Curtis Sittenfeld explores middle age in short story collection

0:00This is an archive edition of Talk of Iowa from Iowa Public Radio. I'm Charity Nebby. The short story collection show don't tell by best-selling author Kurtis Sittenfeld explores the magic and mystery of middle age in a way that might have you questioning how well you know yourself. At moments you might also feel very seen. I know that I did. Sittenfield is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop. He's also the author of seven novels, including Romantic Comedy and Prep. And Kurtis Sittenfeld is here now Hello Kurtis. Hello Charity. Welcome to the show. And I want to start with a question about writing novels versus short stories. As I mentioned, this is your second collection of short stories. And I get the sense from reading your short stories that you really love writing them. How is the process different for you to write a short story? Well, I feel like you can kind of dip in and dip out in a way that it sort of stays

1:05fun the whole time instead of like with a novel. A novel can be very rewarding to write, but there's almost always a time when it drags or you get sick of it or you know, it just feels like you've been chewing the same piece of gum for a really long time. So when you get an idea for a short story, if you're in the middle of a novel, what do you do with that? Well, I usually try to just kind of make a few notes and not jump outside the novel, but sometimes I can't resist. And do you know when you get an idea, do you know this is a short story, not a novel? The difference is that a short story feels like it's sort of a fleeting moment or you know, the whole thing can like build to just one encounter or one scene or even almost like one thought or revelation, whereas a novel is a sort of juicy, extended subject matter

2:09that I as the writer can approach in a lot of different ways. So many of the short stories in this collection and in your last collection as well will revolve around a moment that is kind of exquisitely painful, terribly embarrassing or cringy, something like that. Is that one of the driving forces in these ideas that become short stories? I mean, apparently, apparently so. I mean, I think that like any heightened emotion can be, you know, a great moment for a short story. Like, you do want to show the moment that's different and not the moment that's ordinary, so it can be feeling great regret, it can be feeling great excitement, it can be feeling sort of humiliation, like all those things, most of those you don't want to experience in real life, but they're great for fiction. Right, although we do experience all of those in real lives.

3:11We do. We do. Unfortunately, at times, would you read just a little selection from one of the stories for us? Yes. This is just a brief excerpt from the richest babysitter in the world and this is told from the perspective of she's kind of a woman in kit is telling the stories and adult, but she is describing a family she babysat for in the late 90s when she was an undergraduate. The lesson I thought I'd gleaned from the wallies because I was still then a person who believed that situations provided lessons rather than just marking the passage of time was that too smart, dorky adults could join together and make a family a sweet life. With other families I'd babysat for, the messiness of their lives was recognizable to me from my own upbringing and always vaguely off putting. Then there was the way couples fell in love in movies, beautiful women and handsome men who made witty comments and kissed passionately.

4:12The wallies were neither disorderly nor overtly sexy. They offered a framework for an aspirational but perhaps a attainable way of existing, a home of calm and kindness and seclusion. That is an excerpt from the richest babysitter in the world and I don't want to reveal too much but I'm going to probably. So that story is unusual in the collection because it's very clear to the reader that it was inspired by real life people and they are real life people that we all know something about because they are Jeff Bezos and his first wife. I would probably say they are tech billionaire mashups but sure. You're right. I would not quibble with the basic premise is a girl or young woman is a babysitter

5:12and she's just kind of whatever thinking of her own daily life and then decades pass and the people that she was babysitting for that she's lost touch with are household names. Who are legally distinct from Jeff Bezos? Who are legally distinct? Jeff Bezos and McKenzie Scott. So like I said this is different in many ways than all the other stories in the collection although it has a lot of things in common because the kit is an adult woman and she's reflecting on this earlier time in her life. But what makes you want to write this story? It might even be the same answer for other stories that I am fascinated by how the passage of time is sort of its own plot where if you don't see a person for 20 years or for 30 years even if they don't do anything exciting even if they don't become super famous, that's its own plot.

6:14Like it's almost interesting that they didn't do much of anything or you know so it's just like or like you think they look the same they look so different their personalities so much that you know they turned into their mother. So I think the passage of time is really fascinating and a sort of subcategory of that is that you know like your my interpretation or your interpretation of an event or a moment in the past can change completely the event changes not at all the other person you know it's not it's not as if you necessarily even discuss it but you can see an event in a completely different light because you have changed. There was one story in the collection it's the only story in the collection that's written from a male perspective which I was curious about that have you written from a male perspective before? I think I'm dabble dabble in the male perspective if there's a reason I'll switch to the male perspective it's almost like my default is women and my default is midwesterners

7:17and if there's a compelling reason I'll go to the coast and I'll go to men but there has to be a reason. So honestly I was thinking about the tomorrow box so I guess Oh I forgot your rights there's actually three male adjacent but you're completely right there's one first person male story told told from the point of view of a male English teacher right and I remembered it so distinctly because as I started reading I thought is this the same sex couple is this yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah I was a man a man named Andy right but that is one of those stories where he encounters somebody from his earlier life this is somebody he hasn't talked to in 20 years he has a very distinct memory and understanding of their relationship and then they get together and his whole perception is just turned upside down and it actually reminded me a little bit of those reddit stories and it's a word I can't say

8:20on the air but am I in the wrong I guess is it am I the jerk am I the jerk so it's so fun to play with that perspective but you seem to have a really good time exploring the question of oh wait am I actually a good person yeah yeah I mean I think I will say so I'm 49 just to contextualize all this and like the more years that pass the more life experience you have the more things there are that you think like oh I never would have done that and you do it like things that feel unimaginable when I was younger do not feel unimaginable or another way to say it is I feel like sometimes I'll have really honest conversations with other people my age you usually women who are in our 50s and people can tell me things that you know like might have shocked me a long time ago

9:20and now I'm like oh yeah yeah that's true for most people you know that that's just like all right we are going to take a short break I am talking with best-selling author Curtis Sittenfeld she is the author of seven novels and we are talking about her second collection of short stories it's called Show Don't Tell more in a moment this is talk of Iowa from IPR news There are more ways than ever to listen to this podcast queue it up on a computer tablet or phone ask a smart speaker tune in on a smart TV wherever you listen you can listen to IPR learn more at ipr.org slash smart I'm charity nebie and you're listening to an archive edition of talk of Iowa from Iowa Public Radio with me right now is best-selling author Curtis Sittenfeld she has just released a new collection of short stories

10:21it's called Show Don't Tell and most of these stories explore middle age often from the perspective of middle age women but middle age men get their time in there as well Sittenfeld is a graduate of the Iowa writers workshop he's written seven novels including romantic comedy and prep and as I mentioned this is her second collection of short stories and Curtis you know so many novels you know often they're novels that explore the lives of women in their 20s or early 30s maybe at a stretch it feels like you're having a lot of fun exploring this middle part of our lives we are talking about women who have been married for a long time or are divorced they are mothers their kids are teenagers or maybe they're grown up does this feel like a particularly obviously you're living it but does this feel like a particularly rich part of life that maybe hasn't been explored very thoroughly

11:23I would say yes it feels like a rich time of life I mean I think it has been explored I would say it has not been like glamorized you know like it's often considered like sort of like yeah you know you're you're over the hill or whatever but I mean that's certainly many many other writers have have written like very beautifully about middle age but like by the time you're 45 or 50 or 60 I mean you've inevitably had some pretty juicy experiences probably some like some pretty happy ones and some pretty painful ones and and that's what makes good fiction there was a and patch it released a book not long ago called Tom Lake and when I read that book I thought this is a story that focuses on a happy middle aged woman and how often do I find that now not all of your women are happy they are a middle aged they're not all happy no just kidding they're not they're not all middle aged or happy

12:26right right but that's a reflection of real life for sure and and you also explore relationships and marriage in a lot of ways a number of the the women are in the couples that you write about maybe have recently split up or they are are feeling maybe that the marriage is stagnating in fact you one of your stories called the marriage clock is very specifically about how to reignite the love and passion in your marriage it is a story in which a Hollywood producer travels to meet the author of a self health book called the marriage clock you want to tell me just a little bit more about that setup sure well so so the premise of the book is that it's it's kind of like you know borrowing from the doomsday clock like how many how many seconds or he or or minutes are humans from annihilating ourselves on earth and then how many seconds or or you know

13:34weeks or months is a couple away from ending up in divorce and then there's tips given which I did have I must say I greatly enjoyed coming up with these sort of like tips for this fake well and I thought well this might work try it tell me tell me I mean a lot it also sounds like a lot a lot of the tips boil down to like don't be disgusting around around your spells but the the protagonist of the story is a woman named Heather who is an executive at a Hollywood studio who has gone to Alabama to try to convince the author of this mega best selling book not only to let her studio make a movie of it make a rom com but it'll feature you know multiple couples and she wants one of the couples to be gay and he does not want any of the couples to be gay so that's the sort of conflict or premise

14:36she's you know politically progressive he's politically more conservative and partly because of that she's quite surprised that not only does she really like him in person but they kind of seem to have like a weirdly flirty chemistry well it's a it's a really fun story and like most of the stories in this collection it also makes you think about yourself a little bit my favorite collection and the whole story is giraffe and flamingo and in that story we have a woman who she starts off by reflecting on the stories that her mother used to tell her which were like little snippets of her life that seemed completely irrelevant but she would tell these stories all the time she thought that she would not grow up to tell her children little stories and then she finds that she does tell me about your inspiration for this one

15:36it's funny because so do you know do you know who Jonathan Goldstein the host of the podcast heavyweight and he sort of a you know a beloved public radio figure and heavyweight is a fantastic podcast so I actually was in conversation with him for an event in Minneapolis where I live like he said something so insightful about about the story which I think one of the pleasures of writing fiction is that I can like take my confusion from life write a story about it and then some smart person will like clarify the confusion like I you know I didn't successfully clarify things for myself by writing it but then someone else can can clarify and he said that sort of telling little tidbits is a form of intimacy because with people don't we don't know as well we sort of tell them a coherent story or like we feel like if we're going to tell them something it has to clear some bar being interesting

16:37but for the people that we like live with or know super well you know we can almost be like one time my car smelled terrible like it just it doesn't have to be a real story it can just be a moment I do think that that story is kind of a story about intimacy it's a it is also a story that again gives a woman an opportunity to reflect on an event that happened early in her life and a lot of the sting has been taken out of looking back but the moment in the story that is my absolute favorite when he crosses the line from bullying her in this sort of subversive way that she couldn't even tell anybody about because it's so subtle but he lashes out at her and he makes fun of her for the thing in life that she knows she is best at and in that moment he loses his power and that was just a perfect moment Curtis

17:39I'm glad we both enjoyed it chair does that come come from experience for you in a way? I will say that like everybody you know I think there's areas of my life where I'm like competent and confident and then there's areas of my life where you know I'm a mess so and I do I feel like there are like sometimes when a person just in the course of life sometimes I can feel and I you know I go through life like whatever like wearing yoga pants with dog hair on them so I don't think I don't think anyone is like intimidated by me and so I think sometimes somebody tries to sort of in public maybe like verbally put me in my place and I'll think to myself like you know there's there's ways that you can make me anxious there's ways you can upset me but you're not going to like verbally intimidate me or like your use of the English language is not going to kind of like confound me and leave me speechless so I think that's an area where I would just kind of roll my eyes at the other person I'm talking with Curtis didn't felt her latest collection of short stories is show don't tell

18:43and you know I mentioned earlier that there are moments in these almost all of these stories where you may question how well you know yourself because the character is questioning how well he or she knows themselves or how well he or she fully understands their lives one thing that I really loved in the collection is that there is balance I mean there are stories white women LOL is one of the stories that made me extremely uncomfortable and it doesn't go well it doesn't end well and then you also kind of balance these stories there's another story the patron saints of middle age where we spend time with three different women who really love and respect each other and communicate well with each other and this is an interracial friendship they both take place in St. Louis

19:45did you feel like they were in conversation with each other? Yes so there are 12 stories in the collection and I do feel like a few stories have a kind of twin either thematically or structurally and white women LOL which is about you know a white woman who to her own surprise finds herself in the in the starring role in like a racist white racist viral video and so that that story is a little bit I think toxic perhaps and then as you say there's another story although completely believable also right right and then there is I think the twin story of that is the patron saint of middle age which is again as you say takes place almost in the same St. Louis neighborhood but is a more positive depiction of interracial friendships or relationships your last story in the collection revisits some very familiar territory

20:47for your die hard fans prep was your first real breakthrough novel and your last story in the collection focuses on the main character of that story and again we see her now have has she been in your brain all this time doing stuff? I mean I over the years I have considered writing a sequel about her even like a full-length sequel and sometimes people would ask me you know what happens to Lee and prep and I think what they were asking is does she seem like she's an insecure self-sabotaging mess in prep because that's essentially who she is or because she's a teen if I wrote about her you know three decades later that would answer that question so did you know the whole time or did that did that plant that seed and make you figure it out well it's funny because I I think I always knew I always thought like sure she's you know

21:47more neurotic than average but she's not a full-blown mess but when people ask me that I would say to them you get to decide it's fiction and I guess it turns out I get to decide so I had so much fun with this collection and short story collections don't tend to sell as well as novels they don't tend to get the kind of following that novels do why do you write short stories what drives you to do this? Well it's funny I mean there's there's always analogies which you could say like it's like a delicious snack instead of a heavy meal or it's like a wonderful date instead of a marriage or you know like I think that it's it's short and fun and the weird thing is sometimes people will say I don't like story collections because I figure out who the characters are and then and then it's over but I kind of feel like that opposite is true it's like getting your bed put your phone away read a story from start to finish

22:52think about it go to sleep like don't don't feel you know panicked and sweaty in the usual way you do when you read the news before bed then it's like there's something about the shortness of the form where it's like you consume it in its entirety you know like like a cupcake instead of a cake right right well I my favorite short stories you know stay with me over time and I there are short stories that I read as a teenager that still like float back into my brain and I think about and I was thinking about this because I loved your last collection as well and and so I just sat down and I thought oh there are two stories in that collection that come back into my brain that that just you know every once in a while I'm like oh yeah that's like that and that seems like an incredible victory obviously with novels that happens as well but I don't know it does it feel like more of a victory when you write a short story that that just hits and sticks with people what's funny because so show don't tell

23:52which is the story um essentially you know it's not a true story about me but it essentially takes place at the Iowa writer's workshop yes and then white women lol like both of those stories have sort of had afterlives or you know in the the tiniest of cult followings or something and so part of the reason I wanted this collection to be published is so that people who wanted to read them could find them um because yeah I mean stories do have afterlives which should I ask you which two stories from from my earlier collections to have stayed with you no we're out of time so I'll leave you wondering like a good short story writer does that's perfect Curtis thank you so much for talking with me today thank you charity Curtis sit and felt is the best-selling author of seven novels and we've been talking about her second collection of short stories show don't tell when we get back I'll talk with the founder of peace and freedom a Ukrainian bakery in Ames this is talk of Iowa from IPR news

24:58IPR brings you the most important things that shape your world every day stories from around the state music made down the street things you never knew about the place you call home your news your music your Iowa it's your IPR it's talk of Iowa from IPR news I'm charity nebby peace and freedom are words that are particularly powerful for those who were forced to leave their homes after Russia invaded Ukraine in February of 2022 peace and freedom is also the name of Ukrainian bakery in Ames although in this case peace is spelled P-I-E-C-E like a piece of cake the bakery just celebrated its one year anniversary and we're going to revisit this conversation from January of 2025 peace and freedom sells bread savoury baked goods and of course sweets with me is one of the owners Shalika Hinderangela she and her business partner Hana Petrova run the bakery along

26:01with their mothers arena Hinderangela and Yana Petrova hello Shalika thanks so much for having me excited to be here well it's wonderful to talk to you and I know that you have a long history in Ames Iowa you first came to Ames to study at Iowa State University back in 2010 and then you came back in 2021 and then in the next year I'm sure there was a real influx of people from Ukraine what was that like it was difficult yeah it was not one of those things that you imagine or you foresee happening and it was very traumatic my family came my mother my father my brother so we left a lot of the things that we owned and loved and the people that we care about back home and it was super traumatic honestly my work was extremely flexible because I would come in to work in a complete fog as I believe everyone who had family and I know that in the college where I used to work we had another Ukrainian and then she and I would see each other in the hallway and we would just burst in tears and just talk for like five minutes and then just continue with our day

27:05the Petrova family also part of the bakery that you just opened when did they come to Ames? Yes 100% they came exactly when the war started a little bit after I believe two years back Hannah came and then she brought her mother a little bit after so she came first with her fiancee and then her mother and her brother came so many of the people who came in 2022 and after of course needed a lot of support and help as they had just been uprooted and had to rebuild their lives tell me a little bit about how the Ukrainian community in Ames has come together one thousand percent if we have definitely showed up for all of our people because our like I say this I mean I know I'm biased I know I'm Ukrainian but we have some strong world people we just we come in into a country that we don't know the language and we find those jobs and we work really hard and we get promoted and we become managers like these are real stories of people who just did that within a year they worked so hard they didn't know the language they got

28:07raises they got promoted to managers right and all of those jobs were found because one of us knew somebody and the other person knew somebody and we got connections that we were just like introducing people to people we like me personally with the help of Ames economic alliance had workshops about resumes and interviewing you know and networking and then we had another workshop about opening a small business in the United States like we constantly provide information and resources that help people in this kind of a circumstance that we didn't expect to be because I say this a lot with people you know commonly when I speak is that Ukrainians are very rooted people it is not very common for us to just like come and leave the place and find a new home somewhere else we are rooted into our ground into our soil so this is a big deal I'm sure that when you first came to Ames you probably didn't think this is a community that is just clamoring for Ukrainian baked goods when did you first start baking and selling baked goods so as you said like what have I

29:07been doing since the war started the first thing that I said like some everyone everyone I know can you send me money I'm going to send it to Ukraine to the people I know are doing good things and obviously people sent some money but it is very uncommon for Americans in this particular case to just send money and be like here take my money right so it's like it needs to be something else like something that they're willing to part ways with right and give the money and I told my parents we should do a bake sale my parents were like what do you would you mean a bake sale what will we make and I was like well let's just make honey cake that's what I said let's make honey cake let's make a lot of it and my parents were like how many I don't know 300 pieces I don't know how many so the long story was that my dad said this is a horrible idea where would you do it no one's gonna come why do you always think of such bad ideas you know a whole shabbat of things and then I said we're going to do it from our garage from literally my garage and people are going to show up whoever's going to show up and whatever many we make money we make we will send it over but then when I started talking to this idea about this idea to my people other people like people from

30:07many different countries not just Ukraine everyone started saying can I help and I said how do how do you want to help and they said well I'll bring something I'll bring a big good and that was said maybe 50 times and we had a bake sale but that said we're going to make $100 and send $100 we made $5,000 wow so that's how many people showed up at some point at the end of the day we had nothing absolutely nothing on the tables and my dad opened the fridge and said can we put something else and I was like no we have nothing else what are you talking about so after that we had another big sale in Des Moines that KCCI covered that was very successful as well a lot of Des Moines folks showed up and after that my mom and I looked at each other and we said you know a lot of people really like this and at these events a lot of Ukrainians gather and they meet each other and they talk to each other and they just hang out and they feel like they're a part of a bigger group and then my mom and I decided to start a business and we started being at the farmers market here in Ames we love the farmers market in Ames and we found tremendous success and a year after

31:08we did another year of a farmers market and then we met Hannah and her mom and then they wanted to participate in the farmers market and I said why don't you just take our spot like we will be together at our spot and then it was beautiful I mean it was really awesome we wore two mother daughters and we really liked the collaboration so at one point I was like here's an open building you want to take it and they said yeah so now you're on Main Street in Ames and yeah you're selling a whole variety of baked goods but I and I know that this is not just for the Ukrainian community I know your customers are coming from all kinds of different backgrounds but you also are hoping that when you draw people into the bakery that this is also an opportunity to learn tell me a little bit about your vision yes 1000% so I actually have like a mission in life I am not a baker right like that is not how I would describe myself I can describe myself in many words but I didn't think that I'm going to say I'm a baker but I am now what I have as a mission is to educate people and to change the palette of Iowa that is my mission so by changing

32:11the palette is that there's a lot of really sugary things here in the US and a lot of us Europeans like my friends who are Ukrainian non-Ukrainian Italian and so on forth and so on they say a lot of the Americans we just sugar that is what we taste our things are really toned down on the sugar and really the star is the flavor if it's a honey cake it's honey if it's spinach raspberry it's raspberry if it's lemon marmalade it's lemon right that is not sugar is not a priority for us so I'm changing the palette and I think we're successful in that because we keep having customers repeat customers so come in and be like I just really like that I can taste so many things or I just really like that it's not overly sugary so I don't feel sick after this is amazing and like I or my mother is elderly and she doesn't like eating things that you know bring up her sugar level up so I bring her this this is awesome and we're changing the palette of Iowa I love it but the second piece is that everyone says like food is such a great cultural experience yes and food is not the only thing that culture describes I think Ukrainians can offer so much more

33:12and knowing about our country so important to us that if you come to our baker you see that our walls are covered with posters about history we have little table tens that say here are Ukrainian prominent characters who you know build the biggest airplane or who invented the gas light lamp or who I don't know how build the Brooklyn Bridge or here's like our wheat this is what symbolizes this we educate people as they're in our bakery and if they're eating or drinking something there are travels and they see all of these elements and they learn more so they leave full happy and educated so because I'm an American I want to start by talking about the sweets yeah so what do I apparently we're very very famous for loving sugar so I've watched some of your YouTube videos I haven't had the opportunity to taste any of the things that you're making but you have mentioned honey cake which I know is one of the most important things that you sell at the bakery can you describe it for me a thousand percent and I'm sure you saw it in the YouTube video as

34:14well so honey cake is eight layers of sponge that is made out of honey and in between each layer there's shantilly cream and the thing is that it absolutely has to soak and sit overnight preferably because when it soaks through it becomes super super moist I would even dare say like wet and then when you like use your fork or your spoon it just slides onto your spoon and you can taste the variety of those flavors you definitely taste the honey you also taste the shantilly cream that has a bit of that sourness come through that balances the honey and all of that is in the multi-layered cake that you're like this is pretty different you mentioned also the spinach raspberry which is a really unusual sounding cake was it inspired by the honey cake oh good question yes it was it's actually the honey cake is a base like the standard is the one I described so the base as I said is the same but the filling could be very different so this spinach raspberry cake is actually Hannah's mother's invention invention Yannas so she wanted something bright

35:18colorful and very like eye pleasing and she achieved that by having spinach and someone said on our Facebook that we didn't know if the spinach is real or they're just using dye and we're like no never so for sure we're using only real stuff and the spinach does not actually give the flavor so when you eat it you will never be able to oh my gosh as I taste the spinach you see the spinach but you taste the raspberry the cream cheese the filling of it so it's like a green and pink cake I mean it's really beautiful it is very pretty and Hannah was making jokes she was like it works for Christmas because you know the colors are good it worked for spring because of green it works for summer because raspberry it works for every season so we were joking about it you also have a cake looking at your website called the Keeve cake is this something that is symbolic of the city of Keeve 1,000 percent it is it is we call it our iconic cake we are Hannah and I are both from Keeve so that's our home and Keeve cake is a tradition that would remember I said that each cake takes

36:22approximately three days will Keeve cake is number one contestant for taking three days it really is laborious and my mother makes it and so it has cashews and hazelnuts and the layers are made out of meringue and the buttercream is condensed milk and it's all very highly decorated and it's our only gluten free item which is hysterical because it's designed to be gluten free there's no flour in it so it is gluten free by nature so you also have pevlova and and just other things that look amazing and delicious but I want to talk about some of the savory bakes that you do tell me about them yes it's me I'm a sucker for a savory bake I absolutely love bakes that have like filling that is not sweet I think that's a great snack for the afternoon for breakfast for lunch so I was a huge push for having sabres we even in our bakery have a cooler for sweets and a cooler for sabres and I'm telling you the cooler for sabres runs out more often than the cooler for sweets we have something that's called puri shki that's a plural so one is puri jok

37:22and it's a dough filled with whatever you want it could be sweet it could be savory we have chicken on mushroom we have beef we have curry potato and then we have some manzari's which are filled with a farmer's cheese and the dill and garlic we have rolini that are filled with cabbage carrots and onions tons of stuff tons why do you have curry potato so my dad is Sri Lanka and he makes a mean curry potato with eggs it's really like fascinatingly delicious so we just put that filling into our Ukrainian dough and we sell it and I honestly am telling you that is the best seller everyone sell we sell out of it first because everyone always asks for it I want to ask you I mean you've only been open less than three weeks at this point how has it been going so I think to be honest it's been going overwhelmingly positive on like the front end like what people see is really positive but in the back end it's been a whirlwind of the mountains right it's just been so many things we did not expect before we opened at 930 we had a line of 70 people I mean we had a

38:23a story on Instagram like we can't believe this it's just it's been so cool and so good and I think my favorite part where I understood that this is happening because people talk about these pinch me moments but when that my pinch me moment was we have four tables four four tiny tables we have a tiny space so we built everything we built the tables we bought the chairs we built the bench right and when I looked around and I saw that at four of those tables there were four huge families with kids sitting and chatting and eating and having fun and trying everything I realized that we did the right thing this is a time when many recent immigrants are feeling very vulnerable so you've had a lot of joy in the last few weeks is it also a time where some of your friends and family are are feeling very nervous about their future 1000% and yesterday was a day for that because we opened at 930 in the morning on Sundays and I did have some people come in who said Chalka how are you feeling I said you know exactly how

39:24you're feeling they said do you have some context of lawyers and we shared them then we shared the fact that it's going to be another hard year for all of us and then in the evening closer to 6 p.m. Ukrainians are very nocturnal in terms of their snacks and their sweets so we had a bunch of Ukrainians come in randomly not organized and they all saw each other and they all sat down and they were just talking about you know the things that are coming our way the hardships that we're going to face and they will share their concerns and their worries and it was a bunch of guys and their significant others and they were just saying like what are their plans and what are their thoughts and do they have any next steps and I just thought that it was really cool that it could be a place where they all could find comfort in other people's you know decisions or thoughts rather Chalka thank you so much for talking with me yeah of course Chalka Hindurangala is one of the co-owners of the new Ukrainian bakery on Main Street in Ames it's called peace and freedom peace like a piece of cake you're listening to an encore edition of

40:24talk of Iowa from Iowa Public Radio I'm Cherity Nebby I'm out in the