Growing butterflies, sustaining hope

Through small individual acts, our society can create pathways to recovery

Before hope takes flight, it often requires our help. So, too, this incipient butterfly. (Photo by Derek Ramsey)

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There were tiny black dots on the parsley and dill in our garden last summer, though when you looked more closely you could see a sort of white stripe on each dot. And the dots seemed to be moving on their own. Trying to figure out how to keep our herbs from being decimated, my wife checked an app on her phone, and then got pretty excited. “They’re caterpillars,” she said. “They’re going to become black swallowtail butterflies.”

This is how we became butterfly breeders. Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration: Last summer, we put two of those little white-striped dots in a mesh box on our screened porch, and they both made the transition from caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly. But my wife is enthusiasm in size 9 sneakers, so this year I found myself planting a huge patch of dill specifically because that’s what black swallowtail caterpillars like to eat, and then ordering more mesh boxes for the porch, the better to house more butterflies-to-be. You might want to check back next year to see if we’ve added a butterfly room on the back of the house.

I’d draw the line on a construction project — I’m pretty sure — but I’m otherwise all in with my wife on this initiative. Black swallowtail butterflies are common in many areas of America, but they’re hardly ordinary: wide black wings featuring yellow spots along the edges, with a bright blue band on the hindwings that’s especially prominent among females. Even the caterpillars are gorgeous, in the way of such creatures. The black swallowtail’s beauty likely explains their scientific name, Papilio polyxenes, honoring a figure in Greek mythology, Polyxena, the cherished younger daughter of King Priam of Troy. Various tales depict handsome young Achilles as being smitten by the alluring Polyxena, but the story line of their ill-fated romance gets complicated, as myth often does, so we might return from etymology to entomology.¹

Unlike many species of butterflies, the black swallowtail isn’t considered in danger of extinction. But a study published this spring in Science reported that populations of butterflies across the United States fell by 22 percent in just the first two decades of this century. At that rate, many more butterflies will disappear over the next few years. We can’t worry, then, only about such threatened butterfly species as the Karner blue, nor the persistent and documented decline of the beloved monarch, because beyond usual predators — wasps and rodents and birds — butterflies and other crucial pollinators are broadly at risk, victims of habitat loss, pesticide use and climate change.²

We can imagine an America where those threats might be matters of concern among our leaders; in fact, that was true until quite recently. But the administration of President Donald Trump has moved quickly to make the world dirtier again. It is encouraging coal production and chemical manufacturing. It announced this week that the Environmental Protection Agency’s entire science staff has been eliminated, with the goal of taking overall EPA staffing back to Reagan-era levels. It is even reassessing the 2009 “endangerment finding” that greenhouse gases pose a threat to public health, which is the legal underpinning of the nation’s entire fight against climate change — which, let’s not forget, Trump in 2012 labeled a “hoax” perpetrated by China. (He back-pedaled on that a bit during his first term, while still insisting he wasn’t sure humans had anything to do with climate change, and, anyway, “it’ll change back again.”) ³

So our task is clear. If our government, tragically, won’t protect the environment — if the people elected to set the nation’s course disregard not only threats to fragile pollinators, but more generally to the clean water and air that is the basis of life, and the exquisite natural world that gives us respite and joy — then who will do that work, if not all of us? Indeed, as reasonable people try to shape an effective political response to Trumpism, how do we now counter this benighted administration’s many assaults on hope, if not by taking action, each of us, in little ways, day by day?

A few miles down the Hudson River from our place, in an urban neighborhood near the New York state capitol, Eric and Debbie Fagans learned a few years ago that only 13 percent of the children at Giffen Elementary School could read at grade level. The school was an eight-minute drive from the church the Fagans attended.

Determined people can make a difference. So along with some of their fellow members of Albany’s First Presbyterian Church, the Fagans set out to improve the reading skills of those children. They raised more than $50,000 to transform what had been an industrial kitchen near the school into a tutoring center. They recruited volunteers who would not only tutor, but also act as a board for a new non-profit organization they set up. After a while, the Fagans concluded that their commitment to the project demanded more than occasional involvement. So they sold their home in a mostly white suburb and moved into the community.

The free one-to-one after-school tutoring program took on the name Wizard’s Wardrobe, a mashup of a storyline from C.S. Lewis and the Harry Potter books. It developed a training program for volunteers that includes segments on how racism, poverty and toxic stress affect children. And the recent reports are heartening: Focusing on children who were reading below grade level, Wizard’s Wardrobe has found that after three years of tutoring, two-thirds of the children can read at or above grade level.

Sociologists can tell you why this is important, but you could just ask a teacher. It starts with the fact that reading is the fundamental skill for human success. Reading stimulates brain development; it improves memory, focus and problem-solving skills. As children read, they learn to process their own emotions, and as they explore different characters’ experiences, they develop empathy for others.

The work of Wizard’s Wardrobe to encourage reading is more important now than the Fagans could have imagined when they began its work. The Supreme Court’s ruling this week giving Trump the go-ahead to dismantle the federal Department of Education is only one part of this administration’s assault on schools. For example, it is moving to impound $6.8 billion in funds that local schools are scheduled to start receiving this month — money meant to help immigrant students attain English proficiency, to fund after-school and summer programs and to support the hiring and retention of teachers in low-income areas.⁴

The Fagans have recently gotten much-deserved community recognition for their inspiring work.⁵ If you ask why they’re doing this work in their retirement years, they will explain that they were motivated by the teachings of their religious faith. And they’ll probably also encourage you to look around, because you actually can find a lot of people doing this sort of thing: engaging in individual acts of community support based upon their own skills and capacities.

Of course it is true that we desperately need political leadership to counter the negative impact of Trumpism. How often do we hear frustration these days that the Democrats who might mount a fight to seize back our country seem sluggish? But we can’t wait for them if we hope to sustain the sort of society that America has long imagined itself to be. To combat the Trump administration’s attacks on social justice, economic equality, scientific advancement, education and even fundamental decency, we must commit ourselves to many acts of personal responsibility.

Political movements often are driven by the collective action of large numbers of people. Women’s suffrage and the contemporary civil rights movement, for example, succeeded because individual acts of insight and courage sparked collective action that forced massive change. Leaders tend to emerge from the powerful chemistry created by shared commitment.

The most eloquent statement about this in my lifetime came 59 years ago, in the summer of 1966, when the United States senator from New York, Robert F. Kennedy, spoke in Cape Town, South Africa, in what came to be known as his “Ripples of Hope” speech. It was two years to the day before his tragic death, and some of the words he spoke that day are reproduced at his gravesite at Arlington National Cemetery.

“It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped,” Kennedy said, at one point. “Each time a man stands up for an ideal or acts to improve the lot of others or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest wall of oppression and resistance.”

The Fagans of Albany are modest folks, and I’m certainly not claiming here that the mesh butterfly boxes on my back porch are driving down oppression. We just like the idea of providing cover and food to help some fast-growing caterpillars move into the next step of their life cycle. What difference, really, can a handful of insects make?

But over a few weeks, my wife and I witnessed a transformation, and realized that those tiny spots we had found on our dill and parsley can’t fail to inspire. This week it was time for us to take those butterfly boxes outside and open them.

We watched in wonder as, one by one, seven black swallowtail butterflies flitted about, then emerged from the boxes and alighted on some nearby plants. They waited a bit. And then they flew off into the summer sky, leaving two humans marveling at their beauty, and feeling a bit lighter and more hopeful.

We wish the same for you.

In our Upstate garden, one of “our” butterflies takes a moment of sun before flying away. (RS photo)

1. https://www.greekmythology.com/Myths/Mortals/Polyxena/polyxena.html#google_vignette

2. https://www.xerces.org/press/study-finds-that-us-butterfly-populations-are-severely-declining#:~:text=PORTLAND%2C%20Ore.;%20March%206,22%25%20from%202000%20to%202020.

3. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-says-climate-change-not-a-hoax-but-not-sure-of-its-source

4. https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/16/politics/education-department-trump-administration-layoffs-analysis

5. https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/capital-region-gives-honors-joann-smith-fagans-20395647.php

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WHAT EXAMPLES CAN YOU CITE of people who are engaged in small acts of commitment that, cumulatively, can help build a better America? It’s how we can keep ourselves inspired during this dark time in our nation’s history

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ENDNOTE

WE’RE TAKING A WEEK OFF, so you shouldn’t expect to see an edition of The Upstate American in your box next week. Hope you’re having a great summer.

THANK YOU for reading The Upstate American, and for joining us in the conversation about our common ground, this great country. As we together navigate these challenging times, I hope you’ll join us again — and send me a message with ideas you’d like to see us address.

-Rex Smith