Category: Writing

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

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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.

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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.

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Writing

Weekly Journal 2024-05-12

Portable greenhouse with roughly 700 plants started from seeds.

This week was hit or miss regarding weather. Some days were drop-dead gorgeous with ambient temperatures in the low 70s and blue skies filled with large, cumulus clouds. Other days it rained and rained and rained. Conditions were never that good to get the garden planted because there was too much moisture in the soil. The portable greenhouse is filled with seedlings ready to go into the ground.

Feeling Alone in the Universe

There is nothing like looking at the sky to make us feel alone in the universe. The sky was exceptionally cloudless Saturday night when I was out to watch for the aurora borealis.

Northern lights, or the aurora borealis, were visible around the area, just not near where I live. I explored the neighborhood to find a place with a broad expanse of unobstructed sky so I could attempt to view them. I stayed up late to witness the phenomenon, yet my naked eyes couldn’t see it.

The forecast was “very likely geomagnetic storming will persist through the weekend as several additional Earth-directed Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) are in transit to Earth’s outer atmosphere…” It sounds scary, yet it Earth doing what it evolved to do.

Instead, I looked at the stars on a clear spring night and contemplated the meaning of being alive. It was more blessing than curse.

Hall of Fame Awards

My friend Bill invited me to join him at the 2024 Johnson County Democrats Hall of Fame Awards event in Coralville. He was being inducted for his long political activism as business manager for an electrical workers union. I was happy to sit at his table during the event.

I flipped the program and saw the list of past Hall of Fame honorees printed on the back. So many friends were inducted. A significant number of them died since their induction. I wouldn’t normally go to an event like this, yet am thankful for the opportunity.

Trump Trial in New York

I’ve been following the Donald J. Trump trial for election interference. He was indicted under New York law for falsifying documents to avoid publicity about an affair with a woman who made adult films. My standby code of living is if you are male and don’t want people to know about an affair, keep your pants zipped. It seems clear from the trial the 45th president has no regard for the rule of law. A highlight this week was when his lawyers asked the judge to lift the gag order so he could respond to the woman with whom he had the affair. The proper venue for doing that would be for him to give testimony in the trial, the judge ruled. The prosecution is nearing the end of making their case.

Immigration

I have more to say about immigration. I started re-posting two of my old articles about it on Saturday. It turns out I wrote a lot of them since beginning this blog in 2007. Around 2010, I worked with a group of clergy to get the City of Iowa City to declare itself a sanctuary city for undocumented immigrants. That’s the opposite direction our current government is pursuing. Never mind that the city did not adopt such a policy. It has been a bug-a-boo among Republicans for a long time. Immigration is something about which everyone has an opinion yet few are willing to resolve its problems.

Kitchen-Garden

With my spouse gone for the week my cooking has been different. I made pizza, a casserole, sandwiches with French-style bread, and tacos my way (which is spicy). I cooked through this phase and am ready for her to return this week. On Sunday I bought a pint of Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia ice cream from the local grocer and ate it for dinner.

Jack Daniels Whiskey

I have a fifth of Jack Daniels Old No. 7 Tennessee Sour Mash Whiskey in the house. I’ve had it for many years and it is half gone. This week I poured some over ice and sipped it until the ice melted and the liquid was gone. The main benefit, other than a brief, fleeting, alcohol buzz, was that I slept through the night for seven straight hours. I did enjoy waking with the realization I slept through the night. Whiskey has gotten too expensive to buy, so I plan to make this bottle last.

There are a lot of moving parts in my current life with the biggest being to get the garden planted. After plot three, there are four more to go. It seems like a much bigger job this year compared to last. I’ll keep at it.

Categories
Writing

Weekly Journal 2024-05-05

Lilacs planted shortly after moving to Big Grove Township in 1993.

The week began with delays getting into the garden. Life’s exigencies required attention and garden work was pushed back. There was also rain. There is time before last frost, but not much of it.

Dental Care

Tuesday began with a dental appointment. My dentist sold his practice to a large dentistry operation in 2017. I don’t like outlasting medical practitioners yet as a septuagenarian it happens more than I want. The new group, a large company based in Waterloo, seldom treats me with the same practitioner whether it be hygienist or dentist. Each appointment offers a different vibe and I don’t like it. I mean, I’m used to dentists practicing on their own or with a partner or two and not a constantly revolving carousel of practitioners. I don’t know their business model, yet I suspect the pay is low and the assembly line style of operations yields a lower cost for the owners. It is not patient-centered care.

Trip to Des Moines

It rained on Thursday, making it a good day to take my spouse to see her sister. The rain let up west of Williamsburg and water was standing in Iowa’s neatly rectangular planting areas. Looks like farmers had been in the fields and maybe planted some corn. As we progressed into Des Moines, the state capitol construction scaffolding had been removed from the smaller domes. It was an uneventful trip. The longer I drive, the more I like that.

District Convention

The First District Democratic candidate for Congress was not present at Saturday’s district convention in North Liberty. Iowa political districts are designed around the congressional seat and I have an old-school expectation of hearing from the candidate in person, and getting a chance for a brief side-conversation. I have become a dinosaur. It was not to be.

Absent the candidate, I’m not sure what, besides necessary elections to the state and national conventions, we accomplished. The morning was consumed by a presentation from a third party grassroots group, and an explanation about why we would be using ranked choice voting for the elections. We would likely have saved time if we had skipped these presentations and gone directly to voting.

The third party person gave a presentation that divided campaign work into three buckets: Grassroots groups who would do much of the work around getting voters to the polls, county parties responsible for centralized communication, fund raising, and party organization, and candidate campaigns, which work mostly on their own to secure votes needed to be elected. This division is both useful and problematic.

Do people need something to do in a political campaign? Beyond making sure one is registered to vote and casting a ballot, one can get involved with campaign work, if interested. When Iowa lost first in the nation status after the computer application debacle in reporting results to national media in 2020, we also lost funding from the candidates who spent heavily in the early states to garner attention for their campaigns. Likewise, because Iowa Democrats are in a significant minority, expenditures from the president’s national campaign are not expected. There is work to be done, yet it isn’t clear how such work should be described and assigned to mostly volunteers.

Endemic to the current party structure is a misdiagnosis of key issues to a campaign. More than anything else, politics has gotten local. In Big Grove Precinct, the electorate is divided. During the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump won over Joe Biden 671 votes to 637. In 2016, Trump beat Hillary Clinton 575 votes to 529. Barack Obama won here in both 2008 and 2012. My precinct has a divided electorate and has recently been won by both Democrats and Republicans. While new people moving to our area lean Republican, the key issue is how does an organizer build a Democrat majority at the polls, recruiting votes regardless of party?

A speaker at the convention looked around the room and suggested the dominance of white-skinned, grey-haired delegates is the problem with the party. Whatever. Had rain not been forecast during the convention hours, I would rather have been working in our yard. The trouble, as I experienced recruiting a replacement for my position on the county central committee, is literally no one is willing to do the work to provide steady volunteer work for local Democrats. That’s a much different problem than skin tone and hair color among people willing to show up on a spring Saturday.

My problem at the end of this week was it was May 5 and so much work remained to get the garden planted. We may have had the last frost and I simply don’t realize it. I am determined not to be distracted during the upcoming week.