Sustainability
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Every Wednesday evidence newspapers are dying is delivered to the end of our driveway. I’ve asked the Iowa City Press Citizen to stop this delivery as we get a digital subscription. They can’t. They deliver the paper free on ad days to boost circulation numbers upon which advertising revenue depends. The whole newspaper business seems… Read more
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Editor’s note: An original version of this post appeared on Nov. 13, 2010. It has been edited because my writing wasn’t as good as I thought back in the day. Clarity surfaced during a talk by Ana Avendaño, assistant to President Obama and Director of Immigration and Community Action for the AFL-CIO. She was in… Read more
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Between three and four inches of snow fell overnight. It’s still coming down. I have 80 feet of driveway and a shovel to deal with when the sun comes up. The first buckets of salt and sand were emptied yesterday — there is plenty in reserve. It’s not our first winter in Big Grove. I filled… Read more
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A majority of the garden seeds wait in a corner on the lower level of our home. I cleared a sorting table and next month will plant celery and kale at the first greenhouse shift. There is no immediate need to plan more. The seven garden plots have stands of seed-spent foxtail and last year’s… Read more
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Last June I broke publicly from our state representative Bobby Kaufmann and endorsed Democratic candidate Jodi Clemens for House District 73 in a letter to the editor of the Solon Economist. With a circulation of less than 1,000 weekly copies, I’m not sure my endorsement was widely read. I went on to post three additional… Read more
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My to-do list has grown since retiring from my transportation career in 2009. The number of items on it was supposed to decrease yet it’s not. After retiring that July 3, I engaged in life outside home in a way I hadn’t in a long time. I joined groups working on social issues. I joined… Read more
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A lone bald eagle soared over Rapid Creek north of Wild Woods Farm. We were pulling plastic over the new high tunnel. The eagle lofted in the wind as if it were summer. We would rather the wind died down until we finished. The project was well-organized and it took an hour and a half… Read more
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I ran into my supervisor from the orchard at the home, farm and auto supply store. She stopped to buy dog food. At the end of our conversation she asked me to consider returning to work in the fall. She paid for the food, slung the 40-pound bag over her shoulder and headed toward her… Read more
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Elimination of nuclear weapons remains a priority for many of us who followed disarmament progress through the years. Our work hasn’t ended. What should be our priorities in Trump World? To a large extent, society answered that question in the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), to which the United States is a… Read more
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The end of year has been punk times without relief. Some blame it on social media. Social media users post they need a break. They want to cleanse their mind of the drivel, hostility and tumult often found in feeds they scroll. How is “cleansing” possible? Social media is an addiction and once hooked, that’s… Read more
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