, no one could visit me. All my normal “I’ve been so lucky in my life, I’d go now with regret but no feelings of having been robbed of a wonderful life” – all of them came up against “please not like this, not all alone, struggling to breathe,” hooked (if I was lucky) to a machine that would suck as much life out of me as it put in.

Pause here to rassle with CVS to get them to home-deliver my uveitis medication.

But even that quotidian detail shows how right the other part is – the getting away so easy.  800 people died in this city yesterday alone from this ghastly plague.  The black and brown died in far greater numbers – the people with less protection, shelter, ability to distance;  the people who are doing the essential work (alongside the health workers) so that the rest of us can stay cozy-safe and get our groceries and our exercise bicycles and our crossword puzzles delivered.

I almost always knew that I was going to be okay.  The moment when I couldn’t smell the Vicks VapoRub – that was the first moment of fear.  A couple of days later, the three days in a row of a fever. That was another. By the time Laurisa told me to contact my doctor, it seemed logical enough. Just get the facts on the record, whatever this is. When the doctor called me the next morning and said, well, sounds like you have it, sounds like it’s mild to moderate. Go to bed, drink a lot of water, and Tylenol for the aches and pains. 

Then when my eye began to hurt, and we researched it and it seemed a lot of people had red eyes in connection with the virus. But mine felt disturbingly like the uveitis I’d had so recently in the other eye.  So thank goodness I could start the drops. It was a huge relief because I didn’t lie there and think that I’d be in the hospital going blind at the same time I couldn’t breathe.  Although, I know, why care about blindness then?  Except of course that you hope you’ll be one of the few who comes out of the hospital.

And the sheer torpor. Lassitude. Inability to care about anything, not wanting to eat, listen to anything, write anything. Being actually terrified, that first Friday of the O sib Zoom, of the notion that I’d have to go on and act normal.  So far from attainable, that state of normal.  In a way all of that was the easy part.  The inability to do anything was so crushing a fact that there was no castigating myself for not doing anything. For once.

But honestly most of the time I had no doubt I’d be okay.  My fever never went frighteningly high.  My coughs were occasionally annoying but never terrifying, as Nell’s had been.  I was able to read and read and read.  I devoured Middlemarch. It delivered me from evil those four or five days, drew me like a barge along a canal. There was no doing anything but that, and it was such deliciousness to have it.

Wish I could tell George Eliot. 

April 11, Happy Birthday sweet Laura Grace!

I think I failed us yesterday – no writing.  

It was my best day yet.  Woke up feeling remarkably well.  Sat up quite a bit, a brief Zoom chat with the O sibs. Some good laughs and warm talks with D, with whom I am now actually sitting in the LR, albeit a good long ways away. TWO episodes of Broadchurch.  It was a turning point, an “I’ve surely got this sucker beat now” moment.

And, as such things go, of course I’m much tireder again today.  This thing like torpor. I’ve sought the right word.  Lassitude. Exhaustion. Fatigue is the usual choice, but it’s far too weak. They all need “utter” in front of them.  Arthur laughed when David said “robust fatigue,” but it’s a good phrase for it.  (D said he thought saying “extreme” would have scared them too much.)  Robust is right.  It’s so STRONG, this total sapping of your strength.  It takes over everything.  Even your mind.  Your usual tussle to quit worrying about this or that niggling thing, to replace that with thoughts about what you look forward to or what gave you joy that day: None of that goes on.  Complete takeover:  It was me, Middlemarch and the bed – sometimes sleep, often just lying there.  And the occasional terror. Not often, though. Even that couldn’t push through the robustness of the fatigue very often.

Today I still know I’ll be okay, but the day when I begin really to delve into anything is further off than I’d pictured yesterday.

Tomorrow is Easter. Imagine.  The parade will be “virtual” — along with all the Easter services. 

We’ll “tune in” to Jeff’s service, though I’d love to hear some glorious music.  But can anyone have choirs? I guess not.  But they can have organs.  We’ll listen to Jeff (10:30) then tune into Washington National Cathedral (11:15) to hear “Jesus Christ is Risen Today.”  We’ll play it here, too.  Glory, hallelujah.  I am so grateful myself to have risen from my little tributary of the valley of the shadow of death.

April 12, 2020, Easter morning!

For long I lay in bed in great dismay

We thought that I would surely pass away

But now we have arrived at Easter Day

And – hallelujah! — I am here to stay!

Haha!  This ridiculous ditty came to me immediately upon awakening this morning (only I thought “decay” rather than “dismay.” Decided on a rewrite!). 

I got my first hug this morning.  It went right in to my little heart and soul.

April 18, 2020

I posted this article on Facebook:

There will be no quick return to our previous lives, according to nearly two dozen experts. But there is hope for managing the scourge now and in the long term.

I added this comment: 

“This otherwise helpful article, like so much COVID-19 reporting, falls far short of acknowledging how woefully inadequate is our current testing. I began my own bout with the virus on March 30. Eleven straight days in bed, fever, aches, indigestion, loss of smell and utter inability to do anything but lie there. My doctor, with whom I had a video consultation at the outset, told me I likely had a mild-to-moderate case of the virus. I later wrote to ask her how I could be tested. You aren’t eligible, she said. Why? I asked. You aren’t sick enough. I have since heard personally of a dozen people who had the same experience. One woman was told that, unless you go to the ER, you aren’t sick enough to be tested. As for the value of the blood donation after having the virus, the form I filled out in my attempt to donate said I was not eligible unless I had tested positive. Now we hear repeatedly that widespread testing is essential to our attempted recovery as a nation. How did we fall this far behind? Who is in charge of seeing that we move forward? If we don’t even understand just how short we’ve fallen, we are truly screwed.”

Scores of comments showed how many share this concern about our government’s failing response.

April 20, 2020

Today I went to rest in the guest room for the first time in a looooong time.  I squeezed out some of the hand cream on the bedside table – the stuff I used almost exactly three weeks ago today.  I smelled it.  It was awful.

Thank goodness.

 

Journalism and democracy in crisis

On March 4, 2020, Geneva Overholser spoke at the Overby Center for Southern Journalism and Politics on the topic, “A Crisis in Journalism and Democracy.” She was interviewed by Charles Overby, the center’s chairman, and Greg Brock, a senior fellow there. This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Charles Overby: Welcome to the Overby Center for Southern Journalism and Politics. I’m Charles Overby. It’s my pleasure to welcome you to what I know is going to be an interesting and informative evening. I’m joined by my colleague Greg Brock, who’s a senior fellow at the center with a distinguished career in journalism. And we both have the privilege of having a conversation with Geneva Overholser. Geneva was an editor at Gannett, and she has done so many things in journalism. For all the distinguished people that we’ve had here, I can’t think of another person who has done more different things in an excellent way in the field of journalism.

Geneva was editor of the Des Moines Register when it won the Pulitzer Prize gold medal for Public Service. She was on the editorial board of the New York Times. She was ombudsman for the Washington Post. You know, any one of these things would probably be a capstone for anybody else.  She was director of the Annenberg School of Journalism at the University of Southern California. She was chairman of the board of the Pulitzer Prize. She’s really done it all in journalism, and the fact that she and her husband David Westphal, who’s here with us tonight and also was a distinguished journalist. But they’ve come here to Oxford and Ole Miss to share insights with us. It’s a terrific thing Geneva has been spending time, after you’ve had such a distinguished career, thinking about some of the major issues before us. And we titled this program tonight, “A Crisis in Journalism and Democracy.” Sometimes, titles can be overhyped and so, Geneva, I would ask you just to get started; is there in fact a crisis in journalism and democracy and if so are they related?

Geneva Overholser:  Thank you, Charles, and thank you for that lovely introduction. I think what it really means is I’m old but I’m glad to be here. And I do think this is not one statement that is overhyped. We do have a crisis and I bet most of us would agree that these two crises are related. There is no question that good journalism is good for democracy. It helps people understand their communities and helps people come together. Healthy communities have often gotten that way in substantial part because they had good newspapers and there’s no question that the demise — it’s  way too strong a word — but the enormous weakening of journalism that we have seen particularly locally has contributed to a sense that people are not confident about what they know. Many people are divided because the sources of information have fractionalized.

Continue reading Journalism and democracy in crisis

Our most important news organization is quietly pulling off a revolution

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The evidence has been building for weeks – no, for months – but in the past few days it has struck me with a thrilling clarity: The New York Times is giving us news – good and bad, soft and hard — about a richly representative array of Americans. That hoary presumption that all the news that’s fit to print is male (and white) seems at long last to be under serious challenge.

Last Friday’s Weekend Arts II section, and yesterday’s Sunday Business section ( I read the paper online AND in print, and I sense that this shift may be more evident in print) provided delicious examples. Arts (April 20, 2018) had a lead story on the artist Adrian Piper and her new show at the Museum of Modern Art. Also on the cover was a conversation with the U.S. poet laureate Tracy K. Smith and Jacqueline Woodson, the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. Inside, the riches continued: a wonderful gathering of faces (and topics) from all over the American spectrum. Continue reading Our most important news organization is quietly pulling off a revolution

Can we have a better sexual-harassment conversation?

Boy, is this ever a moment: Sexual harassment has come out of the dark.  That’s a great thing. But it’s worrisome. too. The conversations – and the events – are raging like wildfire on terrain that is utterly unfamiliar. Could we think about some guidelines to keep things as fair and truthful as possible? Some considerations to help us generate more light and less heat?

Here are four possibilities:

  1. Accusations should not be anonymous. We should do everything we can (I’m looking at you, fellow journalists) to encourage the people who make sexual harassment accusations to do so under their own names. This honors a longtime journalistic commitment to render information verifiable and to prevent people from harming others with impunity. It’s a good rule for society to follow more broadly. There will be exceptions on this difficult topic (several women making credible claims together anonymously against a very powerful public man?) but the fewer the exceptions, the more progress we’ll make. The fact that so many women have been willing to go on the record lately is an enormous part of why we are where we are today.
  1. Not all sins are equivalent. The term sexual harassment seems to be stretching to cover an awful lot of ground: From a wink and a whistle, through an uncomfortable conversation or an unwelcome kiss, to an erection pressed against you, having your breasts grabbed or a hand thrown under your skirt – all the way up to sexual assault. Throwing all offenders together is unfair and inaccurate. It is essential that we get as close as we can to the truth of each report, uncomfortable as the details may be.

Continue reading Can we have a better sexual-harassment conversation?