Earth Day is and will always be about this photo taken by the Apollo 8 astronauts on the first manned mission to the moon.
“The vast loneliness is awe-inspiring and it makes you realize just what you have back there on Earth,” command module pilot Jim Lovell said from lunar orbit.
With a perspective six inches from our noses, we often forget who we are and how we fit into the vast reaches of the universe. We are a speck in a place larger than we can imagine.
When I participated in the first Earth Day as a senior in high school, the idea we should work together for peace, reduce pollution, and care for the environment seemed obvious. Even much reviled President Richard Nixon got it — society had to do something to address clean air, clean water and endangered species.
Earth Day is a chance to revisit this iconic photograph. When we consider a broader perspective, as the photograph encourages us to do, little has changed on Earth since it was taken. Our troubles seem petty compared to the overriding fact Earth is our only home. We are all in this together.
As much as societies seek to delineate metes and bounds, there are no borders on the globe. There is only one society of which we are all a part.
This Earth Day I’ll be working at home in my garden. A late spring created pent up demand for outdoors work. For the last four weeks, one excuse after another delayed needed work, yet now I’m ready to release the floodgates.
It’s funny how when one gets all the information the picture looks different.
Since I complained about the purchase of Dick Schwab and Katherine Burford’s property using conservation bond money after partial information was leaked via our local newspaper, I wanted to get back to you now that the purchase has been made public.
The fact Burford/Schwab donated the developed portion of the property mitigates my concern about how bond money is being used. In fact, because of that, the plan, as explained in the Press Citizen, complies with what I said in my March 7 email. “I hope and expect you to vote no on the acquisition of this property using conservation bond money.” My concerns are rendered moot because of the donation.
On reflection, this decision was a good one for which the board should be commended. It is also consistent with conversations I have had with Schwab about how he planned to dispose of his property.
While I continue to be dissatisfied by the partial leakage of information, I have no beef with you.
Thanks for your service on the board of supervisors.
In our neighborhood a preteen found his father collapsed in the yard and ran for help. Despite best efforts by his partner of 30 years, emergency responders, and staff at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, he died Sunday. The funeral is Friday.
A layer of sadness blankets places I go.
It’s not just the death of a neighbor. Cold weather is delaying farmers from getting into the field. Tension permeates everything. We laugh but avoid the reality that something has to give — perhaps delaying the spring share until plants grow. Perhaps something else. We are ready for the weather to break.
Temperatures today are forecast in the low thirties… again. It’s April 18 for goodness sake! The garden should be a third planted by now. It has been difficult to spend time outside, bundled up to keep warm. It’s not the cold as much as it is a nagging hesitancy to venture out into the cold spring.
When we moved to Big Grove, before we put curtains in the living room, I sat on the couch after a long day and watched airplanes make their approach to the nearby Eastern Iowa Airport. Even though my wife and daughter were nearby I felt alone and on my own from time to time. I picked myself up from the couch and engaged in a diverse life. Every so often the quiet in the house is overwhelming, even today. I feel isolated from what matters most. The feeling passes.
I had a physical examination in town, and my arms ache. In my left shoulder I got a pneumonia vaccine and in my right a shingles vaccine. Both require boosters down the line. I had blood drawn for lab tests by a nurse I’ve known more than a dozen years. Achy doesn’t really describe it. I removed the three bandages and piled them up on the night stand this morning. The shingles vaccine is doing its job making me feel sore and unsettled.
Doctor did a depression screening. I passed, that is, I don’t believe I’m clinically depressed… just a bit saddened by the layers of crap we have to live through. It’s partly politics but it’s more than that. It’s as if everything with which we marked boundaries of our lives is being razed, surveyor pins pushed out of place by construction’s bulldozers. All we can do is put the pins back and start over. That’s what I hope to do.
Eventually the weather will break and my farmer friends will get the crop planted. Visitation for my late neighbor is tomorrow. I’m to pick up a sympathy card and a couple of restaurant gift cards to give the family a chance to get out of the house for a while. We all need a break.
The layer of sadness is palpable. At the same time as long as we pick ourselves up and go on living we’ll be alright. at least that is what we hope.
The winner of the June 5 Democratic gubernatorial primary will face Governor Kim Reynolds in the Nov. 6 general election. A popular Democratic view is expressed in the following email received from a neighbor who is usually politically quiet:
I want to encourage everyone to vote since turnout is usually pretty low in primary elections. I also want to encourage you, to encourage your friends and peers to vote.
In regard to the gubernatorial election, there are six candidates on the Democratic side. In my opinion, based on the polls, only two of the candidates have any real chance of getting the 35 percent needed to win the primary. If no candidate gets 35 percent, the selection of the candidate will be made at the Democratic convention. I personally would not like this to happen since one never knows who might come out of the convention (horse trading of support).
In my opinion, it is critical for Iowa to elect a Democratic Governor to balance the Republican Senate and House majorities. (I certainly would also love to see the Democrats take back at least the House or Senate also). You may not agree with my opinion, and that is just fine.
The two Democratic candidates who appear to have the only chance of getting 35 percent are Nate Boulton and Fred Hubbell. I could live with either individual. Nate is a state senator and attorney. He is quite a bit younger than Fred Hubbell — so I think he appeals to the more far end of the liberal wing of the party. Fred Hubbell has had a very successful career with Younkers and an insurance company but he has a very strong record as a progressive leader also. In my opinion, this comes down to the candidate who has the best chance of winning the general election. I think Iowa has been trending a bit more Republican on a statewide basis. I thus think that Fred Hubbell might have a better chance of winning the general election. I have spoken with several state legislators who I trust, and they are supporting Fred Hubbell. So, I will be voting for Mr. Hubbell. (There are also many legislators supporting Nate Boulton).
Is this where the Iowa electorate is regarding the Democratic gubernatorial primary? Probably. It’s nothing against the other four candidates, Cathy Glasson, John Norris, Ross Wilburn and Andy McGuire. This view is consistent with the primary electorates that gave us Chet Culver in 2006, and Hillary Clinton in the 2016 Iowa caucus.
Some things are worth noting here.
First, encouraging primary turnout is de rigueur this cycle. More and more people like my neighbor recognize it. In the shit storm 2017 and 2018 have been, voters are engaged in politics as they haven’t been since the 2006 reaction to George W. Bush’s 2004 re-election. That’s a hopeful situation for Democrats.
What about Cathy Glasson? Couldn’t she get 35 percent? Based on conversations with dozens of primary voters, the answer is no. There is too much push back on her statewide campaign. Popular opinion is she can’t win against Reynolds because her support is too Johnson County and out of state union-money centered. Voters don’t see her as able to win people in the rural expanses of Iowa and that’s important this cycle. Glasson has framed a set of progressive issues but those issues are less important among primary voters to whom I’ve spoken.
What about my guy, John Norris? I see a possibility but primary voters do not. I continue to believe Norris would perform better as governor than the others if elected. While I volunteered to work on the Norris campaign, I have yet to be contacted for a specific request. I plan to door knock before the primary for Norris and my slate of candidates, but that is all I see going on other than frequent campaign stump stops everywhere in the state.
It would be best for the Democrat to win the primary outright. I was elected as a delegate to the state convention and if the gubernatorial choice went to convention I’d do my best work to help pick a winner. The downside is whoever that would be will be tainted because of the lack of primary votes. Going to the convention to pick a winner has no upside for Iowa Democrats.
Take back the house and senate? Sure, we’d like to and with good Democratic turnout in the primary and general elections winning a majority in the House is possible with 95 of 100 races being contested. The senate? That will be a 2020 objective.
My neighbor’s email was a back door, rational, Iowa nice way of endorsing Fred Hubbell. Our precinct is more like the rest of Iowa in a number of ways, including being less liberal than the urban centers of Iowa City, Coralville and North Liberty. I don’t see the appeal of Hubbell based on reading his numerous mailings and listening to his speeches. However, as a compromise candidate, I’d support him and most primary voters to whom I’ve spoken would.
The focus this cycle has to be on defeating Kim Reynolds. Party unity on that idea exists, and will be needed in November.
It’s been 30 days since retirement and I’m up to my old tricks.
Like a hungry dog, I see things and want to be a part of them. “I’ll do this,” I say to myself and others. I run the risk of over-committing and letting people down. Importantly, I divert attention from priorities. New tricks should replace old but I’m not there yet.
Let the engine of life make a soft landing on this rain-soaked spring day. Focus until leaving for the farm in a few hours. In my second go-around at “retirement,” I’ve learned that lesson.
It’s not like I’ve kicked back in an easy chair. I agreed to stay on at the home, farm and auto supply store two days a week and never planned to give up farm work. I’ve written more and would like to write more still.
I’ve been in transition. Without good health life would be harder. I saw the dentist and tomorrow have an appointment with a physician for a physical. I got my car serviced, hair cut, and am planning a trip to purchase clothes. When I do, I’ll turn tattered attire into rags and recycle the denim and cotton. We’ve been living within our budget and the federal and state taxes are filed. The garden is behind this season, but there are seedlings in the greenhouse and garlic poking through the mulch. There will be a garden when the weather breaks. 2018 is a midterm election year and I plan to be more active this cycle than in recent years.
Days take on a rhythm and I’m no longer sure when a week begins and ends. Mostly, it’s been cold, I’ve felt it through to the bone, and there is so much to do before settling into a sustainable pattern. The weather will break and I feel ready to take off.
Slow down, you move too fast. Good advice for someone with my social style.
Yglesias’ book was a timely read in the context of the Trump administration’s forays into foreign policy, notably the April 13, 2018 bombing of Syrian chemical weapons capacity. Written before the Obama presidency, the lines of thought and policy started during the George W. Bush administration continue to the present. There is little evidence liberals received the author’s message or have done much to support a sustainable, bold foreign policiy. Rather they often co-opt neocon positions.
I’d rather have spent both of this week’s days at the home, farm and auto supply store in our garden. Temperatures were warm enough to work in shirtsleeves and the garden is way behind.
Outdoors tasks occupied my work day: unloading field tile and plant trucks, rearranging the yard, and moving tall pallets of pine shavings, first outside while unloading the truck, and then back inside as I made room in the warehouse. We had trucks of merchandise from our main warehouse, a load of feed, and a truck from Missouri with odds and ends of a retail operation: ladders, pipe, light bulbs and sundry stuff. It seemed like I was on the lift truck the entire time.
The best part of the days was feeling a breeze through my hair as I drove from one end of the lot to the other on the lift truck. Father died on a lift truck at the meat packing plant. That thought is never far from me as I finish my days in the work force.
Now begins the rest of today: coffee with an elected official in the county seat and a shift of farm work. If I have the bandwidth, and thunderstorms hold off, I’ll work in the garden later this afternoon.
Part of yesterday was spent outside — in the garden, working compost, cleaning buckets, collecting the bits of drainage tile used to support celery plants, tending the garlic, planting turnips and radishes.
Using a bag of shredded office paper and a match, I started the burn pile created in the aftermath of an unusual wind storm last year. An arborist cut down the big branches and I sawed them into smaller logs and branches. The wood was dry and burned quickly even though it was covered with snow a couple days ago.
The first spring burn pile marks the beginning of gardening season.
I didn’t connect the garden hose as we are expecting freezing temperatures again this weekend. There is plenty of moisture in the ground to give the seeds a start.
A week ago I got a haircut. Partly it was too shaggy and in my eyes while working outside at the home, farm and auto supply store. Partly it was about casting aside the experience it represents for a new start.
My retirement March 16 has been something of a crash landing. Long anticipated, I know the major themes — writing, gardening, farm work, home maintenance and community organizing. I’ve had to add a need to deal with my aging frame and life systems. I made an appointment to see a medical doctor for a physical next week.
Even though I have more time, there never seems like enough to get what I want accomplished. With that in mind, I’ve come to believe what I said in February, that low income workers and retirees can’t afford social media. I posted this on Facebook this morning:
I’ve decided to end my relationship with the Facebook application on or about April 30. I joined in 2008 to follow our daughter and she deleted her account a couple of years ago. It’s not you fair reader, it’s me.
I listened to Mark Zuckerberg testify to Congress yesterday and his plans for dealing with public issues here. I have no interest in artificial intelligence reading my every post to determine if it is worthy according to Facebook criteria.
That said, I will miss the exchanges, likes and shares and appreciate your interest in what I’ve been doing. Facebook has been a creative outlet for me and I plan to channel those impulses elsewhere.
You are invited to continue to follow me elsewhere. I plan to keep my twitter account @PaulDeaton_IA and my WordPress account pauldeaton.com. If you are on WordPress click the button on my home page to add me to your reader, or click on the Follow Via Email button if you are not.
So that’s it. Hope to see you around… literally.
The burn pile was hot and I had to keep my distance while using a hoe to move partly burned branches to the top of it. By supper time it was a pile of white ashes with minerals returned to the ground and carbon released into the atmosphere. I plan to add another garden plot where the burn pile was.
We don’t know what tomorrow will bring. A burn pile reminds us all of the natural world is in transition. In a burn pile there’s no judgment, just the heat of released energy and beautiful, ever changing orange-yellow-blue flames.
In this moment that’s all we require to sustain ourselves.
Senate District 37 Candidates, Coralville, Iowa. April 9, 2018
Politics embraces the idea elected officials have term limits and the electorate gets a chance to accept or reject what they have done in office. That’s basic, and not saying much if it’s all we have.
I managed to avoid retirement life by attending political events yesterday. Countless conversations and eight hours invested by the time I got home, I’m not sure I’m any wiser.
When State Senator Bob Dvorsky announced his retirement he did it long enough in advance for a field of potential Democratic successors to file for election to replace him. We saw them together for the first time yesterday afternoon.
At the Senate District 37 candidate forum in Coralville, Eric Dirth, Imad Youssif, Zach Wahls and Janice Weiner created a dialogue that was informative and wide-ranging. As usual, the Johnson County Task Force on Aging arranged an event that enabled candidates to showcase their positions, personality and public speaking ability. All four candidates demonstrated a reasonable command of the issues in this race. There will be at least two more forums before the June 5 primary election. I’m voting for Wahls.
Three Democrats are vying for two seats on the Johnson County board of supervisors. Mike Carberry, Pat Heiden and Janelle Rettig filed nominating papers and will be on the ballot. When I dropped off some extra garden seeds to my friend John Deeth at the auditor’s office yesterday, he said early voting begins Monday, May 7.
One of my picks in the county supervisor race is incumbent Janelle Rettig who I got to know when she first ran eight years ago. She has a pistol of a personality and a bullet-point approach to her life as a politician. She’s been known to take aim at injustice in the county. As a journeyman datahead, I appreciate that and have supported her since the beginning.
I’ve known Mike Carberry longer through our mutual association with Iowa Physicians for Social Responsibility. We got to know each other in our work to stop coal-fired power plants in Waterloo and Marshalltown, and then worked together when MidAmerican Energy proposed a bill in the Iowa Legislature to have legislators approve a process for a new nuclear power plant. We were successful in stemming the tide on those bad ideas. I haven’t given Mike the nod at this time and am in no hurry to decide my second primary vote.
Supervisor candidate Pat Heiden has not previously served in public office. I’ve known her only since she retired from her career at Oaknoll Retirement Residence where she was executive director for 21 years. She’s positive and talented. What I noticed about her at most events we both attended is she is continuously meeting people, handing out business cards, and talking about issues. She seems a natural politician. I haven’t given her the nod either.
Since the filing period for the supervisor election closed, I’ve discussed the race with numerous Democratic primary voters. It’s surprising to me how much dissatisfaction there is with the current board. Most with whom I spoke were voting for Pat Heiden, many bullet voting. I’ve had my nose to the grindstone and haven’t been paying the supervisors much attention. What happened?
There have long been people I know who don’t think much of what the county supervisors are doing. The dissatisfaction I’m hearing now is different from that and more widespread. The reason I gave hours of my life to a county Planning and Zoning Commission meeting last night was in an effort to understand what’s going on. I’m not there yet, but from that meeting, and my conversations with voters, the supervisors appear to have a wicked problem. It’s called process. Boring? Yes. Voters don’t pay much attention to process unless it spills over into their lives, and that’s what appears to be happening and in turn driving negativity.
There’s more to do to understand this, and I expect another post, maybe two, once I’ve spent more time on it.
For now, I’m going to finish a shift at my desk and get outside to begin garden preparation a couple hours after daylight. I’m also going to quit reading the book Unbelievable by Katy Tur. It reads like eating political cotton candy and I’m pretty sure it’s not good for me. It’s been another day in the life of a recovering political junkie.
The high tunnel is fully planted. The ground is too cold for transplants. Cooler temperatures retard growth of fledgling vegetable sprouts. There is no place to go with the trays of lettuce, kale and greens coming along. The greenhouses are full.
It made an easy weekend of farm work for me with 24 trays of soil blocks on Friday and 20 on Sunday, about half the usual volume.
My good news was after about four weeks, the celery seeds germinated! The depth of flavor of home-grown celery has become essential to our kitchen. Because I had given up on the first planting, ordered new seeds, and re-planted I was thrilled. I delayed planting pepper seeds as it is clearly not too late to get them started. Several inches of snow fell last night and dampened any prospect of gardening today.
What’s different this year is weather and work kept me out of the garden completely in late winter and early spring. In past years I’ve planted lettuce, potatoes, radishes, turnips and spinach by now. I’m past ready to get started. The cold temperatures look to break for a brief planting window tomorrow or Wednesday. I’m hitting the reset button on Spring.
Friends conversed about Facebook this weekend. So many want to delete their accounts. At the same time, we manage information and pages that make it seem important. We long for personal information posts and can’t give them up — a form of craving or confirmation bias. Our presence on the popular social media platform persists… for now.
24 days into retirement I’m not fully healed, but have bottomed out. I cleared the last hurdle of winter by filing our federal and state tax returns this morning. A path to creativity cleared of nagging concerns. Now for a slow, methodical climb to the light. A fall could be fatal. Hope springs if the season has not.
Daily writing is important. It provides a chance to work through wicked problems and understand, if not resolve them. It is also a chance to consider experience deeply. If this blog is a way of dashing off notes in the form of an electronic journal, I’m okay with that. I appreciate my regular followers and readers. There is something more. I’ve dedicated part of this new life to determining what it is.
On another day of waiting for Spring to break I’ll work at home and contemplate where I’m bound. Along with any view of the future is the baggage of a life lived. I’m not sure I need all that baggage any more.
Journey Home 
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