I’m as busy as ever figuring out what life is and what my life will be. In August I’ll be filling in for the editor of Blog for Iowa. Regular posting will resume no later than then.
Like the air traffic controller, we can only land one plane at a time. I need to focus on sustainability in a turbulent world for a while.
Click on the tags to read some of my archived posts while you are here. Also consider following me on twitter @PaulDeaton_IA.
That scholars would publish newly found material written by Walt Whitman is not surprising.
In a time where old newspapers are being digitized and new methods of scholarship seine existing publications like factory ships trawl the Bering Sea, Whitman’s voluminous work shows up.
My relationship with Whitman is comprised mostly of the 1983 visit my wife, her brother, and I made to Whitman’s home in Camden, N.J. It is a simple place, much neglected over the years. By then it was restored to be a fitting remembrance of his last days. It is the only home Whitman owned.
Whitman’s Last Home
It was easy to imagine supplicants waiting downstairs for their turn to meet with Whitman in his parlor/bedroom up the narrow stairway. More than the host of American writers who preceded him, Walt Whitman was tangible, with footprints in society. He left them everywhere.
I hope to return to reading Whitman’s work, even this newest publication.
Yet there is so much to do and take in — and even in good health, life is short. Nonetheless, a new Whitman book is news, and in the digital age, it is available for free to anyone with access to the internet. A type of democratization Whitman may have appreciated.
The next non-internet writing project will be an autobiography in 10,000 words — taking the relative success of Autobiography in 1,000 words and expanding it to twenty 500-word parts as follows:
Birth and parents (1951 – 1954)
Earliest memories (Through 1957)
Kindergarten (1957 – 1958)
First Grade (1958-1959)
Marquette Street (1959 – 1970)
College (1970 – 1974)
Military service (1975 – 1980)
Graduate school (1980 – 1981)
Marriage (1982 – 1985)
A daughter (1985)
Cedar Rapids (1985 – 1987)
Indiana (1987 – 1993)
Living in Big Grove – Family (1993 – present)
Living in Big Grove – Career (1993 – 2009)
Living in Big Grove – Gardening (1993 – present)
Living in Big Grove – Empty nesters (2003 – present)
Living in Big Grove – Retirement from transportation (2009)
Visiting Colorado
Visiting Florida
Second Retirement
I’ve learned to keep the scope of things large enough to say something meaningful and small enough so the project can be accomplished. Using a short form requires focus. Focus brings clarity if I’m lucky.
“Publishers are not accountable to the laws of heaven and earth in any country and regardless of my opinion, editors and publishers will print what they will.”
I wrote this in a letter to the editor of the Quad City Times in 1980 reacting to a popular feature section called Soundoff.
“(It is) little more than a vanity press for many of the writers,” I wrote. “It gets pictures, letters and opinions into print as a final goal; shouldn’t there be more to public voicing of opinion than that?”
This is more applicable today than it was three and a half decades ago.
What I learned in graduate school is the same statement can be applied to almost everything written in public. Reflecting on the Times experiment to make their pages more open to comments and retain readership, chaos reigned. What has changed since then is the emphasis on viewpoint in media — corporate, social or self published — which has been formalized. It’s not all good.
As I turn to the hard yet fun work of writing this year, I plan to journal my experiences in the food system here. Four years from full retirement, there are bills to pay and a life to live. I may pick other topics from time to time. I need to make the best use of every moment.
I’m writing off line as much as I can. While I don’t like to work for free as long as there is less cash than budget, I may occasionally post about those creative endeavors.
Thanks for reading this blog. Check out the tag cloud for your interests. I hope readers will be back often.
It doesn’t appear we will get a solid week of subzero temperatures this winter. Based on the five-day forecast I’m planning to prune the fruit trees on Sunday.
Would that growing food were all there was to worry about.
The challenge has been to assimilate a new work schedule at the home, farm and auto supply store into my writing schedule. Halfway through January, I’m no closer to a plan.
While it may seem self-indulgent, mentioning the word “I” so many times, unless I get this right, it’s curtains for my aspirations as a writer.
I won’t let that happen.
How to use the couple of hours in the morning, my break periods at work, and time in the evenings and on weekends for writing production needs definition. Family, our food system, maintenance on the property, and adding revenue have to be considered as well.
Confident I’ll get there, midweek before the cold it’s not clear how. Something will get figured out. I hope it will be sooner rather than later.
Having yesterday off work at the home, farm and auto supply store, I made a trip to the grocery store and considered last year. Here are some highlights for interested readers.
Reading list.
A key realization was most of my reading — and I still do a lot — is short articles, mostly on my mobile phone or desktop computers. Of the 10 paper books I read, no regrets — I learned from each of them.
I mentioned in my birthday post, the education and empowerment of women is emerging into a new importance, so the Kristoff/WuDunn book Half the Sky was a better motivator than the others.
Here’s the list with most recently read first.
Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn; On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King; This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs The Climate by Naomi Klein; Gilead by Marilynne Robinson; The Perils of Prosperity 1914-32 by William E. Leuchtenburg; The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald; 1381: The Year of the Peasants’ Revolt by Juliet Barker; Poetry City: A Literary Remembrance of Iowa City, Iowa by Dave Morice; Jewelweed by David Rhodes; and The Robber Barons by Matthew Josephson.
Blogging
For the third year I edited Blog for Iowa while Trish Nelson took a summer break. I posted about all five Democratic presidential candidates and got a press pass to attend the Iowa Democratic Party Hall of Fame Celebration July 17 where they spoke. The grab bag of political, environmental, labor and other topics can be found here. The writing speaks for itself.
The post that received the most attention was 5 Reasons Jim Webb’s Stock is Up. There was a vacuum of Iowa coverage of the Jim Webb presidential campaign and my post seemed to fill it for a brief while. Even the candidate posted about my article in social media.
The most popular posts at On Our Own: Sustainability in a Turbulent World were ones written in past years. Autobiography in 1,000 Words, written in 2013, gets consistent, daily page views. Rounding out the top five for the year were my post announcing reasons to caucus for Hillary Clinton in the Feb. 1 Iowa caucus; Climate Change in 200 Words, written in January 2014; my letter to U.S. Senator Joni Ernst advocating for the agreement with Iran over their nuclear weapons program; and a post from 2013 with three photos of some summer pest problems. Readers increasingly recognized me in public because of my writing.
Newspaper Writing
I filed 59 stories with the Iowa City Press Citizen in 2015. When my editor, Emily Nelson, left the newspaper July 2 after a long tenure, it was a signal that the end was approaching. This was confirmed when my new editor, Tricia Brown left Sept. 11. My last story ran Oct. 16.
I covered diverse topics by taking whatever assignment was offered at the Press Citizen. By interviewing startup business owners, people working for non-profits, and many others I met new people.
My favorite newspaper article was about Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey’s visit to Local Harvest CSA. It was also the most fun to write. My article about Bobby and Kayla Thompson and their new hair styling salon in downtown Iowa City was the most popular in 2015, receiving more than 2,500 online views after publication. My advance article about the TaxSlayer Bowl in Jacksonville, Fla., published December 2014, garnered the most online views during my one-year tenure with over 3,000. Print circulation of the paper was about 10,000 according to Gannett’s 2014 annual report.
I don’t have a burning desire to do more newspaper work. It was lowly paid for the investment of time. The monetary income, though slight, went to good use. Freelancing with the Press Citizen helped me realize the importance of having an editor.
Working
Checks came in from nine different employers and contracts during the year with the largest share of income (65 percent) being from Club Demonstration Services, a part time, no benefits job I left in September. Income from CDS will be replaced with income from the home, farm and auto supply store, a full-time job with a benefits package that began Nov. 12. Every other income producing activity was much smaller, with Gannett (15 percent), the apple orchard, the community supported agriculture project, freelance writing and editing, and stipends from my elected office work completing the picture. As the new year begins, I receive only one paycheck, with three other seasonal jobs planned along with my last year of elected office. I need another ten grand in contracts or employment to make financial ends meet this year.
Gardening and Farm Work
The 2015 garden was as productive as it’s ever been. My work at the CSA and the apple orchard continued to teach me new things about growing and selling produce. The garden and both farm jobs are part of the 2016 plan. Combined with related kitchen work, local food is becoming a part of daily life.
In October I decided to write a longer piece — a memoir of my time in the local food movement since retiring from my transportation career. In the article On Not Being Vachel Lindsay, I explained:
The first subject will be a memoir about the evolution of my understanding of local food over the last six years. The goal is a 25,000-word essay that can be combined with other short pieces into a self-published book. Book sales will become a way for people to contribute financially to my work at events.
After leaving CDS in September, it was optimistic to believe I could write 1,000 words a day while preoccupied with a search for income. As the year ended, and now that I have an income base with the work at the home, farm and auto supply store, I expect to resume this writing. I drafted about 6,000 words last year and posted a snippet here.
On New Year’s Eve I reviewed my activity diary and found a disproportionate number of personal contacts were related to politics. My work at Blog for Iowa got me involved, and I expect it will continue. Once we get past the Iowa caucuses I hope to reduce my involvement in politics to a more sustainable level.
In 2015 I spent time writing almost every day. With the practice, I’m confident something good will come of it in 2016.
On Thursday I made the last garden harvest and brought the water hose inside the garage. Snow began to fall yesterday around 5:30 p.m.
I am writing and waiting for daylight to shovel the driveway.
More is changing than the weather. I started a new, full-time job at the home, farm and auto supply store Nov. 12. All other paying work ended. The coming weeks will be a time of figuring out how to make the rest of our revenue budget while supporting my writing. I’m beginning again, which is much different from starting over.
A political organizer from the Bernie Sanders for president campaign found me yesterday and emailed a canvass. Email is impersonal, and I don’t recognize the canvasser as being from our precinct. I responded with my lack of support for Sanders. She wanted to know more. Instead I emailed I was on a hiatus from politics until after Jan. 1, 2016. That’s as true as is any effort to divorce oneself from politics.
I’ve been more concerned about my writing. Specifically, whether I should continue to publish for free. This blog, and others, help me practice the craft. The same can be said for my newspaper writing, except the difference was having an editor. An editor helps improve the quality of work. At what point does this editor-less, non-paying work become less relevant? I don’t know.
The project on local food slowed with my new job. I’ve written a lot about agriculture, gardening and food, so there’s material for a memoir. Some figuring out of life, work and play is required before taking it up again.
Everything is in between. Crossing the line to a new construct is possible with the new year, spring latest.
There is snow to shovel and a shift at the supply store. Those things take precedence in this moment.
It became clear at CRST Logistics I couldn’t combine writing with a career the way William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, and every college teacher who took ink to paper did.
I transitioned to being a purveyor of writing and speaking. It has been tough to consistently secure enough income to support the new métier.
Yesterday I finished the season at the orchard. Freelancing for the newspaper slowed down. It is time once again to set writing aside and work on that necessary task – generating cash to pay expenses.
What do I want to do? Whatever I can to cover ongoing expenses, pay down debt, and enable my writing.
While not a neophyte in the art of the job search, I have a lot to learn. The work I’ve done in retail and as a correspondent may not be around the way it has been.
A recent article at Business Insider lists jobs that are at risk of being automated. The list includes not only retail salespersons and newspaper correspondents, but loan officers, receptionists, taxi drivers, security guards, fast food cooks, bartenders, financial advisers, and musicians. These are all position I might have considered. Suffice it this job search must identify more sustainable work than what these professions offer.
“A significant factor in the decline of the quality of jobs in the United States has been employers’ increasing reliance on ‘non-regular’ employees,” Steven Hill wrote at Salon, “(It is) a growing army of freelancers, temps, contractors, part-timers, day laborers, micro-entrepreneurs, gig-preneurs, solo-preneurs, contingent labor, perma-lancers and perma-temps.”
I embrace such a lifestyle, yet creating a sustainable portfolio of such work has been challenging. Careful attention to budget and managing expenses is essential and is the easier part of the process. What is hard is recognizing the life-cycle of a specific engagement and properly planning for a continuous revenue stream.
“Where I landed after a career in transportation was with a portfolio of activities, some paid and some not,” I wrote in a presentation for the Solon Public Library, “I value all of the work I do and have to make choices on how I spend my time. My life is a systematic and thoughtful process of continuous evaluation and improvement.”
I need to get better at it.
The transition of newspapers, like what is happening at Gannett, is ongoing and incomplete. More and more, the local paper has articles written by reporters further up the organizational structure, blocking out space for freelancers. I enjoyed a good run writing for the Iowa City Press Citizen, but there hasn’t been a story offered in a month. The lesson learned is it is okay to take work to build experience, but as a freelancer the thread to the newspaper can be dependent upon a particular editor. Mine left a while back.
In a world where companies increasingly do away with full time employees using apps and algorithms to manage a pool of part-time workers, being a fulfillment person in such a system has its vagaries and downside. To make such jobs work requires a personal infrastructure to take care of basic needs separately from companies who offer employment. For many years this was exactly what companies wanted – a flexible, variable labor expense that could be ramped up during peak demand and ramped down during the slow times in a business cycle. I developed a support structure where part-time or temporary jobs can be plugged in, but underestimated the continuous need for business development.
During a recent interview for a retail sales position, I was asked my salary requirements. I need between $20,000 and $24,000 per year to pay expenses and may have priced myself out of the job. The reality is we must make our own opportunities or subjugate our lives to what has become a new form of indentured servitude. Instead of booking passage to prosperity in a new world, today such workers struggle to get by in a society that seems interested only in making a buck from you’re here today, gone tomorrow labor.
I worked for great people during much of my working life. Going forward, knowing my potential manager before taking a job will be an important consideration. This learning came from constant experimentation and reflection on the jobs I’ve held since re-purposing in 2009. It’s no secret a significant reason people leave jobs is they don’t get along with their manager.
Yesterday I multi-tasked at the orchard, something we do when the end of season draws near. In addition to helping customers find apples to pick, I prepared samples of eight varieties of apples. Customers, other employees and I had many engaged conversations about apples, their parentage and uses – it’s great work if you can get it. It was the last day of the season and my manager invited me back next year.
By design, we built our home not in, but close to Iowa City when we moved back to Iowa from Indiana. The intention was to be within commuting distance of jobs in Iowa City, Cedar Rapids and the Quad Cities. Over the years I’ve worked in all three, so the idea has been validated.
Iowa City is a UNESCO City of Literature. With my long interest in culture, it was inevitable to have some relationship with Iowa City. That is, as long as I considered myself to be an Iowan, which these days is not a given.
The University of Iowa dominates the culture of Iowa City, providing a diverse mix of people and an economic engine some take for granted. There’s sports as well, although I’m not a fan and haven’t been to a Hawkeye game for more than a decade and that was mandatory for work. I lost interest in the Hawkeyes during the Ray Nagel years.
There are things to like about Iowa City and here’s my short list.
County Seat – It is convenient to live near the county seat. I enjoy paying my property taxes in person and voting at the auditor’s office. I have come to know many elected officials and encounter some of them at the county administration building when I’m there. As a community volunteer, and as an elected official, I’ve consulted with elected officials and staff, and the proximity has been valuable.
Change – Iowans are moving from rural to urban areas and Iowa City has changed in a way to support incoming and transient people. Changes in downtown over the years have been arguably for the better. I remember people running down Wilfreda Hieronymous for her urban renewal developments. I was living in an apartment above a restaurant just before the wrecking ball tore it down to make way for her Old Capitol Center. People hated it. I hated it because of losing the $85 per month rent on a three-room apartment across the street from Schaeffer Hall. In the long run the development of downtown has been a good thing.
Personal History – I demonstrated against the Vietnam War on the Pentacrest the spring of 1971, and saw George McGovern campaign there in 1972. We married at the Unitarian Universalist Church on Gilbert Street and Iowa Avenue. Our daughter was born at Mercy Hospital. I had my last conversation with an uncle on the west steps of Old Capitol. I’ve come to know and love spending time at the intersection of Market and Linn Streets, meeting with friends at the ever-changing coffee shop there. We still buy the occasional pie from Pagliai’s Pizza when I’m in the city before dinner time. These and a hundred more memories are an attraction.
High Culture – Iowa City attracts writers and musicians from around the world and there are opportunities to have a moment with them. I ran into James Van Allen on Market Street, Frederick Exley at the dental clinic, and Donald Justice at UPS. Over the years, I attended readings and events with John Cheever, Saul Bellow, Margaret Atwood, James Laughlin, Hunter Lovins, Edward Albee, William Styron, Toni Morrison, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and many more. I heard guitarists Andrés Segovia, Duane Allman, Albert King, Freddie King, Luther Allison, Jerry Garcia, Bonnie Raitt, Greg Brown, Christopher Parkening and others. The convergence of creativity is unique in the land of the sleepy ones.
Old Things Giving Way to New – With each passing year the Iowa City I know is fading. Old buildings have been torn down and construction is everywhere. The public discussion about historic preservation is a unique, peculiar and engaging endeavor. There is controversy about money and incentives given to developers – when hasn’t there been? Development has been part of Iowa City’s history for as long as I can remember.
Iowa City is making people and corporations rich, while attracting new poverty and crime. Urban sprawl seems uncontrolled. On the outskirts of the city, distinct neighborhoods with singular cultures are nascent. It is a sign of life in a turbulent world.
When I visit Hamburg Inn No. 2, I remember No. 1. I park on Brown Street and walk to town on the grid of streets laid out in the 19th Century, remembering what was here, considering what will be here. Eventually the old grid will give way to something new, and I don’t mean large multi-use properties that currently are in vogue. It is hopeful and energetic – engaged.
I would be loathe to give up our current home to move to Iowa City as so many retirees are doing. There is a cottage industry in people my age seeking something in the county seat. Despite the attractions, I’m not ready to move there, at least not yet.
On June 23, 2009 I made my last business trip in a career with many of them.
Arriving in Chicago on the corporate aircraft, we drove to the Loop to explain the account transition precipitated by my retirement to our largest customer. The meeting took place at their corporate office in the Wrigley Building. We could see the recently completed Trump Tower Chicago through the windows. It had become time to change the skyline of my life.
I had taken to dozing off during staff meetings and lost interest in getting along with the other members of the management team. It was time to make my exit. I hoped to do so with some measure of grace and didn’t know what would be next.
Now, I do.
After years of experimentation, volunteering, and a portfolio of part-time and temporary jobs, I have begun to write in earnest, and intend to make something more than 500-1,000 word posts for publication in newspapers, on blogs, and in other outlets.
The first subject will be a memoir about the evolution of my understanding of local food over the last six years. The goal is a 25,000-word essay that can be combined with other short pieces into a self-published book. Book sales will become a way for people to contribute financially to my work at events.
Equipped with a reasonably sound memory, a sheaf of recent writing on food, labor, farming, gardening, cooking and agriculture, I’m ready.
At a thousand words a day, the essay should be complete by year’s end. Hopefully people will find it unique and worth reading. If I’m lucky, it will be a contribution toward expanding the local food movement.
Journey Home 
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