Author: Paul Deaton

Categories
Writing

Passports — Part I

Passport and Notebook
Passport and Notebook

LAKE MACBRIDE— The U.S. Passport issued on April 26, 1973 is on my desk, waiting to be put away. During the 1972 to 1973 academic year at the University of Iowa, I lived with a friend in a mobile home his parents owned next to Interstate 80 in Iowa City.

We thought to travel to Europe together during the summer of 1973, to see the continent and visit his relatives in Bruges. I got my passport, and in the end, he went that summer and I didn’t, ending up playing in a band in Davenport until returning to finish my senior year in the fall. I traveled to Europe the following summer, after graduation, by myself.

It was what used to be described as “the Grand Tour.” Although my adventures were much less than grand, I did manage to visit Paris, Madrid, Venice, Rome, Vienna and other traditional destinations. Stamps in the passport provide five milestones for the trip. I arrived at London Heathrow on Aug. 15, 1974, departed England at Ramsgate on Sept. 2, left Madrid on Sept. 16, arrived in Arnhem, Holland on Oct. 25, and arrived back in Montreal on Oct. 31. There is more to the story than these stamps.

I kept a journal during my trip, although the first volume was stolen in Calais where someone pinched my backpack from the youth hostel my first night in France. I remember two women making café au lait in the kitchen the next morning and reporting the theft in my hopeless French at the nearby police station.

Last night I skimmed the remaining volume wondering what I was thinking when I kept track of the trip. Well, I know what it was— that the persistence of memory would be better than it is. My trip to Madrid explains the point.

Unlike today, I hardly kept track of day-to-day activities. For example, I wrote an entry on Sept. 10, 1974 at the Hotel Sabina in Madrid, with additional entries on Sept. 11, 13 and 15. In none of those entries was mention of the Sept. 13 Cafe Rolando bombing in Calle del Correo near the hotel. Conversations afterward at the hotel, and the bombing itself, were the reasons I left Spain when I did.

My passport was stamped by Spanish authorities on the train from Madrid to Irun as I left for France. Security had been tightened as I stopped in San Sebastián, in the Basque area that was home of the ETA, a separatist group said to be responsible for the bombing. There were military and police everywhere. When attempting to make it to the beach, an armed officer stopped me, waved his rifle at me and indicated the area was restricted. There is no mention of the police state Franco’s Spain seemed to be in my journal. However, I did write that the Prado seemed, “one of the richest museums of the ones I have seen.”

Memory does persist, although the story may have changed in the telling. It was a trip of language, art and experiences that moved me away from the intellectual world of art history classes, and study of the works of René Descartes and John Locke. What I found was a legion of people my age traveling the continent, and the experience changed me in ways that continue to seem astounding, although I hadn’t realized it at the time.

~ This is one of a series of posts based upon writing in my journal.

Categories
Home Life Living in Society

Saturday Swagger

Garden in the Morning
Garden in the Morning

LAKE MACBRIDE— When the drunken arctic air finished its swagger through the upper Midwest, patches of brown grass reappeared in the white landscape. Pools of water formed on the driveway like dammed up dreams, ready to be cut loose when the rest of the snow melts— a false hope of Spring. Feeling restless, I went to town.

Partly, to proofread the newspaper comme d’habitude on Saturday morning. More than that, one of the county supervisors was holding a community discussion at the public library. If life is anything here, it is partly about politics. Several friends were there, and it was good to break winter for a while. It was a campaign stop for the June primary, and also a chance for conversation with friends and acquaintances.

Topics included drug testing, marijuana decriminalization, ever changing synthetic drugs, the overcrowded jail, trails, the para transit service, loss of services in the new mental health regions, and roads— lots of talk about roads. One who lived west of the Ely blacktop mentioned his road specifically. “When will the county address Curtis Bridge Road?” he asked. I listened mostly, and raised an issue or two. It was all good.

Toward the end a woman came in and talked about geoengineering, wanting the county to take action. She had a confusing message. She asked the county to do something about it, but couldn’t say what “it” was. She had a handout with a website which could be the subject of another post… or not. There’s only so much mental capacity and too little time to consider everything.

But allow me to end my drunken swagger. Time has come to be less distracted. Before we accept it and focus, however, the super bowl is coming, marking the last feasible (albeit lame) excuse to delay and celebrate the holidays. What’s the rush? The needs of the growing season will soon be here, catching us unaware. “Just one more thing, that’s all I ask,”  he said to himself.

Whatever the human capacity for wonder, the hydrant of behavior must be articulated so we can focus on one thing at a time. Engaging as hanging with friends may be, and good for the soul, if we don’t focus, our lives will be no different than the recent polar vector— chilling us for a few days only to leave without stunting the disruptive vectors approaching our lives.

When I worked for the oil company, we had employees in about 100 countries. On staff was an expert in addictions. He worked not only on drugs, alcohol and tobacco, but on almost everything that could trap people and diminish productivity. When I spent time with him as part of my training, I learned more about distraction and its relationship to addiction than I thought possible. Admitting we have a problem is first step. My addiction is to following life’s many ideas to wherever they lead. I admit it, and don’t really want to do much about it. There it is.

It will freeze again this month, at least I hope it will. There’s pruning to do, a garden to plan, and income to be generated. A season to be made. Things don’t happen without our engagement. All the while, Saturday turned to Sunday. The proof reading is finished, the auto fueled, and the groceries were bought. It’s time to set things aside and focus on one thing at a time, and maybe get some of them done.

Categories
Writing

Changing Trains in Paris

June 4, 1977
Paris, France

Gare de l'Est
Gare de l’Est

Departed Mainz June 3, 1977 at 2322 hours in a sleeping car for Vannes. The journey was quite nice. In such luxury I seldom indulge, but this trip I didn’t really think much about it. The little compartment had all the niceties of any fine hotel, and although I was concerned mostly with getting a good night’s sleep, the indulgence will be memorable. Especially the numerous buttons for summoning the waiter and turning the lights on and off. In an earlier time I would have experimented with all these buttons to discover their functions. But now I have changed.

As I exited the train at Gare de l’ Est, I struggled with my bags for 50 meters or so. An older man with a Polish-sounding name spoke with me and offered a ride for my cumbersome duffel bag and clothing sac. He asked the usual niceties— where are you from? Iowa, of course. It seems he is good friends with Mauricio Lasansky‘s son. Small world— so he said.

We shook hands and he guided me to a taxi where I stowed my bags, heading for the connection at Montparnasse.

The ride through Paris made me recall my last trip here.

~ This is the first of a series of posts based upon writing in my journal.

Categories
Environment

Climate Change in 200 Words

the-climate-reality-project-logoPeople seeking scientific proof of anthropogenic global climate change are barking up the wrong tree. The goal of science is not to prove, but to explain aspects of the natural world. Following is a brief explanation of climate change.

Around 1850, physicist John Tyndall discovered that carbon dioxide traps heat in our atmosphere, producing the greenhouse effect, which enables all of creation as we know it to live on Earth.

Carbon dioxide increased as a percentage of our atmosphere since Tyndall’s time at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. As a result, Earth’s average temperature increased by 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit.

The disturbance of the global carbon cycle and related increase in carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere is identifiably anthropogenic because of the isotope signature of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

We can also observe the effects of global warming in worldwide glacier retreat, declining Arctic ice sheets, sea level rise, warming oceans, ocean acidification, and increased intensity of weather events.

It is no wonder 97 percent of climate scientists and all of the national academies of science in the world agree climate change is real, it is happening now, it’s caused by humans, and is cause for immediate action before it is too late.

Categories
Work Life

Shedding Human Capital Costs

Garden
Garden

LAKE MACBRIDE— By the time I returned from military service and finished my master’s degree in 1981, American businesses were well into shedding the costs of human capital. I have pointed to the Reagan administration as a driver of this phenomenon, and will continue to refer to the post-Reagan era, but it began much earlier than that.

When I was ready to start a career, there were no local and viable opportunities for a job that offered what I expected in a benefits package, a pension or substantial retirement plan. The government job I took did not offer health insurance, or a retirement plan. If I thought about retirement at all as a 30-something, I relied on Social Security and Medicare to keep me out of poverty in old age. I still do.

The private company I picked when I left government had a marginal retirement plan, based on profit sharing. They developed a 401k plan when the 1978 IRS change began to be spread throughout private industry in the mid to late 1980s. 401k plans served to limit a company’s pension liabilities. Businesses then began to reduce the cost of health insurance and other payroll benefits.

Today, businesses continue to seek ways to shed the cost of human resources through outsourcing, off shoring, the use of temporary workers, and subcontractors. They also hire consulting firms that specialize in compensation programs, making sure that employee wages are kept consistent with the marketplace, namely lower than what a company might develop organically. To think pay and benefits offerings would return to the 1960s, when good-paying union jobs were available, would be to deny the reality that is today’s work environment.

A friend posted a link to an article titled, “Forever Temp?” that discusses manufacturing’s movement toward temporary workers. It is worth reading. The benefit of temporary workers is substantial for businesses. The cost of training, worker’s compensation, absenteeism, recruiting, personnel and existing employer-employee contracts can be avoided. This practice is so common that moral outrage over the loss of union jobs with good benefits is worn out. Temp workers are the new normal.

Perhaps the expectation that a person could enter a career and work in it until retirement is misguided. There are some cases where it is possible, but not for the vast majority of Americans. What matters now, is whether a job will persist, whether a paycheck is accurate and paid on time, and that there is a commitment to safety in the workplace. All of these things workers in the recent past used to take for granted, but now rely upon government intervention, rule making and enforcement.

Truth be told, I’d rather deal with the uncertainties of the current economic environment than become wrapped in the cocoon of the work-a-day world for low pay. I’d rather be prepared to make it on my own.

Categories
Living in Society

Politics 2014 in Big Grove

Off-Year Caucus
Off-Year Caucus

LAKE MACBRIDE— Living in Iowa, I feel compelled to write about politics from time to time. It is an irresistible urge, that in many ways runs counter to preferred topics like local food, gardening, sustainability, and the like. In an effort to address this Iowa (and maybe New Hampshire) urge, here’s how things look from Big Grove Precinct, going into 2014.

For ten dollars, a person can get the voter registrations for a precinct from the county auditor. In my precinct, there are 1,305 registered voters. Of these, 499 are Democrats, 413 are No Preference, 391 are Republican, and two are coded “L” which I assume means libertarian. From 20 years of living here, and being very active in partisan politics, I know that during a general election, most people are willing split their ticket and pick who they feel is the best candidate for each position. I’ve found this to be true from the top of the ticket on down. No preference voters have become the key group to watch and work with, although not to the exclusion of others.

We moved to Big Grove in 1993 and during our first presidential election here in 1996, 1,105 people voted, with the breakout for president Clinton 599, Dole 377, Perot 105, Nader 10, Browne 1, and Hagelin 2. By 2012, there was more Republican support with these presidential results: total votes cast 1,123, Obama 555, Romney 551, Johnson 7, Litzel 1, and Stein 1.

Our county has election data available back to 1970, so if one figures out which previous elections are comparable, both turnout and the number of votes needed to win are relatively easy to determine. At the precinct level, party affiliation doesn’t lend itself very well to statistical analysis, since, as I mentioned, people are willing to split their ticket to vote for the person rather than the party.

The 2014 political schedule is as follows.

The first day of the second session of the 85th Iowa General Assembly is Monday, Jan. 13. I have been in touch with my state representative and state senator since New Year’s Day, and let them know my priorities. Now it’s up to them.

On Jan. 21 are the off-year precinct caucuses. Expect very light turnout of party activists on the Democratic side. The Republicans have made these events into a social time, so they may have more caucus-goers, but their attendance is expected to be light, like with the Democrats.

March 14 is the deadline for state and federal candidates to file for the June 3 primary. Already we know there will be Democratic primaries in the governor’s race, the county attorney and supervisor races, and probably some others. Since politics is a low personal priority this year, I won’t engage much until after the filing date. Even then, I’ll engage only enough to pick candidates in the primary.

State legislator per diem runs out on the 100th day of the session, April 22. Presumably the session will end on or about that time because legislators will want to work on the fall campaign.

After June 3, we’ll know who our candidates for the general election are, and soon thereafter we’ll also know how the Iowa Democratic Party will organize around them.

Summer is a slow time in politics, and candidates gain some visibility in parades, town festivals and events as they get out and press the flesh. Otherwise, those that aren’t known to voters work to get known.

Labor Day is the official kickoff of the fall election campaign.

In September and October, people evaluating whether to enter the 2016 presidential race will start coming to Iowa to help candidates raise money and visibility for the general election. I’ll begin talking to registered voters about the election, and start identifying them. In reviewing my list, there are a lot of new names, so it will take a while to get through them. I’ll also help out the county party as best I can.

The general election is on Tuesday, Nov. 4.

So there you have it, Iowa politics in under 700 words. In a turbulent world, taking time to figure out the timeline of political events helps organize for and maintain a level of sanity. I hope readers have found this useful. Now back to our regular programming.

Categories
Living in Society

Holiday Reading — Bill Clinton’s Memoir

End of the Holidays
End of the Holidays

LAKE MACBRIDE— A long standing tradition is the holidays are over on the Feast of the Epiphany. So it is this year. Today the Christmas tree lights will turn off for the last time, and the decorations will be repacked until December. It hasn’t been a noteworthy season, nor a bad one.

I made cherry crisp for dessert last night. The last of a string of holiday desserts coming to an end. During winter, the pantry and freezer replace the freshness of garden and farm, and only so many cherries were kept when they were in season. It was enough to provide the flavor for a while. It won’t last for long.

I tried to finish reading President Bill Clinton’s memoir “My Life” during the holidays. At almost 1,000 pages, it was a bit long for the time allotment, and at times it plodded along with the endless, somewhat desultory recitation of his administration’s accomplishments. He did a lot and I’m up to the point where the Clintons dropped Chelsea off at Stanford.

To hear him tell it, Bill Clinton wasn’t always the sharpest knife in the drawer. Especially when he approved the Independent Counsel Reauthorization Act of 1994 that enabled a conservative judiciary to appoint Kenneth Starr as an independent counsel to investigate Vince Foster’s suicide and the Clintons’ Whitewater real estate investments. One thing led to another, and that’s the problem. Starr’s office became an open investigation of anything that might cast aspersions on the Clintons, their friends and supporters, whether it was grounded in fact or fantasy. I thought Bill Clinton was pretty smart until I read his story of why he signed the law, something he said he didn’t have to do and his predecessor encouraged him not to do. What was he thinking?

I’m not sure I believe all of Clinton’s memoir, but who can blame him for putting the best face on everything? What I do know is what he experienced from the independent counsel’s office and the conservative money spent to tear him down has become derigueur for the president regardless of political party. My beef with Clinton was the way he raised money, letting high level donors stay overnight in the Lincoln bedroom. Having read his explanation of the Lincoln bedroom story, and knowing now it was a conservative talking point, I’m over it. He made a lot of mistakes during his administration, but he admitted them, and did more good than bad by any measure.

I am not over my former congressman Jim Leach’s participation in the Whitewater investigations. He should have known better than to get involved with that, and I have no regrets of working hard over two cycles to remove him from office. I still cringe a little when I see him around the county. Clinton devoted about three paragraphs to Leach, and that was enough to induce nausea.

With the temperatures hovering between ten and 17 below zero today, it’s a good time to curl up with a book. Which I will do after finishing a few other tasks around the still holiday decorated house.

Categories
Social Commentary

One Less Used Bookstore

Formerly Murphy-Brookfield Books
Formerly Murphy-Brookfield Books

IOWA CITY— The number of used bookstores in the county is reduced by one. Murphy-Brookfield Books closed after 33 years in business, and its owners sold their historic stone building to the Haunted Bookshop. The deal is done and people and cats were in their new digs when I stopped by earlier this afternoon. Murphy-Brookfield Books went on-line.

I don’t like any of it… except maybe the cats.

I’ll start by saying that if I want to find something to read, there will be no problem. Our home library has enough reading material to last the rest of my life, and then some. Most of what I read is found here. Too, the public library provides on-line access to ebooks I can download to my phone for free if someone else doesn’t have them checked out. From time to time I browse the selection, and it is pretty good. If I can’t find what I want there, I go on-line and buy it from Amazon.com, eBay or one of the bookstores on the Internet. It isn’t for reading material that I frequent bookstores. I can get that at home.

Last year I stopped at the large chain bookseller at the mall. It had changed. It was as if they took everything I liked and removed or placed it out of sight. There was plenty of pulp fiction, and novels that looked like they all had been designed in the same advertising studio— similar titles, same sizes and an array of brilliant covers embossed with foil— lined up like so many treats in an old fashioned candy store. The caché of hanging out at a bookstore, reading and drinking coffee has faded. I’m no longer a fan of coffee bars and besides, who has time any more? I haven’t been back.

Browsing used books is like taking a vacation. I plan the trip for weeks, and upon arrival, one never knows what to expect. By chance, something catches the eye and comes off the table, down from the shelf, or out of a bin. If the price is right, the bound volume comes home.

Through Salvation Army stores, Goodwill and thrift stores, used book stores large and small, rummage and library sales, and estate auctions I have browsed since high school looking for something. In a box of discards I found a 19th Century edition of the collected works of James Fenimore Cooper— the pages turned yellow and brittle, too fragile to turn. At a thrift store in Sweetwater, Texas, for a dollar I bought an autographed copy of Iowan W. Edwards Deming’s “Out of the Crisis” while the rattlesnake roundup was going on. At the library used book sale I found Alexander Kern’s copy of Charles and Mary Beard’s “The Rise of American Civilization,” signed by Kern and dated Sept. 1932 inside the cover. That signature itself was a piece of local history. There is always something to connect to bits and pieces of my history or theirs.

So why don’t I like it? The people seem nice at the Haunted Bookshop. And after all, I was able to survive when the Epstein Brothers closed shop and their portable building was removed from Clinton Street. There is Prairie Lights on Dubuque Street. It was good enough for President Obama, so why not good enough for me?

I didn’t know Mark Brookfield at all… except that he was there most times I stopped by over three decades. I recognized him when I entered, and he was helpful without exception. Whether I was looking for something, or had a box of books to trade for store credit, each transaction went well. I was always happy when I left, and looked forward to the next visit. I doubt he knew me. Now he’s out of sight in the ether.

Maybe I just don’t like change— knowing another landmark off Market Street is gone. One less old haunt in a block where so much has happened in my life. Maybe it’s something else. The new place is packed with books, as if a massive shedding of the printed word was underway— more than just the university community ditching books before moving on. It may be something like that.

So one last time to consider the past, get used to the change, and then go on living with one less used bookstore in which to dig for memories. I won’t get over it. But maybe I will.

Categories
Social Commentary

The Ship Has Sailed

ForwardLAKE MACBRIDE— All the people waiting for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act to collapse under its own weight had better find something else to do. Almost four years in, there’s no way to hop in the DeLorean, go back in time and undo the good the law has already done.

Don’t get me wrong. I expect to hear more laments and entreaties about how wrong it was for President Obama to do it, and that government is taking over health care, yada, yada, yada. Please people. Get a grip. We went through all of these arguments during the Clinton administration. When the Republican idea of filibustering health care reform to death the way Bob Dole did died, so did the idea of repealing Obamacare. If Republicans gained control of the presidency and both chambers of the legislature, how would the repeal even work three years from now? Could they go back in time and undo the mammograms already provided, the colon screenings performed, or take away the happiness people who didn’t have health insurance experienced when they got it? I suppose one Back to the Future reference is sufficient: they won’t be able to go back in time, and some form of the law is here to stay.

The ship has sailed for Obamacare, and by that I mean we are in a period of waiting to know how it will work out. The website is working. The reforms set in place are working. The number of enrollments is increasing. What seems most important about new enrollments is answering the question, what kind of medical treatment will people require? Even though part of the new fee structure includes a premium for excess insurance to cover a bad claims experience, if everyone who comes into a plan needs expensive treatment, it will skew the costs. How will that work out? We won’t know until insurance companies review the data and actuarial experience and set 2015 rates. So we wait. For the close of open enrollment on March 31, and to see the claims experience during 2014.

Josh Mitchell of Talking Points Memo has written that as enrollments increase above ten million people (not a typo, read the article), so does conservative rage. Chill dudes. Greg Sargent of the Washington Post has suggested there are three stages of Obamacare acceptance. Get with the program.

What seems clear to me is that once people get health insurance two things will happen. First, life will return to a semblance of normal, and people will discover that having health insurance is far from a perfect situation. Conservatives will be quick to point this out, although we all know this experience is logical and predictable. Secondly, Obamacare will become the paradigm, generating new struggles to reduce government costs for Medicare, Medicaid, nutrition and other programs, while at the same time attempting to do right by the American people. We’re moving forward in the incredible storm and stress that is living in this country.

If you don’t like it, either move into a yurt, or contribute something positive to the discussion, one our country has been having since Harry Truman was president. A discussion that is likely to continue for the foreseeable future.

Categories
Kitchen Garden

Tart Cherry Coffee Cake

Tart Cherry Coffee Cake
Tart Cherry Coffee Cake

LAKE MACBRIDE— Six pounds of tart cherries from Michigan were buried below frozen corn, eggplant and broccoli in the freezer drawer. The cherries were frozen in one bag, so I thawed them and separated and strained the liquid to use in a separate dish, and make coffee cake with part of them.

The recipe calls for one can of cherry pie filling, but substituting fresh frozen cherries takes only a bit of  preparation. In a large pan, measure three cups of pitted cherries and place on medium heat. Add one half cup of honey, a tablespoon each of white flour and corn starch, and a scant teaspoon of cinnamon. I’m from Iowa, so I use corn starch, but other thickeners will work, including potato starch, arrowroot, or flour only. Stir gently until the mixture thickens completely and set aside to cool.

The batter is in two parts, the cake and topping.

Cake dough: Cream one stick of softened, unsalted butter with one cup of granulated sugar in a mixer. On low speed, add two cups of white flour and one teaspoon baking powder. Mix thoroughly and add 3/4 cup of milk. When the ingredients are thoroughly mixed, press the dough into a greased, spring form pan. I line my pan with parchment paper, but that is optional.

Topping: Cream one stick of softened, unsalted butter with one cup of granulated sugar in a mixer. On low speed, gradually add one cup of flour and mix until the dough turns into crumbs.

Pour the cooled cherry mixture on the dough in the pan and sprinkle on the topping.

Bake for 45 minutes in a 325 to 350 degree oven. Allow coffee cake to cool before serving, although it will be hard to wait. I reserve superlative descriptions for dishes like this when I say, “it is insanely good.”