Nature nerd Emily Bredthauer took most of the pictures enclosed below between August 30 and October 4, 2025 in Story, Marion, and Dallas counties.

I feel so blessed when I come upon a plant I don’t recognize. It’s like a gift from the Universe, inviting my curiosity to be satiated by the endless wonder of the natural world.

In late August, Lobelia inflata was a gift from my rain-soaked sacrament—the very small lavender-colored flowers caught my eye amongst the bevy of bright green. 

Gerald Ott of Ankeny was a high school English teacher and for 30 years a school improvement consultant for the Iowa State Education Association.

When I look at the picture of the Des Moines Public Schools board of directors, I think of the Kingston Trio’s song “It Takes a Worried Man.” In the midst of a crisis, we’re all worried. it’s the last line of the refrain that buoys me: but I won’t be worried long.

It takes a worried man to sing a worried song, oh yes
It takes a worried man to sing a worried song
It takes a worried man to sing a worried song
I’m worried now, but I won’t be worried long

One last word about Dr. Roberts

I recommend Jason Benell’s recent Bleeding Heartland essay, previously published on his Substack newsletter, The Odd Man Out. He gives us a different, eye-opening perspective on the case of the Des Moines Public Schools’ former superintendent, Ian Roberts.

The columnist Chris Espersen shared her perspective in the Cedar Rapids Gazette on October 12. Espersen is a Des Moines parent, a close observer of Roberts, and has had many opportunities to see his student-whispering magic up close. Espersen saw the same potential that then-Des Moines School Board president Teree Caldwell-Johnson must have seen when she recommended that Roberts be hired.

Wayne Ford is the executive director of Wayne Ford Equity Impact Institute and co-Director of the Emmy Award winning Brown and Black Forums of America. He is a former member of the Iowa legislature and the founder and former executive director of Urban Dreams.

The news cycle today is filled with headlines declaring that Elon Musk may become the world’s first trillionaire. His wealth, tied to Tesla, SpaceX, and other ventures, rises and falls daily with the stock market. This possibility captures attention, raises eyebrows, and sparks debate about inequality in the modern age.

But history reminds us to pause. Long before the stock exchange existed, long before Wall Street tracked fortunes, there was a king in West Africa whose wealth was so extraordinary that no number could capture it. His name was Mansa Musa, and his crown jewel was the legendary city of Timbuktu.

Bruce Lear lives in Sioux City and has been connected to Iowa’s public schools for 38 years. He taught for eleven years and represented educators as an Iowa State Education Association regional director for 27 years until retiring. He can be reached at BruceLear2419@gmail.com 

The federal government is shuttered. Are there round-the-clock intense negotiations to find a way to reopen? Are leaders proposing new innovative ways to turn the lights back on?  Is there a sense of urgency? Is the president tirelessly practicing “his art of the deal”? 

No, none of that’s happening.

The Senate convenes to vote on both Republican and Democratic funding proposals, knowing neither will pass. There’s no urgency and little concern. After the gavel, they flee to sympathetic shout-shows to point fingers, hoping Americans will blame the other side. 

A new Iowa poll is testing messages about a $4,000 tax credit to help families cover “approved education expenses,” and suggests that approach may save taxpayer money currently spent on children enrolled in public schools.

It’s not clear who commissioned the text survey, which has been in the field in recent days. The questionnaire points to Randy Feenstra’s campaign for governor, which is technically still in the “exploratory” phase, or some entity planning to support Feenstra for governor. Many of the questions use preferred Republican frames (“education freedom,” parental choice, “limiting government overreach”). The poll asks how important it is for Iowa’s next governor to “work to improve K-12 education,” and tests only one potential match-up: Randy Feenstra vs. Rob Sand. (Last month, Bleeding Heartland covered a different poll testing messages about Feenstra and Sand.)

Homeschoolers are an important Republican constituency, especially among social conservatives. Families who send their kids to private schools—almost all of which are Christian or Catholic—would also welcome an education tax credit, in addition to the taxpayer assistance they already receive through Iowa’s school voucher program (“education savings accounts”).

Feenstra has good reason to search for ways to shore up his support with the “education freedom” crowd. His underwhelming victory over a little-known 2024 primary challenger highlighted troubles on his right flank. He is unpopular among property rights activists who oppose the use of eminent domain to build Summit Carbon Solutions’ proposed CO2 pipeline. He has skipped forums involving other Republican candidates for governor, including an Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition event in July. Feenstra’s exploratory committee has the resources to pay for opinion research.

A recent poll of “likely Republican voters,” conducted by American Viewpoint, found Feenstra “in a commanding position,” with 41 percent support in the governor’s race and no other GOP candidate above 5 percent. A cautionary note: American Viewpoint’s polls for Feenstra’s U.S. House campaign found the incumbent with a roughly 50-point lead over challenger Kevin Virgil before the 2024 GOP primary. Feenstra ended up winning the nomination in Iowa’s fourth Congressional district by a margin of 60.1 percent to 39.4 percent.

Tara Guion is a mother of three from Iowa and an advocate for families affected by Medicaid policy, sharing her story to highlight the real impact of proposed cuts on Iowa children and families. 

As I stood in line at the Iowa State Fair, waiting to meet Senator Joni Ernst, I couldn’t help but think about my child, Luca, and the struggles we’ve faced as a family. My experience is a testament to the importance of Medicaid, a lifeline for many families like mine.

As a pregnant mother of two (soon to be three) boys, I’ve had my fair share of challenges, but it’s the memory of Luca’s four-and-a-half-month stay in the NICU that drives my advocacy. Born at just 25 weeks in March 2021, Luca’s prematurity and subsequent medical complications led to $1.7 million in medical costs, a burden that would have been insurmountable without Medicaid.

The care he has received, including occupational and physical therapy, as well as nutritional services, was crucial to his development. Today, at four and a half, he’s a thriving child, defying the odds, and he started school this fall. 

A pair of recent polls have tried to gauge how the arrest of then Des Moines Superintendent Ian Roberts could affect Iowa’s U.S. Senate race.

One text survey, which was in the field this past week, seeks to determine how much respondents have heard about the incident, who “bears the most responsibility” for the situation, and whether the Roberts controversy gives respondents concerns about Des Moines School Board President Jackie Norris, who is one of the Democrats running for Senate. A different version of the survey tests another negative message about Norris’ past political work and support for “radical DEI policies” on the school board.

Staff for Norris did not respond to inquiries about the survey, but the question wording (enclosed in full below) strongly suggests the Norris campaign commissioned it. Notably, the poll tests U.S. Representative Ashley Hinson (the Republican front-runner) against Norris twice, and Hinson against State Representative Josh Turek once, but does not ask respondents about their preference between Hinson and either State Senator Zach Wahls or Iraq War veteran Nathan Sage. It also tests messages about Norris, but not about any other Democratic candidate.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee, the main campaign arm of U.S. Senate Republicans, commissioned a separate poll of 579 “Democratic primary voters via text-to-web surveys” on September 29 and 30, a few days after Roberts’ arrest. The NRSC has not released full results from that poll, the questionnaire, or the screen used to identify “Democratic primary voters.” Jennie Taer published a few findings in an article on the conservative website The Daily Wire.

Herb Strentz was dean of the Drake School of Journalism from 1975 to 1988 and professor there until retirement in 2004. He was executive secretary of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council from its founding in 1976 to 2000.

Former Des Moines Register columnist Rekha Basu offered an open letter to U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley in the Sunday Des Moines Register on September 28: “Congress must stand up to Trump’s lawlessness. That means you, Chuck Grassley.” Her letter was a 1,000-word indictment of President Trump’s second term, ending with this question:

“What is your tipping point, Senator Grassley? Surely you, too, have apprehensions about how this presidency is playing out.”

She did not have to wait long for a response from Grassley, nor did readers. Alongside Basu’s column, the Register published a “Your turn” 950-word commentary, in which Grassley acknowledged our worrisome times. Excerpt:

“The system is broken,” declared Libertarian Thomas Laehn as he kicked off his U.S. Senate campaign on October 11.

The Greene County attorney, who became the first Libertarian elected to a partisan office in Iowa in 2018, styled his case against two-party governance as a two-count “indictment” of the 535 members of Congress.

One of his central arguments could appeal to many disaffected Republicans.

Matt Russell is a farmer, political writer, and progressive ag and rural leader. He has published work in the New York Times, TIME, AgInsider, Civil Eats, and many state or local publications. He co-owns Coyote Run Farm with his husband Patrick Standley in rural Lacona, Iowa. A version of this essay first appeared on his Substack newsletter, Growing New Leaders: Perspectives from Coyote Run Farm.

The media is covering the federal government shutdown as a battle between Democrats and Republicans. I disagree that this is a fair assessment. The battle is about more than partisan politics. For President Donald Trump, the MAGA movement, and Republicans, this is a battle about redefining the federal government, the Constitution, our democracy, and our nation as it has developed over 250 years.

I don’t think the federal government has ever been used for this kind of obviously partisan communication, other than what Trump has previously said and done. As a reminder, the president is not covered by the Hatch Act, the law that prevents federal employees from engaging in partisan politics while performing their duties as well as other aspects of their lives.

Without doing further research, I don’t want to claim something like this has never happened, but unless someone can show evidence that it has, I’m willing to suggest it likely hasn’t.

Marian Wilson Kimber is Professor of Musicology at the University of Iowa and the editor of the Journal of the Society for American Music.

On October 6, prison laborers began the process of dismantling the 168-year-old State Historical Society of Iowa in Iowa City. State administrators claim it is too expensive to run. You wouldn’t think a music historian like me would have much to look at in the Society’s collection. Spillville was famously visited by Czech composer Antonín Dvořák in 1893. Iowa was the birthplace of Meredith Willson, Bix Beiderbecke, and Simon Estes and the site of the Surf Ballroom, but otherwise, it doesn’t have much of a musical reputation.

I first visited the modest brick building in 2011, searching for the women who posed like the “Grecian urn” ladies satirized in Willson’s The Music Man—yes, they were real. The collection had photographs. But it was something else I encountered there that transformed my research. Archivist Mary Bennett brought me a cardboard box of little program booklets from women’s clubs all over Iowa.

Sondra Feldstein is a farmer and business owner in Polk County and a plaintiff in the litigation discussed here.

Do you care about preserving farmland in Polk County?

Would you prefer that Bob Vander Plaats and his FAMiLY Leader organization not build a national conference center in rural Polk County?

Would you like for your elected representatives to follow the law and not give preferential treatment to powerful organizations?

Do you feel utterly helpless and need to make a difference?

A lawsuit making its way through the courts right now addresses all these issues.

Randy Evans is executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that promotes openness and transparency in Iowa’s state and local governments. He can be reached at DMRevans2810@gmail.com. This essay first appeared on his Substack newsletter, Stray Thoughts. 

The lesson of the hot stove emerged again last week.

That is the lesson toddlers learn early and smart ones retain for a lifetime. Touch something hot and you know not to touch it again.

Educator Ian Roberts delivered a new rendition of the lesson over the past fortnight. Time will tell whether government officials take to heart the learning moment offered by the Roberts train wreck.

A text poll in the field this week is probing whether the recent arrest of Superintendent Ian Roberts is a “convincing” argument against a bond issue that is a priority for the Des Moines Public Schools.

Voters in the Des Moines school district will decide on November 4 whether to approve a $265 million, 20-year general obligation bond to finance the Reimagining Education, Reinvigorating Schools initiative. The referendum needs at least a 60 percent “yes” vote to pass; the district hopes to expand or remodel all of the Des Moines high schools and nearly a dozen middle or elementary schools.

The survey tests two messages against the bond referendum and two supporting it, with a ballot test before and after respondents read the arguments. I enclose below the full questionnaire, drawn from screenshots shared by those who took the “Des Moines Schools Survey.”

Representatives of Yes for Des Moines Schools, a political committee formed this summer to support the bond issue, did not respond to Facebook or email messages seeking to confirm whether the group commissioned the poll. But the results could provide valuable information to that organization, which had raised $105,000 by mid-July, according to a campaign finance disclosure.

Douglas Burns is a fourth-generation Iowa journalist. He is the co-founder of the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation and a member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative, where this article first appeared on The Iowa Mercury newsletter. His family operated the Carroll Times Herald for 93 years in Carroll, Iowa where Burns resides.

Through what political scientists might call a deep canvass into her own culturally polarized family in rural, de-industrialized Ohio author Beth Macy gives us a riveting, devastating and call-to-action mirror into our nation with her extraordinary new book, Paper Girl: A Memoir Of Home And Family In a Fractured America.

The powerhouse work of non-fiction connects three threads—Macy’s memoir of life in rural Ohio, both as a kid and returning adult, exhaustive and exhilarating reporting on a changing America, and a fierce case for the role of local news in preserving or stitching back democracy.

You can get a first-hand preview of Paper Girl in Des Moines, Iowa this weekend with the author of the just-released book.

This post was a group effort by Johnston Public Schools Supporters, a bipartisan political action committee.

The future of the Johnston Community School District (JCSD) is not merely decided in classrooms or on playing fields; it is shaped in the ballot box. On November 4, 2025, Johnston voters face a critical choice, one that determines whether our tax dollars will continue to build world-class public education or be diverted to systems with zero accountability. The decision is clear: we must elect the unified, experienced, and dedicated team of Justin Smith, Kaycee Schippers, and Rexford Davidson to the Johnston School Board.

This slate of candidates—a veteran educator, an engaged parent and paralegal, and a JCSD alumnus—represents the very best of our community. They will bring a formidable mix of classroom experience, legal knowledge, fiscal prudence, common sense leadership and deep, personal commitment to the Johnston School Board. More importantly, they are united on the singular, defining issue of this election: the unwavering protection and robust enhancement of our public schools as the foundational cornerstone of the Johnston community.

Jason Benell lives in Des Moines with his wife and two children. He is a combat veteran, former city council candidate, and president of Iowa Atheists and Freethinkers. This essay first appeared on his Substack newsletter, The Odd Man Out.

If you care about due process, and if you care about the rule of law, and if you care about justice, then everything surrounding the arrest of Dr. Ian Roberts, former superintendent of Des Moines Public Schools (DMPS), should infuriate you.

This whole event has been awful for everyone involved, from students who looked up to him, parents who trusted him, and administrators who appointed him. But something is being missed in this discussion: the presence of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The agency should be abolished—but if it’s going to be around, it absolutely shouldn’t ever operate this way. Its actions make us less safe, not safer.

Instead of only focusing on Roberts’ purported misdeeds, we should be asking the larger question about what is being taken from our communities. Guess what? It’s more than a trusted school administrator.

Bruce Morrison is a working artist and photographer living with his wife Georgeann in rural southeast O’Brien County, Iowa. Bruce works from his studio/gallery–a renovated late 1920s brooding house/sheep barn. You can follow Morrison on his artist blog, Prairie Hill Farm Studio, or visit his website at Morrison’s studio.

I can’t remember the first time I visited a prairie during the Fall season, but believe it was on Cayler Prairie in Dickinson County. I do remember how struck I was with the color everywhere! It had never occurred to me that prairie habitat would exhibit this color change—duh! So used to autumn color in the forested landscape; the trees that we herald each fall lighting up the scenery with vivid to subtle colors of reds, yellows, orange and ambers! But grasses and plants of prairies? Well, why not?

All plants have the same triggers that cause a color change when autumn arrives. As temperatures drop and daylight duration shortens, chlorophyll (the green pigment) breaks down, revealing other pigments. The carotenoids in differing plants bring on yellows and orange hues as the plant chlorophyll fades. And other plants produce anthocyanins in response to sunlight and cooler temperatures, resulting in red and purple colors. Different species have varying pigment compositions, affecting each type’s fall colors. For instance in the image of Stiff goldenrods (Solidago rigida):

Josh Hughes served on the Interstate 35 Community School District Board of Directors from 2015 to 2019. He lives in Des Moines with his husband and four cats.

The first time I met Claire Celsi was in October 2015. Somehow I learned about an event supporting Hillary Clinton’s campaign with former Secretary of State Madeline Albright at a home in southern West Des Moines. Claire was there as well, and I recall her sharing that she was planning to announce her campaign for House District 42 against GOP incumbent Peter Cownie.

Cownie had raised substantial money in his prior campaigns and had been able to secure reelection by double digits despite representing a swingy district. I distinctly remember Claire saying, almost in implicit recognition of that fact, “I’m gonna out work him.”

John Gilbert farms with a brother, a son, and their wives along South Fork, a tributary of the Iowa River. In addition to non-GMO row crops, they raise small grains, forages, cattle, and antibiotic free pigs they sell to Niman Ranch. John is a volunteer with the Southfork Watershed Alliance, and is active in Practical Farmers of Iowa and the Iowa Farmers Union. Their farm has been recognized for its work toward sustainability. 

EDITOR’S NOTE: John Gilbert wrote the following essay, which was first published by the Des Moines Register, before the two-year anniversary of the 2018 Farm Bill’s expiration (September 30). Four members of Iowa’s Congressional delegation (Senators Chuck Grasssley and Joni Ernst, and Representatives Randy Feenstra and Zach Nunn) serve on the Senate or House Agriculture Committees, which are responsible for writing the Farm Bill.

It’s also important to note that this week, the Trump administration is expected to announce bailout payments for soybean farmers—reportedly of about $100 an acre—to offset damages caused by this administration’s erratic tariffs, and trade disruptions. The need for such a payment underscores the weakness of a farm policy based on unrestricted production.

It’s officially time Iowa has one of those warnings, like what you see on cigarette packages: “Caution: Living in Iowa is Hazardous to Your Health!”

The problem isn’t just that Iowa’s water carries way too many farm field pollutants (we’re all tired of hearing about nitrates), although that’s part of it. It’s not just that Iowa has way too many people dealing with cancer; or just that jobs in agriculture, meat packing, construction and manufacturing can be dangerous; or just the dangers of health care deserts in many areas of Iowa. And it’s not just that climate change is making Iowa’s weather more dangerous. The problem is all of those things, and more.