Student Use of AI Robs Them of Humanity

Image I made at Iowa College Media Association convention in February, 2024. I like seeing students with pencils. They are clearly doing their own work.

I had a pretty good day Tuesday, although it was not my day of choice. A family member is having windows in their house replaced, and as a retired person, I was available to be the one to sit at their house as the project proceeded.

It was, partly, a day lost, for me—when it’s pretty and sunny outside, I want to be out there, preferably rolling on a bicycle or tricycle. My old hips and knees make distance walking problematic, and I’m also very slow as a biped. It’s so much more pleasant for me to roll along when I want to enjoy this good Earth where we evolved and are hard wired to enjoy the breezes, sunshine and sights.

But it was also an opportunity. For my house-sitting sojourn, I took along a book I’m slowly reading (“Hollywood, Ending” by John Green), and a laptop computer. My idea was to alternate three things: doing Duolingo lessons, writing blog posts and reading.

It was a pleasant plan, and, frankly, it worked. Except I did a few Duos and then passed on to writing and stayed there the whole time except for short strolling or meal breaks. I processed and posted photographs, which was related to blog writing, for me, and then wrote three posts: One about the midterm election, one about enjoying the fall light and one about recent fall trike rides.

Writing, editing and posting those turned into about a six-hour project, which constituted the bulk of my house-sitting time.

And it was a good day. I enjoy writing. I basically have two creative outlets—like Paul Simon, I have a Nikon camera although mine is digital so there’s no Kodachrome. I make photographs. And I string together letters.

Even as I enjoyed the day, I was mildly disturbed by a post on social media. One reason the day worked for me is that although the laptop I was using has recently had trouble getting online, that day it worked. It’s a pretty severe handicap for a writer whose main outlet is his three blogs to be unable to reach the internet. And it’s not just the failure to post that’s an issue with being off-line—I use Google and Wikipedia all the time, verifying, for example, the spellings of places or names and also double-checking dates.

Anyway, back to the social media distraction. I hope you appreciate that I was too distracted to stick with the distraction.

A former colleague at the university where I taught posted about how student in one of their classes had watched a movie and were to write reflections on it. The students didn’t have access to each other’s written reflections, yet too many of them were way too eerily similar, starting with basically the same sentence in the same form and covering the same themes.

It’s no surprise what’s going on. If you pull up the same free AI online tool and enter similar prompts, that AI model is going to spit out pretty much the same stuff.

For the current professor, that was understandably disheartening. Students would rather take a shortcut and have AI do their writing than actually dive into a topic and think about it. They’ll pay thousands of dollars to attend a private college, and then do everything they can to avoid the hard slog of actual learning.

Well, it’s partly because they’re just aiming for the grade and the degree and don’t buy into the possibility that a mediocre grade may be worth it if it brings some growth.

And while I understand their point that it’s a discouraging time to be a college teacher dealing with AI because students won’t do their own work, I feel there is another aspect to the tragedy that saddens me. I understand that writing is like any human skill. It comes easily to some, it’s harder for others. Some enjoy the joy of self-expression, to others it’s just a waste of time.

Yet that’s where our humanity lies—in our capacity to create new meaning, visually, literarily or even in our objects, objects that include art and utilitarian tools.

Skull of homo erectus, a human species that persisted for more than a million years and created tools. Did they speak? They are close enough to us that it seems possible. Image from Wikimedia Commons from a museum in Frankfurt, Germany.

Six or seven million years ago, we broke off from our close cousins and lived on our own path. We didn’t “pursue” our path because evolution doesn’t work that way—we just started walking on the ground and using our arms to throw and our hands to chip away at stones because that worked. The path we are on was found and formed through accidents of environment and biology.

But anyway, subsequently the hominids became weird great apes—losing most of their hair, flattening their faces, shortening their arms and becoming bipeds. Along the way, we developed clothing and spears and guitars and quill pens and, eventually, computer keyboards. Our flat faces partly evolved to give us oddly flexible sound-making machinery in our heads and throats so our vocalizations could grow more varied and complicated and language could be born. Again, not because we wanted poetry, but the capacity to exchange data with a complex symbolic system proved advantageous for us.

Advantageous and satisfying. Along with learning to teach each other more complex knowledge via speaking, drawing and writing, we learned to creatively lie. Before writing there were oral epic poems and songs.

So it makes me sad that students use AI to craft their narratives because, in effect, they are giving up the ability to craft sharable ideas in writing. If Chat GPT answers the question, the questioner gains little to nothing. Not just in skills and knowledge, but in the reward of creating something original.

I don’t know if the wider world will ever read or appreciate the fruits of my Tuesday labor. Here it is Wednesday, and I’m up to the same pattern, spending my time writing a blog post. But I know some others will read my words, and I have the pride of knowing they are my words, mine alone, nothing strung together by a computer program.

Ancient stone tool, created by human hand. Hope the owner of the hand was proud of their work. From Wikimedia Commons, their caption: A handaxe from the Saint-Acheul site at the Musée d’Archéologie nationale, France.

Sure, it’s much, much slower than using AI. It’s like me walking. But slow walking benefits this old sack of bones (as does riding person-powered bike or trike, for that matter), while riding in a car may get me there faster but also fatter.

To me, writing means both what the author intended and what an audience decides it means, and for a special small subsection of crafted words, that can become a wonderful shared experience. Maybe it’s what John Green gets from his fiction and nonfiction books. Before it finds an audience, or even if it doesn’t find an audience, the first benefit of writing is to the writer.

I had to think these thoughts, organize them and then write these words. And, true, I indirectly used AI, too—I googled some terms in this post, and MS Word kept tapping me on the shoulder when my strings of letters weren’t quite correct—but I still expressed myself, not anyone or anything else.

I can’t explain the satisfaction that writing gives me, but it does a lot to lift my mood and make me feel more fully human. Sure, I can understand that a good writer may use AI as a cheap editor that can speed the writing and proofing process—but that AI habit is a bit dangerous if it becomes students tapping simple queries into a machine that will spit out quick pablum for them.

That seems, to me, to lead to no joy for those students. And nothing human.

Enjoying the Golden Light of November

Grass at Prairie garden of Waldo’s Rock Park in Marion, Iowa, shines in the late afternoon sun, Nov. 8.

It has started to look like late fall here in Iowa, even if it doesn’t totally feel like it. We had a frost last week, albeit not a super heavy one.

Still, there was ice on the roses Saturday morning, and the remaining Milkweed pods are suddenly dryer and splitting. A week ago we did our fall bulb planting, and in this weird, warm fall, I was concerned we were planting too early—the recent frost is reassurance that it wasn’t a bad time for Crocus, Hyacinth, Tulip and Daffodil bulbs to go into the cooling soil.

Frost on a rose in my front garden, Saturday morning, Nov. 7, 2026.

Our warm October was, as a consequence of being warm, much buggier than that month normally is. Now, with cooler nights and light frosts, the aggressive gnats that were such pests in October are much abated.

On a trike ride Sunday, I still saw some grasshoppers and even a few fluttering butterflies—odd to encounter in November, but far less numerous than they were before Halloween.

In some ways, fall is the mirror of spring. In Iowa, spring starts at ground level. The late March and early April, sunshine warms the soil, the early spring flowers appear and the plants closest to the newly frost-free earth wake up first—grass greening, crocus and snowdrops and squill blooming, then low bushes, small under-story trees, and finally the large trees waking up. The stirring of the new year’s life is from the bottom up.

Frost on the front lawn Saturday morning.

In autumn, that is mostly reversed. While there are exceptions—plants like Sumac that start the seasonal change early, for example—it’s often the older trees, the stately Walnuts and Oaks and tall Maples, that start to turn to fall hues first and signal the sleepy season for plants. Down below, the understory trees and the young, shorter trees hang on to their greenery much longer.

I can see the pattern in three Pawpaw trees in my backyard, for example. The oldest and tallest, planted two years ago and a good-sized tree when planted, has started showing signs of brown. It’s still a short tree and not as far along as the tall Oaks, but the tallest Pawpaw outplaces two younger trees of same species. The younger ones aren’t growing anymore, their wood has been hardening for the approaching season, but their foliage is still emerald green.

Anyway, on Saturday morning the grass was grey with frost—not for the first time, but the one earlier frost was very light and spotty, while Saturday’s was more definite. Not the hammer of a hard freeze that will end the resistance of the remaining bugs, but a freeze that should signal even to the young, low trees that it’s curtains for this year’s leaves.

November scenery–a Redbud leaf Nov. 9, Milkweed pods Nov. 6, an Oak leaf Nov. 6 and Fall sunshine at Waldo’s Rock Nov. 8.

One bonus to this weirdly warm fall has been the many days that I can spend outdoors. I’m a triker and a biker (but not a smoker nor a midnight toker). On my rides, I take my Nikon along and take pictures. In summer, the best images are early morning or late afternoon in the golden light of the low sun.

In November, the sun never ascends all that far. While early and late are still the best lighting conditions, even midday the light has an almost poignant golden quality to it. I do prefer the warmer, lighter times of year, but I do appreciate the midday shadows and golden light of November.

A Fall Walk in the Woods

Oak leaves in my backyard Oct. 29, 2026.

A friend came over this morning to look at my tricycle. I ride a recumbent trike most of the time, these days, but have been off of it since last week due to a sticky left wheel brake. Working brakes seem a priority.

I had tried tightening the cable, which would work temporarily, but the brake would always make a popping noise and become slack. The friend figured out that the internal spring needed to be tightened so that the brake would return to “rest” after being used. After he adjusted it, I went on a 12-mile ride, and the trike, knock on wood, seems fixed.

Anyway, I am not much of a mechanical person. I’m better with a camera or pen in my hand than any tool—so I really appreciated the help.

After he had finished fiddling with the tricycle, I asked him if he wanted to see my backyard. Some context—our friendship is mostly a rolling one, we met at my grandson’s baseball games and have a shared interest, as old men, in slow riding on bike trails. From those rides, I knew he was, like me, a fan of wild nature in Iowa, so I thought he would enjoy seeing the forest my wife and I have created.

And he accepted the invite with enthusiasm.

I know I’m a little tree crazy. A few years ago, I counted the number of trees I’ve planted in my regular-size yard, and it was then 24. That count is out of date, now—just this fall, I added 5 trees as I wrote in an earlier post.

Fall colors in my backyard, Oct. 29, 2026.

Anyway, a third of the backyard is set aside as a tree garden, a woodsy area where the trees are fairly densely planted. Not too densly, I hope—I have left some space between trees and have deliberately mixed understory and what will grow to be full-size trees. The rest of the yard is not, by any means, tree-free, it’s just that there is some space left to grass.

It was fun to show someone who appreciates trees this rather crazy-looking plot of land. My friend noted that there are lots of young Redbud trees in the tree garden, and asked if he might take one at some point if he finds a place for a Redbud in his yard. The Redbuds are mostly plentiful volunteers from an old tree that was among the first I planted a quarter of a century ago, so I didn’t hesitate in telling him he could take his pick of the young Redbuds.

Later, my wife floated the idea that he might want more than one. She has an ulterior motive—we’re planning on planting fall bulbs soon, and she wouldn’t mind a few holes pre-dug. Honestly, however, taking out two Redbuds would have little impact on our enchanted forest. We definitely have Redbuds to spare, and I also would like my volunteer tricycle mechanic to enjoy the peace of a piece of my garden.

On trike ride along Boyson Trail in Marion, looking up at golden light in fall tree Oct. 29, 2026.

Today was a beautiful, sunny day. It’s late enough in the year that the sun is starting to seem low in the sky for much of the day, and the light was quite lovely. Later in the day, I went for a second ramble in my own private woods, enjoying the golden afternoon light and snapping images. Then, and on my trike ride, I was focused on the fall colors.

Autumn isn’t as dramatic in my corner of the planet as it is in other parts of North America, but it’s still a time when the green hues of summer give way to a more diverse pallete, and although I’m a big fan of the green times, I enjoy the diversity, too. We’re still awaiting the first real freeze, but the fading light has been enough of a trigger for the older trees.

Making pictures of the fall leaves today was fun. Not as much fun as showing off the woods I’ve created to an appreciative audience, but still. Anyway, stop by if you want a tour of my trees, I’d be happy to oblige. And you don’t have to fix my trike.

Oct. 29–One point of many trees. The chance to see many dinosaurs in those trees, like this one seen Oct. 29, 2026.

My Personal Forest Adds Five Trees

Planting the first tree in the front yard. I’m an old man and was thinking planting 5 trees would be physically taxing. It was, but not as bad as I anticipated. There is an energizing tree-planting high that helped.

We’re having a warm October in Iowa, which is a mixed blessing.

On the plus side, “warm” means highs in the 70s with nights in the 50s or upper 40s—very nice. True, we saw the upper 80s last weekend, but we’re not going to see the uncomfortable hot weather that we did early in September.

On the minus side, it’s a fortnight into the 10th month and we’ve had no sign of frost. At this time of year, as the temperature eases and light decreases, human-consuming insects are getting active and aggressive. Little black gnats can suddenly appear and munch on your flesh. Mosquitos that stayed away in the direct sun of summer are not so bothered by the more indirect autumn light.

I don’t like being critter chow. In a normal October, frost would be our friend—the freezing nights would reduce the insect population.

Nothing is holding back the mandibles of discomfort yet this season.

It’s not just gnats and mosquitos, either. Insects with stingers unconsciously sense that the end is near and have a YOLO recklessness. I planted trees in the first week of the month, and before digging the holes, brought my wife out so we could agree on the exact locations. We were standing in our yard when she suddenly flinched. Unprovoked, a small wasp or bee had stung her. For no apparent reason other than she was there and it was fall and the insect just was mad at the universe.

So I’ve been enjoying our gorgeous weather, but with some precautions such as frequent dousing with that lemon-smelling insect repellent so popular here.

Anyway, enough about bugs. What about the trees? I already have a copious number growing, what was I doing planting more?

Six years ago, a violent storm, an inland derecho with 100 mph winds blowing over an extended period, swept through Cedar Rapids and destroyed most of our tree canopy. Ever since, some groups have been engaged in campaigns to encourage tree planting in my town.

For example, this fall HyVee—through the Monarch Research Project in Marion, Iowa—offered a program under which a person could order one free tree for each of their children or grandchildren, with a cap of five trees.

Normally, a free tree program involves fairly tiny trees—for example, we’ve planted an Oak that we got at a community event earlier this year. It was an 18-inch baby when put in the ground, although it was pretty happy this year and significantly increased in height.

But this fall’s program offered more substantial trees that are 3 to 5 feet tall.

We couldn’t resist. Well, I suppose we could, but we didn’t try. With my support, my wife ordered the five trees we could get.

We chose:

1. A Pawpaw tree. We have a young one growing that we planted the year before last. A Pawpaw is a native fruit tree, but it requires proximity to another of its kind in order to bear fruit, so last year, a daughter got me a second Pawpaw for Father’s Day. That second one, a very young, small tree, bore just a few leaves. It didn’t seem to come back this year, and so my wife ordered a Pawpaw via this year’s program. Foreshadowing—there’s more to this story coming up.
2. A Quaking Aspen tree. It just looked interesting, and is a kind of tree we don’t have.
3. A Black Cherry tree. We have one that volunteered in our side garden some years ago, and it’s a native tree that benefits wildlife, so why not two?
4. And 5—Maple trees. A Sweet Maple and a Red Maple. We had a huge Sweet Maple in our yard before the derecho six years ago, but it was among the trees destroyed. We already had one of its children planted in the lower yard, and this year, the old roots of that destroyed tree sent up a new shoot. So the Sweet Maple is just a sweet tree, not really a new type for us. The Red Maple is a similar tree, but supposed to be fall pretty, so why not?

The five new trees. Red Maple in seating area, Sweet Maple in front, Black Cherry, Pawpaw and Quaking Aspen (the final 3 in the same woodsy area in backyard).

We picked up the trees during the first week of the month on Tuesday afternoon at the Monarch Research Project’s facility east of Marion. The system was pretty slick, and although the line of SUVs and trucks we had to wait in was a long one, it moved quickly and it didn’t take long to obtain our trees. I was pleasantly surprised—all of them were in 3-gallon pots and were fairly tall. We had to lay them down to fit then into our Subaru, although we expected to do that.

Wednesday was planting day. I moved the trees to where I wanted to plant them. The Sugar Maple went in the front yard (where there currently aren’t any maple trees). The Red Maple went to a small seating area, a former sandbox that we’ve put some benches and planters in. We planted a volunteer Maple there earlier this year, but it didn’t make it, so this tree is filling in.

The Aspen was a bit of a challenge—it will grow to quite a tree, and I didn’t want to place it in an open area of the lawn. But we have a sort of woodsy area on the west side of the lower yard, and I put it at the edge of that zone. The Pawpaw would go exactly where the previous one was planted last year (except there is a plot twist coming). The Black Cherry would go in the woodsy area near the Pawpaw.

As noted earlier, my wife’s input on the placement came at an unexpected cost. I don’t know why the stinging insect attacked her rather than either me or nobody. Well, she readily agreed to most of my placements, although I did move the Aspen a bit due to her feedback.

And then the planting. In front, I had to content with some roots in my chosen spot, but I persevered. The Sugar Maple was the first tree planted. We had considered asking the city if one of our trees could go in the parking in front of our house, but the city tree request form is so complex and we don’t know how long the city’s decision takes, so we gave up, and I planted our new front tree in our yard rather than in the parking.

Next, I planted the Red Maple and then the Aspen. Those went more quickly, as they were going into garden areas where I didn’t try to save any sod, and there happened to be no roots when I dug the holes.

The penultimate tree was to be the Pawpaw but it didn’t work out that way. I had a small triangular fence up to protect the small tree planted last year. It had some Creeping Charlie and other weeds on it and was abutting a large fern.

There was a surprise waiting for me. When I removed the fence, and incidentally the clinging weeds came with it—surprise! There was a tiny plant with about five leaves on it. Those leaves—they looked weirdly familiar. I used a plant app on my phone which backed up my suspicion. While the above-ground part of the tiny Pawpaw planted last year had faded and didn’t come back after winter, its roots had not given up so easily. Those tiny leaves on the 2-inch sprout were Pawpaw leaves. Well, cool. I decided to cut back the surrounding plants a bit and just put the protective fence back. We’ll see if this tiny, tiny tree comes back—to be honest, I have some hope. The problem last year is that the newly planted Pawpaw tree never seemed to grow or add any leaves. While shorter, this year’s discovered Pawpaw appears a bit denser with foliage—its leaves are small but still larger than last year’s wan efforts.

So I moved the new Pawpaw about six feet north, still on the edge of the woody part of the yard. I planted the Black Cherry as planned, and then put in the new Pawpaw.

A surprise awaits in the garden–the “dead” Pawpaw from last year has sent up a new sprout. While tiny, it looks more lively than the tree did last year. A bit of a surprise, but cool.

Trees are like every other living thing. They sometimes live long and grow large, sometimes they don’t make it. Sometimes they put up unexpected sprouts six years after apparently giving up the ghost (if trees have ghosts). Sometimes, a little tree just weakly holds on and expires during the winter—and sometimes you think it expired, but are surprised when you clear the weeds and there it is, striving, as live things usually do, to eke out an existence.

There was one more little drama awaiting. A few days after I planted the trees, apparently, a deer wandered into our front yard. It’s chosen salad that day was the tender top sprout and most of the leaves on the Sugar Maple. After that fiasco, I did what I should have thought to do before—put netting in to protect the tree. I doubt the deer killed the tree—at this time of year the tree is about to jettison its leaves anyway—but still. Deer me.

A few days after it was planted, a deer snacked on the Sweet Maple. Luckily, the other trees are all in a fenced yard that the deer don’t enter. And at this time of year, I don’t think clipping off all of the leaves will kill the tree, although it’s not very nice.

Anyway, I’m not entirely sure why I’m addicted to planting trees. A more careful or cautious gardener would plan more and have a less crowded plot of land. But I find the act of putting a new tree in the ground to be intrinsically pleasing. It’s work, the carrying and digging, but work that often has a good end.

Five new trees are in the ground. Will they grow and add to the recovering canopy of this fair city? It remains to be seen, and there may be some surprises.

Shifting Seasons, Future Plans in September

Sept 9–Release of Monarch Butterfly.

September is a month of shifts. It starts in summer and ends with browner foliage and cooler air.

This year, the month at the start was very warm and humid. It’s not that way now. The humid has stayed in the form of oddly frequent rains this damp autumn, but cooler air has moved in.

Not as cool as some years. We will finish the month, it looks like, with nary a hint of frost. But the grey days have been good for other purposes. I planted some grass seed about 10 days ago, and then we had heavy rains and minor creek flooding.

Sept. 11–Morning Glory.

I assumed the scattered seeds had all washed away. But just yesterday I noted that a lot of the grass has germinated, even in the right places.

More fall planting is coming. We’ll scatter milkweed seeds, for instance. We purchased some daffodil bulbs, and I’m sure we’ll pick up some tulips and crocuses.

And there are the trees. We’ve ordered five free trees through a local program, and right now my wife and I are fussing about exactly where those will go in our lawn. The lawn is already marked, and the trees are coming in early October, so we have some time to make those decisions.

September flowers. Asters, Mums and Zinnia.

It was my second fall of not doing class preparation. Before I retired, August would be when summer ended and September would be a very busy month—settling into the rhythm of new students and figuring out what the academic year would bring.

Not this fall. True, not last fall, either, but the last fall was the first term of my retirement, and I was both adjusting to the new reality of not teaching, plus recovering still from heart surgery I had in January of last year. This fall is different. I’m starting some new things—volunteering in a local school library, for instance. I’ve signed up to canvass for local Democrats for the important 2026 elections, too.

One nice feature of this cool and wet September has been the monarch butterfly migration. I’ve noticed them much more this year—of course, I’m out in the world more this September, and I don’t know if there really are more butterflies around or if it’s just that I’m around more to see them.

Monarchs seen in Cedar Rapids parks in September. Prairie Park Fishery, Cedar Lake and Noelridge.

Well, the month is drawing to a close. A friend gave me an aster rooted from a cutting in his garden, and the new flower is already blooming. I have an older, larger aster plant in front that is budding but not yet in flower—that aster will be the signal that the lush time of growth is spent, it will be the final flower to provide pollinators with a bit of a boost before the cold ends this growing season.

New trees, new grass, new flowers—fall planting has some importance in that it is an optimistic investment in the future, a gamble that when the tilt of plant again brings warm weather to this half of the Earth, there will be novel colors to enjoy.

Sept. 20–Deer in grass by bike trail.

Sept. 24–Flying over Cedar Lake.

Sept. 24–Sumac at Prairie Park Fishery taking on fall colors.

New Tires, a Circle of Desks—Memories of a Tragic Tuesday

National Park Service image of 9/11 from Wikimedia Commons.

It was a Tuesday in September, and if memory serves me correctly (a dicey proposition), the weather was sunny and nice in Cedar Rapids.

For me, September of 2001 was an odd time of my life. I was 43, middle aged, and was starting a new career. For more than 20 years, I had been a journalist, first writing for newspapers in central Missouri, then covering the banking industry for a specialized publisher located in Storm Lake, Iowa.

But even in 2001, vast changes in the media world were starting. The internet had appeared, and although we did not yet have our lives swamped by social media, the instant access to information and misinformation was already reshaping our culture. The publishing company I had been working for was seeing its market suddenly drop, and most of us in the editorial side of the business were suddenly let go that summer.

Well, in the late 1980s I had, while working in Missouri, earned a master’s degree at the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Journalism. The graduate program there was definitely design to prepare practitioners more than professors, but in the back of my mind was the thought that having a master’s degree from one of the nationally leading J schools meant I could at some future point shift into a college teaching career.

My parting with the Storm Lake publisher was on friendly terms. The owner of the small company I had worked for helped me get a side gig aiding Buena Vista University with numerous state education reports that had to be written that summer of 2001. In the meantime, I was searching for a new permanent gig.

I have a sister who lived (and lives) in Cedar Rapids and was on the faculty at Kirkwood Community College. She alerted me right around the time I learned my job would be ending that Mount Mercy College in Cedar Rapids was seeking two communication professors.

Yeah, this is a blog post about 9/11. I’m getting there, I promise.

Anyway, I interviewed for the job. It must have gone well, because MMC (now Mount Mercy University) offered me a tenure-track faculty position, which I gratefully accepted. My wife, a nurse who was also now and then a professor, was pleased because Cedar Rapids offered her many more job opportunities than rural Northwest Iowa.

My kids were understandably a bit more mixed in their reactions to the move. My oldest daughter was going to be a junior in high school—I had children in high school, middle school and elementary school. We were moving to a city from a tiny, tiny town (we lived in Early, Iowa, at village of 600 souls).

So that September, me and my family were undergoing the adjustments and awkwardness of major life changes. My children were in a new, much larger, public school system rather than the small Catholic school that they had been attending. Both of their parents were dealing with career changes—me, a new professor at Mount Mercy College, my wife a nursing educator and manager at Mercy Medical Center.

New tires in a shop. Wikimedia Commons, image uploaded by Manhattan Project.

Just a lot was going on. That Tuesday morning, however, what was mainly on my mind was tires. I had to take one of our cars to a tire store next to Lindale Mall to have a new set installed.

I honestly don’t recall exactly when I first heard the news of the 9/11 attacks. I was in the habit of listening to Iowa Public Radio news in the morning, and I know I had a mid-morning appointment for the tires, so I may have heard reports on the radio. What I do recall for certain was how odd the experience was at the tire shop that day.

First of all, it seemed a bit eerie. Soon after the attacks, normal life seemed to freeze. There was little traffic on the short drive to the tire shop, and when I got there, it seemed almost ghostly empty. They had a TV on in the little customer waiting lounge, and I seemed to be mostly alone, sitting there, staring at the TV, unable to believe it when the first tower collapsed and then the second one.

Mechanics were having a weird day, too. They kept wandering into the lounge, starting at the TV for a few minutes, then going back out to the garage area and working for a few minutes. There weren’t a lot of cars there to work on—no surprise customers that day—and I wonder how many hands were on my tires. Given how the mechanics were cycling through, it felt like one must tighten one nut, and then they switched off so they could rotate into the lounge.

It took a while for the tires to be installed. I didn’t mind. The internet existed, but TV was still, in 2001, the best way to follow a live big global news story.

That fall, I was teaching two sections of a speech class that met on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. I also taught a class on writing for public relations (called, creatively, Writing for Public Relations) on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, which is why I was able to go to the tire shop on a Tuesday morning.

Flag flying on my front porch this July 4th, U.S.A.’s 250 birthday. Image by me.

The day’s news was a shock. The day kept getting weirder and weirder. There was a sense that more terror attacks were possible, and in Cedar Rapids, people were fretting about Lindale Mall or Rockwell-Collins (an aerospace company with many defense contracts) being potential targets.

And I had a lecture planned for a random media writing class on that Tuesday afternoon.

Wisely, I decided to delay that day’s lesson. When students arrived in that classroom in Donnelly Hall that Tuesday afternoon, I told them to move the desks. Instead of the usual classroom arrangement, we sat in a big circle.

I don’t recall exactly what I said. It was something along the lines of: “Well, you know the news. What are you thinking? How are you feeling?”

The students started sharing. I didn’t take notes, and my memory isn’t that great to peer back to an 80-minute class period 25 years ago, so I don’t know exactly what was said, but it seemed a lot was and the discussion took the whole class. We simply debriefed and tried to put the unfathomable into some perspective.

The events of 9/11 were world changing, especially in the U.S. It was a huge terror attack on our soil—a shock, I’m sure, akin to what the Greatest Generation felt when Pearl Harbor was bombed in 1941. In some ways, this was worse—these weren’t men in naval uniforms attacking a military base, these were terrorists who did attack the Pentagon, but also buildings in New York filled with regular office workers who were just there, living their everyday lives and working on a random Tuesday morning.

I’ll let others tell their more poignant stories from that terrible day. I’ll also leave it to others to provide more context on what this day ended up meaning and doing to our culture. I was lucky that I wasn’t related to any of the people whose life paths came to an abrupt, unjust and tragic conclusion that day.

Yet sitting in a tire store while mechanics rotated through the longue, or arranging desks in a circle for a day when there would suddenly be no afternoon media writing lecture—these are snippets of memory that stick with me. It was one of those kinds of days.

And I pray we don’t face many more like it.

A Visit to the Sea Turns into a Book Adventure

Looking out from museum at Duluth, Minnesota.

We, my wife and I, recently planned a little trip up north. We have a daughter who lives in the Twin Cities suburb of Mahtomedi in Minnesota. And early in August we made the four-hour drive north for a quick visit.

It was one of several short trips we took this summer—we stayed overnight in the Amana Colonies, for example, and we took a grandson to the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art for a spontaneous visit on a rainy August Friday.

But back to Minnesota. Other than knowing that we would be seeing the grandchildren there and hanging out, “planned” might be a strong verb. But in a phone call shortly before the visit, our daughter asked if there was anything in particular we wanted to do on this visit. I had just written on another blog about a book I read concerning the shipwreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, a 1975 tragedy that claimed the lives of all 29 seamen on the ship. And I mentioned I have actually never seen Lake Superior and thus might want to go to Duluth.

Well, I don’t know the geography of our neighbor to the north all that well. In my mind, Lake Superior and Duluth were way up there at the north edge of the state, between the United States and our current enemy (although I can’t fathom why), Canada.

As a glance at the map will prove, I was making some incorrect assumptions. Lake Superior is a giant inland sea, but is so vast that it not only touches both Canada and the U.S., it also cuts to the middle of Minnesota. Duluth, as it turns out, is not all that remote.

And so, on an August Saturday morning, we piled into two vehicles and began the drive north. Which turned out to be along a busy interstate, but also through very comely countryside—woods, rocky outcroppings, farmland. And dramatic changes in elevation as we came into Duluth—my ears popped like we were landing in an airplane as we zoomed down into the valley of a vast lake.

We ate a very satisfying breakfast at the Duluth Grill, and then ventured to a maritime museum in the city’s port. It was a good museum, and there was a display about the Edmund Fitzgerald. Then we had ice cream at a local shop we walked to and drove though the city to park near a local beach. My daughter had heard from a Duluth native that this beach was nice, and wasn’t overcrowded as some other stretches of lakeshore tend to be.

But as we were approaching our parking destination, we noted an old church that had been converted into a used bookstore. In the grounds of the church, some arts and craft fair was going on.

And since we happened to be in town, why not? We sauntered over.

Books we acquired on our trip, the title page of the photo book and the Duluth bookstore.

Several pleasant books-browsing hours passed. The fair was fun, but the real treat was the chaotic, stuffed interior of the store. Most of their inventory was old hardcovers, and I found an interesting history of photography, published in the 1930s.

Books were an unexpected theme of the whole visit—during our trip, we also visited another used book store in St. Paul, where my wife and I had found a few other interesting tomes.

Anyway, after the Duluth bookstore visit, we walked through a city park with a large rose garden located on bluffs over the lake, and then found a path down to the rocky beach. We hung out for a while, contemplating life on the shores of the lake they call Gitche Gumee.

Views from a Duluth beach.

From the look of what I saw on this brief visit, this is a corner of the planet I wouldn’t mind meandering a bit more in. Duluth was a very entertaining, quirky town. For an old rust-belt sea port, it was, at least in the parts I saw, old and pretty and full of a weird hippie-Viking hybrid vibe. It was very nice.

And I would like to see more of Superior in less urban areas, too.

The Lily and the Heron are from a walk along White Bear Lake in Minnesota. Other nature views are from walk around Lily Lake in Amana, Iowa. Art from Cedar Rapids Art Museum. Despite the heat, there has been a lot of beauty, too, in summer 2026.

The August journey north was the highlight of trips in summer 2026, to me, although there were other pleasant sojourns, too. A niece got married in South Dakota, and the trip there was fun. We also spent a rainy August Friday when we were watching a grandson taking him to the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art. There, I lent him one of my cameras, and he and his grandmother played a game of making images of details of artworks, and having me then try to find them.

In mid-July, we drove over to the nearby Amana Colonies and stayed overnight, visiting several of the small museums there and enjoying a pleasant late day walk around Lily Lake.

Summer 2026 was a bit of challenge. It’s early September, and we’re in the midst of a heat wave in a season that has featured several of those. Yet, it was also a season of visiting some new places and hanging out with family.

I can’t think of a better way to enjoy this season. I hope fall 2026 will include some similar adventures.

Walter Entertains as She Takes Off

July 23–Walter on the front stoop drying herself off before her first flight. She ended up flit-dancing into some flowers first.

July 2026 was a hot summer month here in Iowa that alternated between dry and some intense downpours. At least it wasn’t a drought. And although I didn’t ride it this year, I’m glad RAGBRAI got a break, with most of the days of that annual cross-state bicycle ride not being brutally, dangerously hot, as much of this month has been.

One theme of this month, for me, has been contemplating the beauty of butterflies. We plant Milkweed in our garden, and in June, we found a caterpillar that we brought inside and fed. Early in July, Dodger, who has been mentioned in this blog before, emerged from her chrysalis and was released into the wild.

July 5–A visitor in front garden–male Monarch (two distinct spots on rear wings identify the male–no spots, like on Dodger and Walter means female).

We also attended the Indian Creek Nature Center’s Monarch Fest in July, and picked up a Monarch caterpillar there. The caterpillar was named Walter, and took less than a week to grow to chrysalis size.

When Walter emerged from July 23, there was quite a show. For one thing, it turned out that Walter was also female (you can easily tell the gender of adult Monarch butterflies by looking at their back wings—Google it).

July 23–Walter. Twig was in her jar, which you can see in one image. We have a bug cage that we use to raise butterflies–yes, we wash it well between butterflies. It’s empty now, ready for the next caterpillar.

As with Dodger, we took Walter out to the front porch when it seemed like she was dried enough to move around. We tipped her container on its side and opened the lid.

She crawled out and sat there, continuing to dry. Monarchs are damp when they emerge and take a few hours to get to flying dryness. As she got less damp, Walter moved around a bit, frantically flipping her wings (in my experience, a normal part of the drying process). She ended up off the porch in some flowers in the front garden.

Three other July flyers. Tiger Swallowtail July 13 in front garden. Red Admiral in front garden July 22. Hawk over Cedar Lake July 24.

As we waited for her first flight, a family was walking across the street—three young boys with their parents. I called out to them and asked if they wanted to watch a new butterfly.

They did and approached our front stoop. As they watched Walter, one of our grandchildren and his mother also showed up.

So Walter had quite an audience. She didn’t seem to mind. It wasn’t long after the audience congregated that the time had arrived. Walter had been flapping and dancing about in place, but suddenly took to the air and shot up over our heads.

She headed off to the east.

July 5–Dodger on her emergence day.

Butterflies don’t live long live—and Walter was early enough in the summer that she won’t be a member of the special generation that will survive for months and make the long flight to Mexico for the winter. But perhaps the children of Walter (and Dodger) will be members of that cohort.

I hope so. Most of all, I hope that both our butterfly babies will lay many eggs that make it from egg to caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly. And thanks Dodger and Walter, for being you.

True, it was totally natural, but watching butterflies first flights seems magical—parts of nature are awesome to behold. And to share with young children.

July 22–Waldo’s Rock Park in Marion–warm summer afternoon, summer sky and summer flowers.

A Castle Moves From A Hill

When I was just a few weeks from retiring, I had a meeting with the provost of Mount Mercy University to discuss the future of student journalism at the small Catholic college where I taught. Dr. Tom Castle and I discussed how the university might continue the Mount Mercy Times web site, and how a new advisor might be found when there would be no journalism professor on campus.

One point I appreciated about the meeting is that Dr. Castle “got it” very quickly—the importance of continuing student journalism, the need for a leader, the urgency of coming up with a process. It was typical Tom, to me.

Dr. Tom Castle, April 20, 2024.

He was a rare leader—an administrator who knew how to be quiet and how to listen. As first a faculty colleague and then as a boss, that was one of my key memories of Tom Castle—the man was, like all of us, very busy, but when he could spare a moment, he was there and he was listening. Trust me, in both the private sector and in academia, that’s a rare quality of effective leadership.

I also appreciated his careful way of speaking, his clear empathy and his sense of humor. The university had struggled at times with finding the right person to be its chief academic officer—it’s not an easy role on any campus, I’d bet. But of all the VPs of Academic Affairs or Provosts (the title shifted over time) that I worked with, Dr. Castle was my favorite.

My wife notes that, in addition, she appreciated that he seemed to understand work-life balance. His own family is important to him, and he understood that his colleagues had life priorities beyond their careers.

He was one of the old souls of MMU, one of the people whose career on The Hill helped define what was best about Mount Mercy. Now he has moved on to a new phase in his career outside of MMU.

His departure comes at a time of rapid shifts on The Hill. Mount Mercy has merged with St. Ambrose University and there have been lots of resulting changes. That merger is a shift in strategy as both MMU and SAU face dramatic demographic challenges. It’s not so much winds of change as a derecho of many forces that are reshaping higher education.

Well, I hope MMU finds its way in the weird new world. I am sure that those who are still in the classrooms on The Hill teaching students will carry on their good efforts. I’m also sure many of them will fondly remember and will miss the positive force that Tom Castle was, first as a member of the faculty ranks, then as a university leader.

Happy Freaking Birthday, USA!

Flag flaps in front of my house on the Fourth of July.

The 250th birthday of the United States came and went in a rather unsatisfactory manner. It turns out that the convicted felon who ran the show is better at stealing from the American people than throwing a party for us. Or governing, for that matter.

Things were different the last big birthday this nation had.

Fifty years ago, I recall how some wondered how America would do with its 200th birthday. We were just three years out from the sad end of our misbegotten intervention in Vietnam, and just that temporally removed from the crisis of Watergate. The go-go days of the Hippie era were behind us, and the long national hangover of the 1970s malaise was getting underway.

We had a Republican president then, too, and politics were hot as 1976 was a presidential election year.

But say what you will about President Gerald Ford—he never hijacked the 200th birthday and tried to make it about himself. He understood, as most presidents seem to, present company not included, that being the leader of this country included some obligation to be nonpartisan and inclusive in certain circumstances.

Like celebrating the country’s birthday.

Fourth of July–another view of flag in front of my house.

Anyway, let’s just, for the moment, ignore the insanely incompetent-and-bad-at-governing but gifted-at-grifting cabal of criminals who are in charge now, and let’s talk more mundane, homey things.

Despite the sorry state of the union, I enjoyed America’s 250th birthday, probably more than I did its 200th. Back then, I felt a bit adrift, a lonely 17-year-old high school graduate working at a ketchup factory, saving my money, dreaming of glory, twitching like a finger on the trigger of a gun.

Now I’m a retired grandfather, not so much worried about the next chapter as just trying to prolong it a bit. And trying to live my life, whatever life is given to me, and enjoy more than achieve. The nature of the struggle has shifted, and I like that shift.

What did I do this 2026 Independence Day weekend? Well, first of all, and very American, it was filled with baseball. Not regular baseball—Banana Ball. I had been lucky enough that we got tickets to the Savannah Bananas game July 3 in Iowa City. I went with my wife, one of my daughters, a grandson and a friend that the grandson had invited.

Lily in my garden July 3–Damp in the morning from overnight rain. It will rain again later, delaying, but not cancelling, a baseball entertainment event that was a highlight of the weekend.

For several hours, we ended up huddled beneath the bleachers, waiting while a thunderstorm storm raged outside. Maybe there’s a metaphor there for our national condition—I can only hope so, because two hours later, when the storm moved on and the game finally began, it was silly, schlocky, kitschy, contrived and totally delightful. The grandson and friend ended up standing on their benches, enthralled by this professional wrestling version of the national pastime.

We got to bed a little late that night, so the actual Fourth of July got off to a slightly late start, for me. I missed putting out our flag, but my wife did it before I arose. That day, I enjoyed a trike ride, ate hot dogs for supper and went to bed a bit early. It was nice. Happy birthday, USA!

Butterfly shows up as I prepare to mow July 5. Note rear wing spots–it’s male.

Sunday began with church and then that other weekly American summer sacrament—mowing the lawn. While I was starting to prepare for mowing (transplanting rogue Milkweed plants and setting out clover seed), I noted a visitor. A Monarch butterfly—surely one of our more recognizable continental, if not national, symbols—had shown up on some Milkweed blooms. I grabbed my camera and recorded its image, and noted spots on the back wings that confirmed it was male.

Meanwhile, in slightly related butterfly news, a chrysalis formed by a Monarch caterpillar we had brought inside a couple of weeks ago had darkened, a sign of impending emergence of the changed creature within. I took a post-mow nap, and after I awoke, checked the container only to find not a chrysalis, but a damp, young butterfly.

Cool. After an appropriate celebratory feast of brats, potato salad and a cherry pie, we took Dodger (named by the baseball crazy grandson) outside. We opened the container and hung the lid from a Redbud tree. After a while, Dodger flapped, flitted into the air and began her butterfly life. It was a she, based on the lack of rear wing spots. Maybe Dodger and Visitor can meet and make some fertile eggs. A grandpa can hope.

July 5–Dodger on her first flight.

Thus did the big birthday of this country pass. Fireworks were at the ball game, or maybe I count the Milkweed blooms. I don’t really do parades—but I still feel like I passed this noteworthy anniversary in noteworthy fashion.

I wish the country could do the same. Well, I’ve been watching a Netflix series on the founding of the republic—and our politics were messed up even back then, too. A republic is messy. It’s particularly messy at the moment, and I hope something better is coming once the mess is in our past.

Our republic has made it 250 years. It’s more than a bit shaken at the moment. May the crisis of the moment lead to something better rather than something worse.

Enjoying a warm summer trike ride to Cedar Lake July 5. The sun is temporarily blocked by a cloud, but the sky is still sunny. May that be a symbol of where we are in this country at 250 years.