Tag: worklife

Categories
Milestones Work Life

Bernardo Bertolucci and General Motors

Bernardo Bertolucci (77) died yesterday in Rome, Italy where he had been suffering from cancer. The bigger news was General Motors’ decision to reduce workforce and eliminate six car models, including the Chevrolet Volt rechargeable gas-electric hybrid.

What do they have in common besides their coincidence?

They both hit me where I live.

When I returned from military service I spent time viewing movies I missed coming up, including The Conformist. I became enamored of the film, its director Bertolucci, and its cinematographer Vittorio Storaro. On my cross-country trip from New Jersey, where my pickup truck had been shipped from Germany, enroute home to Iowa, I visited friends Diana and Dennis in Springfield, Illinois. Diana fed us cornbread and beans and Dennis and I went to see Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, with cinematography by Storaro. That night began an infatuation with cinema that continued through my return home and lingered into the early years of our marriage. Of the films I have seen, The Conformist ranks in my top ten.

The Conformist

Partly The Conformist resonated with my short trips to Italy in the 1970s. More, though, it was Marcello Clerici, the vacillating, spineless protagonist who would kill his professor in a woods at the direction of the Communist Party. Who would want to be that? Not me. Not anyone. The impression the film made on my artistic consciousness persists. I will be forever thankful to Bertolucci for his contribution to this formative experience.

The General Motors announcement was a gut punch to anyone who lived and worked in the Rust Belt.

“The reductions could amount to as much as eight percent of GM’s global workforce of 180,000 employees,” Tom Krisher wrote for Associated Press.

What makes this pill tough to swallow is the damage that has already been done throughout the industrialized part of the country. I’ve written extensively about my experiences recruiting truck drivers in Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, New York and Pennsylvania during the period 1987 – 1993. I met thousands of people laid off from industry jobs. What makes the GM announcement different is what I experienced then was related to globalization. What’s happening now has to do with board room decisions emboldened by the recent Republican tax breaks.

The Conformist

There is talk unions will negotiate a better deal for workers as GM moves forward with their plans. How has that worked before? It hasn’t. The only union-related board member had been from the UAW health care trust, a position vacant since December 2017. The fund lost the board seat in October after selling a big chunk of GM stock.

Why would a person that drives a 21-year old passenger car care what GM does? When you’ve seen the faces of long-term employees who lost everything after a plant closing or down-sizing, you know what this announcement from GM means to workers. Only a cold, venal, rudderless being like Marcello Clerici could look on and not feel anything.

Categories
Work Life

Returning to Normal

Vegetable Soup on a Wintry Day

On Wednesday the front of my jeans was covered with pentachlorophenol mixed in an oil solvent. It rubbed off bundles of wooden fence posts at the home, farm and auto supply store as I was stocking racks and rearranging storage. It was dirty work that took all day. I earned about $100.

It is also dangerous work. The store has large display racks lining the east yard where fence posts await customers. I stocked them all. I raised bundles of 25-75 posts of various lengths and diameter six feet in the air with a lift truck, then positioned them and cut the metal bands to loosen them into the rack. One faulty move and a crushed hand could result. Except for the chemicals in my clothing, I finished unscathed.

Pentachlorophenol is used to protect wood from fungal rot and wood-boring insects. When a person installs a wooden fence post he or she hopes it is the last time for a life time and treated wood is the standard. I don’t even want to look at the Material Safety Data Sheet.

Life is returning to normal after the election, whatever that means.

I had coffee with a high school classmate at the new coffee shop in town. I ordered a triple mocha and the barista made it as well as anyone I’ve known. My friend and I discussed a wide range of topics including high school, the 40th reunion I helped organize in 2010, transition to retirement, and politics. Both of us had written for small newspapers and we shared our stories about covering city council and school board meetings. That seems to be a universal experience among writers. We spent 90 minutes before saying our goodbyes. I offered to help if he did more in politics. I think he is planning to finish the book he’s writing first.

It snowed last night although it won’t stick. I left the garden hose outside, thinking I’d use it again. I’d better bring it inside so it doesn’t freeze and break. There’s kale under the snow. If it survived, I’ll pick more.

A pot of vegetable soup simmers on the stove. I made corn tortillas yesterday. Vegetables remain in the ice box to be used up. My mind is not really on the weather, the garden hose, cooking, politics or whatever. I bought buttermilk at the grocery store to make buttermilk biscuits to go with the soup… supper.

This year has been a slide to third base. A crash landing in an open field. A dip in the pool of life. I’m not ready to quit. I have to find respite before going on. Like the MSDS mentioned above, I don’t even want to know what’s going on. Just take a break for a few more days and hope to be able to recharge and gear up for the next adventure. Hopefully there will be a next adventure.

Meanwhile snow melts into the drainpipe and runs down to the tile and then to the Lake which leads to the Gulf of Mexico. I’m focused on the sound of dripping.

Categories
Writing

There is No Second Rise

Fallen Leaves

Weekends at the apple orchard are as good as life gets. Families and individuals arrive to walk among colorful deciduous trees, drink a cup of hot, mulled apple cider and bag some apples for traditional uses in apple butter, pies, sauce and crisps.

Like leaves on the trees, cold brings out the best in people. For an hour or two life seems normal as people dream about what to serve with a holiday dinner at extended family gatherings.

I relish my shifts among such society. There are three more of them this season.

Our annual county party political barbecue and fundraiser happened last night while I was working at the orchard. I donated an item for the silent auction — a four-pack of red pepper flakes and ground spice in an African basket — and attempted to provide desserts.

Instead of producing 24 servings of applesauce cake, I caught the oven on fire with an experiment using almond flour instead of wheat. Luckily the fire extinguisher was fully charged. It took a couple of hours to clean up the mess. I re-baked what I salvaged and can report that after baking soda rises once, there is no second rise. I froze cubes of the result for future home desserts. The plan is to microwave them until hot and serve with a scoop of ice cream or flavored Greek yogurt. Ice cream can cure a lot of things.

Speakers at the fundraiser included local candidates and four outsiders: Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), Governor Jay Inslee (D-WA), and entrepreneur Andrew Yang, Democrat from New York City. I’m not aware that any of the speeches are available on line, so the event will pass into the annuals of local scribes without further consideration. I’m curious about what was said, but not that curious. I would like to know if my donation to the silent auction garnered any bids.

2018 has been a punk year in so many ways. October was no different. For every good thing that happened there were two or three to mitigate any joy resulting from it. It feels like a long slog toward winter which unofficially arrives with the end of Daylight Savings Time on Nov. 4, two days before the midterm elections. A darkness is settling in. It is difficult to see where people stand.

I ran into a friend from the board of health at the grocery store after my shift at the orchard. Her husband is a fan of this blog and we talked about my post, Gardening in End Times. Answering the question, what would you do if society were heading for an imminent, irrevocable disaster as in end times, she answered, “I’d work in my garden.” What else is there to do if disaster is coming?

Former U.S. Senate candidate Roxanne Conlin said it better than I could on twitter last night, “I just hope we can check him at the midterms. I’m not sure we will be able to do anything at all in 2020.”

We accept reality as we know it, become better cooks and gardeners, and that’s a life.

Categories
Work Life

Getting Salt in the Last Week of Summer

Bee Landing on Wildflowers

Another week of summer and already I’ve turned to fall.

This is Jonathan apple weekend at the orchard, marking halfway through the retail and u-pick season. When I think of a red apple, I think of Jonathan. We grow half a dozen varieties, including the heirloom. Except for the 89 degree ambient temperature yesterday it is beginning to feel like fall at the orchard.

At the end of my shift at the home, farm and auto supply store I moved pallets of water softening salt from the storage yard to the load out area for customers. Temperatures were moderate and the wind felt good as I traversed the length of the building in the lift truck. My two days a week schedule is facilitating the transition to retirement by providing some income and giving those days purpose outside the home.

Someday, maybe soon, all this will change.

September’s remaining days will be packed. Finishing garden, yard and kitchen work, and preparing for a winter of writing. After the general election, once the apple harvest is in, I hope for full days devoted to writing. I’m encouraged to work through the interim with positive results. Invested in the present, I’m looking toward a bright future.

Living life as best we can in an turbulent world.

Categories
Writing

Holiday Weekend

Apples Ripening

Since 2013 I’ve worked at the apple orchard on Labor Day.

The holiday coincides with ripening of Honeycrisp apples which is one of our most popular varieties. There are more than a dozen others, including Gala, McIntosh, Red Gravenstein, Burgundy, Cortland, Ginger Gold, Red Free and Akane, ripe and ready to pick.

It rained on Saturday, which suppressed the crowd, but Sunday a couple thousand guests stopped by. It was our busiest day this season.

My job title is “mapper.” That means I talk to many of our customers and help them have a positive experience at the orchard. A large map is displayed at my work station, from which I tell a story about how to find apples. Even when a majority of people seek the same variety, each customer is wants something a little different. It’s my job to figure out what that is and help them find it in a personal way. Sometimes I draw a map on a slip of paper showing where specific apples are. Mostly I use the map as a reference point and work to enable customers to break the chains of intellectual engagement and look at the 80 acres of land that makes up our orchard. With popular varieties that’s easier because the rows of apple trees are visible from my perch at the top of the hill. Among the many things our orchard represents, it is a chance to get away from daily life for a while.

Rain had been holding off Sunday until around 4:30 p.m. when clouds gathered and let loose a shower. Our guests headed into the sales barn and to their vehicles to get out of the weather. Rainfall signaled the end of the day more than our business hours.

I enjoy working at the orchard, especially when it is busy. My personal tradition has been to work on Labor Day and I’ve done it for as long as I can remember.

In the transportation and logistics business operations never ceased and our family had no culture of celebrating this holiday. I recall a Labor Day I drove into the Chicago loop to work in my office. I parked at a construction site near Lake Michigan, walked the block and a half to work, and went through security. I was one of the few people other than security inside the Standard Oil building on Randolph Drive. I believe I got a lot of work done that day, although today am not so sure.

Over the years we’ve become a family that doesn’t celebrate the eight or ten big holidays of the year. That might change in retirement. Even though I grew up in a union household, was a union member at the meat packing plant where my maternal grandmother and father worked, and have a daughter who is represented by a large union, Labor Day is a forgotten time for me. Maybe because I’d been part of management most of my worklife. More likely if I took the day off I wouldn’t know what to do as celebration. In the end, I’d rather spend time with people who are getting away from la vie quotidienne and help make their experience better on Labor Day.

After the rainfall I policed up trash from the picnic area and a young couple asked me to take a photo of them. Guest relations like this is an unwritten part of my job. I looked for proper framing where I could capture the day for them. She handed me her mobile device and I got them to smile. I snapped a photo of them in front of apple trees with our restaurant on the hill in the distant background. The photo pleased them.

I picked up discarded apples, plastic and paper and put them in trash barrels not full enough to empty. That work will be for Labor Day, when if the rain holds off we should have a couple thousand of guests seeking something, apples mostly, but also learning how to live in the 21st Century.

Categories
Writing

Writing in Summer Rain

Monarch Butterfly on Milkweed Plant

Thunderstorms have been rolling over all day bringing needed rain and a chance to get caught up indoors.

I’m less freaked out about the amount of food processing ahead. There have been more cucumbers than normal and I canned the last seven quarts of sweet pickles this morning. That will be the last, I promise. I also canned pints of tomatoes, apple sauce and a jar of the same pickles. While the water bath was bubbling I made a pot of chili for supper with fresh tomatoes and Vidalia onions. We’ll cook the remaining sweet corn of the season. My retirement has had that effect — things are less freaky.

Tomatoes are next, although the plan is to eat as many fresh as possible. With only two of us at home, we can’t eat fast enough to keep up with the growing and cooking so some will be canned and turned into tomato juice and sauce. I’m taking it in stride.

Two weekends ago the orchard hosted our back to school weekend. A balloon artist/magician entertained children, and of course there were apples to pick and eat. It was a chance for parents to have one more family fun event before school begins.

Getting ready to attend grade school was one of the great pleasures of life. Each fall began with friends, new clothes, new pencils, and lined, blank sheets of paper. I needed new clothes after growing out of mine. I was first born, so no hand-me-downs. The sensation of hope and opportunity to begin anew is memorable, unlike anything I experience these days. It was something. I hope today’s graders feel the same way.

A Dad walked into the sales barn at the orchard carrying a young child on a backpack and a two-year old on his shoulders. He looked very fit. After they picked apples the toddler helped me transfer apples from our basket to a bag. “Do you want to count them?” I asked. At two, children aren’t really sure what counting is, or how exactly to do it. He just pick up one apple after another and let me do the counting after one and two.

I can see why people return to work after retirement. When we’ve worked our whole lives in stressful situations there’s no slowing down. It will take work to settle in more comfortably after 50 years in the workforce. What I once thought were extra things — cooking, gardening, reading and writing — are now life’s main event. Not sure how I feel about that. I won’t be for a while.

August is the last month to cover editorial duties at Blog for Iowa. I’m not sure what will be next. We’re moving quickly through the procession of apples, Red Gravenstein, Sansa, Akane and Burgundy this week. We have family Friday events through the month of September, so with work at the home, farm and auto supply store time will fly — almost like I’m working again.

Not really. Living one day in society at a time as best I can, hopefully with enough money for seeds in the spring.

Categories
Environment Work Life

Working in the Heat

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

Independence Day at the home, farm and auto supply store was a time to catch-up with organizing the warehouse, process expired pet food, reposition tall pallets of wood shavings, and generally clean up. The usual receiving activities slowed down as delivery drivers had the day off.

The store was pretty busy and comme d’habitude, management tried to feed us lunch: fried chicken with sides from a chain restaurant headquartered in Orange City.

I resisted. I also didn’t criticize because they were trying to be nice on the holiday we all had to work. We all should be nice when we can.

A couple of projects involved being outside in the blazing heat and humidity. I persisted and got the work done.

When working outside at home I get done early in the day to avoid mid day heat. I’ll work outside all day when the heat index is up to 90 degrees, but that’s the upper limit. With the heat and humidity we’ve been having that meant days indoors even though the sky was clear. It was weird.

According to this morning’s newspaper heat records are being set all over the world. In the Northern Hemisphere we’ve had the hottest weather ever recorded during the past week as a massive and intensive “heat dome” settled over the eastern United States.

In addition, the northeastern Atlantic Ocean is cooler than normal. Partly this means there may be less hurricane-strength storms this season. My worry is it’s being caused by melting of the Greenland ice sheet. If Greenland goes completely, the historical record shows the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) will slow down significantly or stop. That could mean disruption of the growing season in Europe and of their food supply. According to Scientific American, AMOC is the weakest it’s been in 1,600 years.

“The grand northward progression of water along North America that moves heat from the tropics toward the Arctic has been sluggish,” wrote Andrea Thompson. “If that languidness continues and deepens, it could usher in drastic changes in sea level and weather around the ocean basin.”

I think of the blue marble and how all of us on earth are connected.

“No single record, in isolation, can be attributed to global warming,” wrote Jason Samenow in the Washington Post. “But collectively, these heat records are consistent with the kind of extremes we expect to see increase in a warming world.”

There are so many signals and indicators of climate disruption in the global environment that such disclaimers may serve some editorial purpose but are immediately useless. The world is warming and there are consequences.

It’s about more than working outside on a humid and hot day at the home, farm and auto supply store.

Categories
Kitchen Garden Work Life Writing

Last Day of the Season 2018

Chicken at Sundog Farm

Beginning on Feb. 25, and 862 trays of soil blocks later, my 2018 farm work season ended today at Sundog Farm. I finished at Wild Woods Farm on Friday.

More than anything, farm work has been time with young people — doing the work and talking about crops, challenges, and everything else.

In my sixth year of soil blocking I kept up physically. I plan to do it again next year if able.

Now to take a break from farming until returning to Wilson’s Orchard for the fall season.

This will be the first summer in a long time we haven’t taken a share from the CSAs. Our garden is big enough to provide most vegetables and I’m confident of the yield. What we can’t get at home I’ll secure elsewhere. Getting enough to eat is never a problem when working in a local food system.

Next on the practical agenda is home repairs and cleaning. There is never a shortage of work for home owners.

It’s also an opportunity to resume writing. Each time I rejoin the project I lose track of everything else. Hours and days pass and like a coal miner I follow the seam wherever it goes. There is a lot more reading, thinking and organizing than writing at this point. I’ve forgotten more than I know about my own life and it can’t be re-lived, merely touched through a gauze woven of memory.

I began addressing the chronology. I’m not sure that will be the presentation. As I delve into the volumes of writing and artifacts collected since college a thematic approach seems better. It would be cultural aspects of growing up, education, work life, how we developed an ecology of living as a family, and my path toward social responsibility. It will also focus on what readers may find interesting.

Writing is exhilarating at a time when the rest of the world seems weary and worn down. What a great way to spend the rest of this summer.

Categories
Work Life Writing

Feel the Breeze

Western Sky at Sunrise

I’d rather have spent both of this week’s days at the home, farm and auto supply store in our garden. Temperatures were warm enough to work in shirtsleeves and the garden is way behind.

Outdoors tasks occupied my work day: unloading field tile and plant trucks, rearranging the yard, and moving tall pallets of pine shavings, first outside while unloading the truck, and then back inside as I made room in the warehouse.  We had trucks of merchandise from our main warehouse, a load of feed, and a truck from Missouri with odds and ends of a retail operation: ladders, pipe, light bulbs and sundry stuff. It seemed like I was on the lift truck the entire time.

The best part of the days was feeling a breeze through my hair as I drove from one end of the lot to the other on the lift truck. Father died on a lift truck at the meat packing plant. That thought is never far from me as I finish my days in the work force.

Now begins the rest of today: coffee with an elected official in the county seat and a shift of farm work. If I have the bandwidth, and thunderstorms hold off, I’ll work in the garden later this afternoon.

Categories
Kitchen Garden Work Life Writing

Wanting to Wake Up

Community Pond

At retirement plus 19 days I thought I’d be more productive.

Yesterday, after a shift at my desk and an hour-long visit with a neighbor and a team of surveyors, I took a nap… with long, deep sleep. Groggy when I woke, the better part of the day had escaped me.

More time to heal after a life of work.

It’s not like the main spring work of gardening was doable. Rain and ambient temperatures in the twenties and lower thirties gave me a chill most of the day. My farmer friends take advantage of every micro dry spell to plant a row of seeds or plow a field. A home gardener needs an ample period of dry ground and time to get in seed potatoes, early lettuce, radishes, turnips, peas and the like. Thus far the burn pile remains and the ground is unbroken, indicating there was a garden but little else. On the other hand, when the weather breaks, I’m ready.

Boxes of canning jars pile up as we draw down the pantry.

Last night Jacque and I went separate ways for dinner. She prepared a pasta dish with pasta made from lentil flour accompanied with a side salad. I prefer pasta made with semolina flour. These days a salad is organic greens from a specialty grocer, carrots, celery and home made dressing.  When she finished in the kitchen I made a dish I had been thinking about for a week.

Mother made a simple gravy with bacon grease, flour and milk. My supper was a variation of that.

The gravy recipe is easy: three tablespoons fat, three tablespoons flour to make a roux then two cups milk simmered on low heat until thickened. We cook vegetarian at home so I substituted salted butter for the bacon grease. Mother added cooked hamburger to the gravy but I wanted more.

Dinner preparation began with diced storage onions, bell pepper from the freezer and a four ounce can of sliced mushrooms from the Netherlands sauteed in extra virgin olive oil, seasoned with salt and pepper. When the onions began to soften I added two finely diced cloves of garlic from Kate’s farm and incorporated them into the vegetables.

Next was two cups of Morningstar Farms recipe crumbles stirred in until thoroughly thawed and mixed. When the ingredients reached the proper stage I made a well in the center of the frying pan and added three tablespoons of salted butter to melt. I added an equal amount of flour to make a roux. When the roux had cooked for a couple minutes I added two cups skim milk and stirred the mixture until everything was incorporated. I brought it to a boil and turned down the heat to a simmer for about ten minutes until the liquid thickened.

I toasted a slice of sourdough bread, diced it, and spooned the mixture on top in a big bowl. That and a couple of raw carrots was dinner… with leftovers. Comfort food from memories of Mother.

In the annals of human history yesterday wasn’t much. Two people getting along in a place where we’ve lived for 25 years.

“I feel as if I’m fixin’ come out of hibernation and need to work with friends on something meaningful,” I emailed a friend. “What that is will eventually manifest itself… I hope we can recognize it when it does.”

For now I wait for the weather to break, rest and heal.