Yes, we Live here

Today I’m resisting the impulse to comment on politics. For one thing, I can’t do so within any parameters of yesterday, today, and tomorrow. It all just heaps together into one very nasty stew. Besides, plenty of other actual journalists are writing about politics, within the Substack space. I’ll leave it to them.

The job of this newsletter is to write about life in a vibrant town in a beautiful corner of a small state, which doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be, lately. But I digress.

Here’s how I’ve spent my last few days, and how focusing on the everyday keeps me being me.

• A few nights ago, we met up with friends at a nearby brewery and shared a meal and some laughs. Maybe a few more laughs than were strictly necessary but who’s counting? We knew a tornado watch had been issued, but we sat outside on the patio gazing out into the sweeping landscape of northeast Iowa. We could see pretty clearly the thunderheads organizing themselves to the south, in a dark blue row. Hey, I grew up in Kansas. I wasn’t worried. But when the server scurried out to say we might be more comfortable inside, we took the hint.

• My husband and I have, for many years now, listened almost daily to audiobooks checked out through our local library. We like mysteries, and classics, and books set in places where the weather is more comfortable than whatever season we’re currently in. We listen for an hour or two each day and then we have something to talk about, until the next listening session. Over the last few days we’ve been listening to Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus. Yesterday my husband indicated he was looking forward to it ending. I understand. Stripped away from its goofy horror-movie reinvention, it is quite uncomfortable to live through. (Below, Mary Shelly. Click on image for link)

  

• Yesterday, we went to a festival in nearby Burr Oak, Iowa, population approx 171. This town is where author Laura Ingalls Wilder, of Little House fame, spent some of her childhood. We toured some buildings and listened to a presentation about the winter blizzards of 1880. When we left, we noticed the live auction for home-made pies was over $150. For ONE pie. The folks gathered there didn’t seem to be discouraged that Wilder’s recent reputation for holding racist views in her works (published between 1932-1943) prompted her name to be stripped from a children’s literature award. Read and learn, I say. If you want to see what uncomfortable really looks like, read Frankenstein. (My photo of the interior of the newly rennovated Mercantile Building, in Burr Oak.)

  

• As I type this, we’re listening to the CD a string quartet by Antonin Dvorak. It’s the one performed by members of the Berlin Philharmonic Octet. Opus 97 is my current favorite of his “American” period. I didn’t know until after we moved here that one of my favorite composers actually spent time during the summer of 1893 just 12 miles down the road, in Spillville, Iowa. There is more to say, but the photo will have to suffice. Yes, there really is a Dvorak Memorial Highway.

  

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• It’s time to wrap up and prepare this entry for posting. This afternoon we’re headed to a performance of Gilbert & Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance, by the local community theatre group, the New Minnowa Players. We have tickets in Row D, seats 20 and 21. If that doesn’t take my mind off of “things,” I don’t know what will.