Category: Writing

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

Categories
Writing

Market and Linn Streets

T-Spoons at the Corner of Market and Linn Streets

Editor’s Note: Originally posted on Nov. 4, 2011.

I live in the country, in case this is the first time you are reading this blog. In economic tough times, we have to multitask any resource use, so when I drive to the county seat, I try to combine tasks. I book events and meetings then schedule others around them. This is what I did yesterday when I spent the better part of five hours near the intersection of Market and Linn Streets in Iowa City.

Riverside Theatre and my volunteer ushering for “The Cripple of Inishmaan” was the anchor event. I scheduled a student meeting for 5:30 p.m. at T-Spoons and planned to have dinner and browse the used book stores before I had to be at the theater at 6:45 p.m. I ordered a hazelnut roasted coffee with a shot of hazelnut syrup. My coffee was ready by the time he arrived and he had nothing to drink since he was enroute to a class. We talked about the project and then he left for his 6 p.m. class. I reviewed someone’s resume while I finished my coffee in a faux leather chair.

There are lots of restaurants near the intersection of Market and Linn. Long established ones like Pagliai’s Pizza and Hamburg Inn No. 2, and newer ones like Oasis Falafel, Blue Bird Diner and Linn Street Cafe. I decided to read menus and look inside to see how crowded they were. I ended up going into Oasis: The Falafel Joint where I ordered Falafel, Babba Ganoush, Red Cabbage Salad and Madjadra with pita bread. I sat in the window and ate the tasty meal. It was enough food for two meals, so I took one home in a clam shell, leaving it on the floor of my nearby pick up truck before I going to the book store.

At the Haunted Book Store I asked the attendant for directions to the poetry section. In my current life, I view poetry as an indulgence the same way a smoker views a pack of cigarettes, for consumption and an addiction. It wasn’t always that way. There were many shelves of poetry in the store, and not many people: one gent with a portable typewriter was writing on it at a nearby table. I found Ode to the Cold War: Poems New and Selected by Dick Allen and read a couple of poems. For $4.95 it went home with me. I also picked up An Inconvenient Genocide by Alicia Ghiragossián about the conflict between Turkey and Armenia for seven bucks. Stopping by the Iowa section, there was a copy of a 1918 bibliography titled Iowa Authors and Their Works by Alice Marple. I bought this Historical Department of Iowa book for ten bucks to add to my collection of bibliographies of Iowa authors. Thus far, the evening was a success and it I had not been in town 90 minutes.

Stopping by the truck again, I left the books on the seat, stashed my mobile phone and headed to the theater across the parking lot. I took tickets and got to meet all of the theater-goers. The performance was very good.

Why do I write about this? Partly because other writers have done as much near the corner of Market and Linn Streets, and I hope I too will be famous for my writing. Too, this district of Iowa City is part of my personal history. I lived a few block away on Market, went on dates here, saw politicians and plays, did research for my writing, had meals and coffee with people who are important to me and browsed Murphy Brookfield Book Store and Haunted Book Store (and its predecessor) countless times over the years. I write about it because it is part of who I am and hope that is reason enough.

~ Here’s another post about Market and Linn Streets if you liked this one.

Categories
Writing

Rest of the Way Out

Light from Outside

Seems like I’ve been hunkered down and bunkered in since apple season. I’ve been thoroughly funkified. With 45 days left until spring I’m restless to get out of my lair.

The number of indoor places I spend time is limited: the chair or couch in the living room, the kitchen, the bedroom, the laundry room, the bathrooms, or in my writing room.

It was comfortable early on. Now I’m itching for something.

We live during an assault on reason. I mentioned in my last post the greatest threat to society is a weaponization of ignorance and apathy. Politicians are unable or unwilling to change the status quo, lobbying groups don’t want change, and the public doesn’t seem to care, Matt Field wrote in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. That’s a hell of a sticky mess out of which to gain traction.

Still the light from outside beckons us to go there.

Categories
Kitchen Garden Writing

Soup for the Polar Vortex

Vegetable Soup on a Wintry Day

Monday I made a big pot of vegetable soup using what has become a standard process.

Mirepoix of onion, celery, carrot and salt sautéed in a couple tablespoons of vegetable broth.

Potatoes peeled and cut in large chunks, a 15 ounce can of rinsed, prepared beans, a pint of diced tomatoes, a quarter cup of barley, a half cup of dried lentils, a few bay leaves, two cups frozen sweet corn, a quart of home made tomato juice and vegetable broth to cover. I added lots of potatoes and carrots for texture and flavor. Toward the end of cooking I added a cup of frozen peas.

The soup cooks up thick and hearty, just the thing for subzero temperatures the polar vortex is bringing our way tonight and tomorrow.

Other soups I make are similar, adding every kind of vegetable we have on hand — after harvest or after cleaning the refrigerator. The limited number of ingredients in this recipe standardizes the outcome into something recognizable and delicious. Importantly, it is repeatable.

Over the weekend I sorted recipes, an act of curation. I found I’m much less attached to dessert recipes. Over the course of a year I make a few batches of cookies, an apple crisp or two, maybe a spiced raisin or applesauce cake. Those recipes are well used and written in my red book. I love dessert, but not that much.

The dessert recipes I kept included blueberry buckle, a seasonal item we serve at the orchard after the first blueberries come in from Michigan. The recipe our bakers use is called “Betty’s Blueberry Buckle,” but the one I have will serve.

While in graduate school I conducted a series of interviews with a subject for a class on aging. She had a letter from William F. Cody inquiring about his legacy in Davenport. I kept her recipe for custard for the memory, although I’m not sure if and when I might use it.

I find it hard to dispose of artifacts of consumption, although about half of the unsorted pile of recipes went into the paper recycling bin. That I got rid of anything is a sign of progress. So many things compete for attention that piles of artifacts, like these recipes, sit around indefinitely.

Winter is a great time to enjoy a bowl of soup and sort through the detritus of a life on the prairie. I look forward to spring.

Categories
Writing

Addicted to Writing

Desk Work

I’m addicted to writing.

Since retiring in 2009 my morning routine includes making a French press of coffee shortly after waking, wandering downstairs with sleep sand in my eyes, reading at a computer for the first cup, then writing.

When I’m writing everything fades into background as I consider words on a screen. It is bliss.

This blog hit a record number of views in January with four more days to go. I’ve posted almost every day since apple season ended. If I consistently apply my skills as a proof reader and editor I can produce a post that engages readers without calling attention to the prose. I live for return readers and discussions in society about what I’ve written. That too is addictive.

I’ve become some kind of writer animal. The work is not really process, more like a habit that roots out meaning in a common life. Some days are better than others, but an intellectual or human side appears only irregularly.

The addiction worries me.

Cognizant of increasing age I’m reluctant to spend too much time writing. When I begin, minutes and hours go by in a mysterious vortex that sucks away time leaving a few hundred words. That’s not all bad, just worrisome.

With the economic security of income from diverse sources, I’m free to do what I want. From time to time I think about building a wooden bench to place under one of the trees I planted. In good weather I’d read poetry and consume Galoises and Pernod Ricard while immersed in sunlight and pondering the muse. I’ve been drunk in France after too many anise aperitifs and don’t smoke. As good as it sounds, I doubt that’s my future.

Process isn’t everything but it helps. If I were to improve my writing — take out some of the animal-like habits — that’s where I’d focus. Seeking raw material in memory and artifact, discovery of meaning in society, followed by writing, re-writing and more re-writing. Something positive seems likely to result.

As I finish my second French press of coffee I’m wide awake.

I’m drawn to this comforting place, surrounded by books, with a small space heater keeping away the subzero temperatures outside. I’ll ponder my craft a while longer before turning everything off until tomorrow. Such pondering making us human as much as writing ever might.

Categories
Writing

Newspapers Are Dying – What About Blogs?

Iowa City Press Citizen Jan. 23, 2019

Every Wednesday evidence newspapers are dying is delivered to the end of our driveway.

I’ve asked the Iowa City Press Citizen to stop this delivery as we get a digital subscription. They can’t. They deliver the paper free on ad days to boost circulation numbers upon which advertising revenue depends.

The whole newspaper business seems to be on life support: advertising revenue diverted on line, subscriptions down, profitability gone. If governments could forego publication of notices, minutes and official announcements, they would. It would sink many low circulation weeklies in small cities. There are no easy answers and in many homes it is not a question: how can newspapers survive?

It is a big commitment to read a daily newspaper. I know because only in semi-retirement could I read two dailies — The Iowa City Press Citizen and the Cedar Rapids Gazette. With life being a time crunch to address other priorities, it is easier and more relevant to read from a score of internet news sites on the go than be restricted to a single newspaper. That’s part of the problem.

It goes deeper than that. Steve Cavendish of the Washington Post wrote today,

Print revenue is down, digital and mobile revenue aren’t nearly enough, and now a hedge fund promising even deeper cuts wants to acquire the company (Gannett). If the future of corporate news operations looks bleak, that’s because it is.

Newspapers have been under pressure since a heyday that ended in the late 1980s. Hedge funds owning newspapers is the final butcher block upon which the pieces get cut up and sold to the highest bidder. People continue to want news, so what is the next evolution?

There is talk about blogs being a potential supplement or replacement for formal news organizations. I doubt it for a couple of reasons.

Part of what makes good reporting possible is the financial backing of a large organization. Even though news organizations are diminished in that regard, a blogger is either self-financed or just barely capitalized. Pat Rynard of Iowa Starting Line took “this month off from writing to handle our financial and administrative side of things.” Rynard is proving the model of blogging as a political news source, however, he is one guy. Whether his operation is scalable to the level of a news organization is an open question. He reported today he should be solvent through the February 2020 Iowa caucuses, which is a positive. As much as I’d like to see him succeed with sustainable funding and revenue, he faces a lonely and uphill struggle compared to a stressed but viable news organization with adequate financing.

Laura Belin, publisher of Bleeding Heartland, is self financed so her struggle is not financing but access. Associated Press reported today she is trying to get a press pass in the Iowa House of Representatives. AP’s Ryan Foley wrote,

Belin applied for formal credentials for the first time to cover this session, which would grant her work space and easier access to briefings with key lawmakers, among other things.

She was denied but is persisting with her request. Judging from the quality of Belin’s previous coverage a press pass would make logistics easier, although her coverage already sets a high journalistic standard. She breaks news and covers topics newspapers don’t. This leads to another issue, readership.

Foley reported Bleeding Heartland gets 1,500 or more unique daily views while in session. That is great exposure for a blog, however, not nearly what a newspaper, with a print circulation of thousands would get between print and on line. Once I got more than 3,500 unique website views when I freelanced for the Iowa City Press Citizen. My average was much lower than that, but print edition plus on line clicks was always more than 10,000: hard to beat for a blogger. While I stop in at Bleeding Heartland and Iowa Starting Line frequently, they do not yet have the general audience penetration to compete with formal news organizations. As political blogs with a devoted following, maybe they don’t need it.

The first job I held was as a paper boy delivering the Des Moines Register. There weren’t many sales and it was a long walk between deliveries. When I ran into customers while making collections I got feedback on what they liked and didn’t like about the newspaper. (Mostly they didn’t like Donald Kaul’s Over the Coffee). Those days are mostly gone.

I hope the Iowa City Press Citizen survives the next acquisition. They already got rid of their big facility off North Dodge Street and are tucked away in rental space above a couple of restaurants. The idea of delivering free papers to boost circulation sounds like it came from an accounting meeting. I’m reminded every Wednesday the newspaper business as I knew it has dim prospects for the future.

Categories
Living in Society Writing

Legislative Priorities – IPERS Edition

Iowa State Capitol

This is part of a series about political issues that garner interest, but maybe too much or for the wrong reasons.

Main events occurred today at the Iowa State Capitol in the second week of the first session of the 88th General Assembly. Among them was a meeting of the State Government Committee about IPERS.

In a 5:22 a.m. email to my state representative and committee chair Bobby Kaufmann I wrote,

Good luck with the IPERS hearing today. I believe Iowa Policy Project and Progress Iowa are foolish to continue to hammer away at Republicans about IPERS. I agree it was problematic a couple of years ago to bring in the Reason Foundation to “evaluate IPERS,” however, the governor and Republican leadership got the message from Iowans not to mess with it. Time to move on.

A few hours later, I continue to believe that is true.

At the meeting Kaufmann reiterated his Dec. 6, 2018 assertion that under Republican leadership, and as long as he chaired the State Government committee, no changes would be made to IPERS. I’m sure today was meant to be the final word since everyone, including the governor, house speaker and senate majority leader said the same thing.

During the committee meeting, State Representative Mary Mascher, one of my favorite politicians and human beings ever, was mentioned by reporter Caroline Cummings in this tweet:

Cut to chase. Messaging the senate is not going to happen. Kaufmann would not have said what he did without Republican leadership support. After the 87th Iowa General Assembly, in which Republicans were noted for last minute bills Democrats barely had time to read before voting, any trust between Democratic and Republican members broke down. As Bobby Kaufmann’s father Jeff told me at the Solon Public Library on Jan. 21 2012, “There is no longer a Daniel Webster moment where people’s minds are changed in floor debates.” The “trust issue” to which Mascher referred is real and not going away.

At 1:01 p.m., shortly after the meeting, I received an email from Progress Iowa about it, confirming what was said, with a surprising addition, “We won’t be bullied by Bobby Kaufmann.”

IPERS is an important retirement program for many Iowans. It is right to stand up for it as was done the summer of 2017. However, it seems unlikely to be changed this session and maybe next because of the negative impact change would have on Republican chances in the 2020 general election. At what point do we move on to issues that matter as much or more?

When there is no imminent threat to IPERS the posturing, misrepresentation and hyperbole of groups like Progress Iowa seems misdirected. The cliche in politics is follow the money. Who is financially backing them? Why IPERS? The organization’s financial reports would likely provide answers.

It is important to watch the progress of IPERS in the legislature. It is simmering on a back burner and the governor said in 2017 she would like to evaluate changing the program to a hybrid with a defined contribution instead of a defined benefit for new members. She said she would protect the defined benefit workers were promised. Wealthy libertarians behind Dark Money in politics are playing a long game. Waiting a couple of years so house members can get re-elected is not an issue. Vigilance is required to make sure the IPERS pot doesn’t boil over unexpectedly. For now, the committee chair who would have to pass a bill has declared, “Not on my watch.” Democrats will be keeping watch.

It is time to set this one aside and focus on other, better, equally important things this session.

Categories
Environment Writing

Lunar Eclipse

Lunar Eclipse on Jan. 20, 2019. Photo Credit – Van Allen Observatories, Iowa City, Iowa.

Refracted light creating a reddish-orange hue on the moon’s surface looked pretty cool last night.

It was an event to remember, one that transcended daily life. It drew many of us together with a shared experience.

In the eclipse it was easy to imagine and literally see the vast emptiness of the universe. It reminded us of how reliant we are on our only home with its thin layer of atmosphere. No human hand played a role in the astronomical phenomenon except to warn us, as astronomers have since ancient times, it was coming.

Lunar Eclipse Taken with Mobile Device

The event had a long name: super blood wolf lunar eclipse. I don’t need or want a name, just memory of the image enlarged on my retina with a pair of unsteady binoculars.

After sunset the sky was as clear as it gets. The full moon illuminated everything in bright, silvery light. A few years ago I would jog on the lake trail in such light. As the eclipse progressed, the landscape darkened. The moon moved above the house so I went out to the driveway to see it. It was below freezing and I returned inside several times to warm up.

Witnessing the lunar eclipse lacked profundity, it being a function of celestial mechanics. If I was inclined to howl, that’s on me and my humanity. The experience asks the question why can’t we get along when we have so much in common? No answer was forthcoming.

I thought of Juliet’s speech to Romeo:

Although I joy in thee,
I have no joy of this contract tonight.
It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden,
Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be
Ere one can say “It lightens.”

I cling to the shared experience even if my view is blurred by an intervening atmosphere, inadequate lenses, and less than perfect eyesight. If the shared experience serves a human purpose, I’ll assimilate it, becoming the eclipse. Maybe it could transcend physics to help sustain our lives in a turbulent world.

Categories
Writing

After 50 Years

Author at Kraft Foods Oscar Mayer plant on Second Street in Davenport, Iowa Nov. 25, 2011

Feb. 1 will mark 50 years since Father was killed in an accident at the meat packing plant. Memories of Dad have hardened into meaningful stories. I was thinking of him when I woke this morning.

What I remember most is his trying to get out of life as a factory worker. He never made it.

He didn’t like it that he got his hands so dirty, that work in the plant was degrading. His father felt the same way about mining coal. Father and son, they both tried to escape their work culture and couldn’t. Dad encouraged me to find a different path and I tried. After two summers working at the plant during college, doing some of the hardest work in my life, I declined their job offer to become a plant foreman after graduation. It was the only offer I had.

The most important decision I made after Dad died was whether to leave Davenport and attend the University of Iowa as he and I discussed. Mother encouraged me to go and I did. For years I didn’t understand that the August 1970 trip to Iowa City was it. My relationship with family changed in a way that was unexpected and forever. I didn’t realize it at the time but I mourned Dad’s death long afterward. I don’t know exactly when — probably during military service — I was able to live with the loss.

After a shift Dad would head over to the Knotty Pine or Pete’s Midwest Tavern where he would cash his paycheck and socialize. It was what people did, the culture of meat packing. That night he cashed his check at Pete’s Midwest over his lunch break. I kept the coins from his pocket after he died, Mom used the bills the way she would had he gone on living.

Losing a parent before life begins can be tough. It was life-altering for me. Fifty years later I don’t think of the loss. It is a part of me about which there is no thinking, only doing. What else is there to do except go on living?

Categories
Kitchen Garden Writing

Bunkering in During Snowfall

Last of the Fresh Kale

Snow began overnight and is expected to continue all day — the first real snow this winter.

We need more from winter, a week of subzero temperatures to kill bugs in the ground and to stop the sap flow in trees before pruning. Today’s snowfall gets us started, although the long-range forecast shows ambient temperatures well above zero the rest of the month.

We are ready to bunker in. We have reading piles, plenty of food, an internet connection, and an operational forced air furnace. I expect to drive my spouse into town for work so she doesn’t have to scrape windshields afterward. Having lived in Iowa and the Midwest most of our lives we know what to do.

Breakfast was kale cooked in a style of central Mexico with caramelized onions, finely chopped garlic and red pepper flakes. This recipe is worth trying because it allays the bitterness sometimes associated with kale, making a hearty and delicious vegetarian meal. Here’s what I did.

In a medium sized frying pan warm extra virgin olive oil on medium high heat. Cut three medium onions in half,  slice them into quarter-inch ribbons, and add to the olive oil. Salt generously to taste. Once the mixture is cooking, reduce the heat and caramelize the onions. Finely chop three cloves of garlic and add them to the caramelized onions along with red pepper flakes to taste. Mix and cook just until the garlic loses it’s raw taste. Add one half cup of vegetable broth and a generous amount of kale. Cover the pan with a lid and let it cook for five minutes on medium low heat or until the kale is tender. Mix the ingredients thoroughly. At this point I laid two home made bean burgers from the freezer on top of the kale and covered again until the pre-cooked burgers were warmed through and the moisture evaporated. (If you want to use the kale mixture as a taco filling, the bean burgers aren’t needed). Transfer the kale and a burger to plates and top with Mexican cheese and fresh salsa. If you have it, freshly chopped cilantro would be a nice addition. The breakfast of champions.

Five weeks remain until soil blocking begins at the farms. It’s a chance to garage the car for days at a time and turn inward as if there is just us in the world. The snow is getting deep enough to shovel the driveway before heading to town.

Already it is becoming a productive, mostly indoors day. Winter at its best.

Categories
Writing

Composing 500 Words

Jewelweed on the Lake Macbride Trail

Post today, move on to tomorrow, and for the most part, walk away once the post is up. That’s blog writing.

While a writer can improve his or her craft by writing regularly, the impetus to post on a blog can erode time normally spent editing and rewriting. As a result, blog writing can be hit or miss.

John Irving said, “More than a half, maybe as much as two-thirds of my life as a writer is rewriting. I wouldn’t say I have a talent that’s special. It strikes me that I have an unusual kind of stamina.”

Blogging is anathema to Irving’s kind of writing. As a result blogging builds bad habits. How does one break the cycle? The answer is not in more careful planning, writing, editing and rewriting 500 word blog posts.

My blogging process developed a template. After getting a bee in my bonnet I spend time framing 500 words. Next, I rewrite what I’ve written with the goal of lowering the word count and making better sense. How can I say something more succinctly? How can I avoid common problems? How can I avoid using certain words like “but” and “that” and eliminate clichés that mindlessly pop into the text? After a rewrite, I look at the content and make sure I’m drawing a conclusion — that I haven’t developed a cache of author-only supporting information off line. A once over for spelling and grammar, insert a photo, justify, tag it, and hit “publish.” Pretty straight forward. It takes about 90 minutes on a good day.

I’m more careful with letters to the editor and pieces I know will reach a broader audience. They more represent writing according to the Irving model. When I get a chance for 500 words in the Cedar Rapids Gazette, with a print circulation of more than 34,000, I spend more time making sure the writing is thoughtful, well edited, and cogently composed. I haven’t had much trouble getting my work accepted with minimal editorial intervention.

If I had unlimited funds, I’d pay for an editor to review everything I write. When I’ve had an editor — at the newspapers and at Blog for Iowa — my writing improved. For a low wage worker and pensioner, an editor is not an option very often.

Rewriting is important in my writing life outside blogging. However, when I write 10,000 words I often abandon the project until a “later” that doesn’t arrive. This requires fixing through diligence and Irving-like stamina. Perhaps it’s the next thing on which to work.

In my 12th year of blogging I developed a following and am grateful. I often meet people I don’t know who are regular readers. My number of WordPress followers has slowly grown since I made this site public. I am thankful for readers and hope to retain their interest. The way to do that is to constantly improve my writing. Few enjoy process posts like this one. From time to time they are needed.