On Dec. 7 I remember our neighbor Bill who continued to witness about the bombing of Pearl Harbor until his death in 1994. Those were days before we recognized something called Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Rest in Peace, Bill.
A neighbor died of COVID-19 over the weekend. The neighborhood’s rate of infection by the coronavirus has me questioning the wisdom of exercising on the state park trail. On one hand, I understand how the virus is transmitted and have taken to wearing a face mask on the trail. On the other, it’s an exposure I simply don’t need as the pandemic peaks in Iowa. What I know for certain is I will go crazy if I don’t get outside over the remainder of fall and through winter.
I made a couple of work shifts of discovery while I was indoors. While I plan to write my autobiography in 2021, I’m also not in a hurry to proceed because there is so much material. Going through it takes time and if I seek to capture a life accurately, it is time well spent.
I’ll be spending this week getting a grip on the scope of the project. I’m not comfortable I understand what’s available to me yet. I’ll be doing that and determining how to exercise as the coronavirus pandemic yields a record number of cases, hospitalizations and deaths. Be well.
Yesterday the lake was frozen around the edges. There was plenty of open water where waterfowl — geese mostly — swam and fished. The weather was good for walking with not too much wind. Soon the ground will freeze and the cold will end work in farm fields.
As we bend toward winter there is much to consider… and plan… as we enter the second pandemic year. I’m on a brief hiatus from writing and will return with regular posts soon. Be well.
It’s never a problem to fill days with activity. Setting and working toward a broader goal is proving elusive during the coronavirus pandemic.
Activities once taken for granted are now impossible. So many people are on the lookout to prevent contracting COVID-19, causing massive deterioration of our shared social life. My reaction to the extended pandemic was reasonable: a decision to focus on my autobiography. Increasing parts of each day include such work.
In the Jan. 28, 2019 issue of The New Yorker, historian Robert Caro recounted a meeting with his managing editor, Alan Hathway at Newsday in 1959.
“Just remember,” Hathway said. “Turn every page. Never assume anything. Turn every goddam page.”
Caro took the advice to heart. My book won’t be as detailed as his books on Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson. However, it is important to read what I’ve previously written and saved. It’s important to go through the souvenirs, books, boxes and trunks that clutter our household. When the pandemic recedes it will be important to visit places and again speak in person with friends and acquaintances. It is important to give things consideration as I distill them into a couple hundred thousand word memoir.
I started keeping a journal after graduation from the university. The first volume was stolen with my back pack in 1974 at a youth hostel in Calais, France. The rest of them sit on a shelf within arms reach of my writing table. There are more than 35 bound volumes and more in photo albums, media, three-ring binders and file folders in the next room. That’s not to mention photographs, the trove of letters I wrote Mother and got back after her death, or the thousands of blog posts and hundreds of newspaper publications. It’s a lot to read, examine and consider.
I don’t know what to do except begin and let the thread go where it will. With that in mind, below is the first journal entry that remains with me.
Very sunny here today near Stonehenge, and other ancient ruins. Stonehenge yesterday brought to attention the very tourist like notions of seeing something only to tell your friends about it when you get back. It may be that these days this is the notion you should have or at least most common, but it is also a notion of which I refuse to partake. It is only a very insensitive person who will go look and come back in one hour as the tour bus takes, but then there’s hours and barb wire fence to keep you from doing it any other way. Yet here too comes the notion that since there are so many books and pictures and articles about Stonehenge why even bother the few minutes to even see the thing.
On the way from the rocks to the return bus, the drivers were talking and one said to another, “It’s too bad it started to rain. It spoiled their trip.”
Here it seems that there is such a “holiday” preconception among these drivers (and all Britons as well) that it prevents them from seeing what is really, actually there: some rocks with barb wire about them with people crowded within these premises. At any rate, I was no different from the others when I paid my 65p and walked, took some photographs, and bought some postcards which I today mailed to the states.
The measure of Thanksgiving came this morning when I took my blood pressure and stepped on the scale.
My systolic blood pressure was normal and the diastolic slightly elevated. It was elevated to the same point where my medical practitioner and I had a conversation about medication a couple of visits ago. We decided I wouldn’t take meds and I expect my blood pressure to return to normal by tomorrow.
My weight was the same as 24 hours ago, meaning the huge plates of food consumed in the celebration, which made me feel stuffed and drowsy, won’t likely be added to my waistline.
The two of us were alone for the holiday as we’ve been for many years. Our family is small and no one makes a big deal of the holiday. We do all have some kind of feast. Phone calls, text messages, emails and social media posts were made. It was all reassuring. It all felt like normal.
Washington Post, Nov. 27, 2020
The coronavirus pandemic is here and the incidence of cases elevated to the highest level since it began in March. Keeping the gathering small was easy for us: we just had to be ourselves. The Centers for Disease Control recommended Americans not travel. Americans are not good listeners. “In a pandemic-era record, 1,070,967 people passed through security at America’s airports on the day before Thanksgiving,” CNN reported. I expect the numbers on this chart to soar higher in the next couple of weeks.
We are lucky to have enough to eat. CNN reported yesterday some 50 million Americans didn’t on Thanksgiving. Food pantries were swamped and some ran out of food. The toll of the coronavirus pandemic on health, on employment, and on income is tangible. In graduate school, during interviews with survivors of the great depression, they told me having a garden was a big part of how they put food on the table. Because so much of what was on our plate was produced locally or from our garden, food insecurity was not a direct issue here. For that we are thankful.
I did most of the cooking beginning at 11 a.m., continuing for six hours. Over the years we developed recipes for baked beans and wild rice which are the two most complicated dishes and take the most cooking time. Beans and rice are the center of a vegetarian meal. For sides we had steamed broccoli, cooked carrots, butternut squash and sweet potato. I ate a few home made pickles while I was cooking. For beverage it was fresh apple cider and for dessert a take and bake peach pie, both from the local orchard. Everything in the main meal was low fat. Except for the peach pie there was little refined sugar. Eating an ovo-lacto vegetarian diet has its advantages.
Part of my Thanksgiving is politics and I spent time reading Barack Obama’s presidential memoir, A Promised Land. He wrote about the 2006 Tom Harkin Steak Fry where he spoke and my friends and I had a chance to shake his hand in the rope line. While others have written about the campaign, notably David Plouffe in The Audacity to Win, it was good to read familiar stories of that campaign. There may not be another like it because of changes in American society since then.
The president took press questions for the first time since the election while I was cooking dinner. He made what were described as “stunning claims” about the election, without evidence. We are a nation of laws. Mr. President, either show us evidence the election was rigged or shut up. He did say he will plan to leave the White House after the electoral college votes on Dec. 14. There is no doubt Joe Biden won the election. President Trump really has no say in the matter of his leaving by Jan. 20, 2021.
In normal times I would be scheduled for work at the home, farm and auto supply store this morning for Black Friday sales. I left retail work because of the pandemic. I’m not sure I will return to it. We’ve discovered how to get by on our pensions.
During my regular end of year planning it appears our budget for next year is sustainable. My best hope is 2021 does not bring another pandemic Thanksgiving.
I am an early riser, usually beginning my day by 2 a.m. My spouse is often still up from the previous day.
Two windows on the southwest side of the house are illuminated once I reach my writing desk, hers above mine. The planet Jupiter is not always hanging above us as in the photo. We are night owls.
Early rising provides a six-hour shift at my desk before the world wakes up. It is the quiet writers need.
Saturday I culled books. I purged duplicates from the stacks to be donated or given to friends, and put some in a reading pile. I spent the most time reading and considering books that were off grid. That is, they didn’t appear on Goodreads or Amazon, and they had no IBSN, a numbering convention that began in 1967. Many books I will consult for my autobiography predate IBSN. Others were printed privately. It’s a different world when we get off the grid.
I put Who Will Do Our Fighting for Us? by George E. Reedy, with an introduction by Senator Edward M. Kennedy, on my desk. The U.S. military, when I enlisted in 1975, was a backdrop for understanding the role of citizen participation in society. The dialectic Reedy explores is between a conscription and a volunteer army. Reedy favored conscription because such soldiers don’t like what they were doing. “That is precisely the reason why they should be preferred,” he wrote.
I participated in the draft lottery and had the number 128 when I was eligible to be called up. That year they called only through 125 so I could finish my undergraduate degree at the university and fulfill my selective service requirement without a student deferment. It turned out I enlisted after the end of the war in Vietnam.
The other off grid book was A Clearing in the Forest by Gayle A. McCoy. It’s a biography of Colonel George Davenport, one of the founders of his namesake city where I was born. I’m more familiar with his business partner Antoine LeClaire. The plan is to write 500-750 word historical/autobiographical sketches of important places in my life and use them to set the scene for autobiography sections. Both founders require further study before getting to the Davenport segment. I put the biography on my bedside table.
It was a decent fall day yet too cold for bicycle riding. I followed my usual walking route to the public boat docks and back, about 2.5 miles. I was the only trail user wearing a face mask. News media reported a run on grocery stores as there was at the beginning of the pandemic. It is getting dire with reports of high levels of infection in nursing homes, care centers, and at the state prisons. In normal times all of this would be scandalous.
On Friday the Carroll Times Herald published a story about family and friends who contracted the coronavirus. It is anchored around friends playing Euchre and how the virus spread among them. “A spreading sickness” is poignant and timely just before Thanksgiving. Link here to read the first of three parts.
I like the photo in this post. Under a clear sky, light shines from rooms where we live quiet lives. We turn inward for a few hours before dawn, focused on our work. We can be ready when the rest of the world wakes up. What we increasingly find is we are not the only night owls during the disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
Leaves fell from deciduous trees in our yard revealing squirrel nests high in the canopy.
The last few days have been warm, in the 70s. Meteorologists say temperatures will cool as autumn’s last month begins. Yesterday the wind died enough to take a bicycle out on the trail. I wore a face mask as the coronavirus pandemic is escalating in Iowa. Our neighborhood is dotted with homes in quarantine because someone in them contracted the virus.
More people on the trails have begun to wear face masks. The state park is a place where people can gather, social distance, and chat with masks on. The color of water with flocks of pelicans, Canadian geese, and other waterfowl slowly swimming the surface is always pleasant. The peace was disrupted last Sunday when a 21-year old student from the university crashed his automobile near the state park entrance resulting in his fiery death.
The idea of a week persists despite many reasons why it shouldn’t. There is a weekend kicked off by Friday’s handmade pizza dinner. Saturday is a time for getting outdoors and working on projects in the garage, garden and yard. Sunday has become a day to take it easy, spend a long hour with the Sunday newspapers, and take an afternoon nap. By Sunday afternoon it’s time to read email, make phone calls and prepare for the coming week. Weeks have become anchored by such weekends.
To help our friends at the used bookstore in the county seat I bought some children’s jigsaw puzzles for our public library. I emailed the library supervisor and they had been discussing buying more puzzles. It turned out to be a win-win-win scenario. Because shipping is so expensive I will mask up to make a trip to pick them up, then deliver them to the library. The bookstore and library have excellent protocols for protecting everyone from transmission of the coronavirus so I feel safe making the trip.
The library is again taking donations for the Friends of the Library used book sale. It’s uncertain when the next one will be, however. They stopped taking donations at the beginning of the pandemic so it’s positive to hear they resumed. I’m running out of room and plan to donate a couple hundred in the first go-around. I’ll do my best to refrain from buying more at the sale.
We made a list of items for a Thanksgiving dinner. It has been a long time since we left home or had guests here for the holiday. I’m not sure what happened other than we have a small family. This year it will be the two of us again with phone calls and video conferences mixed in with meal preparation. We usually eat leftovers for a week or more after the meal. We used to make special meals for Christmas, our birthdays and wedding anniversary, and Independence Day, but not so much any more. When I pick up the puzzles I hope to find some organic cranberries and oranges to make cranberry relish, a household Thanksgiving tradition.
I’m not sure how much longer to ride the bicycle this year. Suffice it that if the weather holds I’ll continue. Weird weather has come to characterize Iowa and so many other places. We feel the impact of the climate crisis every day. To our benefit, climate change created a zone of temperate weather over our home and the region. While it has been exceedingly dry this autumn, there is hope for precipitation over the next few months. Gardening and farming should yield abundance as they have since settlement after the Black Hawk War.
Today, I’m planning a typical weekend Saturday while embracing the idea such typicality is fleeting. Our lives can be over in a moment, like that of the young man who died a week ago. We must cherish our lives as we can because all we have is the present. As bad as it seems some days, considering the alternative, it is not so bad.
Someone asked, “What is your favorite movie and why?”
I had to think. After considering some options I answered, “The Lion King because of the music.”
I’m not sure that was completely right.
I’m also not sure which movie was the last I saw on television or in a theater. In the time of the coronavirus I watch movies on my desktop computer, either from a disk or streaming. I do keep track of what I watch. The last was on line, Public Trust: The Fight for America’s Lands.
When our daughter visited in December 2014 we watched a video cassette recording of Christmas in Connecticut together, part of a series of “dinner and a movie” events we discontinued as a regular thing. In 2017 I watched The Brainwashing of My Dad from a disk on my desktop. It was a powerful story of a family where the father got caught up in right wing media hegemony to his detriment, and then came out of it — a happy ending. I also watched The Princess Bride (for the first time) on Amazon May 31, 2013. Too many cultural references to avoid it forever. Since 2012, I watched about 20 movies, not many.
When we talk about “favorite movies” what does that mean? For me it means films seen long ago, the memory of which persists. The Lion King fits that description and I would view it again. I’d listen to the CD of the soundtrack more. There are about a dozen movies that mean something to me.
Blade Runner: We saw this at a theater the first time Jacque and I did something together outside of work where we met.
Out of Africa: Because of the cinematography. It’s a gorgeous film and I don’t use the “g” word often.
The Conformist: Few films of that era stick with me the way this one does.
The Matrix: How could someone with a Cartesian outlook not love this movie?
In a Year of 13 Moons: I was obsessed with Rainer Werner Fassbinder the way he was obsessed with subjects and themes in this movie.
Lord of the Rings Trilogy: I recall my argument with Father Harasyn as a freshman in high school about whether J.R.R. Tolkien’s books were literature. I lost the argument and was not given credit for reading them. The movie is a faithful rendering of the book.
The 400 Blows: I was enamored of Francois Truffaut during graduate school. Not as much now, but still.
The Tree of Wooden Clogs: I could easily have been one of the peasants in this film. The cinematography of Ermanno Olmi was unlike anything I’d seen.
Apocalypse Now: The first film I saw in a theater after returning stateside from Germany. It alone launched an interest in movies that persisted for the following five or six years.
Patton: The go-to film for soldiers maneuvering in the Fulda Gap. We would show it on a film projector run by a diesel generator. I knew to carry several replacement bulbs for the projector when we left garrison.
The Sound of Music: Grandmother insisted our family see this together and she paid for the tickets. She would have been the Maria Rainer character if life had been kinder to her.
There are others yet few recent ones. As the holidays draw near, and we contemplate the events of 2020, there are worse things to do than consider things we love. Movies have been part of my life in society as they are for many.
Today was the last shift for our daughter at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. It’s a bittersweet moment.
She arrived for permanent, full time work as an entertainment technician on Nov. 20, 2012. The coronavirus pandemic disrupted any plans she had last March. After six months on furlough she took an assignment outside technical stagecraft in retail sales as part of an agreement negotiated by her union. She took a substantial reduction in pay.
It was not why she journeyed to Florida so she asked again about a transfer to live performance, then gave proper notice and ended her work today. We discussed how live theater would always be an option for work before she took the job. Who knew the pandemic would happen? She worked hard and was well liked.
Doors that opened also close behind us, creating new beginnings. We hope for a positive outcome, especially on the other side of the pandemic.
Following is a blog post she made the day after checking in through the doors in the photo.
Down the Rabbit Hole…again.
Yesterday, I was up early in anticipation of my on-boarding appointment at the Walt Disney Casting building. I didn’t really know what to expect, but as I had been sent a packet of materials right after my phone interviews, I was sure that they would be important.
The Casting building is prominently displayed on the highway leading to the Downtown Disney area. You can see the large gold letters standing out against the brightly colored building, shining in the Florida sun. There is still a thrill in seeing them, even all this time later.
The inside of the casting building is draped in images from Alice in Wonderland. This seems a terribly fitting image as one joins the ranks of the Disney Cast. Working for the Walt Disney Company really is a strange world where the rules aren’t quite the same and the characters all seem to have their own language. One can become tongue-tied just trying to say the right thing. Fortunately, I’m still able to translate decently and spent all of my morning with a smile on my face. The strangest part for me was actually seeing cubicles again. I am so used to being out in the park to work, there’s something strange and foreign about the office setting. It did remind me of what I left back in Colorado though. That strange contrast of just how different the outside world really is.
I met some very nice women who were also waiting for their paperwork to be processed. It continues to fascinate me how, even in a company as homogenizing as Disney can be, there is still such amazing diversity among people’s own stories and personalities. Along with that: I really must brush up on the Spanish. I’m terribly out of practice.
I spent most of the rest of the day recovering from my two days drive. That long on the highway had not done well for my sense of direction or my personal health. The rest seemed to do me very well though, as I feel much better this morning. Some of that may have to do with my two cups of coffee this morning; that seems to have solved my headache problem. Dear Former Office Job: I learned many things from you, but I do not appreciate the caffeine addiction, thanks.
Today, there is much to do. I must visit an apartment office, and I’m hoping they have something suitable and available, as I really don’t want to search much more at this point. I’m currently in the midst of the Tourist district, so trying to get my bearings is quite a pain. Everything is smashed in very close together and the drives and turns here are rather a mess in comparison to other places I’ve lived. I am also hoping I’ll have time to drive up to Orlando and visit my gym. I have been too long away and it’s starting to be noticeable in my midsection. (I’m sure the 3 days of driving in the last week and a half didn’t help any either).
All that aside, I should be truly settled here shortly and will let you all know once that happens. In the mean time, Live well and have a Magical Day. ;)
Who am I now? A blog post on Nov. 21, 2012 by Elizabeth Deaton
With the surge in positive COVID-19 tests, hospitalizations, and ICU patients we plan to reduce trips outside our home and immediate area even more than we did beginning last spring.
Our last provisioning trip was Nov. 11, and it should hold us for at least until Thanksgiving, maybe longer. There is a doctor’s appointment in the real world and everything else will be done via video or voice conference.
We’re learning to live with the coronavirus pandemic which is expected to be with us until at least 2022. It’s hard to say what life will look like on the other side.
Weekend weather sucked. It rained all day on Saturday and high winds blew Sunday. Except for taking kitchen compost to the bin and retrieving mail, neither of us left the house. Even with ambient temperatures in the 40s, it feels like winter is coming.
When we emerge from isolation there will be much to do in society. Everyone will be out there with different agendas. With the challenges of life in the pandemic we must remain strong so we can compete. It will be a competition. In many ways it already is.
Big Grove Precinct is definitely Republican territory.
Republicans swept the top races in the Nov. 3 general election, choosing Donald Trump as president, Joni Ernst as U.S. Senator, Mariannette Miller-Meeks as U.S. Representative, Bobby Kaufmann as State Representative and Phil Hemingway for County Supervisor. Had there been two more Republicans in the race for county supervisor, they would likely have won here too.
The table below contains the canvassed results in the top four races.
Big Grove Township is characterized by its proximity to work. Cedar Rapids, Iowa City, Coralville, Muscatine and the Quad-Cities are all within a daily automobile commute and plenty of people I know here work in all five places. In 1993 we chose to build our home here for this geographical reason. With the comparatively low price of gasoline, it turned out I worked in all of these places except Muscatine.
When I first read the voter list I got from the auditor in the fall I was surprised at how many new names appeared on it. We have become a community with a certain reputation: a strong faith community, good schools, ample employment opportunities, a great library, well maintained infrastructure, and reasonable taxes. Because of this we attract new people, mostly families. As a poll observer for the Democratic Party it hadn’t occurred to me that so many people I didn’t know were voting the Republican ticket. That in-person voters chose President Trump 411 to 128 for Joe Biden is evidence new people moving into the township are mostly Republicans.
Despite few options for high speed internet access, many people in the township work from home during the coronavirus pandemic. Last summer the pandemic created a much different social dynamic where neighborhoods became important and neighboring was more common than it had been. Activities that flourished had little to do with politics. I posted a photo of me wearing a Biden Harris t-shirt on my Facebook page. One neighbor commented during an in person conversation they felt likewise but couldn’t do the same because of work relationships connected through social media. While there was a lot of media buzz this cycle, many people kept for whom they were voting private and this affected our everyday interactions by making them apolitical. Until the very end, it was as if there was no election on Nov. 3.
I can’t overstate the impact of the Secretary of State’s decision to mail absentee ballot requests to every active voter. Contrary to conventional wisdom that more people voting favors Democrats, it had the opposite effect. I also noticed long-time Republican-leaning neighbors, who weren’t on my voter list from the auditor, showed up at the polls to register and vote for the first time in years. Republican turnout was huge because of the systemic variance initiated by the Secretary of State.
Something else was afoot. We don’t turn the television on in our house so I can’t assess the impact of television commercials. Like many in my situation I saw political ads on YouTube, social media and internet news sites. I assume others saw them too. Because of the pandemic my provisioning trips have been reduced to less than one per week. When I drove to get provisions I would hear political radio ads. The local newspapers focused on local races with letters to the editor and paid advertising. I felt insulated from the influence of advertising, because of no television, combined with a pro-active method of acquiring news through paid subscriptions to four newspapers and a well-curated Twitter feed. In other words, I saw hardly any advertisements on Facebook or Twitter, and what I saw in local newspapers and heard on the radio informed me of what candidates were doing rather than being any form of persuasion. Whatever may have caused it, and I assume advertising was a big part of it, people were very motivated to vote this cycle.
At this writing President Trump has not conceded the election to Joe Biden who is clearly, unequivocally the winner. The president is challenging the election results in the courts and the effort has thus far fallen flat. I can’t speak to his erratic behavior or his shoddy legal cases, yet it seems clear he has a vague notion derived from the ancient Greek Theater that the Supreme Court will somehow hand him the election deus ex machina. Good luck with that.
I looked at the county results for U.S. Representative in the Second Congressional District and Mariannette Miller-Meeks walloped Rita Hart everywhere except in the most populous counties. The race is too close to call after the counties canvassed the votes so Hart requested a recount on Friday. With a margin of 47 votes, a recount may swing the election to Hart, or it may not.
I have my beefs with the Democratic Party and how they conducted the election effort. My main concern was they provided no support for me to be able to work my precinct the way to which I have been accustomed. When asked how they planned to reach voters without a phone number in the database they provided no substantial answer. When asked to produce a list so I could work my precinct they said they could not. “That’s not how it works,” one organizer told me. The result was I was left to fend for myself, which is pretty much where the results of the election left me, on my own. Even if I had the tools requested I’m not sure I could have flipped the precinct, so my beefs are likely moot.
The friends with which I built a precinct organization beginning in 2004 are aging, dying and moving away. New people arriving are Republican-leaning. Combine that with lack of a coherent Democratic message for voters and the view from today is we will remain a Republican precinct for a long while.
Despite the challenges, I’m not ready to give up. The election hasn’t killed me yet. Here’s hoping it made me strong enough to survive the coronavirus pandemic and fight another day.
Journey Home 
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