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Each night, throughout this long stretch of intense heat and high humidity, we have been praying to the air-conditioning gods to stay strong and continue to keep us comfortable. Last Friday night I must have forgotten, in my euphoria at the start of the weekend, to say my prayers because Saturday afternoon there was a waterfall coming through the ceiling in one of our offices.

Fortunately a staff member had come in to prepare for the next editions and was horrified at the sight. The water was dripping through the Sheetrock and onto one of our newer computers, then splashing its way off the papers on the desk and the leather surface of the chair to land on the relatively new carpet. A unit in the attic had given up trying to wring moisture out of the room and had broken down, releasing its condensate. The ceiling had begun to sag in protest.

The staff member called me.

I was at home, sitting in my favorite living room chair, reading the sections of the Sunday Times that we somehow get delivered on Saturday morning. The dog lay beside me, snoring slightly, enjoying the peaceful companionship of a weekend afternoon. I could hear the birds chirping outside, even over the whoosh of the air conditioning. It was a bucolic high-summer scene — until the phone rang.

Then we went into a frenzy that has lasted until today, as the repairmen try to pinpoint the problem. One thing I can tell you. It sure is tough to be creative in the 90-degree-plus heat. But the staff has soldiered on, despite the sultry air. Yes, we have fans and, yes, we have air conditioning in the rest of the building, some of which in theory should waft into the stricken room. But it has been uncomfortable, and the staff has persevered. If your newspaper feels a little damp, I trust you’ll understand. And we are hoping the fix is in.

How did we manage before air conditioning? There are still people who do not have air conditioning today by choice. Apartments and stores weren’t air conditioned when I was in the first decade of my life — only movie theaters were, and that’s where we hung out for two features and a news short on Saturday afternoons. When we wanted to cool down on Sundays, we rode the subway out to Rockaway Beach in Brooklyn — the end of the line — then walked the blocks to the sand and the surf, marveling at the seaside breeze. We stayed there — my parents, my brother, my sister and I — until quite late before returning to our stuffy apartment, squeezing as much time as we could from our comfortable location. Sometimes it even got quite cool along the water’s edge at night. We never complained.

During the week, we took refuge in Central Park, sitting on a bench or a blanket that we might have carried through the streets. We would pass neighbors hanging over their ground-floor windowsills and youngsters lounging on the steps of their stoops. Once we reached the park, my dad would find a thicket of trees and spread the blanket for us. Stretched out, we deeply inhaled the sweet summer evening breezes that might come along. After my brother, who was almost 14 years older, purchased his car, he would take us for rides after work with the side windows rolled down and the wing windows directing the flow of air onto our faces. Once we cleared the downtown streets and reached the parkway, he could get up enough speed to make us rejoice in the stream of air.

Even when I was in my 20s and married, we didn’t have air conditioning in our car, although it was available as an expensive option. It wasn’t until we lived on the Texas air base and bought a station wagon from a local dealer for our growing family that we got air conditioning. It turned out that was standard in every car in the South. How perfectly wonderful, but we did take a bit of ribbing from our friends and family about being spendthrifts when we drove back north. That was in the late 1960s, in a world long gone.

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Friends help make our lives special. They are fun to be with, we like the person we are when we are with them, they share activities with us, they offer an ear when we need to talk over important matters, they cheer us up when we are down, they lend a hand when we need help, they broaden our horizons with their intelligence, knowledge and experience — and, most critically, they are there for us in times of crisis. Those are typical answers when we ask people, “What is a friend?”

But what if our friend doesn’t like us as much as we like him or her?

According to an article in The New York Times and other media, recent research on the subject of friends would suggest that only about half of our friendships are mutual. Whoa! That means someone you think is a close friend might not feel the same way about you. Now that is a thought to make you feel instantly abandoned. And, according to the Times, through experts interviewed, “the authenticity of one’s relationships has an enormous impact on one’s health and well-being.”

Who are our friends? Where do they come from? How many real friends can we have? How do we judge whether they are true friends? And are we a true friend in return?

Certainly a true friend is more than someone on Facebook. Alexander Nehamas, a professor of philosophy at Princeton, told The Times that friendship is more like beauty or art, which kindles something deep within us and is “appreciated for its own sake.” It’s a lovely thought.

Ronald Sharp, a professor of English at Vassar College, edited a book, “The Norton Book of Friendship,” with his friend, Eudora Welty in 1991. Sharp is quoted in The Times as saying, “The notion of doing nothing but spending time in each other’s company has, in a way, become a lost art,” to be replaced by volleys of texts and tweets.

To have a friendship with someone has several requirements. First is time. It takes time to understand the other person and to trust that person enough to let him or her understand you. So trust is another requirement. Lucky are those who have friends from elementary school or college, for those have withstood the test of time. Additionally those friends are witnesses to our lives as we are to theirs. That is a relationship to be treasured and not replaced, and it may be resumed even after years have gone by with no contact. Honesty is another. You have to be able to respond honestly to a friend, even if it is not what he or she wants to hear, and to receive the same in return.

But there is more. A close friend is one with whom you interact almost daily because you would otherwise miss the contact. That person is one whose sentences you could reliably finish because, to some extent, you live within each other’s heads. That person is someone who, you absolutely know from prior evidence, has your back. And that is a person who knows and accepts your shortcomings even as you accept theirs because you protect each other’s vulnerabilities. I have only experienced that kind of friendship with one or two people because there isn’t enough time really to get to know that many people, however interesting they may seem.

Then there are perhaps four or six others with whom I maintain ongoing friendships. These are good friends whom I enjoy common ground with, and feel concern and affection for. These friends provide a support system and a social circle to which we all contribute. Others are more casual friends, dependent on circumstances, and they may move in and out of my world at any given time.

Friends and friendships are tested by crises. I have had my share, as have my friends, and we have been there for each other. We will be there again because we are best friends.

  

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One hundred years ago this week, The New York Times has reported, the worst terrorist attack on the United States until 9/11 occurred in New York Harbor. Black Tom Island, supposedly named after an early African-American resident and owned by the Lehigh Valley Railroad, lay next to Liberty Island and was the site of three-quarters of the American-made ammunitions readied for shipment to Allied forces in World War I. Stored in warehouses, in railroad cars and on barges on the small island, the munitions were targeted with small fires shortly after midnight on July 30, 1916, and the first explosion had the force of about a 5.5 earthquake on the Richter scale. It blew out windows of buildings in lower Manhattan and Jersey City, damaged the skirt and torch of the Statue of Liberty, shattered the stained glass windows in St. Patrick’s Cathedral and windows in Times Square, shook and possibly damaged the Brooklyn Bridge, threw people out of their beds and was heard as far away as Philadelphia and Maryland.

On that fateful night, some 2 million pounds of small arms and artillery ammunition were on the island, along with 100,000 pounds of TNT on Johnson Barge No. 17. Initially small fires broke out along the mile-long pier, and while some of the guards fled, fearing explosions, others attempted to fight the fires and called the Jersey City Fire Department for help. The first and largest explosion, at 2:08 a.m, produced a rain of bullets and fragments, followed by mists of ash that made fighting the fires impossible; and the smaller fires burned for hours, causing explosions throughout the night.

While hundreds were hurt, surprisingly only a few people were killed, including a policeman in Jersey City, the railroad chief of police, the barge captain and an infant thrown from its crib a mile away. Two guards were quickly arrested for having triggered the disaster by lighting smudge pots on the pier to keep away the ever-present mosquitoes until it was realized that the pots were too far from the fires to have been the cause. Further investigation, which continued for years, identified the culprits as German agents who were trying to stop the shipments.

Until early 1915, the neutral United States was able to supply any nation with arms, but after the blockade of Germany by the British Royal Navy, only the Allied forces could purchase arms. Imperial Germany sent secret agents to the U.S. to obstruct production and delivery, and some of them caused havoc and civilian panic in the ensuing years. An effective weapon was the “cigar bomb” that was silently attached to the hulls of departing American munitions ships and only exploded after the vessels were well out to sea. Many ships, with their cargo and crew, were lost that way.

President Woodrow Wilson was desperately trying to cling to neutrality before the coming, tightly contested election against Charles Evans Hughes, chief justice of the Supreme Court and former New York governor. Wilson, as the president who had kept the nation out of war, initially refused to recognize the explosions as the work of the Germans. But after the election indisputable evidence forced his hand, and by early 1917 he prepared the country for war against Germany.

After the war, the railroad sought payment for damages under the U.S.-German Peace Treaty (1921) signed in Berlin and, at last in 1953, an agreement was reached for $50 million to be paid to the railroad. Dozens of railroad cars, six piers and 13 warehouses had simply disappeared into a huge crater filled with water and debris after the first explosion. For practical purposes the island, with its causeway to the mainland, had disappeared. Final payment was not made until 1979. In today’s currency, damages are estimated at $500 million.

Landfill projects through the years time have enabled what little was left to be incorporated into Liberty State Park. A single plaque there tells the tale of the largest terrorist attack until our time.

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This might sound peculiar since I am in the news business, but for over the past weekend I disconnected myself from all news reports. I was unplugged, you might say. Now this is a confession from an ultra news junkie. I’m normally so addicted that if I wake up in the middle of the night, I’ll switch on the bedside radio to catch up on what has happened since I went to sleep. But the past week, with the excruciating racist events and senseless killings, here and abroad, were more than I could process.

So I just turned off, or rather I didn’t turn anything on — not my radio, not the television, not the news apps on my cellphone. I didn’t even talk about the news with friends and neighbors.

What a luxury to be able to withdraw from global events for a couple of days.

I have a further antidote for all that has been happening in the world, and it’s even great fun to pursue. This Saturday is Culper Spy Day in Setauket, and it is the work of a number of local organizations committed to bringing history to life. The Culper spies, as you may know, were a small band of close friends who provided George Washington and the colonists with critically important information throughout the Revolutionary War at great risk to their lives. So engaging were their exploits, and so valuable to the eventual outcome of the war, that AMC has a cable TV drama, “Turn,” which has been drawing large audiences for three seasons to date. The series is what we call historical fiction, with the emphasis on fiction loosely — very loosely — based on real events. Those events belong to us because they are part of our local history and are a source of community pride.

This Saturday, July 23, you will be able to walk or bike or drive a designated route that offers views of key locations in the Culper story. There will be “colonists” in costume and signs along the way, helping the stories come alive. And we at Times Beacon Record have produced a multimedia map to enhance your experience. I refer to the newly released Three Village Map, complete with local roads and information from our business community. On this map is a QR code and also a link that, if you click on it with your mobile phone, will open up onto our website to seven different dramatizations of Culper stories — that we promise are historically accurate. In fact, the truth, we think, is more riveting than fiction, as we watch the dangerous exploits of these American heroes and heroines.

The actors in these episodes may be recognizable to you, and they do a fine job of conveying the gist of the story. We have used the services of a professional film crew, who shot the local scenes over the past several months. Community leaders introduce each film segment to set the scene. And in between episodes, if you are walking the route with your family, there are fun arcade-like games to play on your smartphone or laptop. The games, like the scenes, are our original creations and lots of fun. I predict your children — and you — will return to them many times to improve your score. I have.

Special thanks go to the participating organizations and their members for the vision to mount such an ambitious event and the enormous amount of time and effort that went into making history come alive. These include the Three Village Historical Society, The Ward Melville Heritage Organization and The Long Island Museum.

The Times Beacon Record has put together a special pullout within this week’s Arts & Lifestyles section with additional information about Culper Spy Day. Copies will be distributed for free in the historical society parking lot; our multimedia map is $3. Tickets for the more-than 16 attractions, including battle reenactments and colonial cooking demonstrations, are $25, with children under 12 free, from the historical society, WMHO Educational & Cultural Center in Stony Brook village and The Long Island Museum.

Have yourselves a worry free and wonderful day!

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Queen Elizabeth I and subsequently Catherine the Great have captured the attention and the imaginations of people over the centuries, but there was another such extraordinary woman whom I had never heard of until last Saturday night. She was Queen Christina of Sweden, born in 1626, and she was the monarch technically from the time she was 6 until she abdicated her throne in 1654.

Her father was King Gustav II Adolph, and he died on the battlefield at the Battle of Lützen during the Thirty Years’ War. Close to his daughter, his only legitimate child, as she was to him, he decreed that in the event of his death, she was to be educated as a prince — to receive a boy’s tutoring and instruction. Except for a brief, three-year period when she was raised by her father’s half-sister, Catherine, who then died, Christina was always in the company of men and was effectively overseen by the governing regency council and the chancellor. She took to her books eagerly, and throughout her early years she energetically studied 10 hours a day. Her education ranged from religion, mathematics, Greek and Latin, philosophy and alchemy, and she eventually learned at least eight languages: German, Dutch, Danish, French, Italian, Arabic, Hebrew and her own Swedish. She was also deeply interested in the arts and filled her palace and her kingdom with books, manuscripts, sculptures and statues, while encouraging theater and ballet.

When her chancellor, Axel Oxenstierna, wanted to continue the war, she sued for peace. Christina was interested in bringing scholars and artists from throughout Europe and surrounded herself and her court with learned men.

In 1648, Christina commissioned 35 pieces of art. By 1649, 760 artworks, 170 marble and 100 bronze statues, 33,000 coins and medallions, 600 pieces of crystal, 300 scientific instruments, manuscripts and books were forthcoming. Christina was widely viewed throughout Europe as one of the most educated women of the 1600s, nicknamed “Minerva of the North.” She was also regarded as eccentric since she often dressed in the most comfortable clothing, including pants and men’s shoes.

Christina stunned the royals throughout Europe by announcing she would never marry, although constantly pressed to do so by her regency council to produce an heir, and that she would abdicate her throne in favor of her first cousin Charles, with whom she had been secretly betrothed when she was 16. Impressed by a biography she had read of Elizabeth I, known as “The Virgin Queen,” and taken with the idea of Roman Catholicism celibacy — although Christina was rumored not to have been celibate, rather the contrary — she sailed from Sweden for Rome.

The pope, who pronounced her a “queen without a realm, a Christian without faith and a woman without shame,” welcomed her elaborately. As the eventual guest of five consecutive popes, Christina is thought to have been a symbol of the Counter-Reformation since she converted from Lutheranism and became a Roman Catholic. For the most part, she lived in high style throughout the rest of her life, mainly in her beloved Rome, and she certainly influenced continental Europe profoundly with her taste and protectionism of the arts. She militantly advocated on behalf of personal freedom, of charities and, interestingly, of Jews in Rome who were sometimes taunted on the streets.

So how did I come to learn of her remarkable life? I am a fan of Saturday night classic movies hosted by Columbia University arts professor Richard Peña on Channel 13 at 9 p.m., and caught the showing of “Queen Christina” (1933) starring Greta Garbo. From what I have subsequent read, the story is surprisingly faithful to the broader outlines of Christina’s life. She died in 1689 and is buried in a Vatican grotto.

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After every July Fourth we hear about the sickening tally of those injured or maimed by illegal firecrackers and explosives that were fired off in the name of fun. We routinely say, “How idiotic. Why don’t they just leave the fireworks to the professionals and go watch the show someplace?” There are always places to see the artful displays, hear the raucous explosions and cheer together the red, white and blue. If all else fails, there is the television or the computer screen. Do we have to injure ourselves to fully honor the actions of the colonists almost two-and-one-half centuries ago?

This subject is of more than casual interest to my family. When my dad was growing up on an upstate New York farm, one of nine children, a neighbor brought the family some explosive caps with which to properly celebrate Independence Day. The children gathered around a large boulder and cheered with each explosion, as my father’s favorite brother smashed the caps in turn with a rock he held in his hand. But one refused to go off. To make sure he was hitting the cap in exactly the right spot, he bent his head close to the obdurate explosive and carefully aimed his blow. This time it did explode and blew out his right eye. Needless to say, that was the end of that in my household.

The trail of these stupid tragedies continues.

When we first arrived here, on the beautiful North Shore of Suffolk from our Texas air force base, at the end of June, 47 years ago, my husband, who was an ophthalmologist, applied for hospital privileges at St. Charles in Port Jefferson. He was admitted to the ranks with the news that his first “on call” day would be on July 4. His first patient, waiting for him in the emergency room, was a teenage boy whose eye had been destroyed by an Independence Day explosive. He tended to the boy, of course, but never got over the horror of that sight and was sickened by the memory every year. It had been more traumatic for him than the many cases he had treated during the Vietnam War.

With these illegal explosives, brought in gleefully from distant states, we are to this day making war on ourselves. There is the story of the young visitor from Virginia in New York City, who was romping over the rocks in Central Park with his two buddies, when he stepped on a plastic bag of explosives that went off and destroyed his foot. There are seemingly unending stories of hands blown off, faces disfigured, house fires started, bystanders wounded and all manner of ugly consequences from fireworks across America. Some 230 wound up in emergency rooms at the latest count.

When John Adams wrote a letter to his wife, Abigail, on July 4, 1776, envisioning a dazzling annual celebration of independence from Britain, he surely didn’t consider such carnage as part of the party. Nor did he imagine the single horror that brought about what was probably the first city ordinance in America banning the possession or sale of fireworks within the city limits.

It happened in Cleveland in 1908. A clerk in S.S. Kresge’s department store was showing a 4-year-old boy and his mother a “harmless” sparkler with which to celebrate the holiday when a spark flew into the nearby display of skyrockets, torpedoes and candles. The store was almost immediately engulfed in flames. Seven people died, including the little boy, and dozens more were injured as the store burned. The tragedy prompted the city council to act, and many more cities and states have outlawed explosives over the last century.

But there are still states where the sale of explosives is legal, and the present concern is that a growing movement seems underway to relax some of the current legal restrictions. The Consumer Product Safety Commission, which regulates the sale of fireworks, reported that in addition to the many maimings from explosives 11 people died in 2014 alone. Why?

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As Independence Day approaches, Teddy becomes more anxious. Teddy is our 11-year-old golden retriever, and he still has not come to terms with the noises of the holiday in particular and summer in general. We can feel his distress. For no apparent reason he begins to breathe more heavily. He doesn’t remain in his guardian position near the front door of the house throughout the night but seeks to sleep in one of our bedrooms alongside the bed. During the night he will get up and push against the mattress, tossing his head as if seeking comfort in the form of a few reassuring pats. This happens repeatedly throughout the remaining hours of sleep.

Clearly that doesn’t go over too well with whichever one of us he has awakened. But just try shutting the bedroom door to keep him out, and he will go into another routine. He knocks with his paw, his nails tapping against the wood. When that gets no response, he throws his body against the door two or three times. If admission isn’t granted, he begins to cry, loudly and piteously.

At that point Teddy wins.

While we have been aware of his unease, it was not until we read an article about “noise anxiety” in dogs that we actually understood this behavior was part of a seasonal syndrome and not just the expected reaction to the firecrackers going off on July Fourth.

Think about it. With the advent of more beautiful weather, we humans get outside more and do things like mow the lawn, blow the leaves, drive back and forth frequently, and play outdoor games like baseball or even catch amid screams and laughter. Air conditioners switch on and off and summer storms with rolling thunder and crackling lightning come and go. With the far-more-acute hearing of dogs, is it any wonder that such bursts of sound can send them into panic? They can hear far beyond what we can hear, so the volume of what to us is a deafening storm must be like a rock concert on steroids to their ears. This excites their norepinephrine, the brain chemical that triggers a fear response, and they sometimes do frantic things to try and escape what they perceive to be great danger. They may become agitated hours before a storm arrives, and they may continue to shake for hours after the offending storm leaves. No wonder their nervous systems cannot easily calm back down. A few comforting pats in the night just doesn’t do it for them.

There is a new medicine, as reported by The New York Times, which is the first drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration to counter what is now officially termed “canine noise aversion.” It is called Sileo, distributed by Zoetis, and it works by inhibiting the effects of norepinephrine. I don’t know how you feel about administering medicine, but I prefer the loving, comforting approach so far.

There is one room in our house that is quieter than the rest because of its location, and I might take Teddy there and sit with him as I read, if all else fails. There is even a cot in that room. That seems to work — for him and for me. But depending on the severity of the dog’s discomfort, medicine may be required.

Meanwhile there is a movie coming called, “The Secret Life of Pets.” For those of us who enjoy animals and even tend to treat them like humans, the trailer looks amusing, so I recommend the film.

Happy Fourth!

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As I sit at my desk, typing this column, I am enjoying the longest day of the year, June solstice. It will not get dark until almost 9 p.m., and the June light makes our world sparkle. Recently we have been living through some of the most beautiful days with temperature and humidity in the Goldilocks range: not too hot and not too cold. It is also the first day of summer, a word that always brings a smile to my face.

What do you think of immediately when you think of summer? I conjure up cherries, watermelon and corn on the cob; then there are ice cream, lemonade, lobster rolls and backyard barbecues for lots of socializing. Lest you think that all I fantasize about is food, there are those luxuriously lazy days reading at the beach or at the pool … and oh those sweet summer nights. Time seems to slow down a bit and we get to relax amid less structure in our lives.

There are other reasons to be happier when the days are longer. Because we are phototropic beings, the presence of sunlight is important to us, more so for some of us than others. Many people suffer to varying degrees from seasonal affective disorder during the winter, when the days are shorter. Natural sunlight is a freely available mood enhancer, causing us to produce vitamin D, which in addition to helping with the absorption of calcium, also affects our levels of serotonin and melatonin and hence our feelings of satisfaction. When there is little sunlight, some people can suffer from depression.

Light therapy, with specially designed lights and vitamin D plus melatonin supplements can combat SAD to a degree, although no one really knows why some are susceptible. More affected are women, those living farthest from the equator (e.g., the Eskimo) and those with a family history. Chemical makeup, age and genetics also seem to be factors. But there is no SAD during summer solstice. This is the time of the longest light, when the sun seems to stand still in the sky before reversing its direction for the rest of the year. Of course the earth rotates around the sun, rather than vice versa, and as the earth moves away on its axis, it seems the sun is moving lower and lower across the sky through the remaining six months.

June solstice has inspired countless festivals, celebrations and religious events. Stonehenge, that mysterious megalithic structure in England, was clearly built to mark the solstices for the stones are lined up accordingly to receive the sunlight (there were some 12,000 people in attendance this year).

Oops, I didn’t mean to get so carried away with technical stuff. Nonetheless, here’s another bit of trivia: This year the full moon — otherwise known as strawberry moon — coincides with the June solstice we are enjoying. Not since 1967 has that happened, apparently, and it will not happen again until 2062. See how special it is to be alive today!

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On the eve of Father’s Day, here is an adventure story of a father along with a slice of little known history about the Civil War. His name was Newton Knight, he was a poor Southern farmer and he led a revolt against the Confederacy from deep in the heart of Dixie. Proving that not all residents in any one region think alike, Knight and as many as 1,000 other farmers in Jones County, Mississippi, waged an effective guerilla war against the Confederate troops and declared loyalty to the Union.

Whenever Confederate troops came after him and his band of like-minded white men, they would just melt away into the swamps of southeastern Mississippi and disappear to fight another day. Then, in the spring of 1864, “the Knight Company overthrew the Confederate authorities in Jones County and raised the United States flag over the county courthouse in Ellisville,” according to an article in the March issue of the Smithsonian magazine. “The county was known as the Free State of Jones, and some say it actually seceded from the Confederacy,” the article maintains. There will soon be a movie about this remarkable footnote of history, to be called “Free State of Jones,” starring Matthew McConaughey as Newt Knight.

By all accounts, Knight was a remarkable military leader. He certainly was a remarkable father, who had nine children with his first wife, Serena, who was white and from whom he eventually separated. He also had five children with his grandfather’s former slave, Rachel, entering into a scandalous common-law marriage, and according to the magazine, “proudly claiming their mixed-race children.”

Jones County was poor at the time of the Civil War, with only 12 percent of its population made up of slaves, which probably somewhat explains its lack of loyalty to the Confederacy. It also was marked with what the Smithsonian article calls “a surly, clannish independent spirit.” Today it is 70 percent white, still rural and its inhabitants earn low or modest incomes. And while there is a Confederate monument next to the columned courthouse in Ellisville, there is no mention of the anti-Confederate rebellion that Knight led. In fact, Jones County is described by some of its inhabitants as the most conservative place in Mississippi now, and some disown Knight.

Yet some of the younger people in the county think of Newt Knight “as a symbol of Jones County pride,” according to the article. “Knight was 6-foot-four with black curly hair and a full beard—‘big heavyset man, quick as a cat,’ as one of his friends described him. He was a nightmarish opponent in a backwoods wrestling match, and one of the great unsung guerilla fighters in American history. So many men tried so hard to kill him that perhaps his most remarkable achievement was to reach old age.

‘He was a Primitive Baptist who didn’t drink, didn’t cuss, doted on his children and could reload and fire a double-barreled, muzzle-loading shotgun faster than anyone else around,’ said a local historian. ‘….There’s good evidence that he was a man of strong principles who was against secession, against slavery and pro-Union.’”

Knight actually enlisted with a group of locals in the Confederate Army at the start of the war; a biographer speculated that he relished being a soldier. But many of them, including Knight, deserted from the Seventh Battalion of Mississippi Infantry after the passage of the “Twenty Negro Law,” which exempted one white male from conscription for every 20 slaves owned on a plantation, making it what locals called “a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.” When they returned home, they found the Confederate authorities where taking what they wanted from the wives in the name of the war effort—“horses, hogs, chickens, meat from the smokehouse and homespun cloth.” There was a mass meeting of the deserters, and they organized themselves into the Jones County Scouts. Knight was unanimously elected their captain. They vowed to resist capture, defy tax collectors, defend each other’s homes and farms, and do what they could to aid the Union.

Their ranks swelled, they waged guerilla warfare successfully against the Confederate war effort, and that is the way they, led by Newton Knight, entered the history books.

  

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The column I intended for this week has been put aside. This is a historic moment, and as a journalist, with a front row on history, and as a woman in what many still think is a man’s job, I cannot let the moment pass without offering the recognition it surely deserves. Finally, in my lifetime, a woman has become the presidential candidate of one of the two major parties in the United States of America.

Although I have voted for candidates of both parties in different presidential elections, depending which one I thought was better, this has nothing to do with party affiliation. I would never pick party over country. The triumph of this moment does have to do with a struggle for equality in governing that is as recent as my mother’s hard-won right to vote in the 1920s. Can you imagine a time, not prehistoric but merely one family generation back, when women could not even vote? Or earn careers in medicine, law, business, literature or the arts?

This has nothing to do with whether I like Hillary Clinton or don’t like Hillary Clinton, any more than whether I am a Republican or a Democrat. This turn of events feels like we are emerging from the dark ages and into the sunshine of the 21st century. And to be honest, I am surprised at how powerfully this moment affects me.

Yes, I came of age during “women’s lib,” graduating from college at the time Betty Friedan’s book, “The Feminine Mystique,” was published. And yes, I was one of the early wives and mothers in our social circle to balance the needs of a family with those of a business, but frankly I never thought of myself as a member of “the second sex,” or as a revolutionary. I was merely doing what for me “came naturally.” But throughout my life working these dual jobs, I have felt the contradictions within society about a woman’s “role.” Indeed, my own mother was dead set against my starting a newspaper, accusing me of “abdicating my responsibilities at home.” But I thought all that was long past.

Why shouldn’t a woman lead her party in a run for the presidency? If the population feels she is qualified, why shouldn’t she lead her country as president? Now there is a lot more going on during this vindictive presidential campaign than women’s rights. In fact, I wasn’t so aware that the issue of women’s rights was playing a part. So much of the population is angry, frustrated, even frightened with how they are being governed by an obstructionist Congress and a rapidly changing economy.

Thus my surprise by my own reaction on the level of gender equality. I still remember when Geraldine Ferraro, who came to the New York Press Association as the keynote speaker when I was its president in the 1980s, declined my husband’s offer of a corsage. He had bought one for her and one for me, but she explained she “couldn’t look too feminine.”

I also recently remembered with a laugh, as I was recalling early history to my 21-year-old grandson, that I had been propositioned while eating alone in a dining room of a hotel before a convention was to begin there the next day. “Good girls don’t do that,” I was admonished, for dining solo. Lest I chalk up that encounter to a fluke, it happened again on the train trip home.

The past may be past, but it surely isn’t forgotten. And when I looked around the table last month at the board of directors meeting of the NY Press Association and realized that there were only two other women publishers in a room of 28 board members, I realized that the past isn’t even past. But clearly there is hope.

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