This newest DOGE cut is very personal.
National History Day is personal.
Whilst just Juniors in high school, three friends and I researched, wrote, costumed and performed a 6 minute readers theater sketch for a local National History Day contest. Our history teacher thought we could put our teenage drama skills to good use and so we produced Women in Michigan History 1850 to 1984.
We each took on the task of portraying an ordinary, unnamed woman in Michigan at a time of social, cultural and political change, giving voice to her joys, concerns, hopes and fears.
I gave voice to pioneer woman living in the mosquito infested Saginaw Bay Area at the beginning of Michigan statehood. I don’t remember her words but I do remember her costume. I wore a grey, cotton Laura Ashley inspired dress (it was the 1980s after all) complete with a bonnet, all sewn by my mother. The small, round neckline sat above slim sleeves with puckered shoulders attached to a slim bodice puckered at the waist, that attached to a full length floor skirt requiring several bolts of cloth.
I proudly vibed my hero, Laura Ingalls Wilder. And like her, I sweated under all that fabric.
After winning the State competition, we planned our journey to Washington DC for the National History Day competition. For some unknown reason my big sister Jaclyn agreed to be both chaperone and chauffeur. We piled into the car and spent the next sweltering days in absolute bliss, bunking at a college, meeting and competing against our peers (me sweating profusely in my costume), nerding out over our shared passion for history, theater and junk food.
But no more.
40 years later, in an act of just pure stupidity, the ignoramuses at DOGE have cut all funding for this program, a program that inspires and ignites the passion for American history in young people like no other.
I am living proof of this programs success.
And just to be evil, DOGE and Elon Musk, a man that proves again and again the he neither knows nor appreciates American history, has cut the funding in the middle of the competition season. After all of the planning, research, and creating that won them a state level medal, these kids will never experience Washington DC because the competition no longer exists.
No more students will take home their medals, their memories, their goofy pictures and well used sweaty scripts. No more seeds of love, of understanding, of passion for our history planted by a simple competition.
DOGE and Trump are simply the most stupid and evil pirates on this ship of fools of the High Cs- callousness, capriciousness, corruption, carelessness, contempt, cruelty and chaos.
This is my country. Land that I love.
National History Day is no more.
My eyes weep. My heart breaks.
Peace.