Swiss chard and collards donated to the North Liberty Food Pantry.
After an overnight trip to Chicago to visit family and friends, I’m ready to begin summer writing. Ideas have been percolating all spring. It’s time to get them down and make something of them.
I enjoy the Chicago suburbs of Oak Park, Skokie, and Forest Park where I have been spending more time the last couple of years. It is remarkable how from the ground it looks exactly like you’d expect after seeing it countless times while taking off from and landing at O’Hare and Midway. I stayed with someone who lived his whole life in close proximity to where he was raised in Oak Park.
The main summer writing challenge is determining a schedule. I want to get into the garden early in the day to weed and harvest. I don’t want to spend all my energy there. I plan to shake up my daily outline and routines. The re-engineering process should be fun, and easy to accomplish by Friday.
Tuesday morning I took excess chard and collards to the food pantry. The receiver told me, “Those will go fast.” I always feel good when I donate produce I grew for food insecure people.
There are a lot of positives in the waning days of spring. If we can only take the time to recognize them.
It’s been two weeks since I opened my draft autobiography. With the end of garden planting in sight, it’s time to turn back to that work. When I read what I’ve already written it seems like magic. Who wrote all of that? Me. It was me, as unlikely as that sounds.
There are a few kinds of writing on this blog and I’ll be considering them as I go about another day in the garden. The last few weeks have been what I would call “moment capture writing”: I write about a significant event that happened in a few, brief paragraphs and move on. In many ways, these are my favorite posts to read because they tell of moments in my life that might otherwise be forgotten.
Hannah Ritchie wrote a Substack post called “Under-the-hood of writing on Substack.” In it she opines about the type of writing that’s needed on Substack (or blogs). She wrote:
If you do have some tolerance for criticism and have ideas to share, I’d tell you to consider doing longer-form writing. By “longer-form” I just mean more than social media posts or comments; 1,000 to 2,000 words that lets you craft a narrative and explain your thoughts with nuance.
This reflects my blog-writing approach. I’m almost always working through some intellectual puzzle. More on that later. For the moment I must use the last remnants of a very warm night to take care of indoor chores so I can get out to the garden after sunrise.
Six quarts of vegetable broth. The spring version helps clean out the freezer.
While working in the garden, hiking on the trail, cooking, or resting, I’m thinking about my return to writing once the garden is planted. It is particularly important to finish the second book this year and then decide whether or not to put both books in places where people can buy them in 2026. Having a schedule is part of the process. Doing the actual writing is another.
I mentioned that a chronological narrative beginning with arrival in Big Grove Township is not appropriate to this part of my autobiography. On May 25, I wrote:
Up to the time we moved back to Iowa in 1993, 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.
There are some stories I want to tell. Family life after the move back to Iowa is important. My work in transportation and logistics after 1993 covered a lot of territory, yet I want to reduce this to some major stories along with a summary of all I did after returning to Big Grove. Work has been important in my life, so a long chapter about that is in the offing. Becoming empty nesters was a profound change and that merits its own chapter. There was a long period when our child lived in Colorado and Florida, which made frequent visits difficult. My work in environmental activism, on the board of health and in the local food system all are worthy topics with personal meaning. When the money ran out in 2013, and how I coped with that seems important. There is a lot here, yet a lot gets left out by covering these topics. Sorting through all this has been on my mind.
Another writing-related thing is answering the question, What to do about Substack? I don’t post frequently there, but when I do, I get a lot of organic views, more than I do here. Now that the print service I was using to make hard copies of this blog went out of business, I haven’t found a suitable replacement, and maybe it is a good time to move. More on this topic as the summer continues.
Editor’s Note: Still planting the garden and making short posts as I can. It won’t be long before I’m back to normal posting.
I was sidetracked by being a grease monkey for 90 minutes at the beginning of my outdoors shift. When I removed the wheel to replace the tractor tire, I did not realize the role the key plays. It uses friction to to keep the wheel turning as gears engage and turn the axle. No key, no movement.
I started the tractor and put it in reverse: nothing. A couple of YouTube videos later I understood what was wrong, retrieved the key I discarded from the trash and reassembled everything. The grease on my hands won’t come out using special soap, so I will have to wear it off. I drove the tractor to mow a patch in the garden… good as new.
My father eschewed being a grease monkey and encouraged me to find a different way to make a living. Toward the end of his life he was assigned duties as a forklift operator in the meat packing plant. He made a point of wearing decent clothing as he hauled pallets of meat around the warehouse. Decent meant a minimum of homemade repairs. His message was we could rise above the quotidian circumstances in which we came up and found ourselves. He graduated from college at age 40 as an example.
I was glad to resolve the issue created by mounting the wheel improperly. I resisted an urge to call the repair shop and ask them. I just solved the problem using tools available. Self reliance is essential if we will survive the authoritarian regime in Washington, D.C. We need to save our money for more important things like taxes, food, shelter, clothing, and healthcare. Today’s political trends have me living closer to the means of production. That’s a good thing.
Editor’s Note: I finished planting most of plot #3 on Wednesday. I’m waiting for the hot peppers to mature before transplanting them into the final row. Next step is preparing a tomato patch. In the meanwhile, my posts here will be shorter than normal. I do plan to return to “normal” at some point after the garden is in.
Taking time from writing my autobiography is not a clean break. While I’m digging in a garden plot or walking on the trail, my mind is consumed by how to pull everything together and bring the work to a close. Up to the time we moved back to Iowa in 1993, 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.
Thanks to another low-wind, warmish, and dry day I had time to myself to consider the bigger picture of what I am writing. That and get the next big plot turned over. Well, by the time I finished this, I had turned it over with a spade:
Plot No. 3 spaded.
I read Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes by Leah Litman this week. She points out how the U.S. Supreme Court takes more and more power unto itself without substantial resistance from the other two branches of government. While today the president is ignoring some of their decisions, whether there has been a Democrat or Republican as president, the Supreme Court is calling the shots in society through jurisprudence, according to Litman. (Major questions doctrine = good grief!) The attention hound of a president distracts from this very real center of power among the six Republican-appointed justices. If you are following the U.S. Government in 2025, consider picking up a copy and reading it. It informs what is going on in the news in real time. Few books I know are like that.
Today is the fire fighters’ breakfast at the fire station. The menu is simple, but not vegan or particularly vegetarian. I’ll go for my annual dose of pancakes and orange juice. I expect to encounter many I know so it’s not so much about the food. It’s about joining together as a community. We need that now more than ever.
Editor’s Note: I’m still on short posts while I focus on the garden. I have three main plots to go to call it planted. Wish me luck!
This photo does no justice to the color of the Iris, yet it is close. So I try.
It was hella windy the last two days. Forecast was gusts up to 50 m.p.h. Friday night, so I brought seedlings and the portable greenhouse into the garage for shelter. Today looks better.
Happy Sunday!
Editor’s Note: Another short post while I focus on the garden. Thanks for sticking with me.
Photo by Jessica Lewis ud83eudd8b thepaintedsquare on Pexels.com
It’s time to shift gears and focus on getting the garden planted. That means my long streak of daily posts may break. I’m okay with that.
The rest of May will be devoted mainly to gardening.
Making a daily post to prime the writing pump has worked. I added 20,000 words to the book draft since the streak began. Thing is, if I don’t get a garden in in May, there won’t be much of one.
So, shovel in hand, off I go. I hope to get the work done so I can return to posting more regularly.
Larry Pippins died Dec. 2, 2017. Photo Credit – E.J. Fielding Funeral Home and Cremation Services website.
We were at home talking about some of my Army buddies and turned to my friend Larry Pippins. I Googled him and found he died on Dec. 2, 2017, after an 18-month battle with ALS. I hadn’t known. May he rest in peace.
Larry was born three days before me in 1951. I picked this photo from the funeral home site because the way he is standing and the shape of his hands remind me of how I knew him in Germany where we met. I could imagine standing next to him and taking a burger from the tray.
Larry was born in Pensacola, Florida, one of the few native Floridians I have known. He was a male of the South and enjoyed fishing, hunting, kayaking, drinking whisky and vodka, as well as many other activities.
He and his first wife split soon after they left Germany. I stayed in touch with them both until the 1980s. Together they lived in a German castle near Heidesheim that had been subdivided into apartments. I remember more than one overnighter sleeping on the flokati rug they had in the living room. One time, after too much drinking, they had to have it laundered. Those were the days.
We were in the infantry, although he changed his MOS (military occupational specialty) to military police soon after leaving Germany. When we were together, I said the changes we experienced were to transition the military from being prepared for jungle warfare in Vietnam to fighting a war over oil in the Middle East. As so, there we were. He was deployed to the Middle East to support Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. I kept a photograph of Larry with a postcard he sent from Desert Shield framed and with a yellow ribbon on it in our Indiana living room until the war was over.
When Larry was accepted to Ranger School I shipped all the fatigues I had left from my service to him to use while in training. Finishing Ranger School was a high point for him at the time. After graduation, he didn’t think Ranger School was all it was cracked up to being. Not a complete waste of time, but close.
When I was living as a writer in Iowa City in 1981, he sent me an audio cassette in which he admonished me to re-join the military. I did not. We fell out of touch after he invited me to attend a change of command ceremony down South and I couldn’t. We hadn’t had a good conversation since we last met in Chicago in the early 1980s.
We spent so much time together in the military and then after leaving our first assignments we corresponded in the days before the internet and email. Tonight I’ll say a prayer for my Army buddy. He lived a decent life full of friends and family. He made something of himself. He was something.
There is an obvious, intentional flight among journalists and others from working at a news organization to producing a newsletter. Many use the platform Substack, yet there are others. They all can attract viewers, and importantly, have a subscription component that can generate revenue. What they do not do is replace the collaboration of working for a newspaper. Substackers are on their own.
On the road to perdition, this seems the next evolution of journalism. It is littered with potholes and pavement cracks. It has all the aspects of a do-it-yourself, one-person start up. There usually is no editor except the author, unless one is lucky enough to join with others to build some basic, on-the-cheap infrastructure. Call it a newspaper, only without union employees or a big fancy building like the Des Moines Register used to occupy. If a writer misses an issue, they may not get paid, yet there is no blank front page to be concerned about. Newsletters are not redemption for the failings of news organizations. They fracture and fragment news gathering and reduce it down to one-person experiences broadcast on a semi-regular basis. There is value in that, yet it’s not the same by a distance.
Ana Marie Cox wrote on Monday, “Some of the best writing out there is from writers striking out on their own.” That may be so, yet what the proliferation of newsletters has done is enable focus on writers readers like to learn from and leave the rest behind. It is easy to build a silo out of newsletters we like, further breaking down the view that a diversity of writers and opinions is of value. The pressures of today’s society and the changing role of media makes us hunker down into our silos and that is not a positive thing.
“(The exodus from legacy journalism) has created something that it is so personality- and brand-driven, so geared to the success of one person at a time, it scares me,” Cox wrote. “Newsletters are atomizing. They incentivize speed and volume. The newsletter ecosystem isn’t built to support doing big things, or doing things slowly, or doing things collectively. Or doing big things collectively, slowly.”
I get most of my news from one of four sources: newspapers, newsletters, emails, and the social media platform BlueSky. Importantly, I seek news sources that are grounded in the human experiences of the author. Such experience comes at a cost, and newspapers seek to drive out costs by using content from sources like The Associated Press, or in some cases by using artificial intelligence to fill a page. When cost concerns trump personal experience, what is called news becomes less engaging, less worth following.
Newsletter writers try to make it on subscriptions, yet it can be a tough row to hoe. Writers know they need more than a newsletter on their financial platform to live a life. Part of the risk of writing an article is it can be a dud. Without the infrastructure of a news organization, that means less pay for the time spent on the article. As a long-time blogger, I realize the benefit of producing posts with 400 to 1,000 words. They can be produced in an hour or two with less investment of time gathering new experience or information. A seasoned news professional knows the ropes and can survive a dud on a newsletter platform. However, there is a need to produce content on a recognizable, regular basis. To be successful (i.e. generate enough income) a writer must produce engaging volume for their followers. That’s tough to do when an article is based on one person’s experience.
I made a few posts in my Substack account and they get a lot more views than my posts on WordPress. Part of that is how they count a “view.” They explain the same reader may count for multiple views while reading an article. I will continue to post unique content there to see what it does. I doubt I would move this blog to a newsletter format because that is already available to subscribers via email. Too, if there was potential to earn a decent income, I would consider more newsletter content. I don’t see that path as viable at present.
Freelancing has been part of the gig economy since long before we called holding portfolios of income producing jobs as such. Freelancing benefits the news organization because there is a fixed price for each piece of work, and because the number of freelancers can surge or be cut back depending on needs. I produced 100 newspaper articles as a freelancer and I neither felt part of an organization nor like I was paid enough for the investment in time. The idea of a gig economy sounds positive until one has to live in it.
I haven’t talked about “content creators” yet. Maybe that is a topic for a different post.
The Big Oak in Thomasville, Georgia. Photo Credit – Wikimedia Commons by Carla Finley
A foundational childhood memory is driving with my family through South Georgia and seeing Spanish Moss hanging over U.S. Highway 319 between Thomasville, Georgia and Tallahassee, Florida. Here is an excerpt from my upcoming autobiography where I wrote about this.
Our family drove from Iowa to visit Tallahassee, Florida, the place Father lived after re-uniting with Grandfather after his release from prison. Family lore is Grandfather’s conviction for draft evasion was a misunderstanding. He hadn’t meant to be a draft dodger during World War II, according to his late son Eugene. Apparently, there was a problem with the U.S. Mail service, he said. Father spent time as a teenager in the area and graduated from Leon High School. He then enlisted in the U.S. Army with his brother Don.
That trip was to visit relatives in Wise County, Virginia, according to a conversation with Mother. The Tallahassee stop was a side trip, although look at a map and see it was not on the way. I don’t recall whether the memory occurred southbound or northbound, maybe both.
I sat in the back seat of the family automobile as Father drove on two-lane Highway 319 where Spanish Moss hung from oak trees with branches extending over the road. I suspect it was live oak trees, yet I don’t know. Mother was in the passenger seat, I was in back with my brother and sister. Except for Dad, we had never seen Spanish moss before. We did not have that in Iowa. We visited the plantation where Father stayed, the high school, and maybe stayed over with a relative, I can’t remember. These events and the long trip at slow speed along U.S. Highway 319 rolled into one with my trips commuting back and forth between Tallahassee and Thomasville for work.
For three months in 1997 and 1998, I was assigned to a logistics project in Ochlocknee, Georgia. I flew home from Tallahassee every other week, driving the same road I had as a child, U.S. Route 319. Oak trees lined the highway, their branches leaning over the highway were hung with Spanish moss. I lived there long enough to recognize other flora and fauna, in particular, pine forests and pecan plantations. I made this regular trip between Ochlocknee and Tallahassee for most of my stay.
The main memory, of this drive is essential. It is an unchanging remembrance of something seen as a child in a way that shaped me. It has no time or place. Some days I don’t know if it’s real. It is the human condition to believe it is real, and eternal. So, I do.
Journey Home 
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