I use a service called blog2print to make a paper copy of my blog. That is, I used them until Tuesday. In an email, they wrote,
All good things must come to an end
After delivering hundreds of thousands of blog and photo books over the years, it’s time for us to say goodbye. Before we close our digital doors on May 15th, stock up and save 50% off everything!
I ordered books of my 2023 posts plus everything through April 30 this year. I like having matching sized, similarly styled books of what I posted. That won’t be possible going forward, at least through this company. The books are for the inevitable day when I make my exit from the online house I built.
I renamed this blog Journey Home on January 20, 2020. On March 11 that year, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. Also that year, I made the last payment on our child’s student loan, and ended a long career of working for someone else to retire. 2020 was a year of change.
On Feb. 3, 2022, the governor extended the state’s Public Health Disaster Emergency Proclamation on Feb. 3, announcing it will expire at 11:59 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 15. After that, she said, the coronavirus became normalized in daily, routine public health operations. Whatever she said, the coronavirus lingers in society today.
It is time to re-brand this blog, not only to put the pandemic in the rear view mirror as much as is possible, but to mark a new purpose as I write. As I work in the garden this May, hopeful consideration will be given to what is next. The expectation there will be something next is the human condition. A gardener has confidence spring work will produce a fall harvest, and so it is with my writing.
I relish the changing patterns of life. It is possible to get too comfortable, so whatever the source of change, I expect and embrace it. While I don’t like changing how I save my work, I am also ready for the future… and to get the next garden planted.
The week began with planting onions: Patterson (yellow) and Blush (red). In a kitchen garden one cannot grow enough onions to support meals. In my case, the garden has been hit or miss in producing a good onion crop. After planting six rows, I threw up a temporary fence before heading indoors for the rest of the day.
Legislature Adjourns Sine Die
By 4:25 a.m. on Saturday, April 20, the Iowa legislature adjourned and could do no further damage to regular folk. Shortly afterward, the Governor issued a press release touting their accomplishments. What stood out to me was this paragraph about charter schools,
Charter School Expansion:Adjusts per pupil funding to support educational freedom opportunities and allows vacant or underutilized public school district facilities to be available for lease or purchase by nonpublic or charter schools. (SF 2368)
Gov. Reynolds Statement on 2024 Legislative Session, April 20, 2024.
If there were any clearer message Republicans are going after public schools, I don’t know what it could be when they make provisions for disposal of public school property.
Blog for Iowa
Wrapped up my work filling in for Dave Bradley at Blog for Iowa while his family moved to a new home. During this tenure, I wrote 38 posts on a range of topics. Most of them were cross-posted here so readers wouldn’t miss any. It felt good to write on a regularly scheduled basis. It also feels good to be free of the commitment as garden planting ramps up and my work on an autobiography enters a new writing stage.
A Late 50th High School Class Reunion
Our high school graduating class missed our 50th reunion because of the coronavirus pandemic. We decided not to wait any longer and are holding it this July. I volunteered to work the interface between the reunion planning committee and our fellow high school classmates. From my previous experience, it is the best job. I’m enjoying reading the emails with RSVPs and the contact it brings. In this role, I am privileged to interact with almost every classmate engaged with the school, whether they plan to come or not. I expect to attend the main event in July.
Political Event
On Saturday, the Solon Area Democrats hosted a Meet and Greet at the public library. Eight Democratic candidates who attended are running in the June 4 primary. In our county, the supervisor primary is usually the determinant of the general election outcome. There are five supervisor candidates for three seats this cycle. They are all decent people. This was our kick off event for the November election. I’ll have more comments about politics as the campaigns progress.
The pressure to get plants in the garden soil is on. On a related note, I’m running out of indoors places to put seedlings. Here’s hoping for a productive time between now and Memorial Day.
Photo by Jessica Lewis ud83eudd8b thepaintedsquare on Pexels.com
Garden vegetables overwintered: cilantro, spring onions, kale, collards, and garlic. The garlic grew where it was planted last year, so I will pull it before tomatoes go into that spot. Main crop of garlic is about 12 inches tall. The last order of tomato seeds, cucumbers and squash arrived via USPS on Saturday. The shift from indoors to outdoors work is evident this week.
Electricity Outage
On Tuesday a big storm rolled in and took the electricity out for a brief moment. It was enough to risk losing the edits I was making on my autobiography. Luckily, my computer saved my then current work in the browser and I was able to restore it, rename it, and proceed on. Losing a day’s edits is unwanted, but a writer can recover from that. Luckily, because of technology I don’t understand, I didn’t lose anything when electricity failed and the CPU and screen died.
Optometrist
This week I had my annual appointment with an optometrist for a diabetes screening. It is remarkable how many tests and the diversity of equipment they used for this exam. With a special camera, the attendant took a photo of my retinas. There was almost no change to note year-over-year. I’m clear for another as far as diabetes is concerned until the next appointment in 2025.
The optometrist has been mentioning cataract surgery as a future possibility for the last few years. The thing is, while I experience some vision deterioration, the amount of change does not affect everyday activities like reading and driving. If doc recommends it, I am going to delay until there is some kind of actual problem. The annual screening is fine.
He wrote a new eyeglasses prescription, which I will not fill because I like my current glasses and the improved vision they provide.
Robotic Approach to Health
I had a robo-call from my prescription drug insurance company. The machine left a message on my mobile device. When I called back, it was a robotic reminder I needed to fill my prescription, accompanied by warnings about following doctor’s orders. The pharmacy had some kind of robotic reminder system that previously prompted me to refill my prescription. The reason I didn’t refill was my nurse practitioner quit when the university bought the private hospital system. He hasn’t been replaced. When I called the temporary clinic the next town over to discuss, they asked me how many pills I had left. Because of the robot, I had plenty to last a couple of weeks. When I get down to five pills, I’ll phone so they can reauthorize.
In the meanwhile, I met with a group of pharmacy students who suggested an over the counter drug instead of what I was taking. I have been thinking of stopping the prescription drug and self-treating. Did the robots know, and hence their concern?
Mushroom Hunters
While walking on the state park trail I encountered some neighbors I’ve known a long time. They were off trail and I asked if they were looking for mushrooms. Spring Morel Mushrooms are a well-loved delicacy in this region. He answered that was what they were doing. I stopped walking and we talked. The drought is too much for the mushrooms to grow, we agreed. When I hit the turn-around point and returned, they were both gone.
Another Edit Pass
I see an opportunity to improve the draft of my autobiography. When I started, my main concern was getting a story framed on a timeline. Now that it’s done, I want to emphasize my development as a story-teller. I hadn’t envisioned that when I began. I made some changes to the first chapter and now need to follow it through to the end. It was like something nagged at me. Now I know what it was. With gardening season here, I’m not sure how the new edit will be worked into the schedule.
Bluebells, dandelions, double ruffled daffodils, and pear blossoms are in bloom. Spring arrived this week. Then, in a decidedly summery move, ambient temperatures rose above 80 degrees on Sunday. It has been a mixed bag of weather this week, yet I appreciate the blooming flowers.
Eclipse experience
Monday, April 8, was the total solar eclipse in North America. At our latitude, the eclipse was at 82 percent. I made a pinhole projector like I used as a grader to see the shadow of the moon covering three fourths of the sun. It worked just as it did in the 1960s. I also tore up old ground cover from the garden in the diminished sunlight during peak eclipse. No special glasses, no trips to exotic Missouri locales. I had the full Iowa eclipse experience, home style. We know not to look directly at the sun around here.
Onion sets and potatoes
Onion sets arrived via USPS on Monday, April 8. I need to get them in the ground. I’m waiting for the right combination of warm temperatures, no rain and no indoors work to do. The pressure to get them planted is palpable. They are laid out in bundles on newspaper covering my workbench.
Yukon Gold potatoes are planted in containers. I need to round up more dirt to cover them as they grow. A layer of mulch on top would help hold down weeds.
It is also time to assemble the portable greenhouse. These are all signs of the garden’s progress.
Let’s kill energy efficient home appliances
My member of congress spoke to the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which advanced H.R. 7637 The Refrigerator Freedom Act. She accused the Biden Administration of over reach. There was a tranche of related bills, including the “Hands Off Our Home Appliances Act,” the “Liberty in Laundry Act,” the “Clothes Dryers Reliability Act,” the “Refrigerator Freedom Act,” the “Affordable Air Conditioning Act,” and the “Stop Unaffordable Dishwasher Standards Act.” She asserted a form of logic that isn’t logic at all. It is an elected Congress doing the bidding of large-scale manufacturing firms. George Orwell couldn’t have written this script better.
The Pantry is Full
I skipped grocery shopping last week because the pantry is well-provisioned. Our main fresh foods are bananas, in season fruit, fluid milk, carrots, celery, onions and garlic. We had plenty to last until this coming week’s shopping trip. Our 2024 average weekly food and sundries spend is $111.47, so skipping a week of groceries helps with cash flow.
My spouse is helping family in the state capitol this week, so I made extra quarts of vegetable and bean soup to take on the trip. I used the last quarts of vegetable broth canned last year. This week, I plan to use some of the leafy green vegetables and celery from the freezer to make more. Using home made vegetable broth is a money saver.
Double Ruffled Daffodil, April 13, 2024.
I made good progress on my autobiography. As usual, it will be a rush of getting the garden in by Memorial Day. Maybe then, I can catch a breath.
I spent the last couple of days re-writing the end of part one of my autobiography. I am getting so close to finishing the narrative, I can visualize the printed book. Soon I’ll be proof reading for spelling and punctuation, setting margins, and picking a font.
It is the story I want to tell about my first 30 years. Some history, some background, some new writing, and many recycled passages from past writing. More than anything, the narrative is grounded in the reality that was my experience living through it. Writing chapter titles unleashed an avalanche that got this phase of the book finished six months earlier than I recently thought.
I can go into gardening season with the end of this project in sight.
Organic juice section at the grocer on April 7, 2024.
It was a punk week as far as weather goes. Rain and snow kept me mostly indoors. My exercise log shows more indoors workouts which are never as much fun as walking on the state park trail. I managed as best I could.
Women’s Basketball
Sunday I turned on the television and found ABC which was carrying the NCAA Women’s Championship basketball game. Iowa lost to the University of South Carolina 75-87. It was the first time I tuned into a college sporting event since I watched the Iowa football team get shutout by Washington, 0-28 in the Jan. 1, 1982 Rose Bowl. The moral of the story is I shouldn’t jinx the luck by tuning in.
Our high school class reunion planning group was talking about women’s basketball at our meeting this week. I suggested we find one of the women who were leaders in high school to lead the formal program we have planned. One person asked if we had a women’s basketball team. Perhaps there would be a leader from there. We didn’t. We graduated high school before Title IX was signed into law.
Editing the Book
I finished the final rough draft of the first 38 of 62 chapters in my autobiography. This thing may not drag on until summer. My conclusion is I have been over the text so many times, it has become the story. There were some chapters that needed work, but it is a much better draft than what I finished last year.
One lingering concern is including long passages from my journal in the narrative without editing. Some of that writing is a bit rough. When I started journal writing in 1974, I was not very good at it. My argument to myself is that it is better to show the work than sand off the edges in a new narrative. In part, that is to show my progress as a writer in a work intended to showcase my writing. The long passage I wrote in France was particularly rough, yet it serves as an example of how my journal writing started. For now, I’m leaving it in.
The other question is about passages written about long ago events since I started this blog in 2007. There may be a case to just rewrite these. At the same time, they capture a moment in time that would vanish should I re-write them. I left them in at this point.
End of Life Planning
I read Mary Ann Burrows new book, The Last Hurrah: A Living Workbook for a Happy Ending. The book is about end of life planning, but not the kind I expected. She defers to others the tasks of financial and legal advice and writes mostly about how to turn our last days into a celebration. If someone knows me, they know I am not a big one to celebrate moments or have a big to-do about life’s events. The biggest events in my life were our wedding and its two receptions, and our child’s high school graduation. We had gatherings for them. So many of my good friends have died already, I’m not sure who would be left and in good enough shape to travel for a celebration. I started keeping my own obituary a number of years ago. It is pretty bare bones, and that’s the way I like it.
Clear Organic Juice
I went to the grocer to find clear organic juice for my spouse. She wanted organic apple juice, which wasn’t available. In typical (for us) form, I started sending images of various ingredient labels and products. I offered to get non-organic apple juice. In the end, I phoned her and said, “I’ve been waiting in this juice aisle and am starting to get thirsty.” We gave up and I brought home boxed vegetable broth instead.
It was unsettling to be unable to dig in the garden because of inclement weather. The seed potatoes appear to be doing well, and the seedlings are growing. Here’s hoping the coming week find me spending more time in the garden.
Precipitation was forecast all day Wednesday so I did my exercising indoors. On Tuesday, I went to town and bought a Powerball ticket. I understand the odds of winning are against me. Most days I fail to match a single drawn number. Other days, I don’t buy a ticket. At least we can depend upon it snowing in early spring.
I’ve been working on our high school class reunion. We missed the 50th because of the coronavirus pandemic. We scheduled a 50th-ish reunion this July. The former classmates on the planning committee are all great.
When I think of high school, I return to the most dominant feature: the death of Father in an industrial accident on Feb. 1, 1969. Dealing with his sudden death occupied me during the remaining 16 months of school. It was a brutal and clear demarcation of my life. There was a before and an after which defined who I was, and who I would be.
High school was no fun. I checked things off while in school. Tried out for football and swimming and didn’t make either team. Played intramural basketball with some of my nerdy friends plus the one Hispanic person in our class. Sang in chorus all four years. Was inducted into the National Honor Society. Was on the stage crew. Got a part time job after school at a local department store. Bought a used Volkswagen Beetle to get around and began driving it to school. Practiced and played guitar, taking lessons from someone not far from our neighborhood. While this seems bucolic as written, whatever was pleasant about it vanished with Father’s death.
I was lucky to form a new group of friends after Father died. They helped me through a turbulent time. My new friends helped me cope with finishing high school, and getting through college. Not to mention their help with the pressures of a society in transition in the late 1960s and early ’70s.
I had only begun to discuss how I would live my life with Father when he did not return from the meat packing plant. He didn’t have any suggestions as we discussed college and beyond. I enrolled in engineering classes at university but couldn’t master calculus or the slide rule. Without my new friends, I would have drifted into oblivion. With their help, I graduated in four years with a degree in English.
It is good to remember all this about high school now. For that, the reunion and its planning will serve. I still have friends among former classmates. I enjoy thinking about them while stuck indoors during this spring snowfall. It will be good to see them again. The odds of that are better than winning the Powerball.
With chapters of part one of my autobiography named and numbered, it feels I turned a corner from being stuck, to completing the narrative this year. As soon as I typed them all and shrunk them to fit on a single page, it became clear what I had to do next to produce the first volume.
In naming the chapters I re-read part one. The narrative seems sound. The story has defined beginnings, middle points, and an ending. The ending leaves enough suspense to engage readers until I finish part two. Finishing part one this year is definitely possible.
The next step is to return to the text and make a “final rough draft.” What that means is to edit chapter by chapter and resolve any open issues through editing. I had a tendency to defer open issues until “later.” With this phase of the writing, there will be no “later.”
On Tuesday I finished the Dedication, Preface and Chapter One. The early chapters have been worked the most so editing should proceed quickly. There are 62 chapters, so if I proceed with due haste, I should have a finished final rough draft by Labor Day. Some of the later chapters were rushed last year in the interest of “completion.” They will need more work than earlier ones.
Once the final rough draft is finished, I plan to find a reader or two to provide feedback. Many thanks to the three early readers. I don’t want to wear them out with this project so I’m picking new ones. I will also price a professional reader to go through and make suggestions. If I can afford it, I’ll go that route. Following the readers, there will be corrections, more editing and hopefully a “final” product..
At that point, I will need to weigh options. While there is finality in “final rough draft,” is a book ever really final? If any changes are needed — a chapter added, narrative clarified — that will be the time for it.
Once I settle on the narrative, formatting is next. The hodge-podge of cutting and pasting that produced it will have been pasteurized by then. I can focus on making paragraphs, quotes, punctuation, line spacing, chapter breaks, and spelling consistent throughout. This is a kind of work that should feel good when finished, but will be a bear while going through it.
I will need to decide what to call my maternal grandmother. I visit her character at least ten times in the narrative. She was referred to by her birth name Salomea,* nickname Mae, Mae Robbins, Mae Nadolski, Grandmother, and Busha over the years. This will be the time to decide usage so readers recognize her wherever she appears..
While we don’t know exactly what this year will bring, I’m hopeful that by early 2025 I will be holding this book in my hand.
*Footnote: It seems possible Grandmother was named for Salomea of Poland, a princess and queen during the 13th Century.
It is difficult to grasp that one fourth of the year is gone. Days gallop by and run into each other. It is an acceleration I neither prompted nor enjoy. This week’s journal is a bit of hodge-podge. Sometimes that’s how the words fall.
Chapters
One of my early autobiography readers recommended breaking the narrative into chapters. This has been the single most useful piece of advice I received. With chapters, the stream of consciousness style – emulating Jack Kerouac – is parceled into understandable bits suitable for people with shorter attention spans. Likewise, it enables me to consolidate writing about specific topics in one place as appropriate. With chapters I have a better understanding of where the narrative is and is going. It will enable me to determine what’s missing and what needs cutting. Part I stands at 67,271 words, Part II at 60,950.
With that in mind, I plan to push through spring and summer to finish Part I, the story leading to 1982. If all goes well, I’ll self-published that part in early 2025.
Reading more, retaining less
I am reading more yet retaining less of what I read. I don’t like it. I have a shelf of recently read books and only a few scenes in a small number of them stand out. Not sure what, if anything, to do about that.
Reading 25 pages per day is a first priority. I make coffee, tend to chores and then read. My reading habits go way back. Here is an excerpt from my autobiography.
When I was an altar boy at Holy Family Church, Monsignor Barnes influenced me, although I didn’t realize it at the time. He taught me to structure things, with the most memorable advice being about reading. He said, set aside a goal in reading. Read 50 pages each day and stick to your goal. I have not followed that advice religiously, and lapsed in my reading, yet it became part of me, continuing into my seventies.
Unpublished autobiography.
There may be a self-improvement project in this. Unlike many, I won’t give up on reading.
The Jacob’s Ladder
In my quest to read one more book in March, I headed to my poetry shelves and picked Denise Levertov’s The Jacob’s Ladder. I wrote a brief review: “These poems are rooted in a post-war ecosystem of ideas, images, and language. As such, they are a snapshot of that period, and less relevant to the sensibilities of the third decade of the 21st Century. I don’t regret reading them. Some images stand out, especially in the namesake poem. Returning to them seems unlikely.” So it goes. Seven books read in March.
Disposing of Old Medicine
I took some old medicine to the United Methodist Church where pharmacy students from university would dispose of it. As I opened the door, about 15 sets of eyes greeted me, saying I was their first person. I felt obligated to sit down and talk about vitamins and medicine I am taking. It would have been rude to just drop my pills and leave.
The discussion went on to nutrition, dietary practices, sweet corn in the area, gardening, grocery shopping, everything a gardener would have to say about life. They offered choice of gifts and I picked a pill splitter over the multiple pill planning devices. They asked permission to use a photograph with me in it. I said okay.
Green Up
Leaves are budding on lilacs, fruit trees, and all around. Spring flowers pushed through the surface of the soil and flower buds have formed on some of them. This is a period of hope and promise. A cyclical explosion of greenery for which I’m ready.
The first time I heard the phrase “green up” was in the motion picture The Trail of the Lonesome Pine, based on the book of the same name, written by John Fox Jr. It is set near Big Stone Gap, Virginia, about 17 miles from Glamorgan where Father was born.
“I’ve been talking to your pappy,” Dave Tolliver said. “We’s going to get married.”
“When?” queried his cousin June Tolliver.
“Hog killing time. Your pappy has invited all the Tollivers. The whole kit and boodle of them.”
“I ain’t marrying till green up,” June Tolliver said. “Spring’s always the time to do them things. Then it’ll be next green up and the next. I don’t feel nothing.”
The Trail of the Lonesome Pine, Paramount Pictures, March 13, 1936.
Despite the speed with which time flies, I am leading a decent life. Decent enough to write about it a while longer. Thanks for reading.
I wrote my first letter to the editor of a newspaper in 1974, so I’m approaching my 50th anniversary of letter writing. What do I make of this?
I appreciate the editors of the Cedar Rapids Gazette for publishing a daily letters section. Fewer daily papers do that in 2024, if they even remained in business.
Before social media rose to fill our every need to chat, the Gazette rose to become a dominant Iowa newspaper by circulation. To a letter writer, that means a reach of more than 30,000 subscribers. Social media can’t compare to that for everyday folk like me.
The Gazette’s readers are engaged. I get feedback about my letters from community members in person, via email, and on social media posts. Over the years I had my share of anonymous hate mail based on something I wrote. A letter writer seeks such engagement if nothing else.
Finally, the opinion page editors will reject a letter that is poorly worded, or overcome by events. They exercise a gentle editor’s hand which improves my original composition. I rarely complain about editors and usually accept their edits as reasonable.
Who knows how long I will continue to write? I’m sure some have had enough of my opinions. In a society that is increasingly complex, where more people are having opinions, letters to the editor remain an important part of public dialogue.
I wrote 50 years worth. Now it’s your turn.
~ Published in the March 29, 2024 edition of the Cedar Rapids Gazette.
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