Mice in the Modem: A Conversation With Humorist Dan Needles

• Blog author, Cynthia Ross Tustin.
• Avid Retirement Explorer; and acknowledging not everyone is meant to, or wants to retire!
• Mice in the Modem: A conversation with humorist Dan Needles
• Posted Tuesday, February 8th, 2022
• Innisfil, Ontario
• Rural wisdom from the Great Oz of Persephone Township!
• Shout out to Feedspot for naming me #73 on their 2022 Top 100 Retirement Blogs and Websites

Well, yesterday’s conversation with humorist author, playwright, and local farmer Dan Needles was a high point for me, in terms of interviewing (he’s been awarded the Leacock Medal for Humour and is an Order of Canada recipient). They say you should never meet your idols, but I say that’s total malarkey! What they should say is never meet your idols when they’re using Zoom for the first time and have rural internet. Technology was not our friend. The zoom chat was a herky-jerky mess of fits and starts, frame freezes, and lost signals. I assume a bandwidth issue; our rural sage assumed mice in the modem!

Dan Needles, The Great Oz

I’ve grown up in rural Ontario. I’ve owned a farm. And now we live on a 25-acre parcel in Innisfil. It’s not a working farm, but being a good land steward is still a lot of work. I grew up reading Dan’s column in Harrowsmith. The opportunity to chat with him, for me, was like a conversation with the Great Oz. Not to be confused with the all-powerful Woz. I feel certain Steve Wozniak’s internet would work!

For those of you who may not know Dan Needles,  He’s worked as a journalist, speechwriter, and insurance executive who has always managed to be a farmer at the same time. He has a background in economics through his degree from the University of Toronto.

He was the editor of the Free Press & Economist, a small-town weekly newspaper near the family farm in southern Ontario. That’s where he created a column called the Letter from Wingfield Farm. That column became the basis for books and stage plays.

His gift for writing and understanding people served him well as a speechwriter and legislative assistant to a cabinet minister in the Ontario government from 1976-80 at Queen’s Park in Toronto. Then he moved down the street to run the public affairs department for Canada’s oldest life insurance company, Canada Life.

I’ve tried to slow my pace of work and simply focus on having a fun and stimulating side hustle. No side hustle for Dan, he’s still going strong with both the farming and the writing. He’s working on more plays and writes regularly for Harrowsmith, In the Hills Magazine, On the Bay Magazine, and a newspaper in eastern Ontario.

The purpose of our chat wasn’t his interesting past, it was about the future. It was about the concept of retirement. Do writers retire? What about farmers? The short answer is no. As Dan points out; no one will send him a letter telling him to pack up his things, clear out his desk, and say it’s time for him to go. If someone is reading his work, he’ll keep writing. Farming is a little more complicated.

“Farmers Don’t Retire”, According To Dan Needles

Dan informs me that farmers don’t really retire, they just slowly start to do less. He has started “doing less”. However, not out of the desire to retire; but more out of the abundance of caution…that comes with continually hurting oneself. Self-preservation! Ladders are not Dan’s friend!

Those “ladders” have been the source of several major injuries for Dan over the last few years. Virtually all have been self-inflicted! Thankfully, none have been serious enough to convince him to hang up his overalls. But bad enough that Dan’s family has banned him from working at heights. “Self-inflicted.” That reminds me of when my dad ran over himself with the tractor. My dad wasn’t hurt bad enough to quit working with it. Just bad enough to convince him to stop working alone with it!

Certain jobs have age limitations. The fire service is one. For us, it’s sixty and out. I left a bit earlier to enjoy a less urgent pace. Dan Needles has a career is without age restrictions. He chooses! Mr. Needles is what I like to call “self-tenured”. It’s a term my crypto guru uses all the time (more on that another day). Tenured obviously means having a job or post that’s permanent. It’s yours for as long as you want it. Self-tenured is akin to self-employment; doing what you want, when you want, for as long as you want.

If you’re self-tenured, retired, or “workin’ for the man”, we all need to have a purpose in life. When it comes to “purpose, “Dan says he’s no different. His purpose is to feed both people and animals. He believes that we need to “serve with our gifts”. Writing and farming serve that purpose literally and figuratively. Everyone needs to eat. And as the bumper sticker says, “farmers feed cities.” Writing sustains us intellectually.

Dan explains it this way, “I like feeding their minds, and I have a gift for making sense of the world.” Dan’s words have always made total sense to me! He can make sense of anything. Just read his post called Got the Supply Chain Blues That Only a Guy From Georgia with a Garbage Can Bacon Smoker Can Cure. That post conveys that his humour is generally self-deprecating. I appreciate that! It’s simple and down-to-earth, and that resonates with meme…and his thousands of readers.

Dan’s general philosophy tends to be that people “should concentrate on what you have direct control over,” and that “we are only really responsible for the things we have direct control of.”  He says, “it’s important to act on things in your power.” That’s why he doesn’t write about the conflict in Ukraine; but does write about wild turkeys, butterflies, and watering his son’s mushroom logs! You can find a lot of wisdom in the subtext.

If you’re a Dan Needles fan, I hope you continue to enjoy his work. Not a fan yet? Well, perhaps this post will change your mind. I changed Dan’s mind about using Zoom!

Cheers, from Middletown Side Road,

Cynthia

I acknowledge that the land on which I live is the traditional territory of the Wendake-ionwl,  Anishinabewaki ᐊᓂᔑᓈᐯᐗᑭ , Mississauga, and Haudenosaunee peoples.