In Vermont, it is legal to give care to domestic animals like dogs, cats, and rabbits and even “unprotected species” like starlings, pigeons, house sparrows, and mice. However, if you encounter injured or orphaned wildlife, that’s a different story. In order to provide care for them, you have to be a special kind of person: a licensed wildlife rehabilitators.

The Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department, under the Agency of Natural Resources, manages the licensing of wildlife rehabilitators and requires a specific process to earn one. Their regulations state, “Only licensed rehabilitators may legally provide care with the ultimate goal of returning the animal to the wild as quickly as possible, giving the animal the best chance of survival. Vermont rehabilitators may legally possess and treat most common birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians with the exception of deer, moose, bear and wild turkey.” According to their website, there are 18 wildlife rehabilitators in Vermont who have earned their licenses, stretching from Marlboro to Fairfax, Colchester to Barre. Fourteen of these hardworking, big-hearted volunteers are women.

I spoke with three of the 14 women who do this work: Julianna Parker of Otter Creek Wildlife Rescue in Addison, Aimee Brown of FourWands Wildlife Rehabilitation in Barre, and JoAnn Nichols of the Chittenden County Humane Society and HEART, her humane wildlife removal business. Julianna Parker will often be the first to take songbirds, ravens, and woodpeckers, but Aimee Brown will most likely be the one to take in squirrels, and if there is a reptile in need, JoAnn Nichols is your woman.

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It took 72 years for women to get the vote. The first gathering devoted to women’s rights in the United States was held July 19–20, 1848, in Seneca Falls, New York. Finally, in 1920—after a long series of intrepid lobbying efforts and more dramatic actions, such as imprisoned suffragettes going on hunger strikes—the 19th Amendment, or Susan B. Anthony amendment, was finally passed, granting women the right to vote.

After that, the women’s movement largely fell apart for the next four decades. Women did vote and joined various organizations, but that grassroots groundswell did not carry forward with new demands. During the 1920s, women did not coalesce into a unified voting block, and their efforts in the two political parties were largely blocked. During this time, a powerful “women’s vote” never came forward to lobby or even to vote in great numbers.

It took the women of the 1960s to push for reforms in the so-called Second Wave of feminist activism. Women finally voted in equal numbers to men, and in the 1980s, the percentage of women voters surpassed that of men.

A record number of women are now running for the US Congress; 183 are seeking seats in the House—as well as many running for local and state offices. But will we see follow-through? Will we see action at the local and state level in the midterm elections? Will women be lining up in droves as they did after Trump’s inauguration day? Will history be made November 6, 2018, bringing in a new wave of women into Congress?

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Organizational consultant, writer, and teacher Margaret Wheatley writes about our role in creating change. In a foreword she wrote to Living System: Making Sense of Globalisation by Bruce Nixon, she tells of a Buddhist teacher who encouraged people filled with despair over the state of the world. His advice was simple and wise: “It’s just our turn to help the world.”

Most people I talk to these days seem overwhelmed by the hypnotic distraction of rapid-fire tweets and pop-up alarms from the White House that dominate our daily news. The news of what’s happening around the world often leaves me in a state of inertia, spinning with nothing to grab onto or even able to think about something constructive I can actually do. Does this sound familiar to you?

This column aspires to offer ideas on what we can do to have a positive impact—how to concentrate our time and energy on making a real difference in our neighborhoods, communities, and state.

A World on Fire

Did you know that this past July was the hottest month ever recorded in Vermont? Add in high humidity and you get what Scott Whittier, National Weather Service meteorologist in Burlington, calls the heat index. “The heat index values were over 100—some approaching 110, which has never occurred. Those type of values are very dangerous to all people,” he said.

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