A New Chautauqua
Doris Haddock was formally welcomed home in Dublin, New Hampshire on Saturday, April 1, 2000 by her townspeople. Here are her remarks for the occasion.
Thank you.
It is good to be home. My long walk took me through so many landscapes and communities that I often could not imagine that the parade of them would ever end. America is a very large place indeed, and yet it is a small town. We are a close people --closer in temperament and bound by a deeper friendship than we give ourselves credit for. We love being Americans more than we love being citizens of any town or city or state. We have not only our history in common, but our dreams. Our idea that we can all be free, that we can treat each other fairly with justice under the law, and that we might all find some happiness and prosperity together, is not the common condition or attitude of the world.
So I come home full of new admiration for our American family.
I am thankful for the encouragement of my townspeople and family, who supported the idea of my walk without regard to my age, and who allowed me to take my own risks. I am thankful to God for letting me come safely home. I am thankful to New England, for raising its children with businesslike severity so that we might be a little tougher and more courageous, and become, after long lives here, great connoisseurs and critics of beauty and of community.
I have not come home to die. I have come home to live robustly, pursuing my civic interests and my dream of a democratic republic where ideas, work and honorable service are the currencies of exchange, and where bribery is shamed into extinction.
Wherever I went across America, people were so glad to meet someone who just simply cared. They were happy to meet someone who had something to say but who was not running for something or trying to get some personal advantage from it.
If any of you would like to ever run for office, I will tell you that if you will cast self-interest into oblivion --to use a phrase from our original Iroquois Constitution-- people will follow you anywhere. What they are tired of, in all departments of life, is selfishness. There is no reason why an old lady walking down the road should have been so well received, except for the fact that it had been a long time since any of these people could go meet someone who was not a callow, self-promoting, snakeoil-selling political promoter. They wanted to shake my hand and wish me well, not because they thought I was something special, but because I was someone like them. Americans are not selfish. They are kind and full of a great spirit. They want and they deserve leaders who will cast self-interest into oblivion.
We Americans are idealists, but we are practical. We are not waiting for Gandhi to come walking down the path to represent us with perfect, unselfish honor. We will make the best of who we have, as we always do.
We have no perfect neighbors, no perfect family members, no perfection in ourselves, and we mustn't expect it in our leaders or our candidates. We must accept the fact that they do not suffer from low self-esteem. We must take them on as a project --like a woman takes on a man with potential-- and we must make something of them, especially if they will at least express their willingness to learn and to improve, and to deepen and widen their political souls.
The men and women who would be our public servants need mentors who have been grayed and wrinkled by long experience --a kind of Big Brother, Big Sister program for politicians at risk.
Perhaps we should bring these young people up here to summer camp and let them earn their badges in ethics and listening and, most importantly, in tolerance and leadership. They are not learning these things in political science colleges, so maybe we can teach them what they need to know here in Our Town, in New England, where we still remember how to be a self-governing people.
I have a spare bedroom for such campers, if they will come. I hope some of you do, also. Let us forgive them of their past political sins, down by the riverside of the people's politics, and let us teach them to represent our needs and our dreams properly.
And in the great tradition of the Chautauqua meetings, where Americans once gathered in their town parks to enjoy wonderful entertainments and hear great speeches on the issues of the day, let us begin a new Chautauqua movement here that might help return the human scale and the joy to our politics. From here, let it spread again across America, as it did once before, and let it be a place where candidates can communicate without cost to the voters of their communities.
I am glad to be home. There is no more important place in the world than one's home town. The heart of America beats in these places. It may be Greenwich Village or North Beach or Toyah, Texas; It may be Adams-Morgan or West Hollywood or the village of Hashan Khek; Wherever Americans are, they understand their responsibilities to each other and to themselves as a self-governing people. We must nurture those skills and encourage proper leadership. Let us, as a community and as elders, share what we know more generously.