Category: Home Life

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Home Life

Goodbye 2008

Poor Richard’s Restaurant, Colorado Springs

Driving through ranch and mining country along Interstate 76, large square bales of hay are stacked four high as a windbreak around feedlots. The harvest is in and irrigation rigs idle.

On the distant horizon are wind turbines, It’s difficult to see if their blades are turning. Empty coal trains are on the move and motor traffic was light. Cloud formations played against an azure sky coming into Colorado.

As we exited to the Denver bypass, an enormous flock of birds descended onto a surface of water. We too were intending to settle for the night in Colorado Springs.

After dinner at Poor Richard’s Restaurant, we checked in at The Antlers Hilton.

The Antlers was opened a couple of years after the founding of Colorado Springs in 1871, situated with a view of the mountains and close to downtown. It was and is a resort designed to be away from the rough and tumble of the mining community and daily life. There were not a lot of cars in the adjacent self-park garage, and the hotel staff has been personable and helpful. It has been quiet during our stay.

At the end of 2008, the patterns of our lives feel played out.

Getting through the year marks us as survivors, pragmatists, realists and as individuals pitted against a society that rebukes our endeavors to rise above the trivial and petty. There are powerful interests at work.

As individuals we can cope through focus on family and friends and by renewing our efforts to take actions that result in improvement of our life in society. Our hope is that after the family retreat, and we head back home through rural Colorado, Nebraska and Iowa, there will be a new opportunity to repair the society in which we have been participants for much longer than there have been retreats in the Colorado mountains.

From this mile high view, it does not look like we will miss many of the events of 2008. It was a year of reality staring us in the face, and was not always pretty.

Will we make something of the coming days, or will we resemble revelers at a ball, donning a mask to look through the rigid certainties of the maker’s design. We must work toward the former with all of our energy as we return home to the next work.

~ An earlier version first posted December 31, 2008.

Categories
Home Life Work Life

Sleeping In, Waking Up, What Next?

Brian Bedford, left, as Lady Bracknell and Charlotte Parry as Cecily Cardew in “The Importance of Being Earnest,” a 2010 production at the American Airlines Theater. (Photo Credit: New York Times)

It’s 48 days until full retirement and I can’t wait to let loose from the lowly paid work that has sustained us for over two years.

Completely ceasing work is not now, nor will it ever be in the cards. Work is what keeps us bound to our common humanity. To stop is to give up on life.

I’m not giving up on anything except the job at the home, farm and auto supply store.

After two weeks duration, a viral infection is in decline. The best sign of it was sleeping through the night, waking up, then going back to sleep for another hour. Well rested, I ask what’s next?

A better question: will it be more of the same, or something new?

Our brains become wired to want more of the same, so there will be some of that: cooking, gardening, farm work, reading, and home improvements. The challenge will be to do new things, write from a new perspective, and work toward gaining a better understanding of society. To get started, I plan to take it easy for a week or so. After that I don’t know.

That’s a lie. I do know I’ll be picking a major writing project and celebrating spring by planting our garden. There’s a long to-do list around the house and yard. Before I get caught up in more of the same, I must take a moment and breathe spring’s sweet air.

It won’t be long.

Categories
Home Life Kitchen Garden

Sixty Nine Days

Saturday Dinner

It’s sixty nine days until what I hope is my last day of work at the home, farm and auto supply store… and “full retirement.”

The paradigm upon which we based our life in Big Grove shifted. We settled here to be close to work, raise our daughter, and live happily ever after.

Our home is older (as are we), our daughter left Iowa after college, leaving us with the happily ever after. The latter has me stuck.

During bitter cold days, I spend most of my time in the living room, the kitchen, the bedroom, or at my writing table. This weekend I left the house once to get the mail. The tendency is to drift toward the last day of work, delaying everything until then. That’s not really an option with the community work I’ve undertaken and plans made. One foot in front of the other, onward I must go.

The ambient temperature warmed 46 degrees since yesterday morning. If I were a bear, I’d sense winter hibernation is almost over. Instead, this human is in between recovering from a week of physical labor and endeavoring to get busy with one of many projects. Today it’s not going as well as I’d like on either front.

I worked on a local version of dal, cooking the first recipe today. Using 1-1/4 cups lentils, three cups of vegetable broth, turmeric, cumin, hot red pepper, fresh garlic and vegetable oil, the first batch came out edible but not delicious. The idea is to replace the pre-cooked version I’ve been buying at the warehouse club with home made. The recipe creation process will take a while because each batch must be eaten: a person can only eat so much dal per week. After six or seven iterations, if I’m lucky, the finished dish might get to the delicious stage.

Last night I made dinner of corn-rice casserole, steamed peas and a mixture of roasted butternut squash and sweet potatoes. Saturdays have been my night to cook so Jacque has a meal ready when she gets off work. When Garrison Keillor was on A Prairie Home Companion, that provided background noise. Now the radio stays mostly off, or tuned to the classical music station. Another shift in the predictability of our lives.

All this is not to say I seek a rocking chair in which to sit until life departs this frame. Not at all. However, the combination of cold weather, bones, feet and back aching from physical work, and a restlessness about living happily ever after has me stymied.

Just as the cold snap is over, and there’s hope the recipe will eventually turn out well, I’ll get going. Sixty nine days out retirement seems unseen below the horizon. Much remains to be done and I feel myself waking and wondering what will be next.

I’d be good with happily ever after, but not ready to believe it’s possible.

Categories
Home Life

After a Holiday Weekend

Muesli

Three-day weekends are rare at the home, farm and auto supply store. However, this year the retail store was closed Monday for the Christmas holiday.

I managed to get some things done. Mostly I slept, not understanding beforehand how much sleep I needed.

Three days was not enough time to catch up on sleep.

As I consider “full retirement” this spring, out of the box I’ll need two weeks to do nothing but catch up on sleep. Being bone weary makes it difficult to get things done and there is plenty I want to do after leaving full-time, lowly paid work. Getting rested equals getting started on a new life.

That’s not to say the weekend wasn’t festive. I made Christmas Eve dinner, baked shortbread cookies, and we spent time together and talked. We phoned and texted friends and family. We talked a lot.

Corn and Apples for Wildlife

Birds were not coming to the feeder so I changed bird seed. I dumped piles of apples and whole corn for wildlife and watched as crows came first to feast. I spent no money and didn’t leave the property a single time after arriving home on Friday.

I long to take retirement. We can’t afford to stop working. How to sustain our lives needs to be worked out by spring. Treading water, I wrote our budget with enough income to cover expenses for 12 months. I’ll use that time to determine how to make things work. If it’s possible, we’ll figure it out.

I’m enrolled in the federal retirement program and Jacque signed up for federal health benefits. We each carry a deck of insurance cards — Medicare, Medicare supplement and Medicare Part D. We hope not to need any of them. Without the federal retirement program we’d both have to work until we die.

I’m counting on being able to write during retirement. I spent Christmas morning writing an article for the Cedar Rapids Gazette. One never knows if writing will be accepted, but it’s free to the newspaper and I have a unique perspective. I like publishing in the Gazette because of it’s comparatively large circulation. Fingers crossed. I’ll write more going forward.

I’ve had my car on the trickle charger for 12 hours so it should start this morning. Thursday is my appointment at the auto clinic to have the charging system diagnosed. Hopefully it can be diagnosed and fixed — the same hope for every 20-year old vehicle. The alternative is the scrap heap. I won’t need transportation as much after retirement. I budgeted half the gasoline next year compared to this, hoping to use even less.

The time between Christmas and New Years is weird. Because of the paid birthday off work I’m at the home, farm and auto supply store only three days this week. What’s nice about this time is the ability to withdraw from society enough to get our bearings.

That will have to be good enough this year.

Categories
Home Life Living in Society Social Commentary Writing

2017 in Big Grove

Coffee Station

BIG GROVE TOWNSHIP — I found a quart jar of whole bean coffee in the pantry, ground a quarter cup, and made a pot with my French press — a bitter yet delicious treat while reflecting on the past year.

I will need a second pot.

2017 was a year of treading water in a sea of challenges.

National political culture mattered this year. The inauguration of Donald J. Trump as president set a sour tone as his conservative and sometimes unqualified picks filled out the judiciary. His cabinet ate away at the foundation of our Democracy the way termites invade the weakest point of a structure to consume and thereby weaken it. If Barack Obama’s 2008 election freed me from the constraints of a transportation career, the 45th president fouled the air of creativity with his every move — spoken and unspoken. It was a time when capital was valued more than labor, with no better expression of it than the tax bill signed into law on Friday. Repression of Democratic ideals could be found everywhere we live.

My response to the toxic environment was to engage. I re-joined the county party central committee, our home owners association, and the Macbride Sanitary Sewer District. I also wrote: seven letters to the Solon Economist, two columns published in the Cedar Rapids Gazette, 24 posts on Blog for Iowa, two on Bleeding Heartland and 159 posts here. I finished reading ten books this year, most of those in the first few months of the year. I followed the circus that has been Republican control of the federal and state government, and developed some new friends. Moral: when the nation goes sour, get involved locally.

My work at the home, farm and auto supply store has been a physical drain. I applied for and was approved to start Social Security benefits with the first check arriving in late January 2018. I’ll be transitioning out of low-wage work before Memorial Day.

Wild Woods Farm and Sundog Farm kept me busy spring weekends, and I worked the fall apple season at Wilson’s Orchard. There were bits and pieces of other income. By the end of the apple season, I was ready to rest from farm work. Our balance sheet was unchanged year over year.

My health has been okay. I got a crown and transitioned to a new dentist as Dr. Erusha retired. I avoided seeing a physician and am past due for a checkup. The physical work at the home, farm and auto supply store, and on the farms, has been tolerable. My plantar fasciitis remains present, but subdued going into 2018. I’m in reasonably good health for a soon to be 66 year old male.

On a positive note, Jacque and I marked the 35th anniversary of our wedding this month.

“That which does not kill us, makes us stronger,” German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said. I’m still here. We’re still here. We managed to sustain our lives in a turbulent year. That alone is hope for a better future.

Categories
Home Life Writing

Going Home – 2018

Raw Vegetables

I’m going home now that my applications to the U.S. federal retirement program are approved.

My first payment from Social Security is scheduled around Jan. 24, 2018. We both have health coverage through Medicare, a Medicare supplement policy, and a prescription drug plan effective Jan. 1. We’ll need the money and hope we don’t need the health insurance.

It’s not clear what “going home” means today, but for sure, I’ll be leaving employment at the home, farm and auto supply store in the first half of 2018 — likely late winter or spring.

I don’t write in public about family, but plan to nurture those relationships.

Compensated work is on the 2018 agenda, specifically farm work for the sixth season at Community Supported Agriculture projects and at the orchard. I’d work for wages after my retail experience but need to transition out of driving a lift truck and lifting 50-pound bags of feed in long shifts. If I took a new job for wages, the commute would have to be less, the pay more, and personal fulfillment high. I hope to get better as a gardener, transitioning to a more productive vegetable patch and more fruit trees.

Uncompensated work is on the agenda as well. Scores of household projects wait for time and resources. I expect to have the time and some of the resources in 2018. We built new in 1993 and that reduced our home maintenance expenses in the early years. Things now need attention and preparation for the next phase of our lives in Big Grove. I expect to reduce the number of things we possess, converting current warehouse space to better livability.

I’ll continue to be active in our local community, but less outside Big Grove and surrounding townships. The home owners association, sewer district and membership on the political party central committee will serve as primary volunteer activities. I’ll also seek volunteer opportunities in nearby Solon. For a broader perspective I belong to the Arms Control Association, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Practical Farmers of Iowa and the Climate Reality Project.

Importantly, writing is on the 2018 agenda. I’ve been planning an expanded autobiography and that will be the first major project. With it I hope to develop a process to research, write and re-write a 20,000-word piece for distribution, if not publication. If my health holds and the wolves of an increasingly coarse society are held in abeyance, there will be additional projects. My first six decades have been in preparation for this. I believe positive outcomes will result.

I’m going to home to the life we built for ourselves. We’re not from here, yet after 24 years we have deep roots in this imperfect soil. I’m ready to settle in and grow.

Categories
Environment Home Life

Watching it Rain

After the Rain

I’m sitting in the back of my pickup truck, the tailgate is down. Gentle summer rain is falling. The tips of my toes are getting wet but I don’t mind. We need the rain.

In Des Moines political parties are holding their conventions. I followed the action on social media, but not closely.

Breeze from the rain is cooling my forehead. It feels quite good. It is much better than working on a computer, or thinking about politics.

This afternoon I tried pulling weeds in the garden. The ground was so dry they broke off at the surface. Now, after this long gentle rain, the roots should loosen and weeding be done more easily.

Wind is blowing from the west and my knees are getting spattered with rain. I still don’t mind.

Dozens of birds are out in yards around the neighborhood. They don’t mind rain either. All of nature seems to welcome the rain.

Lightning and boomers are starting to roll in. The rain continues to fall gently and steadily.

Some nights it is best to just listen to the rain, and so I will tonight.

~ First posted June 16, 2012

Categories
Home Life Writing

Holiday Fun

Frosted Squash Plants

Hard frost and cooler temperatures make way for end of year holidays. Stress diminishes as plans for outdoor work become moot.

Diversity in the United States means holidays differ among social groups with each family developing a way of participating in a national culture.

Specific things have been on the agenda in our home. We discuss when to set up the Christmas holiday decorations, make and receive phone calls, cook a special meal, and pretty much stay within the boundary of our lot lines. It has been a quiet day for the last several years.

Some activities are particularly fun.

I mentioned the meal in yesterday’s post. What made it special was discussion about what to have combined with its simplicity. We made enough food for leftovers from recipes developed at home. The concession to consumer culture was an inexpensive bottle of Martinelli’s Sparkling Apple Cider. It was sweet and fizzy.

We don’t receive many seed catalogues in the mail yet I started online orders at Seed Savers Exchange and Johnny’s Selected Seeds. The activity informs visualization of next year’s garden. There is a lot of thinking and planning to be done prior to entering payment information and hitting the order button on the web sites. There are discounts from both companies for ordering online this early.

I read a couple chapters of Avenue of Mysteries by John Irving. Books to read pile up on the filing cabinet near my writing desk. I finish most of the books I read each year between December and February. Reading is part of the holiday quiet time and sustains me through winter.

Napping is a lost art. Balance between falling asleep on the couch from exhaustion and intentionally resting is hard to achieve. After the day’s activities I slept straight through the night. I didn’t take a nap this Thanksgiving, but should have.

As a schooler we had at least a four-day Thanksgiving holiday. In the work force, I worked on Thanksgiving Day countless times, even the single time Mother made it out to Indiana for the holiday. That day I coordinated holiday meals for some of more than 600 drivers based at our trucking terminal and missed the main meal service at home.

Indiana was a tough place to live in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The Reagan era was noted for downsizing or eliminating large industrial job sites like U.S. Steel. I can’t recall the number of conversations about what used to be in the steel business. There were many. Even lake-effect snow from Lake Michigan couldn’t deaden the angst people felt. Electing Bill Clinton president didn’t change what the radio stations described as the “steel mill culture.” There wasn’t much for which to give thanks in that economic and political environment.

Memories fade with time and Thanksgiving presents opportunities to re-tell the stories of our lives together. Such storytelling has been wide-ranging and keeps the past alive. A past to inform our future, or so we hope even if the teller doesn’t get details right.

If we work a little, Thanksgiving can be a time to have fun. That may be enough to sustain us.

Categories
Home Life Work Life

Vacation Days

Fallen Leaves

It’s a crash landing after the apple harvest and a summer working almost every day at the orchard or the home, farm and auto supply store. Time to sleep, read and rest.

Four days off work is not enough to fully recuperate but it’s what I have.

Saturday was mostly at home resting, then cooking. Sunday was several long sleep sessions, reading and staying indoors. Today and tomorrow turn toward stuff I want to do and stuff I have to do, mostly the latter. There’s more on my list than will fit in the remaining 48 hours so it’s not really a vacation but more a time to do other kinds of work.

The most important things I do are related to full retirement. Specifically, submitting my application for Social Security benefits to begin after my birthday and changing our health insurance from my work to Medicare. I expect to spend much of today doing just that.

What matters more is figuring out how we want to live going forward. I am already up to my armpits in community organizing so there’s that for the time being.

Once our financial situation reveals itself after Social Security and Medicare, I want to change things around. I expect to slow down or quit at the home, farm and auto supply store next year to focus on writing, gardening and preparing our home for a long retirement. I expect to continue to work in the local food system — at the farms, and at the orchard — but the focus will be on our homelife. It’s been neglected for too long.

Needed work toward sustaining a life in our turbulent world.

Categories
Home Life Living in Society Sustainability

On Capitol Hill

At the U Iowa Homecoming Parade Marshaling Area

Originally posted April 8, 2008. My only meeting with Congressman Dave Loebsack in his office on Capitol Hill.

This morning, I walked to DuPont Circle and took the Metro to the Capitol. The Metro ticket cost $1.65 so that was quite a bargain. I emerged from the station near the Longworth House Office Building where Congressman Loebsack’s office is on the fifth floor. I got in an hour early, so with the help of some construction workers, I located a coffee shop and waited for my appointment. As I walked back to the Longworth Building, there was a haze covering the top of the capitol dome. Tulips were in bloom. I cleared security and located the office.

I was able to meet with the congressman one-on-one. I had a few minutes to talk about politics with him before his chief of staff and legislative assistant joined us. He offered me a seat in his professor emeritus chair from Cornell College. It was cool!

We talked about a number of issues, and I joked that I had a very long list of talking points. He made me feel like we had all the time in the world, and that was also cool.

We talked about the transportation industry, and specifically about the energy policy, or lack thereof as it pertains to class eight vehicles. I explained that using food for fuel was not a sustainable answer to our oil dependence or to high diesel prices. I explained that biodiesel was not a solution for the trucking industry. He asked me if biodiesel was equivalent to food for fuel, and I showed some restraint and said I would get him an answer.

We talked about the California law that regulated particulate emissions in port areas. I asked him to support keeping the federal government out of this dispute between the state and port operators and truckers. I presented information about the health impacts of fine particulate matter from engine emissions on residents living near the ports. He could support the federal government keeping out of this situation. This led to a longer discussion about cutting the rain forests down to plant palm oil and jatropha plantations for biofuels and the related effect of removing capacity to absorb CO2 by doing this. I also gave them suggested reading of Carbon Free and Nuclear Free by Arjun Makhijani.

We discussed the US-India nuclear trade deal that is currently being debated in India. I explained that if this initiative was allowed to go forward, the rest of the world would view this as a form of nuclear proliferation and would set a poor example. He agreed.

We discussed the need to have a surge in diplomacy with Iran by holding talks without preconditions. I believe that if we focus our efforts on discussing preconditions, that no discussions would take place. Whereas if we had discussion and reached impasse, then we would gain respect in the world for having tried.

I asked him to cut all funding for reliable replacement warheads from the federal budget as was done last year. He said he would.

We discussed a number of other issues ranging from food deserts to public health to trucking to politics. It was a great start to the day and a memorable one.