Categories
Living in Society

Boone Work Day

Cars parked behind the garage.

The detached garage near the alley was damaged when a tall pine tree broke in half during December’s straight-line winds. It wasn’t a tornado, yet might as well have been. The top part of the tree crushed the garage roof and created multiple openings for rain to fall through. Things got wet. It was packing time for my sister-in-law’s move this week.

Boone is a red flag city. There is a bustling main street with an abundance of shops and restaurants. They don’t wear face masks any longer in Boone. I didn’t see a mask other than ours during the entire visit. They vote Republican in Boone. Donald Trump won the 2020 election with 56 percent of the county’s votes. One building on the main street has a larger than life mural of him painted in red and black. Many locals do not view it as the monstrosity it is.

Boone was established in 1865 and the following year the Chicago and North Western built a railway station. The Boone & Scenic Valley Railroad survives as a tourist attraction, echoing the cultural heritage. Railroad tracks cross the main street in two places. Most locals know to drive around the crossings when a train stops. I learned how to do that during our visit.

The trip meant two days of physical work for me, organizing the garage for the movers, carrying things up from the basement, and packing the book shelves. While I did my work on Sunday, my spouse and her sister packed up the house. I needed the break from a deep winter feeling created by staying home and mostly indoors the last several months. I feel weary, yet refreshed.

We stayed overnight Saturday at one of the four motels in Boone. It was rated 3.2 stars out of five. When we returned home, the garden seedlings looked good. I watered them and they should survive. It’s time to set up the greenhouse and move them outdoors.

The physicality of preparing for a move can be handled. The emotional part is something else. Every item has to be dealt with, including projects started and not finished, photographs and artifacts from a long life, and consequences of decisions made to acquire things for home use. It didn’t take long to fill the dumpster. Add the trauma of valued artifacts damaged by rain and it can become an emotional roller coaster. We can feel upset by failures, although I found there were more positives than negatives to experience. There is hope for a future for everyone involved.

After two days of work, we didn’t finish, yet that’s the time we had. We made good progress and the work can be finished before the movers arrive.

Sometimes we need a work day away from home. It is a retreat from daily patterns that helps renew us. A work day before moving can be tiring in a good way. There is hope for a better future no matter the status of one’s life.

Categories
Living in Society

Filing Week

Ice on the lake is melting.

The big news from the federal and state candidate filing period which closed Friday is that Deidre DeJear is the presumptive nominee to be the Democratic candidate for Iowa governor.

This is a good outcome in that Governor Kim Reynolds is well-liked in Iowa, and has amassed a formidable campaign war chest to advertise almost anywhere and as often as her campaign deems necessary. DeJear, by being the only candidate, is now free to focus on Reynolds and on building the infrastructure for Democrats to win the November election. It won’t be easy, yet what ever is?

The U.S. Senate race filings generated a primary challenge of Chuck Grassley for the Republican nomination by Jim Carlin of Sioux City. Three of the five announced Democratic candidates remain after the filing period closed: Abby Finkenauer, Michael Franken and Glenn Hurst.

Our current U.S. Representative, Mariannette Miller-Meeks, drew a primary challenge from Kyle Kuehl of Bettendorf. Christina Bohannan was the sole Democratic filer and is now the presumptive nominee.

Democrat Kevin Kinney will face Republican Dawn Driscoll for state senator in Senate District 46.

Elle Wyant is the presumptive Democratic nominee for Iowa House District 91.

Six men filed for state representative in the district’s Republican primary. Their names are John George, Adam Grier, Devon Hodgeman, Skylar Limkemann, Matt McAreavy, and Brad Sherman. I don’t know any of the Republicans personally. John George wore a Qanon t-shirt when he posed for a photo while turning in his nominating papers. That tells us most of what we need to know about the Republican contenders.

The list of federal and state candidates who filed is here.

Categories
Kitchen Garden

2022 Gardening Season

Spring burn pile, March 16, 2022.

Gardening season begins with a spring burn pile. Usually there are plenty of branches from winter tree pruning and windfalls. As elements return to the soil, our hope in the sustainability of life is renewed.

I lit this year’s burn pile with a single match applied to shredded paper. When I went to bed, embers were smoldering. The next day warmth radiated from the ashes even though a light rain had fallen. When the fire depletes its fuel, I’ll rake the ashes evenly over the soil and turn them into it.

I’m ready to garden.

How should I write about the garden this year? What terms should I use? What phraseology is best? What goals do I have for readers, and for myself? What is the lexicon of gardening?

This year I adopted a spreadsheet to track my seed planting, so no need to record that here. There are eight trays of seedlings started in the house. Once the weather breaks, I’ll set up the greenhouse. It is becoming routine. This is a year for recycling everything I can: ground cover, row cover, stakes and fencing. I’m seeking to optimize the gardening space to grow more food we’ll use. Over the last ten years certain plots have become predictable: garlic, tomatoes, greens, and squash. Same way with crops: there are a couple dozen we favor.

There was a sense of discovery in posts I previously wrote. I have come to know most of the crops that grow here, so discovery is mostly over. While being an adherent to a process of continuous improvement, I’m at a level where experiments are each of limited scope. For example, I’m trying San Marzano tomatoes to be used for canning this year. To detail such efforts seems a bit boring both to write and to read.

In college I read British romantics: Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake, Keats, Byron, and the Shelleys. I understand the depopulation of the British countryside and increase in industrial activity in cities. Boring! I keep their books yet I don’t see returning to them any time soon. I seek to engender no romantic fantasy about gardening.

Growing a garden is an economic engine. Whatever I can grow at home is something I don’t have to buy from others. Perhaps the biggest money-saver is vegetable broth made diverse greens. Broth is expensive to buy and cheap to make. The quality of homemade is hard to beat. Once I’ve written about my vegetable broth, though, what else is there to say?

The idea of a kitchen garden needs further exploitation this year. Integrating what I grow and preserve with what we use is an important feature of the process. How many jars of pickles will we need? Not as many as I have been canning. Are we better to make sauerkraut or should we manage excess cabbage in the refrigerator, using it fresh? Based on the amount of old jars of kraut on the shelf, we don’t need to make much of it. Do I need to plant more fruit trees? At my age, whatever I plant won’t be productive soon enough to do much good. There is plenty to be done in a kitchen garden. I’m not sure how much people want to hear about it.

Each day, I walkabout the yard to review daily progress and consider the garden plots and how they should be planted. That process lives in the present and no amount of writing can render it otherwise. I’m not sure I want to write it down. What I know is the brush has been burned. As soon as the weather breaks, I should dig up rows for early planting. Just getting it done is satisfaction enough.

Categories
Home Life

Leftover Rice

Lake ice is melting.

When I make stir fry for dinner there is enough rice to produce leftovers. There are plenty of things to do with leftover rice, yet the most common in our kitchen is making another dish to serve on top of it. This week it was black beans cooked with onion, celery, garlic, tomato and bell pepper. Both meals were satisfying.

During walkabout, the edge of the lake was beginning to melt. The geese in the photo will soon be swimming instead of walking on the ice. Spring officially arrives on Sunday yet for practical purposes, it is already here.

The challenge during this transition is to take my exercise outdoors and work in the garage, yard and garden for part of the day while temperatures are above 50 degrees. While doing so, I hope to preserve the time spent writing and reading in early morning. I have a better process this year, so I am hopeful.

Yesterday, I attempted to change the headlight on the auto and gave up before I broke the clip that holds it in place. I called my mechanic and scheduled it in the shop on Friday. Maybe their expertise will get the job done. For the time being, I don’t drive after dark, and there are fog lights, so it’s not an issue if I do.

This transitional time is the most difficult of the year. There has been so much work delayed because of cold weather. Like with leftover rice, there are plenty of uses for the new found outdoors time. Here’s hoping I can get to work and preserve what I spent all winter developing indoors.

Categories
Living in Society

Welcome to the New District

I live in the new Iowa House District 91. This is the fourth district in which our home has been located since we arrived.

When the Iowa legislature approved the map created by the Legislative Services Agency, I didn’t know what to think. I had not spent much time in Iowa County. I met some people there since redistricting, and now feel more welcome.

As a rural Johnson County Democrat, I’ve witnessed changing political views over the last 30 years. Some of the changes have been good, others, not so much. What I know is the filing deadline for federal and state offices is Friday, March 18, and the primary election is on June 7.

We have candidates.

In Iowa’s First Congressional District, University of Iowa professor and state representative Christina Bohannan filed as a Democrat. Incumbent Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Kyle Kuehl announced they are running as Republicans. Miller-Meeks should have no trouble dispatching Kuehl in the primary. She had a primary challenge before.

In House District 91, Democrat Elle Wyant and Republican Brad Sherman filed in the primary. There is another week before the deadline, but this seems likely to be the field. Republicans are better organized in rural parts of the state, so even though Sherman is unknown to most voters near me, he will have strong support throughout the district.

In Senate District 46, which includes House District 91, Republican state senator Dawn Driscoll filed in the primary, and Democratic state senator Kevin Kinney announced his candidacy for re-election yet hasn’t filed. Both are current state senators thrown together in the new district by the redistricting process.

In district 91, the Secretary of State shows voter registrations pretty evenly split: R = 5,836; D = 5,241; NP = 5,429; Other = 160. Assuming most registered Rs and Ds vote with their party, the district appears to be Republican advantage, although it could be a close race.

The next step is to wait until the filing deadline and see who else might be running. If you want to follow along, the link is here. It’s updated daily at the end of business.

Categories
Writing

Writer’s Week #5

Atlases opened to Ukraine.

Every time I read the name of a new city in Ukraine, I look it up on a map. When considering the vast expanses of farm fields depicted in atlases, I wonder how Ukrainian farmers will get a crop in this spring. I also wonder about the number of war crimes the west will tolerate before doing something more substantial to stop Russian aggression. The invasion began on Feb. 24, although it is being framed as part of a war that began in 2014.

U.S. interest in Ukraine has to do with so many of its citizens being Caucasian. Also, I got to know a group of Ukrainians who were guest workers at the orchard. Many locals have Ukrainian connections. The easy access social media provides to the war (especially via Twitter) makes it real. I was barely aware of other modern genocides, like in Darfur, Rwanda, Myanmar, South Sudan, Central African Republic, Bosnia and Herzegovina, East Timor, and others. With social bias about white folks, the Ukraine conflict is getting plenty of media attention in the U.S. People here are engaged.

Following the Russia-Ukraine war takes more than a little bandwidth.

All the same, I passed 70,000 words in new writing this year. The main change over last year is the process I developed (and have written about) is working. There is much to consider in a single human life, yet time to experience it only once. As I use a chronological framing to work through the story, I’m surprised at how much I remember and how vivid those memories are.

This week I wrote about my time at the University of Iowa. A valuable resource has been the online archives of The Daily Iowan going back to 1868. I also have letters I wrote and letters written to me, my main school papers, as well as some artifacts from the period. All of these resources aid memory in production of writing that is personally meaningful.

I participated in the May 11, 1972 anti-war demonstrations to protest the Nixon administration’s mining of Haiphong Harbor in Vietnam. The tendency is to accept well published stories about what happened, suppressing our personal experience. I believe writing the story I did provides an alternative. Here’s a sample:

Newspapers reported about 1,000 demonstrators by the time they got to Dubuque Street. Some 60 patrolmen with night sticks and helmets stood side-by-side across Dubuque Street at the Park Road intersection near City Park. They deployed smoke into the approaching line of students in front of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity house.

At this point the newspaper narratives diverged. The Davenport Times-Democrat published a headline, “Patrolmen Block Sit-in Attempt.” However, a contingent of protesters returned south on Dubuque to Brown Street and we walked through neighborhoods, then into dense brush to gain access to Interstate-80. At least one person was treated for cuts from barbwire fencing as we found the way to the Interstate through a thickly wooded area. I was among the protesters clearing a path in the brush for others.

We reached Interstate 80, stopped traffic, and set a fire in the eastbound lane. As we did, a bus with Highway patrolmen arrived on the overhead crossing of Prairie Du Chien Road. They climbed down the embankment and formed a line across the eastbound lane. They charged toward us to break up the crowd and extinguish the fire.

From a draft of an autobiography in progress.

If we are not the main character in our own life’s story, then when are we? The new process helps me get a narrative down on paper. Once it is written, editing begins. By the time it is finished, the writing should be quite readable, I hope.

I’m having second thoughts about putting everything in this autobiography. There is too much previous writing I want to include. I see a second volume that is a collection of previous writing, with a section for each type of writing, including letters, poetry, newspaper articles, blog posts, journals and stories. Gleaning the best of this means reading it all. I’d better stick to my knitting and finish the chronological narrative first.

There is also a question of what to do with the images I have on hand. Part of me wants to close the interpretation of images by describing what is in them rather than publishing the image itself. That seems a useful technique. There are so many images there is likely another book with images with extended captions in them. I posted such a work on my Flickr account and it became one of the most widely read posts I made. I took it down when I exited the Yahoo platforms. There is a third book in images and the decision is whether to create it as a bound book, or to make a series of photo albums. It’s an open question.

It has been another good week of writing.

Categories
Living in Society

Price Gouging into 2022

Atlases

There is too much information about the Russia invasion of Ukraine to process. I had to get out the maps to keep things straight. The Rand McNally is a bit old as it shows Ukraine as part of the U.S.S.R. The atlases are opened to Ukraine on the living room coffee table.

I filled the auto, mowers and gas cans with gasoline yesterday. Price was less than $4 per gallon with a 20 gallon limit at the pump. Based on being retired this should last 4-6 weeks. When I lived in Germany in 1977-1979 I paid roughly $5 per gallon in 1970s dollars.

Food costs are not an issue here because so much of what we eat comes from our garden.

Even though it has been a mild winter, our natural gas bill more than doubled. Big companies (Mediacom, Verizon, Waste Management, Insurance) all took the maximum rate increase allowed.

Because of increased regulations, our sewer plant is passing along an unexpected $100 charge to cover a loan for improvements in our quarterly billing.

Combine all of this and money will be tight in 2022. I wouldn’t call it inflation, though. This is definitely not a “general price increase.” Each element has specific causes. The big companies are gouging us, even though their websites say they aren’t.

We spent an hour talking about finances yesterday. We’ll get by, although we come just short of paying off our credit card bill each month. There have been some recurring winter expenses like servicing the lawn tractor, printing my blog in book format, a Washington Post subscription, and garden seed purchases. The credit card balance has been manageable. The choices for a family are to stay engaged in things — the Russia-Ukraine war, and household finances — or let things (and our family) slide into oblivion.

I’m not prepared to do the latter.

Categories
Living in Society

Late Winter

Garden in Winter

Snow fell and a day later it began melting. The ground is partly snow-covered in today’s predawn darkness. With a forecast high of 30 degrees, there will be more melting in sunny areas. Eleven days remain in winter.

With President Biden’s March 8 announcement, “We’re banning all imports of Russian oil and gas and energy,” U.S. gasoline prices increased immediately. I’m planning to round up our gas cans, take them to town, and fill them. I expect prices to continue to climb because of Russia’s continuing aggression in Ukraine. The country should get completely off fossil fuels, although there has been a lack of political will to do so.

Lettuce and herbs are beginning to germinate on the heating pad. As soon as the snow melts I can build the burn pile and clear the first planting plot. As the growing season begins, I’m ready.

Nonetheless, a few more days of winter remain.

Categories
Living in Society

Kevin Kinney for Senate District 46

A letter from State Senator Kevin Kinney:

I have some exciting news to share: I’m running for re-election to the Iowa Senate! I was born and raised in Oxford, Iowa where I’ve farmed and served for 28 years in law enforcement. For most of my life, I have tried my best to protect the most vulnerable Iowans. Whether it be through the Sheriff’s office, the school board, or the legislature, helping people has always been my top priority.

State Senator Kevin Kinney

I believe that the things we rely on to live a good life – quality healthcare, good schools, public safety, a paycheck that is reflective of hard work, affordable living – are bigger than politics. These are basic rights that every Iowan deserves.

I’m running for re-election to continue my lifelong work of protecting victims of sexual assault and human trafficking, helping Iowa farmers make ends meet, and ensuring all Iowans’ access to affordable, quality healthcare.

As a result of redistricting, I’m now running to represent District 46. My new district might be the most competitive in the entire state, but with supporters like you by my side, I know we can win in November. Can you chip in today to help my re-election campaign get off to a strong start?

CLICK HERE TO CONTRIBUTE NOW

In my past campaigns, outside special interests have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to defeat me. I’ve won because I’ve always been able to communicate my positive message to the voters – but I can only do that if I have the resources in this campaign too.

I would be honored to continue my work representing the people of Johnson, Iowa, and Washington counties in the legislature. With your help, we can elect leadership that puts everyday Iowans first.

Sincerely, Senator Kevin Kinney

Paid for by Kevin Kinney for State Senate. Senator Kevin Kinney is not accepting contributions from lobbyists or PACs at this time.

Categories
Environment

Winter Snowfall/Heat Wave

Geese walking on the lake, yet not for long.

Today’s high is forecast to be 78 degrees. Now Mother Nature is just messing with us. On the plus side, maybe the warmth will melt the 3-4 inches of snow that fell overnight. Iowa weather always has something a little different. What I found to be different is I used a different weather app to check the forecast and it was set to Washington, D.C. We don’t need a weather app to know there will be a lot of hot air over there.

Seven trays of vegetables rest on the germination table and the landing near the front door. Everything looks reasonably good. I added the task “assemble greenhouse” to my list and am ready to move onions and cruciferous vegetables outdoors. After the snow melts, I will.

There was an F3 tornado on Saturday that killed six people in central Iowa. Today, the Iowa legislature takes up House File 2299 which would make it harder for Iowa homeowners to prove damage from disasters like a derecho or tornado. There is a GoFundMe for one of the families affected by the tornado, and that appears to be the way society is going these days. We are on our own.

I like it when I can turn off the fan on the ceramic heater in front of my desk. It looks to be one of those days, that is, after I bundle up to take care of snow removal on the driveway. Soon the space heater will be moved to the greenhouse. I can’t wait.