My day started with a Starbucks venti cold brew with cream, which is an unexpected delight in my current life. It also started with putting on a blazer and real pants instead of a tank top and joggers, so this was quite the feat. I made it to the conference in time to pick up my badge and rendezvous with the other two people from my county, so I felt pretty good about my ability to be professional despite being utterly out of practice.
The conference itself was pretty good, I guess. The first speaker was the new head of Extension, who has been in the job exactly six days, so his presentation was a bit fluffy and a good reminder of the value of faking it until you make it, but he seemed nice enough. The next keynote was about food security, and I liked her overall, but I suspect she was somewhat polarizing to the crowd (and her suggestions were things that need to happen at a national legislative level related to the Farm Bill, not things that I can go back to my county and do). And then there were several breakouts of varying utility, along with a lunch where the lieutenant governor spoke (and I liked him quite a bit and wished he were the real governor, since he seems less interested in being a VP pick or highly paid Fox News commentator than our current governor has morphed into).
So overall it was pretty interesting, but I'm oscillating wildly between being eager to get involved and feeling like maybe my talents would be better suited elsewhere. I can get excited about rural issues and feel like there's a long-term investment to be made that will yield results in ten, twenty, thirty years....and then I open twitter and am reminded that Iowa is trying to overturn the previous ban on its no-abortion-after-six-weeks bill. What that *really* means is a woman has two weeks to realize she's pregnant after a missed period if she doesn't want to keep it, since pregnancy weeks start at the date of the last period and not the date of conception. Worse, if she wants the baby but miscarries poorly, she's likely to have a horrific time waiting for the long-dead baby to turn septic and put her life at risk so that the hospital can avoid liability for the D&C rather than providing the woman with the standard medical care for miscarriages that preserves her ability to have children in the future. This is already happening in other states with 'fetal heartbeat' (which is, by the way, not a heartbeat) abortion bans, and it's a tragedy that Iowa is headed down this path.
So, the governor's "we're all for individual patient and parent rights, except we're really not" nonsense makes me immediately think I should move. It feels a little hopeless to be someplace where the government is pushing through things like school vouchers and abortion laws that 65+% of the population disagrees with, and primarying members of their own party who chose to take stands in previous cycles against the most egregious of these laws. And it feels especially hopeless when two of my county's biggest selling points are its hospital and its schools, both of which are likely to be negatively affected in the next decade by what's happening right now.
But that's an issue beyond tonight. After the conference, I was in need of some solo time, so I found a nearby restaurant and holed up with my journal. I ordered some crispy potatoes, and it turned out that was literal, since it was just four whole potatoes cut in half and crispified, which was a little much. Then I had a caesar salad with some salmon, which was a good balanced for the potatoes (which I did not finish). And now I need to sleep so I can wrap up the conference tomorrow - goodnight!
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