“Each moment is different from any before it. Each moment is different, it’s now.”~ Incredible String Band
Best wishes for a happy 2018!
The ambient temperature is 23 degrees below zero outside, the kind of winter we expect in the Midwest. The cold snap should and hopefully will last a week or more. If we’re lucky, it will be followed by another later this month. After that, I’m ready for winter to be over.
There is a lot to do in 2018.
January will be a month to see if financial plans made in December work.
The switch from work-based health insurance to Medicare means managing six different payments for health insurance each month. With this change, my net income from the home, farm and auto supply store should increase, less any additional tax. There is also Social Security, scheduled to begin the fourth week of the month. Now begins the monitoring to see if it comes together as planned. Assuming it does, the rest of the year falls into place as follows.
I haven’t set a date to leave the home, farm and auto supply store, although I’m looking at March 16, giving me three full months of paychecks, which when combined with Social Security, will help the transition. Farm work starts in late February/early March and is expected to run through June or July. Orchard work starts in August. There are only a few other focal points.
Writing: After picking a project, I plan to get back to writing 1,000 words a day, six days a week by spring.
Reading: Read 50 pages a day, six days a week, split between books for learning, enjoyment, and research for writing.
Social Media: Who knew this would even be a category? I plan to maintain my blog and use Facebook and Twitter to develop a readership for new writing. I may add other social media platforms.
Business Development: Once I leave the home, farm and auto supply store attention will be turned to generating cash to help pay down debt and take care of major, deferred household expenses. This must be done in a sustainable way, one considering my aging frame. Over the next year or two I will reduce income from work that makes physical demands.
Food Ecology: Combining gardening, farm work and networking, leverage the local food system to provide a greater share of the food we consume at home. Get better at gardening.
Social Engagement: Develop a sustainable, local group to work on the midterm election, and advocate for environmental, public health, and social justice issues. Work with national organizations to reduce the existential threat of nuclear weapons.
Health: Take care of myself so I can do the aforementioned things.
While not really resolutions, there is a lot to do. Without a plan, one might slip into the abyss and never be heard from again. I’m not ready for that.
Best wishes to readers for a peaceful and prosperous 2018.
State Senator Robert Dvorsky Photo Credit – Iowa Legislature
State Senator Bob Dvorsky’s decision to retire at the end of his current term hits close to home for a lot of reasons.
He represented our family since we returned to Iowa in 1993. During the time since then he became a key player in Democratic politics and in the Iowa Legislature.
He did a lot for Iowans when Democrats held the majority in the Iowa Senate. He also worked to get things done regardless of which political party was in control.
With Bob Dvorsky in office, politics became personal in a way it hadn’t been before.
I began corresponding with him on issues shortly after he was elected to the Iowa Senate. My last letter from him, a response about the no wake issue on Lake Macbride, was dated April 25, 1996. A few years later I became politically active again and saw him everywhere, eliminating the need to write.
During the decades I’ve known him, I can’t recall a single time Bob didn’t seek me out for a brief conversation, whether at the capitol, at a political event, or at my workplace. He knew the owners of the company where I spent most of my transportation career, and after my retirement we encountered each other at the warehouse club where I worked part time. He was always positive and encouraging.
When people say all politics is local, I think of Bob Dvorsky. He’s been a friend and mentor who represented my interests in the legislature. I wish him well in the second half of the 87th Iowa General Assembly and ever after.
One of my work buddies is a mechanic and Vietnam veteran. He was a mechanic during the war although it’s his brother who now operates an auto shop in the county seat. He is active in the American Legion and has a reputation as a curmudgeon. I find myself pointing out I’m older than he is, although I defer to him because of his veteran status. He drives a vehicle similar to my 1997 Subaru.
Transportation is important when working for low wages. The idea of buying a new car — straight from the dealer — is a fantasy reserved for immediately after buying a winning lottery ticket or hitting it big on Bitcoin futures speculation. The chances of doing any of them are minuscule. When someone gets a new car it means nicer and newer than the previous one. My colleagues at the home, farm and auto supply store favor used cars that work and one or another of our collective vehicles is always acting up. We help each other with rides, loaner cars and jump starts without questioning it.
Essential to life with an old car is knowing a good mechanic, “good” being the hard part. Finding one means slogging through abundant folklore, experiences and stories of wrench turners to identify someone gifted at diagnosis with an approach that produces excellent results inexpensively. Being a good mechanic includes willingness to work on an old car, knowledge about the model, and doing what’s needed to keep it running and nothing more.
Acknowledging the importance of diagnosing automotive problems, three groups of mechanics took medical-sounding names for their automotive businesses in the small city near where I live. There’s an auto clinic, auto medics, and an ag clinic. Proper diagnoses are important and good mechanics are possessed of the knowledge, resources and skills to make them. I don’t normally use my curmudgeonly Vietnam veteran friend as my mechanic, even though he would likely work on my car for free.
A while back my Subaru began intermittently overheating. I took it to my mechanic and after several diagnostic attempts we figured a leaking head gasket caused the problem. We weren’t sure, but were sure enough to give it a try. If a dealer were to replace a head gasket in my car, the book calls for pulling the engine because of the configuration of the engine compartment. My mechanic saved me 10 hours labor by replacing the head gasket with the engine in the chassis. He understood ten hours labor made a big difference in our budget.
Recently the electrical system went on the fritz and I suspected the battery was going bad.
Troubleshooting began by asking people I know. My Vietnam veteran friend checked the battery and results of the computerized test he ran showed it to be okay. It wasn’t, but I took his word it was and tried charging the car each night in the garage. The issue did not resolve and repeated charging may have made the battery worse.
I called my regular mechanic, whose schedule was packed, and got an appointment for the following week. When my spouse was not working I used her car to get to work. When I used mine, it continued to lose a charge after four hours in the parking lot until it would not re-start immediately after parking it for the day. It was frustrating.
My colleagues at the home, farm and auto supply store stepped up with five jump starts during the period. On my second break I’d pore over the schedule to see whose shift ended the same time as mine and ask a co-worker for a jump. The first person I asked always jumped me: we all understand cars that have been in service for a while have issues. I was cautious about asking the same person more than once for fear of wearing out the welcome.
Car problems are an existential annoyance. They are also less important than maintaining relationships, including with family, co-workers and neighbors. We are stronger together and will need strength for the coming years. That and a good mechanic.
The City of Solon acted as a good neighbor on Dec. 20 when its city council voted 4-1 to provide water to Gallery Acres West, a subdivision three miles west of the city.
The subdivision sought water service to help resolve its long-standing non-compliance with revised drinking water standards for arsenic published by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Who wants arsenic in their drinking water? It depends.
In 1975, EPA set a standard of 50 ppb of arsenic for public water systems based on a Public Health Service standard established in 1942. In 1999, the National Academy of Sciences concluded 50 ppb did not achieve EPA’s goal of protecting public health and should be lowered as soon as possible to allay long-term risks of low level exposure to arsenic.
EPA now has a goal of zero arsenic in public water systems however the goal is not technically feasible. The agency acknowledged there is a trade off between the cost of removing arsenic and its public health benefits.
“After careful consideration of the benefits and the costs,” an EPA fact sheet issued in 2001 said, “EPA has decided to set the drinking water standard for arsenic higher than the technically feasible level of 3 parts per billion (ppb) because EPA believes that the costs would not justify the benefits at this level.”
After multiple public hearings, EPA set the rule for arsenic at 10 ppb and public water systems were given five years after the arsenic rule was published to comply.
Some of us who manage public water systems took the new rule seriously and endeavored to comply. Others did not, and that leads us to Gallery Acres West. Their water system had its first violation of the new arsenic standard in 2002, failed to take action to reduce arsenic in their water system, and in 2015 was threatened with legal action by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources to force compliance.
During an Oct. 30 telephone call, I asked Mark Steiger, president of the Gallery Acres West home owners association, why they had not complied with the 2001 arsenic rule. He told me it was the cost of compliance. With only 14 homes in their association compliance would run thousands of dollars per household. I get it. As president of a home owners association that managed the same compliance issue for our public water system with 85 homes, it cost us $2,823.83 plus interest per household to upgrade our treatment facility to remove arsenic. In Gallery Acres West’s trade off between the cost of arsenic removal and public health, cost trumped health and residents continue to use drinking water with high arsenic content and will until they hook up to Solon.
The proliferation of development in unincorporated areas raises an issue of the quality of management in home owners associations. There are perceived freedoms in living in a small, insular community away from city life. There is also a cost. Things that could be taken for granted in a municipality require attention and potential action in rural Iowa.
It’s a good thing Gallery Acres West is close to a municipality willing to do their work for them.
~ First published on Dec. 27, 2017 in the Cedar Rapids Gazette
This year a group of Ukrainians with temporary work visas joined us at the orchard.
They were hard-working and fun to be around.
Their contracted wage far exceeds the $185 per month they can earn in Ukraine from their trained profession as English teachers. The visa sets a specific hourly rate of pay and the host is required to provide round trip transportation to Iowa plus housing. They can stay for up to eight months at a time. The Ukrainians went home to their families after the season, although each of them plans to return in a couple of months to help prune apple trees.
Saturday I drove to the orchard to pick up apple cider and frozen cherries. While there, the octogenarian friend who referred me showed up. We talked with the owners long enough for my spouse to wonder where I was. We ran through the usual topics —the hickory nut harvest, Gold Rush apples, cooking projects, which books we were reading, activities of mutual friends — and told jokes, usually one at the expense of another. It was a great conversation among friends.
We live in the same political precinct and have common political interests. We discussed the surprising plan to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem within a few years, and scuttlebutt about Democratic candidates considering a run to replace our state senator Bob Dvorsky when he retires at the end of 2018.
Multiple sources told me local internet personality Zach Wahls and former diplomat Janice Weiner are both kicking tires on a state senate run. I’ve not met either of them and it was news to my co-workers. While politically engaged, each of us has bigger fish to fry than politics.
The orchard sales barn will be open next weekend and that’s it for the year. I’ll need more cider… and conversation by then.
Everyone wants work that’s fairly paid. Once one accepts a work contract — agreeing to work for a wage — that usually ends discussion about compensation. We turn to our co-workers and the life we share in a place and time. If the job is any good we don’t talk about compensation, work hours, or much of anything but the idea of what we do and how to do it better. This has been the case most of my life in every job I’ve held.
At the home, farm and auto supply store we recognize it as lowly paid work, not just for hourly employees but for management. Yet we engage in work as a team and do our best to meet our goals. Employee turnover is high in retail and based on my experience compensation is not the driver. What matters more is it’s relatively easy to get retail work and if one keeps their nose clean and shows up, the employment and paycheck are predictable. A job easily secured is one easily left and that drives turnover. Our workplace is a stopping point for many people enroute to something else.
One of my colleagues was recruited from the sales floor to help check in freight during our busy season. We talk while working. Cognizant of his low wages, he said, “you get what you pay for,” indicating he would work harder if paid more. I’m not sure about that but didn’t tell him so. He is already a hard worker compared to others, and his income contributes to a household with his wife and two children. The job means something to him, but he’d leave it on short notice if a better one came along. We don’t talk much politics at work but he wears a stocking cap and coat with the word “Trump” screen-printed on them.
As my worklife winds down before taking “full retirement” next year, I value the people with whom I spend time. They are a diverse group and I hope to add something to our relationship before I go — remembering the past and living each moment to the fullest extent. These are stopping places, part of a long, personal journey that’s not over. As Robert Frost wrote in 1923, “I have miles to go before I sleep.”
I’m sitting in the back of my pickup truck, the tailgate is down. Gentle summer rain is falling. The tips of my toes are getting wet but I don’t mind. We need the rain.
In Des Moines political parties are holding their conventions. I followed the action on social media, but not closely.
Breeze from the rain is cooling my forehead. It feels quite good. It is much better than working on a computer, or thinking about politics.
This afternoon I tried pulling weeds in the garden. The ground was so dry they broke off at the surface. Now, after this long gentle rain, the roots should loosen and weeding be done more easily.
Wind is blowing from the west and my knees are getting spattered with rain. I still don’t mind.
Dozens of birds are out in yards around the neighborhood. They don’t mind rain either. All of nature seems to welcome the rain.
Lightning and boomers are starting to roll in. The rain continues to fall gently and steadily.
Some nights it is best to just listen to the rain, and so I will tonight.
The trouble for Iowa Democrats is a too long primary season fraught with internal competition. “Competition” is saying it politely.
On Dec. 2, U.S. Representative John Delaney (D-Maryland) began his fifth trip to the Hawkeye state as a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate. Delaney may be unrealistically early, but the presidential candidates are expected to help during the midterm elections next year, more than a year before the Iowa caucuses and two years before the general election.
There is an open race for governor after Terry Branstad resigned to become U.S. Ambassador to China. Republicans have two major candidates, and Democrats have seven. The primary election is June 5, 2018 and already Democrats are running television ads, sending mass mailings, and campaigning all around the state. Part of what’s good about early activity is it can activate people to pay attention to politics.
Whether early activity actually does activate people is an open question. The calls to knock doors and make phone calls for primary candidates in a supposed “ground game” six months out ring hollow in December. Democratic activists will use all the time given to pick and choose among people who are running and vote in the primary or caucus for their favorite presidential candidate. If, as in previous election cycles, the rest of the electorate lets political parties nominate candidates then choose among them a week or two before the election, the activation aspect of a long primary is rendered null. There is little to indicate 2018 or 2020 will be any different from the past.
What is my beef with current Democratic politics? Everything takes too freaking long.
In 2015 I had an email exchange with political operative and race horse owner Jerry Crawford. My issue was
The better question is what are Democrats doing to bring new people into the process? Prove me wrong, but they aren’t doing much except dusting off the same old sawhorses for the post-caucus campaign. Is anyone else tired of hearing the name Jerry Crawford?
Crawford unexpectedly responded, defending himself, “I got involved in politics as a teenager and one of the problems in Iowa is that at age 65 I am still younger than many activists.”
After a back and forth in which Crawford enumerated the ways he sought to bring new people into the Democratic Party, I wrote,
Democrats could use a better organizational strategy. The current one, which came into use beginning in 2004, alienates grassroots activists by being top-down, and not listening to what people in the community are saying. There is no evidence that changed with Hillary 2016. Democrats in a precinct, who seek to get active in politics, should be given more power to contact every voter living there, and not just ID people supporting our candidate, but invite them to join us in the struggle for social and political justice, which is bigger than any single candidate. We all have our dreams and that’s mine.
I don’t bear any political ill will toward Crawford. With Iowa Democratic Party Chair Troy Price’s recent comments, I feel somewhat vindicated:
“In Iowa,” Sioux City Journal reporter Brent Hayworth wrote, “Price said a lesson from the 2016 election was the so-called coordinated campaign, where candidates tap the state party for help, ‘has not been working, it has been too top down.’”
I wish the party under Andy McGuire had realized this before the 2016 election. If wishes were horses, Jerry Crawford’s jockeys would ride in a society where our current government favors capital over labor.
What is next?
I have grown to dislike the Iowa caucuses. The 2015-2016 fight between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders went on far too long. There was never any serious doubt Clinton would be the Democratic nominee whether or not she won Iowa and Sanders supporters focused their energy on taking Clinton down rather than on winning the general election. This created a electorate where former Obama voters flipped to Donald Trump, not only in my Johnson County precinct, but in Democratic strongholds across the state. The long caucus battle, with a close result, and continuing acrimony contributed to the Republican victory in the general election. I understand giving up the early precinct caucus presidential preference activity would change Iowa politics. Borrowing a phrase from gubernatorial candidate Ross Wilburn, who didn’t mean it this way, “Let’s be Iowa” without the caucuses.
Thus far the seven Democratic gubernatorial candidate have played things mostly Iowa nice. While I’m not as active politically as I was in the 2004, 2006 and 2008 campaigns it seems clear the winner of the June primary for governor will be one of three candidates: Nate Boulton, Fred Hubbell or John Norris. Cathy Glasson and Andy McGuire are doing the work of a state-wide campaign but seem unlikely to prevail in the primary because of ties to old ways of campaigning: Glasson to the John Edwards caucus campaign in 2007, and McGuire to campaigns run during her tenure as Iowa Democratic Party chair. At this point, I don’t feel a pressing need to pick a gubernatorial candidate for the June primary but intend to see how things play out among them. That I feel a luxury of time is part of the problem with Iowa Democratic politics in 2017.
We don’t have time because what matters more in 2018 will be community organizing. That’s a much different approach to politics and Democrats abandoned it in favor of data analytics and targeted canvasses to win elections. What community organizing means is being active in our communities and getting things done with other people who live there.
What kinds of things? Water issues, sewer issues, economic development, budgeting, road use, public safety, planning and zoning, emergency services, school boards, cemetery maintenance, public health and other ultra local issues. The reason there is no time is the Iowa Democratic Party may develop policies to support values that impact these areas, however, local problems must be solved by local people who are willing to get involved beyond voicing an opinion. That means everyone regardless of voter registration. Once we work within our communities, we open a door of influence. While it may seem self-serving, it means influencing people to vote for our candidates. This is precisely what Republicans have been doing and it’s time Democrats got on the playing field.
My advice? Forget about the run up to the primary and work in your community to effect change with which people can agree. That may mean giving up the long road trips to attend political events and using the time to get to know our neighbors — all of them. It’ll take some wrangling to get this done, but I’m confident we can move onward in pursuit of a better politics and a better government. We have to.
Today is the first day of shotgun deer season. Until Dec. 17 Iowa shows its culture in tradition-laden, bloody and violent detail.
The deer population needs culling. The damage they do in nature and on farms goes mostly unnoticed by city dwellers. The closer one lives to the land, the more empathy there is with the deer hunt. My solution to deer over-population — re-introducing wolves — is not going to fly where cattle, hog and chicken producers and ranchers live.
Roughly a third of Americans say they or someone in their household owns a gun, according to PEW Research Center. Estimates vary but there is about one gun for every man, woman and child in the United States. Given that reality, hunting serves a purpose to promote education, safe gun ownership, and proper handling of firearms. Gun ownership rates have been in decline since the 1970s.
I encountered a herd of deer on my way back from the home, farm and auto supply store last night. I’m pretty sure they sense what is coming. Many of my colleagues at the store are deer hunters. In some cases, husband and wife hunt together and mount their trophies side by side in the living room. Last year’s Iowa deer harvest was reported by hunters as 101,397, a typical year.
Iowa’s hunting culture seems sane and a bit reassuring against last week’s tumultuous news cycle. Opening the Twitter app on my smart phone was like viewing a portal directly to hell. Reading this week’s news stories was like drinking from a fire hose that left me ragged and didn’t suppress the hellfire. I felt thirsty for more after each Twitter session.
Given that, what to write about?
Despite what’s been in the news ad nauseum (Republican Tax Bill, Flynn flipping in the Mueller probe; emoluments investigation; U.S. boycott of the Nobel Peace Prize award ceremony; Interior Department selling vast seams of coal from national monuments for $0.41 per ton; EPA discarding Obama era rules requiring mining companies to fund cleanup from hard rock mining) the story that stuck with me is related to how we can change all the junk we see. Elections still matter and the 2018 election matters a lot.
Brent Hayworth, reporter for the Sioux City Journal, wrote about a Nov. 30 meeting of 110 Democrats from South Dakota, Iowa and Nebraska held in Sioux City.
“Let’s do something and not just have lunch,” Linda Smoley, chairwoman of the Siouxland Progressive Women said. The group worked on strategy to turn out voters during the 2018 election.
Iowa Democratic Party Chair Troy Price attended the meeting.
“They said we would never win again, we could just go out to pasture,” Price said. “Democrats do what we always do — when we get knocked down, we get back up.”
This verbiage could have happened at any Democratic meeting after a tough election. Here’s what made the difference:
“In Iowa,” Hayworth wrote, “Price said a lesson from the 2016 election was the so-called coordinated campaign, where candidates tap the state party for help, ‘has not been working, it has been too top down.'”
This was a key learning experience for me during past campaigns. Price acknowledging it, and potentially doing something to change our political campaigns, validates the idea Iowa Democrats must and will find a new path forward to regain control of elected offices currently held by Republicans.
Good news during a hellish week. Better news than I expected.
(Editor’s Note: This is a recycled post from June 15, 2012. Midst life’s ambiguities I’m not sure I am free from the spell.)
My social media life began in November 2007 with creation of a Blogger web log. Since then, it expanded, notably with joining Facebook on March 20, 2008. But now, the bloom is off the rose, and I’m not sure what future, if any, social media holds for me.
This was coming for a while, but the Facebook initial public offering on May 17 was the high water mark. Wrapped up in a political campaign, it became clear how little social media matters in local politics, and how despite the recommendations of party elders to use Facebook, twitter and YouTube, our social discourse has not migrated from in person to the Internet. It couldn’t have been clearer during the run up to the June 5 election.
Social media serves us well by enabling us to gather information about people, places and things in a timely manner. If we like, we can share it with others. If there is a big story in the news, it rapidly appears on twitter and we can stay ahead of the news curve. There is little reason to turn on a television any longer, and mostly, we don’t in our household, except to watch a specific program, for background noise, or to view a DVD. Information exchange is the primary value of social media and that remains important.
At the same time, social media appears to fail when it comes to position advocacy and community organizing. What brought Condoleezza Rice to support the New START Treaty, as she did toward the end of 2010? Be assured, it was not social media. In stopping HF 561, the nuclear power finance bill the last two years, posting about it on Facebook didn’t appear to be a primary motivator for people to oppose the bill and contact their elected officials. Social media is more like preaching to the choir. It was countless community conversations that explained what the bill meant and why it was bad for Iowa that made the difference. One might invite someone to an event using social media, but the lion’s share of work was done in person and on the telephone. Any advocacy strategy that uses social media as its primary tactics seems bound to fail.
Like anything, the new social media is a tool, one that should be used like other tools in the satchel. Beyond that, and sharing photos with friends, being reminded of birthdays, and an outlet for creativity, it is hard to get excited about posting on Facebook. As B.B. King sang, “free now baby, I’m free from your spell.”
~ This is the third of a series of posts based upon writing in my journal.
I’m not a fan of human physiology. Given a Cartesian outlook toward life, I’d rather not think about or acknowledge my physicality even exists.
Yet there it is, influencing my daily affairs in ways I don’t comprehend. The physicality of others impacts everything I do in public and in private. My physicality — driving a lift truck, operating a bar code scanner, lifting bags of feed, sitting in meetings with other humans — impacts others as well as myself. For at least a moment, I should consider and endeavor to understand physiology.
Maybe in another life.
“I think, therefore I am” has been my beacon since I was a grader. I call it Cartesian now but its roots are in serving as an altar boy a few blocks from home in the Catholic Church and in the convent located on the upper floor of our elementary school. I’d come home from daily Mass and read what today is called juvenile literature printed on cheap paper and mailed from places of which I’d never heard. I became fixated on my own awareness and with the fact that other people, places and things existed and had impact on me. I felt separate from their reality, connected only by ink on paper, conversation, and radio and television. I became aware that in fact it was a reality.
The origins of a Cartesian outlook have roots further back in my hospitalization for a head injury at age three.
“What I learned through the injury and recovery in the hospital was that there is an infrastructure of knowledge and caring to support us when things happen,” I wrote in 2009. “This experience assured me that although we are vulnerable, we are not alone.”
Four physicians ago, when we first moved to Big Grove, my doctor laid me back on the examination table and rested his left hand on my naked belly and held it for a moment.
“This is not normal,” he said, referring to excess weight layered between my guts and skin. I agreed, respecting his training and experience in physiology, something about which I cared little. One would have thought it easy to improve my Body Mass Index given the intellectual provenance awareness can bring.
But no.
It has been especially hard to exercise since developing plantar fasciitis. Given my love of jogging, I tend to avoid thinking about exercise now, hoping gardening and the physicality of work at the home, farm and auto supply store compensates. I don’t know if it does and am reluctant to do the type of analysis I did with other life schemes.
If mine is a life of the imagination, that’s where I’d prefer to live. Yet reality beckons: in the form of news stories of horrible things happening to people the world over; in the work required to put a balanced meal on the table; or in staying awake during the 25 minute commute to the home, farm and auto supply store. Who wouldn’t want to live in the imagination? There is an unparalleled comfort there.
Whatever I am, physically or intellectually, I go on looking.
I look through a window where spiders persistently weave and reweave a web to catch insects drawn to the warmth and light of our home;
I look through eyeglasses the prescription of which needs an upgrade;
I look through the car windshield alert for the sudden appearance of deer during the rut;
I look through the fog of morning to see what each day brings;
I look for things I recognize more than for discovery and that’s regrettable.
After college I vowed to read every book in our Carnegie library. At the time that may have been possible. I didn’t get past the religion section of the Dewey Decimal System-organized stacks. I don’t read as much today as I did then.
Now the veil of Maya wears thin.
Everything I believed upon retirement from my transportation career has been called into question. I was hopeful the long, difficult work of electing a Democratic president was finished and that common sense would dominate public discourse. It turned out to be too much imagining as we were struck in the tuchus by the physicality of modern politics.
As if awakening from a dream, it will soon be time again to get dressed and find my running shoes. Not because my plantar fasciitis is in abeyance, but because the built in arch support will comfort my aging feet as I re-engage in society. I didn’t imagine I’d have to do that again in this life. It turns out I was wrong and Frederick Douglass was right:
It is in strict accordance with all philosophical, as well as experimental knowledge, that those who unite with tyrants to oppress the weak and helpless, will sooner or later find the groundwork of their own liberties giving way. “The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.” It can only be maintained by a sacred regard for the rights of all men.
I imagine it’s time to get back to work in the physical world.
Journey Home 
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