On June 27 in Keene, 12 or so people attended a rally against a new state law that would censor public school teachers, especially history teachers. Tennessee, Texas, and several other states earlier this year passed similar laws. In a forthcoming New York Times article, a Yale history professor says, “It is a perverse goal: Teachers succeed if students do not understand something.”

Kiera McLaughlin is a senior at Keene high school. She organized the protest. In a June 28 voice phone interview, McLaughlin told the Valley Post, “The bill's objective is: less conversations about racism, sexism, and homophobia in school. School is the perfect place to have those conversations.”

The New Hampshire ACLU is fighting to get the new law canceled.

A good way to start learning U.S. history is to read the books, "A People's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn and "The Warmth of Other Suns" by Isabel Wilkerson; for world history, reading the book "Guns, Germs, and Steel" by Jared Diamond, and seeing the films "Lumumba" by Raoul Peck and “Amandla” starring Sibongile Khumalo.

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On June 26 a local land trust announced it had saved 626 acres of forestland near Brattleboro. The land is in the Vermont towns of Newfane and Brookline. The land trust has a web site at https://GreenMountainConservancy.org. The USA is losing 6,000 acres of open space to development every day.