Photo of the Tuesday morning crew by Food Pantry Director Matt Tapscott
After the sermon, Jesus said, “Give them something to eat,” and then turned a few loaves of bread and two fish into food for thousands.
For our community in northeast Iowa, the miracle of providing sustenance to those in need comes from volunteers.
Meet the Tuesday morning crew. It includes nurses, an optometrist, a dentist, a basketball coach, a college president, a farmer, several small business owners, a banker, and, I’m guessing, a candlestick maker.
When a pantry client fills out a registration form, they put their name, address, and the number of people they live with, period, as in nothing else is asked.
Yesterday, we handled 1200 pounds of food donated by grocery stores and 2000 pounds from a regional government distribution center.
In 2025, the pantry will distribute 330,000 pounds to 2,000 families.
Above all, Jesus and other spiritual guides need someone on earth to stock the shelves.
When I got home, I realized it was open — had been down for two hours — while I stocked shelves at the food pantry, on a step ladder, with ten others, men and women. Perhaps, at our age, no one noticed or cared.
My barn door, in mixed company, such quaint language, exposing my age.
It ain’t easy being 76. At least I’m no longer in front of a classroom. Unless it’s a Life Long Learning class, with other — what’s the current correct term — older Americans. But in my last class, someone offered, “Aren’t we North Americans?” and another, “What about Canada?”
Next time, I’ll stay behind the podium.
In the safety of my bathroom, as I stood in repose, I thought, This is my chance to begin a meditation routine. One of my favorite Medium writers, Gary Buzzard, provides ‘One minute can change your life.’
Fifteen miles into my three-hour road trip to the Okoboji Writers and Songwriters Retreat, I turned my Subaru Forester around. Adjusting the rearview mirror, I had noticed a tiny hair sticking out of my right nostril. Or was it my left? Mirrors are confusing.
But not the image of my grooming kit sitting on the kitchen table, and not in my suitcase. Anticipating a new experience makes me nervous. I blame my mother for sending me to kindergarten at 4. Since then, any new playground seems overwhelming.
Throughout my 76 years, I’ve had many security blankets. Ever since my nose and ear hairs started sprouting at an ever-accelerating rate, three decades ago, it’s been my personal care utensils.
What would my writer workshop cohort think of me, with a log sticking out of my nose? It’s easy for real writers not to care about insignificant matters such as personal grooming. They have books that sit as sentries, mocking the pretenders as they wait in line to register and be assigned their rooms.
Photo by the author
You understand the problem, don’t you? Perhaps you, too, in similar circumstances, have felt like an imposter, even when surrounded by a gaggle of charming, ordinary-looking people, some of whom, truth be told, could use a trim here, a snip there, or a tuck somewhere.
Photo by the author
“And all,” as one of our presenters reminded us, “are writers with unique stories to tell.”
Even trimmed, snipped, and tucked me.
The Middle
Iowa, believe it or not, is a writer’s paradise. It has the famous Iowa Writers’ Workshop located on the campus of the University of Iowa. And now, planted five years ago, this annual late September three-day conference is rooted in a beautiful piece of land surrounded by five interconnected lakes in north central Iowa. It has grown from 50 participants in the first year to 300 this year.
Every morning, we would gather early in this tent to hear a little music and short introductions by the day’s workshop speakers.
Photo by the author
We would then scatter across the wooded Lakeside Laboratory campus to one of fifteen options, with two 75-minute sessions each morning and afternoon. The intention is to have each workshop small enough for conversation and tutoring. The number of participants in the ten classes I attended ranged from ten to twenty-five.
The speakers were uniformly gregarious, professional, and insightful.
Photo by the author
To give you a sense of the smorgasbord of choices, here were mine over two and a half days.
Storytelling Basics
The Art of Brevity
How to get others to care about your memoir
How to find and grow your original idea
Opinion writing: Finding your voice
Lazy Use of Language and Rethinking Words
Investigative Journalism and Democracy
Songwriting as Storytelling
Poetry as a coping tool
Making Broccoli Delicious (about how to make a dull story interesting)
And here are my favorite quotes from presenters.
I have to write to live.
Find the angle that nobody else sees.
You are the only one who sees things as you do. That is your power.
A story (memoir) is a vehicle for transcendence.
I moved back to Iowa from Florida because I noticed that in Florida, I saw no bookshelves and very large shoe closets.
One secret to writing is to create momentum. Always leave something unfinished for tomorrow.
The reader looks for any reason to stop reading. Don’t give them that reason. Never start a sentence with THE and do not overuse commas. And put your hook in the first sentence. Eliminate spare wording. Hemingway never wrote a sentence of more than 12 words.
Begin your story with a scene (action, dialogue, character, and setting).
The End
It turns out I wasn’t the only imposter.
I met many who questioned their writerly credentials.
John has self-published two mysteries, but “don’t real writers find real publishers?”
Dennis, a retired Navy officer and attorney, has stories inside him that have started to come out, with the help of last year’s workshop, so his wife sent him back for another dose. He’s taking baby steps.
Kathy, whose husband died four years ago, has just finished a book that has been accepted by a New York publisher for a “memoir of mourning” that she started writing after the first Okoboji workshop.
Ernest, a self-described blue-collar worker, has kept a journal for years, and now “it’s time to give it form and structure.”
Hi, I’m Paul, with a few scholarly articles in a fifty-year academic career. In the spring of 2018, I wrote weekly stories for friends and relatives about a four-month experience with college students on the island nation of Malta. After retiring in that same year, I started a blog on WordPress, paulmuses.com. A few years later, I joined Medium. Now, 700+ stories later, I guess,
It figures Pastor Jay would shepherd my first convertible ride. And that he purchased this high-mileage 1999 Chrysler Sebring from his next-door neighbor.
On the passenger side floor was a sledgehammer that Jay uses to tap the ignition key six times if it refuses to turn, advice he received from his mechanic brother.
Earlier in the day, a high school homecoming queen preened from my spot.
On the way to pick up a large House Special Pizza, I tried the Regal Wave and lightly brushed my right index finger knuckle against the edge of the windshield. The counter lady found a Band-Aid for my crepey finger.
Her pizza-king husband built a mansion-style house across from the high school as a middle-finger gesture many understand.
Fifty-five years ago, I mounted a friend’s motorcycle and dodged another soft-top into a telephone pole.
Photo by the author of Valentin de Boulogne’s Four Ages of Man, from The Courtauld Gallery in London
What three things do we want to do in the final quarter of our lives? asks Ronald C. Flores-Gunkle. A sensible question from an octogenarian, says this spring chicken septuagenarian.
*
The enviable thing about being Ronald and my age is that we know it’s October in the calendar of life. Time is too precious to waste; leave Facebook to the callow sixty-year-olds.
Like Ronald, I am the reflective man in the middle of the painting. If that’s my only glass of wine today, and ‘tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,’ an insurance longevity calculator gives me a 75% chance of living another 13 years from my current 76. Of course, it wants me to buy an annuity.
Old people today are different from those depicted in 17th-century Italy by de Boulogne. They’re doing more than contemplating and receding into the background. They’re playing pickleball.
And traveling, first on my list. This is my partner Rebecca (74) and me in Namibia last summer.
Photo by Brian Hesse
In two days, we’ll board Amtrak’s Empire Builder in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, for a five-hour ride to Chicago and three days of sightseeing. One of our goals is to see more of America, particularly the America within a few hours of our home in northeast Iowa. On the horizon are half-week trips to Minneapolis, Kansas City, and, stretching it a bit, Salt Lake City.
This approach is partly a concession to age. Our journey back from the summer safari in Namibia, itself a final quarter goal, was a 32-hour travel day, including 22 hours in the air and 10 hours in airports.
Each time I twist a lid, whether for a pickle or a pill, I hear my doctor’s words, ‘Paul, we lose 1% of our gripping power every year after 50.’ Surely, the same is true for stamina, thus our shorter jaunts. And a more relaxing form of transportation, like
2.
The Empire Builder, from Chicago to Seattle. What an American name! And so true. On our two train stints, I will have these two books in my backpack.
Photo by the author
And pull them out in the double-decker lounge car with the panoramic view. I’m reading these volumes by historian Grandin because I believe he might help me understand how the country without the acute accent over the E has taken two steps back on its trek toward a “More Perfect Union,” with the re-election of Donald Trump.
Ronald, that’s thing #2, understanding my country. I’m a retired academic, so this comes naturally. Here’s a quote from Myth (p. 270) that I hope also tantalizes you.
After centuries of fleeing forward across the blood meridian [America’s westward expansion], all the things that expansion was supposed to preserve have been destroyed, and all the things it was meant to destroy have been preserved. Instead of peace, there’s endless war. Instead of a critical, resilient, and progressive citizenry, a conspiratorial nihilism, rejecting reason and dreading change has taken hold. Factionalism congealed and won a national election.
In the margin, next to this quote, I’ve etched WOW.
3.
For a concluding moment, let’s return to de Boulogne’s Four Ages of Man painting and look again at the older man. He’s played, caroused, fought, and, now, perhaps, he’s at peace, ready to let go. There will be others who will take up his burdens.
Ronald, like you, I’m not quite ready for this stage. I’m still in the doing mode, with my lists. But relinquishing my grip on the world, I think, will not be as hard as I once thought.
My 3rd goal is to hold this loosening idea in my imagination, not to fear it.
It’s not as far away as it once was.
Besides, when I release my grip on the world, Donald Trump loses his stranglehold.
“Freight train,” whispered Rebecca, just as the second act of The Lion King was beginning at the Chicago Cadillac Palace Theater.
A day earlier, we had taken Amtrak from LaCrosse, Wisconsin, to Chicago for several days of sightseeing. During dinner at trendy The Gage, recommended by our Palmer House breakfast server, Doris, we talked about ‘passenger’ and ‘whatchamacallit’ trains. Neither of us could retrieve freight until the curtain was raised on a twenty-something Simba.
“Did you thank Marion?” I asked. Marion was the character in It’s a Wonderful Life who would have become an old maid if Jimmy Stewart’s George Bailey had drowned saving his brother when he was a kid.
We’re in our mid-seventies with word retrieval challenges, which, my doctor says, is normal. She added,
Your brain is as old as you are. Sometimes it takes her a while to pull that book off the shelf.
Photo by the author of Grant Wood’s American Gothic from the Chicago Art Institute
*
“Use your room key to access the 21st floor in one of the three elevators at the end of the lobby,” said concierge John, who handed Rebecca the two card keys. We were in Chicago to see art, architecture, and The Lion King.
You must understand, we’re in our seventies with no priors. But a little cranky after a five-hour train ride and a mile hike with travel backpacks from Chicago’s Union Station to the Palmer House Hotel.
As we lingered in a crowd in front of our assigned elevators, a white haired lady of our vintage whispered, “There’s a service elevator right around that corner with two brown mesh swinging doors. It goes right to the top, no stops, follow me.”
Photo by the author
Over three days, we met housekeepers, janitors, food service workers, and a valet with a toothbrush. They all smiled; two winked.
This story was written for a Medium publication, The Challenged.
*
Meet Steven, a grey squirrel who does one thing very well. His winter survival depends upon it. I won’t tell anyone about the hiding place. Besides, I don’t like black walnuts, even though they were my Dad’s favorite nut.
The unexpected wonder of having a father who was a good mentor, in Dad’s case, with everything from hitting a baseball to how to treat the janitor at work, was to be comfortable looking to other creatures as models of how to do something well.
This short tale is about two confidantes, Steve and his namesake.
He’s a persistent bugger, isn’t he? Otherwise, he’ll starve in January.
Photo by the author
I’ll bet you are, too. And that you have a writing routine. Mine is every day, roughly from 4:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m., whether I want to or not. This morning, for example, I didn’t. There are too many other things on my mind. Worries. I’m sure you have them as well. Life throws things at us daily. I’ll wager my friend Steve has bad days as well. Another friend, Keith, loves squirrel pot pie. Fortunately, he lives on the other side of town.
Well, you might be wondering what this squirrely story has to do with Barb Dalton’s excellent prompt for today about what creative skill you wish you had but don’t.
In my case, and at my age, 76 in a few days, I worry about losing what another guide calls ‘the magic of making a start.’ Here’s the other Steven, my human guide, Steven Pressfield, from The War of Art.
Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would not otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meanings and material assistance which no man would have dreamed would have come his way. I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets: “Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, magic, and power in it. Begin it now.” (from W.H. Murray, The Scottish Himalayan Expedition)
After a half-century academic career, I decided to work at this writing gig , to begin to become a writer. My primary outlet was a personal blog site and then, three years ago, Medium. This is story 704.
My marmont friend is driven by instinct.
Me? I’m honestly not sure. Perhaps, it’s something another writer whose name I can’t recall once said when asked what she loved about writing,
I did turn 76 on September 20th. This was written on September 19th.
*
But there are no guarantees.
Still, I prefer to tip the odds in favor of survival. It’s all about probabilities.
So, I’ll buckle my seat belt when, later today, we go to the grocery store to buy broccoli and black beans for our meatless pasta dinner.
On my daily 10,000-step walk, I’ll look both ways twice before crossing our town’s busiest streets and won’t walk in the area of the park where a black bear was sighted last week.
One month ago, at my annual Medicare visit, my doctor said the two blood pressure medicines I’ve been taking for a year have reduced my stroke chances by 15%.
Today, I feel a little knackered. That’s because it’s spring training for my body as it’s preparing for the fall flu and Covid seasons.
I told my manager my left arm is sore, but it’ll be tip-top tomorrow.
Maaya Rive asks whether we’ve ever been trolled on Medium.
*
I’m the 4th goat in the children’s story “The Three Billy Goats Gruff.” My biggest brother threw the bad guy off the bridge, freeing me to walk across in safety.
Thousands of comments over three years of stories, and not a single troll sighted.
Well, someone once wrote something that caused me to delete them, but I can’t remember what it was. I think it was more crazy than mean.
And, sometime in my first year on Medium, still naive of its folkways, I made a snarky comment to a writer I liked and read, but who had never reciprocated. He promptly, firmly, and gently tutored me on his Medium world, which made it impossible for him to read everyone who read him.
Point taken. He was a veteran schooling a rookie. I was older even than the wonder-wielding, swinging-for-the-fences 47-year-old Robert Redford as Roy Hobbs in The Natural.
*
Maaya’s prompt about harassment on Medium nudged me to think about the rarity of other bad stuff in my life.
Today is number 27,761. In years, that’s 76. I live in a small town in the United States. Over the years, however, I’ve spent hundreds of days in large cities around my country and the world. To my recollection, I’ve been robbed one time, and it wasn’t by a bad guy coming up from under a bridge.
It was a friendly man in a funny hat behind a food truck counter in one of those big cities, Washington, D.C. It was a learning experience.
Sometimes, it’s easy to take for granted the friction-lit world we live in.
Later today, I’ll walk around Palisades Park, about a mile from our house. It’ll take me about an hour to hike the paved trail.
Photo by the author
Occasionally, I’ll meet someone. Or catch a glance of a dog walker or mountain biker. Or smell a campfire. Or hear music. Or see a parked car with its door open like I did yesterday. And my imagination will take off. After all, I’m no spring chicken and, especially at the top, the park is isolated.
For it’s true, even in our little corner of Iowa, trolls do exist.
