Category: Writing

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

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Writing

Local Food Pinnacle

Linn Street in Iowa City. Photo by the author.

As a freelancer for the Iowa City Press Citizen I took any story offered by my editor. I was recommended by her predecessor when the newspaper was short reporters. The P-C was in transition as their parent company Gannett outsourced printing, sold the presses, and moved from spacious offices on North Dodge Street to a walk-up on Linn Street. In all, I wrote about 100 freelance articles for the Press Citizen, Solon Economist and North Liberty Leader during 2014-2015.

The following article about Scott Koepke’s visit to the White House Garden during the Obama administration was one of several front page stories I got. I had been working for a couple of farms tied into the local food movement and Koepke’s experience was as good as local food gets. It is one of my favorite newspaper articles among those I wrote.

Lessons for Iowa from the White House Kitchen Garden

A local food advocate and gardener recently returned from Washington, D.C., where he had the opportunity to visit first lady Michelle Obama’s White House Kitchen Garden.

“I’m still floating from the experience,” said Scott Koepke, education and outreach coordinator for New Pioneer Food Co-op, after the trip. “I’ve been telling folks that I wish I had some grandkids to pass this story on to. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a gardener.”

Koepke’s sister, Ann, arranged a formal tour of Obama’s kitchen garden on Oct. 20. While there, he found lessons to apply in Johnson County. “If the president can do it, we can do it,” he said.

“What I appreciate most about Michelle Obama’s influence is that she has not only put nutrition and balanced diets high on the national agenda, but she has shown a creative use of green space for edibles, not just turf grass. As such, the White House garden message advances biodiversity, food security and, as the tagline on my email says, ‘Building community by building soil.’ “

The visit to Washington directly serves Koepke’s work with the Soilmates program, an interactive, organic garden and compost education service for children and adults, offered by the co-op.

He works with area schools to create garden clubs with plots of vegetables on school property. Koepke interacts with more than 33 organizations and 8,000 school children and community members annually, covering gardening, composting, soil science, local foods and life skills.

One of New Pioneer’s primary environmental missions is to stimulate the local production of organic food, Koepke said. Soilmates’ child-driven focus hopes to advance that mission by growing stronger community roots and sprouting the next generation of gardeners and soil-lovers.

“Just like seeds that often lay dormant, sometimes the gardening experience doesn’t manifest itself in transforming a life until years after the initial introduction of getting in the dirt,” Koepke said. “I’ve had folks come back to me many years after they worked with me saying that the lessons learned in the school garden helped them through rough waters. I couldn’t ask for anything more rewarding as a teacher.”

“The White House kitchen garden experience has affirmed even more the work I’m so blessed to do here with children in school gardens,” Koepke said.

Local farmer and school garden advocate Kate Edwards, of Wild Woods Farm, confirmed the didactic nature of the White House Kitchen Garden.
“I think the White House garden is a fantastic example and a wonderful use of space,” Edwards said in a text message. “Growing a garden is a fantastic way to interact with the food system and to take a vested interest in your own health.”

The support comes from other advisers, too.

“I believe Soilmates is on the leading edge in Johnson County to nature-based good health and education,” said Joyce Miller, Kirkwood Elementary School garden adviser. “Demand for this approach is flourishing. I have known Scott Koepke and his work with local school garden programs for years. He developed his Soilmates curriculum to present the delight and benefits of growing soil and food organically, teaching children life skills in the process.”

Mike O’Leary, a retired elementary school principal at Coralville Central, helped oversee their school garden for 15 years. Since retiring, he also has been involved with school gardens at Hills and Hoover elementaries.

“Having a garden space at a school is like having an additional ‘outdoor classroom,'” O’Leary said. “Students don’t need to take a bus or field trip to see first-hand how you can grow your own food. The Soilmates program has been successful.”

Establishing and maintaining a school garden is not without its challenges, Koepke said.

Supporting a garden club places demands on teachers whose plates already are full. If a key teacher leaves and a garden becomes neglected, it could easily be turned back to grass for its easy maintenance.

That’s what happened after first lady Eleanor Roosevelt dug a “victory garden” on the White House lawn during World War II. During the Truman administration, it was converted back to turf — that is, until Michelle Obama’s arrival.

Koepke’s job is to make sure the Soilmates program and the school gardens it engenders is a vibrant and growing element of life in the Cultural Corridor. Visiting the White House garden proved to be an inspiration.

~ First published on Dec. 1, 2014 by the Iowa City Press Citizen.

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Writing

Lookout Park Barricaded

Riverview Terrace Park, Davenport, Iowa postcard. Provenance unknown.

I played at Lookout Park, which was within walking distance of home, before I attended school. The main features are the view of the Mississippi River depicted in this postcard, a long, steep hill in front of the benches, and a stairway from the bottom to the top.

I liked to take a cardboard box up the stairs and then slide down the grassy hill with neighborhood children. After the slide, we would mount the stairs to the benches, take a rest, and then slide down again. It seemed like endless hours of fun in a time when there were few responsibilities.

The city purchased the property in 1894, then known as Lookout Park, and changed the name to Riverview Terrace around 1900. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Despite the official name, we called it Lookout Park.

Tom Barton of the Quad City Times reported the park had been closed by the city with concrete barricades placed so vehicles can’t get in or out. I knew the neighborhood was in decline, yet it’s sad to think of the after hours drinking, littering, prostitution and drug dealing he reported going on in a place with more positive memories.

“This has been an ongoing problem that ebbs and flows, and it began to flow again” this summer, said Ward 3 Alderwoman Marion Meginnis, who represents the area. “The design (of the park) has made it an attractive nuisance.”

Though closed to vehicles, the three-acre site remains open to the public, Meginnis stressed in the article, and is meant as a temporary measure until city staff can decide how best to address and discourage crime.

Sometime we don’t want to know what is happening in the old neighborhoods. At the same time, bad news triggers fond memories. There are days I wish I could forget about everything and slide downhill like we did. Being carefree is a part of youth we didn’t appreciate as we lived it. There is no going back, just remembering.

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Writing

Attending State University

When I arrived at the University of Iowa campus in fall 1970, the university president was Willard Boyd who officed in Old Capitol. The previous term, the president’s office had been occupied by protesters and the academic year ended abruptly. During my freshman year, Boyd held meetings with students and I attended one in Quadrangle dormitory where I lived. He seemed approachable and that surprised me. It proved to be an enduring character trait.

I last spoke to Boyd for an article I wrote for the Iowa City Press Citizen on Oct. 22, 2014. He was much as I remembered him. Following is the piece about the anniversary of the legal name of the State University of Iowa.

50th Anniversary of UI name change — or not

Fifty years ago today, the university in town decided to keep its legal name, “State University of Iowa,” but replaced it with the familiar nickname now in everyday usage. It was not the “Hawkeyes.”

Willard “Sandy” Boyd, currently Rawlings/Miller professor of law and president emeritus, was university provost at the time.

“Virgil Hancher (university president from 1940 until 1964) was a lawyer and said, ‘It is named in the constitution, therefore it shall be ever thus,’ ” Boyd explained. “Howard Bowen (who succeeded Hancher as president) said he ‘wasn’t a lawyer, so we’ll leave it,’ suggesting a nickname, ‘University of Iowa.’ ”

On Oct. 22, 1964, the Iowa state Board of Regents passed a resolution approving the usage of “University of Iowa” to describe the constitutionally named State University of Iowa, keeping the original name for legal purposes.

“I believe the change was intended to reduce confusion between Iowa and Iowa State,” said Mark Schantz, who received his bachelor’s degree from Iowa in 1963 and retired from the College of Law in 2013.

There is less confusion and almost no controversy now, but it wasn’t always so.

Early on, university officials attempted to change the naming convention for the State University of Iowa in practical usage.

In a letter dated Jan. 18, 1918 (available in the University of Iowa Special Collections), C.H. Weller, the university editor, requested permission from University President Walter Jessup to use “University of Iowa” on printed invitations.

“I have been trying for several years to accustom people to the name ‘University of Iowa,’ in harmony with the nomenclature of practically all other great state universities,” he wrote. “The legal name, of course, is ‘State University of Iowa’ (not ‘The State University of Iowa’), but the general use of a shorter term in informal usage is nothing unusual.”

In a Nov. 21, 1963, editorial, the Press-Citizen wrote, “The problem in the names of Iowa’s three state-supported institutions of higher education is that there is a law — the one that says the State University of Iowa is at Iowa City, Iowa State University is at Ames and the State College of Iowa is at Cedar Falls. This may be clear to Iowans, although it’s doubtful, but the plethora of ‘states,’ ‘Iowas’ and ‘universities’ seems to be just too much for those who don’t deal with it frequently.”

The newspaper called for the name to be changed to the University of Iowa.

Has the confusion continued?

The answer is yes, according to University Archivist David McCartney.

“It’s correct to say that our esteemed institution has always been named the State University of Iowa,” he wrote in a December 2010 article for the University of Iowa Spectator. “It’s complicated, as they say. To this day, people still occasionally (and understandably) confuse the names of Iowa’s public universities.”

That’s something today’s Hawkeyes, Cyclones and Panthers will be certain to clarify.

~ First published by the Iowa City Press Citizen on Oct. 21, 2014

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Writing

A Nonpartisan School Board

To run for school board a candidate submits a nominating petition with at least 50 district voters’ signatures on it to the school district office. There is no party affiliation and everyone so nominated is placed on the ballot. I heard on Thursday ballots have been finalized and sent to the printer.

I will analyze the nominating petition signatures when I receive them from the county. They are a public record available by paying a small fee. I won’t be sharing any secrets because nominating petitions aren’t secret.

For now, I have the voter profile for each of the seven candidates for Solon Community School District board of directors. They are Erika Billerbeck, Tim Brown, Dan Coons, Kelly Edmonds, Stacey Munson, Michael Neuerburg, and Cassie Rochholz.

There is a lot of information in these documents, which are also public records. For now, I’m most interested in party registration, the effective date when the candidate registered to vote, and in what recent school board elections they voted. I make no judgment about the candidates by posting this chart. It is data sent by the county, selected and formatted by me.

Data provided by the Johnson County Auditor

Electing someone to the school board is definitely not partisan. More than in other elections a voter seeks the best person for the job. While that seems like an antique idea in a society where everything is politicized, the best board members are not defined by party. Likewise, formal political parties have little influence over school boards.

During the 2019 Solon School Board election there were six candidates for two positions on the board. Three were Republicans, two no party, and one Democratic. Two Republicans won the election, Adam Haluska and Jami Wolf. The dynamic of the race was anti-incumbent because of recently completed collective bargaining between the district and the union. The negotiations drove some to run for school board. I spent as much time as anyone figuring out which candidates would meet my goals for board members. I ended up liking each of the six candidates for different reasons, none of which was party. Party membership played no role in my choice. My sense is it doesn’t for most people voting in a school board election.

Thus far I have spoken with one of the seven 2021 candidates. Like everyone, I’m learning. The dynamic of the election is complicated by the coronavirus pandemic. If the election is a referendum on the school district’s policies regarding COVID-19 and how those policies are implemented, I believe the election favors the two incumbents and another candidate who offers something compelling to voters, the way Jami Wolf did in 2019. It is possible the incumbents could lose the election yet they have broad name recognition within the district and have each been elected multiple times. A challenger will face a steep, difficult summit of the mountain that is incumbency.

Looking at school board candidates through a partisan lens is one factor among many. I don’t recommend making too much of the chart. Do look at it, though, and draw your own conclusions.

Here is a link to the county auditor site where readers can find contact information for the candidates. Do phone or send them an email with your questions. I hope you’ll follow my posts as we learn more about the community and the seven candidates for school board.

All of my posts about the 2021 election can be found here.

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Living in Society Writing

Postcards from Iowa #7

The Pine Barn Inn, Danville, Pennsylvania

Reverse side: The Pine Barn Inn — Danville, PA 17821 As Featured in ‘Back Roads and Country Inns’ Photo by C.G. Wagner, Jr.

I stayed at The Pine Barn Inn while director of maintenance for a large transportation and logistics company. For many years we bought Fruehauf Trailers built in Fort Madison, Iowa. I was in Danville to evaluate a Strick Corporation trailer manufacturing plant as prelude to picking a new vendor. By 1993 the writing was on the wall that Fruehauf was going out of business.

A leveraged buyout in 1986 by the company’s management left Fruehauf burdened with debt, and in 1989 the company was broken up and sold, though one segment, the truck trailer unit, retained the name Fruehauf Trailer Corporation. That corporation declared bankruptcy in 1996 and was sold to Wabash National the next year.

Fruehauf Trailer Corporation Wikipedia.

While many in the truckload segment of the transportation business were buying Wabash National plate trailers, the owner of our privately held company was apparently not a fan. We chose Strick for a non-Freuhauf plate trailer build over others I evaluated.

I traveled a lot during my transportation and logistics career. It came to a point where I would wake on an airplane and not know where I was or where I was going. The job had me traveling to both coasts and from Florida to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I had a heavy carbon footprint in those days.

When I supervised a driver recruiting operation I had offices in Iowa, Indiana, Kentucky, Georgia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Missouri. We even did driver recruiting in Astoria, New York near LaGuardia Airport. I met people from everywhere and spent a lot of time in transit.

I don’t remember much about The Pine Barn Inn, except it was clean and met my personal needs. That’s what I wanted during business trips. Today I hope most of my traveling is finished. At least I still have this postcard.

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Writing

Postcards from Iowa #6

Text on the postcard: Stratford, Ontario, Canada The Festival Theatre viewed from across the Avon River is one of three theatres offering an excellent selection of theatrical performances during the Stratford Festival (May to November). Photo Credit: Robert B. Hicks

When our daughter was in middle school we began taking family vacations. They persisted through the summer between junior and senior year in high school.

It began with a week-long trip to Orlando, Florida where we stayed in a motel and made day trips to theme parks, including Walt Disney World, Universal Studios and Sea World. It was our first air travel together. For me, vacationing was participation in a great American adventure. It had one foot standing on consumerism and the other on a job that consumed much of my life. While we had only a brief sampling of what Orlando has to offer that first year, it was a positive experience. We made summer vacations annual.

Next was a trip to Colorado where we visited friends and did some mountain sight seeing. We drove among the 14,000-foot peaks and spent the rest of the time visiting people. After that, it was trips to Stratford, Ontario for the Stratford Festival of plays, and everything around them. I don’t recall how many plays we saw but our daughter insisted on meeting the actors to get the program autographed after each one. Vacations in Stratford became something else.

I didn’t realize it then, yet it became clear later, vacations were a crucible for making a life from the raw materials of society. They transitioned us through releasing our child to college and then to the greater challenges of living a creative life. Upon reflection, there are not many creative communities like the one in Stratford. We were fortunate to have had those trips.

It’s hard to say whether we will return to Stratford as a family, or take any kind of vacation. We will always have those summers to remember.

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Writing

Postcards From Iowa #5

Reverse side: Personal note postmarked Oklahoma City, July, 8, 1908.

Social media hasn’t helped us stay in touch with friends and acquaintances.

In 2010 I searched for members of my high school class and asked them to join a Facebook group started for our fortieth class reunion. Many joined, but the group is now pretty inactive. Mostly we fell out.

It takes work to maintain a relationship and with all the stuff we have to do just to keep up with society it doesn’t happen. We drift except for those closest to us. I’m coming to a place where that seems okay.

What we yearn for is doing new, interesting, or exciting things. It doesn’t matter if it is with people we’ve known for decades or with those we just met. The arc of our lives isn’t a fixed trajectory. Just because we walked to school with the same group of people during the 1960s, that doesn’t mean the bond was permanent. If I encounter such childhood friends — these days mostly at funerals — we reminisce a bit in the moment and that’s that. We’ve built new lives that diverged from our beginnings.

I favor writing letters to friends and family. Not too much, though. There is an unspoken obligation to write one back and I don’t want to hang that on people I care about. Yet I write a letter from time to time.

This postcard reminded me there are a few people with whom I’d like to re-establish contact. Not that many, though. I have to ask why we fell out in the first place. Sometimes we’ll never know.

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Writing

Outlining

On the state park trail.

I spent a fair amount of Tuesday revisiting the outline of my autobiography. It quickly came into perspective. There will be multiple sections with each drawing on different parts of my life story.

After the dedication and introduction I currently see the following parts.

Part I: Background

It will begin with four historical pieces about Lincoln County, Minnesota; the area around LaSalle, Illinois; Wise County, Virginia; and Davenport, Iowa in 1951. I spent the most time last winter drafting these sections. They each need more work.

Part II: Main Narrative

Next will be a high level narrative of my life from birth until the present. In it I’ll cover the main stories on a time line, from my perspective. I’ll leave out personal information of people who are still living.

This part is subdivided into sections: 1. From earliest memories, moving to Madison Street, school, and my eleven-year residence at the American Foursquare in Northwest Davenport. 2. Begins with college, a trip to Europe in 1974, military service, moving to Iowa City, graduate school, and then marriage. 3. I begin what would become a career in transportation and logistics in 1984. I follow my career from the move to Cedar Rapids; to Merrillville, Indiana; and then back to Big Grove Township where we now live. 4. Next comes our daughter finishing grade and high school, going to college, and then moving from Iowa. 5. Finally, there is empty nest life, community engagement, my first retirement from transportation and logistics, continuing work until the coronavirus pandemic, and the post-work life in which I now find myself. The idea of these sections is to lay out the bare bones of how I spent my life. To research and get the story down.

Part III: Collected Writing

The last part of the autobiography will be a collection of my writing from letters to the editor beginning in 1974, and including resumes, poetry, published writing, journal writing, newspaper writing, and blog writing. The focus will be to reduce the quantity of written work to inform the narrative presented in the second section.

The clarity that came from spending time away from writing as I worked on the garden was a welcome surprise. The outline is not finished. A few days work remains and I’m ready to do it. After that it’s back to writing.

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Writing

Toward Season’s End

Thistle near the state park trail.

Just like that! Temperatures are cooler. It has been in the mid-fifties overnight, with a daily high in the seventies. The shift toward season’s end is happening. Ready or not, here it comes.

This winter I’m again planning to devote significant time to my autobiography. I wrote good pages last winter and would like to move the narrative along. If I learned anything it’s that the task is monumental. Without organization, I’ll never finish.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I’m upgrading my computer CPU to a new one. As I do so, I’ve been going through countless files to see what is relevant to an autobiography. I printed a few things out. The more I look, the more files I find that can be permanently deleted. A person only has so much time to spend with old things that depart from the narrative that is to be preserved. Best to purge it now and get it done.

I resisted going through all the physical objects last winter. The boxes, albums, photographs, files, books, clothing and trunks are everywhere and need to be gleaned for relevant artifacts. Maybe I’ll spend time on that this year. If I do, the idea is to organize things chronologically instead of thematically. That mean busting up boxes and folders I once thought went together. As I extract and refine what I’ll use, there will be no going back. I’m okay with that. As I proceed with computer files I’m finding my organizational process was more a hodge-podge than orderly.

I stopped work on the autobiography mid February as my attention turned to the garden. If I repeat the cycle, I should be able to get a solid five or six months work done. The document on which I’d first like to make progress is called the “book tree.” It’s an outline of how I currently see the narrative progressing. There is a month or more work improving it. In the end it will make writing the narrative easier. Last winter I got addicted to word count. I need to let go of that for the moment and focus on what will be the story. That’s honest, journeyman work to which I look forward.

There are still things to do in the yard and garden. With the hot, humid weather I delayed until there is no more delaying. The grass is turning green and needs mowing. Before I do that I have to clear what became a weed patch upon which to place the clippings. I also have to pick a plot to plant garlic in four or five weeks. By the way, the garlic came in really good this year.

I don’t know how long the autobiography will take. What I expect is it will make life easier for whoever takes charge of my stuff when I’m gone, if for no other reason than that there will be less of it. I cling to the present life yet realize I need to let go. Upgrading my CPU is as good a metaphor as any for that.

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Living in Society Writing

Postcards from Iowa #4

Text on the postcard: THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH is coming your way! To find out when, and much, much more, visit www ringling com MAY ALL YOUR DAYS BE CIRCUS DAYS!

The Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus was a mainstay of my youth. Each year they came to Davenport, usually at the levee of the Mississippi River, to put on the Greatest Show on Earth.

A biography of the Ringling Brothers was one of the first books I checked out from the bookmobile after getting my library card. It was interesting four of the Ringling brothers were born in McGregor, Iowa. They inspired us to put on our own show in the backyard of the American Foursquare my parents bought in 1959.

The circus influenced my decision to be part of the high school stage crew where I could participate in putting on shows.

The days of circuses are ending and Ringling Brothers folded the tents for the last time on May 21, 2017. It was a really big deal when the circus came to town… until they no longer did.