Author: Paul Deaton

Categories
Home Life

Still Trying

Solon During a Snowstorm
Solon During a Snowstorm

LAKE MACBRIDE— We rush toward the new year with hope. Imperfect, we still try and that is something. Some would say it is everything.

On a piece of scratch paper I estimated 2015 income from known sources. The information was to apply for a tax credit during the open enrollment period in the Health Care Marketplace. Our budgeted income is about the same as 2014 actual, although with fewer part time jobs. We qualified for a tax credit of $13,224, which will actually be a payment by the federal government to a health insurance company.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has been under relentless criticism and legal challenge, and it’s far from over. The Muscatine Journal published an article that explained the current case to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court this spring or summer.

“The court has decided to hear a case that questions the legality of federal subsidies for private health insurance purchased via the federal government under the new health care law,” Erin Murphy wrote. Depending upon what the court decides, the tax credits like mine may be on the chopping block for some 24,000 Iowans.

If the subsidy is eliminated, and lawmakers take no corrective action, it means I would have to find more part time work to produce weekly take-home pay of $254.31 to pay for health insurance. It would be the equivalent of working another 30-hour per week job at about $8.50 per hour.

In 2011, Medicare cost $549.1 billion to provide services for 48.7 million beneficiaries, according to the Medicare Newsgroup. That works out to $11,275.15 per year, or $1,949 less than the tax credit we were provided in the Marketplace. It seems doubtful a politician could connect the dots, but wouldn’t it be cheaper to lower the eligibility age for Medicare and pay less to insurance companies? That makes sense, so what was I thinking?

I’ll complete the process of choosing a plan before the Dec. 15 deadline, and it looks like we’ll keep our current policy. Then we’ll wait and see what the high court does.

And we’ll still be trying to sustain a life in a turbulent world.

Categories
Home Life

Staying In For Thanksgiving

A Vegetarian Thanksgiving Dinner
A Vegetarian Thanksgiving Dinner

LAKE MACBRIDE— A dusting of snow lay on the driveway as I walked to the road to get the newspaper. I breathed the cool night air for a few moments. The carrier had not arrived.

Returning to the kitchen, I turned off the boiling pan of eggs—protein for our ovo-lacto vegetarian holiday feast planned to include wild rice, sweet potatoes, lettuce salad, steamed broccoli, homemade baked beans, a relish tray and an apple crisp. There will be leftovers for days.

Except for the lettuce, the meal will be made from pantry ingredients, the result of shopping, but also of canning, growing, bartering and pickling. It’s a sign of the times.

We spent our thirties through fifties traveling for Thanksgiving, but no more. It’s just the two of us. We won’t even travel the three miles to town where one of the churches offers a free Thanksgiving meal for all comers.

In the quiet of each hour we will plan and cook the meal, serve it, and then clean the living room to put up the holiday decorations. Fit retreat from a bustling life among people.

A day to be thankful for what peace there is and the quiet fallen snow beneath predawn air.

Categories
Social Commentary

Diversity in Tight Enclaves

Saul Bellow 2001 - Photo Credit New York Times
Saul Bellow 2001 – Photo Credit New York Times

LAKE MACBRIDE— What is going on in Ferguson, Missouri, and around the country, over the Aug. 9 fatal shooting of Michael Brown, 18, by Darren Wilson, 28, and subsequent absence of grand jury indictments? Don’t ask. What I know is filtered by biased media—both corporate and social. The many people with whom I spent time in a real place yesterday simply didn’t mention the topic—not one time among hundreds of people.

What matters more than this emotionally charged incident is how we view people in the context of the society we construct among friends, neighbors, family and acquaintances over the course of time in a place. We create our own enclaves, and that’s where we live much of our lives, and deal with human diversity as best we can.

When a person has experienced ethnic diversity in countless settings, the tropisms regarding Ferguson make little sense. By framing Ferguson in terms of ethnic diversity, I am already opening myself up to criticism. So be it—that’s who I am and have been since my youngest days. In my defense, I tried to live the dream as best I could.

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character,” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said.

It takes more than citing a quote to achieve justice.

The 2013 population of our county was estimated at 139,155 by the U.S. Census Bureau. The white, not Hispanic or Latino population was 81.6 percent, with 5.5 percent black or African-American, 5.5 percent Asian, 5.4 Hispanic, and two percent other categories. These are facts.

Most people I encounter have little cognizance of them. Neighbors whisper about what would happen to property values if a black family would move in. Among working poor, conversation is often about how “different,” and by implication unacceptable, the behavior of “foreigners” is. In the most rapidly-growing parts of the county, a homogeneous culture centered around church, school, family and work blocks out basic facts about ethnic diversity. In each scenario participants have built an enclave that by any definition includes palpable intolerance.

“I cannot exceed what I see,” 1976 Nobel laureate Saul Bellow said. “I am bound, in other words, as the historian is bound by the period he writes about, by the situation I live in.”

In terms of ethnic tolerance, the situations I call home are not the best. What’s a person to do?

At a minimum, intolerance should not be ignored. We must say something when its ugly face is raised in conversation. It’s not easy to do when a lot depends upon our continued interaction with people found in the places we live, learn, worship, shop and work. Nonetheless, we must confront intolerance personally and directly. We can all do more in that regard.

A great diversion is following incidents like those in and around Ferguson and asserting actions, opining in media, taking direct action. This is little more than a distraction from the work that must be done to challenge intolerance in the tight enclaves where we live our lives.

The work has begun for many of us. If there is a lesson from Ferguson, it is we must do better.

Categories
Writing

Night Storm

The Ditch in Winter
Ditch in Winter

LAKE MACBRIDE— Just before running my mobile phone through the washing machine, I searched the Internet for Hyemeyohsts Storm.

There were a few search results— what little information there was full of controversy. It was 2 a.m. and I hadn’t turned the lights on.

The year Seven Arrows was published, Chuck Storm was a lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Iowa, where he taught a course titled, “American Indian Signs and Symbols.” His wife Swan accompanied him everywhere he went, and would roll cigarettes for him as he told stories once a week for a couple of hours. That was before smoking was banned in classrooms.

I got an A in the course. Everyone did. Storm confronted the administration and made a case for the grade, and got his way. A lot of people who attended the classes weren’t registered. To call it a “class” was a stretch, as the curriculum was disjointed and sometimes incoherent, if one existed at all. What happened each week just happened, and I suppose that was part of the learning.

Storm welcomed us to visit their apartment, and one evening I did. Unannounced, and perhaps a little rude, I appeared at their door, and Swan welcomed me in. They were working with someone who had a issue with film. He was wrapped in celluloid from which he broke free. Afterward, Swan used a hand sweeper—the kind I use to pick up pine needles after the Christmas tree is removed—to clean the carpet, then we dispersed for the evening.

Seven Arrows was a work of fiction, and as such, it was easy to accept. While it claimed to be “the first book about the Ways of the Plains People to be written entirely by an Indian,” it was sometimes uncertain which stories were part of oral tradition, and which were fictionalized.

A number of modern writers have called Storm a fake Indian.

“Hyemeyohsts Storm, whose first name is hard to spell and to say, was another faker who made a minor fortune with his fake Indian book, Seven Arrows,” Dr. Dean Chavers wrote in the Native American Times. “It tried to be a genuine representation of the ceremonies of the Cheyenne people, but it came out as hippie mish-mash, just right for the 1970s.”

Storm has been accused of exploiting native traditions, of selling spirituality, and of being a plastic shaman and plastic Indian. I don’t know about that, and when I knew him he seemed genuine enough—as genuine as any writer I met during my undergraduate studies.

Why life would lead me here is uncertain. A whim from the beyond, as Meyer Baba might call it. What I know is I wasn’t ready to replace my mobile phone, or to consider negativity clouding the view of life as I knew it four decades ago. Perhaps it was just a night storm.

Categories
Writing

Newspaper

Garage Sign
Garage Sign

LAKE MACBRIDE— It’s been a dubious endeavor.

After discontinuing our subscription to the daily (except Sunday) newspaper years ago, I began freelancing for them. Feeling a need to subscribe again, I did.

The carrier came and left no paper on the inaugural subscription day. Perhaps communications between sales and circulation is not all it could be, although friction between these entities has been a bone of contention since I learned the structure back in the 1960s. For my part, I’ve always been an operations guy. Leave the delivery of services to me, and production and sales to someone else. Still, no paper despite my distraction recounting personal history.

Complaining is not my bag. At least that’s what I believe. While developing a tolerance for the human condition, sometimes I fall short. When we know a little bit more about something, like the structure of newspapers, one can get a bit whiny. That is not becoming of the 60-something.

Yesterday I distributed some 1,400 samples of a pastry confection to people in the warehouse. There were a lot of smiles as the imminent Thanksgiving holiday precipitated whole families arriving to shop together.

I enjoyed their conversations—carried on as if I wasn’t there. Men discussed how women could use a food item. Parents and grand parents marshaled children as they navigated the tall steel stacked with palletized product. Patrons with Irish whiskey in their carts lingered in the cheese aisle living large with dairy. It was a specialized soup of humanity and I was ladling it into my bowl attentively.

What I can say about my work in the warehouse is limited. Since I need the income to support my writing, one dasn’t disrupt things. Framing only general and positive remarks in public, there is a story to tell, but it must be told later, after I move on to what’s next to pay the bills. One always believes there will be a next thing.

But this morning, right now, I am writing. For now, that’s enough to accept the varied and imperfect life I have been living.

Categories
Kitchen Garden

Leek and Potato Soup

Canned Soup Stock
Canned Soup Stock

LAKE MACBRIDE— Leeks at the grocery store looked particularly good so I bought one to make leek and potato soup. Leeks make incredible soup stock, so I always look forward to this once or twice a year meal.

The ingredients for leek and potato soup are simple:

Stock

One large onion
Half cup diced celery (garden grown if you have it)
Three carrots peeled and cut into large chunks
Top of one leek rough chopped. Cut it just below where the leaves start to fan out. Be sure to get the dirt out from between the leaves.
Two bay leaves
Salt to taste
Eight cups of water

Soup

Aforementioned stock
One lunch bag full of potatoes, peeled and cut into bite-sized pieces
Remaining leek halved lengthwise and cut into thin ribbons and cleaned
Two celery stalks, medium dice
Two cups frozen cut corn

Partly this list is a lie. Some would skip the stock, boil the potatoes separately, reserving a cup of the cooking liquid. Saute the celery and leeks in a Dutch oven and add the cooked potatoes, corn, potato water and milk (evaporated, cream, or whatever) to cover. Heat slowly until fully warmed, but don’t scald the milk. Serve with freshly baked biscuits.

There is another way. Place the soup stock ingredients in a Dutch oven and bring to a boil. Turn the heat down and simmer until it’s soup. Strain the vegetables out, and put the stock back into the Dutch oven. Add the potatoes and leeks and enough water to cover. Bring to a boil, then turn the heat down to a simmer. Cook until the potatoes are fork tender and add the corn. Re-season. Bring the pot to temperature and serve with oyster crackers or freshly baked biscuits.

There are other ways to make this soup. The point of the story and recipe is that the leeks at the store looked good. I did something about that.

We have gotten too far from the natural instinct of creating from our found environment. Yes, the leeks may not have been grown in Iowa. The soup I made from them was, and that makes it local food.

A meal that was filling and tasty by any definition, cooked once or twice a year when the leeks look good in the store is culture that escapes us too often. Life is too short to let that happen.

Categories
Work Life Writing

Meeting at the Cemetery

Rural Cemetery
Rural Cemetery

BIG GROVE TOWNSHIP— There was trouble last night at the cemetery, the first such trouble since I was elected township trustee.

It had to do with who could be buried in whose plot, and the trustee who coordinates plot sales and burials wanted to discuss the issue. The funeral is Friday, so no time for dalliance. We are meeting at 8:30 a.m.

Two years into my term, being a township trustee has provided a steady stream of learning about our community. There has been time to consider things, and almost no controversy—just repeated expression of wills about what should get done and how. Any conflicts that surfaced were quickly resolved.

I’m confident we will figure this one out.

Yesterday it was shown that Mary Landrieu did have 59 votes to proceed on Keystone XL, and that’s all she had. The bill overriding the executive process on evaluation and approval of the project now goes into the dustbin of the 113th Congress. It likely will be back next congress.

I spent part of the last two days transcribing testimony to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, carbon dioxide particularly.

“I began my career as a summer intern at EPA 42 years ago under what has euphemistically become known as Russell House One,” Dianne Dillon Ridgely said. “I was a 19-year old kid. And what is most dramatic is much of what we addressed that summer—in terms of air pollution, in terms of the public’s engagement on power production—are exactly the same things, particularly in terms of coal, that we are still addressing and fighting 42 years later, and to me that is really a sad commentary.”

Ridgley is a 42-year veteran of governmental action (or inaction) on clean air and clean water, having been appointed by Presidents Clinton, Bush 41 and Bush 43 to international delegations to address environmental issues. We’re still addressing them. There is hope the EPA’s actions won’t be blocked by the 114th Congress, something the presumed Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell indicated is high on his to-do list. Time will tell, but I believe we are on the right side of history regardless of what the Congress does.

My last workday at the local paper was Sunday. It will feel a little weird to be able to focus on my writing on the weekends instead of proof reading the paper. The bucket of part time paid jobs is down to three, and one of those is finished the second week in December. When the number surged to eight last summer, it was too much to juggle. Having found a bottom, the goal for next year is to keep what remains, and use it as a base. In addition, I will seek paid writing jobs and temporary positions and opportunities that can add a few C-notes to the treasury each month. What remains is that I work to support my ability to write.

Hope against hope, I want to get out in the yard and mulch the leaves, and shorten the grass. For that to happen, the snow needs to melt, the yard dry out, and half a day of warmer temperatures roll in. In these days of crazy weather, that is possible, however improbable. That’s where this Wednesday finds me.

Categories
Writing

Snow Came

Snow Cover
Snow Cover

LAKE MACBRIDE— The first snowfall precipitates the innate idiocy of people who forget, or refuse to recall that it gets slippery when snow falls on the roadway. Coming across Mehaffey Bridge Road after a shift at the warehouse, a long lineup of cars was stopped with headlights on. Two cars were in the ditch with the sheriff nearby. I hope no one was hurt.

A snowplow came in the oncoming lane dropping sand and salt, so three of us jumped over and drove around the obstruction. If nothing else, I am a confident winter driver, having weathered all kinds of conditions in the U.S. and in Germany.

Crops are still in the field, but other than that, we needed the moisture. It’s still snowing.

The kale in the garden looks green from the house, but this may be the end of it. Part of tomorrow will be checking it for edibility. There are also vegetables going bad in the fridge, and those will go to compost when I check the kale. The growing season may officially be over.

Categories
Environment

Keystone XL — Bright Shiny Object

Dave Loebsack
Dave Loebsack Voted for Keystone XL

LAKE MACBRIDE— Yesterday the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill directing the federal government to move forward on the Keystone XL pipeline on a 252-161 vote. It was less than the number of votes needed to override a presidential veto, but Barack Obama has been holding his cards close to the chest on Keystone. What he would do if a bill reached his desk is uncertain.

According to the New York Times, the U.S. Senate scheduled a vote on the bill for Tuesday, and Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) believes there are already 59 of 60 votes required to overcome a filibuster when the vote comes up. If the senate can get past a filibuster, the bill’s passage is assured, although getting 67 votes needed to override a presidential veto is less certain than it is in the the house. It’s all political theater.

Our Representative Dave Loebsack voted for the bill, reversing his last vote on Keystone XL. He sent social media atwitter with shock and disappointment framed in terms that appeared to help the authors vent frustration more than say anything coherent. I am disappointed with the vote, but what politician ever consistently voted my way?

I know a couple of things.

When people talk about “environmentalists” I no longer have a clue to whom they refer. Is a farmer who plants a buffer zone based on a government grant an environmentalist? Is a non-governmental organization’s local staff member—overly dependent upon funding sources—an environmentalist? Is a Washington lobbyist for a large NGO an environmentalist? What about members of the defense department working toward a lower carbon footprint for the military? What about my neighbors who protest building a subdivision near Lake Macbride? There aren’t real answers to these questions, and that’s the problem with vague references to “environmentalists.” There is no club to which they all belong, and fewer common denominators. The idea is actually a right wing talking point, and the frame “environmentalists” is used to demonize advocates for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and against production of electricity using coal, natural gas and nuclear fuels. Keystone XL is not a common denominator among environmentalists.

The failure of environmentalists was targeting the pipeline at all, instead of the tar sands. The tar sands is a bigger problem because of humanity’s inexhaustible thirst for oil and natural gas. This is the same problem for the Bakken, West Texas and Eagle Ford formations. Because oil and gas are in demand, there is direct financial return, subsidized by our government, in exploiting these resources. The environmental communities have been unable to adequately articulate the unrecognized costs in terms of human health of these exploration, discovery and production operations—even if a small number of people are working on it. Successful efforts have taken a targeted, NIMBY approach, like the fight against frac sand mining in Allamakee County. By targeting Keystone XL, environmentalists set themselves up for failure. As a friend wrote me last night, “there are hundreds of pipelines in this country already—what’s one or two more?”

I also know unions favor building pipelines. Ken Sagar and Bill Gerhard laid out their position in a Dec. 11 opinion piece in the Des Moines Register. Only a cynic would say that Loebsack’s vote on Keystone XL was quid pro quo for union financial and canvassing support during the 2014 midterms. It is likely more complicated than that, but it had to have been a factor. Part of being Democratic is the fact that Democrats don’t always agree. Keystone XL and Iowa’s proposed Bakken Oil Pipeline are a prime examples of that. Loebsack’s framing of the explanation for his vote makes his sympathies for the union’s legislative priority clear.

“I was skeptical of side stepping the normal processes, but the jobs attached to building the Keystone Pipeline are too important and can no longer be tied to D.C. gridlock,” Loebsack said, according to Ed Tibbetts of the Quad-City Times.

What I also know is October 2014 was the hottest month recorded on the planet since record-keeping began, according to the Washington Post. Yes, you skeptics, the world’s temperatures may have been higher or much colder in some prehistoric era. But what matters more is our civilization, and the changes produced by the industrial revolution are at risk. The underpinnings of basic facts about our lives, when the first frost comes, the amount of rainfall in a region, how we produce electricity, how we sequester carbon in the land, water sourcing, and others are all being undone.

It will take more than one vote in one governmental body to address these broader challenges. What I know is that is unlikely to happen in my lifetime unless we stop focusing on bright and shiny objects like Keystone XL.

Categories
Work Life

Friday in Big Grove

Garden in Late Autumn
Garden in Late Autumn

This week mine has been the life of a writer.

Every possible moment was spent producing copy. It is what I hoped for for so many years. A side-effect was the displacement of blog writing as I scurried to make deadlines and accommodate demands for my time. It’s good work if you can get it, and life-changing.

Whether paid work will persist is uncertain, but I felt confident enough to part ways with our local newspaper where I proofread stories and wrote articles about the school board, city council, and a couple of other topics. 39,100 words were filed in 44 stories since January with compensation of $2,125, or less than the amount of our property tax for the period. I’ll finish my last work there this weekend.

What’s next is freelancing for the Iowa City Press Citizen and a slate of business development activities to identify additional paid writing opportunities. I’d get that organized if it weren’t so busy writing.

There is the slate of work that is not writing also begging for my time. For now, that work pays the bills and flows into the well of experience from which I draw for writing. For now, it is enough.

What it has meant is less time to write here. I hope to return to regular blog writing soon. It is uncertain when that will be.