Category: Living in Society

Politics mostly social commentary.

Corporations Are Making Me Grumpy

Post author By Paul Deaton
Post date April 30, 2014

LAKE MACBRIDE— The bills come quickly as the second session of the 85th Iowa General Assembly draws to a close. They are required to produce a budget, and legislators tend to follow this law. It is not every day they comply with the law. For example, they still owe the school districts a 2016 supplemental state aid number. Not likely that will happen before adjournment sine die.

It is not the scofflaw aspect of the group that makes me grumpy, although there is plenty about the legislature’s actions or lack thereof to grumpify a person. In many cases they are puppets for corporations and that isn’t a happy thought. I’d be happier if the members were required to wear lapel pins to show their corporate sponsorships— the way ARCA, NASCAR and other motorsports club drivers adorn their fireproof suits. Maybe then I wouldn’t be appalled by some of the bills they support. It wouldn’t be good, but it might make the citizen experience more tolerable and lower my blood pressure. After all, in the post-Reagan era it’s all about me, isn’t it?

Garrison Keillor’s appearance at the First United Methodist Church in Iowa City at 7 p.m. on May 4 is making me grumpy.

My favorite local bookstore is sponsoring Keillor at a reading from his newly released collection of writing, “The Keillor Reader.” Back in the day I would have been first in line to buy a copy and be inside the church to hear him from the pulpit. But you see, we had a falling out over his acceptance of a sponsorship from the investment firm Allianz which invests in the nuclear weapons complex.

Maybe be he read my blog and dropped them based on the strength of my position, I hoped. Anxiously googling their relationship, it was worse than I thought. Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of South Florida tried to get National Public Radio to pull the Allianz ads because the company collaborated with the National Socialist German Worker’s Party in their heyday. No Keillor for me, even though until last year, I listened to his program on Saturday nights, and had done so since our daughter was very young.

Which brings me to the connection. Why do I care about these corporate sponsorships anyway? Whether it is our legislators, or Garrison Keillor, or whoever? Why can’t I just live my life?

Someone has to be engaged in sustaining a life on the prairie, and it isn’t the ones sponsored by corporations.

Tags Iowa Legislature, politics

Social Commentary Writing

First Share and Living in Society

Post author By Paul Deaton
Post date April 29, 2014

Asian Greens in Scrambled Eggs with Vermont Cheese and Pickled Bits and Pieces

LAKE MACBRIDE— The first share from the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm was ready yesterday— asparagus, lettuce, baby bok choy and Asian greens. Anticipation over spring and summer cooking is building, even if living on bits and pieces from the pantry will continue until the full flow of local produce is unleashed. Picking up the share at the farm was a fine beginning.

We had more than two inches of rain since Earth Day, so outdoor plants are growing. The garden is too wet to work, although as soon as the soil dries, seedlings are ready to go into the ground. Meanwhile I will go on living in society, and that is today’s topic.

The phrase “in society” has a particular usage here. It is part of a spectrum of relationships with people that contrasts with “chez nous,” the French term that refers to “at home” or “with us.” Maybe there is something else on this jumping green sphere (thanks Lord Buckley for this phrase), “outside society” or “foreign,” but most of our lives are spent chez nous or in society. My tag “homelife” could be changed to “chez nous” and sustain the meaning.

Living in society is that set of relationships which sustains a life on the plains. It includes friends, family, neighbors, workplaces, institutions, retail establishments, and organizations with which we associate or interact. The relationships are interpersonal, that is, specific people are associated with each part of society— it is not an abstraction.

When young, we don’t see our life in society this way. We had an ability to live in the moment without a history of interpersonal relationships, anchoring us into something else. As we age, we are more like a character in a William Faulkner novel that must work to suppress the endless flow of memory.

If experience connects us, the way we live in society is based on thousands of previous interactions. For example, someone ran for the U.S. Senate after a long, productive life. If I saw him today in any of a number of settings— at a retail store, at the retirement village, at a literature reading, at a veterans meeting, at a public demonstration— I would think of the courage he displayed by taking on personal debt to challenge an entrenched incumbent politician who would otherwise have run unopposed. I would also think of our many conversations over a period of years. Our relationship is driven by my respect for his courage, and I picture him when I think about the associations we share. When I use the phrase “in society,” it might be referring to an interaction we had, or one like it with someone else.

My usage of the phrase “in society” may have been explained by others who are smarter, but because it is organic there is a peculiar sense to it on this blog. It is personal, but not really, because is it also public.

I am entering one of the richest periods of personal interaction in life. Old enough to have had experience, and young enough to gain new ones. Each day’s potential is vast midst the galaxy of people with whom I interact. Favoring the phrase “in society” enables me to talk about them without revealing where the specific interaction may have occurred. This protects people from unwanted intrusion into their lives, and enables the writing I do for a couple of hours each day.

Chez nous, we would have had breakfast of Asian greens mixed with scrambled eggs, Vermont cheddar cheese and pickled veggies from last season. In society I am part of the local food movement and post photos of my breakfast. Maybe I am drawing a fine line, but it is an important one for a writer.

Tags farming, Kitchen Garden, local food, Sustainability, Writing

Home Life

Checking In

Post author By Paul Deaton
Post date April 24, 2014

LAKE MACBRIDE— This week has been a whirlwind— the action is not finished. Another Climate Reality talk in Independence tonight, followed by a full weekend of warehouse work. In between, there are three newspaper articles to write and the usual proof reading. This not to mention all the home work that needs doing. I should be able to come up for air by Wednesday.

Last night was time with friends in Waterloo, where we attended a double bass concert and my Climate Reality in Iowa talk. Afterward, we went for dinner at a nearby Mexican restaurant and talked until way too late. I arrived home near midnight.

The benefit of presenting a talk about climate change is the intellectual process of questions and answers. I leave half of the time for that, and it always proves to be the most rewarding part of the hour. A question came from a woman who said she was getting cynical about all the petitions, and asks to write letters to elected officials— a seemingly futile effort. Don’t give up, I said.

I spent the drive home watching the road, and feeling the energy from that room. There was no trouble sleeping after falling into bed.

Home Life

Easter Darkness and Light

Post author By Paul Deaton
Post date April 20, 2014

LAKE MACBRIDE— Easter was the biggest holiday after Christmas while I was growing up, although its importance diminished when I left home at age 18. This photo of my maternal grandmother’s parents— my great grandparents— typified the gatherings of an era that is gone.

Things are more casual today, and seldom do we gather on the lawn for a photo. If we did, our small family wouldn’t have many people in the image. A sign of the times and choices made when we were young.

Our next door neighbor gave birth to her third child on April 10 and yesterday she carried the baby in the yard while we talked about our shared lot line. The baby, swaddled in a blanket, didn’t make a sound. We walked the length of the line, discussing the easement and placement of gardens, hers and mine. The two younger children and her husband joined us. It was a pleasant moment in a life of neighboring.

The lettuce is not up in the garden. In fact the surface looks pretty dry. After the newspaper proof reading, I plan to spend the balance of the day preparing a bed for spring vegetables and working in the yard and garden. There is a lot to be done.

Lingering in the pre-dawn darkness, there is an hour to write, read and think before the rising sun of Easter morning.

Tags homelife, Kitchen Garden

Work Life

Money Smart Week Presentation

Post author By Paul Deaton
Post date April 19, 2014

Prepared remarks for the Solon Public Library Money Smart Week presentation on April 19, 2014.

Thank you for coming to my talk titled “Alternate Living: Focus on Finance.”

This talk is partly about me, but it is really about you. I seek to present some of the ideas and financial tools I use to make a life, as an example of how to cope in a society that has changed dramatically since I grew up in the 1950s.

I hope to generate a discussion in the second part of the hour, that focuses on the idea that alternative living is not only possible, but is a necessary approach to life expectancies that stretch into our 80s and beyond thanks to adequate nutrition and good health that is endemic to our way of life in Iowa. I hope you find value in hearing my story.

My father worked at a meat packing plant in Davenport for $85 per week, and my mother worked at home. We had enough money to afford a home with a mortgage, food, clothing, parochial schools, transportation, health insurance and vacations on a household income of around $4,500 per year.

As we know, things have changed. In 2011, the estimated median household income in Solon was $61,394 or 14 times what my parents generated. Many people I meet believe that amount of income is not only needed, it may not be enough.

Something else has changed in 60 years, and what I am most concerned about is the value of work, the kind my mother did at home, and my father did at the plant, has been degraded and replaced with something else in our burgeoning consumer society. It has taken us away from the foundations upon which lives used to be built. Our lives must be about something besides consumption of stuff, and appreciating the value of work is a starting point.

My story is about getting back to a kind of living that is more diverse than holding one or two well paying jobs in a household and slaving away to save enough for retirement, whatever that is in the 21st century. One that enables us to earn a living wage, contribute to the broader society, and sustain our lives on the Iowa prairie.

I re-purposed my life in 2009 after 25 years in transportation and logistics. Our daughter graduated from college in 2007 with minimal debt, and my wife Jacque and I were in reasonably good financial shape. We had no chronic health conditions, and hopefully, a lot of years to live.

When I left CRST Logistics in Cedar Rapids, I was on track to earn a six figure salary, so with Jacque’s income from her part time job, we were doing better than average. I might have stayed on, and pursued the rewards of longevity, but there were vulnerabilities.

The Toyota Financial Services job seeker web site, says it in black and white: normal retirement age is 62, which is my current age. As I approached traditional retirement age, I didn’t know where I stood in the broader scheme of the company. I had contributed to the rapid and sustainable growth of CRST from a $60 million trucking company that thrived after the Motor Carrier Act of 1980 deregulated trucking, to a full transportation solutions company that earned more than $1 billion in revenues last year. I felt too young to slow down, but the company could hire three people for my salary, and when I left each position I held, they usually did. This is normal in large organizations, something we don’t hear much about. While I was treated fairly where I worked, there is no obligation for any company to keep employees until retirement. That’s just the way it is.

Another important aspect of my work was I felt ready for a change. While I helped build the company over 25 years, and had experienced its growth and the opportunities that go along with that, I felt stale. When our daughter graduated from college, I was not adjusting well to being an empty nester. This feeling increased as she chose to leave Iowa.

I felt ready for a change and on July 3, 2009, left the company for good. I was not ready to retire, even if I had a retirement cake and party when I left, and an unexpected call from the owner expressing his thanks for my 25 years of work.

If there are stages to life, which one am I in? My colleague at the Solon Economist, Milli Gilbaugh wrote about the trouble defining that stage past middle age, and before elderly, in a recent column.

I suppose it is nearly impossible to find a word for the stage of life I’m in; a word that seems accurate and inoffensive to everyone. As a matter of fact, I’ve had trouble knowing just what to call myself for some time.”

Ages seem to be rather neatly divided into 20-year segments, up until we reach 60 and are unceremoniously thrown into the ‘elderly’ cauldron, ready or not. The term ‘child’ generally includes everyone from birth through their teens. After that they are ‘adults’ for another 20 when they suddenly enter the category of “middle age” that will last until they turn 60. After that, we are apparently doomed forever to be ‘elderly’ which I think begins too soon and lasts too long.

What we need here is another 20 year category between ‘middle age’ and “elderly” that includes the years from sixty to eighty.

I couldn’t agree more. With good health, proper nutrition and financial sustainability, there is a lot of living to be done between 60 and 80.

Where I landed after a career in transportation was with a portfolio of activities, some paid and some not. I value all of the work I do and have to make choices on how I spend my time. My life is a systematic and thoughtful process of continuous evaluation and improvement.

My recent work has been general farm work, warehouse work, issue and candidate advocacy, public speaking, and writing. This is much different from my transportation career, which included experience in operations management, personnel recruitment, procurement and logistics. I have served on a number of non-profit boards, including the Johnson County Board of Health, and the Solon Senior Advocates, and am currently serving a four year term as one of three Big Grove Township Trustees. It keeps me busy, and there is a process to achieve financial sustainability over time, and that’s what I want to spend the balance of my time describing.

There are four financial tools I want to discuss, retirement, financial management, research and development, and investment.

Let me cross retirement off the list right away. What an outdated concept in an era when companies are shedding liabilities like pensions and health insurance like there is no tomorrow. Perhaps there is a role for retirement among people who perform physical labor for a career, as they may truly need to slow down and take it easy at age 62. But the idea that we save for a lifetime to enjoy a well financed retirement life, as we hear from financial planners of every stripe, is a joke. The reality is that people in the United States have one of the lowest household savings rates in the world, ranking 22nd among industrialized nations. We say we should be saving for retirement, but aren’t. A better process for aging is needed.

We all know life doesn’t stop, and neither do expenses. What I propose as a replacement for retirement is re-imaging what the years between ages 60 and 80 could be: a portfolio approach to financial sustainability. It begins with the idea that all work has value whether it is compensated or not.

If you look at my weekly activities, they include about 20 hours working as a shift supervisor at a warehouse, 10-15 hours working for the weekly newspaper, 3-5 hours working on a farm, 20 or more hours writing at home, and 5-8 hours volunteering with various organizations. The balance of my time is spent gardening, cooking, reading, doing chores and most importantly, networking.

I am constantly seeking new opportunities to earn income, but have little interest in going back to work that requires 60-70 hours a week of my time and excludes other opportunities. There is too much risk in that. Like large companies that have research and development operations, so too, we should be constantly in the hunt for interesting opportunities for engaging and useful work. When we find a new opportunity it needs to be evaluated and fit into time constraints. There is a process for that.

This is where financial management comes in. It is important to use a few tools that are common in business to evaluate and make improvements in our financial situation. Most important is periodic reporting and planning.

Each month I sit down and write a report of what happened. This is not a personal diary, but a tool to think about what happened, what is important, and what needs to change to sustain our lives. I share this with my spouse, so I have an audience and potential feedback.

The report begins with a general discussion about health and welfare. If we don’t have and maintain good health, getting along can be a challenge. It pays to formally think about it, put it into words and make needed changes on a regular basis.

The second section is a financial report that covers periodic income and expenses, and highlights things that were different about a particular month. It included a budget analysis, which helps identify problems before they happen.

I also keep track of certain activities, like events, meetings, business development activities, and others and record them in the third section. I refer to this often as memory sometimes fails me.

The final section is a balance sheet depicting assets and liabilities. This is a basic and fundamental tool to know where one stands financially and the library has some good resources on this.

My goal is to develop a stable analytical platform from which I can explore opportunities for part time work, temporary jobs and projects that will produce value. My current focus is to add more farm work.

Over time, the kinds of activities may change, but the biggest risk we may face is getting stuck in something that is neither sustainable nor good for us. Retirement is replaceable, and that can be a good thing, especially if we have a process for positive change.

Research and development is mostly about networking. I have found it is important to get out of the house and talk to real people about what is going on in society. There are more than enough volunteer opportunities, so most often, I seek to develop a particular interest when I network with people, that will hopefully point to income opportunities.

One of the key roles work with non-profits served after leaving my transportation career was to introduce me to a wide range of people n the community. There is value in friendship and working on a common purpose, and it is important to maintain engagement in some non-profit volunteer work as part of a sustainable portfolio.

Lastly, I want to discuss investment, and I don’t mean stocks and bonds. Financial resources are important, but I found the best investments have been in myself.

The key lesson I learned has been that many small investments of time and resources are better than staking a single claim on something big. The benefit is that if one source of income goes away, or an investment doesn’t make a return, it is not devastating to replace part of a financial system rather than a single high stake investment. This is what successful business people do, and why shouldn’t we operate the same way? We should.

This has been my personal story about choices I made for sustaining a sound financial life, and some of the tools I have used. Thank you for coming to listen and now let’s open the floor to questions.

Tags Sustainability, worklife

Juke Box

Juke Box – This Train is Bound for Glory

Post author By Paul Deaton
Post date April 18, 2014

Tags Music

Living in Society

To Amend In Iowa Get Moving

Post author By Paul Deaton
Post date April 18, 2014

David Cobb at the Iowa City Public Library

IOWA CITY— We can thank Move to Amend for the sentences “corporations are not people,” and “money is not free speech.” Now what?

David Cobb, one of the founders of the organization, didn’t have an answer at the Iowa City Public Library on April 17. He did say if we filled out a sheet the national organization will plug us in. Plus us into what?

“Our essence was the realization that even people who engage in civic engagement on issues, and there has been just amazing work that’s done,” he said. “But we haven’t, in my lifetime and maybe in a generation, seen the kind of social movements that are the earmarks of this country. The social movement that culminated in the American Revolution, actually the creation of this country, was in fact a social movement. So too was the abolitionist movement, and the women’s suffrage movement, and the trade union movement, and the civil rights movement.”

“You see there is something different between movement and issue organizing or issue activism,” Cobb concluded.

The brochure Cobb distributed on Thursday had great organizing information, with solid ideas: form a study group; organize a workshop or street theater event and invite a speaker from their organization; pass out brochures at public events; write a letter to the editor or op-ed in your local newspaper; propose a local resolution or ordinance; contact elected officials and ask them to take a public stand; or sign a petition. Here’s the rub, organizing does not a movement make.

Blog for Iowa has been writing about Citizens United, which led to creation of Move to Amend, for years. Readers are familiar with the idea of amending the Constitution to say 1). Only natural persons have Constitutional rights and 2). Money is not free speech. After almost four years of being in Iowa, Move to Amend has picked some low hanging fruit: resolutions passed by a handful of governing bodies, some organizing, and a couple of Democratic sponsors for legislation. However, the bicameral Iowa legislature is no closer to acting on amending the Constitution than they were before the Citizens United decision was handed down.

What Move to Amend needs is to become a movement, something Cobb knew this afternoon. It is a long distance from that.

It is ironic that an organization born out of a think tank and turned into a 501 (c) 3 is what Cobb’s narrative implied is not needed. If Iowans want to amend the constitution regarding corporate personhood and money as free speech, then we better get moving. Move to Amend is looking at a 30 year process to amend the Constitution, according to Cobb. The truth is we can’t wait.

~ Written for Blog for Iowa

Tags Blog for Iowa, politics

Home Life

Rain and Other News

Post author By Paul Deaton
Post date April 15, 2014

LAKE MACBRIDE— Sunday and Monday rain was welcome and much needed. According to the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network, 2.7 inches fell. The ground remains too wet for planting, and this morning, temperatures dipped below freezing— it’s 25 degrees presently and too cold for outdoors work. There was a large crew at the farm yesterday, so the soil blocking for the week got done without me. If the ground dries later in the week, there will be planting, but for now there is a schedule gap— also welcome and much needed.

The sound of cello on my smartphone alarm woke me at 1 a.m. to view the total lunar eclipse. Still in my bedclothes, I pulled up the blinds and the sky was as clear as it gets. The eclipse had just begun.

I pulled on my jeans and a shirt, donned my winter coat, and went outside to witness the proceedings. The houses were mostly dark and moonlight reflected off the surface of the lake. Only the sound from a distant I-380 could be heard. I was the only person outside in my neighborhood. It was worth breaking deep sleep to watch as Earth dimmed the moon for a while.

There were spectacular images and a live stream available on the Internet, but I preferred my own view, filtered by the atmosphere and my aging retinas, captured on a handheld digital camera. Along with the light pollution from Cedar Rapids and Iowa City, the Milky Way could be seen. And so many stars.

Checking my email on the smartphone before heading back to bed, I found my state representative, Bobby Kaufmann, formally announced his campaign for re-election yesterday. That’s not really news, just a tick mark off a list of political events I am monitoring. The newspaper asked me to do interviews with the two candidates in the Democratic primary, and I accepted the assignment. The newspaper work gives me more reason to keep my views in this race to myself.

When I returned to bed, I slept a full five hours, and am ready for the day with the unexpected gift of a couple of hours to myself. A rarity in sustaining a life on the Iowa prairie.

Tags environment, homelife

Living in Society

Why Philadelphia Made Me a Deaniac

Post author By Paul Deaton
Post date April 10, 2014

Blog for Iowa: Trish Nelson, Caroline Vernon, Dr. Alta Price, Paul Deaton, Dave Bradley. Photo by Dan DeShane

Happy Tenth Birthday Blog for Iowa

The 2000 election was supposed to have elected Al Gore as the first environmentalist president. He was a shoe-in after a popular Bill Clinton, or so some of us thought. What happened after the U.S. Supreme Court gave the election to Bush was people I know, from the whole political spectrum, launched into activism unlike any in my experience. Howard Dean was at the center of this. Who had even heard of the 79th governor of Vermont as votes were counted, and then the counting was stopped in the election of the hanging chad?

When the 2000 election wasn’t settled on Nov. 7, we were enthralled. I listened to the returns on the radio as I drove to Chicago for a meeting on the 8th. When I reached the motel, I stayed up late watching the early morning coverage on television. I followed the Supreme Court action at home and downloaded a ream of briefs to read. It was a unique time. It was a cursed time. I felt sitting on the sidelines was no longer an option.

The turning point came shortly after the Al-Qaeda attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, and not for reasons one might think. My flight was scheduled to depart Moline, Ill. that day for Philadelphia. After our staff meeting in Eldridge, the televisions in the operations room were turned on with live images of smoke emitting from the World Trade Center. Air travel would not be an option that afternoon.

When I did fly to Philadelphia several days later, the aircraft was almost empty. Enroute to the Eastern Iowa Airport, the car radio informed me that President Bush was also heading to Philadelphia to fulfill a campaign promise at a battered women’s shelter. It meant a possible delay getting to my work site at the former U.S. Steel facility in Bucks County. As we approached, Air Force One had already landed, so we circled for 20 minutes— the delay was minimal.

After getting a rental car and leaving the airport, there were law enforcement officers on every corner, thousands of them. As I headed to work, I passed the presidential motorcade on I-95, heading back to the airport. It was only 10:30 a.m. All that public money on the flight, and law enforcement for a political event? The seed was planted: Bush had to go.

The rest is the history of Bush 43. Things rubbed the wrong way. The television address on the invasion of Iraq seemed similar to Nixon’s explanation of the invasion of Cambodia— both presidents appeared to be deceiving us. There were Cheney’s secret energy meetings, Christine Todd Whitman’s brief tenure at the Environmental Protection Agency, and a thousands cuts against everything I held dear. We were ready for change in 2004.

From the beginning of the 2004 campaign, I didn’t care for Howard Dean. He had the endorsement of Democratic leaders, including Al Gore, and U.S. Senator Tom Harkin, but no one I knew was supporting him. Our small family caucused for John Kerry, who won the nomination, and we lost the November election.

Vindication of Dean’s new campaign style came in the form of Democracy for America (DFA), which I heard about from the current Blog for Iowa editor, Trish Nelson and her friend Ellen Ballas at a DFA training at Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids.

At the training, I met Arshad Hasan, Dorie Clark, Dave Leshtz and others who provided training in the mechanics of winning elections. Things like estimating voter turnout, fund raising, and setting a timeline for the canvass, were all important lessons. Thing is, the DFA techniques worked.

We experienced some success in 2006, and the culmination was in the ultimate grass roots campaign of Barack Obama, with Howard Dean as the chair of the Democratic National Committee. To say Howard Dean wasn’t a part of the transformation of electoral politics would be a lie. Unlike certain politicians, I’m not willing to tell a lie.

My first mention on Blog for Iowa was by Ed Fallon on Nov. 17, 2007, in a post titled Action on Coal Plants. What cemented my Deaniac status and my relationship with the group at Democracy for Iowa, was when Trish Nelson asked me to start writing for Blog for Iowa. My first post was on Feb. 25, 2009 with an open letter to the Iowa Department of Natural resources on the then proposed Marshalltown coal-fired power plant. At some point along the way I got less formal, trading my suit for a T-shirt, but I have been writing ever since. And we can thank Philadelphia for that.

Congratulations Blog for Iowa! May you experience many new writers and another ten years.

Tags Blog for Iowa, politics