23S week 4: Feminism's Gains at Risk: Stemming the Tide

Focus —Barbara Villandry

Barbara began her career working for Shawmut Bank, first in operations and then in Human Resources handling employee communications and activities.  Shawmut awarded Barbara a scholarship to Simmons College to attend a specially designed undergraduate management program sponsored by the National Association of Banking Women.  She continued at Simmons earning her Master’s degree in Communications Management.

     Barbara moved to academia when she became Assistant Director of her graduate program at Simmons College.  From there, she became Chair of the Communications Programs at Hesser College in Manchester, NH where she developed and managed a program in radio and television broadcasting, and a program in public relations. 

    Her home and garden have been her salvation during the pandemic where she has quarantined with her husband and pet poodle.  

CHANGES I’VE SEEN FOR WOMEN IN MY LIFETIME

    I’m hoping you will bear with me as I spend some time walking down my own memory lane.   I’ve been asked to talk about the changes I’ve seen happening for women in my lifetime.  I grew up in the 50s when there was an expectation that little girls would play with dolls and have imaginary tea parties.  I had a miniature porcelain tea set my grandmother gave me.  I loved it when she explained all the conventions of socializing while we would pretend to sip tea.  I cherished those moments, but when I was in my own house, I loved playing cops and robbers and cowboys and Indians with the boy next door in his basement.  I don’t know how many other little girls did that.   I never had girlfriends as confidants.  My mom tried to get me interested in dolls, but that really wasn’t my thing.  Finally, she settled on buying  me “storybook” dolls that were exquisitely costumed dolls designed for display.  I kept them in a cupboard high above my closet and they only came out when someone special came to visit like my cousins.  Other than that, I could be found outside hanging upside down off the bars of the swing set and walking the top of our fence with the boy next door.  

     When our family met for a family dinner at the country club, I had beautiful dresses that I loved to wear.  I understood that when the family was in public, I was expected to be well behaved, and I always acted like a young lady should.  My mom worked six days a week in her father’s jewelry store.  I knew that all of my friends’ moms didn’t work, but I never gave that much thought.  Fast forward to today’s world when I bought my great niece a tea set that I have yet to give her.  I have no idea if in today’s world that is an appropriate gift for a little girl.  I definitely haven’t bought her a doll for fear of pushing her into a stereotype of what a little girl should be interested in.  Last summer, I was truly astonished when my nephew sent me a video of his three-year old boy and five-year old girl riding bucking lambs at the annual rodeo….  Without living in proximity to these kids, buying gifts is a guessing game.

     In middle school, I had a girlfriend who was desperately ill once a month when she got her period.  The nurse wouldn’t allow her to go home.  She had to hang in for the whole day when she needed to be in bed.  My guess is that wouldn’t happen today, and if it did, the nurse and administration would be answering to my friend’s parents and perhaps a lawyer.

     In high school, girls had bouffant hairdos.  They would attempt to sleep with their hair wrapped around giant curlers.  I can’t imagine any girl doing that today.  The girls in high school were all required to wear dresses and nylons.  This was before pantyhose, so these were individual nylons with seams going up the back that were held up by a garter strap or a girdle.  So comfortable!  A couple of years later I was back home visiting an instructor at the high school, and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.  The girls were wearing pants and the guys were wearing colorful print shirts.  That was a bit difficult to wrap my mind around.  It looked more comfortable, but it was a major shift of expectations.

    In college, I attended an evening lecture of a visiting poet.  I was enjoying the lecture when I realized that I had to walk out so I could make my dorm’s 10:00 curfew.  The guys remained to hear the end of the lecture.  At the time I thought that this was so unfair.

     Then there was the time when I accompanied two of my housemothers to dinner.  Yes, housemothers were a part of my college experience!  A female student joined us who was a law student.  I was intrigued that she was training to be a lawyer, but it never occurred to me that I could go to law school.  I had a subscription for The Congressional Record delivered to me at school, but I couldn’t make the leap to think that I could become a lawyer.  When I reflect on that at this age, I’m stunned.  What I did instead was come to Boston to train as a court reporter.  

     The school recommended that I stay at the Franklin Square House, a women’s residence in Roxbury.  When I arrived with my foot locker and suitcase, they put me in a tiny long room that was so much smaller than the single I’d had in college.  Then, I learned that they had a 10:00 curfew.  I was beside myself.  Not that I was planning to close all the bars in Boston every night, but I have never done well with arbitrary rules.  There was a new YWCA residence opening on Clarendon Street in Boston.  I reserved a room, turned up at the desk of the Franklin Square House with my trunk and suitcase, and told them I was leaving!  I took a cab to the new YWCA where a lovely room was awaiting me, and where there were no curfews.  It was eight blocks from my court reporting school, and on a good day, I could walk there.  Later I made friends with a woman who was at The Franklin Square House at that time.  She was amazed the staff just let me leave.  My guess is that I looked older and professional, and they didn’t think I was a student. 

     I never became a court reporter.  I was working at Shawmut Bank in operations and the bank kept promoting me.  My husband and I were married in 1968.  It never occurred to me to keep my maiden name.  That idea gathered momentum a few years later.  There was one officer at the bank, however, whose wife insisted that he take her name.  I never could quite wrap my mind around that.  Today, I’m coming to terms with the fact that “husband” and “wife” seem to be terms that are passe, replaced by the term “partner,” which I always thought was only used by gay couples.  Sometimes it’s hard to keep up with all these changes.

    Around 1979, there were many more young women college graduates hired at the bank into jobs that had never before been filled by women.  One of the things that struck me was they were all dressing in the same pinstriped suit with the required silk tie at the collar.  They were attempting to look like their male counterparts.  The fact that none of these women seemed to have any sense of style made me a bit nuts.  Somewhere in the mid-80s, one of the female banking officers became pregnant and was going to take maternity leave.  She was one of the few women Vice Presidents.  The bank administration was in a dither thinking that she couldn’t hold onto her VP title if she wasn’t working full time.  They did come to their senses and allowed her to keep her title.  She had her baby and returned to have a very successful banking career that included bringing in a lot of money for the banking division.

     About that same time, I went to a conference at Harvard that was centered on family and children.  It was the first session of the afternoon and I did a double take thinking that I’d misheard the speaker.  He was predicting a phenomenal increase in single heads of households.  He was chronicling what turned out to be a major cultural shift.  More women were choosing to have children without marrying the father, or were marrying the father but were not staying in the marriage.  And there were more women and men who were choosing not to marry or to have children.  

     I think back to a month before my high school graduation when all the female graduating high school seniors were invited to an event sponsored by the Association of University Women.  The soon to be high school graduates showed up all dressed in heels wearing hats and gloves that matched their outfits.  I’m sitting there listening to one of these speakers tell the audience there is an order for living our lives.  We should go to college, find a husband, marry, and have children.  I remember wanting to get up and walk out.  It wasn’t that I had other plans, but I thought it was extraordinarily presumptuous for this woman to tell us how we should live our lives.  I can’t imagine her horror as she watched the American social order turn upside down two decades later.

     The birth control pill came on the market in 1960, and for the first time, women had access to a reliable form of birth control.  The 1960s was labeled the decade of the sexual revolution.  Free love was talked about a lot, and Haight Ashbury in San Francisco was identified as the center of the counterculture.  That didn’t impact me.  I was a traditional college student for less than a year in Montana in 1963.  I was in Boston in 1966 training to be a court reporter and working at the bank.  I was married in 1968.  Having said that, the pill was what I was using for birth control until 1979 when I had my tubes tied.  Unlike a lot of women, I didn’t seem to have a ticking biological clock.  The one time I thought about having a child I asked my husband if he would come with me into the delivery room, a practice that was just gaining steam.  He said “no,” and I said, ”Well, that’s the end of that idea!”  

     My pilot undergraduate degree at Simmons consisted of banking women whose banks gave them fellowships to attend this special program to earn their degree.  Almost all of them deferred having children until they were older, some in their 40s.  When I was 24, I had a gyn tell me to have my children in my 20s when I had the energy to keep up with them.  I’ve thought that having children when you are older makes you a different kind of mother.  From my vantage point, it looks to me like my classmates have been very successful in their roles as moms.  My guess is there are tradeoffs between having children when you are younger versus when you are older.  I’d love to see the research on this phenomenon.

     At one of Simmons Leadership Conferences, I listened to Whoopie Goldberg who had just come from a women’s march on Washington.  She talked about bringing a coat hanger to show her young D.C. audience as a way of reminding them what women used to do to abort an unwanted fetus before Roe vs Wade was law.  Today I watch the news coverage of how difficult some states are making it for women to have an abortion since Roe versus Wade has been overturned.  I can’t help thinking that some of these states’ legislators might as well join the Taliban.  It seems to me that subjugating women to their rules, no matter how restrictive, is right up their alley.  

     One of the culture shifts that I’m still coming to terms with is the husband who stays at home and takes care of the kids while his wife works.  In my neighborhood I see men wheeling baby carriages on my street during the day taking the baby out for some fresh air.  Trust me, when I was growing up, there was never a man wheeling a baby carriage down the street.  In a different time, however, I think my parents might have adapted that model if it had been acceptable.  My dad had wonderful parenting skills and my mom had no interest in that at all.

     When my husband and I were first dating in Boston, we’d gotten into an argument, and he pushed me which frightened me.  I went to the police department to see if they could help.  I’m not sure what I expected them to do.  That was a really bad idea.  Their policy was not to get involved in domestic disputes, and I was quickly rushed out of the department and back out onto the street.  Today if I went to the police, they would be required to listen and follow up.  That’s a huge change because a woman’s voice is finally heard.

     Lauren is a childhood friend who wrote Jane Fonda and told her she admired her and wanted to work for her.  Jane hired her to find scripts that her production company could produce.  Because of Fonda’s connections in Hollywood, she was one of the first women to form her own production company.  After five years working for Jane, Lauren formed her own production company which successfully produced three films.  That was possible, although not easy, because women were just beginning to get a foot in the door doing jobs that had always been the province of men.

     Lore Anne is a high school friend who after her freshman year at MIT was told by her father that he wasn’t paying this kind of money for her to earn Cs.  Her dad made her transfer to Montana State University to complete her undergraduate degree.  She completed her PhD at BU, and went on to be one of the first women to head up a division at NIH.  She has two accomplished daughters, one of whom is an oncologist specializing in brain cancer at Einstein.  That would have been a career that was unthinkable for a girl when her mom and I were in high school.  

     So yes, I have seen lots of things change for women, and I’ve had many of my own expectations drastically altered.  And as encouraging as these changes have been, I’ve also been distressed to see the backlash created by folks who want things to be the way they always were.  The speed of change may depend on your perspective.  For a lot of us, these changes have been very slow in coming, but for some, they have come too fast to accept and to embrace.

Click here to hear Barb's talk.

Linda Ai-Yun Liu, PhD

Linda Ai-Yun Liu is a Lecturer of Sociology in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She teaches and writes about feminisms, neoliberalism, cultural studies, and film and media studies. Her work has been published in Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies, and New Review of Film and Television Studies. She serves on the Executive Committee of the Faculty Staff Union at UMass Boston and is active in labor struggles to improve higher ed working conditions. She lives in Dorchester with her partner Joe, baby daughter Lila, and cat Hermes.

Click here to hear Linda Liu's lecture.

References:

Talk at UMass Boston  "Armed Conflict, Gender and the Rights of Nature": Dr. Keina Yoshida, International Human Rights Lawyer  on Thursday 30th March 2023.  (Possible speaker for WE)

Interesting article about expectations for women to do emotional labor work in the workplace: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/mar/27/emotional-labor-work-women-career-gender

     

Spring 2022 week 7, "Driving the Climate Crisis: To Buy or Not to Buy, That is the Question

Focus talk: Barbara Villandry.  Click here to listen.
Barbara Villandry’s Bio
Barbara began her professional life in Boston working at the Shawmut Bank in lockbox operations, processing New England Telephone payments. She worked her way up through the ranks to Assistant Manager. Shawmut awarded Barbara a scholarship to Simmons College to attend a specially designed undergraduate management program designed by the National Association of Banking Women. She continued at Simmons, earning her Master’s degree in Communication Management. She ended her Shawmut career working in Human Resources, where she was responsible for employee communications and activities, including creating the corporation’s first service award program.
Barbara’s career path moved into academia when she became Assistant Director of her graduate program at Simmons College. From there, she became the Chair of the Communication Programs at Hesser College in Manchester, NH, where she developed and managed a program in radio and television broadcasting, and a program in public relations. Barbara was active in the New England Pub Club, where she was V.P. of the Bell Ringers Awards. She is enjoying retirement’s freedom to follow her interests, including gardening.

To Buy or Not to Buy, That is the Question
I’m here to tell you that just like children can inherit their mother’s DNA, they can also inherit their buying habits. My maternal grandparents owned a jewelry store on Main Street. This was before the advent of malls when the town all shopped on one downtown thoroughfare. My mom and Aunt Eleanor both worked in their father’s jewelry store. On their lunch break, they walked up the street to see what other stores were featuring in their windows and showrooms. They were excellent consumers, and knew everyone who worked in these shops.
“The Store” as it was referred to, was the focus of much of our family’s life. I was allowed in the front of the store only if I was properly dressed. When I came from the skating rink dressed in tights and a skating skirt, I had to stay in the back of the store where customers couldn’t see me. When the store kicked off the Christmas season with an evening “Open House,” I was there dressed to the nines, and on my best behavior.
As a little girl, I always loved to spend time in my mom’s closet admiring her fancy dresses and jewelry. I never dared to dress up in any of her clothes, but I did try on her jewelry many times. When I was at my grandparent’s house, I looked through fashion magazines and all kinds of catalogs. My grandmother’s mobility was limited, so she did some of her shopping via catalogs. I loved cutting out the jewelry I liked from the old catalogs. I loved playing with paper dolls that had different outfits I could alternate placing on the dolls. All of this was grooming me to care about style, and eventually to develop overpacked closets just like those of every other woman in my family. I thought that was what all young women did.
When I was eleven, my dad died just before Christmas. My Jewish family celebrated Christmas, instead of Hanukah, and that Christmas was one of total excess. I don’t come from a family where we talked about feelings. My mom and aunt saw their mother go through two nervous breakdowns. The result of that was my mother never wanted to deal with anything that was emotional. My grandmother was a big gift giver, and my mom developed this into a fine art. It was the only way she could show love.
When I was 19, I was hired for my first job which was working for AT&T as a toll operater placing calls on one of those huge boards you’ve seen in old movies. I bought five identical wool knit sheaths with matching cardigans in different colors and of course, matching jewelry. I knew they were a solid beginning of a professional wardrobe. When I packed to go to school in Boston to train as a court reporter, those outfits came with me. The school didn’t have dorms, but they recommended that I live at the Franklin Square House in Roxbury. When I arrived, they put me in this long, tiny room which just about had room for a bed and the clothes I had shipped from Montana. Did I mention that they also had a 9:30 curfew? Within three days, I moved to the newly built YMCA on Berkeley Street that was walking distance to the school, and did I mention, they didn’t have a curfew?
Within a few months of arriving in Boston, I went to work for Shawmut Bank and started shopping at Filene’s. I bought a couple of suits that I love to this day even though they have long ago exited my closet. I can remember how I felt when I first saw them on the rack. It was love at first site. Every week, I checked out both Filene’s and Macy’s just like my mom and aunt had checked the merchandise in the stores on our Main Street back home. And just like I had seen my family do, when someone had a birthday or for Christmas, I did some serious shopping for what I hoped would be the perfect gifts, and then mailed them back to Montana.
A few months after arriving in Boston, mom came out to visit. She took a quick look at Boston, and very quickly put us on a train headed to her favorite place, Manhattan. We stayed a couple of blocks up from Broadway near The Stage Deli. In eight days, we saw eleven plays, visited all the major department stores, back when there were a lot of them, and occasionally found time to eat. Mom bought me a gorgeous Gucci print turban hat at Saks,’ which I never had the occasion to wear, and stayed in my closet way too long. Having said that, I never forgot the experience we had together. It was my first trip to Sak’s Fifth Avenue which was an experience in itself. I remember how happy mom was shopping in that store on Fifth Avenue. Everything about being there at that moment was special.
This trip marked the beginning of my connection with my mother that was based on our shopping together. Prior to this, we hadn’t had much of what you would call a relationship. Over the years, there were more trips to Manhattan where we saw lots of plays and shopped. When I would come home to Montana, I would go home with lots more clothes than I came with because we covered every foot of every store in town. We were developing our own ritual. My husband who is good at electronics and building would always end our visits by telling mom to develop a list of what she wanted him to do the next time we came. Often that included major purchases like a tv or washing machine. He developed his own ritual with mom surrounding buying things. She was happy, he was happy, we were happy!

Occasionally, I would be sent on a shopping excursion that was a challenge. Mom enjoyed decorating her home for Christmas. Every room had its own Christmas theme. If you are familiar with Department 56, you know they manufacture a variety of Christmas Villages. They created a Manhattan series, and every year they would come out with a new piece. Mom would call requesting that I find said piece and ship it to her. Initially, that meant calling the company to find out who in the Boston area carried their line, calling the store and asking them if they had what mom wanted, and then making a quick trip to Boston to buy it before they sold out. This was a limited edition with each store only getting a few of the pieces. Then I would pack the decoration and mail it to Montana.
The few times we were home for Christmas, mom and I always went to the after Christmas sale of a florist that had a large and wonderful gift shop. Did I mention that this was a really good after Christmas sale? By the time we were done, the trunk was filled and maybe some of the back seat. I bought gorgeous Christmas gifts for friends to be given the following Christmas. Mom bought more decorations for her home. I came to understand just how many of these decorations she had after she died. What she had hidden away in every nook and cranny was amazing.
Did I understand the excess of our purchasing? Not at the time, but once we arrived home for the holidays after coming from California and Mexico. Larry had a work conference in Anaheim. The following week we visited relatives in California and wended our way to Tijuana. We parked on the American side and walked over the border. On the return, we were so burdened by our purchases, we could barely make it across the border and back to the car. Hubby really enjoyed the whole bartering thing. After another ten days of vacation in Montana that included all of those after Christmas sales, I was standing in the Delta line with eleven pieces of luggage and boxes to be flown to Logan including a very large, boxed mirror which mom insisted that I needed and would ship. The Delta representative looked at me in disbelief. He told me he would ship it this time, but I should never do anything like this again! When we arrived at Logan, hubby pulled up in our rental car. I was pretty sure that the luggage and boxes were going to make it home without me because there wasn’t room. Hubby was determined that he was not leaving me in Boston. He rearranged things and somehow fit me into a corner of the car. We never did do anything like that again!
In 1995 with the help of our gas company, our house exploded, and everything was declared a loss even though the fire didn’t last long. It was a very hot fire, and the fire marshal said that even though a piece of clothing looked wearable, we could be wearing it and it could shred. Our insurance agent told us to make a list of everything in the house and list what we paid for it. I spent days in a smoke infested house making that list at which point we were told we needed to use replacement costs, not the original purchase prices. We had to redo the list revisiting again every item we could identify or remember that had been in our home.
That was an awakening. Our insurance claim representative brought in his superiors to see how full our closets were. That was my first realization that these closets weren’t what they were used to seeing. With the help of a friend, I made a video of each piece of clothing that were in our closets. That was a start to my mourning process. I was looking at an excess of gorgeous outfits, each with a history of its purchase. Taping that video was painful, watching that video is still painful. And even more painful were my trips to Bed Bath and Beyond after we moved into the new home, and I had to replace everything that had been in my kitchen along with all my sheets, towels, comforters, and pillows. Now, I wasn’t having much fun shopping even though our insurance had provided the funds for all of these replacements. This shopping was a chore and shopping was no longer a pleasurable outlet.
Having said that, we moved into a larger house where twenty-six years later I have managed to overpack lots more closets than I had in our house that burned, so somewhere along the line, my love or need to shop must have returned. These closets are a burden and a problem in search of a solution. During the pandemic, we’ve stayed very close to home. I haven’t had the occasion to dress up. For the better part of two years, I have been living in work clothes when I’m in the garden and a few pair of jeans, sweatshirts and t-shirts and sweaters when I’m in the house. I’ve been seriously impressed with just how simple my needs are, both in terms of clothes and the amount of space I need. The idea of downsizing seemed to big of an issue to deal with, but the idea is getting easier to deal with as I realize our needs aren’t what we thought they were.
As I’ve come to understand the world’s larger survival issues including sourcing raw materials and the pollution that comes from manufacturing and our excess consumerism, I have come to believe that our economic paradigm is wrong. The corporate definition of success seems to be increasing profits year after year, most often achieved by selling more products. I don’t believe that is a sustainable model for the future. As much as I’ve enjoyed my career as a shopper, I’m not interested in sustaining that kind of consumerism. But shopping allowed me to develop a relationship with my mom that I don’t think would have existed without it, strange though that might sound.

Main lecture: Lizabeth Cohen.  Click here to listen.

—Lizabeth Cohen

Lizabeth Cohen is the Howard Mumford Jones Professor of American Studies and a Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of History at Harvard. From 2011-18 she was the dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. In addition to Saving America’s Cities: Ed Logue and the Struggle to Renew Urban America in the Suburban Age, which won the 2020 Bancroft Prize in American History, previous books include Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939, also winner of the Bancroft Prize and a finalist for the Pulitzer, and A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America. She is also co-author with David Kennedy and Margaret O’Mara of a widely used college and advanced placement United States history textbook, The American Pageant. Her writings have appeared as well in many edited volumes, academic journals, and popular venues, including The Atlantic, New York Times, the Washington Post, and the American Prospect.

Among many awards and honors, Cohen has been a fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She was the Harold Vyvyan Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford during 2007-8 and she is a former president of the Urban History Association. Before joining the Harvard faculty, Cohen served in the history departments at Carnegie Mellon University and New York University. Cohen received her Ph.D. from the University of California Berkeley and her A.B. from Princeton University. She lives in the Boston area and in Truro, Massachusetts with her husband, historian Herrick Chapman, with whom she has two grown daughters. Her community activities include serving on the boards of the American Repertory Theater (Advisory Board), the Payomet Center for the Performing Arts (Board of Trustees, Truro), and WBUR (Community Advisory Board).

Spring 2021: Week 10 Pandemic: Our Stories of Resilience and Healing

—A Story Quilt

Barb:

HOW I AM CHANGING WITH THE PANDEMIC

     It has taken a pandemic for me to find my voice.  Ordinarily, I just go along to get along, rarely taking a stand, and that has certainly been true in my 52-year marriage, but the COVID threat changed that.  My husband, Larry, has had this part-time job where he takes older clients who can no longer drive to their doctors’ appointments.  It has been good for him because it allows him to see up close and personal how folks fight to stay independent as they age.

     He had become “the new best friend” of Mary, one of these clients, who had him take her grocery shopping after her doctors’ appointments.  They were both diabetic and were sharing their shopping finds.  In March of 2020, just as we were all trying to get our heads around what this COVID virus meant, hubby got a call from his agency asking him to sign on to take Mary to dialysis three times a week, which immediately got my attention.  I felt in my gut that this was a threat to our safety.  I knew it was important that Mary go for her dialysis, but I was determined that my husband wasn’t going to take her.  Communications in our household has never been our strong suite.  I told him how I felt, and I didn’t think he was processing the information.  That was when I said I would protect both of us as best I could from COVID, and if he wasn’t going to allow me to protect him, then I would do everything necessary to protect myself.  I said if he took this assignment, he wasn’t welcome back in our house.  I knew at that point that COVID had been brutal on an older population whose health was compromised.  The idea of his being in a dialysis facility three times a week for hours at a time was risky, not only to him, but to me.

     At that point, I was running on sheer adrenalin.  I called Frank, the former owner of the company hubby worked for to get his take.  When Frank retired, he held onto the van and had been giving rides to clients who needed a wheelchair.  Hubby had been doing some work for him as well until we understood he was an independent contractor and was responsible for insuring himself.  No insurance company would cover us for that arrangement.  Frank said he wasn’t running the service at that time, at which point I took a deep breath and called Larry’s current employer and told them they weren’t following CDC guidelines putting someone Larry’s age in a risky environment where COVID could be contacted.  They assured me it would be fine.  I was sure they were delighted that they had found someone for the job so that was one more thing they could check off their “to do” list.  I advised them to check with their corporate counsel, because I believed they would advise them that they had a liability issue.  That got their attention.  When they got back to me, they said they would find someone else to take Mary to her dialysis.  I knew I had overstepped what I would ever consider doing under normal conditions, but I didn’t feel these were normal conditions.  I felt that our health, safety and our well-being were on the line.  Mary later got in touch with Larry.  The gal at the agency had told her that we had moved out of the area.  Larry wasn’t sure what the mix up was, but I heard him say that I had him on a very short leash….  

     Since that exchange, everything in our relationship seems to have changed for the better.  Our communications have improved.  We are paying more attention to how each other feels.  We are enjoying the time we spend together.  At least once a day we meet on the deck to take a break and play with the dog.  In the middle of a pandemic, life is good!

                                               ________________

Susan:                                         Sadness

I was looking forward to 2020. It was going to be a very special year for me. Usually we got to visit our families only once a year, at Christmas time, which, in Australia, is synonymous with the summer holidays. However 2020 would be different. I had three trips planned.

First of all, our daughter was due to give birth to our first (and only) grandchild in April. She herself was born in England, far from any other family, and I promised myself that I would be with her to help in those first difficult weeks when her turn came. Now she and her husband are living in South Australia far from any relatives or close friends. I had my suitcase packed in our spare room ready to go when the time came.

Covid came first. We were sent to do our work from home where everything took much longer. Australia shut down. I reluctantly unpacked my bag and instead stocked the spare room with everything that a covid patient might need. We bought a digital thermometer and an oximeter. I was absolutely certain that at least one of us, and probably both would get the virus.

And by summer, I expected, we would be back at work with covid a distant memory.

I had found it extremely hard to break my promise and not be able to be there after Ambrose had been born. Still I expected to be able to make the second trip I had planned which was to attend my mother's ninetieth birthday celebration in October. I had made a special trip ten years earlier for her eightieth. October came and went. Then it became clear that we would not even be able to make our regular Christmas visit.

Each Australian state is only accepting a limited number of people on repatriation flights. For example, Western Australia only takes in 512 a week, set by the number of beds available in quarantine. The flights are very expensive (e.g. cheapest US$6,119 per person), as is the two weeks' quarantine (AU$2520 or $3360/couple). And now it appears that it will be another 18 months before we can be with our families. 

A year or more seems to have gone by in a flash. It's as if there has been a pleat in time. Time has folded back on itself so we have jumped straight from 2019 to the present.

How did I get through this time?

Firstly I had the companionship of my husband, the person I would have chosen to be with. He helps me get through those really low times. He takes me out for an hour's walk each day, rain, snow or shine.

Skype had already been our way of keeping in touch with both our children. Now we were able to watch Ambrose grow from a helpless newborn to a toddler with a big smile, climbing up on everything, waving to us and getting frustrated when things don't go the way he wants. This contrasts to the time when Alix had been born in England and phone calls were a pound a minute with rent at eleven pounds a week. So a week's rent would give us an eleven minute call. Those calls were few and far between. Now I use Facetime to talk to my mother and sister. The internet has been essential. I started WomenExplore on Zoom and I am now running my art group on Zoom too. 

I should also mention the absolutely amazing work done by multitudes of people around the world coming together to create numbers of vaccines in record time. I would not have believed that my husband and I could have been fully vaccinated by now. Vaccines provide the hope that covid will finally be overcome.

People have been kind, such as the friend who gave us a packet of surgical masks at the beginning when we didn't know what to do.

But always in the background is the sadness caused by not being able to be there for my daughter, my mother, my son, and our sisters and other family members. 

                                               ________________

Leigh:

Resilience and Contentment during the Pandemic, March 2020 - May 20, 2021 

Leigh Sherrill - May 20, 2021

We, my husband and I, are very lucky. We have medical workers in our family and close by who helped us quarantine efficiently in mid-March of 2020, answering questions as time went on. We were able to get vaccinated very soon after the clinic opened up in our town. We have remained healthy during this period of time, although my husband continues to need to manage his Parkinson’s Disease.

Through the computer and IPad we have maintained contact with friends and family, the technology allowing me to play bridge online and write my weekly column for the local newspaper. Our library developed a system to phone in a book order with the book then packaged and placed on an outside bench for pickup. Our librarian is especially good at procuring books the collection does not have and suggesting books I might like. In addition we have shelves and shelves of books here at home that I can reread or read for the first time. A special treat has been the Brother Cadfael series by Ellis Peters, of which we have 16 books that before the pandemic I had not read.

Although I am a fairly consistent housekeeper, neglected spaces received some more thorough attention such as the shed, the garage, and the attic with more work to do to clean out the attic. We are very poor at throwing things away as they carry so many memories, but even handling those items and allowing the memories to surge into our thoughts brings pleasure.

Most of all I relished the unscheduled existence. Yes, we have been retired for 20 years, but having always been involved and therefore busy people, once retired to Maine we jumped into life here with relish, never stopping to think that retirement might signal less action.

But the pandemic did give us that signal. And with less action I found more time to observe and enjoy. I love music and have a large collection of CD’s, but I rarely play them because I have come to enjoy the quiet more.

We have always, in retirement, had bird feeders, but checking them only for refill. Now we delight in watching many varieties of birds feed and fly and return for more.

Watching the seasons change and completing the concomitant chores has brought pleasure because time is flexible and plentiful. Especially this spring watching the humming birds return and the tulips and daffodils grow to flowering, and the trees bud and then burst into leaf has brought much joy.

An evening routine of watching local news and then international news, and then eating dinner and then watching two sessions of MASH, is a good combination for us, first bringing us up-to- date with the world and then nourishing our bodies and then relaxing with humor we appreciate.

In 60 years of marriage we have grown to know each other very well. We may prick or rub a tender spot now and then, but love and need for each other soon mends the wound. With two out of three of our offspring in Maine and not far away, we have backup forces with friends to back them up if necessary.

We have worked hard, but are also very lucky. We have had time to enjoy the rewards of our efforts. We have learned to slow down, take deep breaths, watch, and continue to learn to appreciate God’s creation and its gifts to us.

                                               ________________

Ival:

                                               ________________

Regina

One ribbon in the Story Quilt of:

How Do I Share My Money, Time and Love? — A Woman's Dilemma

—By Barbara V.

     Regina and I met in 1980 when we both worked at Shawmut Bank.  We found ourselves in the same master’s program at Simmons College.  We shared a love for exploring new ideas, we both enjoyed working, and we both loved Boston. She told me about her family, and I told her about mine.  She was my biggest supporter, a conscientious listener, a real girlfriend who enjoyed a shopping trip to Chestnut Hill.  She instilled in me a confidence that I would not have had without her.  We didn’t always see everything the same way, but we never argued.  She would explain her position and would listen while I explained mine.  Rarely did either of us win the other over, but we always had a healthy exchange of ideas.  Regina introduced me to Tanglewood, the Christmas Pops, the Peterborough Players, and dinner at The Ritz.  

    When I began teaching public speaking at UNH, Regina thought she would like to do the same, so I took Regina’s resume to the department chair, and soon, we were both working as adjunct faculty.  

     Every evening before class, we would meet at a little restaurant in downtown Durham for dinner.  The first class was always a bit chaotic, and Regina had a lot of students at her door who were not registered.  Each had a compelling story as to why they needed the class.  Regina admitted all of them.  How she handled a public speaking class that was double the usual size, I’m not sure, but she figured it out in true Regina fashion.  The students loved her! 

  When I moved to Hesser College in Manchester, Regina called and asked if there was a job for her.  I took her resume to the dean, and Regina was hired as an adjunct instructor teaching a variety of business courses.  A few years later, she was brought in as a full-time consultant. 

     Every morning around 10, Regina would come in with her cup of coffee, and we’d sit and catch up. There were other instructors and staff who she also checked in with during the day.  Regina loved to focus on a project.  She could churn out more work than anyone I knew, but she also enjoyed the relationships she developed in the workplace.  She cared about people.  She cared about what was going on in their lives. She believed in education, both for herself and others.  

     Regina was a wonderful story teller, and I’ve never known anyone who knew so much trivia.  She was a voracious reader, and that could include serious books, fiction, and pop culture magazines.  She watched a lot of television, surviving on very little sleep.  She was always reading more than one book at a time.

     Mornings were a magical time for her.  She always said that when she heard the birds chirping, she knew it was ok to get out of bed. 

     One night on the way home from work, Regina stopped at the animal shelter and asked to see the cat that nobody was interested in adopting.  They brought out an older cat which Regina said she would take. Then they brought out two other cats that no one was interested in.  Regina adopted all three of them.  And then there was Pyewacket: the kitty that turned up on Regina’s doorstep during a raging blizzard.  Regina opened the door, and the rest, as they say, is history.  

After her mom died, Regina began hiking up and down the mountain near her home by herself.  I was concerned that she was hiking alone, but those hikes helped Regina deal with her grief.  I was always impressed with how Regina would simply rise to the occasion and deal with whatever the issue was.  She did that at work, and she did that at home, often relying on her faith, which was an important part of her life

     Regina’s solution to everything has always been hard work and acquiring more education.  She enrolled in a Master’s program at Boston College in Administrative Studies.  She was commuting to BC from Hancock and living in the college library when she wasn’t in class.  I’d rarely hear from her because she was putting her usual 150% effort into her studies.  Once she completed her degree, she said she was going to look at employment opportunities in the D.C. area, and went to visit Ginny in Virginia.  

     Regina told me stories about her family. I knew Ginny and Dave had a passion for the hunt. I knew about Arthur and his family’s move from the cold north to sunny Scottsdale. I knew that Peter could answer all my gardening questions.  Regina kept me up to date on the lives of her nieces and nephews, their weddings and their children.

         The family house and barn in Hancock where Regina had grown up was her refuge.  She loved working the property in the summer and shoveling snow in the winter.  When a stranger asked to take a picture of the barn and the picture appeared in a calendar of barns, Regina was as proud as could be.  She gave me one of the calendars for Christmas. 

      I worried about Regina in the winter when she would lose power and the sump pumps would stop working, and the basement flooded. When the power went out, the house would have no heat. One winter storm left her without heat for two weeks.  I begged Regina to come stay at our house, but she wouldn’t budge.  I can’t imagine how she survived living in that cold, but she did, more than once.  When Regina needed professional help maintaining the property or her car, the professionals she called were all friends whose families she knew. I think she had them all on speed dial. 

     As often as she talked about selling her home in Hancock, I knew that in her heart of hearts, she never wanted to leave the place she grew up.  As willing as Regina was to take on new jobs and new educational challenges, that same sense of adventure wasn’t in play when it came to making changes that involved her personal life.  Those decisions were much more difficult for her.  

     When we would discuss the future, Regina was absolutely convinced that she wanted to keep working.  Working provided a routine and a focus.  I think it also provided social interaction which was important to her.  In typical Regina style, she enrolled in a weekend Doctor of Education Program at Regis to prepare herself for the next step in her career.  I don’t think Regina understood how she could possibly fill her time without a job to go to every day

 Regina almost always spent Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Day and Easter having dinner with my husband, Larry, and myself, but last year, even though we tried, we were only able to get together for Easter.  I always made an Easter basket for Regina filled with lots of chocolate which I optimistically hoped would carry her through the year.

     Over the decades, Regina and I spent a lot of time together.  Not enough, but a lot.  One New Year’s Day, we headed into Boston for lunch.  The day was unusually warm.  I found a parking place on the street in Boston.  We walked through Copley Square looking at the melting ice sculptures from First Night.  We ate in Copley Plaza’s Oak Room, and we talked and talked and talked.  Before we left the city, we drove around the Common to see the Christmas lights.  We had a perfectly charmed day.  

     When I remember Regina, I want to remember that day with a wonderful friend who enjoyed life, who loved her family and friends, whose religion was her strength.  A woman who dedicated herself to being a good person who could make a difference in the world.  A person who touched people’s lives.  

Regina, you defined for me what friendship is, and I will be forever grateful for the time we shared together.

Demographers Define the Differences Between Generations

Focus talk given on 29th March 2018 on the topic of "The Millennials: New Approaches to Old Problems"
—Barbara Villandry

     You know I’m interested in how demographers and advertising researchers like to define generations of Americans.  Each of these generations is different from their parents, but also similar.  “Cohort” is the term social scientists prefer to “generations” to indicate “people within a delineated population who experience the same significant events within a given time period.  Sociologist Karl Mannheim emphasized that the rapidity of social change in youth was crucial to the formation of generations, and that not every generation would come to see itself as distinct.  In periods of rapid social change, a generation would be much more likely to develop a cohesive character.  But this isn’t an exact science.  There are as many differences in attitudes, values, behaviors and lifestyles within a generation as there are between generations.

     I remember my grandmother telling me that during the depression, she had to visit her banker to beg for one more month to get current on the mortgage of the family home.  She never got over that experience.  The family owned a jewelry store, so you can imagine how difficult a luxury business was to keep afloat during the Depression, but they managed to do it, and they were able to keep the family homestead. 

     But coming of age during the Great Depression didn’t impact my mom and my aunt the same way.  My Aunt Eleanor became thrifty beyond reason.  In 1940 at the age of 19, she went to Manhattan to try to break into the entertainment business as a dancer and a singer. She learned to make a dime stretch a long way.  After five years in Manhattan, she joined my mom working for my grandfather in the jewelry store.  When my grandparents died, my mom and her sister inherited the store, and kept it going for a few years, but they had very different philosophies about how to run the business.  My aunt didn’t want to buy new merchandise, and my mom said customers wouldn’t keep coming in without new stock.  They sold the store.  My aunt retired in her 50’s, and mom went to work for another local jewelry store. In her retirement, my aunt developed a real interest in investing in the stock market, and mom became the ultimate American consumer.

     Both mom and my aunt were part of what Tom Brokow coined as “The Greatest Generation.”  This includes people born between 1901 and 1925.  They survived the Great Depression and lived through WW II.  They were the first generation to have telephones, and a radio in the home, and were said to have a strong sense of right and wrong.

     Folks born between the mid 1920’s and the mid-1940s are called the “Silent Generation;“ they focused on their careers rather than on activism, and this cohort was encouraged to conform to social norms.  As young adults during the McCarthy Era, many members of the Silent Generation felt it was dangerous to speak out.  Elwood Carlson, a professor of Sociology at Florida State labeled them “The Lucky Few” because even though they were born during the depression and WW II, they moved into adulthood during the relatively prosperous 1950’s and early 1960’s.  This generation had higher employment rates than the generations before and after them.

       I missed being a Baby Boomer by three months, but I’m this close to being one.  Generally, Baby Boomers are born between 1946 and 1964.  This generation was the wealthiest, most active, and most physically fit generation up to the time they arrived on the scene.  They were among the first to grow up expecting the world to improve with time.  This cohort gets its name because of the phenomenal increase in births during this period:  76 million.

     In the U.S., this generation can be segmented into two broadly defined cohorts:  The Leading-Edge Baby Boomers, born between 1946 and 1955, who came of age during the Vietnam War, and the other half of the generation born between 1956 and 1964 called Late Boomers or Trailing-Edge Boomers.

     Boomers grew up at a time of dramatic change.  In school, we were taught to “duck and cover,” as the response to air raid sirens that could predict a nuclear attack.  Some of our neighbors were building fallout shelters and stocking them with dehydrated food and bottled water.  President Kennedy led us through the Cuban Missile crisis, NASA put a man on the moon, a wall divided Germany into Communist-controlled East Germany and independent West Germany.  Young men could be drafted and sent to Vietnam, and the number of male students on campus seeking educational deferments was high.  So were the numbers of men crossing the border to Canada to avoid the draft.  Students were protesting the Vietnam War.  Flower power became a term.  Folks were living together in communes.  Some were touting free love, others open marriages.  Haight-Ashbury became the center for the counter culture.  The women’s movement was marked by women burning their bras and demanding to be heard.  Desegregation was a movement.  Baby Boomers were the first generation to grow up with television and rock and roll. Have I left anything out?   President Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated.

     The first Baby Boomer cohort are strongly Democratic, the second half strongly Republican.  The later Baby Boomers came of age during Watergate and Nixon’s resignation.  They remember the oil embargo and lines at the gas station, raging inflation, economic recession, lower employment, the Iran hostage crisis, Ronald Reagan and the AIDS crisis.  Their key characteristics are that they are less optimistic, they distrust government, and they are generally cynical.

     Generation Xers were born between the early to mid-1960s and the early 1980s.  Society was again changing, and these children were called the “latchkey generation,” because they had reduced adult supervision as children compared to the previous generations, a result of increasing divorce rates and increased maternal participation in the workforce prior to the availability of good childcare options outside of the home.  As adolescents and young adults, they were dubbed the “MTV Generation.”  In the 1990s, they were sometimes characterized as slackers, cynical and disaffected.  Some of the cultural influences on Gen X youth were the musical genres of grunge and hip-hop music, and indie films.  In midlife, research describes them as active, happy, and achieving a work-life balance.  This cohort has been credited with entrepreneurial tendencies. 

     The declining birth rate of this generation is attributed to the introduction of the birth control pill in the early 1960s.  Increased immigration partially offset these declining birth rates and contributed to making Generation X an ethically and culturally diverse demographic cohort.

     Politically, in the U.S. the Gen X childhood coincided with a time when government funding tended to be diverted away from programs for children.  One in five American children grew up in poverty during this period.  Gen Xers came of age or were children during the crack epidemic, which disproportionately impacted urban areas and the African American community. 

     The emergence of AIDS coincided with Gen X’s adolescence.  Some sex education programs in schools were adopted to address the AIDS epidemic, which taught Gen X students that sex could kill them.  Gen Xers were the first children to have access to computers in their homes and schools.

     Strauss & Howe wrote of Generation X: “They are already the greatest entrepreneurial generation in U.S. history; their high-tech savvy and marketplace resilience have helped America prosper in the era of globalization.”

     Finally, the millennials, born in the early 1980s, through the mid-1990s.  This generation is generally marked by an increased use and familiarity with communications, media, and digital technologies.  It was the generation negatively impacted by the Great Recession.  This is the generation that was born into the age of terrorism. 

     The experts differ in how they describe the Millennials.  Strauss and Howe ascribe seven basic traits to them:  special, sheltered, confident, team-oriented, conventional, pressured, and achieving.  Psychologist Jean Twenge wrote a book calling them “Generation Me.”  She says they are confident and tolerant, be they also believe they are entitled and are narcissistic. 

     American sociologist Kathleen Shaputis has called millennials the “Boomerang Generation” or the “Peter Pan Generation” because they tend to delay some rites of passage into adulthood for longer periods than most generations before them.  They also tend to live with their parents for longer periods than previous generations.  This could be attributable to the high cost of housing and higher education, and the relative affluence of their parents. Data from a 2014 study of U.S. millennials revealed over 56% consider themselves as part of the working class, with only approximately 35% considering themselves as part of the middle class.  This class identity for people who believe themselves to be in the middle class is the lowest polling of any generation.

     Research by the Urban Institute conducted in 2014 projected that if current trends continue, millennials will have a lower marriage rate compared to previous generations, predicting that by age 40, 3.7% of millennial women will remain single, approximately twice the share of their single Gen X counterparts.  The data showed similar trends for males.

     According to a cross-generational study comparing millennials to Generation X conducted at the Wharton School of Business, more than half of Millennial undergraduates surveyed do not plan to have children.  The researchers compared surveys of the Wharton graduating classes of 1992 and 2012.  In 1992, 78% of women planned to eventually have children dropping to 42% in 2012.  The results were similar for male students. 

     Another large study of millennials found that they are frequently in touch with their parents an average of 1.5 times a day.  They use technology at a higher rate than other generations.  This group is referred to as “digital natives.”  They have home computers, tablets and smartphones.  They watch tv on their mobile devices. 

     Millennials use social networking sites such as Facebook to create a different sense of belonging, making acquaintances, and to remain connected with friends. 

     Millennials are on a track to be the most formally educated generation.  In 2008, 39.6% of millennials between the ages of 18-24 were enrolled in college, which was an American record.  Along with being educated, millennials tend to be upbeat.  About 9 out of 10 millennials feel as though they have enough money or that they will reach their long-term financial goals, even during the tough economic times, and they are more optimistic about the future of the U.S. 

     Additionally, millennials are more open to change than older generations.  According to the Pew Research Center 2008 study, millennials are the most likely of any generation to self-identify as liberals and are also more supportive of progressive domestic social agenda than older generation.  Finally, millennials are less overtly religious than the older generations.  About one in four millennials are unaffiliated with any religion, a considerably higher ratio than that of older generations when they were the ages of millennials. 

WomenExplore Lecture and Discussion Forum reflects on significance of media

The following is a reposting of Johnathan Kindall's review of a day at WomenExplore's lectures on 16th March 2017.  It was published on 21st March 2017 in the Daily Free Press, the independent student newspaper at Boston University.

PHOTO BY JOHNATHAN KINDALL/ DAILY FREE PRESS STAFF

Stephanie Leydon speaks Thursday afternoon at the Democracy Center

about how media acts as an informer and manipulator in today’s society. 

March 21, 2017  by Johnathan D. Kindall

WGBH television and radio reporter Stephanie Leydon met with a group of Boston residents and students at the Democracy Center in Cambridge Thursday afternoon to discuss power, problems and importance of modern media and communication.

WomenExplore, a longstanding lecture and discussion forum, hosted the talk. The self-characterized charity with an educational focus was officially founded as the Theological Opportunities Program at Harvard Divinity School in 1973, but the origins of the group stretch as far back as the 19th century.

Every spring and fall, WomenExplore holds a 10-week lecture series. A different guest speaker is brought in every week, and the listeners discuss a topic for nearly two hours. The theme for the Spring 2017 sessions is “From Monologue to Dialogue: Building Community.”

Lindsa Vallee, of Brookline, has attended WomenExplore meetings for more than a decade. Vallee, who moderated Leydon’s lecture and discussion, said she finds every meeting uniquely stimulating.

“The topics, speakers and discussion keep my brain alive,” Vallee said. “They keep me thinking and aware of new issues.”

Each guest lecture is preceded by a “focus talk,” a short presentation from a member of WomenExplore that opens up the floor and prepares the minds of the group for the topic at hand.

Barbara Villandry, from Nashua, New Hampshire, provided the focus for Leydon’s lecture.

Villandry reflected on the days of Walter Cronkite and Edward Murrow, and reminded many of the attendees about a time where it seemed as if the news could be wholly trusted.

She voiced her concerns with the current state of the media, going as far as to draw comparisons between now and the times of Joseph McCarthy and his Communist witch hunt.

“The pendulum swings both ways,” Villandry said before giving the floor to Leydon. “And I hope that we will soon be back to a place where truth reigns supreme.”

The event then transitioned into Leydon’s lecture, which was centered around her recent attention to partisan divisions and the media following the 2016 presidential election. The title was “The Media: Informer or Manipulator? The Public: Discerning or Naïve?”

“In the months since the election it’s been my professional obsession,” Leydon said to the audience. “I can’t get enough of the divide story.”

Leydon’s feature on WGBH, “Greater Bostonians,” often focuses on individuals and their personal stories. The show’s mission is to highlight those passionate about social change.

“People let me into their homes and there’s a human connection,” Leydon said.

However, that connection isn’t always easy to make, she said.

“We’ve moved beyond identity politics, to politics being our identity,” Leydon said.

She continued to explain how, when she is working on segments for “Greater Bostonians,” many of those walls thrown up in defense of political identity start crumbling.

She drew on these grounded, everyday stories in her lecture.

One such story was that of a New Hampshire couple named Ben and Laura. The two, who had never been particularly active politically, were faithful Trump supporters in the election.

Leydon talked and checked in with the couple at multiple points throughout the election process, and her coverage of real, hardworking and honest Trump supporters resonated with a lot of her Boston listeners, some of whom had never met an ardent Trump fan in person.

Leydon said she wishes the mainstream media would have paid more attention to smaller stories like this during and after the election. She characterizes stories like Ben and Laura’s as a “window to our collective identity.”

She also said she believes that such a focus would begin to bridge the gap between the two sides of the political spectrum. She emphasized the importance of a media-literate public that can recognize blatantly false news and has the skills necessary to seek out truth.

The basis for media literacy is critical thinking, she said, but specific and catered media literacy classes in schools could be a vital step in the process.

“I don’t know how we have a discerning public without a media literate public,” Leydon said.

Vallee agreed with the necessity of starting a dialogue, which is exactly what WomenExplore is attempting to do with their lectures and discussions.

“The election results tell us that there hasn’t been enough dialogue in our country,” Vallee said.

Vallee said she believes that anything that opens up a discussion can create a more united country.

Leydon does not plan to stop telling the stories of real, everyday people on either side of the political divide anytime soon, commenting that even the discussion following her lecture gave her ideas for new stories.

“I’m a journalist,” Leydon said. “When I go out, I have a microphone and a camera. Sometimes I remember to bring a pen and paper. But most of all, I have my ears to listen.”

Tags: Barbara Villandry, Democracy Center, From Monologue to Dialogue: Building Community, Greater Bostonians, Johnathan D. Kindall, Lindsa Vallee, Stephanie Leydon, The Media: Informer or Manipulator? The Public: Discerning or Naïve?,Theological Opportunities Program, WomenExplore