State park trail entry point.

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Tales from the pilgrimage.

Blog for Iowa

  • Book Review: The Hidden History Of The Supreme Court

    The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America by Thom Hartmann is a quick but important read for people who want to review the history of the Supreme Court. At 168 pages, the book takes readers through the founders’ vision of the courts, the Powell Memo, the growing influence of fossil… Read more

  • Organizing the Organizers

    The Democratic Party seems on the brink of descent into a primal ooze as we now debate political staffers forming unions in campaigns. What’s there to debate? Presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg gets the overarching policy right. “Freedom means the ability to organize in order to hold employers accountable and advocate for fair pay,” according to… Read more

  • Taking Seeds from the Prairie

    Is it wrong to collect seeds from a prairie restoration project for use in a home garden or another prairie restoration project? I posed the question on social media. While the responses weren’t that many, they were a unanimous yes. Not so fast! “Stealing is stealing,” Cindy Crosby, author of The Tallgrass Prairie: An Introduction… Read more

  • State Auditor Rob Sand Speaks… Briefly

    State Auditor Rob Sand spoke at the Zach Wahls birthday fundraiser in rural Johnson County on July 14. He was brief. Sand’s brevity is becoming a feature of his political tenure. Those of us who hear a lot of political speeches appreciate his willingness to be brief, be brilliant, and then be done. Blog for… Read more

  • When to Swallow the Red Pill

    Trish Nelson will be returning to the editor’s desk next week. Among things she did while on hiatus was ride a couple days of RAGBRAI, posting this photograph of pies behind empty church pews. The image says something more although I’m at a loss to put words to it. It can speak for itself. Time… Read more

  • Jimmy Carter and Prejudice Against Women

    On Jan. 19, 1976, the day of the Iowa precinct caucuses that started Jimmy Carter on a path from relative obscurity to becoming the Democratic nominee for president, I was in U.S. Army Basic Training at Fort Jackson, S.C. I didn’t really care who became president because anyone would be better than Richard Nixon. As… Read more

  • Politics In Isolation

    It must be hard for out of state political organizers to penetrate the shield of work, family and friends behind which many Iowans spend most of their time. That’s especially true as the large field of presidential candidates self-sorts in the polls, resulting in what seems an inevitable field of Biden, Harris, Sanders and Warren.… Read more

  • Why Racism?

    Racism is a feature of the Trump administration geared toward activating marginal voters who support his racist statements to get them to vote to elect Republicans, posits Thom Hartmann in the clip below. “When Trump said this he knew exactly what he was saying,” Hartmann said on his eponymous program, referring to the president’s statement… Read more

  • What’s Wrong With Our Food System?

    There is a strong argument nothing is wrong with our food system. There is a strong argument everything is wrong with our food system. To talk about a “food system” at all presumes a lot that may or may not be true. It’s no secret large corporations increasingly control food production, distribution and marketing. Scalability… Read more

  • Data Points To Corporate Influence

    Is the Ohio federal court’s recent release of Drug Enforcement Agency data about manufacture and distribution of oxycodone and hydrocodone pills significant? Maybe. I found last week’s Washington Post presentation of scrubbed data engaging for the ten minutes or so it took to drill down to Iowa and the county in which I live. Readers… Read more