My father died in 1993, but Cousin Jim talked to him three years ago. Jim retired from careers in human resource management and college teaching. Jim is one of the most rational and thoughtful people I know. And he’s had diabetes since he was 16.

On the day Jim talked with my dad, he was home alone. His wife Linda was out shopping. Knowing his blood sugar was low, Jim was in the kitchen headed toward orange juice in the refrigerator when he collapsed and lost consciousness.

He estimated that he was on the floor for three minutes before Linda arrived and revived him. During those moments,

I went to a very crowded place. Lots of people of all
Different races and ethnicities wait in a crowded line.
I got in line, and gradually, we moved ahead to what I can only describe as
Gates. At the gates, I was met by your dad. He told me that I must go back.
“Your work is not done,” he told me in a commanding voice.

Three years later, Jim considers this event one of the most vivid of his life. He says today that my father’s words were explicit and directed at him. And that they influenced the way he lives. Jim’s experience was as natural to him as the orange juice Linda used to bring him back from where he was. Linda still thinks it was low blood sugar, period.

What do I believe? The late theologian Marcus Borg wrote in The Heart of Christianity of thin places “as anywhere our hearts are open.” A thin place can be religious, for example, a sermon, or secular, like nature.

Several days ago, at 5:16 am in southwest Iowa, I took this photo of the quarter moon that had just become visible behind clouds and trees. Borg said thin places can be anywhere.

But we have to look.

When we see, we connect to something beyond ourselves. Borg calls it “The More.”

You might call it something else.

For me, seeing is believing.

And believing is becoming.

Check your oil. Clean your window.

I stopped at a convenience store yesterday to buy the summer’s first sweet corn. That’s the farmer’s maroon truck at 3 o’clock. When I pulled my car up, the corn lady was over by a pump talking with a big, bearded guy whose dog was lying on the car’s hood while he pumped gas.

I bought four ears of corn. And then walked over and asked the fellow if I could photograph his dog. He said yes, and moved behind me so my subject would follow him for the proper pose.

When the canine stood up, I saw Cotton’s rag.

I grew up in America in the 1950s. My dad always stopped for gas at a Standard Oil service station on Locust Street run by Cotton. Red-faced Cotton never wore a hat and had fair hair. He seemed to be my dad’s age.

Cotton would pump gas, check under the hood, and wipe windows. His red, white speckled rag hung out of a back pocket. It squeaked as he scrubbed the front windshield.

His business had two pumps with just enough room on each side for one car. A hose was laid across the concrete that announced a customer with a ding ding. I never saw anyone but Cotton service our vehicle.

Dad and Cotton seemed to be friends. They always chatted. My dad was an engineer and knew cars inside and out.

And then, suddenly, we stopped getting our gas at Cottons. I didn’t ask my dad what happened.

And never saw Cotton again.

*

Clothes don’t make the man. The man makes the clothes. And that matters.

“What butt?”

That’s what my partner Rebecca said when I asked her to take a picture of my behind.

I didn’t want to ask my friend John. He’s got the opposite problem.

I’m taking a three-day photography workshop at our local college. Most of the other students are women my age. Tomorrow, we are taking portraits of a photo partner. Maybe that wouldn’t be a good idea.

And my 31-year-old- son’s backside is even smaller.

So I’m stuck with me for the photo op.

You see the problem, don’t you?

My normal-sized photography instructor says a picture is worth 1000 words. I’m putting his theory into practice.

Did you know men lose 5% of muscle mass every decade after 35? (source)

That’s 20% for me thus far. For my keister, that’s .20 X 0 = 0.

Soon my fanny will be in negative numbers.

Why does this matter?

*

In Fall 2022, Rebecca wanted to take this photo of me from her grandson Elan’s Bar Mitzvah. I look presentable, don’t I?

Yes, that’s a Jerry Garcia tie. Thank you for noticing. I’ve got a little collection.

I never listened to Garcia’s Grateful Dead. I don’t like Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia. But I love the funkiness of Jerry’s ties.

I wore a tie daily when I started teaching at Luther College in 1985. During that first year, at least five men across campus, including two in my department, Political Science, asked why a tie. At first, I was surprised by the question. Then, irritated.

In the first faculty meeting, I looked across a room of 150 faculty, 70% men. Ten years from retirement, Harland Nelson in the English Department sported a bow tie. And a couple of guys from Accounting looked like business executives. And me.

College faculty are as vulnerable to peer pressure as any other group. Eventually, some of these people would decide my tenure fate. My concession to the informal dress police eventually became the Garcia tie that debuted in 1992.

As you glimpsed, I still wear Garcia’s five years after retirement.

I like to look good. And this desire is fueled by an incident that occurred 50 years ago.

*

My best college buddy, Barrie, was married in 1972. I attended the wedding but was not one of the groomsmen because when arrangements were made months earlier, we expected I would be in basic training with a low draft number. Why that didn’t happen is a story for another time.

I came to Barrie and Mary Ann’s summer ceremony bummed at not being integral to the action and dressed in a ratty ill-fitting sport coat. My girlfriend, Donna, was a bridesmaid, so I sat alone in the steamy church feeling sorry for myself. And vowing never, ever to be underdressed again.

So ties tend to my higher torso. And shirts usually fit, especially now that my aging muscle mass has dropped from a medium to a trim size with a better sleeve fit on this 5’7″ frame.

The problem is the lower torso. Doesn’t this look like an x-ray of me?

If I wear pants with my actual waist size, 34″, it looks like I have a tail. But a slim fit, stretch fabric, 32″ waist pant that sits just above my hips swaddles my backside without cutting off circulation.

So the low-rise jean look in the first photo seems the optimal solution to my disproportioned torsos.

Should clothes matter to the older man?

I have a friend, Harland. He’s the bow-tied, Professor of English I mentioned above. Harland just turned 98. He lost his wife, Corinne, three years ago. He lives in an Assisted Care apartment and still drives his Prius to Thursday breakfasts with other retired faculty. For formal occasions, I still see him clad in a bow tie. But his everyday uniform is a button-down Oxford shirt and khakis.

The uniform fits the man. “That’s Harland,” I think when I see him.

During my first years as a college professor, I was stubborn about my Jerry Garcia ties because it was a look I chose. I didn’t know Harland at the time, but I assumed, as the only bow-tier, he had faced the same pushback from some of his peers. Yet, he persisted. As did I.

My ego has now traveled south in retirement, lodged in my bottom. After experimentation, I finally found a reasonable solution for my aging body.

It ain’t pretty, but it’s mine.

But there are beginnings and A Beginning

*

Last night, my partner Rebecca turned on the big attic fan. It produced a deep humming, white noise, perfect for sleep. In the 1950s, my parents put a large fan in my bedroom before they bought the first air conditioner. It made the same sound. I still recall my father coming into the room early to turn the fan switch from high to low — a soft hum that eased us to morning.

So I woke this morning refreshed and thinking about beginnings — and A Beginning.

Beginnings

I’ve always loved beginnings.

Maybe it’s because I’m firstborn. I was there at the start of my parents’ family. I absorbed the specialness of it all. Everything was new, possible, waiting to be experienced.

Seventy-three years later, I arrive at basketball games early to watch warmups. Can I pick out the starters for the visiting teams? How do the coaches interact with their players? Does one group have more energy than the other?

An exciting part of the six Bob Dylan concerts I’ve attended is watching the crew set up the stage after the warm-up act departs.

Every instrument is placed in a precise place. Because Dylan is famous for changing playlists, I delight in watching the same ponytailed guy replace one piece of paper with another on whatever surface will be closest to Bob. When all seems ready, the crowd quiets. Waiting. Even the memories give me chills.

Rebecca and I attended a Marine retirement ceremony two weeks ago at Quantico Marine Corps Base in Virginia. Rebecca’s son-in-law, Colonel Jason Schmidt, was retiring. I took this photo a minute before the ceremony commenced.

*

A setup crew of young soldiers had placed all 50 state flags on their bases. The tallest made sure the crescent tops were positioned correctly. One top kept sagging, and he kept tightening until it finally obeyed.

About 15 minutes before the start of the ceremony, a Marine quartet played eclectic music. Every musician acted with fidelity as if her task was the most important in the world. And the perfect beginning to Colonel Schmidt’s final salute as an active duty Marine.

I took the opening photo the Sunday before this year’s Winneshiek County Fair. I love fair time. We live four blocks from the grounds. The streets are bursting with energy. Tattooed carnies walk by our house. Groups of teenagers stroll past in the early evening.

We are bikers, and The Decorah Trout Run Bike Trail borders the grounds. We watch the farm kids, and their parents bring animals into the buildings the week before the fair.

However, I don’t visit the swine barn because what I most look forward to when seeing the fair is this:

*

A Beginning

As I’ve gone through life, I’ve learned that there are beginnings and then Beginnings.

I will co-teach a Life Long Learning seminar on Death and Dying this fall. This will be my 51st year of teaching. I retired from 36 years on a college campus in 2018. But my first teaching job was with 44 sixth graders in 1972. I had extended my college deferment one year to get a teaching certificate to stay out of the Vietnam War draft. By then, the need for inductees had abated to put me out of harm’s way.

So I’ve always thought I became a teacher out of circumstance. Without a low draft number, I would have done something else. I never felt I was natural-born.

And then, last Sunday, my sister-in-law Linda showed me this photo at a family gathering.

*

That’s me on the left, with my little brother Peter. When Rebecca saw this photo, she said, “I’ve seen this teaching gesture by one of your hands many times.”

Here it is in a Life Long Learning seminar I taught in the fall of 2022.

*

And again, one year earlier, from our apartment in Timișoara, Romania, when I was teaching an online course to Romanian students.

*

A New Beginning

There’s no date on that photo of me and Peter. I’m guessing 1955 when I’m six, and Peter is four. We grew up in an era when children were seen and not heard. Who knows what that gesture of mine meant? Or who it was directed at? Maybe my left thumb hurt.

But here’s the thing. I’ve always felt comfortable in front of a group of students. Something was there from the beginning. I didn’t see it.

A talent I thought I had created out of whole cloth was, instead, uncovered.

What difference does this make?

Confidence.

I was not a good student until I was 27 and in graduate school. Most of my colleague teachers were always among the best.

I felt like I didn’t quite belong for half a century.

I might have begun an alternative story if I had seen this photo 50 years ago and taken more chances throughout my career. Less tentative, more decisive.

I eventually became a confident teacher. But I felt I had to outwork everyone else. There’s nothing wrong with this.

Except it builds a habit of defensiveness.

I’m now trying to break with the help of that confident, youthful gesture.

Another Beginning.

*

I became discombobulated.

That was the intention of whoever designed this bathroom.

As if to say, don’t get comfortable; change is coming. You won’t have these urinals forever.

I’ve always felt privileged to be born a man.

Why wouldn’t I?

*

From my birth in 1949, the world has been organized to meet my needs.

Whether in public bathrooms

*

Or our private bathroom, where I get to look at

*

While Rebecca gazes at

*

Of course, my gender privilege makes sense because we all know who took the first bite of the apple. As Adam said, “The Woman you gave me God made me eat the forbidden fruit.”

*

So comfortably clothed men lecture while women look at us and wonder.

*

But the world is turning — even some of its bathrooms.

*

Too fast for the entitled, too slow for the outsiders.

America’s changing bathrooms are one sign of the times. Listen to Yale Psychologist Jennifer Richeson:

My lab is in an old engineering building, and there’s exactly one women’s bathroom. No one noticed that, or at least no faculty members did. And then, slowly, Yale began adding women to the department, and they noticed it. They complained. Now there was friction. What had gone unnoticed by those with power in one era was unacceptable to those gaining power in another.

Power is always the subtext in a democracy. What’s the point of giving power to the people if you don’t, well, provide power to all the people?

What do people who have no power feel? Look closely at this painting by Helen Saunders.

*

The title is Hammock; the theme is suffering.

An invisible person has no voice and thus suffers.

My mother died at 96 in 2017. As her mind slowly ebbed in her last decade, she told this true story repeatedly. It was a well-worn groove in her brain. During WWII, she worked as the head teller in a bank, replacing a man who went to war. Her college degree led to a leadership position she held for three years. When government inspectors appeared every year, they all asked for her.

After the war, she met my dad, had three sons, and worked inside the home to raise us. My dad was an engineer and was frequently out of town. He died in 1993.

My brothers and I put her in a memory care unit a year before she died. One day as my brother Pat and I sat with her in her room, she told us another story. The previous week she had been elected leader of the residents association. As the leader, she went to the director with a list of demands. Among the demands was an open-door policy meaning residents could leave whenever they wanted.

We had never seen our mother so alive.

The bank story was true. This story was made-up but TRUTH.

When I look at the woman in the Hammock, I think of my mother. She was a good mom and spouse. But I always had the feeling she wanted more. That’s what her stories were about.

Would she have been more contented if she had been born one or two generations later?

This story began in a bathroom. I could have started it by putting you in a stadium in New Zealand where America’s Women’s National Soccer team is competing in the Women’s World Cup. After decades of struggle, American women will be paid the same as the American Men’s National Soccer team. (source)

No one ever concedes power quickly or without a demand backed by a counterforce.

As I age and become less visible in a country that honors youth, I take comfort that America has become a noisier place. There were only a few voices when I was born, and they were very loud.

Today, it’s a cacophony: jarring, discordant, and beautiful.

Like that bathroom.

I took this photo two years ago of the Washington Monument and Reflecting Pool from the top step of the Lincoln Memorial. Look closely at the people.

When I turned around to face Mr. Lincoln, this scene presented itself.

And then I looked down at my feet.

I was standing on the spot Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his I Have a Dreamspeech in 1963, with those final rousing words pointing to a distant future,

When all of God’s children, Black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last. Free at last. Thank God almighty, we are free at last.

*

My friend Steve and his wife Katie adopted four South Korean children thirty-five years ago. A week ago, one of his kids, Nikki, was shopping at Walmart when a young man in the parking lot yelled, “Why don’t you go back to China.”

One ignorant guy, right? And The Confederate Flag flying prominently from the white pick-up I saw yesterday, that’s just one truck. Maybe it was the same guy.

Yesterday, I was shopping for a hat and picked up this one for 6 dollars.

It’s a muted version of the Gadsden Flag with a complicated history you can read about here. Lately, however, this symbolism has been adopted by White Supremacist groups.

Three vignettes.

Each is in the open. Out of the shadows.

Should we be worried?

Is America moving closer to or further away from King’s free at-last vision for all God’s children?

*

Four years ago, Rebecca and I visited another memorial. In the photo below, we are sitting behind the podium Adolph Hitler spoke from 1933–1938 at massive Nazi Rallies in Nuremberg, Germany. I don’t have a picture, but on that day in front of us where thousands of Seig Heil saluters once marched were a bunch of kids on skateboards.

The Nazi Rally Grounds are kept in the form of preserved decay as part of an extraordinary Documentation Museum. The Nazi vision of an “exclusionary society” now lies on the ash heap of history.

Could something like that happen here?

*

America today has more immigrants than any country in the world. (source) Fifty million of 330 million were born in another country, with Mexico, China, and India as the top three countries of origin. Most Americans, 59% to 34%, believe immigrants strengthen our country. (source)

These are good omens — one of my intellectual Political Science mentors, E.E. Schattschneider, wrote that “Democracy begins as an act of imagination about people.” Not people as an abstraction but the “warm, breathing, feeling, hungering, loving, hating, aspiring, living being with whom we identify ourselves.”

And he continued, “The democratic concern for people is not selective…it takes a lot of indiscriminate affection for people as people to run a democracy.”

*

I was born in 1949, when America was a different country. With few exceptions, white Protestant males ran its institutions. Silenced voices hid its diversity. For many, America was easier to love.

The sixties changed all that. Laws were passed, opening America’s doors to Asians and those south of its border. Civil Rights legislation and Supreme Court decisions gave voice to African Americans. Other movements of out-groups followed.

White male monopolies slowly disintegrated. But not without a fight.

That we are still in the middle of, that drives America’s politics and explains its divisions.

Two years ago, as a white male at the Lincoln Memorial, I was in the minority. Perhaps even before I die, my race will lose its majority status across this land. In 1867, former slave Frederick Douglass gave an extraordinary speech titled “Composite Nation.” In it, he argued against a law that excluded immigrants from China. He said:

I want a home here not only for the negro, the mulatto, and Latin races; but I want the Asiatic to find a home here, both for his sake and ours.

I don’t want my great-grandchildren to be skateboarding on the decayed steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

We’ve got work to do.

Down the path of indiscriminate affection.

For all America’s people.

Color is integral to our stories.

DEAR BLOG READER: THIS STORY HAS BEEN COPIED FROM MEDIUM, AN ONLINE WRITING PLATFORM. THE HIGHLIGHTING IS FROM MEDIUM. Unfortunately, the links do not work.

*

A reader responded to a recent story with this comment: “I wish niceness were colorblind.” I thought about her comment and wrote a follow-up piece.

I understand the reader’s sentiment. For much of American history, people selected winners and losers based on the color of their skin. Ridding ourselves of this bias seemed a form of progress.

But upon further reflection, and prodded by another reader, I wondered whether being colorblind makes sense. This led me to this analogical tale.

*

Rebecca and I selected each kitchen item in the photo for its colors.

The white backsplash contrasts nicely with the grey-speckled granite countertop. The tiles’ teak grout augments the top’s porcelain flecks.

The framed picture’s cream road complements the backsplash. Its sage green countryside enhances the emerald flower leaves on the French butter dish.

When the butter dish opens, its bright yellow contents enrich the picture’s mustard matting and mango bicyclist shirt.

Color matters.

Color shadings are important.

*

When we look at each kitchen feature, we see its complexion.

Pigmentation is part of the value of each.

To be colorblind makes no sense.

But we don’t see only color.

Each element has stories.

Sometimes these stories are connected to their colors.

Rebecca is a bicycling devotee. She found a print of Giuliana Lazzerini’s woodcutting The Race at London’s Tate Modern Museum’s bookshop. She loved the yellows and greens. They reminded her of fall and summer colors throughout our community’s Trout Run Bike Trail.

Sometimes not.

Rebecca loves the rider’s hunched focus. It embodies her approach to this sport. For this aspect, the rider’s shirt color is irrelevant.

*

We’ve had the French Butter Dish for about a year. It’s ingenious. You tightly pack cold and softened butter sticks into the container on the right in the photo. It is placed over the left receptacle with an inch of salt water. This connection forms an airtight, oxygen-free vessel that keeps the butter fresh for about a month.

Unless you forget to replace the salt water every week. Something I did last week when Rebecca was on a weeklong biking trip.

When the butter morphed into the tinge of The Race’s matting.

*

We value each kitchen component for its colors. We see different hues as complementary, not as competitive.

But color forms only part of their identities. It sometimes connects to their identity, sometimes not. The funky French Butter thingy works regardless of its outer clothing. Its character matters most.

Each has stories worth telling and hearing.

Our butter dish works for us because of its character and color.

Identity is never just one thing.

For a dish or a human.

Caring about someone or something requires seeing all parts of them.

As the first step toward valuing and then understanding.

And overcoming shame

*

We were a month into the fall semester of 1987. It was my second year teaching at Luther College. As usual, I arrived fifteen minutes early, full of nervous energy. I wrote a couple of announcements on the chalkboard and sat in the chair by the window.

The twelve students enrolled in The Legislative Process drifted in and settled with books, pens, and notebooks arrayed around the table.

I started with a mini-lecture to develop the context of that day’s subject matter and reading. Then I asked them a question about the reading assignment. This was a reticent group, even though they were all 3rd and 4th-year students. Their quietness frustrated me. After the second question, with no response, I asked, “How many of you haven’t read the assignment.” Four raised their hands.

“I’ll see you four next class. Please come with the assignment read. I expect everyone to come to class ready to discuss the reading. That’s the only way we can learn together,” I explained.

The guilty four silently gathered their belongings and filed out.

Dreams and a regret

I regretted what I had done before they left the room. In my ten years as a teacher, first in middle school and then in college classrooms, I had never kicked a kid out. I hadn’t planned to kick them out. My job was to teach, and I couldn’t do that if they were not in class. I felt I had failed them. They deserved better. I vowed never to do this again.

This event troubled me so much that for over 30 years, I have had a recurring dream of four students filing past me as they left a classroom. I had this dream a few nights ago. When I woke up this time, I remembered one of the students from this class lives in town. He works as a chiropractor, and I frequently walk by his building.

“Why not contact David?” I thought. So I found his email and reached out to him, asking if he remembered that day.

He responded.

“I remember the entire events of that day. If you’d like me to relate them to you. I would be OK to sit with a coffee and talk about them. I was fortunate enough to have done the reading!”

Reconnecting

David met me with his hand extended as I entered the coffee shop. He was dressed in black scrubs. We ordered coffee and settled into a corner table.

“Thanks for being willing to meet me,” I said. “I’ve never forgotten that day. I always felt I failed those students.”

“Actually, I liked what you did,” he said. “I thought you did the right thing. You showed us through your actions what it means to be a serious student. And that actions have consequences.”

We then spent two hours catching up. What a gift it was to talk with a former student at midlife about how his life had turned out! His daughter had just graduated from Luther. My son, also a Luther graduate, now works at the Co-op. David told me he was the first chiropractor to join one of Decorah’s regional health clinics. I said I was still teaching Life Long Learning courses.

The time flew by.

As we left, we shook hands and agreed to stay in touch.

Urgency of closure

One of the joys of being 73 is the urgency of closure. It’s easy to put things off when you are young. Less so at this point in life. My shame over kicking those students out had dogged me for decades. Holding on to it festered. My recurring dream would not let me off the hook. It was like a good friend sitting on my front porch, encouraging me to face my fear and neglect.

All along, I could have reached out to David. Once I did, he offered another way to look at this event. That balanced my harsh judgment. He reminded me to be kinder to myself. And reconnecting with David encouraged me to think of other wounds that need resolution.

What about you?

Do you have a regret that might benefit from another point of view?

If there is a conversation you have been putting off, take a chance. Reach out. Be bold. Seize the opportunity.

You won’t regret it!

A Lesson in Humility from America’s Greatest Coach

A NOTE TO THE READERS OF MY WORDPRESS BLOG. I NOW WRITE ALL MY STORIES ON MEDIUM.COM. BECAUSE IT COSTS $5 PER MONTH, I AM COPYING AND PASTING THEM TO WORDPRESS. BUT NOT EVERYTHING TRANSFERS PERFECTLY. THAT’S WHY YOU WILL OCCASIONALLY SEE SOME EXTRA MARKINGS OR HIGHLIGHTS.

THANK YOU FOR READING MY BLOG.

*

I’ve just finished a terrific book on the person many consider America’s most outstanding coach, John Wooden.

Wooden’s greatest player, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, wrote Coach Wooden and Me: Our 50-Year Friendship On and Off the Court a few years after Wooden died at 99 in 2010.

Abdul-Jabbar, 76, has written over 50 books; Wooden wrote over 20.

Coach Wooden began his adult life as an English teacher with a love of poetry that he would routinely quote to his basketball players over his 29-year coaching career.

He also wrote poetry as, in his words, an amateur. He said about his poetry efforts,

“Good words in good order is good enough for me.“

I thought about Wooden’s words about writing yesterday when I read this beautiful quote by 

Michelle Scorziello

“When a writer conveys something universal and true, something so fundamental to being human it’s as if a little rent in the universe appears and a kindred spirit has grabbed my hand. The right words placed in the right order can unleash profound affinity. Even more impressive is when the writer’s words are direct and seemingly simple.“

Scorziello’s quote with the vital sentence boldened by me refers to why an essay by Nobel Prize winner Herman Hesse works so well. There is that phrase, again, right words in the right order.

To Scorziello, Hesse’s words “were writing gold, but I could only produce base metal.” I feel the same way about my writing. I read better writers daily, including Wooden, Abdul-Jabbar, and Scorziello.

What do I do about that fact?

When Wooden sat down to write poetry, did he sit in the shadow of Kipling, one of his favorite writers? Is that why his quote concludes with “good enough for me”?

And what about an ordinary coach thinking about her career? Does she sit in the shadow of John Wooden? Or an average NBA player with Abdul-Jabbar’s 38,387 points looming over him? Or Jabbar, now the second fiddle in the points record book to Lebron James.

Did Shakespeare loom over Kipling’s scribblings? Who did Hesse consider his writing master?

For me, I’m in awe of this description of Ted Williams’ last home run from Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu by John Updike:

“Williams swung again, and there it was. The ball climbed on a diagonal line into the vast volume of air over center field. From my angle, behind third base, the ball seemed less an object in flight than the tip of a towering, motionless construct, like the Eiffel Tower or the Tappan Zee Bridge. It was in the books while it was still in the sky. Brandt ran back to the deepest corner of the outfield grass; the ball descended beyond his reach and struck in the crotch where the bullpen met the wall, bounced chunkily, and, as far as I could see, vanished.”

Good words in good order, turbocharged. I could no more write that Updike paragraph than an ordinary college coach could win Wooden’s nine national championships.

Like Michelle Scorziello, I’m confronted daily with a bittersweet fact: I read better writers than me. They offer me hints about how to put words in good order.

In the film Amadeus, a lesser composer, Antonio Salieri, is driven mad because he can’t take his eyes off the gap between his work and the efforts of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Good notes in good order was not enough for Salieri.

How do you manage the tension between the ceiling set by the writers you admire and your lesser efforts?

I occasionally try this mental trick; let’s call it the fly-on-the-wall maneuver.

I become the fly and observe myself sitting in my writing chair, tapping away at the keys on my MacBook Air. John Updike is sitting in the corner, looking out the window, writing in a notebook. Walt Whitman is sitting on his shoulder.

This image always makes me smile.

And brings me back to the task at hand.

The production of which is good enough for me.

What about you?

*

A NOTE TO THE READERS OF MY WORDPRESS BLOG. I NOW WRITE ALL MY STORIES ON THE WRITING PLATFORM MEDIUM. FOR NOW, I AM COPYING AND PASTING FROM MEDIUM TO WORDPRESS. THE HIGHLIGHTED SENTENCES ARE FROM MY MEDIUM READERS. I CAN TAKE THE COLORING OFF.

THANK YOU FOR READING MY BLOG. PAUL

Rebecca and I will spend next January in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. We wanted to escape at least one month of another cold and snowy midwest USA winter. Arizona, California, and Florida did not appeal. We wanted someplace new, outside America.

This now seems natural to search beyond our country’s boundaries. But it wasn’t always this way for me. As I write this story from the comfort of our home, it still isn’t instinctive.

I’ve broken my trek toward globe-trotting comfort into six vignettes.

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#1. I traveled outside the United States for the first time in the summer of 1987. I joined a group of teachers and their families on a two-week trip to England. On our first night in London, a few of us ate dinner at a pub close to our hotel. As we finished the meal, one couple complained that the food didn’t taste like they were used to, and the beer was warm. Even as a novice traveler, agreeing silently with them about the beer, I thought this was not a good attitude.

And I vowed to myself that I would learn to manage this tendency and develop a habit of comfort with new things. As a guest, I must do my best to learn about a region’s culture, values, history, and cuisine. I need to leave myself at home.

#2. In the summer of 1999, Richard dropped me off in Nottingham’s city center and said, “When you finish exploring, why don’t you take the bus back to our house? I was in Nottingham to direct Luther College’s year-long program in this north-central English city. Richard was the previous year’s director and would spend a few days showing me the ropes. Eleven students would follow in September. My tasks before they arrived included working with Nottingham University on each student’s academic schedule and planning four group trips around the United Kingdom.

But my first responsibility was learning how to get around this city of 300,000 so I could guide the students when they arrived. After Richard left, I recall standing on a busy corner in the Nottingham city center with a house address in one hand and a bus timetable in the other and feeling overwhelmed. One year later, the day before David, the following year’s director was to arrive, I walked from that same city center spot three miles to the director’s house without a map or bus schedule. All good things take time. Learn to live with uncertainty.

#3. Directing Luther’s Nottingham program sparked an interest in global experiences that continues today. Two years later, in August 2001, Mark faced me across the breakfast table at the Imperial Hotel in London. Mark was the director of what was then called Luther’s Study Abroad Office. Mark and I had come to London and Ireland to spend four days scouting locations for a January 2002 three-week study course with students I would lead. “What’s first on our agenda?” asked Mark. I looked at him and said, “I have no idea.” Fittingly, he gently chided me and said, “It’s your responsibility to plan these courses.”

Over the next decade and a half, I would plan, lead, and execute five January study away courses to Northern Ireland, Ireland, and England, in 2002, 2009, 2011, 2013, and 2015. And in the spring of 2018, in my last semester before retirement, my partner Rebecca and I would direct Luther’s semester program in Malta. As part of the Malta Program, we took our 11 students on group trips to Italy, Morocco, and Croatia that were planned, organized, and led by Rebecca and me.

In the fall of 2019, Rebecca and I co-hosted a Luther College alum trip to Northern Ireland and Ireland to study Peace and Reconciliation. And in the spring of 2020 and fall of 2021, I served as a Fulbright Scholar at West University in Timișoara, Romania.

I loved classroom teaching, but living and traveling with students in another country was my career’s most challenging and rewarding experience.Somehow — Luck? Fate? — I landed at a college that valued faculty travel and delivered mentors who showed me the way. They let me fail and fail again. And helped me scratch an itch I didn’t know I had.

Being a competent global traveler has become a part of my identity.

#4. In the fall of 2021, Rebecca and I visited the family of one of my Romanian students. Alex’s mom and dad, Gabriela and Marius, and sister Cosmina lived in Reșița, about an hour from Timișoara. Over lunch, Rebecca talked about how one of her daughters had married an Israeli-Jewish American. After she told this story, Marius looked at her and said, almost apologetically, “That could never happen in Romania; America is 30 years ahead of us.”

About a week later, I told this story during a guest lecture in a colleague’s class. My colleague responded by saying her grandfather had married a Jewish Romanian. She then asked for the hands (the course was taught online) of students who knew of Jewish family members. It looked like about 20% of the class raised their hands. For the rest of the hour, the class discussed Romania’s silence. I listened and silently thanked Alex’s family for triggering this educational moment.

I reminded myself that a traveler gets to know the local people. And listens more than speaks. And respects people, government, and institutions at their current level while garnering new respect for cultural pluralism.

#5. Our guide was a Sinn Fein politician on the 2019 alum trip to Northern Ireland and Ireland that Rebecca and me organized and hosted. Michael arranged a visit to The Belfast Police Museum that honors The Police Service of Northern Ireland. As our coach pulled into the parking lot, Michael said, “I’m sure I’m the first Sinn Fein political official to enter this museum.” As we walked through the museum, I saw how tense Michael was.

Afterward, on our way to Derry, he talked to us about what it was like growing up as a Catholic in Protestant Northern Ireland. Later in the trip, we spoke with a Protestant minister about his fears of living as a part of a united and Catholic Ireland. Like Michael, as he talked, I could feel his tenseness.

The 2019 trip was my 6th group trip to this region of the world. Whenever I walk again through the Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods of Belfast and Derry (Londonderry to Protestants), I am reminded of the power of tradition and history. The more travelers know of a country’s history and traditions, the more they will see and feel like I did with Michael.

#6. Two Romanian classes were moved online in the Covid spring of 2020 after two in-person sessions. This was the first time I had taught an online course. Zooming, to me, was something Mighty Mouse did. Once it became clear that COVID was sticking around, I had no choice but to adapt and learn. Travel has taught me to expect the unexpected. It will likely happen.

Two weeks before every global trip, I get anxious. This feeling will hit me as we prepare for Mexico next December. I’m sitting writing this essay on our front porch. The sights, sounds, and smells are familiar. There is a little in me of that couple with the wrong attitude I described in story #1.

But there is more to life than familiarity. There is challenge and newness. I’m comfortable with both feelings.

What about you?