Breaking News

Local Columns

A clean car drives better

Driving through rural Iowa some time ago we encountered a swarm of insects. Soon the windshield was plastered with dozens of bug innards. If I practiced entomophagy, the practice of eating insects, it would have been a picnic. Instead, several attempts with the vehicle’s windshield washer removed most of the bug parts but the next day I drove to the local car wash to completely clean the windshield and the rest of the vehicle. As the car was mechanically pulled through the lengthy car wash and big whirling brushes whipped the car clean I thought about how lazy I have become. ...

An intense and persistent fear

What scares you? Spiders? Snakes? Heights? Public speaking? Death? Congress? I am fascinated with phobias which, my dictionary says, are “an intense and persistent fear of certain situations, activities, things, animals, or people.” What makes the fear a phobia is the “excessive and unreasonable desire” to avoid the things which scare you so intensely. That would include an intense and persistent desire to avoid spiders, snakes, heights, public speaking and death. And Congress. We all have a phobia or two. I have a fear of small, confined spaces. It’s called ...

What’s missing from houses these days?

Take an afternoon drive around an urban or suburban area anywhere in the Midwest. Look at the houses. What is missing from these homes that would likely have been there 50 years ago? Give up? How about a television antenna? Fifty years ago you would have found a television antenna on most residential rooftops. The advent of cable television initiated the disappearance of the rooftop antenna. Then satellite receivers took even more. When commercial broadcast TV went digital in 2009 the new technology eliminated the need for some rooftop antennas. Nowadays internet streaming makes ...

Knowledge talks, wisdom listens

When I learned to read I quickly became a little nerd, reading anything I could get my hands on. It’s amazing what a kid can learn by reading, especially when he finds stuff he shouldn’t be reading. While I have learned a great deal from reading, I’ve learned even more from listening — to parents, mentors, friends, bosses and peers. The earliest bit of wisdom I recall was from my mother. “Don’t tell lies!” she warned as we walked to school on the first day of kindergarten. Her words are well-remembered because I was a bit of a prevaricator at the time. I learned it’s ...

What an education

The best formal education of my life came through two professors at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, when I was doing master’s work in creative writing and acting. Anne Greene and John Hawkins released me from the kind of secondary education boundaries created by the metaphorical mental handcuffs some paths of education place on budding students’ creative energy. My undergraduate at Iowa State in journalism was peppered with some intensely dedicated professors, Tom Emmerson and Bill Kunerth highest among them. But for sheer launching power, I remember not just the ...

Red and yellow, black and white …

Growing up in rural Iowa in the ’50s and ’60s I was not exposed to much diversity. Our small-town schools in those days were nearly all white. In kindergarten and first grade I had a classmate from England. Other than her accent, which I thought was cute, she was like the rest of us kids. A couple of years later a classmate who was also a neighbor was the son of a Native American mother and a white father. Sonny was a good friend and we had a lot of fun playing together. At my first full-time job I worked with a young Mexican lady. Maria was an excellent worker and I have ...