Categories
Writing

Shared Culture by the Lake

Making apple cider vinegar.

When we moved to Big Grove Township we had expectations about building a life here. These expectations spoke to our shared culture.

We built a new home, settled into the public school community and began getting to know people as I worked a career that would eventually take me to a job in Eldridge, Iowa where I managed a dedicated fleet operation for a large steel service company. At the time I thought the 55-minute drive was a reasonable commute.

While there, in a staff meeting, news of the planes hitting the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and crashing in a field in Somerset County, Pennsylvania began to emerge. I was scheduled to fly to Philadelphia that morning but the flight would be delayed. That day became part of an American cultural heritage.

The events of Sept. 11, 2001 were an opportunity for the country to pull together, to unite in shared values. It was squandered by our national leaders who used the terrorist attacks as sufficient reason to invade Iraq. Our disdain for the national culture has increased since then.

Participating in a national culture is made worse by growing income and wealth inequality. If comparisons of modern capitalism with the Gilded Age and the rise of Rockefeller, Morgan, Vanderbilt, Carnegie and others is apples to oranges, Republican leadership of the U.S. government is systematically undoing every constraint on wealth and business implemented since the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act. This is intentional, and under a government subject to the unlimited financial contributions of businesses. In part, we can thank the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. FEC for unleashing the power of the wealthy in our governance.

Not only do we view the rise of the wealthy into power over our lives with disdain, we spend more time thinking about it because of new media available to us 24/7. We tend to forget our local culture, the culture we share with family, friends and neighbors — things that are shared, yet personal to us.

Mom’s funeral on Monday started an immersion into cultures I forgot existed. Greeting people from every part of Mom’s life at the visitation taxed my ability to remember. I don’t believe I come up short. At the Knights of Columbus Hall after interment I sat with three of my cousins and talked about things I’d forgotten existed. Aunt Wini’s wringer washing machine, Orsinger’s ice cream, Uncle Vince’s photography culture, Chicago steel mill culture, and more. I was able to keep up even though it has been years since I’d seen any of them. I could keep up because it is our shared culture.

Yesterday I took the crate of apples from the summer trees in our backyard and made a gallon of apple cider vinegar. By this morning the brewers yeast was working. After skimming the scum, I put the two half gallon jars on the pantry shelf to ferment. I got the mother of vinegar from a neighbor. His family had been making vinegar with it since the 19th century. The distribution of our vinegar is in a short radius with most of it used in our kitchen. I’d be willing to bet I’m one of a very small number of people fermenting vinegar in our township.

The point is we have shared cultures and the only way they exist, now and into the future, is by participating in them. The sad occasion of Mom’s passing was made better by the celebration of her life by the living. Our cuisine is made better by making our own vinegar for pickles and salad dressings. Eventually our national culture will regain its value but we are not there yet.

We chose this township based on the logistics of living. To make it meaningful we’ve had to participate in local cultures. As bad as the national culture is now, we can’t stop participating because so much is at stake. What happens near the lake ripples throughout society. If enough people engage, that could be life-changing for us, and for us all.

Categories
Kitchen Garden

Cooking in Transition

Go-to Summer Meal – Sliced tomato, toasted whole grain bread, basil pesto , salt and pepper.

Our family cuisine is in transition. I’m hopeful for positive new menu items as summer turns to fall.

My spring diagnosis of high blood sugar brought changes. Through behavior modification I’ve been able to reduce key indicators and hope to continue to do so until the physician takes back his diagnosis of diabetes. At the interim check on Aug. 19, I was well on my way — solely by cutting the quantity of carbohydrates and exercising more.

Most nights it’s easy to get a meal ready for dinner. Our repertory includes easy and complex dishes which satisfy if done right. I prepare dinner for both of us four or five nights a week and we are on our own for breakfast, lunch and snacks. It works.

The cuisine we developed in Big Grove focused on techniques to use readily available ingredients to make repeatable dishes. We regularly eat pasta, pizza, macaroni and cheese, bread, chili, soup, casseroles, toppings with rice, and manufactured non-meat burger patties. Fresh and frozen vegetables are basic. Fruit is seasonal and desserts infrequently made or purchased. To meet a carbohydrate budget, I’ve had to regulate and mostly reduce portion size of these staple dishes. When I make a batch, I use a scale. Dishes last longer with leftovers for the next day or two.

When the garden comes in vegetables dominate the plate. Tomatoes are a favorite and we have fresh with most meals while they last. When lettuce comes in we make big salads for dinner. For the time being, I don’t bake bread very often, eschew meat and meat products, and use only a few manufactured products for their ease and serviceability within the context of our cuisine.

I’ve been cooking since I left home, although some of the dishes I prepared in the 1970s were hardly edible. My main cooking lessons began during a long assignment in South Georgia where I worked long days and crashed in the motel where Food Network was daily relaxation fare. The televised repetition of technique by multiple chefs helped me determine how they would fit in dishes I made. Every cook needs basic lessons in technique.

With the challenge of high blood sugar a new cuisine is in the works. Even if I beat the disease, permanent changes are required to prevent recurrence. Part of our aging in place will include development of a simple process to meet dietary needs in a tasty, efficient matter — focused increasingly on ingredients we produce or source locally.

My go-to recipes are memorized or written in a red spiral-bound notebook I bought on vacation in Stratford, Ontario. My go-to cook books are Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Joy of Cooking by Marion Rombauer Becker, and a couple of others

Part of this means downsizing my collection of a couple hundred cook books. There is a lot of good stuff there, although a lot of repetition as well. Over the years I’ve been enthusiastic about certain chefs — Child and Rombauer Becker, Rick Bayless, Mario Batali, Giada De Laurentiis, Tamar Adler and, of course, my mother and grandmother. I’m hoping to find new inspiration in Anthony Bourdain, José Andrés, Sally Schneider and Nigella Lawson. In any case, the result I envision is a new repertory of about 25 main course recipes that have predictable nutritional value and can be made with mostly local ingredients. I also hope to learn new ways to prepare vegetables.

During the first seven months of 2019 we spent $124 on restaurant meals. I have a gift certificate to a highly acclaimed restaurant I won at a raffle last fall stuck to the refrigerator with no plans to use. Eating at home has been and will continue to be our focus.

Change is frequently unwelcome. In this case change is driven by health concerns about which I feel compelled to act. I expect it to be a good fall and winter sorting this out.

Categories
Environment Writing

Glorious Summer of 2019

Cherry Tomatoes

If August was a tough month, this summer has been one of the best in recent years.

Moderate local temperatures with reasonable relative humidity, rain enough to help the garden grow, and friends meeting the challenge of growing flowers and vegetables in a changing climate, all helped us feel comfortable.

July was notable for being the hottest month for the planet since record-keeping began, according to the U.S. government. Regional variation made Iowa tolerable, perhaps a harbinger of the impact of humans living on the planet continues its steady deterioration of our biome.

Despite favorable weather it was hard to get off the starting blocks in August on scores of projects needing attention.

It will soon be time to turn the page.

For the time being I’m eating cherry tomatoes and enjoying the last weeks of this glorious summer.

Categories
Juke Box

Juke Box – Wide Open Spaces

I’m going on hiatus from this blog until after Sept. 9. In the meanwhile, here’s one of the songs we chose for Mom’s funeral. Hope to see you mid-September.

Categories
Living in Society

Trying on T-shirts

Trying on t-shirts

It’s been hard to figure if I should campaign for a Democrat for president before the February caucuses or whether I should remain neutral until the last minute to help our Big Grove precinct caucus go more smoothly.

Based on previous caucuses when there was a presidential preference, the precinct will not be close in 2020. Obama was a clear win in 2008, and in 2016 we had enough extra Hillary Clinton supporters to send a delegation over to Martin O’Malley’s group to make them viable and deprive Bernie Sanders of an extra delegate. At the convention, the O’Malley delegate came over to Clinton after the candidate dropped out of the race.

2008 got a bit ugly. I was the John Edwards precinct captain and was asked to be caucus secretary as I was in 2004. Throughout the difficult body counts and recounts people got impatient and things got a little heated and personal. It is a case for the temporary chair not to identify for a candidate until the last possible moment.

There is the issue of the work. In 2016 Team Clinton door-knocked and phone-called before the caucus like there was no tomorrow, hitting every part of our area, in cities and rural areas equally. I no longer do much of this work outside my own precinct but want to help. If I wait to declare, I’ll help a campaign in other ways.

In the run-up to the 2020 caucus most of the 20 or so candidates don’t have the management structure to canvass the way we did for Hillary. If we pick someone to support without adequate campaign infrastructure we’ll be on our own. That was the case in 2008 when hardly anyone caucused for Bill Richardson, Chris Dodd or Joe Biden. Between them there were about eight people in a caucus of 268 Democratic voters.

Local politics aside, I have been trying on t-shirts… it seems pretty clear Elizabeth Warren will be my pick if I do declare before the night of the caucus. Here’s my run-down of the field. Nota Bene: I will work hard and unconditionally to elect the eventual Democratic nominee regardless of who it is.

Based on Iowa polling, and according to 538.com, there are currently only five possible candidates who could win first place in the delegate count: Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. If they had a breakthrough, which is possible this early in the cycle, Corey Booker, Julián Castro, Amy Klobuchar, Beto O’Rourke or Tom Steyer might be contenders for viability. My hunch is the first five could be viable and the top delegate getter will be one of them.

Narrowing it down, here’s where I land on the five most likely to be viable candidates in February 2020:

One knows there is trouble when Joe Biden’s campaign is weighing whether to scale back his public schedule so he won’t make so many gaffes. He is past his prime and every minute he stays in the race, he blocks others from advancing. I look around my precinct and don’t know who, except the 3-4 people who caucused for him in 2008, might do so now. One of the 2008 group died.

I like Pete Buttigieg but don’t feel he has the right kind of experience to be president. I heard him speak twice in person and each time I marveled at his oratory, but felt empty when he finished. He is clearly an up and comer in Democratic politics and his generational message is important. Sorry Pete, not this time unless you win the nomination.

Kamala Harris is the only one I haven’t heard speak in person. When she came to Iowa her campaign exhibited tremendous energy, of the kind one expects from a presidential campaign. She hasn’t been to Iowa that much. Friends of mine are ardent supporters and that matters in the caucuses. I have a few things to investigate, particularly her idea of privatizing Medicare, but specific policies don’t matter as much as the whole package. She gets positive marks for having won the U.S. Senate in the most populous state in the nation. I have no doubt she could scale her campaign to win the primary.

I haven’t liked Sanders since I met him in 2014. He’s more liberal than most and his policy positions haven’t changed much since he entered politics. I like some of his policy positions. We just didn’t click when we shook hands as he stumped for Bruce Braley. I also don’t see enough support as people who caucused for him in 2016 are finding their way to other campaigns this cycle.

That leaves Elizabeth Warren. I’ve been following her since she was elected from Massachusetts to the U.S. Senate. If she had run for president in 2016 I would have supported her. While concerned about a 70 year-old white woman president, her performance in Tipton allayed my concerns. She has a lot of policy statements and that matters little or not at all. I’ve watched her in the Senate and she supports legislation with which I mostly agree. Is the United States ready to elect its first female president? I have my doubts, but may be willing to throw in with Warren and try it again.

I’m trying on t-shirts, but the only one I bought has Warren’s name on it. If I declare, I’ll do it shortly after Labor Day. What I’ve found this cycle is there aren’t as many choices for president as it appears.

Categories
Writing

Starting Again

Canning Plum Tomatoes

Out of the ashes of lives past we are reborn.

With last Thursday’s death of Mother, as well as that of our friend Lillian Davis, life continues. As we linger around funeral arrangements and schedules, phone calls and meet ups, emails and social media posts, something positive is on the horizon if we can only see it.

Like the single concertina note that begins the David Merrick musical Carnival! it’s familiar and quickly to be accompanied by other instruments. We are uncertain where it will go, but only for a few moments, and then we’ll get swept up in, “Direct from Vienna…”

Warehouse work occupied my last shift at the home, farm and auto supply store on Wednesday. We prepare for the holiday retail season and new merchandise arrives daily. There were trucks to unload, inbound shipments to process, and on line orders to fill. Our store is doing reasonably well compared to our daily goals, although a large-scale competitor is building a new store nearby. Fleet Farm expects to extract $2 million per week in revenue from the area. Our sales and those of others may take a hit. At the end of the year I’ll assess whether to continue there in 2020.

The orchard didn’t need me yesterday because of thunderstorms in the forecast. I used the time to work on funeral arrangements, then we went to the visitation for Lillian. Her children, who were in 4-H with our daughter, are grown and handled themselves well in a tough situation. Lillian would have been proud of them.

Summer plans have been scrambled. To get away from the death reminders I canned the ripe plum tomatoes yesterday. There will be more. I see a physician today and hope to develop next steps to control my glucose levels without medication. Jacque and I have plans to start cleaning the house and downsizing, a process that will go on for a few months. There is more to life than these existential errands.

We do what we can, hoping for the best, and try to make positive contributions in a fractured and turbulent society.

Or as the character Yoda said in the Star Wars movies, “No. Try not. Do… or do not. There is no try.” We can do better.

Categories
Milestones

Lorraine Anne Deaton

Lorraine Deaton at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

Mother died at 2:45 p.m. on Thursday, Aug. 15. I wrote this obituary for the newspaper with input from my sister. Here is a link to the funeral home site with details about the service.

Lorraine Anne (Jabus) Deaton, 90, died Thursday, Aug. 15, at Genesis Medical Center in Davenport.

Born at home on July 28, 1929 near LaSalle, Ill., Lorraine moved with her family to Davenport where her mother joined several sisters at a coat-making plant supporting the World War II effort. She graduated from Davenport High School, and then worked briefly for the telephone company where she established relationships with people who would become life-long friends.

Family relationships remained an important part of her life. Family included her husband, brothers and sisters, in-laws, three children, and numerous aunts, uncles and cousins, many of whom lived in the Quad-Cities Area.

She married Jack H. Deaton from Glamorgan, Va. in 1951 at Holy Family Catholic Church, eventually settling in Northwest Davenport where they established a home. She was active in the church where she participated in community organizations and worked in the school lunch program. She was particularly proud of her volunteer work with the Girl Scouts where she mentored many young girls.

After her husband died in an industrial accident on Feb. 1, 1969, she found work with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. She made a career at the Corps, retiring in 1990 as Equal Employment Opportunity Officer for the Rock Island District. While there she was named Woman of the Year.

In retirement Lorraine remained active in the community. Among other volunteer positions, in recent years she worked at the public library where she helped staff the used book store.

Lorraine Deaton was preceded in death by her husband; her parents, Mae (Nadolski) Jabus and William Dziabas; sisters Winifred Plantan (Hank) and Catherine Nash (Vince); and brothers Richard Robbins (Dorothy) and William Jabus (Marilyn).

Survivors include son Paul Deaton (Jacqueline) of Solon, daughter Patricia Deaton and son Jack Deaton Jr., both of Davenport, and a granddaughter Elizabeth Deaton of Orlando, Fla.

In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation to a local Girl Scout troop or Girl Scouts of America at https://www.girlscouts.org/en/adults/donate.html

Funeral service was Monday, Sept. 9, at Halligan McCabe DeVries Funeral Home, with interment at Mount Calvary Cemetery in Davenport.

Categories
Kitchen Garden

Tomatoes on Everything!

Slicers, plum, paste, cherry and grape tomatoes.

The 2019 tomato harvest has begun.

We have fresh tomatoes with every meal, for snacks, and with everything.

We aren’t sick of them yet and work to preserve some of them is imminent. There’s a lot going on in the kitchen garden this August.

Sweet corn is in. Our local farm has had a spotty year, yet we’ve been able to freeze enough two-cup bags to make it until next year. Last night for dinner we had corn on the cob with sliced tomatoes — a classic summer combination.

First up in tomato preservation is to make a dozen pints of diced. This, combined with a backlog from previous years is enough to run the kitchen. I’ll also make as much tomato sauce as I can. Last year I froze it and that worked well. The freezer is filling up already so I may have to can some of it this year. Last year I froze small tomatoes whole and used them during the year to make sauce. I may try canning them whole to supplement the diced.

Yesterday I picked about two bushels of the first apples. A lot more wait on the trees. Our early apple is sweet and makes a great base for apple cider vinegar. I make a couple of gallons each year and the jars to do so are empty and just need cleaning. Our cupboard remains full of apple butter and apple sauce, so maybe a few jars of each is all I’ll make this year. They are good for out of hand eating as well. I’ll need to find a home for some of them or leave them to wildlife.

I froze enough kale for the year early in the season. What I harvest the rest of the year will be to give away or eat fresh. There is enough vegetable broth for the year, frozen jars of pesto, frozen okra, frozen celery, grated and frozen zucchini,  and the hot peppers are beginning to come in. It’s been a good year so far.

The garden didn’t produce green beans. The plants look healthy and there have been flowers. Almost no beans have been produced.

The variety of red beans planted needs to climb and I thought they were bush beans. There are bean pods forming, so there will be some harvest. Next year they need a fence to climb on, if I plant them again. I planted beans mostly to fix nitrogen in the soil.

It seems like there can never be enough beets. I started some in trays and those fared much better than the ones sown in the ground. Will do more of that next year. For now I have one jar of pickled beets to last the year.

The tomato and apple harvest signal the garden’s impending end. There’s a lot of work to be done, but we enjoy the taste of fresh tomatoes as much as anything we grow.

Categories
Living in Society

Addicted to Politics – Three August Things

Tomatoes on Everything

I often forget myself when talking about politics. My mind enters a narcotized, dreamy, transcendent world where rhetoric and action translate into distraction searching for a reality. In such conversations I articulate long-carried ideas and get them out with others. I listen and learn as much as a person with a driving social style can.

It is rarely a good thing. It is seldom a bad thing. It is part of living in society.

Couple things about August 2019 politics.

Iowa Starting Line

Iowa Starting Line has been able to hire a comparatively large number of people to cover the Iowa caucuses. This, combined with a unique editorial viewpoint, enabled them to provide coverage of events the Des Moines Register and others can’t or won’t. Recent stories include a piece by Elizabeth Meyer that compares Burlington visits of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris; a piece by Paige Godden discussing how the Iowa State Fair enabled voters to narrow the presidential candidate field; and coverage of presidential candidate appearances at the Meskwaki settlement in Tama by Nikoel Hytrek. If these three stories were all ISL posted, it would be great. They posted a total of eight articles on Saturday and Sunday. Hats off to Pat Rynard for what he built at Iowa Starting Line, including fund raising to hire staff and a uniquely Iowa editorial viewpoint.

The Biden Narrative

There is a narrative about Joe Biden that focuses on his front-runner status in the polls. Erin Murphy ran a story in this vein in Monday’s Cedar Rapids Gazette, writing, “Biden, the former vice president, has been the leader in most polling on the expansive field of Democratic presidential candidates, both in Iowa and nationally.” While this is journeyman reporting, it misses the point about Biden.

The key question is whether Biden’s showing in polls will translate into wins in the early states. The Biden Iowa campaign was not viable in the 2008 caucuses and little about his campaign seems different today. Compared to others, he got a late start in Iowa and hasn’t established a ground game to compete with Sanders, Warren, Delaney or others.

Just yesterday the Asian and Latino Coalition of Iowa endorsed Kamala Harris for president. They are a group Biden should have won over. On Friday, Sue and Bob Dvorsky announced their support for Kamala Harris. Dvorskys were key Barack Obama supporters and Sue was chair of the Iowa Democratic Party during Obama’s re-election campaign in 2012. What happened there? Biden gets the respect due to being Barack Obama’s vice president but I can’t figure out how he gains supporters over his performance in 2008, or 1988 for that matter. This aspect of his campaign isn’t readily apparent in the news.

The continuous repetition of the narrative of Biden as poll leader may be true, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. It poisons the well. The longer the narrative continues unchallenged, in the media or from other candidates, the more detrimental it becomes to the Democratic party. Biden is blocking space other, more talented candidates could occupy.

An Electorate Re-made

Who are “real people” in the political discussion? Since my first retirement ten years ago I spent a lot of time with them in society, mostly at lowly-paid temporary or part-time jobs. They don’t show up at political party events or usually talk about politics in public. Most don’t like Trump… or the Democrats either. Will they vote in 2020? Many I know didn’t vote in 2016 and won’t vote in 2020. This is a key problem that few seem to be working as Democrats spend time in the boutique-style shopping for “my candidate” in the run up to the caucuses.

The Secretary of State voter registrations are public knowledge. No preference voters outnumber either party’s registrations and have for a few election cycles. People try to make something of these numbers and I shake my head when someone mentions Democratic registrations in a discussion without mentioning the majority of voters in Iowa don’t identify as Democratic. The Secretary of State’s information may be accurate, but it is useless in aggregate when building a campaign. Political parties are not what binds most voters.

The problems Iowans face are common ones. Key among them is the American idea of building a sustainable structure in which to live our lives, including adequate food, shelter and clothing. It also includes modern add-ons of health care, transportation, insurance, education, banking and consumer debt. Real things assault this structure. I mean government policies like the president’s trade policy, climate change, changing demographics, and the hegemony of rich people and corporations. A person doesn’t have to be a Democrat to hate the Walton family which makes more money in a minute than the average Walmart employee makes in a year. Determining the commonality of such an electorate is ever-changing hard work.

My sense is few campaigns are working on this in the long run up to the Iowa caucuses because in those contests being a Democratic voter for the night is all that matters. There is plenty of common ground to be found when the view takes in all of the electorate.

There is no treatment or cure for the political addict.

Categories
Home Life

Trail Walk

Lake Macbride State Park – Aug. 9, 2019

A main feature of the vacant lot we bought in 1993 was its proximity to Lake Macbride State Park.

When we need exercise, or just want to get away from the house, it’s a short walk to the trail that runs five miles from our nearby city to the main park entrance. In August the park is filled with wildflowers, insects and other flora and fauna of living in Iowa. There is as much to observe as there is to escape in quotidian life.

A trail walk can reset our lives each time we venture out.

Two weekends into my seventh season at an apple orchard I continue to enjoy the work and its customer engagement.

A family drove over from Chicago, one stopped on their way back to Rochester, Minn., and regulars return with the micro-seasons within a procession of a hundred apple varieties. Every chance we have to converse is a window into lives where with at least one common interest. It is the beginning of something positive.

A trail walk can get us centered and ready for such engagement.