Tag: politics

America Collection/General interest
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On Being “A Writer for The Atlantic”

by Fran Johns

How to handle seeing my own words on these pages?

The bottom line? I have become officially insufferable.

I mean, I’ve had stories and essays in a lot of fine publications over the years of my long and happy career. But The Atlantic? Nahh, never going to happen. Yet there it is.

Up until now the pinnacle of my literary success was reached a few years ago when my Brooklyn lawyer friend Peter Flemming, with whom I had a running competition for most letters published in the New York Times, was going over fact-checks with a Times editor. He mentioned our competition to the editor who replied, “Oh, Fran — she’s one of our regulars.” Which, I had thought ever since, would be on my tombstone if I were planning to have such a thing (unfortunately, I am not.)

But now here is my byline, right smack on the same e-page with the byline of Anne Applebaum. Eliot Cohen. Hua Hsu and Jason Liebowitz. If that’s not literary validation I don’t know what is. They may not be writing home about being on the same page with Fran Moreland Johns; I get that. But they probably don’t have Big Head issues either.

I have Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to thank for all this. The idea that I would ever thank RFKJr for ANYthing other than his retirement from public view is nothing short of ludicrous. The man is a threat to humankind. Evil doesn’t even begin to cover it, IMHO.

I said as much in a letter to The Atlantic in response to their excellent cover story (that piece was by Michael Scherer, but who’s name-dropping?) on RFKJr. In the same inbox with a message saying they would be running my letter was an email from an Atlanticeditor, my new best friend Adrienne, asking if I’d be interested in writing an expanded essay on the subject. Took me about seven seconds to hit Reply.

And thus began one of the happiest writing experiences of my literary life. I was asked almost apologetically if the fee would be sufficient — please don’t tell them I’d have done it for $25; later when I apologized on my own behalf for ineptitude with the online reimbursement forms I received an immediate response from an actual person telling me everybody had issues with those forms and that he enjoyed my description of them.

Over the several weeks of writing/editing/etc — these folks fact check their fact checkers — whenever I’d get a copy of something checked or edited its subject head would say things like “Your wonderful article.” I’m thinking of collaging and framing these.

I still haven’t seen my article in print, other than the page proofs (above.) Those of us in the dying breed of print magazine readers still don’t really believe anything until we see it on an actual piece of paper. But surely The Atlantic won’t change its mind and pull my article before the print edition goes in the mail?

Now if only Robert F. Kennedy, Jr were smart enough to read The Atlantic.

America Collection/General interest
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My Mom, & Likely Yours, on Civility

by Fran Johns

Some lessons never die . . . and maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Here’s to a kinder, gentler New Year

Photo by A A on Unsplash

My mother, Helen Hardy Moreland (1897–1967, may she Rest In Peace) set great store in being Proper. One of my favorite memories is a mental image of her, in the blue hat with a small veil, one white glove on her left hand properly holding the other white glove while she shook hands with someone in a receiving line. Or performed some other gloveless task.

My mother was very much of the White Glove generation. One would not even THINK of appearing at a public event gloveless. What her daughters (I was the youngest of four) would know, though no one else did, was that no two of her white gloves ever matched. Most, well worn, had carefully-darned fingertips, some had frills or decorations — they just never matched. This was because she had neither time nor funds to have matching gloves, so she would just grab any two out of her glove drawer, pull one on and hold the other. 

I was reminded of this emphasis on propriety recently in a discussion of What Really Matters over a holiday dinner. It in turn reminded me of my mother and the Midnight Fire story.

Fresh out of college in the still-proper 1950s, I shared an apartment at 9 East Franklin Street in Richmond VA with my sister Mimi. An easy walk from WRNL Radio where she worked, and The Richmond Times-Dispatch where I had my first major newspaper job, it was also close to the Medical College of VA. Those blocks were full of press types and med students and a good time was frequently had by all.

One night, when Mimi forgot to turn off the sunlamp with which she’d been stylishly tanning her face, it shone unattended into the overstuffed chair until setting a fire that woke us at about midnight. I took off knocking at the doors of other units in the converted antebellum house while Mimi called the fire department. I may or may not have grabbed some slippers; Mimi was calmly taking the curlers out of her hair while she gave them our address.

For the next hour we gathered with friends and neighbors in the middle of downtown Franklin Street, watching the firefighters toss our scorched furniture off the balcony, sipping mugs of brandy-laced coffee thoughtfully passed around by a news photographer who lived across the street. It was, we would later agree, the social event of the season.

But it was also more than a little scary. If Mimi hadn’t sounded the alarm, sensing the smoke before it overcame us, the century-old house would quickly have gone up in flames, taking the inhabitants of six apartments with it. So it was in this spirit of high drama that we re-told the story to our mother the following day (one day before it appeared in the Times-Dispatch.) But oops, while describing the details of her daughters’ brush with death I happened to mention the kind stranger who produced an overcoat as I stood shivering in my nightshirt.

And that detail was the whole story for my mother.

“Oh, dahling,” she said, with genuine remorse. “Any lady would have taken time to get a bathrobe on before leaving the apartment.” 

I don’t miss white gloves, or tanning lamps, but occasionally while listening to the president of the United States (and others) I miss both the customs and the language of civility. A college student once said damn in the presence of my mother, causing him to fall all over himself apologizing for such an unforgiveable breach of etiquette. My mother laughed, assured him that she knew the word — she may have mentioned that Shakespeare used it — and she was not the least offended.

But the lesson was clear: respectfulness never hurts. Whatever Mrs. Trump taught her son when he went off to school, it did not include courtesy, respect or civility.

To be fair, and I do try to be fair most of the time, Donald Trump didn’t invent foul language. Nor are disrespect, incivility and four-letter words limited to any age, social demographic or political party these days. (As far as four-letter words go, they have totally eliminated the former delights of creative cursing, which used to be an entertaining skill for the cursed and the curser alike. That’s another loss.)

No one with a brain would wish for a return to white gloves and tanning lamps. But someone with a soul would know the personal damage caused by coarse, cruel words flung at other human beings. Add to that the societal damage of disrespectful words and uncivil behavior that has become as accepted in today’s public life as propriety was a few generations ago.

Going backwards seldom makes sense unless you’re about to step off a cliff. But we could, in fact, go forward in these troubled times. We could, with a little effort, swear less and tell the truth more. We could think first and swallow hate speech. Talk less and listen more. Bring back civility as a New Year’s gift to the universe.

Our mothers would be proud.

America Collection/General interest
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Looking Back at a Roller Coaster Year

by Fran Johns
Sunrise

Chainsaws, axes and masked militias must still contend with ordinary people standing up for justice 

Photo by Quino Al on Unsplash

(As a rule I avoid talking politics on this platform, although I mourn the days when we could talk political differences with civility. Or without offending. Some readers, though — thanks, both of you! — asked that I not withhold some essays that are posted on Medium &/or Substack. The following recaps a dark year.)

A little over a year ago I took a deep breath and started a Substack.

Writer friends had been suggesting such a move for years, but I had resisted. I already write on Medium and WordPress, I argued, and my learning curve bends about as slowly as the arc toward justice. One more technology? No, thank you.

But I needed help. My country had just elected a man who is the antithesis of everything I hold dear — an egotistic narcissist who lies with abandon, abuses women, denies science, craves power and cares not a fig about our fragile planet. He pledged to trade longtime allies for alignment with autocracies around the globe and to destroy institutions that had been built over decades and centuries to protect our freedoms.

I sank into a pit of despair. For a while I found myself saying, “OK, I’m done. I’m 91 years old, and I don’t want to live in this kind of a world. I’m done.” After a while, though, despair does not work very well as Lifestyle.

So I began The Optimistic Eye (Substack) with the express purpose of writing once a week about something politically encouraging or some positive action that was underway or could be taken. With that in mind, the daily task became that of sifting through the rivers of chaos and destruction that began even before Trump 2.0 took control to find reason for hope. 

It worked. The enterprise began with an interfaith Thanksgiving prayer breakfast that was all about light shining into the darkness. Once the Trump regime was in place we saw right away just how dark things would get — but there have always been people shining light. That long-ago breakfast featured prayers in just about every known religion and a few you hadn’t heard of: Native American, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu . . . and the Brahma Kumaris, who are all about inner light and peace.

The year would see a great deal more chaos and darkness than peace and light. But even as the doom squad swooped in, with Donald Trump and his then-best-friend Elon Musk leading the charge, forces for good could also be found mobilizing.

Over the year I wrote about Climate One and the fight to save Planet Earth despite the swift removal of environmental protections, about the healing power of music and the multitudes of individuals standing up for democracy one by one. Quickly, those single souls coalesced into like-minded groups and took to the streets. 

The No Kings marches were as satisfying to write about (well, almost) as to participate in. Below is the flip side of my all-purpose demonstration sign. Its front reads KAKISTOCRACY: Government by the worst. The least qualified. The most corrupt. More ordinary Americans turned out in 2025 to shine the light of truth than ever before in history. All. Year. Long.

For every destructive DOGE cut there was someone working against the destruction. As springtime eased into summer the Optimistic Eye spotted individuals and groups quickly picking up pieces. I even found people in Europe — where head-spinning executive orders were turning longtime allies into foes — who were still our friends. “We can’t understand what’s happened to your country,” one Sicilian homemaker said, “but we still think the Americans we know are good people.” 

Darkness spread. Our Republican-led Congress utterly abdicated its oversight responsibilities; even the Supreme Court caved. But the Optimistic Eye was always able to find a ray of light. Beginning with District Court Judge John Coughenour way back in January there were justices upholding the Constitution and keeping Mr. Trump from running totally amok. There were the ACLU and the Southern Poverty Law Center and other nonprofits pitching in to help.

Then the cracks in Humpty Dumpty’s shell began to appear and the mad king was suddenly not all-powerful. In what has to be the most poetic justice ever known, serial abuser Jeffrey Epstein may play a major role in stopping Donald Trump’s tsunami-level abuse of humankind. Not even his MAGA warriors could stomach the stonewalling to protect himself against whatever incriminating messages lurk in the Epstein files. Atop that bit of good news — the truth of that long, sordid story will (largely) eventually be told — lo and behold the Supreme Court finally weighed in to limit the power of the mad king.

And ordinary citizens, the stars in the skies of democracy, continue to protest against ICE, to protect their immigrant neighbors, and take to the streets in defense of democracy. It ain’t over, Yogi Berra (and Lenny Kravitz) would have us know, ’til it’s over. 

This essayy also is The Optomistic Eye post #77. In the first essay of The Optimistic Eye (12/13/25) was this quotation from the SFIC interfaith proyer breakfast, “Candles of liberty flicker and dim; there will always be those to light them again.”

Happy 2026 to us all. Bring it on.

America Collection/General interest
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Hope is the Thing With Heart

by Fran Johns

STRANGERS AT A DEMONSTRATION SHARE THEIR HOPEFULNESS

(Politics alert: Though I usually try to stay apolitical on this site, a Substack follower actually emailed that he, a Republican who also checks out this site from time to time, thought I should share it on WordPress. What can I say? An actual Reader Request. Thanks, Al, and enjoy, anyone else.)

“Not much,” said one young man when asked what gave him hope. “I mean, I don’t have much hope for today, or next week. But I have a lot of hope for the future. We just have to get things back on track.”

An indomitable group of strangers gathers regularly at the corner of Van Ness and Geary Blvd in San Francisco to hoist signs, wave at passing cars and cheer for democracy. It’s always a different group but with occasional familiar faces. At a recent “Trump Takedown” protest I asked a dozen or so of those gathered what gives them hope. They had a lot to say.

“People like you and me,” said one tall, grizzled Black man with whom I would appear to share little in common except, perhaps, old age. “We’re here, and not giving up.” 

A lovely woman named Nacha (“like Nachos”) answered my question with a smile as she rested her sign to reach for something in her pocket. It was a small plastic envelope containing her U.S. passport and a copy of the Constitution. “I’m an American by choice,” she said. “I came here years ago because I had to leave Peru; I love this country. But I carry my passport with me always now, just in case.”  I did not share with Nacha the brief feeling of hopelessness that spread through me on hearing this last sentence. Still, she smiled broadly and how could that not give everyone hope?

The demonstrators come partly just for the shared community fun. There’s a constant honking of horns, there are waves from passing cars and trucks, shouts of encouragement. One participant said to me, “I know this is San Francisco — but I also know these demonstrations are happening all over the country and won’t stop until we get our democracy back.” That gave me another shot of hope.

A young man named Tylor (“With an ‘O’ — nobody gets that right”) said he has a meditation practice that keeps him “hopeful, and on track.” Tylor also had a rainbow cape, an inclination to dance in the median strip and a Cheshire Cat smile. “Evolution,” he said while dancing (on the sidewalk,) “is a path. It may be bumpy, but the universe is taking us forward toward love and peace.” It is possible to pick up gems of philosophical wisdom at sidewalk protests.

A teenaged couple who are classmates at Washington High School gave my question serious thought before responding. “Trump’s approval ratings keep going down,” he said; “that gives me hope.” She gave a broader assessment: “When I see all sorts of people coming together with positive values . . .” she said, before turning away to smile at a white SUV with passengers waving from every window.

I came home with Tylor’s words in my head. “I’m really just paraphrasing Martin Luther King Jr here,” he said after going on for a while about the evolutionary path toward love. “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” 

May hope continue to be the thing with feathers, and heart.

America Collection/General interest
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The Violent Radicals and Me

by Fran Johns

ON BEING ALMOST-IN-LAWS WITH THE BLACK PANTHERS, AND TRACING THE HISTORY OF THE HOUSE WHERE IT ALL WENT DOWN

Photo by JD Doyle on Unsplash

(Heading into a short week that nonetheless promises long days of news both dark and discouraging, here’s another diversionary tale of people and politics in bygone days. You can’t make any of this stuff up.) 

My husband-to-be, then a young bachelor newsguy named Bud, was looking out the window, talking to his friend Tom while waiting for a woman who had answered his house-for-rent ad.

“Interesting,” he said, as he spotted her crossing the street. “It’s Kathleen Cleaver.”

“What are you going to do?” Tom asked?

“If she wants, it,” Bud said, “I’m going to rent the place to her.” Which he did. Bud settled into the garage apartment, renting the two main floors of a dilapidated San Francisco Victorian he’d recently purchased to newlyweds Kathleen and Eldridge Cleaver. Its location, at 2777 Pine Street a dozen or so blocks west of Fillmore, could have been generously described, at the time, as sketchy.

This was in 1967. It was shortly after Eldridge was paroled from Folsom and San Quentin prisons where he’d been incarcerated for eight years after being convicted of rape and assault with intent to murder. His official position with the Panthers was minister of information.

Many of the houses in the vicinity were in disrepair; others were occupied by citizens of questionable repute. “Aren’t you a little nervous about living there?” Bud was regularly asked by friends who did not come over for tea. “Why?” he regularly replied. “Either the police or the Black Panthers are here at any given time, usually both.”

In little more than a year Eldrige would win fame with publication of his prison memoir Soul on Ice, and subsequently become a fugitive after leading an ambush on Oakland police officers that left two officers wounded. Eldridge was also wounded in that dust-up and his friend and fellow Black Panther Bobby Hutton was killed.

All of which pretty much terminated the lease. Undaunted, Bud went to Black Panther headquarters in Oakland and asked for the remaining rent, which they paid.

Kathleen was the one who handled business affairs at their Pine Street domicile. She was mostly working to advance the causes of the Black Panthers, but helped the family finances by writing for Ramparts Magazine.

Landlord and tenants got along fine though they weren’t exactly close personal friends. My favorite memento of those days is a letter neatly typed on Ramparts letterhead which reads:

“Mr. Johns:

“Please excuse the delay but I have been so god damned busy with these pigs and courts and chaos that I completely forgot to pay the rent. You are very sweet to be so unobtrusive and gentle with me, I think you ar a perfect landlord and I would just like to warn you that you should prepare yourself for any day now some time of assault on this house. I think it is beautiful, I love it, I won’t go away, but the local, federal, international, secret and off duty pigs as well as reagon (sic) . . . wallace . . . alioto et all (sic) want to do us in, Eldridge first, then me. Here’s the rent.

“Peace. – (signed in ink) Mrs. Cleaver”

The Cleavers divorced in 1981 after two children and a life that must never have been dull. Kathleen followed her fugitive husband around the globe before coming back to the U.S. and laying the groundwork for him to come home too. She did post-grad work (law, etc) at Yale and elsewhere, eventually becoming a distinguished lecturer and law professor. He eventually became a Mormon and a conservative Republican. Eldridge died, at 62, in 1998. Kathleen is, as far as I know, alive and well and I would give almost anything to know if she remembers her Pine Street landlord.

Or, for that matter, 2777 Pine Street. Bud sold it not long after the Cleavers left, to help raise the down payment on another Victorian a mile or so farther west that I would later happily call home.

I suspect he sold it for something under $20,000. You could pick it up today — if it were on the market, which it is not — for three or four million. Gentrification has been kind to Pine Street property values.

I sometimes reflect on it all as I walk by the former home of my good husband, who is now, in all likelihood, on some celestial cloud trading stories with Black Panthers and other interesting friends. I try not to take offense at the plaque testifying to the nineteenth century origins of the house and proclaiming it to be the former home of Eldridge Cleaver, “Black Panther and Republican leader.”

Not a word about the former landlord.

America Collection/General interest
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Another Way of Seeing

by Fran Johns

WHILE I WAS LOOKING FOR A NEW PERSPECTIVE ON EARTHLY NEWS . . .

NASA photograph, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope

Winding up a week of not great news the leader of the free world sat down with the autocrat responsible for untold crimes against humanity and a devastating, ongoing war. Very little good news on Planet Earth.

But then, courtesy of the Cloud Appreciation Society, (I’m Member #45,662) came today’s photo. It celebrates the 35th anniversary of the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope.

Taken by Hubble, the photo shows “a small portion of the Rosette Nebula…5,200 light years away.” There are dark dust clouds and “just visible in the upper right of the dark cloud, a young star fires jets of plasma…” 

Planet Earth is not even in the picture.

America Collection/General interest
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Finding Calm Amidst the Chaos

by Fran Johns

TERROR. DISTRESS. EXUBERANCE. STRENGTH. HOPE. HOW TO DEAL WITH THE RELENTLESS EMOTIONAL TURMOIL OF THESE DAYS

Scene at edge of Lafayette Park (Author photo)

Anxiety? Through the roof.

For anyone who’s been paying attention, recent days and weeks have been more discouraging, and borderline frightening, than the days and weeks preceding. Those of us who hoisted protest signs got a little temporary relief.

I was out with my KAKISTOCRACY sign (It’s in the dictionary: Government by the worst. The least efficient. The most corrupt.) But I feel almost as strongly about the message on its flip side:

With my second-favorite marching-sign message (Author photo)

Because sometimes kindness seems the only response to the firehose of brutally bad news: political violence, discouraging court decisions, indiscriminate ICE raids, the cruelty and inhumanity a majority of the country wants to see end. The pressure is already beginning to build again. That may be a good thing for the country, since it seems nothing but public outcry will save our democracy. But what about us cogs in the juddering wheel of justice? We, the little people who need to gather strength?

Many recover with the help of music and art, visits with friends, immersion in a good book. I use all of the above. But I find solace, plus instantaneous comfort and joy, in the urban landscape. Mother Nature busies herself in the midst of the busiest built environments, the American city.

Most U.S. cities, with the help of local conservation groups or non-profits like the excellent Trust for Public Land, have pockets of open space where Mother Nature does her tranquilizing thing. In San Francisco, our cup of wonder overflows, including hilltops for viewing the world:

View of the Bay on a foggy day, seen from a hilltop porch garden. (Author photo)

Whether it’s outdoor walks in the country, where green fields or sparkling lakes serve as gateways to the calmer soul, small-town gardens or city parks, Mother Nature has a way of saying, “Breathe. Look around. Look up.”

Sometimes, she even throws in a hummingbird.

Keep the faith.

America Collection/General interest
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Children, Try to Get Along, OK?

by Fran Johns

SECOND GRADE TEACHER TO DONNIE AND LITTLE ELON: IF YOU CAN’T BE KIND, BE QUIET. AND A FEW OTHER APPROPRIATE ADMONITIONS

Photo by Austin Pacheco on Unsplash

No offense to Mrs. Trump and Mrs. Musk, but some things just didn’t get through to your little boys.

Having raised three children who survived into adulthood without causing bodily harm to one another, or humankind in general, I know what’s possible. One of mine is actually retired now, and he still hasn’t shouted obscenities at former friends (or caused the deaths of thousands of poor children for that matter.)

In the interest of world peace, I’d like to remind Little Donnie and Little Elon about a few things that surely their mamas tried to teach them.

Such as: You never look good trying to make someone else look bad. We grown-ups are getting really tired of you trying to out-badmouth each other. Most of us had second grade teachers — didn’t you? — who taught us that insults are only used by small people.

My second grade teacher Miss Fretwell (I’m not making this up, that was her name) had a list of adages always at the ready. One offense and you’d be copying the appropriate sentence fifty times. So, Donald and Elon, if you didn’t get these messages from your moms, I would like to pass along a few lines from Miss Fretwell:

People with dirty hands point fingers.

A narrow mind usually goes along with a wide mouth.

None are so empty as those full of themselves.

And emphatically:

It’s okay to be angry; it’s never okay to be cruel.

Finally, to get back to that name-calling and finger-pointing, National No-Name-Calling Week was celebrated the third week of January; maybe you weren’t paying attention. Miss Fretwell would have loved No-Name-Calling Week.

Miss Fretwell would have had Donald and Elon at the blackboard, writing a few of the above. Or perhaps, Be Kind. Or even yet,

If you can’t be kind, be quiet.

On a personal note, as if this entire ramble weren’t personal notes, my birthday is June 8, which a friend just texted is National Loving Day this year. Actually, he was a few days off, but I’ll take it. (Bob Liner says he has moved the celebration four days over from the 12th.) It’s also Pentecost, the day we Christians celebrate the descent of the Holy Spirit, which has seemed in short supply lately. Let’s take love and the spirit of peace wherever they can be found.

Be kind

This essay also appears on my Substack, The Optimistic Eye, where I regularly post observations on the political scene (which I try to limit here on dear old WordPress. C’mon over any time; it’s free.

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