Home and Away

College recruiting, corporate management and consulting carried me across much of the United States. Although some of that travel prompted future visits, a suitcase in one hand, briefcase in the other wasn’t the most satisfying way to explore cities and countryside. There are cities I enjoy, mountains worth the travel, lovely ocean sides. Driving across the plains or open lands remind me how different our life experiences are from fellow citizens.

The Midwest continues to be where I am comfortable living my life. Green spaces, cities, the Great Lakes, agriculture, forests blend well. We considered moving during our careers, imagining our lives in desert lands or other river cities, even one Canadian possibility. Except for Canada, I don’t regret passing up those changes.

Something moved me in the childhood lands of Pat Conroy and Flannery O’Connor. The charm of old Savannah and the Lowcountry areas of Georgia and South Carolina felt homey. I wanted to stay for a year, maybe two, and learn about the rhythm of that region’s residents. To walk where azaleas and trees blossomed in March, to witness the loggerhead turtle’s journey, to try Sunday church once more, to celebrate holidays differently.  Biscuits tasted better, seafood fresher, crayfish better than a slab of whitefish. 

Weeks in Maine challenged my Midwest assumptions that farms were farms, days on the shore universal, that New England was an area of wealth and education. Spending weeks in a London flat introduced reality to daydreams of living in a congested metropolitan area. Nearly two weeks in a small Irish community felt nice, but I wanted to go home. This stretch of the south felt like it could be home as if the slower movement of my mature life would be acceptable in a place that has nurtured so many artistic folks.

When the roof needs repair, spring returns to stormy winter, property taxes increase, daydreams happen about a mythical life in a charming setting where all seems lovely. But roofs deteriorate there, summer temps and humidity can be high, history and today’s politics lean away from my values. Best to keep Savannah on my writing retreat list and my home in the Midwest. I’ll be back with a notebook, laptop, and good walking shoes during azalea season.

Happy Clean It All Up Season

Plastic pumpkins should have been stored in the Halloween bin. A pilgrim waits to be moved with the other handful of Thanksgiving decorations. We’ll need at least a half day to put all the Christmas pretties in the basement. The outdoor lights are red and white, so they will wear well until Valentines Day.

Even after reducing decorative stuff by many storage containers, there is so much stored.  It’s hard to trash or give away generations of ornaments, candles gifted by folks now passed, a goofy collection of singing stuffed animals. No family member wants to add these to their holiday decorations, but no one is really okay with giving much away.

New Year’s Day I typically want to write, watch football, chill, but also find my hands impatient to empty the family room of gnomes and the singing animals. The dining room table could be stripped of a tablecloth and brought back to its normal size. I am done with the beloved clutter. Toss the poinsettias. Store the candles. Put away the stockings and hangers. 

Storage bins, filing cabinets, pretty cloth baskets fill ads staging cleaning as invigorating, fun, a natural activity to fill dark winter weeks. With healthy athletic drinks and granola bars also advertised, there is some implication that marketing genius know of a heart-friendly link between snacks and organizing. The whole clean up season is filled with many opportunities to tweak a back moving boxes, many tiny paper cuts or tree hanging hook snags, eye fatigue correcting holiday card lists. 

Forbes, the Cleveland Clinic, Simple and others cite the link between a healthy mind and a clean house. You must look hard to find anything suggesting a tidy house is sign of inferiority. House tidiness or messiness are both probably in one of those twenty-seven signs of dementia or fourteen indicators that you are wearing the wrong size shoes. 

Let those who find new bins and organizing systems satisfying spend what’s left of the holiday dollars. If the tree is put away before friends come over for football’s great Sunday extravaganza and the boxes are near the storage area by Valentine’s Day, consider yourself owner of a moral victory. 

Warning: The Easter Bunny will not leave eggs in red or green felt holiday socks left hanging anywhere in the house. Even those with pastel plastic grass sticking out the top. Do not insult the little creature.

Information Blast Zone

A group of creative writers gathered for our annual retreat this weekend. A few of us had been local government news reporters and all of us are voracious followers of news media. For a second year, we admitted to not watching much national coverage or reading news that could be interesting. We frequently skipped the big stories which seemed redundant yet not very thorough. Like almost two-thirds of Americans, we are all tired of news.

News sometimes appeared to be repurposed to be featured many times. You might read it in an online tonight, see in in print the next day, see the same copy in a second online newspaper a day later then featured on an electric media show. How old is the information? How important? How close to the information’s original offering is the rejiggered version. Hard to know.

The 2023 Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism found that Americans’ fatigue with news continues to climb. The Pew Research 2020 study reported that two-thirds of us feel that fatigue. Here’s Reuters current facts:

• More than one in ten Americans report turning news off. 
• 41% of women and 34% of men say that they sometimes, or often, avoid news. 
• While the study is global, American specific data also show specific areas of fatigue including about one-third of participants staying away from news of the war in Ukraine, forty percent avoiding national politics and an equal percentage not watching coverage of social justice.

There isn’t a lot of information offered about why the numbers are dropping except that news followers are staying within their chosen silos and going to news that is more comfort than challenging. If a viewer doesn’t like the Trump story, watch international news. If it is climate change coverage that is overwhelming, maybe the stock market is more interesting. And when all the breaking news color bands feel like a repeat of yesterday, maybe home remodeling shows or sports coverage or reality television provide a break. 

Folks who study how Americans absorb news point to the 1980 CNN effect–broadcasting news twenty-four hour a day, seven days a week. If you hear a story once, you’re going to hear it possibly every hour, maybe half hour. The 2022 Berkley Economic Review called the CNN model a market failure intensifying conspicuous bias that results in inefficient coverage of other news. Policy makers and decision makers are impacted by the continuous messages.

Jon Stewart’s observation may be the best. His opinion is that the 24/7 news cycle elevates the stakes of every moment putting the public in the “information blast zone.”  And there we get tired.

National Day of Mourning

Is it time for America to create a National Day of Mourning for gun violence victims?

Think about that.

Memorial Day I wrote a piece about how children’s funerals create memories that cannot be forgotten and my difficulty in finding peace in my relationship with God. Sitting in a neighborhood church the evening of September 11, 2001, feels like the last time the ritual of praying and singing in community brought calm. The day the world changed, and innocent people became the hunted of those with evil in their plans.

 My final paragraph of the original work was my main message: If there is a way to create calm or comfort for those mourning in Uvalde, please let that happen. For the near future, lets put guns in the safes and do gun related political theater in backrooms. These are days to stand with the grieving and honor the children and their teachers. 

Tuesday stats about gun violence across the country over Memorial Weekend were published. Wednesday a lone gunman took lives in Tulsa. And local schools cancelled their last days of school because of shooter threats. Babies being buried in one state and grieving beginning in others. The circle doesn’t close. Violent gun carriers, particularly those with assault guns, don’t give us a day off.

Perhaps it is time for America to create a National Day of Mourning for gun victims. Place the day somewhere in a quiet month like March where it won’t morph into a cookout festival. And make it a Wednesday so the travel industry won’t advertise three-day weekends in happy places. Mark the day as special by pairing it with a mandatory national service initiative. Support those who grieve and remember the potential our nation lost in each of those unnatural deaths. If there is no way to control the killing, let us at least honor our dead and remember their names.

On Giving

Recently, I became acquainted with a young Afghan refugee who has been resettled in the US. She’d only been in the US a few days when I met her on a bitterly cold day in February. I had no idea what she might have or need, so I brought a scarf and warm mittens, some toiletries, tea and snacks. The resettlement agency had given her appropriate winter clothes. Within a few weeks they’d found an apartment for her and given her basic furnishings.

Despite our age difference (she’s 24 and I’m in my sixties), we got on well. She had worked with the US embassy and her English is good. I’ve tutored immigrants learning English for years and am aware of some common cultural disconnects. So much of teaching English involves explaining American history and culture as well as grammar and punctuation. My intention is to be a friend, someone she can trust with questions about confusing customs.

When I mentioned meeting her, a number of women I knew immediately asked what household items she might need. Like me, they’ve accumulated a lot of stuff over the years and would be happy to give it to someone who can use it. We all have so much. We’d never miss an extra end table, coffeepot, or winter coat. I had the same impulse, but thought I’d wait to see what she wanted and needed. 

Her apartment’s furnishings seem sparse by American standards, but she was delighted by her things. She’s accustomed to sharing the kitchen with several families and told me she’s never had so many clothes. I recalibrated my instinct to offer her a bunch of stuff. Should I push my aesthetic on her? Maybe she prefers simplicity. Would the donations from my friends and me make her feel inadequate or signal that she seems poor by American standards? 

I’m aware I often overthink things. Maybe she’d love to have more for her apartment. The simple generous reaction friends have had—how can I help—is a good one. Why wouldn’t we help when we have so much? Shouldn’t we?

Yet I know the dynamic between givers and receivers can feel unbalanced. Uncomfortable for the recipient. I’ve already seen my new friend’s deep sense of hospitality. When I visited her and another Afghan family she’s friends with, they insisted on serving me a full meal. Although I wasn’t hungry, I knew it would be rude to refuse, so I ate with them. Similarly, when I gave her the handful of things culled from my closet and kitchen at our first meeting, she gave me a new pair of earrings she had, something I suspect she’d bought for herself.

I try to think how I’d feel if the roles were reversed. Would I simply be grateful, because I needed things and someone cared enough to help? Or would I feel awkward about the charity? In time would my pride be pricked so I became resentful? Trying to be sensitive, not stingy is confusing.