Category: Writing

The hardest part of beginning in 2025 is overcoming entropy. In part, extended yet short-term separation from family contributes to it. In part, the unknowns of our politics do too. There is the warming planet, aging, pressures of a fixed income, and not enough time to do everything I want. I guess this blog post is to say I need to write through it.

I have little to say about our politics. The best advice I’ve found has been to not assume anything and wait to see how the Trump administration unfolds. With the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, the president-elect is better organized than he was in 2017. The U.S. House already looks to be mass confusion. The U.S. Senate has an old guard of Republican octogenarians upon whom we count to control the reins on the president. If Grassley is any guide, I don’t hope for much. We won’t really know how things will shake out until they do.

2024 was the year I got more views on this blog than any previous year. I looked through the posts and the attraction is unclear. The post after the high school class reunion got some interest. The post about buying a saucier was popular. Most of the top posts were written in previous years. Going forward, about what should I write? These things:

• As I write part two of my memoir, some of those chapters will find a home here. Partly this is drafting and re-drafting the narrative. Partly, if the content seems timely, it’s a way to get it out there.
• There will likely be another high school class reunion this year. If there is, I’ll post photos from it here again.
• 2024 was the year with the hottest global average temperature on record. As extreme weather hits locally, I expect to cover it.
• There will be a few book reviews.
• There is a Nov. 4, 2025 school board election. In the past, few journalists covered it, so I did. We had a couple of cycles where there was great interest in the school board election with multiple candidates. I’m not sure how that will shape up this year, but if it is interesting, I’ll cover it.

That’s all for now. It seems like another slow day in Big Grove. I hope to make the best of it.

The year ended with a series of warm, foggy days around the lake where we live. The unseasonably warm temperatures are not good for anyone except the garden insects who might survive another season.

My spouse and I are sharing our one DVD player while she is with her sister in Des Moines. Sunday I hooked it to the television and began watching five movies by Michael Moore including Roger & Me about his efforts to speak to General Motors CEO Roger Smith after the company announced it was closing plants and shedding tens of thousands of jobs in Flint, Michigan.

I made many trips to Flint after GM plant closures started. Ostensibly, those trips were to recruit truck drivers yet it was more than that. One day I found some hiring information in my papers and counted the number of prospective truck drivers I personally interviewed between 1987 and 1993: more than 10,000. My work was at the cutting edge of American business moves to reduce costs, in the case of the people I interviewed, by laying them off. The experience changed me forever. I haven’t been back to Flint since we moved to Big Grove Township in 1993.

The scenes Moore depicts in his films are too “special.” While the stories are believable, his method of selection and framing are transparently peculiar: made to make his point. It is as if he searched for the right setting and characters to film the way a writer tries out words and phrases from their tool box on a page. In one scene, President George W. Bush advises Moore to “get a real job.” Whatever these films represent, they are in the mainstream of progressive messaging.

It was good to revisit these films over the holidays. I’m ready for 2025. As local writer Paul Street wrote in his recent substack, “Get ready for some serious shit and struggle!”

I look forward to seeing what 2025 brings and have already begun creating things to endure after I’m gone. Let the work of resisting the new regime begin, while making something positive from our lives.

Christmastide is to settle in and regroup for the coming year. For me, the season lasts from Christmas Day until the Feast of the Epiphany, which is slightly more British than I am. Before retiring, I had to work either on the holidays or during the festive season. There are no such requirements this year.

Planning for next year takes the form of a to-do list revised from last year. The broader topics include gardening, writing, home and yard maintenance, physical health, and a short list of specific, short-term or continuing projects. Items like cleaning, cooking, and daily chores just fall into place without being listed.

Mostly, I want to keep going.

With the family split up this Christmastide, whatever I do will mostly be on my own. If I can get a start sorting the accumulated stuff in the lower level, that will help with writing my autobiography. It seems as good a place to start as any. As the weather warms, I’ll work in the garage and outdoors more. The next couple of days will be taking it easy and resting for the surge of activity in the new year.

Consider me on holiday until Monday, Jan. 6.

Rain is forecast all day. I resisted the urge to leave home and go shopping. I avoided on-line shopping places as well. I’ve been reading more than usual and am developing a meal plan for the rest of 2024. I’ll be home alone a while longer as my sister-in-law gains confidence in post-surgery living. I look forward to the return of my spouse.

I feel pretty healthy today. That sentence is not always true.

Story ideas have been percolating. All of the new ones require research and developmental thought, so I started a blog post for each and pasted in relevant information. I don’t feel like finishing them. I expect a visit from the muses when it is time.

During the holiday trip I considered my next book. The working title is “Memoir in 25 stories,” although 25 seems like a low number. I want to cluster selected events in my life around specific places to be built out with historical information and memories. Those places include where we lived, significant work sites, and places we visited. For example, I call one place “The Calumet.” It is the land bordering the southern part of Lake Michigan in Illinois and Indiana. It will take some explaining to depict what I mean by the place name. In describing it, I set the scene.

Partly, the book is about what our family did. There are also major themes in which I have broad experience: breaking the unions beginning with the PATCO strike, the destruction of the post World War II society, and changes in workplace. It will also be a story of how people can be creative in a society that has limited interest in such work-product. I will focus on my writing, and partly on educating a child to be creative. I think there is a useful memoir in all this. Now I must revise the 62,000 written words to fit the new paradigm.

I attempt to stay positive as it rains. It is hard to do, so I work. The dishes are all done, the laundry is folded and put away, and the resonances of this difficult year vibrate my core. I may be living a life yet I feel I’m just skidding into 2025 while unable to gain traction on things that matter. I’m hoping and working toward a better year.

Editor’s Note: This post was taken from one on Sept. 21, 2010 and revised. The message about what it means to be a writer seems as timely as ever. In 2010, it was a revelation.

A writer in the 21st Century writes at every opportunity. Spending a life writing a dozen novels has become a thing of the past. The interaction with readers is more intimate, direct, and often. An email, a book review on Amazon.com or Goodreads, a blog post, a letter to the editor, an opinion piece in the newspaper, a technical article, a poem, or a work of fiction, all carry equal weight in how they take up a reader’s attention. Add in social media, and there opportunities aplenty to write.

Readers have plenty of material in which to engage. The diversity and abundance of available writing is a proximate cause of the low number of books Americans read each year. We are using our eyes and ears to take in information constantly, just not reading books.

As the number of writing venues exploded, the ability to generate revenue was diminished. There are a few folks who capitalize on this multitude of writing opportunities. However, constructing a view of where they fit into the life of a writer who writes for wages is both customizable and unlikely. Earning a living wage primarily from writing is as difficult as it has ever been.

Yet the writer’s life is something to which to aspire. The quiet of morning and a few hours typing at the keyboard is important: an organized effort to bring order to a chaotic world with words. In a world where corporate media reminds us constantly that in order for our consumer society to maintain growth, we need to get out there and start buying things: consume the consumables.

A 21st Century writer lives close to the means of production. The idea of buying anything that does not serve our indigenous subsistence or our writing is outside the ken. Many contemporary writers don’t fit well into a consumer society.

Unawares, I have been developing an approach to writing that includes many media. I hope to refine my approach and continue my writing voyage, hoping it produces recognition for what it is among readers, if not a living wage. That this approach is uncertain is accepted. Inherent uncertainty is a risk worth taking.

In search of a decent cup of coffee, we turn from Thanksgiving Day leftovers to the promise of a happy end of year holiday season. This has been a special time since I spent a lonely few weeks after arriving in Mainz, Germany in mid-December 1976. Through the years the loneliness diminished. Part of this month is reflection on the immediate year past and planning for the next 12 months. It is a time to slow down and enter into a tribal time.

20 of 25 copies of my book are out among early readers. I need to conserve financial resources, so that will be it for now. The next decisions are what to do next: print more, publish it on various on-demand platforms, or take another whack at editing. I need to reserve a few copies until I make a decision. Finishing the book was the major accomplishment, so I am in no hurry to take next steps.

I cleared off a 42″ x 31″ space for a memoir writing table. On here, I will go through boxes of artifacts and store items in immediate use in the writing project. It may not be enough space, yet it will serve the purpose for now. The next memoir task is to re-write my outline and go through the manuscript. I sense many of the 65,000 words already written need revision. If I’m lucky, I can finish some of that work before the new year.

Our family is scattered about this December. My spouse is helping her sister recover from surgery, our child has their own life in Illinois, and I am in the Grove holding down the fort: conserving energy, eating out of the pantry, and doing things to improve my health.

I ordered tomato and cucumber seeds. The best varieties sell out, so I want to get them delivered early. There are plenty of cruciferous vegetable seeds leftover from last year. I’m not sure what else I need. Because 2024 was a punk year for gardening, there is more prep work than usual to get ready for spring planting in the ground. I’ll place another seed order once my December pension payment hits the bank account the fourth week of the month.

The rest of today is going through files, papers, and magazines stacked in my physical inbox. I suspect some things were missed. That’s par for the course with so much going on in this life. The snow makes it feel like winter, yet it is not that. The lake is freezing over, yet tomorrow ambient temperatures are forecast in the 40s. One day at a time while living in Big Grove Township.

2024 was transformational. I feel like a different person today than I did a year ago. It is hard to describe, yet I feel more engaged in life than I have been, with a different attitude toward creative projects and mundane household chores. Four big things happened this year.

In August I published An Iowa Life: A Memoir. It brought closure to the autobiography process in a way that encourages me to finish the second volume. I have more confidence with part one finished. I had no expectation of that.

My spouse has been gone helping her sister for much of the year. Besides earlier extended trips, I delivered her in late August, and except for coming home to vote, she has been there since. My sister-in-law has been recovering from surgery and is not ready to live on her own. Neither am I, but I take stock in the fact that the situation is temporary. That commonplace “absence makes the heart grow fonder” is true in my case.

The coronavirus found me in August and on the 29th I tested positive for COVID-19. I wrote about this. While I’m much better, some aspects of my health remain affected. Specifically, my glucose level spiked and my liver function is out of the normal range. I am privileged to get great medical treatment. We’ll see how it is going next check in with the physician. Whatever permanence there may be to the condition, I hope to able to live with it. I didn’t think I would ever die, until I got COVID.

I’m reconnecting with old friends. My high school class decided to have a reunion this year, so I spent time organizing attendance. It also seems like we are getting the band of social activism back together. We need to mount resistance with conservatives taking over our governance. Politics in this election affirmed what I saw in 2022: the old way of running a campaign is obsolete. No one I know identified the new paradigm… yet.

These four things combined made 2024 a very different year. No more of the commonplace issues of finance, gardening, reading, and cooking in plain sight. I found the end point for my autobiography in my infection with the virus. While a number of normal concerns fell off the radar, I like where this post-COVID life is going. It is a great place from which to enter 2025.

Listed below, in descending order by number of views, are my top ten posts thus far in 2024. Statistics from Blog for Iowa and Journey Home were combined in the tally. Each item has a link to the original post.

My review of Nancy Pelosi’s memoir of her time as Speaker of the House was most viewed. Click here.

My review of Barbara McQuade’s Attack from Within. Click here.

House District 92 candidate Ana Banowsky’s story of being a delegate to the Democratic National Convention. Click here.

Reporting on Julie Persons’ campaign to become Johnson County, Iowa auditor. Click here.

Interview with Iowa House Democratic Leader Jennifer Konfrst. Click here.

Reporting on the poorly attended 2024 Iowa Precinct Caucuses. Click here.

I bought a three-quart saucier and wrote about it. Click here.

In the face of insurmountable pressure to withdraw from his presidential campaign, I wrote “Progressives Stand By Biden.” Click here.

“Nuclear Power Isn’t It” provides an update on the lack of progress with regard to nuclear power generation. We should look elsewhere for power. Click here.

I wrote a remembrance of childhood friend and neighbor Katie Tritt. Click here.