A Stranger’s Snap Judgment Prompted Sonia Sotomayor to Help Others

“That injection you saw me give to myself is insulin. It’s the medicine that keeps me alive.”

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor talks to children during an event promoting her new children's book.John Amis/AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Welcome to Recharge, a weekly newsletter full of stories that will energize your inner hellraiser. See more editions and sign up here.

Diagnosed with diabetes in her youth, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor was injecting herself with insulin in a restaurant restroom before a meal when another customer spotted her there.

Sotomayor later heard that customer tell a companion that the justice was a drug addict.

“Madam, I am not a drug addict,” Sotomayor responded. “I am diabetic, and that injection you saw me give to myself is insulin. It’s the medicine that keeps me alive. If you don’t know why someone’s doing something, just ask them. Don’t assume the worst in people.”

The encounter has stuck with Sotomayor for years, she told NPR—and spurred her to write the children’s book Just Ask! Be Different, Be Brave, Be You. Her intention: to portray 12 kids working together to build a garden. Just like the plants, the kids are different—two have autism, for example; one has asthma; and another has Tourette syndrome.

“I wanted to talk about children like me,” Sotomayor said. “Each of us is doing what we do best…each child is doing something to contribute to the garden, despite how they’re differently able.”

Here are more Recharge stories to get you through the week:

“She was our best reporter.” Skeptical and curious journalist Dora Walters knew everybody in Longboat Key, Florida, and broke news into her 80s. She may have been prickly in the newsroom, but she dropped birthday cards on the desks of her colleagues and brought back treats from her trips to Mexico. On her final day of life, she had to go to the birthday party of a 98-year-old friend and turn in her weekly column. Of course, she made the party—and the deadline as well, said longtime friend Dawn DiLorenzo. “Nothing could keep her down,” DiLorenzo said. Thanks to Recharge reader William Weinbaum for the tip. (Longboat Observer)

Happy little trees. Bob Ross, the chia-haired painter and cult star of public TV’s The Joy of Painting, didn’t just paint trees. He painted “happy little trees,” as in this 21-second video for MTV. Decades after the cheerful painter’s death, Bob Ross Inc. has partnered with the state of Michigan to help promote the planting of trees. The state is renaming a prison program that grows 1,000 trees a year to replace those in state parks that have been severely damaged. The Happy Little Trees program, with Bob Ross’ likeness on signage at state parks and on volunteer T-shirts, has already spurred help. “We put a call out to volunteers and said, ‘If you help us replace trees in state parks, you get a happy planting T-shirt,’” said Michelle Coss, volunteer and donor coordinator for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources’ Parks and Recreation Division. “We had over 500 people sign up to help us plant trees.” (Roadtrippers Magazine)

A new crop. Since we last checked, in July, nearly 100 Little Free Pantries have sprung up outside homes and places of worship, bringing the total of informal food centers to nearly 700. Modeled after the Little Free Libraries’ take-something-leave-something movement, these pantries, with nonperishable food and indispensable items (think toothpaste, tampons, socks, school supplies) have become a judgment-free zone for those struggling to get by. “I felt like our world is in a pretty cruddy place and it felt very insurmountable—and I wanted to do something to give back,” said Tara Duffy, who built a Little Free Pantry outside her church in Burbank, California. Duffy said that for her two children, ages 7 and 3, the pantry is “a great example…that no one’s safe, no one’s exempt from bad things happening—and that if people need support, we can do things to help them.” (Los Angeles Times)

I’ll leave you with this sweeping image from the Delaware Water Gap, dividing Pennsylvania and New Jersey, via the Interior Department’s Twitter feed. Thanks so much for reading, and have a great week ahead!

More Mother Jones reporting on Recharge

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate