From The New York Times (Anita Gates):

Helen Reddy, the Australian-born singer whose 1972 hit song “I Am Woman” became the feminist anthem of the decade and propelled her to international pop-music stardom, died Tuesday in Los Angeles. She was 78.

The death was confirmed by her children in a message posted on her official fan page on Facebook…

“I Am Woman” reached No. 1 on the Billboard charts at the end of 1972 (a good six months after it was released — individual call-in requests helped build radio play) and earned her the Grammy Award for best female pop vocal performance. She was the first Australian-born artist to win a Grammy and the first to make the Billboard 100 record charts.

Some male observers called the song — beginning with the words “I am woman/ Hear me roar/ In numbers/ Too big to ignore,” sung by a 5-foot-3 soprano — angry, man-hating, dangerous or all three.

“That simply underlined the many things women needed liberating from,” a writer for Variety reflected in 2019. “Nobody called Sinatra a menace when he sang ‘My Way,’ a no less straightforward hymn to self-determination.”

During the 1970s, three of Ms. Reddy’s songs — including “Delta Dawn” and “Angie Baby” — went to No. 1 on the Billboard chart. Three others — “You and Me Against the World,” “Leave Me Alone (Ruby Red Dress)” and “Ain’t No Way to Treat a Lady” — made the Top 10. More than three decades later, The Chicago Tribune declared her the “queen of ’70s pop.”

Helen Maxine Lamond Reddy was born on Oct. 25, 1941, in Melbourne, Australia, the only child of Max Reddy, a writer, producer and actor; and Stella (Lamond) Reddy, an actress whose stage name was Stella Campbell. Her father was in New Guinea, serving in the Australian Army, when she was born. The Reddys performed on the Australian vaudeville circuit, and Helen began joining them onstage when she was 4…

Survivors include her two children, Traci Wald Donat, a daughter from her first marriage, Jordan Sommers, a son from her second, her half sister, Toni Lamond, an Australian singer-actress, and one grandchild…

In a 2013 interview, Ms. Reddy seemed philosophical. “I am at the age where I can just kick back and say what a wonderful life I’ve had,” she told The Sydney Morning Herald. And she laughed when one very familiar question came up: whether she was nervous the first time she went onstage.

“I don’t remember the first time I went onstage,” she said.

From The Mountain Town News (Allen Best):

Sand Creek Massacre at heartburn of proposals to rename 14,265-foot peak

Through the lens of the 21st century, Colorado will soon revisit a still-festering wound suffered during its founding in the 19th century. Three proposals have been submitted to the U.S. Board of Geographic Names to give the 14,265-foot mountain west of Denver a new handle to replace the existing name, Evans.

One proposal would rename it Mount Cheyenne Arapaho, a nod to the victims of the Sand Creek Massacre in 1864, when John Evans, the namesake, was both territorial governor and the federal government’s Indian agent for Colorado.

Mount Soule would honor Silas Soule, who commanded a company of the Colorado volunteers that attacked the peaceful encampment near today’s town of Eads, in southeastern Colorado. Soule withheld his soldiers from the attack and later testified against John Chivington, the commanding officer. Soule was assassinated in Denver the following April.

Rosalie, the third recommendation, would restore the name the mountain had prior to 1890. Rosalie Bierstadt was wife of the famous painter, Albert Bierstadt. Mount Bierstadt is connected to Evans, the former Rosalie, by a ridge. Colorado currently has no 14,000-foot peaks named after a woman.

The final authority for such proposals resides with U.S. Board of Geographic Names, but that body will be listening closely to the recommendations of the Colorado Geographic Naming Advisory Board created recently by Gov. Jared Polis. The board is charged with making recommendations to the governor re changes and new names but also controversies regarding names of geographic features and certain public places.

“Names are important, not only because they signify what something is to us, but they reflect our values and our legacy, of who we are. In this you will play a critical role,” said Polis at the first meeting of the board last Thursday.

The board has 15 members, most of them state and local officials and representatives of historical and research institutions. They bring plenty of credentials, formal and otherwise, to the discussion, but those of the historian Patty Limerick stand out.

Limerick was consulted in the establishment of the Sand Creek National Historic Site in 2007. She also was involved in the renaming of a dormitory on the campus of the University of Colorado-Boulder. It had been named for David Nichols, a volunteer soldier at Sand Creek and an early proponent of what became the university. In 1989 it was renamed the Cheyenne Arapahoe Hall.

The Evans’s replacements are among 16 proposed name changes for mountains, reservoirs, and other features and one proposal to name a currently unnamed peak.

Many have to do with features that reflect attitudes of previous times. For example, there is a trio of Negros on the Western Slope (a creek, a mesa, and a draw) that have proposed new names, while in Chaffee County, Chinaman Gulch is proposed for a renaming as Trout Creek Gulch.

Jennifer Runyon, senior researcher with the U.S. Board of Geographic Names, suggested to Colorado’s new board members that some proposals will be easier than others. For example, a body of water east of Longmont is formally called Calkins Lake on federal maps, but locally it’s always called Union Reservoir.

Chinaman Gulch has some controversy. The local jurisdiction, Chaffee County, has opposed the name change, she said, believing that the name showed no disrespect. Too, the proposed revision, Trout Creek Gulch, would have introduced an inaccuracy, the Chaffee County commissioners said.

This is from the Sept. 22, 2020, issue of Big Pivots, a publication devoted to the energy and other transitions in Colorado. For a free subscription to the e-magazine, enter you name and e-mail address at BigPivots.com

Then there’s Squaw Mountain, the site of the some-time ski area west of Denver. A proposal has been submitted to call it Mount Mistanta, the anglicized name of the Cheyenne wife of William Bent, the trader in southeastern Colorado in the early 18th century.

Many features around the United States named squaw have been changed in recent years to reflect names used by Native Americans. Runyon cited new names from the Klamath, Paiute, Umatilla, and other tribes in their native tongues, as squaw is considered by many to be derogatory. But that belief is not universal, she observed. For example, the Navajo are proud of their squaw bread and their squaw dances, among other respectful uses of the word squaw.

The federal board prefers to “proceed cautiously and conservatively regarding name changes,” Runyon said. “There needs to be a compelling reason for the change.”

The board doesn’t go looking to change names. “We don’t even encourage name changes. We are here to help,” she said.

The federal board does not want to decide what is offensive. “That is quite subjective,” she said, citing the example of the various views of the word squaw.

And in no case does the U.S. Board of Geographic Names want to approve changes without local input. The commissioners of Clear Creek County, where Squaw Mountain is located, have said they didn’t want a change, although there’s evidence that recommendation may be revisited. The local jurisdiction will now be working with the new state board.

No proposal has been submitted to the federal board to rename the Gore Range, although that idea has flared sporadically in public discussions in Summit and Eagle counties in recent years. The range is named for an Irish baronet, George Gore, who led a large hunting expedition to Middle Park in 1864 and to the pass west of Kremmling that bears his name. Gore’s expedition was known for its wanton butchery of wildlife.

However, the new state board can take proposals directly from the public, Runyon said.

The Sand Creek Massacre occurred a decade after Gore’s gluttony, and the butchery astounded many even at the time. A 675-man force under the command of Col. John Chivington, most of them from the new city of Denver, charged into a camp of Cheyenne and Arapaho in the bed of Sand Creek at dawn on Nov. 29, 1864. The natives believed they had been offered protection from attack because of their declared intentions to be at peace. About two-thirds of those killed were women and children, and many of the bodies were mutilated.

In 2014, Northwestern University in Evansville, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, and the University of Denver, both issued reports examining their connection to the massacre, as both universities had been founded by Evans.

“No known evidence indicates that John Evans helped plan the Sand Creek Massacre or had any knowledge of it in advance,” the Northwestern University report concluded. “The extant evidence suggests that he did not consider the Indians at Sand Creek to be a threat and that he would have opposed the attack that took place.”

If lacking blood directly staining his legacy, Evans was among “several individuals who, in serving a flawed and poorly implemented federal Indian policy, helped create a situation that made the Sand Creek massacre possible. In this regard, the most critical of his errors was to his failure to fulfill his responsibility as superintendent of Indian affairs to represent the best interests of Native peoples in Colorado.”

To compound that failure, the panel from Northwestern University said, Evans refused to fess up to the errors of his past, either immediately afterward or decades later. He never did criticize the massacre.

The University of Denver report, issued six months later, differed in that the study group included direct descendants of the Sand Creek massacre. It goes a small step further than the report from Northwestern in finding a “pattern of neglect of (Evans’s) treaty-negotiating duties, his leadership failures, and his reckless decision-making in 1864.”

5280, the magazine, succinctly summarized the legacy of Evans in a 2019 story. “History’s heroes don’t always age well,” it said when reporting the first official renaming proposal to the U.S. Board of Geographic Names.

There’s much to fuss over in all this naming and renaming. For example, Evans has a second mountain named after him, if not quite as high or prominent, in Lake County, near Fremont Pass. And it might be noted that there’s already an Arapaho Peak, west of Boulder.

Sand Creek has become sort of personal to me. My great-grandparents homesteaded on Colorado’s far eastern tier in the late 1880s, two decades after the Cheyenne, Pawnee, Sioux, and the others had been chased off. Today, some of my ability to wander around Colorado, poking my nose into historical artifacts such as Sand Creek, comes from that working of the landscape by my antecedents.

I’ve been to the massacre site at Sand Creek two or three times for the post-dawn November remembrances convened by Cheyenne people from Montana and elsewhere. The participants then travel to Denver, to pay respects to Silas Soule at his grave in Riverside Cemetery along the banks of the South Platte River. (I am guessing there’s no similar ritual at the grave of John Evans, which is in the same cemetery). The next stop is the tribute to Soule in a building at 15th and Arapahoe, the approximate site of his assassination. Then they march on to the State Capitol.

In 2014, in a rumination on Sand Creek on the 150th anniversary, I wrote an essay published in the Boulder Daily Camera that suggested that the highway between Eads and Denver be given an honorary name. We have the 10th Mountain Division Memorial Highway between Minturn and Leadville, the Ronald Reagan Highway for I-25 as it passes through Colorado Springs, and many more.

Why not the Black Kettle Memorial Highway, I proposed then, which would have honored the Cheyenne chief who took many risks in the months before Sand Creek and at Sand Creek itself in an effort to achieve a peace. He was later killed by soldiers under the command of General George Armstrong Custer.

Of course, I think the Cheyenne and Arapahoe should have the largest say in what becomes of Mt. Evans, if anything. This is sure to be an interesting discussion…

Allen Best is a Colorado-based journalist who publishes an e-magazine called Big Pivots. Reach him at allen.best@comcast.net or 303.463.8630.

Stacy Morford, The Conversation

Scientists have been warning for months that the coronavirus could be spread by aerosols – tiny respiratory droplets that people emit when they talk or sneeze and that can linger in the air.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention appeared to acknowledge that risk on Sept. 18. It posted guidance on its website listing aerosols among the ways the virus spreads and saying there was growing evidence the airborne particles can remain suspended and travel beyond 6 feet. But three days later, that guidance was gone. A note in its place said a draft had been posted in error and that the CDC was still working on the update.

That kind of shifting by the government can be confusing. In the following five articles recently published in The Conversation, we turned to scientists to help explain what aerosols are, how airborne particles can transmit the coronavirus and how to protect yourself.

1. What you need to know about aerosols

When you talk or sing, the rush of air breaks up strands of mucus in your airways, sending droplets of it airborne.

While larger droplets quickly fall, tiny, light ones can linger in the air. If you’re infected, those droplets can contain the coronavirus, and early research suggests it can be viable for many minutes to hours.

Aerosol experts Byron Erath, Andrea Ferro and Goodarz Ahmadi of Clarkson University explained the mechanics of aerosols in a recent article for The Conversation.

They also discussed what people can do to protect themselves. “Wearing face coverings to decrease airborne exposure risk is critical,” they wrote, and “reducing the amount of time you spend in poorly ventilated, crowded areas is a good way to reduce airborne exposure risk.”

2. Is staying 6 feet apart enough?

The common advice for social distancing is to stay 6 feet apart. It’s easy to remember, but it doesn’t account for all aerosol risks – particularly indoors.

Because people infected with SARS-CoV-2 can transmit large amounts of the virus, there is no safe distance in a poorly ventilated room, Erath, Ferro, Ahmadi and their Clarkson University colleague Suresh Dhaniyala wrote in a second article. Air currents from a fan or ventilation system can spread respiratory droplets farther than 6 feet. So can speaking loudly or singing, as superspreader events have shown.

The scientists used a smoky room analogy to illustrate the risk and suggested ways to manage it.

“Over time, it won’t matter where you are in the room,” they wrote. “While it’s not a perfect analogy, picturing how cigarette smoke moves through different environments, both indoors and outdoors, can help in visualizing how virus-laden droplets circulate in the air.”

3. Airborne particles and superspreaders

A large number of COVID-19 cases have come from “superspreader” events where someone who is highly infectious spreads the virus to dozens of others.

Researchers in Hong Kong recently estimated that about 20% of the people infected there were responsible for 80% of the local coronavirus transmission. Choir practices, church services, nightclubs and a birthday party are just few of the documented superspreader events.

Elizabeth McGraw, who heads Pennsylvania State University’s Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics, explained the evidence and the importance of superspreader events to the virus’s transmission in another article.

“The good news is that the right control practices specific to how pathogens are transmitted – hand-washing, masks, quarantine, vaccination, reducing social contacts and so on – can slow the transmission rate and halt a pandemic,” she wrote.

4. What airborne virus means for reopening

The way the virus spreads in the air is also a challenge for reopening businesses and schools.

Respiratory scientist Douglas Reed of the University of Pittsburgh examined studies that have shown how the virus has spread, including at a call center in South Korea, a restaurant in China and a choir practice in Washington state.

“The evidence strongly suggests that airborne transmission happens easily and is likely a significant driver of this pandemic. It must be taken seriously as people begin to venture back out into the world,” he wrote.

More research has been published since that article came out that also points to the virus spreading through the air. One review found adults who had tested positive for COVID-19 were about twice as likely to have dined at a restaurant than those who tested negative. Another described a large outbreak in one ward of a nursing home with poor ventilation. Two other studies traced how the virus spread during airline flights.

A separate article by Kacey Ernst and Paloma Beamer of the University of Arizona looked at the risks in flying during the pandemic and, for those who must get on an airplane, how to stay as safe as possible.

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5. The problem with school buses

With temperatures getting cooler, it’s going to be harder to keep windows open to bring fresh air into enclosed spaces, and that includes public transportation and school buses.

Jesse Capecelatro, a mechanical engineer at the University of Michigan, broke down the risks of the coronavirus spreading inside a school bus and offered eight recommendations.

“Short trips. Masks for everyone. Far fewer passengers than before,” he wrote. “Those are my top recommendations for how America’s school buses should take kids to and from school during the pandemic.”

Editor’s note: This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives.

Stacy Morford, General Assignments Editor, The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Bethany Teachman, University of Virginia

It’s 1:36 a.m. and I’ve just gotten my daughter back to sleep after she threw up violently. She has no fever, no cough, no shortness of breath, but what if…. I think it’s food poisoning and not COVID-19, but I can’t know for sure. Not knowing is hard. I’ll call the pediatrician in the morning, but for tonight I’m left with racing “what if” thoughts.

Most people hate this all-too-familiar type of uncertainty. I find it fascinating.

As a psychologist, I’m interested in how people think differently when they’re anxious. That means I study what happens when people don’t handle uncertainty well and get lost in that bottomless pit of currently unanswerable questions.

If you’re having trouble handling pandemic uncertainty, psychology research can offer tips on how to deal with these unprecedented times.

The uncertainty-anxiety connection

There’s no script to follow for how to live through a pandemic. That can be hard to deal with because it’s natural to form narratives to help you know how to respond. In a movie theater, you know that when it gets dark, it means the movie is about to start – that movie theater script tells you not to panic and think the theater has lost power or is under attack.

In this moment, we are figuratively in the dark, and many people feel they’re drowning in unanswered questions and the anxiety they provoke.

When will a vaccine be available? When will schools reopen (or close again)? Who will win the election? Should I let my child do sports? Is my job safe, or for those less fortunate, when will I find a new job? How many more times will I see “your connection is unstable” during an important video call?

The list of unanswered questions can feel infinite, with no quick or sure answers likely to come for some time. Sitting with these questions is scary, because not knowing can make you feel that the world is unpredictable and your fate is out of your control.

So, what do you do with the anxiety this uncertainty naturally evokes?

If you get stuck replaying the unanswered questions over and over and let anxiety guide your thinking, you’re likely to fill in the gaps with worst-case scenarios. A tendency to catastrophize and assign negative and threatening interpretations when situations are uncertain or ambiguous is a hallmark of anxiety disorders. In fact, “intolerance of uncertainty,” the tendency to fear the unknown and find the lack of certainty highly distressing and uncomfortable, is a strong predictor of anxiety in both adults and children and adolescents.

Given that COVID-19, the economy, racial injustice, climate change and the presidential election all take the need to tolerate uncertainty to a whole new level, it’s not surprising that the percentage of people reporting symptoms of anxiety rose dramatically in the U.S. in 2020.

Stop spiraling and think differently

No individual can fix all the problems American communities are facing right now. And answers to many of those known unknowns and unknown unknowns are elusive for the moment. But you can change the way you respond to uncertainty, which can make managing this difficult time a little easier.

You can reframe the meaning of not knowing to make it less scary.

Imagine three different ways I can think about the uncertainty I feel right now as my sick daughter sleeps down the hall.

First, I can choose to believe in my ability to manage whatever will come, so it is OK to take it a day at a time. I can handle not knowing exactly why my daughter threw up for now because I believe that I will seek appropriate medical care and that I can handle whatever results come my way.

Second, I can remind myself that uncertainty does not guarantee bad things will happen; it just means I don’t know yet. The anxiety I feel from the uncertainty does not actually mean a negative outcome is more likely. The fact that I’m worrying about whether my daughter has COVID-19 does not increase the likelihood of her having it. It just feels that way because of a common tendency, especially among anxious individuals, to think that just having a negative thought makes it more likely to come true. Psychologists call this thought-action-fusion.

Third, I can recognize that I cope with uncertainty in other parts of life all the time. I mean, try to envision exactly what your relationships and work will look like one year from now – there is so much you just don’t know. So I’ve had lots of practice tolerating uncertainty, which tells me I can handle uncertainty even though it’s hard. I’ve done it before; I can do it again.

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Thinking differently about your ability to manage uncertainty is a skill that can improve with practice. Cognitive behavior therapy, for example, teaches people to examine their anxious thoughts and consider other ways to interpret situations without always assuming the worst; there are specialized versions of this treatment that focus specifically on changing how well you can deal with uncertainty. Moreover, as part of our research program, my lab at the University of Virginia offers free online interventions to help people shift their anxious thinking.

Of course, a fourth way to respond to my middle-of-the-night uncertainty would be to sink down into that pit of scary, unanswerable “what if” questions, but it’s time to sleep. I’m going with one of the first three options – I trust I can figure this out in the morning and handle whatever it is. It’s OK not to know right now.

Bethany Teachman, Professor of Psychology, University of Virginia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Pamela Scott Bracey, PhD, Mississippi State University

Valentine’s Day was sweet, spring break was fun, then… boom! COVID-19. Stay-at-home orders, workplace shutdowns, school closures and social distancing requirements changed lives almost overnight. Forty-two percent of the U.S. workforce now works from home full-time. In the six months since the “new normal” began, Americans have gained a fair amount of experience with working, studying and socializing online.

With schools resuming and cooler weather curtailing outdoor activities, videoconferencing will be as front and center as it was in the spring.

As someone who researches and teaches instructional technology, I can offer recommendations for how to make the best of the situation and make the most of virtual interactions with colleagues, teachers, students, family and friends.

Create a designated videoconferencing space

If working from home, select a location with a simple background that does not show angles of your personal space that you would like to keep private. Some videoconference platforms even include free virtual background options to choose from, or allow you to upload your own mock office image files.

If you aren’t able to add home classrooms, desks or workstations, be sure to create a designated learning space at a table for children and their school materials to create structure and a routine. Post schedules near the workspace, and limit distractions.

If lighting in your designated workspace is dark, invest in a ring light or other lamp to guarantee that you can be clearly seen.

Environment affects mood. Since many people now spend the majority of their time within the confines of their homes, it’s worthwhile to declutter, reorganize and clean on a regular basis to make home a space of peace and comfort in the midst of chaotic circumstances.

Get to know your videoconferencing software

To lessen the probability of having your meetings compromised by hackers, use passwords and log onto videoconferences only via secure, password-protected internet networks.

Use headphones with noise-canceling microphones for optimal sound. This can help provide clear communication.

Create accounts within videoconference platforms before going into meetings to access more available features and set your personal preferences.

If you’re tired of the “Hollywood Squares” effect of Zoom and the other major videoconferencing platforms, take a look at some of the newer alternatives, like Spatial, and keep an eye on projects in the works that aim to make videoconferencing feel more like real life.

Keep a schedule and take breaks

Set alarms five or 10 minutes before scheduled start times to remember when to log into videoconferences. Also keep your schedule written in a planner in case your phone dies or gets misplaced.

People with children participating in virtual learning may feel like they’ve become personal assistants trying to juggle multiple schedules. Showing students how to maintain their own schedules will not only lessen your load but will also teach them valuable planning and accountability skills that will carry them far beyond grade school.

Consider actually resting during scheduled breaks in videoconferences. Go for walks outside for fresh air, eat healthy snacks and drink water. Refrain from forcing children to work on homework during short breaks, and allow their eyes to rest, too. Excessive screen time can be bad for your eyes.

Sitting in front of a computer for long periods of time can cause pain in other parts of the body, so be sure to get up and move around during breaks. Being sedentary is generally bad for your health.

Keeping computers at eye level or using moveable webcams can help alleviate neck pain, and also avoid showing what’s in your nose. Maintaining an upright posture can help prevent back and wrist injuries; and using an external mouse for laptop navigation can help reduce strain on fingers and joints.

Identify available resources

Explore resources and benefits offered through your place of employment. Perhaps there is a designated budget for home office equipment like printers, desks, chairs, webcams and headsets. Many companies also offer free mental health therapy sessions, childcare provisions and extended family medical leave through the Families First Coronavirus Response Act.

If you have suffered personal losses due to COVID-19, taking time to grieve is essential; coping alone can weigh heavily on your mental health. Having the support of friends and colleagues can help you navigate these uncharted waters more successfully, but only if they are made aware of your circumstances.

Life online isn’t easy – be patient with yourself and others

The effects of living virtually online continue to affect everyone in various ways. Some are struggling with guilt from having to send children back to school while COVID-19 is still spreading rapidly – but work schedules or financial situations leave no other choice. Other families are struggling with the demands of keeping children home to learn virtually because their school districts aren’t offering an in-person option due to safety concerns.

People in supervisory roles should try to remember that life is different for everyone right now. It’s unreasonable to expect the same level of productivity without considering employees’ home-life situations.

While virtual learning is extremely inconvenient for parents who have multiple children, demanding careers or financial restraints, it’s important to recognize that most educators are doing the best they can – especially those who are also parents. Most are working to learn how to use new software applications, navigate learning management systems and adopt unfamiliar online strategies and classroom management techniques, often with no technical assistance.

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Whatever your reality is right now, just trust your gut and do the best that you can. Take time to appreciate small pleasantries of life, incorporate daily physical activity, take walks to enjoy nature, reconnect with family through game or movie nights and try new cooking recipes. Be especially mindful of your attitude around children, since adults set the tone and highly influence the outlooks of impressionable young minds.

Living online is not the end of the world, but attitude is everything. Continue to do your best, and know that this too shall pass, hopefully sooner than later.

Pamela Scott Bracey, PhD, Associate Professor of Instructional Systems and Workforce Development, Mississippi State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

From Way to Go:

This week, swap a car ride for a bike ride. Not only will you get some exercise, you’ll be automatically eligible to win a sweet commuter bike courtesy of the Colorado Classic!

We’re kicking things off this morning with a video greeting from Gov. Jared Polis, and we’ve got some exciting opportunities for you all week long!

From Esquire (Charles P. Pierce):

The associate justice of the Supreme Court, whose career runs parallel to that of Justice Thurgood Marshall, is dead at 87

will remember her most for the umbrella in the rain.

It was 2013, and the Supreme Court was announcing its decision in the case of Shelby County v. Holder, the decision that gutted the Voting Rights Act and in which Chief Justice John Roberts declared the Day of Jubilee, writing:

Nearly 50 years later, things have changed dramatically. Shelby County contends that the preclearance requirement, even without regard to its disparate coverage, is now unconstitutional. Its arguments have a good deal of force. In the covered jurisdictions, “[v]oter turnout and registration rates now approach parity. Blatantly discriminatory evasions of federal decrees are rare. And minority candidates hold office at unprecedented levels.”
In dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg measured Roberts for a feckless child who understands less about this country and its history than he knows about Sumerian calligraphy. She told him in no uncertain terms what his fanciful decision would mean in the real world.

“Congress approached the 2006 reauthorization of the VRA with great care and seriousness. The same cannot be said of the Court’s opinion today. The Court makes no genuine attempt to engage with the massive legislative record that Congress assembled. … One would expect more from an opinion striking at the heart of the Nation’s signal piece of civil-rights legislation…Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.”

It was more than a clever metaphor, although clever it was. It was a statement of remarkable prescience, a statement from someone who knew that the dark elements in American history never die, but only sleep until the opportunity to wreak the old vengeances reveals itself again, as it almost always does. Justice Ginsburg fought those forces in the days when nobody even acknowledged their existence. Her career runs parallel to that of Justice Thurgood Marshall—two champions of freedom and equality who won great victories in front of a Court that they eventually were asked to join. It is a very small club. To join you need a will of iron, an unshakable granite commitment to principle, and a good measure of controlled, implacable ferocity. It is the ferocity that is the most important thing.

By all accounts, Justice Ginsburg was a boon companion, the late Antonin Scalia’s opera buddy, and a woman of great personal charisma. (On MSNBC Friday night, Hillary Rodham Clinton reminisced about how Justice Ginsburg essentially talked President Bill Clinton into nominating her to the Court by completely acing her face-to-face interview.) Her former clerks adored her. In an admirable demonstration of self-effacement, she thoroughly embraced her late-in-life persona as The Notorious RBG, even inviting camera crews in to watch her workouts. But, make no mistake, there was in Ruth Bader Ginsburg the soul and the heart of a terrifying opponent for the late rounds. In a remarkable string of victories before the Supreme Court in 1971, she forced the country to admit that, yes, the 14th Amendment’s guarantees covered women, too. This was a fight for a winter soldier and that was what it found in Ruth Bader Ginsburg, just as racial equality had found one in Thurgood Marshall. And she did it through broken ribs and five different fights with cancer.

From The Denver Post (Saja Hindi):

Here are the 16 pending proposals for name changes:

Mount Evans in Clear Creek County: three requests. Proposed alternatives: Mount Rosalie, Mount Soule, Mount Cheyenne Arapaho

Squaw Mountain in Clear Creek County. Proposed alternative: Mount Mistanta

Redskin Creek in Jefferson and Park Counties. Proposed alternative: Ute Creek

Chinaman Gulch in Chaffee County. Proposed alternative: Trout Creek Gulch

Redskin Mountain in Jefferson County. Proposed alternative: Mount Jerome

Negro Creek in Delta County. Proposed alternative: Hops Creek or Clay Creek

Negro Mesa in Delta County. Proposed alternative: Clay Mesa

Negro Draw in Montezuma County. Proposed alternative: Hops Draw

Benchmark Lake Reservoir in Eagle County. Proposed alternative: Nottingham Lake

V H Pasture Reservoir in San Miguel County. Proposed alternative: Elk Springs Reservoir

Vurl Reservoir in San Miguel County. Proposed alternative: Wapiti Reservoir

Unnamed Peak in Jefferson County. Proposed alternative: Cimarron Peak

Calkins Lake in Weld County. Proposed alternative: Union Reservoir

The Colorado Geographic Naming Advisory Board was created by Gov. Jared Polis at a time when people across the country have been calling for the removal of symbols of racism. Colorado was one of only two states without such a board.