Posted January 04, 2017in Feature 3
If 2016 had been human, it would have been bi-polar and heavily drugged. Trends came and went without regard for recent performances. For instance, a five-year movement toward higher restaurant prices and lower grocery store prices (for prepared foods) continued and increased. Stock analysts were disappointed that Casey’s “same store”
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Posted January 04, 2017in Political Mercury
First things first. The news of the appointment of the nation’s longest-serving governor, Iowa’s Terry Branstad, to be ambassador to China is encouraging for a host of reasons, from national security to agricultural export opportunities to breakthroughs only possible through the sort of personal relationships Branstad has wisely cultivated over
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Posted January 04, 2017in Film Review
Unlike the original “Star Wars” films that balanced gritty sci-fi drama with sly comedy and an ever-present sense of hope, “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” is Gareth Edwards’ venture into a universe that is simultaneously exhilarating and extraordinarily bleak, never sugar-coating the desperation of the Rebel Alliance or the
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Posted January 04, 2017in Food Dude
The year 2016 was disruptive to the status quo. Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for literature, the Chicago Cubs won its first World Series in 108 years, and Donald Trump became president of the United States. It took some time to get used to it all. Yet one friend
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Posted January 04, 2017in Your Neighbors
While serving two weeks in poverty-stricken South Africa, Bill Raine saw children dying at such a high rate that graves were being mass produced, dug before anyone knew who would be buried there. Some graves garnered headstones, but most were set apart by something else. “In Africa, when they bury
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Posted January 04, 2017in Joe's Neighborhood
The loud and angry Italian couple leaned into each other as they faced off like professional wrestlers getting ready for the big, slingshot-catapult, missile-dropkick finale to their match. Waving their arms and posturing on the narrow, crowded street, they left little room for us to politely walk around the drama.
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Posted January 04, 2017in Center Stage
The city’s most intense musical theater last year took place practically in audience members’ laps. The audience sat eye-level with the players as they wove through the jazz club Noce, putting across “Murder Ballad” with lust and violence. Rarely has “dinner theater” felt so edgy. “The space is so intimate,”
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Posted January 04, 2017in At Home With
Whoever said, “You can’t go home again,” hasn’t spoken with Ron Choate. Choate grew up on the south side of Des Moines, a block from where he currently lives. He initially bought his quaint home and then sold it to move to California. When he moved back to central Iowa
Read More →‘American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst’ By Jeffrey Toobin The events surrounding the 1974 kidnapping of heiress Patricia Hearst by a small band of revolutionaries who called themselves the Symbionese Liberation Army were front-page news for most of the rest of the
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