Rajee Narinesingh faced struggles throughout her life as a transgender woman, from workplace discrimination to the lasting effects of black market injections that scarred her face and caused chronic infections.

In spite of the roadblocks, the 56-year-old Florida actress and activist has seen growing acceptance since she first came out decades ago.

“If you see older transgender people, it shows the younger community that it’s possible I can have a life. I can live to an older age,” she said. “So I think that’s a very important thing.”

Now, as a wave of state laws enacted this year limit transgender people’s rights, Narinesingh has new uncertainty about her own future as she ages.

“Every now and then I have this thought, like, oh my God, if I end up in a nursing home, how are they going to treat me?” Narinesingh said.

Most of the new state laws have focused attention on trans youth, with at least 22 states banning or restricting gender-affirming care for minors.

For many transgender seniors, it’s brought new fears to their plans for retirement and old age. They already face gaps in health care and nursing home facilities properly trained to meet their needs. That’s likely to be compounded by restrictions to transgender health care that have already blocked some adults’ access to treatments in Florida and sparked concerns the laws will expand to other states.

Transgender adults say they’re worried about finding welcoming spaces to live in their later years.

“I have friends that have retired and they’ve decided to move to retirement communities. And then, little by little, they’ve found that they’re not welcome there,” said Morgan Mayfaire, a transgender man and the executive director of TransSOCIAL, a Florida support and advocacy group.

Discrimination can range from being denied housing to being misgendered and struggling to get nursing homes to acknowledge their visitation rights.

“In order to be welcome there, they have to go into the closet and deny who they are,” Mayfaire said.

About 171,000 of the more than 1.3 million transgender adults in the United States are aged 65 and older, according to numbers compiled by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.

The growing population has brought more services such as nursing homes and assisted living centers that are geared toward serving the LGBTQ community, although such facilities remain uncommon. They include Stonewall Gardens, a 24-apartment assisted living center that opened in Palm Springs, California, in 2015.

The center’s staff are required to go through sensitivity training to help make the center a more welcoming environment for residents, said interim executive director Lauren Kabakoff Vincent. The training is key for making a more accepting environment for transgender residents and making them feel more at home.

“Do you really want to be moving into a place where you have to explain yourself and have to go through it over and over?” Vincent said. “It’s exhausting, and so I think being able to be in a comfortable environment is important.”

SAGE, which advocates on behalf of LGBTQ seniors, offers training to nursing homes and other elder care providers. The group trained more than 46,000 staff at 576 organizations around the country in the most recent fiscal year. But the group said that represents just a fraction of the elder care facilities around the country.

“We have a long way to go in terms of getting to the point where nursing homes, assisted living and other long-term care providers are prepared for and ready to provide appropriate and welcoming care to trans elders,” said Michael Adams, SAGE’s CEO.

The gap concerns Tiffany Arieagus, 71, an acclaimed drag performer in south Florida who also works in social services for SunServe, an LGBTQ nonprofit.

“I just am going on my 71 years on this earth and walking in the civil rights march with my mother at age 6 and then marching for gay rights,” Arieagus said. “I’ve been blessed enough to see so many changes being made in the world. And then now I’m having to see these wonderful progressions going backwards.”

A handful of states, including Massachusetts and California, have in recent years enacted laws to ensure that LGBTQ seniors have equal access to programs for aging populations and requiring training on how to serve that community.

The push for restrictions on access to health care has brought uncertainty in other states. Florida’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors also includes restrictions that make it difficult, if not impossible, for many adults to get treatment.

SAGE has seen a spike in the number of calls to its hotline following the wave of anti-transgender laws, and Adams said about 40% of them have come from trans seniors primarily in conservative parts of the country worried about the new restrictions.

The limits have prompted some trans adults to leave the state for care, with some turning to crowdfunding appeals for help. But for many trans seniors, such a move isn’t as easy.

“You have the general fear, fear that is leading clinicians being concerned and perhaps stepping away from offering care, fear of trans elders of who is a safe clinician to go to,” said Dan Stewart, associate director of the Human Rights Campaign’s Aging Equality Project.

Florida’s law has already created obstacles for Andrea Montanez, LGBTQ immigration organizer at Hope CommUnity Center near Orlando, Florida. Montanez, 57, said her prescription for hormone therapy was initially denied after the restrictions were signed. Montanez, who has been speaking out at Florida Medical Board meetings about the impact of the new state law, said she’s worried about what it will be mean as she approaches retirement.

“I hope I have a happy retirement, but health care is a big problem,” said Montanez, who was eventually able to get her prescription filled.

For Tatiana Williams, 51, the restrictions are stirring painful memories of a time when she and other transgender people had to rely on dangerous and illegal sources for gender-affirming medical care. Now the executive director of the Transinclusive Group in Wilton Manors, Florida, Williams remembers being hospitalized for a collapsed lung after receiving black market silicone injections for her breasts.

“What we don’t want is the community resorting to going back to that,” Williams said.

Still, older transgender adults say they see hope in how their generation is working with younger trans people to speak out against the wave of the restrictions.

“The community’s going to take care of itself. It’s as simple as that. We’re going to find ways to take care of ourselves and we’re going to survive this,” Mayfaire of TransSOCIAL said. “And as far as trans youth panicking over this, look to your elders.”
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A “tragic” incident involving a U.S. military aircraft occurred in northern Australia during military exercises Sunday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said, adding that his government was focused on providing support.

Sky News Australia reported a v-22 Osprey helicopter with about 20 U.S. Marines on board had crashed off the coast of Darwin. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) said one person was in critical condition, two were stable and there were no reports of fatalities.

Albanese, speaking at a previously scheduled press conference, declined to provide details about the crash or rescue efforts, which he said took place on Melville Island north of Darwin during Exercise Predator’s Run 2023.

“Our focus as a government and as a department of defense is very much on incident response and on making sure that every support and assistance is given at this difficult time,” he said.

Australian personnel were not involved, Albanese said.

Northern Territory Police were responding to reports of an aircraft crash on Melville Island, the fire and emergency services said in an emailed statement.

The U.S. Defense Department was aware of media reports about the crash “but we do not have anything we can provide at this time,” a duty officer said in an emailed statement.

The U.S. and Australia, a key ally in the Pacific, have been stepping up military cooperation in recent years in the face of an increasingly assertive China.

Four Australian soldiers were killed last month during large bilateral exercises when their helicopter crashed into the ocean off the coast of Queensland.
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Families were torn asunder. A community is reeling with grief. More than 100 people have perished and hundreds more remain missing after flames and smoke barreled from the hills and annihilated the historic town of Lahaina.

But even in places overwhelmed by despair and devastation, the Hawaiian spirit known as ohana endures.

In the Hawaiian lexicon, ohana is a sensibility, a way of thinking that means family, belonging, community and so much more — solace in a time of calamity. It is a unifying principle in an increasingly fragmented world. And in recent weeks, amid misfortune, the word has taken on profound importance in a place appealing for help.

“In times like this, ohana gets stronger,” says Dustin Kaleiopu, whose Maui roots date back to when monarchs ruled the islands.

The kanaka of Hawaii, the Native Hawaiians who inhabit the islands, value ohana, which extends beyond the familial ties of blood. It is a life nourished by kinship.

“In a small town like Lahaina, we all know each other. We’ve all grown up together,” says Kaleiopu, whose ohana came to his aid after he and his grandfather escaped the flames that turned their home into a mound of ash and charred debris. “It’s such a tight-knit community.”

Testing the bonds of ohana

Finding grace and solace can be almost unimaginable when the very world around you is burning. This is what Lahaina faces today.

Thousands of homes are gone. At least 115 people are confirmed dead. And by some counts, nearly 400 of Lahaina’s residents remain unaccounted for: fathers and mothers, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, young and old, friends and neighbors — all part of someone’s ohana.

“There’s plenty of families who’ve been displaced by the fire. So we’re going to take care of our community as much as possible. So in this sense, our community is the ohana,” says Kapali Keahi, whose family has lived on Maui for generations.

In the days, and now weeks, after the deadliest wildfire in the United States in more than a century, families who lost homes and possessions continue to depend on the generosity of relatives, friends and even strangers. Shipments of food, clothes and everyday necessities keep arriving from the state’s other islands, including Oahu, home to Honolulu.

Online fundraisers, many set up by displaced families, have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars, much of it from distant places. One relief fund has well surpassed $1.2 million, its 6,400 donors hailing from every part of the globe.

So much of Lahaina has been lost. Left behind are people in deep despair, said Kekai Keahi, another Lahaina resident. One thing, though, remained strong: a connecting strand.

“Ohana was never lost. It never left,” he said. “We will always come to each other’s aid.”

Keahi spoke as Hawaiian flags fluttered near the ocean and a Native Hawaiian group calling itself Na ‘Ohana o Lele — the ohana of Lahaina — gathered at a beachside park to speak on behalf of their community.

The message from the group was clear: There will be talk of rebuilding, yes, but families need time to grieve and begin healing first.

Many people from many places, united

The community of 13,000 people included immigrants from many parts of the world. Here, they find common ground.

No matter where they came from, no matter when they arrived, transplants are soon charmed by Hawaii’s culture, a melange of imported customs and traditions melded together by ways in existence long before the British imperialist and explorer Capt. James Cook came across the Hawaiian archipelago nearly 250 years ago while crossing the Pacific.

As they assimilate, newcomers pick up the oft-spoken vocabulary intrinsic to island life. “Mahalo” conveys gratitude, admiration and respect. “Aloha” is for hello and goodbye, or for love and affection — a word with the warmth of a hug and the beauty of a lei.

Then there is ohana. As the movie “Lilo & Stitch” defined it, “ohana means family, and family means nobody is left behind or forgotten.”

With so many dead or missing, a sentiment like that is ripe to resonate across a community coping with loss.

“It’s all about family out here,” says Mike Tomas, whose immediate family lost their home in the fire and are sheltering in the homes of friends and relatives. He had planned to move with his girlfriend to Texas sometime in the fall, but they will now depart much sooner.

“Nothing’s left here,” he says. Not even the clothes and belongings they had begun packing. But he knows he’ll be back.

“This has always been home,” he says. “This is where family is.”

Amber Bobin moved from Chicago to Maui nearly four years ago. She says she was drawn, in part, by the culture and strong bonds of community.

Earlier this week, she joined a small group to hang 115 crosses on fences erected along the road that cuts through Lahaina. That’s a single cross for each of the souls whose remains have been found. Bobin expected to hang more crosses in the coming days. The fence also was festooned with a collection of ribbons, one for every person still missing.

And if ohana is a way of life in good times, those crosses and ribbons help reveal what it is in tough ones: a mindset that ensures those who have been part of you remain so, even after they were torn away by forces no one imagined would be visited upon home.

“To be able to experience what ohana means, especially in tragedy,” she says, “has been significantly impactful.”
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Martin Luther King III, along with his wife, Arndrea Waters King, and their 15-year-old daughter, Yolanda, have developed a set of traditions for this time of the year.

Each August, they rewatch the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s rapturous address to the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Even if the civil rights icon’s legacy is closer to the Kings than it is for most other families, they see march anniversaries as a teaching moment.

“We are like any other family, in the sense that we want to teach our daughter about this moment in history,” Arndrea said. “And then we also try to connect it with movements or people that are doing things in the present.”

This year, the Kings will join an expected crowd of tens of thousands of people gathering Saturday at the Lincoln Memorial in the U.S. capital to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the late reverend’s “I Have A Dream” speech.

The event is convened by the Kings’ Drum Major Institute and the National Action Network. A host of Black civil rights leaders and a multiracial, interfaith coalition of allies will rally attendees on the same spot where as many as 250,000 gathered in 1963 for what is still considered one of the greatest and most consequential racial justice and equality demonstrations in U.S. history.

On Friday, Martin Luther King III, who is the late civil rights icon’s eldest son, and his sister, Bernice King, visited their father’s monument in Washington.

“I see a man still standing in authority and saying, ‘We’ve still got to get this this right,’ ” Bernice said as she looked up at the granite statue.

The original march, which featured their father as a centerpiece, helped till the ground for passage of federal civil rights and voting rights legislation in the 1960s.

Organizers of this year’s commemoration hope to recapture the energy of the original March on Washington — especially in the face of eroded voting rights nationwide, the recent striking down of affirmative action in college admissions and abortion rights by the Supreme Court, and amid growing threats of political violence and hatred against people of color, Jews and the LGBTQ community.

“What we know is when people stand up, the difference can be made,” Martin Luther King III told The Associated Press in an interview ahead of Saturday. “This is not a traditional commemoration. This really is a rededication.”

The event kicks off with pre-program speeches and performances at 8 a.m. The main program begins at 11 a.m., followed by a march procession that will begin through the streets of Washington toward the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial.

Featured speakers include Ambassador Andrew Young, the close King adviser who helped organize the original march and who went on to serve as a congressman, U.N. ambassador and mayor of Atlanta. Leaders from the NAACP and the National Urban League are also expected to give remarks.

Several leaders from groups organizing the march met Friday with Attorney General Merrick Garland and Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the civil rights division, to discuss a range of issues, including voting rights, policing and redlining.

The gathering Saturday is a precursor to the actual anniversary of the Aug. 28, 1963, March on Washington. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will observe the march anniversary on Monday by meeting with organizers of the 1963 gathering. All of King’s children have been invited to meet with Biden, White House officials said.

For the Rev. Al Sharpton, founder of the National Action Network, continuing to observe March on Washington anniversaries fulfills a promise he made to the late King family matriarch Coretta Scott King. Twenty-three years ago, she introduced Sharpton and Martin Luther King III at a 37th anniversary march and urged them to carry on the legacy.

“I never thought that 23 years later, Martin and I, with Arndrea, would be doing a march and we’d have less [civil rights protections] than we had in 2000,” Sharpton said.

“We’re fulfilling the assignment Mrs. King gave us,” he said. “We are having to march, saying we can’t go backwards, and we’ve got to go forward.”

Coming out of the march on Saturday, Sharpton said, he will lead a voting rights tour in the fall in states that are trying to erect barriers ahead of the 2024 presidential election. He also plans to meet with major Black entrepreneurs to create a fund to finance the fight against conservative attacks on diversity and inclusion initiatives.

Bernice King said she sympathized with those who have grown weary over the continued fight to preserve civil rights. But they need to remember her mother’s words, in addition to her father’s famous speech, she said.

“Mother said, struggle is a never-ending process,” said Bernice, who is CEO of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, which was founded by her mother after the civil rights icon’s assassination in 1968.

“Freedom is never really won — you earn it and win it in every generation. Vigilance is the answer,” she said. “We have to always remember, it’s difficult and dark right now, but a dawn is coming.”

Her father’s March on Washington remarks have resounded through decades of push and pull toward progress in civil and human rights. But dark moments followed his speech, too.

Two weeks later in 1963, four Black girls were killed in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, followed by the kidnapping and murder of three civil rights workers in Neshoba County, Mississippi, the following year. The tragedies spurred passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

And the voting rights marches from Montgomery to Selma, Alabama, in which marchers were brutally beaten while crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in what became known as “Bloody Sunday,” forced Congress to adopt the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
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The seasonal drink that made pumpkin spice a star is turning 20. And unlike the autumn days it celebrates, there seems to be no chill in customer demand. 

Starbucks’ Pumpkin Spice Latte goes on sale Thursday in the U.S. and Canada, as it does each year when the nights start getting longer and the fall winds gather. It’s the coffee giant’s most popular seasonal beverage, with hundreds of millions sold since its launch in 2003. And it has produced a huge — and growing — industry of imitators flecked with cinnamon, nutmeg and clove. 

In the year ending July 29, U.S. sales of pumpkin-flavored products reached $802.5 million, according to Nielsen. That’s up 42% from the same period in 2019. There are pumpkin spice Oreos, protein drinks, craft beers, cereals and even Spam. A search of “pumpkin spice” on Walmart’s website brings up more than 1,000 products. A thousand products that smell or taste like, well, pumpkin pie. 

For better — and, some might say, for worse — the phenomenon has moved beyond coffee shops and groceries and into the larger world. Great Wolf Lodge is featuring a Pumpkin Spice Suite at five of its resorts this fall, decked out with potpourri, pumpkin throw pillows and bottomless pumpkin spice lattes. 

It has also spawned a vocal group of detractors — and become an easy target for parodies. Comedian John Oliver once called pumpkin spice lattes “the coffee that tastes like a candle.” There’s a Facebook group called “I Hate Pumpkin Spice” and T-shirts with slogans like “Ain’t no pumpkin spice in my mug.” 

The haters, though, appear to be in the minority. Last year, Starbucks said sales of its pumpkin spice drinks — including newer offerings like Pumpkin Cream Cold Brew — were up 17% in the July-September period. And in a 2022 study of 20,000 Twitter and Instagram posts mentioning pumpkin spice, just 8% were negative, according to researchers at Montclair State University in New Jersey. 

Before the latte: what pumpkin spice was 

It wasn’t always this way. 

Canned pumpkin and pie spices were relegated to the baking aisle when Starbucks began experimenting with an autumn drink that would replicate the success of the Peppermint Mocha, which took the winter holidays by storm in 2002. Customer surveys suggested chocolate or caramel drinks, but Starbucks noticed that pumpkin scored high for “uniqueness.” That would turn out to be prescient. 

In the spring of 2003, a team gathered in a lab in Starbucks’ Seattle headquarters, bringing fall decorations to set the mood. They sipped espresso between bites of pumpkin pie, figuring out which spices most complemented the coffee. After three months, they offered taste tests; pumpkin spice beat out chocolate and caramel drinks. 

Starbucks tested the Pumpkin Spice Latte in 100 stores in Washington, D.C., and Vancouver, British Columbia, that fall. The company quickly realized it had a winner and rolled it out across the United States and Canada the following fall. And in 2015, a watershed: The company added real pumpkin to the recipe. 

These days, Starbucks’ Pumpkin Spice Latte has its own handle on X — formerly known as Twitter — with 82,000 followers, and a Facebook fan group called the Leaf Rakers Society with 43,000 members. And it has fans like Jon McBrine, who drinks black iced coffee for most of the year but eagerly awaits the latte’s return each fall. 

“I love the flavor and I love the subculture that has evolved from this huge marketing campaign,” says McBrine, a graphic designer and aspiring author who lives in the Dallas area. 

It’s hot through the end of October where he lives, so McBrine typically orders his with ice. But at least once a year, he gets a hot latte, savoring memories of the autumns of his childhood in Delaware. 

“It’s part of getting into the season,” he says. “It’s almost like a ritual, even if you’re just waiting in the drive-thru.” 

Pumpkin spice latte as sensory experience 

Jason Fischer, an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University who studies human perception through sight, sound and smell, says odor and flavor have a more direct route than other senses to the area of the brain that processes memories. 

That’s due to evolution; humans needed to remember which foods were safe to eat. But it means smells and memories are closely linked. 

Still, he said, people’s sense of smell can be malleable. In experiments, subjects have taken a sniff of something and described it in many different ways. But when they’re shown a label for that smell — say, “pumpkin spice” — their perceptions shift and their descriptions become more similar. 

“Odors and sights go with certain places, like the aroma of pine and the crunching of needles beneath your feet,” he says. “They’re associated with a certain kind of experience. And then marketing taps into that, and it’s a cue for a product.” 

Pumpkin spice doesn’t conjure happy memories for everyone. Kari-Jane Roze, who lives in Fredericton, Canada, loves many things about autumn, including back-to-school routines, changing leaves and hockey. But she’s not a fan of pumpkin pie or pumpkin bread — and she has a particular dislike for pumpkin spice lattes. 

“The artificial flavor is disgusting,” says Roze, who works at New Brunswick Community College. “The only thing I do not like about fall is seeing everyone obsess over PSLs. Makes me want to shut off social media for a month.” 

She won’t have to deal with those “PSLs” for long. The limited-time nature of the product is another thing that keeps customers hooked, marketing experts say. Last year, Starbucks’ holiday-themed drinks arrived on Nov. 3. And then, for devoted fans, the wait begins anew. 
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