State park trail entry point.

Journey Home

Tales from the pilgrimage.

  • Harvest Chopped Salad

    Using a large language model chatbot for cooking strips away a layer of emotional attachment to food, leaving chemistry and physics behind. Sometimes a cook wants that. In the chat box, I listed all the fresh garden vegetables in the kitchen with a question of what to make with them. Within seconds, the machine responded:… Read more

  • Independence Day 250

    Happy Independence Day to those who celebrate! I hope readers find space for patriotic reflections on this unique day in American history. Thanks for reading my blog. Read more

  • Duane Arnold Energy Center Redux

    I was finding my way after university when the Duane Arnold Energy Center began operations on Feb. 1, 1975. I had other things on my mind in the pre-Three Mile Island, pre-Chernobyl, pre-Fukushima world of electricity generation. I was trying to start a life and it wasn’t going as well as I had hoped. I… Read more

  • Surviving a Heat Dome

    Heavy rain that delayed planting tomatoes and peppers is now helping those crops survive the heat dome. Rain over several days deeply moistened the ground, and plant root structures have been drawing on that reservoir. Despite the heat, the garden is growing and producing vegetables. My daily heat dome process is to wake early, read… Read more

  • Invasion of Japanese Beetles

    This Lodi apple tree was my earliest ripening variety. Once Japanese beetles discovered it, they released pheromones that drew in more of their kind and aggregated, as in the photo. The problem was made worse by a neighbor placing two Japanese beetle traps within 75 feet of my small orchard. These traps attract more than… Read more

  • A Case for Christina Bohannan

    I’m all in for the third time with Christina Bohannan for U.S. Congress in Iowa’s First District. Over the three cycles she has run, I had more than my share of one-on-one conversations with her. I have confidence she will do what she believes is right for the district and the country. That doesn’t mean… Read more

  • Week 12 — Here Comes the Heat

    I donated crates of kale and bags of garlic scapes to the food pantries this week. They get produce from the local grocery store and had a large stack of seedless grapes waiting for customers. Our pantry is small, however, anyone who is eligible, can participate. If fresh fruit and vegetables are leftover at day’s… Read more

  • America 250

    As the 250th anniversary of signing the Declaration of Independence approaches, I re-read the document. I plan to read it again before the 4th of July. Living as I do in current times, I can’t believe men wrote these words. I also wonder how women influenced the document. Because our knowledge of the event is… Read more

  • Picasso in New York

    I made no journal entry after seeing the Pablo Picasso retrospective at the New York Museum of Modern Art on June 4, 1980. It had a profound impact on me nonetheless. To see his work presented in mostly chronological order was astounding and relevant to my own creative endeavor. I had paused journaling while on… Read more

  • At the Crossroads

    With my spouse away for two weeks, and completion of garden planting, I cleaned the house for summer and have been considering what I want to accomplish next with my writing. The second volume of memoir is with early readers whose assignment was to finish it before the end of summer. Memoir-writing is on the… Read more