One Book, One Bettendorf

Last year my husband and I up-heaved our family, leaving my parents behind—who were practically live-in babysitters of our three children— and moved to Bettendorf, Iowa.

My husband and I are both Canadian; he grew up between Quebec and Ottawa, Ontario, and I lived in the East Coast town of New Brunswick right up until University graduation

While growing up, beaches and ocean views were virtually a summer play ground for me and my siblings. We used to take the ferry over to Prince Edward Island every summer. Those island days were spent tiptoeing along the ocean shores and poking jellyfish out of our way with long sticks like some childhood version of Russian roulette.

With this childhood background, I could not imagine raising my children in the Midwest of the good ‘ol U.S.A. However, my husband works for Deere and it was a great opportunity for him and our family, so we packed up our belongings and moved here after a hurried two-day spree of house hunting

Following a very tearful good bye at the airport— where I will never forget the heart-wrenched look on my father’s face as he said good bye to his three grand babies— and many flights later, we finally arrived in our new home of Bettendorf This is where I learned my most profound belief: Being surrounded by decent people can make even the most foreign of circumstances feel like home

As we watched the movers begin to unload our belongings into our new home, we were immediately surrounded by teams of neighbors welcoming us. All of a sudden our driveway was like a summer BBQ gathering! With everyone saying their introductions, offering playgroups with their children, offering babysitters phone numbers, and even a sweet couple bringing us cookies. Immediately we felt like we were home.

We have made lifelong friendships since moving here. Now, when I look out at the Iowa corn horizon and miss the ocean view, I simply imagine the corn to be shifting sand dunes, and the blue sky beyond becomes the ocean— because with good friends and a little imagination, you can make anywhere feel like home.

Shelley Little

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It has been said that the only certainties in life are death and taxes. I believe laundry is another certainty. I have seen it drying on the balconies of Europe, across rooms in Asia, and on riverbanks in South America. It’s considered picturesque in those places and often photographed by tourists. However, more and more in America, visible laundry seems to be considered an eyesore or perhaps evidence of poverty. There are even written neighborhood association covenants against the drying of laundry in one’s own yard.

Fortunately, when my family moved into our first (and current) home, it was in an older, kinder neighborhood that allowed visible laundry. Our backyard happened to already sport one of the best clotheslines around: two sturdy T-shaped metal poles strung with four lines down the length of one side of our backyard. I was thrilled and proud to be able to use this clothesline for its practical and historic purpose.

There is still a smattering of lesser clotheslines in the neighborhood but fewer and fewer of them. It is a tradition possibly deemed old-fashioned and certainly unnecessary by younger families moving in. Perhaps they’re embarrassed to hang their underwear in full view of supposedly prying judgmental eyes. Thus, for reasons of propriety, I always hang our underwear on the inside line. The line closest to the neighbors’ eyes is festooned with outerwear like jeans and khaki slacks.

There are certain rituals of segregation and placement involved in my hanging of laundry:
–big items hung first;
–T-shirts shaken out with a smart “snap” before being hung;
–socks paired;
–heavy or longer items hung at the ends and light or shorter items in the middle.

This penchant for outdoor laundry drying runs in my family. My mother still doesn’t own a dryer, and once in a conversation with my then-90+-year-old grandmother, she reminisced that after she hung her laundry out, she would take a seat in her lawn chair in the shade of a tree feeling a profound sense of satisfaction as she watched it flap colorfully in the breeze.

I have this same sense of satisfaction and accomplishment. For me, there’s even a certain mystical sense of being closer to nature: out of the box of the dryer with its machine-manufactured hot air, out of the box of the house with its regulated temperature, into the wide-open fresh air with its extreme temperature variations, its constant possibility of precipitation despite weather forecasts, its sunniness or cloudiness, its time of day, its seasonal cast of light, all filtered through the textures, shapes, and hues of a particular load of laundry.

I believe hanging laundry outside to dry is a simple, easy, natural, energy-saving, ecological, even artistic thing to do. As I write this, it is January in Iowa and the windchill is below zero. I hang inside then and wait till spring when, as always, I thrill to the rhythm of the basket, the pin, and the line and the feel of the sun and the wind.

Hedy N.R. Hustedde

This I believe, that peace and freedom is the natural desire of all human beings.

I grew up Jewish in New York City. On television, I watched newsreels of the liberation of Nazi Concentration Camps, the terrible horror as mountains of naked bodies were bulldozed into trenches for mass burials. A friend’s mother was a camp survivor complete with a number tattooed on her forearm. She was skinny as a rail and afraid to go out. All this just couldn’t be real, but it was. I visited her apartment and played with her son. She was a happy woman watching her son playing with a friend in the peace and security of America. She was happy that life was better for him than it had been for her. I believe that the single most important matter for all peoples is the wellbeing of their families, not their material possessions.

In New York I saw lots of good people, going about their lives in the intense privacy that comes with the anonymity of the crowds. I recall during the great East Coast Blackout, I was an ROTC cadet at the time and a few friends and I pitched in to help. We led folks to safety out of darkened subway trains, and we directed traffic at major road intersections. Later in life, I came to the Quad Cities. There were floods and I helped fill sandbags along with co-workers on the Arsenal. Nobody ever asked for a thank-you, they were just doing what was right. I learned ‘Love Thy Neighbor’ isn’t just a concept or a cliché; it’s a way of life.

I joined the American Civil Liberties Union and served six years on their national board. We debated policies on Civil Liberties, and thru the give and take of those debates, I realized their importance. Once the ACLU agreed upon a policy, there was an irreversible movement to those ends. I learned that the rights we defend today would one day be looked upon by our children as just the natural order of things and that they would imagine America any other way.

I saw the great hope for real peace in the world as President William Jefferson Clinton brought old adversaries together at the peace table and hands were shaken and agreements made and peace flourished. I also saw failures as George W Bush pulled back from hard won agreements, thumbed his nose at the world and brought us into an unnecessary war.

I realized that the natural progress of humanity has been towards increased freedoms and decreased conflict. At times there have been backslides, mostly when cynical leaders have used hatred and fear for their own political purposes and self-aggrandizement. Still, throughout all history, freedoms and liberties have increased, bigotry has decreased and conflict has been looked upon with more and more disdain.

This I believe, people are inherently good. That is the natural condition of mankind. I shall take this optimism to my grave, secure in the absolute certainty that I am right. To believe anything else would be unbearable.

Arthur J Heyderman

One Book, One Bettendorf is a community-wide reading event. The goal is to have everyone in Bettendorf, age 14 and up, enjoy the shared experience of reading the same book.

The book chosen for this project is This I Believe,  a compilation of essays by famous and not-so-famous people, writing about the most personal beliefs that guide their daily lives.

You can pick up a copy of This I Believe at the Bettendorf Public Library, 2950 Learning Campus Dr, Bettendorf.  Click on the links to the right to see essay writing guidelines, and submit your essay here.  We also are hosting a number of special events, including a essay reading hosted by Jay Allison and Dan Gediman, the editors of This I Believe.  Click on the link at the right to One Book, One Bettendorf for more information about special events.

Thanks for joining us.  We look forward to reading your essay.

To submit your essay, click the Comments section of any post.  Submit your essay as a comment, and we will remove all contact information before posting it to the site.