A couple of weeks ago, a local 53-year-old dad died. Two days later, a 59-year-old dad died. Both men had daughters who were my daughter’s classmates. Add to that, the father of two dear friends entered hospice the following week. And if that wasn’t enough: A close childhood friend, who lived across the street, is fighting pancreatic cancer, and it has spread.

This is the way of life sometimes, with a rash of death and dying in our immediate circles. Such events make us aware of life’s capricious nature. Life can be much too short.

Friedrich Nietzsche said, “It is a great thing to see a man in the midst of his dying.” That has always struck me as an awfully easy thing for the living to say, but after spending time with my childhood friend, Lori, a few weeks ago, I caught a glimpse of those words’ truth.

We hadn’t seen each other in decades, but memories came thickly back: The blanket forts on her mom’s clothesline, the sack swing on the tree of the abandoned house, the games of pom-pom-pull-away on my parents’ extra lot.

Neither one of us had much in the way of toys, certainly not by today’s standards. We had long, barefoot summers punctuated by her mom’s Kool-aid-and-Jello popsicles. Best I’ve ever tasted.

We swung on my willow tree branches and climbed the apple tree in our backyard. We rode bikes all over Hospers and sported perennially skinned knees.

We tried to reclaim my brother’s cardboard fort in the garage rafters, but it was too hot to spend much time up there. With our neighbor, Brenda, we formed the LBJ Club and congratulated ourselves that those were the same initials as our president.

In the fall, we raked piles of leaves into leaf houses and yelled if someone messed up a wall. My dad would allow us a week or so of leaf housing before the burning began. Then toasted marshmallows might follow.

In the winter, we slid down her parents’ steep driveway, which made it too slick for their family car to make it up the hill. Her dad would back up in the neighbor’s drive across the road and make a running start. I can still hear the car wheels whining and burning against the ice.

Why didn’t her dad put down sand or salt to ease the car up that crazy-steep driveway? Frugality, Lori said, and that led us to talking about our family’s values of thrift and hard work, values she and I both carry.

We look in wonder at the abundance that many young people have: brand new houses and very fancy cars. We both still wash and recycle sandwich bags. We reuse tin foil if it’s untouched by the food it covers. We giggle about this. It’s an old bond, now renewed.

Both of our parents had large gardens. With the empty lot, my parents had two. As we grew older, we were pressed into service to harvest and can and freeze produce. Lori loved it all. Except for planting potatoes with my dad, I endured it. She has kept a garden throughout the decades, and I spied a spread of vegetables and flowers through her dining room window.

She loves sewing and all the domestic things that make a home. She has always had a kind heart, and in every way, is a better person than I’ll ever be.

She is grateful for every day granted to her. She still possesses a calm spirit, and I left the visit awed by her grace. The visit reminded me of the time I spent years ago with my aunt, “Mugs”, who was also dying from cancer. I went to cheer her up, but she’s the one who gave me a lift.

She was a lot like Lori, a contented, beautiful soul.

My mother’s death wasn’t like this, and although my dad found the bright spots in a grim diagnosis, his last day was agony for him and us. When a life is taken suddenly by accident or physical failure, there’s no time, and that’s a different hard goodbye.

Nietzsche would say that I’ve seen two great things: the lives of two dying women who somehow rose to meet this horrible requirement. I will say, instead, that my life is richer for having known them.

I don’t say this lightly. If you happen to be in the presence of someone whose days are short, but who is fully alive in each metered moment, it is a holy thing. It is a humbling thing. May you stop and honor the moment.

Iowa’s official state motto is, “Our liberties we prize, our rights we will maintain.” The right to live our lives freely and truly our own is under attack. I’d love to see some “Iowa stubborn” rear up against encroaching surveillance.

If the crowdsourcing is correct, there are 13 Flock cameras in the immediate Storm Lake vicinity and another four are clustered at an intersection between Storm Lake and Alta. To borrow an old line, what the flock is happening to us as a county, a state, a nation?

What’s happening is more surveillance, more data being gathered about our comings and goings by reading our license plates. These Automatic License Plate Readers (ALPRs) are everywhere. According to Red Wine & Blue, a national group of suburban women working to defeat extremism, “100,000 ALPR cameras are being used in more than 6,000 cities and towns.”

The “New York Times” reports that one company alone has 120,000 such cameras and contracts with 7,000 police departments across the U.S. Every state in the union would do well to mull the words of Iowa’s motto right now.

That one company is called Flock Safety and it’s a whopper of a misnomer if ever there was one. It manufactures one kind of system and says it “connects communities, businesses, and public safety so incidents can be understood clearly, and decisions can be made on facts.” That may be the marketing pitch to city or county governments, but citizens aren’t buying it.

Across the country, civil disobedience is beating its wings against the Flock. Individuals are protesting ALPRs by shooting at them, hitting them with vehicles, beating them with baseball bats, cutting them down, wrapping them in garbage bags, and splattering them with paint.

Destruction of property might shock or offend you, but citizens are responding to the real reason behind this surveillance. It’s not about safety. It’s about following the movements of “suspect” people based on little more than pigmentation.

Also, according to a story in the New York Times, a Texas policeman used ALPRs “to track a woman across state lines who was suspected of having an abortion.”

In Storm Lake, we have a police department that cultivates and prioritizes public safety over punishment, but it still doesn’t feel good knowing that Storm Lake’s finest are gathering data on us. Several No Kings rallies have been held at the corner of Lakeshore Drive and Lake Avenue, but when someone spied a surveillance camera at that intersection, the latest rally was moved to a different street. (Note: The camera is no longer at that location.)

People in Storm Lake are unlikely to take a whack at a Flock, and I am not condoning the destruction of property, but you could just shoot a bird at one. You could be discreet or creative in how you position a certain digit when approaching a Flock location, bearing in mind that protest is a First Amendment right.

In their “Good News” segment of “The Daily Beans”, podcasters Allison Gill and Dana Goldberg invite listeners to send in bird photos. Said photos can be of real avians or snaps of a person flipping off a property that displays the name of a certain head of state. Someone could start a new trend to the “Good News” segment by sending in “birded” Flock photos.

Not your thing? There are still other ways to protest.

Even bookish, bike-riding nerds can defy the powers of 0s and 1s working overtime. Riding a slower-moving, two-wheeled conveyance is an act of passive resistance and a way to stay off the, um, radar. By pedaling your bicycle or recumbent tricycle, you, too, can refuse to be a number--well, a combination of three letters and three numbers--in a great data collection scheme.

If this isn’t an argument for more people riding their bikes or motorized whatevers to get around town, I don’t know what is. Just be safe. Follow the rules of the road and smile (or wave) at the birdy as you go by. However many fingers you use is up to you.

Joan Zwagerman has an even greater appreciation for the freedom that her bicycle brings.

Every day is another chapter of “As the Administration Churns”, the unending saga of incompetent boobs and skeevy manospherians.

In late July, during U.S. Senate hearings, Senator Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) pounced on Dr. Anthony Fauci, who was grilled for his actions as the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a pique of performative outrage, Moreno yelled “Who the f--- did you think you were?” It was ugly. Either my age or my Calvinist roots are showing (or both), but there’s a time and a place for the f-word, and a Senate floor hearing is almost never the time nor the place.

In the scheme of things, Moreno’s behavior is a small thing, to be sure. The problem is it’s part of an endless trickle of small things, which eventually aggregate into a tsunami.

We, the electorate, are caught in the tsunami, and we are battered in the process and then ultimately flattened. We tune out because it’s all too much. Exhausting us is part of the plan. You might want to secure some psychological Kevlar and suit up because the waves just keep coming and we need to stand strong.

If you followed the news, a few days after that late July outburst, Moreno was back in the spotlight, this time on the defensive. His former son-in-law, U.S. Representative Max Miller (R-Ohio), has been accused of violence towards Moreno’s daughter and granddaughter. These are not recent incidents, and Moreno has been aware of them for some time.

This is all bad enough, but other women have also alleged that Miller was violent with them. Miller is running for re-election, and the GOP wants him to drop out of the race, but Miller, has defied the cooler heads of his party.

What catches my eye in all of this is that Moreno and Miller belong to the party that, since the 1970s, have stated that they stand for family values. Their manifesto, “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise” aka Project 2025, lists the word “family” 160 times and “families” clocks in at 133 mentions. In fairness, some of the instances refer to position titles or citations, but even removing those, the focus on the nuclear family (one dad, one mom, and some children) is clear.

A few examples:

On page 3, under the heading “The Conservative Promise”, the first point states: “Restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children.” Protect our children from dads like Miller who break their daughter’s collarbones.

On page 4, point 1 is further elucidated: “The next conservative President must get to work pursuing the true priority of politics—the well-being of the American family.” Well-being, huh? How about not throwing hot water on mommy, as Miller did to his wife.

The second paragraph in that section ends: “But the most important community in each of our lives—and the life of the nation—is the family.” Except when daddy holds a gun to mommy’s head, as Miller has done.

Immediately following in the third paragraph: “Today, the American family is in crisis.” When a husband (Mr. Miller) throws his wife (Mrs. Miller) against the wall, yes, that’s a family in crisis.

Yet, when our president was asked about Miller’s morass, 45/47’s remarks showed sympathy for Miller and none for the wife and child. “It’s a very sad thing. I know Max,” the president said. “He’s a good person. . .and I’m gonna let the families figure that out.”

This is the party that wants to enter your house and make sure there is a mommy and a daddy, not mommies squared or a daddy duo. This is the party that now wants to check the hormone levels of all females K-12 to be sure that we don’t have trans-female athletes in our schools.

As if trans kindergarten T-ballers will be the ruination of America. For the record, there are no trans kindergarteners. Anywhere.

Of course, we know that the members of The Heritage Foundation (who authored Project 2025) and the president have different and often opposing goals. The Heritage Foundation wants to build a Christo-fascist nation, and the president wants to enrich himself by any means possible—and avoid jail.

He doesn’t care about families. The best that can be said for him (which is also the worst) is that his words and actions, however heinous, match.

The same can’t be said for the far-right wing of the GOP. Where is Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation and author Project 2025’s Foreword, who wrote on page 5: “Every threat to family stability must be confronted.”

The threat isn’t immigration, Mr. Roberts. The threat isn’t a gay couple raising their kids. The threat is literally coming from inside the House--and the Senate and the Department of Defense and the White House.

After the Soviet Union fell in 1991, a dad asked a local elementary school why the classroom maps for that part of the world still said “U.S.S.R.” The way he told it, the classroom teacher gave him a blank stare.

I believe the story because a decade later—in that same elementary school—the maps still said “U.S.S.R.”

This was long ago, of course, and those pull-down maps were huge and expensive. Replacing them in every classroom were not a priority in the age of George Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” program.

This was also a period before the internet soaked our lives in its ubiquity. It wasn’t long after that that paper maps yielded to Mapquest printouts, which gave way to maps on our phone, which then morphed into an accompanying, customizable voice, directing our every turn.

I’ve dubbed my map voice, “Felicity” because she’s British. Sometimes Felicity gets it wrong, especially in deep, rural areas, especially if I want to take a road less traveled. That’s why I still keep paper maps in my car.

Believe it not, there is still uncharted territory in Google mapping. “Proceed to the route,” is not helpful while Felicity recalibrates.

We’ve got so much information at the press of our thumbs, yet we can still go astray. Our reliance on technology can blunt certain skills, like remembering addresses or phone numbers. Is that a big deal? You’d have to ask a cognitive scientist for their analysis, but using your brain, even to recall an old address (314 3^rd St. NW) seems like a good use of synapses.

Google used to be the go-to, and in an effort to remain relevant, Google now offers an AI answer for every query. I suppose it’s an attempt to give Claude, Chat GPT, or OpenAI competition, but any of these tools can be skewed, misleading, or plain wrong.

For example, early in the escalation of AI, educators and researchers noticed that some citations at the end of published articles looked odd. Turns out that AI can hallucinate, which is another word for lying.

AI can create false citations that look real.

It can make up a fictitious journal name. Worse, perhaps, it can use a real journal name but plug in the name of a known author, but they did not write said article. Or, it can fabricate volume and issue numbers or dates of publication.

That’s not all. At a recent AIDS conference in Brazil, a member of the U.S. State Department showed a map of African countries where AIDS cases were of high concern, and what a crazy quilt of geographical mayhem it was!

Reuters reported that every country was mislabeled, although other news stories said that only a few were wrong. Reuters further discovered that the map had been made by OpenAI, and the State Department staffer didn’t notice the errors.

One news article said that the staffer made a last-minute change to a slide on the Powerpoint. I’ll grant that, if rushed by last-minute changes or unforeseen problems, it might happen. Still, it’s not unfair to expect a State Department employee to know Africa’s geography if it’s the subject of a presentation.

This incident feels like just another effed-up day for the current administration. The Reflecting Pool got messed up twice and the Epstein file redactions were done incorrectly, to name just two recent examples. The former is stupid; the latter is dangerous.

What sickens many of us is the fact that accountability and reliability are fast becoming relics. Sloppiness is a slide toward “anything goes” and it feels like the ramp has been well oiled.

At least, in the State Department case, they owned their error and didn’t try to make it Biden’s or Obama’s fault. There is that. And thank goodness someone in the audience knew their geography and could point out that the map was flawed. Thank goodness someone still knows what’s what and where it’s at.

It saddened me that my kids never took a geography class. Studying other countries was very lightly folded into social studies when they went to school, and it showed. They would sometimes ask if a certain country was in Europe or Africa. Or get confused whether Berlin was a city or a country. This was hard for a map-loving nerd-mother to hear.

That was then. Now, you can just whip out your phone and discover a slew of facts about Berlin’s history—if you have a reputable source. It’s easier to find information, but it’s harder to trust it. We must now be both fact-checker and consumer, ensuring that search results are true and not a fever dream of some large language model.

There are still enough of us who believe that facts and precision matter. We need to insist upon it.

Pete Hegseth is trying to diminish the contributions of women in the military, and that’s putting it delicately. The ACLU was more blunt when it said on one of their webpages that Hegseth wants women out of the military. Full stop. This impetus was clear early on when Hegseth fired senior female military leaders.

The brand of Christian nationalism that Hegseth subscribes to feeds his latest decisions to deny promotions to female military personnel. He also ended an important advisory panel for women, the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services.

Without saying it outright, he’s communicating that a woman’s place is in the laundry room doing battle with ring around the collar. That’s the real enemy, ladies.

His latest pronouncement about how the military should test male soldiers for their testosterone levels is bonkers. This “high T” declaration is meant to send a clear message: The military will have only the highest male standards.

Well, good luck with that. It’s a case of “Do as I say, not as I do.” The internet shows footage of Pete barely managing a pull-up, which, one could argue, goes to show that Hegseth’s own “T” obviously needs a boost. Or, how about, just get more fit?

I rail against institutions that deny women equal opportunities fairly often in this space, but I tend to focus on sports. I have never wanted to be in the military, but bless anyone—ANYONE—who does, and women have proven themselves capable in all aspects of service.

I’m not denying that there are differences between males and females, but you can’t keep women down. Historically, they have always found a way to contribute and to use their skills, even if men in charge believe otherwise.

This truth came home on a recent trip to Blank Park Zoo, a place I hadn’t been in 30 years or so. The parking lot is surrounded by old, decaying buildings, which are part of Fort Des Moines. This location served as an important military installation during both world wars.

Women have stood ready to offer aid in any armed conflict, but their roles expanded during World War II. According to the National Park Service, in 1942 “the War Department selected Fort Des Moines to be the new site for a Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) officer training center.”

These weren’t official members of the U.S. Army, but as the name explains, they provided a supporting role to the war effort, and they were paid, but they didn’t receive traditional soldiers’ benefits.

The WAACs took their jobs seriously and were a great success, but Massachusetts Representative Edith Nourse Rogers believed that women should receive all the same pay and benefits as any regular member of the Army. In 1943, Nourse Rogers convinced her fellow members of Congress to pass a bill establishing the Women’s Army Corps (WACs) to succeed the WAACs.

Fort Des Moines became an important site for WAC training, with over 72,000 women enlisting between 1942 and 1945. It was the only site in the country that trained WAC officers.

Although many jobs were clerical in nature, some WACs oversaw the maintenance of firearms. Others tested machine guns and tank ordinance, but women were prevented from entering combat.

Still, General Douglas MacArthur held the WACs in high esteem for their work ethic and because they complained less than male soldiers. Other generals like Dwight D. Eisenhower also recognized the WACs’ contributions, and some suggested that the military should draft the WACs because they were more efficient and better disciplined than most male soldiers.

Does therein lie the rub? Do female soldiers make Pete Hegseth uncomfortable because they are too good at their jobs, even with low T?

The military already has standards for physical fitness, a general test and a harder test for specific occupations. Women serving in those special jobs have already met those benchmarks, but Hegseth wants to draw a different line in the sand, a testosterone-stoked line with the hope that no women will qualify.

Every country in the world permits women to serve in their militaries. If Hegseth were to somehow succeed in sending women packing, how does he expect to fill the ranks? He’s also denying promotions to Black and Brown male soldiers, so what’s his plan? If he’s aiming to create a manosphere military, I shudder for us all.

Intelligent people know from experience that having diversity of thought and experience enriches an enterprise, be it the boardroom or on the battlefield.

The women who signed up for the WAACs and then stayed to join the WACs did so because they wanted to serve their country, just like any patriotic man. The WACs served as best they could, given the limitations placed on them. I have no doubt that they would have done more, given the chance.

Denying women any opportunity of service is the wrong kind of American exceptionalism, but, sad to say, it is in keeping with the way this administration views the world.

In his first stab at the presidency, DJT’s rallying cry was “Build the Wall”, and it was an effective campaign to stoke fear of “other” people. The man who would later become the 45^th president convinced people that America was overrun with drug lords and rapists with calves the size of cantaloupes. He repeated this lie enough to win the Electoral College (but lose the popular vote) in the 2016 election.

And he did attempt to build the wall that he promised. I saw a stretch of it on the Arizona/Mexico border. The way then-President 45 made it sound, I expected thick concrete slabs and barbed wire lacing the top, but instead it was constructed of metal slats that sometimes fell over.

What was supposed to be impenetrable was penetrable in many places. The enterprise lost steam when president-whisperer Steve Bannon was indicted for fiscal malfeasance related to the wall in 2022.

It’s safe to say that most Americans have forgotten about the wall and the rallying cry that drove it. The re-president isn’t crowing about this massive accomplishment from eight years ago, either. He, too, seems to have forgotten about it.

Instead, he’s turned his attention to building walls closer to home.

You may recall that the president decided to append his name above the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. In 1964 Congress voted to name the center in honor of the slain president. President Lyndon Johnson signed the bill.

Our current president sought no such approval when he strong-armed the Kennedy Center’s board into tacking his moniker above the official name. He put up a tarp wall while the facelift—I mean, the defacement—was being done. When directed by lawyers in June to remove the unlawful addition, the tarp wall was reinstalled, where it continues to stand.

The administration says that the edifice suffered damage and it’s too unsightly for the public to see. What public? Attendance has plummeted; acts have been cancelled. Throngs are not thronging to the Kennedy Center.

No, this is an act of defiance, and what is such behavior when you get down to it, but an act of will that’s just another kind of wall.

It’s not a ballroom. It’s a wallroom.

Turning now to the White House, on Saturday, October 18, 2025, a national No Kings rally turned out an estimated 7 million people. The president responded with a cartoon of himself flying over crowds while dumping excrement on them.

Two days later, in a further fit of pique he ordered the East Wing to be razed, and he announced that a grand ballroom would be built in its place.

Later he said the project wasn’t so much about the ballroom as it was for the bunker underneath, but there had already been a bunker under the East Wing. So, a super-duper bunker was in order. Bunkers, of course, are meant for civil and military protection and to wall off troops from the enemy.

Who, I ask, is the enemy? The president doesn’t see the White House as the peoples’ house. He never has. He sees it as a sitting duck for terrorism, which he claims is streaming across the border, but it’s also anyone who makes him feel threatened: reporters, members of Congress who won’t bend the knee, and even comedians.

He’s been talking about making the ballroom drone-proof and sniper-proof, which is to say, making it impervious to attack, which is to say, he wants to wall off the place.

When a square becomes a pen

The latest foray into fortress-making is the plan to build a wall around Lafayette Park, which sits north of the White House. This park has been a historic site for protest. This is where women gathered over 100 years ago to agitate for the right to vote.

Other protests in this space have included civil rights protests in the 1960s, anti-Vietnam war resistance in the 1970s, cries for nuclear disarmament in the 1980s, and protests for LBGT rights in the 1980s and 1990s, and racial protests in 2020.

No one likes criticism, but if you’re president, it’s a big part of the job, and we, the people, are free to dissent. This country was forged in protest.

Of course, the public isn’t being given information about plans for the wall or who will pay for it. According to reports, it will serve as a barrier between the White House and the square, but when the gates to this fenced wall are shut, it creates an enclosure, aka a pen.

Why would protesters need to be corralled?

Marty Pearl, a citizen who regularly protests in Lafayette Square said that “what dictators do is isolate themselves from the people they rule. That is not, for me, the way democracies can possibly work.”

One more before I go

The president is running scared about the mid-terms. His speech on July 16 didn’t whip up the frenzy he intended. He’s been trying to build a wall of election fraud since he lost in 2020, but baseless claims make a poor foundation on which to build anything real or sustained. He’s tried. Oh, how he’s tried, but the artifice is crumbling.

When he tries to blame immigrants, we push back. When he tries to justify building a fortress so that he can never leave power, we push back. When he tries to silence protest, we push back. When he cries foul about the 2020 election, we push back.

While he continues to peddle division, to enrich himself at our expense, we push back, as exhausting as it is. Keep pushing.

It must be a sign of desperation. Obviously, the president hasn’t stirred enough outrage in hurling the word “socialist” around. He wants you to be afraid, very afraid, and the s-word wasn’t cutting it.

Even though he’s really a Democratic Socialist, the election of New York mayor Zohran Mamdani took the sting out of “socialist” and “socialism.” People like his ideas. The president forgot all about evil socialism when Mamdani visited him. 45/47 nearly swooned over the mayor’s good looks and charisma.

So, he’s changed tack and is trying something stronger. He’s flinging the word “communism” around like parade candy. In a two-week span, Reuters.com tracked the president’s use of the words “communism” or “communist” 81 times. It’s a blanket approach where you label everything that doesn’t please you.

He’ll call Democratic primary winners communist, especially if they have progressive ideas, but I’m waiting for him to level it against the new housing bill. Maybe he can blame the twice-failed resurfacing of the Reflecting Pool on communism.

If the president is trying to appeal to young voters with a campaign of communist-mongering, that may not be a great strategy. Voters under 50 don’t understand the grip that Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Red Scare had on America 70 years ago. I didn’t live through it, but I know enough history to understand the way that that propaganda campaign worked.

It was powerful, and it hurt the lives and livelihoods of educators, government officials, and a lot of people in Hollywood. The communist scare didn’t end with McCarthy’s demise either. It lurked for several decades; even Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan used the c-word on occasion.

And now it’s back, which should be no surprise, really. Our current president’s tenure is little more than an extended propaganda campaign, and it will be interesting to see if this latest epithet lands bigly, especially if he adds “godless” to it. That could rile up the religious base, and nothing would please him more.

Yet, because he uses the word amorphously, it’s helpful to remember just what communism is. It involves getting rid of private property and undoing social classes. Under communism, the state owns the means of production, but there are various flavors of communism, one of which is associated with religion.

It is interesting to note that early Christians held their property and possessions in common. I repeat: Many early Christians held their property and possessions in common.

The base tries over and over to assert that America was forged as a Christian nation, so the next time you hear that trope trotted out, remind your friends that Christianity’s economic and social beginnings were not rooted in capitalism but in communism. Feel free to use that factoid at your next opportunity.

And just to be clear, I’m not advocating communism, but those of us who pay attention see the president’s latest foray for what it is. We must not stay silent.

I grew up believing the capitalist line: if everyone worked hard enough, they could get their share of the American dream. According to the Aspen Institute, however, the top 10% of Americans now own just over 69% of our total wealth. The gap continues to grow. More of us are realizing that the opportunity open to our parents and grandparents is closing fast.

Men like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Mark Zuckerberg, and Sam Altman are capitalizing on this closing gap. Their aim is not communism, but it sure isn’t democratic, either. They will happily use the president’s words to steer the electorate to their advantage. So, if he calls everything that displeases him “communist,” they will find a way to push that in front of our eyeballs.

Listen to what the president says but listen even more closely to what he doesn’t say. He uses the words “freedom” and “liberty” a lot, but he shies away from “democracy.” To be fair, “democracy” never occurs in the Constitution, either, but if you want to point out the evils of a certain political ideology (starting with the letter “c”), wouldn’t it stand to reason that you’d remind people of its superior counterpart?

In President Biden’s inaugural speech, the word “democracy” appeared 11 times, a record besting Harry Truman and FDR’s third inaugural speeches, where each used it nine times. In Trump’s first inaugural address, it never appeared, and in 2024, it was used once.

In my youth, the Soviet Union was one of the big communist powers, but today, only five countries—China, Vietnam, North Korea, Laos, and Cuba—are recognized as such. The president doesn’t point to infiltration of communist ideals from any of those countries.

No, according to him, the threat is coming from inside the house in the guise of people wanting better transportation systems, a better form of healthcare, worker protections, clean air and water, and a decent way to make ends meet. All these goals would be good for you and me, but not for “he,” and that is why anyone favoring any of these now becomes part of a communist plot.

The president’s words and deeds clearly show that democracy is not and never was the end goal with him. It’s all about being “number one,” being “on top,” being “the best,” being “hot.” It’s all about him and figuring out how to whip up a frenzy to draw media attention to himself. Using the c-word is just the latest strategy.

So it was decided: Chicago had won the bid for the Columbian Exposition of 1893. Better known as the World’s Fair, Daniel Burnham and John Wellborn Root were named as chief architects to great excitement. American prosperity and optimism were at a peak and Chicago’s business tycoons were eager to outshine the Paris Exposition of 1889.

There were many advances to celebrate, so many technological marvels to share with everyday Americans and the world, chief among them electricity and a myriad of applications.

There were problems, however, from the start. Author Erik Larson, in his book Devil in the White City, chronicled the setbacks that contributed to the fair’s long-delayed opening in May 1893.

The men in charge, the men driving the idea of the fair, were too high on their own supply of grandiosity. Let it be noted, however, that the men hired to execute the ideas were the best in their field. The problem was that men like Burnham, Root, and Frederick Law Olmstead had neither enough time nor money to adequately fulfill the plans.

Downsizing is not uncommon with building projects. As the archivist for Buena Vista University, I’ve seen drawings for grandiose buildings whose final outcome looked nothing like the original. For example, an early conception of a dormitory looked like something out of Oxford. Yet, the reality was a plain brick box with few flourishes or gravitas.

The situation in Chicago, though, was more dire. The buildings were originally planned to be built out of stone, steel, and brick, but there was not enough time for proper construction. Instead, the architects, headed by Burnham, built wooden frames over which they laid “staff” a mixture of plaster and jute.

If you’ve ever seen a plaster and lathe wall, it would resemble that method. Additionally, the builders could create architectural details out of the staff that would fool most people into thinking they were looking at stone.

They slapped dozens of grand halls together with the staff, created neoclassical elements to adorn the facades, and used a spray-painting method to finish them in gleaming white paint.

All the streets were wired with electric lights. The light, reflected off the white paint, earned the fairgrounds the name “The White City.”

You may guess where I’m going with this.

Back in January, the president announced plans for a triumphal arch to be built somewhere near the Lincoln Memorial. The scene was like something from the old cartoon, Fractured Fairy Tales.

Let’s call it “Goldiwisp and the Three Arches.” Goldiwisp had an insatiable appetite for building. So he ordered his minions to dream up a great big arch, a medium-sized arch, and a little arch. But Goldiwisp, being a megalomaniac, could only be satisfied with the great big arch, an arch so ‘uge that it would eclipse the Lincoln Memorial and obscure the sightline to Arlington Cemetery.

The arch has yet to be built, but the concept of an arch appeared in time for the Great American State Fair. It was constructed from wood and wrapped—literally wrapped—with a plastic printed coating of an arch.

A lot of our money—taxpayer money--is being thrown around, and it’s landing in the pocket of one notable resident at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, rather than providing attendees with a pleasant experience.

All by design.

It’s hard to know whether it’s sheer incompetence or if people are being pushed to complete unrealistic projects in unrealistic timeframes, thus resorting to the cheapest, quickest solutions just to get the president off their backs.

But shoddy is as shoddy does. Within days, the sad, little arch started coming apart at the seams. The metaphorical aptness for this presidency is too on the nose not to mention.

Oh, why care about something so insignificant? There are important things to worry about, like, is the war with Iran over or not? What’s happening with the gaping hole where the East Wing used to be? Will mail-in voting be protected? What’s the president’s next desperate move against E. Jean Carroll going to look like?

The barrage never stops. He will never stop.

Therefore, neither should we. Humor and satire are powerful cannons. We must blast with double-barreled intensity about this inanity and all the forthcoming inanities.

That’s why I poke fun at the sad little arch and 45/47’s thwarted attempts to be the Doyen in the Gold City. We don’t have the luxury of simply ignoring him. His mark is everywhere, so we must laugh and keep pointing at how the wannabe king has no massive crowds, no pristine pool, and no East Wing.

And a tiny, little arch coming apart at the seams.

In 2023, I left a long-term marriage and long-term home ownership and became a renter. I’m lucky that my rent doesn’t consume more than 30% of my salary. Even though I have money set aside for retirement, it won’t be enough to consider buying a home.

I’m a good renter. I’m never late with my payments. I’m not loud. I keep my place clean. I live in a small town and many of my neighbors are from, shall we say, “elsewhere” so sudden rent hikes are less likely here than, say, Houston.

Still, I worry. What if the landlord sold the building and a new owner decided they wanted a “better” clientele. This sort of thing happens all the time. And it would be far more of a problem for most of my neighbors than for me.

This week the bi-partisan housing bill, the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, got my attention. Maybe, just maybe, I thought it would be possible to become a homeowner again. Being a renter at my age makes me feel vulnerable.

I’m not asking for anything more than 800 square feet, which is what I have now. To put this in perspective, the size of a Levittown house, built on Long Island immediately after World War II, was 750 square feet. No one balked at giving citizens a small, clean, well-lit space of their own.

The way our system works, however, is that asking for so little is asking for too much. There’s no profit in building such a small stand-alone dwelling unless it’s stacked high and wide into a conglomeration of units.

So, buy a condo! If only.

Of course, the president, who ironically fancies himself Don the Builder, crushed hopes for many wannabe homeowners. He’s holding the ROAD to Housing Act hostage until Congress passes the SAVE America Act.

This means that one bill, which would be the first legislation in decades to offer real solutions for home ownership, has nothing to do with the other, which seeks to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters.

This is yet another illustration of how little this current president cares about other people. It’s astounding how he doesn’t get the societal good that comes when people have good jobs and can house, clothe, and feed their families. Take vacations. Set aside college funds. They have optimism about the land in which they live.

Such jobs, such optimism, are hard to come by for many Americans. But it was not always so.

A president who cared about his people would know the truth about a high tide rising all boats. All those boats can navigate the waters of their life. All those boats can catch the fish they need and enjoy the bounties of their catch. All those boats can find their way safely to shore.

I remember when that was true for vast swaths of Americans. I want to live in such a country again.

The president, however, does not care about any other boats. He wants the best boats for himself, even if he has to get one from another country. The tide, too, exists only for him. He will insist that everyone is perfectly happy with the paper origami boats they have. They can sail anywhere they want, at any time, as long as it’s a tiny, shallow puddle.

So, the president won’t sign the housing bill, but because it was passed in Congress, it is set to become law. This will make the president angry, and he will veto the bill. Unless there were backroom threats and machinations, Congress could override the veto, but when haven’t there been machinations?

For example, Senator Bill Cassidy recently flipped his vote on the War Powers Act after a fiery backroom exchange with the president and vice president. One has to wonder how many strong arms it took to affect Cassidy’s change of heart.

A desire for one’s own shelter is basic and deeply held, but the Toddler-in-Chief is really only interested in tarting up the People’s House, building monuments to his vainglory, and amassing wealth that he can never take with him.

One garden was given over to potatoes and some rows of sweet corn. In the other: peas, carrots, lettuce, tomatoes, cabbage, and squash—both summer and winter varieties.

These were not hobby gardens. These were not I-just-like-to-have-some-fresh-peas-in-the-spring gardens. These were work-ethic plots, meant to help the family avoid purchasing veg through the winter. After toiling in the family hardware store from eight to six, my parents walked directly from the pickup to weeding and watering and checking the produce.

The only thing I liked about gardening was planting potatoes. Dad had a potato planter with a wire chute and a foot pedal. He shoved the wedge at the planter’s base into the ground, creating a hole. I dropped the eye of potato into the chute.

When he stepped on the pedal to open the chute, he released the eye into the hole in the ground and freed the planter. It made a satisfying KA-THWACK as the jaws closed. We’d move down row after row after row, KA-THWACK, KA-THWACK, KA-THWACK. Time alone with Dad was rare, so I would stay and finish the job. It didn’t matter if we planted well after dark.

That’s where my horticultural interests thudded to a hard stop. Once the potatoes were planted, I stayed in the house doing homework, practicing piano, or sneaking potato chips to stave off hunger while my parents pruned and picked.

SIDE NOTE: Notice that if I were planting potatoes, I didn’t think about food, but when I wasn’t planting potatoes, I was thinking about them and eating them in their most unhealthy form.

Sure, I loved fresh tomatoes and corn on the cob, but I hated weeding, and I hated canning and freezing our gardens’ bounty. Summer evenings weren’t for lounging, they were for “putting up” food for winter.

I was drafted into service, and even though I am an inward contrarian, I outwardly complied. I helped under silent duress.

SECOND SIDE NOTE: I used to believe that this “Sure, I’ll help” (but I REALLY don’t want to) was unique to Calvinism. Now I realize most of us feel this way at least five times a day, so my apologies to Calvin.

The worst task was freezing corn. Slicing stacked kernels off the cob is momentarily satisfying. It’s like watching the side of a building fall, but it quickly turns messy. The niblets spurt corn juice on the knife, the table, your hands, and then everyone else’s hands. Soon everything ends up sticky, sticky, sticky.

Given this history, it still baffles me that when I first became a homeowner, I decided to plant a garden. The previous owners had worked a large plot, and it seemed like too much effort to plant grass.

I had watched “Square Foot Gardening” on PBS and liked the idea of sectioning a swath of ground into mini plots. I scavenged old boards and marked off the four-foot sections. I planted lettuce, spinach, carrots, squash, tomatoes, potatoes, and corn. I laid down newspaper mulch to curtail the weeds.

Stuff actually sprang up, but just as quickly rabbits started mowing the lettuce and spinach. Why didn’t I put up a fence, you ask. I ask myself that, too, now. I did harvest some produce that year, enough to spur me to try again the following year.

Year Two. I’ve never owned a gun, but I had mighty murderous thoughts and a fair measure of regret. The damn rabbits took up residence in the yard. They were unconcerned when I rushed out of the house waving my arms. I was fairly certain they were raising a family next to the leaf lettuce.

Uncle.

By Year Three, I seeded the expanse in grass and forswore gardening. Watering turf suddenly seemed infinitely easier than battling Peter and Petra Cottontail and their brood, Paul, Penelope, Prunella, Per, Poppy, Paige, Patrick, Polly, Peyton, Piper, Paisley, Palmer, and Parker.

Through the years I tried raising cherry tomatoes in containers. Instead of Sun Golds, I got Spindly Disasters. I barely had time to get to know my cilantro plants before they bolted. Farewell to thee, cilantro!

The only crops I had success with were mint and raspberries. I did not know that mint thrives on neglect. It should really be called a weed given the way it spreads. It’s the perfect plant for me.

And the raspberries! They, too, spread like weeds, but they made for glorious eating, and they attracted bees and hornets and wasps, so I felt super virtuous doing my bit for the pollinator class.

Now I live in an apartment, and one year, I wanted to grow a few things. I tried basil in a west window, but it died of thirst while I was gone for a long weekend.

A neighbor has two stationary planters in front of her home. This year, she offered one if I wanted to sow some seed. Seed, no, starters, yes. I stuck in two cherry tomato plants, a basil plant, a bell pepper plant, and one crookneck squash. Notice, though, no potatoes.

I didn’t prepare the soil. I didn’t ask her to pray over the five plants (she’s a minister), I just dug holes, plugged in the starters, packed the soil, sprinkled some water (its own sort of prayer) and hoped for the best. I fully expected signs of rabbit nibbling or squirrel digging, but I come by every day to water them, and, so far, remain untouched.

Over one hot weekend, they went from spindly waifs in search of shelter to Marvel superheroes. It’s none of my doing, that’s for sure. All I can say is that there must be hallowed ground in that planter or else my friend really has been praying over them.

So far, so good. Stay tuned.

Striving to ride

Women are still vastly underrepresented in the world of horse racing

It was the stuff of movies, the kind of thing that doesn’t happen in real life. Except that it did. The horse who seemed like a dud was running dead last, and then in the final stretch he began to move up, and he kept moving and moving and moving.

Golden Tempo didn’t just move into first place; he streaked past the other horses and made the finish look effortless. What a great way to be introduced to the Kentucky Derby and horse racing.

That wasn’t all. The horse and his jockey, José Ortiz, were stars in that moment, but history had just been made. Golden Tempo’s trainer, Cherie DeVaux, was the first female to have a winning horse in the Derby’s 152-year history.

Now, I like horses. As a kid, I got to ride a lot, thanks to Brenda, a neighbor who owned a pair of horses—Daisy and Davey--and invited me along many times. I remember reading about Secretariat and Seattle Slew, two Triple Crown winners in the 1970s, but I never watched those events. Instead, I was probably off riding Daisy or Davey.

This spring, I vacationed with six women and on Derby Day, friend Jane cajoled us into watching and placing pretend bets on the horses. Unfortunately, none of us picked Golden Tempo. I was intrigued by all of it.

Horse racing is a strange world to the uninitiated, and sometimes the uninitiated notice things that those familiar no longer see. Sort of like children who blurt out an uncomfortable truth. How could it be that in 152 years of the Derby no other female trainer had a winning horse?

Well, because there are few female trainers, for one thing. In the history of the Derby, fewer than 20 women have been trainers of starting horses. In 2017, Thoroughbred Racing Commentary reported that, of the top 500 trainers in the world, exactly 25 were women. 25! That’s Two-Five! Ridiculous!

I’m struggling to understand what’s so threatening about a woman training a race horse. Sure, this sport is an expensive one, to say the least, but financial barriers for women seem to be falling faster than the old boys’ club determined to keep the fair sex standing on the sidelines in pretty hats.

Besides, the sexism doesn’t end there. I noticed that all of the jockeys were male.

In the three events that make up the Triple Crown (Kentucky Derby, Preakness, and Belmont Stakes), no female jockey raced in any of those events this year.

Until 1986, US racing boards were under no obligation to award licenses to female jockeys. Sometimes it takes a lawsuit, and in this case, that’s what happened. So racing boards now comply with the law, but the racing establishment doesn’t have to like it, and it seems that they don’t. Today, in the top levels of racing, male jockeys outnumber females by 50 to 1.

In the history of the Kentucky Derby, only six female jockeys have had the honor of appearing in that race. Rider Rosie Napravnik rode the Derby in 2011, 2013, and 2014, a rare feat. Napravnik also rode in the Preakness the same year, which was the last time a female jockey appeared there.

In the Belmont Stakes, only two females have ever ridden, and Napravnik was one of the two. In 2013, she made her second appearance in the Belmont, and no other female jockey has ridden since.

The dearth of female jockeys is inverse to the numbers in recreational horse riding, where women outnumber men at least three to one. It’s as though there’s an unspoken rule that women can and should go for trail rides but that’s it.

And if they enter the racing world, they are more than welcome to muck out the stalls; but if they aspire to ride in the big time, it will be a long, hard road.

One female jockey, B.J. Rubin, who preceded Napravnik, was barred from entering the horse barns at the tracks. She was told she was “bad luck.” The males-only jockey club pushed her out completely, threatening to close the track if Rubin was allowed to ride.

Frozen out, she went to the Bahamas to race until the boycott against her dissolved.

When Napravnik started racing, she went by the name A.R. Napravnik to hide her gender. She probably took her cue from Rubin. On the track, though, things were still rough. She told “60 Minutes” in 2013 that male jockeys would push her against the rails or wedge her between two horses. Still, she persisted.

And let’s talk about weight. All jockeys must make weight in order to race. In the Triple Crown, jockeys may weigh no more than 118 pounds. That fact alone should, ahem, tip the scales in favor of women, who typically weigh less than males.

In an article published in “Socius” in 2017, the authors argue that since men have more muscle mass and muscle weighs more, it’s more challenging for male jockeys to make weight.

They resort to extreme methods of cutting weight: starvation, dehydration, purging, pills, all unhealthy behaviors.* Typically, then, because they must be so weight-conscious, many male jockeys are underweight, which puts their long-term health at risk.

Men’s higher muscle mass has been the standard argument for why women couldn’t or shouldn’t be jockeys. They argue that women wouldn’t be strong enough. But strength is not the only measure by which a jockey can succeed.

In that “60 Minutes” interview, Napravnik’s sister, Jazz, said, “I think if strength is what men have to their advantage, I think women would have finesse.” Jazz talked about her sister’s “special connection” with the horses, and her track record proved that.

Horse racing is unusual because male and female jockeys compete side-by-side, rather than in sex-segregated categories. This goes a long way to explain the continued dearth of women at the highest echelons of the sport. When given a level playing field, statistics show that female jockeys outperform males.

And there it is: Female jockeys are too much of a threat. At some level, the horse racing establishment knows this, of course, but sexism is gonna sexism as long as it can.

Someday, perhaps a woman will burst on the racing scene as the true badass she is, whispering her magic into her mount’s ear and clinching all three titles of the crown. It’ll be the stuff of movies.

For now, though, we can celebrate that Cherie DeVaux’s Golden Tempo won the Belmont Stakes on June 6, once again coming from dead last and streaking ahead to win by one and one-quarter lengths.

Golden Tempo was again ridden by José Ortiz, who spoke about the horse in a way that made me think that Oritz knew the secret of finesse, too. It’s not just the province of women, after all. Then why isn’t the track big enough for everyone?

*This is not to say that female jockeys are immune from some of the same weight-conscious concerns, but the issues tend to be more pronounced for men.

DATELINE: Trinity Sunday, Iowa Highway 20, heading west

Just because Montana is big doesn’t mean it merits sole bragging rights to big sky. I’ve been through Montana several times. They’ve got nothing on us; there’s big sky here, too. And that sky can hold forth quite a show.

There’s a shade of carnelian in a cloudless sky that acts like a hypnotic. Have you seen it? The strictly factual say that carnelian doesn’t exist. They say it’s chalcedony, but where’s the poetry in that? Give me carnelian for a moment or two.

Sometimes the expanse overhead is cornflower served with a stunning side of cumulonimbus. Hex code #6495ED, if you insist.

Or periwinkle. Have you seen a periwinkle sky? It’s not my favorite shade, but it’s not up to us, is it? The palette shifts from day to day. No matter what the hue, it’s quite a show.

Today, the sky is not showing off so much as inviting study in a wet-on-wet watercolor wash of smoke and steel, stone and ash.

If I could only paint like that. If I had only learned to control the flow of paint on paper or understand when to let the paint go where it wanted.

There are moments—into the mystic--when the soul is content, where nothing has happened or changed, except the inner landscape. It’s glorious spring and I’ve no wish for a river to skate away on. There’s only this ribbon of road stretching away from those I love, heading west.

Oh, those I love. One child ran to be held and clutched on tightly. One child giggled when I said, “Bless you,” over and over. One child was baptized in a white princess dress, all smiles until the priest poured water in her eyes.

Bless the children.

A baby robin got caught in the window well where I stayed. Its father perched nervously above, morsels for the little one dangled from his beak. Mr. Robin tried to land in the window well, but it was a tricky operation, and he aborted the mission. I opened the window. Perhaps I could flush out the baby somehow.

At that moment, the little bird shifted its plump, dappled body and lifted up and out. Like Dorothy in Oz, it had the power to leave all along.

This is not a story with a moral. It’s just a way of paying attention.

The miles roll on. I don’t know the song that mentions California as I drive and think on all these things. The sound of the chords mixes with the wash of the sky and the stunning green fields.

It’s a portrait of contentment, the soul at rest.

Mine is a small life spent shuttling many miles on a highway that normally numbs my brain. Today this life feels as big as an Iowa sky over a ribbon of road, heading home.

A lot of us like to sing, right? We bellow with glee as little kids and it’s fun. Then, slowly we get told to dial down the volume. Eventually, some singers emerge as true vocal talent. They get solos.

The rest of us may stay in choir because it’s still fun, and we’re with friends, but we’ll never shine. We know that. Still, there are those moments—you know what I mean—where the harmony aligns in near perfection. The tone is pure.

Something shifts; the air crackles with electricity, and you and everyone around you is lifted by the vibrations emanating through your vocal chords. It’s magical. I have been chasing that magic most of my adult life.

I once organized a church choir because it seemed like it would bring people together. I did not conduct, and I did not accompany, but I did corral the chorale, and it was fun while it lasted.

Then, one summer, a young music teacher put an area choir together, and it drew young and old from Newell, Storm Lake, Alta, and Aurelia, perhaps Cherokee, too. We sang at Alta’s Night Out in the city park, and it, too, was fun.

A year or so later, an adjunct at Buena Vista University started an early music choir. I sang with real musicians, and I was out of my depth. They obliged me even though I was lost much of the time. It, too, was fun while it lasted.

Around the same time, a friend and I went to a weekend-long adult choir camp at Luther College for a couple of summers. Again, singing with real musicians was a workout that I was not in musical shape for. What I really loved was the after-hours “beer choir.”

In other words, for people like me who love music, who can carry a tune, but aren’t trained musicians, there aren’t a ton of just-for-fun places for group singing.

One day, a friend posted a video on social media showing some everyday Canadians singing Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” I had to know more. The throng of voices was led by two friends, Daveed Goldman, who played guitar and Nobu Adilman, who conducted.

Their idea was simple. Invite people to a bar. Teach them to sing an arrangement of a popular song. Practice harmony. Put it all together. Have fun. Connect with other humans.

It was not a performance. There was no audience. It was just for the sheer joy of singing together. People of all ages and walks of life showed up and clamored for more.

I spent countless hours watching video after video on their YouTube channel. This non-competitive, low-stakes, open-participation event lit the pleasure AND reward areas in my brain.

For years, I dreamed of making the trek to Toronto, where Choir! Choir! Choir! was based. They met in various bars. The places were packed. Sometimes people were turned away. Sometimes they didn’t meet. The logistics for someone coming from afar seemed problematic.

And then, people from all over wanted their own Choir! Choir! Choir! experiences. In 2017, Daveed and Nobu (who sometimes go by DaBu) began touring. This meant that they were in Toronto less frequently, and with that, logistics seemed even more problematic.

At first, DaBu visited mostly Canadian cities, but after the worst of COVID passed, they began to appear in big American cities, sometimes with famous singers joining them. I followed the C! C! C! tours and salivated. How far would I have to travel?

Somehow, someone had the good sense to nab them for smaller venues, too. When I discovered they were booked to perform in mid-May at the Temple Theater in Des Moines, I knew it was time.

The friend who introduced me to C! C! C! was all in, too, and she brought another friend, a newbie. I had expected that DaBu would follow their old protocol of rehearsing just one song, getting it down pat, and then filming the final product.

But no, they now do an evening of songs by a given artist: ABBA songs or Fleetwood Mac or, on our night, the songs of Queen.

“Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?”

Oh, it was real, all right. So real that DaBu agreed to do two shows instead of just the one originally scheduled.

“Don’t stop me now, cause I’m havin’ a good time!”

It was grand, even better than I hoped. I felt the electricity, and it was over much too soon.

Choir! Choir! Choir! is where those who feel consigned to sing in the shower or the car find their people at last. I’m often shy, but afterward, I walked up to Nobu and said, “Thank you for not making me come to Toronto.”

Instead, I wish I’d said, “Oooo, you ma[d]e me live!”

It’s not that I wouldn’t want to visit Toronto. It’s just that I never thought they’d come to a place like Des Moines.

They said they were impressed by the sound we made. They said they would come to Des Moines again. We’ll hold you to that, DaBu!

Last week, I wrote about all the good things that the Americans with Disabilities Act has brought for people with disabilities. I also wrote that Universal Design and Access have continued to expand access opportunities for everyone.

In other words, ramps, automatic doors, and digital information displays have been major improvements in getting where we all need to go, but we haven’t reached the end of the road. Not by a long shot.

In 2024 the Department of Justice updated part of its regulations of the ADA requiring that “web content and mobile applications (apps) are accessible to people with disabilities.”

What does this mean exactly? Well, if you’ve ever wandered into the settings on a TV, looking for closed captions and clicked the wrong option, you may have heard a voice begin to describe what was happening on the screen.

I listened to this feature once, and it was an exhaustive description of the scene’s action, but it also described some background elements. I know how helpful closed captions can be, so I could well imagine how this assistive technology would help a person who is blind.

So, that’s one of the features that state and local governments are expected to provide on websites and any third-party application software they use. Public colleges and universities must also comply. Private colleges and universities that receive federal funding should also offer such technologies.

Where things can get sticky is in the usage of third-party applications. The third party doesn’t necessarily have to meet these requirements, but the state or local government or college or university does. In other words, the state or local government or educational institution has to figure how to make the apps comply or work with the vendor to accomplish this.

The way that you and I interact with web content and mobile apps, whether we find them easy to use or not, is known as User Experience or UX. The irony of complying with web and app accessibility is that user experience can become clunky or unsatisfying.

If this sounds like a hassle and a headache, it surely must be. The consequences of compliance can have the effect of making a worse user experience.

One of the apps I regularly use hosts Buena Vista University’s digitized campus newspapers and alumni publications. While the app would never have rated a gold star as a stellar user experience, it worked well enough. A few updates over the years made it better.

A couple of weeks ago, though, the app suddenly looked completely different. Bright blue and green had replaced the more traditional landing page. When I tried to execute a search, it balked. I tried again and again and yet again several more times.

Finally, after waiting long, twitchy seconds, the page loaded, but trying to filter my search by a smaller date range proved equally annoying. It was like a horse who did not want to be ridden that day. Nope, no way, uh-uh. Neigh.

I put it down to an internet goblin that rears its head sometimes. It would get better, I reasoned. A few days later, a colleague in another department contacted me, expressing great displeasure as he was trying to use the app.

His unhappiness was enough to stir me to contact the vendor. “Why the change? This is pretty awful. Please roll back the changes.”

The changes could not be rolled back; they were done in the name of access compliance.

“The updated platform is designed to conform to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 Level AA standards, the globally recognized benchmark for digital accessibility and ADA Title II compliance, and is built to work effectively with assistive technologies, support multiple methods of interaction and navigation, and improve overall readability, visibility, focus, and usability for all users.

These accessibility improvements benefit a broad range of users, including aging populations, individuals with temporary impairments, users navigating on mobile devices, and anyone who benefits from clearer and more flexible ways of interacting with digital content.”

OK, but why does the interface feel so bad to use, I asked. Everything felt awkward and difficult. The vendor admitted that there were kinks to work out, which seemed like an understatement.

Later, I happened to talk to a digital learning designer who works for the University of Minnesota. Let’s call them “Morris.” Morris said that if U of M’s learning tools aren’t compliant, it causes them no end of frustration.

Technical compliance (with the WCAG standards) and usability for people with (and without) disabilities are sometimes at loggerheads, Morris said. Features that many of us have come to love, like sliders (to increase size, for example) and drag-and-drop functionality, aren’t that easy to make accessible.

And if someone like Morris does manage to make them accessible, ease-of-use might suffer, which explained what was happening for me and my colleague at Buena Vista University.

For a while, I groused about these changes. It’s not the first time an app’s been updated when the changes felt like a backward step, but then I got a grip. Struggling with apps when you’re

1. colorblind or

2. prone to seizures or

3. ADHD and need a page free of distracting elements or

4. dyslexic and need to easily switch fonts to make letters clearer,

made me realize that a couple of days of frustration is nothing compared to what many students and adults with disabilities deal with on a daily basis.

Change is hard, and it’s going to be bumpy for Morris, who’s struggling to figure out how to balance compliance with usability; for vendors, who will need to step up their game and figure out how to do better by everyone; for people like me and my colleague, who will need to take a breath and be patient with the growing pains on the way to providing better access for everyone.

Many people know that former Iowa Senator Tom Harkin was the mover and shaker behind the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. One of the bill’s features required that access to buildings be equitable for people with mobility challenges.

When I went to Europe in the 1990s, I was struck by all the cobblestones and uneven streets, narrow sidewalks, and steep, twisty staircases in old buildings. I remember wondering how disabled people were able to get around. I saw no wheelchairs then, but things seem to be improving with low-floor trains and trams and specially-outfitted taxis.

We think of the ADA as focused on access, and it is, but providing access is also a justice issue. For much of human history, people who couldn’t move under their own steam were at the mercy of others or worse, consigned to the shadows of human life.

Americans owe a lot to Tom Harkin’s work. In addition to making buildings more accessible, the ADA strives to make hiring practices more just. Much has been written about Harkin’s personal story that drove him to steer the ADA into being.

People may be less informed, however, about Universal Design and Access, which is not a law, but in many ways, a next logical step to the ADA. Universal Design seeks to create environments where people can continue to access facilities or services as their needs change.

Sometimes it’s a matter of incorporating a thoughtful adjustment that benefits everyone. When I was in Portland waiting to board the light rail, an extension slid out from the car’s doorway and allowed for step-free access from the platform. There was no need to “mind the gap” and I was thankful.

A parent with a stroller or a person in a wheelchair could easily enter. I noticed that not all stations were set up to work with this extension, but it was a joy when they did.

I don’t have mobility issues (yet), but I do have moderate hearing loss. To compensate, I wear hearing aids. They work great most of the time, except when public transportation loudspeakers are poor. When I’ve visited Chicago, I use the “L” a lot. Loudspeakers on many cars are terrible, and I can’t hear the next stop unless I look at the station when we slow down.

There have been occasions when I can’t see the sign because of where I’m sitting or where the car stops, but on some recent trips, there have been digital displays at the front of some cars. They clearly display the name of the stop, and it helps me—pardon the pun--stay on track. Not all “L” cars have this technology yet, but I’m sure I won’t be the only one happy to see them when they do.

When it comes to air travel, the sound system on airplanes can also be terrible. On a recent flight, I couldn’t hear anything the attendant said as people found their seats. This probably owed to the plane’s door being open and outside jet noises drowning her out.

Sometimes, however, I can’t hear what the pilot is saying while we’re cruising at 30-something-thousand feet. It would be nice to know what’s up! (Again, sorry for the pun.)

Some pilots are funny, and I can always use a laugh while penned inside a metal tube with 200 strangers. If the situation is far less than funny, I’d like to know that, too.

Of course, I can ask the person seated next to me, but should I have to? A digital display positioned at several intervals throughout the cabin would help people like me stay informed.

Time was many planes sported a seatback monitor. Wouldn’t it have been handy to see all that was being said on the seatback? The monitors were never put to such use, except to show a canned safety film, but that was a missed opportunity for us hearing-impaired folks.

It’s too late to make such a suggestion; seatback monitors are disappearing from most domestic flights. Techsciresearch.com says it’s one way to reduce the plane’s weight and make more room for passengers. Does this mean they will try to squish us in even more tightly?

I don’t call my hearing impairment a disability because I function at a high level in my work and personal life, but it has made me aware of the hurdles, nay, roadblocks that many face daily. I can’t imagine how frustrating it might be.

It doesn’t help that in our current political climate, we have a president who makes fun of people with disabilities and who calls fallen soldiers suckers and losers. He requires the veneer of perfection to function, but he’s no picture of perfection himself.

The backs of his hands are covered in makeup that tries (unsuccessfully) to hide bruises. He got off a plane recently and walked as if he were drunk. He wasn’t drunk because he’s famously a teetotaler, but it sure looked like he could have used some assistance for whatever was bothering him.

I wanted to say, “Hey, Mr. President! If you used a ramp today, thank Tom Harkin.” Harkin is, for me, the measure of a man because his work was guided not by seeking perfection but in practicing compassion. If we practiced more of that as a nation, such would make us a lot closer to great.

I.

Years ago, poet Linda Pastan wrote:

“Isn’t this what life

could be: a walk

before breakfast with the sea

opening its chapters

of water and light. . .”

It stirred up a longing I never knew I had. I’d never seen an ocean, never walked on an endless sandy beach. Oceans seemed mythical to this prairie kid.

And yet.

We were formed in water; we all started as little sea creatures, swimming in a self-contained ocean.

Our bodies are half water, and the pull toward bodies of water is strong.

The prairie was once a shallow, inland sea, and later a sea of grass.

What I’m saying is that the sea is in my blood. Yours, too.

II.

We are here, at the sea, on a beautiful coast. Five mothers and two daughters.

We are here, seven women who once all lived in the same small town, long scattered to coasts or lives far flung.

Though not of my blood, they are my sisters and mothers and aunties and daughters all the same.

We lived on the prairie once, in a place tilled and tiled and shorn of trees.

The flat horizon line afforded brilliant sunsets.

Here, we walk in a fragmented pack on skinny sidewalks past the deli and the wine bar, down to the water tumbling in on itself, to the sand pounded hard by time and tide.

III.

Here, too, exists a strong horizon line, but the sunsets are muted in a hazy scrim. Mist snags on the pines. We see life at the beach through a gauzy lens, but many things become clearer as we walk in the wind and the spray.

I step like a stork through the surge at water’s edge. I pick up small, dark stones, smooth as buttons.

There’s a whole world order happening here. Small shorebirds buzz the water’s edge in formation. Gulls confer with much bobbing and ducking before running headlong toward the water and lifting off.

The surf envelops my ankles, and my feet sink under the shifting sand.

IV.

We cook, we eat, we laugh, we gripe (a little). We are growing older.

In her poem, Pastan tries to imagine what would happen if she “refused to leave” the beach. That’s what hooked me many years ago, a longing for a different life with different rhythms.

We aren’t refusing to leave, we seven. We know our lives are waiting for us away from the beach.

We shake off the sand. We pack, we hug, we wave goodbye. Thank you, my sisters and mothers and aunties and daughters. I carry the prairie and the sea and you with me always.

I finally met Byron of Byron’s fame. You know, the quirky music venue in Pomeroy, a sleepy northwest Iowa town, like so many others, towns that once supported their own school systems and sports teams. They cultivated fierce rivalries with the towns next door.

Now, they are hanging on to whatever vestiges of identity they can, remembering a lost era when storefronts were occupied and people could—and did—shop locally.

I grew up in a town very much like Pomeroy. I know such towns, but none of them have a Byron’s. You must want to go to get there. This was a fact noted by members of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative who descended on Storm Lake last week for their spring meeting.

One IWC friend from Des Moines marveled at how we, in northwest Iowa, drive 45 minutes for all kinds of reasons. “We complain if we have to drive to Ankeny,” she said.

Here’s what I’ve noticed, though. People in cities spend nearly as much time getting to sporting events and shopping centers as rural people do. They may drive shorter distances, but they have other negotiations that take time: traffic, parking, and waiting in line. They have density; we have distance.

On the way to Pomeroy, I tried to envision what my friends were thinking as they drove along Highway 7. This is a beautiful time of year. Fields are plowed, their rich, black soil seems full of promise. On the surface, all looks well, but my friend Jim Sayers rightly notes that those fields remind him “of the significant challenges we face to preserve soil and its health.”

The land is flat and open, featureless almost. How does that register with someone like my friend, Bob, who used to live on an acreage in southeast Iowa, with hills and trees.

Or my friend, Connie from Des Moines who asked what people do if they need milk at 9 pm. In a word: Casey’s.

What do they see when they roll through Newell, where once the Good Samaritan Center offered nursing care and jobs? Or Fonda, with its ball fields and swimming pool set back from the highway? Do they see quaint Americana or a foreign, fading way of life? A way of life that’s interesting to pass through and say you’ve been there, done that?

On that 45-minute drive to Pomeroy, I only met a handful of cars. For me, this is normal, but what does it feel like for someone from Des Moines? Eerie, perhaps? Otherworldly?

I pulled up not far from the front door and walked right in. I was handed a raffle ticket and a multi-colored plastic peace symbol. Groovy.

Walking back from the bar with my Coke in a can (only a buck!!!), I saw Byron perched on a stool. I extended my hand; he opened his arms, and then I knew that everything that’s been said or written about the man and this place was true.

I arrived late for the first set but caught some of Jason Walsmith’s act. He was performing solo, but you may know him as a member of The Nadas. Dartanyan Brown followed with his vocal stylings. Carol Montag’s voice recalled Joni Mitchell and Judy Collins for me, and she sang hilarious songs about Jello and Velveeta.

John Naughton walked in about then and sat at our table. He carried two ukuleles. I’m fascinated by that instrument; learning to play is on my retirement bucket list.

In between sets, Byron pulled tickets and announced raffle winners. Among the prizes: a back scratcher, a pocketknife, photos of that night’s musicians, and a Bic lighter. The winner of the backscratcher said he would add it to his collection. Obviously, he’s a Byron’s regular.

Then the second set started with Chip Albright and his new song about Josh Turek’s candidacy to replace Joni Ernst in the US Senate. I couldn’t stay for Lyle Muller’s round, sadly, and I’m still curious about what happened with those ukuleles.

Art Cullen and I got to share our little corner of the world for a couple of days with good friends, good conversation, and good music. And I finally made it to Byron’s.

It’s delightfully down-home, where all are welcome. Byron’s is the way the world should be.

Shame on me for waiting so long.

“What a world, what a world,” cried the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz. We can utter that same cry every day, every day.

What kind of a world is it where a president and his minions work to undo all that makes America, America?

I’m talking threats to the Constitution, the 14^th Amendment, the 19^th Amendment, the Voting Rights Act, and one of my personal favorites, the Presidential Records Act.

Prior to Richard Nixon’s presidency, United States presidents were allowed to remove documents they created during their terms and claim them as personal property.

In 1934, the United States Congress established its first ever national archives. Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the law for the National Archives to serve as a centralized, federal repository for the government’s documentary heritage.

Previously, federal records had literally been stashed “wherever” and depending on where the “wherever” was, rodents might have eaten documents or leaky roofs might have stained and blurred the writing. Mold could have set in and spread to unaffected documents. Yes, a National Archives was long overdue.

FDR also “believed presidential papers were an important part of the national heritage and should be preserved for future generations”1 but that each president, rather than overwhelming the National Archives, should agree to establish their own presidential library but make the documents available for public use.

In 1938, FDR planned for the first-ever presidential library, where he would later deposit “50 million items, including 16,000 books, 15,000 photographs, 275,000 feet (84,000 m) of movie film, and 300 sound recordings.”2

FDR’s successors also built presidential libraries with private funds that were managed by what was then called the National Archives and Records Service (NARS).3 In 1955 Congress passed the Presidential Libraries Act allowing presidential documents and memorabilia to be transferred to the archives.

A little over a decade later Richard Nixon and Watergate happened. After Nixon left office in 1974, Congress decreed that Nixon’s papers (including White House recordings, of course) were to be seized and transferred to the National Archives.

In 1978 Congress passed the Presidential Records Act (PRA) which “changed the legal ownership of the official records of the President from private to public, and established a new statutory structure under which Presidents, and subsequently NARA, must manage the records of their Administrations.”4

I have written about the current president’s disregard for this legislation

before. In case you’ve forgotten, he took a heap of boxes with him to Florida after his first term, claiming they were personal property, but they were not. They included classified information, which he showed to guests at Mar-a-lago--people who had no security clearance to view such documents.

Some of those boxes have been returned to the government, but many still remain in unsecured areas at his Florida residence. Special Counsel Jack Smith investigated these documents and wrote a report, which remains under seal by Judge Aileen Cannon. Smith has testified twice, once in closed session and once in public, about this case.

After the president fired the National Archivist, Colleen Shogan in February 2025, the archivists at NARA were left to serve under Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Rubio was appointed as Acting Head of the National Archives, but he knew bupkis about the profession. His 300-day term recently expired, and NARA employees are left wondering what comes next.

What’s not likely to come next are the boxes from Mar-a-lago. On April 1—no fooling—the Department of Justice issued a memo—a memo--that the Presidential Records Act was unconstitutional and that the president really doesn’t have to turn over his records when he leaves office after his second term.

The American Historical Association and American Oversight have both sued to dispute this opinion. Because it’s ridiculous. It’s a memo.

Historian Joanne Freeman states that the DOJ’s memo violates the separation of powers. “What we’re talking about is [a] public record that is OURS, and that is how we understand the history of presidencies.”

We can see what the endgame is, of course. 45/47 doesn’t want the public seeing these records. He doesn’t want us to know what he did in his first term, but as Freeman pointed out, destroying or hiding records “is not how noncorrupt regimes function.”

Indeed they do not. I follow all of this with great interest because it is my profession, sure, but how do we—you, me, all of us--know our history unless we have the facts? Yeah, right now, the facts of who we are sucks, but that’s why it’s even more important that we retain our documentary heritage, so that down the road we don’t lie and so that we don’t forget.

Saving the Nixon tapes helped topple a corrupt presidency. We need the boxes from Mar-a-lago, and we need the rest of the Epstein files.

I’m tired of being held hostage. Aren’t you? This guy, bulldozing democracy with the same unconcern that he ravaged East Wing, says we have plenty of our own oil. In one breath, he says that we don’t need oil from the Middle East, and in the next, he threatens to bomb Iran back to the Stone Age.

This same inflammatory statement uttered by the president riled my fellow columnist-friend Art Cullen in his April 6, 2026 column, “The Fred Flintstone Doctrine in the Middle East.” That Stone Age reference made Cullen think about the cartoonish nature of the man in charge and his buffoonish administration. For me, it’s more like life in America has become a Pennywise nightmare.

The president’s posturing is a joke, except it isn’t.

It’s not funny that he sends a message to a centuries-old civilization saying, in effect, “I will annihilate you.” It’s not funny that he threatens a religious-extremist government that he does not understand. It’s not funny that, in one breath, he makes threats in the name of God, and in another breath, in the name of Allah.

It’s not funny that he and his Department of Defense Secretary equate God’s name with “lethality” and bandy about the idea of massive slaughter. They want to scorch the earth so that those who survive will wish they were dead.

45/47 wants to dehumanize Iranian citizens, to reduce them to scratching in the dirt, just like he wanted to dehumanize the Obamas with that monkey meme. Just like he wanted to dehumanize the protesters of No Kings II with the airplane dumping liquid poop in that tasteless cartoon.

What sort of person does such things?

An old phrase, “cock of the walk,” comes to mind. The Cambridge Dictionary defines it as “a man who is too confident and thinks he is better than everyone else.” A definition which recalls the cartoon character, Foghorn Leghorn, who thought he ruled the roost that is, I say, that is until the Barnyard Dawg gave him a good whoopin’.

Where’s our Barnyard Dawg? Congress? That’s a joke, son.

Shucks, Art was right, as usual, going for the cartoon angle of this wacky—but dangerous--scenario. He went for Hanna-Barbera; I went for Looney Tunes.

Oh, how I wish we were all watching 45/47 wave goodbye, saying, “That’s all, folks!”

Yo, nerd alert!

I loved studying poetry and literature in college.

I’m grateful to have been educated in an era when such things were valued. I work at Buena Vista University and in my job as archivist, it was a joy to discover that one of our past presidents highly regarded the liberal arts. Years ago, Keith Briscoe wrote captains of industry to ask their thoughts about hiring such majors.

The corporate presidents who responded to Briscoe said they would welcome a well-read, articulate young person in the world of business. Those responses occurred at the twilight of the liberal arts, just as technology was about to burst into everyone’s life with desktop computers, followed by the internet.

In its time, my alma mater--a small, private college not unlike BVU--had a robust English department. At the end of the 2022-2023 academic year a student could no longer major in literature there. Many of us English alumni mourned.

Big deal!

Good riddance!

What a worthless major!

“You want fries with that?”

Today, students and their parents expect career preparation in college because that’s what the world now demands. One of the results is that students read far less.

They still read, but it’s likely to be something light or texts from friends or family. And they watch posts and videos from influencers who draw them in. “Come see my life. Look upon your own and despair.”

We humans are wired to look, to always look for something beyond this finite entity called the self, to fill the void. Lighting on an image is a siren call. It draws us in.

Words, on the other hand, are work. Our brain must conjure the image. Big words and new thoughts are hard work. Big words can make us angry. We don’t want to wrestle with a story that demands concentration. We don’t want to trip over words we’ve never seen before. We don’t want to grapple with foreign ideas.

I want to say to young people: When so confronted, stay with it. Enter the dark forest of the daunting syllabus. Cut through the thicket of hundreds of required pages. It’s easier than ever to look up a strange word. You don’t even have to get out of your chair.

You just might be transformed along the way. You might emerge from the difficult class a new creature, seeing the world as though for the first time. Take a chance!

This can be a lot to ask the risk-averse young, and I sympathize. I was not one of those can-do type kids. I was riddled with self-doubt and had almost no self-confidence. My only saving grace was that I had a deep hunger to learn. And that, like Robert Frost’s fork in the road, made all the difference.

Let’s just say it, shall we? Technology is a devil. It is smooth and cool and easy in ways that wading through a text can never be.

It’s not that I or my peers were better. We were just deprived of that particular devil. We were thrown back on our own devices.

What an ironic turn of phrase.

In our day, being thrown back on our own devices meant hanging out, screwing around, getting into a little trouble. It meant climbing things like arches and flag poles and cramming a dozen people into a Volkswagen Beetle.

I often marvel that we had so much time to write letters, build Homecoming floats, sew clothing, can food. Days stretched out for what seemed like, well, days. But now, we too have given our souls to that devil. We throw ourselves at our devices just like the kids do.

Now, we descend rabbit holes that lead to underground cities. When we resurface, a whole afternoon has vaporized in a haze of perfect families on perfect vacations. What remains is a tech hangover and a pounding case of envy.

For me, a green goo attaches to my organs, and failure coats my tongue. I look around and all I see is a ratty couch and a ratty dog. I am a person under the influence of the image.

Some of this is not new; we are always being influenced. My grandmother listened to Kitchen Klatter, which told her how to bake a perfect cake. My mother had Better Homes and Gardens’ glossy photos of perfectly glazed hams. Seventeen magazine’s layouts showed perfectly coiffed girls with perfectly straight smiles.

Honestly, one might argue that writers are influencers, too, but I didn’t hate my life after reading Madame Bovary or The Old Man and the Sea. I was entertained, transported even. An alchemy occurred, whose origin was murky and whose end might remain hidden for years.

I was still me but also not me. I was enlarged in ways one might not detect but that were real nonetheless. It was an experience devoid of monetization and followers. There was no algorithm to judge my success at being human.

Thankfully, I’ve learned that the green goo can be shed with fortitude. I lift my eyes to what’s real. My couch is comfortable; it just needs a throw, and my dog is loving; he just needs a haircut. What’s more, the sunset is glorious, and the trees are starting to bud.

When I see young people bent over their phones, I don’t blame them, but I mourn the loss of their youth and hopefulness and how a devil took it.