Central Iowa offers plenty of fish in its streams, lakes, ponds and rivers. If you need a reason to get outdoors this summer, these fishing stories might get you hooked. Ice-cold air conditioning is one effective remedy for July’s oppressive mid-summer heat. But, if after a brutal work week, you’d prefer knocking the edge off [...]
Read More →
Des Moines leaders target nuisance property owners. Des Moines city leaders will be more aggressive with nuisance properties now that they have the money to demolish them. Officials hope income from the local-option sales tax will give them a boost for their “Blitz on Blight” campaign that will target more than 200 properties — some [...]
Read More →
Overwhelming majority of ex-cons struggle in their return, but second chances go a long way in easing the integration. Literature, Hollywood, sports, music and politics have given the lie to thereality of ex-convicts returning to the general workplace. The romantic imagescreated by the examples of a few success stories do not reflect the stacked oddsagainst [...]
Read More →
Editor’s Note: Michael Gartner was out this month, so the rest of us scrubs pulled together the following. The Des Moines Social Club is “in financial hot water” and “looking to reorganize,” according to recent headlines. A nonprofit’s non-profitability isn’t ordinarily news, but the downtown entertainment venue is bankrolled largely by public grants, charitable giving [...]
Read More →
Meanwhile, many are confused to the point of feeling trapped in a looping Abbott and Costello “Who’s-on-First” routine. In the war over pronouns, people who identify as neither fully male nor female on the sexual spectrum, are increasingly demanding respect, and Iowa State University’s president unequivocally backs a position of inclusivity. Anyone looking to turn [...]
Read More →
You may go watch “Men in Black: International” for Hemsworth and Thompson, but you will stay for Nanjiani. If you’re reading this, then that means they got you. Don’t worry. I was fooled, too. You see, nostalgia is a powerful thing. That memory we share of a time when our country was welcoming to travelers [...]
Read More →
This place is on my list of top five restaurants in Iowa. July is America’s month of reckoning with all that is true and constant in our makeup. We celebrate traditions with a bombast of fireworks and pride, returning home to pay respect to roots, friendships and blood. The other 11 months are filled with [...]
Read More →
Safety comes first for Pleasant Hill’s first full-time female fire chief. Of the 30,000 fire departments in the United States, about 150 of them have a female fire chief — according to womeninfire.org. Less than 5 percent of firefighters are female. On June 11, Pleasant Hill’s City Council voted unanimously to buck those trends as [...]
Read More →
An old man getting an earring wasn’t cool 25 years ago. Sonya Rumbly smiles. A wide friendly smile. One that puts me at ease even though I’m surrounded by narrow walls of pink and glitter. Pink-and-glitter purses, pink-and-glitter backpacks, pick-and-glitter necklaces. Claire’s in Merle Hay Mall must be a paradise for 13-year-olds. And me. “I’ll [...]
Read More →
Newspaper tycoon Pulitzer versus paperboys in historically based musical The Des Moines Community Playhouse has developed a strong reputation for delivering lavish Broadway musicals. In this centennial year, it will roll out an eagerly anticipated one: “Disney’s Newsies The Broadway Musical.” This smash hit show, based on the 1992 film, is inspired by the New [...]
Read More →
Loading ...
Years ago, when I was a young pup of a reporter for the Des Moines Register, my assignment was covering state and federal courts. Normally, it amounted to reporting on the dirty laundry of society that gets scrubbed in the courts — the murders, the robberies, the embezzlements and the civil lawsuits. But whenever time [...]
Read More →
Headliner, Grammy winner to perform at 80/35. The 80/35 music festival is scheduled for July 12-13 at Gateway Park. This year’s extravaganza features more than three dozen acts playing on five different stages. Portugal. The Man is one of 80/35’s headlining acts, and the band is scheduled to perform on Hy-Vee Stage on July 13. [...]
Read More →
Cowgirl and marksman is one of several women who dominate upscale catering in Des Moines. Cyd Koehn owns Catering by Cyd. She has catered in Des Moines now for 25 years. We asked her to lunch recently, and she chose Wasabi. Wasabi is one of five restaurants that former New Yorker Jay Wang has opened [...]
Read More →
Striving to keep things local When Confluence Brewing Company opened up in 2012, the staff created a handful of beers inside the brewery in an industrial district close to Gray’s Lake. With potential for expansion, the grassy area in the back offered an untapped gem with the nearby bike trail. Fast forward seven years, and [...]
Read More →
Big dreams were behind the Warren County track, as it was to be one of the premiere road-racing tracks in the U.S. In October of 2012, I co-hosted Home Movie Day Des Moines, a film event where people brought in their homemade 8mm and 16mm films. Janet Barcheski Green had submitted multiple 16mm film reels [...]
Read More →
Canadian rockers experience a full-circle moment after building fan base in small towns. lorious Sons’ lead vocalist, Brett Emmons, took time away from the band while going back to school to study literature at a university in Canada. He told his band to “screw it,” while they performed for six months without him. His goal [...]
Read More →
The Grundigs defied the Nazis, buying a press and distributing pro-Jewish and Communist points of view. Lea Grundig is little known in the U.S. That’s a shame. She and her radical Communist husband Hans lived in Dresden during Germany’s most modern Dark Age, the two disastrous World Wars and the Depression between them. Because Germany [...]
Read More →
