Categories
Living in Society

Nanny State — County Supervisor Edition

Governor Kim Reynolds signed into law Senate File 75 on April 11, 2025. Photo provenance unknown.

When Governor Kim Reynolds signed Senate File 75 into law on April 1, 2025, a crowd of Republican well-wishers was present.

Senate File 75 mandates that Iowa counties containing a Board of Regents university — specifically Johnson, Story, and Black Hawk — change their county supervisor elections from an at-large to a district-based system. The law has gone into effect and we are working through the new process.

Those at the signing ceremony included one Phil Hemingway who ran repeatedly and unsuccessfully for supervisor in Johnson County where I live. Hemingway backed this legislation. This week he filed for election to the Johnson County board of supervisors again, this time in newly created District 2. His is the bellwether race to see if Republican ideas on this prevail. Can they win a seat on the now all-Democratic board?

“Important to me personally was the passage of the county supervisor election reform bill,” Republican State Senator Dawn Driscoll said, “which protects the voices of our full-time residents in counties with large student populations.”

Driscoll’s colleague Republican State Representative Judd Lawler was not far behind.

“This legislation will improve local representation and accountability at the county level,” he said. “By using districts in these counties, the law promotes a more fair representation structure. This is particularly important in areas with highly transient populations, as it allows for better representation of all county residents, particularly rural and small-town residents.”

Driscoll and Lawler both represent parts of Johnson County.

Opponents, including local officials, argued the law targets specific areas and violates county home rule principles. A lawsuit filed in late 2025 challenged the law’s constitutionality, claiming it violates equal protection.

Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that the law does not impede any voter rights and that the state has a legitimate regulatory interest in differentiating counties that host a regents-led university. The court rejected the motion.

“While the matter may be appropriate for disposition on summary judgment, the Court is not persuaded that it is the exceptional type of case that is appropriate for dismissal at the pre-answer stage of litigation. Therefore, Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss should be denied,” the ruling states.

The district court also denied the motion for a temporary injunction which would have immediately blocked the law from going into effect. A non-jury trial is set to begin on March 3, 2027, long after the first election under the new process.

The horse seems out of the proverbial barn.

Even if plaintiffs win the case at trial, what happens next? That will be up to the judge. My Kentucky windage best shot is the new law is here to stay because if they were inclined to stop it, the court would have granted the injunction.

In the meanwhile, my small group of Democrats is organizing a get to know the supervisor candidate event in the new District 2, on March 28, at 1 p.m. at the Solon Public Library. Three Democratic candidates filed: incumbent Jon Green, Janet Godwin, and Jessica Andino. The winner of the June 2, primary will face Hemingway during the November general election.

Categories
Sustainability

Keeping Up On The Climate Crisis

Pre-dawn hour on Lake Macbride, March 19, 2026.

Good people are working to address the climate crisis… just not in the Trump administration. The dominance of the president and his minions runs throughout the federal government to promote energy solutions that make climate change worse. More specifically, discussion about loosening the regulatory environment blocks needed conversations about addressing the climate crisis.

Since January 2025, the Congress held hearings that mention climate change. However, they hear mostly from industry representatives. Which industries? Groups like the American Petroleum Institute and U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Industry is urging Congress to create a more predictable, streamlined regulatory environment, emphasizing faster permitting, lower compliance costs, and clearer rules. They argue current regulations hinder investment, energy development, and competitiveness. They often frame climate policy in economic and security terms rather than scientific urgency. They do not address climate change, nor will they.

Few people I know don’t see the urgency of addressing the climate crisis.

Absent action by our federal government, there are voices we should recognize, beginning with Dr. Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist. Global warming exists and Hayhoe doesn’t accept it on faith. According to her website, she crunches data, analyzes models, and helps engineers and city managers and ecologists quantify the impacts. She is everywhere on social media and tells the scientific truth about where our priorities should be.

Another person to follow is Bill McKibben, a prominent American environmentalist, author, and co-founder of the grassroots climate campaign 350.org. He is also founder of Third Act, which organizes people over the age of 60 for action on climate and justice, according to his website.

There are others, yet Hayhoe and McKibben are in the middle of what is currently happening regarding the climate crisis. Follow them.

Blog for Iowa also recommends the handy climate change BS guide I first posted in 2015, “Is That Climate Change Article BS?” It’s a bit dated, yet still has good advice:

  • Skip climate articles by people who think the problem is hopeless or intractable — because it most certainly is not.
  • Skip articles written by George Will and his ilk.
  • Skip articles — especially longer climate essays — by authors who don’t explicitly tell you what temperature target or CO2 concentration target they embrace and how they’d go about attaining it.
  • Skip articles embracing Orwellian terms like “good Anthropocene.”

“One of the most important things we all need to know when it comes to climate action is this: we are not alone.,” Katharine Hayhoe recently said. I invite readers to follow Hayhoe and McKibben on social media if you are not already.

Categories
Sustainability

Iowa Into Spring

Pre-dawn light on the first day of Spring.

In Iowa we pay attention to the weather. On the first day of spring, unseasonably warm temperatures — climbing into the 70s and even 80s — were part of a broader “heat dome” pattern influencing much of the United States. Record-breaking heat hit the West, and the same atmospheric setup is pushing milder air into the Midwest, giving us an early, almost summer-like start to the season. Is it climate change? Yes — but not in a simple, one-to-one way. The high temperature today is forecast to be 83°F.

These conditions are unusual for March, yet they offer a timely opportunity to begin transitioning work outdoors. As the jet stream shifts and warmer air settles in, now is a good moment to prepare for seasonal tasks, adjust routines, and take advantage of this early stretch of favorable weather — keeping in mind that spring in Iowa rarely settles in all at once.

I’m awaiting arrival of a batch of seeds. When they are in hand, I’ll plant them indoors, followed by peppers, tomatoes and cucurbits over the next couple of weeks. I will use the warm weather to clear the space for the portable greenhouse. By Good Friday, potato tubs and onion and leek starts should be in the ground, the greenhouse assembled and in use. I am simply waiting for the soil to hit that perfect window of friability — crumbly, loose texture that breaks apart easily — and then, game on!

The bed near the front steps has Bluebells. They were a transplant from my in-laws’ home and thrived without me doing anything. They are just budding in the ground on March 20. I carefully cleared the surface and planted a number of old flower seeds, some dating to 2022. The idea is to have something else grow here after Bluebells are done. With old flower seeds, one never knows.

In the garage, I opened the box of onion sets only to find they were leeks. I looked at the order form and indeed, I had not ordered onions. These several weeks, I had been planning how to plant onions, but now the ship steers to starboard in order to make a new plan. Luckily my supplier still had some onion sets left, so I ordered them.

Days like this, I put on special clothing and just go to the garage. No plan, no urgency. Just me interacting with my environment and home. Things get done.

While moving the potato tubs to the designated plot, I found the ground too wet for digging, or even walking on it. Don’t want to compress soil, so I delayed for a few days until it dries out. Spring is off to a good start.

Open for business on the first day of Spring, March 20, 2026.
Categories
Creative Life

Drugstore Paperbacks

Mass-market paperback books.

When I had a newspaper route, I stopped at the corner drugstore and occasionally bought mass-market paperback books. They are characterized by their small size (roughly 4.25 x 6.87 inches), lower price point, and widespread distribution in places like airports, grocery stores, and drugstores. I have so many of them that I built a special shelf to store them near the ceiling.

They were never archival quality, and a typical one from the 1960s has yellowing pages due to the cheaper paper from which it was made. The pages grow increasingly brittle with age. They are what they are: a record of what I was reading. They are subject to the same curation as any of my books.

One of the first I bought was The True Story of the Beatles by Billy Shepherd, illustrated by Bob Gibson. It was promoted as “The original book about the Beatles,” with photographs published in the U.S. “for the first time.” After seeing them on February 9, 1964, on The Ed Sullivan Show, I bought this book that summer and, in the fall, went with my mother to the King Korn stamp redemption center and got a new Kay guitar to play. Our family members were Beatles fans.

Another early purchase was The Great Escape by Paul Brickhill. Several World War II veterans lived in our neighborhood and spoke about their experiences. My cohort of grade schoolers descended on downtown Davenport to meet up for matinees at the several movie theaters operating there. World War II films, including this one, were de rigueur. The 50-cent Crest Book reported, “Now a spellbinding motion picture starring Steve McQueen, James Garner, Richard Attenborough. A United Artists release.” The printing of my copy was October 1965. I can’t say how many times I saw this film—yet many. That’s how grade schoolers rolled in the 1960s.

I went through a period when I collected mass-market paperbacks written and popular in the 1960s. Among them are On the Road by Jack Kerouac, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey, Beautiful Losers by Leonard Cohen, Bound for Glory by Woody Guthrie, Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War by Che Guevara, Prison Journals of a Priest Revolutionary by Philip Berrigan, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson, How to Talk Dirty and Influence People by Lenny Bruce, Daybreak by Joan Baez, and Long Time Coming and a Long Time Gone by Richard Fariña. Just typing these titles is a trip down memory lane.

In part, that is the problem. I moved past the 1960s in my intellectual development, and these books are unlikely to be reread. I envision more culling of less useful mass-market paperbacks as I move through this project. The special shelf space sets the limit on how many I retain.

Categories
Living in Society

Immigrants on an Iowa Roof

Ready to Install the New Roof in 2011.

Since making this post on May 1, 2011, society’s view of ICE has deteriorated for good reason. The problem with illegal workers runs right up to a home owner’s front door where choices are made. This post is unchanged.

While walking in the neighborhood last fall it was hard not to notice a gang of 21 roofers working on a neighbor’s house. The job of removing and replacing the shingles took about 5 hours. It looked like there was not enough room for all of them up on that roof.  I tracked down the foreman and asked him to price my roof and after a few measurements, he quoted a very low price. He worked as a subcontractor during the week and on weekends he sought additional direct work to keep his crew busy.

On Wednesday, nine people were arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement Officers in Hiawatha, Iowa at a roofing job site. They could not produce paperwork indicating their immigration status, were detained, and then charged with immigration violations. All of them were from Mexico. We have yet to hear about what may be the real crime in this incident.

According to the news story, Eastern Iowa Construction (EIC) sub-contracted the Hiawatha roofing job to a business in Iowa City. What this means is that EIC made a sales commission on the job and did not perform the actual work. Photographs in the news story showed that the equipment on the site belonged to EIC. They likely received financial consideration for that as well. Nothing wrong here as that is what business is about, buying low and selling dear. Did EIC know the sub-contractor engaged undocumented workers to perform the labor? Hard to image they did not.

The question is about the sub-contractor. Did he comply with Federal Immigration law? Obviously not adequately. Did the sub-contractor pay the minimum wage? Maybe. But do the math on a roofing job. There is not enough to pay for the supplies, disposal of the old shingles, the sales commission, the subcontractor’s gross margin and a living wage for nine workers. This is the untold crime in the news story, the exploitation of undocumented workers.

While negotiating a new roof on our house, the author refused to sign a contract as long as the roofer kept language that he could sub-contract the work. He told me he needed to keep this option open, and it seemed most of his customers did not question that provision. I gave the job to someone who would do the work themselves without subcontracting.

We live in a society of law and crimes should be punished. Some portray ICE agents as the bad guys, when they are doing their job. Where are the unions in this picture? Where are the home owners to specify contractors who comply with the law instead of taking a lowest price based on worker exploitation?

One hopes the nine workers arrested by ICE make it home safely, and that in Iowa, home owners will start being concerned with the rights of workers as much as they are concerned with trying to maintain a life style in a time of austerity. It is easy to blame our problems on undocumented immigrants, on ICE, and on a host of others. These problems can literally be solved much closer to home.

Categories
Writing

On Being a Writer

Work space is more like a bivouac.

My current book is heading for home and each new day of editing brings a sense of impending completion. Being a career logistician, I consider process: By June, copies for early readers; then another edit; then fund-raising, printing, and distribution. Having written it, the work ahead is answering questions about whether it is the best it can be.

What is this autobiography, with working title A Working Life: A Memoir, about?

A man who set out to write discovers the long experience of work and of living meaningful days in the American Midwest is the life of a writer.

While this sentence needs work, it is the product of writing the book, driven by its themes. Writing, work, and meaning made a permanent structure. Until I finished a first draft I did not recognize that. Now I can stand on it.

Begun in 2010, this work is having a long gestation. As the writing and editing ends, I understand more clearly what my life is about. Soon I can move on to the next project.

More than anything, I need closure. I can see now that by Labor Day I will be ready to let it go.

Categories
Living in Society

Books, Too Many Books

Tired woman in the library.
Photo by Ron Lach on Pexels.com

We are out of storage space in the house, so something has to go.

Before the library’s March 7, annual used book sale, I donated more than 600 books. It was pleasurable seeing them laying on tables in the main meeting room while people browsed through them. I hadn’t realized how many French language books I had until I saw them together in a box on a table. The donation process continues. I named it “The Great Book Sort” and made an entry on my daily planner with no ending date.

This is a form of curation unlike others I began. My process is developing, yet the main activities were to clear my five-foot-squared sorting table and place a box or two at a time on it. As I take them out of the box, some go directly into the stacks in my writing space, others into a box for donation. The rest are divided into piles to keep, maybe to keep, books that can easily be checked out from the library, and those relegated to the garage or to the bedside table. By the time I’m done, the 3,000 spaces in my writing room will reflect my reading life, and part of my intellectual history.

I did some advance work. First, I decided the only authors whose works I will keep in their entirety are Saul Bellow, Joan Didion, William Carlos Williams, and John Irving. They rest on the top shelf to my left, watching over my every activity.

I mentioned my nine shelves of poetry in another post. There is a presidential history section which needs curating. Same with art books, regional history, reference books, farming-related books, and American Studies topics (native, black, women, and pioneer culture).

I began culling cookbooks. The two remaining shelves are ones I expect to use and the rest are either gone or in several boxes in the stacks to be reviewed once more, then likely donated. We have a project list that includes a new cabinet in the dining room for cookbooks. We are a distance from actually getting that. The recipes I keep in the kitchen are handwritten in spiral bound books and a collection of papers clipped together. Mostly this system works.

Part of this curation will be to refine the categories of what is on the shelves. Right now there are too many categories.

A home library is personal. My story in books is evolving from random collections into something more usable in daily life. I will never read everything again, yet the comfort of good books, carefully curated and surrounding me is a net positive. The Great Book Sort is a project worth doing.

Categories
Kitchen Garden

Garden in Late Winter

Garden on March 15, 2026.

The best part of a garden is the produce harvested. A close second is the fresh meals made, followed by goods processed and put up in the kitchen, making the whole enterprise a kitchen garden.

I’ve written before, “The goal of having a kitchen garden is to produce food aligned with our culinary habits that helps meet a basic human need. We have to eat, no matter where, no matter how. It may as well be enjoyable. We’ve all eaten our share of food that doesn’t please our palate. A kitchen garden should address that.”

There is more than that.

A garden is a place where decisions accumulate over time. Where the house is positioned, where trees are planted, which ground is left open, where paths form — some by intention, some by use. Over years these choices create habitat where plants, animals, weather, and human routines overlap. The gardener participates in the process but does not control it completely. A deer path appears. Birds sow mulberry trees the gardener did not plant. Wind finds corridors between structures and foliage.

The result is not wilderness. It is something more ordinary and interesting: a lived landscape, worked for food but shared with whatever life finds its way there.

Some days I get up from the writing desk — an heirloom from my father-in-law’s estate — and simply walk to the garden. In late winter desiccated foliage is beaten down, showing the ground covered in plastic and mulch from last year’s growing season. Garlic is already up. Soon weeds will follow. I cleared a plot to bury the potato tubs for Good Friday planting. As soon as I can manage — between rain showers and late winter snowfall — digging begins.

A deer path emerged between the wooded acreage a few lots to the east and an apple orchard a quarter mile west of me. I walked those woods and saw deer beds in the thick undergrowth. I followed deer paths because they existed in a place infrequently visited by humans. There is no more direct path for them to the orchard than between my garden and the house. The frozen ground is scattered with hoof prints and deer pellets. I occasionally see them browsing for food near twilight, yet mostly they are unseen. The idea of growing an urban lawn isn’t viable here because of such traffic.

Our garden is a noisy place in late winter. Crows, red wing blackbirds, cardinals, sparrows, and finches welcome spring in loud musicality. The sound of rubber tires on pavement filters across the lake from the road to the commercial district. Neighbors walk dogs in small groups, their voices circulate the way strong winds move on their own path during a wind storm.

What lives here is habitat: a built environment made of decisions about garden plots, landscaping, and use. A permissive structure that allows fruit and vegetables to grow while not impeding local wildlife except to keep them from eating tender young plants. Part of me wants a nice lawn, yet the other part wouldn’t have it any other way than it is.

Spring begins on Friday, a form of rebirth, yet not new. As garlic planted last fall emerges, the world stirs with slow, obvious awakening from winter’s decay. I am ready for it.

Categories
Living in Society

Nanny State — School Board Edition

West Branch School Board Member Mike Owen at a public meeting with Governor Terry Branstad.

The Ankeny Community School District defined SSA (State Supplemental Aid) as the cost of living adjustment for school budgets. “To keep pace with rising costs, SSA needs to at least match inflation. If it does not, we would need to thoughtfully consider our budgeting strategy and staffing plans,” according to their website. Each cycle public debate is whether the amount approved by Republicans meets Democratic expectations to support public schools. Mostly it does not and Iowa Republicans have been in the majority longer than kindergarten students have been alive. They have the votes to pass what they will.

Tuesday’s front page headline that Iowa City Schools were years behind in audits is not making the case for more money in SSA. While next year’s level of two percent was approved in February, the financial issues cast a cloud over the school board’s independence. Republicans with a mind to consolidate government operations at the state level might be salivating at the prospects manifest in this local failure.

When I was covering the Iowa City School Board for the North Liberty Leader newspaper, I had a working relationship with their Chief Financial Officer, which I needed to write my stories. While the superintendent tried to maneuver him away from me, I usually got answers I needed. I spent decades in management at a large company and the district’s CFO was as good as any financial officer I have known. What happened, besides changing CFOs?

“The district’s most recent audit — completed two years after the end of that fiscal year — details corrective action needed, including previous district leadership not appearing to properly reconcile the district’s balance sheet,” according to the Cedar Rapids Gazette. “What reconciliations were available contained unknown variances.”

During a board meeting this week (March 5), board member Jayne Finch asked interim Chief Financial Officer Kim Michael-Lee to describe the status of the district’s books “in a few words.” Michael-Lee responded: “Unbalanced, unreconciled,” according to KGAN, the local CBS affiliate.

It’s not a good look found in a financial records audit by an outside firm just before a vote on budget cuts.

At a March 10, meeting, the school board voted to table a proposed $7.5 million budget cut until district finances could be presented in reasonable order. Because of inaccurately applying property tax revenue to appropriate budget line items, board members were unclear as to whether they could meet financial demands, including bond obligations, by June 1.

This is all a long lead in to: WTF Iowa City? Applying revenue to accounts is boilerplate accounting. If you can’t balance the checkbook, you keep working until you figure it out. Basic incompetence calls attention to the problems and when they see a problem like this, elected officials may use the only plan in their playbook: consolidate authority for school board finances at the state level.

Here’s hoping the Iowa City Community School District straightens things out in a timely manner. Let’s not give Des Moines any reasons to make Iowa more of a nanny state.

Categories
Living in Society Writing

Boostered Before a Blizzard

Light on the state park trail before dawn.

On Wednesday I received a COVID-19 booster, and it knocked me down. I felt fine the rest of the day, but on Thursday I could barely stay awake. Even three days later, on Saturday, I was still feeling the aftereffects. Except for when I actually tested positive for the coronavirus, vaccinations had never felt this way. I was out in the yard Saturday and feeling better in the afternoon. Now a blizzard is on its way to eastern Iowa late Sunday.

I don’t think much about aging, yet signs are present. Some joints are stiffer, I need a new pair of glasses, I can’t run as well as I could. Let’s not get into my organs, yet they are changing, too. My sleep pattern is to bed early, sleep for 4-5 hours, then wake to read for an hour, and catch an additional 2 hours of light slumber. The vaccination had me sleeping through the night on Thursday, but I’m already back to the usual. A person can live with all of this. Acceptance is better than fighting it.

While at the pharmacy checking in for my shot, we discussed how the bill would be paid. By reviewing my medical records, I knew the billed cost is around $200. With billing computerization through Medicare and my supplemental insurance, the attendant could look it up on the spot. Insurance paid for all of it. Without insurance, I would likely have skipped it. If this were a reasonable country with healthcare for all, such concerns wouldn’t exist.

I checked with the household on provisions, and we can last through the blizzard. Goodness knows there is plenty of indoors work to be done, even if I would rather be outside. I wonder if less tolerance for cold temperatures is also related to aging. I wonder if I’m losing my hearing or just getting cranky. A week before spring, it’s likely some of each.