Obama Rally

We attended a rally for President Obama this evening on the Pentacrest of the University of Iowa. I had gotten tickets easily yesterday (there were clandestine places around town where non-students could get tickets without standing in a long line (students had to stand in long lines the day before)). The gates opened at 1 p.m. for what was hoped to be a 4 p.m. appearance by Obama, his wife, Michele, VP Biden, and his wife, Jill. At 1 p.m. I watched Obama wind up a speech in New Hampshire. There was no way he was going to be in Iowa until 5 p.m. Besides, there was rain going through mid-afternoon. I was not going to stand out in the rain. My wife was in a meeting downtown until about 4 p.m., and she walked over from there. The rain had stopped. She called while standing in a line a couple of blocks long, though moving quickly. I waited until I’d heard the president’s plane had landed, then walked down to campus. There was virtually no line when I got there, after 5 p.m., though it was (as expected) crowded once inside the gates. I called my wife and found her not too far from where I’d entered. A couple of women behind us said they’d been there since 2 p.m. but had lost their place closer to the stage when they had gone to the port-o-potty. They asked if we could move a bit so they could see. We did, though I told them they wouldn’t be able to see anything anyway. And that was the case. Biden came on first and gave a brief introduction to Obama. Then Obama came on and gave a 30-minute speech. We couldn’t see either Biden or Obama, made all the more difficult by people holding up signs or cameras or children. At one point I tried to take a picture with my iPhone, holding it up over the crowd in front of me, but all that came out was the backs of the heads of the crowd in front of me. The speech was pretty much boilerplate, with Iowa and Iowans inserted where this morning it had been New Hampshire and New Hampsireites. Tomorrow it will be another state. The sound was loud, though echoed off the walls of the buildings, so occasionally wasn’t intelligible. But that didn’t matter. At the end of Obama’s speech, Michele and the Bidens joined him onstage, and I think I caught a glimpse of their backs for maybe a quarter of a second, and that only because I recognized the color of the dresses Michele and Jill were wearing at the New Hampshire rally earlier that I’d seen on TV (blue and green, respectively). But I didn’t go to see the candidates or wives or hear the speeches. I was just interested in the spectacle – the crowd, the staff, the hawkers of buttons and caps and t-shirts, the media, the security (helicopters overhead, black cars with flashing lights, secret service on top of buildings with binoculars and guns, secret service roaming the crowd, unobtrusive in their stiff demeanor, dark suits, and earpieces). Political rallies are theater. More like Shakespeare’s theater, though, than contemporary theater: The most interesting things are happening outside and around the stage, not on it. The crowd and the setting and the just being there are the reasons for being there.

Sweet Corn Iowa

The sweet corn season – Iowa’s defining season – began today as a pickup truck appeared in the Goodyear parking lot on the corner of Governor and Church streets with a relatively small, early, but eagerly anticipated pile of picked-this-morning corn stacked on the tailgate, $5 a dozen. So dinner tonight became the quintessential Iowa summer meal – country style spare ribs, potato salad, and sweet corn:

The Iowa Caucuses Redux

I wrote back in early January about Iowa’s inane first-in-the-nation caucuses:

They’re little more than a non-binding straw poll of preferences among a minority of registered Republicans. The ‘votes’ mean nothing politically. The caucus attendees, meeting in groups of several to dozens to maybe scores in homes and schools and churches, after hearing last-minute speeches on behalf of the candidates, write down their preferences on blank sheets of paper or raise their hands, the results counted on site, and then the results are phoned in to the Iowa Republican Committee who collate and release them to the media. There are delegates elected at the caucuses to attend county conventions, but they are uncommitted, not bound by any of the preference ‘votes.’ At the county conventions, delegates, also uncommitted, are elected to the state convention where delegates are elected, uncommitted, to the national convention.

Of course, the course of the caucuses this year played out even more silly than usual. Late on the night of the caucuses, Mitt Romney was declared the “winner” (of no committed delegates) by the wide margin of 8 votes. But about a month later, another count discovered that the “winner” (also of no committed delegates) was Rick Santorum with a 30-some margin. So the county conventions came and went, and yesterday was the state convention, and the almost 2,000 delegates there voted to send 23 of the 28 delegates Iowa gets at the national convention . . . for Ron Paul, who came in a strong third place back in January. I don’t understand all the political machinations, but apparently the Paul people were much more successful than the Romney people in manipulating the system to push through their delegates and agenda from the county to the state to the national conventions. They aren’t expected to cast their votes for Paul – but then they weren’t expected to get almost all of the Iowa delegates either – but they are vowing to push the Paul agenda in platform committee meetings and wherever else they can. More power to them, I say. The more splintered the Republican Party comes out of their national convention – especially with the nutty fringe splinters of the Paul campaign, the Tea Party, and the Birthers – the harder it will be for Mitt Romney to claim distance from those who helped boost him to the nomination. And if nothing else, perhaps this farce will put an end to Iowa’s first-in-the-nation silliness.

The Iowa Caucuses

The Iowa Republican caucuses are a weird political event. Actually, they’re not a political event so much as a media event. They’re little more than a non-binding straw poll of preferences among a minority of registered Republicans. The “votes” mean nothing politically. The caucus attendees, meeting in groups of several to dozens to maybe scores in homes and schools and churches, after hearing last-minute speeches on behalf of the candidates, write down their preferences on blank sheets of paper or raise their hands, the results counted on site, and then the results are phoned in to the Iowa Republican Committee who collate and release them to the media. There are delegates elected at the caucuses to attend county conventions, but they are uncommitted, not bound by any of the preference “votes.” At the county conventions, delegates, also uncommitted, are elected to the state convention where delegates are elected, uncommitted, to the national convention. So among the candidates in the caucuses, there are no winners or losers in terms of delegate count, as there are no pledged delegates to be won or loss. It’s the media’s (self-compelled) job to determine who won and loss, and that is based entirely on the expectation built up over the weeks leading to the caucuses by . . . the media.

So in this year’s caucuses, there could conceivably be four winners: Romney (if he finishes first), Paul (if he finishes at least second), Santorum (if he finishes at least third), and Gingrich (if he finishes fourth). Perry and Bachmann could also be winners if they finish fourth or better, but that would mean at least one of the other four would have to drop down, making them losers. Romney would be a loser if he comes in third or lower, Paul if he comes in third or lower, Santorum if he comes in fourth or lower, and Gingrich if he doesn’t make it to fourth. The defense of the caucuses is that they “winnow the field”: if you can’t mount a grass roots campaign that puts you in the top three or four in Iowa, you can’t make it anywhere, and you would do us all a favor by dropping out now. Which is why there are always three or four winners and two or three losers. It’s the ultimate in media-driven horse-race politics. And it’s no surprise that the importance of the Iowa caucuses emerged in the late 1970s and through the 1980s, as the 24/7 cable news megaphones were born. The caucuses are regularly touted (by the media) as pure grass-roots, knock-on-doors, campaign-over-coffee democracy. But they are nothing of the sort. They are a media created and media sustained (money making) circus. They don’t deserve to be “first in the nation” – they don’t deserve to continue as is at all.

A Secessionist President

Among the many lies sprinkled (with vigor) throughout his announcement of his run for the presidency, Texas Governor Rick Perry included the following (which he and his Repub cohorts have spouted numerous times): “We don’t need a president who apologizes for America. We need a president who protects and projects those values.” As The Washington Post’s “Fact Checker” has pointed out, this crap is just . . . well, crap. Or perhaps given Perry’s Texas roots, bullshit. Or horseshit. Take your shit pick. He followed this up a couple of days later, foot firmly planted atop a hay bale at the Iowa State Fair, folksy as he could be (not very), declaring: “You want a president who is passionate about America, who loves America!” (Read: not Obama.) Beyond the complete speciousness of this bullshit (or horseshit) is that it’s coming from the “passionate” Governor of Texas who just two years ago, pandering to the idiots of the Tea Party, raised the possibility of Texas seceding from the Union:

Dressed in jeans, boots and a baseball cap with a camouflage peak and a hunting outfitter's logo [how Cabelas], the Texas governor was one of the few major politicians to appear at the tea parties across the country. While crowds yelled "Secede! Secede!," Perry — 60 but telegenic and youthful — thought out loud that secession might be the outcome if Washington does not mend its "oppressive" high-spending, dictatorial ways.

Yeah, that’s the kind of “telegenic and youthful” (60+?) president “who loves America” we need in office — someone who sees secession as a viable option. His campaign slogan should be “Jefferson Davis and Perry too!” More sad is that he’s not the worst of the waste that’s polluting the Republican presidential candidates flaying about here in Iowa this early election season. Most sad is that he and his batshit Repub allies are getting the support they’re getting. If this country is headed into the shitter, these are the Pied Pipers leading the way.

Simple Pleasures of Iowa

There’s something right and all well in the world to have a spring meal on the deck of smoked freshly caught trout and local asparagus (and, OK, boxed couscous and wine). A harbinger of a summer of fresh fish and pork and sweet corn and garden tomatoes and cucumbers and bell peppers and zucchini. The simple pleasures of summer in Iowa.

November in April

A cold rain and wind this morning on my walk. 36° (“feels like 28°”). I adjust my route to avoid the northeast wind as best I can. The tulips, opened over the weekend, are closed again, confused. North of here there is sleet and snow, roads are slick (“travel not advised”), the schools are closing this afternoon. My plan tomorrow was to drive to Des Moines for a noon Iowa Cubs game, but the forecast, which was for 60° and sunny two days ago, is now cloudy, 50°, and windy (and that 50° will no doubt happen in the mid-afternoon if it happens at all); the plan will probably not hold up. I hung the snow shovel in the garage yesterday. But I still haven’t drained the gas from the snow blower. You can’t be too wary in April in Iowa.

First Spring Fishing Trip

My first (early) spring fishing trip to northeast Iowa looked promising. The forecast was for sun and upper 50s on Wednesday, then clouds and lower 60s Thursday, then down to upper 40s Friday morning. Most of the snow in the valleys has melted but not so much as to flood the streams. Last year’s vegetation has been tamped down by winter’s snow and early flooding a couple of weeks ago, making for easy footing along the banks. And there never is much pressure this early in the season.

My first stop was Ensign Hollow, north of Strawberry Point, a small, winding catch-and-release, artificial-only stream. For half a mile up the stream, stopping at maybe a dozen small runs and riffles, I didn’t see or feel a fish. But it’s typical this time of the year, in high water, for the fish to spend much of the day hunkered under bank hides, not feeding, so I didn’t get frustrated, just enjoyed being outside in the warmth, the quiet, the only sound of birds and running stream. And in the next-to-the-last run on the upper part of the stream, a run where I’ve had luck in the past, I did hook into a 10-inch brown trout (good sized for this stream) that I maneuvered to the lower end of the run where I would have had to slip down the bank into the water to release it if it wouldn’t have thankfully flipped the fly out of its lip before I had to.

But Ensign Hollow – and one fish – would wind up being the highlight of the trip.

I drove on up to Decorah, where I was spending the night, and since it was still mid-afternoon, decided to drive to South Pine, a tiny stream that holds the only population of native brook trout in Iowa. I’ve fished South Pine probably half a dozen times, and I don’t think I’ve once been able to find the parking area without getting lost in the maze of dirt roads in the area. This time I was lost for nearly an hour before finally recognizing where I was and where I needed to go. To get to the stream from the parking area, you need to hike down beside a corn field, then further down through a narrow valley, without a path of any kind, through trees, vines, brush, and, this time of year, snow. I remembered the trek being about half a mile, but as I cut my way through the thicket, I realized it was closer to a mile. And when I finally got to the stream, I was reminded why so few make the effort to get there.

South Pine is no more than two or three feet wide in most places, widening out to ten to twelve next to the bluffs, but too shallow and slow there to hold fish. As I walked upstream, I quickly saw that there wasn’t much fishing on the stream – the water was low, there were several bank hides that had collapsed into the water, and there were no fish visible in the clear water. I walked the quarter mile up from the fence at the east end of the stream, but was only able to put my fly into two small runs, with no fish apparent. A frustrating trek. But not as frustrating as the trek back to the car. I didn’t get lost, but I did get fouled in the snow and brush. At a certain point, I looked up the hill, along a deer run, and thought it might be best to hike up the hill, which I assumed would lead me to the cornfield that would lead to the car. But that hike would be circuitous, losing the deer run, through deep snow at times, thickets of vine, some with thorns. By the time I reached the corn field out of the woods, I was sweating and looking out over a landscape of rubble and snow and mud that I only thought led back to the car. Fortunately, it did, finally. And I drove back to Decorah, checked into the motel, and had a nice dinner in town that night, not fish.

The next morning I drove up through Waukon, north to one of my favorite streams, Waterloo, to fish the take-and-release section south of the Highway 76 bridge, near the Minnesota border. I was surprised to see a truck in the parking area, but figured the stream was long enough for two of us. I’d heard on the news in the morning that flooding was expected in the next few days, and was worried the water might already be high and muddy. It was a bit higher than usual, not too bad. But the fish didn’t seem to be anywhere in the stream. I fished from the parking area up to the bridge, not able to get down the bank to about half of the runs or pools because of my bad knee, but didn’t get even a bump, let alone a strike or see a sign of a fish. As I was fishing one of the last pools back near the parking lot, the other fisher from the truck came over and asked how I was doing. “Nothing,” I said. “That makes me feel better,” he said. “Nothing for me either.” And that made me feel somewhat better as well. It wasn’t something I was or wasn’t doing. Or at least I was or wasn’t doing the same wrong thing as this other sorry angler.

But as I waded through the stream back to the parking lot, and across the still melting snow, I stopped and just stood still, looking down the valley, at the bare gray trees etched against the snow on the hills, the soft whisper of the wind. And that seemed enough, worth it. As the old saw goes, it's called “fishing,” not “catching.”