Category: Living in Society

Politics mostly social commentary.

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Living in Society

Politics Going Forward

Big Grove Precinct Polling Place Nov. 5, 2019

Last night I attended my last meeting as a member of the county party’s Democratic central committee. Once I chair my precinct caucus, I’ll be finished with my obligations. Considering it was 2004 when I reactivated in partisan politics, 20 years is enough devotion to this civic duty. It’s time to move forward.

Given my belief in the importance of collective action, what shall I do? I don’t know. Decreased mobility as I age will have me avoiding knocking on voter doors in future cycles. Likewise, the technology that drives human interaction has changed since the days when I could grab a list and make effective telephone calls to voters. Stuff envelopes for mailings? Maybe, yet that has its problems as well. One reason I am leaving active Democratic politics is the old methods don’t work any longer. There are demographic changes at work in my precinct and they have driven the electorate to vote Republican. The local Democratic party hasn’t kept up with the times, God love them.

I may be best at writing about the Iowa political scene. While newspapers are dying (small town Iowa newspaper continue to consolidate or close), when I post something on the Insights page of the Cedar Rapids Gazette, it gets noticed. Same thing with my bloggery here and on Blog for Iowa. I’ve written my share of candidate support/opponent criticism op-eds, yet the times call for something different to dig us out of a hole of ineffectiveness that enables Republicans to thrive.

What seems most important, that few are paying attention to as such, is the further deterioration of the post-World War II consensus that brought unparalleled economic vitality to the United States. Rich folks and libertarians never cared much for the changes wrought by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and have fought those changes vigorously during the Post-World War II prosperity. It looks like they are finally beginning to win this struggle to the detriment of citizens like me, to the detriment of a Democratic form of government.

People say our politics divide us, but what about it does? The Milton Friedman doctrine that “the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits” is a significant part of why Americans are so divided in our politics. This prevailing culture ran contrary to what skilled workers believe and eroded a key aspect of society for people who sought identity through the workplace. It forced a choice between our values and pragmatism. It has not been good for society. It left a vacuum that remains unfilled. Republicans, including the 45th president stepped in to fill the void with their malfeasance.

We must ask better questions of businesses: What great products do you make? How do your workers buy into the company? Why do corporate CEOs get paid so much? How are you giving back to the community? What percent of revenue is invested in long-term research and development? What do you do to make life better for consumers who use your products? If you outsource parts of your business, what is your moral responsibility to subcontractors? How does your company deal with external costs like its impact on clear air and water? There are other questions inadequately addressed that could occupy a writer’s time in perpetuity.

As I write my autobiography, I’ll dive into my political history, beginning with my favorite story about working for Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 presidential campaign. However, my public presence in politics must change to secure the benefits of living in a democracy. No political party can help much with that. Their role must continue to be to find excellent candidates to run against the Republican machine. I ruled out running for office again. It is time to pass the baton to the next generation of political activists and focus on what I do best.

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Home Life

Christmas 2023

Detail of Christmas tree from a past year.

We celebrated a minimalist Christmas this year. My spouse and I left the holiday decorations in their boxes, did not plan a special menu, and made some cards to send to a few friends. Ambient temperature was 53 degrees Fahrenheit at 3 a.m. on Christmas Day, and rain is in the forecast. It will be a time for reflection.

The first Christmas I think of is when I was in first grade. I had a discussion with Mother about whether Santa Claus was a real person, and that year imagined I saw him flying through the sky with his reindeer. Father spend a lot of time in the basement of our rented home near Wonder Bakery on River Drive. He was building me a desk to keep in my room for school studies. I rapidly outgrew it and still have it. Our child indicated they don’t want it when I’m gone. I’m okay with finding another home for it.

Midnight Mass was an annual Christmas activity after we moved to Marquette Street in 1959. I remember walking the block and a half to the church as snow fell upon us. It was one of the best-attended services of the year, so we had to go early to ensure getting a seat. My maternal grandmother was the main force of religion in our family and she herded us along. Holy Family Catholic Church was a center of our family life. Mother and Father were married there, Grandmother worked as a housekeeper in the rectory. Mother worked in the school cafeteria. I was baptized and confirmed there, as were my siblings, and we kids attended grade school at the parish school.

When I left home in 1970, Christmas became mostly a time of traveling home for the holiday. At university, I didn’t want to stay in the dorm over the long Christmas break, so I went home. I do not have living memory of those Christmases. It was never the same after Father died in 1969. When I enlisted in the military in 1976, I came home for Christmas maybe once. It was a long way from Germany where I was stationed.

After our wedding we split holiday time between Ames and Davenport where our parents lived. When our child was born, it felt important for grandparents and great grandparents to have time with them and the end of year holidays were a good time to do that. It was never our holiday because of the travel. It was an important duty of parenting we fulfilled as best we could.

Since our child left Iowa in 2007, Christmas has been hit or miss. There were good ones, and average ones. At some point we stopped doing anything special. We haven’t unboxed the decorations in a few years. We make an effort to call important people in our lives, yet that gets spread over the time between Dec. 18 (our wedding anniversary) and New Year’s Day. Christmas Day is no longer as special as it once was.

According to the Social Security life expectancy calculator, a reasonable expectation is I will have 14 more Christmases and my spouse will have 16. I expect to do everything possible to make them the best we can. Merry Christmas dear readers. Have a happy 2024!

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Living in Society

Book Review: The Big Myth

The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway is a keeper. It was written in the context of a number of contemporary books that outline the role of market fundamentalism in our society. The authors present a convincing case that U.S. Government is smaller than many other industrialized nations and could be better used than it is. The reason our government is not better used is that on the spectrum of free markets to government control, a small group of people have perpetuated the myth that the free market can solve all of our ills and government is too intrusive. They intentionally retard social progress. The book is not a quick read, yet it is vitally engaging throughout.

If you are familiar with the work of Jane Mayer, Nancy MacLean, Anne Nelson, Anne Case, Angus Deaton, Matthew Josephson, and Dahlia Lithwick I recommend reading The Big Myth.

Having married just after Ronald Reagan was sworn into office, I lived through much of the second half of the book. The history Oreskes and Conway wrote is illuminating. What I suspected, and the authors confirmed, was that market fundamentalists found a way to use popular culture to indoctrinate the population in basic tenants of their beliefs. Whether it was the collaboration between Laura Ingalls Wilder and her daughter Rose Wilder Lane in the Little House books, Ayn Rand’s work in Hollywood censorship, Ronald Reagan’s work for General Electric, or Milton Friedman’s numerous and widely read opinions, op-eds and columns, there was an intentional effort to add a layer of conservative ideology to mass culture. Call it what it is: propaganda.

The book made me reflect on how my basic views toward life in society were influenced without me knowing it.

My self-view is one of self-reliance. I stand on my own two feet and endure whatever challenges come my way, hopefully successfully navigating them. I wrote something similar to this many times over 50 years of writing. After reading The Big Myth, I realize this mental attitude may have been a form of indoctrination by active, libertarian agency that found its way into literature, movies, and television programs to which I was exposed from an early age. While self reliance is not bad, that it became part of my mental outlook through indoctrination is not good.

I am not freaking out! The disturbing part of libertarian propaganda about market fundamentalism is the absence of any alternative response. In fact, conservatives constantly accuse liberals of brainwashing children in public schools, to the extent the Iowa Legislature passed a significant private school voucher law to address their fears. Why aren’t liberals in the game? They, like me, likely didn’t understand how deep the propaganda went. There have been few comprehensive stories written about what libertarian radicals have been doing for a hundred years. Oreskes and Conway remedied that.

Pick up a copy at your independent bookstore or, if they have it, from your public library. The Big Myth is essential reading as Republican extremists work to undo American democracy with the backing of large-sized business interests. We can do better than that.

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Living in Society

Invisible Hand at Christmas

November 2023 snowfall.

Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations is a book seldom read in its entirety. Libertarians went through multiple iterations of winnowing the more than five hundred fifty pages into something more readable, something more closely matching their ideological viewpoint. One time, they serialized a right wing version in Reader’s Digest. I will never read it. I don’t know anyone who has read it, certainly not Iowa’s current crop of right-wing politicians. They may know the phrase “invisible hand” even if they don’t use it when enacting policies that make life worse for many Iowans.

The invisible hand is a metaphor for the unseen forces that move the free market economy. Ronald Reagan referred to it as the “magic of the marketplace.” With economic freedom comes prosperity they say. Only it doesn’t. This is truly magical thinking.

This week it was announced Koch Industries is buying the Iowa Fertilizer Company in Wever. This facility has been a story of money changing hands among large, wealthy entities from the gitgo. The $110 million in financial incentives from the state finally comes home to roost with a company that is so deeply embedded in Iowa Republican politics we forget to notice their presence. Is this Adam Smith’s invisible hand of the market, or just the greedy hands of industrial capitalists?

Right wingers believe in the efficacy of the people as individuals with each making their own decisions in a free market economy. This holiday season they emphasized their belief that people, as a group or social class, don’t mean much of anything to them as they work to please corporate sponsors.

Last night, Governor Kim Reynolds released her Christmas message to Iowans, which I quote in full:

“From a humble stable in Bethlehem more than 2000 years ago, the world was given the greatest gift of all time, a newborn King sent to bring light to the world. 

“This Christmas season, the part of the world where Jesus was born is impacted by war. And yet, his promise of peace is everlasting. 

“As we gather to celebrate this joyous holiday with family and friends, let us be reminded of the many blessings that we enjoy as a free people and the responsibility we have to each other as children of God. 

“On Christmas and always, may we be the light in the darkness.  

“Kevin and I, and our family, wish you and yours a Christmas filled with joy and light. 

“God bless you and Merry Christmas.” 

Office of the Governor Press Release, Dec. 22, 2023.

Let this sink in: “Let us be reminded of … the responsibility we have to each other as children of God.”

That is, unless one is poor and can’t afford health insurance. By privatizing Medicaid, the state created an expensive, inefficient process that denies care to some who need it. In that case forget about our shared responsibility to provide needed health care.

That is, unless one is a child who qualifies for the free lunch program where Governor Reynolds on Friday rejected available federal funds to pay for a summertime EBT card for hungry children. In that case, you can go hungry, and by the way, she said, you need to go on a diet because you kids are obese.

That is, unless one lives in our substandard nursing homes where the state is as much as 41 months behind in conducting annual inspections in violation of federal regulations. In that case you can just drop dead.

Where is the idea of Christian charity to bind us together in meeting common needs? Where is the invisible hand to lift up the poor and provide adequate opportunity to achieve minimum financial needs? I submit it is busy in the pockets of the wealthy, delivering government benefits that frame their success, of a kind the poor will never see.

This Christmas season we must vow to change how we treat the poor with our votes… in 2024 and beyond. Republican politicians are not listening. Voting them out of office is the only thing they might understand.

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Living in Society

Haven No More

Photo by RDNE Stock project on Pexels.com

One of my long-standing beliefs is nearby Iowa City is a safe haven for LGBTIQA+ people. It is a place where people can live without undue fear and be who they are. It was, anyway. I recently heard the LGBTIQA+ community is breaking up. Folks are moving out of state to escape the regressive policies of our Republican state government. Governor Kim Reynolds has been the lynch pin in persecuting LGBTIQA+ folks and her supporters cheer her on. If what I heard is accurate, this is a sad legacy. We need a haven for the vulnerable until broad acceptance of diversity is forthcoming. By the fact of Iowa City being the county seat the haven it has been exists, yet seems under pressure.

I have been insulated from this because I don’t live or do much in the county seat. My LGBTIQA+ friends are long-standing and rooted. They are friends, not members of some group. When we get together we discuss important stuff like which schools are best, which clinics provide good health care, and politics, of course. This is what normal people do.

Changing perspectives of our lives in contemporary society is part of living. As Iowans abandon the countryside in favor of living in large metropolitan areas, there will be diversity in cities. That it is concentrated is more the problem. Like every other time in the state’s history diversity can cause isolation, alienation, and conflict. People literally get run out of small towns and cities because they are different. Unless one was born and grew up in Iowa, there is no reason to stay. My issue as a native Iowan is I don’t know where I would go if I left.

All of this makes life more difficult for an aging American. It would be great to invite LGBTIQA+ family members to move here and find a home closer to ours so we can spend more time together. They could be their authentic selves, including being part of our family. That remains possible in a more liberal county like ours, yet the freedom needed to perpetuate this culture is being eroded.

We’ll see where this ends. What I now understand is I must be more attentive to diversity in the county seat as well as where I live. If I am not, there will be safe havens no more.

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Living in Society

Russo-Ukraine War Continues

Photo by Mathias Reding on Pexels.com

We are nine, going on ten years into the Russo-Ukraine War and there’s no sign of resolution. Russia determined the Ukrainian people are part of Russia and annexed Crimea on Feb. 20, 2014. Russia now occupies one fifth of the Ukrainian land mass.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrived in Washington, D.C. Monday as part of the Biden administration’s “last minute push to convince lawmakers to pass a supplemental funding bill, as officials warn that the money for Ukraine is running out,” wrote the Associated Press. I ask myself, “What are we doing in Ukraine?”

For a while, the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel pushed Ukraine out of the news. Conflict over the failure of the long-standing idea of a two-state solution to Israeli and Palestinian claims over the Holy Land, that began after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, took the headlines. This is mostly because every person I know has an opinion on the long-standing conflict in the Middle East. It was a more current thing to talk about rather than hundreds of thousands of people dying in the Russo-Ukraine War. Historian Lawrence Wittner wrote about this on the IPPNW Peace and Health Blog.

Grinding on for nearly two years, Russia’s massive military invasion of that country has taken hundreds of thousands of lives, created millions of refugees, wrecked Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure and economy, and consumed enormous financial resources from nations around the world.

And yet, despite the Ukraine War’s vast human and economic costs, there is no sign that it is abating.  Russia and Ukraine are now bogged down in very bloody military stalemate, with about a fifth of Ukraine’s land occupied and annexed by Russia.

Lawrence Wittner, Replacing a disastrous war with a just peace, IPPNW Peace and Health Blog, Dec. 11, 2023.

Yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer posted the following on Threads:

Schumer doesn’t tell half the story and it is not because of the word limit on Threads. When communicating in or to media, the Majority Leader needs to keep it simple. Surprised he hasn’t said something like “Russia bad, Ukraine good.” Maybe Schumer is right to say it like that. I am of an age I want to know more of the story.

Atlantic Monthly writer Tom Nichols wrote about communications on Monday.

President Joe Biden is trying to run for reelection on a record of policy successes. In modern American politics, this is a nonstarter: Many Americans no longer tie policy successes or failures to individual politicians. Instead, they decide what they like or don’t like and then assign blame or credit based on whom they already love or hate.

Tom Nichols, The Glare of Presidential Power, The Atlantic Daily, Dec. 11, 2023.

“Many American voters now want a superhero, not a president,” Nichols stated. What these voters don’t want is to think about is the devastation in Ukraine attributable in large part by United States support for the war.

In a Dec. 10 substack article titled, “Ukraine’s Percolating Hatred of America,” Matt Bivens, M.D. wrote:

We’re coming up on the two-year mark of this completely avoidable and utterly mismanaged disaster. The beautiful Ukrainian countryside is devastated. Enormous sums of money, and the lives of hundreds of thousands of young soldiers, have been squandered. Millions have fled Ukraine, including many of the young men. The old men — those too tied to their communities to go into hiding from the draft — are who’s left to carry on the fight.

And now, we’ll waste their lives, too.

Matt Bivens, M.D., Ukraine’s Percolating Hatred of America, The 100 Days substack, Dec. 10, 2023.

Bivens addresses the “the burden of guilt that the United States bears for this pointless tragedy.” The story he tells is appalling on multiple levels. I won’t summarize except to say it should be more widely circulated than it is on substack.

My bottom line on Ukraine is we elected people to manage the support we have provided to the country. We should support Ukraine in this fight against Russia. How much support is enough? Today that question refers to financial support Republicans are unwilling to give as the president proposed it. To me, the country elected Joe Biden and when Ukraine’s war with Russia is flagging we have a choice to make. Do we continue as we have been doing and fill the president’s order for more funds? Or do we take stock of where we are and either go all in, or move on to other pressing problems? Those are tough questions for a citizen to answer. For now, I support the president.

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Home Life

Clothing and Me

Photo by Karolina Grabowska on Pexels.com

I basically wear a uniform: jeans, t-shirts, sweatshirts, socks, underwear, footwear, and that’s pretty much it. I own a couple of woven shirts with a collar, and I kept one blue blazer from when I worked in transportation and logistics ending in 2009. I am a plain dresser these days.

Among issues discovered during the year-end budget reconciliation was an unexpected $451.52 spent on clothing for me. I was stunned. Clothing. For me. I researched each transaction and purchases were my basic wardrobe: three pair of jeans, three pair of footwear, t-shirts and underwear. These were not designer items, although I bought them new. I’ll be getting the broad axe out for this budget item.

The single wardrobe change this year was buying longer t-shirts to cover my behind when bending over in the garden. It was with a sense of social responsibility that I now possess seven “tall sized” t-shirts with logos like The Legend of Zelda, NASA, Smokey the Bear and Star Wars. I bought the cheapest cotton ones available and they should last a long while unless I get into something while working in the garage or outdoors.

The problem with blue jeans began when I started buying inexpensive Lee jeans while working at the home, farm and auto supply store. They fit well but were poorly constructed and wore out quickly. Now I’m buying Levis which in their current iteration as a company are durable and should last. Levis cost double the price of Lee, yet represent the better value.

Footwear wears out. I bought a pair of rubberized boots to wear while removing snow from the driveway. The soles fell off my previous pair. I also got a new pair of slippers for $13.28 to wear in the lower level of the house where I do my writing. I don’t want to track things from the unfinished lower level to upstairs and the old ones wore out. I got an inexpensive pair of red Skechers for fancy when my walking shoes wore out and my “fancy” Nikes changed to walking shoes.

I continue to use my Army-issued combat boots when digging in the garden. I walked all over the Fulda Gap in Germany in them, and have run hundreds of miles in them while in the military. What should I say? They are well broken in and nowhere near end of life. They are good shoes to last almost 50 years.

I don’t do a lot of styling around here, not even with scarves. The outerwear is pretty old, and the caps I wear are mostly advertising for tires, farms, seed companies, a Twitch stream, and The Climate Reality Project. Some of the caps date back to the 20th Century. I get a lot of wear out of these items.

Though not really complaining, this post helped me calm down about the expense. Any more, peeling myself off the ceiling has become an important part of aging. Hopefully the four and a half c-notes was money well spent and the 2024 expense will be cut at least in half or completely eliminated.

Thanks for reading.

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Living in Society Sustainability

Provisioning in Isolation

Lafayette Flats, Buffalo, New York. Photo Credit – Wikimedia Commons.

Millennials seem unlikely to purchase homes in the same numbers as my cohort did. So many are sharing an apartment or house and paying rent. It becomes difficult for them to build equity the way I did when we paid down a mortgage. There are other consequences of living with others in a shared apartment or house.

The worm has turned on millennial home purchases according to some. When student loan payments were paused during the coronavirus pandemic, newly available funds were directed into home-buying. According to CNN, “The Department of Education said Wednesday it has approved the cancellation of nearly $5 billion more in federal student loan debt, bringing the total amount of student debt relief provided under the Biden administration to $132 billion for more than 3.6 million borrowers.” This should be a catalyst for more home-buying in the millennial cohort. Maybe they will catch up.

The other part of this financial equation is the lack of good-paying jobs. In part, this is driven by consolidation and outsourcing of functions in the business world. Pay packages have changed so more of compensation goes into hourly wages or contractor fees. Thanks Ronald Reagan and the Republicans for this crappy economic environment for younger people.

The change in types of jobs available also has to do with automation. The automation revolution began some time ago, yet it is taking off with force in 2023. Anything that can be done by a computer or robot will be. Human workers? Not needed as much any more.

Stuck living together with unrelated others is an issue, in particular, during the continuing coronavirus pandemic. According to the University of Minnesota, older adults made up 90 percent of U.S. COVID deaths in 2023. While the younger people the virus targets may be less likely to die of COVID, they continue to get sick and it’s debilitating. A goal for mixed households is to prevent the coronavirus from entering the residence. If it does get in, isolating individuals so they don’t contract it in close proximity to each other is a priority. For some that means shutting the door to a private room if they have one and not leaving one’s room except to use the plumbing.

I had a conversation this week about what food could be eaten in isolation from COVID without going to the kitchen or refrigerator often. It came down to only items that could be eaten as is, or made with boiling water. It didn’t take long to develop something both nutritious and filling. I had some ideas to contribute to the conversation.

When I was younger, I rode buses a lot. From time to time I encountered Hispanic men heading North for agricultural work from Mexico and points south. They solved the food issue for a long journey by making a meal of two cans of food: one beans with sauce and the other some kind of vegetable. They carried the full trip’s supply with them in their bags. It was shelf stable, filling, and reasonably nutritious. They could eat them while standing in a bus station and did.

When my group of Army officers left Germany in 1979-80, one of my buddies was assigned to the U.S. Army’s Fort Natick Labs. He participated in development of meals, ready to eat (MREs). Modern versions of these are available to the public, yet are too expensive for a person who has to share an apartment in order to live in a large city. They make nutritional eating, and people keep them in their bug-out bags to use in case of an emergency. The reality is there exists a generation that can’t afford to live, even in the most ideal economic circumstances, let alone in difficult situations during a time of contagion.

Eventually all the housing stock will become available as older generations die off. Perhaps prices will decline enough for millennials to buy. When I was born, I came home to a three generation home where an aunt and uncle lived along with Grandmother, Mother and Father. It was how they coped with limited income from mostly menial or low-skilled jobs. If I believe being related to housemates makes a difference, it’s because I have experience it has. Multi-generational households are a tradition that goes back deeply into my Appalachian roots. My forebears were dirt poor in many cases.

Being unrelated to others in a shared house is something different, though. I don’t have good advice for those who must do so. What may be the first step is realizing shared households have become a permanent fixture in the American landscape, a significant change from what has been. With such acceptance may come peace of mind if not riches. Peace of mind is well needed in a modern society that evolved around wealth migrating to the richest among us. It’s become a place where we must fend for ourselves.

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Living in Society Sustainability

More About Groundwater

Waterfowl swimming in dawn’s light on Dec. 7, 2023.

The nearby City of Solon contributed about $1,000 to a four-year study of the Silurian Aquifer. By comparison, The U.S. Geological Survey contributed $153,000, Johnson County contributed $310,700, and the City of Marion, much larger than Solon, and a subject of the 2011 Silurian Aquifer study, didn’t give one penny. Johnson County is hosting the study and expected to eat cost overruns of about $50,000 thus far, Josh Busard, Director of the Johnson County Planning, Development and Sustainability Department said in a meeting I had with him yesterday.

I’ve been following sustainability of the Silurian Aquifer, where much of east-central Iowa draws groundwater, for almost 20 years. The meeting with Busard was prompted by County Supervisor Rod Sullivan after I sent him a link to this post. After the meeting, the good news is there is plenty of groundwater for the next couple years. Cut to the chase: Y’all should be conserving water where ever you live. The study is about a year from completion, said Busard.

The study is important locally because Solon, Tiffin, and North Liberty are among the fastest-growing cities in the state. Solon alone grew 50 percent in the 2020 U.S. Census. If Solon does nothing more than build out already approved subdivisions within city limits, it could easily add another 750 to 1,000 residents. That’s not to mention the many subdivisions surrounding the city. Each new person will bring increased demand for water. The entire area draws from the Silurian Aquifer.

I have a lot to say about what the study does and doesn’t do. I’ll save that for another post.

The main outcome of my meeting was to get up to date on what the county is doing. It is always positive to find someone else working on the same issues. We had a good conversation. Busard sent me some public documents to which I link below. If interested in the sustainability of the Silurian Aquifer, I recommend you read them.

Executive Summary for the Board of Supervisors.

Exhibit A to Scope of Work Agreement.

U.S. Geological Survey PowerPoint on the Johnson County Silurian Groundwater Model.

Read my previous post, “Enough Groundwater?” here.

Thanks for reading.

Categories
Home Life

Exercising Indoors

On the state park trail, Dec. 3, 2023

The challenge of winter is to continue exercising at least half an hour each day regardless of weather. Taking a shovel to a couple inches of snow on the driveway is a natural, yet as warm as it’s been, isn’t a consistent source of exercise. Walking the trail is out, although some neighbors do it. I don’t enjoy the slippery surface the snow and ice mixture creates. A few days ago, I was getting a bit panicky as I hadn’t found anything to do.

I ended up searching the internet for ideas and came up with walking in place. I tried it a few days last week and based on how I felt after my half hour sessions, it is a better form of exercise than trail walking. Going forward, when I can get outside, I will. When I can’t, I’ll put on a CD and listen to music while stepping in place for a half hour. It’s something I can do until it’s time to begin working in the garden.

The message of this post is pretty simple. Unless we stick to the idea we need exercise in addition to what we get on an average day, our health will suffer for it. I’ve come to believe keeping at it — doing a set amount of daily exercise — is as important as the exercise we do. So, problem solved — for now.