Categories
Kitchen Garden

Fall Gardening

Fennel, red onion and bell pepper pizza

The correct way to add ingredients to a pizza is to waterproof the dough with oil, cover with tomato sauce, and add a layer of cheese. Toppings, by their name, go on top, followed by an optional light dusting of grated Parmesan cheese.

I don’t follow this procedure, putting the cheese layer on top. That’s how I make a pizza and have for as long as I can remember, going back until high school.

Toppings on top worked well when I tried it, including recently. The habit never stuck.

Friday I disconnected the garden hose, drained it, rolled it up, and placed it indoors. The garden has Russian kale and collards. There are also a few stragglers in the rutabaga patch. Everything else has gone brown and is ready to prepare for winter. This year I’ll take the fences down, although I don’t always. It helps if I do as I’m that much further ahead in the spring.

There’s no news on the presidential election. Counting continues and Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ race was called by Associated Press in states totaling 253 electoral votes. They are leading in four more, of which Arizona has also been called by AP. Any one of the others would put them over the top. As noted Random House copy editor Benjamin Dreyer said yesterday, “My God, the Great Vowel Shift happened faster than this.”

There was news in our congressional race. Due to a “human error” the election results that showed Mariannette Miller-Meeks ahead by 282 votes on election night were corrected and now show Rita Hart with a 162 vote lead. 393,751 votes were cast in this race so the margin has been small. It might change as additional mailed ballots could arrive by the Monday noon deadline. There is certain to be a recount, although in Iowa those typically move the results only incrementally. The big error was found during the normal auditing process, and I believe that was likely the only one. Elections officials are working diligently to follow the law. They know what is at stake.

Today is a me day so I’d better get after it. Once the results of the Nov. 3 election are certified in Iowa on Nov. 10 I’ll have more to say. Nov. 10 is also the day the U.S. Supreme Court hears oral arguments on the Republican lawsuit to overturn the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Stay safe.

Categories
Writing

Friday After the Election

Second District Congressional candidate Rita Hart on Nov. 1, 2020. Big Grove Township, Johnson County, Iowa.

Yesterday, while turning left from the road to the state park trail, my front bicycle tire blew as I braked to make the turn. I eventually fell to the ground and added some minor lacerations to my already well-scarred legs.

This is the second blown tire and the third crash since I began riding on June 18. I will repair the tire and get back on again.

Others caution about riding a bicycle at age 68. This may be a numbers game where the more crashes I have, the more likely I am to break a bone or worse. There may be something to that. I attribute my lack of serious injury to jump school training where we learned how to land safely after falling from an aircraft. I found presence of mind during the incident and was able to let go and land safely, flashing back to some of the parachute landings I made in 1976. Mostly my ego is bruised and I want to figure out why a relatively new tire blew.

This morning Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are within reach of winning the electoral college and the presidency. The incumbent is not expected to concede. We wait for the count to be completed.

Second District Congressional candidate Rita Hart lost her election by 284 votes. We’re waiting to see if additional valid ballots arrive at the 24 auditor offices in the district and change the total. We’ll know a final number by late Monday or Tuesday when the vote is to be certified. For the time being it’s not official.

Last night there were more reports the coronavirus pandemic was surging out of control in Iowa and nationally.

To take my mind off the election I watched a streamed forum with four local news reporters talking about politics. It was fit distraction. Those events used to be held over a beer in person. Maybe next year.

Yesterday Pattison Sand announced they withdrew their appeal to Iowa Department of Natural Resources denials of a permit to withdraw water from the Jordan Aquifer and ship it out of state. They will be back.

On Friday, we wait to see what happens in the presidential election. It’s hard to think of anything else.

Categories
Sustainability

Going Alone on Climate

F.J. Krob and Company grain elevator. Ely, Iowa.

The 2020 general election produced a poor result for battling our biggest problems: income inequality, the climate crisis, environmental degradation, racial justice, nuclear weapons proliferation, and the coronavirus pandemic — even with election of a Democratic president. All of these issues are important yet the most significant is acting on the climate crisis.

Yesterday the United States formally exited the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. While waiting for votes to be counted, Candidate Joe Biden said, “Today, the Trump Administration officially left the Paris Climate Agreement. And in exactly 77 days, a Biden Administration will rejoin it.”

German Budestag member Karl Lauterbach noted the results of the American election this morning, saying they set up gridlock in which “Biden hardly gets a law through, least of all in climate protection. Europe has to go alone.”

It’s not possible for any state to successfully go alone.

The failure of Democrats to secure a Senate majority makes the work more difficult. We know what Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will do as we saw him obstruct the legislative goals of the last Democratic administration when Republicans were in both the minority and majority. While the work will be difficult, now that voting is finished, it must begin.

Wednesday morning, Jen O’Malley Dillon, Biden-Harris campaign manager, and Bob Bauer, campaign adviser for voter protection, laid out the path to 270 electoral college votes and Trump efforts to suppress vote counting. After waking up with not enough sleep and in a fog, the information was assuring. Biden won the election and once the votes are counted it should be revealed. Now what?

The clear message from this election is there is too little work being done to move toward consensus on important issues. Of my list above, there is denial that any of them are problems. As if people say, “I’ve got mine, and that’s enough.” While I can devote time to advocacy it means little if I don’t bring others along with me. By “others” I mean people who currently don’t agree with me.

The ambient temperature was 50 degrees so I donned my riding shorts, took the bicycle down from its ceiling hooks, and aired the tires to 90 psi. I rode 13.7-miles to Ely and back to get things going after missing daily exercise on Tuesday while at the polling place. The long, straight stretch of trail from the roundabout to Ely was a chance to get some thinking done. After descending the steep hill beginning at Highway 382, I entered the zone and miles passed quickly. Not sure how much thinking I did, yet the sun and wind felt good as I pedaled and rolled north. A new beginning.

While coalition building begins alone, that’s not how it will end. It’s hard to know who will join. I helped build diverse, successful coalitions before and believe we can do it again. That work begins today.

When Joe Biden said the 2020 election was about “the soul of the nation” he got it right. Who will we be as Americans? For too long our worst impulses have dominated our public life. As a nation, we are better than that.

Abraham Lincoln said in his first inaugural address, “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.” What we know now is Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation a few years later. Was he being disingenuous? No, clearly not. He did what was needed to bring the Southern states, which had seceded, back into the imperfect union the United States represented since its founding. So it may be with addressing our most significant current challenges going forward.

We don’t want to upset the apple cart of public opinion as represented by the 2020 election results, but we must. It will be complicated and challenging, beginning with the idea going it alone solving society’s problems is no longer an option.

Categories
Living in Society

Reaction to 2020 Voting

Another victim of the coronavirus pandemic was Democratic hopes to make inroads into the Iowa Republican majority. Republicans held their own in the Iowa Senate and added to their majority in the Iowa House in yesterday’s election. Handicapped by a self-imposed ban against door knocking and in person events, the Iowa Democratic Party fielded a slate of good candidates and supported them by telephonic, digital and mail outreach because of the pandemic. It wasn’t enough to win.

Republicans felt few constraints in voter contact, with Republican Party of Iowa chair Jeff Kaufmann saying they completed 3 million voter contacts in a state that turned out 1,688,088 voters, according to unofficial results. Late on Nov. 3 House Speaker Pat Grassley told Radio Iowa this story,

“We recruited good candidates. We raised good money and honestly, we worked,” Grassley said. “We had a great ground game that the Democrats did not have and I think they’re going to wake up tomorrow morning and look at themselves and say: ‘That can never happen again.’”

Radio Iowa Nov. 4, 2020

When Secretary of State Paul Pate decided to mail absentee ballot requests to all Iowa voters, it sealed the deal for Republicans with record voter turnout that favored their candidates.

Vote counting has not ended in Iowa. Mailed ballots postmarked Nov. 2 and received by election officials through noon on Monday, Nov. 9, will be counted. That will be important as in Iowa’s Second Congressional District Republican Mariannette Miller Meeks leads Democrat Rita Hart by 284 votes. Enough absentee ballots could arrive to change preliminary results, so this race is not final until Nov. 10.

President Trump had a decisive Iowa victory winning 890,444 (53 percent) votes to Joe Biden’s 754,609 (45 percent). His margin of victory is basically unchanged from 2016. He was expected to win Iowa.

Despite the fact that Theresa Greenfield was the best U.S. Senate candidate Iowa Democrats fielded since Tom Harkin, she lost with 750,400 votes to incumbent Joni Ernst’s 858,040. This was a decisive win for Ernst.

In our local state house race, Republican Bobby Kaufmann defeated Democrat Lonny Pulkrabek 11,062 to 7,299 votes. Pulkrabek’s 40 percent margin represents a decrease from 2012 and 2018 races against Kaufmann when Democratic candidates garnered 44 percent. Pulkrabek’s vote total was highest among Democrats in the five elections since 2011 redistricting.

Increased turnout due to universal absentee ballot requests provided the most help for Kaufmann since he ran unopposed in 2016.

This house district may enter the dustbin of history as the decennial U.S. Census is complete and the legislature re-draws district maps in 2021. If I were a Republican, though, why would I change it as it consistently produced Republican wins since it was formed.

I spent 12 hours at our polling place on election day volunteering as a poll observer for the Democratic Party. There were no problems and poll workers worked hard and well to accommodate every voter.

Turnout at the polls was 555 voters of whom 411 voted for Donald Trump and 128 voted for Joe Biden, a 3.21:1 ratio of Republicans to Democrats. When added to the preliminary early votes, Donald Trump won the precinct 671 to Joe Biden’s 635.

I was working to flip the precinct to Democratic this cycle yet fell short. I better understand why after watching everyone vote yesterday. Younger people born in the 1970s through 1990s are turning out for Republicans more than I expected. The reason I know this demographic is my poll observing seat was within earshot of people stating their name and birth date for the poll worker.

There is not enough information to understand the results of the election. Suffice it that at 4 a.m. the day following voting we don’t have a winner in the presidential race and enough U.S. Senate races haven’t been called to know which party will control the upper legislative chamber. There is no precedent for what’s going on in the White House this morning where Trump falsely claimed victory and asked for vote counting to stop. Nonetheless it felt important to get these reactions to the election down in writing before being engulfed in the pressing events of the days ahead.

Categories
Living in Society

Election Day 2020

Before the Poll Opens, Nov. 3, 2010

Monday was getting ready for election day. According to the Iowa Secretary of State website, my voted absentee ballot was received by the county auditor on Oct. 7.

I also volunteered to be a poll observer for our precinct today. In the past this person struck the names of Democratic voters from a list we generated so a team in a nearby home could reach out to those who hadn’t voted. We had drivers who could pick up and transport voters to the polling place. We made calls and door knocked until everyone had been contacted. Our statehouse candidate typically stopped by for a pep talk. There was also potluck lunch and dinner — the day served as a social event. This year, because of the coronavirus pandemic, we are only observing voting operations, alert for trouble. No potluck meals or camaraderie for us.

I don’t expect trouble. The president’s call for his supporters to serve as self-appointed election observers sounds like a form of voter intimidation. In our rural precinct more people know each other than don’t, so if there is trouble, it is likely to be quickly resolved by poll workers. I doubt we’ll have to call the sheriff and am trained in what to do if there is trouble. There was a discussion of Iowa’s open carry law for firearms during our training.

There was a training Zoom call, a 42-page manual to read, a credential to print out and laminate, a lunch to pack. I’m planning to wear Dockers and a woven shirt, something I haven’t yet done in 2020. Also in my kitbag are two N-95 masks, the most comfortable shoes I own, and a book to read. It will be a long day. My shift begins at 6:30 a.m. and continues until everyone in line at 9 p.m. finishes voting.

Monday morning the county auditor reported 61,083 voters cast a ballot thus far. In the last presidential election the total number of votes cast was 77,476 or 84 percent of active registered voters. The coronavirus pandemic is driving early voting numbers and the county expects a new record in voter turnout percentage and number of votes cast.

I have no informed opinions or even guesses about the outcome of the election. Statewide Democratic candidates have to win our county to have a chance and Joe Biden, Theresa Greenfield and Rita Hart are expected to do well here. The irony is I won’t see as many Democratic voters at the polls because of the coronavirus pandemic. Many Democrats are voting early to avoid spread of COVID-19.

I expect to have something to say about the election results once they are known. I remember the 2000 election, though. George W. Bush won that election only after the U.S. Supreme Court decided Bush v. Gore on Dec. 12, 2000 and vote counting ceased. In 2020 there have already been electoral shenanigans by Republicans. Sadly, mustering an army of lawyers has become a necessary part of our elections. I hope not to see any lawyers in our precinct unless they are coming to vote.

Categories
Writing

Trail Toward Home

Lake Macbride State Park trail.

The election will be over in November yet the coronavirus pandemic will not. It’s time to decide what’s next.

For each of us the decision will be different. For many there is no choice but to face the actuality of economic hardship, isolation from friends and family, and deaths of loved ones. The pandemic is expected to continue into 2022, according to experts in public health. By the time we are out of the woods I’ll be a septuagenarian, hopefully a survivor of the coronavirus, with another ten active years. What to do?

I’m focused on now. A couple of things are immediately clear.

Regardless of who wins the Nov. 3 election two paths converge: escalation of resistance and dissent, and party building leading to the 2022 midterm elections. Both are important in a time when income inequality is so pronounced.

I’m already thinking of next year’s garden and possibilities for generating some income from home. The house needs repairs and remodeling would be nice. There is a lifetime of stuff to sort and dispose of. Development of the kitchen garden concept will be part of next year’s work, yet most energy will be devoted to writing.

I’ve written from a young age, beginning with letters home from YMCA camp. After graduation from college through today is a continuous thread of journals, letters to the editor, and letters to friends. Since we bought our first home computer in 1996 there are emails and 13 years of writing a blog. A lot of words, some better than others.

Because of the continuing pandemic I’m going to step back and continue to stay on and near our property as much as possible. Importantly I’ll use this place to write more, with a goal of finishing a draft of my autobiography by the end of 2021. I’ll carve out more writing time and increase my daily output from the current 500 words per day on this blog to more than double that. A byproduct of the process will be posting here regularly but less often. I plan to keep the blog open.

Our whole family is in transition because of the coronavirus pandemic. It is unsettling in the present and days ahead seem uncertain. It is best to embrace the inevitability of unwelcome change and be who we are.

The pandemic has been like an Australian walkabout. Our traditions and inherited way of life came to dominate the present. As we find the trail toward home there is faith we will become useful again and emerge from the isolating year 2020 has been to come together as society.

There is hope for realizing life’s potential in every breath, in every sunrise. Our next journey will be familiar although it is only just beginning.

Categories
Living in Society

Road Work

Street sign fixture.

Vandals tore down the street signs on the corner and ran off with them. I took ownership of the replacement process. If I can get the screw in the bottom left of this photo to loosen, finishing the job will take about ten minutes.

It won’t come out.

I ruined one driver by applying more torque than it was designed to take. I tried placing the driver on the screw head and tapping it with a six-pound sledge. I sprayed lubricant on the top and bottom and let it sit overnight. That screw is stubborn to give it an anthropomorphic quality. Someone suggested applying heat so I tried holding it over a candle. Still stuck. Not sure what’s next.

The weather was beautiful for working in the garage. Cool temperatures, partly cloudy, and little wind. I rode my bicycle on the trail. It was the kind of fall day for which we yearn. A couple more of them would provide time to prepare the yard for winter.

As soon as I’m finished with this road work.

Categories
Writing

2021 and Beyond

The headline contained an unmistakable message: “Fauci warned U.S. won’t return back to ‘normality’ until late 2021.”

I went to school, graduated, have been socialized, and ergo know what this means. Better plan something else next year.

Maybe if Americans were more disciplined in our approach to the coronavirus pandemic we’d be doing better. Iowa is currently setting new daily records for number of hospitalizations due to COVID-19. Where there are so many hospitalizations for the disease, there will be deaths. Americans in 2020 aren’t disciplined so we’ll just let the virus ravage us. That’s a heck of a way to approach this situation.

I plan to make a serious effort to finish my autobiography in 2021. That should keep me close to home and virus free.

Thursday I visited my parents’ grave site at Mount Calvary Cemetery in Davenport. My sister joined me. The foot marker she ordered for Mother had arrived and was in position. It was similar to the government-issued one on Dad’s side of the plot. Mom’s hadn’t had the benefit of 50 years settling into the ground. They weren’t properly aligned so she will get someone out to fix it in the spring.

Now that I’ve reached a certain age, and am a survivor, spending time in the cemetery (above ground) is not bad. There were plenty of positive memories among the monuments. We searched for our maternal great grandparents’ graves and couldn’t find them. A number of family members are buried in close proximity and I couldn’t recall exactly where. While we looked, everywhere were people we knew in life. A grade school classmate, my high school guitar teacher, my dentist and physician, a friend whose monument proclaimed, “judge, philosopher, humorist.” There were neighbors and friends we’d forgotten until reminded by their last physical presence on earth. It’s more than tolerable being alive in a cemetery. It’s enjoyable.

The obelisk of Antoine LeClaire, a principal founder of the city, is prominent inside the entry to the cemetery. In 1832, at the end of the Black Hawk War, LeClaire was present at the peace treaty signing for which he interpreted. He also served as interpreter of Black Hawk’s autobiography, which remains in circulation. The church my grandmother attended in later life, and which eventually hosted her funeral Mass in 1991, was built on land that came from LeClaire.

Grandmother is buried in this cemetery too. I remember taking our daughter to her freshly dug grave after the memorial in the cemetery chapel. I explained what death meant in the practical terms of cemeteries. When I asked her about it years later, she didn’t remember. However, I do and maybe such memories are why I don’t mind exploring cemeteries.

The dead don’t worry about the coronavirus and that makes them different from the rest of us, at least for the next year or so.

Categories
Living in Society

After the Election

Corn Field

Because of the decennial U.S. Census, things will change in Iowa politics by the 2022 elections.

With redistricting slated before the midterms, who knows what the new districts created by the non-partisan state commission will look like? In 2001 ours looked like a salamander snaking from Springville through Mount Vernon and Solon out to Tiffin and Oxford. That district elected Democrats to the state house.

Since then, population has grown in Johnson County. I believe some of the Johnson County precincts in today’s House District 73 will be consolidated into a Johnson County dominated district. Who knows though. I recall Jeff Kaufmann was one of two votes against the current House District 73 in 2011 when he was in the legislature and before his son came to win the first four elections in our then newly minted district.

Last night the county auditor reported 56,688 ballots had been sent to voters by his office. Of those, 52,687 have been returned or 93 percent, with 3,873 outstanding. That is an amazing statistic in the last six days of the election.

Everyone expects the national news to be weird between now and election day. I plan to hunker down and do what positive things I can to increase voter turnout for my candidates. I volunteered to be a poll observer in my precinct, which is different because of the coronavirus pandemic. I had to sign a waiver that said, in part,

I acknowledge and agree that the Iowa Democratic Party cannot prevent me from becoming exposed to, contracting, or spreading COVID-19 while volunteering. Therefore, if I choose to volunteer for this project, I may be exposing myself to and/or increasing my risk of contracting or spreading COVID-19. While particular rules and personal discipline may reduce this risk, the risk of serious illness and death does exist.

As Nathan Hale said on Sept. 22, 1776 just before being hanged for spying on British troops, “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.” Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that on Nov. 3, and there is life after the election.

Categories
Writing

Cooking Memoir

Classic family breakfast

This image of a recent breakfast tells a story I’m the only one who hears.

Hashed brown potatoes, commercially prepared ketchup, two organic scrambled eggs, home made hot sauce, and a Gold Rush apple grown at a local orchard. Each part of this breakfast has its origins in the heart of my kitchen garden.

I watched my maternal grandmother make hashed browns many times and the way I do it is how she did. My earliest memories are from time in her small kitchen when she lived in a duplex where Mom, Dad and I occupied the other half. Cooking, growing, acquiring and preparing food ingredients would become a major part of my life, one that should be part of any memoir. Spending time with Grandmother during meal preparation has been influential and became part of who I am.

At the same time, Mother’s kitchen transitioned from meals cooked from many raw ingredients to ones that leveraged help from food processors. In the late 1950s and early 1960s we shopped at a corner grocery store. That gave way to a supermarket that sold many lines of products. Notable among these were bread baked at Wonder Bakery in town, and a Mexican food section where we could buy branded tortillas, sauces, spices and canned ingredients to make tacos and tostadas. Tomato ketchup was one kind of help.

Development of a recipe for tomato ketchup is attributed to Philadelphia scientist James Mease in 1812. The condiment became ubiquitous, including in our house. I have a few old cookbooks with recipes for tomato ketchup yet the idea of making our own wouldn’t stand the heat of August summer. Over the years, ingredients and process of commercial ketchup changed. Despite the use of high fructose corn syrup, we continue to use Heinz brand tomato ketchup on hashed browns. That’s what is in this photograph.

Scrambled eggs reflects many hours of watching cooking programs on television and YouTube. I sourced eggs from many places, although in recent years I buy organic eggs at the wholesale club or get them from local growers. Scrambling an egg is both easy and complicated. Very few times is the result inedible. Reaching culinary perfection has been beyond my reach with any consistency. Eggs are tolerant of erratic cooks. I continue to work to be better at it.

I recently wrote about hot sauce, something I learned to make from my platoon sergeant when we were stationed in West Germany. Over the years my recipe changed to include different kinds of hot peppers, tomatillos and occasional spices. What I used in this photo is similar to what I made in the 1970s when I discovered the condiment.

Finally, apple culture. Like many I came up on mostly Red Delicious apples. That’s one of the four varieties of trees in our current back yard. It was working at a u-pick orchard for seven years that taught me about apple culture. Even though I declined to return this year because of the coronavirus pandemic, I bought eight varieties for their different characteristics. That this breakfast was made in October is reflected by the presence of a Gold Rush apple which is among the last to ripen in Iowa.

How should I write about cooking in a memoir? Today that is an open question. Key cooking events will appear on any timeline I write as an outline for the book. It is unclear how information about cooking might be presented in the final product, whether in its own section or with stories dotting a beginning to end, chronological narrative.

It will be a part of my autobiography. Writing this post made me hungry.