view from the window of our room
as we woke this morning

This weekend we visit some friends who live in southwestern Wisconsin near Gay Mills. Our friends live a simple and sustainable life. This means no TV, no cell phone access, purchasing organic foods and making homemade bread, cakes and pasta noodles and solar panels for electricity. It also means less information but an opportunity to deepen knowledge of the information.

Saturday was Pat’s 65th birthday and our friends invited over other common friends in the area for a grand birthday dinner. There was lots of good food, wine and conversation. I tried, to abide by my wife’s wishes not to talk politics during the dinner but just had to get a few words in.

One of the couples at the dinner we had not seen for over 35 years. They have some land and house near Gay Mills but have lived in Iowa City where the man is a history of labor professor at the University of Iowa. I was impressed with his long career teaching labor history and the enthusiasm his students expressed in learning history. Recently I have been reflecting how history and facts do not seem to matter much these days. Local elections show us we can have all the fact checkers in the world and speak to all the issues but money and negative advertising with half truths or just plain lies still takes the day. Author David McCullough was on the “60 minutes” tonight and spoke how many Americans are historically literate. Facts and lessons from history do not seem to matter much these days.

The woman brought along a copy of a letter she had written to her mom after moving to Milwaukee the day of the Milwaukee 14 action. The next day when they saw the newspaper they surprised. They were impressed by the action and discovered that had met one young man a week earlier when they came to town to look for an apartment. She describes this young man in glowing terms and I am the only person to fit the description.

She also brought me a copy of a poem from our Catholic Worker paper of the time, Catholic Radical, in which I had written in the country jail. The poem speaks of being present with the moment and people in it. This is something I now struggle with, to reclaim living in solidarity with “hungry, homeless, in jail, the classroom, assembly line, walking on the beach.” I write about being as more important than doing.

Living in the present, if just for a few days, and being with friends who you live history with reminds us how if we dig deep into the moment we can find the wealth of being. History speaks of the present.

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