Tag: Writing

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

Freezing Rain and a Green New Deal

Post author By Paul Deaton
Post date February 8, 2019
1 Comment on Freezing Rain and a Green New Deal

Ice turned to mush as rain fell Thursday morning. The surfaces of Lake Macbride and the Coralville Lake appeared to remain frozen as I drove on Mehaffey Bridge Road.

When I arrived at the home, farm and auto supply store it continued to rain. By the end of my shift a layer of ice had formed on my windshield and morning slush had frozen.

I started the engine and chipped at the ice. It took half an hour to gain enough visibility to drive. I decided to skip a monthly political meeting, emailed the secretary of my absence, and headed home.

Iowa is a red state now. Voters had an opportunity to return balance to state government in 2018. Instead they chose Republican control of the governor’s office and state legislature. Taking advantage of their mandate, Republicans plan to take more control of the appointment of judges by changing the composition of a commission that selects nominees for Iowa courts. We’re a red state now, and we don’t like it.

We’re not leaving the state. To even consider it would be an anomaly in lives we’ve come to accept. In the end, politics is something, but not everything. It is definitely not important enough to get stuck in the county seat as the world freezes.

I’m interested in what the Congress does to mitigate the impacts of climate change. Yesterday New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced a resolution recognizing the federal government has a duty to create a Green New Deal. A draft of the resolution indicates the following goals for a Green New Deal during a ten-year national mobilization period:

to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions through a fair and just transition for all communities and workers;
to create millions of good, high-wage jobs and ensure prosperity and economic security for all people of the United States;
to invest in the infrastructure and industry of the United States to sustainably meet the challenges of the 21st century;
to secure for all people of the United States for generations to come—
(i) clean air and water;
(ii) climate and community resiliency;
(iii) healthy food;
(iv) access to nature; and
(v) a sustainable environment; and
to promote justice and equity by stopping current, preventing future, and repairing historic oppression of indigenous communities, communities of color, migrant communities, deindustrialized communities, depopulated rural communities, the poor, low-income workers, women, the elderly, the unhoused, people with disabilities, and youth (referred to in this resolution as ‘‘frontline and vulnerable communities’’).

Who wouldn’t like these goals? Senator Edward Markey introduced the same resolution in the U.S. Senate.

It doesn’t take an advanced degree to understand a Green New Deal is dead on arrival in Mitch McConnell’s senate. While such goals need to be met to slow global warming, politics has ceased to be an endeavor of doing what needs to be done to ensure our mutual survival. Success of any legislation designed to advance a Green New Deal depends on recognizing the threat the climate crisis poses to society. Today, more people recognize there is a climate crisis. Our politicians, not so much.

Al Gore remained positive in his press release supporting the resolution:

The Green New Deal resolution marks the beginning of a crucial dialogue on climate legislation in the U.S. Mother Nature has awakened so many Americans to the urgent threat of the climate crisis, and this proposal responds to the growing concern and demand for action. The goals are ambitious and comprehensive – now the work begins to decide the best ways to achieve them, with specific policy solutions tied to timelines. It is critical that this process unfolds in close dialogue with the frontline communities that bear the disproportionate impacts today, as this resolution acknowledges. Policymakers and Presidential candidates would be wise to embrace a Green New Deal and commit to the hard work of seeing it through.

Failure to act on climate is the same as denial. I’ll support a Green New Deal while recognizing we can’t place all our hopes on a single, political solution. As we discovered during negotiations leading up to the Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, political solutions are far from perfect. They may be inadequate. Yet they are something and have value if they can be achieved.

Tags climate change, environment, global warming, politics, Sustainability, Writing

Writing

Rest of the Way Out

Seems like I’ve been hunkered down and bunkered in since apple season. I’ve been thoroughly funkified. With 45 days left until spring I’m restless to get out of my lair.

The number of indoor places I spend time is limited: the chair or couch in the living room, the kitchen, the bedroom, the laundry room, the bathrooms, or in my writing room.

It was comfortable early on. Now I’m itching for something.

We live during an assault on reason. I mentioned in my last post the greatest threat to society is a weaponization of ignorance and apathy. Politicians are unable or unwilling to change the status quo, lobbying groups don’t want change, and the public doesn’t seem to care, Matt Field wrote in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. That’s a hell of a sticky mess out of which to gain traction.

Still the light from outside beckons us to go there.

Tags #amwriting, homelife, Sustainability, Writing

Kitchen Garden Writing

Soup for the Polar Vortex

Monday I made a big pot of vegetable soup using what has become a standard process.

Mirepoix of onion, celery, carrot and salt sautéed in a couple tablespoons of vegetable broth.

Potatoes peeled and cut in large chunks, a 15 ounce can of rinsed, prepared beans, a pint of diced tomatoes, a quarter cup of barley, a half cup of dried lentils, a few bay leaves, two cups frozen sweet corn, a quart of home made tomato juice and vegetable broth to cover. I added lots of potatoes and carrots for texture and flavor. Toward the end of cooking I added a cup of frozen peas.

The soup cooks up thick and hearty, just the thing for subzero temperatures the polar vortex is bringing our way tonight and tomorrow.

Other soups I make are similar, adding every kind of vegetable we have on hand — after harvest or after cleaning the refrigerator. The limited number of ingredients in this recipe standardizes the outcome into something recognizable and delicious. Importantly, it is repeatable.

Over the weekend I sorted recipes, an act of curation. I found I’m much less attached to dessert recipes. Over the course of a year I make a few batches of cookies, an apple crisp or two, maybe a spiced raisin or applesauce cake. Those recipes are well used and written in my red book. I love dessert, but not that much.

The dessert recipes I kept included blueberry buckle, a seasonal item we serve at the orchard after the first blueberries come in from Michigan. The recipe our bakers use is called “Betty’s Blueberry Buckle,” but the one I have will serve.

While in graduate school I conducted a series of interviews with a subject for a class on aging. She had a letter from William F. Cody inquiring about his legacy in Davenport. I kept her recipe for custard for the memory, although I’m not sure if and when I might use it.

I find it hard to dispose of artifacts of consumption, although about half of the unsorted pile of recipes went into the paper recycling bin. That I got rid of anything is a sign of progress. So many things compete for attention that piles of artifacts, like these recipes, sit around indefinitely.

Winter is a great time to enjoy a bowl of soup and sort through the detritus of a life on the prairie. I look forward to spring.

Tags #amwriting, cooking, local food, recipes, winter, Writing

Writing

Addicted to Writing

I’m addicted to writing.

Since retiring in 2009 my morning routine includes making a French press of coffee shortly after waking, wandering downstairs with sleep sand in my eyes, reading at a computer for the first cup, then writing.

When I’m writing everything fades into background as I consider words on a screen. It is bliss.

This blog hit a record number of views in January with four more days to go. I’ve posted almost every day since apple season ended. If I consistently apply my skills as a proof reader and editor I can produce a post that engages readers without calling attention to the prose. I live for return readers and discussions in society about what I’ve written. That too is addictive.

I’ve become some kind of writer animal. The work is not really process, more like a habit that roots out meaning in a common life. Some days are better than others, but an intellectual or human side appears only irregularly.

The addiction worries me.

Cognizant of increasing age I’m reluctant to spend too much time writing. When I begin, minutes and hours go by in a mysterious vortex that sucks away time leaving a few hundred words. That’s not all bad, just worrisome.

With the economic security of income from diverse sources, I’m free to do what I want. From time to time I think about building a wooden bench to place under one of the trees I planted. In good weather I’d read poetry and consume Galoises and Pernod Ricard while immersed in sunlight and pondering the muse. I’ve been drunk in France after too many anise aperitifs and don’t smoke. As good as it sounds, I doubt that’s my future.

Process isn’t everything but it helps. If I were to improve my writing — take out some of the animal-like habits — that’s where I’d focus. Seeking raw material in memory and artifact, discovery of meaning in society, followed by writing, re-writing and more re-writing. Something positive seems likely to result.

As I finish my second French press of coffee I’m wide awake.

I’m drawn to this comforting place, surrounded by books, with a small space heater keeping away the subzero temperatures outside. I’ll ponder my craft a while longer before turning everything off until tomorrow. Such pondering making us human as much as writing ever might.

Tags #amwriting, Writing

Writing

Newspapers Are Dying – What About Blogs?

Post author By Paul Deaton
Post date January 25, 2019

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 to be on life support: advertising revenue diverted on line, subscriptions down, profitability gone. If governments could forego publication of notices, minutes and official announcements, they would. It would sink many low circulation weeklies in small cities. There are no easy answers and in many homes it is not a question: how can newspapers survive?

It is a big commitment to read a daily newspaper. I know because only in semi-retirement could I read two dailies — The Iowa City Press Citizen and the Cedar Rapids Gazette. With life being a time crunch to address other priorities, it is easier and more relevant to read from a score of internet news sites on the go than be restricted to a single newspaper. That’s part of the problem.

It goes deeper than that. Steve Cavendish of the Washington Post wrote today,

Print revenue is down, digital and mobile revenue aren’t nearly enough, and now a hedge fund promising even deeper cuts wants to acquire the company (Gannett). If the future of corporate news operations looks bleak, that’s because it is.

Newspapers have been under pressure since a heyday that ended in the late 1980s. Hedge funds owning newspapers is the final butcher block upon which the pieces get cut up and sold to the highest bidder. People continue to want news, so what is the next evolution?

There is talk about blogs being a potential supplement or replacement for formal news organizations. I doubt it for a couple of reasons.

Part of what makes good reporting possible is the financial backing of a large organization. Even though news organizations are diminished in that regard, a blogger is either self-financed or just barely capitalized. Pat Rynard of Iowa Starting Line took “this month off from writing to handle our financial and administrative side of things.” Rynard is proving the model of blogging as a political news source, however, he is one guy. Whether his operation is scalable to the level of a news organization is an open question. He reported today he should be solvent through the February 2020 Iowa caucuses, which is a positive. As much as I’d like to see him succeed with sustainable funding and revenue, he faces a lonely and uphill struggle compared to a stressed but viable news organization with adequate financing.

Laura Belin, publisher of Bleeding Heartland, is self financed so her struggle is not financing but access. Associated Press reported today she is trying to get a press pass in the Iowa House of Representatives. AP’s Ryan Foley wrote,

Belin applied for formal credentials for the first time to cover this session, which would grant her work space and easier access to briefings with key lawmakers, among other things.

She was denied but is persisting with her request. Judging from the quality of Belin’s previous coverage a press pass would make logistics easier, although her coverage already sets a high journalistic standard. She breaks news and covers topics newspapers don’t. This leads to another issue, readership.

Foley reported Bleeding Heartland gets 1,500 or more unique daily views while in session. That is great exposure for a blog, however, not nearly what a newspaper, with a print circulation of thousands would get between print and on line. Once I got more than 3,500 unique website views when I freelanced for the Iowa City Press Citizen. My average was much lower than that, but print edition plus on line clicks was always more than 10,000: hard to beat for a blogger. While I stop in at Bleeding Heartland and Iowa Starting Line frequently, they do not yet have the general audience penetration to compete with formal news organizations. As political blogs with a devoted following, maybe they don’t need it.

The first job I held was as a paper boy delivering the Des Moines Register. There weren’t many sales and it was a long walk between deliveries. When I ran into customers while making collections I got feedback on what they liked and didn’t like about the newspaper. (Mostly they didn’t like Donald Kaul’s Over the Coffee). Those days are mostly gone.

I hope the Iowa City Press Citizen survives the next acquisition. They already got rid of their big facility off North Dodge Street and are tucked away in rental space above a couple of restaurants. The idea of delivering free papers to boost circulation sounds like it came from an accounting meeting. I’m reminded every Wednesday the newspaper business as I knew it has dim prospects for the future.

Tags #amwriting, Sustainability, Writing

Living in Society Writing

Legislative Priorities – IPERS Edition

Post author By Paul Deaton
Post date January 22, 2019

This is part of a series about political issues that garner interest, but maybe too much or for the wrong reasons.

Main events occurred today at the Iowa State Capitol in the second week of the first session of the 88th General Assembly. Among them was a meeting of the State Government Committee about IPERS.

In a 5:22 a.m. email to my state representative and committee chair Bobby Kaufmann I wrote,

Good luck with the IPERS hearing today. I believe Iowa Policy Project and Progress Iowa are foolish to continue to hammer away at Republicans about IPERS. I agree it was problematic a couple of years ago to bring in the Reason Foundation to “evaluate IPERS,” however, the governor and Republican leadership got the message from Iowans not to mess with it. Time to move on.

A few hours later, I continue to believe that is true.

At the meeting Kaufmann reiterated his Dec. 6, 2018 assertion that under Republican leadership, and as long as he chaired the State Government committee, no changes would be made to IPERS. I’m sure today was meant to be the final word since everyone, including the governor, house speaker and senate majority leader said the same thing.

During the committee meeting, State Representative Mary Mascher, one of my favorite politicians and human beings ever, was mentioned by reporter Caroline Cummings in this tweet:

Cut to chase. Messaging the senate is not going to happen. Kaufmann would not have said what he did without Republican leadership support. After the 87th Iowa General Assembly, in which Republicans were noted for last minute bills Democrats barely had time to read before voting, any trust between Democratic and Republican members broke down. As Bobby Kaufmann’s father Jeff told me at the Solon Public Library on Jan. 21 2012, “There is no longer a Daniel Webster moment where people’s minds are changed in floor debates.” The “trust issue” to which Mascher referred is real and not going away.

At 1:01 p.m., shortly after the meeting, I received an email from Progress Iowa about it, confirming what was said, with a surprising addition, “We won’t be bullied by Bobby Kaufmann.”

IPERS is an important retirement program for many Iowans. It is right to stand up for it as was done the summer of 2017. However, it seems unlikely to be changed this session and maybe next because of the negative impact change would have on Republican chances in the 2020 general election. At what point do we move on to issues that matter as much or more?

When there is no imminent threat to IPERS the posturing, misrepresentation and hyperbole of groups like Progress Iowa seems misdirected. The cliche in politics is follow the money. Who is financially backing them? Why IPERS? The organization’s financial reports would likely provide answers.

It is important to watch the progress of IPERS in the legislature. It is simmering on a back burner and the governor said in 2017 she would like to evaluate changing the program to a hybrid with a defined contribution instead of a defined benefit for new members. She said she would protect the defined benefit workers were promised. Wealthy libertarians behind Dark Money in politics are playing a long game. Waiting a couple of years so house members can get re-elected is not an issue. Vigilance is required to make sure the IPERS pot doesn’t boil over unexpectedly. For now, the committee chair who would have to pass a bill has declared, “Not on my watch.” Democrats will be keeping watch.

It is time to set this one aside and focus on other, better, equally important things this session.

Tags #amwriting, politics, Writing

Environment Writing

Lunar Eclipse

Refracted light creating a reddish-orange hue on the moon’s surface looked pretty cool last night.

It was an event to remember, one that transcended daily life. It drew many of us together with a shared experience.

In the eclipse it was easy to imagine and literally see the vast emptiness of the universe. It reminded us of how reliant we are on our only home with its thin layer of atmosphere. No human hand played a role in the astronomical phenomenon except to warn us, as astronomers have since ancient times, it was coming.

The event had a long name: super blood wolf lunar eclipse. I don’t need or want a name, just memory of the image enlarged on my retina with a pair of unsteady binoculars.

After sunset the sky was as clear as it gets. The full moon illuminated everything in bright, silvery light. A few years ago I would jog on the lake trail in such light. As the eclipse progressed, the landscape darkened. The moon moved above the house so I went out to the driveway to see it. It was below freezing and I returned inside several times to warm up.

Witnessing the lunar eclipse lacked profundity, it being a function of celestial mechanics. If I was inclined to howl, that’s on me and my humanity. The experience asks the question why can’t we get along when we have so much in common? No answer was forthcoming.

I thought of Juliet’s speech to Romeo:

Although I joy in thee,
I have no joy of this contract tonight.
It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden,
Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be
Ere one can say “It lightens.”

I cling to the shared experience even if my view is blurred by an intervening atmosphere, inadequate lenses, and less than perfect eyesight. If the shared experience serves a human purpose, I’ll assimilate it, becoming the eclipse. Maybe it could transcend physics to help sustain our lives in a turbulent world.

Tags environment, Local Events, Writing

Writing

After 50 Years

Author at Kraft Foods Oscar Mayer plant on Second Street in Davenport, Iowa Nov. 25, 2011

Feb. 1 will mark 50 years since Father was killed in an accident at the meat packing plant. Memories of Dad have hardened into meaningful stories. I was thinking of him when I woke this morning.

What I remember most is his trying to get out of life as a factory worker. He never made it.

He didn’t like it that he got his hands so dirty, that work in the plant was degrading. His father felt the same way about mining coal. Father and son, they both tried to escape their work culture and couldn’t. Dad encouraged me to find a different path and I tried. After two summers working at the plant during college, doing some of the hardest work in my life, I declined their job offer to become a plant foreman after graduation. It was the only offer I had.

The most important decision I made after Dad died was whether to leave Davenport and attend the University of Iowa as he and I discussed. Mother encouraged me to go and I did. For years I didn’t understand that the August 1970 trip to Iowa City was it. My relationship with family changed in a way that was unexpected and forever. I didn’t realize it at the time but I mourned Dad’s death long afterward. I don’t know exactly when — probably during military service — I was able to live with the loss.

After a shift Dad would head over to the Knotty Pine or Pete’s Midwest Tavern where he would cash his paycheck and socialize. It was what people did, the culture of meat packing. That night he cashed his check at Pete’s Midwest over his lunch break. I kept the coins from his pocket after he died, Mom used the bills the way she would had he gone on living.

Losing a parent before life begins can be tough. It was life-altering for me. Fifty years later I don’t think of the loss. It is a part of me about which there is no thinking, only doing. What else is there to do except go on living?

Tags #amwriting, autobiography, worklife, Writing

Environment Living in Society Sustainability

Day to Day Politics

Post author By Paul Deaton
Post date January 13, 2019

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 pieces critical of Kaufmann before the midterm elections. I am confident he saw the ones in the local newspaper. He won the election without breaking a sweat.

Today’s question is whether I should drive to town to attend his town hall meeting. The 88th Iowa General Assembly convenes tomorrow.

Yesterday I emailed Kaufmann my priorities for the session, mentioning three things:

The legislature should support ways farmers can produce more revenue per acre.
I questioned the need for more tax relief and encouraged him to find a permanent solution to the back fill problem Republicans created in 2013 when they altered property taxes for farmers and corporations.
I reminded him of our local issue of keeping the restriction on larger horsepower boat motors on Lake Macbride during boating season.

Of everything on my political wish list, these three things seem possible yet also insufficient. The better way to impact the legislature would have been for Clemens to have won the election. We came up short. It’s time to accept the results and move on.

In a Sept. 24, 2016 opinion piece in the Cedar Rapids Gazette I articulated what is most important in society: follow the golden rule, nuclear abolition, and mitigate the impacts of climate change. Under President Trump, none of these is going well in our government. My work continues regardless of who my elected officials might be. Politics by its nature will almost always disappoint and party affiliation of our leaders does nothing to change the primacy of these focal points for action.

I’m left wondering why I would attend today’s town hall meeting when there is other, more important work to do.

The legislative agenda is being set by Republicans. If Democrats were in charge, it would be much different. I don’t accept the mental construct that the opposition party should resist the party in power as an end goal for the Iowa legislature. Likewise the idea we are “holding elected officials accountable” by constantly calling and emailing them is off the mark. I’ve been in Senator Chuck Grassley’s D.C. office when such calls came in and the impact was a tick mark in a pro or con column on a tally sheet to be read by staff. Grassley gets his legislative feedback directly from Iowans in his annual tour around the state, and from the Washington, D.C. community of which he has long been a part. So it is with with local representatives. That’s a case for showing up today, although not a strong one.

When I wake each day I don’t think about politics until I read the newspapers. As humans we are attracted to conflict and there’s plenty of it recounted in news media. Republicans have been a long time coming to power. Now that they have it, they are remaking the state in their eyes, changing long-standing policy. That’s the nature of political power. The longer conservative Republicans maintain control of government the harder it becomes for Democrats to undo policy changes. With two more years under Republican hegemony it seems unlikely there is any going back to what used to be.

Snow stopped falling overnight. The driveway needs clearing then there’s community organizing work for the coming year. Our infrastructure needs maintenance and if we don’t do it, no one will. Isn’t that always the case?

It reduces to a simple maxim that guides me through life: there is no other, just the one of which we are all a part. That perspective gets lost in today’s political culture. Working to improve our culture is as important as anything else we do. Such work starts at home where I expect I will spend the day.

Tags #amwriting, climate change, environment, global warming, Local Events, Solon, Sustainability, Writing

Kitchen Garden Writing

Bunkering in During Snowfall

Post author By Paul Deaton
Post date January 12, 2019

Snow began overnight and is expected to continue all day — the first real snow this winter.

We need more from winter, a week of subzero temperatures to kill bugs in the ground and to stop the sap flow in trees before pruning. Today’s snowfall gets us started, although the long-range forecast shows ambient temperatures well above zero the rest of the month.

We are ready to bunker in. We have reading piles, plenty of food, an internet connection, and an operational forced air furnace. I expect to drive my spouse into town for work so she doesn’t have to scrape windshields afterward. Having lived in Iowa and the Midwest most of our lives we know what to do.

Breakfast was kale cooked in a style of central Mexico with caramelized onions, finely chopped garlic and red pepper flakes. This recipe is worth trying because it allays the bitterness sometimes associated with kale, making a hearty and delicious vegetarian meal. Here’s what I did.

In a medium sized frying pan warm extra virgin olive oil on medium high heat. Cut three medium onions in half, slice them into quarter-inch ribbons, and add to the olive oil. Salt generously to taste. Once the mixture is cooking, reduce the heat and caramelize the onions. Finely chop three cloves of garlic and add them to the caramelized onions along with red pepper flakes to taste. Mix and cook just until the garlic loses it’s raw taste. Add one half cup of vegetable broth and a generous amount of kale. Cover the pan with a lid and let it cook for five minutes on medium low heat or until the kale is tender. Mix the ingredients thoroughly. At this point I laid two home made bean burgers from the freezer on top of the kale and covered again until the pre-cooked burgers were warmed through and the moisture evaporated. (If you want to use the kale mixture as a taco filling, the bean burgers aren’t needed). Transfer the kale and a burger to plates and top with Mexican cheese and fresh salsa. If you have it, freshly chopped cilantro would be a nice addition. The breakfast of champions.

Five weeks remain until soil blocking begins at the farms. It’s a chance to garage the car for days at a time and turn inward as if there is just us in the world. The snow is getting deep enough to shovel the driveway before heading to town.

Already it is becoming a productive, mostly indoors day. Winter at its best.

Tags #amwriting, cooking, kale, local food, recipes, winter, Writing