Which Iowa high school sports powerhouse can lay claim to being called the most dominant dynasty of all time? What is the most feared program in Hawkeye-state history? Which team was the best, flat-out, of any sport when measured against every generation? Objective stats have a way of taking on subjective value, and, even after [...]
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Humankind and its animal compatriots have maintained an adversarial dependency on each other for thousands of years, since long before planting and harvesting were discovered. Survival depended upon hunting and gathering for both sides. Prehistoric humans hunted in packs before the discovery of weapons that could put down a saber-toothed tiger or a bear. The [...]
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Scott Smoldt was golfing with someone from his club when they started talking about their professions. The man, a business broker, asked Smoldt whether he’d ever considered selling his business, Smoldt Moving & Storage. Smoldt, who purchased the family-owned business in 2002 when his dad retired, told the man he was thinking about retiring in [...]
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In 2019, Des Moines police officers responded to 202,000 calls. Twice, officers fired their guns in the line of duty. Each time, the officers were fired upon first. So why does the police department need to spend $99,029.76 for 396,000 rounds of ammunition for the next 12 months? What does the department do with the [...]
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One of my great misfortunes is that I never got to know my grandfather, the late publisher of the Carroll Times Herald, James W. Wilson. Either he died too soon, or I was born too late. I was 7, and Grandpa Wilson was 77 when he passed in 1977. Nothing can make up for the [...]
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On the streets of New Orleans, word begins to spread about a mysterious new drug that unlocks superpowers unique to each user for five minutes (per pill). The catch: You don’t know what will happen until you take it. While some develop bulletproof skin, invisibility and super strength, others might feel side-effects akin to a [...]
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I drove aimlessly around town during the power outages, mainly because my car was my only place with air conditioning. Restaurants were closing all over town — three Burger Kings, the S.E. 14th Street Popeyes and the large McDonald’s on University at Sixth all appeared closed while neighbors had power. I knew we would lose [...]
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If you’re in northwest Des Moines and somewhere near Beaverdale or Drake University, and if you happen to see a flaming hula hoop spinning around a performer who is being cheered on by her neighbors while they snap photos, then you will have met Jessica Short — also known as the Holisitic Hooper on Facebook. [...]
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The local theater scene continues to evaluate and evolve, balancing the necessity of safety with the call of the muse to produce performances. Without our traditional focal points in performance arts, the initial shock of what the pandemic has done to life’s routines has been replaced with finding new directions for coping with the changes [...]
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One moment there’s nothing, the next moment — beautiful flowers. Magic. Which must be why the blossoms stand at the very tippy top as if suddenly sprouting out of the head of a giraffe. Straight and tall on stems that are long and ungainly, it would seem that the wind blowing across the Iowa prairie [...]
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Twenty years ago, when the death of 2-year-old Shelby Duis outraged Iowans, I was confident the Spirit Lake tragedy would soon bring change to our state. I probably was naive. In 2016, when Natalie Finn, 16, was found near death in a middle-class neighborhood in West Des Moines, I was confident that tragedy would bring [...]
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I moved to Des Moines in the early summer of 2007. My first dwelling was on the southside where Gray’s Lake Apartments are now, located behind what used to be AIB College. At age 22, I spent most of my time watching movies, one of the few things I could afford to do. I quickly [...]
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The Des Moines Art Center has re-opened with some cute posters of famous pieces of art with people wearing those familiar baby blue masks that Hanes, the men’s underwear company, sold $700 million dollars of in the second quarter. “Glad to have you back” is the theme. They do not make it easy on people [...]
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Are you up for something with a tropical feel while sipping margaritas on a breezy patio designed to cure coronavirus blues? Then head over to Rita’s Cantina. Located off S.E. Fifth Street, it’s close to East Village and occupies the building of the former SKOL and Mad Meatball. The new digs are spruced up with [...]
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Drone racing isn’t virtual reality, even though participants appear to be wearing VR goggles. And drone racing isn’t a video game, even though the hand-held controllers function in a similar manner to hand-held gaming devices. Chase Johannsen says decent racing aircraft can be bought for a couple of hundred bucks plus some of the other [...]
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Jessica Dunker is head of the Iowa Restaurant Association, an organization that represents 600 members and 6,300 eating establishments. I asked her to lunch, and she chose Table 128, a casual fine-dining café in Clive. The restaurant had done more than any other I had seen to promote safe dining and human distancing. Tall see-through [...]
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When twins Walter and Wagner first played the violin at age 11, they never imagined they would be filming a music video on a private jet 20 years later. They thought they’d be in their home country of Brazil, playing classical music in an orchestra. The twins, Walter and Wagner Caldas, known as the Brazilian [...]
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