In my lifetime, there has never been anybody like President Barack Obama. His very presidency was symbolic, and I feel privileged to have witnessed it. His presidential library opens today in Chicago, Illinois. Choosing Juneteenth I’m sure was no accident, and since it’s a federal holiday, today would be a good time to take a few days off, head to Chicago and visit the library of the first Black President.
Visit the website for a look back at the Obama Presidency Timeline.
Visit the library and Obama Presidential Campus in person:
The library is located on a 19.3 acre campus on the South Side of Chicago in historic Jackson Park. Directions.
There are many things to do there that do not cost admission:
Original works of art
Gardens and plazas, including the Women’s Garden, the Eleanor Roosevelt Fruit and Vegetable Garden, and the John Lewis Plaza.
Nature walks
Playground
Newest branch of the Chicago Public Library
Cafe, Restaurant, and Picnic Area plus a store.
There will be programs and tours throughout the year that may require registration or tickets. Sign up for their newsletter here.
Admission to the museum is about $30 for adults for timed tickets or walk the grounds; the campus is open daily, free of charge.
Tomorrow, in commemoration of Juneteenth, historical interpreter Nathan M. Richardson brings his portrayal of abolitionist Frederick Douglass to Grant Cottage in Wilton, New York in a conversation about Ulysses S. Grant.
I visited the cottage a few years ago, and it was hands down the best historical site tour I’ve ever been on. I am looking forward to this event, which will be held tomorrow, from 1 to 2pm.
All Grant Cottage programs are free and open to the public and donations are greatly appreciated.
Directions:
From the South:
Take the Adirondack Northway (I-87) north to exit 16 toward Ballard Rd/Wilton/Corinth.
Turn left ojnto Ballard Rd. (CR-33) toward Wilton/Corinth.
Go for about 1 1/2 miles.
Continue on Corinth Mountain Rd (CR-33).
Turn right onto Parkhurst Rd. Continue on Mt. McGregor Rd. The cottage is almost two miles.
GPS address: 1000 Mt. McGregor Rd., Wilton, NY 12831
I grew up in a Jewish household in a Jewish neighborhood visiting grandmothers and cousins and observing holidays with the typical complaints of a child with too much energy to sit still and do nothing while the parents were at temple. We were often told to quiet it down while all of the kids were doing their best (or not so best) in the temple parking lot. I can still feel the heat on my face that came up from the asphalt even on these early fall days. These were my formative years. I lived this way in Queens, New York until I was ten, almost eleven when we moved to Long Island, which was different as night was to day.
While we moved east, my cousins moved south to Florida, and while we wrote often, we were bereft [th] of each other’s company which had been constant practically since I was born. My grandmother was their aunt, and my Bubbe (great-grandmother) was their grandmother. My new neighborhood was more diverse than Bayside’s Oakland Gardens, although our immediate neighbor was Jewish and he had a mixed accent of Eastern European and the Yiddish language. We traveled into Queens to see my grandmother, and into the Bronx to visit my uncle.
While I know something of Native American culture, in writing my current book, I’ve discovered so much more, and it excites and inspires me. June is an important month in the Native American calendar, especially for the Haudenosaunee, as it is the season of strawberries. In addition to the three sisters (corn, beans, and squash), strawberries are a significant part of the culture, food source, and creation story. They are the first fruits of spring, and a leader of the berries. They are singled out for thanksgiving in the welcoming address before ceremonies.
Strawberries are sweet and tart, red and juicy. They can be enjoyed on their own or in other foods, mixed into salads, pureed into ice cream or yogurt, sat atop cakes or baked right in. They are refreshing and if you’re lucky, plentiful in June.
There are two Strawberry Festivals that you should know about happening in the next few weeks:
The 33rd Annual Strawberry Festival at the Kanatsiohareke Mohawk Community west of Fonda, New York on Saturday, June 27 and Sunday, June 28, and
Both events are filled with strawberry goodness, Haudenosaunee Mohawk culture, Native music and dancers, and much more! Check their flyers and websites for admission prices.
If you are in Fonda, stop by up the road and visit the St. Kateri Tekakwitha: National Shrine & Historic Site, celebrating the 350th anniversary of St. Kateri’s baptism on the site. She is the first North American Native Saint canonized by the Catholic Church.
If you decide on Kahnawake, don’t forget your passport for the border! You can also visit the Canadian National Shrine for St. Kateri where her relics are entombed. Contact the Kahnawake Tourism also to set up a tour of the village which sits on the St. Lawrence Seaway.
Stuck between the idea and an ideal, somehow despite the advantages and privilege still remains elusive. I’m talking about our country, the United States, the great democratic experiment. It has never been perfect, and it has been idealized by the patriarchal class. It began, and remains today in many places and situations, with white men, landowners with money, wifely support, servants and slaves. That slavery was written into the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, an irony and a tragedy if ever there was one. In thirty-four days is a celebration that I would normally be looking forward to, but the state of our government and the administration currently in charge is making it increasingly more difficult to get behind a “celebration” or an honoring of what we have been and what we are becoming.
How is this related to mental health?
Mental health awareness month officially ended yesterday, but our mental health awareness must continue – the awareness of how we’re feeling, how people make us feel, what triggers us, and how to cope with those triggers. At our house, we have four flags in the front along with a pride flag. I left the US flags displayed in honor of our fallen for Memorial Day. I’ve decided to remove them for June. I think Flag Day has been coopted by the current president as his birthday party, and I will not participate in that. At all. I plan to replace the flags for July 4th weekend and then remove them again until Election Day.
I feel for the people who say we have nothing to celebrate. Sometimes I believe that, but sometimes I see what good happens when people do good; without the cameras rolling, without the benefits of being seen, without heaped upon praise, simply acting because that is the right thing to do. That is what I believe this country can be. I was raised that way, and I hope I’ve raised my kids that way. The ideal of the idea of the US is the melting pot, the blending of many into one – e pluribus unum.
I’ll ignore the circus in Washington, D.C. for the next few weeks, although I won’t ignore the harm they’re doing, the persecuted, the shamed, the bigotry and racism abounding currently, and acknowledging this is nothing new, we’ve always had this. We’ve hoped for the best, and I hope and pray that we can rebuild, not rebuild what we had, but a stronger foundation, a stronger, more equal place for the world to come and to look to as my great-grandparents did, as my mother-in-law did. I want us to be what we can be, what we should have been all along.
I have memories of the Bicentennial, and I am going to make memories for the 250th. I want my kids to look back in another fifty years for the three hundredth birthday and see how far we’ve come. I can hope. I can encourage.
Regardless, take your mental health temperature, and see what you want out of the next few weeks, how you want to celebrate or ignore our country’s founding, how you can stay on your recovery course in the best possible way. Make your coping tools available so when triggered you have the mental space to reset. First and foremost, take care of you.
And for my own mental health, I can ignore Washington’s circus monkeys through this birthday and then get back on the protest wagon and fight for our democracy, repair what they’ve destroyed (including the Rose Garden and the East Wing and the Voting Rights Act and Roe v. Wade), and rekindle a better place for all of us. I have faith. We can do it. We can.
Today can be a difficult day for several reasons, the least of which is the shitshow that’s the current US government administration. There are fireworks (triggers for those with PTSD, pets, etc.). There are ceremonies commemorating the dead military of past wars and conflicts. There are mattress and car sales, which often don’t correlate to the reason for today’s day off from work, as well as picnics, parades, and a sea of red, white, and blue.
I’ve had flags on my front lawn for several months and as we move closer to the 250th anniversary of our country’s founding, I wonder if I should keep them up considering the fascism and lawlessness going on at the White House and in Washington, DC.
I did decide to leave them up for this weekend. Memorial Day hits harder than the other patriotic days especially when we are still at war and our “commander-in-chief” is a stark, raving lunatic who collects assassination attempts like my kids collect Pokemon cards.
I will be doing five things to get through the day today, and hope to keep my mental health on an even keel:
Wear my protest shirt.
Begin reading Heather Cox Richardson’s Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America.
Spend some time going over my notes from my recent research trip for my book.
Spend time in prayer and prepare for my upcoming ten minute presentation.
Breathe, drink water, stay off the internet, and draw even if the drawings are doodles and intersecting lines in different bright colors.
What do you suggest for today to protect your mental health?
What if the last two years could have been like the last week or so?
Getting to know the astronauts of the Artemis II. The collaboration between two countries, the best friends for the ages…before. The three men and one woman, flying faster than any of us, save a small handful have flown before. Working together. Laughing. Joking. Talking to their families. Talking to us. Showing us the stars. As television studios think they know what we want, what we long for, we watch the livestream of a government department from the outskirts of our little corner of the solar system. We hang on every photo. We cried with joy and sadness when the friends named a crater after one of their team who didn’t live to see this moment. Carroll. She was a spouse, and she was part of the team, because none of us can get where we are, can do what we do with support, and for these four astronauts, their families are their support, taking care of the homelife. Sacrificing in different ways. Like us, holding their breath but never saying the scary parts out loud. It’s different for them.
The best of humanity looking at the rest of humanity. Words of wisdom, words of faith, words of friendship.
I love the moon. I’ve written about the moon several times right here. I’ve been in love with the moon since my first memory, although to be fair it’s a family memory that I’ve adopted as my own since it was about me. I have been told that I watched the moon landing in 1969. I was two and a half years old, and I was so excited. I have uncles, my father’s brothers who are named Neil and Buzzy, and I thought they were the ones on the moon. Easy to be confused. In our first real apartment, the moon shone in our bedroom window, something I really missed in every other place we’ve lived. I loved (and continue to love) to sleep in the moonlight. I will often hold my hand up just to see it in the light of the moon. In the coldest night, I’ve tried to watch eclipses, standing on my front porch going inside to warm up every few minutes until it was over.
There is something special about the moon and the people who travel there and beyond.
Remember their names:
NASA astronauts Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, Mission Specialist Christina Koch, and Canada Space Agency (CSA) astronaut Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen.
We were in Canada a couple of years ago and visited the Canada Aviation and Space Museum in Ottawa, and the one pin I collected from there was the Canada Space Agency, so when it was mentioned this week that Jeremy Hansen was a Canadian astronaut and part of that agency, I went to my pin collection and began wearing this one.
I’ll keep it on for a few days or longer past splashdown which is tonight at 8:07pm. As GenX, I may wait until they are safely out before I turn on the television. This has been a remarkable week. It has brought me a peace in the chaos, a stop on the journey, and something I haven’t felt for a long time – a lifting up; aspiration and inspiration. As I implied at the beginning, we can get through anything together.
We can. We will. We are.
I leave you with the words of astronaut and pilot for this mission, Victor Glover who said earlier this week:
“I think these observances are important, as we are so far from Earth and looking back at the beauty of creation. I think for me, one of the really important personal perspectives that I have up here is I can really see Earth as one thing.
And you know, when I read the Bible, and I look at all of the amazing things that were done for us, who we’re created, it’s…you have this amazing place, this spaceship. You guys are talking to us because we’re in a spaceship really far from Earth. But you’re on a spaceship called Earth that was created to give us a place to live in the universe, in the cosmos.
Maybe the distance we are from you makes you think what we’re doing is special. But we’re the same distance from you, and I’m trying to tell you—just trust me—you are special. In all of this emptiness—this is a whole bunch of nothing, this thing we call the universe—you have this oasis, this beautiful place that we get to exist together.
I think as we go into Easter Sunday, thinking about all the cultures all around the world, whether you celebrate it or not, whether you believe in God or not, this is an opportunity for us to remember where we are, who we are, and that we are the same thing, and that we got to get through this together.”
Photos from NASA.
(c)2026
Go to nasa.gov/artemis-ii for more photos from space.
I don’t even know what’s specifically happening today. I do know that if I go on Threads or turn on the news, I’m going to get a migraine, and I don’t get migraines.
How do we cope with the world around us?
In addition to all this *gestures wildly*, on Tuesday we lost power. It remained off for over twenty hours. No internet, no electricity, no heat.
Our work plans were cancelled. Our dinner plans were cancelled. My daughter’s day off plans in front of Netflix from her cozy bed were cancelled. Fridge barricaded from the kids. Sweaters on.
Our country is at war, our economy is tanking. Gas prices are ridiculous. We have ICE agents in our airports “helping” the TSA, and by helping I mean tackling and detaining folks waiting for their flights. We have airplanes crashing because air traffic controllers are overworked and understaffed. Our government is doing everything in its power (and beyond that) to destroy what we’ve grown and built over the last two hundred fifty years.
We may never recover from this.
The President of the United States posted this week about a combat, Purple Heart receiving veteran, lifelong public servant, and former director of the FBI when it had some prestige that he was glad he was dead. Not condolences for the family. Not we had our disagreements, but I wish his family well. No. Glad he’s dead, good riddance.
His Cabinet lies under oath every time they come in contact with a Congressional hearing.
I’m appalled. I’m repulsed. I’m disgusted.
And I know I’m not the only one.
There is little I can do individually except make my anger, distrust, and contempt for this corrupt administration known. Feckless Republican cowards have let him get away with this treason for too long. They all need to go.
I know how all of this is affecting my mental health. I can only imagine how it affects yours.
Here are some of my thoughts and suggestions for getting through another day:
Breathe.
Turn off the news. Just let it go for twenty-four hours.
Be gentle with yourself. If you simply want to sit and stare at the four walls for ten minutes, sit and stare at the walls for ten minutes.
If you have a porch or balcony, sit on it and watch the neighborhood around you just be. Take that time.
Do something comforting. It could be reading a chapter in that book, eating a bowl of macaroni and cheese, buy some flowers from the supermarket, sing a song from your childhood.
Do one thing every day that is unrelated to the world that gives you comfort. Just one thing. Keep a journal or diary, and you’ll create a go-to for yourself when you need a reminder of distractions that work.
Today is the third day of Women’s History Month. Typically, there’d be a proclamation from Washington, Congress and/or the White House, but I won’t hold my breath waiting for that. It was clear last week when the Olympics closed for this year that the White House would only be acknowledging the white men on the men’s hockey team. Yes, they did win the gold medal, and should be congratulated, but (or is it and) the women’s hockey team also won the gold as did ten other US athletes or teams. I will say that the last time that the men’s hockey team won the gold was right here in New York forty-six years ago. They were truly a ragtag team of true amateurs. I wasn’t even in high school. The women’s team, on the other hand competed in their first Olympics in 1998, and have won a medal in every Olympics they participated in.
You may think from that introduction that this is going to be a diatribe against misogyny, for Title IX, against discrimination, for DEI (which benefits everyone), but it’s not. It is, however, the world we live in currently with Congress and the White House attempting to take women back to their dark ages. We will not let them. We are not going back.
I begin this Women’s History month with that declaration: we are not going back. We are 50% of the world. We are equal. Even though we’ve earned it, we do not need your respect, but we will not be mocked.
One way to commemorate and celebrate women is to support their spaces and we can do that by using our time and our dollars and visiting some of those spaces.
We have traveled to Canada yearly for the past several years, and each time we’ve driven west towards Niagara Falls and the Rainbow Bridge, we pass a sign on the New York State Thruway that declares the Women’s Rights Historical National Park, and every time I see that sign, I say (out loud), I want to go there one day. And maybe one day, I will.
I find that these are the most important follows. They are the ones I trust, they are truthtellers, and they are important voices for these very difficult times.
Griffins and Ginger Snaps 