A message from CommUnity Crisis Services and Food Bank:
It’s difficult to find words for the situation our community is in right now. We are so grateful to receive incredible support from our community, and we’re lucky to be surrounded by people that truly care about their neighbors.
However, the current economic climate has created an urgent situation at our Food Bank. Food and financial donations are both down, and our inventory is scarce. In January, we had 1,640 more visits to the Food Bank than the month prior. And with everyone’s financial situation being affected by inflation in the past year, in-kind donations decreased from almost 15,000 lbs. of food in December to just over 5,000 lbs. in February. We are in need of Food Bank donations in order to keep our neighbors fed. We understand every budget shrank this year, but if you are able to help, we really need you right now.
If you can help with a financial donation, click here.
To learn more about CommUnity Crisis Services and Food Bank in Iowa City, click here.
Three bond measures on yesterday’s ballot passed with required majorities. 18.51 percent of registered voters participated in the election, according to preliminary results released last night by the county auditor.
A curious fact about the election was that 530 people signed the petition for the bond referendum and 632 voted for the bond. One presumes those 530 signers all voted for the ballot measures and made up the majority of votes that resulted in passage.
Based on following local elections for many years, I submit those 530 voters make up the core constituency in school board elections. Without those voters on board, no school board candidate is likely to win an election. While there have been challenges to the school board status quo during the last two cycles, the core constituency candidates won the elections. If an anti-establishment candidate does not recognize this basic aspect of school district politics, and develop a campaign to counter it, there is little chance they can beat the establishment.
Next up is a school board election in the fall when Adam Haluska and Jami Wolf’s current terms expire.
Here are the preliminary results of yesterday’s election. Click on the image to enlarge its size for better reading:
There is a school bond election today and I’m voting yes to the $25.5 million the school district wants. The bond might not have been necessary if Republicans in the Iowa legislature had been doing their job to support K-12 public schools instead of ditzing around with which bathroom people use and restricting access to books. I expect the bond to pass with a low-turnout vote.
Today in the Iowa Senate 11 bills are on the debate schedule released yesterday by Republican Senate Majority Leader Jack Whitver. The governor’s education and state government reorganization bills are on the list. So are the bills with restrictions on which bathroom a person can use, and prohibiting trans-gender medical procedures for minors. There is also a ban on “woke” investing of public funds. I intend to lay low after we vote, run a few errands, and let the shit show commence and run its course. Republicans have the votes to pass whatever they deem appropriate, logic and compassion be damned. They are expected to pass most of these bills.
In the meanwhile, I plan to write until we have to leave. Like many people, I don’t see what benefit can be derived from our politics. At least, today that is true.
When I was in eighth grade at Holy Family Catholic School, we were required to keep a current events scrapbook. I still have mine. It has four sections: Vietnam, Nation and World, Local, and Misc. My grade on the project was an “A.”
I clipped this Associated Press photograph from the Times-Democrat, a precursor to the Quad-City Times. A soldier was shot, and in the image has just begun to fall. I thought of this image through the years because it reminds me of the reality of war. We need such a reminder.
The Vietnam War was ongoing during my high school years and prominent in society. That’s likely why one fourth of the scrapbook was clippings about the war. The idea we boys would all potentially face compulsory service weighed on those times.
Soon after my 18th birthday, Mother took me to the Selective Service office to register for the draft. Our 1966-1967 high school yearbook was “Dedicated to the struggle for peace in Vietnam, especially to those graduates who are or soon will be a part of that struggle.” Going to war seemed a real possibility that day.
While I was reluctant to get involved in anti-war protests, when four students were killed at Kent State, I participated in a demonstration at the Davenport Armory, carrying a mocked up coffin representing one of the dead. I also participated in a school strike, skipping our humanities class because there were more important things going on in the world. I gladly served detention for skipping class because I had done the right thing.
As a septuagenarian, we work to get rid of things that can’t be passed on. I’ll be keeping this clipping, my draft card, and memories from that time. The reality of war has become distant from us. It is sanitized by media and highly controlled public relations staff in the military.
Dan Feltes was elected First Vice Chair of the Johnson County Democrats on March 2, 2023.
The monthly central committee meeting was followed by the off-year caucus. The evening was intended to start us toward re-organizing the county Democratic Party to win in 2024. It was a somewhat chaotic meeting. We are Democrats, so that’s to be expected.
The best part of the meeting was the reunion with people met during previous campaigns. We talked about our work to elect Royceann Porter as the first black county supervisor. We talked about walking the walk. We talked about shared experiences. It was good.
I have no illusions about what is possible. The meeting was a chance to get out of the house and discuss politics with others. For a while, I’ve been participating via video conference rather than in person. There was a different dynamic to being there. If we did something to make a difference in our politics, that would have been a surprise benefit.
Conversations in person remain difficult after a long withdrawal from society beginning during the coronavirus pandemic and continuing as I write my book. As the engines of conversation ignite, I’m not sure we are at our best when we converse in person with strangers.
One person ranted about doing more door knocking to activate people to work on politics. They had what I would describe as a driving personality. Drivers tend not to be the listening type and just want to assert their point as gospel. That never goes well.
Why did Democrats perform so abysmally? The answer was at the doors, for those who were listening.
I door knocked during the midterm campaign and found people home. They didn’t want to get involved with politics. Some weren’t even interested in voting. I called it apathy at first, but that’s not right. People are dealing with complex lives and pressure from all parts of society. It is work enough just to deal with getting by. Politicization of schools during the pandemic was particularly on people’s minds. Politics seems unlikely to resolve situations like this. So people turn their back on politics, even if it goes against their self-interest, even if it means striking out on their own. Political organizing in that environment was challenging. Little seems to have changed less than a year later.
Much was made at the meeting of an “aggressive plan to rebuild the Democratic Party in Iowa under the leadership of our new chair, Rita Hart.” Here’s the problem: Hart lost her last two elections. The race for the Congress was a nail-biter and our best chance to hold the First District Congressional seat. We came up short. No question Hart is a decent person and a loyal Democrat. It will take more than that to turn this Republican state around. There’s little hope with Christina Bohannan either. She lost the first Congressional race in the district 46 percent to 53 percent. She should have won. The Democratic Party needs winners to lead us out of the woods. They are in short supply.
I have confidence in Zach Wahls and Jennifer Kofrst who are our senate and house minority leaders. They are two people when we need a legion of activist leaders.
By the end of the caucus, we talked about building infrastructure to activate people to work on campaigns. We have large geographies of the county represented by Republicans. It seems like we should learn about those precincts and do what it takes to turn them Democratic. For Pete’s sake, Democratic voter registrations in the Johnson County part of House District 91 outnumbered Republicans. We still lost that half of the district. Consensus was lacking in our group about this focus.
People talked about how Johnson County goes blue every election and how we might help people in the rest of the state with our excess capacity. We too quickly take the winning portions of the county for granted and project that on conservative areas like ours. I mean, I worked on campaigns outside the county before. While we try to be helpful, we don’t always know the turf or the culture of those foreign canvasses. When it’s all hands on deck to win a special election, not all hands are of equal value. It makes me gag when I hear and read of the reference to Johnson County as being solid blue.
We are supposed to follow up with our conversation via video conference in a couple of weeks. I’d like to find a replacement for myself on the central committee. Even the most active in my precinct want no part of that. At the end of the day, now is the time to finish my book and that will have to be my focus for the next 18 months. Good news is the first in the nation Iowa precinct caucuses were cancelled and that will free up my time.
Tomorrow night is the biennial organization meeting and election of officers for my county’s Democratic party. I plan to attend in person, even though video participation is available. I’m fit to be tied about our state-wide politics for a couple of reasons, yet mostly because Democrats lost our ability to hold back the extreme politics of the opposition.
We need a path to fixing this.
Former county supervisor Pat Heiden filled me in with a fundraising email on Tuesday:
Hello! I’m reaching out to you today because we need your help! The Iowa Democratic Party is initiating an aggressive plan to rebuild the Democratic Party in Iowa under the leadership of our new chair, Rita Hart.
It begins with us in Johnson County.
Email from Pat Heiden, Feb. 28, 2023.
I’m glad Heiden remains involved with party politics. She already worked a full career before winning her election. Instead of taking it easy after leaving office, she remains politically engaged. Good for her.
I previously received a fund raising email for the same event, to which I replied,
Happy one month left of winter!
You can take me off your political fund raising list. I won’t have extra cash for political donations until I hit the lottery or get our house fixed up whichever comes first. Also, I’m 80k words short of finishing my book, and pretty busy until I write them.
I’m a bit overdosed with these four speakers in any case. They are very available, apparently everywhere.
Have a great spring, if it ever arrives!
Regards, Paul
Email sent Feb. 25, 2023.
Gone are my days of seeking to be a recognized political activist. As a septuagenarian I’m more interested in conserving resources and preparing for elderly living, especially if I become infirm. I’m still fit to be tied.
After decennial redistricting, we landed in a Republican-leaning Iowa House and Senate District. Our Democratic senate candidate worked hard to win the 2022 election and came up short. Our Democratic house candidate was unopposed in the primary, yet took a new, demanding job after filing that prevented her from running the kind of underdog campaign that was needed. After living through the 2012-2020 cycles with Bobby Kaufmann winning all five contests, experience shows it unlikely we will be able to get these seats away from Republican incumbents. That is, unless the county party does something more to win in 2024. This is one of the reasons I plan to attend the organization meeting in person tonight.
Is it that bad? Yes, it is.
Our State Senator Dawn Driscoll is part of Republican party leadership. While she does communicate through a weekly newsletter, she has supported leadership initiatives, notably, school vouchers and setting liability caps for medical malpractice and the trucking industry.
She is floor manager for Senate File 443 which would reorganize how county supervisors are elected, requiring large counties like ours to eliminate at-large supervisor elections and establish districts where each voter picks only their own supervisor. This is a significant change. If it passes, rural voices will be less relevant than ever because to evenly divide the districts by population, urban voters will be part of and dominate every district.
Our State Representative Brad Sherman has sponsored 16 bills as of this writing. The list of bills resembles the playbook of right-wing interests. Included in his sponsorship list are bills covering means-testing for public assistance, anti-trans discrimination, K-12 social studies curriculum, prohibition of drugs used for abortion, a Second Amendment preservation act, voter suppression, changing the Iowa Civil Rights Act, closer scrutiny to books available in school libraries, nullifying the federal Defense of Marriage Act, and prohibiting abortion in the state. None of this is surprising. Elections matter and Driscoll and Sherman won fair and square.
Yesterday the national cancer registry released it latest report, saying Iowa was second in the nation for incidence of cancer. We are the only state where the rate of cancer cases is growing. Likewise, our public schools used to be considered best in the nation. We’ve fallen to 24th in K-12 schools, according to U.S. News and World Report. This is not to mention our deteriorating water quality, lack of population growth, and a workforce shortage that negatively impacts business.
While these things are not really news, everything is hitting at once. Iowa as presently configured is not a state I would choose if I weren’t born here. Young people wised up and chose to live and work elsewhere.
So, yes. I’m fit to be tied and young enough to try to do something about it. It will take all hands on deck to steer the ship back on a reasonable, responsible course.
How does an artist survive and thrive in a highly competitive creative environment? Produce a book like Doggerel by Martha Paulos. More than thirty years after publication, it seems fresh and holds interest.
The linocuts in this book are compelling and well-executed. The poems written by their respective (famous) authors add to the linocuts. Nothing about this book is a hagiography of dogs and that seems to be the point. The book is funny, and based in a society the reader can understand. Who hasn’t been chased by a dog while riding a bicycle?
Linocuts take more time to produce than other media. Paulos’ high level of technical craftsmanship made it worth our time to appreciate her art.
Recommended for people working toward a career in creative endeavors. Also for anyone interested in linocuts. If a person collects dog stuff, they should get a copy for Doggerel’s uniqueness.
While my spouse was being fitted for eyeglasses, I tried on a few pair of frames. I am not used to looking at myself in the mirror, yet my reflection was okay: hair reasonably combed, I didn’t look dumb. I don’t pay much attention to looks, so seeing myself was a bit of a shock. I appeared younger in the mirror than my age.
I delayed new glasses. If there is a prescription update at my April screening, I want the latest lenses. I keep eye wear for years after they are new.
Our Iowa life does not include vision insurance because it is a loser. Between advertised sales and self-imposed delays in updating our glasses, it is cheaper to pay cash for optometry service. The technician covered every common type of available discounts and insurance during the conversation with my spouse. By then, I had moved on, sitting on a bench in the mall reading my mobile device while the transaction concluded.
My news and social media feeds told a story of Iowa undergoing historic change in our governance. Republicans are just getting started. It will be a new Iowa when they are done.
The transition began with spurning the black president and Democratic governance in 2010. Obama won Iowa in 2008, but Democrats lost the governorship two years later as Terry Branstad returned to office with Lieutenant Governor Kim Reynolds. It intensified when Republicans gained control of the Iowa governorship, House and Senate in 2017.
The evangelical movement in Iowa politics is partly responsible for Republican dominance. Evangelicals are less about religion and more about authoritarian behavior. I mean, I met Bob Vander Plaats when he ran for governor and he is no more religious than a broken garden spade.
What is the political evangelical movement about? Getting back to a mythical past, one that never was real, and tearing down anything that conflicts, for example, education, tax structures, licensing requirements, rules about hunting, LGBTQ+ rights, and so on. The only thing sacrosanct is allegiance to corn, soy, and livestock farming. True believers genuflect at the altar of corn ethanol.
Before the 2010 three judges campaign, the one where evangelicals rallied to ouster three Iowa Supreme Court justices because they were part of a unanimous decision that an Iowa law restricting marriage to one man and one woman violated the state’s constitution, Iowans may have given evangelicals a pass. They are religious, how bad can they be? As the Iowa legislature prepares to enable young children to work in slaughter houses and other dangerous jobs, and parents assert ownership of children as property, we should now know.
The mall was deserted when I sat down. There weren’t enough shoppers to keep the lights on. It was during the middle of the day when seniors tend to business, but still. If I owned that mall, I’d be worried.
If the mall closes and the eye wear retailer moves, we’ll go there. Even though my prescription needs an update, I can still see clearly enough to know that Iowa will never be the same once Republicans are done with it.
It will be a new Iowa, one I hope all of us can tolerate.
The Thursday before Ash Wednesday is celebrated as Weiberfastnacht in the German Rhineland. It is a day when women assert their dominance by cutting off the neckties of men they encounter. Some of us long recognized that women should be in charge of society, and not only on “Silly Thursday” as today is known. Helau! to those who celebrate.
We had a dusting of snow overnight in Big Grove Township. It was lightly falling when I looked out the pre-dawn window and is expected to continue into tonight. It may be a proper blizzard and a good day to get indoors work done. I’m writing today about my return from Mainz and the work I did at an apartment at Five Points.
When I returned to Iowa from Germany I stayed at Mother’s house for a week or so, and then found an apartment at Five Points in Northwest Davenport. I was settling into my new place by Nov. 11, 1979.
We called it Five Points because it was the intersection of Division Street, West Locust Street and Hickory Grove Road. From the intersection there were five directions one could go. All five led to distinctly different parts of the city. There is another five points located in the city’s poorer district, although it is not well known among the majority white population.
Hickory Grove Road used to be a wagon trail before the arrival of paved roads. Follow it northwest and it intersects with U.S. Highway 6, not far from the place Jack Kerouac wrote about in On the Road.
“The sun was going down, I walked, after a few cold beers, to the edge of town, and it was a long walk,” Kerouac wrote. “All the men were driving home from work, wearing railroad hats, baseball hats, all kinds of hats, just like after work in any town anywhere. One of them gave me a ride up the hill and left me at a lonely crossroads at the edge of the prairie. It was beautiful there.” For me, it was a place to stay while I figured out my future. I wasn’t sure which direction I would go.
Excerpt from an autobiography in progress, Feb. 16, 2023.
I have living memory of that apartment at Five Points. While I was in Europe, a number of friends from high school had gotten married and I missed all of their weddings. Now that I was back, I ordered wedding gifts from a mail order catalogue so I could visit with them individually, present the gift, and get caught up on our lives.
The UPS delivery person was a high school classmate. He attended elementary school at Saint Vincent’s where since 1895, the Catholic Church had cared for children as an orphanage and school. My friend said he could get me a job at UPS if I wanted. If I had taken him up on the offer, I would likely have earned far more than I did during my worklife. I thanked him and declined. He ended up retiring early and moving to Florida.
I wrapped all the gifts and contacted my friends by telephone to set up dates. It wasn’t like being at their wedding, yet it was something positive. If I had stayed in Davenport, I would have attended their weddings and maybe closed in on one of my own. Marriage had not been a priority for me while in the military or as I returned to Iowa.
I don’t celebrate carnival any longer, except on social media. I used to join friends to attend the annual Rose Monday Parade in Mainz near the thousand-year-old Saint Martin’s Cathedral. It was a big deal, with hundreds of thousands of people in attendance. I note the date of my settling in at Five Points was the same as the beginning of the carnival season in Germany. A coincidence, I suppose… although maybe not.
As snow falls in Big Grove Township, we are bunkered in with provisions. I don’t plan to wear a necktie, yet if we get into a celebratory mood, I would. Happy Weiberfastnacht to those who celebrate… and Helau!
There is not a lot of money to spend on frills at the end of each month. I wrote about this before and while we hope to pay off our outstanding consumer loan this year, an unexpected expense could complicate things. Like many people we live on the edge between financial survival and ruin.
There are broader implications than our single household.
Last year, 48 percent of household expenses were programmed. That means property taxes, water, electricity, sewer, refuse hauling, road maintenance, insurance, telephone, cable T.V., car loan payment, and broadband. There is no escaping these expenses.
Sixteen percent of expenses were food, sundries, gasoline and cash expenses. One can economize here, but all of these categories are necessary. Our food expense is lower because we regularly use produce from the garden.
The balance of our expenses (36 percent) was what I call household operating expenses. This includes clothing, household repair parts, auto repairs, health co-pays, writing expenses, gardening, donations, and anything unexpected that pops up during the year. Sometimes things break and an outside contractor is needed to make furnace, electrical or other repairs. Contractors are not cheap.
I used to go shopping when the Super Bowl was televised. It was a tradition. I’d wait until the neighborhood got quiet, start the car, and drive to the mall to walk deserted passages and browse. It was my personal equivalent of Black Friday. I’m not sure how much I spent on such shopping trips, but not much. The message was more how anti-sports I became after seeing the Iowa Hawkeyes play with coach Ray Nagle back in the day. Sports was and is a waste of time in our household, unless someone we know personally is playing.
With no money left at the end of each month, and we had to take out a loan to pay for some unexpected expenses. Shopping out of tradition doesn’t make sense with a personal loan. It is better not to buy anything extra other than what we need to get by.
I compare this with the post-war boom during the 1950s when large companies banked on a consumer society. The population boomed and people were buying new homes and equipping them with modern appliances and furnishings. The car culture took off. Today, with so much of our expenses programmed and necessary, combined with replacement items, this has to be taking sales away from merchants who once relied upon them. We bought a used car last year, and will buy a major appliance or two this year, but such purchases can’t be driving the economy, at least not in the same way. Cars and appliances are made better to last longer these days and that has to hurt replacement sales.
We are going through the house to purge stuff we don’t need. So much of what we cared about for years, isn’t anything our child wants. We have the room to store old things, although there is nothing wrong with some empty space. I keep thinking I could need, use, or repurpose. I need to let go. It is hard to get a purge started, and we are not ready to call the waste management company to arrange for a dumpster. However; that day is coming.
The Super Bowl will continue to be a non-event here. We’ll make the usual meals, yet we won’t do any shopping outside our normal stocking levels to prepare. I’ll skip a traditional shopping trip that shouldn’t have been a tradition at all. I’ll be better for that.
Journey Home 
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