One Book, One Bettendorf

While Bettendorf’s direct participation in the This I Believe project ended with the close of our One Book, One Bettendorf project, the national This I Believe project goes on.  The Bettendorf Public Library, WVIK and the Quad-City Times are now encouraging everyone to submit essays to www.thisibelieve.org.  WVIK and the Quad-City Times are planning on monitoring that web site, and will choose essays from local writers for broadcast on WVIK and publication in the Times.

Our thanks to all our essayists.  If you are still interested in acquiring a copy of “This I Believe”, contact the Bettendorf Public Library at 563-344-4179 or info@bettendorflibrary.com.

Our thanks to our One Book, One Bettendorf sponsors:

I believe in Iowa. I believe in beautiful sunsets, golden fields, and friendly people. Although the state is often looked down upon for its apparent tedium (it was recently voted the least desirable vacation destination by Outside Magazine), Iowa really does have a lot to offer. Our home prices are low, the state is very picturesque, and there are plenty of activities and events to keep everyone busy.

The biggest benefit of calling Iowa home is the inexpensiveness and simplicity of just about everything! I love going to the grocery store and paying significantly less for a basket of goods than my bigger-state counterparts. A $1 million house is considered excessive in just about every area of the state; only a couple hundred thousand is needed to buy a palatial abode. Beyond prices, Iowans enjoy short commute times, thanks to our (almost) perpetually traffic-free roads. This all sounds boring, but being able to enjoy life to its fullest at a leisurely pace and reasonable price is great!

Although my home state has a reputation for being flat and not particularly attractive, I think otherwise. Many artists use Iowa as their inspiration for paintings, photography, and musical compositions because of its natural beauty and effortless splendor. Throughout Iowa are gorgeous miles of farmland, quant little rows of shops on quiet downtown streets, and even a few bustling cities that have concert halls, architectural gems, and museums galore. You have not lived until you have driven along an Iowa interstate and seen nothing but seemingly infinite fertile fields of green and gold out of your car window. Even though our unpredictable weather is a turnoff to many, where else is it snowy and cold in the morning, only to be sunny and 70 degrees by two o’clock in the afternoon?

Above all, however, are the hidden activities and festivals that are often known only to Iowans. Besides the famous Iowa State Fair, there are great music venues, magnificent holiday parades, and a host of other events to keep even the most reluctant visitor happy. My favorite part of the whole year is the Bix 7 race, held right here in Davenport. Seeing 15,000 runners make their way up the Brady Street hill, wind around scenic Kenwood Boulevard (also known at Bix 7 Boulevard), and then finish in the heart of our downtown is a cherished happening that I anticipate every year. It is experiences like this that make Iowa fun.

As the saying goes, “Is this Heaven? No, it’s Iowa”. Keeping with the stereotype of Iowans, I am pretty stubborn. I am thankful for the good ideals and open mind that my Midwestern upbringing has engrained in me, and I could see settling here for the rest of my life. After a phase of wanting to move far away from here after high school, I have decided that my state has too much going for it to simply leave forever once I reach college age. My great experiences have encouraged me to return here someday. I believe in Iowa.

Brendan Iglehart, 16

An idyllic childhood was all I had known. The sort of thing you see in a Norman Rockwell picture; family around the table, relatives and friends living nearby, and a Taste Freeze at the end of my quiet one block street. I remember how we could trick-or-treat at our neighbor’s houses without worry. Most of them were elderly and loved making homemade treats for the children. Other than the usual school bullies life was practically perfect. That all changed in sixth grade.

That was the year the screaming started, or at least was noticeable. There was yelling, slamming of doors, the refusals to go to church by my father, and my mother’s constant crying at the closed bedroom door. At twelve years old I discovered life was not perfect after all. The following year, my brothers and I were being dragged halfway across the country to chase after my father. Coming back home the following year, my thirteenth birthday was spent knowing my parents were signing divorce papers at the county courthouse that very day. People would wish us well and say they were sorry it happened.

And so the journey began! The only problem, I didn’t know it was a journey until a few years ago. I had heard the rumor but never felt the truth of it. During my teen and college years, the majority of my time was spent trying to create the perfect life of fun times and experiences. Instead of moving forward, I was stuck wanting the happy feelings of my childhood. What I really did is over involve myself, overachieve, underachieve in my studies, and allow myself to be in precarious situations, one of which turned into a rape that scarred me deeply. And people would say to me, “Don’t you wish it didn’t happen?”

By then I was burnt out and hell bent on just finding someone, anyone, who would love me, take care of me, and help me create that perfect life. After two beautiful children, one of which is learning disabled, a failed marriage, and various other calamities, I finally found out that I had to love myself. Something I hadn’t done for a very long time. I’m nearly forty now, and for the first time since I was a little girl, I can honestly say I like myself, just the way I am. I love my life. Sure there’s a few extra pounds and a couple a crow’s feet, but inside I know who I am and what I believe. I believe I would not be the person I am today had God not given me the opportunity and the strength to experience everything I have experienced in my life, the good and the bad. So when someone says to me now, “Don’t you wish you had never …?” I just smile and say “no,” because without “it,” and the other bits of my past, I would not be the person standing before you now that you know and love.

Juliet Hunt

When I was 13 years old, about the time I was watching the new super hero movies the Incredible Hulk and Spiderman, my Uncle Jeff and his father-in-law Steve had me tag along with them on their yearly fishing trip to Ely, Minnesota.  We had many fun times.  I remember the shower.  We purchased a tent shower and the bag hold the water was supposed to warm up by the sun but the sun never came out so we were stuck taking showers with cold water.  I remember that when Steve and Uncle Jeff caught the two smallmouth bass I didn’t catch any.  I remember the trash talk about who was a better fisherman and threatening each other that we were going to throw each other into Lake Fenske and leave them behind.  The second year we went there I actually did wake Jeff, Steve’s son, up out of his slumber and told him there was a big pike at the dock and he threw me in and then went back to sleep.  Funny thing is, when Jeff threw me in I had the camera in my pocket with the only picture of the fish.  I remember sleeping in the small camper with two guys who sounded like a couple of grizzly bears when they slept, and always having to go to sleep before them for me to get any sleep at all or put the ear plugs in and wait for the sun to come up and go back out on the lake again.

My parents are always arguing and fighting.  My parents are alcoholics.  Although they are better now, all of the drinking and arguing was a lot of stuff to put on a 13-year-old’s plate.  My Uncle Jeff rescued me from that.  He taught me stuff I could do to get away from all the chaos at home.  Like fishing.

I believe in heroes.  To me a hero does ot have to be someone who flies around the city in tights with a cape over his back protecting people from evil villains.  They are much more than that.  Before I went to Minnesota with my Uncle Jeff, I had many thoughts going through my head.  Running away was one of these and suicide was another one.  I was completely fed up with my parents and all of their pathetic little problems.  No one even cared if I was around.  All they cared about was the booze.  I would have done one of the two if my Uncle Jeff would not have come along and rescued me.  He rescued me from my parents, the booze, and a lot of pressure no 13-year-old should ever have put on him.  He is my hero and without him I don’t know if I would even be alive today.  I still look up to him.  Although he may not be able to fly like Superman or shoot spider webs out of his hands, like Spiderman, he’s still my hero.  This I believe.

Deven White, age 15

The awakening of spring can happen anytime after March 1 in the mid-west.  Slowly the days get a bit longer and the crust of winter melts away.

God and Nature have it all planned out.  By the middle of March the geese are on their way north and the ducks not far behind.  The robins are starting to show up from their long trip from a much warmer climate.  Their song wakes us up in the early morning.  They seem happy to be back and we are pleased to have them.  This is where they will mate and raise the next generation of happy warblers.  They are a  member of the thrush family so they love to sing.

Slowly the grass takes on a greener color and starts to grow.  The early plants start to emerge such as garlic, which is wild, asparagus and rhubarb comes up in their patch.  It is a glorious time of the year.  The sap starts to rise in the trees, maple first and the rest not far behind.  Some of the fruit trees start to bloom and leaf out early and some later.  When we see the early blooms of spring, we soon hear the buzzing of bees.  They have been dormant all winter and are hungry for nectar.  I don’t think man could have planned any thing like this.  It takes God’s pland and nature’s way to work out the best.

One of the most amazing things about plant ecology is our wild flowers.  With  no help from mankind, they thrive in their wild environment year after year.  The task would be too great to name all the wild flowers and ferns.  The ones we see the most often are the violets, blue bells, Dutchman’s breeches, tiger lilies, lilies of the valley and more.  Each wild flower and fern has a long history.  It seems they have been here forever.  They come up every year in their own place, in their own time.  They grow from roots or seeds and are scattered by the wind or the animal life of the Forest.  It is just one more sign of the awakening of spring.

God and Nature working together perform a natural beauty for us all to ponder.

There is nothing more exciting in the spring than the peeping through of the tightly curled fern fronds and their gradual unrolling and spreading upward toward the light.  They are one of the world’s oldest plants.  In the language of flowers, fern means “revelry”.  The cool green, the quite glens which they inhabit, the lush leaves cut delicately and arch gracefully, all suggest deep musing and places to be alone with thoughts.

Wayne C. Little

This I believe…..

Relationships create our being. We form opinions about ourselves through the reflections in others’ eyes. I learned survival from my grandmother and unconditional positive regard. She taught me that I am loving, loveable, entertaining and very OK. Whenever I smell anything resembling lye soap I think of her.

When I look at the thinning skin on my thinning hands and see the beginning of brown spots I think of her. She was my first friend. I loved the me that I saw in her eyes. I was not a skinny little girl with bird legs. I was whole. I was not a curly haired little girl in a straight haired world. I was not left-handed in a right handed world. I was not an only-lonely child. I had a companion.

I was a worrier and she was a soother. I worried about storm clouds and head aches and cancer. She always said it would be OK.

I roamed fields as a young child seemingly free from concerns of the greater world. But even when fishing at the pond in the back pasture I hated killing the fish and wondered how badly the hook hurt before we hit them with the pliers to relieve them of their misery, and if God were there to meet them on the other side — I mean heaven. Grandma said, “Probably.”

We could hear cows bawling at night after their calves were weaned from them. They seemed to be dying of broken hearts. I asked Grandma how we could comfort the cows, and she said it would be “all right”. Most things would be “all right.”

She knew how to do everything. She made her clothes, lye soap, quilts, cheese and the best strawberry jam ever. We would lay on the grass and point out animals we saw in clouds. She never laughed at me, she thought I was special. Remember the skinny legs? She had ‘em, too.

She only wore dresses, until one day. We got ready to go to the timber to hunt hickory nuts, and it was cold, a pretty crisp fall day. We got my dad’s coveralls for her to wear over her flowered dress, cotton stockings and black heels. It was a hoot. She had never worn trousers of any kind. We took pictures and she hid her face. We showed the pictures to everyone.

These are precious memories, and I wonder how I can create memories for my grandsons. It takes imagination. They live many miles from me, so visits aren’t frequent. I make the most of those visits. We read lots of books, crawl around under tables, build forts and ride cable cars and ponies. I love them in an active way and give myself to them. I hope that works.

Pat Kirkland

I believe in the truth, beauty and necessity of the adage that one man gathers what another man spills. I live this belief not only for the sake of reducing, reusing, and recycling; though I’m a firm believer in always keeping my area clean. But when I was a child my Granda would come over from Ireland to visit and I would be taken on extraordinary excursions. Granda is a gatherer. If it’s cheap or free, working or not, toxic or clean, it finds its way into his massive pockets and home to the safety of his salons. These “salons” were rooms in his home in Ireland-he had two of them and a shed, full from floor to ceiling of bric-a-brac, bits and pieces, cogs and springs. Everything from gun parts, to watch workings, or any bit of electrical gadget he could get his hands on. All of these things would find their way into his space and ultimately be forgotten until needed days or decades later. He was always called upon to fix what was broken or rig what needed to be rigged. The ingenuity of that man is mind boggling. He can fix your bike, rewire the toaster and make you an intricate charm bracelet out of the treasures in his salons.

His visits always had their high points: garage and thrift shopping for days on end; listening to stories from his time with the United Nations Peacekeeping forces in the Belgian Congo; and panning for gold in the Canadian Rockies. (He is obsessed with the Klondike and can recite the entire collected works of Robert Service.) But the visits also had their low points. As a budding teenage girl, the mandatory trips to the local dump to forage for treasures and the mortification of watching him root through my neighbor’s garbage being the lowest of the low. He is a non-discriminate gatherer.

Now I have children of my own, the first named for my Granda. They have the supreme joy of being raised by a gatherer who was trained by the best. I take them to yard sales, Sally Ann, and the Goodwill stores-and they really do love it. Yesterday for the first time they had the mortification of witnessing me root through someone’s garbage. I could hear my Granda’s voice, “sure, ‘tis only garbage, it’ll clean up grand!” as I placed my pilfered flower pot into the back of my mini van. I was excited and giddy, so pleased with my treasure, I could feel it like a warmth deep inside me. And he’s right, it will clean up grand.

I believe in gathering what another man spills.

Caroline O’Sullivan-Jens

My search for an expression of my deepest beliefs revealed that they are in my Catholic faith handed down by my family and formed in the crucible of growing up in the depression.  I had five brothers and no sisters.  My father, Jacob, died of an undertermined cause in 1934, leaving my mother to raise six boys along with few resources but faith and family.  Both my father and mother were from large rural families.  My mother’s family was very close.  We moved to an area where my mother had five brothers with adjoining farms in a German Catholic neighborhood.  I had a happy childhood, growing up with cousins by the dozens, some good mentors and lots of hard work.  I married a wonderful Irish Catholic girl and we have five great children, all happily married.  I attended college, attained a masters degree and taught for 28 years.  My wife and I have strived to establish an authentic catholic home.

 For me, the anchor of my life has been this faith, which has involved continuity, change and growth.  I have learned that core beliefs, to be relevant, must be examined, tested and applied.  I regard my faith as a trustworthy guide, which at age 80, remains ever fresh and provides three important virtues which have permitted me to flourish; they are faith, hope and love.  I believe that God is active of each of these.

I need faith to confidently believe that there is a power beyond what I can see, one who makes truth possible, give order, design and meaning to the world we know, and with whom I can have a personal relationship.  I cannot live without hope.  It enables me to believe that there will be a better tomorrow.  That things are possible beyond what I can see or understand, and that God, who has revealed himself to humankind, will fulfill his promises.  I need to love and to be loved.  Love gives purpose to our lives and is the basis for meaningful human relationships and with my God.

I am a long-time Chicago Cubs fan; when people comment on the Cubs jacket  that I wear, I somewhat jokingly mention that the Cubs are a sign of faith, hope and love.  I see in baseball a certain microcosm of life’s uncertainties, with one important difference.  While baseball is just a game, life is not a game but a living reality, with humans as the centerpiece of an earthly existence full of mystery.  Amid the suffering, failures and disappointments of our lives, faith, hope and love help us to flourish and to make life a celebration.

Bernie Vogel

I am a Christian. I came to Christianity on a very strange path. You see, most of my life I was an atheist. Though my road has led me to Christianity I must admit that I still believe in unbelief.

It was unbelief that makes me what I am today. I am doubtful, skeptical and sure of only the fact that I will never be sure. This does not mean that I believe in nothing. Quite the contrary, I believe that the truth is everywhere and can be seen. I just have come to the happy moment of understanding that I will never see it all, never hold truth in my hands and, therefore never know what truth is. Even if a miracle revealed to me the truth today, I am sure that by tomorrow I would find more truth waiting for me. Different truth. Tomorrow’s truth.

Now, you would think that unbelief would lead one away from and not to Christianity, but you, I believe, would be wrong. my unbelief led me to certain…um…beliefs:

1. If no one has the whole truth, then no one deserves to judge or be judged by the truth.

2. We all have a part of truth within us. Everything has a part of truth within it.

So my non-belief led me to become a non-judgemental pacifist. I thought about becoming a vegan, but that seemed rather animalist. Who knows that plants enjoy death any less than a cow?

Which leads me back to Christianity. I found more and more, that Jesus was a non-judgemental pacifist who said we should all be non-judgemental pacifists because we live forever no matter what.

Not that I believed it. Not that I didn’t believe it. I didn’t know. I did find that it was a cool way to live. Perhaps this is a little too utilitarian. Perhaps, but then the materialists can see where I’m coming from too.

Since I’ve become a non-believing Christian I have Pagan, Hindu, Athiest, agnostic, Muslim, Jewish friends. All who have and share their truth with me. I share mine with them. Many of them are pacifists and non-judgemental (though, by all means they don’t have to be) I can only hope that one day the world will be full of non-judgemental pacifists who live as if life would never end no matter what their creed, what books they read or who or what (remember, no judging) their friends are.

With God’s help, it will be so. This I believe.

Michael Callahan

I spent my childhood exploring on the Rock River outside of Moline, Illinois. There were live clams in the shallows, and beautiful clam shells to be found where the muskrats had been feasting. There was a venerable old bullfrog who could sometimes be found on his favorite rock if I crept up quietly, and who bulged his throat to an impressive size. There were crawdads who dug little mud holes along the bank, and turtles who slipped off their log perches and disappeared the moment I got close. I seined for minnows with an old milk jug and then let them go. I learned to catch leopard frogs by anticipating the direction of their leaps, and let them go also. Curiously, water birds were scarce. Each summer we waited and watched to see if a single pair of mallard ducks would return to our shore. All these animals became my playmates, and I was happy to be alone with them outside until dusk.

I no longer live on my river, but in a city with sidewalks and streetlamps. In my life I have seen the Rock River swamplands burned out and filled in to build shopping malls and parking lots. I have seen our old house deteriorate after years of floods, termites, and deferred maintenance. The turtles no longer sit on logs in the crick along the road, and frogs are rarely seen. I have seen so many acres of forests and marshes disappear in my lifetime that it is easy to imagine humanity’s destructive effects on our entire earth, tempting to despair of our planet’s future. I wonder how global warming and toxic pollution will change the world my children live in. But the birds give me hope.

I live near enough to the Mississippi that the bald eagles soar over our house in the winter. They fly so close we see their talons. We see the amazing pelicans circling twice a year in their random formations, like a ball of yarn unraveling in the sky. My kids and I have often seen great blue herons along Duck Creek, improbably flying with their ridiculously long legs trailing behind. Canada geese are so numerous, they almost become a nuisance, but I forgive them for the friendly sound of their honking as they fly over in a determined V formation. We no longer have to wait all summer for a pair of mallards, but they are numerous year-round. Birds that were never or seldom seen in my childhood are thriving now. This gives me hope. Maybe people will be able to free themselves from the dirt and take the long view of life from the sky, like the birds. Maybe we can learn to travel light, and let our thoughts soar unfettered and free like these birds, and find a better way to live. I believe in looking up.

Melita Tunnicliff