Don’t let the fact that New York Mayor-elect Eric Adams is an outspoken vegan fool you. 

Make no mistake, after being diagnosed with diabetes, Mayor-elect Adams embraced a plant-based diet and talks, often, about losing 35 pounds and seeing his health improve. The former state senator and then-Brooklyn borough president has become something of a public health evangelist, promoting a vegan lifestyle.

At the same time, New York City’s incoming mayor, a Brooklyn native and former captain in the New York Police Department, has cultivated a working-class coalition more likely to prefer barbecues and cream in their coffee instead of the kale smoothies he often champions.  

After he’s sworn into office on Jan. 1, Mr. Adams, who will become the second Black mayor in the history of the nation’s largest city, will in many ways offer a challenge to the ascendant progressive wing of the Democratic Party, bringing a personal style and vision of governance more pragmatic than ideological, observers say. 

Labeling himself a “practical progressive,” Mayor-elect Adams won a crowded primary with a pragmatic platform that emphasized public safety, decrying Democratic efforts to “defund the police.” He proclaimed during the campaign that New York “will no longer be anti-business.” And as he fills out his administration, he’s been less impressed with Ivy League degrees and establishment credentials than he has been with what he calls “emotional intelligence.”

“He is inclusive; he is pragmatic. It doesn’t matter the party; it doesn’t matter the race, the domestic group, or the power of money – he’s not going to be antagonizing or polarizing,” says Ramon Tallaj, a member of the mayor-elect’s transition team and founder and chairman of SOMOS Community Care, a nonprofit health network that serves Medicaid and Medicare recipients.

Over eight years ago, Mayor Bill de Blasio vaulted unexpectedly into the national spotlight, a relative unknown with what many considered radical progressive views after 20 years of the tough-on-crime and pro-business administrations of Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg. Mr. de Blasio effectively described New York as a “tale of two cities,” promising to both rein in the city’s yawning wealth disparities and radically reform the NYPD at the height of the stop-and-frisk era. After taking office, his first priority focused on animal rights, and he spent a significant amount of political capital trying to ban the city’s horse-drawn carriages in Central Park – an effort that famously flopped.

“In the course of constructing his administration, de Blasio made it more representative demographically, and moved it to the left ideologically,” says Ken Sherrill, professor emeritus of political science at Hunter College in Manhattan. “But it’s not clear that he addressed many of the everyday concerns of people living in the outer boroughs – and I say that as a kid who was born in the Bronx and raised in Brooklyn.”

Professor Sherrill also points out the deep cultural differences between the former officer born in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn and Mayor de Blasio, whose administration, he says, was in many ways made up of highly educated “ideas people” who frequent progressive study groups.

“What progressive people who call themselves progressive don’t understand is that lots of people who are excluded from society in the outer boroughs don’t hold views that coincide with progressive ideology,” Professor Sherrill says. “And this may be a shock to some people on the left.”

Brittainy Newman/AP

Incoming New York Mayor Eric Adams appointed Keechant Sewell, show in Queens on Dec. 15, 2021, as the first Black female NYPD commissioner.

One of Mr. Adams’ first appointments was to name Keechant Sewell, chief of detectives in Nassau County, as the first Black woman to head the NYPD. And Mr. Adams has said he wants to bring more everyday New Yorkers into the police department, promoting those in what he calls the “minor leagues” of law enforcement, including hospital police, homeless service police, school safety officers, over 70% of whom are people of color and women.

Even though Mr. Adams has defended certain measures of “qualified immunity” and has spoke out forcefully against the “defund the police” movement, he has nevertheless been committed to reforming police departments. 

When he was 15, he and his brother were arrested and then assaulted by a New York police officer. The experience left him shaken and bitter, but the pastor at his church encouraged him and other young Black men to join the police department and work for change from within. In 1984, Mr. Adams graduated second in his class at the Police Academy. 

Indeed, over the course of his 22-year career as a New York police officer, Mr. Adams became a leader in efforts to change the NYPD from within, co-founding the advocacy group 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, which focuses on police brutality and racial profiling. 

But he’s also focused on issues surrounding Black violence and high rates of homicide in certain communities. 

“Back then, when it was not a slogan painted on the streets, I was talking about Black Lives Matter,” Mr. Adams said in an interview in The Atlantic. “You can’t say ‘Black lives matter’ and have outrage when a police officer shoots someone ... but ignore shootings in our city the same day when 15 people are shot.”

In keeping with his emphasis on “emotional intelligence” over establishment credentials, the mayor-elect also tapped New York educator David Banks, who heads a network of all-boys schools that focus on students of color, to be chancellor of the nation’s largest school system. Mr. Banks founded the unionized Eagle Academy for Young Men in order to serve Black and Latino boys who often struggled in school, even as teachers – many of them white women – struggled to help them. 

In some ways, the mayor-elect’s choices represent a return to some of the emphasis in the Bloomberg administration, says Amy Zimmer, New York bureau chief at ChalkBeat, a nonprofit news organization that covers education issues across the country.

Both Mr. Adams and Mr. Banks have expressed support for charter schools – in stark contrast to the de Blasio administration, which imposed caps on the number of such nonunion schools. “Whether they make a push in Albany to lift the charter cap remains to be seen," says Ms. Zimmer, noting a change in leadership in the state legislature.

“But Adams has talked about replicating ‘excellent’ schools, and we just saw that Bloomberg Philanthropies is investing $750 million over the next five years to expand charter schools across the nation, including in New York City,” she says.

But the recent spike in crime and the city’s ongoing economic crisis remain New York’s most pressing problems, says Dan Biederman, president of Biederman Redevelopment Ventures Corp. in the city.

“Mayor Adams’ challenge is to turn that around,” says Mr. Biederman, citing the “changed views of the electorate” that brought him to power. “So far, he’s saying all the right things on this issue.”

In the 1970s and 1980s, Mr. Biederman helped spark the revitalization of areas near Times Square, then a red-light district of sex shops and drug sales, creating organizations such as Bryant Park Corporation and 34th Street Partnership to form public and private partnerships that helped reshape these blighted areas into tourist destinations that brought billions to the city.

He’s still appalled at how progressive politicians and activists helped scuttle Amazon’s plans to possibly build its global headquarters in Queens, a move that would have brought thousands of jobs to the borough. Mr. Biederman says that one of Mayor-elect Adams’ biggest challenges will be to influence City Council members and state legislators to support his agenda, even as more progressives join their ranks.

“Companies like Amazon should be welcomed with open arms by his administration,” he says. “Despite being rejected for an HQ by legislators, they’ve stuck around in a less prominent way and have become a great force for good in this city.”

Like former Mayor Bloomberg, a former smoker who was also something of a health zealot, banning trans fats and famously failing to ban the sale of “big gulp”-sized sodas, Mayor-elect Adams has promised to revamp city-funded food programs. He wants to end processed school lunches, ban sugary drinks in public hospitals and city jails, and extol the benefits of plant-based eating. 

Dr. Tallaj, whose network serves the poorest of New Yorkers and has been on the front lines of the pandemic, has been helping shape the health policies of the incoming administration. But he also sees the larger challenges the city is facing. 

“I was just telling the [transition] group today,” he says. “In my country, Dominican Republic, when somebody says ... ‘I got a visa!’ it means, ‘I’m going to New York!’ 

“Now I say, ‘Oh, where are you going?’ To Austin, to Miami,” Dr. Tallaj continues. “I believe we have to go on that path to be sure that New York continues being the capital of the world. And I believe the mayor has his heart in doing so.”

Michael Gruber/AP

Palais Coburg, where closed-door nuclear talks have been taking place in Vienna, Dec. 17, 2021. The talks broke off suddenly last week when Iranian negotiators said they needed time to consult with their government.

In the months since talks aimed at reviving the Iran nuclear deal restarted, Tehran has announced crossing one technical milestone after another in its nuclear program and has continued racing toward ... what exactly?

The answer to that question remains unclear. But for some nuclear proliferation experts, Tehran may at least be weighing the eventual need for a regime-change insurance policy that brings it to the brink of having a nuclear weapon.

Iran insists, as it has for years, that its nuclear program is intended solely for peaceful purposes. And this month CIA Director William Burns said the United States still sees no signs that Tehran is weaponizing its program.

For many nuclear proliferation experts, Iran’s trumpeting of its nuclear production leaps is largely aimed at enhancing its position at the negotiating table, where it is seeking relief from sanctions that then-President Donald Trump imposed after pulling out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, in 2018.

Iran’s achievements include mounting stockpiles of uranium enriched at purity levels much closer to those needed to fuel a nuclear bomb, and the installation of hundreds of increasingly sophisticated centrifuges designed to turn out that enriched uranium.

But what worries a growing number of nonproliferation analysts is how Iran’s unbridled nuclear program and the technical advances it has made since 2018 have brought it irretrievably closer to becoming a nuclear threshold state – meaning a state possessing all the physical elements and intellectual expertise needed to deliver a bomb on short notice.

Without a deal that reimposes limits on Iran’s program while bringing the U.S. back in and removing Trump-era sanctions, “bumping up on a weaponization threshold could become an attractive option for Iran,” says Suzanne DiMaggio, a senior fellow with expertise in Iran and North Korea at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

“If the diplomatic route fails,” she adds, “we shouldn’t rule out that some in Iran might want to move to a more advanced program as an insurance policy.”

EU Delegation in Vienna/Reuters

Members of Iran's negotiating team wait for the start of a meeting of the JCPOA Joint Commission in Vienna, Nov. 29, 2021.

Indirect talks between the U.S. and Iran resumed Nov. 29 in Vienna after a five-month hiatus. But no progress was made as the U.S. responded to Tehran’s maximalist demand for full sanctions removal by doubling down on the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign of increasing sanctions.

The talks broke off suddenly last week when Iranian negotiators said they needed time to consult with their government. That left European powers leading the diplomatic effort to rescue the JCPOA, warning that only “weeks” remain to reach a deal before Iran’s fast-advancing nuclear program makes diplomacy moot. On Thursday it was announced that the talks would resume Dec. 27.

The North Korea precedent

The idea of nukes as an insurance policy does not originate with Iran, but rather goes back over more than a decade to ultimately failed U.S.-North Korea diplomacy. Regional experts say now that Pyongyang’s decision to develop nuclear weapons was a means of safeguarding the Kim regime from American destruction.

A key difference between North Korea and Iran, some analysts say, is that the Iranians have not decided to weaponize their nuclear program. But what worries some is that the U.S. is now employing an approach with Iran similar to the one it used with North Korea, yet expecting a different outcome.

“As far as comparing North Korea with Iran, one way we’re already there is in terms of thinking we can hound them out of their [nuclear] program,” says Jim Walsh, a senior research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Security Studies Program in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

“In both cases the primary U.S. tool is sanctions, the thinking being that we can impose enough pain to compel them to do what we want,” he adds. “But instead, both North Korea and Iran decided the best response was to accelerate. In both cases, it’s been the complete failure of compellence and coercion.”

Not everyone would agree. Many experts assert, for example, that the harsh sanctions the Obama administration imposed on Iran early on were instrumental in getting Tehran to agree to the limits that the JCPOA imposed on its nuclear program.

But for others, that does not alter the fact that in the cases of both Iran and North Korea, the U.S. rejection of diplomatic agreements early on in the two countries’ nuclear programs only encouraged both to move forward.

“Let’s remember that we had an opportunity to strike a deal with Iran in 2003, when they had something like 300 centrifuges,” says Dr. Walsh. “But because the U.S. said, ‘We want zero centrifuges,’ the deal fell apart – and now they have 19,000 centrifuges and are ... making noise about stockpiling [highly enriched uranium] at 60%.”

Iranian Presidency Office/WANA/Reuters

A number of new-generation Iranian centrifuges on display during Iran's National Nuclear Energy Day, in Tehran, Iran, April 10, 2021. Iran has insisted for years that its nuclear program is intended solely for peaceful purposes.

As for North Korea, Carnegie’s Ms. DiMaggio notes that the Clinton administration reached a framework agreement with Pyongyang aimed at nipping its nuclear program in the bud. “But then we had a presidential transition from Clinton to Bush, and the agreement was tossed out,” she adds, as the new administration decided the deal was essentially appeasement of North Korea.

Now Pyongyang is thought to be expanding its nuclear arsenal and perfecting missiles that could deliver those weapons.

Different regional context

Yet despite the similarities between the trajectories of North Korea and Iran, there are also key differences that could keep Iran from becoming a de facto nuclear power.

For one thing, Ms. DiMaggio cautions, the regional contexts of the two countries are very different. “North Korea did not have an Israel to contend with,” she says, referring to Iran’s committed arch-adversary. “In fact, if anything, they have a China that in some ways is their only but very important friend.”

Indeed, President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, traveled to Israel this week to confer on Iran, at a time when the militaries of the two allies are discussing joint exercises to game out eventual operations striking at an Iranian nuclear program that’s gone too far.

For some, rumblings about such potential exercises are intended as much as anything to rattle Tehran into returning to the negotiating table – perhaps early next year – and to be more open to compromises to get the JCPOA back into effect.

And while Iran may be deepening relations with both China and Russia as a strategic counterweight, neither one is anything near the powerful friend that China is to North Korea.

A path back to mutual trust?

MIT’s Dr. Walsh says the next round of talks will be the now-or-never moment for both the U.S. and Iran to step away from “the new and devious ways both sides have found to push the other” and to move away from maximalist positions.

Because if the talks fail and Iran does opt to continue its march to the nuclear threshold, he says, there is no reason to believe military strikes would deter Tehran.

Instead, Iran might go for that insurance policy.

“Let’s say we do bomb them,” he says. “Then there’s a good chance they decide they’re a nuclear state and they build a bomb.”

To avoid that outcome, Ms. DiMaggio says the U.S. is going to have to dial back the maximum pressure campaign, while both the U.S. and Iran are going to have to muster a basic ingredient of successful diplomacy between adversaries – mutual trust.

Over the course of this year’s talks, “we’ve been sinking into a deep morass of distrust,” she says. “Reversing that before it becomes entrenched is vital.”

“Welcome to Pullman,” said Ciere Boatright. A neighborhood leader, she’s a prime mover in the revival of one of America’s most famous planned cities – a section of South Chicago named after railroad magnate George Pullman.

Back in the 1980s, dominant colors in this part of the city were gray and brown. Abandoned steel plants and other factories lined the nearby Dan Ryan Expressway, rusty testaments to American manufacturing that no longer seemed able to compete.

But when I visited this year on a summer day, almost all I could see was green from a viewpoint on the 11th floor of the USBank building that overlooks the former Ryerson steel mill. The expanse of lawns and trees rivaled the leafiest suburb. And Ms. Boatright, then vice president of real estate and inclusion at Chicago Neighborhood Initiatives (CNI), was showing me more signs of rebirth.

She pointed out the Walmart, which set up shop nearly a decade ago; the Method factory that makes eco-friendly soap and other cleaning products; and the greenhouses of the Gotham Greens urban farm sitting on top of the factory. 

“See the big white building with the blue stripe?” she asked. “That’s Amazon.” Pullman is the location of the company’s first fulfillment center in Chicago. (Ms Boatright has since joined CRG, a national real estate company, doing similar development work on a broader scale.)

Pullman still is facing challenges. But its strides of progress may offer hope to other urban neighborhoods aiming for stability. And in some ways, its past has been a prelude. Some old priorities have resurfaced.

Ann Hermes/Staff

The urban greenhouse Gotham Greens, a Method soap factory, and a wind turbine sit where the Ryerson steel plant once stood, in the Pullman neighborhood of Chicago.

Ideals of progress

In 1880 George Pullman, whose Pullman Palace Car Co. brought upscale train travel to the middle class, sought to improve life for his workers as well. He built a new factory and a town next door that would house workers in pretty brick homes with modern conveniences, including indoor plumbing, gas heat, and landscaping. The community had shops, parks, athletic fields; even the factory was architecturally distinguished. His idea was that workers living in elegant surroundings would be happier and more productive.

But workers chafed under his Victorian-era rules and expectations. And when the panic of 1893 led to a brief but sharp depression, Pullman cut employees’ pay, but not the rents he charged them. That prompted a wildcat strike, which was soon joined in solidarity by many other U.S. railroad workers. The strike was broken after two months by President Grover Cleveland, who sent in the Army to get the trains moving again.

Pullman won the strike, but his workers’ paradise never recovered. The Pullman neighborhood endured a string of reversals over the next 120 years: the Great Depression, deindustrialization, white flight, foreclosures, a mentally ill arsonist, and an urban plan that called for razing a good part of the neighborhood.  

Starting with investment – for all

“There are lots of knocks in Pullman and we keep getting up from the mat,” said Tom McMahon, a retired police captain and longtime resident and community activist. “I think that’s resiliency.”

Many areas are struggling to achieve that.

If Chicago is truly going to be resilient, all neighborhoods must share in it – even low-income ones, the Urban Land Institute Chicago concluded in a report released in July. And the key ingredient to make that happen?

“Investment,” said Ms. Boatright, echoing the report.

She showed me what a determined effort had achieved, taking the wheel of her Lexus to drive to the 111th Street Gateway Retail Center. It’s a 10,000-square-foot building that houses an office hub for Blue Cross Blue Shield, a Pot Belly restaurant, and a food hall. 

The 4-year-old development is modest. But Ms. Boatright talked about how intentions determine success. By offering jobs to residents, it begins to reverse the trends of the past century, she said. “The people who first experienced disinvestment are the first to benefit from reinvestment.” 

In all, some $450 million of public and private investment has come into the neighborhood over the past decade. And “some of the broader social indicators are starting to improve,” CNI President David Doig said in an interview this week, pointing to rising employment and decreasing crime. But “we suffer from perception issues. People still see the South Side of Chicago as an industrial wasteland.” 

For businesses aiming to plant roots here, not everything has gone according to plan.

Ann Hermes/Staff

A Whole Foods distribution center sits at a former steel plant site, providing jobs to Chicago’s Pullman neighborhood. About $450 million of public and private investment has come into the neighborhood over the past decade. And “some of the broader social indicators are starting to improve,” according to David Doig, president of Chicago Neighborhood Initiatives.

“The first month we hit it out of the park,” said Ashley Walker, area manager at Lexington Betty, a local barbecue restaurant. But when the pandemic hit, business fell off and hasn’t fully recovered.  

But the investment has created a sense of security. “It’s safe,” said one of the park rangers for the recently opened National Pullman Monument. “Rangers live in the neighborhood even though they don’t have to.” The monument, which opened Labor Day weekend, expects to attract 300,000 visitors annually to the area. A Culver’s fast-food outlet launched in November, the first stand-alone restaurant to locate in the community in more than 30 years.

An inclusive vision, from jobs to gyms

In many ways, Ms. Boatright and CNI are the opposite of Mr. Pullman. While he was top down, their work is bottom up. Where he imposed his vision, they listened.

“We didn’t have a master plan,” she said. Instead, they conducted an exhaustive 80 community meetings to find out what residents were looking for in a revival. “We wanted to make sure that we were planning with the residents rather than planning for” them, she added. Once the priorities were set, Ms. Boatright was tenacious in pursuing the vision. “I was born on the Fourth of July,” she said. “I’m a firecracker!”

Residents’ priorities were not that far off from Mr. Pullman’s. First was to bring in retail stores, in particular a grocery store because by that point the neighborhood had none. “We reached out to just about every grocer you can imagine,” Ms. Boatright said. Finally, Walmart agreed to locate a store in the neighborhood, with a third of its floor space dedicated to groceries and the promise to give hiring preference to Pullman residents. 

Jobs were the second priority of residents. And after Walmart, it became easier to recruit more retail to the area.

Residents’ third priority was recreation. The community opted for an indoor facility where neighborhood children could play basketball or soccer, or hit the batting cages under adult supervision. “This is what excites me,” said Ms. Boatright, watching the Bulldogs club basketball team practice at the community center. “They can play year-round and they’re safe.”

The challenge of housing

The community’s final ask – affordable housing – is more complex. Mr. Pullman designed his town so that the supervisors and best-paid workers lived south of the factory. They got the nicest homes. Poorer workers lived north, with far fewer amenities. So as forces of economic decline began to set in, South Pullman always had history buffs, architects, and other outside groups working with residents to preserve the neighborhood. Its ethnic and racial diversity remained. By contrast, North Pullman fell prey to white flight and poverty. 

“All of us who were outsiders – and that includes me ... we would not have been able to do anything if the local people had not been working so hard with virtually no financial support,” said Susan Hirsch, professor emerita of history at Loyola University and author of the 2003 book “After the Strike: A Century of Labor Struggle at Pullman.”

Despite the lack of financial resources, local activists like Lyn Hughes worked to bring recognition to North Pullman, establishing in 1995 the National A. Philip Randolph Pullman Porter Museum. That’s another wrinkle in the Pullman legacy and a lesson in how even the best-laid plans can lead to surprising results. 

Mr. Pullman insisted that the porters on his trains be Black, at least in part because he wanted to keep them from joining white railway employees in a union effort. Still, the Pullman porters got the last laugh, organizing the nation’s first Black union to win a collective bargaining agreement a few years before the white factory workers at Pullman organized. 

The Pullman porters were a seedbed for an African American middle class that would be sorely tested in recent decades by deindustrialization and then the Great Recession’s foreclosure wave. Only now is CNI beginning to make progress in North Pullman, buying and rehabbing the housing stock block by block and then putting it up for sale. 

Plenty of communities in America are facing decline or failing to prosper. The need to find and follow recipes for resilience is clear. Ms. Boatright’s words are still ringing in my ears.

“We know that this is going to take us a long time,” she said. But “our communities are not problems to be solved; they are communities that deserve investment.”

A child’s natural inclination is to desire a toy – whether it’s the midst of the holiday season or the middle of summer.

The history of Olmec Toys, founded by Yla Eason, begins in this spirit, during a beach trip to the shores of Jamaica. However, what she found was that her son, Menelik Puryear, needed more than something to play with.

“I don’t know exactly how it came up, but he was playing with this He-Man toy. And [my then-husband] and I said something like ‘You can be a superhero too,’” Ms. Eason says. “He just casually said, nonplussed, ‘No, I can’t, because I’m not white.’”

Menelik was 3 years old at the time, which added to Ms. Eason’s shock. The road to reassurance wasn’t easy at first.

“Your skin is not going to stop you from being a superhero. When we get back to New York, we’ll buy you a toy, a Black superhero toy,” Ms. Eason told him. But then “we came back, started looking for one, and could not find one,” she says.

“I started talking to other mothers and found out they were having the same problem,” Ms. Eason adds. “They couldn’t find any Black superhero toys for their boys either.”

Out of that absence, Olmec Toys and its flagship figure, Sun-Man, were created in 1985. Now, almost 40 years later, Sun-Man is seeing a resurgence. Thanks to a partnership with Mattel Toys – and in a piece of “sweet irony,” Ms. Eason says – Sun-Man will be sold alongside He-Man as part of the Masters of the Universe collection. Under the partnership licensing agreement, Mattel will be reproducing Sun-Man and the Rulers of the Sun toy collection, but Ms. Eason will retain rights to the property. The toys are slated for a first-quarter release in 2022.

Menelik Puryear/Courtesy of Yla Eason

Olmec Toys founder Yla Eason created the Sun-Man toy in 1985 in response to a dearth of dolls with brown skin. This is one of three versions the company produced as part of its multicultural Rulers of the Sun collection.

Marketing to the future

Ms. Eason’s career is more than a toy story, though. What made her an innovator and marketing strategist was her approach to demographic analysis, which was ahead of its time.

“Even back in 1985, you could see in America where the majority would become the minority,” Ms. Eason says. “In terms of the percentage of Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and Native Americans, compared with whites, you could see a market was there.”

Her studies also led her to cross paths with educator and psychologist Kenneth Clark, whose most famous experiment, conducted in the 1940s with his wife, Mamie Clark, who was also a psychologist, focused on the self-image of Black children. In what became commonly known as the “doll test,” the Clarks analyzed the responses of Black children who were given the choice of a white doll or a brown doll. A majority chose the white doll and made positive statements about that doll and negative ones about the brown one. The study was later used as an important point of reference in the Brown v. Board of Education desegregation decision.

“Back then, I just saw myself as going to speak to a noted scholar, but his importance is even more significant to me now,” Ms. Eason says. “I asked him, what does it mean when kids can’t see themselves, and what did the studies show?”

“Basically, he said it affects all of their abilities in education, as well as socialization and self-perception,” she explains. “It can have a negative effect on their performance in school because they don’t think that highly of themselves.”

Ms. Eason and the Clarks had their fingers on the idea of “representation” before it became a 21st-century buzzword, and from there, she and her former husband raised the money to start Olmec Toys.

“People first, then profits follow”

In addition to Black superheroes, starting with Sun-Man, the company created Hispanic and Asian action figures, all with ethnically appropriate skin tones and facial features. The company also offered a line called Our Powerful Past, which featured dolls of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X.

“I got the licensing rights from both Coretta Scott King and Betty Shabazz, so that children could see what we have done and who we are,” Ms. Eason says. “Our history did not start with slavery in America, and the people who are a part of [Black] history have done wonderful things.”

After seeing successful sales in large retail stores such as Walmart, Olmec Toys struggled to keep up with demand, and larger companies began producing and selling multicultural dolls for less than Olmec could. Thirteen years after its founding, the company went out of business.

The recent Sun-Man revival, and her work at Rutgers Business School as an assistant professor of professional practice, bring Ms. Eason’s story full circle. She says Ed Duncan, Mattel’s senior vice president and global head of design for boys action, games, and inventor relations, reached out to her about reintroducing Sun-Man.

“When you think about it, Mattel could have made their own multicultural line,” Ms. Eason says. “I give a nod to their desire to really be authentic.”

As a marketing professor at Rutgers, Ms. Eason says one of the premises of her teaching is serving people.

“I think if you want to make money and do good, you start with people first. It’s always people first, then profits follow,” she says. “When you start a company or begin a product, what is your goal? What are you thinking about? If it’s about doing the best for people, serving people, I think you will do that ethically. And that benefits everybody.”

Linda Bleck

The black-and-white photograph of Mrs. Mueller that I took with my Brownie camera captures her seated on the sofa in our living room, smiling shyly. Mrs. Mueller was our next-door neighbor when my sister and I were growing up.

We got to know her after her husband died. She didn’t have children of her own and no relatives that we knew of. She was gentle and kind, and Laurel and I considered her our special friend.

Early one December, Mrs. Mueller went into the hospital. Laurel and I were busy making Christmas presents, and we pondered what to make for Mrs. Mueller. It dawned on us that she would be coming home a few days before Christmas to an empty house with no holiday decorations. We lit upon the idea of decorating a small tree that would greet her with lights and cheer. We were wondering how to carry out our plan when the answer appeared.

I was in Miss O’Keefe’s sixth grade class that year, and we had trimmed a small tree with paper-link chains and ornaments we’d made in art class. It was beautiful. Best of all, it had to be removed from the classroom before Christmas vacation. 

Miss O’Keefe said there would be a drawing for the tree. We’d each write our name on a piece of paper and put it through the slot in the shoebox she had decorated. On the last day of school before vacation, she’d draw a name from the box, and that student could take home the tree. 

As I put my folded piece of paper into the box, I whispered to Miss O’Keefe that I really hoped I’d win the tree because my sister and I wanted to give it to our neighbor.

I was beside myself with excitement! In vain my mother pointed out there were 30 children who might win the tree, but I was certain I would get it because our cause was good: We wanted to make Mrs. Mueller happy.

The day before vacation finally arrived. Laurel and I usually walked to and from school, but I was so sure I’d win the tree that I persuaded Mom to pick us up in the car that day.  

Late that afternoon, Miss O’Keefe announced it was time for the drawing. My heart pounded. I held my breath as she took the lid off the shoebox, closed her eyes, swirled her hand around in the box of folded pieces of paper, and drew one out. She opened her eyes, unfolded the paper, looked at it, and proclaimed, “Holly Wheeler has won the tree.”

I was ecstatic! I’ll never forget my mother’s face as I raced to the car when school was out and told her I’d won the tree. Some of my classmates carried it to our car and put it into the trunk carefully so the ornaments wouldn’t get knocked off. 

Mom had a key to Mrs. Mueller’s house, and that evening, my mom, dad, sister, and I carried the tree next door and set it up on a table in the living room.

It looked beautiful.

The next day, when Mrs. Mueller’s car turned into her driveway, we hurried over to welcome her back. We followed as she slowly made her way into the house and turned on the lights. Then she saw the tree. First, there was a look of surprise. Then, a sweet smile appeared, and tears filled her eyes. She turned to us and softly said, “Thank you.” 

Laurel and I excitedly recounted the story of the tree, and then we all had milk and Christmas cookies.

My parents had told us that making others happy would bring us more true joy than a pile of presents under the tree ever could. And one of the happiest Christmases I recall is the one when we got a tree for Mrs. Mueller.

Many years later it dawned on me that we might have had more help with our scheme than we realized. While Miss O’Keefe had announced my name, she never showed anyone what was written on that piece of paper.

This time last year, most of us were preparing – or at least hoping – for 2021 to bring a return to “normal.” But hindsight, as they say, is 20/20. Now when I reflect on the past 12 months, I see a year of learning to flex and grow within a new reality. 

I have come to appreciate humanity’s immense ability to adapt to new and unprecedented situations. Throughout the year, I have seen demonstrations of this in myself and in society at large. 

Yes, the pandemic forced us to reconsider many things, from the most basic of human interactions to how we define the workplace. However, history has shown that humans are very good at adapting to radical changes. We redefined our way of life when we became an agricultural society, then an industrial one, and now we are learning to cope with the information revolution. Seems to me that humans in general embrace change as a path forward.

This year, I worked on three stories that helped to underscore that idea for me. In Houston, I met the director of the Houston Forensic Science Center, who overcame personal tragedy and injustice as a youth and made it his lifework to correct the failures of a system that had let him down. In the American Midwest, I met farmers who had embraced alternative sources of energy, even when the idea of a changing climate went against their core belief system. And a bit closer to home, in Massachusetts, I was introduced to a man who devoted himself to helping people overcome their fears and discover the joy of open water swimming, as a way to combat closures and restrictions due to the pandemic.

As we enter 2022, I am sure that we will encounter more challenges. But I’ve learned that humanity finds a way to adapt, whatever comes our way. Or, at the very least, I know in my heart that we will give it our best shot.
– Alfredo Sosa, director of photography

Alfredo Sosa/Staff

Swimmers conquer their fear of open water in a July safety class in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. The class was held in response to an increase in open water drownings.

Alfredo Sosa/Staff

Contractors with the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority work on the East Somerville station as part of a project to extend Boston's Green Line, June 23, Somerville, Massachusetts.

Alfredo Sosa/Staff

Fighting crime is personal for Peter Stout. As president and CEO of the Houston Forensic Science Center, he still visits crime scenes himself, Feb. 24.

Alfredo Sosa/Staff

Christopher Milledge, a technician with the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network, discharges a gun in the firing range at the Houston Forensic Science Center on Feb. 24 in Houston, Texas.

Alfredo Sosa/Staff

Andrew Bowman has little time for political discussion about climate change. As a farmer, he listens to what his soil and crops tell him, May 3.

In search of light

For the first three and a half months of 2021, I went nowhere. At least not for one of the long and faraway trips that have been my routine for decades. And when I finally began traveling again, it wasn’t like before. It was better.

I guess that’s what being cooped up at home will do – we realize what’s important, what we’ve missed. Being out on assignment again was exotic and exciting. But it was also comforting to see the broader world still intact and ready to roll with whatever comes next.

My first multiday trip out of Boston was to my hometown of Washington, D.C., just as the city was starting to reopen in late April. Government workers and tourists were scarce. The streets and National Mall were quiet. At dawn, as I gazed out over the city from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, the monuments spoke to me of our country’s long history of overcoming challenges – ones even bigger than a pandemic or insurrection. Martin Luther King Jr. reminded me that “the arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice.”

June took me to a county fair in San Diego. I found people yearning to reconnect, to be in crowds again – smaller crowds than usual but still ... crowds. I admit to visiting the piglet races many times. I laughed at the same eye-rolling jokes about piglets named Brad Pig and Kim Kardashingham, reminders of just how fortifying humor can be. Bonding with the audience through laughter felt so familiar, so right.

All year, I found myself drawn to animals as a source of light. Animals are pure in their affections and reactions. Whatever happens, they just carry on. They stun me not just with their perseverance, but with their grace.

I can’t do my job without light. I love that it’s always there to find.
– Melanie Stetson Freeman, staff photographer

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

People enjoy the rides at Home Grown Fun, the San Diego County Fair, on June 18 in Del Mar, California.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Piglets race around a sawdust-covered track at Swifty Swine Racing at the scaled-down San Diego County Fair on June 17 in Del Mar, California.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Veronica Robles (in red) performs with her all-female mariachi band at the 2021 Boston University Global Music Festival on Sept. 18. Ms. Robles started a Latino cultural center in East Boston in memory of her teen daughter, who died about six years ago.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Two young elephant seals are ready to be fed at the Pacific Marine Mammal Center on June 23 in Laguna Beach, California.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Dawn breaks behind the Washington Monument and the Reflecting Pool in Washington on April 28.

Persistence of life

What does resilience look like? I’ve found proof of the persistence of life in the strangest places – a popcorn stand, a riverbank, even from the air.

A few photo assignments from this past year stand out to me as evidence of how hard-wearing we all are. They’ve helped me to remember how readily life will return, even if it looks a little different than before. 

With indoor cinemas shut down early in the year, many of us were watching from home, missing the collective experience of going to the theater. Good thing a pandemic solution already existed in the form of drive-in movies. In warm-weather places like Los Angeles, new pop-up and old-school drive-ins were thriving and finding ways to accommodate customers.

I saw a different kind of revival, in Northern California, along the banks of the Klamath River. The Yurok and other Native American tribes have been working hard to maintain the health of the salmon and the river, which is central to their culture. Four dams that have long disrupted salmon runs will be coming down. The river will run free once again.

A New Mexico community also celebrated a kind of liberation this year, with the return of the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta. After a pandemic hiatus, hot air balloons once again soared over the city by the hundreds. As I photographed from one of those balloons looking down over the city, I experienced the endurance of these traditions and found it lovely to capture them firsthand.
– Ann Hermes, staff photographer

Ann Hermes/Staff

Spectators watch at twilight as over 500 tethered balloons light up simultaneously at the Balloon Glow during the 49th Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta on Oct. 3 in New Mexico.

Ann Hermes/Staff

From left, Yurok fisheries technicians Gilbert Myers Jr., Keenan O’Rourke, and Jamie Holt prepare to catch fish as part of a parasite investigation.

Ann Hermes/Staff

Gilbert Myers Jr., a fisheries technician with the Yurok Tribal Fisheries Program, catches fish for a research project near the confluence of the Trinity and Klamath Rivers on Sept. 9, Weitchpec, California.

Ann Hermes/Staff

From left, Amy Taylor, Ally Malick, Leuwam Tesfai, and Emily Rodrigues play games before an Electric Dusk Drive-In show on April 1 in Glendale, California.

Ann Hermes/Staff

Moviegoers watch previews at the Mission Tiki Drive-In Theatre on May 6, in Montclair, California.

REUTERS

People ice skate around the Christmas tree at the Natural History Museum in London in December 2021.

Some people have finished their Christmas shopping early, worried that the special gift they’d been eyeing might be in short supply. Yet others are rediscovering another type of gift that is never held up on an unloaded cargo ship or stuck in a clogged supply chain. 

It is an act of kindness. Reminders of this deeper spirit of Christmas are not hard to find.

Most of them are quite public. Nova Scotia, for example, has sent a giant Christmas tree to Boston each year in gratitude for that city’s act of kindness more than a century ago in aiding the province’s capital, Halifax, after a gigantic explosion. 

A similar gift of a tree graces London’s Trafalgar Square each Christmas. It is a thank you from Norway for Britain’s support in the fight against fascism during World War II. This year’s White House Christmas display includes a room decorated as “The Gift of Service,” publicly honoring the contributions of the military, front-line workers, and first responders. 

For many people, the pandemic has meant altering their Christmas celebrations. But it has not stopped a search for acts of kindness. 

The city of Kane, Pennsylvania, for example, organized a Christmas Kindness Challenge, a variation on an advent calendar in which people perform one good deed each day in the run-up to Christmas. One day might include thanking a health worker or military veteran; another donating unused items, or calling an old friend. On one of the days participants were asked to “Be kind online and offer positive comments on social media.”

“There’s something to be said about putting ourselves second and others first,” says Beth Anne Langrell, CEO of For All Seasons Inc., a mental health center that serves Maryland’s Eastern Shore. 

“The way that we are most filled is when we identify something that matters to us because it’s something in which we can invest and make a difference,” she told the Salisbury (Maryland) Daily Times. The result, she points out, is “a human life being helped.”

The giving of physical gifts can be an act of kindness too, of course. If thoughtfully chosen, they reflect the meaning of Christmas, the dawning of a love and truth beyond material treasure that binds individuals, whether as family members, friends, or strangers. 

The founder of the Monitor, Mary Baker Eddy, saw the message of Christmas as the antidote to human hatred. “The basis of Christmas is love loving its enemies, returning good for evil, love that ‘suffereth long, and is kind,’ ” she wrote. 

The best Christmas gifts are not hard to find. They are also never in short supply.