Category: Living in Society

Politics mostly social commentary.

Categories
Sustainability Work Life

Revolution in the Home Kitchen

My Great Grandmother
Great Grandmother

LAKE MACBRIDE— The idea that a revolution should take place in the home kitchen is not unique to this blog. My focus on the relationship between the home kitchen and local food— that the latter won’t be viable in the way it could be without changes in the former— is not unique either. However, a recent New York Times article, “Pay People to Cook at Home” by Kristin Wartman demonstrates the disconnect between what is going on at the grassroots level regarding local food and priorities in urban cultural centers.

Wartman, a nutritionist and blogger, posits the following,

“Those who argue that our salvation lies in meals cooked at home seem unable to answer two key questions: where can people find the money to buy fresh foods, and how can they find the time to cook them? The failure to answer these questions plays into the hands of the food industry, which exploits the healthy-food movement’s lack of connection to average Americans.”

Her solution, as the title of the article suggests, is to pay people to cook at home, “(to place) a cultural and monetary premium on the hard work of cooking and the time and skills needed to do it,” including a government program. My suggestion is she hop on the shuttle from her home in New York City down to Washington, D.C. and witness the vast sea of farm industry lobbyists on Capitol Hill. She may then realize that hell would freeze over before any help in paying home cooks would be forthcoming from the federal government.

One can agree with the idea of placing a cultural premium on the value of home cooking, although we don’t necessarily want to return to the era of my great grandmother and her kitchen garden (see photo). The question is how, as a society, do we get there?

The future of local food and a revival of home cooking with whole foods is more dependent upon economics than upon time. If the economics are great, people will find the time. It is common knowledge among local food enthusiasts that the current economic paradigm regarding food, cooking and eating depends upon cheap energy.

Wendell Berry recently asked Michael Pollan, “what will be the effect on farming, gardening, cooking and eating of the end of cheap energy? Are physical work and real cooking going to remain optional?” Readers can listen to Pollan’s answer here. The gist of it is that as cheap energy fades from view, people will be required to become more self-reliant as a form of adaptation to the environmental crisis. This would likely drive more of whatever were least expensive, including local food and home cooking if they provided superior value, something it is not clear they do, at least for now.

The relationship between local food systems and cheap energy is important. I dismiss so-called food miles as an overly simplified argument. There is a complex but valid argument about the relationship between artificially low energy prices and high prices in local food systems that is worth pursuing. It is further complicated  by the fact that the end of cheap energy will be delayed due to the proliferation of hydraulic fracturing and the abundance of natural gas it produces. The complexity of the relationship between energy prices and local food requires further exposition in another post.

People can agree that obesity is a national and local problem. They can agree that chronic diseases, related to eating habits (including salt, sugar and fat consumption), drive a segment of higher health care and related health insurance premium costs. Where there is difficulty agreeing is in answering the question whether to take a homemade brown bag lunch to work, or spend the 30-minute break going to the gas station to have $1 per slice pizza for lunch. Today, the economics of direct food prices drives the decision at one of my workplaces.

The revolution in the home kitchen will begin once we deal with the environmental crisis, cheap fuel and the false notion that there is not enough time for what is important. The economics of food are driven by these things. That won’t happen anytime soon, not until the importance is escalated by some imminent, existential reality. It is not as simple an answer as creating another government program.

A better answer may be to seek ways to recognize the value of all work in society. That too is a complex problem wanting an answer. Something this blog is working toward.

Categories
Home Life Kitchen Garden

Sunday is Laundry Day

Old Sweatshirt
Old Sweatshirt

LAKE MACBRIDE— Yesterday’s wind died down to reveal almost perfect weather conditions today. A little cold— frost is evident on the leaves of thyme— but not the hard frost about which gardeners often fret. My April 30 assessment proved accurate: it is still time for planting.

While the yard is too wet for mowing, there is laundry to do, and a day to organize. Today will include the first cut of lawn— an abundant and sustainable source of mulch for the garden. It will take four hours to make the two cuts, bag and spread the grass clippings on garden plots. The five-gallon gasoline container was filled yesterday, so if the mower starts and the sun shines, we’re ready to go. The neighbors will appreciate the results.

Garlic Patch
Garlic Patch

The other big task for today is digging and delivering spring garlic to the CSA for inclusion in tomorrow’s shares. I estimate two to three hours for the project. There is so much spring work to do, the balance of the day will be easily filled.

Before I finish my third cup of coffee and second breakfast, head down to remove the old sheet from the door to my study and put away the space heater for the season, I want to write about the sweatshirt in the photograph.

While making kits at the warehouse, it occurred to me the sweatshirt is as old as some of my cohorts who were born in the 1990s. It was a gift during a boondoggle of a trip to Aventura, Florida, where a group of corporate transportation equipment maintenance executives met to discuss braking systems. There were a number of these so-called “maintenance councils” sponsored by equipment manufacturers. While invited to join a many of them, one had to be selective. Brakes are important in trucks, so I went.

Turnberry Isle
Turnberry Isle

Last to arrive, my schedule prevented me from playing golf on the one of the resort’s courses that morning as other council members did. My plane landed at the Hollywood airport as dinner was being served and the taxi delivered me to the restaurant as speeches, mostly related to tenure on the council, began.

When describing the trip as a boondoggle, it means everything was included: air fare, luxury hotel accommodations, meals, greens fees for golfers and entertainment. There was even a budget for gifts like the sweatshirt, although corporate policy prevented me from accepting anything too extravagant. Corporate staff had our beds turned down, and reviewed our final hotel bills to ensure everything within reason was paid by the corporation.

During the event, golfing was available, but I’m no golfer. As an alternative, we toured the inland waterways, went deep sea fishing and experienced the constant fawning of sales staff, engineers and corporate interns present for the event. The company wanted the experience to be unforgettable as they held a council meeting to discuss brakes. In transportation, a brake failure through improper manufacturing or maintenance is a liability— and there are lawsuits.

While doing the laundry, I noticed the sweatshirt was frayed at the seams. It won’t last much longer. I donned it again to head downstairs, and then to the garage and garden. Not because of the memories, but because it was something to keep away the chill as the sun burns off the frost and new work begins.

We launder our memories as well as our clothing, in hope of something. Better experiences and memories, I suppose. Memories we make ourselves, away from the exigencies of corporate masters and lawsuits. Eventually old clothes will wear out. There will be something else to wear— something we produce ourselves, rather than the gift of a corporation looking out for their own interests. At least that is what one believes on laundry day.

Categories
Home Life Work Life

Saturday Miscellany

Lettuce Patch
Lettuce Patch

BIG GROVE TOWNSHIP— The editors are in Jamaica on vacation, so work at the newspaper was rearranged to finish the proof reading today and create tomorrow as my first day off paid work since Good Friday. The fill-in copy layout person wanted Mother’s Day off work, so I finished my part of producing the weekly newspaper before lunch.

I called Mother today and had a long chat. For the first time in a long while, she had listened to some of my advice and reported she took it. The two of us are not much for the Hallmark Holidays, but we have a special call each year on or before Mother’s Day. I am thankful to be able to hear her familiar, octogenarian voice letting me know what is going on in her life.

Otherwise, today has been a miscellany— some of which is worth recounting, the rest, not so much.

Censored on the Internet
Tweet Expunged

For the first time, one of my tweets on twitter was expunged. A person is not saying much, if from time to time, someone doesn’t react negatively to it. Don’t know why it is gone, but I suspect someone ratted me out to the twitter-gods on the Internet. It was likely over the use of a question mark rather than a period. The reason I have a copy is Iowa City Patch re-tweeted me, generating an email with the content.

Rand Paul gave a speech at an area fundraiser today, giving credence to the idea that his presence is to help Republicans organize for the first in the nation 2016 Iowa caucuses. Paul’s visit was intended, at least partly, to generate some interest among no preference and Democratic voters. From reading other accounts of the event, the Republican party faithful represented most of the attendees. Rand Paul ≠ Ron Paul, and there could be trouble for the Republican organizers trading on the Paul name. Trouble would be fine with me.

In our state representative’s weekly newsletter, he outlined the reason for his opposition to new nuclear power, especially in rural Wilton, where he lives. It is more than the NIMBY (not in my back yard) approach he mentioned at the Morse town hall meeting. He suggested, perhaps unintended, that the issue will be a live round during the second session of the 85th Iowa General Assembly.

Garrison Keillor’s “A Prairie Home Companion” plays on the kitchen radio Saturday nights beginning at 5 p.m. I have been listening off and on since graduate school. For a while, one of Keillor’s prominent sponsors has been Allianz, the German financial services company. The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) pointed out that Allianz owns 4.45 percent of the shares of the top 20 producers of nuclear weapons. Allianz has investments in Alliant Techsystems, BAE Systems, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman,  General Dynamics, Honeywell International and others.

ICAN has called for divestment in these securities, and I have been pondering what to do since hearing. Long standing behavior is hard to change, especially when part of our lives is built around it. I have invested a lot in “A Prairie Home Companion.”

It is habit and memory that turns on the radio. Memory can’t be changed, but habits can. Familiar and comforting as ” A Prairie Home Companion” is, I’ll find something else to do while preparing our Saturday night meal. It is a disappointing development in a world full of wonder.

Categories
Social Commentary

Getting Out

Tomato Cages
Tomato Cages

LAKE MACBRIDE— The last eight weeks have been a retreat from my recent life in society. Eschewing standing relationships, wrapped in a cocoon, endeavoring to earn money for the tax man, insurance companies and lenders, the universe of human contact has been reduced to a very small circle of family, close friends and work. I got out yesterday to attend a political meeting. It was a mixed bag.

On the positive side, I spent time with like-minded people I have known for a while, engaging in ideas and strengthening relationships. On the downer side, there is a lot of work to do to make social progress, and the voices heard often are the loudest, regardless of the efficacy of their arguments. My take-away was an unsettling feeling of cultural dissonance.

The droning of talking points— the would be muezzin called for prayer from a seat in the back of the room. Her schedule followed no holy book, her themes were less than holy— the whims and fancies of enthusiasms founded in self-identified diatribes. She leveraged the event to support her secular devotions. Absent another voice, it’s all those gathered would hear. We have to be an alternative voice to the vapid droning.

It cannot be that social progress can be made only by the affluent class, people that earn more than a living wage. But it takes an economic platform to be active in society— source of finance, a safety net. It is beyond the means of most people. Many struggle to achieve such a platform their entire lives, wrapped in a social cocoon, getting by as best they can.

We each feel a sense of dignity and worth that comes from our indigent circumstances. We live in a society that would suppress our native instincts and bend our will to meet the economic, social and political needs of others. We must resist with all of our strength, remaining true to ourselves.

There is a personal responsibility to contribute to social progress, and it is hard to do under any circumstances. After examining yesterday’s events, my conclusion is that I have to get out more.

Categories
Living in Society

Divided Government Comes Home

Morse Fence
Morse Fence

MORSE— State Rep. Bobby Kaufmann held a town hall meeting at the Morse Community Center, where 25 people gathered this afternoon to hear what is going on in Des Moines. He wanted to hear what we had to say, and some members of the audience had a lot of it. Kaufmann reported that local celebrity, Laurie Tulchin of the Newport Road clashes,  helped pay for the hall.

Johnson County Republican party chairwoman Deborah Thornton approached, after the formal part of the meeting, and asked me to sign a petition changing how we would be represented on the county board of supervisors. I don’t support the proposal and said so. She said, “that’s okay,” and moved on to others, after mentioning the Rand Paul event coming up in Coralville. It was an example of the new Republican diligence in what they may see as a Graham township opening to expand their base. Kaufmann won only 42 percent of the vote in Graham precinct during the 2012 general election. I know Graham precinct and believe her effort was futile. However, one had to appreciate her diligence and persistence.

I liked Bobby Kaufmann the first time we met, and still do. What is surprising is now that I have a Republican representative in the state house, I also like divided government. Even more than the so-called trifecta, when Democrats, under Chet Culver, controlled the governorship and both houses of the legislature. (Note: The three branches of government are executive, legislative and judicial. Legislators seem to forget the judiciary in their tripartite calculus).

In divided government people have to work together to conduct the state’s business, each holding the other party accountable. For a working stiff like me, that’s as good as it gets in government.

After the 2012 general election, I wrote in the Tipton Conservative,

“In the 85th Iowa General Assembly, House District 73 will be typical of Iowa, where our state representative and state senator, Democrat Bob Dvorsky, will be in the majority in their respective chambers. In order for anything to get accomplished, the senate and house must seek bipartisan common ground as a first step.

The mistake of past house Republicans has been to get some house Democrats to join in legislation, call it bipartisan, and lay blame in the other chamber when it was rejected. This went both ways.

Kaufmann has an opportunity to differentiate himself. If he rejects the stale blame game house Republicans have played with the Iowa Senate, and, as he promised during the campaign, works toward bipartisan solutions to get meaningful legislation passed and forwarded to the governor, then he will grow his base of support and help his re-election prospects.

However, if he plays the blame game, his prospects for re-election diminish.”

It is too early to tell how the session will play out, and for me, everyone is too chummy over in Des Moines. Today, Kaufmann demonstrated that whether or not he read my letter, he gets what I had to say and has been working toward getting something done in divided government. He repeatedly mentioned his relationship with Democrat Dave Jacoby of Coralville (and their seven lunches together this session). He gave Jacoby credit for helping craft bills that gained true bipartisan support when put to a vote. It is hard to legitimately complain about that.

As a citizen, I believe our legislature doesn’t need to do dumb things like prop up the nuclear power industry, support economic development deals like the one with Orascom, or turn away an expansion of Medicaid in some reasonable form. If I don’t agree with Kaufmann on some important issues, he is doing the work of representing the district. At the same time, my state senator is protecting me from Republican bad ideas.

Now that divided government has come home to roost, one finds it not very progressive, but better than expected.

Categories
Work Life

Saturday Morning after TGIF

Screwdrivers
Screwdrivers

LAKE MACBRIDE— There was a time when our life on the Iowa prairie resembled what now is referred to as the middle class. My mother worked at home and at the school cafeteria, and my father had a shift job at a meat packing plant, Monday through Friday. We kids went to school and church, played in the neighborhood, and from time to time, our maternal grandmother came over for Sunday dinner. We had little money, and didn’t need much. After Dad’s death I found one of his pay stubs in his basement workshop indicating $89 per week.

Dad was involved with our family, the union, politics and getting ahead. After work on Fridays he would head to Pete’s Midwest Tavern to socialize, and blow off some steam. On Saturday mornings he slept as late as he ever did, his wedding band and watch on the bedside table until he rose. As he struggled to get ahead, he took up golf as a means of socialization and networking, although he didn’t call it that. Eventually, Saturday morning sleep-ins were replaced with an early tee-time. It turned out he was good at playing golf, not quite a scratch golfer.

It’s been a lot of years since Dad passed on— it is difficult to tell, beyond the gene pool,  whether I am like him or not. He would likely disapprove of my current temp job as a shift worker, as he had better things in mind for me. He never said exactly what, but provided career advice, “don’t become a grease monkey— keep your hands clean.”

After a week of warehouse work, my workmates and I do thank God when Friday arrives. It is a bit lame that I don’t know if bars are open after midnight. Always, I have headed home, although someday my younger cohorts may invite me out after work. I would go if they did.

My hands swell from the manual labor I perform. I take off my wedding band and place it on the dresser near where the watch I haven’t worn since the 1990s rests, its battery dead. I sleep in on Saturday morning, and it’s okay to break from society and its conventions.

The way the phrase “middle class” is used today seems spurious. A marker for a political agenda, rather than a condition or status in society. Demographically, the term is meaningless because of the vast range of economic status of the group falling between the haves and the have nots— the have somethings.

I feel working class when sleeping in on Saturdays, tired from the preceding week of manual labor. Whatever one calls it, luxuriating in being who we are is important to maintaining our sanity in a turbulent world. Even if it only lasts for the brief time between sleeping and waking on Saturday mornings.

Categories
Home Life Kitchen Garden

Three Spring Lessons Learned

Arugula, Basil and Lettuce
Arugula, Basil and Lettuce

LAKE MACBRIDE— The sound of rain dripping in the downspout woke me. Opening the blinds revealed a queue of cars protecting school children from the rain at the bus stop. It is an overcast day, with rain we surely need. The school bus arrived, and I moved trays of seedlings outside to harden them. Better plants be hardened by the weather than children. Life will be hard enough as they finish grade school and begin to grow up.

Spring has been a time of lessons learned in Big Grove.

Cooperation with neighbors enabled me to borrow a rototiller and till the garden as well as it has ever been at no financial cost. That benefit, combined with working together in a common enterprise, is a reminder of our local culture, and the need to nurture it.

Seeking out people with experience in similar interests can provide benefits. Working together with them is even better. The inspiration to plant more seeds in trays this year was working with experienced growers at a local farm. Seeing the success others have can inform our own successes.

Adaptation to the sometimes crazy weather was the climate reality with which we lived. The cold, wet spring retarded progress in yard and garden work. Though delayed, the trees and plantings are now thriving. It is better to focus on what progress can be made than to complain about the weather, and other things beyond our control.

Life is what we make of it is the old saw. Quotes, proverbs and sayings aren’t worth much unless we put them into practical application by doing things with others. It takes time and effort. Sometimes it takes replacing bad habits accumulated over time with something better.

Perhaps the best lesson of this spring has been the reminder that we can’t stop living. If there is any hope for social progress, it is in working together with others toward a common good— a lesson that extends beyond spring.

Categories
Living in Society

On the Body Politic

Main Street
Main Street

LAKE MACBRIDE— Would that the body politic were a human, subject to purges and nostrums that would cure what ails it. Alas, there is no cure for the body politic or our role in it. On most days we accept politics for the diverse, desultory and sometimes malodorous reflection of society it is.

That is not to say politicians are smelly. The body politic is less about public office holders, and more about us. The politicians, elected officials and those who would be, are full of good intentions, and occasionally, will take a principled stand on an issue. But more than these visible manifestations of it, the body politic is all of us in our raucous cacophony and wide spectrum of interests. Part of the dynamic is being disengaged from politicians and politics, most of the time.

To lead a reasonably normal life, one must resist tendencies driven by political activists, and focus on a more general political life. I have a few things in mind.

Engaging in politics includes campaigns, but is mostly governance. The work of elected officials is to govern after being sworn in. Vigilance of their performance and participation in guiding their actions are important in the body politic. In Big Grove, we are represented by two Republicans and three Democrats between the Iowa General Assembly and in the U.S. Congress. Whatever we want to accomplish depends upon working with all of them. When a favored candidate loses an election, some activists turn immediately to working on the next campaign to supposedly replace the undesired elected official. This behavior misses the point of governance.

It is common knowledge that a U.S. Senator or Representative must constantly raise political contributions for the next campaign. For them, the campaign never ends when they have a targeted dollar amount to raise each day. An elected official’s life includes constituency work, public appearances, and maintenance of a public presence, in person and on the Internet. All of this is a form of campaign work. People might think anyone can run for office, get elected and serve, but the large number of lame candidates who have recently challenged the incumbent in our U.S. House district is testimony to the fact that not anyone can. If elected officials must be in continual campaign mode, most of us do not.

My experience during the last five election cycles is that people are interested in politics, but not that much, at least in public. The tendency is for people to change their voter registration from partisan to no preference, so much so that no preference registrations are the largest segment of voters in many districts. This reflects the practical desire to dissociate from the body politic, even if people take general elections seriously. Some register no preference for business reasons, some to hide their political beliefs from neighbors, and others to feign an objective stance when deciding for whom to vote. It is evidence of a curious dichotomy between abhorrence of things political, combined with sub rosa engagement.

Life is more diverse than seeking the next big political campaign. Rather than the body politic, we should think of political engagement as like shingles in society. Once one has had the pox, they are a carrier for life.

Categories
Work Life

Plasma Sales and Politics

LAKE MACBRIDE— The Cumulus radio station in Cedar Rapids was advertising how a person could earn up to $340 per month selling their plasma. It’s enough money that it was worth a look to see if plasma sales could fit into our bottom line. It sounds kind of grim, but people do it all the time.

Plasma is the pale, yellow liquid portion of blood that helps our bodies control bleeding and infection. When one donates plasma, our blood is removed and the plasma separated before blood is returned to our body. We generate more plasma within a couple of days so twice a week donations are usually possible.

Donating takes about an hour and plasma collection centers make it easy with a straight forward, step-by-step process. Importantly, they explain how payment is loaded on a debit card. It is literally using one’s body as an ATM.

Several self-employed and low-wage earners in my circle use plasma sales to supplement monthly income. Got a toothache? Better schedule some sessions at the plasma center to get dollars to pay the dentist. One suspects residents of our nearby college town use the cash for cigarettes, sugary drinks and beer, but in any case, plasma sales can be a reliable and steady source of income if one meets the requirements for donating.

The money could be put to good use. For example, it could be used for political donations. That way, when a political telemarketer called, I would know my approximate annual budget, and be able to say, “Yes. I’ll donate that $100, which will take me four plasma sessions.” Politics would literally be based on blood money then.

We could go a step further and say that all financial contributions to politicians had to originate in plasma sales. There would be a natural limit to how much a person could donate, and a restriction could be placed on corporations that said something like, corporations can make political contributions, but such contributions must be paid via the plasma of shareholders, imposing a natural limit to money spent by corporations during political campaigns. I bet corporations would exercise their free speech differently under such a rule.

If my modest proposal about political contributions through plasma sales seems a bit edgy, I am pretty sure it would work. Importantly, it would set a human limit on political contributions. Having skin in the game would take on a whole new meaning. Most Americans are asleep at the wheel of politics, and would not contribute, so there is little danger of a glut of plasma on the market.

If times get tough, I’ll re-visit adding a plasma sales income line to our household operating budget. For now, I’m just glad I don’t have to do it.

Categories
Environment Social Commentary

Pelicans and Cranes

Crane at Mehaffey Bridge
Crane at Mehaffey Bridge

LAKE MACBRIDE— The pelican migration is underway, and flocks of the white and black birds fly lazily— above our lakes and river— back and forth in a pattern I recognize, but can’t adequately describe. Pelicans appear here twice a year. I stopped during a trip to North Liberty to watch them fly near the construction site for Mehaffey Bridge.

I am leading a new life with my beater of a car. The radio has six preset buttons, of which four are set. I haven’t tested the cassette and CD players and listen mostly to a country station in Cedar Rapids owned by Cumulus Media. The music fits my new lifestyle, or seems to.

Country music on Cumulus gets me thinking. It is imbued with a certain familiar life, and while on a trip to work or to market, it is easy to suspend disbelief and listen. The songs are places where I don’t have to be me until Monday, people cope with loss as they drive your truck, and where “I found Jesus” rhymes with “I wrecked my first car. I tore it all to pieces.” Whether one likes the new country music or not, the snippets of reality are tangible, visceral the way manual labor is— stripping away the intellectual aspect of our lives. That may be the point of my predilection to hit number four on the presets most often— sometimes it is good to just stop thinking.

Consider the cranes. Man-made with engineering specifications that enable a reach four stories above the roadway to build the new bridge. They are built to fit the task, work from floating barges, and reach heights limited by design. Our lives today tend to be more like cranes than pelicans. Near these man-made lakes, we lean toward believing Bill McKibben, that we are at the end of nature. Except no one told the pelicans.

Beyond the fixed world of my used Subaru, with its country music tuner and enough life to keep me going for a while, are the flocks of pelicans, doing what pelicans do— part of which is inspiring us to believe there is more to life than what we find on main traveled roads needing an overhaul.