The Ukrainian sociologist-turned-guerrilla fighter believes that the liberation of his southern city of Kherson is only a matter of time.

The first city to fall to Russian troops after their February invasion, Kherson has in recent weeks heard the explosive rumble of the Ukrainian military as it slowly advances to end six months of Russian occupation.

Days of street protests that first greeted the Russian presence – and were suppressed with violence – gave way, he says, to carefully calibrated resistance action that has sabotaged Russian military capacity and claimed the lives of some 20 pro-Russian officials, in Kherson and other occupied towns.

“They feel that the walls are watching them,” says the resistance fighter, who asked not to be further identified, for his safety. He says he is on a Russian wanted list, is trained in laying mines and setting explosives, and has moved 25 times since the occupation began.

“From what we hear in the [Russian] intercepts, they are so eager to escape from here,” says the sociologist/fighter.

That is the result of methodical, patient perseverance on the part of the Kherson resistance to undermine the Russian occupation. A key was striking a balance between doing harm to Russian invaders – by creating conditions that will weaken any Russian pushback to the Ukrainian assault – and not inviting severe retaliation.

“For several months we had an order not to touch [Russian troops] at all, to not provoke sanctions against the civilian population,” says the guerrilla.

Those days are over.

Drama near Kharkiv

Yet if the Ukrainian counteroffensive moving toward Kherson was long telegraphed, it has been the lightning advance by Ukraine in the past week far to the northeast that has grabbed headlines and demonstrated to Ukrainians even more dramatically the fruits of perseverance.

Ukrainian forces probing Russian defenses in the Kharkiv region that had been depleted by a redeployment toward Kherson broke through the front lines, surprising Russian troops and forcing them to hurriedly abandon critical and long-held towns and villages.

Kostiantyn Liberov/AP

A Ukrainian soldier smiles aboard a military vehicle in territory recaptured from Russian forces, in the Kharkiv region of Ukraine, Sept. 12, 2022. Ukrainian troops claimed to have captured many Russian soldiers as part of the lightning advance, which forced Moscow to make a hasty retreat across the region.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Monday that Ukraine had recaptured some 2,300 square miles of territory in the past 10 days, with at least 200 square miles of that on the Kherson front. The Institute for the Study of War calculates that reversal to be twice as much territory as Russia had seized in total since April.

In Kherson, the growing Ukrainian military pressure is clear, say pro-Ukraine city residents contacted by phone. It is seen, they say, in the darkening mood of Russian troops and their enablers, as well as in the anxious movement of ammunition and troops, who have seeded themselves among civilians. The pressure has also yielded a first glimmer of hope that liberation may not be far away.

Russian commanders reportedly have already crossed the Dnieper River to the south, and Ukrainian strikes have now destroyed a bridge that was the only escape route in that direction.

The thousands of Russian troops remaining north of the broad expanse of the river must now be resupplied – or must escape – over a fragile pontoon bridge. The Kherson resistance fighter says his unit provided the intelligence that enabled precise targeting of the bridge.

“We will wait as long as necessary,” he says. “We have already heard so many promises of a counteroffensive that will liberate the city that now we do not pay attention – we just do our job.”

And that job, he reckons, entails 80% collecting and analyzing information about “the movement of the enemy” for precision strikes. The remaining 20% is “so-called creative work on the destruction of orcs,” he adds, using a derogatory nickname for Russian troops often given them by Ukrainians that references the evil warriors in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy.

“We kill no more than 10 to 15 orcs per month,” he says of the toll exacted by his own unit. “Most of the destruction of Russians and explosions is carried out by professionals, those [security and intelligence operatives] who were here before the occupation.

“We killed some local collaborators who did some very bad things,” he says.

After a string of such assassinations in August, Mykhailo Podolyak, a top adviser to the Ukrainian president, tweeted that when Kherson “falls asleep, the partisans wake up.”

SOURCE:

Institute for the Study of War and AEI's Critical Threats Project

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Jacob Turcotte/Staff

The very existence of an organized resistance in Kherson has surprised some residents, who thought there had not been enough time before the Russian occupation to organize underground guerrilla activity, says a former tour guide in Kherson called Anna, who asked not to be further identified.

Many of the activists who took part in initial protests against the Russians were “caught on video and tracked down,” she says. While some left, others “went through torture here in the city.”

Russian troops “expected that locals would welcome them with songs and dancing,” says Anna. “When they realized that this was not the case, they began to tighten the repression.”

Still working is a “yellow ribbon movement,” which decorates the city with Ukrainian symbols, and defaces pro-Russia billboards and posters.

“It takes a lot of resources to organize such activities. ... In Kherson it is impossible to buy a can of spray paint, but from somewhere this graffiti appears,” says Anna.

“Any show of resistance lets the occupation authorities know that ... Kherson is Ukraine,” she says. “It is also very strong support for the locals, because you understand that you are not alone.”

Russia’s plan to hold a referendum in Kherson on joining Russia was shelved due to the “security situation,” pro-Russian officials said last week.

Kherson’s Russia supporters

As Ukrainian troops advance and the sound of artillery is constant, residents “understand that the price of liberating Kherson will be enormous,” says Anna, adding that she is almost certain to leave the city “because it is all a strong psychological trauma.”

“I won’t be able to walk the streets and see all the collaborators I know by sight,” she says. “My concern as a resident of the city is not how to beat the Russian military out of this city; it is how to chase away the rot that has settled here.”

Indeed, Kherson has had its share of pro-Russia citizens.

“In the first couple of months there were people who said, ‘Calm down, Russia is here forever,’” recalls Anna. But today, “we can see the real results of the fact that the front is already close.”

“Those people who were waiting for Russia are in panic mode, to put it mildly,” she says.

As Ukrainian forces approach Kherson, Russian searches of cars have become increasingly intrusive and frequent, she says; many families that arrived with Russian intelligence and occupation authorities – in anticipation of a permanent stay – have now also departed.

Alex Chan/SOPA Images/Sipa/AP

Ukrainian soldier Sergij walks in the trenches close to the front line at an undisclosed position in Mykolaiv oblast, Ukraine. Ukraine has recovered some of the territory occupied by Russia by launching a counteroffensive, moving south from the Mykolaiv area to attack Russian forces in and around Kherson.

Reporting on the situation in Kherson has been the Ukrainian media platform Vgoru, which began work in 2002 and still reports with a team of clandestine correspondents both inside and outside the city.

The occupation boosted Vgoru’s 200 Telegram subscribers to 8,000, and its readership on Facebook has soared from 300,000 to as many as 2 million people.

As it has in other parts of Ukraine it has occupied, Russia has tried to introduce the Russian ruble as currency in Kherson and impose the Russian language and school curriculum in advance of any attempted referendum.

“Resistance in Kherson is to pay in [Ukrainian] hryvnia, it is to speak Ukrainian, and it is to continue to educate your children online in a Ukrainian school and not send them to a Russian school,” says a journalist with Vgoru called Liza, who asked that only her first name be used.

Constant shelling has made some residents blasé about their own safety, including, Liza says, her grandmother, who lives close to a Russian military base and often hears Ukrainian rockets flying past on the way to their Russian target. She tells her granddaughter she won’t move, “because these sounds make me happy.”

“The liberation of Kherson will be a great victory,” says Liza. “But it will also be a very bitter victory, because the full scale of the crimes committed by the Russians will be revealed to us. People are tortured, people are kidnapped, and most don’t talk about it because people are afraid.”

For resistance, much work remains

The sociologist-turned-guerrilla knows those risks too well. The day the war began, he enlisted with the Territorial Defense Forces. But within days, Russian forces swept into Kherson, overnight putting his unit onto a resistance footing.

With little time to establish secure communications, the new “resistance” simply exchanged phone numbers. When the Russians captured officers, like his company commander, those phone numbers revealed the identities of active resistance members.

“Many stayed here; many of them were caught,” says the resistance fighter.

But today as Russian troops display anxiety, “the mood [among pro-Ukraine residents] is very high, and people are optimistic.”

“I try not to fixate on my expectations about when the liberation of Kherson will happen, because I do not want to go through stages of disappointment, anger, and depression,” he says.

“We realize how much work we have to do, what forces are fighting against us,” notes the resistance fighter philosophically.

But the Russian forces were caught off guard, he adds. They “consolidated many of their positions to prepare for their next offensive.”

“They did not prepare for defense ... and this is not playing into their hands.”

Anmar Goodridge-Boyce

Barbados’ first female prime minister, Mia Mottley, signs a condolence book for the queen at the office of the British High Commission in Bridgetown, Barbados.

The island nation of Barbados permanently retired the Royal Standard of the United Kingdom, the flag of British royalty, less than a year ago, when it dropped the queen as its head of state and declared itself a republic.

That didn’t stop Barbados from lowering its largest flag – an ultramarine, yellow, and black banner that flies at Garrison Savannah – to half mast over the weekend to mark Queen Elizabeth II’s death. Barbadian Prime Minister Mia Mottley shared her sympathies in a book placed out at the British High Commission office for citizens to share their sympathies.

But social worker Roshanna Trim won’t be signing her condolences.

Although she sympathizes with the queen’s family and those who mourn her loss on a human level, Ms. Trim says that as a Black, Caribbean woman, her sympathies are overshadowed by her country’s quest for justice after centuries of slavery and exploitation.

“British postcolonial territories are still dealing with the socioeconomic impact of our shared past,” says Ms. Trim, steps from the historic Parliament building in the capital, Bridgetown, where life has continued largely uninterrupted. “We are yet to see any true commitment to reparatory justice. We are yet to see attempts to compensate for the human rights injustices of the colonial era.”

Queen Elizabeth was seen by many as the architect and greatest defender of the postcolonial Commonwealth, composed mostly of former colonies. But throughout its 56 member states, including 15 realms that recognize the British monarch as their head of state, others are questioning whether such anti-colonial sentiment will grow, and if the search for fairness will ultimately shake its bonds with the royal institution.

For all the antipathy toward the monarchy, the figurehead of the queen has helped blunt the deepest criticism, scandals, and political turmoil for 70 years. And her death comes at a time of global realignment, sovereignty movements, and the formation of regional blocs that provide more relevance for many developing countries today, argues William Gumede, executive chairperson of the Democracy Works Foundation in South Africa. 

“She was a very important figure of glue that held the Commonwealth together in the last couple of years because there’s been such dramatic changes in the world,” he says. “And what we are going to see now really is a kind of release of all these kinds of sentiments.”

“Why do we have a queen from England?”

Already this weekend the prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda announced plans for the Commonwealth realm to hold a referendum on becoming a republic in the next three years.

Toby Melville/Reuters/File

Britain's Prince William arrives to attend the inaugural parade for service personnel completing the Caribbean Military Academy's officer training program in Kingston, Jamaica, March 24, 2022.

During a visit this March to Jamaica by Prince William and his wife, Kate, the Jamaican government announced it would explore ditching the monarchy as well while demands for reparations and an apology for slavery have grown.

Much of the new movement predates the queen’s death, part of the passage of time, demographics, and the political moment. Jamie Bradley is the Atlantic director of Citizens for a Canadian Republic. But he grew up in Halifax in what he calls a “monarchy family,” where the world wars were close to his parents’ hearts.

“We had the queen’s picture up there and still have a plate of her coronation that my mother bought somewhere,” he says. “But I was 6 years old during the centennial and that had a huge impact on me. Everything was Canada, Canada, Canada. And then my little brain started going, ‘Then why do we have a queen from England?’”

Mr. Bradley says younger generations feel even more disconnected. In immigrant societies like Canada, many newcomers feel no historic attachment to the Crown. And in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests and Indigenous rights, anti-colonial movements are seen as a central civil rights platform. With the ascendance of King Charles III, many see an opportunity to reset relationships.

First Nations groups in British Columbia called on the new king to reject the Doctrine of Discovery, a 15th-century Catholic doctrine also used by Britain to claim land in North America. “With a change in Canada’s head of state, it’s time for a change in the Crown’s approach to Indigenous sovereignty,” the group wrote.

A complicated issue

Views are not monolithic across the Commonwealth, where the queen’s image graces currencies, and hospitals and public institutions are named after her. In downtown Toronto, in pubs like The Queen & Beaver Public House where portraits of the queen throughout the decades hang, many customers spent the weekend toasting her 70 years of reign.

Patrick Doyle/Reuters

Queen Elizabeth's royal cypher is projected on the Peace Tower of the Parliament Buildings, after Queen Elizabeth's death, in Ottawa, Ontario, Sept. 8, 2022.

In Barbados, Marva Niles was born in 1953, the same year of the queen’s coronation. When the now-retired custodian was a child, Barbados was yet to be an independent country, only breaking away from England in 1966. Ms. Niles grew up singing “God Save the Queen” and for her, the monarchy is simply part of her early life.

Bridgetown-based political analyst Kevon Edey says support for the monarchy splits along generational lines, but also gets complicated because the questions facing society are complex. “This divide also is reflective of the complex history the royal family had within the region, especially as it has begun to tackle its role in the slave trade,” he says.

Transitioning from a realm to a republic also entails loss – whether that’s the stability that comes from a centuries-old monarchy or the alliance with other nations. Indeed, becoming a republic is a politically and technically challenging process, and public opinion is still divided, even if it is shifting.

An opinion poll in Canada by Angus Reid in April showed 51% of respondents supporting the abolishment of the monarchy in coming generations, much higher than recent years. And even now in Barbados, it’s not clear that there’s strong support for the transition – what limited polling there was before the change on Nov. 30, 2021, showed a majority did not understand what becoming a republic meant for the country. Barbados is still a part of the Commonwealth of Nations.

Can the king bring about change?

In the Commonwealth, which includes some African countries that weren’t former colonies, Dr. Gumede argues the voluntary association can find more relevance by becoming a trade alliance based on equal terms, he says, and less Anglocentric.

Gilbert Bellamy/Reuters/File

A protester holds a sign during a rally to demand that the United Kingdom make reparations for slavery, ahead of a visit to Jamaica by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, outside the British High Commission in Kingston, Jamaica, March 22, 2022.

King Charles might create a kind of cohesion for the Commonwealth similar to his mother, but in the modern era. His reign won’t have longevity or be buoyed by nostalgia. But when he visited Barbados last year for the transition ceremony, he referred to the “appalling atrocity of slavery.” During a visit to Canada’s North this year, he urged society to “listen to the truth of the lived experiences of Indigenous people.” He also said leaders should work with “Indigenous knowledge-keepers” to “restore harmony with nature.”

On Sept. 10, the king was called “a man ahead of his time” by Prime Minister Mottley, both for his position as an environmentalist and advocate for youth.

Melissa Murray, a Jamaican American professor of law at New York University School of Law, watches the monarchy avidly. She wrote a viral Twitter thread about the complicated feelings the monarchy evokes when one admires the queen’s sense of duty while being cleareyed about what the institution has done to its former colonies. She says that future attitudes across the Commonwealth will depend on how the institution manages to evolve.

“I will say I thought King Charles had a very moving speech where I think he hit a lot of the notes that he had to hit – some conciliation and acknowledgment of the diversity of the realms that he now heads. And the real question is, is the idea of monarchy one that a society like ours that is fixated on these questions of inequality … a model that can be consistent with that ethos?” asks Professor Murray. “I think that’s what we’re going to find out.”

Should I stay or go?

It was a question Elsa Barron had wrestled with on her own for years. Now, at a public panel on faith and the climate at the COP26 summit in Glasgow, Scotland, she was on the verge of voicing it aloud to a crowd of strangers.

The panelists, faith leaders from the All Africa Conference of Churches, hadn’t named names. But Ms. Barron had gleaned the message. One of the biggest impediments to climate action in their communities was ... her home community: evangelical Americans, who hold an outsize influence in missionary ministries in Africa.

She had bitten her tongue through the Q&A session, nervous about being vulnerable in such a high-profile crowd. But just as the moderator moved to close the event, she felt her hand shoot up.

“I grew up in that community,” she recalls admitting to the panel, heart racing. “What is needed from me in this moment?” 

For evangelical environmentalists, the temptation to leave the church behind and take their climate concerns elsewhere is high. This is especially true among younger generations, who, even in conservative circles, are more likely to worry about climate change than their elders. Ms. Barron, for one, stood on the brink of abandoning her faith just a couple of years ago. 

So the response she got from those panelists at COP26 last November has stuck with her. 

“If you have the opportunity to be rooted in your community, asking questions, pushing for change, and advocating for communities that don’t have an inroad to these spaces, then that’s probably the biggest thing you can do,” she remembers being told. 

The choice to stay and fight has not been easy, demanding resolve, patience, and the courage to speak up, again and again. But at a time when writing off those with differing views has become commonplace, Ms. Barron has found that her empathy and love for her community – imperfect as it may be – have helped her work with, instead of against, those on the “other” side of the climate divide. 

“It takes a lot of courage to not just pick one side or the other, especially in such an extremely polarized society,” says Melanie Gish, author of “God’s Wounded World: American Evangelicals and the Challenge of Environmentalism.” 

The willingness of young Evangelicals like Ms. Barron to engage their church communities is exactly what is needed, she adds, for churches and the climate alike. 

In the United States, climate awareness and urgency have grown steadily in recent years. Today, 77% of Americans say climate change is caused mostly by human activities, according to data published by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. Even among white Evangelicals, thought has been shifting. A poll conducted by Yale and other groups in 2020 found that 44% of them attributed global warming to human activity, up from 28% when the Pew Research Center asked a similar question in 2014.

And the National Association of Evangelicals just renewed a call to action to mitigate the environmental crisis from a “biblical basis,” updating a report from 2011. Yet climate skepticism remains disproportionately high among evangelical Christians, even compared with other religious groups. Some evangelical leaders have pitted environmental movements against religion, painting the former as a politically motivated threat to a faith-driven life. Many simply don’t see church as the place to address environmental concerns. 

“Considering that American churches are losing young people, established churches and their leaders cannot afford not to listen. And so I see their role as catalysts for action,” Dr. Gish says.

Chenyao Liu/Courtesy of Elsa Barron

Elsa Barron speaks at Hoosier Interfaith Power and Light's Faith Climate Summit, where she was moderating a panel on environmental justice, Oct. 10, 2021.

A “second Reformation”?

When Ms. Barron tells a group of strangers she grew up evangelical, she doesn’t just mean she attended church on Sundays with her family. Early on, her devotion to her faith was so zealous she became known as the “creation girl” at school. 

“I was pretty outspoken about it,” she laughs now, remembering how she would push back on evolution in class and cite books on creationism in public debates she herself had initiated.

However, Ms. Barron was also a self-declared “shark girl” who dreamed of becoming a marine biologist. In high school, she learned to trust the scientific process and was confident the seven-day creation narrative would show up in the science if true. It did not. 

So she brought her doubts to the University of Notre Dame, where she majored in biology. As she left creationism behind, a new transformation was taking root, starting with one little book that hit her “like a ton of bricks.” The text was “Laudato Si,’” the 2015 encyclical on “care for our common home” written by Pope Francis. She still remembers her visceral response to her first read.

“It felt like, ‘Oh my goodness, how did I miss this?’” she says. Until then, her religion and her love for the natural world had existed in separate spheres. Now, she began to see the environmental crisis as a deeply spiritual crisis, built on a foundation of greed, extraction, and irreverence. And with that understanding came an accompanying spiritual obligation. 

“If we don’t care about it and don’t do something about it, we’re failing to fulfill two of our callings as people of faith: to care for creation and to love our neighbors,” she says over Zoom from her family’s home in Illinois. 

That’s the idea behind “creation care,” an environmental movement grounded in biblical direction, such as the duty to “tend and keep” the Garden of Eden. Solidified in the 1980s, it offers a counterpoint to the so-called Lynn White thesis from the late 1960s that linked environmental harm to the Judeo-Christian belief that God gave man “dominion” over the Earth. 

Some have gone so far as to call the creation care movement a “second Reformation,” says Dr. Gish, although the ideas have been more readily adopted outside the U.S., especially in places on the front lines of climate change. 

Importantly, creation care transcends narratives of impending doom, says Ed Brown, founding director of the nonprofit Care of Creation. 

“We care for God’s creation because we love God, and therefore we would care for creation even if it were not in crisis,” he explains. As a former pastor and missionary from a fundamentalist background, the environmental “convert” understands the hesitation of his peers. In fact, he titled his first article on environmental stewardship “The Confessions of a Reluctant Environmentalist.” But now he says the call to care for the Earth has become second nature. 

“Because I’m a Christian, I love my wife, I love my kids, I care for God’s world. It ought to be as natural as that.”

Combating climate change with conversation

Even though creation care, also known as environmental stewardship, has become more widely accepted in the U.S., being a young evangelical environmentalist can be lonely. 

Ms. Barron’s qualms with her faith heightened throughout college, especially following the election of Donald Trump. She grew increasingly disheartened by what she saw as a lack of concern for the world’s most pressing problems. 

“I had a lot of anger toward [the church] and a lot of frustration that I just didn’t feel could be reconciled, to be honest.” 

Then, two things happened.

Courtesy of YECA

Climate advocates from Young Evangelicals for Climate Action participate in a "climate die-in" in front of the White House in Washington in January 2020.

On the one hand, her mother texted her about a group called Young Evangelicals for Climate Action. YECA was founded with the support of the Evangelical Environmental Network in 2012. In addition to the group’s advocacy, the organization trains youth fellows on writing op-eds, talking to representatives, leading projects in their own communities, and engaging effectively with church members and leadership. 

Ms. Barron says she held back none of her trepidation in her application essay to be a fellow – and was welcomed into the fold. For the first time, she met a host of evangelical environmentalists grappling with similar questions, while working to shift the culture on climate within their own churches and college campuses.

The brunt of the work, Ms. Barron found, comes down to finding the courage to engage.  

“It starts with conversations; it starts with one-on-ones ... telling your church leaders and pastors what you’re passionate about,” says Tori Goebel, national organizer and spokesperson for YECA. “It’s not necessarily about facts and statistics and different scientific figures, but rather it’s just sharing stories and connecting to shared values.” 

It’s an approach that has become more popular, thanks to experts like Katharine Hayhoe, a Christian climate scientist whose 2018 TED Talk on fighting climate change through genuine, heartfelt conversations has been viewed over 4 million times. 

On the other hand, as far from home as Ms. Barron may have felt spiritually, the pandemic pushed her back there physically. All of a sudden, she again found herself surrounded by a community of people who had known her since she was born. So the types of conversations she could have were different from, and sometimes more powerful than, those she’d had on campus with people who shared her views. 

Before her trip to COP26, where she was a citizen observer through the Christian Climate Observers Program, her pastor gave her the floor during a Sunday service to tell the congregation about her trip and ask for its blessing. After she spoke, a mother of two teenage boys came up to her to say she didn’t know climate change was something you were allowed to talk about at church.

When she returned from Glasgow, she got more questions. “So you really think this climate change thing is real?” one congregant asked her point-blank.

It’s hard to measure the impact of those sorts of interactions, Ms. Barron acknowledges. 

“But I do have a hunch that those conversations wouldn’t have happened with just anyone on the street,” she says. “We were part of a community together, and because of that, we were able to dialogue in a way that was actually meaningful. We were listening to each other.”  

“Olive Shoot”

Today, Ms. Barron is a remote environmental research fellow at the Center for Climate and Security in Washington. Outside of her day job, she works with the nonprofit environmental organization Faith in Place, collaborating with churches across Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin to make practical environmental changes. 

Once a community decides to be part of the solution, there are any number of ways they can take action, she says. Pollinator gardens, community gardens, sustainable landscaping, replacing lightbulbs, solar panels, reducing water consumption, policy advocacy, writing letters to representatives – the list is long and wide-reaching.     

She also hosts a podcast called “Olive Shoot” that pulls from environmentalism, peacemaking, spirituality, and more to answer the question, how do we find hope in the midst of a climate crisis? Even her grandmother, one of a long line of conservative Evangelicals, loves the podcast. 

“That’s a big win,” admits Ms. Barron. “My grandma has even talked to some other members of the family who are less open, and is working her magic.”

Ms. Barron will be back at COP27 this November in Egypt, this time as a facilitator supporting other young Christian activists, leading conversations on climate care, and convening a global youth movement centered around environmental justice and peace building. 

Ms. Barron knows the evangelical tradition has a long way to go. “Choosing to stay, to engage, to participate has been an immense challenge,” she says. 

But she’s learned a few things by sticking around and not turning her back on what seems broken. Just as she no longer feels she needs to be a perfect example of environmentalism to be a climate activist, she’s found that communities don’t have to be in perfect agreement to take part in meaningful transformation. 

“Now I am much more open about just saying, ‘I’m part of the problem. And I’m deeply committed to fixing it.’”

Rhett Steele lopes through the dense Indiana forest, oblivious of the ironweed and paw-paws and briars that grab at his legs. He and fellow forester Rob McGriff stop at their goal: Tree No. 4.

“Good white oak,” Mr. Steele says of the tree, marked with baby blue paint. “Got the right diameter” – he squints at it with an expert eye – “36 inches. Plenty high. Got a knot up on that side, but on the other side you can go 60 feet without a defect. Got a slight sweep to it – they can bend it to fit a hull.” 

The century-old tree will be perfect for the hull of a famous ship 1,000 miles away in Boston – the USS Constitution.

The story of how this Navy base in southern Indiana came to be the supplier of wood to keep America’s oldest fighting vessel afloat is in part the story of settling the Midwest, and in part an unusual marriage of the needs of warfare and conservation that work well together on this base. 

Naval Support Activity Crane – its formal name – is 100 square miles, bigger than Washington, D.C., and located 30 miles south of Bloomington. Within its fences are scattered 1,700 weathered concrete bunkers that contain the munitions of war – everything from pistol ammunition for all of the Navy to large howitzer shells for the Army. In one corner of the base, high-tech researchers help develop sophisticated weaponry: laser-guided weapons and the guidance systems of rockets.

But most of the base is forestland containing millions of trees – again. 

In the 1800s Indiana whined with thousands of sawmills as lush forests were mowed down for farms and pastures. But farming was hard work, with meager returns. The thin topsoil, never enriched here by glaciers that dragged loam over other parts of the Midwest, offered only a subsistence existence. 

In the depths of the Depression, Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal sought to move poor farmers to more fertile grounds, and turn this area into a state park. Works Progress Administration crews built a stone shelter house on a knoll, dredged a 900-acre basin for a lake, and began planting trees to control rampant erosion.

But as World War II loomed, the government decided to move its battle armaments far inland from the coasts, vulnerable to attack. They doubled the size of the government holdings around Crane, cleared space for concrete storage buildings, and put a naval base here to handle explosives.

Stephan Savoia/AP/File

The USS Constitution, with its topsails unfurled, is towed through Boston Harbor past Boston's financial district skyline in August 2014.

It was a busy place during the war, as huge aircraft bombs and tank shells and mines were wheeled in and out by a workforce including women and retired military men. “Rosie the Riveter was alive and well here,” says Jeff Nagan, the chief public affairs officer for the base.

The war ended, but the military still needs to be armed, and Crane helps serve that function. 

Mr. Nagan acknowledges the oddity: People ask, “Why is there a Navy base here? There’s no ocean,” he says as he drives on a sylvan road past bulky bunkers, each with a number indicating what armaments lay behind the locked steel doors. A stag with full antlers peeks from the edge of the woods. 

As the base served its quiet function in the Midwest, farther east In Boston, the Navy decided for the 1976 Bicentennial to try to restore the Constitution, still commissioned but mostly sitting as a floating dormitory for cadets. 

The Constitution’s constitution is an American legend. In a fearsome battle off the coast of Nova Scotia against Britain’s HMS Guerrière during the War of 1812, sailors saw enemy cannonballs bounce off the 22-inch-thick wooden hull. They nicknamed it Old Ironsides.

When at dock in Boston, the striking black and white USS Constitution floats at the Charlestown Navy Yard. Its broad deck is studded with menacing cannon, with even larger weapons in the gun deck below, and its airspace is a cobweb of lines that can hoist 48 sails.

But by the Bicentennial, more than a century of disrepair, sitting in water, had damaged many of the ship’s thick wooden planks. When the Navy’s restorers sought replacements, they found there were far fewer forests in the country that still grew straight white oak trees long enough to fit into the ship’s 204-foot hull. They finally found a private supplier in Ohio, who provided the trees at a pretty price.

A government forester heard of the costly sale, according to Mr. Nagan, and wondered to his superiors: “Did you guys look in Indiana? We have a base with huge white oaks there.” From then, Crane became the official supplier for the Constitution’s regular repairs, sending more than 100 trees to Boston. 

The forests at Crane have grown thick around the munitions bunkers, which are spaced out for safety. The Navy eventually took over the care of the forests from the Department of Agriculture, fostering the natural hardwoods – red oak, white oak, hickory, and tulip poplars – to control the erosion and restore the land ravaged by farming and the base construction.

Doug Struck

Civilian foresters Rhett Steele (left) and Rob McGriff identify white oak trees in the Naval Support Activity Crane forest in Indiana that will be used to repair the hull of the USS Constitution.

“There’s been a conservation ethic here that this land was made to be forest,” says Trent Osmon, the environmental manager on the base. The woods also are a source of income; the Navy allows loggers to take less than a quarter of the annual growth of the forest. Mostly the land is nurtured for conservation, the logged trees carefully selected for the health of the woodlands. They don’t permit logging during nesting season of the endangered Indiana Bat. 

Mr. Steele and Mr. McGriff, civilian foresters who work for the Navy, walk the woods and mark trees to be logged. They share their days with bobcats, ruffed grouse, turkeys, buzzing bees and migrating birds. Both say they love the solitude of their jobs. “You get to see stuff other people just drive by. You get to appreciate it because you’re out on your own,” says Mr. Steele. He adds with a twinkle, “and nobody to bother you.”

When they see a promising white oak – straight, tall, without defects – they mark it carefully on their topographical maps, and nurture it. Robert Murphy, the veteran shipbuilder who oversees the regular repair of the Constitution, has come from Boston to walk with the foresters to select the best trees. Trucked to the Charlestown yard, the logs are cut into massive planks 7 inches thick, 14 inches wide and as long as 45 feet. White oak has unique pores that seal the wood from liquid, making it valuable for boat hulls.

Mr. Murphy’s crew of 10 restorers in Boston stick to the ship’s original material, he says. “We’re hoping to keep it for another 225 years.”

The foresters at Crane share the goal. Mr. McGriff surveys the trees on a sloping hillside as a gentle rain falls. 

“You know,” he muses, “someday that one, or that one, might end up as Constitution trees.”

Rebecca Gibian/AP/File

NPR’s Nina Totenberg (left) and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg appear onstage at an event in New York in 2018.

When NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg first got to know the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the early 1970s, neither woman was well known. As Ms. Totenberg recalls in “Dinners With Ruth: A Memoir on the Power of Friendships,” “We were outsiders to the world in which we operated. We both had our noses pressed up against the windowpane, looking inside, and saying, ‘Hey, men in there, let me in!’” Of course, they each achieved remarkable success in their respective fields. Through their decadeslong friendship, they were there for each other through professional challenges and triumphs as well as personal joys and losses. In addition to RBG, Ms. Totenberg recalls friendships with her NPR colleagues Cokie Roberts and Linda Wertheimer, among others. She spoke recently with the Monitor.

Your relationship with Ruth Bader Ginsburg long predated her appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court, but how did you manage the potential conflict of being personal friends with her while covering the court?

It really wasn’t that difficult. We’d been friends for more than 20 years, and she then happens to get on the Supreme Court. You don’t divorce her over that. You maintain your friendship and you maintain your boundaries. And they’re pretty clear: I can’t ask about what’s going on inside the court, and she can’t dictate what I’m going to write, either. 

Early on, you and RBG were both women in extremely male-dominated fields. How important was that to the connection you formed?

I’m sure it had a great deal to do with it. That was true for me and Ruth, me and Cokie and Linda. We weren’t trying to break a glass ceiling when we started out – we were trying to get a foot in the door. We had a common experience as women in that era, when men dominated everything and could and did say almost everything to and about us in our presence. It was a really important thing that we had other women we could turn to who were our friends. 

You cover other important relationships in the book, including your long friendship with the late Cokie Roberts. What do you miss most about her?

I miss everything about her. I miss her good counsel, her laugh, our Saturday nights at the movies. I miss her riotous sense of humor and her goodness. 

Many people are familiar with RBG’s legal and judicial career and her devoted relationship with her husband, Marty. What do you want readers to know about her as a friend?

I knew her for almost 50 years, through a time when neither of us was the least bit famous, much less iconic, as she became. At some very critical moments in my life she gave me the best advice and the best care. She did that when my late husband [Sen. Floyd Haskell] was sick for years. She was amazing in how she would show up at just the right moment to offer a meal or a ticket to join her at the opera or the best advice imaginable.

RBG was famously close friends with her ideological opposite, Justice Antonin Scalia. You also had a friendship with Justice Scalia as well as other men and women with a range of political views. Do you think those types of relationships are still possible in our hyperpartisan times?

I’m not sure. I still have friendships with judges who are very conservative and very liberal. I think with politicians it’s much harder. When I used to cover Congress often, which I only do for confirmations now, I had lots of friends on the right and the left, Democrats and Republicans. I think that would be harder today, in part because Republicans in particular, but not exclusively, really shut out journalists unless they think they are partisans to their point of view. You can like people, respect them, and fairly represent their views without being partisans for them. I think some politicians just don’t believe that. 

Public confidence in the Supreme Court is at a low point. As an expert on the court, what are your thoughts on what the coming years might look like?

I think many people were shocked that Roe v. Wade was overturned. Once [former President] Donald Trump got three appointees and the 6-3 conservative majority, that was a foregone conclusion. For those of us who cover the court, the only question was how fast they were going to do it. There are a lot of other issues coming down the pike that will have a profound effect on American society, but they’re not as big a deal as abortion rights are. People may not notice what’s happening, but this is going to be a court unlike any we’ve seen in at least 70 years. It’s a very interesting story to cover. That’s the way I have treated it and will treat it.

AP

Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema is greeted after giving an official apology in July, 2021, for the involvement of the city's past rulers in the slave trade.

Dutch leaders do not often visit Suriname. Their presence stirs suspicions among local critics. That’s because the South American country still bears the legacies of three centuries of colonial rule by the Netherlands – a legacy that includes Dutch merchant ships bringing enslaved Africans to Suriname and many other parts of the New World.

When Prime Minister Mark Rutte arrived yesterday on the first state visit in 14 years, he came to discuss trade, public health, and agriculture. But his two-day trip may have had a deeper historical import: a prelude to a government apology for the Dutch slave trade.

“As much as we would like to, the history of slavery is not something that the Netherlands can just shake off,” writes Wim Dubbink, a business ethics professor at Tilburg University, in an article on the school’s website. “Taking responsibility is broader than just accepting blame. ... It also carries a promise to act differently in the future. Apologies express that intention.”

Two years ago, Mr. Rutte told a parliamentary debate on racism that “apologies form a risk that society will further polarize.” A 2021 opinion poll showed that 55% of Dutch people opposed apologizing for slavery. A report by a national commission called “Chains of the Past” sharply disagreed. “Apologies help heal historical suffering, but apologies are mainly aimed at building a shared future,” the report stated last year, helping to shift attitudes.

Since then, the city of Amsterdam and the Dutch central bank, among other institutions, have apologized for their historical links to slavery. Mr. Rutte appears to have evolved as well. He told reporters last Friday that “a significant moment is to be expected later this year” concerning the Dutch role in slavery. That is expected to include a formal national apology and the creation of a fund to support academic research on Dutch colonial slavery and help the country’s former colonies, such as Indonesia, address climate change.

A national apology would mirror conversations taking place across Dutch society, within schools and museums, churches and businesses, about colonial slavery. One factor that may help explain the changes in Dutch attitudes, says Valika Smeulders, curator at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, is the recognition of what many historians know well – that “racism is not something that always existed.” It was born out of colonialism, Dr. Smeulders told the BBC, and can be unlearned.

That deceptively simple idea offers an assurance of the dignity of people caught in the trap of historical resentment, no matter what side they’re on. The Dutch are showing that official apologies need not be accusations. They can be pathways to common understanding and reconciliation.