This is What Democracy Looks Like!

Here we are at the Capitol...



Here's why we were there...



Now that we qualify as "elders" we figured it would be a good idea to be there for the "Elder Rally" ....



...along with a lively crowd of people of all ages who were there outside and inside the Capitol to continue protesting the shameful things our Governor and his fellow Republicans have been doing to the people of Wisconsin....







Here's the sign Denny made to take to the rally....



....and here's the letter he wrote:

Dear Governor Walker

Because your actions over the past few weeks have signaled your distain for the citizens of Wisconsin, I suspect that you will not read this message or, if you do, that you will ignore me as you have tens of thousands of other Wisconsin citizens. When I sat down to write this letter to you, I had thought of making a rational appeal to you. However, as I thought it over, it became apparent to me that I would be appealing to one of you major short-comings--namely, the ability to rationally address the issues that face you.

Mr. Walker, you have demonstrated not only a signal lack of social concern for our children's education, the poor and under-represented, and those who must work for a living, but a lack of moral concern as well. Were your actions but the result of deeply held political beliefs, it would be one thing. But your actions have demonstrated to me that it is not political beliefs that motivate you, but rather the two major evils that invest our political system today: the thirst for absolute power and the need to satisfy those whose dollars have brought you to the office you inhabit.

Your unwillingness to negotiate and to compromise, even when faced with overwhelming evidence that the citizens of this State do not support your extreme actions, is evidence of a blind and angry man. You do not deserve any claim to "democratic governance" since your actions are neither democratic nor do they suggest in any way that you are trying to be of service to the citizens of this State. Yours appears to be a personal agenda, supported by those who will benefit most from stripping rights from the under-privileged and those who have to work for a living.

For this reason, Mr. Walker, I will do everything within my power over the next weeks, months and years to see that you are removed from office. If that can be accomplished through recall, then the social and moral evil that you have unleashed will all the sooner be addressed. If I must wait for the next election, then I will dedicate my labor and my support to seeing that you are defeated.

Dennis Day

Snow on Ash Wednesday

The word "Lent" comes from an Old English word that means springtime. And it's good to remember that on this Ash Wednesday morning as I look out my window...

...because I have been doing a lot of thinking lately about the difference between faith and belief and somehow I think there's a connection here. There's more to faith than trying to believe what we've been told we must believe. There's more to hoping for spring than being put off by the fact that it's still snowing. There's more to Lent than fasting.

I think faith has to do with what I know in my heart even if isn't in sync with what other people believe. It's what Richard Rohr means when he says "Your deepest intuition is real." No matter what anyone else may choose to believe about today's forecast when I look out the window I know in my heart that spring is already happening underneath all the snow that is filling up our back yard.



And so what on earth does this has to do with Lent? Quite a bit, I think, because there's more to it than what so many of us have always been led to believe we must do in order to observe it appropriately. Lent is a time to examine our priorities and take a closer look at where we spend our time and energy, as well as what we need to do (or not do) in order to nurture the spiritual side of who we are. The traditional approach of combining fasting, prayer and almsgiving can be one way of doing that - but only if we know in our hearts why we're doing it.

“…our self-imposed sacrifices are likely to be pretenses, symbolic gestures without real interior meaning," says Thomas Merton who obviously gave a great deal of thought to this very subject...



"Sacrifices made in this formalistic spirit," continues Merton, "tend to be mere acts of external routine performed in order to exorcise interior anxiety and our attention will tend to fix itself upon the insignificant suffering which we have piously elected to undergo, and to exaggerate it in one way or the other, either to make it seem unbearable or else to make it seem more heroic than it actually is. It would be more sincere as well as more religious to eat a full dinner in a spirit of gratitude than to make some picayune sacrifice of part of it, with the feeling that one is suffering martyrdom."

I'm thinking about Merton's words as I look out my window on this snowy March morning as Lent gets underway. Last year as summer was ending I brought in all my geraniums so I could keep them trimmed back and alive through the winter. Now, just as Lent begins, the cuttings I've taken are already thriving. By spring they'll be ready to plan outdoors.



This Lent I'll be doing some fasting, some alms-giving and some praying, just like I always do. But I'm also going keep my geraniums well watered and be grateful for what I carry in my heart - a sure and certain faith in spring.

What's the connection between Little House on the Prairie and Candlemas Day?

Last night, once I was assured that everyone I love was safe and sound inside their homes rather than stranded somewhere in a snow drifted ditch, I settled down and allowed myself to savor the particular pleasures that go along with being snow-bound on a dark and stormy night.

It always reminds me of how much I loved reading the Little House on the Prairie Books when I was a child – especially on blizzardy winter nights with the wind howling through the trees and the snow swirling against the windows.

I used to imagine myself right there in the little log cabin on the banks of Plum Creek, or along the shores of Silver Lake, or in the big woods of Wisconsin. I’d pretend I was tucked in next to Laura and Mary in a big feather bed, all snug and warm under a patchwork quilt, drifting off to sleep with the wind rattling the window panes and the light from the fire flickering on the log walls.

“Laura felt a warmth inside her. It was very small, but it was strong. It was steady, like a tiny light in the dark, and it burned very low but no winds would make it flicker because it would not give up."

— Laura Ingalls Wilder, The Long Winter

I woke up this morning and remembered that it’s the 2nd of February, Candlemas Day. I love the amazing interconnectedness of things – last night’s blizzard….which put me into a Little House on the Prairie Mood…which sent me scurrying for a copy of the Long Winter…which yielded the quote about the little light that burned very low but did not even flicker ,,,which is so appropriate for today, Candlemas Day.

Candlemas, the climax to the Christmas and Epiphany liturgical season, is filled with symbolism. It’s the Church’s feast of the presentation of the Child Jesus in the temple and harkens back to Jewish rituals of purification and offering following childbirth. It’s filled with predictions about things to come because of the encounter with the prophetess Anna and ancient Simeon who declares that the child will be “a light for revelation to the nations” (Luke 2:32)

Presentation of the Child Jesus in the Temple

Hans Holbein

And so a ritual evolved in the Church involving candles and a dawn procession that used to be practiced in churches throughout Christendom until the Reformation. That hasn’t kept the ritual from being kept alive in Cistercian monasteries. And in fact one of my favorite memories of the three months I spent with the Sisters at Mississippi Abbey is the morning I participated in the Candlemas procession there.

We gathered just before dawn in the dimly lit scriptorium where we were each given a lighted candle to carry with us as processed into the darkened church for morning Mass. Prior to the reading of the Gospel, we rose from our choir stalls and took our candles up to the altar where they remained until darkness fell again and Compline brought the day to its close.

Today, on this cold winter morning I have gathered together as many candles as I can find in the house and arranged them all on the dining room table. I want to keep them burning there throughout the day and into the night, symbols of light, hope and revelation, reminders of what it means to live in a world where each of us has a part to play in spreading this kind of light into one another’s lives.

The Good Earth

One of the books I selected as a part of my 2011 reading challenge needed to be Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction. (So many titles to choose from!) I finally picked The Good Earth by Pearl Buck and discovered that not only did this book win the Pulitzer Prize in 1932, but in 1938 she became the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize for literature for “her rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China and for her biographical masterpieces". It’s interesting to note that she refused to accept the prize in person because it was being presented in Nazi Germany.

The Good Earth was published in 1931 and eventually translated into more than 30 languages. Much of its appeal has to do with Buck’s talent for describing ordinary details and customs of pre-revolutionary Chinese peasant life which she was able to do because she grew up in China and was acquainted with its history and culture. She was also familiar with Chinese literature and oral story telling traditions, which is reflected in the narrative style she uses in her novel. As a result I feel there was an authenticity to the way the story unfolds in simple words and phrases, as well as the sparse dialogue between characters whose way of speaking and interacting with each other is dictated by strict social norms and conventions.

I enjoyed this book very much and it left me fascinated with Pearl Buck herself. A little bit of research on-line revealed that evidently she wrote The Good Earth in less than three months and went on to become quite well known because of the awards it received. Nevertheless, despite her Nobel prize for literature, the “literary establishment” (heavy weight writers like William Faulkner included) thumbed its collective nose at her even going so far as to criticize the Swedish Academy for awarding her such a prestigious prize.

Today her books are considered dated when compared to novels about China that are being written by contemporary Chinese writers. But in the thirties she was one of the few, perhaps the only, person writing about China. And the fact that that's where she grew up, learning to speak Chinese even before she could speak English, certainly qualified her to write about what she learned there.

Throughout her life, she and her second husband Richard Walsh, (who was also her publisher) were involved in a number of humanitarian efforts through the East/West Association an organization devoted to mutual understanding between the United States and Asian Countries. Pearl Buck also founded Welcome House, known today as Opportunity House, the first international, inter-racial adoption agency in the United States, as well as establishing The Pearl Buck Foundation. “This then is our responsibility,” she said in one of her speeches, “to share what we have, so that the benefits of human wisdom with its infinite deities, may be enjoyed by all.

Eleanor Roosevelt was one of Pearl Buck’s role models as was Margaret Mead; and Pearl was an avid advocate of women’s rights and racial equality. It was probably for these reasons, as well as her interest in Asian cultures that the F.B.I. kept detailed files on her for years. She had been classified as a Communist sympathizer but at the same the Chinese government accused her of being a “running dog of capitalism,” and her books were banned there until as recently as 1997.

The Good Earth was made into a film in 1937 and was nominated for five Academy Awards, winning two of them (Best Actress and Best Cinematography). Ironically, the Actress who won the award for her portrayal of O-Lan had not been the first choice for the role. In addition to employing Chinese as extras and giving the role of Wang-Lung’s sons to Chinese actors, the role of O-Lan had originally been intended for Chinese actress Anna May Wong. However, the Hays Code miscegenation rules banned the portrayal of mixed race marriages on screen, and so she was rejected because the actor who took the part of Wang-Lung was white.

My Life in Books 2010

"Early Autumn"

Deborah DeWitt Marchant

Having fun with the titles of some of the books I've read in 2010...

I used to belong to The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (Michael Chabon)

People might be surprised to discover that I’m Alias Grace (Margaret Atwood)

I will never be The Last Wife of Henry VIII (Carolly Erickson)

At the end of a long day I need The Echoing Grove (Rosamond Lehmann)

Someday I hope I'll have The Perfect Summer (Juliet Nicolson)

At a party you’d find me in The Music Room (William Fiennes)

I’ve never gone Out Stealing Horses (Per Petterson)

I really don’t enjoy Strong Poison (Dorothy Sayers)

I would like to visit Wolf Hall (Hillary Mantel)

In my next life I want to live at The Barn at the End of the World (Mary Rose O’Reilley)

My advice is to make Final Payments (Mary Gordon)

I hope I never run into the demon in the house (Angela Thirkel)