Tag: Writing

Writing about writing, autobiography, cross posting selected work from other places.

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Writing

Newspaper Writing

Editor’s Note: This is one of 100 newspaper articles written for the North Liberty Leader, The Solon Economist, and the Iowa City Press Citizen beginning in 2014. The North Liberty Leader stopped publication in early 2022. The Solon Economist remains on the bubble. This is an example of the collaborative type of writing produced with my newspaper editors. The whole experience of freelancing was beneficial if low-paid.

Iowa City Community School District board meeting on Jan 28, 2014. Photo by the author.

Van Allen school to be expanded
Four new classrooms will serve 100 additional students

By Paul Deaton

IOWA CITY (Feb. 5, 2014) – Paintings by Van Allen and Penn Elementary School students on the walls of the Iowa City Community School District (ICCSD) school board meeting were a colorful backdrop as Superintendent Stephen Murley and the board held brief discussions during an equally brief meeting on Jan. 28.

The board held the second of three readings of Appendix 9 , the ICCSD capital projects planning and approval process document that guides the board in its oversight and implementation of the district’s facilities master plan. The long-range plan was adopted on July 23, 2013, and proposes to spend an estimated $252 million on capital improvement projects during a 10 year period. Included in the plan is an addition to Van Allen Elementary School in North Liberty.

Following the formal meeting, the board’s Operations Committee met, and began with an update on the Van Allen design project by representatives of the architectural firm Neumann Monson and Van Allen Principal Pat Brown.

On Dec. 17, 2013, the Iowa City school board approved a project design expenditure of $123,250 for Van Allen. The design was to include additions to the current structure, containing four classrooms to house approximately 100 additional students. A committee of staff volunteers worked with Neumann Monson during the design development phase of the project. Three schematic designs were evaluated, with a final preference for additions to existing pods two (on the East side of the building housing Kindergarten through second grade) and three (on the West side of the building housing grades three through six. The design would create about 5,600 square feet of new space and fall within the approved budget of $1.68 million.

Principal Brown explained the criteria the committee developed for the addition.

“One of the things we’d like to do is to continue, as much as possible, is (keeping) like grades together so that we can group our first grades together, second grades together. Our teams do a lot of collaboration in their planning and delivery of instruction. It works much better when we keep those grades together,” she said.

Brown said another important criterion was flexibility of classroom design.
“We are anticipating growth in the North Liberty area. And as we’ve seen with enrollment, kids don’t always come to us in neat packages with the numbers just right as they move up through the grades. (The additions) could give us growth on both sides of the building.”

“We will have additional classroom space to meet student instructional needs in a positive learning environment,” said Brown in an email after the meeting.

Current enrollment at Van Allen for K-6 is 489 students. In addition, the elementary school also serves 27 preschool students. Projected enrollment for the year 2022-2023 is 527 based on the school’s current attendance area.

According to Brown, there are plans to rezone the attendance areas in North Liberty and Coralville beginning this spring. Additional students will likely be zoned into the Van Allen Elementary attendance area to help with projected elementary population growth.

“North Liberty enrollment projections for the school-aged population taken from the U.S. Census (2000-2010) shows an increase of 122 percent. Coralville increased 29 percent,” said Brown.

Van Allen Elementary School was Iowa’s first LEED certified public school. LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) is a set of rating systems for the design, construction, operation and maintenance of greens buildings intended to help building owners be environmentally responsible and use resources efficiently. Van Allen received a silver LEED certification, and features natural lighting, recycled building materials, geothermal heating and cooling, and natural landscaping. Neumann Monson expects to preserve LEED certification with completion of the project.

The board will hold a public hearing on the final project design in April. Once the design is approved, Neumann Monson expects the bidding documents to be prepared for distribution to contractors by April 24, and returned by May 16. Construction is to begin June 1, with a construction completion date not later than June 30, 2015.

~ Written for the North Liberty Leader.

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Writing

The Dam Breaks

Checking the Earliblaze apples on June 26, 2023.

The cartomancer drew an Ace of Spades, indicating things that have been in disarray in my life may be coming together. After mild spells of undiagnosed dizziness today and yesterday, I feel the dam breaking and am ready to portage to the other side as the impoundment pool is released. That means I will return to writing my autobiography soon.

I sent the first half to four friends from whom I hope to hear feedback. Two have responded and two are married and will respond together when both finish reading. The feedback garnered thus far has been invaluable.

The next decision is whether to work on the part just reviewed or work to get the rest of it up to the same level of completion. The second part is problematic in that there are multiple narrative threads which represent a lot of work. At the same time, revising what was reviewed makes some sense while the feedback is fresh.

In part two there will be the experiences with family before our child attended formal school. Those are the most important years and they are over before we realize it. It is important to capture some of those fleeting essences while we can. We brought her home from the hospital to Cedar Rapids, Iowa where we lived the first 30 months, then moved to the Calumet region of Indiana where she started Montessori School, followed by public schools. We moved to Big Grove Township in 1993. That’s one narrative.

I lived through the post-Reagan years of turmoil in the workplace and have things to say through the frame of living in the Calumet and recruiting truck drivers and mechanics. More than anything, in interviewing some 10,000 people, I learned and felt directly the pain Reagan’s initiatives put so many working people through. I want to tell that story.

The challenge of being a writer intensified with the advent of computer technology. Of what was this new tool capable? What were realistic expectations? How did it change the way I wrote? How did writing in public change from my first letter to the editor in 1974 until today? Another narrative worth exploring.

During my career in transportation I traveled all around the country. I spent the most time in Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Georgia, Tennessee, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, West Virginia and other states. I used to bring a magnet home from each new place and filled up the front of the home refrigerator with them. I spent time with some of the poorest people in the country and with large corporations far removed from the reality most of us know. Sorting that out will be a big task in itself and seems worth doing.

There is a lot in front of me. It appears to be in the cards for me to get going again. I can feel it. I am ready.

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Writing

Writing in Public

My writing desk, December 1979.

My first letter to the editor of a newspaper appeared in the Quad-City Times on Dec. 30, 1974. I had just returned to my home town from Europe after college graduation. I did not like the culture I experienced in Davenport. The letter was a way to express my opinion in public and garner feedback from other members of the community. It worked to a fashion before the time of social media. It would not be my last letter to a newspaper complaining about living in society.

There are risks when writing in public. When I wrote letters to the Cedar Rapids Gazette, in response, I received anonymous threatening letters in the mail. It was a form of intimidation for having an opinion with which someone disagreed. Because the letters were anonymous, and didn’t threaten me physically, I discarded them and wrote more letters to the newspaper. I’m not certain I’ll write any more letters to the editor, yet I won’t let intimidation be the reason to slow me down.

In Iowa, we are considering the incident of a prominent meteorologist named Chris Gloninger who received a death threat after educating his viewers about climate change. Repeated email harassment over his weather reports led to a case of PTSD, after which he resigned his position. I seldom watch television weather reports, so I likely don’t understand the situation. Harassing a T.V. meteorologist via email is a lazy person’s way of “sticking it to the man.” How infantile!

In his upcoming book, The Hidden History of American Democracy: Rediscovering Humanity’s Ancient Way of Living, author Thom Hartmann closes with the following:

You may think your voice is but a faint whisper in the wilderness, but there are ways you can amplify it at no cost other than a bit of effort. Write letters to the editor of your local newspapers. Become active on social media. Volunteer with the dozens of great good-government groups and organizations devoted to saving our environment, our democracy, and our world.

The Hidden History of American Democracy: Rediscovering Humanity’s Ancient Way of Living by Thom Hartmann.

Hartmann reiterates one of the best remedies for feeling impotent or down is to take action. We can’t let the inevitable naysayers get to us when we do.

Good luck Mr. Gloninger. May your future be bright.

Categories
Writing

District of Tall Buildings

Davenport Hotel circa 1980. Photo Credit: National Park Service.

When a group of men gathered at the Rock Island home of George Davenport in 1835, they had a mind to purchase land and lay out a town on the Iowa side of the Mississippi River. With native tribes removed, something needed to be done with the land, or so they believed. By any measure, the enterprise was a commercial venture in a relatively optimal, if arbitrary location. Its lackluster beginnings would haunt the city until I was born more than a century later.

In Spring 1836, Major William Gordon surveyed the place that would become the City of Davenport. He and his business partners, including George Davenport and Antoine LeClaire, offered a sale of lots to a party from Saint Louis who had been transported by steam boat to participate in a two-day auction. Sales were much less than expected. The sellers did not have clear title to the lots at the time of the sale and that likely contributed to poor sales.

There was never a question Davenport would be settled by non-natives. As original forests were clear cut upstream, and rafts of logs floated to river towns on the Eastern border of Iowa, there was money to be made. The lumber business was profitable, yet not sustainable. It was one more instance of profiteering in the city’s history.

The lumber business gave rise to the railroads. When the Davenport Hotel was constructed in 1907 it was situated equidistant between the two major rail stations in the city. “Erection of the Davenport Hotel inaugurated a period of building that would bring Davenport’s central business district fully into the era of the ‘tall buildings,'” according to the National Park Service website. Other tall buildings were built around it, including The Dempsey Hotel (1913), The Blackhawk Hotel (1915), The Davenport Bank and Trust Company Building (1927), and The Mississippi Hotel (1931).

Temple and Burroughs Architects created the Davenport Hotel building in the Renaissance Revival style. The structure was an important feature of the city’s commercial center. Located in Antoine LeClaire’s first subdivision of Davenport, one couldn’t get more center city. As commercial needs changed in downtown, some of the tall buildings were converted to housing. My maternal grandmother lived in government-subsidized housing in the Mississippi Hotel for many years.

The May 28, 2023 collapse of part of the Davenport Hotel building should be a wake-up call for city governments everywhere. The response of the City of Davenport has been as lackluster as the city’s founding. What seems obvious today is these tall buildings are getting old and literally falling apart.

At least there is political hay to be made in this national story. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis just announced he will send a crew to Davenport to help in the recovery of the building collapse. Is it a coincidence he is also vying for position in the 2024 Iowa Republican caucuses?

There may be dollars to be made from old building stock. City staff needs to energize and make sure none of the other tall buildings in the commercial district collapses while developers pursue the almighty dollar. History has shown, they are likely to nod their heads toward developers and let the action play out as it did last month. What a sorry way to run a city.

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Home Life

Rain Broke the Dry Spell

2023 garlic scapes
Remaining 2022 garlic crop

Two days after a full moon, in pre-dawn darkness, it was difficult to see it rained yesterday. It hadn’t rained long, just enough to get the ground wet and start water flowing toward the ditch. It was not enough to seal cracks in the ground caused by a lack of moisture. The ditch near the road has hardly been used for runoff this spring. I hope the dry spell is broken.

After a hiatus, today I return to writing. Garden plot seven remains to be planted yet the hard work of putting in a garden is almost done. Already an abundance of vegetables was harvested even if my favorite hot peppers wait in the greenhouse to be planted.

At the point I realized our yard couldn’t produce enough grass clippings and leaves for garden mulch, and began laying down weed barrier to hold moisture and suppress weeds, everything changed. It was helped along by relenting to the need for fertilizer (composted chicken and turkey manure) and some pesticides used by my organic farming friends. Not everything improves with aging, yet my garden was made better by experience.

May was a month of stuff breaking. We scrambled to cover the expense of new appliances: washer, dryer, range, furnace, and air conditioner. We previously replaced the refrigerator, water heater, water softener, and our 2002 automobile. The new technology is clearly better. I can’t get over how quickly batches of water-bath canning jars come to temperature and boil. Our clothes get cleaner as well. All of this took time in May. We are over the hump, fingers crossed.

The acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk created turbulence in my social media space. The main change is I notice more trolls. I know to block them without question, yet it is an annoyance. I tried Mastodon, Post, and Spoutible and none of them fills the same need as Twitter. Mastodon was too complicated with their decentralized server model. Spoutible and Post have a lot of nice people, yet the depth of relationship is lacking and may become an issue. The other legacy social media accounts (Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook) are doing what they do without issue.

There wasn’t a lot to write about in Iowa Politics this spring. Republicans in the legislature had super majorities and could and did pass what they wanted. The trouble for a political blog writer is getting a handle on the changes and creating an approach that makes sense while Democrats are in the minority. One would have thought logic and reason would be the path, yet no. Republicans now take legislative action based on tropes and whims from the great beyond. To use logic serves their misinformation purposes. Building a story board will require more effort than usual as we prepare for the 2024 and 2026 elections.

Lack of rain is concerning. The Midwestern garden relies upon a consistent amount of rainfall spaced at predictable intervals. As the atmosphere and our oceans warm, more moisture is stored in the atmosphere. Rainfall we were used to became the exception rather than something upon which gardeners can rely. It leaves us with the unpredictability of life. When the dry spell breaks, we can breathe easier, at least for a little while.

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Writing

Toward Future Dishes

Maytag Range delivered to our kitchen on May 22, 2023.

We replaced the Kenmore range purchased in 1988 with this new Maytag model. Technicians from the small appliance dealer did a good job delivering, installing, and explaining it. More than once they referred me to manuals dropped on the counter. Although it will take time to understand the features of the range, I will attempt to live up to the promise this technology offers. I expect to prepare many future dishes using the device. The inaugural meal was black beans and rice.

A future is not always assured. I took a spell while tending the covered row of herbs and vegetables, then made a retreat indoors. I have had two conversations about such episodes with my medical practitioner. He said if they were infrequent and do not persist, there was little to be done about them. Easy for him to say. Most days spells recede behind the proscenium arch where the curtain is down more than up on my aging frame. From time to time, spells appear as players to complicate life. We are in act one of what can be expected to be five. Here’s hoping I live to denouement and a final, dignified curtain call and bow.

This is the longest I have been away from posting since I can remember. My spouse will be spending a week with her sister who is moving from a rental to a house in July. There is a lot of packing to be done. While she’s gone, I hope to finish planting the garden, organize for summer, and begin regular writing again. I hope to be done with the intense rasher of friends who died this year. Appliances died in equal numbers, yet it is not the same.

I miss my friends, appliances not so much. Appliance transitions brought discussion with banks, business owners, sales folks, delivery drivers, and technicians. It is a way to go on living whereas my dead friends and family offer little engagement for the future except in memory. As we age, we do the best we can.

On the way home from the grocer I stopped for gasoline. After fueling, I pretended I was in Thomasville, Georgia again and bought a Yoo-hoo chocolate drink and lottery ticket at the gas station. Playing the long game, I bought a Powerball ticket instead of a scratch-off. If we can’t see a future beyond the now, then we will never live a long one. Validating the statistics of lotteries, my ticket was not a winner in Monday night’s drawing. At least we have the new range and the prospect of delicious meals.

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Writing

Spring Break

Front rolling in.

I’ve taken to opening the garage door and watching storm fronts roll in. Probably, I’m carrying baggage from the Aug. 10, 2020 derecho.

Multiple reasons have me running behind, with a short time to get the garden in by Memorial Day. I’ll be taking a break from writing to focus on spring and all. One never knows how many more springs we’ll get. I intend to enjoy this one.

Take care dear readers. Hope to see you again soon. Hope you enjoy what remains of Spring!

Categories
Writing

Clearer View of Writing

Spring clouds

Should a person be sensible and find a job, or follow their passions? This is a false choice, although one many feel compelled to make. I’m not sure those two options often exist concurrently.

My insight into this choice may be the result of getting a new eyeglasses prescription filled. On Friday they were ready at the warehouse club, the first prescription I filled since before the pandemic. I can see clearly now and it’s a revelation. Well, no. That’s not it. Maybe it’s something else.

At our tenth high school class reunion in 1980, I described myself as a writer. Here’s the entire passage from the booklet the organizing committee issued:

Paul lives in Iowa City and attended U of I, BA 1974, and the United States Army Infantry School. He is a writer. He is also a First Lieutenant in the U.S. Army Reserves. M.A. candidate in American Studies at U of I.

Unpublished journal, Summer 1980.

It was out there. I was a writer. Decision made! Not so fast!!

One of the last nights I spent in Davenport in 1980 was with two friends at a bar called The Mad Hatter. We walked to the Palmer Student Union where another friend was performing with his guitar. We had a discussion about how a person had to give up her artwork after taking a job at John Deere. She was tired after work, raising a child, and found little time or desire to make art. I knew if I took a full time job after graduate school I might find myself in the same situation. I had just declared myself to be a writer! I decided to stick it out at least until I finished graduate school.

I had enough money saved to pay for graduate school with help from the G.I. Bill. After graduation I wanted to remain in Iowa City, so I got an apartment and found a low-level job without benefits working for the university. One thing led to another and I met someone, got married, and together decided we needed more money to afford a house and everything else involved in a long-term relationship. Things happen. I didn’t put my writing on hold.

During that first year after we married I made an earnest attempt to write the book about which I had been talking for so many years. The working title was Going Home, and I summarized it in a journal entry:

Going Home will begin with a descent from high culture – Vienna – to low culture – Davenport – á la William Carlos Williams. Then will come a rebuilding – a putting together of a new life from the pieces. A new ascent, with both feet placed firmly on the ground. So, from Vienna, to Davenport, to Iowa City, to Northeastern Iowa. Descent to the ground, but then both feet planted firmly, beginning a step at a time, making a new beginning.

Personal Journal, Iowa City, June 17, 1983.

I’m not sure today what exactly that meant. The image of “both feet planted on the ground” recurred in my journals. It would also be an argument for a common life, free from external structures. At various times, I called the book the 1969 Novel or Going Home, yet it never became much more than an idea about Iowa contrasted with Europe… or something. I made outlines and wrote passages. I made reading lists and trip itineraries. I made research notes for much of 1983.

In each section of Going Home, I want to provide the reader with two things. First, I want them to be able to relate to the personal experience from which each scene is written, enabling them to say, “I’ve been there.” Second, I want them to be able to see that the given experience functions ideologically in the novel, giving the characters some sort of influence. Too, I want the sections to teach the reader a way of life.

Personal Journal, Iowa City, Iowa, June 27, 1983.

I wrote about the book extensively in my journal without getting anything significant down on paper. I had the idea, likely from Emerson, of turning away from the courtly muses to everyday life. I did extensive reading to form a moral framework for the novel. This is all well and good, yet here’s the issue: I had no clue what it meant to be married.

It is significant that at this crossroads there was no real choice between following my passion to be a writer and doing what was sensible. In seeking to write, I sought realization of who I was regardless of any framework for living. The pent up desire to become a writer compelled me to continue to live as best I could: writing, earning money, having a family life, the whole shebang. It would have been easier if Morpheus had offered me a one-time choice between the blue and red pills.

It is important to refrain from framing life as a choice between options. This seems too simplistic. A dilemma means a choice between disagreeable alternatives, yet devising an arbitrary choice is just that: arbitrary. It would be a false choice.

While we might feel good about defining a choice and making a decision, the results seem unlikely to endure. We owe it to ourselves to accept complexity in life and deal with it outright. We can’t settle for second best when both choices are sub-optimal.

It sometimes helps to get a new pair of glasses, to see clearly, even if they are not responsible for choices we make.

Categories
Writing

April 2023 in Big Grove

Trail walking in Spring 2023.

The last few days of April have been marvelous. Rain subsided, ambient temperatures were mild with low humidity. It has been a spring month, as good as they get. No more close friends have died this month, so there has been psychological relief as well. We needed a breather.

Spinach planted in the ground on April 15 is up. Onions are doing well. Yesterday I planted cauliflower, cabbage and kale, and there are two more rows in that plot for broccoli, collards, and other leafy green vegetables.A mad garden rush will be happening in May with the target of getting the initial planting done by Memorial Day, which this year falls on May 29. Gardening is going well.

The Biden administration announced that it intends to end the presidential declaration of national emergency and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) public health emergency attributable to the COVID-19 pandemic on May 11, 2023. I was at a restaurant last night where a couple of people continued to wear a facial mask. With my full regime of COVID-19 vaccinations, I did not.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there have been 104,538,730 reported cases of COVID-19, 1,130,662 deaths attributed to it, and 55,743,629 doses of vaccine administered. There are currently 9,167 hospitalizations due to the coronavirus. It was, in no uncertain terms, a public health disaster. The scale of 1.1 million U.S. deaths is difficult to wrap one’s head around as we close in on the end.

The Iowa Legislature has taken up budget bills, which means we are close to the end of session. Thank goodness. There has been so much controversy over bills it had been like drinking from a fire hose trying to understand what is happening. Republicans won super majorities in 2022, and are exercising their power like never before. Democrats are hanging on, trying to get a message out. Democratic messaging has been like trying to light a candle in a derecho: word is not getting out beyond political junkies.

Our blogging group went to dinner Friday night at Royceann’s Soul Food Restaurant in the South District Market in Iowa City. The menu has a fixed number of daily items on it and diners can order a meat and two sides for $18. It is a bit tough for vegetarians to find something on the menu, and tougher for vegans. I ordered cabbage, cornbread, and macaroni and cheese. The preparations were distinct and tasty. I plan to return to try the collards with cornbread. I usually say I can cook better than what I find in restaurants, yet not this time.

Our furnace gave up the ghost this month. We have been discussing which new one to get and have made a decision. When an expensive item hits a household on a fixed income, it takes some wangling to determine how to pay for it. We have it figured out.

I have finished reading seven books in April. Check out what I’ve been reading on the Read Recently page by clicking on it at the top of this page. I got new glasses for the first time since 2019. It’s great to be able to see clearly again. Hope your April was as good as mine. Thanks for reading my post.

Categories
Writing

Great Book Sort #1

File box full of books.

This year I donated roughly 700 books to the public library used book sale and to Goodwill. Goodwill is less picky about what they will accept, so they received the majority of them. Many of my donations still had the Goodwill price tag from when I bought them. Library downsizing has only just begun.

All but The Moviegoer of my collection of Walker Percy novels went into boxes and out the door. I felt a bit sad about that, but as Vonnegut said, “So, it goes.” I had to decide about my collections by author. Other authors, that I worked equally hard to collect, went into bankers boxes with the names and date packed on the outside. Who knows if one will get into the boxes again, yet they are available and take up no precious shelf space. A few — Bellow, Didion, Irving, Morrell, Faulkner, and William Carlos Williams got their own special shelf space. It wouldn’t be my library without those authors.

I wrote previously about poetry and that decision seems solid. The shelves are easily accessible so when I want to read poetry I can get at the stacks.

Cookbooks are impossible. Half of what I gave away was cookbooks. I can’t seem to part with many more. Yet I must. Truth is, I hardly use cookbooks any more. Having learned how to cook, they serve as cultural artifacts related to places and people with which I have some connection. Reference material for the church where I was baptized, or the American Studies department where I got my degree. In seventy years of living, we generate a lot of connections. A cookbook has usually been involved. They also serve as examples of how to prepare a particular dish or ingredient. Keeping many of them takes up space that could be devoted to other topics. This sorting is far from over.

Hundreds of books about Iowa history and by Iowa authors needs reduction to a shelf of about a dozen to hand off to our child when they are ready. I also wrote about this. More of those got boxed up, leaving the first tier to be read and re-considered on the shelf.

The space for books about U.S. presidents is settled at eye level on two long shelves. The ones by or about presidents in my lifetime is sorted. I had two copies of Eisenhower’s White House memoirs and one is on the bench waiting to be packed up for Goodwill. I have a blank space for the second volume of Obama’s presidential memoir. No space was left for a Trump memoir, I mean, you got to be kidding me.

My African-American studies section has grown, and I need a space for American Indian books. I can’t bear to part with all the ancient writings, although the chances of reading some of them are slight. I may get into Plutarch’s Lives, or I may not. Keeping them for now.

Art books take up too much space. Having so many is a function of my interest in certain artists like Picasso, Joan Miró, Georgia O’Keeffe, Warhol, Hopper, and the like. Some I bought at the artist’s retrospective, and some I picked up at used book sales. Until I get to the point of running out of space, most of them will stay right where they now are.

A byproduct of sorting is finding more books to read. The to-read shelves are packed to overflowing. I’ve also found some lost friends, like George McGovern’s autobiography, Grassroots, and Joe Biden’s Promises to Keep. I put Biden’s memoir into a box, thinking he would never be president. Now it’s up in the presidential lineup.

The great book sort is proving to be beneficial. I have a better understanding of what I have, and organized them into projects for future writing. For now, there are some empty shelves. There won’t be for long.