Here’s what is surprising. The vegetables outside the garden fences are mostly untouched by rabbits, deer and other critters. Some behind fences are getting nibbled.
Who knew I could leave lettuce, turnips, carrots, radishes, spinach and other plants unfenced and the animals would stay away. Maybe I’m just lucky… or maybe someone knows an answer.
Next garden workday I’ll harvest and see how it goes the rest of the season.
It seems like a month since I’ve taken a breath.
The Honey Locust trees are in bloom all around Big Grove. Apples and pears are forming in our small stand of fruit trees. Nature’s relentless cycle advances, ready or not.
There is pressure to keep up with a diverse life during spring. It increases these last days before Memorial Day. The main thing is not to freak out.
While we live there is always a next chapter to write. For the moment, it is enough to keep my mind and hands busy—and enjoy the Honey Locust trees while I may.
The sinusitis mentioned in recent posts has taken a toll. The yard work is set back, with seedlings standing tall, waiting transplant. I have a full basket of news stories to write and prospects of other work. There is a lot to do.
Yesterday I called off at the warehouse due to incessant coughing. I returned the coolers from Thursday’s CSA delivery and stopped at the pharmacy to find medicine used long ago to relieve sinusitis that proved incurable when we lived in Indiana.
I couldn’t recall how to spell it so I wrote what I knew on a piece of paper: chlor ________ maleate. The pharmacist recognized it, chlorpheniramine maleate, asked me a few questions about my health, and found a box of 24 tablets for $3.99. Within a few hours the medicine began relieving my symptoms, and in another day or so I’ll be as back to normal as it gets.
The morning after I’m sore and tired, but ready to mount the steed of a life built here in Big Grove and ride.
The meaning of songs like Stan Rogers’ “Northwest Passage” has changed with global warming and the ongoing re-discovery of the wreckage of Franklin’s vessels. Nonetheless, Stan Rogers didn’t live long enough to see these things, and occupies a unique place in music history. As I pick up my journey where I left it some three weeks ago, I recall these words from Rogers
For just one time I would take the Northwest passage
To find the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beaufort Sea.
Tracing one warm line through a land so wide and savage
And make a Northwest Passage to the sea.
Growing broccoli from seeds is tough without a germination shed and controlled environment. Miraculously, I made it from seeds to plants in the ground, with hope of a crop. I fenced them in before rain came yesterday.
This morning I inspected the plants and all survived. Each has the prospect of a head of broccoli, one of our favorite vegetables. We’ll see how they fare on the next step of the journey, but the hardest part is over.
I also planted several varieties of radishes, arugula and the first eight Amish Paste tomato plants before the rain. It felt as though I got some things done, but not nearly enough. Now the ground will have to dry out before I can get in the garden for the next round of planting.
Someone gave me a treatment to speed removal of mucus from my sinuses, which has been an ongoing problem for the last three weeks. I mixed up a quart of water with two teaspoons of salt and one teaspoon of baking soda and applied the liquid into my nostrils with a turkey baster. I mentioned the treatment to several people, and they all mentioned the neti pot, which was news to me.
I gained a better understanding of what’s going on in my noggin—I never understood it was open space in there. The treatments made me feel better for a while, but the mucus keeps coming. It’s a weird sickness where I feel much like normal, but cough to void the rheum of the mucus presumably gathering in response to an irritation or infection.
So today I am hunkered in with my neti pot substitute, saline solution and lemon water, hoping to get some writing done. Plus there’s the prospect of broccoli.
Life could be a lot worse.
The silence on the story of human trafficking connected with slavery in the seafood industry is deafening.
Margie Mason of the Associated Press reported Tuesday that Indonesian police arrested seven suspects in an ongoing case.
“Five Thai boat captains and two Indonesian employees at Pusaka Benjina Resources, one of the largest fishing firms in eastern Indonesia, were taken into custody,” wrote Mason. “The arrests come after the AP reported on slave-caught seafood shipped from Benjina to Thailand, where it can be exported and enter the supply chains of some of America’s biggest food retailers.”
But for the investigative reporting by the Associated Press, these instances of slavery and human trafficking would have gone unnoticed, especially in the Western Hemisphere at the end of the global food supply chain.
American consumers don’t want to hear what goes on at the far end of the food supply chain. Using slave labor to fish is particularly egregious, and most people I meet don’t want to hear any of it. The focus is on the box, can, bag or piece of fruit or vegetable in front of them. Few want to dig very deep into where it comes from. We are the less as a society because of this prevalent American value.
I’m not a person who sees cause for alarm everywhere I look. I’ve been inside enough manufacturing and production operations during the last 40 years to know it requires oftentimes difficult work to make things we use every day. In most cases, there is a human impact with the means of production.
In the slow walk away from union representation since the Reagan era, much of what we learned about worker treatment has been abandoned by companies whose business model is to outsource or use subcontractors. That’s the immediate defense of Pusaka Benjina Resources: their subcontractors were responsible for any human trafficking and slavery. It is really no defense.
One should appreciate that the Associated Press is still willing to invest substantial resources in breaking stories like the slavery on Indonesian fishing vessels. Few others seem willing to do so as news organizations struggle to carve out a viable business niche, and as news and information gets blended into a vast soup of engaging, but largely irrelevant bits and packets transmitted with the speed of breaking news.
What’s a blogger to do? We begin like a fisher, setting sail on the sea of posts, articles, books, emails and letters that exist on electronic media. Waiting for what is relevant, what is news, and importantly, what matters. Not what matters to me, but what matters to all of us on this blue-green sphere.
What comes next is up to each of us.
It’s been a tough couple of weeks complicated by a lingering and persistent impulse to void the rheum of excess mucus. I don’t feel ill for the most part, but the coughing has been terrible.
Missing work without sick pay means less income and a further exploration of the life of low wage workers. Well into the experiment in alternative lifestyle, I don’t see how people can make ends meet, even working three jobs as I have been doing this spring. That said, I won’t give up and expect to continue hacking through this rough patch—literally.
I picked lettuce, spinach and radishes from the garden the last two nights and made a frittata for dinner with greens from the CSA, spring garlic and onions. It was satisfying served with a salad, and there were leftovers. Already garden production is worth savoring. Between now and Memorial Day, the focus is on getting the spring planting done.
For the moment that’s all there is to say except change is coming. To make this life more sustainable, to improve our economic base. How change will look is an open question. I look forward to seeing how it comes together.
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa– Al Gore held up a T-shirt presented by a youth group from Indiana that said, “Ask me about my future.” The context can be political, even if the presenters intended the question be about the environment.
Gore joked about wearing the T-shirt in Iowa and what it might mean during the run up to the 2016 Iowa Caucuses. During the 28th training of climate activists for The Climate Reality Project, he made clear he was a “recovering politician” and had no plans to run for president again.
Why did Gore pick Cedar Rapids for his first North American training since 2013? Five reasons.
It is partly about influencing the presidential selection process related to Iowa’s first in the nation political caucuses. By training Iowa activists, he hopes to make the voice for climate action heard by candidates for president.
It’s about extreme weather events including the 2008 Iowa flooding and recovery. The conference used space that was under water during the flood and heard from Mayor Ron Corbett about what the city did to repair the damage of the flood.
It’s about bringing a focus on the impact of climate change on agricultural issues in the breadbasket of the world.
It’s about Iowa’s success in development of renewable sources of electricity, wind energy in particular, but solar as well.
It’s about advocating for world governments, including the U.S. government, to make meaningful commitments to climate action at the United Nations 21st conference of the parties in Paris, France this December.
There was a lot to discuss and Gore was generous with his time, speaking multiple times each day of the conference. The significance of its 350 attendees from around the world, 75 of whom were from Iowa, is hard to miss. The movement for meaningful governmental action to mitigate the causes of global warming and related climate change is gaining momentum worldwide.
Here are some takeaways from the conference:
The people at my table, and attendees generally, are already doing a lot to raise awareness of the need for climate action. They are possessed of a high level of energy and are really smart people devoted to taking climate action.
The price of solar electricity is plummeting and installation of photovoltaic arrays is growing exponentially. In some parts of the world solar reached grid parity, and this, coupled with other sources of renewable energy, will drive the end of the era of fossil fuels.
The Iowa Soybean Association had a seat at the table, which a few years ago would not have happened. Christopher Jones, an environmental specialist for the group, said they had begun to change their thinking about global warming during the last year. If this is borne out by their actions, it would be a tidal shift for the big agricultural organizations.
Gore added information about Iowa to his already encyclopedic knowledge of global warming and related climate change. He spoke about everything from extreme floods and droughts that have hit Iowa, solutions implemented here—particularly wind and solar electricity generation, and current political issues, including the eminent domain legislation working its way through the last days of this Iowa legislative session.
A member of Citizen’s Climate Lobby asked Gore why he hasn’t endorsed the fee and dividend scheme they propose. Gore responded he favors putting a price on carbon, there are multiple mechanisms to do so, and he hasn’t finished research to determine which one(s) to endorse.
The political will to take climate action is building worldwide. The election this week of Rachel Notley as provincial premier in Alberta, Canada, where the long ruling Progressive Conservative party was oustered by her New Democratic Party is a prime example. “During the campaign, Notley promised to withdraw provincial support for the (Keystone XL pipeline) project, raise corporate taxes and also potentially to raise royalties on a regional oil industry already reeling from the collapse in world prices,” according to the Guardian.
Finally, there is hope. The solutions to the climate crisis are working. Renewable energy is beginning to take off, gain broader acceptance, and reach toward grid parity. Almost no new coal-fired electricity generating stations are planned for North America and old ones are being shuttered. We are not there yet, but Gore’s training and inspiration made the journey easier for us, and encouraged us to tell our own story about why it is important to take climate action before it is too late.
There is no planet B.
“We couldn’t even evacuate New Orleans as hurricane Katrina approached,” Gore said.
Earth is our only home, and is hanging in the balance. It’s up to us to protect it.
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa– On the first day of the Climate Reality Leadership Corps training founder Al Gore gave his slide show, an updated version of the one used in the film An Inconvenient Truth. It’s the third time I’ve seen him perform in person, and there were differences in emphasis, but the big message of day one came from the panel on renewables and policy.
“Go solar,” said Warren McKenna, president of Farmers Electric Cooperative, Kalona.
In significant ways, these two words sum up what’s needed to meet world energy needs, replace fossil fuels, and move civilization toward sustainability.
In an hour, sun shining on Earth provides enough energy to meet our collective needs for a year. Whether we realize it or not, fossil fuels represent ancient sunlight stored for millennia in the ground. According to multiple speakers yesterday, most of proven reserves of fossil fuels cannot be burned if we seek to retain Earth’s livability.
What makes solar an attractive solution to the climate crisis is the cost of installation is plummeting. At the point solar electricity generation reaches grid parity it will be an easy financial argument to make that fossil fuels should stay in the ground in favor of the less expensive alternative.
Companies such as Berkshire Hathaway Energy (BHE) already like solar, wind and other renewable energy generating capacity.
BHE accounts for six percent of U.S. wind electricity generating capacity and seven percent of solar according to Warren Buffet’s 2014 letter to shareholders.
“When BHE completes certain renewables projects that are underway, the company’s renewables portfolio will have cost $15 billion,” Buffet wrote. “In addition, we have conventional projects in the works that will also cost many billions. We relish making such commitments as long as they promise reasonable returns–and, on that front, we put a large amount of trust in future regulation.”
Solar is not without it’s problems. Natural resources must be exploited to make photo-voltaic panels, and the issue of conflict minerals continuously gets pushed aside. There are manufacturing, labor and transportation issues with solar. Problems notwithstanding, the argument for solar boils down to do we want a future, or not?
What we know is dumping 110 million tons of CO2 pollution into the atmosphere every day is not sustainable, and already we are seeing the impact of global warming and related climate change damage the lives of tens of millions of people.
There are no simple answers to solving the climate crisis. As industry demonstrates the viability of renewable energy, the only thing holding us back is a lack of political will to take unavoidable steps to mitigate the causes of global warming.
The economic argument provided by declining solar electricity generating costs will be a potent weapon in the political fight.
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa– More than 350 people from around the globe convene here for the Climate Reality Leadership Corps’ 28th training beginning Tuesday, May 5.
The group is kicking off its North American advocacy effort for firm and substantial governmental commitments to climate action at the 21st United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP-21) to be held in Paris, France on Dec. 11., said Mario Molina, director of the 7,500-member international group of climate activists. Additional trainings are being held this year in Florida and Toronto, Canada to jump-start the effort with 1,000 newly trained climate leaders in advance of COP-21.
They are also here because of Iowa’s first in the nation political caucuses to make sure the need for climate action is heard by the field of presidential hopefuls traversing the state.
On Monday, May 4, State Senator Rob Hogg, a speaker at the training, pointed out in an email that three presidential candidates will be visiting Cedar Rapids this week. He encouraged readers to question the candidates about climate change.
“This gives us an opportunity to tell the candidates that Iowans are concerned about climate change and perhaps even ask the candidates questions about climate change,” Hogg said.
He provided a schedule and possible questions for the candidates.
Tuesday, May 5, 4:30 p.m. – Candidate Ben Carson of Florida (formerly of Maryland and Michigan) will be speaking at the Cedar Rapids Marriott, 1200 Collins Road NE, on Tuesday, May 5, at 4:30 p.m. He will be joined by Congressman Rod Blum. This is a chance to speak with Congressman Blum as well as Carson.
Thursday, May 7, 7:30 a.m. – Candidate Carly Fiorina of California is scheduled to speak Thursday, May 7, from 7:30 to 8:30 a.m. at the Blue Strawberry, 118 2nd St. SE, in downtown Cedar Rapids.
Thursday, May 7, noon – Candidate Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas, is scheduled to speak at the Pizza Ranch, 2450 Westdale Dr., in southwest Cedar Rapids, on Thursday, May 7, at noon.
Hogg suggested these questions for the three Republicans:
Did you agree with President Reagan’s decision to sign the Montreal Protocol on stratospheric ozone depletion, and if so, would you support similar international agreements to fight climate change?
Are you concerned about climate-related disasters like record flooding in Iowa, record drought in California, and sea level rise, and if so, what would you do about it?
Climate Reality Project founder and former Vice President Al Gore is expected to be present for the three days of training. Part of the training is related to his slideshow about the science and human impact of climate change, an updated version of the one used in the movie An Inconvenient Truth. He is also expected to meet with key political figures regarding the need for climate action while in Iowa.
About 75 of the training attendees are Iowans, so there is hope the need for climate action can be kept in front of politicians during the 2016 election cycle.
To learn more, visit ClimateRealityProject.org.
A persistent cough prevented me from working at the warehouse Friday and Saturday. My schedule included preparing and serving food, and it would have been bad to go in sick. Instead I felt like crap at home and tried to focus enough to get a few things done, including writing an article for the newspaper, interviewing someone at the Iowa City Farmers Market and planting radishes and green beans in the garden.
Thrill is gone for me at the farmers market. I did not go one time last year and yesterday bought a bag of lettuce for $3 and that’s it. The market has become more of a flea market with crafty stuff, prepared food and vegetables imported from outside the county. It may be a seasonal alternative to the grocery store for city dwellers but unless my garden goes big and there is excess to sell, I have little reason to return.
Speaking of thrill is gone, I was saddened to hear musician B.B. King is in hospice care at his Las Vegas home.
Apple blossoms peaked and their petals are falling into a snowy carpet over the grass. Because it has been warm, calm and sunny for much of the week, I am hopeful the pollination was thorough.
Hardening indoor seedlings began yesterday when I put the first batch for planting in the outdoor sun most of the afternoon. Broccoli will be first to plant, followed by basil, celery and three kinds of kale. The next wave will be tomatoes, followed by peppers.
Two neighborhood kids and their puppy invaded my garage space yesterday. The puppy got loose and decided to see what I was doing. Right behind him a young brother and sister crawled down the retaining wall and chased him behind the table saw without regard to anything else. She collared him and took him home. While they accomplished their mission, my take away was that part of youth involves less awareness of the broad context of our actions. That may be okay for children, but not for adults.
Life has gotten busier. Not too busy to take in the scent of lilac and apple blossoms, touch the soil with bare hands and interact with children, but busy enough.
Journey Home
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