paulmuses

Carol Labuzzetta, MS asks about the coldest place we’ve ever been. Oh, Carol, do I have a story for you!

Perhaps you’re sipping from a mug of hot chocolate in front of a crackling real log fireplace. Or, like me, sitting in a sunny courtyard with a running water fountain in San Miguel, Mexico, where it will be 70° Fahrenheit later today, a disappointing 5° cooler than yesterday.

This is where Rebecca and I escape the January cold in our home state of Iowa, USA.

My story begins on Sunday, January 5, 2014. When Rebecca and I met several years earlier, we lived 323 miles apart, she in Clarinda, in southwest Iowa, and I in Decorah, to the northeast.

That year, we spent the holidays at her home. As we were both still working, I needed to drive back to Decorah because my Luther College January term class began the next day. As I got in my car, I set my iPhone GPS.

And, full of hope, I turned the ignition key of my four-month-old Subaru Forester. Still young, it had never experienced -20° combined with a fifteen-mile-per-hour arctic wind that had loosened from the north. When I heard the first sluggish crank, I knew it was game on.

Since Rebecca and I have lived in Iowa most of our adult lives, we know its weather extremes. My mother and father experienced 118° in 1934, without air conditioning, and I recall the unimaginable -46 ° in 1996 in Elkader, just 30 miles east of Decorah.

Cars are like people in that when cold, all their parts must work harder. So I worried. The current temperature of -20° would be the high of the day. And we’d be fighting a northerly wind most of the way. Usually, a full tank of gas got me to Decorah with around 50 miles to spare, but that day, the cold and into the wind meant I would have to get out of the car to pump gas.

This is a good point in the story to distinguish real temperature from wind chill. Real is actual, and wind chill is what the actual, actually feels like on one’s skin. So, I knew that for around five hours, my Subaru’s thin chassis was the only thing between me and the -46.

As the car warmed up, I thought, How long can a human survive -46?

Life is taking chances, right? Rebecca and I hugged and, per usual, she said ‘safe travel.’ Once I got north of Des Moines, I was able to pick up a Minnesota Public Radio station, which announced that Governor Mark Dayton had just closed all public schools the following day.

I knew my residential college was holding first-day classes, but had also put out word that students should not travel if they felt the conditions were too dangerous.

Sure enough, my car’s gas gauge showed less than a quarter tank remaining about 100 miles from home. I stopped at a small station in Hampton, about two hours from home. When I stepped outside the car, the glacial air hit me immediately.

My gloves were thickish, but no match. I pressed the handle to release the gas I hoped was still liquid, and once I saw the gas pump indicator move, I slipped back in my car.

Once home, I turned on all faucets to make sure water was still running through the pipes.

The next morning, in a toasty classroom, I introduced students to the intricacies of American Politics. Unprecedentedly, at the end of the two hours, no one wanted to leave.

On my way home, I parked on Water Street across from my bank to put a document in my safe deposit box. The temperature was -28, and the wind was 18 MPH, still out of the north. Because there were few cars on the street, I maneuvered mine into a slot 30 feet from the bank’s lobby door. Bundled with thick gloves, a scarf, and a stocking cap pulled low, I exited and started across the street.

After three steps, I froze, pivoted, and retreated to bank another day.

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Rebecca and I have been in San Miguel, Mexico, for four days, arriving at the Guanajuato International Airport, about an hour away, on Thursday. This will be our third January in this central Mexican city of about 175,000, and the second esconced in this apartment. Yesterday, we put down a deposit for 2027.

Here’s a midday view from our rooftop.

It’s 4:38 AM as I type these words. Rebecca is asleep and will be up around 7. This morning I arose at 3:30, a little earlier than usual. My writing stint is before sunrise, wherever I am.

In the first photo, outside the window over the couch, is a little courtyard with a running water fountain. Beyond the font is a door that leads to the neighborhood you see in the second photo.

Somewhere, outside that door, a dog barks, just as she did yesterday at precisely this time.

On World Introvert Day, Carole Olsen asks whether we are introverts or extroverts.

Carole, I’m in the middle, on a border between thriving with others and needing alone time, according to a therapist years ago, who administered a personality test. When she told me this, I thought, that sounds about right.

The best way to explain what this means is my philosophy on screened porches. Here’s our front porch. It sits on one of our community’s busiest streets, with hundreds of cars and tens of walkers passing each day. When did people start owning more than one dog?

This is our newish back porch, off a quieter street.

Good screens make good neighbors.

The extrovert part of me enjoys being with people, even online, which is itself a natural protection, perfect for someone in the middle. For example, I like the Medium community, which includes not only writers and readers but also regular commentators like Carole.

Lately, several Medium friends have returned having tried Substack. My sense is they’ve come back because they miss the Medium coterie, imperfect as it has become.

So too on a porch. I like being a part of the outdoor life of my neighborhood, offering an occasional hello, and engaging in a rare, more extended conversation. But I also need the subtle barrier, the apartness, and not just from squirrels.

Our good friends Ed and Carol across the street regularly sit on their back patio late in the summer day, as Rebecca and I do the same on our back porch. Once a month or so, we’ll take our drinks across the street to catch up on the latest. We’ll enjoy each other’s company for an hour or so and then return to our little worlds.

However, sometimes there is a threat so significant, so obtrusive, so ubiquitous that even the introverts throw caution to the wind and come out in droves.

When screens, fences, personality traits, and other differences recede into the background.

Mark your calendars, No Kings III is July 4, 2026.

I wrote this story three years ago and, on request, republished it on Medium last week.

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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 seven 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 pony-tailed 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 Corps 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 were 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 on 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 Lifelong Learning seminar on Death and Dying this fall. This will be my 51st year of teaching. I retired after 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 by one year to get a teaching certificate to avoid 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 naturally 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 Lifelong 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 Peter and me. 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 hurts.

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 wouldn’t go down these steps even when the tornado reaches Hazel’s house,” repeated Rebecca.

“Oh, come on. Besides, they were good enough for John Wayne Gacy,” continued me.

You’re sick, Paul

Seriously, this was the last time — ‘The last time ever I…’

Carly Simon?

No, it’s Roberta Flack’s The First Time. You always get that one wrong.

Oh yeah. Carly’s was You’re So Vain.

Warren Beatty, right?

She admitted it in a book. But this is about the salt, isn’t it? Finally, Paul! It’s too dangerous for someone almost 80. I’ve been telling you this for a decade.

I’ve aged out of pulling those 40-pound suckers down those stairs. What are you humming — give me a minute…Yesterday?

The Beatles or Roy Clark?

You gotta give me a hint, I’m worn out.

‘I’m not half the man I used to be.’

Very funny. I liked Roy’s better.

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Neither Rebecca nor I has slept well this week. The excitement of Santa, you think? Well, of course, that’s part of it. And, Mr. Claus, we liked the stocking caps and that you’ve joined the upcycling clothing movement. Your endorsement was the nudge needed.

But we won’t need them where we’re going. We’re migrating south to Mexico for January.

Some of our friends wonder why Mexico. Aren’t you going out on a limb? What about the cartels?

We asked ourselves the same question two years ago, before our first exposure to San Miguel. Why leave the comfort and routines of our little nest in northeast Iowa for the unknown?

This central Mexican community is now a little less mysterious, and what we’ve come to glimpse — the people, the climate, the landscape, the food, the culture, the language, even the cobblestone streets — we like.

We believe it’s a durable branch.

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Mike hosted our older men’s monthly book group. It was not his fault that the pizza was cold. It didn’t matter.

That’s retired physician David modeling how to use the torch he brought to carmelize the sugar on top of his crème brûlées. One of us dropped his ramekin. It also didn’t matter as David brought an extra.

Jim, our leader, said he’d had a request to add a 12th member, someone who’d just retired and was moving to be close to their daughter and grandchildren. “Twelve’s a good number,” offered John.

The book was Dennis Lehane’s Small Mercies, a terrific novel set in mid-1970s Boston that included murder, crime, power, racism, and the unforgettable Mary Pat, who, according to another character, was someone “who is irretrievably broken and wholly unbreakable.”

“That’s my favorite line in the book,” said Bob, “And I can’t quit thinking about it.”

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Before another Christmas departs, I wish goodness to carapace your life.

Perhaps you don’t celebrate Christ’s birth. Me neither. But I do admire his life and teachings, especially to love your neighbor as yourself.

Rick, a friend who is a practicing Buddhist and Catholic, waits until this day to raise the tree and to begin contemplating the meaning of this sacred moment, apart from the material trappings.

You know, it’s not easy to love yourself. That’s because, as one ages, it becomes harder to lie to oneself. Besides, Santa sees all, doesn’t he?

I think people who don’t love their neighbor don’t love themselves. So that’s where the work needs to be done, loving yourself.

And not your false self, the perfect one — that’s gotten me into trouble.

No, that schmuck in the mirror, the one with the misshapen nose, he’s precious.

And so are each of them, our neighbors!

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It’s a frigid Sunday morning in the middle of the USA. Later today, Rebecca and I will host Mike and Maggie, two close friends, around this dining room table.

When they come through the back door at the scheduled time, 5 pm, I’ll say, ‘What took you so long?’

One of them will offer a bottle of wine in an elegant, but slightly worn, gift bag that we will reuse when we return the favor in about a month.

Last month, Maggie prepared beef stroganoff, with a mushroom-free serving for me. Mike offered precisely measured Old Fashioneds with square, cubed ice.

Today, Rebecca has planned salmon, Brussels sprouts, squash, and rice. My task is to remember to take the ham bone out of the freezer for their dog, Shadow.

Their friendship and company, like the wine and reusable tote, are gifts made more precious by this Holiday season.

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Language matters and reveals character. If I were to refer to a MAGA supporter as dumb white trash, that would say something meaningful about my temperament. Even if you secretly agreed, you would question my judgment. Many rational people would find me unacceptable as a leader.

In 2015, Donald Trump introduced his candidacy for the Presidency of the United States with the words Mexico sends ‘rapists’ to the USA.

One year later, Ruth Bader Ginsburg gave an interview in which she said, “He says whatever comes into his head at the moment. He really has an ego,” thus making him a bad choice to lead a country of 330 million.

Many agreed. Mr. Trump, over the next decade, continued to offer daily examples of language most, including some supporters, consider unacceptable.

Now, here we are, with Trump’s despicable references to a man and a woman murdered by their son. This is not a different Trump. This is only the most recent version. Tomorrow, it will be, hard as this might be to believe, worse.

Am I, in this prediction, suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome?

Justice Ginsburg was vilified for daring to focus on the close connection between what one says and who one is.

I’ll bet you did the same when little Tommy was 4, 8, and especially 16. That’s not derangement. It’s called decency. Something we want in our kids. And used to expect in our Presidents.

When someone is perpetually indecent, responding is a full-time job. Not to counter, not to be “deranged” would be crazy.

In 2025, if you don’t have Trump Derangement Syndrome, you’re not paying attention.

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