paulmuses

Or risk losing it

The photo shows the front of our house, yesterday.

And the front of Hazel’s house, our 90 year old neighbor.

You can see Hazel down the sidewalk, with her little dog.

America’s midterm elections are next week and so there are political signs all over town including in front of both houses.

The five signs planted in our yard support candidates and an issue that align with our interests, values, and world views.

The two signs residing in Hazel’s yard do the same for her.

Hazel and I have never talked politics in the 15 years we have been neighbors.

But our signs tell us of us and the 100s of cars, walkers, and bikers that travel by our houses each day on our city’s Main Street that we support different sides.

*

In this photo, you can see another sign announcing the academic Department I taught in for 33 years.

When I think about Politics, I begin with two people.

Not Donald and Joe.

Hazel and me.

We each have different interests, values, and world view.

The reasons for our differences like include: personality, upbringing and parental influence, religion, income, gender, education, occupation, marital status, ethnicity, race and sexual orientation.

I’m sure you can add several I missed. That might account for your own Politics.

Last fall my partner Rebecca and I lived in Romania for four months.

For almost 40 years, until 1989, Romanians lived under Communist dictators.

Politics died under Communism because freedom died.

The freedom to form different interests, values and world views.

The freedom protected in the American Constitution’s Bill of Rights and the 1991 Romanian Constitution.

Freedom means nothing if we can’t express our interests through support for candidates and issues that are extensions of us.

Hazel’s and my freedom require more than signs. It mandates a ballot.

*

The photo above shows the new Winneshiek County Veterans Memorial at 4 AM across from our houses and signs.

The central idea of the Memorial is that force is sometimes necessary to protect freedom.

The Memorial’s eternal light guards our signs which express our differences which are a manifestation of our freedom.

It doesn’t protect just my freedom. But also Hazel’s.

Freedom’s value is best understood when absent, by those who don’t have it.

Hazel’s mother and my grandmothers could not express their interests through a vote until 1920.

It was not until 1965 that America’s Black citizens across the country could cast a ballot.

About the franchise, Martin Luther King, Jr. said:

As long as I am unable to exercise my Constitutional Right to vote I do not have command of my own life. I cannot determine my own destiny for it is determined for me by people who would rather see me suffer than succeed.

America’s true Politics is only two generations old.

One generation older than Romania’s.

*

Politics honors freedom, difference and voice.

It is built upon a moral idea about the equality of all citizens.

Hazel might be richer, smarter, or more moral than me, but Politics sees both of us as precious and unique.

Our outer differences melt away to expose what the late Political Scientist E.E. Schattschneider referred to as “the warm, breathing, feeling, hungering, loving, hating, aspiring, living being with whom we identify ourselves.”

During the summer of 1968, I heard for the first time, my father express doubt about America. I was 18.

Martin Luther King ,Jr. had been assassinated on April 4, Bobby Kennedy on June 6.

Assassination is a form of anti-Politics, as is a dictator like Romania’s Nicolae Ceaușescu.

Those who assaulted (not the protestors) America’s Capital on January 6, 2021 rejected Politics.

Those who rioted (not the protesters) in American cities after George Floyd’s murder rejected Politics.

My father’s lament in 1968: what is happening to America?

*

Like my father 50 years ago, today, I am often discouraged about the particularities of America’s Politics. The Romanians we met last year felt the same about Romania’s Politics.

It is hard to love the Politics we see around us, particularly the nastiness.

But it is impossible to love the anti-Politics. And that is good. Some things are worthy of hatred.

Remember that Politics gives us an honest reflection of who we are, as a People.

The mirror does not lie; that makes it valuable.

Recall the alternatives to Politics: Ceaușescu in Romania, in America, assassinations, the assault against the Capital and counting of votes, and riots.

I must love Politics or risk losing it.

And the leaves that aren’t there

I’m still angry.

Do you see that magnificent three-crowned tree?

My neighbor had it killed two years ago.

I asked him why.

He said it was rotting.

I saw no evidence, from leaves or trunk.

In Empty Sky, Bruce Springsteen sang of loss and emptiness on September 11, 2001.

And good and evil.

Trees are not people, but…

I’m not innocent.

Twenty years ago I cut down a Crab Apple tree.

Its sin?

Apples on the ground.

Inconvenience.

In its place

Not Joni Mitchell’s Parking Lot, but a drive-way.

And another empty sky.

I’m still angry.

*

On Saturday, my partner Rebecca and I were hiking in Palisade park, a few blocks from our Decorah home.

The park is full of mountain bike and hiking trails.

We selected the Smeby Trail, ranked advanced, with an elevation of 872 feet.

Along Smeby, we met this car with Buick Eight on its grill.

Wikipedia tells me Buick made the Eight from 1940 through 1958.

Maybe my new friend and I share a birth year, 1949.

Years ago, someone abandoned him.

Put him out of sight because he was no longer any use.

Except as a reminder of what can happen when others define our value.

*

Lately I’ve been wondering whether in 10 years I will be able to do something I’m doing now.

Examples:

Yesterday I carried four bags of 40 pound salt crystals for the water softener into our house and down into the basement.

Last week a colleague and I finished teaching a Life Long Learners course that met for three hours, on four Wednesdays.

In a few hours, Rebecca and I will do a 45 minute kettlebell workout.

What about advanced hiking trails?

I think society prods me to wonder whether I’m soon to be too old to do those things.

My Buick friend shows me where this leads.

*

Someday I will become a human version of this abandoned Buick Eight.

Either above or below the earth.

For now, with yearly maintenance check-ups, regular oil & filter replacements, and an occasional glance under the hood, I should be good for another 100,000 miles.

Or the winter of Our Content — The Literary Version

“I only want to Live Till the Age of 75”

I’m a hop, skip, and jump from 75 so when I saw this article by Donnette Anglin I needed to take a look.

Captivated by the topic, I googled “wanting to die at 75” and found Ezekiel J. Emanuel’s “Why I Hope to Die at 75.”

Donnette is 52. Ezekiel was 57 in 2014 when his essay was published.

Both authors described the feared and real challenges of the last quarter or the winter of our lives.

I fear them as well.

All of this was on my mind four days ago when I attended an Emeriti Colloquium at Luther College where I taught for three decades and retired from in 2018.

Over 75

The speaker was Harland and he is the fellow in bib overalls in the first picture.

Harland taught English and his talk was about growing up on a farm in northwest Minnesota.

He’s in costume and still teaching.

Harland is 96.

That’s Harland in dark glasses at 18 sitting next to his father.

When asked what he was looking at, he answered “I suppose life beyond the farm.”

Will was making a point.

Like his friend Harland, he grew up in the rural upper midwest in the 1930s and 1940s.

He was describing how threshing rings (groups of families) planned card parties and other social gatherings that helped build community.

Will taught Religion and is 90.

Larry was explaining how a 1940s thresher machine worked.

He is a biologist and 88.

Ruth is intense, even in repose.

She taught French and Italian and is my co-teacher in a Life Long Learning course we will teach this fall on The 1619 Project.

Ruth is 78.

I don’t remember the point Dave, another biologist, was making.

Maybe that’s because 20 years ago, as a college Vice President, he gently chided me for a snarky remark I made about the college’s poo-bahs.

I hope to lose my snark, when I turn 75.

Dave is 85. Thank goodness former administrators never fade away.

That’s me in the red cap looking and listening.

I’m going to be 73 and my photo-happy partner Rebecca is 71.

Most of those at Harland’s talk were over 75

The Last Quarter is where the game is won

Anglin and Emmanuel are right about the challenges of growing older.

There’s lots to fear.

But name a time in life when that was not so.

Raise your hand if you want to be 16 again.

No one understands the difficulties of life in the last quarter better than those who are still playing.

As I looked at Harland’s crowd, there was evidence everywhere.

Wheel chairs, walkers, canes, drooping heads, and at least one napper–sorry Harland.

Yet

They were all there.

Sill vital.

Sharing wisdom, experience and stories.

And Presence.

Because no one lives in the moment better than perennials.

Afterword

The phone holder below was carved by Jim, biologist # 3, who started these colloquia eight years ago.

Jim is a hop, skip, & jump beyond 80.

Tuesday, September 11, 2001

On Tuesday morning, September 11, 2001, I was teaching in Luther College’s Main 211.

This is what the classroom looks like today.

Except for the raised TV monitor and computer, it looks the same as it did twenty one years ago.

In 2001, Main 211 had a TV but on that day it did not work.

Decorah, Iowa (All times are Central Standard)

I got to my office about 6 AM to prepare for an 8 AM class. I was teaching a new course, Struggles for Freedom, that compared freedom movements in three countries, Northern Ireland, South Africa, and America.

I completed my work in Koren Hall about 7:30 and strolled the 200 yards to Main and my classroom. The sun was to my back, on a clear day in the American midwest.

Always restless before class, I wanted to check whether there were enough chairs for the 16 of us.

Also on my mind was where to put the portable lectern to signal to students where I would be sitting. I decided to put it at the end of the table facing the door.

Because I did not plan to use the TV, I did not check whether it was working.

Tuesday, September 11 would be our 5th class meeting.

We started with Northern Ireland and that day’s topic was the role of terrorism in the conflict between Protestant and Catholic Communities.

It was a normal Tuesday morning on the Luther College campus in Decorah, Iowa.

Boston & New York (Times are Central Standard)

At 6:59 AM, American Airlines Flight 11 with 92 people took off from Boston International Airport destined for Los Angeles.

As I was preparing for my day’s work:

Captain John Ogonowski and First Officer Thomas McGuiness Jr. were going through their pre-flight routines.

Chief Flight Attendant Karen Martin was overseeing the boarding of passengers along with Flight Attendants Barbara Arestegui, Jeffrey Collman, Sara Low, Kathleen Nicosia, Betty Ann Ong, Jean Roger, Dianne Snyder, and Amy Sweeney.

Among the 81 passengers finding their seats were Mohamed Atta, Abdulaziz al-Omari, Wail al-Shehri, Waleed al-Shehri, and Stam al-Sugami.

About the time I was walking from my office to my classroom:

Flight Attendant Betty Ann Ong notified (7:19 AM) the American Airlines ground crew that Flight 11 had been hijacked. Ong provided information for 25 minutes.

As students began filtering into Main 211, at 7:46 AM

Mohamed Atta guided America Flight 11 into the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

Decorah

As students were settling into their seats, one mentioned he had heard on the news that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center.

Before I asked my first question about that day’s Northern Ireland reading, at 8:03 AM:

Marwan al-Shehri steered United Flight into the South Tower.

In 2001, no one had a phone or personal computer to see news in real time.

Unknowing, we continued class.

Just as Hani Hanjur maneuvered American Airlines 175 into the Pentagon, at 8:37 AM, a student poked her head into our classroom and told us another plane had hit the World Trade Center.

We all looked at her, then at each other. I went to the TV and discovered it was not working.

I then told the class to go and find a find TV. Most scattered but a few stuck around to chat. I said there was a TV in the Administrative Assistant’s Office in Koren.

We walked briskly across campus and climbed the three flights to Chelle Meyer’s office.

We joined Chelle and a couple of student around her little desk TV, at 8:59 AM, and watched in real time the collapse of the World Trade Center’s South Tower.

Seven minutes later the passengers of of United Flight 93 forced Ziad Jarrah to ditch his guided missile into a Pennsylvania field well-short of the targeted US Capital or White House.

At 9:28 AM, two minutes before my Freedom Struggles’ class would have ended, the North Tower of the World Trade Center collapsed.

2712 killed and 6000 injured, on Tuesday, September 11, 2001.

Why the most memorable day?

9/11 would live in my memory regardless of what I had been doing on that day. Just as November 22, 1963 or those terrible 1968 dates, April 4 and June 6 live on.

But politics, religion, and terrorism — all came together on that Tuesday. Just as they had on April 19, 1995, in Oklahoma City.

I needed to know more about what was going on in the world that would produce these horrors.

In the summer of 2002, I developed a new course, Terrorism and Democracy.

I had never studied terrorism in graduate school.

I thought it would be a one-off.

I taught Terrorism and Democracy every year until I retired, in 2018.

Late last summer Rebecca and I built a small screened-in porch in our backyard.

This summer we sit and enjoy observing our neighbors.

Below, a teenage buck lingers to tell us how his family is doing; often he brings them along.

We also meet squirrels, bats, bees, beetles, and, about two months ago, a skunk.

I took no picture as I was afraid movement would detonate her defense system.

The skunk was an unpleasant surprise and we watched her waddle under the back deck of our neighbor Hazel.

If you want the longer skunk story, you can read about it here.

We tattled on the skunk. Hazel called the police. The police referred her to Dennis, our community’s Animal Relocation Officer.

We didn’t know we had an ARO.

Dennis captures unwanted critters and releases them outside town.

The foxy skunk eluded two weeks of Dennis’ traps.

Five raccoons, including the one pictured below, did not.

An expectant mother, said Dennis.

I know her, said Craig, another neighbor. My security camera captured her overturning my garbage can.

Guilty and exiled.

Our raccoon neighbors travel along a creek bed, crossing the border with impunity.

Too many to trap. So Hazel dismissed Dennis.

Instead, she put lattice panels under her deck.

Craig bought a garbage can with a tight lid.

We keep our mouths shut.

None of us built a wall.

*

It’s not easy living with others.

But not impossible.

No, not a group. No, not flowers. No, not senior citizens.

*

“I don’t want to be a senior citizen,” said Warren Turner.

Me neither. That’s me in the plaid shirt & maroon hat next to my partner Rebecca.

I’m 72 and she is 71, which, by the way, is the average age of the folks in Mike’s photo.

Mike took this picture three days ago at Phelps Park in northeast, Iowa USA.

Rebecca and I live in two Iowa communities, Clarinda in the southwest and Decorah in the northeast.

We invited our southwest Iowa friends to join us for three days of kayaking, biking, and eating.

On Thursday, we kayaked down Minnesota’s Root River.

After Bill took this picture, he lost his phone in a shallow water bank.

Remembering the exact location, the next morning he retraced the three-hour route and recovered his waterproof phone.

In Bill’s photo, I’m in the orange kayak that I would overturn a few moments later.

Another Bill, with the white hat & blue life jacket, and Mike (not in the picture), would spend 30 minutes helping me retrieve & drain the submerged kayak.

On Friday, we biked Decorah’s Trout Run Trail; on Saturday, Minnesota’s Root River State Trail.

In this picture, that’s kayak-rescuer Bill in the colorful shirt, with Rebecca to his left.

Bill, Rebecca and two other perennials joined 15,000 bikers in late July to ride 420 miles across Iowa on RAGBRAI (The Des Moines Register’s Annual Bike Ride Across Iowa).

*

There are 54 million Americans over 65.

If you’ve got to lump us together and attach a label, why not perennials?

Thumbs-down on senior citizen. I wasn’t a junior citizen at 22.

Why call me a senior citizen at 72?

Millennial Sam Tetrault listed perennial as one of several better name-options.

I liked it, particularly when I read Dictionary.com’s definition of a perennial as

An older person whose mindset, interests, or lifestyles does not fit into any specific generational label.

None of us, whether old or young, likes to be seen through the lens of a label.

Categories, even my preferred-perennial, miss what is unique about each of us.

Regardless of age, we all want to be seen.

Not labeled.

Afterword

When our friends left Sunday morning, Rebecca and I took a three-hour nap.

And, later that evening, went to bed early.

The Beginning

Wendell answered the door. Still in uniform.

He was Sharon’s father and my boss at Baskin – Robbins.

Scooping ice cream was my first job, after four years of paper-routing.

Wendell took scooping very seriously.

New dippers trained for four days to perfect the technique that would craft the perfect 3 oz spherical portion.

Not only that. We shoveled from large tubs of ice cream and the circular surface had to be evenly lowered.

56 years later I’m an unofficial scooper inspector whenever I walk into an ice cream palace.

I see a moon surface tub and I’m outta there.

My scooping skills satisfied so Wendell hired me in the summer of 65.

On my first day behind the counter, hat and apron in place, Wendell peered at me with his head tilted upward and an impossible-to-read smile and said:

Paul, no matter where you are in the store, I can see you.

An Interlude

Wendell invited me in.

It’s the fall of 1966 and he hasn’t fired me so I’ve passed muster on the ice cream front.

But a date with his daughter? No four day training period for that.

I now see his smile as shy and not enigmatic.

The house was spit-level, popular in America in the 1950s & 60s. I stood in a little entryway, with stairs in front of me ascending to the living room, bedrooms, and kitchen. And stairs to the right descending to a TV room with a door to the garage.

In that TV room, on a couch, the following summer, 1967, a million years from this moment, Sharon and I would be safe from Wendell’s gaze.

And Beverly’s.

Beverly was Sharon’s mom who thought Sharon could do better.

I’d learn that, too, the following summer.

Pretty Sharon followed Beverly down the stairs. It looked to me like they had come from a bathroom, just off the kitchen. They came from on high. That’s what I felt.

Sharon was wearing a green dress with a fishnet pattern on top.

That’s where I was supposed to put the corsage. Somewhere on that mesh.

Without pricking…

Somehow I got it attached.

Phew.

The Middle

“Have fun” said Beverly as Sharon and I slipped into my parent’s car.

Like the out-of-sight TV room and couch, the car’s front bench seats without a center console would be a gift that kept giving, to Sharon and me the following summer. On that night, the gap between us was the size of the Grant Canyon.

On the way to my high school’s homecoming dance, I decided to take side street that paralleled Locust, a busy street.

Thank goodness.

I had just turned left off Jersey Ridge Road onto a quiet residential street and heard a pop followed by a bump-bump from the back right end of the car.

I eased the car to the side of the street, in front of another split-level.

The tire was flat. One month into my Driver’s Permit, I had never opened the trunk let alone fixed a flat.

Thankfully, I think now, no cell phone to call my dad.

I walked up to the split-level, knocked on another door, and asked the guy who answered the door for help. I didn’t know him but four years later he would hire me to work on his yard-work crew.

15 minutes later we were on our way.

The End

Honestly, and I’ve tried, I have no memory of the dance.

Did we dance? A slow dance? Surely not.

But a clue to my teenage psyche that evening lingers.

On the way back to Sharon’s house, the gap between us on that front seat had narrowed not a whit.

I took busy Locust Street as I had just learned in Geometry the shortest distance between two points was a straight line.

Damn. I was on a roll, with green lights at all intersections until we got to Locust & Brady. One of busiest intersections in Iowa, in 1966.

It is that moment I recall as if it IS this moment.

Tom Jones’ Green Green Grass was playing.

I looked over at Sharon, at the alluring fishnet, with the corsage still hanging-in & on, and thought

I have no idea what I’m doing.

This photo was taken last fall in the Rarău Mountains in eastern Romania. Florin Floriol was our tour guide on a trip to Romania’s Bukovina Region.

“Let’s engage in the spirit of the forest,” Florin said to Rebecca just before I took this picture.

As my index finger tapped my phone’s photo button, I recall thinking how humbling it is to imagine the natural world has something to teach us. That it has a spirit.

I read somewhere that prayer ought to be for our sake and not for Gods’. Bowing, kneeling, or prostrating are physical manifestations of reverence for something transcendent.

Listening to a tree is a prayer. It’s also a powerful exercise in something else many of us have lost, a sense of awe.

*

An overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, produced by that which is grand, sublime, extremely powerful.

Dictionary.com

Awe described my feeling on Monday, when I came upon this sight.

On Sunday, a storm with 65 mph winds pummeled northeast Iowa. No human lives lost but cars overturned and hundreds of trees downed, including this tree at one of the entrances to the Trout Run Trail, three blocks from our home.

You can see my bike just to the right of the woman in yellow.

As I entered the trail, I thought what on earth am I looking at? I dismounted and gawked. Is a chimera just over the embankment dam? And then another damn:

I’d never seen such a big tree torn from its centuries-old home.

I marveled at the size of its roots.

Was this tree planted by the Ho-Chunks who had a village on this land in 1840? Or by the Day family, European-Americans who settled Decorah in 1849, 100 years before I was born.

*

You were one of the longest-living beings on earth

I know you only in death

You cannot be replaced

I will honor you with a descendent

So you will not be forgotten

To scoot or not to scoot?

*

A few days ago I walked into my community’s kettlebell workout facility.

Resting on the desk was a new sign commanding me to

START YOUR DAY WITH YES

Really?

Confronted with something or someone new, my initial response for 72 years has been NO.

Sometimes nay becomes kay, but nada is my starting point.

The late public intellectual William F. Buckley described a conservative as

Someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop…

I’m a political liberal, with a conservative personality

To scoot or not to scoot?

That start your day with yes exhortation has been gnawing at me so I’ve been on the prowl for personal examples. Like yours, my days are filled with big and small opportunities to lead with NO or YES.

For example, a few weeks ago e-scooters appeared on the streets, sidewalks, and bike and hiking trails of our 8000 person community.

My first response was faultfinding, particularly when I saw a few discarded on the Trout Run Trail, an 11 mile blacktopped path around Decorah, Iowa.

Critical is a sometimes pretentious way of saying no. That was also my initial posture to e-bikes that appeared about three years ago. Is an electronically-assisted pedal bike really a bike? Won’t it clog-up our non-motorized byways? What will it do to the moral fabric of our community?

I didn’t know I could stand on that soap box while peddling.

A couple of years ago my friend Steve, who shares my 72 years, told me he purchased an e-bike to enjoy the trail regardless of heat or wind. Now he bikes more and only uses the pedal assist up switchbacks.

Travis, owner of a local bike shop, reported e-bikes are half his sales.

Lately, when an e-biker passes me on an incline I think someday I’ll repeat the favor and pass with a wave some whippersnapper.

And I’ve been rethinking my default NO to scooters.

It’s amazing the different modes of moving on our 11 mile avenue: biking, hiking, skating, skiing, strolling, running, and, not least, pulling babies in a bike trailer.

Just off the trail, nature viewing, trout fishing, and, of course, amour.

With all these ing’s going on, why not scooting?

Yes does not mean…

Starting the day with YES does not mean we say yes to everything or everybody.

It’s sensible for me to say NO to the headstand station during our kettlebell workout.

The same, silently, to the owner of the pick-up truck with the Confederate Flag painted on the tailgate I saw yesterday parked downtown.

Saying YES does not mean no judgment about what life presents. Apparently Decorah’s City Council is re-thinking its commitment to the Bird e-scooter program. An Informed YES or NO is a good thing.

As an orientation, Yes is an open door to the world. No is a closed door, with double locks. It can be opened, to an e-thing, but only grudgingly and after too much else is missed.

In Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl has a quote that relates to the theme of this essay. The context was the life-orientation of the despairing person Frankl encountered in Auschwitz and Dachau.

We had to teach the despairing men that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life–daily and hourly.

Starting my day with YES helps me be open to the questions life will pose.