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Changing Iowa’s judicial selection process is bad for business

I have seen dozens of opinion letters in publications across the state about the proposed legislative changes related to the selection of judges in Iowa. But there is one perspective I have not seen expressed, so I want to share it with your readers. I spent my professional career at AEGON USA/Transamerica in Cedar Rapids, retiring as President and CEO a few years back. I currently sit on the boards of Cedar Rapids Bank and Trust and F&G Life Insurance Company of Des Moines, as well as the board of ICR Iowa and the Cedar Rapids Airport Commission. While at AEGON/Transamerica, while ...

An informative library website

Do you know all that Kendall Young Library’s website has to offer? We have many tools, policies, databases, and information to make your lives easier, The website provides general information and links to further information such as hours, address, phone number, current event information, new book information, and links to sign up for the library newsletter. There are also links to get to Bridges: Iowa’s eLibrary, RB Digital, and TumbleBooks: eBooks for eKids. You can use our website to search our Online Catalog and see if a certain book is in or checked out. You can even put a book ...

Saying good-bye to Mom’s house

It’s final. As the executor for my mother’s estate I signed the papers earlier this month handing over my mother’s house to a new owner. Mom died at age 91 in late November leaving behind six children, six in-laws and a host of grandchildren and great-grandchildren who are all slowly learning how to live without her. One of the steps of closing her estate was selling her house. A charming young woman in her town bought the house, a modest three-bedroom ranch home. I remember riding my bicycle past the homes in her neighborhood as they were being constructed sixty years ago. ...

Iowa has many unique attractions

It turns out that there are plenty of unique attractions in Iowa, according to the book “Oddball Iowa, A Guide to Some Really Strange Places.” For about ten years I got to do some traveling around our state when I wrote features for an Iowa magazine. It was fun, and that's when I decided that our state is really way too big. Depending on where I was going, it could take me a half-day just to get there, and I was still within the borders of Iowa! Sometimes I wondered what the men who platted out states in the Midwest were thinking. My purpose on those trips was to see ...

Ice fishing memories

Boy oh boy what a change: When the new year started a couple of months ago we were looking at a very mild winter. The ice wasn’t as thick as it usually is at that time of year, and there wasn’t much snow around either. Flash forward to early March and there’s plenty of ice and too ...

God be with you: A better way to say goodbye

The English-speaking world’s most common expression of farewell, “goodbye,” originated in the 16th century as “God be with you.” Through a series of metamorphoses over the next two centuries it became the contraction we use today. Its history notwithstanding, I dislike the term. I’m just not a good goodbye guy. Back before TSA regulations kept family and friends out of airport boarding areas, one of the worst things about waiting in an airport terminal was being around people who were saying goodbye. I tried to avoid eavesdropping or gawking but it’s impossible not to ...