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In December of 2025, 21 Republican Senators in Indiana’s General Assembly did the most patriotic thing they could do: They put country—in this case, State—over political party. Despite forceful pressure from President Trump’s administration to strong-arm them into drawing a new voting map, they joined with 10 Democrats in refusing to commit an unethical, mid-term gerrymandering of districts in order to gain two more Republican seats in the U.S. Congress. With the 2026 elections looming, and the possibility of the U.S. House of Representatives losing its Republican majority, the president’s followers went into high gear. There were threatening phone calls, texts, swatting, and even emails to the grandchildren of the defiant Republicans saying that their friends wouldn’t like them anymore if their grandparents didn’t vote for the redistricting. But the steadfast Senators stood their ground despite the onslaught. As one government official put it, “Hoosiers don’t cheat.” Their choice wasn’t, in my opinion, just putting State over Party. It was putting right over wrong. After losing the gerrymander battle, Donald Trump is reported as saying he will “primary” the defiant State Senators by Blitz-Kreig-financing their opponents the next time they’re up for re-election. How can Indiana Republicans defend their principled politicians? Simple. By voting for them in the next primaries. As the president’s followers are fond of saying, “Elections have consequences.” Indeed they do. There were many other instances of courage this year. For example, when Chicagoan Baltazar Enriquez began blowing an orange whistle to alert immigrants in Little Village—a largely Mexican community–that ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents were in the area. There had been a series of brutal deportations of nonwhite immigrants in a number of cities including a bizarre nighttime Black Hawk helicopter raid on a Chicago apartment building in September, which evacuated the residents into the streets and secured even children with zip-ties. I don’t think anyone objects to removing undocumented immigrants convicted of felonious crimes. But it’s apparent that ICE is mindless and heartless in rounding up Spanish-speaking and/or nonwhite immigrants even if they’re not criminals. Being “undocumented” is a civil infraction, by the way, not a felony. And many of the undocumented immigrants have resided in the United States for years, have been working and paying taxes like anyone else, and/or are married to U.S. citizens. Appalling videos have been circulating on television and the Internet of ICE agents physically tackling men and women for removal to so-called “deportation centers” and third-party countries without a warrant or evident legal justification or any care for the humanity of the detainees. Does this sound like 1930s Germany? Perhaps. But America isn’t Nazi Germany and we’ve learned that the way to oppose injustice is to refuse to give in, and to voice opposition in ways large and small. For example, week after week, city after city, ordinary people are demonstrating their outrage against ICE, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Executive. These citizen protesters have formed a grassroots’ “No Kings” movement against the excesses of the Trump administration. But each individual can also make an impact. To help his hard-working neighbors and their children evade this snatch-and-grab, Baltazar Enriquez came up with the idea of the warning whistle—because “it’s analog” he explains, and it can’t be intercepted electronically. The so-called “whistlemania” has now spread throughout the country. The through-line of all these overt actions is resistance and persistence. We live, I believe, in an Age of Dichotomy, as extreme as any in American history, short of civil war—and there are some insurrectionists who threaten even this. Dichotomies not only of right and wrong; but of tolerance and bigotry; morality and immorality; white and nonwhite; rich and poor; good and evil. Yes, good and evil—how else would one characterize the sins of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell? And those who have protected, supported, and affiliated with Epstein and Maxwell in sexually victimizing countless young women and girls? And held no abusers to account. Terrible dichotomies. But we’ve been here before. In the Spring of 1954, when I was 12 years’ old, I would come home from my 8th grade class in Jr. High and sit cross-legged on the living room floor to watch the Army-McCarthy Hearings on television. As much as I then understood the sinister proceedings at that age, it scared the bejesus out of me. Communism was frightening enough but what Senator Joseph McCarthy was doing to American citizens was even more frightening. So, the following year when the FBI showed up in my 9th grade class to demonstrate the technique of fingerprinting, I declined the offer as my classmates went up one by one. (The FBI apparently has more than 160 million fingerprints on file now– including mine.) I didn’t know anything about J. Edgar Hoover, but I knew I didn’t want to be in any government database. What if I needed to flee from tyranny some day? Live off the land. Be incognito. (Remember, I was only 13. Heavily influenced not by reading any political manifestos, but by the self-sufficiency of no-less-than Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan – despite my being female.) By that time, we students had already been through the 1952 “duck and cover” fear of the atomic bomb in the Cold War with the Soviet Union. In New Jersey, we lived only minutes away from Manhattan and well within the designated “blast radius.” We had posters of the bomb on the wall and instructions to hide in the basement of our homes when the sirens sounded. And most of us were “war babies” growing up with memories of WWII’s deprivations—belt-tightening; saving tin cans and tin foil from gum and cigarette wrappers; victory gardens (my grandmother had one in our small row-house backyard); ersatz butter made from lard and yellow coloring packets (that you squeezed together); shoveling coal into the basement furnace to heat the house on cold days. There were canned vegetables and fruit salad; frugality of window boxes to store food in winter; and fear for servicemen and women in Europe as we watched the Pathé war news in movie theatres. I never became an activist—life always intervened—but in college I did support the turbulent Civil Rights movement and attended the Youth March for Integrated Schools in 1959 in Washington D.C. to hear Martin Luther King, Jr.—somewhat poorly because of the cheering crowds. After that, I did nothing political other than sign a petition against the Vietnam War in the 1960s, shortly after which I was audited by the IRS for the first and last time–without any penalty. When I was 21, a year after I graduated college, I registered as an Independent voter…and have remained so for the succeeding 63 years. Told myself that I’m not a ‘joiner’. Took satisfaction in voting for both Republicans and Democrats according to their character, policies, and performance. I maintained that stance until Donald Trump’s second term as President. It is his intention, evidently, to dismantle the U.S. Constitution and devour all our foundational institutions for his own insatiable appetite for dominance. We especially see attacks on the First Amendment (freedom of speech), the Fifth Amendment (due process), and the 14th Amendment (birthright citizenship). It seems, as well, that Trump would like a third term in contradiction to the 22nd Amendment. Why? Yes, the elixir of power has its drug-effect. But so, too, has the smell of money. Never has a U.S. president apparently culled more grift in so short a time. Maybe we do have a king…King Midas—gilding everything in gold with his cheesy taste in décor. What is especially concerning is that our dichotomies…our divisions…may have the same consequence as the Confederacy versus the Union: the Blue versus the Grey. Only in this instance, the Blue versus Red. Or at least, the result may indeed be the very tyranny that this 13-year-old once feared. We can’t let that happen. Not only for the 250th anniversary of our national democracy, but also not to weaken our role internationally, or even weaken our independence from malign foreign states. Republicans and Democrats need to find allegiance to a higher Power—the concept of unity in adherence to what is Right, Good, and Sane. If we don’t fight for our unified democracy, we shall indeed lose it. Don’t think it’s not possible. Since I initially wrote this podcast, President Trump activated our military to execute an incursion into Venezuela to remove President Maduro (and his wife) and transport them to the United States to stand trial for drug-trafficking and assorted other charges. Trump announced that he was going to run the country and appropriate Venezuela’s oil…with a little help from his industry friends. Trump then went on to suggest similar consequences to other countries in our hemisphere—Colombia, Mexico, and Cuba, for starters. He also resumed his intention to annex Greenland from Denmark. I guess he forgot all about Canada becoming our 51st state. Sacre bleu. In light of these developments, I’m revising my conclusion that, for Donald Trump, it’s only about “follow the money.” It is that, in part, but I think the essential motivation now is about conquest…as a demonstration of power. And because President Trump is Commander-in-Chief of the American military, he has the resources to effect his hegemonic will. Where this Julius Caesar-ish or Putin-esque appetite for subjugation may lead us, we have now seen it play out both domestically and international

1Shorer, Mark; Sinclair Lewis, an American Life, McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., New York, London: 1961, p. 610. 2Ibid., p. 608. 3Lewis, Sinclair; It Can’t Happen Here (1935), Signet Classics, Penguin Group, New York:1970, Chapter 1, p. 9. 4Ibid.; p. 8. 5Rowling, J.K., Harry Potter, the series, 1997ff. 6Op Cit., Lewis, Chapter 2, p. 18. 7Snyder, Timothy, On Tyranny. Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century, Tim Duggan Books, New York: 2017, pp.18ff. 8Ibid., p. 23. 9Ibid., p. 24. 10Op Cit., Lewis, Chapter 4, pp. 27-28. 11 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/concentration-camps-1933-39. 12Op Cit, Lewis, p.381. 13Roth, Philip, The Plot Against America, Jonathan Cape, London:2004.

1Shorer, Mark; Sinclair Lewis, an American Life, McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., New York, London: 1961. 2 “Americans and the Holocaust,” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; https://exhibitions.ushmm.org/americans-and-the-holocaust/personal- story/dorothy-thompson 3Thompson, Dorothy; I Saw Hitler, Farrar & Rinehart, Inc., New York: 1932; p. 10. 4Ibid., p. 12. 5Ibid., p. 13. 6Ibid., p. 14. 7Ibid., p. 16. 8Ibid., p. 18. 9 Ibid., p. 4. 10Ibid., pp. v-vi. 11Ibid, p. 29-30. 12Ibid., p. 18. 13Ibid., p. 21. 14Ibid., p. vi. 15Maddow, Rachel; Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism, Crown Publishing Group, 2023. 16Op Cit, Thompson, pp. 9-11. 17Op Cit, Maddow, p. 16. 18 Op Cit, Maddow, p. 29. 19 Hitler, Adolph; Mein Kamph, Chapter XI, “Race and People,” https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200601h.html#ch1-11 20 Op Cit, Maddow, pp. 83-84. 21 Op Cit, Maddow, p. 84.

Welcome back!

Joyce Keller Walsh is back!

Mysteries, Myths & More will take a short hiatus. My episodes will return early in 2021. Thank you for listening!

Cohen, Roger, “The Last Testament of Maurice the Rooster,” in Opinion, p. A22, The New York Times, Saturday, June 27, 2020.

a “Animals have complex dreams, MIT researcher proves. Study may advance understanding of human learning and memory,” Massachusetts Institute of Technology, News Office, January 24, 2001. b “Do animals dream?,” Posted by EarthSky in EARTH, February 7, 2019. c American Psychiatric Association, (2013) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.), 2013; Washington, DC d Peterson, T. (2016, February 4). Understanding PTSD Nightmares and Flashbacks, HealthyPlace. Retrieved on 2020, May 9 from https://www.healthyplace.com/ptsd-and-stress-disorders/ptsd/understanding-ptsd-nightmares-and-flashbacks. e America Veterinary Medical Association, JAVMA news; “Pet ownership spending going strong; published on May 08, 2019. f Federation of European Companion Animal Veterinary Associations, “Which country spends the most on its pets?”; posted 22/02/2020; https://www.fecava.org. g Stephen Robert Kellert and Alan R. Felthous, “Childhood Cruelty toward Animals among Criminals and Noncriminals,” in Human Relations 38(12):1113-1129 · December 1985.

• “Walking,” an essay (also called, “The Wild”) by Henry David Thoreau, published in 1862, but delivered as lectures prior to that. • Rabbit-Proof Fence, 2002; produced by Phillip Noyce based on the book Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence by Doris Pilkington Garimara in 1996. • 1917, 2019; writers, Same Mendes and Krysty Wilson-Cairns; director, Sam Mendes. • The Maze Runner, 2014 (and series); directed by Wes Ball, based on James Dashner’s 2009 novel of the same name. • Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote in two-parts, 1605/1615. • Jean Ramón Jiménez, Platero and I, 1914. • Tom Wolfe, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, 1958. • The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, 1994; conceived by filmmakers Stephan Elliott and Stuart Quin; director, Stephan Elliott. • William Faulkner, As I lay Dying, 1930 • Thelma and Louise, 1991; director, Scott Thomas; writers, Sidney Iwanter and Mark Onspaugh. • Ernesto “Che” Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries, 1952. • Victor Hugo Green, The Negro Motorist Green Book (also The Negro Motorist Green-Book, The Negro Travelers’ Green Book, or simply the Green Book), 1936-1966; was an annual guidebook for African-American roadtrippers, originated and published by African American, New York City mailman Victor Hugo Green. • Green Book; 2018; writers, Peter Farrelly, Brian Hayes Currie, and Nick Vallelonga; director, Peter Farrelly. • Zombieland, 2009; writers: Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick; director: Ruben Fleischer. • Steven King, The Langoliers, 1995. • Airplane!, 1980; written and directed by David and Jerry Zucker and Jim Abrahams; producer, Jon Davison. • Air Force One, 1997; writer, Andrew W. Marlowe; directed and co-produced by Wolfgang Petersen. • Flight of the Living Dead, 2007; writers, Sidney Iwanter, Mark Onspaugh; director, Scott Thomas. • The Aeronauts, 2019; writers, Tom Harper and Jack Thorne; director, Tom Harper. • Around the World in Eighty Days; book by Jules Verne, 1872; it went through several iterations in film and other versions. • Passengers, 2016; originally written by Jon Spaihts in 2007; director, Morten Tyldum. • Gravity, 2013; directed and co-written by Alfonso Cuarón with his son, Jonas. • Star Trek (The Original Series), 1966-69; created by Gene Roddenberry; aired on NBC-TV. • Agatha Christie, Murder on the Orient Express, 1934. • The Lady Vanishes, 1938; writers, Ethel Lina White (based on the story, “The Wheel Spins”) and Sidney Gilliat; producer, Alfred Hitchcock. • The Polar Express, 2004; animated film based on the 1985 children’s book of the same name by Chris Van Allsburg; co-written, co-produced, and directed by Robert Zemeckis. • The Taking of Pelham 1, 2, 3, 2009; directed by Tony Scott; a film adaptation of the novel of the same name by Morton Freedgood (writing under the pseudonym John Godey), and is a remake of the original 1974. • Snowpiercer (movie), 2013; director, Bong Jooh-ho; writers, Bong Joon-ho and Kelly Masterson, adapted from French graphic, Le Transperceneigem 1982, authors Jean-Marc Rochette, Jacques Lob, and Benjamin Legrand; (t.v. series), 2020—; TNT network. • Nathaniel Philbrick, Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War, 2006. • Leon Uris, Exodus, 1958. • Dante Alighieri, The Inferno (first part of The Divine Comedy), c. 1308-1329, Italy. • Homer, The Odyssey, 8th century B.C.; Greece. • Das Boot (English: “The Boat”), 1981; written and directed by Wolfgang Petersen; produced by Günter Rohrbach. • The Hunt for Red October, 1990; adapted to film the novel of the same name by Tom Clancy, 1984. • Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1851. • Titanic, 1997; written, co-produced, and co-edited by James Cameron. • The African Queen, 1951; adapted by John Houston and James Agee from the C.S. Forrester 1935 novel of the same name. • Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea, 1952. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens), The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 1884 (in the U.K.) and 1885 (in the U.S.).

Fiddler on the Roof, the musical, was first produced on Broadway in 1964 -- with music by Jerry Bock, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, and book by Joseph Stein (who also wrote Zorba). It is based on the story Tevye and his Daughters (or Tevye the Dairyman) and other tales, published in 1894 by Sholem Aleichem, whose real name was Solomon Naumovich Rabinovich. From Wikipedia: “Sholem Aleichem died in New York on May 13, 1916 from tuberculosis and diabetes, aged 57, while working on his last novel, Motl, Peysi the Cantor's Son, and was buried at Old Mount Carmel cemetery in Queens. At the time, his funeral was one of the largest in New York City history, with an estimated 100,000 mourners. The next day, his will was printed in the New York Times and was read into the Congressional Record of the United States.” In his will, Sholem Aleichem writes that he wished to be buried “not among aristocrats or the powerful, but among plain Jewish laborers, among the very people itself….” (New York Times, Wednesday, May 17, 1916)

SHOW NOTES • https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-estimates.htm • Defoe, Daniel, A Journal of the Plague Year, 1722. • MacMahon, Brian, and Trichopoulos, Dimitrios, Epidemiology. Principles and Methods, 2nd Edition, J.P. Lippincott, 1996. • “Outbreak, On Assignment with Richard Engel,” on MSNBC-t.v., 15 March 2020. • Jane Qui, “How China’s “Bat Woman” Hunted Down Viruses from SARS to the New Coronavirus -- Wuhan-based virologist Shi Zhengli has identified dozens of deadly SARS-like viruses in bat caves, and she warns there are more out there,” Scientific American, March 11, 2020. • Reference to William Farr and John Graunt was provided in an email (3/19/20) to me from Professor of Epidemiology Emeritus Richard Monson, M.D., S.D. • Cancer Causes and Control, an International Journal of Cancer Epidemiology, published in Oxford, England, with editorial offices at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. • Wells, H.G., War of the Worlds, 1897.

The World of Peter Wong

Willie Pleasants is a longtime resident of Dorchester, Massachusetts, and an educator who holds a degree from the University of Massachusetts. As President of the Friends of the Uphams Corner Branch Library for the last 5 years, she was instrumental in finding funds to offer two Respite workshops to support the caregivers. She recently hosted a five-week writer’s program to help them to become published authors, which resulted in the anthology, Write On! Write On! (available through the Uphams Corner Library as a fundraiser). She also volunteers her time as Secretary for a group called ‘Seniors on the Move.’ She is the author of three books of poetry and short stories: Ain’t That the Truth, Make Truth a Habit (both available on Amazon) and soon-to-be available Stretching the Truth. Programing and workshops • In 2014 (continuing to the present), she created and facilitated a class called, “Storytelling at Tea,” which was offered as a course for the Osher Life Learning Institute at University of Mass /Boston. Her poems and stories are used to help provoke conversations with the participants about their lives. • 2018, 2019 organized the Dorchester Open Studios to help artists sell their artwork. • From 2012- 2017, she volunteered as a team leader for a Jumpstart program, that helps three- to five-year-old children prepare to enter kindergarten to succeed with language and literacy skills. • In 2008, she instructed a poetry workshop in the Mason Middle School with fifth graders. She spoke at Career day at the Patrick Gavin Middle School to encourage written poetry. She has facilitated classes on writing poetry at the Bristol Plymouth Regional School in Taunton. • Since 2007, she has been a co-founder of the authors’ support group, Authors without Borders – a consortium of regional authors in Massachusetts who first joined together in 2007. Media • She does workshops, panel discussions, and Meet and Greets to help navigate the maze of writing, publishing and marketing books. • Willie was one of the producers and hosts of a Cable show at NBTV called, “Authors Without Borders Presents” (2011-2019). • She also produces and hosts her own cable show called “Willie’s Web” on the Boston Neighborhood Network (BNN). • She is currently (2019-20) a DJ for WBCA 109.2 FM Community Radio, “The Village.” Website: www.williepleasants.com

We haven’t kept up with the Sally-B for many decades, but as I was researching this, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the plane is still flying. Although Ted White has died, Ellie Sallingboe continues to operate the B-17 with a faithful crew of pilots (apart from herself) and other volunteers. You can learn more about this plane in Wikipedia and/or by going to the official website www.sallyb.org.uk. To learn more about what we humans have done, and are doing, to birds, I recommend a compelling story in the book, The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century by Kirk Wallace Johnson (2018). Further, you might want to look up (on the Internet) how the Passenger Pigeon became extinct through hunting, and how birds continue to be smuggled and sold for the pet trade.