#OnThisDay: 2nd Anniversary of Hurricane Helene Status Report

Since western North Carolina was so severely damaged by Hurricane Helene beginning on September 26, 2024, I am blogging about it today. I don’t want people to forget, and I want people to know that the people in the region are still recovering from the storm.

Trouble came on a scale no one could have predicted.

You can find thousands of photographs from the disaster online. I just did not have permission to post any of them.

Summary of Hurricane Helene Damages in North Carolina (Data gathered from various online sources, some not in agreement, of course. This is my best effort as a regular citizen.)

Lives lost: 106

Total estimated damages: Nearly $60 billion

Federal funds received to date: $14.4 billion

Highest recorded rainfall, September 25-27, 2024: 30.78 inches in Busick, a community near Mount Mitchell in Yancey County

Landslides: More than 2,000

Dams that failed or were severely damaged: 40

Tornadoes spawned: 8

Housing units destroyed or severely damaged: 3,800

Housing units damaged: 125,000

Timberland damaged: 822,000 acres

Trees downed in national forests in NC: Millions

State-maintained roads destroyed or heavily damaged: 5,000 miles

State-maintained bridges destroyed or damaged: 700

State-maintained culverts destroyed or damaged: 700

Privately-owned roads, bridges, and culverts severely damaged: 7,000

Water and sewer systems damaged: More than 160

Jobs lost in western NC in the month after the hurricane: 19,000

Examples of Assistance western NC has received:

Search and Rescue members sent from California: 151

Starlink internet terminals sent from a Kentucky storm chaser: 30

Starlink internet terminals contributed by SpaceX: 500

Line crews sent from T&T Line Construction of Hornwell, New Brunswick, Canada: 11

Additional line crews from Quebec, Canada: several

Line crews from across the US: multiple

Helicopters sent in to transport and set power poles: Duke Energy

Disaster relief assistance: 1^st Battalion of the 169^th Aviation Regiment of the Connecticut Army National Guard

Volunteer private helicopters in rescue efforts: Operation AirDrop and the Carolina Emergency Response Team

Meals provided by World Central Kitchen: More than 64,000

Affordable microhomes built by Beloved Asheville: 12 so far, with another village planned in nearby Swannanoa

New housing units built by Blue Haven, Inc. (a 501(c)(3) organization which is part of singer Eric Church and his wife, Katherine’s Chief Cares Foundation: 37 (Please visit https://chiefcares.org/ and https://wataugaonline.com/eric-churchs-chief-cares-expanding-in-western-nc/ to learn how this endeavor works and is being expanded.)

Value of pizzas donated to Asheville residents by Mellow Mushroom: $5,000

Liters of water distributed by FEMA: 6.5 million

Meals distributed by FEMA: 7.1 million

Cajun Navy arrived from Louisiana immediately with search-and-rescue teams. They stayed for weeks, if not months.

Heavy equipment work donated by Precision Grading of Tryon, NC (a small excavating and grading company that now includes a 501(c)(3) division to handle donations whose name is now Precision Grading & Disaster Relief.) Basically, their disaster relief work is free-of-charge, but individuals receiving insurance benefits for damages are requested to pay the company for work done.): More than 500 days of very hard work and counting. Visit https://myfox8.com/video/north-carolina-nonprofit-owner-worked-500-days-straight-helping-hurricane-helene-victims-rebuild/12197331/ for a recent report.

Mountain Mule Packers Ranch’s nonprofit Mission Mules (in Mount Ulla, NC) carried tons of food, water, insulin, building supplies to areas inaccessible by other means in North Carolina.

Books collected and distributed by 21^st Century Packhorse Librarian: 9,000

PVC pipes cleaned out of the French Broad River due to the flooding of the IPEX plastics manufacturing plant in Woodfin, NC by volunteers from the environmental nonprofit MountainTrue: 6 million pounds. (IPEX has agreed to pay MountainTrue $500,000 for their efforts.)

Amish people from Pennsylvania and Ohio came and built tiny homes for people who had lost their home to the hurricane, but I could not find the exact number.

Rebuilding projects completed or underway in Yancey and Mitchell counties by Rebuilding Hollers, a 501(c)(3) organization: 585 (Visit https://rebuildinghollers.org/Projects for more details.)

Looking to the Future

Landslides: The State of North Carolina is remapping western NC using new LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) scans that show the actual damage and waterway channel shifts as a result of Hurricane Helene. That data will continue to be processed for updated flood-hazard maps. That information will be shared with FEMA.

Information I found indicates that FEMA flood zone maps concentrate on rivers and coastal storm surge. Western NC is 300 to 400 miles from the coast. The steep terrain and 30-inch rainfall associated with the hurricane turned tiny streams into raging rivers that were not accounted for on FEMA flood maps. Therefore, fewer than 3% of the properties in western NC that were most damaged by Hurricane Helene are included in FEMA’s mapped flood zone areas.

LiDAR scans that have been superimposed over older maps that predicted potential landslide locations have lined up very well and have identified many additional landslide-prone locations. This information will be used to restrict future development.

Water, Wastewater, and Sewer Systems: Water, wastewater, and sewer systems receiving State funds for repairs and reconstruction are required to repair/reconstruct to a higher, storm-resilient standard and not merely rebuilding to the pre-Helene standards. The NC Department of Environmental Quality has awarded grants totaling more than $1 billion for water and wastewater infrastructure in western NC counties. Another $750 million is needed.

Dam Repair/Reconstruction: After not having a state budget for a couple of years, the NC General Assembly finally adopted a budget this summer. It includes $20 million toward the repairing and reconstruction of failing dams. Government officials and environmentalists will hopefully work together to implement work to be done. Reports indicate that some of the dams were constructed to supply water to textile mills that no longer exist and those dams – at least one of which dates back to 1905 – were not built for flood control. This, no doubt, will be a contentious issue over the coming years as removal of a dam is not a simple undertaking.

Brother Wolf Animal Rescue

If you’ve been following my blog for the last two years, you will remember that I have written a number of times about Brother Wolf Animal Rescue in Asheville, North Carolina. Staff and others did an amazing job of evacuating all the animals before the facility was wiped out by Helene’s flood waters.

The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in Asheville stepped up and provided temporary quarters for Brother Wolf, and a campaign was held to raise money for a land and building(s) in a less vulnerable location. Having temporary space provided by the local ASPCA made it possible for Brother Wolf to find homes for more than 900 animals in 2025 and many more were given medical care.

In 2026, the ASPCA awarded Brother Wolf a $1 million grant toward its rebuilding!

Brother Wolf Animal Rescue is a registered 501(c)(3) organization. For more information, visit https://www.bwar.org/.

Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina

If you follow my blog, you know that the Blue Ridge Parkway is near and dear to my heart. Portions of the parkway are still closed, but it is predicted to be fully-reopened in NC by the end of 2026; however, not all hiking trails, picnic areas, or other recreation areas will be fully restored by then.

Please visit https://www.nps.gov/blri/planyourvisit/roadclosures.htm if you want more information or are planning a trip. That website is updated weekly.

Keep in mind that the North Carolina portion of the parkway runs from Milepost 216.9 at the Virginia state line to its terminus at Milepost 469.1, so most of the parkway is open now. Motorists just need to check maps of the parkway and plan accordingly.

If you’re planning a trip to enjoy the beautiful fall foliage in the Blue Ridge Mountains, be sure to get off the parkway occasionally to support restaurants and small businesses because they took a big hit in multiple ways since September 26, 2024.

Interstate 40 in Pigeon River Gorge

For months after the hurricane, I gave updates from the North Carolina Department of Transportation on I-40, US highways, state highways, and state roads as they were reopened – and in many cases – rebuilt. That story continues two years later and will not soon end.

I invite you to watch a two-minute video at https://www.ncdot.gov/news/press-releases/Pages/2026/2026-09-02-i-40-reconstruction-update.aspx, which is part of a September 2, 2026 update from the NC DOT. (Note the size of the Pigeon River under normal times in the right portion of the photo.) The numbers are staggering and the ultimate estimated completion date for the 5.5 miles of I-40 that were destroyed or severely damaged by the hurricane is now the end of 2029.

As is indicated in the referenced video, the state hopes to have three lanes open by the end of 2028. Currently, only two lanes (one eastbound and one westbound) are open with a 35 mile-per-hour speed limit.

US-176 in North Pacolet River Gorge

A 1.1-mile stretch of this federal highway between Tryon and Saluda, NC has been closed since Hurricane Helene. It has received little publicity, and I’m afraid I have failed to mention it in my earlier hurricane recovery blog posts.

A month ago, Blythe Construction of Charlotte was awarded the contract for this $32 million highway reconstruction project. The work is projected to be completed late in 2029. The project faces many of the same challenges as the reconstruction of I-40, as the highway is/was wedged between a river and steep terrain.

The flooding of the North Pacolet River during the hurricane washed out portions of the highway and all the soil underneath it. Some of the slopes where the highway was now drop as much as 60 feet down to the river.

Engineering for such a reconstruction project usually takes five to seven years but was fast-tracked and completed in less than two years. For more details, visit https://www.ncdot.gov/news/press-releases/Pages/2026/2026-08-17-us-176-helene-contract-awarded.aspx.

In Closing

I look forward to the day I don’t need to give Hurricane Helene updates! Perhaps on the storm’s fifth anniversary, Brother Wolf Animal Rescue will be settled in its new facility, the Blue Ridge Parkway will be fully restored to its former glory, I-40 will almost be rebuilt through the Pigeon River Gorge, and US-176 through the North Pacolet River Gorge between Tryon and Saluda will almost be rebuilt.

I apologize to the countless individuals, organization, and companies that I have failed to name that have and will continue to work tirelessly to help the residents of western NC recover from Hurricane Helene.

Janet

All history is local, but no history is just local.

An Opportunity for Me to Speak

Last Tuesday, I was one of the presenters for the “history day” meeting of the 2026 Class of Leadership Cabarrus. (Cabarrus is the name of our county.)

Leadership Cabarrus is described as follows on the Cabarrus County Chamber of Commerce website (https://cabarrusncchamber.org/leadership-cabarrus/):

“Through a series of monthly class days from September through May, participants are introduced to and examine how leadership in the historical, geographical, educational, economic, governmental, and cultural segments work together to perpetuate and advance the Cabarrus County region and its citizens.

“The program is also designed to nurture and develop the leadership skills of current and potential leaders, offering a stimulating atmosphere that fosters diverse viewpoints and yields innovative solutions to the critical questions facing our community. The program’s focus is creating awareness and connecting leaders to the issues; it is not an academic leadership training program, but an excellent professional development opportunity to communicate with the Cabarrus County community. Furthermore, the program is non-partisan and does not recommend or advocate for partisan positions on public matters.”

Since the 1980s, Leadership Cabarrus has hosted more than 700 participants from 200 companies.

This was the third time I’ve been invited to be a presenter for Leadership Cabarrus. I spoke to the 2024 Leadership Cabarrus Class about the history of Harrisburg. I was invited back last year but had to cancel at the last minute due to illness.

After cancelling at the last minute in 2025, I was pleasantly surprised to be invited back this year.

The venue is not always the same. I spoke at the county office building in Concord in 2024. This year, I was scheduled to speak at Southern Grace Distilleries at Whiskey Prison in Mt. Pleasant, North Carolina.

Say what?

Yes, I was scheduled to speak in the chapel of the former prison, which is now a distillery. I thought this would make an interesting blog post, so I arrived a few minutes early and took some pictures.

Guard Tower, I assume was only in operation while it was a prison.

Southern Grace Distilleries, Mt. Pleasant, NC

A sign I assume is left from the property’s former use as a prison.

Things soon went off the rails because the motorcoach (is that still the proper term for a bus?) transporting the 36-member Leadership Cabarrus Class had massive electronic issues and a replacement bus had to be requested from Winston-Salem – some 60 miles away.

Since the class members were stranded at the Eastern Cabarrus Museum, it was decided that I should leave the prison and drive back into Mt. Pleasant and meet the class members at 73 & Main Restaurant. When I arrived at 73 & Main, I could see the class members in the distance as they walked from the museum to the restaurant.

I must say that the people in charge of Leadership Cabarrus showed phenomenal leadership as they juggled the schedule on the fly and dealt with the disruption of the rest of the day’s schedule – which was planned down to the minute for the next six hours. The whole experience turned out to be an unexpected lesson in going with the flow.

The group was congenial. I only noticed one member who was visibly bored out of her mind as I spoke as fast as I could about the history of Harrisburg. Perhaps she was there under duress.

The presentation gave me an opportunity to briefly hold up my two local history books: Harrisburg, Did You Know? Cabarrus History, Book 1 and Harrisburg, Did You Know? Cabarrus History, Book 2 – in case any participants were so enamored by my speech that they wanted to learn more. (By the way, they are available at Second Look Books in Harrisburg and on Amazon in paperback and ebook: https://www.amazon.com/Harrisburg-Did-You-Know-Cabarrus-ebook/dp/B0BNK84LK1/ and https://www.amazon.com/Harrisburg-Did-You-Know-Cabarrus-ebook/dp/B0BXBQ1F79.)

Unbeknownst to me, one of the class members was the daughter of a school classmate of mine whom I’ve known for 65 years. Meeting Stephanie’s daughter was a great surprise! Coming full circle, I expect to see Stephanie at our high school class reunion this weekend.

I must have done an okay job because after I spoke, I was asked to present again in 2027. Who knows? Maybe I’ll get another chance to speak in a former prison. I finished speaking as the replacement motorcoach arrived, so everything worked out great for me. I have no idea how the rest of the day’s schedule went for the group. Fortunately, I got to go home.

I’m glad we still have freedom of speech in the United States, although Trump continues to attack the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America. Case in point: banning news agencies who report the truth about his evil deeds get banned from the White House. It’s not his house. It’s not his constitution. The White House and the U.S. Constitution belong to the people. Only a dictator attempts to control or silence a free press.

A meme with the words of the First Amendment with the American flag in the background — The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America

Janet

The First Amendment guarantees our right to religion, speech, the press, assembly, and our right to complain to and about the government. Don’t take one word of that Amendment for granted!

Introducing I Need The Light! (again)

Do you remember last year when I introduced my book, I Need The Light! 26 Weekly Devotionals to Help You Through Winter? It’s mid-September and time to remind people who live in the northern hemisphere to reconsider that book. Although it is still much warmer than normal here in North Carolina in mid-September, I don’t want fall and winter to sneak up on you.

Front cover of I Need The Light! 26 Weekly Devotionals to Help You Through Winter, by Janet Morrison #INeedTheLight!
#devotional #seasonalaffectivedisorder — *I Need The Light! 26 Weekly Devotionals to Help You Through Winter*,
by Janet Morrison

I wrote the book from my own experience. I don’t just dislike cold weather, I dread autumn and winter. That’s half the year! What a waste of my time and energy! It’s called Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). I thought it only affected people in the cold, but I have read that some people experience this in the spring and summer.

When I was given my diagnosis, the physician’s assistant urged me to get out in the bright sunshine every morning. Since I have fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis, that simple-sounding recommendation continues to be a challenge for me. When you don’t sleep well (or at all) at night, and you wake up every morning feeling worse than you did when you went to bed – even if you got a few hours of sleep — early mornings are not an enjoyable time of the day.

It was one morning as I walked that I kept repeating to myself, “I need the light. I need the light. I need the light.” It was perhaps the fifth time I said those words that I realized that the short sentence had a double meaning.

I need light to help me cope with SAD, but I need The Light – Jesus Christ – to help me cope with all facets of my life. That is why “The” is capitalized in the book’s title.

Each weekly devotional looks at a different passage in the Bible that references light or The Light. I quote five versions of the Bible in each devotional and I draw on several other books and Bible commentaries in my comments about each passage. Each week includes a suggested activity and a recipe for a comfort food.

People have commented that they like the conversational style in which the devotionals are written. That pleases me because that’s the comfortable and familiar manner in which I hoped to share my thoughts.

I Need The Light! 26 Weekly Devotionals to Help You Through Winter is available in paperback at Second Look Books in Harrisburg, NC. It is also available from Amazon in paperback athttps://www.amazon.com/Light-Weekly-Devotionals-Through-Winter/dp/B0FMNCDFBT/ and e-book at https://www.amazon.com/Light-Weekly-Devotionals-Through-Winter-ebook/dp/B0FN9S27YW/.

I Need The Light! Companion Journal and Diary is available only in paperback at Second Look Books and from Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/Need-Light-Companion-Journal-Diary/dp/B0FRKRM9KJ/.

These are books that you can read again every year and get something new out of them. I hope you or someone you know who does not thrive in cold weather will find these books helpful.

Janet

Books I read in August 2026

I concentrated on my writing in August, to the detriment of my reading; however, I did read two interesting and very different books.

P.S. I Forgive You: A Broken Legacy, by D.G. Kaye

In this memoir, D.G. Kaye writes about how difficult and painful it was to grow up with a narcissistic mother. Everything was always and only about her mother, so Kaye grew up knowing that she could never be good enough to gain her mother’s praise.

Kaye writes about how she and her siblings coped in different ways through the years and then handled the situation differently when they reached adulthood. Kaye struggled to make her decision to estrange herself from her mother, but as her mother’s death approached and came to pass she had to deal with that decision all over again.

Kaye loved her mother, but she eloquently writes about how difficult it was to live with her and under her lingering influence.

P.S. I Forgive You: A Broken Legacy is not an easy read, but I highly recommend it.

For people like me, who had a wonderful mother who always put her children ahead of her own desires and needs, I found it jarring to read about Kaye’s experience.

I was fortunate beyond all measure in my childhood home life.

The Stolen Life of Colette Marceau, by Kristin Harmel

The Stolen Life of Colette Marceau, by Kristin Harmel was the August pick for the Rocky River Readers Book Club. It created lots of good discussion. The moral question presented by this novel is whether it is ever all right to steal.

Intrigued?

The book’s protagonist, Colette Marceau, was born in to a family of jewel thieves. The catch, is that her mother told her that they were descendants of Robin Hood and, therefore, their thievery was justified in that they used the proceeds for good causes.

Specifically, Colette dedicated her life to stealing jewels from Nazis and Nazi sympathizers and putting all the money gained from those jewels to build and maintain a Holocaust museum/center.

The story revolves around the disappearance of her sister along with her sister’s half of a butterfly bracelet. Colette had the other half. In her later years, Colette set out to find her sister’s half of the bracelet and determine who killed her.

The story becomes very complicated as everyone is not who they claim to be, there are familial connections you won’t see coming, and was the body retrieved from the river actually Colette’s sister… or did she survive World War II?

All the loose ends are tied up in the end, and some of them will surprise you.

Janet

Never take your right to read for granted.

#OnThisDay: The Charleston Earthquake, 1886

When we think about earthquakes in the United States, our thoughts usually jump to California, but 140 years ago today Charleston, South Carolina experienced a powerful one.

A photo of a street in Charleston, South Carolina today showing a row of old townhouses, each painted a different color. Horse-drawn carriage on the street transporting tourists. — Present-day street scene in Charleston, South Carolina. Photo by Leo Heisenberg on Unsplash

The Charleston Earthquake predated the Richter Scale, but it is estimated now that it was probably a magnitude 6.9 to 7.3. It was felt as far north as Boston, as far west as New Orleans, as far south as Cuba, and as far east as Bermuda.

It was felt here in the southern piedmont of North Carolina, so I wrote about it in 2010 when I was writing a local history column for a newspaper. Therefore, my two-part newspaper series about “Earthquakes Felt Here” is included in my book, Harrisburg, Did You Know? Cabarrus History, Book 2.

Sand and water spewed from fissures in the ground approximately 12 miles west of Charleston, and it is believed that the earthquake was most intense in that area. The sound was compared to that of steam escaping from a boiler. The term for that is soil liquefaction.

Reading that was the first time I remembered hearing about that possible result of an earthquake.

The Times, a newspaper in Concord, North Carolina, reported that the first shock at 9:52 pm toppled chimneys and kerosene lamps in homes. That three-and-a-half-minute shock caused houses to crack and sway.

A second shock came fifteen minutes later, and a third one came about fifteen minutes later. Aftershocks were felt here in Cabarrus County, North Carolina (200 miles northwest of Charleston) through at least September 5.

Other topics in Harrisburg, Did You Know? Cabarrus History, Book 2 include the following: an 1849 meteorite, the 22-mile ring dike Harrisburg sits in, the building of the Rocky River Presbyterian Church’s fourth sanctuary in 1861, baseball, the Piedmont Area Development Association, the incorporation of Harrisburg in 1973, the Sauline Players, bridges built over Rocky River in the 1870s, Rocky River Academy, an attempted train robbery in 1907, a tribute to George L. Govan, a year without a summer (1816), gristmills, early schools, the push to get electricity in 1928, the coming of the “high-speed” rail in 2012, and the Pioneer Mills goldmining community.

Harrisburg, Did You Know? Cabarrus History, Book 2 is available at Second Look Books in Harrisburg, NC and also on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/Harrisburg-Did-You-Know-Cabarrus-ebook/dp/B0BXBQ1F79/ for the e-book and https://www.amazon.com/Harrisburg-Did-You-Know-Cabarrus/dp/B0BW2QMLHC/ for the paperback.

Janet

All history is local, but no history is just local

Note: I failed to include the following information in my original post: There were at least 60 deaths. Approximately 2,000 buildings were severely damaged and most of the chimneys in Charleston and the Summerville area were toppled. Damages were estimated at more than $5 million at the time of the earthquake, which would be around $200 million in today’s dollars.

I love maps, but…

I love maps, but just let me say that the Trump Administration has once again acted loose and fast with the facts.

We all remember when Trump took a Sharpie pen and altered a NOAA hurricane prediction map to show Hurricane Dorian taking aim at Alabama.

The latest in White House-issued maps was apparently intended to substantiate Trump’s threat to rename Lake Ontario as Lake America and to remind us that, in Trump’s mind, the Gulf of Mexico is the Gulf of America. Trump believes he has the authority to do whatever strange thought crosses his mind. He believes if he says it, it is true. He believes if he does it, it is legal.

That latest White House-issued map is a Lego map. Perhaps it was AI-generated. If so, it stands as a prime example of why AI cannot be trusted. Regardless of who or what created the map, it was the White House that proudly issued the map on the internet for all the world to see.

I preface the following paragraph by reminding you that I have lived in North Carolina my entire life. I have visited Washington, DC several times. I visited the Great Dismal Swamp two years ago.

You see, in addition to proudly displaying “Lake America” and the “Gulf of America,” this week’s Trump map places Washington, DC smack in the middle of the Great Dismal Swamp in northeastern North Carolina.

Map of USA posted by the Trump White House on social media on August 25, 2026

It is ironic that Trump campaigned promising to “drain the swamp,” but now he has apparently moved our nation’s capital 200 miles south to real one.

Janet

The government should be afraid of its citizens, not the other way around.

P.S. I didn’t even mention the social media post that the U.S. Department of Education had to take down this week when it was brought to their attention that it equated the Trump Administration with Nazi Germany.

Perhaps someone in the Department of Education needs to study World War II. Or… could it be that someone inside the Administration was trying to tell us something?

Cracks in the armor?

Janet

#OnThisDay: 19th Amendment, 1920

I have heard it said that the 19^th Amendment “gave” women the right to vote. The verb “gave” or “gives” is a slap in the face of all the women (and men) who risked their lives to have the right to vote.

It would be tantamount to saying that black people in the United States were “given” civil rights in the 1960s. No, they earned every one of those rights. The word “give” in all its tenses and forms insinuates that rights were bestowed as a gift. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In July, I read an excellent little book, Roses and Radicals: The Epic Story of How American Women Won the Right to Vote, by Susan Zimet. I told you a little bit about it in my August 4, 2026 blog post, Books I read (or attempted to read) in July 2026. I urge you to read that book.

Photo of front cover of Roses and Radicals with the head of the Statue of Liberty under the title. — *Roses and Radicals*, by Susan Zimet

The road to women securing the right to vote in the United States started before the nation’s founding. In 1776, Abigail Adams famously told her husband, John Adams, to “remember the ladies” as the Declaration of Independence was being contemplated and written.

Of course, John Adams did not take her pleas to heart (and probably paid for his foolishness in various ways for the rest of his life.) The Declaration of Independence states that “all men were created equal.” Today, we (well, most of us) take that to mean “all people were created equal,” but women were technically and deliberately left out of the Declaration. But I digress

As is told in Roses and Radicals, it took women down a very long and winding road to secure the right to vote. There were women’s rights conventions and campaigns throughout the decades from 1840 until the 19^th Amendment was finally made part of the U.S. Constitution in 1920.

Women were beaten and arrested for marching in the streets and simply for standing beside streets to protest the lawful discrimination that was holding them back from being all they could be. They had to fight for education, not just the right to vote.

That story cannot be condensed into a blog post. There’s just too much history – too much history that was never included in a single history textbook I ever read – for me to do it justice here.

It is an unbelievable story, akin to the story of how many centuries it took for people of color to get rights equal to their white counterparts in the United States. There is still racial discrimination that flies under the radar of the law. We see it every day. We also still see blatant racism in Trump wanting to plaster his name (no doubt, in giant gold letters) on the aircraft carrier that was already designated to be named in honor of World War II hero Mr. Doris Miller. Mr. Miller just happened to be black. His story of heroism during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor is extraordinary. Trump, on the other hand, dodged the draft because he claimed to have bone spurs.

Back to the 19^th Amendment…

Those of us born after 1920 cannot fully appreciate the sacrifices made by women (and by people of color) to try to get the right to vote in this country.

It astounds me to think that when my mother was born in 1912, women did not have the right to vote! The 19^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was not ratified until 1920. That’s just 33 years before I was born! I simply cannot get my head around that fact. To put that 33 years in perspective, 33 years ago today it was 1993!

And now, in 2026 in the U.S. we have people in positions of power, including the U.S. President, who are pushing for a so-called SAVE America Act which will make it more difficult for married women in our country to vote. It goes well beyond “voter ID.” A married woman – or anyone whose name today does not match their birth certificate – will be required to produce documentation of every name change they’ve had.

This is primarily targeting married women, regardless of what supporters of the Act claim. It is an alleged solution to a problem that does not exist: voter fraud.

Don’t be fooled! The real crime is voter suppression.

Janet

Never take your right to vote for granted!

#OnThisDay: Dr. Anna Julia Cooper

Today’s blog post is about a North Carolinian most North Carolinians have never heard of. Such is the way that women and people of color have been left out of our history books.

Anna Julia Haywood Cooper was born in slavery in Raleigh, North Carolina on August 10, 1858. She never knew who her father was. This wonderful photograph of her can be found at https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2016702852/.

Dr. Anna Julia Cooper
Photo from Library of Congress website.

After the slaves were emancipated, she enrolled in St. Augustine’s Normal School and Collegiate Institute in Raleigh. The school was supported by the Freedmen’s Bureau and was created to educate black people to become teachers. A local pastor made it financially possible for her to attend the school.

She was not just any student. She went to school at St. Augustine’s for 14 years and took every course offered, including the ones that had only been open to male students.

She graduated in 1877 and married George A.C. Cooper, a theology student at St. Augustine’s from the Bahamas. Unfortunately, George died in 1879.

Cooper taught at St. Augustine’s for two more years after her husband’s death until she was accepted for study at Oberlin College in Ohio. She earned a Bachelor’s degree from Oberlin in 1884 and an honorary Master’s degree there in 1887.

She started teaching at the M Street Washington High School in Washington, D.C. in 1887, and became more involved in social activism after moving to the nation’s capital. She was an advocate for black students to have college opportunities.

Cooper’s book, A Voice from the South by a Black Woman of the South, was published in 1892. It is acclaimed as the first book-length work about black feminism. She put forth the theory that black women were in the unique position of having to face discrimination due to their gender and the color of their skin. (I’m sure Dr. Cooper would be distressed to know that they are still in that position in 2026!)

Cooper helped found the Colored Women’s League of Washington, D.C. in 1892 and served as the corresponding secretary. At the First National Conference of Colored Women of America in Boston in 1895, Cooper was a delegate. She delivered a paper calling for organization of black people at the conference. The National Federation of Afro-American Women no doubt came about in response to the Boston conference. Cooper took an active role in that organization.

In 1900, Cooper spoke at the Pan-African Conference in London, but she focused her efforts in her own community in Washington, D.C. where she became the principal of the M Street High School.

She and W.E.B. DuBois had similar theories about race, but DuBois and Booker T. Washington locked horns. Cooper moved to Missouri for a while to get away from their political differences. She returned to M Street High School in 1911.

In case you aren’t sufficiently impressed by Anna Julia Haywood Cooper…

In 1912, she went to Paris and finished translating Le Pèleringae de Charlemagne. She studied at Columbia University for several summers and then completed her Ph.D. at the Sorbonne in Paris, thus becoming the fourth black American woman to earn a Ph.D. Her doctoral thesis about slavery and the French Revolution was translated into English in 1988.

Dr. Cooper became president of Frelinghuysen University in Washington, D.C. in 1929. She gave the university her home for its permanent site. The “Hannah Stanley Opportunity School” at the university was named for Dr. Cooper’s mother.

Dr. Cooper died at the age of 105 on February 27, 1964. She and her husband were buried in City Cemetery in Raleigh, North Carolina.

My March 20, 2026 blog post

When I posted a blog titled “Puzzling Banners at Dept. of Education” on March 20, 2026, Ni of ShiraDestProjectDoBetter (shiradest.wordpress.com) reminded me that Dr. Anna Julia Haywood Cooper’s image should have been on one of the banners hanging on the U.S. Department of Education headquarters building in Washington, D.C.

(To jog your memory, in my post I questioned why in the world Charlie Kirk’s image was on one of the banners. I never did figure that one out!)

Ni was exactly right. Dr. Anna Julia Haywood Cooper’s image should have been honored there alongside Booker T. Washington and Catharine Beecher.

Janet

Never take access to higher education for granted.

Books I read (or attempted to read) in July 2026

I guess I was in worse shape in June and early July than I realized. I have stated in at least one blog that I enjoyed the novels I read in June because I hadn’t read a novel since January. I was surprised a couple of weeks ago to find a list of the books I read in May: The Creek, The Crone, and The Crow, by Leah Weiss; The Immigrant and the Outlaw, by Joy Neal Kidney; and The Astral Library, by Kate Quinn. It had slipped my mind that I enjoyed all three of those books in May, so I apologize to the three authors for my memory failure.

After having a very good month of reading in June, I had high hopes for July, but sometimes our reading experiences don’t meet our expectations on all counts. July turned out to be a mixed bag.

The River Knows My Name, by Kelly Mustian

After reading The Girls in the Stilt House, Kelly Mustian’s debut novel in 2021, I kept hoping she would write another historical novel. She came through for us last year with The River Knows My Name. I finally got around to reading it in July.

As the blurb on Amazon states, it is “a haunting Southern story about memory, family secrets, and fierce and fragile love.” Set in the early 1930s in Mississippi and 1971 in North Carolina and Mississippi, Mustian has woven a story of intrigue, family loss and love, and how one decision can affect generations to come.

Why did Evie appear at Nell’s house when they were young children and Evie never left? What did Evie’s hidden birth certificate reveal?

This is a dual timeline novel, which you know is not my favorite format, but I stayed with it because the characters and the plot drew me in from the beginning. Mustian did a masterful job of telling a complicated story of secrets, the passage of time, “where there’s a will there’s a way” perseverance, the love a mother has for her child, and how family isn’t necessarily based on biology.

I highly recommend The River Knows My Name, and I hope Kelly Mustian will gift historical novel fans with many more novels.

John of John, by Douglas Stuart

After watching an online interview of Douglas Stuart, I eagerly awaited my name reaching the top of the waitlist for John of John at the public library.

I have had the privilege of visiting the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. I have spent some time on the Isle of Lewis and visited the Isle of Harris. They are wild and stark and incredibly beautiful!

John of John, by Douglas Stuart is set on Harris. The author does a great job of giving you the setting. The moon-like starkness, the incessant wind coming off the Atlantic, the sometimes-rough ferry crossing of The Minch – the body of water between the mainland and the Outer Hebrides. The houses, the crofts, the weavers of Harris Tweed (which is also made in cottages on Lewis), the single-track roads, the sheep, the Gaelic native language, and the conservatism of the Free Presbyterian denomination (which is quite different from the Church of Scotland) are all brought to light in this novel.

The setting is almost a character in the book because to give the landscape and climate justice, one has to be immersed in it to truly appreciate the story.

The protagonist is John MacLeod, son of John MacLeod, son of Iain (John in Gaelic), son of Iain MacLeod. Young John has left the island to go to art school. He has gotten caught up in the fast life (life everywhere is “fast” compared to life in the Outer Hebrides) in Edinburgh. His father calls him home to care for his ailing maternal grandmother.

The younger John is not keen on the idea. The life he has lived on the mainland as a gay young man will surely upset his devout Free Presbyterian father to the point that he expects his father will disown him. How long can he keep his homosexuality a secret from his father.

But his father also has a secret.

If you are sensitive to “F-bombs,” you might not enjoy this book. I accepted them as apparently being part of the homosexual scene in which the younger John lived. Not that all homosexuals casually use this language, but it was part of the make up of the younger John – probably as part of his rebellion against the strict religious home in which he had been raised.

I tired of the story after 150 pages. There were other books I wanted to read, so I returned John of John to the public library. Kudos to the author for transporting me to the Outer Hebrides for a few hours.

Roses and Radicals: The Epic Story of How American Women Won the Right to Vote, by Susan Zimet

This book caught my eye when I was at the public library the week of July 4^th. It was part of a display the librarians had assembled of books pertaining to the 250^th birthday of the United States Declaration of Independence and related patriotic books and history books.

The book prompted me to pause and contemplate the incredible sacrifices the women (and a few men) made throughout the first fourteen decades of our country’s history to work toward the passage of a Constitutional Amendment that would make it unlawful for any state in the union to prohibit anyone from voting based on their sex.

I will write more about the 19^th Amendment to the United States Constitution in my blog post on August 26 – the 126^th anniversary of the ratification of that amendment.

Roses and Radicals is a relatively small book of barely 150 pages, including the bibliography and index. I thought it would be a quick read.

Sprinkled throughout the book are sidebar-like sections within chapters that tell the stories of individual including Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Anne Marbury Hutchinson, Lucretia Mott, Mary Wollstonecraft, Sisters Sarah and Angelina Grimké, Sojourner Truth, Lucy Stone, Victoria Woodhull, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Ida B. Wells, and Edith Wilson. A book could be written about each on of them.

Roses and Radicals begins with the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1840. Elizabeth Cady Stanton accompanied her husband, who was a convention delegate. But her story began when she was five years old and her last brother died. Her father said to her, “Oh my daughter, I wish you were a boy.”

In response to that remark, she was determined to be the son her father had lost. That path served to show her how difficult it would be for a woman to fulfill the burden her father had placed on her because women were so restricted by law and society norms. Fathers held legal rights over daughters and husbands held legal rights over their wives and children.

But, getting back to the anti-slavery convention in 1840… The wives of delegates and the women delegates were not allowed on the main floor. They were relegated to a balcony. The women were so incensed that they began laying plans during the convention. If people from around the world could meet to work for the abolition of the slavery of Africans, the women concluded that they could organize themselves and fight for the rights of women.

The book tells how each of the women I named in an above paragraph worked for the equality of women, women’s rights in the eyes of the law in the United States, and ultimately for women to have the right to vote. It gives little-known details of how women worked behind-the-scenes as well as marching in the streets to secure women the right to vote.

Janet

Too many books. Not enough time. Not enough bookcases. Never take your right to read – or your right to vote — for granted.

One thing led to another…

We all have days when every little thing seems to go wrong and one insignificant event leads to another insignificant event until things come to a head.

I had one of those afternoons yesterday.

It all started last week with a fraudulent charge on my credit card which necessitated the issuance of a new card. I had finally gotten comfortable with my old security code. Oh well.

Yesterday I received an email from the credit card company indicating that I needed to go to my account where I would find a letter regarding my fraudulent charge claim.

When I went into my account, it said I didn’t have any letters or notices, so I got my card in hand and prepared to call the credit card company.

But first, this might take more than a few minutes. I need some water. That’s when things took a turn.

I went to the kitchen for water. Decided a couple of ice cubes would be nice. In the process of getting two ice cubes out of the freezer compartment, I hit my “funny bone” on the door which made my hand release the ice cubes which hit my bare toes.

That wasn’t enough. I realized the washing machine had stopped, so I went to move the clothes from the washer to the dryer before calling the credit card company.

I got to the laundry room.

That’s when I stepped in water.

Janet

Prayers for our U.S. military personnel in harm’s way in the Middle East and prayers for the people of Ukraine. My problems yesterday afternoon were tiny.

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