On our second day in Denmark, we took a cab from the train station in Skanderborg to Rhy, where our hiking was to begin. I had already received a wink from a man on the train, which I took as approval of my baseball cap’s message, “Elect a clown. Expect a circus,” since winks at my age are rarely flirtatious. We entered the cab pretty confident we were on our way to creating some positive feelings about Americans when our cab driver asked us where we were from. “The United States,” we said, quickly adding, “but we don’t like our president.” Our cab driver replied, ”He’s a great guy, great for our country.” “Are you kidding,” we asked. “He wants to take Greenland.”

Judy is away this week, walking around the Lake District of Denmark wearing a hat that says, “Elect a clown. Expect a circus” to assure any Danes she encounters that she is not in favor of the United States annexing Greenland.

After three years, Oleksandra Kavulchuk is leaving her adopted home in the United States to move to Romania with her husband and their young son. They found refuge in Salem when the war first ravaged their city of Odessa and so much of Ukraine. Although she once found safety on our shores, she now feels at risk here, too. The Trump administration, with its feckless efforts to broker a peaceful and just end to the war, combined with increasing difficulties with work visas and permits, make Oleksandra fearful. In Romania, she hopes to feel more secure.

My friend looks forward to the delivery of her Meals on Wheels. It’s not just the food, which is admittedly pretty good and means she doesn’t have to cook for herself. It’s the friendly face and the chance to chat, since my friend lives alone and can no longer drive. She has friends, sure, but many of them no longer drive either. Since her spouse died, isolation and loneliness bring a daily sadness that is sometimes broken up only by the visits of the food deliverer.

I visited the National Museum of African American History and Culture, part of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, shortly after it opened in 2016. Barack Obama was president, but the new museum had been mandated by an act of Congress in 2003, when George W. Bush was president.

We celebrated the good news that Harvard University stood up to Trump’s demands. The richest school in America refused to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programs, ban masks at campus protests, enact merit-based hiring and admissions reforms, and reduce the power of faculty.

For a few days last week, my two college friends and I were bombarded by the truth. Truth about the history of our country. About slavery and the Middle Passage. About the North’s collusion and support of slavery both in the South and in their homes. About how and why Reconstruction failed and the ways in which slavery didn’t end but rather evolved into mass incarceration.

As activists committed to justice and equity, we attended Hands Off rallies across the country to stand united!

I’m a double Jumbo. For those who don’t know, that means I have two degrees from Tufts University; in my case, a bachelor’s and a master’s degree. A half-century separates our years on campus; still last week’s detention of Tufts graduate student Rumeysa Ozturk hit me harder than other recent ICE actions. As I viewed the footage of her arrest, I realized that Ozturk and I had walked the same school paths, studied in the same library, attended class in the same buildings. We even gathered with friends in the same area where she, a Turkish citizen with a valid visa, was grabbed forcibly by masked ICE agents before being incarcerated in a facility in Louisiana. Her crime is still ill-defined, but apparently she co-wrote an op-ed for the school newspaper criticizing the university for not divesting its holdings in Israeli companies, and she participated in a protest about Israel’s military operations in Gaza.

We went into last night’s event, “Books are for Reading, not Banning,” knowing that censorship has risen in recent years and that we feel, often smugly, lucky to live in Massachusetts. We knew that the majority of targeted books (and their authors) have LGBTQ+ themes; the rest are primarily about race. What we discovered is that there is a lot we didn't know, and other realities we need to be reminded of.

As we approached the Whitney Plantation an hour outside New Orleans, my mind returned to a family visit to Williamsburg, Virginia, when I was about seven years old. I remember lots of sunshine and blue sky and people, both black and white, dressed up in pastels, the women with wide skirts and ruffled bodices, the men with tight pants, fancy jackets and wigs. Everything looked very festive and happy. I knew in advance that Whitney would be a different experience.

Many of us continue to struggle with how to stay informed without becoming so anxious we can no longer function. It is tempting to completely turn away from the news, but how can we when decisions are being made that might destroy our form of government and harm the lives of millions? Yet, when is it okay to cry uncle and say we have had enough? And, if we want to limit our exposure, what are the best sources of honest reporting?

The bad news keeps coming. Programs are ending. People are losing jobs. Vaccinations may no longer be available to children. We continue to feel vulnerable and fearful for ourselves and others.

The destruction of DEI initiatives in schools and businesses throughout the country has left people scrambling to understand what it all means for those most affected and for all of us. We have come to understand that DEI programs and policies are not just for people of color, but also for the physically and cognitively challenged. That not only those on the right have criticisms but also some on the left.

Thirteen-year-old Anne Frank, hiding from the Nazis with her family in an attic in Amsterdam, wrote, “In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.” When I first read her words, I remember being filled with admiration for this young girl — for her courage, her ability to find joy in life as her world grew smaller and her future more bleak.

As we listened  to the president’s plan to take over Greenland – to wrest it from Denmark and annex it to the United States – we started wondering if perhaps the president thinks Greenland is actually green. We thought maybe he believes this massive arctic ice cube is the perfect spot for a new golf course or three. Is he envisioning an entire greenway from coast to coast, catering to the elite golfers of the world?

We find ourselves almost speechless as we watch the news and hear the heartless response of our president to the deaths of children on an airplane; to the deportation of immigrants; to the dismantling of programs meant to combat centuries of inequality; and to the dissolution of international alliances that protect our worldwide community.

Last weekend, when one of our adult sons returned from doing his family’s weekly grocery shopping, he unpacked the usual items: fruits and vegetables, milk, cereal, yogurt, bagels, bread, cheese, snacks for the first grader, chicken and fish for dinners, and pasta. One regular item, however, was missing: eggs. Not because prices were so low as a result of President Trump making good on his campaign promise. And not because the prices were so high they were unaffordable.

For those of us who like metaphors, there was nothing like the raging snow storm followed by bone-chilling cold that accompanied Monday’s inauguration. As we dug out from many inches of the white stuff, and negotiated carefully to avoid the black ice, we felt vulnerable, a bit unprotected, and worried about neighbors and families who might be stranded without heat or food.

Hate crimes and hate groups seem to be everywhere. We hear and read about them on a daily basis. While discrimination and prejudice against “the other” are nothing new, these current strains of venom seem to be striking dangerously and frighteningly close to home.