State park trail entry point.

Journey Home

Tales from the pilgrimage.

Paul Deaton

  • Juke Box — Who’s Gonna Build Your Wall

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  • Rural Door Knocking

    There is plenty of time to think about things when door knocking a rural precinct. Houses are spread out, and typically there is a long walk from the road to the dwelling. Sometimes you can’t even find where people live on a farmstead, or the family moved away. I had a finger wave and waved… Read more

  • On Our Own Into 2016

    “Publishers are not accountable to the laws of heaven and earth in any country and regardless of my opinion, editors and publishers will print what they will.” I wrote this in a letter to the editor of the Quad City Times in 1980 reacting to a popular feature section called Soundoff. “(It is) little more than… Read more

  • We’re Going Home — Hamburg Inn No. 2

    With yesterday’s announcement Hamburg Inn No. 2 is being sold by 68 year-old David Panther, another chapter in the long exodus of sixty-somethings from Iowa City’s public stage is closing. With growth and a burgeoning new population, long time aspects of Iowa City iconography have changed and are changing. Old is giving way to new.… Read more

  • Iowa Caucus — 8 Days Out

    Stuff is getting real as we enter the last days before the first in the nation Iowa caucuses on Feb. 1. The Democratic race has been somewhat dull and uninspiring. Set aside the hubris-imbued early drop-outs (Lincoln Chafee and Jim Webb), those in the race, Hillary Clinton, Martin O’Malley and Bernie Sanders, bring little we… Read more

  • Three Recent Cancer Victims

    The recent passing of David Bowie, Alan Rickman and Brian Bedford, all from cancer, reminds us that no matter the place people hold in our imagination we are grounded in a humanity that can be taken from us equally. They will be missed. I know least about David Bowie. He was one of many rock… Read more

  • Hope Springs from Saturday

    In the life of a political activist, only occasionally do events transpire that make our efforts seem worthwhile. It began during the George W. Bush administration with inauspicious red and white signs that simply said, “Talk to Iran.” On Saturday, Jan. 16, Secretary of State John Kerry announced, Today, more than four years after I… Read more

  • Mid-week Hustle

    It doesn’t appear we will get a solid week of subzero temperatures this winter. Based on the five-day forecast I’m planning to prune the fruit trees on Sunday. Would that growing food were all there was to worry about. The challenge has been to assimilate a new work schedule at the home, farm and auto… Read more

  • Society in Decline?

    How does one recognize society is in decline? We participants probably can’t. In 1540 conquistador Hernando de Soto sent a messenger to Quigaltam, supreme leader of a people whose ancestors had built mounds and lived in the Mississippi River basin for 700 years, to say, “the son of the sun” expected his people to obey… Read more

  • Hillary and the Polar Vortex

    BIG GROVE TOWNSHIP, Iowa — The ambient temperature dipped below zero degrees overnight, signaling the arrival of the polar vortex. Soon it will be time to prune the apple trees — most likely next weekend. I worked a door knocking shift for the Hillary Clinton campaign on Saturday. While a lot of people weren’t home,… Read more