Canadian Geese swimming in a shrinking pool as the lake freezes.
When I retired in April 2020 I didn’t stop working. No one stops working, ever, unless they are disabled or derelict. The work I do is to make productive use of my remaining time on Earth. During the holidays I slack off and take it easy. That’s finished as the new year has begun.
When I say “the holidays” I mean from Thanksgiving through January 6. I would add the Memorial Day, Independence Day and Labor Day weekends. That is enough holiday celebrating for me. Now that I’m back to work, it’s time to reorganize.
My days begin with what I call wake up chores. Depending on when I wake, I read right away, exercise, dress, take care of personal hygiene, make coffee and catch up on overnight news. I use my mobile device for the news part, although I put limits on how long each day I use certain programs.
Once finished with chores, I head downstairs to my writing table.I finish recurring tasks on my pre-printed list and get down to the first shift of the day. Most days that is writing. If I’m lucky or efficient, that starts by 4 a.m. I break around 5:30 a.m. for breakfast, followed by exercise as soon as the sun begins to rise and I’ve got my new words.
The regular work schedule this year has me writing and editing my memoir as first priority. I’m still getting organized and the goal will be to add 1,000 words per day to the 61,000 I carried over from 2024. These will likely be edited down with new words added. There is research and revision so I don’t yet know how much time it will take. I’m guessing about four hours each day. From my experience, that is a good amount of time wrangling words.
I’m not sure how this writing will impact my bloggery. While my posts don’t count toward my daily goals, they do get me thinking about language and that benefits my memoir.
There is open water on the lake with a bright day ahead. Time to get writing!
I met Murray through my part time job in high school. He went to West High School, and I went to Assumption. Today, I might call him a gear head. Maybe I called him that then.
He was building a “hot rod” at a gas station on Brady Street. When I last saw it he had stripped it down to the frame. Part-by-part he assembled it himself. He planned to use it to “ride the ones” (driving the one-way streets in downtown Davenport with other high school aged kids with cars). I don’t think he had any other real plans for his hand-made car. It seemed to be more about the process.
“Right to repair is a legal right for owners of devices and equipment to freely modify and repair products such as automobiles, electronics, and farm equipment,” according to Wikipedia. “Right to repair may also refer to the social movement of citizens putting pressure on their governments to enact laws protecting a right to repair.”
In the late sixties, we hadn’t heard the term “right to repair.” Murray assumed he could do what he wanted to get his vehicle street legal. He knew what being street legal meant. Today, manufacturers are tightening the screws on repairing vehicles, farm equipment, and electronic devices, blocking users and owners from working on their stuff. It seems anti-American… and wrong.
I don’t think denying the right to repair will stand in 21st Century America.
My maternal grandmother had no hesitation about taking apart her stove and fixing a burner. She was born in the late 1800s, and that’s what she learned growing up. When I saw her do this, the stove came with her rented apartment. A younger person might have just called the landlord.
When I studied the rural Minnesota community where my great, great grandfather settled, there were two blacksmith shops in a community of about 200 families. At a distance from major commercial centers (if such even existed in the 1800s), and with Original Equipment Manufactured parts distribution (not called that or even in existence then) a long and slow process, locals devised indigenous solutions to mechanical problems with available materials and said blacksmiths. This seems so American, so pragmatic.
No one would argue about modern day equipment, vehicles, and farm implements being more complicated than they were in the late 1800s. If a wheel fell off a wagon and broke, the owner would mend the wheel, axle, or both and start operating it again. The computer technology embedded in modern equipment was in an unforeseeable future. Likewise, computer-aided design enabled such precision that would be hard to replicate using a hammer, anvil, and heat. Where is the balance between the owner of a piece of equipment fixing it themselves and the manufacturer insisting that only they had the expertise to do so? This aspect of society is changing and to many of us, it make no sense.
I lost track of Murray when I went to university. Last time I saw him he was working at a gas station on Riverside Drive in Iowa City. Sometimes I think about what society is losing with fewer gear heads and people like my grandmother around. We changed in ways that shut the door on returning to a life where folks knew how every device in their home worked and how to fix it. It is one way our lives have gotten poorer with increased technology.
Some Friday night I’ll have to go ride the ones in my home town to see if teenagers still do. Somehow, I doubt it.
The hardest part of beginning in 2025 is overcoming entropy. In part, extended yet short-term separation from family contributes to it. In part, the unknowns of our politics do too. There is the warming planet, aging, pressures of a fixed income, and not enough time to do everything I want. I guess this blog post is to say I need to write through it.
I have little to say about our politics. The best advice I’ve found has been to not assume anything and wait to see how the Trump administration unfolds. With the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, the president-elect is better organized than he was in 2017. The U.S. House already looks to be mass confusion. The U.S. Senate has an old guard of Republican octogenarians upon whom we count to control the reins on the president. If Grassley is any guide, I don’t hope for much. We won’t really know how things will shake out until they do.
2024 was the year I got more views on this blog than any previous year. I looked through the posts and the attraction is unclear. The post after the high school class reunion got some interest. The post about buying a saucier was popular. Most of the top posts were written in previous years. Going forward, about what should I write? These things:
As I write part two of my memoir, some of those chapters will find a home here. Partly this is drafting and re-drafting the narrative. Partly, if the content seems timely, it’s a way to get it out there.
There will likely be another high school class reunion this year. If there is, I’ll post photos from it here again.
2024 was the year with the hottest global average temperature on record. As extreme weather hits locally, I expect to cover it.
There will be a few book reviews.
There is a Nov. 4, 2025 school board election. In the past, few journalists covered it, so I did. We had a couple of cycles where there was great interest in the school board election with multiple candidates. I’m not sure how that will shape up this year, but if it is interesting, I’ll cover it.
That’s all for now. It seems like another slow day in Big Grove. I hope to make the best of it.
The year ended with a series of warm, foggy days around the lake where we live. The unseasonably warm temperatures are not good for anyone except the garden insects who might survive another season.
My spouse and I are sharing our one DVD player while she is with her sister in Des Moines. Sunday I hooked it to the television and began watching five movies by Michael Moore including Roger & Me about his efforts to speak to General Motors CEO Roger Smith after the company announced it was closing plants and shedding tens of thousands of jobs in Flint, Michigan.
I made many trips to Flint after GM plant closures started. Ostensibly, those trips were to recruit truck drivers yet it was more than that. One day I found some hiring information in my papers and counted the number of prospective truck drivers I personally interviewed between 1987 and 1993: more than 10,000. My work was at the cutting edge of American business moves to reduce costs, in the case of the people I interviewed, by laying them off. The experience changed me forever. I haven’t been back to Flint since we moved to Big Grove Township in 1993.
The scenes Moore depicts in his films are too “special.” While the stories are believable, his method of selection and framing are transparently peculiar: made to make his point. It is as if he searched for the right setting and characters to film the way a writer tries out words and phrases from their tool box on a page. In one scene, President George W. Bush advises Moore to “get a real job.” Whatever these films represent, they are in the mainstream of progressive messaging.
It was good to revisit these films over the holidays. I’m ready for 2025. As local writer Paul Street wrote in his recent substack, “Get ready for some serious shit and struggle!”
I look forward to seeing what 2025 brings and have already begun creating things to endure after I’m gone. Let the work of resisting the new regime begin, while making something positive from our lives.
The forecast was snow yet it isn’t cold enough. Instead, a light rain is falling… enough to keep me off the state park trail until it ends. Warm weather this time of year has become the norm thanks to increasing average, global, ambient temperatures. Climate change is cooking us on a slow roast.
I looked at my 2024 calendars and a few big projects kept me busy: politics and the general election, trips to deliver my spouse to her sister’s home in Des Moines, the summer high school class reunion, publishing my first book, and then getting and recovering from COVID-19. The usual daily chores of writing, reading, gardening, cooking, cleaning, and health maintenance took a lot of time. I had more medical appointments than usual this year. I existed as best I could.
I don’t make resolutions for the new year. I hope to gain perspective on my quotidian life and do better in each moment of consciousness in it. Shorter version: I’ll go on living.
My writing process is focused on finishing the second volume of my memoir this year. If all goes well, I’ll publish it in 2026. While waiting for feedback from the first volume, I’m weighing whether to make the book more available in book world by posting it where it can be purchased.
Our family is in three different cities this New Year’s Eve. I don’t mind being alone this holiday. I rarely stay up until midnight. Today’s main decision is whether I will visit the grocer to buy festive food. The more I think about it, the more likely I am to make do with what I have.
Many thanks to readers of this blog. Each visit, like, and comment is appreciated. Although I don’t post all the comments, I read them. I plan to continue to post here for at least another year. I’ll do the best I can to make it worth your time.
Christmastide is to settle in and regroup for the coming year. For me, the season lasts from Christmas Day until the Feast of the Epiphany, which is slightly more British than I am. Before retiring, I had to work either on the holidays or during the festive season. There are no such requirements this year.
Planning for next year takes the form of a to-do list revised from last year. The broader topics include gardening, writing, home and yard maintenance, physical health, and a short list of specific, short-term or continuing projects. Items like cleaning, cooking, and daily chores just fall into place without being listed.
Mostly, I want to keep going.
With the family split up this Christmastide, whatever I do will mostly be on my own. If I can get a start sorting the accumulated stuff in the lower level, that will help with writing my autobiography. It seems as good a place to start as any. As the weather warms, I’ll work in the garage and outdoors more. The next couple of days will be taking it easy and resting for the surge of activity in the new year.
Rain is forecast all day. I resisted the urge to leave home and go shopping. I avoided on-line shopping places as well. I’ve been reading more than usual and am developing a meal plan for the rest of 2024. I’ll be home alone a while longer as my sister-in-law gains confidence in post-surgery living. I look forward to the return of my spouse.
I feel pretty healthy today. That sentence is not always true.
Story ideas have been percolating. All of the new ones require research and developmental thought, so I started a blog post for each and pasted in relevant information. I don’t feel like finishing them. I expect a visit from the muses when it is time.
During the holiday trip I considered my next book. The working title is “Memoir in 25 stories,” although 25 seems like a low number. I want to cluster selected events in my life around specific places to be built out with historical information and memories. Those places include where we lived, significant work sites, and places we visited. For example, I call one place “The Calumet.” It is the land bordering the southern part of Lake Michigan in Illinois and Indiana. It will take some explaining to depict what I mean by the place name. In describing it, I set the scene.
Partly, the book is about what our family did. There are also major themes in which I have broad experience: breaking the unions beginning with the PATCO strike, the destruction of the post World War II society, and changes in workplace. It will also be a story of how people can be creative in a society that has limited interest in such work-product. I will focus on my writing, and partly on educating a child to be creative. I think there is a useful memoir in all this. Now I must revise the 62,000 written words to fit the new paradigm.
I attempt to stay positive as it rains. It is hard to do, so I work. The dishes are all done, the laundry is folded and put away, and the resonances of this difficult year vibrate my core. I may be living a life yet I feel I’m just skidding into 2025 while unable to gain traction on things that matter. I’m hoping and working toward a better year.
This is the face of a man trying to understand how his Android camera works. The background on the state park trail was planned. The green sweatshirt is my standard winter uniform, although I own sweatshirts in several colors. The watch cap was a gift from a farmer friend. My unshaven face is because I’m at the end of my once every three days shaving cycle. I’m looking at the lens because that’s what I think I should be doing. As selfies go, this is graded C-minus. It reinforces my belief I am not photogenic.
As if 2024 was not bad enough, today’s Cedar Rapids Gazette reported the University of Iowa is ending the American Studies Department in anticipation of anti-diversity legislation effective next year. I graduated from the progran in 1981 when it was a loose interdisciplinary group not even formalized into a department until 2000.
One of my valued possessions is a copy of Charles and Mary Beard’s The Rise of American Civilization with Alexander Kern’s signature inside the cover. I bought it for a buck at the library’s used book sale. I doubt Republicans behind anti-DEI knew of Kern’s early leadership in American Studies at Iowa, or of the Beards’ seminal work. I think that is the point of the anti diversity movement: public schools will only teach one version of American history, the one we legislators approve.
I’ve been around long enough to remember local folks questioning why we should build a big, fancy library in our town with population about 2,000. The money was donated, then the building was deeded to the city for one dollar. The expense of permanent staffing generated some griping. We live in a time when it is not a long distance from these attitudes rising to the surface again, and this time closing the library permanently. I hope not, but here we are.
On the positive side, this week a federal judge struck down key parts of an Arkansas law that would have allowed criminal charges against librarians and booksellers for providing “harmful” materials to minors. Nevertheless, Iowa leads the nation in the number of banned books.
Let’s face it. These discussions and repression of information in public helped make 2024 a difficult year all around.
I’ll likely continue to make selfies. Once I figure out the camera, I might work on posing. For now, I’ll deal with life as it presents itself. What else are we to do?
Lonny Pulkrabek and Rita Hart two days before the 2020 election in which Hart lost her race for Congress by six votes. Masks because we were in the thick of the coronavirus pandemic.
It seems urgent to figure out what to do in our politics going forward. I’d like to begin my work just after the New Year’s holiday. Disengaging from politics is not a useful option. I plan to stay with the fight and so should more of us.
It’s been almost seven weeks since the Nov. 5 election in which Iowa Democrats fared poorly. Donald Trump won the top of the ticket race against Kamala Harris, and Republicans added to their majorities in both chambers of the state legislature. Republicans retained all four seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, with Mariannette Miller-Meeks winning in the first district by 799 votes. I’ve been reading, listening, and thinking about my experience and the best I can describe Democrats current situation is we are tied to the whipping post and everyone is whaling on us.
I get it. We get it. We lost the election and as we recover from the losses, we see the state party as a visible whipping boy. The week before Christmas I drove past the office on Fleur Drive in Des Moines and even I cringed at how little the building changed since I last paid a visit. Democrats won’t win elections by repeating the same strategies and tactics we used in 2024. It seems appropriate to have a discussion about whether to blow up the Iowa Democratic Party and start over.
I like the song Whippin’ Post, which I heard the Allman Brothers Band play on Feb. 19, 1972 at the University of Iowa Field House.
Sometimes I feel, sometimes I feel, Like I’ve been tied to the whippin’ post. Tied to the whippin’ post, tied to the whippin’ post. Good Lord, I feel like I’m dyin’.
I haven’t felt like I’m dying since the election. I attribute that to being an experienced septuagenarian with little to lose. We have the wrong expectation if we think the state party will dig us out of the hole we’ve gotten into. It is useless to whale on the state party and expect running the chair out of town on the rail will fix the problems. Further, it is plain wrong to expect the state party to lead us out of the darkness. We must find our own way.
There is a different usage for whipping post besides the place we can tie folks who don’t live up to our expectations and flog them.
John C. Leggett and Suzanne Malm described “Whipping Post” as a metaphor for a romantic relationship in which the participants masochistically stay in though it has gone bad. This definition invokes the mutuality between the leadership and members of the Iowa Democratic Party. It is aptly applied to today’s politics. We must free ourselves from the relationship and break up.
Endemic to the current party structure is a misdiagnosis of key issues in a campaign. More than anything, politics has gotten local. In Big Grove Precinct, where I live, the electorate is divided. Trump won here in 2024. During the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump won over Joe Biden 671 votes to 637. In 2016, Trump beat Hillary Clinton 575 votes to 529. Barack Obama won here in both 2008 and 2012. My precinct has a divided electorate and has recently been won by both Democrats and Republicans. While new people moving to our area lean Republican, the key issue is how does an organizer build a Democratic majority at the polls, recruiting votes regardless of party? We didn’t address that in 2024. It was hard to get anyone to do normal grassroots work in my area. Both these things need our urgent attention.
Others have recently written about the First Congressional District Convention on May 5, in North Liberty. The description I wrote soon afterward hits a key point:
A speaker at the convention looked around the room and suggested the dominance of white-skinned, grey-haired delegates is the problem with the party. Whatever. Had rain not been forecast during the convention hours, I would rather have been working in our yard. The trouble, as I experienced recruiting a replacement for my position on the county central committee, is literally no one is willing to do the work to provide steady volunteer work for local Democrats. That’s a much different problem than skin tone and hair color among people willing to show up on a spring Saturday.
It also indicates that whoever is party chair will have minimal influence on how campaigns are organized. It is up to us to self-organize.
No matter how many teams of canvassers are deployed by Democratic organizations, Democrats will be frustrated. I suggest something else is at work. What drives people not to care about our governance? Where did the breakdown of top-down methods used in the past by Democrats occur? Answers to these and other questions seem more important than keeping the Iowa Democratic Party (or ourselves) tied to the whipping post.
Mariannette Miller-Meeks at the Iowa State Fair, Aug. 13, 2010. Photo credit – Wikimedia Commons.
By the end of the holidays I need to resolve my relationship with politics for the coming years. The federal trifecta with Republicans controlling the executive and legislative branches of government was a clear win, if a somewhat marginal one. After reading many news stories and comments, and based on my experience, I am ready to move forward. In general, Democrats are still licking their wounds, yet life is too short to dawdle in the arena. First, the situation, then what I plan to do in my next post.
Let’s start with President Trump. He is a lame duck going into his second term with about a year and a half to get anything big done. (Obama was hobbled after the 2010 midterms). This time the president-elect has a shadow administration comprised of the Heritage Foundation and their Project 2025 to support him. He also has a number of billionaire buddies he hopes to install in his cabinet and other key governmental positions. Don’t forget his side kick, the richest man in the world, who is willing to spend untold sums of money to get his way. These things can be counted among Trump’s assets.
Out of the box, Trump seems particularly weak. Partly this is his own doing, yet the evidence is more visible with each passing week.
The man is apparently governing via social media. Few people I know pay much attention to social media whether it be Truth Social, X, BlueSky, Threads, Instagram or Facebook. It is his decision how to govern and conduct routine press relations. A more effective way to do this would be to enable his press secretary Karoline Leavitt to play a larger role by releasing his appointments, policy announcements, and general news, thus creating a buffer to moderate his bad stuff before releasing it. As he is doing it, the message is off the cuff, and haphazard. Ultimately we can’t believe anything he says, but we knew that from the first term.
Some Republicans, including the president-elect, have been kicking around the word “mandate” after the November election. Enough dust has not been raised to obscure the fact President Trump barely won the election. The Republican majority in the House is super thin (5 members), and the 53-47 majority in the Senate is not filibuster-proof. In the Senate, it is not clear the aging cohort of octogenarian Republicans will cave to his every wish. It will be a rough road ahead for the president to accomplish much during the 119th Congress, if they are even capable of getting all the Republican legislators behind him on any legislation.
Trump is losing initial skirmishes. John Thune beat his choice of Rick Scott for Senate Majority Leader. The Senate wanted no part of Matt Gaetz as Attorney General. His side kick Elon Musk got out ahead of him in the public debate over keeping the government funded. Trump didn’t respond to Musk for hours. After he did, his demand that a suspension of the debt ceiling be included in the CR was ignored. All of these things point to a weak second term as president.
Despite this impressive ledger of liabilities, his minions, like Mariannette Miller-Meeks, continue to parrot his talking points about a mandate, to wit: “November 5th, 2024 is a day that will forever be remembered as the day the American people voted for a mandate—a mandate for change.”
There was no mandate, Trump barely got a plurality. Unlike his economic policy, I predict this weakness will trickle down throughout Republican governance. Stay tuned for what’s next for my advocacy in the next post.
Journey Home 
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