Donald Kaul announced in Sunday’s syndicated newspaper column that his professional writing days may be over.
Kaul’s “Over the Coffee” column was one of the Des Moines Register’s highlights for many years. He wrote the column from Des Moines beginning in the early 1960s and from Washington, DC between 1972 and 1983. After resigning from the Register, Kaul stayed in Washington and began writing a syndicated column. He later moved back to Michigan, where he grew up. You can read his recent work at the Other Words website. Bringing Kaul back to the Sunday Register’s opinion section was among the best changes under the paper’s current editor in chief, Rick Green.
Kaul’s latest piece describes his heart attack on July 5, which caused him to question “whether I want to spend my last years writing about this new country.”
I’m now 77 years old. I’ve been doing this – writing columns – for nearly 50 years, 35 years of it in Washington. I can tell you that things have changed, and not for the better.
I’ve covered fools, crooks, and charlatans over this half century. But for the most part, they had some sense of seriousness about them – an appreciation for the national interest as they saw it. Even rogues like Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon did.
The current bunch of miscreants is nothing like that. Centrist Democrats, who talk a good game but don’t do much about it, are battling increasingly radical Republicans, a fierce tribe of Bible-thumping know-nothings fueled by money from modern Robber Barons who want to sell the country off by the board foot and metric ton for their personal profit.
Thus we approximate the times described by the Irish poet W.B. Yeats:
“The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”
After someone mentioned Kaul’s heart attack and possible retirement at a book group I attend on Sunday nights, we never got back to talking about the book. Women shared memories of Kaul as a fixture in their households, and in some cases they homes they grew up in. We recalled fragments of his work. One of my favorites was Kaul’s commentary on then Representative Jim Ross Lightfoot’s appearance on the Phil Donahue Show in the late 1980s. Another woman talked about a classic Nixon family Christmas card spoof from around 1972. She mentioned that when Kaul gave the keynote address at the Iowa Library Association’s conference about 10 years ago, people lined up to ask him to sign copies of his collections (The End of the World As We Know It, They’re All in It Together: When Good Things Happen to Bad People, How to Light a Water Heater and Other War Stories).
Kaul was a major influence on one of my childhood friends, who became a journalist and freelance writer.
I understand why Kaul may never return to writing his regular column, but I hope he will find it too hard to stay away from the keyboard.
If I can track down my paperback copy of The End of the World As We Know It, I will add some excerpts to this post. Meanwhile, please share your Donald Kaul memories in this thread.
P.S. – Kaul also was one of the RAGBRAI creators:
RAGBRAI’s beginnings are part of Iowa lore: In 1973, Des Moines Register writers Donald Kaul and John Karras had the idea to ride bicycles across the state and visit towns and their residents. They invited people to come along, thinking maybe a few hardy teenagers would join. They were shocked when hundreds showed up in Sioux City.
Iowans became captivated when Register writers told the adventures of the ride, featuring a lovable 83-year-old Clarence Pickard, who pedaled the distance wearing trousers, long underwear and a long-sleeved shirt.