Good morning.
Saturday in Whitewater will be cloudy, with a high of forty degrees. Sunrise is 6:23 and sunset 5:49 PM, for 11h 25m 41s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 39.8% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}one hundred sixteenth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}
On this day in 1861, Lincoln becomes America’s sixteenth president. On this day in 1917, Republican Jeanette Rankin of Montana takes office as the first woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.
Recommended for reading in full —
Sarah Kendzior writes that Some call this America’s resistance. Really, we are helping one another: “What is now called resisting is often Americans simply helping others: a concept so alien to the Trump administration that it is labelled as subversive. Lawyers volunteer to aid unjustly detained immigrants; clergy hold interfaith rallies when one religion is attacked; citizens look out for their neighbours and lobby officials on their behalf. Unlike previous administrations, when assaults on freedom and safety were usually couched as incidental, Mr. Trump’s policies are explicitly aimed at hurting vulnerable people. This means the resistance is unlikely to burn out or fade away, as it is a fight for survival. Citizens will not blithely acquiesce to the loss of their health care, public schools and civil rights. Many Americans have expressed longing for things to go back to normal: an understandable impulse because of the exhaustion the administration causes. But if Americans have learned anything over the past month, it is that rights need to be fought for in order to be preserved. Accepting injustice as normal was part of how we got here. Refusing to accept even greater injustice as normal is the only way we will get out.”
Rosalind Helderman reports that Despite early denials, growing list of Trump camp contacts with Russians haunts White House: “Two days after the presidential election, a Russian official speaking to a reporter in Moscow offered a surprising acknowledgment: The Kremlin had been in contact with Donald Trump’s campaign. The claim, coming amid allegations that Russia had interfered with the election, was met with an immediate no-wiggle-room, blanket denial from Trump’s spokeswoman. “It never happened,” Hope Hicks told the Associated Press at the time. “There was no communication between the campaign and any foreign entity during the campaign.” In fact, it is now clear it did happen. The past few days have brought a growing list of confirmed communications between Trump campaign aides and Russian officials, with each new revelation adding to a cloud of suspicion that hangs over the White House as critics demand an independent investigation. Trump’s team has offered various explanations for the meetings: Some encounters, they have said, were brief, no more than casual, polite introductions. Others involved the routine diplomacy common for officials surrounding a candidate for the nation’s highest office.”
Anemona Hartocollis and Noah Weiland describe Campus Backlash After Leaders of Black Colleges Meet With Trump: “A photograph of the black leaders smiling and chatting with Mr. Trump around his desk was widely circulated and instantly became a flash point for students who believe the administration has been insensitive to the needs of black Americans. “Is it a photo op, is it an opportunity for Trump to put himself next to black people and smile?” Llewellyn Robinson, a Howard sophomore, said, after the graffiti had been wiped clean. “Is that the situation we’re dealing with? Or is it truly a seat at the table?” Howard protesters said they had heard echoes of support — in the form of tweets, student organizations reaching out and the exchange of information on group messaging apps — from students at other prominent black institutions like Spelman, Morehouse, Hampton and North Carolina A&T. An aide to one college president said that concerns about how to deal with the protesters had been a topic of intense phone conversations among the leaders.”
(Note – This website advocates a clear approach toward Trump: cooperation is humiliation, collaboration is degradation.)
Chelsey Lewis offers 5 tips for beginner backpackers: “A few summers back I took my sister to Devil’s Lake for a little introduction to backpacking. Since she had never been, and my own experience is pretty limited, we did a mock outing, car-camping at Devil’s Lake and hiking with our packs throughout the park during the day. But we packed and planned as if we would were in the backcountry so that when we did eventually take on a real backpacking trip (at Big Bend National Park in Texas) we would know how many miles we could handle and how our gear would hold up. If you want to get into backpacking, it’s a good idea to do the same — practice somewhere a little closer to civilization to test your physical abilities and your gear. Here are some other tips for beginner backpackers….”
What’s Up for March 2017?: