Part of our job is to continuously point to heros, and to constantly renew issues that have been buried by complacency and BS. We are gadflies by nature. Here's to a current heroine who does both these duties with grace. My apologies for the length of the follwoing forward.

A

From: Dennis Burke <burke@amug.org>
To: azcc@getnet.com
Subject: Granny D at 90 years, 3,000 miles
 

Dear Friends,

Doris (Granny D) Haddock celebrated her 90th birthday and her 3,000th mile
walking in Cumberland, Maryland this week.  On Monday, she was mobbed by
hundreds of Granny D! chanting school children and townspeople as she
stopped at Cumberland's historic train station to speak from the back of a
caboose. The town provided birthday cake for all. The town of Winchester
sent its finest traditional musicians, Kindred Spirits, who filled the old
station house with ancient aires played on pennywhistles and hammered
dulcimers.  Also present were news crews from Japan, Germany, England, in
addition to US crews. Her remarks to the crowd are printed below.

After two days of rest, during which the worst snowstorm in four years hit
the area, Doris Haddock put on cross-country skis to continue her trek to
Washington. An historic canal, the C&O, happens to run from Cumberland to
Georgetown--near the heart of Washington.  Along the side of the canal is
the old tow path, which is right now covered with snow. Doris did six miles
of it yesterday.  A bit less than 180 miles to go.

Dennis Burke

Ps. Check out the high school photo of Doris that turned up at the
Cumberland birthday party: http://www.grannyd.com

-----------------------------------------------------
 
 

DORIS HADDOCK'S 90th BIRTHDAY SPEECH

January 24, 2000, Cumberland, MD
 

Thank you all very much indeed. What a wonderful birthday this is--here in
the exquisite setting of historic Cumberland, Maryland. It is such a treat
to be in a place so much older than myself.

President Washington, I have learned, was here in 1794 to review the
federal troops sent here to discourage a little rebellion called the
Whiskey Insurrection--a disagreement over the advisability of a tax on
distilled spirits, levied by the rather new federal government.

President Washington noted this in his diary: "After an early breakfast we
set out for Cumberland--and about 11 O'clock arrived there... I passed
along the line of the Army; & was conducted to a house, the residence of
Major Lynn of the Maryland line... where I was well lodged, & civilly
entertained."

Well, I know how he felt.

That residence, by the way, is just over there, across the way. You see how
the past is cherished and respected in Cumberland.

How much more than buildings must we cherish and respect the institutions
that provide, after long and bloody years of defense, our freedoms as a
self-governing people. I am headed to a city where those institutions are
being sold for scrap--a place far downhill from here.

But before we depart from this place, let us look around at the beauty of
America. Let us look at a town where there is no other way for public
servants to be except honorable. If a mayor or constable or executive of
such a town as this should sell out the interests of his townspeople for
the sake of a campaign contribution, a career would be over and shame would
come to a family. This is the real America. Down the hill is another
America, where there is no shame, and where the buying and selling of
America's interests are not called bribery though that is what they are,
and where the stealing of real power away from what we founded as a
government of, by and for the people is not called a coup or a treason,
though that is what it oozes toward.

So we Americans stand here no longer concerned about the tax on our
whiskey. We can bear that; we can drink to that. But we cannot bear the
greater damage that is being done to us by far more intoxicating poisons:
power, money, and prestige: distractions that blind the vision and poison
the souls of those within the Beltway in an epidemic of disdain for the
American People--whom they take as a mere market for their political
products.

A flood of special interest money has carried away our own representatives
and our own senators, and all that is left of them--at least for those of
us who do not write $100,000 checks--are the shadows of their cardboard
cutouts. If you doubt it, write a letter to them and see what rubber stamp
drivel you get back. For all we know, they might all have died ten years
ago and the same letters continue to be sent out.

Now, standing here on the back of this charming caboose, why would I spoil
my own birthday party with a bunch of politics. Well, because I love
politics and this is my party.

I love it to death and I shall love it to death. It was the dinner-table
meat and potatoes of my wonderful, 62-year marriage. It is what we talk
about on Tuesdays in my little town, at a thing we call the Tuesday Morning
Academy. It is what self-governing Americans must hold in steady
fascination and endless conversation if we are to be free.

My husband Jim died several years ago after a ten year struggle. At the
end, he said that he was ready to go and that he did not want any more food
or water. It took him eleven days and nights before he was successful. My
son Jim, my grandson Raphael, sat with him at night and I held his hand
during the eleven heartbreaking days. After ten years of caregiving, it is
difficult for an old wife to adjust, especially when the mate was such a
sparkler--such a person of light and life and red-blooded activism. He was
fun. And how to you wake up each morning in a world where the fellow you
would run to with a new thought to share is nowhere to be found? Where he
does not answer your call through the house?

My dear friend Elizabeth died too, shortly after Jim, and also after a long
period of caregiving that did wear me out.

I am not trying to make anyone feel sorry for what happens in a long life.
All things end. But I want to say something important about it, and that is
why I bring it up. I stand here on the tail end of a caboose. And so it was
when Jim and Elizabeth were gone. Life seemed very much over--all the
picnics, all the hikes, all the frosty ski trips. I was deeply depressed
and I know that many people today are in that same place. And what I want
to say to them, and to all of you to remember for that day ahead when you
think you are standing at the end of your life, is, damn it, don't give up
the ship.

I know I am mixing my transportation metaphors with trains and ships, but
it is my 90th birthday and I have just walked 3,000 miles and I shall mix
metaphors all day long if I please.

For those of you who have lived a long life and think your are finished
with it, I tell you that, if you will pray for courage and look to the
needs of your community rather than yourself, a great energy and happiness
will come to you. Indeed, your community needs your wisdom and your
patience. Your family needs you, too, whether or not they believe it. Your
country needs you.

Friends, look at this country, our genius republic--this great sailing
vessel we have built that we might find our way to the future together as
free and equal citizens, as friends and partners in self-governance. Though
it is two and a quarter centuries old, the paint still smells new some
days, and the flags still snap in the wind. But what a price we have paid
for it! I do not have to remind you of the rows upon rows of marble stones
that mark the sacrifices our friends and our children and our fathers and
their fathers have made to build this great craft and keep it safe, do I?

But now--in a time when people are so stressed in their lives and are so
unaware of what it means to truly live well, to live free, to live with
enough leisure and confidence to be the stewards of their own lives and
communities--in this time, we strangely find ourselves having to explain
why it is a bad thing if mulitnational corporations control our elections,
and why it is a bad thing if our elected leaders no longer represent the
interests of the people.

I know that some of these people just need to be awakend. We can do that.
We can show them a future they will want. But there are others who know
very well what has been lost in this nation over the last few decades and
they have lowered their fists slowly in despair. To them, to my generation
and the generation younger and the generation older, I cry to you,
please--don't give up the ship.

Work with us to return our self-government to the human scale. Help us
defeat those Members of Congress who will not take even the first step
toward reform, which everyone with a brain and a soul knows is the simple
act of outlawing the huge soft money contributions that now flood elections
with special interest money and special interest obligations.

We care nothing for the taxes on whiskey, because they are nothing to us
anymore. We pay $150 billion dollars a year in extra taxes because tax
breaks are being sold for campaign contributions, and we pick up that tab.

Where do we march to make a fight of this? Not against our government, but
against those inside and outside of it who have set up their cash registers
in our temples of democracy. Where are they? Downhill from here in a place
that smugly dismisses the rage of Americans.

Let them become suddenly uneasy. Let them notice that the birds and the
dogs are strangely silent. Something is brewing, and it is called an
election. It will be the last one for many of them. I pledge myself to
that, and I am full of energy yet and full of years.

Thank you for helping me celebrate one of the great days of my life--I know
that many of you have come a very long way. Let's adjourn to make our plans
for Washington, and have some cake together.

------------------

Information on her arrival in Washington: http://www.grannyd.com/dc.htm

Recent posting after a BBC interview: Dear Granny,  I am British, not an
American, but your address to your people in Dearborn on July 23, 1999,
made me an American in spirit. What is happening in America is happening
everywhere, but unfortunately most people feel powerless to change it. Your
optimism is wonderful and I sincerely hope that you can help to change
America, because America was founded on the hope of creating a New World.
We are all waiting for that New World. May your dream sow the seed of
regeneration in the garden of our minds. Peter Preston, Zielona Gora, PL, -
Wednesday, January 26, 2000.