The myth of relaxing on a towel at a beach, sunglasses and sunscreen on, reading a book may not exist for most of us in Iowa. The beach nearest us has been closed in recent seasons because of the risk of exposure to microcystin and E. coli bacteria, both harmful to human health.
Nevertheless, reading is an important part of summer activities, and essential for people engaged in society. Our home owners association has a monthly meeting at the public library where staff politely boots us out in June and July because it falls on the same night as the summer reading program. Summer reading is one of the most important programs at a public library.
When I write “reading,” I mean books. A lot of our time is spent reading news articles which, while important, does not involve the kind of commitment as reading a book cover-to-cover. I started the Goodreads Reading Challenge last year and it helped me stay focused on reading. I’ve read 16 books this year and you can see which ones on my Reading List page.
Here, in no particular order, is a list of ten books on my bedside table for reading this summer:
Where the Light Enters: Building a Family, Discovering Myself by Jill Biden.
The Tallgrass Prairie: An Introduction by Cindy Crosby.
The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women by Kate Moore.
The Overstory by Richard Powers.
Pacific by Simon Winchester.
Milkman by Anna Burns.
The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow’s World by Charles C. Mann.
The Uninhabitable Earth: Life after Warming by David Wallace-Wells.
Janesville: An American Story by Amy Goldstein.
Energy: A Human Story by Richard Rhodes.
While beaches may be closed due to environmental pollution, I plan to find a shady spot on our property or a comfortable chair inside to crack open a book from time to time this summer. Please do leave a comment with what you are reading this summer below.
Spanish Moss on a Tree in Thomasville, Georgia Photo Credit – Wikimedia Commons
My memory of South Georgia is specific. I don’t know if it’s real.
As a child, our family drove from Iowa to visit Tallahassee, Florida, the place Father lived after re-uniting with his father after Grandfather’s release from prison. For the record, 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, youngest son Eugene. Dad graduated from Leon High School, then enlisted with his brother Don in the U.S. Army.
That trip was to visit relatives in Wise County, Virginia, according to a recent conversation with Mother. The Tallahassee stop was a side trip. I don’t recall whether the memory occurred southbound or northbound, maybe both.
The memory is of riding 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. 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, Leon High School, and maybe stayed over in a motel, I can’t remember. These events and the long trip at slow speed through the Spanish moss-hung oak trees rolled into one over time, It was almost 60 years ago.
In 1997 I had a three-month work assignment near Ochlocknee, Georgia. My project was located at the largest employer in the county, which was and is involved in mining and processing minerals for a variety of consumer applications. No local ever complained to me about the mines. The rest of the economy was agricultural: peanuts, cotton and pecans.
Because Tallahassee was the closest airport, I flew home from there every other week, driving the same road I had as a child, replete with oak trees hung with Spanish moss. I lived there long enough to recognize other flora and fauna. In particular, pine forests and pecan plantations. The road seemed the same as my childhood memory. I made this regular trip between Ochlocknee and Tallahassee for most of my stay.
The memory sparked an interest in Janisse Ray’s memoir, Ecology of a Cracker Childhood. I wrote the following brief review in the Spring edition of the Prairie Progressive:
Other than authors of country music, few write about the pine forests of South Georgia. Janisse Ray’s memoir, Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, is important for the sense of place it creates. She grew up in a junkyard with ever-present extreme poverty, mental illness, and fundamentalist Christianity. Her story is one of growing self-awareness and hope in a land where both were in short supply.
While Ray is ten years younger, we share cultural references. Perhaps the most significant is the sense of loss she describes for Long Leaf Pine forests and their ecology. I feel much the same living in a state where what was here — tallgrass prairie — has been replaced by fenced parcels where farmers grow crops and raise livestock. Her experience in Georgia informs my life in Big Grove.
Ray mentions Thomasville, Georgia a couple of times in the book. I stayed in Thomasville while working at the mine. There was little daylight between work and rest so my life then was very specific.
The biggest excitement during my stay was when an inspector found a boll weevil in a trap during the season. Boll weevil traps were part of an early warning system to prevent damage to the important cotton crop. One of the plant workers at the mine had a government contract to inspect boll weevil traps. When he found one it made news all round the county.
The first boll weevil appeared in Thomasville in 1915. The insect did its part to bring down the antebellum economy where cotton was a global mainstay. Boll weevils had supposedly been eradicated by chemicals by 1990, but weren’t.
Ochlocknee, Georgia was a poor place where cattle casually roamed Main Street and a Model T Ford sat up on blocks in someone’s yard. I went to the auction house one night, but had no way to transport anything home. I listened to the bidding and tried to keep my hands down. Lunch at the Depot Restaurant was a meat and two sides with iced tea. A diner could pay extra and get a third side. The restaurant has since closed. When I encountered locals outside the job site, the conversation was a mix of complaining, gossiping and harshness. The place and its people defined hard-scrabble.
I had few friends in south Georgia. After working a 13-hour day at the plant, I made dinner at a hotel and watched cable television including a fledgling channel called Food TV. The name later changed to Food Network. I attribute my interest in food and cooking to those nights alone in Thomasville. My involvement in the local food movement has its origins in the contrast between that uninviting place in South Georgia and my nightly food escape. We didn’t have Food TV in Iowa at the time. Like Spanish moss, it seemed exotic.
The main memory, of driving through Spanish moss hanging from branches over the highway, 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 and 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.
On a sunny Friday among peak apple blossoms I cleared the fourth plot for a multi-crop gardening area.
The first three plots have early vegetables and are not completely planted. With eight trays of seedlings ready, and more in the greenhouse, it’s time to get them, along with seeds I’ve been holding, in the ground.
I don’t clear garden plots in autumn. I’ve read it’s best to leave them and let small rodents eat the weed seeds left behind. Clearing a plot becomes a bit of a spring production.
I remove the fencing, cages, fence posts and any non-organic debris. Then I gather brush generated since the last burn pile and burn it with straw from the plot. Once the fire dies down I run the mower over it with the deck as low as it will go. Yesterday this produced a 15 by 12 foot plot ready for planning, soil preparation, planting and fencing.
The plan is for spring onions, celery, spinach, lettuce, radishes, leeks, green beans, red beans, chives, arugula, basil, parsley and cilantro. The plan is written, now subject to further consideration and modification as I turn the soil, spade-by-spade and attempt to beat forecast rain.
This work is the core of who I am. I’m thankful to be able to do it.
Monday didn’t happen as expected. There were three things involving arborists, health care and farming.
Without announcement, the arborist arrived to take down a maple tree I planted on the northwest corner of the house. Turns out I didn’t know what I was doing when planting the 12-inch, stick-sized sapling so close to the house in 1994.
Now fully grown, unusually strong winds already took out one of the main branches. We determined it would be less expensive to remove the tree than pay for a roof repair when limbs inevitably blew down on it.
It was a small way of mitigating the damage of the climate crisis.
The crew was four men with two pickup trucks to haul away brush and wood. The benefit of using an arborist instead of a tree service is the equipment is pickup trucks, ladders, and an array of Stihl brand chainsaws and old fashioned loppers. There is minimal soil compaction around the work site without heavy equipment and that’s important to a home owner.
Arborists at Work
The arborists took out the maple and trimmed the pin oak, finishing well before noon. Our next door neighbor engaged them for tree trimming and by the end of the day our corner of the neighborhood was looking good.
Monday’s main event was a trip to the local clinic to get checked out.
Last Friday someone called, saying I was overdue for a physical exam. They had an appointment the following business day, which in a small city is disconcerting. The hospital managing the clinic is already having financial difficulties. The fear is the clinic will close, making it neccessary to drive to the county seat for health care. I took the appointment.
We no longer have two physicians at our clinic as one was replaced with an ARNP or Advanced Registered Nurse Practitioner. I get that the United States is facing a physician shortage, and our ARNP fills a coverage gap. It makes sense to differentiate the skills being performed in a local clinic and find practitioners that closely match them.
I miss what I had for a very long time, a doctor with whom I established a relationship and could get to know in our community. I’m not saying it was great, or that we should go back. I miss it but am ready to move on, seeking an answer to the question how do people get treatment in a scenario in which part of every office visit is talking about how to pay for services?
Arborist at Work
I liked my ARNP. He explained something I hadn’t considered. He said I was scheduled for a physical exam and there would be a significant cost. I explained that’s what the Friday caller said I needed so I went with it. He changed the billing code and said, once a person reaches a certain age, the better course of action when seeking treatment is to come into the clinic for specific maladies, without getting a traditional physical exam. I have a history already, which when combined with age and lifestyle risks, along with my complaints, can determine a course of care without physical examinations as I’ve had previously. What their team did today was little different from what the last physician did, with the exception the prostate examination was delayed until the results of a panel of lab tests he ordered were known.
At 3:40 p.m. I drove to the farm to pick up our vegetable share of Bok Choy and Koji, Leaf Broccoli, Mixed Greens, Lettuce, Spring Garlic, and Garlic Chives. Each year I secure onion starts for our garden leftover once the farm has planted theirs. It was time. Usually I get a bundle or two of starts produced in Texas, but Monday was different. The farmers gave me two trays of locally grown starts still in soil blocks. It seemed a generous gift considering the work that produced them. I was thankful to have them.
A day that started with a headache from a 12-hour fast before my clinic appointment turned out for the better. I had a cup of coffee after the clinic and the day got progressively better. It was one more day of sustaining a life in a turbulent world.
A thin haze dimmed reflected light from the moon. Thin enough to allow dots of starlight to penetrate the atmosphere and with moonlight illuminate the neighborhood.
The haze was just enough to know it was there.
I moved trays of kale, broccoli and parsley seedlings from the garage to a pallet near the driveway in the hazed light of a waxing gibbous moon.
Today is the 50th Earth Day.
Earth Day is less about a view of night’s starry presence than it is about seeing Earth as a whole. Few times in our history has a photo of Earth made such a difference in so many lives as Earthrise taken by astronaut Bill Anders. It sparked the movement that brought us Earth Day which continues to this day.
We humans have not been the best stewards of Earth since April 22, 1970.
Early Years
Vague notions of ascendancy were taught by our grade school teachers. In the seventh grade I was segregated from neighborhood friends to join a college-bound group of peers in a special classroom. I entered the National Honor Society in high school and when I graduated in 1970 had no clue what I wanted to be. I knew I was college bound, not because I wanted that, but because the nuns said I should be. That I finished college at all was miraculous. I felt a sense of relief as President Nixon appeared to heed a shared need to do something about the environment. When he created the Clean Air Act (1970), and then the Clean Water Act (1972) I felt Earth Day had done its job.
Military Service
When I left Iowa in 1976 for basic training at Fort Jackson, S.C. I had little idea of what being a military officer meant. I knew the Vietnam War was over and I wanted to serve as my father had. The context was a paternal grandfather went to prison for draft evasion during World War II. Given a choice, I would serve. Among other things, military service taught me the environmental cost of war.
The environment has long been a silent casualty of war and armed conflict. From the contamination of land and the destruction of forests to the plunder of natural resources and the collapse of management systems, the environmental consequences of war are often widespread and devastating. ~ Ban Ki-moon, UN secretary general
Oil consumption and related carbon emissions are significant contributing factors to degradation of our atmosphere. The use of depleted uranium in military ordnance, notably during the 1991 Gulf War, created a complex array of environmental problems including introduction of carcinogens into the environment. We destroyed Iraqi infrastructure, including water and sewer systems, and contaminated surrounding ecosystems. The use of defoliant Agent Orange in Vietnam created sickness among soldiers and decimated biodiversity in the country’s tropical rain forests. We should include potential use of nuclear weapons which studies have shown, in a limited nuclear war, could create a nuclear winter making 2 billion people food insecure.
Awareness of the military’s environmental problems is a lesson learned.
Worklife
I worked 25 years in the transportation business, including an 18-month stint with Amoco Oil Company in Chicago. What goes almost unnoticed as part of background noise in modern society is the amount of fossil fuels burned by trucking, railroad and ocean-going transport vehicles. When I was maintenance director for a large trucking firm, I spent $25 million per year purchasing diesel fuel for our vehicles. That doesn’t count fuel burned by our affiliate companies which used independent contractors who fueled their own semi-tractor trailers. The fundamental dynamic during this period was I needed a job to support our family and given what I perceived as a lack of opportunity after college and military service I took what I could find, staying there for most of my professional career. I traded the environment for financial security. My main concerns were job performance and getting ahead. The nuns in grade school didn’t adequately prepare me for this kind of worklife. Environmental issues were off the table.
Retirement
When I left transportation ten years ago the climate crisis became more real.
In 2013 I participated in The Climate Reality Project conference in Chicago, taught by former Vice President Al Gore. It made a difference to learn the science of climate change and in the following months I began presenting the information learned in public speaking, in letters and articles in the newspaper and in my daily life.
We entered a period of politicization of everything. Facts ceased to matter. Income inequality worsened and the U.S. government seemed owned by the richest people. The scientific facts about climate change became a political choice: do you or don’t you believe the science of climate change?
Climate change is real and is impacting our lives now. Even banks are seeing how it can impact their business. From an open letter from the Governor of Bank of England Mark Carney, Governor of Banque de France François Villeroy de Galhau and Chair of the Network for Greening the Financial Services Frank Elderson:
The catastrophic effects of climate change are already visible around the world. From blistering heatwaves in North America to typhoons in south-east Asia and droughts in Africa and Australia, no country or community is immune. These events damage infrastructure and private property, negatively affect health, decrease productivity and destroy wealth. And they are extremely costly: insured losses have risen five-fold in the past three decades. The enormous human and financial costs of climate change are having a devastating effect on our collective well being.
The authors call for an orderly transition to a low-carbon economy. “The stakes are undoubtedly high,” the authors wrote. “But the commitment of all actors in the financial system to act on these recommendations will help avoid a climate-driven ‘Minsky moment’ – the term we use to refer to a sudden collapse in asset prices.” In other words, the climate change bubble could burst.
The Future
Less than 24 hours remain in this 50th Earth Day, a brief moment in Earth history. Whatever humans do, the earth will be fine. It’s human life and society that’s at risk. My takeaway from 50 years of considering Anders’ image of Earth against a background of the immensity of space is the same as when I first saw it: we humans are all in this together. It is going to take more than Earth Day to bring political will to act on climate.
Kale Seedlings from the Greenhouse, Ready to Plant
I’m going home.
Yesterday’s fire at Notre Dame Cathedral, on Île de la Cité in Paris, brought that feeling from the darkness.
It is no longer my world.
When I visited Notre Dame I didn’t take photos. I brought a dozen rolls of Kodak film with me on a 12-week trip to Europe. They had been stolen in Calais. I reluctantly bought two to replace them and used them sparingly. Having studied Gothic architecture in art history class, I figured there were enough extant photographs to call up memories without any light I personally exposed to film. It turns out those memories, in light of the fire, remain prominent without external stimulation.
I remember standing below the large stained glass window, made in the 13th century, in awe of the accomplishment. In 1974 the cathedral wanted repairs and there was ongoing work being done. The flying buttresses looked fragile, the stone facings of the church well worn by pollution from acid rain and vehicle exhausts. I marveled that the stained glass survived two world wars and read the story of how they did. A religious service started and I left the cathedral.
News reports this morning say the stained glass window that made an impression on me 45 years ago was saved from the fire. The collapse of the roof and gutting by fire of the interior means any repairs will be costly. With the centuries-old struggle to keep the building up, it’s hard to see how a complete restoration would even be possible. In any case, the 13,000 trees cut to make the roof —an entire forest — can not be replaced after so many centuries.
We are used to landmarks being changed or disappearing. The World Trade Center in New York City and the Bamyan Buddhas in Afghanistan are two different types of examples in my lifetime. How uncaring people can be about preserving history. How fragile is what has been entrusted to us by the past.
When the world you’ve come to know changes, it is time to go home.
According to the Social Security Administration’s life expectancy calculator I can expect to live 17.4 more years. I’ll do my best to live a good life, however, the journey home has already begun.
By July 3, the tenth anniversary of my departure from the logistics company, I hope to have my exit from the workforce defined.
I continue to work for pay and barter and am concerned with a loss of income those five jobs currently provide, although, not that much.
I’m ready to focus on work closer to home which pays in ways other then monetarily. Our needs have changed and so have I.
The reason our household is in this position is Social Security and Medicare. At 50 years into the workforce I continue to contribute to both, and the benefits provide a livable financial structure. The fact we’ve been responsible citizens helps as well.
It is time to move on.
That said, I enjoy my five jobs and the people I meet. The home, farm and auto supply store provides insight into low wage workers and the challenges of retail. The two farms where I soil block are quite different if my work is the same in both. I enjoy the farmers, workers and volunteers in each setting for different reasons. Work at the apple orchard has changed since my friend Jack first referred me there. The operation has gotten bigger, the number of revenue streams expanded. I’ve learned a lot about apple culture and the work appears to have run its course for me. My summer coverage of Blog for Iowa has been a time where I am required to put a post up five days a week. It has always provided a chance to think more about contemporary affairs and what it means to be a progressive Democrat.
The long goodbye from all of these jobs is already in process.
What will I do besides slow down my work outside home? That’s an open question, the answer to which depends on continued good health. For now, I am mentally active and undamaged by life’s stresses. Another human working to sustain a life in a turbulent world.
Saturday was the first spring day with temperatures in the low 70s.
I spent a few hours raking and using the chainsaw, beginning yard clean up. More clean up remains but I’ve learned to take it easy until returning to better physical shape through the work.
I relished being outside at work so much. Excited to deploy the chainsaw, I forgot hearing protection until I was almost finished.
Neighbors hailed me from their yards and in passing by. The whole neighborhood seemed outside and alive. There was ice below matted leaves yet everything else indicated spring had definitely arrived.
Saturday had begun Friday by covering mixed beans with tap water to soak overnight.
Before sunrise I cooked the beans in homemade vegetable broth, then added carrots, celery, onion and bay leaves. The broth reduced so I added more — four quarts in all. It simmered all day yielding a deep brown color by supper time. A cup of soup with toasted bread, a small plate of cheese and pickles, and a glass of milk made the meal.
A week into April and nothing is planted in the ground. I surveyed the garden plots for a spot to plant peas and carrots and have ideas but no plan. I’m getting better with garden layout each year because of a shift from whimsically filling space to consideration of which plants go where and why. After yesterday there’s a lot of wood to cut for a burn pile, such cutting making space to think about sunlight, shade, soil health, animal traffic and mulch.
It’s been difficult to imagine myself in a post worklife world.
When I left my last transportation job work no longer defined me. I could become something new and different. Ten years later work continues to occupy a role in my story. That’s not unusual in the United States. I also don’t think it is that good.
Mostly retired, a pensioner, I lack a forward-looking narrative. Living a life, working part time for wages, those are not worth narration. They are part of the human journey, the arc of which often seems uncertain.
So I drift… read and write. I will read and write as long as I’m able… and take care of necessities.
Framing a life in work was abandoned. The actuality of it proved harder than writing these words. If I spend time in public, outside the flickering light of lamps and screens… sunlight through the French door, I’ll want a narrative more than “I’m a pensioner.”
I like the word pensioner, yet it’s an unusual introduction. My pension is from Social Security, it is real, and it pays many of our expenses. It reflects more than 50 years of work, during which I contributed to the fund. “I am a pensioner” seems okay, but I wouldn’t lead with that because it sounds so awkward, so work-related. There is more to life than a reference to work that generated a pension.
I told a life story in my post Autobiography in 1,000 Words, which seems long for a personal narrative. I like the facts presented yet they doesn’t say who I am, who I’m trying to be. Maybe I’d better know that first.
Should I present as writer? People recognize me as such. I don’t like talking about writing projects, so no, I wouldn’t lead with that.
Should I present as a gardener? I garden and post about gardening in multiple places. Why does a personal narrative have to be about only one thing? It doesn’t.
To whom would I tell a personal narrative if developed? I think about Dunbar’s Number and the cognitive limits it suggests. If we only get 150 stable relationships because of physiological limits, why am I even worrying about a personal narrative? My 150 knows me and I know them. Isn’t that enough?
Last Saturday a group gathered at Old Brick in the county seat and discussed political advocacy. That’s where this post about personal narrative originated — I felt I needed an elevator speech as I introduced myself. We all need a brief chat about who we are when meeting people.
I am genuinely interested in meeting people and hope any conversations will be more about them rather than me. If I talk in terms of their interests, it’s because I’m curious about how people live their lives. I need to hold up my side of the conversation.
“Hi. I’m Paul, a pensioner from rural Johnson County. I spent 50 years in the work force and now I’m here talking to you. What’s your name?”
I don’t know, pretty lame. It’s a conversation starter, and could lead somewhere the way an ignition switch on an automobile begins a trip. It’s not flashy but may serve. Maybe that’s all that’s needed and I’m over thinking this. Maybe such a brief speech is enough.
The arc of life is bending toward the unknown — an opportunity to imagine what could be. Maybe that’s the narrative, at least it could be.
The first spadeful of garden soil revealed an absence of frost the length of the 10-inch divot — and plenty of earthworms.
It’s time to plant peas, lettuce, turnips — the early, albeit late vegetables.
It’s also pretty exciting. Like most people in my life I’m tired of indoors and ready to do more outside in moderate temperatures.
I rose at 4 a.m. and fell into a pattern of making coffee, heading to my work space and writing.
I read newspapers and checked social media. I wrote correspondence, emails and texts. I have three different blog posts started. Sometimes I finish a post before leaving the house. Sometimes a topic requires development so I’ll sketch an outline and work on it a few days. In any case, writing is a primary creative outlet and I value the work the first few hours of each day.
It’s only a fraction of the time and that’s where cooking, gardening and outside work comes in.
I made a two egg cheese omelet for breakfast. I’ve been viewing Julia Child’s French Chef videos about omelet-making and it made a difference in technique. Using high heat, slight agitation of the egg mixture as it’s cooking, and when to add ingredients to create the finished product. I hadn’t really considered those aspects of it before. It was a fine start to the day.
Outside I started making a burn pile, finished pruning the apple trees, and parked my car outside to leave garage space for spring. I cut back the sprouted trees in the flower bed to allow early bulbs to be seen. Spring is running late, but it’s coming fast. There will be plenty to fill my days going forward.
At the home, farm and auto supply store spring shipments arrive daily. On Thursday I unloaded truckloads of bagged dirt, large bundles of wooden fence posts, and an extra load of general freight from the centralized distribution center. It felt good to be outside in 50-degree temperatures.
I found a three-ring binder with brief writing about books I owned or read in the mid-1970s. From an entry on Dec. 2, 1975:
With reluctance I must admit my pursuit of literature outside my job has been minimal. I really haven’t been spending time at home reading. So, for the present, I am going to try a month, half a month anyway, with no poets. The daily reading is what is suffering most.
What I didn’t realize then was there would be a pivot point in life where I stopped pursuit of literature and started living it, where I read less poetry and started writing. This spring day is a reminder of that, made clear by the absence of frost in soil teeming with life and begging for something to grow.
Journey Home 
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