Kurt Meyer writes a weekly column for the Nora Springs – Rockford Register and the Substack newsletter Showing Up, where this essay (originally published in two parts) first appeared. He served as chair of the executive committee (the equivalent of board chair) of Americans for Democratic Action, America’s most experienced liberal organization.

It seems I lucked out. I don’t know what the statute of limitations is on the illegal sale of raw milk, but I’m about to make a confession. If my violation is so heinous that I simply cannot “run out the clock” on this and enforcement is still possible after five-plus decades, then I’m in big trouble.

My confession: I was part of what, in retrospect, can only be called a raw-milk “syndicate” for maybe five years in my mid-to-late teens. Co-conspirators were my parents and at least one brother, my back-up milker, who always seemed somewhat less helpful than I wished. My customers, beneficiaries of my crime ring, were nearby farm families, plus a thirsty household in Mona, and two guys Dad worked with at the plant… Hormel’s in Austin, Minnesota.

Yeah, we smuggled contraband raw milk across state lines.

Bernie Scolaro is a retired school counselor, a past president of the Sioux City Education Association, and former Sioux City school board member.

I would park around the corner and wait until there was no traffic, no sign of people, before getting out and swiftly entering the bar in Sioux City, Iowa. It was the 1980s, and entering and leaving Three Cheers (the only gay bar in town) without being noticed was always a challenge. I felt the stigma of having to hide who I was, deny myself, not knowing who would approve or disapprove, or what the backlash might be if I were exposed.

At some point in my life, I came to a crossroads. I realized not only that I had to be true to myself, but also that I needed to let others know and accept me. While took too long, I eventually realized that I had another responsibility as well: to show others it’s okay if you are gay and love whom you love. I realized that being open helped others accept themselves and/or their family members who were struggling with their identity.

Earlier this week, I went to dinner. I was wearing RAYGUN’s “Iowa for Kamala” t-shirt while my partner wore RAYGUN’s “Mind your own damn business” t-shirt. 

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.

There’s not supposed to be any crying in politics.

Only sometimes there is. My own tears, even.

Iowa Democratic Congressional candidate Lanon Baccam, born in Mount Pleasant and raised by his immigrant parents, spent part of a summer speech talking about the Iowa of our youth when this state soared. Immigrants and blended families were embraced. Vision and kindness and big-heartedness prevailed in the state under Governor Robert Ray as we absorbed abandoned kids and refugees fleeing violence.

At one point Baccam motioned to me in the audience.

“I’m looking at Doug Burns right now, because his family looks like my family,” Baccam said during a speech to the Iowa Farmers Union in Elkhart, rural Polk County.

Kentin Waits is a writer and small business owner living in Des Moines. His work has appeared in Inc., Christian Science Monitor, U.S. Airways Magazine, and Kiplinger. 

If the thought of a stranger using your loved one’s cemetery plot as a campsite upsets you, proceed with caution.

In late July, I checked Facebook postings from my hometown of Knoxville, Iowa. On Wednesday, July 24, the community of 7,500 hosted an estimated 18,000 RAGBRAI riders overnight. I was curious to see the turnout and marvel at the willpower of those fit enough to participate in this two-wheeled endurance test.

Various threads began to mention that the city had quickly run out of available green space for campsites. The decision was made to open a section of Graceland Cemetery for the night (an empty hayfield and future site of the new Graceland Chapel). The lot abuts the historic cemetery and is separated only by a small lane that’s not open to traffic.

Tim Nelson is a Des Moines-based campaign staffer.

The Des Moines City Council will hold an emergency meeting on July 22 to decide whether or not to criminalize homelessness in the city.

The ordinance would allow the city to fine homeless people for sleeping in public spaces and would allow the city to get rid of what little property these people have faster.

As someone who has experienced homelessness, I find this ordinance cruel and ineffective.

Photo of Caitlin Clark first published on the University of Iowa’s Hawkeye Sports website in 2023.

Bernie Scolaro is a retired school counselor, a past president of the Sioux City Education Association, and former Sioux City school board member.

I am one of those snowbirds from Iowa residing in South Carolina. I happily cheered on Caitlin Clark and the Iowa women’s basketball team throughout the NCAA Final Four tournament. While my Carolinian friends cheered for their Gamecocks, they nonetheless enjoyed and admired the ride the Hawkeyes provided for myself, the state of Iowa, and actually, most of the nation. 

Photos by Bruce Lear, published with permission

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  

There’s a learning curve for every change. How sharp the curve is depends on the speed of the change. The journey from Iowa snowbound to Florida snowbird was abrupt but welcome.

We bought a small place in the land of alligators and golf carts and headed South a day after the last January blizzard. Here are a few lessons from our snowbird education.

Amy Endle began her career in Iowa and has been a school psychologist with an Area Education Agency since 2012. She emailed the message enclosed below to all members of the Iowa House and Senate on March 23.

Dear Iowa Legislators 

I hope this message finds you well. I am writing to inform you of my family’s difficult decision to leave Iowa after 12 years of residency and return to our native Wisconsin. I have proudly served Iowa children, parents, and schools as a school psychologist since moving to Iowa in 2012. 

This decision was not made lightly and is driven by concerns directly impacting our livelihood and the educational future of our 3 children. The core reason for our departure stems from the increasing insecurity surrounding the sustainability of a gutted Area Education Agency (AEA) system. The knee-jerk decisions passed by legislators more interested in pleasing the governor than serving children in Iowa have not only affected the professional stability of highly trained education specialists, but have also cast a shadow over my family’s future in Iowa.

Lanon Baccam is a combat veteran, former USDA official, and candidate for Iowa’s third Congressional district.

On this International Women’s Day I’m thinking about the nine incredible women in my life. My wife, three mothers-in-law, four sisters, and my mom—Bounmy Baccam—the bravest, most loving, and generous woman I know.

My family’s story traces back to Laos and is deeply impacted by the Vietnam War. A conflict so violent that to this day Laos maintains a notorious distinction of being the most bombed nation on earth. Two million tons of ordnance were dropped on Laos—the equivalent of an entire planeload of bombs every 8 minutes, 24 hours a day, for 9 years on an area the size of Oregon.

Shutterstock image of an angiogram is by April stock

Rick Morain is the former publisher and owner of the Jefferson Herald, for which he writes a regular column.

I had a heart attack on the evening of February 27. All is well.

Tuesday about 7 p.m. I was sitting at the press table at the Jefferson City Council meeting, taking notes, when my chest started to hurt. I figured it was probably acid reflux, which I have from time to time, so I waited for it to go away.

It didn’t. It hung around after the meeting adjourned at 8 p.m., so when I got home I told Kathy that if it didn’t disappear by 9:30, I would go out to the emergency room at Greene County Medical Center to have it checked out.

Heather Sievers is the founder of Advocates for Iowa’s Children and an Altoona mother of a child of rare disabilities. Photo of Heather with her daughter Rowan was provided by the author and published with permission.

I am speaking out to educate our communities and give voice to thousands of families across the state who are begging our Iowa legislators to stop the Area Education Agency (AEA) education reform bill from being passed into law during the 2024 legislative session.

Having spent years building my professional experience in effective health care transformation, performance and process improvement in large systems, I know we are not doing this the right way. We are not taking time to perform a credible and thorough study to determine what reform is needed before enacting a bill. A change of this magnitude cannot be rushed, or it will inevitably fail. The risk is too high to gamble on our children’s well-being and their futures. 

Any harm to our children as a result of the decisions made this legislative session will never be forgiven, nor forgotten. Our integrated AEA system works and is a national treasure. Many states aspire to implement a system like we have, and my personal story demonstrates that our system works. 

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Alexandra Dermody is a Davenport-based Gen Z community advocate, nonprofit director, and small business owner.

The experience of transgender Americans is fraught with difficulty, particularly for trans women of color, who are disproportionately targeted for violence and prejudice. Startling data from the Trans Murder Monitoring project exposes a disturbingly high number of murders of transgender individuals worldwide, with a notable portion occurring in the United States.

This violence is not haphazard but rather a direct result of pervasive discrimination present in all aspects of society—from employment opportunities to inadequate health care access. These are not isolated occurrences, but rather symptomatic of a larger societal issue that systematically deprives transgender individuals of their basic rights and humanity.

From left: State Representative Dick Myers, Chip Carter, and Tim Kraft in December 2003. Photo by Dave Leshtz, published with permission.

Dave Leshtz is the editor of The Prairie Progressive.

The first sentence of Tim Kraft’s obituary in the Albuquerque newspapers last month labeled him as the manager of Jimmy Carter’s 1976 Iowa caucus campaign and, later, “a top aide to President Carter.”

Not a bad legacy for a kid from Noblesville, Indiana. It gives a hint of the extraordinary, suggesting that the deceased man was smart, talented, and deserving of recognition for helping to elevate a nationally unknown politician and farmer from the South to the presidency.

For those of us who have worked the caucuses or on campaigns, we know just how remarkable of a feat that was—and why, almost 50 years later, it’s worth the lede in his obituary. We also know just how far out of the norm it is for the person who orchestrated that win to be so humble and down to earth.

Phil Specht is a retired farmer and a father who also lost a son. He wrote this poem on February 9, 2024, as a “deeply personal response to a very public mistreatment” of President Joe Biden, first by Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report and then by the press.

How Dare You Ask The Date My Son Died

I could not tell you.

A black cloud obscured the calendar.

Was it a Monday?

I do not know.

My five-year effort to gain a seat on the Iowa House press bench ended less than five days after the Institute for Free Speech filed a federal lawsuit on my behalf.

House Chief Clerk Meghan Nelson informed me shortly after 5:00 pm on January 23 that the Iowa House approved my application for work space, and a spot has been reserved for me in the press box on the floor of the House chamber.

Photo by Julie Gammack of an Iowa Democratic caucus on the south side of Des Moines, January 15, 2024. Published with permission.

Kurt Meyer writes a weekly column for the Nora Springs – Rockford Register and the Substack newsletter Showing Up, where this essay first appeared. He serves as chair of the executive committee (the equivalent of board chair) of Americans for Democratic Action, America’s most experienced liberal organization.

The Facebook message came in late Monday morning. “Just wondering if you are going to your caucus tonight. I’m worried that there will only be a few people there. Nobody seems interested this year in the Dem caucus.”

My friend, who lives 200 miles distant, began this exchange by noting a recent column I had written. I respond, “Yes, you bet I’m going. Sometimes we send important messages simply by showing up, which is why I named my column such.” 

Dan Piller was a business reporter for more than four decades, working for the Des Moines Register and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. He covered the oil and gas industry while in Texas and was the Register’s agriculture reporter before his retirement in 2013. He lives in Ankeny.

Nikki Haley needed an entire day to admit, rather furtively, that slavery was a possible cause of the Civil War. Donald Trump thinks that the bloody struggle from 1861-65 (which Trump, in a rare burst of accuracy, described as “very rough time”) happened because Abraham Lincoln was born too soon to read the “Art of the Deal.” Had the Great Emancipator been so fortunate, Trump said in Newton on January 6, “you probably wouldn’t even know who Abraham Lincoln was.”

Iowans whose knowledge of the Civil War goes slightly beyond Ken Burns’ PBS series three decades ago are shaking their heads in wonderment at such ignorance. But history is as much a vantage point than an absolute certainty. I learned that lesson in September, 1963, and the first days of classes in my junior year at Lincoln High School in the Nebraska capitol city.

Photo of Joan Marttila provided by the author and published with permission.

Joan Martila is a retired Mississippi Bend Area Education Agency audiologist. She is a former president of the Iowa Speech Language Hearing Association as well as a former president of the Iowa Speech Language Hearing Foundation. 

Another election year is upon us. I can guess what you’re thinking, because I have heard others say it: Why do Iowa Democrats have so many losers running of office? 

I am one of those losers. Let me tell you my side of the story.

AJ Jones is a writer. She is a creator of art and expresses herself across different mediums. She embraces her neurodivergence as a unique way to view the world and create a better future.

Domestic Violence Awareness Month is always difficult and one of remembrance. I remember the last conversation I had with Linda, a friend from work. She told me how her husband had tied her up and locked her in the downstairs bathroom of the house for several hours. How he had threatened her with a knife and how he had previously threatened her with a gun. 

You can imagine how that conversation went. I often wonder if my advice was sound.  

Henry Jay Karp is the Rabbi Emeritus of Temple Emanuel in Davenport, Iowa, which he served from 1985 to 2017. He is the co-founder and co-convener of One Human Family QCA, a social justice organization. In this photo from 2001, he is standing in front of a salt rock in the Negev (southern Israel).

A death toll of over 2,800 and growing. Some 150 Israelis—men, women, children, the elderly—held hostage in Gaza by the terrorist organization Hamas. Entire families massacred. Bodies of dead babies. Israel is in a struggle to the death with its blood enemy, Hamas.

Being a New Yorker born and bred, I must admit that I never felt the need to fly until, as a college graduate, I joined my classmates as we boarded a flight to Israel, bound for our first year of rabbinic study in Jerusalem. It did not take long before I fell in love with the 4,000-year-old homeland of my people. Since then, I have journeyed there several times.  It is my home away from home; second in my heart only to my beloved U.S.A.

As a lover of Israel, I can attest that these days a heavy cloud hangs over the Jewish people, not only in Israel but around the world. It’s a cloud of anguish, violence, fear, death, and profound grief, born of the recent Hamas attacks waged against the Israeli towns and villages on Israel’s southern border, along with the ongoing barrage of missiles fired by Hamas, targeting civilian populations as far away from Gaza as Tel Aviv. The pain of Jews is very real and very raw, as there is hardly a Jewish household, inside and outside of Israel, untouched by a personal loss because of this, the greatest mass murder and hostage taking of Jews since the Holocaust.

Dr. Greg Cohen has practiced medicine in Chariton since 1994 and is vice president of the American College of Osteopathic Family Physicians. He was named the Rural Health Champion by the Iowa Rural Health Association in 2014 and was awarded the Living Doc Hollywood Award for National Rural Health day in 2015. He was named a Distinguished Fellow by the American College of Osteopathic Family Physicians as well as Physician of the Year by the Iowa Osteopathic Medical Association in 2019.

Dr. Cohen’s first commentary about the COVID-19 pandemic is one of the most-viewed Bleeding Heartland posts in the sixteen-year history of this website.

Three years ago, I wrote a letter to the editor about my experiences as a rural physician six months into the COVID-19 Pandemic. There was no vaccine, no Paxlovid, and only experimental treatments for patients sick enough to be hospitalized. About 180,000 Americans had died. I had not hugged my children or grandson in nearly six months, and in my recurring dreams, I was suffocating in an ICU bed. (I finally hugged my children seven months later, after we had all been vaccinated.)

Dave Leshtz is the editor of The Prairie Progressive.

228 E. Bloomington Street in Iowa City was a battered old duplex across the street from Tweedy’s grocery store, the future site of Pagliai’s Pizza. The elderly landlady lived in one half of the duplex. I lived in the other half with a married couple and their baby, plus whoever needed a bed for the night or the week or the month. 

A block south on Linn Street was the Hamburg Inn #2. The year was 1967, and the Burg was in its pre-caucuses heyday. I ate breakfast, lunch, or dinner there almost every day.

The customers were vividly eclectic: hungover fraternity brothers, young couples who obviously had spent the night together, lawyers with nearby offices, small-time gamblers, alcoholics who had trouble lifting that first cup of coffee to their lips without spilling, poets, and house painters.

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 took the photo above of Shellsburg School (now Vinton-Shellsburg).

Teachers have earned appreciation for more than a week in May or during tragedies like school shootings or a pandemic. They really do train all other professions.  

People who boast about pulling themselves up with their bootstraps have short memories. If I tried to pull myself up with my own bootstraps, they would have broken, and my boots would have remained firmly on the floor. No, in my tiny school in my tiny town, I had some dedicated motivators called teachers.

Tracy Jones is a progressive political activist in Davenport. These comments are a longer version of testimony she delivered at an Iowa House public hearing on July 11 (see video below). She is pictured here on the left, speaking to State Representative Luana Stoltenberg.

In the spring of 1972, my mom was a pregnant 32-year-old with three young children. My sister was eleven years old, my brother was eight, and I was fifteen months old. Our mom had just experienced the collapse of her second marriage, and her pregnancy was not my dad’s.

I can only imagine the shame, fear and guilt that must have clung to her. Our mom was raised in a conservative and religious household. I’m certain an abortion wasn’t the first thing on her mind, but she knew her medical history. She had difficult pregnancies and suffered from severe preeclampsia with each.

As the pregnancy progressed, it became clear that this would be the pregnancy that would kill her. She needed an abortion but was living in a state where it wasn’t legal.

Bleeding Heartland user PrairieFan is an Iowa landowner.

My boxelder trees look horrible.

The foliage on the outer branches is a sickly pale green. The leaves are twisted and stunted. Looking at other plants near my house, I see cupped and contorted leaves on trees, vines, and wildflowers. As happens every year, farm chemicals have trespassed (drifted) onto my conservation land.

Iowans who don’t know what it is like to live near typical corn and soybean fields might guess that farm-chem trespass would be a very occasional accident, followed by apologies, handshakes, and maybe a “sorry” gift. But that is not how it works in much of rural Iowa. 

Larry Osweiler grew up in Keota, Iowa and now lives in Indiana. A graduate of the University of Iowa, he is an aficionado of Iowa treats found nowhere else: Pagliai’s Pizza, Sterzing Potato Chips, Maid-Rite’s, and kolaches from anywhere close to Cedar Rapids.

I got interested in Iowa politics in 1964 at the age of 8, when Governor Harold Hughes was running for re-election. I had sent for a picture of the governor and received a package from his office a few weeks later. I remember showing it to everyone on the school bus.

While waiting on the bus one afternoon, I remember Evan Hultman riding by on the back of a convertible with a Hultman for Governor sign on it. Hughes won with 68 percent of the vote. Hard to believe there was once a day when a Democrat would win a statewide race in Iowa by that large a margin.

I studied the book I’d received and memorized almost every state official. John Schmidhauser was elected to Congress from the first district. At our dinner table that election night, I wondered how my dad was so sure Lyndon Johnson was going to win the presidential election.

Writing under the handle “Bronxiniowa,” Ira Lacher, who actually hails from the Bronx, New York, is a longtime journalism, marketing, and public relations professional.

My aunt, who raised me after my parents died, would wake up early on Sunday to prepare a meal, then take a cab, at great expense, to visit her sister, confined to a mental institution. “If she were Catholic,” one of the nurses in the ward told me, “she would be a saint.”

But she also threw around the word “shvartze” to refer to black people. “Shvartze” technically means “black” in Yiddish, but it’s also the equivalent of the N-word. So, yes, my aunt was a racist. But she also did good for me, her sister, and uncounted others. And I still say a memorial prayer for her on the anniversary of her death.

No such sentiment may be forthcoming for Scott Adams, the longtime cartoonist who created “Dilbert.”

Deb VanderGaast is a registered nurse and child care advocate seeking to advance state and national child care and disability policy, inclusive child care practices and improve access to quality, affordable child care for working parents. She was the 2022 Democratic nominee in Iowa Senate district 41.

The LGBTQ+ community in Iowa is under attack, and so are our schools. Many people think the acceptance of queer people in our culture is causing an increase in transgender and queer kids. They think exposure to transgender and queer people in education, books, movies, music, and the community is “grooming” kids to question their gender and sexual identity.

They are completely wrong.

Adolescence is a time when kids form their identities and “try on” various roles as they explore who they are and who they want to be. Our society now allows many more options as acceptable choices for youth to consider, but this increased acceptance has not changed who kids are becoming. Rather, it has allowed adolescents to safely express who they already are. They are no longer constrained by social biases against gay and transgender people.

Aime Wichtendahl is a member of the Hiawatha City Council and first openly trans woman elected to government in Iowa.

When Iowa Republicans gained a trifecta in 2017, I told our city manager, “I don’t know what their economic agenda is, but I bet it has something to do with gay marriage and abortion.”

Fast forward six years and little has changed—except the legislature devotes extra time attacking transgender youth to feed their lives into the never-ending culture war dumpster fire.

This column by Daniel G. Clark about Alexander Clark (1826-1891) first appeared in the Muscatine Journal.

Do you know where your people came from? How they arrived on this continent? How they made their way to Iowa? If not, might it make a difference in your life to learn their stories?

On May 2, 2010, I posted on Facebook: “I just found a ‘smoking gun’ historical document that confirms my hypothesis (ever stronger over the past decade) about my ancestors’ role in the Underground Railroad. I am descended directly from men named as key players in Connecticut, including my great-great-grandfather who migrated directly to Durant, Iowa. Do I sound excited?”

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.

Given all the hoopla and hokum—and bitterness of kicking someone in the teeth—about the legend that there once was a celebrated Iowa caucus, let’s get back to reality.

Let’s consider whether there once was a Virginia who wondered about Santa Claus, and whether he actually was a fellow who dealt with things that really mattered—like merriment, consideration of others, and even being jolly.

Dan Piller was a business reporter for more than four decades, working for the Des Moines Register and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. He covered the oil and gas industry while in Texas and was the Register’s agriculture reporter before his retirement in 2013. He lives in Ankeny.

The pending end of Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucuses will no doubt set off long nights of reminiscences covering a half-century among the state’s political/media intelligentsia. But I will step forward with a claim that is not to be challenged.

I was the first-in-the-nation critic of the Iowa caucuses. It happened entirely by accident.

This post was supposed to be a book review.

I bought a copy of Sylvan T. Runkel: Citizen of the Natural World at the Okoboji Writers’ Retreat in September, thinking it would be perfect to review for my Iowa wildflowers series. Runkel co-authored some of the best Iowa wildflower guides, and I’ve used Wildflowers of Iowa Woodlands and Wildflowers of the Tall Grass Prairie countless times.

Co-authors Larry Stone and Jon Stravers both knew Runkel and interviewed many of his friends, relatives, and former colleagues while researching their biography. As expected, I learned a lot about how the famous conservationist grew to love the outdoors and became passionate about native plants and natural landscapes.

The book also struck a chord with me as I’ve been coping with the most physically challenging year of my life.

Kurt Meyer writes a weekly column for the Nora Springs – Rockford Register, where this essay first appeared. He serves as chair of the executive committee (the equivalent of board chair) of Americans for Democratic Action, America’s most experienced liberal organization.

Some people live in town and have a second home on a lake or in the country. For almost two decades, we’ve reversed these items. Our primary residence is in rural North Iowa – in the country – with a turnkey town home in the greater Minneapolis area. There, for the last ten weeks, we’ve provided “supporter housing” for a political campaign worker in the Twin Cities.

Accommodating this short-term boarder was not demanding duty. We’re often not there, more true recently as delayed travel plans were rescheduled for earlier this fall. Furthermore, providing temporary housing is consistent with a vague “transition strategy” as we seek different ways to support causes we believe in.

Let me explain how this relates to politics.

Dan Piller was a business reporter for more than four decades, working for the Des Moines Register and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. He covered the oil and gas industry while in Texas and was the Register’s agriculture reporter before his retirement in 2013. He lives in Ankeny.

The windowless Office Lounge bar on Grand Avenue nestled across a narrow alleyway from the Register and Tribune Building in downtown Des Moines was a hopping place in the early morning hours of Wednesday, November 6, 1974.

Longtime Office Lounge owner Dorothy Gabriel continued her election-night tradition of keeping the Register’s semi-official bar open after hours (to the apparent indifference of the Des Moines police) so that the newspaper’s staff could blow off the heat and tension of election night.

Zach Elias grew up in Bettendorf and is a graduate student in philosophy who studied at the University of Dubuque.

I consider myself a curious person. Sometimes that quality has been to my benefit. Sometimes it has been to my detriment.

My curiosity particularly emerges during any election season. Every time, my political voice is reenergized when I see signs in the yards of my neighbors, political ads, and announcements of candidates coming into town.

The first cold winds of the winter season call an end to a fun, untethered summer. The beautiful fall leaves in the frame of the big combines put me in a reflective mood. Who wouldn’t stop to admire all the change? It’s as if nature knows a big decision looms, and is doing its best to sober you up from the summer sun.

Charlie Hodges is a Democratic activist in Polk County.

As some of you may have heard, President Joe Biden revealed his student loan forgiveness plan last week. Shockingly (sarcasm), Iowa Republicans reacted with faux outrage and misinformation.

U.S. Senator Joni Ernst had this to say about those who may be receiving assistance through the plan:

To the Iowans who coach student athletes or lead other public school-based activities:

As a new academic year begins this week, you may feel more emboldened to bring your religion into practices, games, or other school group gatherings. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that high school football coach Joseph Kennedy was wrongly disciplined over his post-game prayers on the field.

Writing for a 6-3 majority in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, Justice Neil Gorsuch mischaracterized Kennedy’s actions as a “short, private, personal prayer.” In fact, the coach sought public acclaim and extensive media coverage for giving thanks to God at the 50-yard line, sometimes surrounded by players.

No doubt the coaches who copy Kennedy will be celebrated in many Iowa communities.

I’ve been thinking about how coaches like him will change the school sports experience for students like me.

The ankle I severely fractured in January continues to interfere with my wildflower outings. Although I’m able to walk a couple of miles now, I have limited range of motion, which makes it hard to cover much distance on uneven ground like unpaved trails or prairies. My ankle flexion is still too limited for me to feel comfortable doing the long bike rides that used to provide lots of material for this series.

This week, I struck out looking for the plants I had hoped to feature. So I dove into my files and pulled out a selection of wildflowers I’ve found in August over the past six years.

Shawna Anderson: Birth control pills may have saved my life and also helped me to conceive.

When the U.S. House approved a bill in July to protect Americans’ access to birth control, 195 Republicans voted no. Those House members, including Iowa’s Representatives Ashley Hinson, Mariannette Miller-Meeks, and Randy Feenstra, opposed codifying not only my right to access family planning, but also my health care.

As a 43-year-old married mother of two and grandmother, I never thought I would see the day that I needed to defend access to any reproductive care, but here we are. After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned what I grew up hearing was the law of the land, Democrats are trying to ensure that people like me will have access to the health care we need.

A friend once told me we should call birth control hormone therapy, because that’s really what it is. Not only does it aid in family planning, but it can treat some medical issues. Let me tell you how birth control/hormone therapy may have saved my life and helped me to conceive.