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Environment Living in Society Social Commentary Sustainability

Protect Environment; Stop Nuclear Weapons

Paul Deaton
Paul Deaton

(Editor’s Note: When this guest column ran in the Cedar Rapids Gazette on Wednesday, Sept. 21, its abstract nature became real as heavy precipitation events pummeled Butler County and other parts of northeastern Iowa, disrupting lives there and downstream. Living in an environment where rain damages crops instead of nurturing them; where rivers jump their banks, close schools and displace people; and where Cedar Rapids must protect the city from record amounts of floodwater multiple times in eight years, something’s wrong. We must take action that includes electing a government that will address the causes of global warming and nuclear proliferation, not just deal with the actuality we have created).

Protect environment; stop nuclear weapons
By Paul Deaton
Guest column for the Cedar Rapids Gazette Sept. 21, 2016.
Reprinted with permission of the author

If we accept the premise articulated by Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, that we are stronger together, there is a lot in society requiring our collective attention.

There are no lone wolves in human society, although a number of people want to get away from the pack. Can we blame them? Being stronger together is a fundamental characteristic of Homo Sapiens. It’s what we do as a species.

What should we be working on?

It is hard to avoid the primacy of following the golden rule. We should be applying the golden rule, better than we have been, to everything we already do. This is basic.

Two other issues call for our attention, the threat of nuclear weapons, and mitigating the effects of climate change.

Today, on very short notice, nuclear powers can unleash a holocaust ending life as we know it. Nuclear war is not talked about much in the 21st Century; however the threat is as real today as it was when President Truman authorized the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombings. The United States should take the lead in eliminating nuclear weapons. We need a transformational change in our nuclear policy that recognizes these weapons are the gravest threat to our security and must be banned and abolished.

We are wrecking our environment and should stop. Just 90 companies are to blame for most climate change, taking carbon out of the ground and putting it in the atmosphere, geographer Richard Heede said. If that’s the case, the move to eliminate fossil fuel use can’t come quick enough. These companies should be targeted for regulation by governments. Companies say they are not to blame for the demand from billions of consumers that drives fossil fuel use. Technologies exist to eliminate fossil fuels, and we should adopt them with haste. One purpose of government is to act as a voice for people who have no voice. Regulating business to protect our lives in the environment would serve that purpose.

After the 2016 election these issues will remain. The first can gain wide support easily. It is time the other two gain parity.

~ Paul Deaton retired from CRST Logistics in 2009.

Categories
Environment

Autumn Begins with a Flood

Flooded Wetland
Flooded Wetland

There was a lot to make one cranky as summer ended yesterday, including the weather.

Extremely heavy rains are flooding parts of Iowa and the impact will soon be felt downstream.

The Cedar River is expected to crest at 24.1 feet next week in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the highest level after the record 31.12 foot crest on June 13, 2008.

“We have four days to get ready, and now is the time to start,” Mayor Ron Corbett said Thursday.

We’ve had a lot more time than that to get ready.

During Al Gore’s Climate Reality Leadership Corps Training, conducted in Cedar Rapids in May 2015, Mayor Corbett made a presentation about the 2008 Cedar River flooding, how it impacted Cedar Rapids, and what actions were taken and being considered to mitigate damage from potential future floods. The next week will determine whether the plans and discussions were enough to prevent serious damage.

Senator Joni Ernst has been pushing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to expedite completion of the Cedar Rapids Flood Control Project, recently in the Water Resources Development Act.

“This legislation includes my work to direct the Army Corps of Engineers to expedite the completion of the Cedar Rapids flood control project,” Ernst wrote in a Sept. 15 press release. “The provision emphasizes to the Army Corps of Engineers that Congress wants this project to remain a priority. I will continue working to ensure the Army Corps of Engineers understands the great need for this long-standing project to be completed in a timely and efficient manner.”

These efforts seem well intentioned, but too little, too late.

The connection between this flood and global warming is clear. When the atmosphere is warmer, its capacity to store water vapor increases. When it does rain, it can do so in heavy precipitation events in which a large amount of rain falls in a brief amount of time. The frequency and intensity of heavy precipitation events has increased since World War II and that appears to be what happened in northeastern Iowa over the last few days.

Here’s an excerpt from a WHO-TV news article about flash flooding in Butler County. It tells the story:

BUTLER COUNTY, Iowa — Storms in northern and northeastern Iowa overnight caused some damage as they spawned tornadoes and dropped heavy rain – up to 10 inches – in some areas.

“We expect the crest this evening what we’re being told around 7 p.m. probably water levels similar to 2008 or more so,” said Jason Johnson, Butler County Sheriff.

Flooding from the Shell Rock River has cancelled classes in the North Butler School District for Thursday and many students gathered at the high school to help fill sandbags. Highway 14 on the way to Charles City is impassable because of water over the road.

Butler County Sheriff  Johnson says there isn’t a widespread evacuation in Greene but some residents are moving to higher ground.

In Floyd County, 7.55” of rain was reported and Charles City saw 6.35”. The Little Cedar River is at moderate flood stage at Nashua and near Ionia. The rainfall total reported for Ionia is 6.24″.

Work will remedy the crankiness of summer’s end. One didn’t expect it to be sand bagging levies, homes and businesses to prevent damage from what is projected to be the second worst flood in Cedar Rapids history. It will get us through the weekend.

The newest flood begs the question of what’s next to mitigate the damage from future flooding? Government involvement in a solution is necessary but it must be implemented faster than it has been. We also have to connect the dots between our personal actions, global warming and climate change more than we have.

For now, we’ll just have to deal with the existential reality of the flood, something I recall doing since the 1960s. It’s a way of sustaining our lives in a turbulent world, but we can do better.

Categories
Living in Society

Letter to the Solon Economist

Big Grove Township Trustee Ballot
Big Grove Township Trustee Ballot

If you have been thinking of running for elected office, a slot is open on the ballot in Big Grove Township.

Mark Haight is the lone candidate seeking re-election as township trustee for two open seats. Mark has unique skills suitable for being a trustee, so I hope you’ll flip the ballot and vote for him.

I announced my decision not to seek re-election six months ago. To date no one has been recruited to fill my seat and that creates an opportunity.

Is it too late? Not at all.

On the first day of early voting in 2012 I noticed there was only one candidate for two seats. I decided in the voting booth to write myself in and campaign to become a township trustee.

I issued a press release, made a post on my blog, and made one speech at a political event on Cottage Reserve where State Senator Bob Dvorsky allowed me to speak to Big Grove residents. I sent a note to friends and neighbors and won the election with 71 votes.

The Big Grove Township Trustees are responsible to provide fire protection and first responder service for the township, manage the Oakland and Fackler’s Grove cemeteries, and to resolve lot line disputes. Our main activity is preparing and approving a budget each year.

If you’ve been thinking about running for public office, here’s your opportunity to campaign and win. The non-partisan board of township trustees is a great place to get started in politics.

Categories
Writing

First Folio: Important, but no Beowulf

First Folio Table of Contents
First Folio Table of Contents

The Folger Shakespeare Library of Washington, D.C. sent copies of the First Folio of William Shakespeare’s plays on a 50-state exhibition in celebration of the 400th anniversary of the bard’s death in 1616.

The First Folio is the only reliable record we have of 18 of Shakespeare’s plays.

The exhibit is at the University of Iowa Libraries until Sept. 25.

I first heard of the First Folio in Father Harasyn’s freshman high school English class in 1966 when we read and memorized parts of The Merchant of Venice. I can still hear the voices of friends who went to work in quarries, at construction sites, and driving trucks reciting Portia’s quality of mercy speech from memory. It was the deepest dive into a single Shakespearean play I’ve had. May mercy fall like gentle raindrops from heaven on the graves of my departed childhood friends.

I’m not hopeful of getting to the county seat to view the exhibit. Let’s face it, First Folio is not that rare and is one of the most cited texts on earth. It’s commonplace. I viewed a copy at the Library of Congress where it was displayed near their copy of a Gutenberg Bible, a much rarer document.

First Folio is no Beowulf
First Folio is no Beowulf

Of roughly 500-750 copies believed to have been printed in 1623, about 234 are known to have survived. The printing process was “revise as we go,” which yielded many variants. When we think of a literary tradition that includes Homer, Sophocles, Euripides, Aeschylus, Aristophanes, the Gutenberg Bible and the Beowulf poet, 234 extant copies is a lot. The First Folio is no Beowulf in terms of rarity of manuscript copies.

My English major nags at me to see the exhibit. Yesterday I asked an orchard co-worker if she had seen the First Folio. The dialogue which took place between customers, much modified, went like this:

Me: Have you seen the First Folio?
She: No, not yet. My professor said it’s not that special. Why would he say that?
Me: Cancel his tenure, fire him, and get him to work digging ditches.
She: (Silence).
Me: Too extreme?
She: Yes. An apology would suffice.

I took an undergraduate Shakespeare course from the late Sven Magnus Armens at the University of Iowa. Born in 1921 to Swedish immigrants in Cambridge, Mass., Armens was a Tufts and Harvard graduate who served in the Coast Guard during World War II. His papers are located in the University Library Special Collections Department and of more interest to me than the traveling First Folio exhibit. I haven’t seen them either.

Known for walking his Great Danes around Iowa City, Armens was a chain smoker and smoked during our class. His hands were stained with tobacco and his classroom notes yellowed with age. By the time I took his course, he’d been at Iowa 20 years. We knew class was over when he crumpled his empty cigarette pack and threw it in the corner waste basket. A Shakespeare class seemed obligatory for an English major. Armens filled a slot and seemed delayed from life outside the classroom as he took us through several plays. His physical presence was as important as the texts we studied.

If we view the world through the window of Shakespeare’s plays, as Erving Goffman has suggested in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, the First Folio is important. Perhaps because of the way western society came up, Shakespeare has been ingrained in our lives like few other literary works. If some are dismissive of First Folio, one concedes there are other, Shakespeare-less, world literary traditions.

It is hard to escape the grip Shakespeare has on our lives 400  years after his death. Whether to view the First Folio exhibit, or not to view, has become surrogate for the struggle to transcend our roots and see the world in a different way. That is so Shakespearean and perhaps why I’m torn. The act of viewing would be a concession to Shakespeare preeminence, something for which I’m not ready.

The book will be opened to Hamlet’s speech, “To be, or not to be,” so maybe I should just get over it and go.

Categories
Living in Society

Iowa Returning to its Roots

GOP Outpost in North Liberty, Iowa
GOP Outpost in North Liberty, Iowa

Tucked away in a North Liberty strip mall in Iowa’s most Democratic county is a Republican campaign office.

The yard signs along Highway 965 are noticeable only for their comparatively large number (five), and one including an image of the GOP elephant and the letters “G.O.P.”

The county had 18,335 registered Republicans on Sept. 1 and regardless of their chances in 2016, Republicans hope to build on their numbers and influence here.

Former Apprentice finalist and Donald Trump Iowa campaign chair Tana Goertz was slated to appear with State Representative Bobby Kaufmann, who represents six precincts in Johnson County, at yesterday’s grand opening. Current office hours are 1 until 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday, a token presence in a Democratic county.

Iowa is not a Democratic state. It is Republican, such appellation including many voters who register “no party.” If the Republican Party of Iowa was caught off guard by the 2006 insurgency against their terrible governance, they reacted and have their act together more now than at any time since our family moved back to Iowa in 1993.

Expect Iowa to award its six electoral votes to Donald Trump this cycle, contrary to the claims of prominent Iowa Democrats. It’s not just me saying this. Yesterday’s Monmouth University poll showed Trump leading Clinton by eight points with a 4.9 percent margin of error.

“Among Iowa voters likely to participate in November’s presidential election, 45 percent currently support Trump and 37 percent back Clinton.  Another 8 percent intend to vote for Libertarian Gary Johnson, 2 percent say they will support Green Party candidate Jill Stein, 2 percent say they will vote for another candidate, and 6 percent are undecided,” according to the Monmouth University website.

A single poll in September is meaningful only as a wake-up call to starstruck Democrats. As readers may know, the author is with Hillary and nothing has changed since I declared for her before the February Iowa caucus. She could indeed win Iowa’s electoral votes. If she does it will only have been if the Iowa Democratic Party changed its process for voter registration and turnout. There is nothing to indicate any substantial changes and 2016 is not expected to be a wave election for Democrats in Iowa. If anything, there is a solid chance the wake from relative Republican unity will sweep the Iowa Senate into a Republican majority. Democrats are working hard to prevent that from happening.

In 2016 people still talk about the Kennedy administration as if it were bathed in the glow of Camelot. What is forgotten is Richard Nixon won Iowa’s electoral votes. 2016 is more like 1960 in that despite Iowa’s participation in the nominating process, Hillary Clinton will win 270 electoral votes, just none of them in Iowa.

Why do I say that?

Unlike in Democratic states, Republican culture has gone mainstream in Iowa. Democrats have invested too much in chattering social media and too little in mainstream presences like university activities, farming, community groups, churches, and the like. By focusing on the outrageous behavior of Governor Terry Branstad, Bruce Rastetter and other prominent Republicans, Democrats left everyday Iowans behind.

Low wage workers are everywhere in Iowa in significant numbers. Based on my conversations with them, if they vote at all, they are just as likely to vote for Donald Trump as Hillary Clinton, whose name the corporate media associates with all things bad.

The kernel of hope that arises from 2016 Iowa Republican hegemony is that after Nixon’s defeat, Iowans elected Harold Hughes governor. Hughes was a liberal’s liberal who was later elected U.S. Senator. Let’s hope Clinton holds her own nationally, and that 2018 can be a comeback year for Iowa Democrats.

There are still Iowa Democrats who haven’t given up on 2016. I hope they are right and I am wrong.

Categories
Kitchen Garden

Red Bell Pepper Soup

Red Bell Pepper Soup
Red Bell Pepper Soup

The abundance of tomatoes, bell peppers and onions is leading to a pot of soup featuring those ingredients.

There is no recipe — I used ingredients already in the ice box. I cut up a bag of onion seconds and sauteed them in extra virgin olive oil until translucent; poured in a quart and a half of diced tomatoes (drained); and added a scant pint of the pulp of red peppers cooked and separated with a food mill, also drained. I seasoned with salt and that’s it.

The mixture is simmering in my Dutch oven on medium heat. Once it is thoroughly cooked, I’ll take the stick blender to it and taste. After that, who knows?

The adventure is in the doing and learning. Because of the uniqueness of this season, the dish is hardly replicable.

Categories
Work Life

Work in Late Summer

Weedy Garden Plot
Weedy Garden Plot

This week my to-do list turned into a deal-with list and I don’t like it.

The tipping point was the car overheating while driving north on Highway One. There is not enough time to fit car repairs into late summer.

I’m going to have to deal with it.

The pool of liquid in the garage was the first sign. At first I thought it was condensation from the hot, humid weather. When it didn’t evaporate after 24 hours, I became concerned, then the car overheated enroute to the orchard. After checking fluid levels and consulting with friends I was able to make it home without overheating again. Now I have to find a repair shop and arrange transportation while it is getting fixed — all without going broke or missing a day of work. I’m dealing with it.

The key to dealing with this and everything else on my deal-with list is to take care of myself and not freak out. That I have this blog helps with the not freaking out part. There is solace in work.

Saturday I worked the orchard mapping station after my colleague left for the day. The ambient temperature was in the 70s and a breeze blew up from the creek bed cooling everything. I interacted with hundreds of people during the remainder of my shift, hearing about people’s plans to pick and later use apples in baking, making applesauce and storage. Most said they would just eat them. Who wouldn’t?

I also heard some personal things: about a trip to Palestine, protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline on the river, and a story about my mother when she was younger, how she had influenced another woman. Everything was part of a broader society, one with many personal connections, that arrives at the orchard in late summer.

From time to time it was quiet. The breeze was cool and comforting on my face. The exigencies of a deal-with life escaped like vapors, leaving me at the map station where I was content just to be.

My advice is when life has many demands, get to work. Not only can it accomplish something positive in the form of income and work-product, it can help sustain our lives in a turbulent world.

Categories
Home Life Work Life

Pressing the Limits

Garden Plot with Kale and Peppers
Garden Plot with Kale and Peppers

For the first time in a long time I missed work on Wednesday.

After a futile attempt to shave, shower and drive into the home, farm and auto supply store, I called off and slept until 2 p.m. — a total of 19 hours in bed.

I’m back to normal and scheduled four days vacation at the end of the month. If approved, I will use the time to catch up around the house and rest.

I don’t want to admit it, but 100 days of work may have been too much to attempt.

In an effort to understand low wage work life and the exigencies of lives where there is not enough income, I dealt with it as many do by adding more jobs. A predictable conclusion has been it doesn’t resolve the issue.

A key driver in the financial shortfall is buying health insurance, an expense that takes 34 percent of my wages from a full-time job. As the two of us approach Medicare age we’ll see some relief. We’ll also be approaching full retirement and presumably slowing our outside work. I look to my maternal grandmother’s example: she did alterations into her eighties. I expect to be doing something to earn money as long as I’m physically able. My current work on area farms is setting the stage for that.

Trying not to complain, these are observations about a life. In the spirit of Cotton Mather I’ve self-inoculated to see what happens. While believing in unlimited potential of a human, the brief illness is evidence of a physical limit. Knowing one’s limits will make us stronger and hopefully more effective.

We are well into the apple harvest at the u-pick orchard where I spend my weekends. It is an abundant crop and I enjoy interacting with hundreds of apple pickers each day. It is something like a fair, about which Garrison Keillor wrote in the Washington Post this week.

“The Fair is an escape from digitology and other obsessions, phobias and intolerances,” Keillor wrote, “also a vacation from the presidential election which has obsessed many people I know, including myself.”

The lone evidence of politics I spotted at the orchard last weekend was a single too-young-to-vote teen wearing a Trump T-shirt. Discussion of politics was completely absent within my hearing. I don’t know the demographics of apple pickers except from my own observations over the last four seasons. What I’d say is apple culture is an equalizer, something almost everyone with transportation can take part in and one in which I am happy to participate.

For me, it’s about forgetting a life that’s challenging and sometimes too hard for a shift at a time. It’s also about hope that society will find common ground.

Categories
Home Life Kitchen Garden Writing

Into The Vanishing Point

Vanishing Point
Vanishing Point

A new perspective revealed itself from paths traveled daily.

Something showed through the uncut grass and garden in the light of a rising sun.

I should quit thinking and mow the damn lawn.

It depends. What time will I finish at the orchard? How will I feel after interacting with locals for a shift? Will the press of decaying produce draw me into the kitchen again? How guilty will I feel about letting grass grow long?

So much depends. If conditions are right — temperatures moderate, weather dry, and a couple hours of remaining daylight — I may mount the John Deere and make a first pass. The lawn is so long it will take at least two.

So much depends upon weather, capacity for work, and a will to sustain our lives in a turbulent world.

I looked up and saw the vanishing point through the middle of my garden for the first time in 23 years this has been our home.

It has been there all along, the work of the farmer who subdivided his homestead, the surveyors who platted the lots, and the home builders who positioned structures according to convention and restrictive covenants recorded at the county administration building. I played my part unintentionally by positioning my garden in the southeast corner of our lot.

It was hard to miss.

Yet it was there. I walked into it and am still here.

Categories
Home Life Work Life

September Song

Rainbow at Wild Woods Farm
Rainbow at Wild Woods Farm

An air traffic controller can land only one airplane at a time and so it is with us.

Life’s cornucopia brings many gifts. Midst the abundance of life’s instance what’s essential for a sixty-something is reliance on a foundation built over time and selecting single tasks related to grand plans as well as we can.

August and this summer has been a great success, a disaster, a drain and an inspiration all at the same time. 37 days into 100 Days of Work it is time to take stock and see what makes it through the funnel of current interests related to longer term plans. It is also time to consider rainbows.

I plan to take a brief hiatus, a week or two, to take stock of the ongoing harvest of produce, and ideas. Then I plan to go on living. Hope to see you on the flip side.