Category: Writing

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

Categories
Home Life Writing

Going Home – 2018

Raw Vegetables

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.

Categories
Writing

Ten Years of Blogging

Writing Table

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.

Categories
Home Life Writing

Holiday Fun

Frosted Squash Plants

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 Mysteries by 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.

Categories
Kitchen Garden Writing

Thanksgiving Chili Bowl

Homemade Chili

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.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Categories
Living in Society Social Commentary Writing

Waking and the Imagination

Curing Squash

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.

Categories
Work Life Writing

Back to Work

Barn Wood

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.

Categories
Writing

Last Share at Sundog Farm

Sundog Farm

The sun set as I pulled into Sundog Farm, home of Local Harvest CSA.

Eileen from Turkey Creek Orchard had just dropped off fresh aronia berries and jars of fruit jam to fill orders placed over the weekend. Farmers Carmen and Maja were there but didn’t have time to talk as they had deliveries in Cedar Rapids.

That left me with the goats and sheep to pick up our share.

Low wage work has kept me so busy everything that was once important gave way. I finished reading What Happened by Hillary Rodham Clinton, the first book I read since April. Clinton’s book is an important read for Americans and finishing it a year after she lost the election seemed good timing. What surprised me was how much space she devoted to Russian meddling in the 2016 election. My native reaction was what happens on the internet doesn’t matter much to a U.S. general election, but she convinced me that maybe it does. I also enjoyed her personal stories throughout the book. As was the case while reading her last book, Hard Choices, I found her analysis to be helpful and reasonable.

Today is election day in Iowa’s cities and towns. My pal from the Clinton campaign, Lauren Whitehead, is running unopposed for city council in the town nearest us. There is no election in the unincorporated area where we live. Because of our family roots in southwestern Virginia, I have been following the gubernatorial race there. The Democrat is leading in the polls although that’s no guarantee he’ll win. Whatever the result in Virginia my Twitter feed will be clogged up with analysis and punditry tonight. It’s a good night to retire early with a book and read about the election in the morning.

Yesterday I applied for Social Security retirement benefits. If all goes as expected the first check will hit in late January. By Spring I’ll be in a position to scale back my work at the home, farm and auto supply store. After that I hope to return to the CSA farms to help with spring planting. It will be the sixth year.

For now, I took the vegetables home and will consider how best to use them before they turn to compost. That’s an essential human question. One I spend extra time trying to answer.

Categories
Writing

Potluck Beginnings

Basket of Apples

On Friday I clocked out of work at the home, farm and auto supply store for four days off in a row!

I drove straight home, dumped the coleslaw I made in the morning into a bowl and mixed it up one last time before the potluck. I grabbed a pair of tongs for serving and headed to the orchard for the 6 p.m. event.

The annual crew potluck is our biggest and only non-work event at Wilson’s Orchard.

About 80 people attended at the on-site Rapid Creek Cidery, bringing the best side dishes imaginable to go along with chef Matt Stiegerwald’s braised pork from hogs raised at the orchard’s farm.

We joked we weren’t sure if we were supposed to bring potluck table service. A veteran of many church potlucks brought a basket with plates, silverware, glasses and everything one would need. Most of us used paper plates and flatware. I enjoyed a glass of plain hard cider as aperitif before switching to non-alcoholic.

When serving began, I made a southern-themed plate with pork, my coleslaw, macaroni and cheese, dumplings and raw tiny carrots. One of countless possibilities given the many tables of side and desserts. All that was lacking was corn bread but it was a potluck after all.

My work pals were all there: the octogenarian who makes dinosaurs and showed off the scar from his recent knee surgery to all who were curious; the pilot who recounted his air-search for the other orchard, which he couldn’t find until I gave directions from ground level; the artist who gave a speech about entering the drawing for fabulous prizes mostly from the Orchard’s lost and found (think sunglasses); the data analyst who is sharp as a tack yet made a six-figure error on the cash register; the Ukrainian guest workers; and the crew of bakers with their families — it takes a lot of bakers to make all the turnovers, pies, apple and peach crisps and blueberry buckles we sell. The sales barn manager was there. She works non-stop from before the August opening until the end of the season. Actually just about everyone was there. Needless to say the conversations and meal, with a chance to win prizes, were delicious. That’s no apple joke.

We talked about when we might see each other again and confirmed that God willing and the creek don’t rise we would be back next year. My only regret was it wouldn’t be soon enough. Heaven help us if it’s not until next season.

Categories
Writing

Drawer of Ingredients

Drawer of Bell Peppers

Our household had no shortage of fresh food this year.

Barter agreements with two farms, my work at the orchard, and a garden that produces more food each year created a kitchen full of ingredients to feed the two of us and others.

I’m thankful to have figured out how to provide local food for our family mostly grown using organic practices.

So it is with this blog. It is a place to capture what’s going on in a turbulent world and make sense of it if I can. I post original content and significant writing from elsewhere. The interplay between this blog, email, Twitter and Facebook is complex and ever changing. Like the fruit and vegetable production, it is a pantry full of ingredients for bigger projects — snippets of this and that drawn from memory and experience.

I’ve written about 2017 as the final lap leading to a finish line. It is also a starting line. In addition to taking care of our aging home, ourselves and our relationships, I plan some writing projects, including an expansion of my post Autobiography in 1,000 Words. I made the plan a year and a half ago and once end of year chores are done I hope to schedule the work. Something else has to give — likely be my work at the home, farm and auto supply store.

At this point, memory is still good and the larder is full of ideas. Now to make something of all these ingredients. What else is there to do?

Categories
Writing

Grit Alone Won’t Protect Local Food Systems

Red Delicious Apples

The marketplace of home vegetable gardens, community supported agriculture, farmers markets, road side vegetable stands, restaurants, retail interests and direct farm sales hasn’t coalesced into a sustainable local food system, and may not.

One should never doubt the resilience of farmers. At the same time, due to unwelcome changes in society, our local food system is at risk before it has become sustainable.

A small group of pioneers made progress toward a sustainable, local food system. People like Denise O’Brien, Dick and Sharon Thompson, Fred Kirschenmann, Francis Thicke, Laura Krouse and Susan Jutz took ideas about sustainability and put them into practice. Their work enabled a new generation to enter the local food business — people like Tony Thompson (New Family Farm), Kate Edwards (Wild Woods Farm) and Carmen Black (Sundog Farm).

The idea of a return to diversified farms producing food for local markets begs the question how did we get away from it?

If markets for local food become stale or disappear due to changing tastes or financial stress, increased commodification could erase slim margins and lead to bankruptcy.

A local food system is about cooperation and support: between farmers, and with their customers, suppliers, workers, volunteers and bankers. Without that a family may have their dinner on the table, but the entire system is risked if such individualism is the prevailing attitude.

Change is in the air. Change driven by economic hardship and oppressive policies originating in Des Moines and Washington.

It doesn’t look good for growers, retailers or consumers, not because business models have changed, but because we are entering an era when wealth flows to the top, leaving the rest of us struggling. How will farmers get health insurance if the individual market becomes too expensive? They may take a job in town and let their agricultural aspirations go.

These changes and the challenges they bring will test the sustainability of a fledgling local food system.

Climate change is impacting society negatively as well. What we assume about Iowa’s growing conditions — adequate rainfall and predictable temperatures — is subject to change as the oceans and atmosphere warm, increasing the number and intensity of extreme weather events. Likewise, increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere may be reducing the nutritional value of food, according to a recent study published in the journal Nature.

I don’t doubt the resilience of farmers I know. If a local food system can be sustained, they will do it. Isn’t it time you got to know your farmer? We could all use a friend during these turbulent times.

~ First published in the Saturday, Sept. 30, 2017 edition of the Cedar Rapids Gazette.