Roger Wright – Chicago

Tomorrow he’ll leave the United States of America for good, and I can’t think of a single reason to tell him why that’s a bad idea.

I’ve known him all my life. He’s family. Not close. But we’re related. I ever saw him all that much. But the chances are now that I’ll never see him again.

I don’t get to Thailand much.

He’s career military. Navy. Retired now. An MP. Faced down bad guys with guns everywhere from the steaming jungles of Columbia to the harbors of Indonesia.

If it’s a place on earth, he’s been there. So empty platitudes of patriotism don’t mean much to him. He’s served.

With what’s left of his GI Bill he’s going to finish his teaching degree in Thailand and teach English as a second language. Because here in the United States, there are no jobs. Not really. Not for him. In the blood lust frenzy to cut government funding these past six months and control that deficit that’s been tossed over the vulnerable and the weary like a ripped, scraggly blanket that will never keep out the cold; there have been zero job creation bills passed by the U.S. Congress. So there are no jobs. Especially if you’re over 50. And being a veteran doesn’t really make a difference in daily living. A parade and a politician’s speech do not pay a mortgage. Nor does the tiny stipend he gets.

Private industry? The world does not need too many more “Security Consultants.” Especially ones who are weary of the guns and the death. There is no job for him here.

So he’s leaving.

A lot of us talk about leaving. “If this person wins the election, if they yank away collective bargaining, if corporate profits get any higher, if I can’t afford to go to the doctor—there are millions of solid, individual good reasons to leave. Lots of us talk about it.

He’s doing it.

It’s been four years now since he scattered his Mom’s ashes off the windy, sun struck coast of San Diego. Her Irish heritage taken by the wind. And his Irish, American Indian Dad, his crinkly smiling eyes and movie star good looks has been gone for years. Finally, his brother. His brother battled hard through seven years with the cancer. But then his time came too.

There is a woman in Thailand. There has never been a shortage of women in his life. This one is a farmer. But she’s not the reason he’s leaving. He’s learned too much to make her the reason. They will live on the ocean. Live on almost nothing. Because that’s all they need.

There is a daughter. A sparkling, smiling young lady of intelligence brought up by her mother in Europe and now almost ready to go out on her own. Maybe some day she’ll come see the relatives she has in Chicago. Maybe she’ll go see her Dad in Thailand some day.

So he’s leaving. He’s thought it through hard.

And for the life of me, I can’t come up with one good reason why he’s wrong.

So I am left with an even larger, weary sadness. Of just what that means.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ0kAZJy_3o]

“John, I just can’t handle this Japan thing anymore.

Apocalypse right now. Does radiation smell?”

It was Crazy Mike. My Cousin from Chicago. I knew I shouldn’t have picked up the phone. But he’s family. I could listen to him with the sound down on the TV. The Marquette game was on. Janet was off doing something on the Internet. The beer was cold. He is family.

“Yeah, I hear you Mike. They got it rough. I never seen anything like that.”

“John, the pictures of the old people standing in perfect lines trudging up the steps to escape the water. Nobody pushing, screaming, looting. Jesus John. Those people are just. . .well hell. I don’t know how to say it. You got big time news people talking over there. Their voices cracking. They don’t know how to describe this.”

“Yeah,” I said as a point guard hit a three from half court. “It’s rough. And you got to hand it to them. Gotta respect those people. They know how to handle this kind of thing.”

“John, I don’t know if there’s ever been this kind of thing. I wonder if we gotta start thinking about this differently.”

“Mike, this was a natural disaster. I didn’t make the earth move and the big waves come. I already sent a check to the Red Cross. It wasn’t much. But I don’t have much.”

“No, no no. I’m not talking about money. I got less of that than you do. In fact I don’t even know too many people that have much of that anymore. I’m talking about something different. Can I explain?”

There was a commercial on, so I said, “Sure.”

“OK. Here it is. I’m talking about changing the whole way we think about this.”

“Mike, did you start one of those on-line philosophy classes again?”

“No. Can’t afford um. What I’m talking about is thinking, ‘What if this wasn’t just a Japanese problem? What if this was our problem too?’

“Mike. I know you’re a sensitive guy and all that. And that’s a nice thought. But you’re on the northside of Chicago. I’m in Cedarburg. Just north of Milwaukee. Neither of us is north of Tokyo. We can feel for them. Or we can pray for them. But we can’t be them.”

“No wait. Let me finish. We can’t be them. That’s not what I’m saying. Listen, you know how everyone has their own story? Every single person is different in some way or another? Right?”

The game was back on. I knew I wasn’t being hit up for money. So I settled in. “Yeah. I guess”

“Well, what if there is a collective story as well? One we all share. A common story.”

“Like communism or something? Is that what you’re talking about?”

“Are you sure you’re a real history teacher,?”

“Yeah. Yeah. I hear you. Ok. So there’s a collective story. I can see that”

“Are you sure? I don’t think most people would buy it. Not really.”

“Who wouldn’t?”

“Well, people who don’t get that there could be something bigger than themselves. I’m not criticizing. I’m just trying to describe what I see. When you start talking about something bigger than the self, its a pretty quick jump into religion. And I see people carrying around their hatred of religion like a badge.

All those who were abused by religion, those who are more comfortable with science as an explanation because it can, maybe someday if we get good at it, leave nothing to the imagination. Those who don’t believe there ever could be a higher power.

Those who are so sure of what they believe that it makes your teeth hurt? Ever have a conversation with someone who was positive about NOT believing anything? I bet they’d think that a collective story was a boatload of crap. Because to have a collective story, there’s got yo be forces larger than the self. Forces we don’t totally understand. And there are a lot of people who do not like that kind of thinking.”

“So you’re telling me I should go to church? Mike, you didn’t join a cult or something did you?

“No, it has nothing to do with church. Especially if your faith is one which includes doubt as an essential element.”

“What does that mean?”

It means you don’t pretend you know everything. Or that what you believe or don’t believe is any better than anyone else. Guy named Paul Tillich. But that’s not important now. What’s important is that you believe there is something larger than you.”

“Something larger than you?”

“Yeah. It’s a hard thing for most of us to get. Especially if we try and do it alone. I know I couldn’t understand it alone. Not that I’m an expert.

But I think it comes down to thinking that I am not the center of the universe.

That there is one collective beating heart.

Because if that were true, if there really was one story, one heart that included all of us, then it would mean that we are all in this together.”

“OK. Lets say I buy this. I mean you know how long it’s been since I been to church.”

“Yeah, you tell me on a pretty regular basis. Often my teeth hurt when you do. But like I said, it’s only about church if you choose it to be about church.”

“Ok, so if I buy this, this idea that there is a collective story. A larger story that we all play a part in—what do I have to do?”

“Well I . . .oh wait. This is interesting. The news just came on.”

“You’re watching TV too?””

“Yeah. And listen to this story. The radiation alarms in the airports in Seattle, Dallas and Chicago just started going off today as passengers got off the planes from Japan.”

“No way.”

“Yeah, but the government said don’t worry. It’s not the people. It’s the luggage. The luggage has the radiation contamination. It’s coming from medical equipment. So no one has to worry. Kind of reminds me of how no one was supposed to worry about Hitler before World War Two.”

“Oh that’s good. I feel much better now.”

“Yeah.”

So Mike what is it you were saying? Sum it up for me buddy. What’s your point? How are we supposed to start thinking about this differently?”

“It’s this. What if there was a collective heart? It included all of us.

What if this wasn’t their problem?

What if it was our problem?

What would we do differently?”

“Did we lose Wisconsin? Of course we did. I’ve been a high school teacher in the Wisconsin Public Schools for 25 years. Graduated from Beloit College. B.A. in Psychology. Masters in Teaching. I started the year Liz was born. She was our first. Molly came next.

That Masters program is gone now. Just like my union bargaining rights. I used to have a union. Now I don’t. It’s really pretty simple. We lost.

I’m not saying I liked the union. No one likes writing that check for the dues every month and then hearing the stories of where that money goes. Union treasurer caught with his hand in the cookie jar of embezzled funds.

But I don’t like taking out the garbage after dinner in the winter either. I’d much rather go sit in my chair and watch basketball and have one more beer while Liz and Molly fade into their rooms and twitter or Facebook or whatever it is they do and my wife Janet talks to her sister on the phone. There’s a lot of things I don’t like. I still haven’t found an institution that’s perfect. I teach American history to high school kids, so I’m pretty sure I didn’t miss the news on any perfect institution that came before me. If I had missed one, my kids would have clued me in. Twittered me or something. Just because some of the people who run the union are idiots, that doesn’t I would stop writing that check to the union. I go to church. And a lot of people who work there are idiots too.

I wrote the check to keep the foot of guys like Scott Walker off my throat.

Now there’s no one to help me do that.

Am I mad? I don’t get mad anymore. I’m tired. And as long as it’s just you and me talking? I’m scared.

Janet gets mad enough for both of us. Once, true story, I had to pull her back from a biker in a roadhouse just outside of Whitewater. She used to dance. And there was a time when she could be standing right in front of you and connect the heel of her foot to your chin, before you could even take a breath. And that was before she took kickboxing.

Even now. She’s told me about something she calls “muscle memory.” Like the kick is still there inside. Ready for when she really needs it.

So this guy with the leather Harley vest, stringy hair, at least 260, maybe 280 pounds, arms like tree trunks, thought he should get his beers before Janet, who was first. There was almost real trouble. Janet might have killed the guy.

I was sitting with my back to the whole thing, there was a Brewers game on, and I hear the voices rising. I turn and see her right leg starting to tense, so I am there, right then, between her and mister seriously bad breath and all the years of staring down kids, well, it somehow worked. Because the guy could have done me serious damage.

I get a little mad when they started funding the PR campaign saying we teachers were the money grubbing pigs.

At first it made me laugh. When I first started, I remember the guy I student taught for. He says to me, “Kid, if you want to make some money in this job, I got two words for you. ‘Drivers Education.” That’s where the money is. Guys name, and I’m serious, was Mr. Fly.

No one teaches for the money.

And I did teach drivers ed. In addition to my regular load. During the eighties. When things got tough for awhile. Our girls were growing up. Janet sold real estate. That helped a lot. And it kept her schedule flexible for her real job—chauffer to the girls. But we did need the money.

And I’ve always coached baseball. Long as no one’s gonna read this, and I can be frank? I’ll tell you. Sometimes I forget that I even get paid for coaching baseball.

So when I heard about all this lazy, dumb teacher stuff, I started to get a little mad. Till I remembered something my Cousin Mike from Chicago told me. I call him ‘My Cousin Vinnie’ for a lotta reasons. But his name is Mike. And I remember the time Mike said to me, “Hey. Don’t get mad. Get even.” He told me he never bought that line himself. But he thought I’d like it. And I did.

Mike’s an odd duck. He’s been nothing but happy these past 15 years or so. Ever since he hooked up with Marisa. She’s Sicilian. Doesn’t look it though. On the street, in stores, people do double takes because she is a spot on identical twin of Sandra Bullock. The last time I saw her was oh maybe a year ago when they drove up from Chicago to see a Brewers game.

Mostly Mike and I talk on the phone. I don’t know what it is about him. Sometimes I think he’s freaking out of his mind. Sometimes I think he just sees things that other people don’t see. He makes connections between things that don’t seem like they connect at all. Till you think about it for awhile. Which might mean he is crazy.

But in the past few years, as things have gotten so, so tough for so many people, it seems like Mike has eased up inside. And he’s got less money every day. So figure that out.

Like yesterday. He calls and says, “Yo! I figured it out! ”He never says hello. He just starts talking. He also says “What if” a lot.

“What have you figured out Mike?”

“What if the point was to thank God for the things that are hardest for you?”

Now personally that sounded like a load of religious crap. But I let him talk.

“For Marisa and me, it gets tough sometimes. We’re always the ones that are a little bit different. Always standing on the outside. Not quite like everyone else. It’s hard for us to feel be belong. Anywhere we go. But you’ll never believe what happened. Just now. I am driving past I saw this big huge open field smack in the middle of the city. Just now!! And the open field made me feel like I belong!”

“And you are calling at 7:15 on a Saturday morning to tell me this why?”

“It’s incredible. I’m driving down Larabee. And 5 years ago I couldn’t drive through here without getting shot! It’s where Cabrini Green used to be.

I just dropped Marisa off at work, turned around to come home and I’m going through these open fields. There is nothing here. And I’m thinking, “Oh my God. Anything can happen here now. Anything. It was like the open fields became possibilities. And a possibility is something that can include anyone.

“Not following you Mike.”

“Listen Cousin John. This open field here reminded me of you. Of Wisconsin. You think you lost, right?”

“I know I lost.”

“No you didn’t. You won. Because what you got up there my favorite Cheese Head pal, is a big open field. Just like this one. You got people who care. You got people who were fooled, so now they are mad. And you got people waking up to what’s really important. You got people waking up to what it means to take care of each other! You got a possibility. Just like this field!

“ I got no union Mike.”

“John, you got people ready to rebuild one. To stop voting against their own self interest just because some whack job tells them too. You know what you got now John?

“What?

“ Possibilities. Like an open field. You got good things.”
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQOCdE0E64o]

First, there was the faint, distant smell of a chocolate croissant warm from the oven on a busy corner in Chicago. A blue-sky day. Spring maybe just around the corner. And not a bakery in site. Just the smell.

The Borders Book Store. Empty shelves. Selling off fixtures. Wrinkled rows of greeting cards for holidays we never needed. Splattered stacks of books like stains on empty boxes once crammed with our culture, our memories, our dances with dreams.

He smells that chocolate croissant again. Picks up a book laying face down. Back jacket blurbs by Carl Reiner, Larry Gelbart and Kinky Friedman. Thinks, “Geez. Whoever wrote this had some high powered friends.”

Opens it up. Starts reading. Laughs out loud 3 times in the first 5 pages. People shoot him looks. Bad form to laugh at funerals. The epigram at the front of the book,

“Boy meets girl. So what?”
-Bertolt Brecht

He turns to the cover. “Millard Fillmore. Mon Amour.” The author: John Blumenthal.

He walks up to the skinny, pierced cashier. A sentry for the funeral party. And as he starts to hand the book over to be scanned, and gets his money out, there is this tiny flicker of motion that runs down his arm and into his hand and he does not want to let the book go. Silly. He hands it over. Gets it back. And as he clutches it tight, walking out of the store, there is something like a binding electrical current between his hand and this bound together sheaf of paper. A connection almost physical. Brought alive through the turning of the pages.

He is an admitted Kinddleholic. Imagines meetings in dank church basements. Faceless people sitting in a circle. “Hi, my name is Roger. I’m a Kindleholic.” The droning chorus from the group.

“Hi Roger.”

The 30 second thrill of a “book” appearing in his hands late at night. A transaction so quick you almost forget money is involved. He likes the Kindle a lot. Like he likes chocolate éclairs. And, as he walks away from the empty shell of what once was Borders, west past what once was Barnes and Noble, the touch of the real book. The feel of the paper. The completeness of that bond begins to take him away.

He again smells that chocolate croissant fresh baked in the wind and he’s no longer on West Diversey in Chicago. He’s in the 5th arrondissment in Paris’s Left Bank.

This time in Paris it’s different. Twice before he’d been to Paris. Both times alone. But this time, this time, he finally got to go back in love.

“This is it!” he tells her. “C’mon! This is Shakespeare and Company! Can you believe it! It’s like it’s always been here. Like it was waiting just so I could show it to you!” It’s a bookstore that never went away!

He reigns in the excitement, careful not to reign it in too much, and start blathering on like a bored history professor. “This isn’t the original one that Sylvia Beach started. The one where Hemingway, Joyce and Ezra Pound and well everyone,” he pauses to make sure he’s not babbling, “the one where they all hung out.

Sylvia Beach. She was from New Jersey you know. Imagine being the person who published Ulysses. Imagine writing Ulysses! Bringing it in here. Little guy from Ireland with really thick glasses. I wonder what he said when he first handed Sylvia Beach the manuscript?’

“This is really hard to read?” she laughs.

“Hah! Could be.”

“So why isn’t this the original store? What happened?”

“Little thing called World War II.”

“That would do it,” she says.

“But then they came back. After the war. Another guy. George Whitman. He opened another English language bookstore in 1951. And when Sylvia Beach died, this store got the name. “Shakespeare and Company.” And a whole new generation of writers. The Beats. Corso, Ginsburg. This is where they hung out. This building? It goes back to the 16th century. It was a monastery.

“That’s perfect,” she said. Then for uncounted hours, the two explored the bookstore that came back. Their journey through the store was like a chance to pick up history and hold it in your hands.

And as the lapping waters against ancient stone riverbanks of the Seine faded, the Paris sky turned to dusk. As wine and a smoky jazz bar up on Montmartre where the saxophone memory tunes of Coleman Hawkins calmed the coming night; Paris faded.

Back on a Chicago street, he passed an empty storefront.

Looked inside and envisioned a new Shakespeare and Company. Stocked the shelves. Swept the floors. Made it into something that would last. Even through World Wars.

An empty storefront in the Chicago spring.

“I wonder if I should talk to my commercial real estate friend,” he thought.
How can anything break the bond with the book? How can that just disappear? Shakespeare and Company came back. So you can come back.

I know retail. I know independent bookstores in general are hurting. I know starting up an independent bookstore now would be crazy on about 15 different levels.

Of course the printing press was pretty crazy in its time too”

But then he smelled that just warmed chocolate croissant again. And he thought of the song by the great Bonnie Koloc. That song where she started:

“I’m gonna look out my window.
Gonna let in the sun.”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8b92Wgqo70]

Danny says, “So I guess the way things are today is kill or be killed.”

His tone like someone saying, “And yes, I’ll have coffee with that.”

He’s not throwing a rock on a Libyan street, planting a mine in the Afghan dust, starving slowly on a grey Chicago Boulevard, or even being told to sit down and shut up in Madison Wisconsin. He sells cars. There are two dealers in town. And the only way he can get customers is to take them from the other guy. What he really needs to do is close the other guy down. He needs to do this to survive.

He’s not complaining. Asking no one for pity. A funny, good guy in his fifties. Long solid marriage. Health. Blessed to have kids. He’s worked for every dollar. If you asked him about his politics, which I never have, he’d probably tell you he was conservative, but the question wouldn’t really interest him. Because so many larger questions loom like a cloud of orange acidic dust raining down upon a wasteland of broken American dreams.

Why are all but such a thin sliver of a few, struggling to survive?

It just wasn’t supposed to be this way.

Lori writes back, “I’m O.K. But I’m like most of us, living on fumes.” Lori is a published author. One who has walked alongside more than one giant of our times. But these days Lori is living on fumes.

It just wasn’t supposed to be this way.

In a billion tiny moments, the struggle now not to thrive but to survive plays out. Chicago is hit by a massive blizzard. My three neighbors start shoveling out the alley that runs behind our houses. I’m not there. But when I get there I see that they have shoveled all the snow into my yard. Blocking my, access to the alley. Confronting them all with “Why would you do that?” The first answer I get back is; “Well, we had to have somewhere to put the snow. Shoveling out the alley was really hard!”

So I ratchet up the discussion. One guy gets it. He says, “I wasn’t thinking, I’m sorry.” Which gives me hope cause now the issue with him is closed. Sometimes I don’t think either.

The second neighbor says, “I was thinking about my kids. And was mad at my husband because he wasn’t helping.”

And the third neighbor doesn’t even see the problem.

Livin on fumes.

Tim writes and says, “There are certain words I’m just going to have to take out of my vocabulary.’ Words like ‘retirement.’ As if the need to even use the word is gone.

Sarah stands up in church and asks for a prayer because she’s a teacher, under attack. In one of the richest school districts in the country. The district has no money problems. But their boss is up for a bigger job. So he has to show he’s raising high today’s most popular smokescreen, ‘the deficit.’ Got to make those budget cuts. Her boss has got to show that he can cut budgets with the best of them. Even if there’s no real need.

Sarah’s world gone sideways. Because the one thing Sarah really doesn’t know how to do is defend why she’s a teacher. “The thing I really can’t understand,” she says like she just lost something but she’s not sure what it is, “Is why they’re attacking our level of education? They’re telling us we’re not very smart. I’ve got a masters degree and I’m almost done with a second one.” And the real question, ‘Why she even needs to defend herself?’ goes missing.

A million tiny pinpricks of kill or be killed.

So you look for a road. Some way out of this descending cloud of just surviving.

Something that can take you to the lost substance of why you’re here. A way to leave this place better than you found it. Something to lift you above “kill or be kiiled.”

You look for a road. Maybe that road is a wild clear stream under an endless blue sky where the salmon run wild. Maybe it’s a room where something you did our said changed something. Helped someone. Maybe you made something. Cleaned something. Took care of something. Maybe your road is the freeing power that comes with the revelation that none of this is really yours, the relief of knowing that you’re really not the center of it all. Maybe your road comes with forgiveness.

As many different kinds of roads as there are people.

Your road more important now than ever. When it’s all about kill or be killed.

You find a road.

Maybe a road that goes right by your home.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjNSmAl7hF0]

He taught bosses. Peter Drucker was his name.

Ever wonder if it even matters anymore how good a boss you have? It matters. Right? A bad boss can make a person’s day feel like it was spent skipping down a carpet of coarsely ground glass.

But in the cube farm, big lie fueled world of corporate temples of power and greed where you work—if you’re fortunate enough to still work anywhere—does the question “What makes a good boss?” even matter anymore? Do good managers even matter?

Imagine knowing the name of the person who invented “management.”

Two empty eyed, men standing at the confluence of the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers eons ago. The desert sun is going down. It’s starting to get cold. And the guy with the big stick says to the guy with small stick, “Hey! YOU start the fire!”

Was that Big Stick Guy the first manager? What would he say about bosses today?

In our time, Peter Drucker, is credited by many as being the gold standard in painting the picture of just what it means to be a good manager. Page through any of the countless books on management, those books people buy and no one reads, and chances are you’ll see the name Peter Drucker. No matter how wacky the theory (‘Manage By Green Tea Vapors’, ‘Management-Shamanagement: How I Stopped Reading Stupid Books, Made Great Salami Sandwiches and My Deli Did Pretty Good’ or even “The Nano-Second Manager: How to Manage Without Ever Caring’) somewhere there is a mention of Peter Drucker.

My friend Sam once told me what it was like to work with Drucker. Sam and I would talk early in the mornings, before anyone else would come in to work, in the one room basement of what used to be the Iroquois Theater in Chicago. Now the damp and barren, tables pushed against the wall, computers that continually crashed, “borrowed’ software ‘war room’ of a retail startup. The Iroquois was the site of one of the worst disasters in Chicago history. 600 people either burned, crushed, suffocated, stampeded or were killed by jumping from a third floor hallway on to the bodies already piled up in a back alley when, like the Triangle Shirtwaist fire in New York City, there was a management decision to lock the doors from the outside and a fire broke out.

So the aura of that basement was grim. But Sam’s stories were real.

Drucker was a strange guy, he told me. He was a consultant to a big company in Texas where Sam was the CFO. And every month, for a morning, Drucker would come in and he just talk with a bunch of the leaders of the company. “It never seemed,” Sam, told me, that he was saying anything all that magical. It was all a lot of common sense. But he had a way of making you want to listen. And he listened. And so we’d have these conversations, and then everybody would get up, say goodbye, Drucker would leave and we’d all go back to work.

Then the funniest thing would happen. Maybe a few days, a week later, I’d be doing something, and I’d think of something Drucker had said. And I’d try something different. Could be anything. But I’d try something different. It’s like I was somehow THINKING differently.

As if I had more respect for everyone I worked with.

And whatever I was doing worked better.

Whatever I was doing worked better.

Yesterday afternoon an old friend, someone I had hired in the last century, called to ask for some thoughts on how to handle a struggling employee. One of the threads of my work has always been to be what used to be called “management or leadership development.” A practice that is now akin to being a blacksmith. Especially for someone in their extremely late forties. No one pays for coaching leaders anymore. Perhaps all that’s left of Peter Drucker are his books.

Our phone conversation was wonderful. I pictured myself as a baseball player going back for an old timers game. Scampering in from third base Ron Santo style, whipping off an off balance throw to first and beating the runner by a mile.

When she said, “I knew if I called you, you’d know what to do,” I was a little bit more alive.

But I wondered if I was also an antique sepia toned photograph stuck in a box of old pictures, crumpled and dry in someone’s dusty attic.

In an era of raw multi-national corporate power and negotiations seeking solely to destroy those on the other side of the table, with the resulting massive lay-offs or power shifts that can blow in like winds smelling of sulpher, in a world where no one really even invests in developing leaders anymore, where the engagement of a person with their work ranks up there in importance with who we buy our paper from —– does the notion of management, the notion of a good boss, of mutual respect, really even matter?

Or are all the decisions made so very far away, as if they are being made by the forces of nature themselves, that simply being a good boss means about as much as what time I’ll eat lunch.

Is the respect for who we work with still here?

Birget lost her six-year-old son in the winter of 1855 when the root cellar out back of their cabin collapsed and he was crushed under the snowy wind weight of a blizzard in Ephraim Wisconsin that they still talk about today.

She had sent him for a clay tub of sweet cherry preserves. It was just the two of them. She and her book-reading son. Why there was just the two of them, a story on it’s own.

A story that didn’t matter to her community. Because in her community, she was accepted.

The community was a tiny group of Moravians, a Christian group, living by the words:

In essentials unity

In non-essentials liberty

In all things love.

Their search was simply for a place to bring those words to life.

In the grey sky snows of February 1853, their leader, Rev. Andreas Iverson and 3 companions walked east from the tiny outpost of Green Bay Wisconsin. Treading across the ice of Sturgeon Bay and up through bare tree Indian trails, they found their place on a hill over a breathtakingly pristine bay. They called the place Ephraim.

In the spring, Birget, protecting her tiny son, and the community that protected Birget followed.

And as the community took root, Birget lived as a protector of the community. Whether it be the winds, the hunger or the mysteries of the sickness that swept across the community, she would be the one with the root berry teas, the breads, the brute strength to lift the logs in place and then seal off the cabins from the winds. With raw physical strength when she built, with just knowing what to blend when she cooked, and with knowing how to make the cooking fires simmer and roar, with a laughter that spoke to the warm winds of spring and endless tunes she would hum that somehow protected even stronger than the walls, Birget was a protector of the community.

But on that February day, it was noon, the sky was bright as it snowed, that February day when the root cellar collapsed and took the breath of life from her son, there was nothing she could do to protect.

There was only the wail of her sorrow. Echoing through the trees. Some in the community say that it seemed her cries never stopped. Even after she died in the very next frost you could still hear her cries. Years later people in the community say that they could still hear her cries. Cries that prompted prayers of comfort to continually be sang to the heavens.

In essentials unity

In non-essentials liberty

In all things love.

There is a winding hill that leads down into Ephraim and the Bay. Today it’s Highway 42. Back then it was a trail. But the stars that light the way are the same. Even after 153 years. And it’s right there on that hill, where if you listen very, very hard, there are still times you can still hear her cries.

Sometimes in the dancing starry night you can even see her. Chugging along. Off to protect. Off to soothe. Off to be strong. To lift the heaviest of logs if they will keep out the winds that chill her community.

And if the fever pitch of the world’s woes hit their boiling point, she will even leave that hill and shimmer into the souls of those who also try with all their might to protect.

Like that time in Madison.

Birget never belonged to a union. She never was a republican or a democrat, she never manufactured stories of deficits to divert the attention of anyone from anything. She simply would not know how.

But she does know evil.

In the beaten, desolate, too many beers every night auto worker from Janesville who has struggled on for three years now and just the other night was thinking of his favorite movie. “It’s a Wonderful Life.” The part where the evil banker Mr. Potter was offering ten cents on the dollar. And how maybe what the governor was saying in dismantling the union wasn’t all that bad.

Nothing else has worked.

And Birget saw the evil in the rivers of money flowing into the collective rivers of Wisconsin to grow the idea that the thing most harmful to the almost poor are those wretched souls who are very poor. Then lighting the fires of that fight.

Perhaps the very worst evil of all. Evil masked as reasonableness. In the calm, well fed, never missed a meal tones of columnist David Brooks, poisoning the minds of the reasonable by saying, “Private unions are OK because they fight shareholders. But public unions fight taxpayers.” So maybe we ought to take a nice gentle look at public unions. Before we crush them, bury them, suffocate them just the exact same way Birget’s six-year-old son was crushed when that root cellar collapsed 153 years ago. Birget sees as clear as the sun on Ephraim Bay that the goal here is to crush the community. The community that builds. That feeds. That flourishes. That serves.

Birget absorbs these words of pure evil and she starts to wail. She then starts to sing.

It’s a faint cry. Most in the Madison capital don’t hear it. It’s a tiny sound in the background. But then it starts to get louder. And suddenly there is more energy for the fight. That fight that is for nothing less than community. That fight that says: In essentials unity.

And suddenly it’s not just in Madison. It’s a spark. A tiny spark. To the desolate. The discouraged. And it starts playing like a song in every American community.

These forces of evil will not give up.

But Birget the protector won’t either.

So she starts singing loud now. A song that came after her time on earth. But a song she knows well.

Birget sing loud enough for anyone who cares to listen.

And she doesn’t tell. She doesn’t advise. She doesn’t quote a made up fake number. She asks a question. One from the song.

“What force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one?’

And this Labor Day Ghost keeps walking. She’s still here. Waiting for the next line to be sung back to her.

For the community makes us strong.

Or at least 2 of the 14. I wish I could say where in Chicago this happened. But I promised I wouldn’t. But here’s how it happened.

As I walk in, there are only two guys at the bar. I give them space. Sit a couple of seats down where I can look out the window. It’s a neighborhood place. Named after an old folksinger whose kid once got busted for littering. Pretzels and mustard on the bar. Good beer. And one of the guys is saying to the other, “We should have stayed up at Chocolate Fest in Rockford. Or whatever that was. I love the Clock Tower Inn!

So I said, “You guys aren’t from here, are you?”

One of the guys laughed and said, in an accent that rang straight out of the north woods of Wisconsin, “Oh, not hardly!”

“What are you two doing in this part of town? Most out of town folks stay down in the loop,”

“Well, we figured that as long as we were in Chicago, we’d see Wrigley Field!”

“Good choice. You guys probably staying at one of the big hotels downtown, huh?”

“Well,” said the guy with the accent that made me think, ‘this guy is gonna ask me if there is any good ice fishing nearby’ “We are actually staying at the. . . . “and he gave the name of the hotel.

Smart choice if they wanted to not attract attention. “So let me ask you a question. You guys wouldn’t happen to be 2 of the Wisconsin legislators who left the state, would you?”

“Well, you know, we really can’t go into that.”

“I’m taking that as a yes,” I said

“Now I guess, I don’t know. You’re not some reporter or something are you?”

“God knows I’ve tried. But the only real reporters here work for the Chicago News Cooperative. And they haven’t hired me.”

“Maybe we better just. . . so you don’t, you’re not in the media or anything like that.”

“Well I have some blogs. One to use for selling a book. One that gets a couple hundred readers and a third one that gets about 5 readers.”

“OK!” they both laughed. I guess you’re alright then. If you write about us, don’t give our towns or names. And put it on the blog that gets the 5 readers!”

And we talked for the next hour or so. What was behind all the posturing by the governor. The passion in the crowds. The history of Wisconsin. Fighting Bob. I told them I wrote about that but it didn’t get featured where I wrote.

“Of course not! One of them said. That’s always seen as yesterday.”

“Yeah, but it’s not. It’s today,” said the other guy.

“So let me ask you guys. A lotta people say that what you did in leaving the state was cowardly. You guys left other people to fight. I mean, I know you’re going back. But still. Why didn’t you stay?

And the larger of the two guys. He paused for a minute. Then he said to me.

“You go to church?”

“Well, yeah. I guess. Most times. Recently, I’ve gone back.”

“You ever hear the phrase, “’turn the other cheek?’”

“Of course I have! But sometimes, you gotta fight. Sometimes you can’t do that! Sometimes. . .” and then he interrupted me with this.

“What if turning the other cheek was NOT a passive act?”

“I don’t understand. . .”

“Think about it. What if turning the other cheek was not a passive act? Let me give you an example. Now what’s the name of this bar?”

I told him.

And then he said. Same name as the man who wrote one of the most famous songs in the world. And you know there’s another verse to that song, Not usually sang in schools. But the same man did write it. You know how it goes?

‘Was a big high wall there

That tried to stop me

A big sign painted

Said private property

But on the back side

It didn’t say nothing

“Cept this land was made for you and me.”

“So you’re saying. . .well you said it. Sometimes turning the other cheek is not a passive act? Sometimes there is something written on the back of the wall? Sometimes you gotta step away to step forward?”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

“You guys got some important work to do,” I told him.

“We all do,” he smiled. “

And the three of us lifted our glasses, and said in unison.

As if we could forever not be scared,

To fighting Bob La Follette!

As Bob LaFollette got up in that wagon to speak in 1897, “The Wisconsin Idea” was already coursing through the blood of the German immigrants who stopped to listen. The war on those most vulnerable was already going on. And if the people in this photograph somehow had the power to peer into the future, perhaps they’d gaze at February 2011. Right now. Today. And think to themselves, “Will this war ever end?”

The Wisconsin idea is so simple that it’s greatest danger lies with those who skim over it so fast that they don’t really absorb what it says. The Wisconsin idea envelops public policy, education and politics. But at its heart is this little pearl, the commitment “to insure well-constructed legislation aimed at benefitting the greatest number of people.”

Bob LaFollette was “The Wisconsin Ideas’” greatest advocate. And if he were still with us today, he would be the one at the front of the battle lines, drilling into the minds of even the most rabid, drooling dog barking at the legions of American’s least likely to take care of themselves—all those imaginary “welfare mothers,” all those fictionally lazy “unemployed”, the sick, those who serve the government, the military, the war veterans, —drilling into their minds that the drunken sailor spending that got us here simply will not be paid back by those least able to afford it.

“Ensuring well constructed legislation aimed at benefitting the greatest number of people.”

LaFollette would be pounding the message, the Wisconsin idea, in ways that made “The twitter” quiver and Facebook tremble.

Because the guns aimed at this idea represent an even greater threat than the negotiations over who gets how much money, the ugly slanderous talking points aimed at government public servants, and all the sleazy, “big lie” internet messages that foul the telecom highways of the world like litter out a car door that forever remains on the side of the road every single time someone presses “Send” and extends the life of another piece of garbage.

Here’s why—when you kill an idea, you kill the origin of the thinking that kills the possibility of a better future. In doing so, you kill everything from a healthy life, to a roof under which you can sleep, to food on your table. You kill conversation, honest debate, and at the very end of this list: you kill the potential for leaving the world better than when you found it.

Yesterday, thousands joined the protests in Madison, the state capital. The newly elected Governor issuing a statement saying, “It’s simple. We’re broke.” A much easier statement to swallow than the rest of the story:

So what we’re going to do about it is first demonize public employees and take away their collective bargaining rights. If you want me to be direct? We’re gonna crush the unions. We will dance on the grave of Bob LaFollette. We will take aim and start carpet-bombing the Wisconsin Idea. With visions of shock and awe. Because if we can crush the vulnerable in Wisconsin. we can do it anywhere.

The Wisconsin idea. “Legislation benefitting the greatest number of people.” Note what is not in that phrase.

Nothing about class warfare.

Nothing about republicans and democrats

Nothing about the media or the sex and drugs and payoffs to congressmen.

Nothing about The President causing all the problems.

The Wisconsin idea. Currently under attack.

What would Bob LaFollette do? Attack back? Bite a blogger? Tweet somebody? Keep quiet and do nothing?

Or perhaps ask the question,

Can you really kill an idea?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PX7M9psH0rM]

Hordes of middle aged men pushing shopping carts
Like herds of wind whipped buffalo

Streaming through gleaming grocery store aisles

Of the American plains of retail sorrow

Baffled by the question,

Is this all?

Is this all?

Men who push shopping carts

At 10:00 a.m. on a Wednesday morning

Study the cans of tomato sauce

As if they were the next big deal.

Men who push shopping carts

Eyes cast down.

Fumbling through coupons clutched tight

Comparing price points

Wondering why we still need Swiffer sheets at $10 bucks a box

When there is no shortage of rags.

Men who push shopping carts

Out of supermarkets and into alleys.

Plopping open garbage cans to pluck out aluminum

And whatever else they can,

Men who push shopping carts

Their parade numbers swelling larger.

Dressed in the grey dark tones of winter

None of them warm enough

All of them thinking

Once I was

And

Sometimes in winter

As they motor all the carts to the Food Pantry line

Like they were once again commuting in some timeless rush hour traffic jam.

And a report was due, or a deal done or a widget rushed into production and there were complications so they had to make the call or send the e-mail and be sure to not miss the kids play or the soccer game because you have missed the last six.

Men leaving shopping carts lined up outside.

In line for the meal.

And the lady behind the counter that hands them the food is ninety one years old.

She is just one of the broken, imperfect crowd

Trying to figure it all out together.

But as she hands one man, one plate

Surrounded by their brothers and sisters

There is a life light the flickers in the one man’s eyes.

A light that darkness just can’t put out.

From that flickering light

Without any reason or measure or creation of their own

Men who push shopping carts

Still envision

One fine morning.

One fine morning.

In the bleak midwinter

Men without shopping carts can see one fine morning.

Flickering in the eyes of a 91 year old woman

Handing them their plates of food.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvVN_KRriTM]