Category: Writing

Writing about writing, autobiography, cross posting selected work from other places.

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Writing

Winter Writing Plan – 2023

Writing desk while living at Five Points in Davenport in 1979-1980.

The writing choice before me is a garden of forking paths. What winter 2023-2024 produces will depend upon a number of decisions I make this month. As I pursued completion of an autobiography, things got complicated.

Do I next work on the first part, leading up to the time of this photo, or pursue the second part? I wrote more than 60,000 words in each thus far. Part I is about me being born through graduate school, Part II is about marriage, fatherhood, career, health, socialization, and intellectual development.

There is a case to work on Part I. I sent out copies of the draft finished last winter to a few friends. The feedback presented ideas of which I hadn’t thought. There is a substantial revision in the future. Do I do that now, while the feedback is fresh?

There is an equally powerful case to work on Part II. Stylistically, I’m not sure what I will do, yet the chronological approach of Part I does not seem as relevant or possible. Fleshing out what that will be is a time-consuming process with potential revisions and re-writes ahead. Do I take a stab at it and get something down on paper this winter before editing and revising the whole work?

I’m leaning toward the second path. The chronological format until 1981 makes sense because I was enacting a path to education that was part of my upbringing. By that year I felt my education was finished and it was time to live the life for which I spent 30 years preparing. The rest of the book is that story.

The trouble is there is too much information, too many resources, and too many complexities to incorporate in the narrative without making it too long. I must choose which elements will be presented. Some of this is easy, and parts are complicated.

Part of the narrative is the highlights of our life as a family. It is no one’s business what goes on in a family. At the same time the context of family makes us who we become. I want to lay down a bare bones history for our child to read and hopefully know in addition to their own memories and narratives.

Work life is also important. Beginning with my time in transportation and logistics, earning money to support our lives took much energy, physical and mental. Family and friends saw one side of this. Preserving what I experienced is equally important.

Two geographies stand out. The first is described on the U.S. Geological Survey map titled Davenport, which includes Davenport, Iowa City, and the part of Cedar Rapids in which we lived. Most of my life was spent in this geography. The second is what I call The Calumet. It is Lake County, Indiana and Chicago, yet more than that. For six years Merrillville, Indiana was the base camp from which I explored the Eastern United States with work. In addition to annual waterfowl migrations, lake-effect snow, and a culture driven by the end of the industrial revolution’s expansion, it was the place where our child started school and we owned our first home.

There may be additional narratives which include politics, volunteer work, my writing life, cultural engagement with music, radio, television, and photography, and development of a kitchen garden. The book will end with the coronavirus pandemic and a hopeful look forward at the rest of my seventies and eighties.

Just writing this post has been helpful in picking which path. As soon as I get the garlic planted, I’m ready to devote my full attention to writing. Next step will be de-doing the outline.

This outline will need re-doing.
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Writing

Dreaming into Autumn

From the Lake Macbride trail on Sept. 27, 2023.

I’ve been sleeping in fits: lucky to get five straight hours, I’d rather have, and need seven or eight. This morning I woke after five, couldn’t sleep, read 50 pages of poetry, and still couldn’t get back to sleep. I got up and worked my daily routine, made breakfast, and laid down and slept for another two straight hours. It’s no way to live.

During those two hours I returned to a dream from another sleep. I dreamed I was in Germany with one of my farm buddies and other people who weren’t alive yet when I was last there. I returned for a lost item from the previous dream and found it. Then I returned it to my farm friend and woke up.

Details are already sketchy. In typical fashion, I’ll forget about it quickly. For a little while, I wondered what the hell that meant. Then I decided to accept it and get on with my day.

Today is about care packages. I will finish assembling the one to go to our child with garden produce. I’ll also make soup and chili to take to my spouse and her sister the next trip to the state capitol. I don’t know if I’m finished dreaming, yet I hope not.

Will see what today brings.

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Writing

In Between

I began wearing a mask in high traffic public places this week. Too many local and personal friends recently contracted COVID-19. One died of the virus.

No single narrative describes my or anyone’s life.

That said, I wrote my obituary, a two hundred word narrative intended to communicate generalities of who I was, and meet a specific public need without being too special. I’m not talking about this. I have a few other narratives in mind.

I’m fortunate to have copies of my resumes dating back to 1975. I’m not sure employers do resumes any longer, favoring online applications that protect their legal liabilities. However, almost 50 years of resumes show my changing story. I keep up my LinkedIn profile with accurate jobs and dates of employment. I’m not really talking about these public-facing narratives either.

What is most interesting to me are those times when my personal narrative shifted. There are seven in between times at this writing:

  • The time between graduation from university until enlisting in the U.S. Army, especially the time spent living in an apartment on Mississippi Avenue in Davenport in 1975 (18 months).
  • Living at Five Points in Davenport after military service beginning in 1979 (Eight months).
  • The time between graduate school and getting married, especially the time living in an apartment on Market Street in Iowa City beginning in 1981 (18 months).
  • Working for a large oil company in the Chicago Loop beginning in 1989 (18 months).
  • Retiring from transportation and logistics beginning July 2009 (17 months).
  • Coping with retirement income needs beginning November 2012 (14 months).
  • Dealing with the coronavirus pandemic beginning March 2020 (Two months).

Each of these periods proved important to how my life changed. They contribute more than what fits in a 200-word obituary. They are at the core of my autobiographical writing.

At the moment, I’m researching the third in-between time in Iowa City for my autobiography. Some of that writing will spill over to these pages, so stay tuned.

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Writing

Tell It Slant Poetry Festival

Fan of Emily Dickinson? You should know about this upcoming annual Tell It Slant Poetry Festival at the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst, Massachusetts. Online participation is enabled! Here is the direct link to learn more about the festival and sign up.

Read Frank Hudson’s post about it below.

Like trains of cars on tracks of plush

Also, consider following Frank Hudson and The Parlando Project here.

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Kitchen Garden Writing

Apple Rush

Apple time 2023. Red Delicious.

My focus in the garden turned to apples. By weight, it is the biggest crop I grow. Doing something useful with them drives me to spend much kitchen time processing them. Zestar! and Earliblaze are finished with Red Delicious remaining to close out the garden season.

Of the four varieties I grow, Red Delicious hang the longest on the tree. When they produce, there are many, many of of them. Our needs for juice, applesauce, apple butter, dried apples, and fresh eating are modest compared to the quantity on the tree. I’m already looking for placement of most of them in a Community Supported Agriculture project.

Tomatoes are finishing and it has been a good season. Because of spring trouble getting seedlings to take, there weren’t as many, or as many different varieties, as I had hoped. The difference this year compared to last is that we used most garden tomatoes in our kitchen instead of giving them away. Tomatoes are a brief delight of summer. Once ours are gone, I expect to buy very few tomatoes at the grocer.

I took down the portable greenhouse and noticed a problem with the zipper at the access point. I don’t know if it will be usable next year but I folded it up and put away the frame. Replacing it will be a spring decision, although I likely will. The portable greenhouses are good for a couple of seasons.

I need to figure out fall garden plot preparation. Where will the burn pile be? Where will the garlic go next month? Where will tomatoes go next year?

The burn pile is important because I move it around to deposit minerals throughout the garden. Because we are in a drought I won’t actually burn anything until rain comes. There needs to be plenty of space to pile it high while we wait.

I plan to plant 100 garlic seeds and it will likely be in the plot where the garden composter currently lives. The pallets used to make the composter are getting old and deteriorated. I will likely move the composter to the west side of the garden. I hang my Practical Farmers of Iowa sign on it, so on that side, it may be more visible from the street.

Finally, there are tomatoes, likely the most important crop I grow. This year, deer were able to jump the fence and eat many small tomato plants. Next year I plan to return to a crowding method of tomato planting. By giving deer no place to land inside the fence, they can’t jump in, and the plants grow better. The issue is it crowds me as well. I liked having four-foot rows between the tomatoes this year. It made it easier for me to get among the plants to weed and harvest. It made it easier for the deer as well. I may have enough fencing to install eight-foot tall chicken wire around them next year. This may be the compromise I choose to keep four foot rows. Which plot will tomatoes go? I’m not sure yet, although I favor following the garlic.

As home life turns to apple processing, I enjoy the sense of closure it brings. In years when there are few apples, gardening doesn’t seem the same. In the coming days I’ll embrace the apple rush. Who knows how many more there will be?

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Writing

Kiss of Autumn

Green Ash tree leaves touched by the cold.

Overnight temperatures reached 50 degrees this week. I examined our trees the next day and the Green Ash and Autumn Blaze Maple were both kissed by cool weather and leaves had begun to turn. Summer is over before we know it.

There is a large-scale sporting event this morning. I had to look it up: The University of Iowa football team is playing Utah State at Nile Kinnick Stadium. It’s a day to avoid the traffic and congestion in the county seat.

I attended a few football games at Kinnick. When in graduate school, I lived near the stadium where the house-owner rented his yard for game-day parking. Sometimes patrons had an extra ticket to give us. When I worked in Cedar Rapids, one of my supervisors was a sporting enthusiast. He required his managers to attend certain games with him so I went with the group to Kinnick for an unremarkable contest. During meetings with national staff, we were required to attend professional sporting events. That’s how I was able to watch Patrick Ewing play basketball in Dallas. I don’t regret learning of the ballet-like moves of professional basketball players. Sports has not been my thing.

In high school, almost every freshman boy tried out for the football team. I didn’t make the cut and decided to pursue interests in the arts: reading, writing, music, and theater. High school was an awkward time and I spent most of my non-classroom time on the high school stage crew, reading, or practicing the guitar. Most of my classmates seemed to have a natural instinct to find a partner and be with each other. That wasn’t my thing either.

Being part of a sports team was not that interesting. I suppose of one were on the 1961 New York Yankees roster it would be different. When I played baseball for the Sears Roebuck team it was never at that level. That was a team: Whitey Ford, Elston Howard, Roger Maris, Moose Skowron, Yogi Berra, Clete Boyer, Mickey Mantle, Bobby Richardson, and the rest. On a Saturday in the 1960s, one could listen to the neighbor’s backyard radio broadcasting Chicago baseball games from across the alley. After Roger Maris broke Babe Ruth’s home run record in 1961, I lost interest in watching or listening to baseball games on television or the radio.

In 1982, when I worked at the University of Iowa, the football team had a berth to the Rose Bowl for the first time since 1959. It was a really big deal and half the city cleared out to travel to Pasadena for the game. I lived on Market Street in a small apartment and tuned in to watch on my 12-inch black and white television. Iowa was pathetic. Washington shut out Iowa 28-0, the first Rose Bowl shutout in 29 years. “Sports are important at a Big Ten university,” Hayden Fry said in his memoir. He apparently didn’t mean winning was.

It will be cool this morning, with temperatures rising to above 90 degrees this afternoon. I’ll work among my apple tress for a while, then turn indoors to process garden produce. I can see the end of the garden. It has been good this year.

Now that the season has begun to turn, I linger under the foliage. At least for a few more times as late summer becomes autumn.

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Writing

Pivot Toward Fall Writing

Seed garlic for 2023-2024 season.

Summer races toward its end. I’m cognizant there are not that many summers left, a baker’s dozen if I’m lucky. I plan to live each one as best I can without staking a claim to permanence. I’ve come to believe life is lived best in motion. We crave permanence which is anathema to living.

After a break this Labor Day weekend, I turn to my autobiography again. There is a lot to do. Last winter I wrote through to the end of graduate school and sent the draft to a couple of people for feedback. Unlike the traditional chronology of the first part, the next is complex. I have in mind writing it in threads that can be separated from the cloth, multiple concurrent chronologies. I return to the hope this narrative will be relevant to our child.

It has been a weird summer with my spouse gone for the last seven weeks. I don’t mind time alone, yet after a few weeks, I’m ready for us to be together again. We’re not sure how much longer this will continue.

August is the beginning of garden harvest, so she’s missed most of the fresh vegetables. When I make a day trip to visit and help, I take some of what is ready for their table. It’s not the same as being here.

Drought is oppressive. The 2012 drought seemed worse than this year. Both have been bad. We’ll see what the state climatologist has to say once the weather breaks. The last few days have been cooler, yet no rain. No rain forecast for the next week or more. We need rain.

I looked in my cookbooks for a recipe to use hot peppers, tomatillos, garlic and cilantro and found one for tomatillo salsa. It used up half the tomatillos on the counter. That will have to do for this afternoon.

Stroke by stroke I take up writing again. Whatever this summer was, I’m ready to pivot to what’s next. In October I’ll plant the garlic for next July’s crop and it will feel like the garden is done. For today, I’m waiting for Red Delicious apples to ripen, making a couple more pints of tomato sauce, and getting back to writing.

Here we go!

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Writing

August Heat Wave

Part of the shore of Lake Macbride after continued drought conditions.

It is supposed to get hot during Iowa summer, yet not like this. On Wednesday and Thursday, ambient temperatures climbed to nearly 100 degrees with heat indexes approaching 120. I got outside shortly after dawn and walked along the lake shore. Neighbors were also on the trail early to beat the heat. The air was like soup. I spent most of the days indoors after walking and tending the garden.

August is almost a five week month. The writing I have done for Blog for Iowa is helping me get in practice to take up my autobiography again after Labor Day. My readership on this site after cross posting has not been as good as usual. Perhaps that is because my long-time readers are used to a different kind of writing. That’s okay. The small stipend I received to cover a vacation helped pay for necessary, existential things around the house. Things like pumping the septic tank.

I asked my friends on social media what book I should read next. There were plenty of suggestions. I picked The Circle of Reason by Amitov Ghosh, to be followed by A Fever In The Heartland by Timothy Egan. If you have reading suggestions, please leave a comment. Rarely has someone recommended something that I didn’t evaluate and read it.

It occurs to me I haven’t been to the farmer’s market in a couple of years. As I scaled up the garden, I needed less outside produce. I can’t imaging going to the orchard for apples as my trees have more than I can harvest before they fall. The pear tree is keeping us in sweet fruit, so I skipped all the commercial berries, peaches, nectarines and the like in favor of eating from our yard.

The heat is not good for septuagenarians. I feel healthy, yet realize I have to take it easy on working outdoors when it’s hot and humid. All the indoors time has not been particularly good for me, yet I’m able to process vegetables and fruit and cross things off my electronic to-do list. I look forward to autumn.

More and more I feel like a survivor. My parents and grandparents are gone, and I never had an excessive number of friends when I lived in Davenport before 1970. My political friends are aging and dying. I don’t feel like driving, except when I have to get groceries or run an errand. I need a haircut.

My spouse has been at her sister’s home for the last month, so I do what I want indoors. Notably, the radio has been on whenever I want to listen. Our child has their own life, which increasingly doesn’t involve parents. All of this means I am forced to deal with aging in America, which includes a large rasher of loneliness. I’ll be fine. As a writer, I crave being alone with my thoughts and writing.

The pattern of a hot August lives in memory. Living in this week’s excess heat hasn’t followed any traditional pattern. We have a new air conditioner so that’s a plus. (I raise a toast to Willis Carrier, the inventor of air conditioning). Except for dairy products, there is no reason to leave the house. Some say I should give up dairy products, but I’m not ready. When I went outside to get the mail, the neighborhood was exceedingly quiet. So quiet, it was eerie.

I can see the end of this heat wave and it gives me hope. Soon my spouse will be home and we’ll get back to whatever passes for normal. We survived the coronavirus pandemic without contracting COVID-19. We’ll survive this.

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Writing

No Off-Years

Johnson County Democrats at a summer parade. Year unknown.

The Johnson County Democrats created a political campaign called “No Off-Years.” In a recent email, State Senator Zach Wahls explained:

I’m reaching out to invite you to join our “No Off-Years” campaign – a movement that goes beyond the elections every two years and focuses on doing the important organizing work that will turn Iowa blue again.

Our democracy thrives when we, the people, are actively involved in shaping its path. It’s not just about rallying before elections – it’s about keeping our momentum going consistently. That’s the idea behind “No Off-Years.”

Traditionally, we’ve concentrated on election periods, but I believe Democrats and anyone who values progress must stay engaged throughout the year. We need to foster lasting change, build connections, and ensure our voices are heard, no matter the season.

Email from State Senator Zach Wahls, Aug. 16, 2023.

A local organizer from Solon, got down to brass tacks while promoting training for a September canvass:

This is the path forward to better governance in the state of Iowa. We need to knock on doors and talk to our neighbors about why we think it is important support democratic candidates and really turn out and vote in huge numbers.

Email from Seth Zimmerman, Aug. 14, 2023.

What I’m hearing is Democrats developed special messaging focused on identifying where voters are politically, and encouraging them to join the mainstream Democrats in turning out for the 2024 general election.

Whatever No Off-Years becomes, I support the effort unequivocally. So should readers.

My friends and I have been talking about how to support the effort. Our small coterie of the 70-plus crowd has been debating whether to walk turfs to knock on doors at all. If they do so, some need a walker and there are various kinds from which to choose. Our theory is if one is door-knocking with a walker, 1). a person can sit and rest when needed, and 2). we might get a few sympathy votes. Making phone calls to friends and neighbors makes more sense for us than knocking doors, although that has its issues. Our conclusion in numerous telephone conversations is the next generation needs to step up and manage most of the in-person part of this campaign.

It is important to note that the main purpose of pre-election canvassing is to target and identify potential voters for our candidates, then get them out to vote. I recall the first Obama campaign during the general election. Our neighborhood organizer had a well-annotated list of everyone in the neighborhood and crossed them off once they committed to voting for Obama or said they wouldn’t. As election day approached, we were able to assess each uncommitted person on the list and make a last-ditch effort to persuade them before the polls closed. We didn’t perceive this as rallying before the election, but rather dotting our i’s and crossing t’s to bring every possible voter to the polls.

Iowa Democrats have bottomed out in our election of candidates in federal, state and local races. There is a need to change that going forward if we want to be a viable party that attracts new people. The No Off-Years campaign is worth trying. After all doing nothing is a worse option.

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Writing

Take Your Medicine, Watch Iowa Press

Johnson County Democrats at the 2022 Solon Beef Days parade.

In an email exchange with a friend, I asked whether they would attend the Iowa State Fair on Saturday when the two Democratic candidates other than Joe Biden were scheduled to appear at the Des Moines Register Soapbox. They said yes, and would bird dog some of the Republicans as well.

Had I known Semafor journalist Dave Weigel would be there, I might have driven to the state capitol for a chance to meet him.

Thursday, on their way to the state fair, Iowa Democratic Party Chair Rita Hart and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz stopped by Iowa Press to record the following episode.

In my last two posts, I wrote about whether the abortion dog would hunt in Iowa. The topic came up when Stephen Gruber-Miller of the Register had this question:

Stephen Gruber-Miller: Iowa republicans this summer passed a ban on abortion at about six weeks into a pregnancy.

I’m curious, as you’re talking to members of the Democratic Party around the state who are recruiting candidates, who are trying to encourage people to run for office, is that something that comes up as a motivator for people to run for office?

Hart: Well, absolutely.

I think always when you are recruiting for candidates and as people are considering running for office, it’s the issues that often drive them.

And this is an issue that is a great motivator not only because of the fact that this law is unpopular, that people recognize that it’s not very workable, that to have a law where decisions are made at six weeks where most women don’t even know they’re pregnant, that that just does not work.

And so, issues are really important to people and they will step up accordingly because it’s far reaching.

It affects how many OBGYNs are attracted to work in this state when we already have a shortage.

It affects women’s health care in general.

And so, these are issues that are important to people and motivate them to run.

Iowa Press Transcript Aug. 11, 2023.

Whenever our Democratic leaders appear on Iowa Press, we should tune in. Not because it’s great television (it often isn’t) but because if we ever want to dig out from Republican dominance in the state we have to have a common platform from which to make our campaigns. Watching the party leader, and a Democratic governor in Iowa to stump for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris is the kind of boilerplate information we must assimilate.

Make sure you caffeinate before watching this program.