Month: January 2026

You Can’t Keep These Girls Down!

The Raging Grannies have been advocating for democracy, justice, and social and economic equality since the 1980’s. Now Herstory includes an international group of wise women elders who use song and humor to deliver stinging commentary to educate and motivate for change. Tell me this is not powerful!

The Raging Grannies began in 1987 in Victoria, British Columbia, and quickly spread across the country. White, middle-class, educated, between the age of 52 and 67, they were anthropologist, teachers, businesswoman, counsellor, artists, homemakers, and librarian. Initially they were reacting to the threat to health and environment posed by the visit of US Navy warships and submarines in the waters surrounding Victoria, vessels that could be powered by nuclear reactors and/or equipped with nuclear arms. They were also reacting to sexism and ageism within the peace group they were involved with: relegated to making coffee, they found little receptivity for their ideas. Finally, when asked about the beginning of the Raging Grannies most went back to their lifelong engagement in a variety of causes. For a few, activism was new. One woman, whose husband was an ex-military officer, was surprised to see possibly nuclear US Navy vessels literally in her backyard (Brightwell, 1998). Phoning around she was outraged to find that there were no emergency plans for the civilian population, only for the military base. ~ Carole Roy, Ph.D. Candidate in Adult Education at OISE/UT

I’m especially prone toward spunky women who make a difference because of my own paternal grandmother, Hattie Mae (Smalling) Feathers. She lived in East Tennessee in the small community of Watauga. During her life which spanned the late nineteenth to the latter 20th centuries, she was a member of the first all-women’s baseball team of Watauga, a Daughter of the American Revolution (DAR), a Suffragette and a graduate of East Tennessee State Normal School (now ETSU) in the 1940s: she walked across the graduation stage to not only accept her diploma but that of her son (my Dad) whose diploma was awarded while he was flying B-29s in WWII! Talk about courage and drive….

Hattie Mae Feathers

Hattie Mae in Her Youth. Think about it. This was probably around 1900 when women had no vote and were generally unheard and unseen. Not Hattie Mae!

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.

Margaret Mead

Letter to Congressional Republicans

January 26, 2026

Letter to All Republicans

US Congress 2026

Dear Senators and Representatives of the Republican Party,

This moment requires members of the Republican House and Senate to act decisively to protect the civil rights of citizens and adhere to Constitutional laws. Under your watch, the nation has never been more at risk of becoming another form of government: autocracy.

We the People have patiently waited for you to stand up for democracy. There is no more recent and brazen example as the persecution of Minnesota leaders and citizens. Pam Bondi’s request for voter roles is a clear violation of state’s sovereignty under law. Other cities have endured violations of civil rights by ICE but in Minnesota the worst of the far right ideologues of your once great old party are persecuting people it labels with a host of unamerican labels from elected officials right up to the White House.

We are not dealing with a “strong executive” but with people in key positions of power who have publicly stated their hatred of immigrants and their hatred of Democrats. Whatever happened to a nation in which both Republican and Democratic administrations were adhered to by citizens of all political views because all our leaders followed the rule of law and Constitutional laws.

My view is that we learned who DJT was in his first administration in which he pushed against the laws of our nation but was held in place by our guardrails against a despot: Supreme Court and Legislature. Now we have a stacked court of right leaning judges who have given immunity to a leader who is exactly the kind of person our founders wrote about who if he got into power would destroy the Republic. That is what we are witnessing, and, I have to say, is doing so with a lot of facilitation by you and your colleagues.

I am 80 years old, and I have never seen anything like we have in Donald Trump: an erratic, unstable human being; a person ignorant of our country and the world al large; a man whose mental health is deteriorating in plain view. We have never been more at risk in national security.

The killing of two Minnesota citizens by ICE who were protesting (their civil right) and the cowardly way in which Homeland Security reacted by calling them both insurrectionists is how dictatorships operate. Each family has a right to a full investigation. Life is not cheap in America under normal conditions.

I am begging you and your colleagues to stand up for the Republic! Protect our 250 years of striving together to make the best country we can. My God, the world is turning away from us. But do you know what I hold each of you most responsible for? Breaking the trust of the American people in such ways that you have weakened and endangered us. STAND UP!! Think about your legacy.   

Sincerely,

Susan Lee Feathers

Devoted Patriot of American Democracy

Teacher, Writer, Active Citizen

Freedom, Nation’s Capitol. Photo by Susan L Feathers, 2013

New World Order

Witness: from America’s ashes a global reorganization without US…

Mark Carney is the wise leadership America lacks. Americans at home are under attack from a vicious police force created by a rogue regime purportedly of the Republican Party. THIS cabal of small minded, unelected ideologues, has nothing to do with our Republic’s governance or American history. The man in the seat behind the Resolution Desk is a despot, a tyrant, and an ignorant and psychologically damaged man.

Kudos to Mark Carney and all the men and women who lead democratic governments across the world and who live in reality.

Americans enter a new world where we are a danger to the world and a minor player in world affairs. We can thank the MAGA party and the cowardly republican reps supporting and in lock step with a fascist movement tearing up our democracy in plain sight.

Americans, we must recover what we can, and then elect sober, intelligent leadership which can recover our values and come to terms with how this tragedy has happened to us. I suggest we study how Germany recovered after they, too, tried to destroy other nations and create a white male hegemony.

As an American, as daughter of a decorated WWII veteran, my heart is on the ground. In spite of that, I am actively working with my fellow Americans to recover the guardrails of our democracy, and then work to repair the damage to our collective belief in our country’s ethos.

Photo by Susan Feathers

Positive Climate Progress in World

Sam Matey on Substack keeps track of climate progress across the world.

Shows China leading, and countries across the world are ahead of the United States in solar development.

U.S. economic and foreign policy is now based on Trump’s crude delusions

Paul Krugman

https://open.substack.com/pub/paulkrugman/p/the-ignominious-death-of-drill-baby?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

The Courage of Our Convictions

History and Justice

America and Americans are riding a rising wave, a tsunami caused by tyrants in our body politic. The winds of ill will call us to ride the powerful wave to its resolution in the renewal of this Republic in its 250th year.

Truth bubbles up whenever forces seek to push it down, down from our sight and the light of facts. Our founder reminds us, “Facts are stubborn things.”[1]

Therefore, we take the courage of our convictions and we go out. Out we go to the streets with friends; we pick up a pen, and we write from experience and the assurance of our laws; we write from our shared wisdom; we text and email our Representatives, and we stand above the fray and call upon our fellow Americans to stop the madness:

  • A powerful Executive is not synonymous with abuse of power;
  • The powerful and lasting alliances through NATO and the United Nations have kept the world from worldwide war for 80 years; wholesale destruction of those alliances imperil American lives and those of our allies for coming generations;
  • Hatred of immigrants affronts the entire history of this Republic which has stood as a refuge for the repressed and made up our population over its entire history; no nation and its people are “garbage”;
  • Oil is a bygone energy source; nations around the world are converting to clean, renewable, cheap energy and should the tyrant stay in office, America will decline.
  • No intelligent leadership declares climate change a hoax.
  • The current president is not fit for office:  mental and physical incapacity; vicious, revengeful and dangerous to our Republic, citizens and nations worldwide.
  • The cabal of unqualified ideologues who surround the president are re-writing American history in their image and imaginations. Hundreds of years and millions of citizens’ labor to faithfully and accurately record our history and culture is being defaced, altered or all together destroyed.
  • Declaration of the United States of America as a Christian country defies the Constitution’s basic tenet of separation of church and state. We honor citizens’ personal choice of faith including the right to choose none.

History and Justice are watching, and they are recording on their stone tablets the ugly record of your assaults against humanity, your sloppy footprints on the Capitol. If it is Sorcery that abides now, watch out for falling catapults and hurling marble thrown by the straight aim of monuments surrounding your little stick and mud manifestations.

Now we see you, then, we don’t.

History and Justice are watching.

[1] John Adams

Earth’s Operational Plan

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe. ~ John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra, 1911.

On Christmas Eve in 2025, Iceland recorded a temperature of 19.8 degrees Celsius. The usual temperature average in Iceland on Christmas Eve is ~0 – 4 degrees Centigrade. Of Earth’s two poles, the Arctic Pole is warming faster.

Gradually, over the last 200 years, humans have sent carbon dioxide into the atmosphere at greater and greater rates until causing verifiable climate change. About 75 years ago, climate scientists warned the public of the relationship of carbon dioxide concentration and atmospheric temperature. [Technically, Alexander von Humboldt first described human induced climate change in 1800.]

Jim Hanson in the U.S.A. is the climate scientist who has been sounding the alarm for decades and enduring a concomitant response from the fossil fuel industry of being an idiot or insane (even when the industry was later revealed to have discovered that connection over half a century ago and chose to cover it up and even deny it when challenged, all for profit.).

Hansen first wrote about hidden tipping points in Earth’s complex biological and physical systems: thresholds that exist which once breached throw the system into permanent changes after which a new equilibrium is reached. As mosquitos have reached Iceland for the first time in its geological history, my guess is that the region’s ecosystems have blown by several tipping points. Iceland may be on its way to becoming an entirely other bioregion.

What does it matter? Referring back to what John Muir observed that everything in the world is hitched to everything else, humans cannot predict the outcomes and not just for humans. This amazing planet and the biomes we have all learned about and experienced, have operating systems as yet fully understood by humans. The more we play around as we seek greater riches, the more we play a dangerous game. It’s akin to Russian Roulette with our loved ones and future generations in the cross hairs.

Thanks to the persistence of scientists and environmentalists and other society leaders, we are letting fossil fuel production decrease and developing clean energy sources worldwide. This is a good direction that puts humanity on solid ground, at least for atmospheric forcing of a hot planet.

The precautionary principle

In the 1970s the German scientific community developed the principle of Vorsorge or, foresight. They developed the concept and practice while addressing the environmental impacts of deforestation.

An important and influential statement of the PP is the principle 15 of the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development in 1992. It states “where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.” Scientific Direct

I am including this principle for readers as we begin to address climate change around the world, especially in your home region. We should proceed, but with caution, to try various solutions guided by science and technology first. Economics will follow as we secure the very source of our wealth: the ground under our feet, the sky over our heads, the water we drink, etc.

People across the planet are experiencing climate change through storms, floods, heat waves and loss of biodiversity. So this is no longer a trumped up hoax. We experience in myriad ways. But what we may not realize is that it is changing the planet’s operating systems and we don’t know where that is going to end up. Will it continue to support life as we know it? Don’t know.

Every person must be involved in making sure the way we live is harmonious with what we DO KNOW about how the Earth systems operate:

  1. Earth systems operate on an inexhaustible source of clean energy (the sun);
  2. Earth manages ecosystem relationships so it does not overharvest a population;
  3. Earth recycles matter to reuse;
  4. Earth maintains genetic diversity.

To be an educated citizen of this planet, a child to an adult needs to know how the land under her feet, the sky over her head, and the living kin around her operate to stay healthy, reproduce, and live to the fullest. An educated citizen must understand her role in maintaining that system for the benefit of All.

References

Iceland Temperature at Christmas: Guardian, Dec. 20, 2025

von Humboldt the first environmentalist: nature ecology & evolution

°F = °C * 9/5 + 32

For interest and for an excellent recent book about Alexander von Humboldt and just a generally great read, I recommend Andrea Wulf’s recent biography of Alexander von Humboldt, The Invention of Nature.