Tag: homelife

Categories
Living in Society

Cutting the Cord

Photo by Photo By: Kaboompics.com on Pexels.com

On Saturday I cut the cord.

Not literally, as cable television no longer comes into the house via coaxial cable. It arrives from an internet modem. Nonetheless, we canceled our service and they took it away within five minutes of me hanging up the phone. The bill is to be pro-rated.

I stood by the cable guy when they laid the coax in a ditch from the curb box to the house in 1993. We had the same service provider all these years and don’t regret it. Now the missing television service will likely not be noticed.

My viewing was sporadic. I turned on CSPAN a couple of times a year and viewed maybe two or three shows on the Public Broadcasting System. We used to watch the weather during severe events, yet the local broadcast channel migrated to the internet. For that reliable service it was costing $70 per month (too much). Budgets are tight and something had to go. It’s the end of an era.

We changed our internet package as well. We had way over the amount of capacity needed for our usage. Shouldn’t the service provider be monitoring our usage to determine we have the correct offering? Maybe they should, yet that is not what they are about.

What was the downfall of cable television programming? I submit that in part it was the proliferation of specialty channels. Take T.V. shopping, for example. When it was new, I tuned into QVC Network to see what was on offer. I don’t recall ever buying anything, yet many viewers did. When we arrived at QVC’s West Chester, Pennsylvania headquarters for a sales call, we saw the quality of merchandise in the show room was questionable. With so many cable channels hawking wares, combined with my experience in Pennsylvania, the shopping channels all got lost in the noise.

When we were first married, we viewed television programs at home. In 1983 we consumed what was probably typical T.V. fare: forgettable programs like Dallas, Dynasty, Kate and Allie, The Scarecrow and Mrs. King, and The Love Boat.  The last episode of M*A*S*H aired on Feb. 28 that year. A program by Iowa City filmmaker Nicholas Meyer called The Day After aired on Nov. 20. I don’t know if this was cable, yet it doesn’t really matter. We don’t watch any television now.

Saying I left cable T.V. is a form of conspicuous non-consumption. The personal and political decision to announce this can be interpreted as a decision to abandon conversation topics with friends, or some kind of “holier than thou” internet asceticism. It can be that. All I’m trying to do is reduce our expenditures so we can survive into retirement.

While it is the end of an era, I won’t be missing cable television very much. I’m not sure what that means to the broader society. Bean counters of the internet suggest cable television subscribers are declining by about 5 percent per year over the last eight years. A lot of viewers remain. There is so much to do, so little time, and people are choosing cable television less.

Perhaps we should have cut the cord earlier. That we didn’t is evidence long-held habits are hard to break. At least, for now, there’s the internet.

Categories
Writing

An Inside Joke

Trail walking on Feb. 3, 2025.

Before deactivating my Facebook account, I posted a photo of Rainer Werner Fassbinder as my profile picture. The New German Cinema was in vogue in Iowa City during the early 1980s. I saw more than 20 films by Fassbinder during a two-year period. He died on June 10, 1982, of a drug overdose/suicide. The joke was that as prolific as I was on social media, as Fassbinder was in film, I ended my own Facebook life by deactivating it, partly because I felt addicted to it. I suspect no one got the joke.

The changes in my social media use mentioned in yesterday’s post have had an immediate effect. Maybe not exactly cause-effect, but since I removed social media from mobile, I have been sleeping more soundly and more hours of it. I reduced mobile device screen time by half yesterday, to about three hours. I seem to be getting back to having seven or eight hours of sleep in a night. While that takes time from doing things I love, it is likely good for my health. Other positive changes seem to be happening.

It took a while this year, yet I am deep into revision of my current book. I had 63,000 words on January 1, yet the whole thing needs restructuring. I spent part of yesterday working on a new outline. It’s not finished. Having written the first book, I learned a lot about how to create a readable narrative. I plan to apply those skills as the major re-write begins. I will start with a solid outline and then, from the beginning, rewrite each chapter as if it were a stand-alone piece. The main epiphany is I need to focus on a smaller set of narratives. I’m thinking 25-30 stories. My whole life won’t fit, and there is no reason for it to do so. It’s not like I’m Robert Caro writing the biography of LBJ.

Yesterday one of my shoes wore out while I was walking on the state park trail. Water began to seep through the hole in the sole and by the time I finished 30 minutes of walking, my left foot was drenched. When I got home, I tossed the shoes in the trash and dried my feet. I made a note to buy a better pair of walking shoes soon.

There are a lot of moving pieces today. Having more rest and a new pair of walking shoes seems like a necessity. Also humor can help if people get the jokes.

Categories
Living in Society

Giving Attention to Stuff

Photo by Ola Dapo on Pexels.com

Our home is a relatively quiet sanctuary for creative work and networking with family and friends. It is easy to enter a room and “do something,” whether it be cooking, cleaning, writing, reading, or working in the garage, garden or yard. We made it this way when we designed the house and its setting. We are constantly using computers.

I recently discovered a new widget on my mobile device called Digital Wellbeing and parental controls. It tracks screen time. The results were shocking: more than six hours per day. Since then, I’ve been using the tool to reduce screen time. Last week I averaged 4 hours 24 minutes per day, which is a still a lot. I am endeavoring to do better.

What did I do about it? First I sorted my social media accounts. During the last year I reduced my social media presence, deactivating Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. I left Threads on my desktop and had BlueSky on my mobile device. This morning I removed all social media from mobile. In doing so, I removed them from my bed room and living room.

Second, I turned my mobile device into the tool it was intended to be. Instead of garnering my attention on social media feeds the way a slot machine empties one’s pockets, I time my morning exercise, read ebooks, keep up with news and email, and monitor traffic on my blog. I don’t mind the screen time if I’m getting something other than distraction in return.

Since paring back social media my human interaction increased with more telephone time and emails. As the weather warms, I expect to have more interaction with neighbors outdoors. These are positive developments.

The main thing I learned through the widget is to think about how I spend my time and focus more of it on stuff that adds value. That doesn’t just happen by itself.

Categories
Sustainability

New Year’s Eve 2024

Trail walking in late December 2024.

The forecast was snow yet it isn’t cold enough. Instead, a light rain is falling… enough to keep me off the state park trail until it ends. Warm weather this time of year has become the norm thanks to increasing average, global, ambient temperatures. Climate change is cooking us on a slow roast.

I looked at my 2024 calendars and a few big projects kept me busy: politics and the general election, trips to deliver my spouse to her sister’s home in Des Moines, the summer high school class reunion, publishing my first book, and then getting and recovering from COVID-19. The usual daily chores of writing, reading, gardening, cooking, cleaning, and health maintenance took a lot of time. I had more medical appointments than usual this year. I existed as best I could.

I don’t make resolutions for the new year. I hope to gain perspective on my quotidian life and do better in each moment of consciousness in it. Shorter version: I’ll go on living.

My writing process is focused on finishing the second volume of my memoir this year. If all goes well, I’ll publish it in 2026. While waiting for feedback from the first volume, I’m weighing whether to make the book more available in book world by posting it where it can be purchased.

Our family is in three different cities this New Year’s Eve. I don’t mind being alone this holiday. I rarely stay up until midnight. Today’s main decision is whether I will visit the grocer to buy festive food. The more I think about it, the more likely I am to make do with what I have.

Many thanks to readers of this blog. Each visit, like, and comment is appreciated. Although I don’t post all the comments, I read them. I plan to continue to post here for at least another year. I’ll do the best I can to make it worth your time.

Categories
Living in Society

Staying Home

Home baked bread.

I ran out of bread and didn’t want to leave home to go shopping. I baked a loaf instead. We need more of this as the Republican sh*t storm approaches. We must get along in society, conserve resources, pay down debt, use the automobile less, and eat from our garden and pantry. A bug out bag would not hurt. We must go into survival mode until the dust settles, if it ever does. It will be a while before we can see where we might impact the new society.

Last week a podiatrist said I have to start wearing shoes indoors if I want my feet to heal. Not any shoes, but special shoes that are more expensive than what I usually buy. I bought a pair of these expensive, special shoes. Buying cheap shoes may be part of the original problem. My feet feel better already and my outlook is on the mend. After discussing process with my spouse we developed a solution to prevent tracking dirt all over the house.

The problem is I am a creature of habit and can’t remember to keep them on. When I leave my downstairs writing space, five or ten minutes can elapse before I realize that comme d’habitude I took off my indoors shoes at the bottom of the stairs. My habits are so ingrained, I don’t turn on lights when I get up in the middle of the night, finding my way by memory. Breaking some of my habits is also in the works in the new Republican society.

As Americans , politically, we are sailing into uncharted waters. At home we try to get by, increasingly drawing on friends and acquaintances in multiple virtual and physical communities. For now, we withdraw, resupply, refit, and get ready for what maelstrom is next.

Categories
Kitchen Garden Writing

Food In Situ

Backyard garlic.

I recently read The Cooking of Provincial France by M.F.K. Fisher, et. al. It raised awareness of how cuisine can be rooted in specific locales, based not only on locally-grown food products, but on the soil, air, and water specific to a place. Local residents literally spring from the landscape and food grown there, according to the authors. Regretfully, French cooking is immersed in animal products. Separate the dairy, beef, pork, lamb, fowl, and fish and it would not be French cooking. It cannot exist except in situ.

What does in situ mean?

In the United States, we have a long tradition of destroying places and then building settlements as if on a blank slate. Natural vegetation, evolved over hundreds of years, was razed, and replaced with farms. Then, when the farm couldn’t make it — even with government subsidies — it was parceled off and sold for residential properties.

We built our home in such a farm conversion and prepare varied meals in the space we built. None of it is native except for the harvest from our backyard garden. Those seeds and seedlings come from elsewhere and not here. The phrase in situ, in this context, includes some aspect of food grown locally.

It seems ironic that as much “food” as is grown in Iowa and in the fields surrounding our residence, most of the corn, soybeans, wheat, hay, and other commodities are not grown for direct human consumption. Much of these foodstuffs are used either in animal feed or as an ingredient in industrial processes like distilling ethanol, or making biofuels or corn syrup. In Big Grove Township, there is no in situ.

That’s not to say our household lacks a cuisine. Clearly it has a distinctive one. Perhaps the most characteristic food we prepare is tacos. That they are made from raw tortillas from the wholesale club, greens and tomatoes grown at home, and produce we sometimes grow ourselves and sometimes don’t, makes them ours. The Mexican oregano we use also lends distinctness to the dish.

The important thing is when I make tacos, I’m not trying to copy a dish I saw elsewhere. I’m creating something unique, from scratch, with ingredients we grew or have locally available. I use tomato sauce that varies a lot (just as each tomato picking is different). How I use each jar makes a difference in the outcome of the tacos.

Rather than produce a certain kind of soufflé according to the science and rules of French high cuisine, I’m more likely to scramble an egg or make an omelet. Sometimes I’ll make another serving of tacos, perhaps with scrambled eggs in it.

While a few people I know grow shallots, chervil, and tarragon at home, the seeds to grow them did not come from here. They may be typical of French cuisine, yet are not of here. It is important not to get too precious about certain ingredients and where they come from. If I grow these, I use them until they are gone.

Over the years I posted many opinions about local food. Today I’m not sure that matters as much as I thought. What I learned was the idea of local food is constantly evolving. I continue to purchase groceries from a large, retail establishment on a weekly basis. That doesn’t make me any less interested in available local foods. Am I a purist? No, I am not. Being a purist about food does not make sense. It is challenging enough to keep track of what local food is available and where.

I leverage locally grown food when it makes sense. The dishes I prepare are not any less good. So, I’m here, I grow food, and I’m cooking. I am still a latecomer to the upper Midwest, one who is trying to get by. What else can I do besides enjoy what I make here?

Categories
Living in Society

A Vegetarian

Slicers drying on the counter.

It is ironic that I used to be a member of the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen of North America Local 431 and am now vegetarian. This is because in 1982 I married a vegetarian who recently became vegan. More precisely, I am an ovo-lacto vegetarian, as long-time readers of this blog may know. It is not hard to get enough food as a vegetarian in the United States. There is no deprivation in it either.

In my childhood home, countless meals were prepared in the kitchen, typically by Mother. When my grandmother visited, usually on Sundays, she helped prepare food. I don’t recall Father cooking hardly at all.

Because Father worked at Oscar Mayer, where there was a butcher shop for employees to buy meat at a discount, meat was a main course at most evening meals. We had a family cuisine different from other families in the neighborhood. Although I don’t recall exactly how it differed, it became a discussion topic among my friends and neighbors.

I learned how to cook, beginning at university. With fresh ingredients and an array of information sources about culinary preparations, I got better over the years. Any more, I don’t like eating in restaurants. Partly because I prefer food I cooked myself as I know what’s in it and it tastes better. Partly it is an economic consideration: eating at home can be less expensive.

Our meals resemble non-vegetarian fare often: pasta sauce, pizza, chili, casseroles, and tacos all adapt well to being vegan. What is more interesting, though, is making soup with fresh ingredients from the garden. It is almost always good, always different, even when fresh produce is less available in winter. Stir fry is another difficult to do badly meal that changes with the seasons. Over forty years we developed a cuisine distinctly our own and we enjoy it. It also keep us nourished.

There is no going back to eating meat. It doesn’t fit into our culinary world view. I’ve moved beyond meat to another place where plants provide what nourishment we need. In many ways, it is a better place.

Categories
Living in Society

Starting Over

Writing desk circa 1980 with a telephone.

Like it or not, the demise of my handheld device on Thursday marked the end of an era. I procured my first smart phone — that’s what we called them then — to work on a political campaign in 2012. When the technician told me last week he could not recover my files or contacts because of the way the phone failed, I thought for a minute and walked away from all that. I don’t feel better, yet I am free.

What burned me particularly is my back up — the contact files on Microsoft Outlook — had wiped all the phone numbers there as well when I upgraded to the online version. I guess I’ll find out to whom I want to speak going forward. A main loss is recognizing who might be calling. Just like that, an era of telephony was over.

My spouse and I scheduled a day to go through papers and came upon a stack of clippings from when my father-in-law was installing rotary dial telephones around Iowa and Illinois in the 1950s. He lived in a small trailer, which he hauled around to Martelle, Marengo, and other less populous towns. He helped usher in a new era of rotary dial telephones. The family revisits this story often.

I don’t have much recollection of using the telephone in the 1950s. In fact, the telephone was not that important to my life, outside work, into the late 1990s when I got a flip phone to carry with me while traveling. I installed telephones in several places I lived during the interim, including in Germany where I seldom used it because the rates were so expensive. We used home telephones mostly for calling family and friends, and for staying in touch with work.

While wireless telephony has its roots in the 19th Century, what we called cell phones came into their own around 2000 when I got my flip phone. I could take a photograph and text it to someone else, in addition to talking to them on a call. Freeing myself from wired infrastructure was revolutionary. The smart phone, with its instant access to the internet was another wireless development that changed how we interact with the world.

It will be straight up work to rebuild my important contacts. In a way, being free from all the telephone history is a positive. In my remaining seasons on Earth is will mean a less cluttered life. Damn! Like many things, I just wasn’t prepared for a change.

Categories
Sustainability

Equipment Failure

Mowing the Lawn

I had been mowing with my John Deere lawn tractor for about 15 minutes. Life was good as I prepared the yard to be more presentable when overnight guests arrived later in the day. I stopped, turned off the engine to move something, and when I returned to the driver’s seat the engine would not crank. After trouble shooting to see if I could resolve the issue, I called the repair shop and they picked it up that day. They said they would have it for three weeks, most likely, because of a backlog of work. I’ll have to hire someone to mow as the lawn will turn into a jungle of natural habitat if I don’t.

We brought the equipment home from my father-in-law’s estate before the turn of the millennium. When it breaks down, there is always a question of whether repair parts will be available. The company says, “Nothing runs like a Deere,” yet they no longer make or stock every part for every model going back to the company’s founding in 1868. Planned obsolescence has become part of their business strategy. If my tractor can’t be fixed because parts are not available, I’m not sure what I will do. There are several suitable models under a thousand dollars. I really don’t want to spend that kind of money to mow the lawn half a dozen times a year. There is a case to replace it now to avoid future price increases. I would rather have just finished mowing the lawn than deal with this now.

This personal experience feeds into the broader issue of Right to Repair. When we own something, like my John Deere tractor, we shouldn’t have to beg the dealership to have access to repair parts and fix it. I’m not that mechanical as a basic social skill so I rely on others for car, tractor, chainsaw, trimmer, home appliance, and other repairs. We are subjected to their rules, and one of those is availability of repair parts. I bought more than a few new appliances because repair parts were no longer manufactured or stocked. It’s a rook deal!

When I worked in transportation I became aware of increased technology used in mechanical devices, Class 8 vehicles particularly. This changed the landscape in multiple ways. Importantly, equipment developers sought technology to make things better or comply with new laws. It was one more component to include in an automobile or refrigerator that cost something, and when the initial sale was made, increased net margin for the seller and manufacturer. What is often forgotten is any new maintenance issue related to failure of electronic components. There are no work-arounds when a computer chip fails.

When my John Deere would not start, I quickly diagnosed the problem as an electrical failure. I’ve had the tractor long enough to recognized the layers of failure it demonstrates. When I was on the phone with the service writer they agreed. So now we wait.

We bought a quarter acre lot in 1993 because it was available. We liked the proximity to the state park hiking trail and the public school system. There was abundant room for a garden and an orchard. What we didn’t foresee then was the inability to get ahead financially enough to completely eliminate the lawn in favor of a giant garden. Such projects are the endeavor of youth, so I’ll be dealing with mowing for as long as we live here. We don’t plan to move. We’ll stay and deal with interactions from a variety of service technicians. I’d better maintain a friendly relationship with them. Life could be worse.

Categories
Living in Society

July Is Almost Done

Photo Credit – Cedar Rapids Gazette

July is ending better than it started.

The June 27 debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden launched weeks of political uncertainty. I did not watch the debate, yet its impact hit me and so many of my friends who are Democrats. We didn’t know what to expect.

On July 13 a shooter attempted to assassinate Trump. To a lay observer, it was clear whoever set up security for the Pennsylvania rally left gaps in security coverage the candidate should have had. Why would security leave a roof within line of sight of the speaker’s podium and within range of commonly available weapons unsecured? Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned on July 23.

On July 17, Biden was diagnosed with COVID-19 while in Las Vegas. He returned to Delaware for isolation and treatment. He continued to execute his role as president through and after resolution of the illness on July 24 when he returned to the White House.

On Sunday, July 21, after noon, President Biden announced he would not accept the nomination of his party as president. While insiders knew this was coming, most of the nation was surprised. It brought closure to the post-debate period. Democrats quickly rallied around Vice President Kamala Harris who has already secured enough delegates to become the party’s nominee. In addition, she has done well in fundraising for her own campaign. People seem willing to engage in our politics again. As one commenter on Threads said of July 24, “I swear to god this entire day feels like Joe lit the Beacons of Gondor and Rohan freaking ANSWERED.”

The month has been exhausting, mostly because all of these things matter.

Personally, the High School Class Reunion was a big deal, and my spouse has been at their sister’s home helping out all month. With a couple of exceptions — Independence Day parades, a home owners association meeting, a political fund raiser, and the reunion — I have been pretty isolated. I need to spend more time with people right now.

I also need to work to make sure August is a better month.