Category: Environment

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Environment Kitchen Garden

A Local Food Saturday

Saturday Farmers Market Produce
Saturday Farmers Market Produce

LAKE MACBRIDE— Herbs are abundant in the garden, so I have been making dishes that taste better with fresh herbs: red beans and rice with fresh thyme, pasta sauce with fresh basil, and bread with sun-dried tomato and fresh rosemary. Each iteration of a dish, prepared in a moment of time, has consequence in our lives. Every bowl of soup, sandwich and plate of pasta is different for a home cook. Sometimes the food is better than others— our homemade meals speak to who we are, what we want to be and what we can be.

The idea of local food Saturday is simple. In order for there to be a vibrant and sustainable local food system, individuals must want to find, purchase and cook with local food items. We have to make a market in the things we hold dear. That’s how I landed on the important role home cooks can play in sustaining a local food system. Saturday is a weekend choice that fits a lot of people. It’s not like I am the first to come up with this— I’m not.

It is possible, and rewarding, to change our outlook from a being a consumer who goes to market to being a producer of home cooked meals that includes local food. One could do as well to develop a meal plan that includes local food and local food outlets, since almost no one cooks all, or even most of their own food at home.

The act of buying is such a brief part of our lives. We should make the most of it by unchaining ourselves from the mega-mart and relegating grocery stores to a more proper role as supplemental sources of provisions. It costs nothing to change one’s perspective, and the financial and personal payoff can be superior.

What did I do with the items in the photo from last Saturday’s farmers market?

The turnips were an impulse purchase as I could have waited a week to get fresh from my garden. I cut and washed the greens, cutting about a cup into quarter inch strips for soup, and putting the remainder in a container to use as cooking greens later in the week. Using the bulbs, I made turnip soup that included a quart of homemade stock, carrot, onion, celery, the turnip greens and the finely sliced stalk of the broccoli in the photo. I added dried chervil, salt and a bay leaf to make four servings.

The kohlrabi was for an experiment cooking it with potatoes. There will be a number of kohlrabi from the CSA, and a couple are growing in the garden. I’m trying to figure out how to use them. They also go well in a salad, cut into raw, matchstick-sized bits.

The radishes, cucumbers and zucchini were for fresh salads. The garden and CSA are producing lots of lettuce, and we have salad almost every night— sometimes as a meal. Lettuce and other leafy green vegetables are an important part of a local food system, and because we produce our own, there are none in the photo. The yellow squash was to slice and cook with greens.

Broccoli was to steam with dinner as it is a favorite and the broccoli in the garden was not ready yet. One stalk is not much, so we also steamed the last of the fresh asparagus from the CSA. A vegetable side dish to soup and a salad seems a bit weird, but was delicious nonetheless.

Finally there is the local honey. I got it home and realized there was another open jar in the pantry. I made the previously mentioned bread with local honey, fresh rosemary, sun dried tomatoes and a custom mix of flours.

In all, I spent about two hours in the kitchen with local food preparation, not including the rising time of the bread. On average, people spend a lot less kitchen time in a day, but ganging up on the prep work on Saturday made for better meals later during the week.

The revolution in local food will come when we change our attitude from being a consumer of goods to a producer. There will be a time when our lives are more interesting than who gets booted on the television program “Chopped.” For some of us, that time is already here, at least on Saturday afternoons.

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Environment

On Michael Pollan

Michael Pollan
Photo credit: Fran Collin

LAKE MACBRIDE— Few people who work in academia are as well known, admired and reviled as Michael Pollan. Safe to say that a vast majority of the people on the planet have never heard of him.

Readers of this blog should know a). an answer to the question who is Michael Pollan and what does he do; b). I am familiar with most of his books, along with some articles, speeches and particularly his tweets on twitter; and c). I am not a “Pollanite” as some derisively refer to his followers.

The dust jacket of his latest book, “Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation,” has the briefest of biographical snapshots and is likely the best. He is an author, a contributor to The New York Times, and Knight Professor of Journalism at Berkeley. In a bit of self-promotion, he added the sentence, “in 2010, Time magazine named him one of the one hundred most influential people in the world.” Maybe more people have heard of him than I thought. More information about Michael Pollan is available on his web site MichaelPollan.com, and his full biography and curriculum vitae are useful for getting a brief overview of the man and his work.

Where Michael Pollan influenced my thinking was in three of his books that are mentioned less often, beginning with his 1997 effort, “A Place of My Own: The Architecture of Daydreams.” The other two were “Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education” (1991) and “The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World” (2001). What impressed me about “A Place of My Own,” and was a bit irritating, was that the book was about building his personal study, tying in a number of disciplines to tell a story about a building on his property— how he planned and built it.

My first reaction to Pollan was that he was a narcissist. What he does well is to take a common activity, like building a study, hemp growing, whole hog barbecue, or growing and tending lawns, establish a personal experience that relates to it, and lay a foundation to transcend the narcissistic impulse to focus on broader points. His inclusion of so much of his personal activities is a literary device, although my immediate reaction prevented me from understanding that at first. Sometimes the device works well (Iowa corn growing ), and sometimes it doesn’t (North Carolina barbecue).

There is really little point in writing, as I have done, about trivial things like cooking buttermilk biscuits, pruning trees and downsizing my book collection unless there is something relevant to say about the rest of society. My takeaway from reading Michael Pollan’s books is that we can base broader social criticism in our personal experience. As an academic, and now famous author, Pollan has access to information that most of us do not. That, and the unique perspective he gained from years of study, are reasons to read him.

Categories
Environment

On James Hansen

James Hansen
James Hansen

IOWA CITY— It’s hard to believe, but a lot of people don’t know who is James Hansen of Denison. He is a retired NASA scientist who took the first sentence of NASA’s mission statement, “to understand and protect the home planet,” to heart and explored the science of climate change. That is, it was the first sentence of the NASA mission statement until the George W. Bush administration removed it.

Hansen’s concern about the kind of world he will leave his grandchildren led him to continue to speak out about the need to mitigate increasing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere— the cause of global warming.

I met Hansen on Jan. 27, 2008 in Iowa City, and his message hasn’t changed much, except maybe to express increased urgency about the need to mitigate rising temperatures related to burning fossil fuels before it is too late.

If readers don’t know about James Hansen, they should. Check out his brief bio at the Columbia University website here. In this 17 minute TED talk, from February 2012, http://on.ted.com/Hansen, Hansen presents, in easy to understand terms, the science of global warming and the urgent need to do something about it.

There is no debate about global warming. The debate is over what to do about it. According to Hansen, we should stop subsidizing the fossil fuel industry and implement a carbon tax. We should do it now.

Categories
Environment Sustainability

Keep on the Sunny Side

Atherton Wetland
140th Street – June 9

BIG GROVE TOWNSHIP— The flood water is receding on the Atherton Wetland, bringing hope the Iowa River and Coralville Lake have crested despite today’s rain. It’s good news at a time we need it.

All hell is breaking out on the national scene, and it is not good. Where to start?

Sergeant Robert Bales’ cold-blooded killing of 16 non-combatant men, women and children in Kandahar province in Afghanistan came to light and defies reason. According to NBC News, Bales didn’t know why he did it. According to the article, “Bales’ lawyers have said the married father of two suffered from PTSD and brain injury after four combat deployments and was under the influence of drugs and alcohol the night of the raids on family compounds in Kandahar province.” There had to have been more wrong than this. The massacre points to another failure of military leadership.

There was news that the Central Intelligence Agency didn’t always know who it was targeting and killing with drone-launched Hellfire Missiles in Pakistan. The article reported, “about one of every four of those killed by drones in Pakistan between Sept. 3, 2010, and Oct. 30, 2011, were classified as ‘other militants’… The ‘other militants’ label was used when the CIA could not determine the affiliation of those killed, prompting questions about how the agency could conclude they were a threat to U.S. national security.” That non-combatants were the target of the CIA drone program was no surprise to those of us following reports from inside Pakistan, but the revelation was shocking nonetheless. The news makes timely the Covering Ground to Ground the Drones action this week in Iowa by Voices for Creative Nonviolence.

Finally, the news that the N.S.A. is monitoring metadata from our phone calls and information from a number of major Internet service providers was chillingly Orwellian. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd quoted George Orwell’s 1984 yesterday, “there was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to.”

For one, I was prepared to be constantly monitored by God’s omniscience by my Catholic upbringing. The federal government is no one’s god, and this intrusion on privacy, while apparently supported by all three branches of the federal government, just isn’t right.

In a turbulent world, these national issues are a distraction from work toward sustainability. As the Ada Blenkhorn/J. Howard Entwisle song the A.P. Carter family used to sing goes,

There’s a dark and a troubled side of life;
There’s a bright and a sunny side, too;
Tho’ we meet with the darkness and strife,
The sunny side we also may view.

Here’s to keeping on the sunny side as it will help us every day and may brighten our way. At least the flood waters are abating… for now.

Categories
Environment Home Life

Sunday Afternoon Drive

Flooding 140th Street
140th Street, June 2

BIG GROVE TOWNSHIP— When we were children, our parents used to take us out for a Sunday afternoon drive. A typical trip might include visiting Weed Park in Muscatine, friends of my parents in Blue Grass, or to the Niabi Zoo near Coal Valley, Ill. Today’s Sunday afternoon drive was not as much fun. I drove to 140th Street NE near Ely Road to see the progress of the flooding.

That is, not as much fun unless one is a fisher. When I arrived at the edge of the water, about half a dozen motor boats were out. Click on the thumbnail above, and the boats can be seen as small specks toward where the road rises out of the water. Word is out that striped bass, catfish and carp are biting. The reason I know is a neighbor mentioned it while I was working in the ditch in the front yard after the drive.

140th Street May 31
140th Street, May 31

The water has risen about four feet since Friday. Compare the two photos to see how the building is being submerged. If you would like, take a look. For me, I would not like. It is wearying to deal with the consequences of climate that changed when we should be advocating to change how society interacts with so-called nature turned into an owned and built environment.

Like this flooding, changing climate is hitting us where we live. In the water we use, the air we breathe, and the weather we experience. This weekend politicians sought photo opportunities to post on social media: of them helping sandbag buildings to protect them; of them inspecting the damage. What they should be doing is actual networking with their colleagues in government to find common ground and take concrete action to solve the climate crisis.

Some may not notice the climate crisis because they are so busy cleaning up in its wake, or in this case, trying to catch the limit of striped bass. Maybe they are taking a much needed Sunday afternoon nap. Eventually the frequency of these hundred year floods, at a rate of three in 20 years, will be noticed. It is not too late to solve the climate crisis, but we don’t know for how long.

Categories
Environment

Comparing the Floods

140th Street
140th Street

ATHERTON WETLAND— The flooding continues here. It has not reached the level of either 1993 or 2008— yet.

As I write, the county has issued mandatory evacuation orders for people who live in low lying areas. What used to be a 100 year flood needs a new name, as this spring brought the third major flooding in 20 years. One has to believe that a cause of the frequent and extreme weather is our changing climate, wrought by greenhouse gas emissions resulting from human activity. The flooding is a reminder of the importance of working toward a solution to the climate crisis.

A proximate cause of the flooding is the rain. The Iowa Department of Natural Resources reported record rainfall,

swinging from drought concerns to flooding worries within weeks, Iowa has set two precipitation record highs in 2013: the statewide average precipitation for March, April and May collectively at 16.65 inches; and a year-to-date precipitation total of 18.92 inches. These are highs among 141 years of records.

What to do but adapt?

If the reader clicks on the photo, there is a building on the left side of the image. During June 2008, the flood waters reached the eaves of this building. In 1993, the building did not exist.

We live near Lake Macbride and in 2008, the trail next to the lake was covered in water. It would take a lot more water to fill the watershed enough to reach our home, so were never in danger of a wet basement.

We’ll see how the flood of 2013 plays out, but based on the reports on social media, it may fall somewhere between 1993 and 2008 levels. Iowans are getting used to frequent flooding, indicating advanced stages of adaptation to changing climate.

Categories
Environment

Spring Flooding and Moving On

Flooded Wetland
Flooded 140th Street

ATHERTON WETLAND— 140th Street west of the Ely Blacktop has been flooding for a couple of weeks. The recent heavy rains, and those forecast for today and tomorrow are expected to create more flooding. The local result is the Atherton Wetland gets wet, holding water destined for the Coralville Lake, the Iowa River and beyond— serving its purpose in our owned and built environment.

Atherton Wetland
Atherton Wetland

June is a time of flooding, something Iowans are getting used to managing. The water is expected to flow over the 712 foot Coralville Lake spillway later this week, and the government is making preparations for the flood. In the personal world of quotidian affairs, the Ely blacktop is still open, and I should be able to make my way to Cedar Rapids later today to run errands.

Our lawn is lush, green and long— a habitat for birds, rabbits and other small mammals and amphibians. When the rain ends, it will be a four hour project to mow, bag and pile the grass clippings near the garden: a harvest of mulch for a garden that badly needs weed suppression. Garden weeds like rain as much as the lawn does.

Atherton Wetland
Atherton Wetland

It is just as well the rain came last weekend. There is plenty of inside work to do and the garden can be a distraction. This year, more than others, I feel a connection to the earth. Despite the rain, I harvested lettuce, arugula, spring garlic, chives, spring onions and radishes for our dinner salad. Perhaps it is the work on the farm and the understanding of where our food comes from that pulls me in. Perhaps something deeper.

Would I could let go and spend my days tending the garden and harvesting the produce of rain, sunlight, soil and biodiversity. For now, with the reality of flooding roads and other exigencies, that remains a dream.

Categories
Environment

Earth Day 2013

1970 Earth Day Button
1970 Earth Day Button

LAKE MACBRIDE— There is little new to say this Earth Day. It’s not that I’m down about it, but most everything has been said before.

What started in high school as a way to participate in a national environmental movement by selling green and black buttons leading up to April 22 has become institutionalized in a way that takes the punch out of things.

Government and corporations have Earth Day activities, and not as many of them this year compared to last. It is a sign that corporate reputation management is at play more so than the grassroots efforts of men and women who want to see our government act on the Keystone XL pipeline, reduce the use of hydrocarbon and nuclear fuels, and preserve our air, land, water and biodiversity.

Earthrise 1968
Earthrise 1968

There are a lot of things individuals can do to reduce, reuse and recycle, and many people do them year around. What is lacking today is the political will to reduce CO2, methane, mercury, and other emissions. Our culture is driven by corporations more than government, and the business models upon which they operate continue to consider the atmosphere the same way we do an open sewer. That has to change if human society is to survive. It’s not just me saying that.

It has been a long struggle to get environmental issues to have parity with war and peace, economic progress, social justice, and man’s inhumanity to man. Environmental issues are not at parity yet, but should be.

What we know today is that the time for individual efforts is past. Only by joining together with like-minded colleagues will change be possible, and there is no agreement on what change is desirable, nor a path to determining how to proceed.

For a while, we must stop talking, stop thinking… and consider where our lives on the planet place us. Earth Day or no, many will reduce, reuse and recycle as these behaviors have become part of our daily habits. It is not enough.

On Earth Day 2013, I plan to dig in our garden, and let the work produce a sweat as I plant spinach, radishes and turnips. A brief retreat from talking and thinking, appreciating the irony that it was agriculture that started the release of greenhouse gases that led us to today.

What is the greater good when it comes to the environment? I don’t know, but more than seven billion others on the blue green planet have a stake in an answer. It’s time to renew our efforts to find one.

Categories
Environment Social Commentary

Pelicans and Cranes

Crane at Mehaffey Bridge
Crane at Mehaffey Bridge

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

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

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

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

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

Categories
Environment Sustainability

Nuclear Power in 2013

Nuclear Power? - No Thanks
Nuclear Power? – No Thanks

LAKE MACBRIDE— A group called Saving America’s Farm Ground and Environment (S.A.F.E.) is hosting a meeting tomorrow about MidAmerican Energy’s study of two sites in Iowa where they may propose to build nuclear power plants. A representative from the electric utility is scheduled to brief the group about their plans, something they did previously only in a private meeting with land owners near the proposed site at 150th Street and Sweetland Road in rural Muscatine. My friends at Blog for Iowa posted details about the meeting here. Under different circumstances, I would attend, but alas, I have to work a job to pay my utility bills.

Nuclear Power Plant Site
Nuclear Power Plant Site

If the global mind exists, as Al Gore posits in his book “The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change,” it is powered by electricity. How society will produce the electricity to communicate is an open question. In a consumer society, electricity also powers cooking, laundry, staying up after sunset, and a host of personal and industrial tasks. Participants in a consumer society don’t often consider the question because the electric utility bill is inexpensive compared to other budget items.

What people do know is they don’t want a nuclear power plant in their back yard, and that is why people in Muscatine County are getting together. The memories of Chernobyl and Fukushima are too fresh, there is no safe level of radiation, and while the geography of the proposed site appears to be in the middle of nowhere, it is on prime farmland, and of interest to people from miles around.

MidAmerican Energy has a track record of obfuscation about their nuclear plans, and tends to operate in a perpetual salesmanship mode full of talking points and puffery. Locals are skeptical of their assertions, but until now, have been denied access to the discussion. This makes tomorrow’s meeting important, especially if the utility company is willing to listen.

A simple truth about nuclear power is that it is too expensive for anyone to capitalize, including Warren Buffett’s MidAmerican Energy, without financial considerations that a public utility can get only through legislative action. MidAmerican’s legislative agenda regarding new nuclear power was blocked during the 84th Iowa General Assembly. In a sense, the community resistance to a new nuclear power plant is putting the cart before the horse. Nonetheless, we should be listening to hear the reaction and press coverage of the concerned citizens meeting tomorrow. If we care about sustainability in a turbulent world, this activity is one to watch.