Someone asked me how I make vegetable broth when I posted this photo on Instagram. I wrote an exceedingly long explanation that may not really answer much. The method is centered around using the abundance of garden greens. Here’s how I explained it, although ask me again and the explanation might vary from the simple mirepoix, bay leaves and greens seasoned with salt.
I get out a big stock pot and evaluate how much I want to make depending on available greens. Usually one large onion, a pound of carrots, half a dozen stalks of celery and three bay leaves. Two large onions seems too much, but IDK. I know it’s controversial but I season the broth with salt at the beginning of the cooking. I want the flavor to be ready when I use it. I used to leave salt out completely but changed my thinking on that. Then I pile in whatever greens are available. I like turnip greens best, but they are not ready yet so I cleaned up the refrigerator, using bok choy, kale, collards, and tatsoi yesterday. Next I fill with tap water so the greens are covered and crank up the heat until it is boiling. Once it comes to a boil, I turn the heat to low and cook at least until the onions are transparent, often longer. Couple hours, for sure. Stir often. I use mostly cruciferous vegetable greens, yet would not be averse to adding wilted lettuce to the mix. If I have leeks, I’d add them too. I also put vegetable scraps in the freezer for broth and soup, yet in the spring I keep it simple with mirepoix, and cruciferous vegetable greens. I want to end summer with 3-4 dozen quart jars of broth made using the water bath canning process. No worries about electricity disruption. Thanks for asking.
The only national holiday I note is Memorial Day. Giving one’s life for their country is the ultimate sacrifice, something to be noted and revered, even if the death occurred in the most ignominious circumstances. Long ago I fell away from celebrating birthdays and holidays. My celebratory focus is the Memorial Day weekend.
Partly, it’s because Memorial Day is in spring. Leaves on the fruit trees and oaks look the best they do all year, before insects arrive and ravage the pristine growth. I endeavor to get the garden in by now, although I’m behind this year.
Military service has been important in my life. I wanted to do my part for a greater good and that led me to enlist in 1975. I was a peacetime soldier. It seems important to recognize those who gave their lives while serving in the military.
The weekend began last weekend when I asked our state house candidate whether they would attend the fire fighter’s breakfast to greet people. No, there were other plans. Even though our child left home in 2007, my spouse remains with her sister to finish the move to Des Moines, and I don’t get out much, I continue well-worn habits.
Friday, for the first time since March 13, 2020, I had dinner at a restaurant with friends. Our political writing group has been itching to get out and break the coronavirus pandemic isolation. A good time was had at a local brewery where they make an “Iowa City lager.” I learned to love pilsner beers while serving in the military. We have been writing together since we met before the 2006 general election cycle.
Saturday was a catch up in the garden day. I spaded the last plot, planted bell peppers, and harvested what is expected to be an avalanche of kale and other greens. I cleaned up and moved to the kitchen where I made a batch of vegetable broth. I closed the evening there, made a big salad for dinner, and water bath canned the vegetable broth, finishing up at bedtime.
I missed listening to A Prairie Home Companion on the radio. The program was my Saturday night for so many years. I couldn’t stand the loss so I went to the living room and turned on the new (to us) digital television to watch an episode of Pati Jinich’s Mexican Table from San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Jinich is no Garrison Keillor, and that’s a good thing. Her history as a policy analyst, focused on Latin American politics and history, makes her more interesting. Nonetheless, I missed the tradition of listening to the radio while working in the kitchen. No. I’m not hooking up a television in the kitchen to watch cooking shows. That would be so wrong.
Today is the fire fighters breakfast and I plan to attend when they open at 6:30 a.m. Almost everyone in the area comes into the station and I can break the isolation at home for an hour. I don’t particularly enjoy the industrial food, yet greeting locals I haven’t seen since last year makes the event worthwhile.
After the breakfast I would normally get out a copy of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby for my annual read. It is one of the best books about summer, although I missed last year’s read and may let it lie this year as well. Noting my fandom, our child gave me a couple of posters derived from the book. They are not a fan of Gatsby. I hope to get the posters framed. I may yet read Fitzgerald again, although it’s time for new habits and new interests. The garden isn’t in yet so there is that work to do today. I’ll need something else after it is in.
Tomorrow is the holiday and I’ll put the flag outside. I eschew the ceremonies in town which have turned into an “all veterans” celebration. That misses the point. I considered driving west in the new legislative district to Marengo for their Memorial Day remembrance. The legion has gone to an “all veterans” format as well. I’ll likely just drive to the cemetery and pay my respects after breakfast this morning.
Freedom has a cost, and there is no more salient aspect of it than the sacrifices men and women made by giving their lives in military service. Memorial Day celebrations are tempered with a feeling of loss, isolation, and sadness this year. One hopes participating in the holiday makes us stronger as we enter summer.
It has never been easy for creative people to channel their talents, let alone make a living from their work product. My reaction to this fact of society was to get a job that pays a salary or wages and create on the side. I don’t know of any other way to finance creativity over the span of a single life.
When I was younger — from high school until finishing military service — I felt I could be anything I wanted to be. Hoo boy! To be that kid again! I bought some time when I returned to Iowa after military service by getting my Masters Degree in May 1981. I then faced the reality of how few jobs existed that provided an inherent ability to create. I worked for the University for a while, got married, and began what would turn into a 25-year stint in transportation and logistics. I created on the side, yet was often too tired after work and on weekends to get anything creative accomplished. There was creative output, but not as much as I wanted.
I tried a lot of creative media when I was young: ceramics, drawing, watercolors, performing music, and writing. Of these, writing is the one that stuck with me. I started a journal after undergraduate commencement, and have continued to write in it until today. Except for the volume stolen from me in Calais, France after crossing the English Channel, I have them all. I sought to get published in the local newspapers by writing letters to the editor beginning in 1974. I continue to write them. Beginning in 2007, I published online blog posts which have accumulated into a substantial body of work. I began with the Google Blogspot platform, then switched to WordPress. I have printed copies of all of these posts in 20 volumes. After trying things in my youth, I ended up using writing as my creative outlet.
Among my favorite writers is William Carlos Williams who made a living as a pediatrician while writing some of the most imaginative verse and prose I’ve read. I could never be like him yet he is a role model for the way he isolated himself from his day job to participate in literary culture of his time. His is a lesson every person seeking an outlet for creative endeavor should seek and likely emulate. While there is no single “literary culture” today, it is important to seek a group of like-minded writers with whom to share ideas and collaborate. For Williams, the literary culture of New York City was near his home in Paterson, New Jersey. One might think I would have something similar by living about ten miles from the University of Iowa Writers Workshop, but that hasn’t proven to be the case.
I recently wrote about living on Gilbert Court in Iowa City during my senior year as an undergraduate. It was a significant exposure to a group of poets, prose writers, artists and book publishers who made their own literary movement called “Actualism.” Darrell Gray even wrote about the movement in his book Essays and Dissolutions published in 1977. By that year, I was long gone from Gilbert Court, living in Germany after joining the U.S. Army. We didn’t consider ourselves to be “Actualists” when I was there. Gray and others were working through the idea. Actualism had become more prominent during the years after my graduation.
The realities of needing a job to pay bills has been present since undergraduate school. Since we married, I have been able to carve out a space to get away from daily life to be creative. I have a talent for something, and have done my best to maintain a quality of life that will support my writing as a separate endeavor. Now that I retired and have predictable pension income there is more opportunity to write. Thing is, all that writing since 1974 means something as well.
If I don’t have a firm idea of what I should be doing with my writing and creative endeavor, there is a sense I have a talent for something. For now, the major project of my autobiography takes a lot of creative energy. Between that, this blog, and letters to the editors of newspapers, I find a way to channel my talents. If each person’s journey is different, it is something to recognize where one is going.
The obvious path to change American gun culture is through voting. Since Republicans have majorities in both chambers of the Iowa legislature and hold the governor’s office, we need to vote them out. This is the crew that advanced a Constitutional Amendment for “strict scrutiny” on firearms restrictions that would prevent the Iowa Legislature from regulating guns. When 90 percent of Americans favor sensible gun regulations, Iowa Republicans are taking us in the wrong direction. We should vote for Democrats.
I reduced my idea to these words on Twitter yesterday.
The response was mostly favorable. There were a few trolls, although I prevented the post from being ratioed by limiting who could reply to it. The tweet remains active and at this writing garnered 17,720 impressions with 1,203 engagements and 704 likes. That’s a lot for the account of an aging Iowan who likes to post artwork, links to my blog posts, newspaper clippings, and local culture stories which include politics.
Let’s get started with the proposed Constitutional Amendment that will appear on the Nov. 8, 2022 ballot. Republican Majority Leader Matt Windschitl has been the principal sponsor of legislation easing gun control regulations in Iowa. The seven-term state representative had this to say about the Constitutional Amendment in his Jan. 29, 2021 legislative newsletter:
As many subscribers of this newsletter know the Freedom Amendment is the proposal to enshrine in our state constitution protections for our Second Amendment rights. This proposal is something that House Republicans have been working to advance for the last decade. The language is simple, straightforward and unambiguous. It reads as follows, “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. The sovereign state of Iowa affirms and recognizes this right to be a fundamental individual right. Any and all restrictions of this right shall be subject to strict scrutiny.” Iowans need and deserve this fundamental protection in our constitution, as we are one of six states who do not currently have these protections in our state constitution.
A more detailed explanation of Winschitl’s reasoning for the “Freedom Amendment” can be found in his March 22, 2018 newsletter, which is here. Simply put, Republicans hold significant majorities in the Iowa House and Senate and are systematically implementing policy, including gun control policy, that Democrats prevented from passage when we held one or both of the chambers. Governor Kim Reynolds is an enabler of the most extreme policies advanced by the legislature.
Perhaps the two most important primary elections answer the questions which Republican will challenge U.S. Representative Cindy Axne in the Third Congressional District, and which Democrat will challenge U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley. Control of the U.S. House of Representatives is at stake in the four Iowa Congressional races and to ensure there is a chance to retain the House majority, Iowans should elect Democrats. The Fourth Congressional District has been out of reach since Steve King was elected, yet by re-electing Axne and adding Christina Bohannan in the First District and Liz Mathis in the Second, Iowa Democrats will have done their part to retain the House majority and thus will be able to advance legislation like HR-8 and HR-1446 which expand background checks. With the U.S. Senate split 50-48-2 between Republicans, Democrats and Independents, defeating Chuck Grassley is essential to effective gun control.
Whether Deidre DeJear can defeat the great Republican enabler Kim Reynolds is an open question. Since DeJear has no primary challenge she deserves our financial support now. How her campaign will go through November will depend upon what happens in the U.S. Senate race, which has higher visibility than the gubernatorial race. If the electorate is ready for a change in U.S. Senator, as polls suggest, the hope is DeJear will gain coat tails and the possibility of election. She is the best option for improving gun control in Iowa. Vote for Democrat Deidre DeJear because Republicans are removing most gun control.
In the wake of the Uvalde, Texas shooting, Linn County Supervisor Stacey Walker posted on Twitter, “We must do what we can, with what we have, and we must do it now.” There is no reasoning with Republicans on gun control. I agree. Democrats must act now. The problem is, we didn’t elect enough of them in 2020 and suffer the vicissitudes of Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema in the current Congress because of it. There will be another Congress and the only effective response to gun violence is to elect Democrats across the board.
1856 log cabin (left) and 1861 log house relocated to Marengo, Iowa.
A few uncaptioned photos from my May 21, 2022 visit to the Iowa County Pioneer Heritage Museum. I’m still mulling the meaning of the collection of historical items.
Playing with a Frisbee on Gilbert Court in Iowa City.
It isn’t clear when it began yet I’ve reached a stopping point in writing my autobiography. I had intended to breeze through my undergraduate education at the University of Iowa — touching key points only — so I could focus on my trip to Europe, military experience, and the time leading up to our wedding and the birth of our only child. I’m inside those years in Iowa City pretty deep and the dive has only begun.
As I wrote about my early and K-12 years in Davenport, it was easier to paint with a broad brush. The narrative I sought to reduce to paper had been forming for a long time, comprised of specific memories and a small set of people, places and things. I had never thought of my years from birth to high school graduation in a structured manner before. I’m learning about those times in a way I hadn’t considered. It was easy to avoid complexities as moving away from home, and what I became at university, gained more narrative importance. I have had to stop and take stock. That’s where I remain for the time being, likely for the rest of summer.
My last year of university was transformational and I’m just beginning to understand how much so.
Senior year, when I lived in a shared home on Gilbert Court, was the time when Oscar Mayer & Company offered me a job as a plant foreman. I appreciate the offer. They didn’t have to make it. Yet when they funded most of my education in the form of a grant from the Mayer family after the death of my father at the Davenport plant, it seemed appropriate. I recall the first summer I worked at the meat packing plant. One of the millwrights I was helping offered to take me to see the elevator which collapsed and killed Father. I had no interest in reliving that history then, or on a daily basis while working there. I declined the offer.
I had not developed any strong relationships with women by the time 1974 arrived. It seemed unlikely I would be ready to do so for a while. During summer gatherings with male high school classmates, they were often ready for sexual action. I was not and those nights we departed company so they could pursue their desires. I developed relationships with women at university, yet wanted to be friends. I couldn’t bear the possibility of a romantic breakup forcing us to separate. Lack of a “girlfriend” was a background tension I dealt with by living a full life in other ways.
The most important transformation may be coming to terms with the desire to be creative. After graduation I spent years considering what that meant. A group of poets and artists gathered at our house from time to time. Some are better known than others yet it was David Morice, Darrel Gray, Alan and Cinda Kornblum, Jim Mulac, and others who stopped by. I was enamored of Actualists, perhaps. In any case, I learned from them that a conventional approach to poetry, fiction writing and book making wasn’t necessary for success. I didn’t know any of them well, yet hanging with them in the living room helped me grow creatively.
I was taking art and art history classes to complete my degree in English. I dabbled in ceramics, tie dye, music, photography and other media. I realized there was no clear path to success as an artist, let alone the multi-media creator I vaguely wanted to become. I gave up a conventional career in the meat packing plant, in favor of a speculative future. It was unlike what I expected in high school and held a sketchy future at best. The desire to pursue this idea drove much of what I did throughout the rest of my life yet especially the following eight years.
The autobiography will be better for all this new understanding. Yet I have to get back at it. Currently, there is much work to get the garden planted. Once that’s done perhaps the muse will visit again.
Sandy is the spark plug of our community, especially when it comes to services for senior citizens, yet more than that. We met Saturday morning at a political event at the public library. A primary election is coming up on June 7 and there is stuff to discuss.
I asked Sandy about donating garden produce to the food bank again this year. She said the food bank would welcome the contributions and local donations were an important part of providing fresh food to people who need it. “I’m trying to slow down,” she said, explaining that some younger people were now taking donations on Mondays. Sandy turned 87 last September so there is nothing to say about her slowing down, other than she earned it. No one can replace what she has done for the community. We are grateful for any time with her.
For dinner I pulled something from the freezer and noticed the item was not hard, as it should be. The thermometer registered 50 degrees, precipitating “oh noes!” I spent an hour emptying everything into five-gallon buckets for composting. A lot of work went into preserving the food. Such is life: eventually our efforts become compost.
The two apple trees planted in 2020 are in bloom. That means a few apples, we hope. When one plants trees it is hard to avoid a long-term perspective. If there are apples, we’ll enjoy them.
Iowa haboob on May 12, 2022. Photo Credit – KCCI – TV8
I tapped the brakes as we drove home from Des Moines on Monday, May 9. A farmer was discing a field and wind blew large clouds of dust from behind him across Interstate 80. It obscured the view, rendering driving unsafe.
Losing valuable topsoil might be cause for concern, except that corn and soybeans are grown mostly by application of commercial fertilizer and insecticides to ground with hybrid seeds. Tilling the ground where seeds, fertilizer, water and bugs meet, to create a suitable growing medium, matters more than actual topsoil in Iowa. High winds blowing topsoil away doesn’t seem to matter much to today’s Iowa farmers.
A network of farming hums in pre-dawn hours this time of year. Beginning well before sunrise, farmers call each other from kitchens and barns to discuss and decide what they will do that day. If they prize their individualism and freedom, they also speak and act more or less uniformly about crop decisions. There is a fixed ideology of modern agriculture involving corn, soybeans, hogs and cattle. Long delayed this year, this week’s decision was to get corn in the ground.
On Wednesday, May 11, Eleanor Hildebrandt posted an article, “Iowa’s prime corn yields likely gone.”
At the beginning of the second week of May, Iowa farmers were two weeks behind the average planting schedule to the past five years. It was the slowest planting pace in nearly a decade. Only 14 percent of seed corn was in the ground on Sunday, as April weather made it particularly difficult to plant potentially successful seedlings. Research on corn yield from Iowa State University shows the most successful corn crops are planted before middle May.
Iowa’s prime corn yields likely gone by Eleanor Hildebrandt, May 11, 2022
Experts don’t believe the 2022 corn crop will break any records.
It has been a windy week. While no news source is discussing the relationship between the 2022 corn planting season and a somewhat unique weather phenomenon called a haboob, it seems clear that hundreds of farmers plowing, discing, and planting corn loosened thousands of acres of topsoil. When combined with high winds, topsoil blew away in gigantic clouds like those in the image above.
When weather outlets began using the word “haboob,” I immediately thought of Desert One and the failed 1980 attempt during the Carter administration to rescue 52 American hostages from the Iranian embassy. The helicopters unexpectedly encountered haboobs in the desert, which disrupted their flight plans toward Desert One, a staging area. The Atlantic tells the story of the haboobs during the operation here.
Photo Credit – National Weather Service.
The other image that came to mind after reading “haboob,” was of Farm Security Agency photographs of Kansas dust storms in 1935. These storms were attributable to the sod busters who broke up the prairie and farmed the land to exhaustion after the Homestead Act of 1862. These iconic images are a part of our history.
The disconnect of yesterday’s haboob from the large scale farming that made it possible is a sad statement about the nature of our news media and its influence over how we view our lives. Television viewers and radio listeners marvel at the use of a “different” and “peculiar” word to describe the weather phenomenon rather than discuss the causes of this loss of topsoil. At some point the loss of topsoil will matter more than it seemingly does. Yet we have dumbed down the way we take in information, and seem prepared to swallow anything as long as it doesn’t upset the equilibrium of how we currently understand the world.
Don’t get me started on education, though. On Thursday, May 12, there was a League of Women Voters candidate forum in Tiffin where four of six Republican Iowa House District 91 primary candidates spoke about education. This is from the Iowa City Press Citizen.
Education and what is taught in schools to children quickly became one of the main topics of the night as candidates were asked by audience members about the teaching of critical race theory and gender and sexual orientation in schools. Most of the candidates argued against teaching both, often making transphobic remarks in addition to their answers.
GOP District 91 debate includes education, conspiracy theories by George Shillcock, Iowa City Press Citizen, May 14, 2022.
With intense heat, humidity, and heat advisories, my shifts in the garden have been shorter this year. When I get dizzy, it’s time to head into the house and cool down. There is progress, nonetheless.
All the trays of seedlings under the grow light found their way to the greenhouse on Wednesday. I will need to start more lettuce, yet it can wait. The main crops — broccoli, tomatoes, peppers, squash and beans — need to get in the ground as soon as my four-hour shifts allow.
The calendar says we have five weeks of spring left, but I don’t know about that. Technically, it is spring, yet weather-wise, summer has arrived.
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