Women’s History Month, 2026

/ Doreen Stratton / 1 Comment

March is almost over after fickle weather of snow, rain and one day–a balmy 72. Time to post before March ends.

Every March since 1982, ten women’s organizations across Bucks County select ” … a woman who best exemplifies the social, intellectual and creative contributions women have made to our future …”.

The Bucks County League of Women Voters is one of the ten. This year, the League–through Jean Weston, a member of the League, had nominated me to become the recipient for 2026. It was my honor to share my remarks from the Thursday, March 19, 2026 ceremony at the James Lorah House in Doylestown.

******

Thank YOU, Maggie Wallace-Cullen for that introduction.
Maggie is my daughter from another mother.

Thank you, League of Women Voters of Bucks County for the nomination, and Jean Weston of the League for nominating me.

Kathleen Horwatt? Ashe oleng (it means thank you very much in Maasai). Kathleen oversees this annual event which raises women high in the sky.

My appreciation to Tara Tamburellao, for the poem in my honor. Yes, l am honored to receive the 2026 Bucks County Women’s History Month Award.

First, I’d like to introduce my family. I’m one of six siblings.

My oldest sister, Barbara, was unable to travel from Delaware. As was my brother Chris. Barbara and Chris are Central Bucks High School Hall of Fame recipients. My oldest brother Jim passed away in 2017.

My brother John is here. John is also a recipient of the central bucks high school hall of fame. In 2008 he was honored for baseball. There were multiple Doylestown boys who had learned from John the art, skill, and joy of baseball. Read more about my brother on my blog, the Bucks Underground Railroad, of June 17, 2020: “Black Dreams Matter”.

My sister Judith is here—Introspective, Judith surprised all of us by moving to New York City. One day she took a bus ride to Central Park and discovered a love of horseback riding. It takes a strong-willed woman to saddle and control a 1500 plus pound animal.

She like me, returned to Doylestown. Judith is a member of the via and a docent for the James Lorah House. She is a Penn State Master Gardener and the Coordinator for the Doylestown community garden.

My two California born children—Mark Jackson and Mélanie Spelts.

Melanie is an equestrian trained by Judith. Then, she trained her two daughters—Aleeya and Gracyn. Now my great-grandaughter Audrina–at age 6–has begun winning equestrian ribbons. Work schedules kept them from attending tonight.

Finally, I must give Mélanie a proud shout out for beginning her fifth year in recovery.

Mark could not be here. Mark shares videos of rebuilding classic cars from their frames. His wife Christine is a Souderton high school physics teacher. Often, they fly to California for visits to Mark’s uncle, Reggie Jackson.

My remarks tonight . . . Are there any women?

After I came home in 1975, I think those ten years in California had prepared me for this long journey in activism. Three years later—1978—I carried an anti-nuke sign, protesting the three-mile island nuclear power plant accident. Our feisty group was called the Central Bucks Clean Energy Collective. And our slogan? No Delaware Water to Limerick.

It was also a time I began writing and volunteering on political campaigns. In 1983 I was offered a position in the Doylestown District Office of Congressman Peter H. Kostmayer. Just a year earlier, you may remember the National Vietnam War Memorial was dedicated in Washington, DC. That event inspired veterans across America to construct memorials and monuments within their communities. BUCKS COUNTY WAS ONE OF THEM.

Near the end of 1983, our congressional office was asked to assist the County Memorial Committee. Our task was to verify Bucks County names that had been killed or missing in action in the Vietnam War.
My assignment was to research local newspaper archives, contact veteran groups and families of deceased service members. I savored this assignment. My 2nd husband was a Vietnam War combat veteran.

When I received a name killed or missing in action, I called the archives in Washington, DC. They would check the master list of names on the wall and if there was a match, we had a name to etch on our wall. This project made me curious. . . . Were women casualties etched on the wall? During one of my calls to the archives, I asked, “are there any women on the wall?”

“Yes”, he answered, “There are eight of them. Would you like the list? I’ll send it to you.”

Who were the eight names? How come I’d never heard of them? I had followed the war and now I wondered . . . How could military service women die in the Vietnam war? Where was the coverage?
True, it was an unpopular war. Casualties coming home in coffins. However, I was aware women served in the military. Some resided on the family compound where i lived with my first husband near Travis Air Force Base.

Years later, I would learn that during the Vietnam War, possibly 10,000 women—nurses, air traffic controllers, communication specialists, and civilians had served in-country.

When ‘The Wall’ was dedicated, many veterans had reacted negatively: “It’s just a gash in the ground!”. Eventually it would be embraced by the men and women that traveled there. My first time at the Wall, I stood on the rise. The granite “V” is nestled in Mother Earth. Maya Lin’s minimalist design is beautifully powerful. To me, the wall is a female nurturing the souls of all who visit, and all who died.

I witnessed veterans standing on the rise. For lengths of time, they stared at the wall. In silence. Weeping. Some hesitated. . . . Not yet ready. Others walked across the grass down to the Wall. And hands, fingers . . . Touched the names.

In 1993 a memorial was dedicated to women of the Vietnam war. Sculpted by Glenda Goodacre, the monument, on an area above the wall, encircles three women and a wounded soldier. They scream at the heavens as they heal and protect the rescued warriors.

So, you ask, who are the names

When the names of the eight women arrived, it was on one sheet of paper. All were officers and nurses. Seven had served with the Army Nurse Corps. The eighth woman, with the Air Force Nurse Corps. The list also included two male Army Nurse Corps officers.

The causes? Eight deaths included two male nurses caused by aircraft accidents. The other two deaths?—one died from a rocket that hit her hospital—and the other from a subarachnoid hemorrhage.
Seven of the women were my age—give or take two years. The eighth nurse had served in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam.

I dove into research. Newspaper clippings from their hometowns brought these women to life. I asked myself: what should I do with this information? By then I was an accomplished closet writer. Stuck in a cabinet were my journals, a one-act play, three short stories, several essays, and a work-in-progress novel.

If I wanted to write about any of these women, i must first gain approval from their families.
I called and introduced myself and said, “I want to write about your daughter.”
Early in this project, I had met my first two women veterans—both had served in Vietnam. We became friends: Grace Moore–a combat nurse. Denise Black—a unit supply clerk

In 1986, my research led to an article placed in The American Journal of Nursing. It was the first time all ten Vietnam military nurses had appeared in a single publication.

Researching, interviewing and writing while employed was my challenge. A project of this depth required the resources of time and money. After the AJN article, the National Vietnam Veterans of America placed a notice in their national newspaper. Soon, I began receiving responses from combat nurses and infantrymen. Sometimes I succeeded in interviews; other times nurses were not ready to revisit that passage of their lives.

However, those instances when combat nurses gathered at veteran events or ceremonies, I witnessed a sisterhood of women. They acknowledged there were shared experiences which we could never comprehend. They had returned home, with lost innocence; aged beyond their twenty-something years.
My project about women veterans lasted a decade. Letters, phone calls, interviews and travels to their homes resulted in three drafts of mini biographies. I traveled to Scranton Pennsylvania, to New Jersey, to north and South Carolina, to Massachusetts and several visits to the Vietnam wall in Washington.
I failed to travel into Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan, the homes of the other nurses.
Each of the three drafts are under 200 pages.


–2nd Lt. Carol Ann Drazba, Pennsylvania
–2nd Lt. Elizabeth Ann Jones, South Carolina
–2nd lt. Pamela Dorothy Donovan, Massachusetts

If any are interested, I’ve brought reprints of the AJN article.

In 1989, I was asked to edit the Pennsylvania VVA Newspaper. For the next three years I interviewed, photographed, edited, and laid out the monthly newspaper which was sent to veterans and supporters across the Commonwealth. As the paper’s editor, I had an assignment to attend the Pennsylvania VVA when they met once-a-year inside a state maximum security prison. The National VVA Charter supported veterans who were incarcerated. They realized many veterans’ tours led to unlawful activities.

That introduced me to prison advocacy and ended my VVA activism. In 1994 I founded The School of Hard Knocks, Inc, a non-profit youth- at- risk intervention corporation.

Other evolutions of my activism continued.

It was 1999 when I discovered the depths of my African heritage. I had traveled to Ghana and a year later, Egypt. My journey continued when, in 2005, I met two amazing women. Two are here this evening. Phyllis Eckelmeyer, one of the two co-founders of the Maasai Cultural Exchange Project, Inc is here with Alice Sparks. We traveled to Kenya in 2015. Over several years, community donations from Bucks County citizens funded seven water wells. Now, potable water is available for a Maasai village of 5,000 people.


Another mission of MCEP was women. The NGO we collaborated with encouraged empowerment for their women. The organization also promoted education for Maasai children. Over 100 Maasai students were able to attend school because people wanted to sponsor a child. Some of the students have attained college degrees and have taken their knowledge back to the village.

In 2015, on my second sojourn to Kenya, I met 5-year-old Lisa. I decided to sponsor her education. Every year, my donation of $150.00 has carried Lisa into every grade. She has now matriculated into grade 10 at a boarding school in Nairobi. I dream of returning to Kenya and witness Lisa’s graduation.

This day in Doylestown, we celebrate Bucks County Women’s History Month. My remarks about military women likely initiated my years of activism. I want to honor three military women who—in the first three weeks of war in Iran, made the ultimate sacrifice.

Capt. Ariana Savino, 31, Covington, Washington; Sgt First Class Nicole M. Amor, 39, White Bear Lake, Minnesota; and Tech Sgt. Ashley B. Pruitt, 34, Bardstown, Kentucky

The Commander-in-Chief has labeled Iran “. . . An excursion. . .”. At the end of the 20th Century, there were women in uniform that had been promoted to leadership roles as Generals or Admirals. The current administration has purged them from the Pentagon. Black Women. White Women.

The Heritage Foundation has released an addition to Project 2026: The Golden Age. A blueprint to suppress women by taking away our right to vote.
I speak these words because I fear for our Democracy–

The world burns
as Nero
Fiddles and prances
on
the demolished East Wing
of The People’s House

–-Doreen Stratton, 3/19 26 at
Bucks County Women’s History Awards Ceremony

When Alice Paul was 32, she and other women were dragged to jail for holding a sign asking to Vote. It was 1916. While in prison, she and the women went on a hunger strike. They were released a year later. On August 19, 1920, the 19th amendment ratified women the right to vote.

Among our family archives, I found a piece of paper, ink faded from age, yet the name on it was still visible. It was my Grandmother: Lillie B. Stratton. Once a teacher, she was widowed in 1900 after her husband—my Grandfather, a veteran of the Civil War—had died. At the age of 49 with 10 children, in 1939 Lily had registered to vote.

Our family’s old polling place was the Doylestown Borough School. There’s now a parking garage where it once stood. Once upon a time growing up in Doylestown, on every election day, I would take hold of my mom’s hand and we and Daddy walked those three blocks to the polling place.

Those were the days of the old lever voting machine. You had to flip the levers for the candidate. As I stood in the booth with my mom, straining my neck upwards, she picked me up and tucked me close. With her free arm, she guided my hand to hold the big lever as she pulled.
The curtain opened, her vote was counted

DO SOMETHING SPECIAL:
Take your daughter or son to the polls On Tuesday May 19.

-END-

Calling All Ancestors

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A few weeks ago, a colleague, said, “You know, after someone dies, that person will remain alive as long as there is someone to say their name.”

February is Black History Month. It is the month when African Americans celebrate their ancestors’ legacy. On Tuesday February 3, beginning at 7:00 pm, I will call out my ancestor, my Grandfather, Joseph B. Stratton, who served with the Union Navy from 1863-1864 in the Civil War.

Through the wonders of Zoom, I am honored to sit inside the Bucks County Civil War Museum and Library of Doylestown to present a Power Point lecture about my Grandfather. From the comfort of your home, you will learn about one Black man’s experience that happened during a significant chapter in our Nation’s 250 years of Democracy.

Please register for this free event at this email: civilwarmuseumdoylestown@gmail.com. Join family, friends, and history buffs while I share my Grandfather’s legacy who during the Civil War, served on a blockade runner along the Eastern shore from Wilmington, Delaware to South Carolina. Equally, it is exciting for me because I will present this Zoom from the Doylestown Civil War Museum and Library, where I will be surrounded by their collection of artifacts and documents.

The picture with this narrative is the only image of my Grandfather. However, through the wonders of Ancestry.com, we have traced our Stratton surname to Tobias Stratton, my Great-Great Grandfather, born a Free Black in 1767 Philadelphia.

Tobias married Harriet Mintas in 1795, a Jamaican woman. Our Stratton legacy had begun. We know little about my Great-Great Grandfather’s life in Philadelphia. I imagine him walking the cobblestones of the city. Did he see Benjamin Franklin at his printing press? And at age 9, did he push his way through a joyful crowd for a better position to witness the reading of the Declaration of Independence for the first time?
Who, I wonder, were my ancestors before Tobias?

The first Africans arrived on the shores of Virginia in 1619. For two hundred years, enslavement created a gap of procreated amnesia. My DNA chart from Ancestry.com discovered 45% of four different north European countries and the rest? Ten different countries from Africa, my Motherland.
Gaps.

Currently there is an intolerant crusade, determined to erase Black existence, it is rumbling across America, determined to forbid the culture, contributions, and history of ancestors such as mine: Joseph B. Stratton—a Black man of America: a son, a husband, and a father; he was an educated man, a barber, an activist, a veteran of the Union Navy, and a patriot. He was my Grandfather.

Joseph B. Stratton

My Last night in Egypt

/ Doreen Stratton / 3 Comments

In the early 1980s I became enchanted by anything Egyptology: The statues, the jewelry, the pictures and narratives that appear in my coffee table books, and fictional novels. It was over a decade later, when a dream to visit Egypt came true. In 1998 I enrolled in Teen Summit 1000, a tax-exempt organization in Philadelphia. Its mission was to educate African American youngsters—age 14 through 18—and enrich them about their culture and heritage.

The organization also sought adults for the program—Group Leaders—to mentor the children (Students). I enrolled as a group leader and along with the students, once a month we gathered in Philadelphia to participate in the curriculum which included Black History, fund raising, tours, lectures, and personal empowerment. At the end of this two-year program, if all requirements were met, Students and Group Leaders qualified for a 10-day round trip to Egypt.

Last week, I pulled from my bookshelf, the journal of my Egypt sojourn filled with memories of the eight-day itinerary. Pasted on different pages were my airline ticket, passes to the Valley of the Kings tombs, the Cairo Museum, and meal ticket souvenirs; I looked at my photo album with the dozens of pictures I’d taken. These were site visits I wall always cherish:

After I descended to the bottom of the Giza Pyramid, I sat in silence on the catafalque where once a Pharoah’s tomb had been placed thousands of years ago.

In the Cairo Museum where statues of people rose twenty or more feet toward the ceiling, voices of other tourists echoed off the walls. I was astounded by and wondered how hundreds of miniature beetles, fashioned in turquoise or onyx, each to the exact size, lined in precision for us to admire.

There were the crowded streets of Cairo, the incessant honking of horns, the strumming of lutes drifting from small shops, the aroma of perfumes that overwhelmed my senses when I walked into those shops, and the heavy odor of history saturated the air in this ancient land.

On the 8th day, and the final evening of this Sojourn, I chose to delay sleep in my bed and wandered onto the terrace of our hotel where tables with rattan chairs beckoned me to sit. Beyond the terrace, it was dark except for a spattering of lamps still lit inside houses. Immediately I was drawn to a table with a chair near the edge of the terrace. Within minutes a gray cat—a stray—slipped onto my lap. For an hour, the cat’s motor purred, and I returned its joy by nuzzling its fur.

Cats were sacred to the Egyptians. They were the protectors which kept away the rodents and scorpions in homes, and protected crops from birds. Cats are painted on tomb walls, with their heads on images of deities that represented justice, fertility, or power. Mummified cats found in the tombs, were the companions for their masters or mistresses, guaranteeing safe passage to the afterlife.

I am a lover of cats. Growing up, cats were a part of our family’s household; and when they died, they were buried in our gardens, to rest among the backyard flowers and hedges.

KAYA, my companion from 2013 until 2025.

Here on this Egyptian terrace, in a strange land, a stray cat had slept on my lap until unexpectedly, the Islam Call for Prayer filtered through the silence. As magically as it had chosen to appear, on my last night in Egypt, the cat slipped away in the darkness.

A tragic Melody from two voices

/ Doreen Stratton / 7 Comments

BOOK REVIEW

Not If I Can Help It, by Meg Groff

(Rivertowns Books, Irvington New York 283 pages with List of Advocacy Organizations and Source Notes)

$32.95 hardcover; $22.95 paperback at Doylestown Bookshop

(Doreen Stratton Photo)

Two weeks have passed since reading Not If I Can Help It by Bucks County resident Meg Groff, an attorney who writes this memoir from cases about her advocacy of protecting families and defending women victims of domestic violence. Reading these cases, I recalled when I realized the pain, anger, and the silence from this unspeakable horror before it was considered to be a crime.

It was 1962, I was 21, living in California with my first husband Joe, an Airman in the United States Air Force stationed at Travis Air Force Base. Our off-base housing in Vacaville, California consisted of multi-attached four-plex apartments, single level with either one-two-or three-bedrooms.

The walls of the units were so paper thin, I could hear the activity of the family of a Sergeant, his wife and two children. My ex worked the graveyard shift on the base which meant for five nights of every seven I was a solitary sleeper, a fresh bride newly relocated from Doylestown.

One night, I was suddenly startled awake when I heard a man’s voice, as each word muffled with an authority matched with a fist hitting flesh. She was weeping. Quietly. I pulled myself to a sitting position and stared at the wall, listening to a tragic melody from two voices, one struggling against pain, the other inflicting power. When the man was spent, only silence. I slept poorly afterwards, wondering if she was dead or alive, realizing this evil had never visited my family’s home. What do I do?

When I mentioned it to Joe, and wondered how I could reach out to this woman, he responded, “Stay out of it.” To this day that is often the attitude when domestic violence touches family or friends.

When Joe’s tour of Travis ended, his reassignment to Guam began a chain of life events which returned me to Doylestown in 1975.

I became an activist in the mid-eighties and that was when I met Meg Groff. By then she was a Family Lawyer with the Bucks County Legal Aid Society where she “. . . Battled for Justice for Victims of Domestic Violence and for the Poor.”

Before she embraced that battle, Meg Groff’s early adult years involved a journey of pauses and leaps, as she describes the “legendary Sixties,” an era when she and husband Jim lived off the grid. Groff eventually enrolled in college hoping for a career in psychology until late one night, a knock on her door revealed a “ . . . tear-stained woman, barefoot, dressed only in a nightgown, with disheveled locks of long, blond hair partly shrouding her pretty face.” Meg was staring into the eyes of a typical domestic violence victim which continues even now, everywhere, every place, all the time.

This incident she witnessed happened before there were shelters, police safety measures, court hearings before a judge, protection from abuse orders, family mediation, and incarceration for crimes of severe abuse or murder. A law degree was now in her sight.

Groff shares with us cases about some of the legal aid clients she represented from her years with that agency. She describes the struggles women experience from abusive or stalking partners, denial of their children’s custody or solutions to climb out of poverty. The list of Advocacy Organizations at the end of the book is a journey of how far protection for women and families has progressed 40 years ago when Meg Groff chose Justice.

(Doreen Stratton Photo)

In late 1980 I served on the Board of A Woman’s Place, a shelter Groff was instrumental in getting started. Finishing Groff’s book, I remember the words of Beth Taylor, Executive Director at that time: “I’ll be happy when the day comes and we don’t need a shelter to protect women and children.”

It’s gonna be a bumpy ride

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Traveling to Kenya in 2013 with the Maasai Cultural Exchange Project, Inc (MCEP), we visited a few elementary schools. It was culture shock. In Kenya, paying the price of education comes IF parents have $100 to $150 each year for a child to attend school.

(Doreen Stratton photo)
A TYPICAL MAASAI SCHOOL GROUND

Schools in Maasailand and across Kenya exist in structures of cinder block, corrugated metal roofs, and windows sometimes without glass panes, other times with none. The earthen soil is hardened from constant foot traffic or sometimes there is unevenly poured cement. There are wood desks with benches or not enough of them. This means some students will stand while others sit on the floor, lesson books in their lap, each clutching a pencil.

(Doreen Stratton photo)
DESKS ARE AT A PREMIUM

During our 2015 journey to Maasailand we toured a newly built school for first year students living in an isolated village. The floor consisted of rocks which hopefully later, would be poured over with cement.

(Doreen Stratton photo)
DESKS AND BENCHES ON A ROCK-FILLED EARTHEN FLOOR

In the Central Bucks School District, we are billed annually with a tax which supports public education for our youngest citizens. My children and grandchildren are long gone from the Doylestown schools which they had graduated. How blessed they were to learn in buildings nothing like those I walked through in Kenya.

(Doreen Stratton Photos)

I do not mind paying that school tax. I am helping in the education of America’s future Leaders. We are blessed to enjoy public education in this country.

BUT TROUBLE IS BREWING FOR AMERICA’S PUBLIC EDUCATION SYSTEM

In a February 8, 2025, NPR article by Jonaki Mehta, about the nomination of Linda McMahon to head the US Department of Education. Confirmed in early March, McMahon is best known as head of World Wrestling Entertainment. The February article reported:

 “McMahon has a limited background in education, along with her career as a business executive.”

The lady of wrestling had served on the Connecticut State Board of Education and during #45’s first term, she had led the US Small Business Administration.

True, we are overwhelmed with challenges confronting us here in the Central Bucks School District. I close with this

Buckle up supporters of public education: We are in for a rocky ride.

The Whippersnappers

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On a Facebook page today, February 6, 2025, there was a post challenging the media to dig into the six “whippersnappers” who (apparently) worship Elon Musk so much they want to dismantle our Democracy.

I am old enough to remember the black and white television cowboy programs. It was always that grumpy old man in The Lone Ranger whenever he was pissed off with the young boys in episodes, he called them “whippersnappers.”

Then this evening a few hours ago, there was a knock on our door. A concerned citizen handed over two pieces of paper, one with images about six nerds who had hacked into a highly classified Federal Government server containing every piece of information about every American in this country.

An additional page contained this verbiage:

“Musk’s team of youngsters, as first reported by WIRED on Sunday:

“Akash Bobba, 21, a student at the University of California, Berkeley; Edward Coristine, 19, a student at Northeastern University without graduating; Gautier Cole Killian, a 24-year-old who attended McGill University; and Gavin Kliger, a 25-year-old who attended Berkeley.

“The groups’ relative lack of experience—especially no previous positions in government work—has Democrats crying foul they were granted access to sensitive records while remaining in the shadows, away from public scrutiny.

“All six desperately tried to cover their digital tracks recently, all of them deleting LinkedIn profiles, X accounts and even Facebook.”

We have been shaken out of our malaise. Finally. Citizens gathered across America yesterday protesting the possible collapse of Democracy. Even the MAGAs now realize that there ain’t nothing wrong with being #woke. That they hit the wrong button on the November 2024 presidential election.

Whatever is your comfort zone to protest: letters to editor, calling each of your elected representatives; volunteer on a campaign; plant a sign in your yard; or attend and speak at government meetings.

Hey Media: You on to this?

Water, Water everywhere and not a drop to drink

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Last week a letter dated December 29, 2024 arrived from Jason Carter, Chair, Board of Trustees and Grandson of former President Jimmy Carter announcing “ … my grandfather’s passing.”

I along with millions of people in our nation and around the world, expressed sorrow that Jimmy Carter, the 39th President and longest living President of the  United States had transitioned at the age of 100.

I had joined The Carter Center in early 2000, after traveling to Ghana in 1999. Being of African descent, Ghana had awakened my connection to Anything Africa.

The Carter Center was established in 1982. Its mission statement begins– The Carter Center, in partnership with Emory University, is guided by a fundamental commitment to human rights and the alleviation of human suffering. It seeks to prevent and resolve conflicts, enhance freedom and democracy, and improve health.

Everyone is familiar with the former President’s devotion to Habitat for Humanity. I hope to share with you information  about Guinea Worm Disease—a tropical disease known to many countries in Africa.

What is Guinea Worm Disease?

Considered a neglected tropical disease, Guinea worm disease (dracunculiasis) is a parasitic infection caused by the nematode roundworm parasite Dracunculus medinensis. It is contracted when people consume water from stagnant sources contaminated with Guinea worm larvae. Inside a human’s abdomen, Guinea worm larvae male and female worms mature and grow. After about a year of incubation, the female Guinea worm, one meter long, creates an agonizingly painful lesion on the skin and slowly emerges from the body.

Guinea Worm Disease thrives in polluted streams, rivers, and street gullies across 21 countries in Africa and Asia. In 1986, The Center began to eliminate the disease after Carter had traveled to Ghana and witnessed a worm emerging from a woman’s swollen breast. Unlike smallpox, there is no vaccine or treatment against Guinea worm disease. The Carter Center then and still has partnered with African and Asian health agencies to change rural villagers’ daily life, offering education and prevention on how Guinea Worm Disease spreads, and providing water filters to those in need, and controlling outbreaks with larvicides.

I visited the Motherlands of Ghana, Egypt and Kenya. It was 1999 while touring the capital of Accra, Ghana I realized that not everyone lives with potable water. In Accra and other large cities, unsafe water lingers in canals and gutters. A recent USAID report states only 11% of the Ghanian population thrives on unsafe water.

Although I’d traveled to Kenya in 2009 and 2015, Guinea Worm disease never crossed my radar, even though I’d read about it in Carter Center newsletters. I’ve posted about the Kenyan Maasai several times on my blog, describing their struggles of culture and survival.

Kenya is located on the east coast of Africa. I, Phyllis Eckelmeyer and Alice Sparks, as the Associates with the Maasai Cultural Exchange Project Inc. (MCEP), traveled to Kenya in 2015 visiting the seven water wells which our organization had sponsored. The wells are sited across Olosho oibor, a village of 5,000 Maasai.

Before there were seven water wells, there were pools of stagnant water (as pictured below). This was the place where Maasai women and often wildlife sought their nourishment. It was common to discover animal waste in or around these pools.

(Doreen Stratton photo)

Days after the start of 2025, I and my MCEP Associates received an email from Francis ole Sakuda, our Maasai NGO partner:

The wells have transformed our Maasai village with education and the youths are engaged in growing tomatoes and onions for local markets, leading to creation of jobs. This has led them away from drug use and alcohol.

President Carter had vowed to eliminate the disease before his death. A few days after he transitioned, a cable news journalist commented that on the day of President Carter’s death, there were only 5 reported cases of Guinea Worm disease.

Kenya had also suffered from dracunculiasis but by 2018 the country was declared free of Guinea Worm.

WATER IS LIFE

Photo by Alice Sparks

Heaven has saved a special place for former President Jimmy Carter.

Those two Black men

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I am exhausted by Donald Trump, and I am exhausted with the media because they finally admitted Trump was “. . . a racist.” Unlike many who waited until midway into President Joe Biden’s term to even utter the word “racist” about Trump, I spotted his hatred within a minute after he rolled down the escalator and announced his candidacy.

Full disclosure. I am a Black Woman.

Trump was always a racist and hateful man who detested people of color.

I’ve never understood the small percentage of Black people who are supporting and voting for Trump. Equally disheartening to me was to see those two Black men sitting in the bleachers at rallies as they mimic the cheers and fist pumps of the MAGA crowd.

How could these two Black Men support a man who called Africa a shithole country?

Dear Black brothers in the bleachers at Trump rallies: What are you thinking? We are descendants of a civilization reaching back centuries when scholars created Nations and warriors protected Kingdoms. It was a Joy for me when I discovered my DNA is traced to the African country of Benin. It may only be a sliver of a nation along the African west coast, but Benin became the missing fragment of my soul.

I hope one day my Black brothers will find the means for sojourning to Motherland Africa and discover the fragment of their souls, abandoned on the African coast when ships carried our ancestors to the shores of America.

And tomorrow, while standing in line at your polling place, my Black brothers, I hope you vote to elect Vice-president Kamala Harris, a strong woman for President of the United States of America.

Scraping Doylestown History

/ Doreen Stratton / 7 Comments

(Photos by Doreen Stratton)

There are times when life treats you with a piece of knowledge about your hometown and you tuck it away, unless it pops up in your memory bank at an unexpected moment. Eleven years had passed before it happened for me.

It was Saturday, April 6, 2013, when a Historical Marker was unveiled at the corners of State and Main Streets in Doylestown Borough. The marker dedicated this intersection as the trail for the Lenni Lenape (Le-NAH-pee) Nation as they traveled from the east and from the south to their destination, the Delaware River.

The Doylestown Historical Society with assistance from Melissa Cornick, a journalist, and strategic communication specialist (for professional activities), coordinated the day’s event which included a lecture by Professor Evan Pritchard, descendant of the Micmac people and expert in Algonquin culture and languages.

Earlier that same day Professor Pritchard, an Algonquin Historian, had lectured to a packed audience at the Doylestown Presbyterian Church. I was impressed with Pritchard describing the Lenape historic trade route, the stop at State and Main Streets, their ancient land use, and the pathways along what became Routes 202 and 611. At the conclusion of the well-gathered dedication at the Marker, there was a lively afternoon Pow Wow at the Doylestown Historical Society Park.

Pritchard’s visit to Doylestown also had allowed him to tour some of the tunnels which remain below our town’s streets. Thousands of years ago these “tunnels” were caves where the Lenape, a nomadic indigenous tribe, rested after traveling from the shores of the New Jersey Atlantic Ocean. (I like to believe those tunnels, thousands of years later, were safe places for fugitive slaves in the 1800s)

Eleven years after the Lenape Marker had its dedication, the front-page April 4, 2024, edition of the Bucks County Herald reported:

“Bucks County Historical Society’s Doylestown Twp. Land eyed for luxury homes.

“Custom home builder Richard Zaveta outlined his concept for an upscale community on 24 acres owned by the Bucks County Historical Society in Doylestown Township at the supervisors’ meeting Tuesday.”

https://buckscountyherald.com/stories/bucks-county-historical-societys-doylestown-twp-land-eyed-for-luxury-zaveta-custom-homes-fonthill-mercer-museum,43733

Where, you ask, is this land?

When you drive south on Main Street in Doylestown Borough, across from the new WAWA is a thicket of trees—24 acres—fanning from Main Street, bordering the bypass until the trees bump against a large development of single-family homes. This land is in the Borough’s neighbor, Doylestown Township. Years ago, this acreage was three or four times beyond that number when the land was either woodland or farms.

(24 acres from the google map)

SOME HISTORY

Hidden in that forest once was a popular venue called The Hustle Inn, where teens gathered and danced to live bands. In the early 1940s, Ellis and Anita Smith purchased an 1848 farmhouse and barn, and converted the second floor of the barn into what would become The Hustle Inn. It operated from 1946 until 1966. I had relocated to California for ten years so missed the 1964 drama when outsiders came into town, resulting in a fight involving three hundred people.

https://patch.com/pennsylvania/doylestown/this-was-doylestown-1964

The Smiths sold their property in 1967. Eventually it was purchased by the Matthews School of Fort Washington. They renovated the barn as a dormitory for young boys.

The January 12, 1970, The Morning Call, published an article about the end of an era when a fire destroyed the building formerly called The Hustle Inn. No one was inside the structure at the time of the fire. A cultural piece of Doylestown History was ashes but is still cherished in a private Facebook page.

Image of The Hustle Inn — Courtesy of Spruance Library, Mercer Museum

Then, early in 1991 the acreage was carved away for 99 single family homes. I often wonder, could the Lenape have paused there to rest, eat, and drink? (there was water in those woods). This area was rich with springs, many now gone due to extensive land loss. And where the Lenape Crossing Marker is placed, there was a natural spring from which this indigenous tribe drew water, and how “The Fountain House” received its name.

On April 18 The Herald published an opinion from Doylestown resident Mary Hughes expressing her concerns about this proposed development. She mentions “ . . . the vast number of historic objects and equipment . . . which many people outside of the organization may be unaware.”

https://buckscountyherald.com/stories/historical-societys-proposed-land-sale-at-odds-with-its-mission,45618

This past May I walked onto the woods through an access road. I’m not embarrassed to admit I’m a tree hugger. Standing on the access trail, I was at a loss for words gazing up at the canopy of green. We’re losing precious land. I strongly encourage the Township and the Historical Society to consider an archeological study and an environmental impact study before any bulldozer knocks down any tree.