Change

We all think about change and improvement: changing ourselves, improving our communities, changing our attitudes, improving our spouses. We change our hairstyles, we change our beliefs, we change what we do or what we eat or what we read or what we listen to, trying to better our lives or the lives of those around us. 

Some of us even think about changing the world. Few of us ever try, though, because it is so daunting a task. How can someone just plain Jane ordinary little old me really help change the world?

Sometimes the first step in changing the world is as simple as refusing to give up your seat.

Thank you, Rosa Parks, who 55 years ago today chose to stay seated.

Hard Times

Times are tight all over. My older son Ben is looking for work again, having been recently laid off. I know of at least two high school classmates of his who are working three jobs each. My older brother just broke his leg in a freak accident and is out of commission (and work) for at least six to eight weeks. Someone else I know has a home in foreclosure, a chronic illness, and a soon-to-be ex who just left the country, leaving her and their nine year old son, who has his own medical problems, without insurance, without money, without support, without anything.

That last individual recently asked me to please set aside any "extra garden bounty" I might have as we would be seeing each other later in the week. So yesterday before meeting up with her, I picked some tomatoes from our wreck of a garden and even found a couple of red, ripe King of the North sweet peppers to add to the sack. There was a zucchini in the refrigerator - the last from my dad's garden - that my hand hovered over. We love zucchini. Then the bakery scene from A Little Princess, during which a hungry Sarah Crewe divides six hot rolls with a beggar child, came to mind:

Sarah took out three more buns and put them down…

"She is hungrier than I am," she said to herself. "She's starving." But her hand trembled when she put down the fourth bun. "I'm not starving," she said - and she put down the fifth.

The zucchini went into the bag.

My overwhelming social impression as we drove to and from Montana last month? Hard times. Call it what you want - a recession, the Great Recession, or (what I believe along with columnist Paul Krugman) possibly the Third Depression - the signs are evident everywhere. Empty houses, starting on our street and lining the route all the way to Helena and back. Empty storefronts to go with those empty houses. Signs for food pantries, even in towns of 150 or 200.

Increasingly, we are all impoverished. If not literally, then figuratively by the spreading poverty around us. Our piggybanks are worn and chipped. So are our spirits at times.

In the middle of opening wedding presents, Alise suddenly said, anguished, "we can't accept this gift from [a family member]. They can't afford to give us this." She bent her head down, it hurt so much. Her father, a wise and compassionate man, told her to appreciate the love behind the gift and to accept and use it in that spirit. Several times that morning, as other gifts were opened, he or Alise's mother quietly mentioned how certain family members had clearly dug deep into their pockets to gift the newlyweds.

I suspect the newlyweds, on their own shoestring budget, will never forget the love and hope woven into their presents.

Warren and I feel the pinch at times. We each have modest incomes. After he pays support from his and a monthly payment for back taxes comes out of mine, they are even more modest. I'm helping Sam tackle college in my own limited way (his father and Financial Aid are doing the bulk of it). There are always medical bills, and overdue (and uninsured) labs and an oncology appointment loom for me in October. Warren's truck just gave up the ghost after many, many, many, many miles, so there is a replacement in our future.

Warren recently said, as we drove home on a day that had already been too long and during which we had both been stretched too thin, that he wished things would ease up a bit for us. Me too. I worked on the household bills this morning - my income is still recovering from August - and I winced when I summed up the total and then looked at my checkbook. At least I have income with which to pay those bills. I am grateful for that, because there were times during my illness when I didn't have the money or means to pay. There are many around me who do not now.

Many months ago, when we were just starting our relationship, Warren wrote: "you probably aren't going to get Europe, diamonds, many expensive meals or lots of shoes." As I told Warren in response, I never cared for diamonds or shoes, and I can make my own great meals fairly inexpensively. I've seen Europe, albeit many years ago, and there are places in this country I want to see before ever returning. Fortunately, we each learned, separately and a long time ago, to make the most of what we have, including financially, and in that regard, as in so many other ways, we are very well suited.

When it comes to the hard times our nation, my community, and my friends and family are going through, my focus is small and local. I can't fix the Third Depression; I can only hope that thoughtful analysts like Krugman point the way for our otherwise entrenched and polarized politicians.

But I continue to chip away at the grassroots level, one zucchini at a time.

On the Road

Sam at the Badlands in North Dakota.

The buffalo at the Great Northern Carousel in Helena (Of course, I rode it!)

Wedding rehearsal: mom Mona escorting

daughter Alise down the aisle

(Alise's dad Joe is performing the ceremony)

The Big Event is this evening. I can't wait!

Happy 4th of July!

I love the 4th of July. It is my favorite holiday hands down. I love our city parade, I love the concert in the evening, I love the fireworks, I love it all.

Our parade is small by big city standards, but that does not diminish my pleasure in it one whit. You can't watch it without knowing someone in the procession - a Cub Scout, a clarinetist in the high school band, someone driving a decorated tractor. Aunt Ginger lives on the parade route and we will all gather there to wave and laugh as our friends go by.

The evening concert is special for lots of reasons, starting with that it is put on for free by our local symphony, the Central Ohio Symphony. This is the same symphony that my husband Warren is the executive director of and that back in April raised over 2000 pounds of food for our local food pantry with just one benefit concert (a national record).

In short, this is one great symphony before they even begin to play.

On July 4th, the orchestra plays a mixture of patriotic songs and Broadway and movie hits. This year, because it is the 40th anniversary of man landing on the moon, music from "Apollo 13" has made its way into the lineup.

The symphony plays outdoors on the campus of Ohio Wesleyan University, which nestles right up to our downtown. Seating is on the lawn. We bring picnic dinners, sodas, lawn chairs, desserts, blankets, wine, and sparklers; children run up and down the walkways; everyone and everything is decked out in red, white and blue.

This concert draws 5000 or more annually. It is not a noisy crowd but neither is it a performance hall quiet crowd. There is always a low undercurrent of talk, of friends greeting friends, of old neighbors reconnecting. Crowd enthusiasm is obvious from the opening ("Fanfare for the Common Man" and the Star Spangled Banner) and does not diminish the rest of the evening.

During "Armed Forces Salute," veterans and active service personnel stand when their military branch's theme song is played. My dad and brother Mark will be on their feet for the Army; my friend John Smith, a WWII veteran who was at Iwo Jima, will stand up for the Marines. We the audience will applaud enthusiastically.

The last two pieces are always the same: Tschaikovsky's "1812 Overture," followed by Sousa's "Stars and Stripes Forever." Before the last note has faded, concertgoers are up and moving half a block over to see the city fireworks display. The street by the campus is closed off and we all pitch our chairs and blankets right there on the road or the practice fields and look up until the first one explodes.

I'm also a sucker for fireworks. Always have been. There is something about seeing those colors bloom, shimmer, and fade away that thrills me every year. I ooh and aah right along with everyone else, and "everyone else" includes everyone who was at the concert just 10 minutes earlier.

It is a perfect evening.

30 summers ago, when I was 23, I traveled around Europe for six weeks. I was in Hamburg (then West Germany) on July 4 and homesick, not for my apartment but for America. I wanted to be there - anywhere - in the United States that day. I have never missed another one, including even the summer I was being treated for myeloma and in between stem cell transplants when the 4th came around.

I almost always spend the concert with Sally and Chris, who were my across-the-alley neighbors when I first moved back to Delaware. Back then, we would watch the concert and the fireworks together, then come home and let the kids light sparklers and smoke bombs and throw pop drops until late into the evening. Those were magical days for the children and any of them at the mention of the 4th will still say "remember when we used to light all those fireworks in the backyard after we got home?"

Yes, I do.

On July 3, 1776, John Adams wrote his wife Abigail his thoughts about celebrating Independence Day:

I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.

Adams was actually writing about July 2, which was the day the Continental Congress approved the idea of independence. The vote on the Declaration of Independence did not come until the 4th, which is why we have celebrated that day as Independence Day ever since.

No matter. Adams was dead on right when he wrote he believed that succeeding generations would continue to mark the day. The notion that individuals could come together and create a nation founded on principles of justice and equality was a stunning, indeed a revolutionary, idea for its time. It continues to be so today. We the people have not always lived up to those principles, but we the people continue to strive towards realizing them. I am optimistic enough to believe that the ideals that drove Adams and his colleagues to take that giant and dangerous leap into the unknown continue to guide us yet today.

Adams wanted us to mark Independence Day with "Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more."

I'm with him.