Categories
Writing

Leaning Into What’s Next

Finding My Way

The second half of 2018 has been weird. A burden was lifted when Social Security checks began to arrive a year ago. With them came a view that new undertakings were possible, unlike at any time since I returned from Germany in 1979.

The next big thing isn’t as obvious in 2018 as it was in years past.

Maybe removing economic worry became the impetus for a new way of seeing the world — a complete segregation between who I am and work I do in society. I’m less worried about society and the focus is now on me. It’s new territory for someone who has been steadily busy since high school. What will this next act in life be?

I think of the famous speech from As You Like It although I’m not sure William Shakespeare’s seven ages of man still apply. When life expectancy was shorter they may have been relevant (in British Society), but with a longer span our lives are more diverse and such notion of ages antique.

There have been breaks in the continuum of my life. The time before school, then schooling through high school, leaving home for university and adventure, settling in with marriage and a career, followed by a long semi-retirement leading to this year when I applied for my Social Security pension and stepped back from working except when it interested me. By that reckoning I am beginning a sixth period although it doesn’t seem so clear cut. It seems downright foggy, the path vague.

After first retirement in July 2009, I had hope of starting a new career or my own business. That didn’t happen the way I expected. The question these days is how will I spend them? Each day is an open book, often isolated from the ones before and after. It is no way for a human to live.

This all came home after apple season when I reduced my work schedule to two eight-hour shifts at the home, farm and auto supply store each week. I’m hopeful to make a positive contribution during the sixth age of Paul. Already I’m autonomously getting started with next year’s garden, more writing and reading, and plenty of cooking. However, these things are a baseline in who I am, rather than the full result — a framework the contents of which aren’t visible in the chiaroscuro of mist-filled days and cloudy afternoons. Like a batter as the baseball is pitched from a mound, what to do next will become clear as I stand at the plate and consider the sphere and its rotations as it hurls toward the catcher’s mitt.

I expect I will write my way out of this. Not today, but soon. Once I do, Katy bar the door.

Categories
Living in Society Writing

Fair Redistricting Makes for Fair Elections

Big Grove Polling Place Nov. 6, 2018

The 2018 Midterm elections are over and I’m happy about the outcome.

I live in Big Grove Precinct, nestled around Lake Macbride, and here Fred Hubbell beat Kim Reynolds by two votes of 1,107 cast in the governor’s race. Why am I happy if Hubbell lost statewide?

Compare 2018 to 2014 election results in Big Grove when Terry Branstad won the precinct with 558 votes to Jack Hatch’s 367 (951 votes cast). Overall voter turnout increased by 16 percent in 2018, and almost all of the increase favored the Democratic governor. In a precinct where Donald Trump won by 54 votes, I’m glad to see we flipped back to Democratic in the governor’s race, even if only by two votes.

My opinion on these facts: the 2018 midterms were a fair election.

People are already gearing up for the 2020 election. At stake will be something that gets to the core of what makes for fair elections, a fair way to draw maps of congressional and legislative districts.

Iowa’s process where an independent, temporary commission recommends a district map to the legislature, which votes on it, is a fair one. Iowa has avoided gerrymandered districts (like Pennsylvania and North Carolina drew to favor a particular political party) largely because of our process.

No matter who wins the legislature in 2020 we should keep our statutory redistricting process to ensure fair elections, that is, if we want to strengthen our democracy. I want that and hope you do too.

~ Published in the Nov. 29, 2018 edition of the Solon Economist

Categories
Home Life

Thanksgiving Leftovers

Tacos

I put Thanksgiving leftovers in a plastic dish for my lunch at the home, farm and auto supply store.

Low levels of activity characterized the last week. Once I finished morning sessions at my writing desk, I didn’t leave the house much. I don’t like the thought of going to work today, yet two shifts each week provides structure and socialization. It would be easy to get disconnected from society where we live. It’s time to get going again with a trip across the lakes.

I made a slaw of green cabbage and daikon radish and put a serving in a plastic container to supplement the beans, kale and rice lunch in the other. I’m ready for my shift.

Yesterday the Cedar Rapids Gazette reported Devotay, the restaurant started by Kurt and Kim Friese, was shuttering Jan. 1, 2019. Frieses sold the restaurant last January and under new owners the tapas bar is not attracting enough customers. They plan to re-name the Linn Street restaurant, create a new menu and re-open. Tapas was a thing when I worked in the Chicago loop, and I’ve eaten paella in Spain, but today’s potential customers apparently don’t get it. Such is restaurant life in a county seat that hosts a large university with a transient population.

As I read the news, the letter carrier delivered a copy of Friese’s book A Cook’s Journey: Slow Food in the Heartland. When I ordered it, the web site said it was the last copy in stock, although it was published across the lake in North Liberty. They can probably make more as long as there is demand. I knew of Friese the food author, but never read him, ate in his restaurant, or ran into him around the county. I met him when he became more active in politics. He was a good writer and a great conversationalist. I still can’t believe he is gone.

To make sense of our food ecology, some knowledge of what Friese did is essential. Until his last days he was recruiting people to join the slow food movement. I doubt anyone can replace what he did because of his long tenure and specific knowledge. Devotay likely relied on this as well and was bound to change after they sold.

“Food is important,” chef Matt Steigerwald said when he opened Lincoln Cafe in Mount Vernon. While I didn’t know Kurt Friese’s food hardly at all, he left a legacy which is likely entwined in the Thanksgiving leftovers I packed for lunch. I intend to unpack his food legacy in my quest to understand the complex food ecology where we live.

But for now, I have to get ready for my shift.

Categories
Milestones Work Life

Bernardo Bertolucci and General Motors

Bernardo Bertolucci (77) died yesterday in Rome, Italy where he had been suffering from cancer. The bigger news was General Motors’ decision to reduce workforce and eliminate six car models, including the Chevrolet Volt rechargeable gas-electric hybrid.

What do they have in common besides their coincidence?

They both hit me where I live.

When I returned from military service I spent time viewing movies I missed coming up, including The Conformist. I became enamored of the film, its director Bertolucci, and its cinematographer Vittorio Storaro. On my cross-country trip from New Jersey, where my pickup truck had been shipped from Germany, enroute home to Iowa, I visited friends Diana and Dennis in Springfield, Illinois. Diana fed us cornbread and beans and Dennis and I went to see Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, with cinematography by Storaro. That night began an infatuation with cinema that continued through my return home and lingered into the early years of our marriage. Of the films I have seen, The Conformist ranks in my top ten.

The Conformist

Partly The Conformist resonated with my short trips to Italy in the 1970s. More, though, it was Marcello Clerici, the vacillating, spineless protagonist who would kill his professor in a woods at the direction of the Communist Party. Who would want to be that? Not me. Not anyone. The impression the film made on my artistic consciousness persists. I will be forever thankful to Bertolucci for his contribution to this formative experience.

The General Motors announcement was a gut punch to anyone who lived and worked in the Rust Belt.

“The reductions could amount to as much as eight percent of GM’s global workforce of 180,000 employees,” Tom Krisher wrote for Associated Press.

What makes this pill tough to swallow is the damage that has already been done throughout the industrialized part of the country. I’ve written extensively about my experiences recruiting truck drivers in Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, New York and Pennsylvania during the period 1987 – 1993. I met thousands of people laid off from industry jobs. What makes the GM announcement different is what I experienced then was related to globalization. What’s happening now has to do with board room decisions emboldened by the recent Republican tax breaks.

The Conformist

There is talk unions will negotiate a better deal for workers as GM moves forward with their plans. How has that worked before? It hasn’t. The only union-related board member had been from the UAW health care trust, a position vacant since December 2017. The fund lost the board seat in October after selling a big chunk of GM stock.

Why would a person that drives a 21-year old passenger car care what GM does? When you’ve seen the faces of long-term employees who lost everything after a plant closing or down-sizing, you know what this announcement from GM means to workers. Only a cold, venal, rudderless being like Marcello Clerici could look on and not feel anything.

Categories
Environment

Protect Our Planet, Protect Ourselves – 24 Hours of Reality

It’s a fact: Fossil fuels are driving a climate crisis and threatening our health. On Dec. 3 – 4, Climate Reality and former Vice President Al Gore will be joined by an all-star line-up of artists, thought leaders, and scientists for 24 Hours of Reality: Protect Our Planet, Protect Ourselves. Tune in and learn how we can make a healthy future a reality: https://www.24HoursofReality.org.

Categories
Environment

Act On Climate

Earthrise by Bill Anders, Dec. 24, 1968

Every few years, interest in climate change spikes, according to internet search frequency reported by Google Trends. When the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released their special report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5º C above pre-industrial levels on Oct. 8, searches spiked again. Searches are already trending downward.

Newspapers in our area ran stories about climate change, about one a day in recent weeks. Is there a new window of opportunity to act on climate? I doubt it. There is no window because the walls of the house we used to live in have been blown out.

It is time to act on climate.

Every environmental activist has a to-do list. Mine has four parts.

Reduce, reuse and recycle personally. I don’t seek to create a livable environment for me only as the late George Carlin derisively asserted about environmentalists. It is better to buy only food the household can use rather than let it go to waste. We live a life of making do with old clothing, old cars, and recycling single use bread and celery bags for our garden crops. It remains important to have a discussion with Waste Management about why they won’t recycle plastic. If enough people do it, maybe they will find a better way than baling and shipping it overseas or discarding it in landfills. This is a starting point for almost everyone.

Band together with like-minded people. We walk a tightrope in life in which the risks are many. On one side, we avoid the insularity of confirmation bias in which like minded people often find themselves. On the other, we are stronger together. A recent Stanford University study of 30 years of data about street protests found “citizen activism, which has been shown to impact state and firm policy decisions, also impacts electoral outcomes.” A single voice can be amplified if it joins a chorus of hundreds or thousands.

Advocate with elected officials to mitigate the effects of climate change. There is an art to political advocacy. Where groups have been successful, we found common ground with people of divergent backgrounds to unify around a single action. This is partly how we stopped two new coal-fired power plants from being built in Iowa. It is also how we changed the minds of legislators regarding new nuclear power plants in the state. Two tactics serve little purpose: contacting a legislator every time we disagree with any action they take, and group think of people who advocate for a carbon tax as their primary method to combat climate change. We must understand the diversity of solutions to the climate crisis, keep our powder dry for when it matters most, then act in unison.

Help educate people on the threat of unaddressed climate change. It goes without saying there is uneven understanding about the impacts of climate change in society. My popular post, Climate Change in 200 Words explains the basic science, about which there is little disagreement from even the most strident climate deniers. Where society gets hit hardest is in the impacts of warmer atmosphere and oceans. The news is full of examples. Few people have missed the fires in California, hurricanes in Florida, Texas and New Jersey, or the severe 2012 drought in Iowa. All of these events were made worse by global warming. Much of the intensification of our weather events is predictable and likely avoidable with societal action. Education is a valid and essential part of creating collective action to mitigate the effects of climate change.

Perhaps the important lesson about climate change derived from Google Trends is there are clear news hooks which can make climate action more likely. The problem hasn’t gone away and we can’t rely upon news events to precipitate our actions.

Whether we will act on climate before it is too late is unknown. What we do know is the human condition includes hope for survival and a better world. It is unrealistic to believe global societies will unite around a single course of action. Part of the brilliance of the 2015 Paris Agreement was it enabled every nation to participate in their own way toward a common goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Whatever deficiencies existed in the agreement, it was a positive sign of what humanity is capable.

The IPCC special report is another scientific explanation we must act on climate before it is too late. This is my to-do list. What is yours?

Categories
Home Life Kitchen Garden

Into the Light

Black Friday, 4:30 a.m., at the home, farm and auto supply store

I spent much of Black Friday loading customer vehicles with large, bulky items that were on sale. It was often a three-person job.

Management had us come in an hour before the store opened at 6 a.m. to put the final preparatory touches on what is one of our biggest sales days of the year.

A crowd of shoppers waited when we opened. Given the types of merchandise we carry and aggressive pursuit of Black Friday market share, it was no surprise.

Throughout my shift shoppers arrived in vehicles containing bags of merchandise from other stores. We helped fill them up and all was good in retail world.

I was tired when I arrived home at 2:30 p.m., more because my early morning schedule was disrupted than the work I did at the home, farm and auto supply store.

First thing I did was make a batch of red chile sauce using dried New Mexico chilies.

We continue to have kale in the garden so the day before I planned a last-minute dish for our Thanksgiving dinner. Before I forget, here’s what I did:

Saute a diced medium onion in a frying pan. Add a couple of cloves of diced garlic. Once the onions and garlic are tender, add a pint of diced tomatoes and a tablespoon of Mexican oregano. When the sauce comes together, add a large amount of sliced kale leaves with the stems removed. I used three big leaves but more is okay because it will cook down. The stems can be sliced finely and added for more texture. Add a drained and rinsed can of prepared black beans. Season with salt to taste. Reduce heat to a simmer until the liquid has evaporated and serve hot as a side dish.

I had dinner of Thanksgiving leftovers and went to bed early. There will be a lot to do as we come into the light of this weekend.

Categories
Home Life

A Vegetarian Menu

What does a Thanksgiving menu look like in an ovo-lacto vegetarian household?

Deviled eggs, crudites and pickles

Roasted pumpkin seeds

Pickles and crudités

Deviled eggs

Vegetable Dishes

Wild rice pilaf

Baked sweet potato

Steamed green peas

Kale and black beans in tomato sauce

Desserts

Cranberry relish

Apple crisp

Almond flour shortbread cookies

Sparkling apple cider

Categories
Home Life

Thanksgiving 2018

Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

There’s a lot for which to be thankful this Thanksgiving.

None of who I am would be possible without the strong support of family and friends. I don’t often write about them in public and that’s by design. They are there, rock solid, behind the twists and turns of my days while sustaining a life in a turbulent world.

There are other thanks to give.

I am thankful for Social Security. Fifty years ago, when I made my first contributions, I did not like the deductions from my paycheck. I rationalized them by saying when I reach retirement age the program would be there for me. It lived up to that long ago promise. Whether Social Security will continue is uncertain. The band of grifters currently leading us in Washington wants to cut the program. The more extreme among them and their supporters would eliminate it entirely. I thank Franklin Delano Roosevelt for creating the program and for the many who have stood up for it over the years. I’ve worked hard during my life and because of Social Security we’ll be able to subsist as we age.

I am thankful to be a member of the Democratic Party. In Johnson County, Iowa we have a diverse membership. When we gather, as we did on Tuesday, the conversations are meaningful and our shared history relevant to our daily lives. Set aside the polarizing depiction of liberals by right wing organizations and media and we are plain folk working to live decent lives. I admit I do like organically grown turnips out of my garden. That’s hardly political as a right wing commentator recently suggested. My friends in the Democratic Party know that.

I am thankful to have good health. A co-worker at the home, farm and auto supply store told me yesterday I looked well-preserved. By that I hope he meant I looked younger than my age and not already partly embalmed. My longevity is more likely due to not smoking, drinking only a couple ounces of alcohol per month, avoiding most animal meat in my diet, and staying engaged in society. We never know when our lives might end. I am thankful to have made it thus far.

I am thankful to live in Iowa. Despite recent changes in our governance, how we live is so much better than being a slave in the Thai seafood industry, being a war refugee in the Middle East, being a climate refugee as deserts grow in Sub-Saharan Africa, or being a person without means living on the draw in Southwestern Virginia where my father’s family came up.  On our worst days an Iowan can have hope and for that I am thankful.

I am thankful for the farming community to which I belong. My life in rural Iowa creates a lens through which I see the world more clearly. It ties me to the weather, land use, water quality, food production, and skills and techniques that make me a better gardener. My work with our home owners association and as a township trustee familiarized me with public drinking water, sewer and sanitation, emergency services, managing cemeteries, tax levies, and how people get along with each other. I’m in pretty deep and expect to remain so. Life would be less if I weren’t.

There are more thanks to give and before closing I thank my readers. Your views, likes and comments mean a lot. They encourage me to continue. Without a readership, a writer is little more than a dog barking at the moon. I’m thankful to have seen the full moon setting this morning, behind trees I planted two decades ago. Soon the sun will rise on another day and I want to be part of it.

Categories
Living in Society

Royceann Porter Democrat for County Supervisor

Last night Johnson County Democrats nominated Iowa City resident Royceann Porter for the Dec. 18 special election for county supervisor. I support her candidacy for two reasons. She is a Democrat who won the nomination in an open process, and many people whose judgement I respect support her. Before last night, I wouldn’t have recognized her if I saw her walking on the street. I’m rapidly getting to like Porter and have already reached out to congratulate her and offer help in her campaign.

The other nominee, Pat Harney, had been elected county supervisor four times yet convention delegates rejected him by a vote of 109 to 42. In his three-minute speech Harney focused on the challenges of winning the special election, something of which delegates seemed cognizant. Unspoken at the convention was the challenge a black woman would face among quietly racist voters in the county who would prefer the white male Republicans are expected to nominate. Porter’s campaign is about moving the county forward and that’s another reason I support her.

“I have been a leader in this community for many years,” Porter wrote in a Nov. 19 campaign email. “I will use my commitment and experience to make sure that Johnson County works for all of us. And, I know I can win against the Republican nominee in the December 18 special election.”

In a county where 48,758 people voted for Democrat Fred Hubbell for governor Porter should easily win the election over any nominee Republicans put forward at their upcoming convention. It’s not a given as the 2013 special election that made Republican John Etheredge a supervisor reminds us. It’s up to delegates at last night’s convention to get the word out about Porter’s candidacy and make sure voter turnout is sufficient for her to win.

I plan to do my part to elect Royceann Porter county supervisor and look forward to the campaign.