LAKE MACBRIDE— So begins the quiet time. Snow covers the ground, temperatures are well below freezing, and life turns inward toward family and friends, and reading, writing and cooking, as we approach the winter solstice. Somewhat spontaneous, and upon us all at once, there is practiced ritual to help us make it through the days.
Christmas at Home
Since making the last CSA delivery during Thanksgiving week, these days have also been a time of recuperation. The year’s physical labor was not without its toll. Tendons, ligaments and connective tissue are not as flexible as they once were, so despite a cautious approach to work, I have been a bit sore. Recovery is well under way, but I don’t recall that aspect of life from previous holiday seasons. Who knew naproxen sodium and skin moisturizer would become as prevalent as Christmas greetings and holiday lights?
All Roads Lead Home
Today, I’ll write and mail the fundraising letter for a social group. I’ll read a book, and plan for next year. There are a few errands in the hopper as we move toward the weekend. Then there will be the bustle of house cleaning, and decorating from the boxes of stored memories kept below the stairwell. One can get lost in the pattern and there is a yearning to do so because of its comfort and familiar warmth.
A time to let go of ambition and desire, and to return to being native.
LAKE MACBRIDE— According to the Dec. 11, 2013 issue of the New York Times, “nearly 365,000 people picked a health insurance plan through state and federal exchanges established by the Affordable Care Act (ACA) through the end of November. While the pace of enrollment picked up last month, it is still a fraction of the 1.2 million target that the Obama administration had set for the first two months.” In Iowa, the target was 6,970 individuals enrolled with only 11 percent attainment (757 individuals). What’s going on?
In 2012, the American Community Survey, found the number of uninsured people in Iowa was 254,275 uninsured, or 8.4 percent of our population. I’m not a statistician, but enrolling about 7,000 by Nov. 30 seems a reasonable target. Out of the whole, there are some, where household income exceeds $50,000 (91,073 uninsured), and non-citizens (28,901 uninsured), who would not be eligible. Nonetheless, enrolling only 757 individuals is an embarrassingly low number.
The enrollment period for coverage Jan. 1, 2014 was extended after the website trouble until Dec. 23, so some may have delayed to use this time. I submit, at its core, the problem is a cultural issue, rather than policy. Here are my thoughts:
People I know don’t understand health insurance is mandatory in 2014, and if they do, the perception is there is no reason to get it given the slight penalties.
Wellmark, the largest health insurance company in Iowa is not in the exchange, indicating that if one has insurance where the policy is grandfathered, it may be better to wait to change policies until Wellmark enters the exchange for the 2015 calendar year
The exchange requires some married couples to move from a joint policy to individual policies. That doesn’t seem right, and it was not explained well, if at all. Why change unless one understands this aspect of the ACA?
The folks at the exchange I spoke with were not prepared to deal with the idea that some people do not know how much income they will have in 2014, thus creating uncertainty about the amount of the tax credit, and how much will be paid out of pocket. Uncertainty for this and other reasons will be an obstacle to enrollment.
There have been success stories about people who have benefited from the Affordable Care Act, using expanded Medicaid and the insurance exchanges. On the ground level, the failure to attain targeted enrollments seems to be a failure on the part of government to recognize that enrolling in the exchange is not intuitive, and that people who may qualify for insurance may also need persuasion. This is particularly true given the all-out assault on the Affordable Care Act by some Iowans, including Rep. Steve King (R-Kiron).
Too, where is Organizing for Action? While enrolling people in the Affordable Care Act may not be their primary mission (Organizing for Action is the grassroots movement to pass legislation relating to the Obama administration’s agenda), failure to gain a better degree of compliance with the ACA will result in a policy failure for the administration, and hinder OFA’s progress going forward. OFA has a self interest in the success or failure of the ACA. Having missed identifying the need for persuasion, it seems doubtful anyone in the administration picked up the phone to call OFA.
With the deadline for Jan. 1 2014 coverage less than two weeks away, what’s a person to do? For me, that means keeping the policy I have for another year, even if we qualify for a less expensive policy on the exchange. For the tens of thousands of Iowans who don’t have health insurance it remains to be seen. While the benefits of the ACA are pretty clear, even those who would be helped the most by the law are just not buying it.
LAKE MACBRIDE— Having a headache rots. Having one on Saturday rots more. Last Saturday, my headache was bad enough to cancel the whole day’s schedule with the exception of working at the newspaper. That wasn’t the worst of it.
Something happened to shuffle my memory, creating chunks and particles that float before my mind’s eye like the colored shapes in a kaleidoscope. As it happens, I try to recognize the bits and pieces. They are familiar, but disjointed from whatever associations may have existed. The sense is they are important, but maybe not. It has been a weird few days since then.
Whatever it was, Saturday stands as a line between my past and what will be— something I need more than want. We all cling to memories and forget they serve our future, not nostalgia for days of yore. It was a clean cut, enabling a fresh approach to each day’s endeavors. Yet the bits and pieces persist.
The effect has been to concentrate on creating well considered cultural objects: writing, food, trips in the car, segments of time spent with others. One fears, and to some extent welcomes, the idea we only live once and had better make the best of it. That is where I’m finding myself today.
Whatever was lost on Saturday may not be found, and it’s time to let go and move on after the shuffle.
There were two pictures of biscuits and gravy next to each other in my Facebook newsfeed Sunday morning. One from Salt Fork Kitchen and one from Big Grove Brewery, two new restaurants that opened this year in Solon. While I am not partial to the dish, one has to appreciate the fact that there is some competition for the Sunday brunch trade on Main Street. Not to leave them out, the American Legion serves the dish for breakfast as well.
In this simple offering is a sign of hope for revitalizing Main Street in our and many other small towns. While the shelf stable and highly processed foods available in most grocery stores serve a purpose in family meals, there is a trend toward using fresh ingredients and sourcing food locally. Whether we realize it or not, Solon is in the mainstream of this trend.
At last count, there were eight places to get something to eat on Main Street in Solon, counting the grocery store and the gas station. In addition, a number of local growers produce everything from spring radishes to fall squash. In our midst, without us really being aware of it, we have the necessary elements of a vibrant local food system.
In order to revitalize Main Street, people have to want to come there, and since these new eateries opened, I have noticed more vehicles filling the newly designed parking spaces downtown. That is a good thing. I don’t know, but the increased foot traffic has to be good for established businesses like the grocery store, the hardware store, the barber shop and others.
If we seek to become boosters of life in Solon, we should support our Main Street businesses, and with the recently improved local food scene, there is more reason to do so.
LAKE MACBRIDE— Biscuits and gravy is not a balanced meal, but it is very popular around the lake, and at the restaurants in town. Recently, a restaurant developed the dish to stave off its ultimate demise. Biscuits and gravy are popular, but not miraculous. The restaurant closed. Most local restaurants that serve breakfast offer the item on the menu, and people buy it.
While growing up, our mother prepared a variation on biscuits and gravy we called creamed hamburger on toast. Slices of toasted white bread were cut into small squares and placed on a plate. Ground beef was browned in a cast iron skillet, then removed, leaving the drippings. Using flour and milk, she made gravy with the fat in the pan, seasoned with salt and pepper. When the gravy thickened, she added back the meat, stirred and served the mixture on the toast. We didn’t have it often, but enjoyed it when we did. It was a tribute to my father’s southern heritage, and a somewhat exotic, inexpensive meal made with ingredients usually on hand.
Photo Credit Big Grove Brewery, Solon
In a vegetarian kitchen, there is no meat fat, so our gravies, if made at all, are done so with butter, using the familiar process. It serves. Biscuits are a quick bread, and easy to make, but at home the similar use has been to place a halved biscuit in the bottom of a large bowl and spoon a hearty vegetable soup or stew over it. This is a traditional serving method, one that stretches back in time for multiple millennia. It is much more common in our household than preparing gravy.
Our neighboring town is in a position to develop a vibrant Main Street with the recent interest in local food combined with a proliferation of eateries. While biscuits and gravy is far from haute cuisine, competitive offerings of the dish make a case that a local food scene is alive and growing. That can only be good for those of us who live nearby.
While locals enjoy biscuits and gravy, will outsiders, whose business is needed to supplement local purchases, make the trip for such items? It’s an open question. An answer lies in restaurants serving good food, something which the competition for business will hopefully provide for those who dine out on a Sunday drive, or during a motorcycle or bicycle rally.
One would like to support local businesses, but can only eat so much biscuits and gravy. Here’s hoping the word gets out about our growing food scene in town. In the meanwhile, for those who do most of their cooking at home, here’s a simple biscuit recipe that is easy and quite tasty.
Whole Wheat Biscuits
Ingredients:
2 cups whole wheat flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons cold unsalted butter
1 cup milk
Preparation:
Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.
In a medium sized bowl, combine the flour, baking powder and salt, mixing thoroughly. Cut the butter into tiny bits and mix into the flour mixture until the texture is coarse. Pour in the milk and mix the dough until it comes together. Knead it 8 to 10 times and turn it out on a floured surface. Flatten the dough to 3/4 inch thickness and cut biscuits into single serving sizes. Bake at 450 degrees for 10 to 12 minutes or until lightly browned. Makes about eight servings.
LAKE MACBRIDE— Walking across Highway One to the mushroom park lot, the headache felt worse the closer I got to the car. After proof reading next week’s newspaper, driving home, and assessing the situation, things were bad enough to call off the rest of Saturday’s activities. It became a day comprised mostly of fighting off a painful headache— something I don’t usually have to do. The good news is this morning, I feel re- and ready to renew year-end activities. Being a sixty-something, I know not every day is as productive as one would like.
At this point my reader-o-meter is nagging that I had better get to the meat of this post to retain the few who stuck through that first, self-indulgent paragraph, if any. So here it is. Thanks for reading this blog.
When I started writing on a public blog during November 2007, it was a big step from sending an occasional letter to the editor of a local newspaper, to something that anyone with Internet access could see and, if I let them, could comment upon. With the exception of Iowa City Patch and Blog for Iowa, I’ve taken down my previous iterations of blogs and reduced them to bound paper on a shelf. So what’s up with that?
The persistence of blog writing is, and should be very brief. Some posts from the first years were better than others, but I’d just as well have posting be fresh, and of the moment. Downloading and printing old work is part of the process, and I don’t open those books very often. Not many care about yesterday’s news, let alone the musings of an isolate citizen of the plains. If there is a more persistent story, it would be better handled by word smithing at my desk, and spending the effort to get it published more permanently. Not much of what I have written or said is of high enough caliber for that.
Mostly, blog writing is a way of working ideas out. Taking something, and adding a bit of research, a bit of the opinions of others, a photo, and making something else. A snapshot of how we approached an issue, recipe, behavior or artifact in a given moment. Let’s face it, with tens of millions of blogs, there isn’t much original thinking going on, and the main purpose of blogging is to put reasonably articulate stuff out there to find like minded people and see what they have to say. Blogging is more about us.
So thanks for hanging with me. I plan to keep on writing next year, and I hope you will return.
LAKE MACBRIDE— It’s no secret that when wind turbines began to be constructed, there was an unintended consequence of killing animals that collided with the large blades. Birds and bats made most of the news, endangered species particularly. On Friday, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced it will be extending the maximum length of the permits it’s granting wind energy facility operators for the ability to injure or kill bald and golden eagles. The move to increase the length of the permits from five to 30 years is intended to more closely match the life cycle of wind turbines and is said to be consistent with the department’s Eagle Conservation Plan Guidance. The so-called “eagle-take permits,” that accept the inevitable deaths of the national bird and other species, has begun to get conservationists in an uproar. It is only beginning.
First on deck to take action have been the National Audubon Society, the Environmental Working Group and the American Bird Conservancy. A friend who worked for the latter organization indicated that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has put the cart before the horse in some cases. In Wyoming, a “record of decision” regarding an eagle-take permit on a wind farm was signed by the Department of the Interior before knowing where the turbines would be sited. It speaks of shoddy work by the department, even though the decision was more than a year in the works.
My experience in developing wind farms was a consulting engagement that was part of the Criterion Wind Project near Oakland, Maryland. At the time I was involved, we hadn’t hear of an incidental take permit for birds and bats, and it wasn’t until the project was completed that the subsequent owners of California based Clipper Windpower, United Technologies Corporation, were required to get one for Criterion, and that only after legal proceedings.
What I know for personal observations was that the developers were very much like the desperadoes of the 19th Century West in that they dealt with regulatory issues, only as they came up, not in a pro-active manner, and with an eye toward completing the project above all else. If corners could be cut, they were. There was a race to take advantage of expiring wind energy tax credits from the federal government, and that drove the implementation schedule, with its corner cutting. In the case of Criterion, public opposition grew, and the project was delayed because of it. Eventually, Criterion was scaled down and completed in December 2010. My understanding is that the take permit issue with regard to Indiana bats at this location is unresolved at this writing.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife eagle take permitting re-emerged in the corporate media yesterday, and large environmental groups intend to fight the decision. Battle lines are being drawn between American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) and conservation groups, and somewhere Charles and David Koch are smiling as it serves their agenda for the nascent wind energy industry to experience challenges. For someone like me, it’s tough to pick sides between people I know and respect on all sides of the issue. What I do know is the issue of our time is the release of CO2 and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and the deleterious effects it is having on life as we know it. There is no time for side skirmishes like the eagle take permitting, and one hopes for a speedy resolution to the conflict.
LAKE MACBRIDE— As Thanksgiving leftovers linger in the refrigerator, diminishing bit by bit each day, we need to make something different, a new dish. With the abundance of potatoes at the end of the growing season, making a scalloped potato dish fits the bill instead of the usual mashed, boiled or fried. Serve it with a green vegetable and a protein, and it would make a comforting meal on a day that didn’t get above 15 degrees.
My first thought was to find a home neighborhood recipe in one of the cookbooks I collected from the church and hospital near where I grew up. No luck there. Apparently the church ladies didn’t cook gratin much. (There were no credits to men in the book). So off to the Internet and a review of the standard fare of websites returned after a search for “scalloped potatoes.” While there are many variations of potato dishes, I sought the simplest, with the fewest ingredients, and least prep time. Modified from the recipe to use items on hand, here is the dish.
Scalloped Potatoes
Ingredients: 1-1/2 cups milk (or heavy cream), 3 bay leaves, half teaspoon dried thyme, 2 garlic cloves run through a garlic press, half teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg, salt to taste, 2 pounds of potatoes peeled and cut into eighth inch slices, half cup Parmesan cheese, salt and pepper to taste.
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
In a saucepan, heat the milk or cream with the bay leaves, garlic, thyme, nutmeg and salt and pepper. Butter a casserole that will hold the potatoes. Pour the heated milk through a strainer into a large bowl with the slices potatoes. Sprinkle half the Parmesan cheese on top and mix gently to coat the sliced potatoes with milk and cheese.
Spoon part of the milk mixture into the bottom of the casserole and layer the potatoes so they are evenly positioned. Pour the rest of the liquid over the potatoes and sprinkle the remaining Parmesan cheese on top as a crust.
Cover the dish with aluminum foil and bake for 40 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool for five to ten minutes and serve.
Note: If chives were in season, I’d finely slice them and sprinkle them between layers of potato.
LAKE MACBRIDE— My earliest memory of Nelson Mandela, who died yesterday, is associated with the image printed on this button. At the time, South Africa seemed like a remote corner of the world, and there were other substantial, and more local, social justice issues with which to be involved during and after I attended college at the University of Iowa. I recall President Reagan’s veto of the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act in 1986, and for me, it typified what was wrong with that administration. I supported the act and congress overrode the president’s veto. Others have said more eloquently what I would, may Nelson Mandela rest in peace, and may his legacy live long.
On Thursday, I had breakfast at Sykora Bakery in Cedar Rapids, interviewed for a low wage job, attended a lecture on the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, visited my congressman’s local office, and met with my insurance agent to attempt to finalize health and dental insurance policies for 2014 during open enrollment. It was a busy day and a mixed bag.
After spending most of the last four and a half years working in low wage jobs, one would think I would have a clearer view of the challenges of low wage workers in Iowa than I do. Having given it some thought overnight, a little clarity appeared.
There is a role for government in low wage work, and it is less about fixing a higher minimum wage, and more about providing part of the social safety net. Government programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP and others matter a lot. The work of the U.S. Department of Labor provides worker protections for low wage workers. What matters more is its help in transitioning from lowly paid work to something better, and breaking out of the low wage environment.
Unions have become mostly irrelevant to low wage workers. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2012, 6.6 percent of private sector workers were members of a union. The idea of unionizing minimum wage workers like those at fast food restaurants, is ridiculous because of the high turnover. This is especially true in the current regulatory environment. Like it or not, market conditions will set the pay and benefits of most lowly paid jobs, while unions watch as bystanders. As someone who recently sought and found a number of low wage jobs, if a person works at it, they will seldom have to compromise for minimum wages.
Anyone who is paying attention knows that in making a living, money is one of many components, and not always the most important one. The lower on the socioeconomic scale one falls, the more money helps, but the less it matters as one draws increased support from a social network.
So that’s where thing rest on Friday morning. I need to quit resting and get after it.
LAKE MACBRIDE— Breeding livestock is as old as dirt and the season for cattle and sheep is wrapping up now. Bulls and rams have begun their fall courtship, and the question remaining is whether or not the ladies are pregnant during the first go-around. Some farmers can “tell” if the females are pregnant, while others consult with a large animal veterinarian. The idea is to impregnate the livestock now for spring lambs and summer calves.
Cattle
As a flexitarian, I’ve given little thought to where meat comes from since my days of working in a slaughterhouse more than 40 years ago. The animals with which I am familiar now are grass and grain fed and well cared for. While confinement operations are de rigueur in Iowa, in the local food system, we don’t talk much about concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), except to criticize the environmental issues associated with them. We believe our way of managing livestock is better.
That said, my intersection with raising livestock is more tourism than economic activity. I enjoy reading about the complex solutions to cattle feeding involving corn, silage, alfalfa, distillers grain, corn stalks and grass, but wouldn’t want to spend my life in a constant analysis of nutrient values and costs. There is a knack, rather than a science to this, and farmers seem to do what pleases them with an eye to what others may be doing and saying.
At the end of the day, when a person works in the local food system there is exposure to the entirety of things people consume as food. Learning more about livestock this year has been another valuable lesson in sustainability.
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