Baker's heartbeat

Cory Deutmeyer watches as Ryan McCaw unloads trash bags full of litter collected from about two miles of ditches in rural Scott County, Iowa. The men report there was more trash and litter collected than usual.        It was a sunny, warm Saturday morning when more than a dozen men, women and teen-agers met at the Jason and Casey Feller home in rural Scott County, Iowa. Jason Feller had contacted volunteers to do the spring ditch-cleaning around the Lake Huntington neighborhood, located east of Scott County Park.     The group was about equally divided between men and women, and it was decided that the women would work collecting litter, trash and debris for about a mile along 270th Street. The men would take Utica Ridge Road, also for a mile. (Utica Ridge poses a bigger challenge so the groups take turns on that stretch.)     The debris clean-up project took about an hour. In general, three folks walked along the ditch to spot the trash in t...

      We do wear masks, habitually indoors at stores, etc. Steve relaxes outdoors at a South Beach restaurant, near Miami.        A girlfriend was succienct in her complaint: "I hate wearing a mask," she said. "It fogs up my glasses!"     Mask fatigue is a real issue in the current pandemic, now in its second year. Most anyone I know is heartily and completely tired of masking-up but do wear masks when necessary.     I thought about this topic, especially a few weeks ago when we caught some rays in sunny Miami Beach, Fla. We sat on South Beach, a safe distance from others, and noticed almost everyone wore a mask onto the beach until they were sitting down, sunning or reading.     Fast forward to televised news reports several days later. There were hundreds of college kids, on spring break, partying on the streets and not wearing masks. It was easy to see how peer pressure and the quest to be "normal" again ...