The president-elect has withdrawn into Trumpworld.
“For nearly the entire week since he became president-elect, Donald Trump has been holed up in his gilded New York skyscraper,” wrote Julie Pace and Jill Colvin of Associated Press. “A steady stream of visitors has come to him, flooding through metal detectors and getting whisked up to Trump’s offices and penthouse residence.”
Reading the tea leaves after the Nov. 8 election is pointless until the new administration’s cabinet and staff is named — until the president-elect emerges.
As the procession of supplicants makes its way to the tower my advice is to hunker down and let chips fall where they will. The president-elect gets to name his own team and outsiders to may as well go piss up a rope as try to influence his decisions.
I’m keeping my powder dry and so should others who intend to resist the imminent rollback of long-established policies. This is a basic military tactic I learned as an infantry officer.
To be effective, we must be vigilant for now, and ready to resist the growing hegemony of Trumpworld.
Pumpkin Pancake Topped with Apple Butter and Caramelized Apples
The weekend was a chance to get in the kitchen again.
When memories of a god-awful general election campaign persist, work is the best antidote.
I made a lot of dishes.
First up was a big pot of chili. Onion sorting has become a weekly thing and there was a whole tub of the same white onions to dice and cook in canned tomato juice for chili. I’ve written my chili recipe so many times I won’t repeat it here.
I halved and seeded a pie pumpkin and baked it in a 360 degree oven until fork tender. It made about four cups of pumpkin pulp, half of which I used to make pumpkin bread. The bread recipe was from The King Arthur Flour Bakers Companion cookbook except I omitted the nuts and chocolate chips. A slice of pumpkin bread went well with the chili for supper. There is a second loaf to take to the home, farm and auto supply store for the break room.
Roasted pumpkin seeds are crunchy and delicious especially while still warm. I separated seeds from the pumpkin guts and baked them with a little salt. It was hard not to eat them all.
After dropping my spouse at work, I went to the orchard to spend the $50 gift certificate received during our end of season party. I bought 19 pounds of Gold Rush apples, a long keeper and plenty delicious (apple joke). To make room for them in the ice box, I took the bowl of apples already there and peeled and sliced them for a simple caramelized apple dish. When it was done I put it in a plastic tub in the ice box.
Ice Box
Not to show off or anything, but here is what our ice box looked like when I returned from the orchard and put everything away.
The end of this spate of cooking came at breakfast Sunday morning when I made pumpkin pancakes topped with home made apple butter and the apple dish from Saturday warmed in the microwave oven. I made the batter in a bowl just used to bottle ground habañero and jalapeño peppers so the pancake had a kick.
Days of kitchen cooking seem rare as life accelerates toward year’s end. My advice is two things: grind your hot peppers in the garage, and when you feel blue, get to work. You’ll be glad you did both, especially the former.
Illuminated and bright white, the atmosphere blurred the view in a way vision did not.
Night is coming and with it restlessness and yearning…
For something once held in my hands… now gone.
People I know are disturbed about the election of Donald Trump as president. His transition team is a leaky bucket so we know some of what’s going on in Trumpland. His first steps don’t look good for anyone, including people who rallied around him. They will be freaking out sooner than expected as the president-elect struggles to deliver on campaign promises. It’s only five days after the election.
I live in a privileged enclave the affluence of which is driven by the largest of Iowa’s state universities and a few medium-sized businesses. Since moving to Big Grove Township in 1993 I’ve held the county seat at arms length as best I could. Iowa City is where I attended college, met my wife, got married, and witnessed the birth of our daughter. I have memories of my time there — most of them are good.
Eight of 58 precincts in Johnson County, including ours, voted for Donald Trump. Those who assert the county is monolithic in its liberalism paint with a broad brush. Their canvass looks neat — well contained within its edges. Like all products of imagination and technique such portraiture is more aspiration than reality. I’d rather live midst swing voters, small business operators, low-wage workers, and young men and women with imperfect lives. I’ve been with them so long it seems like home.
Tonight I’m drawn to the moon with its inconstant orbit outside the frame of a 24-hour day. As it sets over my shoulder this morning, giving way to sunrise, I’m reminded of this:
O blessed, blessed night! I am afeard.
Being in night, all this is but a dream,
Too flattering-sweet to be substantial.
~ Romeo and Juliet, Act Two, Scene Two in Capulet’s Orchard
Having inoculated myself early on to the possibility of Donald Trump winning Iowa’s six electoral votes, my reaction to his Nov. 8 victory in a close national election was more recoil than shock.
“Expect Iowa to award its six electoral votes to Donald Trump this cycle, contrary to the claims of prominent Iowa Democrats,” I wrote on Sept. 16.
I believed Hillary Clinton would win nationally based on conventional sources — polls, media analysis, progressive friends and family. Trump didn’t just win Iowa. He beat Clinton statewide by almost 10 points, attracting voters repulsed by his personal character but not wanting another Clinton in the White House. Trump won the voters that make Iowa a swing state.
My surprise in the result came from a failure to listen to my own experience.
“Low wage workers are everywhere in Iowa in significant numbers,” I wrote Sept. 15. “Based on my conversations with them, if they vote at all, they are just as likely to vote for Donald Trump as Hillary Clinton, whose name the corporate media associates with all things bad.”
As we now know, a majority of the people I described weren’t at all likely to vote for Hillary Clinton. I didn’t want to believe Trump could win and that distorted my perception.
The messaging from Republicans was direct, simple and effective.
“The American people have had enough of failed status quo policies which have left them less hopeful for our country’s future,” said Jeff Kaufmann, Republican Party of Iowa chair in an Aug. 10 press release. “They have had enough of serially dishonest, corrupt, and self-interested career politicians like the Clintons.”
Their candidate hammered this message home over and over in an effective social media campaign which, when combined with a national GOTV effort that worked with local parties, enabled Republicans to distract many Democrats while they networked with people early on.
What we thought we knew about politics proved to be outdated as conventional political wisdom was incinerated this cycle. If Democrats held a ground game advantage in 2006 and 2008, Iowa Republicans reached parity this cycle. Ground game is no longer a political advantage, it is a necessary tool. Ground game must be well executed for Democrats to maintain parity with Republicans.
Having competed with Jeff Kaufmann’s political organization on his home turf of Wilton and Cedar County in 2012, I believe the success of Republicans statewide is due mainly to his 2014 appointment as their party chair and broader application of tactics he has long used on the ground. Like with any competition, each game, each election is a result of training and performance. The level of expected ground game performance has been raised this cycle.
Experience tells me election day didn’t bring the end of politics as we know it. The body politic is ever changing, ever re-inventing itself, sometimes by design, sometimes by unintended consequences. Those of us who believe the framework of society is enduring also see an opportunity in the election results for positive change. After voting for Richard Nixon in 1960, Iowa elected Democrat Harold Hughes as governor.
After recoiling from the repugnant national election results my response is simple: confront bigotry, work to build positive community relations where I live, and resist the rollback of everything I’ve worked for.
These things can only be accomplished by joining together with others in common purpose. Or as Hillary Clinton said, we are stronger together.
On election day co-workers at the home farm and auto supply store asked me about the Clinton – Kaine bumper sticker on my 19 year-old car.
I said it was still a contest and you should vote if you haven’t. Trump could win.
By this morning’s unofficial tally, Trump won both the popular vote and the electoral college. (Popular vote was still being counted when this was written and Hillary won the popular vote). It is unsettling and upsetting.
Identifying where Trump will place priorities is difficult because of the many, and often conflicting things he said during the campaign. Along with the executive branch, the next congress will be controlled by Republicans — for the first time since 1928. Things look bleak as global financial markets took a fall in the wake of Trump’s victory.
In Iowa, Republicans flipped the state senate and will control the executive and legislative branches of government for the next two years. They will have their way with state government empowered by Trump’s stunning Iowa win. What will be their priorities? It is hard to say specifically now that restraint has been removed.
I am recoiling from the national and local results as many others are.
I haven’t changed. The sun will rise in about 90 minutes bringing the new hope inherent in each morning. I will still be standing.
Few people I know like the results of the election but it is less about us and more about our failure to live well in the broad community surrounding us.
The election brought home that in these United States, we are on our own as long as we fail to come together in common cause. Being stronger together is who we are as a species. It is a glowing ember after a firestorm that incinerated conventional wisdom about our society.
Let’s hope it will sustain us through these turbulent times.
All at once the United States is coming together and the convergence is upsetting.
While members of the white privileged class engaged in the seventh game of baseball’s World Series, a black church was burned in Greenville, Mississippi.
While members of Sioux tribes stand in opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline crossing land theirs by treaty, white occupiers of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge were acquitted of wrong doing by a jury in Oregon.
While supporters of the Republican presidential candidate chant “lock her up,” “build the wall,” and “drain the swamp,” the more sane among us work toward a world that can be sustained based on what we know about society and its role in the environment.
It is an America I have known well, one of hate, greed, ignorance, isolationism, violence and intolerance. It pits rich against poor, convincing many to believe they are weak and powerless in an electorate that produced a horror show of incompetence, graft, war-mongering and corruption among elected officials.
Votes matter — now more than ever.
We’ll see voter turnout in the general election together on Nov. 8. The forecast does not look pretty. Many people I meet feel the value of their vote has been diminished. What they don’t always realize is the loss of hope and positive outlook about our lives in society is intentionally manufactured. What’s happened in the post Ronald Reagan era has been a stunning undermining of the fabric of society including governmental institutions being hollowed out predictably and intentionally by the richest Americans to favor their interests.
Congressman John Lewis of Georgia’s fifth district recently posted, “I’ve marched, protested, been beaten and arrested–all for the right to vote. Friends of mine gave their lives. Honor their sacrifice. Vote.”
Voting matters, the powerful among us know it, and voter suppression during this election cycle has no precedents in the 50 years since the Voting Rights Act was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson. It is the first election without the protections of the law.
When the Supreme Court of the United States struck down Section Four of the Voting Rights Act, Chief Justice Roberts wrote in the 5-4 decision,
“Our country has changed, and while any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions.”
“There is no doubt that these improvements are in large part because of the Voting Rights Act,” he wrote. “The Act has proved immensely successful at redressing racial discrimination and integrating the voting process.”
Ask the 200 members of the Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church in Greenville, Mississippi how redressing racial discrimination is going.
We woke up Wednesday to the murders of two Des Moines police officers. A white suspect is believed to have killed two white police officers in premeditated murders. The murders are abhorrent.
“What happened yesterday was calculated murder of two law enforcement officers. Plain and simple, that’s the reality. If someone wants to argue that reality with me, my office is two doors down,” said a visibly frustrated Des Moines Police Chief Dana Wingert.
With due respect to Chief Wingert, we have courts to determine the guilt or innocence of the suspect. Relativism has no place in our justice system. Reality may be arguable, but truth and justice are not.
While fueling my car the morning of the murders, the attendant walked up, wanting to talk about the election.
I said, “have you heard about the murders in Des Moines?” He hadn’t. Despite the speed with which the internet can communicate aspects of our lives, our understanding of current events is uneven at best, deplorable at worst.
Late last night I received an email from a respected friend suggesting a letter to presidential candidate Jill Stein asking her to drop out of the race and support Hillary Clinton. It read, in part,
We have never met in person, but I am writing to urge you to please drop out of the Presidential race and give your vocal support to Hillary Clinton. I completely agree with your policies, and am frightened by many of Hillary’s plans, but we simply cannot risk a Trump presidency, with his finger on the nuclear arsenal — he is insane.
What the hell?
Our country was founded on genocide, built on the backs of slave labor, then taken from us by the richest people in the world. In the 2016 general election we will reap what we sowed.
This dark time in history has few modern precedents. More than anything we cannot afford to relinquish the search for truth, meaning, sustainability and social justice. Not now. Not ever.
Hay Feeder Ring Photo Credit – Tarter Farm and Ranch Equipment
Something is wrong when the garden produces tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers in Iowa the fourth week in October.
I’ll dice tomatoes for breakfast tacos later this week, Bangkok peppers are in the dehydrator, and cucumbers and jalapeno peppers in the icebox waiting to be used. There is chard and kale, oregano and chives. Those leafy green vegetables usually survive until November, but tomatoes and cucumbers?
Call it what you want but something is happening and we know exactly what it is.
I spent most of Friday working with hay feeder rings.
After re-resurfacing the outside lot where farm equipment is displayed at the home, farm and auto supply store, I assembled and re-merchandised the stock of feeder rings.
I don’t know if it was a day’s work, but spent a day doing it, working slowly and as safely as possible. I was tired after the shift with a hankering to leave everything and head west to work on a ranch — day dreams of a low-wage worker.
The garage was cluttered after a summer of intermittent work.
I checked off each item on the to-do list on my handheld device before heading to the orchard for a shift. I disassembled the grass catcher and stored it; re-mixed bird seed and filled the feeder; checked the air pressure on our auto tires; brought in salt and paper products from the car; stored 40 pounds of coarse salt in tubs for winter ice melting; cleared a work space on the bench; and swept the entire floor. It took about two hours. I wanted more, but time ran out.
Yesterday’s political events had me thinking of Gettysburg, Penn. My parents, brother and sister went there before Dad died. I remember reading President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address on a placard near where he read it himself. With deep roots in rural Virginia, and ancestors fighting on both sides of the Civil War, it was a seminal experience for me. It began the process of turning me from being a descendant of southerners enamored of romantic notions about plantation life to being an American eschewing the peculiar institution and those who stood for it. To my mother’s probable dismay, I brought home a Confederate flag and hung it in my bedroom. Visiting Gettysburg helped me understand the reality of the Civil War and those who fought and lived through it. I was coming of age.
My parents pointed out the house and farm where Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower lived after his presidency. Eisenhower hosted world leaders there, including Nikita Khrushchev, Charles de Gaulle and Winston Churchill. He also raised Angus cattle. We thought favorably of Eisenhower even if he was a Republican. As Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe during World War II he was a well known part of our culture. Seeing his farm enabled us to touch reality in his celebrity.
My life is here in Big Grove. I’m not heading west to work on a ranch. I don’t display the Confederate battle flag or think about it much any more. I will re-read the Gettysburg Address as I did this morning and wonder how my ancestors got along with each other after fighting in the Civil War. Perhaps there are lessons for the United States in 2016. I’m certain there are.
I drove to the county seat to vote after my shift at the home, farm and auto supply store. There were six or seven poll workers — plenty of staff to handle the day’s last half hour of early voting at the auditor’s office.
The orange ballot box was so full the poll worker had to jostle it for mine to fit in.
Surprisingly, or not, this shit show of an election didn’t pull the final curtain after casting my ballot. The proscenium arch has no curtain after this godawful exposition of what politics has become. Trump may burn the theater down before he is through. Throngs of his supporters would cheer.
My next door neighbor called out as I arrived home. In jeans, a sweatshirt and stocking cap she was gleaning her garden before an imminent frost. She offered hot peppers. I declined as our ice box already has more than needed for winter. We conversed for a while about produce and ideas. We didn’t talk about politics.
This morning I left the glow of the computer screen to go outside.
It’s not going to frost this morning. My weather app tells me 32 degrees in the last half hour before sunrise. Ambient temperatures may dip to freezing, but not long enough to damage much in the garden. Experience tells me it won’t get that cold in the micro-climate of our yard. There’s less chill in the air than when I spoke with my neighbor.
As days move through the calendar experience also tells me election day won’t bring the end of politics as we know it. The body politic is ever changing, ever re-inventing itself, sometimes by design, sometimes by unintended consequences. Those of us who believe the framework of society is enduring also see an opportunity in today’s bedlam for positive change.
Not the hope and change Barack Obama touted in Iowa eight years ago. His administration will leave us with mixed reviews and something different. The clear knowledge that for change to come, we can’t lose hope. At the same time, we must work for change that is much needed in the American society we call home. Many of us will find hope in the ashes of the 2016 campaigns and are willing to work to bring change we know is needed.
People are weary of the 2016 presidential campaign.
Voting began Sept. 29 in Iowa and we can’t get to Nov. 8 quickly enough.
For the most part, decisions about who to support are made. While there have been many surprises this cycle, and might be more, not much can change minds as we move toward election day.
The strength of Clinton’s campaign is in its organizers.
I met Janice Rottenberg more than a year ago in Iowa City. Today, she’s leading the Clinton organizing effort in Ohio, where Clinton stands a 60.6 percent chance of winning 18 electoral votes.
I worked with Kate Cummings, senior program director for Florida Democrats, during the 2012 cycle, She was also in Iowa for the 2016 Iowa caucus campaign. Clinton stands a 71.2 percent chance of winning Florida’s 29 electoral votes.
For his part, if Donald Trump has political organizers it’s not clear who they are or what role they play in his media based campaign. He’s running as if it were a professional wrestling promotion. The WWE hall of famer knows how to run down and dirty and would drag us all to his level if he could. If the Commission on Presidential Debates would allow it, I expect he would call for a 1960s-style professional wrestling cage match like I saw with my father at Municipal Stadium in Davenport. Trump is more a promoter like Vince McMahon than a politician.
George Will wrote this week the Republican post-campaign autopsy can likely be written Nov. 9 in one sentence, “Perhaps it is imprudent to nominate a venomous charlatan.” I’m confident a majority of Americans feel the same way.
It’s all over but the voting, and if there are some surprises, the biggest one will be that Donald Trump receives tens of millions of votes. Republicans who plan to vote for him do so with a sense of duty to their party. After all, the Republican grass roots had the candidate they voted for and feel some obligation to vote for him in the general. They own that and many of us won’t let them forget.
As for Hillary Clinton, it seems like nothing will stop her now. It’s not over, but it’s over.
Journey Home 
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