Little Village Eastern Iowa issue 316: March 2023

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Mission Creek Festival

Meet the musicians, authors and neighbors behind the 2023 lineup.

Free the Weed

What will it take to get meaningful marijuana reform in this state?

Hailey Whitters

The Sheuyville-born artist will play a hometown show before touring with Shania Twain.

22

Indican’t

Cannabis advocates want Iowa lawmakers to puff puff pass the damn bill already.

INDEPENDENT NEWS, CULTURE & EVENTS

Since 2001

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28

Book Talk

34 curry Favor

Indulgent yet healthy, dinner at this Coralville Thai restaurant left a delectable impression.

6 From the Newsletter

8 Ad Index

12 Letters & Interactions

18 En Español

20 Essay

22 Free the Weed

26 mars hojilla Q&A

28 Mission Creek Authors

32 Prairie Pop

34 Bread & Butter

36 A-List

40 Events Calendar

51 Dear Kiki

53 Astrology Forecast

55 Local Album Reviews

59 Local Book Reviews

63 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.

Subscriptions: lv@littlevillagemag.com. The US annual subscription price is $120. All rights reserved, reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. If you would like to reprint or collaborate on new content, reach us at lv@ littlevillagemag.com. To browse back issues, visit us online at issuu.com/littlevillage.

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Camonghne Felix, Shelley Wong and Michelle Zauner at Mission Creek Festival 2023.

adapted from DISA Global Solutions

EDITORIAL

Publisher

Genevieve Trainor genevieve@littlevillagemag.com

Editor-in-Chief

Emma McClatchey emma@littlevillagemag.com

Arts and Culture Editor

Isaac Hamlet isaac@littlevillagemag.com

News Director

Paul Brennan paul@littlevillagemag.com

Art and Production Director

Jordan Sellergren jordan@littlevillagemag.com

Multimedia Editor

Associate Publisher—DSM Adria Carpenter adria@littlevillagemag.com

Photographer, Designer

Sid Peterson sid@littlevillagemag.com

Multimedia Journalist

Courtney Guein courtney@littlevillagemag.com

Spanish Language Editor Summer Santos

Calendar/Event Listings calendar@littlevillagemag.com

Corrections editor@littlevillagemag.com

March Contributors

Cristin Mitchell, Jay Goodvin, John Martinek, Kembrew McLeod, Kent Williams, Lauren Haldeman, Loren Thatcher, Melody Dworak, Mike Kuhlenbeck, Sam Locke Ward, Sarah Elgatian, Teri Underhill, Tom Tomorrow

INDEPENDENT NEWS, CULTURE & EVENTS

Since 2001

LittleVillageMag.com

PRODUCTION

Digital Director Drew Bulman drewb@littlevillagemag.com

Marketing Analytics Coordinator Malcolm MacDougall malcolm@littlevillagemag.com

SALES & ADMINISTRATION

President, Little Village, LLC Matthew Steele matt@littlevillagemag.com

Advertising

Genevieve Trainor, Joseph Servey, Malcolm MacDougall, Matthew Steele ads@littlevillagemag.com

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Website design, E-commerce, Publication design creative@littlevillagemag.com

CIRCULATION

Distribution Manager Joseph Servey joseph@littlevillagemag.com

Distribution

Bill Rogers, Ellen Keplinger, Ethan Christian Edvenson, Huxley Maxwell, Justin Comer, Sam Standish distro@littlevillagemag.com

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Little Village HQ, LV Creative Services 623 S Dubuque St Iowa City, IA 52240 319-855-1474

Little Village—Des Moines 900 Keosauqua Way, Ste 253 Des Moines, IA 50309

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Meet this month’s contributors:

Cristin Mitchell roasts, packs and delivers delicious Wake Up Iowa Coffee. Her wildly popular dog, Friar, turned 5 on Feb. 27.

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.

Melody Dworak is a librarian at the Iowa City Public Library, juggling two to three books at any given time. Having a love for all things reading and writing, she served on Little Village’s editorial team from 2005-10.

Send

Issue 316 , Volume 2 March 2023

Cover photos courtesy of Mission Creek Festival

Make it your March mission to binge the albums, books and buzz surrounding the 2023 Mission Creek Festival. Plus: Is weed legalization a winning issue in Iowa? One man is staking his reputation on it.

Mike Kuhlenbeck is a freelance journalist and National Writers Union member based in Des Moines, Iowa.

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 with an inquiry.

Teri Underhill is a creative living in Norwalk, Iowa.

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

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

From the Newsletter

Four of the top stories featured last month in the LV Daily, Little Village’s weekday afternoon email written by Paul Brennan. Subscribe at littlevillagemag.com/support

Feb. 9:

Malpractice and the Iowa GOP

On Wednesday, both the Iowa House and Senate approved a bill limiting juries to awarding $1 million or less in non-economic damages in cases where a doctor has been founded to have committed malpractice, and $2 million or less in cases where the jury has determined a hospital or other medical institution has committed malpractice. The caps also do not apply to punitive damage awards for cases of “willful and wanton” disregard of patient safety.

Feb. 10:

‘Relentless salesman’ eyes presidency

Perry Johnson, a Michigan businessman who has filed paperwork with the FEC to establish a presidential campaign exploratory committee, announced on Thursday he’ll be running TV commercials on Sunday during the Super Bowl in media markets across Iowa.

Feb. 16:

Gun bill advances

A bill that would make it illegal for state and local law enforcement agencies to enforce federal gun laws and regulations was approved by an Iowa House subcommittee on Wednesday. HF 147 provides examples of what would be considered illegal federal infringement, including taxes, fees and “Any registering or tracking of firearms” that could “create a chilling effect” on gun sales.

Feb. 21:

Book ban hearings continue

On Monday evening, the Iowa House Government Oversight Committee held its second hearing on a proposal by Gov. Kim Reynolds that would require all public schools in Iowa to ban a book if any one of the state’s more than 300 public school districts bans it. The first hearing on Feb. 6 had only five witnesses, all members of the Polk County chapter of Moms for Liberty. They shared with the committee their concerns that it is too hard to force Iowa public schools to remove books they find objectionable.

80/35 (40)

Arnott & Kirk (63) City of Iowa City Communications (52)

Coralville Public Library (60)

FilmScene (47)

Firmstone Real Estate (7)

Goodfellow Printing, Inc. (51)

Grinnell College Museum of Art (40)

Gross Domestic Product (24)

Hancher Auditorium (54, 56)

Honeybee Hair Parlor (27)

Horizons (48)

INDEPENDENT IOWA

Downtown Iowa City (10-11)

- Basic Goods

- The Green House

- Release Body Modification

- Merge

- Prairie Lights Bookstore & Cafe

- Hot Spot

- Critical Hit Games

THANK YOU TO THIS ISSUE’S ADVERTISING PARTNERS

- Record Collector

- Yotopia

- Beadology

- Mailboxes of Iowa City

- fix! Coffee

- Revival

New Bohemia & Czech Village (35)

- Chrome Horse

- Next Page Books

- Vault Coworking

- Goldfinch Cyclery

- The Daisy

- Cobble Hill

Northside Marketplace (38-39)

- Marco’s Island

- High Ground

- John’s Grocery

- Russ’ Northside Service

- Pagliai’s Pizza

- Oasis Falafel

- Hamburg Inn No. 2

- Artifacts

- R.S.V.P.

- Press Coffee

- George’s

- Dodge St. Tire

Iowa CIty Burger Haul (7)

Iowa City Climate Action (29)

Iowa City Downtown District (52)

Iowa City Public Library (33)

Iowa Department of Public Health (62)

Iowa Public Radio (50)

Johnson County Public Health (4)

KRUI 89.7 FM (7)

Kim Schillig, REALTOR (50)

La Wine Bar (16)

Linn County Conservation (31)

Martin Construction (41)

Mesa 503 (19)

Mission Creek Festival (43)

Musician’s Pro Shop (51)

Nearwood Winery (29)

New Pioneer Food Co-op (2)

Nodo (7)

Obermann Center (31)

Orchestra Iowa (30)

Phoebe Martin, REALTOR (58)

Public Space One (31)

Raygun (12)

Riverside Theatre (25)

Shakespeare’s Pub & Grill (51)

Shelter House (48)

Taxes Plus (9)

The Club Car (51)

The Englert Theatre (37)

The James Theatre (45)

The Wedge Pizzeria (53)

Trowel & Error (45)

University of Iowa Stanley Museum of Art (64)

University of Iowa Theatre Department (27)

Veterans for Peace (50)

West Music (33)

Wig & Pen (53)

Willow & Stock (21)

World of Bikes (9)

Who reads Little Village?

Magic

Board Games. X-Wing. HeroClix. Miniatures. L5R. Pokemon. Yu-Gi-Oh. Vinyl. Retro toys. Pop vinyl & plushies. Gaming & collectible supplies. Huge Magic singles inventory plus we buy/trade MtG cards. Weekly drafts, FNM, league play, and frequent tourneys.

Now buying/selling/trading games & toys! Bring in your Nintendo Gameboy, NES, SNES, N64, Gamecube, Sega, WiiU, Xbox 360, PS1-2-3, & other used games, consoles, action figures, and toys for cash or trade credit!

Fun atmosphere and great customer service!

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

Letters & Interactions

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.

A response to the article “Hacklebarney Brown” from the February issue:

DEar GrEG BrOWN, Friends in Iowa have sent news of your retirement. It saddens me to know your “slant six mind and a super-charged heart” won’t be bringing us new songs. But it is a blessing to have your music play on in my life.

Your music gave me succor through a divorce and in turn, was the soundtrack to better times. Like “Letters from Europe” when I moved to Poland in 2006. I still get a kick out of how you imagine being born in Central Europe in “Eugene.”

Those smallmouth are great on a fly rod / They’re not all finicky like trout / Trout are English and bass are Polish / And if I wasn’t born in Central Europe / I should have been

The lyrics that reecho in my mind are too numerous to voice here. Hence, I will simply thank you for enriching my life by playing “the poet game.” Overall, your songs remind me that “this life is a thump-ripe melon, so sweet and such a mess.”

May your retirement be as full of the wisdom, humor, verve, and love that graced your songs.

Liebe Grüße, Matt Kollasch, Berlin, Germany

Hundreds rally for LGBTQ Day on the Hill, protesting bills ‘meant to scare us back into the closet’ (Feb. 2)

My partner was at Day on the Hill, and after coming home and sobbing about

how awful our rep was, we’re seriously considering leaving for MN. A whole family of trans people who love our community and our town and our little house forced to leave because fascism is running wild. It’s been an incredibly hard few days. —M.C.

Gov. Reynolds boasts about her anti-LGBTQ school policies, calls for new law restricting students’ access to books conservatives don’t like (Feb. 3)

I don’t understand how this is legal. This is obviously discriminatory. Isn’t this against federal law?? Speaking of which, how are we justifying school vouchers? How can we justify using public money to send kids to schools with discriminatory policies?? —Kristy

Even if we take his vile comments at face value, it would seem he’s suggesting that people with mental disabilities don’t have

rights and don’t deserve protections under the law. —Ben C.

Bringing in national hate groups to further a discriminatory, bigoted agenda…no surprise. Bet they show up on the campaign contribution list. Reynolds & her minions are literally in their own basket of deplorable. —Jessica R.

Pole to pole: Visiting every Des Moines strip club in one night (Feb. 6)

We don’t deserve this level of journalism. Finally, a culture aficionado writing in the city of Des Moines. —Nate M.

Please, pay Max to work a night shift and write part 2. —Ciara J.

I’m glad you did this, so I won’t have to.

Peter S.

Revival’s vibrators are a bestseller — and spreading good vibes about sexual wellness (Feb. 13)

Life is more fun with a vibrator. —Revival Iowa City

The Dame products are soooooo good.

Jessica D.

Groups will rally in Cedar Rapids to support transgender kids, while Mike Pence campaigns at CR Pizza Ranch (Feb. 14)

It was a great turnout! —Susan M.

In full support of those protesting Pence’s callous and cruel intolerance. Shame on Pizza Ranch! —Michael M.

And remember, the [co-]founder of Pizza Ranch pleaded guilty to sexually abusing teen employees. If Pence and the PAC sponsoring this actually cared about protecting children, they sure are picking an odd venue for it. Great for bullying people in a completely different school district who can’t get there in time though. —Geoffrey J.

Let it be clear that this manufactured cul-

MOMBOY LAUREN HALDEMAN

ture war is bullshit - transgender people have for long existed and have not been some major problem until, conveniently, now they are seen as such by a political party struggling to maintain its hold on power. Ignore every attempt by these conservative “activists” to convince you they’re “only in it for the children” - they would knowingly condemn trans kids to unnecessarily hopeless lives, alienating them from the care they need, meanwhile peddling rhetoric that fetishistically obsesses over the genitals of transgender youth and adults. This attempt to dehumanize transgender people, whose only crime is to affirm their humanity and expand their conception of the self to more appropriately fit all that a person is, must be repudiated so strongly as though it were fascism unmasked. —B.Y.

Your Village: Why there’s a statue of a nude woman facing the Iowa State Capitol (Feb. 15)

Don’t tell Moms For Liberty. —Kristine T.D.

PERSONALS

You know how Rose in Titanic runs through the corridors yelling, “Jack! Jack! Jack!” Rosie the dog mayyy do something similar when you leave the house. But let her in, and she will never let go of your heart. A vocal 1.5-year-old cattle dog mix, Rosie can’t wait to get on-leash for a long walk on the beach (or anywhere, really). Could this spunky jet-black beauty be your lifelong love? Inquire with the Iowa City Animal Center: 319-356-5295, icanimalcenter.org

Send

Why couldn’t it be a fountain. —Celine R.

Greg Brown, Iowa’s contribution to folk music mythology, reflects before retirement (Feb. 16)

Kembrew, you’ve outdone yourself.

Todd K.

I saw his interview [in the Gazette] where he said he no longer sings the “Iowa Waltz” because it’s not true anymore (“we take care of our old, we take care of our young”). —J.L.W.

A speech that inspired us...

Hi, I’m 11. I’m still growing and figuring out who I am, who I could be. I believe all kids deserve to feel safe in school. That is why I founded the gender and sexuality alliance at my elementary school. I

wanted there to be a place for kids who, like me, were interested in learning more about who they are and the world they live in. It’s easier for me in my house who accepts and appreciates me for who I am and who I have become. All kids should be able to grow and learn about who they are. It’s important to let kids decide when and how they come out. Don’t erase me or my experience from any language or books. Don’t erase my queer friends or our queer heroes. We deserve the right to be who we are when we are ready, at home, at school, and everywhere in between. —Noa, an Iowa student, speaking during a hearing for Senate Study Bill 1145, which would require school districts to out students questioning their gender or sexuality to their parents, and forbid certain books and lessons addressing gender identity

STRESS FRACTURES JOHN MARTINEK

MEGA STORE

Time capsule Dale

Meet LV’s newest columnist—a Gen X townie who goes to bed in the ’90s and wakes up in modern day IC/CR.

The early months of 1996 have been a whirlwind for Hawk fans. Carver once again proved to be a menace to Bobby Knight and his gang of Hoosiers on Sunday as Russ Millard repeatedly found Chris Kingsbury open on the wings while trouncing the General with a 26-point rout. Indiana’s good luck charm—a team meal at the Lark Supper Club in Tiffin—turned out to be just another steak night.

In celebration, we went hard Sunday evening and put an unholy burn on the pitchers at Gunner’z while some Chicago band played acoustic rhythms ‘til closing time. We kept the party going Monday at The Q Bar for Cup Night ($1 dollar starters with $.50 refills), inhaling a Big Montana from the Old Capitol Mall Arby’s and a pack of Camels.

I awake from my bed inside my apartment below the Head Hunters Barbershop, my orange cup from the Q hanging from my upper lip. I peel it away and head for the shower, lathering in some of that Short & Easy shampoo my former live-in left behind after a momentous argument. Odd, it feels so long ago.

I pull on some corduroy pants and a too-small CR-Lasalle football T-shirt, which means it’s laundry day. I round up the denims and the whites for a wash at Duds N Suds on Iowa City’s southwest side. It’s a Tuesday, so I’ll order some Old Style Light while I wait.

Heather, the bartender with a towering swoop in her bangs, knows me well and always says, “What the Dale Happening?” when I come up to ask for change. Sure, I could use one of the ample change machines, but I enjoy the interaction. After my cold pitcher, I’ll attack the Super Bar at the Wendy’s next door, relaxing in its cozy sunroom.

But something’s not right. I pull up to Sturgis Corner, and the Wendy’s has been replaced with a huge retailer selling a shitload of staples. How did I not get the news, and more importantly, is Dave Thomas OK?? At least the Village Inn is open; I can always eat there.

But Duds N Suds is gone, too! I’m walking through its entrance into what is now called Oryza Asian Cuisine. Irritated but admittedly hungry, I guess I’ll make the best of this while I try to put the pieces together. One day you’re flirting with a waitress at the Q as she empties your ashtray, the next you’re enjoying a hot bowl of Singapore mei-fun at your favorite place to drink and nap while your jeans get the Snuggle treatment.

Sure my belly is pleasantly full, but will I ever hear “What the Dale Happening” again? I feel the need to confide in the third-shifters at the Kittyhawk… maybe they can help me work this out….

—Jay Goodvin

Bat Babies Shirt

I awake from my bed inside my apartment below the head hunters Barbershop, my orange cup from the Q hanging from my upper lip. I peel it away and head for the shower.

Machismo, masculinidad tóxica y chicos

Parte dos

El mes pasado, hablé del juego peligroso que nuestra sociedad requiere de nuestros chicos. Nuestra cultura en su totalidad incentiva este juego; el panorama mundial de los medios de comunicación está lleno de ejemplos autoproclamados por chicos jóvenes. Es casi bastante que la idea de la crianza de hombres buenos de los niños parece imposible. ¿Cómo podemos luchar contra tanta corriente arrolladora?

Tengo suficiente experiencia de intentar ser un hombre que yo sé que han maneras positivas de estar macho. Podemos motivar a los niños la búsqueda de estas maneras, y si motivásemos a ellos como una comunidad, tendrían posibilidad mientras desarrollan en hombres. A ver. ¿Qué podemos incentivar en los chicos? Muchas cosas, pero porque tengo espacio limitado, voy a emplear una lista numerada convenientemente de cuatro rasgos estereotípicos de la masculinidad y hablar de cómo usarlos por el bien y no lo malo. Mira, solo soy una asistente legal. No tengo todas las soluciones.

1. EL LIDEraZGO Nuestra sociedad espera que los hombres sean lideres. En realidad, enseña a los niños cómo estar tercos, mandones y arrogantes. El liderazgo bueno implica escuchar y considerar las ideas de otras personas. Significa conocer los límites de tu conocimiento y en quien confiar por consejo. Supone la habilidad de tener una visión más amplia y ayudar a ti y a otras personas para realizar una meta. Nuestra sociedad concibe el liderazgo con el individual, no el grupo, al centro, y debemos modelar el opuesto para los chicos.

2. La FOrTaLEZa El mensaje que los hombres verdaderos no lloran es tan universal que no necesito elaborar más. Los hombres y chicos en nuestra sociedad se suponen que endurecerse cuando cualquier cosa sale mal. Pero la fortaleza no tiene que significar el rechazo de efectos emocionales ni la ocultación de sus emociones del mundo. Los chicos pueden estar resilientes. Debemos enseñar a los niños cómo tomar un revés y recuperarse, cómo confiar sus sentimientos en sus amigües y su familia. Es más difícil a mostrar el ser auténtico que vivir toda su

vida detrás de una máscara.

3. La FUErZa Como la fortaleza, los chicos están enseñados que el poder, la fuerza, todo se reducen a la potencia de su personalidad y la superioridad física. La competición significa que, si no eres lo mejor, eres un fracaso. La fuerza verdadera, al contrario, implica reconocer tus talentos, tus déficits y cómo pedir ayuda cuando la necesitas. Los hombres fuertes entienden cómo dar una mano solidaria en vez de intimidar a las personas molidas por fuerzas más grandes.

4. La LÓGIca El pensamiento lógico es bueno, pero recibes lo que introduces. Si tu premisa inicial no es correcta, la lógica provee un resultado congruente y erróneo. Todes les niñes se beneficiarían de alfabetización más fuerte en medios de comunicación y saber cómo verificar fuentes de información. Desperdiciar una mente es una lástima, y debemos animar la lógica verdadera junto a mejor inteligencia emocional.

Machismo, Toxic Masculinity and Boys

Part Two

WrITTEN aND TraNSLaTED

BY SUMMEr SaNTOS

In last month’s piece, I discussed the dangerous game that our society asks our boys to play. Our culture as a whole encourages this game; the media landscape is full of self-proclaimed role models for young boys. It’s enough to make the whole idea of raising boys into good men feel hopeless. How can we fight such an overwhelming tide?

I’ve had enough experience with trying to be a man that I know there are positive ways to do so. We can encourage boys to pursue them, and if we do this at a community level, then they’ll have a chance as they grow into men. So, what can we encourage in boys? A lot of things, but because I have limited space, I’m just going to use a conveniently numbered list of four stereotypically masculine traits and discuss how to use them for good, not bad. Look, I’m just a paralegal. I don’t have all the answers.

1. LEaDErShIP Our society expects men to be leaders, but what it really teaches boys to be is stubborn, bossy and overconfident in themselves. Good leadership is about listening and considering others’ ideas. It’s about knowing the limitations of your own knowledge and who to rely on for advice. It’s about being able to see

a bigger picture and help yourself and others achieve a goal. Our society imagines leadership to be about the individual, not the group, and we should model the opposite for boys.

2. TOUGhNESS The message that “real men don’t cry” is so pervasive it hardly needs further elaboration. Men and boys are expected by our society to just tough it out when things go wrong. But being tough doesn’t have to mean not letting anything affect you and hiding your feelings from the world. Boys can be resilient. We should teach boys how to take a setback and bounce back. How to trust their friends and family with their feelings. It’s a lot tougher to show your real self to the world than it is to live your life behind a mask.

3. STrENGTh Like toughness, boys are taught that power all comes down to how forceful a personality you project and how physically superior you are. Competition means that not being the best makes you a failure. Real strength, though, means recognizing what you are good at, what you aren’t, and how to ask for help when you need it. Strong men know how to reach a helping hand to, rather than bully, those who are ground down by bigger forces.

4. LOGIc Logical thinking is good, but you get what you put into it. If your starting premise is bad, the logic provides a coherent, but wrong, result. All children would benefit from stronger media literacy and knowing how to check sources of information. A mind is a terrible thing to waste, and we should encourage real logic alongside better emotional intelligence.

Pedro Pascal, model for positive masculinity. Emma McClatchey / Little Village

Fully Booked

As a reader who loves to learn about conflict-resolution strategies, I embrace books on negotiating agreements and finding win-win situations.

I first read Amanda Ripley’s High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out in June 2021. Ripley is a veteran journalist who’s been published in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and the Atlantic, to name a few. When I come across a book by a journalist, I know it’s going to be written well. Ripley’s writing is clean and direct, quick to read and easy to understand.

Do you all remember June 2021? COVID-conflict was like no other discord I’ve seen before. Tensions and anxieties were constantly high. This was an extended period of high conflict, and Ripley’s book provided lessons on how to move through it.

Ripley provides case studies that demonstrate people getting dragged deep into the tar pits. She points out the “us versus them” dynamics and introduces the concept of “conflict entrepreneurs,” or people who exploit high conflict for their own purpose. The appendices at the end guide you through discovering high conflict in the real world and in yourself, as well as offer strategies to prevent the situation.

My biggest takeaways? Remembering that the only way past conflict is to go through it, and that my liberation is bound up in yours. If your loss is my gain, then what I gain is reveling through your suffering.

Another enlightening book is Liz Fosslein and Mollie West Duffy’s Big Feelings: How to Be Okay When Things are Not Okay. Published in April 2022, this book benefited from witnessing the conflicts occurring in the pandemic and elucidated the “big feelings” underneath. Win or lose, a person’s ego and feelings are affected most.

The authors list seven emotions and traits that are at the bottom of these big feelings: uncertainty, comparison, anger, burnout, perfectionism, despair and regret. Each chapter features delightful drawings to illustrate the authors’ points.

Working through these emotions helps ground a person and get back to their core, unagitated self. When you realize the fear you’re feeling stems from uncertainty, you can forecast different outcomes and the ways to embrace or mitigate the upcoming change. Duffy’s book also offers assessments on how much that feeling is controlling you; just how urgently do you need to take a break and take care of yourself?

Navigating conflict well depends on knowing how to negotiate. The same people who founded the Harvard Program on Negotiation—William Ury, Roger Fisher and Bruce Patton—also wrote the 1981 book Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In. I read this book in a college course on Peace Studies, and its messages hold. It’s a down-to-earth business book about building agreements, one that applies to everything from buying a new car to international politics.

“Conflict lies not in objective reality, but in people’s heads,” the author states.

These three books can help you get out of your turmoiled thoughts and into a position to advocate for your needs.

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.

Self help books that aren’t B.S.

I am Not Strong By choice

BY TErI UNDErhILL

In the summer of 2022, I went with my hālau (hula group) to the Big Island of Hawai’i. During this trip, we chanted, danced, hiked, cried, laughed and more. We went to the top of Mauna Kea for the sunrise, celebrated the full moon of Hina (Goddess of the Moon), was taught hula by my kumu’s (teacher’s) aunty, and so much more, all in one week.

Our last night together, June 14, was a night of many celebrations. Wedding celebrations, anniversaries and birthdays we all celebrated under the full moon. We celebrated through hula, bellydance, song, poetry, storytelling and the four directions (an Aztec ritual led by two Mexicans in our group). At the end of our four directions, we hugged one another, shook hands and told each other how much we appreciated one another. One of my hālau’s family member’s looked me in the eyes, held my arm and told me, “You are stronger than you think” and hugged me tightly. I have been told I’m strong by many people in my personal life, but from this journey it hit me differently.

I have tried feeling strong, coming from many mana wahine (strong women). I have come from women who have gone through abuse and have lived through it and to tell their reflections. I have seen history repeat itself through my cousins and yet every wahine in my family is very outspoken, honest and strong. Why do I not feel the same as I view them?

In my 22 years of life, I have gone through verbal, physical and sexual abuse mostly from my childhood that has impacted me greatly. I have seen the other side of suicide to where I live mindfully now. I am just as outspoken and honest about my life as someone that is mixed, queer, fat and traumatized. Why do I not feel strong?

I’ve come to realize I am not strong by choice. I have no other option but to keep going, pushforward and be “strong.” I have spent my adolescence hurting deeply. I would bruise myself, starve myself, be mean to myself and be delusional to believe that “everyone hates me so I must hate myself first.” I have spent a decade of my life, which at the moment is the majority of my life, in pain that I caused myself because I believed that was what I deserved.

At some point, you grow tired of the pain. It wasn’t until I graduated high school I started to spend some time befriending myself. While I may not be besties with myself, I allow myself to understand my needs and boundaries and respect them. I’ve found hearing myself and my needs is what I deserve. If no one else will listen, I still deserve to listen to myself.

This turning point came after my first relationship when I was 17 years old. I was in an emotionally abusive, on and off, relationship with a classmate for six months of my senior year. Through this senior year, I attempted suicide and relapsed deeply into my pain towards Cont. >> on pg. 52

‘Trapped’ Teri Underhill

Pipe Dream

BY PaUL BrENNaN

As February was drawing to a close, Democratic leaders from the Iowa House of Representatives held a press conference to introduce their bill to legalize cannabis in the state.

“Legalizing marijuana for adult use keeps Iowans safe, stops our tax dollars from going to neighboring states, improves the quality of life for Iowans who are suffering from chronic illnesses and it stops us from wasting state resources to unfairly punish Iowans,” Minority Leader Jennifer Konfrst said.

The 78-page bill was comprehensive. It covered the strength of the cannabis people 21 and older could legally possess (up to 500 mg of THC), how the location of retail outlets would be determined (local referendums) and how it would be taxed (a 10 percent excise tax with the revenue being split between schools, mental health services and local law enforcement). The bill set up a “seed-to-sale” regulatory system under the supervision of the Alcoholic Beverage Division, and addressed criminal justice reform by expunging convictions for possession for non-violent offenders.

“It is time to do this,” Konfrst said.

Time or not, the bill never stood a chance. And the timing of its introduction suggests the Democrats understood that. Konfrst and her colleagues announced legalization was one of their top 2023 legislative priorities in September of last year, but waited until the week before all bills must be passed at both the subcommittee and committee level to introduce it. Not that it would have stood a better chance if it had been introduced earlier; Democrats in the Iowa Senate introduced a bill to legalize recreational use of marijuana three days after the legislative session started in January, and it went nowhere.

Important Republican leaders in the legislature, like Rep. Steve Holt, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, oppose legalizing recreational use of cannabis. So does Gov. Kim Reynolds.

“I believe marijuana is a gateway drug that leads to other illegal drug use and has a negative effect on our society,” Reynolds told the Des Moines Register last year.

“I don’t see change coming from a big,

sweeping bill,” Brad Knott told Little Village the week before House Democrats unveiled their bill. “Not with this governor, not with these Republicans in charge.”

Knott has four decades of experience in Democratic politics at the state and national-level. He’s worked for Sen. Tom Harkin and Gov. Tom Vilsack, and served in the Clinton administration. Last year, after selling his political consulting businesses, he started the nonprofit Campaign for Sensible Cannabis Laws (CSC) to advocate for change in Iowa.

CSC is focused on getting legislators of both parties to engage in a serious debate about the state’s laws. The group’s preference is apparent in its website’s url, FreeTheWeedIowa.org, but

its current focus is just on getting a debate at the state capitol.

“Campaign for Sensible Cannabis Laws doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue,” Knott said about the url. “We needed something easier to remember.”

The all-volunteer organization launched last May, and had its first public forum in October.

“This is probably the first public event since at least the 1970s in Iowa for anybody to have a serious conversation about reforming the cannabis laws,” he told the three dozen people gathered in the meeting room of a Des Moines Holiday Inn on a Saturday morning.

There was a brief moment at the end of the ’70s when Iowa was one of most progressive

Another year, another failed attempt to bring Iowa’s cannabis laws out of the dark ages. But one lobbyist is still convinced legalization is a winning issue.

Brad Knott has been trying to keep it real in Iowa. Sid Peterson / Little Village

states on marijuana. In 1979, a group of bipartisan legislators, led by Democrat Bob Arnould of Davenport and Republican Dale Hibbs of Iowa City, passed a bill to allow the medical use of marijuana by people with glaucoma or undergoing treatment for cancer. On June 1, 1979, Gov. Bob Ray signed the bill, making Iowa the ninth state to approve the medical use of cannabis.

Unlike the House Democrat’s bill this year, the 1979 bill contained few details, leaving it up to the Board of Pharmacy to create the medical marijuana program. It also required the board to make sure the program was in accordance with

federal law. That was impossible.

In 1972, President Nixon’s attorney general, John Mitchell—who would later be convicted on charges of conspiracy, obstruction of justice and perjury for his role in Watergate—made marijuana a Schedule I drug. The National Controlled Substance Act of 1970, the cornerstone of Nixon’s “War on Drugs,” created a ranking system for all drugs. Schedule I drugs are ones the federal government has declared have no medicinal use and a high potential for addiction.

There was no way the Board of Pharmacy could create a medical marijuana program in Iowa that adhered to federal law. The program was never launched.

Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980, and his administration created an even simpler-minded version of the War on Drugs with its Just Say No campaign. Republican presidents have been largely inflexible on cannabis, if only to avoid being called soft on crime. Democrats before Biden haven’t been much better.

In October, Biden announced he had ordered the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Attorney General “to review expeditiously” marijuana’s status as a Schedule I drug. At the same time, the president announced a pardon for anyone with a federal conviction for simple possession of marijuana.

But the mass pardon, which did not apply to any offense beyond simple possession, only had a very limited effect, because most convictions for possession occur at the state level and aren’t subject to presidential pardons.

At the state level in Iowa, not much happened

for roughly three decades after the 1979 attempt to introduce a medical marijuana program. In 2014, the legislature did pass a bill creating a limited program to allow some patients to possess and use oil derived from cannabis. But it would

be another three years before the state issued its first license to a company to grow marijuana and process it into cannabidiol. Another year would go by before the first five state-licensed dispensaries were allowed to sell it.

In its 2022 State of the States Report, the Americans for Safe Access Foundation, a nonprofit that monitors medical cannabis programs and advocates on behalf of patients, ranked Iowa’s program among the worst in the nation, due to its limited scope and many restrictions. The report did note there have been incremental improvements in the program since it began

In 1972, President Nixon’s attorney general John Mitchell made marijuana a Schedule I drug. Library of Congress

In its 2022 State of the States report, the

americans

for Safe access Foundation ranked Iowa’s program among the worst in the nation.

Legalized Medical & Decriminalized Medical Decriminalized CBD with THC only Fully Illegal

In 1979, a group of bipartisan legislators passed a bill to allow the medical use of marijuana. Des Moines Register

THE ENVY CORPS PERFORMS DWELL (with strings)

dispensing cannabidiol in December 2018. Those incremental improvements are part of what persuaded Brad Knott to launch his campaign.

“I’d wanted to do this for a long time and the time was never right,” he said.

Knott started in politics as Reagan was reinvigorating the War on Drugs. His approach has always been practical, focusing on what is possible.

“I don’t like to get into just lost causes,” Knott explained. “It takes up too much energy, there’s too many fights that we can win.”

After a series of conversations with friends early last year, he decided the fight to reform Iowa’s marijuana laws was now winnable.

“For a long time in the ’80s and ’90s, I accepted the idea that change wasn’t viable,” Knott recalled. “But all the changes going around in the country, including in Iowa’s neighboring states, really started to change my thinking.”

It wasn’t just the increasing number of states that had legalized recreational cannabis use, or the polls showing solid majorities of Iowans favor legalization, that made the time seem right. It was also the increasingly widespread acceptance of the racist nature of the War on Drugs and the need for change as a basic matter of justice.

In 2020, the ACLU published a report documenting racial disparities in arrests for marijuana possession. Nationwide, a Black person was 3.64 times more likely to be arrested for possession of marijuana than a white person, and at the state level, a Black Iowan was 7.26 times more likely to be arrested.

After Knott decided to work on reform, he approached the Iowa Democratic Party in hopes it would provide resources for the campaign. He was well connected in Democratic circles, and felt sure he could convince party leaders a sustained campaign for reform could help candidates win in Iowa. The party turned him down, and pursued other approaches on its way to massive defeats in November.

Knott also approached a major cannabidiol dispensary in Iowa, in hopes they might provide funding for a campaign. They wished him well, but that was all.

“Once the funding for a real, paid campaign went out the door, I had to switch to a self-supporting organization,” he said. “I thought about the early Obama effort during his first run for president. They created tools for people to organize on their own and do local campaigning.”

“We tried to design the website with resources to facilitate that. To help people get conversations about reform started.”

It’s an approach that appealed to Parker McNally, a student at Kirkwood Community

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DES MOINES MUSIC COALITION, LITTLE VILLAGE MAGAZINE & HOYT SHERMAN PLACE PRESENT

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College, who recently joined CSC as a volunteer organizer in the Iowa City area.

“With an issue such as cannabis reform, opinions can be incredibly divided, especially in a state like Iowa,” McNally said. “I think it’s important for legislators, especially from the culturally conservative parts of the state where there might still be a stigma about marijuana use, to know they will have support from constituents if

In 2020, the acLU published a report documenting racial disparities in arrests for marijuana possession. Nationwide, a Black person was 3.64 times more likely to be arrested for possession of marijuana than a white person, and at the state level, a Black Iowan was 7.26 times more likely to be arrested.

they are willing to participate in a serious discussion about reform.”

McNally realizes that Iowa City isn’t a culturally conservative part of the state, but it is one that gives him a chance to meet other young people from across Iowa.

“Because it’s a college town, you get people from all over,” he said. “What I’m hoping to do is connect with people, especially from rural parts of the state, who are then willing to take the conversation back to their hometowns. The site has a lot of good resources to help them with that, including how to contact their legislators.”

To Knott, the site’s most important feature is its online petition.

“The campaign isn’t going to get on [lawmakers’] radar until we can demonstrate we have political strength,” he said. “There’s a difference between a petition where a person signs their name, and polls where you can remain anonymous.”

Knott acknowledges that even getting a serious debate on reform is an uphill struggle, and if debate leads to anything, it will still face an opponent in Gov. Reynolds. But he still thinks change, if only incremental change, is possible.

“If you’re going to get into politics you’ve got to have a bit of optimism about the possibility of change,” Knott said. “Or you’ll just never get anything done.”

Paul Brennan is Little Village’s News Director.

Misson creek Festival

Life on Mars

A Q&A with Mission Creek performer mars hojilla

BY ISaac haMLET

Between biomedical engineering classes at the University of Iowa, Myles Evangelista has made time for his first Mission Creek Festival. Performing under the name mars hojilla—the title of Evangelista’s recent musical project—the alt-rock artist spoke with Little Village about learning to read out of spite, falling in love with music, and what performing at MCF means to him.

mars hojilla plays at 3:15 p.m. on Sunday, April 8 at the Trumpet Blossom Cafe during the final day of Mission Creek.

Can you tell me about how you started mars hojilla? Hojilla is actually my middle name. It’s Filipino tradition for the kids to be granted their mother’s maiden name as the middle name. So that’s a part of my heritage that I’m really, very proud to center.

I started making music when I was in high school. I had an indie-rock band with some of my friends when I was a junior in high school. I’m initially from Peoria, in central Illinois, so that [band] kind of resolved when we all moved to college. As recently as this past year, June of 2022, I started playing solo music… under the name mars hojilla.

What about indie-rock music captured your interest? Another very important part of Filipino culture, I would say, is the at-home karaoke machine. It was a way that my parents were able to keep my older sister and I entertained for multiple hours on end growing up and also just really fostered my love for music at an early age.

A story my mom likes to tell is that I actually learned how to read out of spite. This karaoke machine displays the lyrics on the screen and it kind of scores you on how well you matched the words’ sound. I kept scoring lower than my older sister because I didn’t know how to read yet.

A lot of the songs that I was singing growing up on the karaoke machine were my parents’ type of music, the ’70s and ’80s pop: Elton John, ABBA and bands like Queen and Journey.

As I grew up, I started writing my own lyrics… just based off of my personal experiences. They’re very rooted in storytelling and I just set it to a style that I was familiar with which was that kind of pop. Before I started writing I didn’t

really consider what the theme was, I just wanted to focus on making music where I like how it sounds.

Are you hoping to put an album together? What are you aspiring to and in terms of your musical trajectory? I would like to start recording soon. I guess the only major roadblock is that I’m still a full-time student at university here.

It’d be great to have a single or even an EP out by the end of this year, maybe even by the end of this summer if I’m being optimistic.

Even before Mission Creek Festival, you played at Refocus Film Festival. How did that happen? By then I had played my first solo set in Iowa City just a couple of weeks before at Trumpet Blossom Cafe.

“as I grew up, I started writing my own lyrics… just based off of my personal experiences. They’re very rooted in storytelling and I just set it to a style that I was familiar with which was that kind of pop. Before I started writing I didn’t really consider what the theme was, I just wanted to focus on making music where I like how it sounds.”

mars hojilla courtesy of Mission Creek Festival

I had been keeping up with FilmScene for a while and they had posted something on their social media about taking applications for local artists. They left that category kind of broad as far as what musicians or what genre they were looking for, but I just was really working on trying to get my name out and to the Iowa City scene. So I went ahead and I applied and they said, “We would love to give you a spot.”

Was Mission Creek a similar story where you sent in an application? I figured I would just apply and see what happened.

About a month after I submitted my application I got word back from Elly Hofmaier, who was a talent buyer for their local showcase, saying that they looked into what I do. Despite [the fact] I don’t have anything released yet, I had done for SCOPE Productions a very stripped down—just my voice and guitar—performance of one of my songs for

It’s time to book with our newest bees!

We are so buzzed to welcome The Hive Collective:

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McF: mars hojilla, Sunday, apr. 8, 3:15 p.m., Trumpet Blossom, included with pass ($55-110)

Mission creek Festival

Word art

BY Sarah ELGaTIaN

Camonghne Felix, Shelley Wong and Michelle Zauner are among the most innovative writers working today and all happen to be queer women of color which, historically, may have kept them from the spotlight.

Zauner, frontwoman for the band Japanese Breakfast and guitarist for Little Big League, became a household name in the literary world with the release of her 2021 memoir Crying in H Mart (AA Knopf). Reviewers praised her use of language and vulnerability as she documented the bereavement experienced surrounding her mother’s cancer diagnosis and death.

In a 2022 interview with San Diego LGBT News, Zauner said she had difficulty finding a place among queer musicians, adding, “I hope in ten years it’s not such a shock to see a queer person of color making music.”

Author and Chinese immigrant Xixuan Collins of Bettendorf said she doesn’t often see women of color headlining literary events, and openly queer artists even less. “I think [headlining Felix, Wong and Shelley] would be seminal,” Collins said. “On the other hand, it’s still Iowa.”

Outside of Des Moines and Iowa City, Collins said she has noticed little representation of marginalized people on the scale of a large festival headliner.

Quad Cities artist Jenna Isbell spoke to the importance of seeing oneself represented at arts festivals in particular, in both rural and urban communities.

“I would be shocked to see three queer women of color headlining the conferences I go to,” they said. “If I wanted to see myself, if I want to see something other than cis-hetero white men, it almost has to be off the beaten path, and smaller. Most of these big festival spaces are really unwelcoming.”

Bronx-born Camonghne Felix has some experience finding her voice within traditionally white, heteronormative systems. She spent her first years after college in politics, serving as a communications strategist and speechwriter for former New York governor Andrew Cuomo. She was also in charge of communications for Elizabeth Warren’s 2020 presidential campaign.

Felix’s debut poetry collection, Build Yourself A Boat (Haymarket Books, 2019), was longlisted

Crying in H Mart, Michelle Zauner

MCF: Michelle Zauner, Thursday, Apr. 6, 5:45, Hancher Auditorium, included with pass ($55-110)

Build Yourself a Boat, Camonghne Felix

MCF: Camonghne Felix, Saturday, Apr. 8, TBA, free

As She Appears, Shelley Wong

MCF: Shelley Wong, Friday, Apr. 7, TBA, free

Meet the three queer women of color headlining Mission Creek Festival’s lit section this year.

Shelley Wong, Margarita Corporan

Michelle Zauner courtesy of Mission Creek Festival

“I can admit that I was still moved by the poetics of what representation could mean, by the endless metaphors it offered up about Blackness’ survivability and resistance, but what I discovered is that representation is, fundamentally, a metaphor.”

—Camonghne Felix

Camonghne Felix, Alexa Starry

The Bruce & Judy McGrath Family Concert

for the National Book Award.

Much of Felix’s work wrestles with feelings of “otherness,” not exclusive to race, gender or sexuality, but also delving into life with trauma and unanswered questions. In a 2022 essay for The Cut, Felix discusses the impact of representation on those who are othered.

“I can admit that I was still moved by the poetics of what representation could mean, by the endless metaphors it offered up about Blackness’ survivability and resistance,” she wrote. “But what I discovered is that representation is, fundamentally, a metaphor.”

Shelley Wong’s work also deals with being outside the mainstream. She uses atypical formatting and sensory experiences to illustrate her experiences as a fourth-generation Chinese-American artist.

Wong has taught creative writing at Ohio State University and her first full-length book of poetry—As She Appears (YesYes Books)—was released in 2022. It too was longlisted for the National Book Award.

In the decade she spent writing As She Appears, Wong was navigating the poetry world in addition to her mixed identity.

“[Y]ou’re up against the larger culture, the larger society of systemic oppressions of women, LGBTQ folks, and Asians—especially now, we’re seeing it more visibly, but it was always there,” said Wong in an interview with Ploughshares. “So I think for me, I wanted to kind of convey these different histories and distortions and erasures and speak to how that can affect the psyche and self-consciousness.”

This literary side of this year’s Mission Creek Festival also includes performances by Michael Torres, Zoë Bossiere, Joe Wilkins and Lauren Haldemann, and a book fair including dozens of independent presses. The festival’s mission of championing “independent-minded musicians and writers” and promoting “voices across ethnicities, cultures, and experiences” appears to be alive and reflected in its artists.

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

March 30–April 1, 2023

Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora

2022–23 Obermann Humanities Symposium

obermann.uiowa.edu/frequencias

Film screenings, lectures, multimedia performances at FilmScene & the UI Stanley Museum of Art.

Individuals with disabilities are encouraged to attend all University of Iowa-sponsored events. If you are a person with a disability who requires an accommodation in order to participate in this program, please contact Erin Hackathorn in advance at 319-335-4034.

Pop Mission Objectives

A guide to local artists at Mission Creek Festival 2023.

BY KEMBrEW McLEOD

“Community is explicitly list ed in the Mission Creek Festival tagline—’Music. Lit. Community.’—which you won’t find with most other prominent music and arts festivals,” said Elly Hofmaier, marketing and programming co ordinator for the Englert Theatre, which produc es the festival.

The Englert’s senior programming manager and festival director Brian Johannesen added, “Mission Creek is really a community-wide fes tival, with partners stretching from Hancher to Big Grove. We always want to highlight and ele vate Iowa City and all its arts offerings.”

Little Village readers may be familiar with Hofmaier and Johannesen. In addition to their tireless work with the theater and festival, they are also local musicians who have their feet firmly planted in the local scene. The charismatic shock-blonde Hofmaier fronts garage-scuzz indie rawkers Penny Peach—and has also performed with Elizabeth Moen, the Iowa Women’s Jazz Choir and other jazz combos—while singer-songwriter Johannesen has spent the past decade building a catalog of albums steeped in quiet, melancholy beauty.

Closing in on its second decade of rocking Iowa City, Mission Creek Festival continues to bring in nationally and internationally prominent musicians, artists and writers. However, the glue that binds it all together is an emphasis on local and regional talent.

“Year after year, about a third of the Mission Creek programming is sourced locally,” Hofmaier said. “As a nonprofit, artist-led festival, we think very differently about how we engage our local talent.

“When we think about putting together our local roster,” she continued, “we’re not thinking about who is going to have the biggest draw or sell the most tickets. We’re thinking about how we can best showcase the ingenuity, talent and vastness within the Iowa music scene. We’re thinking about the people who are ready for that extra push, that next step in their artistic careers. We’re thinking about the artistic voices that give fresh perspective to our cultural zeitgeists.”

Festivals are an integral part of building local

get from playing in front of new audiences, it’s also about supporting each other.

“I think supporting local art remains a priority of the festival,” Johannesen said, “because everyone on the programming team—Andre Perry, Elly Hofmaier, Nina Lohman and myself—are all local artists. We know what it’s like.”

The other thing that sets Mission Creek apart from other typical music-oriented festivals is the incorporation of literature and other art forms, which stems from Iowa City’s official status as a UNESCO City of Literature and its history of attracting artsy oddballs whose roots are deeply planted in underground culture. Mission Creek connects the dots across the eclectic range of musical genres, mediums and styles of expression, creating a whole greater than the sum of its parts.

“Instead of the festival having a singular motif—music or literature or visual arts—the undercurrent is humanity itself,” Hofmaier said. “The beating heart of the festival is people coming together for a communal experience.”

Mission Creek is designed for folks to explore and open themselves up to new experiences, and the flow of the festival has been carefully curated so that audiences can stumble across innovative artists they might not have otherwise gone out of their way to see.

A music fan might buy a festival pass to see the iconoclastic Cat Power and then be lured

a bestselling memoirist who also fronts the indie rock band Japanese Breakfast. In this way, Mission Creek provides a comfortable place for people to experience other art forms without feeling too out of their depths.

“This is how it worked for me as a music-lover new to Iowa City,” Hofmaier said. “I see a festival with a sick music lineup and a handful of other activities I’m curious about, but maybe wouldn’t have gone out of my way for. I go to the zine fair and I go to the readings and of course I’m hooked and I’m now seeking these experiences and artists out on my own. It works the other way around too. Mission Creek is a playground for adult children with an open mind and a willingness to explore.”

As a longtime festivalgoer, my advice is to float like a feather in the wind and trust the intuition of Mission Creek’s programmers, who have put a lot of thought and care into engineering the way the events flow and connect with each other. That strategy has yielded many a pleasant surprise, introducing me to acts that have become favorites, but if you want some extra guidance, here’s my rapid-fire round-up of local and regional artists you can experience.

Des Moines’ Extravision creates a spacious, psychedelic vibe that is imbued with reverb-drenched oceanic guitar sounds, which can be heard in the song “Heart Is a Nest of Snakes.”

all photos courtesy of Mission Creek Festival

Occupying the same ecstatic, musically transcendent territory is mars hojilla, an Iowa City band fronted by University of Iowa undergrad Myles Evangelista, who has a gorgeous voice and a knack for writing catchy, melancholic songs. The group’s drummer extraordinaire, Chloe Weidl, made me TikTok famous when she was a student of mine at the University of Iowa—but that’s a story for a different day.

Hailing from a bizarro, upside-down universe in Cedar Falls, Mr. Softheart rattles bones with postpunk guitars, baritone goth vocals, glacial synths and rock’n’roll performance art, and the band does a cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “State Trooper” that sounds downright evil. If you want to swim deeper in avant-garde soundscapes, check out BCJsPs (“beesee-jays-peas”), a group of University of Iowa graduates whose mix of field recordings, found sounds and ambient textures can fry synapses.

The burgeoning Des Moines hip-hop scene is represented by FlyLife, a prominent member of the Us vs Them (UVT) rap collective whose laidback flow glides over spacey beats and makes his performance a must-see.

Also hailing from the state capital is Greg Wheeler & The Poly Mall Cops, a loud-hard-fast garage rock trio that can blister concrete—not for the faint of heart, which I mean as a compliment. But if that’s not your speed and you just want a good-time party band with an old school hip-hop vibe, look no further than The Uniphonics.

A wonderfully eccentric crown jewel in Iowa City’s musical landscape is Karen Meat, a project created by Arin Eaton and which will be performed by an all-star Iowa City supergroup that includes a brass section. I also urge you to check out Pictoria Vark, an Iowa City-based vocalist and bassist whose bottom-heavy compositions complement her airy, higher-register vocals—a special quality that helped place 2022’s The Parts I Dread on many end-of-year best albums lists. The 23-year-old was also highlighted by Rolling Stone as an artist to watch in 2023.

I would be remiss if I did not give a shoutout to some of Iowa City’s most rockin’ writers, like Rachel Yoder, whose debut novel Nightbitch has been adapted as a film starring Amy Adams that is set for a 2023 release by Searchlight. And I’ll close with one more action item: a reading by Lauren Haldeman, a multihyphenate poet, visual artist, computer programmer and puppeteer whose event will include projected images from Team Photograph, a groundbreaking graphic novel/memoir/poetry hybrid that is as visually stunning as it is emotionally moving.

Kembrew McLeod is available throughout the week of MCF for free psychic consultations.

Blue Elephant Thai

2301 2nd Street Suite 2, Coralville 319-351-4543, blueelephantthairestaurant.com

BY CRISTIN MITCHELL

For two years now, Blue Elephant Thai Restaurant has been serving delicious and nourishing food off 2nd Avenue in Coralville, in between Nailville Salon and Almost Paradise Tobacco & Vapor. Thai cuisine is known for its blend of sour, sweet, salty, savory and sometimes creamy notes, and it’s this perfect meld of flavor that Blue Elephant gets right.

Blue Elephant’s dining area is split into two rooms with a wide floor-to-ceiling plant stand that is absolutely draped in lush green pothos plants. Brightly colored floral arrangements are scattered throughout a little sea of tables with white tablecloths, below a ceiling painted with blue and white swirls.

I was struck by what my water arrived in: a silver aluminum pitcher etched with traditional Thai motives. Little things like that can make even water taste better. After a long, cold morning of making deliveries around the Corridor (I work for a locally owned coffee roastery) it felt holy to wrap my hands around a steaming mug of jasmine tea ($3) and soak in this ambience.

Blue Elephant’s menu is expansive and offers appetizers, Thai noodles, Thai curry, fried rice, entrees, desserts and drinks (all non-alcoholic). The majority of items run under $20. Their prices may crest the average for the area, but considering that all of their sauces are homemade with only fresh, whole ingredients, it feels warranted. Their menu helpfully highlights healthy plates and indicates spiciness on a 1 to 5 scale.

If I see spring rolls on a menu, I’m ordering them; this time was no different. The crisp lettuce and carrot in the two-piece spring rolls ($9.50) were delightfully crunchy and were to be dipped, if one wanted to (and one should), in their homemade peanut sauce. Chicken satay ($11.50), which includes four perfectly tender pieces of meat seasoned with curry all throughout, arrived sitting atop lettuce leaves and came with a thick, bold, curry charged peanut butter sauce. Consider this chicken satay as an alternative to buffalo wings—and with the bamboo skewers, less messy to boot. Mouth watering yet?

Typically I don’t go for a sugar-forward

Blue Elephant Thai’s floral interior; chicken satay; larb; drunken noodles Cristin Mitchell / Little Village

sauce, but I had to try the Pad Ki Mao (Drunken Noodles, $15.50) because at this point I had a hunch that I would thoroughly enjoy whatever came out of that kitchen—and I’m a sucker for Thai basil. Sweet and tangy with a hint of heat, the saucy Thai rice noodle dish came topped with a small handful of cilantro and garnished with lime. Delicious.

Definitely get the larb ($17.50), a funky minced meat salad, if you enjoy pungent flavors and lots of herbs! Note that there are red, green and white onions in this dish, so the acidic level is on the high end. Lemongrass, mint and cilantro infuse this well-spiced minced meat (I ordered beef, but you can also order chicken or pork), which sat atop lettuce leaves, and is served with sticky rice. Dig in how you would like, but I enjoyed putting the sticky rice and minced meat in little lettuce wraps and chomping away!

If pressed I would say that the Tiger Cried Beef with Sticky Rice ($18.50) is my favorite dish at Blue Elephant. The sticky rice, chewy with a dash of sweet, complimented the umami flavoring of the grilled beef swimmingly. Enjoy it wrapped in its accompanying charred lettuce and a dollop of chili paste and you have yourself a perfectly seasoned, balanced meal. Indulgent yet healthy, there was a lot of satisfied finger licking that went on here!

When researching Blue Elephant Thai Restaurant online, I came across many other restaurants with a similar name. Curious as to why this was, Alek told me that Blue Elephant is also the name of a renowned cooking school in Thailand. Unsure of whether there is any connection between the two (the owner was unavailable), I’m under the assumption that someone associated with Blue Elephant trained at this cooking school. Whether or not this is the case, it’s clear that both the school and this restaurant are committed to keeping the tradition of cooking and sharing delicious Thai cuisine with the world.

Despite a couple signs posted communicating staffing shortages and that patience and understanding are requested, the tightly run ship of Blue Elephant is kind, adept and experienced— marks of excellent service, if you ask me. The care put into the whole experience of dining at Blue Elephant was evident to me, which is a quality that will keep me coming back.

Next time I go to Blue Elephant will be on a Tuesday, which is the only day of the week they serve som tum (papaya salad, $11.50). I’m already daydreaming about ordering curry, which I saw at a lucky table nearby. Dear readers, this is a delicious trip worth your time, money and above all, your palate.

a-List

Raised in Iowa

Rising country star Hailey Whitters is joining up with a mega-star— but not before a hometown show at the Wildwood.

BY ISAAC HAMLET

Before she tours with pop-country queen Shania Twain, Hailey Whitters plans to return to her roots.

“Raised is super influenced by the people and place that raised me,” said Whitters, a Shueyville-born country musician now based in Nashville, regarding her latest album. “I found myself unintentionally [thinking] back to that place when I was writing this record… In hindsight I was probably a bit homesick, I was on the road a lot, I’d been in Nashville for 10 or 12 years.”

Her 2017 debut, Black Sheep, earned her

comparisons to Lucinda Williams and Emily Saliers from Little Village reviewer Genevieve Trainor, who praised Whitters’ voice and songwriting chops. (That same year, Little Big Town released a single, “Happy People,” co-written by Whitters and Lori McKenna.)

“If Hailey Whitters really is a ‘late bloomer,’” Trainor wrote in their review, “then country music has a lot to look forward to from her.”

On March 30, 2023, the 33-year-old Whitters plays at Iowa City’s Wildwood Smokehouse & Saloon, half an hour south of the town she grew up in, as part of her Raised tour, which kicked off in late February.

Raised will be a year old when Whitters finally performs the album in eastern Iowa. The last time she was in the area was in 2022 as part of her COVID-delayed Heartland tour. After a year of waiting, Whitters’ Raised tour allows her to build shows to center tracks from this latest release.

“‘Raised,’ the title track … I think that’s going to shine in a live setting,” she said, musing on some of the pieces she’s eager to bring home with

Hailey Whitters w/ Stephen Wilson Jr., 8 p.m., Thursday, March 30, Wildwood Smokehouse & Saloon, Iowa City, $20-30

Press photo via Hailey Whitters, tenderloin

photo by Zak Neumann, flower photos and collage by Jordan Sellergren

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 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

APR 06 -08 MISSION CREEK FESTIVAL

3 days of music & literature

$50 - 110 + FEES

APR 13 JUSTIN WILLMAN

Magician & Comedian

$15 - 75 + FEES

CO-PRESENTED BY: Mammoth Live

APR 19 THE CACTUS BLOSSOMS

Indie rock duo with Riley Downing

$15 - 22 + FEES

The James Theater

DUMMIES

MAR 10 CRASH TEST

Canadian rock band with Carleton Stone

$20 - 45 + FEES

MAR 12 ERIC GALES

Blues rock guitarist with Ally Venable

$20 - 38 + FEES

Wildwood Saloon

SEASON SPONSORS:

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

APR 21 -22

DAVID SEDARIS

Humor writer

$58 + FEES

APR 24 NEIL HAMBURGER Stand-up Comedian with Major Entertainer

$15 - 25 + FEES

Trumpet Blossom Cafe

APR 29 HEATHER LAND Floodwater Comedy Festival

$58 + FEES

her band. “‘Big Family,’ that’s one I’m excited about. ‘Pretty Boy’… that’s a piano ballad on the record and none of us play piano so I’m very curious how that one will come through.”

This stop near her hometown will be brief, but there are a few musts for the rising star during her visit.

“A pork tenderloin is always on the list,” she said. “I’m stoked to be back and to get to be there with the people who have supported me since day one, and I’ll hope I get a pork

tenderloin bigger than my face.”

Her schedule will bring her to Peoria, Illinois the next day, followed by a show at Wooly’s in Des Moines at 7 p.m. on April 1.

Soon after that central Iowa stop, Whitters will prepare to join up with Shania Twain’s Queen of Me tour as an opener for the country superstar. Whitters will play on stages set before crowds of more than 10,000 people.

“I don’t even know if that’s really sunk it yet. It’ll probably hit me seeing the stage, but I try not to think about that too much because I get so nervous and anxious,” Whitter said. “It’s gonna be nuts, it’s probably going to be some of the biggest shows I’ve ever played.”

Whitters expressed a desire to give her audience a show that feels authentic and intimate, whether she’s playing to a crowd of 10 or 10,000.

“I feel very privileged to be out here, to be doing what I’m doing and it would not be possible with the people and the place that raised me,” Whitters said. “So I’m excited to bring it home and get to play it in the place and for the people.”

“I’m stoked to be back and to get to be there with the people who have supported me since day one, and I’ll hope I get a pork tenderloin bigger than my face.”

July 7-8 • Downtown Des Moines, Iowa

EVENTS: MArcH

MARCH 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.

Lucy Ferriss & Repros For Iowa Emma Goldman Clinic Fundraiser, Press

Coffee, Iowa City, Saturday, March 4 at 5 p.m., $10 suggested donation

Join Prairie Lights and Repros for Iowa at Press Coffee for a special Emma Goldman Clinic fundraiser. Author Lucy Ferriss will be reading from her novel, The Misconceiver, which was published in 1997. The Misconceiver is a powerful novel of dystopia; it’s set in the United States in 2026 and Roe v. Wade has been overturned and abortion is banned. The novel has recently received renewed attention since the overturn of Roe v. Wade in June 2022. Ferriss is making multiple stops around the midwest this year sharing her novel and raising funds for bookshops and reproductive rights organizations. There is a $10 suggested donation at the door that will be donated to the clinic.

Literary Luxuries

January 27–April 8, 2023

Devices, Tools, Objects, and Props

RECENT WORK BY JEREMY CHEN

February 3–May 6, 2023

Fragmentary Visions

GRINNELL COLLEGE’S KELEKIAN COLLECTION

For updated information about events visit Grinnell.edu/museum

Wednesday, March 1 at 5 p.m.

Creative Matters Lecture Series: David Treuer, Old Capitol Museum, Iowa City, Free

Wednesday, March 1 at 7 p.m. Reading w/K. Iver and Paige Lewis, Prairie Lights, Iowa City, Free

Thursday, March 2 at 7 p.m. Conversation w/Lance Olsen, Prairie Lights, Free

Saturday, March 4 at 11 a.m. Book Launch w/Elizabeth Gilbert Bedia, Sidekick Coffee & Books, Iowa City, Free

Monday, March 6 at 7 p.m.

Reading w/Nic Brown, Prairie Lights, Free

Tuesday, March 7 at 7 p.m. Local Libraries LIT: Jamal Jordan, Iowa City Public Library, Online, Free

Cautious Clay · Blu DeTiger · Thumpasaurus · William Elliott Whitmore

Etran de L’Aïr · Disq · McKinley Dixon · Ax and the Hatchetmen · Lipstick Homicide ·

Kiss the Tiger · Ancient Posse · Annie Kemble · Us Vs Them · Emma Butterworth · Penny Peach · Hurry Up, Brothers · Allegra Hernandez · Lady Revel · Flash in a Pan · Chill Mac· Surf Zombies · Basketball Divorce Court · Zap Tura · Glass Ox · Salt Fox · Belin Quartet · The Crust Band · Lost Souls Found · Girls Rock! Des Moines

Sudan Archives · Deerhoof · Ric Wilson · Gustaf

House of Large Sizes · Elizabeth Moen · Maxilla Blue · Pictoria Vark · Tayls · Ramona and the Sometimes · Neil Anders and the Brothers Merritt · Monstrophe · Des Moines Music Coalition Summer Camps

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, 15 1/2 x 21 1/2 x 7 1/2 inches. Courtesy the artist

Thursday, March 9 at 7 p.m. Reading w/Eleanor Catton, Prairie Lights, Free

Saturday, March 11 at 11 a.m. Book Launch w/Lin Thompson, Sidekick Coffee & Books, Free

Monday, March 20 at 7 p.m. Reading w/ Raphael Frumkin, Prairie Lights, Free

Tuesday, March 21 at 7 p.m. Reading w/Chris Schlegel, Rebecca Wolf, Kenneth Reveiz, Prairie Lights, Free

Wednesday, March 22 at 7 p.m. Reading w/Tara Bynum, Prairie Lights, Free

Thursday, March 23 at 7 p.m. Shel Stromquist, Prairie Lights, Free

Monday, March 27 at 7 p.m. Reading and Conversation w/Cornelia F. Mutel and Nick Herbold, Sidekick Coffee & Books, Free

Tuesday, March 28 at 7 p.m. Reading w/Leslie Schwalm, Prairie Lights, Free

Wednesday, March 29 at 7 p.m. Reading w/Devin Johnson, Prairie Lights, Free

NiBeSaPaDaPaSo: Echoes of Ireland, Mirrorbox Theatre, Cedar Rapids, Friday, March 10 at 7:30 p.m., $20

Every March, the City of Cedar Rapids enjoys a rollicking event celebrating Irish heritage, the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade, hosted by the SaPaDaPaSo (St. Patrick’s Day Parade Society). This year, Mirrorbox Theatre is inviting you to start your Celtic revels a day early, on the Night Before SaPaDaPaSo! The company presents a reading of Brian C. Petti’s generational saga Echoes of Ireland. First performed in 2010, the play, a series of four monologues, follows an Irish family from 1860 in County Cork to New York City in the present day. Fiddler Marita May O’Connell will weave traditional tunes into the mix, and you can complete the illusion of Éire by knocking back a Lion Bridge Olde 17 Irish-style stout.

Mirrorbox Theatre

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

Theatrical Thrills

Wednesday-Sunday, March 1-5 Million Dollar Quartet, Revival Theatre Company, CSPS, Cedar Rapids, $24-55

Opening March 3 at 7:30 p.m. The Pillowman, Iowa City Community Theatre, $12-20

Friday, March 3 at 7:30 p.m. Floodwater’s Tiny Team Tourny, Willow Creek Theatre Company, Iowa City, $10

Friday and Saturday, March 3-4. IGNITE: The Big Muddy Dance Company, The James Theater, Iowa City, $15-28

Saturday, March 4 at 9:30 p.m. Jayson Acevedo, Joystick Comedy Arcade, Iowa City, $5

Closing Sunday, March 5 at 2 p.m The Fog Comes on Little Cat Feet, Dreamwell Theatre, The Artifactory, Iowa City, $15

Friday-Sunday, March 10-12. Jack & the Giant Beanstalk, Coralville Center for Performing Arts, $15-17

Opening Friday, March 10 at 7:30 p.m. The Wild Women of Winedale, Giving Tree Theater, Marion, $25

Opening Friday, March 10 at 7:30 p.m. Fefu and Her Friends, Riverside Theatre, Iowa City, $15-40

Opening Friday, March 10 at 7:30 p.m. Just a Matter of Time, Willow Creek Theatre Company, $15-25

Friday, March 10 at 9:30 p.m. Tyler Ross, Joystick Comedy Arcade, $5

Thursday, March 16 at 7:30 p.m. Pot O’Laughs: St. Patrick’s Day Eve Comedy Show, The Green House, Iowa City, $5-10

Masma Dream World + New Standards Men, Trumpet

Blossom Cafe, Iowa City, Friday, March 10 at 9 p.m., $10-15 Feed Me Weird Things, the Iowa City listening series focused on esoteric and rare music, has one show this month, and you should make sure you reserve tickets. New Standards Men, a duo hailing from Denver, will be performing; they’re a group known to fuse multiple genres, including punk, psychedelia, and elements of drone, sludge and jazz. Masma Dream World, the solo recording project of Devi Mambouka, a multi-disciplinary artist and degree sound therapist will also be performing in TB’s intimate space. Masma Dream World have performed worldwide as a solo performer and supported Duma, a KenyanUgandan experimental metal band, on their month-long U.S. tour in 2022.

Musical Marvels

Thursday, March 2 at 7:30 p.m. Leo Kottke, Englert Theatre, Iowa City, $20-46.50

Friday, March 3 at 7:30 p.m. St. Paddy’s, Coralville Center for Performing Arts, $17-22

Friday, March 3 at 8 p.m. Telepathy Club, Good Morning Midnight, Zap Tura, Penny Peach, Gabe’s, Iowa City, $10

Saturday, March 4 at 10 a.m. Community Music Day, Cedar Rapids Public Library, Free

Saturday, March 4 at 7:30 p.m. Gaelic Storm, Englert Theatre, $34-39.50

Saturday, March 4 at 8 p.m. Anthony Worden & The Illiterati, Mr. Softheart, Maaze, Ideal Theater & Bar, Cedar Rapids, $13

Wednesday, March 17 at 8 p.m. David Cross w/Sean Patton, Englert Theatre, Iowa City, $25-145

Friday, March 24 at 7:30 p.m. The Mystery Hour w/Jeff Houghton, Englert Theatre, $2853

Saturday, March 25 at 8 p.m. Comedian Darius Daye, Willow Creek Theatre Company, $5-15

Saturday, March 25 at 8 p.m. Knights of the Round Pasties: What’s Your Game? CSPS Hall, Cedar Rapids, $20-100

Saturday, March 25 at 9:30 p.m. Chris Grieco, Joystick Comedy Arcade, $5

Saturday, April 1 at 7 p.m. Girlies for Emma Goldman, Willow Creek Theatre Company, $5-15

Saturday, March 4 at 9 p.m. Ion, ADE & Sean Tyler, Gabe’s, $10

Tuesday, March 7 at 5 p.m. Corridor Jazz Project Concert, Paramount Theatre, $15

Tuesday, March 7 at 7 p.m. Ligament w/Christine Burke and Justin K Comer, The James Theater, Iowa City, $10-15

Thursday, March 9 at 8 p.m. Kat and the Hurricane, Early Girl, Casual Disasters, Trumpet Blossom Cafe, Iowa City, $7

Friday, March 10 at 7:30 p.m. Orchestra Iowa: Verdi’s Requiem, Hancher, Iowa City, $17-58

Friday, March 10 at 7:30 p.m. Crash Test Dummies, Englert Theatre, $20-45

LITTLEVILLAGEMAG.COM

Sunday, March 12 at 8 p.m. Eric Gales w/Ally Venable, Wildwood Saloon, $20-38

Tuesday, March 14 at 7:30 p.m. Drive-By Truckers w/Margo Cilker, Englert Theatre, $15-38

Wednesday, March 15 at 7:30 p.m. Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Englert Theatre, $42-72

Friday, March 17 at 7 p.m. Jeremy Young: Sketches for 42 Magnetic Tape Loops, PS1 Close, Iowa City, $10 suggested donation

Friday and Saturday, March 17 and 18. Orchestra Iowa: Strumming Strings, Opus Concert Café, Cedar Rapids, $10-25

Saturday, March 18 at 1 p.m. Bluegrass Jam, PS1 Close House, Iowa City, $5 suggested donation

Saturday, March 18 at 8 p.m. Basketball Divorce Court Release Show, Gabe’s, $10

Sunday, March 19 at 2 p.m. Orchestra Iowa: Strumming Strings, Coralville Center for Performing Arts, $10-25

Thursday, March 23 at 7 p.m. Willy Porter, CSPS Hall, $18-22

Saturday, March 25 at 9 p.m. Vuyo Sotashe Group, Hancher, Iowa City, $10-15

Wednesday, March 29 at 7 p.m. Roger Clyne & The Peacemakers, Wildwood Saloon, Iowa City, $22-30

Thursday, March 30 at 7:30 p.m. Children of the Light: Danilo Pérez, John Patitucci, & Brian Blade, Hancher, $10-30

Friday, March 31 at 7 p.m. William Elliot Whitmore, Wildwood Saloon, $25

Saturday, April 1 at 7 p.m. Beauty & The Beats w/LaLa DeLo, The Green House, Iowa City

Saturday, April 1 at 8 p.m. Horseshoes & Hand Grenades w/Flash In A Pan, Wildwood Smokehouse Saloon, $20

Saturday, April 1 and 8. Improvised, Looped, Live Music Production, PS1 Close House, $5-50

Sunday, April 2 at 7:30 p.m. Advance Base, Claire Cronin, Dan Wriggins, PS1 Close House, $10

Women-Owned Business

Market, NewBo City Market, Cedar Rapids, Saturday, March 11 at 10 a.m.,

Free Celebrate Women’s History Month in March by spending your Saturday morning and/or early afternoon at NewBo City Market in CR. Come hungry as you’ll want to grab a bite to eat before shopping at one of NewBo’s food vendors. Then, peruse the variety of curated guest vendors popped up inside the market. All vendors participating will be woman-owned, and the market will feature handmade retail goods.

Community Connections

Begins Thursday, March 2 at 8 p.m. Public Space One Annual Art Auction: Infinite Weave, Iowa City, Online

Friday, March 3 at 6:30 p.m. Bike Packing Clinic, Fin & Feather, Iowa City, Free

Saturday, March 4 at 3 p.m. Care & Spark, Porchlight Literary Arts Center, Iowa City, Free

Monday, March 6 at 5 p.m. Herbs and Cocktails 101, The Green House, Iowa City, $25

Saturday, March 11 at 12 p.m. IC Press Co-op Open Studio, PS1, Iowa City, $10-20

Saturday, March 11 at 1 p.m. SaPaDaPaSo St. Patrick’s Day Parade, Downtown Cedar Rapids, Free

Saturday, March 11 at 2 p.m. Stanley Creates: Collaborative Paper Quilt, Stanley Museum of Art, Free

Sunday, March 19 at 1 p.m. Spring Equinox Celebration, Robert A. Lee Recreation Center, Iowa City, Free

Frequências: Contemporary AfroBrazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora, Stanley Museum of Art and FilmScene–The Chauncey, Iowa City, Thursday-

Saturday, March 30-April 1, Free

Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora, the 2022-23 Obermann Humanities Symposium, is organized by multiple scholars whose work focuses on cinematic arts, Brazilian literature and culture and Brazilian film. The symposium celebrates emerging young AfroBrazilian filmmakers, curators, programmers and scholars already acclaimed in the international cinema sphere. Events include a mix of film screenings, performances, discussions and conversations that will take place over the course of three days at the Stanley and FilmScene. All events, including the screenings, are free and open to the public.

Monday, March 20 at 4 p.m. One Iowa: LGBTQ Legislative Update, The Green House, Free

Thursday, March 23 at 4:30 p.m. Prairie Preview, Iowa City Senior Center, Free

Thursday, March 23 at 8 p.m. Artist Talk w/Franklin Peters, Stanley Museum of Art, Iowa City, Free

Saturday and Sunday, March 25 and 26. Maple Syrup Festival, Indian Creek Nature Center, Cedar Rapids, Free-$12

Monday, March 27 at 7 p.m. Musical Bingo, Big Grove Brewery, Iowa City, Free

Tuesday, March 28 at 4 p.m. Curator Guided Tour: Out & About: Queer Life in Iowa City, UI Main Library, Free

Tuesday, April 4 at 10 a.m. A Community Reading of Martin Luther King Jr’s “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence,” sponsored by Veterans for Peace Chapter #161, Iowa City Ped Mall (in case of inclement weather: Iowa City Public Library, Meeting Room D), Free

Films In Focus

Wednesday, March 1 at 6:30 p.m. The Whale w/Samuel D. Hunter, FilmScene–The Chauncey, Iowa City, $10-13

Wednesday, March 1 at 10 p.m. Late Shift at the Grindhouse: Dillinger, FilmScene–The Chauncey, $8

Courtesy of NewBo City Market via UI Obermann Center

Thursday, March 2 at 7 p.m. Mean Streets, FilmScene–The Chauncey, Free-$8

Saturday, March 4 at 10 p.m. Speed Racer, FilmScene–The Chauncey, Free-$8

Monday, March 6 at 6:30 p.m. The Big Lebowski, FilmScene–The Chauncey, $25-30

Tuesday, March 7 at 7 p.m. The Sting, FilmScene–The Chauncey, Free-$8

Wednesday, March 8 at 10 p.m. Late Shift at the Grindhouse: Steelyard Blues, FilmScene–The Chauncey, $8

Thursday, March 9 at 7 p.m. Fantastic Planet, FilmScene–The Chauncey, $8

Sunday, March 12 at 5:30 p.m. Blue Carpet Bash, FilmScene–The Chauncey, Free w/ RSVP

Tuesday, March 14 at 7 p.m. Badlands, FilmScene–The Chauncey, Free-$8

Wednesday, March 15 at 10 p.m. Death Smiles on a Murderer, FilmScene–The Chauncey, Free-$8

Thursday, March 16 at 7 p.m. Funeral Parade of Roses, FilmScene–The Ped Mall, $10-13

Saturday and Sunday, March 18-19 at 11 a.m. The Picture Show: The Secret of Kells, FilmScene–The Chauncey, Free-$5

Wednesday, March 22 at 7 p.m. Girlhood, FilmScene–The Chauncey, Free-$8

Thursday, March 23 at 3:30 p.m. The Picture Show: The Secret of Kells, FilmScene–The Chauncey, Free-$5

Friday, March 24 at 10 p.m. But I’m a Cheerleader, FilmScene–The Chauncey, Free-$8

Saturday, March 25 at 10 p.m Eraserhead, FilmScene–The Chauncey, Free-$8

Saturday, April 1 at 10 p.m The Room, FilmScene–The Chauncey, Free-$8

Registration open for Summer CSA 2023!

Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) members sign up at the beginning of the season to receive a box of seasonal produce for 16 weeks (late May - late September) from the farm (4811 Melrose Ave, Iowa City)!

Full share - 16 weeks of veg from the farm: $475

Half share - 8 weeks of veg from the farm: $250

Full share SNAP: $50/month x4 months

Half share SNAP: $25/month x4 months

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

A Red Carpet Affair: Oscar Watch Party, Varsity

Cinema, Des Moines, Sunday, March

12 at 6:30 p.m., $25-35 Varsity Cinema is rolling out their red carpet for a special live-stream of the Academy Awards ceremony. The new cinema’s event will feature small bites from neighboring restaurants including Dough Co., Lucky Horse, and late-night coffee from Mars. Event-goers can also enjoy games and giveaways throughout the evening. A Pre-Show Red Carpet ticket ($35), includes pre-show admission to watch the Oscars red carpet arrival starting at 5:30 p.m., small bites and two drink tickets. Regular admission ($25) includes small bites, one drink ticket and admission at 6:30 p.m.

Saturday, March 4 at 9 p.m. Danny Russell Wolf w/Allegra Hernandez and Tough Ghost, Lefty’s Live Music, Des Moines, $10

Thursday, March 9 at 6 p.m. Capital City Pride Speaker Series: Mikah Meyer, Temple Theater, Des Moines, Free

EDITORS’ PICKS: MARCH 2023

Friday, March 10 at 5 p.m. Community Access Programming: Youth Art Show Opening Reception, Des Moines Art Center, Free

Sunday, March 12 at 2 p.m. We Rock Fundraiser and Showcase, Gas Lamp, $10

Closing Sunday, March 12 at 4 p.m. The Hundred Dresses, Des Moines Community Playhouse, $1419

Iowa Eats Food & Drink Festival, Waterloo Convention Center,

Saturday, April 1 at 1 p.m., Free-$10 Eastern Iowa foodies, the Iowa Eats Food & Drink Festival is happening on the first of April, but we promise this festival is no joke. Head to the Waterloo Convention Center to enjoy a oneday celebration of food. The festival will feature all Iowa foods and products. A few of the many festival vendors include the Amana Heritage Society, Fireside/Ackerman Winery, Convergence Cider Works, Lola’s Fine Hot Sauce, and more. Moe Cason, a self-taught pitmaster and cookoff champion, JayJay Goodvin, a well-known food blogger, and Capri Cafaro, an author, podcaster, and radio host will all be presenting at the festival. Advance tickets are $10, which includes entry to the event and food/beverage samples.

Wildest W’loo + more!

Saturday, March 4 at 10 a.m.

Urban Farmers Market, Waterloo Center for the Arts, Free

Sunday, March 5 at 2 p.m.

LUNAFEST, Hearst Center for the Arts, Cedar Falls, Free

Tuesday and Wednesday, March 7 and 8. Bluey’s Big Play, Gallagher Bluedorn Performing Arts Center, Cedar Falls, $29.75-50.75

Friday-Sunday, March 10-12. Maple Syrup Festival, Hartman Reserve Nature Center, Cedar Falls, Free-$10

Wednesday, March 15 at 8 p.m. Weyes Blood w/Vagabon, Wooly’s, $25-30

Thursday-Saturday, March 16-18. Hoop and Hops, Cowles Commons, Des Moines, Free

Saturday, March 18 at 7:30 p.m. Problems, Heligoats, Acid Leg, Gravity’s Constant, Gas Lamp, $10

CEDAR FALLS/WATERLOO

Saturday-Sunday, March 11-12.

Psychic & Paranormal Expo, Bien Venu, Cedar Falls, $5

Saturday, March 11 at 8 p.m. Astral Space, Phoenix Curse, Phantom Threat, Octopus College Hill, Cedar Falls, $10

Tuesday, March 28 at 5:30 p.m. Board Game Night, Waterloo Public Library, Free

Saturday, April 1 at 11 a.m. RodCon, Rod Library, Cedar Falls, Free

MARCH 2023 PRESENTED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA STANLEY MUSEUM OF ART DES MOINES/AMES

Dynamic DSM

Courtesy of the Varsity CInema

Moe Cason, via the festival

LITTLEVILLAGEMAG.COM

Sunday, March 19 at 4 p.m. Leah Hawkins in Concert, Plymouth Church, Des Moines, Free-$25

Friday, March 24 at 7 p.m. Freegrass String Trio w/Blake Shaw, Noce, $18-45

Friday, March 24 at 7 p.m. The Healing Power of Music In Concert w/Geneviève Salamone, Ames City Auditorium, $10

Friday, March 24 at 8 p.m. Naughty Nerds Cabaret: Geeky Garters, xBk Live, Des Moines, $30-50

Saturday, March 25 at 9 a.m. DSM Book Festival, Various Venues, Downtown Des Moines, Free

Sunday, March 26 at 5 p.m. The Emblem Faction w/Hardship, In Search of Solace, Rehtek, Lefty’s Live Music, $10-15

Wednesday, March 29 at 7:30 p.m. Once Upon This Stage: Hoyt Sherman Place, Des Moines, $25-75

Thursday, March 30 at 8 p.m. Scott Yoder, Mr. Softheart, Jordan Mayland, the LiFT, Des Moines, $10 suggested donation

Friday, March 31 at 12 p.m. Transgender Day of Visibility Educational, One Iowa, Online, Free

Saturday, April 1 at 10 a.m. Central Iowa Trans Lives Festival, First Unitarian Church of Des Moines, Free

FIND MORE EVENTS

Finest Fairfield

Tuesday, March 7 at 7:30 p.m. Eugene Gaub on the Steinway, Sondheim Center for the Performing Arts, Fairfield, Free

Wednesdays, Mar. 8, 15, 22, 29 at 7:30 p.m. Open Mic, Cafe Paradiso, Fairfield, Free

Friday, Mar. 10, 11, 12, 13 at 7 p.m. M3GAN, Cinema Fairfield, $6

It’s Alright! (If You Like That Sort of Thing), Fairfield Arts & Convention Center, Opening Thursday, March 16 at 7:30 p.m., $10-20 Fairfield

Area Community Theatre (FACT) is proud to present the world premiere of Iowa: It’s Alright! (If You Like That Sort of Thing). From the addled minds of the theater’s writers, actors, musicians (and semi-demented friends!), comes an original fresh-off-the-farm variety show made for the masses—an entertaining smorgasbord of snarky radio plays, peculiar peripheral news, exalted song-and-dance celebrations, and sappy firsthand accounts of what it’s like to live in the most Midwestern of all Midwestern States. Tickets are $10 for youth and $20 for adults. For more events and specific details on each of the events below, visit: fairfieldjournal.org.

Saturday, March 11 at 10 a.m. E-Sports Smash Bash, Cinema Fairfield, Free

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

Saturday, March 18 at 1 p.m. Birding the Carnegie: A Field

Guide to Iowa’s Birds of Prey, Carnegie Historical Museum, Fairfield, Free

Monday, March 20, at 8:30 a.m. Smartphone Filmmaking: 5-Day Workshop, Cinema Fairfield, MIU’s Cinematic Media, $65

Tuesday-Thursday, March 21-23 at 7 p.m RRR, Cinema Fairfield, $6

Sunday-Tuesday, March 26-28 at 7 p.m 80 for Brady, Cinema Fairfield, $6

Wednesday, March 29 at 7 p.m Heat and Dust, Cinema Fairfield, $6

Friday, March 31 at 7:30 p.m. Zakir Hussian: Masters of Percussion, Sondheim Center for the Performing Arts, $10-45 Fairfield Journal

More than a meal for our senior neighbors in need.

Creation Studio Open Work

Hours, Bettendorf Public Library, Monday, March 13 at 2 p.m., Free

The Bettendorf Public Library will host open hours for their Creation Studio program, in which patrons of all ages are invited to use established and emerging tools and supplies to inspire and assist participants to explore their interests without having to invest in the tools themselves. They will have equipment and software available for use and learning to encourage participants to explore and learn creative arts and STEAM activities. The programming is free and includes use of sewing machines, Cricut, 3D-printers, photography light boxes and computer programs.

Quintessential QC

Saturday, March 4 at 11 a.m.

Transcending Identity: A Trans Woman Workshop, ClockInc, Rock Island, Free–registration required

Sunday, March 5 at 2 p.m. QC

Environmental Film Series: Dead Sea Guardians, Figge Art Museum, Davenport, $5

Sunday, March 5 at 2 p.m. Masterworks V: Fearless Females, Centennial Hall at Augustana College, Rock Island, $8-40

Tuesday, March 7 at 7 p.m. Protomartyr & Titus Andronicus, Racoon Motel, Davenport, $20

Wednesday, March 8 at 5 p.m. Quad City Community Seed Swap, Quad City Botanical Center, Rock Island, free

Friday, March 10 at 8 p.m. Low Tides with Liv Carrow, Rozz-Tox, Rock Island, Free

Saturday, March 11 at 10 a.m. QuadCon, Northpark Mall, Davenport, Free

Wednesday, March 15 at 6 p.m. Open Blues Jam, Kavanaugh’s Hilltop Pub, Davenport, Free

Sunday, March 19 at 2:30 p.m. Youth Nature Writing Workshop, Nahant Marsh, Davenport, $15-20

Tuesday, March 21 at 7:30 p.m. Journey and Toto, Vibrant Arena at the Mark, Moline, $35-150

—Sarah Elgatian

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

$50/month

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Thanks to our February donors

Ed Flaherty

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Matthew Russell

the student org YouTube channel.

Elly found that video through my application process and she said that what they did find on me was very compelling and they will be happy to give me an opportunity to play on a bigger stage.

What’s exciting to you about being able to play on a stage like that? When I first got booked, I was like, “Oh, this is like, a big fest, I feel like I need to step up my game.” So before getting accepted into Mission Creek, I hadn’t really entertained the idea of being backed with an ensemble. … From experience with having a band in high school, it was really hard to coordinate everyone’s schedules.

But I think with Mission Creek Fest, there’s the potential for a lot of people to see me and I was like, “I have to step it up.” So I’ll be playing all of my solo songs with a bassist and drummer who are both friends I knew prior to Mission Creek.

For people who maybe haven’t heard you play before, how would you describe your sound? I draw a lot of my stripped down voice and guitar style from the artists NoSo, who SCOPE actually brought to the homecoming concert this past October, they were the opening act.

I listen to a lot of emo-folk adjacent artists, so the Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus types, kinda mixed with pop-punk DJ vocals, because when I got to middle school and high school I was really into My Chemical Romance and Neck Deep’s style and I feel like that translates into the way that I write and sing as well.

When I first started playing solo I compared my stuff to acoustic versions of pop punk songs that don’t exist yet.

Is there anything else you want to add for people reading this? Going along with feeling the need to be represented in the music scene, on top of being like a non-white indie musician— and I alluded to in the SCOPE video as well—I’m also a transgender man. It’s a rare thing in the music industry in general, but especially in that indie-rock scene to find a musician who is both non-white and genderqueer.

I look up to a lot of musicians, but looking for musicians I can relate to, it’s kind of slim pickings, which is why I draw such heavy inspiration from NoSo, who is Korean American and also nonbinary.

It just means a lot to be able to see somebody who was more like me play on a big stage. So I kind of carry that with me. As long as I’m playing at Mission Creek, I hope that other folks can share in my excitement.

Charity Nebbe, Host

Dear Kiki, I have a friend group from college that have kept in touch over the years through a group text. Friend A and B lived together, while friend C and I live fairly close and occasionally visit each other. I always knew A and B to be pretty inseparable, but recently A texted me saying that B moved away suddenly with very little warning, leaving A in a bit of a bind, and now they’re having a falling out because of it. I’m not sure what to do. I’ve known B to be a bit selfish in the past, so this behavior tracks with her past actions, but it was still shocking. B hasn’t mentioned it at all, and I’m afraid to ask for details. I feel like my long-standing friend group is falling apart and I don’t know whose side to take. A isn’t texting me back about the situation and I don’t want to pressure them, but the whole situation makes me feel so distant and I’m not sure what to do. I don’t want to just stop talking to any of them, but I’m worried that talking to one will make the other think that I’m taking sides. We’ve all been friends for so long and it’s breaking my heart.

Sincerely,

Frazzled Friend

situations change, and some rifts are unmendable. What I want you to do here is give yourself permission to grieve. Again, you can’t control them. You can’t “fix” this, no matter what you do. Whatever happens, happens: If the friend group is broken, you will have to find a way to survive that, just like any other ending.

There’s a trivialization of friendship in U.S. culture, but rest assured that this experience carries as much trauma as the end of a romantic relationship or the loss of a job. Don’t be a hero, Friend. Your heart is breaking and you need to honor that grief and be gentle with it. Give yourself time and space to heal, and cherish whatever platitudes have gotten you through similar situations in the past: Yes, you will find new friends eventually. Yes, you will still have joy in the future even though it will look differently than you imagined. Yes, you are still a good friend. And yes, this happens to even the most diligent and caring people.

Dear Friend,

I’m sorry to hear you’re feeling frazzled. It’s hard when people we care about beef with each other, because we absorb all of the hostility yet feel powerless to affect the situation in any way. It sucks.

There’s a couple of things to dig into here.

The first is the toll the situation is taking on you. This is a prime example of a “put your mask on first” situation. You’ll be no help to either of them (or the other people in your life) if you don’t protect your own capacity. What’s important for you to remember is that these are grownass adults making choices. As their friend, you are allowed to have opinions. But you don’t bear any responsibility for their decisions nor do you need to bend your reactions to their convenience.

The best thing you can do in this and any other relationship is react honestly and speak with kindness. Because this is a fraught situation, one or both of them might feel like you’re taking sides. But you can’t control their feelings. They might feel like you’re taking sides even if you do nothing at all. And at the end of the day, it’s better to deal with the fallout of honest reactions than to change your behavior and face that fallout anyway. Just be there for them, as much as you are able.

The other issue, Friend, is that awful feeling of fracturing that you need to navigate. I wish I had better news, but the truth is that people and

You speak of being afraid to talk to B and say that A isn’t returning your messages. But where is C in all this? How are they feeling? Have you spoken to them? No one wants to feel like they’re talking out of class about other people’s problems, but you need to respect the ring theory here: comfort in, dump out. A and B are at the center of this. They are the ones the core situation is happening to. Be there to comfort them, but only express your frustration and grief to people on your ring or further out.

Lean on C or on other friends less involved. Expressing and trying to come to terms with your own feelings isn’t gossiping and it isn’t disrespectful to A or B. It’s how you protect yourself in order to help them better. Here’s to a less-frazzled future, Friend. —xoxo, Kiki

myself. I was tired of this cycle. I was angry at how I was being treated. I was angry at being dismissed by close ones around me. It finally clicked in my brain that I deserved so much better from others but most importantly myself.

I started reading self-help books such as Body Positive Power by Megan Jayne Crabbe and The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf. I started surrounding my social media with diverse body types, disabilities, cultures, ethnicities and more. I let myself cry all the tears I needed to. So in the summer of 2022, June 14, when I was told I am “stronger than you think” by a, now, friend, I was stunned. That statement hasn’t left my mind since that day.

June 14 is my brother’s birthday and this would have been his 39th birthday. My brother passed away suddenly when I was 14 years old. I compare our strengths a lot. He had severe cerebral palsy and I had undiagnosed (at the time) autism. He could not walk the last five years of his life and I was contemplating my own. He was the one to pass away when I tried to.

I have felt deeply in my life. Sometimes I am told I am “too emotional.” Now I am told I am “strong.” Looking back, I am only “strong” because I had to be and I have to be. I have no other option for myself but to continue my life and heal. I do not have any other choice. On my dark days, I am still considered “strong” when I feel the weakest.

Strong people are not strong by choice. We have gone through trials and tribulations. We have cried and felt fearful for most of our life. Even as I heal, I am still fearful of life to this day. I may stand straight, shoulders back and chin up, but this is the only way of survival I know.

Remember this when you look at your heroes or people you wish to become one day, they did not become a strong figure in life because of choice. Behind every strong individual is a battle of a journey.

Teri Underhill is a creative based in Norwalk, Iowa.

ASTROLOGY

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Piscean author and activist W. E. B. Dubois advised us to always be willing to give up what we are. Why? Because that’s how we transform into a deeper and stronger version of ourselves. I think you would benefit from using his strategy. My reading of the astrological omens tells me that you are primed to add through subtraction, to gain power by shedding what has become outworn and irrelevant. Suggested step one: Identify dispiriting self-images you can jettison. Step two: Visualize a familiar burden you could live without. Step three: Drop an activity that bores you. Step four: Stop doing something that wastes your time.

ARIES (March 21-April 19): In 1993, I began work on my memoirish novel *The Televisionary Oracle*. It took me seven years to finish. The early part of the process was tough. I generated a lot of material I didn’t like. Then one day, I discovered an approach that liberated me: I wrote about aspects of my character and behavior that needed improvement. Suddenly everything clicked, and my fruitless adventure transformed into a fluidic joy. Soon I was writing about other themes and experiences. But dealing with self-correction was a key catalyst. Are there any such qualities in yourself you might benefit from tackling, Aries? If so, I recommend you try my approach.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Two Taurus readers complained that my horoscopes contain too much poetry and flair to be useful. In response, I’m offering you a prosaic message. It’s all true, though in a way that’s more like a typical horoscope. (I wonder if this approach will spur your emotional intelligence and your soul’s lust for life, which are crucial areas of growth for you these days.) Anyway, here’s the oracle: Take a risk and extend feelers to interesting people outside your usual sphere. But don’t let your social adventures distract you from your ambitions, which also need your wise attention. Your complex task: Mix work and play; synergize business and pleasure.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Astrologer Jessica Shepherd advises us to sidle up to the Infinite Source of Life and say, “Show me what you’ve got.” When we do, we often get lucky. That’s because the Infinite Source of Life delights in bringing us captivating paradoxes. Yes and no may both be true in enchanting ways. Independence and interdependence can interweave to provide us with brisk teachings. If we dare to experiment with organized wildness and aggressive receptivity, our awareness will expand, and our heart will open. What about it, Gemini? Are you interested in the charming power that comes from engaging with cosmic contradictions? Now’s a favorable time to do so. Go ahead and say, “Show me what you’ve got” to the Infinite Source of Life.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): “Only a lunatic would dance when sober,” declared the ancient Roman philosopher Cicero. As a musician who loves to dance, I reject that limiting idea— especially for you. In the upcoming weeks, I hope you will do a lot of dancing-while-sober. Singing-while-sober, too. Maybe some crying-for-joy-while-sober, as well as freewheeling-your-way-through-unpredictable-conversations-while-sober and cavorting-and-reveling-while-sober. My point is that there is no need for you to be intoxicated as you engage in revelry. Even further: It will be better for your soul’s long-term health if you are lucid and clear headed as you celebrate this liberating phase of extra joy and pleasure.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Poet Mary Oliver wondered whether the soul is solid and unbreakable, like an iron bar. Or is it tender and fragile, like a moth in an owl’s beak? She fantasized that maybe it’s shaped like an iceberg or a hummingbird’s eye. I am poetically inclined to imagine the soul as a silver diadem bedecked with emeralds, roses and live butterflies. What about you, Leo? How do you experience your soul? The coming weeks will be a ripe time to home in on this treasured part of you. Feel it, consult with

it, feed it. Ask it to surprise you!

By Rob Brezsny

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): According to the color consultant company Pantone, Viva Magenta is 2023’s color of the year. According to me, Viva Magenta is the lucky hue and power pigment for you Virgos during the next 10 months. Designer Amber Guyton says that Viva Magenta “is a rich shade of red that is both daring and warm.” She adds that its “purple undertone gives it a warmth that sets it apart from mere red and makes it more versatile.” For your purposes, Virgo, Viva Magenta is earthy and exciting; nurturing and inspiring; soothing yet arousing. The coming weeks will be a good time to get the hang of incorporating its spirit into your life.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): If you are not working to forge a gritty solution, you may be reinforcing a cozy predicament. If you’re not expanding your imagination to conjure up fresh perspectives, you could be contributing to some ignorance or repression. If you’re not pushing to expose dodgy secrets and secret agendas, you might be supporting the whitewash. Know what I’m saying, Libra? Here’s a further twist. If you’re not peeved about the times you have wielded your anger unproductively, you may not use it brilliantly in the near future. And I really hope you will use it brilliantly.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Storyteller Martin Shaw believes that logic and factual information are not enough to sustain us. To nourish our depths, we need the mysterious stories provided by myths and fairy tales. He also says that conventional hero sagas starring big, strong, violent men are outmoded. Going forward, we require wily, lyrical tales imbued with the spirit of the Greek word *metis*, meaning “divine cunning in service to wisdom.” That’s what I wish for you now, Scorpio. I hope you will tap into it abundantly. As you do, your creative struggles will lead to personal liberations. For inspiration, read myths and fairy tales.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Many astrologers don’t give enough encouragement to you Sagittarians on the subject of home. I will compensate for that. I believe it’s a perfect time to prioritize your feelings of belonging and your sense of security. I urge you to focus energy on creating serenity and stability for yourself. Honor the buildings and lands you rely on. Give extra appreciation to the people you regard as your family and tribe. Offer blessings to the community that supports you.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): If you are like 95 percent of the population, you weren’t given all the love and care you needed as a child. You may have made adaptations to partly compensate for this lack, but you are still running a deficit. That’s the bad news, Capricorn. The good news is that the coming weeks will be a favorable time to overcome at least some of the hurt and sadness caused by your original deprivation. Life will offer you experiences that make you feel more at home in the world and at peace with your destiny and in love with your body. Please help life help you! Make yourself receptive to kindness and charity and generosity.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): The philosopher Aldous Huxley was ambitious and driven. Author of almost 50 books, he was a passionate pacifist and explorer of consciousness. He was a visionary who expressed both dystopian and utopian perspectives. Later in his life, though, his views softened. “Do not burn yourselves out,” he advised readers. “Be as I am: a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it.” Now I’m offering you Huxley’s counsel, Aquarius. As much as I love your zealous idealism and majestic quests, I hope that in the coming weeks, you will recharge yourself with creature comforts.

CONOR HANICK WITH KEIR GOGWILT AND JAY CAMPBELL

Friday, April 14, 7:30 pm

$10

STUDENT & YOUTH TICKETS

Iowa City native Conor Hanick has been called the “soloist of choice for…thorny works” by The New York Times and is a champion of many composers of his own generation— as well as a brilliant performer of works by the full range of great composers. Hancher welcomes Hanick home for a performance that will feature solo, duo, and trio works.

TICKETS

Adults $20 / $25 / $30

College Students $10 / $10 / $24

Youth $10 / $10 / $24

EVENT PARTNERS

Mace and Kay Braverman

Hills Bank and Trust Company

H. Dee and Myrene Hoover

EMERSON STRING QUARTET

Friday, April 21, 7:30 pm

Gary and Randi Levitz West Music

Candace Wiebener

$10

STUDENT & YOUTH TICKETS

Undeniably one of the finest string quartets of the last four decades, the Emerson String Quartet has announced it will disband in 2023. Hancher is proud to once again present these incomparable musicians as part of their final tour. Don’t miss your last chance to experience this essential ensemble live.

TICKETS

Adults $40 / $55 / $60

College Students $10 / $10 / $48

Youth $10 / $10 / $48

EVENT PARTNERS

Bill and Fran Albrecht

Richard and Judith Hurtig

AMERICAN BALLET THEATRE

Saturday, May 6, 7:30 pm

Over the last several years, American Ballet Theatre has delivered astonishing performances for Hancher audiences—including the whimsical Whipped Cream and an incredible outdoor show on the Fourth of July in 2021. Now the Company returns to close Hancher’s 50th anniversary season with a mixed repertory program—including ZigZag, choreographed by Jessica Lang to music by Tony Bennett—that is sure to thrill and delight everyone who experiences it.

TICKETS

Adults $70 / $85 / $95

College Students $56 / $68 / $76

Youth $56 / $68 / $76

EVENT PARTNERS

Charles Richard and Barbara S. Clark

Robert and Karlen Fellows

Sue and Joan Strauss

LaDonna and Gary Wicklund

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.

Scene from ZigZag. Photo: Rosalie O’Connor.

Photo: Laura Desberg

Photo: Erin Baiano

Photo: Jürgen Frank

BYrN D. PaUL The Great Vehicle BYRNDPAUL.BANDCAMP.COM

Byrn D. Paul is one of those musicians on a wavelength entirely their own.

He plays guitar, cello, violin, oud, koto, pedal steel guitar and modular synthesizer on The Great Vehicle On previous releases he positively shreds on the guitar, but this latest album is not about virtuosity. Technical skill is a requirement for this kind of music, and it’s as much a product of Paul’s digital audio production mojo as it is his fingers on strings.

His lyrics are also ambitious, exploring a syncretic, multi-modal mysticism. He’s concerned with Life, the Universe and Everything. I still laugh at Beavis & Butthead So for this album I’ll take Ludwig Wittgenstein’s advice: It’s something whereof I cannot speak so I’ll remain silent.

Philosophizing aside, there are many great musical ideas here, elegantly performed, recorded and produced. Paul is a guitarist primarily and there’s plenty of texture and rhythm from his guitar. None of the songs are verse/chorus/verse pop songs. The closest contemporary analog to what he’s doing is Joanna Newsom. They both write intricately structured, sophisticated pieces that take you to unexpected places.

“Sophia Samsara” closes the album but is a good place to start examination. Beginning with the sound of flowing water, church bells and spoken word poetry: “I never saw the bushes stir to admit the sacred guardian fawn / Foltchain, in her snow-white pelt.” The vocals

are subtly pitch-shifted and processed to sound portentous. But following that, you’re surprised by an almost conventional song, a lullaby of sorts. Though, I’m not sure a child would be comforted by the lyrics “Rejecting vice and nihilism / Embracing bliss beyond distinction.”

“Blue (III) Birds” is constructed in layers, including electric piano, inchoate rumbling found sound and the koto. Without being too on the nose, recordings of bird song enter during the song’s outro, which is awash with varied musical timbres including violin, cello, guitar and what I think is the wind rustling leaves. This is 21st century music, a digitally assembled bricolage.

Alongside the lyrics in the extensive booklet included with the album is discussion of specific guitars, effect pedals and VST instruments used in production. The technical detail is presented as earnestly important as the mystical lyrics and poems. It’s a bold, wonky move.

You don’t often hear an album so lush and deeply worked from an Iowa musician. Paul harkens back to the 1960s psychedelic explosion of Pink Floyd, The Moody Blues and Yes, but his music could only be created in this digital future.

Throughout The Great Vehicle, Paul saddles his lyrics with a lot of sincere ruminations on discovering the sacred and mysterious truths of life. Yet the music itself is also lovingly independent of his philosophical intent.

My alternate title for the album could be Never Mind the Gnosticism, Here’s Bryn D Paul. One can let the lyrics wash over them and focus on the pleasures of melody, harmony and auditory texture.

—Kent Williams

JaD FaIr aND

SaMUEL LOcKE WarD

Happy Hearts

JADFAIR1.BANDCAMP.COM

Cross-country collaborations with punk-rock legends are nothing new for Sam Locke Ward. His glorious work with Mike Watt (Minutemen, fIREHOSE, etc) under the SLW cc Watt moniker has been covered in this publication before. At the same time those albums were unleashed on an unsuspecting public, Ward made contact with Half Japanese founder Jad Fair, whose plans for 2021 centered on putting out one hundred (!!!) albums in a year’s time. Fair’s own pedigree is impressive, having worked with Daniel Johnston, Thurston Moore, Richard Hell, Moe Tucker, Teenage Fanclub and John Zorn among many distinguished others. The two began a “pen-pal” project, sending tracks back and forth between Iowa City and Austin, Texas at the slightly less grueling pace of one complete song per week.

Kill Rock Stars has just released the result: a dizzy, woozy, sugar-sweet collection of love songs fittingly named Happy Hearts. With 17 songs filling a 40-minute runtime, Happy Hearts fits neatly onto two sides of translucent yellow vinyl, and it feels positively “normal” after the maximum minimalism of Ward’s last album, the 9-minute, 40 song masterpiece Bubblegum Necropolis. Brevity is still key here, but the bouncy optimism could hardly be further from that album’s rage, tension and musical chaos.

Ward’s 2021 and 2022 releases felt like a means of venting the desperation and anger stirred up in Iowa

during and before the plague years; the American nightmare set to music. Fair has a different vision: the glory of love. Their press release sums it up perfectly: “Happy Hearts is a very positive album,” says Fair. “It’s good to stay positive.”

The album is a rather askew take on that ancient touchstone of popular song, twisted at times in its unabashed moon-in-June bubbliness. Fair’s lyrics could have been scrawled in a notebook by a lovestruck middle-schooler. Some memorable lines: “A little bird whispers ‘She’s the one,’ go to her, it’s time for love”; “Cupid got me, and got me good, his arrow shot me right where it should … thank you Cupid, thank you pal!”; and a personal favorite: “It’s as easy as eating cherry pie or falling off a log; three wishes from a magic fish, or a magic frog.”

This is the intoxication stage of love set to music; the state of being too zonked on hormones to drive, awash in pastel colors and soft synthesizers. It’s the soundtrack to making reckless decisions, like matching neck tattoos or moving to Indiana, all for that darling one. The effect is so overthe-top that one wonders where the bit starts, or ends; the tone is somewhere between the stoned innocence of “Don’t Laugh, I Love You” by Ween and the deep satire of “Our Wedding” by Crass, or nightclub music in a David Lynch movie. It almost feels like there’s something wrong with it.

Ward’s music evokes everything from Sunday morning televangelist programs to ‘80s homecoming dances to wine-bar acoustics to straight-up punk rock. Used with extreme restraint, his familiar punk-styled vocals are all the more hilarious in their light application. The music becomes more ominous and at times even atonal by the album’s end, but the mood of celebration remains: celebration of living and laughing and loving and sweet, sweet junk food. More collaborations have been promised; they are awaited with great interest.

—Loren Thacher

YOU DON’T OFTEN hEar aN aLBUM SO LUSh aND DEEPLY WOrKED FrOM aN IOWa MUSIcIaN.

BUDDY GUY DAMN RIGHT FAREWELL

WITH SPECIAL GUEST: TOM HAMBRIDGE

Friday, April 28, 7:30 pm

At age 86, Buddy Guy is a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee, a major influence on rock titans like Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, and Stevie Ray Vaughan, a pioneer of Chicago’s fabled West Side sound, and a living link to the city’s halcyon days of electric blues. Buddy Guy has received eight Grammy Awards, a 2015 Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award, 38 Blues Music Awards (the most any artist has received), the Billboard Magazine Century Award for distinguished artistic achievement, a Kennedy Center Honor, and the Presidential National Medal of Arts. Rolling Stone ranked him #23 in its “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.” In 2019, Buddy Guy won his eighth and most recent Grammy Award for his 18th solo LP, The Blues Is Alive And Well. His most recent album is The Blues Don’t Lie

TICKETS

Adults

$65 / $85

All Students

$25

limited availability

Order online hancher.uiowa.edu

Call

(319) 335-1160 or 800-HANCHER

Accessibility Services

(319) 335-1160

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.

GrEG WhEELEr aND

ThE POLY MaLL cOPS

Manic Fever

HIGHDIVERECORDS.BANDCAMP.COM

MCF: Greg Wheeler and the Poly Mall Cops, Gabe’s, Iowa City, Saturday, April 8, 7:30 p.m.,

included with pass ($55-110)

You didn’t realize you were waiting for this moment. But I promise you, you were.

Later this month, on March 24, just a couple weeks ahead of their appearance at Iowa City’s Mission Creek Festival, Des Moines punkers Greg Wheeler and the Poly Mall Cops will drop their debut fulllength, Manic Fever. If, like a good Iowan music nerd, you’ve been following Greg Wheeler’s career since his time with Cedar Rapids band The Wheelers, then you’ll be absolutely ready for the wild, frenetic beauty of this aptly named album.

The 12-track release includes all three songs from their 2017 7-inch split and nine additional tunes to give you a crick in your neck as you jump and thrash along. Track four, “DGASAY,” one of those carried forward from their earlier release, is a classic punk vibe, channeling the ’70s obsession with sped-up surfer rock tonality. It’s the most polished track on the album, the one begging to be released as a single.

The following track, “Nothing,” is one of the album’s standouts, delightfully subtle following the fiery vehemence of “DGASAY.” It’s a track to get lost in, balancing seemingly straightforward lyrics—“There’s nothing much left to do / Except completely obliterate you / And there’s nothing left to say /

I want your face to go away”—with a wistful melodic structure, espe cially on the chorus, that reveals the lyrics to be pure bravado.

The title track is another that grabs your ears, 1:42 of quick addictive vo cals and swirling instrumentation that make clear just how much fun they had composing these pieces. “Slowly Erasing You,” another 2017 re-up, is next, one more track that dances around and puts the lie to its lyrics. Then “Waste Away” takes control of the narrative, with lyrics that feel more poignant and true (“Don’t let go, I’ll float away”) couched in driv en, drum-forward desperation that demands attention. This trio of songs in the album’s third quarter encapsu lates the themes and philosophies of the whole; the three are worth loop ing on their own a few times through.

Closer “Fast Forward” is the per fect capper, all garage grunge grit and grime locked in conversation with the listener, begging for the emotional turmoil of the album to be over. I’m generally a fan of albums that bear repeating, that can be lis tened to over and over. But this is a deeply satisfying conclusion that hints at the possibility that the at tempts at closure teased throughout might finally be realized.

Manic Fever is simultaneously nostalgic and contemporary, peak 2007 but without feeling retro. If I said, “goth pop-punk,” you, dear reader, would likely respond, “Oh, you mean emo?” But no. I do not mean emo. The Poly Mall Cops are more Joy Division than My Chemical Romance. And there’s a ’90s fuzz overlay that gives the al bum a very Love Among Freaks, Clerks soundtrack kind of vibe, along with just the right amount of raucous drums, reminiscent of clas sic, Brett Reed-era Rancid.

In other words, it’s like a decadent meal from the punk rock buffet. You think you have a grasp on their style, then they throw a wild card at you— and make it work every time. They deliver pop punk filtered through the miasma of pandemic times.

—Genevieve Trainor

Emily Kingery’s Invasives opens in a garden and closes in a garden, repeatedly returning to Eden and tearing it down with one consistent throughline: that which is invasive.

The opening poem, “Musk Thistle,” weaves together two concepts such that they are inextricable. It talks about pulling weeds and ponders the difference between a weed and any other plant, relating that imagery to the way we accidentally sow figurative and digital seeds in our own lives.

Our speaker lingers in her childhood, hands us Barbies and woodchips, and pulls us through basements and playgrounds, laying groundwork for ways our desires hold us captive. Kingery repeatedly gives visceral illustrations of how lovers leave deep-rooted, impossible traumas in their wake. She makes us fall in love with bad men, asking, “Who argues / with men who undress you / the way summer does / to spring,” in the poem “April.”

She reminds us of young love, unrequited love, the pain of trying to exist in spaces not made for you. This collection hit closer to home than I could have anticipated and in darker corners than I’d like to admit. I think that’s an accurate picture of Invasives: a pretty package with ornate scaffolding built around our hauntings.

It’s probably true that not everyone has had experiences like those outlined in Invasives: abusive lovers, the allure of toxins, the belief that belief alone can save us. But

Kingery’s felicity is unparalleled— she pries universals out of snapshots from slumber parties and crushing on Indiana Jones and the specific boredom that means the end of coming of age. We are not all from the small town in which our narrator learns how to want and how not to love, but we do all learn these things.

Reading the poem “Toxicity” (the title and refrain derived from the System of a Down song), I understand how the unrequited can be romantic. Kingery’s language is potent, her scenes developed and raw. The book itself is invasive. Where you might expect to feel voyeuristic, instead you wear the narrator’s skin, her story coiling inside you.

What really gives these poems power is their bald-faced realism. The language is often flowery, but the images depicted here are disaster photography. They are high-contrast black-and-whites of crime scenes and personal tragedy, the best of which combine soft, natural

TaYLOr BraDLEY

There’s No Place Like House BARNES & NOBLE PRESS

Much is absent in Taylor Bradley’s latest book.

That observation is not an assessment of the component parts of the book—which catalogs segments of Bradley’s life from 2018 to 2020— rather, “absence” is the aching touchstone of this well-built text.

Published in late 2022 by Bradley, a 2013 University of Iowa graduate, There’s No Place Like House is a memoir, presented

be looking for narrative grounding. Thankfully, Bradley writes with a deft hand and is quick to define these vacuums after the first essay.

The most important absences are noted in the beginning and often take the spotlight in multiple essays. In particular “One-Inch Planet,” “Mary Poppins for Damaged Men” and “The Breakup” etch wretched failings with a surprisingly sympathetic hand.

Bradley’s time in the book is mostly focused in Los Angeles, while dipping in and out of London, New Orleans and Grand Junction, Colorado, among other places. As the essays continue, a somewhat recurrent cast of characters begin to take shape. An 80-yearold neighbor, an aging mother, a semi-estranged father and a handful of friends reappear throughout, but—keeping with the conceit of the book—none feel like permanent players, even when their presence (or lack thereof) is powerfully felt.

Dozens of photos illustrate settings, objects and people throughout the book. Many of these images lack distinguishable human faces, and when distinct faces do appear, it’s often in old, smiling family photos that add texture to Bradley’s already nuanced prose. Regardless of subject, these images tend to extrapolate on the text, rather than merely represent it.

elements with the grit of drugs or basement parties. As in “Tricks,” “I have read enough / to know I am half-gone already. I have cut enough flesh / that when the crosscut saw is flourished in the garden for the final trick, my body will disappear on its own.”

There are poems in here about happy things, beautiful moments of confidence and change, and the collection even gives opportunity to the reader to choose their own adventure with the way the book ends. Invasives is a fever-dream journey through trauma, but you get through it.

—Sarah Elgatian

as a series of photographs and essays. These narratives extend from 2018, in the immediate aftermath of a failed, decade-old, romantic relationship, to mid-2020 when COVID swallowed the globe.

Prior to this, Bradley has published poetry collections and written plays, at least one of which was part of the UI’s 10-Minute Play Festival in 2012.

Throughout There’s No Place Like House, Bradley establishes a slew of lackings, observing things as “not-my TV” and “not-my Grandpa” and the house of an “almost mother-in-law.”

Defining things in the negative risks losing a reader when they may

The book’s title alludes to a line repeated in The Wizard of Oz by Dorothy Gale, played by Judy Garland. When Dorothy is spirited away to the land of Oz, she’s followed by her house but not its content. She has to get back to Kansas, back to her home.

At the start of this book, the narrator prepares to leave a house that is not her own. But unlike Dorothy, she is not beckoned “back to Kansas.” That is a place she intentionally fled. Without that clear and guiding star, our protagonist’s path is more tumultuous than any yellow brick road.

—Isaac Hamlet

ShE rEMINDS US OF YOUNG LOVE, UNrEQUITED LOVE, ThE PaIN OF TrYING TO EXIST IN SPacES NOT MaDE FOr YOU. ThIS cOLLEcTION hIT cLOSEr TO hOME ThaN I cOULD haVE aNTIcIPaTED aND IN DarKEr cOrNErS ThaN I’D LIKE TO aDMIT.

SEaN aDaMS

The Thing In The Snow

WILLIAM MORROW

The Thing In The Snow is set in a remote location “where the snow never melts.” Given my fiery hatred of Iowa winters, this was already enough to catapult me into a headspace of inexplicable tension that kept me turning the pages of Sean Adams’ latest novel.

Our narrator, Hart, is a supervisor tasked with making sure the Northern Institute, formerly a research facility, remains a place where “research cannot possibly occur.” The abandoned state of the Institute makes the presence of Gilroy, the last remaining researcher at the facility, even more curious. Hart is in charge of two subordinates: Gibbs, who Hart suspects is secretly plotting to take his job, and Cline, who he describes as “easily distracted and unintelligent.”

The staff doesn’t know their coordinates, they don’t know what research used to be conducted there, they don’t know the exact temperature in the facility. And they don’t know what the ominous black shape near the eastern wing of the building is, the titular “thing in the snow.”

In accordance to the wishes of Hart’s superior, Kay, the team strives for “efficiency,” spending their days carrying out their assignments: opening and closing doors to make sure they are functioning properly, using golf balls to check if table surfaces are level, sitting and shifting around on chairs to make sure they are sturdy enough, etcetera.

Hart regards this busywork with the utmost seriousness, obeying orders and filling out endless forms.

Despite managerial aspirations, Hart is seemingly at a professional dead end. It’s bad enough that our narrator is insecure about his leadership status, but like his team, he is left in the dark about practically everything.

Seeing the title, my mind flashed with images from John Carpenter’s 1982 film The Thing, a story centering on a team of researchers in Antarctica pitted against an unfathomable threat. A notable influence on that film is the work of horror scribe H.P. Lovecraft, who penned his own tale of an Arctic expedition team in his 1936 novella At The Mountains of Madness.

Thinking I had ventured across this frozen terrain before, I discover Adams once again subverts all expectations save one: delivering a superb novel in another year seemingly destined for the dumpster fire (a lesson I should have learned from reviewing the author’s debut novel The Heap in 2020.)

Here, Adams lures readers into a

Tara a. BYNUM

Reading Pleasures: Everyday Black Living in Early America

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS

Book Matters: Tara Bynum, Prairie Lights, Iowa City, Wednesday, March 22 at 7 p.m., Free

Scholar Tara A. Bynum, an assistant professor in the University of Iowa Departments of English and African American Studies, is exploring interiority—and exemplifying it.

and fears stalk our thoughts; the uncertainty of the future is often a hovering cloud. It’s a remarkable phenomenon that these early Black Americans found and expressed those pleasures. It “bears proof,” Bynum writes, “of the taking care of or the tending to an inward self.”

The existence of these examples, and Bynum’s choice to present them in this way, is reminiscent of current trends toward defiant joy: from the ideas of Black boy joy and Black girl magic to the insistent refrain that “trans joy is resistance,” historically marginalized communities in the U.S. and across the world have been advocating for the power of expressive pleasure instead of taking pleasure in expressions of power.

world as claustrophobic as a snow globe, then shakes things up with a flurry of satirical commentary on the surreal and absurd nature of workplace culture. I am reminded of the space truckers in another Carpenter film, Dark Star (1974), and the cubicle dwellers in Mike Judge’s Office Space (1999). However, such comparisons last only briefly, as Adams gifts readers a uniquely hilarious yet frightening vision with The Thing In The Snow

(Reviewer’s Note: Special thanks to Beaverdale Books in Des Moines for lending an emergency copy of the book to Little Village for review.)

—Mike Kuhlenbeck

In her recently published monograph Reading Pleasures: Everyday Black Living in Early America, Bynum leverages her research in pre-1800 Black literary history for a deep dive into the lives and writings of a selection of early Black intellectuals. Beginning with Phillis Wheatley and moving on to names perhaps not well-known outside of academia, she examines the ways in which each pours their interiority onto the page, how they hope, how they dream and how they love. And as she does so, she sinks into the subject matter, revealing her own pleasures at every turn.

The pleasures in question, she advises in the introduction, are not sexual or even necessarily physical. “I’m describing what looks like those quotidian and simple pleasures that make life easier,” she writes. And, quoting James Baldwin, invokes a definition of “sensual” that embodies the ability to “respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the breaking of bread.”

This is no easy task, of course, even in the modern day. Anxieties

Writing about pamphleteer David Walker, Bynum is direct in discussing his obvious anger, but argues that it’s “well-intentioned and purposefully excessive.” And it is utilized in pursuit of happiness: “namely,” she writes, “a world where his brethren are no longer enslaved.”

What is most beautiful about these chapters is the way that Bynum maintains a delightful voice, a first-person perspective that centers her own pleasure in the researching and writing of this book. Her curiosity permeates each page. “I still wonder sometimes,” she writes, “what Phillis Wheatley thought about as she brushed her teeth.” It’s a tongue-in-cheek moment—Bynum acknowledges self-effacingly that she’s aware toothbrushes weren’t around in Wheatley’s time—but it gets at the heart of her questioning. There’s a lot that these explorations of interiority can reveal, but we can never know how the authors truly see themselves.

Through these intertwined readings, Bynum searches for throughlines and truths, finding relevance in the writers’ shared Christian faith and tracing that influence. But mostly, she models for the reader what it is to read with curiosity and how to allow the interiority of others to inform our own, resulting in a communal experience.

—Genevieve Trainor

aDaMS LUrES rEaDErS INTO a WOrLD aS cLaUSTrOPhOBIc aS a SNOW GLOBE, ThEN ShaKES ThINGS UP.

Syphilis in Iowa increased by more than 167% from 2019 to 2022.

Syphilis is a sexually transmissible infection (STI) that can cause long-term health problems. It’s serious, and cases are on the rise in Iowa. Not everyone who has syphilis has symptoms, so people often don’t realize they have it. That’s why it’s important for you to get tested regularly for STIs, including syphilis, if you’re sexually active.

ACROSS

1. Top often paired with a cardigan, casually

5. “When was your last ___ smear?”

8. Opposite of fiction

12. Somewhat

13. One of many around the house for vinegar

14. Note for an oud?

15. Some memoirs

17. Corolla competitor

18. Character set?

21. Virtual date annoyance

22. Wicked relative?

24. Briefly offline?

25. TV shopping station whose letters stand for three attributes

26. Moses’s Obi-Wan Kenobi co-star

28. Done for

30. Monarchy with no permanent rivers: Abbr.

31. Judges

33. Character in a Strange

Planet comic

36. Montero rapper Lil ___ X

37. 2021 WNBA champs

39. Sponcon, e.g.

40. Rattles off

42. What a vest covers

44. Muscle that can be bounced, for short

45. Unsupervised

47. Rate zero stars, e.g.

51. Wheelchair basketball player and TV host Adepitan

64. Guinness offering

65. Card game with reverses

66. Just that time

67. Schlep

68. Ku or Kane, e.g.

69. Celebratory cheers

DOWN

1. Cows and bulls

2. Didn’t have time to cook, perhaps

3. Spanish port with ferries to Tangier

4. Fluffy rice cake

5. Throb

6. Query in many a ’90s chat room: Abbr.

7. 100 centavos

8. Stormtrooper shipped with Poe

9. Browses an estate sale, say

10. Travel company?

11. EDM subgenre

14. “Live with it”

16. The first one ever began handing out cash in a New York bank in 1969

17. Company that aptly anagrams to “a rest”

announcements?

36. Compliment to a photographer or a tennis ace

38. Poet Harvey who contributed to Marvel’s World of Wakanda

40. Paved the way for

41. Didn’t release immediately

43. Tree that drops its cones during forest fires

44. Most scared at the haunted house, perhaps

46. Shaq’s alma mater

48. Like many a telenovela star

49. Free will

50. Doesn’t stay in one’s lane, say

52. Stonewall Inn demonstration

54. Ref. that added “burner phone” in 2022

57. Mötley ___ (band with a rare double gratuitous umlaut)

58. Self-satisfied

60. Gabriella’s boyfriend in High School Musical 63. Wahoo, at a sushi bar

52. Shares, as someone else’s post: Abbr.

53. “Without further ___ ...”

55. It’s shared by John Oliver and John Cena

56. Thick and delicious, as frosting

59. More soaked

61. Silkwood writer Nora

62. Item of color-changing jewelry found four times in this grid

20. Prefix with normative

23. Control tops?

27. Subjects of California’s Silenced No More act: Abbr.

29. Invite along for 32. Second part of “i.e.”

34. “The Ketchup

Song” group ___ Ketchup

35. Wedding

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