Category: Writing

Writing about writing, autobiography, cross posting selected work from other places.

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Sustainability Writing

Stonehenge is Still Here

Stonehenge with orange powder paint applied by vandals on June 19, 2024. Photo Credit: BBC.

In the first place, it is difficult to recognize this gathering of large rocks in the photo as Stonehenge. Mostly, the significance of an act of vandalism may have been more prominent in the minds of two vandals than in anyone else. I get it. Summer was about to begin. That’s a big day for some. Just Stop Oil, the organization behind the vandalism, said their motivation was to demand the next UK government end extraction and burning of oil, gas and coal by 2030. Whatever. Apparently it took an oversized hair dryer to blow the powder paint from the rock surfaces without harming colonies of lichen that developed there. If people know about the incident, it’s been forgotten by now.

Having done my tour of duty on the Salisbury Plain, my memories are scant. I stayed at a youth hostel, and made visits to Salisbury, Bath and Stonehenge. Another traveler, who spent the previous few weeks wandering about the moorland of southwest England, invited me to accompany him. I declined. It sounded too much like Iowa, and a bit dreary. I bought a post card at the Stonehenge gift shop and worked my way from the chalky plateau to the chalk cliffs of Dover and then to Calais, where my journal of Salisbury and England was pinched with my backpack after crossing the channel in a hovercraft.

I never looked back on England, and don’t understand the fascination with Stonehenge at solstice. It is an old thing, shrouded in lost history. I’m more thankful the days start getting shorter, and planning for autumn can begin in earnest.

One surviving account of my visit to Stonehenge remains.

Very sunny here today near Stonehenge, and other ancient ruins. Stonehenge yesterday brought to attention the very tourist like notions of seeing something only to tell your friends about it when you get back. It may be that these days this is the notion you should have or at least most common, but it is also a notion of which I refuse to partake. It is only a very insensitive person who will go look and come back in one hour as the tour bus takes, but then there’s hours and barb wire fence to keep you from doing it any other way. Yet here too comes the notion that since there are so many books and pictures and articles about Stonehenge why even bother the few minutes to even see the thing.

On the way from the rocks to the return bus, the drivers were talking and one said to another, “It’s too bad it started to rain. It spoiled their trip.”

Here it seems that there is such a “holiday” preconception among these drivers (and all Britons as well) that it prevents them from seeing what is really, actually there: some rocks with barb wire about them with people crowded within these premises. At any rate, I was no different from the others when I paid my 65p and walked, took some photographs, and bought some postcards which I today mailed to the states.

Journals, Winston Churchill Gardens, Salisbury, England, 11:45 a.m. on Aug. 27, 1974

In the 5,000-year history of Stonehenge, Wednesday’s protest is less enduring than the lichen that over millennia colonized the massive stones. I don’t wish ill on the two vandals. I just hope they receive their just desserts. I’m sure the ancient druids could care less about this week’s events.

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Writing

Weekly Journal 2024-06-16

Organizing stakes to fence the tomato patch.

This week was one of existential errands: meeting a technician at home for washing machine repairs, getting the automobile oil changed, a planning meeting for our upcoming high school class reunion, grocery shopping at the wholesale club, and chauffeuring my spouse to an appointment. It is the stuff that keeps our operation going.

I spent time in the garden to finish the tomato patch. There are squash and cucumber blossoms in rows I planted. What I managed to plant seems to be taking as expected. Nothing very exciting happened this week in the garden or elsewhere in my life.

Working with My Cohort

Two meetings remain for the planning committee of our 50th-ish high school class reunion. The six people on our regular video call are no-malarkey do-gooders committed to bringing this thing in on time and on budget. I’ve known them all since high school which ended in 1970. Our long, if intermittent acquaintance makes working together easy and enjoyable. Among the topics I raised:

  • Polish fathers of the bride counting dinner plates and instructing reception attendees to use the same plate for seconds.
  • The craziness of feeding 78 billion farm animals but not being able to feed 7.8 billion humans.
  • Explaining how vegetarians seek to be identified as people versus adherents to a cult.
  • Part of aging in America is sorting these things out. Then you just have to tell someone!

The reunion happens in a month.

Gardening Reached Apogee

This year I couldn’t get caught up with the garden. A few days remain before summer begins, and at least two plots will lie fallow this year. That’s not all bad, yet I envision a future with a much smaller garden. It’s complicated, yet it’s not. We simply don’t eat as much food as I can grow. I made a very large plot by combining two of the older plots. It has been impossible to keep critters who enjoy the garden as much as I do out of that growing space.

Once I clear out the greenhouse, I will prepare the two plots to lie fallow the rest of this year. Last year’s garden is likely as good as it gets and an apogee in the arc of a gardener’s life.

Quick Bean Soup

I made a “quick bean” soup for dinner of all organic ingredients. That means I used canned beans — a prepared 3-bean mix plus canellini — medium dice of carrot, celery and Vidalia onion, bay leaf, Herbes de Provence, salt, and sliced pac choi, stem and all. For liquid I used home made vegetable broth. When the vegetables were tender, I blitzed about a third with a stick blender, stirred, and there was supper.

I’ve been feeling kind of punk the last few days. My blood pressure has been elevated above normal and I’m having trouble sleeping. I spent much of Saturday in bed. I’m reading Annie Jacobsen’s Nuclear War: A Scenario which is likely contributing to difficulties in sleeping. I have been free of headaches, chest pain and difficulty breathing, so I’ll ride it out for a few more days and hope for the best. If I didn’t take my blood pressure at home, I may not have noticed anything different. Information can be both a blessing and a curse. (Update: My blood pressure returned to normal range by Monday morning. The spell passed).

And that was my week. Cheers!

Categories
Living in Society Writing

Call Balls And Strikes? Not So Fast!

U.S. Supreme Court

On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Food and Drug Administration, et. al., vs. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, et.al., a case about use of the drug mifepristone in terminating pregnancies up to seven weeks. The high court found unanimously the plaintiffs lacked standing. They did have other things to say.

Is the Supreme Court calling balls and strikes in this decision? No, they are not.

Politico journalist Alice Miranda Ollstein identified four anti-abortion wins buried in the Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling against them. Read Ollstein’s entire article on Politico’s free website here and give her a follow. My short summary of the pitfalls she identified is as follows:

  • The SCOTUS decision was based entirely on procedures grounds, i.e. the plaintiff did not have standing. The decision avoided discussion of merits of the case.
  • What rights do physicians have to refuse to perform abortions or other health services that they feel conflict with their moral or religious beliefs? Historically, said University of Texas law professor Liz Sepper, a federal law called the Church Amendment gave doctors the right to refuse to participate only in abortion or sterilization, but the new ruling expands the scope to “the full range of medical care.” This could be a major departure from precedent.
  • Justice Clarence Thomas’s separate concurrence with the unanimous decision contained suggestions for other ways abortion opponents could bring legal challenges or pursue restrictions on the pills in Congress or through the executive branch. Such road maps are certainly not necessary and some would say inappropriate.
  • Thomas’s concurrence suggested the sword should cut both ways. This is a flashing warning light for abortion-rights proponents who have long relied on what’s known as third-party standing to challenge abortion restrictions in court. Essentially, many courts have allowed doctors to bring lawsuits on behalf of their pregnant patients because the time-sensitive nature of pregnancy makes it impossible for patients to sue, and because most anti-abortion laws target doctors rather than patients with criminal and civil penalties.
    Thomas wrote, using loaded language favored by the anti-abortion movement, that the court’s decision denying standing to the doctors in the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine should cut both ways.
    “Just as abortionists lack standing to assert the rights of their clients, doctors who oppose abortion cannot vicariously assert the rights of their patients,” he said.

What may seem like a clean win for proponents of use of the drug mifepristone for ending pregnancies is not clean at all. I recommend reading Ollstein’s entire article here. It seems easy to predict this issue will return to the Supreme Court soon.

Categories
Sustainability Writing

Finding Everything

Earthrise by Bill Anders, Dec. 24, 1968

What will we humans do when we’ve found everything we once lost? If Sir John Franklin’s 1845 voyage of HMS Erebus and Terror to find a Northwest Passage is an indication, we will continue singing the same songs events raised up, even as more of the actual history becomes known. Lord Franklin is a classic folk song and hard to release from repertories. John Renbourn discussed new discoveries about the fate of Franklin’s crew found in 2014 and 2016. He said it ruined the song forever. When he sings it, Renbourn does not change the lyrics. Click here to hear the whole story and listen to his version of Lord Franklin.

Enter the June 9, 2024 discovery by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society of the last vessel of Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton found in the Labrador Sea. The wreck of Quest lay upright and intact on the seabed at a depth of 390 meters. Rediscovery occurred this week and next steps, I feel certain, will be forthcoming.

My point is we are going to run out of historical artifacts to find. What then?

As the Bill Anders photograph from Apollo 8 confirms, Earth is a finite place. Humans are polluting our air, water, and land at an unprecedented pace. The population of humans is growing. What we haven’t found is a way to live without dire consequences for our planet and the people and other wildlife who inhabit it. Isn’t it time we made that discovery?

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Writing

Blazing Hot Afternoon

Compost bin made from old pallets.

I spent my Wednesday outdoor time repairing pallets and re-building my garden compost bin. I’m not sure how many more years these boards will last. In many cases, they are so deteriorated they wouldn’t take a nail. It is literally held together with bailing wire rescued from hay bales used to mulch garlic. Anyway it is back up and will quickly fill up with weeds and vegetation from the garden. I won’t harvest compost from this bin for two years. As regular readers may recall, I’m running way behind in the garden. I usually put this bin together in mid April.

Ambient temperatures were at 86 degrees by 11 a.m. when it was too hot to continue working outdoors. A younger me would have persisted all day. I am able to recognize the signs that heat is affecting me and can call it quits.

Soil around garden plants was still wet at 11 a.m. Once the worst of the heat is over, I’ll shut off the soft water and water them again. I encountered the small rabbit that has been dining on the garden. The cayenne pepper deterred it somewhat, yet not enough. Something broke into the covered row and ate a head of lettuce. It looks like the work of a deer. I had another piece of fabric and did a make shift repair. It held over night.

I’m having doubts about attending the state Democratic convention on Saturday. I’m receiving the usual emails regarding the convention, including one from someone wanting to be elected as a delegate to the national convention, and one from the rural caucus. The rural caucus made this request:

There are three amendments we’d like to share our thoughts on; we encourage delegates to vote with us in support of rural Democrats:

  • We support the amendment requiring a 3 delegate minimum per county.
  • We oppose the amendment removing term limits for members of the State Central Committee.
  • We oppose the amendment adding the State Central Committee Steering Committee to the constitution, making the Committee a permanent decision-making body of the Iowa Democratic Party.

If these are things most important to Democrats who live in rural areas, then it is a sign the state party has lost its way. While these three issues may be important to some, they indicate a kind of tinkering around the edges of party structure that will hobble us from regaining control of the legislature and statewide offices. This is not a strong case to attend the convention.

I’m undecided. If they were having the convention in downtown Des Moines, I would have used it as an opportunity to drop off my spouse to visit her sister while I was at the convention. Instead, we are in Altoona, which while not a terrible distance, would add another hour of driving to my day should we do a sister-in-law visit. Another check mark in the no column of decision-making.

Thing is, there weren’t enough people to fill the state convention slots at the county convention. The pool of alternates to pass on these responsibilities is pretty shallow. Democrats can likely do good on this without me. There remain two days to decide.

There are better things to do than get moody about politics. I think I’ll schedule this post and get after them. Thanks for reading!

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Writing

Weekly Journal 2024-06-09

On the Lake Macbride state park trail.

I managed to get outdoors and garden every day this week. The cruciferous vegetable patch is coming along. One row of cabbage and I’m calling it done. I plan to sprinkle cayenne pepper around the plants to deter animals from nibbling on the tender shoots. That and some Dipel®, which contains a naturally-occurring bacterium found in soil and plants, and I should be good. This is the latest in the season I planted brassicas. Luckily I’ve been cooking with over-wintered collards, this spring’s pac choi and tatsoi, and frozen leafy green vegetables from last year. It has been good to get into the garden.

Writing – Prep for Printing

I created a new file of part one of my autobiography for publication formatting and began work. It takes a lot to make it suitable for printing: font selection, margins, chapter setup, line spacing, ISBN, and maybe a copyright. I researched printing prices for a self-published book and I should be able to get 25 copies for a few hundred dollars. This book was never intended for trade publication.

150 Days Until the Election

We are less than 150 days until the Nov. 5 general election. I offered my political help to my state representative and senate candidates. We’ll see how they take me up on it. Both are first time candidates, so I’m not sure my 60 years experience on political campaigns will be relevant to them. The races will be tough. As long as I can work something out with the campaigns, that is how I’ll spend my political time this cycle.

On the State Park Trail

Six of the last seven days I walked 30 minutes on the state park trail. Everything is greening up. White flowers appeared and can be found everywhere. This transitional time — before everything gets eaten by bugs, or trampled by wildlife — is a favorite. There have been plenty of photo opportunities. The day I did not walk was a long, sweaty one in the garden.

Israel Is Using AI Targeting

An increasing number of news stories assert the Israel Defense Forces have been using artificial intelligence-enabled decision-support systems (AI-DSS) to target and kill Hamas operatives. All is fair in love and war, they say. Or is it? What if I told you AI finds Hamas targets most frequently at home with family. As bombs fly, they take out non-combatant women and children along with Hamas operatives. Shouldn’t that be a war crime?

The U.S. Military Academy at West Point hosts the Lieber Institute. “In today’s complicated battle spaces, the continued effectiveness and enforceability of the law is highly dependent on whether the expressed rules remain definitive, understood, and accepted,” it says on their website. “Yet contentious topics highlight a troubling lack of unanimity in the international community concerning the law.” Since the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel has used unconventional tactics to achieve battlefield superiority. While they have been innovative, any targeting method that indiscriminately includes women and children is morally bankrupt. Let’s hope the peace plan I mentioned last week takes root.

Summer begins in 11 days. Hopefully the main garden planting will be done by then and I can focus on weed maintenance, harvest, and the rest of my household projects.

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Writing

2024 Primary Results

Sign at Saint Mary’s Catholic Church in Solon on June 4, 2024.

The Democratic ballot was simple this election. Vote for all the Democrats, except pick three of five candidates in the supervisor race. The primary winners for supervisor were Rod Sullivan, Lisa Green-Douglass, and Mandi Remington. No surprises there.

On the Republican side, there were two races of interest. Incumbent Congresswoman Mariannette Miller-Meeks defeated prayer breakfast organizer David Pautsch with 55.9 percent of the vote. In House District 91, Oxford attorney Judd Lawler defeated second-time candidate and Williamsburg Mayor Adam Grier with 78.9 percent of the vote. Lawler trounced Grier in Johnson County where he got 502 of 554 votes cast.

The common theme for these elections is voter turnout was pathetic.

Miller-Meeks’ 16,446 vote win was a comment on the state of the Republican Party in the First District. Division within the party runs deep is how I read it. It was surprisingly low for someone who first ran for this seat in 2008, and won her last election by seven points. Such division will keep her tilting toward the extremist wing of her party. In the general election this represents no change in her match-up with Democratic challenger Christina Bohannan.

In an election night email, winning supervisor candidate Rod Sullivan summarized the situation like this: “I sincerely hope Democrats are ready to work this fall, because Dems did not turn out Tuesday! Hopefully they care more about Congress than local races.” We shall see.

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Writing

Weekly Journal 2024-06-02

Turning over the 2024 tomato plot.

Garden work made me tired this week. It took multiple days to prepare and plant the tomato plot, and it is not finished. Other plots are prepared for specialty crops like fennel, okra, peppers, kale and the like, but I can’t get around to putting them in the ground. So it goes with a septuagenarian gardener. Things are slowing.

Election Interference Trial

The biggest news this week, upon which I will spend the least time, is the New York trial of former president Donald J. Trump. I tend to agree with actor Robert DeNiro, who said, “I don’t want to be talking, but I am so upset by it. I have to say something. This is my country. This guy wants to destroy it. Period. He’s crazy.” Read “Keep Hope Alive” for my longer take.

Writing

It seems clear once I finish the current read-through and editing, the next step for my autobiography is preparation to print it for private distribution. That means making about ten or twelve copies as a first run so I can call it done. Font type, page layout, line spacing, long quotation formatting, grammar and punctuation consistency, and more need to be addressed. I should have a professional read it and provide advice, yet I don’t have funds to do that presently. The goal is to have the finished book in front of me later this year.

Part two has more words than part one already, yet most of it is in very rough form. When I’m ready to start, the outline needs completely re-done. This would be followed by a serious write-through. Part of the reason I stalled on part two is the amount of background documentation is tremendous. Journals, notes, files, recordings, and more are stuffed in boxes waiting for me. That’s not to mention more than 5,000 blog posts. I don’t expect to turn every page, yet I must turn a lot of them. The main initiative to do a write-through will be during the hot days of summer and the coming fall and winter.

First things first. I need the first book in hand as soon as is practicable.

Israel-Hamas War

There has been devastating loss of life in Palestine. U.S. policy enables it. Here’s hoping the president addresses this in a meaningful way. He encouraged Hamas to accept the following proposal. Let’s hope all parties can soon agree to a way out of the violence.

“It’s time for this war to end, and the ‘day after’ to begin,” Biden said in remarks at the White House May 31.

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Writing

Hummingbird Dreams

Mottled shadows of grasses against a piece of cloth.

I hung a piece of cloth over the lower level windows across from my writing table. As the sun rises, shadows dance on it: insects, long blades of grass, and lately, a hummingbird suspended in air as they are while searching for food. It feels I’m living in Plato’s allegory of the cave and I’m fine with that. It is a reminder the world in which we live is not a lie. I’m not chained in place. I’m free to go outdoors, see the hummingbird, and not be blinded by the sun.

I bought mini-blinds to put on that window, like the others in the lower level of the house, yet am glad I didn’t install them. There is a constant show on the window covering for dreaming. We humans need dreams.

The garden ground is too wet to work this morning. It seems unlikely to dry by noon. If the lawn dries sufficiently I’ll mow. There is plenty of indoors work to do if it doesn’t.

Our go-to, easy-to-prepare dinner is tacos. I made them last night, based on the recipe I wrote a few years ago. Instead of yellow onions, I used spring onions. Instead of garlic, I used garlic scapes. Instead of frozen kale, I used a mixture of fresh Pac Choi and collards from the garden. Such seasonal variations make tacos one of our favorite meals. They always taste a little different, in this case, fresher than normal. We prepare the dish often.

This week, Major League Baseball added the Negro League statistics to the record book. It changed some of the rankings. Josh Gibson beat Ty Cobb in highest career batting record. Gibson beat Babe Ruth, Ted Williams and Hugh Duffy in other categories as well. When I was a kid I didn’t have a baseball card of Josh Gibson and was not aware the Negro League existed. For me, Babe Ruth was it. Until this year, we found he wasn’t. Here’s a link to the Washington Post story.

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Writing

Weekly Journal 2024-05-26

Rain on the driveway on May 26, 2024.

There are good and bad things about this week. In the good category, it rained four out of seven days, alleviating local drought conditions. In the bad category, it rained four out of seven days, making the ground too wet to work in the garden. There is now a race to get seedlings into the ground before they get too big in their soil blocks. I plan to focus on tomatoes first.

Editing

Each time I edit my autobiography I find chapters that need work. The positive is I get further into the edit without stopping to do anything but correct typos and grammatical errors. There are clinkers, though.

I am not satisfied with the narrative about time in the military. I assembled the right quotations from my journal and papers. They can flow better. I reread them after a sound sleep and they do tell the story. The issue is I have many versions of the story of being in the military I have told and would like to tell. For my autobiography, I need to choose one.

I should be able to re-write the entire book as needed and prepare it for self-publication. If all comes together as planned, I should have a printed book by early next year.

Gardening

I’m usually finished with garden planting by the end of May. Not this year. The combination of rainy weather with increased limits on my stamina has me way behind. Even so, what was planted shows progress. Scapes are beginning to emerge from garlic plants. I got a few cabbages and kale in the ground. I weeded onions in time to save them from being dominated by weeds. The covered row is up and the seedlings under it are doing well. What is planted is growing. I just need to be closer to the finish line than I am.

Memorial Day

I did not do much this Memorial Day weekend. I have written about the holiday a lot on this blog. Here is a passage from a 2022 post: “Freedom has a cost, and there is no more salient aspect of it than the sacrifices men and women made by giving their lives in military service. Memorial Day celebrations are tempered with a feeling of loss, isolation, and sadness this year.” That seems always to be the case.

I am not aware any of my ancestors died while serving in the U.S. military. Our family is lucky in that. My maternal grandfather served in the U.S. Army and shipped out to France just before the Armistice was signed at the end of World War I. He did not see combat. Noting Memorial Day seems important nonetheless.

Memories of Summer

My summer is increasingly comprised of memories. Lately, the heat has been unbearable, drought too penetrating. I turn inward and indoors, like I did in this paragraph from a 2008 post in the first year of this blog:

I think of Ricard drunk in the non-commissioned officer’s club in Vannes on the West Coast of France. Of the overnight ride in the sleeper berth and waking in Paris to change trains. Of the trip to visit Gothic cathedrals in Amiens, Rheims, Rouen, Notre Dame, and others. Of the American cemetery at Normandy Beach. Of the landing near Calais where my backpack was stolen from a youth hostel. Of the rive gauche and Montmartre and le Big Mac. Of leaving France through Irun to see the running of the bulls in Pamplona, then swimming in the bay off San Sebastian.

Le week-end d’été, Aug. 1, 2008.

The garden occupies me and blocks other activities. Hopefully the weather will dry up long enough to finish getting it in. In the meanwhile there are plenty of memories to keep me busy indoors.