Tag: #amwriting

Categories
Writing

August Heat Wave

Part of the shore of Lake Macbride after continued drought conditions.

It is supposed to get hot during Iowa summer, yet not like this. On Wednesday and Thursday, ambient temperatures climbed to nearly 100 degrees with heat indexes approaching 120. I got outside shortly after dawn and walked along the lake shore. Neighbors were also on the trail early to beat the heat. The air was like soup. I spent most of the days indoors after walking and tending the garden.

August is almost a five week month. The writing I have done for Blog for Iowa is helping me get in practice to take up my autobiography again after Labor Day. My readership on this site after cross posting has not been as good as usual. Perhaps that is because my long-time readers are used to a different kind of writing. That’s okay. The small stipend I received to cover a vacation helped pay for necessary, existential things around the house. Things like pumping the septic tank.

I asked my friends on social media what book I should read next. There were plenty of suggestions. I picked The Circle of Reason by Amitov Ghosh, to be followed by A Fever In The Heartland by Timothy Egan. If you have reading suggestions, please leave a comment. Rarely has someone recommended something that I didn’t evaluate and read it.

It occurs to me I haven’t been to the farmer’s market in a couple of years. As I scaled up the garden, I needed less outside produce. I can’t imaging going to the orchard for apples as my trees have more than I can harvest before they fall. The pear tree is keeping us in sweet fruit, so I skipped all the commercial berries, peaches, nectarines and the like in favor of eating from our yard.

The heat is not good for septuagenarians. I feel healthy, yet realize I have to take it easy on working outdoors when it’s hot and humid. All the indoors time has not been particularly good for me, yet I’m able to process vegetables and fruit and cross things off my electronic to-do list. I look forward to autumn.

More and more I feel like a survivor. My parents and grandparents are gone, and I never had an excessive number of friends when I lived in Davenport before 1970. My political friends are aging and dying. I don’t feel like driving, except when I have to get groceries or run an errand. I need a haircut.

My spouse has been at her sister’s home for the last month, so I do what I want indoors. Notably, the radio has been on whenever I want to listen. Our child has their own life, which increasingly doesn’t involve parents. All of this means I am forced to deal with aging in America, which includes a large rasher of loneliness. I’ll be fine. As a writer, I crave being alone with my thoughts and writing.

The pattern of a hot August lives in memory. Living in this week’s excess heat hasn’t followed any traditional pattern. We have a new air conditioner so that’s a plus. (I raise a toast to Willis Carrier, the inventor of air conditioning). Except for dairy products, there is no reason to leave the house. Some say I should give up dairy products, but I’m not ready. When I went outside to get the mail, the neighborhood was exceedingly quiet. So quiet, it was eerie.

I can see the end of this heat wave and it gives me hope. Soon my spouse will be home and we’ll get back to whatever passes for normal. We survived the coronavirus pandemic without contracting COVID-19. We’ll survive this.

Categories
Writing

Who Knew It Would Change That Fast?

Firewood left on the state park trail.

When I retired the first time in July 2009, there was an office party with a sheet cake at the transportation and logistics company. The founder’s son telephoned me with well wishes. I wasn’t done working at age 57, yet knew where I worked for the previous 25 years would be seen only in the rear-view mirror. I never looked back.

When I retired for the second time, in April 2020 during the pandemic, I had little idea that would be it. Our household managed to avoid COVID-19 and my health was better than it had been for a long time, and still is. Funny how when you stop being with people, fewer upper respiratory diseases are contracted. Now that the coronavirus is normalized, I thought there would be something next. So far, most of my work has been centered around writing and home life. There has been no next and I need one.

With five COVID-19 vaccinations, I am as protected as a person can get. Recently, most friends who contract the virus don’t die from it unless there are complicating health factors. It seems a lot of people continue to test positive for COVID-19. The virus is our permanent companion and a reminder of our mortality.

I visit the doctor’s office more frequently, although that is partly because I have extra time available. I know there are benefits included with Medicare that have no co-pays. I press the clinic to deliver those services. Based on their current financial condition, they could use the revenues. The end result is my health seems closely monitored and I’m ready for what’s next.

So what am I waiting for? In part, for the second coming:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst   
Are full of passionate intensity.

Of course, this is William Butler Yeats from The Second Coming. In a similar and more personal way, I wrote about things falling apart to the chair of the county Democratic Party after our last central committee meeting, “I haven’t found anyone to replace me on the central committee yet. There is almost no interest in doing extra things in politics or anything else. We, as a society, didn’t used to be this way.” While Yeats was writing about World War I, a lot of anarchy has been loosed in society in 2023. There is not a lot of visible conviction.

I’ll get through this patch of anarchy and find passionate intensity again, no doubt. I just wish I had realized earlier how fast everything would change.

Categories
Living in Society

End of the Line

Summer on Lake Macbride

Last night I led the last annual meeting of our home owners association as president. About a dozen members gathered at the shelter in town to share a potluck dinner, socialize, and hear news of what our board has been doing. I did my best to be thorough. It has taken me a while to shed volunteer activities undertaken since retiring in July 2009. This one dates back to 1994.

I’m almost there. The last will be to leave the county party central committee and become a regular voter. This one is tricky in that no one else in our precinct expressed interest in taking the responsibility for more than one term. I’ll figure a way to let go and it won’t be long.

I lost track of how many hours I volunteered in my life. After retirement it became a way of life for more than ten years. We’re at the end of the line. Going forward, I plan to concentrate on writing, gardening, and fixing up the house.

People should be helpers in society. I plan to continue to grow more food than we can use and donate extras to the food banks. Books, kitchenware and other excess possessions will be donated as well. Yet to lend time and experience to leadership of social groups is not in my future. If there was a catastrophe, I’d surely help out.

It’s not that I’ve earned time working on myself and our home, although I have multiple times over. It’s that the male drive that brought me this far needs to step back to let a new generation of people take the baton from here. I’m confident we’ll be fine, and so will my ego.

It is a brilliant day near the lake today. Wildflowers are blooming, and the ambient temperature hasn’t been too hot. For a while, I was able to walk the trail and just breathe.

Categories
Writing

High Summer in Iowa

Fennel, patty pan squash, green beans, cucumbers, zucchini, cauliflower, and snow peas from the garden on July 11, 2023.

Photographs of garden vegetables serve as therapy. Therapy to get me to write and post more often. The harvest of vegetables has been better than any year I remember. It’s not even tomato and pepper season!

The biggest writing project I’ve had in a while is finished and ready to post Thursday on multiple sites. After that, I’m covering a vacation on Blog for Iowa in August. Then, I’ll return to my autobiography. Like the concertina that opens the Broadway play Carnival, it’s time to get the writer’s squeeze box going.

There is nothing wrong with just being. When I walk on the state park trail most mornings, I listen for birds, observe where sunlight and shade fall, and feel cobwebs draped across the trail caught on my skin. There are many challenges in life. That half hour is a time to let them go and concentrate on being here.

Afternoon ambient temperatures now reach into the 90s. Except to check the garden, I stay indoors when it is so hot. We are fortunate to be able to afford air conditioning. Once the household chores are caught up, I can sit at my table and write. I’ve been doing more of it now that high summer has arrived in Iowa.

Categories
Writing

Newspaper Writing

Editor’s Note: This is one of 100 newspaper articles written for the North Liberty Leader, The Solon Economist, and the Iowa City Press Citizen beginning in 2014. The North Liberty Leader stopped publication in early 2022. The Solon Economist remains on the bubble. This is an example of the collaborative type of writing produced with my newspaper editors. The whole experience of freelancing was beneficial if low-paid.

Iowa City Community School District board meeting on Jan 28, 2014. Photo by the author.

Van Allen school to be expanded
Four new classrooms will serve 100 additional students

By Paul Deaton

IOWA CITY (Feb. 5, 2014) – Paintings by Van Allen and Penn Elementary School students on the walls of the Iowa City Community School District (ICCSD) school board meeting were a colorful backdrop as Superintendent Stephen Murley and the board held brief discussions during an equally brief meeting on Jan. 28.

The board held the second of three readings of Appendix 9 , the ICCSD capital projects planning and approval process document that guides the board in its oversight and implementation of the district’s facilities master plan. The long-range plan was adopted on July 23, 2013, and proposes to spend an estimated $252 million on capital improvement projects during a 10 year period. Included in the plan is an addition to Van Allen Elementary School in North Liberty.

Following the formal meeting, the board’s Operations Committee met, and began with an update on the Van Allen design project by representatives of the architectural firm Neumann Monson and Van Allen Principal Pat Brown.

On Dec. 17, 2013, the Iowa City school board approved a project design expenditure of $123,250 for Van Allen. The design was to include additions to the current structure, containing four classrooms to house approximately 100 additional students. A committee of staff volunteers worked with Neumann Monson during the design development phase of the project. Three schematic designs were evaluated, with a final preference for additions to existing pods two (on the East side of the building housing Kindergarten through second grade) and three (on the West side of the building housing grades three through six. The design would create about 5,600 square feet of new space and fall within the approved budget of $1.68 million.

Principal Brown explained the criteria the committee developed for the addition.

“One of the things we’d like to do is to continue, as much as possible, is (keeping) like grades together so that we can group our first grades together, second grades together. Our teams do a lot of collaboration in their planning and delivery of instruction. It works much better when we keep those grades together,” she said.

Brown said another important criterion was flexibility of classroom design.
“We are anticipating growth in the North Liberty area. And as we’ve seen with enrollment, kids don’t always come to us in neat packages with the numbers just right as they move up through the grades. (The additions) could give us growth on both sides of the building.”

“We will have additional classroom space to meet student instructional needs in a positive learning environment,” said Brown in an email after the meeting.

Current enrollment at Van Allen for K-6 is 489 students. In addition, the elementary school also serves 27 preschool students. Projected enrollment for the year 2022-2023 is 527 based on the school’s current attendance area.

According to Brown, there are plans to rezone the attendance areas in North Liberty and Coralville beginning this spring. Additional students will likely be zoned into the Van Allen Elementary attendance area to help with projected elementary population growth.

“North Liberty enrollment projections for the school-aged population taken from the U.S. Census (2000-2010) shows an increase of 122 percent. Coralville increased 29 percent,” said Brown.

Van Allen Elementary School was Iowa’s first LEED certified public school. LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) is a set of rating systems for the design, construction, operation and maintenance of greens buildings intended to help building owners be environmentally responsible and use resources efficiently. Van Allen received a silver LEED certification, and features natural lighting, recycled building materials, geothermal heating and cooling, and natural landscaping. Neumann Monson expects to preserve LEED certification with completion of the project.

The board will hold a public hearing on the final project design in April. Once the design is approved, Neumann Monson expects the bidding documents to be prepared for distribution to contractors by April 24, and returned by May 16. Construction is to begin June 1, with a construction completion date not later than June 30, 2015.

~ Written for the North Liberty Leader.

Categories
Writing

The Dam Breaks

Checking the Earliblaze apples on June 26, 2023.

The cartomancer drew an Ace of Spades, indicating things that have been in disarray in my life may be coming together. After mild spells of undiagnosed dizziness today and yesterday, I feel the dam breaking and am ready to portage to the other side as the impoundment pool is released. That means I will return to writing my autobiography soon.

I sent the first half to four friends from whom I hope to hear feedback. Two have responded and two are married and will respond together when both finish reading. The feedback garnered thus far has been invaluable.

The next decision is whether to work on the part just reviewed or work to get the rest of it up to the same level of completion. The second part is problematic in that there are multiple narrative threads which represent a lot of work. At the same time, revising what was reviewed makes some sense while the feedback is fresh.

In part two there will be the experiences with family before our child attended formal school. Those are the most important years and they are over before we realize it. It is important to capture some of those fleeting essences while we can. We brought her home from the hospital to Cedar Rapids, Iowa where we lived the first 30 months, then moved to the Calumet region of Indiana where she started Montessori School, followed by public schools. We moved to Big Grove Township in 1993. That’s one narrative.

I lived through the post-Reagan years of turmoil in the workplace and have things to say through the frame of living in the Calumet and recruiting truck drivers and mechanics. More than anything, in interviewing some 10,000 people, I learned and felt directly the pain Reagan’s initiatives put so many working people through. I want to tell that story.

The challenge of being a writer intensified with the advent of computer technology. Of what was this new tool capable? What were realistic expectations? How did it change the way I wrote? How did writing in public change from my first letter to the editor in 1974 until today? Another narrative worth exploring.

During my career in transportation I traveled all around the country. I spent the most time in Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Georgia, Tennessee, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, West Virginia and other states. I used to bring a magnet home from each new place and filled up the front of the home refrigerator with them. I spent time with some of the poorest people in the country and with large corporations far removed from the reality most of us know. Sorting that out will be a big task in itself and seems worth doing.

There is a lot in front of me. It appears to be in the cards for me to get going again. I can feel it. I am ready.

Categories
Writing

Writing in Public

My writing desk, December 1979.

My first letter to the editor of a newspaper appeared in the Quad-City Times on Dec. 30, 1974. I had just returned to my home town from Europe after college graduation. I did not like the culture I experienced in Davenport. The letter was a way to express my opinion in public and garner feedback from other members of the community. It worked to a fashion before the time of social media. It would not be my last letter to a newspaper complaining about living in society.

There are risks when writing in public. When I wrote letters to the Cedar Rapids Gazette, in response, I received anonymous threatening letters in the mail. It was a form of intimidation for having an opinion with which someone disagreed. Because the letters were anonymous, and didn’t threaten me physically, I discarded them and wrote more letters to the newspaper. I’m not certain I’ll write any more letters to the editor, yet I won’t let intimidation be the reason to slow me down.

In Iowa, we are considering the incident of a prominent meteorologist named Chris Gloninger who received a death threat after educating his viewers about climate change. Repeated email harassment over his weather reports led to a case of PTSD, after which he resigned his position. I seldom watch television weather reports, so I likely don’t understand the situation. Harassing a T.V. meteorologist via email is a lazy person’s way of “sticking it to the man.” How infantile!

In his upcoming book, The Hidden History of American Democracy: Rediscovering Humanity’s Ancient Way of Living, author Thom Hartmann closes with the following:

You may think your voice is but a faint whisper in the wilderness, but there are ways you can amplify it at no cost other than a bit of effort. Write letters to the editor of your local newspapers. Become active on social media. Volunteer with the dozens of great good-government groups and organizations devoted to saving our environment, our democracy, and our world.

The Hidden History of American Democracy: Rediscovering Humanity’s Ancient Way of Living by Thom Hartmann.

Hartmann reiterates one of the best remedies for feeling impotent or down is to take action. We can’t let the inevitable naysayers get to us when we do.

Good luck Mr. Gloninger. May your future be bright.

Categories
Writing

District of Tall Buildings

Davenport Hotel circa 1980. Photo Credit: National Park Service.

When a group of men gathered at the Rock Island home of George Davenport in 1835, they had a mind to purchase land and lay out a town on the Iowa side of the Mississippi River. With native tribes removed, something needed to be done with the land, or so they believed. By any measure, the enterprise was a commercial venture in a relatively optimal, if arbitrary location. Its lackluster beginnings would haunt the city until I was born more than a century later.

In Spring 1836, Major William Gordon surveyed the place that would become the City of Davenport. He and his business partners, including George Davenport and Antoine LeClaire, offered a sale of lots to a party from Saint Louis who had been transported by steam boat to participate in a two-day auction. Sales were much less than expected. The sellers did not have clear title to the lots at the time of the sale and that likely contributed to poor sales.

There was never a question Davenport would be settled by non-natives. As original forests were clear cut upstream, and rafts of logs floated to river towns on the Eastern border of Iowa, there was money to be made. The lumber business was profitable, yet not sustainable. It was one more instance of profiteering in the city’s history.

The lumber business gave rise to the railroads. When the Davenport Hotel was constructed in 1907 it was situated equidistant between the two major rail stations in the city. “Erection of the Davenport Hotel inaugurated a period of building that would bring Davenport’s central business district fully into the era of the ‘tall buildings,'” according to the National Park Service website. Other tall buildings were built around it, including The Dempsey Hotel (1913), The Blackhawk Hotel (1915), The Davenport Bank and Trust Company Building (1927), and The Mississippi Hotel (1931).

Temple and Burroughs Architects created the Davenport Hotel building in the Renaissance Revival style. The structure was an important feature of the city’s commercial center. Located in Antoine LeClaire’s first subdivision of Davenport, one couldn’t get more center city. As commercial needs changed in downtown, some of the tall buildings were converted to housing. My maternal grandmother lived in government-subsidized housing in the Mississippi Hotel for many years.

The May 28, 2023 collapse of part of the Davenport Hotel building should be a wake-up call for city governments everywhere. The response of the City of Davenport has been as lackluster as the city’s founding. What seems obvious today is these tall buildings are getting old and literally falling apart.

At least there is political hay to be made in this national story. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis just announced he will send a crew to Davenport to help in the recovery of the building collapse. Is it a coincidence he is also vying for position in the 2024 Iowa Republican caucuses?

There may be dollars to be made from old building stock. City staff needs to energize and make sure none of the other tall buildings in the commercial district collapses while developers pursue the almighty dollar. History has shown, they are likely to nod their heads toward developers and let the action play out as it did last month. What a sorry way to run a city.

Categories
Home Life

Rain Broke the Dry Spell

2023 garlic scapes
Remaining 2022 garlic crop

Two days after a full moon, in pre-dawn darkness, it was difficult to see it rained yesterday. It hadn’t rained long, just enough to get the ground wet and start water flowing toward the ditch. It was not enough to seal cracks in the ground caused by a lack of moisture. The ditch near the road has hardly been used for runoff this spring. I hope the dry spell is broken.

After a hiatus, today I return to writing. Garden plot seven remains to be planted yet the hard work of putting in a garden is almost done. Already an abundance of vegetables was harvested even if my favorite hot peppers wait in the greenhouse to be planted.

At the point I realized our yard couldn’t produce enough grass clippings and leaves for garden mulch, and began laying down weed barrier to hold moisture and suppress weeds, everything changed. It was helped along by relenting to the need for fertilizer (composted chicken and turkey manure) and some pesticides used by my organic farming friends. Not everything improves with aging, yet my garden was made better by experience.

May was a month of stuff breaking. We scrambled to cover the expense of new appliances: washer, dryer, range, furnace, and air conditioner. We previously replaced the refrigerator, water heater, water softener, and our 2002 automobile. The new technology is clearly better. I can’t get over how quickly batches of water-bath canning jars come to temperature and boil. Our clothes get cleaner as well. All of this took time in May. We are over the hump, fingers crossed.

The acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk created turbulence in my social media space. The main change is I notice more trolls. I know to block them without question, yet it is an annoyance. I tried Mastodon, Post, and Spoutible and none of them fills the same need as Twitter. Mastodon was too complicated with their decentralized server model. Spoutible and Post have a lot of nice people, yet the depth of relationship is lacking and may become an issue. The other legacy social media accounts (Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook) are doing what they do without issue.

There wasn’t a lot to write about in Iowa Politics this spring. Republicans in the legislature had super majorities and could and did pass what they wanted. The trouble for a political blog writer is getting a handle on the changes and creating an approach that makes sense while Democrats are in the minority. One would have thought logic and reason would be the path, yet no. Republicans now take legislative action based on tropes and whims from the great beyond. To use logic serves their misinformation purposes. Building a story board will require more effort than usual as we prepare for the 2024 and 2026 elections.

Lack of rain is concerning. The Midwestern garden relies upon a consistent amount of rainfall spaced at predictable intervals. As the atmosphere and our oceans warm, more moisture is stored in the atmosphere. Rainfall we were used to became the exception rather than something upon which gardeners can rely. It leaves us with the unpredictability of life. When the dry spell breaks, we can breathe easier, at least for a little while.

Categories
Environment

As Light Falls

Lake Macbride from the North Shore Trail, May 27, 2023

Morning light illuminated this peninsula on Lake Macbride during my walk. One never knows how a multi-function mobile device will capture a photograph. I’m pleased with the results of this one.

The hard part is breaking away from preoccupations on a trail walk, to be aware of our surroundings enough to notice how light falls on the landscape. The results can be liberating. If the image comes out well, it’s a bonus. Increasingly, I seek the light on excursions off property.

Five of seven garden plots are planted, meaning I am running behind. Reasons have to do with weather, and with the pace at which I work. A five or six-hour shift with breaks every hour is what I can muster. Progress is steady, yet slow. Gardening is a tolerant activity and whatever one can do is better than the alternative. I do what I can.

Already there is a harvest. Leafy green vegetables, lettuce, spring onions, radishes, and herbs. I mixed fresh greens with last year’s frozen ones to make spring vegetable broth for canning. It is time to use up the freezer to make room for the new harvest. Spring broth is always best so I noted the month on the lids.

I forgot potatoes at the wholesale store so I drove to town on Saturday. My neighbor, who owns the grocery store, was there and he thanked me for the San Marzano tomato seedlings I gave him. I had extra. The grocery store wasn’t busy. Organized locals got their Memorial Day weekend shopping done by Friday. We had a good chat about tomatoes, gardening, and people in the community. The value of the trip was no small potatoes, although I got some of those, too.

My spouse is at her sister’s home for the week, so I’m on my own. As I age, I dislike being alone. While freedom to cook how I like is a perquisite of her absence, meal preparation takes only a small part of each day.

Today is the annual firefighters breakfast in town and I plan to open it up then move on to garden and yard tasks before the ambient temperature gets too hot. If all goes well, I’ll mulch tomatoes (which means mowing the lawn), build a brush pile, and trim around the foundation of the home to prepare the spot for the new air conditioner.

The flags are up at Oakland Cemetery, signifying local veterans who died. The Memorial Day service moved to the new veterans memorial in town. I’ll stop by the cemetery on my way to breakfast and see how light falls on the graves and flags. I know many of the names. I was active with many of them when they were living. That, too is part of aging in America.

Flags at Oakland Cemetery