July 16, 2019 by Brent Antisdel
in Stray Thoughts
This is a good week for Iowans to put away forever what a friend once called our “mental overalls.” The label was his way of describing the tendency of Iowans to downplay the state’s importance in anything other than dirt-under-your-fingernails agriculture. Being a farmer certainly is nothing to be ashamed
Read More →“Culture, the acquainting ourselves with the best that has been known and said in the world, and thus with the history of the human spirit.” Matthew Arnold, in Preface to Literature and Dogma (1873) Are you curious about where the quotes I find originate? If you are like me and
Read More →“To the artist is sometimes granted a sudden, transient insight which serves in this manner for experience. A flash, and where previously the brain held a dead fact, the soul grasps a living truth! At moments we are all artists.” Arnold Bennett, journal entry (March 18, 1897), in The Journals
Read More →
July 09, 2019 by Brent Antisdel
in Stray Thoughts
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
Read More →
July 03, 2019 by Brent Antisdel
in Feature 1
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
Read More →
July 03, 2019 by Brent Antisdel
in Feature 2
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
Read More →
July 03, 2019 by Brent Antisdel
in Feature 3
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
Read More →
July 03, 2019 by Brent Antisdel
in Civic Skinny
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
Read More →
July 03, 2019 by Brent Antisdel
in Political Mercury
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
Read More →
July 03, 2019 by Brent Antisdel
in Film Review
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
Read More →
