A long time ago, I realized the people in charge are no smarter than the rest of us.
My little town in northeast Iowa has a seven-intersection shopping area with a signal light at each crossing that commands go (green), slow (yellow), and stop (red), with walk and don’t walk for pedestrians. Two weeks ago, they decided to change to a continuous flashing red light.
Here’s my letter to our local newspaper about this change.
Cancel Decorah’s Flashing Red Light District
I live on Water Street, a few blocks east of downtown, so I walk and drive it several times every day. Yesterday, 5% calmer than usual after my new 15-minute meditation routine, I got in my car to get a Snickers tornado at Whippy Dip.
On the way back, I crept up to the intersection of Mechanic and Water, second in line for take-off. The eastbound car in front of me had its left turn signal on, as did the westbound car across the intersection, with a chorus of three pedestrians waiting off stage.
No one knew what to do, precisely the opposite sensation you want when driving, walking, or biking.
I thought about snatching my Tornado or checking my phone to calm my nerves, but as a law-abiding Iowan for 76 years and a newly minted meditator, I cleared my mind and recalled the hands-free law passed by our state legislature, rightly concerned about Iowans’ health.
When I pulled into my driveway, I was 10% more unsettled than usual.
TO MY PAULMUSES.COM READERS–THANK YOU. TODAY, I TRANSFERRED MANY STORIES THAT HAVE BEEN PUBLISHED ON MEDIUM TO THIS BLOG SITE. TOO MANY, SO IF YOU ARE READING THEM IN ORDER I APPRECIATE YOUR PATIENCE AND PERSISTENCE.
I love living in a hoof-friendly community, following in the striding footsteps of my mother, who marched three miles a day until she was 90.
A hip replacement slowed her down to a stroll until, at 94, she forgot who she was and what she liked to do.
“Moving at a regular pace” was the last of her habits to fade away, after coffee and ice cream, just like Glen Campbell’s songs stayed with him longer than the cities he was performing in, as shown in the poignant documentary “I’ll Be Me,” about how he and his family managed his Alzheimer’s during his last tour.
Yesterday, I made the mistake of prematurely stepping off the curb onto this crosswalk before realizing I’m not in Florida anymore.
Photo by the author
Of course, the closest car slowed to a stop to accommodate a pedestrian. I’ve given up waving these altruistic strangers on. Now I give them a thumbs-up and hope the cars behind are paying attention.
Two weeks ago, I spent six days in Winter Haven, Florida, taking care of my late brother Peter’s estate. This community sits between Tampa and Orlando. Below is one of the sidewalks across from my hotel, which I hiked down each day. In that week, I saw one other pedestrian. And no bikers.
Photo by the author
As I walked through intersections, watching the timer count down from 20 seconds, I felt like a stranger in a strange land; this feeling of alienation was heightened by the darkened windshields, which are illegal in my state of Iowa.
Sadly, at the end of each daily walk, I felt more, not less, anxious. Ironically, the people I met in the hotel and restaurants, at my brother’s church and assisted living facility, in bookstores and coffee shops, were all, without exception, friendly.
For me, walking is a therapy session. My couch is Palisades Park, about a mile from our house. This is the waiting room.
Photo by the author
Occasionally, we’ll have a group session.
Photo by the author
As you can tell from the incline, it’s not for the faint of heart. But the personal insights sometimes take my breath away, particularly when I’m helped to gain perspective and take the long view.
Photo by the author
However, my guides always tell me at the end of each session, “Be careful out there, and take it one step at a time.
Last night, meaning three hours ago, because I checked our upside-down clock light projector, I dreamt of writing a story of 150 words. It was only a snippet of an image, but it stuck. You know how that is, sometimes night memories linger upon waking, and sometimes not.
When I fell back to sleep, another vision prodded, of our French coffee thingies. Below is the real assembly line.
Photo by the author
The first photo is today’s finished product.
It is now 6:14 AM, and I’ve been writing for over two hours. I’ve yet to check the New York Times or The Economist, so that’s a sign my writing muse is in the house.
On the lap desk, in a red Moleskine notebook propped under my right arm next to my MacBook, is an open page listing dates for photos I will use in two writing projects, neither of which was this one.
A few years ago, I fell into the daily habit of walking around a local forested park a few blocks from our house.
Yesterday, on the way to Palisades, I took the first picture and thought, what came first, the root or the sidewalk?
You’ll notice a fenced playground across the street. It used to be the parking lot for a funeral home that is now a Montessori School.
The genius of recycling.
When I entered the park, I was primed to discover other examples of survival. Isn’t this old timer magnificent?
Photo by the author
And these guys don’t give up.
Photo by the author
Five years ago, Rebecca and I built a back porch that required a new sidewalk, so we moved the birch tree you see in the middle of the photo below from its birthplace along the sidewalk path. We carefully dug under the root ball to give the tree a good chance of surviving. We needn’t have worried.
Photo by the author
Both of us remember the first Earth Day in 1970, Joni Mitchell’s environmental anthem, “The Big Yellow Taxi,” and her admonition not to cover more of the earth with concrete.
Well, we sinned.
That’s one reason we have planted 10 trees on our property and why my daily walk through a forest is penance, pleasure, and enlightenment.
Trees can get through the most challenging environments.
That’s a lesson worth pondering for other living things.
I’ve loved Louis Armstrong’s version of It’s a Wonderful World since I first heard it in 1967.
Please take two minutes to listen.
What do you think? How does it make you feel?
The song was written by George David Weiss and Bob Thiele as a salve for the horrors of the Vietnam War. (source)
But it’s timeless and universal.
Armstrong’s life, as a Black man in America, and his role in the American civil rights movement give the words additional power and depth.
Yesterday, I found it on Spotify for my running errands soundtrack. As I turned onto our street, we passed the familiar entrance to our town’s cemetery, just as the sun was dying, and Louis was repeating verse three.
If you’re a writer, I’m guessing you have peaks and valleys, periods when it seems easy to do the work and intervals of stasis.
When in the midst of the former, everything seems right with the world. About the times of stoppage, a feeling of panic seeps in, as in, will I ever write again?
Last week, I was traveling to take care of a family matter, so I did not write for six days, April 7 through April 12. This journey, to Florida from my home in Iowa, was to begin my responsibility as the executor of my late brother Peter’s estate and to attend his and his wife, Pamela’s, funeral and inurnment. Pete died in January, and Pam last September.
Every day, I met kind and generous people who had cared for them, including the hospice nurses who had been with my brother the moment he drew his last breath.
Early each morning, during my typical writing time, I instead sat in the motel’s breakfast room, readying myself for the day by observing and occasionally talking with the other patrons. I was mostly content to be and not do.
Today, thinking back and writing about this time, I wonder why peaks seem more natural than valleys and thus less to be feared.
Stasis is defined as an equilibrium of forces, which, for an animal, produces a state of rest. An example is a bear hibernating during the winter. (source)
The melancholy of mourning produces a torpor that respects the unspoken feelings of loss, until they can be acknowledged.
You’ve never been more popular. There’s even a book, Why Buddhism is True, that touts your wisdom, such as the emphasis on living in the moment.
I’m creeping toward your 80, finding it easier to slow down and smell the roses.
But before flowers bloom in late spring, while I’m out walking, I take your advice and pay close attention to one thing, with no distraction. The little sticks in my ears, each with a foam rubber end, block out everything but the speaker’s words.
Allowing me to listen, as I’m sure your followers did, to the talker with a single-minded attention to the moment.
Mindfulness is truly a gift that keeps on giving.
With objects of focus that help clear one’s mind of all the intrusive chatter that clutters one’s thinking, making life harder than it needs to be.
Photo by the author of the ‘Boys Teachers’ at Davenport Assumption in 1965, from the Assumption Yearbook.
What a discovery!
They’re all there, in one blast from the past. I threw everything away, as did my mother, so I have nothing left from my high school years, not even my red-and-black-sleeved letter jacket with the large white A.
Fortunately, my old high school didn’t. It had the good sense to put its Yearbooks online. So I’m writing this morning with ALL my teachers looking at me, surely from the teacher’s lounge in the great beyond, as this photo was taken in 1965. I’ll be joining you someday. Save a donut.
I went to a Catholic high school that separated the boys from the girls, except for the 17-minute lunch period. The boys were in wings A and B, and the girls in C and D. You can see the boys’ faculty in the picture.
Here are four vignettes from my sophomore year. The names are real, as are my memories. Can you put a name to a face?
Sister Laurent taught Algebra. Strangely, she liked me. I never knew what to do with a teacher who showed me favor. She returned tests with the lined papers folded vertically, with the grade inside and circled in red. B- repeated ad nauseam, a phrase I didn’t learn in Latin, open only to the highest achievers. She occasionally admonished the boys, who had just returned from gym class, to keep their knees firmly touching.
Mr. Loras Schiltz taught Spanish and American History. In first-year Spanish, he accused me of cheating on a quiz. I hadn’t, and that night I called him at home and explained. That was the only time I ever phoned a teacher. I don’t recall the conversation, but he let me retake the test.
I also took History from him, with a book the size of a Bible. Schiltz, an assistant football coach, patrolled the six aisles of thirty boys with military vigilance. Joe Graham’s head was resting against a wall when Mr. Schiltz whacked Joe’s left ear with the text. I knew what would happen next, as I had gone to grade school with Joe.
His false right eye popped out onto the desk, after which he gathered it up and popped it back in.
I always felt sorry for Mr. Robert Grenier, who taught English and was my homeroom teacher. Empathy does not come easily for a 16-year-old. He seemed too sensitive to be in charge of hormone-charged teenagers. His biggest weakness was that he didn’t seem to like us.
Looking back from my own fifty-year teaching career, I may have learned this lesson through osmosis, years before I could imagine myself in the front of the classroom. My final image of Mr. Grenier was on the last day of school, when he stood helpless as his class of gangsters charged out of the classroom, overturning desks at the sound of the final bell. He didn’t return the next year.
Oh, Mr. Raymond Ambrose, I’m sorry, you were a good man, but your Civics class was so dull. Duller even than typing, where I pounded out 22 words an hour on the first day and 21 words an hour on the last day, for a well-deserved D-, the same grade you offered me. It was a gift, I know, so I didn’t have to retake the class. You could have punished me for those 0’s on the dreadful Friday quizzes, but you didn’t.
Perhaps you saw, beneath the pimply surface, an inkling of the future college teacher of Politics, who would learn from his biography to see beyond the immature moments of the young men and women sitting before him.
Let me tell you a little story about a man, well, you know it’s me, don’t you?
It was his fourth day in the central Florida motel breakfast room. By this point, he had established a routine and thus felt safe, comfortable, and secure. The space, just off the lobby, opened at 6 am, and he was usually the first in line for coffee.
Photo by the author
Before he got his cup of Dark Roast, he had staked a claim on his favorite table, with an open computer and notebook.
Photo by the author
From this perch, he could observe other creatures making waffles, one of his favorite breakfast foods, and he thought, if he can do it, so can I.
Photo by the author
So he did. Malted vanilla was his choice. Two minutes and 30 seconds later, he settled into his seat. Even the sealed butter and syrup lids with the perforated corners came loose with surprising ease, pinched by his 76-year-old thumb and index finger. And today, another preference, link sausage. He readied the knife and fork, as waffles cool down quickly. Everything in his little world was perfect.
Photo by the author
Until they showed up. He was bent over, shuffling with a walker. She, also stooped, was scouting out tables close to the waffle machine. An even older-looking couple had alighted on the only other open table.
The woman kept scanning the room, and her husband lingered next to the griddles.
What should the man do? He thought, Why me, Lord? Am I my brother’s keeper? Out, out damned spot. It’s her vulture eye. And, damn!
Finally, the man gathered his breakfast, computer, and notebook, and moved to a counter chair and made contact with the woman whose actual eye was more dove than vulture.
The man’s first bite of waffle was cold, which served him well.
But today, I prefer the long view. So I can see clearly, through the debris of my imagination.
Sometimes, I look backward.
I know what you’re thinking. The past is dead. Yet, it really isn’t.
Yesterday, I enjoyed a chicken and avocado sandwich again, the other half, a day later. Yes, it was a bit dry. Even so, I thought, I like sandwiches of all sorts.
At 76.
For years, I denied this trivial truth, repeating a thoughtless mantra about my mother’s cold lunches every day through high school. Does this work for you? Blaming a parent who can no longer defend herself.
Recognizing this is the danger of an early spring walk in the park. One naturally continues to interrogate. Inevitably, before the wire under the fingernail, you become a blabbering turncoat.
