While 2020 will be remembered as the year of the pandemic, I am encouraging Marshalltown residents to remember it as the year of rebuilding. I do not need to say how much damage the tornado did or how many residents and business owners have had to plod through insurance and finding a contractor ...
Always before, there have been words. Always before, someone crafted them with writerly skill and gave them to the president to give to us. Always, before. When seven people died aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, President Ronald Reagan spoke of how, just that morning, they “waved ...
In some ways, this horrible pandemic has brought out the best in humanity. Where I live, neighbors are helping neighbors. A friend who cleans houses for a living says about half of her clients are no longer having their homes cleaned, but they are still paying her. I hate what’s happening ...
Leave it to an artist. Artists usually have many talents, not just one art form. Creative minds are not limited to a single genre. Such is the case with 61-year old Steve Helling, of West Point. He has a degree in art from Iowa Wesleyan College (now University), and has painted some pretty ...
Life is filled with nuance, with complexity. Take, for example, the case of Amy Cooper. Cooper is a 41-year-old white woman who worked at Franklin Templeton, an asset management firm. She was walking her dog without a leash in the Ramble section of Central Park when she was confronted by a ...
The Iowa Women’s Foundation is launching a new campaign to increase the recognition of child care providers as essential, professional workers. The campaign, the CAREforce for our WORKforce, will also give the public information on how they can support child care providers during and after ...
The shackles could not hold us. The Evanses cast them aside last week and traveled to Bloomfield and Cedar Rapids to visit our parents. There are few social distancing concerns when you are standing quietly in a cemetery with your spouse, and your thoughts. Every time I make the trip to ...
President Donald Trump’s late-night firing of the State Department inspector general is only the latest in his purge of – and resistance to – these independent and nonpolitical law enforcement officers. Trump isn’t the only president to get rid of inspectors general. President ...
Ever since Adam and Eve’s failure in the Garden of Eden, humans have had to work with emotions that were not there in creation’s beginning. Sin allowed Satan to offer his violence as an alternative to God’s love. All kinds of feelings emerged. It was God’s love against the hostility of ...
The stair stepped closure of Iowa schools; for the remainder of the 2019-2020 school year, has created a challenging, complex and stressful series of decisions for Iowa’s educational community. This will continue throughout this summer as school districts’ grapple with summer school ...
In national polling, former vice president Joe Biden is the clear 2020 front-runner. He’s up nearly 5 points in the RealClearPolitics polling average; he’s up in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida and Arizona. That’s because Biden campaigned as the anti-Bernie Sanders: a “return to ...
H e was eight years old when he came west in a covered wagon from Ohio with his family — his father and mother, two brothers, two sisters, and a two year old nephew — eight in all. Cholera had nearly wiped out the village in which they lived. “The people were frightened beyond ...
We always can use more humor. Even during a pandemic. At least that was my justification for a “thought” I shared with the world on social media last week. A Michigan woman posted on Twitter that she was writing a condolence card when her 5-year-old son interrupted and wanted to know what ...
On Monday, in an off-the-cuff comment following a White House meeting with restaurant industry leaders, President Trump revealed that he has been taking the anti-Malaria drug hydroxychloroquine for “about a week and a half now” to protect himself from COVID-19 Asked why, the president ...
My annual order of wildflower seeds arrived in the mail, and I’ve never been so eager to start something new — something beautiful and immune to the virus taking so much away. I love reading aloud the names of the flowers that, in theory, will thrive here in northeast Ohio. Purple ...
Dean Fisher effective in the Iowa house? Why didn’t he convince fellow Republican then governor Terry Branstad to keep the state juvenile home open in Toledo, Iowa? Branstad closed it down. Dean Fisher wasn’t effective in keeping it open.
Sometimes we just need a laugh. The wife and I were driving to Des Moines from Marshalltown and along the highway were around seven or eight dead raccoons. The thought crossed my mind, “Why don’t we put up raccoon crossing signs like we do for the deer?” Then I thought about the show ...
Everyone knows the saying “the rising tide lifts all boats.” When the sun is shining, the weather is clear, and the breezes are blowing, all of us benefit. But the same can’t be said of stormy weather. Sometimes, when a storm is raging, some of us are anchored in safe harbors, while ...
Eighteen-year-old Dameon Shepard was playing video games when the mob came to his door. Some were carrying guns. It must’ve felt like one of those old westerns where the sheriff faces down angry townsfolk demanding the blood of the desperado inside his jail. Or, given that Shepard is black ...
I am writing this letter to congratulate the 2020 graduates of Marshalltown High School and the surrounding school districts. It has been a very difficult year for these seniors and their parents, dealing with the coronavirus outbreak, social distancing and missing out on the fun spring sports ...