Update from this post about Roger Wang, local business owner and community volunteer who was taken into ICE custody on the way to get his green card: Roger has been detained at a New York State ICE detention facility for over two months; he has a local immigration lawyer assisting him, whom you can help fund through this link.
This sobering update brought to you as part of Linda’s One-Liner Wednesday series. Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2025/08/27/one-liner-wednesday-its-official/
In late April, I posted about Write Out Loud ’25 at the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, New York. My poem “The Bridge” was read by Sharon Rankins-Burd as part of the event, along with work by fellow Grapevine Poets Richard Braco, Merrill Oliver Douglas, and Jessica Dubey and twenty more writers living within 100 miles of Cooperstown.
I’m pleased to announce that the recording, long delayed by technical difficulties, is finally available! The recording will open in a separate tab in YouTube. If you click on “more” in the description, it opens a list of the program with links to bring you to whichever segment you wish to view. I’m especially pleased to share Sharon’s reading of my poem. She did an amazing job!
Enjoy!
Vote for Democracy #44
(Photo by Lucas Sankey on Unsplash)
Donald Trump decided to declare a crime emergency in Washington, DC and to surge the National Guard into our capital to deal with it.
This is an excuse, not an emergency.
Crime is at its lowest level in thirty years in Washington, DC. There are some higher-crime neighborhoods in the city and problems with youth crime and truancy, so the police could use some extra resources, but the new forces are seldom sent to those areas. Instead, they are largely deployed near national monuments and transit centers, more a show of force than actual crime-fighting.
DT’s rhetoric immediately pivoted from crime to making DC more “clean” and “beautiful” by removing people who are homeless. For the record, people who are homeless are much more likely to be victims of crime than perpetrators. In DC, they are most likely to be older, low-income adults; to be able to afford to live in the city, one needs about $90,000 in income, which is unattainable for many older folks.
Trump is also using this as cover for bringing in personnel from other federal agencies, including ICE. There have been arrests of suspected undocumented people by masked agents without identifying badges, as we have seen in many areas of the country. There are also government and military personnel being assigned duties for which they lack training. For example, FBI agents are being put out on patrol when their expertise is in investigation; for those of you outside the US, the FBI is the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
While DT is claiming that people feel safer and are going out more to eat more often, restaurant and bar owners are complaining that their business is down by 25% or more compared to this time last year. Many people in Washington, joined by others around the country, are protesting the militarization of the city. The presence of troops on the streets feels intimidating to them, making them less likely to go out.
Several Republican governors have mobilized their own National Guard troops to send to Washington. This doesn’t make sense because these troops would not have proper training for the situation. Deployment also takes the troops away from their regular jobs and families and hinders their availability to deal with emergencies or disasters in their home states.
Trump is threatening similar tactics in other cities where the mayors and governors are Democrats, such as New York. However, he is not threatening cities like Nashville, Tennessee, which has a higher rate of violent crime and murders than Washington. Tennessee has a Republican governor and local elections in Nashville are officially non-partisan, although the current mayor is affiliated with the Democratic party.
Because Washington, DC is not part of a state and is the federal capital, the president has somewhat more leeway legally to call in troops. It would be more difficult to use this tactic in other cities, although Los Angeles shows that Trump can manufacture an “emergency” even when there isn’t one. The fear is that Trump will militarize cities where the electorate is heavily Democratic in order to suppress the vote in the midterm elections next year. This falls in line with Trump’s requests for Republican-led states like Texas to redistrict to try to increase the number of Republican-leaning districts in their states to keep from losing their Congressional majorities in the face of the unpopularity of their policies and actions. It also goes along with Trump’s vilification of vote-by-mail, which he perceives as favoring Democrats.
I don’t know if the lawsuits, protests, and possible legislative intervention will be enough to get the military off the streets of American cities or not. It seems that these deployments violate the Posse Comitatus Act. There is a really good explainer about Posse Comitatus here which elucidates what it says and ways it is sometimes circumvented.
If you are in the United States and worried about this issue, you can contact your Congressional representatives and let them know. Trump is only supposed to have a military presence in DC for 30 days unless Congress grants an extension, so you can urge them to vote no and encourage their colleagues to join them. You can join a local protest in solidarity with Washington residents. It also helps to be aware of the scope of Trump’s ignoring or twisting of facts and the law to suit his purposes.
Facts still exist. Make sure you are following the facts and not lies.
Image by Satheesh Sankaran from Pixabay
As we continue to hope and work toward justice and peace for Ukraine, I’m sharing a recording of John Rutter’s “A Ukrainian Prayer” recorded in April ’22 by the Madrigal Choir of Binghamton.
Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednsdays! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2025/08/20/one-liner-wednesday-you-know-youre-tired-when/
Enjoy The Effie Effect by Eva Schegulla, a comic noir detective radio play/podcast that is sly, witty, and tons of fun!
Sharing this with you as part of Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays. Join us! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2025/08/13/one-liner-wednesday-sounds-like-the-start-of-a-dickens-novel/
On this 80th anniversary of the first use of a nuclear weapon, I’m praying for a total, permanent, global ban.
Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays! Bonus: Click the link below for news about Linda’s latest book! https://lindaghill.com/2025/08/06/one-liner-wednesday-would-you-look-at-that-2/
Vote for Democracy #43
(Photo by Lucas Sankey on Unsplash)
There are so many horrors happening every day in the United States under the Trump regime that it’s difficult to write posts because I feel like I’m not able to do justice to the topic when there are so many illegal, immoral, unconstitutional, and/or unconscionable actions and statements perpetrated in an ongoing basis.
Today, though, I decided to lift up the threats to immigrants and refugees beginning with a local story. Roger Wang, the owner of a local Chinese restaurant who fled political persecution in China, was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as he arrived for his green card hearing. For those who may not be familiar, a green card is a document that means an immigrant can live and work permanently in the US. Roger had been in the legal process for twelve years and had fulfilled all the requirements that ICE set out to earn his green card, but he was arrested anyway. There is a fundraiser for legal costs and to try to offset the losses to his business. As I write this, I haven’t heard any updates about where Roger is and when or whether he might be able to be released.
Stories like Roger’s are being repeated around the country. Immigrants are being detained by ICE, even when they do have legal status. The Trump administration has shamefully rescinded the legal status of many refugees, including those who served alongside the US in Afghanistan, and who face danger if they return to their home countries. Government agents, sometimes without identifying insignia and with their faces covered, have snatched people from their workplaces, cars, or even the streets and detained them. Sometimes, people with citizenship are detained, too. Appallingly, agents have injured people they are taking into custody They also have taken parents away, leaving their young children behind; sometimes, they take the children into custody, too, and have deported them with their parent, even if the children are United States citizens. Trump tried to take away birthright citizenship from children if both of their parents are undocumented, but this order is on hold while the courts hear arguments about it, although the 14th Amendment, Section 1 is very clear that being born in the United States confers citizenship.
It’s become more difficult to travel into the United States, even for people who are citizens or have permanent status. This month, Wilmer Chavarria, the school superintendent in Winooski, Vermont and a naturalized citizen originally from Central America, was questioned for five hours at the Houston airport as he returned from visiting family in Nicaragua. This risk causes a chilling effect on international travel for both US citizens and for tourists from other countries, especially those who aren’t White, as people of color are disproportionately subjected to being hassled by government border agents. Some countries are warning against travel to the US and tourism is down significantly. This is especially true for Canadians, due to Trump’s threats to their sovereignty and damage to their economy. This is particularly sad because Canada has been such a good neighbor for so long; my spouse B has Canadian ancestry with one of his great-grandfathers immigrating to the US in the late-19th century.
The majority of Americans are upset about the cruelty and disregard for US and international law that the Trump administration is exhibiting. They have sent people to detention camps and dangerous foreign countries and prisons without hearings or formal charges. They have disrespected judges and skirted/defied court orders when cases are brought. Many people, including lawyers, local/state government officials, faith leaders, charitable organizations, schools, and local community members are doing all they can to speak up for the rights of our immigrant neighbors, but it’s difficult when unidentified federal officials snatch people without notice and take them to undisclosed locations, sometimes even deporting them to their country of origin or an unrelated country before their families or lawyers can speak to them.
It’s part of the authoritarian nightmare we are living.
We will keep speaking out and doing what we can, despite the grim reality.
I don’t know how long it will take but we have to get our democracy back on track and always, always, always respect human rights.
Eric Carle, beloved author/artist of The Very Hungry Caterpillar and many other books, lived in western Massachusetts where I grew up and I’m very happy that Bombas chose to honor his legacy with a line of socks for both children and adults.
Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2025/07/30/one-liner-wednesday-i-heart-tomatoes/
Recently, a doctor told me I might have to give up on finding a diagnosis for my medical problems, but I’m not giving up.
Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2025/07/23/one-liner-wednesday-some-days-ya-just-cant-win/
In the first few seasons of The Late Show, Stephen Colbert did a recurring skit, then a best-selling book, called Midnight Confessions, in which he “confesses” to his audience with the disclaimer that he isn’t sure these things are really sins but that he does “feel bad about them.” While Stephen and his writers are famously funny, I am not, so my JC’s Confessions will be somewhat more serious reflections, but they will be things that I feel bad about. Stephen’s audience always forgives him at the end of the segment; I’m not expecting that – and these aren’t really sins – but comments are always welcome.
I am (perhaps overly) proud of my intellect.
It wasn’t always that way.
I was brought up with the ethos of “do the best you can” and the good fortune that my best fit in well with the expectations of schooling. That, coupled with a natural love of learning, landed me various honors. High school valedictorian, also attained by both my older and younger sisters. Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude at Smith College, where I was also the Presser Scholar in music my senior year. While I was thrilled to be recognized, I could chalk up the honors to my hard work and liberal-artsy curiosity rather than ascribing it to particular intelligence.
Developing pride came more as a self-defense mechanism when I was a young mom. I had chosen to be the full-time, at-home caregiver, facilitated by the time and place in which B and I were navigating parenthood. This was not, though, the lifestyle expected of a high-achieving, Seven-Sisters grad. Without the external validation of a paying job and in contravention of the “having it all” Super-woman model of the 1980s, I developed pride in who I was and what I chose to do – and do well, as I continued to do the best that I could – almost as a defense mechanism.
This quiet pride helped me navigate a number of challenges in our family life and in my volunteer work over decades, but pride is both a positive attribute and a “deadly sin.”
As many of you know, I’ve been struggling with a still-not-fully-diagnosed medical condition, now well into its second year, that has caused significant brain fog and fatigue. In particular, I’ve lost access to my creative side, which is a huge blow to my life as a poet, and my ability to research, synthesize, and think critically is diminished both in scope and duration.
It’s a difficult time in my life and made more so because my intellect has long been such a core part of my identity.
Who am I living with this disability?
How will I face the prospect of losing the life of the mind that I have cultivated and loved for so long?
I’ve been fighting my way through the medical maze to try to regain what I’ve lost but it’s not at all clear at this point that it will be possible. I also am facing the prospect that I could deteriorate further.
Can I remain proud of who I am?
I know the answer should be yes, in keeping with the dignity inherent in each person.
It remains to be seen if I can apply the grace I give to others to myself.
Joanne Corey 