Usually, I am able find hope within myself and go forward.   This has been much harder in recent times, and I have been actively looking outward for hope and inspiration.

Two recent examples for me, quite different in how they provided hope and inspiration, have been Bruce Springsteen and K-Pop Demon Hunters.

Bruce Springsteen has been quite vocal in his political views, and he has shown up so visibly that he has been attacked by those who disagree with him.   His song, “Streets of Minneapolis”, captured a moment in the anti-ICE protest movement.

Last Tuesday, April 1st, Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band launched their Land of Hopes and Dreams tour in Minneapolis, Minnesota.   Springsteen said during the concert:

“Tonight we ask all of you to join with us in choosing hope over fear, democracy over authoritarianism, the rule of law over lawlessness, ethics over unbridled corruption, resistance over complacency, unity over division and peace over war.”

And the way he said it, with heart and commitment, wearing his emotions on his sleeve as Springsteen is known to do, was inspirational to me.

I was curious about K-Pop Demon Hunters because I had heard that it was very popular.   I finally watched the movie last month.   I did not expect that I would fall in love with the story and the songs. 

In my telling, K-Pop Demon Hunters is an uplifting feminist story with some moral truths in which three young women vanquish the demons through the power of their song.   One moral truth is about the need to show one’s vulnerabilities, no matter how uncomfortable, and if one does, then one’s friends will rally behind them.   However, if you stay hidden then your friends will not know you need help or how to help you.   The second moral truth, related to the first, is the theme to one of the Demon Hunters’ songs and it is that you have to face it in order to fix it.   One needs to face reality squarely, see what is actually going on, to take action to make a difference.

The story of K-Pop Demon Hunters has stayed with me, and I have replayed the songs multiple times.   Each time I listen I get a jolt of hope and sense of possibility.

During these difficult, what have you found that has provided you with hope and inspiration?

I watched the half-time show to try to understand more about Bad Bunny, his appeal, and his point of view.

I was very glad that I watched.

I did not understand a single word that Bad Bunny said.

I missed numerous cultural references that were highlighted in Bad Bunny’s performance.  I read about them afterwards, and I’m still not aware in many cases of what it was that Bad Bunny was trying to bring to our attention.    

There was one thing that I fully understood.  I understood the sign that it was in the background of much of the performance.  The sign read: “The only thing more powerful than hate is love.”

If that sign was the only message that I, and maybe many other viewers of the half-time show got, then that was enough to send a powerful statement.  

The sign said that we can beat hate, that we can love people fully and openly, and that hate will concede to love.

This is a powerful message today.

I appreciated the reminder of the truth that love is more powerful than hate.

Thank you Bad Bunny.  Gracias.

Some facts:

The richest 15 billionaires in the U.S. saw their wealth rise by over 800 billion in 2025, an increase of 33%.

There are 935 billionaires in the U.S.   Their assets increased by 21% in 2025.   These 935 billionaires control $8.1 trillion in wealth, nearly double the wealth held by the bottom 50% of Americans comprising over 170 million people.

Since 2020, the richest five men in the world have doubled the size of their fortunes.

The amount of wealth owned by the poorest half of the world is less than the amount owned by just the 12 richest billionaires. 

6 billionaires own 9 of the top 10 social media companies.

1/6 of all federal campaign dollars spent in 2024 by U.S. political parties, candidates, and committees came from 100 billionaire families.

1 out of every 7 citizens in Asia were offered bribes in exchange for votes.

A person from the richest 0.1% of the population emits more carbon in a single day than someone in the bottom 50% emits all year.

Globally, men own US$105 trillion more wealth than women – the difference in wealth is equivalent to more than four times the size of the US economy.

The world’s richest 1% own 43% of all global financial assets.

The richest 1% globally emit as much carbon pollution as the poorest two-thirds of humanity.

In the USA, the wealth of a typical Black household is just 15.8% of that of a typical white household.  In Brazil, on average, white people have incomes more than 70% higher than those of Afro-descendants.

Only 21% of humanity lives in the countries of the Global North, but these countries are home to 69% of private wealth, and 74% of the world’s billionaire wealth.

Some questions:

Does this information surprise you?

What are your memories of noticing that some people had more, and other people had less?  Is there a story from you past that you can tell about that?

Where you can see and feel the impact of economic inequality – in your family, amongst your friends, in your town or city, or globally? 

What steps do you think you can take to help close the global inequality gap?

I remember that my parents had a stereo system in the family room when I was growing up.   I can’t say that I ever remember them using it.   They had a bunch of classical music albums, and I don’t remember what else.   My sister had a turntable in her room … I don’t remember what music she listened to either.  But when she went away to school, I inherited her turntable.   I had albums and 45’s.   I remember that I had a full collection of Allan Sherman albums (maybe some my parents had bought for themselves first) and I had Bill Cosby comedy albums.      If you don’t know Allan Sherman, he was a Jewish comedian/songwriter – he would take popular songs and re-write the lyrics in a funny way.    His most famous song is: Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduhwhich is about a child’s experience at sleepaway camp.   I had more typical music albums.  I think the 1stmusic album that I purchased with my own money was Simon and Garfunkel’s Sounds of Silence in 1966.   Another album that I got a few years later was Jethro Tull’s Aqualung (remembering this now, I listened to Jethro Tull as I typed this paragraph, 1st time in probably 50 years).   I would play the few albums that I had over and over.   I was never able to remember lyrics but when the song played, I could sing along to some degree.

My taste in music has changed and widened over the years.  I have gone through phases, maybe we all do.  In my 20’s, I listened almost exclusively to movement music – the women’s movement, the men’s movement, gay liberation, anti-nuclear and anti-war music.   I probably remembered more of those lyrics since they were most consistent with what I was thinking and feeling at the time.    Chris Williamson, Holly Near, Geoff Morgan, Charlie Murphy, and Fred Small were all favorites.    As time went on, some of my good friends were musicians and they produced their own cassettes and CD’s.  None of them ever became big-time famous, and I love the songs that my friends - like Rick Goldin, Eliot Pilshaw, and Ginny Frazier – wrote and performed.   Rick has been thoughtful to write original words to songs for my birthday and wedding anniversary.

I don’t have any of my albums anymore, I think they were given away several moves ago and when we did not own a record player.   But I have the tape cassettes and CD’s that I accumulated over 30+ years.   And I bought a tape and CD player this summer that is now right next to my desk so that I can play music easily whenever I want.   Over these last few months, I have re-discovered some early favorites that I had completely forgotten about.   CD’s that were buried in my collection included Harry Chapin, Jim Croce, Sheena Easton, Lionel Ritchie and Jane Oliver.

I have never really been attracted to any particular genre of music; I would just listen to what I enjoyed listening to.  You might be surprised that I now consider myself a Swiftie.  I was encouraged by a friend to watch a documentary about her, and I was inspired by her courageous actions as a young woman to fight against sexism.  So now I listen to Taylor Swift albums.

And I have never really gone to music concerts.  I did when I was at Oberlin College.  I had friends in the Conservatory, and I would go to listen to their performances.   And I still remember when a good friend opened for Holly Near at Oberlin, that was thrilling.   I probably have not been to a concert in 30 years.   That is, until good friends invited me to join them at a concert in Minneapolis.    I flew to Minnesota to join them and heard a live performance of Jelly Roll.   Everyone who knows me has been surprised that I went to this concert.   But Jelly Roll’s music moves me.   I have never been an addict, really have never even been close to either alcohol or drugs.   But Jelly Roll’s music I think speaks to everyone, and certainly it does to me.    

As I write this now, I’m listening to soft rock ballads of the 70’s and 80’s.

What are you listening to?   What is the soundtrack of your life?

When I joined IBM in 2004, one of the things I was excited about was to learn more about diversity initiatives.  IBM had the reputation of being a leader in the diversity space for decades.   Ted Childs was the charismatic and influential leader of IBM’s diversity work, and I worked alongside him for several years until his retirement.  Ted was considered a pioneer and icon amongst corporate diversity leaders.   And IBM had a myriad of initiatives that were robust, meaningful, and impactful relative to diversity.  In my role, which included executive staffing and succession planning for the company, we tracked numerical progress on executive diversity monthly and reported that out to the CEO and his leadership team.   Diversity was a regular point of focus and discussion at IBM amongst its most senior leaders.

So, it was with dismay and discouragement that I read the article by Jessica Guynn in USA Today on December 9th, 2025, These are the Companies That Rolled Back DEI Amid Trump Backlash.    Guynn writes:  “After decades of embracing DEI, IBM dissolved its diversity team, altered some of its initiatives and stopped linking executive compensation to workforce diversity goals.”

I understand the political environment and specifically for IBM the pressures associated with being a federal contractor.   But diversity and diversity initiatives had been a strength and value of the company.   What do leaders do when core values of an organization conflict with practicalities associated with the bottom line?   For too many leaders and organizations cited in Guynn’s article, the answer was to lay low, accommodate, and acquiesce.   

I salute companies that have retained their diversity initiatives and focus.  One example cited in Guynn’s article is Apple which encouraged “shareholders to reject an anti-DEI proposal from the National Center for Public Policy Research. Over 97% of shareholders voted against the proposal that called on Apple to “cease DEI efforts.”  

We have a role we can play on this issue … we can vote our shares to the extent that we are stockholders, and we can vote with our purchasing power when choosing where to shop and what to buy.   There are more efforts nowadays to mobilize consumer power via boycotts.   The most prominent has been the Tesla Takedown campaign when Elon Musk took such a prominent role in Trump’s campaign and then in the Trump administration.      Tesla’s sales went down significantly and that also hurt Tesla’s stock price (and Musk’s wealth).   

One step we can all take is to pause and think about what we want to support and/or not support in choosing where to buy and what we buy on a week-to-week basis.

How can you leverage your consumer buying power, however small (many small actions add up to something much bigger), to exercise influence on what you want to see happen around you and in the world?

What is courage?

According to Webster’s Dictionary, courage is “mental or moral strength to venture, persevere, and withstand danger, fear or difficulty.”  

I think courage is that capability to face fear and act because something more important is possible.   Being courageous does not mean that we are not afraid.   It means that we choose to act despite our fear.  

I’m reminded of a quote by Georgia O’Keefe: “I've been absolutely terrified every moment of my life - and I've never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do.”

I believe that everyone is born with courage inside of them and wants to do their part to set things right in the world.   Unfortunately, many, if not all of us, have had that sense of courage that we all had get damaged.     That damage occurred at home, at school, and in our religious institutions.   The damage happened as we were disciplined, threatened, and silenced.   Our courage was systematically chipped away at, to such an extent that most of us struggle to act courageously today.

When I was at IBM, there were policies, programs, and processes that if implemented I believed would improve the effectiveness of the organization and the work lives of IBM’s employees.    And these programs were not in the minds of the senior leadership of the company.   To make change, I had to advocate.   And I had to advocate repeatedly and with as much force as I could muster.   This was hard to do.   I often felt like giving up and just going along with the status quo. 

This is where “courage” on the whiteboard played a key role.   I wrote it there during a meeting that I had with some of my team members.   They were pushing me to be the advocate that I wanted to be.   And I said I’m going to need courage to do this (I don’t even remember what this was about at that time).   What helped me to act with courage was that team that I had with me.  Even though I would go to meetings with senior management on my own, I had my team with me in my mind and that gave me more courage to speak my truth and to advocate forcefully for what I believed.

I’m choosing to write this blog today because I feel like we all need to be more courageous, including me.   We need to advocate for the changes that we believe will make people’s lives better.   We need to act as forcefully as we possibly can.  And what will help us to do that?   I think it will be the same thing that helped me to act at IBM.  We must notice that we have each other on our side.  Let’s recognize that not one of us is alone.  We are together.   The great protest song slogan of my youth was “United we stand, divided we fall.”  

What helps you to act with courage?

So now we are at this moment in history.    The exploitative nature of our current society, domestically in the United States and globally, is more visible than ever.   We can see how the rich are getting richer, and using their wealth to exercise control over governments.   We can see the increasing danger to the survival of our species, both in the climate crisis and in the number of armed conflicts going on throughout the world.   The recent climate conference of nations, COP30, produced no significant agreements towards reduction in the use of fossil fuels.   Those who count these things indicate that there were 61 state-based armed conflicts across 36 countries in 2024, with a notable rise in internal conflicts and overall violence.   Furthermore, the United Nations has become less able to create collective will to intervene and stop armed conflicts.

YIKES!

So where to from here? 

There are some theorists who postulate that things must get worse before they can get better.   One hears this at the individual level; e.g., the person who drinks too much needs to hit “rock bottom” before they face that they have an alcoholism problem and seek help and treatment.   We also hear this at the organizational level – people need to understand and feel an organizational crisis before there is sufficient motivation to make major organizational changes.  The phrase that we used to use in the corporate environment was that we needed to create “the burning platform” so that staff would support structural changes.

Have things gotten bad enough that we, as a society, have hit rock bottom and understand that the platform that we live on is burning?

How do we know whether things are that bad?   Many of us, especially in the United States and other Global North countries, still have relatively comfortable lives.  We might be against many of the current administration’s policies -- on climate, immigration, health care, tariffs, etc.   But how deeply, if at all, are we personally impacted by these policies?    

I think one critical challenge is how to help people “feel the pain” of the current situation even when they might believe that they are protected and going to be OK no matter what policies are implemented by any government.     How do we break down the barriers to let even those who are comfortable face the uncomfortable realities of the current moment? How do we do this without scaring people that could cause retreat and inertia?   Ultimately, how do we help people to connect with our inner humanness which cares about all people and not just ourselves?

Most of these decisions I don’t even think twice about.   I don’t review them afterwards and second-guess, for example, whether I had the healthiest breakfast.   I do sometimes curse and wish I had not gotten on the highway and gotten into that traffic jam or that I had not bothered to read that whole article in a magazine when I really seemed to learn what there was to learn just from the opening paragraph.   So, to quote from the song, “Regrets, I’ve had a few and then again, too few to mention.”  

I want to share two examples of bigger decision that I have made to which my mind continues to return.  

Example number 1 is a very personal decision that my wife and I made over and over again not to have children.   We talked about it extensively and repeatedly decided, at various points in our lives together, that it just did not make sense for us for various reasons.  

Example number 2 is a professional decision that again my wife and I made together.  In the early 1990’s, when I was a rising star at GE, I was offered the position of Human Resources Executive for GE across the Asia-Pacific region.   This was a huge job, a big promotion, and it would have put me squarely on the path to compete, over time, for the role of Senior Vice President of Human Resources for the entire GE Company.  

I re-visit these decisions in my mind periodically.

I love being with children.   Everyone tells me that I would have been a great parent, and I think they’re right.    And I have no regrets about the decision.   I miss having children.   I have cried about not having had children.  And I think the decision was absolutely the right one for my wife and me … thus no regrets.   I think it’s important to feel whatever feelings we have about “the road not taken” (to quote the poem).   But feeling those feelings is not the same thing as wishing we had taken the other road. 

The same is true for that professional decision I made over 30 years ago.   I loved working at GE, I loved the challenges, and I love making a difference in thousands of people’s work lives.   I miss that I never got the chance to play the biggest possible role for me at GE.   But missing it is not the same as regretting the decision.  It was clear that turning down that position was the best decision that I could have made at that time.  

We do the best thinking that we possibly can to make decisions.  We collect information, maybe we solicit other’s input, maybe we make lists.   We weigh things out with whatever tools we have available to us, or we rely on our gut intuition.   We decide.   Some decisions turn out well, other decisions not as well.    Sometimes we might look at past decisions as mistakes.   They are all our decisions.  And we own those decisions, for better or worse.   And we get to mourn the road not taken and experience the loss for what that would have been.  

What decisions have you made that you re-visit in your mind?    Are you able to feel the loss of the road not taken?

How can we correct the history of injustices done to Africa?

There are policies that we can educate people about, advocate and campaign for, and protest about until they actually happen.   And we also need to look at the personal work that we can each do to clear up our confusions so that we think more intelligently about the policies needed.

The Global North holds 70% of the world’s wealth due to colonialism and imperialism.  

There is more than enough money to fully address the climate crisis and meet human needs.   

The richest 1% of the world’s population (about 51 million people) has 38% of world’s wealth.   We can tax their wealth, we can tax financial transactions, and we can increase income taxes for high earners.

We can tax fossil fuel companies.  

The Secretary-General of the UN called “on all developed economies to tax the windfall profits of fossil fuel companies….”   

All subsidies to fossil fuel companies need to end.

We have described the dynamics that has caused the Global South to be in debt to institutions of the Global North, and this history is ongoing.

Debt should be cancelled while outright grants from public-controlled funds to countries in the Global South should be increased.   

Pope Francis called for debt cancellation and a new international financial system to help low-income countries during the Year of Jubilee in 2025.

‘Turning Debt into Hope’ is the Jubilee 2025 theme for Catholic and other faith and justice organizations around the world.

Instead of instituting these commonsense policies, numerous false solutions for climate financing have been proposed like providing more loans to Global South countries, debt swaps, and temporary moratoria on debt payments when there is a catastrophe.  

These false solutions provide some temporary relief for developing countries, but they do not address the underlying issue of the huge debt burden that Global South countries are carrying.   

There are major inadequacies in international structures like the International Monetary Fund (IMF).   Each country, based on its ‘relative economic position’ is given voting rights to elect delegates to the IMF’s executive board, which makes all the organization’s important decisions.  The Global North is vastly overrepresented.  The United States, for instance, has over 16% of the votes on the IMF’s board despite representing only 4% of the world population. Since the IMF’s Articles of Agreement require 85% of the votes to make any changes, the US has veto power over the decisions of the IMF. 

Given this situation, what is the personal work that we, people of the Global North, need to do to act boldly and equitably to solve the climate emergency?

We must accept responsibility for the role that our nations of the Global North have played in creating both global wealth inequality and the climate crisis.

We must better understand the history of colonialism, neo-colonialism, and racism as we have begun to describe today. 

And we must look at how we have been conditioned to want more than we need (for ourselves, our people, and our nation), to seek comfort, and to be indifferent to the needs of others. 

We have been taught to believe that the Earth is ours to do with as we please, to celebrate the accumulation of wealth, that having more is better, that what’s mine is mine -- valuing personal ownership, and that growth is good.   As a white US upper middle-class man, I have internalized these beliefs, as have many of you, through no fault of our own.   And to move forward we need to rid ourselves of these confusions.

What are our thoughts and feelings about the Global North’s appropriation of the world’s resources and controlling of so much of the world’s wealth?   We think it's unjust, unfair, and wrong.   And we feel furious about it along with sadness.   It is important that we access these feelings.   If we don’t, we could become bitter or depressed.

This is the work we need to do as citizens of the Global North.

We can work through these confusions that were installed in our minds, we can listen to each other about where we first heard these messages, we can express our upset (both from our early lives and in the present), and support and back each other to powerfully speak truth to power.

We then asked people to do listening exchanges in triads with the prompts:

•            When did you first see or understand that there were differences in people’s wealth?   How did we feel about some people having more and others having less?


•            Do you have more than we need?  Have you ever bought something and brought it home only to wonder why you had bought it and recognize that you do not need it.    Indigenous leaders have challenged us to reduce our consumption to support a sustainable world


I’m a white man from the United States, and I’m honored to be partnering on this webinar. 

I grew up largely ignorant and misinformed about Africa.   As an adult, and especially since becoming involved with Sustaining All Life and United to End Racism, I have gone to Africa 4 times, led workshops there, listened to many African people about their experience (especially in relationship to money and economics), led workshops and classes for Africans virtually, read books by African authors, and listened to podcasts by Africans and about Africa.  I still have a lot to learn.  And I have been asked today to talk about the history of colonialism in Africa and its impact from the perspective of a white ally.

We know that the whole continent of Africa has been dominated by Europeans for centuries.  Westerners often think about Africans as if they were one people with one history, ignoring the continent’s thousands of cultures, languages, and heritages.  There are 55 countries in Africa and over 3000 languages spoken today. 

Many great civilizations and peoples emerged from Africa.

For many years, prior to The Age of Discovery and colonization, the primary relationship between coastal African kingdoms and European countries was trade. 

In 1493, the Pope issued the Doctrine of Discovery which stated that non-Christian lands should be taken and ruled by Christian nations, and indigenous people living on these lands should be converted to Christianity.  A papal bull followed that same year that legitimated slavery of African people and Native Americans.   About that same time, the concepts of race categorization or taxonomy were being created and then popularized in Europe which evolved into theories of white racial superiority. 

In 1870, 10% of Africa, mostly coastal areas, was under European control.  By 1914, after the Scramble for Africa, this figure was almost 90%, divided amongst 7 European countries.  Colonial borders were drawn unilaterally by the Europeans.   Greed, the desire for wealth, motivated the Europeans.   Europeans took control of the African continent for their own imperialist purposes – trade, exploitation of people and resources, and settlement.   And its impact has been devastating to African people.

The process of decolonization started with Libya in 1951, and continued through the 1970’s.   This meant that the European countries no longer directly ruled in Africa … but instead neo-colonialism was prevalent – “the deliberate and continued survival of the colonial system in independent African states by turning these states into victims of political, mental, economic, social, military, and technical forms of domination carried out through indirect and subtle means….” 

Africa is not and has never been poor.   Africa is rich in people and natural resources which have been stolen for centuries and continues today. 

Over 12 million Africans were shipped across the Atlantic as slaves, and millions more died in the process. 

Millions more Africans were enslaved within Africa to provide labor to extract the continent’s natural resources.   For example, an estimated 10 million Africans in the Congo Free State were killed between 1885 to 1908.  

The continent possesses vast natural resources that were plundered, including ivory, rubber, timber, and minerals.

60% of the gold in Europe came from West Africa, valued in the trillions of dollars.

Unequal trade relationships, where African nations often export raw materials at low prices while importing finished goods at higher costs, perpetuate the wealth drain. 

And this list could go on. 

What is the impact on debt, climate, and the African people?

African countries owe US$685 billion to external creditors as of 2023.

Africa’s debt has more than doubled in the past decade.


African countries will pay over US$88 billion in external debt service in 2025.

External debt owed by African countries is equivalent to 24.5% of their combined GDP in 2023  


Climate change has had a devastating impact on Africa, a continent that contributes less than 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions but suffers disproportionately from its effects.  

Rising temperatures and droughts have devastated agriculture.

In 2024 alone, flooding affected 7.5 million people across 18 African countries creating the largest number of internally displaced people in the world. 

The imposition of monoculture farming systems for cash crops disrupted sustainable indigenous agricultural practices.

 Promises of climate finance to help African countries adapt and mitigate climate effects have largely gone unmet or are delivered as loans, not grants, perpetuating debt cycles.   

Africa’s marginalization in global climate negotiations reveals structural racism in international policymaking. 

In addition to the debt and climate impact of imperialism and colonialism, we, in the west, have grown up with pervasive messages that black Africans are primitive and less intelligent.  As a result of white people’s oppressive attitudes, black African people have internalized racism, colonialism, and genocide. 

 We have work to do – both to root out our oppressive attitudes, to support African people in their liberation, and to advocate for policies to correct for racism and the historical colonialism, imperialism and present-day neo-colonialist practices.

We then asked people to do listening exchanges in triads with the prompt: What are your thoughts and feelings listening to the history of the colonization of Africa?

Later, my co-leader spoke about the impact of colonization, imperialism and racism in Ghana and the implications for climate and human services.  

I concluded with thoughts about what we, in the Global North, can do to address the historical injustices done to Africa.   See my next blog, Exploitation and Debt Part II, to read my final comments at the webinar.

To me, whether acting independently, or as part of a political movement, or as part of a military force, or as part of a government initiative does not matter.  Killing innocent people is simply wrong, no matter who does it, how it is done, and no matter what the motivation or the hoped for desired outcome of the action.

There are too many cases these days, whether in Ukraine, Russia, Sudan, Rwanda, Congo, Israel, West Bank, Gaza, and the list goes on, of killing/wounding/raping/destroying without regard for people’s lives.

There are countless political, economic, and social explanations for why this is happening.  I try to look for what is happening psychologically.   And one area that I keep thinking about, and looking at within myself, is the pull for revenge.

I had the pull to seek revenge, and it tended to come up around my closest people

(hopefully not as much as it used to).   When I have experienced someone

as acting in a hurtful direction towards me, I want to hurt them back.   I’m sure we have all observed this behavior in young people, whether demonstrated with physical actions or words (one person says something mean, and the other person responds with something mean in return).  For me, my pattern when acting inside hurt feelings has been to withdraw.    Withdrawing is my patterned method for hurting someone back who I feel has hurt me.   When I do it, it is acting inside of a patterned pull for revenge.      Is this

any different from the person with the patterned pull for revenge who uses

a gun to get revenge?   In both cases, we are acting on the patterned pull

for revenge.  The gun is more destructive than withdrawal …  but I think I we need to purge ourselves of any last remaining pulls to act out revenge feelings and encourage others to do the same.

Although I don’t remember it very well, both my mom and older sister have told me stories about how my dad would withdraw and totally stop talking to my mom when he was upset about something.   My best guess is that I saw that, maybe experienced it directed at me or maybe I just experienced it as a bystander, and something got internalized within me as a result.   I have had to work hard to not act consistent with what I saw my dad do.

Do you have feelings inside you that sometimes cause you to want to seek revenge?   Do you remember early experiences of where or how those feelings might have gotten installed within you?

I disagree with many of the policies of the governments of all the countries that I mentioned in the above paragraph.  I have actively disagreed and protested against some policies of the United States government over the last 50+ years, starting with the Vietnam War in the late 1960’s and into the 1970’s.   The U.S. government has done some horrific things, sometimes overtly and sometimes covertly, both domestically and internationally.

I fully claim being an American, or more correctly, a U.S.’er.  Despite how much I might adamantly oppose what the United States government is doing at any particular time, it does not make sense for me to deny, run away from, or hide that I am an American.  I am an American.   Actually, I think it makes sense to claim pride in being an American … just as I claim pride in being a man or in being five feet, nine inches tall or in being a bridge player (per my last blog).   I am who I am, and I can choose to be proud of who I am in every aspect, regardless of mistakes or oppressive actions I have taken in the past.   So, I am proud to be an American with all the positives associated with America and with all its flawed, oppressive and damaging polices that have wracked havoc on millions of lives.

If I can claim being an American, and take pride in being an American, then it makes sense that Israelis, Palestinians, Kenyans, Nigerians, and Russians (and everyone else) can do the same.   This does not mean that they agree with their government’s actions (they may, or they may not).  It means that we all get to take pride in the place that we come from and where we live, our heritage and our history.  

I have heard people say that “if things get worse”, then I’m leaving the country.   And people have certainly left all the countries that I have mentioned, plus many others, because of disagreement with policies and fears, or the reality, of being persecuted for those disagreements.

We need to make a distinction between a country and people from that country.   I think we can know and like people from everywhere.  We can know and like people from all countries, even those with which we have disagreements with their government’s policies.  

Let’s claim pride in who we are, including the country in which we live.   And let’s build relationships with people from all over the world to dispel myths or confusions we might have about places that are foreign to us.  Let’s do all that while we continue to advocate for the changes in government policies that we believe will make our country and the world a better place.

This is probably an exaggeration, but I can’t say that I remember when I did not know how to play bridge.

I have many memories of being home alone as a young person and dealing out all four hands of bridge, and bidding and playing them all myself.   On Saturday night, my parents would go out, and I’d sit in front the TV set watching, or more listening, to whatever was on and practicing bridge at the same time.

I started to play bridge with my friends when I was in about 6th grade.    I invited 5 friends (Billy, Jon, David, Danny, and Joey) – we took bridge lessons together from the director of the local bridge club (Ernie).   I already knew all about how to play, but my friends did not, but they were all eager to learn.  Once they got through the basic lessons, we would invite each other to our homes on Saturday night, the host supplied snacks, and we played bridge for a few hours.   Wholesome entertainment!

When I went to boarding school starting in 9th grade (that is a whole other story), I became friends with others interested in bridge.   It was a combination of playing and me doing some instructing.   I remember that I did not have as much patience back then as I do now.   My bridge playing was good enough that some of the masters (teachers who also lived in the dorms with us), invited me to play with them.   I especially remember Mr. Cobb, who also taught Latin, inviting me to his apartment to play bridge with other teachers, and I was able to stay up after lights out as they wanted to keep playing.

My most important teacher and partner was my mom.   She was an excellent bridge player, arguably the best player in our local community.   She would regularly win when she played in local tournaments and would often travel into New York City and elsewhere, to compete in bigger tournaments.   When I played with my mom, it seemed like she never made a mistake.

Probably the biggest highlight of my bridge-playing career was that when I was 16 years old, I played in a national tournament where contestants were divided based on their level of experience.  I played with Bart (a local attorney) and stayed overnight in New York City as it was a 2-day tournament.   And we won, came in 1stplace, amongst 256 pairs (if I remember correctly).   Our victory was reported in Alan Truscott’s bridge column in The New York Times.   My 1st moment of fame!

I love that bridge is a partnership game, it is about communicating with another person as clearly and accurately as possible … and having agreements with each other about what different communication means.   All the communication in bridge is symbolic – bidding suggests what cards you hold (but you can’t say I have 5 hearts headed by the King, Queen) and playing the cards is all about signals with your partner, specifically on defense.   There is an intricate language for communicating at bridge, its artificial … and there are multiple variants of that language.

I am currently teaching 4 women in our apartment building how to play bridge.  I can see how far I’ve come as a teacher compared to my impatience with my high school friends.   In college, 2nd semester of freshman year, for my Educational Psychology class I taught my best friend how to play bridge, documented the experience, and wrote a term paper about it.   I really wanted him to learn and was really stumped as to why certain aspects were challenging for him.  The more impatient I got, the worse he did.  What a great lesson to learn about teaching.  I wouldn’t claim to have endless patience now, but I think the 4 women that I’m teaching probably feel like I do.

I want to come back to my mom.   As I wrote above, she was a highly skilled and accomplished bridge player.    She is now almost 98 years old.   When I go to visit, one thing that we reliably do is play bridge, both on the computer and going out to local bridge tournaments.   It is in playing bridge, where I can most see the impact of aging on my mom.  She is still relatively physically healthy … but her short-term memory is very challenged.   In bridge, to play well, one needs to remember what bids have been made and what cards have been played.   This is unfortunately very hard for my mom at this point in her life.   She still loves to play; it is probably her single most very favorite activity.   But she now routinely makes mistakes because of her faulty memory.  I’m glad she still enjoys it as much as she does.   And I still enjoy playing with her.   But the roles are reversed … she used to point out my mistakes to me to help me learn to be better.  And now I easily see her mistakes but often I don’t say anything … her lapses in memory are not something that she can learn and correct.

My mom taught me to play bridge, it has been a favorite activity of ours for almost all of the 69 years of my life, and it hopefully will be something we continue to do together until the day that she dies.

My mother (almost 98 years old) received a call from someone reporting to be her brother (they talk with each other about once per year) sharing a hard luck story about his children’s college loans, health issues for himself and his wife, and house remodeling that turned into a money pit.   After sharing all this, my mom’s brother asked for a loan of $22,000.

OK, this sounds like a scam on my elderly mother.   But my mom told me that the voice sounded like her brother, just a bit depressed, and this person was able to relate facts and stories that were identifiers of his identity.

When my mom told me this, I was suspicious.   I told her not to provide any money whatsoever.   But to call her brother herself and see who answers.

Meanwhile, I wrote my uncle at his business e-mail address.   My uncle is a successful lawyer at a major firm.   In my email, I told him that I thought my mom was being scammed by someone who is impersonating him.

Within 40 minutes, I got an email back from my uncle.  Note: my uncle and I email rarely and when I write him, it is usually a few days before I get a reply.  The reply from his business email address was that this is not a scam, that there were health issues, and that he had a major problem.   He did not ask anything about me but that was not unusual.  

Then I called my uncle on his cellphone … I wanted to hear his voice and interact directly.  The person who answered sounded like my uncle and knew information that I would have thought that only my uncle knew.  Although it was a very horrible story that he told of what had happened, and it seemed very uncharacteristic of him, I was also somewhat sucked into believing his story.  Luckily, I was visiting with my sister and her younger son at the time … and I had that conversation with my uncle on speakerphone so that they could hear.  They were more suspicious than I.  I told my uncle that I would consult with my sister and mother about his request for a loan.

After the call, my nephew, who has a lot of media skills and uses AI in his work, demonstrated for us how easy it is for AI to replicate someone’s voice.

The next morning as we were having breakfast, I got a phone call from my uncle’s wife.  She had never called me before and I had only met her once, over 25 years ago.   She proceeded to talk and cry (again, I had her on speakerphone so my family could hear).  She repeated much of the story that I had heard from my uncle and added that her brother had stolen $500,000 from them as well as other problems that they were facing.   As she talked, I had the phone on mute, and we were trying to figure out what to say or ask that would help to determine whether this was really my aunt or an AI imposter.   Finally, we thought of a situation, and I interrupted my aunt to ask about it.  Her response multiple times was to ask me what had happened, and the trick part of the question was that I had not attended the event that I was asking about, and my real aunt would have known that.   I hung up the phone believing now that I knew it was a scam.

But how do I alert my uncle and aunt that that this is happening when the phone numbers and email addresses that I used were clearly compromised?

We decided that the next step was to call my uncle’s law firm and talk with his secretary.   I left a message, and she returned my call later that day.

Meanwhile, I had called my mom and told her that it was definitely a scam and not to provide any money.   And my mom told me that her brother had given her an address to which to send the money (further validating our belief that it was a scam).

I talked with my uncle’s secretary when she returned my call later that day.  I had never spoken with her before.  I explained who I was and what had happened.   She was not aware of my uncle having any health issues (he is semi-retired and comes into the office only occasionally) and she was surprised that he would be asking anyone for a loan.   I suggested to her that she contact her law firm’s IT and Security departments.

The next day I exchanged messages again with the secretary at the law firm because I wanted to follow up to be sure that this was being handled.  When we talked with each other late Friday afternoon, she told me that she had called my uncle and that he had told her that he was aware of this scam effort and that he was handling it and nothing more needed to be done.   This did not make sense to me – someone had impersonated him and asked his sister for $22,000 and nothing needed to be done?   I continued the conversation with the secretary who I could tell was wanting to follow her boss’ directions.   I helped her once again agree that he had told that me that he had health issues and that she was not aware of any, and that my mom had been asked for money and that she did not think that my uncle would need money.   And then I added that if this an AI-generated scam, and my uncle’s and aunt’s cellphone numbers are hacked as well as his law firm email address, then might this same scam be run on my uncle’s law firm clients and that would be put the law firm at risk.   She understood this and said that she would send an email explaining the situation to her law firm’s IT and Security folks and copy me.  She did so on Friday night, and I replied with additional information and then also forwarded the email that I had received from my uncle’s law firm email address in which he wrote that there was no scam – I wanted them to see that his email address had been hacked.

Ok, that’s the incredible story that happened.  I still find it hard to believe.   There are some details that I have left out just to keep this to a reasonable length … but everything I wrote above is what happened.  I appreciate that I was with my sister, my nephew, and our spouses so that we could all think this through together.  And I want everyone to know how sophisticated scammers have become.  This is a warning for all of us.

It is in the interests of the oppressive forces that we feel disillusioned and defeated, and that we just give up and focus on making our personal lives go as best as they can.

But while having good personal lives is important, it is not insufficient.  We need to stay hopeful and engaged in constructive resistance to autocracy and the ascent of the oligarchy and make whatever attempts we can to promote positive change at the local, state, national, and international levels.

How do you stay hopeful and engaged?

Below I’ll share a few things that I have found helpful to stay hopeful and engaged.

1)        I have participated in 3 relatively large protests over the last few months, 2 here in Stamford and 1 in New York City.  In all cases, I organized to attend the protests with friends.   I don’t believe that these protests will change any policy-maker’s views (although the protests against the Vietnam War definitely had an impact).   However, I participate because the energy is infectious and the numbers of people attending is encouraging.   It is helpful to be surrounded by other people singing out and shouting together, to experience that I am part of something that is bigger than just me.

2)        I have found it very important for my mental and emotional health to find places where I can share and vent about what is bothering me.   For different people, this takes different forms.  For me, I am an active participant in Re-evaluation Counseling (RC).  RC is dedicated to helping individuals recover from the ways that they have been emotionally hurt so that people can live their lives as fully as possible.  

For those of you not familiar with Re-evaluation Counseling (RC), the essence of the theory is that all human beings are inherently intelligent, caring, and zestful.  However, these human qualities become blocked or obscured as the result of hurtful experiences starting early in our lives.   These hurtful experiences might have been anecdotal within our families/schools/church communities/friendships/etc. and/or based within oppressive systems like sexism, racism, etc.  RC is a practice of listening, of learning to follow the pathways of memory toward the healing of ancestral and current societal wounds. In some ways it’s very simple, building on the lived experience that many people have had: after a good cry with a trusted friend, the fog lifts, the mind works better, we are more available again for human connection.  If you want to read more about RC, you can go to https://www.reevaluationcounseling.org or reach out to me directly.

3)        Reading about good things that are happening somewhere in the world.   Sometimes I have to search for the good news.   More frequently, I must decide not to skip over it (while I get sucked into the latest horror).  A few examples, that maybe you did not know:

·      A new study from the International Energy Agency found that EV batteries got 20% cheaper last year.

·      The EU appears to be more or less on track to cut its greenhouse gas emissions in line with its Paris pledges.

·      Public libraries are wonderful places that offer lots of free programming and opportunities to mingle with other folks from your local community.

4)        Do something.  As a climate activist, I have shifted my focus to be much more at the state level where, despite obstructionist tactics by some politicians and lobbyists, there is a better chance of getting something done.   This has had two additional benefits – building relationships with other local activist and getting to know my state-level representatives.   I don’t think it matters so much what you do (e.g., I just wrote my state senator in support of climate legislation) but that you do something.  It feels good.  Maybe it makes a difference.   And it serves as an active contradiction to feelings of hopelessness.

5)        Finally, it helps me to have time with friends, to build closer and more committed relationships.   We don’t have to agree on every political issue. We often spend time together without politics even entering the conversation.   Being with people, knowing that I’m connected with other people, gives me the faith and courage to act.  

What helps you to stay hopeful and engaged during challenging times?

At the conference, I did a lot of reflection about my family of origin, my roots.    It could be that I have romanticized the story of my ancestors … but I think I’m relating things that I understand to be true.   I’m much more connected to my dad’s family mainly because I grew up with my dad’s parents and uncles and aunts and cousins all living in our local community.    Unfortunately. My mom’s parents and extended family were thousands of miles away and even though I have fond memories of time with them, I am less familiar with their personal stories.

My dad’s ancestors were from rural Hungary, and based on birth, wedding, and death certificates that I found back into the early 1800’s that were all identified as peasants.   I visited Hungary several times on work trips @ 25 years ago and hired a local historian to research my family’s history. It is not clear what led to their migration to the United States.  I could not find any history of pogroms in the area in which they lived.  More likely, it was famine conditions and the hope for a better life (they had relatives in the United States).

My grandfather’s older brother was the 1st member of the family to come to the United States and settled on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.   He was a teenager.   Later, my grandfather and his 2 younger brothers and their mom all come to New York City also.    This was the family that I grew up around.  Later, I learned that there were other siblings that had stayed in Hungary or had died in childhood, and their father who had also died relatively young.  

Because of some breathing issues that my grandfather had in Manhattan, a doctor advised that he move to the country.   So, he and my grandmother moved to Middletown, New York (in the Catskills area).   The Markovits clan (the other brothers and their mom) all moved to the Middletown area also.  The three older brothers all opened corner grocery stores.   And they pooled their financial resources to put their youngest brother through college and law school.   The three grocers at one point had a combined total of five corner stores.

One piece of their story that has become clearer to me recently is that these brothers basically operated as a collective.  They purchased wholesale groceries together, leveraging their buying power.   If one brother ran out of canned tomatoes, another brother would send over a case of canned tomatoes.   They were a unit.   My grandmother had actually gone out on a double date with my great uncle, while my grandfather was with my future great aunt.   After the evening, my grandmother suggested that they swap, and both newly formed couples eventually got married.   They were a tight-knit family unit, living in close proximity with each other and helping each other in business.   The whole family relied on the baby brother to be their lawyer whenever necessary.   The 4 brothers were four of the ten men who came together to form a synagogue in Middletown.  I appreciate how the Markovits family functioned as a clan, living near each other and looking out for each other.

All four brothers had families that they raised in the Middletown area.   My dad was an only child, but he grew up with his cousins.   These cousins all pursued their own careers.  My dad expanded his dad’s corner store into a supermarket. Other cousins became lawyers, dentists, professors, or department store buyers.   Although they had grown up together, they became more independent from each other than their parents’ generation had been.  They still got together for family events.  I have pictures of everyone together – the 4 brothers and their wives, their children and their partners – at my grandparents’ 50th wedding anniversary party.   And although picture-taking was not allowed in our conservative synagogue, I have memories of everyone being together for Bar-Mitzvah’s and weddings.

My generation also, for the most part, grew up in the Middletown area.  There were eight of us Markovits children who grew up together in Middletown itself, all within 10 years of age of each other (and no two in the same grade in school).  I was good friends with two of my cousins, playing tennis or golf with them during the summers and visiting at each other’s homes.    We all got along and liked each other, and we knew we were all part of the same extended family.

As time went on, each of those in my generation followed their own path.  Some rebelled against their parents (it was the 1960’s after all).  Others stayed more closely connected, at least with their own parents and siblings.

But the sense of the Markovits clan that my grandparents had is long gone.  There are no longer gatherings of extended family.   The siblings have maintained their connections, but the extended family has been broken.  I have never met most of my cousins’ children.  We live all over the country – there is no proximity anymore.

I don’t think this story is unique to my family.   Nor is it even unique to Ashkenazi Jewish families.   But something happened.   We could attribute part of the explanation to a desire for upward mobility.   We could potentially attribute part of what happened to anti-Semitism and the desire to assimilate into mainstream culture.   And we can look at this as part of a broader trend in the United States of moving to chase jobs and careers.

I feel fortunate that I grew up surrounded by my extended Markovits family.  

Whatever the cause or explanation, I am saddened by the sense of loss of what was once the Markovits clan.  

This week, we met with Connecticut’s State Treasurer and 3 of his top deputies.     The State Treasurer manages $60 billion on behalf of the state’s pensioners and retirees.    

We came to the meeting with four requests:

1.      Move state investments away from climate-change-causing fossil fuels.  In 2025, we ask you to start this process by committing to making no new investments in stocks, bonds or private equity investments in companies or funds that invest in fossil fuel producers or pipeline companies.


2.      Invest more in renewable energy to enable the state of CT to benefit financially from the massive trend toward decarbonization. In 2025, we ask you to commit to $569 million investment (1% of the 2024 total assets of $56.9 billion) in companies and funds focused on climate solutions and to increase that commitment by 1% of total assets annually by 2030. 


3.      Vote as a shareholder for company disclosures of Scope 1, 2 and 3 greenhouse gas emissions and to support policies that mitigate systemic climate risk.


4.      Co-file key resolutions that mitigate climate risk, and pre-declare AGM season votes to build support amongst peers.

Six of the attendees were asked to provide our perspective as to why it was important for the State Treasurer to act on our requests.   These six speakers were a teenager, a religious leader, an environmental justice advocate, a Connecticut State retiree, an elder who is a local leader of Third Act, and me.   I was asked to speak to the financial risk of climate change.  

The meeting went well.   The State Treasurer and his office are already taking some constructive steps.   Our intent was to both support him in his actions and to push him to do more.  

Below are the remarks that I made in the meeting with Connecticut State Treasurer Erick Russell:

“Hi, my name is Mike Markovits.  I co-lead a climate team at Temple Sinai in Stamford.   And I’m a retired executive from GE and IBM.

Ashen, Terri, and Ivelisse have presented compelling moral, climate, and justice- based reasons for shifting the state’s investments.

I’m going to add what some might describe as a cruder rationale.  Let’s improve the state’s returns on its investments and provide long-term sustainable returns for current and future pensioners and retirees.   It is consistent with the state’s fiduciary responsibility to seek the highest possible returns while managing risk.

Fossil fuel stocks reported a 5.7% return in 2024, barely 1/5 of the S&P 500’s performance.

The fossil fuel sector has underperformed the S&P 500 in 7 of the last 10 years and were the poorest performing sector in 5 of those years.

Investment in fossil fuel business has been described as asymmetric in the sense that the foreseeable rewards are not likely to be equal to the foreseeable risks.  This means there Is limited potential upside and significant potential downside to investing in the fossil fuel sector.    In the long term, it is highly likely that risks associated with a decarbonizing world will result in a sharp decline in the value of fossil fuel companies.

Thinking even more broadly, we know that the climate crisis is already exploding insurance costs and making entire regions uninsurable.   The systemic risk created by climate change threatens the foundation of the financial sector and other sectors as well.  

It is vital for the country and the world that we transition our economy away from fossil fuels.   It is the state’s fiduciary responsibility to manage climate risk.   Connecticut can help the environment and make more money … and this is in the best interests of our state’s pensioners and retirees.”

In Blog #33, I wrote about a presentation that I did at my Temple’s Mitzvah Day on “Moving Our Money.”   As much as it is beneficial for each of us to divest from any support for fossil fuel companies – the companies themselves and their funders, it is even more important for big institutional investors to move their money away from fossil fuels and into renewables.  

In the United States alone, as of 2022, there was 35 trillion dollars in pension funds.  These funds are managed by the local and state governments, employers, and unions on our behalf as current and/or future pensioners/retirees.   If we can help to move these pensions funds from investing in fossil fuels and their funders (banks and insurance companies, for example), it would make a big difference. 

How is your pension fund invested?  Who manages your pension fund? Let’s investigate and make our voices heard.    I hope you can take steps to support the kinds of efforts that we are making in Connecticut wherever you live.

This past Saturday, April 5th, numerous organizations across the United States organized actions to protest the Trump administration’s initiatives.   The actions were organized under the banner of Hands Off!   Hands Off our schools, hands off our immigrants, hands off our social security, etc.

One of these protests was scheduled to happen here in Stamford, CT.   I decided that I wanted to attend and was pleased to see that the meeting location for the rally and march was only a few blocks from home.

I decided rather than just show up at the rally myself, I would see if I could organize friends to go together.   I wrote local Stamford friends:

“I am planning to attend the march/rally on April 5th here in Stamford entitled: Hands Off! Stamford Fights Back.  It is a march/rally in opposition to the policies being instituted by the Trump/Musk administration….

I’m looking for people to go with to this event.  Please let me know if you plan to attend and we can figure out how to find each other in the crowd.”

Several people responded, some to find each other at the rally and others decided to meet at my building so we could walk together to the rally.

In the final days before the protest, we got notified that the rally location had moved because so many people had signed up, they needed a bigger venue …. Very encouraging!

I also saw that the sponsoring organizations were holding a sign-making party on Friday evening before the rally.  I decided to attend, meet people and mingle, and make a sign.  In advance, I decided that my sign would read: “United We Stand.”    I think the most important thing is that people stay united in pushing against Trump’s initiatives and not let ourselves be divided.   I showed my sign to people that were making their signs and got favorable comments.   One person said I needed to put something on the other side of the sign, so I added: “Democracy Together.  Hands Off.”

It was reported that over 1200 separate rallies happened across the United States, in big cities and smaller towns.   I estimated that about 2,000 people were at the Stamford rally which I thought was impressive given the cold rainy weather.   The local newspaper report said 5,000 people but I think that must be a misprint … it did not seem like that many people to me. 

I was one of the 2,000 or more people rallying and marching with 4 other friends.  I saw a handful of other people that I knew, and many more people that I had never seen before.  It was a diverse group including babies in strollers.  

I can imagine that someday today’s grandchildren and great grandchildren will ask: What did you do to oppose Trump’s destruction of the economy, democracy, and so much more?

I was just one person in the crowd on April 5th.  And it was a crowd that I was glad to be in.

I have never really questioned this philosophy.  It has just seemed to me to be the way that things are.   But recently I have begun asking myself questions.  And it has led me to make connections with other things that I have learned that gives more credence to my questions.

It all started when a good friend strongly recommended to me that I listen to a podcast series entitled “The Telepathy Tapes.”    I was not immediately interested.  I was skeptical about the possibility of telepathy.   But my friend was enthusiastic about the insights that she was getting from listening, and even followed up with me the next week to see if I had listened to an episode yet.

I listened to the first episode of “The Telepathy Tapes”, and then the next one and the next one.   I have listened to five episodes so far.  They have stimulated me to think about what I believe is possible in human communication.

Before I explain what I have been learning, and the associations that it has generated for me, let me first state that I am somewhat scared to even be communicating to you about these ideas.   What will you think of me?   At the extreme, will you think that I need to be “locked up and the key thrown away’?    There is a reality in the United States, and maybe throughout the world, of people being oppressed for their unconventional beliefs.   A long time ago, it was for believing that the earth rotated around the sun or that the earth was round.   Still today, there is a somewhat hidden put still pervasive oppression of people who do not think and/or act in a manner consistent with societal norms.  The impact of this oppression is to cause people to go silent, hold their thoughts privately, and “pretend” to conform.

“The Telepathy Tapes” are an effort by a documentarian to tell the stories of autistic young people who are non-verbal and their ability to communicate telepathically with their mothers, their teachers, and among themselves.    Various experiment and studies have been done with these young people that seems to demonstrate without question that these autistic children have telepathic skills.   In simple words, the experiments show that these young people can ”read the minds” of their mothers.   One simple experiment was using a random number generator, letting the mom see what the number was but carefully shielded from the autistic young person, and that young person would be able to report what the number was, time after time after time.  

It was mind-blowing to me to listen to these podcasts.   Is telepathy really possible?   And why is it happening with autistic children specifically?

I remember learning, maybe in college, that people who grow up with a deficiency in one of their five senses are often able to develop superior qualities in other senses.   For example, a person who grows up without sight, might develop very good hearing and smell to compensate for the lack of visual information.   These cases are about building extraordinary capability in skills that we all have.     Is the inference that maybe all of us have the capability to communicate telepathically but we have not needed to develop that capability because we have verbal language and writing for communication?    This possibility has more credence to me as I have talked about “The Telepathy Tapes” with friends, and several moms have told me that they had telepathic-type experiences with their young children when they were very young and then it discontinued as their children gained verbal skills.  

In recent years, I have read about trees being able to communicate with each other.    This was a completely new idea to me and maybe to science in general.   Supposedly this happens through some combination of interlacing root structures and through the air using scents.   Wow!   So, if trees can communicate with each other non-verbally, why can’t humans be as capable and as intelligent as trees?

I’m sure we have all had the experience of picking up the phone to call someone only to have the phone ring with that person on the line … and saying: “I was just thinking of you.”   Maybe this is purely coincidence or maybe we somehow connected telepathically with that other person.

I don’t know what is possible.   I’m definitely interested in exploring these ideas further.

Do you have thoughts or ideas that you hold privately because you are afraid of what people would think if you shared them publicly?  

What experiences have you had that would support the possibility of telepathy among humans?

In 2023, I participated as a member of the Connecticut JEA delegation.   The delegation met twice with the senior aides for our 2 Connecticut Senators who focus on climate and climate-related issues.   In 2024, I led the Connecticut delegation in February and then supported one of the teenagers that I work with in my local Temple climate group to lead the delegation in August.

In 2023 and 2024, Jewish Earth Alliance recommended to the state delegations the legislation that we should lobby for with our Senators.   We were encouraged to request that our Senators co-sponsor specific legislation, vote yes on that legislation, and push to see to it that the legislation comes to the Senate floor for a vote and passage.   The legislation that we advocated for was progressive in nature, such as enhancing environmental protections, creating new national park areas, adding climate resiliency to the farm bill, and environmental justice legislation.   

Last week, coincidental with the Jewish holiday of Tu Bishvat, we had our first lobby day of 2025.   Our advocacy was quite different than in previous years.    Instead of advocating in favor of new climate or environmental legislation, Jewish Earth Alliance recommended that we advocate against Republican efforts to take away climate protections and laws that had been won in previous years.   This year, the local teenager and I were co-leading the Connecticut delegation.   The teenager suggested that we add to our advocacy that we encourage the Senators to do everything that they can to obstruct Republican initiatives of all kinds.  I agreed with this idea, we talked with our Connecticut delegation about it, and there was no objection … so we added it to our script.  We asked the Senate aides, who we know quite well after years of meeting together, whether they saw any opportunity for bipartisan legislation on climate issues and their answer was basically no.   And when we talked about using stalling tactics and whatever they could to obstruct Republicans, they agreed and cited ways in which the Connecticut Senators were already doing so.

Our conversations last week went very well with both Senate aides.  Our Connecticut delegation debriefed and felt quite good about the messages that we conveyed, how we conveyed them (with a delegation almost equally of teenagers and adults), and with the feedback we heard from the Senate aides.

At the same time, I have felt profoundly saddened by the contrast in what we were able to do in previous years versus in 2025.   I am upset that this is where we are today, that the chances for positive climate action have disappeared at the national level, and that the best we can do is to try to hold as much of the previous climate gains as we can.   Of course, local and state action is still possible, and I will certainly direct efforts there for myself and my local Climate Team.  

How are you choosing to try to push for progressive change, whether on climate or other issues, in the face of Republican control at the national level?