Categories
Living in Society

Pivot To The Primary

Iowa State Capitol

When the legislature adjourned sine die at 7:08 p.m. last Sunday, the governor responded with a press release hitting my inbox at 7:12 p.m., proclaiming the 2026 session was a success. Long story short, “Republicans are delivering big for Iowans,” Governor Reynolds asserted in a statement. If you believe that, stand on your head.

Republican governance has been so bad, they even passed a law to hobble Reynolds’ replacement, assuming it will be Democrat Rob Sand. They tried this before with Sand as auditor and with Attorney General Tom Miller. The efficacy of this move is wearing thin.

Water quality is such a compelling issue in Chris Jones’ campaign for Secretary of Agriculture, Republicans passed a do-nothing water quality bill in the last week of session. If I didn’t know better, I’d say Republicans are on the run.

For now, the rhythm of Iowa politics shifts, trading the urgency and headlines of floor debate for something quieter but consequential. The June 2 primaries are upon us. The relative quiet of this coming month is not inactivity so much as a change in where and how politics happens.

Campaigns are no longer ramping up—they are knuckling down. Instead of large, highly publicized events, they focus on smaller gatherings: county meetings, fundraisers, informal meet-and-greets. Messaging becomes more targeted. Endorsements, local networks, and turnout operations take priority over broad visibility. Much of the real work happens in conversations rather than speeches—in living rooms, community events, and local party circles. Organizing for the election becomes more granular.

In the Republican primary, all eyes are on the governor’s race to see if any of four other candidates can beat Randy Feenstra. All five are serious candidates as far as that is possible for a Republican, far to the right of average Iowans. Rob Sand’s clear path to the general election put’s him in a better position with each passing week as Republicans jockey for position and votes.

I wrote about the Democratic primary races here. The most interesting of those are the county supervisor races under the new system Republicans put in place in three counties with a regents university. My sense is that regardless of what the current Johnson County board of supervisors has done recently, the election is a jump ball, not governed by logic or reasoning, but a desire for something new. From where I sit, the electorate is preoccupied with other things, such as making financial ends meet under Republican governance.

It is not too late to get involved with a primary campaign in a race important to you. My advice is don’t let the quiet lull you into inaction. Too much is at stake in November and the race to the general begins in earnest on June 2.

Categories
Living in Society

A Spring Retreat

First gosling spotted on May 6, 2026.

Once or twice a year, my spouse visits her sister in Des Moines. That means, at least in part, I have the house to myself for a week or so, and can cook how I want—more meals that include capsaicin in its varied forms. During these times, I seek to better bind my activities with intent, simplify them, and break existing habits by changing the daily, physical markers that prompt them. If possible, I would re-invent my regimen. That may be a lot for a week.

A primary consideration is that while home alone, everything has new rules. Rules regarding noise, kitchen activities, and access to the washer and dryer. We get along on these topics most of the time, yet I cut loose during the absences: I got caught up on laundry by day two! I made a spicy version of rice and greens! This time there is more intent on my part during our period of separation.

The house is quiet when I wake, so I can walk to the kitchen for a drink of water in my underwear. I’ve been able to move my morning reading to the living room when during normal conditions, she is using it. I frequently wonder what she is doing, then recall she is not here. It is another aspect of breaking set habits. It is surprising how much depends upon her physical presence.

On what was a “normal day,” everything was structured around productivity blocks and task completion. During this retreat, I don’t want a lighter version of that. A different process is at work with fewer work switches, fewer obligations, and more sustained, intentional engagement with one thing at a time. Less planning and more doing. I break loose from the compartments of reading, chores, errands, food prep and writing that occupied my active mind.

Food is a large part of a retreat. Two days after she was gone, I decided to have a two-day fast during which I limited caloric intake, and structured meals so there are more fruits and vegetables in the morning along with two main meals at lunch and dinner. The idea was to stick with the caloric limits, the hope being to help my body with digestion and maintenance.

During a retreat things naturally settle into a pattern. I resist that. I wake early, read in the living room, exercise, then spend long uninterrupted stretches in the garden. By afternoon my clothes are stained with with soil and sweat. The rhythm of digging, planting, and weeding replaces the compartmentalized routines that usually govern the day. Tasks that once felt separate — cooking, watering, reading, laundry, writing — begin to fold into one another.

Habits become visible when I am alone. When the dishes are done before bedtime, I see the empty sinks in the morning and feel ready to fill them again. Unawares, I notice how often I expect to hear another person moving through the house, or delay entering a room because I assume it is occupied. It reveals how much of ordinary life is built from quiet interactions and repeated physical cues rather than conscious decisions.

By the end of the week, I doubt I will have reinvented myself. I will be thankful for the brief chance to examine my life while habits loosened. Retreat enables me to eat differently, work differently, move differently through the house, and remember that habits are not permanent fixtures so much as paths worn into the carpet by repetition. Some days I want to vacuum it all up and start over.

Categories
Creative Life

A Day Begins

Sunrise.

I wake in the middle of the night with the sun well positioned below the horizon. What light exists comes from stars, the moon, airglow, or the indirect light of nearby never-sleeping cities. I am awake, but don’t want to be.

Sometimes I get up and walk to the kitchen for a drink of water, then stand at the French door, looking at the sky. By now Earth is turning toward light as the sky begins to lose its blackness. Below the horizon, shapes blend into a singular darkness. Above, stars and planets are still visible. Light has begun to penetrate, thinning the darkness.

Our child called it “blue thirty:” the point where sunlight begins to dominate the sky. The sky is briefly a dark shade of blue. They noticed this while camping and taught me to look for it. The silhouettes of grounded objects emerge from darkness, becoming recognizable forms.

Now I want to turn on lights and wake. The horizon has become readable, and the urge to create something is present at nautical twilight. I make coffee and go to my writing place.

After donning hiking shoes, I walk toward the state park trail at first light. From obscuring darkness, the day takes shape in colors—greens, browns, and blues. It begins in semi-darkness with loud migrating birds—geese in late winter and songbirds in spring. Bird sounds surround me as I pick up the pace to increase my heart rate. I can see the trail changing from dark to light at my feet.

The sky puts on a show as dawn breaks. In pinks, reds, and golds, refracting sunlight makes the sky dance as an artist paints a canvas. Dawn arrives in colorful glory.

By the time I round the turn toward home, the sun rises. Direct light illuminates the trail, with long shadows of trees, bushes and other vegetation. The day has become clear—with things to do.

As I finish the turn, I feel my pulse and walk toward the rising sun.

Categories
Kitchen Garden

First Harvest 2026

Mizuna, two kinds of bok choy.

Bok choy and mizuna were outgrowing the germination tray so I harvested instead of planting them. Along with containers of arugula growing in the kitchen, I have three cups of four kinds of fresh greens: the first harvest of the season. I enlisted artificial intelligence to suggest a dish featuring them.

The goal is to make a warm, one-bowl meal.

Of the options presented by the chat-bot, I picked a rice-based dish. One cup uncooked white rice to allow the flavor of the greens to show. My standard rice preparation is to use homemade vegetable broth to cook the rice.

For protein I used MorningStar Farms® Chik’n Strips, which were browned in a small amount of oil, then set aside.

Next, the process goes quickly:

  • Saute garlic, onion in extra virgin olive oil until translucent.
  • Add the greens and toss for about 30-60 seconds until slightly wilted.
  • Make a rice dressing in a large bowl: 1-2 tbs miso; 1 tbs extra virgin olive oil; 2 tsp apple cider vinegar; dash of maple syrup; tbs chili crisp; Teaspoon of hot pepper powder; dash of sesame oil. Mix well.
  • Add cooked rice to the bowl and mix thoroughly so grains of rice are coated.
  • Add the cooked greens mixture and the protein. Mix thoroughly.

Makes 3-4 servings.

Finished dish. The sauce was particularly good.
Categories
Creative Life

A Life of Photos Part XV

On the state park trail.

The garden has me outdoors more often, and because of it, I’m taking more photographs with my mobile device. Here are some from April and early May.

Drivers.
Spring flowers.
First burn pile.
Bluebells
Pre-dawn light on Lake Macbride.
Road sign.

Spring is about the outdoors.

Moon in the neighborhood..
Brush fire #2.
Morning mist.
Pear tree pollinated.
On the state park trail.
Cruciferous vegetables.

I’m spending more time at my workbench.

Workbench.
Pre-dawn light.
Categories
Kitchen Garden

Week 4—Still Cooler Weather

Brush fire #2 of 2026.

A couple of nights dipped into the 30s this week, so I am holding off planting temperature-sensitive crops. The portable greenhouse is at capacity. I continue to used a space heater overnight. Other work besides planting remains to be done.

Plot preparation continued. The first round of weeding radishes and turnips was followed by hilling potatoes. I pruned the dying Red Delicious apple tree. The Zestar! and Crimson Crisp trees had a full bloom uninterrupted by frost. Cruciferous vegetables look good. The main question is how will I get everything done by Memorial Day? I probably won’t.

Crimson Crisp apple tree in bloom.

The brush pile got to six-feet tall so I burned it on a windless, cool Friday. Mostly, it was brush from that particular plot, combined with cuttings from the dying apple tree. It was quickly reduced to a pile of glowing embers that continued to smolder until nightfall.

With the burn pile now ashes, it will soon be time to prep the soil for tomatoes. I deconstructed last year’s tomato cages and stacked them closer to the plot. My main interest is to move the hardware as little as possible, but to remove it from where tomatoes were. That will be the first plot for seasonal, warm-temperature vegetables.

Tomato cage storage.

I mowed last week with the deck set to three inches. The idea was to let the clippings dry on the lawn before using them to mulch garlic. There are not enough clippings with this mow. The garlic is wanting weeding, or weed suppression. Mulching is a high priority, yet unaccomplished last week.

Embers of brush pile #2.

It was a good week in the garden. I started thinking about what would be first to harvest,  maybe radishes. Turned out it was mixed greens still in the germination tray.

Mixed greens from the garden.
Categories
Reviews

Spring Reading

Photo by u00c1nh u0110u1eb7ng on Pexels.com

When I fill in for Trish or Dave on Blog for Iowa I post about what I am reading. In part, I do so to share books I felt were worthwhile. In part to encourage people to read actual books in any format. The sad state of American reading is hard to ignore. 40 percent of Americans read no books in the last year, with a majority reading four or fewer, according to recent statistics. If you only read four this year, here are some recommendations.

Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children’s Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Each spring I re-read one of my favorites. It has been 50 years since I first opened Slaughterhouse-Five at university, the same university Vonnegut taught at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He famously wrote this book at 800 North Van Buren St. in Iowa City and was a presence throughout downtown when he was here. I wrote about this in 2021. I appreciate the cameo appearance of a local Sears and Roebuck warehouse in the book. The story itself holds up well and its unique narrative is constantly engaging. In a time when fiction seems formulaic, Vonnegut is a refresher in what it means to be alive.

Sarah Smarsh’s strongest work to date is in Bone of the Bone: Essays on America by a Daughter of the Working Class. Her first book, Heartland, was a sensation; her second, She Come By It Naturally, fell flat for me. Smarsh’s strengths are well suited to the type of short essays in Bone of the Bone. It left me wanting to read more. I reviewed it here.

Hannah Ritchie is the kind of data head I would like to be and her new book, Clearing the Air: A Hopeful Guide to Solving Climate Change in 50 Questions and Answers is part of the reason. In it, she explains aspects of solving the climate crisis using data to back up her statements. This one is worth reading. I reviewed it here.

People don’t know about Lance M. Foster’s The Indians of Iowa and I seek to remedy that. Foster studied anthropology and holds an advanced degree from Iowa State University. The University of Iowa Office of the State Archaeologist wrote a tribute to him on the occasion of his 2025 death. Find it here. We so often trace Iowa’s lineage to the Black Hawk War in 1832, but Foster takes it deeper in simple, straight-forward language. There is a bibliography, tour guide, and notes for further reading. It is an entry point into native culture in Iowa.

So there are four books to read this year. Please drop a comment and share what you are reading this spring.

Categories
Living in Society

Being Progressive After Louisiana vs. Callais

President Lyndon B. Johnson addressing a crowd during campaign rally in Pawtucket, Rhode Island on Sept. 28, 1964. Photograph by Cecil W. Stoughton, Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library, Austin, Texas.

The saturated news coverage of Wednesday’s U.S. Supreme Court Decision in Louisiana vs. Callais makes it difficult to say anything useful about its impact. Simply put, this is about Chief Justice John Roberts’ long-time goal—four decades in the making—to gut the Voting Rights Act.

In 2016, I asked, “Who is a progressive? Who is a ‘real’ progressive? Who will continue a progressive legacy?” I answered, “You are not a progressive unless you have read Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America by Iowa’s own Ari Berman.” Little has changed in 10 years. Here is an excerpt from my 2016 review:

In this extensively researched, easy to read text, Berman reminds many of us of the reason we became politically active: as a way of engaging in progress toward racial and social justice centered around the Voting Rights Act (VRA) signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on Aug. 6, 1965.

There has been a concerted, well-planned effort to suppress provisions of the VRA. The June 25, 2013 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Section 4, which required certain states to get pre-clearance of changes to voting laws from the Department of Justice, was only the most obvious, recent incident. Berman’s account of the Nixon and Reagan administrations provides insight that de-fanging the law was part of Republican intent from the beginning. My reaction was incredulity at everything that was happening before my eyes without me understanding it.

Ari Berman, in Give Us the Ballot, traces Chief Justice Roberts’ involvement with voting rights issues back to his Reagan-era opposition to strengthening the Voting Rights Act in 1982, arguing that his later Supreme Court opinions reflect a consistent skepticism toward key provisions of the law.

Louisiana vs. Callais goes after Section 2.

Click here to read Amy Howe’s Decision Analysis at SCOTUSblog.

Click here to read Joyce Vance on the decision.

Learn the history by reading Berman’s book. Be a progressive by working for the changes we need in our government to restore the Voting Rights Act and protect everyone’s right to vote.

Categories
Writing

Advance Reader Copies

I took back roads to the printer in Coralville to pick up advance reader copies of A Working Life, the second part of my autobiography. Getting to this point was a high water mark in the struggle to write it that began in 2010. There is a story in this book, one I hope finds broader appeal. When I arrived at the desk for pick up, workers hadn’t finished binding the book. I waited.

My first advance reader is a retired teacher whose late husband was a poet. The second is a friend from Maine with whom I attended U.S. Army basic training and officer candidate school in 1976. I’ve read the text so many times, I’m not sure the most obvious typos and grammatical faux pas catch my attention. I will move forward with this work, so I’m looking for a couple of sets of eyes to catch mistakes missed by someone too invested in the story.

Nearing the finish line is clearing space for other projects. Mostly, though, my days are falling apart. The garden needs planting, the garage wants cleaning to make it more productive, and there is an endless list of home projects ahead. I also have to figure out how we will survive if the do-nothing Republicans don’t fix Social Security soon. I have taken up some of those, yet the main question is what will I write next, given the newly found void in my mornings?

Some things I know. There will be a cookbook to standardize and put all my inherited and locally developed recipes in one place. There will be a book of poetry for the 25 or so poems I found when researching my autobiography, along with new ones. I plan a different direction for this blog, along with a new title. I plan to take older posts off line and start fresh. All of these are big projects, and will likely be enough writing work for the near term. The main push will be to have a big project for winter 2026-2027.

I’m not sure how I will get my autobiography published after early readers provide feedback. I don’t have the money, so I am looking at some form of fund raising in the fall. I paid for volume one and distributed the books for free—there are not enough funds to do that again. I may serialize the book behind a paywall either on WordPress or Substack with a big push to get people subscribed at the front end. I gave early readers until Labor Day, so I can work through these ideas this summer. For now, though, I have to get a garden in.

Thursday was a lost day because I had my eyes dilated and it took the full 4-6 hours for them to recover. I had a discussion about cataract surgery with my optometrist who has been suggesting the procedure for years. I held that off another year. Doctor talked about adjusting to aging as I slow down. I don’t see myself slowing down any time soon.

It rained Thursday night, so I could get right into the garage after sunrise and get to work. The big push to Memorial Day is on. From the high ground of finishing the autobiography, it looks like there will be another crop from the garden… and writing. The remainder of 2026 looks to be good.

Categories
Living in Society

Vote for Jon Green

Johnson County Board of Supervisors candidate Jon Green in Iowa City, May 22, 2021. Photo Credit – Izabela Zaluska/Little Village

Jon Green should be re-elected in the newly created Johnson County Supervisor District 2.

He was first elected to the Board of Supervisors in 2021. As board chair, Green led the process of gaining consensus on a jail proposal. When you see the jail referendum on the November ballot, Jon’s fingerprints will be all over it. We should re-elect him to finish this important work.

New districts are creating tumult in supervisor elections and can eventually be expected to impact governance. At least one incumbent won’t be returning. Others may lose their primary. The Republican hope was they could elect at least one supervisor under the district system. Change is coming, like it or not.

Jon has the sense to know changing a governance process already in transition would be tampering with an otherwise stable system. He opposes changing the form of government to using a county administrator. It is the right call.

For these reasons and more, I urge you to vote for Democrat Jon Green in the June 2 primary election for District 2 supervisor.

~ Published as a letter to the editor of Little Village on April 29, 2026.