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Support is strong for music in schools

In case you didn't know, March is National Music in Our Schools Month. It started as just one day in 1973 March 1973 in one state (New York), and now it is recognized all over our country with special concerts and programs. In some places, those concerts are held outside of schools in public parks, concert halls, civic buildings, maybe even libraries and shopping malls. Two things come to mind when I consider music in our local schools. One is how well music programs are supported in schools in our area. It seems like the patrons of our school districts simply expect that ...

Dad was right … at least on Sunday

Sixty years ago the nicest thing you could do for me on a Sunday morning was tell me I didn’t have to go to church. I wasn’t an atheist or anything; I just didn’t like to go to church. A year earlier my parents had changed churches and I was having difficulty adjusting to the new church. My father, bless his heart, believed that if the church lights were on we should be there. And we usually were. Even after I came to a personal faith I longed for a Sunday morning when I could stay home, read the Sunday paper and maybe catch something on television. A few years later I ...

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 ...