Art in a Life
Most Iowans don’t value art like that displayed at the University of Iowa. Increased public awareness of this attitude is part of the coarsening of Iowa culture in its current wave of neoliberalism. As...
View ArticleBook Review: Doggerel
How does an artist survive and thrive in a highly competitive creative environment? Produce a book like Doggerel by Martha Paulos. More than thirty years after publication, it seems fresh and holds...
View ArticleThe Great Shuffle
The back seat of the Chevy Spark is loaded with boxes of books to be donated to Goodwill. Between this load and the previous two, I downsized by about 500 books. It doesn’t look like I made a bit of...
View ArticlePrairie Home
It’s time for decisions… about Garrison Keillor. Specifically, what should I do with this pile of books? Most were purchased at thrift stores for a dollar or less. I may have purchased the poetry book...
View ArticleGreat Book Sort #1
This year I donated roughly 700 books to the public library used book sale and to Goodwill. Goodwill is less picky about what they will accept, so they received the majority of them. Many of my...
View ArticleBook Review: The Hidden History of American Democracy
Is democracy the default state of humanity? In The Hidden History of American Democracy: Rediscovering Humanity’s Ancient Way of Living, author Thom Hartmann presents the case that democracy is our...
View ArticleDon’t Tell Us What To Read
A fundamental right in the United States is to choose what we each read, see and hear. The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution gives us this right. Where is the boundary between educating our...
View ArticleBook Review: Presidents of War
The Mason City and Urbandale school districts have both been in the news because of their efforts to comply with the new Iowa law which restricts what school children can read in class or in the school...
View ArticleBook Review: Democracy Awakening
Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America by Heather Cox Richardson is a must read for anyone following the contemporary discussion of conflict between the liberal consensus and movement...
View ArticleCurating a Personal Library
A library is curated, which means it inherently contains the biases of the librarian or curator. How will books be organized? When space is at a premium, which go to a thrift shop and which go into a...
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