Long before you catch sight of the diminutive Thai woman, you’ll hear her voice — loud, strong, a touch of carny barker in the undertones, and leavened with laughter.  “Come in, come in, come in — please, sit anywhere,” is heard from the depths of the kitchen.  And you obey.  The smell of curry makes your nose prickle as you look over the spotlessly ordered dining area.  Even the sides of the condiments are sparkling clean.  Really.

Ormsin Heineman, nicknamed Mao by her family (a Thai variation of the sound made by a cat), is barely visible on the other side of the pass-through as she cooks in the kitchen.

She quickly finishes the dish she is preparing and looks at you beaming with a smile that stretches wide enough to make her eyes disappear.   Ah, but you take a second look.  Her solid no-nonsense stance makes you hesitate.  Without her saying a word, you know she will not brook any sass, you know you’d better sit up straight, and you hope you cleaned behind your ears.   This is June Cleaver mixed with a bit of Athena the Goddess of War.  Tough love.

Raised in rural Thailand, Mao came from a family of 11 that was “dirt poor.”  Every morning she would push a cart to market to sell items made and raised in the home.  She started cooking to have more items to sell from the cart.  A hard life.  After she finished all the schooling she could in her small town, she headed off to college in Bangkok, where she obtained a degree in cooking and other home arts.  This led to teaching home economics.  It was not enough.  Mao had bigger plans.  So off she went to America.

For the next several years, there were few jobs that she didn’t do — restaurants, grocery stores, fast-food joints.  She cooked, she cleaned, she cooked some more.  Whatever it took.  Language, however, was still a problem.  In one restaurant she worked at in Seattle, she wasn’t allowed to wait on customers because she couldn’t say the words on the menu.   Undaunted, the menu came home and she worked endlessly to try to make sounds that were non-existent in her native language.  Apparently, her hard work paid off.   She ended up cooking for and running three restaurants in Seattle.  Not bad.

On September 3rd, 2004, Mao became a U.S. citizen.  “I never missed a question on the test,” she says proudly.  And four days later, she opened the King & I in West Des Moines — a highly respected Thai restaurant with amazing food.   She summarizes her management style: “I talk loud.  My mouth order-order, but my hand work-work, too.”  As for the customer, “I know exactly what they want when they come in the door and that is treating them right.”  Given her past, it is not a stretch to believe her when she leans in to say, “I can do anything; I’m not scared.”  No kidding.

But perhaps she is referring to something else . . . .

Many years ago while living on the east coast she met Fred.  A Vietnam Vet.  Wounded in the war.  Purple Heart.  A man by any measure of manhood.  There was just a small problem.  Fred had MS.  It didn’t matter to Mao at the time.  She was in love and soon married.  Twenty-one years quickly passed.

Fred became sicker and sicker.  That also didn’t matter.  Mao’s belief about marriage isn’t complicated: “One gets sick, one holds the other’s hands.”  Period.  Fred is now totally bedridden and needs basic care.   “He’s a happy guy; he’s at home,” Mao says in explaining his life.  She takes care of him and comes and goes frequently from the restaurant making sure he is all right.  “I watch him on a webcam now too.”

Really?  It’s all a cake walk?  This is the good life?

“I’m so tired. . . .  Sometimes I cry at night and talk to my dead father.  Then it is over. . . .   I cannot just stand back and watch him die.  I love him. . . .   And if you love somebody, you can love everybody. . . .  I try to help many people — too much pain for many.  If you don’t expect it back, you happy. . . .  If you do good, tomorrow is better.”

Emma Lazarus wrote a poem that is enshrined at the Statute of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.  Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Perhaps this immigrant is the one lifting the lamp.

Joe

Have you noticed that the topic of weather is the great equalizer that turns us all into Iowa farmers this time of year? You can be the librarian at the Downtown Library, a CEO at Nationwide, or a checker at Hy Vee, and out of your mouth will come these words: “What do you think of this weather?”  And before you know it, even if you live in an East Village loft, you’ll soon drop into farmer-weather lingo: “Can you believe that wind chill?” or “Do you think we got much moisture out of that storm?” or “Was that an Arctic blast that blew in last night?”  Honestly, you’re just a hair’s breadth away from asking if the cattle trough has frozen over.  Trust me — YOU DON’T HAVE A CATTLE TROUGH!  YOU DON’T HAVE A COW!  You have a cat.  Sorry.

Of course, you aren’t really an Iowa farmer, but you can be an Iowa Farmer.  If you’re an Iowa Farmer, when it is snowing or raining you head out the door, and if it doesn’t snow or rain, you also head out the door.  Period.  Unfortunately, if you fail to make this sharp turn towards being a bit tougher during this month of February, the consequences can be dire.  This isn’t just a vitamin D problem for those that stay inside.   This is a question of orientation: if you refuse to let this weather control your life, if you put your face into the wind, if you put on these gigantic lugged boots to walk on the river trails, who or what can possibly stop you?  Right?

You can see the positive fallout from such thinking.  Lame boyfriend?  Just walk a block in freezing wind thinking about your rotten relationship.  By the end, the boyfriend may not know it yet, but he’s gone.   Struggling with a problem at work?  Walk west on Grand, circle around the Meredith Gardens, then walk back downtown.  Problem solved.  Not getting along with your Mom?  Fine, bundle up (don’t forget your galoshes), and do a loop together at Gray’s Lake.  Relationship saved.

I guarantee this solution.  So much so that I think it can solve all the acrimony about gun laws, the education budget, immigration, drone warfare, and the interesting worry about who’s piercing what.  What should our legislators do with all these problems?  Duh, get out their sleds and head to Waveland Golf Course.  Snow’s melted, you say?  Are you new to town?  Just wait for the Girl’s Basketball Tournament.  It’ll come.

This south hill at Waveland should fit the House of Representatives just fine.  Just bring the toboggans from Decorah, the snow boards from Iowa City, and the traditional runners from Sioux City.  That should do it.  Discussion of whether we need to carry AK-47’s while shopping at Target will have a different tenor hanging onto the back of a sled while screaming with delight.  I promise.

As for the Senate, I’m thinking the long west hill.

This gives the Senators a chance to not only go a little longer, but to see the cemetery across University out of the corner of their eyes.  Death and the outdoors are generally the perfect ingredients for making good decisions.

To cement this argument about getting outside, I talked to a real Iowa Farmer, Dave Parker, who farms near Mingo.

“Outside?”  Dave asked with a twinkle in his eye.  “The wind blew a tree down yesterday that almost hit my propane tank.  I stayed inside all day.  It felt good.”

Joe

The class is soon to begin.  Chairs shuffle, winter coats are thrown to the side, note pads and laptops are carefully balanced on the 12-inches-of-polished-wood for a desk, and low conversation floats through the room.   Cell phones are turned off or carefully hidden just out of sight.  Murmurs, coughs, and dropped pens are given one last go-around, and then quiet.

He stands at the front of the room in his tight black t-shirt and jeans.  A small smile sits on his spectacled face, taking little away from the sense of energy compressed.  Clearly, he will either begin or explode.   Or, he may begin, and then explode.   But there will be an explosion.  Is it too late to leave?

“I’m about to tell you something important . . . .”  And so the class begins.   Rabbi Jay Holstein talks with a rhythm that locks you in your seat as sentences are broken into pieces as if he is speaking his last words.   And you, a mere student at the University of Iowa, are the only person entrusted with his will and testament.   You’re it.  Then, as if to contradict the need for you to administer the last rites, the words themselves are boomed out or whispered with such dramatic overtones you begin to wonder if you’ve wandered into a Pentecostal revival in Dolby Surround Sound.

“Let’s SAY . . .                                                                                                                             I had a PILL . . .                                                                                                                      That FINALLY . . . tells you the right thing to do.”

“In a short LIFE . . .                                                                                                                FULL of travail . . .                                                                                                                WHY should we be interested?”

And he is off and running. The Epic of Gilgamesh, death, meaning of life, old age, right and wrong, sexual austerity, family values, Jew/Christian, how one should lead their life, Genesis 2, the Book of Ruth, the movie E.T.   That’s about ten minutes in.   This is not for the faint of heart.

“Do you read the Bible like you read Hemingway. . . .  Are there special rules? . . .      The Bible is wonderfully dangerous. . . .   I’m about to turn left, when you think I’m going right. . . .   This is a semi-casual question: Does this learning about us show something? . . .   Is it possible to do what the Bible says about the table, the bedroom, and the grave? . . .  If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck . . . .  I don’t make judgments (laughter).”

Seventy-five years old, this man has taught you, or someone you know, at some time over the last forty years — thousands of Iowans.  He ostensibly teaches courses in the Department of Religion, but everyone knows that is not what he’s teaching.  Sure, he’ll teach the great writers, he’ll teach the Bible, and he’ll teach you Biblical Hebrew.  But, that’s not what he’s teaching.  He is teaching you how to think, how to live, how to grapple with a world that may not have your best interest at heart.  It is intoxicating and terrifying.  After fifty minutes of him, you need a nap.

Ah, but there’s a small catch.  Rabbi Holstein’s heart is not so good.  Yup, he’s been cut from one end to the other to clean things out.  Medications are lined up for their proper dispensation throughout the day.  And he carefully navigates workouts that are a shadow of the 100 mile weeks he used to run.  Now, after one of his classes, a new weariness is evident.  Everything has a price.

But there he is.  Standing at the front of the room.  Another class.  Challenging your morality — challenging your thinking — challenging any mental laziness.   He might explode.  Or he might not.

“Are you tough enough?” he asks the young man in the fourth row.

My money is on the teacher.

Joe

It is a fairly serious time and we are fairly serious folks dealing with fairly serious issues.  Duh!  Guns, mental health, economic disaster, global warming, war, Michelle’s bangs.  It feels a bit like that time when you had to babysit your younger brother and younger sister.  Your folks were gone, you were scared silly, and — listen for it — there’s the dreaded bump from downstairs in the dark.  If you remember, you were pretty sure the noise was the cat knocking over the pizza you had balanced on the TV.  But, there was an outside chance the noise was a mass murderer.  So you sent your younger sister down to check it out.  Today is a similar time.  A time for decisions and responsibility.   A serious time.

But do serious times require only seriousness?   Consider Greg Robinson.

Dr. Robinson’s size is the first noticeable feature.  He is a BIG MAN.  With his shaved head, broad smile, and large body, there is an urge to step back a little while shaking hands.  He’s just too imposing.  Too big.  Too close.  But then he talks.  He speaks of compassion, children, his adult children, other’s children, kindness, and more children.  Really.  It’s amazing.  Soon you realize that conversation is a piece of sparkly yarn that Dr. Robinson swats first one direction and then the next, until he eventually ends up rolling around on the floor.  As a listener, your job is to enjoy and periodically give the yarn a tug.  It is mesmerizing.

“I remember my elementary school principal who wore wingtips with some type of taps.  I could always hear him pacing up and down the halls.  He never came in the classroom. Ever.  I thought if I ran a school, I’d do it differently. . . .   A lot of principals work really hard to learn kids’ names.  I’m sorry to say that as you get older, all you remember are the names of the families.  Come on, what do you expect from me?  I’m a guy who had a stroke. . . .  When I go to Hy Vee and see all my former students working and I can’t find anything on my shopping list, I just cry out: ‘For god sakes help me.’  It works.”

Dr. Robinson began his career in Urbandale as the principal at Jensen Elementary School.   He soon became Superintendent of Urbandale Schools.  Nine years later, a stroke pushed him into an early retirement.  Life.

His message to first graders, teachers, and parents over all those years was simple:  “I want everybody to take a breath, we’re going to do our best.”  This notion of “trying your best” was leavened with more than a sprinkling of pixie dust.  “I dressed up as a clown when I was the principal because it should be fun to come to school.”  And each first grader was sent home with a “we are going to work hard” picture and a “we are going to have fun” picture.

“Expect the Best” was his motto.  Still is.  However, humor softens the edges of his life.  Recently, he fell down the stairs.  Perhaps not the most hilarious event.  As he lay crumpled in the stairway, holding his broken arm, he heard the EMT say, “Dr. Robinson are you okay?”  Of course, the EMT was a former student.  Dr. Robinson was okay as he shouted nonstop questions from the back of the ambulance on the way to the hospital: “Can we open the windows back here?”  “Can’t we turn on the siren and race down Aurora?”  “Did you really grow up to be an EMT?”

Dr. Robinson still follows his students.  He still visits them at the hospital.  He still makes calls when families are in trouble.  He shaved his head to show solidarity for an injured friend and pierced an ear to motivate a student struggling with life.  He is concerned about education in the State of Iowa.  He meticulously follows the legislature’s decisions.  And his heart breaks when tragedy strikes the school-age population.  He is a serious man dealing with serious issues.  On the other hand: “I sit with strings of Christmas lights and change the bulbs to Urbandale colors, blue and white.  Am I crazy?”

Well, yes.  But, perhaps a balm for serious times.

Joe

Really?  They tell me that you’re on your high horse about the recent visit of the Monster Trucks to Des Moines.  Your artistic nose is out of joint at all the noise and the dirt and the craziness.  You’re wondering how an over-sized truck can possibly have one admirer let alone a twitter account.  And you’re worried this will give cause for more jokes about Des Moines as a backwater — a good place to fly over on your way to more refined activities.

Look.  Have you ever seen a really large vehicle jump over a bus?  Or over four cars?  Or jump across a chasm?  Or do a wheelie?  Aren’t you just a wee bit tantalized by the absurdly large?   If you take the ordinary and present it in an extraordinary fashion, doesn’t it give you pause and maybe even a new perspective?

Hah, you want artistic proof?  Well, how about Claes Oldenburg and the late Coosje van Bruggen.  They made a career of making the ordinary extraordinary.  You know, the spoon and cherry in Minneapolis.

And the Shuttlecocks in Kansas City.

And Cupid’s bow and arrow in San Francisco.

Of course, we have our very own Crusoe’s Umbrella.

And a garden trowel sitting outside of Meredith.

These are amazing outdoor sculptures.  And Des Moines has two of them!  Really three if you count Oldenburg’s giant plug sculpture inside the Art Museum.  And we have even more than mere sculptures by Oldenburg and Van Bruggen — we have Monster Trucks.  Duh, the ordinary presented extraordinarily.

Still not convinced?  Okay, drive down Hickman, and on the south side of the road is the perfect merger of Oldenburg, Van Bruggen, and Frosty the Snowman.  As big as a house.  Check it out.

Of course, you’re speechless.  That’s what the extraordinary does.

Joe

Truth is hard to come by it seems.  What we see is shaped by so many factors that have nothing to do with what is actually in front of us.  The problem ranges from an actual blind spot in our eye to the mind’s technique of filling in what we didn’t see with information as if we really did see.  It’s why that old prosecutor used to tell me he preferred a bloody knife to an eye-witness to the murder.  The bloody knife is the truth.  And the eye-witness?  A little more problematic.

And not only is our perception of events of questionable value, we are fickle in our choices of what is true.  We read in the evening news how assault rifles have no place but in war, and by morning we find a “teacher’s aide,” on sale, today only, with a free ammunition magazine the size of a State-Fair zucchini.  Really?

Okay, where do we find a bedrock in these shifting sands?   On what can we hang our stocking cap?  Where is our Weather Beacon in the storm?

On the northwest side of Des Moines, flush with Douglas Avenue, is a small donut shop.  The smiling man behind the counter is Al.  Al is from New Delhi, India — his full name is Alok.   Al is schooled in irony.  That is not his chosen profession.  He was trained in information technology, for which he came to Chicago in 1989.  After a while, his work could be done more cheaply in India.  And, you guessed it, his job in America was outsourced to his former country.  Al was unemployed.  See, irony.

With a wife and two kids and a mother and father who needed his care, he came to Des Moines looking for opportunity.  Lo and behold, the Donut Hut opened up as a possibility.  And Al hit the ground running.  Before long, his spotless store with amazing donuts was filled with students, parents, teachers, construction workers, truckers, and, most importantly, the Church Ladies from Holy Trinity.  Check it out.  An immigrant’s success story.

Ah, but of course there’s more.

“I treat everyone at the shop as a family member,” Al says in his soft lilt.  Well, you might like to know that Al’s definition of “family”  includes his employees, you, me, and that pierced kid coming in the door.  Don’t believe it?  Ask Al’s dad, who is in Des Moines on a visit.

“My son understands people’s feelings heart to heart.  Customers who get an ‘A’ in their schooling, he gives a free donut — that is a wonderful thing,”  said Roy Oberoi.   Roy is of another time and another place.  Soft-spoken, dapper, with a European twist to his scarf and a stoicism that leaves little room for facial movement.  “I simply watch,” Roy says of his involvement in the business.  But, watch he does.

Donuts for A’s, did he say?  Kitty-corner to the donut shop is an alternative high school.  Al speaks with pride of the students who visit his shop: “The students have been very nice.  Yes, they did mess up, what they did is not right, and they need to change.  I’m proud of how they come to my shop and behave.  They know the value of education.  If they  improve, they should be rewarded.”  See, Al is your guardian angel.

Al’s dad nods with approval, “Perhaps he’s going beyond my expectations because he enjoys very much little ones — small children — he has come to their age.”

Is this all baloney?  Does Al really “come to our age”?  “I actually love this place,” Al says. “I can see satisfaction with customers.  Achieving something, giving them some happiness, some respect.  This is my way to do it.  It comes from my heart.”

“When people leave my shop, no matter how they walk in, they leave happy and with a smile on their face.”

Roy imperceptibly nods in agreement with his son.

A father and his son.   Practicing the moral life.   A bedrock in the shifting sands.

Joe

To look at the world out of 18-year-old eyes brings a certain clarity to the landscape, a certain freshness to encounters.  Every day is literally a new day because you haven’t experienced that many days as an adult.  When you’re 18, relationships are budding, flowering, or blossoming.  “Withering on the vine” isn’t part of the discussion.  It is a time when all your body parts work like a charm and the mysteries of aspirin and ice are yet to be discovered.  When you are 18, the seductions of your world are driven by passion and excellence and biology.  It is a holy time.

Although, there is a curse to being 18.  When you’re 18, older adults, and definitely relatives, are given a playbook with a set litany of questions to ask on any occasion.  Trust me.  You could be jogging down the road or sitting at Thanksgiving meal, it doesn’t really matter.  Be prepared for any one of the following: (1) What are you going to do with your life? (2) Do you have a boyfriend (girlfriend)? (3) Do you have a job? (4) When are you going to get a real job?  (5) And don’t you think it’s time to get serious?

These questions are anything but fresh.  And when asked of an eighteen year old, you can see their eyes go dead and their fingers twitch for the comfort of the touch screen.  It is confounding why any older adult would ever ask these loaded and judgmental questions.     It seems just lazy.

So, I began by asking 18-year-old Robert what he was going to do with his life . . . . See, that’s him down the sidewalk.  Incongruously pushing a dustpan and broom amidst all the snow.  But Robert is cleaning up after you and me.   Several months ago, he had a bit of good fortune, assisted by his grandma, and became an employee of Operation Downtown.  They’re the group that tithe the downtown businesses and then plow the money back into beautification, clean-up, and keeping an eye on the downtown.   This day, Robert’s job is to pick up cigarette butts and garbage that didn’t quite make it to the trash bins.  There wasn’t much to pick up on this morning, the day after Christmas, with temps in the single digits.

Robert told me that he is the youngest on the downtown crew.  “Everyone else is at least 50 years older,” he says smiling, which would put the next youngest employee at 68.   “They all make fun of me — in a good way,” he says by explanation.

A recent graduate of Southeast Polk High School, this is Robert’s first year without a winter break — a vacation during the holidays.  He hunches his shoulders at the thought of working on the day after Christmas, twists his head down to the ground, and bemoans the loss of those younger years with a Job-like cry: “Come on, really.” However, Robert is thrilled to have the work.  He sees it as building character.  He hopes that it will open doors to his ultimate goal of becoming a construction worker.  “I hate the cold and the heat, but this job shows that I can work in the cold and heat.”

And the fun?   “I like walking around.  Everyone is friendly here.”  And the perks?  “They provide everything but shoes, underwear, and socks.”  And what are you going to do with your life?  Robert smiles . . . .

18 years old.  What did I tell you.

Joe

He was an old man when I lived with him years ago.  But I suspect this was his pattern even as a young farmer.  Up early in the kitchen.  Mandatory dress of union suit, ironed pants, and dangling suspenders.  Two white bowls placed on the table.  No one washed.  No one shaved.  The smell of sleep strong in the air.  Coffee was put on.  Toast was brought out for dipping.  And, at last, Grandpa and I could look life in the eye as we smelled the coffee percolating.

Traveling into the past is inevitable if you’re on Ingersoll Avenue and the wind is blowing.  The smell of roasting coffee wafts up and down the street — beckoning memories.  The source of inspiration can be confusing as you make your way past the smells of pizza, pasta, and tacos, but it’s somewhere in there.  A dark smell.  An acrid smell.  A smell that is so good it is almost bad.  But there it is.  Zanzibar’s.

Julie presides over this world — a world of coffee.  When you walk in the door these days, she is not the greeter, she will not likely wait on you, but there is no doubt who is calling the shots as she briskly manages the whole enterprise.   More often than not, she’ll bring your coffee and clear your table as she is moving between tasks.   A few kind words are spoken and she moves on.  She is just a little daunting in her demeanor of quick efficiency wrapped in a small-boned, porcelain frame — a quick gust of wind across the field.

“I’m most proud that this actually works,” she says while carefully considering the advantages.  “I’m gainfully employed, I provide employment for others, and I’ve created a comfortable place where people can come.”  You think?  And any disappointment?  “That I’m still here twenty years later.”

Is she kidding?  Nope.  You see, Julie is a traveler.  You probably know a few folks like her.  They’re frequently hidden among the laborers cleaning your motel room, or pouring your drink, or delivering your pizza, or washing your car.  Jobs that provide a quick getaway.  They’re generally well-educated, smart, and looking ahead to that next trip.  They want to go.  Anywhere.

Julie spent her younger years roaming, interspersed with college.  A stint in Australia (yes, even working at a sheep station), in Europe, and then in California.  Her time in California as a barista gave her a passion for coffee.  So, using her college degree in international business, without the “international” part, she decided to open a coffee shop in her home town of Des Moines.  She’d do it for five years.  “I never had any intention to live in Des Moines, but I knew I could make this work.”  In any case, it was “just for five years.”

And now, twenty years later, what happened?  “When I was younger I was always looking ahead.  But one of the things you give up with that approach is attention to today. . . .  This thought allows me not to be so angry that I’m still in Des Moines.”

Really?  Is that why she is here?  Zen and the Art of the Coffee Shop?  Perhaps.  But then Julie starts glowing as she talks about  Zanzibar’s, her blue-collar background, and her struggles to succeed. “My first requirement for this shop was my own roaster.  If you’re not roasting you don’t have control over the freshness.”   And so she bought the Big Red Roaster, which she placed in the center of the coffee shop.  And she exposed the tin ceiling, and she laid the wood floor, and she built the counter, and she bought an espresso machine, and she hired help, and she solicited artists to hang their works.  Whew.  Catching her breath for a moment, she gives a tight smile.

Then she speaks with pride of the woman who does the roasting, who took over after her then-retired father retired from roasting.  She ticks off the names of her employees who are all important to her, not least because of their individualism (“I’m not interested in having everyone the same behind the counter — I want different looks, different personalities, and different styles — and I don’t want to babysit them”).  She speaks of her customers and her devotion to making a visit to her shop “comfortable,” “accepting,” and an “experience.”  Which thought sends her off on the importance of customer service and the lamentable loss of such skills and the importance of exposure to people and the danger of the cell phone age and the concept of living a sustainable life and . . . .

Excuse me, and travel?  “Every day you could have an adventure just by having a cup of coffee.”

And so my Grandpa would fill the white bowls, and we’d savor the first shared sip in the cold, early morning air.

Joe

If we are all facing the Mayan End of the World in one fashion or another, where do we find the courage to look over the edge, slap our chests, and beckon the unknown to give us its best shot?   Mmmm . . . you don’t think it’s the end of the world?  Listen, you’re going to the in-laws Christmas morning, your parents for Hanukkah in the afternoon, and all three kids are sick.  This smells a bit like disaster.   And gifts?  Lord, did you remember the paper carrier, the mail carrier, and your spouse?  I didn’t think so.  Oh, yeah, you forgot to order the ham.  And where are your decorations — the neighbors are wondering.  By the way, will you keep your job after that dance you did at the work holiday party?

See what I’m saying — the End of the World is upon us.

Where can you find the strength to face such adversity?  How can you find that wonderful shake-your-fist-at-the-heavens feeling where you do the dance from Rocky at the top of the Iowa Capitol stairs?   Where exactly is a cure?

Don’t look at me.  Lord, I’m just trying to keep my foolish behavior to a minimum.   And, in any case, I was more concerned about those strange lights hovering in the cemetery off of 55th Street.

In the daylight, Glendale Cemetery’s gently rolling hills, pond, and narrow roads would be the perfect setting for a Bed-and-Breakfast.

As you continue to drive west, you will dead-end at the Veterans section abutting 55th Street.  Hundreds of flat markers show the final resting place of many of the men and women who served and their spouses.

Trust me — it is a place of somber reflection about the brevity of life and about duty to country.  But what about the strange lights?  Look closely at what is going on over the slight ridge to the south in Block 51 . . . .

Yup, IN THE GRAVEYARD!  Block 51 has been transformed into a holiday destination.  Come on, don’t these decorations speak about joy and dance and love in the face of sadness?  Aren’t they the fist in the air?  Don’t you want to stand up a little straighter? This is powerful stuff.

Oh, by the way, there are a few lights in Block 51.

Now go face the end of the world.

Joe

Okay, it is the dark and dreary days of January with the bulk of winter ahead of us.  I know what you’re thinking.  Yup, I overheard your conversation.  You’re beginning again to lay out your crazy theory of Des Moines as a rest stop, aren’t you?  You know what I mean.  This is where you say that you just ran out of steam on your trek across the plains and exhaustion left you on the banks of the Des Moines River — for what you thought was a bathroom break.  And now you’re stuck.  You can’t move on to satisfy your REAL DREAMS, which are clearly not in Des Moines.   But you are just too tired to go forward.  The Midwest has mired you in mediocrity.  What a shame, too, when you arrived so talented and so good-looking.

Perhaps you’re right.  Perhaps you do belong in the mountains, or at the ocean, or around creative, artistic people like yourself.  But perhaps, just perhaps, you’re missing that Des Moines is akin to a closing argument.  If the purpose of closing argument is to walk the jury down the path until almost the end, and then let the jury walk the last few steps alone so that they have the excitement and thrill and ownership of discovering the truth for themselves, then Des Moines is a good closing argument.

You just called me crazy!  Well, what about the copper crown?  You know that funky one by James Ellwanger hovering over the south-west edge of downtown Des Moines.

Whose head did you put the crown on?  Does the copper tiara fit your boyfriend, your mother, or the remainder of the Statute of Liberty?  That’s the point isn’t it.  You get to walk the last few steps yourselves.  You get to create.   Or not.  Your choice.

Still not convinced?  Okay, what about Balzac’s Coat?  You know, Judith Shea’s work in the Sculpture Garden.

How did you fill up the coat?  Did you put the portly Balzac back in the coat?  Or did you imagine the coat draping that young, bony hipster who hangs out in the East Village?  Or did you wrap yourself in that mysterious mantle?  See, you decide.  You get the thrill.

Okay, I’m going to give you only one more.  Check out the work by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen:

No, not really an umbrella, right?  This large piece of whimsy is a gift from Des Moines to you.  You get to see Robinson Crusoe or not.  You get to imagine any scenario from the Lilliputians gazing up at Gulliver to Fred Astaire dancing in the rain.  You get to complete the story.  See, a good closing argument.

Are you buying this?

Don’t worry, relax, I don’t quite buy the good-closing-argument theory either.  On the other hand, what about the State-Fair-fried-pickles theory?

Joe