Andrea Carney

2026-02-252026-02-25 by Andrea Carney

Cleaning for Darlene

When I was 16, my family moved to Sylmar. Darlene, a neighbor, noticed my sister Elaine and me in our front yard. She walked down the street and asked, “Do you babysit?” I said yes. She had three girls.

I told another neighbor, Susie, about the babysitting job. Her sister Marian came out and said, “Don’t babysit her kids; she’s got a retarded child.” I said, “I don’t care. I’m up for challenges.” Darlene was desperate for help; she was a waitress. Overworked and underpaid. Neither Darlene nor her husband Hal accepted their youngest girl, Anna, nine months old and so she was neglected for some reason. They left her in bed with bottle propped up and let her poop her pants and spread it around. Anna had a habit of staring straight into your eyes, unnervingly.

2020-05-272025-08-03 by Andrea Carney

For a Clinic Without Supervisors

Comment by David Hughes: The present pandemic has inspired many performing artists: locked down, they are reinventing old works and coming up with new ones. A century ago in 1914, labor bard Joe Hill did the same from his own lockdown—a Salt Lake City jail—lifting lines from “The Internationale” and composing new ones like these from “Workers of the World, Awaken”:

If the workers take a notion,
They can stop all speeding trains;
Every ship upon the ocean
They can tie with mighty chains;
Every wheel in the creation,
Every mine and every mill,
Fleets and armies of the nation,
Will at their command stand still.

2020-05-082025-08-03 by Andrea Carney

The Racist Boss, The Child-Molesting Priest

The coronavirus has moved systemic racism into public discussion once again. To people who’ve been tracking health in this country, none of this comes as a surprise. The greatest health care system the world has ever known is not accessible to all, and there are a lot of efforts to keep it that way.

2020-04-112025-08-03 by Andrea Carney

Summerhill 2: The Day School

In the fall of 1970 I enrolled my stepdaughter in Summerhill Day School, which was run by Oliver Haskell, who I profiled in Part 1 with research help from my husband David Hughes. (See Part 1 also for how I came across the school in the first place.) If you’re confused by the Summerhill name, so was I at first. It wasn’t a name Ollie chose himself. We’ll get to that after some more about what led to the school’s founding.

2020-02-022025-08-04 by Andrea Carney

Summerhill 1: Ollie Haskell

In November I spoke with my niece and told her I’ve been telling my stories here. She immediately responded, “Write about Summerhill.” So I will.

2020-01-022025-08-04 by Andrea Carney

And He Never Left!

In a comment to my post The Stranger Alongside Me in September our friend Milania remarked on my being a rescuer. In reply my husband David Hughes said, “I guess you could say she rescued me forty-four years ago this month! We’ll have to have Andrea tell that tale some day.” Milania urged me to do so “sooner rather than later.” Okay, but I should say that “rescue” sounds more dramatic that it really was, although David and I agreed that this story could get a little bit personal.

2019-10-282026-10-24 by Andrea Carney

Reopening the Rosenbergs

Note: This is the second in a series of my recollections about Julius and Ethel Rosenberg who were executed in 1953. See Part 1 and Part 3. My husband David Hughes contributed much research and text to what follows.

2019-10-092026-10-24 by Andrea Carney

Observing the Sabbath: Killing the Rosenbergs

Note: See also Part 2 and Part 3 of this trilogy.

As early as I can remember I was placed in front of the radio (we had no television). I was exposed to music, advertisements, dramas, and news. At age three I tried to read newspapers. I simply wanted to read about what I’d heard. By the age of five I was reading the “briefs” in the back pages because they were easier for me, but they also could lead me to bigger stories. In particular I remember reading briefs about spies.

2019-09-132025-08-07 by Andrea Carney

The Stranger Alongside Me

In 1974, a few months after I started working in the same doctor’s office that I wrote about in Little Women, I triaged a woman with a severe and painful case of shingles. As we talked she told me something as if she were desperate to unload a terrible secret. She had witnessed the aftermath of a murder and then been chased by a pickup truck, and was tailgated so closely she couldn’t see its license plate. I ushered the woman into an exam room so “Bernie,” the doctor I supported, could see her. Afterwards, he and I didn’t discuss the woman’s diagnosis, but I did tell him how I’d been pursued by a pickup just before coming to work with him.

2019-09-092025-08-07 by Andrea Carney

Otitis Tedia

At this point fluoride in drinking water (not to mention toothpaste) is so widespread that we might not remember a time when its use was controversial. I personally don’t think that adding it to our water supply is wise, but I won’t discuss that here. I’ll simply recall my own experience with fluoride in the 1960s as something to keep in mind.