Writing space at Five Points in Davenport, Iowa, 1980.
I posted for 190 consecutive days and plan to pause for a while. Several things consumed my energy which needs recharging, something important to sustaining this bloggery.
I plan to write more about process, although today I don’t know what to say. A writer has a distinct ecosystem from which words spring. Consideration of that environment and process is important, and next on the to-do list. I have always had a process, yet it’s time for a rest, then a reset.
I bought the desk in the photograph immediately after returning to Iowa from Germany because I needed a place to write. Without home computers or cellular phone service, the incandescent lamps, two portable typewriters, a landline telephone, and a handheld calculator were the only mechanical devices I used. The large windows played a role.
The desk is still with me, although its use changed to that of a sorting table and storage unit. A writer sometimes needs space to lay out papers and artifacts when developing a story. I now write on a library table inherited from my father-in-law.
While I’m away—in the next virtual room as it were—here’s a Pete Seeger rendition of this famous folk song.
I want to say something about artificial intelligence’s intrusion into life. Because the emerging technology is rapidly changing since public awareness of it increased a few years ago, whatever I might say seems unlikely to persist in relevance for long. For now, people I know reject it as something of value. Evidence is everywhere.
May commencements brought a share of public derision. Speakers were being booed after bringing up AI and touting its benefits, notably former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Gloria Caulfield, a real estate executive. Graduates face a difficult labor market, and a technology that could make it more difficult to find a job was neither welcome nor news.
There is a lot to hate about Schmidt, but who is Gloria Caulfield? She comes from the Lake Nona development world, a 17-square-mile, master-planned smart city and innovation hub in Orlando, Florida. To her, AI and related innovation represent modernization, economic growth, and future competitiveness. She thought her speech was relevant, yet graduates in media, arts, and communications heard another warning that the professions they trained for may become more unstable. No wonder they booed.
Among problems encountered by recent college graduates are that their work internships are not turning into jobs as employers don’t accept that as experience. The use of resume scanners instead of a human is off-putting. The struggle to talk to a human at a prospective employer creates uncertainty. In addition, there are fewer jobs out there. Entry level positions are viewed as most likely targets of AI-driven automation. These things put together create stress in graduating seniors. AI is simply one more thing.
When I’m working at my desk I have a Twitch stream on in the background. The community is more than five years old with a good group of regulars I’ve gotten to know, some of them in real life. To a person, they are not fans of artificial intelligence. When the chat turns to AI, rejection is immediate. There are reasons for that, although the discussion never gets to them.
In part, this cohort spent years adapting to unstable working conditions. They are well-versed in the digital world, and a bit weary of yet another technology purporting to make their lives better when so many new technologies did not fulfill their hype and promise. They lived through outsourcing, remote work transitions, automation, software churn, layoffs, and constant demands to retrain or rebrand themselves professionally. AI is yet another source of volatility in the job market, yet another skills race with no certain outcome, and one more way to jimmy-jack the job market to the advantage of business interests.
My Twitch cohort is mostly of digital natives likely to have played Oregon Trail in school computer labs, and first experienced the internet by loading a disk into their home computer to access by dial-up on a phone line. They have seen it all and the commercial nature of AI represents nothing special. They are tired of the next new thing.
Why don’t I like it? The theft, mainly.
In October 2025, my blog got a dramatic increase in number of views from a single source. By dramatic, I mean in September the view count was 2,800, and October was 51,335. Most of these views took place from Oct. 7-9, or roughly 12 views per minute on average. The views were of individual posts going back to the first still existing online. Obviously a machine was doing this “viewing.” To what end, I don’t know, but I suspect AI training.
A local used bookseller reported a surprising number of recent online purchases of obscure books, to the tune of 500 orders per week. They feared the worst, that the purchasing was algorithm driven to acquire the books, tear off the covers, scan the pages for AI, and then discard them. In aggregate, taking millions of used books out of the marketplace. The Washington Post recently ran a story about this operation. This is a clear intrusion into what many of us believe are social norms—people buy books to read and cherish them. It represents AI theft.
I use artificial intelligence almost daily, mostly through Google’s Gemini which is now embedded into the search function. I also use ChatGPT for more complex questions. Both provide responses quickly but I find half of them problematic, or more simply said, they are garbage. Crappy work product makes AI just one more suspect opinion in a society where there is a lot of that going around.
Likely a machine designed the rollout of artificial intelligence to more public use. As is typical, the machines missed the human factor, which is another reason to boo.
With spring’s garden work, my joints ache in the morning. By the time I finish my daily exercises and 30-minute walk on the state park trail, the ache subsides. I wouldn’t change anything, yet have to wonder how many more years I can continue tending the large garden we have. That’s not a question for today as I don my overalls and prepare to dig yet another plot. It is a question for the near-term future.
This week’s focus was on getting the tomato plot planted. I spent much of Tuesday clearing the ground of collected fencing, ground cover, and other things stored temporarily. Then, I mowed the tall weeds, being careful to avoid mowing the large toad who had taken up residence. I encouraged it into the fringe area where I left the grass tall. No toads were harmed in this operation. Next comes spading the ground, applying fertilizer and soil conditioner, then rototilling.
The other limiting factor is the unseasonably warm ambient temperatures. On Wednesday morning, the forecast was for a high around 90 degrees. I have to pace myself as the heat index climbs. In earlier days, when I would work in the hot sun for hours at a time, I relished the sweat as it poured off my brow. Being older has me realizing at some point, I need to shut myself down and head indoors to the cooler temperatures. That has usually been a matter of how I feel. Septuagenarians pay attention to that.
This coming weekend is my last filling in for Blog for Iowa author Dave Bradley as he moved his family back to Iowa from Indiana. I don’t know what I will do with the extra time. The older I get the more I discover there is always something waiting for my attention.
Daisies at the Unitarian Universalist Society in Coralville, Iowa.
This week in the garden is mostly about what I did last Monday and Tuesday, which is not much. The overnight rain—four days in a row—made the ground too wet for digging. However, it was ideal for weeding and I made a clean sweep of the leeks, onions, turnips and radishes. They all look good right now. I brought in and began to freeze kale, harvested radishes, and pulled three green onions for the kitchen. There are already plenty of herbs. The garden is only half planted and abundance is evident.
It did not help that I had three six-and-a-half hour shifts as a poll worker. It took me away from the garden on clear days with ambient temperatures in the 50s and 60s. I took the job, so I had to show up. That is one of the positive benefits of hiring a septuagenarian.
Saturday when I returned from a memorial service I got dressed and got on my mower to cut grass for mulch. As I was unloading the bags, I notice garlic is already producing scapes. After I finished emptying the first bags of clippings it started to rain. At least I didn’t have to water. On Sunday I finished laying ground cover for plot #4, ad planted fennel, green beans, and cucumbers.
Some weeks are like this. A gardener simply lives with nature, and a rain-out week is part of that.
I wrote at length in 2020 about Pattison Sand wanting to mine the Jordan Aquifer and ship the water out west. They persist in needing water, and Iowa DNR sent me this email about their current permit request on Tuesday.
You are receiving this email because you previously expressed interest in or commented on Pattison Sand Company’s Water Use Permit Application.
For a quick recap: Pattison Sand Company requested additional water last year for their quarry facility near Clayton, IA. In response to comments received during the public notice period for the current modification, the Water Use Program held a public hearing, a public meeting, and gathered additional public comments on the proposed permit modification.
Since the last meeting, the Iowa Geological Survey completed a Hydrologic Investigation and the Water Use Program evaluated options for environmental safeguards and permit conditions. We’d like to share those findings with you at an upcoming meeting:
When: Tuesday, June 9th, 2026 | 1:00–6:00 PM
Where: Garnavillo Community Center, 106 W Niagara St, Garnavillo, Iowa
Staff from the Water Use Program, Iowa DNR Field Office, and Iowa Geological Survey will present on permit conditions, local geology and hydrology, environmental impacts, and timeline. Feel free to drop in at any time during the event. There will be presentations at the beginning (1pm) and end (5pm) of the event.
We hope to see you there.
This looks to be an excellent meeting.
For background information, here is an excerpt from my 2020 post on Pattison Sand:
Mining the Jordan Aquifer
News on Friday, Feb. 28, 2020, was Pattison Sand Company of Clayton sought to extract 34 million gallons of water per year over a ten-year period from the Jordan Aquifer, according to Perry Beeman of Iowa Capitol Dispatch. The water would be shipped by rail to arid regions in the American west, potentially to New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Nevada, Utah, Arizona or California. The Jordan Aquifer is also the source of municipal water for the city of Marion which lies within Liz Mathis’ senate district.
Earlier this month Pattison proposed to extract 2 billion gallons per year from the Jordan Aquifer using wells they drilled to support their frack sand mining operation. This proposal was rejected by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources.
The problem with tapping the Jordan Aquifer is it is prehistoric water, in other words, it has been there a long time. The aquifer does not recharge at the same rate as the Silurian Aquifer which lies on top of it. Once the Jordan Aquifer is drained, the water will be gone and communities that currently rely upon it could be left without a reliable water source.
The climate crisis is evident in the American west. Demand for water exceeds the region’s capacity to produce it through rainfall, snow melt, and underground aquifers. Something’s got to give for people who settled there to survive. Mining and shipping water from Eastern Iowa is not a good idea because what may be abundant to meet our current needs will be diminished by the extraction proposed by Pattison and others. It is easy to see how a discussion over water rights could escalate into regional conflict over this basic human need.
If we look at history, humans have continued to exploit natural resources until they are gone, in many cases leading to the collapse of societies. Our brains are not wired to perceive the threat shipping billions of gallons of water from Iowa to the west could have. We have to pay attention, and the role of government is to look out for the common good.
It is hard to image an overall plan to resolve the climate crisis at its root causes. Further exploitation of natural resources doesn’t solve anything and could potentially make matters worse. At least we were discussing it and in doing so raising awareness on a sunny morning in Ely over kolaches.
Every gardener should read The Lives of Bees: The Untold Story of the Honey Bee in the Wild by Thomas D. Seeley. Gardeners are aware of the mix of pollinators required to service our plants and make food growing possible. We tend to forget this key insect, Apis mellifera, has been present on Earth for from six to eight million years. Before there was agriculture, there were common honey bees. Understanding wild bees and how they interact in the wild is useful and relevant knowledge.
The book is comprehensive, and based on the author’s research as well as that of others. There is a lot about bees I hadn’t considered before.
Wild honey bees position their hives a good distance from each other, a half mile apart on average. This serves multiple aspects of bee life—defensive purposes and limiting the spread of parasites such as the Varroa destructor and contagious viruses between colonies.
Likewise, bees have evolved to prefer a hive entry in a hollowed out tree around 15 feet above the ground. The small entry usually leads to the lower third of the cavity. If we want to find a wild honey bee nest in a tree, we must look up. This positioning is likely an evolutionary aspect of hive location. Curiously, black bears—a main bee hive predator—have eyesight that can’t see bees flying in and out of an opening that far up a tree, according to Seeley.
As humans domesticated bees in apiaries, they did what makes sense for beeswax and honey production—built larger hives for their swarms of bees. According to Seeley, wild honey bees strongly prefer tree cavities with a volume of about 10 to 12 gallons. In addition to size, the tree cavity provides insulation from cold weather. Contrast that with commercial apiaries whose average size is 20 gallons, nearly twice the ideal size. Seeley found less tendency for apiary bees to swarm in larger hives. The result has been allowing mites like the Varroa destructor to propagate better. In a section called Darwinian Beekeeping, he detailed his process. Commercial bee keeping removed a natural defense built up among bee colonies over thousands of years of evolution.
The physical book was made using a heavier paper than most mass market books. In fact, it was a bit much to read in bed because my hands got tired of holding its weight. The photography and illustrations make the premium paper worth the workout of holding and reading it. There is more than just the physical object. If you have ever wondered about bees, this is a comprehensive and readable reference. Highly recommend.
Signs of spring are everywhere: First sets of goslings on the lake with their parents, songbirds throughout the forested area, and earlier morning sunrises. During my at-home retreat, I have been keeping irregular hours and changing most everything about my daily schedule. On Tuesday I slept until first light, immediately dressed, and headed out for my morning walk without any of the normal daily regimen. It felt weird, but I did it. Behind all the schedules and regimen, I’m still me.
I came across what appeared to be a molted feather of a Barred Owl on the trail. Because I hear owls high in the tree canopy in the predawn light, there is ample additional evidence they are around. The feather confirms the species of owl. While researching the feather, I discovered the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, which governs such findings. The common outdoor saying, “take only pictures, leave only footprints,” applies here.
Barred Owl feather on the state park trail. The rules, according to the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, are to not touch them, tempting as it may be to pick it up and take it home. I took this photo and left it where I found it.
If you’ve been in the spice aisle of a grocery store, the high prices are quite noticeable. A jar of organic dried basil costs $7.75 per ounce at a local chain grocery store. If one buys bulk via mail order, the cost of a pound of the same product is $0.86 per ounce. I bought bulk of basil, marjoram, and parsley and shared the savings by giving some of it away to family.
Dried herbs bought in bulk and then broken down for a gift.
The big spring project is planting the garden. For now, I can stand all the work and hope to continue at least another ten years. Indeed the fresh produce—where I control the inputs—is of high value in our household. The year-to-date expense is running 73.4 percent of 2025. Lower costs have to do with purchases made last year, and reusing fencing, plastic ground cover, and the covered row. I’m not finished spending money but the trend is hopeful. Every pound of home-grown produce displaces money I would have to spend at the grocer or farmers’ market. It is a good way to live.
There was a chance of rain, but not much of a chance. We need rain, but the deep soil moisture is probably sufficient. The recent sunny and windy days have been drying the garden’s surface soil. That’s another spring worry—getting sufficient rain to produce a garden crop. Officials at the National Weather Service say we are near normal. That is good enough for today.
After spading the next garden plot on Sunday, I went to the home, farm, and auto supply store to get fence posts. It was a madhouse around 12:30 p.m. with families out and stocking up on all kinds of home items. The person ahead of me at the cashier tallied up more than $500 worth of merchandise. Outside in the parking lot, the garden center was set up and like me, people were buying things to use in the garden. I was home alone, so didn’t mind being with people, even if I didn’t know anyone by name.
On the way down, I drove past Walmart and Lowe’s, which both likely carry the fence posts I needed. I would rather shop where I knew one of the principals while I worked there. I held a “retirement job” to earn enough money to fill budget gaps until reaching full retirement age. The job ended during the coronavirus pandemic when I decided the risk was not worth the reward. One of the owners stopped to see me every time he was in town, and sent birthday and holiday cards with a personal note. Big box stores don’t offer that sort of amenity.
It was Mothers’ Day. As I looked for the fence posts I saw several mother-daughter couples filling carts. The reason I felt they were mother-daughters is because of their similar faces combined with an appropriate age difference. Thoughts turned to my own mother.
My last memory of her was walking her casket from the hearse to the grave site next to Father. The ground was uneven and my grip was unsure. I almost tripped and the casket lowered unevenly with the other pall bearers, shifting Mother inside. She was never big on celebrating Mothers’ Day, although I miss being able to pick up the phone and call her.
They didn’t have the size fence posts I needed at the home, farm, and auto supply store. I bought five three-foot ones for tomato cages, but will have to get the four- and five-foot ones elsewhere.
As I headed home across the lakes I felt the garden workday was at an end. Tomorrow looked like another beautiful spring day for progress. Earlier in the day, I wished my spouse a Happy Mothers’ Day and she replied our child sent her a nice note. This trip was about more than garden supplies.
The terms “data center,” “energy,” and “artificial intelligence” get bandied about in the media. It would be good to have a better understanding of what these things mean in the context of the rapid growth of artificial intelligence. Hannah Ritchie sorts through some of this in an article titled, “How much electricity does AI consume?” Read it here.
From what I understand, “data center” does not mean a single thing. For example, when Google signed a long-term contract with NextEra Energy to buy most of the electricity generated from a refurbished nuclear power plant in Palo, Iowa it had specific intentions for use. In multiple public statements it indicated the electricity was to support cloud and artificial intelligence infrastructure. Where exactly the electricity would be used has not been specified, nor is the contract tied to any specific future facility. Likewise, before Duane Arnold Energy Center comes on line in 2029, plans for usage could change.
If one uses artificial intelligence at home, it seems obvious AI is an industry in transition. I have been using various AI tools for about a year, and from a user perspective, the interface and results change often, in some cases daily. By 2029, there could be dramatic changes in both cloud and artificial intelligence process and usage. To use the Google example, what Google thinks it will use this contracted electricity today, may not be what they use it for in 2029 and beyond.
It is often missed that electricity and energy do not mean the same thing. The former is a subset of the latter. For example, when I worked as a consultant in Kentucky, the steel mill which was our customer had predicated its business on the availability of low electricity prices at night to melt scrap metal for their rolling mill. I have experience with a number of corporations that used energy to heat and dry products, forge steel and aluminum, and other industrial uses. That doesn’t mention home heating, automotive, and aviation uses of energy. When we discuss data centers, in terms of energy use, we are speaking of electricity.
A friend’s son works for a major multinational corporation and is working on development of artificial intelligence to support their manufacturing and sales operations. It is a major project involving travel to many countries where the company has a footprint. I expect most large companies are doing similarly. The results of these exploratory efforts will change how they do business, including the fear that AI will replace human workers in large numbers. There are fears and there are actualities and unfortunately we don’t know the latter today.
My point is when talking about data centers, energy and artificial intelligence we must do better than to bandy about terms for which there are better definitions. We should not avoid that discussion but participate actively in it when possible. Doing so meaningfully means knowing about what we bring up. In the case of AI we are discussing electricity.
By my calculations, we passed the last frost and the rest of the garden can go in. If cold temperatures return, I have a banker’s box full of old flat sheets to cover and protect young plants.
Three plots had been planted, leaving four and part of the garlic patch with which to do something. I know one will be exclusively tomatoes, two will be a mix of vegetables, a small plot will be fennel, celery and celeriac, and the last will be some kind of winter squash. A lot of work is finished, and a lot remains before initial planting can be called done.
I planted spinach in the covered row simply to get the tray out of the overcrowded greenhouse. I learned how to use covered rows from my friend Susan while working on her farm. The best parts of a covered row are protection from pests and a controlled environment that enhances normal growth. I bought the hoops from the farm where I worked and the cover from a commercial supplier a number of years ago. If cared for, the cover will last.
Friday, I bought thyme, sage, and chive plants from local farmers I know. These will go under the cover with parsley, cilantro and basil. Once the plants get too tall, I will strip the cover back and let them grow in open air. This process can produce a large herb crop for drying. If there is enough, I will make fresh pesto and freeze some.
At the farm, each herb pot was four dollars. To put that in perspective, I have more than 700 blocks with plants started, or according to this retail value, about $2,800 worth of them. I don’t mind paying full price at the farm because I can leverage their work to get a few things I want but don’t have space in the greenhouse to grow.
I spent a couple of hours weeding garlic. I had hoped to have it mulched with grass clippings by now but there weren’t enough, therefore weeding. Collecting grass clippings was high on my weekend to-do list, yet there really isn’t enough grass to mow yet.
There were some empty spots in the cruciferous vegetable plot so I filled them in from the greenhouse. At this point, I want every spot filled with something. The crop looks healthy thus far.
Saturday was a solid shift in which I planted lettuce and tatsoi in the covered row, cleared off the celery and celeriac plot, and cleared last year’s tomato plot. I salvaged most of the plastic ground cover to reuse and made burn pile #3 for the season.
Burn pile #3.
Sunday morning was spent spading the big plot I cleared. It was a lot of work, yet part of the process of conditioning the soil.
Fourth plot turned over on May 10, 2026.
I wasn’t planning on running so many errands this week. The main one was Monday’s round trip to Des Moines. I had poll worker training at the county seat on Thursday, and a Friday get-together with a friend who just moved back to Iowa. Running errands takes away from gardening, yet is essential to a modern life. Much as I wish for something different from automobile culture, it is what we have in our decision to life in rural Iowa.
It was a good week of preparations. I am looking forward to getting the whole garden in during the next few weeks as we are on the cusp of summer.
In between stints of spading, I took a break in the garage. The addition of the table to the left is making a big difference.
Journey Home 
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