Author Archives: wendywelch

The Monday Book: THE LONG WINTER by Laura Ingalls Wilder

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I found THE LONG WINTER at a thrift store, one of my first fun outings in a year involving non-socially-distant hiking. The title looks different when you’ve emerged from your chrysalis, post-vaxx and post-winter weather, to go do something with a friend.

Most American school children read this book before they graduate middle school. As a child I had the boxed set and devoured them over and over. It’s a little odd to read them as an adult and realize how much sweetness hides some truly terrible things.

Last night I read LONG WINTER in one sitting. How did I miss that sense of threat that pervades every chapter, as the family ticks down from the last of the butter to the last of the milk to the last of the flour to the last of the potatoes, to the last of the burnable fuel? The dawning realization of the townspeople that the train was not coming, the train that was their literal supply line, anchoring them out on the prairie with the safety of coal and already-ground wheat and other “new-fangled” things like kerosene. Ma’s ingenuity at producing a button lamp from axle grease. Pa buying the last two cans of oysters in town for Christmas dinner. The hay sticks that they burned as fast as they made them; twist hay to have the warmth to twist more hay.

And the darkness. The robbery that Pa participated in to get the supplies he came home with.The dying of the lamp on Christmas Night. The inability to buy flour or lumber at any price because “Banker Ruth bought it all.” What happened to Banker Ruth when winter was over, one wonders?

The heroism of Almanzo and Cap, going to buy wheat from a man in the middle of nowhere, is offset by the fact that Almanzo walled up 150 bushels of wheat before they left. So no one could ask him to buy it.

It is a different book as an adult than as a child. I’ve observed there are several rewrites and washouts of these American classics over time, based on racist overtones and the charming overwrites of things like being illegally in Indian territory, or quite possibly murdering a railroad employee, etc. You know, these are still American classics. Just, now that I can see what wasn’t meant to be visible to children, I appreciate Wilder’s two-layer genius in writing all the more. She told the whole story, twice at the same time, for two different audiences. Gonna go back and read the rest of these now.

Yep, American classics: fear, prejudices, frontier justice, snowball fights, family spirit, and all.

How Will we Know?

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It was a rough year, and the time isn’t up yet. How will we know when the pandemic is over? Good question, one that will see many answers, but hopefully not too many false finishes resulting in further irresponsible deaths from maskless wonders and “it wasn’t real” hard cases. (A girl can dream.)

Perhaps the biggest question is not “when will we get back to normal” but “how can I help now that so many people have gotten hurt?” Those harms will linger, be they financial or family loss.

Friends in mixed circles of right-wing-first Christianity worried about The Great Reset, an idea pushed by a billionaire with a big mouth but not a lot of influence. He said now was the time to rearrange society along more equitable and sensible lines, do away with cash, globalize in governance as well as markets, and other things that set the heads of apocalyptic-prone thinkers spinning.

The Great Reset isn’t gonna happen, because politicians understand: why fix society when you can make a LOT of money prolonging its problems? But can we have a whole lot of small resets? My priorities changed this year, some for the better. I’m praying for guidance on how to re-enter, and the wisdom to know what to keep, what to alter in the new habits I’ve learned from this year. We are reopening a world that won’t so much be even a new normal as a rag-tag amalgam of people who just want it all to go back to the way things were–many of whom were forced into new ways of living–and people who used this time for a small reset. Oh brave new world, to have such diversity in it. Help me learn to value, honor, and uphold the rights and needs of everyone in it, Jesus. I’m listening. Of all the things You have ever redeemed, let pandemic time be one of them, so the lessons learned aren’t wasted within those who learned them.

This year taught the difference between privilege and guilt. I had money and a continuing job working odd hours, which gave me options for taking up new leisure crafts like decoupage (which has become my new thing). I didn’t have child responsibilities and I own land, so became a whiz bang grow-your-own and then preserve it by canning. I discovered how much I enjoyed these activities. Guilt over privilege at these options, no; responsibility for having them, yes. Giving away food and (decoupaged) furniture. Writing the book about Conspiracy Theory came from a sense of accountability: I knew people who knew a lot about the subject, and we had access to publishing. Time to offer back. Which can sound conceited, but it’s also what you’re supposed to do. If you know what’s going wrong, say so. If no one listens, you did the right thing. If a lot of people listen, you did the right thing.

I remember watching a reporter and a photographer who covered the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, showing photos to a small group of New York City attendees at a posh bookstore. The reporter said something about going out to the valley after the battle for the photos and on the way back to the hotel getting stuck in traffic and sweating so bad she couldn’t keep her headscarf on, etc. Joking with the assembled listeners. A woman wrapped in a beautiful shawl in the air conditioned room stood to ask, after all this horror how can you joke, how can it be just a job to you?

The reporter had clearly been asked this before. She said, in essence, I have to have a life. I share what I know as a surrogate for others who will never walk into these situations, and when that is done my job is done. I don’t live my life in guilt that I’m not one of those bodies; I do make sure people understand any one of us could have been one of those bodies.

This affected me. Guilt is tiring for the person who carries it and of no comfort to those who need things. It is a useful fake virtue signal among people who want to push agendas. As the slow reopening unfolds around us I am asking Jesus to guide me in life, responsibility, and ignoring fake signals in favor of the true, small reset opportunity before me. That is all.