Tag: Writing

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

Categories
Writing

Last Month of Winter

It was a two-cup video conference.

Despite recent rain, snow remains piled around the yard. It felt like spring for a few days, yet it’s clear another month remains in winter. I’m okay with that. We need a hard freeze to kill off bugs and stop the sap flow in our fruit trees for the best pruning. I’m getting a lot done just by staying indoors most of the week.

I went to the home, farm and auto supply store to buy collard seeds. They were out. The cashier caught me up on gossip at my former employer. Two of my managers had tested positive on a newly implemented random drug test program and were fired. The store was busy for a Thursday morning. I bought some okra, tomatillo, scallop squash, and leek seeds.

I asked a farmer friend if they had extra collard seeds, and they do. I’ll pick them up over the weekend, maybe today.

My seedlings are taking shape. Plenty of kale (four varieties), broccoli, and cabbage (two varieties) started. It took forever, but my first stevia seeds finally sprouted this morning. Those are Zone 9, but we plan to keep them inside the house. My second wave of onions sprouted fine and are growing. Should be ready to plant them in April.

The concept of my greens patch is to have a lot of Winterbor and Redbor kale with a mixture of other greens like chard, tatsoi, pac choi, and others. If I had a dozen collard seeds, I’d hope for 5-6 seedlings. Main uses will be cornbread and collards from fresh, stir fry, and an ingredient in canned vegetable broth, and soup. If I had an abundance, I’d give the popular surplus away. I’ll de-stem and freeze whole leaves for winter. It is great fun to smash the plastic bag of frozen leaves to smithereens with my fist just before adding them to soup.

Regular readers may notice the poetry I posted. I appreciate the views. These are poems found in my files from the 1970s when I wrote more poetry. I’ve been lightly editing before posting them here. There are way more bad poems than good in what I’m finding. I also found poetry I wrote in high school My teacher used copious amounts of red ink to critique them. There was not much usable in that batch from 1967.

Posting poetry has given me relief from writing this blog. The number of views has been good, so the endeavor has been worthwhile. I’ll keep it up until I run out of old poems.

During the last month, I added more than 26,000 words to my autobiography. The processing of old documents and files is becoming established. By the time the first draft is finished, I should surpass 200,000 words. I’m more than halfway there. 200k is too long for this book, so I’ll have to edit. I’m won’t get carried away with editing until I go through the remaining boxes of artifacts. I have been constantly finding important memories. Going through the process helps me understand more about myself and how I grew up and lived. I’m satisfied with the progress, although presently awash in memories.

Time to get after today’s work. Another round of seeding, a trip to the eye glasses store and more work on our shared project list. Best wishes for a relaxing and productive weekend!

Categories
Writing

Bix Festival

Jazz flows across the Mississippi.

A polite and encouraging announcer presents:
   a businessman from Davenport,
   a chiropractor with
   his brother from Sacramento,
   a lawyer from Moline,
   a Catholic priest from Argentina,
   and a band leader from Orlando.

They will play jazz.
"The way it is supposed to be played," he said.
"The way Bix would have liked it."

I wander the levee toward the roller dam
   where water churns.

A collector, steeped in passion,
   and at home,
   makes piles of Beiderbecke 78s...

He might say,
to the gathered musicians, 
"These songs sound mighty good,"
yet prefer the dust and scratches
of his collected disks.

Water churns through the dam.

I consider when there was no jazz to remember,
   before the grid of streets and buildings,
   and return to a native place.

In a heartbeat of clarity and intuition I see...
   famous forebears surveying the plats...
   and wonder what happened 
   to Black Hawk's bones.

While jazz flows across the river.

~ Undated from some summer in the 1970s
Categories
Writing

Red Sky at Dusk

Red Sky at Dusk

A redness fills the room
   where I spent hours practicing guitar.

It is the setting sun
   refracting its rays.

Securing my thermal blanket,
   I rest in bed.

With or without a red presence,
   I'll close my eyes and ears,
      leaving me with memories...

To dream... of musical notes infused with red sunsets.

~ Undated from the mid-1970s
Categories
Writing

Untitled: To Paul

This morning you bumped
your own dresser.
Knocking a pack of Certs,
wintergreen flavor,
onto the floor.

One cert flew loose and
landed in your mouth.

Then you awoke
and I had
a fresh mint taste in my mouth.

I had another.

~ Iowa City, 1973-1974.
Categories
Writing

Writing Desk #1

Writing desk purchased in November 1979 in my apartment at Five Points, Davenport.

At this desk I made some of the most consequential decisions of my life. I had just returned from three years living in Mainz, Germany, and rented this one-bedroom apartment at Five Points in Davenport. By the time this photo was taken in December, I knew I could not stay in my home town.

It’s not that I disliked Davenport. I was insulated from seeing how average the city was by a family that welcomed me and tried to do their best by me. As I returned after a long absence, There was little vitality running through the city. I didn’t fit in.

When I sat at the desk and wrote, I felt like a writer.

The early part of my post-high school intellectual development centered around Saul Bellow. “I want,” he wrote and I agreed. At Five Points I became enamored of Joan Didion. I bought The White Album from The Book of the Month Club. After it arrived, I went to the public library and checked out everything Didion had written. I read three of her early books in two weeks about when this film was exposed. I couldn’t get enough of her.

“Didion speaks with a voice, the voice of a person sitting in a sunlit room at a typewriter,” I wrote in my journal. “Her paragraphs seem well-written, her vocabulary is enriched with new words. I particularly like her image of the end of the 1960s. The spread of word of the Tate murders across the valley.”

Didion’s thoughts seemed to evolve before my eyes on the page.

She was from a military family. Her father was an Army finance officer and the family often moved. I found commonality in this experience. “She touches on something it has taken the four years in the military for me to realize,” I wrote in 1980. “It is a feeling more than anything else, but I suspect that it may be something peculiar to the military environment.” I saw how her experiences in a military family influenced her writing and in turn how my service would influence me.

During the following years, I sought out every book Joan Didion wrote and began reading them soon after publication.

I continue to think of Joan Didion while I’m writing.

In every place I lived, I had a desk on which to write. What makes this one different is it rests a few feet from the writing space I established after inheriting my father-in-law’s library table.

At university I struggled to find a path. I was on a trajectory supercharged by the death of Father in 1969. Didion’s writing was something I could look to and see myself. Being successful as a writer wasn’t meant to be my career. Yet Didion gave me hope in dark times.

I needed that at Five Points as the 1970s ended and I began to call myself a writer.

Categories
Writing

Listening is Important

Woman Writing Letter

The first funnel of the Iowa legislature is March 3, so it’s time to look at what our representatives Dawn Driscoll (SD46) and Brad Sherman (HD91) have been up to.

No doubt they won the 2022 midterm election, despite failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake’s warning about election integrity during a recent trip to Iowa. They won fair and square.

If I don’t agree with them in many cases, they each have explained some of their votes in their newsletters. Reading them helps me understand their point of view. I won’t convert from being a Democrat to Republican, yet listening to legislators with whom I disagree is important. It’s a way to improve civility that has been lacking in our politics.

Republicans hold legislative majorities, and the governor is pushing for major changes. Because proposed changes are substantial, it is difficult to get a grip on the reorganization of state government and education. Legislators should take time to consider the bills in public forums.

My hope for the rest of session is that Republicans listen to Democrats when they have something important to say, pay attention to details of what they propose, and do right by all Iowans. These are reasonable things to ask.

~ First published by the Marengo Pioneer Republican on Feb. 14, 2023.

Categories
Writing

In the Calumet

76 and 53...
degrees and humidity...
climate,
     as good as we get, 
     in the Calumet.

Our society,
     of family and friends,
     spoke of weather:

     conversation derived...
          from ancestors who...
               sectioned townships....
                    once the natives were gone.

And while the indigenous here...
     seem preoccupied with commerce...
          I consider...
               the atmosphere...
                    of the Calumet.

~ Summer 1988
Categories
Writing

I Want to Tell You

I don't want that old thing
that you had before.

I just want to tell you
one thing:

I want to play baseball

now

at the park

because there's no baseball space here.

No baseball space at all.

~ Spring/Summer 1989
Categories
Writing

First Day of Summer

Summer came today
Cool, windy, clear.

On the weathered picnic bench
I sawed limbs,
fallen during the storm,
into firewood.

She stacked the logs
on the deck
near the gate leading to the
driveway.

~From my Indiana Journal circa 1988
Categories
Living in Society

Skipping an Annual Shopping Tradition

Tools

There is not a lot of money to spend on frills at the end of each month. I wrote about this before and while we hope to pay off our outstanding consumer loan this year, an unexpected expense could complicate things. Like many people we live on the edge between financial survival and ruin.

There are broader implications than our single household.

Last year, 48 percent of household expenses were programmed. That means property taxes, water, electricity, sewer, refuse hauling, road maintenance, insurance, telephone, cable T.V., car loan payment, and broadband. There is no escaping these expenses.

Sixteen percent of expenses were food, sundries, gasoline and cash expenses. One can economize here, but all of these categories are necessary. Our food expense is lower because we regularly use produce from the garden.

The balance of our expenses (36 percent) was what I call household operating expenses. This includes clothing, household repair parts, auto repairs, health co-pays, writing expenses, gardening, donations, and anything unexpected that pops up during the year. Sometimes things break and an outside contractor is needed to make furnace, electrical or other repairs. Contractors are not cheap.

I used to go shopping when the Super Bowl was televised. It was a tradition. I’d wait until the neighborhood got quiet, start the car, and drive to the mall to walk deserted passages and browse. It was my personal equivalent of Black Friday. I’m not sure how much I spent on such shopping trips, but not much. The message was more how anti-sports I became after seeing the Iowa Hawkeyes play with coach Ray Nagle back in the day. Sports was and is a waste of time in our household, unless someone we know personally is playing.

With no money left at the end of each month, and we had to take out a loan to pay for some unexpected expenses. Shopping out of tradition doesn’t make sense with a personal loan. It is better not to buy anything extra other than what we need to get by.

I compare this with the post-war boom during the 1950s when large companies banked on a consumer society. The population boomed and people were buying new homes and equipping them with modern appliances and furnishings. The car culture took off. Today, with so much of our expenses programmed and necessary, combined with replacement items, this has to be taking sales away from merchants who once relied upon them. We bought a used car last year, and will buy a major appliance or two this year, but such purchases can’t be driving the economy, at least not in the same way. Cars and appliances are made better to last longer these days and that has to hurt replacement sales.

We are going through the house to purge stuff we don’t need. So much of what we cared about for years, isn’t anything our child wants. We have the room to store old things, although there is nothing wrong with some empty space. I keep thinking I could need, use, or repurpose. I need to let go. It is hard to get a purge started, and we are not ready to call the waste management company to arrange for a dumpster. However; that day is coming.

The Super Bowl will continue to be a non-event here. We’ll make the usual meals, yet we won’t do any shopping outside our normal stocking levels to prepare. I’ll skip a traditional shopping trip that shouldn’t have been a tradition at all. I’ll be better for that.