Tag Archives: Lakewood

Life and political struggle 2019

November 17, 2019 10:07 am

My life has reached a point where it feels like the year may as well end in early November. Because working toward the November election looms so large each year, consumes so much effort in every form, and this year even accounted for so much of my paid professional work…

I wake up about one week into November, not only with a jet lagged mystification about how I went from Memorial Day to late Autumn so quickly, but exhausted, and at something of a loss for what purpose these several more weeks in the calendar year serve.

With the 2010s closing out, it feels like I should review the past decade as well as the past year, but the past decade for me has mostly been the tale of two half-decades. The five years 2010-14 were largely personal: personal projects, solitude, lots of “me time,” personal life dramas, a lot of reading and writing and travel and reflection.

This began changing steadily each year, right from the beginning of 2015, in a way that almost feels scripted.

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Late Sept. 2019, phase shift

September 30, 2019 10:03 pm

I spent minutes struggling for a title, here, because I’m not sure how to describe the national situation. “Dam breaking?” That describes how this moment feels, but what if a month from now the dam still seems to be there.

I wrote this in our newsletter for the Lakewood Democratic Club:

Trump pressured a foreign government (Ukraine) to open an unfounded investigation of a political opponent, in return for the release of funds which his administration was holding back. He also tried to block Congress from seeing a related whistleblower complaint.

He got busted, his personal involvement in this attempt to extort foreign election interference is now exposed, and a whole lot of other misconduct is being exposed as well.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has announced complete support of formal impeachment proceedings.

That’s the bare summary of the past week!

That’s a decent, simplified summary, I think. It leaves out a lot, but it covers the big news which seems to have precipitated a “phase shift,” in which suddenly House Democrats quit being scared, polling had a sudden jump in public support for impeachment, Trump and Republicans are on the defensive, and everything just seems different and that’s the part which seems to defy explanation.

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The Housing Dilemma, and Trilemma

January 15, 2019 9:02 pm

My own observation is that most of the time, housing/affordability is a quagmire of an issue, in large part because it combines personal impact with enduringly popular misconceptions.

I’m certainly not a policy expert here. Even without taking leave of reality it’s possible to venture very very far into the weeds on this issue. But for what it’s worth, I think the reality of housing policy is ultimately pretty basic.

If you want to counter rising local housing costs, you need more housing, in significant amounts. That’s pretty much it.

I think the housing conversation in most places tends to go everywhere but this basic principle because people don’t want to accept the basic trade-offs in housing policy. I would describe these as a dilemma, and a trilemma.

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Party secretary

November 30, 2018 3:44 pm

Thursday night, the Lakewood Democratic Club* elected me to be secretary for 2019-20.

Thanks everyone who supported my second bid for elected office, ever.

Twenty years ago, I made an almost literally last-minute bid to be president of Harwood House in the residence halls at Iowa State University. I won a plurality in the three-candidate election which followed. I took office at the beginning of my junior year, aged 20, and went on to be probably just about the best president which Harwood ever had. (Not making this out to be a stupendous accomplishment, but for what it’s worth that is my honest non-exaggerated estimate.)

I’m now 40, and in January I will presumably take office as Democratic Club secretary (barring some low-odds circumstance like the club disbanding first). Time flies.

I’m also two-for-two in bids for elected office, and in a sense for asterisks. First time out, as noted I only won with a plurality. This time, I campaigned diligently for members’ votes, only for the other candidate to withdraw 24 hours before the meeting, with the result that I was unopposed and waved in by voice vote.

Oh well. In politics, one is grateful for victories as and where one finds them!

* Now that the club is officially a PAC, it is for practical purposes basically a city party. Thus I title this post “party secretary” because the sound of it amuses me.

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Profile writing

September 18, 2018 3:31 pm

I’m writing, these days, but it doesn’t involve much fun research or exploration. Much of what I write is for political campaigns and causes. I write most entries for state representative candidate Mike Skindell’s blog, for example.

I have a list of subjects that I have wanted to look into, when time and energy permits, but so far it’s still just a list. Either time or energy have been wanting at most points this year.

Recently, though, inspiration was somehow enough to profile a complete stranger in a satisfying little human-interest article for the local newspaper. It should appear in the printed Lakewood Observer on Wednesday.

Jamie Garrett is a server at Deagan’s Kitchen, an expecting mother, and an aspiring forensics student.

The fact that she’s missing most of one arm is a fact of life, but it doesn’t define her identity.

You can read the rest online also.

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Crowded life, sparse commentary

March 22, 2018 9:22 am

So much going on. Yet so much of it is political, and taking to my personal blog (which is barely more than a diary) to comment on that seems kind of naive.

Not that I wouldn’t write a long, indulgent post expressing my views on e.g. Lakewood’s political tug-of-war that is now into its fourth consecutive year. But given how much my days are packed with the kind of inelegant campaign activity that actually reaches people, I suppose I just can’t bring myself to expend the effort required by any kind of deep essay.

I’m currently doing… a lot of work for two candidates for state representative, plus some work for another, and for two state senate candidates. I’m writing, for publication, where it makes sense… the latest LO included my promo for next week’s Lakewood Dem Club meeting, and an article encouraging support for Issue 1. (It also includes an ad I designed for one of the rare nonpolitical clients.)

Last week I made a day trip to Detroit for political organizing.

I dream of capturing once more a life beyond all this. But certainly not before May 8, and probably not for some while after that, really.

Oh well. This morning is relatively calm, and I was going to jot down some thoughts about The Infinity War (comic book series) stirred up by recent ballyhoo for the big feature film… then I found that I already wrote such a post three years ago. So.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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Tristan Rader for Lakewood City Council

November 13, 2017 9:36 pm

A few days ago, I was out walking and had this feeling like I was coming out of a trance… to find that four months had passed.

I have written here about similar feelings twice in the past 13 months, so all I can really say is that this was a similar experience with a new intensity.

I looked around me and saw trees at the very end of their fall-color peak period. Then I thought back and could recall no other sense of the season, equally solid, since the beginning of July.

I recall being in Lakewood’s July 4 parade…

…then I was out for a walk and autumn was into its downhill half.

The best way I can think to describe it is that for the first several months of this year, it was like life was on fast-forward. It felt like time passed more rapidly than normal, but I could still perceive events around me, at an accelerated pace. Then since this post, it became more like just skipping from brief glimpse to brief glimpse, with everything in between jumped over entirely.

This was basically a year of my life. I sacrificed the year, to political action of various types, but above all to Tristan Rader’s campaign for Lakewood City Council.

Kristine, Tristan and me back at the campaign’s formal kickoff

Imagine my reaction since, entirely contrary to my expectations, we succeeded.

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It was just 2016 a month or so ago I swear

September 8, 2017 9:24 pm

Summer has basically been and gone since my last entry here. It feels like autumn already, too. With hurricanes, fire or drought afflicting much of the U.S., I have no complaints at all about an early autumn, itself, certainly.

But honestly, I scarce know where this year went.

Since… I think it was with the real intense push against Trumpcare in the Senate that things “went to 11” and stayed there. Since then, life has just been full, whatever happens. All day, every day of the week, every week.

I have obtained more than 130 signatures for the Fair Districts ballot measure. And that’s like a when-possible activity, that fits into such “gaps” in my schedule as I can identify.

This past week was relatively calm. Yet it included

  • distributing literature for Jeff Johnson’s campaign
  • handing out dog biscuits at the Lakewood Dog Swim
  • Live-tweeting a City Council meeting
  • an interview about Hancher vs. Hilton with Iowa Public Radio
  • Dropping by an open house about the Icebreaker offshore wind power pilot project
  • Visiting Senator Portman’s office (once again) to express my opinion
  • Putting together two extensive e-mail newsletters

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An Open Letter to LEAF: please help defeat Issue 64

October 24, 2016 4:30 pm

The following is a letter which I recently addressed to the Lakewood Earth and Food Community (LEAF)

There is no more respected voice in Lakewood on issues of sustainability, health and local resilience than LEAF. The deal that closed Lakewood Hospital impacts all of these issues, in predominantly negative ways. I would like to ask LEAF’s members to consider joining opponents of this deal, which voters will confront in November as Issue 64.

Closing our hospital leaves Lakewood without many important health services. Worse, it leaves Lakewood without the control over local interests that our publicly owned hospital protected. As experience has demonstrated—in East Cleveland, in Sagamore Hills, and in Lakewood—a private multinational will pay lip-service to what’s best for communities even while transferring away resources that people depend on.

In Lakewood, this means not only lifesaving medical services, but a resource equally important to most people’s wellbeing: nearly 1,000 jobs. The reintroduction of those jobs at sites outside of Lakewood, meanwhile, only underscores this plan’s most serious harm to LEAF’s mission. As environmental sustainability inherently requires both local action and a holistic outlook, the deal that closed Lakewood Hospital must be considered within a regional context.

In this context, the deal has nothing to do with a changing need for hospital services, and everything to do with sequestering those services in the most affluent zip codes. Shutting down Lakewood’s publicly owned hospital and opening a private hospital in Avon cannot be judged separately in matters of sustainability. If we are to steer ourselves away from unhealthy and environmentally costly development and lifestyles, we need to promote compact, walkable cities like Lakewood. The efforts of LEAF exemplify this planning for tomorrow. In contrast, transferring hospital services to a car-dependent exurb exemplifies the worst features of failed models.

Even if part of this plan is outside the direct control of Lakewood, we can still pursue better options than simply conforming to a harmful trend. Our city and region need community leaders to step forward, today, and help make that choice clear. I hope the members of LEAF will respond to this need, and oppose the choice of sprawl and outsourcing by voting against Issue 64. Our committee will be pleased to answer questions at any time, and we thank you for your ongoing good work.

Sincerely,

Matt Kuhns
Sr. Editor, Save Lakewood Hospital Committee

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The blur months

October 9, 2016 9:50 pm

Perhaps, in some limited ways, a blog can say as much through the absence of posting as it can through actual posts.

It does seem fair to say that the absence of activity around here is in some sense a record of my life, lately, or at least of the disruption of my life’s former routine.

Seven months ago, I wrote

After weeks of dithering, our city council has confirmed the November general election as the date for our referendum on their vote to close our community hospital. So, just under 35 weeks to go. 😐 Then I can (maybe) have my life back!

We’re now down to just more than four weeks. And whatever I imagined was the case in March, in the past five or six weeks this campaign has really “just about maxed-out my personal energies,” in ways which challenge me to find a personal precedent.

I hardly know where to begin.

On a personal level, life has become so different. It has now been a bit more than a year since the last period of real, extended quiet like those which I experienced with some regularity during the past decade. Last September, e.g., with a seasonal slowdown in freelancing work, I had peace, quiet and even boredom.

Since then, no. Even when work has slowed down, this year, tranquility has remained a memory only. Always some new thing going on. Meetings… meetings… documents to write, documents to design… strategy to consider… e-mails… phone calls… reading, analysis and posting.

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