Author: Paul Deaton

I haven’t written about how qualified and competent Joe Biden is as our president. He is uniquely qualified to be president, especially right now. That I haven’t written about this may be due to possessing that certain Iowa bias based upon his three dismal appearances in the Iowa caucuses, including in 2020. I don’t blame him for axing Iowa in the nominating poll position. No one asked for my opinion. He is successfully holding back the forces of authoritarianism and fascism.

While returning to writing my autobiography it’s immediately clear: I have a lot of work to do. Given the limited window of October 2023 to March 2024, what work will I do? I need to get Part II framed up with main events so I can later hang details upon it.

The early part of a life is easy to describe because during education and early work experience, a single thread can tie everything together. That’s less the case as a person moves on to next steps, which may include marriage, a family life, relationships, work, and pursuit of health, welfare and happiness. I wrote previously about this and what I said then holds true. Part II is to describe the life for which I spent 30 years preparing.

A related process is going through boxes of belongings and downsizing. Partly this helps focus on aspects of the story I might have forgotten. Partly, the unused detritus of a long life should be passed on to people who might use it today. This is better done by the owner than left to heirs. Our child doesn’t want all the stuff that fits into our house, so I would be serving her interests by processing it now. For a while, I’ll be going through and eliminating possessions, keeping what best fits the story as it evolves.

Lastly for today, I need to set aside a specific time of day to write. That’s likely to be after I finish morning tasks and eat breakfast. I hope to settle into my desk by the eight or nine o’clock hour and write until noon.

Thanks for reading! Make it a great day!

For three weeks after graduate school in May and June 1981, I visited a number of friends. The trip took me to Springfield, Illinois; Columbus, Georgia; Fort Rucker, Alabama; New Orleans; and along the Mississippi River north through Vicksburg Mississippi; Portageville and Ballwin, Missouri; and then home to Iowa City. It was the last trip after finishing my education and before applying said education to my life. I had no idea how things would turn out.

The trip was unlike the Grand Tour I made after undergraduate school. Since then, I had served in the military, lived in Europe for three years, attended graduate school on the G.I. Bill, and moved through degree preparation like a fish swims through water. Two artist friends brought a bottle of champagne to my place and helped celebrate my graduation. We discussed audiences and art. How much are artists influenced by their audiences? Should they be influenced? I believed then, and more so now, a writer must concern themselves with an audience. In 1981, I had no art, little public writing, and no concept of audience other than people who held a certain undefined social status.

Each place I went held vestiges of antebellum life. From the black housekeeper of an IRS worker, to racist attitudes among my former Army buddies, to a local culture where the next Ku Klux Klan meeting was all the social buzz, it was everywhere I went.

What struck me more than anything was the ordinariness of people I met. People stood at odds with the American culture I know. Or maybe, they represented an American culture I hadn’t come to know. While Lincoln’s bones rest in Springfield, the living there seemed unprepared to take up the unfinished tasks of the dead. Instead they participated in a culture devoid of life as they performed old, well-patterned ceremonies of living that had lost their meaning by 1981. My trip was a hard reckoning with reality.

Near Columbus, Georgia I visited a place that today is called Historic Westville. The ticket I bought is printed with the message, “Westville. Where it’s always 1850.” Westville is a fabricated village made from buildings built before 1850 and moved to what was once an open field. It was to represent the zenith of cultural life in the antebellum south. People who had visited Colonial Williamsburg would be disappointed by Westville, yet the designers did the best they could. Attendance was slight the day I visited.

In one building I met a period costumed woman who showed me an example of home spun thread. There was a spinning wheel and she showed me how it worked. However, despite the knowledge, she didn’t know how to make homespun herself. I found something about this disappointingly characteristic of modern day Americans. We may know the ideas behind how things work, to actually do such work, to put ideas into motion, is a step too far for many. Americans, above all else, must practice those things they know are important. When it came to equality under the law, the south of my trip failed to measure up.

After finishing my long education I had to get going in life. I felt an urge to put into practice what I learned during the first thirty years. I knew then I couldn’t be like some of the friends I encountered on this trip south. What I would become was both unknown and an open book. As much as any other time, I began writing that book in 1981.