Chard and celery are growing in the garden and not ready to pick. It’s Dec. 25 for heaven’s sake!
Grass is greening and water is standing in the ditch. Ambient temperature is 30 degrees — freezing, but not quite. The spring-like weather belies the holiday decorations inside our home.
Our daughter pulled back to back shifts where dreamers work, ending last night with a terrific fireworks show. Had we been near we would have watched, but the miles separating us were too many this Christmas.
Threatening to move closer, she said we wouldn’t like it. Even in an Iowa that borders corrupt, uninspiring and terrible under Terry Branstad, she is likely right. There is no way I would trade my current congressman… however, there is that nice Corrine Brown. Maybe I’m not finished making my case.
This morning’s activities included laundering my three work shirts, blue jeans and socks. I look forward to when I have enough clothes to last a full work week.The biggest development at the home farm and auto supply store was my interview about becoming a receiving clerk. Because of the store’s growth, they now need two.
I began cross training with the current clerk on Wednesday. What makes the new position different is the hours 8 a.m. until 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday. It will be my first time with weekends off since I worked at the University of Iowa. After all the irregular work hours this will provide an opportunity, setting the stage for work to generate the ten grand — reduced a bit by the increase in hourly wage the new position will garner.
After several attempts, I developed a winter hot sauce made from canned goods. I drained whole tomatoes, reserving the juice for another recipe. I added drained, pickled Serrano peppers to the bowl. Next, a jar of a red and jalapeno pepper sauce made earlier this year. I chopped the mixture with a stick blender, jarred and refrigerated. It went great on my scrambled eggs, which along with hash brown potatoes and an apple is a traditional holiday breakfast in our household.
I started a load in the dishwasher.
Next came a batch of traditional shortbread cookies. I softened a pound of butter on the counter overnight. To the butter, add a cup of brown sugar and cream together. Add 4-1/2 cups all purpose flour, then bring the dough to consistency, roll it out and cut into strips. Bake at 325 degrees for 22 minutes.
We never know what today will bring. For me it is enough to spend time at home with family and seek respite in personal traditions as the rest of the world is muted by the clatter of dishes in the sink and my firm intent.
It hasn’t been the best Christmas, nor the worst. It just is, and that’s enough.
Tomorrow is winter solstice and I’m ready for days to get longer. A new year’s hope begins.
We spent yesterday decorating the house for the Christmas holiday. I ate a slice of the fruitcake sent by Mom.
This morning I’m drinking coffee from the Boynton reindeer Christmas mug, and settling into habits formed long ago. It is time for year end reflection and planning.
I posted on Facebook:
Went to Wilson’s Orchard yesterday and bought two gallons apple cider, a baker’s dozen Gold Rush apples and 12 pounds frozen Montmorency cherries. The cherries were grown in Michigan which produces ~90,000 tons of the fruit each year. The ancient Romans are credited with finding this cherry near the Black Sea and propagating it in the Roman Empire. It is named for the Montmorency region near Paris, France. We mix them with plain strained yogurt and granola for a meal substitute.
In other holiday news, we put up the holiday tree and I placed the big order for garden seeds from Johnny’s Selected Seeds. There are a lot left over from last year, so the order was smaller than usual. I plan a gigantic plot of radishes, some of which I hope to convert to cash to donate to Physicians for Social Responsibility – Iowa Chapter. Next step is to look at the Seed Saver’s Exchange and pick out some kind of red bean for drying, along with some one-time experimental seeds.
We are making a sincere effort to locate the remote control that operates the analog to digital converter on the television. Might watch a VHS Christmas movie if we can find it.
Best wishes for a happy holiday season and a Merry Christmas to those who celebrate it.
I ordered a new vacuum cleaner on line from Hoover last night, and garden seeds from the Seed Savers Exchange this morning. Holiday shopping is done if one can call it that. I work at the home, farm and auto supply store all but two of the 11 remaining days this year, helping shoppers make purchases as this year transitions to next.
There’s the ten grand, but I can’t lose sleep over that — at least not yet.
And thus the next orbit of the sun begins. May God shine light on all of us as our search for truth and meaning continues. May our actions further social justice and a hospitable environment in which to live.
Rain fell last night leaving a wet landscape. Soon it will be time to make breakfast — and get ready for the trip across the lakes.
Most creative Americans I know have a sense of responsibility about their lives. Artists, writers and musicians accept lowly paid creative work when they can get it and find other, supplemental funds to pay bills.
We all have bills and there are consequences for failing to pay them.
It is a constant struggle, leading some to selling plasma, taking physically demanding and dangerous work, working in call centers, retail, farming and the food business. Occasionally we sell artwork, writing or music. The struggle is important, and life remains about the creative process. I’ve discussed selling plasma with visual artists and low wage workers who do, and it’s not for me — at least not yet.
Another ten grand should help our family make it through 2016 responsibly. Twenty would be better. I’ll find it somewhere.
Earthworms crawled along the bottom of the garage door, fleeing groundwater. The lawn is greening after the big snow storm followed by rain. Water stands in the ditch with temperatures forecast in the 40s through the end of the year. It’s not normal.
Another crazy weather episode in a life increasingly filled with them.
It is hard to concentrate on the big picture and will be until I have a plan for that ten grand.
When our family lived in Indiana, the 1988 Democratic nominee for president was mostly decided when our May 3 primary arrived. Michael Dukakis had been dominating previous primary contests and was expected to get the nod for president. He did.
If I voted in that primary (don’t remember) it was a harbinger of what I felt on election day, basically what the f*ck? It seemed futile to vote for a candidate I hadn’t supported and didn’t like. At the same time, living in a Democratic county, I wasn’t about to pull the lever for a Republican. George H. W. Bush trounced Dukakis 426 – 111 in the electoral college, winning Indiana and 39 other states.
In Iowa we hold the first presidential nominating event — the Feb. 1 Iowa caucuses. I like the early attention, but less so each cycle. The 2016 contest has been about whether or not to ratify Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee. She has not wavered in her effort or in polls conducted in Iowa, making this the most lackluster Iowa caucus cycle I can remember. Clinton is not inevitable, but her campaign’s strategy, tactics and discipline make it hard for her to lose in Iowa. The campaign is trudging its way to a caucus win, with the saving grace being the large number of young, energetic and enthusiastic people helping organize the effort.
A professional class of political consultants, activists, fund raisers, corporate media correspondents, bloggers and supporters has evolved. At each announcement of a new supporter, there is a discussion of whether that person is a significant “get” for the campaign. The rise of this new class of operatives, many deriving a living from politics, has been because of unlimited money in politics. Money feeds the professional political class which is inflicting the body politic like a cancer. The Democratic process has become about winning elections.
Elections matter, but like the professional political class feeding on our Democracy, a sole focus on elections is problematic for our long term political health.
U.S. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan mentioned the Democratic focus on elections in his Dec. 3 Confident America speech.
“Maybe the way to win the debate is to play identity politics, never mind ideas,” Ryan said. “Maybe what you do is slice and dice the electorate: Demonize. Polarize. Turn out your voters. Hope the rest stay home.”
While Ryan is supporting a conservative agenda with this speech, and Democrats I know focus on governing as much as elections, what he said describes exactly what Republicans are doing in Iowa more than Democrats.
What I miss most about Iowa politics is the chance to build the community where I live. It has been difficult to do so in campaigns with which I have associated since 2004. The hindrance has been the data analysis method of targeting caucus-goers or voters, and the necessary exclusion it breeds. The Iowa Democratic Party is not about community building in a geographic sense. It is about building coalitions of whoever will join together with us to win elections. To say I despise it is an understatement.
Whatever issues I may have with the Democratic Party, they are not the reason Iowa should ditch the caucuses. It’s because candidates roaming free-range around the state has served only slight useful purpose. It has been harmful to the Iowa that elected candidates like Harold Hughes and Robert Ray.
There is an economic benefit of having 20+ candidates campaigning in Iowa, but less than one thinks. Brianne Pfannenstiel posted an article at the Des Moines Register recapping candidate spending this cycle.
“Despite Iowa’s outsize influence in the nation’s presidential nominating process, political spending is still funneled primarily to coastal states, which house major political consulting and advertising firms,” Pfannenstiel wrote. “Iowa accounts for just three percent of the $153.3 million that presidential campaigns have spent so far this cycle, filings with the Federal Election Commission show.”
The amount is much less if one removes fees and salaries paid to members of the Iowa professional political class. The Iowa caucuses are not about economic impact, as facts in the article demonstrate.
For the most part, the Iowa caucuses are about party building. If you think having as many as 20 non-presidents wandering every restaurant, gas station, gymnasium and legion hall isn’t having an impact on what Iowans believe about politics, think again.
There is little chance President Santorum will undo the Obama legacy because there is zero chance of him being president. What he, Mike Huckabee and others polling less than five percent do is build the culture of party politics in a corrupting manner. It reinforces what people already get from mass media. Minority and fringe views are depicted in media as being acceptable as media corrupts.
Candidates seek supporters to build their respective campaigns. There are few better examples of the deleterious effect of this than this headline and story by Jill Colvin and Bill Barrow of Associated Press, “Trump backers baffled by criticism of his Muslim proposal.”
When we open the state to all political comers, candidates who still poll in the asterisk range have been given serious coverage in corporate news outlets and blog posts alike. There is no sacred responsibility to cover the presidential aspirations of candidates like Lindsey Graham, Carly Fiorina, Lincoln Chafee or Jim Gilmore. That they travel Iowa is to our detriment. Attention given them is time we could focus more productively.
While I grumbled about my choices in 1988, I knew I was a Democrat and that gave me standing in my community. What is heard today is a plethora of weird views with serious and flaky mixed together in a jumble. Politics is like Chex mix gone wrong. Activists and advocates say we should ask “serious questions” of candidates, but there is little use of asking any question of most of these candidates. After all, we are not on a fact-finding mission to fill our grocery cart.
The benefit of holding the first in the nation caucus is much less than we think. More than that, it is corrupting Iowa in a way that has yielded us more conservative elected officials including Governor Terry Branstad, Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst, and Representative Steve King. That’s not the Iowa I want to see, and rethinking our role in presidential politics is important to making a change.
A few people I know attended, but mostly the names and faces of the negotiators and players were reduced to certain heads of state and prominent activists.
Short version: now that the agreement is made, governments must adopt it.
“Senate leadership has already been outspoken in its positions that the United States is not legally bound to any agreement setting emissions targets or any financial commitment to it without approval by Congress,” he said.
Managing greenhouse gas emissions will be a challenge without U.S. leadership. The Republican-controlled Congress is unlikely to consider or adopt the agreement. The Heritage Foundation asserted the administration is planning to make an end-run around Senate scrutiny. That is ridiculous given the public nature of the negotiations that produced it and the long, lead-up to the accord.
Suffice it that the Environmental Protection Agency Clean Power Plan is the primary mechanism for compliance with the terms of the Paris agreement, and the Congress has been trying to kill it. Debate on the Clean Power Plan began long before it was published Oct. 23 in the Federal Register. On Nov. 18 the Senate passed a resolution to kill the plan. On Dec. 1 the U.S. House of Representatives did likewise.
The United States is not the leader we could be on mitigating the causes of global warming. Nothing about COP21 changed that.
What has changed is the world is coming together to address the greatest threats to human survival. Not only regarding greenhouse gas emissions, but in other areas. Whether the United States will lead or follow is to be determined. The direction has been set, and while there will be tenacious resistance to changes in the fossil fuel paradigm, new leadership is emerging. Life as we know it hangs in the balance.
Let’s hope our government steps up to the challenge. We have the capacity. Whether we have the political will is an open question as the world passes us by.
The deer population is abundant because of a lack of predators, including the mostly male deer hunters currently in the field.
People freak at the idea of wolves or large cats being near, so culling the herds has become a human activity. There is little danger of taking too many.
Almost three months into the Iowa deer hunt, the second shotgun season begins Saturday. The other day, I found a deer hoof in a parking lot, picked it up, and tossed it into a trash bin. There are no intuitive rules for disposal of deer hooves. Meanwhile, deer hides have been piling up at the home, farm and auto supply store as hunters bring them in.
Deer licenses are issued mainly to male hunters for a personal, annual ritual. They gear up with ammunition, waterproof clothing, meat grinders, jerky seasoning, hats, and undergarments designed to wick perspiration away from the skin. Male comradery—the kind deer hunters share—is both common and rare.
My experience of the hunt is minimal. Closest I got to hunter’s comradery was hanging out with Dad’s golfing partners at the public course club house. I took everything in as they threw dice, played cards, smoked cigars and cigarettes, and waited to secure early tee times. My memory is like the stories I hear when asking hunters what they do when they hunt. Male bonding never became important for me.
I recently overheard a conversation between two teenagers that went something like this:
She: Everyone knows women are smarter than men.
He: Yeah, but you menstruate.
She: Only one day a month.
He: But still, you bleed.
I was taken aback. Maybe I haven’t spent much time with teens since ours left home. Maybe it was the inherent competitiveness. What also got to me is my concurrent reading of Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristoff and Sheryl WuDunn. In some of the countries depicted in the book, he would have raped her to settle the question of domination.
What line does our culture draw between commonplace banter and the realities of oppression? If there is one, it is difficult to discern. Suffice it that American cultural restraint keeps most young men from sexually assaulting women with whom they compete. At the same time, something elemental is lurking with unstated intent.
Deer hunting is acceptable social behavior with formal rules and regulations coupled with diverse, personal traditions. In some ways the annual hunt is grease on the skids of normalcy — a form of culture that can lead to civilization. I suspect the teen boy will ultimately become a deer hunter if he isn’t already.
I use fencing to protect plants I like more than deer need in an effort to coexist. Today I put out a bushel of apples for them. I am beginning to understand how to get along.
There is something appealing about the way deer hunting creates long-term relationships between hunters, and with their respective spouses. This season I’ve come to understand the blood sport more than I did — as much as I may be able.
The good news about finishing three full weeks at the home, farm and auto supply store is the company offers health insurance that meets the Internal Revenue Service “minimum value standard” for less money than coverage available through the government’s health insurance marketplace or elsewhere.
The bad news is all of the pay from this full-time job will fund health care insurance, co-pays and deductibles for our family if we seek any care. If we don’t need health care once the coverage goes into effect Feb. 1 that will leave us roughly $150 take home pay per week. We’ll need more than that to pay the rest of our expenses.
Ada Blenkhorn and J. Howard Entwistle wrote the song “Keep on the Sunny Side” in 1899:
There’s a dark and a troubled side of life;
There’s a bright and a sunny side, too;
Tho’ we meet with the darkness and strife,
The sunny side we also may view.
Most people know the version Mother Maybelle Carter sang on the 1972 record album Will the Circle Be Unbroken produced by William E. McEuan. I favor the original A.P. Carter version which hearkens back to our family roots in Southwestern Virginia. Dig deep enough and you’ll find we’re shirt tail relatives on the Addington side, which is Mother Maybelle’s maiden name.
Not only may we view the sunny side, keeping there will be the only thing that gives us hope. This first job sets a foundation upon which to build the rest of my worklife.
What else?
In the works are spring at the Community Supported Agriculture project, summer editing at Blog for Iowa, and fall weekends at the apple orchard. These were all discussed during my interview with the home, farm and auto supply company, so getting time off shouldn’t be a problem.
The most excitement I felt in a while was finding the Seed Savers Exchange 2016 seed catalog in the mailbox yesterday.
Someone gave me a packet of their scarlet kale seeds last year and it was a great addition to the garden. Too bad all of my customers are used to getting kale for free, or it could be a source of some income.
It is conceivable I could generate a thousand or so dollars from the garden this year by expanding the planting area and selling excess. Circumstances may have me doing that.
It is a reasonably warm fall day near the lake — a time for hope and getting lost in seed catalogs.
Any useful discussion of guns in society is personal.
Frequent shootings have been reported in nearby Cedar Rapids, often in the neighborhood where we lived when our daughter was born. We heard gunshots while we were there. Most times a weapon was discharged with no one injured and no subsequent news story. The main reason we moved was not the presence of guns, but to find a rodent-free rental home in which to raise our daughter.
At the shopping mall in Coralville where I buy button-down shirts, neckties and dress slacks, a man shot and killed a women near her workplace at the Iowa Children’s Museum on June 12. The murder appears to have been premeditated. This and other shopping mall shootings are a constant reminder of the peculiar risks of our consumer culture.
When I hear about shootings, it often takes the form of an anecdote. Like the Nov. 27 incident in which a man was asked to stop smoking by a restaurant employee in Mississippi, and then shot the woman dead. If you’ve never been to a Waffle House, like the one where this murder occurred, I recommend it. The counter is close to the kitchen and it is hard not to get involved in the drama acted out between customers and staff. There was drama at all the Waffle Houses where I dined.
What to do about the increasing number of firearms discharges in populated areas and public places is an open question our society won’t ask with any seriousness. By serious, I mean addressing the related political, regulatory, Constitutional, educational and public health issues in a way that would reduce the frequency of shooting incidents and the number of people killed and injured in gun violence. If we don’t ask the question it won’t get answered.
As a soldier I trained on every weapon in our company’s inventory from personal weapons like the Colt 45 revolver and the M-16A1 rifle, to mortars and the TOW anti-tank missile system. I became an expert marksman and have the badge to prove it. When I left the Army I checked my guns at the arms room and never looked back.
The existence of guns and weaponry in society is not our American problem. How they are used and regulated is.
Guns are regulated — just go to a gun shop and try to buy one. Changing regulations to address gun violence in mass society seems a logical way to address the problem — a no-brainer. A large majority of Americans would support tightening regulations with simple solutions like restricting gun purchases by people whose names appear on government terrorist watch lists. There is also broad support for universal background checks, such support blocked by a few vociferous pro-gun advocates.
There is a black market in gun sales and an active off the books exchange of weapons between friends and family. Criminals and terrorists will always be able to locate some of the hundreds of millions of firearms in the country to do their malevolent deeds. That is less the issue.
There is a lot of stupid stuff going on: things like keeping loaded weapons where toddlers can access them. Reasonable people who own guns take appropriate action to keep guns safely, or at least out of the hands of toddlers. We all need to stop doing stupid stuff, and media should develop common sense in reporting gun violence.
The media, both corporate and social, is culpable in gun violence. As data journalists Ritchie King, Carl Bialik and Andrew Flowers pointed out yesterday, mass shootings have become more common in the United States, but overall, gun homicides have decreased. If the Cedar Rapids Gazette writes a story about every reported gun discharge inside city limits, the issue of gun control would be escalated to higher importance than when shootings were commonplace in my family’s neighborhood — background noise while living in a rodent-infested area. There are few ledes to gun stories that capture the broad issues of what happens when our educational system is underfunded, mental health care is inadequate, people fear loss of Second Amendment rights, and politicians won’t take action to fix obvious problems with gun regulations. How writers spin this matters and the stories are spinning out of control.
Personal responsibility, while lacking in large segments of society, would be something, but it is not enough. As Tracy Leone posted after the recent San Bernardino, Calif. shootings,
Prayer is for church. Congress legislates.
— Tracy Leone (@LeoneTracy) December 3, 2015
It is time for elected officials to act to reduce the frequency and severity of gun violence. We need to coach them in this as they need it.
In the meanwhile, we live our lives as best we can with the ubiquitous presence of guns, shopping in the mall, and engaging in the drama of everyday life, all the time understanding that if we don’t follow the golden rule, our chances of avoiding gun violence decrease.
Global Zero’s Brittany Kimzey Bird-Dogging Hillary Clinton in Coralville
Full of exuberance after the election of Barack Obama, author of the April 5, 2009 speech on nuclear abolition in Prague, Czech Republic, we believed U.S. Senate ratification of the New START Treaty with Russia would proceed easily. Our attention could then be focused on ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty signed by president Bill Clinton in 1996.
It didn’t happen that way.
In 2009 I was part of a coalition of organizations advocating for CTBT ratification. The Senate minority had banded together to leverage their power. Ratification of New START became an epic struggle, rather than the slam dunk we expected. The final result was laced with irony. In order to get a cloture vote on New START, the Obama administration agreed to modernize the U.S. nuclear complex.
It was a bitter pill and an example of how the congressional minority was capable of blocking legislation advanced in a Democratically controlled congress. CTBT remains on the back burner.
“Each December, the First Committee resolutions goes to the full General Assembly for a second vote,” Beatrice Fihn, ICAN executive director wrote in an email. “The four key resolutions (humanitarian consequences, humanitarian pledge, ethical imperatives and open-ended working group) will be voted upon again on Dec. 7. This is a great chance for us to improve the voting results from First Committee and a good opportunity to put additional pressure on some governments.”
Whether the U.S. will vote for the resolutions is unclear, and Undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security Rose Gottemoeller has repeatedly said the U.S. seeks to eliminate nuclear weapons through the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which is already in force, rather than in a new treaty.
ICAN, a global campaign coalition working to mobilize people in all countries to inspire, persuade and pressure their governments to initiate and support negotiations for a treaty banning nuclear weapons, is expected to lose a major portion of their funding for next year from the Norwegian government. The campaign, launched in 2007, and now with more than 400 partner organizations in 95 countries, is reacting to the funding stream change. Loss of the funding may have a significant impact on the campaign.
In Iowa, home of the first in the nation political caucuses, advocacy groups are asking questions about nuclear abolition at campaign events. Yesterday Brittany Kimzey, of Global Zero bird-dogged Jeb Bush at an event.
Others published letters to the editor and opinion pieces on nuclear abolition, and plan to get platform planks regarding abolition into party platforms. The Iowa Democratic Party state platform contains planks regarding elimination of nuclear weapons, containing the Iranian nuclear program, and engaging in diplomacy to contain North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. Because of the word limits imposed by the party, some slight modification of these planks may be possible. The Republican Party of Iowa platform is devoid of mention of nuclear weapons.
As I write, corporations are making a handsome financial return on modernization of the nuclear weapons complex. Conflicts in Asia, Africa and Europe escalate tension and raises concerns nuclear weapons may be used again or captured by terrorists. Arms Control Association Daryl Kimball posted one of the issues on Twitter:
Did you know: several dozen tactical nukes are in #Turkey? “Reassessing the Role of U.S. Nuclear Weapons in Turkey” https://t.co/xjzgREXT1q
Nuclear weapons should never be used again. At the grassroots it is unclear there is adequate support for abolition as 2015 ends. The work continues nonetheless.
President Obama is scheduled to depart Washington for Paris later today to attend the 21st Convention of the Parties (COP21 or Paris 2015). Paris 2015 offers our best hope to curb greenhouse gas emissions through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
As of yesterday 150 heads of state had accepted the invitation to participate, with representatives of 196 nations planning to join. Each head of state will make a speech, with the order set by UN rules. President Obama’s speech will follow His Majesty Mohammed VI, the King of Morocco around noon local time.
In the wake of the Nov. 13 terrorist attacks, Paris is on lock down. Ed Fallon described the scene.
With public demonstrations banned, would-be participants lined up pairs of shoes in one of the rally locations that would have been. As I type, a human chain is lining up between Place de la Nation and Place de la Republic.
Even though people with means have traveled to Paris to demonstrate, contrary to what people like Naomi Klein and other prominent climate change advocates have said, accompanying demonstrations don’t seem so relevant to the bigger picture. With or without them, the heads of state and dignitaries will accomplish something with regard to mitigating the causes of climate change. Let’s hope it is enough.
That’s not to say there isn’t hope, just that all of the speeches could be reminiscent of the scene from Star Wars where Queen Amidala addressed the Galactic Senate.
Even though the U.S. political system, the legislative branch of government particularly, is unprepared to act on climate today, I believe, and with good reason, the effects of anthropocentric climate change will become so pronounced that even the most virulent climate skeptic will recognize the need to take action to mitigate its causes.
The time for which we have long waited is upon us. Here’s hoping our leaders take action.
The most excitement I felt in a while was finding the Seed Savers Exchange 2016 seed catalog in the mailbox yesterday.
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