It has taken four days to recover from the move in Des Moines. Surprisingly, it wasn’t temperatures in the high nineties that affected me. The killer was walking up and down stairs endlessly as we loaded basement stuff into the truck. My legs began to hurt at home on Monday and have been sore ever since. By Thursday I felt on the return trip to normal health, yet am not there yet. I hope this is the last move in which I help someone else.
We’ve entered the humid part of summer. As I write there is a fog over the landscape. Thursday the yard was covered in spider webs with condensation on them.
Spider webs with condensation.
On the plus side, tomatoes are beginning to come in. Another summer day in Big Grove. I plan to make the most of it.
Our local daily newspaper printed the entire Declaration of Independence in this morning’s edition. I didn’t read it again yet appreciate the gesture.
Even though “men” were “white men” in the document, and slaves, indigenous people, and women were not included in the lofty talk about “the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God entitle them,” the document served to change the course of human events and resulted in the United States of America. It was a radical beginning, one whose promise has not been fulfilled by 2023, if it ever will be.
I am restless about it no more, as instead of turning in my bed while the sound of fireworks ignited near the lake last night, I slept straight through. I have come to terms with American’s many imperfections and focus on making my small corner of it more tolerant and diverse.
Our local food bank was closed for donations on the third, so I found another food bank that could take a large box of cucumbers and zucchini. I had planned to make and can pickles this year but our inventory from previous years is strong. I decided to eat from previously canned pickles for another year, and that created an excess of pickling cucumbers. As I drove across the lake to deliver them in North Liberty, the wakes of pleasure boats were evident on most parts of the surface. The Independence Day weekend was in its full bustle. The food bank appreciated the donation.
We found a water line break on the main entry road to our development. I spent Monday morning coordinating communication with members while the repair was effected. Partly, it is a thing for septuagenarian men to gather at construction events in the neighborhood to “watch.” Partly, as outgoing board president I wanted to make sure the well was turned off and back on in a way that minimized contamination of the water system. Things went well and I felt good about one of my last actions as board president.
We don’t celebrate Independence Day in our household. In the pantheon of annual holidays, it ranks second behind Memorial Day.
Based on what’s in the garden and refrigerator, we’ll be eating one of ten kinds of leafy green vegetables for dinner. That and other dishes as yet unknown. I’ll dig the first garlic plant to see where we are. It has to be close to harvest, so on my to-do list is preparing the garlic rack. Today’s to-do list is long.
Spring has turned to summer and with forecast ambient temperatures above 90 degrees today, I plan to spend the afternoon indoors. I will be cooking, reading, writing, and noting my independence from the tyranny of cultural traditions surrounding our nation’s birth.
As Robert Browning wrote, “God’s in his Heaven, all’s right with the world.” Or so we convince ourselves to believe when the holidays arrive.
Two days after a full moon, in pre-dawn darkness, it was difficult to see it rained yesterday. It hadn’t rained long, just enough to get the ground wet and start water flowing toward the ditch. It was not enough to seal cracks in the ground caused by a lack of moisture. The ditch near the road has hardly been used for runoff this spring. I hope the dry spell is broken.
After a hiatus, today I return to writing. Garden plot seven remains to be planted yet the hard work of putting in a garden is almost done. Already an abundance of vegetables was harvested even if my favorite hot peppers wait in the greenhouse to be planted.
At the point I realized our yard couldn’t produce enough grass clippings and leaves for garden mulch, and began laying down weed barrier to hold moisture and suppress weeds, everything changed. It was helped along by relenting to the need for fertilizer (composted chicken and turkey manure) and some pesticides used by my organic farming friends. Not everything improves with aging, yet my garden was made better by experience.
May was a month of stuff breaking. We scrambled to cover the expense of new appliances: washer, dryer, range, furnace, and air conditioner. We previously replaced the refrigerator, water heater, water softener, and our 2002 automobile. The new technology is clearly better. I can’t get over how quickly batches of water-bath canning jars come to temperature and boil. Our clothes get cleaner as well. All of this took time in May. We are over the hump, fingers crossed.
The acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk created turbulence in my social media space. The main change is I notice more trolls. I know to block them without question, yet it is an annoyance. I tried Mastodon, Post, and Spoutible and none of them fills the same need as Twitter. Mastodon was too complicated with their decentralized server model. Spoutible and Post have a lot of nice people, yet the depth of relationship is lacking and may become an issue. The other legacy social media accounts (Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook) are doing what they do without issue.
There wasn’t a lot to write about in Iowa Politics this spring. Republicans in the legislature had super majorities and could and did pass what they wanted. The trouble for a political blog writer is getting a handle on the changes and creating an approach that makes sense while Democrats are in the minority. One would have thought logic and reason would be the path, yet no. Republicans now take legislative action based on tropes and whims from the great beyond. To use logic serves their misinformation purposes. Building a story board will require more effort than usual as we prepare for the 2024 and 2026 elections.
Lack of rain is concerning. The Midwestern garden relies upon a consistent amount of rainfall spaced at predictable intervals. As the atmosphere and our oceans warm, more moisture is stored in the atmosphere. Rainfall we were used to became the exception rather than something upon which gardeners can rely. It leaves us with the unpredictability of life. When the dry spell breaks, we can breathe easier, at least for a little while.
My earliest memories of radio are of neighbors across the alley listening to Chicago baseball games. They turned the volume loud enough we could hear the sports announcer yet not make out what they were saying. It created a summer neighborhood ambience in the pre-JFK years.
Today a radio is on when I’m working in the kitchen, garage or garden. I also turn it on in the car. My listening habits are steady: country music in the garden, car and garage, and classical in the kitchen. I no longer like listening to news broadcasts on the radio.
Transistor radios were popular when I was a preteen. We could listen to the AM radio and hear the latest music without parental supervision. I tuned in to KSTT radio in Davenport and remember the songs from 1963 until I went to high school. It felt cool to be able to directly link to the broadcasts. I tried to get a copy of the printed weekly Top 40 list and follow along with the songs.
Radio was important when I lived in Germany. For the most part, I had no television and listened to the Armed Forces Network in my truck or at home. They played a lot of old radio serials, which I enjoyed. News had a Europe-centered slant. I have living memory of a radio announcer reporting from the Vatican during the conclave of the College of Cardinals to elect a new pope. We waited dramatically for the color of the smoke from the Sistine Chapel to be identified and announced.
A Prairie Home Companion first aired on July 6, 1974. I didn’t know about it until after my return from Germany in 1979. After we married, it became a staple on Saturday afternoons. When Garrison Keillor left the show (for the second time), nothing good replaced it and my Saturdays were never the same.
My crank powered radio with a solar panel on it gave up the ghost. The crank spring wore out and the dials wouldn’t turn any more. I bought a new one that can also charge a mobile device. I don’t crank it much, using the solar receptors for my garden radio experience. If there was a night-time power outage, we could keep our mobile devices charged.
When I retired, I moved my clock-radio-alarm from the bedroom to on top of the refrigerator. The device has a 9-volt battery, which when there is a power outage, enables it to keep time. I figured I didn’t need an alarm after retirement. It turns out that figuring was accurate.
When the radio plays a song I recognize it does something to me. I listen and follow along with the lyrics if I know them. It is getting so I do know the lyrics of a lot of songs. I suppose the radio is training me to get addicted to listening. Thing is, I’m usually too busy working on something that requires my attention. Even if I focus on the task at hand, the radio plays in the background. After all these years, I guess I like it that way.
I planted peas yesterday. It seems late getting them in, yet like everything in gardening, we sow our seeds and hope for the best. There is nothing like a bowl of sugar snap peas in the refrigerator for snacking.
Cooler ambient temperatures have made it difficult to get in the garden. Meanwhile, seedlings started indoors have used up almost every available space. We need a few days in a row of better weather to get at least the cruciferous vegetables in the ground. Fingers crossed we’ll get that this week.
I finished reading William Styron’s memoir about depression, Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness. It made me think about whether or not I have been depressed. My tendency is to say no, yet after reading Styron, I’m not sure. I certainly haven’t had debilitating depression like he did. When I heard him read from The Long March at university, he had no appearance of being depressed. He recovered from his depression and wrote the memoir. The fame of it eclipsed that of his previous books. Despite depression, Styron achieved a level of success few writers have.
Depression has not played any significant role in my life.
Darkness Visible raises the question of suicide. Styron lists many successful, creative people who took their own lives. He considered suicide himself. I’ve considered what suicide is, yet have not been tempted to take that step in my creative endeavors. I accept that I’m alive, and thanks to my parents I felt valued as a child. That carried me through difficult times in my life. I’m more worried about unintentionally killing myself by things such as falling off the roof during my twice annual inspections, flipping the John Deere tractor while mowing the ditch, or by falling down the stairs because there is no handrail. These situations need resolution soon.
The best news is I continue to crave sugar snap peas grown in our garden. Growing them keeps me engaged with life and chases the blues away. I can’t wait to get back out in the garden… So I can chill a bowl of peas in the refrigerator.
This year I donated roughly 700 books to the public library used book sale and to Goodwill. Goodwill is less picky about what they will accept, so they received the majority of them. Many of my donations still had the Goodwill price tag from when I bought them. Library downsizing has only just begun.
All but The Moviegoer of my collection of Walker Percy novels went into boxes and out the door. I felt a bit sad about that, but as Vonnegut said, “So, it goes.” I had to decide about my collections by author. Other authors, that I worked equally hard to collect, went into bankers boxes with the names and date packed on the outside. Who knows if one will get into the boxes again, yet they are available and take up no precious shelf space. A few — Bellow, Didion, Irving, Morrell, Faulkner, and William Carlos Williams got their own special shelf space. It wouldn’t be my library without those authors.
I wrote previously about poetry and that decision seems solid. The shelves are easily accessible so when I want to read poetry I can get at the stacks.
Cookbooks are impossible. Half of what I gave away was cookbooks. I can’t seem to part with many more. Yet I must. Truth is, I hardly use cookbooks any more. Having learned how to cook, they serve as cultural artifacts related to places and people with which I have some connection. Reference material for the church where I was baptized, or the American Studies department where I got my degree. In seventy years of living, we generate a lot of connections. A cookbook has usually been involved. They also serve as examples of how to prepare a particular dish or ingredient. Keeping many of them takes up space that could be devoted to other topics. This sorting is far from over.
Hundreds of books about Iowa history and by Iowa authors needs reduction to a shelf of about a dozen to hand off to our child when they are ready. I also wrote about this. More of those got boxed up, leaving the first tier to be read and re-considered on the shelf.
The space for books about U.S. presidents is settled at eye level on two long shelves. The ones by or about presidents in my lifetime is sorted. I had two copies of Eisenhower’s White House memoirs and one is on the bench waiting to be packed up for Goodwill. I have a blank space for the second volume of Obama’s presidential memoir. No space was left for a Trump memoir, I mean, you got to be kidding me.
My African-American studies section has grown, and I need a space for American Indian books. I can’t bear to part with all the ancient writings, although the chances of reading some of them are slight. I may get into Plutarch’s Lives, or I may not. Keeping them for now.
Art books take up too much space. Having so many is a function of my interest in certain artists like Picasso, Joan Miró, Georgia O’Keeffe, Warhol, Hopper, and the like. Some I bought at the artist’s retrospective, and some I picked up at used book sales. Until I get to the point of running out of space, most of them will stay right where they now are.
A byproduct of sorting is finding more books to read. The to-read shelves are packed to overflowing. I’ve also found some lost friends, like George McGovern’s autobiography, Grassroots, and Joe Biden’s Promises to Keep. I put Biden’s memoir into a box, thinking he would never be president. Now it’s up in the presidential lineup.
The great book sort is proving to be beneficial. I have a better understanding of what I have, and organized them into projects for future writing. For now, there are some empty shelves. There won’t be for long.
My spouse and I noticed the mulberry tree on walkabout Tuesday afternoon.
The mulberry tree was damaged by the 2020 derecho and has begun to die. Branches high in the canopy are losing bark and not regrowing it. Soon it will need to be cut down and recycled. This is the only tree remaining from when we bought the lot in 1993.
We were discussing what to do with the yard. Mainly, we need to plant the area in front of the house where it was cleared last year. A flower bed of some kind will go there.
We took out the maple tree stump last year. We are considering replacement with some kind of tall bush rather than another tree, a forsythia or hydrangea, maybe.
More than half the Red Delicious apple tree is gone due to wind storms yet it seems very robust. Hard to tell if there will be an apple crop this year, yet under normal circumstances, there should be one.
Finally, the trays of seedlings are now outdoors in the greenhouse. It should be easier to water them. Next into the ground are onion sets, beets, and spinach. Hopefully there will be progress midst ambient temperatures in the 70s today.
Now to close this entry out and head for the lake trail for a morning walk.
By the calendar it is spring, yet it doesn’t quite feel like it. Too much darkness, too much rain, and too cold temperatures. Things will break, yet that doesn’t help get through today.
Monday I stopped at my parents’ graves while on my way to the wake for a friend. The dirt on Mother’s grave settled in the three and a half years since she was buried. I don’t know if the cemetery takes care of that, or whether I should bring a couple bags of topsoil, grass seed, a rake, a pair of gloves, and build it up myself. Whatever I do would be converted to the cemetery standard in time. It may not matter over the long term, although I’d feel better after tending her grave.
There have been enough funerals for a while. It is convenient to watch some from a distance via streaming. We don’t get the benefit of fellowship when we attend that way. I knew a lot of people at my friend’s in person wake, so that was pretty satisfying. I’m ready for what’s next and if spring would arrive, that would be it.
I didn’t know what to expect with Christopher Isett and Stephen Miller’s The Social History of Agriculture: From the Origins to the Current Crisis., yet it is slow reading as I drag my way through peasantry, indentured servitude, slavery and variations of people farming for little or no money. It seems a necessary background and the previous half dozen books were easier to read and more enjoyable. I’m halfway finished. Time to hunker down and finish it as there is valuable information therein. With gathering darkness and storms outside, what else is there to do?
It’s been a punk day for weather with me feeling under the weather. We have plenty of COVID-19 test kits, yet I’m confident that is not the problem. I’m okay with a bit of mystery. Soon enough spring will be here.
Probably time to get out William Carlos Williams and re-read Spring and All. Few things cheer me up like his writing.
Seeded tomatoes and peppers and set them on a heating pad under a grow light.
Saturday seemed busy. It could have been more productive. As a retired septuagenarian, there is never any difficulty staying busy. I do wonder if I could produce more during each day. More production is the American way.
A key aspect of America’s peculiar institution of slavery was efficient use of slaves. Especially on sugar plantations, but on others as well, every daylight hour was to be spent working in the fields or processing crops. If a slave died from being over worked, no problem. They could easily and inexpensively be replaced by another. The lives of slaves on a plantation were short.
The average lifespan of enslaved Africans who worked on colonial sugar and rice plantations was seven years. Extreme physical demands relied on equally extreme instruments of torture to ensure control over enslaved peoples and to protect plantation profits. The economies and societies they built were denied to them, along with human dignity.
National Museum of African American History and Culture website.
Making enslaved humans productive was essential to accumulation of wealth in the highly lucrative production of sugar, rice, cotton, tobacco and indigo. A system of overseers and supervision was developed. While slavery ended with the Civil War, those techniques from plantation days persisted in practice and in many cases are revered by business efficiency experts. In 1850, the average life expectancy for a slave was 36 years.
We’re not accumulating any wealth here, yet feeling like I’m accomplishing more would be a boon. Here’s what I have in mind:
About this time last year I stopped regular, daily work on my book. This year I plan to spend less time in Summer and Spring, yet write something or work on research every day. The major obstacle is I can’t seem to get through all the boxes of research documents in a timely manner.
Reduction of my book stacks will continue. The goal is to donate every time I shop over in Coralville, or about every other week. I have a process and things are moving more quickly now. Some time each day on this.
My goal is to read 25 pages per day. For historical books with a lot of detail, that’s probably right. When reading fiction, it’s too low. The idea is to adopt different goals for different kinds of books. If I can’t read 50 pages of fiction per day, there is something wrong with me.
Our refrigerator and pantry are good at keeping food and there is too much of it. I plan to work down the excess by cooking differently. Maybe I’ll find a few recipes that are keepers.
Listen to more music. I wrote this playlist in 2005. It is a story of my life in music. Back when I played, I sang all of these.
Cripple Creek (Traditional)
Lord Franklin (Traditional)
Shenandoah (Traditional)
Big Rock Candy Mountain (Harry McClintock)
House of the Rising Sun (Traditional)
500 Miles (Hedy West)
The Cruel War (Traditional)
Blowin' In The Wind (Bob Dylan)
Pack Up Your Sorrows (Pauline Marden and Richard Fariña)
Wabash Cannonball (William Kindt)
This Land is Your Land (Woodie Guthrie)
Freight Train (Elizabeth Cotten)
The Hammer Song (Pete Seeger and Lee Hayes)
Good Night Irene (Huddie Ledbetter said he didn't know who wrote it)
Someday Soon (Ian Tyson)
Early Morning Rain (Gordon Lightfoot)
Four Strong Winds (Ian Tyson)
Both Sides, Now (Joni Mitchell)
What About Me? (Scott McKenzie)
The City of New Orleans (Steve Goodman)
You Ain't Going Nowhere (Bob Dylan)
I Shall Be Released (Bob Dylan)
It's All Over Now, Baby Blue (Bob Dylan)
The Dutchman (Michael Peter Smith)
The veins on my arms do not stand out. Ever. The clinic drew blood for my semi-annual checkup and it took two staff members four pokes to obtain a sufficient sample. I’m an adult and can stand the pokey pokey. I also know about my hiding veins.
The blood test results were posted same day on a health profile hosted by the hospital. Let’s just say I have some work to do after last winter.
My high school friend Mike Tandy died on Thursday. He was on stage crew and close friends with most of our 1970s band members. He occasionally played bass guitar. He was a teacher most of his working life. Rest in peace, buddy.
The last ten days have been relentless with deaths of people I knew well. Now that spring is here, maybe I’ll get some relief. In any case, I bookmarked the three funeral homes in my home town for easy reference.
A thunderstorm blew through Big Grove Township last night. It was severe enough for us to retreat to our safe place on the lower level. After the 2020 derecho, it was no biggie. A little hail and moderate rain fell. We lost electricity for an hour or so. When the lights and stove went out, I put away the dinner I was making and took the ingredients back out when electricity returned. I left the half-cooked brown rice on the stove and without additional heat, it turned out exceptionally well. We need to replicate that process without the loss of electricity.
I binged on poetry reading at the end of the month, finishing books by Czesław Miłosz, Alice Walker, Adrienne Rich, and James Wright. I liked each one in different ways. The fewer mass culture references in poetry, the better. None of them was clean enough for my liking. It bugged me a little that Walker repeated she was “writing poetry again.” Just show me, don’t tell me is a basic tenet of poetry.
The cleaning of an external hard drive proceeds a little each day. Unfortunately, there are unique and useful files on it, so the computer spends several hours each day with the transfer. My obsessive compulsion about saving my computer work paid off in the new finds I have made. It is a drudgery, though.
I don’t care about sports, yet last night’s win by the University of Iowa Women’s basketball team against number one ranked South Carolina was a big deal. I noticed in social media, some friends flew to Dallas for the game. We talk a lot about how divided the country has become. Yet, if one can’t get behind the success of this team, you may be the problem and need a look in the mirror.
It’s tomato and pepper planting day in Big Grove. I had better get after it.
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