Author: Paul Deaton

Categories
Sustainability

To the County Seat

Tonkin Gulf 50th Anniversary
Tonkin Gulf 50th Anniversary

IOWA CITY— My skills at ordering a beer failed to keep up with the times. We were meeting at a bar in the county seat, one recognizable from infrequent visits for meetups over 40 years. I arrived first and took a seat at the bar.

“What do you have on tap?” I asked. The trouble began.

Expecting the bartender to name two or three brands manufactured by large brewers, she handed me a menu with a long list of draught beers.

“Do you make any of them here?”

“No, we don’t.”

Distracted when I saw two modern-day hipsters drinking tall PBRs a few feet away, I said to myself, “it’s not that simple any more.” I should have ordered one of those.

The bartender stood waiting, then left while I pondered.

Memories came. Of the Chief Tavern on Seventh Street in Davenport where I went when things got a bit rowdy where I rented a room during the summer of 1975. I’d take a book, walk the half block, and nurse a beer at the bar, reading and waiting for things to quiet down at home.

“Do you have pilsener?” I asked when she returned. She did.

As U.S. Army officers in Germany, we secured cases of Pilsner Urquell through the U.S. embassy in Prague. It was hard to get the Czech beer in the late 1970s, although the brand is widely available today— even in our rural Iowa town.

Resolved that pilsener shall be my standard order to avoid having to memorize ever changing options. Keep things simple and cope with change.

A few minutes later she brought a tall glass with an inch and a half of foam. I paid six dollars and a buck for a tip, and nursed the beer until my friends arrived.

Our local chapter of Veterans for Peace was commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution that gave congressional authorization for the war in Vietnam. It is a resolution we now know was premised on a falsehood. It is not news that in war, truth is the first casualty.

The most powerful part of the event was the witness of five members of our chapter who are Vietnam veterans. I tried recording the speeches, but my device shut down when some of their voices were softer than its range of perception.

Tom Kelly
Tom Kelly

Former marine Tom Kelly spoke of black ops in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, something we knew at the time was going on. The reality of his experience spoke louder than his voice ever could.

“I did things I’m not proud of,” he said, wearing a ball cap commemorating his veteran status as a marine. It was sobering to hear his words as the sun set on a beautiful Iowa summer day.

None of the Vietnam War needed to have happened. The American deaths and injuries; the far greater number of Vietnamese deaths and casualties. It did happen, and as the memorial at the court house is inscribed, “all gave some; some gave all.” It is not only about us.

Our country’s propensity for war, and the deceptions and falsehoods about it, make determining what to do more challenging than ordering a beer could ever be. It seems critical that we move on from our personal problems to effect change. In a society possessed of personal choices, our government is on a course of militarism that could jeopardize all we hold dear.

To say I am glad to know the veterans in our group couldn’t be more true. To say we can continue with our nationalistic pandering to the gods of war is the lie. One we can’t afford to repeat as we sustain our lives in a turbulent world.

Categories
Juke Box

Juke Box – I Will Wait

Categories
Writing

Drawing from a Spring

Lake Macbride
Lake Macbride

LAKE MACBRIDE— Possessed of a large frontal lobe of the cerebral cortex, I spend way to much time intellectualizing life instead of living it. This is not new, nor is it peculiar to me. It’s the human condition— a blessing and a curse. Memory is particularly important for a writer in that if one can’t conceptualize, writing would be impossible. Readers are important too, but that is another story.

The challenge of daily writing is to develop a story balanced between enough research and not too much. That research is in experiences new and old. For now, the source of ideas flows like a spring in an Appalachian hollow, providing a way of life for those who can tap it. One hopes the spring never runs dry.

My experience with Appalachian springs is personal. During a visit to the home place in Virginia shortly after our marriage, we visited family friends who lived a certain way in a hollow with a spring. The income they had was from watching my uncle’s four cows and tobacco fields while he was away working for an airline. The grounds and cow keepers had a government draw from a disability, which was being set aside to eventually buy farming equipment. Money was not a primary concern, although if they had it, they would spend it. So it is in Big Grove.

One might call the author a hoarder. Guilty as charged. I’m a hoarder of books and artifacts collected in diverse experiences around the U.S., Canada and parts of old Europe. The ideas about them reside within me, and that’s the true and deep reservoir of experience for writing. Often, it is research enough.

Occasionally one has to reach out for inspiration, and that’s where I land as summer ends and the fall harvest approaches. The persistent question, what’s next?

I’ve worked to create a process that sustains us over the near term, and now it’s time to produce something longer than a 500 word blog post with the process. Exactly what is an open question for the next month or so.

With consideration and review, contemplation and decision, a path forward will be mapped— toward new experiences and broader exposure of my writing.

It’s time to draw again from the spring.

Categories
Writing

August Tomatoes Have Arrived

victory garden 3t01136uThe garden is producing a lot of tomatoes, with the cherry and plum varieties coming in. I picked a bowl last night, and those still on the vines continue to grow and ripen.

There was a mature jalapeno and a couple of Serrano, which with the banana pepper, garlic and onion from the CSA will make the base of a nice tomato hot sauce.

Marketmore cucumbers are forming on the vines. They’re at the stage where close monitoring is needed to pick them at the perfect size and before they balloon to gigantic. The celery is reaching a recognizable stage, and basil is ready. Despite the failures of this year’s gardening, there is a variety of produce to harvest.

News of the Listeria monocytogene scare in some California fruit reached Big Grove. We have a few plums past their prime in the ice box, so it was a good enough reason to compost them, even if there was little trouble from the rest of the box as we ate them. They looked so good in the store, that despite the long trip they made to Iowa, we bought and enjoyed them. Apples and pears will soon be ready in our garden, taking us away from a desire for imported fruit.

The advent of August tomatoes marks a turning point in the season. It’s time to plant the second crop of radishes, turnips, and spinach. That work is scheduled for in the morning.

Categories
Home Life

Missed the Stars

Garlic Scapes
Garlic Scapes

LAKE MACBRIDE— Dawn was breaking as I walked the mobile phone bill to the mailbox. Hoping to view the stars on another clear morning, it was too late. Will have to settle for the sun today, which is not settling at all.

The ground is hard and dry in the garlic patch. I had no idea. My daily vegetable watering in mulched plots kept this knowledge from me. It feels like we are heading into another period of drought, even if the latest drought map shows we aren’t there yet.

To deal with the dry plot, a place I would like to get into production again, I plan to lay down a tarp, or heavy plastic to retain moisture, suppress weeds, and use as a storage area for excess fencing and other garden equipment I store outside. That will enable the mulching of the rest of the plot where they are presently stored. Over the years I imagined building a shed on the garlic plot, with a couple of solar collectors and a battery pack, but for now vegetable production will be the focus, hopefully next year.

The acorns planted in the garlic plot the year our daughter graduated high school have grown to be trees. Three of them. They are symbols of how life gets away from us. The shade has not helped the rest of the garden. One of them has a very straight trunk, and I plan to cut it down and make something from it. The other two should be transplanted to replace the green ash trees in front of the house, but who knows when that might get done.

My attempt at creating habitat in our yard has been successful, but not in a way I anticipated. A gray and white cat has taken up residence, and curls up and sleeps on the grass clippings among the tomato plants. It seemed loathe to move until I began watering.

A rabbit settled between the hot peppers and another tomato patch. It loves to eat clover, and yesterday I spotted it in the neighbor’s yard, since I cut all mine with the mower. This rabbit has survived longer than most do, and has not tried to get under the fencing protecting the vegetables.

There is a rodent living in the ditch in front of the house. It also travels among the lilac bushes and apple trees, leaving paths everywhere. It chewed one of the screens to the lower level of the house and then another. It is the most offensive of the yard residents, and seems to stay away from the cat, regrettably.

There are butterflies and bees; foxes and opossums; and birds of all kinds traveling through our yard. The squirrels come to visit when the acorns fall from the trees, and of course deer walk through almost nightly, chewing on what isn’t fenced away from them.

Our platted lot is teeming with life on any given day. We are happy for that, and try to encourage it as we can. It creates a sense of place in a turbulent world.

Categories
Writing

Blueberry Weekend at Wilson’s Orchard

Wilson's Orchard
Wilson’s Orchard

A blatant commercial plug from my favorite fall workplace:

Hi All,

Its that time again. Tractor rides, turnovers, slushies, apples, and blueberries. We open for the season tomorrow, August 1 and will be open every day after that for the next three months. Open 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. through the end of September. Grab the kids, that crabby spouse and come on out and enjoy our bit of heaven.

This weekend features blueberries. Great big, tasty ones from Michigan. Bluecrop variety— the best there is. Get them by the pound or by the 10 pound box. Either way you’re in for a treat. Blueberries freeze extremely well, allowing you to enjoy them all winter long— great in cereal, on yogurt or just plain. $4/pound or $34 for a 10 lb box.

We also have Georgia peaches available. Great big, juicy and tasty. These peaches actually taste like peaches— imagine that! $2.50/pound or $42 for a 25 pound box.

On the treat side, on Saturday and Sunday you can add to your blueberry fix with a slab of Bevo’s Blueberry Buckle, warm and yummy. Or, go with a hot turnover with ice cream. Or a couple of cider donuts. Or heck, its been a long dry spell, do one of each! Apple cider slushies will be flowing as well — plenty to choose from.

On the frozen side, we have apple and cherry turnovers available in 8 packs as well as apple, cherry and blueberry pies.

This weekend looks to be GREAT weather. Come by and get your first tractor ride of the season or enjoy a stroll through the orchard. The crop looks exceptional this year. We dodged several hail storms, came within a degree of a major freeze and withstood straight line winds. Through it all, the apples survived and thrived and we have a great looking crop nice sized fruit with good color and flavor. Knock on wood.

What’s Pickin’

While the crop looks great, most varieties are at least a week later than normal due to the cooler temperatures this summer.

Pristine— in the words of Chug Wilson, “the first good eating apple of the season”. Pristine also make very good pies, for those of you so inclined.

Jersey Macs— an early McIntosh, GREAT for applesauce. Good flavored eating apple, but a bit on the tart side Dutchess of Oldenberg— quite tart. This is an old time apple in Iowa, one of the first that settlers found could withstand the tough winters here. Our crop of Dutchess is quite small this year

Hope to see you all soon.

Paul Rasch
Wilson’s Orchard, 2924 Orchard Lane NE, Iowa City, Iowa 52240

Categories
Kitchen Garden

Cooking in Big Grove

Broccoli Florets
Broccoli Florets

The harvest is strong at the CSA and the abundance has been reason to engage in cooking again. It’s not that we haven’t cooked meals. It’s that there is so much to do in this brief time on the planet that like simmering pasta sauce from last year’s tomatoes, the activity was moved to the back burner.

Our own garden looks to produce a lot of tomatoes, peppers, a few cucumbers, and some celery. There is also a lot of fruit on the apple and pear trees.

There may be an eggplant or two from our garden, kale enough to feed the entire subdivision, and whatever I manage to get in the ground for second crop. At the grocery store on Tuesday, zero is the number of fresh vegetables purchased because we have more than we can possibly use— local food luxury.

The garden got away from me this year, and yesterday I mowed down the garlic patch. The bulbs were too small for kitchen use, and there is a supply of garlic scapes in the fridge for daily use until the bulbs from the CSA have cured. If I get to it, I plan to spade the ground and cover it with grass clippings.

Eggplant is a blessing and a curse. I made a casserole of tomato sauce, chunks of sliced eggplant, fresh mozzarella, and a cooked mixture of onion, diced eggplant, zucchini, fresh cherry tomatoes and kale for dinner last night. It was very tasty, but a person can enjoy eggplant only for so long during the season. Eggplant produces abundantly in this climate, and the rounds I baked and froze last year went into this year’s compost. Will eat it at the beginning of the season, but for how long afterward is an open question.

There is also cabbage from the CSA. Coleslaw is a typical dish. During my recent pantry review, I found plenty of canned sauerkraut— enough to last another year. There is also soup aplenty, so we’ll be sharing the extra cabbage.

 Someone at the CSA made pickles with kohlrabi and freshly grated ginger. I’m seeking that recipe for refrigerator pickles as a way of dealing with an abundance of kohlrabi.

One of the several challenges for a local food system is to prepare the harvest into a portioned, nutritious meal, then to sustain that activity for the entire year. Ingredients are always a combination of garden, pantry, farms and merchants, but it is the knowledge and action of cooking that makes local food viable. Cooking is physical labor and practice more than head knowledge. In a local food system we get plenty of both.

Categories
Sustainability

Letter to the Solon Economist

Iowa City Nuclear Free SignCommemorating Hiroshima and Nagasaki Day

Aug. 6 marked the 69th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan when between 60,000 and 80,000 people were killed instantly, with a final death toll estimated at 135,000.

Aug. 9 will mark the anniversary of Nagasaki where about 40,000 people were killed instantly by an atomic bomb, with a final death toll of about 50,000.
We won the war and the world changed forever.

What has become of our nuclear weapons program?

The report isn’t good.

Late night comedians ridicule the state of our nuclear complex, the foibles of its officers, and the many accidents it produced. An example was Vice Admiral Tim Giardina, the STRATCOM deputy chief in Bellevue, Nebraska, who was fired by President Obama last October after being caught passing counterfeit poker chips at a Council Bluffs casino. Comedy is not reality, and Giardina’s situation isn’t that funny.

Last week Russia violated the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty, which was signed by President Reagan, and ratified in 1988, by testing a ground-launched cruise missile. Cruise missiles are delivery systems for nuclear warheads.

While the treaty violation does not comprise a new threat in the tense relationship between the U.S. and Russia, it is troubling.

“It suggests that Russia is moving away from a long U.S.-Russia tradition of restraining the most dangerous weapons even as they have serious disagreements on all sorts of issues,” said Daryl Kimball, of the Arms Control Association.

Life is scary enough without nuclear weapons, so what’s an Iowan to do?

It’s time to prevent what we cannot cure, and call for nuclear disarmament.

~ Paul Deaton is a member of the Iowa Chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility, U.S. affiliate of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, a 1985 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.

Categories
Writing

Allure on the Prairie

Canned Goods
Canned Goods

LAKE MACBRIDE— The allure of imagination is a writer’s arena. It can be a saving grace, enabling us to survive in a world gone mad. It can be a distraction from existential realities that beckon for attention. It is a blessing and a curse, perhaps the result of our too large brain combined with the relative security of life on the American plains. Perhaps it is simply a way to live.

Writers seek allure more than imagination, at least this one does. That moment when an idea rises on the horizon. A shiny object, not unlike a fashion photograph— each element prepared meticulously for our viewing, the scent of perfume imagined despite the reality of a two dimensional image on a screen. Allure is the well from which a writer dips a ladle and drinks.

Norman Mailer described the writer’s process:

You go in each morning, and there’s a blank page. Maybe it takes five minutes, maybe it takes an hour. Sooner or later you start writing, and then the words begin to flow. Where does that come from? You can’t pinpoint it. You always wonder, “Will it all stop tomorrow?” In that sense it’s spooky. In other words, you’re relying on a phenomenon that’s not necessarily dependable.

There is no shortage of things to occupy our attention. A recent story on the cable television business reported there are 10 million households in the U.S. that have an Internet connection, but no cable television. It’s enough people for Home Box Office to perceive a market and develop a direct sales, Internet delivered, bundle of subscription programs. Radio, then television, and now the Internet, have served to suppress imagination’s allure. Programming fills our attention capacity as we plug in to our favorite diversion. For a writer, this is a low level poison trickling into our veins, suppressing creativity. Allure vanishes leaving us feeling empty and used, yet craving more.

“No ideas but in things,” wrote William Carlos Williams. Would that it were so. His 20th Century produced a consumer culture in which people collected things without ideas. Certain die cast toys, boxes of pasta, tools, and my addiction— books and reading material. The result of someone’s ideas tangible and in our hands. Maybe Williams was warning us.

As we age, we become aware of our physical limitations and imagine more. Aging bodies become temples of memory to be filled by righteous and earthy memories. As our bones stiffen writers strive to avoid calcification of ideas. It takes work. We are not always successful.

“Memory believes before knowing remembers,” wrote William Faulkner. As we age, the hard drive of memory falls into disuse. We repeat old jeremiads in society, trying to get along. We can forget the allure of the imagination.

When a writer loses the ability to be drawn to the allure, one is no longer a writer. A scribbler maybe, a blogger definitely, a writer only in external artifacts and behavior.

We may be driven to package our awareness, like a gardener spending weeks in the kitchen canning and freezing produce for a winter of use. The jars on a shelf serve a purpose, the least of which is nourishment. They become another distraction from the allure of a life of imagination.

Categories
Kitchen Garden

First Tomatoes

First Tomatoes
First Tomatoes

LAKE MACBRIDE— Earlier this week the first tomatoes were harvested from our garden. Two types of cherries which were sliced up and placed on a dinner salad. Few things are as good as a fresh tomato.

There are some 32 tomato plants in our garden and we hope there will be an abundant harvest. One never knows with the tomato blight, the uncertain weather, and bugs. We don’t spray anything on our tomatoes, and take what they will produce— less deductions for certain conditions. It has been enough.

First tomatoes are another benchmark along the year’s progress. Later this year than previously, but just as delicious.