Twinzies--I am the prototypical and perfect Cascader: I have a house, drive a car and wear clothes none of which I could afford without assistance or at least borrowing big time. In short, I live beyond my means. A woman with a street urchin budget should look like it, but of course, when I am not too arrogant to be honest--I admit I am elated my family doesn’t mind subsidizing this old bat on the homeplace. I love wearing new duds, living in a “painted lady” with a new deck, etc. Cascade, a city with a limited budget in the same situation, but lacking flush, generous relatives, bleeds its taxpayers and defers maintenance. Like a private home owner ignoring maintenance at his own peril, the city has in the last 7-10 years quit maintaining alleys, abolished the sidewalk committee, is marginally maintaining the streets, reserved nothing to do Hwy 136, and has shot its wad on a new gazebo, a dog park, Cougar blue pool roof, parking there and other amenities. In conjunction with the state, the city has fixed the Monroe St. Bridge, which serves two businesses, and resurfaced the corner by Casey’s, which serves two more. Rather than fixing streets, alleys and sidewalks or prioritizing the library and doing a bang-up job of it, the City and Park Board accepted some ground in Oak Hill Mike Beck wants to pawn for favors from the city, and has endorsed a group fundraising for five or six new pickleball courts there. There is a class of Cascade folks who go to Ft. Myers (Guilty, as charged!) and Mesa every winter and wants to come home to the amenities communities with a lot of half-million dollar 2nd homes have. They refuse to acknowledge that this is a place with a lot of houses and people worth barely $100,000 (Guilty as charged!) and deluxe pickleball courts and dog parks are out of line. Maybe even a morally questionable. Adding 2 or 3 courts in the community park, though feasible and ersatz, not showy and brand-spanking like Oak Hill is the right thing to do. I will be donating a sum of money I can barely afford contingent on the organizers doing the right thing.

Deciding in the Age of Ambivalence

We are living in the Age of Ambivalence. I admire City Administrator Lisa Kotter—I even gave her a going-away present—though I’m both sad and glad she’s going. During Hometown Days I trekked down to Riverview Park one afternoon to clap for Bob Green and other Cascaders receiving Valor Quilts. But as I told Bob--“This doesn’t mean I don’t abhor war, despise the off-the-books secret military budget (Could that be why the U.S is so in debt?), and especially the bastards who profit from it.” I went because I like and respect these guys and I don’t believe you can have a country without a military, (Look at Ukraine.) In spite of the fact that militaries are mostly misused--consider the Israeli military’s support of land-grabbing Jewish settlers, and Major General Smedley Darlington Butler’s analysis of the U. S. military: I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. Capitalism, with its well-recognized capacity to play into the hands of the greediest, has little redeeming social value and has created the inequality that is currently destroying democracy here, in Germany and democracies around the world. However, the most vexing dichotomy the current Age of Ambivalence is whether to donate to the pickleball fundraiser. Especially now that we know Mike Beck turned over to the city a storm sewer line in Oak Hill is broken, and it will cost us $30 or $40,000 to fix. Beck is donating some rocky ground he can’t do anything else with to build new pickleball courts on. This was a problem from the get-go. It is: 1) NOT centrally located giving all citizens equal access, as city parks should 2) NOT environmentally-conscious because players will have to drive 3) NOT socially-conscious to solicit donated funds and use them to build an amenity in the newest, highest property value neighborhood in the city. So what do you do? I have been agonizing for weeks over this one because I play frequently and feel obligated. So, I will be giving the pickleball people a promissory note for far more than I can afford to donate, contingent on them NOT accepting ground from Mike Beck. They’ll need it if they do the right thing.

Is Cascade a Democracy?

You don’t think Cascade is an undemocratic outlier? Guess again. The reason Cascade ended up with an ordinance that says Council people have to run on their records every two years is because that’s what most towns with decent democracies do. The company that put our ordinances online made a template, presumed we had a democracy, so the glitch. In response, Councilwoman Megan Oliphant said she needed “two years to get up to speed on the issues.” Well, I was on council once and it took me two months—I came up with the list of questions about rebar & concrete and picked the brains of everybody that knew. If Oliphant isn’t willing to expend the effort, she should resign. If she’s not smart enough, ditto. That’s not the only problem on the Cascade City Council: with the mic off before a council meeting one night early this year, Mike Delaney told me: “This is NOT a democracy; it’s a Republic, and these people (he gestures to the rest of council) and I were elected to make the decisions. OK, King Mike. Yeah, I was the one who discovered this glitch, and I have called Secretary of State Paul Pate’s office to try to get some help in putting this up for the vote of the people, so here’s hoping they care more about democracy in Cascade than the people on council.

Devils & "The Devil's Element"

A McDermott Farms Honey Wagon returning for a load.

I can't quite believe I haven't made a post to Critical Eye since Feb. Well, like many another American, I am having trouble believing we have democracy here any more. It's not simply a matter of all all the time and energy I have expended in public service, it's men like Charles Grassley, who seem to do little more, but have established themselves on the right side of the power dynamic and have no compunctions. 

The Democrats drummed Joe Biden out, but 10 years older and infinitely more on ag questions Charles Grassley is going strong. This is no credit to the Republican Party, the Farm Bureau, Grassley himself or the rest of the superstructure that keeps him in power. 

Last week 17 beaches were closed in Iowa for excess E-coli bacteria--liberally applied to Iowa fields as animal manure, from hog, dairy and poultry operations, but I thought if we just got control of Grassley,  & Big Ag, the environment would recover overnight. Not so according Dan Egan, the author of The Devil's Element, who quotes David Schindler, who devoted his life to outlining the effects of Phosphorus, which it sounds like is a bigger problem than nitrogen.

On page 165 of The Devil's Element, he says: "What we better be prepare to do is make pretty draconian restrictions on phosphorus applications and on land uses that promote runoff, but then also be patient... This isn't going to happen in a few years. It's that patience factor that always stymies things, because for some reason people can spend 50 years screwing up a lake  but expect to be able to fix it in a couple years. It just isn't the way it happens."

 Equal Time for Shame

 

Then, in those old days when there were wolves in Wales

And almost nobody was above average except in Lake Woebegone

Where teachers weren’t beat or shot or fired and/or taken off

The sub list (tantamount to) being beat, shot or fired,

We had standards, democracy and a little equity, though

the fat cats have never been terribly fond of that stuff and often

got a pass, old Rothschild, George Bush and King George

and all the rest from as far back as the French Revolution, before

and fast forward to now and tomorrow, though the Romanovs

lost their heads and never learned, but don’t say retarded

because you know that’s not allowed.

 

I’d like to live in a true country where a Donald Trump is ashamed

To claim he made his fortune like the rest of us, walking to campus

In down-at-the-heel shoes because he didn’t have bus fare,

no less a sports car. A true country where Fat Cat Donald,

a million-aire-head while still pooping his dipes,

Is recognized as a fat cat pooping his dipes,

Is despised as a fat cat pooping in his dipes

and his old man’s raping, pillaging and grabbing

 the NY housing development pussy doesn’t become the gold standard

for developers as far and wide as Iowa, where our developers (Mike & Bucky)

now have silver spoons in their diaper poop thanks to ole man Trump.

 

I’d like to live in a true country where, when you buy a concert or plane

Ticket, you get a whole seat instead of three-fourths or seven-eighths

of one because some fat ass has his or her arm in yours and frankly,

I’d like the fat guy whose arm was in my seat last time I flew

to apologize, go on a diet or buy two seats next time. Look,

Amy Schumer’s fat ass isn’t the problem, rather far more basic:

The human frame was not engineered to carry the avoirdupois

of a grizzly, yak or yeti and so the reason most need new knees 

is simply that our we cannot carry what we have managed to lard

onto ourselves, and the shame, nay immorality of this rub is some

folks get no medical care because others are gobbling up

a load of what they should not need.

 

Democracy used to do this for us, but of course, we are losing that

Once upon a time, we kept each other in line and my sisters

Told me point blank the morning of the wedding, “you can’t

Eat breakfast and wear that dress; you’ve gained so much weight

For Shame! You look obscene; we don’t care how much you paid for it!”

Since I am the fat ass of the family, I know just how much shame we had

and how liberally we spread it around—Liberals, socialists, Democrats and

Republicans alike. Equal opportunity shame, I say, for not learning

My times tables, when I was told, shame on you! Now though,

not learning our times tables when you are told gets an IEP, a tutor

And your mother goes up to school and yells at the teacher who

Is taken off the sub list, beaten, shot or fired. Fuck her IPERS.

 

So ladies and gents, boys and girls, tell me this:

What indeed is a Bernie Madoff or a Donnie Trump but a

Small vacumn-packed lack of shame which can cannot

Relate to the pain of losing the little place they raised the kids in

While aggrandizing themselves with 58-bedroom mansions, Rolles,

Pools and we are sending them to jail for their crimes? Pray tell,

People, wouldn’t a little front-end shame do a whole lot more here?

So stand up.

I said, “Stand Up.” Let’s hear a hearty round of applause for shame.

Yeah, Shame! 

March 2023

Portfolio Links:

https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/The-Home-Forum/2016/1228/How-Mom-confounded-the-phone-man

at: 

https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/opinion/columnists/2019/05/29/substitute-teacher-fired-scolded-students-their-grammar-teaching-education-schools-language-skills/1269842001/ and across the Gannett Syndicate,

and at:

https://secularhumanism.org/2021/06/adventures-of-a-nascent-atheist-abroad/

https://secularhumanism.org/2020/06/toward-a-more-democratic-atheism/

https://secularhumanism.org/2020/10/flipping-god-the-bird-across-the-ages/

(Review of a book called “Unbelievers, an Emotional History of Doubt” published by Harvard Press, an amusing book about the History of Atheism)

https://secularhumanism.org/2023/04/infinity-war-lies-damned-lies-and-superabundance/

(Originally titled “In the Ivory Tower with a Couple Forrest Gumps)

 

Celtic Life International, Newfoundland, Canada

https://celticlifeintl.com/a-song-for-father-francis-part-1/

https://celticlifeintl.com/a-song-for-father-francis-part-2/

behind a pay wall https://www.liguorian.org/contents-27/

Front Porch Review Republished: “Country Kitchens April 2023

https://frontporchreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/April-2023.pdf

 

in the Times of London July 2023 Education Supplement:

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/depth/are-student-demands-higher-grades-threatening-standards

Gutsick, Heartsick & Disgusted

One morning last week, somebody waylaid me in the post office wondering why I wasn’t at the Monday 22 January Cascade City Council meeting. He went to complain about the sidewalk ordinance. I explained I am gutsick, heartsick and disgusted of trying to do democracy for Cascade—it is a group activity anyway.  Though I noticed for all the threatening, some people in my neighborhood did NOT receive citations for not cleaning their sidewalk. Now, if it would have been my sidewalk…

            A number of people have appeared before council to complain, but we have elected a council with no sense of fairness, so only option seems to be to get a referendum of signatures from all the people in town unfairly burdened by this ordinance. Then present it to a judge after the city assesses us for NOT shoveling. I checked with Small Claims"

1)     The largest possible award is $6,500

2)     A group of homeowners can press charges,

3)     You don’t need a lawyer.

However, I am not going to organize it. I will aid any action homeowners in the town center wish to take, but—repeat—I am sick of trying to do democracy for Cascade. Nobody on city council has much sense of fairness or decency, as they have proven with actions taken across the board, including treatment of the police, the library, passing the tree ordinance, etc, ad nauseam.  

            I recognize a lost cause when I see one. I might as well be productive and make quilts or braid rugs instead of wasting time on Cascade's democracy. 

 

Update on Sidewalk Possibilities

Hearing from the meteorologists that we are back in the El Nino weather pattern, and watching the city pass a more restrictive shoveling ordinance; I called a couple lawyers after X-mas. Sue Hess kindly spent 15 free minutes on the phone discussing the issue and possibilities with me.After I explained the situation: old part of town, sidewalk; newer parts, none. Council created the problem; some developers and homebuilders had to install it; others not. One council even let a couple take theirs out!  While she agreed it was notoriously undemocratic, a legal realist, she pointed out, “You know very well the courts will side with the city.”

Thinking of former mayor Clay Gavin taking a previous council to court for a public violation of the law, I assured her I did. She went on to explain that you need a lot of property owners to join the action, and a “signed petition might help.”

“What about a sort of Old Towne Sidewalk Revolt where nobody shovels?”

“That might work! Only most ordinances provide for assessing the property owner.”

“As does ours, but what if we banned together and took the city to Small Claims Court to get the money back and a ruling?”

“You’d have to check into the specifics; I don’t deal with small claims.” 

I thanked her profusely. Last Wednesday I was called to jury duty, so in the break, I toddled down to Small Claims and got the skinny: 1)     You can have multiple defendants, but the clerk wasn’t sure if there were an upper limit. 2)     Anyone can fill out and file a small claims form online. 3)     Upper limit $ recovery: $6,500. 

Various Cascade citizens have complained to council—most recently Al Reis, but several others. This is Boston Tea Party territory, so if you want your democratic rights, you have to fight for them. I had to hire mine done because the wind had pounded the snow into styrofoam. If you can volunteer not to shovel and be a defendant in a small claims suit, or to sign a petition, write me at keyronmcd@yahoo.com.