Categories
Living in Society

We’re Going Home — Jimmy Carter

On Jan. 22, 1977, two days after being sworn into office, President Jimmy Carter called on all Americans to turn down their thermostats to 65 degrees during the day and cooler at night. We were in an energy crisis and using less natural gas and electricity was part of his plan to deal with it. He wasn’t a popular president.

As I write this post, Carter’s remains are enroute to Washington D.C. with his funeral service scheduled at the National Cathedral on Thursday, Jan. 9. I did not care for Carter as president. I caucused for Ted Kennedy during the Iowa precinct caucuses in 1980. If I had known then what I know now about Ronald Reagan, I would have been firmly in Carter’s camp and supported his re-election. Hindsight is usually twenty-twenty.

Because Jimmy Carter had a long post-presidential life, there is a tendency to revise the history of his presidency. Part of that is normal analysis. Part is wishful thinking. While working on another project, yesterday I found my journal entry about Carter written on May 30, 1982. I stand by this assessment of his presidency as much as anything else I recently read. Here it is in its unedited entirety:

About native ability: Jimmy Carter is one who comes to mind. He was a Washington outsider and this, I believe, was the cause of his downfall. In a popular magazine I read an article about Rosalynn and him down in Plains, Georgia living a life of word processors, bicycling, and family memories. Jimmy Carter seems to me to be a president who relied on his native ability to see him through. He was judged, even by members of his party, as a failure, though. Native ability was not enough.

Carter was decent, honest, and hard-working, but his lack of understanding of the Washington scene in which he placed himself made it impossible for him to be successful. His successor scorns him, members of the Democratic Party only extend the minimum of traditional courtesy due an ex-president. Yes, native ability is not enough these days. Not enough for Jimmy Carter, not enough for me.

There is a lot to be said about native abilities. It’s what made America what it was in its early days through the 20th Century. People call Carter a lot of things, yet the one that seems more apt is the “next modern president.”

What Carter sought to do was ahead of the times and he suffered for it. If his initiatives — like harnessing sunlight for energy, personal responsibility, human rights, respect for individuals, and others — had endured, America would be a much different place. Instead he is unrecognized, yet woven into the warp and weft of a society that believes it can be better than it is. He took steps to do what he could to realize such a place, using his native talents and abilities.

As Robert Browning said, “…a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, Or what’s a heaven for?” It seems unlikely there will be another like Jimmy Carter. May he rest in peace.

Categories
Living in Society Writing

If It’s About Workforce

Iowa City Old Capitol

In the spiritual struggle against the sin of liberalism the Republican majority’s sights turned to the regent institutions. This session, a new legislative committee will deal specifically with higher education policy. Leading the effort is Republican Rep. Taylor Collins from Mediapolis. He said to expect “significant reforms to Iowa’s higher education system,” according to the Cedar Rapids Gazette.

Framing his jihad as addressing the workforce shortage in Iowa, Collins is riding a national wave in opposition to diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in education. No worries on the part of administrations at the three major Iowa public universities. They are bowing down to the jihad in advance. The University of Iowa already announced closure of some offending programs, including the gender studies and American Studies programs in advance of the new DEI law going into effect in July. They discuss the possibility of forming a new umbrella school for these and other programs, although that seems uncertain as I write.

Rep. Taylor Collins seeks to refocus Iowa’s higher education system on producing students ready to fill high-need jobs in our state, Iowa House Speaker Pat Grassley said in a statement.

“In his first term, (Rep.) Collins led efforts to dismantle the DEI bureaucracies at the regent institutions and remove political bias from the university presidential selection process,” Grassley told the Cedar Rapids Gazette. “I’m eager to see the work he will continue to do as chair of this new committee. A comprehensive review of Iowa’s entire higher education system is long overdue.”

I am a graduate of the American Studies Program in 1981, although we were a loose consortium of interests rather than an official department. It was a way for me to get an interdisciplinary degree to further my liberal arts education. I had no interest in using the degree to get any job.

I paid very little for my undergraduate (1970-1974) and graduate (1980-1981) degrees from Iowa. Today, the cost of an undergraduate degree from Iowa is $29,219 per year or $116,876 if a student can finish in four years. Now we’re talking real money. I understand one expects something to go with that expenditure and related debt. But a job?

If the legislature’s aim is to turn the regent institutions into a fancied up community college program then count me out. If that’s the case, I’d go one step further and make a modest proposal. Keep key curricula and programs like education and sell off the big pieces for workforce development. Who better to manage the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics than a big insurance company like United Healthcare or Kaiser Permanente? Why not sell the agriculture programs to Cargill? Engineering? Maybe Apple, Halliburton, Microsoft, General Dynamics, Alphabet, Meta, or Amazon might buy them and integrate them into their other product offerings. Hell, there are so many potential buyers we could run the sale price on that one way up.

The truth is, Rep. Collins hasn’t said much about this or how Iowa survives as an economic base going forward. He is hacking away at DEI, and everything that means. Last year wasn’t good, and this year isn’t shaping up to be much better.

This will be one to watch and I expect to keep a ring side seat. The 2025 session of the Iowa Legislature begins Jan. 13.

Categories
Writing

First Work Week of 2025

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!

Open water on the lake.
Categories
Living in Society

Right to Repair

Trail walking on the state park trail.

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.

Categories
Writing

Into 2025

Sunrise on the state park trail, Jan. 2, 2025.

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.

Categories
Writing

Warm, Foggy Days

Foggy morning on Lake Macbride.

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.

Categories
Sustainability

New Year’s Eve 2024

Trail walking in late December 2024.

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.

Categories
Writing

Christmastide 2024

Trail walking Dec. 28, 2024.

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.

Consider me on holiday until Monday, Jan. 6.

Categories
Writing

Skidding into 2025

Trail walking on a foggy day.

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.

Categories
Living in Society

On the Trail to a Selfie

December 2024 selfie.

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?