Patricia Vaccarino

Freedom Spent

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When I was in college, a professor suggested that I read Freedom Spent by the legal writer Richard Harris. Freedom Spent was a narrative of three case studies in which Americans lost their civil liberties during legal proceedings that adhered to the letter of the law, or abided by a strict constructionist (narrow) interpretation of the law that disregarded the gravitas and prevailing spirit of the U.S. Constitution.  I lent Freedom Spent to so many friends that eventually I lost track of it and fear it is no longer in my library. 

Today, I am more convinced than ever that America has the most amazing...

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Latest Posts in Patricia Vaccarino

NOTES FROM THE ROAD: On Stewardship

I was walking on 1st Avenue, south of the Pike Place Market, when I heard two men talking loudly. They were close enough to make me turn and look. The guys were burly, not in the best of shape, not old, but not young; it’s hard to tell someone’s age. What caught me by surprise was that they were making disparaging remarks about my city.  


NOTES FROM THE WORKING CLASS: Javon Monte 1994 - 2024

The blue-skied Seattle day is warm for February 8th. I walk across the freeway overpass on Madison Avenue and turn right onto 6th Avenue. A man is huddled on the steps leading up to the Plymouth Congregational Church. The building is the color of a white palace. The man is young, black, lean, but he takes up the entire landing at the bottom of the steps; his battered blue backpack is large and looks heavy. He is crying, sobbing into a blinding-white concrete buttress.


NOTES FROM THE WORKING CLASS: On Courage

Courage is a forgotten virtue. Too often courage is shoved aside and replaced with bluster, anger, and abuse. Just ask the actor Robert De Niro. Outside the courthouse during Donald Trump’s criminal trial, De Niro expressed his fears about what another Trump presidency would bring to America.


May is Our Do Gooder Issue

There is no such thing as a good war, but some wars are more noble than others. This month Carl Larson writes about his experience providing defense support for Ukraine. Larson is also the Co-founder and President of the nonprofit organization Ukraine Defense Support (UDS) that provides non-lethal support aid to this war-ravaged nation. This month Barbara Lloyd McMichael writes about Tanisha Brandon-Felder, Ed.D, who is an advocate for literacy and the host of a YouTube program called Talking Books with Tanisha. Patricia Vaccarino writes about her grandmother Katherine Sheedy and St. Mary’s Church (Yonkers, NY) in The Third Candle.


NOTES FROM THE WORKING CLASS: The Third Candle

Katherine Sheedy attended noon mass every day at St. Mary’s Church in Yonkers. Going to church was more than a religious rite. It was how she expressed herself—Irish Catholic, good natured and kind, except when she was vexed by something she did not understand. And she did not understand me, her rebellious granddaughter, the third in line.