I-o-waaaa Ramble

Two things about Iowa. Okay, maybe three.

First, the caucus process, to be charitable, is at best ludicrous and at worst anti-democratic. To be fair—which is one of the most abused concepts in the history of humanity—the process does make a lot of money every four years for the state, an anomaly population-wise, though these dollars hardly amount to more than a sloshing about in the ethanol subsidy bucket.

What caught my attention in the 24/7 Iowa news deluge was an article at Politco which proclaimed “How America’s Dullest City Got Cool”. While I suspect a lot of folks can offer a long list of challengers for this dubious distinction—being dull, that is—Des Moines’s turnaround has been dubbed worth noting by a number of news outlets, online and off. Short version is that Des Moines is hep, tech, and Chamber-of-Commerce excited about itself.

Good for them. Seriously.

But wait. There in the side bar “Des Moines by the Numbers” is an interesting numerical nugget. Between 2000-14, under-18 poverty in Metro Des Moines increased 114%, while in the US during the same timeframe the rate for that group increased 35%.

Now, to be fair, Des Moines is home to a significantly better educated population than the national average, is statistically much less homicidal, and is way shorter on commute time. The piece de résistance of this urban uptick though is the city’s $24 million worth of art in the Pappajohn Sculpture Park. Any way you slice it, that’s a lot of dough.

Like so many cities, Des Moines has nearly double the population in the metro area when adding in the burbs and adjoining towns. It is in the inner city, which is African-American overwhelmingly, that household income is barely more than half what it is for white households.

Added to the mix is a growing Hispanic population that barely registered as a countable group in 1970 at 1.3% but reached 12% in 2010 and by some accounts is growing at 15% a year as the second largest ethnic group in the metro area (and in the state as well).

In a state that is approximately 91% white—and thus the anomaly—the state capital is about 24% non-white. So while Iowa is an outlier in several ways demographically, Des Moines seems a pretty representative metro area in 21^st America with inner city poor who are mostly African-American and a burgeoning Hispanic presence.

The other item that attracted my attention (and before Flint, by the way) is the water battle between Metro Des Moines and three rural counties. The issue in this throw down is nitrates in the water, and Des Moines says it will have to spend $80 million to update its nitrate removal system. The cost of doing that in 2013—removing nitrates—cost $900,000 according to the Des Moines Water Works. Currently, the situation is a lawsuit, warring factions in the state legislature, tepid Federal response, and farmers threatening to boycott the city.

Now the state budget is tangled in spending for nitrate abatement along with other matters such as education and infrastructure, and no one wants to sort out spending where it matters, on the bottom line.

But even more so, the pool fight between Mississippi and Memphis ratcheted up my interest in what may be at the center of territorial slugfests in our new century: Water.

Delta farmers in Mississippi via the state are suing Memphis again over an aquifer below their fields. Memphis maintains a we-drilled, we-pumped, we-have-the-right line of defense. At least the science seems consistent in the assessment that more water is being taken out than is being returned over time. Even I can do that kind of arithmetic.

Of course, the jurisdiction is state vs state and so the case would be Supreme Court worthy. At first, they refused to hear the matter in 2010, but now the court is allowing the $615 million lawsuit to go forward. And Arkansas is paying attention this time around as the aquifer is also under a portion of that state as well.

Nitrates. Aquifers. Or worse.

Wait until a state pulls a more localized version of the Blue Nile dam in Ethiopia and folks downstream start screaming.

Downstream. Just like downhill. We know how that flows.

Biophilia

So, what’s up with the flowers and trees and stuff?

Yep, from time to time I am asked about my interest in birds and flowers and trees and stuff. Maybe I have a case of, as E. O. Wilson defines it, biophilia, a “love of living things”.

My earliest sense of something living put in the ground and tended to was rooted in edible fruit. In St. Petersburg, my paternal grandparents’ yard had a guava tree, which led to a harvest that produced guava jelly on toast or muffins and with peanut butter on sandwiches.

Across town my mom’s father grew a variety of plants, but the grapefruit tree—more a bush, really—made a great impression. I remember it being full of fruit, and his mix of coffee grounds, fish guts, and egg shells was the super-secret mash that made it flourish.

As for trees generally, I was a late bloomer. Moving to Duluth, Minnesota when I was 11 introduced me to trees on a much different scale. Our first home’s fruiting tree was a chokecherry. Well, named, and another case of personal experience being the best of teachers.

But the yard was surrounded by birch and pine and elms that initiated a growing sense of their stateliness, their stature as living things. Of course, to see a stand of birch after a snowy stretch followed by colder, brighter days so that the snow and branches would sparkle in the sunlight—simply, spectacular.

The following year we moved into town. Two apple trees were a boon—my kid sister made great pies—and the property had plenty of mature trees. There is where the arrival of birds in an explicit way became signifiers of the seasons: During a heavy snow, a great snowy owl, hawked at by mousy snowbirds, hunkered down in a birch behind the house, or the arrival of robins hopping about under the newly green apple trees.

At the end of the alley was our garage, which had a rock-walled garden on the south side. The spring of my senior year we put in tomato plants started in a hothouse and planted rhubarb, both of which did well. Apple-rhubarb pie made the menu, and tomatoes as large as baseballs were sliced and diced and stewed.

I think owning property accelerated what I felt internally, a sort of kinship with plants and trees that made it nearly a need to plant and to tend to what was already living on my property, modest as it may be. After Hurricane Hugo, I planted two red maples to create shade someday for the front of the house. Those were the first two trees I ever planted, and several years after I moved out, I learned the new owner cut them down. Still don’t understand that decision.

To the next yard, I added three trees to keep watch with an ancient fig tree, which led to the only real disagreement with birds I have ever had, that pecking fruit once and flying off thing.

As different homes joined the catalogue of my residences, so too what I planted marked my history.

And 3 more trees at the next place, and then 12, and then 5, and now here, 7—trees, the height of optimism. Pears and apple and dogwoods and crape myrtles and plums and elms and Japanese maple and Leylands and magnolias.

What followed through the years, too, were viburnum and plumbago and forsythia and knockouts and japonica and ligustrum and pyracantha and tea olive and loropetalum and lilies and azaleas and tulips.

Then birdhouses—for the bluebirds—and bird feeders—bringing in sparrows and finches and cardinals and doves and titmouses and warblers and wrens, oh my.

Somewhere along the way came more and more a taking note of, hummingbirds near at hand and hawks overhead. Geese flyovers and buzzards circling, and pairs of kites patrolling the skies.

All living things. Maybe that’s the appeal. By my hand, by my effort. A re-scaping of the land. A modifying of the environment. I am amazed, surprised—just like with the grapefruit hanging heavy in my grandfather’s backyard when I was a young boy.

I chose to let it all remain a bit mysterious. No wannabe botanist or biologist or arborist am I.

So, to answer the question: Miracles.

Behind the Wall

Now hold on a minute, about this wall thing.

Great empires have had their better wall days. Hadrian’s runs about 73 miles, and the nearly 3900-mile wall in China is the stuff of Guinness records. Historically speaking, the world is long overdue for a wall.

Why should the United States, as empires go, be an exception?

Of course, we only have 1,989 miles to work with on the Mexican side and a whopping 5,525 with our Canadian neighbors, but—well, you know. Hmmm, go for the record or….

As infrastructure projects go—wow! Of course, these ideas are just paper-napkin brainstorming between slices of pizza. I’m thinking concrete and wire and high tech surveillance stuff, maybe 20-feet high, with watchtowers and command and control centers.

Roads built where there are no roads, and hamlets for housing border guards and families, and then schools and hospitals and shopping centers, maybe a public library here and there. Dentists. Massive job creation—bingo! Low-tech, high-tech, in-between tech.

Sloganeering: Made on American Soil.

Wait—the Colorado River. Let me check. Yep, somewhere upstream from Yuma there’s a dam waiting to happen. Maybe we could out Hoover the Hoover. Can you say recreational possibilities?

Could be among the hottest travel destinations in the land. And on an international scale. Heck, even a theme park or two or three. Tombstone tourism might go off the chart. An app for saying “Draw, Pardner” in the top 6500 languages. Maybe we could include some of those walkouts so that fellow Americans could take selfies while standing over a foreign country.

Just a thought—graffiti. We could hire kids, have contests, maybe for college credit. And what a canvas for the other side.

Oooo, boy, don’t you know congressional delegations will be salivating at the prospects for campaign fund-raising. You know how it goes, spend a little, make a little.

Of course, I have no vested interest in any part of this project. Except for calling dibs on a 24/7 Tortilla House diner—copyrighting the idea as I write. Let’s see, one every 50 miles or so: Franchising!

Hahaha, Old Bob Frost—something indeed.

A Time Piece

On a median dividing a portion of the cul-de-sac where my parents live stands an astrolabe between two immature cherry trees. Merely a lawn ornament, now weathered so a bluish patina covers its copper skeleton, it is a spherical version of the sort credited to Al-Narizi around 1100 years ago, although the first astrolabes were being used in Greece perhaps as early as 150 BCE or even earlier.

The compelling design idea for astrolabes was to calculate the location and movement of the sun and stars as an aid to navigation or answering astronomical questions—about time, for instance.

This particular instrument remains unmoved, an ever fixed mark of some spot in the sky as I walk by with my dog several times during the course of the day. Sometimes I think to take a closer look, but my dog is enthused by our goings and returnings, and so instead I watch for bluebirds or cardinals or whatever might be in flight. Mallards once, but I’ll save that encounter for another time.

These days, in my retirement, I am allowed a more casual relationship with time. I am aware of but rarely demanded by, and so it is no bother that my clock in the truck still shows the world to be in Daylight Saving Time. The hour fallen back for now is easily calculated.

My bedroom clock is even worse, ahead by two hours. The software is designed to reset automatically as we push forward or tumble back in time, but the extra second added to the UTC back in June caused my little machine a sort of programming burp that set itself forward 3 hours. How? I don’t know. But I know enough to figure that when it says “6”, it’s not get-out-of-bed time.

The extra second was to account for the earth’s rotation slowing. What, you didn’t feel that?

Yes, two clocks in the house are ticking along accurately—one given to me by my school district when I retired—I like to think they were being ironic—and the oven clock, which doesn’t really tick tick. Of course, phone and laptop are set correctly, too.

Once upon a time, as part my standard repertoire of jokes, I observed that I didn’t wear a watch since they sounded bells where I worked. Besides, students were—and still are no doubt—as time-centric a set of individuals as you may ever see. Nothing like the final few minutes of the period when book bags and bangs must be properly attended. Better even, the speed of writing when they realize that an in-class essay may intrude on hall time between classes. Pens nearly snap from the extra pressure. “Write, Forrest, Write!”

Currently, my most important timepieces are the neighbors’ trees. Two doors down, several shortleaf pines set the marker in the morning for ten minutes or so of shade on my patio. If I drop pasta into boiling water then and brown some meat, throw in diced onions, and add some marinara—lunch time will be in the sunlight at my little outdoor cafe as the sun clears the pines.

By the time I finish lunch and sit for a bit, the sun will duck behind my next-door neighbor’s pines, and in I go. Of course, I am on the winter schedule, and so for now it’s around 11:30 for eating outside if the temperature is a sunny 50 degrees at least.

Or 12:30 or 1:30—depending on which of my timepieces are at hand. I could make some joke about no time like the present, but that moment, alas, is long gone.

In Passing, A Meander

With the deaths of Bowie and Rickman within the week, hard not to pause, to take stock—if only momentarily. Both were 69, both died from cancer. Both of their lives ran parallel with mine, embedded in the culture, in movies that I watched, in music that I heard.

David Bowie stepped into the limelight as I finished high school and began college. I was in my mid-30s when Alan Rickman became a face and name to most of us with Diehard. The rest, as they may say about both men, is now history.

Coincidentally, at breakfast yesterday, I told a younger friend about a mortality test I took online—not being morbid, just curious. The hundred questions covered lifestyle and family history, current and past ailments, and illnesses and diseases.

The results gave me a 1 in 4 chance of not making it to 72, but a 75% chance of seeing 77, and then 1 in 4 odds of seeing 82, which is what the Social Security Administration calculates for me. On this matter, I become a fan of optimistic governmental projections.

Of course, the only way to really play it is to see tomorrow when you see tomorrow. Not how we live our lives. The daily exercise of living seems to demand otherwise. Appointments, a rendezvous, deadlines—and, people, I am not quite 6 years into a 30-year-refi.

The higher number—the 20 years perhaps—is just far enough out from today timewise to be in the arena of the abstract. But, I think back, and I have done 20 years three times already. And how many times do we look back and say of some event incredulously “Was it that long ago?” and shake our heads.

Twenty years ago Alan Rickman was in Michael Collins. Your cue: “Really? Was it that long ago?” Maybe dredging up A. E. Housman’s poetic lament that 50 springs with cherry trees blossoming are not enough is not such a good idea. The poem was published when he was 37. He died 40 years later.

The lower projection, to have a decade or less, is of course sobering, but not worth dwelling on beyond a shrug of the shoulders. Not being cavalier, just exercising common sense. Life is moment to moment, but who has time for that. Ten more birthdays, maybe less, is a count that my fingers may account for if so.

Of course, we have a vital stake in a future that comes one tick of the clock at time. Sure, I intend to cut back the roses in the next couple of weeks. Take the lantana to the ground. Feed the trees in six weeks. Spring, you know.

However, I am a longstream-ist at heart. The invention of writing is pegged at around 5200 years ago. Was it…seems like…that long ago?

So I am but a flickering. I am afloat on the current of time that flows steadily along regardless of whether or not I sit and dawdle in the garden or wait in the checkout line at the grocery store. Whether I am speeding along in my 10-year-old truck at 70 mph or listening to Bowie sing “Heroes” released almost 39 years ago. Yep, 39, that’s right.

What I do know—or what do I know? We come, we go. Timestamp TBA.

Guns N 'Buttah

From simple minds, simple ideas. And so from out of my mind—a sharing—an idea so obvious that we all should be dumbstruck for not getting to it earlier. Really, just blind luck that the notion came my way.

Proposition: By federal law, every American citizen 16 and over shall be issued a handgun and 20,000 rounds of ammunition. And, the right to open carry will include a 24/7 provision that negates all state and local restrictions.

Of course, such a sweeping piece of legislation will be bedeviled by the details, but I—while cooking up a pot of rice, showering and shaving, taking the morning meds, and feeding the dog a biscuit—have considered much.

Maybe some Qs & As to speed up the chew-time on this idea. Bon appetit!

Q: You mean like everywhere, all the time?

A: Yes.

Q: Cool.

A: That’s not a question.

Don’t muck around with the legislation—keep it simple, remember. We’re not talking tax code here.

Q: What if I don’t want the gun?

A: Sell it. And the ammo, too.

I know what’s coming next.

Q: What if people sell it for drugs or sex or food?

A: A tiny minority already do. Think “For the greater good”.

Q: Kids with guns in schools? That’s crazy talk.

A: Yes. Do you think a 16-year-old will draw her gun when the other 800 kids in the cafeteria have theirs at their sides? Not bloody likely.

Q: Guns in legislative assemblies?

A: I’m not seeing the problem.

Of course, more practical issues will need to be addressed. The freedom of choice is an inalienable right, of course, but the legislation shall mandate American made (not assembled elsewhere or made elsewhere and assembled domestically, capisce?). As for caliber, let’s go with .22s, .357s, and 45s. I might favor Ruger, S&W, Kel-Tec, and Colt—but my personal choices should never intrude on the rights of others.

Q. Gun manufacturers are not distributed equally across the United States by legislative districts, so how is this fair?

A. Congressman, you know the answer, you’ve been hearing it all your life. Besides, unfairness has been institutionalized already.

Q. Do we have this kind of manufacturing capacity?

A: We ramped up for WWII, didn’t we?

Q. Wouldn’t it be cheaper to offshore this production?

A. Your money is the fed’s money is our money is the fed’s money….

Q. How is that an answer?

A. And no subsidiaries of foreign companies allowed either. Next.

I think we should go with a gun charge card—with a security chip, duh—set a price limit of somewhere between $600 & $800.

Q. What happens to the leftover money from savvy shoppers?

A: Unspent goes back to the treasury.

Q. But that’s not fair. And that will inflate prices.

A. It’s all good. Next.

Q. What if someone sells their card and the buyer can purchase two guns?

A. No law against owning more than one gun, right? Remember this is just a minimum, a one-for-all deal.

No one group is targeted. Jobs—at least temporarily—will be created in the manufacturing, transportation, and service arenas. Stock prices will ascend in the near term. We might generate more revenue by licensing shops—maybe a target symbol to identify certified arms dealers. This law could be win-win-win-win.

After my nap I may have more to add, but I think I have covered all the significant concerns and loopholes.

Guns and butter. Sweet. Let the wheelin’ and dealin’ begin.  

You Can't Handle Nuance!!!

Think words don’t matter all that much? Substitute overlord for employer and underling for employee for the rest of 2016. See, didn’t I just make the personnel department’s handbook for underlings more amusing? Oh, right, human resource department.

“So, who’s your overlord?”

“I’m an underling with Boeing.” 

Fun stuff.

One of my favorite minor exchanges in a Shakespearean play is when Brutus asks of Antony and Octavius, “Words before blows. Is it so, countrymen?” Octavius responds, “Not that we love words better, as you do”.  What better a scene than enemies having a parley to exchange verbal barbs before the physical assault? And the wittier, the better.

Could have gone with opponents or foes or adversaries.

As for the wrangling over describing the folks out in Oregon making the news, I am using armed individuals. Note, some may be unarmed, which is different than being disarmed. Which is not to say anything about their personalities, disarming or otherwise.

The Economist recently noted the words disappeared from the SAT tests—advertised as an attempt to use words more likely found in academic disciplines and the workplace. Exegesis? Echelon form? A little late to the wake, but I did admire the magazine’s effort to use as many SAT words as they could in the piece.

I mourn the deletion of lugubrious. It breaks my heart in two. It tears at my soul to no longer expect that I may form such a word in my mouth for future ears that will not hear with understanding. Lugubrious. Oh, so wretched that I may retch. Too much?

Maybe radicalized ranchers.

May as well confess that I like the sounds of words—reading them out loud to a captive audience for 31 years may be the cause. Simply put, stop stops when you pop that ‘p’, and go may go on a length with the ending vowel.

Insurgents?

Students, colleagues, friends have fussed a bit—only a little--about my word choices, which I consider not all that. I know writers and editors—E.B. White, for one—call for the simpler word. Agreed. Mostly.

I do flinch when I hear or read super excited. Ecstatic? Ebullient? Exuberant? Reacting to a new cat, for instance. Or an ‘A’ on a test. Or the birth of a child? A new car. A nice fish on the hook. Multi-million-dollar-lottery win. Super happy, no doubt.

Lunatic fringe? (Surrey optional)

Now here’s what gets me really interested: Do I have a different experience when I describe my reaction as one of ecstasy rather than ebullience? Or if I were to be ecstatic over the birth of a child and you were to be super thrilled, would the describing words describe the difference in our experiences? Or maybe it's all a matter of individuals perceiving, thinking, or feeling differently, language be hanged. (Not literally)

I don’t know.

And now, dear reader, you are super relieved this post is at an—sound it out—end.