The Internet is a strange and mysterious and quite often mystical place, it makes us crazy and distracts us, sometimes it redefines the idea of friendship and community in the most powerful of ways. I don’t quite know how to describe my friendship with Julie Vogen Beck of Davenport, Iowa, it is a new kind of friendship but so real. Julie has been following my blog almost from it’s inception, we have traveled a lot of life together and are very much connected in this new and unprecedented way.
I became aware of her after her then-husband died of cancer, and she set out on her own hero journey to find love, connection and security in a very uncertain world. From the first, she encouraged me on my blog, in my writing and photography. She rooted for me in my life.
From time to time, she shared some of the pain and struggle in her life with me, I remember encouraging her to get some help, which she did, and I have been fascinated and overjoyed to see the way she has put her life back together, overcoming some painful things, things that might have discouraged or done in a lesser person.
Julie does not get discouraged or done it, she does not quit or complain. A couple of years ago, she got in touch with an old school friend, then she lost the job that was keeping her life afloat. She and Roger decided to pool their resources and get married, and I was thrilled beyond words when Julie came charging into the Iowa City Public Library with her new husband and her daughter to meet Maria and me and to hear me talk.
She was beaming with energy and contentment. She and Roger are having a wondrous life together.
In this new culture, we pass one another like shooting stars, we whiz along on our own tracks, only fleetingly aware of one another. Once in awhile, something in the ether connects us, and Julie and her brave struggle through life have always caught my eye and touched my heart. Month by month, I saw her will and courage and strength demonstrate to me and others that there is no value than whining about life, in struggle stories and lament, the meaningful life comes to those who do not give up on it, do not surrender themselves to the ideas of other people.
Julie lit up when she came charging down the street outside of the library and saw Maria, hugged me and said “good for you, she is such a sweetie! What a smile!”
This morning, she messaged me. “It was absolutely wonderful meeting the two of you last night. In my lifetime I haven’t really ever been keen on meeting people that I consider celebrities, however I have always wanted to have the chance to meet you, Jon.”
Same to you, Julie.
“Maria’s smile is something else,” she wrote. “I just loved how she lights up when she smiles…even Roger agreed with this. I am so happy you and Maria found each other. It was meant to be…You and Maria were so warm and friendly that I will never forget it, it meant so much to me. My daughter and her friend loved the talk and meeting you both also and were so happy that they came.”
I wish I could find the words to let Julie know how much it meant to me that I finally got to meet her; that we have known and stuck with one another in this new medium and in this new way for so long. That we have both cheered the other on as we fell off the rails and climbed back on, again and again. I wish she could know how much it meant to me that she came to see me with her new lover and partner and her daughter. She is a celebrity in my world, and I could feel the very real connection we felt with one another, the sense of a shared experience, her warmth and openness and honesty. It made the trip to Iowa worthwhile in and of itself.
Thank you, Julie, for putting up with me and my life for so long, we have traveled the hero journey together. I told Maria that I hoped you would make it to one of my talks, your bravery and determination to find your rightful path in the world despite the many painful obstacles thrown in your way have always been a light to me. I am so glad to have met you and felt your energy and love. Lucky Roger.
New York City casts a long shadow over it’s less hip and media-centric cities, especially in the Midwest, seen as stuffy and backward along the country’s trendy urban coasts. Elitism is not just a posture in places like New York, it is a faith. They really do believe everybody else is woebegone and stupid.
Des Moines has a very hip and ascending old loft district, it is right in the shadow of the beautiful state capitol building, but it has taken the name “East Village” to make sure everybody understands it’s the new Des Moines, not the stuffier old one. I wish they had come up with a different name, but the neighborhood is awesome, I was struck right away by one of the old businesses still remaining, the American Plumbing Supply company, you will not find toilets in store windows anywhere in Soho or the East Village of Manhattan.
Still, we found one hip arts story we loved so much we bought each other necklaces and some other good stuff. We found a wondrous taco place and had a terrific lunch for $10. This is a fun neighborhood to walk through, the energy there hums and gives the lie to the notion that cities like Des Moines can’t make some loud and joyful noise.
I have known for a long time not to accept other people’s stereotypes and conventional wisdoms.
If I am interested in the truth, I have to go and see it for myself. When the media deals with Iowa at all, it is mostly to portray the state as a remote outpost peopled by rabid and angry right-wingers and taciturn corn and soy farmers. For the next few weeks and months, you will see that stereotype all over the news. Presidential candidates and reporters will pour into Des Moines and the rest of the state for the first Presidential Primary, and they will try to sniff out votes and say outrageous things to get attention.
People in Iowa bristle at the way they are portrayed, I can’t say I blame them. There is a defensiveness about the place, Iowans pointing out to strangers that everyone in the state is not an angry reactionary. They are correct. You don’t have to look very far to see something much deeper there and more interesting.
Journalists rarely talk to real people, just spokespeople for real people.
I was surprised by Iowa, so was Maria. I loved it.
We only saw a small part of it – Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, Iowa City – it is a much bigger state than that, but we were charmed by what we saw. The people were the nicest and warmest people I have met anywhere – they really love authors and books and strangers – the food was as good as any we have eaten in New York City.
I even ate the best pizza ever there, and there was a peaceful, measured, un-frenetic feel to the place. I had the sense of a less stressful life than many Americans now live. Rush hour lasts about 10 minutes, and we heard one horn honk in three days. After dark, it gets quiet. There are places to go, but most people seem to want to go home.
Iowa struck me as the perfect family place, but it also has a surprisingly diverse energy, all of the cities we visited had funky and evocative neighborhoods in the midst of various stages of renaissance. There are a lot of wonderful old lofts and buildings in the downtowns of the Midwest, and many of them are being re-discovered and re-habilitated. Everyone there that I met was dumbstruck at the suggestion that it is cruel for a working horse to pull a carriage in Central Park, people stable and ride horses in a huge park that goes right through the middle of the city.
There are a lot of farmers in Iowa, many came to my four readings, I was touched and flattered by that. We had a lot to say to one another. We talked about donkeys, farms, animal rights, the future of animals in the world, the reality of farming and the real lives of real animals, about training and the human animal bond. Great stuff, lots of questions. A more engaged audience than I have seen in awhile. Many people had read a lot of my books, going back to “Running To The Mountain.” They asked me about people, animals and places I sometimes forget.
I am proud of my “Saving Simon” book tour. It ended Tuesday in Iowa City. My publisher did not participate in the publication or book tour for this book. So I am proud and grateful for the support given me in Iowa and elsewhere for this book tour, it is the first one I put together and the best one I have ever had. Lots of lessons in that. I am so appreciative that I have not accepted the discarding of Simon’s story, it deserves to live.
My first reading was at the Wesley Acres, an independent living center in Des Moines. Susan Skinner of Wesley Acres responded to my blog announcement last October of the book tour I was putting together, and she sparked the invitation for me to come to speak in the state. The residents at Westley Acre’s filled the center’s auditorium Sunday, it was an emotional experience to talk to so many people in their 80’s and beyond, it was satisfying and touching. They had stories to tell, perspectives to offer, a rich history to share. The next day, the Des Moines Library sponsored my talk at Drake University, a big and beautiful auditorium with a couple of hundred people in it, then to Cedar Rapids and the Next Page Book Store on Tuesday, and then to the Iowa City Public Library Tuesday evening.
It was a great evening in Iowa City, I had the first angry animal rights activists of the book tour, they thought I was callous and cruel and disappointing – and evil – for my opinions about domesticated and working animals keeping their jobs. There were only two. The people in Iowa know what hospitality means. I did have a I slew of angry e-mails waiting for me when I got back to the hotel. I told them I don’t do the nasty e-mail thing, they disappeared. Anger, I have found, needs fuel to live.
I’ll write more about the trip, but Iowa got to me. There is a gentleness about the people, a calmness and courtesy that is truly disarming. Des Moines and Cedar Rapids do not sizzle like New York or Boston – Iowa City does – the things to do list drops off sharply after the art museum and the Botanical Garden (not too much garden there) and the Iowa State Fair. We missed the Corgi Dog Race, it had 134 entrants and 1,700 humans cheering them on.
Des Moines seems like a family place, in many ways it evokes post-war America in it’s spirit and architecture. It seems a good and sane place for people to raise their kids. Like many mid-western cities, the streets are wide and quiet, rush hour is over in a blink, nobody honks, the crime rate is low, people talk slowly and don’t shout. People open doors for other people, and let others get ahead of them in line.
I don’t mean to say it is a paradise, but one does not feel or see much of the frantic scrambling and tension that characterizes life in so much of urban and suburban America. Courtesy and patience seem woven into the fabric of the place.
The media that swarms all over the state during presidential campaigns has done a poor job of reflecting the very rich character of the place. There, people have not forgotten farmers and the truth about the real lives of animals. The corn and soy and cattle farms that stretch forever outside of the cities are enormous, mind-boggling and on a scale unknown in the Northeast or South. And yet there is a lot of energy, it is on an Iowa scale, not a New York City scale. In each of the three cities we visited, downtowns are being re-populated by artists and kids, new restaurants and shops are opening up, lofts being renovated.
Des Moines is not a beautiful city, it is a comfortable and accessible city, it kind of opens up it’s arms to you and locks you into a big and comfortable hug. Cedar Rapids is grittier, it is bouncing back from a devastating flood in 2008. I gave a talk at a beautiful small bookstore t in the NewBo neighborhood (New Bohemian) called the Next Page, we had a full house, 15 people. It was a sweet and intimate talk, I loved it.
Iowa City, the home of the University Of Iowa, has plenty of urban energy, diversity, music, bars, restaurants and culture. It is the state’s proud answer to the East Village or Brooklyn. But I have to say that somewhat to my surprise I was drawn the most to gentle Des Moines, it was a bit like going to see your family back home, Maria and I both felt completely at ease there the minute we arrived, we soaked up the quiet streets and neighborhoods, the good restaurants, the truly striking generosity and courtesy of so many of the people there.
For two nights, we stayed at Wesley Acres in their guest house, and I was not sure how it would be to be there. It was quite wonderful, I was so touched by the energy, curiosity, bravery and spirit of many of the residents there, they had much better stories to tell than I did, and I loved hearing every one of them. We had some very powerful and emotional interactions, I will write about them.
I think I was expecting Wesley Acres to be a depressing place, but it was anything but that, it was life-affirming and inspiring, despite the very real challenges and realities the residents there face. I’ll write more about that, I just wanted to say I am home, glad to be home, but we both felt a deep attachment to Iowa, there is a sense of values and constancy there that I think many people yearn for and miss. They have managed not to throw all of that away in the name of progress, corporatism and the new global economy.
And I have rarely felt so good about being an author, meeting people who had read my books, remembered them, apprecaited them. I am not into whining, but that experience is becoming increasingly rare for many authors. I savored it, it was good for my writerly soul.
“I love it here,” one Minneapolis transplant told me, “but I do get frustrated sometimes, when you get to a four-stop intersection, you have to sit there a long time, because nobody wants to be rude and be the first one to move.”
We got home from Iowa this evening, we hauled the bags in and went to check on the animals, Lulu and Fanny had clearly been giving themselves a dust bath, clouds of dirt came off them when Maria grabbed a brush to clean them off. I think donkeys love to bug people, they are always happy to come and rub against us covered in dust, manure and buds from trees. They love to get dirty, they love to be groomed. A good way for us to come home and re-connect to the farm.
