Tag: #amwriting

Categories
Living in Society

Korean Grocery

Bulletin board at H Mart in Niles, Ill. On April 2, 2025.

Someone shared a photo of the interior of a Korean grocery store in Niles, Illinois in a social media post. I had to visit the next time I was in the area, so this week, I did. The experience was a bit surreal.

For the first time in a long time, I entered a grocery store and left without buying anything. It was the H Mart in Niles, an Asian Grocer larger than the American grocer I frequent near home. They had aisles and aisles of foodstuffs with Korean lettering on the packages. Two of us walked from end to end to see what was on offer. It was a lot. It would be easy to drop $500 in one visit and not scratch the surface of what was available.

There was a food court near the entryway. It was well past the lunch hour when we arrived, and two hours until supper time. I would have thought someone would be eating, yet few were. Every person behind the counters was not doing anything, just standing or sitting, I suppose waiting for a customer. The store was almost empty of customers on a Wednesday afternoon.

At the other end of the store near the exit was a row of other kinds of merchants, such as the nail salon that stood out. In between were well-stocked, well-faced shelves. There were a couple of stockers, who each had a single box of a product to refill a shelf. This is unlike our grocer in that here, the stock person fills a large flatbed cart with dozens of items which are wheeled to the floor and parked while the entire aisle is re-stocked. Maybe it’s a cultural difference, although I’m struggling to figure out why.

There was a lot of seafood, reminding me that marine life everywhere on Earth is under pressure from over fishing. There were many kinds of pickled products, including kimchi and daikon radishes. I wouldn’t know how to choose one type of pickled product for a meal among so many options. There were small shelves of U.S. company products. Notable was a wide set of shelves of Spam products, actually multiple sets in different locations in the store.

South Koreans eat lots of Spam, according to National Public Radio. It is the second-largest consumer of Spam in the world, eating roughly half as much as the United States, which has six times as many residents. U.S. soldiers introduced Spam to Korea during the Korean War. Dishes such as Kimchi Spam Musubi, Bibimbap bowl with Spam, and others are considered to be delicacies. When my uncle was stationed in Persia during World War II he ate so much Spam in his rations he never ate it again after military service. To each their own, I suppose.

The reality of H Mart did not measure up to the internet posting. In person, it seemed a vast, well-stocked warehouse for people with a specific culinary interest. How does one decide which pancake mix to choose when there are so many? Maybe there are too many varieties. Inside H Mart it is a world of its own.

They even had boxes of Aunt Jemima pancake mix, with the iconic figure on the box, from before Pepsico took a step into the future of racial equality and removed her. Quaker Oats, a subsidiary of Pepsico, may have felt it was doing the right thing by removing the aunt’s image. In the bright neon lights of the store there was consumer comfort in seeing her image persist. Maybe they got the message about DEI and put Aunt Jemima back in her place.

I found the visit fun, the most fun I’ve had in a while. I don’t get out much. Since I didn’t buy anything, it was cheap fun. I don’t know if the internet ruined me for experiences like this. I would never have seen the inside of H Mart without that social media post. It is one more bit of reality incorporated into my online world view. I just need to develop a taste for kimchi and I’ll be set.

Categories
Reviews

Book Review: The Ministry of Time

Trail walking on March 31, 2025.

Large crop fields have been worked along many of the roads I traveled to Chicago this week. Ready or not, the season turned to spring. Next on my indoor planting schedule is tomatoes, followed by cucumbers and squash. I’m waiting for conditions outdoors to improve to tear down some of last year’s garden and prep the soil. It’s how I’ve learned to be a gardener.

I finished reading The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley. I wrote a book review on the Goodreads social media platform:

The public library had this book and I heard about it from Barack Obama’s reading list. It was a fast-moving, engaging read. The 20k+ reviews already written on Goodreads are a trip and highly recommended. Here is a link to the page. Couple things to add:

  1. The main value of this book is the author’s use of language. It is right on the surface and had me looking up things she wrote for usage. Most fiction I read does not engage like this. The writing worked sometimes, and sometimes not. I found this invaluable to my own writing.
  2. Did not care for romanticizing tobacco use. Too many friends who died of lung cancer.
  3. Lord Franklin’s search for the NW passage is being rediscovered. Not sure this fictionalized version helps or hurts. Probably not positive to actual history.
  4. Hard to put down once started.
  5. The imperfect character of the female lead was compelling.
  6. Author’s summary of how she created the male lead from the historical record is a must read.

Rated 5 stars because among dozens of fiction books read in the past several years, this one stands out with enduring quality. It is likeable because it is different.
Give it a go!

I’ve been away from my writing computer for two days. It’s time to get back to work on my memoir. Thanks for reading.

Categories
Living in Society

Better Vibes Ahead

Lake Macbride Watershed drainage ditch on March 22, 2025.

I plan to be out of office and away from writing computers for a couple of days. Here is a photo from a recent trail walk to keep you company.

Categories
Writing

Inside the Bubble

Trail Walking on March 29, 2025.

The ambient temperature is chilly as I write. Not freezing, not spring, just chilly. I yearn to be outside working in the yard and garden. I don’t yearn enough to bundle up and brave the cold and wind. At least I got the garlic in the ground on Saturday and it rained Sunday. I’ll take little victories when they come.

I’ve been spending what seems like a lot of time writing. Each day includes writing emails, social media posts on BlueSky, and at least one blog post. All of that writing is to prime the pump for work on my autobiography. I’m on the draft of Chapter 25 of a possible 50, so the draft is half finished. Time writing is valuable for the distraction it provides. Distraction from our politics, mostly.

On Monday, Paul Krugman posted this graphic:

His comment was about the impact of economic uncertainty on small businesses. It’s not good, he said. However, there are more kinds of uncertainty during the current administration that are equally uncertain.

Will Social Security continue to provide steady retirement income? Will my veteran friends continue to have health care through a viable Veterans Administration system? Will my public library be able to afford things like interlibrary loans, websites, and other services if federal funding goes away? Will research facilities be able to create needed vaccines during the next, inevitable pandemic? When I’m infirm enough to need a nursing home will Medicaid be available to help defray costs? Life today is one big truckload of uncertainties, hence my need to be distracted from it.

As society grows more uncertain, the tendency is to withdraw into what is most important in life: family, maintaining a home, eating sufficiently well to avoid problems, maintaining physical and mental health, and more. Such concerns during the Reagan administration rose and my reaction was to withdraw into what I will call the “Reagan bubble.” Focus on what is important and the heck with everything else. Needing a Reagan bubble complicates things in significant ways.

The tendency is to conserve resources. That means less spending on retail in person and online. It also means using funds to pay down debt. Can we get by with the vehicle we currently own for a few more years? Will the washer and dryer hold up without needing replaced? Conserving resources, multiplied by a society that feels the same way about uncertainty will have negative fallout for the consumer economy. While I’m not an economist, it will be felt across the economy, not just in the consumer sector.

Living in the Reagan bubble will be good for my writing, the same way the coronavirus pandemic was. Until I finish the second book, I need that. That raises another question, though. Where will things be when I do finish the book, hopefully by the end of the year? It’s a big unknown. Those of us who have been to this rodeo before during the Reagan years know what to do.

Categories
Sustainability

Sunday is a Day of Rest

Predawn sky from the state park trail.

The constant news cycle is not good for us. Sunday is as good a day as any to take a break and focus on the real world all around us. It is also a day to post my favorite photo of the week.

Categories
Writing

Schererville Terminal

Welcome to Schererville. Photo Credit – Wikimedia Commons.

Editor’s Note: This is a draft chapter from my memoir. I was assigned to the Schererville, Indiana trucking terminal of Lincoln Sales and Service for most of the time from 1987 until 1993.

On my first day of work, as I crested the railroad bridge just south of the Schererville terminal, I saw a car had driven under the trailer of one of our tractor-trailer rigs while it was making a left-hand turn onto Indianapolis Boulevard. I didn’t know it then, yet this would become the typical start of a day. During the time I worked there, about four of the six years we lived in the Calumet, there was always something happening. It was nearly impossible for a human to keep up. Thankfully, no one appeared to be hurt in this specific accident.

The Town of Schererville, Indiana is called the “crossroads of the nation.” Situated in Saint John’s Township in Lake County, it has been a crossroads since before becoming a state when Native American trails crisscrossed not far from the current location of the intersection of U.S. Highways 30 and 41. At one time, Standard Oil Company owned all four corners of that intersection. The Standard Oil Trust had lots of money and was buying desirable locations to sell automotive fuel and lubricants across the country. Locations along the Lincoln Highway, which ran coast to coast, were prime. Their corporate descendant, BP, still operates on the northeast corner which currently has a large gas station and convenience store. Our trucking terminal was about two miles north on Highway 41, which is also called Indianapolis Boulevard.

Because the company fuel island was close to the main roads traveled by our truckers, almost all our drivers stopped to get fuel, drop off payroll paperwork, use the restroom, check in with the company trainer, and if needed, get their equipment repaired or serviced. Our fuel island attendant J.J. knew Chicago like the back of his hand and gave directions to help out-of-state drivers find their customers using routes safe for an 18-wheeler in the city and its suburbs.

In 1987, Lincoln Sales and Service in Schererville was a full-service trucking terminal. During my two tours of duty there, we evolved into a driver recruiting station when the shop and fuel island were closed after a union organizing attempt, and training was moved to the corporate office in Cedar Rapids to provide a consistent, documented process when the U.S. Department of Transportation audited us. Driver payroll had already been centralized in nearby Griffith, Indiana. Our terminal staff shrank from more than 25 employees to half a dozen over the years. There was less traffic after the fuel island closed, yet it was busy enough for us to hire an outside security service. I was young and could keep up with the workload which often bled over into family time.

I described terminal operations in Chapter 18, yet I want to bring focus to the story of my work.

The many driver interviews I conducted were a story of dehumanization. Workers were laid off by companies that felt they had to be competitive, whatever that meant. It was a time of ubiquitous management consulting firms who restructured businesses to direct more revenue and earnings to owners, shareholders, and high-level managers. CRST followed this path eventually. It was busy at our terminal because most of the time I worked in uncharted territory in managing a recruiting operation with little guidance unless there was a lawsuit, workers compensation claim, or union activity.

In the crucible of manufacturing in transition, tens of thousands of workers in our area were trying to adjust. I was there listening to them and found one heck of a story. I hired some of them, doing what I could to ease their transition.

I officed in Schererville yet traveled a lot. By the end of my time there I was managing trucking terminals in Schererville and Richmond, Indiana, and starting recruiting operations in West Virginia, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Missouri. I would wake up on airplanes unsure of where I was, or where I was going.

I’m glad for the experience. I hated the experience. My life in the Calumet, and everywhere else I traveled, taught me about unionization and the consequences of change sparked by the Reagan Revolution in a way I believe gave me a unique perspective. They were days of hope for an intangible future that included success. In retrospect, I don’t know what that means. It was a busy time and there was little time and energy left for family.

Categories
Writing

The Work I Do

Photo by Yury Kim on Pexels.com
The work I do
is not for me

so much as it is for

the friends I have come to know.

The collages
The poems
The journal entries
The performances

Not for me.

The nuns taught us.

All for the honor and glory of God.

It is a lesson

that stuck.

~ Labor Day, 1989, Lake County, Indiana
Categories
Sustainability

Big Grove Township Extreme Weather #1

The home we built in 1993 from Google Earth.

Editor’s Note: Our arrival in Big Grove Township was marked by the first in a series of extreme weather events: the 1993 flood. It was called a once in 500-years flood, yet we would soon find out flooding had become more common, including the next 500-year flood event in 2008. I plan to weave at least six extreme weather events into my memoir, beginning with this chapter on Big Grove Township.

Big Grove Township was established before Iowa Statehood. The first sawmill was built here in 1839 by Anthony Sells on Mill Creek. Put the big groves of trees together with the sawmill and you have us. The oak, walnut, hickory, ash, elm and cottonwood that once thrived among numerous pure springs were gone when we bought our lot here. What dominates is the culture we and others brought with us to an area where all trees indigenous to the Northwest once existed in abundance yet no longer do. There is something essentially American in that.

There is a subdivision named Mill Creek today, suggesting this history. Throughout the area, people refer to early settlers and builders of homes instead of the people who now own and live in those structures. The names Cerny, Beuter, Andrews and Brown persist, as does the more recent name of Don Kasparek upon whose former farm our home is situated.

On the vacant lot we purchased, there were scrub grasses and a lone mulberry tree. The tree appeared to have been planted by a bird’s droppings while it perched on a surveyor’s re-bar marker. The ground had a high clay content which suggested Kasparek had removed the topsoil before subdividing the plats. When he died in 2003, I recognized him in our association newsletter. We speak of him from time to time in the neighborhood, although not always in a positive way.

I looked at an old picture of a building on Main Street in Solon, the nearest city. In sepia tones, seven teams of horses and wagons are lined up in front of a building on the dirt street. We can make out the lettering on the shop windows: Cerny Bros Grocery, Cerny Bros Hardware, and Cerny Bros Feed. While the roads have been paved for many years, much of downtown and the surrounding area resonates with the area’s origins in history before automobiles.

We built our home during the record-breaking floods of 1993. Governor Terry Branstad described the extreme weather event as “the worst natural disaster in our state’s history.” The Des Moines Register published a commemorative book titled Iowa’s Lost Summer: The Flood of 1993. Extreme weather delayed construction of our home that summer, causing us to stay with relatives and in motels for about a month after we moved from our house in Indiana. We moved in during August 1993. I was used to severe flooding from growing up in Davenport where the 1965 Mississippi River flood broke records. I was not used to flooding, 1993-style.

I couldn’t help but believe who I was represented itself in any of local history. My culture was what I brought with me, rooted in coal mining, factory workers, farming, home making, and the rural cultures of Virginia, Minnesota and LaSalle County, Illinois. Our history as a family goes back on both sides to the Revolutionary War. My line in Virginia goes a hundred years prior to the revolution.

That my ancestor Thomas Jefferson Addington is a common ancestor to the Salyer girls of the Salyer-Lee Chapter 1417 of the United Daughters of the Confederacy stands in contrast to the story of Maciej Nadolski working in coal mines in Allegheny, Pennsylvania after the Civil War and then buying land from the railroad in Minnesota. What of my father’s birth in Glamorgan, Virginia? What of the suppression of Polish culture by the Russians after 1865 that led to a massive migration of Poles to North America? If I weren’t here, we wouldn’t speak much of these things in Big Grove Township. Perhaps with time we will.

Categories
Writing

The Real Work Begins

Writing About Apples

Drafting Part II of my memoir is proceeding well. During the last ten years I did so much work writing bits and pieces that paragraphs now fall quickly into place. I have a solid draft of chapters 1-17, which is before we moved to Indiana. Because the time is so recent (1988), and because I wrote a lot while living through it, there are ample documents and memories available. Too many, really. I have choices to make. Sadly, the choice is what to leave out.

I wrote this description of where we lived last week:

The dominant geographic feature in the Calumet is Lake Michigan. I remember endless flocks of geese migrating above our house, noise of their honking entering through open windows continuously and for hours at a time. There was “lake effect” snow that piled up quickly during winter. Outside our house, it never really got dark because of the proximity of Chicago and Gary which indirectly illuminated our yard. The hum of traffic from nearby Highway 30 was a constant white noise, muffling the broader world.

I don’t remember much of what we ate in Indiana but my grandmother gave us money to buy a stove and refrigerator for the kitchen. We bought them at Sears, which was a short drive from our house. Grocery stores were not open on Sundays, so we had to plan. We got to know several family-style restaurants, many run by Greek immigrants, where we would get away from home for a dinner out. (Excerpt from a draft memoir, March 16, 2025).

The Calumet Region can be characterized by its proximity to Lake Michigan, and being the home of the largest concentration of steel mills, oil refineries, and chemical plants in the world during the 20th Century. I adapted the name to characterize my life as “living in the Calumet.” The havoc wrought by the Reagan Revolution resulted in many tens of thousands of unemployed industrial workers who were the raison d’être for our company to establish a driver recruiting operation there. During my six years working in the Calumet, I personally interviewed some 10,000 job seekers spread out across the states north of the Ohio River. A person learns a lot about American culture while doing that.

That’s the problem. I’m stuck with getting out a literary funnel to narrow the scope of my narrative. There are simply too many stories to tell.

My time in Indiana has a fixed beginning and end point which can be dealt with. Long time readers of this blog have likely heard some of these stories, like the post Flint and Reagan’s Wake which tells about my experience in Flint, Michigan in 1988. The balance a memoir writer must achieve is in the mixture of hardened memories and rediscovering our past lives through research. Including some of the hardened narratives is a must. They just can’t dominate the overall story.

Achieving this balance is the real work of autobiography. In my early years, the stories remaining are fewer and the inclination is to include them all because it was reasonable to do so. Not so when the main work of a life begins. The issue of my ideology, combined with specific experiences that stand out is not a given. We need to turn more pages to make sure we get the narrative to align with our intentions.

Categories
Writing

Not as Planned

Pelican migration, late winter 2025.

Ambient temperatures were in the mid-40s yet it was the wind, gusting at 25 mph, that made garlic planting impossible. I rescheduled. The soil is right, but I didn’t want to fight the wind. This year’s garlic is an experiment. It is not going as planned.

This excerpt from my journal seems apropos for today.

So be it, a life of creating starts. Here a thermometer installed on the kitchen awning. Here some seeds planted, a corner raked. A book read, a lifelong process, never ending, of small acts, viewable only with an eye more omniscient than mine: as the nuns taught, “All for the honor and glory of God.”

To live a life: this is what is presented.

Like a pioneer, I step into the wilderness. Though others may have lived here before, my presence gives new life to the present. Not forgetting what my ancestors have created, I strike a new path, and though a crowd goes the main road, I’ll take the paths still traveled by deer and rabbits and birds.

I feel the number of people who live engaged in life is diminishing. Many seem to accept that society is a prioiri. What we do takes place in a context set by others. They do not realize that we are the set designers, as well as the authors of this drama. And drama only comes as we will.

We must make a sculpture of the clay of our lives. Something created in a manner that will yield beauty and worth to the observer. Whether that observer be society’s poor or rich art patrons, or God alone. It is critical the creation be made. We must attempt it. Though only God may be watching, in his eyes, our lives, small and made of clay, have purpose, and worth. But the charge is ours, each one to live a life. (Personal Journal, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, April 13, 1986).