WCW Community 2011

House Appeal - December 2011

  As I am writing this, it is early November. A community member commented after morning prayer about the beauty of the intricate frost designs on the windshield of a car. The maple tree outside Bethany House's front door is quickly shedding its foliage, the brilliant yellow leaves cascading down and covering our front sidewalk with their magnificence. Yet as I delight in the beauty of this season, we in Minnesota know all too well what lies ahead. Those without a roof are panicking, knowing that campsites and vehicles will soon no longer provide adequate shelter from winter's harsh conditions.

  We are so very blessed to have Bethany House (for single men) and Dan Corcoran House (for families and single women) in our Winona community. It is always a privilege to be able to welcome a stranger asking for housing. The hope of both volunteers and guests is kept alive by our wider support community who keep the houses running. 

  We are grateful and humbled by your sacrifices and outpourings of money, food, meals, hours of service in cleaning, maintaining, fixing, and let's not forget --- washing dishes! We have been uplifted by the generosity of time and skills given during last summer's work week. This year we were able to replace the furnace at the Bethany House. We also completely gutted and reconstructed my bedroom after an unfortunate plumbing problem from the upstairs bathroom.  And the blessings continued this fall with a successful barn dance/fundraiser and replacements of desperately needed appliances at the Dan Corcoran House, thanks to the generosity of our extended community. 

  We have so many reasons to be grateful here at our houses of hospitality. Perhaps the most significant change in our community this year has been the addition of four new live-in community members, which has allowed us to reopen the Dan Corcoran House. We are blessed with their commitment, energy, hospitality, and compassion.

  Yet the needs of those who come to our doors are overwhelming. One Monday, not so long ago, we received numerous phone calls from women, families, and men in desperate situations, all in need of shelter, food, and friendship. One of those calls was about a single mom with three young children sleeping in a car. And as the temperatures have dropped, someone who’s been camping nearby told us of his fear of sleeping outside as winter approaches. Yes, the need exists right here in our community. We are grateful when we can help, when a bed or room is available.

  Recently we have seen a dramatic increase in numbers for our evening meal. We are grateful to be able to feed so many --- again, with your generosity.

  As always, we try to be good stewards of the resources given to us and to live a simple, frugal lifestyle. The thermostats are turned low to reduce heating costs; we worked at a local vegetable farm this past summer in exchange for fresh produce; we canned and froze vegetables and fruit this year; we are now making our own laundry detergent. We recognize all that is given to us as gift and work hard to keep our expenses low.

  Looking ahead to 2012, our anticipated needs are the usual high cost of heating both houses during the winter months, a general increase in expenses with both houses now open, a constant need to replenish our pantry shelves, and stucco repair and painting of the exterior of Dan Corcoran House. We also hope to replace some windows in the next year.

  Peter Maurin desired “to build a society where is it easier to be good”. That is also our desire for our houses of hospitality. Can we count on you this year to help make that happen? We invite your kindness and compassion to enter our homes and the lives of our guests through your prayers, friendship, presence, and donations. We rely on God's providence working through you to keep our doors open. We thank you for allowing us each day to see the loaves and fish multiply to feed the hungry.

A Day on the Border

by Dan Wilson 

 My alarm clock rumbled at 4:30 a.m.  It is just barely light as the sun rises in the Sonora desert, about sixty miles south of Tucson Arizona, and twelve miles north of the U.S.-Mexico Border.  The morning couldn’t come soon enough after a night of fitful sleep on a slowly deflating camping pad.  Didn’t use the sleeping bag again; it dropped to a stuffy 80°F overnight.

  I roll out of bed and put on the same threadbare pants, praying that they will hold together for at least one more day and hopefully the rest of the summer.  It hurts to put on my shirt.  Two weeks’ worth of sweat has dried to a hard crisp.  I open my tent, and turn my boots over upside and shake.  Luckily, no scorpions this morning.  I crawl an extra three feet to duck under the prickly mesquite trees I put my tent under.  With my headlamp on, I do the same morning chores that I have done for months.  Water in the large stock pot, water in the gallon pitcher.  Oatmeal in the pot, coffee in the pitcher…more coffee in the pitcher. 

  I look in the kitchen tent for the broken lighter, and flick at the propane for several seconds.  The heat from the flames is another unwelcome reminder that it is only going to get hotter today.  Someone said 115°F this week. 

  Oatmeal on, coffee boiling, I tune my banjo and play “Cripple Creek” as loud as I can, walking around the camp.  About 20 other young volunteers perform the same ritual:  roll out of their sleeping bag, tent, or the back of the truck they have been sleeping in.  We all meet at the plastic folding tables next to the kitchen tent twenty minutes later.  With bowls of oatmeal and large cups of coffee in hand, we begin to have the same conversation that we have been having all summer.

  “When was the last time people went to Ruby East?”

  “Three days ago”.

  “How about Apache?”

  “How much water did we bring there last time?”

  “Twenty-five gallons, I think? And about 8 cans of beans.”

  “We saw a lot of footprints at Murphy’s Well last week.” 

  “What about Deadman’s Drop?”

  “We only find slashed water bottles there.”

  “Did you bring them up the trail, up that really steep hill?  Border Patrol won’t climb that high, you could try that.”

  In this conversation I have another surreal moment, which seems to make up the majority of my summer.  This group of twenty idealistic volunteers is responsible for trying to save the starving, dehydrated, and injured masses migrating north through the unforgiving Sonoran Desert.

  Thirty minutes later it is decided.  Four groups will go out on “patrols” and “water runs.”  Three people will stay back to monitor the patients in camp, and to give the “Know Your Rights” talk.  We also need to monitor our patients’ blood pressure.  No More Deaths doctors in Tucson are worried that the 50-year-old couple staying in camp has ruined their kidneys’ ability to filter blood.  During the summer, you need to drink a gallon of water a day, just to keep your body working.  They were both in the desert for three days without anything.

  We drive out of camp in large, scraped, bent, loud, old and awesome four-wheel drive trucks, each loaded down with tired volunteers, hiking packs, lunches, crates of beans, medical packs, and about thirty-seven gallon jugs of water. For the next hour and a half we drive over dirt roads that I would feel uncomfortable walking over, listening to an old cassette of John Prine.  We pass one or two locals driving into town, and about eight white-and-green Border Patrol “dog-catcher” trucks.  Instead of a bed in the back of the truck, they have a low-ceiling box with bars for windows. We drive through yellow mountains; they’re not yellow with sand, but with blooming Mexican Poppies.

  Our GPS tells us we are in the right place.  We all hop out of the truck, load our backpacks with as much water as we can carry, and then throw in cans of beans.  We follow our GPS down a hill and into a ravine.  My thighs are burning; my knees feel abnormally shaky underneath ten gallons of water and my med pack.  I am blinking twice as fast to keep the sweat out of my eyes, and I realize that not five minutes later, my shirt is once again soaked in sweat.  We navigate down into a ravine, which makes me regret carrying eighty pounds of water.  In the bottom of the ravine, I see the most beautiful sight I have seen during my entire summer in this magnificent and deadly desert: thirty empty jugs of water, and twenty-five empty cans of beans!  In the watertight bucket that once held packets of food and socks is a note scribbled on the back of a bus ticket to northern Mexico: “Thank-you and God Bless you very much.”

  The most conservative estimates show that at least five hundred people a year die in the desert, on the American side of the fence.  Since 1994, we have been pushing people out of the cities, off the roads, and into the bleak, burning desert.  Almost eighteen years later, the reality of the Border is changing.  We are not closing our Borders to drug smugglers, job-stealers or terrorists.  We are closing the door on those trying to go back to their lives in the U.S. 

  According to a recent survey of those recently deported to Nogales, Mexico, the average person deported has lived in the U.S. for 14.4 years, and has 2.5 children still living in the states (70 percent of these children are citizens).  Of those interviewed, 70 percent said they would continue to cross the border until they make it back to their families.  The trip into the United States consists of a three-day hike (usually done at night, running); about three thousand dollars to a coyote (or human trafficker) who will leave you for dead if you lag behind, or kidnap you if you are unable to pay; and interactions with Border Patrol who WILL (99.7 percent of the time) hit you, deny you food, water, and medical care, take your belongings, and make you as miserable as possible for the 48 hours you spend with them (NoMoreDeaths.org).  After this, you will go to court and spend up to nine months in the worst jails in the country. 

  Still, the human spirit survives.  Still, people make the journey for their children, spouse, family, and almost never for their own sake.

  One of the miraculous things about the desert is its ability to cut through all of our preconceived notions about “The Immigration Issue.”  Theories about free trade, Border militarization, and national security no longer seem relevant when you meet someone without shoes who has been lost without food or water for a week.  There is one truth given to us from the desert.  We are killing our neighbors.  We are killing ourselves.

When Bankers Rule

When Bankers Rule

by Peter Maurin, 1877-1949



Modern society has made the bank account the standard of values.


When the bank account becomes the standard of values
the banker has the power.


When the banker has the power
the technician has to supervise the making of profits.

When the banker has the power
the politician has to assure law and order in the profit-making system.


When the banker has the power
the educator trains students in the technique of profit making.


When the banker has the power
the clergyman is expected to bless the profit-making system or to join the unemployed.


When the banker has the power
the Sermon on the Mount is declared unpractical.

When the banker has the power
we have an acquisitive, not a functional society.  

Live-in Volunteer

We are always seeking people who want to do the works of mercy in the context of community.  Live-in volunteers of all ages welcome women, familes and single men in need of food, shelter or friendship at our two houses of hospitality. If you think you might be interested in becoming a live-in Catholic Worker volunteer, check out our Join Us section.