Here are the election night vote totals for the top four races in Big Grove Precinct. I will update these numbers, if needed, after the official canvass. It was another Republican night in Big Grove Township, and in Iowa.
Race
Republican
Democrat
President
Trump
Harris
699
598
U.S. House
Miller-Meeks
Bohannan
700
617
State Senator
Driscoll
Chabal
741
526
State Representative
Lawler
Gorsh
716
545
Statewide, Trump won Iowa easily. Miller-Meeks has a 799 vote lead out of 408,337 votes cast, with 20 of 20 counties reporting. That race is too close to call and there will be a recount according to the Cedar Rapids Gazette. District-wide, Dawn Driscoll and Judd Lawler both won their races.
I have reactions to the results, although I will save those until all the counting is done and the results certified.
After my post-masters degree tour of racism in America I decided to stay in Iowa City. My reasons were not complicated.
I had to decide whether to be in a relationship with someone, and Iowa City was a regional social hub offering a large pool of potential friends and mates. The rest of the state seemed a primitive agricultural landscape, desolate and barren of intellectual engagement. As a young Iowan possessing two degrees, of course I chose to live in Iowa City.
Having established my desire to write, Iowa City seemed an excellent place for that. It offered a broad intellectual life, not to mention being the home of the writers workshops. I expected to find other writers of varied skills, along with what it took to support a writers community.
Work was available. The money I banked in the military would soon run out. I needed a job to pay monthly bills. I had no idea of supporting myself beyond the next rent payment. I could live paycheck to paycheck indefinitely, working a job that would leave energy each day for writing. The idea of long-term employment with decent benefits had already begun to fade from American society as Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as president in January that year.
In the pre-internet days, relationships were in person or they were difficult. A long-distance relationship involved telephone calls and letters. We made our life where we lived and it took a year to discover what was possible in Iowa City. It became my year of being a writer.
In undergraduate school I saw writers come and go in the shared house on Gilbert Court where I lived. The pattern was simple. Find a place to live and write, find enough income to pay bills, and then go on living with a view toward producing a book of poetry or prose. It was no different when I finished graduate school.
When it came time to get my own apartment, I found a small one with a kitchen while most students were out of town on summer break. When I toured the apartment, a tenant still lived there. I deduced she was a writer of some kind, “a writer’s workshop type.” She had photographs of writers on the walls, and many books by workshop alumnae in a peer cabinet in the living room. My quick analysis of her book shelves was she displayed types of books I tried to avoid. My future landlady had had a run in with her, and described her as a little backward. I didn’t care much about all that drama. I was ready to move in and get started with the next iteration of my life.
The apartment on Market Street had six windows. It helped me feel more in touch with the world after living in a windowless basement with my friend Joe. I felt in union with events going on around me in the vibrant county seat. I felt a power living in the old part of the city, and I was in its midst. It took me two days to settle in.
From a logistics viewpoint, the pieces of a life were coming together. What I realize now, and didn’t then, was I needed something to write about. That flaw made it difficult to get words down on paper in the time before we knew what Reagan and his coterie were up to.
This is a draft of the first chapter of the second part of the author’s memoir.
Tomorrow is election day in the United States. At lunch on Friday, a candidate asked the sheriff if he was coming to the election night party in the county seat. He wouldn’t be, he said. Because of the election they had extra officers on duty to address uncertainties of what might happen when the polls close. His presence was required to command that group.
Our politics changed since I began voting: we need a standby police force to address potential conflict. Hopefully the extra staff won’t be needed. In Iowa’s most liberal county conflict escalating to violence seems unlikely.
For the first time since I can remember, I finished my list of voters to contact on Thursday before election day. We used to go right up to the poll closing with our efforts, yet this cycle we got ahead of the game. I continue to do two or three things each day to contribute to electing Democrats. Unless something dramatic and unprecedented happens, I plan to stay home on election night.
The tension created by this year’s political campaigns is palpable. Regardless of who is elected president, the tension will be real. I recall the reaction among the electorate when the first black man was elected president in 2008. If the first black woman is elected tomorrow, I expect an intensified encore of the drama. If Trump is elected, his chaotic governing will be unrelenting. I’m braced for both possibilities.
In an email sent Nov. 3 at 6 p..m., Jen O’Malley Dillon, Campaign Chair, Harris for President, wrote the following:
We feel very, very good about where we are. More people — and more diverse people — are voting than ever before. We are currently on pace to turn out the voters we need to get to 50%+1 in each battleground state.
We continue to have a few paths to victory: By winning the Blue Wall (Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania), by winning the Sun Belt (Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina), or by winning a combination of the two. We are seeing what we need to see to pull at least one of those paths off.
Volunteers knocking on doors, making calls, and making sure voters have what they need to head to the polls are making a difference in this race. So much so that undecided voters in the last week are breaking for the Vice President by double-digit margins.
We know that, among the remaining pool of undecided voters, more are open to voting for the Vice President than for Trump. Our team on the ground is kicking ass reaching those voters and we have to keep it up in the days to come.
The day before election day, we are standing by to see what happens. I’m confident the best qualities of being an American will prevail.
Michael Alden Hadreas, better known by his stage name Perfume Genius, is an American singer, songwriter, and musician. Photo Credit – Wikimedia Commons
Why are there no more geniuses?
That’s an easy one to answer. Our culture no longer recognizes people as being geniuses. But, you might say, what about Einstein, or Leonardo, or others? Weren’t they geniuses? The answer, of course, is yes they were, but we now call them geniuses only in hindsight.
Today we see people as people, innately of potential equality, with various forces at work which inhibit the realization of that potential.The case of women artists is one, there are others. There is a dangerous assumption here: that genius is a goal or state of being to which a person aspires. An individual begins a human like other humans and develops to become a genius. They go through a process, they progress. I reject this.
Genius becomes a function of being recognized as such. If a genius is “ahead of their time,” then they will not be recognized in their own time for their accomplishments. In short, genius, like all other words, is defined in a cultural context. As the culture changes, today’s geniuses might be tomorrow’s buffoons. We need a new word to describe genius. That word will not appear in the current American milieu.
~ This post was written in the author’s journal on June 14, 1981.
Rain and wind are blowing leaves from most deciduous trees, revealing squirrel nests in the canopy. Some, like the Pin Oak, hang on to their leaves until next year’s growth pushes them out. Most everything that’s coming down before winter has come down on the third day of stormy weather in Big Grove Township.
I set the election aside to focus on writing.
I’ve written about 60,000 words of the second part of my memoir. I feel I should start over. Writing the first part changed the way I look at writing memoir. I should incorporate what I learned, and will. That means a complete re-write of the outline and a chapter by chapter re-writing of the story. It will be a different book than what I first envisioned and hopefully more readable and engaging.
I left the story in Iowa City during the summer of 1981 just before President Ronald Reagan fired the PATCO air traffic controllers to break their strike. Reagan and his conservative progeny’s deconstruction of the world in which I grew up became a constant theme during my life. During summer 1981, they were just getting started.
There was a brief window of about a year before I proposed to my now spouse on Aug. 18, 1982. In that year, I lived in the Iowa City of which we’ve heard tell as a writer’s haven. I moved from my high school friend’s home to an apartment on Market Street. I found a job with the University to pay my bills. I sought to be a writer and did what many would be writers do near but not part of the writer’s workshop. It was something of a plan. It is important to recapture that time because in several ways, it is archetypal of what creative Iowans do to cope with this barren agricultural state which is increasingly devoid of creativity.
Because my focus was on writing, I have plenty of journal entries from that time to re-read. That summer, I compiled a number of my essays into a book called Institutional Writings. I printed 15 copies and distributed them to friends. I was determined to be a writer even though I wasn’t sure what that meant in 1981. Iowa City wasn’t a solution for me. It was more a transitional place.
I accomplished something significant today. I got started writing Part II. There is much to be done yet I’m moving, hopefully in the right direction.
I recently read The Cooking of Provincial France by M.F.K. Fisher, et. al. It raised awareness of how cuisine can be rooted in specific locales, based not only on locally-grown food products, but on the soil, air, and water specific to a place. Local residents literally spring from the landscape and food grown there, according to the authors. Regretfully, French cooking is immersed in animal products. Separate the dairy, beef, pork, lamb, fowl, and fish and it would not be French cooking. It cannot exist except in situ.
What does in situ mean?
In the United States, we have a long tradition of destroying places and then building settlements as if on a blank slate. Natural vegetation, evolved over hundreds of years, was razed, and replaced with farms. Then, when the farm couldn’t make it — even with government subsidies — it was parceled off and sold for residential properties.
We built our home in such a farm conversion and prepare varied meals in the space we built. None of it is native except for the harvest from our backyard garden. Those seeds and seedlings come from elsewhere and not here. The phrase in situ, in this context, includes some aspect of food grown locally.
It seems ironic that as much “food” as is grown in Iowa and in the fields surrounding our residence, most of the corn, soybeans, wheat, hay, and other commodities are not grown for direct human consumption. Much of these foodstuffs are used either in animal feed or as an ingredient in industrial processes like distilling ethanol, or making biofuels or corn syrup. In Big Grove Township, there is no in situ.
That’s not to say our household lacks a cuisine. Clearly it has a distinctive one. Perhaps the most characteristic food we prepare is tacos. That they are made from raw tortillas from the wholesale club, greens and tomatoes grown at home, and produce we sometimes grow ourselves and sometimes don’t, makes them ours. The Mexican oregano we use also lends distinctness to the dish.
The important thing is when I make tacos, I’m not trying to copy a dish I saw elsewhere. I’m creating something unique, from scratch, with ingredients we grew or have locally available. I use tomato sauce that varies a lot (just as each tomato picking is different). How I use each jar makes a difference in the outcome of the tacos.
While a few people I know grow shallots, chervil, and tarragon at home, the seeds to grow them did not come from here. They may be typical of French cuisine, yet are not of here. It is important not to get too precious about certain ingredients and where they come from. If I grow these, I use them until they are gone.
Over the years I posted many opinions about local food. Today I’m not sure that matters as much as I thought. What I learned was the idea of local food is constantly evolving. I continue to purchase groceries from a large, retail establishment on a weekly basis. That doesn’t make me any less interested in available local foods. Am I a purist? No, I am not. Being a purist about food does not make sense. It is challenging enough to keep track of what local food is available and where.
I leverage locally grown food when it makes sense. The dishes I prepare are not any less good. So, I’m here, I grow food, and I’m cooking. I am still a latecomer to the upper Midwest, one who is trying to get by. What else can I do besides enjoy what I make here?
I can’t get the general election off my mind so I’ll write about it again. This cycle will be my last dance as an activist.
Inevitably, I’ll attend a few events, donate money, and offer counsel when asked in 2026. I would like to see the governor thrown out of office, along with her coterie of Republican lackeys and extremists. At the same time, I plan to scale back my political work going forward. It is time for the next generation to take the reins of this political wagon. In many ways, they already have.
Every political poll I read shows the candidates for president and for our congressional district within the margin of error. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that some long-time Republicans plan to vote for Kamala Harris because of the sh*t show the Trump campaign has become. Whether they will go beyond the top of the ticket is something not asked by people who discovered hidden Harris-Walz votes. We’ll see how it goes, yet on Sept. 15, Trump’s lead in Iowa shrunk to within the margin of error at 47-43 percent.
I don’t believe Trump is planning to win the old fashioned way by getting the most votes. I don’t see him doing anything to get more votes. It is widely expected Harris will lead in the popular vote.
Regarding the outdated electoral college, it is too close to call in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Arizona, Nevada, New Hampshire, and Georgia. Trump is believed to have a plan to steal the election by creating so much confusion on and after election day with regard to state level electors that the U.S. House of Representatives will decide who is the next president. Or maybe it will take another form. It’s anyone’s guess today whether that is even possible. I have no doubt Trump has a plan to win any way he can to the detriment of our Democratic Republic. His plans are not about us, they are about him.
Christina Bohannan winning the First District Congressional seat would be a big deal. It would be a return to normalcy after having a congresswomen who keep her lips close to the rear end of Mike Johnson and Donald Trump. The magic eight ball is hazy on that race.
I was the only person on the state park trail Monday morning. It is often like that. I walk at a quick pace to keep my heartbeats per minute above the goal rate. So far I have been able to get in at least five walks per week. It is likely for the best no one was around because I would stop and talk politics with anyone I know, defeating the effort to raise my heartbeats per minute.
A week from the election there are some positive signs. Not enough to lift the tension that keeps us on the edge of our lives. At seven days to go, I’m ready for this thing to be over. So is most everyone I know.
Since 1982 I’ve grown vegetables where I live. I planted them in every home or apartment but one (we had mature black walnut trees to forage there). If I rank the 2024 garden with others during the 43-year period it goes in the upper third. Not the best, not the worst, better than average.
I planted five of seven plots this year. There was not enough time or energy to get them all planted. Likewise, I’m not sure we need seven vegetable plots for our household. Some year, maybe next, one of them will be converted to flowers, and another to a raised herb garden. Likewise, the northeast plot, next to the oak trees, is not the best location to get sunlight. That plot needs conversion to some kind of garden shed with a border planting of more flowers.
The main plot problem was that in combining the two largest plots into one fenced area, the fence did not serve as a deer deterrent like it did in the smaller plots. In the past, the close proximity of all the fencing deterred deer from jumping in for lack of a landing space. Opening it up made the leap more attractive. I like the large plot, but if I persist, I need to put ten-foot fencing around it. In 2025, I should split them back up as I don’t want to spend the money for a deer fence.
Garlic. I built a burn pile over the stump of a locust tree in hope of burning it out when the drought abates. I don’t know if that will work, but I could reclaim the whole plot for vegetables again. This year I used it for garlic, which grew okay, except there is a significant percentage of cloves with some kind of fungus. I segregated the heads that appear to have the fungus and was able to find plenty of clean heads for next year’s seed. I peeled the infected ones, removed the bad spots from the cloves, and pureed them in a blender with extra virgin olive oil (see photo above). We’ll see how those preserve, but it is a good use of damaged cloves. It is Oct. 28, and I don’t have next year’s crop planted. I walked the planned plot and just need to do the work before the ground freezes solid. Garlic can even be planted in the spring, although that’s not what most farmers do.
Tomato plot map, 2024.
Tomatoes. It was a good year for tomatoes. I had plenty of cherries, plums, and slicers to meet our needs and give some to the local food bank. The map above indicates the varieties I planted. The Amish Paste, Granadero, and San Marzano were made into tomato puree which was mostly used fresh or canned. There was an abundance of cherry tomatoes, with them coming in first and lasting until the first hard frost. The slicers — Better Boy, Abe Lincoln, Goliath, Black Krim, Brandywine and Yellow Brandywine — provided a long season and adequate variety. The Yellow Brandywine did not produce much but the fruit was tasty and adequate in quantity.
Failures. Onions, Turnips, Radishes, Celery, Broccoli, Cauliflower, Green Beans, Bell Peppers, Peas, and Okra did not produce as expected. Part of this was planting in the extra large plot mentioned above where seedlings became deer food.
Potatoes. My tub method of growing potatoes worked again this year, keeping the small rodents from eating them first. This is a time-tested practice and I’m glad to have developed it. It works.
Cucumbers. An adequate crop with plenty of varieties. Not too many. I was able to can all the pickles I need until next year. There were plenty for eating fresh and donating to the food bank.
Hot Peppers. There were enough to get by until next year with preserved blends of peppers, onions, garlic and vinegar in the refrigerator. I always have more than I use. There were plenty to use fresh. I have a backlog of dried peppers in the pantry. I began turning some of them into powder to use to repel bugs.
Cruciferous Vegetables. It was a light year due to the big plot situation. Luckily, there is plenty in the freezer from last year. I could stand to grow a few more cabbage.
Fruit. It was the off year for the main apple trees. I did get some Zestar! and Crimson Crisp and made applesauce to use fresh. The pear tree produced in abundance and we ate fresh fruit while it was in season.
Row Cover. The covered rows are the best part of the garden. I get plenty of early lettuce and bok choi. There was basil, parsley and sage in abundance. When I mention a raised herb garden above, the intention is to put as much of it as I can under row cover. I need to work through succession planting so the supply of lettuce is continuous for a longer period of time.
Gardening was worth the work in 2024. I plan to put in another in 2025.
Apple season is winding down with farmers selling from their coolers. In the cycle of local produce, society and nature lay down such markers that winter is near.
There are signs of the change in seasons all around. Yesterday I noticed a gigantic flock of pelicans near the state park trail. They stretched for half a mile along the east-west axis of the center of the lake. As it is for migratory pelicans, it is time for us to refuel and move on.
While at the farm store last week, a woman told me that what I saw was the last of fresh vegetables. I bought a big bunch of kale and three bell peppers. We’re on to pumpkin season now.
Election day is always a sign winter is coming. In the even numbered years we have federal elections and in the odd, state government and school boards. I almost always have some yard signs up and as we approach election day, they become surrounded by the fallen leaves of deciduous trees in our yard.
It’s open enrollment for Medicare. I encourage my readers to ditch any form of Medicare Advantage and get on the real program. As we age, our health care needs increase as do related expenses. There is no reason to give a cut of this cash exchange to insurance companies. It costs significantly less to the government if we choose the real deal.
Due to lower overnight temperatures I added wool blankets for the bed. I am at two presently and a third stands ready for service in the closet. I brought two of them back from military service. Making woolen blankets for soldiers is something the U.S. Government did well. These will continue to serve as long as I have them.
I adjusted my Goodreads reading goal from 56 to 52 books this year. I took on some long books last summer, and am running behind. While the book count is lower compared to last year, the number of pages read is about the same. Last year, I read 69 books. I read more than 50 every year beginning in 2020.
Lastly, I’m going through my winter collection of sweatshirts to see what needs replacing. I’m unlikely to buy anything new this year. As a septuagenarian, my sense of style, or styling an outfit is minimal. I thought about making a series of brief style videos showing my daily outfits for a month or so. Frankly, my style varies little from day to day. It’s a choice of which jeans, which t-shirt and which socks for the most part. I don’t really accessorize at all. Not sure there is a market for that type of video.
Pelicans won’t stay here long. The next big project is to take up the second volume of my memoir after the election. I’m pretty sure the renewal of effort will drag on into December. I have a full year’s work to do to get the book suitable for publishing.
Whatever you do, if you are a U.S. citizen, be sure to make a plan to vote on or before Nov. 5. So much depends upon the outcome of the general election.
The contrast between our major presidential candidates could not be more stark. On one hand a candidate promises to be a dictator on day one of his administration and praises Hitler’s generals, wishing his would be like them. On the other hand, Kamala Harris represents everything good about our imperfect American Democracy.
I continue to do two or three things daily to contribute to Democratic wins on Nov. 5. At the same time, I realize I’m not only working for a particular result from the election, but setting the stage for the future. The relationships built during the next two weeks will strengthen as the winners become known. The election doesn’t end with vote counting, the inauguration, or much else related to process.
Going forward we must build a better America, one that includes everyone, one built on personal relationships. This will be challenging, yet more so if the Republican is elected. It must be done for the benefit of all.
Neither will the work end on election day. What seems clear is we have 13 days until tomorrow. We must ask ourselves what kind of tomorrow we want and work to get there. May the year 2024 be a turning point in American society. One that brings hope for a better life for our country and its people.
Working together, we can make that possibility a reality.
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