What about yours?

To my Blog readers. This story was published in Medium’s Good Vibes Club. It is a reflection on my writing experience on the Medium platform.

Prelude

However, occasionally, like this morning, as I sit down to write story number 403, I imagine my Medium residence looks like this shack just around the corner from us.

Old, tired, collapsing, plant and animal infested — abandoned. A small number of readers, few reads, and fewer comments. For example, story 401, about 9/11, got five reads and two comments.

You may identify with this discouragement, regardless of the size of your Medium audience. I recall being on a friend’s 50-foot yacht in Chesapeake Bay and catching a glimpse of a 240-foot ship moored off to our right, thinking, “There’s always a bigger boat.”

We’re never satisfied, are we?

On Sunday, I went to church, something I rarely do. I should do it more often. It was a Presbyterian service. The Pastor admonished us not to “Covet our neighbor’s house.”

Of course, I spent the next minute in a visionary rapture over the magnificence of some of my Medium friends’ homes.

They get 1000s of claps, 100s of reads, and 10s of comments.

I had no idea what to expect when I joined Medium three years ago. In 2018, when I retired from forty years of teaching Politics to college students, I started writing a blog.

I disliked the third-person academic writing I had to do to get tenure and promotion. It was too far removed from exploring my immediate world, which fuels my Medium stories.

My blog tales were like this one, triggered by something that jumped up and bit me usually the day before. In this case, it was a combination of Pastor Jay’s chide, my jealous response, and that crappy shack I walked by for the hundredth time. And, of course, disappointment at the woeful response to my September 11th story.

But I wanted a bigger readership than the family and friends who faithfully followed paulmuses.com.

My blog house looked like this. I wanted more.

Tiny, Funky and Beautiful

Medium gave me more readers. It’s a busy street.

So there was a steady stream of people walking, biking, or driving by— seven hundred this month. About half linger, say hello, and then they’re off.

I appreciate each one. My door and windows are always open, and there’s a chair for you to sit on if you want to chat.

My property looks so much better today. A friend says I have a funky place. But I needed help.

A neighbor offered her kayak; another helped me install the solar panel and a third the housewarming plant.

Similarly, Medium has given me outlets. My favorites include Six Word Photo Story Challenge, Fiction Shorts, Crow’s Feet, Entertain Enlighten Empower, and Good Vibes Club.

There are so many more. Each has helped me grow as a writer. For example, before I joined Medium, I never used photos in my stories. Now, often, a visual image starts the creative process. It’s the seed. That’s how the shack in the second photo worked — it externalized my disappointment over the few reads for a story I believed deserved more.

Honestly, I don’t want a larger house. Occasionally, I think I should add another room or build a garage, but my house and yard would become too important. And I have other things to do, other vital things in my life.

Small is beautiful!

Postlude

I’ve been fortunate to have two Medium stories boosted. Each time, I rattled around in the mansion for a few days.

You can take the boy to New York, but you can’t take Iowa out of the boy.

I could not wait to return to my tiny, funky, beautiful Medium home.

How do you feel about your Medium experience?

Today’s random word is scatterbrain.

______________________________________________________________________________________

This story was published in Medium’s Fiction Shorts.

A Drabble is a concise 100-word story that respects your busy schedule. Your presence here matters. Please stay on the page for thirty seconds so you will count as a reader. Thank you.

Today’s Drabble will begin with “I heard a story about a Dragon.”

________________________________________________________________________________________

“I heard a story about a Dragon.

But he went away.

Or did I leave him?

Lately, I’ve been a little scatterbrained.

Sometimes, I even talk with Mary.

In the early morning.

Paul visited me yesterday.

And left on a jet plane.

There’s a Lemon Tree outside my window.

I’ve no earthly idea why.

We had beef stew for lunch.

I hope it wasn’t Stewball.

Do you like rock and roll music?

The wind is blowin’ today.

500 miles an hour.

Did you see Kamala last night?

She took a hammer to him, didn’t she?

Don’t think twice about that.”

_________________________________________________________________________________________

In this fiction, I’ve imagined a musing by Peter Yarrow of the folk group Peter, Paul and Mary. I’ve included references to some of their popular songs in this order: Puff the Magic Dragon, Early Morning Rain, Leaving on a Jet Plane, Lemon Tree, Stewball the Racehorse, I Dig Rock and Roll Music, Blowin’ in the Wind, 500 miles, If I had a Hammer, and Don’t Think Twice. Here’s a link to their greatest hits.

Today’s random word is squeak.

This story was published in Medium’s Fiction Shorts.

A Drabble is a concise 100-word story that respects your busy schedule. Your presence here matters. Please stay on the page for thirty seconds so you will count as a reader. Thank you.

And will include the phrase “as soon as the words…”

_______________________________________________________________________________________

“Oink.”

“Let me…”

“Squeak.”

“All I said was that I could pee standing up in the old days.”

“You mean the good old days. When men were, men and women were…”

“I didn’t say that. As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I felt accused of being a pig.”

“You are doing better, John. Instead of saying, ‘You accused me, you owned the feeling.’

“Mary, sometimes I feel the world is moving too fast.”

“For me, it’s like James Baldwin said, ‘America is changing all the time but never changes at all.’

Waiter, the check, please.”

“Oink.”

_______________________________________________________________________________________

No golfer, scholar, or writer is an island.

Published in Medium’s Entertain, Enlighten and Empower

____________________________________________________________________________________

Golfing

Yesterday, I played golf by myself on an unoccupied course. My usual links buddies were unavailable.

“It happens every year in September. Even on a beautiful day like this, the place is empty,” said the clubhouse guy.

As you can see from the first photo, there is no other living person on site.

Alas, today was not Judgment Day. Or, for fans of the 1968 film Night of the Living Dead, imagine the undead moseying up that sidewalk to form my gallery.

I wanted someone around to appreciate the high-arc fade that led to this close-to-the-hole Tigeresque result pictured below. I used a five-hybrid club to hit 150 yards over a valley that bounced two times and rolled up on the green for a gimmie putt if you’re playing alone.

Or to see me try to maneuver my ball between these trees.

I used a five-wood to lift the ball over the first tree on the right. Unfortunately, it tipped an unforgiving top branch and dropped behind the tree’s trunk — one more inch and perfection. As it was, you would have appreciated the vision and the effort.

That shot was as hard as a transition sentence or two in this story between solitary golf and writing. But first, one more audience example.

Studying

I just finished teaching a Lifelong Learning seminar on the American 2024 Presidential Election. The course was attended by 35 mostly retired community members. We met for three hours each Wednesday in September. Below was my freely captured audience.

During my forty-year teaching career, I loved creating new courses. Teaching forced me to keep learning, and my summers were full of days of exploring and preparing.

My college’s Lifelong Learning program helps keep me in the game.

Without it, I’d be like that solitary golfer performing for gravestones.

Writing

Who wonders, “What’s the point without a witness?”

Would I have read all those political books last summer without the promise of a packed room dangling in front of me?

Writers are told to write for their readers. I’ve never understood what that means. But that’s different from the question, would you write if you had no readers? Does writing give you enough sustenance to do it without anyone else paying attention?

I’m not sure golf does it for me. I took many photos during yesterday’s round and subconsciously thought about this story. Two political books are lying unread on my desk, which I did not get to before I finished my class. Maybe I’ll finish them. Maybe not.

Would I complete this story if I knew no one would read it?

This question makes me uncomfortable. Needing an audience seems a baser motive than loving golf, the study of politics, or writing, regardless of externalities.

But is it less pure?

I’m not so sure.

I love the camaraderie of playing golf with one or two friends. So much socializing comes from the game’s challenges, commiserations, and rare opportunities for transcendence, like the shot in photo three and the almost shot in photo four. Perhaps it’s the game that brings us together.

I love the back-and-forth of a diverse group of people collectively thinking about America’s political life. In a way, we’re doing the thing we’re studying.

Finally, I love the possibility of a reader of this story asking herself, “Do I need an audience for whatever I am passionate about?”

Humans are social. So, everything we do can be sparkled by the need to reach beyond ourselves.

No golfer, scholar, or writer is an island.

_________________________________________________________________________________________

Today’s random word is egg.

This story was published in Fiction Shorts as a Drabble.

A Drabble is a concise 100-word story that respects your busy schedule. Your presence here matters. Please stay on the page for thirty seconds so you will count as a reader. Thank you.

Today’s Drabble is 150 words.

Setting: A Denny’s Restaurant in Eugene, Oregon.

Janet: “Have you ever walked out of a movie?”

Bob: “Five Easy Pieces, in 1970.”

“You don’t look that old. What’s your secret?”

“I don’t eat eggs.”

“Who doesn’t eat eggs?”

“It’s the texture — the same with peas. My mom made us eat everything, but I’d gag whenever I put an egg or a pea in my mouth. No egg or pea for sixty years.”

“I loved Jack Nicholson in Five Easy Pieces. Why did you walk out?”

“I hated the hold-the-chicken scene in the diner, too out of control.”

“That’s my all-time favorite Nicholson scene, even better than Here’s Johnny in The Shining.”

“I wanted to walk out of that one. But my late wife Donna wouldn’t let me.”

Waitress: “Can I take your orders?”

“I’ll have meatloaf.”

“Chips and beans. Do you have a substitute for the eggs?”

“Peas.”

_________________________________________________________________________________________

I did walk out of Five Easy Pieces in 1970. I’m not sure why. But I suspect twenty-year-old uptight me saw too much truth in Jack Nicholson’s Bobby Dupea character. I loved The Shining and Here’s Johnny. I hate eggs and peas and once, politely but firmly, asked a server in a London pub to take back my fish and chips because the peas, which I had said I did not want, touched the fish. Finally, the Five Easy Pieces diner scene was filmed at Denny’s restaurant in Eugene, Oregon.

Symptoms of aging are everywhere

*

Time is no longer a friend.

It’s early September here in northeast Iowa, and the weather has already turned cool. My father, who lived only to 71, called it a nip in the air.

Where did the summer go?

“Gone to graveyards all,” as Peter, Paul, and Mary sang about soldiers.

In America, it’s been an eventful warm season.

Joe’s debate debacle, the waiting and inevitable decision, Crooks’ fortunate miss of the crook, Kamala’s glorious gripping of the reigns, and the inspired selection of Tim, and, then, the joyful climax.

I would have hated to miss it.

My tears this morning are mostly ragweed-caused.

I guess time is sometimes on my side.

But, dammit, life is sooooo precious, as Oprah would warble.

And I feel it slip-sliding away, as Paul Simon pitched perfectly.

*

This mortality rumination started earlier this summer in this sand trap.

I’m a good enough golfer to connect yardage to the flag to the club in my hand.

One hundred fifty yards into a slight wind meant a five iron.

I struck the ball perfectly, and it plopped into this bunker twenty yards short of the green.

As I settled into the electric golf cart and mentally reviewed how to hit out of the sand, I heard my late mother whisper, “How stupid are you?”

And I smiled.

Even though she scored a hole-in-one sometime in the 1930s, this gentle epithet-memory was not about golf. Mom aimed this phrase at herself whenever she missed something obvious, like when she forgot to put sugar in the Christmas Chocolate Pie.

I played golf as a young man, but not so much in the last thirty years. Yet, I had never adjusted my club yardages downward, even though I’ve been playing from the “senior” tees for a decade and roaming around the links sitting down.

How stupid am I?

*

My mother lived to 96, two years longer than her mother, seven years short of her centenarian sister.

Gene-wise, I’m a lucky winner.

Maybe that’s why aging has snuck up on me. On a good day, I look fifteen years younger.

Here’s a photo taken two months ago. I’m on the right with my golfing buddy Mike. He’s 76.

My dad looked younger until sinus cancer aged him beyond his years, another genetic plus.

A few weeks ago, my partner Rebecca (73) and I spent a week in St. Louis visiting her son Jonathon and his family: Suzanne, Irene (8), and Alice (1). We like to do the dishes after the evening meal, a routine we established years ago. This time, we remarked how much more tired we were at the end of the day than five years ago.

*

Now that I’m no longer stupid — maybe enlightened — I see and feel everyday examples of aging in myself and others.

How much longer will I be able to lug fifty-pound sacks of salt down the cellar stairs to our water softener?

We had our gutters covered with wire mesh two weeks ago, so I would no longer be tempted to climb a ladder.

Rebecca hands me a jar to open, and after a few attempted twists, I look over my shoulder to see if anyone else might be available.

We scrutinize our 80-year-old friends for telltale signs of, well, I’m not sure what. But we never used to pay close attention to those a half-decade older.

On June 27, when he walked out on that stage, we saw our future and Joe Biden’s.

High on my today’s to-do list?

I’ve got to buy a four iron to get over that blasted sand trap.

_______________________________________________________________________________

A conversation between two Americans

Today’s random word is stick.

*

This Drabble was written for the Medium Publication Fiction Shorts.

A Drabble is a concise 100-word story that respects your busy schedule. Your presence here matters. Please stay on the page for thirty seconds so you will count as a reader. Thank you

Today’s Drabble requires 150 words. Thank goodness.

*

A whispered conversation at the Auschwitz Exhibit in Boston on a bench looking at the Hitler photo.

Abraham: “I love America.”

Amburo: “How long have you lived here?”

“For forty years, my mother and father came from Israel. You?”

“Twenty years from Rwanda.”

“Tutsi?”

“Yes. But I have Hutu friends. How long have you lived in Boston?”

“15 years. I manage people’s money. Edward Jones. You?”

“Ten years. High school English teacher. No money. Did any of your relatives die?”

“All my grandparents, all but two aunts and uncles. You?”

“My brother and a cousin.

It couldn’t happen here, could it?”

*

“He didn’t have to beat them over the head with a stick. They believed every word — each lie. Look at their faces. They are mesmerized.”

“The Hutu leaders called us cockroaches until many believed we were.”

“Too many were silent.”

“Until it was too late.”

“This exhibit.”

“A warning!”

_________________________________________________________________________________

This fictional account of a conversation was prompted by my visit yesterday to The Auschwitz Exhibit in Boston. Wikipedia has excellent entries on the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide.

But I am going to tell you my only scar story

*

Do you see it?

It’s a 52-year-old relic.

That is attached to a 75-year-old artifact.

Who earned it for what, thankfully, has become an anachronistic practice.

If two of my mates and I from the Iowa Annie Wittenmyer Home in 1972 were chasing a shark and telling scar tales, this would be mine.

*

Steven was 12 years old. Like all the kids in the cottage, he had been in trouble with the law and taken away from his parents.

I read their case histories at night, toward the end of my 4 — midnight shift. Nothing in my middle-class sheltered life prepared me for their problems.

This was my first job after college. Two staff members, a man, and a woman, cared for twenty children, ten boys and ten girls, during each eight-hour stint. We were unskilled childcare workers whose primary job was to maintain order.

I majored in Sociology and earned a teacher’s certificate after completing student teaching in the spring of 1972. The Wittenmyer job was to tide me over until my first teaching job, which would come five months later. I would be as clueless in that job as I was with these troubled young people.

*

The Annie Wittenmyer facility had been an orphanage during America’s Civil War. By the 1960s, the complex had become a juvenile detention center. I was assigned to a unit with middle-level security, meaning kids could only go outside with permission. There were no guards or guns, but doors were always locked.

When someone misbehaved and did not settle down, we locked them up. Yes, that’s what we did. Worse, this lock-up room was on the second floor, up a narrow set of stairs, and the door opened inside rather than outside. More on that in a moment.

Many of these kids had a problem with impulse control. Someone or something would trigger their anger, which would then escalate. I don’t remember why, but this happened to Steven one day. We had one tool in our kit.

He was average-sized and rotund, with glasses that didn’t fit properly. The poor guy’s face was beet-red. But I couldn’t calm him down. So I wrapped my arms around his torso and lugged him up the stairs while he kicked and screamed. The cell was at the top of the stairs, with the door open to the inside.

I hauled Steven across the hallway and pushed him inside. He lunged toward the door as I pulled my right arm out of the doorway, wedging it shut on my middle finger.

*

It could have been worse.

Ten stitches closed the burst fingertip. I was back to work in two days. After it healed, it tingled for a few years.

Most importantly, Steven was not sent to one of the maximum security units. That often happened after an outburst.

*

I worked at Wittenmyer for a few more months before I took my first teaching job. I don’t remember lugging another kid up those stairs.

I don’t know what happened to Steven. Already, at twelve, he had one strike against him.

A few years later, I met another of my charges outside an employment office in another city. We chatted for a bit. He was now a young man and seemed to be on an upward path. I asked him what he remembered about his time at Wittenmyer. He said it gave him some structure and a few social skills.

Occasionally, I look at the little scar in the middle of my right middle finger.

It reminds me how some scars are more profound than others.

____________________________________________________________________________________

As I ponder the last four weeks in America.

*

I want to know what’s around that metaphorical bend.

Maybe it’s my human evolution.

My distant ancestors needed to guess right about the predator outside the cave.

Or fool themselves into thinking they knew.

Grammarly has joined the confidence crowd.

It slaps my hand whenever I use a word like “maybe” in the second sentence or “perhaps” in the one below.

Given their phenomenal campaign launch in Philadelphia, perhaps Kamala Harris and Tim Walz will defeat Donald Trump and J.D. Vance.

It tells me to drop the perhaps so I will sound more confident.

Grammarly wants us all to feel more positive. Being confident that we can foretell the future will improve our mood.

It’s sure about this.

*

What a bunch of hooey.

Conceivably, it’s helpful nonsense.

Using the language of confidence, I talk myself into believing I know what’s around the bend.

By reading my confident words, you drink the Kool-Aid, thinking you know more about the world than you do.

With arms locked together, we waltz happily into the future.

*

But ponder this, my friend.

If, like me, you wanted Donald Trump to lose the 2024 American Presidential election, the world now seems, if not precisely, more orderly.

Predictable.

With Joe Biden’s recusal after pressure from former Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others, Kamala Harris’ elevation, the quick coalescing of the Democratic Party around her, her mistake-free debut as a Presidential candidate, and the selection of everyman Minnesota’s Governor Tim Walz as her running mate, the dominoes seem to be falling in place.

To use my bike trail metaphor, all of this is nicely laid out right around the bend.

Of course, you know where I’m heading with this example. A few weeks ago, few would have predicted any of this.

1. Joe’s withdrawal
2. Because the Democratic Party was a hollow shell with no formal way to influence his thinking.

3. But if Joe did the unexpected, there would be a damaging fight for the nomination, or if he endorsed Kamala, she would not be a stellar campaigner.

4. If Harris became the nominee, she would pick a white male from one of the swing states, Arizona or Pennsylvania. Tim Walz was not on anyone’s list until the “These are weird people” interview.

*

But there’s more.

When the Biden campaign offered a June 27th date for the first debate, it thought this would be to Joe’s advantage. Imagine if the first debate was during the fall campaign when it usually is.

Or, assume the deadly-to-Joe-chances debate occurs on June 27, followed by the Democratic Convention instead of the Republican Convention on July 15. As it was, it took Biden three weeks after the debate to withdraw.

If there had been no debate, there would have been no organized pressure on Joe. Even with the disastrous debate, an early convention would have left no time even for Pelosi and others to work their magic.

Under either circumstance, around the bend offers Biden/Harris vs. Trump/Vance.

Or, on July 14th, in Butler, Pennsylvania, what if Thomas Matthew Crooks’ aim had been three inches more accurate?

*

My favorite website prognosticators, 538, now give the actual Democratic Party ticket of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz a 50/50 chance of beating Donald Trump and JD Vance.

I think Blue’s chances are significantly better. But it’s more a hope and a feeling than anything else.

Holding “this or that” lightly seems a wise template for what might happen.

The unknown world, replete with contingencies, is beyond knowing — before it happens.

Before I travel around the bend.

And an older man book group

*

Our 11-person mature-man book group meets monthly, usually at one of our homes. This month’s meeting was the book American Gun by Cameron McWhirter and Zusha Elinson. And the place was at my house.

We’re all in the vicinity of 70. Next month, we’ll meet with a younger-man group for a joint conversation. Baby boomers meet Generation X. I joined this 20-year-old group four months ago after thinking about it for many years.

Did I want to sit around and discuss books? And with only men?

*

We’re a diverse group with college professors, a banker, a high school teacher, an administrator, a physician, an engineer, and a reporter. Most are liberal, but not all. Everyone has a point of view about the books we read.

No one dominates the conversation. No toxic masculinity. Back to that in a moment.

*

I’ve linked to the Amazon page for American Gun so you can read a sample of the reviews. Our group thought it was a terrific book. I couldn’t put it down because the narration was excellent. It’s a cultural history of one facet of America over the past 50 years.

If you want to know why there are so many guns in America, this is the book for you. It’s not an anti-gun book or an anti-AR-15 book. It’s an exploration of why this particular gun became the American Gun.

Our group included a few hunters. However, no one owned or had even touched an AR-15. So we asked our local sheriff and police departments if one of their officers could help us to understand this weapon.

Byron joined us for an hour and brought along two AR-15s. He’s a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan and has been in both the police and sheriff’s departments as a firearms instructor.

He laid out the two guns on my dining room table and showed us how they were put together, including the bullets used. Then, he passed them around.

I hadn’t held a gun in over 50 years and never pulled the trigger on the 0.22 I carried that one time while hunting with friends. When I cradled each, I put my finger on the trigger and imagined a target.

I still don’t get it. That’s why I’m glad to have read the book.

*

The pizza arrived when Officer Byron did — and cooled on the kitchen table with the beer waiting in the refrigerator. We peppered him with questions, and he gave thoughtful answers.

I was struck by how he respected the guns and saw them, in his hands, as necessary for our safety. Yet, he wished it had not become the weapon of choice for so many Americans, including Thomas Crooks, who attempted to assassinate Donald Trump.

After Byron left, we opened the pizza boxes and the beer. No one cared that the pizza was cold. We had a book to discuss.

About 30 minutes into the conversation, someone, I think it was Jim, raised the issue of toxic masculinity. The authors of American Gun took us into the worlds of several mass shooters, all men, including Stephen Paddock, who killed 60 and wounded 413 in Las Vegas in 2017.

You can read the Wikipedia entry on toxic masculinity here. Another excellent article by conservative columnist David French on the male toxicity of the recent Republican convention here.

I’m providing these resources because our group said nothing particularly enlightening about why men do bad things. Other than this, our sons had gone through the local public school and had become swept up in school groups, including athletics, music, school governance, and drama productions.

They had made connections and learned how to be with others. Indeed, that’s one antidote to the social isolation that is often a symptom of mass killers.

Honestly, our group of long-time men were as perplexed as, perhaps, you are at both America’s gun fetish and the men who use these weapons to kill others and themselves.

*

As I sat in my living room, looking out at this group of aging men, each willing to give up two hours of his time to listen, engage, ponder, probe, open up, and, ultimately, sit with the horrors described in American Gun and the ambiguity of a weapon that destroys and protects, I thought, I’m honored to be a part of this men’s group.

That, in some mysterious way, we’re part of the solution.