October 2004

Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC.

Home Truths

Jim Walch offered these reflections on a visit to his longtime home in the US. He now resides in Stockholm, Sweden.

When you've been away a while, you see the changes. Out on my evening walks in small-town Wisconsin, I notice that many more people have their shades pulled down. I'd been away since Easter 2001.

In the shops, even casual conversation turns to health care. I guess I'm at that age when this seems like a natural topic. My peers get a little soggy-eyed when I tell them I live in a place where national health care for everybody actually works, at about half the current costs in the US.

In the small talk I sense the insecurity. I hear the newspeak. At the Post Office, I take a "Get Ready Now" flyer from the US Department of Homeland Security, and ponder the sound of this. "Homeland Security" seems like a poor translation of "Heimatschutz." Whatever happened to "domestic"? Anyway, the flyer tells me to make an emergency supply kit. Just in case. Something like when we hid under our desks in grade school, jut in case. Apparently this helped since we never did have a nuclear war.

I need some new shoes, so I walk down to the square and buy some at the Shoe Box. Since I am also looking for a cell phone card, I decide to try them out and hike the mile or so out to the Farm & Fleet. Of course it's a bit eccentric to walk these days, especially when you have to do so on the road since there aren't any sidewalks. And all those worried looks at the box tucked under my arm.

People are scared. But of old shoes? Why didn't Europeans, even after the recent train bombings in Madrid, panic themselves into extra-constitutionality? It took the Spanish a bloody civil war in the 1930s and decades of fascism to work out the democratic social contract other countries worked out peacefully: welfare systems that provide security for everyone. This is especially important for bringing down levels of structural insecurity, allowing citizens to withstand all those other fearful events that occur in life. Europeans, through their bloody history, have learned that they are not invulnerable but have to live at ground zero.

Inspired by the Homeland Security Initiative, I put together a survival read-ing list for family and friends. First on my list is It Can't Happen Here, by Sinclair Lewis in 1935. Out of print. I visit my favorite used bookstore in Madison, hoping to find a copy to leave behind. When I explain that it is about a fascist takeover by the religious Right in the United States, I receive the dry reply "it would not be under Fiction." Back in the small town, my sister and I walk down to the Carnegie Free Library. I always wondered what the "free" meant. Free as in "free beer" or free as in "free thought" and "free speech"? Now that we're getting registered for what we read, I guess it means just the former. But we request this scary book anyway.

What now? Time to cut the grass again and I have to pack my bags. The high school band marches past, comfortably out of step.

Coming home again, lugging my bags in from the car, I see that my Swedish daughter is related to her aunt in Wisconsin: she's put out some old shoes as flower pots, geraniums and pansies on the stairs. And yes, airport security did tear my shoes apart. But I have some good glue.

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