On the corner of my sorting table rest piles of recently read books. I am shocked at the level of retention from the experience. It is not as much as I want. Is there an issue with reading while aging, or not?
In an article titled, “Reading in Normally Aging Adults,” authors associated with the American Psychological Association present the following article abstract which describes the physiological and cognitive process. Sorry, it is a bit long, yet everything in it is important.
Skilled reading requires coordination of knowledge about language with a broad range of basic cognitive processes. While changes due to aging have been documented for many of those cognitive processes, the ability to read declines little during healthy aging. Aging is associated with slower reading, longer eye movements and more regressive eye movements, but the qualitative patterns of older adults’ eye movements in response to lexical characteristics (e.g., frequency) and sentence characteristics (e.g., word predictability) largely resemble those of younger adults. The age-related differences in reading behavior are due in part to older adults’ reduced visual abilities. In addition, they may result from compensatory strategies wherein older adults rely more on their intact semantic intelligence and less heavily on perceptual processing of text, or alternatively they may be a consequence of older adults being less adept at effectively coordinating word recognition with processes of oculomotor control. Some age-related declines are seen when reading comprehension and text memory are assessed at lower levels of representation for complex sentences. However, older adults perform as well or better than younger adults when higher-level meanings of a text are assessed. These high levels of performance reflect older adults’ ability to draw on crystalized semantic intelligence that provides well-organized structures in long-term memory of the patterns that tend to occur in natural language. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)
Reading in normally aging adults by Gordon, P. C., Lowder, M. W., & Hoedemaker, R. S. APA PsychNet.
My take away is that while my vision has somewhat deteriorated, mental capacity remains strong, and I can draw on information and experience gained in my past to better and more quickly understand what I am reading. According to other articles I read this morning, reading can maintain mental functioning, and stave off common mental illnesses among the elderly like Alzheimer’s disease.
The money quote is, “However, older adults perform as well or better than younger adults when higher-level meanings of a text are assessed.” In theory, these psychologists say, since I have visual acuity, I retain the potential to be as good a reader as anyone.
Why am I worried about the piles of books read yet little remembered?
The abstract points to a borderline area of reading: the interaction between read text and the stored intelligence in my brain. To what extent am I processing what I read in context of past reading experience, and to what extent am I taking in text to gain new experiences? My fear is it is the former. If we read, it should be to expand our knowledge and experience, not to intake words and sentences as a form of confirmation bias.
Because I curate a large home library, I plan to continue reading for as many months and years as possible. My daily reading goal is 25 pages from a book. For the most part, I exceed that amount depending upon how engaging the writing has been. Importantly, I want more than to check off the daily reading goal box on my to-do list. I want to gain knowledge and experience that will help me better cope with society. I want to read to become a better writer.
By year’s end I will have read almost 60 books. If the text is being assimilated into my existing cognitive capacity, there is nothing wrong with that. I take up each new book with hope it will reveal something about society, something specific in life, an answer to a question or something about myself. I also read to see how other authors write. As long as I take a few minutes to appreciate each book after finishing it, I am of an age where everything read becomes part of my world view.
First Lutheran Church with moon rise near Marengo, Iowa.
It took 42 minutes to reach Fireside Winery near Marengo where a group of political friends gathered for the first time since the midterm elections. Among topics discussed were the value of pedicures, local spa experiences, and nail salons. We talked about the election as well.
It was a long drive to get there, yet also important to stay engaged. Iowa County has half the votes in my Iowa House District.
In 2016, before redistricting, our current Republican state representative ran unopposed. In 2024 we may run a candidate again in the new district, although the strength of the Republican’s win was such it may discourage Democratic candidates considering a run. It only makes sense to run to win.
It was good to be among people with common interests. I refrained from drinking any wine at the gathering as I have given up drinking alcohol and driving. It turns out conversation is just as good without it. Drunken me would likely have rejected conversation about getting a pedicure. Now I’m considering getting one.
Fall colors along the long, mostly straight road from Ely Blacktop to the Highway 151 junction are captivating. Most row crops are in the bin with shades of yellow and brown dominating fields. Leaves on deciduous trees have mostly fallen. Traffic was light. It was a good afternoon to appreciate a long drive.
What did I do all year? I am at the point in retirement I had to look. One day blends into the next and I lose track of the calendar.
There is no ending the coronavirus pandemic. The governor extended the state’s Public Health Disaster Emergency Proclamation on Feb. 3, announcing it will expire at 11:59 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 15. After that, the coronavirus becomes normalized in daily, routine public health operations, she said. By declaring the pandemic normalized, the governor washed her hands of it. We are on our own. I still wear a protective KN-95 mask when among large groups of people, mostly when grocery shopping.
I got more involved with politics than I wanted to be. I volunteered to be an alternate member of the county central committee from our precinct. The two people who replaced me did not continue for another term so I’m back to being our single, main representative. I attended the county, district and state conventions, and participated in a number of events, phone calls and meetings for varied candidates. I worked as a poll watcher at the Big Grove Precinct polling place on election day. My main work of postcard-writing, door knocking, and events was for the Kevin Kinney campaign for state senator. I continued the long-standing personal tradition of stuffing envelopes, this time for the Christina Bohannan campaign. Politics beyond county offices was a bust this year.
Our last old automobile wore out. The 2002 Subaru broke some things for which we could not get new repair parts. It was a safety issue, so we donated it to Iowa Public Radio and bought a used 2019 Chevy Spark. I would have driven the old car for a while longer if we could have gotten parts. I like the new car’s fuel economy and tight turning radius.
In March, my sister-in-law moved to Des Moines for a new job. In July, our child moved to a new apartment in the Chicago area. We helped with both moves. That is a big task for septuagenarians yet we did the best we could. They appreciated the help.
We spent about $3,000 on “home operations.” About half of that was hiring a contractor to remove stumps and cut back our overgrown lilac bushes. The other big expense was repairing the yard tractor. All of the equipment I use around the house is getting old and in coming years will need repaired or replaced. Just this week we had to replace a fan in the furnace. After almost 30 years, it was developing the sound of failure.
I continue to serve on our home owners association board and as a sewer district trustee. I wanted to exit this work in June, yet there was no one to step up and do it. There is responsibility in complying with regulations pertaining to public water and sewer systems, so it is a non-trivial job. We do the best we can. I understand this water system management is part of living outside city limits and someone has to do the work.
Most of my time was spent writing, reading, cooking and gardening. I began devoting 30 minutes per day to downsizing some of our possessions. Am hoping slow and steady gets this done. I find going through and getting rid of belongings provides new energy for projects.
I seek opportunities to socialize and would do more if I could figure a way. Plain truth is once a person is “retired” they become less of a public entity and less important as younger folks assume responsibility in society. I’m okay with fading away once the need for my services ends. When it comes to community work, though, there may never be an end.
Coming out of the pandemic has been a long process yet that’s where we are. The last three years have been punk times. I’m ready for some new plans and fresh energy. I’m confident about finding both.
Yesterday the Rules and Bylaws Committee of the Democratic National Committee voted to advance a series of first in the nation states for the 2024 presidential nominating calendar. Iowa was not one of them. The plan includes South Carolina first, followed by New Hampshire and Nevada the following week, then Georgia, then Michigan. The plan is expected to be approved by the DNC early next year.
If one didn’t know Iowa was to be booted from the early states, they have not been paying attention.
Iowa and New Hampshire, both of which have state laws requiring them to go first, are considering next steps. If either state chooses to disregard DNC and changes the schedule, there are penalties, including losing delegates at the Democratic National Convention. Delegates are the whole point of the nominating process. There may be state penalties for failure to go first, but let’s face it, any state could pass such a law and who would enforce it? What will happen next in Iowa is presently unknown.
In 1968, the Democratic National Convention was a disaster in several ways.
Outside the convention hall, anti-war demonstrators protesting the Vietnam War roamed Chicago streets. The Chicago police department, under the direction of Mayor Richard J. Daly, used force in an attempt to maintain control.
During the evening of Aug. 28, 1968, with the police riot in full swing on Michigan Avenue in front of the Democratic party’s convention headquarters, the Conrad Hilton hotel, television networks broadcast live as the anti-war protesters began the now-iconic chant “The whole world is watching.”
1968 Democratic National Convention protests, Wikipedia.
At home, I saw televised news reports from Michigan Avenue. A friend was inside the Conrad Hilton with Harold Hughes who ran for president that year. He hoped the nomination of Hubert Humphrey, in a smoke filled room away from the convention, was something that would never again happen. South Dakota Senator George McGovern was assigned the task of re-designing the nominating calendar and process, which he did. We have been operating under the McGovern plan ever since.
Most Americans of voting age participate in presidential politics. Here is a brief summary of my memories. Consider it my farewell gift to the Iowa caucus.
Harry Truman: I was 13 months old when Harry Truman left office. I have no living memory of his administration.
Dwight D. Eisenhower: Our family didn’t like having a Republican president yet were thankful for his plan to build the Interstate Highway System. I recall talking about how it was designed so that military vehicles hauling missiles could travel under the roads and bridges that crossed the Interstates. We didn’t like Eisenhower yet accepted that his credentials during World War II yielded a competent chief executive.
John F. Kennedy: Father worked on the Kennedy campaign and shared some of that with me. If there was a Camelot, I’m over that now. I wrote previously about this. Click here to read that post.
Lyndon Baines Johnson: I stuffed envelopes for the 1964 Johnson campaign at the Democratic office in downtown Davenport. I came to expect that all elections would be like the Johnson landslide. I was young.
Hubert Humphrey: Based on conversations with my father, I felt the Humphrey nomination was tainted. Partly, I didn’t understand how the convention got so out of hand. I resented the corruption evident in Chicago Mayor Daly. Richard Nixon won in 1968.
George McGovern: My main memory of McGovern’s campaign was a rally before election day at the University of Iowa Pentacrest. I don’t remember if I voted. I wrote more extensively about the 1972 election here. Richard Nixon won reelection.
Jimmy Carter: I was in between finishing Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning, Georgia and traveling to my first assignment in Mainz, Germany during the 1976 presidential election. After Nixon’s resignation in disgrace, I literally didn’t care who was elected president that year.
Ted Kennedy: Turns out I didn’t care for Jimmy Carter enough to support him for a second term. I caucused for Ted Kennedy in Davenport and he wasn’t viable. I declined to join my union friends with the Carter group and went home.
George McGovern: My spouse and I caucused for George McGovern in 1984. We attended a forum in Des Moines where he, Walter Mondale, Jesse Jackson, Fritz Hollings and others appeared. At the precinct caucus, I joined the platform committee and was selected to go to the county convention as a McGovern delegate. It was my first taste of Johnson County politics.
Michael Dukakis: We lived in Lake County, Indiana in 1988. I remember saying to myself during the June primary election, “Who’s bright idea was running Dukakis?” He lost to George H.W. Bush.
Bill Clinton: Still in Indiana in 1992, I supported Bill Clinton. I took our daughter into the voting booth so she could press Clinton’s name on the touch-screen voting device for me. I didn’t devote a lot of time to Clinton’s campaign or to politics. Back in Iowa for the 1996 election, I continued to be inactive in politics. I judged Clinton could be nominated without my help and didn’t attend the precinct caucus. Clinton won Iowa 50.26 percent to Robert Dole’s 39.92 percent.
Al Gore: I skipped the caucuses in 1996 as I believed Al Gore would win the nomination without me. He did, and as we know, the U.S. Supreme Court stopped ballot counting in Florida during the general election, giving the win to George W. Bush.
John Kerry: I quickly came to believe the George W. Bush administration was the worst. In the first days after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attack, I rallied around the president. It didn’t last long. I wrote about my transition here. All three in our family attended the 2004 caucus in Big Grove Precinct together and caucused for John Kerry. I helped run the caucus as secretary that cycle. I joined the Democratic central committee again and worked on the Kerry campaign. I also decided that after his performance in the Whitewater controversy, long-time U.S. Representative Jim Leach had to go. In 2006 we elected Dave Loebsack to the Congress.
John Edwards: Despite all the negativity that came out about John Edwards after his last presidential campaign, I have no regrets having worked to make him the Democratic nominee in 2008. I spent time with him, his wife Elizabeth, and their children. This precinct caucus was the best attended in my almost 30 years living in Big Grove Township — about 260 people. I served as caucus secretary again and it was challenging to make a count. There wasn’t enough room in the school cafeteria and some of the voters stretched out into the hallway. I recall Edwards had a contingent from the care center in wheelchairs and on gurneys. In the end, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards tied and Clinton won the coin toss. Barack Obama got the most delegates and won the general election.
Barack Obama: During the 2012 precinct caucuses I led two precincts other than my own: Cedar and Graham. The caucus began with live video of Obama, then we broke into precinct groups. Noone was willing to lead the caucus among the eight people in each of two precincts. I convinced a friend to be secretary. Obama’s reelection was not a given yet his campaign was thorough enough to win a second term.
Hillary Clinton: I led the Clinton delegation to the 2016 precinct caucus. We had so many delegates we could send some to the Martin O’Malley group to make them viable and deprive Bernie Sanders of a delegate. I decided being a Clinton leader took precedence over running the caucus. It was a good decision. As we know now, Clinton won the nomination and lost the general.
Elizabeth Warren: I led my own caucus for the second time in 2020, supporting Elizabeth Warren for the nomination. I was well organized and the process proceeded smoothly. We split our four delegates with one each to Warren, Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg and Joe Biden. Biden placed fourth in Iowa. It wasn’t until South Carolina that the Biden train started to roll out of the station. Buttigieg won Iowa by a small margin yet any momentum was halted by a computer failure in the application we used to report our results. This disaster was likely a prime catalyst for removing Iowa from early in the nominating process this week.
Joe Biden: Joe Biden hasn’t announced whether he will run for president in 2024. One assumes he is in good health and will live long enough to serve a second term. If the DNC is successful in removing Iowa from the early states, as it appears they will be, presidential politics will be a lot different in Iowa. I hope it will be better.
Our county Democratic party held the first central committee meeting after the 2020 midterms on Dec. 1. I wouldn’t describe it as positive. It was a meeting without hope.
As expected, candidates for the Iowa legislature with districts contained within county boundaries won. So did the statewide Democratic candidates, yet only in Johnson County. Democrats, as has been widely reported, lost all statewide races except state auditor.
Someone on the first district central committee reported there is a concern among central committee members about a lack of leadership from the Iowa Democratic Party. Not sure if we are at “heads will roll” stage.
Locally, we raised a lot of money, yet failed to give it to candidates before the election. We had $32,000 in the bank after election day, a mortal sin. Could that have made a difference in some of the races we lost? We’ll never know.
County chair Ed Cranston said we had a goal of creating a 35,000 vote margin for Democrats in the county election. Our U.S. Senate candidate Michael Franken got a margin of 27,130. Cranston acknowledged a need to determine why we fell so far short of our goal. All we know at this point is no preference voters were neither adequately targeted, nor did they turn out in needed numbers. Numbers are being crunched, he said.
A former county party chair made a motion to move toward in-person meetings in January and February. About two dozen people participated in the Dec. 1 meeting via Zoom. The motion was voted down as committee members recognized the value of enabling as many people as possible to participate in the rebuilding process. In my one minute speech against the motion, I said it was discriminatory against disabled persons to suggest members must show up in person. The motion was a form of ableism, I said. Most of those participating via Zoom voted against the motion.
The central committee in a large county like ours has become less relevant to the political process. Whether we meet in hybrid form, in person, or virtually, no one has any good ideas about what needs to be done going forward. Emphasis on “good.”
This cycle we lacked a state coordinated campaign and didn’t know what to do with that freedom. With yesterday’s leak from the Biden team that the president was recommending early states be comprised of South Carolina, Georgia, New Hampshire, Nevada, and Michigan, Iowa will be even more isolated if that holds. That’s not all bad. It would be better if we had a plan for political life after the caucuses.
That’s right. The reality of the Iowa caucus is it’s over.
Last night the Biden administration hosted President of France Emmanuel Jean-Michel Frédéric Macron in its first state dinner. I hope no one got sick with all the fancy food. I mean, regular people don’t eat lobster and such like that. On the plus side, Biden held only one state dinner since the inauguration. Now back to work for the president and for the rest of us trying to stay relevant. The party is over.
View of Trail Ridge Estates on Thursday, Sept. 30, 2021.
SOLON, Iowa. — It is no surprise a year into development of Trail Ridge Estates by the Watts Group additional public costs are being identified. The first is environmental.
The Cedar Rapids Gazette reported yesterday the Watts Group was fined $3,000 by Iowa Department of Natural Resources for pumping construction runoff into a storm drain that leads to Lake Macbride. I note the Watts Group built the storm drain after developing what was previously a farm field. Such environmental pollution is part and parcel of a development this size. The lake is already feeling pressure from development and this additional loss of farmland has an impact. The matter was settled by the parties in a consent order signed Oct. 25.
What will cost more is the recently announced $25 million school bond expected to go to voters this spring. Trail Ridge Estates will contribute directly to area growth and the requirement for more classroom space in the school system.
The district, like the town of Solon, has seen a steady increase in enrollment since 2014, and anticipates planned housing developments — with another 500 new residential units — to bring additional families in to the district. Solon schools’ current enrollment is 1,450 and is expected to increase by about 350 to 750 students over the next 10 years, depending on how quickly new housing developments take shape.
The farm field in development was planted mostly in corn and soybeans, so converting it into housing is no significant loss to the food system.
Trail Ridge Estates was annexed to the City of Solon and will contribute to significant growth, maybe 50 percent more than the 2020 U.S. Census count of 3,018. What may get missed in this news is the area is evolving from what it was when we moved here into something new: a more expensive, environmentally compromised place to live. While promoters of the bond issue say it won’t increase taxes, how can it not increase expense as the school system grows to match population? The district will eventually see increased costs as a result of this development.
We will welcome more information on the bond issue. I plan to study it closely yet will likely vote for the bond. Public schools are endemic to thriving communities and we want our nearby city to thrive.
Vegetarian Thanksgiving dinner from a previous year.
Everyone invited to our holiday gathering was under the weather so we cancelled Saturday’s in-person event and video-conferenced. As we spoke, tissues were passed around and microphones muted while participants took care of sinus congestion. It was sub-optimal, yet worthwhile. Ours is a small family, so we are flexible. Those who tested for COVID-19 were negative.
We have plenty of uncooked leftover food. Enough so this week’s provisioning run will be extra light coming home.
I met a friend for breakfast on Friday at the Tipton Family Restaurant. It was our first in-person meeting since the coronavirus pandemic was declared in March 2020. We picked Tipton because it is the midpoint between where I live and he was staying. The restaurant gets three stars, yet to be clear, it is not on the Michelin star scale. Breakfast was fine as was our conversation and walk along the main street.
The rest of the long weekend was highlighted by cooking. We ate simple fare on Thanksgiving, a veggie burger patty with two sides. On Saturday I changed my dried bean recipe from baked beans to bean soup along with vegan cornbread. Sunday I made a pizza for lunch. Since pizza is mostly a delivery mechanism for melted cheese, and I haven’t found a way to make palatable vegan pizza, it was pizza for one. I incorporated home grown red pepper flakes into the sauce. I was sneezing for about ten minutes afterward.
At some point we will make the full holiday meal that includes wild rice, baked sweet potatoes, baked beans, scones and cranberry relish. We don’t know when that will be. Taking the big meal out of Thanksgiving changes the tenor of the holiday. We are okay with that.
What went wrong for Democrats in the 2022 midterm election? A lot. How do we fix it? The first reaction, and I believe the wrong one, is to throw the bums out.
I like Ross Wilburn, Iowa Democratic Party chairman and have since he was the Iowa City mayor. I agree with the idea that if he can’t perform as state party chair — and the lack of Democratic wins during the recent election cycle makes a case that he can’t — we should replace him. There are three parts to this and they don’t lead us there.
First, Democratic core activists like the groups with which I associate were very busy with political work for a year before the November election. Whatever analysis we or others might make about the mechanics of the campaign (Vote Builder, money, coordinated campaign, messaging) it doesn’t detract from the fact our core active Democrats were busy working to get our candidates elected.
Second, the state central committee, which elects the party chair, is increasingly irrelevant. Our last days of glory were in 2006 and 2008. It has been a long, dry season ever since. The biggest change in the state central committee has been the rise of Bernie Sanders supporters who wanted to change everything for the better. They won their elections to the central committee, yet I’m not seeing change we need. The last two cycles have really rotted. Maybe they should be replaced as well.
Third, the problem in replacing folks on the state central committee, and how they organized the 2020 and 2022 cycles particularly, is millennials and Gen-Z voters are not stepping up to help campaigns the way my generation was accustomed to doing. I noted in a previous post, contrary to the national trend, they were the ones who found reasons not to vote on Nov. 8. Instead, they are packing their bags and leaving the state permanently. This is part of a broader dynamic. Changing members of the central committee can be fine, yet it doesn’t address the brain drain ongoing in Iowa. This is an unrecognized, real-world consequence that costs the party. People who leave the state to better themselves seem most often to be, if not always, Democratic voters.
A Republican strength is it targets young Iowans who attend community college, get married, raise a traditional family, and settle down close to where they were born. The culture of this is stifling, yet some folks in those generations thrive in it, have multiple children, and buy McMansions to withdraw into church, school and family. For the most part, they are not Democrats.
Making do in this bleak Iowa cultural landscape seems unlikely for young people who have more ambition and are willing to trade what they know for a chance at something better. They will leave the state and never look back.
I’m not sure changing the party chair addresses this core problem. That’s why I’m not anxious for major changes in the state central committee.
For a minute, let’s go into the Wayback Machine. After Wilburn was elected in 2021, The Des Moines Register reported,
Wilburn said he would begin the party’s rebuilding efforts by creating a three-election-cycle strategic roadmap; improving candidate and local leadership development; working to become a better asset to county parties and other constituency groups; and improving the party’s use of data.
State Rep. Ross Wilburn elected to lead Iowa Democratic Party as chairman by Brianne Pfannenstiel, Des Moines Register, Jan. 23, 2021.
What of that plan? To my knowledge, that was the only public mention of it. On its face, it’s one cycle down and two to go. From my perch, candidate development seemed very good. There were great candidates fielded, like Kevin Kinney, who didn’t win their elections. This part was successful, even if the results were disappointing.
I’m not sure how the state party became a better asset to county parties. Here in Johnson County, we had freedom to structure a campaign the way we wanted. It appeared we had enough paid staff and resources to conduct operations. Statewide candidates were frequently present. We weren’t successful in the most Democratic County, yet there should be valuable lessons to learn. The biggest lesson should be found in answering the question why did we fall about 4,700 votes short of our 32,000 Democratic margin goal?
As far as improving the party’s use of data, all I heard as election day approached was that we were focused on turning out likely Democratic voters who previously voted only in presidential years. We had the data to target those folks, yet not enough of them voted. As I have written, my precinct turnout, among Democrats and Republicans was significantly less than 2018 and 2020. Part of that is erosion of Democratic registrations yet turnout in both parties was down. Three cycles equals six years, so hopefully the state central committee is busy analyzing data to figure out what went wrong during the first two.
During previous election cycles, I wrote my analysis of the election quickly, soon after the polls closed and results were known. It seems essential we take our time this cycle to examine the results carefully and thoroughly. I plan to live in Iowa for a long time, and would like to see more Democratic wins. 2023 will be the first time I’ve had a Republican state senator since we moved here in 1993.
Things have been better when Democrats had a say in our governance. We are a distance from that being the case again. During the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, part of the celebration has been coming to terms with that reality.
The garlic rack converts to a table by using a remnant of a 4 x 8 sheet of 3/4-inch plywood used to build our child a loft bed for college. I laid it down on top of the two by fours used to hold garlic as it dries. The rack is tall enough so garlic leaves don’t touch the floor. As a table I can work without bending over. It is a useful space to sort things out.
I read 50 books thus far this year. They are listed on the Read Recently page which is updated after I finish each one. Here are the highlights of this daily activity.
By far, the most interesting book was Year of the Tiger: An Activist’s Life by Alice Wong. She was born with spinal muscular dystrophy and her book stands out as a tale of living an active life with a disease that confines her to a wheelchair. In her discussion of Twitter, she describes how the social media platform is used by disabled persons who may have no other public voice. As Elon Musk acquired and is changing the platform, I hope he improves the disability community’s ability to participate in this aspect of society.
Memoirs and biography were too small a portion of the books I read. As someone writing their own autobiography, I should be reading more in this category. Each of the four I read was important. I enjoyed Loretta Lynn: Coal Miner’s Daughter more than Ted Kennedy: A Life by John A. Farrell and Like a Rolling Stone by Jann S. Wenner. Lynn’s book was relatable in a way Kennedy and Wenner are not. A person can take only so much of the life story of rich people. I associated Joan Liffrig-Zug Bourret, who died in the care center in town this year, with the many cookbooks she published at her Penfield Press. Her memoir, Pictures and People: A Search for Visual Truth and Social Justice tells a story that goes well beyond her chronicling of the Amana Colonies in Iowa.
When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamín Labatut seemed unique and necessary. The Chilean author presents, as The Guardian put it, “an extraordinary ‘nonfiction novel’ that weaves a web of associations between the founders of quantum mechanics and the evils of two world wars.” It was unlike anything else I recently read.
I read fiction for diversion and to see how other writers do their work. Amor Towles’ The Lincoln Highway was the best of the lot this year.
In poetry, how did I miss Mary Oliver in my life? I don’t know but Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver was well-written and engaging. I’ll be returning to this excellent volume.
Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How it Changed America by John M. Barry tells a story essential to anyone who is from or is writing about life in the Mississippi basin.
Related to my autobiography was The Trader at Rock Island: George Davenport and the Founding of the Quad-Cities by Regena Trant Schantz. This is an essential book about the settling of the Midwest. What was most surprising is it was just published in 2020. I would like to have read this when I was a teenager in Davenport.
There were no real clinkers in this year’s books. What made a difference in reading more was setting a daily goal of reading 25 pages in a book. I hope readers find my review of 2022 reading to be useful. I’d love to hear what you are reading in the comments.
Despite yesterday’s mass resignation at Twitter, things seem back to normal. When an authoritarian boss gives employees an ultimatum to work harder or leave, for most people the only choice is to leave, thus depriving the authoritarian of their leverage. This is America. That is, unless your visa is based on such work and employees have morphed into slaves.
My freakout regarding Elon Musk buying Twitter is over. The big picture, obvious to any sentient being, is the transition is not going well. I don’t like the many little changes I’m seeing in the platform, yet I’m still there and will be for the short-term. Also, I can enter my birthday and get balloons on my account that day. That might be nice. Give me an edit button and it would be the cat’s meow.
Most of the rest of this post was written before Musk’s arbitrary deadline for employees last night. I plan to continue unless there is a subscription fee or the platform goes dark.
After the election I purged accounts. During a political campaign, the reasons for following had a shelf life until the general election. I got down to 160 or so. Now I’m thoughtfully curating a timeline that provides me the best of what is available and relevant. As of this writing, there are 173.
The core of people I follow are those with whom I have some personal connection or long term interaction on Twitter. I’ve been to their house, went to school with them, worked on a project together, or otherwise know them in real life. There is also a small cadre where I don’t recall how we got started in social media yet the thought of dropping them was too much to bear. This is to be expected.
I distilled the many possible local news reporters to a group of about a dozen that I either know or interact with frequently. I follow a few reporters who work for major news outlets, like the awesome investigative reporters Robin McDowell and Margie Mason with Associated Press, Emily Rauhala with the Washington Post, Jane Mayer and Elizabeth Kolbert with The New Yorker, and a few others. Wednesday I added Trip Gabriel with the New York Times and Vaughn Hillyard with NBC News. Both of them have been a frequent presence in Iowa doing political reporting and highlight important national stories without their tweets being too many.
After Michael Franken lost the Iowa U.S. Senate race, I had to find some Democratic senators to keep tabs on what the upper chamber was doing. Amy Klobuchar started following my account during the 2020 Iowa caucus cycle after I followed her, so there is one. I also decided to add back Brian Schatz of Hawaii, Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin. Chuck Grassley follows me, yet I don’t follow him any longer. I get plenty of information about Grassley from other sources, including occasional in-person encounters, and his weekly legislative newsletter. My other U.S. Senator is Joni Ernst. Because she is a rising Republican star, there is plenty of information available about her activities. I follow my congresswoman Mariannette Miller-Meeks and she follows back.
Lastly, I revisited some of my connections with Friends Committee on National Legislation. I follow Joe Volk who is now retired and was general secretary when I visited in Washington, D.C. We did some events together in Iowa. I follow the current general secretary, Bridget Moix. I also follow Jim Cason whom I met in D.C. and Arnie Albert who was my D.C. roommate and is retired from American Friends Service Committee in New Hampshire. Friends Committee on National Legislation provides direct, accessible information about what’s going on in the capitol.
Like most users, I have no idea what Musk is doing. Perhaps he does, although Twitter users are doubtful and last night’s events were unexpected. He is apparently living at his office until whatever plans he has are realized. If he were to fail, which I doubt, I would shut it down and not seek another platform to replicate it. Twitter is useful for what it is –a valued news source. If it went away, I’d just have to adjust.
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