Category: Writing

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

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Writing

Great Book Sort #1

File box full of books.

This year I donated roughly 700 books to the public library used book sale and to Goodwill. Goodwill is less picky about what they will accept, so they received the majority of them. Many of my donations still had the Goodwill price tag from when I bought them. Library downsizing has only just begun.

All but The Moviegoer of my collection of Walker Percy novels went into boxes and out the door. I felt a bit sad about that, but as Vonnegut said, “So, it goes.” I had to decide about my collections by author. Other authors, that I worked equally hard to collect, went into bankers boxes with the names and date packed on the outside. Who knows if one will get into the boxes again, yet they are available and take up no precious shelf space. A few — Bellow, Didion, Irving, Morrell, Faulkner, and William Carlos Williams got their own special shelf space. It wouldn’t be my library without those authors.

I wrote previously about poetry and that decision seems solid. The shelves are easily accessible so when I want to read poetry I can get at the stacks.

Cookbooks are impossible. Half of what I gave away was cookbooks. I can’t seem to part with many more. Yet I must. Truth is, I hardly use cookbooks any more. Having learned how to cook, they serve as cultural artifacts related to places and people with which I have some connection. Reference material for the church where I was baptized, or the American Studies department where I got my degree. In seventy years of living, we generate a lot of connections. A cookbook has usually been involved. They also serve as examples of how to prepare a particular dish or ingredient. Keeping many of them takes up space that could be devoted to other topics. This sorting is far from over.

Hundreds of books about Iowa history and by Iowa authors needs reduction to a shelf of about a dozen to hand off to our child when they are ready. I also wrote about this. More of those got boxed up, leaving the first tier to be read and re-considered on the shelf.

The space for books about U.S. presidents is settled at eye level on two long shelves. The ones by or about presidents in my lifetime is sorted. I had two copies of Eisenhower’s White House memoirs and one is on the bench waiting to be packed up for Goodwill. I have a blank space for the second volume of Obama’s presidential memoir. No space was left for a Trump memoir, I mean, you got to be kidding me.

My African-American studies section has grown, and I need a space for American Indian books. I can’t bear to part with all the ancient writings, although the chances of reading some of them are slight. I may get into Plutarch’s Lives, or I may not. Keeping them for now.

Art books take up too much space. Having so many is a function of my interest in certain artists like Picasso, Joan Miró, Georgia O’Keeffe, Warhol, Hopper, and the like. Some I bought at the artist’s retrospective, and some I picked up at used book sales. Until I get to the point of running out of space, most of them will stay right where they now are.

A byproduct of sorting is finding more books to read. The to-read shelves are packed to overflowing. I’ve also found some lost friends, like George McGovern’s autobiography, Grassroots, and Joe Biden’s Promises to Keep. I put Biden’s memoir into a box, thinking he would never be president. Now it’s up in the presidential lineup.

The great book sort is proving to be beneficial. I have a better understanding of what I have, and organized them into projects for future writing. For now, there are some empty shelves. There won’t be for long.

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Writing

8 Shelves of Poetry

Eight 23-inch shelves of poetry.

With enough perspective, the social importance of objects is diminished.

I’ve been inside the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor, and saw it up close. It’s name, “Liberty Enlightening the World,” by sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, simply states what it represents. Since installation it has come to mean more.

At the reopening after restoration of the statue, on July 3, 1986, President Ronald Reagan said, “…we celebrate this mother of exiles who lifts her light beside the golden door.” The golden door is a political addition, and not needed. It is a corruption. It permeates everything. It was only when I viewed the Statue of Liberty from Windows on the World atop the World Trade Center did I realize how imbued with cultural attachments it is. From my seat overlooking New York harbor, the statue seemed minuscule, less significant than the movement of boats under a clear night sky.

My belief about culture-imbued words used in poetry came from epiphanies like this. The best poets stay away from that kind of cultural insertion, instead using language to create meaning. My reading of poetry is a search for such verse, without culture bombs dropped into the text. It is hard to find.

The first books I bought after earning money delivering newspapers were collections of the poetry of Robert Frost and Carl Sandburg. I later added the poetry collection of W.B. Yeats. The books lay on a shelf at the M.L. Parker department store and spoke to me. I purchased them. Poetry did not become a key organizing principle for my home library, yet volumes were often available at a discount or given to me. The number of poetry books grew. Today, I have eight 23-inch shelves of poetry in my library.

In the late 1970s and ’80s I wrote poetry as a form of creative expression. Some of it was good, most wasn’t. A few have been posted here. It was a way to be a writer. There is a project of going through those pages, editing them and re-writing the poetry from today’s perspective. When I previously did that, results improved. There may be a book of poetry in me, yet I am a prose writer. I don’t often write it, yet do read poetry often.

Like everyone, I have favorites. I will go on reading Charles Bukowski until I’ve read every available verse. I only recently discovered Mary Oliver. Can you believe it? She’s among the best. Eventually I will get to Sven Armens’ two books purchased at a used bookstore in the county seat. Armens was my undergraduate Shakespeare teacher, a figure more suitable to being a character in Othello than poet or Shakespearean scholar. A reader needs to expand beyond favorites. That is the purpose of my eight shelves of poetry: be there when I need to consider language.

If I were a poet I would emulate characteristics of Vachel Lindsay, particularly his Rhymes to be Traded for Bread. Poetry as literal currency. I remember visiting the Vachel Lindsay house in Springfield, Illinois, and thinking how dull it must have been for Lindsay to be planted in a single location for any length of time. I see Lindsay walking into Kansas and other Midwestern places more than being planted in Springfield. I should return to reading Lindsay.

Having a wide selection of unread verse creates a go-to place when I’m stuck for what to read next. These going to poetry moments are unlikely to deliver me to re-reading Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queen, yet maybe I should. The use of inventories in his writing has been influential in mine. Better to list the cultural attributes one seeks to invoke rather than assume readers will understand all the references in a single, culturally well-known object as an author hopes.

A writer has to use nouns, dammit! Better that verse explores the meaning of nouns. I would rather poetry be all verbs, suggesting action and an ever-evolving thought process. One can’t escape the nouns, though. I’m not hopeful I’ll find such verse in my eight shelves of poetry. I plan to continue the search, a couple of volumes each month.

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Writing

Being Different

Seeded tomatoes and peppers and set them on a heating pad under a grow light.

Saturday seemed busy. It could have been more productive. As a retired septuagenarian, there is never any difficulty staying busy. I do wonder if I could produce more during each day. More production is the American way.

A key aspect of America’s peculiar institution of slavery was efficient use of slaves. Especially on sugar plantations, but on others as well, every daylight hour was to be spent working in the fields or processing crops. If a slave died from being over worked, no problem. They could easily and inexpensively be replaced by another. The lives of slaves on a plantation were short.

The average lifespan of enslaved Africans who worked on colonial sugar and rice plantations was seven years. Extreme physical demands relied on equally extreme instruments of torture to ensure control over enslaved peoples and to protect plantation profits. The economies and societies they built were denied to them, along with human dignity.

National Museum of African American History and Culture website.

Making enslaved humans productive was essential to accumulation of wealth in the highly lucrative production of sugar, rice, cotton, tobacco and indigo. A system of overseers and supervision was developed. While slavery ended with the Civil War, those techniques from plantation days persisted in practice and in many cases are revered by business efficiency experts. In 1850, the average life expectancy for a slave was 36 years.

We’re not accumulating any wealth here, yet feeling like I’m accomplishing more would be a boon. Here’s what I have in mind:

  • About this time last year I stopped regular, daily work on my book. This year I plan to spend less time in Summer and Spring, yet write something or work on research every day. The major obstacle is I can’t seem to get through all the boxes of research documents in a timely manner.
  • Reduction of my book stacks will continue. The goal is to donate every time I shop over in Coralville, or about every other week. I have a process and things are moving more quickly now. Some time each day on this.
  • My goal is to read 25 pages per day. For historical books with a lot of detail, that’s probably right. When reading fiction, it’s too low. The idea is to adopt different goals for different kinds of books. If I can’t read 50 pages of fiction per day, there is something wrong with me.
  • Our refrigerator and pantry are good at keeping food and there is too much of it. I plan to work down the excess by cooking differently. Maybe I’ll find a few recipes that are keepers.
  • Listen to more music. I wrote this playlist in 2005. It is a story of my life in music. Back when I played, I sang all of these.
Cripple Creek (Traditional)
Lord Franklin (Traditional)
Shenandoah (Traditional)
Big Rock Candy Mountain (Harry McClintock)
House of the Rising Sun (Traditional)
500 Miles (Hedy West)
The Cruel War (Traditional)
Blowin' In The Wind (Bob Dylan)
Pack Up Your Sorrows (Pauline Marden and Richard Fariña)
Wabash Cannonball (William Kindt)
This Land is Your Land (Woodie Guthrie)
Freight Train (Elizabeth Cotten)
The Hammer Song (Pete Seeger and Lee Hayes)
Good Night Irene (Huddie Ledbetter said he didn't know who wrote it)
Someday Soon (Ian Tyson)
Early Morning Rain (Gordon Lightfoot)
Four Strong Winds (Ian Tyson)
Both Sides, Now (Joni Mitchell)
What About Me? (Scott McKenzie)
The City of New Orleans (Steve Goodman)
You Ain't Going Nowhere (Bob Dylan)
I Shall Be Released (Bob Dylan)
It's All Over Now, Baby Blue (Bob Dylan)
The Dutchman (Michael Peter Smith)
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Writing

To WCW

Set my skepticism regarding doctors
     aside for now,
     while considering
     the pediatrician and poet.

Set it on that basket,
     where it's shine might
     illuminate this moment.

Would we have him as our physician?
Would we travel into the city with him?
Would we seek his company?
Would he have sought ours?

To have his eyes, his struggles...
     his medical practice,
     his practice of poetry...
     It was all one.

I took the basket to the garden,
     to dig potatoes,
     and struggle to get out
     from where I rooted with singular purpose.

~ Written in the Calumet, circa 1990.
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Writing

Writing Caesura

Writing desk in 1980.

The first draft of part one of my autobiography is finished. The narrative begins with my maternal great, great grandfather’s arrival in 19th Century Minnesota and continues until I finished graduate school in 1981. It is a good place to end winter writing as my focus turns to the garden. Caesura.

I’m not finished with the narrative. I sent part one to a reader, and may send it to one or two more. I needed a break from the writing.

I identified as a writer after returning from military service. It persisted. I diligently worked at writing during the first year of our marriage. I felt the urge to do more to earn money and support our small family, and found a new job by March of year two. The birth of our child in year three changed everything. I found outlets for writing through the years yet it wasn’t until 2007, when our child left Iowa, and I started a blog, that I began to find a consistent voice.

Much research and sorting remains. On Saturday I spent several hours reviewing digital files. I deleted so many, One Drive sent me an email asking if I was sure I wanted to delete them. There were some useful passages and many more hours of this lie ahead.

That’s not to mention the artifacts laying around in boxes. All of it needs review. Yet there is a garden to plant and tend to. I’ll work things out in the pre-dawn hours of each day.

The next chapters will be more challenging, as by the time of our marriage, life had gotten complicated. A spouse, a new job, a child, and the challenges of working in the Reagan era all created demands. I met them as well as I was able.

I wrote the outline for part two and have about 60,000 words. As I find relevant writing and subjects, I can copy and paste them there. Once the garden is in, hopefully by Memorial Day, I can take another look at what I have.

In the meanwhile, I had no idea what a big task this would be. As long as my health remains good, I’ll continue to write and edit until this work is done. There is so much invested in it, I can’t abandon it now.

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Writing

Box of Reality

Shoe box full of print photographs, March 21, 2023.

I found a passport I thought was lost in a box of photographs on Monday. It expired in 1983, issued by the American Consulate in Frankfurt, Germany. I put it in the drawer with the previously expired passport it replaced. One less thing nagging at me as a result of the discovery.

I was opening unlabeled bankers boxes to see what was inside. It makes no sense to stuff things in a box without a label, yet that’s where I find myself. Along with some transportation memorabilia, one box contained this shoe box full of photographs. The images covered the entire timeline of the book draft I had finished Sunday. I thought these photos were lost forever.

My habit of making photo albums (using selected images after developing and printing batches of photos) resulted in this collection. It contains remainders of rolls of film from several of those albums. The prints are all mixed up, with different sets of film stuck in the shoe box in what appeared to be random order. At a minimum, I must organize them the way I discussed a few days ago. This is a big and welcome find!

Next will be to organize and edit the images to create another layer of the book narrative. I also want to label them in groups, so I can more quickly find something for my writing. This will take longer than I want, yet it should improve the writing.

I looked through a few hundred photographs yesterday afternoon after chores. I have living memory of taking most of those shots, recognizing them and the place they were taken almost immediately. The harder part is determining what these moments of reality mean in the context of my septuagenarian life. I expect that will be a collaborative project. Already I sent a duplicate of a photo taken in 1981 to the subjects. There will be more of that type of sharing.

It seems best for the autobiography to have been drafted before looking at these photos. Tapping memory and public documents enabled a reasonably researched narrative. Now that I found more photos, we’ll see what else memory dredges up for inclusion in the book.

With Spring arriving yesterday afternoon, it will be challenging to make time for writing. Yard and garden work is also important. After sunrise, I will be drawn outdoors. All the same, how could writing about these memories not be meaningful? I can’t wait!

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Writing

Writing for Newspapers

Solon Economist – 2016

I will insert seven newspaper articles I wrote from 2014-2015 in my autobiography. The insertion will display that form of writing and indicate my thinking at the time. They record some memorable events which advance the book’s narrative. I winnowed the articles from the 100 I wrote and picked these:

  1. Van Allen school to be expanded — Feb. 6, 2014. My first article in a newspaper was coverage of the Iowa City School Board meeting for the North Liberty Leader. This story was about the aspects of the meeting that affected residents of North Liberty. The challenges of covering the school board are many. Before the meeting there is a packet to read. It often exceeds 500 pages. The meetings themselves can be quite long. Capturing an interview or two can be challenging as key figures depart the meeting as quickly as feasible. When I conversed with the district’s chief financial officer, the superintendent intervened to break up the conversation, thereby controlling messaging. With all this work, a freelancer won’t make money on this important coverage. That was a lesson learned.
  2. Connecting Solon with trail system — Sept. 11, 2014. Doug Lindner was owner/publisher of the Solon Economist and North Liberty Leader when I worked there, first as a proof reader, and then as a freelance writer. I appreciate his giving me a chance to freelance. This article in the Solon Economist covered a joint meeting between the Solon City Council and the Johnson County Board of Supervisors about our local trails. They found funding and acquired land for the trail to connect Solon with the Cedar Valley Trail in Linn County. This new trail has been in constant use since it was completed. We can hop on our bicycles and ride all the way to Waterloo if so motivated.
  3. UI to mark 50 years since name change — or not –Oct. 22, 2014. I had to leave the Solon Economist to pursue freelance opportunities with the Iowa City Press Citizen. This front page article was about the State University of Iowa, as named in the Iowa Constitution. Because of the official name, the Iowa City university was often confused with Iowa State University in Ames. On Oct. 22, 1964, the State Board of Regents gave permission to use “The University of Iowa” as its name. I enjoyed interviewing former university president Willard Boyd for this article.
  4. White House Kitchen Garden inspires Iowan — Dec. 5, 2014. Scott Koepke worked at New Pioneer Food Co-op when I interviewed him for the Iowa City Press Citizen about his October visit to the White House Kitchen Garden. His sister arranged the visit and Koepke brought ideas back to Johnson County to use in his work. “If the president can do it, so can we,” he said.
  5. Advocating for the environment — Feb. 18, 2015. I pitched this story to my editor at the Iowa City Press Citizen, Emily Nelson. She said yes. It was an opportunity to travel to Des Moines and interview many people I know in the environmental advocacy community, as well as elected officials. It was great fun, although a freelancer won’t make a dime on a story like this because of the work that goes into it.
  6. Farm crawl to highlight women — Sept. 23, 2015. This article was publicity for an upcoming Women, Land and Legacy Farm Crawl in Johnson County. The purpose of the farm crawl was to address a need for more networking opportunities in the region. I interviewed three farmers at their farms, two of them I met for the first time. Like most articles I wrote, this one was a money loser because of the high number of hours invested to cover the event adequately.
  7. Bill Northey tours Local Harvest CSA — Sept. 26, 2015. Bill Northey was Iowa secretary of agriculture when I interviewed him. By the time I wrote this article, I had worked at Local Harvest CSA for three seasons. I first heard from Northey, “About one out of four rows of soybeans in Iowa ends up going to China.” Iowa governor Terry Branstad had announced a number of soybean contracts with China earlier in the day and I got the local scoop.

I am glad to have had the opportunity to write for newspapers. My role as a freelancer existed because news organizations were being squeezed about overhead costs, including the salaries of permanent reporters. In a transitional newspaper publishing economy, I am proud of my 100 stories.

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Writing

Editing Photographs

Photo of the author, 1973-74.

In stable Midwestern households, photographs accumulate. We don’t move as often in Iowa, and when we do, we know how to store photographic paper so it doesn’t get wet and humidity is suitable to preserve them. I’m speaking of printed photographs more than digital. Well into the post-millennium-bug digital era, we continue to have uses for printed images. We tape them to our computers, pin them on bulletin boards, use magnets to hang them on the refrigerator, and frame some to place on the bedroom dresser, piano, or whatnot. We know what a whatnot is in Iowa.

Our millennial child has fewer printed photos than we do. One challenge of aging is to assign meaning to countless photographs so we don’t just dump them on the next generation. That was true of my parents’ generation. When Mother died, Sister retained the family photographs. I made a project of digitizing the ones in which I was interested. I did that while Mother was still living. She was well-aware of approaching the end of life and we had many happy discussions. It is hard to know if that will be possible for our child and me.

Before I ditched all of my Yahoo products, I wrote an autobiography in photographs on Flickr in 2011. It was 16,000 words and 133 images with a page devoted to each image. It was widely viewed after I posted a link on social media. I will be drawing on that narrative in my current project.

What does one do with thousands of paper photographs and even more digital ones?

  • The first task is to find the images. Most people have a place where most photographs are stored. Those are easy. There are many more sources, I’ve found. Some are in ceramic dishes in the bedroom. Many are filed with written pages in file folders, and digital images remain on various computing devices around the house and need migrating to a common platform. Collecting them into one place can be a major challenge.
  • We must turn every page and look at them. Watch out for the rabbit holes of memories. At the same time, enjoy them while examining them.
  • Sorting can mean multiple things. For paper photos, made with exposed film, there are often mistakes where the image is intelligible. Discard those from the collection while looking at them. In the digital era, we tend to take multiple exposures of the same scene because the cost of doing so is negligible and we want a good shot. As long as you are there, delete the 19 worst of 20 exposures and keep only the best one or two.
  • Rededicate space for storage. Some will remain in frames or on the refrigerator and some will find a home in a cool, dry space or in the cloud.
  • Decide what you want to keep. For me, that means how many images of the cucumber patch are necessary? More than you might think, yet not that many. How many photos of geese flying over the lake? In a series of images from Garden of the Gods near Colorado Springs, keep only the ones that make a narrative point. If there were multiple visits, keep some from each distinct time period. At the beginning this seems intimidating, although having a process and sticking with it is helpful. Continuous improvement of the process makes things better as we go along.
  • Do every batch the same way the first time, and do it right. Define for yourself what that means.
  • Convert selected paper images to digital.
  • File photographs in an organized fashion by subject, theme, or date. It will make it easier to find something when a project calls for it.
  • Take time to enjoy them. Especially as we age, there are only so many times to look at old photographs. The reality is we may not return to them again. Make notes on the ones intended to pass along.

Mid-westerners can be lucky for the stability, financial security, and good health that is possible here. When one is getting a grip on seven or eight decades of Midwestern life, a thoughtful process — one that improves as we proceed — seems necessary. I would also acquire a whatnot.

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Writing

Impressions of the Divine

Midst the trafficking of our lives
   we seek mostly what we know...

What's special about that?
It's me, it's you, it's all new
   AND ALIVE WITHIN US...
      ... isn't it?

We seek paths we know,
   worn well by our boots, and
   stained by our feces;
Yet, isn't there something else
   in the jungle surrounding us?

A philosopher and theologian am I
   within this world of concrete and glass.

But then, I am, I AM!
   alive, human, and wanting nothing
   but satisfaction from this life...
   ... why is it so slow in coming?

Words are ink on paper,
   the embossing of a typewriter.
People say this is the nature of our lives:
   Impressions of the Divine on earthly matter...

It is just a path worn by the trafficking of our boots.

~ Fort Benning, Georgia, Sept. 29, 1976
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Writing

On Retreat

I said a prayer,
then meditated.

Tea brewed with
Orange Pekoe teabags
is hot, dark, and ready.

While out for a walk,
I bought chewing gum
from a vending machine
near the main railway station.

I chewed gum all the way home.

Through the window,
children are playing.
I realize something
is bothering me.

I do not share the joy
of playing children.

Instead, I'm on retreat,

as ice cubes crack
with the heat of the tea,
before I sit at the typewriter.

~ Mainz, Germany, May 30, 1977