Tonight, Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band opened their Land of Hope & Dreams Tour in Manchester, England. Bruce launched this run of shows with three statements about the situation in the United States, with comments preceding his songs “Land of Hope and Dreams,” “House of a Thousand Guitars” and “My City of Ruins.”
The biggest news over the weekend was silence: the silence of Republicans. They refused to disavow White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller’s statement that the administration is looking at suspending the writ of habeas corpus, that is, essentially declaring martial law. They have also stayed quiet after the administration announced it was planning to accept a gift of a $400 million luxury Boeing 747-8 plane from the Qatari royal family. President Donald J. Trump would use the plane as Air Force One during the rest of his presidency and take it with him when he leaves office.
This is in keeping with the refusal of 53 Republican senators to answer questions from Rolling Stone’s Ryan Bort after NBC’s Kristen Welker asked Trump, “Don’t you need to uphold the Constitution of the United States, as president?” and he answered: “I don’t know.” Only Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) went on the record, posting on social media: “Following the Constitution is not a suggestion. It is a guiding force for all of us who work on behalf of the American people. Do you agree?”
It seems as if Republicans who are not on board the MAGA train are hoping the courts or reality will stop Trump’s authoritarian overreach. As Steve Vladeck noted on Friday in One First, there is “near-universal consensus…that only Congress can suspend habeas corpus—and that unilateral suspensions by the President are per se unconstitutional.” In addition, Miller’s insistence that it would be appropriate to suspend the writ of habeas corpus because the United States is under attack—a position Trump echoed yesterday when he posted, “Our Country has been INVADED by 21,000,000 Illegal Aliens, many of whom are Murderers and Criminals of the Highest Order”—has failed repeatedly in court.
Reality will trip up Trump’s plan to take possession of the Qatari gift. As David Kurtz noted this morning in Talking Points Memo, retrofitting the luxury plane with the defense capabilities and security protections necessary for Air Force One will take years, not months. (Air Force One is not a specific airplane; it is the call sign given to any Air Force aircraft carrying the president of the United States).
Still, the Republicans’ silence matters. Whether Trump’s plans are all possible is not the point: he and the members of his administration are deliberately attacking the fundamental principles of our democratic republic. That lawmakers who swore an oath to uphold those principles are choosing to remain silent makes them complicit in that attack.
The framers of the U.S. Constitution recognized that democratic government was a new departure from a world in which the world’s monarchs made deals amongst themselves. They placed strong guardrails around the behavior of future chief executives to make sure they would not sell the American people out to foreign leaders. “[N]o Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under [the United States], shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State,” they wrote in the Constitution. An emolument is a payment. (continued on the website on page 2)
In the NYT. Mr. Hawley is a Republican senator from Missouri.
Polls show Democrats down in the dumps at their lowest approval level in decades, but we Republicans are having an identity crisis of our own, and you can see it in the tug of war over President Trump’s “one big, beautiful bill.” The nub of the conflict: Will Republicans be a majority party of working people, or a permanent minority speaking only for the C suite?
Mr. Trump has promised working-class tax cuts and protection for working-class social insurance, such as Medicaid. But now a noisy contingent of corporatist Republicans — call it the party’s Wall Street wing — is urging Congress to ignore all that and get back to the old-time religion: corporate giveaways, preferences for capital and deep cuts to social insurance.
This wing of the party wants Republicans to build our big, beautiful bill around slashing health insurance for the working poor. But that argument is both morally wrong and politically suicidal.
Let’s begin with the facts of the matter. Medicaid is a federal program that provides health care to low-income Americans in partnership with state governments. Today it serves over 70 million Americans, including well over one million residents of Missouri, the state I represent.
As for Missouri, it is one of 40 Medicaid expansion states — because our voters wanted it that way. In 2020, the same year Mr. Trump carried the Missouri popular vote by a decisive margin, voters mandated that the state expand Medicaid coverage to working-class individuals unable to afford health care elsewhere. Voters went so far as to inscribe that expansion in our state constitution. Now some 21 percent of Missourians benefit from Medicaid or CHIP, the companion insurance program for lower-income children. And many of our rural hospitals and health providers depend on the funding from these programs to keep their doors open.
All of which means this: If Congress cuts funding for Medicaid benefits, Missouri workers and their children will lose their health care. And hospitals will close. It’s that simple. And that pattern will replicate in states across the country.
One of my constituents, a married mother of five, contacted me to explain why Medicaid is vital to her 8-year-old daughter, who depends on a feeding tube to survive. Formula, pump rentals, feeding extensions and other treatments cost $1,500 a month; prescriptions nearly double that cost. These expenses aren’t covered by private insurance. The mother wrote to me, “Without Medicaid, we would lose everything — our home, our vehicles, and eventually, our daughter.”
Congress should be doing everything possible to aid these working families, to make their health care better and more affordable. We should cap prescription drug costs, as I have recently proposed. We should give every family in America with children a hefty tax cut. What we should not do is eliminate their health care.
Mr. Trump himself has been crystal clear on this point. Since taking office he has repeatedly rejected calls for Medicaid benefit cuts. Just the other week, he said, “We are doing absolutely nothing to hurt Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security. Nothing at all.”
And for good reason. The president understands who his voters are. Recent polling shows that 64 percent of Republicans hold a favorable view of Medicaid. About one in six have personally been on the program. Meanwhile, more than 80 percent of Americans oppose significant cuts to Medicaid and over half — half — have a personal or family connection to the Medicaid program.
It’s safe to say the Trump coalition was not pulling the lever for Medicaid cuts in November. Mike Johnson, the House speaker, finally woke up to this fact last week, when he withdrew his support from one of the most aggressive reductions to Medicaid on the table. But many of my House and Senate colleagues keep pushing for substantial cuts, and the House will begin to hash out its differences in negotiations this week.
My colleagues have cited the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal, which has been pushing that line for months, including in a recent editorial that inveighed against my opposition to Medicaid benefit cuts. But following The Journal’s prescriptions would represent the end of any chance of us becoming a working-class party.
Republicans need to open their eyes: Our voters support social insurance programs. More than that, our voters depend on those programs. And there’s a reason for this that Republicans would do well to ponder. Our economy is increasingly unfriendly to working people and their families.
For the better part of 50 years, working wages have been flat in real terms. Working people cannot afford to get married when they want to, have the number of children they want to or raise those children as they would like. These days, they can barely afford to put a roof over their kids’ heads, to say nothing of health care.
Both Democrats and Republicans share the blame for this state of affairs, which is one big reason Mr. Trump got elected. He promised to shake up the status quo. Republicans in Congress should pay attention. Our voters not only want us to protect the social insurance they need to get by; they also want us to fight for a better life — for a better economy with the kinds of jobs and wages that allow working people to get married and start families, to buy homes and have a stake in their towns and neighborhoods.
That’s the promise of American life. If Republicans want to be a working-class party — if we want to be a majority party — we must ignore calls to cut Medicaid and start delivering on America’s promise for America’s working people.
Josh Hawley is a Republican senator from Missouri.
The average pediatric wheelchair can cost thousands of dollars. And when children grow and their needs evolve — or a wheelchair gets damaged — those costs multiply.
So, the team at MakeGood NOLA, a New Orleans-based adaptive design lab, has made something that can transform the world for disabled children.
“Introducing the world’s first fully 3D-printed wheelchair,” MakeGood founder and president Noam Platt started a recent social media video.
The new 3D-printed chair by MakeGood. Photo courtesy of MakeGood NOLA
He wheels a small, almost toy-like lime-green wheelchair into the frame, complete with a matching harness, suitable for children ages 2 to 8.
“Everything from the body, to the wheels, to the tires, the seat, and even the straps, all were 3D printed on a regular Bambu Labs A1 machine,” Platt continued.
This means the design is fully compatible with a regular 3D printer anyone can have in their home.
“We designed this to be modular and easy to make,” Platt continued. “Really, anyone with a 3D printer and some filament can download the files and print it.”
Ed Note: I hope you’ve had a chance to read Erma Bombeck’s book, “Motherhood, the Second Oldest Profession.” It’s a wonderful wise, funny and poignant collection of essays.
Those of us who are truly lucky have more than one mother. They are the cool aunts, the elderly ladies, the family friends, even the mentors who whip us into shape. By my count, I’ve had at least eight mothers. One of the most important was Sally Adams Bascom Augenstern.
Mrs. A., a widow who had played cutthroat bridge with my grandmother in the 1950s, lived near my family in Maine in the summer. I began vacuuming and weeding and painting for her when I was about 12, but it wasn’t long before my time at her house stopped being a job. She was bossy, demanding, sharp as a tack…and funny and thoughtful, and she remembered most of the century. She would sit in her rocking chair by the sunny window in the kitchen, shelling peas and telling me stories while I washed the floor with a hand sponge to spin out the time.
Sally (not Sarah) Bascom was born on December 25, 1903. (For folks in Maine keeping score, that made her almost a full year older than Millard Robinson, a fact she loathed.) She was the oldest of six children and spent her youth taking care of the younger ones. When I once asked her what was the most important historical event in her lifetime, this woman who had lived through the Depression and both world wars answered without hesitation: “the washing machine.” It had freed her and her mother from constant laundry. She could finally have some leisure time, which she spent listening to the radio and driving in cars with boys. Because her mother always needed her at home, it was not she, but all her younger siblings, who went to college. By the time Mrs. A. was an adult, she was certain she wanted no part of motherhood.
Mrs. A. never forgave her sister for driving her Model T through a field. She saved aluminum foil not because of WWII, but because of WWI. She supported herself and refused to marry until she met an older man who offered to take her traveling; they had a quick wedding and set off for Banff, where they looked at mountains and watched the bears pilfer trash.
She destroyed her knees playing tennis, so she would weed the garden by staggering to a lawn chair set up there. She loved snapdragons and nicotiana, veronica and irises and wild roses. After Mr. Augenstern died, she drove herself to and from Florida once a year in a giant old Cadillac with “Arrive Alive” on the license plate holder; she drove like a bat out of hell. She played bridge with terrifying intensity. And she always refused to be seen in public unless she was in a dress with her hair pinned up and her pearls on.
Mrs. A. laughed at me when I fell in love with history and tried to tell her that people changed the world because of their beliefs. “Follow the money, Heather,” said the woman whose income depended on her knowledge of the stock market. “Don’t pay attention to what they say; pay attention to who’s getting the money.” I listened. And then I learned as I watched her lose my grandmother’s generation and then work to make friends with my mother’s generation. And when they, too, died, she set out, in her eighties, to make friends with my generation. Every day was a new day.
Mrs. A. left me her linens, her gardening coat, and this photo of her and her siblings: Frances (who died young), Phyllis, Carlton, Guy, and Nathan. She also left me ideas about how to approach both history and life. I’ve never met a woman more determined never to be a mother, but I’m pretty sure that plan was one of the few things at which she failed.
Thinking of her, and all the wonderful women like her who mother without the title, on Mother’s Day 2025.
Twelve years ago, a Dutch nursing home — the Woon-en Zorgcentrum Humanitas Deventer — implemented a unique program.
In exchange for 30 hours of their time and companionship each month, local college students could live in the care center rent-free.
“It started with the idea of becoming the warmest home for seniors in Deventer,” Gea Sijpkes, director of WZC Humanitas, said in a statement. “And we wanted to do that with the energy of the youth.”
For Sijpkes, it’s a win-win. Recent studies find that intergenerational friendships can mitigate stress, lower depression, and boost self-esteem in older people.
“At the same time, there was a shortage of student housing, which meant that more and more young people were staying at home. I then thought: why don’t I combine the two?”
Image via Woon-en Zorgcentrum Humanitas Deventer / Facebook
The director went on to explain that “the students are not caregivers” but instead “good neighbors.” (continue on page 2 in Skyline Happenings)
Ed note from ChatGPT: “Quo vadis?” is Latin for “Where are you going?” or more literally, “Where are you marching?”
It’s famously associated with a Christian tradition involving Saint Peter. According to the apocryphal Acts of Peter, as Peter was fleeing Rome to escape persecution, he encountered a vision of Jesus. Peter asked, “Quo vadis, Domine?” (“Where are you going, Lord?”), and Jesus replied, “I am going to Rome to be crucified again.” This prompted Peter to return to Rome, where he was eventually martyred.
The phrase has since come to symbolize a moment of decision or turning point, especially one involving moral or spiritual direction.
From HCR:
Today, on the second day of the papal conclave, the cardinal electors—133 members of the College of Cardinals who were under the age of 80 when Pope Francis died on April 21—elected a new pope. They chose 69-year-old Cardinal Robert Prevost, who was born in Chicago, thus making him the first pope chosen from the United States. But he spent much of his ministry in Peru and became a citizen of Peru in 2015, making him the first pope from Peru, as well.
New popes choose a papal name to signify the direction of their papacy, and Prevost has chosen to be known as Pope Leo XIV. This is an important nod to Pope Leo XIII, who led the church from 1878 to 1903 and was the father of modern Catholic social teaching. He called for the church to address social and economic issues, and emphasized the dignity of individuals, the common good, community, and taking care of marginalized individuals.
In the midst of the Gilded Age, Leo XIII defended the rights of workers and said that the church had not just the duty to speak about justice and fairness, but also the responsibility to make sure that such equities were accomplished. In his famous 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, translated as “Of New Things,” Leo XIII rejected both socialism and unregulated capitalism, and called for the state to protect the rights of individuals. (continued on page 2 on Skyline Happenings website)
There is a growing, concerning movement undermining one of the most well established scientific theories there is: germ theory, the idea that germs—like viruses and bacteria—cause disease.
But it’s subtle.
Outright denial of germ theory is still a fringe idea: very few deny that viruses and bacteria exist. Rather, it’s the effect of germs—whether germs are the true cause of an illness—that is increasingly being called into question.
What germ theory is and isn’t
When germ theory was first proposed in the 1800s, scientists didn’t have the modern scientific tools we have today, and there was genuine debate over how infectious diseases like cholera were transmitted. Some thought it was microscopic germs, while others thought it was “bad vapors” (miasma theory). But that debate has been long settled. Microscopic germs like Vibrio cholerae (the bacteria that causes cholera), measles, influenza, and polio all cause infections that make people sick
Of course, there is more to germs than just disease. Some germs are good for us—like the many germs that make up the microbiome in our gut. And some germs cause disease only some of the time, like the MRSA bacteria that I am almost certainly colonized with as a healthcare worker. And sometimes, other health conditions—like those with diabetes or conditions that weaken the immune system—make people more susceptible to infectious germs.
Germ theory does not say all germs are bad, nor does it say germs are responsible for every disease known to humans, nor does it say that any exposure to a germ is a guarantee of illness. It says that certain germs can cause infections that make people sick. And when that happens, the germ really is to blame.
A new subtle form of germ theory denial
But this idea is starting to be rejected and replaced with a new, inaccurate view of why infections happen and what we should do about them.
This new version of germ theory denial still acknowledges that germs are real, but says they’re not all that much of a threat for a healthy individual, and not the real problem causing disease. Instead, when someone catches an infection, the person’s immune system and lifestyle are blamed—an unhealthy diet, lack of exercise, exposure to “environmental toxins,” or underlying conditions are allegedly the “true” cause of disease because they damaged the immune system. (continued)
Hello Seattle Stand Up for Science Community!We are excited for you to join us at our next rally, Science for All, will be coming soon on Sunday, 5/18, from 9-11am! Our goal is to cover as much ground as possible between the Ferry Terminal and the Sculpture Garden along the Seattle Waterfront.
This event seeks to demonstrate our community’s support for scientists and scientific research, public workers, and public lands. We will bring scientists and the people that benefit from science and research (so, everyone) to the waterfront, creating a line of supporters from the ferry terminal to the sculpture garden. This event will feature several “Ask a Scientist” stations, where you can ask scientists your most pressing (and imaginative!) questions about their work, their field, and why they do what they do! We will also have postcard writing stations for you to contact your representatives, a “passport” that kids (and adults) can get stamped after visiting each theme area, sign-making and costumery, and more! Bring your friends, family, and kids for a morning of fun, action, and advocacy in support of science, scientists, public workers, and research. More details can be found here, but in the meantime, make sure to follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Bluesky. See you there!
From Frank C.: At yesterday’s meeting of the First Hill Improvement Association’s Urban Design& Public Space committee, we received a brief update on the Harborview Hospital renovation project. Without getting into much detail, I think it is fair to say that the new construction and renovations that are planned will have some impact on our neighborhood. It looks as if the process of naming the firm to do the design and construction will be later this year, with a “guestimate” that construction will beginning 2028.
In his last months, Pope Francis blessed an effort to transform the vehicle he used when he visited the West Bank in 2014 into a mobile health clinic to treat Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip.
Pope Francis in his popemobile in Manger Square in the West Bank city of Bethlehem in 2014.Credit…Vincenzo Pinto/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
When Pope Francis visited Bethlehem in the Israeli-occupied West Bank in 2014, he crisscrossed the traditional birthplace of Jesus in a white popemobile manufactured especially for his visit.
Now, the vehicle is being transformed into a mobile health clinic to treat ill and wounded Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip — an initiative that Pope Francis blessed in the months before he died.
While the clinic will serve only a limited number of Palestinians in Gaza, Pope Francis’s personal involvement in the project reflected his commitment to Palestinian civilians caught in the crossfire between Israel and Hamas, particularly children, in more than 18 months of war.
“The papamobile is a very concrete sign that Pope Francis is concerned with all the suffering of children in Gaza, even after his death!” Cardinal Anders Arborelius of Sweden said in an email on Monday.
The idea to recreate the popemobile as a health clinic came from leaders of Caritas, a Catholic organization, and Cardinal Arborelius approached Francis with it. The Swedish cardinal is a contender to become the next pope after Francis.
The popemobile, a converted Mitsubishi, was donated by President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority for Francis’ visit. It was given to the Franciscan order afterward, and then to Caritas after Francis blessed its use in Gaza. (continued on the website)
A photograph of the popemobile at a garage where it will be transformed into a mobile health clinic was made available by Caritas Jerusalem.Credit…Caritas Jerusalem
In November 2024, representatives of Francis said that he welcomed the initiative, according to two letters from senior Vatican officials reviewed by The New York Times.
“I am pleased to convey His Holiness’s approval of the project, together with the assurance of his prayers for all associated with this charitable endeavor,” Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra, a senior aide to Francis, wrote to Cardinal Arborelius.
The popemobile will be staffed with a physician and a nurse and equipped with medical instruments to offer children basic care, including rapid tests for infections, suture kits and syringes, according to Anton Asfar, the secretary general of Caritas Jerusalem. Caritas Jerusalem has around 100 staff members in Gaza providing aid to Palestinians.
Preparing the vehicle for use, including the installation of blastproof windows, will take roughly three weeks, Mr. Asfar said. Caritas Jerusalem, he added, will soon request approval from Israeli authorities to deliver it to Gaza.
COGAT, the Israeli government agency responsible for coordinating the entry of aid into the enclave, did not respond to a request for comment about whether Israel intended to allow the passage of the popemobile. Israeli authorities have enforced a total blockade on humanitarian supplies and commercial goods for the past two months, saying that the ban was meant to pressure Hamas to release more of the hostages they have been holding since the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
Francis was one of the most outspoken prominent supporters of a cease-fire in Gaza and the delivery of humanitarian aid. He also called for the release of hostages, met with their relatives and condemned the Hamas-led attack, which left some 1,200 people dead and about 250 abducted.
“Yesterday, children were bombed,” Francis said in a December 2024 address. “This is cruelty. This is not war.”
The Israeli military has said its bombing campaign has targeted Hamas militants and officials and weapons infrastructure, and has blamed the militant group for exposing civilians to danger by embedding with them.
The popemobile will be carrying a message of hope and solidarity, but it will also be offering needed services, said Peter Brune, the secretary general of Caritas Sweden.
“It’s symbolic,” he said, “but it’s also practical.”
Monsignor Benoni “Don Ben” Ambarus, who was the official responsible for managing Francis’ charity and prison pastoral care in Rome, said that before his death, the pope donated €200,000 (or about $226,400 USD) to a juvenile prison in Rome: Casal del Marmo.
Not only was it nearly the last of his personal wealth, but it went to fund a pasta factory — Pastificio Futuro, or “Future Pasta Factory” — that operates in the prison.
“I told him that we have a big mortgage for this pasta factory and if we can reduce it we will lower the price of pasta, sell more and hire more boys,” Ambarus told La Repubblica newspaper.
“He replied, ‘Almost all my money is finished, but I still have something in my account.’ And he gave me €200,000.”
Throughout his time as pope, he was entitled to a papal salary of some €30,000 a month, but Pope Francis refused to collect it. Instead, he deferred it to various organizations, churches, and groups in need.
Casal del Marmo held a particularly special place in the history of Pope Francis. In 2013, he celebrated his first Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday there.
And in 2023, he returned to wash the feet of 12 young inmates.
It was a ritual that recalls the foot-washing Jesus performed on his 12 apostles at their Last Supper before his crucifixion. In this Holy Thursday moment, Pope Francis assured the youth of their dignity, adding that “any of us” can fall into sin.
Pope Francis’ commitment to people in poverty and prison was prominent throughout his papacy, demonstrating his belief that the Catholic Church should help and provide attention to people living on the margins of society.
“In society, we profit from each other … how many injustices [are there], how many people without work, without money to buy what they need? If that’s not me, it’s for the grace of God.”
Ambarus said that even in his tired and frail state, Pope Francis would be remembered as someone who fought for the rights of prisoners.
“He (fought for) them until his last breath,” Ambarus told La Repubblica. “That is why the prisoners saw hope in him. A father died for them.”
Ambarus also condemned the Roman legal system for failing to respond to Pope Francis’s calls for mercy toward inmates.
“[Pope Francis] called for more to be done to restore dignity to people … But there was no direct result of his appeals. Like on the reduction of sentences,” Ambarus added.
“A great sadness enveloped the prisoners when they realised that the institutions had done nothing, not even a small gesture. Small gestures — a letter, a conversation, practical help with shoes or clothing — can reignite the human dignity that prison walls so often extinguish.”
But Pope Francis will be remembered far beyond a gesture. The pasta factory in Casal del Marmo received his blessing years ago, employing inmates to work toward reintegration in society and prevent recidivism.
“It all goes back to March 2013,” Alberto Mochi Onori told El Mundo, when the pope visited the prison for Holy Thursday for the first time.
“At the end of the visit, he delivered a brief homily, proclaiming: ‘Do not let yourselves be robbed of hope!’”
After a prison chaplain spoke with the Pontiff on this visit, Onori said Pope Francis declared: “We have to do something for these kids.” The pope later donated the initial funding to start the pasta factory.
“The profile of those who come here is usually people who don’t have their head in the right place. If they don’t have an alternative, they fall back,” Carmine, a 25-year-old former inmate at the facility, told El Mundo.
“But when the kids come here, they come with one mindset and leave with another. One of wanting to work and get organized. The project works very well. Working gives you hope.”
By Susan Dominus in the NYT Magazine (thanks to my Buddhist friend Howard P.)
Growing up in Maryland, Sonja Lyubomirsky could see that her mother was unhappy. When Sonja was 9, her parents moved the family from Moscow, where her mother taught literature at a high school, to the United States, hoping to offer their children more opportunities. In their new country, Sonja’s mother could no longer teach, so she cleaned houses to help the family get by. She missed her old career; she longed for her home country; she was frequently teary. She was unhappy on a Tolstoyan scale. Sonja understood her nostalgia and frustrations, which were compounded by a miserable marriage, but she still wondered: Were Russians just less happy than Americans? Was her mother destined to be unhappy anywhere, or was this a result of life circumstances? What, if anything, might make someone like her mother happier, if not wholly content?
In 1985, Lyubomirsky left for college at Harvard, where, her adviser reminded her years later, she frequently brought up the topic of happiness, even though his expertise was in the social psychology of the stock market. At the time, the study of happiness was far from the wellness mega-field it has become today. In the ’60s, a researcher making a rare foray into the subject noted that very little progress on the theory of happiness had been made since Aristotle weighed in two millenniums earlier. That paper concluded that youth and modest life aspirations were key components of happiness (findings later called into question).
Many scientists at the time believed that happiness was essentially random: It was not something to cultivate, like a garden, or to reach for, by setting and achieving meaningful goals. It was something that happened to people, by virtue of their genes, their circumstances or both. “It may be that trying to be happier is as futile as trying to be taller and therefore is counterproductive,” the authors of a 1996 study concluded.
When Lyubomirsky arrived at graduate school for social psychology at Stanford in 1989, academic research on happiness was only beginning to gain legitimacy. Ed Diener, a psychologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who would eventually be known for his work in the field, waited until he was granted tenure before tackling the subject, despite harboring a longstanding interest in it. Lyubomirsky, too, was wary of choosing happiness as a specialty — she was a woman in science eager to be taken seriously, and anything in the realm of “emotions” was considered somewhat soft. Nonetheless, on her first day of graduate school at Stanford, in 1989, following an energizing conversation with her adviser, she resolved to make happiness her focus.
Lyubomirsky began with the basic question of why some people are happier than others. A few years earlier, Diener published a survey of the existing research, which touched on the kinds of behaviors that happy people seemed inclined to engage in — religious observance, for example, or socializing and exercising. But the studies, which sometimes had conflicting findings, yielded no clear consensus. Lyubomirsky’s own research, over many years, pointed toward the importance of a person’s mind-set: Happy people tended to refrain from comparing themselves with others, had more positive perceptions of others, found ways to be satisfied with a range of choices and did not dwell on the negative.
But Lyubomirsky knew she couldn’t separate cause and effect: Did being happy encourage a healthy mind-set, or did adopting that mind-set make people happier? Were people like her mother doomed to live with whatever their natural level of happiness was — or could they take control of their mood, if they only knew how? Even if you could change your mind-set, that process seemed to take a long time — people spend years in therapy trying (and often failing) to do it — and Lyubomirsky wondered whether there were simpler, easier behaviors they could adopt that would quickly enhance their sense of well-being. She decided to put it to the test.
Lyubomirsky started by studying some of the habits and practices that were commonly believed to be mood boosters: random acts of kindness and expressions of gratitude. Each week for six weeks, she had students perform five acts of kindness — donating blood, for example, or helping another student with a paper — and found that they were happier by the end of that period than the students in her control group. She asked a separate group of students to contemplate, once a week, the things they were grateful for, like “my mom” or “AOL Instant Messenger.” They, too, were happier after doing so than a control group. The changes in well-being weren’t particularly large in either study, but Lyubomirsky found it remarkable that so small and low-cost an intervention could improve the quality of students’ lives. In 2005, she published a paper based on those studies arguing that people did have considerable control over how happy they were. (continued)
Ed note: I’ve not noticed (yet) a tendency of some to infantilize the way they talk to me, but I have overheard such talk to others. Perhaps I’m not frail enough yet. I hope it won’t happen to me or to you. Even if well intended such talk is condescending and limits our humanity.
A prime example of elderspeak: Cindy Smith was visiting with her father in his assisted living apartment in Roseville, Calif. An aide who was trying to induce him to do something — Ms. Smith no longer remembers exactly what — said, “Let me help you, sweetheart.”
“He just gave her The Look — under his bushy eyebrows — and said, ‘What, are we getting married?’” recalled Ms. Smith, who had a good laugh, she said.
Her father was then 92, a retired county planner and a World War II veteran; macular degeneration had reduced the quality of his vision and he used a walker to get around, but he remained cognitively sharp.
“He wouldn’t normally get too frosty with people,” Ms. Smith said. “But he did have the sense that he was a grown up, and he wasn’t always treated like one.”
People understand almost intuitively what “elderspeak” means. “It’s communication to older adults that sounds like baby talk,” said Clarissa Shaw, a dementia care researcher at the University of Iowa College of Nursing and a coauthor of a recent article that helps researchers document its use.
“It arises from an ageist assumption of frailty, incompetence and dependence.”
Its elements include inappropriate endearments. “Elderspeak can be controlling, kind of bossy, so to soften that message there’s ‘honey,’ ‘dearie,’ ‘sweetie,’” said Kristine Williams, a nurse gerontologist at the University of Kansas School of Nursing and another coauthor.
“We have negative stereotypes of older adults, so we change the way we talk.” (continued)
Danny Westneat- Seattle Times columnist (thanks to Mary Lou P.)
Seattle Times columnist Writing this column for two decades, one thing I’ve noticed is that nothing hacks some people off more than good news.
This is especially true of good news about crime. Reports of falling crime are uniquely narrative-upsetting and denial-triggering. People who regularly cite police data when crime is rising simply do not accept this same data when it goes the other way.
It’s odd when these are the police themselves. But this is how I ended up in a Seattle police union video wearing an acorn on my head.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about how crime finally appeared to be dropping this year, according to the police’s own stats. As a result, I said the Seattle Police Officers Guild ought to stop portraying Seattle as a lawless hellhole on its social media feed.
The head of the union didn’t appreciate the suggestion.
“It’s disgraceful,” said Mike Solan, president of the guild, during a segment directed at me on his YouTube show, “Hold the Line.” “It’s not journalism. … It’s sloppy reporting … because crime is through the roof.”
He dubbed me “Danny Westnut,” displaying a photo mashup of me wearing an acorn on my head. Get it? The fifth graders who first called me that back in ’76 would be pleased.
He did make an argument that crime isn’t really down, it only appears to be down due to a drop in calls. People aren’t calling because they don’t think an officer will come.
“Overall 911 calls from the community for public safety services are dropping, and so the conclusion is that, ‘Hey, crime must be dropping,’” Solan said. “Well, that’s completely opposite to what the reality is.”
“The stats are going to be manipulated,” he went on. “But if you drive around, it doesn’t take rocket science to see that public safety is still a major problem in this city. In fact, it’s still at crisis levels.”
Seattle has plenty of problems, it’s true. But is it right that 911 call volume is masking the truth about crime?
Attempting to commit some journalism, I asked a crime data expert, Jeff Asher of AH Datalytics, who has testified before the state Legislature about Washington crime problems. He said it’s possible that call volume could affect rates for some property crimes, which are often not reported. But not for serious or violent crimes.
“Most 911 calls aren’t reporting crimes anyway,” he said.
He suggested focusing on four crimes with the highest report rates. These are homicide (which is reported near 100% of the time, because there’s a body); shootings that cause injury or death; car theft; and robbery.
So, through four months of 2025 in Seattle, homicide is down 25%. Shootings are down 22%, car theft is down 32% and robbery is down 26%, according to police data. Compared to the year Seattle hit a 30-year high for violent crime, 2022, the declines are eye-popping: Homicide is -50%, shootings -41%, car theft -20%, and robbery -36%.
Also: Call volume from the Seattle public is down compared to prepandemic. But it’s actually up through four months this year compared to high-crime 2022, according to the city’s dispatch dashboard.
“We’re seeing enormous drops in crime, pretty much everywhere around the country,” Asher said. “That’s not a reporting issue. Those crimes are actually down.”
“King County just experienced the safest start to a year that we’ve had in five years,” says King County Prosecutor Leesa Manion. She announced a 35% drop in gun violence countywide last Tuesday.
Huge crime swings like these are unusual, and so big they’d be impossible to mask, Asher said.
Why is it happening?
“Nobody really knows,” he said. “We still don’t know why crime fell in the 1990s, and that’s one of the most studied periods in all of crime.”
He cautioned that these comparisons are backward-looking and across short time frames. By the end of the year, we might no longer be talking about 35% improvements, or any improvement at all.
It also doesn’t mean there aren’t going to be events that shock the senses, such as this past week when someone sprayed bullets into a public park in Rainier Beach, grazing a woman and an 8-yearold girl.
I did see, though, that the mayor of Baltimore was tweeting about how they had only five murders in April — the fewest in a single month in that city’s recorded history. The mayor credited the work of the Baltimore Police Department.
Well, Seattle had only one murder in April, back on April 2. That means we went the next 28 days of April with zero. Five makes the national news out of Baltimore, while in Seattle, which has 200,000 more people, one is apparently not news, or not to be believed at all.
Asher said police unions have “an obvious incentive to highlight rising crime” — to push the city to hire more officers. But I’d think there’d also be reason to cheer when crime falls, à la Baltimore. The Seattle cops could be saying, “See, we’re doing a great job.” Rather than what they are saying, which is that the good news is fake.
The narrative that crime only goes up is one of the most potent in politics. This past week, President Donald Trump issued an executive order to “unleash high-impact police forces” in America’s cities. The order alleged there is such an urban crime crisis that “excess military and national security assets” need to be deployed to the cities.
“Millions of Americans live in fear, worried that surging crime will destroy their lives, homes or businesses,” the White House said.
Except crime isn’t surging! Trump could be taking credit for what are record-breaking crime declines. But that doesn’t get the right-wing blood pumping. Nor would it further the continued demonization of left-wing cities like Seattle.
Call me a nut — and they did — but why not be happy that crime has eased, at least for a minute? When Seattle crime soared so much in 2022 and 2023, I wrote 16 columns about it. (I counted.) For that I got called a right-winger by the progressive left. Now that it’s falling, I’m writing about that, and being denounced as an “activist” and “a pretty staunch cop-hater” by the head of the police union.
As for that acorn the cops put on my head, those nuts come from the oak tree. That’s America’s national tree. Oaks are durable, resolute and, above all, live in the real world. So, I’ll take it.
Danny Westneat: dwestneat@seattletimes.com. Danny Westneat takes an opinionated look at the Puget Sound region’s news, people and politics.
I had thought to post a picture tonight and then realized that today was the 151st running of the Kentucky Derby. The event was launched in 1875 as horse racing—with its famous Black jockeys, who won more than half of the first 28 derbies—was gaining an audience in the U.S.
A horse-based event gives me the opportunity to repost a piece my friend Michael S. Green and I wrote together a number of years ago on Ten Famous American Horses. While it has no deep meaning, it does illustrate that there is history all around us, a theme you’ll hear more about from me soon. And it was totally fun to research, too. I spent hours watching Mr. Ed shows and reading entertainment theory, but the insightful detail—and the inclusion of Khartoum—is all Michael. This piece remains one of my favorite things I ever had a hand in writing.
So tonight, let’s take the night off from the craziness of today’s America and recall past eras when horses could make history.
1) Traveller
General Robert E. Lee rode Traveller (spelled with two Ls, in the British style) from February 1862 until the general’s death in 1870. Traveller was a grey American Saddlebred of 16 hands. He had great endurance for long marches, and was generally unflappable in battle, although he once broke both of General Lee’s hands when he shied at enemy movements. Lee brought Traveller with him when he assumed the presidency of Washington and Lee University. Traveller died of tetanus in 1871. He is buried on campus, where the safe ride program still uses his name.
2) Comanche
Comanche was attached to General Custer’s detachment of the 7th Cavalry when it engaged the Lakota in 1876 at the Battle of Little Bighorn. The troops in the detachment were all killed in the engagement, but soldiers found Comanche, badly wounded, two days later. They nursed him back to health, and he became the 7th Cavalry’s mascot. The commanding officer decreed that the horse would never again be ridden and that he would always be paraded, draped in black, in all military ceremonies involving the 7th Cavalry. When Comanche died of colic in 1891, he was given a full military funeral (the only other horse so honored was Black Jack, who served in more than a thousand military funerals in the 1950s and 1960s). Comanche’s taxidermied body is preserved in the Natural History Museum at the University Of Kansas.
3) Beautiful Jim Key
Beautiful Jim Key was a performing horse trained by formerly enslaved veterinarian Dr. William Key. Key demonstrated how Beautiful Jim could read, write, do math, tell time, spell, sort mail, and recite the Bible. Beautiful Jim performed from 1897 to 1906 and became a legend. An estimated ten million Americans saw him perform, and others collected his memorabilia—buttons, photos, and postcards—or danced the Beautiful Jim Key two-step. Dr. Key insisted that he had taught Beautiful Jim using only kindness, and Beautiful Jim Key’s popularity was important in preventing cruelty to animals in America, with more than 2 million children signing the Jim Key Band of Mercy, in which they pledged: “I promise always to be kind to animals.”
4) Man o’ War
Named for his owner, August Belmont, Jr., who was overseas in World War I, Man o’ War is widely regarded as the top Thoroughbred racehorse of all time. He won 20 of his 21 races and almost a quarter of a million dollars in the early twentieth century. His one loss—to Upset—came after a bad start. Man o’ War sired many of America’s famous racehorses, including Hard Tack, which in turn sired Seabiscuit, the small horse that came to symbolize hope during the Great Depression.
5) Trigger
Entertainer Roy Rogers chose the palomino Trigger from five rented horses to be his mount in a Western film in the 1930s, changing his name from Golden Cloud to Trigger because of his quick mind and feet. Rogers rode Trigger in his 1950s television series, making the horse a household name. When Trigger died, Rogers had his skin draped over a Styrofoam mold and displayed it in the Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Museum in California. He also had a 24-foot statue of Trigger made from steel and fiberglass. One other copy of that mold was also made: it is “Bucky the Bronco,” which rears above the Denver Broncos stadium south scoreboard.
6) Sergeant Reckless
American Marines in Korea bought a mare in October 1952 from a Korean stable boy who needed the money to buy an artificial leg for his sister, who had stepped on a land mine. The marines named her Reckless after their unit’s nickname, the Reckless Rifles. They made a pet of her and trained her to carry supplies and to evacuate wounded. She learned to travel supply routes without a guide: on one notable day she made 51 solo trips. Wounded twice, she was given a battlefield rank of corporal in 1953 and promoted to sergeant after the war, when she was also awarded two Purple Hearts and a Marine Corps Good Conduct Medal.
7) Mr. Ed
Mr. Ed was a talking palomino in a 1960s television show by the same name. At a time when Westerns dominated American television, Mr. Ed was the anti-Western, with the main human character a klutzy architect and the hero a horse that was fond of his meals and his comfortable life, and spoke with the voice of Allan “Rocky” Lane, who made dozens of “B” westerns. But the show was a five-year hit as it married the past to the future. Mr. Ed offered a gentle, homely wisdom that enabled him to straighten out the troubles of the humans around him. The startling special effects that made it appear that the horse was talking melded modern technology with the comforting traditional community depicted in the show.
8) Black Jack
Black Jack, named for John J. “Black Jack” Pershing, was the riderless black horse in the funerals of John F. Kennedy, Herbert Hoover, Lyndon Johnson, and Douglas MacArthur, as well as more than a thousand other funerals with full military honors. A riderless horse, with boots reversed in the stirrups, symbolized a fallen leader, while Black Jack’s brands—a U.S. brand and an army serial number—recalled the army’s history. Black Jack himself was buried with full military honors; the only other horse honored with a military funeral was Comanche.
9) Khartoum
Khartoum was the prize stud horse of Jack Woltz, the fictional Hollywood mogul in Mario Puzo’s The Godfather. In one of the film version’s most famous scenes, after Woltz refuses requests from Don Vito Corleone to cast singer Johnny Fontane in a movie, Woltz wakes up to find Khartoum’s head in bed with him…and agrees to use Fontane in the film. In the novel, Fontane wins the Academy Award for his performance. According to old Hollywood rumor, the story referred to real events. The rumor was that mobsters persuaded Columbia Pictures executive Harry Cohn to cast Frank Sinatra in From Here to Eternity. As Maggio, Sinatra revived his sagging film career and won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.
10) Secretariat
Secretariat was an American Thoroughbred that in 1973 became the first U.S. Triple Crown winner in 25 years. His records in the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes, and the Belmont Stakes still stand. After Secretariat was stricken with a painful infection and euthanized in 1989, an autopsy revealed that he had an unusually big heart. Sportswriter Red Smith once asked his trainer how Secretariat had run one morning; Charlie Hatton replied, “The trees swayed.”
By David Brooks Opinion Columnist in the NYT – article titled “How to Survive the Trump Years With Your Spirit Intact”
I had forgotten how exhausting it is to live in Donald Trump’s world. He’s not only a political figure. He creates a psychological and social atmosphere that suffuses the whole culture — the airwaves, our conversations, our moods.
If there is one word to define Trump’s atmosphere, it is “pagan.” The pagan values of ancient Rome celebrated power, manliness, conquest, ego, fame, competitiveness and prowess, and it is those values that have always been at the core of Trump’s being — from his real estate grandiosity to his love of pro wrestling to his king-of-the-jungle version of American greatness.
The pagan ethos has always appealed to grandiose male narcissists because it gives them permission to grab whatever they want. This ethos encourages egotists to puff themselves up and boast in a way they find urgently satisfying; self-love is the only form of love they know.
The pagan culture is seductive because it lures you with images of heroism, might and glory. Think of Achilles slaughtering his enemies before the walls of Troy. For a certain sort of perpetual boy, what could be cooler than that? But there is little compassion in this worldview, no concept that humility might be a virtue. There is a callous tolerance of cruelty.
Tom Holland is a historian who wrote several fine books of classical history, like “Persian Fire.” Gradually he became more and more appalled by many of those ancient pagans — those Caesars who could slaughter innocent human beings by the hundreds of thousands while everyone thought this was totally fine.
“This is a really terrifyingly alien world, and the more you look at it, the more you realize that it is built on systematic exploitation,” Holland told the writer Justin Brierley. “In almost every way, this is a world that is unspeakably cruel to our way of thinking. And this worried me more and more.”
The callous tolerance of cruelty is a river that runs through human history. It was dammed up, somewhat, only by millenniums of hard civilizational work. The pagan ethos — ancient or modern — always threatens to unleash brutality once again. The pagan ethos does not believe that every human was made in the image of God, does not believe in human equality, is not concerned about preserving the dignity of the poor. It does not care much about the universal feelings of benevolence, empathy and faithfulness toward one another, which, it turns out, are absolutely required for a democracy to function.
We seem to be entering a pagan century. It’s not only Trump. It’s the whole phalanx of authoritarians, all those greatness-obsessed macho men like Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. It’s the tech bros. It’s Christian nationalism, which is paganism with worship music. (If you ever doubt the seductive power of paganism, remember it has conquered many of the churches that were explicitly founded to reject it.) — Continued
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