Black Coat, long cut, with a red flower in the lapel. Top hat rounded, and in good shape. He hung it on the vacuum tank while he worked. Come in. Where is the fire place? Move things around so there is room. Lay out the cloth. Bring in the drum-like vacuum pump, Rods and brushes. Move things out of the fireplace Sweep, lights. Point out problems with fireplace. Clean up gear. Take out gear Sweep hearth with a hand broom. Everything is done methodically. Ford pickup with cover on back, ladders on top, though he did not use them.
Editor’s Note: The following letter was emailed to Iowa U.S. Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst on Sunday, Feb. 23, 2025. If they reply, I will post below the original letter.
Dear Senators Grassley and Ernst,
A citizen has to work hard these days to stay up with what the federal government is doing. I do my best, and based on my studies, ask you to avoid the reconciliation process to pass a budget. Both Democratic and Republican led Senates have used it. Now is not the time. Here are my reasons.
There are not enough votes to overcome a filibuster of the tax cuts expected from ongoing reconciliation talks. Plain and simple, a majority of voters do not support them. Our senators should consider the will of voters in this regard.
As you know, the House Speaker has not come up with enough savings to offset the $4.5 Trillion expense the proposed reconciliation bill’s tax cuts are expected to incur. Let’s say Speaker Johnson meets his $2 Trillion savings goal. We would still add at least $2.5 Trillion to the national debt to pay for the tax cuts. We would be digging a deeper hole when we need to be filling it in.
From which programs do these proposed savings come? I understand cuts to Medicaid account for about $880 billion, and all are from programs people need and use to survive. Providing tax cuts to the well-off in Iowa and in the country at the expense of programs less well-off people depend upon is the wrong direction.
Those are my main points. To summarize, do not use the reconciliation process to pass the budget. Regular order provides stability I have come to expect from the Congress.
Thank you for your consideration. Regards, Paul Deaton
Do people live paycheck to paycheck? I know I do. My life in commerce revolves around fixed pensions inadequate to cover every financial need. Our budget allows a couple hundred dollars per month for expenses that are not programmed the way loan payments, property taxes, health insurance premiums, home owners/auto insurance, and utilities are. If I save $50 per month at the grocery store, that’s $50 I can spend on whatever expense may crop up. I use a credit card to smooth over cash flow each month.
U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders spoke about living paycheck to paycheck during a “Fighting Oligarchy” event Saturday in Iowa City. If you have an hour, the video is worth viewing as Sanders has become one of the best explainers among legislators of what is going on in Washington D.C. Find it here.
“Today, the oligarchs and the billionaire class are getting richer and richer and have more and more power,” Sanders said. “Meanwhile, 60 percent of Americans live paycheck to paycheck and most of our people are struggling to pay for health care, childcare, and housing. This country belongs to all of us, not just the few. We must fight back.”
Sanders’ main ask during his speech was to reach out to Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, who won her re-election by about 800 votes, and ask her to vote no on the upcoming final reconciliation bill. I suspect most Iowans don’t understand what that is.
Simply put, if leadership in the Congress does not have enough votes to pass bills in regular order, they can use reconciliation to overcome a potential Senate filibuster. Instead of needing 60 votes, a reconciliation bill only needs a simple majority in the Senate. Miller-Meeks referred to “reconciliation talks” in her Feb. 4 Telephone Town Hall. “You don’t do a lot of policy in the reconciliation. It has to be either revenue or tax based.” Many legislators are in these Republican-dominated talks. Miller-Meeks called Sanders “a radical,” according to the Daily Iowan.
The Daily Iowan reported on Sanders’ stop in Iowa City:
Sanders raised concern over the Reconciliation Bill, proposed legislation spearheaded by Trump which would extend tax cuts. Sanders said the bill will give over a trillion dollars in tax breaks to the billionaire class.
The tax cut extension would lower rates for almost all Americans, but would benefit the wealthiest taxpayers the most. (Bernie Sanders warns of ‘Trumpism’ at Iowa City event, by Roxy Ekberg, Daily Iowan, Feb. 22, 2025).
The rub is that the U.S. House of Representatives has not been able to offset the estimated $4.5 Trillion expense of tax cuts included in reconciliation with savings in government operations. House Speaker Mike Johnson set a low bar of $2 Trillion in savings and to date has only come up with $1.5 Trillion. From which programs do these savings come? Cuts to Medicaid account for about $880 billion, and all are from programs people need to survive. As I wrote Rep. Miller-Meeks on Saturday, providing tax cuts to the well-off in Iowa and in the country at the expense of programs less well-off people depend upon is the wrong direction.
Because I worked hard and long in a career in transportation and logistics, my pension is substantial enough to mostly make ends meet. The over-use of tax credits will run up the deficit and national debt, and if Republicans insist on a giant tax cut for the well to do, the money to pay for it will come from somewhere. It will come from people like me who live paycheck to paycheck and don’t have much room for extras in our budget.
Science may be the best way humans have to develop reliable knowledge. Underpinning 21st Century science is the idea the world has a rational basis that can be understood. In this time of political chaos and confusion, craving science seems a logical next step as we seek reason in the social and material world.
As I wrote before, I find solace in withdrawing from society into family as a reaction to Republican hegemony. As I do, I find people and situations requiring attention. As a septuagenarian, I find more people who need medical care and financial help than I did during the Reagan years. They also need companionship. The vulnerability of living on pensions is no longer an idea, but a reality. There are limited funds to go around and a small number of income-producing mechanisms available to the aged. Current threats by the administration to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid can be alarming. It isn’t any easier for millennials entering their fourth decade.
Due to extreme cold, I missed about a week on the trail. It is my concession to aging and self-care. I resumed trail walking Friday when ambient temperatures rose to the teens. Building a good life under the oppression of Republicans is a best practice. We must keep our health, strength, and financial resources for when we really need them. While we might sense the ineptitude of the administration during its first five weeks (how could one miss it?) the noise has not reached a crescendo. If not careful, all the hailstorm of attacks on the liberal consensus could blow up in Republicans’ collective face. We plain folks need to keep our powder dry for now, and be ready to act.
What is the underlying reason for a person to exclaim as “evidence,” in a public meeting, that the American Library Association is a “Marxist organization?” That librarians conduct a “grooming barrage” of unacceptable books? It seems clear such citizens’ language is weaponized and they departed reality in conceiving their analogies and metaphors.
Educators sometimes get upset with me when I point to the education system as the cause of such deviance from rational thinking. I suppose indoctrination into a cult could be a different cause, but legislators seem to accept such “evidence,” as the subcommittee and full education committee advanced the bill repealing Iowa Code 728.7 to the full Iowa House. The underlying reason may be the desire to feel there is a culture war going on in our public libraries and schools. If there is, departure from reason is a part of it. For me, I browse the public library collection to see what new books I might have interest in, and are available for check out. I don’t need a nanny state to do that.
Life can be reasonable and certainly the physical world has a scientific underpinning the understanding of which scientists continuously refine. The ship of American society has become unmoored and is heading for the shoals. Whether it can be saved is up to us. Old and young, we must be ready.
On a trip to Chicago, I stopped at the scene of the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre on North Clark Street where seven men were lined up and murdered by four men who were presumably Al Capone’s agents in 1929. Today, the site has been razed. It was across the street from the pizza restaurant where we would be dining that evening. I found no markers about the killings. I thought of this long ago event when shortly after midnight this morning I received news the president fired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force Gen. CQ Brown Jr., Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti, and Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. Jim Slife late Friday. He had already fired, Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Linda Fagan in January.
Brown’s firing was clearly racist. Franchetti and Fagan’s firings were misogynistic. All four were appointed by President Joe Biden.
Secretary of Defense Hegseth previously said that Brown should be fired along with all other generals involved with diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts, according to Associated Press. Though we knew this might be coming, that it actually happened is an affront to every person who served in our military, including me.
That the president picked as Brown’s replacement, a former three-star general who does not meet congressionally mandated requirements, adds fuel to the fire.
Once I take a cup of coffee and peel myself off the ceiling, there is work to do: writing letters to Chuck Grassley, Joni Ernst, and Mariannette Miller-Meeks, a letter to the editor of the newspaper, and reaching out to everyone I know.
The Reagan administration marked the beginning of the end of my hope for a decent paying job with benefits. I managed to work in transportation and logistics most of my life, but there was never a pension, the retirement programs were chintzy, and no better jobs that I could identify were on offer. I knew I would be eligible for a Social Security pension. I had not planned to rely solely on it. I wrote about my life in 1981: “The chance of long-term employment with decent benefits had already begun to fade from American society as Ronald Reagan was inaugurated president that year.”
The Reagan presidency was particularly harsh for working families like ours. A recession, high unemployment, and a sequestered president had set his agenda and accomplished much of what he intended during his first year in office. When something went wrong, like when the country was caught trading arms for hostages, the criticism seemed not to stick to the popular president. When we examine what Reagan did for businesses and took away from plain folks like us, I can see why it took courage to get through those days. It helps explain why I felt stress during the time we were starting our family.
The Reagan years changed American politics in a way we are feeling today. Heather Cox Richardson explained:
(A) reactionary mindset came to dominate the Republican Party after Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980. Republicans began to insist that anyone who embraced the liberal consensus of the past several decades was un-American and had no right to govern, no matter how many Americans supported that ideology. And now, forty-five years later, we are watching as a group of reactionaries dismantle the government that serves the needs of ordinary Americans and work, once again, to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of an elite. (Letters From an American, Heather Cox Richardson, Feb. 11, 2025).
It is easy to see Republicans today, throughout the country, embrace this ideology. On Monday, at a State House subcommittee hearing, someone called the American Library Association “Marxist.” Another person described a “grooming barrage” of unacceptable books in libraries. One dumped a load of books on the committee’s table. What that meant I can only guess as I’m not caught up in whatever media bubble they were. The chair of the meeting asked her to remove the books and cautioned the attendees there would be decorum. These are crazy times.
Some in politics revere the work Reagan did while he was president and seek to bring back his approach to policy and governance. Plain folks like us do not. We remember Reagan and the impact of his policies. I saw the layoffs in Buick City and across the rust belt when I worked in those communities. I saw the internationalization of corporations and the way they sought low labor costs like water finding a gully. I saw the degradation of the environment and poisoning of our rivers and streams. None of this benefited regular folks like me.
My grandmother lived in the Vail apartments in Davenport, which had been converted to senior living. Reagan had lived there too, early in his career when he worked as broadcaster in Davenport. People like my grandmother were left behind in more ways than one. Reagan was neither of the people nor for them. There seemed little connection to what went on in Washington, D.C. and the power of the electorate was diminished. In 1981, I felt we had lost an ability to influence the direction of our country.
Don’t get me wrong. Democratic administrations following Reagan did their best to reverse the slide of money from folks like me toward the richest Americans and corporations. Long term, it didn’t work. The thing is, the wealthy can afford to play the long game and if it were not Trump today, it would be somebody else dismantling our government.
I probably need to let go of the Reagan stuff, even though it played a role in my life ever since he was elected. The good part of the Reagan years was they had me withdrawing into family. There was some solace in that.
Marine Corps War Memorial, Arlington, Virginia. Photo by Michau0142 Pau0107ko on Pexels.com
It is -10 degrees Fahrenheit on Tuesday as I write this post. In our fifth week of the new administration the tentacles of corruption and incompetence are beginning to reach into our lives. Really going to need an extra cup of coffee this morning. I’m in the resistance now.
The two bellwethers of government change for our family are Social Security and Medicare. On Monday Team DOGE breached Social Security. The Washington Post reported:
The acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration left her job this weekend after a clash with billionaire Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service over its attempts to access sensitive government records, three people familiar with her departure said Monday.
Michelle King, who spent several decades at the agency before being named its acting commissioner last month, left her position Sunday after the disagreement, the people said.
Our Social Security usually hits the bank on the Monday before the fourth Wednesday. It’s less than a week before we know if we are impacted this month.
The Federal budget is far from finalized, yet the U.S. House of Representatives struggled to come up with savings to offset the $4.5 trillion in tax cuts they propose. They aren’t really trying to cover the gap. They are half a trillion dollars short of their $2 trillion over ten years goal. Even though the president instructed house members to leave Medicare alone, the Energy and Commerce Committee, which handles health care spending, is asked to cut $880 billion over the decade. Details are not available but expect Medicaid to take a big hit this time. The sentence “They are coming for your Medicare” can’t be far behind.
That’s not all. The National Park Service fired two of seven workers at the Effigy Mounds National Monument, which along with the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum is one of two Iowa sites managed by the National Park Service.
Iowa people we know will be impacted by the freeze in federal research funding from the National Institutes of Health. The funds go to multiple locations, including the University of Iowa near where we live.
According to the Washington Post’s Artificial Intelligence news aggregator, “Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service is seeking access to a heavily guarded Internal Revenue Service system that includes detailed financial information about every taxpayer, business, and nonprofit in the country.” We all should pay taxes, and the rich their fair share.
The grim reaper is knocking at the door to claim our federal support to give a tax break the country cannot afford.
Nothing we do is apolitical. The commonplace “let’s keep politics out of it” is the stuff of folklore. It denies an essential truth about us as humans. Among other things, we are political animals. We have to resist the onslaught of this Republican governance.
I am descended from people who fought in the American Revolutionary War. Perhaps I get it genetically: I am not afraid of conflict because these colors don’t run.
Kale and collard seedlings planted Feb. 13, 2025. Pinkish hue from the grow light.
I delayed indoor kale planting for a week until Feb. 13. I will delay planting the other cruciferous vegetables and herbs by two weeks or more. Live and learn. It is an exciting time of the year with seeds going into soil. My heating pad and grow light held up for another year.
2024 was a marginal year for our garden. I couldn’t get the plots planted. Deer started jumping the fence and ate two successive plantings of cruciferous vegetables. Then, weeds grew everywhere. I couldn’t get some crops harvested when they matured. I got decent crops of garlic, tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, and collards. I hope to renew my efforts with vigor this spring. May gardening do better in 2025.
The main work is clearing the old plots, weeding, and pulling up the plastic sheeting in a way that preserves it to use again this year. This means a LOT of work. I tried making very large plots last year and the result was deer jumped the fence more often, as mentioned. The idea that plots should be smaller, leaving no landing zone for deer proved to be most effective. Given the Social Security Administration life expectancy table, I have 11 more gardens to plant. No more experimenting with plot size at this stage of life.
I bought two batches of seeds. There will be herbs, lettuce, Asian greens, cauliflower, green beans, and a lot more. The apple trees should produce this year. The Red Delicious tree planted in 1995 has been a work horse. Storms, including the 2020 derecho, have damaged it so it looks like half a tree. I will keep harvesting Red Delicious apples from it until the last windstorm takes its final toll.
Despite all the talk about inflation, food continues to be a smaller percentage of our household budget. Insurance is the killer, ironically. Car, home, life, an multiple health care policies add up. We garden because we control inputs, plus the produce tastes better than store-bought. Our garden will continue in this enduring culture of life again this year.
Gold Rush apples at Wilson’s Orchard and Farm Oct. 22, 2022.
During the eight years I worked with Paul Rasch at Wilson’s Orchard I learned a lot about apples. I was offered a chance to return after the coronavirus pandemic, yet I declined. Things had changed too much as they diversified their offerings. They moved from being mostly a seasonal apple orchard to being more of a year-around event destination with multiple big crops available for u-pick, musical entertainment, special dinners, and of course the rebuilt barn that could host a wedding or other special event. It would be difficult to recapture how I felt about my tenure in the earlier years by taking the job. I’m okay with everything.
When my apple trees fruit, I don’t hardly go to the orchard. I can get all the apples I need for a year from the five remaining trees. At the end of each season, regardless of whether I have apples, I buy Gold Rush apples from the orchard because they keep really well in the refrigerator. On Feb. 14, I’m still eating last season’s apples, even though they are getting wrinkled. They seem sweeter now than they did when they were just-picked.
When I have apples, I replenish my stores of applesauce, apple butter, apple cider vinegar, and dried apples. In the beginning, I would process every good apple I grew. A person only needs so much of processed goods. Today I make what I need to replenish the shelves and leave the rest for wildlife to eat fresh and over the winter. Invariably, every apple I leave in a backyard pile is gone by spring.
I’ve gotten to Henry David Thoreau’s view of apples:
Early apples begin to be ripe about the first of August; but I think that none of them are so good to eat as some to smell. One is worth more to scent your handkerchief with than any perfume they sell in the shops. The fragrance of some fruits is not to be forgotten, along with that of flowers. Some gnarly apple which I pick up in the road reminds me by its fragrance of all the wealth of Pomona, carrying me forward to those days when they will be collected in golden and ruddy heaps in the orchards and about the cider-mills.
Thoreau captures something I can’t. I think about this quote every time I take a wrinkled Gold Rush apple from the refrigerator drawer and inhale its perfume.
Journey Home 
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