Belle Boggs

2 months ago | frogtroubletimes.substack.com | Belle Boggs |Beatrice Allen

On Tuesday I texted Cat, Are we in constitutional crisis? Yup, she replied. Later I asked a historian friend, “So, is this constitutional crisis?” Oh yes, he said. On Tuesday night, Cat and I cried at dinner. Maybe you cried too, or yelled, or had a hard week, like some other members of our family, that was hard beyond politics but compounded by politics, made worse by the fact that we are living in not only a constitutional crisis but a crisis of care.

2 months ago | frogtroubletimes.substack.com | Belle Boggs |Beatrice Allen

Have you ever been to the Peabody Hotel in Memphis? We haven’t, but we felt like we had after reading John Philip Duck by Patricia Polacco. It’s the story of how the Peabody Duck March got started, way back in the 1930s.

Jan 19, 2025 | frogtroubletimes.substack.com | Belle Boggs |Beatrice Allen

When I was growing up, and all the way through high school, my home state of Virginia did not celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Instead, we stayed home from school on “Lee-Jackson-King Day,” a bizarre and offensive holiday honoring Confederate generals as well as our most significant and important activist for peace, justice, labor rights, and democracy. Virginia wasn’t the only state to balk at the national holiday’s rightful name—even New Hampshire called it “Civil Rights Day” until 1999.

Jan 12, 2025 | frogtroubletimes.substack.com | Belle Boggs |Beatrice Allen

It snowed here Friday afternoon and evening—our first measurable snowfall in three years. Bea and Harriet, who’d gotten out of school early, wouldn’t let me go for a run in it until they did a special protective ritual (they say you can’t “pay attention” to the snow when it first starts or it might stop).

Jan 5, 2025 | frogtroubletimes.substack.com | Belle Boggs |Beatrice Allen

I wondered if we’d get any holiday cards at all this year. Everyone I know is pretty down after the election, exhausted from fall’s hard work and bracing themselves for what’s next. I got behind and didn’t send cards, which tends to depress the number of cards you get in return. But we got them, maybe not as many as usual but enough to fill three windowsills, where they cheered us for the season.