Happy New Year's Blues--Reflections on a Blue Planet

     At the risk of wishing my life away, I am eagerly awaiting the demise of 2022. I knew better than to expect much from it—my Mom died when she was 77, my age this moment. That I am still alive and sinnin' isn't any consolation! Consolation itself seems, well, taking your eye off the ball. 

    The ball being our Blue Planet.

   The weather seems intent on reminding us what a drag humans are, but we seem equally intent on ignoring it. Though the reminders are pretty spectacular. Hurricane Ian did not constitute a wake-up call for Floridians. The Arctic cold snap that we dealt with over Christmas was more or less business as usual for winter in Iowa, but  the following record-breaking Wednesday? 57 degrees broke the previous record of 54.

    According to all the population counters, on or about November 15, 2022, the human race topped 8 billion. We know human activity from building bonfires (poor folks cooking food) to driving Mercedes' and flying private jets (fat cats) is at fault. Mother Nature's best efforts to curtail human proliferation quietly--Covid--seems not to be working either. Or even violently: hurricanes, cyclones and derechoes.

  We've waited  years for the U.N. to address the issue. I quit donating to environmental organizations trying to get them to speak out on human overpopulation. Perhaps promote a provision that all countries keep their populations relative to their land/ability to accommodate people. Of course, islands such as Ireland, Haiti, will object, but it's in their own best interest. The social disorganization--kidnapping, gangs of desperate young men terrorizing the Haitian countryside, etc. is exactly what results. Duh. A medical-professional-friend went there once to help, and never went again.

    The liberal set here and on the other side of the Atlantic has themselves convinced that we can continue biz-as-usual human proliferation if we keep the temp below 1.5 C degrees of increase. Lying to ourselves may be the human race's best act. They have to know it's a long shot and even achieved, it will not work as long as population growth continues unabated. So happy New Year's Blues!

           

City Council: Kids' Essays, Ag Gag, Garbage, Nuisances & $9,000 Floor Mat

The Cascade City Council meeting began Monday evening more charmingly than usual: the winners of the 7th Grade Essay Contest--Cody Lynch 1st Place, Colie Leytem 2nd, and Mollie Orr 3rd reading their essays on the topic "If I Were Mayor." Predictably, they were entertaining, sweet and featured preteen perceptions of the office without much comprehension of the thorny issues of governing. 

Such as--neither Mayor Steve Knepper, nor councilmember nor city administrator seems the slightest concerned that my drainage proposal has been kept off the agenda. I had submitted it before the previous Mayor Greg Staner left office. He refused to hear it. I thought it had been enacted as part of the Storm Water Ordinance. I discovered it had not when the Administrator issued a building permit to a neighbor who has already covered 90% of his lot with hard surface. Though I was promised it would be on this agenda, it was not. I guess I will have to contact the Attorney General's Office on that one.

There was a long discussion of the two food pantries in town, one of which is about to lose it's home because the city

Council spent $8,987  on a floor mat for below the slide at the pool, which the kind of soft core issue this council loves. Along the same lines ignoring the undemocratic possibilities of a Nuisance Ordinance, council passed that on 2nd reading. Penalizing small/senior citizen households and those who compost, order less online and are generally less wasteful, Council raised the garbage rates without a 3rd reading. Rewarding wastrels and penalizing people who only put garbage out once every couple months, is apparently this Council's fairness and good governance.

The one bright spot in the whole proceeding, I did succeed in getting Councilwoman Oliphant to admit she was not aware that Chief Justice Stephanie M. Rose of the Southern District of Iowa had found the "Ag Gag" law a violation of journalists' right, therefore unconstitutional and informing her that the DNR had fined local manure pumping company $2,000 for two violations.