While in high school, Earth Day served a pressing purpose. NASA astronaut Bill Anders had taken the famous Earthrise photograph on Dec. 24, 1968, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, describing the impact of use of the pesticide DDT, was published in 1962, and there were no legal or regulatory mechanisms to protect our environment. Teenage me was inspired to take action and we did the best we knew how to support the effort. Mostly that meant selling Earth Day buttons like the one in the photograph to raise funds.
Earthrise Dec. 24, 1968
Word from Washington, D.C. is the president is planning to note Earth Day 2025 by signing executive orders that would strip some environmental nonprofits of their tax-exempt status, setting up a possible Earth Day strike against organizations seen as standing in the way of the president’s push for more domestic oil, gas and coal production, according to Bloomberg News. How the worm has turned.
The trouble is that to address the climate crisis, governments must be involved. While this administration is temporary, the harms from doing little or nothing for the remaining time could do permanent harm. That is to say, Earth will be fine. It’s the people who live on it who are in harm’s way.
Now is the time to find like minded people who support the science behind climate change and band together to do something. What is possible is an open question.
Pear Blossoms, April 19, 2025.
Editor’s note: The president signing these executive orders did not make news today.
The constant news cycle is not good for us. Sunday is as good a day as any to take a break and focus on the real world all around us. It is also a day to post my favorite photo of the week.
It snowed overnight on March 20, leading into spring.
The year we moved to Indiana’s Calumet Region in 1988 marked the onset of the worst U.S. drought since the Dust Bowl. The 1988-1990 North American Drought covered a smaller amount of geography compared to the 1930s Dust Bowl yet it was the most expensive extreme weather event in terms of monetary damages in U.S. history until that time.
Nearby Milwaukee, Wisconsin, set a record 55 consecutive days without measurable precipitation. During summer heat waves, thousands of people and livestock died. The drought led to many wildfires in western North America, including record fires in Yellowstone National Park in 1988.
While living in the Calumet, I understood the region’s activities were adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, enhancing the greenhouse effect that causes planetary warming. This includes the enormous Amoco Oil Company refinery located 23 miles from our house.
In 1988, we were turned inward, living our family life. We also had air conditioning. I did not understand how prevalent the deleterious effects of climate change would become in our lifetimes. It was one of what became a series of extreme weather events leading through time to when I wrote this post. We understand now.
The United Nations suggests ten thing we can do to address climate change. They even have an app! It is not too late to begin addressing our contributions to global warming and environmental degradation. Click here to learn more about what you can do.
Editor’s Note: Our arrival in Big Grove Township was marked by the first in a series of extreme weather events: the 1993 flood. It was called a once in 500-years flood, yet we would soon find out flooding had become more common, including the next 500-year flood event in 2008. I plan to weave at least six extreme weather events into my memoir, beginning with this chapter on Big Grove Township.
Big Grove Township was established before Iowa Statehood. The first sawmill was built here in 1839 by Anthony Sells on Mill Creek. Put the big groves of trees together with the sawmill and you have us. The oak, walnut, hickory, ash, elm and cottonwood that once thrived among numerous pure springs were gone when we bought our lot here. What dominates is the culture we and others brought with us to an area where all trees indigenous to the Northwest once existed in abundance yet no longer do. There is something essentially American in that.
There is a subdivision named Mill Creek today, suggesting this history. Throughout the area, people refer to early settlers and builders of homes instead of the people who now own and live in those structures. The names Cerny, Beuter, Andrews and Brown persist, as does the more recent name of Don Kasparek upon whose former farm our home is situated.
On the vacant lot we purchased, there were scrub grasses and a lone mulberry tree. The tree appeared to have been planted by a bird’s droppings while it perched on a surveyor’s re-bar marker. The ground had a high clay content which suggested Kasparek had removed the topsoil before subdividing the plats. When he died in 2003, I recognized him in our association newsletter. We speak of him from time to time in the neighborhood, although not always in a positive way.
I looked at an old picture of a building on Main Street in Solon, the nearest city. In sepia tones, seven teams of horses and wagons are lined up in front of a building on the dirt street. We can make out the lettering on the shop windows: Cerny Bros Grocery, Cerny Bros Hardware, and Cerny Bros Feed. While the roads have been paved for many years, much of downtown and the surrounding area resonates with the area’s origins in history before automobiles.
We built our home during the record-breaking floods of 1993. Governor Terry Branstad described the extreme weather event as “the worst natural disaster in our state’s history.” The Des Moines Register published a commemorative book titled Iowa’s Lost Summer: The Flood of 1993. Extreme weather delayed construction of our home that summer, causing us to stay with relatives and in motels for about a month after we moved from our house in Indiana. We moved in during August 1993. I was used to severe flooding from growing up in Davenport where the 1965 Mississippi River flood broke records. I was not used to flooding, 1993-style.
I couldn’t help but believe who I was represented itself in any of local history. My culture was what I brought with me, rooted in coal mining, factory workers, farming, home making, and the rural cultures of Virginia, Minnesota and LaSalle County, Illinois. Our history as a family goes back on both sides to the Revolutionary War. My line in Virginia goes a hundred years prior to the revolution.
That my ancestor Thomas Jefferson Addington is a common ancestor to the Salyer girls of the Salyer-Lee Chapter 1417 of the United Daughters of the Confederacy stands in contrast to the story of Maciej Nadolski working in coal mines in Allegheny, Pennsylvania after the Civil War and then buying land from the railroad in Minnesota. What of my father’s birth in Glamorgan, Virginia? What of the suppression of Polish culture by the Russians after 1865 that led to a massive migration of Poles to North America? If I weren’t here, we wouldn’t speak much of these things in Big Grove Township. Perhaps with time we will.
Editor’s Note: On Friday, FOX News mentioned President Donald Trump sent a letter to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, seeking a new deal with Tehran to restrain its rapidly advancing nuclear program and replace the agreement he withdrew America from in his first term in office. Iranian state media immediately picked up on Trump’s acknowledgment, though there was no confirmation from Khamenei’s office that any letter had been received. This seems largely a head fake. The real issue is the nuclear weapons held by the United States and Russia.
When the president mused about all the money the United States was spending on refurbishing our nuclear weapons complex, he can’t be taken seriously. This is what he said:
There’s no reason for us to be building brand new nuclear weapons, we already have so many. You could destroy the world 50 times over, 100 times over. And here we are building new nuclear weapons, and they’re building nuclear weapons.
What motivates this comment? Tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. I plan to view it with a skeptical eye until the discussion gets beyond the type of public brainstorming the president is known for. This is what he meant:
The U.S. House is having trouble coming up with enough savings to fund my $4.5 Trillion in tax cuts, so maybe we could use some of the nuclear complex monies.
Cognizant there is a national security issue around the use of nuclear weapons, the president’s team developed a policy. Invoking the failed Reagan missile defense policy, the administration proposes we try it again under the aegis of an “Iron Dome for America.” As Stephen J. Cimbala and Lawrence J. Korb point out in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the plan has serious technology and policy problems. What needs to happen is renewal of discussions between Russia and the United States concerning arms control. If nuclear arms are eliminated, there would be no need for a missile defense system by any name.
Daryl G. Kimball of the Arms Control Association said, “a dialogue between Moscow and Washington could lead to negotiations to maintain or lower current limits on the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals before the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) expires in February 2026.” If the president is serious about reducing the number of nuclear weapons, this is a reasonable approach. I don’t think reason can be applied to the current administration when they lust after tax cuts for the wealthy.
While public oxygen is taken up by the uninformed chopping away at the federal government by Team DOGE, the country could be working on arms control. In a recent substack, Joe Cirincione opined that to keep Europe safe, two things were needed:
For over seven decades, there have been two basic frameworks that have stopped the spread of nuclear weapons in Europe. One is NATO, founded in 1949, that provided positive security assurance to Europe. America assured European NATO members that if they were attacked, the United States would defend them, including with our nuclear weapons. So, these countries did not need to get their own nuclear weapons. America would protect them.
That extended deterrence, as it is called, was not, by itself, enough to stop countries from considering their own nuclear arsenals. The United Kingdom got nuclear weapons in 1952 and France in 1960 despite the security assurances. Another framework was needed: the arms control and disarmament commitments embodied in the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), negotiated in 1968 and ratified by the Senate under Richard Nixon in 1970.
We all know how the president feels about NATO. He doesn’t care for treaties any better. As we have seen, he appears to be forsaking Europe for his new relationship with Vladimir Putin.
So what is the administration doing to control nuclear weapons? Short answer: Nothing. He should be doing more, and elected officials need to hear from us on this topic. The U.S. Capitol Switchboard is (202) 224-3121.
Gillett Grove, Iowa has a post office and 30 people, according to the 2020 U.S. Census. In 2000, there were 55 people. The whole of Clay County, where the town is located, appears in decline. In some ways, Gillett Grove typifies rural Iowa.
How did this come up? The way many things come up in a household: we got talking.
Its history is brief. “First settlers appeared in Gillett Grove in 1856 and the town, named after the Gillett brothers, was incorporated on May 13, 1874,” according to the website Travel Iowa. “The town was originally located west of the (Little Sioux) river and one and half miles North until 1899 when it was moved to the east side of the river along with the arrival of the railroad.” I don’t see railroad tracks on Google Maps.
The high school for the South Clay Community School District was located in Gillett Grove. It also served Webb, Dickens, and surrounding rural settlements. In a relatively rare for Iowa occurrence, this consolidated district was dissolved in 2010 when it had 132 students.
The website Zillow lists the sale of a house at 506 3rd Street at auction for $25,300. Built in 1900, the outbuildings appear to be worth more than the dwelling. It’s a fixer-upper, definitely. Who might live in such a place in this rural city with limited visible economic activity? It’s an open question, yet the website suggests the property could garner $816 per month in rental income.
How many towns and hamlets like Gillett Grove exist in Iowa? More than a few. There is not time to write about them all. What we do is discuss our connections with some of them and wonder what life might be like living there. Then the conversation ends and I’m glad to live where we do.
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