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Questions rail feasibility study

Letters to Editor

To the editor: City council is treating local taxpayers like boiling frogs, blind to what is happening right in front of us at Gateway Industrial Park. Last week, council approved a $120,000 rail feasibility study, backed by a $100,000 Iowa DOT grant and $20,000 in local tax dollars. They are planning a branch spur off the line west of the river into the east side of our empty industrial park. The official cover story leans on local operations like Vantec or Custom Meats, even though officials admitted neither business actually needs this rail spur. Developers rely on tried and ...

Be grateful, be safe, thank those working around us

Local Columns

This week across Iowa, harvest is in full swing. After a long rainy September, our farmers can finally get into the fields. If you have been in Iowa a few years, you know what is involved. People are working long hours using large equipment. Our roads are having entirely different traffic patterns. Even the deer are more erratic as corn fields are leveled. Despite all of the September rain, there is even a risk of devastating field fires. I grew up on a family farm in Greene County. As soon as I could walk, my parents and big brothers were telling me to stay away from the bull ...

That is totally groovy and I dig it

Local Columns

Growing up in the 1950s and 1960s in small town Iowa had many benefits for which I am grateful. At the same time, when you leave home and get into the “real” world this set-up can leave you with a deficit of worldly knowledge. In the late ’50s I acquired a sweatshirt imprinted with slang and illustrations from the “beat generation.” Beatnik words like “cool,” “Daddy-O” “square,” and “fuzz” were common slang in the post-war beat counter-culture and 11-year-old me tried to comprehend them all. In my early ’60s teen years there was a new slang. ...

Vote: It's about the fate of our country

Letters to Editor

Letter to the editor As we approach this year’s crucial election, we face an important choice about our nation's future. Voting for Democratic candidates is the most effective way to ensure a future built on shared prosperity, equality, and progress for all Americans. Democrats consistently advocate for policies that invest in everyday citizens rather than concentrating benefits for corporations and the ultra-rich as Republicans policies do. From lowering prescription drug and health care costs to supporting infrastructure improvements and clean energy, Democratic leadership has ...

4-H is about helping youth achieve

Editorials

Editorial: National 4-H Week, which began Sunday and concludes Saturday, is a good time to celebrate the enormous contributions 4-H makes to our community and nation. It's hard to imagine anyone in Iowa who doesn't know a bit about 4-H, but this week is an appropriate occasion to reflect on the important contribution this organization makes by helping young people develop skills and values that will serve them well for a lifetime. 4-H got its start in Iowa in 1901. Today it is the largest youth-development program in the state. About one-quarter of the state's young folks are ...

It’s sad to see them go

Local Columns

While driving around Iowa I have noted a continuing decline in the number of barns. Once the monarch of every Iowa farmstead, the barn has given way to more efficient metal buildings and, in some cases, no buildings at all. Things change. As with threshing machines, windmills, the outhouse and the horse-drawn wagon the wooden barn is rapidly becoming a part of our past. And that’s okay, I guess. Things change and we have to learn to change with them. Still, I feel some sorrow in the loss of the barn. So much of what made a farm a farm several decades ago centered on ...