Let's Row Together

Spending the summer solstice on Nantucket surrounded by family. Getting away is a time to step out of routines, let habits fall away.

Getting away.

It’s summertime and I want to be away.

Maybe it’s a lifelong habit acquired as the child of a university professor.

The school year ends; my family went away.

As a child, I was taken to the Cape Cod edge of Nantucket Sound.

As a mom, I take my children to places familiar to me in my youth.

It’s always the sea calling me, just as mountains, lakes, back roads, bike rides, and foreign adventures issue their siren call to others.

At the sea, what I cherish most is sharing this precious away time with family and friends.

Madaket beach, Nantucket at sunset, 2025 Photo by Matthew McWeeney

Last week in Nantucket, I was surrounded by love. This embrace began with Patrick, my cousin, when he generously gifted his family’s home for a week. My family – Maya with fiancé Matthew, Allison with boyfriend William, Cape Cod nieces Anya, Sophia, Augusta – shared it along with Matthew’s family members who I’m getting to know before Maya and Matthew are married in September. Matthew’s mom, Kathy, sister, Meredith, brother-in-law, Steffen, and their dog, Lily, joined us, as did Maya’s and Matthew’s friends – Amy, Gretchen and Sam.

Being away is freeing.

It feels good to step out of routines. To let habits drop away.

I nap at will.

I read whenever and wherever.

We follow paths, some leading us by cottages bursting with flowers.

Others lead us to the sea.

To dig toes into the sand.

To be rocked to sleep by the ocean’s rhythmic sounds.

To awaken, then run down the sloped beach to dive in pounding waves.

To watch seals raise their heads for air, only to slip back under.

Later, with sand brushed off and bathing suits and towels hung to dry, we enjoy the bounty of the sea – both in its cooking and our eating.

All I need is all of us experiencing our time away together.

Mr. (Fred) Rogers lived in “The Crooked House” at 33 Massachusetts Avenue, Madaket, Nantucket (top photo, below).

Each evening, we passed his house in our walk on his dune-shaped street to a Madaket sunset.

It’s impossible to block out world events, or at least it was for me on Nantucket.

Bombs exploded.

U.S. Supreme Court decisions were handed down.

The work of Congress dragged on.

So, in closing, I’ll share the wisdom of three women — the first two are words written by Supreme Court Justices this week, the third, is the words spoken by a courageous Senator 75 years ago.

Three Women Speak: Let us listen!

2025: Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson from her dissent in this week’s “birthright citizenship” U.S. Supreme Court decision in Trump v. CASA:

“Those in the good graces of the Executive have nothing to fear; the new prerogative that the Executive has to act unlawfully will not be exercised with respect to them. Those who accede to the Executive’s demands, too, will be in the clear. The wealthy and the well connected will have little difficulty securing legal representation, going to court, and obtaining injunctive relief in their own name if the Executive violates their rights. Consequently, the zone of lawlessness the majority has now authorized will disproportionately impact the poor, the uneducated, and the unpopular — i.e., those who may not have the wherewithal to lawyer up, and will all too often find themselves beholden to the Executive’s whims. … With deep disillusionment, I dissent.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor from her dissent (joined by Sotomayor and Kagan) in the “birthright citizenship” U.S. Supreme Court decision in Trump v. CASA.

“The Court’s decision is nothing less than an open invitation for the Government to bypass the Constitution. The Executive Branch can now enforce policies that flout settled law and violate countless individuals’ constitutional rights, and the federal courts will be hamstrung to stop its actions fully. … With the stroke of a pen, the President has made a ‘solemn mockery’ of our Constitution. Rather than stand firm, the Court gives way. Because such complicity should know no place in our system of law, I dissent.”

June 1, 1950: Maine senator Margaret Chase Smith, when issuing her “Declaration of Conscience.” In doing so, she rose in the Senate to speak about a “serious national condition.” She was referring to Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy’s vigorous effort to root out communism, in which he’d silenced nearly every Republican.¹ She ended her declaration with a warning: “It is high time that we all stopped being tools and victims of totalitarian techniques—techniques that, if continued here unchecked, will surely end what we have come to cherish as the American way of life.”

On the Senate floor, Smith said, “It is a national feeling of fear and frustration that could result in national suicide and the end of everything that we Americans hold dear…. I speak as a Republican, I speak as a woman. I speak as a United States senator. I speak as an American. … I do not want to see the Republican party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny—Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear. … I doubt if the Republican party could do so simply because I do not believe the American people will uphold any political party that puts political exploitation above national interest. Surely we Republicans are not that desperate for victory. … I do not want to see the Republican party win that way. While it might be a fleeting victory for the Republican party, it would be a more lasting defeat for the American people. Surely it would ultimately be suicide for the Republican party and the two-party system that has protected our American liberties from the dictatorship of a one-party system. As an American, I condemn a Republican Fascist just as much as I condemn a Democrat Communist. They are equally dangerous to you and me and to our country. As an American, I want to see our nation recapture the strength and unity it once had when we fought the enemy instead of ourselves.”

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1. Six fellow Republican senators signed her “Declaration of Conscience.” Charles W. Tobey, New Hampshire, George D. Aiken, Vermont, Wayne L. Morse, Oregon, Irving M. Ives, New York, Edward J. Thye, Minnesota, Robert C. Hendrickson, New Jersey.