Monthly Archives: May 2025

Great Things

My America is a place of perpetual greatness, not this dark moment of greed and misconduct. G.C.

Remarks at Gettysburg, 1889

“In great deeds something abides. On great fields something stays.

Forms change and pass; bodies disappear, but spirits linger, to

consecrate ground for the vision-place of souls. And reverent men and

women from afar, and generations that know us not and that we know

not of, heart-drawn to see where and by whom great things were

suffered and done for them, shall come to this deathless field to

ponder and dream; And lo! the shadow of a mighty presence shall

wrap them in its bosom, and the power of the vision pass into their

souls.”

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain

Gail Chumbley is the author of the two-part memoir River Of January and River Of January: Figure Eight. Chumbley has authored three historical plays, Clay about Senator Henry Clay, Wolf By The Ears, an examination of American slavery, and Peer Review, where 47 meets presidents from the past. Additionally, Chumbley has co-authored Dancing On Air, a screenplay depicting the true adventures of an aviator and showgirl.

An SOS

I sent this letter to my Senators. Feel free to use it how you can.

Dear Senator,

I am reaching out to share my growing dread with this current administration. Arbitrary cuts to government programs, gestapo-like assaults upon peaceable communities and the shrinking of America’s international role is chilling.

As a career history educator I know these actions are decidedly harmful to all of us and that he is attempting to gut the rule of law. It’s as if the United States is drifting into a new Dark Ages and few are standing up for tenets of the Constitution, a hard-won, and hard-defended blueprint of government.

Please restrain yourself from the temptation of pursuing unfettered power, and apply the oh-so-needed brakes on this administration; we are counting on you to hold him to account.

I am a child of the Cold War era and recall the fear of air raid sirens and Soviet attack. But today I am more afraid. What is good about the United States is bad to this administration, and quickly ransacked out of existence, criminals are pardoned, and the guilty go free.

This damage does not fully rest on the White House, he could not carry out his pillaging without the silence of Congress. I implore you to have courage and stand up to this feeding frenzy and let us go back to being America, which still is “the world’s last best hope.”

Gail Chumbley

SLC