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THE POWER OF

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AN EPIC WWII STORY DECEMBER 2024 VOL 04 | NO 40

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CHRISTMAS TREES,

INTERRUPTED THE GOOD NEWS BEYOND THE BAD

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CONTENTS

36 TRIAL BY FIRE WHY DID STRANGERS RISK THEIR LIVES FOR A MAN THEY’D NEVER MET? by ethan bauer

“The only thing that mattered to us: there’s a person in that car who needs to be saved.”

48 A TASTE OF HOME AN EPIC WAR STORY OF GENEROSITY AND HOLIDAY SPIRIT. by ethan bauer

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AN EPIC WWII STORY DECEMBER 2024

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CHRISTMAS TREES,

INTERRUPTED THE GOOD NEWS BEYOND THE BAD

BY NICHOLAS KRISTOF

O N THE COVER I L LUSTR ATIO N BY A L EX N A B AUM

LAST ONES STANDING IN COAL COUNTRY, LOCALS BRACE FOR THE END. by natalia galicza

DECEMBER 2024

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CONTENTS

“Peacemakers know that to do what is necessary to achieve inner peace requires taming our schedules.”

IDEAS

66 HABITS OF PEACEMAKERS It’s no accident that they don’t fly into a rage. by steven t . collis

COMMENTARY

A REFLECTION ON TIME

Hanukkah and the defiance of time. by meir soloveichik

BREAKDOWN

BETTER TO GIVE

Charitable donations keep America going. by laurenz busch

CULTURE

THE WEST

SEE THE FOREST FOR THE TREES

CARDS ON THE TABLE

The timeless allure of board games.

Trimming America’s iconic Christmas tree. Really.

by ethan bauer

by john d . sutter

ODE

ONCE UPON A TIME

Ode to a pocket watch. by joe marotta

POINT/COUNTERPOINT

THE END OF JOBS

LETTERS FROM THE FIELD

TAKE CARE

Is universal basic income the answer?

POETRY

The singular hospitality of hutkeepers.

by natalia galicza

WINTER SOLSTICE IN THE GORGE, 2016

by danielle dubrasky

by lauren steele

MODERN FAMILY

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING UNCLE WOLF

THE LAST WORD

NATIONAL AFFAIRS

GEN Z’S GENDER PARADOX

IDEAS

RAYS OF HOPE

EPIDEMIC IN OUR POCKETS

The art of uncling, through the generations.

How young adults are diverging into an uncertain future.

When the best confront the worst of humanity.

Digital addiction with the author of “Dopamine Nation.”

by stephen fried

by eric schulzke

by nicholas d . kristof

by chad nielsen

DECEMBER 2024

CONTRIBUTORS

MEIR SOLOVEICHIK

NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

CAROLINE YANG

Soloveichik is rabbi of Congregation Shearith Israel, the oldest Jewish congregation in the United States. He is the director of the Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University and author of “Providence and Power: Ten Portraits in Jewish Statesmanship.” His commentary on the meaning of Hanukkah is on page 15.

A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and op-ed columnist for The New York Times, Kristof has co-authored, with his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, five books: “Tightrope,” “A Path Appears,” “Half the Sky,” “Thunder from the East” and “China Wakes.” An excerpt from his latest book, “Chasing Hope: A Reporter’s Life,” is on page 62.

A photographer, Yang is based in Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota. Her work has received awards from Communication Arts, Diversify Photo and American Photography. Her clients include The New York Times, Outside magazine and Nature magazine, among other publications and companies. Yang’s photos appear on page 36.

MELINDA BECK

JOHN D. SUTTER

DANIELLE BEAZER DUBRASKY

Beck is an award-winning illustrator, animator and graphic designer whose clients include Harper’s Magazine, The New Yorker, Time magazine, Nickelodeon, Random House and the New York Public Library. A series of her political illustrations is in the Library of Congress’ permanent collection. Beck’s work is on page 16.

An assistant professor of environmental media at the University of Oregon, Sutter is also a journalist and filmmaker based in Eugene, Oregon, whose work has won a Livingston Award, Edward R. Murrow Award, Peabody Award and two Emmy nominations. Sutter’s story about the demise of the Douglas fir is on page 24.

Dubrasky is a professor of English and creative writing at Southern Utah University and the author of three books of poetry. Her work has been published in the Chiron Review, Ninth Letter and South Dakota Review, and her essay “Juliet” won the 2020 Mississippi Review Nonfiction Prize. Dubrasky’s poem about a winter solstice is on page 77.

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THE VIEW FROM HERE

THE SEASON OF HOPE

fter a long, contentious, and at times, exhausting election season, we designed this month’s issue thinking our readers will want a respite from politics. As important as it is to participate in our electoral process, and as much space as we’ve given this year in the magazine to choosing our next president, our lives are much more than our politics. We hope the stories in this issue are a reminder of that. I’d suggest starting with Rabbi Meir Soloveichik’s column, “A Reflection on Time,” on page 15. Soloveichik is senior rabbi at Congregation Shearith Israel in Manhattan, America’s oldest Jewish congregation, and writes about one of the singular rituals of the faith: the lighting of candles during Hanukkah. As Soloveichik notes, the ritual is a reminder of time, how quickly it passes, and what truly endures. “We are asked to ponder what lasts more than a moment, what aspects of life are truly enduring,” he writes. I’d also recommend Steven T. Collis’ essay “Habits of Peacemakers,” which begins on page 66. Collis is a law professor, but he’s spent the past four years researching the qualities of peacemakers. He’s found particular characteristics we can all emulate, and two habits that are particularly resonant around the holidays, when

fraught political topics often come up: spending time with people doing anything other than talking about hard topics and achieving some sense of inner peace. And finally, I’d recommend two features by staff writer Ethan Bauer. The first is a remarkable story about a group of strangers who helped a man escape his burning vehicle this April near St. Paul, Minnesota. What makes a stranger risk his or her life to save someone they never met? We sent Ethan to Minnesota to track down the survivor and those who rescued him to find out. What Ethan learned might surprise, and inspire, you. That story, “Trial by Fire,” begins on page 36. The second feature begins on page 48 and chronicles the story of an American soldier held in a Nazi POW camp during World War II. It’s also the story of an unselfish act, during a time of suffering and crisis. I don’t want to give too much away, but it’s worth a read, and I hope it will renew your faith in humanity. As I read this month’s issue, I looked forward to the holidays and the spirit they bring, of healing, of peace and thinking of others, especially the less fortunate. I hope you can read these stories beside a crackling fire, or with a hot cup of cocoa, and that for a brief moment at least they can warm the heart. —JESSE HYDE DECEMBER 2024

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STAFF WRITERS ETHAN BAUER, NATALIA GALICZA WRITER-AT-LARGE MICHAEL J. MOONEY

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS SAMUEL BENSON, LOIS M. COLLINS, KELSEY DALLAS, JENNIFER GRAHAM, MARIYA MANZHOS, MEG WALTER ART DIRECTORS IAN SULLIVAN, BRENNA VATERLAUS COPY EDITORS ASIA BOWN, PAYTON DAVIS, SARAH HARRIS, VALERIE JONES, CHRIS MILLER, TYLER NELSON, GABBY PETERSON

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THE BUZZ

Our O C T O B E R cover story recalled the fall of the Berlin Wall 35 years ago through two different perspectives: A woman who was a teenager in East Germany when President Ronald Reagan challenged his communist counterpart to “tear down this wall,” and the speechwriter who penned those lines credited for precipitating an event that symbolized the beginning of the end of the Cold War (“The Voices that Cracked Stone”). For many readers, Ethan Bauer’s story brought back memories of “the great communicator” and a different era of conservative politics. “I was extremely proud of all that President Ronald Reagan did during his time in office. Where most of the politicians did not see the vision that Reagan had of a free Europe, Reagan saw what could happen and he carried on until his vision came to pass,” wrote Boyd Nuttall. Others, like reader Phillip Daugherty, compared Reagan to today’s candidates. “Reagan wasn’t a perfect president, but, compared to what Republicans put on the ballot this year, he’s right up there with Mother Teresa.” Natalia Galicza traveled to Arizona to help us better understand the motives behind people who don’t vote. They have existed every political season in every state, but in 2024 they were expected to have an unintentional, outsized impact on the election (“Uncast Ballots”). While many readers espoused the view that voting is a privilege, right and duty that should not be ignored, others, like Jayson Meline, empathized with those who see no candidates on the ballot who represent their views and values and find no reason to help elect them. “Both parties are failing citizens with substandard candidates three elections in a row and running. (Arizona) reflects that sentiment.” Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska is a rarity in Washington today and writer-at-large Michael Mooney explained how this politically moderate legislator from Alaska manages to not only survive but thrive in a politically polarizing environment (“Last of Her Species”). Readers shared a variety of opinions about Murkowski’s performance and conservative credentials. But John Inman, who lived in Alaska for several years, credits the four-term senator’s longevity to producing results for her constituents. “Yes, she is not a fan of Donald Trump. ... But normal Alaskans respect her independence and her work ethic. She actually wants to help govern, not just to pontificate.”

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“Normal Alaskans respect her independence and her work ethic. She actually wants to help govern, not just to pontificate.”

DECEMBER 2024

OPENING SHOT

E M P LOY E E S WO R K I N T H E WO O D SHO P AT T HE D P S SK IS FAC TORY IN SA LT L AK E C ITY, UTA H.

Utah has long claimed “the greatest snow on earth.” After all, its been on our license plates since the mid-1980s. Skiing remains a major driver to the Utah economy (bringing in nearly $2 billion from tourists last year alone), and also boasts one of the best ski makers in the world. DPS, which operates near downtown Salt Lake City, is the largest domestic producer of skis in the U.S. PHOTOGRAPHY BY SPENSER HEAPS

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B E LOW: M ATT H E W A R E N A A PPLI E S C A R B O N FI B E R S H E E TS .

DECEMBER 2024

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COMMENTARY

A REFLECTION ON TIME HANUKKAH CELEBRATES NOT A MOMENT IN TIME, BUT THE DEFIANCE OF TIME BY M EI R SOLOV EI C HI K

n the evening of December 31, 2024, as multitudes ring in a new year, Jews around the world will be engaged in one of the singular rituals of their faith: kindling candles on the seventh of the eight evenings of Hanukkah. The lighting recalls the menorah, or candelabra, of the Temple in Jerusalem, and its purification by the Maccabees after its desecration by the Seleucid Greeks. According to the Talmud, only one ritually pure flask of oil remained, enough to last one day; but the flames fueled by this sacred flask ended up burning brightly for eight days. This may seem a minor miracle when compared to the wonders described in scripture; and there are so many miracles that do not have a holiday ritual devoted to their recreation. But what is actually being recalled is an event that bears powerful symbolism: a small bit of the fuel of faith that lasted beyond expectations. It is to marvel at Jewish history itself. At the time that the Seleucid empire paganized the Temple in Jerusalem, its rulers didn’t predict a day when their own version of paganism — revering Zeus and Athena — would disappear, and that the God of Abraham would be known around the world. Two centuries later — when the Romans sacked Jerusalem; triumphantly carried the candelabra of the Temple into the Forum, the epicenter of their empire; and emblazoned an image of the moment on the Arch of Titus — no one predicted that a Jewish state would be reborn, with its capital in Jerusalem, while the Forum would be nothing but a tourist site. For those concerned today about the future of biblical faith, the Hanukkah candles present a powerful reminder: Cultures and ILLU STR ATION BY KY LE H I LTO N

communities that mark the enduring truly endure. Thus, a truly Jewish contribution to a symposium about the new year must ask readers to reflect on how they use their time, and how they approach time itself. In contemporary culture, millions mark, and count down to, a moment in time, exuberantly exclaiming “Happy New Year.” To ponder the Hanukkah candles is to realize they celebrate something entirely different: not a moment in time, but the defiance of regular time, the enduring within fleeting time. In this sense, as the flames burn, we are asked to ponder what lasts more than a moment, what aspects of life are truly enduring. And it is this question that Americans of faith ought to bring into 2025. One of my favorite Hanukkah stories is told by the great Jewish dissident Natan (Anatoly) Sharansky in his memoir “Fear No Evil,” which describes his nine years in a Soviet prison. To celebrate the holiday, Sharansky made a makeshift menorah, which was soon confiscated. In response, Sharansky engaged in a hunger strike, and the prison commander, worried about a public relations disaster, sought a compromise. Sharansky told the Soviet officer that since it was the last night of Hanukkah, he would end his hunger strike if he could light the menorah once more — in the commander’s office. The officer agreed; and at this point Sharansky made up, out of whole cloth, a bit of Jewish law. He impishly informed the officer that for the ritual to be efficacious, all in attendance must stand at attention, listen carefully to the blessing being pronounced and respond “Amen.” Sharansky describes what occurred: “I lit the candles and recited my own prayer in Hebrew, which went something like this: ‘Blessed are You, Adonai (Lord), for allowing me to rejoice on this day of Hanukkah, the holiday of our liberation, the holiday of our return to the way of our fathers. Blessed are You, Adonai, for allowing me to light these candles. May you allow me to light the Hanukkah candles many times in your city, Jerusalem, with my wife, Avital, and my family and friends.’” Sharansky continued his prayer a bit, and then added in Hebrew: “And may the day come when all our enemies, who today are planning our destruction, will stand before us and hear our prayers and say ‘Amen.’” And the Soviet officer immediately answered: “Amen.” Sharansky’s prayer was fulfilled, reminding us that to kindle candles is to mark the endurance of faith — and to foster one’s faith in what is truly enduring. This is especially true following a year that has been a difficult one for the Jewish people, but also one in which the faith of many Jews has grown even stronger, as they pondered their people’s striking endurance in history. And if there is a resolution that is worthwhile in 2025, it is to ponder what truly lasts in our lives, and to remember Henry David Thoreau’s aphorism and insight: that it is impossible to kill time without injuring our eternity. M E I R S O L O V E I C H I K I S T H E S E N I O R R A B B I O F C O N G R E G AT I O N S H E A R I T H I S R A E L I N M A N H AT TA N A N D D I R E C T O R O F T H E Z A H AVA A N D M O S H A E L S T R AU S C E N T E R F O R T O R A H A N D W E S T E R N T H O U G H T AT Y E S H I VA U N I V E R S I T Y.

DECEMBER 2024

THE BREAKDOWN

BETTER TO GIVE AN INSIDE LOOK AT CHARITABLE DONATIONS

D E C E M B E R M AY B E

known as “Giving Season,” since about a third of all donations are made this month, but Americans are generous all year round. From small acts of service like helping a stranger to change a tire or volunteering in a blood drive to historic cases of financial largesse, pitching in is part of our national identity. Some credit faith, in one of the most religious of all industrialized countries. Others cite a long history of mutual aid and an entrepreneurial spirit that supports an occasional boost to help people lift themselves up. Whatever the answers, Americans donate more than any other people in the world. Here’s the breakdown: —LAUR ENZ B U S C H

7X AS MUCH

That’s what Americans donate per capita relative to their European counterparts. In 2023, that totaled $557.16 billion, two-thirds from 16

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individual donors. The top 50 philanthropists gave $12 billion — down 28 percent from 2022 — including $3 billion from former New York

City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Corporations added $37 billion, or 7 percent. More broadly, middle-income donors average $3,296 a

year. People who make less than $50,000 donate at higher rates than all other income levels, short of the highest earners.

A $600 BILLION DISASTER

WHEN I’M 64

The average donor is on the verge of retirement, as baby boomers outgive other generations with around $1,225 annually. That’s almost $700 more than the last-place millennials. Gen Z came in second, at $785; almost half of them donated exclusively to disaster relief. The 2024 Bank of America Private Bank Study of Wealthy Americans found that older donors are more often driven by a sense of duty, while younger donors are more likely to gauge the success of their efforts by public recognition.

That’s how much Americans donated in 2021, adjusted for inflation, an all-time high amid the disastrous financial impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. Up to 13 million gave away all or part of their stimulus checks. It tracks: Donations often increase in times of crisis, disaster and war, even in faraway lands. One in four Americans has sent donations to Ukraine since Russia invaded in 2022, plus over $500 million from corporations such as Epic Games, Amazon and Microsoft.

CARNEGIE’S NINE-TENTHS

Scottish immigrant turned steel and oil tycoon Andrew Carnegie donated nearly all of his wealth before he died in 1919, totaling $6.5 billion in modern currency. That funded universities, conservatories, pensions, scientific research and Carnegie Hall. He paid for 7,500 church pipe organs and roughly 3,000 libraries, 1,687 in the U.S. In “The Gospel of Wealth,” published in 1889, he argued that it was a disgrace for a man to die rich. OXYTOCIN BY HALF

AMERICA’S TOP CAUSES 1

$145.81 billion $80.03 billion RELIGION

FOUNDATIONS

$88.84 billion $62.81 billion HUMAN SERVICES

PUBLIC-SOCIETY BENEFIT

$87.69 billion

$56.58 billion

EDUCATION

HEALTH

ILLU STR ATION BY M E LI N DA BE C K

“THERE’S A DIFFERENT C U LT U R A L A P P R OAC H TO P H I L A N T H R O P Y I N T H E U . S . W E H AV E A TAX SYS T E M T H AT SUPPORTS IT; PUBLIC I N S T I T U T I O N S T H AT C E L E B R AT E I T ; A N D E D U C AT I O N A L , S O C I A L A N D C U LT U R A L O R G A N I Z AT I O N S T H AT R E Q U I R E I T TO T H R I V E . I T ’ S PA R T O F O U R E X PA N D E D U N D E R S TA N D I N G O F W H AT I T M E A N S TO B E A M E R I C A N .”

One study found that infusing subjects with oxytocin, commonly used to accelerate labor during birth, led to a 48 percent increase in donations. Researchers believe the “cuddle hormone,” which contributes to relationships and emotional bonding, enhances the “warm-glow” feeling that results from doing good — and could play a role in encouraging us to give more.

A M I R PA S I C , D E A N , L I L LY FA M I LY S C H O O L O F P H I L A N T H R O P Y, INDIANA UNIVERSITY

10,000 SCAMS

60% OFF

That’s roughly how many times charitable causes were used to defraud Americans in 2023, costing $22.5 million. It’s a huge leap from 2019, when there were fewer than 4,000 such reports. One scammer feigned pancreatic cancer and collected $40,000 on GoFundMe. The IRS offers a free tool to vet charities and warns that con artists tend to prefer cash, gift cards, cryptocurrency or wire transfers.

That’s how much of their gross income American taxpayers can deduct each year for cash and noncash donations to charitable organizations. Congress first created the deduction in 1917, hoping to offset the impact of tax hikes made to fund World War I, originally capped at 15 percent. The U.S. has one of the world’s more generous tax policies in this regard.

2/3

OF ALL DONATIONS CAME FROM INDIVIDUALS IN 2023

DECEMBER 2024

POINT / COUNTERPOINT

THE END OF JOBS IS UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME THE ANSWER TO AI?

F O R A S LO N G as automation has been replacing human labor, writers and thinkers

have wondered how society might change if human labor became unnecessary. How would we make a living? Today, artificial intelligence is making these questions real, as robots and algorithms replace workers on all levels, from truck drivers to software coders and even white-collar professionals. Some, including politicians and tech entrepreneurs, say the answer is universal basic income (UBI), a regular cash payment to every adult citizen. Others argue that UBI would cost too much, in both treasure and morality. Who’s right? — N ATALIA GA LICZ A

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CHANGE WITH THE TIMES

NOTHING IS FREE

WORKING AMERICANS NEED a financial safety net,

SIMPLY PUT, AMERICANS don’t want a UBI. In 2020,

and soon. The McKinsey Global Institute projects that 30 percent of the hours that employees currently spend working nationwide could become automated in the next six years, leaving tens of millions in need of new training and employment. “There is a significant mismatch between the skills that workers bring to the market and the skills that new jobs require,” economist Evelyn Forget told Forbes in July. “ UBI can allow some workers the time to go back to school and to acquire new skills, and it can allow older workers to transition to retirement with a bit of dignity.” UBI could reduce poverty, making Americans healthier and happier. Pilot studies show that recipients are hospitalized for necessary medical treatment 26 percent more often than those without a UBI. In one Canadian study, hospitalization rates for injuries, accidents and mental health issues actually fell. Other trials abroad have found that UBI allows recipients to buy medicine, eat better and reduce anxiety and depression. Experts also say poverty is linked to stress, domestic violence, substance abuse and legal troubles. Putting more cash into circulation can also stimulate consumer spending, the economy’s biggest contributor. A three-year study funded by OpenResearch, an arm of OpenAI, found that low-income families given $1,000 each month increased their spending by $310. We also know that families help loved ones in need 25 percent more often when they receive a UBI than they do without one. Unlike welfare and other social programs, UBI would not require an expensive bureaucracy to prevent fraud. It would function more like a Covid-19 stimulus check. Speaking of which, it’s important to remember that the government has a duty to protect the well-being of its citizens. As technological and economic upheaval leave workers in the lurch, we need solutions. Even the founder Thomas Paine made an argument that could apply. In his pamphlet, “Agrarian Justice,” he writes that every adult should be compensated for the shared use and split ownership of the land, which he saw as our common inheritance, in order to fend off poverty, which he insists is unnatural and human-made.

presidential candidates Andrew Yang and Bernie Sanders incorporated UBI proposals into their platforms, which brought the question back into national view; both lost in the Democratic primaries. That same year, a Pew Research Center survey found that 54 percent of respondents opposed Yang’s relatively modest proposal of a $1,000 monthly federal UBI for each adult citizen. One reason: the price tag. Yang’s UBI proposal would have cost about $3 trillion each year, or 75 percent of the federal budget. Expanding the pool of recipients to include children would likely raise that to upwards of $4 trillion. More than simply cutting checks, this would require reinventing the American economy, increasing taxes on individuals and business operations and slashing other social programs. Even the reorganization of federal bureaucracies to accommodate such massive change would involve as-yet-untold expenses for a government that is already running a $1.8 trillion annual deficit. At the same time, a UBI would disincentivize work. The same OpenResearch study cited previously found that participants didn’t leverage the added financial support to seek out higher paid employment. Rather, they took time off, working an average of 1.3 fewer hours per week, or about eight days less a year. Subjects were 2 percent less likely to be employed at all and experienced an overall decrease in household income. That much lost productivity could pose existential consequences to families and the economy writ large. Not to mention the moral implications of untethering financial rewards from community, effort and sacrifice. Free money doesn’t just pose practical problems; it devalues the efforts of others and worsens a growing detachment issue among Americans. “Public attitudes aside, for the amount of investment that UBI programs require one might assume they would solve many of society’s ills,” writes Erin Norman, senior messaging strategist at State Policy Network, a hub for state-based conservative think tanks, in Governing Magazine. “But there are a wide variety of problems facing society — including loneliness, a lack of a sense of belonging and a lack of purpose among youth — that are specifically solved by contributing to society in a recognized way. Namely, with work.”

ILLU STR ATION BY A N D R E W CO LI N BE C K

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MODERN FAMILY

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING UNCLE WOLF THE ART OF UNCLING, THROUGH THE GENERATIONS

BY STE P H E N F R I E D

hile I had a truly exceptional dad, I have always depended on the kindness of uncles. All kinds of uncles: the ones related by blood, the ones related by marriage, the ones you “call uncle” because they’re related by family friendships; the ones you see all the time, the ones you see a few times a year but always on the same specific occasions and ones you see hardly ever, but always wished you saw more. I’m not trying to overlook aunts here: I have been the beneficiary of some epic and life-altering auntage over the years. But it’s somehow less surprising when aunts make an emotional connection. I believe there are some intergenerational emotions that most men can only share — if they can share them at all — through their uncling. So, all my life, I’ve been extremely uncle-curious, and fascinated by niece and nephew relationships. (There is, by the way, a gender-neutral word for nieces and/or nephews — coined back in 1951. The word is “niblings” — children of your siblings. No big surprise that it hasn’t caught on for nieces and nephews, but I could imagine it coming back as the name of a snack food.) The first important uncle I remember was my dad’s closest neighbor buddy on 20

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Kingsley Drive. He thought it was absolutely ridiculous for me to call him “Uncle Irv,” as my parents instructed. So, from the time I was four or five, as part of his general strategy to encourage me to be as irreverent as he was, he said I should just call him by his first name. When my parents vetoed this, he and I discussed this on the street corner one day, and came up with what we

FROM MY VERY FIRST DAY OF UNCLEDOM, I WAS FULLY FOCUSED ON BEING A GOOD ONE. IF POSSIBLE, AN EXCELLENT ONE. SO, I THOUGHT ABOUT WHAT HAD MADE MY BELOVED UNCLES GREAT.

thought was the perfect solution: I could call him “Aunt Irv.” We found this far more amusing than my mom and dad did. And when you’re a kid, nothing is better than a grown-up who will let you make jokes at your parents’ expense. Besides Aunt Irv, there was my Uncle Steve and Uncle Mike, who I saw at family

dinners pretty much every week of my life until I left for college. Uncle Steve was the husband of my father’s younger sister, a generally mild-mannered accountant who would wrestle with me after dinner on the blue shag carpet in my grandparents’ living room. He did this because my father couldn’t: Dad had back surgery in his early 20s and was never able to roughhouse with his three boys, of whom I was the oldest. But when I began uncling myself years later, I came to understand Uncle Steve had another incentive to wrestle with me. It scored him big points with the very close family he had married into to have a “thing you always do together” with the first grandchild. When I was done wrestling, I would walk down the long hallway in my grandparents’ house and knock on the always-closed door of my “cool uncle” Michael — my father’s younger brother by nearly 15 years. He was a suburban hippie who looked like James Taylor before he shaved his original mustache, and always softly asked to be excused from the dinner table as early as possible to escape the grown-ups, so he could huddle in his bedroom with his record collection and guitars. I was the only one allowed to visit him. And week by week he introduced me to every kind of music that mattered in

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DECEMBER 2024

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my life: from Stevie Wonder to Bob Dylan to John Coltrane and Bill Evans to Mozart. He didn’t talk a lot, but he made music and musicians’ ideas come alive to me. He taught me how to listen and pay attention to album covers and liner notes. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, he also was the first to teach me about the challenges of mental illness and addiction, which is how we lost him at the age of 44. Then there were the three-times-a-year uncles, my mom’s tall, gregarious kid brother, who early on branded himself as our “beloved Uncle Wally” and took us to baseball and football games; our great-uncle Sonny on my dad’s side, a World War II POW who never married but always arrived from Worcester with compelling sweets and cakes; our great-uncle Paul on my mom’s side, who looked like a handsome ’40s movie cop, and brought us exotic carved gifts from his travels but never could marry his girlfriend, who was the wrong religion, but we called her Aunt Margaret anyway. And then there were a handful of great-uncles we knew just for a few years, until my Pop-pop had a fight with his brother and furniture store business partner, and we didn’t see them for another decade. While I also had terrific aunts, they played less of a role in my young life — except for my father’s sister, Barb, who became my alternative universe “cool mom.” (When I realized I was falling in love with my wife, Diane, I told Aunt Barb first — because she was also the one who first noticed, and asked.) I married Diane at 29, and within five years I had stopped being just a consumer of uncling, but a purveyor myself — five times in eight years. While we didn’t have kids of our own, we had two nieces on her side of the family, then a nephew on my side, and then another nephew and niece on her side. They are my uncle brood. From my very first day of uncledom, I was fully focused on being a good one. If possible, an excellent one. So, I thought about what had made my beloved uncles great. 22

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The keys to uncling seemed to be: Be there. Listen. And, for the most part, shut up. Ask good questions, but offer advice only when asked, and even then, do so carefully. If you must offer a perspective, never, ever pretend, even for a second, to be an alternative parent. You’re also not an alternative friend. You are something better and different and, ideally, someone less complicated. Do whatever it is your nieces and nephews want to do with you, and be prepared, if they like it, to do it again and again — even if you didn’t understand why they liked it in the first place. You want a “thing you always do together”: an activity, a type of conversation, a song. And then, when they suddenI WANTED TO DO EVERYTHING I COULD BEFORE THEY REACHED THE AGE WHEN THEY WANTED NOTHING TO DO WITH ELDERS. THAT MOMENT NEVER ACTUALLY CAME (NOT YET, ANYWAY).

ly stop wanting to do that thing anymore, never take it personally. Just find something else to take its place. Keep everything that is created during the time you are together; do your best to remember everything you’ve spoken about. There is no way of knowing what will be important later. When you’re together, always pay. Period. Even if they’ve reached the point where they make more money than you. It’s not about the money, it’s about them feeling they are still being uncled. (This rule doesn’t count if you’re helping them with car or house hunting.) Whenever possible, feed them. (Even if they’re just, well, nibbling.) F O R T H E F I R ST couple years, I found un-

cling fairly easy, mostly involving responding to the phrase, “Take the kid while I do this.” First you hold them until the parents

want them back, then you sit with them until the parents want them back, then you walk and play with them until the parents want them back. As soon as they were old enough to draw, my wife, an author and artist, would bring them art supplies and paper and teach them anything they wanted to learn about drawing. I can barely draw a triangle, so I provided themes and structure. One year, we decided we were sick of all the books the kids were reading and it was time to write one of our own: It was the adventures of a singing shark, who the kids called “Eedee” — I have no idea why. (Whenever Eedee was confronted with a typical shark situation, he would say, “I don’t want to eat you, I just want … to sing!”) We came up with the basic Eedee story during Halloween, and at Christmas we arrived with printed copies of a 15-page book with the story at the bottom, but the pages blank so each kid could illustrate their own version. We still have all their books, including the sequel about Chompee the Alligator. As soon as they were old enough to dance, I would DJ the family dance parties in the rec room. Diane and I also helped the kids write original, and often quite ridiculous, plays, which they then put on during our last evening together. (One favorite involved a publishing company for the undead called “Tuesdays with Zombies.”) I lost my father when he was 62 and I was 39. The next spring, I convinced both sides of my family, with all the nieces and nephews, that we should start spending the week of July Fourth together at our family vacation house. A logistical nightmare, but an epic enterprise of the heart. This is the kind of gathering that normally can only be pulled off by grandparents using guilt and implicit threats of will revision. But it became my biggest annual uncle project, especially as the kids grew, but the barely-large-enough getaway house did not. Since I was the one who got up every morning to buy baked goods for breakfast, I told all the kids that if they got up with me, I’d get them whatever treat they wanted: not

just doughnuts and sticky buns but, if necessary, 7 a.m. milkshakes from the convenience store. Many of them continued to rise at dawn with me into their teens and 20s, which is unheard of. Then came Uncle Wolf. One Christmas, I can’t recall what year, all four kiddos on Diane’s side were just old enough that they could no longer be counted on to play quietly without some disaster. They also kept bugging their moms, their grandma and their aunt, Diane, who wanted their own private conversation time. As is often true in my life, I was urged to “just … do something!” So, I told the kids to put on their winter coats, and come outside with me. I hid, they came and found me, and when they did, I jumped out, growling loudly and started chasing them around and around the house. The kids loved this, and gave it (and me) a name: “Uncle Wolf.” The ladies inside had another name for it: They called it “the running of the children.” And it was so successful — both fun and incredibly exhausting — that for years, whenever we were together, the kids wanted to play Uncle Wolf. One year, my nephew Eli hadn’t tied his sneakers, and one fell off while Uncle Wolfing. I grabbed it, growling of course, and threw it into the tree in the front yard. And it got stuck there. So, we had to throw other things at it — including his other sneaker — to get it down. The next time we played, they wanted the sneaker in the tree again. We did this for years. And it kept the kiddos going through good and challenging times. Not long after the millennium, both of my sisters-in-law were getting divorced. So, while the kids still wanted to do fun things, like Uncle Wolf, and early morning shopping for sweet treats, they also needed someone grown-up to talk to who wasn’t in the middle of a marital dispute. Whenever we were together, I made sure that if any of them wanted a private moment to talk — about anything — we would find it. In a family where people were almost pathologically unable to keep secrets — actually,

what am I saying, that’s all families, right? — whatever was told to Uncle Steve stayed with Uncle Steve. I relished my role as a “kiddo whisperer.” I discovered Skype only because it allowed me to talk to my niece and nephew in Maryland, who would tell me about their “Spunky Kids” group at school for families going through divorce. I played guitar when I was a teen but hadn’t picked one up for years. When my nephews expressed interest, I bought a used electric guitar from a friend and helped teach them both to play over Skype. I wanted to do everything I could before they reached the age when they wanted nothing to do with elders.

BE THERE. LISTEN. AND, FOR THE MOST PART, SHUT UP. ASK GOOD QUESTIONS, BUT OFFER ADVICE ONLY WHEN ASKED, AND EVEN THEN, DO SO CAREFULLY.

THAT MOMENT NEVER actually came (not yet,

anyway). But once the nieces and nephews were in college from sea to shining sea, things did change, of course, and I had to find other ways to remain tethered. We still meet yearly in the summer, and my nephew Eli still gets up with me every morning, and we talk for two hours over freshly made doughnuts and coffee before anyone else wakes up. But mostly we stay connected through Zooms and text chains and a private Facebook group, punctuated by periodic gatherings for special events. Unfortunately, for a while, too many of these events were funerals and memorial services. Especially through the three-year period from 2015-2018 when Diane lost her dad, I lost my Aunt Barb and then my mom, and then my Uncle Steve — who had been helping me hold it together after losing mom and Barb, and I was doing my best to help him. Then Diane lost her mom.

It seemed like an endless spiral of grief, and soon there was almost nobody left in either of our families who were older than us. Keepers of family history, gone; emotional mentors, gone; leaving us and the next generations of our families to negotiate a new normal. Some days I was still able to uncle through the tears, some days I needed the nieces and nephews to reverse-uncle me. I didn’t want to appear needy — who needs a needy uncle? — but I also wanted the kids to know that some of the multigenerational comfort I sought could only come from them. And they rose to the occasion. They texted, they Zoomed; they indulged their uncle. I couldn’t have been more grateful. My nephew, Jake, on my side of the family, had recently moved to our city with his girlfriend — now his wife — and we connected more often. I have a half-court basketball game that I’ve been nurturing for over 30 years — some players now have kids old enough to play, and Jake started joining us so the young people could guard each other. And sometimes he comes out to breakfast with me after a morning game, to talk and to listen. He knows one of the things that make me feel best is to be of emotional service to him. Uncling makes me feel good. After he moved here, we started encouraging all the other nieces and nephews to move here, too. Miraculously, four out of five now have, and the fifth, Emma, and her wife, Dakota, are forever looking at real estate in our town. I am in uncle heaven. Last week, I was playing half-court hoops with my regular group of guys, including one of their sons, and my nephew Jake (who I always pick for my team). At one point during the second game, one of our teammates, Jon, saw I was wide open and Jake, who was dribbling the ball, hadn’t noticed. Jon didn’t want to call out my name, because then the other team would notice, too. So, he just yelled out, “Uncle!” And within a second, the ball was in my hands. I was smiling so hard, I almost missed the shot. DECEMBER 2024

THE WEST

SEE THE FOREST FOR THE TREES THE UNCERTAIN FATE OF AMERICA’S ICONIC CHRISTMAS TREE

BY JO H N D. S U TTE R

he best way to identify a Douglas fir — that ubiquitous American evergreen that, it turns out, is much more than a staple of the Christmas season — is to look at the cone. Not the “pine cone,” as it were, because the Doug (a friendly nickname), definitely is not a pine. Don’t even call it a “fir cone,” as the Douglas fir is not a true fir, either (too many chromosomes; cones that dangle from branches rather than levitating upward). “Cone” will do. Anyway, pick a cone off the forest floor and you’ll quickly notice its hallmark ornamentation: Each woody scale is overlaid with a tan, paper-like veneer that is shaped like a mouse’s tail and hind legs — as if the rodent were caught trying to scurry into the center of the cone. I’m attempting to note little things like this while switchbacking through the forests of southern Oregon behind Rich Fairbanks, a quick-moving and even faster-talking Doug fir fan. A retired wildland firefighter and forester in his early 70s, Fairbanks has the approximate air of a Columbia Sportswear Santa. His beard is ash gray, eyes emerald blue, glasses wire-frame. He carries a walking stick and wears hiking boots and a plaid shirt. Less jolly, more just-keep-up. 24

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“Have a fig at some point,” he says, snapping one from a branch. Our boots crunch on the dusty trail as we make our way up the north-facing slope of a mountain on his 20-acre property. “Yeah, that’s the Douglas fir,” he says without pause. “You have incense cedar and Baker cyprus and sugar pine and redbud. And you see this is a ponderosa pine?”

they almost look like holiday decorations on a tree someone just started decorating. They’re clustered at the top against a rich backdrop of green. “There’s a Doug fir,” Fairbanks says, looking at the same tree. “And look, it’s got a stress crop. Sometimes the tree will put out a whole bunch of cones all of a sudden.” Why’s that? “It knows it’s dying.”

A RETIRED WILDLAND FIREFIGHTER AND FORESTER IN HIS EARLY 70S, FAIRBANKS HAS THE APPROXIMATE AIR OF A COLUMBIA SPORTSWEAR SANTA.

has evergreencolored carpet and fluorescent lights. Jena Volpe, a fire ecologist with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, clicks to the next slide of a PowerPoint, revealing an aerial hillside of Doug firs, not far from where Fairbanks lives. Nearly all the trees are in various states of decay. Some are blanched red. Others have lost their needles entirely — literal skeletons of their former selves. It looks almost like a fire’s come through. “Gray-stage mortality,” Volpe calls this end state. Seven government employees sit around a U-shaped conference table at the BLM’s office in Medford, Oregon. They’re here to try to explain to me a phenomenon dubbed “firmageddon.”

Fairbanks likes to list trees and tree factoids while you walk. I have a hard time telling them apart. I notice another possible Doug that has a constellation of cones at the very top of its branches — the “crown” of the tree, Fairbanks says — a few dozen feet above the ground. The cones catch my eye because they are so incredibly dense that

T H E CO N F E R E N C E R O O M

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DECEMBER 2024

THE WEST

Another slide shows an entire valley that looks like this. Thousands and thousands of trees. Volpe focuses on the conditions that create the crisis. Red, orange and yellow charts show how this part of the West has been drying out at an alarming rate since about 2001 — with an unheard-of drought walloping the region starting in about 2012 and continuing to this day in October. A “heat dome” settled over much of Oregon in 2021, killing more than 100 people in Oregon, setting a 119-degree temperature record there, several hours north, and scorching the forests in these valleys down south. “Some trees are just dying from the drought,” she says. And all of that, according to scientists, is linked to the climate crisis, which is making drought and heat more frequent and more intense. Then comes the kicker: A native beetle, the flatheaded fir borer (“FHFB” on the slide), an insect so tiny it would fit on the tip of a pencil, attacks drought-stressed trees and kills them. The beetle enters the tree via little holes in the bark, lays eggs in the cambium — the critical growth layer just inside the tree’s bark — and then “girdles” the tree, essentially strangling and killing it. Between 2015 and 2020, the flatheaded borer contributed to the deaths of more than 250,000 Douglas fir trees in this area — more than the four previous decades combined, according to a 2023 study published in the Journal of Forestry. The paper warns of a “decline spiral” for the tree as this native beetle takes advantage of intensifying drought conditions. Doug firs may not last much longer here. I realize these scientists have the ability to see into the future, in a sense. Laura Lowrey, a forest entomologist with the U.S. Forest Service, says Doug fir needles flashing red is one early sign of fir-borer infestation. Another dark omen: Clear globes of sap-like goo — “pitch jewels” — emerge in the bark, small enough that they’re hard to detect unless the light hits them just right, in which case they glisten like tinsel. The pitch is a defense mechanism — one that works if 26

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the tree is healthy and has enough water; it can be futile if the tree’s roots are pulling from dry ground. How eerie this must be, knowing a tree will die in two or three years. “I don’t want to get too gruesome here, but honestly … it’s like when you have a human being that has cancer,” says Jesse Kiene, a fire management specialist at BLM. “You can see that color change. You can see the body type change, you can see the loss of muscle and you can see those things, right? … (It’s) the same thing as with a tree. You can see that tree just slowly wilt away. “It’s a foregone conclusion of where it’s going to end up.” “That’s rough, Jesse,” another researcher says. Laughter ripples across the room. It’s one of those awkward laughs that covers something true.

HIS IS A WORLD NOT OF “TREES” OR EVEN “EVERGREENS” AND “CONIFERS” BUT OF INDIVIDUALS.

DAV I D D O U G L AS , A Scottish botanist and

the eponym of the tree, once said it is “one of the most striking and truly graceful objects in nature.” Driving three hours south of Eugene, Oregon, where I live, to Rich Fairbanks’ land near the California border, it’s almost impossible to imagine Doug firs having any trouble anywhere in the world. There are just so many, and something about their abundance makes them feel eternal. This particular morning, a “Twilight” mist hangs over the Willamette Valley, cloaking the ridgelines in fog. From afar, Doug firs look almost like they are one organism — a fuzzy blanket of green that covers the mountains, protecting them from harm. Up closer, you notice their

spear-like tips — the branches that stretch skyward in youth before drooping like the wet arms of a scarecrow as the trees mature and settle into heights that, in Oregon, can top 300 feet (and can reach ages well over 300 years). It’s not a tree to be underestimated. Doug is a dominant species of the West, able to survive in sopping-wet conditions in the Cascade Mountains — and in true desert, including in the cracks of dried-up lava flows in New Mexico, Stephen Arno and Carl E. Fiedler write in “Douglas Fir: The Story of the West’s Most Remarkable Tree.” The authors refer to Doug as “nature’s all-purpose tree,” noting that it has “provided more wood than any other species for building the infrastructure of the American West,” and that it has the widest distribution of any conifer on the continent. I recently moved to Oregon from Washington, D.C., and, until now, many of my Doug fir experiences involved micro-versions of these trees that had been snapped up from farms in infancy for December placement in my living room. Christmas lovers know Doug for the soft needles, which extend from its branches in a pattern that one scientist out here refers to as a “star.” Oregon grows and farms more Christmas trees than any other state, and Doug firs make up much of the lot. Fairbanks, for his part, does little to sentimentalize the trees. In December, he puts a Noble fir in his home — not a Doug. After growing up outside New York City, 18-year-old Fairbanks uprooted himself and drove west across Canada. It was 1970, the year he fell in love with the forests of the West and decided to work toward protecting them. He studied forestry at a community college in Northern California (he would later earn a graduate degree in community and regional planning from the University of Oregon) and then joined a crew fighting wildfires. Over time, however, he started to think that his role in fighting fires might be part of the problem. He’d always had a hunch that the Smokey-the-Bear policies of the 1970s

— essentially mandating that any forest fire would be put out, and gaslighting Americans into believing that only they could prevent forest fires — were making massive fires more likely, not less. He watched forests that hadn’t burned in a century fill in so densely that they looked ready to combust. And he watched as fires increased in size and severity — taking old-growth Dougs and ponderosa pines with them. Things only became more dramatic as the climate continued to warm. Now the forests are starting to behave in ways he never could have predicted. His response? Roll up his sleeves. In the last few years, Fairbanks estimates he’s pulled out hundreds of dead Douglas firs from his little 20-acre property. In 2023, he says he hauled something like 50 pickup truckloads of Doug fir firewood to a nearby town, Ashland, to give it away. Critically, the former wildland firefighter is also doing something many in the West consider anathema, but is increasingly becoming part of how scientists view a safer future for forests. He’s setting fire to the land. DENSE COLUMNS OF gray smoke billow from

the forest. This is the Oregon Gulch Fire of 2014, as seen from an airplane. The gray chimneys converge in a massive, bomb-like cloud of white. A “pyrocumulus,” Jena Volpe calls it. It’s the kind of “mass fire” everyone here fears. We load up into vehicles, me and the government scientists, to go see a patch of forest the BLM has tried to protect from this sort of thing — a prescription that involves setting low-intensity fires. On the drive, I ask Lowrey, from the Forest Service, how far “firmageddon” could spread. It’s mostly concentrated for now in the Applegate Valley, she tells me, but there’s evidence it’s spreading north into other valleys, including the Willamette, where I live, affecting trees on particularly dry slopes. We pull up to the patch of land that the BLM “treated” for mass fire prevention. On

the way, dead and dying forests were so commonplace that they almost started to lose their shock value. The difference on this plot, which has an aspect that’s wetter and more favorable to Doug fir than many others nearby, is that the trees are still green and largely healthy. They’re also spaced out more than usual. If a typical forest out here is like an elevator crammed with people almost shoulder to shoulder — a result of logging and fire suppression — then this feels more like a Covid-era elevator. There’s enough space for you to extend your arms in both directions and not hit another Doug. The agency follows up these tree-thinning efforts with controlled, low-grade fire. That’s meant to restore balance and prevent the mega-fires with flames tall enough to torch older trees, like Dougs.

IT’S ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO IMAGINE DOUG FIRS HAVING ANY TROUBLE ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD. THERE ARE JUST SO MANY, AND SOMETHING ABOUT THEIR ABUNDANCE MAKES THEM FEEL ETERNAL.

Such “treatments” face opposition from all sides — from logging advocates, who would like to see more of the forest harvested for timber, and from environmentalists, who have sued to block some of BLM’s tree-thinning efforts, claiming its motives are commercial, not safety-related. Recently, one of the BLM’s prescribed burn signs was defaced with the word “arson.” Agency officials seem somewhat mystified. These forests are going to burn at some point, they say. Better that it’s controlled. RICH FAIRBANKS IS among the rare-but-vocal

landowners who support fire management, even as he questions some of the federal government’s efforts. He collaborated with

a regional Prescribed Burn Association — the first of its kind in the state — to burn an acre of land right by his home. He wishes more landowners would realize that to protect the forest, it needs to burn occasionally. “There’s some nice flowers that come up” after a fire, he says, “shooting stars.” On our walk, I keep trying to ask Fairbanks big, philosophical questions about what’s happening to the Douglas fir — about his attachment to the forest and the sweat he puts into it. Usually, he responds by pausing, looking into the distance — and then listing tree species for me. Perhaps this stay-in-the-weeds focus is healthy. Fairbanks loves the forest. His house is decorated with drawings of plants, he dedicated his professional life to this stuff. Yet he’s able to accept that his little patch of the world is changing, and — unless he’s able to stop the use of fossil fuels and miraculously reverse the climate crisis — there’s not much he alone can do to halt firmageddon. Instead, he’ll manage as best he can. And he can celebrate the forest — the Dougs but also the ponderosa pines, white oaks and sugar pines, the last of which is among his favorite trees. The sugar pine doesn’t have the art-deco cones of a Douglas fir, but its pine cones are impressive — as tall as a human head. They stand up to fire quite well. “Magnificent tree,” Fairbanks says. Unlike Fairbanks, I move through the world with a fair amount of tree blindness. The holidays are when I touch the needles and read the tags. I envy his way of seeing. His is a world not of “trees” or even “evergreens” and “conifers” but of individuals. As an early forester, he cut into the trunks of Doug firs — the slices are called “cookies” — and stared back through hundreds of years of time, across years of drought and plenty. Trees truly are magnificent when you stop to look closely enough. The least we can do is know their names. DECEMBER 2024

NATIONAL AFFAIRS

GEN Z’S GENDER PARADOX YOUNG MEN AND WOMEN ARE DIVERGING INTO AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE BY E R I C S C H U L Z K E

or high school guidance counselor Jessica Grosland, it’s a familiar tale of two siblings. The same parents, same resources, same neighborhoods. But markedly different outlooks and prospects. “The sister sits up straight in the chair. She knows she’s got to be organized, and she has a plan for the future. Then the brother kind of slumps in, with his hoodie over his head, kind of disengaged.” At the high school where she works in Utah, Grosland says, the average female student has a 3.3 GPA, while the average male a 3.0. And girls are nearly three times as likely to finish high school with a perfect 4.0 GPA. Such achievement gaps are typical across the nation, and in fact, across the developed world. No surprise, then, that 58 percent of American college students in 2024 are female, a gap that first surfaced in the 1970s but has widened dramatically in recent decades. The disparity doesn’t end with academics. The differences now manifest in a growing ideology gap in the newest generation of young adult males and females. Researchers are finding that in the past 28

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decade, the life experiences of Gen Z’s women have pushed them further to the left politically than their male counterparts, and those experts wonder if growing differences between young men and women — in politics, ambitions and life prospects — might present a challenge to relationships and marriage.

“GEN Z IS TWO GENERATIONS, NOT ONE. TENS OF MILLIONS OF PEOPLE WHO OCCUPY THE SAME CITIES, WORKPLACES, CLASSROOMS AND EVEN HOMES NO LONGER SEE EYE-TO-EYE.”

millions of people who occupy the same cities, workplaces, classrooms and even homes no longer see eye-to-eye.” One typical example is the embrace of feminism as a label. Only 43 percent of young men today consider themselves “feminists,” a recent American Enterprise Institute survey found, against 61 percent of young women. By contrast, the millennial cohort embraces feminism at more balanced levels: 54 percent for women, 52 for men. Why are young women pushing out and turning left while young men pull inward and tilt right? The answers, some experts suggest, stem from sociological and political shocks that shaped Gen Z’s viewpoints, paired with gendered differences in how these young people perceive social and political threats. WHENEVER A NEW generation flies the nest,

“Gen Z is two generations, not one,” writes data analyst John Burn-Murdoch at the Financial Times. “In countries on every continent, an ideological gap has opened up between young men and women. Tens of

researchers race to figure out which way they’re headed. In a democracy, predictions of where the country is headed hinge on the views and choices of each new generation. And with its vanguard now turning 28, Gen Z is ready for its closeup.

ILLU STR ATION BY JA M E S ST E I N BE R G

DECEMBER 2024

NATIONAL AFFAIRS

Standing by with mountains of data is Melissa Deckman, the CEO of Public Religion Research Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based research and data think tank. Deckman’s Gen Z analysis can be found in her new book, “The Politics of Gen Z: How the Youngest Voters Will Shape Our Democracy,” which draws on multiple surveys of thousands of Zoomers, as well as extensive focus groups. Her analysis reveals ideological differences between genders that are much sharper than just a few years ago. For example, data collected in May 2022 show that 50 percent of Gen Z women identify or lean Democratic, with just 21 percent favoring or leaning toward the Republican Party. Her survey found that Gen Z men, however, favored Democrats only slightly, 38 percent compared to 36 percent identifying as or leaning Republican. Comparing this to four years ago during the 2020 campaign, the Harvard Youth Poll found that young women had shifted six points in favor of the Democrats. But young men had pulled the other direction, now favoring the Democrats by only three points, compared to 22 points in 2020. Gender is only part of the story. Deckman calls Gen Z “the most diverse generation in American history.” Barely 50 percent of the cohort is white, she found, and roughly 25 percent identify as LGBTQ+. And, she found, LGBTQ+ voters are much more progressive on a host of issues, compared to their straight peers. This generation shares unusually high levels of both distrust and political engagement, Deckman says. “Compared to older generations,” Deckman tells me, “Gen Z is frankly lacking in trust of a variety of organizations in society, from organized religion, to the federal government, to the criminal justice system, and to the media and political parties.” Their political maturation was shaped by a series of startling events that had a greater impact on young women than they had on men, Deckman says. Most notably, the #MeToo movement sparked 30

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worldwide outrage in 2016 and 2017, beginning with Donald Trump’s “Access Hollywood” tape and followed by the shocking revelations about Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. #MeToo swept well beyond American shores, reshaping gender politics from Europe to South Korea. “The impact in South Korea has been pretty startling,” Deckman says. “There has been a tremendous impact on the viewpoints of young women, and a huge divergence there.” In a spin-off from the American #MeToo movement, dating and marriage in South Korea have nearly ground to a standstill, Deckman says, backed by a women’s social movement, known as the 4B movement, which urges

“COMPARED TO OLDER GENERATIONS, GEN Z IS FRANKLY LACKING IN TRUST OF A VARIETY OF ORGANIZATIONS IN SOCIETY, FROM ORGANIZED RELIGION, TO THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, TO THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM, AND TO THE MEDIA AND POLITICAL PARTIES.”

women to say no to sex, childbirth, dating and marriage. Deckman cites South Korea and Europe as indicators that the new gender gap in politics is pervasive, deep and unlikely to abate soon. She says her surveys and focus groups also show that American Gen Z women were pulled leftward by protests organized in response to school shootings that started around 2018 and continued for several years, leading to widespread gun control activism. Before that, Deckman notes, in 2014, Black Lives Matter protests took off after high profile incidents involving police shootings of unarmed Black men. These, too, percolated until 2020, when

BLM street protests merged into the chaos surrounding the pandemic. Undergirding all of these events, Deckman adds, were concerns specific to women, including #MeToo, the heightened salience of abortion and the outsized presence of Donald Trump himself. Trump has become an ongoing bête noire for American women, argues Steven Greene, a political science professor at North Carolina State University who researches gender and politics. “I think Trump, almost more his persona than his policies, made American women feel that their status in society, the gains that they have made, are under threat,” Greene says. “Obviously part of that was abortion, but it goes beyond that. Look at the Women’s March in 2017 and the energy behind that.” FOR THEIR PART, young men are increasing-

ly skeptical about where the young women around them are heading politically. Evan Greene, a Democrat, is among those doubters. He is the 18-year-old son of Steven Greene and a student in his first year at North Carolina State University who plans to major in chemical engineering. He expresses measured skepticism about his party’s posture and messaging. “The Republicans are hammering on economics,” Evan says, “but the far left of the Democratic Party is always focused on gender issues.” These messages, he says, seem calculated to blame rather than to persuade. “You kind of get the idea that people don’t like straight white men.” But this frustration cuts across racial lines. If a male engineering student at an elite school feels ignored by political elites, it should be no surprise such sentiments intensified among young men of all races who are struggling with their future. “Young men who are college educated,” Deckman says, “tend to be doing a lot better, but really it’s the working class, disproportionately among young men of color, that haven’t really been able to be as successful, who’ve been more offended in lots of ways, and so this is a real problem.”

Many young men facing those higher hurdles become alienated and detached, well before they finish high school. Across the board, boys are simply less interested in college, says Richard Reeves, a Brookings Institution scholar and author of the 2022 book, “Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It.” “Skepticism about the value of college has grown more among men than women,” Reeves said. And even when young men get to college, Reeves notes, they are less likely to earn a degree, and the result increasingly is that boys and men have neighbors, siblings and spouses with different educational levels. “You can see it in my neighborhood,” says Steven Greene, the political science professor at North Carolina State, who is Evan Greene’s father. “Across the street was a woman who is a bank manager and her husband installed decks, and two houses up is a female social worker whose husband installs flooring.” “We need to find a balance in how we talk about gender without alienating men, especially men who are at an impressionable age,” he said. “A lot of what Republicans give is just this performative masculinity. And for somebody less experienced in the world, who is figuring out how to be a man, I can see that there’s an appeal there.” Steven Greene says he is watching his son’s political maturation with interest, but without meddling. Evan is the third of four children in the family, with the youngest, still in her early teens, being the only girl. “The sibling dynamics of politics are underexplored,” Greene said. “There have to be so many households where the 18-year-old son is drawn to right-wing masculine role models, and then his 16-year-old sister is a social justice warrior.” Looking at his neighbors, Steven does note that educational differences don’t necessarily lead to divergent politics. One of his blue-collar neighbors, he says, supported Bernie Sanders, the liberal Vermont

senator and one-time Democratic presidential contender. But right and left extremes in American politics can easily find common ground these days. In this case, there is a shared frustrated desire among men to support a family in the manner that their fathers or grandfathers once did. That’s the perspective of Michael Kimmel, an emeritus sociology and gender studies professor at Stony Brook University in New York and author of “Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era.” In previous generations, Kimmel says, men working in trades and crafts used to support families with their own income. That’s much harder now. “The U.S. median income of a family of four,” Kimmel

“THERE HAVE TO BE SO MANY HOUSEHOLDS WHERE THE 18-YEAR-OLD SON IS DRAWN TO RIGHT-WING MASCULINE ROLE MODELS, AND THEN HIS 16-YEAR-OLD SISTER IS A SOCIAL JUSTICE WARRIOR.”

tells me, “was exactly the same in 2023 as it was in 1973. But in those ensuing 50 years, of course, the big difference is that mom is working.” “The core of masculinity,” he says, “is that I’m supposed to put food on the table and protect my family. If I can’t provide for them, then protection may be a more interesting option. Maybe I’ll just buy a few more guns. We can’t provide. So we protect.” ASKED TO FORECAST the future, Deckman

expects the ideological gaps between Gen Z men and women will persist, especially given that the phenomenon now seems systemic in the world’s democracies. Young women, she says, now do seem to

care more about social justice and equality, while young men worry more about status and economic opportunity. After years of hovering on the fringes, Reeves says, the challenges facing men are getting attention. Starting this year, he has a new megaphone for his message, as president of the newly-established American Institute for Boys and Men. Seed funding for the project came in the form of a $20 million grant from Melinda Gates. It wasn’t just the infusion of cash that was important: it was also legitimation of the cause from a blue blood donor. AIBM ties its mission to some concerning statistics, such as the 71 percent of opioid deaths suffered by men, and the fact that men are four times more likely to attempt suicide. For decades, these distinctive male threats have been sidelined. The group’s initial focus is on research and dialogue, addressing five key areas of concern: mental health, education and skills, employment, the particular needs of Black boys and men, and fatherhood and family. The group hopes to tackle overlooked male challenges by taking unexpected angles. For instance, their employment arm is tackling underrepresentation of men in female-dominated fields, such as teaching, social work and psychology. “It’s still relatively early days,” Reeves told me. “I don’t want to overstate it, but I do think that this issue feels much more mainstream. I do think that in some places, like the U.K. and Norway, it is happening a little bit faster than it is in the U.S.” Reeves was thrilled this spring when the Norwegian Men’s Equality Commission issued what Reeves called “a comprehensive, factual, policy-rich manifesto for boys and men in a society committed to gender equality.” “Many boys and men do not feel that equality is about them, or exists for them,” the Norwegian report stated, arguing that greater concern for the challenges of men and boys “will strengthen equality policy, not weaken it.” DECEMBER 2024

LETTERS FROM THE FIELD

TAKE CARE THE SINGULAR HOSPITALITY OF HUTKEEPERS

BY L AU R E N STE E L E

s far as I could see, there was no place to rest. My husband, Sean, and I were venturing up to the unworldly Puez plateau, a vast, undulating altopiano rich in limestone but scarce in plant life. We had clambered onto this island in the sky from Brixen, the oldest town in the Tyrol region straddling Austria and Italy, passing the flanks of Sass de Putia (where, with some patience and binoculars, one can look upon a view of 449 church spires) and crossing over high passes where peaks teetered in the clouds and signs directed us in Italian, German and Ladin, with times estimating how long it would take us to get somewhere. The thing about “somewhere” in the mountains, though, is the feeling that you’re somewhere and nowhere all at once is nearly constant. Each col, cliffside and valley has a name and has been tramped across to the point where the path of least resistance is (albeit still quite resistant) human-made via switchbacks and passes. You’re also nowhere that feels particularly hospitable. Despite what the wildflowers and families of surefooted ungulates may communicate, other living things, like people, don’t flourish in terrain where rockfall, avalanches, substantial winds and long winters make the rules. Despite being absolutely out of 32

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my mind gawking at the beauty around and settling into the feeling of vertical feet passing beneath me, that truth was dog-eared in my mind as the sun began to set, the temperature began to drop, and we realized we had to figure out where to sleep in this bizarre world of limestone. “THIS PLACE IS MEANT FOR ANYONE WHO’S SEEKING REFUGE FROM THE ELEMENTS IN THE MOUNTAINS. THAT’S WHEN I STARTED TO ADOPT THAT STEWARDSHIP MENTALITY: I AM ALSO A VISITOR HERE IN THIS LINEAGE OF CARETAKERS.”

We puffed up a cable-aided stretch of via ferrata — Italian for “iron way,” these paths were built to aid the movement of alpine military units through the Dolomites during World War I — and peered into the steep canyon walls of Vallunga, sculpted by ancient vessels of ice, charting the courses of future travelers like us and carving canyons. Walls sheered away in each direction. Seemingly materializing through

twilight’s filter like a will-o’-the-wisp, a hut appeared, perched in a grassy field hanging above the depths. We bashfully let ourselves into the Rifugio Puez, barely removing our gloves and unshouldering our packs before a tall, blonde woman sat us at a table nestled in the wood-stove-warmed stube, or commons. Her name was Katrin. She is the wife of Costa Denis, the owner and operator of Rifugio Puez. She asked us if we could use a hot beverage. Could we ever. She came back with a mug of hot chocolate, and I would put money on it being the most luscious I’d ever had — like what I’d imagined as a kid when I read about cocoa as “thick and rich as melted chocolate bars” in “The Polar Express.” I was giddy. Costa Denis’ grandfather, renowned mountain guide Pietro Costa, began managing the rifugio (a mountain hut) in 1940, before passing it down to his children, Oscar and Gemma. Costa Denis grew up spending his summers there, and, when the time came, took over for Oscar and Gemma. Now, he, Katrin, and their two little girls, Emma and Lena, spend weeks on end tending to the place, first built in 1889 and roosted in the same mountains that inspired the legends of dragons and giants

B E LOW: T RAIL MARK E RS P OST ING T IME E ST IMAT E S — NOT DISTANC E S — TO DE ST INAT IONS AND H OT C H OCOL AT E , T WO P L E AS U RE S E NJOY E D BY T H OS E T RAV E RS ING ITALY ’S DOLOMIT E S .

ABOVE: AN UNMANNED BI VOUAC FOR EMERGENCY SHELTER PERCHED HI GH I N THE HANGI NG MEADOWS OF VAL CANZOI I N I TALY. RI GHT: RI FUGI O BOZ , WHERE ONE CAN SLEEP I N CONVERTED STABLES AND INDULGE I N LOCAL CHEESE.

PHOTOGR AP H Y BY S E A N RYA N

DECEMBER 2024

LETTERS FROM THE FIELD

HI G H-A LP IN E L I V I N G B E IN G E NJ OY E D BY THE AU T HO R IN ITA LY’ S D O LO M ITE R A N GE .

that generations of his ancestors have told. Far from Jeep tracks and cable cars, they have supplies flown in via helicopter or packed up the trails by foot. Basking in the glow of the stove, I watched as Costa and Katrin heaped steaming dumplings and apple strudel onto plates, washed dishes, carried firewood to the stove, pillows to bunkrooms, and water to the kitchen. How? I stared at the whipped cream piled in my mug. After any day spent walking or working sunup to sundown, things just taste good. But this little

hot chocolate was a panacea. An impossible treat made feasible in this place only by the hard work of the one who created it and the one who was lucky enough to enjoy it. As folks like Sean and I wandered in looking for a place to warm up, a place to sleep, and a bite to eat, only to flit away at dawn with our packs back on our shoulders to look for another place to awe, people like Costa and Katrin were here, watching the sun rise over Vallunga and keeping an eye on the small mountain lakes to ensure those mythic dragons didn’t rise out of the water. They remained. They knew so much more of these mountains than I ever would, and they gave me a place to rest in them. “REFUGE” PRESERVES ITS Latin root in both

the noun (refugium) and the verb (refugere) interpretations of the modern word, used to communicate both a literal shelter and the figurative sanctuary that we seek — symbolic language fit perfectly to the shape of the rifugios and refugios of the Dolomites and the Andes, the doms of Slovenia’s Julian Alps, the cabanes of Switzerland and France’s Alps, and the huts of the U.S.’s Rocky Mountains. Etymology has a helpful tendency to provide an anchor for the often-elusive ways in which words float around the feeling of what we’re trying to say. But simply, the refuge … is for taking refuge. Even for hutkeepers themselves. “It’s meant to be a shared refuge,” says Jeff Colt, who worked as the hutkeeper at the Carter Notch Hut in New Hampshire’s White Mountains and was caretaker at two of the range’s eight American Mountain Club-owned huts between 2011 and 2016. “As the hutkeeper, you are asked to take pride in the space. You’re asked to take care and upkeep it and make it hospitable so people feel welcome there. But at the end of the day, it’s not your space. That’s maybe the biggest lesson I learned through my time working in the huts. I have my own bed and I have my quarters, but this place is meant for anyone who’s seeking refuge from the elements in the mountains. That’s 34

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when I started to adopt that stewardship mentality: I am also a visitor here in this lineage of caretakers.” It’s a relatively small community, even globally speaking, of people who know what it means to steward a mountain hut. The AMC huts hire just 49 caretakers each season. Some huts in the Alps — like the Great St. Bernard Hospice in Switzerland, a 975-year-old hostel that serves as a stop on the ancient Via Francigena pilgrimage, running from the cathedral city of Canterbury in England to Rome and Apulia, Italy, to ports of embarkation for the Holy Land — are manned year-round. In the case of St. Bernard, four canons (the people, not the weapon) and one oblate reside in the monastery full time, welcoming skiers and religious pilgrims alike in the winter, keeping carafes of hot tea at the ready, waking guests each sunrise with Gregorian chants, and holding the keys to the treasure room and crypt — where it’s rumored that the bodies of weary winter travelers who didn’t survive the deep snow and frigid temperatures remain. The Opus Hut, which sits on an old mining claim between Telluride and Silverton, Colorado, is run by one man: Bob Kingsley. Legend has it he hasn’t owned a TV since 1987. He instead busies himself with the hut — filling gaps in the timber-framed cabin (which he built from reclaimed wood handed down from a dairy farm), maintaining the compost toilets, perfecting his chicken pot pie recipe and organizing the logistics of carrying between 8,000 and 9,000 pounds of winter supplies up to 11,600 feet from the valley floor. There’s a misconception about choosing a simpler, more deliberate way of life. The simple life is not easy. A job listing for the post of Yosemite Ostrander Ski hutkeeper puts it well: “Given this is a residential position, the work of the hutkeeper really is never done. The ideal candidate will take joy in connecting with overnight guests and helping create a convivial environment as part of the hut experience. This is a position for

someone who loves to ski and host people as well as clean and maintain a precious old building.” The typical morning for any given hutkeeper starts at 5:30 a.m. with the preparation of breakfast, followed by the serving of said breakfast and assisting travelers with their checkout and payments. Around 8 a.m., hutkeepers begin cleanup before finally enjoying a short breakfast and break for themselves. To finish off the morning, there’s more cleaning to do — the bunks, the bathrooms, the hearth room. After lunch, hutkeepers often spend the late-afternoon hours prepping bread, baking pies or cakes, prepping water and the kitchen, chopping wood, doing laundry, accounting and the all-important task of inventory. Then, dinner calls. Then, dishes. So many dishes. Hutkeepers save their dinner for last, savoring it a bit after the THERE’S A MISCONCEPTION ABOUT CHOOSING A SIMPLER, MORE DELIBERATE WAY OF LIFE. THE SIMPLE LIFE IS NOT EASY.

drying racks are full and guests are washing their faces or shuffling decks of cards. At some point, the accounting for the day is in the books, the kitchen is clean, bellies are full and it’s time for bed. One AMC caretaker once jokingly described the work as “the reverse 9-to-5.” Oh, but to keep alive the delight of that simple life. N E A R LY 1 0 0 M I L E S from Rifugio Puez, I

draped my jacket across the back of a wooden chair in the living area of another hut called Rifugio Boz, a converted farm where schiz, a fresh local cheese pan fried with cream, is often served at dinner and where we slept in stables that now serve as a bunkhouse. How many had hung their wet jackets up in this room before me, grateful for the roof overhead?

Behind us on winding trails were the huts we had called “home” for the night. Rifugio Mulaz, where a loving-but-dutiful border collie named Stella greeted guests as the sunset fired up the surrounding peaks in a red blaze of light, and Rifugio Treviso, a hut run for over 20 years by mountain guide Tullio Simoni, his wife Mara and their son Igor. After a late-day storm chased us down a grueling 5,700-foot descent — past the remains of a 1950s plane crash — Igor heard the squish in my shoes as we plodded onto the creaking wooden floors of the hut to ask if they had room for two more. Before guiding us to our bunks, he showed me to the hearth and strung a line above the stove for me to hang my socks. They were dry again before he doled out a second helping of minestrone and read the weather report for the next day from notes scrawled out on a piece of notepad paper: blue skies. “I’m pretty sure I’m a better friend, a better husband, a better lot of things because of my time in the huts,” reflects Colt. “And that’s not just because I learned that you should clean as you go and whatnot. It’s the pace of life and appreciation. It takes recognizing that you’re doing something for something much bigger than yourself to have that type of connection with a place.” Back home in the Wasatch Mountains of Utah, months after returning from the Dolomites, a cluster of brick-red stems and sharp purple petals clinging to the rocks lucky enough to have landed atop Mount Tuscarora caught my eye. I knew something looked familiar. They were alpine snowbells, the same wildflower that had dotted that impossibly green pasture that Rifugio Puez sits in. These flowers are one of the few with the ability to push through the snow and bloom before the thaw, thanks to an “antifreeze” carbohydrate its root system stores through the winter. Even in the harshest environment, it finds what it needs to blossom. I laugh to myself, recognizing that in some funny way, Katrin’s cocoa was my antifreeze nourishment that evening on the Puez Plateau, sustaining me in the mountains I, too, want to know. DECEMBER 2024

TRIAL

FIRE A CAR IS BURNING. A MAN IS TR APPED INSIDE. HIS ONLY HOPE RESTS WITH STR ANGERS WILLING TO RISK THEIR LIVES TO SAVE HIM.

BY ETHAN BAUER

DESERET MAGAZINE

PHOTOGRAPHY BY CAROLINE YANG

DECEMBER 2024

FIRST THERE IS FIRE, AND ONLY FIRE. EVERYTHING ELSE STANDS still.

The small red SUV, the man inside, the road around it — all freeze in place, save the orange glow and the whipping flames. Then come the people. They come running. Less quickly than you might expect, as if they’re pondering what can be done as they get closer. They tap the windows. They pull on the doors. The driver is stuck. The fire grows. They pull harder. The doors won’t budge. More people come now. Seven, eight. Nine or 10 if you count those in the background. Black and white. Men and women. Young and old — they pull together. They pull harder still. They make no progress. The fire grows. The attempted rescue unfolds in the palm of my hand, 38

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or anyone’s hand. It unfolds on my smartphone, and compared to the funny cats and cooking tutorials and clips from prestige TV, it’s impossible to scroll on. This video demands attention, as indicated by the astounding number of views. The rescue continues with an explosion. A torrent of fire smacks everyone backward, like the crack of an enormous whip. The fire is beyond their efforts now. It’s two stories tall. It consumes the driver’s side of the car. The man inside must be dead. If not now, then certainly soon. And yet, they keep coming back. If they don’t, the man is going to die. The flames are only getting bigger. Hotter. Nastier. The entire car could explode any second. Little pieces of it

are already detonating one by one. There are so many reasons not to run back. Another belch of flames only confirms it. They don’t know this man. They don’t have to help this man. Yet they do. Again and again and again. They manage to break a window, and now real progress begins. They hoist him out by his ankles. BANG! Another explosion crackles through the screen. This time, only a few rescuers back away. One stumbles out of the frame, but most stay in place, as fragments of metal and plastic and glass spray their ankles and feet, and the bottom of the car burns like hot coals. They bear it. They stand in the middle of it. They finally pull the man out, and four of them scurry

away with his body. They carry him out of view, while the car burns and burns, leaving only steel bones. I HADN’T BEEN able to get my

mind off the 59-second clip — shot in April 2024 along Interstate 94 near St. Paul, Minnesota — since I first saw it. By then it, or other edits of it, had been shared everywhere. One version attracted over eight million views on YouTube. CNN, TMZ, the New York Post, Fox News, the Daily Mail, the BBC, The Washington Post, ABC’s “Good Morning America” — they all picked up the story. It proved irresistible, tailored perfectly to quick-hit digital sensibilities, as well as the most universal, most pressing question humans can face: whether

the people in the frame will live or die. That made the footage gripping enough, but there was something else. At a time of intense national division, with politicians aggravating fault lines between race, national origin, gender and other identifiers, the video is striking because of the diverse array of people involved. The man in the car, it turns out, is a white, 71-year-old lawyer from Ohio, while the first man to arrive at his side is an Ethiopian immigrant who works at the post office. The other rescuers include a 32-year-old physical therapist with long, red hair; an older white man wearing sweatpants and thong flip-flops with white socks; and another young Ethiopian immigrant with a car that just

happens to have a camera running when he jumps out. I visited Minneapolis in September hoping to meet the people behind the viral video. I wanted to know, foremost, what kind of person does what they did. Coming from so many backgrounds, from so many places, I wondered what they shared that made them put so much at risk to save a stranger. Especially after I saw a lesser-known video of the incident, captured by a stationary Department of Transportation camera and from a completely different angle — one that revealed that while about 10 people did stop, dozens did not, the cars creeping by, their drivers and passengers rubbernecking but doing nothing to help. Why did some run toward the fire, while others watched?

SA M O R B OV I C H WAS O N T H E CUSP OF R E TI R E M E N T WHEN HIS CAR C A R E E N E D O FF I N T E R STATE 9 4 , N E A R ST. PAU L, M I N N E S OTA , A N D N E A R LY TO O K H I S LI FE .

DECEMBER 2024

MAN IN the car, the 71-year-old lawyer, has wavy white hair and thick black spectacles and plays in a band. His name is Sam Orbovich. He moved to Minnesota in 1982 when his wife, Cindy, accepted a job as a professor at Macalester College. As she rose through the ranks of academia, Sam practiced law with an emphasis on residential health care providers. He argued multiple cases before the Minnesota Supreme Court, and by the time of his accident, he’d been presented with two lifetime achievement awards. He also raised a family with Cindy — a son, Alex, and a daughter, Anna. About a year before his accident, he’d told his bosses at the largest law firm in Minnesota he was ready to THE

AT A TIME OF INTENSE NATIONAL DIVISION, WITH POLITICIANS AGGR AVATING FAULT LINES BETWEEN R ACE, NATIONAL ORIGIN, GENDER AND OTHER IDENTIFIERS, THE VIDEO IS STRIKING BECAUSE OF THE DIVERSE ARR AY OF PEOPLE INVOLVED.

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retire, inspired by a friend who emphasized the importance of having a next chapter in life. He had a grandson by then, too, and he wanted to spend time with him. But then a few major cases came up, and he felt guilty handing them off. So he stayed, no matter how much his inner voice urged him not to. One of the men who saved him, the Ethiopian immigrant with a car camera running, is Kadir Tolla, a 34-year-old entrepreneur who came to the U.S. in 2004, when he was 14. He fled a civil war that threatened every able-bodied adult. His father had already escaped with some of Kadir’s older siblings, first to Kenya, and later to Minneapolis. With Kadir approaching the age of warfare himself, his dad brought him along. He

spoke no English and struggled in school, but after about six months, he started to adjust. He started to make friends. He started to dream. After high school, Kadir moved to Memphis and started a trucking company, which allowed him to see more of the U.S. The tragic death of his nephew in a robbery-gone-wrong pulled him back to Minnesota, and to a woman he’d known since high school. He and Heaylan Omer married in 2022 and, together, started the Second Home Adult Day Center, an activity center for “functionally impaired adults.” His first child — a daughter named Mi’aa — was born last November. He’d given a lot of thought to how he wanted to raise Mi’aa; how he wanted her childhood to look different from his own. He never wanted her to fear violence as he had, nor did he want her to have to start over. He wanted stability. Everyone involved in Sam Orbovich’s rescue shares some version of this truth. They all have a lot to live for. They all have a lot at stake. Lacie Kramer, the redheaded 32-year-old, has her “dream job” at a physical therapy practice where she caters to young figure skaters — like the girl she once was — and a Pomeranian puppy named Ragnarok. Michael Coy, a 53-year-old UPS driver, has two kids close to Lacie’s age and endured a brutal divorce many years ago. He’d found his legs in Thailand, where he met a woman and remarried in 2017; he’s never been happier than with her. And Dave Klepaida, a state employee who played perhaps the largest role in saving

Sam Orbovich, is approaching retirement age himself — although who knows when he’ll go through with it. He’s spent his entire career — his entire life — around cars and engines, first as a gas station attendant; then in the towing business; and for the last 10 years on behalf of the state. He wouldn’t want to do anything else. Their unique interests and backstories converged on the evening of April 18, 2024, in the fiery flash of an instant. None of them had any time to think about what had gotten them there, or why they did what they did. They hadn’t had a chance to consider it yet. Except, maybe, for Sam himself. SAM SPENT THE morning work-

ing from home to visit with his sister, then dropped her off at the airport en route to his office to finish the workday there. Around 6 p.m., he texted Cindy, telling her he was about to head home. He fetched his CR-V from the valet in downtown Minneapolis, then started the same drive he takes every day. No one who saved him, however, was on their usual commute. Lacie, the physical therapist, was trying to make it to a friend’s continuing education presentation across town after work. Michael, the UPS driver, had just gotten into Minneapolis after a trucking trip, but because of a communications mix-up, he’d accidentally dropped his rig at the wrong facility; he, too, had to head across town before he could clock out. He was on his way there when he saw the fire.

KA D I R TO LLA , A N E TH I O PI A N I M M I G R A N T, WAS A M O N G TH E FI R ST TO R U N TOWA R D TH E FI R E . O PPOS I TE PAG E : KA D I R , H I S W I FE H E AYLA N O M E R A N D TH E I R DAU G H T E R M I ’AA .

DECEMBER 2024

“It shouldn’t have happened,” he said later. “I should not have been there.” He thinks about that a lot. Kadir was about to head home in his Tesla when he got a call from a client who needed after-hours assistance. He headed that way, toward Interstate 94. En route, he spotted a woman in a pickup truck stalled on the side of the road. He stopped and asked if she needed help. He’d made that a habit because of his time as a truck driver. He’d been stuck in ditches many times, and always got out thanks to the goodwill of strangers. In this case, the pickup truck wouldn’t budge. The woman told Kadir a tow truck was already on its way, but thanked him anyway. So he left, bound for Saint Paul, and I-94. He was approaching his exit when, up ahead and just out of view, Sam’s red Honda CR-V sailed into the right-most lane. As the asphalt curved left, the car continued straight and jumped the shoulder and the grass embankment, kicking up a trail of gray dirt and dust. It didn’t accelerate or swerve or flash emergency lights. Nor did its drift have an obvious cause, like another driver’s aggression or the telltale overcorrection of someone caught texting and driving. At a few seconds past 6:34 p.m., Sam Orbovich was encased by 3,500 pounds of metal and plastic and glass, hurtling toward a lamp post weighing hundreds if not thousands of pounds, at close to 70 miles per hour. And he wasn’t slowing down. Sam’s CR-V toppled the post like a fallen domino, but the 42

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damage to his car was severe. The collision crumpled the bumper and snipped the fuel line, leaving a trail of fire across the dry roadside grass. The driver’s side door was pushed up against a steel guardrail, blocking his potential escape. Gasoline trickled. The flames rose. A few feet up ahead, Tesfaye “Tes” Deyasso, the postal worker, parked his van on the shoulder and sprinted toward the wreckage. He was followed closely by Michael, whose 18-wheeler was now parked in the middle of the road. They found Sam hunched over the steering wheel, knocked unconscious. Tes tried pulling the doors open. He was able to crack them briefly, but the guardrail smacked them shut, like a bent playing card snapping back to form. Michael rushed toward the other side and opened the passenger-side door. He called out to Sam, and he was able to wake him. But Sam was still visibly dazed. He didn’t seem to recognize the urgency of the situation. At least not right away. Michael talked him into removing his seat belt, then told him to move toward his voice. On the other side of the car, Kadir parked his Tesla and joined Tes in prying at those doors with abandon. He placed his leg on the railing for leverage, less pulling than heaving. Lacie joined in, along with the older man wearing sweatpants and flip-flops with white socks who was never identified. He emptied a fire extinguisher on the car’s underbelly, hoping to slow the flames and their march toward Sam. It’s hard to

IN A DEADLY CATASTROPHE, THE HUMAN BR AIN CYCLES THROUGH A SERIES OF QUESTIONS: HOW URGENT IS THE PROBLEM? HOW BIG IS THE RISK? AND WHAT CAN I REALLY DO TO HELP? THE ANSWERS CAN BE MORE SUBJECTIVE THAN THEY SEEM.

L ACIE K R A ME R , A P HYSIC A L THE R A P IST, HE LP E D P ULL O R B OV I CH F R O M THE SHATTE R ED PASSE N G E R WIN D OW AND C AR RY HIM TO SA F ETY.

say whether it worked, but if it did, it wasn’t for long. About 50 seconds had passed, and the fire was growing. The heat had melted the soles of Michael’s shoes. “We have to break the window,” Lacie said, just as Kadir appeared with a piece of fiberglass debris and futilely slammed it against the glass, bloodying his hand. Explosions — from the tires and the radiator and the oil pan

— cracked the air every few seconds. Kadir began to suspect the worst — until Dave Klepaida pulled up in a reflective orange shirt and a Department of Transportation truck. As part of the state’s FIRST program, aka “Highway Helpers,” Dave’s job is to cruise the streets and keep traffic moving. That night, like the others, he technically wasn’t supposed to be in the area. It’s part of his

standard route, but he was only in that spot, at just past 6:34 p.m., because he was heading home an hour early. His experience had told him the smoke rising in the distance was probably a grass fire as he sauntered that way. Then he saw what really awaited. He activated his emergency lights and ran. For all 10 years with the state of Minnesota, Dave carried around a red device on his keychain called a “Resqme” — a window-punch that works like a finger prick at the doctor: You press the spring-loaded gadget to the glass, and it shoots out a small metal spike. Outside of training, he’d never had to use it before. And part of him wondered whether it might be too late. The fire had spread to the driver’s side, spewing from the hood, consuming the front tire and radiating from below. He punched out the back window on pure instinct and training, then the front, brushing away the shards of glass with his thick work gloves. Michael screamed from behind him, telling Sam to put his feet out the window. Sam’s ankles popped free, but with more oxygen pouring into the car, the fire grew even faster. Thick clouds of gray smoke rushed out all around him. Kadir grabbed Sam’s left ankle, and Michael grabbed his right. Just as they started to pull, another explosion detonated beneath the car. Sam, still dazed, wrapped his hands around the door frame. Lacie ran back in and told him to let go. With that, the force of the rescuers almost flung his body out. With Kadir and Tes DECEMBER 2024

M INNESOTA D EPART M ENT O F T RANSPO RTAT IO N

DAV E K LE PA IDA , A M I NN E SOTA D E PA R TM ENT O F T RA N SP O R TATIO N E M P LOY E E A N D O N E OF O R B OVIC H’ S R E SC UE R S , I N I T I A L LY THO UGHT HE WAS RUSHIN G TOWA R D T HE SM O K E A N D F LA MES O F A B R USH F IR E .

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grabbing a leg, and Michael and Lacie supporting Sam’s shoulders, they shuffled away from the flaming wreckage. Firefighters later estimated Sam had 10, maybe 15 more seconds before the point of no return. Perhaps they told him that at the scene, but if they did, he doesn’t remember it. He doesn’t remember much at all, including what caused the accident. But remarkably, aside from some singed hair and some scrapes on his back from the window glass, he was completely fine. Even his sport coat survived in good working condition. He was discharged from the hospital that very night, without so much as a tube of ointment. He got home still not knowing the extent of what he’d escaped.

He spent the night sorting through his smoky clothes and taking a long shower, followed by a trim of his sticky, burnt hair. He sent a few emails to family explaining what had happened, and he went to bed. The next day, he saw some still photographs of the accident on a community Facebook page. The gravity started to set in. Especially when his sister from Ohio reached out via email the following day. “Did you know there was a video?” she asked. “I don’t think you should watch it.” Sam, like so many others, clicked on it right away. IN HIS RUSH to help, Kadir had

left the door to his Tesla open. That triggered the car’s many cameras to start recording. He watched the footage alone the

next day, then decided to share it more widely, he told me in September. I met him outside a red brick building just a few blocks from where George Floyd was murdered. Wearing black loafers with sparkling crystals and a thick silver chain, he explained that he thinks Americans have an unfair reputation. “White kills Black, Black hates Asians, Asians hate immigrants — all this stuff,” he says. “But the actual Americans, if it wasn’t for social media, they help each other.” Mostly, at least. There’s also a version of the Tesla footage filmed from a different camera angle that he refuses to release. He says it depicts a man running toward the accident – then thinking better of it and running away. He doesn’t want that seconds-long snippet to get out and potentially ruin this man’s life, with so many Americans seemingly eager to jump into online pile-ons. But when he reviewed the rest of the footage of the car fire, he thought, “Let me share this good story, because I know it could change the way people look at this country.” His decision caused a digital monsoon. The video amassed hundreds of thousands of views on TikTok. The Twin Cities Fox affiliate reached out, asking to use the footage and to interview Kadir. By week’s end, it’d been shared by nearly every national outlet, and many international ones. Michael Coy saw it first on TikTok; then caught Kadir’s appearance on the local news; then flew to New York to appear on the “Tamron Hall” show. Dr. Phil reached out. Dave Klepaida

“WE DIDN’ T KNOW WHAT SAM’S COLOR WAS. WE DIDN’ T KNOW WHAT R ACE HE WAS. WE DIDN’ T KNOW IF HE WAS STR AIGHT. WE DIDN’ T KNOW WHERE HE WORKED. WE NEVER ASKED. THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERED TO US: THERE’S A PERSON IN THAT CAR WHO NEEDS TO BE SAVED.”

thankfully had a communications manager to handle the deluge at the Minnesota Department of Transportation. Sam Orbovich wanted nothing to do with the frenzy. For one thing, he was still traumatized. For another, after he’d watched the video his sister sent him, he felt like he wasn’t the story. The people who saved him — they should be the ones in the limelight. “I did not have an appreciation of how much danger I was in until I saw the video,” he says. “And when you see those folks get pushed back because the flames are erupting, and they keep coming back to the car — that’s incredible.” He drafted a statement and had his assistant send it to all the reporters. “I am alive today because several good Samaritans and professional first responders saved my life,” he wrote. “My family and I are incredibly grateful to these heroes.” But Sam didn’t want to slip into the shadows completely, either, as the letter made clear at the very end. “I look forward,” he wrote, “to thanking them all in person.” ALMOST A MONTH later, Sam

had identified six of his rescuers — Kadir, Michael, Lacie, Tes, Dave and Tessa Sand, a nurse who made sure he was safe once he was out of the car. On May 14, he invited the group to Nina’s, a chic coffee shop a few blocks from his condo in St. Paul’s Cathedral Hill neighborhood. He got the owners to keep the place open after hours, with catered coffee and pastries as well as pizza and halal food. The

purpose was mostly celebratory. To say thanks. Sam had come a long way, having gone to a few sessions with a trauma therapist and going so far as to crack jokes about what happened. “I’m glad you guys didn’t know I was a lawyer,” he said. Dave even gave Sam a special gift: the very Resqme tool he’d used to bust the window and free him. But beyond the pleasantries, Sam Orbovich was also curious about something. He wanted to know why they did what they did. The unsatisfactory answer is that they don’t know. Almost universally, they describe it as a reaction — whether something engrained genetically or the result of special training. It didn’t feel like a choice. That tracks with emerging research. Stephanie Preston, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan, told me that “heroic altruism” — the term academics use for acts of heroism that benefit strangers — is the result of a complex mental calculus taking place at a speed impossible to process in the moment. When the human brain sees a situation like Sam’s car accident, it cycles through a series of questions. Namely three big ones: How urgent is the problem? How big is the risk? And what can I really do to help? The answers can be more subjective than they seem. Urgency, her theory suggests, is deeply ingrained in humans by our mammalian biology. In her 2022 book, “The Altruistic Urge,” she proposes an “offspring care theory” — the idea that most mammal newborns, including humans, are born helpless and require intense DECEMBER 2024

“I’D LIKE TO THINK THAT I WOULD … BUT I DON’ T KNOW,” HE TOLD ME. “I COULDN’ T SAY IF IT ’S SOMETHING I WOULD DEFINITELY DO.”

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attention — to explain the roots of heroic altruism. From an evolutionary perspective, this has made us extraordinarily sensitive to situations that require immediate action. But heroic altruism is also “adaptive,” she says; our thinking can change given the particulars of a situation. Different people are going to assess risk differently. And some people are genetically predisposed to more confidence, to a belief that they can help, while others are more likely to act on their perceived limitations and do nothing. Considering these answers and other questions — Will I get fired if I don’t keep driving? Do I need to pick up my kids? Will I get seriously hurt? Is the driver still alive? — our brain spits out a binary, reactionary output: Yes or no. Right now. The ultimate decision of whether to act or not happens too fast to unpack at the time it’s made. It happens so fast, in fact, it’s hard to call it a decision at all. “We didn’t know what Sam’s color was,” Kadir says. “We didn’t know what race he was. We didn’t know if he was straight. We didn’t know where he worked. We never asked. The only thing that mattered to us: There’s a person in that car who needs to be saved.” Indeed, heroic altruism operates as more of a mental reflex. And it’s a reflex that isn’t exactly rare. Since its founding in 1904, the Carnegie Hero Fund has recognized over 10,000 people for risking “death or serious physical injury to an extraordinary degree while saving or attempting to save the life of another person.” But is acting to save a stranger,

then, something we can choose to do — or something predetermined by our cognitive makeup? Is that reflex something we can develop — or something we either have or don’t? Watching the video again — and again — after talking to Sam and the people who saved him, that’s the question I kept coming back to. What they did in the video is “remarkable,” Preston told me, because they just keep going back, explosion after explosion. No one would have faulted them for stopping, but they didn’t. And confronted with the evidence of the many people who didn’t stop to help, I wondered: Would I? FIVE MONTHS AFTER the acci-

dent, Sam Orbovich welcomed me into his condo in Cathedral Hill. Oil paintings hung on the wall. A humidified instrument case held his guitars and violins. He’d officially retired on June 7, less than two months after the accident that nearly killed him. Not because he wasn’t going to anyway, he insisted. Nearly dying was more of a final nudge. Since then, he’d spent a lot of time enjoying that next chapter he wanted. Traveling. Spending time with his 4-year-old grandson. But he’d also spent a lot of time thinking about that day. The video pops up randomly on social media — for everyone involved — and whether looking directly at it or not, Sam suffers the occasional flare of something like survivor’s guilt. “Any one of those people could have been seriously burned by those flames and had their life changed forever,” he said. “And so you’ve got that to cope with.” He’s done so

SAM ORB OV I C H E V E NT UALLY ME T WIT H H I S RE S C U E RS A N D T H ANK E D TH E M P E RS ONAL LY F OR SAV IN G H I S L IF E . H E K E E PS A P H OTO O F T H E GAT H E RIN G O N H IS P H ONE .

by taking up one more, less expected retirement hobby: He’s devoted himself to getting every possible recognition for the people who saved him. He sends applications on their behalf all over, including one to the Carnegie Hero Fund that’s still pending. He also stays in touch, writing email updates and learning about where they’re at. For the most part, the answer is back to normal. Michael Coy is back on the road for UPS, with plans to eventually retire to Thailand. Dave Klepaida is back on the road, too — a welcome reprieve from the initial tidal wave of interviews. Lacie Kramer is enjoying her dream job in physical therapy. And Kadir Tolla is working to grow his business and raise his daughter, who turned 1 in November. And remember that red brick building near where George Floyd was killed? He recently bought it. It’s a massive complex, housing a church and,

formerly, a school. He has big plans for renovations, including an expansion of his adult day care business and an event venue. He registered the property in Mi’aa’s name. All of them remain bonded by this accident of circumstance, and by something featured prominently in Sam’s living room. Amid the oil paintings and string instruments, perched on a shelf in a mahogany frame, sits a small and red item that would be puzzling if you didn’t know what you were looking at: the Resqme gifted to him by Dave Klepaida. “That’s what saved me,” he said, handing it to me. I asked him, finally, the question I’d been avoiding. If the roles were reversed, would Sam rush toward the flames to save a stranger? I suspected he’d say yes, without a doubt. How could he say anything else? Of course he’d pay it forward! Of course he’d face the fire! Of course! But Sam surprised me.

The night before his own accident, he told me, his sister was in town for a brief layover. He’d just picked her up from the airport when, not far from his home, he came across a brutal traffic accident. A lone car was flipped over, resting on its roof. It wasn’t on fire, and first responders had already arrived. So Sam kept driving. He doesn’t regret it; there really was nothing he could do. But it does make him wonder. What if there was something he could have done? “I’d like to think that I would … but I don’t know,” he told me. “I couldn’t say if it’s something I would definitely do.” No one really can. Not until it happens. And that — more than the fire or the drama or the diverse intersection of humanity — is what makes the video of Sam’s rescue so gripping. It’s a frightening realization; one that’s easy to dismiss at first. “I would absolutely help

him!” screams our conscience from the comfort of the couch. But the video evidence suggests it isn’t so simple. None of us know. Not even the man who would be dead otherwise. After I handed Sam back the framed Resqme that saved his life, he opened a drawer in the kitchen, pulled out a little plastic bag with a little plastic device inside, and handed it to me — my own Gatorade-green Resqme. T hey’ve become his go-to gift for family and friends. He carries one everywhere himself. As I left Sam’s condo, I thumbed over the plastic, a powerful reminder in my jacket pocket. None of us know how we’ll react when faced with a moment of need — a car fire, a slip-and-fall, a child swept away by a strong current. Until the moment comes, the best we can do — the only thing we can do — is be prepared. And then choose. DECEMBER 2024

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A TASTE OF HOME EIGHTY YEARS AGO, IN A NAZI POW CAMP,

AMERICAN SOLDIER THAT SENT

THE HOLIDAY SPIRIT RIPPLING ACROSS GENERATIONS BY Ethan Bauer ILLUSTRATION BY Mark Smith

PHOTOGRAPHY BY Laura Seitz

DECEMBER 2024

ARCIA PLOTHOW WAS YOUNG THEN, WHEN HER FATHER FIRST TOLD THE STORY.

So young that she can’t remember the first time, exactly, because she can’t remember a time before she’d heard it; a time before her father would visit her and her brother at bedtime, especially with Christmas approaching, and they’d beg him and beg him to tell it again. It didn’t matter where they were — Florida, Nebraska, maybe Indiana; as a military family, no place was ever home for long. Yet, when her father’s bright eyes met theirs and he began to paint the scenes and people, home was never too far away. Dad rarely started the story in the same place. He jumped around, depending on what themes he wanted to emphasize. How he wanted to shape the family lore. Sometimes he might include certain supporting details from early on, like the fact that he grew up poor in rural Idaho, where fudge and other sweets treats were a luxury. Or maybe, on a night when he was especially tired, he’d start near the end, with Christmas 1944 — 80 years ago this month. But often he’d start at the beginning, when a letter arrived at his family’s home in Salt Lake City. It was the summer of 1942. Talk of invasions and troop movements filled the barbershops and Latter-day Saint meetinghouses in the wake of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor and America’s entrance into World War II. Wendell B. “Mike” Terry, as Dad was then known, talked about rumors 50

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of war plenty himself, but more than war, he talked about Beverly “Bev” Dodge. They’d been together since 1941, when they met at a skating rink. She’d ignored him until she couldn’t anymore. “Do I know you?” she finally asked. “No,” he said with a smirk, “but you’d sure like to.” By Thanksgiving they were a couple. After Pearl Harbor came the letter. In January 1943, it read, he was to report for basic training at an Army base in New Jersey. Mike Terry was going to war. The next six months on the East Coast taught him a lot about what he didn’t want. He didn’t want to be an infantryman. And he didn’t want to be a low-ranking grunt. He decided to pursue the Army Air Force, as an officer and a pilot. The pay and benefits were much better that way. He knew he wanted to marry Bev, and his chosen track would allow her to live with him until he was sent overseas. Pilot training was notoriously challenging, and many flunked out, but Terry steeled himself against failure with a lesson he traced to a Sunday School teacher, Sister Duckworth. “When it’s too hard for everyone else,” he liked to repeat, “it’s just right for me.” He graduated from flight school on January 7, 1944, almost exactly a year after his military service began, as a second lieutenant. Given about a week of leave, he needed to be on a train for Florida by January 16, which gave him just enough time to stop in Utah, marry Bev and bring her with him.

P RIS ON C AMP P H OTOS OF M I K E T E RRY, TAK E N S H ORT LY A FT E R H I S C AP T U RE BY GE RMAN S OLD I E R S I N AU GU ST 1 9 44. OP P OS IT E PAGE : A PAGE FR O M M I K E T E RRY ’S P RIS ON C AMP JO U R N A L, INC LU DING AN IL LU ST RAT I O N A N D ONE OF T H E P OE MS H E CO M POS E D.

The wedding had been planned in his absence, but some missing paperwork made him late, arriving in Salt Lake City just seven hours before the couple was scheduled to be married in the Salt Lake Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He was about to be sent into a war where 40 Allied planes were getting shot down every day, so getting sealed to Bev for eternity, he felt, was essential. The next afternoon, they left for Florida. Once they arrived, Terry trained on the coveted B-17 “flying fortress” — a four-engine heavy bomber that required a crew of 10, mostly to man the machine guns designed to protect it from fighter attacks. As pilot and leader of the crew, which stayed together and trained on the exact same plane it would use in combat, Terry was supposed to be the last man out if the B-17 ever went down. Many crews decorated their planes with colorful nicknames and graphics, but not Terry. His plane had no pictures and just three letters beneath the cockpit: BEV. IN JULY OF 1944, Terry’s crew finished training and received its assignment: 8th Army Air Force, 1st Division, 305th Bombardment Group, with a home base in the British Isles. He said goodbye to Bev, who they were pretty sure was pregnant. She took a train back to Salt Lake City, while he flew his B-17 some 4,000 miles to a base north of London. His first assignment was quick — a 200-mile run into occupied Germany, near the Netherlands. He was told, however, that he needed to be tight and precise; the Germans could recognize which pilots were new, and that would make him and his crew targets. The crew dodged enemy fire, dropped its bombs and returned to base safely. His next mission began on the morning of August 13. It had been about two months since D-Day, and the Allied troops were making progress in France. The Germans were trying to retreat and regroup. Terry’s task was getting behind enemy lines to bomb roads and bridges and limit the Nazi escape. This was a complex operation,

with about 1,300 bombers and 131 fighters pair of machine gun barrels on his plane, involved. The weather was lousy, so the and plummeting toward the French counplanes had to climb to about 23,000 feet tryside below. and rendezvous above the clouds before He opened his parachute a mile up in beginning their assault. As the first planes the sky, Germans shooting at him from arrived high in the sky, they circled and cir- down below. Their bullets missed, but he cled in formation, hit the ground hard, TERRY BANKED RIGHT, BUT IT WAS waiting for the othsmacking his head ers, the whole sky and getting knocked TOO LATE. THE PLANE ENTERED A DOWNWARD, alive with deadly near unconscious. LEFTWARD SPIRAL, WHAT REMAINED weapons. When he managed OF THE WING CONSUMED BY FLAMES. Their approach to stand, he found revealed the green French coastline — and himself a few feet away from German SS something else. Puffs of black smoke. The troops, with the signature skull and crosshallmark of anti-aircraft fire. These muni- bones on their military caps. tions would explode at varying, preset altiThey’d also captured his bombardier tudes, sending shrapnel spraying in every and took both Americans to a French direction. From Terry’s spot behind the lead chateau-turned-command-center, where planes, he could only see the puffs as he they interrogated them and then, rather cruised through the sunshine; in the rel- than offering a spot in the chateau, sent ative calm of his cockpit, he couldn’t yet them to sleep in a car along with armed hear or feel their explosive energy. But as guards. Squeezing each other’s arms with he drifted in the direction of the artillery, Morse code, the Americans hatched an eshe knew that peaceful feeling wouldn’t last. cape plan. The Germans planned to sleep Soon BEV bumped and rattled and in shifts, so Terry and his fellow airman creaked as the munitions boomed all would pretend to fall asleep. Knowing their around. Terry managed to reach his target German guard would be exhausted, they and drop his bombs, but right as he did, figured pretending to sleep would bait him he heard the voice of his tail gunner. “Sir!” he said. “They’re tracking us!” Terry looked back and saw a trail of black puffs moving in their direction. Terry banked right, but it was too late. A shell detonated near the top of the left wing, tearing off a large piece that included an engine. The plane entered a downward, leftward spiral, what remained of the wing consumed by flames. Terry ordered the crew of nine others to bail and did what he could to slow the death spiral. He managed to get everyone out, by parachute, until he was the only one who remained. What happened next, he wasn’t sure. He remembered the door was jammed, and the fuel tank was about to blow. He remembered thinking about Sister Duckworth, and her insistence that he embrace hard things. He remembered saying a prayer. And he remembered the stunning force of, somehow, getting sucked into the open sky, whizzing past a DECEMBER 2024

into falling asleep, too. Then, they’d run. AS CHRISTMAS APPROACHED, Terry The bombardier escaped first, and Terry had spent close to four months at Stalag Luft joined him after waiting five minutes, but I. The days got shorter and colder. Coal rahe was too noisy. The car’s shifting springs tions had run out, so Terry and his fellow woke the guards, and they pursued and re- prisoners had to burn twigs and other debris captured Terry. to keep warm. Sometimes they sang carols, As punishment, his German captors or told stories about their families. Somebeat him until his eyes were so bloody times they huddled together for warmth. and swollen that when he woke, his wrists On Christmas morning, the camp’s tied to a sturdy tree branch, he feared he’d commander ordered everyone outside for gone blind. He eventually managed to a surprise. They’d received a shipment, wipe away enough he told the prisonTHE RED CROSS CARE PACKAGE blood to see, but ers, of Red Cross he was in such bad care packages. The CONTAINED POWDERED MILK, A shape that the Germen cheered. BriefPACKET OF SUGAR AND TWO SQUARES mans decided they ly. There weren’t OF CHOCOLATE — ALL POTENTIAL INGREDIENTS TO needed to find a enough packages MAKE SOMETHING LIKE CHOCOLATE FUDGE. Red Cross medic. for everyone, the Terry was eventually taken to Stalag Luft commander continued, so he planned to I, a Nazi POW camp in north-central Ger- raffle them off to two men per barrack — many near the Baltic Sea that was predict- meaning the odds of any one man winning ably frigid in winter. He was assigned to were about 125-to-1. Terry was that one. a wood-plank barrack and an 18-by-24-foot The package contained some basic toiroom with 23 other men. They slept on letries — tooth powder and pencils and straw mattresses, without insulation, and gloves. It also contained a journal, which had a small fireplace for heat. Guards ra- Terry would use to document his memotioned them one lump of coal per day. Food ries and musings. But most importantly, it was rationed even more closely. Prisoners contained a can of powdered milk, a packet got 4.5 ounces of meat — less than half of a typical ribeye steak — per week, with similarly miniscule amounts of dried vegetables, cheese and bread. The only exception was potatoes; each prisoner got 16 tuberous ounces per day. They showered once a month. And some unlucky souls got to experience all that misery while also getting letters from home calling them cowards for getting captured. “Dear son,” read one letter recorded in Terry’s journal, though thankfully not addressed to him. “I’m sorry you got the sweater I knitted. I made it for a fighting man.” Back home, Bev learned her husband was alive via a flurry of postcards from ham radio operators across the country. They’d picked up a POW message for her from the Berlin short-wave station. “My darling wife,” her husband had said, “just a word to let you know I am well and all right.”

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of sugar and two squares of chocolate — all potential ingredients, Terry discerned in the moment, to make something like chocolate fudge. He hadn’t tasted anything sweet in half a year. He figured this small gift to himself would be the closest he’d get to experiencing the Christmas he pined for. At least until another idea occurred to him. He poured the powdered milk into a saucepan and mixed it with water. Then he flattened the can, folded up the edges and crimped them shut as best he could — a makeshift baking dish. He added the chocolate and the sugar to the saucepan, stirred, and watched it bubble atop a fire built into the dirt floor. When it was mixed and melted, he transferred it to the baking dish to cool. Silent, intense stares from his cellblock mates pierced the chilly air. So did a joyful melancholy, as the smell of chocolate interrupted all the other unspeakable smells. When the fudge cooled, Terry carefully sliced it into 24 individual pieces. He later told his family that he was inspired by Jesus Christ’s example; that if Jesus were there instead of him, that’s what he would do. He’d share. The baking dish was palm-sized, and each piece was no bigger than a fingernail.

M AR C IA P LOTHOW, WHO GREW UP HE AR IN G STO R IE S OF HER FATHER’S T I M E AS A P R ISO N E R OF WAR D UR IN G WO R L D WA R I I , NOW LI VES I N P L E ASA N T GR OVE, UTAH. O P P OSITE PAG E : P LOTHOW STI LL HAS SE VE R A L O F HER FATHER’S P OSSE SSIO N S F R O M HI S TI ME AS A PR ISO N E R O F WA R, I NCLUDI NG HI S JO UR N A L A N D THE FLATTENED M I LK C A N HE USE D AS A FUDGEB A K IN G D ISH.

With the tide having turned against the Germans, the Russians, rumor had it, were feeling vengeful. And they were getting so close that, on May 1, the German guards fled and the prisoners were left to wait for the Russians to arrive. Terry spent the in-between visiting the Baltic Sea. He had seen it from camp; it was just a few miles away but always felt so far. Now, with Russian machine gun fire roaring in the distance and getting ever closer, he figured this would be his only chance. On the way, German civilians begged him to take their daughters so that the Russians wouldn’t assault them, or worse. On the shores, he found an entire family — a mother, grandmother and three children — shot dead. There were no signs of a struggle. As if they’d come to look at the water one last time, then died willingly. He finally arrived home in the summer of 1945, almost four years since he and Bev began their courtship. For the first time, he A sudden anticipation swept through the met Marcia, his 4-month-old daughter. And 18-by-24-foot cell nonetheless. for the rest of his life, right up until he died “Merry Christmas,” Terry told his fellow at the age of 63 in 1987, he told her about the prisoners, and handed out the pieces. war. Most of all about the fudge, and how the The other inmates savored the moment in act of eating it — and sharing it — brought different ways. Some of them ate the whole him that much closer to her. To home. little square in one bite. Others licked it, saMarcia is 79 now, having spent decades voring every granule of sugar. Terry, mean- with Utah’s Alpine School District and rewhile, made his own piece last as long as he tired in Pleasant Grove. Throughout those could, taking one little birdie nibble once a decades, she kept the flame of her dad’s day for three days, unstory alive by telling TERRY AND HIS FELLOW PRISONERS til it was all gone. it to her students, and HAD TO BURN TWIGS AND to former Latter-day STALAG LUFT I OTHER DEBRIS TO KEEP WARM. Saint general authorwouldn’t be liberated SOMETIMES THEY SANG CAROLS, ity and author Gerald until May. Germany OR TOLD STORIES ABOUT THEIR FAMILIES. N. Lund, who pubwas on the verge of lished a book about it losing the war by then, and the prisoners in 2017. Most of all, though, she continues to knew it. It was just a matter of whether the share the story with her dad’s descendants, Russians or the Americans would reach of which there are nowadays too many for them first. The American POWs wanted the her to count. Just as she had begged and Americans to arrive first for obvious reasons, begged him, these days, they beg her. Espebut they’d also heard vicious rumors about cially when her telling comes with props: her the Soviet troops and the Eastern Front, dad’s journal and the original baking tray. where fighting was so bitter and brutal that When the story is finished, she tucks both it accounted for more casualties than all the into a box in her closet, where they can rest other theaters of World War II combined. out of sight until next Christmas. DECEMBER 2024

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MINERS IN WHAT WAS ONCE THE NATION’S MOST PRODUCTIVE SWATH OF COAL COUNTRY BRACE FOR THE FINISH

BY Natalia Galicza

PHOTOGRAPHY BY Spenser Heaps

DECEMBER 2024

t u r n - o f - s e a s o n b r e e z e blows in through the screen door as Mark Thatcher sits across from his wife Verna in their home in Kemmerer, Wyoming. The two are in their respective reclining chairs, discussing the incoming development of a nuclear plant along Highway 189, six miles away. Mark sinks deeper into his seat. His mind begins to wander a few miles down the street from the subject at hand, to the coal-burning Naughton Power Plant and Kemmerer coal mine where he worked for more than half his life. It’s how he paid for this house. It’s how he paid for kids to go to soccer practice and unwrap brand-new Barbie dolls on Christmas. Now, it’s why he and the other 2,500 people in Kemmerer have to reinvent themselves after more than a century of fueling a sense of identity, an economy and a country with coal. Five months earlier, on April Fools’ Day, PacifiCorp announced its plan to convert the remaining two of Naughton Power a

I N 18 43, E X P LO R E R JO HN C . F R E M O N T F O UN D COAL N E AR WHAT WO ULD B ECOME T HE TOW N O F K E MME RER, WYO MIN G . THE F IR ST MI NE O P E NE D IN 1 881 , A N D COAL’S B E EN A PA R T O F THIS CO M MUN ITY E VE R SIN CE.

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Plant’s three units to natural gas in just two years. This energy transition will be the plant’s swan song before it closes completely in 2036. When it does, the fate of the last operating coal mine in Kemmerer will hang in the balance. So, too, will the fates of the hundreds of miners who still work there. “Imagine the two biggest employers in your community going away,” says Brian Muir, Kemmerer City administrator, who was hired in 2019 to help Kemmerer survive the eventual closure of its coal operations. “Our backs are against the wall here. ... We need something.” Renewable energy use surpassed coal consumption for the first time in more than a century last year, when it hit a low unseen since 1900. It’s continued to decrease over the last couple of decades — even in coal-friendly Wyoming, which produces more coal than any other state by a long shot, some 41 percent of the nation’s total, compared to West

Virginia’s 14 percent. In May, the Bureau of Land Management proposed ending future coal leasing for the Powder River Basin in the northeastern half of the state, the most productive coal region in the country. That news alone is widely seen as the biggest step toward the end of the American coal mining industry altogether. President-elect Donald Trump, who promised to bring back “beautiful, clean coal” in his 2020 campaign, touted oil and gas exploration at his 2024 rallies. So it’s not clear whether his new administration will attempt to slow the pace of mine closures or challenge the push against new federal coal leases, if anything. In most other corners of the country, mine closures might be celebrated as a march toward progress, a move in direct compliance with federal mandates to cut carbon emissions and curtail the effects of global warming before it’s too late. But in communities like Kemmerer, it’s also an

existential threat. Beyond these fiscal casualties, coal has come to define a way of life, especially for the miners of Wyoming. As the mines shut down, it’s not a matter of if these people will survive, but a question of how. America is moving on. And they will have to, too. Currently, there are fewer than 40,000 people working in the American coal industry. Yet nearly 15 million people — about 5 percent of the country’s population — live in communities that depend on the industry for their local economies, tax revenues and property values. Last year, coal exports brought the country $5 billion in revenue. Overall, the industry generates $27.6 billion annually, although that number pales in comparison to the more than $41 billion it brought in each year a decade ago. Yet, an argument could be made that America needs more coal. Last year, coal generated 16 percent of electricity nationwide, about half as much as a decade prior.

Federal projections estimate that share will get halved again by 2050. This is happening at a time in which America’s demand for power is outpacing supply. And it will get worse. A growing need for electricity, from the rise of electric vehicles to data centers for artificial intelligence, is poised to place an unprecedented pressure on the country’s energy infrastructure. Output will need to double within the next five years to accommodate an energy surge equivalent to adding another state of California to the nation’s power grid. Phasing out coal in the midst of this crisis has placed the country at a crossroads; a majority of Americans support prioritizing renewable energy development, yet less than half feel the nation is ready to phase out fossil fuels like coal completely. Solutions, including Kemmerer’s bet on the nuclear plant that just broke ground in June, aren’t producing enough power right now to pick up the slack. The project by DECEMBER 2024

MARK THATCHER, A F ORME R COAL MINE R, B E GAN WORK ING IN T H E MINE S AT AGE 19, AND RET IRE D IN 2 01 8 , AF T E R NE ARLY 5 0 Y E ARS OF WORK .

TerraPower, an energy company owned by Microsoft’s Bill Gates, is just one of the 34 new nuclear plants that the country will need within the next five years to keep up with the pace of power demand. If it’s successful, it will prompt at least five more TerraPower nuclear plants across Wyoming and Utah. “We’re trying to find other alternatives,” Muir says. “We were one of the first communities scheduled to be shut down. And still are.” Mark listens in his living room lounger as Verna offers her own speculations. “It’s gonna get nuts,” she says. “We’re the guinea pigs.”

efore the advent of alternative en-

ergy production, before most of the world arrived at a consensus that burning fossil fuels shoulders most of the blame for a worsening climate, coal mining was a profession viewed with pride. Miners, whether above ground or below, powered the country. Mark Thatcher knew this at 58

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19, when he began work at the now-defunct Price River Coal mine in Helper, Utah, a mere two days after his wedding with Verna in 1976. He was barely an adult when he started. Though, it’s there in the cold, cavernous belly of the planet, that he felt he truly came of age. His team mostly consisted of Vietnam veterans newly returned from what was then the first and only televised war in American history. He felt fascinated by these men, most 10 to 20 years his senior, who had left one kind of darkness for another. Though he avoided asking many questions about their time overseas. They weren’t talkative, nor did the life-and-death conditions of the work that joined them lend much time for conversation. Yet they still communicated, their bodies moving in concert under uncertain earth. They relied on one another. If a roof bolter did not secure the overhead safety jacks, the roof would cave in and bury the miners alive. If

HE HAD HIS FINGER, STAINED BLACK BY COAL DUST AND GRIME, ON THE PULSE OF THE REST OF THE WORLD.

a fire boss did not inspect the mine for gases like methane, an explosion would erupt and incinerate the crew in moments. “You learn to be interdependent and trust people,” Mark says. “That’s formative.” Over nine years, he moved through the ranks: laborer, roof bolter, gas watchman, fire boss, section boss. When he got laid off, he found work at another mine in Rock Springs, Wyoming, and lived in a motel near the mine, driving hours home to Price every weekend to see Verna and their four kids. Eventually, he found an advertisement in the Big Nickel classifieds for a job in Kemmerer. They all moved in 1988 for Mark to begin work at the mine. “We used everything we had to stay afloat, and when we moved up here, we moved up here on nothing. Had to borrow money to get the lights turned on,” he says. “We were both just starting out in our 30s with four kids, and, well, off we went.” He was the first new hire in six years, a lucky standout to secure a job as an electrician amid mass layoffs that had resulted in more than 70 cuts. It was a job he had done before, in an industry he’d grown accustomed to, in a state just over the border from Utah. The town in many ways mirrored his hometown, yet everything about the work felt different. The equipment was far larger, monstrosities of machinery capable of processing thousands of tons of coal every hour. Mark worked surrounded by seams of coal 20 feet thick and exposed to the elements. He suffered blistering sunburns in the summer and risked frostbite in the winter. Yet somehow, the grueling labor carried with it a certain awe and mysticism. There’s the wonder of witnessing a prehistoric timeline each day, a secret world dug beneath the present one that’s hundreds of millions of years old. But most of all, there’s pride. He and his co-workers were responsible for producing the power the rest of the country depended on. Wyoming has been the top coal-producing state for almost four decades, but most of that energy goes elsewhere. According to

the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the state produces 12 times more energy than it consumes. At the time of Mark’s career in Kemmerer, coal fueled more than 50 percent of all the electricity generated nationwide. He was a single degree of separation from the heating systems that prevented ranching families in Montana from freezing in their own homes during brutal winters; from the subway system in New York City that bridged millions of commuters day after day; from the television sets aglow in Oklahoma suburbs at 7 p.m. like holiday lights, transmitting the news and the sitcoms that follow. He had his finger, stained black by coal dust and grime, on the pulse of the rest of the world. All while remaining nameless and living in a rural town most Americans have never heard of. “That was life,” he says. “Ninety percent of the time I had the best job at the mine, and 10 percent was the worst.” He only retired in 2018 at the age of 61 when he discovered a tumor on his adrenal gland. Otherwise he would have kept working. “Wyoming has this culture of fossil fuel production, a pride around powering the nation, because we export so much of our energy,” says Robert Godby, an associate professor at the University of Wyoming who researches energy and environmental economics. But the energy industry has changed. “Suddenly, not only are they seeing their livelihoods threatened, but at the same time, they’re being demonized by certain sections of society for being the people who are killing the planet,” Godby says. “They didn’t choose to kill the planet. They’re just trying to make a living like everybody else.”

K E MME RE R IS H OME TO ONLY A F E W T H OU SAN D P E OP L E , B U T T H E E NT I R E RE GION IS RE T H INK ING I TS IDE NT IT Y AND E CONOM Y AS COAL MINE S AND P L AN TS ARE DE COMMISS IONE D.

to reduce the environmental impact of fossil fuel extraction first rolled out en masse in the 1970s, as the negative, long-term health and environmental consequences of coal mining became irrefutable. Streams choked by loose sediment and sulfuric acid, altered topography and oxide-stained e fo r m s a n d r eg u l at i o n s

DECEMBER 2024

LYNN E HU S KINS O N/E CO FLI GHT

WHATEVER PRIDE ONCE SEEMED SYNONYMOUS WITH COAL MINING HAS NOW WITHERED AWAY TO SHAME.

rock, destroyed natural habitats, acid rain and carcinogenic ash carried downwind to communities all became matters of public knowledge and concern. Americans everywhere expressed outrage. Even oil companies like Exxon internally acknowledged a need to divest from coal for the first time. Though that decade-defining awareness took far longer to reach Lynne Huskinson and the rest of Gillette, Wyoming. Huskinson began working as a truck driver at the Belle Ayr open-pit coal mine in 1979, the year after the Wyoming Constitution was changed to allow women miners. It wasn’t a dream job by any means, but the promise of a high-paying salary for a 19-year-old without a college degree felt too good to pass up. She spent 39 years there, working her way up to a technician operating electric shovels and wheel loaders capable of hauling hundreds of tons of earth. As the years passed she became more worried about the negative environmental impact of coal mining. It was only after Huskinson and hundreds of her co-workers got laid off in 2019 that she had enough time to really think about how she

WYO M IN G P R ODUCES THE MOST COAL I N THE COU NT RY. MANY TOP - P RODU C ING M IN E S A R E OPEN PI TS, WHI CH HAVE BEEN PROV E N TO CONTAMINAT E WAT E R SO UR C ES AND EXACERBATE WATER SCARCIT Y ISS U E S IN T H E WE ST.

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felt about coal mining, which eventually led to anger, and then action. She joined the Powder River Basin Resource Council and the Western Organization of Resource Councils, environmental organizations that advocate against coal mine expansion in the Powder River Basin. They successfully pushed the Bureau of Land Management to end federal coal leasing in the region earlier this year. Huskinson now occupies a unique place — that of a former miner who advocates against the industry. On one hand, there’s the knowledge that mines in Wyoming produce more carbon dioxide pollution than anywhere else in the country. On the other hand, they are the lifeblood of the local economy. The Wyoming Mining Association reported last year that coal miners make an average of $94,807, not including benefits. Their take-home pay is twice the statewide average. “It’s just been such a constant, available work,” Huskinson says. “I started when I was 19. I retired when I was 60. But in my 50s, I was embarrassed to tell people I was a coal miner.” She believes in the need for an energy transition, but she also fears her economy will capsize if coal mines close without any plans in place to replace those jobs. No matter what happens, she feels like Wyoming will be losing something. And it’s not just jobs. State taxes on minerals run the government, fund schools, build highways and maintain waterways. When coal output slowed in the past and that cash flow ceased, the government proposed slashing statewide programs for the elderly, poor, incarcerated and mentally ill. Schools lost hundreds of millions of dollars in possible funding. Small towns had to consider opting out of sewer maintenance. Huskinson ran for the Wyoming House of Representatives in 2020 on a campaign to disincentivize fossil fuels and rethink the state’s tax structure, to change the economic scaffolding that makes an energy transition so tricky in Wyoming, but she lost. And half expected to. “We’re getting closer to the end of coal. I would have said the same thing

“OUR BACKS ARE AGAINST THE WALL. ... WE NEED SOMETHING.”

five years ago,” she says. “I’m not afraid to be against what everybody else is, but it’s not a popular opinion where I live.” Unlike Gillette, Kemmerer is at least attempting to prepare for an energy transition. Huskinson looks to the tiny speck of town more than 400 miles away from hers as a source of inspiration. Maybe it will offer an example of how local economies can transition in the wake of national change. Or maybe it will serve as a warning. “If you live in Kemmerer, you just want to see some revenue. It’s anything to keep the town at this point,” she says. “I don’t know how you could be a coal miner and not be worried it could just all fall apart.”

part from the environmental con-

sequences at the heart of the energy transition, coal is also a finite resource. Recoverable coal reserves across producing mines nationwide are expected to run out within the next two decades. That leaves little time to balance the economic, social and political complications of finding its replacement, and those attempts are only beginning to take shape in some Western and Appalachian states. Even then, not everyone has given up on coal. Cliff Green only joined the industry five years ago. The 48-year-old drives his white Chevrolet pickup 140 miles every day for work, a little more than an hour from his home in Green River to the Kemmerer mine and back. He sees no end to coal in sight. In his mind, it’s been a reliable fuel source for more than a century and doesn’t see that changing any time soon. Electric grids will still operate on fossil fuels. Electric cars will still be bought off the lots of dealerships across the nation. Life will go on, as we know it. “A lot of people drive electric cars and want

to get rid of coal, but still want to have an electric car because fossil fuels are bad,” he says. “But where do they get the stuff to make batteries? Out of the ground. Mining.” Yet the job market doesn’t seem to have the same confidence in coal’s longevity. Before Kemmerer, Green worked at Black Butte, another mine in southern Wyoming. He’d been making more money than he ever did as a commercial heavy equipment mechanic, 11 more dollars every hour for the same job title. Neither of his parents had been miners. He had no connection to the industry and no inside knowledge of its decline. So when Green got handed a pink slip announcing his layoff a few weeks before Christmas, he felt blindsided. “They never gave us any indication at all,” he says. “Monday morning we came in, they called us up to the top of the trim and said, ‘Well, we got some bad news. We’re laying you off.’ That was the only warning we got. It wasn’t real comfortable.” There were not many other options after that. The mine in Kemmerer offered the same pay range for the same responsibilities, and it meant he’d get back to work less than a year after his layoff, so Green figured it was worth the commute. Even with a retirement date for the mine looming. He works at the same mine where Mark Thatcher worked, the same one that sits a few miles across the street from where the incoming nuclear plant will be. Right now, construction of the nuclear reactor promises an estimated 1,600 temporary jobs. But once it’s completed, it will provide the community with only about 250 permanent jobs — including lower-paid positions like security detail. Green is applying elsewhere just in case. But he’s not hopeful about his prospects. For

all this talk of energy transition, especially among national advocates and politicians, the reality is not enough has changed to make it seamless. More clean energy jobs are materializing nationwide, with some 8 million to date, but they still account for less than half of opportunities within the energy industry. Wyoming has fewer clean energy jobs than any other state nationwide. Those new jobs are not filled quickly enough, either. Most require at least a bachelor’s degree, whereas coal mining is more accessible with fewer barriers to entry. “It seems like everything’s kind of slowing down, and you wonder what’s going to happen,” Green says. The space coal has carved for itself in the industry took more than a century to make. It has a place in the living rooms, kitchens, cars and workplaces of every person in the nation. But the consequences associated with its extraction have made its end inescapable. Natural gas is cleaner while still efficient, but it also relies on fossil fuels. It’s finite. Even nuclear energy won’t last forever since it’s dependent on uranium, though it’s more plausible and less polarizing than renewables. In the eyes of many, that makes it the perfect candidate for launching a larger energy revolution, one that now has a foothold in Kemmerer. Despite the writing on the wall, Green is still in search of his own next chapter of the American dream — the slice of wish fulfillment Huskinson and the Thatchers got before the coal industry came crashing down. He’s still a believer in coal, too, hellbent on the unlikely assertion that it will come back into prominence. Or maybe that’s just the fantasy he sells himself to keep driving those 140 miles each day. “I guess I got to do what I got to do,” he says. And so he does. DECEMBER 2024

IDEAS

RAYS OF HOPE FINDING LIGHT BEYOND THE BAD NEWS

BY N I C H O L AS D. K R I STO F

hen I reported from Darfur, Congo, Yemen or other places inhabited by people of color, woke critics sometimes scoffed that my reporting was that of a “white savior.” The same charge was made against other white writers and photographers reporting in the developing world, and against white doctors and aid workers there. It reflected the notion that white American busybodies preen as they engage in moral crusades abroad, without acknowledging their own severe problems at home. There was a kernel of truth to this. It became “cool” for Americans to volunteer in Rwanda or Tanzania rather than at a prison or school in their hometown, and journalists and aid workers alike can be condescending or disrespectful to people abroad. Then again, the fundamental conceit of the white savior critique — that white people are eager to help people of color — doesn’t ring true to me. The blunt truth is that the big problem isn’t white saviors but white indifference. Americans intervened in 1999 to protect white Kosovars and in 2022 to protect white Ukrainians, but did much less to help Black Rwandans, Black Darfuris or Black Ethiopians, or to rescue Arabs in Syria or Yemen, or to support other dark-skinned people 62

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like Guatemalans or the Rohingya. Given all that, is it really true that the fundamental problem is a surplus of white saviors? White activism, particularly from the Jewish community, saved many lives of Black people in Darfur, and anything that discourages white people from activism against atrocities against people of color is likely to mean more people dying unnecessarily in places like Tigray or Myanmar. THE BLUNT TRUTH IS THAT THE BIG PROBLEM ISN’T WHITE SAVIORS BUT WHITE INDIFFERENCE.

Another thread of the white savior critique emphasizes that coverage or activism often portrays those suffering as two-dimensional “victims,” and that the right to tell these stories belongs to people from these countries rather than to Western journalists or aid workers. Again, there’s some validity to this critique. Simplistic narratives abound in journalism and the humanitarian community, and too often we drop into countries and report without knowing enough about local conditions.

That said, the critique is also simplistic. How would it work to have stories told primarily by local people? Were Germans really the best people to cover the Holocaust? Should Rwandans have been the voice of the genocide there? Should European newspapers have hired only Southerners to report on the American Civil Rights Movement, and if so, which Southerners? If a news organization wanted to hire a local person to cover the genocide in Myanmar, where repression of the Rohingya was popular, the majority of those local people would have said that there was no genocide at all and that the Rohingya didn’t exist as a people. I’m also shaped by my interactions with extraordinary people who are sometimes perceived as “white saviors” but in my view are heroes. A white Australian doctor named Catherine Hamlin moved to Ethiopia in 1959 and started a hospital to repair obstetric fistulas and treat some of the most forgotten women in the world. Dr. Hamlin became the world’s leading advocate for women and girls with fistulas and raised enormous sums for corrective surgery (credit Oprah Winfrey, who put Dr. Hamlin on her show and also contributed personally). Even during the most perilous periods of the Ethiopian dictatorship, Dr. Hamlin

NICHO LAS D. KRISTO F

DA N ESTY

NIC HOL AS D. KRISTOF

THE AUTHO R HAS SEEN THE BEST OF HUMANI TY H E L P ING AL L E V IAT E P OV E RT Y, DIS E AS E AND STARVAT ION (TOP ) AND WO R ST O F WA R A N D DESTRUCTI ON SI NCE HE BEGAN HI S T RAV E L S AS A ST U DE NT IN 1 9 8 2 (RIGH T ) AND F ORE IGN CORRE S P ONDEN T ( LE FT ) .

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continued her work as so many others fled. For six decades she gave her all, enduring danger and difficulty, to alleviate suffering in Ethiopia. Dr. Hamlin, who died in 2020, was regarded by many Ethiopians as a saint. Likewise, when I reported on the civil war in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan, I heard legends of “Dr. Tom,” an American named Tom Catena who ran a hospital in a rebel-held area and provided the only medical care in one of the most dangerous and disease-ridden parts of the world. I was scared reporting in the area for just a few days at a time. Sudanese government planes dropped bombs in the rebel areas, so we camouflaged our vehicle so it couldn’t be easily seen from the air. When we saw a plane overhead we would rush for caves in the rocks. The caves had spitting cobras, so even hiding from a bomb could be lethal. The only road into rebel territory in Nuba was a dirt path, and the day before I took it on one occasion, government soldiers ambushed civilian vehicles and opened fire on them. Dr. Tom endured all this year after year after year. Dr. Tom treats bombing victims and leprosy patients, he delivers babies and sets broken arms, he pries shrapnel from women’s bellies and amputates their children’s limbs. Somehow he manages a 435-bed hospital with no reliable electrical power or running water, not even an X-ray machine. He is always on call, except when he periodically falls unconscious from malaria — and then the entire Nuban community holds its breath to pray that he will survive. Dr. Tom is motivated by his conservative Catholic faith to save lives half a world away, and I am in awe of him. It’s easy for Americans sitting on a university campus to scoff at missionaries like Dr. Tom, but impossible when you see him working by himself in a hospital that has been bombed 11 times. A Muslim paramount chief compared Dr. Tom to Jesus. The chief explained that Jesus healed the sick, made the blind see and helped the lame walk — and that is what Dr. Tom does every day. It’s because of witnessing people like Dr. Tom that I’m 64

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more friendly to evangelicals and conservative Catholics than most liberals are. Yes, there is religious intolerance and bigotry, but there’s also irreligious intolerance when people on the left mock people of faith. sometimes complain to me that American news coverage of humanitarian crises is exploitative. They see news organizations profiting off the suffering of people in the developing world. But in truth, coverage of overseas crises invariably loses money. For me, one striking moment came when I filed a Yemen column back-to-back with one about the nomination to the Supreme Court of Brett Kavanaugh. The Kavanaugh column, which I whipped off in an afternoon with no dangerous travel, had seven times as many page views as the Yemen column. AMERICAN UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

A JOURNALIST FOLLOWING IN MY FOOTSTEPS TODAY MAY NEVER SEE THE LEPROSY, BLINDNESS AND GENOCIDE THAT I’VE SPENT DECADES COVERING — AND IT’S THAT SENSE OF PROGRESS THAT FILLS ME WITH HOPE.

That’s why most news organizations don’t cover Yemen, which at the time the United Nations called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. George Bernard Shaw wrote: “The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them.” And that indifference, toward people of any complexion, strikes me as a far more urgent concern than the willingness of some doctors or aid workers to help people of a different race. If Western news organizations weren’t willing to lose money to cover these crises, the suffering would be even greater. If in general I was skeptical of progressive

critiques of foreign news coverage, there was a strand that I found important and valid. I came to think that we in the media had a bias toward negative news that often harmed poor parts of the world. If I think of the places in Africa that I have principally covered over the last quarter century, they are the crisis spots: southern Africa during the AIDS crisis, Darfur, Congo, South Sudan and so on. Somebody reading my columns might get the misimpression that all of Africa is starving or fighting, when in fact some parts of Africa have done well. I undercovered countries like Ghana that were democratic and making progress in education and health care. That’s a way in which journalism can be misleading: We cover planes that crash, not the far greater number of planes that land. There’s a media bias toward bad news, layered on top of a cognitive bias toward threats. In the context of global development, our audiences learn primarily about failure and setbacks, not the progress that is often the backdrop. As former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers once told me, “Events are 75 percent bad, and trends are 75 percent good.” And we cover events more than the trends. I fear that journalists and aid workers, by focusing on crises, genocide and famine, further a narrative of Africa as a dangerous, failed continent and that this makes it more difficult to attract tourism and investments. So I’ve tried to also write about the successes there, and in my win-a-trip journeys we normally include a stop that highlights progress as well as challenges. This penchant for bad news misinforms the public. In polls, a majority of Americans say that world poverty is getting worse. That is false. ONE OF THE most stunning trends of my

lifetime has been an extraordinary decline in global poverty, disease and illiteracy. When I graduated from college, more than 40 percent of the world’s people were still living in “extreme poverty” — equivalent to a bit more than $2 per person per day in

today’s money. Adjusted for inflation, fewer than 10 percent now live at that level. People meeting me for the first time often expect me to be dour and pessimistic, the Eeyore of journalists, because I spend so much time covering war, genocide, poverty and disease. But the truth is that my travels have left me with a deep appreciation for this positive change — and for the capacity for further improvements. Much of the change in my lifetime has been positive for most of the world’s inhabitants. Just about the worst thing that can happen to any person is to lose a child. Until the early 19th century, almost half of all humans died in childhood. Now that’s down to about 4 percent. For most of the last 20 years or so, we could have run a front-page headline reading “Another 170,000 People Moved Out of Extreme Poverty Yesterday.” Or: “Another 200,000 People Get Piped Water for the First Time Today.” Or: “Another 325,000 People Today Get Electricity for the First Time.” Those are the real figures for the number of people lifted out of extreme poverty or gaining running water or electricity on an average day around the world. The 2020 Covid-19 pandemic marked a setback in this global march forward, and the number of people living in extreme poverty increased. Children also dropped out of school, hunger increased and girls were forced to marry early. But this was a setback of a few years, not longer, and preliminary evidence suggests that global child mortality actually continued to decline during the pandemic, though more slowly than before. Meanwhile, other trends, such as the declining cost of solar panels and improved access to the internet, continued apace. We in journalism focus mostly on villains, which is fair enough. But side by side with the worst of humanity, you see the very best. You encounter evil, but also heroism. For every genocidal warlord burning a village or throwing a child on a bonfire, there is a Dr. Tom Catena or a Dr. Catherine Hamlin, or some nameless hero showing undaunted courage.

Resistance Army attacked St. Mary’s College, a girls’ boarding school in northern Uganda, and kidnapped 139 teenage girls, tying their hands and leading them off into the bush, the police and army refused to help. They were terrified of the LRA and its reputation for killing and raping without hesitation. But an Italian nun at the school, Sister Rachele Fassera, refused to be intimidated. She set out, armed only with a rosary, and followed the trail of the kidnappers, in part by the litter they left behind. On the second day, Sister Rachele caught up with the kidnappers and begged them to release the girls. She pleaded, she browbeat them, she refused to give in — and the kidnappers released 109 of the girls to Sister Rachele. Sister Rachele didn’t accomplish all she had hoped, but with raw courage and a rosary she accomplished what the Ugandan army could not. W H E N T H E LO R D ’ S

WE IN JOURNALISM FOCUS MOSTLY ON VILLAINS, WHICH IS FAIR ENOUGH. BUT SIDE BY SIDE WITH THE WORST OF HUMANITY, YOU SEE THE VERY BEST.

Sister Rachele, and so many other selfless souls struggling to do justice around the world, inspire me. They remind me of one of my favorite quotations from Robert F. Kennedy: “Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and ... those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.” Despite the setback from the pandemic, if you had to pick one time to be born in the roughly 300,000 years since the emergence of modern humans, it would probably be this decade. Yes, climate change presents enormous challenges, and there

are risks of nuclear war and eroding democracy. But you still would probably be less likely to die, less likely to be malnourished and more likely to be educated than at any point in human history. Those aren’t just numbers. I’ve seen the progress in my reporting. When I first traveled through West Africa with Dan Esty in 1982, when I wasn’t being held at gunpoint by soldiers in Ghana, what pained me the most was the beggars in every town. Some were blind from cataracts, trachoma or river blindness. Others were disfigured by leprosy. Still others were crippled by clubfoot. Now these terrible ailments are all disappearing. Cataracts are repaired in a quick $50 surgery by groups like Cure Blindness and Seva Foundation. Blinding trachoma is prevented with inexpensive azithromycin, by groups like Helen Keller International. River blindness is prevented with ivermectin, used to deworm dogs and horses in America, thanks to the work of the Carter Center and others. For less than $1 a person, we can prevent devastating and excruciating causes of blindness. Leprosy has also declined more than 90 percent, and leprosy hospitals are so empty they are taking on patients with new kinds of ailments — fistula, Buruli ulcer and more. Bravo to Leprosy Mission International for its work! As for clubfoot, it is easily treated in infants by organizations like Miracle Feet, leaving children able to run and play like everyone else; they can grow up to become doctors or teachers instead of beggars. A journalist following in my footsteps today may never see the leprosy, blindness and genocide that I’ve spent decades covering — and it’s that sense of progress that fills me with hope, and with determination to keep pushing for further gains.

NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF IS A PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING JOURNALIST AND COLUMNIST FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES. FROM “CHASING HOPE: A REPORTER’S LIFE” BY NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF. REPRINTED BY PERMISSION OF ALFRED A. KNOPF, AN IMPRINT OF THE KNOPF DOUBLEDAY PUBLISHING GROUP, A DIVISION OF PENGUIN R ANDOM HOUSE LLC. COPYRIGHT © 2024 BY NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF.

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IDEAS

HABITS OF PEACEMAKERS IT’S NO ACCIDENT THAT THEY DON’T FLY INTO A RAGE

BY STE V E N T. CO L L I S

have spent much of the past four years researching the qualities of a peacemaker. My job as a law professor who specializes in the First Amendment spurred that line of thinking. I often engage in discussions on the freedoms of religion, speech, the press, assembly and petition, and the divisive issues that stem off those liberties: abortion, religious freedom, racism, freedom of speech, LGBTQ+ rights, academic freedom, the news media, campus protests, regulation of social media, constitutional interpretation — to name a few. The audiences I work with are diverse. They include diplomats, judges, academics, religious leaders, media executives, high schoolers, college students, devout churchgoers, devoted atheists and agnostics, LGBTQ+ members, those who hold traditional beliefs about sexuality, and people across the ideological spectrum. They come from all over the globe and from every race and class imaginable. 66

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But here is what often surprises most people: Neither I nor the people with whom I talk about these potentially contentious issues have experienced a negative outcome in our conversations. We have not turned on each other in a rage. None of us has been

PEACEMAKERS KNOW THAT TO DO WHAT IS NECESSARY TO ACHIEVE INNER PEACE REQUIRES TAMING OUR SCHEDULES.

canceled. Our conversations have not devolved into shouting or ad hominem attacks but have always been productive. That is to say, they have, without exception, led us toward better understanding each other or

a common problem, or they have inched us toward a solution. In some cases, they have even helped us step toward finding agreement over disputed issues. Those repeated experiences led me to want others to have them as well — and often. So I embarked on the journey to try to understand the habits of the peacemakers among us. I defined a peacemaker as someone who can engage in productive discourse about difficult topics; any difficult topic. That includes politics for sure, but also the many challenging conversations that can arise in family situations, the workplace, among friends, at church, or anywhere else we human beings must interact with each other. There are those among us who know how to navigate difficult situations well. What habits do they employ? My hope was to identify them, determine why they work, and then distill those ideas down so anyone could use them.

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Unsurprisingly, peacemakers employ many of their habits long before they are in actual conversations. No question, they have skills and habits they use during the middle of a difficult exchange, but some of the habits that make them effective lie in how they approach each day as much as in how they handle specific conversations. And two of those habits are especially poignant during the holidays: (1) spending time with people doing anything other than talking about hard topics; and (2) achieving some sense of inner peace. CONNECTING WITHOUT DEBATING

IF YOU WANT TO BE ABLE TO HAVE PRODUCTIVE CONVERSATIONS WITH PEOPLE IN YOUR LIFE AROUND DIFFICULT TOPICS, SPEND SOME TIME WITH THEM DOING ANYTHING BUT THAT.

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Have you ever wondered how the Constitution of the United States was drafted? I don’t mean the ideas the founders included in it or the debates they had. I’m referring to the process. How did representatives from 13 different colonies with drastically different and competing interests come together to draft what is now the longest-standing constitution in the world? It was not easy. In an era long before air conditioning or bug spray, the delegates met in Pennsylvania in the sweltering summer heat of 1787. This was not the America we know today, where we enjoy a somewhat common culture despite our geographical differences. These men represented interests, ideologies and ways of life that made any likelihood of achieving any sort of workable agreement highly unlikely. From all objective evidence, they should not have been able to draft and agree to the Constitution. Part of the secret sauce was that they spent time together doing all sorts of things other than debating a constitution for a new country. As legal scholar Derek Webb has discovered, the delegates spent the middle of the day hashing out business. But after “every day’s business, they ate dinner at various taverns … which were sprinkled liberally throughout the city. Eventually, dinner ‘clubs’ formed in which eight or more delegates would regularly dine together at a time. These clubs were for delegates from all the states, and their informal

membership typically cut across sectional and ideological lines.” When dinner ended, the delegates would enjoy an evening tea with each other. In an environment where hostility easily could have reigned, the delegates achieved the impossible because they spent time with each other outside the debating framework. That allowed the far more difficult conversations during the day to be productive. Most of us are not drafting a constitution or helping determine how we should interpret its provisions. But we are engaged in work that is arguably more important. We are trying to build strong families and relationships. We are striving to create effective work environments. During the holidays, we are yearning for family gatherings that help us capture the spirit of what we’re celebrating. As we pursue those goals, we can learn a few things from the founders and other peacemakers. If you want to be able to have productive conversations with people in your life around difficult topics, spend some time with them doing anything but that. The world is filled with ways to connect with others: dinners, walks, board games, sports, golf, service, skiing, hiking, cycling, fishing, camping, dancing, watching British dramas that we convince ourselves are not just soap operas — the list is endless. Figure out what you enjoy and invite other people along. What you will likely find is that most people who disagree with you are not monsters or fools. Hopefully they will come to realize that you aren’t either. And ask yourself: When you’re sitting down to enjoy Christmas dinner or open packages or celebrate Hanukkah, do you really need to talk with your loved ones about the most pressing issue of the day? Too many of us are consumed by certain topics, so much so that they prevent us from connecting with our loved ones over common interests. Deliberately set some of those difficult topics aside at times. The reward will be more enjoyable moments with the people in your life and more productive conversation when the tough topics do come along.

CULTIVATING AN INNER PEACE

Of course, setting aside the topics we care about the most is not easy. It is hard to let go. It requires an inner discipline and peace that too few of us have but that we can all cultivate. Peacemakers take the time for habits that develop inner peace, which then permeates outward into the rest of their lives, especially their conversations. Because peacemakers come from nearly every background imaginable, not one of them has the market cornered on techniques to achieve inner peace. Those who believe in the divine often rely on prayer and religious practices. Others use meditation and mindfulness. Some rely on professional therapy. Many use exercise. All find ways to free themselves from the technological manipulation of our age. I’ll touch on a couple of habits that seem especially useful during this time of year. The first is time management. William Rehnquist, the late chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, once said, “For all of life’s disparities in talent and wealth, each of us is given exactly the same amount of time in each hour, and in each day, and in each year. It is a limited amount, and it is impossible for anyone to be so rich in ‘time’ that he can enjoy every single one of the things which time may buy. So, … there are choices to be made. But it is very important for each of us that these choices be made consciously, with as much knowledge as possible of their consequences.” We are always tempted to add more to our plates. I am guilty of this as much as anyone. Maybe more. And I am certainly a proponent of spending our time doing good. We do not want to be so protective of our schedules that we end up not engaging with our world. But peacemakers know that to do what is necessary to achieve inner peace requires taming our schedules. They deliberately carve that time out of their days. They recognize that the rest of their time is so much more valuable when they take care of themselves mentally, emotionally and spiritually (if spirituality is important to them).

Perhaps the most important practice is setting aside a designated time each day to pursue their own peace. For some, this may be first thing in the morning, the moment they roll out of bed. Others may choose to do it over lunch or even during the day when they transition from one stressful activity to another. The precise time is not important. What is important is finding the window that works for you, then treating that as sacrosanct. We may tell ourselves that by taking such time, we are giving up other, better, even more selfless activities. That is an understandable temptation. Delivering cookies to our neighbors is good. Taking care of the poor this time of year is divine. Writing a clever and fun Christmas card and letter is

WHEN YOU’RE SITTING DOWN TO ENJOY CHRISTMAS DINNER OR CELEBRATE HANUKKAH, DO YOU REALLY NEED TO TALK WITH YOUR LOVED ONES ABOUT THE MOST PRESSING ISSUE OF THE DAY?

always nice. Ensuring every friend in our life receives the most thoughtful, personalized gift imaginable is laudable. But it may well be that we need to sacrifice some of those wholesome things for the better goal of achieving inner peace. The joy we might bring our neighbor by delivering them a thoughtful gift will soon become joyless if the price we pay is being short-tempered and stressed with our family. For those who are Christians, I think this is part of what Jesus Christ meant when he said, “For ye have the poor always with you; but me ye have not always.” Some activities are worth doing, but they may be worth

doing later or differently. Perhaps we can push off some of the service we might be inclined to do over the holidays until after the New Year. Our neighbors will feel loved if they receive those cookies on January 15. And we can always serve the poor throughout the year, rather than pushing to do it mostly around the holidays. Another habit that both science and experience have proven fruitful is journaling. Studies have consistently shown that journaling is good for our mental health. It can help reduce depression, anxiety and stress, which in turn can improve immune function. It helps those dealing with trauma to recover faster. It can help us develop a sense of gratitude. In short, it can help all of us develop a sense of inner peace. When you are carving out time in your schedule to develop your own sense of inner peace, add journaling to that window. It will be well worth it. IN ALL THIS, I do not want to lose sight of

why we are spending time with others and developing a sense of inner calm. Our goal is not to avoid difficult discussions. Those habits — along with many of the others I discovered — allow us to understand others better and control our emotions when the time comes for difficult situations. We may want to keep the conversation light around the dinner table, focusing on jokes and lighthearted topics in which everyone can bask. We may want to start off a holiday with our own spiritual practices and journaling. But later that night, a difficult discussion may be necessary about a family member struggling with alcoholism, or a brother who can’t hold down a job, or an abusive parent or sibling, or a political issue, or any number of the myriad challenges we all face. Those conservations will be so much better if we have implemented the habits of a peacemaker ahead of time.

S T E V E N T. C O L L I S I S T H E AU T H O R O F “ H A B I T S O F A PEACEMAKER: 10 HABITS TO CHANGE OUR POTENTIALLY T OX I C C O NV E R S AT I O N S I N T O H E A L T H Y D I A L O G U E S .”

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CARDS ON THE TABLE INSIDE THE TIMELESS ALLURE OF BOARD GAMES

BY E TH A N B AU E R

y grandmother came to the United States from Cuba in 1965 and never learned to speak English. She tried her best to teach me Spanish, with workbooks and newspaper clippings and constant drilling to make sure I could roll my rrs and properly pronounce the letter ñ. Her lessons worked to a degree; I can converse in Spanish, with her or with anyone, but not with much depth. English was without question my first language. That became one of many barriers between the two of us. Even though our countries shared a common waterway, we came from different cultures. When I stayed at her house in Miami, where I grew up, she’d watch her telenovela — a style of Spanish-language soap opera — on Univision from the couch in the living room while I sat in one of her plastic-wrapped dining room chairs watching “Clifford the Big Red Dog” on PBS Kids. Later, I moved on to Florida Marlins highlights on “SportsCenter.” But there were two things that reliably 70

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brought us together, always at the dark wood table with heavy, stone legs. One was, predictably, food. She’d spend all day cooking up arroz con pollo or picadillo or black beans simmered with white onions,

BOARD GAMES HAVE A LONG AND MURKY HISTORY, BUT THEY CAN BE FOUND IN ALMOST EVERY ADVANCED ANCIENT SOCIETY, FROM ANCIENT SUMERIA AND MESOAMERICA TO THE MONGOL EMPIRE.

green bell peppers and garlic — the signature flavor trio of any Cuban kitchen — and then expect me to clean my plate. When I didn’t, she’d tease me about being too skinny, calling me her “little lizard” in Spanish.

The other was Parcheesi. Or Parchís, as my grandmother called it in Spanish. Sometimes it was just the two of us, but more often, we played when my cousins came to visit. They spoke even less Spanish than I did. We’d blow on our little cylinders for good luck before rolling the dice, and we’d chant “Dobles! Dobles!” because doubles would let us roll again. We’d joke about “eating” each other’s pieces and sending them back to the beginning of the board. I’m sure we talked about other stuff, but I don’t remember that. What I can’t forget is how that simple game’s universal appeal became a bridge between our separate worlds. In today’s digital world, I talk to my grandma on FaceTime instead of sitting around that table. You might think the analog games we played are relics now, a kind of trivial pastime easily replaced by the latest upgrade. But if anything, board games are thriving in the marketplace, even more popular than they were back then. There’s something here, hidden beneath

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the surface, that transcends technology and changing lifestyles. Something that my grandmother and I felt a long time ago. a long and murky history, but some record of recreational table games can be found in almost every advanced ancient society. “Whenever you do archeological excavations,” says Mikael Jakobsson, a researcher with the MIT Game Lab, “you realize people have been playing games all the time, everywhere.” Ancient Sumerians played a version of backgammon some 5,000 years ago. A few centuries later, they rolled pyramid-shaped dice playing the Royal Game of Ur, “the oldest complete tabletop game ever discovered,” according to The New York Times, named for the birthplace of the biblical prophet Abraham in modern Iraq. One thousand miles west, ancient Egyptians were already playing “senet,” in which players move around a 30-square checkerboard. They valued the game so much, Queen Nefertari is depicted playing it on the wall of her tomb, while King Tutankhamun’s tomb contained at least five boxed sets. From Europe and the Americas to China and the Mongol empire, humans have gathered around board games pretty much since we transcended hunter-gatherer lifestyles and started to form societies. Parcheesi is descended from an Indian game that dates as far back as the sixth century, but versions are found in cultures across the world, from “Patolli” in ancient Mesoamerica to “Wahoo” in Appalachia. The industrial revolution brought games to the masses. By 1874, Parcheesi became one of the first board games trademarked in the United States. Many others — like Sorry!, Aggravation and even Trivial Pursuit — are modeled on its “cross and circle” format, with players rolling dice and moving pieces accordingly, trying to reach the end of the board first. Many classics, like Monopoly and Life, grew out of advances in printing technology during this era. Printers in Europe and the U.S. learned that people would buy B OA R D G A M E S H AV E

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board games even if they weren’t particularly thrilling or inventive. Some adopted the spinner to replace dice, which were associated with gambling, but most involved moving pieces around a board. That was enough to make them a hit during what Jakobsson dubs the “first golden age” of board games. That lasted until about 1977, when the Atari 2600 brought basic video games like Combat and Street Racer into American living rooms. Soon kids were gathering around the family TV to play arcade hits like Pac-Man and Space Invaders. For nearly five decades, cultural successors to that console have dominated recreational games in the American home — and the marketplace. But the pendulum is swinging back. In 2016, The Guardian proclaimed “a

“HUMANS ARE NATURAL GAME DESIGNERS. IF YOU EVER ARE ON A PLAYGROUND WITH A BUNCH OF KIDS, THEY’RE OUT THERE CREATING GAMES.”

boom in board game sales.” In 2022, The Washington Post heralded a new “golden age of board games” that “might be here to stay.” Fortune Business Insights, a market research firm, projects that the global board game industry will double in value from current estimates of over $14 billion by 2032. One reason: Board game designers have learned from their mistakes, bringing creativity and the lessons of digital gameplay to a discipline where innovation was lagging. As Jakobsson says, they’re “catching up” from “neglect over the last half-century or so.” Another: digital fatigue. “The interest in board games is a retaliation against the ubiquity of digital media,” Zachary Horton, a professor of English who studies board games at the University of Pittsburgh, told the school’s news service in

2020. “People are looking for more engaged and social activities as they become more isolated by technology.” Something about board games, it seems, remains timeless. That takes me back to Grandma’s dining room. To muttered mantras calling for the seven I needed to keep my grandma from winning; to the rattle of dice against the sturdy board; to finishing the game just in time for a bowl of ice cream; and to my cousins and I begging for one more round before bed. GABE BARRETT PLAYED the standards first.

Monopoly. Stratego. Connect Four. Chess, especially, before school with his friends. Games took a backseat for a few years as he played college football at Murray State, then Auburn. He was an upperclassman when some high school friends recruited him to play Dungeons & Dragons. He was captivated. In a role-playing game where each player takes on a fantasy persona like a knight or a druid and makes decisions on their behalf, it felt like anything was possible. Soon he launched a gaming podcast, wrote a book on the subject and started his own company, testing games and creating his own. So he thinks a lot about how the mechanics of board games work as social connective tissue. The best designers, he says, start by thinking of a particular audience — like edgy teenagers or families with young children. “It’s better to make a game that people love and hate versus a game that people just think is OK,” he explains. “You want to focus in on that group of people you’re aiming at, and then make it the most enjoyable experience possible for them.” They can certainly learn from video games, which have gleaned valuable insights into the human psyche. For example, Barrett says the best board games today give players a chance to live out a pleasant alternative reality, if only for a little while. So, “How is this game going to help people feel powerful, wealthy and/or clever?” In Catan, released in 1995, players race to build societies on a fictional island. In 2008’s

Pandemic, they race to prevent a tragedy we all went on to experience. Some might boil down the allure of such examples to another key factor: agency. The more a game allows its players to control their own fate, the more engaging it becomes. At the same time, it’s a mistake to make a game too complex. The fix might require making painful cuts. But attention spans are declining, so games need to move quickly. There’s no magic duration, but as anyone who has played Monopoly knows, nothing kills fun like a drawn-out and predictable conclusion. A good game also needs memorable, emotional moments throughout — but especially at the end. Barrett considers two factors when evaluating a game. First, is it fun? Second, can I sell this? If the first answer is yes and the second is no, the solution might be a change in trim. Baseball, for example, may not attract many casual fans in 2024, but if the game’s mechanics are good, a more popular framing — say, outer space, or a zombie apocalypse — can make all the difference. If not, people have plenty of alternatives. These days, that includes craft games from indie designers. Board games are a popular subgenre for crowdfunding on GoFundMe and Kickstarter. The latter lists just under 50,000 projects at various stages of development; a role-playing game based on the fantasy world of Latter-day Saint author Brandon Sanderson may be the most heavily crowdfunded board game project of all time. These sites can even give funders a voice in how the games will be played. “Humans are natural game designers,” Barrett says. “If you ever are on a playground with a bunch of kids, they’re out there creating games.” And while modern board games have become more efficient, intentional, marketable and, ideally, more fun, they still stack the shelves at Walmart and Target next to old fixtures like Yahtzee, Candyland and Uno, because they all tug at an elemental part of our humanity. Something innate that emerges early in childhood. What players want, at day’s end, is a

challenging experience that helps them to connect with each other. J.R.R. TOLKIEN, AUTHOR of the “Lord of the

Rings” book series, believed that acts of creation, like art and music and world-building, are expressions of the divine within us. In an essay called “On Fairy Stories,” he even used games to justify faith in a higher power, because playing a role in friendly competition is also an act of imagination. By extension, the board games we play must tell us something about what it means to be human on this planet. The substance of classic games is not coincidental. Monopoly is a microcosm for navigating the economy, first published during the Great Depression. Life, created in 1860 but relaunched a century later, lets

GAMES BRING US ALL TO THE TABLE, A LEVEL PLAYING FIELD WHERE OUR REALLIFE DIFFERENCES FADE INTO THE BACKGROUND.

players vicariously experience the impacts of financial and career decisions like going to college, taking out a mortgage or getting homeowners’ insurance. Axis and Allies, released in 1981, at the height of the Cold War and a Reagan-era wave of patriotic fervor, lets players relitigate World War II through the eyes of a commanding general, weighing the risks and benefits of deploying troops or invading a country. On the other hand, the specifics of each game may not matter all that much. What matters, argues Chris Sinkinson, is that games bring us all to the table, a level playing field where our real-life differences fade into the background. And we sit together for however long the game might last. “That creates the context for fellowship,” he says. “It creates a space where you can have those conversations that, in

my experience, can get into some meaningful topics.” Games are not Sinkinson’s focus as a professor of theology and apologetics at Moorlands College in England, but in 2023, he wrote about a recent surge of interest in board games that seems particularly acute among Christians. His church even has a tabletop gaming group that is open to the public and members alike. Perhaps that’s why he corrects me when I describe board games as “trivial,” as mere leisure. “There is something more profound (happening) than just filling a bit of time,” he says. “And I think that speaks to that sense that men and women … have a yearning to explore, to create.” And to connect, which is something video games can’t quite replace. With a game on a screen, “you’re configured to look away from the world or the room,” says Jakobsson, the MIT researcher. “When we play board games, we all show up at the same place and face each other. So there’s a lot more socializing and talking and having fun that doesn’t have that much to do with the game. The game just configures the social event, so we have a reason to come, but we’re there for the people.” Barrett, the game designer, believes that is what makes board games sacred, even in the digital era. They encourage us to be fully present and engaged with each other. They offer a forum to transcend our differences and become more fully human in one another’s company. “Maybe we’re competing. Maybe we’re cooperating,” he explains. “But whatever it is, we’re gonna have some stories to tell when we get done.” Or not. There’s not much narrative-building in Parchís. There’s no real strategy, much less alternative reality. But I miss it. I only see my grandmother once or twice a year now. She’s in her 90s and nearly deaf. And I live far away, where I rarely get to practice my Spanish. But whatever our differences, we can always pull out that game board, where the dice clack toward the inevitable thrill of victory and pain of defeat. Because whatever our differences, that’s a language we both speak fluently. DECEMBER 2024

ODE

ONCE UPON A TIME ODE TO A POCKET WATCH

BY JO E MA R OTTA

y grandfather would read Raymond Chandler mystery novels at night while lying on the couch. He’d sometimes read aloud to me, saying a phrase in Italian. I didn’t understand, but I liked the rhythm he gave the words. When he finished, he would pick up his pocket watch, look at it intently, and announce it was time for bed. Upstairs, he would place the watch on my nightstand and I would fall asleep to the rhythm of its ticking. He gave me the watch when I graduated high school. I was enchanted by its heavy gold case, the clear, bold numbers and its tiny inset second hand. You could see and hear time passing. Still, this was 1968, and it didn’t match my bell-bottom pants! So I put it in a small box in my top dresser drawer. Each time I moved to a new location, the watch came along. Each time I opened the box, I would wind the watch, raise it to my ear to hear it mark time, and think of my grandfather. He would write letters to his brother in Italy, early in the morning at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and milk from a large cup. Writing, sipping, looking out the window at the garden, and occasionally taking out the watch to check the time. Summers he’d spend all day in the garden, turning soil, planting seeds, watering tomatoes and onions, cucumbers and carrots, 74

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lettuces and fruit trees. I remember how he’d crumble the black soil in his hand, then, brushing it off, he’d take out the watch. He wore a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, black trousers with cuffs, and black shoes — cap-toe, I think. His hair was white, his face tan. There was a tattoo on his left forearm, though I don’t remember any details about it. He wore wire-rimmed glasses and owned one suit, which he wore on Sundays for church. He looked regal in that suit, a gold chain anchoring the watch to his vest pocket. I have no photographs of my grandfather, but I can see him clearly, walking the length of the garden, becoming smaller as he reached the far end, then larger as he walked back. He’d stop, wipe his glasses with a handkerchief, examine the fruit on a plant, check the time, then continue toward me, a peach in hand. Recently, while going through some boxes, I found the watch. I hadn’t seen it in years. It had stopped at 2:28. After a polish, it looked just as it did in my grandfather’s hands. I admired a swallow engraved on the back, a beloved symbol of southern Italy, where he was from. Swallows also represent going home — or rediscovering who you are. I wound the watch and there it was, that reassuring rhythm! I hooked the chain to my belt loop and slid it into my pocket. Now, when I wake each morning, I reach for the watch on my nightstand and check the time.

PHOTOGR AP H Y BY J O E M A R OT TA

DECEMBER 2024

POETRY

WINTER SOLSTICE IN THE GORGE, 2016 BY DA N I E L L E D U B R AS KY

Our myths turn long nights into evergreen cut on grocery store parking lots, a continent away from thousands of reindeer starving as the Arctic ice dissolves. Only one star guides the way out to where striped lines follow diesels lit like Christmas — miles of commerce threading the Mojave. The longest night spills from a cup of tears I drink through this highway that weaves between monoliths of an American Stonehenge propped along the Virgin River’s winding course. I see her face in the rock at the hour’s cusp — Freya carrying the sun in her antlers. She treks the sky, a spinning wheel around our breath, and seeds the earth on the darkest night with bits of amber. The sun stands still at dawn on a plateau of Kaibab sediment, reaches down into gypsum layers, then sandstone pockets to greet bighorn sheep near river banks who step out of shadow for the new year. DA N I E L L E B E A Z E R D U B R A S K Y, AU T H O R O F 2 0 2 1 ’ S “ D R I F T M I G R AT I O N ,” D I R E C T S T H E G R A C E A . TA N N E R C E N T E R F O R H U M A N VA L U E S AT S O U T H E R N U TA H U N I V E R S I T Y.

C U R ATED BY U TAH PO E T LAU R E AT E LI SA BI C KM O R E

DECEMBER 2024

THE LAST WORD

ANNA L E MB K E

EPIDEMIC IN OUR POCKETS DIGITAL ADDICTION WITH THE AUTHOR OF ‘DOPAMINE NATION’

BY C H A D N I E L S E N

ome lessons we learn the hard way, as individuals and as a society. Early in her career, Dr. Anna Lembke says she made some mistakes treating patients because she “didn’t know anything about addiction.” It wasn’t a major subject in medical school or even her residency. So she switched her focus. Now, 25 years later, she’s a leading expert in that field, a professor of psychiatry and addiction medicine at Stanford University and author of “Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence.” In that book, a New York Times bestseller released in 2021, she raised alarms about a new epidemic that is reshaping modern life: addiction to smartphones and social media. “Our modern ecosystem,” she argues, “conspires against us when it comes to compulsive overconsumption.” She made that case appearing in the 2020 Netflix documentary “The Social Dilemma,” and is an expert witness in litigation against social media companies. Recently, she released “The Official Dopamine Nation Workbook,” a practical guide for families working together to change compulsive behaviors. 78

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Previously, Lembke studied the mechanics behind the overprescription of opioids, stimulants and benzodiazepines, and in 2016, published “Drug Dealer, MD: How Doctors Were Duped, Patients Got Hooked, and Why It’s So Hard to Stop.” In that process, she learned about the nature of dependency, and found there are many ways to lose oneself in a habit. FOUR FACTORS MAKE SOMETHING ADDICTIVE: POTENCY, QUANTITY, NOVELTY AND ACCESS. WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE ADDICTED?

Broadly defined, addiction is the compulsive use of a substance or behavior despite harm to self or others. You can look into ancient texts written thousands of years ago and find that same phenomenon. What’s different today is we know it is a brain disease, and there are distinct changes that characterize the addicted brain. And it’s easier to get addicted, not just to drugs

and alcohol, but to all kinds of behaviors: pornography, sex, social media, shopping, gambling, even food. DOES THAT MEAN SOME OF US HAVE A DEFICIENCY THAT FEEDS INTO ADDICTION? OR DO WE CREATE A DEFICIENCY THROUGH OUR CHOICES?

A bit of both. People come into this world with differing degrees of vulnerability based on their genetics. There are also psychological risk factors, like childhood trauma. And there are sociological factors like access. If you live where certain drugs are available, you’re more likely to use them and to get addicted. We have 24/7 access to digital media, and that, too, is a drug, a potent reinforcer of the human brain. So we’re all struggling with compulsive overconsumption. HOW DOES DIGITAL ADDICTION WORK?

Four factors make something addictive: potency, quantity, novelty and access. The more dopamine gets released and the faster it does, the more a substance or activity is “reinforcing” to the human brain. The more we are exposed to it, the more likely ILLUST RATI ON BY KYLE HI LTON

It will get brighter. OPTIMISM

THE LAST WORD

we will build a tolerance and need more potent forms to get the same effect. When we’re not using, we experience symptoms of withdrawal: anxiety, irritability, insomnia, depression and craving. One way to overcome tolerance is with novelty, slight changes so the brain sees the drug as something new. And if you can get something anytime, anywhere, you’re more likely to use it. Digital media has all those features. Even a slight change to a video can engage our hunting or treasure-seeking function, and TikTok never runs out. Our brains love it, and once we get a little bit, we want more. IS DOPAMINE THE REAL PROBLEM? IT’S PART OF US, RIGHT?

We need dopamine. It’s the neurotransmitter that tells us to pay attention to something right now, because it’s important for your survival. But drugs release more dopamine at once than our brains have evolved for, without any up-front work. And that’s confusing. Our brains try to adapt but lose the ability to self-correct when the stimulus is no longer available or stops working. SOCIETY SEEMS TO THINK THIS IS A BIGGER PROBLEM FOR YOUNG PEOPLE. IS THAT TRUE?

Child and adolescent exposure are different. Kids are more sensitive to comparisons, validation and influence from their peers. And their brain’s prefrontal cortex — which allows planning, delayed gratification and awareness of future consequences — is not yet fully connected to its reward pathways. That doesn’t mean it’s not harmful for adults; older people get addicted to their smartphones, too. But we need guardrails that protect kids until their brain is more developed. We don’t let them go into casinos or buy cigarettes, right? Any child under 13 should not have unmonitored access to the internet. Their use of screens should be infrequent, of short duration and carefully curated. And with teenagers, there needs to be an open and vibrant discussion about use, etiquette, opportunity costs, ways to monitor each other, and to be self-accountable. 80

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WE’VE ADDED A LOT TO PARENTS’ JOB DESCRIPTIONS JUST BY BRINGING THESE DEVICES INTO OUR HOMES.

I agree, and it cannot be left up to parents alone. That’s unfair to them and to the kids. And it shouldn’t be left up to teachers. Kids can’t learn with a smartphone in their pocket. Even during breaks, they need to socialize without them. The corporations that profit from these devices need to change design elements that keep people on their phones. States and countries around the world are experimenting with turning off notifications during school hours and at night, or preventing algorithms from tracking kids and using their data. Infinite scroll, auto play, pull to refresh, likes, notifications and ranks, all that should just go away on a kid’s device. SHOULD WE BE HOLDING COMPANIES RESPONSIBLE? EVEN AS AN ADULT, I’M FREE TO PUT DOWN MY PHONE, BUT THAT DOESN’T MEAN I’M FREE TO PUT DOWN MY PHONE.

Exactly right, because of the hijacked brain. If we just ask, companies are not going to do it. We have to hold them financially accountable for preventing new cases and impacts like eating disorders, body dysmorphia and self-harm; for identifying folks who are at risk and doing something about it; then finally, for treating those cases. It’s like the tobacco companies. We have to get in there with a surgical knife and get out the toxic elements. That’s going to require all hands on deck. IN YOUR BOOK, YOU DISCUSS SOME MEASURES THAT CAN HELP TO BREAK A DIGITAL ADDICTION. CAN YOU SHARE THE KEY POINTS?

The interventions need to be biopsychosocial, like the ailment. Medications can help, as can therapy, joining a 12-step group or getting a sober social network. But the heart of recovery is a dopamine fast – enough time away to get out of that cycle. That doesn’t mean no screens ever; for most people, that’s impossible. So identify the problem. Is it video games? Shopping sites? YouTube shorts? Then abstain from that for four weeks, not replacing it, but enduring the withdrawal. By

then, most craving abates, and people can see their behavior with new insights, appreciate the consequences of their use and make better decisions going forward. SOME KIDS SAY WE’RE JUST OVERREACTING TO A NEW MEDIUM, THE WAY OTHER GENERATIONS RESPONDED TO THE TV OR ROCK AND ROLL. IS THERE ANY VALIDITY TO THAT?

I got addicted to romance novels. They’re a form of escape, but 30 years ago, they couldn’t be accessed with the push of a button. Anything that’s reinforcing or pleasurable, including learning, can be addictive, if technology allows the drugification of that experience. We know how to do that. We’ve studied the human motivational system. A video game is much more potent, novel, bountiful and accessible, and we’re spending all day, every day, every available moment playing, and changing our brain reward pathways as a result. More modest rewards, like sitting and talking with a family member, watching a sunset, going out for a good meal? They’re sort of blah now. We’re all zombies to this stuff. TELL US MORE ABOUT DRUGIFICATION.

It’s turning everyday activities into drugs, even those we once associated with healthy human flourishing. Like playing chess! They have short versions online, integrated with social media, gamified and monetized. It’s all video games now. You’ve got rankings, treasure chests, notifications. Kids aren’t going to sleep. They don’t want to do anything else. They don’t want to leave their rooms. None of that is good. WHAT’S YOUR LAST WORD ON THE SUBJECT?

As parents, we tend to fluctuate between screaming at our kids in a dysregulated, unproductive fashion or just throwing up our hands and saying, “It’s hopeless.” Neither extreme is good. Open up a conversation. Look at your own behavior. Look at your children in the broader context and make an effort. Try to intervene in small steps that are practically feasible.

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