paulmuses

Last spring four friends and I met on Zoom to talk about our 50 year college reunion. We graduated in 1971 from St. Ambrose University in Davenport, Iowa. Because most of us would not be able to attend the official event scheduled for this October, we decided to create our own celebration. We built a list, picked a weekend date, developed an itinerary, and sent out invitations. We called it an Old Friends Reunion. And it took place last weekend.

That’s the planning group on the right. As one of my mates said, “that’s the first time Gardner has ever been in the back row.” Tall Barrie knows me too well having heard too many times the story about how the only reason I made the Sacred Heart Grade School choir was they needed another short guy to fill out the first row. Friends know our vulnerabilities. What trips our triggers. That’s why my planning pals and I went back and forth on one or two nights. We eventually chose two and then added a third, a Thursday night for the planners and their partners.

That’s our group on Friday night. The last time this bunch was together America was divided, by everything it is divided by today: politics, war, race, gender, culture, religion, environment, and sexual orientation. Nothing has changed and, of course, everything has changed.

All summer I worried that America’s hostile political climate, with COVID and masks and vaccinations a propellant, would intrude upon our gathering. I thought “three nights for some, two nights for others, that’s trouble.” On the second night, Jerry said to me “you were uptight last night.” “Yeah,” I said, “I had all these fears about how our differences would come to the surface.” This little back and forth between Jerry and me came in the middle of a quiet and intense conversation about how we were as far apart in politics as it is possible to be.

And then it hit me. Two or three nights gave us all the time and space we needed to get comfortable with each other. Longer was better than shorter. Communication expert David Murray puts it this way, about communication in large doses:

With a little more time to move around in, we’re less noisy and opinionated, more reflective, more relaxed, more honest. And better listeners.

From An Effort to Understand, p. 207

On Saturday night, in the middle of a conversation about religion with Jerry and spouse Mary, my partner Rebecca said “you know, I hold all of my religious beliefs loosely. I do that because there is so much we don’t know. We are so small and the world is so large.”

“Holding our beliefs loosely,” Rebecca’s right. That’s how we maneuver through our genuine disagreements. It’s a path toward being “less noisy, more reflective, and honest.”

That’s what I learned from our old friends’ reunion.

Hold my beliefs loosely

And my friends tightly

And when we hold friends tightly, what happened in Davenport, Iowa last weekend, does not stay in Davenport.

The Des Moines Register’s Annual Bike Ride Across Iowa is the “oldest, largest, and longest recreational bicycle touring event in the world.” It is a peaceful army of around 15,000 bikers, support vehicles, medical teams, bicycle shops, food vendors and Highway Patrol police that every year moves across Iowa from the Missouri to the Mississippi River, with overnights in seven communities. The average daily ride over the 48 RAGBRAI’S was 67 miles.

On Saturday, July 31, my partner Rebecca and Wheel Thing teammates Colleen and Scott completed their 454 mile from Le Mars to Clinton by dipping their bikes in the Mississippi River and in a final triumphant act thrusting their two wheel rides into the air.

Rebecca had trained for Ragbrai by riding 631 miles from April to July mostly in increments of 12 miles around Decorah, Iowa’s Trout Run Bike Trail. More than the number of miles, Decorah’s trail offers many steep switchbacks that are perfect for building up lung, leg, and heart endurance. She had ridden her first full RAGBRAI in 2019 and knew she needed to be better prepared this year.

On the way back to Decorah from Clinton in our four wheel vehicle, I asked Rebecca to sum up her 2021 RAGBRAI experience.

“I owned it,” said Rebecca. “I’m 70 years old and I rode across Iowa.”

Not all journeys need end in Ithaca.

Yesterday, I got mad at my partner Rebecca. A small thing triggered my anger. Really small. She accused me of throwing away a ginger root she had tucked away in our Decorah freezer. I am a thrower but I don’t throw out her stuff, anymore, so I was momentarily hurt and angry. To put it in Mr. Rogers’ terms, what did I do with the mad I felt? I accepted its familiar feel, felt it, and expressed it as in “I am angry because I haven’t thrown any of your stuff away for at least four years.” Two minutes later my anger exited and I went off to the grocery store to buy a ginger root.

Accept, feel, and express my anger seems so simple and automatic to me now. But it wasn’t always so.

An emotional illiterate

I grew up an emotional illiterate. My parents and schools taught me how to read and write and think but not what to do with emotions, especially negative emotions, particularly anger. My own anger scared me. I remember once when I was around eight slugging my six year old brother Peter over and over and being scared of what seemed my bottomless fury. The anger of others scared me even more. When my mother threw the silent treatment at me for something I had done wrong, I would always think, “would it ever end?”

I never SAW my father angry. But on at least three occasions I did HEAR his anger and my moms’. Each time was an early Saturday morning when I was awakened in the second floor bedroom I shared with Peter by voices coming from the first floor kitchen. The voices were impassioned, resentful, and inflamed and they were coming from my parents. I thought, “maybe like mine their anger was bottomless or endless.”

Of course, it was neither of those things. But I didn’t know that at the time. No one ever told me it was OK to be angry. Or that like any other emotion anger would pass through and not set up camp, if only I would let it. Neither my father nor my mother ever talked about anger probably because their parents never talked about it with them. I don’t recall teachers or friends ever saying anything about feelings. And Mr. Rogers’ “What do you do with the mad that you feel would not be available until my son’s generation.

So I was on my own regarding feelings until I was about 30 and read a newspaper article that included this quote by a college president:

I would picture on the clay targets during a skeet shoot session the faces of students and faculty who gave me the most the trouble.

A serendipitous encounter

The article chronicled how this guy guided his emotions while leading an American college in the sixties and seventies, during a time of social unrest on campuses and in America. I met this man’s story when I was struggling with my own emotions, especially anxiety. I would eventually learn my anxiety was caused by my refusal to accept negative feelings. The quote above set me on a decades-long journey toward emotional literacy. I was like the horse, ready to drink the water.

I copied the college president’s words on a card and carried it around for weeks. “It’s OK to be angry,” I thought. WOW. Anger doesn’t make me a bad person. OK. But what do I do with “the mad that I feel?” Maybe I can find an outlet where my anger can be worked through so that I don’t act it out or keep it tucked inside. Shooting at clay pigeons was not my thing. But golf was. So one day I went to the local golf range and let my frustrations flow through my body and club onto that innocent white ball. Just a guy on the golf range, hitting ball after ball after ball.

Accept, feel and express

Over the years I have become more comfortable with negative feelings, my own and those of others. My unknowing college president tutor taught me to accept, feel, and express them in acceptable ways. Sometimes this means working through these feelings in private, without burdening others. This is the skeet-shooting and golf-range approach. At other times, it requires simply stating how I feel, without drama or rancor, the ginger-root approach.

I have learned that no feeling is to be feared or ignored. If treated with respect, it will behave and depart.

And I am always looking for examples of how others handle their anger. Who do you think THIS former president was picturing on those clay pigeons?

How I almost killed Rebecca and Bill

If Bob Dylan had been born in International Falls, Minnesota instead of Duluth, he might have titled his 1965 Album and song Highway 71 instead of Highway 61.* But Duluth it was and 61 we got. Both highways travel north to south in the middle of America and finish up in Louisiana. 61 starts in Duluth and 71 in International Falls. Dylan had 61. Rebecca and I have 71. We live in two Iowa cities, 323 miles apart, Decorah in the northeast and Clarinda in the southwest. When we drive from Decorah to Clarinda, we know that once we hit Highway 71 we are 45 minutes or three of Dylan’s longest songs – Murder Most Foul, Highlands, and Tempest – away from our Clarinda home. This 1500 mile slab of concrete, road kill, and contoured farm land offered-up this week two more stories, on Highway 71.

The day I almost killed Rebecca and Bill, on Highway 71

My blog readers know about Rebecca’s Ragbrai rehearsals. The Des Moines Register’s 2021 454 mile bike ride across Iowa starts in western Iowa today and so we were in Clarinda this past week for final preparations. On Wednesday, Rebecca and retired physician friend Bill started out early in the morning on a 30 mile excursion on county roads around the southwest corner of Iowa. I dropped Rebecca at Bill’s and then 45 minutes later started down Highway 71 to St. Joseph, Missouri. More on why I was going to St. Joseph below.

A few miles south of Clarinda, as I was listening to Spotify’s Jimmy Buffet station, my phone navigator told me I would be arriving at Panera Bread in St. Joseph 20 minutes early. So plenty of time, mellow Buffet-music, and the upcoming Braddyville, Iowa speed trap encouraged me to slow down to 50 MPH. Yes, I know, an old guy behind the wheel of a slow moving car In Iowa, how many times has THAT GUY been in front of me over the years. I glanced up to the rear view mirror and then over to the side mirror and saw a semi truck passing me on the left of this two lane road. I then looked ahead and saw two bikers smack-dab in the semi’s road path. I thought

You’ve got to be kidding me. My negligence caused an impatient truck driver to take a reckless chance that will kill those two bikers. What will I tell the police?

Of course, the bikers quickly moved onto 71’s narrow shoulder and the truck eased into the right lane, with about 50 yards to spare. Whew! And then I saw Rebecca’s grey biking shirt and Bill’s yellow biker jersey. I waved, increased my speed to 59 MPH, and muttered

Why are Rebecca and Bill riding their bikes, on Highway 71

Two old friends, on Highway 71

Joe and I had not seen each other or talked in 35 years. We both are 71, 1971 graduates of St. Ambrose College, and our current homes are linked by Highway 71. A few college friends and I have been planning a 50 year reunion in Davenport, Iowa in August. Joe was on my list of contacts and so I called him a few months ago. “I don’t do reunions,” he said. “That’s Joe,” I thought. Since Joe lives in Fairway, KS, just south of Kansas City, about two hours from Clarinda, I suggested we meet some day about half way between our towns. Wednesday worked for both of us and we decided on Panera’s in St. Joseph, Missouri, on Interstate 29, about five miles south of 71.

Panera Bread has always been one of my favorite places. I love its Bear Claw pastry, tolerance of its customers’ long stays, and good memories. When my mom visited Decorah, I would take her to the Panera’s in Rochester, MN or LaCrosse, WI. And when I visited her in Davenport, my brother Pat would join us on Saturday and Sunday mornings at Panera’s. And Rebecca and I first met at Panera’s in Ames, Iowa, half way between Clarinda and Decorah. On that first date years ago, we talked for a couple of hours over breakfast, decided to walk around Iowa State University, and finished-up back at Panera’s for lunch. Something good had begun. So Panera’s is a special place and funny enough there was one in St. Joseph, just off 71.

We see ourselves in the mirror everyday and lose sight of how much we are aging. We are like the frog in water that does not try to get out until it is too late. Until we meet an old friend. Joe was waiting for me when I walked into Panera’s. He looked good, for being 71. Momentarily I felt like that old frog that had been thrown into boiling water. Then Joe and I shook hands, exchanged some niceties and walked to the counter to place our orders. Joe ordered a Bear Claw. And then we remembered-together for about three hours.

Can you imagine us

Years from today

Sharing a park bench quietly

How terribly strange to be seventy

Simon and Garfunkle sang those words from the song Old Friends in 1968, when Joe and me were 19. The song is about two 70 year old men reminiscing. They wonder what did we think old age would be like, when we were young. Toward the end of our remembering-time, I asked Joe, “would you want to be 19 again?” “No,” he said. “Perfect,” I thought. And “how terribly strange to again be nineteen.” Lastly,

71 is good enough.

On Highway 71

_________________________________________________________________________

*Bob Dylan probably titled both song and album Highway 61 for two reasons. He was born in Duluth, where 61 begins. But Highway 61 also runs down the Mississippi and is connected to the development of the Blues. See Highway 61 revisited.

And an update on Rebecca’s preparation for the 2021 Des Moines Register’s Bike Ride Across Iowa

Euro 2020 and England vs. Italy

On Sunday, July 11, Italy defeated England to win the European 2020 soccer championship. The game ended in a 1 – 1 tie after regular time and two additional periods. In international soccer, penalty shootouts decide the winner. A penalty shootout is where five players from each team take turns from the penalty spot, 12 yards from the goal. Italy won the penalty shootout 3 – 2.

Three of the five England players Manager Gareth Southgate selected for the shootout are black: Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho, and Bukayo Saka. All three missed their shots. A small number of fans used Twitter and other Social Media platforms to direct hateful comments at these players. And someone defaced a mural of Marcus Rashford. Southgate, who himself had missed a penalty shot against Germany in Euro 96, condemned these odious tweets and the England team and most of the country rallied around the players in the days following the game.

I watched 45 of the 51 Euro 2020 games, including this championship match. I wanted England to win but my stomach tightened an extra notch when England’s final three penalty shooters – Rashford, Sancho, and Saka – all missed. I worried about what might follow.

Where does the hate come from that would lead someone to post a vicious tweet or damage a mural? Thinking about this question lead me back to a day many years ago.

“You’ve got to be taught”

In 1958, two delivery men hauled a huge package up 25 steep steps through a little entry way into the living room of my parents’ house. Inside was something called a stereo, the iPod of the day. After supper, my parents, two brothers and me sat around the living room – we usually only used the living room at Christmas time – and listened to the soundtrack of the film South Pacific. I knew nothing of the story but one song stuck in my memory, “You’ve got to be carefully taught.”

I did not see the film South Pacific until the summer of 1980. I was living in Ann Arbor, Michigan where The Michigan Theater showed classic movies every weekend. I settled into my seat about 15 minutes before the film and was startled to see an organ piano rise from the theater depths with the organist playing the music I last heard in 1958. The film began and eventually wove its way to the”Carefully Taught” subplot. I saw the anguish of American Lieutenant Cable and Tonkinese girlfriend Liat. Cable decides not to marry Liat because love was not enough. Too many of his contemporaries had been taught to hate, in the words of the song,

“People who’s eyes are oddly made and people who’s skin is a different shade.”

Children notice difference

My mother too often told this story about me. “When Paul was three, I took him shopping to Walgreens Drug Store. We were in the check out line and Paul turns and sees a black man for the first time. Paul starts crying and pointing and would not stop until we left the store and got into the car.” Rebecca’s mom told a similar story about her three year old son Mike. They were at the State Fair in Illinois and Mike saw a black man and said over and over “he’s black, he’s black.”

Last summer Rebecca and I spent three months in Houston, Texas babysitting four year old Irene, one of Rebecca’s grandchildren. One day Rebecca showed Irene a You Tube video clip of a friend’s 4 year old Chinese granddaughter singing a song. After the brief clip, Irene said “I don’t like her.”

Apparently humans are programmed to start grouping people – making distinctions based upon physical characteristics – by the age of two.* Little Paul, Mike, and Irene did what all humans start out doing. They notice human differences and respond. I was scared, Mike was bewildered, and Irene was displeased. Yet, I did not become a hater. Nor did Mike. Irene, well, let’s just say the chances of Irene becoming an adult who hates Chinese people are slim.

But some little children do grow into adults who hate “those whose eyes are oddly made and people who’s skin is a different shade.” I know nothing about the people who felt the need to send out into the world venomous words and images directed at the England’s black players. Nothing, except their actions. But I also have seen the actions of the more numerous non-haters. Most Social Media messages after England’s loss to Italy supported Rashford, Sancho and Saka. And fans from across England rushed to bury the graffiti on Marcus Rashford’s mural in flowers and other tributes.

It’s not easy to teach people to hate

When I was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s I do not remember my mom or dad talking much about race. My mom did not describe the Walgreen incident until I was in my thirties. The only comment I ever heard my father make about race was that the singer Nat King Cole was a “good negro.” Yes, I know, cringe-worthy to our 2021 ears, but this race-language was enlightened compared to what I occasionally heard from his parents and brother Jim at Sunday dinners in Tipton, Iowa. Other than my dad’s judgment about Cole, my parents never taught their children there was anything wrong with people who did not look like us.

Rebecca’s mother and father spent one year in the 1940s in Georgia before moving back to Illinois to raise their six children. According to Rebecca, her mom would told her kids that blacks in Georgia had to use different drinking fountains and how wrong that was. Throughout the 1960s Evelyn Franklin would refer to that Georgia experience when talking with her kids about the motivations of those protesting for Civil Rights.

Irene lives in Houston, Texas with her mom Suzanne and dad Jonathan, Rebecca’s son. Houston is one of America’s most diverse cities and Irene’s daycare, preschool and neighborhood friends reflect that diversity. And the evening after Irene’s “I don’t like her comment” we all played the I Never Forget a Face Memory Game and all three adults took every opportunity to talk with Irene about how different human faces are and how that is difference is good.

Most people do not become haters because their parents and increasingly the society that surrounds them send too many messages into the “little ears” of children that are antidotes to turning those differences children note into fear and then into hatred. Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein II published “You’ve got to be carefully taught” in 1949, the year I was born. How much has changed, for the better.

The little Paul’s, Mike’s and Irene’s of today learn in a world where the messages sent by haters are condemned by most adults. It’s never been easy to teach people to hate.

You’ve got to be taught from year to year; It’s got to be drummed into your dear little ear; You’ve got to be CAREFULLY taught…You’ve got to be taught before its too late; before you are six, seven or eight…

It’s even harder today.

Rebecca’s Ragbrai update

In A Life Lesson from a Biking Grandma, I wrote about Rebecca’s preparation for the 454 mile bike ride across Iowa that starts a week from today, Sunday, July 25. She is now at 550 miles and probably will fall a bit short of the 700 recommended pre-Ragbrai miles. However, she says “I feel strong and think I am ready.” As the distance between us increases on our daily rides, especially up the Decorah bike trail switchbacks, I agree. And it’s been fun playing the part of trainer Rocky Balboa to Rebecca’s Adonis Creed.

* Kwame Anthony Appiah makes this point in The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity.

Wasting a moment

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives,” wrote Annie Dillard. When I read the Dillard quote a week ago, the image that popped into my mind was not about a day but a minute. The image was a clock that hung in the front left corner about 10 feet off the ground just over my high school Geometry teacher Mr. Deroin’s right shoulder as he stood behind a podium. I am sitting in the front desk in the row closest to the windows just under the clock. My 15 year old neck tilted easily upward urging the click that will signal the minute hand to thrust forward, from 1:12 to 1:13.

I wanted 1:12 to be 1:13. And then 1:14…until 1:21 and the end of Geometry class. I was living one minute in the future wasting away in Davenport, Iowa 14 years before Jimmy Buffet was doing the same in Margaritaville.

I am guessing Dillard meant the “of course” in the quote above ironically, at least as it applies to me. The idea that my life is best thought as the cumulation of increments – days, but also minutes and hours – is not obvious to me. Here are two practices that have helped me experience the wonder in each moment, hour and day. And that also serve as antidotes to despair.

How many days do I have left?

One way to think in life increments is to see the increments. I use the Days Calculator web site every so often to remind myself of the bits that have made up my life. When I checked it a few moments ago, I discovered that from my birth date of September 20, 1949 I have lived:

37,738,080 minutes

628,968 hours

26,207 days

And then I use the The Social Security Actuarial Table to tell me how much time I have left. From today, it offers me:

7, 057,440 minutes

117,624 hours

4901 days

4901 days remaining. Hmm. Seeing my past and future life in its increments, brought home the power of a favorite quote about the meaning of life, from Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning:

We [The prisoners of Auschwitz] needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life – daily and hourly…Life ultimately means taking responsibility to find the right answers to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.

When I behold each moment, each hour, each day of my life, I am less likely to starve it of meaning, to waste it away by wishing for the next moment.

The certainty of death

Of course, those numbers about my future minutes, hours and days are an illusion. Maybe I have more. My mother lived to be 96 and one of her sisters 103. Or maybe less. My father died of cancer at my age. But this chimera, that I have 4901 days left, is more useful than the default fantasy that purrs away in the background of my thinking. When I bring it to the foreground, it goes something like this.

Dying is something that happens to other people. Not to me.

The Population Research Institute estimates that 117 billion Homo Sapiens have lived on earth, including the 7 billion alive today. That means 110 billion people have died. Having been lucky enough to live, I am certain I will die. To combat my illusion about death, I occasionally use a death mediation I learned from the late Indian Jesuit priest Anthony DeMello who wrote in Awareness:

I’ve often said to people that the way to really live is to die. The passport to living is to imagine yourself in your grave.  Imagine that you’re lying flat in your coffin and you’re dead. See the body decomposing, then the bones, then it all turning to dust. Now look at your problems from that viewpoint. Changes everything, doesn’t it? Do this for a minute or so every day and you’ll come alive.

There is nothing more wondrous than this moment

I don’t want the 15 year old Paul sitting in Geometry class thinking about how many days he has left or the certainty of his death. He’s got to be in what the psychotherapist Irvin Yalom in Staring at the Sun calls the everyday mode. He’s just trying to figure out HOW to get through the world.

On the other hand, 71 year old Paul finds it useful to awaken to what Yalom calls the ontological mode. This type focuses not on the HOW of the world, but

The miracle of being itself and marvel THAT things are, THAT you are.

I have lived long enough to know that many of my moments, hours, and days have been filled with pain. Life is hard, for all of us. A brief survey of the news or of history offer too damn many examples. If the present is painful, yearning for the future is a rational choice. And despair is tempting.

Yet, moments are all I have, all you have. Even if some of them are full of pain. I have found that regular reminders of the miracle of my brief moment of existence are enough to balance the sadness, with wonder.

Have you ever been dogged by bad thoughts? Thoughts you could not let go. I have and it all started with a Superman comic book and a confession.

Confession # 1

I remember the week I rooted for the evil Superman. In 1962 I got my hands on the comic book that introduced the anti-Superman Bizarro. And didn’t let go, for about a week. I reveled in Bizarro’s nastiness and carried my well-worn comic book around as a talisman, even wedging it inside the New Math paper textbook my school handed out when I was in 8th grade. I did and felt all of this in secret, telling no one. Not my friends or brothers and certainly not my parents. This guilty pleasure was mine and I held it close. But the guilt soon overwhelmed the pleasure. “There must be something wrong with me,” I thought, “I am enjoying this bad guy too much.”

When Bizarro entered my life at 13, I had been confessing my sins for six years. Roman Catholic kids made their First Confessions and First Communions at 7. I don’t know where I picked up the phrases “bad thoughts” or “impure thoughts” but they became my go-to sins. I defined my sin repertoire by thoughts more than actions.

It’s not that I didn’t have behaviors to confess. I lied to my parents all the time as in “yeah, I finished my homework.” And at ages 9 and 12, I stole little items from a local drug store as part of the membership requirements of a neighborhood gang. Yikes, but it sounds worse than it was. Friends Vinny and Mark plus me were the gang and as I recall we didn’t do anything other than steal bubble gum or aspirin bottles from Smith Drug.

Then there was that day around this Bizarro-time when I went into four garages in an alley behind our house and knocked or pulled down anything I found. Double yikes, and fortunately, that was a one-off.

But I never confessed to lying, stealing or pillaging. What I did confess were bad thoughts, as in…

Bless me father for I have sinned. This week I keep thinking about all the bad things this Bizarro guy I am reading about does. I can’t stop these thoughts.

For the first time in my confession history, I took what I considered a sin seriously. Did evil thoughts mean I was an evil person? Did evil thoughts mean I could do evil things? I don’t remember what the priest said when I confessed my Bizarro thoughts. However, I do know now what I wish he had said then.

Confession # 2

“My son,

Thoughts are not actions. And they do not define the person. No one really knows where thoughts come from. Some religious traditions, Buddhism, for example, suggest thoughts come from nowhere. Psychologists have learned that thoughts are outside our control. Even Jesus had bad thoughts, temptations. By the way, the same is true for feelings and sensations but let’s stick to thoughts because that is what you have confessed to.

Everyone has 1000s of thoughts everyday. Some of these thoughts are what you might call fringe thoughts. These are weird thoughts, thoughts that have nothing to do with who you are or what you might do. Just this morning as Mrs. Smith was preparing my breakfast she put a sharp knife on the table. My brain sent me this thought, “I could stab Mrs. Smith.” I like Mrs. Smith and have never stabbed anyone in my life so I let the thought pass through my mind.

When you read about Bizarro, Evil Superman, it was natural for your brain to send you thoughts about how nice it would be to do evil things. In fact, I’ll bet you rooted for Bizarro for a week because you were resisting those bad thoughts and so they were sticking around. What we resist, persists.

Remember thoughts do not make the boy. Actions do.

Now, let’s talk about what you have been doing!”

Preparing for RAGBRAI 48

My partner Rebecca is preparing to ride her bike across the state of Iowa. Yes, the entire state, 454 miles in seven days. She will join 15,000 riders in late July on the 48th RAGBRAI, the [Des Moines] Register’s Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa. “Wow,” you say. That’s what I said two years ago when she did it the first time. COVID erased last year when she would have done it again.

How do you prepare to ride as many as 84 miles in a day? RAGBRAI officials recommend 700 miles of preparation. Rebecca has ridden 160 miles thus far this spring, usually 14 miles a day three or four times a week. Decorah’s 11 mile Trout Run Bike trail circles the city and offers steep switchbacks through the countryside that provide perfect training for this endeavor. “Every mile up these hills will decrease my pain in July,” said Rebecca to me yesterday at the top of the steepest switchback.

“For Sunday and most of Monday in 2019, all I could think about was that I could call Paul and he would pick me up. On Tuesday, I thought why would I do that?”

That’s Rebecca reflecting back upon her preparedness for Ragbrai 47 in 2019. Each of the 700 miles of preparation added to Rebecca’s capacity to bike across Iowa. Her leg strength, stamina, and confidence got better. But biking more than 400 miles for someone in their late sixties was still a formidable challenge.

“We had just gotten to the top of a very very steep and rather  long highway going into Keokuk on the last day of the ride.  I made it!  I did not get off my bike and walk as so many did.  But the comparison between myself and my team mates became evident when Colleen said “Whew, that was tough.  I actually slipped down into my granny gear.”  Hmmm.  I had been in my granny gear most of the week. But whatever.”

Better but still…

Yesterday I did a couple of things better than I would have done them several years ago. My improved performance on each activity happened slowly, incrementally, and intentionally. While better at each task, I am still a long way from where I want or, perhaps, ever can be.

Whenever you are faced with a challenge or frustrated with a ceiling on your progress, remember this life lesson from Rebecca, the biking grandma.

How America changes for the better

“You can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” said a friend to me the other day. We were talking about breaking an old habit and trying something new. I chafed as it was me that suggested trying this new thing. Yet Barrie was right, no one likes to change, including me. But we are changing all the time. Not just you and me but America. We don’t see the change because we focus too much attention on the moment and too little attention on a longer time span. And we pay too much attention to old dogs and too little attention to new dogs.

A playground story

One of the advantages of living 71 years is perspective on the way things used to be. I recall two things from a lunchtime playground incident when I was 11 years old, in 1960. The 20 boys in my class were on an ice and snow covered parking lot that served as our playground. We were playing a version of tag, with a line of 20 boys running from one end of the playground to the other starting with one boy in the middle. Whoever he could tackle would remain in the middle for the next wave. The last boy standing would be the winner.

The first thing I remember was waking up in the school nurse’s office with my mother sitting on a chair in the corner and my head bandaged. I had been unconscious for about 30 minutes. Apparently when I was tackled my head hit the ice and concrete and this had knocked me out. The nurse told my mom to take me home and put me to bed. Can you imagine what would happen to school administrators today who allowed kids to play tackle-tag on an ice covered concrete playground? Or if a head injury did occur, have no concussion protocol in place? Regarding kid safety, America (and much of the world) has changed, for the better.

My second memory IS embarrassing but wasn’t when I and others gave a full-throated “tackle red man” shout to signal the next onslaught. We were just kids and didn’t know better, just as we didn’t know tackling on concrete and ice was dangerous. But we played that game all the time with adults supervising the playground. Not only didn’t they see the concrete and ice danger, they didn’t see how offensive this term was to American Indians.

From acceptable to unacceptable

Today, Dictionary.com defines red man as “a contemptuous term used to refer to a North American Indian.” In 1994, St. John’s University changed the name of their athletic teams from Redmen to Red Storm, in recognition of both Native American sensitivity and the fact that half their athletes were women. And two years ago America’s National Football League Washington Redskins became The Washington Football Team. Pressure by Native American groups and corporate sponsors after the George Floyd killing was enough to force the Washington team ownership to do what they had resisted doing for years.

It’s really all about the new dogs

“Time keeps on slippin, slippin into the future,” The Steve Miller Band reminds us in Fly like an Eagle. From a generational perspective, time is a friend. How does a society change for the better, as America has done regarding kid safety and what language is acceptable? Regarding language, the late Political Scientist E.E. Schattschneider* writes:

Old words are a revelation of the ignorance of people, their superstitions, folly, prejudices, [and] miscalculations…

How do words, like red man or redskin, become old? How do practices like slavery or Jim Crow segregation lose their force in the world? Many, many reasons, but one sticks out when we take a generational or time perspective. Sometimes old dogs learned new tricks but more often the world supplied new dogs who learned new tricks.

Based on current death and birth numbers, 85,645,140 Americans will die in the next thirty years and 112,426,200 will be born. The 85 million who will die – most of them old dogs – will take old dog tricks – opinions, prejudices, and votes – to their graves. The 112 million who will replace them – the new dogs – will learn new tricks. Many will develop different opinions, prejudices and political preferences.

This is one way America changes and one reason children are safer today and offensive terms like red man or Redskin are unacceptable. With new people, old language and ideas are discarded. New ideas are accepted and new ways of acting toward others become achievable. And America’s vision of who is part of the American community and thus worthy of respect expands.

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*The idea for this blog came from E.E. Schattschneider’s Two Hundred Million Americans in Search of a Government.

Two Questions

Can you think of the last conversation you had where neither you nor any of your partners interrupted the speaker? Or tried to finish someone’s sentence? Or followed without missing a beat Bill’s story with one of your own? Or responded to Maria’s question with “well, what do you think?” instead of effortlessly moving into advice mode with “let me give you my two cents.”

Me neither.

Can you think of the last time you felt completely at ease in a conversation knowing your conversation partner would not: interrupt, try to finish your sentence, follow your story with her story, or jump quickly to offer advice?

Me neither.

If my recent conversations were recorded, you would hear me: prudently interrupt, helpfully complete sentences, constructively add a story, and sagely offer advice. I do all these things with the perverse idea that my conversation partner needs my mind more than her own.

Rubbish

Says Nancy Kline in Time to Think: Listening to Ignite the Human Mind, a terrific book I wished I had read 20 years ago, the first year it was published. If I had and taken the content to heart, I would have been a better partner, father, son, teacher, and friend. It’s not too late for me or you. Three sentences from Kline early in the book grabbed my attention.

Everything we do depends for its quality on the thinking we do first…The quality of a person’s attention determines the quality of other people’s thinking…Attention, the act of listening with palpable respect and fascination, is key.

Listening and thinking

“Think before you act.” My mother said that to me a lot. So Kline’s first sentence was a nice reminder of a truism born out time and again throughout my life. See a stick on the sidewalk and it feels like a snake. But, pause, take three breadths, and the thinking and judgment part of the brain, the cerebral cortex, kicks in and tells you its a stick.

How does the quality of my attention, my listening, make you a better thinker? About 25 years into my 40 year college teaching career, I decided to move from a lecture format to a more Socratic question and answer pedagogy. Jenna, an excellent student, came to my office when I sent her a brief email asking why she was missing so many classes. “I came to Luther to interact with my professors,” she said, “not to sit in class and look at one power point slide after another.” I thought about what she said for a week and decided no more power points. Over the next couple of years I developed a more interactive class format that included questions on the day’s assigned material and mini-lectures for context.

More questions meant more student responses. And more opportunities for me to interrupt. Always with the best of intentions, of course. I thought interrupting to help finish a thought or guide a student to the correct interpretation of an idea or gently nudge them to an insight was proof I was a good listener. Perhaps, but my job was to help my students become better thinkers. Imagine, Kline writes, what it means to be in conversation with someone you know will not interrupt.

To know you are not going to be interrupted allows your mind to dive, to skate to the edge and leap, to look under rocks, twirl, sit calculate, stir, toss the familiar and watch new ideas billow down. The fact that the person can relax in the knowledge that you are not going to take over, talk, interrupt, maneuver or manipulate is one of the key reasons they can think so well around you.

The key to all of this, says Klein, is attention, “the act of listening with respect and fascination.” I describe two examples, one from film and another from personal experience, of Klein’s ideas about how better listening can help encourage better thinking.

42

There’s a great thinking scene* in the film 42, about Jackie Robinson’s 1947 experience as the first African-American to play in America’s baseball Major League. Robinson’s (played by the late Chadwick Boseman) Brooklyn Dodgers were playing the Philadelphia Phillies managed by Ben Chapman. Chapman had been shouting racial epithets at Robinson and after making an out Robinson carries his bat into the tunnel leading from the dugout to the dressing room. Furious at this treatment, Robinson smashes the bat against a wall and lets out a wail. Dodger owner Branch Rickey (played by Harrison Ford) stands watching in the tunnel and then begins to move toward Robinson.

Smashing the bat and emoting a cry of emotional pain gave Robinson time for the thinking part of his brain to assert itself against the feeling part. And the Rickey character stands back and watches and as he watches he is listening to Jackie. He then moves forward and listens some more and then finally offered Jackie some advice. Rickey’s advice was for Robinson to channel his rage toward beating Chapman’s team which was what Jackie did. But Boseman and Ford played this scene in such a way as to suggest Robinson came to this solution on his own, with Rickey mostly an observer and listener.

An electrician thinks

“[Quality] listening is enzymatic,” says Klein. What better proof than to try it and see listening in action. Last week an electricians arrived at 8 AM to put in two or three new outlets. We have a house built in 1890 with an unfinished basement and thick sandstone walls. Electrical work has always been a challenge. We explained what we wanted but I had another agenda. Rebecca went up stairs to finish some work leaving me alone with Kyle. For about 30 minutes I observed him working out loud the various basement and wall problems. I did not interrupt and when he asked a question I responded with “what do you think?”

Ease

I enjoyed observing Kyle’s mind at work. I tried to create an atmosphere full of what what Klein calls ease. Ease is “a presence defined by an absence…[and] allows the human mind to broaden and reach.” Regardless of intention, interruptions create a sense of urgency. And Klein rightly says that “urgency keeps people from thinking clearly.” Unlike urgency, ease is a catalyst. Here’s Klein again.

Ease conceives and grows cymbal-crashing exciting thoughts from the thinker. The loose, leaning-back, breathing-out, smiling, keenly attentive, confident, unrushed presence blasts lucid ideas out of otherwise impenetrable vaults of confusion and doubt…Ease creates…Urgency destroys.

It’s not me it’s you

The secret to quality attention and quality listening is to switch my focus from me to you. That’s a skill and takes practice. I can focus inward, on my thoughts and ideas. And that leads me to want to interrupt you. Or I can focus outward, on your thoughts and ideas. And while I am doing that, search for questions that encourage you to keep thinking. In the Art of Loving, Erich Fromm said “it is not possible to respect another person without really knowing him.” I can only know you if I listen well. And by listening carefully, I inevitably see your interesting mind at work.

You have my permission to return the favor.

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*Apparently the bat breaking incident never happened. I include this fictional scene because it depicts a form of what Klein calls a good thinking environment.