An early reader of my autobiography asked about this paragraph.
When I was born, Davenport was already a tired town. I hadn’t realized it, of course, because my family life was positive and supportive. I felt I could be anything I wanted, and this notion was reinforced once I started school. I grew up in a time of hope, despite challenges. We had vague knowledge of Davenport’s beginnings. I came to believe while being from there, I was not of there. (An Iowa Life by Paul Deaton).
“I am most surprised by your statement that you did not believe you were ‘of there.’ Looking for more explanation here,” they wrote.
In response, I wrote:
My mother and father brought a defined culture with them when they moved to Davenport and I was born. I came up in that culture, which for Mother was based in rural Illinois where she was born, and for Father, it was in western Virginia. In going through the history for this book, it occurred to me that I did not experience any culture indigenous to Eastern Iowa, but rather what my parents brought with them and lived. Yes, I was from Davenport, but not a person who grew up in a culture that was local. I contrast that with Provincial France where people are a literal extension of the soil, the sea, and the air. Mine was a distinctly American experience. (Letter to a friend, Sept. 6, 2025).
When I re-write the book, which I will once its companion is finished, I plan to add this explanation. As long as we live in a consumer society where the work to produce our lives lies in places, corporations, and people with whom we have no relationship, except for a commercial transaction, we cannot be of there, much though we yearn to be.
Green slime on the state park lake due to over-application of nitrogen in the watershed.
Weeds will grow anywhere in Iowa with open ground. I use plastic fabric to suppress weeds in the garden, yet a weed will find even the tiniest pinprick, plant itself, and grow. The purpose of weeding is to favor one side in the competition among plant life and improve crop yields.
This post isn’t proceeding how I thought it would. I am from an agricultural state, so when I think of weeds, I think of how it impacts row crops, corn and soybeans. I feel obliged to discuss that first.
On Sunday crop dusters flew over the house most of the day. It’s time to spray pesticides and herbicides, I guess. In 2024 Iowa corn yield was 211 bushels per acre according to the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship. According to Farm Progress, failure to control weeds, especially early in the crop cycle can lead to anywhere from 20-40 fewer bushels per acre. When the corn is taller, and has established a canopy, competing weeds can reduce yields by about 3 bushels per acre for every day they are left uncontrolled, according to Iowa State University. Corn farmers live on tight margins, so they usually don’t hesitate with a generous application of glyphosate. Those 20-40 bushels can mean the difference between a good year and a bad one.
I have been reading Chris Jones’ book The Swine Republic. In the way the universe sometimes comes together, Monday morning’s reading happened to be the chapters on glyphosate and Dicamba, two herbicides widely used in Iowa. I was already writing this weedy post, so it added a certain something to my mood. This isn’t the rabbit hole I intended when I began.
I would use the weed paradigm differently. Whenever I enter the room where most of my artifacts live, they compete for attention. By getting rid of some, they would be out, freeing me to follow the vein of an idea where it may lead without distraction. Part of me doesn’t mind the diversions. Empirical me understands I only have so much time left on this jumping green sphere and I’d better make the best use of it.
I should weed out things of marginal interest to the broader thrust of my work. I don’t want to. My wants and urges have little to do with logic. They arise from a complex experience of a life that seldom conformed to social norms for their own sake. This is part of what makes me unique. Unwillingness to execute a plan to downsize possessions is a feature of my creative life, not a problem. Rational me understands the house will explode if we try to fit much more in it. Creative me says if it will, let it explode and we’ll see how it unfolds.
When I’m in the garden I pull weeds as I go. This is especially important as soon as seeds germinate and emerge from the soil. Like the corn farmer, I know this is the time to eliminate competition for nutrients, light and space. It is better to do it before seedlings emerge. I do what I can to produce a bountiful harvest. My creative issue is the seedlings in my life emerged long ago and have grown to become part of the living landscape. Weeding the stuff would create a new way of seeing. What if I don’t like it?
Maybe I’ll feel better about weeding my stuff after I finish the autobiography.
Anyway. It’s time to set all that aside and get to weeding. We can’t take it with us and don’t want to leave a big mess for my heirs to clean up.
It was hot and humid outdoors all day Tuesday. I managed a hike on the state park trail between thunderstorms. A little after 10 a.m. I drove across the lakes to the wholesale club to secure provisions. My usual three-pound can of generic Colombian coffee had increased to $20.99 from $13.99 the last time I stocked up, a 50 percent price increase. The tariff on Brazilian coffee goes into effect on August 1, after which it will cost even more. I did not replenish inventory at $20.99.
At the end of June, I replaced the whole house water filter. Yesterday I sat down to order a replacement and the new price was $20.19. In February I bought the exact same part for $13.40, a 51% increase in 5 months. I only get two of these per year but this increase and others like it will make household financial management more difficult. It is a preview of what life under the oligarchs will be like.
The garden has me distracted from work on my autobiography. There is so much produce to process, there seems little time for anything else. To preserve the harvest, immediate action is required, so writing is pushed back. In the annual cycle of my life, this is a feature, not a bug. Our lives would be the worse without the garden.
Hours in the kitchen enable my thinking about life and writing about it. I am certain I have at least one more book in me as the urge to write an autobiography has been with me as long as I can remember. At its core, writing autobiography is part of a life well lived. Once I finish and get a copyright, what then?
I envision creating a new document, using the first two books as a base, to which I add autobiographical information and stories. The published books will stand on their own as moments in time, yet my story will continue to evolve as long as I live. Part of it is finding aspects forgotten during the first telling. Part of it is recording new insights on the same stories already told. It will be a continuous work in progress that may never be published the same way again. It will be a never ending memoir.
There are other books I imagine publishing. The most obvious one is collections of my essays first published on this blog. There is enough here to make a book about local food. There is another about sustainability. While I’ll cover the coronavirus pandemic in part two of my autobiography, there is a much longer story to tell about its impacts on my life and on society more generally. That story is just being revealed. Whether I get to any of this is an open question.
For now, I continue to process fruit and vegetables so we’ll have something for our dinner plate long after the frost comes in October. As the harvest winds down, I’ll work again on my memoir. I still hope to finish the draft by the end of year holidays.
Sunday morning I picked green beans because they were ready. About 20 minutes into the task I was drenched in sweat. With a forecast high of 89 degrees it became clear it would be another indoors day. Once again, I escaped into my two favorite spots in the house: my writing table and the kitchen.
After finishing chores I sat at the desktop and finished my post for yesterday. I also exchanged emails with a friend with whom I am doing this event.
We met in person on Friday and have the idea of talking about why we write books at the end of the time. We are curious about how attendees get information about complex topics. Do they read books to do so? Should be a good conversation.
I am into the second volume of my autobiography and she is into her third, so that’s the origin of that. She sent along a quote about why we write from Nairobi Williese Barnes that said, “(we write) to shift the conversation, challenge harmful narratives, and encourage accountability in the ways we support and uplift one another.” I don’t disagree with that sentiment.
She quoted me back from my own writing from posts on this blog:
So we write, partly to clarify our thinking, and partly to satisfy our need to reach out to others and express the value of our lives, one life among the billions of people walking on the planet. Whether anyone reads or understands our writing is not the point, although we hope they do.
Why am I writing here, in public? Part of it is self-expression, a basic human need. Part is using language to understand complex social behavior. …. Defining a broader moral lesson is the challenge as the memoir progresses.
There are few finer things on this jumping green sphere than writing about writing, especially with a friend.
I made it to the kitchen at about noon and endeavored to get busy. I started with doing the dishes. More accurately, I started with the laundry. On the last Sunday of each month I launder my bed sheets and catch up on other laundry that accumulated. This took a bit of time out of kitchen work as I did five loads. I managed to make what I call “minced salad.” That is summer vegetables suitable for eating raw diced into one eighth inch cubes and mixed together with extra virgin olive oil and apple cider vinegar. I season with salt yet the seasoning possibilities are endless. It came out well.
The garden is about finished with zucchini. I modified my zucchini bread recipe, substituting applesauce for the oil, and by wringing the water out of the zucchini with a towel. It is to set for 2-3 hours before cutting so I haven’t tasted it. It appears to have had the desired effect which was to decrease the moisture in the loaf and reduce cooking time. It should be good.
Zucchini bread baked on July 27, 2025.
The benefit of these activities is I can shut out the rest of the world and focus on our family. We need more time doing that. It is a way to go on living in turbulent times.
Donation to the community food pantry on July 14, 2025.
Writing can be divided into two large categories: public and private. Most of us spend time in each domain. The obvious difference between public and private writing has to do with audience. Most of what I write is for public consumption, which means I have a responsibility to use logic, facts, and verifiable truth as tools to make my language more effective. This blog is public writing, as are letters to the editors of newspapers, and the books I am writing. Private writing includes journals, emails and letters, and to some extent, exchanges on private servers. Public writing is my main concern.
Why am I writing here, in public? Part of it is self-expression, a basic human need. Part is using language to understand complex social behavior. There was a time — thinking of 1974 — when I hoped to influence the direction of society. That is, I assumed society had a direction and momentum that would improve how we live. To some extent, that outlook continues in published letters and on this blog. I am no longer sure of the role of individuals in this.
To effect change in 2025 society, it seems clear it takes a broader, more diverse movement. Movements need a voice, yet not only one. The democratization of expression has given everyone who wants it a voice in the public square. We may not like what we read and see, yet in the end, democratization of expression is a net positive. The 500-1,000 word essay is a perfect medium for working through ideas. That’s one reason I’m here after beginning this blog in 2007.
Book writing presents a special challenge. In autobiography one hopes to depict a personal history with some verifiable accuracy. There is also a didactic principle at work. The example of a single life may have broader meaning in the culture and that is what we hope. At least that’s the goal of my longer works. It became evident this week there is much to do to make my autobiographical work more meaningful beyond my circle of friends and family.
I opened part two of my autobiography and started reading from the beginning. I have been writing forward, without looking back, since the beginning of the year… to the tune of 86,728 words. The idea was to get a story down and return to edit. There is a lot of editing to do, in addition to new writing. I hope to finish the book by year’s end, yet don’t want to finish just to finish. The narrative should mean something beyond personal reminisces. Defining a broader moral lesson is the challenge as the memoir progresses. Simply put, working through that is why I’m here.
The year is half done and it’s time to check the compass to see if I’m heading the right direction. Maps will be required, so I got out some of my favorite ones and considered where I’ve been and where I might go from here at mid-year. This process isn’t really scientific.
I know the region of Fulda, Germany as well as I know Big Grove Township, probably better. Getting out the same old maps is comforting… a reprise of what is possible in a life. It’s a fit thing to do on a Saturday as June ends and the days get shorter. It is easier to chart a course by knowing where we’ve been.
Saturday mornings do not mean the same thing they did. When I was a grader, Saturday meant taking the city bus to downtown, paying my newspaper bill, and eating at the automat in the department store or at the Woolworth’s lunch counter. I often hung out until the movie theaters opened for a 25-cent matinee. It was an outrage when the price increased to 35, then 50 cents. At university, Saturdays meant time to catch up on studies and enjoy the quiet while everyone else attended a home sporting event. After university, as I entered the work force, Saturdays were a time to relax for a few hours before heading into a work place. I rarely worked only five days in a week, especially in the military and after beginning work in transportation and logistics. When I retired, it got increasingly difficult to tell one day from the other without looking at a calendar. The meaning of Saturdays eroded, although hope for meaning persists.
This Saturday morning began with a restless night. I woke just after midnight and finished reading the current book. I couldn’t get back to sleep so I got up just before 2 a.m., did my exercises, and made coffee to start my day. I finished my to-do list, made refrigerator pickles with yesterday’s harvest, and then went back to bed just before dawn. After a couple hours sleep, I got up again, turned the coffee warmer back on and went for my normal daily hike along the state park trail. There were a lot of people on the trail, dressed in brightly colored workout clothing. While I didn’t know many of them, it felt like being part of a community. The only ones who did not say “hi” back were men with earbuds distracted from nature’s beautiful morning.
It was going to be another hot afternoon, so I got to work soon after arriving back home. I changed into my overalls and mowed the ditch, which likely burned more calories than the trail hike. I worked for a while in the garden and then headed inside to take a shower and got out my compass.
Writing. I’m back to work on the second volume of my autobiography. The main task is to set aside a couple of daily hours for new research and writing. When we moved to Big Grove Township, our child was eight. I’m enjoying reconstruction of what our lives together were like during the time before they entered college. This part is pleasurable to remember and write about.
Reading. I read 43 books in the first six months. This year is different in that I am interfacing more with the public library. In addition to saving money on buying books, the range of my reading increased. The public library makes it easy to see what new books are being shelved, and the wait-time to borrow a copy of something in which I find interest is usually short. I even recommended a couple of books for purchase and without exception, the library did buy them. I hope there will be more of that ahead.
As owner of thousands of books, there are already plenty of them in the house to read. My best hope is to find work related to my autobiography and put them at the front of the reading queue. Part of me wants a process for picking the next book. Part of me wants to leave the choice full of whimsy and spontaneity.
Physical Condition. Improving my physical condition is a must. I lost 20 pounds of weight since January 1, and according to the doctor I need to lose a lot more. 30 minutes of brisk daily walking has been good. Working in the garden has also been positive. When the garden season began, I could hardly get up from being down on my knees. Now, I don’t even think about it and get right up when I am finished with something. The key changes this year were the increased physical activity combined with tracking how much I eat in an application. There are issues with the app, but it does help me stay focused on what I am feeding myself. The result has been a slow, steady weight loss since I began using it. I don’t see anything changing in the next six months. If I continue as I have been doing I could reach target weight before the end of the year.
Kitchen Garden. In addition to making vegetable broth, pesto and pickles, I’m looking to stock the pantry and freezer with produce I grow myself. This year looks to be a big apple year, so I need to save energy to process and stock up on related products. Garden abundance will guide my efforts here. I need to go with the flow.
Working in the Garage. Working on the Indiana section of my autobiography has me reprising this activity. I put the flag up over the garage door and work outside with creative impulse, modeled on what I did in Indiana when our child was living at home and entering school. It’s not the same as then, yet it is a form of nostalgia in which I am not afraid to indulge. More of that in the coming months. In many ways, it reflects who I am.
Curating Artifacts. It is incumbent on septuagenarians to cull the good from the not so good as far as souvenirs, photographs, books, clothing, tools, supplies, and everything else accumulated in a lifetime so those left when we pass on don’t have to deal with them. I admire Mother for doing this in the final years of her life. The photographs are the hard part. Spending time with a batch of 50 images should take ten minutes or less. Invariably it can turn into a several hour project because of the way memory is invoked. If I did one thing in the rest of 2025, it would be to develop a process that allows memories to arise from the well of lived human experience, and then find a different home for 90 percent of my artifacts. That merits some time.
Financial Stability. We depend on pensions and there is a known problem with Social Security. I wrote about this in 2017, and while the date changes along with the program, politicians have not done much to address this gap, then forecast in 2034. The Congress should address this now, although there is little visible interest in doing so. Senators like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have a plan. The Congress needs to take the issue up and fix the program. That or tell us to get screwed now.
As Saturday morning turned to afternoon I felt recovered from a restless night. For the time being I can afford health care and medical visits, improve my eating habits, and get on with my writing. In many ways, the second volume of my autobiography will be the high water mark. Once I finish writing it, I plan to edit both books for publication and get them out there as ebooks and paper books, using one of the services. I know the way to accomplish this, so I can put away my maps until needed again. I’m not ready to get rid of them.
Before dawn it was 78 degrees Fahrenheit. I went for a hike before the sun came up and beat the daytime heat. It will be the kind of heat they were talking about in the Bible… namely, Hell. A couple groups of joggers were out with me, one running by flashlight. We locals often have the same ideas if there are different interpretations of illumination.
I went to the clinic for a blood test this morning. A technician was working on the entryway. Looked like he was installing a new security system. He asked, “How are you?” I responded, “That depends upon what the doctor says.” Well… he left himself open to that old-time joke.
The university remodeled the waiting room. They removed almost everything except the seats, replaced those and increased the capacity to 13. They included two double-wides, not that anyone in our area needs one of those. They must have high hopes. That or standard practices that make no sense out in the country. I noted they made me wear a wrist band. Not like I would get mixed up with anyone else at my early morning appointment. They did use it to scan me after the blood was drawn.
When I was checking out, the person at the window said my current physician is moving to Coralville. Did I want to follow him, they asked? I said I wanted to continue to visit the local clinic, where I have been going since 1993. They changed my appointment to be with the new practitioner. I should have asked whether it was a physician or some other type. Guess it doesn’t matter for my kind of common maladies.
I made a list of outdoors work for after the clinic, but the only thing I did was spray the cruciferous vegetable patch with DiPel which is made of bacillus thuringiensis, a common pesticide used by organic growers. Everything else will have to wait until the heat wave moves on. According to our post-DOGE weather report, it looks like it is heading east and we may break loose by tomorrow. Who knows, though.
Importantly, I have returned to writing. I wrote a chapter with a career update, then turned to my real interest: remembering our time as a family when we moved from Indiana to Big Grove Township. I can tell it will be a good summer for writing.
Wild Blackberries ripening around Independence Day.
On July 2, 1995, when our child was ten years old, the two of us rode our bikes to Solon on the state park trail. We read the newspaper and ate breakfast at the Country Café. On the way home we stopped to pick wild blackberries growing along the trail. I made blackberry jam with some of them. It was hard not to eat them all as we picked them.
We then rode to watch the Freedom Festival regatta by the public boat landing. The sky was clear blue with a few cumulus clouds. Sails billowed in a breeze imperceptible from the shore.
Summer days like that are a reminder life is always just beginning. We live in each moment yet look forward to every new day with the hope that positive things will take place. Chance plays a role, although we must be active agents in making our future the best it can be.
Big Grove Township was established before Iowa Statehood. The first sawmill was built here in 1839 by Anthony Sells on Mill Creek. Put the big groves of trees together with the sawmill and you have us. The oak, walnut, hickory, ash, elm and cottonwood that once thrived among numerous pure springs were gone when we bought our lot here. What dominates is the culture we and others brought with us to an area where all trees indigenous to the Northwest once existed in abundance yet no longer do. There is something essentially American in that. We moved to Big Grove Township in August 1993.
There is a subdivision named Mill Creek today, suggesting this history. Throughout the area, people refer to early settlers and builders of homes instead of the people who now own those homes and live in them. The names Cerny, Beuter, Andrews and Brown persist, as does the more recent name of Don Kasparek upon whose former farm our home is situated.
On the vacant lot we purchased, there were scrub grasses and a lone mulberry tree. The tree appeared to have been planted by a bird’s droppings while it perched on a surveyor’s re-bar marker. The ground had a high clay content which suggested Kasparek had removed the topsoil before subdividing the plats. When he died in 2003, I recognized him in our association newsletter. We speak of him from time to time in the neighborhood, although not always in a positive way.
I looked at an old picture of a building on Main Street in Solon, the nearest city. In sepia tones, seven teams of horses and wagons are lined up in front of the building on the dirt street. We can make out the lettering on the shop windows: Cerny Bros Grocery, Cerny Bros Hardware, and Cerny Bros Feed. While the roads have been paved for many years, much of downtown and the surrounding area resonates with the area’s origins in history before automobiles.
We built our home during the record-breaking floods of 1993. Governor Terry Branstad described the extreme weather event as “the worst natural disaster in our state’s history.” At one point that summer, it rained 50 out of 55 days. The Des Moines Register published a commemorative book titled Iowa’s Lost Summer: The Flood of 1993. Extreme weather delayed construction of our home that summer, causing us to stay with relatives and in motels for about a month after we moved from our house in Indiana. We finally moved in, the same day technicians were hooking up electricity and cable television. I was used to severe flooding from growing up in Davenport where the 1965 Mississippi River flood broke records. I was not used to flooding, 1993-style.
I couldn’t believe who I was expressed itself in any of local history. My culture was what I brought with me, rooted in coal mining, factory workers, farming, home making, and the rural cultures of Virginia, Minnesota and Illinois. Our history as a family goes back on both Jacque and my families to the Revolutionary War. My line in Virginia goes a hundred years prior to the revolution. This seemed to have little relevance to local culture in Iowa.
That my ancestor Thomas Jefferson Addington is a common ancestor to the Salyer girls of the Salyer-Lee Chapter 1417 of the United Daughters of the Confederacy stands in contrast to the story of Maciej Nadolski working in coal mines in Allegheny, Pennsylvania after the Civil War and then buying land from the railroad in Minnesota. What of my father’s birth in Glamorgan, Virginia? What of the suppression of Polish culture by the Russians after 1865 that led to a massive migration of Poles to North America? If I weren’t here, we wouldn’t speak much of these things in Big Grove Township. Perhaps with time we will.
Dear Dennis,
The pioneer spirit! So much of popular culture lauds these people. Their hard work, and inquisitiveness have been amalgamated into a hagiographic portrait: the very founders of modern society. I take exception to this, rather, the importance and interest of the pioneers is over-emphasized. They struck new settlements in the wilderness, stayed 3-5 years, then sold out to move to Kentucky, then Indiana, then Iowa, then beyond. Restless, not enduring, their influence has been too much. I’d rather look at those who followed in their footsteps. Those who took the broken wilderness and made something of it, in many places the wilderness is, figuratively, still broken, transients residing there, waiting development. (Letter to Dennis Brunning, April 19, 1986).
If the 1980s was a time of our getting started, the 1990s were a time of work and supporting our family. We saved for our child’s college, and for our retirement. During the flood, we established ourselves. The time here was one of making a career and making time for family. We bought the home we could afford, and proceeded to fill it with boxes of stuff, many of which we do not now have a clue about what is inside. We are working on that as I write.
We took vacations, supported our child in high school activities, and took them to college. I worked for the income but took two long hiatus periods because of a nagging dissatisfaction. I had a retirement party and a cake in July 2009. We had been able to establish a financial foundation that, while not luxurious, was okay. All three of us were trying to make our way in a world that did not appear to care whether we succeeded or failed. I believed we were succeeding.
Iowa was one of the last areas settled by horse and wagons. If the United States is provincial when compared to the cultural centers of Europe, what then of us, twice removed from Europe? New York and Washington seem as removed as Paris and Bonn. So, culture in Iowa, even as we sit in Big Grove Township is not an indigenous thing. It is derivative, just as the language I write in is English. What I do, and experience from that point of view is indeed, as so many have said, provincial. But what about this? I cannot say because my life is based on study of western civilization. My view is it is no less pure, and beautiful and useful than the rigid cultures of Europe or the East Coast of the United States.
When I wrote journals, they were not the kind written by Samuel Pepys, or Henry Adams. They do follow journal forms as they came down. To say something new, and private: a creation in its own right. That’s what my writing was about. If it accomplishes nothing more than the calming of a Sunday afternoon, then it will have been of some use.
Creativity in Iowa often takes something of outside origin and incorporates it into a new creation, that is fed from the soil yet showing the genetic traces of the ancestor. This journal might be recognized as something it is not by an easterner or a European. Though nature has presented what it will, we must and will nurture nature’s presentation to our own new, creative intentions. I did not recognize this as we moved to Big Grove Township in 1993, yet that’s how things evolved.
By Aug. 6, I had begun journaling again:
I stopped keeping a journal some time ago. But now, in the basement of our unfinished house I take pen to paper and begin it anew. Here, in Johnson County, I hope for good things to take place.
I notice now… the ringing in my ears, the sounds of birds, and a car now and then driving in front of the house. It is a quiet place. There is much to do to make it a productive place. (Personal Journal, Big Grove Township, Aug. 6, 1993).
In late Spring 2025, while I’m digging in a garden plot or walking on the trail, my mind is consumed by how to pull everything in my autobiography together and bring the narrative to a close. Up to the time we moved back to Iowa, a chronological narrative seemed appropriate. Beginning here, in this place that was a vacant lot when we arrived, life got complex to an extent a time-based narrative doesn’t really capture those 32 years. There was no single narrative. And so it shall be in these closing chapters of this book.
It’s been a good spring. The cruciferous vegetable patch has been coming along nicely. If it continues, there should be plenty of home grown kale and collards for the coming year until next year’s crop comes in. Hopefully everything else in that plot will mature for harvest.
Cruciferous vegetable plot.
I’ve been able to exercise daily with a brisk walk on the state park trail. I’m moderating what I eat using an app to track calories. I shed 15 pounds of weight this spring. I am eating better food in appropriate quantities. Between the exercise and change in eating habits, I feel better.
The trail goes on forever.
Today I plan to catch up on work around the house and make a trip to the wholesale club. Tomorrow I re-start summer writing. Here’s hoping for a memorable summer.
Don’t forget. Today is Juneteenth! Happy Juneteenth to all who celenrate. That should be every American.
Journey Home 
You must be logged in to post a comment.