Categories
Environment

Winter Days

Trail walking at sunrise.

According to the sensor installed on the north side of the house, the ambient temperature was 13 degrees below zero Fahrenheit when I began writing this post. The sun is rising and it warmed up. We’re not at zero yet, although the high is forecast at 25 degrees. Today the weather is weird again.

Hannah Ritchie, author of Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet, posted a widget on the internet with a state-by-state analysis of electricity generation sources. Find it here. Here is where Iowa lands:

Here is another chart:

Iowa is a leader in wind energy and has plenty of room to improve our solar capacity. There are environmental issues with every form of electricity production, yet burning fossil fuels is our most immediate danger because of the role of carbon dioxide in enhancing the greenhouse effect. Despite today’s low temperatures, Iowa is simply too darn hot.

The trend on the following chart is the right one. As a state, we need to move more quickly.

It seems obvious to me that to get to zero fossil fuels used to generate electricity Iowa needs to install many more solar panels. There are issues with both wind and solar generated electricity.

The wind doesn’t always blow and the sun doesn’t always shine. They can be addressed. One of the key strategies to deal with intermittency, which is what this is called, is to improve the forecasting and planning of renewable power generation and demand. Another strategy is to invest in storage and integration solutions that can balance the supply and demand. A third strategy is to foster innovation and adaptation. This involves developing and deploying new technologies, designs, and practices that can enhance the performance, efficiency, and resilience of renewables. We need the will to solve these problems.

So the news about electricity generation in Iowa is positive. We just need more renewables and technological solutions to deal with intermittency so we can replace fossil fuels altogether. To a reasonable mind, this can be accomplished. Now we just need our regulatory and governmental authorities to get on board.

Categories
Kitchen Garden

Nutrition and Exercise While Aging

Cooking Eggplant

The secret to aging well is no secret: maintain an active lifestyle and improve our diets with nutrient-dense foods. Of course, that assumes there are no mitigating factors such as poverty, cardio-vascular disease, cancer, and lacking the proper function of at least some of our teeth. This post is a listicle of conversations I’ve had about nutrition and aging.

  • Seniors often don’t have enough money to go grocery shopping. Concurrently, they earn more money than the federal poverty level, so are not eligible for SNAP, the Seniors Farmers Market Nutritional Program, or the Commodity Supplemental Food Program.
  • Mobility can be a problem. Our culture assumes mobility either through mass transit, or by driving a personal vehicle. Many people age without being able to continue driving. Even if one can take the bus to the grocery store, carrying capacity for the return trip is limited. Grocers will deliver or have a service deliver. It adds what can be a substantial charge on top of the groceries.
  • Dining alone is not always fun. The absence of children, or a spouse being deceased or away, has us reverting to a primitive state of avoiding cooking or making simple meals that don’t have the best nutritional content.
  • There is increased production and use of leftovers. For example, a pan of lasagna can make six servings.
  • If we are not heating up leftovers, prepackaged meals can be tempting. They can be more expensive and often contain high levels of salt and additives with unpronounceable names.
  • Even with a full pantry a person doesn’t always cook. There is a possibility to open a can or packet of something and call it a meal.
  • Leaving home for exercise can be a challenge. If one lived in the same place for decades, the neighborhood may have changed, making it more risky. Likewise, one has to pay more attention when outdoors for things like cracks in the sidewalk, and high traffic areas.
  • Inclement weather can keep us indoors. I know when it was below zero all day Tuesday, I did not leave the house except to check the mailbox.
  • Aging means we may not have the stamina we once did. Some days it is a lot to muster the energy for a thirty-minute walk.
  • Our strength can be diminished. There is no need to go to a gym for strength training when dumb bells or stretchy bands can do. We also have to take it easier than we did a few decades ago: no more bench lifting.
  • Fear of falls is real. If we lose our balance while exercising at home, we could be injured, unable to get to a phone, and trapped.

That’s what I am hearing about aging well. If you like, leave a comment you heard about the challenges of good nutrition and exercise while aging.

Categories
Living in Society

Coffee on a New Day

Morning coffee on Jan. 21, 2025.

The new president took the oath of office Monday and I tuned in for some of the ceremony. Minnesota U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar gave an excellent speech. Not so much Mr. Trump. Several prominent people, including historians who would know, rated it the worst speech in the history of inaugural addresses. I turned it off and went trail walking just as he approached the podium. I hope Klobuchar is planning to run for president again.

We will all have to deal with the reality of the new administration. The day after the inauguration, it is hard to say what exactly that reality is. The president is trying his best to make us believe in an alternative reality. If we resist nothing else, we should resist that.

From the noise of yesterday came the quiet of today. Like many, I’m using this quiet to understand where I might help get the United States back on track. I expect it will be an inter-generational effort. So forget about resolving things with a blue wave election in 2026. It is time to reduce our screen time and get to work.

I’m participating in the Meta blackout that runs until this weekend. With each day I am becoming more confident I can deactivate my Facebook, Instagram and Threads accounts. I will see how that shakes out yet less screen time will hopefully equal more writing of my own.

I don’t have anything profound to say about this week’s events. There is no shortage of punditry making points of analysis. I know when to keep it short. Let’s have a cup of coffee on this new day. Cheers!

Categories
Living in Society

Leonard Peltier Freed

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons.

I looked at the thermometer and it was 8 degrees Fahrenheit outdoors. I put on my cap, scarf, and coat and left for a walk along the state park trail. It was a brisk walk in that I wanted to keep my heartbeat elevated. I was stunned by the news. Leonard Peltier is freed.

I got teary-eyed as I read the White House Press Release that in one of his final acts as president, Joe Biden commuted the life sentence of Leonard Peltier. This has been a long time coming. I have been in favor of freeing Peltier since I can remember, including in the 1970s when I served in the U.S. Army overseas when he was sentenced.

Hawaii Senator Brian Schatz had been posting on social media about granting clemency to Peltier since the election. I don’t know how Washington works, yet I believe his advocacy made the difference. It certainly wasn’t my message to the White House, the last of several I sent.

We will miss Joe Biden more than we know.

Since the Trump administration will immediately take down the Biden administration website, I screen-shot the text below. The archived website is expected to return, yet who knows when that will be?

Categories
Living in Society

Slán leat, Joe Biden

Vice President Joe Biden, May 2010 in Cedar Rapids.

I didn’t campaign for Joe Biden when he came to Iowa to meet us in 1988, 2008, or 2020. I lived in Indiana in 1988 and found better choices the other two years in Iowa. He did poorly each cycle, barely registering on the scoreboard in 2020. That year he went on to be elected president and served faithfully and with dignity the four years ending today. As the Irish might say, Slán leat, Joe Biden. You served us well and we’ll be missing you as we cope with tomorrow.

If the Iowa Democratic caucuses said anything about U.S. presidential elections, it was never about us, it was about all of us. Joe Biden was a president for us all, and I’m thankful for that.

When I took this photo, Democrats had reached the high point in an arc that began after the turn to this century. We experienced grueling defeats in 2010. Barack Obama and Joe Biden swam against the Republican tide as Newt Gingrich and his allies tainted American politics, launching an enduring era of brutal partisan warfare. Let’s hope the next four years don’t make it worse.

What I admire about Biden is that after the death of his son Beau, he did not follow Obama into presidential politics. PBS reported in October 2015, “The vice president’s 46-year-old son, Beau, died of brain cancer in May, and Biden stated publicly over the summer that he did not know if he could emotionally commit himself to a run for office.” It was his turn to run, but family matters more to this son of Scranton, Pennsylvania, so he stepped back. He lived to regret that decision, yet he persisted over time and made us proud.

Slán leat, Joe Biden. We already miss you.

1988 Biden for President logo.
Categories
Living in Society

Rural Iowa Leans on Higher Education

Corn Field

Rep. Taylor Collins (R-Mediapolis) is the poster child for the anti-diversity, equity and inclusion movement in Iowa. I previously described his work as “the spiritual struggle against the sin of liberalism,” but it’s not really that. It is an old friend, resentment rural Iowans hold against city-dwellers, in this case educators employed by the regent institutions in Iowa.

Here are posts from Rep. Collins’ Facebook page that set the stage:

Thank you Representative Collins! Iowans want well educated students not radical ideologies shoved down the throats of our students!

Time to put an end to the communists running the universities in the state of Iowa.

Nothing will change in the Universities until the Iowa legislature either ends tenure for professor’s in Iowa or somehow fires the administrators who hire and fire.

If you went anywhere in Iowa and asked what people liked about the University of Iowa they would likely say either the Hawkeye athletic program or the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. People from all over the state attend Iowa sporting events or get treated at the University Hospitals. One can argue the value of sportsball programs, yet it is hard to deny the acclaim Caitlin Clark received in the women’s basketball program. If a person has a complicated medical diagnosis, it is good to know treatment is as close as Iowa City. These impressions are not wrong.

If you asked the same people what they don’t like about the university, they might say the unabashed liberalism in Iowa City. The resentment is targeted at people who work for the state government and hold what are, by comparison, cushy, well-paid jobs with substantial benefits, with some employees belonging to a labor union.

You can’t argue much with people’s opinions, even if they are not based in the same reality as you and I. In her book The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker, author Katherine J Cramer lays out these attitudes that pit rural versus urban folk in a way that resonates with Iowa and other rural states I visited.

In my Jan. 7 post I wrote, “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.”

The response from Rep. Collins to forming a new school is now known. It is hell to the no!

Sen. Lynn Evans, (R-Aurelia), and Rep. Taylor Collins (R-Mediapolis), sent a letter to the Board of Regents on Jan. 8 saying the UI’s proposal to form a School of Social and Cultural Analysis should be rejected, as it brings together “ideologically driven programs,” rather than doing away with them, according to Iowa Capitol Dispatch.

“Iowans expect our institutions of higher education to be focused on providing for the workforce needs of the state, not programs that are focused on peddling ideological agendas,” the letter stated.

Iowa Board of Regents spokesperson Josh Lehman told Iowa Capitol Dispatch in an email that the board did receive the letter and “appreciate(s) them sharing their opinions with the Board.” Lehman may as well have thrown a barrel of gasoline on that fire.

The new House Committee on Higher Education met last week. Below are the members, seven Republicans and four Democrats, several of them heavy hitters in the legislature.

Taylor R. Collins (R, District 95), Chair
Jeff Shipley (R, District 87), Vice Chair
Ross Wilburn (D, District 50), Ranking Member
Steven C. Holt (R, District 12)
Heather Hora (R, District 92)
David Jacoby (D, District 86)
Bobby Kaufmann (R, District 82)
Jennifer Konfrst (D, District 32)
Monica Kurth (D, District 98)
Skyler Wheeler (R, District 4)
John H. Wills (R, District 10)

This committee’s work is expected to be widely reported by Iowa media. I’ll be adding my two cents as well as the session continues.

Categories
Living in Society

Inaugural Weather

Trail walking.

The outside ambient temperature was 54 degrees Fahrenheit as I drove to the county seat for provisions. That was exceedingly warm for mid-January. Because of King’s Birthday on Monday, my Social Security check came early and I had money to buy groceries. I’m still not used to being tied to a monthly pension payment. It is better than the alternatives.

The incoming administration moved Monday’s inaugural ceremony indoors because of a D.C. forecast of ambient temperatures in the 20s. I am quick with snarky comments like “How is the administration that can’t stand the cold going to take over Canada or Greenland?” While some Canadians I follow were rolling on the floor laughing about this, I think something else is at work.

If Trump is anything, he is a master of messaging and communications. Holding his swearing in and speech indoors provides a kind of messaging control that if it were outdoors, would be less possible. The guest list will be smaller inside the capitol. I can imagine the countless media comments about the size of the inaugural crowd if held outdoors. While crabby people wearing MAGA hats have already been in video clips on social media, saying they could have just stayed home and watched on T.V., you’ll have that and Trump must know it. In any case, I don’t plan to watch the speech live, although I will likely read the text next week. I don’t know many people excited about the prospect of another four years of him.

The good news about the first week of the legislature is both my House and Senate representatives issued a newsletter. Hard to say how often they will publish, but it is something positive. I don’t expect a lot of positive things from the legislature this session. The Republicans have super-majorities, and are in a position to pass anything they want. I expect they will. The challenge is to find things I can support and encourage my elected officials to support them. A sense of doom hangs over our district.

I can’t help but think of the excitement and hope that surrounded Barack Obama’s inauguration 16 years ago. There is a clear sense that the gains we made as a society since FDR are coming to an end. We worked to elect a better person as president and we lost the election. What else can we do but go on living?

Categories
Writing

Sun Rising on the News

Sunrise on Lake Macbride.

It never helps to drive for more than a few minutes on an Interstate Highway in Iowa. I focus on keeping the car in my lane with the radio off. If my mobile device rings, I let it go to voicemail. When I look through the windshield at the landscape, it feels bad. It has been so long since the prairie was ripped up that people forget it once existed.

“More than 80% of Iowa was once covered in tallgrass prairie,” according to the Story County Conservation Center. “But over time as land use changed (we built cities, roads, agriculture fields, etc.) this critical habitat has diminished: Today, less than 0.1% of the original prairie remains.”

Iowa now has an extraction economy and the landscape shows it, even when the fields are green in July and August.

The ambient temperature averaged around 40 degrees on my trip home from Des Moines. That’s too warm for mid-January yet these are not normal days. There is scant snow on the ground, a harbinger of more drought to come. These conditions recur and appear to be the new normal. Desolate, dry, and barren are words I never thought to use to describe my home state. They fit.

So what is next in this place?

I have to figure out how to get news. I get a squinchy feeling every time I say I subscribe to the Washington Post, yet I need a national newspaper and every one of them has issues. Better the devil I know.

The Cedar Rapids Gazette announced the next in a series of cost savings efforts. They are reducing the number of printings they do to three per week. The online daily edition will continue for now. I read that over coffee before starting each day.

The local weekly paper, the Solon Economist, has about 600 current subscribers. I have not been impressed with its work since being purchased by the Daily Iowan a year ago. Among things that are missing is getting the newspaper posted online in a timely manner. Between Dec. 26 and Jan. 9, they did not post any of three expected editions online on publication day, until after I emailed the editor and asked what is up. My subscription will continue as long as they are in business.

I don’t watch television and infrequently turn the kitchen radio on. They will not be a major news source.

The internet has lots of stuff on it. The exodus of many newspaper reporters from their newspapers to Substack is having an effect on news coverage. There are too many Substacks, and not enough time to read all of them. They lean toward opinion, rather than news.

As far as social media goes, I’m keeping Facebook, Instagram and Threads. For now, Threads is where you will find most of my text posts. I cut back followed accounts on Facebook and Instagram where I don’t know the human behind them in real life. I’m also on BlueSky which has been a good place to read news-like stuff, yet it is not appealing as a place to find community. I spend too much time on social media and am actively working to reduce that.

Email has been and continues to be the best source of news. We don’t talk much about the role of email, and maybe we should. I spend as much time on email as I do on any single social media account. The time spent there rewards me with news.

It occurred to me, somewhere between Colfax and Williamsburg that I can’t delay the decision about how to get news. This will be a busy year as long as I find good health and economic security. News is the lifeblood of an engaged citizen. We must be picky about which outlets we use.

Categories
Living in Society

Travel Day

Morning light show.

Just posting this photo today while I use windshield time to wonder.

Categories
Living in Society

Condition of the State

Iowa Capitol

The political season kicked off last night with Governor Kim Reynolds’ Condition of the State address to a joint session of the legislature. The press release with the speech arrived in my inbox at 8:27 p.m. and I read it right away. Reading it was more efficient than watching it. I will not rehash the whole thing. The press release is here.

The language in the written version seemed less shrill than in previous years when I heard her deliver the speech. Rep. J.D. Scholten posted the following on Threads last night.

This year’s Condition of the State speech was far less punch down politics and culture war crap, which is good. Energy, hands-free driving and cancer research are the three main things I heard that I’m excited to work on.

Cutting unemployment insurance is tone deaf with all of the layoffs happening in the last year in Iowa, especially with Tyson closing the plant in Perry and John Deere shipping jobs overseas.

Like for Scholten, there are things Reynolds mentioned I’d like to see advanced in a bipartisan manner, coupled with some skepticism.

Addressing mobile device use in our lives seems like a no brainer. If a person uses a telephone at all while driving, it should be hands free. This is a safety concern that falls in the main purpose of government regulation. Likewise, it seems bad that K-12 students spend over six hours per day on smart phones, according to the governor. It is hard to see any legitimate purpose for schoolers keeping their devices with them or turned on while in the classroom. I would think local control of this issue would be the way to go, with school boards setting policy based on factual information about their districts. The state tends to get heavy-handed when they assume control of what should be decided locally. It is an important enough issue to have this discussion.

Cancer sucks. The governor addressed the problem in her speech, “Every case of cancer is a tragedy. And I’m concerned by the data showing that these tragedies disproportionately affect Iowans. Our state has ranked second for new cancer cases two years running, and we’re one of just two states with rising rates.” Getting to the bottom of this statistic is important to the well being of Iowans. As I mentioned, cancer sucks. If we can determine a path to reduce the incidence among Iowans, we should follow it. Studying our high cancer rate is a good use of state resources.

The energy discussion, of keeping Iowa electricity prices low and having capacity and infrastructure to attract businesses to Iowa, is a good one to have. Coal and natural gas should be phased out as sources of energy used to generate electricity. The state should strive for a mix of energy sources. It does seem like the big money behind nuclear power got to the governor. Here is what she said:

For starters, we need to take a serious look at nuclear energy. Its potential is amazing, but the investment is big and the horizon is long. So we need to get started.

In the coming weeks, I’ll be putting together a task force that will make recommendations for how we can move forward. I’ll be bringing together experts to look at issues like permitting, which often takes too long. They’ll also look at workforce challenges, because recruiting nuclear engineers doesn’t happen overnight. And they’ll be talking with stakeholders around the state to make sure we have local buy-in.

I’ll also be proposing a bill and working with legislators to continue to promote an all- of-the-above energy portfolio that ensures the lights are on regardless of whether it’s hot, cold, windy, or cloudy.

As I’ve said repeatedly, using nuclear fission or fusion to generate electricity has substantial associated problems. These problems need to be resolved before we get too far down the path. Likewise, generating nuclear power in Iowa is not as simple as turning on the key at the Duane Arnold Energy Center. If the governor has in mind getting beyond vague platitudes about baseload power and carbon-free electricity, that would be good. At present, I find no logical reason to turn the Duane Arnold nuclear power plant back on. The development of small modular reactors and their wider use seems years away in the United States. I will suspend my skepticism to see if truth will out in the discussion of nuclear power proposed by Governor Reynolds.

While my skepticism of the governor is substantial. These are things that merit consideration by the government we have.