Drought, Shingles, War, Immigration, Inflation & Elections--2023 Was One Demoralizing Year

At my age you don’t want to be caught wishing your life way, I am eagerly wishing this whore of a year 2023 outta here.  The La Nina drought we have had for the last three years, made gardening difficult and expensive. Your grass burned out, you had to water often, and you always needed mulch. Meanwhile, I signed up for the Master Gardener course thru Dubuque County Extension, which proved to be a good deal more difficult than it was when the person who originally told me about it took it, but I passed. 

The pressure of that, running for city council and trying to paste-up the Cascade Free Press on the computer is certainly what gave me shingles, which I still have--apparently it does last six months! While the Free Press was clearly campaign lit, it looked like a newspaper and was so highly researched that some of the pieces in it were nothing but numbers (i.e. ordinances, comparisons of salaries of local city administrators, fines, etc). That did not stop Mayor Steve Knepper from whining that it had inaccuracies. Shortly, after the election I invited him over here to my house and told him make a list of them—I would re-research the issue and publish a correction if necessary. Tomorrow is the New Year’s, and I still haven’t heard from him, so that tells me a lot. While he was here, however, he did admit that Councilwoman Megan Oliphant did say that removing a tree cost $1,000.  I rose and pointed mine cost $3,000+ but you can’t get up and correct a councilperson anymore, no matter how wrong they are. Citizen input was seriously curtailed in 2023. 

Mentally, I classify societal problems as those we could solve easily if we would each take the responsibility to act or vote honorably. Example: UPS, FedEx, and Amazon traffic on this street exploded this Christmas because so many people are ordering stuff. Are we really going to put a dent in pollution if we increase driving, deliveries and leaving the vehicle running when we dash into the P.O?  Or leave it running while we eat a burger in a bar? 

How much responsibility do we as individuals bear for what is wrong with our world? It seems the world we live in would be a whole lot better if individuals did what was right in and outside the voting booth.  How many Russians voted for Putin? Israelis for Netanyahu, and one of my opponents in November who only said he wanted “to serve” and came up with not one single idea before the election. He went to three council meetings, but I have never seen him at the podium either supporting a good idea or denouncing a bad one. He cares about Cascade? 

My second class of problems is those we can’t do anything about. My friend Rona living in Haifa,

suddenly finds herself in a war zone.  I disliked Netanyahu even in the year I was there in 1986 because he seemed corrupt.  He courted the right wing, compromised democracy in his country and look at where Israel has landed. I don’t have any friends in Ukraine, but my heart breaks when I see films of the destruction there. But I can’t vote in either place! 

It’s been a year of increased mental illness, judging by the talk about it, looking around and seeing the pressure ordinary people are under. Nevertheless, we will certainly see more of it because the Governor Kim Reynolds seems dead set on getting rid of the income tax, which will leave the state with less money and increase the tax burden on the poor. Nobody seems very concerned about this level of immigration is doing to the American people either.  

Look at Israel and Russian and vote honorably whether it is in your own interest or not.