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.
Earthrise Dec. 24, 1968
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.
Pear Blossoms, April 19, 2025.
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.
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.
Empty milk bottles, an empty wine bottle and a salad dressing bottle... filled with water and white tulips -- whose time will soon be past.
There is a dead spider in a milk bottle. I remember those milk bottles being left on the back porch, filled with milk. How it was...
Contemporary life has changed. We drive to the Stop N Shop to get our milk in plastic jugs (#2 recyclable). And glass milk bottles are the stuff of collectors and flea marketers.
On the 100th anniversary of publication, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald was a quick read. In this case, less than 24 hours in four sittings. I highly recommend reading it. There is not much new to say since I wrote about it when the copyright expired in 2021. My new takeaway: a novel needn’t be long to be effective, engaging, and relevant. Gatsby is a product of that unique time, yet relevant to American society today.
It is a blustery day in Big Grove Township with winds forecast in the 25-30 m.p.h. range all day. With ambient temperatures in the low 50s, it is again on the chilly side for garden work. I realize there are few perfect days for gardening. I will get outdoors again to enjoy the sunshine.
He returns. There were big cumulus clouds of the kind Georgia O’Keeffe painted in 1965 when she was 77 years old. Cast against blue sky, these real clouds were a wondrous summer scene.
I went to breakfast with a neighbor and that set back the whole day. We had a good conversation and learned we have a lot in common, including time spent in the Calumet region of Indiana. I’ll be playing catch up the rest of today and tomorrow. Wish me luck.
Editor’s Note: This is fifth in a series of posts about my creativity while living in Indiana. Check out the first post here.
When we lived on West Post Road in Cedar Rapids, our child was transitioning to talking in human language and walking. Singing and running soon followed. I determined the best time for my creative endeavor was in the early morning hours before the rest of the household woke and I had to leave for work. On good days, I got in two solid hours of reading and writing.
After moving to Indiana before our child started preschool, working in the garage became a main creative activity. The ranch-style home on a crawl space had inadequate room for much of my creative inventory except for some book shelves in the living room and a place to put the word processor. In the garage I had a workshop, a writing desk, and boxes of stuff brought from Iowa. My longer spells of creative activity occurred on weekends and vacations and included all aspects of my life muddled into one process. I continued through winter by acquiring a propane construction heater.
Elizabeth is in the driveway washing the car windows. I am in the garage, writing at my desk, listening to the radio WJOB.
The garage is a place where we can let our imagination go. Much time is spent organizing and moving supplies, but the creative endeavor is what we live for.
What assumptions are behind this garage and the endeavors in which we engage? (Personal Journal, Merrillville, Indiana, Sept. 12, 1992).
Our child was often outside with me playing in and around the garage. It was a main activity we did together. Some days they would ride the Big Wheel tricycle up and down the driveway, sometimes play on the small deck where there was a sandbox shaped like a turtle (called Shelly), sometimes playing in the backyard and garden, and much time hanging out with me inside the garage. All of those memories combine into one of just being together. I felt it was what fathers did.
I built a workbench out of two by fours custom designed to match my 73-inch height. At times I would use it to build or repair something. At times I would spread out papers on a project in progress. It was well built and survived the move to Iowa in 1993 where it occupies a prominent place in the current garage.
Characteristic of warm days in my creative space was to open the garage door and hang an American flag on the door frame. The flag was one I used in Mainz while on Autobahn road marches with armored vehicles. Garage door up! Flag hung! I was open for business!
In my journal I described some conversations about what we should call this space. We tried out names and settled on The Deaton Family Workshop. I wrote that on a student-sized chalkboard and placed it where all who entered could see. We possessed a secret life with each other in the garage and were co-conspirators regarding our lives in the Calumet.
Today I continue to put the garage door up and hang a flag. It is not the same one. This American flag once flew over the U.S. Capitol and was acquired through my congressman. It is fading from exposure to sunlight and needs to be replaced.
When I’m open for business in the garage today, it is not the same feeling as before our child left home. I do the best I can. I don’t mind remembering what once was when we simply went outside and played together. Days like that are no longer commonplace. Once in a while we get together and simply be with each other. I look forward to those days.
Journey Home 
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