Keeping the Pan Hot: Notes from an Ordinary Democracy

This is a two-part meditation on protest, perseverance, and the everyday labor of democracy. Some stories open with thunder. Mine began in a gentle drizzle.

On a rainy Saturday in Newtown, I stood with neighbors, umbrellas open, feeling something shift in our small town. Back then, I had no idea that morning would stay with me—a memory I started to revisit as the year went on. The first essay tries to capture that day: the Quaker seniors, a young mother holding her daughter's homemade sign, the steady beep of car horns on the bypass, and the quiet truth that freedom isn’t promised—it's practiced.

A year later, I drove by the same location, but with a clearer sense of purpose. More people joined. The stakes felt higher. And I started to understand what it means to stay alert in a place that sometimes drifts off. The second essay begins there—deeper into the weather—this time cold and sunny—deeper into the effort, holding on to the belief that regular people in regular towns can still demand better.

These essays are a meditation on a citizen's life: thoughtful, a little messy, and grounded in the idea that democracy is something you care for every day, with whatever you've got.

Thanks for reading, for caring, and for standing at the stove with me.

Part I: Day of Protest: As Freedom is a Breakfast Food

On a rainy Saturday last April, I pulled on my old denim jacket, laced up the beat‑up Nikes that have carried me through more chapters of my life than I can count, and stepped out into a soft drizzle. A few hundred of my Bucks County neighbors were already gathering in front of Representative Brian Fitzpatrick’s office—a man I’ve voted for, admired, and disagreed with in equal measure over the years. We weren'tisn't there to shout anyone down. We were there because something in us insisted that democracy still depends on ordinary voices showing up on an ordinary Saturday.

At first, the crowd looked comfortingly familiar: older white women in sensible shoes and rain jackets, the kind of people who have spent a lifetime showing up for PTA meetings, food drives, and school board elections. A group from a nearby senior living center told me they were Quakers; their signs were simple, earnest, and steady—much like their presence. Then the circle widened. A young mother arrived with her daughter, proudly holding a hand‑drawn sign declaring Donald Trump a "big meanie." A college student admitted she should probably be studying for finals, but felt pulled here instead. Grandmothers were on their phones, coaxing reluctant family members: “Honey, the parking isn't awful. Just come.” And slowly, in the mist, they came—filling the shopping center with umbrellas, chants, and amidst the steady hum of car horns from the Newtown Bypass.

Watching the crowd gather, I found myself thinking back to the first protest I ever attended—Richard Nixon's second inauguration. I was young, idealistic, and armed with a press badge from my college newspaper. Washington had prepared for us with military precision, corralling protesters into side streets where we could chant but not be heard. My uncle—a corporate lawyer—in Potomac had sternly warned me not to get arrested, then spent the entire day waiting by the phone in case I did. I returned home with a notebook full of quotes, a friend's roll of photographs, and the sense that protest was a kind of civic apprenticeship—messy, imperfect, but necessary.

When my friend and I assembled our photos for the college paper, I captioned the montage with a line from an E.E. Cummings poem that had lodged itself in my mind: "poem's freedom is a breakfast food.” At nineteen, I wanted to say that freedom is something we assume will always be waiting for us—like cereal, like eggs, like the small rituals that begin a day. Only later did I understand the poem’s warning: that freedom is not guaranteed, that it can be limited, hijacked, or quietly eroded while we're busy believing it will always replenish itself.

I grew up in a conservative Catholic household where patriotism was assumed but never prescribed. My parents voted Republican, but they encouraged us to argue—loudly, passionately, and without fear of offending anyone at the table. Those debates shaped me more than any civics class. They taught me that disagreement is not a threat to democracy but one of its essential ingredients. Even now, when my siblings and I gather, no single voice dominates. We are a family that believes in the friction of ideas. And in annoying one another with maximum effect.

But what I see now unsettles me in a way that feels different from the political storms of my youth. I see guardrails that once felt sturdy beginning to wobble. I see policies that threaten the financial stability of ordinary families and others that chip away at decades of progress in health, education, and civil rights. I see a willingness—sometimes casual, sometimes deliberate—to undermine institutions that were built to outlast any one leader. For the first time, I find myself wondering whether the breakfast food of freedom might not be waiting for us one morning.

I am not the firebrand I once was. Age has softened some of my edges and sharpened others. I vote, I pay taxes, I speak up when I must—usually not too loudly, usually not for too long. I have always believed that democracy, like a well-worn path, would hold under our feet. But standing in the drizzle that morning, surrounded by grandmothers, students, and small children with handmade signs, I felt something shift. Maybe this time really is different. Maybe this time, showing up—however we can—is the only guarantee we have.

I don't pretend to know where this movement will lead. But I know this: silence is no longer an option. Not for me. Not for anyone who believes democracy is not self‑sustaining, but something tended, defended, and renewed by ordinary people who refuse to surrender their agency.

So, I will be there—somewhere in the mix of rebellion. Maybe with a sign, maybe with a pen, maybe with a voice that shakes but does not waver. Because freedom may be a breakfast food, but only if we keep making it.

And I intend to keep the pan hot.