.25 percent, that's point two-five percent

Point two-five, .25 percent is all. One quarter of one percent is the amount of the U.S. budget designated for foreign health aid. The U.S. government partners with organizations and foundations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Nothing But Nets, Lutheran World Relief, the Central Asia Foundation (3 Cups of Tea), Rick Warren's charitable relief non-profit, the Paul Carlson Foundation and others, to provide vaccines, anti-malarial nets, clean water, health clinics, schools, and more in Africa, Asia and other impoverished places in the world. Point two-five percent. As it turns out, that's a lot of money. Compounded by the funds given from the not-for-profit faith-based sector and other monies, these dollars save millions of lives already. Perhaps that is the message we most need to hear right now: it works. This action works. "We are most like God when we are giving." It was my good atheist -- or maybe not so atheist anymore -- friend who told me a few years ago, "the God created you with specific talents. It is your job to use them," and continued, "for the good of people." As it turns out, he's an editor. And he told me I needed to write. It seemed perhaps I might take his encouragement seriously. As I do. Making money is not a particular talent of mine. I still give some of it away, along with other material gifts in kind. Giving is a way of life, as you know. I put money in the kettle every time I walk past a Salvation Army bell-ringer, not to feel righteous or because my bits and pieces are such a great contribution to the cause. But to keep me in the habit, of always giving, reaching, going beyond myself. I don't carry a lot of cash so it might be a quarter or a dollar I put in but it is something. And my something and your something and the Salvation Army's something and Urban Peak's something and Angel Heart's something and the church's something and even the .25 percent of the government's budget add up to something that changes lives. The first fantasy I ever had about becoming enormously wealthy came one morning as I was driving up the Tri-State Tollway in grinding traffic, on my way to work in Chicago. What blurb on the radio prompted it I don't remember but I do remember my mind racing with the ways I'd give that money away. I'd have plenty to give to Mattie Butler's organization, WECAN, and to the Chicago Food Depository, and to the Nature Conservancy, and to Lutheran World Relief, and the Heifer Project, and on and on and on it went. I got greedy for more money at some point because I remembered other places I wanted it to go. Honestly, that was the most fun I'd had in ages. And it still is. One of my favorite little games to play in my mind. New needs and realities have occasioned new ideas for the recipients of my gifts. But it is one of the best antidotes for self-pity I can think of. Better yet, of course, is the actual giving. When one is depleted, physically, financially, emotionally, the natural instinct is to preserve. There is some basic nature involved, we need to do some conserving, building up, restoration. And there are humbling moments when it is remarkably more blessed to receive. But even in the middle of the mess, there is the possibility of giving. Reaching, extending, looking beyond oneself, giving beyond oneself. I believe we are never so depleted that we can't give something. It may be only a smile. I believe I've been there. It may be only a generous gesture, in traffic. It may be holding the door open, or putting a quarter in the red kettle in front of the mall. It may be almost nothing. But it is the muscle movement that matters. For the sake of staying connected, properly alligned to the world. A week ago today, for the first time in my life, I wondered where the money for a turkey dinner for our family was going to come from. I was stunned. Humbled. And eventually hopeful. A client paid, the funds were wired to our bank account on Wednesday. And, as you remember, we ate the best turkey dinner we've ever had. Other years we've filled bags and baskets with turkeys and pies and potatoes and rice and beans and a treat or two to deliver to families in Denver. I especially loved the year Angie and I set out together on slick streets to find our assigned three homes, cherishing the sweet, if brief, conversations we had with grateful families for whom our presence was a gift in addition to the foods we brought. Such giving is sometimes disparaged as charity, checkbook charity. Bandaids, not solutions. It's true we need more. Bill Gates points out that we need to create systems, infrastructures that deliver again and again and again, creating market points and capital that generates the replication of efforts and the extension of the benefits. True. True. True. But the thing is, creating wealth is not my talent. So I do what is mine to do. Write. And give. And offer it up to the ones who are here as God's hands and mouths and feet and hearts, for their health, their justice, their peace, their fullness of life. Each of us has those things we are "made to do," as my friend told me. The thing is, that we do them. And do them for the sake of the world. I keep thinking of what could be, what could happen if we gave the same amount of money we spend in military action instead to building roads and opening schools and filling bellies and planting fields and building wells and vaccinating children and putting up anti-malarial nets. Three times a billion cups of tea. It's not just a fantasy. It begins to happen every time we move our minds beyond what is to what is possible. I'm going to go downstairs to play the piano now. The Thanksgiving hymns, once more this season. We Gather Together. Come, You Thankful People, Come. And my very favorite, God Whose Giving Knows No Ending. "Gifted by thee, turn we to thee, offering up ourselves..."

The best turkey

Today was the best Thanksgiving meal ever made. Dave did it and he did it just exactly right. Like lots of you, we spent time remembering what we are grateful for. And here, in no particular -- or edited -- order is what we wish to say 'thanks' for. Glycolysis politics James Madison Glee teepeeing houses (Note: we didn't teepee the Governor's house; Sheryl, was that you?) Mahler's Second Symphony bag pipes home fun family living in Colorado Diet Dr. Pepper humor friends -- old and new Poland change forgiveness elliptical machines Arapahoe Singers nasal sprays and recovering vocal cords fish oil the secret to the perfect high-five Marbury vs. Madison Hulu perspective flannel pants book clubs walking Ms. Daisy giving garlic hair dryers hot showers options indoor plumbing bubble baths sour neon gummie worms Roughworks $5 3 pound bags of chicken breasts roommates Linus Pauling South Africa semester Nelson Mandela hope wisdom and learning Dave's (Dad's) cooking!!! turkey and stuffing and gravy and potatoes and rolls and green bean casserole and pumpkin and pecan pie and more rolls sweet potato casserole exercise brother and sisters parents courage Rachmaninoff Third Piano Concerto Aspen holidays stories Michael Kors New York New York New York fatherly pride -- Dave's watching Annika interact so gracefully with his colleagues at a gala dinner in Washington D.C. John Marshall writing groups and encouragement Lighthouse Arapahoe High School Class of 2010 Macalester College Class of 2010 senior years two graduations in May scholarships! giraffes, rhinos, zebras, lions eating zebras, vervet monkeys moose the bison traffic jam in Yellowstone, merging with buffalo Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons Moab Jim Tracy MLB Manager of the Year football Breakthrough summer teaching refugees and immigrants encouragement and awards energy President Barack Obama Colorado Rockies iPods variety Palm Springs Christmas growing gay rights choices freedom inspiration Democratic National Convention Hawa meeting Michelle Obama this week Medicine Bow camping tweets antique cell phones Taylor Lautner tripping monsters Macalester World Cat Beethoven's 5th and everything else future what's coming simplicity mute button on the TV yoga aspen trees hiking backpacking and camping all the mountains! sunny 65 degree winter days for taquito picnics at Wahoo wonderful health insurance Mayo Clinic Wellness programs discovery road trips 400,000 miles on cars Mary Travers the end of communism novels singing family support trust road trips work clients Milkbones playing the piano tennis Tattered Cover Bookstore Tattered Writers ideas chocolate soft blankets and fluffy towels discovery adventure home enough America's Next Top Model iPhones biochemistry biochemistry snowshoeing Herman Gulch hiking biking along the Highline Canal the Lonetree Rec Center trampolines words beauty Paris polar ice mentors tootsie rolls patience more music just enough grandma's and aunt Joan's cookies safety possibilities goodness Beaujolais Nouveau ...and that was the first course. We hope that you have much to be grateful for and have times to remember and give thanks! And we hope -- but doubt -- that your turkey dinner was as absolutely fantastically perfect as ours. Grateful for you all, too! Jan

Full Heart

"I'll be back really late," I told her. "We're going out to a club after." And then it hit me. I used to come back really late all the time when I stayed here at my sister-in-law Joan's house in Minneapolis. And leave before dawn. My days back then generally ran from the first meeting at 6 a.m. until the last one ended around midnight. Boy, what a different life that was. I never went out to Hell's Kitchen in those days either. This house in south Minneapolis across from Powderhorn Park has been my Twin Cities refuge for more than fifteen years. And for most of that time, the earliest times anyway, I was up here for conventions, conferences, continuing education courses. I've stayed here when the house was painted plain old white and while it was being painted -- and now that it is painted a gorgeous aubergine. I survived thunderstorms, even tornado warnings and a killer heat wave when the humidity and the temperature were beyond bearable. I did radio interviews on the phone in this house several times, once sitting in a closet because I was too nervous to concentrate anywhere else. Joan hosted me on her own for several years but then happily added a husband, Jay, and later, a son, Noah. This room where I'm staying was once painted a lush velvety and very deep lavender, and had artsy, feminist art on the walls. Now it is cranberry colored and has Green Day posters, a certified framed photo of Randy Moss, and shelves filled with Legos, armored personnel carriers, tanks, a galleon complete with pirate, and an ax, for god's sake. So much has changed. So much has stayed the same. The house itself has been doubled in size. Merlin the magical Alaskan husky has gone to the great hunting ground in the sky and now there is Cooper the golden to love. And the infant we met in 1998 is now playing Risk and organizing neighborhood football games. Coming back again and again over the years, in such different circumstances, provides a strong cord in my life. Joan's strong (spectacular) coffee, the newspaper on the dining room table, rich conversations and stairs that still creak in all the old places. I've come back here for sanity and sustenance and rest after wrenching days at various conventions, late night strategy sessions that succeeded in planning the same event, again, heart-breaking conversations with women who sought out the church's expert on clergy sexual abuse, late night kibbitzing in the lounge at the Hilton Hotel with silly colleagues who were happily unwinding after one too many business meeting, and celebratory receptions to honor the church's first female bishops. This is the touchstone. This egg-plant painted house at Powderhorn Park. We came here as a family too, for years, spending the Martin Luther King holiday weekend up here in the snow. My daughters learned to ice skate on this lake and to cross-country ski in this park. And then there was the year of the wedding, here, the reception in this house, and a couple of years later, the party to welcome baby Noah. It all came back to me tonight as I left to drive over to Macalester College to pick up my daughter -- the one who once let me hold her hand and teach her to skate -- for dinner and her roommate's senior recital. And this also came clear to me as I drove across the Mississippi River bridge and down Summit Avenue, still haunted by the spirit of F. Scott Fitzgerald and the current genius of Garrison Keillor. Of all the late nights and early mornings and comings and goings from this house, none is so important as this trip, this visit, this, here, now. I got in at 1:17 tonight. Sadly, not a record. But it was the best. the very best thing i have ever done here. From here. Taking Kaia to dinner. Hearing Carly play, and seeing her tap dance. From classc Poulenc to Artie Shaw. But the real best was being here as a mom. Talking to my daughter. My grown-up almost graduated-from-college little girl. Of all the fascinating and even major, institutional changes I've come here to be part of, this one is definitely the best. Being a mom beats being a bureacrat!

Life is a road trip

Life is a road trip. Now that the statue of limitations has run, it might be time to get out the blackmail photos I have of Bryon, Tim, and Claude clinging to a light pole in the middle of a truck stop parking lot in North Platte, Nebraska in a gale wind in the middle of the night. Tim has a bandana – tied like a scarf on his head, Byron is holding on to a cowboy hat for dear life – a sight his Manhattan friends may not be familiar with, and Claude is straddling the light pole, as if it is a horse, and also wearing a cowboy hat. I can’t for the life of me figure out why I didn’t submit it to the college yearbook. While I'm at it, you had might as well know about the 110 mph sprint across the Nebraska Challenge. Denver to Chicago in about 11 hours. Don't tell. All night road trips take me back to college. The back window littered with debris from every junk food known to man: Doritos, Oreos, HoHo's, Ding Dong's, Cheetos, Butterfingers, Snickers, and not one apple core in the bunch. Whirlwind trips to get home for Thanksgiving. To Florida for Spring Break. To New York for a weekend. All nighters in the car, through sleet and ice and fog and, once, past a manure truck that lost its load on our rental car on the Pennsylvania Turnpike that was closed but nobody told us. Kind of a surprise when we came out from a pre-dawn breakfast in Hagerstown to the fragrance of the melting sludge caking the car. Do you know how hard it is to get frozen-on manure off of a car? Do you know how humiliating it is to drive a shitty (yes, literally) car up to Capitol Hill in D.C. for a 10 a.m. appointment? Am I too old for this? I did just get the senior special at Perkins in Lakeland, Minnesota where I’ve stopped at 4:34 a.m. local time, simply to get out of the car and make the move from Diet Coke to coffee. So perhaps I am too old to pull all-nighters anymore but not too dumb to profit from it. America is about moving. Not staying put. Traveling across this stretch of empty space that says nothing so much as "Siberia." No wonder so many Volga Germans and Russians settled here on the steppes of South Dakota. To understand this country you have to move through this empty space. I drive it tonight in six hours. The Lakota roamed it for centuries. My grandmother crossed in a wagon that took, oh, weeks. To understand the mythos that is this America, you must roam. Become unsettled, at least for a time, for a week, a day, a night. To ponder the raw untamed space -- not just land but space. To ponder its ancient emptiness. The roamers, the unsettled who used this space so very differently than we do now. To have a relationship to land and space that is all about humility and stewardship and possibility and, again, humility. Not owning, not possessing, not even occupying but moving, moving through, moving on, always moving, moving, moving. It is wrenching to leave Denver on days like this morning – or yesterday morning it is now. Sun glistening on snow drenched peaks, glinting pink in the dawn. Okay, it wasn’t dawn. It was 10. But still, it was gorgeous. Seeing mountains in the rear view mirror is not something I like. The reward this time is seeing my oldest daughter, Kaia, at college in a few hours. And as we’ve done this trip before, I just kept going. And going. Cruise control set on 79. Seven hours from Denver to Rapid City. Seven hours more to Sioux Falls. Who wants to give in then? Truth is; I hate hotels. I especially hate the hassle of stopping in a hotel for seven hours, schlepping in my backpack. Sleeping in a sketch bed. Bad shower pressure. I’d rather save my $75 for a good bottle of wine. Or the roller coaster at Camp Snoopy. (Yes, I know it’s not Camp Snoopy anymore but it will always be Camp Snoopy in my heart.) Life is like this. Life is a road trip. Improvisation. Surprise. Shit stuck, frozen, to your car. Watching the cows come home. Investigating the bull for sale in Chugwater, Wyoming. Normally, bull comes free. All nighters. That bleary time of early morning between about 3:30 and, well, bedtime the next night. Good coffee. Senior discounts. Kind strangers. Amazing tattoos. Friends being silly, city slickers in cowboy hats and bandanas. Singing along to the Carpenters when no one else has to listen. Not possessing, not owning. Not even occupying. But moving through, And, especially for me today: Kaia, a great reward for my labors. The coffee pot is drained. The baker has arrived. The night shift waiters have gone home. My cell phone battery is charged and there are still 237 CD’s in the car I haven’t listened to yet. My sister-in-law should be up in an hour. Won’t she be happy to see me, lounging on her porch, six hours ahead of schedule. Then again, she knows better than to be surprised. Life is a road trip. You never know quite what is up ahead. Enjoy the ride. And maybe get a cowboy hat.

Hit the Road, Jack

Time to hit the road again! It's hard to imagine getting my love of road trips from the long journeys of my childhood. A thousand miles from Denver to Los Angelos, a thousand miles from Denver to Chicago. And, when I was ten, a thousand miles to Minneapolis via U.S.Highways that routed us through Pierre, South Dakota at 5 p.m. where the temperature was 110 Fahrenheit and the entire bag of Circus Peanuts I ate did not sit well. For our trip to California in 1967, my mom sewed me a bag for all my trip treats, books, and who knows what else. It was less than twelve inches square with two exterior zippers and a little handle. Whatever was in it, it somehow kept me going across the Arizona desert at night as the regular bumps meant we'd hit another bunny. What a weird trip. Things have become more complicated since the days of a Brownie camera or, maybe, already, a Kodak instamatic. For seven days on the road, I have a computer bag from the Aspen Music Festival, a Colorado Non-Profit Conference bag for books and notebooks, a little Clinique bag from Nordstrom for the camera charger and the phone charger and the computer cords, and an enormous bag from the Santa Fe Market for all the CD's I've collected and made to keep me sassy and singing all the way across South Dakota. My clothes are in a bag from the NCCED -- the National Community Capital something something else. I love driving across this country! Bad for the climate, good for me. I make trade offs to assuage my guilt. No air conditioning in the house, long car trips on the back roads of America. Somebody said that a woman's car is like her giant purse. Nope. It's better. My car is my closet. Several sweaters, multiple pairs of shoes, coats, random books and extra scarves, make-up, and granola bars, blue corn chips, lasagna leftover from Saturday's lunch, a three-hole punch, a two-liter bottle of caffeine free Diet Pepsi, and two tennis balls. Circus peanuts optional. I'll let you know if there's anything interesting out there.

Claim Check

I love my dry cleaners. It offers drive-up service. And, they give you back your clothes even when you lose, forget, let the dog eat, or bake the claim check into the meatloaf. Not that I would ever do that. I don't go often so it's not that they know me on sight. But they know enough to know that when I pull up and give them my phone number, I get my sweater back. Years ago our neighborhood conversations got around to the subject of husband's shirts. "Where do you take them?" It was getting expensive to send them out to be laundered. Where was the cheapest place that did a good job? Several opinions were expressed, criteria clarified, and recommendations made. I was silent, listening with some confusion. Until Linda asked, "Jan, where do you take Dave's shirts?" "Oh. I don't. We don't send them out." "You IRON them?" my neighbors all asked at once. "No," I confessed. "Isn't that what permanent press is for?" The more amusing part of this story came a few days later. Six-year-old Annika was visiting next-door-neighbor and wonder woman, Linda, a quilter, in her sewing room. My daughter was wide eyed as Linda showed her how she pieced together the beautiful fabrics. But then things got weird. A strange appartus was unfolded. A metal object placed upon it. Water poured into a spout. Steam arose from it. Annika, daughter of my heart, and flesh of my flesh, then asked, "what's that?" "An iron," Linda answered. "What's an iron?" Yes, it's true. We don't iron much. Another perk of Colorado living. But every great once in a while, sweaters and silks need to be dry cleaned. And I am always freaked about losing the claim ticket. Never fear. My clothes claim me. All of which has me pondering tonight. What else claims me? What people, relationships, family claim me? Choose me. And expect something of me. What are the claims on my time and attentions? What claims tie up my energies and affections? My emotions, intellectual curiosity? And you? I've decided it's time once more to do a claim check. To make sure I'm being claimed by the things -- people, values, commitments, talents -- that best reflect the person I understand myself to be and the gifts I've been given. It's easy to get distracted and derailed. I dare say, especially in our addled, busy world with multitudes of choices, voices clamoring in our heads, calling us this way and that. To make the inevitable Polish connection, I find myself more easily focused there. And my friends too. Tho' not so much as they used to be, the choices are more stark. It is not so easy to do all of the both/and's that we get away with. You can't have it all. Or come close to pretending. The claims on energy and attention are rigorous and sometimes present a zero-sum option. I like the good discipline I'm forced to accept when I'm in Poland, living in Warsaw as I do from time to time. In Denver, it's easier to wander off course. So it's time again for a claim check. Who gets me? What gets me? And you?

What comes after

My dad lost his right hand in a farm accident when he was 24. His right hand was cut off by a corn picker. He was out in the field about a quarter mile from the house, harvesting corn. The engine stalled, he reached in to fiddle with it and the blade -- closer than he realized -- sliced his hand clean off. He somehow staunched the blood, an improvised tourniquet, and ran for home. An ambulance was called, he was rushed to the hospital. Somebody, I forgot who, had the presence of mind, maybe it was even my dad, to bring the severed hand to the emergency room. Attempts to reconnect it were unsuccessful and my dad lived out the rest of his life with only one hand. He learned to write all over again, as a lefty. He went on playing fast pitch softball with his brother Vince, fiercely competitive and formidable, dad catching for his brother, who had one of the strongest and fastest fast balls in the state. My dad learned to catch with one hand AND to throw out baserunners stealing second. He cleared trees and helped to build the camp in the mountains where I spent my summers. He learned to play golf with one hand, he rode a horse with one hand, mowed the lawn, drove thousands of miles on family vacations, put up Christmas lights, whacked a tennis ball around the court, taught me to ice skate and ride a bike, barbequed, changed the oil, and walked me down the aisle when I was married thirty-three years ago. He would have been 88 last Tuesday. He lived to hold two granddaughters and play catch with them, push them on swings, put on his funny red clown nose to make them giggle. He sang in a Keen-Agers choir, served in many public leadership positions in his small city and rode a gorgeous quarterhorse in the Fourth of July parade during his years on the Independence Stampede board. He and friends built a Swedish stuga at the history park and he would give you his last dime. He lived through an horrific, life-altering event and figured out how to come out on the other side. But this is the thing: it changed him forever. He learned new skills, adapted to limiting circumstances. He created new patterns and new habits and found clever ways to work around his disability. His life was never the same. And for everything he figured out, every adaptation, every accomodation, he was keenly aware everyday of what had become impossible. He amazed and inspired me and multitudes with his skill and spirit at making the very most of what had happened and what he had left. But this is the thing: his life was never again the same. He lived every single day with loss, a tangible, physical, obvious and, to some eyes, ugly loss. He felt phantom pain from the nerve endings that were severed and sometimes that pain was excruciating, or the phantom sensations of movement were heartbreaking all over again. Two relevant connections: when Germany was divided into East and West, something was cut off, cut out of each nation and something was lost that even the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of the country that followed can't repair. In the twenty years since the end of communism, remarkable adjustments and adaptations have been made. But it's not the same, not the same at all, had the German nation remained whole, not severed. Life will never be the same again. The same can be said for Poland and the other countries that were captive behind an Iron Curtain from 1945 until 1989. Even now that the situation is so wondrously changed, now that they are not cut off from Western Europe and the rest of the world, something was lost during those days that can never be fully restored. But, my musing, I confess, is a lot more personal. Even as I adapt and find new ways to move through the world after being attacked and losing more brain cells than have regenerated yet, if ever, even as I get better, I am not the same. It took my breath away again today to realize that I am not only not the same person I was ten years ago, I don't even see that person when I look deep inside or let myself out to play, to interact with the world. There are so many cognitive behavioral exercises I do, I can change the way I act even when I'm in a full-blown crisis. But there are parts of me that are simply gone. And don't seem likely to be put back on. It took my breath away again today to realize that my personality is irrevocably altered. I can't even pretend to be the ebullient, powerfully assertive woman I used to be. She's just gone. I asked my psychiatrist again this week, will I ever get back to what I was? Before the injury? Before the attack? She told me not to count on it. I cannot even begin to tell you how discouraging it is, how frustrating to not be able to reach that strong, take on the world, "I can do it," (meaning anything1) spirit. But. And this is the big butt. I am learning instead to do things differently, to make the most of what is possible. The Germans and the Poles, Czechs and all were cunning and courageous as they have been working to move foward after an amputated history. My dad did. And so am I.

Berlin

"Five minutes of heaven." "Let me purchase your ticket," Sabine begged me. "It will be the only ticket to the West I will ever get to buy." Who knew, ten years later, she would buy her own. My first views of Berlin, East Berlin, were not at all what I expected. I arrived on a Friday afternoon train in October, 1980, from Weimar, another East German city. It was an uncomfortable trip, standing for an interminable time in the crowded vestibule of a train car with my jumbo hard-shell yellow Samsonite suitcase and a desperate desire to get out of drab and depressing Eastern Europe, if only for a few days. I, and especially my out-of-place suitcase attracted the attention of every passenger who got on and the unfriendly stares of those jostling for better footing in the small space we uneasily shared. The train was packed with workers returning home to the big city, going to visit the big city, seeing relatives in the big city. And me. No one ever got off, people just kept getting on. And on. And on. I was nose to nose with strangers for the last 40 kilometers. I was completely surprised to rattle through the outskirts of Berlin and discover neighborhoods, or districts, of single family homes with big gardens, lawn chairs, and detached garages. Even in late Fall, the grass was green, a few faded blooms were stubbornly still on the vines. Clothes hanging on the line, blue, green, red, yellow, blue jeans and overalls. Dogs chasing after children. Children playing tag and digging in the dirt. Where was I, Wilmington, Delaware, or was it really Berlin? Sabine and Dietrich met me at the bahnhof and whisked me away in their newer green Volvo. We made a brief -- and entirely forgettable -- tour of the city, avoiding the places I longed to see, The Wall, Unter den Linden, the Brandenburg Gate. We had a scrumptious dinner of chicken with herbs, freshly steamed vegetables saved from the garden, big slices of juicy red tomato, and a nice light wine. Their children, Ulrike and Krystof were teenagers, proud to show me their rooms filled with posters of the current East German rock stars and early punk design. Krystof had longish hair and was himself a proto-punk type kid. He had a pierced ear and a henna tattoo and played a primitive Jimi Hendrix tune on his guitar for me. Ulrike was his opposite. Prim, carefully composed, she worked in a private boutique for spending money and had a boyfriend with whom she left for the movies. The family's home was one of the single family homes with a large garden like I'd seen on the way in. It had come to them by inheritance. They had a huge, productive garden and a few grape vines for making their own sweet wines. A bonfire pit was surrounded by several benches and garden chairs, with large bushes offering privacy. We sat outside for a few minutes, looking over at the tall television tower that had become a matter of great pride for Berliners. Would I like to make a trip to to the top? A lovely family. She was an oncologist. He was a nuclear engineer. How they got clearance to host an American in transit I have no idea. Or maybe they didn't. I never officially registered as a guest in their home (a formality generally required) so perhaps the entire thing was below the radar. One learned not to ask a lot of questions, primarily out of consideration for one's hosts. The issue was embarrassment, humiliation due to the degrading conditions under which they lived. They were members of the small Methodist church, the organization that hosted my visit. Their home was filled with books and record albums (that would be vinyl, for you who haven't heard of them). During the daytime we toured war ruins. A large landfill nearby was still filled with rubble from World War II, some of it yet uncovered. We went to a nearby market. And mostly we sat and talked. And talked. And talked. Of life here. And there. Of essential human values. The dangers of materialism -- whether dialectical or consumerist. Family, hopes, future. Freedom. What was it? Did it depend more upon internal or external conditions? Could one be free in a perversely restricted environment? Could one be free in a persistently distracted environment? We also went to the train station in the center of the city so that I could purchase the ferryboat ticket that would take me next day to Sweden. A train from Berlin north to the coast, and then a Swedish ferry to carry me across the Baltic to my own ancestral home. "Please, let me buy it," Sabine begged. She did not have the money to purchase my ticket outright but she asked if she could be the one to approach the ticket windown first and request the oneway passage to Helsingborg, the oneway ticket out. Of course, it was my passport that the agent required in order to make issue but she conducted the transaction and said, "I pretended, I pretended it was for me." "It was five minutes of heaven," she said, "followed by the plunge into depression: it was not really for me." The mood of our visit turned on that hinge moment. I could leave. They could not. I was going. They had no such choices to make. From then on, they wanted to know more and more about the West. It was not so much that they ached to live there, but were dying to know more about this unknown world just across The Wall. The Wall. We went to see The Wall after dark that last evening of my stay. "Do you want to see Checkpoint Charlie?" First of all, it made me giggle to hear this cliched American term built into the flow of a German language sentence. It didn't belong. I told them I'd go wherever they felt like taking me, wherever it was comfortable or safe for them. Sabine and Dietrich decided the children must not come. If there was trouble, they didn't want Ulrike and Krystof involved. More intense discussion followed. I said, "we really don't have to do this." "No," they insisted. This is something you must see, must experience." It turned out, they rarely went anywhere near The Wall. It was a dominant reality of their daily life but they saw it only a few times a year. Sabine chattered nervously the entire way into the center of the city. Dietrich was unusally silent. He drove. Then, pulled over to the side of a street in front of a block of apartment buildings. "We are very close. I can't go all the way up to the Checkpoint. That would be dangerous for us. They check license plates. We don't want to be seen as having an interest," he explained. "It will be out the left windows. Look quickly." "Can I take a photo without flash?" "Yes, and show it to everyone. This is how we live." And with that he sped off and we drove the few blocks, then turned a corner, down a block, and there, through the intersection, I saw it. The Checkpoint. Another block, The Wall. This is what I remember: a tall cement wall, brilliantly lit up, like a set scene in a movie, the curved over lamp poles, emptiness. There were no cars parked or driving on this street approaching The Wall. It was as eerie as you might imagine. Eerier. I was too stunned to take any photos -- for once in my entire life. Dietrich squealed around the corner on two wheels and drove away like a bat out of hell. Literally. Back to the safety of normal life in East Berlin. The next morning the saw me off at the train station, all of us weeping. In 1989, on a crisp November day, Sabine and Dietrich and their children and grandchildren strolled through the Brandenburg Gate, and into the heart of West Berlin. A new world. Ten minutes from their home.

"It's over."

Annika was all of fifteen. It was February, 2008. She was a volunteer for presidential primary caucuses in suburban Denver, assigned to work at a public school ten miles from our house. She arrived early as directed. The lines were already out the door and around the corner. Colorado was not one of the big prize primary states but it was early days and the question was, can the Obama momentum continue? Annika discovered that the paid workers were in a tizzy, absolutely flustered by the turnout and by the reality that the room they had prepared was nowheres near big enough. One woman disappeared for an hour. Ostensibly to seek direction but really, to sit in a tiny closet and freak out. The mom in me loves this part. Annika went to the principal and the custodian and said, "we have too many people. We need a bigger room. Or we need another room." She arranged for the caucus to be split, from the original two precincts sharing one room to the obvious solution, they'd each have their own. Annika took the required materials to the cafeteria and, beings that she herself was a tad bit underage to actually preside, she commandeered another one of the paid workers -- who had been distinguished by her distinct style of hand-wringing -- to follow and technically run the meeting. But really, it was Annika who ran that caucus that night, poised and calm and terribly efficient. Several hundred voters did their business and went home satisfied with their part in the political process. That tells you something about my younger daughter. But I want it to tell you something, as well, about Poland. There is no way anything like this would, could happen in Poland. Not yet. Twenty years ago, 1989, it was November, as it is now. Right. The borders of Hungary and Czechoslovakia were leaking like a sieve. Crowds had gathered in Leipzig on Monday evening, in the square outside the main Lutheran church, St. Nicolai, in the tens of thousands, with candles, to pray, to demonstrate their determination that change should come. One week later, the Wall would crack open and crumble, come down, gone, gone. Forever. In an instant. Or close to it. Twenty years ago, 1989, November, it was already five months since the Polish nation had gone to the polls in the first free elections in the Soviet bloc since World War II, or, to be more clear, in the first free elections ever in the Soviet bloc. By this time twenty years ago, Poland already had a non-Communist Prime Minister and majority in its Parliament. By this time twenty years ago, Solidarity had moved in to the Department for Foreign Affairs building and had the keys. The long, painful struggle for freedom and a civic society in Poland had gone on for all of the forty-some years of Communist domination. Workers' strikes, student strikes, more workers' strikes, and then, after the election of the Polish Pope and his first visit to Poland in 1979, the workers and the intellectuals and the students and the whole mass of Polish society had joined together, cooperating, resisting the Party's attempt to fragment their purposes and set them at odds with each other, as it had done in the past. The whole of Polish society was together in this pursuit of freedom, democracy, and, let's face it, food. It was not a wholly non-violent revolution. But the violence came not from the revolutionaries, as is normally the case, but was started and provoked by the authorities and was, blessedly, limited. The casualties were lifted up and revered and the people carried on their slow march to freedom. By this time twenty years ago, Gorbachev had already told the Polish Prime Minister, Mieczyslaw Rakowski, "it's over." Meaning, the communist stranglehold on power. The post-War Polish state, the People's Republic (that was never the people's at all). ' "It's over." The Poles had voted. The verdict was overwhelming. No big surprise there. Solidarity won. The Communist candidates barely got the requisite 50% majority even in the seats where they ran uncontested. But there were surprises. Only 62% of the electorate had come out to vote. Despite the posters plastered all over town, all the towns, and countrysides, and a blanketing campaign by Solidarity to make sure everyone knew who "their" candidates were, the response was tepid. This shocked me. Until I remembered the accustomed resignation, skepticism, and outright cynicism of so many people after forty-plus years of having no say, no power, no opportunity to express their voice in other than rote forms. Or in the protest demonstration. Voting. What was this voting? Of course,they knew. Had longed for it, labored over years for the right to vote. But the Poles did not line up three days in advance or walk hundreds of miles, as the black South Africans did, when the time came. And to this day, they're still getting used to the idea. And especially the overwrought campaigning. When I told the story of my daughter's activism, people were stunned. To a person. But they're getting it. While it is oft said (and not without some merit) that Poles are better at fighting than governing, and their political climate is enough to make you tear out your hair, democracy in Poland is now something to be cherished, and the franchise used. It amuses me that every week, or so it seems, a new opinion poll is widely published with the latest figures about the relative popularity of the leading political parties. It's like taking your blood sugar reading every hour. But what a joy! They can do this now. What was thought lost forever, impossible in the lifetimes of at least all of my peers, if not their children, is routine. So routine as to be sometimes forgotten, or blown off. "I forgot to vote." A year ago today I sat in the Europa Cafe, and the Honoratka Restaurant, and the Coffee Heaven on Nowy Swiat with friends, fretting, waiting out the election returns from America. My vote had been cast. I had faxed it from the American Embassy several days earlier and had emailed -- twice! -- to be been reassured by a lovely woman named Joy at the Arapaho County Clerk's office that my ballot had indeed been deposited with all of the mail-in ballots to be duly counted. I even had my actual ballot, the piece of paper on which I had connected the arrows to cast my votes. How cool -- I got to keep it! But that wasn't enough. I needed numbers. My daughters spent the day ringing doorbells, driving elderly voters to the polls, taking food to the poll watchers. My Polish friends were stunned. Wasn't this going a bit overboard? "Just wait," I told them. "Your grandchildren will get to this point. Democracy grows on you. Maybe it takes a little while to believe it can work." (And some days I still shake my head.) Twenty years ago, even before Gorbachev told Rakowski in Berlin, "it's over," the fun part was just beginning.

Remembering as a subversive activity

Not all memories are allowed. Not officially. Or rather, we now get to put that in the past tense. Glory Hallelujah! Twenty years ago it became officially okay to remember everything. Up until then, from 1945 until 1989, the Poles used All Saints' Day as a subversive act, an opportunity to stir up forbidden stories of Polish heroism that defied Soviet power, ignored Soviet reality, told the truth of history. As you scroll through the photos to the right of these posts, you see a cross monument to Katyn, the site where some 22,000 Polish leaders, especially its military officers were executed by a shot in the back of the head by the Soviets in 1940. Any acknowledgement at all of this travesty, even mention of the name, was forbidden during the communist era of the People's Republic of Poland. There was no memorial to the victims of the Katyn Massacre until after 1989. Likewise, you see memorials to the fighters and victims of the Warsaw Rising (not to be confused with a separate event, the Warsaw Jewish Ghetto Uprising, which took place a year earlier). It was forbidden to teach, to mention this event during the communist period. Officially, it did not happen. These memorials are also new. See the stunning memorial to the victims of deportation to Siberia, hundreds of thousands of Poles who were summarily sent off in unheated train cars to exile, forced labor in the perma-frost, the deplorable life described in the Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzhenizten, during the War, most of whom never returned. Those memories were forbidden, but not extinguished, during the Soviet-dominated communist period and the remembrance was a goad to action, to resistance, to defiance. There are graves of opposition leaders and critics of the communist government who have recently died, and others that have become known, and are revered. But. Even before such memorials were put up and remembrance was permitted, the Poles had their ways of finding heroes, martyrs, symbols of resistance and courage to commemorate and celebrate. And they did it as much to thumb their noses at the prevailing powers as to honestly acknowledge the significance of such individuals and events. Father Jerzy Popieluszko was a powerful opponent of the communist regime during the Solidarity period. He pastored a parish in a northern district of Warsaw and drew overflow crowds for fiery sermons. He was murdered in October, 1984 by the Secret Security police, to shut him up and stop his influence, and to intimidate the renewal movement. As these things go, of course, the plan backfired and in response to Fr. Popieluszko's martydom, the Poles rallied on a regular basis at his parish, St. Stanislaw Kostka, where he is buried. When I visited a few months after his death, the churchyard was still covered with flowers and the Solidarity banners were hung with bold defiance on the fences. They were the only Solidarity banners flying openly at the time and, because they were on church territory, they were allowed. It was a constant irritant to the Party, the government, and a constant source of inspiration to the people. The banners and flowers and candles and vigils continued there until the end of the communist regime. And they continue to this day. Say all you will about the church's faults and failures, we have to acknowledge its powerful role in the process of change in Eastern Europe during the 1980's. The Roman Catholic Church in Poland undergirded the power of Solidarity at every turn. The election of John Paul II, the Polish Pope, had an awful lot to do with the changes that followed. In fact, it is likely impossible to over-estimate the influence and correlation of the Pope's power, politically and as a source of inspiration to hearts and minds all over Eastern Europe. These memories have highlighted the moral bankruptcy and hollow integrity of the oppressors and lifted up the values that must be incorporated in a subsequent society. During periods of occupation and oppression, the Polish people have been quick to find sources of pride and success in the past and to be fired up to heroic deeds in their own times. For some, these past saints were simply a source of hope. It was not so easy to walk through all of the walkways of the Powazki Cemetery in Warsaw in the 1980's. And there were not as many monuments to see. But what was there, they found. And lit up. Lights burning in the night. The beautiful, haunting scene of red candles lit from inside and flames shooting up from time to time, lighting up the old graves and illuminating the faces of those who find in these lights a reason for future hope. Flickers of flame, leading one on and on, deeper and deeper into the graveyard, into its stories, into its depth. The authorities in the old days always breathed a sigh of relief when All Saints' and All Souls' Days were past. They dared to hope that the remembrances were sentimental. But no. They were fuel. In the days to come, we will remember the stories of the days of early November, 1989, as the "Polish disease" spread throughout Eastern Europe, became endemic, cracked open the sealed borders between Czechoslovakia and Austria, and finally brought down the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989. Not much mentioned will be the names of those whose graves I visited, left candles, prayed. Jacek Kuron. Bronislaw Geremek. Rikard Kuklinski. Ryszard Kapuscinski. Fr. Popieluszko. Even Mieczyslaw Rakowski. And countless others. Who made a way. And those still with us. Adam Michnik. Leszek Balcerowicz. Lech Walesa. Anna Walentowicz. Bold. Clever. Brilliant strategists -- most of the time. And doggedly determined. And then, of course, the women and men whose labor is less well known or almost altogether hidden. Friends, family, colleagues, faithful servants of humanity. Is it too much to ask that as the media help us to remember those remarkable days, we give the Polish people the honor due and acknowledge and marvel at the impetus they provided for this "quiet revolution" of 1989 that finally joined Europe in freedom from West to East. Again. And may your subversive memories spur you to bold deeds. I'm thinking of what to do first.