Surprise: It all depends! A feature story I wrote in this month’s CITYVIEW offers some context for considering a question that reflects how much affection Iowans have had for their hometown papers: Will the print newspaper survive? Here are some reflections on the lengthier piece, which was written with the
Read More →Will potential political nominees disappear into the cornfields like the ball players in the movie? Pardon the heresy and excuse the rant, but after the 2018 legislative session, it’s understandable and defensible to offer a different take on the hyperbole from the movie “Field of Dreams.” You know, the lines where baseball’s Shoeless Joe Jackson
Read More →Antidotes to Trump (and Reynolds) If you seek respite from the madness and despair inflicted by Donald Trump, you’re fortunate to have two “safe houses” within a few hours of Des Moines. One is 125 miles east of town, in West Branch, and is called the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum; the
Read More →Reason to worry about Iowa’s desertion of longtime values and principles Given the course of the Iowa legislature and the damage it has done to public education and the question of church-state relations, there is reason to worry about Iowa’s desertion of longtime values and principles. That thought came to
Read More →It’s puzzling that no one has drawn the obvious links between the sinister Grigori Rasputin and his efforts a century ago to save Russian czar-to-be Alexei Romanov and today’s sinister Vladimir Putin, president of the Russian federation, and his efforts to save President Trump. Consider: Rasputin was a figurative and
Read More →Or unhinged and unfit for office? This is the last Donald Trump item this column or CITVYIEW will publish. If you believe that, then you likely agree with Trump’s characterization of himself as a “very stable genius.” (Caveat: You are reading this at least a month after Trump’s VSG self-assessment.
Read More →Last January, many of us feared the New Year, what with a person routinely referred to as a liar, sexual predator, egomaniac and worse about to be inaugurated as the nation’s 45th president. With the onset of 2018, trepidation has changed from the Trump who justified our fears to being
Read More →We have surpluses of grinches and gloom this holiday season, so our stocking stuffers include lumps of coal along with the joys, people and events we rightly cherish. Consider: In the holiday season, questions are raised about separation of church and state as, for example, manger scenes placed in city hall. But little such
Read More →Among people to be thankful for this Thanksgiving are Viola Liuzzo, Alberta Jones and Peter Norman. Their lives and deaths testify to the importance and the risks of protests — one reason the First Amendment includes our right to seek “a redress of grievances.” Viola Fauver Gregg Liuzzo (1925-1965) was
Read More →Here are scary stories to tide you over until neighborhood urchins with Halloween riddles visit you at month’s end. 1. The fate of the world may rest in the hands of Donald Trump, Kim Jong Un and Dennis Rodman, with maybe Terry Branstad in a cameo role. Most recognize the characteristics shared by Trump and
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