Tag: Sustainability

Nuclear abolition, climate change, environmental degradation, nature, peace and justice.

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Living in Society

View Toward Tomorrow

Canadian geese feeding in morning light.

We all have access to the news, so I need not recap what happened during the Nov. 5 election. Suffice it the front face for the Heritage Foundation, which is the front face for right-wing billionaires like Charles Koch and his club, was elected president. The Republican win was so deep it was and will be disabling for a while. It’s time to begin getting over the loss and move forward.

In a Nov. 20 article originally published in Hankyoreh, John Feffer provides a possible future as progressives pick up the pieces of our shattered dream of continuing the successes of the Biden administration with Kamala Harris. The entire article is printed here.

The challenge of navigating uncharted political waters is we don’t always know what to expect or what it might look like. Feffer provides some ideas toward envisioning the future as follows:

  • In 2016, Trump himself was surprised by his own victory, and his team was ill-prepared to take power. In 2024, his team is ready to hit the ground running on day one.
  • A demoralized Democratic Party is busy trying to figure out why it lost so badly in the elections.
  • The next four years promise to be chaotic, vengeful, and dangerous.

What can be done to prevent the new administration from doing its worst?

At the global level, many countries will step into the vacuum created by U.S. withdrawal—from the Paris agreement, the effort to supply Ukraine, and various global human rights institutions. European powers will likely step up their assistance to Ukraine if the Trump administration ends all military support for the besieged country. Europe, too, will continue to take the lead in terms of a clean energy transition. China, Brazil, and India are also producing a growing amount of electricity from renewable sources.

Inside the United States, the greatest resistance will come from the states. These states controlled by Democrats—California, Washington, Massachusetts—are already preparing to work together to block Trump from executing his extremist agenda. This resistance will likely take the form of filing suits that tangle up the new administration in court.

States have authority to set policy. For instance, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s repeal of Roe v. Wade, a number of states preserved access to abortion services through court rulings, legislative policy, or popular referenda. Regarding mass deportations, some Democratic governors have already said that they will not allow state police to assist federal authorities with the removals. Democrat-led states will do their best to create islands of sanctuary against the overreach of federal authorities.

NGOs and social movements will also mount resistance. A women’s march in Washington, DC just after Trump’s inauguration in 2017 demonstrated the depth and breadth of anger at the new president’s attitudes and proposed policies toward women. A comparable march is planned for January 2025.

The resistance is organizing to push the Democratic Party toward economic populism. The goal is to highlight the economic costs of Trump’s early moves—mass deportations, tariffs, corporate tax cuts—to build momentum to win the 2026 midterm elections. As we crawl out of our cave, and the outrage at Trump’s actual policies explodes, new movements will emerge to mobilize public anger.

While I am as guilty as the next person in being shocked and angry about the choices of the U.S. electorate, it would be a mistake to accept the next four years as set in stone. When Trump’s policies begin to bite, the anger will return and, with it, a new determined resistance. I, for one, want to be a part of that.

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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.

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Kitchen Garden

Autumn Yard Work

Burn pile Nov. 12, 2024

Now that the election is over, I’m motivated to work in the garden. If all goes well, I’ll plant garlic before the snow flies. The weather forecast looks good to get it done this week between planned activities off the property.

Because it’s been raining, I felt okay about burning brush. I need a place to store fence posts and chicken wire fencing. I burned it today and got the mower out to run over the tall weeds and make room.

Fallen leaves have blown off the plot where the garlic will go, so all I have to do is turn it over, fertilize, and run the rototiller through it. The hardest part is turning the soil over. I feel like working on it, something I could not say during the run up to the election.

I’ve been busy inside as well. Organizing stuff, getting rid of stuff, consuming stuff, recycling stuff. It’s been a week of stuff. There is too much of it and it prevents me from focusing on what is most important. Funny how quick;y the recycling bin filled today.

For the next while, my posts are going to be short and to the point. Increasingly, that’s the way I like them. So it will go.

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Sustainability

COP29

Image of Earth 7-6-15 from DSCOVR (Deep Space Climate Observatory)

President-elect Donald Trump is expected to withdraw the United States from the Paris Climate Accords, as he did during his first term. His re-election cast a pall over the 29th Conference of the Parties which began Monday in Baku, Azerbaijan. The United States has been a world leader in mitigating the worst impacts of climate change. Trump’s direction of breaking down the international order where the United States is a leader seems clear.

Azerbaijan is the third consecutive petrostate to host the conference, and arguably intends to stop decarbonization if they can. The work must continue, yet it is expected to slow because of the prospect of the U.S. intentionally hobbling it. In an email this week, the Climate Reality Project said, “Wealthy petrostates and fossil fuel companies are misleading the public, lobbying country leaders, and taking over the COP process, trying to stop progress every step of the way.” Addressing the climate crisis will continue to be an uphill struggle.

Based on the seven days since the election, Trump seems better prepared to implement policies the Heritage Foundation handed him in the form of Project 2025. I must pick which parts of society in which to exert my personal influence. I need more dust to fall and settle before deciding what to do. The climate crisis ranks highly on my list.

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Living in Society

A Long Way Home

Trail walking on Nov. 10, 2024.

I’ve been trail walking earlier in the day since the general election. To make it a better form of exercise, I pick up the pace to get my heartbeats per minute elevated enough to do some good. I don’t know what I will do for exercise once the snow flies and I’ve shoveled the driveway. If autumn continues the way it has been during the hottest year in recorded history, I may not have to worry about it as we could well skip winter.

On Saturday I made a stew with plant protein meatballs. I found some old carrots and celery in the vegetable drawer and wanted to use them up. After peeling the carrots and cutting them into big chunks, they went into the Dutch oven with the chopped celery. I added the rest of the small-sized garden onions, and peeled and halved a pound of garden potatoes. I covered everything with vegetable broth and seasoned with bay leaves, salt, pepper, oregano, dried parsley, and powdered garlic. Once the root vegetables were fork tender, I made a slurry of corn starch and vegetable broth to thicken the stew. Toward the end, I added the meatballs and a couple handfuls of green peas. It came together well. With my spouse away from home, there will be leftovers for days. The flavor reminded me of a dish Mother made using beef. I took that memory into the next day and made rice over which to ladle leftover stew for lunch. It wasn’t her cooking, yet her presence was strong that day.

It seems doubtful I will reconcile with the Iowa Democratic Party. Donald Trump grew his support in the most liberal county in Iowa from 21,044 in 2016, to 22,925 in 2020 to 26,069 in 2024 or a total of 23.9 percent growth during the eight years. Democrats here walloped Trump with Clinton getting 50,200 votes in 2016, Biden 59,177 in 2020 and Harris 58,772 last week. The strong Johnson County performance this year did not win the election in the First Congressional District. Winning there takes gains in the rural vote which wasn’t there in sufficient numbers. Trump increased his winning margin in Iowa overall. We knew we had to do better than this after the results in 2020. Everyone I knew, including me, was doing work to get Democrats elected. The electorate was not receptive to the Democratic presidential candidate this year or since Obama won in 2012. Iowa certainly is Trump country today. More’s the pity.

I will continue to take walks along the state park trail. I will continue to cook a lot of our family dinners. I will work more on my physical and mental health, and overall wellness. As a septuagenarian, I realize there are only so many years left. There is not enough time to spend on activities that don’t produce needed results. For now, and maybe permanently, politics can take a holiday.

The Republicans I know are, for the most part, good people. Misinformed, yet the kind that will help a neighbor or contribute to community projects. There is some racism and misogyny as there has always been locally and in American society more generally. Any improvements I make in my politics will be close to home, among people I know well, and despite our differences.

There is no going back to what was. Today, it seems like a long way home.

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Living in Society

Into a Landing Zone

Along the state park trail, Nov. 8, 2024.

I changed my digital footprint now that the election is past. I deleted some social media accounts, reduced the number of friends in the remaining ones, and evaluated how I get news. It is part of a self-care process to improve my physical and mental health after the recent traumatic revelations about American society. I feel better already. It was a suitable landing zone after the election.

Journey Home is a public blog and I intend to keep it that way. Writing here helps me develop narratives that can be used in other parts of my life. It is part of a process of understanding the world and society. It also provides a constant struggle to say things better with fewer words. My typos here are frequent, yet I eventually catch most of them. Each of us needs a way to think through the experiences we have and this is mine.

I resisted the recent reaction to Jeff Bezos putting the kibosh on Washington Post political endorsements before the election, and kept my subscription. Subscription to a national newspaper is needed for someone like the author of this blog. All the other national newspapers have similar problems and I don’t want to punish the reporters because of what their owner did.

The Cedar Rapids Gazette has done a good job in 1). staying in business, and 2). creating a diverse community of readers. One sees this by reading the editorial page, or what they call “Insights.” Liberal advocates, conservative crackpots, and everyone in between abound there. I welcome them all. Usually, because of their printing schedule, I hear news they report from other sources because that’s the kind of society in which we live. Subscribing to a newspaper is about the writers: local reporters, syndicated columnists, and readers who write letters to the editor and guest opinions. I wouldn’t miss some of them if they were cancelled, yet we also need them all.

For social media, I’m down to: Goodreads, Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. Goodreads is how I keep track of my reading and find new books. Facebook is people I know from my experiences in the real world. Instagram is a place to post photos and auto post them to Facebook. Threads is a way of live blogging my life. For now, this is enough to manage. I deleted my BlueSky and LinkedIn accounts this week to reduce the clutter.

People know me from writing in public and tell me so when we meet in person. Unless we enter a police state where political enemies are harassed by the government, and citizens spy on and get nasty with their neighbors, I will continue. What else am I going to do?

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Living in Society

The Sun Rose in the East

Sunrise over Lake Macbride on Nov. 6, 2024.

The morning after the 2024 general election I went walking on the state park trail at dawn. It was light enough to see the ground, and the sun rose in the east as I entered the main part of the trail. The air was clean and I took deep breaths. I needed that a few hours after reading the general election results.

I was as prepared as I could have been for Trump to win. As a result, I am weathering the aftermath reasonably well. I can’t say that about everyone else to whom I spoke in the last two days. Some were on the verge of tears over the disrespect to women the majority demonstrated by voting for Donald Trump. The country has descended to a very different place than we thought we were.

Something needs to change in my life. The best advice I give myself is to take time to plan effectively.

It has been two months since I tested negative after suffering from COVID-19. While the main symptoms are gone — the constant coughing, particularly — there have been substantial changes in my muscles, blood pressure, and the tests the clinic does for diabetes. Things are not normal so my plan is to evaluate my health today. That’s going to take a while and a better action plan. It is not only me that needs to change.

To return to a majority, Democrats need to change how we live. We must recognize that political campaigning is a subset of everything else we do. We must build relationships more broadly than within our small coterie of like-minded people. We value our relationships, yet to succeed in politics new ones must be in our collective future. My modest proposal is to blow up the current organization of the Democratic Party and start over. We do not understand the electorate and need to. The bonds of affection we developed over years are hard to break, yet we must.

I have gotten good at picking myself up after failing to effect needed change. At some point, our goals for society need calibration. Our methods need to change. It makes little sense to get back on the same horse to keep riding when what we need most is to send the beast to the glue factory. Doing this is harder than we think.

I have a long to-do list today. I expect the sun will rise again in the east. It is time to dust myself off and get back to work building new goals and a new way to achieve them.

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Kitchen Garden

Garden Analysis 2024

Pureed garlic in the refrigerator.

Since 1982 I’ve grown vegetables where I live. I planted them in every home or apartment but one (we had mature black walnut trees to forage there). If I rank the 2024 garden with others during the 43-year period it goes in the upper third. Not the best, not the worst, better than average.

I planted five of seven plots this year. There was not enough time or energy to get them all planted. Likewise, I’m not sure we need seven vegetable plots for our household. Some year, maybe next, one of them will be converted to flowers, and another to a raised herb garden. Likewise, the northeast plot, next to the oak trees, is not the best location to get sunlight. That plot needs conversion to some kind of garden shed with a border planting of more flowers.

The main plot problem was that in combining the two largest plots into one fenced area, the fence did not serve as a deer deterrent like it did in the smaller plots. In the past, the close proximity of all the fencing deterred deer from jumping in for lack of a landing space. Opening it up made the leap more attractive. I like the large plot, but if I persist, I need to put ten-foot fencing around it. In 2025, I should split them back up as I don’t want to spend the money for a deer fence.

Garlic. I built a burn pile over the stump of a locust tree in hope of burning it out when the drought abates. I don’t know if that will work, but I could reclaim the whole plot for vegetables again. This year I used it for garlic, which grew okay, except there is a significant percentage of cloves with some kind of fungus. I segregated the heads that appear to have the fungus and was able to find plenty of clean heads for next year’s seed. I peeled the infected ones, removed the bad spots from the cloves, and pureed them in a blender with extra virgin olive oil (see photo above). We’ll see how those preserve, but it is a good use of damaged cloves. It is Oct. 28, and I don’t have next year’s crop planted. I walked the planned plot and just need to do the work before the ground freezes solid. Garlic can even be planted in the spring, although that’s not what most farmers do.

Tomato plot map, 2024.

Tomatoes. It was a good year for tomatoes. I had plenty of cherries, plums, and slicers to meet our needs and give some to the local food bank. The map above indicates the varieties I planted. The Amish Paste, Granadero, and San Marzano were made into tomato puree which was mostly used fresh or canned. There was an abundance of cherry tomatoes, with them coming in first and lasting until the first hard frost. The slicers — Better Boy, Abe Lincoln, Goliath, Black Krim, Brandywine and Yellow Brandywine — provided a long season and adequate variety. The Yellow Brandywine did not produce much but the fruit was tasty and adequate in quantity.

Failures. Onions, Turnips, Radishes, Celery, Broccoli, Cauliflower, Green Beans, Bell Peppers, Peas, and Okra did not produce as expected. Part of this was planting in the extra large plot mentioned above where seedlings became deer food.

Potatoes. My tub method of growing potatoes worked again this year, keeping the small rodents from eating them first. This is a time-tested practice and I’m glad to have developed it. It works.

Cucumbers. An adequate crop with plenty of varieties. Not too many. I was able to can all the pickles I need until next year. There were plenty for eating fresh and donating to the food bank.

Hot Peppers. There were enough to get by until next year with preserved blends of peppers, onions, garlic and vinegar in the refrigerator. I always have more than I use. There were plenty to use fresh. I have a backlog of dried peppers in the pantry. I began turning some of them into powder to use to repel bugs.

Cruciferous Vegetables. It was a light year due to the big plot situation. Luckily, there is plenty in the freezer from last year. I could stand to grow a few more cabbage.

Fruit. It was the off year for the main apple trees. I did get some Zestar! and Crimson Crisp and made applesauce to use fresh. The pear tree produced in abundance and we ate fresh fruit while it was in season.

Row Cover. The covered rows are the best part of the garden. I get plenty of early lettuce and bok choi. There was basil, parsley and sage in abundance. When I mention a raised herb garden above, the intention is to put as much of it as I can under row cover. I need to work through succession planting so the supply of lettuce is continuous for a longer period of time.

Gardening was worth the work in 2024. I plan to put in another in 2025.

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Living in Society

Signs Winter Is Coming

Pelican migration – October 2024

Apple season is winding down with farmers selling from their coolers. In the cycle of local produce, society and nature lay down such markers that winter is near.

There are signs of the change in seasons all around. Yesterday I noticed a gigantic flock of pelicans near the state park trail. They stretched for half a mile along the east-west axis of the center of the lake. As it is for migratory pelicans, it is time for us to refuel and move on.

While at the farm store last week, a woman told me that what I saw was the last of fresh vegetables. I bought a big bunch of kale and three bell peppers. We’re on to pumpkin season now.

Election day is always a sign winter is coming. In the even numbered years we have federal elections and in the odd, state government and school boards. I almost always have some yard signs up and as we approach election day, they become surrounded by the fallen leaves of deciduous trees in our yard.

It’s open enrollment for Medicare. I encourage my readers to ditch any form of Medicare Advantage and get on the real program. As we age, our health care needs increase as do related expenses. There is no reason to give a cut of this cash exchange to insurance companies. It costs significantly less to the government if we choose the real deal.

Due to lower overnight temperatures I added wool blankets for the bed. I am at two presently and a third stands ready for service in the closet. I brought two of them back from military service. Making woolen blankets for soldiers is something the U.S. Government did well. These will continue to serve as long as I have them.

I adjusted my Goodreads reading goal from 56 to 52 books this year. I took on some long books last summer, and am running behind. While the book count is lower compared to last year, the number of pages read is about the same. Last year, I read 69 books. I read more than 50 every year beginning in 2020.

Lastly, I’m going through my winter collection of sweatshirts to see what needs replacing. I’m unlikely to buy anything new this year. As a septuagenarian, my sense of style, or styling an outfit is minimal. I thought about making a series of brief style videos showing my daily outfits for a month or so. Frankly, my style varies little from day to day. It’s a choice of which jeans, which t-shirt and which socks for the most part. I don’t really accessorize at all. Not sure there is a market for that type of video.

Pelicans won’t stay here long. The next big project is to take up the second volume of my memoir after the election. I’m pretty sure the renewal of effort will drag on into December. I have a full year’s work to do to get the book suitable for publishing.

Whatever you do, if you are a U.S. citizen, be sure to make a plan to vote on or before Nov. 5. So much depends upon the outcome of the general election.

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Living in Society

13 Days Until Tomorrow

Autumn trail walking.

The contrast between our major presidential candidates could not be more stark. On one hand a candidate promises to be a dictator on day one of his administration and praises Hitler’s generals, wishing his would be like them. On the other hand, Kamala Harris represents everything good about our imperfect American Democracy.

I continue to do two or three things daily to contribute to Democratic wins on Nov. 5. At the same time, I realize I’m not only working for a particular result from the election, but setting the stage for the future. The relationships built during the next two weeks will strengthen as the winners become known. The election doesn’t end with vote counting, the inauguration, or much else related to process.

Going forward we must build a better America, one that includes everyone, one built on personal relationships. This will be challenging, yet more so if the Republican is elected. It must be done for the benefit of all.

Neither will the work end on election day. What seems clear is we have 13 days until tomorrow. We must ask ourselves what kind of tomorrow we want and work to get there. May the year 2024 be a turning point in American society. One that brings hope for a better life for our country and its people.

Working together, we can make that possibility a reality.