Columns
We recently changed over to a different health insurance company here at Sojourners. The new company is less expensive than our previous insurer, and it covers virtually every pre-existing medical condition except stuttering.
("No, I swear I never stuttered before I signed up. I just walked in here, and, well, it s-s-s-s-ort of came over me all at once.")
Our new insurance company seems pretty good. At least the application (at right) was only one page long. The only thing I wondered about is a new procedure—called a "group x-ray"—that the staff has to get once a year. Apparently it saves the insurance company a lot of money, but I don’t see how we’re all going to fit on that table at one time.
But seriously, health care is an important concern of all Americans, particularly sick people who wish they lived in virtually any other industrialized nation except ours. Here in the United States of Complicated Health Forms, if you go to a hospital you pray that your insurance is accepted—otherwise you’re put on the "standby stretcher" (the one with rust on the wheels), or you have to share a bed pan with somebody you don’t know.
With all the conflicting opinions about our nation’s health crisis, it’s nice to hear at least one clear voice of integrity. Not surprisingly, it’s from cigarette executives, the people who have the courage to state that their products have absolutely nothing to do with health. In fact, there is very little evidence linking cigarettes to lung cancer, and as soon as that’s shredded and burned there won’t be any at all.
The transformation of South Africa is one of the most significant events of our time. It therefore deserves serious reflection. The miraculous victory of South Africa's long freedom struggle was not inevitable and must not be treated as such. Things could have gone very differently; indeed, conventional wisdom expected a quite different outcome. The unraveling of that beautiful nation into a downward spiral of violence, hatred, chaos, and endless racial and civil war was a logical expectation. We have recently seen such horrendous social disintegration in too many other places.
How do we explain the triumph of both justice and forgiveness in South Africa? What are the lessons we can learn? What insights can be applied to our own struggles for social change?
Books could and should be written on this subject, but let me offer some initial reflections based upon a long-term involvement with the South African struggle and its people.
First, there was the power of persistence. The phrase one always heard in South Africa was "stay in the struggle." I have never seen a situation where there were more reasons to give up. But people never did. The sheer determination of South Africa's black majority and their few white allies was finally rewarded with victory. They always believed that, one day, they would be free. During so many periods of persecution, suffering, and despair, they were about the only ones who did believe. It was always easier for others to give up on South Africa.
My dog is a practitioner of nonviolent resistance. I know you don’t believe this, so I will explain. Last Thanksgiving, at the age of six weeks, she came to live with me on the 13-acre farm in the North Carolina mountains where I rent a small garage apartment.
I knew from Day Two that Savannah was more than just a blonde pup with long eyelashes and a perpetual smile. On her first venture down the porch steps, she fell on her nose and rolled. On her second day, she backed up, took a running start, and spread all four paws out as she lept off the top step—as if to convince herself that if she couldn’t walk down, she would fly. With great aplomb, she picked herself up and trotted on. That was the moment my love for her was sealed.
She has been a source of endless delight, gracing me with an abundance of gifts—companionship, affection, chunks of horse manure, dead snakes. With great pride she set at my feet one day a large, decomposing catfish head, the odor of which reached the far hollows of the county (emanating as it was from her fur, since she had joyfully rolled in it before sharing it with me).
But, sadly, despite her talents, Savannah quickly learned that she was not Miss Popularity on the farm. The horses stomped at her; the geese hissed at her; and the goats menacingly lowered their horns whenever she came near. The grumpy old cocker spaniel who lives in the farmhouse next door growled at her whenever she licked his face (which was several times a day); still, she lavished her unconditional love on him, unable to accept that anyone or anything could find her anything but absolutely lovable.
In 1974, my family moved from Great Falls, Montana, to Visalia, California. All moves are difficult, but this one—falling between sixth and seventh grades—was particularly hard. Even more profound than a change in physical geography was the new social layout.
My Montana classmates were children, existing in the twilight of 12-year-olds. I and other girls in Mrs. Hewitt’s room did notice "the boys," but playground games were still self-segregated by sex. On our half of the blacktop, jump rope, four square, and tag reigned. On the far side, sequestered boys played much the same inventory, minus jump rope, and when possible, a clandestine game of British Bulldog.
However, in California adolescence had dawned fully without me. Truth be told, the sun was high in the sky—couples "goin’ steady," holding hands at the bus stop, and eyeing pinky friendship rings with a diamond chip at Woolworth’s—$12.99.
OUR TEEN years never quite leave us: The alchemy of awkwardness, exhilaration, self-absorption, and social longing is acid-etched with precision. I revisit these times often now, as my oldest daughter approaches this leg of her journey. Knowing the young adults in our circle mostly inspires me. From our reliable and yet vulnerable baby-sitters (boys and girls) to the earnest, sincere, and too-much-bass neighborhood garage band, these people are now part of my ever-widening adult community.
What can be eaten for breakfast, lunch, or dinner; is grown in all 50 states; and had a war named after it? The potato of course. (The 1778-79 War of the Bavarian Succession was nicknamed "The Potato War.") The Incas of Peru, who cultivated hundreds of ancient potato varieties in terraced highlands, measured units of time by how long it took a potato to cook.
This marvelous crop provides more calories per acre than any grain or vegetable. While potatoes can be grown in a dazzling array of shapes, colors, and sizes, these days most of us rely on the russet Burbank, the white Katahdin, and several red varieties. "Yukon Gold" is gaining favor rapidly, probably because its creamy yellow flesh gives the impression of having lots of butter when it’s served.
In Texas, red potatoes are the passion, fittingly planted on Valentine’s Day and harvested in May. That is, if the weather permits. This year a capricious heavy rain, combined with 80 degree temperatures, doomed my farm’s potato crop to a rotting morass. So I am somewhat forlornly sitting inside today writing about potatoes instead of digging them.
I admit I was really looking forward to "new potato" season. I had the menu all planned out—boiled potatoes with butter and parsley, cream of potato soup, leftover potatoes fried for breakfast, potato salad, and shepherd’s pie. And I wasn’t the only one. Our neighbors were over twice last week to see if the potatoes were dug yet. Elderly family members who used to have farms of their own have been reminiscing about past potato harvests and lamenting the fact that senior nutrition centers these days don’t serve enough potatoes.
The miraculous events in South Africa made hope possible for me again. I was there for the transformation—the inauguration of a new South Africa—and will never be the same.
John Dear, S.J., Philip Berrigan, Lynn Fredriksson, and Bruce Friedrich are currently being held in the Chowan County Jail in Edenton, North Carolina, for their Pax Christi-Spirit of Life Plo
Highway food can be fun for a while—eating forbidden french fries at a fast food joint or sipping iced tea in the cool muffledness of a restaurant.
Actually, it was more like "The Day the White People Came" when Bill Clinton and his entourage of young Caucasians descended on our inner-city neighborhood.
"Welcome to the 40s," a friend said to me on my birthday, "the old age of youth and the youth of old age."
Thirty years after Mississippi Freedom Summer, 3,000 international observers return from El Salvador’s postwar "democratic elections."
We gathered in the courtyard outside the First United Methodist Church in Brevard, North Carolina, just about dusk on Good Friday.
This issue of Sojourners marks a significant breakthrough in paper technology.
Summer campfires and sing-alongs aside, the history of God's people is written twice: Once in documents beginning with the Torah and the Bible, and simultaneously in the music passed from family
A dream came to me. It was the mid-1990s. Most unusual things began to happen...
For salad lovers this is a heady time of year with more greens around than a person can shake a salad fork at.
Dreams are the language of God, I’m told. If that’s the case, God has some wild ways of communicating.
The glare of the camera lights showed the anguish on Joseph Bernardin’s face as he arrived at the annual meeting of U.S. Catholic bishops last November in Washington, D.C.
Let’s say you’ve just walked into the grocery store and on the way to pick up some onions you notice a healthy sized mound of eggplant, with glossy, deep purple skin shining under the florescent lights.