Categories
Living in Society

Mandate My Left Foot

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.

Categories
Writing

Winter Begins

Photo by Brigitte Tohm on Pexels.com

I dug out my packet of hot chocolate mix from its hiding spot in the back of the pantry shelf. The shift to winter is palpable and I’m going to need a cup to get by. As a bonus, it was mixed and packaged by a friend of our child.

Late Friday afternoon, the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services reported the first case of bird flu jumping to a human in the state. According to the release,

The individual was exposed to infected poultry while working with a commercial flock in northwest Iowa. The individual reported mild symptoms, has received appropriate treatment and is recovering. The case was identified through testing at the State Hygienic Laboratory and confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

As of December 20, 2024, the CDC has reported 64 confirmed human cases of H5 HPAI across nine states. The majority of the exposures are linked to infected poultry or dairy cows. There is no evidence that human-to-human transmission of influenza A(H5) is occurring in the U.S.

With all the egg production in Iowa, this was bound to happen. It could be a big deal, and it could be close to nothing. Time will tell.

No one wanted to shut down the government right now and the Congress didn’t yesterday. I don’t presume to know what the president-elect and his wealthy sidekick were thinking about this. I do know:

  • A continuing resolution was passed until March 14, which gives the new administration the ability to influence budget going forward. Everything else we heard in the media during the last 72 hours has been posturing.
  • Democrats would like to eliminate the debt ceiling completely, and this wasn’t the time for partial measures. They rejected the president-elect’s proposal to suspend the debt ceiling. The debt ceiling is a leftover policy from World War I.
  • The Republican House could not pass a CR without Democrats helping them get the two thirds majority needed. The final CR had bipartisan, bicameral support, which is the way it is supposed to work, sort of.
  • If the Republican House had been doing their work and passed all of the funding bills in regular order, in a bipartisan way, we wouldn’t even be having this discussion.
  • The main news media wants there to be a lot of drama because it helps their bottom line. Over-dramatization of the lack of a budget was, in part, the media’s doing.
  • In the end, what was expected to happen did.

While reading my 1981 journal I found a record of dreams of Mark Twain visiting one of my fellow Army officers, and Norman Mailer, at whose home I arrived by water landing. I don’t know what either of them meant. I do not dream about writing or celebrities that much. What I like is talking about writing with friends.

The lake trail walk will be chilly this morning, with ambient temperatures in the high teens and low twenties. As soon as the sun rises, I plan to get out on the trail.

Categories
Writing

Final Day of Autumn

Ice under the foot bridge.

I had an early dinner last night with a friend. The restaurant was near where I lived while in graduate school. Plenty of seats were available at 3 p.m. The food was good, the service excellent. We talked for a couple hours about writing. While enroute home it sprinkled rain as warm weather held on to autumn in the face of winter’s imminent arrival.

Like many, I followed the U.S. Congressional hijinks regarding a continuing resolution to fund the federal government from tomorrow until March. So far, nothing passed. I had no expectations as the Congress has a poor track record of passing budget bills on time. The situation was complicated by Trump’s largest campaign donor taking the issue to his social media platform. It’s been more than a year since I deleted my account on X, so I don’t know the details. We’ll see if they pass something before midnight tonight.

When I sent 20 copies of my book to friends and acquaintances, I didn’t understand what a big ask reading it would be. Given that about half of the U.S. population didn’t read or listen to a single book in 2023, I should have been more skeptical of the printed book format. Reading appears to be in decline as a favorite way for Americans to spend their free time.

I discussed this with my publisher and they suggested my observations were accurate and recommended I consider an audio book format should I broaden the reach of my book. That idea is filed away with other sales pitches until I hear back from more of the 20 book recipients.

Writing a book will be the format for the second half of my autobiography. The die is cast on that, yet once it is finished, I may consider other types of writing as my main work product. Not as short as a blog post, but readable in the increasingly shorter attention spans of potential readers. How in the heck did we get to this place?

I’m bunkering in for the holidays, which this year are even weirder than in previous years. We gave up Christmas decorations five or six years ago, and the family is split this year with one of each of the three of us in different cities. We are in process of working something out. There are four or five days in which to do that. I am reasonably certain we will be more timely than the federal government has been in passing a budget.

Categories
Kitchen Garden

Cornbread and Beans

Soaking beans.

Bill Monroe wrote a song called “Lonesome Road Blues” in which a verse goes, “They feed me on cornbread and beans, lord, lord. I ain’t a-gonna be treated this way.” It is doubtful that Bill Monroe was the first to use cornbread and beans in a song lyric this way, but he gets to the point that cornbread and beans is an inexpensive meal, a staple in the antebellum Southern states. I recall being served cornbread and beans by a high school buddy’s spouse on a visit to Springfield, Illinois. I didn’t want to tell him what that meant. They divorced soon afterward.

In Big Grove Township, beans, or bean soup is a winter staple. I occasionally make bean soup and alternately serve it with biscuits or cornbread. It is a seasonal culinary marker and not a reflection of poor treatment, although I continue to like “Lonesome Road Blues.”

Cooking is a form of food processing, and without it, the dried beans would be inedible. The only processed food ingredient I used in the soup was some stock made earlier in the season from garden and pantry ends. I used corm meal in the cornbread, but it is such a basic pantry item, that we don’t consider it “processed.” This food preparation is still pretty close to the source, and eating products made with cornmeal should be okay in moderation.

When we live like we do, with labor closer to the production of everything, we become more aware of where our food comes from, and what it takes to make it. It has changed how we shop. When we go to the big grocery stores, there are lots of aisles that we do not even explore. In the frozen foods section, we seek out fruits, vegetables and several meat substitutes. I almost never go down the cereal aisle. There is usually an aisle for seasonal promotions and we never go there. We make our own greeting cards or use old ones laying around. I suppose others buy these things, but living closer to food sourcing and production frees us from this “need.”

So I’ll make cornbread and beans this season, and look forward to it. It will be a treat the first time we make it, leading, perhaps, to a second. To every thing, there is a season. We should treat ourselves right with cornbread and beans.

Categories
Writing

On a Writer’s Life

Iowa History Books

Editor’s Note: This post was taken from one on Sept. 21, 2010 and revised. The message about what it means to be a writer seems as timely as ever. In 2010, it was a revelation.

A writer in the 21st Century writes at every opportunity. Spending a life writing a dozen novels has become a thing of the past. The interaction with readers is more intimate, direct, and often. An email, a book review on Amazon.com or Goodreads, a blog post, a letter to the editor, an opinion piece in the newspaper, a technical article, a poem, or a work of fiction, all carry equal weight in how they take up a reader’s attention. Add in social media, and there opportunities aplenty to write.

Readers have plenty of material in which to engage. The diversity and abundance of available writing is a proximate cause of the low number of books Americans read each year. We are using our eyes and ears to take in information constantly, just not reading books.

As the number of writing venues exploded, the ability to generate revenue was diminished. There are a few folks who capitalize on this multitude of writing opportunities. However, constructing a view of where they fit into the life of a writer who writes for wages is both customizable and unlikely. Earning a living wage primarily from writing is as difficult as it has ever been.

Yet the writer’s life is something to which to aspire. The quiet of morning and a few hours typing at the keyboard is important: an organized effort to bring order to a chaotic world with words. In a world where corporate media reminds us constantly that in order for our consumer society to maintain growth, we need to get out there and start buying things: consume the consumables.

A 21st Century writer lives close to the means of production. The idea of buying anything that does not serve our indigenous subsistence or our writing is outside the ken. Many contemporary writers don’t fit well into a consumer society.

Unawares, I have been developing an approach to writing that includes many media. I hope to refine my approach and continue my writing voyage, hoping it produces recognition for what it is among readers, if not a living wage. That this approach is uncertain is accepted. Inherent uncertainty is a risk worth taking.

Categories
Living in Society

Photo Gallery 2024

Here are twelve photos that are among the best I took this year. Click on the upper left image to open the slide show. Hope you enjoy!

Categories
Reviews

Book Review: Citizen

Each end of year holiday season I find a book by or about one of our presidents and read it as a gift to myself. Since that slugabed Barack Obama hasn’t published his second book of presidential memoirs (volume one was published in 2020), I settled for Bill Clinton’s post-presidency memoir Citizen: My Life After the White House published Nov. 19 this year. There are plenty of reasons to read Clinton.

My position about Bill Clinton and this book is that since he survived heart disease and a case of sepsis he ought to write a post-presidency memoir so historians can benefit from the information gathered herein. Indeed, there is granular information about the accomplishments of the Clinton Foundation. The first two parts of the book cover those years in detail lest we forget Bill and Hillary Clinton were do-gooders, all over the world. Let’s face it, though. Bill Clinton is a political animal and the third part of the book, “Politics, Rewriting History, and Reviving the Foundation in a Still Uncertain Future,” in which he discusses politics, is what many were waiting to hear.

Clinton points to Newt Gingrich and his Contract with America as the source of today’s divisiveness in society. When Republicans won the 1994 midterm elections and installed Gingrich as Speaker of the House, it was he who changed our politics to be more confrontational. From shutting down the government twice, to welfare reform, to a capital gains tax cut, to impeaching Bill Clinton as president, Gingrich made it so our politics would never be the same as it was. We are still suffering from the conservative detritus in his wake in national politics. He supported Donald Trump’s claims of a stolen election, and claims of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election.

Important in Citizen is Bill Clinton’s account of Hillary Clinton’s political life through her run for the presidency in 2016. While their story is familiar, he makes a strong case for what happened and why. It is a story infrequently told in major media outlets and worth reading here.

Clinton also reviews some of his major accomplishments, like the Crime Bill and the Family and Medical Leave Act. There is no shortage of moments when he honked his own horn about his many accomplishments as president, including job creation, converting the budget deficit into a budget surplus, and connecting more schools to the internet. Clinton makes a solid case that his administration did many things that benefited middle-income workers.

Beginning around 2016, Clinton received criticism from the left that his signing the 1994 Crime Bill and the 1996 welfare reform bill were actually him (and Congress) caving to the far right. He defends himself rationally as the “explainer in chief” is wont to do. It is important to recall that in the end, Clinton was one of the good guys among politicians and advanced Democratic causes.

I recommend reading Citizen: My Life after the White House by Bill Clinton. It is important to know the history of Democratic politics and Clinton was in the middle of it.

Categories
Living in Society

Colfax Casey’s

Home brewing a cup of coffee while traveling.

Coffee is $2.02 per 16 ounce cup at the Casey’s in Colfax. I stopped there enroute home after an overnight visit to my spouse and her sister. I made many trips to Des Moines this year, and almost always stop in Colfax to see what’s going on at the convenience store. That usually means seeing what new employees greet me, as employee turnover appears to be constant. This Casey’s is an easy off and on the interstate and I usually purchase a lottery ticket, gasoline, and a beverage or snack. The sameness of the offering is comforting.

I started the day with a Keurig cup of coffee at my sister-in-law’s home. I forgot my bottle of instant espresso, which I prefer when I can’t make my own coffee in my own machine. I am an early riser and foraging in the kitchen is better than leaving the house in search of a cup. The Keurig cup served during the hours before the others awoke and got out of bed.

I have been spending so many nights in Des Moines, I bought a 28-inch wide camp cot with 600 pound capacity. I brought pillows, sheets, and a blanket from home, and borrowed a feather blanket from my sister-in-law for added cushioning. It is not the best, yet it is sufficient. Once the transition in Des Moines is finished, we’ll have the cot for overnight guests at home.

My travel from home to Des Moines is in four segments. Leaving home, I cross Lake Macbride and the Coralville Reservoir to access Penn Street which leads to Interstate 380. I take 380 South to the large intersection with Interstate 80, then exit West on 80. There is a long, mostly straight stretch of 80 that leads to the outskirts of Des Moines where Colfax is found. From Colfax, the congestion begins and the highway expands the number of lanes. I follow 80 to Interstate 235 to the exit for the state capitol, then it’s a multi-mile journey to my destination. I have the route memorized. That long stretch of Interstate 80 drives quickly.

If I have no extra chores while in Des Moines, my tank holds enough fuel to make the round trip without stopping. Usually there is something extra, and then Colfax is my go-to fuel stop. Coming from Des Moines, arriving in Colfax is a release of the tensions of congested traffic. On this week’s trip, truck traffic was heavy all the way, which again built tension after resting in Colfax. I made it home safely.

We need places like Colfax. Without these trips, I would not have considered the place important. Just another stop on the interstate highway. Yet our mind needs patterns and in cases like this we create our own. Gasoline, coffee and lottery tickets are available all along the interstate highways. That I pick Colfax for my stops is a bit of creativity I own and enjoy. I look forward to stopping at the Colfax Casey’s.

Categories
Sustainability

Duane Arnold Redux

Google Maps Image of Duane Arnold Energy Center

Editor’s note: This is a letter to the editor of the Solon Economist in response to Caden Bell’s opinion saying the Duane Arnold Energy Center nuclear power plant should be reopened.

I don’t understand the logic of reopening the Duane Arnold Energy Center because life is like a cartoon called The Simpsons. I’ve never seen an episode of that show, so maybe I’m missing something. What I do know is Caden Bell offers no logical reason to reopen the Duane Arnold Energy Center nuclear power plant in his Dec. 5 opinion in the Solon Economist.

First things first. The technology at Duane Arnold is old. The physical plant is old. Its permit has been renewed twice. There is a limit to the life of these facilities built in the 1970s. Why throw new money after old technology? We shouldn’t.

If Iowa were to do anything regarding nuclear power, we should at least wait until known problems have been resolved. Bill Gates is working on that. Gates received a permit for a small modular reactor in Wyoming. If there is a future for nuclear power in the energy mix, it is not in plants like Duane Arnold, but in small modular reactors if the bugs can be worked out. That is a big if. The future of nuclear power relies on such projects. Give Gates and company time to do the work.

Who will pay? The nuclear energy industry relies heavily on federal subsidies. Bell offers nothing about financing the return of nuclear power in Iowa. It remains a key issue with any electricity source. His opinion is useless without addressing who will pay.

My recommendation is Bell return to watching The Simpsons and keep opining about real-world issues like nuclear power among his university friends.

~ Published in the Dec. 12, 2024 edition of the Solon Economist.

Categories
Living in Society

Social Media Into 2025

Photo by Buro Millennial on Pexels.com

It’s no secret I use a mobile device. I recently discovered a metric in settings called Digital Wellbeing which tallies the number of minutes of screen time on my device. I was shocked to see I averaged 5 hours, 50 minutes of screen time per day during the previous seven days. Just by being aware of my time I reduced it from 6 hours, 30 minutes on Friday to 4 hours, 29 minutes on Saturday. I need a more organized approach to reduce screen time.

Eschewing social media completely is not a good option. I rely upon the interactions with “friends” and “followers” and the relationships they have grown into. On Threads, these are mostly people I know only through the platform. On BlueSky, these are people I know in person or others I followed during my long time on X (2007- 2023). Threads is about art, photography, and sharing each others’ work. BlueSky is about staying tuned to whatever we call the national discussion inside a liberal bubble. Facebook is still there, although I am paring that group down to people with whom I have a tangible, in-person link. In most cases, I know Facebook friends from personal interaction. I have a couple of active friends on Instagram, but mostly I view posts by people I don’t know. I also view short videos there, something I hadn’t intended yet takes a lot of my screen time today. These four programs represent the as-is situation with social media.

Six hours of screen time in a day is not acceptable. While the entertainment value it provides is already baked into our monthly budget, the cost is in how my brain accommodates the input. Without completely understanding it, I know it has a deleterious effect. That is reason enough to cut back.

Killing time is not an interest of mine. So what am I seeking from screen time? I’ll just make a list:

On Threads, I curated a feed that informs me about what our small community is doing. Mostly, we share photos of cups of coffee, and daily, regular posts which are habit forming. One person showcases a different pair of socks each day. I see photographs, works of art, and short posts about how the day is starting across multiple time zones. When I wake, the Australian and New Zealand accounts are already on morning of the next day. While I’m doing this, I make my own daily post with the outdoors ambient temperature, time, a brief composition, and a photo of my coffee cup. I drink coffee while scrolling to see what followers are doing today. We all have morning routines, and this is mine. I return for updates a couple of times each morning and afternoon. By 6 p.m. I shut my mobile device off for the day.

After the November election there was a movement of people from X to BlueSky. A lot of the folks I followed on X made the transition. Some I followed on Threads decided BlueSky was a better platform. In any case, I’m there and posting a couple of times each day. It has been easy to regulate how much time I spend there because I am less interested in any “national discussion.” Threads is my go-to.

My sights are set on reducing time on Instagram. The number of accounts I follow there is small and only a handful post regularly. It has become a site with two main functions: automatically cross post photos I upload to Facebook, and following a few accounts that offer something unique. If I reduce screen time, the largest initial share of cuts will come from Instagram. I went into settings and set a timer to notify me when I spend 90 minutes in a day on Instagram. We’ll see how that goes.

Facebook used to be great, but now it has been reduced the way a balsamic reduction is made. Besides publicizing my work, I belong to two groups: my high school class group I founded to facilitate organizing a couple of reunions, and a group I started for our home owners association. These two useful functions are likely the reason I still have a Facebook account.

The gist of this is to cut way back on Instagram time, and not dally when I’m doing something purposefully. In theory, everything I do on social media should be purposeful. I’ll give that a week or so and see if my screen time is reduced. What I would much rather be doing is spending time face-to-face with my friends. Here’s an example:

I had a chance to spend an hour with a dear friend in a deserted cafe this week. We were bathed in sunlight, although I preferred a seat that was shaded. We talked about our books, our health, and our plans. It was an oasis of calm and warmth in the increasingly turbulent world in which we live. I need more time spent like that. Likely we all could use it.