There were a couple of snowfalls this year yet we haven’t really had a winter. The vernal equinox arrives today at 10:06 p.m. Central Daylight Time. Spring is here, ready or not.
Four years ago, on March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. In so many ways, that changed everything. I’m still processing what happened. I’m also settling into the new life I created in the middle of the shutdown. It changed my attitude toward living.
People I know continue to get COVID, as recently as this month. While it is not the same as influenza, it appears to be as persistent. I am current on vaccinations for COVID (and everything else) yet the constant mutation of the coronavirus indicates there will be no absolute prevention.
I remember the spring of 2020 and it was similar to this year. About that time someone had left home to enter a nursing home and neighbors dug and split their iris plants. I got some bulbs and planted them. They come up every year. I hope to see them rise for many more. All we can do is marvel at their essential being and appreciate them for what they are.
A friend returned from a trip to Thailand and we had a driveway conversation about it. We first worked together on a political campaign in 2004, so I’ve known her 20 years. We looked at photos and videos on a handheld device. One video had her swimming in a river with a five-year-old elephant. It was good to catch up.
The reason for the reunion was to collect signatures on an Iowa House candidate’s nominating petition. We have been working together so long, we speak to each other in shorthand about politics. Between us, on short notice, we collected 11 signatures. The candidate had more than the 50 required by the Secretary of State.
Later that day, another friend stopped by to pick up the petitions and deliver them to the candidate. We had a long conversation as well. I knew his father before him and the three of us all worked on Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign. Those were heady times. I wrote a post about this in 2008. We talked about the House District and who we might pull in to work on the campaign. This cycle, I plan to be a worker bee, not an organizer. I think people have heard just about enough from me. There is interest in doing better in the new district.
Living with a vegan makes for strange breakfasts. Any dairy products I consume happens mostly in the morning. Missing home made pizzas, I made one for breakfast. It is not a big change to cook a pizza for one. Instead of a cup of water I began with a generous half cup. It made a pie just the right size.
Since garlic was up, I dug around in the mulch to make sure the leaves were penetrating the straw. I planted about 100 head of garlic in October. I lost maybe two head under the mulch. Bodes well for the July harvest.
On Thursday I used my Merlin Bird ID app outside the garage. In a short time it identified these birds: Northern Cardinal, American Robin, House Sparrow, Blue Jay, White-throated Sparrow, American Crow, Red-winged Blackbird, House Finch, Tufted Titmouse, Eurasian Tree Sparrow, and Canada Goose.
Since I downloaded the app, I’ve taken to standing on the steps in front of our house each day and letting it record for a couple of minutes. It’s a way to see who is in the neighborhood and for what I should look when I start working outdoors. This is the most fun I’ve had in a while.
The week seemed productive yet I’m losing perspective. It’s like that Lynda Randle song Cousin Al used to play each day on the AM radio across the Alabama-Georgia line when I lived in Columbus, Georgia:
One day at a time, sweet Jesus That's all I'm asking of You
Just give me the strength to do everyday What I have to do
Yesterday's gone, sweet Jesus And tomorrow may never be mine God help me today Show me the way One day at a time
Selfie taken with computer video camera on April 28, 2020, the day I retired from paid work.
When the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11, 2020, I began pulling back from engagement in society. That process continued when I decided to retire from work at the home, farm and auto supply store on April 28 that year. Since then, I have distanced myself from almost everything and developed a new way of engaging in society.
I don’t spend as much time with people as I did. My conversational style shows it.
The main part of my days is spent at home with a weekly trip to the grocery store and a couple other shopping trips each month. The automobile is not getting many miles. If there is a reason, I will travel to the county seat, to my home town, or to Chicago or Des Moines to run errands or visit family and friends. That is about it.
The last activity I dropped was membership in the county Democratic Party central committee. I led the January 15 precinct caucus and will be attending the county convention on March 23. After that, I will become a worker bee in politics, not an organizer. I’m good with the change.
A majority of my time will be divided between working to maintain and fix up our home, writing, and sorting through the accumulation of too much stuff. So far, that keeps me busy.
This time at home as a writer is what I worked for all my life. If I am stepping back from society, I am stepping into a new life lived the way I want. As long as my health holds and we have money enough to live, I’ll be alright.
Since I made it this far, I’ll quote Douglas MacArthur, “Old soldiers never die, they just fade away.” Already, I can hardly see my shadow on a sunny day.
I threw in with a group of readers, writers, artists, and photographers when I joined Threads to replace my X account. There is a lot of discussion about books to be read stacks. You know what I mean: that pile of acquired books that grows and eventually might be read. What is the right number to have? 100? 200? More? Less? There is not a right answer. I have a completely full bookcase in one of the passageways leading to my writing room. When it’s time for the next book, I browse it like I am in a personal book store. To be read stacks got me thinking about how to select the next book.
Book selection is a hodge-podge process in my world. I diligently read at least 25 pages per day. When it’s time for the next book, sometimes I know what to pick up ahead of time and sometimes I don’t. I can be like a dog chasing a squirrel. There is little interest in being disciplined here. Less than there should be. I tend to pick recently acquired books for next.
At the same time, there are books I own I want to get to. For example, I’m building a collection of books about Florida, Virginia, Minnesota and other places important to my family history. Those are maybe 50 books organized on shelves for easy grabbing for research. Somehow those need to be worked into the rotation.
Referrals are the most important part of the process: referrals from friends, social media (Threads and Facebook mainly), from the footnotes of other books, and from what my pals on Goodreads are reading. I used to just buy those books and find a spot for them.
While I have more than a thousand books in my library to be read (maybe two thousand, who’s counting?), I slowed the purchasing process. When I find a book to read from any source, I put it in my Amazon shopping cart and remove it to save for later. That builds a reading list without buying a book. In the past, when I filled my cart, I used to just place the order. No more.
I have a Goodreads account with a few friends. The Goodreads to be read list exists yet I don’t find it as useful as the Amazon list. I use them both when I’m stumped.
When the next book is up, from any source, and I don’t have a copy, I check availability on the online catalogue at the public library. This is a new process. We are in a small community so sometimes they have it and sometimes they don’t. If they have it, I place a hold and pick it up on the next trip to town.
I keep nine shelves of more than 400 books of poetry. I use them to palate cleanse or for inspiration. There are so many unread poems they could keep me busy for a long time.
In terms of filling my life with reading, I would never have to leave the house for the 14 years left according to government life expectancy tables. Nonetheless, I want to stay current and as an avid reader of online publications I frequently encounter a new book I should read.
My bottom line is I like the hodge-podge of my to be read stack and its extensions online. With so many good books in the world, I don’t want to miss many. I don’t have enough perspective to know whether I have and a to be read stack is no answer to that problem.
Garlic is up in the garden: yield looks pretty good. Somehow building a brush pile escaped me this week so I need to get cracking on that. Many robins and other birds have arrived. Lilacs are beginning to bud. All signs are present for an early spring.
Class reunion
Nothing can sober a person like figuring out who died from one’s high school class. For my class of 1970, our research shows 42 of about 260 classmates have died. That is in line with what insurance company actuarial tables suggest should be our experience. It doesn’t make dealing with those deaths any easier. “Who died?” was the most frequently asked question at our 40th reunion in 2010 so the planning committee is front loading work to have a better answer this time.
When I work on the organizing committee for a reunion I’m more likely to attend. My main interests are finding out what people have been doing during the years since we graduated, planning the event, and catching up on news. I would not likely attend if I wasn’t on the planning committee. The event is in July, dubbed the 50th Reunion (Delayed) because we canceled during the coronavirus pandemic when our 50th would have been.
Charlatan
I finished reading Charlatan: America’s Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam by Pope Brock this week. It is a well-researched and easy to read book about early 20th Century medical practices and associated quackery. Dr. John Binkley, the charlatan, is reminiscent of B.J. Palmer, son of the discoverer of the chiropractic principle, who lived in Davenport. Palmer started the first radio stations west of the Mississippi River in Davenport and Des Moines, paraded elephants through the city streets to advertise the chiropractic principle, and had a museum called Little Bit O’Heaven at his chiropractic school. The museum had artifacts collected during his global travels. While chiropractic thrives into the 21st Century as a respected medical profession, its trajectory in the early years is tied to that of the goat-gland charlatan depicted in this book. Worth reading for this and other reasons.
State of the Union
I viewed video of the entire State of the Union Address. It took me multiple segments to get through it. Biden did an excellent job, of the kind I expect from a Democratic president. I also viewed video of the Alabama housewife (and U.S. Senator) who delivered the Republican response. They have nothing! Seriously, Biden got criticized for having a campaign TikTok account. Do Republicans not know about the numerous objections among users to federal attempts to regulate TikTok? OMG! Governor Kim Reynolds made a press release reacting to the State of the Union with a tepid response. Why did she even bother if she had nothing to say? Republicans really do want to take the country backward.
The week started with days where the ambient temperature reached a high in the 70s, dipped on Wednesday to the teens, then rose again the rest of the week. The expectation for first week in March is highs in the 30s and 40s, so it seems unseasonably warm.
Creamed crumbles on toast
I don’t have many meals derived from Mother’s cooking. As important as cooking has become to me, I can count on one hand the number of dishes I now make that she did, too. One of those is variously called chipped beef on toast or creamed beef on toast. Mother made this for Father as a reminiscence of Southern cooking in which he came up. I don’t use beef in our kitchen, yet I made this for breakfast one day. I use vegetarian recipe crumbles as a meat substitute.
Saute half cup of finely diced onions in two tablespoons of butter and add one finely chopped clove of garlic. Season with salt and pepper. Add dried home made hot pepper powder. Add a cup of recipe crumbles and cook until thawed from the freezer. Add two tablespoons of all purpose flour and combine everything while on medium low heat. Add one cup of milk (cow milk or oat milk, whatever is the kitchen standard) and combine. Lower the heat and cook until the mixture thickens. Toast and cut into 3/4-inch squares two slices of bread. Pour the creamed crumble mixture evenly over the toast and enjoy.
Tracking writing
I edited the first ten chapters of my book. I created a spreadsheet to track what I did and how the daily word count changed. The fact that I am now including numbered chapters is a revelation. It helps organize topics in a way I hadn’t considered. I now gather topics from different places in the narrative over a span of years under a single header. It helps reduce the amount of duplication that plagued me from the cut and paste method of composition with which I began. I am satisfied I made progress last week.
Email rabbit hole
I have email files beginning in 1999. There are hundreds of thousands of stored emails and I don’t plan to read them all. When I begin a session of email reading, I become lost for hours in a rabbit hole of forking paths. For example, the emails I wrote and received about updating the county plan for dealing with a contagious disease epidemic seem prescient in light of the coronavirus pandemic ten years later. This research will yield a paragraph, maybe two in my chapter about the coronavirus pandemic which closes the book.
What I seek the most is emails from friends and family to use in other parts of the narrative. Facts are recorded with dates attached to them and they help evoke memories of that time. The trouble I see is advancing technology may render some of those files obsolete. For now, the current version of Microsoft Outlook opens all the saved files, yet I’m anxious to go through them even if it would be better to wait until I’m writing those parts of the narrative.
Publication
I decided to publish Part I of the autobiography first. The narrative goes through finishing graduate school and taking work at the university where my spouse and I met. I was 30 years old on our wedding day: a clean breaking point for the narrative. The second part of the book will be more difficult to write because there is so much material to condense. I delay that challenge by deciding to finish part I this year, God willing.
Summary
It was a good week. Hopefully increased garden tasks can be added to my life without compromising the writing. March brings the pressure of spring and I am ready for it. On Friday, March 1, we saw the first Robin in our yard, along with another flock of smaller birds. Spring is definitely coming.
The purpose is to make a conscious decision to reduce how many times I post here and use that time to advance my autobiography. With spring arriving in four weeks, I need more writing time. I debate changing how I describe my autobiography to my “WIP,” or work in progress like all the cool writers do on Threads. Autobiography seems like too big a mouth full and I don’t like “memoir.”
On Saturday and Sunday, I’m filling in at Blog for Iowa for a while, and those posts will be cross posted here without comment. I strive for a broader audience and put more effort into selecting topics for those Iowa readers. I’ll also cross post any writing that gets published in the newspaper, or other places in the real world, also without comment. A letter to the editor is often a re-working and shortening of something else I posted here, so it seems like duplication to publish the letter like the one that made last Thursday’s Cedar Rapids Gazette here as well.
I’ve pretty much given up on a range of topics that used to be important to me. Cooking, recipes, gardening, local food, and others remain parts of my life. I just don’t feel I have anything new to say. I am weary of writing about “organic practices” when so many people are food insecure. I plan to give those a rest unless I prepare a great dish and want to preserve how I made it. I may highlight unique ways I find to increase food security among those who need it.
I’ve been taking a lot of photos of morning cups of coffee. I post them on my Threads account, tag them a certain way, and there is a group that goes into a frenzy of liking them. These posts get, by far, more views than any others I put up. It’s sad, but it’s something.
That’s it for this week. Let’s all make it a great one next week!
When I review my 50 years of writing I find recurring stories. For example, the one I tell about Father’s political organizing during the John F. Kennedy campaign was repeated at least a dozen times. As I write my autobiography is seems better to distill those versions into a single narrative, one for the record, one which becomes the story. When I’m gone, who will have time or make it for all those versions? What are those previous efforts? They record a narrative that is part of me the way an artist makes sketches in a notebook.
Most of my writing is unpaid. I don’t seek financial return for investment in narratives. Writing helps me understand a complex world and my role in it. It provides a way of seeing the world outside living memory. When I pass, my living memory goes with me, except for the renderings I make as artifacts. Even then, only the writing would remain. I am not a famous person so the narrative may well end with me.
Writing this blog, journaling, and posting on social media are all rough drafts. Some are better than others. None of them is an autobiography the way my actual draft autobiography is. It is important to keep writing and re-writing our history in hope of getting a version that seems right. In the end, I’m not sure that is possible. In the end, the version will be final, like it or not.
Creative endeavor is important in every life. I systematically explored various creative outlets outside writing: playing music, drawing, painting, ceramics, photography, cooking, gardening, and others. To support these endeavors, I studied the world through travel, visiting museums, visiting cities, formal education, living in a foreign country, working a career that involved meeting thousands of people, and reading more than most people. Creative endeavor means different things, yet for me it was always being an artist, at least in part.
It seems important not to muddle things. While I painted a bit, I am not a painter. I made ceramic pots, yet I am not a potter. I devoted long hours to playing the guitar, and am not a musician. I am a writer. Knowing that, the next step is being the best writer I can be. I discovered it takes a few rough drafts.
There is not much traction in Iowa for nuclear disarmament causes. Iowans are occupied with a state government taking public money away from public school systems and giving it to private ones. In several important ways Iowa is becoming a paternalistic, uneducated, and cruel place to live and that occupies a lot of our bandwidth. All the same, Iowans know the risk posed by nuclear weapons. If used, they could disrupt society all over the globe. Few, if any, people want that.
“Presidential leadership may be the most important factor that determines whether the risk of nuclear arms racing, proliferation, and war will rise or fall in the years ahead,” Daryl G. Kimball, Executive Director of the Arms Control Association wrote. Most Iowans are aware of the existential threat posed by nuclear weapons. However, they don’t vote for a president based on nuclear weapons policy positions. In fact, Republicans no longer write a national platform, so who knows what their policies are? Elections today have become more tribal in nature and much less issue oriented.
A lot is at stake regarding nuclear weapons proliferation during the 2024 election. As the primary season began in Iowa, the expected nominees for president are Joe Biden and Donald Trump. We have a good idea how they will address nuclear weapons related issues based on their past behavior. Biden would follow time-tested methods of controlling nuclear weapons at home and abroad: through negotiations, treaties and agreements with nuclear armed states and with those like Iran and North Korea that develop nuclear weapons capabilities. Trump is belligerent and it’s hard to know what he would do. The uncertainty about his potential actions if elected president is itself a nuclear risk. A crucial factor in whether one of today’s nuclear challenges erupts into a full-scale crisis, unravels the nonproliferation system, or worse will be the outcome of the U.S. presidential election.
“Russian President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale attack on Ukraine and threats of nuclear use have raised the specter of nuclear conflict,” Kimball said. “To his credit, Biden has not issued nuclear counter threats and has backed Ukraine in its struggle to repel Russia’s invasion.”
Well before Putin’s nuclear rhetoric regarding Ukraine, Trump engaged in an exchange of taunts with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in 2017. In response, North Korea pursued its own nuclear weapons program, creating more risk of a nuclear detonation.
Trump hasn’t seen a long-standing international agreement he likes. The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty expires in 2026. Trump didn’t agree to an extension in 2021 when he was in office. Biden extended it by five years just under the wire. If elected, Trump seems unlikely to sign a new agreement with Russia. Biden, on the other hand, proposed new talks with Russia on a post-2026 nuclear arms control framework.The war in Ukraine seems likely to delay progress on such talks.
In November, senior Chinese and U.S. officials held the first arms control talks in years. Progress seems possible with Biden. Trump? Not so much.
Iranian leaders continue to increase capabilities to produce weapons-grade uranium in response to Trump’s 2018 decision to withdraw unilaterally from the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. He proposed imposing tougher U.S. sanctions to pressure Iran into negotiating a new deal. They now are threatening to pull out of the NPT if the United States or other UN Security Council members snap back international sanctions against Iran, according to Kimball.
The U.S. has not ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. The Trump administration did not help when in 2018 it declared the U.S. did not intend to ratify the treaty, and in 2020 when senior Trump officials discussed resuming explosive testing to intimidate China and Russia. Biden, on the other hand, has reaffirmed U.S. support for the treaty; and his team proposed technical talks on confidence-building arrangements at the former Chinese, Russian, and U.S. test sites.
How do nuclear disarmament activists get a grip on the need to disarm, both in the U.S. and abroad? Article VI of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty already called for elimination of nuclear weapons. The question is one of political will. On that, we look to the November elections to see if the country will have any.
~ This article was first published in the February 2024 edition of The Prairie Progressive.
Cautiously, I’m sharing bits of my work in progress that readers of this blog may have heard about. I shared the image above with a Canadian poet on Threads in response to a question, “What did you learn from your childhood experiences? It was different from other garnered responses, and it stands alone. I think the writing here was solid.
It took a good while to write those two paragraphs. Because they originate in living memory, outside of language, I understood what happened and assigned meaning only after repeated drafts preceded by long consideration. Probably why it takes me so long to write autobiography.
That I called this experience a defining moment means, at least in part, I thought about what happened a lot. There is a scar on my forehead to remind me of it every time I look in the mirror. Any more, I don’t think about the scar and what caused it, but over a lifetime I remember those days, what happened, and what the experience means to me now.
How does one communicate about living memory? These paragraphs are one way, and as written, I don’t have any revisions. I captured something that resonates. Over the years, I wrote a lot about René Descartes, including this passage:
I studied René Descartes at university and spent substantial effort considering his first principle, cogito, ergo sum, or in English, “I think, therefore I am.” I wrote about my Cartesian outlook toward life. We are isolated beings, wrapped in a veil of humanity, closer to God, or its divine essence than we realize. Such veil, metaphorical or not, is woven of delicate threads, like the lace of Morbihan, or silk from China. We could spend a lot of time marveling in its delicate needlework or shimmering surface. Yet we are compelled to reach out beyond the veil.
If I entered a funk about my work in progress after having some people read a draft, then I am now coming out of it feeling ready to begin anew. There is a story, more than one, residing in memory. I felt compelled to start that story. 127,511 words in, the compulsion to finish it strengthens. There is little timing of my creative endeavors. I only know, for this work, the time is now.
Journey Home 
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