Taking Stock

The 20th anniversary of 9/11 comes at the same time as canning season and the metaphor of taking stock has been playing on my mind.

When I started this blog two years ago it was so I could have a creative project that someone else could not take away from me. Long story, but I’ve had a lot of opportunities that have gotten torpedoed just when they might have had a chance to develop and grow and the consequences have been life-altering. I finally had one too many.

20 years ago was also a time when I was taking stock because things had not been working out for a long time. When I was in my early teen years I was someone who had a creative spark, was reasonably intelligent and could communicate well.

At key moments in my life, when there was a door open to a professional opportunity that looked like I was going to be able to develop my talents, something happened to slam the door shut. And then one day, like many people, I looked back and realized that I was a long way from that kid on the farm who had all that potential.

It was always kind of a long shot anyway because I did not come from a culture that valued individual growth. Growing up in rural Iowa, conforming to the norms of the group was the dominant ideology.

The funny thing is, it has often felt like my efforts to develop a professional life have been blocked by the gatekeepers to another kind of group. A kind of club. It’s a club full of people who were encouraged from a young age to develop their talents and they were telling me that I didn’t belong.

I’ve made a conscious effort to reconnect to that kid who represented the best of my young self. I feel a need to develop my own expression even if it never connects to an audience just so that I can see where it goes. It always got shut down before.

I think a lot of the resentment rural people have towards those who celebrate personal expression and growth comes from the fact that many rural and working class people feel like they never got the chance to develop as individuals so why should anyone else?

And that’s where the appeal of Donald Trump comes in. I know that sounds like a stretch, but bear with me.

My first thought when I tried to understand the appeal of Donald Trump was that he is a fantasy figure. He’s what people think they would be able to act like if they ever won the lottery. All the frustrations they’ve ever had in life would be removed because they could just walk over anybody who got in their way. He’s the repressed Id on steroids.

I think Trump supporters look with anger at people in the arts, people marching for liberation, people in academia and people experimenting with gender identity because they feel resentment toward people who seem to be playing by a different set of rules.

And I get that.

As I’ve tried to re-career throughout my life, I’ve gotten blocked by people who don’t think I belong in the club.

But I’ve kept coming back to the idea of reconnecting to the young teen who grew up on an organic farm. At the age of 39, I moved to a small town in Iowa and bought a natural foods store that I ran for seven years. That’s when I discovered that small town Iowa was not the same place I grew up in and the culture of resentment I experienced predicted the rise of Donald Trump.

I was only in my late 40s when I moved away from there and ran face-first into a wall of ageism that was ready to throw me on the scrap heap of society. It’s been a long decade plus since then.

But when Covid hit I found that a lot of my farm mentality became a positive. I could conceptualize Covid as being like the Great Depression. My parents had grown up during the Great Depression and, funny as it may sound, I felt a connection with them about that through the TV show, The Waltons.

Hey, I was ten years old when it came on.

In a lot of ways, journaling and blogging has been a way to get in touch with my inner John Boy.

Which brings me back to canning.

See, it all ties together!

And to gardening. And to the fact that for a number of years we have been converting our backyard into a perennial wildflower pollinator haven. I truly believe our backyard has more soil microbe, insect and pollinator activity than the average Iowa cornfield.

Our mental health during Covid has been surprisingly good because we have rejected the expectations of society and have taken pleasure in the rhythm of the seasons of our home and yard. Gardening and freezing and canning have given us activities that keeps us productive with a sense of accomplishment.

Cooking gives you a reward that office politics cannot take away. Opening up a jar of something in the wintertime made of something you grew in the summer is a reminder that seasons come and seasons go and that each has its own rewards.

I think a lot of people freaked out so much during Covid because their status as members of a group was threatened. That wasn’t such a big loss for me because I’ve been consistently rejected by the dominant groups of every community I’ve lived in my whole life.

So I don’t really have any great insights into the meaning of 9/11 or the times we live in other than these moments are opportunities for reflection and, hopefully, a chance to see that growth has been happening and that things are getting better. I’m trying to write my own narrative and not let other people write one about me.

I will close with some contemplative music that was some of the most requested to Public Radio stations after 9/11. It’s called Farewell to Stromness and is about a town on an island off the coast of Scotland that almost disappeared. Almost.