Courtesy of Beaverdale Books Review by Fay Jones William Morrow & Company 11/19/13 $26.99 300 pp. Shandi Pierce is 21 years old living life with her precocious 3-year-old son, Natty, and her best friend, Walcott, in tow while trying to better her life. She’s taking herself and Natty from her
Read More →Jackson Pollock Mural worth $150 million (Civic Skinny, March 13)? Sell it. Build the $75 million Iowa City art museum. Then — like those art projects all over Iowa such as the giant Herkys in Iowa City, the giant ice crème cones in LeMars and the giant rabbit heads (?) in Council Bluffs
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Posted March 19, 2014in Locker Room
For some, the best motivation comes in the form of tough-as-nails, no-nonsense criticism that is biting, unapologetic yet entirely encouraging. Others need a nurturing voice that reminds them that they are at their best when they are trying their hardest. Jillian Michaels manages to combine both strategies in her fitness
Read More →George Michael “Symphonica” Island “Symphonica” is not, in the strictest sense of the term, a new album. The vast majority of what’s covered here is from 1999’s “Songs From the Last Century” and 2004’s “Patience.” The vocals are great, of course — nobody’s ever doubted that Michael could sing —
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Posted March 19, 2014in The Sound
Molly Ringwald has pretty much always been a singer. “I started out singing jazz with my dad when I was 3,” Ringwald recalled during a phone interview. At the age of 6, the ingénue had recorded her first album “I Wanna Be Loved By You: Molly Sings” with her father
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Posted March 19, 2014in Joe's Neighborhood
A streetcar is trying to kill me. I thought you should know. Crazy? Maybe. Paranoid? Certainly. But untruthful? You be the judge. The bell is what announces the streetcar’s arrival. There is no rumble, no whistle, and no escaping steam to give warning. Silence reigns as she smoothly glides along
Read More →Play the “Name that Crime” quiz! HITTING A GIRL WITH GLASSES The victim called police around 2:30 p.m. after a friend of hers broke into a house where she was sleeping at the 300 block of East McKinley and assaulted her. The suspect broke a window and came inside, then
Read More →WASHINGTON, D.C. — A fast-growing foreign-student work program is taking jobs from U.S. citizens, while its “alarming mismanagement” poses a national security threat, critics charge. “Foreign students, sometimes aided by school officials, are currently abusing the Optional Practical Training program to acquire unauthorized employment in the United States,” said Sen. Charles
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Posted March 12, 2014in Joe's Neighborhood
A clump of paper birch trees was planted by my neighbor in his front yard several years ago. Today, the white-bark trees stand out proudly against his blue house in Des Moines. They delight the eye. Their cousin, the river birch, is in our front yard across the street. Eighty
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