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With a little help from AI

It is no secret that AI has captured the imagination of most of us. It has, in particular, captured the imagination of the media. The gist of the media’s wonder is: How can we use AI? Well, in the interest of answering that question, I launched an experiment. I asked AI what we can do about draconian politics. Here’s how AI would replace me as a commentator. You might want to note that even the subhead above was generated by AI. Below, AI’s words are in quotes. “In recent years, the term ‘draconian’ has been used frequently to describe policies and political ...

A little bit of childhood

Sixty-five years ago one of the favorite things our mother would say to us was, “We’re going to Titonka (or to Wellsburg) Sunday.” Those were the Iowa communities where our grandparents lived. A trip to Wellsburg meant spending a Sunday with our maternal cousins and a trip to Titonka meant a day with our paternal cousins. Cousins played a big role in the lives of my siblings and me and we had a lot of them. Our mother was one of 12 children and our father one of six. In total we had 55 first cousins and dozens of second cousins, some of whom were nearly as close to us as first ...

TURNING BACK THE PAGES OF TIME 1960: 25,000 Greet Kennedy at Fort Dodge

Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kennedy received a tumultuous welcome this morning at Fort Dodge. Kennedy, who flew to Fort Dodge from Sioux City, on his way to the national plowing matches at Sioux Falls, S. D., was greeted by 25,000 people at the airport and in the business ...

Different strokes for different folks

Recently I ran into a childhood friend who is a lifelong (and successful) farmer. “How’s life in the big city?” he asked, referring to my home in the Des Moines suburbs. I get this query occasionally from rural friends, some of whom cannot imagine living in the city or suburbs. Over the past nearly eight decades I have had the privilege of living in communities ranging from some of Iowa’s smaller towns to Iowa’s largest community and several years on farms. Folks who have never lived on a farm or in a tiny town may have difficulty understanding how someone can do that. ...

Four dead in Ohio

The year I was a junior in high school, four college students were shot on a campus in Ohio. The setting was Kent State, a public university. On May 4, 1970, a rally protesting the expansion of the United States’ involvement of the Vietnam War into Cambodia went sideways; 28 National Guard soldiers fired about 67 rounds over 13 seconds, killing four students. Kent State wasn’t the only site of pushback then. College protests were escalating. There was a real desire on the part of many students to resist any kind of escalation of war because, well, they didn’t want to be a part ...

Leadership is listening. Listening is empathy.

As I have stepped into this role of leadership, I have come to realize that I quite literally had no idea what I was getting myself into. What I thought the position was when I declared my candidacy to now is a complete 180 turn. No one really knows what goes into a respective position until they sit in the chair of those that came before you. I have also learned extremely quickly that the people that make up your given organization are what makes the wheels turn; they are the ones that the public sees and the ones that the public form an opinion of, and they impact how your department ...