Ecologists call it edge effect: the border between two worlds is where life concentrates.

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A twist. Starting with the writing advice this time:

forget about centers,

find the edges.

*

Turning on my local NPR radio station, I heard rain was coming. Fast and furious. I glanced at the radar on my phone’s weather app, nothing but colors in a swirl; the forecast was rain the next three hours. Abruptly, the voice on the radio changed, “Damn, everyone get to your basement now!” I could make out the storm sirens starting up in the adjoining town. All things hinted at extreme weather, I mean, hosts on NPR never say, “damn.” I noticed an eerie greenish cloud bank in the distance.

Before I considered taking cover, I went next door to check on Neon Blare, my neighbor. Not unusual for me. Neon was vulnerable because of his advanced age and his need to use a walker. However, that’s not entirely why I went to check on him. I went because he could read clouds.

Neon was already talking to me when I walked in: “I know why you’re here and don’t believe ‘em about the rain. Maybe south of here a hundred feet or so, but nothing’s gonna happen right here where we are.” Neon was roughly eighty-three to ninety years old, but, and no offense to him, he looked much older. He had a slow, creaky limp and a hunched back. His arms were full of bluish veins, and he chewed and swallowed tobacco, which surely accounted for his bad cough, soupy skin, and bad breath. He was impeccably sincere, though, and was, without doubt, a savant-level weather interpreter. When I first moved into the area, he would come by once in a while when I was out in the yard and talk about the weather and share his predictions. Without being pushy or anything, he would check back in a few days, maybe a week later, and say, “Did I, or didn’t I, tell you it’d rain?” Over time, I understood Neon was consistently correct. Well, today, his saying the approaching storm wouldn’t happen seemed just too much. I tried to say, “But the radio said ....” That’s all the further I got. Neon was grinning, “The radio said! Ha, listen to you, don’t make me laugh. What do they know? They wouldn’t know the difference between being outside and inside. The weather has a smell, a speed, a pressure telling you everything. Ground-level clues, not radars, reveal what you need to know.”

I half-smiled, knowing I was being an idiot, showing a lack of respect, but still I replied, “I mean, sure, but come on, Neon, you can’t be serious today?”

Neon looked back to the sky one more time, to ease my mind, I suspect. “No, Sir, sorry, no rain falling here. The wind’s not swishing enough; you smell that? Nothing humid in the odor, and for sure, the color in the air is all wrong. I mean, look, the birds are still flying around. Sorry, nothing exciting here.”

“Really? No way you can know that; there’s just no way,” I said, not so interested in the storm anymore, but wondering how, with the dark clouds nearby, he could boldly sit back and calmly challenge the radio forecasters’ predictions. The National Weather Service had to be capable of something. Heck, as far as I could tell, the jet stream had descended and was preparing to flow straight through our town, flinging tornadoes, cats, and dogs. I almost wanted to pout; I was so confused.

“What’d you come over and ask for then, huh? If you didn’t want to believe me, why check? If you want to waste your time, go on back and hide in your little basement,” Neon chuckled.

I replied, “Neon, nothing personal, I mean I do believe you, but no one can figure out weather to the very inch.”

“Like I said,” Neon started saying, “What’d you ask for? This ain’t rocket science; it just isn’t going to rain on our block; it’s not that big a deal. I wish it would rain. I need water for my cucumbers.”

Well, I noticed by the time we were done talking, the storm was whirling away about a quarter mile from us; I even heard a couple glass balls on people’s weathervanes being blown up by lightning bolts. Later that day, folks shared photos of golf-ball-sized hail. But yet, Neon and I were only having to contend with a light shower, well, more of a dim mist really, and maybe just one minute at that. The cement almost as moist as morning dew, maybe. I smirked at Neon while the light mist fell though, honestly expecting more, “Guess you weren’t totally right, huh, Neon?”

“Humph, was off by thirty feet. I could have sworn we wouldn’t get even one drop. I must’ve missed something in the wind or in the chirps of the Wood Thrushes. See Herman Vane’s driveway, though? Dry as dust,” Neon said.

He was right: Herm’s drive beside us was dry. Then Neon added, “Always remember, the end of the storm has to be somewhere. Consider the edges, not the center.”

Marveling at Neon’s remark, I said, “What are you, some sort of Shaman, or Monk, or one of those Buddhist Satvas?”

Pulling out a new plug of tobacco to stuff in his mouth, he added, “You mean a Bodhi Satva? Maybe, maybe I am, but I doubt it. I just watch and observe the world around me.” He went back to chewing, swallowing, and watching clouds.

He was old, sure, but peaceful and fluent, almost animal in the way he moved between the center and the edges of his world.

I’m part of the , a grouping of scribes casting thoughts out into the cyberworld.

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I’ll start this way. Wendell Berry wrote: “There’s an important difference between telling the right story and telling the story right.” Good intentions aren’t everything, but they are significant. Being “right” has limitations—meaning: being right doesn’t mean you necessarily ever get anything done. In a similar way, we know figuring out reality, taken far enough, tips into fiction. Albert Camus hinted: “science that was to teach me everything ends up in a hypothesis.” A leap of faith is not a quip, but a query. Do you stay a course—following hints and facts to the unknown?

A trail of tears runs wet from lies and unfaithful gestures. When chopping fresh yellow onions, tears come out of me. The tears aren’t dramatic; they’re real. In many ways, the world could use an onion-flushing, a scrubbing of our tear ducts, a cleansing of our motivations glutted with silt and coarseness.

Truth is elusive as a Red-tail hawk twists out of view in the sky. Each step forward feels like the title to Jonathan Safran Foer’s book, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. Explosions in the ear. Sudden, helpless gasps which stop the breath and silence the ears. There are normally many truths at once. One convenient, others difficult. The comfortable one doesn’t account for much—a sort of glittery makeup on the outside—a dog is barking. What we crave is why. Why is the dog barking? I discovered an explanation of useful truth versus dramatic truth in The Score, by C. Thi Nguyen:

“We must assume there’s a gap between the methods of science that lead to good science and the methods that lead to more publications. Second, more publications lead to higher prestige and better jobs. Third, young scientists are more likely to imitate the scientists with the higher job status.”

This encapsulates a dangerous loop. Status replacing knowledge, the easy path dressed up as the harder one. We arrive, again, at telling the right story versus telling the story right. Makes me feel like I rubbed my eyes with the juice of onions.

“Reality” is tricky, like a rabbit pulled out of a hat. Looks can be deceiving. What’s true today is fool’s gold tomorrow—sometimes hidden, sometimes camouflaged. Inside the cottonwood tree are stars. When I first discovered this, I was surprised. Try it yourself, crack a small branch, and inside you’ll uncover a five-pointed star. When I spot a lone cottonwood in the middle of Kansas, for instance, I recognize persistence. A suspension of the impossible. A cradle for the holy. An actual galaxy.

People tell me, “You don’t look like a publisher.” Most things don’t announce what they are hiding. What's inside the onion we can't know, and what's inside the cottonwood we didn't see. At first glance, a Cottonwood looks like most trees on a riverbank—rough bark, cotton-heavy air in June, roots hunting water. Who knows where else you’ll find a five-pointed star. Maybe a round stone you find on a creekside will be a geode, splashed with color inside.

There were a couple of behemoth Cottonwoods along the Kaw River when I lived in North Lawrence, Kansas. Each caused me to slow down and think. Something about being by them, touching them, provided a healing touch. As if they were giant acupuncture needles slipped into my uncertain soul, displacing my fears and doubts about the future with natural courage. Not like turquoise, but they felt as bright and bold. For a year or two, I developed an empathy with their struggles to grow, similar to finding my own place in this world. What was the exact feeling? I’m not sure, but I was on a journey to discover the extra part you can add to ordinary. I was searching the earth for hidden stars. This coincided with the beginning of my publishing life.

People assume that creativity and writing get easier over time, this is rarely true. In fact, writing is a way of narrowing your choices; having too much freedom and time usually doesn’t work. A bit like fitness, what was hard gets easier, but that’s because you’re in better shape, so you rise to a new level of challenge and so on. There’s this belief that writing, or creativity, is luck and it’s some passion which clicks on a whim. The secret recipe is putting in 10,000 hours and it’s telling a story the right way as much as telling the right story. There’s a difference between good writing and how many views you get. See Nguyen's quote above again. Being told you’re wrong and not minding is part of the path some call luck. Noticing the invisible when others think you’re just seeing things.

If you are never completely alone with your own thoughts, you will never come to any valuable realizations. The idea that some people may not have their very own thoughts and opinions seems sad and unbelievable to me. Every yellow brick road is paved with failure and fantasy. Like bread dough, slow kneading and time reveal how sour can be baked into something we enjoy right out of the oven. Some days, I stand in a spring creek and understand the water has flowed straight from the Milky Way. This didn’t happen because fortune randomly smiled, but because I kept showing up until the water felt like home.

The hard thing to do is usually the right thing to do, which means to write well is to go inside, to find what makes an onion cause tears, to see the stars inside the cottonwood. To examine closely and not take shortcuts. Good writing takes time and increasingly more and more effort. Try to explode auras. Not as flashes of light, but to recognize stars and the variety of light already all around us.

I’m a member of the Sharing comma splices here and there along with all the others.

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“On a cloud I saw a child.
And he laughing said to me” — William Blake

Sounds of innocence and delight; sometimes echoes travel twice, then twice, and twice again, through blood and tears, the unknown and the known.

My wildest & widest visions open my eyes; too many facts, figures, and ideas are made up by invisible people in power. People who formulate laws and rules which determine our farming practices, gender roles, and financial futures, which end up frustrating me. But, at this moment, now, I’m thinking of songs of innocence—of whether prayers are real and whether blessings might become more fully real, and whether noises I heard as a child were what I really thought they were, as real as I believe, as wild as I hoped. Were they possibly formed of once-upon-a-time magic? Did those long ago imaginary games in the backyard behind our house teach me anything? I find myself moving closer and closer to yes.

During a late March walk today, I noticed the unmistakable shrill of not just one Bald Eagle but another and another, as well as the dark dots of many a crow in the tree tops along the Kickapoo River.

So many sounds lapping like drips of aroma, everywhere, around me, unpeeling, spring’s arrival is in the air. Primal purrings, the first snaps of color out of the earth, a child giggling, a tulip bulb rising, bright colored birds returning. Late winter moonlight glowing against swift night clouds, the earth a thing of delight. My mind returns to Blake: “Tyger Tyger, burning bright, In the forests of the night...”

I wonder about my place in this wide world. I take notice of conversations and thoughts about solitude and catastrophe these days. Snow falls the night before April first, and overnight snowdrifts have formed in the wind and walled me in amidst the driftless hills. I’m reminded nothing rising falls equally. There are definitely opposite and unequal reactions. There’s nothing new about any of this. Nothing unusual about how I’ve been both unkind and kind. I’ve done unto others as I’d not want done to me at times. Of course, I have also wished and wanted the best for people. I’ve tried to make a difference, but who knows. Maybe this is too innocent? I’d rather trust than distrust. I heard someone say, “grief is the receipt of love.” This seems fair and full of honest tears.

I’ll go out with more Blake, my innocence in need of a little more charm—

“And I stain’d the water clear,
And I wrote my happy songs'
Every child may joy to hear”1

My past, present, and future are created of, and made of, and based on this world being full of surprise, and joy, for every child of every age to hear.

As the “Car Talk” brothers used to say of their association to NPR: even though I’m sure they all cringe when I point this out, I’m a member of the .

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I am an animal, and my senses are alert—teeth and saliva, nose and ears, all the better to smell this earth with!

The wind is blowing fiercely tonight. Wailing coarse over icy ground. Ground that gets lifted and moved between winter and spring. Soft like pigment on a watercolor painting—land which clings to the sides of snowdrifts along the roads, looking soiled—brown and black and crusty. I wouldn’t say this is beautiful, but to each their own.

Facts are facts: here in Iowa, we live with topsoil. That is, what’s left of our crumbly and loose layer of earth carried in slow, cloudy formations down our watery ways, south, never to return again. As spring eeks in, mud and moisture glaze the land, crocus blooms huddle tight to the ground. The tips of twigs squeeze open, and leaves furl out. From somewhere out of the night, Robins form Rounds together. Squirrels make Scurrys, Crows create Murders, so many Gaggles of Geese overhead, a few Sandhill Cranes call out, and Knots of Frogs will soon begin. I’m told nitrates gush into our drinking water at alarming rates. Phosphorus, too. Like a pawn, I drink and pray for the best. What else am I to do? I declare a resounding and definitive “Yes,” to all of this, just like Carl Sandburg: “I am the keeper of the zoo: I say yes and no: I sing and kill and work: I am a pal of the world: I came from the wilderness.”

Inexplicable is the word for the day: This morning breaks dawn, goes light blue, a thin sliver of yellow-orange shimmers as though one single strand of Northern Lights. I gawk at the world each morning, at all this full-speed-ahead creation, and understand the world is an exquisite whirlpool of elements. My mind, one step removed from speaking in tongues, offers the world a Cross Eyed Blue Amen!

I’m a member of the that hosts an ever-growing gaggle of authors putting words together on issues with ties to Iowa.

I imagine a fair amount. I have a habit of waking up and staring outside to start my day. I also spend a lot of my time working, but these meditations, these Substack Intensive-style postings tend to help me align my confidence in a world which requires I put so much of my trust in others day after day. Today is the last post in this series.

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Sounds of innocence and delight; sometimes echoes travel twice, then twice, and twice again, through blood and tears, the unknown and the known.

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Is it just me, or does common sense seem like an endangered species these days? It feels more like a trap of “bad faith.” We’ve given perpetual positive feedback a slight lead in our conversations. There seems a loss of individuality and a love of standardized living. Our artificial inventions are getting the better of us. Humans hopped on a roundabout and spun off crooked.

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I stirred up in my sleep.

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The wind is blowing fiercely tonight. Wailing coarse over icy ground. Ground that gets lifted and moved between winter and spring. Soft like pigment on a watercolor painting—land which clings to the sides of snowdrifts along the roads, looking soiled—brown and black and crusty. I wouldn’t say this is beautiful, but to each their own.

Facts are facts: here in Iowa, we live with topsoil. That is, what’s left of our crumbly and loose layer of earth carried in slow, cloudy formations down our watery ways, south, never to return again. As spring eeks in, mud and moisture glaze the land, crocus blooms huddle tight to the ground. The tips of twigs squeeze open, and leaves furl out. From somewhere out of the night, Robins form Rounds together. Squirrels make Scurrys, Crows create Murders, so many Gaggles of Geese overhead, a few Sandhill Cranes call out, and Knots of Frogs will soon begin. I’m told nitrates gush into our drinking water at alarming rates. Phosphorus, too. Like a pawn, I drink and pray for the best. What else am I to do. I declare a resounding and definitive “Yes,” to all of this, just like Carl Sandburg: “I am the keeper of the zoo: I say yes and no: I sing and kill and work: I am a pal of the world: I came from the wilderness.”

Inexplicable is the word for the day: This morning breaks dawn, goes light blue, a thin sliver of yellow-orange shimmers as though one single strand of Northern Lights. I gawk at the world each morning, at all this full-speed-ahead creation, and understand the world is an exquisite whirlpool of elements. My mind, one step removed from speaking in tongues, offers the world a Cross Eyed Blue Amen!

Share Ice Cube Press: Publishing, Writing, and Smart Life Secrets

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“Perhaps when we die our names are taken
from us by a divine magnet and are free
to flutter here and there within the bodies
of birds. I’ll be a simple crow
who can reach the top of Antelope Butte.”—Jim Harrison

I didn’t know at the time, but when I was a little kid, the creek water I was drinking in the woods turned out to be mostly septic drainage. To me, the water looked clean, and the flavor fine. I was inventing my reality. We slowly learn as we grow older, looks can be deceiving. Closer examination begins to matter. Misdirection can be a glorious swerve, but losing trust in ourselves is never alright.

These days, I think a fair amount about the passing of time—mid-life, near-life, tomorrows, yesterdays, today, and all-of-a-suddens. Some of my thoughts include:
1) Details become as complex as geological time. What do I mean? The more you know, the less you know.
2) Saying something will be “easy” is a top ten joke.
3) Most things are not what we think. At least one creation story declares we live on the back of a turtle. Poet Gary Snyder wrote, “I pledge allegiance to the soil of Turtle Island.” Our world a turtle? Why not. If I tell you finding the color blue is difficult, I’m not lying. I’ve spent the last thirty years searching for cyan, but that’s a post for another day.

Let’s confer with blackbirds.

I was wade fishing one of my favorite spring-fed creeks of the Driftless when a Raven landed atop a tall Cottonwood. I thought what brings you to me now? Attentive, all I heard was a creaky CAW. Then another variation, CA-CAW. Next, a pebble showed up in my palm. Well, not really, but I wouldn’t have been surprised. I watched two monarch butterflies flutter in the air dapping up some common milkweed. More importantly, a hatch of decent-sized caddis flies had begun, and I cast to some rising brown trout. I forgot about the bird for the moment. I focused on water. On space, not time. My mind silent, but of course, silence comes in ten thousand variations—the way the water flows, rising brown trout, my daughter grinning, my wife watching sea otters, facts in a story I might write equal to its fiction. One may think: is this too much silence, too much hope? Maybe, but I’m not alone in these things; they’re creation in action, they’re the world’s refrain:

All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful1…

I was lured in by creation stories a long time ago, or maybe they discovered me? Either way, I’m convinced everything has a beginning; I’m not so convinced everything has an ending.

And there’s this:

When you speak to a Raven, or an Angel, or a Spirit, they pass along what you say. So that your noises or thoughts become a sort of braille: well-felt and tangible rosaries of the wild, beads of earthly elements—fire, water, earth, and air—echoes of a forgotten language.

W.S. Merwin wrote about this, about lost and long ago language in his poetry, “A breath leaves the sentences and does not come back … they know that such things are no longer believed”2 Exactly. Secrets older than words. A long time passing.

Often we think of unique pre-historical, archetypal myths, start to trust them, want to believe them, but are told, “Oh, never you mind such things.” At least I know I’ve had such thoughts as long as I have lived. I’ve often wondered, What have we done with our silence? Wondered, how is it that what we believed in for hundreds of years is suddenly of no use? If I pursue these ideas, am I being too creative? Too independent, too much this, too much that…I can recall teachers, friends, co-workers, others saying: “nonesuch nonsense never you mind.”3 Turns out teachers and leaders prefer conformity and control. Prefer people to be seen not heard, to follow the leader. Wouldn’t you know it, this is essentially the role of public education these days. George Orwell wrote in 1984, “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” With this rejection of evidence, “the party” can do as they please. These days, in my state, this is obvious—for instance, our rising cancer rates and soil erosion mean nothing. Our libraries are being “cleansed.” Our population picked over. We are told we feed the world. Reminded we are doing valuable work; the “Lord’s work,” we are the brightest and the smartest. We are loyal, we eat our beef and our chicken, and most importantly, we’ve learned to reject the evidence of our eyes and ears.

Where do I go from here, you might wonder? Fortunately, there are places to go. I want to make a roundabout prayer for Iowa.

Maybe I’m a dreamer, or maybe I’m crazy, or maybe I’m just mixing up two John Lennon songs, but I believe creation myths are necessary for explaining the living. Fox steals the sun, Clouds bathe the soul, Raven finds polluted water and unleashes a fortnight of bright red dawns, the way the moon winks tin at night. At this point, I’m no longer just talking about Ravens—but prophets, tricksters, creators. Heroes with a thousand faces4—independent journalists, small presses, folk musicians, populist political candidates, public land trusts, believers in land ethics, instigators of civil disobedience. Anyone who still accepts what they see and what they hear.

Let me offer a quick reminder of the once-grand region between two rivers we now call Iowa. A smooth blend of ecoregions: tallgrass prairie, oak savanna, healthy meandering streams and rivers, vast wetlands, diverse wildlife and natural habitat sustained by seasons, wildfires, floods.

If we listen and recall what once was—before our curvy streams were straightened, the wetlands drained, the Oaks cut, the prairie yanked and unrooted, the possibilities are astounding. Iowa hasn’t always been corn and beans and mushy animal waste turning things into cancer and erosion. Hasn’t always been field after subsidized field of eerie silence, where no insects move. A place where our young people flee for their lives from. At the rate we’re going there will be two options: ignorance, or fear.

Most of us know Zeno’s paradox. How Achilles can never catch the tortoise because the distance to be travelled is constantly halved and halved on into infinity. Our brains have limits of comprehension. We are only as good as the questions we can ask and the observations we can make. Quantum physics is essentially the mergence of philosophy and magic realism. Afterall, this high science has proudly produced …

ta-dum,

the uncertainty principle!

Where does this leave me as I confer with blackbirds? Well, uncertainty.

I was thinking the other day that we never catch up with our past. No matter how much we slow down. The CA-CAWs I hear might be my mind inside out. “A Crow is impatient,” explained Barry Lopez, “a Raven, they take time, can wait out dew on their wings in the morning.” I feel like this brings me back to silence. Watching, listening, believing. When walking and wading in creeks, I feel most alive, and where I come the closest to the uncertainty principle.

What do I want most? To love and to care for others, to experience joy. Where people are confident enough to create and make mistakes. I want to live in a place where I know kids can swim in water that is safe to swim in. Where chemicals don’t contaminate the soil. Where hospital cancer wards aren’t overlooking football fields, which are sponsored by the very Big Ag corporations which are causing the kids to have cancer in the first place. (This is a straight-up hat tip to an event where I heard Chris Jones speaking.)

I appreciate the world is uncertain. When I was little, what I thought was clean water wasn’t. But I was fine, and that’s the point: I was free and able to develop my mind with what I saw, what I heard, what I thought. We need to let the world create, not be controlled by greed or a ruling “class” telling us how and what to be. Not control our language, tell us what rules to follow.

Somehow, someway, believe beyond yourself. Beyond facts, beyond sounds, beyond senses, into stillness and the fullness of silence. Converse with Blackbirds. Fortunately, fluency is not required in any of this.

What’s the writing tip in this column? I think it’s this quote from Thelonius Monk, “The loudest noise in the world is silence.” Good writing shows up when we aren’t trying to write, like humming when we don’t even know we’re humming. Respect quietude. I return to the poem at the beginning, “I’ll be a simple crow who can reach the top of Antelope Butte.”

In the spirit of this substack, I’d encourage you to contribute and spread the word of ’s campaign for Iowa Secretary of Agriculture in the state of Iowa. Vote for him in the Democratic party primary and then again in the State Election this November. This elected position is definitely not just for farmers. It’s a public office for a reason. To quote Woody Guthrie, “this land was made for you and me.”

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As much mirage as fact, I am part of the a group of authors examing the in’s and out’s of Iowa.

“Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them.”—George Eliot

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In some ways, this column is as ordinary as a post can be. Simple and straightforward, but looks can be deceiving. Also. I’m not a Jungian expert; however, I came across a couple of things he wrote recently that relate to what I want to share—“People will do anything to avoid facing their own souls.” I agree. He also wrote, “Who looks inside, awakes.” Living is complicated.

While pretending to be oh-so busy living my so-called meaningful life, I made a grave mistake. Something I’m embarrassed to admit. Although once I reveal my error, I doubt I’ll be considered unusual.

I’ve discovered most people move along, joking with their children, their parents, their elders, their in-laws, good friends, aunts and uncles, avoiding topics, conveniently forgetting issues, not saying things which would make the most difference if said out loud. Things such as: I’m proud of you. I admire you. God forbid: I love you. And if done, allowed to settle, not immediately disrupted with a joke, or some passive-aggressive and sarcastic quip.

I’ve been no different. I’m a member of the too-little-too-late club, singing Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi, “… you don’t know what you’ve got / Till it’s gone…” about paving paradise. This year, as I do at Christmas time, I stood by my parents' graveside, offering them a brief year-in-review, tossing spadefuls of coffee beans, and while I read my mom’s name etched in stone, I realized my mistake. A classic should have, would have, could have moment, now turned Catch-22.

What should I have done years ago instead of pretending my life was so busy and too hectic? I should have said three words with direct eye contact, holding her hands the length of one full breath <an inhale in/an exhale out>.

For the record, I believe love can be simmered into a slow-cooked stew, kneaded into homemade bread, churned into vanilla ice cream, but all the same, I should have used the simple power of words one time—straight up, no jive.

Above: My mother's mother passed away giving birth to her, she was then brought up by an aunt (Jimmie) and her husband (Joe) in South Texas ranch country near Goliad. I never got the feeling it was an easy life. Her life included standing in front of moving cattle to round them up, a lot time with her grandmother, learning how to cook, do needle craft, and excel in school, all while wondering, I'm sure, where life might take her. She ended up at the University of Texas in Austin, married and left her close-knit family for the Midwest, then traveled widely the latter half of her life to at least seventy-five countries, every continent, every ocean, and almost every sea. She enjoyed telling her family back "home" where and what she saw when she could. 

You’ve probably guessed the one thing I should have done by now.

In clear English, I should have said, “Mom, I love you,” which, in translation, could have meant so many things. I’ll try this one mixture of the ordinary and heroic: I never understood well enough all the tiny things, the bold thoughts, the many meals you made me, each freshly fetched from your heart. When you served potatoes it was a decision to make me happy: cut and boiled, or fried and crisp, layered with cheese, served some way you thought I, the whole family would enjoy. You’d thought it out, then sat and watched us eat, smiled, and when I ate and oohed and ahhed, no doubt those noises made you feel your time was worth the effort. I like to believe all those moments, those licking-the-last-drops, the asking-for-more, every thank you, each equal to a love you. And for so many days in a row, one after another, we sat and ate and I know from time to time I looked over and grinned, and I hope they did too and I know right now to just be talking about cooking sounds somehow like your place was in the kitchen, but that’s not true, just one thing which comes to mind because you were a Walt Whitman poem so full of multitudes, containing all the flavors and joy I needed growing up. When I was scared our car might not make it up the steep and rickity Gilbert Street hill, you somehow knew to turn us around because you’d heard a car’s gear was stronger in reverse, I should have cheered a little louder and given you a higher, higher, higher high five when we crested the top and you kept our trip on time. No sweat at all. And: I didn’t realize then, entirely, the one you married made so few decisions, and, this didn’t make him bad, but this did make you more alone and him more child than grown because whenever it was most convenient, he seemed to go “away” and thus you were braver, stronger, and more of what we ever needed than I ever fully knew. I figured this out, because when you passed away, my family and relatives were less than in every way—less noticeably kind to me and others, less clean, less obvious, less talkative, less able to be who you and I thought they really were. They had followed your kindness and generosity but never took to heart who you really thought they’d be, completely. It became a mystery to me. They were cons, lies at least, and cheats. Who’d have thunk it: I suspect the neighbors never knew, but I bet, the pets knew, the store clerks, and for sure the empty kitchen knew, the lonely plants knew, the piles of saggy laundry knew, the slack and unswept porch knew, the cabinets of the kitchen knew. I didn’t realize all you did along the way, and that was the fault in my stars, to steal a phrase. And, of course, it goes without saying, to have adopted a child (me) was not your first choice, but it was an excellent choice, generous indeed and, finally, some say love burns crazy quick and wild, but I don’t believe so, rather love flows slow and far and long and all the way to the sea, then back up in the sky, then down and all over again and again, only stopping whence we forget about the water, and the sea, and the weather, and then, only then, do things go dry.

When I was very young, on long drives across the country, I’d say I was bored, and my mom would say, look out the window and watch the scenery. I frequently think of this. Of looking out at the wide world passing by, but I also ponder the immensity of all the time I can remember now, of all my many aunts and uncles, friends, and family, all the variety, the wonders, the good luck tossed upon me, of all the many lifetimes I feel I’ve lived. And although I doubt my mom ever read On The Road, I think she’d have embraced what Kerouac wrote. Can hear her reading parts to my brother and me as we settle in for a bedtime story—“all that road … where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars’ll be out, and don’t you know that God is Pooh Bear? The evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, …” when we were little my mom would close the book she was reading, stand up and say, as she turned off the bedroom light, “Good night, I love you, I’ll see you in the morning.”

Writing this, I feel a mix of time and emotions. A twisting toward the country of old men. What do I mean? These days, I have thoughts and moments when I can’t tell if what’s happening to me is aging or things changing. Although I’m not sure either matters, because I agree with Gretel Ehrlich, who wrote: “Honesty is stronger medicine than sympathy.”

This seems the right place to end, but of course it’s not, because I still haven’t done the one thing I set out to do.

To say once, so perfectly, if she were here and could close her eyes to hear me would know without any doubt the full meaning of, “I love you, Mom.”

If, for some reason, you’re still wondering, what’s the writing tip in this column? Here it is: Don’t wait, or be afraid to share what you most believe in. Words have power. Instead of being scared about what could go wrong, focus on what could go right.

The path to my Community Supported Literature Shares (CSL) program is circuitous. I think you’ll enjoy the twists, turns, and reflections along the way.

I crave a meandering trout stream, eddies, undercut banks, and riffles; some believe I take my fly rods for walks more than I fish. When I venture out though, I feel in the midst of the catch of my lifetime. Then December arrives, and I get trapped in winter shadows whilst they stretch across fresh snow between leafless trunks of trees, the world silent, bitter blacks-and-whites, narrated by pileated woodpeckers and a pair of distant barred owls. This particular Substack is a gesture of thanks—an offering to words, writing, and books. In praise of community and region, readers and writers.

When I think of the many writers I’ve met in person and what they’ve meant to me, there are four who come to mind most deeply—Barry Lopez, William Stafford, Terry Tempest Williams, and Gary Snyder.1 Do I believe any one of them are aware of their influence, recall ever meeting me, unlikely? Each involved brief encounters, borderline accidental.

In 1984, I entered a “lecture” hall in Iowa City, told I’d enjoy the speaker, because I liked Thoreau’s Walden. I arrived to hear Barry Lopez, who had authored a book entitled Of Wolves and Men. He spoke about giant landmarks and the language used in vast Arctic landscapes, of geese lifting in unison, of winter counts, but mostly he spoke with a passion I hadn’t heard an adult use before. What he shared and how he shared his fascination with the natural world changed the course of my life from the very moment I left the room that day. He did to me what he said wolves did to him: “The wolf exerts a powerful influence on the human imagination. It takes your stare and turns it back on you.” I went to a couple of his book signings over the years, exchanged a few words and handshakes. I never tired of his tone of voice, use of language, and the environment. I sent him every book, and reviews of his books, I wrote. Each time he sent me a short, eloquently worded postcard, encouraging me to keep up the good work. We exchanged short notes like this about twenty-five years until he passed away near the end of 2020. I still feel grateful he ever took time to reply to me, and cherish the world he opened my senses to.

Years and years ago, now out of print, Northern Lights journal hosted an event in Missoula, Montana, honoring the poet W.S. Merwin. At the time, a young Rick Bass and Terry Tempest Williams were also featured. During a breakout session, I went and listened to Terry Tempest Williams. Her book Coyote’s Canyon had recently come out and captured my imagination. After she finished talking, to my surprise, she walked over to me and exclaimed she’d admired my attentiveness. Was that even a thing? I told her I enjoyed what she’d been talking about, we talked a bit; I mentioned I was having a go at some writing, and she asked for a sample. I gave her an odd “myth” I was working on—words mixed with simple drawings—I’d entitled The Burning of Knuckle Bruised Confusion. A couple months later, she sent an encouraging note, expressing I was onto something, perhaps a new sort of nature-based myth. That day in Missoula, though, I have to admit, I was more interested in getting out of the conference and finding trout on Rock Creek, and didn’t spend much time speaking with her; however, her generosity and feedback took me by surprise and inspired me more than she will ever know. The day her note arrived in the mail, landlocked as I was in Kansas at the time, I felt a renewed sense of hope in what I was doing. Another’s time is truly a gift.

In 1987, I chanced into a poetry reading at a library in Pullman, Washington, by a poet I had never heard of, William Stafford. He was a calm and soothing reader. He talked, particularly about a poem of his, entitled Ask Me. He explained the power of words could change a life if you were lucky, both as a writer and a reader. He told how a dishwasher in Bodega Bay, California, recognized him one evening while he was eating dinner on a dock. He’d come out to thank him for writing Ask Me. Said, honest to god, the poem had changed his life, made him see the world more clearly, listen longer, and slow down. In fact, he and his “now wife” used to read and re-read the poem to each other, slower and slower, each and every word, full of sound. And so now, Stafford read the poem as slowly as he could, to us. I listened, charmed. The pace was superb, maybe even over too soon. Poetry and words, I understood, right then and there, weren’t really just for lovers, or funerals, or ivory towers, but for the living, for those trying the very hardest to make sense of being alive. Every time I read the final line of Ask Me, I nod my head, “What the river says, that is what I say.”

The fourth author is a roundabout one, I admit. I frequently recall the rousing start of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness,” and marvel the book was published by Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s City Lights small-press pocket-book series. Yet this isn’t the full roundabout; the tie is that I’ve been a Jack Kerouac junkie since reading On The Road. When I found out Kerouac also wrote The Dharma Bums and that Gary Snyder was the inspiration for the book’s character Japhy Ryder, I was more or less floored. I was equally interested in the beats as I was in the world of environmental writing—Wendell Berry, Aldo Leopold, Gretel Ehrlich, Sigurd Olson, etc. I had read Snyder’s Turtle Island. In fact, when I sent out my first publication, Sycamore Roots, I had read the essays in his Practice of the Wild four or five times. After mailing out Sycamore Roots, as if by miracle, Snyder sent me a $5 bill to subscribe. After that, we exchanged a few notes. As with the other authors, he encouraged me to push ahead with my ideas. I finally met him, very briefly, in Ames, Iowa. I introduced myself, and he said he recognized my name. Really? We spoke for maybe five minutes. A small thing in his world, but genuine inspiration in mine. This, and the other brief author encounters I’ve had, made me feel I belonged where I’ve always hoped I might end up.

Success is really about understanding the give-and-take of generosity and hope, and then having the courage and persistence to enable them. Sure, part of success is just showing up. Part is believing in others—in the talent of authors. What do I mean? Knowing and appreciating good writing when I read it.

I’ve felt the power of words rush through me many times. I’ll give you an odd example—one sentence in two different spots. The first was inside City Lights bookstore in San Francisco. I noticed, above a door, “Be Not Inhospitable To Strangers Lest They Be Angels In Disguise.” Not complex, but the words and the setting made an impact on me. Then, by surprise, I spotted them again in Paris at Shakespeare & Co., and felt the same. Just words, I know, but surrounded by books and words, so far from home, I felt the power of words in me again.2

I’ve been lucky to live in such a way that words are vital to who I am, are illuminated in my mind. I meet authors at the right times in their lives, and then share remarkable books with readers. As if walking in Wonderland and chancing up on the Cheshire Cat. The ingredients of contagious magic right before me, so that I cast the literary arts in such a way to better understand how we can best live, right here, in the Midwest.

As I write this, it’s hard to believe I started my press during my 20s and I’m now in my 60s.3 Considering I’ve never been trained in business, marketing, publishing, design, editing, economics, publicity, social media, you name it,4 it’s even more strange. I like to believe what I know has come through energy, persistence, observation, listening closely, making mistakes, and motivation. Jim Harrison said something along the lines of, “It gradually occurred to me that it’s not people’s problems that interest me, but their solutions to their problems that interest me.” This has been my crystal ball. I’ve done what I’ve had to do, at a pace I could sustain.5

First and foremost, authors have trusted me. Without this, there would be nothing. Publishing has meant finding and sharing their words. I’ve done this by foraging through submissions, conversations, trusting my curiosity, and, I suppose, sacrificing my wish to be a writer myself. But, as the saying goes, “that’s why they call it work.” There was a point at which the thing I cared about most became the way I needed to make a living. This threshold was not as easy as I’d thought. Looking back, I quote the poem Ask Me again: “Some time when the river is ice ask me / mistakes I have made.”

What have I tried to do best? Be as honest and sincere as I could be. What do I mean? To do for authors what I would want a publisher to do for me. Have I always done this well? No. Are some upset with me? I’m sure they are. Have I told every single author that I can only do so much for them? Yes. Have they always agreed to this limitation from the beginning? Yes. Sadly, I have to say NO more in my life than I say YES. No one is ever completely happy. I could sell 10,000 copies of a book, and the author would almost instantly wonder why I didn’t sell 11,000. I could accept 15 books a year, and someone would still be upset that I didn’t take just one more, even though I’d have literally no time, energy, or money to help them. I get lots of things wrong; sometimes, I know pretty quickly I’ve made a mistake, but when things go right, there is nothing better. My goal is never to have a book fail. But so it goes, right? Some do. Some don’t. The way is easy, strive hard.

I’m finally going to explain what all this has to do with my Community Supported Literature Share (CSL) program and what signing up on Substack means:

I publish books bigger publishers won’t: Big publishers have brand managers, distribution deals, and shareholders to answer to. They won’t put their name on certain titles no matter how important the story is. I make decisions based on what needs to be said, not what’s safe for a corporate image. Your CSL share funds publishing that prioritizes truth over marketability. I doubt a larger publisher would have titles such as ’s We Crapped In Our Nest, or ’s The Swine Republic.

You’re investing in literature that explores and explains the Midwest: These aren’t books that get rejected by New York City—they are books they would not even consider. I publish writers and topics which reflect what’s actually happening in rural environments and Midwest communities, voices and perspectives being ignored by national publishers. I believe our so-called flyover territory is an enlightened region, full of reality-based ideas and insights worth sharing and learning from. I believe the truth is here, not on the coasts.

I encourage authors to say what they actually mean: When writers work with me, they’re not editing themselves through the lens of focus groups and acquisitions committees. They write their real story—raw, regional, and honest—because they know I won’t flinch. These voices exist because I actively promote courage instead of self-censorship. I don’t worry about word counts. I tell authors all the time, “Use however many words you need to best say what you have to say.”

I’m a “shop local” and a “read local” movement: Just like Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) connects you directly to farmers growing real food, a CSL connects you directly to a local publisher. The same values that drive people to support local businesses, farmers’ markets, and regional entrepreneurship apply to books. When you buy from chains or online retailers, the money goes to massive corporations. Your CSL share supports this independent Midwest business directly and its authors. In some cases, a local indie bookseller.

You get to see yourself and your place in literature: People enjoy movies when they recognize themselves and their communities. Reading about where you actually live—the towns, landscapes, and struggles of the Midwest—is exciting in the same way. These books are about agriculture sometimes, yes, but also rivers, small-town life, birds, seasons, and the real stories happening in places that national publishers treat as flyover country. You get novels, poetry, and nonfiction that reflect your world, proof we exist, and reflect what we care about most. These days, there’s a tension, too, in Iowa at least—blue lives trying to figure out life in a red state.

You get 8-12 books delivered: Like a CSA farm share, you’re pre-funding the work and getting a full harvest at the end of the year. All our books get made based on literary merit rather than corporate sales projections. You’re discovering new writers and subjects you might not have chosen on your own. At the end of the year, meaning right about now, you’ll be sent all the books we’ve worked on in 2025. I’d also point out: If you want to support this work but don’t need the books yourself, your annual share can go to a local library, school, writing group, community center, senior center, or even a Little Free Library in your neighborhood.

You get Substack columns all year on writing and publishing: Throughout the year, your CSL Substack subscription includes (much shorter) columns with writing advice and thoughts on publishing, drawing on decades of hands-on experience. I try to surprise and share ideas that differ from other publishers. In my opinion, no one needs to read another post on query letters, about showing not telling, or on how to craft an opening paragraph. I believe in using stories to encourage writing, and I like drawing on examples from my own life to offer writing tips. I also introduce any interns I have and pass along news that seems relevant throughout the year.

You’re supporting 35+ years of independent publishing: As I mentioned earlier, this marks the start of year thirty-six. Your subscription keeps this entrepreneurial operation alive and proves that alternatives to corporate consolidation can thrive year after year. If you want independent books, independent voices, news, and journalism, it takes a community, not just likes on social media platforms.

In the end, it’s the same spirit as Eat Local & Shop Local, except it’s Write Local & Read Local. The more people who join, the better. In the words of Red Green, “We’re all in this together.”

I’m a member of the a healthy group of mostly Iowa writers doing the best they can to bring good words to the masses.

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Like some never-ending path where time exceeds space, and space runs amok of time, let’s open a door and eavesdrop on the Higher Than The Sky Gang at the Bitterhaüs Cafe, where time flows fluidly and details, told and told again, reign supreme.

Sometime long ago, men started to gather and compare their lives—strangers became familiar, sometimes friendly, sometimes not—through story. One after another, day after day, clutter and memories, pain and wonder simmer a mulligan stew of dreams. Right now, Thelbert Zulch, oblivious to the sorrows he caused others, sits innocent, at 87, lost and mulling his misgivings. Mumbling something about the past, about a drought he’d nicknamed bankruptcy. Everyone nods. They remember the summer. He’d tried dressing up fancy, begging for rain from a dry blue sky. Like bad jokes, he made up rain dances week after week, reverted to living as a wild thing, growled new dialects of speaking in tongues; reeked as if a forest troll. Had hidden in his withered fields and, before long, wept over losing the farm. Scared of ghosts—of his grandfather’s, but even more of his grandfather’s grandfather’s hell laced soul. By the end of the year, he was still breathing, but barely. No useful rain came. Not before his sanity was gone. And his crude jokes pushed away his friends. Not before he crushed his wife and kids so hard they moved away. He did live his nightmare, selling the home place. Now, here he sat, ashamed, of empty heart and mind.

The shortest man in the group, Gritty Johns, opened his mouth when Thelbert finished. As Gritty starts, Wallis Kern cuts in, “Not another of them mountain-top tall tales, Gritty.” Gritty goes on. He tells how he was friends with an old man over near Bear Creek who’d spent two months eating a heap of thirty-five ol’ car batteries. Straight-up taken a metal file to ‘em, ground ‘em up, quarter cup of dust a day into his coffee ‘til all of ‘em was gone. Just adding power to his blood. Turned himself magnetic. Soon after, he roamed the prairie, found himself a lightning storm, one nice bolt lit him up, whisked his voice up something quick, became the fastest auction chanter there ever was at the livestock lot. Listen close, you might still hear his wild-pitched call in the air who’llgivemeone, givemetwogivemethree ….

The gang’s attentive today. Graham Peebottom nods, “I heard him chant, that tongue lashed a raging river,” but Graham whispers. Gritty’s stories could just as often be true as not, no harm either way, but if you said you knew someone who might never have existed, you felt pretty foolish.

Flick Peters rocks back and forth in his chair, picking at his teeth. Flick’s simple with a case of the slow-smarts. Listening and rocking. Picking and nodding. Thing is, Flick pretty much decides who gets to talk. Where his eyes stop, talk begins. Flick moves his eyes over to Earlis Penny, whose mother was a puppet mistress.

Earlis feels Flick’s glare. “Oh no, Flick, no, no.” Earlis holds his hands up to a light bulb and casts his mother’s hippo shadow on the wall. Although an interesting image, Earlis performs this with so little emotion it’s sad to see. Other than running a puppet theater, his mother did nothing. Other than help his mother run the theater, Earlis did nothing. When she passed away, he came to a complete halt. Behind Earlis’s back, everyone agrees he’s acting like a baby, but no one would ever say this to him, not within the confines of the higher than the sky gang. After all, Earlis feels what everyone feels—life is unfair, why can’t we ever have one simple wish? Roll back time and sit with someone we loved just one more time.

There’s a constant among these retired men: so many turn glum, yet also oddly brave when they leave their “careers.” Regrets seem to eat them up, what they say they’d do now versus what they did “back then,” are incongruent. One thing has become clear: if they’d told the truth when the truth had mattered most, to the people who most needed to hear what they had to say, their lives would be much different now. Better, who knows? Less regret, for sure. Instead, they’d hid, and flinched; lied, and fled. It’s not so unheard of, really. Certain details were overlooked, a clue here and there withheld. What they tend to do now is reconsider and muse upon—

if only and what if.

An old baseball game comes up, how ol’ manager Bret Honeypump once threw a bucket of water at plate umpire Scat Plunk, hoping to get a game rained out to save his 36-game winning streak. When Whip DeMillow hears this recollection, he twitches his chin akimbo. Whip has loose nerves and doesn’t do a lot of talking at the Bitterhaüs; he shows up because he doesn’t like to be alone. Today, though, Whip is feeling free and explains what he thinks the afterlife will be. He says he thinks it’s going to be like sleeping on a giant down pillow in the sky. He even admits, he can hardly wait. He’s tired of being alone, stuck with a bunch of memories he didn’t even enjoy creating in the first place. “My darn life ain’t been fit for much, but heaven’s gonna be swell.” Whip’s neither happy nor sad; just tuckered out. Nothing he’s done has ever made any sense as long as he can remember.

On the other side of the room, Harness Trenchold is telling anyone who will listen he’d bet on horses in Vietnam and won a million dollars on a purebred named Max Giddy. Not only that, he had slept on top of Mount Everest two days, then built sand castles on the Italian coast under a full Harvest moon, survived three car wrecks, been reincarnated as a dinosaur, and traded counterfeit money to the United States Department of Treasury wearing a Russian uniform.

After spouting off this way for a few minutes, Harness nodded his head, smiled, and said one more thing before he fell asleep. He’d purchased two hundred shares of common stock in the promised land, and so when he got to heaven, he was finally gonna be a rich man.

You could hear one man after another say the same thing, loud and clear, they’d bought stock in the promised land and were gonna be rich too.

Before too long, the Bitterhaüs Cafe was full of dreamers, each feeling they’d earned their rightful place in the Higher Than The Sky Gang.

My writing advice: Details you might think too small to matter usually do. In fact, more often than not, a tiny detail marks the precise moment when a story begins. Richard Hugo, from his book Triggering Town, “triggering subjects are those that ignite your need for words. When you are honest to your feel­ings.”

I’m a member of the Check it out for weekly podcasts, gatherings, and other things under the Midwestern sun and moon.

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This is only a test.

A reality check, if you will.

If you think you know what’s coming next, we have a problem.

I

do

not

want

to be predictable, or have an answer for everything.

I tend to pace and ruminate. Like a person stuck in a small room. I ponder, wonder, and quantify. Do I think too hard? Am I too serious? Perhaps. I bind and unbind real and imaginary Gordian knots. Weave circles, form paradoxes, hear voices, devise fables, move in and out of confusion. Over and over I live with not knowing. So what’s the reality check, you ask? I believe there’s more to knowing than being correct.

Believe there is value in translations of—

long ago futures,
and of,
praying the sun up out of the ground each morning.

Of finding a forest in a tree; spotting trees in the forest. Madness maybe, but why stop there, perhaps a large flush of birds spewing into the air are seeds for the wind. The world is circulating contagious magic all the time—allowing me to smell morels in the spring and hear sounds older than words. The obvious shimmers anything but obvious. My favorite Taoist koan challenges me most days: the way is easy, strive hard. How do I begin? With the first step.

Reality is hard to pin down. When creating art, or science, or writing, you need to consider all of the possible 10,000 angles of a sphere in order to figure out how you’re going to make the most sense. Some clutch their pearls and declare they care about social justice. Some recycle as if they were more engaged in competition than stewardship. Some know all about the working class yet haven’t ever worked. Some think they know how to write but don’t write. Some know about raising kids, but their own kids won’t speak to them. Reality ends up being a frosted lucky charm or something like that. To each their own delusion.

Back to writing advice, lest I forget the point of this post:

Anytime someone tells me something is going to be easy, I try not to cringe. I read somewhere, “effectiveness could be modeled after love and passion,” but I no longer believe this. People claim they love clean water and are passionate about the environment, but what good has this done for us, here in Iowa? I think it was Matthew Fox who said, “The only way to change the world is to change ourselves first.” Honestly it’s clear the environmental crisis is a crisis of the soul. There’s a reason we have professions dedicated to dark nights of the soul and other tales to astonish.

In writing, we say be honest with your readers, and this is mostly true. The truth is useful, but not always convenient. Or entirely true for everyone. That is: some truth is only some of the truth, and some is called fake.

Writing is a two-way street; too much for you and the reader won’t care. Too much for the reader, and the writer won’t care.

In writing, we say, treat your reader’s time with respect. Thus, take no shortcuts when writing.

In writing, not everything we write is good. Sometimes, as painful as it feels, a paragraph we wrote and believe to be amazing needs to be deleted.

In writing, where you decide to end your story or essay is usually where you should begin.

In writing, we say show, not tell; or tell, not show, I can’t remember. We say this because it’s nonsense advice meant to give us “experts” something to say.

Most writers have a pet peeve they believe in: write longhand on legal paper, use a fine point pen, a medium point pen, write in the morning, scribble notes inside the margins of a book, never use the word ‘that’ or ‘it’, write every day for ten minutes, write listening to music, in silence …

Somebody says they’re writing a book, and you ask about what, and they say a memoir. And you ask what sort of memoir, and they say, their life. And you ask what about their life, and they say, about their job. And you ask what about their job, and they say, as a doctor. And you ask what kind of doctor, and they say a rural doctor. And then, before you ask another question, you realize you already don’t care what they’re going to write about and don’t ask any more questions.

Being a good writer gets much, much harder once you decide you want to write well.

People tend to write one way, and one way only, but there is nothing wrong with using poetics in nonfiction, or fiction within biography, or a short short story as a transition between two nonfiction essays, and so on. After all, what do most novelists say when asked if they will ever write their memoirs? “I already have.”

Reality is part epiphany, part myth. If what you want to write about were easy, you and I both know the writing wouldn’t be worth doing. Be sure to include whatever inspires you on every page, in each and every paragraph.

Jim Harrison said, “Good art doesn’t specialize in cheap solutions.” I agree.

Maybe this will help. Richard Nelson, in his book The Island Within explains what makes a good hunter—“That’s easy. That’s somebody the animals come to.” I think the same can be said for writing—that’s easy, that’s someone the words come to.

I’ll end with this writing tip. As soon as I can predict what you’re going to write next, I’ll quickly lose interest, because this will mean you’ve lost interest in what you’re writing.

Surprise is knowledge’s victory.

I’m a sauntering and slow but persistent member of the I’m sure many of the other members would tell me to eat more Wheaties.

I’ll call him Fillmore Grin. He rested toothpicks in his mouth and taught me the power of silence. His family had lived in Soldier’s Grove for at least seven generations. They were nothing special, one might say, no family-run store or an invention amongst them. Good gardeners and mushroom hunters the most common opinion of the family. Although they were admired at what fewer and fewer still respect—home economics—aka, tidy self-sufficiency. Fillmore wasn’t one to speak more than a few words at a time. As if to accent this, he scarred his lips and the fronts of his gums to a crisp using a blow torch, while on the job, trying to light a cigarette. This cut his very few words to nothing. He retired soon after. Neither he nor his colleagues felt much empathy when he departed. A propensity to tell the truth and not cut corners left him perpetually at odds with others.

After retiring as a field conservation officer with the DNR, he sauntered more casually through the driftless region. A few months passed without him speaking to mend his scars. Over this time, Fillmore concluded talking was essentially unnecessary. He got along with frowns, smiles, sneers, shakes, nods, eye rolls, and raising or dropping his shoulders. The only problem he had was with other people. They thought he should speak more, explain himself. Wondered if his burnt lips had humiliated him? Was he depressed? Was he sad? Lonely? Fillmore did not give an owl’s hoot about these mind readings. He shrugged his shoulders and went in search of more chanterelles and brook trout.

Much to my surprise, maybe six months after his burning, Fillmore Grin pulled me aside one winter morning beside the Kickapoo River. He talked for roughly three minutes. Told me about stones and family. He explained his family was indivisible. They were held together like sedimentary rock—ground up, pressed, and molded; mixed and stirred, heavy but not suffocating, unified across time. One after another, above and below. When one of them would die, they made a point of laying the heaviest and largest stone they could find above the buried body so the only thing to escape was the soul, not the memories.

“A soul we can do without. Memories, we use those over and over again when we garden, fish, cook, and think.”

While Fillmore spoke, I think he was gazing far away, reconfirming a memory from his past, and I just happened to be nearby. We weren’t close, had only shared a few morning waves over the years. After talking to me, his lips were bleeding. I knew better than to say a word, just nodded. We both went our own ways.

Not much of a talker myself, I didn’t speak for the next couple of days. I picked up smooth stones I came across and thought about the people I’ve known during my life, thought about those who have passed away—all the aunts, uncles, grandparents, parents, cousins, and friends. I grasped a few rocks tighter than I had expected.

My writing advice: put down your pencils, pens, phones, and keypads. Listen to the noise the wind makes. Inhale deeply. Memorize the exact moment and place you are right now.

Discover which rocks speak secrets.

I’m a lesser-known member of the I try and post unique and one-of-a-kind columns you won’t find anywhere else on Substack or the collaborative. I hope to keep indie book publishing and good writing vibrant.

I require drama mixed with facts. Find truth within stories. “Truth” isn’t the number 1, so to speak, but what happens on either side—how we arrive there and what happens next.

Although no one seems impressed, I am a revolution. I’m the cog making consistent progress, chipping away at the status quo. Gil Scott Heron declared, “The revolution will not be televised.” Exactly. I publish new books as I’m able. Revolutions aren’t big bangs; they’re slow builds. Most people are distracted by the most obvious events of the day, drifting along complacently. Gil Scott Heron again, “I can't pay no doctor bills / But Whitey's on the moon.” Slow and steady is my only trick. An Occam’s razor revolt.

I read a lot, or rather, try to read a lot. Most writing I come across seems insincere. I hosted an author event last week, and someone said, “I’m sorry no one reads anymore.” My reply, “I feel like more and more people are writing these days.” There’s a correlation between the two. One piece of advice any sincere writer will recommend is the importance of reading to improve your writing. A safe surmise—we are not within Orwell’s 1984, but Huxley’s Brave New World. What do I mean? Being controlled is not the problem; we’re not engaged enough to even require control.

Revolutions are needed because conspiracies need walls and convenient, mutable borders to persist. One from Iowa: we worship the unregulated influence of “farmers”—people who sow and reap corn, beans, biofuels, and confined creatures. Surprisingly, this group “employs less than 2% of the state government workforce.”1 Yet, these few strangle all of us. This is just the sort of whitewalling which fools most of the people most of the time (including state-endorsed Ag schools and goofy-clad politicians wearing overalls during political ads in the Cornbelt). Iowa’s rows and rows of corn and beans and animal concentration camps (CAFOs) are pieces of a larger manipulation. Things spread and grow. Ethanol, pipelines, land values, soil quality, financial incentives, water quality, cancer, and carbon emissions. Some adopt concepts like Green Ethanol—skew-minded capitalists who pretend a gentler vocabulary makes them less guilty. Someone from Iowa meets someone from New Jersey who knows someone from Minnesota … so it goes. This dancing to the beat of an unregulated industry honors the passive-aggressive patron saint Bartleby.2 When owners, consultants, farmers, investors, and lobbyists are asked to share their involvement, they tend to utter, “I’d prefer not to.” I’m reminded when my mother served a Watergate Cake with Cover-Up Icing during a party in the 1970s. While she served the cake, everyone laughed and groaned about President Nixon and his pals. All of them in despair, but also feeling powerless. Tragedy in real-time.

Subtle details are clues to deceit.

The mission of my independent press in eastern Iowa is “using the literary arts to better understand how we can best live in the Midwest.” To achieve this, I’ve literally put my money, time, and labor where my mouth is the last 35 years. Is my revolution working? Do I think I’ve slowed down brain drain? Inspired less exploitation of the land? Who knows. I’m not sure I’ve even inspired authors to support other authors, which I consider a sort of shame: “Do for other authors what you hope they’ll do for you.” Do I think the Midwest is more or less a catastrophic mess? Yes. Do I still believe trying to understand and improve where I live is worthwhile? Absolutely.

Over the decades, I’ve gone from being the cool, hip & eccentric person with a literary dream to mostly unnoticed by the literary community, even in my so-called City of Literature. I’ve outlasted many though. The Dr. Suess quote at the beginning works: “Oh, the places I've been, the people I've seen." When the Iowa City area applied to be designated a UNESCO City of Literature, unbeknownst to me, my press was included as one of the reasons. I was far from the only reason, but the best plans are in the details.

I believe I’m an ideal literary citizen of this City of Literature. I attended the Iowa City public schools and the University of Iowa, earning a BA in English & History (to be fair, we didn’t cover living authors or local topics). Paul Gruchow once wrote: “Nothing in my education prepared me to believe … that there was any reason to be interested in my own place.” I’ve run my press in Johnson County, Iowa, 30 of my 35 years. The state of Iowa awarded me an Arts Legacy award a couple years ago. Do I think one of the City of Literature’s icons, Paul Engle, would be proud of me? Most likely. I’ve often wondered about my city, though. I’d say my former high school doesn’t take pride in being part of the City of Literature, the English Department at UIowa hasn’t celebrated the fact they inspired a publisher. The alumni foundation remains silent. I’m not blind, though. When I do book fairs, I understand the longest lines are for kettle corn.

Remarkable writing is being done these days,but finding these authors is a challenge. I think it was Faulkner who said, “the past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Inspiration still inspires. One thing still leads to the next thing. Karl Marx wrote, "The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.” I worry our “best” writers wear out from all the distractions going on these days—the comments online, the strands of social media all around us, for instance. I hear an echo of Ginsberg’s Howl, “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness.”

The best place to end is where things lack luster, get sticky, hard, and confusing. Creating words and essays can be lonely and time-consuming. Even if you write well, nothing may come your way. Hoping to figure things out is a fool’s journey, as Jim Harrison quipped: "Beware, o wanderer, the road is walking too."

Revolutions, writing, and social change are difficult. I mean, even liberal bookstores in sanctuary cities banned anti-vaxxing books during COVID.

I’ll end with a writing tip. “It’s easy to make a living telling the people in control [also, friends] they’re right.”3 This is more formidable than one might think. Truth often involves not stopping long enough to question if certain people are innocent. Good writing is both sacred and profane.

I’m going to bake a cake with some cover-up icing, eat a slice, then resume trying to improve the place I most want to live.

Although I suspect most of the members don’t know I exist, I am a member of the

1

The Swine Republic

A Progressive Platform for Iowa Food and Agriculture

Secretary of Agriculture is one of seven executive offices Iowans see on their off-year voting ballot. The Iowa legislature created both the office and the Department of Agriculture (now IDALS) in 1923. It may seem curious that we have a statewide election for the administrator of a department that employs less than 2% of the state government workforce …

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10 months ago · 102 likes · 57 comments · Chris Jones

When I first tried writing, I hated it. Gripping my pencil as my kindergarten teacher made me copy single letters of the alphabet over and over, I would angrily stab through the paper, frustrated at how long it took to write a single letter. Learning to write is a slow, cumbersome, and frustrating process that takes years to master, requires constant improvement, and endless practice. Most kids aren’t as frustrated as I was because they were just beginning to read too. Their literacy skills were not yet formed. However, when I entered kindergarten, I was already flying through chapter books. I journeyed into fantasy worlds, slaying dragons when I should have been solving subtraction problems. I spun stories for my parents and acted out book plots with my friends. Because my imagination flowed much faster than my pencil, writing felt like taking a step back for me. I could read multiple sentences in the same amount of time it took to write a single word. My ideas were stunted by jagged graphite and muscle cramps. The day that I discovered computers was the day that I became a writer. Instead of slowly scratching letters onto a page, I could make them appear with the simple click of a button. With technology at my fingertips, I could write faster than my imagination could keep up.

Hi! My name is Sara Shannon, and I’m the 2025 fall intern for Ice Cube Press! Ever since I was blessed with a Google Docs account, my love of writing has grown exponentially. I discovered the power in putting my stories on the page where others can read them. I love crafting plots and rearranging words from simple sentences into evocative prose. Writing has given me an outlet to express myself and share it with others. I’m still an avid reader and storyteller, but I enjoy being a writer just as much. I’ve been experimenting with different forms of writing and have landed on short stories and flash essays for now. I staunchly decided to become an author when I was ten years old and refused to consider other career paths until a teacher told me full-time authors don’t exist. Thankfully, he was wrong. However, this conversation, while heartbreaking, was the wake-up call I needed to explore multiple career options. After I won some writing contests at the University of Northern Iowa, I ended up as an English Major here. Before coming to UNI, I had considered publishing and editing. I tried my hand at editing during COVID when my mother needed someone to proofread her work project. I spent quarantine editing 120 pages of corporate jargon, which humbled me deeply, but it also introduced me to the exciting world of editing. At UNI, I’ve been able to explore the industry and learn what makes editing such a vital part of the literary process. I’ve always been a reader, which later translated into becoming a writer. I believe literature is more than just some dusty old books; it’s our humanity. It’s a living, breathing art form that shares who we are as human beings, and it is fed and nurtured by the readers, the writers, and our unsung heroes, the publishers. I have a greater appreciation for the publishers, the marketers, and the organizers who get new literature into the hands of readers like me, than I did when I was younger. To me, editing is more than a satisfying puzzle (although I do enjoy hunting for missing commas). It is an opportunity to make the connection between writers and readers. By helping people hone their art into something they are proud of, editors help bridge the gap between readers and writers. I understand the frustration of having a missing link between your creativity and a way to send it out into the world, and I don’t want anyone else to experience that. I’m excited to enter the world of publishing because I want to be part of the bridge that distributes art to those who will appreciate it. I want to help artists find their audience and readers find their story through the publishing world.

I am so excited to intern for Ice Cube Press. In this industry, it can be difficult to find someone willing to take a chance on your art. I love that Ice Cube Press wants to publish people who would be otherwise overlooked because they write rural stories. I believe every story deserves to be told, read, and appreciated, no matter what it is. I’m elated to be a part of helping Ice Cube Press connect readers to authors, because everyone deserves a chance to share their creativity.