This year should be a good year for apples and pears. Every tree has a lot of blooms, including the two newly planted “replacement” trees. Some days it’s good to just view this fleeting event during which we pray for frost to hold off, pollination to occur, and a bountiful crop.
We mapped our house
in a township
with a lake
and a preserve
for native species...
Then structures came on wheels
manufactured halves
parked in a cul-de-sac
while the foundation cured
waiting the arrival
of the cranes...
When the schedules converge
on that day... in this plat:
the dwelling,
planned by convention and
executed in compliance,
is lifted in place...
May the process of completion
the prospect of residence...
engage and enrapture us...
Until when,
if ever,
in early light
we are startled by waders
lifting from among the water lilies.
~ Circa 1993
Afternoon plans changed after the optometrist dilated my pupils. It was part of my annual eye exam, in which I seek to monitor whether or not diabetes is showing in my retina. I got an all clear diagnosis but the dilation persisted well into the afternoon. I could not bear working outdoors on a sunny day. That evening it rained for several hours.
Thursday morning I wheeled the recycling bin to the curb for pickup. It has been warm enough I dispensed with wearing a sweatshirt. A light breeze felt good on my skin as I contemplated the dark sky while walking back to the house. Simple things in a simple life.
Also on Thursday I began a five-day prep for a colonoscopy. The hospital would have me reduce the amount of fibrous food eaten, which is a chore since almost everything I eat by design has plenty of fiber. I asked them about it, yet they had no guidance about what I should eat, saying, “Do the best you can.” It will be a change during which I expect to drop a couple of pounds of weight. After the procedure I expect to gain it back.
Four paragraphs in and I’m not sure where this post is going. I don’t want to write about the political-media-government generated chaos available in my email and social media news feeds. I rely on email, newspapers, substack and BlueSky for most of my information in this category. Thing is, everyone has the capacity to access the same kind of information, so repeating it wouldn’t be adding much new to the fray. I guess I’ll write about my changing relationship with the public library.
My writing space has thousands of shelved books. Organizing them is a work in progress. There are thousands more stored in boxes. I don’t need to add many more to my collection, so this year I started using the public library more. It started with a simple request.
I asked the library to order Chris Hayes’ new book The Siren’s Call and they did. Part of this process is the person who suggests a new book gets the ability to read it first. I read it and reviewed it. I am glad others in the community will be able to check it out and read it too. Then I asked the librarian to order Bill Gates new book, Source Code: My Beginnings. They have a process to make book suggestions online, which I love. They did order it, I read it, and wrote a brief review on Goodreads. After reading it, I have no interest in finding a spot on my shelves for it. Better the library keep the copy, as this book should be popular. By this time I was enjoying the public library again.
I began exploring the website, the hosting of which is currently paid by a grant from the federal government. They have a feature called “What’s New” which is a query form that calls up the titles added to the library shelves in the last week. I’m checking it out daily. Already I found several new books to read, books I might have missed in other places. In addition, my home page has this banner at the top: “In 2025, you have saved $434.00 by borrowing from the library rather than buying!” Now I was really hooked.
My philosophy of reading is pretty simple. Read some pages in a book every day. This habit is part of developing a way to live a good life. Some books demand more daily pages than my typical 25 per day. Once I get going on a good book, it is hard to stop reading.
If you haven’t been to the public library in a while, I recommend you check them out. Maybe you will find a way, like I did, to reinvigorate your reading. Plus, there is usually no cost to check out a book! Other advice: figure out your topic before writing an essay. It may keep your readers more engaged.
Why Trump’s pattern of purging our highest-performing military officers is dangerous by Sen. Tammy Duckworth.
“Our standards will be high, uncompromising and clear.” – Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s Message to the Force, January 25, 2025
President Donald Trump’s pick for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, retired Lt. Gen. Dan Caine (retired), possesses an extraordinary record of service—in Iraq, in special access programs and in the National Guard. There is no question of his capacity to lead, devotion to our country, character, courage or competence.
But those aren’t the qualifications required by law to be the senior-most military officer in our Armed Forces. Federal law requires the chairman to be active duty and have served in any of three senior roles: vice chairman, service chief (except the Coast Guard) or commander of a combatant command. Caine fails to meet one of these.
The president can waive most of the qualifications if he determines it is in our “national interest.” But the only justification that President Trump has stated for waiving these legal standards in this instance is that he remembers Caine stating he “loved” Trump, would “kill” for Trump and that Caine proudly donned a MAGA hat which—as Trump gushed—would be a violation of federal law.
Strangely, Caine has categorically denied that he ever did any of those things, which means either Caine lied—under oath—or that he told the truth and Trump has no justification.
To President Trump, the “national interest” appears to mean personal loyalty.
The nomination of Caine is just the latest example in a dangerous pattern of President Trump purging—in multiple reckless and sudden bursts—the military of its highest-performing general officers from mission-critical roles. Why? Because they promised loyalty to the Constitution instead of to him? These firings have nothing to do with upholding high standards at all they are about prioritizing fealty over qualifications and putting our national security at risk in the process.
Please click here to read the rest of this important opinion piece.
I respect Republican Senator Joni Ernst for her service as the commanding officer of a transportation company during the Iraq War. I also don’t know how an accomplished military officer got tangled up with the DOGE caucus yet she did. She has been a cheerleader, saying, “DOGE will sweep over this city (Washington, D.C.) and forever alter the way it operates.” Indeed, the task force is attempting to do that and the Veterans Administration is not exempt.
When the 2022 PACT Act passed, Ernst was on board. “Our veterans, who have sacrificed so much and continue to pay the price for their service, deserve the life-saving benefits in this bill,” she said. “The PACT Act works to fulfill our duty to care for those who put on the uniform in the name of protecting our freedom, both past and present.”
President Biden staffed the VA to accommodate the new law by hiring some 83,000 new workers. DOGE now seeks to return staffing to 2019 levels, according to Military.com. What happens to the PACT Act if the VA cuts employees hired to fulfill its commitments? Ernst must decide. Support our veterans or support DOGE.
The good things Senator Ernst may have done are undermined by her declaration in support of DOGE. In the meanwhile, veterans may be left untreated while a diminished VA tries to care for their special needs with significantly reduced staff.
Senator Ernst should support the VA or find another line of work.
~ Published as a letter to the editor in the April 27, 2025 Cedar Rapids Gazette.
While in high school, Earth Day served a pressing purpose. NASA astronaut Bill Anders had taken the famous Earthrise photograph on Dec. 24, 1968, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, describing the impact of use of the pesticide DDT, was published in 1962, and there were no legal or regulatory mechanisms to protect our environment. Teenage me was inspired to take action and we did the best we knew how to support the effort. Mostly that meant selling Earth Day buttons like the one in the photograph to raise funds.
Word from Washington, D.C. is the president is planning to note Earth Day 2025 by signing executive orders that would strip some environmental nonprofits of their tax-exempt status, setting up a possible Earth Day strike against organizations seen as standing in the way of the president’s push for more domestic oil, gas and coal production, according to Bloomberg News. How the worm has turned.
The trouble is that to address the climate crisis, governments must be involved. While this administration is temporary, the harms from doing little or nothing for the remaining time could do permanent harm. That is to say, Earth will be fine. It’s the people who live on it who are in harm’s way.
Now is the time to find like minded people who support the science behind climate change and band together to do something. What is possible is an open question.
Editor’s note: The president signing these executive orders did not make news today.
I got out to the garden on Good Friday. In years past, I would plant potatoes that day as part of remembrance of my grandmother’s gardening folklore. Potatoes are an inexpensive food, readily available at the grocer, year-around: a simple carbohydrate in a life when I need to reduce my number of carbs. I enjoyed having home grown potatoes, yet skipped it in favor of other uses for the home made potato-growing containers.
Most garden work lies ahead. The weather forecast this week seems dicey for outdoors work. Such uncertainty is caused by our unpredictable, changing climate. Garden plants are resilient, however. If I protect against the last frost, chances are good there will be a crop.
I managed to move some brush around on Good Friday.
Celebrating Easter weekend is no longer a thing for me. While I was coming along as a grader, my grandmother was a driving force in celebrating Easter weekend and noting the resurrection. In studying the history of her community of Polish immigrants in Minnesota, I found her desire to don special clothing, attend Mass, and take posed photographs of everyone to note the day has its roots there. They lived an impoverished but good life in the late 19th Century. They also shared a vibrant cultural life surrounding the church. Parts of that cultural heritage found its way through grandmother to me, even if it didn’t stick.
I’ve been working on the part of my autobiography that describes the time our child started school while we lived in Indiana from 1988 until 1993. I kept written journals and re-reading them has been life changing. During the 30+ years since then, I have forgotten a lot of my own history. The current writing includes broader historical perspective I couldn’t get while living a life in real time. The end result is an appreciation for things I did do to help our child be the best they could be.
A main concern was how to spend more time with family. In February 1991, I put a pencil to it and found I was spending no more than 60-90 minutes per weekday plus time on weekends with our child. That seemed not enough. There are dozens of snippets of journal entries about our lives together. The challenge is how to weave those into a meaningful narrative, yet maintain the idea they are only a part of our lives together. This is perhaps the most interesting writing challenge thus far in the autobiography.
I didn’t make much progress on the book this weekend, although there was no shortage of things about which to think and remember. Some days, that’s what a writer needs.
Here are some shots from around the yard for April 20, 2025.
Few things speak of spring like newly budded and flowering plants. They provide hope on a cloudy and dark day.
The sound of their tricycle on cement,
"Look Daddy how fast I'm going!"
Clockwise, now counter-clockwise
in early afternoon.
Round and round
pedaling, pedaling
looking at me
then gliding to a stop.
They are almost too big for it.
Soon they will need one less wheel...
Better to move around the expanding circles
until they are on their own.
~ April 21, 1991 in the Calumet
Who knew the house of cards would fall apart after rendition of legal U.S. residents to El Salvador without due process? But there you have it. The coffee tastes bitter today. Here’s hoping the coming days are sweeter.
If immigration reform and rounding up undocumented U.S. residents was the first goal of the administration (and it was), they did a terrible job preparing for it. The present goal apparently is to deport one million people per year, far short of what was said on the campaign trail. They did not adequately ramp up the legal system to accommodate due process for each one of this number of deportees. They seemed shocked that the judiciary system won’t let them load random people on cattle cars and sent them off to foreign lands with gulags without charges or a hearing of any kind. They just assumed the judiciary would go along. This lack of due process appears to be a line in the sand. When it get the the U.S. Supreme Court, the hand-picked justices seem unlikely to accept it. We shall see.
One has to ask how much time to spend thinking about Trump and his minions. I follow the news in a cursory way. I am usually familiar with a story someone raises in conversation. It is best for my personal productivity to spend as little time as possible occupied with figuring out what the administration is doing. I do care, yet it seems pointless to try to make sense of it when there is no conventional sense to be made about much of it. There are two key threads: Russell Vought’s implementation of Project 2025, and the daily changing whims of the president. I am not interested in being a spectator in the coliseum.
To maintain my sanity, I have to stay focused on finishing writing the current book. Once it is put to bed, I can turn my attention to other important things.
Journey Home
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