I’ve even been trolled by Facebook “friends” who think I should write about serious things, not chocolate pie.
They think the half-century gig wasn’t penance enough.
So I’ve been feeling guilty.
More importantly, I’ve got that moon photo.
As I took it a few weeks ago, Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Bad Moon Rising started playing in my head.
Along with visions of Mr. Trump.
Because I’d been reading apocryphal stories like the ones linked below.
So that’s the first thing you ought to do.
Read each of the hyperbolic Trump stories with Creedence as the soundtrack.
The trouble IS on the way, say the experts, with many bad moons rising.
The earth as Jupiter, with its 95 moons.
The second thing, and I say this with heart, head, and gut, born of a lifetime of studying political scholars and pundits, is that no one, not me, not you, no one, has a clue today what will happen on Tuesday, November 5, 2024.
So ignore the elephant in the room. Lift the shade.
He will still be there in the morning. The prognosticators will as well.
Instead, focus on those around you and that wonderful world outside the window.
Where you might see something like this mouse.
Photo by the author
*
More fascinating in expiration than Donald is in life.
Those are blood stains, by the way, as Pat did not give up the card easily.
He always said I should listen to Donald Trump.
So I did and hired The Donner and Blixon Law firm.
Who uncovered a heretofore unknown precedent.
The oldest son gets first dibs on the pie.
Rebecca and I have already served the pie to guests twice this season, and we’re still a week away from Rudolph.
Two Catholic nun friends were in town to see the annual Luther College Christmas pageant. Catholics have the saints; Lutherans have the music. Before my ritual prompt, each said it was the best chocolate pie they’d ever had.
Another couple, skeptical at first, asked for another piece.
Her pie would come out of the refrigerator a little runny on a rare occasion. Whenever that happened, I’d helpfully quote Julia, who said the test was the taste, not the look.
Patience was not my mom’s strong suit. Nor mine. This pie requires it. I’m sure Buddha had something to say about pie and waiting.
And you’ve cooled your heels long enough.
The Recipe
Melt and blend 1 cup of chocolate chips, 3 Tablespoons of sugar, and 3 Tablespoons of milk. (We use Nestle Tollhouse semi-sweet and half-and-half).
Cool.
Add 4 egg yokes one at a time, beating well after each. Add one teaspoon of vanilla.
Beat until stiff 4 egg whites.
Fold into chocolate mixture and pour into a 9″ baked pie crust.
Chill for several hours. (Channeling Buddha, we let it sit in the refrigerator overnight)
I had asked if any of them were free homecoming weekend.
As you can see, by 1970, the worm had turned at my college, which started accepting women in 1968.
Even dressed up, I struck out.
Photo by the author of the author in the 1971 St. Ambrose yearbook
Wounded pride.
So, I did what any red-blooded Ambrosian male would do.
I started hanging out in the student canteen at Marycrest College, a women’s college about a mile up Locust Street from St. Ambrose.
Marycrest followed St. Ambrose and opened its doors to men in 1969. But in 1970, the competition was still thin.
It was late Friday night, and she was sitting behind a little desk inside the canteen door. I got a Mountain Dew from the pop machine and took a plastic chair on the other side of this small room. Who did she remind me of?
Earnest guys like me never had prepared pick-up lines.
But the two beers had loosened my tongue; no one else was around, and I was desperate.
So, with Dew in hand, I walked over, introduced myself, and probably asked her major. I don’t remember. We chatted a bit — pressure built as the canteen was closing at midnight. Finally, I asked Shari for her phone number.
The Phone Calls
“Why didn’t you ask her to go to Homecoming?” asked Barrie the following day as I cleaned chicken, and he worked the grill at Riefe’s Restaurant, halfway between St. Ambrose and Marycrest.
“There’s no way Suzanne Pleschette does not have a date for homecoming,” I splat.
Today, Barrie lives on the East Coast, just sold his retirement yacht, is, as you know, still with Mary Ann, and was always a step or two ahead of me.
“She didn’t have a date last night,” he rebutted.
I hemmed and hawed all day Sunday.
By Monday afternoon, it was then or never.
There are four things I need to explain. I went to college in my hometown and lived at home with four people: mom, dad, and two younger brothers. We had two phones, one on a counter between the kitchen and family room and another in the TV room upstairs. No privacy.
I never called girls on those phones. Once I started dating, everything, and I mean everything, was secret.
I used a drive-up pay phone three blocks from our house. Shari lived in a dorm where there was one phone for each hall. Whoever answered would find the person.
The cold phone receiver diverted my anxiety. I asked if she would like to attend the Homecoming concert featuring The Association and then dinner.
Silence.
“Let me think about it. Could you call me back on Wednesday?”
So that is what I did.
That was my second mistake.
On Wednesday, Shari said yes.
The Dinner
But first, the concert. That’s The famous Association on a makeshift stage on the gym floor of my high school, Davenport Assumption. St. Ambrose played basketball games at Assumption because its gymnasium was too small. And it had no concert hall.
Photo of a photograph of The Association by the author from the 1971 St. Ambrose Yearbook
I have only one memory of the concert.
Thank goodness for the music because Shari and I had nothing to say to each other. We had emptied our conversational tanks a week earlier in the canteen.
I understand now Shari was as desperate as I was. Had she spent Tuesday and Wednesday trying to find a better option? Eventually, she decided something was better than nothing.
We had that in common.
But no chemistry, even before dinner.
At The Plantation.
Yes, in 1970, in Moline, Illinois, there was a restaurant with that name. You can read about its history here. If no tables had been available at the Plantation, my second choice was The Gay Nineties.
The past is a different country.
Something else you might find interesting. Two weekends before homecoming, my sociology professor, Keith Fernsler, took his senior seminar class to Chicago to attend one of Jesse Jackson’s Operation Breadbasket meetings. In preparation, we read Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.
Yet to be woken, I wanted The Plantation because my parents, who didn’t know anything about my date, took us to this anachronism once a year when we were kids. It’s where my brother Peter threw up on a waitress.
Foreshadowing.
The waiter started with Shari, who, with no hesitation, said
My first classroom as a teacher was 50 years ago. It reined in 44 sixth graders at St. Johns Elementary School in Burlington, Iowa. Today, it is five stalls in a church parking lot.
Fortunately, my last classroom still exists.
For three decades, it was mine until I retired from Luther College in 2018.
Not only mine, of course, but it was in the building, Koren Hall, that housed my office and department, Political Science.
The Registrar’s Office favored me because I loved early morning classes — demand and supply lines for classrooms crossed midday. So, the early bird got the worm to ease the primetime room shortage.
8 a.m. Monday through Friday. Typically, I taught Terrorism and Democracy on MWF and Global Politics on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Usually, all the seats were taken. A small percentage of students loved early morning. First-light classes freed up the rest of the day.
Who would want to start the day with Terrorism? You’d be surprised. I was. I created this course the summer after Al Qaeda attacked America on September 11, 2001, thinking I would teach it once. Word spread and it became a go-to choice. Of course, Al Qaeda morphed into ISIS, so the subject stayed current. Unfortunately.
When I stepped back into this classroom a few days ago and took my usual pole position, sitting on the left edge of the front of the desk, facing the phantom students, I thought Eduardo Galeano was right. Galeano was a Uruguayan journalist and novelist who wrote this about empty soccer stadiums.
Have you ever entered an empty stadium? Try it. Stand in the middle of the field and listen. There is nothing less empty than an empty stadium. There is nothing less mute than stands bereft of spectators. (Source)
This empty classroom was the same.
Full of sounds.
And memories.
Of how much I had changed as a teacher.
The mellow murmuring before class.
I would usually walk into the classroom about 20 minutes before class started. That’s when students would start arriving. I wanted to see the room fill up and, more importantly, if they would talk with each other. A low murmur was a good sign. That meant they were comfortable in this space and with each other.
Typically, on the first day, before class, I heard few voices but my own, “Good morning, welcome to Political Science 335.” Unless they were sitting next to a friend, no one talked — the nerves of anticipation. I felt the same.
My first task in our first meeting was to help them feel comfortable with me, the course requirements, and each other.
This sounds obvious, but it took me a long time to learn. I recall looking out over one of my first groups of college students in 1985 and thinking I must intimidate them into taking the task of learning seriously.
The only sound I heard was my voice. Full of authority. And myself. Standing at the front of the room, behind a podium, looking out over the crowd, seeing only the subject matter I was there to deliver.
That Professor had been fired long ago.
As I introduced myself and took them through the syllabus, I made eye contact with each person. I wrote the syllabus in easily understandable language with test and paper dates boldened. I explained my expectations regarding reading assignments.
And then, I got to the essential message of the first day. In this class, we will talk a lot about controversial topics with each other. I then randomly assigned them to groups of three.
And asked them to discuss this question:
Was American President Harry Truman’s 1945 decision to drop hydrogen bombs on the Japanese cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima an example of terrorism?
The creaking of wooden desks
For the first 20 years of my college teaching career, I put overhead and PowerPoint slides between myself and the students — the words and images became my Holy Grail. I spent hours crafting these slides, searching for the perfect terms, word order, and pictures to express that day’s material. Going into class, I often felt very pleased with myself.
Of course, you, my writer friends, recognize these as sound scribbler habits: choosing the right words, arranging them correctly, and discovering compelling visuals.
These are good learning practices. They helped me to know the day’s material better. For a long time, I was satisfied the slides were a model of good thinking. I had found the proper endpoint of teaching.
And then, 15 years before I retired, I started to listen carefully to the room as I went through the slide presentation. The chorus was unmistakable.
Instead of Edgar Allan Poe’s beating heart, I could hear nothing but the creaking of desks.
Jenna was right.
Jenna, an A student who had been missing class, cued me to this listening when she told me in a private conference that she had started cutting class because she was bored.
All you do is summarize the material. You faculty hide behind PowerPoint.
The squirming, fidgeting, and creaking were symptoms of a different kind of killing than that of the Old Man by Poe’s narrator.
I needed to find a different way.
To get rid of the creaking desks.
The rumbling of conversations
It took me a year or so to develop a different pedagogical approach. The first decision was the most important — no more PowerPoint.
Eventually, I settled into a combination of mini-lectures that set the context for the day’s conversations, followed by small and large group discussions.
I worked diligently to reduce the day’s content to its essence. And then developed questions whose answers would help the students process the material.
When this process worked, the class conversations would produce a continuous, deep sound, like a rumble.
On these days, as I wandered in and around the cohort groups, occasionally offering insight and, sometimes, a gentle reminder to stick to the task, I would think.
A few days ago, my favorite college football team, The Iowa Hawkeyes, was crushed by the University of Michigan Wolverines, 26–0 in the Big Ten Championship game.
The Hawks had the ball many times and could not score. Michigan put six scores — two touchdowns and four field goals — on the board.
“They were the better team today,” said one of the Hawkeyes. (source)
My favorite ex-American President, Jimmy Carter, was crushed by Ronald Reagan in 1980, with 49 electoral votes to 489.
Reagan was the better candidate that day.
Today, the University of Michigan is ranked #1. (source)
Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign is considered one of the best presidential campaigns in American history. (source)
My Hawkeyes are not too shabby, with a 10–3 record and a #17 ranking.
Jimmy Carter, 99, is considered by many to be the “greatest American former president.” (source)
Yet both were soundly defeated, in public, by a superior opponent.
Good, but not great.
What does it feel like to be paired with someone playing the game at a different level?
Like the Hawkeyes, I’ve had a good writing year, making do with limited talent.
The statistics were not pretty. Seven punts, three fumbles, no touchdown, and no field goals.
Not even a halfway-decent metaphor.
James was better at everything.
The official scorebook tells the tale of his six tallies.
Touchdown
This innocent country set you down in a ghetto in which, in fact, it intended that you should perish. Let me spell out precisely what I mean by that, for the heart of the matter is here, and the root of my dispute with my country. You were born where you were born and faced the future that you face because you were black and for no other reason. The limits of your ambition were, thus, expected to be set forever. You were born into a society which spelled out with brutal clarity, and in as many ways as possible, that you were a worthless human being.
Field goal
Any upheaval in the universe is terrifying because it so profoundly attacks one’s sense of reality. Well, the black man has functioned in the white man’s world as a fixed star, as an immovable pillar: as he moves out of his place, heaven and earth are shaken to their foundation.
Touchdown
The glorification of one race and the debasement of another — or others — always has been and always will be a recipe for murder. There is no way around this. If one is permitted to treat any group of people with special disfavor because of their race or the color of their skin, there is no limit to what one will force them to endure, and, since the entire race has been mysteriously indicted, no reason not attempt to destroy it root and branch. This is precisely what the Nazis attempted.
Field goal
It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death — ought to decide, indeed, to earn one’s death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life. One is responsible to life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return.
Field goal
The only thing white people have that black people need, or should want, is power — and no one holds power forever.
Field goal
If we — and now I mean the relatively conscious whites and the relatively conscious blacks, who must, like lovers, insist on, or create, the consciousness of the others — do not falter in our duty now, we may be able, handful that we are, to end the racial nightmare, an achieve our country, and change the history of the world.
Post Game Reflection
After a few days of overcoming my disappointment with this defeat, I will look at the game tape and try to learn something from the best.
But this I know now.
Mr. Baldwin could do everything.
He could put his personal experience into words that cut to the core of anyone who has ever been invisible.
He exposed my weaknesses, my lies, and my fears in a way that made me feel naked. Many of my teammates felt the same way.
But some of them resented him. I saw it in their eyes. They wanted nothing to do with his message. One said, “How dare he be better than us.”
By the end of the game, even they were deflated.
What did Baldwin teach me?
Not that I could write like him. That’s not possible or important.
However, after watching him at work in one game, I can begin to model his approach to life.
An honest and careful examination of life, including my relationship with myself and others.*
He taught me one final thing.
What it’s like to be that other human being peering at me from the other side.
It’s funny.
By the end of the game, as we walked off the field after shaking hands, I felt we were on the same team — no longer opponents.
*This insight came from Nicholas Buccola’s terrific book The Fire Is Upon Us: James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr., and the Debate over Race in America.
Every morning, I get up around 4 AM. Go ahead, get your magnifying glass. The Bose radio stereo clock shows 4:19.
This morning, I slept in.
Because I was worried, as usual.
About the bat.
That appeared 190 days ago.
It was the first bat in my house since I purchased it on July 15, 2000 or 8,536 days ago.
We used a blanket to persuade Count Dracula to find another crypt.
Our neighbors Ed and Carol told us they spent $500 to seal their house against the nocturnal enemy.
You and Rebecca can have the badminton racket. It worked better than a blanket.
Each morning for 190 days, as I come out the door just to the left of the ready-for-action racket and flip on the under-the-counter light, I glance up at the ceiling, expecting to see the oval flight pattern, and hear that dastardly flutter. My right hand twitches, ready.
But again, this morning
NO BAT APPEARED IN PAUL’S HOUSE.
So we spent our $500 bat prevention money on an extended warranty for the new refrigerator.
Do you have memories triggered by that first cup of coffee in the morning?
I do.
Here are my three favorites.
Grandpa Al
When I was growing up, my mom told the story of sitting on her father’s lap as he gave her a spoonful of coffee.
I like thinking of my mom as a child.
With a father I would never meet.
Her dad, Al Thomas, died in 1946, three years before I was born.
That’s him below in 1922, the year my mom was born. Grandpa Al sold life insurance, never missing a day of work, even during the Depression. Although with only a grade school education, he and my grandmother Florence sent three daughters and one son to college in the 1930s.
Photo by Linda Thomas from a family family album
One of those daughters, my mother Dody, drank coffee for over 90 years. She would have two cups in the morning and one after supper that never kept her awake.
Until in the memory care unit of a nursing home, when, at 95, she forgot who she was, including her love of coffee. Sitting with her in the home’s dining room while her untouched coffee cooled is a memory that lingers.
Why didn’t I offer to spoon her coffee?
Marty
Marty’s family moved to town from Troy, New York, during our sophomore year in high school in 1964. I immediately liked him because he was one of the few boys shorter than me.
And Troy seemed exotic. No, it wasn’t because I had read The Odyssey. That journey wouldn’t happen for forty years. Marty was smart. Smarter than me. At least, that’s what I always thought. And he came from far away, so he was worth knowing.
One of the guys I hung out with, Mike, made fun of Marty. He called him Bomber. Mike was a big guy and a bully, and short guys never liked bullies. Bullies prey on outsiders. I’ve always had a soft spot for outsiders, even though I’ve usually sat comfortably on the outer edge of the inside.
Marty was an outsider who wanted to be accepted.
He lived his adult life in St. Louis as a radio DJ and part-time actor. At our 40-year college reunion, he performed a one-person Shakespeare act. How can you not like a guy like that?
When he died in his sleep three years ago, I remembered my favorite Marty and Paul story.
We went to a college in our home town. Professor Noel Kamasa’s Biology exam would be our first college test, and we figured an all-nighter was in order. It would be my first and only, even with eight more college years.
Marty lived in a small house with parents and two siblings still at home. So his mom sent us to the basement and said she would make coffee.
I had not tried coffee. Nor had I ever spent time on my dad’s knee, except for a very rare tap on my behind.
I waited until well after midnight before I tried my first cup. Marty and I would take turns throwing terms at each other. You either knew photosynthesis or you didn’t. I had never studied. Not really. And the more mature me, the one who would show up in graduate school, was a decade away and could not help. In forty years of college teaching, I never failed to tell my students not to wait until the night before to start studying.
Panic, for both of us, set in. We were both so tired we started laughing. The more we laughed, the more coffee we drank. My stomach felt queasy around 5 am, three hours before the exam. An hour later, I started throwing up. Diarrhea soon followed.
Tired but immune to coffee’s effects, Marty drove us the five miles to class.
It’s funny what you don’t remember more than a half-century later. That first exam grade is lost.
But that coffee time with Marty is preserved, I hope, forever.
The Malta Eleven
In the spring of 2018, Rebecca and I traveled with nine college students to the Mediterranean island nation of Malta. That’s the Malta Eleven below in 2019 at the group’s graduation.
Photo by a kind passer-by
Rebecca and I often reminisce about the four months we spent with this group. My college set up a semester-long program on this island forty years ago. We were the co-directors for 2018. We lived, traveled, and attended classes with the students, agreeing it was one of our peak experiences.
Kaelib, the fellow in the back with his eyes closed, could never keep his eyes open during photos. Never, ever. That’s one of a thousand delightful memories from our time with this group.
Another was my introduction to French Press Coffee.
Rebecca and I arrived in Malta in mid-January, two weeks before the students. Maria, who owned the building that would house all of us, picked us up at the airport. She had also laid out sundry food and drink on a table for the first week. Up early the first morning, I was happy to find a package of ground coffee next to a funny-looking glass container with a lid, filter, and plunger.
Googling, it took me a few minutes to find a similar image so I could put a name to this gadget. Then, I had a few more minutes to discover the new world of French Press coffee in the dining room of an apartment on a busy street in a former British colony.
The steps are now routine: boil the water, spoon the coffee into the carafe, add just enough hot water to create a paste that sits for one minute, pour the rest of the water up almost to the top, fit the filter/plunger, and set the timer for three minutes, and finally, and very carefully, push the plunger down to the bottom.
On that first Malta morning, anxious for the first cuppa, I pushed too hard, splattering coffee grounds and scalding water.
As the timer ticks to zero this morning, I wait patiently for the right moment.
I have memories of my mom, Grandpa Al, Marty, and the Malta Eleven to keep me company.
You can see a documentary on Pollack’s Mural here.
The University of Iowa is home to America’s first MFA program, the prestigious Writer’s Workshop, and Caitlin Clark, last year’s collegiate basketball National Player of the Year.
Pollack’s Mural resides comfortably in southeast Iowa because nonconformity is everywhere.
Infecting even the desk clerk who took this photo.
Photo of Rebecca and me by the front desk clerk.
So, I wasn’t surprised I encountered a mutinous loo.
*
Later that night, I decided to get into the spirit.
I splattered Pollock-like toothpaste onto the brush and raised my right hand in victory for a Clark-like hand gesture.
