It gives me wry amusement to recall my youthful response to the civil rights demonstrations of the early 1960s. “Nobody ever changed anything by walking around waving signs,” I said. The aftermath of the March on Washington in 1963 proved me wrong. Some 250,000 people from all over the nation came to the National Mall on August 28 to protest racial discrimination. The next year Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Anti-war protests in the streets of the United States a few years later shifted public opinion toward ending American involvement in the Vietnam War. Meanwhile, an estimated 20 million people nationwide participated in Earth Day on April 22, 1970; this largest single-day demonstration in U.S. history led to passage of the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency. Protests over the weeks after police killed George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020 involved between 15 and 26 million across the nation, spurring some state and local police reforms such as banning chokeholds and no-knock warrants.

Crowd sizes are often contentious. Numbers matter as a measure of public support, a means to expand public awareness, and a factor in planning for public safety. Memorable disputes arose after the 1995 Million Man March and the 2017 Presidential Inauguration. Early attempts to be objective, by multiplying density (people per unit space) by the total space covered, didn’t account for variations in how tightly people cluster or for arrivals and departures over time. Drone photography, satellite images, and AI models allow more accurate headcounts if weather and visibility cooperate.

That said, nearly 7 million estimated participants nationwide made the No Kings protest this October one of the largest in American history. What changes as a result, if anything, is yet to be seen.

Image: No Kings protest in Dallas, Texas, June 14, 2025. Photograph by Brendan Rogers.

Habits can be hard to break, especially those you’ve kept up for ages. Other habits, formed not so long ago and then skipped for a year or two, can be hard to recover. After spending more days this summer in the garden than the woods, I put too much trust in my Ice Age Trail (IAT) routines and mental maps when I finally got back to the trail last week.

I used to toss the IAT guidebook and atlas in the car before leaving home. This time it didn’t enter my head. Road names like Frenchtown and Storytown rang familiar, but I forgot how they related to where I wanted to go. Even after a stop at Kwik Trip for bananas, gas, and directions, it took twice the predicted time to locate the trailhead.

Bit by bit I re-learned what was once familiar. How to use trekking poles to stay upright on a stony, uneven surface. How to pause at forks in the path to make sure I’ll know the way back. How to still my mind to make space for the sounds of squirrels, birdsong, and wind in the upper branches.

I’ve read suggestions to recall what delighted you as child and rediscover or adapt it later in life. Exploring unfamiliar woodlands has always brought me joy. Today I carry poles and a cell phone and am more likely to stick to the path, but the joy is the same. And the habits that support it are gradually coming back. 

On Thursday I stowed all my short-sleeved tee shirts in the guestroom closet and brought the long-sleeved jerseys to hang near my bed. The outdoor temperature was in the forties. We may not top the low seventies again till spring.

It’s often struck me how law and culture define sharp boundaries, of necessity, for changes that are really gradual. When are you really mature enough to drink or drive, or to vote wisely? When does one become a person or an adult? How fast is it really safe to drive on a country road? By what date is a landlord required to heat the apartment?

This week I was struck by the personal need to do the same. Although switching the wardrobe from summer to winter, or the thermostat from cool to heat, isn’t tied to a specific date on the calendar, these markers of the turning season happen on a single day. Meanwhile the world orbits the sun, leaf colors deepen week by week, and the level on the outdoor thermometer bobs up and down.

​By any measure, fall is well and truly here.

In high school, I was secretary of every club I belonged to. Those were the days when secretaries were girls almost by definition, and the nerdy clubs I joined consisted mostly of boys. I didn’t mind. Taking minutes let me record events as I saw them, truthfully but with editorial comment. I might describe a discussion as interminable, or mention smirks and rolled eyes when someone said something particularly stupid.

By my twenties I’d reached a more adult understanding of responsibility. Impersonal writing had no place for personal bias. And yet . . . My college seminar professor Mr. Blodgett taught us that history without bias was impossible. However hard you strive for objectivity, you must still choose what to include and how to arrange it. Researchers must decide what to investigate. Journalists must decide who to interview. An editor must decide which story to headline. Nor is “fair and balanced” a solution. Do flat earth and round earth merit equal weight?

Between 1950 and 1981, Americans heard Walter Cronkite’s news reports with confidence and respect. He was called the most trusted man in America. I haven’t heard that said of anyone else in decades. Advances in technology let us choose our separate silos, who we’ll trust and who we’ll dismiss. We debate not just policies but facts. The skeptics among us distrust everybody.

There’s no going back, but that doesn't mean "anything goes." Repeat as fact only what’s true; base claims on evidence; reveal possible conflicts of interest. Follow the scientific method or the journalists’ code of ethics. Every honest step helps, even if we can’t avoid bias altogether. Even Walter Cronkite had to decide which news was important enough to report.

Image: Newsman Walter Cronkite, “the most trusted man in America.”