The 14 women who have accused Trump of sexual harassment or assault

Donald Trump and his Press Secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, claim that all 14 of the women who have accused Trump of sexual harassment and/or assault are lying.

At the same time, Trump admitted to sexual assault while aboard an Access Hollywood bus back in September of 2005, and his description of this assault is strikingly similar to some of these women's accusations.

Trump also famously tweeted this:

In summary:

• According to Donald Trump, 14 women are liars, but he is not, even though both he and the women are speaking  about the same same thing in the same terms. 
• Trump seems to believe that women and men cannot work together without sexual assault taking place.

I have worked almost exclusively in the company of women for 20 years. It is not uncommon for me to be the only man in the room at any number of meetings or professional development. Prior to that, I attended an all women's college and was always the only man in class. 

Despite my proximity to women for almost a quarter century, I am quite confident that no woman would claim that I sexually harassed or assaulted her.

Trump is no different than Harvey Weinstein except that he has a Republican Congress and a Press Secretary standing behind him. History will judge these people poorly. 

The women who have come forward so far include:

Ninni Laaksonen, former Miss Finland.
 “Trump stood right next to me and suddenly he squeezed my butt” in July 2006.

Jessica Drake.
Said Trump grabbed and kissed her without consent, then offered her $10,000 for sex in 2006.

Karena Virginia.
Says she was groped by Trump at the U.S. Open in 1998.

Cathy Heller.
Says Trump grabbed her and attempted to kiss her at Mar-a-lago in 1997.

Summer Zervos.
Apprentice contestant says Trump started kissing her and grabbing her breasts, began "thrusting his genitals" in 2007.

Kristin Anderson.
Said Trump reached under her skirt and grabbed her vagina through her underwear in the early 1990s.

Jessica Leeds.
Said Trump lifted up the armrest, grabbed her breasts and reached his hand up her skirt in the early 1980s.

Rachel Crooks.
Says she was assaulted by Trump in an elevator in Trump Tower in 2005.

Mindy McGillivray.
Says Trump groped her while she was attending a concert at Mar-a-lago in 2003.

Natasha Stoynoff.
Says Trump pushed her against a wall and jammed his tongue down her throat at Mar-a-lago in 2005.

Jennifer Murphy.
Apprentice contestant says Trump kissed her on the lips after a job interview in 2005.

Cassandra Searles.
Says Trump grabbed her ass and invited her to his hotel room in 2013.

Temple Taggart McDowell.
Former Miss Utah says Trump kissed her directly on the lips the first time she met him in 1997.

Jill Harth.
Says Trump repeatedly sexually harassed her and groped her underneath a table in 1993.

As long as you're not as sexually repressed as the Vice President, the gender-neutral restroom is working just fine

During intermission at last night's Moth StorySLAM at The Oberon in Cambridge, I went to the restroom.

The Oberon has converted its formerly gender-specific restrooms to gender-neutral restrooms. When I entered what was once a men's room, I was greeted with the typical line that can be found during intermission, except that this line contained both women and men. 

Nine people in all. Five women and four men were queued up in front of the four urinals and three stalls. Some were chatting while waiting. Others scrolled through their phones. As far as I could tell, no one thought this odd or inappropriate.

And why would they?

Women used the stalls. Men used the urinals or the stalls.  

One of the women in line actually knew me from previous performances and asked me for some storytelling advice while we waited to pee. 

For someone like the Vice President, who can't have dinner alone with a woman who isn't his wife or drink a beer when his wife is not present, I would imagine that this scenario might cause him to blow a gasket. His seemingly admitted inability to control his lustful desires might erupt into an uncontrollable fervor at the mere thought of a semi-naked woman behind a thin restroom partition.   

But for the majority of Americans who operate as normal human beings and who aren't so fearful of temptation that they must quarantine themselves from the opposite sex without a marital chaperone, this gender-neutral reconfiguration is working out just fine.      

Perhaps in the future the restroom design could be differentiated this way:

Gender-neutral restrooms

Single use restroom for the perverse who can't control themselves when genitals are exposed privately but in the vicinity of their own genitals

Guest post: Daniel Dale's Twitter feed

Daniel Dale, Washington correspondent for the Toronto Star, tweeted the following thread that I have cut and pasted here in the event you don't use Twitter or didn't see it on Twitter.

It's fantastic.
________________________________

Here is a thread about Donald Trump getting hilariously lost in his own lying. 

This is what Trump told radio host Mike Gallagher last week:

So Trump starts with a lie: that Rasmussen had his approval rating at 46% or 47% that day. He was actually at 41% that day.

Then Trump adds a second lie: that 47%, an approval rating he does not have, is an approval rating that makes re-election guaranteed.

He is not content with that. He must boast about his superiority to Obama. And this is where he loses control of his own nonsense.

He says...Obama left office with an approval rating lower than his own. "46%." This is a third lie.

In fact, Obama left with a much higher approval rating than Trump's imaginary 47%: Obama had 62% final approval in Rasmussen.

But anyway, Trump is stuck - he said Obama's approval was almost identical to his own! And he adds, scrambling, "So he was very popular."

But oh no. Trump has gone wrong. He has now called Barack Obama "very popular." He must correct this.

So he adds, in the mocking tone of a middle schooler: "If you call that popular."

OK wait: he had just said 46% or 47% is his own awesome rating. Now he is mocking the idea that that is a good rating. Because Obama.

In sum: Trump went from bragging about his fake 47% to mocking a fake Obama 46% that is 5 points higher than his own actual rating, 41%.

This concludes today's episode of One Paragraph Of Donald Trump Talking.

Just the kind of conversation I want before sunrise

Nothing to see here.

Just a pre-sunrise conversation with my eight-year old daughter, Clara, about what the word "stillborn" means, followed by a flood of tears over the fate of Elizabeth Adams, the stillborn daughter of Abigail Adams.

I love parenting.

"Don't you dare..." are words most frequently uttered by morons

This is a tweet from Pastor Greg Locke, an outspoken, mouth-breathing conservative who opposes the rights of gay, transexual, and transgender Americans and has gone so far as to call them mentally ill and criminal. He's also a supporter of Donald Trump and many of his policies. 

Yesterday Locke tweeted this:

If you haven't heard, Eminem produced a freestyle rap about Trump that has gone viral. It's angry, clever, pointed attack on the President and (more surprising) his fans who support Trump.

I have two comments on Locke's tweet:

1. His description of Eminem is ironically a near-perfect description of Donald Trump.  

2. More important, Locke did that stupid thing that people do.

He writes, "Don't you dare lecture us..." 

Don't you dare? He already dared. He produced a four minute freestyle rap video that clearly lectures about politics and that you clearly watched. How can Eminem not dare to do something that he's already done and you know he's already done?

Do you think he has a time machine? 

It's sad and stupid when someone uses this meaningless, overly dramatic rhetoric to try to make a point. Proper retorts to the "Don't you dare..." nonsense include:

1. Too late, wing nut. I dared. And you know I did. That's why you're talking about it. What is wrong with you?

2. Hey dumbass, this isn't a reality television show. The "don't you dare..." middle school melodrama doesn't play well in the real world where cameras aren't running and the words are meaningless. Give it a rest. 

3. Look at the angry little man, everyone! He's trying to tell someone who's already done something to not do that something. How transparently powerless and pathetically ineffective of him. What a train wreck of a human being. Kind of makes him look like a President who promised that Mexico would pay for a wall, Americans would have beautiful, inexpensive healthcare, the Dreamers immigration status would remain unchanged, the LGBTQ community would be supported at every turn, and that he would release his tax returns. All talk and no action.

Trump's boycott list does not make America great at all

Over the course of his Presidency, Donald Trump has asked the American people to boycott the following corporations and entities:

The Hamilton musical
Oreos
Apple
Netflix
Amazon
The entire state of Hawaii
Nordstrom
Budweiser
Starbucks
The National Football League

For the minority of Americans who support Donald Trump, America is becoming a far less entertaining and amusing place. 

Honestly, it must suck. 

For the rest of us, America has been a far less entertaining and amusing place since election day. Thankfully, we still have the warm embrace of our Oreos, our Netflix, and Amazon Prime to comfort us.  

On a day of tragedy, a little hope.

Yesterday was a tough day. I awoke to the tragic news from Las Vegas and wondered when this violence is ever going to end. 

Of course, America averages more than one mass shooting every single day. Las Vegas was especially horrific in terms of its body count, but by definition (a shooting in which four or more people are injured or killed), mass shootings are commonplace in our country. 

Daily occurrences. 

With that in mind, it's hard to be hopeful.

Thankfully, I found a great deal of hope yesterday in the company of young people. 

I started my morning with my two favorite people in the world. They crept down the stairs in the early morning light and sat beside me for breakfast. They colored pictures of rainbows and pink flowers, read books about Ruth Bader Ginsburg, played with the cats, and watched videos about how rubber is made.

Mostly, they talked endlessly and giggled incessantly.

Then I headed to school, where my 21 other favorite people awaited. We read books, solved math problems, told stories, and wrote about the truth behind Old McDonald's farm.

But even within the walls of our school, violence does not always escape us. Yesterday my students loaned $25 through our class's micro-loan account to a farmer in El Salvador after they learned that El Salvador is the murder capital of the world. Feeling empathy for someone living in such dire circumstances, their decision over which entrepreneur to lend to became an simple one.

It's easy to find hope in the optimism, passion, joy, and energy of young people.

Then I headed north, to The Berkshire School, where I spent the evening with high school students. I told them stories. I taught them how to tell their own stories and the importance of doing so. We laughed and even cried a little. We talked about authenticity, vulnerability, and connection. 

One young lady shared stories of the way her brother has come to her defense time and time again. A young man thanked me for making him feel a little less alone in this world. Another student asked me how she might find the courage to share a story of her bisexuality with her peers.  

These were engaged, intellectually curious, excited kids who wanted to learn something new and make the world a better place. 

I drove away filled with hope. 

On those especially hard days in America, when sadness fills our hearts and hope is hard to find, I recommend that you try to spend your day in the company of young people.

Spend time with your children or grandchildren.
Volunteer in a classroom.
Give a parent or parents a night out by offering to babysit their children.

Find a way to spend time in the presence of children or young adults. In no way will the tragedy of the day be mitigated by these young people, but your heart will feel better and the future will seem a little brighter.

On a day like yesterday, that is a great thing. Perhaps even a miracle.   

A Trump supporter has found his bridge-too-far, and it's pathetic

Former NFL head coach turned television analyst Rex Ryan was on ESPN's pregame show on Sunday. Ryan was a vocal Trump supporter during the election, going so far as to introduce him at a rally in Buffalo, NY.

On Sunday, in a conversation about Donald Trump's comments about football players kneeling for the anthem, Ryan said:

"I supported Donald Trump. But I'm reading these comments, and it's appalling to me, and I'm sure it's appalling to almost any citizen in our country. it should be. Calling our players SOB's and all that kind of stuff... "

Sure, Rex, because during the election, this wasn't quite enough to turn you off to Trump:

Or this:

Or this:

Or this:

It's good to see that someone like Rex Ryan has finally come to realize that maybe, just maybe, Donald Trump is not a decent, reasonable, honorable defender of the Constitution.   

It's just a shame that he was able to look past the bragging about sexual assault, the denigrating of Mexican immigrants, an attack on a United States war hero, and his blatant bigotry.

Not to mention Trump's attack on Gold Star families, his lies about Muslims celebrating on rooftops on 9/11, his broken promise to release his tax returns, his failure to understand concepts as critical as the nuclear triad, and the way he stole money from hard working Americans via Trump University.    

All that was fine. No big deal.

But call a football player a son-of-a-bitch?

In the words of Rex Ryan, "appalling."

No, Rex. The most appalling part of his whole disaster was your willingness to look past all of these atrocities and support a candidate who was morally and ethically unfit for office.  

Would I ever take a knee in protest during the national anthem?

I was pulled over by a police officer last week. I was driving 53 MPH in a 40 MPH zone.

Honestly, I had no idea that I was speeding. It was Elysha's first day back to work, and I just wanted to get home and talk about her day. I guess I was a little too anxious to see her. 

As the blue lights filled my rear view mirror and the officer hit the siren, my heart beat faster. My muscles tensed. My flight-or-fight response triggered. 

I am always terrified when dealing with the police. 

When I was 22, I was arrested and tried for a crime I didn't commit because a single police officer was convinced of my guilt. My arrest resulted in the loss of my job and my home. I ended up homeless and hungry, and if not for the kindness of friends, I don't know where I would be today. I ultimately lost about 18 months of my life working 90 hours a week in order to pay a $25,000 legal fee.

As a result, I am always afraid when I encounter police officers. While I respect and admire the work that they do and appreciate their dedication and service, I also know how one police officer derailed my life and came close to putting me in prison. 

I can't imagine what it must be like to be a black man in similar circumstances. 

I have watched far too many of videos of black men being beaten and shot by white police officers. I have watched as a great majority of these officers have avoided jail time for their actions. When I encounter the police, I am terrified of being misunderstood. Mistakenly perceived as a criminal. Unfairly arrested. Perhaps even jailed and tried for a crime I did not commit. 

I am not afraid for my life. I am not afraid of being shot because I reached for my license too quickly or took my hands off the steering wheel.

I can't even imagine.

On Sunday, hundreds of athletes in the NFL, the WNBA, Major League Baseball, and other sports knelt during the national anthem, joining Colin Kaepernick in his protest against police brutality and the mass incarceration of Africans Americans.

Including my New England Patriots.

Many of these athletes knelt in response to Donald Trump's comments in Alabama, where he called Kaepernick a "son-of-a-bitch" and demanded that he be fired (even though Kaepernick has been effectively blackballed by NFL owners for his protest and doesn't currently have a job). 

My response to their protest was simple:

I support the players' First Amendment right to peacefully protest. I support the hell out of it. So, too, do thousands of military veterans and active duty personnel, who took to social media on Sunday to remind Americans that they risked their lives so these men could freely protest.

Including 97 year-old John Middlemas, a World War II veteran who took a knee in solidarity on Sunday. 

I wanted to add that if I were in these athlete's shoes, I would probably choose a different means of protesting, but to say such a thing would be stupid. And if you look anything like me, it would be stupid for you, too.

I'm a white man. I have not spent the last ten years watching watching people who look like me get shot and killed by police officers on video. I have not watched countless white police officers go free after killing unarmed black men. 

I don't live in a country where African Americans are statistically imprisoned for longer periods of time than white Americans who committed the same crime.  

I have no idea how these men and women feel. 

Yes, maybe there is a better way to protest, but until Kaepernick took a knee, America didn't seem to care much about these issues. Every month or two we would watch body camera footage or a Facebook live video of a white police officer shooting an unarmed back man, and after a brief period of outrage, nothing would change. 

Maybe if I was as afraid as someone like Colin Kaepernick, I would've taken a knee, too. I might've stood on my damn head.  

Donald Trump's stupid remarks may have turned Sunday into a protest against him, but Kaepernick's initial goal was to raise awareness of the issue, and he clearly has. When the President of the United States is talking about your protest, you have brought significant attention to the issue.

If I was afraid to getting shot and killed during a routine traffic stop, maybe I would be doing everything in my power to get the attention of the world, too. 

Donald Trump is an old, white man. He does not know the fear that African Americans face on a daily basis. Despite my arrest, trial, and near-imprisonment, neither do I. Going to prison unjustly and getting shot in the driver seat of my car are two very different things.

If you aren't black, you can't know what it's like to live in this country,

The people who vehemently oppose the player's kneeling during the national anthem are almost exclusively white. They are people who do not fear being shot and killed by a police officer for speeding or driving with a broken taillight.

When was the last time we saw body camera footage or a Facebook Live feed of an unarmed white motorist being shot by a police officer?

Trump doesn't know what it's like to be black. Neither do I. I never will.

But I know that the First Amendment gives Americans the right to peacefully protest, including kneeling during the National Anthem. Or sitting during the Pledge of Allegiance. 

Or even burning the flag in protest.  

Only fascist and totalitarian states value their flags more than free speech. 

I respect these player's right to kneel. I respect a fan's right to boo in protest of this protest. 

What I don't respect is a white person's belief that he or she could ever know what it's like to be a black person in America today. If you're white, don't tell me what you would do differently.

There's no way of ever knowing. 

My favorite billboard

The billboard is up on Southern Boulevard, which is one of the only streets that links directly to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.

With Hurricane Irma now battering Florida, my thoughts are with everyone whose lives and property are at risk from this cataclysmic storm.  

My thoughts are also with this particular billboard. Envisioning how angry Donald Trump must be knowing how close it sits to his property and how visible it must be to every guest driving up to his resort warms my heart.

I'd hate to learn that it was lost in the storm. 

Time to break the law on behalf of Harriet Tubman

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, a Yale graduate and former Goldman Sachs investment banker whose Daddy is also a Yale graduate and and former Goldman Sachs banker (Steve is clearly blazing his own trail in this world), indicated last week that the Treasury Department could abandon plans to replace President Andrew Jackson on the front of the $20 bill with abolitionist Harriet Tubman.

The redesign had been finalized under President Obama.

Steve is also currently under investigation by the Treasury Department’s inspector general for taking a government jet to Fort Knox the day of the solar eclipse, perhaps to witness the eclipse from a more favorable position.

Steve is also married to Louise Linton, the fashion-obsessed occasional actress who made headlines two weeks ago after criticizing a woman on Instagram for having less money than she has. 

Linton grew up in a Scottish castle and derives all of her wealth from her family and her husband's fortune.  

She apologized for her elitist comments weeks later in the pages of Washington Life alongside photos of her posing in expensive ball gowns in various locations at her and Mnuchin's Washington mansion.

There are clearly the type of people who Harriett Tubman would have adored. 

In regards to the change in the $20 bill, Mnuchin said, “It’s not something that I’m focused on at the moment. The issues of why we change it will be primarily related to what we need to do for security purposes.”

So screw Harriet Tubman. To hell with the idea of allowing our daughters or children of color to see someone like them on a piece of currency. If our money is secure with old, white men on it, then old, white men it shall be! 

It's also sad that Mnuchin can't apparently focus on more than one thing, or even delegate this matter to a staffer. After all, it's a simple change of face on a bill. We've changed the appearance of our money appears many, many times in just my lifetime. It's not exactly unprecedented. It shouldn't be too hard.

But fear not. We may have a solution. 

Josh Malina, who played a vice president’s chief of staff on the NBC political drama "The West Wing," encouraged his more than 240,000 Twitter followers to write the famous abolitionist’s name on $20 bills over the face of Andrew Jackson. 

This may technically violate federal law, but it's still a fantastic idea, and one that I think Harriet Tubman would have loved. If a white man is going to once again stand between Tubman and the recognition she deserves, the least we can do is break the law on her behalf, the same way she did for the hundreds of slaves who she illegally ushered to freedom. 

Trump's "real" job numbers

On the wake of a less than stellar jobs report, Trump has been touting his "million jobs created" in the first half of 2017.

One million jobs sounds great. But look at the first half of 2017 job creation in comparison to previous years:

2013: 1.12 million

2014: 1.50 million

2015: 1.39 million

2016: 1.24 million

2017: 1.07 million

One million Americans finding work is fantastic. But it's also the fewest number of new jobs created during the first half of the year in five years, so a little perspective, please.

Admittedly not Trump's forte.

Also, thank you President Obama. 

A little girl, a Supreme Court justice, and courage

It's the top of the seventh at the Hartford Yard Goats last night, which means we have abandoned our seats for rides on the enormous, inflatable slides behind the right field fence. 

Charlie has hurtled down these monstrosities before, but for Clara, this is her first time. I expect her to be nervous. Frightened. She may back out.

She is who she is.

I watch as Clara climbs the ladder, admittedly impressed by her willingness to even begin the process. A few seconds later, a hear her voice. She's shouting.

Her words:

"Ruth Bader Ginsburg!"

Then she comes plunging down the slide, repeating the name of a Supreme Court justice again and again.  

She lands with a thud at the bottom of the slide, hops off, and makes a beeline to the ladder for another ride. 

"Clara!" I call. "Why are you shouting Ruth Bader Ginsberg?"

"When I'm nervous, she gives me courage!"

She is who she is.  

'80's John Hughes villain comes alive

On Tuesday, Louise Linton, wife of Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, posted a photo of herself stepping off an official government plane wearing designer labels.

I know she was wearing those labels because she hash-tagged them in the photo caption. 

Jenni Miller, a Portland, Oregon mother of three, didn't love the photo and wrote “Glad we could pay for your little getaway #deplorable.”

Linton responded by insulting Miller. Essentially, this born-into-wealth, married-into-wealth failed actress made fun of Linton for being poor. 

“Aw!!! Did you think this was a personal trip?! Adorable! Do you think the US govt paid for our honeymoon or personal travel?! Lololol. Have you given more to the economy than me and my husband? Either as an individual earner in taxes OR in self sacrifice to your country. I’m pretty sure we paid more taxes toward our day ‘trip’ than you did. Pretty sure the amount we sacrifice per year is a lot more than you’d be willing to sacrifice if the choice was yours. You’re adorably out of touch. Thanks for the passive aggressive comment.”

“Your life looks cute,” she wrote an hour later before deleting the comment and making her Instagram account private as the world saw her comments and rained scorn upon her. 

Linton is a woman who was literally born in a castle. She's a woman whose designer labels are the result of her birth and marriage. She's a woman who has always had everything that she wants and needs.

She's a woman so vacuous that hashtags the designer labels that she is wearing.  

This isn’t Linton’s first act of stupidity.

In 2016, she published a memoir about the six months she spent in Zambia in 1999 during her gap year. The people who she worked with refuted the claims she made in the book. The Zambian government criticized her for falsely characterizing the country as a "a war-torn hellhole" when it was actually at peace during her time there. 

In addition, Linton’s book featured photos of the HIV-positive children, which were used without the children’s (or their families’) permission.

The backlash was so acute that Linton pulled the book and apologized.

So yes, Louise Linton has apparently decided to embrace the image of the 1980's John Hughes female super-villain:

A snobby, condescending, pretentious, mean, wealthy woman whose fortune comes solely through birth and marriage and yet feels like this alone places her above all others.

Her last film, Cabin Fever, has the unique distinction of having a score of 0% on Rotten Tomatoes. In that film, she played a sheriff's deputy. Perhaps she's trying to present herself in a new light to prospective producers or directors.

"Look! I can do evil, stupid, rich-bitch ice queen, too."

Yes, Louise. You certainly can.

This is what a free and excellent media looks like

This is the way journalists should conduct an interview. This should be taught in journalism school. 

This is exactly what people want from the media:

Hold public officials and hackneyed pundits accountable. 

Don't forget.

This little baby girl grew up and became a warrior who stood against hate and injustice.

Heather Heyer.

Say her name. Remember her name.

Tyrion Lannister got it right.

It's hard to acknowledge your privilege when you've enjoyed it for your whole life.

It's even harder to admit that your success is very much the result of that privilege, and that your self-perceived story of hard work, sacrifice, discipline, and skill might be entirely different absent your privilege of race, nation, gender, socioeconomic class, or health.

Someone who has been listening to me stories this week said to me, "It's amazing that you've come so far given where you once were."

I replied, "I'm a healthy, intelligent, white man in America. Even with the misfortune that I've suffered in life, I was already hugely advantaged from the get-go. Change the color of my skin or my gender or stick me in a third world country, and my story is probably very different. My path might have been hard, but it was a hell of a lot easier than most people of the world."

It seems to me that there are a segment of people in America today who enjoy the same or similar privileges but refuse to to recognize their good fortune. They feel like victims rather than the benefactors of a lottery that afforded them enormous privilege. They fail to see that the struggle of others is in large part the result of institutions that make their path more difficult because of their race, gender, or country of origin.

It made me think of these words, spoken by fictional Game of Throne's character Tyrion Lannister:  

This, too, shall pass.

We spent last week in Washington, DC. We visited with good friends, ate good food, toured the museums and the monuments, and had a grand time.

What I will always remember about this trip, however, is the way my daughter's insatiable curiosity, her incessant reading, and her mother's influence have transformed her into a student of the world.

Clara loves Clara Barton. This love began with the name they share, but it quickly grew into a genuine interest and love affair with this woman. She's read several books on Barton and can detail her life history if you have about an hour.

The Clara Barton home is coincidentally just a couple of miles from our friend's home, so we stopped to visit. We were sad to discover that the house is closed. Though it's designated as a historic site (it was also the first headquarters of the Red Cross), it's in disrepair, and it doesn't look like it will be open anytime soon.

We went to look at it even though we knew it was closed, planning on taking a photo of Clara standing outside the house. Instead, we were met by three men who were inspecting the building, and one offered to bring just Clara and Elysha inside. He gave them a private tour of the home, and he and Clara exchanged Clara Barton tidbits.  

It was almost better than the house being open to the public. Clara was the first child in a long time to enter the home, making the moment for her very special.

Later that evening, we were touring the FDR monument when Clara spotted a statue to Eleanor Roosevelt, a remarkable politician in her own right. Clara began spouting facts about this female American icon as well, but she also asked at least twice as many questions. 

We ended our tour of the monuments that evening at the Lincoln Memorial. Having lived in DC for six months, I'd visited this monument many times, but it was just as awe inspiring this time.

My son, Charlie, couldn't believe that we were allowed to step inside. He asked an endless stream of questions about the architecture and Lincoln himself. 

Elysha and Clara sat down in the north chamber so that Elysha could read her the Gettysburg Address aloud.

It's easy in today's political climate to become despondent over all that we see. It's not hard to lose hope and perhaps think that our country is spiraling in the wrong direction.

I am not immune to these sentiments from time to time, and I am an optimist and an anti-alarmist. 

But my trip to Washington renewed my spirit.

Abraham Lincoln led our country through the Civil War. Millions of Americans died on American soil in a battle for the future of our union.

Clara Barton served as a nurse during the Civil War. She witnessed horrors beyond imagination in a time when women did not have the right to vote and lacked many of the basic rights and privileges enjoyed by women today. 

Eleanor Roosevelt helped to lead our country through the Great Depression and World War II. 

These were some of America's most challenging times.    

Yet here we stand today. Our country persists. 

The not hard to imagine the despair that Americans must have been feeling during the times of Lincoln, Barton, and Roosevelt. I must have been easy for those men and women to lose hope in the future of their country. 

Yet they fought. They battled. They persisted. Just like we will.

My greatest hope comes from the wide-eyed, insatiable curiosity of my children and their inherent desire to, in the words of Abigail Adams, do good and be good. 

Lincoln, Barton, Roosevelt, and their generations of Americans faced enormous, almost unimaginable challenges, and they won. They preserved and protected this nation for future generations. 

Just like I know we will, for Clara, Charlie and their future generations. 

Heather Heyer: Patriot and hero of the first order

Her name was Heather Heyer.

She died when a car with an Ohio license plate rammed into a crowd near Charlottesville's downtown mall after the rally at the city park was dispersed. Heyer was one of the counter-protesters marching in jubilation near the mall after the white nationalists dispersed from the scene.

Heather Heyer went to Charlottesville to stand against torch-wielding, gun-toting, Nazi flag flying white supremacists who were there to protest the city's decision to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from the Emancipation Park.

Now we know whose statue should replace the traitor and racist Robert E. Lee: 

Heather Heyer, an American patriot and hero who stood against hate, intolerance and violence, and paid the ultimate sacrifice so our country could be free and safe for all. 

Just listen to this. Please.

I can't recommend this episode of StoryCorps enough. 

Entitled "No Barrier for Love," it features immigrants talking about what’s important to them — from falling in love to feeling like they do or don’t belong, memories of how they made their way to this country, and what they found when they arrived here.

It's really so much more. 

It's 16 minutes long and worth every second. 

It's also important for people to hear. Too many Americans misunderstand immigration on an economic, humanitarian, and historical level.

Too many stupid white men in the White House have embraced nationalism and racism over common sense, basic economic principles, demographics, patriotism, and basic human decency.      

My children will be listening to this episode soon, and in September, my students will be listening to it, too.

You should listen now. Then pass it along.