My former teacher, Donald Murray, once said that you know you are a writer if your daughter’s coffin is being lowered into a grave, and you are taking in the details, so that later you might write about this.

This statement alone attests to the importance of paying attention to detail because it itself is a detail. And details are what bring the written word to life. And maybe too the spoken word. You start to listen to a story, and the storyteller’s details become lackluster. You stop listening, start to fidget and focus on forthcoming events.

I smell potato leek soup, which Pete is cooking. A good detail, for sure.

I was thinking about detail this morning, as I got out of my car and walked across the Moose Lodge Parking Lot. It was already cold and windy, and being 9:30 a.m., the sky was blue/orange in color. The moon was just a sliver.

I went inside, through two doors, walked into a dining hall, stopped to pay $10.00 for my Lions Club Breakfast. I had $9.00 in change. I told Elda, who was taking the money, that I forgot the dollar bill that I had set aside when I was counting the money out of the fish box that my mother had once given me.

It is odd, how after my mother died, that the few objects she left me have acquired significance; the fish box (as I call it), which we use to put our change, it is significance and also has a purpose. We keep our change in it.

I was circumspect and didn’t say anything negative to Elda about her role in the Palmer Senior Center’s financial shortfall.

There were numerous small tables, and numerous people sitting at them, eating breakfast. The wall decorations consisted of dead animals, mainly moose, some deer, a few elk. One moose had blue lights looped around his antlers.

I went up to where the food was being served and spoke first with the woman who was behind a table, her job was to pass out plates, forks, knives, and napkins. We talked a bit. She said she was tired. I said I’d take her place. And so I got the easy job, which was saying hello to those who were waiting in line for breakfast items – pancakes, hashbrowns, scrambled eggs, bacon, and gravy.

I was hungry, but gosh darn, I had a job to do, which was to say hello to the breakfast eaters. The Lions, mainly older woman wearing their bright yellow vests, they swarmed around me, making sure that there were enough utensils and plates on hand.

I made very small talk with those in the breakfast line, as small as I could get. Everyone has a story, and I elicited stories related to holiday wear, the windstorm, breakfast, getting up early. And people, amazingly, were genuinely friendly.

I surprised myself because the smaller the talk is, the less apt I am to engage in it. It helped that I didn’t know anyone, but I did feel at a loss, not having any books to pass out and talk about.

I extricated myself from the ho ha by joining my old friend Julie. We ate breakfast together. She told me that her husband had just had back surgery and showed me the MRI image of the cyst that was up against his spinal column.

I left when she did, removed my apron and got the hell out of the Moose Lodge. It was by now light outside – and blustery.

I went to the hotel and sorted 30 plus boxes of books.

Next: 335. 12/14/25: There’s No Escaping Climate Change