Living in Society
Politics mostly social commentary.
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It is a commonplace of 2026 Iowa Democratic campaigns that candidates must appeal beyond party lines. Set aside the registration numbers (only 527,675, or 29%, of Iowa’s 1,807,752 active registered voters are Democrats), and winning non-Democratic votes is essential. My question is whether Republicans will vote for a Democrat. It is one thing to attend… Read more
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Much has changed since Iowa opened to settlement in 1833 after the Black Hawk War. Some things seem unchanged. The brief period between 1836, when Iowa became part of the Wisconsin Territory, and the platting of the City of Solon in 1840 was a time when people saw a grove of trees and decided to… Read more
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I wrote about the role Pablo Picasso played in my creative life after seeing the retrospective the New York Museum of Modern Art on June 4, 1980. My creative work takes place in a context of mundane blocks of time into which I divide each day. There have been different iterations of this since reaching… Read more
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When Mark Divitt voted in the June 2 Democratic primary he noted there was no candidate on his ballot for the Iowa House of Representatives. That led to his decision to run, followed by Iowa Democratic Party Chair Rita Hart calling a special nominating convention for House District 91 on July 9. About half of… Read more
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I attended our home owners’ association annual meeting on Tuesday. Since we cut the number of board members back to seven, the positions have been filled, and life here goes on. The quarterly dues have been the same since we moved here in 1993. There is a road repair project going on, although our main… Read more
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It is fitting that the late Scott Kleppe was named honorary Grand Marshall of this year’s Solon Beef Days. Kleppe was a constant presence in the city, and helped set up and tear down the event for decades while in the city’s public works department. He died unexpectedly on June 10. He will be missed… Read more
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Ambient temperatures reached into the 90s beginning Tuesday and have been unrelenting. That’s how early summer weather goes in Eastern Iowa. That’s a lie. According to local meteorologists, average temperatures are running about seven degrees above the 30-year average high. Read more
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My Google origin story is in 2006, a group of consultants from Hyderabad, India, working on a software installation at my Cedar Rapids office, convinced me to move to a new email platform called Gmail. At the time I needed a referral to get into Gmail, which the guys gladly gave. That decision, with unlimited… Read more
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My insurance company informed me there will be a National Military Monument in Washington, D.C. They wanted my permission to put my name on it. I did not respond. On Veterans Day 2015, I wrote, I don’t understand veterans recognition in the 21st Century. Everyone thanks veterans for their service if they know he or… Read more
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Will reading be a short anomaly in human history? That’s a question asked by Rose Horowitch in her Atlantic article “The End of Reading is Here.” It is a bit of a downer, especially for people who make it a point to read from a paper book every day. I’ve written before about how few… Read more
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