“Lordynges,” quod he, “in chirches whan I preche, I peyne me to han an hauteyn speche, And rynge it out as round as gooth a belle, For I kan al by rote that I telle.
My theme is alwey oon, and evere was
Radix malorum est Cupiditas.
~ Geoffrey Chaucer, The Pardoner’s Prologue
Chaucer’s Pardoner
Outrage at Iowa Republicans serves no useful purpose. Organize your family and friends, or your neighborhood or your social groups.
Resist.
In our house such endeavors begin by getting to work. Making contact with potential fellow travelers is part of it. So is rejuvenating our spirits. Most important before departing on a pilgrimage, we must question assumptions that led us here, those that lead us on. To flesh out faulty timbers of a political view rendered obsolete by the recent election will take effort. The same indulgences, relics and stones will not serve. Soon work will consume us. Before it does, check the compass and kit bag.
Spring will be here soon and winter’s work is not finished. Begin there. Today. Head outside with broom in hand and breathe the crisp air of our future… and organize.
Rain is the best natural resource left in Iowa, helping us grow crops without irrigation because of its abundance.
If other parts of North America can more deserving be called America’s breadbasket — Central Valley, Imperial Valley and Salinas Valley in California particularly — Iowa is due for resurgence because of abundant precipitation combined with California droughts.
Water shortages in California have reached crisis level and despite government actions may not be resolved. If Iowa farmers were to diversify we could overtake California as America’s breadbasket. Now I’m dreaming.
Rain has been a blessing to Iowa and is expected to be our future.
Beginning in 1832, after the Black Hawk War, the landscape of Iowa was transformed from a natural place to a grid of farm fields, cities and towns. Enhanced by global warming, and changes in the polar vortex and prevailing winds, it rains in Iowa — sometimes too much. Rain is all that’s left of what was once a natural world. I’d go so far as to say there is no nature, only sentient beings struggling to survive in this built environment.
No one begrudges Anthony Sells’ saw mill for processing the trees that gave a name to Big Grove Township where I live. There’s plenty of blame for the built environment to go around. It matters little how we got here. What matters more is answering the question what will we do next?
For me that means collecting rain in our yard and preventing erosion. Some rain will be stored in plant life, some in vegetables and fruit. Some will make it to the ditch and the nearby lake. Take what rain we need and release the rest into the Mississippi basin and beyond. Have faith in rain.
What’s here is rain. Rain remains, it’s covalently bonded electrons exemplary of our being. Let it rain.
~ Published in the Jan. 19, 2017 edition of the Solon Economist/North Liberty Leader.
Rain is the best natural resource left in Iowa, helping us grow crops without irrigation because of its abundance.
Rain has been a blessing and is expected to be our future.
Beginning in 1832, after the Black Hawk War, the landscape of Iowa was transformed from a natural place to a grid of farm fields, cities and towns. Enhanced by global warming, and changes in the polar vortex and prevailing winds, it rains in Iowa — sometimes too much. Rain is all that’s left of what was once a natural world. I’d go so far as to say there is no nature, only sentient beings struggling to survive in this built environment.
No one begrudges Sell’s sawmill on Old Mill Creek for processing the logs that gave a name to our township. There’s plenty of blame for the built environment to go around. It matters little how we got here. What matters more is answering the question what will we do next?
For us that means collecting rain in our yard and preventing erosion. Some rain will be stored in plant life, some in vegetables and fruit. Some will make it to the ditch and the nearby lake — a lot less than did when we moved here.
It’s important to consider rain and leverage its abundance. Take what we need and release the rest into the Mississippi basin and beyond. Have faith in rain.
If other parts of North America can more deserving be called America’s breadbasket — Central Valley, Imperial Valley and Salinas Valley in California particularly — Iowa is due for resurgence because of abundant precipitation combined with California droughts. Water shortages in California have reached crisis level and despite government actions may not be resolved. If Iowa farmers were to diversify we could overtake California as America’s breadbasket. Now I’m dreaming.
What’s here is rain. Rain remains, it’s covalently bonded electrons exemplary of our being. We consider the built environment and let it rain.
“We could use some of that global warming,” a truck driver told me.
It was a joke. The ambient temperature was in the low teens and we both work outside as part of our jobs. If the weather were warmer our jobs would be easier. I thought it was funny.
“I don’t really believe in global warming,” he said after a pause.
“It doesn’t really matter if you do,” I replied. “Like it or not our climate is changing because of man-made global warming. It affects us even when it is cold.”
He seemed skeptical. Given a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal I should have expected his response.
Our perception of climate change and willingness to accept scientific evidence about it is shaped by what we experience, according to Scott Waldman, writing in Scientific American.
That means if one lives where weather is cooler than average, he is more likely to be a climate change skeptic, deferring to personal experience as a guide. If one lives where it is warmer than average, she is more likely to accept the science of climate change, also deferring to personal experience as a guide.
“When personal experience and expert opinion don’t align on a topic that’s not critical to an individual’s well-being, they’re going to go with their gut rather than what the expert tells them,” Robert Kaufmann, the study’s lead author said.
Kaufmann said it’s human nature to trust one’s own experience over scientific evidence or political wisdom.
“Unless it really affects my everyday life, I’m not going to spend time studying this issue, and I’m not necessarily going to believe scientists either, especially now that experts are held in such ill repute, but I’m going to make up my mind based on how I can see and feel climate change,” he said. “For many people, that is record-high and record-low temperatures.”
Such attitudes notwithstanding almost two-thirds of voters across all parties want the Trump administration and the Congress to do more to address global warming, according to Kaufmann.
I appreciate a good climate change joke in the middle of winter because it presents an opportunity to address the fact climate is changing because of human-made global warming, and there is scientific evidence to support it. The conversation is something we should have more often, yet people avoid talking about climate change.
“Most Americans say global warming is personally important to them, but don’t talk or hear about it much,” Edward Maibach and others from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication wrote.
In “Is there a Climate ‘Spiral of Silence’ in America?” the authors found “more than half of those who are interested in global warming or think the issue is important “rarely” or “never” talk about it with family and friends (57 percent and 54 percent respectively).” Fewer than half of Americans say they hear about global warming in the media monthly or more, and only one in five Americans hear people they know talk about global warming at least once a month according to the article.
It’s pretty quiet out there regarding discussion of global warming and climate change.
“The future of the planetary conditions on which human civilization depends are reliant now more than ever upon scientists and innovators, businesses and civil society, and our collective efforts to accelerate the implementation of the solutions to the climate crisis that are already available and cost-effective,” former Vice President and Nobel Prize winner Al Gore wrote in Scientific American.
If that’s the case, and no one is talking about climate change, how can we create meaningful action to mitigate the effects global warming is having on us?
The good news is technological solutions to the problem are working as the price of renewable energy approaches parity with fossil fuels. In some markets, solar generation of electricity is cheaper than with fossil fuels. If technology will lead the business community to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions contributing to global warming, we are part of the way there. Technology alone won’t drive the change we need. To find political will for action, every voter should engage in the issues. What can we do?
For my part I’m going appreciate the value of a good climate change joke, and use them to break the ice on conversations about the need to act on climate. People may agree or disagree, but talking about global warming and climate change, and the science behind them, is as important as laughter on a chilly day, or a cold drink during a drought.
In this final 2016 post it was easier than last year to outline my writing plans.
The work I do to pay bills and support my writing has been tough mentally and physically. To cope with an aging frame and occasionally distracted mind I have had to focus. That meant planning, and then with discipline, working the plan. 2016 was a mixed bag and I expect to do better in 2017.
I seldom post about my personal life and family — at least directly. That leaves issues I confront every day as grist for the keyboard.
There are four broad, intersecting topics about which I’ll write during the coming year.
Low Wage Work and Working Poor
Not only do I earn low wages in all of my jobs, I meet a lot of people who do too. During the last four years I developed a framework for viewing how people sustain their lives without a big job or high salary. A focus on raising the minimum wage, wage theft or immigration status may be timely but most of what I read misses the mark. Stories fail to recognize the complexity with which low wage workers piece together a life. This subject needs more exposition and readers can expect it here.
Food Cultivation, Processing and Cooking
Living on low wages includes knowledge of how to grow, process and prepare some of our own food. My frequent posts on this topic have been intended to tell a story about how the work gets done. I plan to grow another big garden in 2017 and perform the same seasonal farm work. I sent off a membership form to Practical Farmers of Iowa this morning and expect my experience with that group to contribute to food related writing.
Nuclear Abolition
I renewed my membership in Physicians for Social Responsibility. We have a global footprint and as a member I have access to almost everything going on world-wide to abolish one of the gravest threats to human life. The president elect made some startling statements about nuclear weapons this month. The subject should hold interest and perhaps offer an opportunity to get something done toward abolition. The United Nations voted to work toward a new treaty to abolish nuclear weapons. They did so without the support of the United States or any of the other nuclear armed states. In that tension alone there should be a number of posts.
Global Warming and Climate Change
My framework has been membership in the Climate Reality Leadership Corps. Like with Physicians for Social Responsibility we have a global footprint with thousands of Climate Leaders. We have access to the latest information about climate change and its solutions. The key dynamic, however, is how work toward accepting the reality of climate change occurs on a local level. What researchers are finding is skepticism about the science of climate change originates in the personal experience of people where they live. If the weather is very hot and dry they tend to believe in climate change. If it is cold, they tend not to believe. Thing is, climate change and human contributions to it are not a belief system as much as they are facts. Global warming and climate change already affect us whether we believe or doubt.
So that’s the plan. While you are here, click on the tag cloud to find something else to read. I hope you will return to read more in 2017.
It’s Christmas Eve in Big Grove, the ambient temperature is about freezing, and we’re ready to bunker in, finish decorating our Christmas tree and prepare a traditional supper of chili and cornbread.
My Christmas wish is for peace on earth.
Elusive as that may have been during 2016, we can’t give up hope. Not now. Not like this.
As winter solstice brought longer days — increasing light imperceptible in each day’s cycle — it is time again to fly with eagles, gain a broader perspective, and thank people who are always in these written words if rarely mentioned — my wife Jacque, our daughter, my parents and my maternal grandmother.
Reading
I continue to read more on my phone and computer than I do full-length books. Nonetheless I managed thirteen books in 2016, the most important of which were authored by people I know: Connie Mutel and Ari Berman.
Methland by Nick Reding had the biggest influence, by a distance.
Here’s the list of books, most recent first:
Diet for a Hot Planet: The Climate Crisis at the End of Your Fork and What You Can Do About It by Anna Lappé; My Life on the Road by Gloria Steinem; Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Haran; Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town by Nick Reding; Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America by Ari Berman; A Sugar Creek Chronicle: Observing Climate Change from a Midwestern Woodland by Cornelia F. Mutel; Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms, and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories by Simon Winchester; And Then All Hell Broke Loose: Two Decades in the Middle East by Richard Engel; Slavery in the Upper Mississippi Valley, 1787-1865: A History of Human Bondage in Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin by Christopher P. Lehman; The Diary of a Napoleonic Foot Soldier by Jakob Walter; Old Man River: The Mississippi River in North American History by Paul Schneider; MiniFARMING: Self-Sufficiency on 1/4 Acre by Brett L. Markham; and Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal by Eric Schlosser.
For the fourth year I edited Blog for Iowa while Trish Nelson took a break, writing at least one post each weekday during August. My book review of Give Us the Ballot ran in The Prairie Progressive, a guest column ran in the Cedar Rapids Gazette, and I wrote two letters to the editor of the Solon Economist since the general election. I cross posted Next for Iowa Democrats on Bleeding Heartland, my first post there.
More outside publication is planned for 2017.
Working
Income from five jobs helped financially sustain us in 2016. Work at the home, farm and auto supply store provided health insurance and a regular, predictably low paycheck. In descending order of income were jobs at Wilson’s Orchard, Local Harvest CSA, Blog for Iowa and Wild Woods Farm.
Each of these jobs was good for a reason. Blog for Iowa encouraged me to write every day. Farm work helped me connect with others in the local food movement. The home, farm and auto supply store provided a venue for conversations with low-wage workers. I’ll seek additional income in 2017 and maintain relationships with each of these organizations.
The common denominator among these jobs is interaction with people. As I enter my last year of work before “full retirement,” I seek that as much as income.
Gardening
2016 was another improved year in our home garden. Among many experiments were growing root vegetables in containers (a success with carrots and daikon radishes), growing squash in the unused storage plot, and using sections of 4-inch drainage tile to protect young seedlings. Failures included bell pepper plants which succumbed to weed competition, and loss of tomato yield due to a lack of attention. The best crops included broccoli, celery, eggplant, tomatoes, Bangkok peppers, turnips, basil, sage, oregano and kale.
Ancillary activities included distribution of kale and a few other vegetables to local library workers and friends, and weekly posts about the garden on Facebook.
We raised adequate produce to serve the needs of our kitchen. I also learned a lot through collaboration with friends and neighbors.
Apples
I followed the 2016 apple season at the orchard and continued to develop our home apple culture. Our apple trees did not produce a crop this year.
The last of the 2015 crop is peeled, sliced and frozen, or turned into applesauce and apple butter. We have enough frozen apples left for a Christmas Day dessert. This year’s orchard apples were mostly eaten fresh.
I made more apple cider vinegar. The process was simple: I added Jack’s heritage mother of vinegar to apple cider from the orchard in half-gallon ventilated jars and waited. This year I added an eighth-teaspoon of brewers yeast to each container at the beginning. The benefit was hastened alcohol production and a superior final product. I also learned that a cooler temperature slows alcohol production and this can produce a better result. Today there are two gallons of apple cider vinegar in the pantry and another gallon and a half in production.
Politics
The general election did not produce the result many people, including me, wanted.
At the same time, a lot of acquaintances seek to become active and “do something” during a Trump administration. There is plenty of work to resist the expected rollback of what we value in society. Specifically, work toward protecting the environment, reducing the number of nuclear weapons, and ensuring social justice.
My term as a township trustee ends Dec. 31, so regarding politics, I can be an unencumbered agent of change. The next step is to leverage the opportunity the general election brought with it.
Retirement
The time since my July 2009 retirement from CRST Logistics can be divided into clearly defined phases. First came a period of social activism characterized by work with community organizations. It lasted until the end of 2011. Next was the political year 2012. After that, life found me working low-wage jobs to support my writing. That’s where I am today. In 2016 came a realization that in order to spend more time writing, I have to get past the finish line to “full retirement” as defined by the Social Security Administration. For me that’s in December 2017. I took the first step by signing up for Medicare this month.
2016 was a time to learn, work on writing, and do things that matter. More than anything, I have been writing. Everything else provided a platform or material for it. If 2017 presents significant challenges, there should be plenty to write about.
Anthony Sells built the first sawmill in Big Grove Township in 1839. There were a lot of nearby trees, hence the name. Things changed.
Farm fields, and eventually subdivisions, replaced the Oak-Hickory forest. Except for the state park and a few scattered parcels, the change has been decisive and permanent.
Memory of trees persists as a place to retreat during the end of year holidays.
Like during much of our lives, food is a holiday consideration — special menus using favorite recipes. We secured fresh cranberries, oranges, Gold Rush apples, sweet potatoes, broccoli, cookie ingredients, apple cider, and a frozen cherry pie from the orchard for the season. Yesterday’s purchases included dark roasted Sumatran coffee (Arabica beans), 64 fluid ounces of half and half for ice cream, special crackers and cream cheese. Planned recipes include cranberry sauce, shortbread cookies, apple crisp, and wild rice. It’s a lot of food for a special meal tomorrow. We’ll eat leftovers for days.
There is more to life than food.
That’s where the camera fades to black and a window into my life is obscured.
The idea of old trees now gone provides solace. Outside living memory, there is no going back to the time before Sells’ sawmill. For most who live here, it is already forgotten.
On this ground we make our own history. Because it lives today, it dominates our outlook and activities. The recipe is not specific and we challenge today what we did yesterday in hope of a better tomorrow.
There is something about the trees. Some linger as Sells’ lumber in structures in the nearby town. What matter more is the idea here was once a different ecosystem. One has to ask, “will what we replaced it with be sustainable?”
The president-elect made stunning cabinet picks in the 30 days since the general election. I don’t like any of them.
As political institutions re-tool, it’s clear millionaires and billionaires will be the primary beneficiaries of Trump’s administration. He won the election so it’s his right to name a team and set an agenda.
As my colleagues at the home, farm and auto supply store said often in recent weeks, “the election is over.”
Who knew it would be the agenda of the Republican party of Warren G. Harding and his return to normalcy that elected Trump?
“America’s present need is not heroics, but healing,” Harding said during a speech in Boston May 14, 1920. “Not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality.”
Harding’s view was nothing was the matter with world civilization after World War I that couldn’t be fixed by returning to “normalcy.” Trump’s campaign slogan, “make America great again” is reminiscent, if not derived from this.
“The world needs to be reminded that all human ills are not curable by legislation,” Harding said, “and that quantity of statutory enactment and excess of government offer no substitute for quality of citizenship.”
There is a lot to unpack in the Harding – Coolidge – Hoover era, which we now know gave us four-term President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It was an unintended consequence of Andrew Mellon’s execution of Harding’s plan for a prompt and thorough revision of the tax system, an emergency tariff act, readjustment of war taxes, and creation of a federal budget system. Mellon’s long tenure and contribution to policy resulted in the Great Depression. His failures gave us FDR.
Whether the stress on western civilization after World War II was more or less than after World War I is hard to say. Republicans sought to overturn everything FDR stood for and enacted into law, then and now. With Trump they see a chance to turn back progressive reforms dating back to that era.
“The people were demanding a return to ways of prewar living — Harding’s ‘normalcy,'” Herbert Hoover wrote in his memoir. “But in reality, after such a convulsion, there could be no complete return to the past. Moreover, the social sense of our people, livened by the war, was demanding change in many directions.”
Enter Trump’s cabinet, comprised of elite citizens, each of whom appears to have disdain for the office to which they were appointed. They intend to unravel government as we currently think of it, leaving the rest of us behind.
There will be no making America great again under President Donald Trump for reasons similar to what drove the failure of Republicans during the Harding – Coolidge – Hoover era.
Now, more than at any time in my lifetime, the resources and energy of citizens are needed to protect the commons from the new hoard of marauders until the worm turns and progressives gain power again.
That day will come. I hope it doesn’t take the same 12 years after World War I to produce a new, progressive era.
Some of us aren’t doing any soul searching after the 2016 general election.
Democrats lost, and as a Democrat that means something to me personally. Yet I know what I stand for and so do my friends and family.
Nothing about our beliefs was changed by the election of Donald Trump. If anything, we plan to work harder to advocate for what we believe is just.
Last week the president-elect and his daughter met with former Vice President Al Gore. Gore’s statement after the meeting was important as it pertains to mitigating the negative impact of man-made global warming and climate change on humans. It also applies more generally.
“Despair is just another form of denial. There is no time to despair. We don’t have time to lick our wounds, to hope for a different election outcome,” Gore wrote. “We have to win this struggle and we will win it; the only question is how fast we win.”
I share Gore’s optimism and so should people who care about leaving a better world for our descendants.
Who knows what President Trump’s impact on the environment will be?
To hold ground environmental advocates have claimed since the Nixon administration, we can’t ignore the renewed challenges presented by the mogul’s rise to power.
We don’t know what Trump will do, however, environmental advocates have been stroking against the current all along. The stakes are too high to give up now, nor will we.
We are stronger together so I plan to join with my colleagues at The Climate Reality Project for mutual support and direction. A perfectly timed kickoff is the 24 Hours of Reality webcast scheduled Dec. 5 and 6. I will tune in for at least part of it and encourage readers to do likewise.
Here’s what our chairman had to say after the election:
In every great struggle humanity has undertaken, the march towards progress has included both successes and setbacks. And the struggle to protect and save the Earth’s ecological system is no exception.
Today, I am as optimistic and resolved as ever that we will solve the climate crisis. Our collective efforts are dependent not on politics or ideology — or elections — but on our commitment to each other, to the health of our planet and to a sustainable future for all.
We must — and will — continue to find hope and joy in our work that will define humanity for generations.
Last night President-elect Trump said he wanted to be a president for all Americans. In that spirit, I hope that he will work with the overwhelming majority of us who believe that the climate crisis is the greatest threat we face as a nation.
I wish him well in these efforts and intend to do everything I can to work with him and his administration to ensure that our nation remains a leader in the global effort to meet this challenge. Moreover, there is reason to believe that it is not naive or Pollyannaish to hope for more than what we fear.
We have already made great strides to solve the climate crisis all around the world. The work that has been done by civil society, businesses, investors, and governments at all levels will continue to be driven by the fact that solutions to the climate crisis are not just vital to our planet, but are vital to our economy. The market forces driving the transition to a sustainable economy simply will not be slowed.
Less than a year ago, when the historic Paris Agreement was reached, we knew that our journey was only beginning. We knew this work would not be easy – indeed, more would be required. Now we know that our work must be redoubled.
Today, without regard to last night’s outcome, we must turn our focus to making the promises of the Paris Agreement a reality by embracing the forces that are already working to grow our economy and transform our energy future.
A sustainable future is in sight – but we cannot take it for granted. We must fight for the future we all believe in. Now, more than ever, our planet needs us – and I’m inspired by the knowledge that we’ll take the path forward together.
Al Gore
Founder and Chairman
The Climate Reality Project
Closer to home, I’ve long followed State Senator Rob Hogg who is an advocate for protecting the environment and a member of The Climate Reality Project. Recently elected minority leader in the Iowa Senate, Hogg offered this advice:
Continue to speak up with elected officials. A Doubting Thomas today can be a leader for climate action tomorrow. Remind Republicans of their successes including the Clean Air Act, the Montreal Protocol, and solar energy investment tax credits. Do not let them off the hook by ignoring them.
Midway through my seventh decade of life it is time to get more active. I am ready for what lies ahead and the road forward.
Journey Home 
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