In a hopeful year, the U.S. Congress is back to work, on Jan. 8 the state legislature convenes the second half of the 87th Iowa General Assembly, and grassroots politics begins another cycle with the Feb. 5 annual Iowa caucuses.
Politics affects us all.
In a time when there is no time for us to get anything done, here are five easy things to improve our politics.
If you are free Feb. 5, attend your political party caucus, which begin at 7 p.m. Republicans and Democrats agree when to hold precinct caucuses and these meetings represent a chance to see what having an R or D next to your voter registration means.
Subscribe to elected officials’ newsletters. All of our federal and state representatives have a newsletter. If you don’t know who represents you, in the Solon area it’s currently U.S. Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst, U.S. Representative Dave Loebsack, State Senator Bob Dvorsky and State Representative Bobby Kaufmann.
Take time to learn about the gubernatorial candidates and vote in the June primary. Both major political parties have a primary election for governor.
Worry less about process and more about values. So many voters get tied in a knot about what governing bodies should and shouldn’t do before enacting laws or ordinances. The better question is what do our representatives stand for? Their values are clear in votes they have made.
Be civil when talking about politics with friends and neighbors. If you can’t, then change the topic to the weather. Most important is taking time to listen, followed by thinking before opening your mouth. It’s possible to hear people out with whom we disagree without discussions escalating into an argument.
Use these five ideas and I believe you will agree a better politics is possible.
~ Published in the Jan. 11, 2018 edition of the Solon Economist
“Each moment is different from any before it. Each moment is different, it’s now.”~ Incredible String Band
Best wishes for a happy 2018!
The ambient temperature is 23 degrees below zero outside, the kind of winter we expect in the Midwest. The cold snap should and hopefully will last a week or more. If we’re lucky, it will be followed by another later this month. After that, I’m ready for winter to be over.
There is a lot to do in 2018.
January will be a month to see if financial plans made in December work.
The switch from work-based health insurance to Medicare means managing six different payments for health insurance each month. With this change, my net income from the home, farm and auto supply store should increase, less any additional tax. There is also Social Security, scheduled to begin the fourth week of the month. Now begins the monitoring to see if it comes together as planned. Assuming it does, the rest of the year falls into place as follows.
I haven’t set a date to leave the home, farm and auto supply store, although I’m looking at March 16, giving me three full months of paychecks, which when combined with Social Security, will help the transition. Farm work starts in late February/early March and is expected to run through June or July. Orchard work starts in August. There are only a few other focal points.
Writing: After picking a project, I plan to get back to writing 1,000 words a day, six days a week by spring.
Reading: Read 50 pages a day, six days a week, split between books for learning, enjoyment, and research for writing.
Social Media: Who knew this would even be a category? I plan to maintain my blog and use Facebook and Twitter to develop a readership for new writing. I may add other social media platforms.
Business Development: Once I leave the home, farm and auto supply store attention will be turned to generating cash to help pay down debt and take care of major, deferred household expenses. This must be done in a sustainable way, one considering my aging frame. Over the next year or two I will reduce income from work that makes physical demands.
Food Ecology: Combining gardening, farm work and networking, leverage the local food system to provide a greater share of the food we consume at home. Get better at gardening.
Social Engagement: Develop a sustainable, local group to work on the midterm election, and advocate for environmental, public health, and social justice issues. Work with national organizations to reduce the existential threat of nuclear weapons.
Health: Take care of myself so I can do the aforementioned things.
While not really resolutions, there is a lot to do. Without a plan, one might slip into the abyss and never be heard from again. I’m not ready for that.
Best wishes to readers for a peaceful and prosperous 2018.
BIG GROVE TOWNSHIP — I found a quart jar of whole bean coffee in the pantry, ground a quarter cup, and made a pot with my French press — a bitter yet delicious treat while reflecting on the past year.
I will need a second pot.
2017 was a year of treading water in a sea of challenges.
National political culture mattered this year. The inauguration of Donald J. Trump as president set a sour tone as his conservative and sometimes unqualified picks filled out the judiciary. His cabinet ate away at the foundation of our Democracy the way termites invade the weakest point of a structure to consume and thereby weaken it. If Barack Obama’s 2008 election freed me from the constraints of a transportation career, the 45th president fouled the air of creativity with his every move — spoken and unspoken. It was a time when capital was valued more than labor, with no better expression of it than the tax bill signed into law on Friday. Repression of Democratic ideals could be found everywhere we live.
My response to the toxic environment was to engage. I re-joined the county party central committee, our home owners association, and the Macbride Sanitary Sewer District. I also wrote: seven letters to the Solon Economist, two columns published in the Cedar Rapids Gazette, 24 posts on Blog for Iowa, two on Bleeding Heartland and 159 posts here. I finished reading ten books this year, most of those in the first few months of the year. I followed the circus that has been Republican control of the federal and state government, and developed some new friends. Moral: when the nation goes sour, get involved locally.
My work at the home, farm and auto supply store has been a physical drain. I applied for and was approved to start Social Security benefits with the first check arriving in late January 2018. I’ll be transitioning out of low-wage work before Memorial Day.
Wild Woods Farm and Sundog Farm kept me busy spring weekends, and I worked the fall apple season at Wilson’s Orchard. There were bits and pieces of other income. By the end of the apple season, I was ready to rest from farm work. Our balance sheet was unchanged year over year.
My health has been okay. I got a crown and transitioned to a new dentist as Dr. Erusha retired. I avoided seeing a physician and am past due for a checkup. The physical work at the home, farm and auto supply store, and on the farms, has been tolerable. My plantar fasciitis remains present, but subdued going into 2018. I’m in reasonably good health for a soon to be 66 year old male.
On a positive note, Jacque and I marked the 35th anniversary of our wedding this month.
“That which does not kill us, makes us stronger,” German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said. I’m still here. We’re still here. We managed to sustain our lives in a turbulent year. That alone is hope for a better future.
On several occasions, friends and family politely informed me I must downsize my book collection.
I resisted.
The specific enjoyment of working at a desk, surrounded by books, may not be everyone’s idea of idyllic, however, for me it is close to sublime. It’s who I am.
While pondering a work backlog in said enjoyably sublime, idyllic location, my mind began to wander. It arrived, somewhat predictably, on the question which book to read next? One thing led to another and finally to the context of the current series of posts about going home, my remaining time, and this analysis.
How many books can I read during the coming years?
Set aside what we all know about life — we could die tonight — and answering this question is useful to a bibliophile. Here goes:
I can read 50 pages a day if I keep at it. I don’t read books every day but expect to come close as I transition to full retirement next year. It’s an inexpensive way for a person with limited resources to stay engaged in society. Assume I read 50 pages, six days per week.
According to the Social Security Administration life expectancy table I can expect to live another 18.5 years. Assume I do. That would be 288,600 pages read. Sounds like a lot, yet it is a finite number.
How long is a book? Obviously they vary in length and some are more interesting than others and read faster. For purposes of analysis, I used the Harry Potter series (UK edition) as my guide to book length. The seven books in the series total 3,407 pages, averaging 486.7 per book. This is somewhat arbitrary but sounds about right. My reading potential is 592.97 books during the coming years. If I can do it, that would more than double the number of books I now read per year to 32.
There are issues with this hopeful analysis.
What if my eyesight fails? That’s possible and somewhat likely given the results of my infrequent visits to the optometrist. We’ve discussed macular degeneration, cataracts, optic nerve disorders like glaucoma, and the condition of my retinas. While my eye health is reasonably good, that could change. If it does, it could impact my ability to read. It could also restrict books read to large print editions or those available electronically where the font size can be enlarged. I don’t like thinking about it, but there it is: a bibliophile’s nightmare.
There is also a question of cognitive engagement. Will I be able to understand what I read for my life span? Will reading help resist neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and Huntington’s disease? Will the head trauma I experienced at age 3 manifest itself in my remaining years in the form of a neurocognitive disorder? Will I experience a stroke or head trauma that will impact cognitive function? While less worrisome than loss of eyesight, if I lose the ability to comprehend what I read I’ll just have to deal with it.
An air traffic controller can land only one plane at a time and so it is with reading books. The most important question was my first one: which book will I read next? Carefully considered answers are important at full retirement age.
My friends and family are right, I should downsize my collection of books. Partly because given the remaining time I can’t read but a small percentage of them. I must focus on those relevant to my current life. Downsizing is also important because I don’t want my paternal legacy to be passing on an unorganized mountain of stuff for our daughter to spend her time going through. That would be rude and not what I want to be as a father.
I’m going home next year and hope to continue reading books. There’s a lot to learn and experience inside their covers. Reading helps sustain our lives in a turbulent world.
I’m going home now that my applications to the U.S. federal retirement program are approved.
My first payment from Social Security is scheduled around Jan. 24, 2018. We both have health coverage through Medicare, a Medicare supplement policy, and a prescription drug plan effective Jan. 1. We’ll need the money and hope we don’t need the health insurance.
It’s not clear what “going home” means today, but for sure, I’ll be leaving employment at the home, farm and auto supply store in the first half of 2018 — likely late winter or spring.
I don’t write in public about family, but plan to nurture those relationships.
Compensated work is on the 2018 agenda, specifically farm work for the sixth season at Community Supported Agriculture projects and at the orchard. I’d work for wages after my retail experience but need to transition out of driving a lift truck and lifting 50-pound bags of feed in long shifts. If I took a new job for wages, the commute would have to be less, the pay more, and personal fulfillment high. I hope to get better as a gardener, transitioning to a more productive vegetable patch and more fruit trees.
Uncompensated work is on the agenda as well. Scores of household projects wait for time and resources. I expect to have the time and some of the resources in 2018. We built new in 1993 and that reduced our home maintenance expenses in the early years. Things now need attention and preparation for the next phase of our lives in Big Grove. I expect to reduce the number of things we possess, converting current warehouse space to better livability.
I’ll continue to be active in our local community, but less outside Big Grove and surrounding townships. The home owners association, sewer district and membership on the political party central committee will serve as primary volunteer activities. I’ll also seek volunteer opportunities in nearby Solon. For a broader perspective I belong to the Arms Control Association, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Practical Farmers of Iowa and the Climate Reality Project.
Importantly, writing is on the 2018 agenda. I’ve been planning an expanded autobiography and that will be the first major project. With it I hope to develop a process to research, write and re-write a 20,000-word piece for distribution, if not publication. If my health holds and the wolves of an increasingly coarse society are held in abeyance, there will be additional projects. My first six decades have been in preparation for this. I believe positive outcomes will result.
I’m going to home to the life we built for ourselves. We’re not from here, yet after 24 years we have deep roots in this imperfect soil. I’m ready to settle in and grow.
On Nov. 10, 2007 I launched a blog called Big Grove News, named after the rural township where I live.
I made three posts that day: a brief welcome announcement; a copy of a letter to the editor of the Solon Economist asserting the name of the Environmental Protection Agency should be changed to the Environmental Exploitation Agency under President George W. Bush, advocating for Democrats to caucus for John Edwards; and a remembrance of Norman Mailer who died that day.
Since then, under different names and platforms, my blogs traced my transition from a well-paid career in transportation through our daughter’s leaving Iowa after college, and my “retirement” at age 57. As readers know, I didn’t really retire nor ever will I. In the post-Reagan era working people get relief from a troubled world only when they head to the cemetery. Ten years later I’ve become a low-wage worker getting by well enough to support my writing.
I thank the many friends and editors who read my work, provided feedback, encouraged me, and helped improve my skills. My editors in the newspaper business — Lori Lindner, Jennifer Hemmingsen, Emily Nelson, Jeff Charis-Carlson and Doug Lindner — were invaluable to my craftsmanship. Trish Nelson’s editing since my first post at Blog for Iowa on Feb. 25, 2009 kept me focused on progressive issues. Her influence has been and is significant. When I think of who is reading me, she’s there.
I also thank John Deeth who noticed I had begun blogging that November. In the petri dish that was then Johnson County, Iowa that meant a lot. Laura Belin encouraged me to re-think my policy of taking posts off line. It was good advice and I’ve left them up ever since.
Influences
The fact of Barack Obama’s administration enabled my current desire and ability to write in public. Whatever flaws he had as president, his tenure created a political and social environment that encouraged me to let go the entanglement of a big job and venture out on my own. If the Republican had won in 2008 I’d likely still be working in transportation.
I live in a place with inherent stability. Townships were the first form of Iowa government and on clear nights I can close my eyes and see the removal of natives and destruction of prairie that led to today’s grid of land sections created by the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. Fence rows and gravel roads create the patchwork that today is Iowa seen from the sky. Whether the work of our forebears was good or bad, in 2007 it was a stable paradigm for rural life. The peaceful stability of living in Iowa enabled my writing.
The consumption of news, information, books and magazines combined with the explosion of social media after 2007 changed the way I read and write. The broad availability of information on the internet led me to pick a few areas and read deeply in them: foreign affairs, agriculture, slavery and the environment. My written pieces got shorter and more concise.
Creative influences
My earliest creative influences were William Shakespeare, Pablo Picasso, Pete Seeger, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, Babe Ruth, Saul Bellow, Marlon Brando, Albert Einstein and John F. Kennedy.
Today’s influences are Al Gore, George Lakoff, Greg Sargent of the Washington Post, Jane Meyer and Elizabeth Kolbert of the New Yorker, Naomi Oreskes of Harvard University, Ari Berman of Mother Jones, and the trio of Associated Press writers Margie Mason, Robin McDowell and Martha Mendoza. I also follow and read most of what Daryl Kimball and Joe Cirincione write about nuclear non-proliferation. Current influences include well-known writers Joan Didion, John Irving and Simon Winchester.
I don’t watch television. I don’t (or can’t stand to) listen to radio, especially National Public Radio. Vera Ellen is likely the best dancer ever. I consume YouTube videos, including recent views of interviews with William S. Burroughs, Hunter S. Thompson, Robin Williams and Robbie Robertson. I don’t know or like much of current music but favor Sara Bareilles and Amadeus Electric Quartet. I still listen to the music of The Band, Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, Peter, Paul and Mary, Paul Simon, Bert Jansch and the Incredible String Band.
Writing about my influences is indicative of a desire to continue blogging. As I reach the Social Security Administration’s “full retirement age” next month I expect to continue blogging as I have but do more writing off line. Ten years of blogging has prepared me well in politics and I hope to have something meaningful to say during the 2018 and 2020 election campaigns.
We never know what tomorrow might bring, although most good writers have a pretty good idea.
Hard frost and cooler temperatures make way for end of year holidays. Stress diminishes as plans for outdoor work become moot.
Diversity in the United States means holidays differ among social groups with each family developing a way of participating in a national culture.
Specific things have been on the agenda in our home. We discuss when to set up the Christmas holiday decorations, make and receive phone calls, cook a special meal, and pretty much stay within the boundary of our lot lines. It has been a quiet day for the last several years.
Some activities are particularly fun.
I mentioned the meal in yesterday’s post. What made it special was discussion about what to have combined with its simplicity. We made enough food for leftovers from recipes developed at home. The concession to consumer culture was an inexpensive bottle of Martinelli’s Sparkling Apple Cider. It was sweet and fizzy.
We don’t receive many seed catalogues in the mail yet I started online orders at Seed Savers Exchange and Johnny’s Selected Seeds. The activity informs visualization of next year’s garden. There is a lot of thinking and planning to be done prior to entering payment information and hitting the order button on the web sites. There are discounts from both companies for ordering online this early.
I read a couple chapters of Avenue of Mysteriesby John Irving. Books to read pile up on the filing cabinet near my writing desk. I finish most of the books I read each year between December and February. Reading is part of the holiday quiet time and sustains me through winter.
Napping is a lost art. Balance between falling asleep on the couch from exhaustion and intentionally resting is hard to achieve. After the day’s activities I slept straight through the night. I didn’t take a nap this Thanksgiving, but should have.
As a schooler we had at least a four-day Thanksgiving holiday. In the work force, I worked on Thanksgiving Day countless times, even the single time Mother made it out to Indiana for the holiday. That day I coordinated holiday meals for some of more than 600 drivers based at our trucking terminal and missed the main meal service at home.
Indiana was a tough place to live in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The Reagan era was noted for downsizing or eliminating large industrial job sites like U.S. Steel. I can’t recall the number of conversations about what used to be in the steel business. There were many. Even lake-effect snow from Lake Michigan couldn’t deaden the angst people felt. Electing Bill Clinton president didn’t change what the radio stations described as the “steel mill culture.” There wasn’t much for which to give thanks in that economic and political environment.
Memories fade with time and Thanksgiving presents opportunities to re-tell the stories of our lives together. Such storytelling has been wide-ranging and keeps the past alive. A past to inform our future, or so we hope even if the teller doesn’t get details right.
If we work a little, Thanksgiving can be a time to have fun. That may be enough to sustain us.
We discussed plans for Thanksgiving dinner exactly three minutes.
It’s the two of us and we haven’t had chili with cornbread for a long time. We haven’t had an apple crisp this season either, so that will be our Thanksgiving supper along with a bottle of sparkling apple cider.
A person can eat only so many pizzas, bowls of soup, squash, rice and potato dishes in one month.
We don’t use the television much, so no Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, no movies, just us, chez nous with talk and naps. We get a signal from basic cable and have talked about getting a new television to replace the one that displays varying shade of red regardless of channel. The conversation was inconclusive.
People call it a holiday, but this year it’s merely a different day off work as I have to add Saturday to my schedule at the home, farm and auto supply store. A mid-week day of rest anyway… and some overtime pay.
We had a phone call with our daughter during which I was described as “Garrison Keillor-like” while telling a story about the orchard. Don’t know if that’s good or bad and I denied it. I claimed the Minnesota writer was much taller so how could I sound like him? The moniker stuck despite my denial. I’m okay with that.
I started talking about Minnesota where my Polish forebears bought land from the railroad. The only trip I made to the home place was the summer after Grandmother died. I brought back a turtle carved from pipestone for our daughter. She remembered the gift but not the context around it. We likely all have imperfect memories which should encourage us toward humility.
I understand why parents tell their children the same story over and over again. It’s a way of defining shared history. If we are honest, we craft the story to accurately reflect our experience, sanding off rough edges to help it along. Tricksters among us may misrepresent certain aspects of a story to see if listeners catch on. That’s part of the story telling craft, one that reinforces what is shared about our experiences. I believe we can be honest tricksters.
About now people are finishing their holiday feasts and winding down: viewing television, making phone calls, drinking coffee, putting away leftovers, et. al. I plan to read while the chili simmers, then make the apple crisp. It will go into the oven timed so it can be served warm.
I’m not a fan of human physiology. Given a Cartesian outlook toward life, I’d rather not think about or acknowledge my physicality even exists.
Yet there it is, influencing my daily affairs in ways I don’t comprehend. The physicality of others impacts everything I do in public and in private. My physicality — driving a lift truck, operating a bar code scanner, lifting bags of feed, sitting in meetings with other humans — impacts others as well as myself. For at least a moment, I should consider and endeavor to understand physiology.
Maybe in another life.
“I think, therefore I am” has been my beacon since I was a grader. I call it Cartesian now but its roots are in serving as an altar boy a few blocks from home in the Catholic Church and in the convent located on the upper floor of our elementary school. I’d come home from daily Mass and read what today is called juvenile literature printed on cheap paper and mailed from places of which I’d never heard. I became fixated on my own awareness and with the fact that other people, places and things existed and had impact on me. I felt separate from their reality, connected only by ink on paper, conversation, and radio and television. I became aware that in fact it was a reality.
The origins of a Cartesian outlook have roots further back in my hospitalization for a head injury at age three.
“What I learned through the injury and recovery in the hospital was that there is an infrastructure of knowledge and caring to support us when things happen,” I wrote in 2009. “This experience assured me that although we are vulnerable, we are not alone.”
Four physicians ago, when we first moved to Big Grove, my doctor laid me back on the examination table and rested his left hand on my naked belly and held it for a moment.
“This is not normal,” he said, referring to excess weight layered between my guts and skin. I agreed, respecting his training and experience in physiology, something about which I cared little. One would have thought it easy to improve my Body Mass Index given the intellectual provenance awareness can bring.
But no.
It has been especially hard to exercise since developing plantar fasciitis. Given my love of jogging, I tend to avoid thinking about exercise now, hoping gardening and the physicality of work at the home, farm and auto supply store compensates. I don’t know if it does and am reluctant to do the type of analysis I did with other life schemes.
If mine is a life of the imagination, that’s where I’d prefer to live. Yet reality beckons: in the form of news stories of horrible things happening to people the world over; in the work required to put a balanced meal on the table; or in staying awake during the 25 minute commute to the home, farm and auto supply store. Who wouldn’t want to live in the imagination? There is an unparalleled comfort there.
Whatever I am, physically or intellectually, I go on looking.
I look through a window where spiders persistently weave and reweave a web to catch insects drawn to the warmth and light of our home;
I look through eyeglasses the prescription of which needs an upgrade;
I look through the car windshield alert for the sudden appearance of deer during the rut;
I look through the fog of morning to see what each day brings;
I look for things I recognize more than for discovery and that’s regrettable.
After college I vowed to read every book in our Carnegie library. At the time that may have been possible. I didn’t get past the religion section of the Dewey Decimal System-organized stacks. I don’t read as much today as I did then.
Now the veil of Maya wears thin.
Everything I believed upon retirement from my transportation career has been called into question. I was hopeful the long, difficult work of electing a Democratic president was finished and that common sense would dominate public discourse. It turned out to be too much imagining as we were struck in the tuchus by the physicality of modern politics.
As if awakening from a dream, it will soon be time again to get dressed and find my running shoes. Not because my plantar fasciitis is in abeyance, but because the built in arch support will comfort my aging feet as I re-engage in society. I didn’t imagine I’d have to do that again in this life. It turns out I was wrong and Frederick Douglass was right:
It is in strict accordance with all philosophical, as well as experimental knowledge, that those who unite with tyrants to oppress the weak and helpless, will sooner or later find the groundwork of their own liberties giving way. “The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.” It can only be maintained by a sacred regard for the rights of all men.
I imagine it’s time to get back to work in the physical world.
The desultory nature of lowly paid work is a grind.
That’s what I found yesterday upon returning to the home, farm and auto supply store after a four-day vacation. By afternoon I was ready for a nap but instead scratched at the stacks of piled up work and made a day of it. I won’t run out of work there any time soon.
I had thought to secure provisions at the warehouse club after work but was tired, achy and my feet hurt. I skipped shopping and drove straight home.
Vacation consisted mostly of sleeping, reading, napping, cooking, writing and resting. I’ve been working almost every weekday and weekend since February when I started soil blocking at the farm. It all caught up with me. By Tuesday night I felt more human if not fully rested.
I left our property exactly three times: to meet with a neighbor about our relationship with Iowa Department of Natural Resources, to fill Jacque’s car with gasoline, and to pick up our share at the farm. Most of what I hoped to do while vacationing remains undone. I did manage a few things using the internet: applying for Social Security retirement benefits, ordering a couple of books for winter reading, and ordering parts to repair a burner on our aging electric range. It’s something.
I’m not complaining. We have it better than most who make it on less than a livable wage in the post Reagan society.
What matters more was the ability to author a few posts during this down time. Nothing profound — public journaling really — and that escape into the imagination made all the difference.
Journey Home 
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