Republican U.S. presidents don’t like international climate agreements.
George W. Bush withdrew the United States from the Kyoto Protocol, a treaty we ratified, and yesterday Donald J. Trump notified the United Nations of our intent to withdraw from the global climate agreement signed in Paris when the mandatory one-year waiting period finishes the day after the 2020 general election.
The two Republicans said the agreements would hurt or restrict the U.S. economy.
If Democrats re-take the White House in 2020, there is a lesson to be learned from these agreements. A broader consensus is required for international agreements to be sustained over time. They can’t be subject to the vagaries of U.S. politics.
What then?
The answer is in engagement — in society, with friends and family, and with government. We can no longer survive alone in the context of these networks.
The sooner we realize it the more likely will we be to better implement solutions to the climate crisis. We can’t rely on government alone as its strengths wax and wane with political tides. We must use broader societal tides to our advantage, eroding recalcitrant shorelines when we can, and flowing back to the sea when we can’t.
From Act II, Scene 2 of Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare:
JULIET
O, swear not by the moon, th’ inconstant moon,
That monthly changes in her circle orb,
Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.
ROMEO
What shall I swear by?
JULIET
Do not swear at all.
Or, if thou wilt, swear by thy gracious self,
Which is the god of my idolatry,
And I’ll believe thee.
ROMEO
If my heart’s dear love—
JULIET
Well, do not swear. Although I joy in thee,
I have no joy of this contract tonight.
It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden,
Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be
Ere one can say “It lightens.” Sweet, good night.
This bud of love, by summer’s ripening breath,
May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet.
Good night, good night! As sweet repose and rest
Come to thy heart as that within my breast.
So it is, and so it should be. Now back to figuring next steps as Republicans ditch the work leading to near consensus on how to mitigate the effects of climate change.
Corn-rice casserole for the annual orchard potluck dinner.
A hard break from autumn accompanied last week’s snowfall.
Outdoors there is garden clean up, raking leaves, and another mowing to be done, however, we’ve turned mostly inside.
A main issue has been determining how to get exercise without an active garden and walks along the lake. Yesterday I cleaned and set up the NordicTrack ski machine. This morning I tried it. It will serve for a while and, in any case, seems more focused than walks along the lake and yard work.
As orchard season ended I took an eleven day hiatus from carb counting. The point was to see the impact formal training and weeks of habit had on daily food consumption. Some things were easy: eating only one slice of bread at a meal, portion control, and selecting snacks that had less than 15 carbs in them. What was harder was dealing with cravings. I was mostly, but not always able to do so. At the end my average weight remained unchanged at a 15 percent loss. Clothes still fit and if I exercise daily indoors, I may have to get pants a size smaller. I went back to carb counting this morning and return to the clinic for more tests in three weeks.
The time between harvest and year’s end has been for reflection and for making plans. After a struggle when I retired in 2009 our situation stabilized with adequate income to meet short term needs and engaging work in the community. I feel fortunate to be approaching my 68th birthday with an ability to think beyond it.
I expect to continue to write short posts, although a format change at On Our Own is overdue. Before changing the look of the blog I want to print out past years for the book shelf. Financial constraints held me back from making a paper archive every year so I’m behind.
There is other writing to do. I recently ran into a former editor at the Iowa City Press Citizen and we discussed freelancing. It would take a compelling reason for me to seek publication more than I get in letters to the editor of the Solon Economist or an occasional guest opinion in the Cedar Rapids Gazette. If anything, the next period will be one of working on an autobiographical work. Whether that has import beyond family and close friends seems doubtful. It’s what an educated person does or at least that’s the paradigm through which I view it. Our daughter might appreciate the effort of culling old papers and artifacts so there is less for her to deal with when we’re gone. I don’t plan to be gone anytime soon.
Perhaps a few more autumn days lie ahead. The forecast looks dry through the end of this week. I took a vacation day from the home, farm and auto supply store to clean up the garden. If all goes well we’ll be able to turn inside when winter arrives in earnest.
Gold Rush and Snow Sweet apples purchased on the last day of the season, Oct. 31, 2019.
The soybean harvest was disrupted by snowfall.
Several inches fell in the last 48 hours. Farmers came to town, including to the home, farm and auto supply store.
It will be a wet crop, propane prices are already higher. The main worry is when will farmers be able to get soybeans and corn out of the field. There’s no clear answer.
Farmers sought things to help deal with unexpected winter weather: boots, gloves, salt, sand, feed, bedding, shovels, and the like. We do a fair amount of trade during and after snowstorms.
Employees who farm called in asking for an additional shift because they can’t get in the fields. Our pay is meager, but off-farm income is important in the financial calculus of small-scale farming.
In the nearby county seat there is little discussion of the daily lives of row croppers and livestock producers. Those city folk come to our store, but to purchase pet food, shovels for the walk, disposable hand warmers, and ice melting compounds less harmful to pets. We cater to everyone.
After my shift I diverted along the Interstate to visit the orchard sales barn on the last day of the season. While there, I was recruited to work an event in December. Details are sketchy but why wouldn’t I do it?
I picked a dozen Gold Rush apples for storage and another five Snow Sweet for fresh eating. There were still a lot of apple varieties available.
Hurrying home, I made final preparations for Halloween, which included sweeping and salting the front steps, preparing a bowl near the door for treats, and baking pizza for dinner. Our visitors during the two-hour window for trick or treating were neighborhood children, many of whom made a previous costumed appearance on their parents’ social media accounts.
Regarding the Nov. 5 election, I’m settling into choices. I asked around about the election of our trustee on the Kirkwood Community College board and plan to vote for the incumbent, Tracy Pearson. For school board my decision is not final. I’m leaning toward Carlos Ortega and Jami Wolf. I also like Lauren O’Neil. If she doesn’t win this time I hope she runs again in 2021 when three positions are up. I’ve written so much about the school board election I thought it important to communicate where I’m landing. It seems doubtful most of the hundreds of post readers will find this obscure reference to the election. I’m okay with that. It’s not about me.
What should we make of Tuesday’s October snowfall? Not much, I guess.
It was another day in the neighborhood, where melting snow delayed yard and garden work, and a final mowing with grass clipping collection.
It’s unclear whether further mowing will occur.
Weather has me turning inward. A technician is schedule to inspect our furnace, a pack of 9-volt batteries is ready to install in smoke detectors, and I bought a new snow shovel to replace the aluminum one that proved too flimsy.
I’m also prioritizing November reading.
October has been a great month for this blog with the most monthly views since I began blogging in 2007.
It’s time to take a breather before the rush to year’s end. After today’s shift at the home, farm and auto supply store, that what I plan.
After missing last year I planted garlic on Oct. 15. A couple of clear days dried the ground sufficiently to mow the plot, turn it, and put seeds in the ground.
I increased the number of rows from two to five which if all goes well will yield plenty of scapes and about 60 head of garlic.
Whether I’ll harvest anything next July is always a question. A gardener learns to live with unanswered questions that remain so until season’s end.
This photo highlights a developing process of minimizing the amount of ground I turn over for planting. Garlic needs space with 18 inches between seeds and 36-inch row separation. There’s no good reason to plow up all the ground in the plot. Even though the soil was cold earthworms were near the surface. That’s not to mention the unseen organisms that make soil fertile. I no longer use a mechanical tiller and do everything by hand. It’s good exercise that doesn’t use fossil fuels.
Fingers crossed there is an abundant harvest.
At a meeting of our home owners association board, I announced I’m looking to exit responsibilities as board president. I’ll finish my current term, I said. If the other board members are nice to me I might be convinced to re-up for one more three year term. That would be it. I will have lived 68 years in December and it’s time to focus on other things.
Because of the board meeting I missed the televised Democratic debate. That’s a joke. I haven’t turned on our tube-style television in years. Now that Elizabeth Warren is leading in the polling averages the knives are out. Read last week’s post here for my take on why support for Warren persists now that she is the front runner.
As responses to my email to Solon School Board candidates come in, I’m impressed by the field. Three men and three women who would each bring something positive to the board. Because of a scarcity of information about the election, yesterday’s post really took off, becoming the most viewed new writing on this blog in 2019. The majority of views are coming from Facebook, but I don’t see much discussion in my feed. What that usually means is a group in the district has latched on to my post and discussed it in a private group. Last time that happened, someone trolled me with a letter to the editor of the local paper. Any discussion will be good for what is expected to be a low-turnout election.
I’m sitting on four bushels of apples and need to get to work processing them. It won’t be today or tomorrow as I’m back at the home, farm and auto supply store. I’m blown away by the quality and quantity of this year’s crop. Years like this make gardening rewarding. On deck are more dried apples, small batches of applesauce and apple butter, more juice for vinegar-making, and baked goods for potlucks. Some of the last-picked apples will go into sweet cider, and of course some of them will be eaten raw.
It is fall in the gardening year but even after first frost we are busy planting and processing the harvest. It’s how we sustain ourselves in a turbulent world.
Daylight remained as I drove into the driveway after a shift at the orchard.
If the garden appeared scorched by the previous night’s first frost, some tomato plants survived and the kale looked resilient.
The weather forecast is a couple of days without rain. I scheduled garlic planting for Tuesday when the ground should be dry enough. Fingers crossed I get a crop in this year.
I picked another bushel of fully ripened Red Delicious apples yesterday morning. This morning I used apples knocked down and damaged during the picking process to make an apple crisp for the county party’s fall fundraiser. In September I bought 30 aluminum food service trays for potlucks. This was the fifth one used.
We were busy at the orchard Saturday. Because of rainy weekends there is a pent up demand for the u-pick apple experience. I was tired at the end of my shift. I fixed eggplant Parmesan for dinner and could go no further. I was so tired I left the dishes to clean this morning. If there was any doubt, autumn has definitely arrived.
Hot peppers gleaned from the garden before the first frost.
When we had insufficient income to pay bills few errands were run.
We made almost no home repairs, delayed maintenance on everything, and minimized activities that required resources not on hand.
Now that our retirement income is set, and supplemented with a couple of extra jobs, I can afford to run errands. Yesterday I did so for the first time in a while.
The day began in the kitchen. Using onions and Swiss chard from the farm I made frittata for breakfast. Next, I sliced apples and filled the dehydrator. Sunday is the county party’s fall barbecue so I tested a recipe for applesauce cake to see if it would fit in the foil pans I bought for potlucks. The recipe fit without modification. In between this cookery I managed to glean the garden, bringing in peppers and tomatoes that would be damaged by frost. The kale looks really good right now and a freeze would make it taste better.
I cut five pieces of applesauce cake, put them on a plate, covered with foil, then delivered them to the public library while still warm. The librarian was making tea so the timing was perfect.
Next stop was the orchard where I hiked half an hour up and down hills, picking five varieties of apples: Regent, Crimson Crisp, Mutsu, Fuji, and New York 315. I also got some Snow Sweet and Honeycrisp in the sales barn. The season is about over yet there are lots of apples remaining on the trees.
From the orchard I drove to the recycling center in the parking lot of the former Hy-Vee supermarket on North Dodge Street. This is my go-to place for paper and magazine recycling. With our new clean-up project we are getting rid of lots of old magazines, too many for the curbside bin.
I pulled into nearby Hy-Vee where I bought organic celery and a packet of Morningstar Farms Recipe Crumbles for a pot of chili planned over the weekend. I’d been discussing nutritional yeast with one of the orchard owners so I bought a small container of Bragg’s brand to try it. The recipe we discussed was serving boiled or baked potatoes with a sprinkling of nutritional yeast and a dollop of yogurt. I’m now one step closer to trying it. They did not have the organic mayonnaise I sought, so I continued to Trader Joe’s.
Trader Joe’s is a store on the island that is the Iowa River Landing. This 180-acre mixed use development borders on the weird side. An arena is being built there and there are high rise apartment buildings, a hotel, a university-affiliated clinic and retail outlets. Despite having a range of activities, there is no sense of community at Iowa River Landing. I picked up two jars of organic mayonnaise and two of French Dijon Mustard. Staff was very friendly.
Westward to a big box home improvement store where I sought a replacement baseboard register for one of the bathrooms. Borrowing a tape measure from staff, I found the one I needed. On the way out I made an impulse purchase of a small bottle of 50:1 fuel mix for my trimmer. Expensive, but the right fuel is important for high-speed, small engines. My trimmer has been repaired twice since I purchased it so paying extra for proper fuel.
Final stop on the loop of the county seat was a drug store where I bought sundries, then drove home through three roundabouts and over two lakes.
Later that afternoon we went to the public library where Jacque delivered a book project she’d been working on as a volunteer and picked up the next. While she reviewed things with staff, I browsed the used book cart to see what was available.
I eschewed community cookbooks this time (how many of those can a person digest?) and bought good copies of a couple of works on my reading list. I also bought Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick and In Her Kitchen: Stories and Recipes from Grandmas Around the World by Gabriele Galimberti, the latter of which I read last night. What a marvelous book of women’s stories, recipes, and photos of the women with their ingredients facing a photo of the dish they created.
Moving from low wages to an adequate retirement income won’t make us rich, except in the ability to get out, run errands, visit with friends, and buy things we need to sustain our lives in a turbulent world.
Despite the changing season there was local lettuce, bell peppers, radishes, kohlrabi and tomatoes to make a fresh salad with last night’s pasta dinner.
I made the pasta sauce with fresh tomatoes as well.
Red Delicious apples are at peak ripeness. As I picked another bushel under an azure sky, I couldn’t resist eating those I knocked to the ground. The variety is unjustly maligned… and delicious.
Three things stand out in the second half of 2019: coping with diabetes, Mother’s death, and increased political activity.
When I was diagnosed with type two diabetes on May 13 I reacted with a lifestyle change. I counted carbohydrates consumed, then in September added counting calories. At around 200 carbs and less than 1,800 calories per day, I shed 15 percent of body weight since May 6. While my daily numbers are not exact, they accomplished what we hoped. I also keep track of exercise and work toward getting at least a half hour done daily. On Aug. 19 my A1C had reduced from “diabetes” to “prediabetes.” I’m hoping to get a clean bill of health during my November doctor’s appointment, fingers crossed.
I haven’t processed Mother’s Aug. 15 death. I feel her absence yet I’m not sure what it means now or going forward. My own mortality is in relief. I want to phone her, but she’s not there.
My calendar is filling up with political work. I decided to support Elizabeth Warren in the Feb. 3, 2020 Iowa caucus. My Warren organizer provided tools to begin a precinct canvass. I look forward to making the initial contacts. The presidential race is only part of it.
U.S. Senator Joni Ernst has been popular in the state so making her a single-term senator will be challenging. Five Democrats announced campaigns for the nomination which will be decided in the June 2, 2020 primary election. In order for a potential Democratic president to make progressive change, a Democrat-controlled U.S. Senate is required. Unseating Ernst will be a high priority after the February caucus.
My congressman Dave Loebsack announced his retirement. Retaining control of this seat is a high priority. There are two Democrats competing for the nomination with Rita Hart favored to win over Newman Abuissa. This race will also wait until after the precinct caucuses.
Yesterday Iowa House Republican legislators chose their leadership team. Democrats hope to regain the majority in the lower chamber. Our state senator Zach Wahls is not up for re-election in 2020, and no one has been able to beat Rep. Bobby Kaufmann since redistricting after the 2010 census. If there is a viable candidate for state representative this cycle, he or she will require some bandwidth. Kaufmann hasn’t announced a re-election campaign, but it is expected.
Today presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard is scheduled to appear at a house party hosted by a long-time neighbor. I’m making an apple crisp for the event. Macoun and Northern Spy apples are warming on the counter after storage in the ice box. When I publish this post I’ll head upstairs to make the dessert and hope something meaningful came from this piece of writing.
Greta Thunberg in Iowa City, Iowa Oct. 4, 2019. Photo Credit: Greta Thunberg Twitter feed.
Was yesterday’s gathering of a couple thousand people to support school strikers for climate action the equivalent of Evangelical Christian mega-churches?
Maybe.
Drawn to Iowa City by the arrival of 16 year-old Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg, people attended the event for a variety of reasons. Mostly they seemed interested in environmental action as well as in Thunberg and her celebrity. Such feelings fall at the intersection of an impulse to do something, political activism, and the real need to prevent human-caused climate change from getting worse.
By all accounts the event was positive, although I did not attend. I’ve been to mega-church revivals, one replete with Johnny Cash performing. It’s not who I am. Iowa City is the bastion of our state’s liberal elites, a group that includes many friends, but has proven ineffective in implementing the kinds of change needed to address our most significant shared environmental problems.
The presidential campaign of John Kerry, spouse of Teresa Heinz Kerry, scion of the Heinz ketchup family, gave rise to notions of liberal elites. Together the couple wrote a book titled This Moment on Earth: Today’s New Environmentalists and their Vision for the Future. While it was a New York Times bestseller, it did little to move the needle on climate action. It reinforced the idea that Kerry was of the East Coast liberal elite. Kerry’s campaign contributed to coalescence of a reactionary cult that eschewed all things liberal.
I don’t hear my liberal friends talking about this very much. In some ways, Kerry faded into the background in a male-dominated cultural environment that brought us Barack Obama, then Donald J. Trump.
R.F. Latta made a point on social media yesterday. “What liberals don’t understand about GOP reluctance to stand up to Trump is that conservatives fear the floodgates of culture change will burst open if they do and that will end of their way of life forever.” A similar sentiment is found in Lyz Lenz’ recent book God Land: A Story of Faith, Loss, and Renewal in Middle America in which she describes the male-dominated nature of white Evangelical churches. Rejection of Hillary Clinton as president was related to her female gender. Lenz wrote the 2016 election was an assertion of male power. Liberals must endeavor to understand the fears of conservative, evangelical Christians and others if we hope to avert the worst outcomes of the climate crisis.
Iowa City is home to Democrat Jean Lloyd-Jones, who along with Republican Maggie Tinsman, founded an organization called 50-50 in 2020, a “campaign school for women.” The organization has “a 10-year campaign with the goal of electing women to fill half the seats in the Iowa Legislature and half of Iowa’s Congressional delegation, and a woman Governor by 2020 – the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage in this country.” The organization serves as an alternative to the churches of liberalism and conservatism. Jean and Maggie have kept the issue of moving women to a more prominent role in politics at the forefront of media attention. As Greta Thunberg’s visit to Iowa City fades into memory we need something similar for environmental issues.
We have some top drawer environmental activists in our area. I’m thinking of State Senators Rob Hogg and Joe Bolkcom, Mike Carberry, and members of the non-partisan 100 Grannies for a Livable Future. All of them would like nothing better than to bridge partisan divides to work on sustainable climate action. Without addressing conservative fears about liberalism, I don’t see how that can happen.
Yesterday’s climate strike was positive in many respects. The climate crisis will impact everyone so solutions must also include everyone. Otherwise, we could find ourselves kneeling at the altar of celebrity with nothing to show for it.
Stew of potatoes, eggplant, tomato, black beans and vegetables.
Who wants to reinvent home cooking every time they enter the kitchen?
Here’s a better question, how can I work to be present in the kitchen and produce tasty, nutritious food for our family?
While I have a strong memory of Mother’s cooking, I don’t recall many of the dishes. For me, home food begins in 1959 when we moved to Northwest Davenport where I lived at home until going to university in 1970. During those years Mom cooked what I believed was standard fare for working class people. If there was a typical dinner, it included beef or chicken as a main course, potatoes or rice, and a vegetable. Sometimes there was dessert. Dad got a discount at the butcher shop co-located at the meat packing plant where he worked. He brought home mostly beef and pork products, and we had plenty. Memorable tastes include liver and onions, beef vegetable soup served on white rice, and usual fare of hamburgers, grilled cheese and meat loaf. It was a staple cuisine that tasted good and provided nourishment.
When I became mostly ovo-lacto vegetarian in 1982, traditions associated with Mom’s cooking went out the window except when we visited her. I started cooking while I was in college and like most beginning home cooks was not very good at it. I recall serving Mother tuna and noodle casserole during the visit she made to my small apartment. I used her recipe, which included canned tuna and condensed mushroom soup. We got through the meal, one of the few during my life where she came to my place for dinner. I liked the dish with its savory richness. Today, I wouldn’t use tuna because of my mostly vegetarianism, but also because of over fishing of the species combined with the use of slave labor to harvest it in waters off Asia.
There is a utopian impulse in American society in which groups of people separate from social traditions and strike out anew. In that sense, a cook has a choice. Should we learn and perpetuate cooking traditions in our kitchen or improvise new meal solutions against a perceived and newly created blank slate? My choice is to make a cuisine from an ecology of food I identified and help create that borrows from everywhere to create new dishes. I may write a cook book to record the journey, but have little interest in creating traditions. A tasty, nutritious meal is enough.
In retirement for 16 months, I’ve found we have become increasingly isolated from society. Even though we rarely use the television set, I now understand the archetypal image of retired man yelling at the TV from a chair. It is harder than imagined to get out of the house for anything other than my part time jobs. The new paradigm has been good for our marriage and provides a natural break for utopian culinary endeavors.
The meal began with weighing out a pound of small potatoes from my barter arrangement with Farmer Kate. When I brought them to the kitchen, I didn’t know what I would do with them.
While looking through the weedy, end of season garden, I found three large Galine eggplants behind the foliage. I picked them and brought them inside.
On the counter was a good supply of garlic and cherry tomatoes. In the ice box was half a Vidalia onion, the last of the fresh garden celery, part of a bell pepper, some leftover black beans, and jars of thick tomato juice.
There was a meal in these ingredients.
After cleaning and trimming the potatoes I put them in a large sauce pan and covered them with tomato juice. My tomato juice is very thick due to a process I developed to use excess tomato water while canning. I brought the mixture to a boil then turned it down to simmer until the potatoes were fork tender.
I cut the eggplant with skin on into large chunks, soaked the pieces in room temperature tap water for 30 minutes, dredged them in flour, then fried them in two tablespoons extra virgin olive oil until browned on all sides.
In the Dutch oven I cooked the onion, bell pepper, celery and garlic in a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil on high heat until tender. The only seasoning used was sea salt.
When the potatoes were done, I dumped the whole pan into the Dutch Oven, added the black beans and some cherry tomatoes, then added the eggplant. I scraped the bottom of the frying pan into the Dutch oven with a spatula to get all the flour and oil mixture and thicken the sauce.
I turned the heat to medium low and warmed until everything was evenly heated and the sauce thickened.
In retrospect, I could have added some frozen okra and seasoned it with red or green hot peppers. We keep the spicy dial turned to low in shared meals. It made four servings and was satisfying.
Humans consume only so many vegetables. 20 percent of an estimated 20,000 species of edible plants represent 90 percent of our food. Others may have made dishes similar to this potato eggplant stew. Each ingredient, each technique and each vegetable has its own detailed and unique history. There are a finite number of ways to pull them together into a tasty, nutritious dish. Improvisational cooking need not be unique, just as utopian living works to meet the same human needs as the rest of society. As a seasoned home cook, I no longer have to reinvent things. At the same time, improvising based on available ingredients renews our interest in cuisine.
Journey Home 
You must be logged in to post a comment.