He was the better writer today

*

A few days ago, my favorite college football team, The Iowa Hawkeyes, was crushed by the University of Michigan Wolverines, 26–0 in the Big Ten Championship game.

The Hawks had the ball many times and could not score. Michigan put six scores — two touchdowns and four field goals — on the board.

“They were the better team today,” said one of the Hawkeyes. (source)

My favorite ex-American President, Jimmy Carter, was crushed by Ronald Reagan in 1980, with 49 electoral votes to 489.

Reagan was the better candidate that day.

Today, the University of Michigan is ranked #1. (source)

Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign is considered one of the best presidential campaigns in American history. (source)

My Hawkeyes are not too shabby, with a 10–3 record and a #17 ranking.

Jimmy Carter, 99, is considered by many to be the “greatest American former president.” (source)

Yet both were soundly defeated, in public, by a superior opponent.

Good, but not great.

What does it feel like to be paired with someone playing the game at a different level?

Like the Hawkeyes, I’ve had a good writing year, making do with limited talent.

The stars somehow aligned, and I made it to the championship game against James Baldwin and The Fire Next Time.

Prognosticators said I didn’t have a chance.

They were right.

Game Recap

You’ve seen me play all year.

You saw me today.

The statistics were not pretty. Seven punts, three fumbles, no touchdown, and no field goals.

Not even a halfway-decent metaphor.

James was better at everything.

The official scorebook tells the tale of his six tallies.

Touchdown

This innocent country set you down in a ghetto in which, in fact, it intended that you should perish. Let me spell out precisely what I mean by that, for the heart of the matter is here, and the root of my dispute with my country. You were born where you were born and faced the future that you face because you were black and for no other reason. The limits of your ambition were, thus, expected to be set forever. You were born into a society which spelled out with brutal clarity, and in as many ways as possible, that you were a worthless human being.

Field goal

Any upheaval in the universe is terrifying because it so profoundly attacks one’s sense of reality. Well, the black man has functioned in the white man’s world as a fixed star, as an immovable pillar: as he moves out of his place, heaven and earth are shaken to their foundation.

Touchdown

The glorification of one race and the debasement of another — or others — always has been and always will be a recipe for murder. There is no way around this. If one is permitted to treat any group of people with special disfavor because of their race or the color of their skin, there is no limit to what one will force them to endure, and, since the entire race has been mysteriously indicted, no reason not attempt to destroy it root and branch. This is precisely what the Nazis attempted.

Field goal

It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death — ought to decide, indeed, to earn one’s death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life. One is responsible to life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return.

Field goal

The only thing white people have that black people need, or should want, is power — and no one holds power forever.

Field goal

If we — and now I mean the relatively conscious whites and the relatively conscious blacks, who must, like lovers, insist on, or create, the consciousness of the others — do not falter in our duty now, we may be able, handful that we are, to end the racial nightmare, an achieve our country, and change the history of the world.

Post Game Reflection

After a few days of overcoming my disappointment with this defeat, I will look at the game tape and try to learn something from the best.

But this I know now.

Mr. Baldwin could do everything.

He could put his personal experience into words that cut to the core of anyone who has ever been invisible.

He exposed my weaknesses, my lies, and my fears in a way that made me feel naked. Many of my teammates felt the same way.

But some of them resented him. I saw it in their eyes. They wanted nothing to do with his message. One said, “How dare he be better than us.”

By the end of the game, even they were deflated.

What did Baldwin teach me?

Not that I could write like him. That’s not possible or important.

However, after watching him at work in one game, I can begin to model his approach to life.

An honest and careful examination of life, including my relationship with myself and others.*

He taught me one final thing.

What it’s like to be that other human being peering at me from the other side.

It’s funny.

By the end of the game, as we walked off the field after shaking hands, I felt we were on the same team — no longer opponents.

*This insight came from Nicholas Buccola’s terrific book The Fire Is Upon Us: James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr., and the Debate over Race in America.

NO BAT APPEARED IN PAUL’S HOUSE

Every morning, I get up around 4 AM. Go ahead, get your magnifying glass. The Bose radio stereo clock shows 4:19.

This morning, I slept in.

Because I was worried, as usual.

About the bat.

That appeared 190 days ago.

It was the first bat in my house since I purchased it on July 15, 2000 or 8,536 days ago.

We used a blanket to persuade Count Dracula to find another crypt.

Our neighbors Ed and Carol told us they spent $500 to seal their house against the nocturnal enemy.

You and Rebecca can have the badminton racket. It worked better than a blanket.

Each morning for 190 days, as I come out the door just to the left of the ready-for-action racket and flip on the under-the-counter light, I glance up at the ceiling, expecting to see the oval flight pattern, and hear that dastardly flutter. My right hand twitches, ready.

But again, this morning

NO BAT APPEARED IN PAUL’S HOUSE.

So we spent our $500 bat prevention money on an extended warranty for the new refrigerator.

Three Powerful Coffee Memories

*

This morning, it was a cuppa of French Press.

Do you have memories triggered by that first cup of coffee in the morning?

I do.

Here are my three favorites.

Grandpa Al

When I was growing up, my mom told the story of sitting on her father’s lap as he gave her a spoonful of coffee.

I like thinking of my mom as a child.

With a father I would never meet.

Her dad, Al Thomas, died in 1946, three years before I was born.

That’s him below in 1922, the year my mom was born. Grandpa Al sold life insurance, never missing a day of work, even during the Depression. Although with only a grade school education, he and my grandmother Florence sent three daughters and one son to college in the 1930s.

One of those daughters, my mother Dody, drank coffee for over 90 years. She would have two cups in the morning and one after supper that never kept her awake.

Until in the memory care unit of a nursing home, when, at 95, she forgot who she was, including her love of coffee. Sitting with her in the home’s dining room while her untouched coffee cooled is a memory that lingers.

Why didn’t I offer to spoon her coffee?

Marty

Marty’s family moved to town from Troy, New York, during our sophomore year in high school in 1964. I immediately liked him because he was one of the few boys shorter than me.

And Troy seemed exotic. No, it wasn’t because I had read The Odyssey. That journey wouldn’t happen for forty years. Marty was smart. Smarter than me. At least, that’s what I always thought. And he came from far away, so he was worth knowing.

One of the guys I hung out with, Mike, made fun of Marty. He called him Bomber. Mike was a big guy and a bully, and short guys never liked bullies. Bullies prey on outsiders. I’ve always had a soft spot for outsiders, even though I’ve usually sat comfortably on the outer edge of the inside.

Marty was an outsider who wanted to be accepted.

He lived his adult life in St. Louis as a radio DJ and part-time actor. At our 40-year college reunion, he performed a one-person Shakespeare act. How can you not like a guy like that?

When he died in his sleep three years ago, I remembered my favorite Marty and Paul story.

We went to a college in our home town. Professor Noel Kamasa’s Biology exam would be our first college test, and we figured an all-nighter was in order. It would be my first and only, even with eight more college years.

Marty lived in a small house with parents and two siblings still at home. So his mom sent us to the basement and said she would make coffee.

I had not tried coffee. Nor had I ever spent time on my dad’s knee, except for a very rare tap on my behind.

I waited until well after midnight before I tried my first cup. Marty and I would take turns throwing terms at each other. You either knew photosynthesis or you didn’t. I had never studied. Not really. And the more mature me, the one who would show up in graduate school, was a decade away and could not help. In forty years of college teaching, I never failed to tell my students not to wait until the night before to start studying.

Panic, for both of us, set in. We were both so tired we started laughing. The more we laughed, the more coffee we drank. My stomach felt queasy around 5 am, three hours before the exam. An hour later, I started throwing up. Diarrhea soon followed.

Tired but immune to coffee’s effects, Marty drove us the five miles to class.

It’s funny what you don’t remember more than a half-century later. That first exam grade is lost.

But that coffee time with Marty is preserved, I hope, forever.

The Malta Eleven

In the spring of 2018, Rebecca and I traveled with nine college students to the Mediterranean island nation of Malta. That’s the Malta Eleven below in 2019 at the group’s graduation.

Rebecca and I often reminisce about the four months we spent with this group. My college set up a semester-long program on this island forty years ago. We were the co-directors for 2018. We lived, traveled, and attended classes with the students, agreeing it was one of our peak experiences.

Kaelib, the fellow in the back with his eyes closed, could never keep his eyes open during photos. Never, ever. That’s one of a thousand delightful memories from our time with this group.

Another was my introduction to French Press Coffee.

Rebecca and I arrived in Malta in mid-January, two weeks before the students. Maria, who owned the building that would house all of us, picked us up at the airport. She had also laid out sundry food and drink on a table for the first week. Up early the first morning, I was happy to find a package of ground coffee next to a funny-looking glass container with a lid, filter, and plunger.

Googling, it took me a few minutes to find a similar image so I could put a name to this gadget. Then, I had a few more minutes to discover the new world of French Press coffee in the dining room of an apartment on a busy street in a former British colony.

The steps are now routine: boil the water, spoon the coffee into the carafe, add just enough hot water to create a paste that sits for one minute, pour the rest of the water up almost to the top, fit the filter/plunger, and set the timer for three minutes, and finally, and very carefully, push the plunger down to the bottom.

On that first Malta morning, anxious for the first cuppa, I pushed too hard, splattering coffee grounds and scalding water.

As the timer ticks to zero this morning, I wait patiently for the right moment.

I have memories of my mom, Grandpa Al, Marty, and the Malta Eleven to keep me company.

Rebecca will join me in an hour or so.

When I will do it all again.

*

My mother raised three boys.

Who she taught to put down the toilet seat.

This seat refused my help.

Descending on its own time.

In 21 seconds.

*

The toilet is in a hotel in Iowa City, Iowa — home to the University of Iowa and its 31,000 students.

Rebecca and I joined another couple to tour the Stanley Museum of Art.

And view this Jackson Pollock painting.

You can see a documentary on Pollack’s Mural here.

The University of Iowa is home to America’s first MFA program, the prestigious Writer’s Workshop, and Caitlin Clark, last year’s collegiate basketball National Player of the Year.

Pollack’s Mural resides comfortably in southeast Iowa because nonconformity is everywhere.

Infecting even the desk clerk who took this photo.

So, I wasn’t surprised I encountered a mutinous loo.

*

Later that night, I decided to get into the spirit.

I splattered Pollock-like toothpaste onto the brush and raised my right hand in victory for a Clark-like hand gesture.

With my left hand, I reset the toilet seat.

And brushed my teeth for 21 seconds.

Also, something my mother taught me.

I then sat down.

To write this story.

Managing ADHC in my seventies

*

I’m sure I had a mild form of Attention Deficit Disorder when I was a kid.

But in the 1950s, no one cared.

The Sisters at Sacred Heart School kept a tight lid on their large classrooms.

Particularly Sister Robert Cecile, my 6th grade teacher.

Rainy days were the worst.

No recess.

How many stick figures can a kid sketch?

How many times can he ask permission to go to the bathroom?

Robert Cecile was no fool.

Finally fed up, she would keep me after school on the last day of class.

However, time took care of things. It usually does. My brain matured. I followed.

By my late twenties, I became a civilized adult who could stick to a task.

My revenge was to become a teacher.

The fidgeter was in charge of the fidgetees.

First, five years of trying to figure out 6th graders.

Then, forty years of getting to know undergraduates.

Aware that each of them would, like me, eventually grow up.

*

Today, five years into retirement, I’m still easily distracted.

When I look out the window, no one says, “Paul, quit daydreaming.”

Then, Sister called it laziness. Today, it’s creativity.

Now, I can get up and go to the bathroom anytime.

And I’m encouraged to stay hydrated.

So I move around a lot.

It’s good for the joints.

*

However, the tree outside the window offered no help with this sentence.

My bladder was temporarily empty.

Most importantly, I’ve turned off my MAC’s notifications for my waking hours.

The shade covers Windows, and the cleaning sign bars entry to the bathroom.

No trumpet announcement. No look-at-me red circle.

With the silence of the MAC, I can do my work.

I wish Sister Robert Cecile could see me now.

And that I could see all my former students.

Particularly those 6th graders.

Still lined up two by two, marching into retirement.

And stepping, unmonitored, into their bathrooms.

Imagine this on a rainy day.

Could you?

On a bad day, conjure a better one.

Buck O’Neil did.

Do you know of Buck?

You ought to.

As an introduction, I suggest Joe Posnanski’s The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O’Neil’s America.

It’s about much more than baseball or a baseball player.

Buck died at 96 almost twenty years ago. He was a Negro League player, manager, and the first African-American coach on an American Major League Baseball team.

He was a Black baseball player beyond his prime before Jackie Robinson opened the door.

Buck had too many reasons to be bitter to count.

It rained every day on him.

When Posnanski asked how he kept bitterness at bay, Buck said

Where does bitterness take you?

To a broken heart?

To an early grave?

When I die

I want to die from natural causes.

Not from hate

Eating me up from the inside.

One last Buck O’Neil story.

Toward the end of his life, Buck was one of 39 Negro League players, managers, and owners considered by a special committee for induction into American baseball’s Hall of Fame.

17 of the 39 were selected for an honor Buck yearned for and deserved.

But didn’t get.

In July 2006, 16 Black men and one Black woman were inducted into the Hall of Fame.

The guest speaker was

Buck O’Neil.

Inspired by Roger Miller’s Chug-a-Lug.

*

No, only one is for me. The one on the left. The other is for Rebecca.

It’s five o’clock.

No Chug-a-Lug. No hi-de-ho.

My tummy will burn, but that’s our bean soup for lunch.

These stories are about my 19-year-old self in 1968.

I’ll bet you remember 19.

So you know they won’t be pretty.

But they will explain why my Gin and Tonic is small, ice-full, and the only one.

Screwdriver in a seedy apartment

It was an early summer Friday night. Jerry picked me up. We had just finished our first year of college. He worked at a gas station, and I managed the snack bar at the country club.

Jerry was an experienced drinker. I was still a virgin.

The party was in a second-floor apartment in a rundown house a few blocks north of Sacred Heart Cathedral and School, where I had been an altar boy and attended grade school.

We walked up rickety outdoor steps, through a half-opened door, and into a dimly lit living room with a couch and a few chairs. Jerry went into the kitchen to put his illegal six-pack into the refrigerator. Three people were standing around: two men and a woman. I didn’t know them, and they seemed older.

Sitting on the kitchen counter was a glass pitcher full of what looked like orange juice, surrounded by paper picnic cups.

“Try a screwdriver,” said Jerry, “vodka and orange juice.”

I don’t remember how many I had, but my head spun. And my tongue loosened for slurred words.

Jerry helped me down the steps and dropped me off at home.

Where I walked up the 21 front yard steps I shoveled in the winter and through the front door.

I never used the front door. No one in our family of five ever did except for guests.

Who now filled the living, dining, and family room, sitting around card tables my mom had borrowed for my parents’ Friday night Bridge Duplicate.

I offered three hellos, and Crab walked the 13 steps to my bedroom, which I shared with my brother Peter.

As soon as my head hit the pillow, the nausea hit.

The following day, I felt like I wanted to die. My head throbbed. But the snack bar couldn’t run itself. Before I opened, I went to see Ronnie, the bartender. He looked at me and said, “You need a bloody Mary.”

One Beer and a broken table

Later that summer, on August 28, 1968, Screwdriver Jerry picked me up again for a party at my other friend Jerry’s house. Why do I remember the date?

It’s the Thursday night of the Democratic Party’s Presidential Convention in Chicago — the night of the clash between the Chicago police and those demonstrating against, well, almost everything going wrong in America.

The two Jerry’s, me and, I think, host Jerry’s sister, were in the basement watching all of this on TV. Jerry’s dad would occasionally come down the basement steps to rail against the kids on the street. But he didn’t mind the beers we were drinking.

The one I had was too many.

My two Jerry friends were rooting for the Chicago police. So, I stood up too fast to make a counter-point. And fell over and broke Jerry’s mom’s new end table.

On the way home, Screwdriver Jerry, always with my best interest in mind, dropped me off in front of Sharon’s house. Sharon was my first girlfriend, with whom I had broken up the summer before.

A couple of days later, Jerry would tell me I peed on her front lawn.

Three beers and Gina at Danceland

Thankfully, for you and me, this 3rd story is short.

In the fall of 1968, my college sponsored dances every Friday night at Danceland. Usually, I would go with a few friends.

On this Friday, Mike went along.

Danceland served cheap beer in plastic cups. Before too long, I downed three.

Chug-a-lugs.

Gina was pretty and sitting by herself.

My defenses down and courage up, I went over and asked if I could join her.

We talked for a while; I leaned over and kissed her lightly out of nowhere.

And she kissed me back.

That’s all.

*

Three days later, during a pool game, while we were cutting class, Mike said to me:

You know Gina is the girlfriend of the star forward on the basketball team.

And then he said something only a true friend would say.

Paul, you’re an idiot when you drink.

A message this self-respecting 19-year-old needed only to hear once.

Hi-de-ho.

Turn back before it’s too late.

*

What else is a fella to do?

Who, at 74, is one year older than Walter Matthau when he made Grumpy Old Men.

With co-star Ann-Marget, who never stopped smiling.

Two years later, they do it again with Grumpier Old Men, with Sophia Loren, who never stopped smiling.

Would one Grumpy Old Woman be asking too much?

And Grammarly, what’s your problem with fella? You don’t slap a purple line under, dude.

I know; I click dismiss, and the purple line disappears.

But I like to play by the rules if the rules make sense.

That’s what nice fellas do.

But Ann Margret’s & Sophia Loren’s are changing the world.

Because someone thinks newer is better.

Our town’s mayor is a woman. The first woman to run the city. She smiles a lot. I’m a progressive fella, so I voted for her.

She couldn’t leave well enough alone.

One of her new ideas was a new leaf pick-up program. The rule used to be to rake the leaves into the street. The workers would not scoop them up if they were on the boulevard.

Two years ago, pushed by the mayor, the street department bought a new-fangled leaf vacuum truck. Now, the leaves must be out of the street, ON the boulevard, but no more than five feet from the curb.

Yesterday, I raked some leaves from the street onto my lawn.

Really?

I came into the house to write a blog about this ridiculous new program and tried to log into WordPress. I received this message: you must create a two-step verification to continue.

Ugh.

It’s bad enough that I must keep changing my password every six months. Now, I need to keep my phone handy when I check my dwindling bank account. Someone had to pay for that new street cleaner. Or when I want to rant on my blog. And remember whether it was Tommy or Jimmy who was my best friend when I was 10.

Speaking of two steps, I used to be able to unscrew any lid with one movement. I could hit a baseball and golf ball a long way for my size — strong wrists from scooping ice cream at sixteen. I couldn’t cook, but I could unscrew.

Wouldn’t you want this fella around?

Now, I’m reduced to this.

*

My friend Will, 92, in Assisted Living, said to me the other day, “There can’t be room-controlled thermostats in his complex because no one understands how they work.”

And then he told me a hilarious story about how he and Harland, also a resident and 98, were sitting around his apartment last week, and suddenly, from a corner, Alexa started speaking up. The digital assist box that housed Alexa had arrived a few weeks earlier as a gift from Will’s nephew. Neither could figure out how to silence her, so they threw a blanket over the table.

That’s Will and Harland at a recent Life Long Learning Seminar on Death and Dying. You can read my stories on this course here.

They are the anti-curmudgeons. Each does his best to keep up with the changes the world throws at them ever-increasingly. But they also have begun to hold many things lightly. And each has a sense of humor, whether about death or Alexa.

Years ago, as they neared Curmudgeonville, they must have turned around before it was too late.

And now serve as role models.

As do Ann Margret (82) and Sophia Loren (89), still smiling.

Postscript

Our community’s Mayor, Lorraine, is widely acclaimed as the best mayor in decades and handily won re-election.

The new leaf vacuum program, bugs worked out the first year, works like a charm.

Tommy, of course.

But I changed the question.

*

There’s a reason for every season.

But it’s not really about us.

Humans.

We’re all about making meaning.

As if the tree needs a biographer.

It doesn’t.

It just is.

But I do.

Demand a reason.

For this season.

So I borrow what’s not mine.

*

Fall descends.

Darkness.

Death everywhere.

Inevitable.

No escape.

Even though I try to hide the evidence.

*

Have you ever seen

Anything so foolish

As me.*

_________________________________________________________________

*Yes, you are right; this is an oblique reference to Joyce Kilmer’s poem Trees.

Photography

Nature

Part III of a Life Long Learning Seminar on Death & Dying

*

It was another sunny Wednesday morning for our forty souls. This was the third of four Death, Dying, and Living classes. You can read about the seminar here and review our first and second sessions.

Two played hooky.

Harland (98 and with the microphone) and Will (92 and to Harland’s right) had a prior engagement. They joined out-of-town friends for an annual luncheon.

By the way, fifty years ago, Larry, to Harland’s left, was a student of Will and Harland’s. Will was a Professor of Religion and Classics, and Harland, English.

The assignment for the third session was to watch the film Jack Has a Plan. My colleague Alan showed the movie at 7 a.m. in our seminar room before class for those who couldn’t attend the Sunday screening. My other colleague, Ruth, baked a blueberry coffee cake. If this sounds slightly sexist, you don’t know Ruth.

Jack Tuller, a resident of California, was diagnosed with brain cancer 25 years ago. The documentary, by a friend of his, chronicles the last three years of his life, including his plan to die on a Friday at 4 p.m. Because California is one of ten states that allow physician-assisted death, Jack was able to choose a time to die. You can see the states on the map below.

I’ve linked you to the film’s website, which includes a summary of Jack’s story, photos, awards, and a review of the right-to-die issue.

It’s a powerful and uncomfortable film. We asked our participants to join several others to discuss how this film spoke to them.

*

Alan, Ruth, and I each joined a small group. In my group, people told stories of loved ones who might have selected Jack’s option if they had lived in a state that protected medical aid in dying.

You get a sense of the main case for this position by looking at the names of the laws in each state. (source)

Oregon: Oregon Death with Dignity Act

Washington: Washington Death with Dignity Act

Vermont: Vermont Patient Choice and Control at the End of Life Act

California: California End-of-Life Option

Colorado: Colorado End-of-Life Option

Washington D.D.: D.C. Death with Dignity Act

Hawaii: Hawaii’s Our Care, Our Choice Act

New Jersey: New Jersey Medical Aid in Dying for the Terminally Ill Act

Maine: Maine Death with Dignity Act

New Mexico: New Mexico Elizabeth Whitefield End of Life Options Act

Montana: Baxter v. Montana (The State Supreme Court case that ruled in favor of Medical Aid in Dying)

In the film, Jack throws a party for friends and family on the day he chooses to die. At 3:30, with tears and hugs, the guests depart, leaving Jack and his wife alone. She will help administer the three prescribed drugs. The camera also goes with Jack telling us he “will die a happy man.”

A neighbor of Jack’s said, “Jack did not kill himself. He chose to die before the cancer killed him.” The California law sanctions choice for those who have a six-month terminally ill diagnosis.

So, the main argument in favor of medically assisted dying (notice that no state uses the term suicide) for those in the prescribed condition requires that the government protect their right to choose. Sanctioning their choice is rooted in their dignity as human beings.

In my group, most of us accepted the choice perspective under the condition of a terminal illness. We were glad Jack lived in California and could follow his personal vision.

*

But not all of Jack’s friends and family accepted his decision. The same was true in our small group and, as it became clear when we convened the large group, in other groups.

The most compelling counter-argument was that Jack was a part of a community. He was not only an individual. And the community would miss his person, his voice. One member of our group worried that medically sanctioned death was an example of individualism that had gone too far.

Our class read an article by New York Times columnist David Brooks that developed this perspective and used Canada’s law to illustrate how a policy that limits beneficiaries to the terminally ill has been expanded to include those who are suffering psychologically.

One of Jack’s friends, a cartoonist, said to Jack, “It’s almost like you are a character in this movie. But you’re not. You are a real person who is still a part of our lives.”

We invited a retired physician to join our class for the Jack conversation. He told us he disagreed with the Oregon law when it was passed a decade ago. Now, he wasn’t so sure. Maybe he could prescribe for Jack.

*

I’ve seen the Jack film twice, one year apart. The second time, a week ago, I wished Jack would change his mind. Part of me understood his fear that he would soon be unable to get out of bed. And that he found it increasingly difficult to do the simplest things. But another part saw that his friends and family would help him up to the end.

A gift for him.

And for them.

What do you think?

____________________________________

For the last session, we invited a funeral home director and a minister. The theme is Closure.