Little Village Eastern Iowa Issue 315

Pleasure Revival

Browse the food-shaped wellness products setting the Ped Mall abuzz

PLUS: Greg Brown’s last waltz before retirement

Shady conversation hearts, and other Valentine’s treats

A date with terror in the Quad Cities

Iowa’s sexiest war memorial

DEAR KIKI

The c-word at the heart of polyamory

EN ESPAÑOL Machismo, masculinidad tóxica y chicos

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22 Sex Sells

28 Ramblin’ Man

30 Hot-Blooded

As if you could outrun the vampires and werewolves hiding in this QC scare

6 Top Stories

8 ad Index

11 Interactions

18 En Español

20 your Village

22 Good Vibes

26 bread & butter

28 Prairie Pop

30 a-List

32 Events Calendar

47 Dear Kiki

49 astrology

51 album reviews

55 book reviews

59 Crossword

Little Village (ISSN 2328-3351) is an independent, community-supported news and culture publication based in Iowa City, published monthly by Little Village, LLC, 623 S Dubuque St., Iowa City, IA 52240. Through journalism, essays and events, we work to improve our community according to core values: environmental sustainability, affordability and access, economic and labor justice, racial justice, gender equity, quality healthcare, quality education and critical culture. Letters to the editor(s) are always welcome. We reserve the right to fact check and edit for length and clarity. Please send letters, comments or corrections to editor@littlevillagemag.com.

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The Aer, the Pom, the “Tickle Pickle”—whatever you pick, Revival wants to leave you satisfied.

Ahead of his final gigs, roots legend Greg Brown reflects on a seven-decade musical odyssey.

Dana Telsrow / Little Village

factory.

EDITORIAL

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February Contributors

Avery Gregurich, Elena Vallejo, Ethan Edvenson, John Martinek, Kent Williams, Lauren Haldeman, Loren

Thatcher, Michael Roeder, Sam Locke Ward, Sarah Elgatian, Tom Tomorrow, William Blair

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Meet this month’s contributors:

Dana Telsrow is a part-time portrait artist and full-time CEO of Really Cool Hats For Sale.

Elena Vallejo (she/her) is a QC native currently studying at SAU, her love for writing has been fostered by community.

Ethan Edvenson is an emerging artist from Des Moines who creates gestural mixed media drawings.

Kembrew McLeod is a founding Little Village columnist and the chair of Communications Studies at the University of Iowa.

Kent Williams lives, works, writes and complains in Iowa City.

Loren Thacher is a writer, musician and radio host based on the Iowa/Illinois border. Correspondence can be sent to Lthacher13@gmail.com.

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Issue 315 , Volume 32

February 2022

Cover by Jordan Sellergren

Hello, LVer. Peruse at your pleasure: Folk hero Greg Brown’s best gigs, an IC boutique’s revivifying new product line, Valentine’s Day eats, Iowa’s 125-year-old bronze mommy, Halloween in February, and more!

Melody Dworak is a librarian at the Iowa City Public Library, juggling two to three books at any given time. She served on Little Village’s editorial team from 2005-2010.

Michael roeder is a self-declared Music Savant. When he isn’t writing for Little Village he blogs at playbsides.com.

Sarah Elgatian is a writer, activist and educator living in Iowa. She likes dark coffee, bright colors and long sentences. She dislikes meanness.

Summer Santos earned her Ph.D. in Medieval English Literature and MFA in Literary Translation from the University of Iowa in 2019. She now works in immigration law as a paralegal. If you wish to contribute to En Español, you can reach her at generalridley@gmail.com.

Jordan Sellergren / Little Village

Culture writers, food reviewers and columnists, email: editor@littlevillagemag.com

Illustrators, photographers and comic artists, email: jordan@littlevillagemag.com

You

Top Stories

Catch up on Little Village’s most-viewed headlines from last month. Read more at LittleVillageMag.com.

Hamburg Inn No. 2 closes ‘for physical and spiritual repairs,’ will reopen by February

by Paul brennan, Jan. 9

On Dec. 30, managers of the Hamburg Inn said that due to a series of ongoing problems the restaurant would close “indefinitely.” The problems they cited included a broken sewer line, which left Hamburg Inn with no working toilets, and the restaurant not making enough money to cover operating expenses or continue paying the staff.

This 15-year-old songwriter from Des Moines is having fun writing sad music

by Courtney Guein, Jan. 10

Addilyn Erica is only 15, but successfully balances being a teenager with growing as an artist. This was made clear with the release of her debut EP Some Days on Nov. 4, 2022, in which the Des Moines singer-songwriter spins stories of love, heartbreak and freedom.

In Condition of the State speech, Gov. Reynolds boldly pushes for changes unpopular with most Iowans

by Paul brennan, Jan.

11

On Tuesday night, Gov. Kim Reynolds called on the newly expanded Republican majorities in both houses of the Iowa Legislature to ignore critics, including the media and “so-called experts,” and push to divert tax money from public schools to private schools, eliminate certain state agencies, and fast-track other policy priorities.

‘Our public schools are not failing, elected officials are failing them’: Iowans opposing voucher bill flood legislature with comments by Emma McClatchey, Jan. 17

Gov. Reynolds’ education savings account plan is projected to cost $918 million over its first four years, not including administrative costs. Little Village compiled 60 comments posted by teachers, admin, parents and alumni of Iowa’s schools urging state legislators to vote no.

Adamantine Spine Moving (10)

Arnott & Kirk (59)

Club Car (47)

CommUnity Crisis Services (36)

Coralville Public Library (6)

DVIP (40)

FilmScene (31)

Firmstone Real Estate (46)

Goodfellow Printing, Inc. (47)

Grinnell College Museum of Art (41)

Gross Domestic Product (17)

Hancher Auditorium (58, 60)

Honeybee Hair Parlor (52)

Independent Iowa Downtown Iowa City (24-25)

- Beadology

- Basic Goods

- The Green House

- Mailboxes of Iowa City

- Prairie Lights Bookstore & Cafe

- Hot Spot

THANK YOU TO THIS ISSUE’S ADVERTISING PARTNERS

- Record Collector

- Critical Hit

- Yotopia

- Merge

- Revival

- La Wine

- Release Body Modifications

Independent Iowa New Bohemia & Czech Village (48)

- Next Page Books

- Chrome Horse

- Goldfinch Cyclery

- NewBoCo

- The Daisy

- Parlor City Pub & Eatery

Independent Iowa Northside Marketplace (44)

- Pagliai’s Pizza

- George’s

- Marco’s

- High Ground

- Oasis Falafel

- John’s Grocery

- Russ’ Northside Service, Inc.

- Dodge St. Tire

- Hamburg Inn No. 2

- Artifacts

- R.S.V.P.

- Press Coffee

Iowa City Burger Haul (41)

Iowa City Communications (52)

Iowa City Public Library (54)

Iowa Department of Public Health (46)

Iowa Public Radio (50)

Johnson County Public Health (4)

KRUI 89.7 FM

Kim Schillig, REALTOR (50)

Martin Construction (32)

Mission Creek Festival (39)

Musician’s Pro Shop (47)

Nearwood Winery (16)

New Pioneer Food Co-op (20)

Nodo (46)

Orchestra Iowa (27)

Phoebe Martin, REALTOR (9)

Public Space One (23)

Resilient Sustainable Future for Iowa City (52)

Raygun (49)

Riverside Theatre (16)

Shakespeare’s Pub & Grill (47)

Taxes Plus (42)

The Club Car (47)

The Englert Theatre (35)

The James (54)

The Wedge Pizzeria

Think Iowa City (56)

Trowel and Error (54)

Trunk (50)

University of Iowa Stanley Museum of Art (2)

University of Iowa Theatre Arts (15)

West Music (52)

Willow & Stock (33)

Little Village magazine print readership 25,000—40,000 per issue

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200,000 monthly article views 74,000 unique monthly visitors

RECENT READER SURVEy DATA

MEDIAN AGE: 37

MEDIAN PERSONAL INCOME: $50k

23.4%: $40k—60k

20.9%: $60k—80k

15.8%: $100k+

12%: $20k—40k

15.8%: <$20k

EDUCATION

Masters: 35.8%

Bachelors: 38.5%

Ph.D: 12.3%

Some college: 7.8%

Associates: 4.5%

AVERAGE NUMBER OF CHILDREN 1.85 Join

12%: $80k—$100k

GENDER

Female: 69.6%

Male: 27.8%

Nonbinary/other: 2.5%

This issue of Little Village is supported by: Ads@LittleVillageMag.com (319) 855-1474

AVERAGE NUMBER OF yEARS LIVING IN EASTERN IOWA 27

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LV encourages community members, including candidates for office, to submit letters to Editor@LittleVillageMag.com. To be considered for print publication, letters should be under 500 words. Preference is given to letters that have not been published elsewhere.

If he’s not paying them then what the fuck does he expect? Are they going to get back pay for their missed wages?

—Nora J.H.

LOCAL

PACKING

Big 2023 energy. —Amy B.

Spiritual repairs? Is that an exorcism?

—TNM

Somehow this is not reassuring.

—Jennifer

Staff working for free ... they definitely need some get right with God time. Wow. When I worked there Steve would have never done that.

—Becca

K.

Quite the fuster cluck it sounds like! Hope new management rights the ship or a new, local, owner takes over.

—Tory B.

Ah the no paycheck, no toilets, absentee-owner all-American diner. A far cry from his pie-shake-in-the-sky plans to franchise the Burg all over the world, Lee has been slowly fucking the place up since he bought it.

C.

—Chris S.

The owner’s response has assuredly doomed the business now, I assume the renovations are to get the property presentable enough to sell. —Ben C.

The employees aren’t the ones who dropped the ball here. If employees weren’t getting paid or communicated with....!! This is ridiculous. Michael Lee needs to accept responsibility!

—Michelle H.

Much love and support to the employees. —Carol C.

I hope it can rise again. Lots of good memories for me there. —Tom T.

Just let it go gentle into that good night… —Seth S.

Ya’ll have no idea what happened here

•

•

and there is an investigation going on … after seeing what 8 months of my absence did to that kitchen I believe they were compensated for standing around. … I never had a communication problem with the owner and have a team of people that got payroll back on track. —

Joseph Mulvihill, newly rehired Hamburg Inn manager

In Condition of the State speech, Gov. reynolds boldly pushes for changes unpopular with most Iowans (Jan. 11)

She’s been pushing for these changes for years and people still voted for her by like a 20 point margin. So, I don’t know if we can really call them unpopular. Iowa Republicans will get exactly what they voted for.

—Jason A.

Welp… 2.5% increase for education means another year making 32k for this teacher, they won’t give us raises if

they are getting beat by inflation.

—SFL

Thanks Kim, it’s not like my expenses haven’t also increased substantially the last couple of years. We will spend decades recovering from decisions that this woman makes over her first administration. She will leave nothing undone before the 2nd administration is finished. The institutions on which the state has been successful will be damaged beyond repair and she will make sure that they will be so damaged that they can’t be recovered. Our state government is not broken. Well, I might find the Board of Regents somewhat broken but that’s because it’s completely controlled by Republicans. They can’t fill other government agencies with Republicans because they’re just not there to fill jobs at agencies like the Iowa Department of Public Health. People go into those jobs for reasons that Republicans would avoid

MOMBOY LAUREN HALDEMAN

them. … The Republicans know that they do not have demographics on their side or public opinion of young people, even in a state that is fairly conservative. Like Iowa, I find most young adults fairly tolerant and they can see through this. But the Republicans want to make sure they make an impact that lasts and they don’t really care what young people think and really what older people think for that matter. I find it hard to imagine that there’s a family in Iowa that hasn’t had a close personal experience with abortion. Even up there in northwestern, Iowa, where they would have you believe they never have sex, at least for recreational purposes. We may lose all the abortion clinics but we will regain Florence Crittenton homes for unwed mothers so that shamed parents in Northwest Iowa can send their daughters to work it out on the farm. Another Magdalene laundry.

—Donald B.

PERSONALS

Bonded pair seeks third life companion. Senior Jasper, 12, and young buck Mojo, 4, prove age is but a number. This multigenerational mini-schnauzer duo arrived at the Iowa City Animal Center inseparable, and plan to leave it the same way—alongside their new ride-or-die. (You?) Sporting the dark gray coat (covering a few lumps and bumps) is Jasper, watched over patiently by foggy-gray Moj’. Both are easily wooed by a kind pet and a soft bed. (Yours?) To set up a group date, call 319-356-5295.

Send

WORTH REPEATING

“Our first priority in this legislative session—and what I will be focusing on over the next four years—is making sure that every child is provided with a quality education that fits their needs.” —Gov. Kim Reynolds during the 2023 Condition of the State address

“As presented, the voucher program on the table goes against the very principles of true competition. Instead, it creates a playing field that has the teams (in this case, school systems) playing by different rules.” —Amy

Hawkins, Dubuque Community School District superintendent

“You know, they’re held to, you know, they’re, most of this would deal with public schools, with public schools right now. So, you know, they would just be public schools.” —Gov. Kim Reynolds clarifying that her bill to ban “woke indoctrination” in classrooms will not apply to private schools, even though they will receive increased taxpayer funding through ESAs, in an interview with KCCI

“Iowa now funds students, not systems.” —Corey A. DeAngelis, millionaire school choice lobbyist from San Antonio, Texas, sharing a photo with Gov. Reynolds in the statehouse shortly after flying into Iowa to celebrate the passage of the ESA bill

“Opportunities will be lost, schools will close, small rural communities will be devastated. What happens to small towns in Iowa when they lose their school? You cannot have free public education and free private education. IA already spends $1300 less per student.” —Matt

Denger,

Iowa City Community School District superintendent, responding to Reynolds’ education plan on Twitter

STRESS FRACTURES

JOHN MARTINEK

INTERACTIONS

Fortuna board Game Cafe in the Ped Mall is closing (Jan. 19)

Never got its full chance to shine.

—Tallen M.W.

Grateful I got to enjoy some special times there! —Trevor P.

One of my favorite places in Iowa city. A true loss for the community. —Chance B.

Fortuna was a great concept, disappointed to see it go. It’s sad the rent on the Ped Mall is too high for small, independent businesses to sustain themselves.

—Amber F.

State lawmaker accuses some educators of promoting socialism (Iowa Capital Dispatch, Jan. 19)

Where does all this paranoia come from?

—Ken M.

“I know from doing the reading that I do and the research that I do...” A few grafs later. “My wife told me.” Iowa’s answer to Ginny and Clarence. —Jim P.

Against socialism, is he? I can rest easy, then, that he’s against taking my money and giving it to someone else to send their kid to private school. I mean c’mon, what kind of commie crap is that?!

—Travis L.

Dude looks like he wants to borrow my skinsuit. —Clarence J.

If it were within the scope of my teaching, I would gladly hold class discussion comparing political ideologies “that conflict with the principles of freedom and democracy that were essential to the founding of the United States.” We would start with Christian nationalism and dominionism, since these are easily understandable as a threat to freedom and democracy, then we’d move on to fascism, plutocracy, kleptocracy, kakistocracy, anocracy… —Christopher B.

“A number of young people realize that a capitalist society where rich bald white men like me hold the majority of the wealth isn’t sustainable and we can’t have that!” —Alex

G.

Gov. reynolds: admin costs, accountability standards for ESa plan unknown until after it’s approved, ‘parental rights bill’ will only affect public schools (Jan. 23)

How is not knowing the cost fiscally conservative? —Mark

“Just give me access to the tax money, we’ll sort out all the details later when nobody is paying attention. Trust me.”

—Max Q.

This soon to be law is terrible for Iowa. Also don’t forget that this will allow public tax dollars to fund private religious schools and religious education. —Dan C.

Separate but equal. —Ben G.

LV ASKED: What are the best dinner date spots around?

Readers recommended:

• Orchard Green, Iowa City

• Chez Grace, Coralville

• The Webster, Iowa City

• The Map Room, Cedar Rapids

• Joseph’s Steakhouse, Iowa City

• Baroncini Ristorante Italiano, IC

• Caucho, Cedar Rapids

• Ruthie’s Steak & Seafood, Riverside

• Napoli Pizza, Burlington

• The Broth Lab, Fairfield

• Chophouse Downtown, CR

• Stringtown Grocery, Kalona (“Bring the snack haul back to the bridge over the railroad tracks and watch the sunset.”—@hard_goer on Twitter)

En Español Machismo, masculinidad tóxica y chicos

Parte uno POR SUMMER SANTOS

Al fin de 2022, la policía en Romania detuvo a Andrew Tate como parte de su investigación del tráfico de personas. Si no sabes quien es Andrew Tate debes preguntar al chico adolescente más cerca de ti. La probabilidad es gran que él sabe quien es Tate y que él es un fan.

¿Los traficantes tienen fans? Sí, es verdad. Si me dudas, piensa en los sombreros MAGA. Andrew Tate obtuvo su amplia influencia por representar una vida lujosa, rica y exitosa, una vida donde era rodeado por mujeres hermosas y donde promocionaba su misoginia franca y sin vergüenza. Frecuentemente, Tate avanzaba que los hombres deben controlar las mujeres como propiedad, porque esa es como él ve a las mujeres, como propiedad.

Por supuesto, no es el único proveedor de estas actitudes. Pero su fama y influencia con chicos jóvenes es inquietante, sobre todo. De hecho, se confiesa en su sitio web a ser traficante donde explica casi como en la forma de un libro de texto el método amante de tráfico en personas como su procedimiento. Mas evidencia por creer que su persona es su personalidad en verdad.

¿Por qué han chicos se juntaban en masa a este tipo de retórico odioso? ¿Qué sobre este retorico tiene significado para ellos? He visto argumentos que es un fracaso de feminismo, que el feminismo no ofrece nada positiva a los chicos y en consecuencia escuchan a las voces que les ponen a las nubes y les hacen sentir bienvenidos. Yo comprendo la tentación a tomárselo este

argumento en serio. Después de todo, la frase ‘masculinidad toxica ha entrada la conversación sobre criar a los niños.

Si sabes que es un adjetivo el argumento falla. La masculinidad toxica no es la idea que la masculinidad por sí misma es toxica por naturaleza, pero un grupo de creencias y conductas toxicas se han vuelto asociadas con la masculinidad. Andrew Tate personifica esta idea, y personas como el desean que estos rasgos tóxicos sean la forma dominante de la masculinidad. Los resultados: una generación de hombres quienes sienten derecho a los cuerpos de mujeres, quienes usan violencia para obtener lo que quieren y quienes no pueden aceptar la respuesta ‘no’. El feminismo ofrece soluciones y masculinidades positivas. Entonces, ¿por qué no hablan de estas los youtuberos e influencers?

A manera de respuesta, permíteme a decir verdad sobre mis dificultades con masculinidad de cuando creía que era chico. Era joven y influenceable. Vi un mundo en que los hombres más odiosos tuvieron éxito y eta demasiada joven para entender que el éxito y la riqueza no son exactamente iguales. No sabía cómo redefinir mi perspectiva, ni más descubrir voces para ayudar (resulta que no soy hombre y no me habría ayudado). Pero esa es nuestro sistema. El éxito monetario es lo más exultado, el premio por el abuso de otras personas. Nuestra sociedad recompensa e incentiva la masculinidad toxica y los chicos responden a la llamada porque pueden ver las recompensas materiales. Reconocen como nuestra sociedad define el éxito y lo que esta definición requiere de ellos. Nuestro mundo pide un favor peligroso de los chicos, y demasiados no pueden ver las opciones mejores. Hablare de estas opciones en el próximo mes.

Machismo, Toxic Masculinity and Boys

Part one

WRITTEN AND TRANSLATED By SUMMER SANTOS

At the end of 2022, Romanian authorities arrested Andrew Tate as part of a human trafficking investigation. If you don’t know who Andrew Tate is, ask your nearest teenage boy—there’s a not insignificant chance that he both knows who Tate is and is a fan. Human traffickers have fanbases? Yes, they do. If you ever doubt that, just remember the

MAGA hats. Andrew Tate gained his influential reach by portraying a lavish, wealthy and successful lifestyle where he was surrounded by beautiful women and the shameless, straightforward misogyny he proudly proclaimed. Tate frequently promoted the idea that men should control women as if they were property, because that’s how he sees them: property.

Tate isn’t the only purveyor of these attitudes, of course, but his prominence and reach with young boys is particularly alarming. The fact is, his human trafficking is also openly admitted on his website, where he practically lays out the textbook format of the loverboy method of trafficking as his modus operandi, which lends further credence to the belief that his influencer persona is very close to the real thing.

Why do boys flock to this kind of rhetoric when it’s so obviously hateful? What about this speaks to them? I’ve seen people argue this as an issue with feminism—feminism isn’t offering anything positive for boys, the argument goes, and so they go to whoever does talk them up and make them feel wanted. The temptation to take that argument seriously is understandable—the term “toxic masculinity” has become part of our discussion about raising boys, after all.

But that argument falls apart when you know what an adjective is. Toxic masculinity is not the concept that masculinity itself is inherently toxic, but that a collection of toxic behaviors and beliefs have become associated with masculinity. Andrew Tate is the embodiment of this, and people like him aim to make these toxic traits the dominant form of masculinity, mold a generation of men who feel entitled to women’s bodies, who use violence to get what they want, who cannot accept no as an answer. Feminism does offer positive, expansive ways to be a man, so why aren’t those the ones being discussed by influencers and YouTubers?

By way of an answer, let me be honest about my own struggles with masculinity from when I thought I was a boy. I was young and impressionable. I saw a world where the more horrible kinds of men got success and I was too young to know success doesn’t simply equal wealth. I didn’t know how to reframe my view, let alone find voices to help (turns out, I’m not a man and it wouldn’t have helped anyway). But that’s our system: monetary success is held in highest regard, rewarding mistreatment of others. Our society rewards and encourages toxic masculinity and boys respond because they see the material rewards. They recognize how our society defines success and what that asks of them. Our world asks them to play a dangerous game, and too many young boys can’t see the better options.

Next month, I’ll dig into those options.

Stacks on Stacks

MEGA STORE

Scottish author Mhairi McFarlane has become a rom-com-writing critical darling, and is handsdown my favorite author right now. (Mhairi is pronounced VAH-Ree.) Her recent books have earned accolades from all the respected review journals—Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews and Library Journal

And for good reason! McFarlane launches the reader into believable dramas that you wish wouldn’t happen to anyone, while still creating sardonic comedy through her quick-witted characters. Every character she constructs is a person I wish I knew in real life. We meet the wedding photographer who vows never to be married in Mad About You, a highly competent lawyer who was dumped so her boyfriend of 18 years could sow his wild oats (If I Never Met You), and a grieving bestie who unrequitedly loves an engaged friend who strings her along (Just Last Night).

Kirkus Reviews wrote, “McFarlane’s gift is writing romantic comedy that depicts a recognizable world... without dimming the luster of shining moments of humor, love, and connection.” They called Mad About You “a very funny, very romantic story with deep emotional impact.”

I devoured each of these in their own right. Just Last Night particularly left me aching to read the gut-wrenching story again.

In that book, you don’t have to wait long for a major development to change every direction the plot could take. Our heroine, Eve, meets her three besties weekly for a pub quiz. The morning after one such night, Eve learns terrible news that changes her entire world. She is plunged into grief; her loss, immeasurable.

As the narrative unfolds, Eve learns secrets her best friends kept from her for years, changing everything she thought she knew. She is made to hold enduring love in one hand and burning betrayal in the other—and one betrayer is too dead to make amends. Survivor’s guilt is woven throughout, and the real hero turns out to be misunderstood and maligned (and a hottie with his own survivor’s tale).

Bestselling romance author Emily Henry (Book Lovers, People We Meet on Vacation) posted this Goodreads comment about the book: “I wish I’d written this, but then again, I don’t think I could stand to give up the chance to read it, having no idea what was going to happen. … I absolutely adored this. Mhairi McFarlane’s voice is like no one else’s.”

If I Never Met You and Mad About You have their own weighty dramas that help propel the novels forward. While traumatic experiences are a part of her heroines’ whole person (think: abandonment, emotional abuse, gaslighting), McFarlane leads with the symptoms and situations before suggesting any diagnosis. She satisfies the cardinal “show me, don’t tell me” rule of writing. When readers recognize those very same symptoms and situations in themselves, the earth shakes beneath them.

McFarlane’s novels are a hilarious balm in an unpredictable world.

Bat Babies Shirt (White): $23

Melody Dworak is a librarian at the Iowa City Public Library, juggling two to three books at any given time. She served on Little Village’s editorial team from 2005-2010.

Can’t decide what to read next? Librarians at the Iowa City Public Library have some ideas. This month, Melody Dworak highlights great romance.

Iowa Madonna

By PAUL BRENNAN

My friend says he read somewhere that Des Moines has the most erotic statue in the world. I moved here a few months ago, and have seen zero erotic statues. Do you know what he’s talking about? —CG, Des Moines

It’s probably not the most erotic statue in the world, but in his iconic memoir about growing in Des Moines in the ’50s and early ’60s, Bill Bryson did describe a 7-foot-tall bronze figure on the grounds of the Iowa State Capitol as “the most erotic statue in the nation.”

“Called ‘Iowa,’ it depicts a seated woman, who is holding her bare breasts in her hands, cupped from beneath in a startlingly provocative manner,” Bryson wrote in The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid (2006).

The statue is part of the Iowa Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument, which commemorates the 76,534 Iowans who fought in the Civil War. Of course, Civil War monuments aren’t known for being erotic, and this one didn’t start out that way.

Iowa contributed more troops per capita to the Union Army than any other state, so a large, official memorial would be expected. But 13 years after the end of the war, there was still no official state monument. James Harlan was determined to change that.

Harlan was a significant figure in Iowa politics. Born in Illinois, he moved to Iowa City after graduating from college in Indiana in 1845, and was appointed the city’s school superintendent. In 1853, he moved to Mount Pleasant, where he spent two years as president of Iowa Wesleyan University. He left after being elected to the U.S. Senate, and represented Iowa for 10 years before President Lincoln appointed him Secretary of the Interior. He served for just over a year before returning to the Senate for one final term.

In 1888, Harlan successfully pushed the Iowa Legislature to create a monument commission, and immediately became one of its leaders. The commission began accepting designs for a war memorial, and offered $500 for the best design. Artists from across the state and around the country submitted plans. In June 1889, the commission selected the design by Harriet Ketcham of Mount Pleasant.

Ketcham had an established reputation as a

sculptor in Iowa art circles, but her selection was still a surprise. If anyone thought Ketcham had an unfair advantage because she was friends with Harlan, had attended Iowa Wesleyan and once sculpted a flattering bust of the former senator, they were polite enough not to say so publicly.

Most of the submitted designs featured a towering column topped by a flag or the statue of a soldier or a Nike (the Greek winged goddess of victory, not the sneaker). Ketcham’s was more

“Ketcham’s design also called for two more female allegorical figures on either end of the base of the monument,” Louise Rosenfield Noun wrote in her 1986 essay on the monument.

The first was History as a maternal figure reading to a child. The other was “a mourning Iowa placing garlands on a funeral urn.” Both would change before the monument was unveiled. History changed a little; Mourning Iowa changed a lot.

Ketcham never saw the finished monument. She died in 1890, and the Iowa Legislature didn’t approve funding for construction until 1892. In 1894, the commission hired Carl RohlSmith, a Danish-born sculptor living in Chicago, to complete the work. The commission chose Rohl-Smith not because they admired his work or his artistic vision, but because he submitted the lowest bid.

basic: a general on horseback on top of a temple-shaped plinth. The plinth was to be flanked by two generic soldier statues and feature an allegorical female figure, one that was fully clothed and completely unerotic.

Ketcham’s design was widely panned when it was published. Too small, too lacking in grandeur. She started revising it.

The general was moved from the center of the temple-like plinth, and became one of four generals on horseback along its edges. A towering column took his place, with a wingless figure of victory at its top. Two large bas-reliefs, one depicting a battle and one of soldiers returning home, were added, as were 35 medallions featuring images of various veterans.

Rohl-Smith was supposed to stick to Ketcham’s design. He didn’t. When commission members saw sketches of his revisions, most were outraged. Especially Harlan.

Even by 19th-century standards. James Harlan was a prude. As Secretary of the Interior, he searched the desks of his clerks at night, looking for signs of inappropriate behavior. One night he found a book of poetry. Harlan flipped through it, shocked by the poems and by what the clerk had written in the margins. Harlan fired the clerk the next day, declaring such “filth” had no place in government.

The clerk was Walt Whitman. The book was

Cont. >> on pg. 48

A fitting tribute to “our young and vigorous state,” or lewd? History is still deciding.

an inscription above Des Moines’ infamous bronze woman reads, “Iowa, her affections, like the rivers of her borders flow to an inseparable union.” Adria Carpenter / Little Village

CIVIL War MONUMENTS

arEN’T KNOWN FOr bEING ErOTIC, aND THIS ONE DIDN’T STarT OUT THaT Way.

Ican’t be the only Iowan who has found herself opening an incognito tab in a dispiriting search for a decent vibrator.

Driving across the state on I-80, you’re bound to see a few billboards for adult stores selling plasticky sex toys out of warehouses with truck-friendly parking lots. Chains like Romantix, Spencer’s and Lion’s Den are easy enough to find, as are sales reps for the multilevel marketing company Pure Romance. But their superstore ap proach, wink-wink attitude and often garish products and packaging aren’t everyone’s cup of tea.

What’s left then? Adam & Eve drop shipping, or a Sharper Image back massager? Luckily a handful of major retailers, including Target,

by EMMa MCCLaTCHEy

have recently started selling products specifically for sexual pleasure (much to the chagrin of conservative reactionaries like Marjorie Taylor Greene), from $15 vibrating bullets to $200 dual clitoris/G-spot stimulators.

But shopping for a product you plan to use intimately begs a few questions—questions you might not be inclined to ask the dude stocking shampoos the next aisle over. That’s where your friendly neighborhood shopgirls come to the rescue.

Revival, a boutique and vintage clothing store in the Iowa City Ped Mall turning 20 this year, figured out a long time ago their customers like being cozy, comfortable and socially progressive. After years of selling smallbrand clothing, accessories, soaps,

moisturizers, fragrances and, most recently, CBD bath soaks and lotions, owner Sheila Davisson and manager Maggy Moran figured adding sexual care products was a natural next step.

Vibrators hit the shelves in 2022, and ended up Revival’s bestselling products of the year.

“This was my first vibrator,” said Revival staff member Sheridan Posschelle, picking up a $49 forest-green vibe Revival sold to 80 customers in 2022. “I don’t know what I did without it. Like literally, it changed me. It changed my sexuality and my comfortableness with myself. This is the first place I really had been exposed to it, honestly, and had an ability to talk to my coworkers and talk to my friends about it. Not only is it here so we can sell it, but it’s also here to create conversations.”

Revival carries vibrators from two companies,

Maude Drop

Revival wants to make sex toy shopping a more pleasurable experience.

Maude Vibe $49

Dame aer $95

Dame Pom $95

Jordan Sellergren / Little Village

both of which manufacture in the U.S.: Maude, founded in 2018 by Eva Goicochea on the principles of quality, simple and inclusive sexual wellness products (a mission that brought actress Dakota Johnson onboard as an investor and co-creative director in 2020); and Dame, launched in 2014 by sexologist Alexandra Fine and engineer Janet Lieberman. The pair endeavored to close the “Pleasure Gap” between men and women by designing toys specifically to assist arousal and orgasm.

For Moran, who has a background in public health, part of normalizing sexual wellness means featuring the products prominently in the center of the store, not hiding them in the back, and avoiding buzzwords.

“I’m never going to carry a brand that I can’t talk about,” she said. “We just did a reorder and one of the new brands is called Shegasm. I can’t look a customer in the eye and be like, ‘Would you like to buy a Shegasm?’”

carries the brand’s organic lubricant ($10/2 oz. bottle), coconut bath ($18/8 oz.) and a candle whose melted wax can be used as massage lotion ($30).

Most vibrator questions from customers—“Are these for boys or girls?” “What can you do with them?” “Are they waterproof?” “Should I use silicone or water-based lube?”— can be answered with an emphatic yes, Moran said. Their vibes are easy and safe to use anywhere on the body, on most any body, and the manufacturers provide plentiful, LGBTQinclusive instructions, including animated videos on the Dame website.

While some shoppers browse the sex section quizzically, mistaking the Vibe for a taper candle or the Drop for an egg timer, those who know what they’re buying will usually head straight to the register.

“It’s really cool to see there’s people that are no-shame about it and ready to roll,” Moran said.

Moran and Posschelle were quick to admit Revival’s vibes aren’t the sexiest to behold, all minimalist in design and bearing little resemblance to genitalia.

“None of them are like what a dildo or vibrator was known to be in the early 2000s. They’re all very intentional shapes,” Posschelle said, holding up the green, oblong Maude Vibe that Revival staff lovingly refer to as the Tickle Pickle. “They say this is specifically designed for clitoral stimulation. I appreciate that they use that language … There’s a lack of sex ed in this country, and having products on the market that are open about what they’re about and using the right language is also a way to educate people.”

The shop carries Dame’s Eva Couples Vibrator ($135; billed as the most crowdfunded sex toy in history), the flexible Pom ($95), the Arc G-spot vibrator ($115) and the Aer ($95), a clitoral suction vibe that has flown off the shelf. Moran recently stocked 50 bottles of Dame’s vibrator cleanser, which sold out in less than a week.

Revival’s Maude vibrators—the $49 Drop and Vibe—are cheaper and more beginner-friendly. They’ll add Maude’s curved wand vibrator Spot ($79) in time for Valentine’s Day. Revival also

“We’re very nonchalant about it in the store, too,” Posschelle added, “because we never want them to be uncomfortable. We’re all pretty open about our sexualities here.”

Many tech business platforms aren’t, unfortunately. Revival’s sex-related products can’t be listed on Google, Facebook and Instagram, but they still sell vibrators in-store and on their website, and offer delivery through the Iowa City Downtown District and CHOMP.

Getting in the vibrator game has been good business so far, and Revival staff are proud of how the expanding sexual health section complements their regular partnerships with the Emma Goldman Clinic and other pro-choice orgs.

If nothing else, the shopgirls have likely saved some fellow pleasure-seekers and their partners from the experience of ordering an overpriced and dubiously designed toy off Amazon.

“I like to believe our customer trusts us with their sexual wellness,” Moran said. “You don’t have to be ashamed of a vibrator.”

Emma McClatchey bought her first vibrator from Romantix in Iowa City. It was OK, but no Tickle Pickle.

“There’s a lack of sex ed in this country, and having products on the market that are open about what they’re about and using the right language is also a way to educate people.” —Sheridan Posschelle

Always buying & selling quality vinyl records, CDs & turntables.

115 S. Linn Street (by the Public Library), Iowa City Tel: 319-333-1260; Email: chg@criticalhitgames.net

Iowa City is for Lovers

Sweeten the meal this Valentine’s Day by sprinkling in some local flavors.

by SID PETErSON

No matter your relationship status or feelings surrounding Valentine’s Day, it’s a convenient excuse to indulge in a fancy meal, cocktail, dessert, or all three. Spend Tuesday, Feb. 14 in good spirits—and out of the waiting area—by supporting local IC/CR businesses, planning ahead and getting straight to the good stuff.

Paint the Town Red

OK, so you’re planning to eat out on Valentine’s Day night with that (or those) special person(s) — hear me out for a moment. There are many wonderful places to treat yourself to a nice dinner in Eastern Iowa, and many will inevitably be very busy. Wherever you end up, be sure to be extra patient with restaurant workers; you don’t want to be responsible for making the day of love feel like another amateur night for bar staff this close to St. Pat’s. Remember to RSVP as soon as you can if you have your heart set on going out on the 14th.

If you’re wanting to be out, but in a relaxed environment, I suggest heading to Iowa City’s Northside, and making your way to Brix Cheese & Wine Bar. If you’re able to snag a seat at the bar, take your time perusing Brix’s lengthy list of wines, cheeses and meats. Chat up Brix’s friendly and knowledgeable staff and see what they recommend (if they’re not too swamped). Brix’s February cheese of the month is a chocolate goat cheese, which pairs well with Love Red, one of

Sugar, Sugar

their red blends from northern California.

Noodle Around at Home

IMHO, there are two excellent ways to eat your way through Valentine’s Day at home. The first starts with picking out the recipe, making yourself a list and heading out to your favorite grocery. You’ll find me walking over to New Pi for some last-minute ingredients and to pick up a piece (or two) of their scrumptious carrot cake for dessert— and possibly taking my time in the wine section, too, debating which bottle of red to splurge on.

The “I Love You Cherry Much” shake or sundae from Frydae’s, Marion

Pullman’s banana foster bread pudding (perfect for two!), Iowa City

Baklava from Vytyl, Cedar Rapids

You may be thinking, Cooking an elaborate meal on a Tuesday night? No thank you! Fair enough! If you’re spending the 14th in IC, the good folks at Saigon’s Corner and Ramen Belly can hook you up with exceptional take-out. You can’t go wrong with either of these two— it just depends if you’re feeling pho or ramen. Personally, I’ll go out of my way to swing over to the Peninsula neighborhood off North Dubuque Street just to indulge in Ramen Belly’s house ramen (miso & pork broth). The dish is warm, nourishing and perfect in every way. In addition to the tasty broth and noodles, you’ll find a soft boiled egg, scallions, corn, baby bok choy, bean sprouts and bamboo shoots. Yum!

If you’re more up north and in the mood for

Chocolate

cheesecake from Kathy’s Pies, Cedar Rapids

Lemon-yuzu curd from The Webster, Iowa City

A monthly coffee subscription from Daydrink (a new roaster each month!), Iowa City

An assorted box of macarons from Valerie’s French Cooking, Iowa City

Beignets from Lightworks Cafe, Cedar Rapids

Any chocolate or candy from New Pi’s aesthetic Valentine’s Day section, Iowa City and Cedar Rapids

An on-tap extravirgin olive oil or balsamic vinegar from Prairie Kitchen Store, Iowa City

Ditch the Walgreens candy box and treat ’em to something special!

Sid Peterson / Little Village

via Valerie’s

Italian takeout, I’d recommend Lincoln Wine Bar, situated on Mount Vernon’s mainstreet. It’s a bit of a drive from IC and CR, but worth it! Order one of their specialty woodfired pizzas to share. All pies are handcrafted, using their old-fashioned Neapolitan pizza oven.

Share Ur Truth

If you haven’t eaten, received or given one of Deluxe Cakes and Pastries’ iconic Valentine’s Day conversation cookies, do you even know the meaning of love? This is your sign to preorder one of their conversation heart boxes this February (check their Instagram for ordering info).

This cute little shop in Iowa City’s Longfellow neighborhood drops a full Valentine’s Day menu each year, including cookies that can do the flirting for you. Choose your rating (PG through XXX) and you could receive affectionate cookies, cringe-inducing cookies, blush-inducing cookies and even cookies with hell to pay: Last year, Deluxe offered break-up/hate boxes frosted with phrases like “ew” and “toxic.” If you have your own words in mind, Deluxe also lets you customize your conversation hearts.

Whatever the message, you’re not going to end up eating just one cookie.

A Funny Valentine’s Eve

Don’t spend the day before Valentine’s trolling Tinder or Craigslist for a pity date. Plants, laughs and quality time with your gal pals/more-thanpals are all much better for your health!

If you haven’t yet been to The Green House, Iowa City’s new plant-themed cocktail lounge, Feb. 13 (or Galentine’s Day, as enshrined by Amy Poehler’s Parks and Recreation character) is the perfect opportunity. The woman-owned GH is hosting Gigglin’ Galentines, a comedy show featuring headliner Megan Gogerty and three other hilarious comics, Lily Obscure, Emi Bendler and Clara Reynan.

I’d recommend grabbing tickets online ahead of time. You’ll save yourself $5 and have the assurance of getting a reserved seat. Doors will open at 7 p.m., show will begin at 7:30 p.m. If you’re unsure what to drink, I’d recommend the Audrey 2 cocktail—I love the violet and mint combo. Or, if you’re passing on booze, try the non-alcoholic shrub they’re offering that evening. The spicy watermelon habanero shrub is delightful!

Hacklebarney Brown

Greg

by KEMbrEW MCLEOD

The term roots is often used to describe unadorned country and folk music—though it is sometimes invoked without much thought about its deeper, more resonant connotations. But by examining the life of Iowa’s most well-known purveyor of this tradition, Greg Brown, we can better understand how it is ingrained in history, culture and family.

“Mom taught me how to play guitar,” he recalled. “Most of the music I heard living in southern Iowa was around her. She was born out in the country, south of Fairfield, and there was a lot of music down there.”

Born in 1949, Brown grew up in the Hacklebarney area of Iowa, where the soft coal mines drew folks from Kentucky and Virginia who brought with them a wellspring of musical influences. As a boy, he played the ukulele and messed around with a pedal lap steel guitar, which his father hooked up to an old-timey radio with a big 14-inch speaker that served as an amplifier.

“My dad was a preacher,” he said. “They called them Holy Rollers back then, and we stayed in that church for about five or six years when I was a little boy, traveling around. There was lots of singing in that church, and gospel quartets would come through.”

Brown knew he wanted to play music from a pretty early age but he didn’t know if he’d be able to make a living at it, so he attended the University of Iowa, in part to get a student deferment that kept him out of the Vietnam War. After Brown secured a spot opening for Eric Anderson, the folksinger took a shine to him, and Brown left the straight academic life behind in 1969 to set out for New York City, where bohemian adventures awaited.

“Eric invited me to come to New York,” Brown said, “so I went there that next summer and knocked around getting jobs at the little coffee shops in Greenwich Village. That’s really where I started out, and I had a steady gig at Gerdy’s Folk City.”

After four or five months, Brown started to miss his girlfriend living in Oregon, so he sold his guitar at a Village store and bought a standby airline ticket to be with her. They decided to move back to Iowa after a few months on the West Coast, but the young couple broke up while

driving through Wyoming, which set the stage for a few more years of rambling around.

“I think I was living in Des Moines for a while,” Brown said. “Anyway, I had a trio, and the woman in the band had worked with this guy who was living out in Las Vegas, Buck Ram. He was the manager for the Platters, and he invited us to come out and write songs, so we went out there and tried to ‘achieve blend’ for a while. That’s what he said we had to do: achieve blend.”

They never did successfully achieve blend, so Brown headed back to Iowa and began gigging with Richard Pinney around the Midwest. In 1974, the duo played a live set at a Rockford, Illinois club that was recorded for an album, Hacklebarney, which sunk without a trace. “It wasn’t very good,” he said, “but that was OK, because not very many people heard it.”

Brown and his first wife split up a couple years after their daughter Pieta Brown was born in 1973, when they lived out in the country in a house with no running water or indoor plumb-

Pieta Brown’s 2002 debut, the natural outgrowth of a family tradition that was steeped in music. As a little girl, Pieta would go down to Hacklebarney with her dad to visit her great-grandparents, her great-uncle Roscoe, and a bearded fiddle-playing character named Buzz Fountain, who’d host gatherings called Selma Jams.

“Grampa Honey played the banjo and sang,” Pieta said. “Gramma Honey played the pump organ and sang. Those were my gramma’s parents, so the music goes way back in our family. At the Selma Jams, I got to dance around with a hat turned upside down collecting donations for the musicians. So, some things haven’t changed too much.”

At the end of the 1970s, Greg Brown decided that it was time to make a studio album, so he got together with some friends, like Dave Moore, and cut his first solo album, 44 & 66. Released in 1980, it was followed the next year by a stone-cold classic, The Iowa Waltz, another do-it-yourself affair.

OF

SO rOOTED, aND GIGaNTIC. WHEN HE’S SINGING aND PLayING, I FEEL SUCH aN UNFILTErED CONNECTION TO SOMETHING THaT IS SO MUCH bIGGEr THaN I aM Or HE IS.” —PIETA BROWN

Established record companies weren’t interested, so the can-do Midwesterner went down to the bank, took out a loan, and pressed up a batch of albums that he sold at gigs and in local record stores. This laid the foundation for an influential independent label, Red House, that championed left-of-the-dial folk artists in much the same way that indie labels like Dischord and SST incubated punk rock at the same time.

“I liked having a small label because I had complete freedom,” Brown said. “I could record whatever I wanted to, whenever I wanted to.”

ing. The newly single musician moved back to Iowa City and held down jobs at the library and the hospital while he grew his solo career, one gig at a time. Brown often hosted late-night jam sessions at his place, where he’d wake up li’l Pieta to hang out and listen to music well into the night, then excuse her from school the next day.

“One of the reasons I loved waking up for those times is because my dad would make me tapioca pudding,” Pieta recalled. “Some of my earliest memories are of music. The sound of guitar. A foot tapping. The sound of the birds outside the open window out in the country. Yes, there were a lot of disapproving calls from the school system. I never really understood school, though. It never felt right to me. Waking up in the middle of the night to eat tapioca pudding and make music made way more sense.”

Those evenings planted seeds that flowered into several critically acclaimed albums since

These DIY albums soon got the attention of Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion, which frequently featured him as a musical guest. After moving to Minneapolis, where that long-running radio show was produced, his gravely baritone voice and homespun guitar playing could be heard coast to coast on the air. (Fittingly for an Iowa boy, the word broadcasting is rooted in an agricultural metaphor: i.e., casting sonic seeds across the land.)

“I met a guy named Bob Feldman who had promoted a show for me in Minneapolis, and I was moving up there to work on Prairie Home, so I said to Bob, ‘Hey, how would you like to be Red House Records?’ And he said, ‘Sure.’ So, we put a couple of boxes of records in his backseat and he became Red House Records, and that’s that. He’s the guy who really got the whole thing going, and

Cont. >> on pg. 36

Greg brown’s two retirement shows at the Englert this month are SOLD OUT.

Brown’s storied career in music is founded on family jam sessions and “complete freedom.”

“HEarING My DaD SINGING aND PLayING IS ONE

My FaVOrITE SOUNDS ON EarTH. IT’S SOMEHOW

A-List

That Was Close

by ELENa VaLLEJO

Love isn’t patient and isn’t kind in Factory of Fear’s newest haunt.

Moline-based Factory of Fear has been manufacturing Halloween scares for nearly 30 years, showcasing year-round attractions across more than 40 scare rooms. They’ve been sharpening their fangs in preparation for their 2023 Valentine’s weekend event, “Love is Blind: Vampires Suck.” This year marks the ninth year of their annual Valentine’s haunt, this time focusing on the realm of vampires and werewolves.

Though these creatures were some of the most gruesome and repellant villains of early horror fiction and films, pop culture of the 21st century has recast them in the public imagination as brooding hunks and tortured romantics. Studios, publishers and social media users have recently reinvigorated Anne Rice’s steamy vampire universe, nostalgic swooning over Twilight’s interspecies love triangle, Marvel’s Morbin’ nocturnal crime-fighters and even the charming, furry monsters of the Addams Family. (Netflix’s teen horror-comedy-romance Wednesday reached over 150 million households within three weeks of debuting last fall, according to the streamer.)

“Just like everything in entertainment and pop culture, vampires and werewolves are making

a splash again, just like zombies did 10 years ago and 20 years before that,” said haunt director Brett DeLeo. “We try to stay up to date with trends in horror. So, if vampires or werewolves are your thing, we’ve definitely got something for you with this event!”

The vamps and wolves inside Factory of Fear are probably not the kind you want to ask on a Valentine’s date. Those who dare to enter this year’s haunt will experience rooms and characters festooned with spook and gore, surrounded by lovey-dovey-bloody decor.

“Love is Blind” will not, in fact, leave you in the dark; Factory of Fear is experimenting with some mood lighting, utilizing new light features to keep visitors on their toes throughout the haunt.

“Some of the lighting has definitely been adjusted to fit the theme and some new lighting has been installed to further enhance the theme, “ DeLeo said.

Factory of Fear first opened its doors in 1994. Over the last decade they’ve expanded to become one of the most decorated haunted attractions in Illinois, making the top 10 haunted houses lists year after year at hauntedillinois.com and winning several local best-of-the-area contests. In 2018, they completed their first 100 percent remodel. And they didn’t stop there, adding 5,000

square feet to their space in both 2020 and 2021. Growth hasn’t just been limited to the physical space, but the calendar as well. While most Halloween attractions (and therefore jobs) are seasonal, the Factory has made it their mission to bring year-round events to the community.

“The reality is that by running yearround events, we’re able to stay engaged with our customer base and keep the actors involved,” DeLeo said. “It’s really a win-win for everyone.”

Factory of Fear’s “Love is Blind: Vampires Suck” event runs two days, Feb. 10 and 11, from 7-10 p.m. at their scare factory in Moline, 5027 4th Ave. Tickets can be bought in advance at hauntpay.com for $30 each.

The average haunt length is about 30 minutes. As stated on their website, actors do not touch you as you make your way through the haunt, but they will get really close—maybe even close enough to make your heart flutter.

Elena Vallejo (she/her) was born and raised in the QC area. Throughout her life she has fallen in love with the art of writing. She is currently studying Early Childhood Education, Theatre and Writing at St. Ambrose University in Davenport.

Flushed cheeks, chills down your spine, heart beating wildly... there’s more than one way to have a thrill on V Day.

Factory of Fear’s “Love is Blind: Vampires Suck”

“JUST LIKE EVEryTHING IN ENTErTaINMENT aND POP CULTUrE, VaMPIrES aND

WErEWOLVES arE MaKING a SPLaSH aGaIN, JUST LIKE ZOMbIES DID 10 yEarS aGO aND 20 yEarS bEFOrE THaT.”

Adrenaline still pumping after the Factory? Make it a full-on date night and you may just fall in love.

Staying in Iowa?

Dinner: Miss Phay Cafe

The best local Vietnamese, walkable from your hotel

Hotel: blackhawk Hotel A local historical landmark that has gone through enough renovations to make it posh but not too expensive.

Entertainment: Skybridge A staple in free QC entertainment. Make sure you go at night for the lights and riverview.

Shopping: abernathy’s A vintage, homemade and alternative culture shop for clothing, decor and tchotchkes.

Late night: analog The QC’s favorite barcade.

breakfast: Toasted Super cute diner with fancy toasts. Great brunch spot after a good sleep or to nurse a hangover.

Staying in Illinois?

Hotel: Victorian Inn Historic bed and breakfast near Rock Island’s District, where the nightlife things happen.

Entertainment: The QC botanical Center

Home to an impressive variety of plants from all over the globe, plus it’s gorgeous and warm (and near the other spots on this list).

Shopping: The artsy bookworm A bookstore/art gallery with a social justice slant.

Dinner: El Mariachi One of the best-kept secrets and best Mexican restaurants in the QC. It has a lot of competition in Moline’s Floreciente neighborhood, though.

Late night: rozz-Tox Coffee shop, bar and venue with a limited selection of incredible food, games and sometimes shows or movies.

breakfast: QC Coffee & Pancake House

Their famous special is the Cinnamon Roll Pancakes. —Sarah Elgatian

EVENTS: FEbruAry

FEBRUARY 2023

Planning an event? Submit event info to calendar@littlevillagemag. com. Include event name, date, time, venue, street address, admission price and a brief description (no all-caps, exclamation points or advertising verbiage, please). To find more events, visit littlevillagemag.com/calendar. Please check venue listing in case details have changed.

Black is… Black Ain’t, FilmScene–The Chauncey, Monday,

Feb. 27 at 7 p.m., Free-$7 The aftereffects of anti-Black racism in the United States often means that the Black identity is reduced to a few broad, stereotyped strokes that flatten and reduce the complex experience of what it means “to be Black.” Marlon Riggs’ final documentary explores the wide spectrum of Black experience, including the reinforcement of homophobia and sexism within the Black community, as well as interviews with Bell Hooks, Cornel West and Angela Davis.

Films In Focus

Wednesday, Feb. 1 at 10 pm. Late Shift at the Grindhouse: Obstacle Corpse, FilmScene–The Chauncey, Iowa City, $8

Thursday, Feb. 2 at 7 p.m. Jazz on a Summer’s Day, FilmScene–The Chauncey, Free-$8

Saturday, Feb. 4 at 10 p.m. Medicine for Melancholy, FilmScene–The Chauncey, Free-$8

Wednesday, Feb. 8 at 10 p.m. Late Shift at the Grindhouse: Nurse 3D, FilmScene–The Chauncey, $8

Thursday, Feb. 9 at 7 p.m. Black History Month Film: Descendant, Iowa City Public Library, Free

Saturday, Feb. 11 at 10 p.m.

Twilight, FilmScene–The Chauncey, Free-$7

Sunday, Feb. 12 at 1 p.m. Meredith

Willson: America’s Music Man, Voxman Music Building, Iowa City, Free

Tuesday, Feb. 14 at 7 p.m.

Sleepless in Seattle, FilmScene–The Chauncey, Free for members

still from ‘Black is... Black Ain’t’

EDITORS’ PICKS: FEBRUARY 2023

Wednesday, Feb. 15 at 10 p.m. Late Shift at the Grindhouse: Winnie-The-Pooh: Blood and Honey, FilmScene–The Chauncey, Iowa City, $8

Thursday, Feb. 16 at 7 p.m. Portrait of a Lady on Fire, FilmScene–The Chauncey, $10-13

Friday, Feb. 17 at 10 p.m Come With Me My Love, FilmScene–The Chauncey, $8

Saturday and Sunday, Feb. 18 and 19 at 11 a.m. The Picture Show: Ratatouille, FilmScene–The Chauncey, Free-$5

Saturday, Feb. 18 at 10 p.m. Thunder Road, FilmScene–The Chauncey, Free-$7

Wednesday, Feb. 22 at 10 p.m. Late Shift at the Grindhouse: Valley Girl, FilmScene–The Chauncey, $8

Thursday, Feb. 23 at 3:30 p.m. The Picture Show: Ratatouille, FilmScene–The Chauncey, Free-$5

Thursday, Feb. 23 at 7 p.m. Black History Month Film: Driving While Black, Iowa City Public Library, Free

Saturday, Feb. 25 at 10 p.m. Tampopo, FilmScene–The Chauncey, Free-$7

Tuesday, Feb. 28 at 7 p.m. Never Rarely Sometimes Always, FilmScene–The Chauncey, Free-$7

Art Show: Art from the Inside Out, Artifactory, Iowa City, Friday, Feb. 10 at 7 p.m., Free

Inside Out, a comprehensive re-entry community that helps citizens return from incarceration to Johnson County, is hosting an art show at Artifactory. Inside Out will be showcasing more than 25 pieces of art from individuals who are currently and formerly incarcerated. The show will celebrate the talent and hard work of these artists as well as promote public awareness of their resilience and humanity. The reception is free and open to the public.

Community Connections

Sunday, Feb. 5 at 1 p.m. Freeze Fest, Terry Trueblood Recreation Area, Iowa City, Free

Sunday, Feb. 5 at 1 p.m. Alma Thomas Heart Mosaics, Iowa City Public Library, Free

Dan Ockenfels

FEBRUARY 2023 PRESENTED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA STANLEY MUSEUM OF ART AROUND THE CRANDIC

Saturday, Feb. 11 at 12 p.m. IC Press Co-op Open Studio, Public Space One, $10-20

Saturday, Feb. 11 at 2 p.m. Stanley

Creates: Portraits in Green Inspired by Lee Krasner, Stanley Museum of Art, Iowa City, Free w/ registration

Sunday, Feb. 12 at 2 p.m Naturalizing Roadsides: Making a More Beautiful Iowa, Iowa City Public Library, Free

Thursday, Feb. 16 at 5 p.m. Free Third Thursday, Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, Free

Saturday, Feb. 18 at 2 p.m. Grant Wood Talk w/ Michael Dixon, Stanley Museum of Art, Free

One Book Two Book

Festival, FilmScene–Chauncey and Macbride Auditorium, Iowa City, Saturday-Sunday, Feb 25-26., Free

One Book Two Book Festival, Iowa City’s annual celebration of children’s literature, returns this February. Festivities will begin mid-morning with a book fair, family-friendly shorts at FilmScene at the Chauncey, and Lego and BRIO trains set-up at MERGE for all to enjoy. In the afternoon, FilmScene will also host a book character meet-and-greet; stop by to get a photo with Clifford, Elephant & Piggie, and Mother Bruce. The Write Out Loud Student Award Ceremony, an event recognizing and honoring local student’s winning writing submissions, will be held in Macbride Auditorium on Sunday at 1 p.m.

Literary Luxuries

Thursday, Feb. 2 at 7 p.m. Tegan Nia Swanson, Prairie Lights, Iowa City, Free

Sunday, Feb. 5 at 2 p.m. Cornelia Mutel Tending Iowa’s Land Anthology Reading, Prairie Lights, Free

Sunday, Feb. 5 at 4 p.m. Writers Open Mic, Iowa City Poetry, Virtual, Free

Tuesday, Feb. 7 at 7 p.m. Aron Aji, Prairie Lights, Free

Wednesday, Feb. 8 at 7 p.m. Reading w/DK Nnuro, Prairie Lights, Free

Thursday-Saturday, Feb. 9-11. Racial Reckoning through Comics w/ Joe Sacco, Iowa City Public Library, Free

Saturday, Feb. 11 at 11 a.m. Book Launch and Coat Drive w/Norene Paulson, Sidekick Coffee & Books, Iowa City, Free

Monday, Feb. 13 at 7 p.m. Jean Chen Ho w/ Angela Flournoy, Prairie Lights, Virtual, Free

Thursday, Feb. 16 at 5 p.m. Books Matter: Scholars in Conversation, Stanley Museum of Art, Free

Thursday, Feb. 16 at 7 p.m. PJ Party and Storytime at Grant Wood’s House, Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, Free

Friday, Feb. 17 at 7 p.m. Erika Meitner and Caryl Pagel, Prairie Lights, Free

Saturdays, Feb. 18 and 25 at 3 p.m. Projection Mapping w/ Jacob Smithburg, PS1 Close, Iowa City, $10-120

Sunday, Feb. 19 at 2 p.m. Drawing Salon w/Robert Caputo, Stanley Museum of Art, Free w/registration

Thursday, Feb. 23 at 7 p.m Spriestersbach Lecture w/ Oliver Lee Jackson, Stanley Museum of Art, Free

Saturday, Feb. 25 at 10 a.m. BlackOwned Business Market, NewBo City Market, Cedar Rapids, Free

Sunday, Feb. 19 at 3 p.m. Cynthia Ukah, Prairie Lights, Free

Tuesday, Feb. 21 at 6 p.m. BYOBook: Black Bottom Saints by Alice Randall, Iowa City Public Library, Online, Free w/ registration

Saturday, Feb. 25 at 10:30 a.m. Poetry, Music, and the Environment w/ Iowa Poet Laureate Debra Marquart, Cedar Rapids Public Library

Sunday, Feb. 26 at 1 p.m. What’cha Reading Book Club, Craft’d, Cedar Rapids, Free

Sunday, Feb. 26 at 2 p.m. Mary Beth Sartor Obermeyer, Prairie Lights, Free

Sunday, Feb. 26 at 3 p.m. Write at the Stanley, Stanley Museum of Art, Iowa City, Free

Monday, Feb. 27 at 6 p.m. Rebecca Makkai, Prairie Lights, Virtual, Free w/registration

FIND MORE EVENTS

Courtesy of City of Literature

COMING IN 2023

FEB 4 CEDAR COUNTY COBRAS + JOE & VICKI PRICE

American roots & blues music

$10 - 15 + FEES

The James Theater

FEB 10 -11

THE SECOND CITY SWIPES RIGHT

Award-winning improv comedy troupe

$20 - 48 + FEES

SPONSORED BY: James Investment Group Inc.

FEB 25 ENGLERT LOCAL SHOWCASE

Experience Iowa City’s rising local music scene ft. Sean Tyler, The Wilted, & 24thankyou

$10 - 15 + FEES

FEB 26 TRIO LESS T RAVELED Music for 2 violins & 1 cello

$18 - 22.64 + FEES

PRESENTED BY: Red Cedar Chamber Music

SEASON SPONSORS:

MAR 2 LEO KOTTKE

American acoustic guitarist

$20 - 46.50 + FEES

MAR 3 TAB BENOIT

Blues guitarist & singer with JD Simo

$20 - 50 + FEES

CO-PRESENTED BY: T Presents

MAR 4 GAELIC STORM

Chart-topping Celtic band

$34 - 39.50 + FEES

MAR 10 CRASH TEST DUMMIES

Canadian rock band with Carleton Stone

$20 - 45 + FEES

MAR 12 ERIC GALES

Blues rock guitarist with Ally Venable

$20 - 38 + FEES

Wildwood Saloon

MAR 14 DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS

Southern rock band with Margo Cilker

$15 - 38 + FEES

MAR 15 NITTY GRITTY DIRT BAND

Country rock band

$42 - 72 + FEES

CO-PRESENTED BY: Mammoth Live

MAR 17 DAVID CROSS

Worst Daddy in the World Tour with Sean Patton

$25 - 145 + FEES

MAR 24 THE MYSTERY HOUR with Jeff Houghton

$28 - 53 + FEES

PRESENTED BY: Inside Out Reentry Community

MAR 29 TITUS ANDRONICUS

Indie rock band with Country Westerns

$15 - 22 + FEES

Gabe’s

I think it did turn into a fairly important little label.”

In the 1980s, Brown began working with producer and sideman Bo Ramsey, a rail-thin guitarist perpetually clad in a straw cowboy hat who played on a number of his albums, including One Big Town, Down In There, Slant 6 Mind and Freak Flag. Meanwhile, Brown’s unassuming legend quietly spread throughout the land.

The year 2002 saw the release of Going Driftless: An Artist’s Tribute to Greg Brown, which featured roots music luminaries Iris DeMent, Lucinda Williams, Gillian Welch and others, along with a cover of “Ella Mae” by his daughters Pieta, Zoe and Constie Brown. Around this time, Brown fell for DeMent, who was born in Arkansas into a Pentecostal family that shared similar cultural and musical touchstones. He still remembers the moment that sealed the deal, when they were both playing at the Rocky Mountain Festival in Lyons, Colorado and DeMent was about to go onstage to sing with boho country-folk artist John Prine.

“Iris was standing there with a paper plate having her supper, and she looked at me and said, ‘Here, you finish this,’ and she just handed me her plate,” Brown said. “Well, you just don’t do that, really, unless you’re gonna marry somebody. Even I—who’s pretty thick about those sorts of things—understood exactly what was going on. I took that paper plate, and within a few months we were married.”

The couple’s musical and familial roots have entwined in many ways since then, such as when Pieta Brown co-produced Iris DeMent’s brand-new release, Workin’ On a World, which includes a couple songs they co-wrote. The album’s infectious title track is a hopeful anthem for our troubled times, with a chorus that goes: “I’m joinin’ forces with the warriors of love / Who came before and will follow you and me / I get up in the mornin’ knowing I’m privileged just to be / Workin’ on a world I may never see.”

Whenever our collective problems might feel insurmountable, this song stands as a reminder that we are part of an unbroken circle of folks who have fought (and will keep fighting) to make the world a better place. This long-view sensibility also resonates with the way that Pieta views her own life and family.

“I do see myself as part of a very rooted musical lineage—I am just one little variation, a continuation,” she said. “Hearing my dad singing and playing is one of my favorite sounds on earth. It’s somehow so rooted, and gigantic. When he’s singing and playing, I feel such an unfiltered connection to something that is so much bigger than I am or he is. He can make me laugh and cry in just one song! His body of work is multi-directional, and fun, and beautiful, and I’m just getting to know it even still.”

Kembrew McLeod spent the winter holidays working on an interpretive dance adaptation of “Yummy Yummy Yummy” by the Ohio Express.

iHearIC: mars hojilla,

dropbear, Rachel Saint and Robyn Groth, PS1 Close House, Iowa City, Sunday, Feb. 26

at 7:30 p.m., Free iHearIC, the long-standing free Iowa City concert series, is making its grand return after a three-year hiatus in a new-to-the-series venue, Public Space One Close House’s upstairs dancehall. They’re kicking their season off with an exciting, diverse lineup of local talent. mars hojilla is the solo indie alt-rock project of Myles Evangelista, a punk rock kid at heart based in IC, from Peoria, Illinois. dropbear, bassoonist Gabi Vanek and saxophonist Justin K Comer will also be performing, in addition to Rachel Saint, the electronic and rock project of Rachel Kellogg, and artist and poet Robyn Groth. Admission is free and donations are welcome.

Musical Marvels

Wednesday, Feb. 1 at 7 p.m. The Arcadian Wild, Wildwood Saloon, Iowa City, $15-25

Friday, Feb. 3 at 7:30 p.m. Spoken Word and Blues: Caleb “the Negro Artist” Rainey and Kevin Burt, Giving Tree Theater, Marion, $23

Saturday, Feb. 4 at 7 p.m. The Wildwoods, La Wine Bar, Iowa City, Free

Saturday, Feb. 4 at 8 p.m. Cedar County Cobras and Joe & Vicki Price, The James Theater, Iowa City, $10-15

Saturday, Feb. 4 at 8 p.m. Aaron Kamm & The One Drops, Gabe’s, Iowa City, $15

Sunday, Feb. 5 at 7 p.m. Fellow Pynins, CSPS Hall, Cedar Rapids, $15-18

Friday, Feb. 10 at 8 p.m. James Armstrong, CSPS Hall, $25-30

Friday, Feb. 10 at 8 p.m. Kevin Burt, BIG Medicine, Dave Zollo, Wildwood Saloon, $15-20

Friday, Feb. 10 at 8 p.m. Summer Camp: On The Road Tour, Gabe’s, Iowa City, $10

Saturday, Feb. 11 at 7 p.m. Flash in a Pan, La Wine Bar, Free

Saturday, Feb. 11 at 7:30 p.m. My Bloody Valentine, CSPS Hall, $12-15

Saturday, Feb. 11 at 7:30 p.m. Kronos Quartet, Hancher Auditorium, Iowa City, $10-50

Saturday, Feb. 11 at 7:30 p.m. A Valentine’s Evening w/the Dandelion Stompers, Ideal Theater & Bar, Cedar Rapids, $15-25

Sunday, Feb. 12 at 7 p.m. Norma Jean, Wildwood Saloon, $25

Sunday, Feb, 12 at 7 p.m. Bouquet and Closet Witch, Gabe’s, $10

Thursday, Feb. 16 at 7:30 p.m. Greg Brown Retirement Show, Englert Theatre, Iowa City, $23-48

Friday, Feb. 17 at 7:30 p.m. American Dreams w/the Harlem Quartet, Coralville Center for the Performing Arts, $10-17

Friday, Feb. 17 at 9 p.m. Sam Locke Ward, Gabe’s, $10

Saturday, Feb. 18 at 2 p.m.

Dan + Claudia Zanes, Hancher Auditorium, $7-25

Saturday, Feb. 18 at 7 p.m. Gabrielle Kouri and George Spielbauer, La Wine Bar, Free

Saturday, Feb. 18 at 7:30 p.m. Good Habits, Casual Distaster & More, Gabe’s, $10-15

Saturday, Feb. 18 at 7:30 p.m. American Dreams w/the Harlem Quartet, Paramount Theatre, Cedar Rapids, $10-17

Saturday, Feb. 18 at 9 p.m.

OHYUNG, Trumpet Blossom Cafe, Iowa City, $10-15

Tuesday, Feb. 21 at 6:30 p.m. Mardi Gras w/Dandelion Stompers, Swampland Jewels, Five Seasons Swing, Wildwood Saloon, $10-20

Saturday, Feb. 25 at 7 p.m. GIDEON w/For the Fallen Dreams, Orthodox, Guerilla Warfare, Wildwood Saloon, $20-25

Saturday, Feb. 25 at 7:30 p.m. Englert Local Showcase: Sean Tyler, The Wilted, 24thankyou, Englert Theatre, $10-15

Saturday, Feb. 25 at 8 p.m. The Pork Tornadoes, Paramount Theatre, $25-50

Tuesday, Feb. 28 at 7 p.m. The Steel Wheels, Wildwood Saloon, $15-25

mars hojilla. Caspian Voss

A Doll’s House & A Doll’s House Part Two, Theatre Cedar

Rapids, Opening Thursday, Feb. 23 and

Friday, Feb. 24, $15-27

Henrik Ibsen’s classic drama surrounding the life of Nora and Torvald Helmer is updated for a modern audience in these two plays performed in repertory of one another. In the first, Nora and Torvald have seemingly the perfect middle-class life, until a secret revealed threatens to tear them apart. In the 2017 A Doll’s House, Part II, written by Lucas Hnath, we see 15 years into the future and the aftermath of the events of the first play. TCR recommends A Doll’s House and A Doll’s House Part II to audience members ages 12+.

Theatrical Thrills

Thursday, Feb. 2 at 7:30 p.m OPEN, Mirrorbox Theatre, Cedar Rapids, $20

Friday-Sunday, Feb. 3-5. Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, Iowa City Community Theatre, $12-20

Saturday, Feb. 4 at 7:30 p.m. Pilobolus, Hancher Auditorium, Iowa City, $10-50

Saturday, Feb. 4 at 9:30 p.m. Sasha Rosser: Stand-Up Comedy, Joystick Comedy Arcade, Iowa City, $5

Opening Friday, Feb. 10. The Fantasticks, Willow Creek Theatre Company, Iowa City, $25

Friday and Saturday, Feb. 10-11. The Second City Swipes Right, Englert Theatre, Iowa City, $20-48

Opening Friday, Feb. 10 at 7:30 p.m. Cabaret, Theatre Cedar Rapids, $18-48

Friday-Sunday, Feb. 10-12. The Secret Garden in Concert, Coralville Center for Performing Arts, $17-30

Closing Sunday, Feb. 12. A Walk in the Woods, Riverside Theatre, Iowa City, $15-35

Monday, Feb. 13 at 7 p.m. Improv: Love is a Funny Thing, Lucky Cat Comedy, Cedar Rapids, $10

Monday, Feb. 13 at 7 p.m. Gigglin’ Galentines: Comedy Show w/Megan Gogerty, The Green House, Iowa City, $5-10

Thursday, Feb. 16 at 6 p.m. Queen’s Night: Galentine’s Day, NewBo City Market, Cedar Rapids, $15-90

Friday and Saturday, Feb 17 and 18 at 8 p.m. SPT Trivial Pursuit: Art & Literature, CSPS Hall, Cedar Rapids, $25-30

Friday, Feb. 24 at 7 p.m. Floodwater Comedy Fest: Tiny Team Improv Tourny: Prelims, Willow Creek Theatre Company, Free

Friday, Feb. 24 at 9:30 p.m. My Best Friend is Black, Joystick Comedy Arcade, $5

Friday and Saturday, Feb. 24 and 25. The Fog Comes on Little Cat Feet, Dreamwell Theatre, Artifactory, Iowa City, $10-15

Friday-Sunday, Feb 24-26. Million Dollar Quartet, Revival Theatre Company, CSPS Hall, $25-55

Saturday, Feb. 25 at 7:30 p.m. New Comic Competition, Joystick Comedy Arcade, Free

Sunday, Feb. 26 at 3 p.m. Broadway at the Paramount: The Simon & Garfunkel Story, Paramount Theatre, Cedar Rapids, $53-78

Christina Kroemer

Shiara

Nivana

FEBRUARY 2023 PRESENTED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA STANLEY MUSEUM OF ART AROUND THE CRANDIC

Bawdy and Soul Valentine’s Burlesque Shows

Theater, Iowa City, Friday, Feb. 10 at 8 p.m., & The Olympic Theater, Cedar Rapids, Saturday, Feb. 11 at 8 p.m., $25

Upcoming Burlesque!

Friday, Feb. 10 at 7:30 p.m. Burlesque, Fox Brewing, West Des Moines, $25-45

Saturday, Feb. 11 at 7 p.m.

Burlesque: Beach Party, The Circa 21 Speakeasy, Rock Island, $20-25

Tuesday, Feb. 14 at 6 p.m. A Valentine’s Dinner Experience, The Garden, Des Moines, $20-75

Saturday, Feb. 18 at 8 p.m. So This Is Love, Skylark, Rock Island, $30

Friday, Feb. 24 at 7 p.m.

Burlesque Revue, Stoner Theatre, Des Moines, $52.50

Friday, Feb. 24 at 8 p.m. The Garden, $15

Shiara Nivana

Quarter Craze Fundraiser for Rescued, Highland Park Bowl,

Moline, Saturday, Feb. 25, $10

Rescued, a high-end resale boutique in Moline, donates its profits to assist animals with veterinary expenses, whether they’re in shelters, staying with fosters or living with their forever families. Rescued’s Quarter Craze fundraiser is part auction, part raffle. The price of admission includes a paddle and a poker chip, and during bidding a winner is chosen at random like a raffle. Pets are welcome to bid and shop with you, and a professional photographer will be on site to capture some family portraits for $15 a photo.

Quintessential QC

Thursday, Feb. 2, 5 p.m. Our Culture Our Selves Writing Workshop, Midwest Writing Center, Online, $30-40 scholarships available

Friday, Feb. 3, 5:30 p.m. Phyrexia: All Will Be One Event, Remis Arane Exchange, Muscatine, $25

Saturday, Feb. 4, 5 p.m. Lantern Release, ERA Studio QC, Moline, $25

Tuesday, Feb. 7, 5 p.m. Craft Show, Radicle Effects Brewerks, Rock Island, Free

Saturday, Feb. 11, 11:30 a.m. Have a Heart for the Homeless Luncheon, Bally’s Casino, Rock Island, $35

Saturday, Feb. 11, 1 p.m. Form & Function Nature Writing Class, Nahant Marsh Education Center, Davenport, $15-20

Saturday, Feb. 11, 2 p.m. Partner Painting Swap, ERA Studio, Moline, $35

Wednesday, Feb. 15, 7 p.m. Grunge Alternative Music Bingo, Nerdspeak Brewery, Bettendorf, Free

Thursday, Feb. 16, 3:30 p.m. Exploring Careers in Art and Museum Studies, Rogalski Center, Saint Ambrose University, Davenport, Free

Domestic Violence Intervention Program Souper Bowl

Order Tickets Here

Sunday, Feb. 19, 1 p.m. Heathen Coffee Time, Dead Poet’s Espresso, Moline, Free

Sunday, Feb. 26, 8 p.m. Flea Market, Mississippi Valley Fairgrounds, Davenport, $3

All proceeds benefit victim/survivors of domestic violence, human trafficking and stalking.

Courtesy of Rescued

FEBRUARY 2023 PRESENTED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA STANLEY MUSEUM OF ART QUAD CITIES Curated by Sarah Elgatian

Good as H*LL: A Palentines Celebration,

Waterloo Center for the Arts, Friday, Feb. 10 at 7

p.m.,

$25

Waterloo Center for the Arts is throwing Cedar Valley’s coolest pal-entines celebration, suited specifically for you and your best friends. Twerk the evening away at this pre-Valentine’s Day celebration to an upbeat Lizzo-inspired DJ set and create handmade cards for those you love. Your ticket includes champagne (a.k.a. Juice; it’s a Lizzo party, after all) and dessert. Other beverages will be available for purchase as well. Proceeds from the event will support Friends of the Art Center.

Wildest W’loo + more!

Thursday, Feb. 2 at 8 p.m. Octopus Comedy Showcase, Octopus College Hill, Cedar Falls, $10

Saturday, Feb. 4 at 10 a.m. Ice Harvest Festival, Cedar Falls Historical Society, Free

Saturday, Feb. 4 at 7 p.m. WCF Symphony Concert: Création Du Monde, Gallagher Bluedorn Performing Arts Center, $6.75-40.75

Saturday, Feb. 4 at 8 p.m. Salt Fox, Mr. Softheart and Odd Pets, Octopus College Hill, $10

Opening Friday, Feb. 17. Prelude to a Kiss, Waterloo Community Playhouse, $10-22

Opening Friday, Feb. 17. Murder at the Howard Johnson’s, Cedar Falls Community Theatre, $10-25

Saturday, Feb. 18 at 6 p.m. Waterloo Sneaker Ball, Courtyard by Marriott, Waterloo, $25-350

Saturday, Feb. 18 at 7 p.m.

Storm Large, Gallagher Bluedorn Performing Arts Center, $22.55-66.75

Saturday, Feb. 18 at 8 p.m. Phoenix Curse, Soultru, Jim Swim and Cheesus, Octopus College Hill, $10

Monday and Tuesday, Feb. 20-21 It’s Okay to Be Different: Stories by Todd Parr, Gallagher Bluedorn Performing Arts Center, $1

Devices, Tools, Objects,

February

Fragmentary Visions

Props

Left: Iran, 17th century. Large Dish with Coy Gazelle. “Kubachi” ware, underglaze blue decoration with overglaze patterning, 13 inches dia. Grinnell College Museum of Art Collection, Gift of Nanette Rodney Kelekian. Right: Jeremy Chen, A Space for My Body, 2022. Mixed media,

Gratitude Revealed, Fairfield

Arts & Convention Center, Thursday,

Feb.

23 at 7 p.m., Free

Cinema Fairfield is proud to present a special screening of Louie Schwartzberg’s Gratitude Revealed, free and open to the public. Louie Schwartzberg is an award-winning cinematographer, director and producer. His notable career spans more than four decades, capturing breathtaking imagery using time-lapse, high-speed and macro cinematography techniques. This event will be hosted by Matthew Kalil, an assistant professor for the MFA program in screenwriting at the David Lynch Graduate School of Cinematic Arts. There will also be an opportunity for reflection and discussion following the film. Freewill donations benefit the Fairfield Arts and Convention Center.

Finest Fairfield

Monday, Feb. 6 at 2:30 p.m. Genealogy Group, Fairfield Public Library, Free

Tuesday, Feb. 7 at 7:40 p.m. I Love Lucy: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Sitcom, Fairfield Arts & Convention Center, $10-60

Wednesdays, Feb. 8, 15, 22 at 7:30 p.m. Open Mic, Cafe Paradiso, Fairfield, Free

Sundays, Feb. 12, 26 at 1:30 p.m. Write On Writers, Fairfield Public Library, Free

Thursday, Feb. 16 at 7 p.m. Acoustic Open Mic, Hosted by Lore Nobel House, Free

Saturday, Feb 18. at 7:30 a.m. Legislative Forum: Shipley, Hayes, and Dickey, Fairfield Chamber of Commerce, Free

Saturday, Feb. 18 at 1:30 p.m. Speaker Presentation: Doug Tallamy, Fairfield Public Library, Free

Saturday, Feb. 18 at 7:30 p.m. The Beat Goes On: Lisa McClowry as Cher, Sondheim Center for the Performing Arts, $10- 60

Monday, Feb. 27 at 5:15 p.m. All Our Voices, Fairfield Public Library, Free

Friday, March 3 at 6 p.m. First Friday Art Walk: Youth Art, Fairfield First Fridays, Free

Come Pho Luv (+ Beer),

Mainframe Studios, Des Moines, Saturday, Feb. 11 at 5:30 p.m., $47

If you haven’t been to an art event at Mainframe Studios yet, here’s your chance!

Tangerine Food Company’s annual Come Pho Luv event on the Saturday before the 14th is perfect for partners, pals or those flying solo. A ticket to the event will include four food stations that’ll include pho, fried chicken, crepes and more. Guests will also receive five beer samples from Peace Tree Brewing. In addition to excellent food and beverages, plan on partaking in many art experiences throughout the evening. There will be live music, a floral photo backdrop, tarot readings and workshops offered by Mainframe artists.

Dynamic DSM

Friday, Feb. 3 at 5 p.m

First Friday: Center Street, Mainframe Studios, Des Moines, Free

Opening Friday, Feb.

3. August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson, Des Moines Community Playhouse, $29-43

Sunday, Feb. 5 at 1:30 p.m. Postcards: Exhibition Gallery

Talk, Des Moines Art Center, Free

Thursday, Feb. 9 at 6 p.m

Capital City Pride: Zoey Luna, Temple Theater, Des Moines, Free

Saturday, Feb. 11 at 1 p.m. Local Author Fair, Beaverdale Books, Des Moines, Free

Tuesday, Feb. 14 at 5 p.m. Valentine’s Day Skate, Brenton Skating Plaza, Des Moines, Free$9.50

Wednesday, Feb. 15 at 6 p.m. Thy Art is Murder, Wooly’s, Des Moines, $25

Saturday, Feb. 18 at 6:30 p.m. Elision EP Release Show, Gas Lamp, Des Moines, $12-15

Friday and Saturday, Feb. 25 and 26. Ballet Des Moines: Balanchine+, Hoyt Sherman Place, Des Moines, $42-82

Tuesday, Feb. 28 at 7 p.m. The Finesse Japan Tour Kickoff, xBk Live, Free w/ RSVP

Perks of donorship

 Recognition on our Supporters page on the web and in print

 Early access to newly released half-price gift cards (Reader Perks)

 Access to the secret Donors’ Lounge Facebook group

 Invitations to special members-only events

 Home magazine delivery (at $10/month level and up)

Thanks to our January donors

Bill Nowysz

Allyson Units

Richard Rote

Eliza Rose

Scott Harrington

Nathan Albano

John Weyer

Dane Anderson

Mitzi Read

Bill Radl

Wendy Brown

Laura Wilkens

Dear Kiki, Is polyamory worth the trouble? Lay it out for us.

Signed, Polycurioush

Dear Polycurioush, Well, that all depends. Are you polyamorous?

Polyamory is one of the many things outside the societal norm that is often erroneously referred to as a lifestyle choice. And, certainly, people can choose to engage with it or not. But

thrill to your partners’ joy, and their pleasure in your happiness will only serve to deepen it. But if you interact with the world more transactionally, then—while you can still choose a poly lifestyle and succeed—the work necessary to make it a success will drain you. This will be especially true if your primary partner (if you have one) does experience compersion and you do not.

the question of whether or not it is “worth the trouble” boils down to something intrinsic and innate.

Let’s look at the central element of polyamory: compersion. The convenient website whatiscompersion.com defines that term as, “our wholehearted participation in the happiness of others.” It’s used in poly circles to describe the feeling of joy you get seeing your partner happy with someone else.

But not everyone experiences that feeling of joy. It threw me for a loop the first time I realized that some people do not take thrill or pleasure in the happiness of others, sexual, romantic or otherwise. It wasn’t until adulthood that I discovered some people view some or all types social interaction as transactional, and when someone helps them or arbitrarily gifts them something, they feel a crippling sense of obligation in return, and would never want anyone else to feel that on their account.

I spent my youth giving, giving, giving—I always loved the feeling of basking in others’ happiness. When I found out the “truth” about Santa Claus, my first reaction was to become Santa for my family and drop random gifts under the tree without admitting they were from me. I genuinely thought I was a bad person for wanting to help people because it didn’t come from some sense of “doing the right thing,” but from a selfish desire to feel that ancillary joy.

If you are wired to experience compersion, and that compersion extends to intimate relationships, then polyamory is absolutely worth every inch of “trouble” it brings with it (really, it’s all just coordinating calendars). You will

Ultimately, Polycurioush, like any other “relationship style,” you need to look inward first when deciding whether it’s for you. If you are poly, it will be a whole lot of unrewarding work to spend your life in a monogamous relationship. If you’re not, consider other types of ethical nonmonogamy, like swinging, where you can sow your oats but still fall back on a central partnership. Or consider just being single. There’s nothing wrong with playing the field and not “settling down,” despite the lies society tells.

Also remember that, like all relationships, polyamory must be built on a foundation of radical honesty and trust. If you or your partner aren’t ready for that, then you need to work on your partnership first (ideally with the help of a poly-friendly couples counselor) before you introduce other human beings into your dynamic. More people can’t fix a flailing relationship; you wouldn’t, for example, have a baby to solve your problems, and adding other adults to the same mix won’t help either. We all deserve more respect than that.

xoxo, Kiki

IF yOU arE WIrED TO EXPErIENCE COMPErSION, THEN POLyaMOry IS abSOLUTELy WOrTH EVEry INCH OF “TrOUbLE” IT brINGS WITH IT (rEaLLy, IT’S aLL JUST COOrDINaTING CaLENDarS).

Leaves of Grass, which Whitman was revising. Whitman got another job, Harlan became a footnote in literary history.

The commission eventually accepted RohlSmith’s revisions, but Harlan stayed mad for the rest of his life. In a speech he gave three months before his death in 1899, Harlan complained about “deformities” in the monument caused by the “misconception” of an artist “born and educated in the north of Europe.”

When work on the monument finished in 1898, the commission decided not to hold a dedication ceremony. Many of its members disliked it. So did much of the public. Veterans complained about a number of things, including the monument’s location and whose images were memorialized on the medallions. But most of the criticism focused on the revised figure of Iowa, which was called “too lewd.”

The official guidebook to the monument published in 1898 described the Iowa statue as a “beautiful, youthful mother offering nourishment to her children,” and said it was an appropriate symbol of “our young and vigorous state.” The guidebook said anyone who views it is “elevated by its purity of suggestion,” and claimed “great art critics” had declared it “one of the finest art conceptions in America.” The guidebook did not, however, name any of those art critics.

Regardless of what critics thought, the statue did gain a following among generations of adolescent boys in Des Moines, as Bryson indicates. But even that admiration had its limits.

“[I]t was a long way to cycle just to see some copper tits,” Bryson recalled.

The tits are bronze, not copper. And they remain just where Rohl-Smith placed them: on the north side of the monument, pointed directly at the Iowa State Capitol.

––Paul Brennan

February Events

Mother Iowa cups her bodacious breasts. Adria Carpenter / Little Village

ASTROLOGY

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): “I want to raise up the magic world all round me and live strongly and quietly there,” wrote Aquarian author Virginia Woolf in her diary. What do you think she meant by “raise up the magic world all round me”? More importantly, how would you raise up the magic world around you? Meditate fiercely and generously on that tantalizing project. The coming weeks will be an ideal time to attend to such a wondrous possibility. You now have extra power to conjure up healing, protection, inspiration, and mojo for yourself.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Before going to sleep, I asked my subconscious mind to bring a dream that would be helpful for you. Here’s what it gave me: In my dream, I was reading a comic book titled Zoe Stardust Quells Her Demon. On the first page, Zoe was facing a purple monster whose body was beastly but whose face looked a bit like hers. On page two, the monster chased Zoe down the street, but Zoe escaped. In the third scene, the monster was alone, licking its fur. In the fourth scene, Zoe sneaked up behind the monster and shot it with a blow dart that delivered a sedative, knocking it unconscious. In the final panel, Zoe had arranged for the monster to be transported to a lush uninhabited island where it could enjoy its life without bothering her. Now here’s my dream interpretation, Pisces: Don’t directly confront your inner foe or nagging demon. Approach stealthily and render it inert. Then banish it from your sphere, preferably forever.

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Theoretically, you could offer to help a person who doesn’t like you. You could bring a gourmet vegan meal to a meat-eater or pay a compliment to a bigot. I suppose you could even sing beautiful love songs to annoyed passersby or recite passages from great literature to an 8-year-old immersed in his video game. But there are better ways to express your talents and dispense your gifts—especially now, when it’s crucial for your long-term mental health that you offer your blessings to recipients who will use them best and appreciate them most.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): In esoteric astrology, Taurus rules the third eye. Poetically speaking, this is a subtle organ of perception, a sixth sense that sees through mere appearances and discerns the secret or hidden nature of things. Some people are surprised to learn about this theory. Doesn’t traditional astrology say that you Bulls are sober and well-grounded? Here’s the bigger view: The penetrating vision of an evolved Taurus is potent because it peels away superficial truths and uncovers deeper truths. Would you like to tap into more of this potential superpower? The coming weeks will be a good time to do so.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): The ingredient you would need to fulfill the next stage of a fun dream is behind door #1. Behind door #2 is a vision of a creative twist you could do but haven’t managed yet. Behind door #3 is a clue that might help you achieve more disciplined freedom than you’ve known before. Do you think I’m exaggerating? I’m not. Here’s the catch: You may be able to open only one door before the magic spell wears off—unless you enlist the services of a consultant, ally, witch or guardian angel to help you bargain with fate to provide even more of the luck that may be available.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): I trust you are mostly ready for the educational adventures and experiments that are possible. The uncertainties that accompany them, whether real or imagined, will bring out the best in you. For optimal results, you should apply your nighttime thinking to daytime activities, and vice versa. Wiggle free of responsibilities unless they teach you noble truths. And finally, summon the intuitive powers that will sustain you and guide you through the brilliant shadow initiations.

(P.S.: Take the wildest rides you dare as long as they are safe.)

By Rob Brezsny

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Fate has decreed, “Leos must be wanderers for a while.” You are under no obligation to obey this mandate, of course. Theoretically, you could resist it. But if you do indeed rebel, be sure your willpower is very strong. You will get away with outsmarting or revising fate only if your discipline is fierce and your determination is intense. OK? So let’s imagine that you will indeed bend fate’s decree to suit your needs. What would that look like? Here’s one possibility: The “wandering” you undertake can be done in the name of focused exploration rather than aimless meandering.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): I wish I could help you understand and manage a situation that has confused you. I’d love to bolster your strength to deal with substitutes that have been dissipating your commitment to the Real Things. In a perfect world, I could emancipate you from yearnings that are out of sync with your highest good. And maybe I’d be able to teach you to dissolve a habit that has weakened your willpower. And why can’t I be of full service to you in these ways? Because, according to my assessment, you have not completely acknowledged your need for this help. So neither I nor anyone else can provide it. But now that you’ve read this horoscope, I’m hoping you will make yourself more receptive to the necessary support and favors and relief.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): I can’t definitively predict you will receive an influx of cash in the next three weeks. It’s possible, though. And I’m not able to guarantee you’ll be the beneficiary of free lunches and unexpected gifts. But who knows? They could very well appear. Torrents of praise and appreciation may flow, too, though trickles are more likely. And there is a small chance of solicitous gestures coming your way from sexy angels and cute maestros. What I can promise you for sure, however, are fresh eruptions of savvy in your brain and sagacity in your heart. Here’s your keynote, as expressed by the Queen of Sheba 700 years ago: “Wisdom is sweeter than honey, brings more joy than wine, illumines more than the sun, is more precious than jewels.”

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Your assignment, Scorpio, is to cultivate a closer relationship with the cells that comprise your body. They are alive! Speak to them as you would to a beloved child or animal. In your meditations and fantasies, bless them with tender wishes. Let them know how grateful you are for the grand collaboration you have going, and affectionately urge them to do what’s best for all concerned. For you Scorpios, February is Love and Care for Your Inner Creatures Month.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Revamped and refurbished things are coming back for another look. Retreads and redemption-seekers are headed in your direction. I think you should consider giving them an audience. They are likely to be more fun or interesting or useful during their second time around. Dear Sagittarius, I suspect that the imminent future may also invite you to consider the possibility of accepting stand-ins and substitutes and imitators. They may turn out to be better than the so-called real things they replace. In conclusion, be receptive to Plan Bs, second choices, and alternate routes. They could lead you to the exact opportunities you didn’t know you needed.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Author Neil Gaiman declared, “I’ve never known anyone who was what he or she seemed.” While that may be generally accurate, it will be far less true about you Capricorns in the coming weeks. By my astrological reckoning, you will be very close to what you seem to be. The harmony between your deep inner self and your outer persona will be at record-breaking levels. No one will have to wonder if they must be wary of hidden agendas lurking below your surface. Everyone can be confident that what they see in you is what they will get from you. This is an amazing accomplishment! Congrats!

It will be a celebration when Greg Brown performs two retirement shows at the Englert this month. A lot of reverence will be there too, as a town gets the chance to pay tribute to one of its musical patron saints, hearing for a final time many beloved songs straight from their maker’s mouth.

Seth Avett of the Avett Brothers paid his own kind of tribute back in November, releasing Seth Avett Sings Greg Brown. There’s something about tribute albums that follow that title formula, Artist Sings X, that always feels profound, as if presenting their songs in just the right way will summon the artist themself out of the speakers. Seeing as Avett recorded the album in various hotel rooms in towns wherever he and his brother were playing that night, it feels particularly so, like he was inviting Brown to spend some time jamming with him in those many rented rooms.

Beginning with one of Brown’s most widely celebrated tunes, “The Poet Game,” Avett is remarkably delicate, careful to get every word exactly right. When he sings, “Why does the color of your skin or who you choose to love still lead to such anger and pain?”, he does so with an awareness that the ink may be dry on the page, but the question is as fresh as if it were rewritten every day. Brown was desperate when he asked it; Avett is resigned, exasperated by the time he finally finishes the verse.

“Good Morning Coffee” and “Just A Bum” are as buoyantly joyful as when Brown first presented them. Avett delights in trying out some

of Brown’s well-hewn Midwestern scat singing for himself on the former. On the latter, he harmonizes with himself throughout the tune, begging the question of just how Greg Brown filled so much space with just one voice. That mystery remains on “Telling Stories” when Avett sings the line “My dog was my buddy, the wind was green and yellow.” Avett gets the wonder right, but Mr. Brown alone has the ability to always sound like the fabled voice from on high, even when he sings sincerely about his dog and the colors of the wind.

Avett’s interpretation of “The Iowa Waltz” is particularly anthemic, in that grade school music program kind of way. Never mind that line about taking care of our own and our young, surely tongue in cheek even when Brown wrote it. Still, it’s an undeniable affirmation of a song, even for its saccharin. Or maybe because of it.

The tribute wraps up with “Tenderhearted Child”, the Greg Brown song which most rivals Dylan’s “Forever Young” as a “hopes for the ones who come after us” tune. There’s an authentic kind of romance to it: Avett alone in a hotel room singing this one to his own son, however miles and months away from this recording.

Avett’s is the third tribute album to be recorded of Greg Brown’s work: first Minnesota singer Prudence Johnson put out Songs of Greg Brown in 1991. A decade later Going Driftless: An Artist’s Tribute to Greg Brown was released, featuring 14 female performers, including Lucinda Williams, Ani DiFranco and Gillian Welch. Each of these albums are delightfully distinct and deserve a listen. With this tribute album, Avett provides the latest evidence that, throughout his pioneering career, Greg Brown has always written songs for other voices to sing. And after his two shows this month are through, soon that’s all that there will be, and it will have to be enough.

Don’t worry: Greg Brown has made sure that it will be.

—Avery Gregurich

SyLVEE & THE SEA

The Less I Needed the Better I Felt PIETABROWN.BANDCAMP.COM

Pieta Brown says time she spent in Tucson and the friends she made there sparked a music career. These friendships continue to this day as she works with AZ legends like Howe Gelb from Giant Sand and Joey Burns and John Convertino from Calexico. She has appeared on three albums from Calexico, and they returned the favor on her 2017 album of collaborations titled Postcards.

Like many artists during the pandemic lockdown, Brown found herself working on music by herself. She recorded instrumental fragments, really sketches of music, to Convertino who fleshed them out with his drums and vibes. She sent some of these tracks to Don Was— of Was (Not Was), president of Blue Note Records, and who lent his bass to Brown’s 2009 EP Shimmer—to add upright bass, and to CARM— of Y Music and Bon Iver—to add horns. Her only rule to the players was “no charts, no fear, no thinking, no remorse.”

Considering that none of the musicians who participated in the recording were in the room together, the album, which is credited as Sylvee & The Sea. As stated in the liner notes, “The final mixes bore proof to the notion that cool things can happen when you use the force and let go…”

The title The Less I Needed The Better I Felt speaks to the minimalist approach to the proceedings. It’s apparent that the very short (often two minutes or less) tracks clearly started with Brown’s piano and

guitar. Convertino, Was and CARM take her lead, delivering performances that fall in the free spaces or adorn the melody. For many of the songs Convertino brings deconstructed bits of percussion—not driving the song but providing improvised punctuation. On songs like the opener “Sun Rain” Convertino’s vibes and drum fills wash over Brown’s long-delay electric guitar.

Taken in whole, the album presents a contrast of movement and stillness. Most of the songs are short sketches lifting the bits of melody Brown started with, but a few of them have more structure and present a different story. If there is anything I’d compare the songs on The Less I Needed The Better I Felt to, it would be the atmospheric soundtracks that Ry Cooder has made over the years, specifically the soundtrack to Paris, Texas. Many of these songs carry a similar kind of abstract moodiness.

“Redistortionate” is one of my favorite tracks on the album. The band locks in and the song moves with a more structured beat over a shimmering and melodic guitar line. The listener can almost fill in a vocal part by Brown; it sounds like an outtake from one of her albums. Clocking in at a minute and 44 seconds, it’s not nearly long enough, and every time I listen to it, I restart it to get another loop.

Another track that has movement is “Distillery” which sounds like New Orleans jazz. Brown delivers a piano line reminiscent of an old time gospel song, Convertino drops in a march beat and CARM layers over bell-muted trumpets. A vibe and sound that we’ve never heard before on her records!

In recent years, Pieta Brown has expanded the scope of her music beyond the guitar-slinging singer-songwriter we’ve come to know and love, and redefined herself as a performer. Her sonic experimentation will surely inform her future work, proving that she is larger than the genre she is typically put in.

—Michael Roeder

SETH AVETT

Seth Avett Sings Greg Brown

RAMSEUR RECORDS

SLW + BBJR

shake-and-bake meth cooked in an abandoned farmhouse.

The songs aren’t just blasts of noise; each tells a story or carries a message with the barest economy of words. Sometimes sung, often shouted, the tracks are layered with sheets of saxophone and guitar racket, evoking everything from lurching free-jazz, hardcore punk gang vocals, ‘60s spy-flick soundtracks and abstract Saturday morning cartoons scored by King Crimson, plus a little Irish reel toward the end.

“I told Bob I was ‘gonna play hard pitch,’” Ward explained. “It’s fun to throw hard stuff at Bob because he’ll do it.”

Iowa is beautiful: a land of verdant cornfields, ball diamonds, quaint small towns and Shire-like rolling hills. But the realities of life are grim: the mask of “Iowa nice” all too often hides a deep core of red-state intolerance. Those acres of corn are nurtured by chemicals that seep into the rapidly eroding soil, owned by faceless agricultural conglomerates; desperation, addiction and hopelessness are endemic in a poisoned, culturally barren landscape.

From this land of contradictions springs the Bubblegum Necropolis EP, the newest collaboration between Sam Locke Ward and Bob Bucko Jr. It’s a rapid shift from the long-form sorrow of Discount Sacrifice at the Altar of Bargains, their 2021 full-length—not least for its format, a collection of 40 songs packed into the wildest, most chaotic nine minutes that any musician has put to tape in the last year.

SLW and BBJR experimented with drastic minimalism in 2021 on their two collaborations with Mike Watt (Real Manic Time and Let’s Build a Logjam). “I actually started the experiment on [Logjam] and just kept going,” says Ward. The approach ties in with the suitably absurd title: “It’s a field of songs that are all broken down to their essential components.” Broken down, as in crushed up like allergy meds and combined with caustic sonic backing to make a mixture as volatile as

Bubblegum Necropolis is a deeply Iowan album, from “Church Going Choir Girl” to “Sports Bar” to “Rail Road Town” to the most Iowa track of all, “Pig Shit Delight”: “It’s a pig shit swim in a pig shit lagoon / an Iowa treat from me to you!” What better way to make sense of a place where highly explosive pockets of unstable, near-molten pig feces are commonplace?

Elsewhere, Ward (the comic artist behind Little Village’s Futile Wrath) and Bucko take on alienation, corporate culture, boredom, despair and nonsense situations. All this may sound rightly unpleasant, but here’s the thing—it’s hilarious. They process their angst with a warped sense of humor, crooning such chestnuts as, “Listen to your heart and follow your dreams / listen to your heart beat true.”

Bubblegum Necropolis is the finest release of 2022, a catchy, clamorous summation of what it’s like to live in these absurd times. On first listen, I laughed so hard I had to constantly stop and repeat songs. Buying the digital version of the album may be preferable—the songs fly by so quickly that repetition of tracks becomes necessary. But if you buy the tape, you can stand on the lawn outside Kim Reynolds’ office with a boombox and play it for her, an experience worth the cost of bail.

—Loren Thacher

RAMIN ROSHANDEL & JEAN-FRANÇOIS CHARLES

Jamshid Jam

NEWFLOREMUSIC.BANDCAMP.COM

Since the 1960s, it seems the University of Iowa School of Music has loosened up about what is allowed and appropriate music for which one can get a Phd Composition—in a good way. There’s always been a raffish, crusty side to the department going back to Peter Lewis’ Scorpio Concerts from the 1970s. But this less traditional ferment happened alongside the work of more traditionally oriented composition professors. Now, what was experimental 40 years ago becomes mainstream practice, without entirely losing its wild edginess.

Jamshid Jam is a very modern stretching of music composition. Ramin Roshandel’s performance on the album is improvised, combining his live playing of the Persian setār with digital electronic processing by Iowa professor Jean-François Charles. There is no score, only the performance. The digital processing patches they use incorporate randomness. But they clearly take their time tuning these systems to have musically useful outcomes.

There are no “sharp stick in the ear” freakouts to the way the digital effects vary randomly, and in fact change becomes, paradoxically, a constancy. Nothing repeats, exactly, but as Marvin Bell would say, it repeats “inexactly.” Summed with Roshandel’s free interpretation of the Persian improvisational style, they make music that is never the same twice, yet satisfies in a “same but different” way as through-composed, written composition.

It is experimental in process, but not in performance. Iowa City musician Gabby Vanek (another Iowa alum) recently said of her improvisations “...if I didn’t practice it I don’t know if it’s going to work.”

Roshandel & Charles rehearsed these pieces before recording official versions of them. Each piece reflects a well-worked out musical aesthetic, with distinctive tonality and timbre. But it’s exciting that other performances also exist, giving live audiences something new and unique.

The novel improvisational vocabulary is rooted in Persian classical and traditional music. Charles samples and plays back the setār in real time, sometimes shifted in pitch, or played back in sections. While Charles is remixing, Roshandel is listening, playing into the digital effects, accompanying them and imitating the digital stuttering.

On “Chāhārgāh” the electronics are radically transformed fluttering sounds, so divorced from their original sonic context that one can’t tell if they began with the setār, or some other found sound. “Bayāt-e Tork” uses frozen granules of the setār sound as drones, similar to the Indian tambura, a drone instrument.

The digital sound processing may be off-putting to listeners more in tune with traditional “classical” music—but this particular music wouldn’t exist without modern computers and software like Cycling 74’s Max/MSP, which is the digital tool of choice in the UI’s electronic music program.

Jamshid Jam is both novel and accessible to an adventurous listener. In fact, given the importance of improvisation in those musical traditions, using computers is a natural progression. When anyone can download a setār app on their phone, there’s no going back to the strictly analog world for this music. To extend and transmute something traditional in new ways continues the tradition without upsetting it.

—Kent Williams

Bubblegum Necropolis EP SAMUELLOCKEWARD.BANDCAMP.COM

Sam Locke Ward ‘Happy Hearts’ release Party Gabe’s, Friday, Feb. 17, 9 p.m., $10

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2023 Double Up Food Bucks pays for half of the CSA cost for CSA members paying entirely with SNAP!

TENDING IOWA’S LAND: PATHWAyS TO A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE

Cornelia F. Mutel, editor

includes chapters written by recognized experts in their field; between each chapter are perceptive personal essays written by Iowa farmers or environmentalists.

While contemplating Tending Iowa’s Land, a poignant story returned to mind. A good friend of mine and his wife, several years ago, lived very near the Iowa River. During a hot, dry spell, he decided to put a pump into the river and use river water instead of well water to resuscitate their parched garden. The plan worked perfectly—the moistened plants promptly returned to vegetal lushness. By late afternoon on the third day, however, the leaves curled, the stems sagged, and the plants drooped earthward. Within a week every vegetable in the garden was brown and dying.

On one hand, this dead-garden story invokes a folksy humor characteristic of good storytelling. Beneath that humor is the tragic reality that the Iowa River, in that circumstance, was toxic. How could river water kill a garden in the middle of one of the most agriculturally productive states in our country? The answer is, most probably, the profound ecological alteration that, since about 1830, has been degrading our Iowa landscape.

Tending Iowa’s Land: Pathways to a Sustainable Future (edited by Constance Mutel) explores the history and status of, and possible solutions to, this relentless phenomenon. Each section in the book (titled Soil, Water, Air and Life)

In addition to the book’s structure and content, Mutel made another key decision: all contributors would write in a first-person storytelling form. As a result, the wide-ranging content is rendered stylistically and tonally unified, approachable and amicable—literary features that are so important when addressing potentially controversial subjects like land usage and agricultural practices. Plus, all the chapters and essays effectively serve a central goal: to provide the scientific foundation for a back-to-the-basics sourcebook that explores the human-caused alterations in the soils, hydrology, climate and ecosystem that have degraded Iowa’s environment.

Tending Iowa’s Land offers a rich educational experience, exploring concepts such as biochar, neonicotinoids, roller crimping and detritovores. Perhaps more importantly, the book develops two broad, critical concepts. First, our soil, water, air and native biodiversity are all inextricably interdependent in the ecosystem that is Iowa. The improvement or degradation of one influences each of the others. Second, Iowa’s history is showing us that our present land management practices are unsustainable. Fortunately, those practices are being slowly supplanted by regenerative agriculture and the restoration of native biodiversity. The success of this evolution is dependent upon a collective of farmers, other agricultural interests, concerned citizens and environmentalists pursuing political, legislative, technological and educational solutions. Further, Mutel suggests that our success will require the cultural transformation of our personal values; herein lies the opportunity for Iowans to literally lead the world away from monocultural wastelands toward a future of sustainable, biodiverse ecosystems.

—William Blair

TATE LEWIS-CARROLL What’s Left

What’s Left (Finishing Line Press, February 2023) builds its atmosphere immediately— the cover and epigraph synching an ambiance by opening with a formally stylized Nirvana quote followed by a transcription of a sparse voice message from the author’s father (the cover is a cardboard box with the top folded shut, it’s labeled in permanent marker with the title). The foundation indicates elegy—and the book is an elegy—but the scaffolding suggests renaissance, too.

I have been around death a lot and often find art surrounding it either flatly grim or trite. Tate LewisCarroll’s poems are neither. They stick to your ribs and wind around your ankles, weighty and precise. While the speaker grieves their father’s death, they take the reader’s hand and offer us the room to grieve, too. We watch the father from a child’s point-of-view, awestruck, in the opening poem, “Shell Collecting,” a father and child digging for shells: “like the right word for a poem: precious wentletrap, / lettered olive, moon snail. He’d recall their names / as if he were the one who’d lost them.”

The first poem introduces the cancer the father will eventually die from, but slowly, after we witness the relationship between father and child change and strain. Interspersed between poems that indulge difficult memories are six poems titled “At My Father’s Wake,” each with a parenthetical subtitle that could be funny, but

mostly hit close to home (I feel confident anyone who has ever been family of the deceased knows this experience) including: “An Exhibit Where Strangers Stick Their Fingers in My Cage to Feed Me Their Opinions Disguised as Pieties” and “A Causeway Toll for which Passersby must Scrounge for Spare Remarks In Order to Leave the Island” and “An Arcade With Only Whac-A-Mole Machines.”

This exploration of death and grief is, like all explorations of death, also an investigation into what it means to be alive—and to live with death. This painful duality is expressed in “Another Cherry Tree,” with a line that resonated with me enough to cause me pause, “Their bodies / will / sprout up / all around you like thistles / And like thistles / they will cling to your socks / and leave little splinters in your fingers, / which will linger all day / when you try to pull them off.”

There are many more excerpts I marked to quote here, dizzying concrete poems and clever uses of form (haiku and sestina!), but I would be remiss not to mention the bright color photos that act as section dividers. Given the attention they deserve, they are another powerful illustration of life in stages.

This collection provided me with great catharsis, a feeling of being seen. After many times bereaved and having no language to express it, this book is a gift. It conjures words from our most vulnerable moments—“And what a jealous god / it is, always taking, taking. / With a jealous god come commands, / come severed limbs, come rivers / of blood, comes seeing the devil’s hand (from “The Anatomical Man”)”—and gives us something to do with them. There’s an annoying stereotype that says that pain is a catalyst for art. I have found that untrue, but with this book came a reprieve. This book made me want to create.

—Sarah Elgatian

UNIVERSITY OF IOWA PRESS

Cornelia Mutel ‘Tending Iowa’s Land’ anthology reading Prairie Lights, Sunday, Feb. 5, 2 p.m.

FINISHING LINE PRESS

FERIT EDGÜ, TR. ARON AJI

The Wounded Age and Eastern Tales

NYRB CLASSICS

aron aji. Prairie Lights, Iowa City, Tuesday, Feb. 7 at 7 p.m., Free

Born in 1936 in Istanbul (and approaching his 87th birthday on Feb. 24), Ferit Edgü has been writing beloved and award-winning work in his native Turkish since 1959. He’s published novels, stories, essays, poetry and even a children’s book. He’s been adapted to film, awarded the Sait Faik Literature Prize and the Sedat Simavi Prize for Literature and been translated into French, Italian, Japanese and more. But little to none of his writing was available in English. Until now.

Aron Aji, director of the University of Iowa translation programs and president of the American Literary Translators Association. And he has built a career deftly translating Turkish authors. It may be vanity to review a translation of work that I could not read in its original language, but this is important enough a volume to try. The nuance of translation lies in the ability to disappear. Like an editor, a translator is a partner, responsible for standing in for the reader and ensuring that the author’s intent is conveyed. A translator doesn’t merely convey meaning, but atmosphere, tone and style.

This is especially true of poetry. And The Wounded Age, the first in this two-story volume, is an intricate journey that walks the line

between poetry and prose. Aji’s sparse translation packs a poet’s layers of meaning into each word, hanging thinly on each page in an echo of the sensation of breathing in the mountains, where the tale is set: Much of the story is dialogue, the narrator (a reporter) relying almost entirely on his interpreter, Vahap, to offer him a window into the world of the people he’s trying to better understand.

It’s filled with the agony of someone who longs to tangibly help those he meets, but knows he is relegated only to tell their story.

It is a must-read for reporters in today’s media landscape, anxious to convey humanity as well as knowledge, and for anyone obsessed with the history of war poetry and the ways that words are asked to intercede between us and darkness.

The second in the volume, Eastern Tales, reads like a book of fables or parables, each vignette heavy with meaning and weighty as poetry. Although first published a dozen years earlier (The Wounded Age in 2007, Eastern Tales in 1995), it carries through the themes of the first: communication, understanding, neglect and loneliness. It, too, is set in the mountains, and speaks of them as of a lover.

“As I said my thank-yous to the man I wouldn’t see again, he said ‘Don’t you worry, Teacher, you’ll come again. Sooner or later, these mountains call you back.’”

Where The Wounded Age emphasizes and embodies the experience of being in the mountains— the starkness, the thin air—Eastern Tales carries the heaviness that the idea of a mountain conveys. It’s an elegant parallel to place them in this proximity, almost a primer to the region they describe. Here, as in the first, Aji’s translation emphasizes the sensation invoked, building a world of deep meaning, lovingly realized.

—Genevieve Trainor

DK NNURO What Napoleon Could Not Do RIVERHEAD BOOKS

DK Nnuro in conversation with Tameka Cage Conley Prairie Lights, Iowa City, Wednesday, Feb. 8 at 7 p.m., Free

Stanley reads book Club: ‘What Napoleon Could Not Do’ UI Stanley Museum of art, Iowa City, Saturdays, Feb. 25, March 25 and april 29, 2 p.m., Free

Early in DK Nnuro’s debut novel, a Ghanaian father presiding over his son’s divorce ritual is introduced by his well-read brother to the concept of schadenfreude. “Delighting in [someone else’s] misery,” it’s defined. Again and again, the characters in What Napoleon Could Not Do (out Feb. 7) dance around this concept, and again and again, find it lacking. This is not presented as an excess of humanity, though, so much as an inability to connect to emotion.

It is mirrored by their similar inability to delight in the joy of others. When confronted with joy, the novel’s central characters pick at it, examine it, search for surreptitious intent. Doubt is given a place of privilege over credence, to the extent that there is an anxiety hovering over each scene—an expectation of disappointment, an atmospheric Chekhov’s gun. Nnuro lays his characters bare before the reader with a Dostoyevskian interiority, expertly enmeshing the experience of reading with the anxiety and uncertainty that the characters themselves feel.

What Napoleon Could Not Do examines the lives of siblings Jacob Nti and Belinda Thomas. Belinda

is the academic success, whose skills and contacts got her accepted to boarding school in the U.S., then university and law school. The lack of a green card made employment difficult, leading to an early marriage to a man nearly twice her age. Jacob is back in Ghana, with few prospects and a dwindling sense of hope that he will ever make it to the states. His divorce, from a Ghanaian woman living in the U.S., after five years of long-distance marriage and many failed emigration attempts, launches the novel.

Belinda, whose husband is a Black American, is aware that the U.S. is not the promised land that some of her family back home still envision. Her perspective is described as “... her fury over America’s singular skill at simultaneously engendering and dashing hopes.” This thread positions the U.S. in opposition to its immigrants, Blacks and Africans in opposition to white Americans and wealth in opposition to poverty in ways that consistently deny the reader any sense of schadenfreude. All are victims, in a sense, not of America, but of the American dream: an almost Buddhist assertion that wanting itself is what destroys us.

The novel is anchored by Nnuro’s keen visual sensibilities. It should come as no surprise to any reader that he currently serves as curator of special projects at the University of Iowa Stanley Museum of Art. Every angle into this story is a visual one, from the flowers in the Nti family’s garden to the lushness of kente fabric to the darkness of a road in a blackout.

What Napoleon Could Not Do is a deeply engaging examination of what it means to emigrate, what defines home for an immigrant and what defines family for people who have not seen each other in decades. Nnuro spins moments into landscapes and memories into tapestries, inviting the reader into the hearts of a family that struggles to understand the differences between the world they hoped for and the world that is.

—Genevieve Trainor

$7

STUDENT & YOUTH TICKETS

Saturday, February 18, 2:00 pm

Grammy Award-winner (and longtime Hancher friend) Dan Zanes and HaitianAmerican jazz vocalist Claudia Zanes perform a mix of old and new songs from near and far in a style that has been called “all-ages social music.” It’s also been described as an all-ages party! This highly interactive concert will have you dancing and singing along as the duo performs homespun, artful, joyful music for everyone to enjoy.

TICKETS

Adults $15 / $20 / $25

College Students $7 / $10 / $12

Youth $7 / $10 / $12

EVENT PARTNERS

The Gazette

DAN + CLAUDIA ZANES LET LOVE BE YOUR GUIDE $10

ACADEMY OF ST MARTIN IN THE FIELDS

GARY HOFFMAN (CELLO)

Thursday, March 2, 7:30 pm

STUDENT & YOUTH TICKETS

One of the finest chamber orchestras in the world, the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, is renowned for fresh, brilliant interpretations of musical masterworks. The orchestra will be joined by Gary Hoffman, a cellist renowned for the fullness of his sound and his impeccable technique--which he employs to bring his exceptional artistic sensibility to the fore.

TICKETS

Adults $30 / $40 / $50

College Students $10 / $10 / $40

Youth $10 / $10 / $40

EVENT PARTNERS

Albert B. and Jean M. Hood (1931–2022)

Robert J. and Sue B. Latham

Bryan and Jan Lawler

The McIntyre Foundation

HANCHER AUDITORIUM 50 YEAR S

Individuals with disabilities are encouraged to attend all University of Iowa sponsored events. If you are a person with a disability who requires a reasonable accommodation in order to participate in this program, please contact Hancher in advance at (319) 335-1160.

Photo: Xavier Plater

Photo: © Benjamin Ealovega

ACROSS

1. Oodles

5. Type of exfoliant

10. Exile isle

14. Drink brand with snow in its logo

15. Type of exfoliant

16. Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina is often in one

17. Proctologist?

20. Home of the WNBA’s Aces

21. Bygone Animaniacs programming service

23. Jokey prefix with “webs”

24. Make a commitment of sorts

25. Rooms by the (Edward Hopper painting)

26. “Chandelier” chanteuse

27. Clover Stout and Honeysuckle IPA?

32. 47-stringed instrument

34. Joint

35. Cofounder of 51-Across

36. Treaties that aren’t what they seem?

39. They have shingles

42. ___ facto

43. Cornhole attempt

47. Place to buy ritual oil?

50. Sartorial concern

51. “Straight Outta Compton” group

52. One of the JASON months: Abbr.

53. Scandinavian-American counterpart to “oy vey”

55. 2008 John Cusack/ Hilary Duff film that satirizes the military-industrial complex

57. Car that “drives a little slower,” in a 1975 hit 60. “Indeed”

61. HVAC passage built into Memorial Stadium in

Lincoln, Nebraska?

63. Headey of Game of Thrones

64. Word with body or mirror

65. Series shortener

66. Emulate Yayoi Kusama, sometimes

67. Prevent legally

68. 7-stringed instrument

DOWN

1. Not quite ladylike?

2. 1984 setting

3. Have your name atop marquees, say

4. First shot of a volley

5. Tedious task

6. Chewed stimulant

7. Turns

8. Strange thing to find in Double Stuf Oreos?

9. Hellraiser writer/director Clive

10. Abbr. in front of a year

11. ___-faire

12. Source of suds

13. Flight home?

18. Laura of Jurassic World Dominion

22. “My money says ...”

24. River to the Ohio

28. URL ending for adjuncts

29. Steering a shell

30. Company that introduced Garbage

Pail Kids cards as

NFTs in 2020

31. With 37-Down, like more than one out of every five people on Earth

33. Deflating sound

37. See 31-Down

38. This is what it sounds like when doves cry

39. Rampage

40. How fishing spiders can walk

41. Wind instrument with a solo (surprisingly) in the Troggs’ “Wild Thing”

44. Not working

45. Brandy cocktail often served with a sugar rim

46. Alarm

48. Fauci ___ (Covid vaccination)

49. Contented sound for a cat (or a kangaroo, it turns out)

54. Che chum

56. Caesarian section?

57. Hurdle for future public defenders: Abbr.

58. “Now it’s your turn”

59. Blubber

62. Audible pauses

$10

A HANCHER COMMISSION

KRONOS QUARTET AT

WAR WITH OURSELVES—400 YEARS OF YOU

COMPOSED BY MICHAEL ABELS

TEXT & NARRATION BY NIKKY FINNEY WITH TONALITY, CONDUCTED BY VALÉRIE SAINTE-AGATHE

Saturday, February 11, 7:30 pm

A rhapsodic modern-day song cycle spun from the skin of history for string quartet, chorus, and narrator, At War With Ourselves – 400 Years of You features a text by National Book Award-winning poet Nikky Finney inspired by her 2013 poem “The Battle of and for the Black Face Boy.” The music was composed by Michael Abels, composer for the Jordan Peele films Us and Get Out. This powerful new work explores race relations, social justice, and civil rights in 21st century America.

EVENT PARTNERS

Individuals with disabilities are encouraged to attend all University of Iowa sponsored events. If you are a person with a disability who requires a reasonable accommodation in order to participate in this program, please contact Hancher in advance at (319) 335-1160.

STUDENT & YOUTH TICKETS

TICKETS

Adults

$30 / $40 / $50

College Students

$10 / $10 / $40

Youth

$10 / $10 / $40

Order online

hancher.uiowa.edu

Call (319) 335-1160 or 800-HANCHER

Accessibility Services (319) 335-1160

Photo: Jason Ayer/University of South Carolina

David and Sally Dierks

MidWestOne Bank

Bill Rubright in loving memory of Karen G. Rubright and Emilie J. Rubright George and Carrol Woodworth

This project is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts. To find out more about how National Endowment for the Arts grants impact individuals and communities, visit arts.gov.