Categories
Living in Society

Politics Doesn’t Take a Holiday

Newport Precinct Polling Place
Newport Precinct Polling Place

JOHNSON COUNTY, Iowa — Talk about politics is everywhere as the June 7 Democratic primary approaches.

There is a lot to think about in the two races with a field: U.S. Senate and county supervisors.

Well maybe not that much.

The four U.S. Senate candidates participated in a foreign policy forum in Des Moines last night and this tweet summarizes why I support State Senator Rob Hogg:

Addressing anthropogenic global warming is high on my priority list.

I’ve written about the county supervisor race a couple of times and I’m still where I was with my three votes: Sullivan, Green-Douglass and either Pat Heiden or Kurt Friese.

Heiden comes with strong endorsements of people I know and respect in and out of politics. On the positive side, she is an experienced businesswoman turned political newcomer with credibility on the three issues she is highlighting during the primary campaign: good governance based on her experience as executive director at Oaknoll Retirement Community; attention to the needs of the elderly — the county’s fastest growing population segment, and addressing mental health care delivery in the wake of the state’s poorly executed consolidation of services.

On the challenged side, Heiden was registered as a Republican voter as recently as last year. Already the whisper campaign has begun: she is a Republican in Democratic garb and will undo the progressive agenda, they say.

I asked her about the recent switch in registration. While she didn’t have a good answer, she made clear she was new to politics and didn’t fully understand the importance of one’s registration in the so-called People’s Republic of Johnson County. It is not an issue for me, and the idea she would help undo progress is a stretch.

As for Friese, he appears to be working his campaign as one would expect a candidate to do. Information is readily available and he scheduled an event in each of the towns in the county. That he’s riding his bicycle to each town is a positive, unique twist. The importance of community outreach is high on my list. Thus far, only he, Sullivan and Heiden have made a noticeable effort to campaign outside the peculiar enclave that is Iowa City, Coralville and North Liberty.

On the positive side, Friese’s issues list includes social justice for people living in poverty, who are food insecure, and without affordable housing and access to mental health care. His list of endorsements is a mixed bag of people I know and respect, with some clinkers mixed in.

On the challenged side, Friese is a denizen of Iowa City with all the negative connotations that includes. His business is there and he participates actively as a notable person in society. Outside the county seat, people don’t know him and he has managed to get sideways with a couple of people I know and respect.

To an extent, he panders to the Newport Road gang and their method of slowing urban sprawl. His early tagline, “stop pouring concrete on good farm land,” is evidence of this. He has strong support on Newport Road. This is about the land use plan and how the supervisors administer it. At least Friese is engaged in this issue and expected to be a predictable vote on development in the northern part of the county.

As one of the liberal centers in the state, Johnson County has some responsibility to lead by example and support gender equity on boards and commissions, including the board of supervisors. The current status is two females and three males and I feel strongly we don’t want to walk that back to one to four. Gender equity is an important issue, although not the most important one. It’s worth considering when there are plenty of good potential supervisors in the race. With three of five seats up for election, the decisions made in the primary will presumably be ratified during the general election and set the agenda for the next four years.

It is important people take time to learn about the candidates before voting.

Categories
Kitchen Garden

A Blustery Day with Lettuce

Belgian Lettuce Harvest
Belgian Lettuce Harvest

Holy cats it was windy yesterday!

My to-do list was long, the weather sunny and dry, and danger for frost long past.

It was time to focus on planting.

The blustery day took its toll long before everything was erased from the white board.

As readers can see from the diagram, indecision plagued execution of the planting. In the end, I planted more kale than expected (26 plants of three varieties in two rows) and left the rest open. The morning after, I plan to wait until the soil warms a bit and plant a long row of hot peppers (5 varieties, spaced 18 inches in a 19-foot row) and finish with two rows of red beans in this plot. While I planned to work two plots, the wind took my energy before starting the second and the clock timed out.

Saturday Plan
Saturday Plan

I slept nine hours last night.

Later this morning it’s back to work at the farm. Most seedlings will be outside seasoning while I’m gone as the tray-based numbers diminish and move to the soil.

Life is not only about gardening as much as some days I wish it were.

My solar-powered garden radio pulled in a signal with The Marriage of Figaro by Mozart while I was breaking up the clods of turned soil with a hoe. After my shower, I found this bar-graph version of the overture, which helped me better understand the music.

Categories
Kitchen Garden

Le Weekend de la Plantation

Blue Spruce Tree
Blue Spruce Tree

The fields were too wet for planting this week so farmers took on other projects and came to town.

Partly as a result, sales were up at the home, farm and auto supply store.

One of the highlights of working there is listening to narratives about the projects in which people engage. Customers seek specific hardware to meet practical needs in a turbulent world.

For a lot of customers, coming to town is fun and it rubs off.

This weekend’s project in Big Grove is planting two plots in the garden.

You’d think that with seeds and seedlings in the bedroom since February I’d have more of a layout for the crops. I’m working a 9 by 19 foot plot first, having turned it before the rains and applied compost this morning. A long row of kale will go in for sure. After that, I’m not sure. As I condition the soil with a hoe and rake there’s more time for consideration.

If my plan for growing seedlings was that of an experienced gardener, how I execute the actual space will be the work of an artist. As long as some vegetables are produced, I’ll enjoy gardening while I may.

Note to self: get the weeds suppressed today.

Categories
Kitchen Garden

After Rain

Potato Plant Coming Up
Potato Plant

Leaves of potatoes burst through the surface of the soil revealing robust growth and hope for a crop.

During last night’s inspection I realized why many of us garden — we are born of the soil and all it produces.

Recent rain boosted everything.

I’ve been seasoning seedlings outside and am ready to plant them all. The question is weather and availability. There is slight chance of rain today so the soil should be dry enough to work. I have a couple of hours of daylight when I finish at the home, farm and auto supply store. If all goes well, another plot can be planted with kale, cucumbers and beans tonight.

One hopes things go well.

Categories
Environment Reviews

Book Review – A Sugar Creek Chronicle

A Sugar Creek ChronicleIn A Sugar Creek Chronicle: Observing Climate Change from a Midwestern Woodland Connie Mutel produced an engaging narrative of her efforts to cope with change while living on a parcel of Oak – Hickory forest in Northern Johnson County, Iowa.

The narrative is about climate change as the title suggests. It is also rich with descriptions of the flora and fauna of the region and how her life as a Midwestern ecologist, wife, mother, and cancer survivor has changed and is changing because of our warming planet.

It was hard to put the book down once I started reading.

The narrative is a combination of autobiography, new journalism, scientific research and advocacy for the political will to take action to mitigate the causes of anthropogenic global warming and its impact on our climate before it’s too late.

What makes the book important is less the scientific discussions about climate change, and more how Mutel copes with a life she believed held stability and predictability as key components. In telling her story Mutel articulates a personal perspective of current scientific research about climate change in a way that should provide easy to grab handles on a complex topic.

The idea that carbon dioxide causes global warming is not new. Around 1850, physicist John Tyndall discovered that carbon dioxide traps heat in our atmosphere, producing the greenhouse effect, which enables all of creation as we know it to live on Earth. That story has been told time and again.

The benefit of reading Mutel’s observations is one finds a lot in common with her life, on many levels. Her inquiry into global warming and climate change provides us a window not only to her world, but to ours.

~ Posted on Amazon.com.

Categories
Kitchen Garden

Turnip Leaves and Lettuce

Field Tile Protecting Celery Plants
Field Tile Protecting Celery Plants

I got naked as I get in the yard on World Naked Gardening Day.

Suffice it that under my Carhartt overalls, Oracle T-shirt, Dickies socks, Calvin Klein underwear, University Square Industries cap, Rugged Wear ventilated gloves and government-issued army boots my nakedness kept its own sensible and properly hidden vigil.

I worked our small plot of land the whole day. By the end of the shift I was drained with no energy left to drive 30 minutes each way to a political event in Coralville.

Onions Between the Composter and Daylillies
Onions Between the Compost and Daylillies

Contrary to the advertisements, I don’t think “nature” intended anything regarding humans wearing clothing to garden. In fact, there is not much “natural” about gardening. We have specific intent as to what will happen in each plot we plant. We cultivate things the same way we do with any aspect of human culture. “Gardening” is a human creation. The idea of taking off clothing to weed thistles borders masochism. The idea of turning soil with a spade and without shoes would be nutty.

Row of Peas
Row of Peas

A lot of gardening got done despite the clothing.

Except for driving my car from the garage to an impromptu parking spot on the lawn, and collecting grass clippings for the garden, my direct use of internal combustion engines yesterday was minimal.

I worry a bit about the nuclear reactor generated electricity stored in the batteries for my trimmer, but other than that, it was a low impact day.

The lettuce planted March 2 is ready to harvest. Too closely planted turnip seeds are producing leaves an inch long. They are tender and require thinning if I want any turnip roots from the row. There are some carrots in my sunken containers, but not as many germinated as expected. There is plenty of lettuce for salads and tacos, and the prospect of turnip greens both for salads and a batch of soup stock. Those things are going well in the garden.

Belgian Lettuce
Belgian Lettuce

What’s going less well is the spring garlic. After producing in abundance for many years, this year’s crop will be less. I’m not sure why. Too, the extra warm weather is slowing growth of radishes. Hopefully the first row will mature in the next week or so. Both of these crops will be donated for charity sales planned for next weekend — that is, if they produce by then.

Thinking horizontally, and having great hope, I planted broccoli in two rows. Last year brassica oleracea cultivar didn’t produce, despite many efforts to protect the plants. Using a batch of old tomato cages as support, I buried chicken wire about an inch deep in the soil around each seedling. The cages are tall enough to keep deer away while the plants are young, and hopefully the rodents and rabbits won’t find their way through the chicken wire. Once the plants take off, I’ll high-fence the rows. Fingers crossed, since home-grown broccoli is the best and we missed out on it last year.

It took the usual two plus hours for the spring harvest of grass clippings. I cut the lawn short, collect the clippings using the bagging attachment, and piled them up for use in the next week or so. For one of the few time during the growing season, my lawn is shorter than the neighbors — not that I’m paying attention to that. Mulch is critical to minimizing well water use, and grass clippings are free but for the labor of collecting them. Today’s plan is to spread them around.

Garden Viewed from the North
Garden Viewed from the North

Determined to capture new images, I took some photographs before going inside for the day. Our 0.62 acre lot is not big, but there is a diversity of habitat here. The rodents are free to leave any time they wish, and I attempt symbiosis with deer who have been traveling through our lot for much longer than our home has been here. Here’s a short gallery of some favorite new photos from Saturday.

New Growth on the Blue Spruce
New Growth on the Blue Spruce
Bird's Next in the Golden Delicious Apple Tree Stump
Bird’s Nest in the Golden Delicious Apple Tree Stump
Apple Tree After Subzero Weather Pruning
Apple Tree After Subzero Weather Pruning
Categories
Living in Society

Mogul Rising

Mexican Wolf Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Mexican Wolf – Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons Colin Burnett

As bad as the Ronald Reagan presidency was for middle and low wage earners, a Donald J. Trump presidency could be worse.

Last week’s tit for tat about jobs for West Virginia coal miners is an example of how Reagan’s policies resulted in decimation of an industry, people forgot, and then Trump asserted he could bring those jobs back.

With a peculiar presentism Hillary Clinton became the villain because she spoke the truth about coal mining.

“We’re going to put a lot of coal companies and coal miners out of business,” she said.

Clinton walked her statement back while campaigning in West Virginia last week, however, its urgent reality stands: a majority of fossil fuels need to stay in the ground.

Not only is Trump the presumptive Republican nominee for president, there is a path to him becoming president. As progressive Thom Hartmann has said, his campaign should not be taken lightly.

His candidacy strips away everything we thought we knew about how the world works, about how people do things in society. Like a wind of rage blowing throughout the continent, it desiccates the landscape, and sets the stage for an extended and devastating wildfire season in which wage earners would take the brunt of change. The ongoing wildfire in Fort McMurray, Alberta is emblematic of this.

Trump would be Reagan on steroids and a lot of people wouldn’t mind.

It is time for folks to reduce the attention given to each outrageous statement made in social media or during interviews and speeches, and work to stop the rise of the mogul. It’s time to treat his candidacy less as a source of jokes and more as a threat to an already eroded way of life.

Categories
Kitchen Garden

Pivot Point in the Garden

Seedlings
Seedlings

Tomorrow’s 142nd running of the Kentucky Derby serves notice the race is on to finish spring garden planting.

Planting is never completely done.

What I mean is putting seeds in the ground and moving the 10 trays of seedlings from our bedroom to the garden soil by Memorial Day.

The coming weekend will be prime time for planting.

Our warehouse club sent a notice of a fruit and vegetable recall yesterday. Here’s the scary first paragraph the company posted on their web site:

As a precaution, CRF Frozen Foods of Pasco, Washington is expanding its voluntary recall of frozen organic and traditional fruits and vegetables. We are performing this voluntary recall in cooperation with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) because these products have the potential to be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes. The organism can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections in young children, frail or elderly people, and others with weakened immune systems. Although healthy individuals may suffer only short-term symptoms such as high fever, severe headache, stiffness, nausea, abdominal pain, and diarrhea, Listeria infection can cause miscarriages and stillbirths among pregnant women.

We checked all of the noted items in our freezer and there were no recalled items. The recall renewed interest in growing as much of our own food as we can and knowing the farmer on the rest. It is hard to avoid consumer products produced in large quantities, but the Listeria hysteria is a reason to minimize their use. The perfect attitude adjustment going into the garden work weekend.

There is a lot of work to do during the next three weeks. I’ve been reviewing weather forecasts since Monday and it looks like a chance of rain Saturday afternoon, but otherwise, clear.

It will be a rush of digging, raking, planting and mulching. A pivot point toward summer.

Categories
Living in Society Social Commentary

Seven Influences

Barn
Barn

We are blinded and forever changed by our experiences if we are lucky.

Insights and epiphanies are few in life’s span. They can shape who we are and the choices we make in profound ways.

Some become passions and border on enthusiasm. Enthusiasm as in close to spiritual ecstasy, or possession by a god or the devil.

It began when I was three years old.

In the basement of our home at 919 Madison Street in Davenport, I was playing on a swing set my parents set up. It collapsed and the next thing I knew I was laying in a pool of my own blood. Mother rushed me to Mercy Hospital where the physician made me breathe ether poured in a funnel before stitching me some 50 times to close the wound on my forehead. I stayed in the hospital for what seemed like a long time. My parents visited every day at least once.

It never occurred to me that hospitals existed, or that so many people outside our home were employed with systems that nurtured the sick and injured. It gave me comfort and curiosity, then, and now.

I began Kindergarten while we lived on Madison Street. Mother had me walking about three quarters of a mile to school for the half-day sessions.

One day I got lost.

The way was to walk North on Madison and then East on 10th Street until I reached the stairs on the steep hill that was Riverview Terrace Park. From there I not sure, but believe I walked North on Washington Street to Twelfth Street, then over to Marquette where I turned South until Jefferson Elementary School was on my left. It was a long trip for a Kindergartner.

One day I took a shortcut on the way home and got lost. My homecoming was delayed much so my mother came out to look for me. She set out on foot and eventually found me on the steps of the park. It was a scary thing for a young person. It taught me to persist in the face of the unknown.

When I entered the seventh grade, we occupied a new school the parish built a block from our home. It was a terrible separating from my childhood friends as I was selected to join other seventh and eighth graders in an advanced class. The nun told us we were college bound and needed to begin preparing. I didn’t like the separation from my neighborhood pals, and occasionally I would hang with them at the Cue and Cushion, a local pool hall. That wasn’t meant to last. It was a blessing and a curse that we were separated. Less fun, more studies and some isolation from the roots I had formed with neighborhood kids as a grader.

My father’s death in 1969 was sudden and jolting. I had begun to consider college, and during a conversation with Mother after Dad’s death offered to give up those plans to help her adjust. She encouraged me to go to college and that forever broke me from the home where I’d lived in childhood. Once I left home, I would never really return.

My college years, military service and graduate school were a long transition from homelife in Davenport to living in the broader world. I experienced the world’s diversity during those 11 years and became a global citizen. In the end, I decided to stay in Iowa where Jacque and I met while working for the University of Iowa. We married in 1982 and to say it was a life-changer is an understatement. I hope we will remain married until death do us part.

The arrival of our daughter in 1985 was another formative experience, one that changed everything in a positive way. Having been lucky enough to be a parent, I discovered the tremendous opportunities and challenges of providing a home life so they could become a responsible citizen. It gives me a great deal of pride to see how she has grown and changed over the years since she entered the world. If all the world’s a stage, her entrance was notable and her performance enduring.

The decision to leave the transportation business after more than 25 years shaped how my life has played out. With that decision came a new world of engagement in society. For the first time, I’ve been able to concentrate on living how I want, writing, distracted only by the existential demands of society. I don’t know what enduring writing will be produced, but without the commitment that began July 3, 2009, nothing of my current life would be possible.

In reasonably good health, in a safe environment, much is possible. Where shall I go? I hope to be on the road to some usefulness in society.

Categories
Living in Society Social Commentary Writing

Walt Whitman’s ‘New Book’

Walt Whitman House, Camden, N.J.
Walt Whitman House, Camden, N.J.

That scholars would publish newly found material written by Walt Whitman is not surprising.

In a time where old newspapers are being digitized and new methods of scholarship seine existing publications like factory ships trawl the Bering Sea, Whitman’s voluminous work shows up.

Manly Health and Training: With Offhand Hints Toward Their Conditions, serialized beginning in 1858, and written under Whitman pen name Mose Velsor, was published on line in its entirety in the Walt Whitman Quarterly Review edited by Ed Folsom. Read Jeff Charis-Carlson’s article about the new Whitman book in the Iowa City Press Citizen.

I’m not ready for more Whitman.

My relationship with Whitman is comprised mostly of the 1983 visit my wife, her brother, and I made to Whitman’s home in Camden, N.J. It is a simple place, much neglected over the years. By then it was restored to be a fitting remembrance of his last days. It is the only home Whitman owned.

Whitman's Last Home
Whitman’s Last Home

It was easy to imagine supplicants waiting downstairs for their turn to meet with Whitman in his parlor/bedroom up the narrow stairway. More than the host of American writers who preceded him, Walt Whitman was tangible, with footprints in society. He left them everywhere.

I hope to return to reading Whitman’s work, even this newest publication.

Yet there is so much to do and take in — and even in good health, life is short. Nonetheless, a new Whitman book is news, and in the digital age, it is available for free to anyone with access to the internet. A type of democratization Whitman may have appreciated.