Gold Star Widow Doesn't Want Others to Grieve Alone, Creates Country's Largest Faith-Based Group for Widows
So she created a way for widows to come together and help each other heal. In 2018, Brown launched Never Alone Widows in Atlanta, Georgia, where she is currently based. Now, it is the largest faith-based group for widows in the United States, with over 60 chapters across 27 states. Roughly 2,000 women meet up every month to share each other's journeys. The group also organizes annual retreats and conferences for larger get-togethers. While it is a Christian ministry, non-Christian women can attend as well. 'We want anybody who needs community and healing to come and find it in local groups,' she said.
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Boston Globe
9 hours ago
- Boston Globe
Basho was an elitist, Thoreau a codependent
I'm a baby boomer. My students were Gen Z. We had different views on things. I expected our classroom discussions to be lively. But still. I heard their thoughts on the reading with outright admiration and stunned incredulity. The whiplash could be unnerving. Get The Gavel A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Enter Email Sign Up Consider poor Basho! The 17th-century Japanese poet walking in the cold rain wearing his sandals and paper coat was apparently an elitist. Wendell Berry — poet, farmer, agrarian essayist, and activist — is crystal clear on his practice of Christian faith, but my students argued that he was actually a Buddhist. And certainly it was jarring to think of Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Transcendentalists as imperialist oppressors. Henry Thoreau (no filter!) didn't have a chance. While rapturous in considerations of solitude, he socialized and dined with friends — often! Obviously, a codependent. And could we read Norman Maclean's classic 'A River Runs Through It' — a story about two brothers, family, God, and trout fishing — from an eco-feminist perspective? Advertisement These reactions to the literature startled me, to put it mildly. But it was hard not to see a certain imagination at work here. For all his humility and deficient outerwear, Basho was an educated man, which likely did qualify him as an elitist of his time. Berry himself identifies as a marginal Christian, and his thinking is not exactly conventional; and perhaps there are beliefs in which these two spheres of faith converge. And of course Thoreau infuriates all of us, especially those of us who most admire him. As with so many original thinkers, he contradicts himself constantly and with endless enthusiasm. 'He is such a geek. A total nerd. But I still love him,' one student concluded. Mark Twain had an admiration for new technologies of the time yet lamented the loss of river life, conflicting sensibilities familiar to us today. Advertisement My students learned about human inconsistencies in belief and temperament. Discovering the ambiguities and minor hypocrisies of those we hold in high regard is part of education. Theirs and mine. Facing up to our own partialities and discriminations comes into it as well. Maybe more to the point, their lack of interest in dogma allowed for unconstrained and broad interpretation. A contempt for established doctrine led them to evaluate the reading in ways that were — needless to say — new to me. Which is probably as it should be. Confounding questions and alternative perspectives have a rightful place in environmental thinking today. How we think and what we do in the natural world now is often confused, complex, contradictory. Beliefs and behaviors defy one another constantly. Knowledge and experience are often at odds. Our ideals and practices are often freakishly out of alignment. Advertisement So what's a college professor to do? Meet our students where they are, as the saying goes today. Although we may all still be in the woods, it helps if we can partner up to learn the names of the trees, the shapes of the leaves. And as a new academic year begins, I'd like to think my own abiding regard for the canon can find a convergence with the unorthodox perspectives offered by my students. Actually, it could even make for the kind of thinking that comes close to what Thoreau advocated more than 150 years ago: not knowledge so much as a 'sympathy with intelligence.' He elaborates only by suggesting 'that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy,' an inclusiveness in sensibility that my students and I might even agree on.
Yahoo
21 hours ago
- Yahoo
Texas's Camp Mystic was ‘a place of joy'. Floods turned it into a site of great loss
The loss of 27 campers and counsellors from Camp Mystic to the Texas Hill Country flood may serve, at a terrible cost, to expand its considerable reputation across Texas and beyond. Even as the floods claimed more lives along the valley – at least 120 confirmed dead and 160 people unaccounted for as of Tuesday – the loss of several 'Mystic Girls' has dominated the headlines. The camp, which offers two four-week terms and one two-week term over the summer, has been the go-to summer camp for daughters of Texans for nearly a century. It's so popular that fathers have been known to call the registrar to get their daughters on the list from the delivery room. The camp, which spans more than 700 acres, has been widely described as an all-girls Christian camp, lending an image of baptisms in the river, but the religious component may be overstated: the camp is known as one of dozens along the Guadalupe River where Texan families send their young to escape the brutal heat of the lowlands. Related: Everything we know about Texas flooding – with visuals Now at least one-half of Camp Mystic, which was due to celebrate its centenary next year, lies in ruins, torn apart by raging floodwaters. The sound of song and girls playing has been replaced by the sound of chainsaws and heavy equipment as 19 state agencies and thousands of volunteers work to search and clear mounds of flood debris along the river, including the muddied personal items of the campers. Five days after the flood, the task along the valley has become a search-and-recovery operation: no one has been rescued from the river alive since Friday. In addition to the lost girls, Camp Mystic's director, Richard 'Dick' Eastland, a fourth-generation owner of the camp, died while attempting to bring five girls to safety. 'It tugs at the heart of anyone in the world that sees the pictures of those little faces,' said Claudia Sullivan, author of a book on the Camp Mystic experience, Heartfelt: A Memoir of Camp Mystic Inspirations. 'To know that they were there, having the time of their life, that they were innocent, and then to be taken away in such a tragic event – it takes you to your knees.' Most alumni contacted by the Guardian indicated they were too upset to discuss the camp, or its reputation, as Texas Monthly put it in a 2011 article, for serving 'as a near-flawless training ground for archetypal Texas women'. It has served generations of Texas women, often from well-to-do or politically connected Texas families, including the former first lady Laura Bush, who was a counsellor, and the daughters and granddaughters of Lyndon Johnson, former secretary of state James Baker, and Texas governors Price Daniel, Dan Moody and John Connally. *** The camp may have been incorrectly characterized as a 'Christian' camp. 'That evokes the idea of church camp but that's not the case,' said Sullivan. 'It's a private camp for girls that holds Christian values. When I was there we spent a lot of time talking about being kind to one another and having compassion, and there were people from other denominations and faiths.' Camp Mystic is better understood, Sullivan added, as being in a place free from pressure. 'You're in nature, in a beautiful setting, and really removed from the world', said Sullivan. 'It's a place of joy and innocence – or was. My sense is that it will definitely be rebuilt, but it's awfully early.' The outpouring of grief and rush to support the community have been striking. A church memorial service was held on Monday in San Antonio for the 'Mystic girls' who had been lost. Many dressed in the camp's green and white, together in song and prayer. It was not possible to get to the camp on Tuesday, a tailback of 2.5 hours extended across the seven miles from Hunt, the nearest hamlet, to Camp Mystic. At the season's peak in July and August, the camp hosted 750 girls aged between seven and 17 years old – that's more than half of Hunt's population of about 1,300. At Ingram, a riverbank town that also lost dozens from RV camps and homes to the flood, emergency workers and volunteers were pitching in, in many cases in the hope of recovering people still lost, and many bodies probably hidden under large piles of river debris, shattered homes and mangled possessions. John Sheffield, owner of Ingram's Ole Ingram Grocery, said the flood had not recognized social differences and nor would the recovery effort: 'This is Americans taking care of Americans. There's been such a tremendous outpouring of support and compassion.' Down by the river, search crews were continuing to comb through debris and mud. Claud Johnson, the mayor of Ingram, was operating a digger up by Hunt. An EMS van pulled up, suggesting another body had been found. Helicopters continued to move overhead despite an incident on Monday when one was struck by a privately operated drone and was forced to make an emergency landing. There's been such a tremendous outpouring of support and compassion John Sheffield Three baristas from the Aftersome Coffee stand in San Antonio had come up to serve recovery workers. Allyson Bebleu said she had gone to church camp and it had given her some of her fondest memories. 'It's not just for the wealthiest families, people of all types go to camp,' she said. 'Everyone is putting themselves in the shoes of the Camp Mystic girls. It's tragic.' Camp Mystic was also the subject of a controversial video recently posed by Sade Perkins, a former member of Houston's Food Insecurity Board. Perkins was 'permanently removed' by John Whitmire, the Houston mayor, after she called Camp Mystic a 'whites only' conservative Christian camp without even 'a token Asian, they don't have a token Black person'. Richard Vela, whose 13-year-old daughter Maya was evacuated from a nearby camp, Camp Honey Creek, on Friday and was still too upset to discuss it, said Perkins' comments 'were not right. You don't talk about people like that. There's a lot of death going on and they still haven't found everybody.' *** Bruce Jerome, who was manning an outreach for flood survivors in Ingram, said he had known Jane Ragsdale, the director and longtime co-owner of Heart O' the Hills Camp, in Hunt, Texas, who had died in the flooding. 'She was just genuinely wonderful,' Jerome said. Further down the track to the river was Josey Garcia, a Democratic representative for San Antonio in the Texas state house. She and her team were also picking through the debris, pointing out vast piles that still need to be be sifted through. Garcia, a military veteran, said it was important to come 'and collaborate with our neighbors here to recover those that are missing and help Kerr county clean up. We've had folks coming from Laredo and outstate Kansas to lend assistance. It's showing the spirit of Texas – when it comes to lives being devastated it's our duty to step.' Garcia, too, rejected negative characterizations of Camp Mystic. 'I've been hearing a lot of the rhetoric that's been going around. This is not the time for those types of distinctions. I don't care who was at the camp. All I know is that there are parents and families that are missing their loved ones. Whether it's rich Caucasian children or any other children, we'd still be there.'
Yahoo
21 hours ago
- Yahoo
Michigan summer camps want parents to know 'we are prepared'
After a flash flood killed dozens of children attending summer camp in Texas, Michigan camp leaders want to remind worried parents that safety is always their priority. The flood happened early morning on July 4, when heavy rainfall caused the Guadalupe River to rise at a deadly speed. The death toll for Kerr County, Texas, is 120 people and counting, according to USA TODAY. Of those deaths, 27 are children and counselors from Camp Mystic, an all-girls Christian sleepaway camp located on the banks of the river. Summer camp is a beloved tradition for many families, and a sacred coming of age ritual for children and young adults. To continue that legacy, camp leaders in Michigan say that safety must be a priority. Jill Laidlaw worked for Camp Cavell in Lexington for 37 years. Laidlaw often played out emergency scenarios in her head when she was a camp director. When she heard about the tragedy at Camp Mystic, she said she immediately thought about what the young camp counselors tried to do to keep the kids safe. "(They were) probably trying to put the kids up on the top bunks, thinking it was going to just be a small flood, and somebody would come and help them, and then realized that they were going to have to try and get those kids out," said Laidlaw. Laidlaw said that thinking about it keeps her up at night. "I'm having a hard time dealing with it," she said, " I don't think we'll ever know the stories." Laidlaw said any emergencies she experienced as a camp director were nowhere near as devastating as what happened at Camp Mystic. But there were instances that challenged the staff. One time, Laidlaw said, the camp lost power for three days while hosting 200 children living with muscular dystrophy. "We had to deal with electric (wheel)chairs, trying to charge them," Laidlaw said. "It was quite the challenge to keep them there when that would happen." She said fire trucks would come to the campsite and hook up extension cords to their generators. The trucks would charge five electric wheelchairs at a time, and keep the kids entertained while they charged. Laidlaw said Camp Cavell was accredited by the American Camp Association (ACA) and practiced safety protocols at the start of each one-week session; they were most prepared for fires and storms. ACA accreditation is optional, she said. But all camps in Michigan are required to meet Michigan Lifelong Education, Advancement and Potential (MiLEAP) safety regulations to obtain a license from the state. According to Michigan law, some of those regulations include providing written procedures for emergencies with disasters (weather, fire, lost camper), posting evacuation routes visibly in every "camper-occupied" building, in more than one room, and performing fire safety orientation within 48 hours of a new session. Latitia McCree-Thomas, senior vice president of communications and marketing for the YMCA of Metro Detroit, said the camp is well prepared to know what to do and where to go in case of emergency. YMCA of Metro Detroit is also ACA-accredited. "We actually do drills every week with the staff and the campers so they know exactly where to go during any severe weather or emergencies," McCree-Thomas said. "We have staff that are constantly monitoring the weather as well, and all employees know the evacuation plan and proper routes." McCree-Thomas said there are alternate evacuation locations to go to, in case the original spots are destroyed or blocked-off. She also said children are accompanied by adults at all times during camp, highlighting that safety is the No. 1 priority for YCMA. In a written response to the floods in Texas, the president and CEO of the American Youth Foundation — an organization that owns summer camps — Liz Marshall said that safety is also at the forefront of what all of their camps do. More: MI school district budgets precarious as feds sit on $160M, state misses deadline "This tragedy hits hard for those of us who dedicate our lives to creating safe, joyful summer experiences for young people," Marshall wrote. She also wrote that their Michigan camp, Miniwanca, collaborates with local emergency responders to create and practice safety protocols — in addition to having staff trained in CPR, first aid and crisis communication. The camp also monitors the weather closely and ensures that evacuation routes are "clearly identified" for campers and staff. For programs at Miniwanca that travel, leaders always have a trackable device like a cellphone, satellite phone or GPS locator. McCree said the YMCA of Metro Detroit has received phone calls from worried parents after the deadly flood in Texas. And asking questions is exactly what parents should do, she said. More: Michigan school district agrees to end seclusion after DOJ probe, Free Press investigation "When you sign your children up for any program, ask what their safety protocols are," she said. "Make sure you're comfortable with the processes and then also make sure your child is aware of what they are." McCree suggests parents ask whether their camp is accredited by the ACA — something that isn't required but adds extra levels of safety. Henry DeHart, interim president and CEO for the ACA, wrote in an email to the Free Press that ACA accreditation acts as an "educational framework" for the health and safety standards for summer camps — often going "beyond what state laws require." Some of those requirements require specific health and safety training for camp staff members, and thorough documented plans and frequent rehearsal for emergency situations for staff and campers. DeHart wrote that Camp Mystic in Texas is not accredited by the ACA. Laidlaw said that even with the added regulations from the ACA, there's no way to plan for every possible situation. "No matter what kind of protocols they had there, I can't imagine they had anything that could have dealt with something so quick," said Laidlaw. DeHart wrote that the ACA is providing financial support to the cause and mental health services are available to neighboring camps in Texas. "We recognize that tragedies anywhere can heighten anxieties everywhere. We encourage open, ongoing dialogue between camps and families, and we stand ready to support camp professionals as they navigate these difficult conversations with compassion and clarity," DeHart wrote. Contact Emma George-Griffin: EGeoreGriffin@ This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan Camps continue to prioritize safety after Texas flash floods
