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Living in Society

Changing Gun Culture Politics

Deer in the Park – Photo Credit Heidi Smith

The obvious path to change American gun culture is through voting. Since Republicans have majorities in both chambers of the Iowa legislature and hold the governor’s office, we need to vote them out. This is the crew that advanced a Constitutional Amendment for “strict scrutiny” on firearms restrictions that would prevent the Iowa Legislature from regulating guns. When 90 percent of Americans favor sensible gun regulations, Iowa Republicans are taking us in the wrong direction. We should vote for Democrats.

I reduced my idea to these words on Twitter yesterday.

The response was mostly favorable. There were a few trolls, although I prevented the post from being ratioed by limiting who could reply to it. The tweet remains active and at this writing garnered 17,720 impressions with 1,203 engagements and 704 likes. That’s a lot for the account of an aging Iowan who likes to post artwork, links to my blog posts, newspaper clippings, and local culture stories which include politics.

Let’s get started with the proposed Constitutional Amendment that will appear on the Nov. 8, 2022 ballot. Republican Majority Leader Matt Windschitl has been the principal sponsor of legislation easing gun control regulations in Iowa. The seven-term state representative had this to say about the Constitutional Amendment in his Jan. 29, 2021 legislative newsletter:

As many subscribers of this newsletter know the Freedom Amendment is the proposal to enshrine in our state constitution protections for our Second Amendment rights. This proposal is something that House Republicans have been working to advance for the last decade. The language is simple, straightforward and unambiguous. It reads as follows, “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. The sovereign state of Iowa affirms and recognizes this right to be a fundamental individual right. Any and all restrictions of this right shall be subject to strict scrutiny.” Iowans need and deserve this fundamental protection in our constitution, as we are one of six states who do not currently have these protections in our state constitution.

Words from Windschitl, Jan. 29, 2021 issue.

A more detailed explanation of Winschitl’s reasoning for the “Freedom Amendment” can be found in his March 22, 2018 newsletter, which is here. Simply put, Republicans hold significant majorities in the Iowa House and Senate and are systematically implementing policy, including gun control policy, that Democrats prevented from passage when we held one or both of the chambers. Governor Kim Reynolds is an enabler of the most extreme policies advanced by the legislature.

Perhaps the two most important primary elections answer the questions which Republican will challenge U.S. Representative Cindy Axne in the Third Congressional District, and which Democrat will challenge U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley. Control of the U.S. House of Representatives is at stake in the four Iowa Congressional races and to ensure there is a chance to retain the House majority, Iowans should elect Democrats. The Fourth Congressional District has been out of reach since Steve King was elected, yet by re-electing Axne and adding Christina Bohannan in the First District and Liz Mathis in the Second, Iowa Democrats will have done their part to retain the House majority and thus will be able to advance legislation like HR-8 and HR-1446 which expand background checks. With the U.S. Senate split 50-48-2 between Republicans, Democrats and Independents, defeating Chuck Grassley is essential to effective gun control.

Whether Deidre DeJear can defeat the great Republican enabler Kim Reynolds is an open question. Since DeJear has no primary challenge she deserves our financial support now. How her campaign will go through November will depend upon what happens in the U.S. Senate race, which has higher visibility than the gubernatorial race. If the electorate is ready for a change in U.S. Senator, as polls suggest, the hope is DeJear will gain coat tails and the possibility of election. She is the best option for improving gun control in Iowa. Vote for Democrat Deidre DeJear because Republicans are removing most gun control.

In the wake of the Uvalde, Texas shooting, Linn County Supervisor Stacey Walker posted on Twitter, “We must do what we can, with what we have, and we must do it now.” There is no reasoning with Republicans on gun control. I agree. Democrats must act now. The problem is, we didn’t elect enough of them in 2020 and suffer the vicissitudes of Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema in the current Congress because of it. There will be another Congress and the only effective response to gun violence is to elect Democrats across the board.

Categories
Living in Society

Trip to the Pioneer Museum

1856 log cabin (left) and 1861 log house relocated to Marengo, Iowa.

A few uncaptioned photos from my May 21, 2022 visit to the Iowa County Pioneer Heritage Museum. I’m still mulling the meaning of the collection of historical items.

Categories
Living in Society

I’m for Mike Franken

The Democratic primary election is June 7 and I’m supporting retired three-star admiral Michael Franken for Iowa’s next U.S. Senator.

To learn more about Mike Franken, his experience, and what he stands for, visit his website here.

Categories
Writing

Writer’s Week #7

Playing with a Frisbee on Gilbert Court in Iowa City.

It isn’t clear when it began yet I’ve reached a stopping point in writing my autobiography. I had intended to breeze through my undergraduate education at the University of Iowa — touching key points only — so I could focus on my trip to Europe, military experience, and the time leading up to our wedding and the birth of our only child. I’m inside those years in Iowa City pretty deep and the dive has only begun.

As I wrote about my early and K-12 years in Davenport, it was easier to paint with a broad brush. The narrative I sought to reduce to paper had been forming for a long time, comprised of specific memories and a small set of people, places and things. I had never thought of my years from birth to high school graduation in a structured manner before. I’m learning about those times in a way I hadn’t considered. It was easy to avoid complexities as moving away from home, and what I became at university, gained more narrative importance. I have had to stop and take stock. That’s where I remain for the time being, likely for the rest of summer.

My last year of university was transformational and I’m just beginning to understand how much so.

Senior year, when I lived in a shared home on Gilbert Court, was the time when Oscar Mayer & Company offered me a job as a plant foreman. I appreciate the offer. They didn’t have to make it. Yet when they funded most of my education in the form of a grant from the Mayer family after the death of my father at the Davenport plant, it seemed appropriate. I recall the first summer I worked at the meat packing plant. One of the millwrights I was helping offered to take me to see the elevator which collapsed and killed Father. I had no interest in reliving that history then, or on a daily basis while working there. I declined the offer.

I had not developed any strong relationships with women by the time 1974 arrived. It seemed unlikely I would be ready to do so for a while. During summer gatherings with male high school classmates, they were often ready for sexual action. I was not and those nights we departed company so they could pursue their desires. I developed relationships with women at university, yet wanted to be friends. I couldn’t bear the possibility of a romantic breakup forcing us to separate. Lack of a “girlfriend” was a background tension I dealt with by living a full life in other ways.

The most important transformation may be coming to terms with the desire to be creative. After graduation I spent years considering what that meant. A group of poets and artists gathered at our house from time to time. Some are better known than others yet it was David Morice, Darrel Gray, Alan and Cinda Kornblum, Jim Mulac, and others who stopped by. I was enamored of Actualists, perhaps. In any case, I learned from them that a conventional approach to poetry, fiction writing and book making wasn’t necessary for success. I didn’t know any of them well, yet hanging with them in the living room helped me grow creatively.

I was taking art and art history classes to complete my degree in English. I dabbled in ceramics, tie dye, music, photography and other media. I realized there was no clear path to success as an artist, let alone the multi-media creator I vaguely wanted to become. I gave up a conventional career in the meat packing plant, in favor of a speculative future. It was unlike what I expected in high school and held a sketchy future at best. The desire to pursue this idea drove much of what I did throughout the rest of my life yet especially the following eight years.

The autobiography will be better for all this new understanding. Yet I have to get back at it. Currently, there is much work to get the garden planted. Once that’s done perhaps the muse will visit again.

Categories
Living in Society

Slowing Down

Apple blossoms.

Sandy is the spark plug of our community, especially when it comes to services for senior citizens, yet more than that. We met Saturday morning at a political event at the public library. A primary election is coming up on June 7 and there is stuff to discuss.

I asked Sandy about donating garden produce to the food bank again this year. She said the food bank would welcome the contributions and local donations were an important part of providing fresh food to people who need it. “I’m trying to slow down,” she said, explaining that some younger people were now taking donations on Mondays. Sandy turned 87 last September so there is nothing to say about her slowing down, other than she earned it. No one can replace what she has done for the community. We are grateful for any time with her.

For dinner I pulled something from the freezer and noticed the item was not hard, as it should be. The thermometer registered 50 degrees, precipitating “oh noes!” I spent an hour emptying everything into five-gallon buckets for composting. A lot of work went into preserving the food. Such is life: eventually our efforts become compost.

The two apple trees planted in 2020 are in bloom. That means a few apples, we hope. When one plants trees it is hard to avoid a long-term perspective. If there are apples, we’ll enjoy them.

Categories
Living in Society

Corn Planting and a Haboob

Iowa haboob on May 12, 2022. Photo Credit – KCCI – TV8

I tapped the brakes as we drove home from Des Moines on Monday, May 9. A farmer was discing a field and wind blew large clouds of dust from behind him across Interstate 80. It obscured the view, rendering driving unsafe.

Losing valuable topsoil might be cause for concern, except that corn and soybeans are grown mostly by application of commercial fertilizer and insecticides to ground with hybrid seeds. Tilling the ground where seeds, fertilizer, water and bugs meet, to create a suitable growing medium, matters more than actual topsoil in Iowa. High winds blowing topsoil away doesn’t seem to matter much to today’s Iowa farmers.

A network of farming hums in pre-dawn hours this time of year. Beginning well before sunrise, farmers call each other from kitchens and barns to discuss and decide what they will do that day. If they prize their individualism and freedom, they also speak and act more or less uniformly about crop decisions. There is a fixed ideology of modern agriculture involving corn, soybeans, hogs and cattle. Long delayed this year, this week’s decision was to get corn in the ground.

On Wednesday, May 11, Eleanor Hildebrandt posted an article, “Iowa’s prime corn yields likely gone.”

At the beginning of the second week of May, Iowa farmers were two weeks behind the average planting schedule to the past five years. It was the slowest planting pace in nearly a decade. Only 14 percent of seed corn was in the ground on Sunday, as April weather made it particularly difficult to plant potentially successful seedlings. Research on corn yield from Iowa State University shows the most successful corn crops are planted before middle May.

Iowa’s prime corn yields likely gone by Eleanor Hildebrandt, May 11, 2022

Experts don’t believe the 2022 corn crop will break any records.

It has been a windy week. While no news source is discussing the relationship between the 2022 corn planting season and a somewhat unique weather phenomenon called a haboob, it seems clear that hundreds of farmers plowing, discing, and planting corn loosened thousands of acres of topsoil. When combined with high winds, topsoil blew away in gigantic clouds like those in the image above.

When weather outlets began using the word “haboob,” I immediately thought of Desert One and the failed 1980 attempt during the Carter administration to rescue 52 American hostages from the Iranian embassy. The helicopters unexpectedly encountered haboobs in the desert, which disrupted their flight plans toward Desert One, a staging area. The Atlantic tells the story of the haboobs during the operation here.

Photo Credit – National Weather Service.

The other image that came to mind after reading “haboob,” was of Farm Security Agency photographs of Kansas dust storms in 1935. These storms were attributable to the sod busters who broke up the prairie and farmed the land to exhaustion after the Homestead Act of 1862. These iconic images are a part of our history.

The disconnect of yesterday’s haboob from the large scale farming that made it possible is a sad statement about the nature of our news media and its influence over how we view our lives. Television viewers and radio listeners marvel at the use of a “different” and “peculiar” word to describe the weather phenomenon rather than discuss the causes of this loss of topsoil. At some point the loss of topsoil will matter more than it seemingly does. Yet we have dumbed down the way we take in information, and seem prepared to swallow anything as long as it doesn’t upset the equilibrium of how we currently understand the world.

Don’t get me started on education, though. On Thursday, May 12, there was a League of Women Voters candidate forum in Tiffin where four of six Republican Iowa House District 91 primary candidates spoke about education. This is from the Iowa City Press Citizen.

Education and what is taught in schools to children quickly became one of the main topics of the night as candidates were asked by audience members about the teaching of critical race theory and gender and sexual orientation in schools. Most of the candidates argued against teaching both, often making transphobic remarks in addition to their answers.

GOP District 91 debate includes education, conspiracy theories by George Shillcock, Iowa City Press Citizen, May 14, 2022.

Maybe my expectations are too high for Iowa.

Categories
Kitchen Garden

It’s Spring By The Calendar

Garden on May 11, 2022.

With intense heat, humidity, and heat advisories, my shifts in the garden have been shorter this year. When I get dizzy, it’s time to head into the house and cool down. There is progress, nonetheless.

All the trays of seedlings under the grow light found their way to the greenhouse on Wednesday. I will need to start more lettuce, yet it can wait. The main crops — broccoli, tomatoes, peppers, squash and beans — need to get in the ground as soon as my four-hour shifts allow.

The calendar says we have five weeks of spring left, but I don’t know about that. Technically, it is spring, yet weather-wise, summer has arrived.

Categories
Kitchen Garden

Sunday Afternoon Walk

Pac Choi.

Around 1 p.m. I finished in the garden and took a walk on the state park trail. The wind had picked up. While there was plenty of remaining work in the garden, onions were in and other plots tended, I was ready to break the tension from wondering how I would fit everything in the ground this year.

The trail held little traffic: a couple of joggers and a group of young adults out sight-seeing. Spring has arrived with greys and brown of winter yielding to green, yellow and purple. There has been human activity in the park, due mostly to cleanup of the 2020 derecho and the recent prairie burn. The margins between the trail and housing developments get thinner each year. The breeze helped me forget.

Mostly I felt the rush of air on my face as I walked my prescribed route. Strong wind is a blessing and a curse. Yesterday it was a stress-reliever.

Under the row cover everything looked good. I inspected and weeded, then picked some Pac Choi for a stir fry this week, and enough lettuce and spinach to make a small salad. Dinner was the salad with organic rotini and sauce leftover from Friday’s pizza-making. I’m ready for my spouse to return home.

As I read the news after dinner, a longing for better times arrived. When I graduated high school it felt like the strictures of society were loosening. There was hope for better days for our country and our lives in it. No more. Republicans never liked the changes of the 1960s and ’70s. Since Ronald Reagan was elected president they have been rolling back the liberties we gained. The repression pushes down on everything.

They say longing and loss brings people together yet I don’t know about that today. Yesterday I wrote a friend, “I think things changed dramatically during the pandemic. Not only did we break all our good habits, I don’t see enthusiasm for just about anything in real life. People simply want to get by in their own world and leave the politics and pandemic out of it.” What good is it to bring together yet another isolated small group when the tide of conservatism threatens everything we have come to know?

I used the garden hose for the first time this season. It is old. I need to get a new one. The mended joints came loose while it was in storage. They leaked as it filled with water pressure. The nozzle is kaput as well. This morning I’ll take wrenches and a screwdriver to repair the joints again. There are a couple of old nozzles in the garage to use if needed. I don’t like them as well yet one of them will serve. Despite the leaks, the garden got watered and will until I replace the hose. That is, if I do.

So it goes on a spring day in Big Grove Township.

Categories
Kitchen Garden

Shift of Onion Planting

Pizza toppings: Kalamata olives, spring onions and red bell pepper.

On Saturday I spent seven hours planting onions. The names of onion varieties are delightful: Walla Walla, Red Carpet, Ailsa Craig and Rossa di Milano were started from seed.

I emptied the wagon and hooked it to the lawn tractor to haul heavy things. I used to carry the 100-foot water hose, tiller and everything else out there, yet I don’t want to risk being injured. This is a concession to age. The new system reduced the number of trips back to the house.

I filled the small cooler we received as a wedding gift with iced water and a couple of canned beverages. When I got thirsty, a drink was nearby. Hydration is important when working in the sun, as are frequent rest breaks.

This may be the last year for seeding my own onions. Onion starts from the seed supplier have done better than home-seeded ones. It is the final results that matter. I planted three long rows of Patterson onion starts, figuring this would be the mainstay for long-term storage. The variety did well last year so we’ll see how they do.

When I finished for the day, I showered and made a grilled cheese sandwich for dinner. I didn’t feel like cooking. I sliced some store-bought radishes in half and had them as a side dish. Garden radishes should be ready soon. I fell asleep in the reading chair shortly after sitting down. Knowing my condition, I set the alarm to wake me in time to view the Democratic U.S. Senate candidate debate. The primary election is June 7.

My spouse has been at her sister’s home since Earth Day and I’m ready for her to return. Today’s forecast is clear with more wind than yesterday. I should finish the onions and till at least one more plot. Gardening season seemed like it would never arrive, yet it has.

Categories
Living in Society

Fences in Washington

Enchiladas just out of the oven.

I heard this morning security officials have begun to install non-scalable fencing around the U.S. Supreme Court. Lines are being drawn as the future of Supreme Court decisions with three Trump appointees on the bench clarifies. I agree with my Blog for Iowa colleague, Trish Nelson, who wrote today, We Are Going Back.

In this tumultuous time I’m reading C. Bradley Thompson’s America’s Revolutionary Mind: A Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration that Defined It. The founders were concerned with a tyranny of the majority. These days it is the tyranny of a minority of voters that gives us pause.

Nothing about the coming changes is new. On Aug. 17, 2016 I wrote:

What makes August part of the summer of weird normal is the lack of political talk about almost anything but the Republican nominee for president. It is normal that a lot of voters activate during presidential election years. What is weird is a combination of things including regular people cozying up to Donald Trump; people who would bleed Democratic if cut saying they won’t vote for Hillary Clinton no matter what; and controversial issues, including climate change, abortion, school funding, incarceration rates, water quality and government spending, being sidelined to watch the national political show.

Journey Home, Aug. 17, 2016.

With Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett on the high court, there seems no limit to what fundamental parts of our lives in common can be rolled back. Key issues that matter in millions of American lives are no longer being sidelined. The whole thing seems likely to be dismantled. It is unsettling.

The undoing of modern society began with Citizens United v. FEC and Shelby County v. Holder. The court is expected to be supercharged to toss aside decades of precedent and decisions to get us to a form of the society The Federalist Society, who recommended Trump’s justices, envisions for us. Instead of being governed by “We the people,” the few have taken over the joystick of power in society.

The question we have to ask ourselves is whether our grievances are sufficient cause to revolt against our government. We can either vote Republicans out of office or do something else. My sense is we are not at the “something else” phase yet.

Changes at the Supreme Court took place in front of our eyes. The rejection of Hillary Clinton by some Democrats marked the onset of what we are seeing today, even if the roots of it lay further back. There are no quick or easy fixes. Posting such grievances I have on this blog or in social media does little to effect the change we need to stop the bleeding of our rights and privileges. We need to stop the bleeding.

We also need to rise up, although it’s not clear what that means in 2022. It is time to figure it out. Let’s hope the fence around the Supreme Court is temporary.