Since I threw in with a bunch of readers, artists, photographers, and writers on social media, I’m learning a lot about being “social” in that context. Mainly, we have to interact or what’s the point? I also try to say positive things when I do comment about a piece of writing, painting, photograph or whatnot.
There are games. One of them was to post as follows:
The challenge is to choose 20 books that greatly influenced you. One book per day, for 20 consecutive days. No explanations, no reviews, just covers. (Unless you ask…)
Recurring meme on Threads. March 16, 2024.
I’m going to try this and see if it yields engagement. Positive engagement is what social media is all about. NOT in order of importance, but in the order I posted them:
Henderson the Rain King by Saul Bellow.
The White Album by Joan Didion.
The Politics of History by Howard Zinn.
Spring and All by William Carlos Williams.
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving.
The Actualist Anthology edited by Morty Sklar and Darrell Gray.
Joy of Cooking by Irma Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Becker.
The Photographer’s Eye by John Szarkowski.
The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. DuBois.
Dubliners by James Joyce.
Adventures: Rhymes and Designs by Vachel Lindsay.
Complete Poems by Carl Sandburg.
Pablo Picasso: A Retrospective by New York Museum of Modern Art.
The End of the World as We Know It by Donald Kaul.
An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace by Tamar Adler.
The Interpretation of Cultures by Clifford Geertz.
Lake Wobegon Days by Garrison Keillor.
The Assault on Reason by Al Gore.
What Is Cinema? by Andre Bazin.
I Seem To Be A Verb by R. Buckminster Fuller, et. al.
Editor’s Note: I posted through the 13th photo and this project is something of a fizzle. Threads views began minimally and decreased from there. I will finish out the series, but won’t try it again.
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.
There were a couple of snowfalls this year yet we haven’t really had a winter. The vernal equinox arrives today at 10:06 p.m. Central Daylight Time. Spring is here, ready or not.
Four years ago, on March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. In so many ways, that changed everything. I’m still processing what happened. I’m also settling into the new life I created in the middle of the shutdown. It changed my attitude toward living.
People I know continue to get COVID, as recently as this month. While it is not the same as influenza, it appears to be as persistent. I am current on vaccinations for COVID (and everything else) yet the constant mutation of the coronavirus indicates there will be no absolute prevention.
I remember the spring of 2020 and it was similar to this year. About that time someone had left home to enter a nursing home and neighbors dug and split their iris plants. I got some bulbs and planted them. They come up every year. I hope to see them rise for many more. All we can do is marvel at their essential being and appreciate them for what they are.
A friend returned from a trip to Thailand and we had a driveway conversation about it. We first worked together on a political campaign in 2004, so I’ve known her 20 years. We looked at photos and videos on a handheld device. One video had her swimming in a river with a five-year-old elephant. It was good to catch up.
The reason for the reunion was to collect signatures on an Iowa House candidate’s nominating petition. We have been working together so long, we speak to each other in shorthand about politics. Between us, on short notice, we collected 11 signatures. The candidate had more than the 50 required by the Secretary of State.
Later that day, another friend stopped by to pick up the petitions and deliver them to the candidate. We had a long conversation as well. I knew his father before him and the three of us all worked on Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign. Those were heady times. I wrote a post about this in 2008. We talked about the House District and who we might pull in to work on the campaign. This cycle, I plan to be a worker bee, not an organizer. I think people have heard just about enough from me. There is interest in doing better in the new district.
Living with a vegan makes for strange breakfasts. Any dairy products I consume happens mostly in the morning. Missing home made pizzas, I made one for breakfast. It is not a big change to cook a pizza for one. Instead of a cup of water I began with a generous half cup. It made a pie just the right size.
Since garlic was up, I dug around in the mulch to make sure the leaves were penetrating the straw. I planted about 100 head of garlic in October. I lost maybe two head under the mulch. Bodes well for the July harvest.
On Thursday I used my Merlin Bird ID app outside the garage. In a short time it identified these birds: Northern Cardinal, American Robin, House Sparrow, Blue Jay, White-throated Sparrow, American Crow, Red-winged Blackbird, House Finch, Tufted Titmouse, Eurasian Tree Sparrow, and Canada Goose.
Since I downloaded the app, I’ve taken to standing on the steps in front of our house each day and letting it record for a couple of minutes. It’s a way to see who is in the neighborhood and for what I should look when I start working outdoors. This is the most fun I’ve had in a while.
The week seemed productive yet I’m losing perspective. It’s like that Lynda Randle song Cousin Al used to play each day on the AM radio across the Alabama-Georgia line when I lived in Columbus, Georgia:
One day at a time, sweet Jesus That's all I'm asking of You
Just give me the strength to do everyday What I have to do
Yesterday's gone, sweet Jesus And tomorrow may never be mine God help me today Show me the way One day at a time
Selfie taken with computer video camera on April 28, 2020, the day I retired from paid work.
When the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11, 2020, I began pulling back from engagement in society. That process continued when I decided to retire from work at the home, farm and auto supply store on April 28 that year. Since then, I have distanced myself from almost everything and developed a new way of engaging in society.
I don’t spend as much time with people as I did. My conversational style shows it.
The main part of my days is spent at home with a weekly trip to the grocery store and a couple other shopping trips each month. The automobile is not getting many miles. If there is a reason, I will travel to the county seat, to my home town, or to Chicago or Des Moines to run errands or visit family and friends. That is about it.
The last activity I dropped was membership in the county Democratic Party central committee. I led the January 15 precinct caucus and will be attending the county convention on March 23. After that, I will become a worker bee in politics, not an organizer. I’m good with the change.
A majority of my time will be divided between working to maintain and fix up our home, writing, and sorting through the accumulation of too much stuff. So far, that keeps me busy.
This time at home as a writer is what I worked for all my life. If I am stepping back from society, I am stepping into a new life lived the way I want. As long as my health holds and we have money enough to live, I’ll be alright.
Since I made it this far, I’ll quote Douglas MacArthur, “Old soldiers never die, they just fade away.” Already, I can hardly see my shadow on a sunny day.
I threw in with a group of readers, writers, artists, and photographers when I joined Threads to replace my X account. There is a lot of discussion about books to be read stacks. You know what I mean: that pile of acquired books that grows and eventually might be read. What is the right number to have? 100? 200? More? Less? There is not a right answer. I have a completely full bookcase in one of the passageways leading to my writing room. When it’s time for the next book, I browse it like I am in a personal book store. To be read stacks got me thinking about how to select the next book.
Book selection is a hodge-podge process in my world. I diligently read at least 25 pages per day. When it’s time for the next book, sometimes I know what to pick up ahead of time and sometimes I don’t. I can be like a dog chasing a squirrel. There is little interest in being disciplined here. Less than there should be. I tend to pick recently acquired books for next.
At the same time, there are books I own I want to get to. For example, I’m building a collection of books about Florida, Virginia, Minnesota and other places important to my family history. Those are maybe 50 books organized on shelves for easy grabbing for research. Somehow those need to be worked into the rotation.
Referrals are the most important part of the process: referrals from friends, social media (Threads and Facebook mainly), from the footnotes of other books, and from what my pals on Goodreads are reading. I used to just buy those books and find a spot for them.
While I have more than a thousand books in my library to be read (maybe two thousand, who’s counting?), I slowed the purchasing process. When I find a book to read from any source, I put it in my Amazon shopping cart and remove it to save for later. That builds a reading list without buying a book. In the past, when I filled my cart, I used to just place the order. No more.
I have a Goodreads account with a few friends. The Goodreads to be read list exists yet I don’t find it as useful as the Amazon list. I use them both when I’m stumped.
When the next book is up, from any source, and I don’t have a copy, I check availability on the online catalogue at the public library. This is a new process. We are in a small community so sometimes they have it and sometimes they don’t. If they have it, I place a hold and pick it up on the next trip to town.
I keep nine shelves of more than 400 books of poetry. I use them to palate cleanse or for inspiration. There are so many unread poems they could keep me busy for a long time.
In terms of filling my life with reading, I would never have to leave the house for the 14 years left according to government life expectancy tables. Nonetheless, I want to stay current and as an avid reader of online publications I frequently encounter a new book I should read.
My bottom line is I like the hodge-podge of my to be read stack and its extensions online. With so many good books in the world, I don’t want to miss many. I don’t have enough perspective to know whether I have and a to be read stack is no answer to that problem.
Garlic is up in the garden: yield looks pretty good. Somehow building a brush pile escaped me this week so I need to get cracking on that. Many robins and other birds have arrived. Lilacs are beginning to bud. All signs are present for an early spring.
Class reunion
Nothing can sober a person like figuring out who died from one’s high school class. For my class of 1970, our research shows 42 of about 260 classmates have died. That is in line with what insurance company actuarial tables suggest should be our experience. It doesn’t make dealing with those deaths any easier. “Who died?” was the most frequently asked question at our 40th reunion in 2010 so the planning committee is front loading work to have a better answer this time.
When I work on the organizing committee for a reunion I’m more likely to attend. My main interests are finding out what people have been doing during the years since we graduated, planning the event, and catching up on news. I would not likely attend if I wasn’t on the planning committee. The event is in July, dubbed the 50th Reunion (Delayed) because we canceled during the coronavirus pandemic when our 50th would have been.
Charlatan
I finished reading Charlatan: America’s Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam by Pope Brock this week. It is a well-researched and easy to read book about early 20th Century medical practices and associated quackery. Dr. John Binkley, the charlatan, is reminiscent of B.J. Palmer, son of the discoverer of the chiropractic principle, who lived in Davenport. Palmer started the first radio stations west of the Mississippi River in Davenport and Des Moines, paraded elephants through the city streets to advertise the chiropractic principle, and had a museum called Little Bit O’Heaven at his chiropractic school. The museum had artifacts collected during his global travels. While chiropractic thrives into the 21st Century as a respected medical profession, its trajectory in the early years is tied to that of the goat-gland charlatan depicted in this book. Worth reading for this and other reasons.
State of the Union
I viewed video of the entire State of the Union Address. It took me multiple segments to get through it. Biden did an excellent job, of the kind I expect from a Democratic president. I also viewed video of the Alabama housewife (and U.S. Senator) who delivered the Republican response. They have nothing! Seriously, Biden got criticized for having a campaign TikTok account. Do Republicans not know about the numerous objections among users to federal attempts to regulate TikTok? OMG! Governor Kim Reynolds made a press release reacting to the State of the Union with a tepid response. Why did she even bother if she had nothing to say? Republicans really do want to take the country backward.
About 200 cell blocks with broccoli, kale, chard, collards, celery, herbs and more on March 2, 2024.
Yesterday a large flock of pelicans arrived on the lake. It’s a sign spring is coming.
While checking the mail, someone I’ve known since we moved here in 1993 was walking their dog. We had a discussion about the weather and about my garden which is one of the largest in the area. Our consensus of two was it is going to freeze again. It is too early to start digging garden plots.
In my fourth week of indoor seed planting, things seem to be going well. Most seeds have sprouted on schedule, and despite growing indoors, are developing in a way that will make for sound seedlings. Soon it will be time to assemble the portable greenhouse and move some outside.
There was a Red Flag Warning on Sunday, which means a risk of wildfires. I will delay brush burning until the warning ends.
I got these on Saturday at the Solon Public Library Annual Used Book Sale for a free will donation.
On Saturday I went to the public library and bought three books at their used book sale. I began reading the Pete Souza book as soon as I got home and couldn’t put it down until I turned all the pages. It is incomprehensible we went from Obama as depicted in these photos to Trump. I began to tear up a couple times while reading it. I am usually more reserved.
This led me to thinking about the presidents during my lifetime and this brief rating:
Truman: Don’t recall as president.
Eisenhower: Okay for a Republican/Interstate Highway System
Kennedy: Favorable
LBJ: Vietnam/Voting rights/Medicare
Nixon: OMG!
Ford: Not Nixon
Carter: Malaise/Camp Davis Accords
Reagan: JFC!
George Bush: Reagan-lite
Clinton: +/- Neocon
George W. Bush: Bad, very bad
Obama: My president
Trump: Nightmare/insurrectionist
Biden: What I expect from a Democrat
Spring is two weeks away and the days tick by much faster than I’d like. By my count, I can expect 14 more springs during my lifetime. I plan to find enjoyment in each of them. Hopefully pelicans will be a part of them.
The week started with days where the ambient temperature reached a high in the 70s, dipped on Wednesday to the teens, then rose again the rest of the week. The expectation for first week in March is highs in the 30s and 40s, so it seems unseasonably warm.
Creamed crumbles on toast
I don’t have many meals derived from Mother’s cooking. As important as cooking has become to me, I can count on one hand the number of dishes I now make that she did, too. One of those is variously called chipped beef on toast or creamed beef on toast. Mother made this for Father as a reminiscence of Southern cooking in which he came up. I don’t use beef in our kitchen, yet I made this for breakfast one day. I use vegetarian recipe crumbles as a meat substitute.
Saute half cup of finely diced onions in two tablespoons of butter and add one finely chopped clove of garlic. Season with salt and pepper. Add dried home made hot pepper powder. Add a cup of recipe crumbles and cook until thawed from the freezer. Add two tablespoons of all purpose flour and combine everything while on medium low heat. Add one cup of milk (cow milk or oat milk, whatever is the kitchen standard) and combine. Lower the heat and cook until the mixture thickens. Toast and cut into 3/4-inch squares two slices of bread. Pour the creamed crumble mixture evenly over the toast and enjoy.
Tracking writing
I edited the first ten chapters of my book. I created a spreadsheet to track what I did and how the daily word count changed. The fact that I am now including numbered chapters is a revelation. It helps organize topics in a way I hadn’t considered. I now gather topics from different places in the narrative over a span of years under a single header. It helps reduce the amount of duplication that plagued me from the cut and paste method of composition with which I began. I am satisfied I made progress last week.
Email rabbit hole
I have email files beginning in 1999. There are hundreds of thousands of stored emails and I don’t plan to read them all. When I begin a session of email reading, I become lost for hours in a rabbit hole of forking paths. For example, the emails I wrote and received about updating the county plan for dealing with a contagious disease epidemic seem prescient in light of the coronavirus pandemic ten years later. This research will yield a paragraph, maybe two in my chapter about the coronavirus pandemic which closes the book.
What I seek the most is emails from friends and family to use in other parts of the narrative. Facts are recorded with dates attached to them and they help evoke memories of that time. The trouble I see is advancing technology may render some of those files obsolete. For now, the current version of Microsoft Outlook opens all the saved files, yet I’m anxious to go through them even if it would be better to wait until I’m writing those parts of the narrative.
Publication
I decided to publish Part I of the autobiography first. The narrative goes through finishing graduate school and taking work at the university where my spouse and I met. I was 30 years old on our wedding day: a clean breaking point for the narrative. The second part of the book will be more difficult to write because there is so much material to condense. I delay that challenge by deciding to finish part I this year, God willing.
Summary
It was a good week. Hopefully increased garden tasks can be added to my life without compromising the writing. March brings the pressure of spring and I am ready for it. On Friday, March 1, we saw the first Robin in our yard, along with another flock of smaller birds. Spring is definitely coming.
My relationship with the world of art is tenuous at best. A few high school and university friends practiced the visual arts. They were, and in some cases still are, multidisciplinary artists. I viewed myself as a multi-media creator yet throwing a pot, painting a watercolor, or drawing a sketch are activities in my portfolio that have been lost to exigencies of living a modern life. I have a lot of art books and art memories. It’s a big topic, so I’ll limit myself to three things: books in my library, artists I’ve seen or knew in person, and major shows I attended.
Art books take up too much space. When I built the bookshelves in my library I designed a shelf to accommodate them. Having so many is a function of my interest in certain artists like Picasso, Joan Miró, Georgia O’Keeffe, Andy Warhol, Edward Hopper, and the like. I saw major retrospectives of each of these artists and usually bought a book to remember the work. I picked up many art books at used book sales. Until I get to the point of running out of space, most of them will stay right where they are in the library.
Among the pantheon of artists who lived during my lifetime, three come to mind: Joan Miró, Louise Nevelson, and Leslie Bell.
I saw a major Miró retrospective in Paris in 1974. I wrote in my journal, “The show of Joan Miró was very complete and what impressed most were the ceramics and weaving. The paintings lacked something in such great numbers, better just a few to contemplate rather than such overdose.” Later, on a 1978 trip through Italy with friends, I saw the artist filming a program for French television at Fondation Maeght in Saint Paul de Vence. While Miró is known as a Catalan painter, the unexpected encounter on the French Riviera cemented him as French to me.
Louise Nevelson came to Iowa City for the installation of Voyage at the University Lindquist Center. I happened to be at the installation site when the artist walked up to have a look at the space. She was scheduled to give a lecture at the Museum of Art later that day. The University describes the work in place:
Voyage was the first sculpture purchased with funds provided by the Art in State Buildings Program, initiated in 1978. With public works such as Voyage, Louise Nevelson creates a visual dialogue using existing scenery and groups of vertical elements, evocative of trees or plant like forms. Nevelson preferred to see her large-scale outdoor sculpture, which she undertook in the last fifteen years of her life, as environmental architecture. Voyage fits this description as it commands attention within the closed-off courtyard of the Lindquist Center. Yet, it does not overwhelm the entire space. The work invites dialogue with the viewer, offering a variety of shapes, forming spatial relationships with both the spectator and the architectural environment.
One local artist I knew well was Leslie Bell, an art professor at Saint Ambrose University. Les was a couple years ahead of me in high school. I came to know him more as a musician than a visual artist. He was good at whatever he did. I recall picking him up while hitch hiking to a friend’s home. I engaged his band to play at our fifth high school class reunion. He was part of a small group of intellectuals in the Quad Cities. He helped create a film festival around the time I returned from military service. We were not close friends. He was an example of someone successful in making art a career. He influenced many students at Saint Ambrose. I thought about him while I tried to figure out how to live in my home town as an adult in the early 1980s.
I visited so many art museums during my life. During trips to Europe I made a point to see the works of Johannes Vermeer, which are not gathered in a single location. I saw a lot of them. I made a point to see Monet’s work in Paris. I bought a book of Byzantine mosaic images when visiting Ravenna, Italy in 1974. I saw the Picasso retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the Andy Warhol retrospective at the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Georgia O’Keeffe retrospective somewhere. The latter was so much about the artist and not about the location of the retrospective. Seeing art in person is essential and I did my share of it.
How shall I use the couple hundred art books in my library? For reference, of course. There has to be something more than that. I’ve been creating so long, I don’t need many references. As long as I have the space, they can sit on shelves waiting for my attention.
Journey Home 
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