Tag: journals

Garden vegetables overwintered: cilantro, spring onions, kale, collards, and garlic. The garlic grew where it was planted last year, so I will pull it before tomatoes go into that spot. Main crop of garlic is about 12 inches tall. The last order of tomato seeds, cucumbers and squash arrived via USPS on Saturday. The shift from indoors to outdoors work is evident this week.

Electricity Outage

On Tuesday a big storm rolled in and took the electricity out for a brief moment. It was enough to risk losing the edits I was making on my autobiography. Luckily, my computer saved my then current work in the browser and I was able to restore it, rename it, and proceed on. Losing a day’s edits is unwanted, but a writer can recover from that. Luckily, because of technology I don’t understand, I didn’t lose anything when electricity failed and the CPU and screen died.

Optometrist

This week I had my annual appointment with an optometrist for a diabetes screening. It is remarkable how many tests and the diversity of equipment they used for this exam. With a special camera, the attendant took a photo of my retinas. There was almost no change to note year-over-year. I’m clear for another as far as diabetes is concerned until the next appointment in 2025.

The optometrist has been mentioning cataract surgery as a future possibility for the last few years. The thing is, while I experience some vision deterioration, the amount of change does not affect everyday activities like reading and driving. If doc recommends it, I am going to delay until there is some kind of actual problem. The annual screening is fine.

He wrote a new eyeglasses prescription, which I will not fill because I like my current glasses and the improved vision they provide.

Robotic Approach to Health

I had a robo-call from my prescription drug insurance company. The machine left a message on my mobile device. When I called back, it was a robotic reminder I needed to fill my prescription, accompanied by warnings about following doctor’s orders. The pharmacy had some kind of robotic reminder system that previously prompted me to refill my prescription. The reason I didn’t refill was my nurse practitioner quit when the university bought the private hospital system. He hasn’t been replaced. When I called the temporary clinic the next town over to discuss, they asked me how many pills I had left. Because of the robot, I had plenty to last a couple of weeks. When I get down to five pills, I’ll phone so they can reauthorize.

In the meanwhile, I met with a group of pharmacy students who suggested an over the counter drug instead of what I was taking. I have been thinking of stopping the prescription drug and self-treating. Did the robots know, and hence their concern?

Mushroom Hunters

While walking on the state park trail I encountered some neighbors I’ve known a long time. They were off trail and I asked if they were looking for mushrooms. Spring Morel Mushrooms are a well-loved delicacy in this region. He answered that was what they were doing. I stopped walking and we talked. The drought is too much for the mushrooms to grow, we agreed. When I hit the turn-around point and returned, they were both gone.

Another Edit Pass

I see an opportunity to improve the draft of my autobiography. When I started, my main concern was getting a story framed on a timeline. Now that it’s done, I want to emphasize my development as a story-teller. I hadn’t envisioned that when I began. I made some changes to the first chapter and now need to follow it through to the end. It was like something nagged at me. Now I know what it was. With gardening season here, I’m not sure how the new edit will be worked into the schedule.

It was a punk week as far as weather goes. Rain and snow kept me mostly indoors. My exercise log shows more indoors workouts which are never as much fun as walking on the state park trail. I managed as best I could.

Women’s Basketball

Sunday I turned on the television and found ABC which was carrying the NCAA Women’s Championship basketball game. Iowa lost to the University of South Carolina 75-87. It was the first time I tuned into a college sporting event since I watched the Iowa football team get shutout by Washington, 0-28 in the Jan. 1, 1982 Rose Bowl. The moral of the story is I shouldn’t jinx the luck by tuning in.

Our high school class reunion planning group was talking about women’s basketball at our meeting this week. I suggested we find one of the women who were leaders in high school to lead the formal program we have planned. One person asked if we had a women’s basketball team. Perhaps there would be a leader from there. We didn’t. We graduated high school before Title IX was signed into law.

Editing the Book

I finished the final rough draft of the first 38 of 62 chapters in my autobiography. This thing may not drag on until summer. My conclusion is I have been over the text so many times, it has become the story. There were some chapters that needed work, but it is a much better draft than what I finished last year.

One lingering concern is including long passages from my journal in the narrative without editing. Some of that writing is a bit rough. When I started journal writing in 1974, I was not very good at it. My argument to myself is that it is better to show the work than sand off the edges in a new narrative. In part, that is to show my progress as a writer in a work intended to showcase my writing. The long passage I wrote in France was particularly rough, yet it serves as an example of how my journal writing started. For now, I’m leaving it in.

The other question is about passages written about long ago events since I started this blog in 2007. There may be a case to just rewrite these. At the same time, they capture a moment in time that would vanish should I re-write them. I left them in at this point.

End of Life Planning

I read Mary Ann Burrows new book, The Last Hurrah: A Living Workbook for a Happy Ending. The book is about end of life planning, but not the kind I expected. She defers to others the tasks of financial and legal advice and writes mostly about how to turn our last days into a celebration. If someone knows me, they know I am not a big one to celebrate moments or have a big to-do about life’s events. The biggest events in my life were our wedding and its two receptions, and our child’s high school graduation. We had gatherings for them. So many of my good friends have died already, I’m not sure who would be left and in good enough shape to travel for a celebration. I started keeping my own obituary a number of years ago. It is pretty bare bones, and that’s the way I like it.

Clear Organic Juice

I went to the grocer to find clear organic juice for my spouse. She wanted organic apple juice, which wasn’t available. In typical (for us) form, I started sending images of various ingredient labels and products. I offered to get non-organic apple juice. In the end, I phoned her and said, “I’ve been waiting in this juice aisle and am starting to get thirsty.” We gave up and I brought home boxed vegetable broth instead.

It was unsettling to be unable to dig in the garden because of inclement weather. The seed potatoes appear to be doing well, and the seedlings are growing. Here’s hoping the coming week find me spending more time in the garden.

Garlic is up in the garden: yield looks pretty good. Somehow building a brush pile escaped me this week so I need to get cracking on that. Many robins and other birds have arrived. Lilacs are beginning to bud. All signs are present for an early spring.

Class reunion

Nothing can sober a person like figuring out who died from one’s high school class. For my class of 1970, our research shows 42 of about 260 classmates have died. That is in line with what insurance company actuarial tables suggest should be our experience. It doesn’t make dealing with those deaths any easier. “Who died?” was the most frequently asked question at our 40th reunion in 2010 so the planning committee is front loading work to have a better answer this time.

When I work on the organizing committee for a reunion I’m more likely to attend. My main interests are finding out what people have been doing during the years since we graduated, planning the event, and catching up on news. I would not likely attend if I wasn’t on the planning committee. The event is in July, dubbed the 50th Reunion (Delayed) because we canceled during the coronavirus pandemic when our 50th would have been.

Charlatan

I finished reading Charlatan: America’s Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam by Pope Brock this week. It is a well-researched and easy to read book about early 20th Century medical practices and associated quackery. Dr. John Binkley, the charlatan, is reminiscent of B.J. Palmer, son of the discoverer of the chiropractic principle, who lived in Davenport. Palmer started the first radio stations west of the Mississippi River in Davenport and Des Moines, paraded elephants through the city streets to advertise the chiropractic principle, and had a museum called Little Bit O’Heaven at his chiropractic school. The museum had artifacts collected during his global travels. While chiropractic thrives into the 21st Century as a respected medical profession, its trajectory in the early years is tied to that of the goat-gland charlatan depicted in this book. Worth reading for this and other reasons.

State of the Union

I viewed video of the entire State of the Union Address. It took me multiple segments to get through it. Biden did an excellent job, of the kind I expect from a Democratic president. I also viewed video of the Alabama housewife (and U.S. Senator) who delivered the Republican response. They have nothing! Seriously, Biden got criticized for having a campaign TikTok account. Do Republicans not know about the numerous objections among users to federal attempts to regulate TikTok? OMG! Governor Kim Reynolds made a press release reacting to the State of the Union with a tepid response. Why did she even bother if she had nothing to say? Republicans really do want to take the country backward.

Hope your week went as well. Cheers!

Beginning today, I plan to post a weekly journal of significant activities for the week ending on Sunday. This week, I already wrote about my trip to pick up soil mix, cooking lentil soup, movies, and a short, developmental piece from my work in progress autobiography. This week’s entry may be short.

The purpose is to make a conscious decision to reduce how many times I post here and use that time to advance my autobiography. With spring arriving in four weeks, I need more writing time. I debate changing how I describe my autobiography to my “WIP,” or work in progress like all the cool writers do on Threads. Autobiography seems like too big a mouth full and I don’t like “memoir.”

On Saturday and Sunday, I’m filling in at Blog for Iowa for a while, and those posts will be cross posted here without comment. I strive for a broader audience and put more effort into selecting topics for those Iowa readers. I’ll also cross post any writing that gets published in the newspaper, or other places in the real world, also without comment. A letter to the editor is often a re-working and shortening of something else I posted here, so it seems like duplication to publish the letter like the one that made last Thursday’s Cedar Rapids Gazette here as well.

I’ve pretty much given up on a range of topics that used to be important to me. Cooking, recipes, gardening, local food, and others remain parts of my life. I just don’t feel I have anything new to say. I am weary of writing about “organic practices” when so many people are food insecure. I plan to give those a rest unless I prepare a great dish and want to preserve how I made it. I may highlight unique ways I find to increase food security among those who need it.

I’ve been taking a lot of photos of morning cups of coffee. I post them on my Threads account, tag them a certain way, and there is a group that goes into a frenzy of liking them. These posts get, by far, more views than any others I put up. It’s sad, but it’s something.

That’s it for this week. Let’s all make it a great one next week!

28 July 1981
Iowa City

Last night and this morning I read Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman. It has been some time since I last turned those pages, and with the facsimile first edition I have, I felt like the years had turned back.

It is a good book today and I think a large part of my own status is derived from or related to the past readings of this book. I can’t help but say amen to every line.

For what I perceive in Whitman is that life comes only by the individual’s bringing life to otherwise lifeless things. This is what I am about. Nice job Walt.

13 August 1981
Iowa City

First entry after beginning work. This is about right. Two weeks before I get started writing in my journal again. I guess I’m starting to get to where I can do other things besides work a job. I’m beginning to settle in. There’s a ways to go yet.

18 August 1981
Iowa City

The writers I read on writing say that the best time to write is in the morning when I first wake up. That’s not the way it will be. My writing will take place after a day of work in a job with lots of people contact, in a busy part of town, in close contact with a lot of other people, while I am engaged in a myriad of activities. I think all of this is the way it should be, a return to John Donne, perhaps, but a proper state of affairs. For we are always engaged in the world with others. We must be.

It’s time to look to the future. The first step is the publishing and distribution of Institutional Writings. I pick the books up tomorrow after work and will begin writing the passages for the receivers. As I approach thirty years, I make my commitment to life. To people. I consciously leave the past in the recesses of me memory to chart a course over unmarked territory. But I am not a pioneer, in a sense, I cannot be,for I join in my every action with all those who preceeded me. With the rest of humanity. In the most familiar terms, by those who share my culture. But these too are words that belong to the past. Here I go.