One type helps me become a better person

*

Paul’s a decent guy.

“Solid,” wrote one of his old teachers in a confidential letter of recommendation that Paul and his non-tenured colleague Ron read when they broke into the Department Head’s office late one night in the spring of 1985.

I’ve grown to like him.

But sometimes, he can be a tyrant.

The Putin of his little world.

A nasty piece of work. Self-involved.

Oh, he hides it well behind that self-satisfied smile.

Take yesterday, for example. He perfectly timed the six-minute drive down Water Street in his Subaru Forester, arriving at the bakery at 6:31 a.m. The pecan rolls should be ready; Paul will be first in line.

It’s his second Forester, by the way. The first was a lemon. This one, five years old today, has a brand new air conditioner. Paul wrote about that fiasco here.

He wrote about why he finds self-promotion difficult here, here, and here.

Who’s he trying to kid?

About that second flawed Forester — he thought about a Buick Encore. It gets better gas mileage and is friendlier to the environment in other ways. It’s air conditioner probably would have lasted longer than five years. Most of the Republicans he knows drive Buicks. So did his father.

Paul’s a liberal boomer; a Buick doesn’t fit the image. He likes thinking he’s counter-culture.

A Subaru Outback had taken his spot in front of the bakery, so he maneuvered around the parking space reserved for bikes in front of the Sugar Bowl ice cream parlor to a place in front of the Montessori School set up years ago in a building that used to house a photographer’s studio.

This delay puts him fourth in line behind a men’s book group trio but close to the table where the day’s Des Moines Register sits. Except today, there’s no sports section.

He feels his left pants pocket and discovers no phone to distract him.

And thinks, why is the barista taking so long to prepare the book guys’ specialty coffee orders?

Then, the owner comes up the aisle from the kitchen and announces the Pecan Rolls will be out in about 10 minutes.

Paul smiles sweetly and says, well, at least they will be fresh.

Paul’s air-conditioned Forester arrived home around 7 a.m., just before Rebecca woke. Coffee would be ready for her.

That’s his coffee cup on the left and Rebecca’s on the right, with fresh Carmel Pecan Rolls.

Notice that the Pecan roll on the left was bigger.

Paul did.

Which one do you think he took?

*

I’m so damn self-interested. Even today, when I volunteer at Decorah’s Food Pantry, I will feel good about myself doing good. The late Indian Catholic Priest Anthony De Mello, in Awareness, writes that there are two types of selfishness,

I give myself the pleasure of pleasing myself; that’s self-centeredness.

I give myself the pleasure of pleasing others, which is more refined.

De Mello says humans are naturally self-centered because they focus on self-preservation.

How does one become aware of how self-oriented he is? DeMello’s technique is self-observation, looking at myself like I would look at someone else.

Self-observation is different from self-absorption, which is self-preoccupation.

I wrote this Pecan Roll story in 3rd person. That technique puts me at a psychological distance from this guy, Paul. It is a humbling experience because I see just how self-involved I am. I’m no more counter-culture in this Subaru capital of Iowa than my Republican friends are with their hoity-toity Buicks.

But before I wrote the story, I observed Paul this early morning.

That’s why I didn’t beat myself up for wanting the larger Pecan roll. Forewarned is forearmed.

Following DeMello’s 3rd-person self-reflection approach, I am more in control of how I decide to act on my self-preservation feelings.

So I took the smaller pastry, preferring to feel good about my generosity rather than guilty about my self-centeredness.

And even better when Rebecca said why don’t you have the bigger one.

Virtue is so rewarding!

You can read, watch, and think along with us.

Yesterday was a sunny, beautiful, late summer day, so I strolled through the cemetery across the street from our home in southwest Iowa and thought about what the dead might teach the living about life.

*

I’m a retired political science professor. Two colleagues and friends — both retired profs, one in Modern Languages, the other in Communication studies — and I will teach a Life Long Learning Seminar this October titled Conversations about Death, Dying, and Living. We’re in our seventies.

Our previous employer, Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, runs four seminars yearly. In addition to our topic, this year’s menu includes Liberty, Rights and the Supreme Court, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Theologian of Resistance, and Let’s Dip our Toes into Micro-History.

This is a photo of a seminar on America and Race we taught last fall.

Thirty-five people are enrolled in the Death class. That’s all the room holds. The age range is 50 to 98.

Why this topic?

It’s a little unusual as someone with expertise in the subject matter teaches the typical seminar. That’s not the case with Alan, Ruth, me, and this course. But we have invited experts to be guest speakers.

The primary reason for our interest is that death has gotten our attention. Not only because we know people who have died or are dying but because, at this point in our lives, it — death — sits in the corner, stubbornly refusing to go away. When we were younger, we could ignore it or deny it.

Ernest Becker wrote a famous book decades ago, The Denial of Death, about how most human cultures enact sophisticated methods to avoid facing the inevitable. It sat collecting dust on my bookshelf. I read it forty years ago and reread it last year with older and more open eyes.

How do you stop ignoring something that refuses to go away? We’re academics, so our solution is to study it and then talk about it with others. Of course, while we were doing this, one of Ruth’s friends died. Martin was 90, and Ruth and others were at his death in a circle of prayers and goodbyes.

Thus, the Death, Dying, and Living seminar was born after months of reading articles and books, previewing films, surfacing speakers, and planning meetings

The class will meet each Wednesday in October from 9 a.m. to noon. You can see from the photo above that we have a comfortable room with plenty of light. The obligatory picture of Martin Luther hangs over us. He might not like all he hears.

Mr. Death will sit quietly in the middle.

But the rest of us will engage in lively conversation.

These topics, texts, and speakers will guide our conversations

Session 1: Considering Living and Dying; Text: Leo Tolstoy The Death of Ivan Ilyich; link to free online copy.

Session 2: What is Quality of Life and Quality of Death?; Text: Wendell Berry, Fidelity; Guest Speaker, Dr. David Baaken (physician)

Session 3: Who Has Control?; Text: the film Jack Has a Plan; Guest speaker, Brecka Putnam (Howard County Hospice)

Session 4: What happens after Death?; Guest speakers: Scott Helms (Director/Owner Helms Funeral Home); Pastor Michael Wilker, First Lutheran Church

Life

Some day, I will no longer be. Death is when I no longer am. Until that moment, I can change. I am still becoming.

Life Long Learning means that we do not stop learning when we are no longer students. As long as we have life, we can grasp something new.

Ivan Ilyich, the protagonist in Tolstoy’s terrifying short novel that begins our seminar, discovers only in his last moments “that he had not lived his life as he should have done.” Ilyich is dying poorly because he has lived badly.

Tolstoy forces us to consider the question, what does it mean to live well?

In Fidelity, Burley, 82 years old, is dying in a hospital. His son, Danny, believes the machinery and impersonality of this institution is an insult to his father’s life: “There are many degrees and kinds of being alive. Some are worse than death.” This belief drives the plot of Wendell Berry’s short story.

Berry forces us to consider the question, what does it mean to die well?

Jack Tiller has had a brain tumor for 25 years. The Jack Has a Plan documentary chronicles his three-year quest to end his life. It’s an extraordinary film encouraging viewers to ask who should control death.

In our last session, we consider the afterlife for the family and friends of the person who has died and for the person herself. Funeral and burial options are expanding in the USA.

And, finally, what do people think happens after they die?

It should be a lively month.

I’ll give you a live report in November.

---

I don’t think so. I heard no birdsong when I opened our back door at 4:05 a.m.

Truck traffic on Water Street is my alarm clock.

I think only Garrison Keillor and I are stirring. He wrote about getting up at 4 a.m. here. I haven’t read his story yet. It would be like batting after Willie Mays. Writing is hard enough without having a schoolmaster with a sharp ruler looking over my shoulder.

I’ve got a friend who interviewed Keillor during Prairie Home Companion days. My friend tells me Garrison would re-write sketches thirty times. I’ll read his story later.

I’ve been getting up early for most of my 73 years. That’s just how my body works. When I was a kid, my parents let my brothers and I stay up late on Saturday nights to watch Creature Features, horror movies with monsters. As far as I knew, Frankenstein, Dracula, and Wolfman wreaked havoc forever. I was fast asleep when they met their dastardly end.

---

I’ll bet you are interested in my 4 a.m. routine. This photo, taken 90 minutes ago, sets the stage.

I’ve already had three sips of coffee. Otherwise, none of this is possible. So, making coffee is the first thing. Last week, Rebecca and I visited her daughter and family in Boston. I wrote about it here. I’m also up early when traveling and always scout out the kitchen layout. Only cats Wilber and Orville joined me for coffee at the dining room table.

The white mug is mine. The black one with the brown interior is Rebecca’s. She will come through that door to our bedroom at 7 o’clock. About 6:30, I will put another pot of coffee on.

Notice the laptop and phone on top of the kitchen counter. Those are Rebecca’s. They are now recharged and ready for her when she wakes up.

Now, I’m settled into the brown chair you see straight ahead. My feet are on the footrest, and my 2018 MacBook Air rests on a lap desk. It is 6:30. Time to make Rebecca coffee.

I’m sure Garrison is sitting ramrod straight at a desk in his home office.

On his 8th revision.

What does he do when he comes to the end of a story but thinks he should write more?

Does he change perspective?

I’ll bet he does.

My partner Rebecca sits in this chair. We’ve been together for 13 years. We were looking for red flags as we got to know each other. That’s what you do when dating later in life.

Rebecca worried about my early morning rising. What did I do? Was I ruminating? I assured her it was just my body clock. Throughout my 40-year academic life, I developed the habit of doing all my coursework in the early morning hours.

So here I sit, just outside our bedroom. Rebecca long ago learned to enjoy having the whole bed to herself — the coffee ready, with her devices charged.

I revise as I write. I’ll assign myself the equivalent of three rewrites.

This story is ready to submit.

Now I’ll see what Garrison has to say about 4 a.m. He probably knocked it out of the park, just like Willie.

Sigh.

---

*

Paul Simon was 26 in 1968 when he wrote about two 70-year-olds sitting on a park bench. I was 19 when I first heard Old Friends and these words.

How terribly strange to be 70.

I’m soon to be 74, and my partner Rebecca is 72. That’s us in the photo taken a few days ago by Rebecca’s daughter, Emily.

These two seventy-year-olds were sitting on a park bench after walking three miles. Not in the round-toed high shoes of Simon’s song, but sleek, well-buttressed walking shoes.

70 isn’t strange. It’s also different from what it looked to Simon in his twenties.

On our park bench in Marblehead, Massachusetts, Rebecca and I were reminiscing about our week-long visit with Emily, Aviv, Ilan, Sivan, and cats Orville and Wilbur. You are right, the Wright Brothers, as Emily’s spouse Aviv is a pilot.

Don’t worry, I will show you only a few photographs illustrating some highlights of our trip. But before I begin, please listen to Old Friends and read the lyrics to get the full effect of contrasting Simon’s vision of 70 with our reality. I’ve placed each below.

Minneapolis

Because our flight to Boston was scheduled to depart at 6:30 a.m., we decided to spend the night in a hotel close to the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. We live three hours away in northeast Iowa. And we also wanted to visit the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

Peter Blume’s 1926 Maine Coast was my favorite painting. There are so many questions.

Rebecca’s favorite was Peeling by John Wilde: “I liked this painting because I have been working on drawing hands. Also, it is quite sexy.”

We’re not quite ready for Simon’s sunset yet.

Boston

Up at 4:30 a.m. for the flight to Boston that would arrive around noon. We purchased tickets for a 4 p.m. Boston Red Sox — Houston Astros game earlier in the summer. Emily, Aviv, and the kids picked us up, and we hung around Fenway Park until the game started.

Let me introduce you to the Hods: Aviv, Sivan, Ilan, and Emily.

And the most famous outfield wall in American baseball history.

As the Hall of Fame announcer Harry Caray used to say, “You can’t beat fun at the ballpark.” We stayed to the last out and were not too disappointed that Houston beat Boston 7–4. Rebecca’s son Jonathan lives in Houston, and we will visit him and his family in December on our way to spend January in San Miguel, Mexico.

Boston traffic after the game was heavy, so it took Aviv about 40 minutes to drive us to their home in Marblehead, along the coast, northeast of Boston. It was about 9:30 when Rebecca and I settled into their comfortable guest room, 16 hours after our day had started.

Marblehead

Emily and two friends with their kids had planned an outing to the Ipswich River Wildlife Sanctuary for Friday. Rebecca and I decided to tag along on this hiking and bird-watching adventure. In the photo below, part of our group prepared bird seeds for Chickadees.

With this result, for Rebecca.

OK, I know, I’m wearing out my welcome. You’ve been very patient sitting through photos of our trip. We did some other stuff, and I’ve got more pictures. But enough is enough.

I’ve made my point. For many of us, twilight years, or whatever term you prefer, are not what we thought they might be like when we were young. Most of our friends are over 70, and they live active lives.

They do so because the sunset IS CLOSER. Simon’s shared fears do include death. That’s why two colleagues (each is 78) and I will be teaching a Life Long Learning Seminar this fall on death, dying, and living.

As death comes closer, life becomes more precious.

Postscript

Paul Simon is 80, and Art Garfunkel is 81. What would they talk about if they were sitting on a bench today?

*

You can listen to Old Friends here.

And read the lyrics:

Old friends, old friends
Sat on their park bench like bookends
A newspaper blown through the grass
Falls on the round toes
Of the high shoes of the old friends

Old friends, winter companions, the old men
Lost in their overcoats, waiting for the sunset
The sounds of the city sifting through trees
Settle like dust on the shoulders of the old friends

Can you imagine us years from today
Sharing a park bench quietly?
How terribly strange to be 70

Old friends, memory brushes the same years
Silently sharing the same fears

*

I took the photo of our northeast Iowa community from a bluff about a mile outside town. You can see the Winnishiek County Courthouse Clock Tower on the right and Saint Benedict’s Catholic Church Steeple just to its left.

State and church are separate.

Our community of 8,000 has 20 churches, a Zen Monastery, and a Quaker Meeting House. The closest Synagogue and Mosque are 60 miles away, in LaCrosse, Wisconsin.

I was born in 1949. My mother was raised a Catholic, and my father a Protestant. Before marriage in 1948, my mother asked my father to convert. He soon withdrew from the Catholic program because the priest insulted him, and my dad was not a believer. But he accepted that his three sons be raised Catholic.

When my father died of cancer at 71 in 1993, as my family was leaving the funeral parlor before the casket was closed, I looked back for one last look at my dad. I saw my mother place a rosary through the fingers of his defenseless hands.

She had never forgiven him for not converting. Or maybe she thought a rosary might save his soul.

I never asked her why.

But I’ve not forgotten that image.

*

Through its human institutions, religion provokes powerful feelings of longing, belonging, and exclusion. Though I have not been a practicing Catholic for over fifty years, I still feel its power when I enter one of its churches.

America’s Founders knew European history, particularly the religious wars of the 16th and 17th centuries, and understood the power of religion to divide. (source)

That’s why the first words of the American Constitution’s Bill of Rights were about religious freedom.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting its free exercise.”

Religion provokes powerful feelings.

So, the government shouldn’t take sides.

Separating religious institutions from government is a worthy ideal.

For E Pluribus Unum.

---

Don’t we present well? You’ve seen this group before. I wrote about them last year in a story linked here.

You could call us senior citizens. We’re all over 66, with most over 70 and a few within shouting distance of 80. That’s me in the second row, white shirt and sunglasses, shaded by Ernie.

To my left is Bill, who, a month ago, spent a week riding his bike across the state of Iowa. He was joined on that mission by my partner Rebecca, in pink and sitting in front of Bill.

You could call us senior citizens, but I wouldn’t. Ernie would lead the charge. It would be slow but not pretty.

No, perennials is the better label. Read about why below.

The photo was taken last week in Houston, Minnesota. Our group of 16 had just ridden our bikes 31 miles from Lanesboro in southeastern Minnesota to Houston on the Root River State Trail.

We left Lanesboro an hour earlier than planned because the temperature was predicted to reach 100 by noon. That photo was taken at 11:30 a.m., with the shade tree you see making the 99 degrees feel like 99 degrees.

When our cars and trucks carried our bikes and us back to Lanesboro, it was 102.

Along the bike route to Houston, we met two obstacles.

The first was a rattlesnake curled up in the middle of the trail. When one of us tried to take a photo, Mr. Snake had slithered off the path. Later in the day, I asked the owner of our hotel about the rattler. He said he could not remember the last person bitten and that the local hospital no longer carries the expensive serum.

The second hurdle was a hurdle — a large tree that came down the night before covered our path. You can see the assembly line we formed to lift all the bikes over and through the branches.

Perennials know how to organize, cooperate, and cope with unexpected circumstances.

That’s Brenda in the white shirt at the end of the line. Do you see her bike? It’s an E-Bike with an electric motor and battery that provides pedal assistance. Thirteen of our group have transitioned to motorized bicycles in the last few years. More on this below, but E-Bikes were a heavy lift through that maze.

The only holdouts are Bill, Rebecca, and me. Bill and Rebecca are bicycle purists, so they have not considered this option, even with last week’s steamy temperatures.

---

Me? I temporarily went to the dark side on another group bike excursion in Missouri earlier this summer. You can see that 60-pound E-sucker below.

Pedal-assisted bikes weigh about twenty pounds more than regular bikes. See the relatively broad kickstand. With this bike, I could get a pedal boost of up to 28 MPH. It also included a throttle that I used occasionally. When I applied the hand brakes, the motor was disabled. The oblong battery required recharging after 60 miles.

I rented an E-bike to test the motorized bike experience and my reaction to what I consider an age-related accommodation. The weightier cycle took some getting used to, particularly when braking and maneuvering through narrower parts of the trail.

But I loved the confidence it gave me when applying the boost going up a hill or into the wind. And that little rain storm that hit us five miles from our destination, I throttled up to 28 miles with no care in the world.

Our E-Bike friends tell us the pedal assist keeps them on the bike trail. The photo below was taken after another day of biking in Minnesota — 21 miles with a cool 90-degree temperature.

---

My mother lived to be 96, stubbornly refusing most age-related assistance. I use the word stubborn intentionally, as even six years after her death, my two brothers and I talk about how difficult she often made life for those around her. If only she had gotten a hearing aid at 60, we say, and then trail off as the older we get, we are slowly coming to understand her perspective.

Admitting the need for a hearing aid meant accepting the inevitability of bodily decay, of death.

Who wants to go down that path? Isn’t it better to resist?

Our friends’ E-bike experience suggests another choice. For most of them, without the E-bike, they would not have ridden on either day. And if they didn’t ride, neither would Bill, Rebecca, and me. And there would have been no Missouri bike adventure. All of a sudden, life can get smaller.

Who wants to go down that path? Isn’t it better to resist?

When you think about it, at every stage in life, not only in our last quarter, we are constantly adjusting to what life throws at us. I yearned to play varsity basketball in high school, dreamed about it, and shot basket after basket at the hoop my dad hammered into the side of the garage to make it happen.

Yet my 5’7″ frame blocked my way every bit as much as my declining muscle mass and energy signal that an E-Bike is just around the corner. I decided to join the swim team.

When to hold ’em and when to fold ‘em was Kenny Roger’s pop version of Aristotle’s Golden Mean approach to life. Each offers a path through the middle.

With only an occasional rattlesnake. That is minding its own business.

Find the E-balance between extremes.

---

---

Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke to America 60 years ago this week. Watch the 17-minute speech from this link and read the transcript here.

I’m a 73-year-old white man who started high school in 1963. I do not remember watching, reading, or talking with anyone about this event. Not a word by my parents, teachers, or friends. Nor do I recall a class discussion about the civil rights movement at any point in the four years of high school.

From 1967 to 1971, I attended St. Ambrose, a small Catholic liberal arts college in my hometown of Davenport, Iowa. Everything changed. Many of my religion, philosophy, sociology, and history teachers brought civil rights into my life. A young professor took us to Chicago one Saturday morning to attend Jesse Jackson’s Operation Breadbasket. Muhammad Ali, unable to fight because he refused induction into the army, spoke to us in our school’s chapel.

John Howard Griffin, a white journalist, darkened his skin with medication and traveled throughout the South as a black man. He wrote about his experiences in Black Like Me and lectured about this in the St. Ambrose student union.

And Keith Fernsler, a sociology professor, assigned King’s dream speech.

Drip by drip, my eyes were opened. You might even say I was awakened to what it was like to be Black in America.

I have never recovered from that experience. 

Being woke is about being alive to the lives of others.

I did not stop loving my country when I discovered its flaws any more than I stopped loving my parents when I began to see their imperfections.

Today, I find it impossible not to seek out the voices of those on the margins of our societies.

The margins in a Democracy ought to be thin places. Hard to see.

Walking through life with eyes open is the only way to see them.

Listen to Martin’s timeless message.

There is nothing to fear.

Only one American urging us toward the better angels of our nature.

*

*

It was an overcast day a few weeks ago when I set off from our home on 15th Street, walking toward Clarinda’s Lied Public Library.

I had just passed the Sheriff’s Office with its American and Blue Lives Matter flags when I glanced over and saw this mural for the first time.

Suddenly, my step quickened, and my mood lightened, so I had to slow down to look closer at this new addition to our southwest Iowa community.

I loved the vibrancy and the centered tree. It covered a worn-out, nondescript wall painting.

Robert Henri said:

You should paint like a man coming over the hill singing.

Whoever painted this took that advice to heart.

I asked my friends Scott and Nancy, who know everything and everyone in our small town. They are the prototype connectors Malcolm Gladwell writes about in The Tipping Point.

They gave me the artist’s name, Tatiana Schaapherder, who lives in town.

When I asked Tatiana about this mural, she said

My sponsors gave me one word: Community.

She told me, “I wanted my painting to show all the people of my town coming together, with the tree in the middle representing growth. The cardinal on the right is the town bird and high school team name. The robin on the left honors the building owned by the Robins Nest Cafe.”

“Have you done any more murals in Clarinda? ” I asked.

Mamá Montaña, she said.

This is Mamá’s story. It’s the story of people coming together to make street art.

It’s the story of Community.

The Artist

You’ve already met Tatiana. Currently, she is in her 4th year of college studying Art Education. Born in Clarinda, she has traveled widely, including Tanzania, Japan, St. Croix, Germany, and, last year, Costa Rica, where she got the idea for Mamá Montaña which means Mountain Mama.

She has painted 16 murals in three countries, including for her accommodation in Costa Rica.

When I asked why street art, she said

It’s my favorite art because of how transformative it is to space.

The Building

This is Mamá’s space before Tatiana and Chelly.

The building is owned by a local realtor and rented by Chelly Kendrick, who moved back to Clarinda two years ago from Rapid City, South Dakota, to open Kendrick Station, a spa, beauty, and personal care business.

Chelly asked the building’s owner about painting the outside, and he said, “That’s fine; just don’t paint the brick.”

Because Chelly had also traveled to Costa Rica, when she met Tatiana, she felt comfortable saying, “Follow your vision for this space.”

Here is that vision.

The Patron

“Can I borrow your building as a canvas?”

Trish Bergren, Clarinda Carnegie Art Museum Director, has asked several local business owners this question. Carnegie helped pay for Mamá Montaña.

She told me finding an artist with a vision that honors the space was challenging but that once she met Tatiana, she looked forward to “watching her fly.”

*

Beckie Finch, Executive Director of the Clarinda Foundation, catalyzed The Community Tree Mural. She worked with the building owners and approached Tatiana with the one-word idea: community.

Now, when she walks by The Community Tree mural, she thinks

When we think of growth, roots, beauty, peace, change, or an interpretation entirely personal, our mural represents community, our community.

Now, when I walk by, art mimics life, the life of our community.

And needs its owner to tell it

*

Two days ago, my partner Rebecca and I met 18 friends in a small town about 40 miles from home for two days of biking, kayaking, and dining.

Our friends traveled for five hours and booked rooms at the Stone Mill Hotel. We met them in the hotel’s breakfast room, just inside the two doors you see in the photo, early on the second day. We reserved space for the night because we’d be biking all day.

I noticed the yellow convertible when we pulled our red car into a parking space across the street from the hotel. What a funky little car, I thought. So, I snapped this picture.

Early the following day, before anyone else was up, I sat at a table next to the two windows to the right of the green doors with my MacBook Air, writing a Medium story. It’s about 6:30. I know coffee and breakfast fixings will be ready soon. I hear someone in the little preparation room I had noticed the day before.

I looked up from my Mac and outside and saw the little yellow car back in its slot. Maybe its owner was the breakfast guy I noticed the day before when I snuck a banana before mounting my bike. I had seen him quietly moving around the room while our group finished breakfast.

Sure enough, when I checked the coffee carafes, there he was. I followed him back into his cubicle and asked, “Is it your yellow car?” He looked over his left shoulder and said, “It’s an old guy trying to be young.”

When he returned with the decaf carafe, I offered that I also liked his personalized license plate. He looked at me, “Are you interested in a story.”

Bobby’s story

Twenty years ago, he had purchased his first Mazda Miata, another yellow convertible. This was a few years before his first wife was diagnosed with cancer. She didn’t like the car and wouldn’t ride in it until she got very sick.

It took the cancer five years to kill her. Bobby took care of her at home. When the pain permitted, she learned to like short trips around town in the little yellow car with the wind caressing her face.

Bobby drove the little car headlong into another car two years after she died. “It was neither driver’s fault, just a crazy intersection,” he said. “Our cars were totaled, but we walked away with cuts and bruises.”

Today, Bobby is retired, lives with his second wife, and manages the hotel breakfast room for two hours every morning.

A few years ago, he bought another little yellow Miata with a license plate that honors his first wife. His second wife of 15 years, whom he met online, also doesn’t like little cars.

In case you can’t read it, the quote by Robert Louis Stevenson off Bobby’s right shoulder reads:

To be what we are and to become what we are capable of becoming is the only end in life.

*

When our group filtered into the breakfast room, Bobby enlivened our pre-biking time with a constant chatter that was absent the day before.

Yellow is the least popular color for American cars. (source) Very few Americans own sports cars and even fewer convertibles, particularly in Iowa and Minnesota.

That’s why I noticed the little yellow car.

And the owner, with a story to tell.

And stories help us understand our lives.

Photography is storytelling.

Ten days ago, the class of nine had just settled into seats when our teacher Jay described the theme of the three-day photography workshop*.

Most students were like me, with thousands of photos on their phones — 7,293 for me — and little fundamental understanding of what we were up to when clicking.

Jay’s three-word introduction resonated with me. I taught Politics to college students for 40 years. In the first meeting of all my classes, I would tell them that successful politicians create compelling stories about what matters most to their constituents.

Our class’s first activity was a visual critique. Jay put up a photo and asked us to list the first thing that came to mind in our notebooks. After nine different opinions, he offered the second insight:

Every photo-story idea is correct.

Similarly, I suggested to my students that the objective truth of a politician’s story was often irrelevant to its success as a political strategy.

So armed with a few insights from Jay, including holding my camera close to my body, I’ve wandered my community this past week searching for visualimages that yearn for a voice.

That helps me understand my life.

The Fullness of Time

The first photo was taken last Thursday at the opening ceremony of Nordic Fest. Norwegians founded my Decorah, Iowa, community in the mid-19th century. You can read the official story of the three-day festival honoring this heritage here.

But my story is about time slipping away. Nordic Fest happens the last whole weekend in July. For a former teacher, the beginning of August meant the end of summer. It still does.

Summer just blinked itself away.

I feel the same about my life in this little corner of Iowa.

I took this photo yesterday at daybreak. It reminded me of my first early morning walk 38 years ago in my new community.

My first day in Decorah had been hot and humid, so the following morning offered fog that lifted from the dewed ground.

On that first morning, I could not see all that would become: marriage, a child, an academic career, travel, friends, students, a divorce, a blossomed mature relationship, and retirement. And so much more. The fog was the story.

Yesterday, the sun slowly burned away the low-lying cloud. By evening, I could see the movement of my life beyond its details. Clouds on the ground hide — clouds in the sky illuminate.

This is what is meant by the fullness of time.

The Everyday Mode

However, before that enlightenment, life intervened. First, our downstairs toilet, which had been sputtering, died.

Thirty minutes on YouTube convinced me the problem was the fill valveunder the red cap. Ace Hardware, two blocks away, had a cheap replacement valve. But the ten steps the DIY Replacing All Internal Toilet Parts channel laid out suggested it would take about an hour.

So instead, I walked another block to our go-to plumber. Amazingly, Mike was between big jobs and met me back at the house. Ten minutes later, he had replaced the blue flapper piece after announcing fill valve was healthy.

Thankfully, the toilet was repaired before Jonathan and Irene arrived. That’s seven years old Irene below, standing before her namesake at our local Co-Op.

Jonathan is Rebecca’s son, and Irene is one of her seven grandchildren. They, daughter-in-law Suzanne and newborn Alice were visiting from Houston, Texas.

Yesterday was full of what psychotherapist Irving Yalom** calls the everyday mode, how things are in the world. Toilets need to be fixed, and grandchildren must be entertained. Most of our days are filled with daily details. Often they are problems that must be solved.

Much of our time is gobbled up, doing the things that move us from A To B throughout the day.

But there’s another perspective, what Yalom labels ontological. This is not about the how of life but the miracle that life is: my life and yours.

Mortality

A leaking toilet is one thing; the finiteness of life another. Whenever something comes to an end, like this summer, I briefly move from everyday mode to ontological. That’s why I took the Nordic Fest photo.

I ask myself, how many summers do I have left?

Fortunately, we live next to a cemetery.

Whenever the everyday mode gets too much, I wander around this place. Thinking about death forces me to follow my how many summers question with this one.

How do I want to live with the time I have left?