From Nataliia Shatilova’s perspective, Russia’s eight-month occupation of her city of Kherson in southeastern Ukraine last year had the unintended effect of steeling residents to face the challenge of floodwaters that have inundated riverfront neighborhoods over the last week.

“We went through the occupation, and during the occupation people very quickly built a strong level of independence and resistance to the occupying forces, and that built a strong sense of determination and self-reliance among our communities,” says Ms. Shatilova, deputy director of the Kherson regional operations of the Ukrainian Red Cross.

Add to that the past six months of almost daily shelling from Russian forces just across the Dnipro River, she says, and people have been prepared to confront what she calls the “third difficult situation” to besiege Kherson in less than two years: the Dnipro’s devastating flooding following the collapse of the Nova Kakhovka Dam.

As water from a heavy rain pours into the bombed-out southern facade of the government building the Red Cross has converted into flood response headquarters, Ms. Shatilova lists the area’s unfilled needs for food, medicines, and dry shelter.

But she also underscores Kherson’s fortitude and optimism, qualities that have surprised even her.

“People are in good spirits,” she says. “They are taking this situation with the destroyed dam as another challenge that we here in Kherson will overcome.”

The catastrophic flooding followed destruction June 6 of the Nova Kakhovka Dam and hydroelectric power plant, about 60 miles up the Dnipro from Kherson.

Howard LaFranchi/The Christian Science Monitor

Nataliia Shatilova, deputy director of Kherson regional operations for the Ukrainian Red Cross, in the bombed stairwell of the building the Red Cross has made its flood response headquarters, in Kherson, Ukraine, June 11, 2023.

The dam’s collapse quickly drained what had been one of Europe’s largest reservoirs, created in the Soviet era decades before Ukraine’s independence to supply water to heavy industry and to enable large-scale irrigation of Ukraine’s fertile but dry southern steppes. The reservoir also supplied fresh water to Crimea.

Ukraine and Russia continue to blame each other for the dam’s destruction, although indications that an internal explosion of the Russian-controlled facility caused the failure could suggest Russian responsibility.

Both sides insist the other was motivated to unleash the reservoir’s waters by Ukraine’s long-anticipated counteroffensive to retake occupied territory, which launched last week. Russia may have caused the breach to stall and complicate the counteroffensive, some say, while others speculate that Ukraine acted with the intent of flooding entrenched Russian forces.

Whichever is accurate, the undisputed outcome of the destruction is an environmental calamity for southern Ukraine that some experts warn could equal the impact of the 1986 nuclear disaster at the Chernobyl power plant in northern Ukraine.

The flooding inundated more than 200 square miles of land downstream in both Ukrainian and Russian-occupied territory – submerging dozens of villages and riverfront neighborhoods of Kherson and sending a dangerous and toxic stew of dislodged landmines, chemicals, and untreated sewage from overwhelmed systems into the Black Sea and west along Ukraine’s southern coast to the port city of Odesa.

Officials voice concerns that the fetid waters could have dire health and economic impacts – on farming and fishing, for example.

AP

Rescuers rush to safety an injured civilian evacuee who had came under fire from Russian forces while trying to flee by boat from the Russian-occupied east bank of the flooded Dnipro River to Ukrainian-held Kherson, June 11, 2023.

More long term, the flooding and loss of extensive irrigation systems could leave thousands of acres stripped of their rich topsoil, and result in a desertification of farmlands that have helped make Ukraine one of the world’s most productive breadbaskets.

But for now, in Kherson’s flooded neighborhoods, the focus is on cleanup, recovery, and pitching in to help flooded neighbors.

“We’ve been through everything, so we won’t put our hands down now,” says Nataliia Bespogaynaia as she employs her rubber-gloved hands to scrub the floodwater-soaked fixtures of a friend’s market in Kherson’s riverfront Antonivka district.

The little market, which once served patrons of a nearby beach and motorists crossing a now-destroyed bridge to the Russian-occupied east bank of the Dnipro, hasn’t been open for months. But Ms. Bespogaynaia says she decided to help the store’s owner clean up from the filthy waters that at one point were waist-deep – and to prepare for the day when the store might serve the surrounding area once again.

“We are lifetime optimists!” she says, gesturing to her two friends who joined her for the cleanup. That draws a broad smile from Sasha Kondratenko, clad in shorts and rubber slides, who adds his own upbeat note.

“We are now Venice!” he says, repeating the lemons-to-lemonade line that has become popular in Kherson.

Which is not to say the three friends aren’t concerned for the area’s future.

Howard LaFranchi/The Christian Science Monitor

Nataliia Bespogaynaia (left) with two friends, Nataliia Mavryk and Sasha Kondratenko, at the little market they are cleaning for the owner in Kherson's flooded Antonivka riverfront neighborhood.

Mr. Kondratenko points out the submerged houses across the street closer to the river and wonders aloud what will be salvageable. He worries about the public health ramifications of the untreated sewage and chemicals.

And he wonders if the many species of fish and animals the area boasted of just a week ago might have disappeared. “We just don’t know what to expect for the future,” he says.

For biologists and ecologists, the dam collapse has already destroyed the unique estuary system at the Dnipro’s Black Sea mouth and will lead to severe health and environmental impacts beyond Ukraine to Bulgaria, Turkey, and other Black Sea-fronting countries.

“People are comparing this to the Chernobyl power plant disaster, but this is a very different kind of environmental catastrophe with a wider range of impacts,” says Vladislav Balinskiy, a biologist and head of the Ukrainian environmental nongovernmental organization Green Leaf.

As he takes stock in Odesa of the piles of river reeds and other debris clogging one of the city’s normally unencumbered sandy beaches, Mr. Balinskiy notes that as terrible as Chernobyl was, it did not irretrievably alter the surrounding landscape. Over time dissipation of radioactivity has allowed nature to recover.

“But here the very particular and unique natural systems that made up the Dnipro River’s estuaries have vanished, carried away to beaches like this one,” he says. “They just don’t exist anymore.”

Indeed, the flooding destroyed the 200,000-acre Lower Dnipro River National Park, an internationally recognized jewel that was home to unusual and even unique plant and animal species. Those include the frog and lizard species, some of which were already endangered, that Mr. Balinskiy has found over the past week along Odesa’s shoreline.

As for economic impact, he notes that nearly 2.5 million acres of irrigated farmland depended on the reservoir. “Where before we were growing crops, we could now have dust storms,” he says.

Howard LaFranchi/The Christian Science Monitor

Community leader Sergei Ivaschenko, inspecting the flooded streets of Kherson's Antonivka riverfront neighborhood.

Another calamitous result of the dam collapse was the washing away to flooded downriver communities and the Black Sea more than 50 years of accumulated sediments on the Kakhovka reservoir’s bottom.

Mr. Balinskiy points out that insecticides and other agricultural chemicals that were banned in the United States beginning in the 1960s were used on Soviet Ukraine’s rapidly expanding croplands into the 1990s. The sediment buildup, which in some places reached more than 50 feet deep, also held the polluted and untreated waste of heavy industries the Soviets placed along the reservoir’s perimeter.

“Now all those insecticides and chemicals and bacteria that have developed have been washed into the Black Sea,” he says. “We don’t know what the impact will be,” he says, “but we do know what precious natural systems we have lost.”

In Kherson’s riverfront communities, people have heard of and are discussing the many dire consequences the dam collapse will have beyond their flooded homes and muddy streets, says Sergei Ivaschenko, a community leader in Antonivka village.

The potential public health ramifications are especially worrisome for many residents, he says.

But then his demeanor brightens. “These people have lived through the occupation and the shelling, so now they are not afraid of anything,” he says – not even a disaster that he says can only be called “an act of terrorism.”

Reporting for this story was supported by Oleksandr Naselenko.

Ever since she was a freshman at Colorado College, Rikki Held has been waiting for today. 

It’s not her graduation; that happened a few weeks ago. This is something else – the day when a major lawsuit that bears her name, Held v. Montana, goes to trial. It marks the first time that young people in the United States have gotten a chance in court to demand the right to a stable climate. As such, it’s a key moment in what has become a global effort by children to use litigation to demand government action – and potentially affect public opinion – on climate change.

“I didn’t think it would be this long at all,” Ms. Held said in an interview before the beginning of the trial, in which 16 young plaintiffs, ages 5 to 22, claim Montana’s continued support of fossil fuels violates the state’s constitutional promise to “maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment in Montana for present and future generations.” 

“It’s kind of a slow process,” she continued. “But that’s also meant I’ve been able to tell my story.”

And her story, which she has been sharing with neighbors and classmates for years now, and which today she was able to tell from the stand, is this: Her favorite place on this big-sky Earth – her family’s ranch outside the town of Broadus, population 456 – is increasingly and devastatingly threatened by the effects of climate change. Over recent years, she has watched drying riverbanks leave her animals without drinking water; she has watched floodwaters, connected to abnormally high temperatures and unusually rapid ice melt, decimate riverbanks. Wildfires have swept across the ranch, and she has become accustomed to air quality warnings. 

Climate change is “not just something on the other side of the world,” Ms. Held says. “It’s affecting people in Montana and people working closely with the land, and we rely on environmental systems to make a living.” 

This narrative, according to the plaintiffs’ case, is one that is repeated in different forms throughout the state. There are children who have had to evacuate their homes because of climate-charged wildfires, or who can no longer hunt because of shifting animal ranges. There are residents of the Flathead Indian Reservation who can no longer practice certain ceremonies because the snow has melted too quickly, and there are children who live near Glacier National Park who must stay inside because of smoke conditions.

Their case, then, is not just about justice, the young people and their lawyers say, but about perseverance in insisting that state representatives – the grown-ups who are supposed to take care of them – actually protect their futures.

“The climate crisis is degrading and depleting Montana’s unique and precious environment and natural resources, which the Youth Plaintiffs depend on for their safety and survival,” the lawsuit says in its complaint. 

Thom Bridge/Independent Record/AP

Youth plaintiffs look on during a status hearing for Held v. Montana in the Lewis and Clark County Courthouse in Helena, Montana, on May 12, 2023.

Montana, the lawsuit claims, has an obligation to protect these children’s right to a stable climate as part of its constitutional duty to maintain a clean and healthful environment. (Montana is one of only a handful of U.S. states whose constitutions include a right to a clean environment.) It is also required to act as a trustee of the state’s natural resources for the benefit of future generations.

Two views on climate – weighed in court

Instead, plaintiffs allege, the state has embraced an energy policy that specifically supports fossil fuels – an act it knew would contribute to the climate crisis that is causing the harm.

But that’s where the legal wrangling begins.

The state has argued that there’s no way to show that Montana’s energy policy actually causes the alleged environmental harm – and it rejects the premise that the young plaintiffs can hold the state liable for making what it claims are well-considered energy policy decisions. Some state representatives have also dismissed the youths’ claims as misguided advocacy; the lawyers representing the Montana plaintiffs are part of a group called Our Children’s Trust, which is representing young people in climate cases throughout the country.

“This entire case has been nothing more than a publicity stunt spearheaded by an out-of-state special interest group,” Emily Flower, a spokesperson for Attorney General Austin Knudsen, was quoted in the Flathead Beacon as saying. “We believe this political theater will come to an end soon.”

But Montana district court judge Kathy Seeley has allowed the case to go forward – despite recent GOP changes to a law involved in the plaintiffs’ argument. Over the next two weeks, lawyers expect testimony from the youth plaintiffs, as well as pediatricians and scientists who are expected to talk both about the impact of climate change on children’s mental health and the connection between climate change and environmental harm.

“The Held case is really the first case that is going to answer the question, hopefully positively, as to whether the right to a safe and stable climate is part of the environmental rights that the people of Montana are entitled to,” says Maya van Rossum, an environmental activist and lawyer who has started the Green Amendment movement to add mandates for a healthy environment in state constitutions across the U.S.

It will also be a moment where climate change scientists can make their case in court about the connection between climate change and extreme weather, says Michael Gerrard, an environmental lawyer who is the founder and faculty director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University. On the other side of the coin, those who might minimize the impact of climate change could face legal questioning too. 

Thom Bridge/Independent Record/AP

Judge Kathy Seeley listens during a status hearing for Held v. Montana in the Lewis and Clark County Courthouse in Helena, Montana, on May 12, 2023. She scheduled a trial to decide if the rules by which the state evaluates fossil fuel development are constitutional.

“It means that scientific evidence will be subject to the crucible of cross-examination,” he says. “Climate science deniers have long had a political platform. But they’ve mostly tried to stay out of court because they’ve realized they were vulnerable.”

The trial, which is scheduled to last two weeks, is scheduled to be livestreamed, and Our Children’s Trust has helped organize watch parties across the country. 

Differing opinions at a local park

But for many in Montana – even young people – the lawsuit is still under the radar. 

Hazel Rex, 20, and Taylor Macik, 19, both Montana State University juniors, were leaving Glen Lake Rotary Park, known as Bozeman Beach, after a recent day of relaxation in the sun as ominous gray clouds rolled over the train tracks on the other side of the pond – the very tracks that carry Montana coal from mines in the state’s eastern region to ships waiting on the West Coast.

They weren’t familiar with the lawsuit, but after learning more about it, Ms. Rex said she was surprised it had gotten as far as it had.

“It’s extremely hard for Montana to do anything about fossil fuel usage because now it’s about damage control and what we can do to minimize its effects,” she said. She didn’t feel much was being done in the state to offset fossil fuel use.

Tony Knick, sitting in his plug-in electric Ford F-150, came here to “cool his feet off” in the pond before continuing on his errands with his wife. He wasn’t familiar with the lawsuit, either, but he still had an opinion.

“Some of these lawsuits are frivolous,” the retired business owner said. “I don’t think we really have any fossil fuel concerns in Montana.”

That opinion wouldn’t surprise Ms. Held. She says that many of her neighbors don’t call the shifts in the environment “climate change,” and says a lot of people aren’t clear on the correlation between Montana’s coal extraction and fossil fuel energy policies with the floods, wildfires, and heat waves. She hopes the lawsuit will help get more people talking about all of it. 

“If you just ask a person if they’ve ever experienced climate change, I’ll get the reaction that they haven’t – it’s seen as an abstract thing that’s hard to see, on the other side of the world,” she says. “But people do experience these things. All the time.” 

Dawson Dunning, a wildlife filmmaker who also grew up on an eastern Montana ranch agrees. He says people don’t often talk about climate change – but it’s clear to them it’s having an impact. 

Jodi Hausen

Dawson Dunning teaches his son, Ansel, how to fish at Glen Lake Rotary Park in Bozeman, Montana, on June 6, 2023. Mr. Dawson has been involved with Northern Plains Resource Council, a Montana-based nonprofit dedicated to protecting the state’s water, land, air, and working landscapes.

“There’s a lot of recognition in the ranching community that things have changed,” he said. “We’re looking very much at a drastic change in our future. We can’t keep burning and developing.”

Mr. Dunning has been involved with the Northern Plains Resource Council, a Montana-based nonprofit dedicated to protecting the state’s water, land, air, and working landscapes. As such, he said, he’d seen the need for vigilant public oversight of government regulators. Mr. Dunning spoke of two proposed fossil fuel projects he believes would have negatively impacted his family’s ranch – a coal mine near Otter Creek and a railroad that would have run through nearby properties. Both projects were eventually abandoned after years of fraught legal battles.

“I’m not a huge fan of things being decided in court,” he says, “but I don’t see another option.” 

Stephanie Hanes reported from Northampton, Massachusetts, and Jodi Hausen reported from Bozeman, Montana.

Marco Bello/Reuters

Former President Donald Trump arrives at Miami International Airport a day before his arraignment in a federal court in Miami, Florida, June 12, 2023. He faces dozens of felony charges accusing him of illegally hoarding classified materials and thwarting the Justice Department’s efforts to get the documents back.

Of the many incongruities in Donald Trump’s life, this one may be the most stark: The former president has never been in greater legal peril – and his dominance of the Republican Party seems as strong as ever. 

Before Mr. Trump’s 37-count criminal federal indictment last week over his post-presidency retention of classified documents – including six counts of obstruction – he was already far ahead in the 2024 GOP presidential nomination race. Today, the latest polling shows Mr. Trump crushing his primary competitors. 

A CBS News/YouGov poll released Sunday shows Mr. Trump with 61% support among likely GOP primary voters – ahead of his recent average – versus just 23% for his nearest competitor, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. And polling suggests that some voters who had moved away from Mr. Trump have now come back to him – a shift that was apparent after Mr. Trump’s criminal indictment in April in New York state over alleged falsifying of business records.  

For most of the dozen or so non-Trump Republicans vying for the GOP nomination, the former president’s legal woes present a unique challenge: The need to distance themselves from Mr. Trump and his various controversies without alienating his supporters, many of whom are rallying to his defense. The two-track formula some candidates have settled on, for now, involves criticizing the indictment as political while also suggesting the party ought to move on from a candidate who attracts so much drama.

Evan Vucci/AP

Hope Quant of Miami (second from right) stands with other Trump supporters outside Trump National Doral, June 12, 2023, in Doral, Florida. Many Trump followers are unfazed by criminal charges against the former president.

In the wake of Friday’s indictment, for example, Governor DeSantis put out a statement that criticized “an uneven application of the law depending upon political affiliation,” but also did not defend Mr. Trump’s actions. 

On Monday, former U.N. Ambassador and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley argued on Fox News that the Department of Justice and FBI had “lost all credibility with the American people.” But, she went on, if the charges in the indictment are accurate, Mr. Trump was “incredibly reckless with our national security.”

“Two things can be true at the same time,” she said. 

“This is a very difficult needle for Trump’s opponents to thread,” says Danny Hayes, a political scientist at George Washington University. “They want to say that Trump has done things they wouldn’t do – but at the same time, he shouldn’t be punished for it.” 

That’s a subtle criticism, Professor Hayes adds, and for the most part, voters don’t really deal in subtlety.

“The message that most people hear is that the prosecution is unjustified – not that Trump behaved inappropriately or did something wrong,” he says. 

The former president’s latest legal problems will be front and center at 3:00 p.m. Tuesday, when he appears in federal court in Miami for his arraignment. Pro-Trump protesters are expected to rally at the courthouse, and on Tuesday evening, Mr. Trump has summoned the media to his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, for remarks. He’s also scheduled to hold his first fundraiser of the campaign Tuesday evening, at Bedminster. 

Wilfredo Lee/AP

Federal Protective Service Police officers cordon off an area outside the Wilkie D. Ferguson Jr. U.S. Courthouse in Miami, June 12, 2023. Former President Trump is set to appear at the federal court Tuesday.

Of course, it’s still early days – and some GOP strategists say it makes sense for Mr. Trump’s rivals to be cautious for now. 

“They’ll want to be careful not to say something they might regret later,” says Alex Conant, a Republican political consultant. “All of this is so unprecedented. There is no playbook for candidates to look to.” 

Voters, too, are still processing the news. But the view among many conservatives, which has been repeatedly hammered by Mr. Trump and his allies – that the American justice system has been “weaponized” against the administration’s political opponents – could be hard to shake. 

Even warnings by GOP heavy hitters may fall on deaf ears. Former Attorney General William Barr, who served under Mr. Trump, was unequivocal in his view of the federal indictment yesterday on Fox News. “If even half of it is true, then he’s toast,” he said. 

When asked about the comment, a Florida-based Republican strategist who supports Mr. Trump dismissed Mr. Barr as a “disgruntled former employee.” 

Among the large Republican field of candidates, only two have fully broken with Mr. Trump, both former governors – Chris Christie of New Jersey and Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas. Their message is clear: He should not be the party’s standard-bearer. Mr. Christie, a former federal prosecutor, has called the federal indictment alleging obstruction and mishandling of classified documents “devastating.” Mr. Hutchinson called on Mr. Trump to end his campaign. 

John Bazemore/AP

Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson speaks at the Georgia Republican convention, June 10, 2023, in Columbus, Georgia. He is one of the few GOP candidates who has criticized former President Trump in the wake of his indictment, calling for Mr. Trump to drop out of the race.

But it’s hard to see their message gaining much traction among Republican primary voters – or even reaching them. Both are likely to have a hard time garnering enough support in the polls or in numbers of donors to qualify for the first Republican debate in August. 

The rest of the field is avoiding attacking Mr. Trump and, to a greater or lesser degree, trying to have it both ways. 

Governor DeSantis took what some interpreted as a veiled swipe at the former president last Friday at a GOP convention in North Carolina. In his days as a naval officer, he said he “would have been court-martialed in a New York minute” if he had taken classified documents to his apartment. He was speaking of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was investigated over her use of a private server for work – but the parallels to Mr. Trump were unmistakable. Governor DeSantis has also pledged to “bring accountability to the DOJ [Department of Justice], excise political bias, and end weaponization once and for all.”

Other high-profile candidates – including former Vice President Mike Pence and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott – have also made the “weaponization” argument. 

One GOP candidate who has gone further is businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, who pledged that, if elected, he would pardon Mr. Trump on his first day in office. He did criticize the former president for holding on to classified documents, but called the indictment “deeply politicized.” 

In going easy on Mr. Trump, some of the lower-polling candidates may be signaling that they’re interested in being his running mate. But for anyone who runs for the top job, there’s always the hope of catching on – and in this primary cycle, that means peeling off soft Trump voters. 

Alex Brandon/AP

Vivek Ramaswamy, a businessman and candidate for the 2024 GOP nomination, speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference, March 3, 2023, at National Harbor in Oxon Hill, Maryland. He says that, as president, he would pardon former President Donald Trump.

Kevin Madden, a veteran of three Republican presidential campaigns, argues that the non-Trump candidates can’t just sit back and wait for voters to come to them – they need to seize the moment. 

“Very rarely in a campaign do you have an opening like this against the front-runner that provides everybody else in the race an opportunity to advance and an opportunity to really drive a contrast,” Mr. Madden says. 

The obvious argument, he says, is that Mr. Trump is “a wounded candidate who is in a position to lose the general election as a result of all the nonstop legal trouble he’s gotten himself into.” 

In addition to the two recent indictments, Mr. Trump is also facing another potential federal indictment around the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, and a case in Georgia centered on an alleged effort to overturn the 2020 election result.

“Trump voters aren’t going to just get tired and peel off on their own,” Mr. Madden says. “Someone has to make a case that they’re a better vehicle for their vote in the general election.”

Shellie Flockhart, a salon owner outside Des Moines, Iowa – the state that will hold the first GOP nominating contest early in 2024 – voted for Mr. Trump twice. This time, she’s keeping her options open, and lists three candidates she’s considering: Mr. Trump, Mr. DeSantis, and Mr. Ramaswamy. 

But Ms. Flockhart, like many GOP voters, is also skeptical of the Trump documents case. She notes that President Joe Biden, too, was found to have classified documents in his personal possession (from his days as vice president and as a senator). The differences between the two cases – such as whether the documents were returned promptly upon discovery – may not strike many voters as significant.  

To make people turn on Mr. Trump, Ms. Flockhart says, “it would have to be something really major that we haven’t seen another president do.” 

I was a high school senior when I discovered my astonishing talent. The discovery so shocked me that I kept mum about it, thinking that no one would believe what I was able to achieve morning after morning.

Some people have a photographic memory; others have perfect pitch. I had perfect timing. Perfect!

I was living with my maternal grandparents at the time. My mother had died when I was 13, the oldest of four children. Our father was largely absent, so our grandparents graciously took in my two sisters, my brother, and me.

Our grandparents were not wealthy. They had recently retired from years of sharecrop farming. While they’d managed to save enough to buy a home in the tiny town of Java, South Dakota, they were short on living expenses, especially with four kids to feed and clothe.

So, our grandfather took a job as janitor of the Java school building, a large two-story structure that housed grades 1-12. Keeping the entire building clean was a stressful job for one man. Realizing this, I began helping him after school, sweeping rooms and emptying wastebaskets, for a small wage. I continued this work until my final year of high school.

By that time, Grandpa was eight years past retirement age. When the first cold snap of that year arrived, he fired up the school’s furnace. He quickly realized how difficult it had become for him to shovel the huge pile of coal chips required to fill the hopper of the furnace’s stoker. 

I volunteered to take on that job, a commitment that required me to set my alarm clock an hour earlier each morning. I’d fumble into coal-darkened jeans, go over to the school, and shovel a half ton of coal into the hopper, enough to keep the fire blazing for 24 hours. Next morning, I’d fill it again.

After finishing that chore, I’d go home, clean up, change clothes, and eat breakfast. I’d pace my preparations by glancing at the mantel clock in the dining room – it would be years before I’d have a watch. Then I’d head back to school, always at the last minute.

It was during those morning rushes to school that I discovered my superpower.

On two consecutive mornings the week I began stoking the furnace, at the very instant I stepped onto the sidewalk in front of the school, the first bell rang. That was the signal for students to head to class. This astonishing coincidence prompted me to hone my precision. I became obsessed with maintaining my split-second timing. I scrupulously planned each phase of my morning activity. I paced myself. I achieved astonishing precision. Often I’d step onto the school’s sidewalk just as the first bell rang.

Not always. Some days I was a bit off. But most mornings, my arrival and the first bell coincided. This accomplishment gave me enormous pride – and some eerie feelings.

I enjoyed my newfound precision for only a few months. As warm weather arrived, there was no need to stoke the furnace. I missed my former routine, but I easily adapted to sleeping longer. I soon lost my zeal for arriving just in time. Nevertheless, I was proud of my amazing inner clock. I sensed it snoozing in the background, ready to awake and snap back into action when needed.

***

Decades later, at a school reunion, I happened to meet Harold Spiry, the superintendent of our school in my time, He’d been in charge of ringing the bell by pressing a button in his office. My mind flashed back, and I couldn’t resist bragging. I told Mr. Spiry about how well I had ordered my complex morning work back then, how – despite that lengthy string of morning duties – my timing had been impeccable. Morning after morning, I said with pride, I’d stepped on the school’s sidewalk just as the bell rang.

“Oh that,” he said, his eyes narrowing as he thought back to that time. “Do you recall that my desk and office windows looked out over the front of the building? I often saw you coming. And when you hit the sidewalk, I’d ring the bell.”

Reuters

Colombia's President Gustavo Petro and Antonio Garcia, commander of the National Liberation Army (ELN), shake hands in Havana as Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel claps during the June 9 announcement of a ceasefire for 6 months.

One of the world’s oldest violent conflicts could be near an end because of a novel idea in peacemaking: Let civilians participate. Last Friday, the Colombian government and the National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrillas signed procedural agreements that not only plan for a 180-day cease-fire but also open a way for civil society to track and verify the deal.

“Let this be the people’s agreement,” said ELN chief negotiator Pablo Beltrán during the signing ceremony in Cuba. 

Allowing civilians to monitor the cease-fire would set the stage for them to participate in the details of a final peace agreement, which Colombian President Gustavo Petro expects by 2025. The guerrillas might end their violent tactics if the deal begins to fulfill the social and economic goals that inspired them to take up arms in the 1960s.

Colombia already has experience in bringing civilians into a negotiated peace agreement. During talks that cemented a 2016 pact with a larger guerrilla group known as Farc, tens of thousands of victims of that war were at the table. Organized into a political force, they played a key role in shaping the deal and softening the stances of the two sides. Many former Farc members have since become politicians.

This new agreement would include more than civilian groups in the verification of the cease-fire. They would be joined by the United Nations and the Catholic Church, helping to broaden peace efforts beyond a few leaders on either side.

The purpose of the deal, explained a joint statement by the government and ELN, “is to generate the necessary conditions for the civilian population – social leaders, ethnic peoples, women, human rights defenders – to exercise their rights freely in their own territories.”

The agreement was perhaps easier to reach because Mr. Petro is a former guerrilla who became Colombia’s first left-wing president. The number of ELN members is estimated at between 2,000 and 4,000.

The cease-fire is set to start Aug. 3, allowing only a few weeks for both sides to select the civilians who will monitor the pact’s implementation. They, more than others, probably know that peace is not merely the absence of conflict. It also requires inclusion and respect of the interests of a wide section of society. And right now, the main interest of Colombians is a silencing of guns.