Little Village issue 328 - April 2024

THREE ELECTRIC PERFORMANCES

featuring UI students and faculty.

One vibrant campus with creativity at its heart.

This semester, join us for brilliant, diverse, eclectic artistry celebrating students, faculty, and staff across the performing arts.

Dance students, working with Professors Stephanie Miracle and Eloy Barragán— and with MFA student Katelyn Perez— will take to the Hancher stage with the iconic Martha Graham Dance Company.

Theatre Arts students will bring a beautiful play to life under the direction of Professor Caroline Clay. And School of Music students will perform a new opera at Hancher with music composed by Professor William Menefield, who will also direct.

Each performance is emblematic of what’s possible on a campus committed to collaborative, transformational arts experiences for artists and audiences alike.

MARTHA GRAHAM DANCE COMPANY GRAHAM100

PRESENTED BY HANCHER AUDITORIUM WITH SUPPORT FROM UI DEPARTMENT OF DANCE

Friday, March 29 / 7:30 p.m.

Hancher Auditorium

An indispensable dance company celebrates 100 years, bringing is founder's classic works to the stage alongside new work by contemporary choreographers. Martha Graham—an icon among 20th century artistic icons—radically expanded the dance vocabulary, and her work has captivated audiences worldwide while influencing generations of artists.

TICKETS

Adults $65 / $45

Students & Youth $10

SCHOOL OF MUSIC

FIERCE IN THE RED AND BROWN WATER

By Tarell Alvin McCraney

Directed by Caroline Clay

PRESENTED BY UI DEPARTMENT OF THEATRE ARTS

Friday–Sunday, April 12–14 & Wednesday–Saturday, April 17–20 Theatre Building

San Pere, Louisiana: Oya runs fast, but her collegiate future is placed on hold to care for her mother. Inspired by Federico García Lorca’s Yerma and Yoruban cosmology, Tarell Alvin McCraney’s In the Red and Brown Water is a lyrical offering at the intersection of ancestral myth and ritual about a young woman’s coming-of-age navigating lovers, community, and her chosen path.

TICKETS

Adults $20

Senior Citizens $15

Youth & Non-UI Students $10

UI Students $5

PRESENTED BY HANCHER AUDITORIUM, PERFORMING ARTS PRODUCTION UNIT, AND UI SCHOOL OF MUSIC

Friday & Saturday April 26 & 27 7:30 p.m. Hancher Auditorium

An opera for the 21st Century, Fierce follows four teenage girls finding identity and purpose in the world as they write their college essays in a high school writers’ workshop. The young women face striking internal challenges—the difficulties of high school popularity and social media, the weight of parental expectations, personal loss, and unstable lives at home—but come together to find community, self-empowerment, and the confidence to embrace new chapters.

TICKETS

Adults $20

Youth & Non-UI Students $10

UI Students $5

Little Village x Stanley Museum of Art OPENING MAY 4, 2024

TO MY FRIENDS AT HORN: KEITH HARING AND IOWA CITY

At the height of his career, Keith Haring visited students at Ernest Horn Elementary School in Iowa City and painted the mural “A Book Full of Fun” (1989). The University of Iowa Stanley Museum of Art uses this mural as a lens to reconsider Haring’s career in “To My Friends at Horn: Keith Haring and Iowa City.” The exhibition, on view May 4, 2024-Jan. 5, 2025, opens on what would have been Haring’s 66th birthday and celebrates the artist’s legacy through works of art on loan from the Keith Haring Foundation, photographs and archival ephemera.

Haring’s relationship with Horn Elementary began in the early 1980s after teacher Colleen Ernst, affectionately known as “Dr. Art,” introduced her fifthand sixth-grade students to his work. At the time, Haring was famous for his spontaneous chalk drawings created on sheets of black paper that were used to cover advertisements in New York subway stations. An introductory postcard from Ernst in 1982 grew into an ongoing exchange of letters and care packages between Haring and the grade-schoolers. Haring traveled to Iowa City in March 1984 for “Keith Haring in Iowa City,” a three-day artist residency developed in partnership with the University of Iowa. He conducted drawing workshops, painted a public mural and shared insight into his practice during

a public lecture. After that visit, he remained in touch with the students and addressed his correspondence, “To All My Friends at Horn,” a greeting that inspired the name of the exhibition.

“Keith Haring envisioned a world where art functioned as a pillar of education and civic life,” said Diana Tuite, the Stanley’s visiting senior curator of modern and contemporary art and the exhibition curator. “He appreciated children for their sense of wonder and their unprejudiced natures and saw how meaningful it was for him, an openly gay man, to be in these spaces.”

Necessary construction at Horn Elementary School necessitated the mural’s

temporary relocation. In July 2023, the Stanley partnered with the school to conserve the artwork. To do so, conservators removed the mural, along with a portion of the wall to which it was attached, and safely transported the 4,000-pound structure to the Museum, where it will remain until it can be safely reinstalled at Horn Elementary School in 2025.

The Stanley’s exhibition marks the public debut of “A Book Full of Fun” and the artwork’s first appearance alongside the 12-foot-long mural Haring painted on tarpaulin during his 1984 artist residency in Iowa City. The untitled work was completed in the city’s

Share your memories of Keith Haring’s trip to Iowa City: If you or someone you know met Keith Haring during his trip to Iowa City (1984 and 1989), or if you have any related photos, drawings, or other memorabilia, we want to hear from you!

Old Capitol Center on March 27, 1984 to the accompaniment of the Johnson County Landmark jazz ensemble. It was also featured in an exhibition of his work at the Stanley (then the Uni-

“To My Friends at Horn: Keith Haring and Iowa City” is made possible through generous grants from the Henry Luce Foundation and the Keith Haring Foundation. Additional support is provided by the Beth and Nate Tross Stanley Museum of Art Support Fund, the Tom Rocklin and Barbara McFadden Program Fund, the Don Heineking Fund for Exhibitions and Programs, the Friends of the Museum Fund, the Members Special Exhibition Fund and the Foundation for Advancement in Conservation.

versity of Iowa Museum of Art) during the same time. Featuring a menacing computer-headed caterpillar – one of Haring’s recurring tropes – the symbolic mural echoes sentiments about technology that Haring was known to write about in his journals: “The human imagination cannot be programmed by a computer. Our imagination is our greatest hope for survival.”

Stories from the community will also be incorporated into the exhibition, including interviews with former students, related photographs, drawings and other mementos that reveal the artist’s lasting impact on Iowa City.

Watch: Keith Haring | Rediscovering the Iowa City mural: Discover the fascinating process of transferring Keith Haring’s mural from the walls of Horn Elementary to the Stanley Museum of Art.

Your Annual Guide to Recreation in Iowa

38 Stay Tuned

It’s been 40 years since college students first bum-rushed the airwaves from Iowa City.

42 Re-cyclists

If a bicycle is the key to freedom, Iowa’s many bike co-ops are out for revolution.

54 Un-bird-ened

The more eyes on the skies, the merrier for this 100-year-old org of avian advocates.

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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Above: Iowa City Bike library shop coordinator Walter linares talks bikes with patrons. The Bike library is among several cooperatives serving cyclists of all types around the state of Iowa. Ben Roberts / Little Village

EDITORIAL

publisher

Matthew Steele matt@littlevillagemag.com

Editor-in-Chief

Emma McClatchey emma@littlevillagemag.com

Arts Editor

Genevieve Trainor genevieve@littlevillagemag.com

News Director

Paul Brennan paul@littlevillagemag.com

Art Director

Jordan Sellergren jordan@littlevillagemag.com

photographer, Designer Sid Peterson sid@littlevillagemag.com

Calendar/Event listings calendar@littlevillagemag.com

Corrections editor@littlevillagemag.com

April Contributors

Achilles Fergus Seastrom, Anna Reishus, Dawn Frary, Drew Boss, Dylan Marcus McConnell, John Busbee, Jonah Terry, Kate M. Conlow, Kembrew McLeod, Lauren Haldeman, Lily Wasserman, Norbert Sarsfield, Ramona Muse Lambert, Rob Cline, Sam Locke Ward, Tom Tomorrow, Victoria Fernandez

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INDEPENDENT NEWS, CULTURE & EVENTS

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Drew Bulman drewb@littlevillagemag.com

production Manager

Jordan Sellergren jordan@littlevillagemag.com

SALES & ADMINISTRATION president, little Village, llC Matthew Steele matt@littlevillagemag.com

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

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Meet this month’s contributors!

Achilles Fergus Seastrom is a trans writer and editor from Kansas currently living in Ames. His writing often focuses on human relationships with nature and the environment.

Anna reishus, illustrator and designer. Game Dev. Dog Mom.

Dawn Frary is an Iowa City-based writer, photographer, death doula and wildlife educator.

Drew Boss is lead mechanic at Iowa City Bike Library.

Dylan Marcus McConnell is a graphic designer, illustrator and art director, currently in Toronto for reasons hidden even from him.

John Busbee developed his appreciation for outdoor recreation while growing up in southeast Iowa, exploring the small creek, trees and wildlife on his farm’s Back Forty.

Jonah Terry is an Iowa native with a belief that art begins at the eyes and ends in the heart.

Kate M. Conlow is a lawyer and antitrust scholar. All views expressed are hers alone and do not represent those of her employer.

rec’d • Issue 328

April 2024

Cover by Jonah Terry

This year’s Rec’d highlights southern Iowa cities and the history surrounding them. Plus: guides to bike co-ops, camping music fests, college radio stations and more. Also: Denise Long’s legacy; tributes to an IC icon.

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

lauren Haldeman is an author, graphic novelist and poet in Iowa City.

lily Wasserman is a student at Drake University and the features editor at the Times-Delphic student newspaper.

Norbert Sarsfield (PDGA #112424) is an avid disc-golfer, partial to Stingrays, Proxies and Leopard3s. On a good day you can find him playing a morning round at Peninsula Park.

ramona Muse lambert makes art and music. Sometimes she’s in charge of dinner too. Buy her art at Ramonamuselambert.com.

rob Cline is a writer and critic who would gleefully give the current state of things a negative review.

Sam locke Ward is a cartoonist and musician from Iowa City.

Victoria Fernandez is the Teen Librarian at the Iowa City Public Library.

Culture writers, food reviewers and columnists, email: editor@littlevillagemag.com. Illustrators, photographers and comic artists, email: jordan@littlevillagemag.com

Top Stories

House Republicans vote to immediately ban guaranteed income programs in Iowa, before results from the first study are known

By

paul Brennan, March 5

A pilot study providing $500/month to families in three Iowa counties with average household incomes less than $25,000 is showing promising results for treating the harms of poverty. But Iowa Rep. Steve Holt is going out of his way to kill the federally funded study before it’s complete, worried it’s a gateway to “socialism on steroids” that will “murder our work ethic.”

Bill eliminating regular health and safety inspections of hotels and motels in Iowa passes

By paul Brennan, March 20

The Iowa Senate gave final approval on Tuesday to a bill that addresses the Iowa Department of Inspections, Appeals and Licensing’s (DIAL) decade-long failure to follow state law and inspect hotels and motels once every two years by eliminating the law requiring those inspections.

Jury acquits Tara McGovern on all charges related to the Oct. 16 protest outside the Iowa Memorial Union

By paul Brennan, March 14

It took a Johnson County jury just a few hours on Thursday to decide Tara McGovern (married name Tara Dutcher) was not guilty of both charges for which they had been arrested last November. Their case attracted much local attention and was even covered by the Washington Post, but their acquittal likely came down to a simple lack of evidence.

PHOTOS: Chappell Roan at Val Air Ballroom

By Anthony Scanga, March 18

Chappell Roan at Val Air Ballroom on Sunday, March 17. Roan is currently on tour with Olivia Rodrigo and made a solo stop at Des Moines’ Val Air Ballroom on Sunday, March 17. The L.A.-based singer, songwriter and performer played to a sold-out crowd decked out in pink. Five Midwest drag performers opened the show.

AllSpice (14)

Arnott & Kirk (71)

Arroyo Grappling Academy (65)

Baker Paper Company (68)

Bawdy Bawdy Ha Ha (68)

Bur Oak Land Trust (43)

Catch Des Moines (34)

Cedar Rapids Opera (64)

CommUnity (57)

Coralville Center for the Performing Arts (65)

Coralville Public Library (72)

Des Moines Metro Opera (21)

Des Moines Performing Arts (8)

Des Moines Playhouse (36)

Des Moines Symphony (13)

Dupaco (37)

Farm to Film Fest (13)

FilmScene (26)

Four Winds Farm Apothecary (23)

Goodfellow Printing, Inc. (21)

Greater Des Moines Botanical Garden (13)

Grinnell College Museum of Art (27)

Hancher Auditorium (2-5)

Honeybee Hair Parlor (13)

ICDD Dubuque Street (16-17)

- Dublin Underground

THANK YOU TO THIS ISSUE’S ADVERTISING PARTNERS

This issue of Little Village is supported by:

- Z’Mariks

- Nodo

- St. Burch Tavern

- Which Wich

- Micky’s Irish Pub

- The Shop Iowa City

- Deadwood Tavern

- 223 Baby Co

- Sports Column

- Pullman - Dulcinea

- Masala

- Catherine’s

Independent Cedar Rapids (6263)

-Indigo River

- Goldfinch Cyclery

- Next Page Books

- Cobble Hill

- The Daisy

Independent Downtown Iowa City (48-49)

- Praririe Lights

- Beadology

- Riverside Theatre

- Hot Spot Tattoo

- Harry’s Bar & Grill

- Record Collector

- Yotopia

- Critical Hit Games

- Release Body Modification

- Mailboxes of Iowa City

- Revival

- The Green House

Independent Highland Park/Oak Park Neighborhood (32-33)

- Des Moines Mercantile

- The Collective

- The Slow Down

Independent Northside Marketplace (40-41)

- George’s

- Pagliai’s Pizza

- Dodge St. Tire

- John’s Grocery, Inc.

- Marco’s Grilled Cheese

- R.S.V.P.

- Artifacts

Indian Creek Nature Center (34)

Ioa City Community Theatre (14)

Iowa City Communications (22)

Iowa City Public Library (21)

Iowa Department of Public Health (37, 59)

Jethro’s BBQ (20)

KRUI 89.7 FM (56)

Kim Schillig, REALTOR (24)

Linn County Conservation (35)

Martin Construction (70)

Mirrorbox Theatre (64)

SAGE ADVICE SPICY STAFF GOOD

Musician’s Pro Shop (21)

New Pioneer Food Co-op (10)

No Escape Iowa (27)

Orchestrate Hospitality (68)

Phoebe Martin, REALTOR (45)

Polk County Conservation (66)

Prairiewoods (23)

Public Space One (24)

Raygun (23)

Refocus Film Festival (15)

Resilient Sustainable Future for Iowa City (70)

Riverside Theatre (55)

Science Center of Iowa (66)

Shakespeare’s Pub & Grill (55)

Splash (59)

Table to Table (43)

The Club Car (55)

The Englert Theatre (60)

The James (43)

University of Iowa Stanley Museum of Art )6-7)

Varsity Cinema (18)

Wig & Pen (27)

Wildwood Saloon (35)

Willow & Stock (66)

World of Bikes (27)

xBk (15)

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.

This year’s raccoon bounty bill (HF 2665) is state sanctioned, and taxpayer subsidized animal cruelty. The legislation’s goal is to incentivize the trapping, clubbing and skinning of raccoons. Lawmakers in committees on the bill have said the fur trapping industry is hurting because of low sales. They also say that raccoons are eating too much corn.

The estimated cost of this farce is $860,000 a year. If someone wants fewer raccoons on his farm, he already has the legal ability to do what he wants. He can already hire a trapper. I shouldn’t have to pay for it. The state legislature has an opportunity to say no to nonsense like this. The bill should be tabled and shouldn’t even be given a chance for a vote. But when it does inevitably get called the floor, our state representatives should reject it. Please contact your legislators and tell them to vote no!

—Lynn Gallagher, Iowa City

House republicans vote to immediately ban guaranteed income programs in Iowa, before results from the first study are known (March 5)

Good grief. No one who is a lower income earner has a fighting chance to begin the ability to improve their situation!! —Sara W.

Well we can’t have THESE effects, that would be BAD for the Iowa GOP who depend on our being so busy with surviving that we cannot go further and advocate for ourselves. Also, LOCAL CONTROL NO BUENO AMIRITE????? Next thing you know they will want to raise minimum wage.

—Jbinia

reynolds endorses Trump, Trump ignores reynolds (March 7)

Trump won’t forget she endorsed DeSantis. Say bye bye to any cabinet position, Kimmy!

—Meg C.B.

HAVE AN OPINION?

What a boot licker. Hope her Desantis check bounced. —Kendal L.

tRump will do whatever he can to get her voted out. Hopefully that opens up an opportunity for Rob Sand to be elect as Governor and bring back some sense of decency to Iowa. —N.A.

I wish, but pipe dream. Not in this state. It keeps getting redder because of the brain drain. Sand will be lucky to win re-election for auditor. He barely won last time. Only dem to win statewide office, and I’d be shocked if he wins again. I like the guy, but this state is a shithole. —C.M.F.

lawmakers advance bill to ban civilian police review boards and increase protections for police officers considered ‘unsuitable or unfit’ (March 8)

Scott Webster is so horny for a police state.

—Timothy M.

Our entire state legislature is always creating

RAMONA

INTERACTIONS

solutions in need of problems that never existed. —Bill W.

Can’t let these pesky citizens get in the way of cop’s job “to protect and serve.” —Craig A.

Iowa was one of eight states setting records during the country’s ‘warmest winter on record’ (March 12)

I’m deeply concerned about the drought.

—Julie E.

The drought affected our grape harvest. We lost half our crop in 2023 in Knoxville, IA which will result in a drop in wine production.

—Nearwood Winery & Vineyards

Crossing the reub-icon: Seven Iowa-made sandwiches, reviewed (March 14)

All right New Pioneer Co-op!!! Congrats!

—Craig A.

I’m glad you included Belgian Village—my family has always been obsessed with them, and by my family I guess I mostly mean my mom. I always add extra kraut and sauce and get the one with raisins in the bread for fun. I think we ended up figuring out that buttering it up and heating it up in the oven is best.

—Rachel K.

Yes I almost included that but it was cut for space––recommending heating it buttered and open-faced in the oven (at 350º).

—Jordan

Sellergren (article writer)

What’s the best in IC out of all these reviews if you had to pick? Like where am I getting lunch today, Jordan?

Of those reviewed, Dandy Lion is the bomb. And a liiiitle bit healthy-ish. Unreviewed: Hamburg makes a good one and Harry’s looked good, if it’s still on the menu after St. Patrick’s Day. —Jordan Sellergren (writer)

Francie’s in Des Moines has the best Reuben in Iowa. —Rob B.

Check out Pan and Fran’s, Coralville. Super yummy! —Micki G.

I’ve always been partial to the Reuben at Shakespeare’s. —Jeffrey A.M.

Jury acquits Tara McGovern on all charges related to the Oct. 16 protest outside the Iowa Memorial Union (March 14)

Thank you for your careful reporting on this important trial. I applaud Tara McGovern for their courage, and I am relieved at the outcome. It’s disturbing that the charges were made against them in the first place. It appears to be biased targeting, not honest policing. —Ginny P.

And the system did what it should, thank God. So happy for you. —U.M.

Hooray! So glad Tara stood up, and SO glad they have been found not guilty. —Susan F.

Mississippi politician who smashed the Satanic Temple display at the Iowa Capitol seeks to have hate crime charge dismissed (March 19)

But it was aimed at a different religion so it’s exactly a hate crime. —Scott G.

It is a hate crime! And he should be held accountable to the highest standard , because he is a politician. Set by example. He’s old enough to know and understand that actions have consequences. Vandalizing property is against the law. He should definitely be charged with more than just fourth-degree criminal mischief. —Tara L.

How exactly does “One should strive to act with compassion and empathy toward all creatures in accordance with reason” [a Satanic Temple tenet] go against Christian beliefs? —Todd H.

Bill eliminating regular health and safety inspections of hotels and motels in Iowa passes (March 20)

One more reason not to vacation in Iowa.

—Christopher C.

So… let’s start a campaign to submit a complaint after EVERY hotel stay. —CST

This is actually so gross. —Jess L.

Making the state shittier and shittier every day. It’s no wonder why everyone wants to leave. —Lance E.

I can’t figure out if Republicans want more government or less government. I mean, abortion, book banning, IDs on licenses, tightening SNAP and unemployment, and then less motel, puppy mill, sr center inspections, no water monitoring, less rob sands, less farm restrictions. HMMMMM? —Tim J.

GRAND OPENING!

APRIL 20-21, 2024

25% off CBG items in-store & online! (code: 420CBG25)

First 100 store visitors get a FREE prize!!

Every in-store purchase entered into a gift basket raffle!!!

$300 VALUE!

Spirituality in the 21st Century: Hope in Action

April 26 & 27

in person in Cedar Rapids & online via Zoom

featuring Susan Bauer-Wu, PhD, RN, FAAN Rev. Veronica M. Johnson Leah Rampy, PhD & musician Sara Thomsen

Join us as we explore how we can awaken to possibilities, become more resilient in the face of complex challenges and create change.

Learn more & register at www.Prairiewoods.org

Fully Booked

Get well versed this National Poetry Month

Originally launched in April 1996, National Poetry Month celebrates the contributions of poets and their art. Poetry can be especially meaningful for youth as a tool of self-expression, of making sense of new things. Great poetry offers multiple ways to think about subjects using an toolkit of poetic devices.

Though obviously longer in form, novels in verse are extended poetry. This month’s Fully Booked highlights top novels in verse and poetry for young adults.

Safia Elhillo shakes my world and resonates with my very soul. She is raw, brutal, soft and her way with words—the sounds they make, the imagery she creates—is magical. She is an example of the very reason I read, so I’m recommending three of her books. The first, a novel in verse called Home is Not a Country, follows Nima, a first-generation Muslim girl making sense of her new home in America. Elhillo once wrote that this book was for her communities who were “rebuilding a life in the aftermath of a great rupture.”

The second, Girls that Never Die, was picked up haphazardly as I perused the poetry section one day, not even knowing it was the same author. I sat down and read every word a few times in one sitting. She’s a savage, and in this poetry collection, she reimagines feminine liberation after years of shame. Roxane Gay said that “every single poem is stellar” in this book, and I absolutely agree.

Bright Red Fruit, Elhillo’s most recent novel in verse published in 2024, is an evolution. The coming-of-age story follows a teen navigating the slam poetry scene who attracts the attention of an older man, leaving her reputation at stake.

Poemhood: Our Black Revival, edited by Amber McBride, Taylor Byas and Erica Martin, is a meticulously curated anthology of Black experience. Poems are categorized into enigmatic volumes and span history, themes of generational trauma, mass incarceration, environmental injustice, and hope.

A wonderful fantasy fairy tale described as Swan Lake meets The Last Unicorn, A Warning about Swans by R.M. Romero is steeped in mythology as main character Hilde relinquishes her gift in return for a higher purpose. Fans of Elizabeth Lim’s Six Crimson Cranes and Holly Black’s The Cruel Prince will enjoy this read.

There should be no mention of poetry in Iowa City without highlighting local slam poetry star himself, Caleb Rainey. His poems hit hard with power and insight, and underscore his lived experiences with astute observations. Look, Black Boy resonates with themes in Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me, which was influenced by the indomitable James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time. Rainey also leads youth generative poetry workshops. Find out how to connect middle and high school youth to poetry at iowacitypoetry.com.

Finally, ICPL is preparing to release their very own Lit Mag for teens and is currently looking for art, prose and poetry. Email victoria-fernandez@icpl.org to find out how to submit work.

—Victoria Fernandez

Recreation is Renewal

BY JOHN BUSBEE

“A period recourse into the wilds is not a retreat into secret silent sanctums to escape a wicked world, it is to take breath amid effort to forge a better world.” ––Benton MacKaye (1879-1975), American forester, planner and conservationist.

“The intellect must not be kept at consistent tension, but diverted by pastimes…The mind must have relaxation, and will rise stronger and keener after recreation.” ––(Lucius Annaeus) Seneca the Younger (d. 65 AD)

Recreation. A deceptively complex word. Its core allure comes from its Latin origin, “recreare, or create again, renew.” This renewal can be of the brain or body—an exercise that enriches you more than it tires your mind and muscles. Here are a few strategies for finding renewal through recreation:

Make getting there half the fun. Consider your recreational pursuits as both journey and destination. The physical element to your adventures has a bounty of benefits. Bicycling, walking, hiking—these are all recreational strategies, even and especially when they’re not required for a commute.

Central Iowa’s excellent network of bicycle and walking trails beckons and encourages outdoor immersion. The Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation developed an online compendium of trails at iowabytrail.com. The Des Moines Street Collective adds to this primary network at their own site, dsmstreetcollective.org/trail-map. Judicious planning will help you utilize the inviting stop-overs dotting the landscape, like Confluence Brewing Company (by Gray’s Lake on the Meredith Trail) and The Chicken (in Orilla on the Great Western Trail).

Be willing to slow down. Pack a one-two punch on your adventure by carting along painting materials, or a journal. Have your phone camera (or a digital SLR) at the ready when you venture forth, for serendipitous discoveries can be around any corner. Be willing to stop and capture memories.

Waterways offer soul-quenching experiences. This core region of Iowa also boasts some impressive waterways. The Iowa Confluence Water Trails (ICON; iconwatertrails.com) offers detailed information about fun to be found on the water, both small (Big Creek, Chichaqua Bottoms) and large (Raccoon and Des Moines rivers, Saylorville Lake). Canoeing, kayaking and tubing, when the waters are safe to traverse, can be refreshing escapes from work and urban life. Fishing can be an added diversion. One Iowa photographer, while kayaking a low-water midsummer Raccoon River, even discovered the skull of an ancient bison.

Appreciate the seasonal variety. While spring through autumn may seem the optimal time for outdoor recreation, consider expanding your scope to include the benefits of living in a four-season state.

Dubuque photojournalist Mark Hirsch, while on a drive in the country, noticed a lone Bur oak tree standing in a cornfield. His serendipitous find happened during “magic hour” natural light, so he captured the image. Using the creative improv technique of “yes, and…” he returned to the same tree each day for a full year, capturing a seasonally changing montage of his stately arboreal find. Hirsch admits that the project changed his own life.

The trails and waterways invite recreational travelers into the countryside, but some seasonal inner-city delights can also be found. During the coldest times of winter, the Des Moines River below the Scott Street dam becomes a haven for magnificent bald eagles. Photographers have captured beautiful images of our national bird as they perch in barren trees lining the riverbanks, or swoop to the water to capture a piscine meal.

Make the journeys, share the discoveries, reward yourself. It’s time for recreation.

Christopher (Chris) Wiersema of Iowa City died on Wednesday, March 13, unexpectedly, but peacefully in his sleep.

A public memorial will take place on Sunday, April 7 at the Englert Theatre from 2-5 p.m. The Englert is located at 221 E Washington St in downtown Iowa City.

Chris was born on July 10, 1980 in Naperville, Illinois to his loving parents Douglas Warren Wiersema and Mary Lynette Wiersema. He was followed by his brothers Brian in 1984 and Kevin in 1986.

Chris grew up in the Chicago area and began his career in the arts as a teenage extra in the film adaptation of High Fidelity. He was a brillant, curious and adventurous young adult. During a tense stretch of his teenage years, he survived a stint in reform school in the Dominican Republic—an experience that profoundly shaped his life. By his own account, it was a difficult ordeal, but, in being temporarily displaced from the deluge of media that most American youth grew up with in the ’90s, he found hidden beauties in the new world around him. He explored the sounds of nature and the noise of man-made industry: cars, motorcycles and factories. He learned to see art, hear music and discover humanity in unexpected places. In spite of his harsh conditions, Chris developed a set of values that he would carry through his many friendships in life: in the most difficult or uncertain times, he could see the best in us, understand our possibilities, and encourage us to pursue our most promising outcomes.

After returning to Chicago, he spent several years writing about culture and community for Newcity magazine. Sometimes in print and often in casual conversation, Chris was a global arts and culture reviewer of the most refined order. He could focus a critical eye, often with sharp, humorous wit, on everything that was crooked about the world while maintaining a clear view on the good. Despite all evidence to the contrary, he believed we should keep living, keep trying and keep up our hopes.

In 2001, he moved a few hours west to attend the University of Iowa. He had heard that Iowa City was a good place for artists and the arts, and his influence on Iowa City’s artistic scene was immediate. As a musician, he often collaborated with his close friend Matt Schettler in the ambient/noise band Lwa. As a promoter, he hosted both internationally acclaimed and local musicians at house shows in his basement or in his backyard. As a community member, he supported countless bands and emerging local artists—attending their shows, providing couches to sleep on and offering a masterful mix of honest, kind and motivating feedback. Musicians started bands or kept making

music after hearing encouragement and advice from Chris.

He took the role of manager of the local rock club Picador in 2006 (formerly Gabe’s and then Gabe’s again in 2010.) During his tenure, Picador established itself as an essential venue for touring and local artists in the Midwest in a period when indie and experimental music rose in popularity. In that time, it was possible to see bands like Animal Collective, Boris and Wolf Eyes, sometimes within weeks or days of each other. Chris was the steady hand who welcomed the artists to Iowa City and made space for the community to witness their immediate, vibrant art.

In the midst of busy days and longer nights, Chris met his life partner, Anne Marsh, one of the few people who could meet and exceed Chris’s sophistication by having a sharper wit, more daring sense of aesthetics and an even more heartwarming, welcoming laugh that could make any stranger a friend.

While stewarding Picador toward success, Chris remained fully committed to the “official” and underground music and arts scenes happening at other venues and in local basements. In 2009, he became a producer—and eventually programming director—with Iowa City’s Mission Creek Festival. He helped transform the festival from a DIY start-up into a leading national event for independent music and literature. He curated legendary, improbable performances in Iowa City with artists like Faust, Silver Apples, Laurel Halo and Philip Glass. He later joined the Witching Hour festival team as a founding producer and curated a range of multidisciplinary experiences.

Following his time with Mission Creek and Witching Hour, Chris founded Feed Me Weird Things, a concert series devoted to avant-garde, experimental and other music existing outside of society’s usual descriptors. While rotating across several local venues, the series found its spiritual home at Trumpet Blossom Cafe, an Iowa City vegan restaurant that became a listening room after dinner service.

Feed Me Weird Things was the culmination of a lifetime of listening and nearly two decades of working in the arts. Through FMWT, Chris shared his ultimate vision of welcoming his community into beautiful sounds and art that we might have otherwise missed. While his reputation had been earned over years, the range of artists featured at FMWT concerts affirmed Chris as one of the most singular, visionary, and caring music programmers in the United States. In 2022, he launched Feed Me Weird Things’ keynote festival event FEaST, a multi-day celebration of adventurous music that quickly became a marquee destination for underground, experimental and forward-thinking artists from around the world.

Through all this work, Chris was fastidiously

Feed Me Weird Things’ 2024 Spring season will proceed, but please confirm with the venue ahead of each performance.

Emily Beisel & Bill Harris w/ Netochka Nezvanova, Trumpet Blossom Cafe, Tuesday, Apr. 2 at 8 p.m. $10-15

lia Kohl & Macie Stewart, Trumpet Blossom Cafe, Thursday, Apr. 25 at 8 p.m., $10-15

MIZU w/ OHYUNG, Trumpet Blossom Cafe, Saturday, May 4 at 9 p.m., $10-15

CO-prESENTED W/ rECOrD COllECTOr AND TUESDAY AGENCY:

Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet w/ Wendy Eisenberg, Ava Mendoza, and Shane parish, Trumpet Blossom Cafe, Sunday, May 5 at 7 p.m., $20-25

Messa (Italy) w/ Daisy Glue, Trumpet Blossom Cafe, Saturday, May 18 at 9 p.m., $15-20

Gwenifer raymond (Wales) w/ special guest TBA, Trumpet Blossom Cafe, Tuesday, Jun 4 at 8 p.m., $10-15

Jazz

Feed

Benjamin Fawks

and gratefully in service to the idea of building a better community, a place where we feel inspired to be creative and are bold enough to engage art that is unfamiliar to us. In many ways, he simply wanted us to be moved, to fall for something and be transformed, to be in awe of life.

Gathering Of Family & Friends Englert Theatre, Sunday, April 7, 2–5 p.m.

More privately, he was, increasingly with age, an expert gardener. He was an accomplished prose writer, working in both fiction and essay formats, most recently on a long-form reflection of his time in the Dominican Republic. After a hiatus, he had returned to playing and recording music in a collaborative project called Death Bag with his friend Gabi Vanek. His record collection was worthy of review by the Library of Congress and, as a local DJ, he shared his curated archive with eager audiences. And, he loved his cats! He perhaps saw them as a more elevated species than anything else. Chris was also wickedly funny, discussing the issues of the day in elaborate modes of satire. He criticized Iowa City on all matters culture and politics accurately and painfully— and he did it because he loved this place; despite being born a city kid, he was quietly ecstatic to commit much of his life to this place in an effort to make it all better. And the joyous energy he brought to the world with his closest friend and partner, Anne, was magical. Together, they were exquisite hosts feeding friends, old and new, in warm and cold weather, near the bonfire in their backyard—always sharing stories and laughter into the late hours.

In all his actions, it was rarely about Chris. It was always about the rest of us—his community, his people. Every show, every conversation in the park, every joke traded over IG messenger—it was an invitation to be alive and engage with the world around us. He was also beloved by artists and artist agents and managers across the country and the world who knew that when they came to Iowa City, Chris and his team would treat them like family. At his core, he was committed to kindness and taking care of those around him. He cooked for us, made sure we always got home safely, and listened to us for hours as we tried to figure out our lives.

As Chris embraced his 40s, he actively supported young, emerging artists and curators in Iowa City. He steadily paid his experience forward, ensuring the path would be easier for people coming up 20 years behind him. Many saw Chris as a friend, a brother, a father, an uncle, a guide, a mentor, and no one saw him better than his wife, Anne, who loved him so deeply and was the truest of partners, supporting him through his work and passions.

Chris loved his wife, his parents, his brothers, his nephews and his community. And his community and family truly felt that love. And, again, he loved his cats!

Chris was preceded in death by his mother, his brother Brian, and by his dearest cats: Ornette, Preston and also Margot.

He is survived by his wife Anne Marsh, father Douglas Wiersema, in-laws Dawn Elizabeth Marsh and Timothy Weston Marsh, brother Kevin Wiersema, sister-in-law Danielle Wiersema, and nephews Trey and Dylan Wiersema.

When Chris moved to Iowa City, he had heard it was a good town for artists and the arts. When Chris left Iowa City, he had made it a better town for artists and the arts, a place that might inch closer to making its dream of itself an actual, breathing reality. In doing so, he has left a foundation, roadmap and endless inspiration for the rest of us to continue the work. He will be remembered, missed and loved forever by his family and friends in Iowa, the Midwest and across the world. ––Andre Perry

This obituary was originally published on Gay & Ciha’s website.

Reflections from the Community

We’re all losers. I don’t mean that we lost a competition or that we’re down on our luck. I mean that in the sense that our community has suffered a great loss, whether we know it directly or not. We lost when Kirk Walther died in 2017. We lost when the Mill closed. We lost when Trevor Lee Hopkins passed away last year. And now we’ve lost Chris Wiersema. As a community that prides itself on art, music, literature and thoughtful culture, it’s difficult losing the spaces, and more importantly, the people that make Iowa City unique, beautiful and weird.

Chris was intelligent, self-deprecating, inclusive, thoughtful, exuberant, and empathetic, no matter where you happened to catch him. From behind the Tobacco Bowl counter, to behind the bar at The Picador, to Little Village articles, to basement house shows, to backyard bonfires, to his carefully curated, booked, promoted and hosted Feed Me Weird Things events

- Chris always made time for everyone. Despite his depth of knowledge and esoteric tastes, when he came through the store (which was regularly for over 25 years) he always displayed curiosity and was always willing to talk music.

Kirk Walther used to refer to people who were music obsessed as “music heads,” and Chris was the definition of the term. He always sought new wavelengths and auditory experiences, seeming to

take as much joy in the delicate sounds of an expertly plucked harp as recordings that sound like the murmurs of an industrial boiler room in action. That’s not to say he wasn’t discerning, because he was, but his open mindedness and penchant for the off-kilter, avant garde, unknown and underrepresented never waivered. Squelching synthesizers and unrelenting feedback that would drive the average person to madness not only didn’t cause him to flinch, but were enjoyed like a morning songbird. This is part of what made him an exceptional leader for booking music in Iowa City: absolute fearlessness.

Even when the ends didn’t meet or Chris had to use his own funds to book a faraway act, he believed in a shared sonic space that he could create for our community. When going to a Feed Me Weird Things show you were likely to hear people say things like “that was the best thing I’ve ever heard” and other people saying “that was the noisiest thing I’ve ever heard, but it’s an experience I won’t forget.”

It was bound to open minds and it seems that’s what Chris wanted. Never settle for the mundane when you can try something new and perhaps even weird. Some of the best music we’ve ever tasted came from following Chris into the proverbial kitchen.

Going forward it’s hard to imagine what things will look like for young Iowa City outcasts and

Behind the counter at the Tobacco Bowl in 2004. Benjamin Hassman

derelicts who will never know the shelter that Chris provided, but from our perspective we owe it to them, and to Chris, to try to provide those spaces, to remind them the world is small, but full of new things to taste test. Perhaps the best recipes are still unknown. Go ahead and feed us weird things. (Sorry to you, dear reader, and to Chris’ memory for beating this metaphor so thoroughly.)

Our hearts and sincere condolences go out to Chris’ loved ones, close friends and family.

—Record Collector

Chris was such a profound master of our language; he was able to describe things—music, art, people, pop culture, food—in a way that left me perpetually in awe. Evoking deep feelings and clear imagery, his words were a reflection of the depths he plumbed to discover forms of creativity and passion that we didn’t even know were possible until he presented them to us.

It was a genuine privilege to have known him for over 20 years and to have had the opportunity to work with him to present the Feed Me Weird Things series at Trumpet Blossom. He made my place incalculably better and although I got to thank him several times while he was still here I desperately hope he knew how much I appreciated his support and partnership. I will miss my friend, my confidant, someone who I could commiserate with who truly knew what it was like to just pour your soul into something.

We’re all better (and weirder) people, and have built a better (and weirder) community, because he shared his magic with us. Our grief is monumental but I hope we can see that his spirit lasts in everything he touched.

—Katy Meyer, Trumpet Blossom Cafe

Early this year, I wrote to Chris, “I had a dream last night and you were there. You were in a space of creative possibility and ripeness, curating an old music collection we’d found.” In the dream, he was

behind a table with a turntable and crates of records, flipping through each one. In both dreams and in life, Chris was the bringer of things ripe and rich, be they cookies, lasagnas, albums, performances, jokes, or Instagram stories.

I’ve been reading everyone’s beautiful tributes to Chris over the last days, and the word that keeps coming to mind is belonging. For those of us who were lucky enough to know Chris, he made us feel we belonged here, in Iowa City, in art, in music, in dark rooms standing beside each other, feeling. And it’s clear many of us also felt that, in some small special way, Chris belonged to each of us, uniquely. I felt cherished by Chris, and I hope he knew I cherished him back. He had a way of being immediately vulnerable and honest, no bullshit, and created a space where I could be the same with him. His legacy is kindness, generosity, and unapologetically being exactly who he was. Chris was an aspirational human being. I miss him already. I hope he keeps visiting me in dreams.

—Rachel Yoder

Iregularly wrote about events that Chris Wiersema masterminded, and in doing so we often conversed about music, sound, aesthetics and community. The best way for me to honor Chris’s deeply held beliefs about art and everyday life is by sharing his own words, which I recorded last fall and have edited for this space.

“I think we have a greater chance of discovering paths to empathy by engaging with the unknown— paths that we don’t necessarily have when we go back to the familiar. Engaging with something new is both terrifying and also cathartic, because it can reveal things about the ways we think and process information in real time.

That can make us feel vulnerable, but through doing that, we can also recognize that vulnerability in others. By taking in things fully without the armor of critique and past experience, it creates a

path to more positivity. I mean, I’m a recovering cynic, and so this has been my practice to move away from that. If you have quiet minds that are together and open to what is being presented, I think it engenders an empathy, an understanding of each other’s unique experience and perspective—not just in art, but in the world.” —Chris Wiersema

—Kembrew McLeod

Thank you Chris for introducing Magik Markers, Noxagt, Jack Rose, Lau Nau, Mdou Moctor, Thumbscrew and so many more to Iowa City. Thank you for trusting me to be Jim Jarmusch’s body man when Squrl played at the Yacht Club and asking me to screen films before Damo Suzuki & Bill Orcutt. Thank you for being able to quiet down a raucous crowd and kindly ask them in the most irrefutable way to pay attention.

—Phillip Ochs

Technically I was Chris’s uncle (by marriage). But I’m pretty sure he never saw me that way and I never really thought of him as a nephew. I always thought of him as that cool, weird (term of endearment here...) friend everybody should have in their life. And that quick, sharp, perverse sense of humor of his aligned perfectly with mine.

Chris was the perfect house guest. Our favorite. He had this ability to fade into the wood work, only appearing when needed, to flip an album, share a drink, or talk about books and films. We shared some good times (and laughs) around our dinner table.

Feed Me Weird Things was not just a project for Chris. It was his mission statement. Chris was the guy who could find those amazing, often eclectic, rays of light in a sometimes dark world. He turned me on to a lot of wonderfully strange things over the years, certainly music. From Grinderman to Moondog, and finding for me a rare dub album album that I thought I’d never own... they all have pride of place in my collection.

The world is a little less weird and strange, now that Chris has tripped the light fantastic into the sweet hereafter. The Too Much Fun Club has lost a charter member. And I, like many of you, am profoundly sad. That’s the way it goes when people get ripped out of our lives for reasons that never get fully explained. But my life would be even sadder and poorer, if I had never known Chris. And it’s the memories, the music, and the wicked laughs we shared that I will take forward and know my life was better for having him in it. Sail on, Chris, sail on. —David Fulgham

Chris’ many contributions to Little Village have been poignant and often hilarious. Several LV staff favorites are highlighted below. Use the QR to access his full author page and read.

Vasectomy Story Issue 290, February 2021

Letter to the editor: The Mill was an Iowa City institution. Maybe that was the problem. Jun 30, 2020

An Instant Pot recipe* so easy, even you won’t screw it up Issue 257, February 2019

Recipe: Instant Pot sesame chicken for two Issue 236, February 2018

Reflections on a Silver Ball Issue 115, June/July 2012

Next Stop: Britt, home of the annual Hobo Convention Sep 4, 2011

A

Milk & Honey

Thousands of Latter-day Saints crossed Iowa in the 1840s, seeking a promised land in the west. The marks they left on the landscape—and U.S. history—are still being explored.

BY EMMA MCClATCHEY

Long before I-80 cut a clear path through the state—and before any asphalt, rubber tires, railways or virtually any infrastructure existed to aid westward travelers—crossing the roughly 300 miles between the Mississippi and Missouri rivers was a long, arduous journey. The native landscape, wildlife and bacteria familiar to generations of indigenous people often proved deadly to white settlers.

Nonetheless, thousands made the journey across the land we now call Iowa in the 1830s. Westward migration was a nationwide trend following the Black Hawk War and escalating Indian removal policies championed by presidents Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren. More than 100,000 Native Americans were forced west onto reservations in unincorporated territory (mostly Oklahoma and Kansas) in a campaign of ethnic cleansing that killed more than 15,000 en route and saw millions of acres in the southeast U.S. claimed by wealthy white settlers and converted into cotton fields tilled by enslaved laborers.

Cue the Oregon Trail theme music.

The vast majority of the displaced tribes (most Cherokee, Creek, Chickasaw, Choctaw and Seminole) took paths that ran south of Iowa. They were followed closely by legions of white migrants pursuing Manifest Destiny along the Oregon and Santa Fe trails between 1836 and

1869. But one significant trail wove just north of Iowa’s modern border with Missouri, leaving wagon ruts, graves and towns that remain to this day and recall a religious exodus.

Fly or die

The Mormon Trail started just east of the Mississippi in Nauvoo, Illinois, where the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had once again unsuccessfully attempted to establish a home base

among fellow Christians who did not consider the Book of Mormon, published in 1830, to be a legitimate revelation from God. The new religious movement had moved from New York to Ohio to Missouri to Illinois, each time trying and failing to found the holy city their prophet Joseph Smith had envisioned.

In Nauvoo, Smith introduced several controversial doctrines, including baptism for the dead, Masonic-like societies with secretive rites and,

Jonah Terry / Little Village

most consequentially, plural marriage. While publicly claiming to be monogamous, Smith had taken as many as 40 wives, one just 14 years old. Smith’s followers, called “Saints,” were met with increasing violence from non-Saints, to which Smith was increasingly responding with more violence.

He was murdered in 1844, shot by a member of the mob that attacked the jail in Carthage, Illinois where he was awaiting trial for destroying the printing press a local paper used to spread what Smith considered anti-Mormon sentiment. The militant and amply bearded Brigham Young took over leadership of the Saints, and received a mission from above: head west to the Great Basin, and make a Zion there.

Like many religions, the LDS Church tends to romanticize the oppression faced by early adherents.

“It is difficult to imagine a successful Mormon Church without suffering, without the encouragement of it, without the memory of it,” wrote R. Laurence Moore in his 1986 book Religious Outsiders and the Making of Americans. “Persecution arguably was the only possible force that would have allowed the infant church to prosper.”

But the Mormon Trail is also distinctive for its relative safety compared to other 19th century migrations. Roughly 3.25 percent of travelers died on the trail, compared to 10 percent of those who took the Oregon Trail. It’s likely the common purpose shared by the Saints—who hailed not just from Nauvoo but also western Europe, where LDS missionaries had converted thousands— helped them avoid disasters.

“Perhaps their suffering seems less dramatic because the [Mormon] handcart pioneers bore it meekly, praising God, instead of fighting for life with the ferocity of animals and eating their dead to keep their own life beating, as both the Fremont and Donner parties did,” reads a 1956 piece in Collier’s Magazine by Iowa native Wallace Stegner, often called “the Dean of Western Writers.”

“But if courage and endurance make a story, if humankindness and helpfulness and brotherly

love in the midst of raw horror are worth recording, this half-forgotten episode of the Mormon migration is one of the great tales of the West and of America.”

Hitting the trail

The first wagons left Nauvoo on Feb. 4, 1846— exactly one year before the founding of the University of Iowa, for some context—and were ferried across the icy Mississippi River to Montrose Landing and the abandoned, original Fort Des Moines in Lee County. (It was at this same spot four years earlier that Joseph Smith had allegedly prophesied the Mormon exodus, saying they’d soon be “driven to the Rocky Mountains” by their enemies.)

Brigham Young led the maiden voyage of Mormon Trail pioneers, roughly 3,000 people in 500 wagons; a larger camp of 10,000 Saints would catch up later. They crossed the Des Moines River at the village of Bonaparte, then made their way to Richardson’s Point, located near the town of Milton in Van Buren County, where they stayed from March 7 to 19.

Iowa is among the most altered landscapes in the country, with less than .02 percent of its native prairies surviving to the 21st century. But some sites along the Mormon Trail are practically time capsules.

“You can still get a good idea of what it would have been like 175-plus years ago,” said Brad

The Mormon Trails Across Iowa

Klodt, president of the Iowa Mormon Trail Association (IMTA). “I’m a fifth generation in Van Buren County; it’s very rural, very rough. I can see where they would follow the high ridges to where the traveling was the best. I can see where they cross creeks and streams and add a solid limestone base to it so the wagons could get across easier.”

This tough terrain was exacerbated by the tough Midwest climate. “If you’re a homegrown Iowan or been here long enough, you realize how bad the spring weather can be. They hit freezing weather, snow, rain. The mud mired them down terribly. They would camp in certain spots for anywhere from a day to two weeks.”

“The first two or three recorded deaths on the Mormon Trail in 1846 happened there, and they were kind of prominent deaths,” Klodt continued. “One of them was Edwin Little, a 30-year-old nephew of Brigham Young, and the other a little 15-month-old boy. I think they basically got pneumonia.”

The pair were buried in crude coffins and unmarked graves in nearby woods. (Another eight adults and four children would die before the group reached Utah.) It wasn’t until 1981 that local historians found and marked the graves, and Klodt himself helped clear a path to them for visitors. The point was officially dedicated as a historic site in 2017 thanks to a partnership between the federal government, the LDS Church and the

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Iowa Mormon Trail Association (IMTA).

“One nice thing working with the National Park Service and the LDS Church and having the IMTA in the middle, we’re able to bring out a lot more history of smaller locations,” Klodt said. The association is dedicated to preserving trail sites and educating both Saints and secular explorers. Klodt himself is not Mormon, but is fascinated by the history.

“I’ve got [a surviving structure] about two miles from me. A little barn that was built in 1846, right on the trail,” he said. “It saw a lot in its time, and it’s still standing. An Amish family uses it every day.”

The IMTA meets every three months at the Prairie Trails Museum in Wayne County, which also houses a Mormon Trail exhibit.

Morale and manpower

“With death always comes life and with life, there’s usually joy and peace,” according to Klodt.

Along with the first deaths, Richardson’s Point also saw babies born and bands formed. Nauvoo bandleader William Pitt gathered Pitt’s Brass Band to cheer up fellow travelers in the evenings. They’d also dip off-trail for three days at a time to play for locals and earn money for supplies.

One of the most important hymns in the LDS Church was written on the Iowa Mormon Trail in 1846. William Clayton, a former clerk and scribe for Joseph Smith, penned “Come, Come, Ye Saints” during a particularly muddy night at the Locust Creek Campsite in Wayne County, right after learning his wife had successfully given birth back in Nauvoo. The lyrics were set to the English folk tune “All is Well.”

Come, come, ye saints, no toil nor labor fear / But with joy wend your way. / Though hard to you this journey may appear, / Grace shall be as your day. / ‘Tis better far for us to strive / Our useless cares from us to drive; / Do this, and joy your hearts will swell / All is well! all is well!

The route’s next major stop was Garden Grove, roughly the midway point on the Iowa stretch of the Mormon Trail. Today, it’s a tiny Decatur County town with a population around 175, but in the winter of 1846/47, it was a refuge for about 600 Saints, who made a permanent settlement on lands belonging to the Potawatomi.

(Garden Grove is included in the small Mormon Trail Community School District, established in 1959. The district has an angel mascot, complete with wings, halo, sneakers and a slingshot.)

“A large amount of labour has been done since arriving in this grove: indeed the whole camp are very industrious,” wrote Orson Pratt, one of the faith’s first theologians. “Many houses have been built, wells dug, extensive farms fenced, and the whole place assumes the appearance of having been occupied for years, and clearly shows what

can be accomplished by union, industry, and perseverance.”

Garden Grove, the Mount Pisgah settlement just northwest of it—where several thousand acres of corn, peas, cucumbers, buckwheat, potatoes, beans and squash were planted—and the Grand Encampment near Council Bluffs became way stations. Way stations were towns that essentially served as both short- and long-term residences for Mormons travelers.

“A lot of forethought went into this,” Brodt said. “These way stations were quite a good way of looking out for people. They keep wood cut up for fires and they’d have cabins built … If a woman was pregnant and getting ready to give birth, they would stop at the way station until she had the child and was recuperated enough where she could travel, or if there were people that were sick or people couldn’t afford to keep going, they could stay at the way stations. An awful lot of people just got in Iowa where they knew it was safe and homesteaded, got jobs.”

The fastest Mormon trailspeople reached Council Bluffs (then called Kanesville) by June 1846, where they wintered before embarking on the second leg of the 1,300-mile journey from Nauvoo to Brigham Young’s chosen destination. The first Saints arrived in the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847, commemorated annually as Pioneer Day in the church.

In 1852, Young, now the governor of the newly formed Utah Territory as well as the president of the LDS Church, called all Saints lingering in way stations and waiting overseas to hurry west, and most obliged. Between 1855 and ’57, thousands of converts immigrated to New York or Boston before riding the rails to their western terminus in Iowa City. While preparing for the trail—which included building handcarts that were cheaper and faster than ox-drawn wagons—many camped in an area west of the Iowa River near Hawkeye Recreation Fields, later designated Mormon Handcart Park. The nonprofit Johnson County Historical Society was originally formed in 1963 to erect a monument on the site and designate a nearby road Mormon Trek Boulevard.

The hive survives

Beehives have been an essential symbol in LDS sermons, art and architecture for nearly 200 years. Young even considered naming their new state in the west Deseret, a synonym for “honeybee” mentioned in the Book of Mormon. That didn’t happen, but a beehive has always sat at the center of the Utah state flag. To Saints like Young, beehives represented an orderly kingdom built from nothing, an industrious society capable of transforming a desert into a garden—and stinging their enemies, if necessary.

More than 80,000 Saints would ultimately

follow Young to Utah, which became the headquarters of a world religion roughly 7 million strong. As the first governor of the Utah Territory and president of the church from the death of Joseph Smith until his own death, Young formally banned Black men from priesthood, practiced plural marriage (he had 56 wives in his lifetime) and precipitated a string of violent conflicts, including the massacre by a Mormon mob of some 120 migrants passing through Mountain Meadows, just 10 years after the first Saints crossed Iowa.

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Back east, an LDS movement separate from Young took root. Known as the Reformed Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—and renamed the Community of Christ Church in 2001—the scholarly faith was led by Smith’s eldest son, Joseph Smith III. In 1870, he bought 3,000 acres near Garden Grove and established the town of Lamoni, where the RLDS Church’s Graceland

“For some members, there’s a lot of pride in church history. And I think for some members, it’s kind of like a stumbling block. It’s something we have to overcome.”

— Rob Heverling

University was established. (Lamoni, Iowa was also the birthplace of the Hy-Vee grocery store chain. Founders Charles Hyde and David Vredenburg were RLDS members.)

The church takes an “all are called” approach to membership and the priesthood. Women and LGBTQ people are ordained. Members are encouraged to study LDS history. In the past couple decades, the Book of Mormon has become largely absent from worship, according to Pastor Rob Heverling of Council Bluff’s Community of Christ Central Church.

“We’re pretty radically different [than the LDS Church],” he said. “For some members, there’s a lot of pride in church history. And I think for some members, it’s kind of like a stumbling block. It’s something we have to overcome.”

For this community of roughly a quarter million, the Mormon Trail was less about blazing a path to the Promised Land than finding your hive along the way.

“There’s a theme of journeying, you know, from Joseph Smith and all the struggles of the early church, bloodshed, wars, being run out of communities. That’s a journey. It’s a very physical journey, but it’s also a very theological journey,” Heverling said. “And so maybe it fits really well with where we are in the Community of Christ, because we have journeyed as an organization, as individuals—we are on our own faith journey.”

Dragons Love Tacos, 2023-24 Season

Our Town, 2023-24 Season

THE COLLEGE STATION

If Iowa’s coolest locales had a soundtrack, it’d be underground FM radio.

BY KEMBrEW MClEOD

This is a scrappy story of young folks bum-rushing the airwaves through sheer force of will.

With humble origins that can be traced back to a University of Iowa dormitory broom closet, KRUI is now celebrating 40 years of FM radio broadcasting thanks to the passion of students and other community members.

In the beginning there was KWAD, named

for the Quadrangle dorm, which closed its doors in 2016 and has since been demolished. Back in 1952, the station’s first DJs played Dixieland jazz and current popular music from the Quad’s closet studio, which transmitted signals through an AM radio carrier current that flowed through the dorm’s electrical system. KWAD slowly expanded its electrified network to other dorms by installing more transmitters and, in 1968, the station changed its name to KICR, which stood for

Iowa Campus Radio.

Four years later, the station changed its name to KRUI, after a Cedar Rapids station began angling to use the KICR call letters. Even though it was an AM station, KRUI adopted what was referred to at the time as an underground FM radio format—DJs were given much more leeway than Top 40 stations to launch into extended “raps” about social issues and spin freeform rock, soul, blues and jazz.

Throughout the early 1970s, KRUI was the

Prairie Pop

only station in the area that was dedicated to playing rock and roll. Because it had a captive audience of about 5,000 dorm residents, this student radio operation raked in roughly $10,000 per year in advertising revenues until 1974, when KRNA debuted as Iowa City’s first commercial rock station. Ad sales plummeted, and with no other funding streams to sustain KRUI, it ceased operating from 1976 to 1978.

But the kids refused to let their on-air dreams

die, and by the end of the decade, KRUI had been folded into an arm of the university’s student government, which gave it a second life.

Momentum kept building, and at 7:03 p.m. on March 28, 1984, the station began broadcasting as a 100-watt FM radio station after a lot of heavy lifting by former KRUI general manager Peter Koenig and a core group of other student volunteers.

“[Koenig] had the vision, was able to rally the support for it, and handled the complex 93-page-long Federal Communication Commission application,” Joe Reagan told the Daily Iowan in 1984, when the Communication Studies major was serving as the station’s general manager. “A professional could have come in and done it, but that’s not what KRUI is about. KRUI is about students doing it.”

Blanketing Iowa City with its 89.7 megahertz signal, its expanded reach couldn’t have come at a better time for the surrounding community. College radio was transforming into a major cultural force in America, and the next phase in KRUI’s history coincided with the formation of a national network of independent music labels, record stores, zines, venues and college radio stations. That network made it possible for underground musicians to promote cross-country tours in a pre-internet age—which in turn planted the seeds for the Nirvana-led alternative rock explosion in the 1990s.

During this time, KRUI adopted its long-running tagline, “Iowa City’s Sound Alternative,” which emphasized the station’s commitment to promoting obscure sounds that could only be found left of the dial, where lower-frequency noncommercial stations could be found on old school analog radio sets. Fittingly, in 1991, KRUI’s T-shirts were branded with the slogan “Just a little to the left, honey.”

Iowa City’s relative proximity to several major Midwestern cities, combined with KRUI’s reputation as a thriving college radio station, ensured that a head-spinning array of national talent played in town on any given week—Nirvana, L7, Babes In Toyland, Los Lobos, Mudhoney, Uncle Tupelo, Meat Puppets, Yo La Tengo and Sonic Youth, to name a few—many of whom stopped by the station to promote their gigs on air.

During radio’s early 20th century days as a new mass medium, the term broadcasting was coined as an agricultural metaphor: broadly casting sonic seeds across the land. This is what KRUI and other college stations did during an era that was dominated by corporate media outlets that made little room for the kinds of outsider voices that eventually found more accommodating spaces on the internet.

Throughout the 1990s, KRUI invested in this online future by upgrading its equipment, and in doing so it became America’s first all-digital college radio station. Then-general manager John Barker wrote in a 1995 station newsletter, “Digital has made a big impact at KRUI. From the way the DJs are able to do their show, how the listeners perceive the station, how the station is managed, and the foundation being laid

Ride the Airwaves

Bored on the road? Tune into the nearest student-run radio station.

KALA 88.5 FM St. Ambrose University, Quad Cities / FIrST AIr DATE: Nov. 4, 1967 / rANGE: 10,000 watts

KBVU-FM 97.5 FM “The Edge” Buena Vista University, Storm Lake / FIrST AIr

DATE: November 1997 / rANGE: 6000 watts

KDPS 88.1 FM “Edge 88.1” Des Moines Public Schools and Grand View University / FIrST AIr DATE: 1953 / rANGE: 5,200 watts

KICB 88.1 FM “The Point” Iowa Central Community College, Fort Dodge / FIrST AIr DATE: 1971 / rANGE: 200 watts

KMSC 92.9 FM “Fusion 93” Morningside University, Sioux City / FIrST AIr DATE: 1978 / rANGE: 13 watts

KRUI-FM 89.7 FM “Iowa City’s Sound Alternative” University of Iowa, Iowa City / FIrST AIr DATE: March 28, 1984 / rANGE: 100 watts

KSTM 88.9 FM Simpson College, Indianola / rANGE: 100 watts

KULT-LP 94.5 FM “The Kult” University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls / FIrST AIr

DATE: Oct. 17, 2003 / rANGE: 100 watts

KURE 88.5 FM “Iowa State’s StudentRun Radio Station” Iowa State University, Ames / FIrST AIr DATE: 1949 as KMRA; Aug. 12, 1996 as KURE / rANGE: 630 watts

KWAR 89.9 FM “Your Sound” Wartburg College, Waverly / FIrST AIr DATE: 2008 / rANGE: 1000 watts

KWLC 1240 AM “Luther College Radio” Luther College, Decorah / FIrST AIr DATE: Dec. 18, 1926 / rANGE: 1000 watts daytime; 540 watts nighttime

KWPU 90.5 FM “The Ladder” William Penn University, Oskaloosa / FIrST AIr

DATE: 1976 as KIGC 88.7 / rANGE: 1000 watts

Anna Reishus / Little Village

for future improvements.”

With that solid foundation in place, KRUI was one of the earliest college radio stations to stream its broadcasts online, and today it is a 360-degree media operation that encompasses FM radio broadcasting, a website that publishes music news and reviews, play-by-plays of Iowa sporting events, internet streaming, podcasting and more.

Over the decades, KRUI kept its head above water as the university moved its studios from location to location, finally settling in a somewhat dumpy house near the Field House. The station’s studios remained in that building until 2002, when the next critical chapter in its history unfolded. After decades of treating KRUI like an unwanted stepchild relegated to the metaphorical (and sometimes literal) basement, school administrators planned to move its operations into an even dumpier barn-like building.

These events occurred during my first two years serving as KRUI’s faculty advisor, and I remain impressed to this day with the way that the station’s young staff rallied the troops and used their own broadcasts as a megaphone to pressure the university to change course. During a rally in 2002, KRUI staff handed out leaflets featuring a drawing of Herky driving a bulldozer accompanied by an all-caps headline, “DON’T LET THE U OF I TEAR DOWN KRUI AND MOVE US TO A BARN!”

The campaign worked, and KRUI found a home in the Iowa Memorial Union, where it thrived with new state-of-the-art facilities—that

is, until the 2008 floods closed the IMU for a year, and its studios were temporarily moved back into a dorm. After a decade-long return to the IMU, COVID shut KRUI’s doors in 2020, something that posed existential questions about what it means to be a radio station without a studio serving as its physical hub and social lifeblood.

KRUI bounced back in the years following the pandemic under the steady hands of general managers Abbie Eastman and Daniela Rybarczyk, who steered the ship through uncharted waters into a brighter future. Once again, it was a group of teenagers and 20-somethings who resurrected this radio station from the ashes (to paraphrase the Who, the kids are still alright).

Looking over the horizon towards the station’s next 40 years, current general manager Tiger Slowinski waxes philosophical. “Radio, especially college radio,” he said, “has never fundamentally been about the format, or technology used, artists played, or DJs on air.”

“Radio, in its essence, is simply a platform to elevate the voices of a community. As long as we hold this to be true, it doesn’t matter how the technology, people, or even the community itself change. Radio will, and radio does, continue to serve our communities by elevating the voices within it.”

Kembrew has served as KRUI’s faculty advisor for the past twenty-four years, and he first got involved with college radio in 1989.

Engineer A.J. Bautista awaits updates to KrUI’s equipment transmitter. Ongoing maintenence forced KrUI to go off-air during the early ’90s until it became America’s first all-digital college radio station in 1995. David Greedy / The Daily Iowan, University of Iowa Libraries Special Collections & Archives

Swell on Wheels

Bike

collectives

know cycling is safer, cheaper and more fun as a group.

BY LILY WASSERMAN

If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you give a man a bicycle, teach him how to keep it in tip-top shape, and advocate for there to be safe spaces for him to ride, you’re a bike collective.

Iowa’s bike collectives are nonprofit community programs that focus on making bikes and cycling opportunities more accessible and giving local commuters an alternative to cars.

“I’d like to think that every year we’re improving transportation for the entire community, whether that’s a child who wants the freedom of having their own bike or a new refugee to Iowa that is completely reliant on getting a bike there for transportation,” said Jerry Lewis, executive director of the Des Moines Street Collective. “That at its core is why we exist.”

Lewis used to deliver copies of the Des Moines Register on his bicycle. Today, he delivers bicycles to adults to children in need.

“When you present it to a kid that doesn’t have one, it just opens up [their world],” Lewis said. “It’s freedom.”

The Street Collective worked with volunteers and other nonprofits in the Des Moines area to give away over 350 bikes last year, according to the organization’s 2023 impact report.

Many of the collective’s bicycles are donations, either from nearby retail stores or people who don’t need their current bikes. Volunteer Steve Starks first walked into the collective to donate a bike, then stayed to work on the others.

“Their bikes are so varied that every time you come here, there’s something you’ve never seen before, and you’re not quite sure how to take this apart or how it works,” Starks said. “There’s the tools available, and there’s somebody that will show you, and suddenly you get it apart.”

Starks comes into the shop a few times a week to rebuild or deconstruct bikes, and said he appreciates the opportunity to expand his mechanical skills among good company.

“Even if they come from different backgrounds than me, we share bikes together,” Starks said of his fellow volunteers.

In 2019, after conversations with local leaders, the collective decided to broaden its focus to more than just biking, furthering its goal of seeing fewer cars on the road. They have since advocated for

adding more sidewalks to Des Moines area streets and public transportation.

“We understand that biking doesn’t work for everybody, and most everybody is a pedestrian at some point during the day,” Lewis said. “Whatever we can do to make it easier to walk or bike to some of the places we need to go just jives with why we exist.”

Beyond advocate efforts in their areas and bike giveaways, many bike co-ops focus on making sure that those who have bikes know how to fix them up when necessary.

Mark Stevenson, head mechanic at the Cedar Valley Bike Collective, began his work after over 30 years of mechanic experience in retail. Through the collective, he was able to take what he learned and pass it on to new bikers.

“In many ways, I feel like the collective is more successful in creating avid cyclists than the retail bicycle sector is,” Stevenson said. “There’s many reasons for that, but I think being able to reach the underprivileged people of the community has a lot to do with that. So I find it very rewarding.”

Cedar Valley Bike Collective, like the Des Moines Street Collective, accepts donations. If the bikes can’t be repaired for sale or donation, the parts might go to the Earn a Bike program, where volunteers either donate 20 hours of their time to the shop or 10 hours and build their bikes out of available parts. Through this, they learn how bicycles need to be maintained.

“Understanding even how your wheels come off your bike is something a lot of people don’t know, and the little tricks to doing that are things that people just wouldn’t know if they weren’t in the bicycle trade,” Stevenson said.

Iowa Bicycle Cooperatives

Iowa City Bike library

1222 S Gilbert Ct, Iowa City, icbikelibrary.org

NewBo Bikes

39 16th Ave SW, Cedar Rapids, newbobikes.org

Chain reaction Bike Hub

1010 3rd Ave SW in Cedar Rapids, crbikehub.org

Des Moines Bicycle Collective

506 E 6th St, Des Moines, dsmstreetcollective.org

Cedar Valley Bike Collective

219 W 4th St, Waterloo, cvbikecollective.org

Dubuque Bike Co-op

2206 Central Ave, dubuquebikecoop.org

Community Bike project Omaha

525 N 33rd St, Omaha, communitybikeproject.org

Refurbishing donated bikes and parts not only keeps more working bikes in the community, it keeps broken ones out of alleyways and landfills. NewBo Bikes in Cedar Rapids places particular focus on “reusing, recycling and repurposing bicycles,” according to their website. If they can’t repair an old bike, it is dismantled to recycle the steel and aluminum. Sometimes old parts are recycled creatively in artwork and home goods, such as bike seats turned into bar stools, or plant stands made out of crank arms.

Above: Iowa City Bike library shop coordinator Walter linares works with a patron. Ben Roberts / Little Village right: the spirit of community collaboration is strong at the Des Moines Bicycle Collective. Annick Sjobakken/ Little Village

Many collectives, such as Cedar Valley Bike Collective, also host bike rodeos that teach participants, usually children, about bike safety. Once someone has a bike and some basic know-how, they can use it to get to school, work and events around the area.

Even the bicycles themselves facilitate social interaction. The Iowa City Bike Library hosts events ranging from group rides to historic local sites, to care and repair classes. Some are weekly, like their Women Trans Femme nights, where, as their website says, “non-binary, gender non-conforming, female-identifying, trans, and femme folks” can come together for bike maintenance and repair, while others, like their Halloweenseason Witches Take Flight ride, are yearly.

Within the Iowa City community, members of the Bike Library work on outreach to teens, such as through the Outspoken Teens bicycle repairing and riding program that aligns with local high school schedules. For other programs, the Bike Library partners with local community organizations, such as Neighborhood Centers of Johnson County for WE Ride, a girl’s cycling program.

Founded in 2004, the Iowa City Bike Library’s collaborative model has directly inspired other collectives around the state, such as the Dubuque Bike Co-op and brand-new Cedar Rapids nonprofit Chain Reaction Bike Hub.

As one of their first-ever events last November, Chain Reaction acquired more than 100 trashed bikes from the Linn County Solid Waste Agency, then held a bike-washing event with youth from two of their partner orgs, the Children of Promise Mentoring Program and Foundation 2.

“A biking community is a healthy community and a happy community,” said Dubuque Bike Co-op President Rob Williams. “I hope that we’re helping bring that health and happiness to Dubuque via a bicycle.”

One of the main challenges to their now 12year mission of making more local bike enthusiasts are the bluffs throughout the city, which can discourage new riders.

“There’s no shame in getting off your bike and walking up to the top of the hill, because each time you do it you’re going to make it a little bit further, and eventually you’re going to make it to the top of that hill without getting off and that’s going to make it pretty feel pretty damn good,” Williams said.

Right now, the collective is focused on growing its volunteer base and expanding the hours of its store on 2206 Central Ave, which is currently only open from 6 to 8 p.m., Tuesday and Thursday.

“There are people that come through our door from all aspects of life,” Williams said, “and everyone that comes through that door, no matter where they’re coming from, what their circumstances are—everyone is either a biker or a potential biker.”

Wednesday, April 24

Behind the Handlebars

What bike is right for you? Iowa City Bike Library’s lead mechanic describes eight common styles of bicycle and how they stand to serve your needs.

BY DrEW BOSS

Full Suspension

Mountain Bike

Comfort Hybrids

Featuring an upright position for the rider, riser handlebars and padded saddle, these utility bikes are good for short rides around town, running errands or a daily commute. They have a full range of gears and usually rim brakes. All in all, a very practical bike for the “every person.”

Sport Hybrid

These bikes have a more aggressive posture, leaning the rider slightly over the handlebars. They are lighter and have more nimble riding characteristics—great for exercise or getting to your destination faster. The flat handlebars keep you engaged with the other road uses and traffic. Some might say these make the perfect commuter bikes. Just outfit with fenders and a rear rack and away you go!

Road Bikes

Do you have the need for speed? Want to ride long distances on paved roads? Then this is the category for you. The road bike is characterized with drop handlebars, light frames and narrow tires. The aggressive position gets you out of the wind and is aerodynamic for efficiency. Great tool for exercise and staying fit.

Touring Bikes

Designed for long distances and carrying cargo, these bikes have drop handlebars with a more mild riding posture, letting you ride all day in comfort. Often setup with racks, fenders and lights, these bikes are built with durability in mind over speed. You will get to your destination in comfort, just maybe not in the knick of time.

When the trails are steep and chunky, this is the best bike for the job. Flat bars, wide tires, disc brakes and suspension on both wheels characterize this machine. The Midwest is quite flat, making this more of a destination bike: When you travel to Moab, Utah or Bentonville, Arkansas you are bringing this bike along!

Hardtail

Mountain Bike

Hardtail means only the front wheel has suspension. Most mountain bikes fit into this category; these are some of the most versatile bikes. You can ride single track trails off-road to commuting and lots in between. They can be ridden year round with the same maintenance as a hybrid. The wide tires give traction in the dirt and snow. If you want versatility and only have the need for one bike, this may be your best choice.

Recumbents

Recumbents and trikes offer a full layer back seated position for the rider. They come in many configurations for the steering and pedal positions. If you are in the market to buy one, try as many as you can before buying. These are great machines to get out and exercise, or just to ride for fun. Choose your routes carefully as they are significantly heavier, making hills more of a challenge. They may not take corners as fast as a traditional bicycle.

E-Bikes

Need a little assistance when you are out for a ride? Want to get somewhere fast without breaking a sweat? An E-bike may be the answer. E-bikes come in almost all cycling categories nowadays, but most commonly a comfort hybrid. They allow the rider to work a bit less and achieve their cycling goals with some help. Multiple levers of assistance put the rider in control of how much output the motor and battery will supply. This is one of the newest and fastest growing categories in cycling, and it’s in its boom stage.

Jordan Sellergren / Little Village

THE HILLS HAVE RAGBRAI

Free-roaming courthouses, famous sandwiches, cinematic birthplaces, snakey streets—this year’s cross-state bike route has it all.

BY pAUl BrENNAN

The route for RAGBRAI LI stretches from Glenwood on the Missouri River to Burlington on the Mississippi. At 424 miles, this year’s route is fairly short, but it will be the “hilliest ever RAGBRAI,” according to organizers.

It’s not the first time Glenwood and Burlington have been connected. In 1869, the Burlington and Missouri River Railroad reached

Glenwood, its final stop in Iowa before heading to Omaha.

Between the start and finish, riders will spend the night in six other southern Iowa cities. Read on for some background on the burgs about to be bombarded by bicycles.

Glenwood

Named after Presbyterian minister Glenn Wood in 1852, this burg is nestled among the Loess Hills, and a quick climb up Old

Slaughterhouse Hill gives you a lovely view of the area.

The hills come alive every year as the wildflowers bloom, which inspired the name for the annual Glenwood Superbloom, a gravel cycling race for women. This year’s Glenwood Superbloom is scheduled for Sept. 21, giving any interested RAGBRAI rider two months to rest and recuperate before the race.

From Glenwood, riders will pedal 44 miles, climbing 2,955 feet, to…

Red Oak

Red Oak is home to the impressive Montgomery County Courthouse, described in the National Register

of Historic Places as “[p]erhaps the best of Iowa’s Victorian Romanesque courthouses.”

Construction on the stately edifice began in 1891.

In a very Iowa moment, it was decided that the old courthouse in Frankfort, the original county seat, would be salvaged to try to save a little dough. Locals voted to drag the two-story building from Frankfort to Red Oak.

“The courthouse was raised up and put upon huge sleds which were yoked to thirty oxen,” according to an early history of Montgomery County. In another very Iowa moment, the movers were overtaken by a surprise blizzard about halfway through the

Anna Reishus / Little Village

eight-mile journey. They “lost control of the sleds as they were going down an incline… and the courthouse [was] allowed to wander on its own across the prairie” once the oxen were unyoked.

It disappeared from sight.

“It wasn’t until well after the storm that it was located on a farmstead two miles northeast of Red Oak,” the history continued. The oxen were yoked up again, and it was dragged to town square.

Every summer, Red Oak celebrates its history with a festival, Junction Days. (The town’s original name was Red Oak Junction before being shortened in 1901.)

From Red Oak, it’s 40 miles and 1,699 feet of elevation to…

Atlantic

According to local lore, the founders of Atlantic decided to give the town an oceanic name because it was approximately halfway between the Atlantic and the Pacific. A coin was tossed, and the Atlantic won. Whether or not that’s true, Atlantic is connected to both oceans via the American Discovery Trail (ADT), the only continent-spanning trail system just for hikers and cyclists.

Atlantic sits on the northern route called the T-Bone Trail, which follows an old spur line the Rock Island Railroad built to speed up the shipment of Cass County cattle to Chicago’s meatpacking plants. Twenty-five miles up the ADT to Audubon sits Albert, the world’s largest bull statue. Erected in 1964, the 28foot tall, 45-ton Albert is made of steel and concrete and overlooks the trailhead.

From Atlantic, riders will pedal 79 miles, climbing 4,384 feet, to…

Winterset

Named on an unseasonably cold day in July 1849, Winterset is also appropriately home to the cozy Iowa Quilt Museum.

The city is probably best known as the birthplace of Marion Morrison, known as the actor John

Wayne. It’s hard to explain to anyone under 40 what a towering figure Wayne was—in part because most of his 175 movies haven’t aged well, culturally or cinematically—but the John Wayne Birthplace Museum can give visitors a sense of his celebrity.

Winterset’s city park is also home to one of Madison County’s six celebrated covered bridges, as well as Clark Tower, a 25-foot-tall, castle-like limestone structure built in 1926.

Back on the bike, and 74 miles and 3,039 feet of climb later, you’re in…

Knoxville

Knoxville is famous for dirt track racing at the Knoxville Raceway, and its National Sprint Car Hall of Fame & Museum brings in visitors all year long. But RAGBRAI isn’t about internal combustion engines, so let’s honor Knoxville as the birthplace of the Iowa flag instead.

State flags seem like a normal part of life, but the idea didn’t catch on until after the Civil War. By 1917, there were only three states that didn’t have a flag and Iowa was one of them. That year, Dixie Cornell Gebhardt, a lifelong resident of Knoxville, rose to the challenge and created the flag still flying today. Gov. William Harding called Gebhardt “Iowa’s Betsy Ross.”

Sixty miles and 2,441 feet in elevation later is…

Ottumwa

One of America’s must-try diners, Canteen Lunch in the Alley has been serving its version of a loose meat sandwich for the better part of a century. Local boy turned semi-star Tom Arnold introduced Rosanne Barr to the sandwich, who incorporated it into her show, Rosanne.

The spot only has 16 stools, so it can be hard to get a seat. But there are plenty of other options outside the alley, and every year Ottumwa’s food, music and growing diversity is celebrated in

the VIVA Ottumwa International Festival.

Cyclists face their longest day, because it’s 82 miles and 3124 feet in elevation to …

Mount Pleasant

Mount Pleasant is accustomed to welcoming thousands of visitors. Every summer since 1950, it’s hosted the Midwest Old Threshers Reunion, a five-day celebration of the era when farm equipment was steam-powered.

Old threshers and other parts of the Midwest’s agricultural heritage are preserved in the Richard E. Oetkens Heritage Museums in Mount Pleasant. At the Hazel Grace Pierson Carousel Pavilion, visitors can ride a restored antique carousel—steam-powered, of course.

The Union Block, built in 1861 and still standing in downtown Mount Pleasant, was a hub for civil rights advocates in the 19th century, its visitors including Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth. It also housed the county court offices that awarded Arabella Mansfield her license to practice law in 1869, after she became the first woman in the U.S. to pass the bar exam and be recognized as an attorney.

The final leg of 45 miles and just 1,099 feet of elevation change brings riders to…

Burlington

Burlington is where RAGBRAI LI ends, but it’s where Iowa as part of the United States began. The first raising of the American flag in what became Iowa happened in 1805 in what’s now Burlington’s Crapo Park. In 1838, Burlington became the first capital of the newly created Iowa Territory.

The 85-acre Crapo Park next to the Mississippi is an ideal space to relax and celebrate on July 27. The park has an arboretum, a botanical garden and, as if being adjacent to one of the world’s great rivers wasn’t enough, a lake.

Cyclists looking for a bonus challenge can’t miss Snake Alley, which has a decent claim on the title “Crookedest Street in the World.” The snaking shape of the one-way street was designed to help horses keep their footing as they descended the sharp incline of Heritage Hill in 1894. Now it’s a tourist attraction, and inspired the Snake Alley Criterium, an annual bike race every May with a course that forces riders to try to navigate Snake Alley going uphill.

Jordan Sellergren

all-day breakfast eclectic comfort food “best fried chicken in town”

Visit us for fresh takes on Jersey/Philly sandwiches, burgers, fried chicken, wings, house-baked desserts & breads, full bar, espresso & much more.

New Dinner Menu!

2x 2024 Top Chef Runner-up!

daily specials delivery on chomp

116 E Washington Downtown Iowa City (319) 259-7402

harrysbarandgrilliowacity.com facebook

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

116 S Linn St (319) 337-5029 CLOSED Tuesdays www.recordcollector.co

Magic the Gathering. Video Games. Warhammer. Warmachine. RPGs. Board Games. X-Wing. Dice. LotR. HeroClix. Miniatures. GoT. Blood Bowl. L5R. Pokemon. Yu-Gi-Oh. Kidrobot 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 video 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!

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

UNDER THE STARS

Concerts and camping are a match made in heaven. And rural Iowa.

BY SID pETErSON

Backbone Bluegrass Festival

1358 110th St, Strawberry Point backbonebluegrass.com

The Backbone Bluegrass Festival has been around since 1981 and brings a mix of bluegrass, country and gospel acts to the northeast corner of Iowa. Held in Strawberry Point on the last weekend of July, this summer’s fest is Friday

to Sunday, July 26-28. Aspiring musicians can check out the festival’s guitar, banjo, mandolin, dobro, fiddle and upright bass workshops on Saturing morning, or go fully immersive by attending the Strawberry Jam Camp or the Songwriters Workshop, July 24-26 ($300). Campers also perform the first night of the festival.

Tickets for the festival are $554,

which includes five shows and the Saturday workshops. (Individual day passes are also available.)

Teens 13-16 years old are just $5 per day, and children 12 and under are free. Camping is available on festival grounds for $20 per night (a limited number of 30 Amp sites are available at $25 per night). There are hot showers and a food stand on the grounds.

If camping on festival grounds isn’t your thing, consider making a reservation at Backbone State Park (and the sooner the better). There are two separate campgrounds to choose from, including both nonelectric and electric sites and fourseason cabins. Backbone is Iowa’s first state park, and it boasts one of the highest points in northeast Iowa, the Devil’s Backbone.

Codfish Hollow

Barnstormers

5013 288th Ave, Maquoketa codfishhollowbarnstormers.com

@realcodfishhollow

Codfish Hollow is a one-ofkind venue located just outside Maquoketa, and a magical place to soak up music and retreat from it all. If you’re heading out for a show this spring or summer, be

sure to take advantage of the complimentary camping. Trust, you will want to stay out there as long as you can.

Camping is available the night of a show only. Plan to arrive two hours before the show’s door time to set up. There’s no formal campground, but attendees are welcome to set up in the field and take advantage of the few fire rings and wood onsite. Codfish welcomes campers, pull-behinds, RVs and tents. Be aware there’s no running water, and just a few porta-potties are located near the camping area.

Sleeping on Codfish’s land is ideal both because of its beauty and its practicality. Have a few beers at the barn, then at the end of the night, jump back on the iconic hayride to be taken straight to your bed. But just in case you’d prefer another place to crash, consider Maquoketa Caves State Park and Horseshoe Pond Park, both nearby. Note: Shows sell out quickly at the barn. Be sure to buy tickets as soon as possible once shows are announced.

UPCOMING:

Saturday, May 18 at 8 p.m. Pieta Brown w/ Chastity Brown, Jody McGill, $35

Sunday, May 26 at 8 p.m. Charlie Parr Record Release, $25

Saturday, June 8 at 8 p.m. Them Coulee Boys w/ Long Mama, Cedar County Cobras, $30

Saturday, June 15 at 8 p.m. Miles Nielsen & the Rusted Hearts w/ Erik Koskinen (trio), Marques Morel, $30

Saturday, June 22 at 7 p.m. Murder By Death w/ Wildermiss, $30

Tuesday, June 25 at 8 p.m.

Lucero, $40

Thursday, July 4 at 5 p.m. Barn on

the Fourth: Lady Liberty (ft. Lolo, Annie Humphrey, Awful Purdies, Diane Patterson & Lojo Russo, $40

Tuesday, July 23 at 8 p.m. Wilderado w/ HARBOUR, Windser, $25-110

Saturday, Sept. 14 at 8 p.m.

Horseshoes & Hand Grenades w/ Flash In a Pan, $35

Turkey River Cabin Concerts

24199 295th St, Elkader cabinconcerts.org

@turkeyrivercabinconcerts

Turkey River Cabin Concerts cultivate community through intimate shows, all taking place in a (very) remote section of the Turkey River Valley. There’s no running water and often spotty phone service, but attendees can enjoy the river views, sand volleyball court and miles of trails to explore onsite. You can count on folks doing yoga on Sunday morning.

Tickets to concerts include tent camping, parking and activities. You’ll want to bring your own food and beverages, and what you pack in, you need to pack out. Carpooling is recommended, or take advantage of the canoe/ kayak shuttles.

For the more adventurous concert-goer: BYOB (bring your own boat). Consider kayaking, canoeing, paddleboarding, tubing or floating three miles of the river to the concert site. The float takes approximately 1.5-2 hours.

UPCOMING:

Saturday, May 18 at 3 p.m. Pistol Whippin Party Penguins, Texas Toast, Willy Tea Taylor, The Turkey Buzzards, Clare Doyle, $45-85 Sunday, May 19 at 2 p.m. Pokey LaFarge, $50

Hinterland

3357 St Charles Rd, St Charles hinterlandiowa.com

@hinterlandiowa

Central Iowa’s beloved three-day music and camping festival in St. Charles is returning for its ninth year the first weekend of August—Friday to Sunday, Aug. 2-4. The lineup, announced in January, includes

heavy-hitting indie musicians Hozier, Vampire Weekend, Noah Kahan and Mt. Joy.

Hinterland is known for its sometimes worrisome weather conditions (that is, August in Iowa). So if you’re planning to camp, be prepared for it all; festival-goers have experienced heat, mud and severe storm warnings. Rest assured, Hinterland will go on rain or shine.

The festival is only 30 miles south of Des Moines, so making the trek back and forth each day is doable. Staying over is convenient, though, especially since this year, camping is included with all festival tickets. The type of camping available depends on the ticket purchased. (As of press time, all weekend passes are sold out, but General Admission tickets still remain for Saturday at $145, and SAINTS tickets, $750 per day, are available for Friday and Saturday.)

Tip: Venture to the late-night Campfire Stage. The performances are exclusive for campers each night after the festival headliners finish (around 11 p.m.) until approximately 2 a.m.

Seed Savers Benefit Concert

3074 North Winn Rd, Decorah seedsavers.org

The nonprofit Seed Savers Exchange seeks to steward America’s culturally diverse and endangered garden and crop legacy. They educate and connect people through sharing seeds, plants, stories, and from time to time, music! Their annual benefit concert among the gardens will be held at Heritage Farm on Saturday, Aug. 10.

Go early for wine, beer and a garden tour with Seed Savers founder Diane Ott Whealy. The concert will begin at 7 p.m. One confirmed artist is David Huckfelt; stay tuned for the full lineup announcement. Food trucks will be present, and Toppling Goliath will serve beer and seltzer.

There will not be camping onsite, but organizers highly encourage booking at Pulpit Campground, about a 10-minute drive south.

Anna Reishus / Little Village

via Codfish Hollow Barnstormers

Off the Chain

You know what they say: don’t throw all your discs in one basket. Good thing Iowa has roughly 6,500 baskets.

BY NORBERT SARSFIELD

What sport do you associate with the state of Iowa? Wrestling? Basketball? Football?

Disc golf probably didn’t come to mind, but the Hawkeye State has a long, storied history with the target sport.

According to UDisc, the sport’s most popular scorekeeping and course directory app (founded by two Iowa State University students), Iowa currently has 363 disc golf courses, ranking it third among all states in disc golf courses per capita. The oldest course in the state, Tourist Park in Cedar Falls, was established in 1978.

The PDGA (Professional Disc Golf Association) World Championships have been held in the state twice: in Waterloo/Cedar Falls in 1989 and in Des Moines in 2004. Iowa has also produced two of the greatest female disc golfers in the sport’s history. Juliana Korver, a University of Northern Iowa graduate, won the Female Professional Open (FPO) World Championships five times (1998-2001, 2003), while Des Reading, another UNI graduate, was crowned FPO World Champion three times (2002, 2005, 2006). More recently, Gannon Buhr from Indianola is currently the top ranked Mixed Professional Open (MPO) player on the PDGA tour, Sarah Gilpin of Solon won the FPO Putting World Championships in 2022 and 2023, and the Des Moines Challenge tournament has become one of the most popular stops on the Disc Golf Pro Tour.

A relatively inexpensive and accessible sport, disc golf has seen significant growth in recent years. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, while the professional side of the sport shut down along with other professional sports leagues, new amateur players flocked to local courses. An outdoor recreational activity that could be enjoyed solo or in socially distanced groups, disc golf provided a much-needed distraction during a dark time.

The combination of being able to enjoy the outdoors while connecting with other people was a big draw for Brady Connor, who discovered disc golf around this time while still a high schooler in Tipton. Connor was particularly drawn to “the beautiful scenery it provides and the laidback nature of the game itself,” he said.

“Some of the most amazing views I’ve ever come across have been on disc golf courses … Another thing I’ve come to find is that most of

the people that you meet are incredibly friendly. I have made so many new friends since I started playing disc golf.”

New COVID-era players joined a community of disc golfers that had been playing the sport for decades. Greg Friestad, Associate Professor of Chemistry at the University of Iowa, has been a member of the PDGA since 2009. In addition to the appeal of the outdoors, Friestad also appreciates that disc golf is accessible to young and old outdoorspeople.

“I’m an outdoors enthusiast with a lot of hiking and backpacking in my past,” he said. “Iowa doesn’t have a lot of long-distance hiking options, but disc golf gives me that joy of escaping for a day of walking in the woods. It’s a great way for a 50+ guy like me to get a lot of exercise without the injury risks that come with other competitive sports. It’s two to four miles of walking for a casual round, depending on the course, and tournament competition can easily put eight to 10 miles on my step counter. I’m so glad to have found an active sport I can enjoy well into my 60s and beyond.”

For those interested in trying out disc golf, the first step is getting your hands on a few discs. Advanced disc golfers will often have 15 to 20 discs in their bags, but beginners are best served by starting out with a limited number of discs and learning how they fly. Discs come in a variety of shapes for a variety of purposes, from bevel-edged distance drivers designed to cut through the air efficiently for long flights, to blunt-nosed putters designed for straighter, shorter distances.

You can stock up on supplies at Titan Disc Golf. With physical shops in Cedar Rapids and Des Moines, and an online store at titandiscgolf. com, Titan has by far the largest selection of discs and disc golf accessories in the state.

According to co-owner Joe French, “Both shops are staffed with knowledgeable disc golf veterans who can answer any questions a newer player might have about flight shapes, beginner-friendly

discs and price comparisons between plastic types and manufacturers. We take pride in helping to grow the sport in our communities and beyond. And we love helping players of all skill levels and ages pick out that perfect disc they are missing in their bag.”

Disc golf equipment can also be found at sporting goods stores like Play It Again Sports and Scheels.

Discs in hand, now it’s time to find somewhere to play. Easier courses average about 250 feet between baskets, while the most difficult ones can exceed 400-foot average distances. Of course, hills, trees, bodies of water and other obstacles add to the challenge.

In the Iowa City area, Wetherby Park is a great place for beginners to start. With nine shorter holes and no real rough in which to lose discs, beginners can let their discs fly, learn their flight characteristics, and become comfortable with putting. Next up, the Altmaier Family Park is a fun, challenging 18-hole course in Coralville that will provide opportunities to work on a variety of shot types. A nearly 700-foot, open, downhill final hole invites players to test out their max distance throws. Sugar Bottom is a nice introduction to

Wildcat Bluff recreation Area in Vinton and peninsula park in Iowa City. Norbert Sarsfield

woods golf, with Peninsula Park’s wooded fairways and punishing rough making it the most demanding course in town.

If you’re a glutton for punishment, Becky Zallek Disc Golf Course in Des Moines, according to one Google reviewer, is “a brutal and unforgiving course, but it’s absolutely fun!” The Metro has a wealth of other topnotch courses, among them Ewing Park, with a wooded front nine and open back nine; Daubendiek in Jefferson, a newer, densely wooded course along the Raccoon River; the pro-level Pickard Park in Indianola; and the gorgeously wooded Walnut Ridge Recreation Area and Grandview Park.

Unfortunately, many of the Cedar Rapids area courses were severely damaged by the 2020 derecho. There are plans for Jones Park to be redesigned incorporating some land from the adjacent ball golf course. Redesign work at Legion Park in Marion has been ongoing, and there is hope the new course there will be ready for play this spring. Shaver Park, long the gem of Cedar Rapids disc golf courses, was hit particularly hard by the storm and was rendered unplayable for several years. Through the hard work of the local disc golf club, the course was completely redesigned and reopened last summer. It is once again the most challenging course in the Cedar Rapids area.

Further north is perhaps Iowa’s most challenging course, Wildcat Bluff in Vinton, ranked by UDisc in 2023 as the 16th best disc golf course in the world. Fair warning: check your ego in the parking lot.

For those looking to connect with other players there are several ways to plug into the local disc golf community. In Iowa City a singles league (Beef League) and a random draw doubles league (Iowa City Dubs) meet weekly and rotate courses. The Cedar Rapids PDGA League is a weekly singles league that meets at various courses, while Sunday Dubs at Shaver Park is the local weekly doubles league. The Des Moines Metro Disc Golf Club was founded in 1990 and provides constant opportunities to compete, even in the coldest months. Their Ice Bowl tournament this winter raised $3,000 for the Food Bank of Iowa.

Finally, it is important to know that it requires the work of many volunteers, working in conjunction with local parks departments, to maintain and improve disc golf courses. Joining your local club and participating in course work days is a great way to give back to the local disc golf community, keep your local courses in their best shape, and meet other local disc golfers. Happy discing!

LV EDITORS’ PICKS

2024 RECREATION-FOCUSED EVENTS

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.

Water Sports

Sundays, April 7, 14, 21 at 8:30 a.m. Adult Spring Learn to Row, Beckwith Boathouse, Iowa City, $175

Thursday, May 30 at 6 p.m. Kayak Basics, Jester Park Outdoor Recreation & Wellness Center, Granger, $20

Saturday, June 1 at 8:30 a.m. Fishing Derby, Quarry Springs Park, Colfax

Saturday, June 1 at 9 a.m. National Learn to Row Day, Beckwith Boathouse, $75

Friday, June 7 at 9 a.m. Senior Fishing Day, Easter Lake Event Center, Des Moines, Free

Friday, June 7 at 1 p.m. Family Fishing Basics, Easter Lake Event Center, Free

Saturday, June 8 at 9 a.m. Freedom Festival Cardboard Boat Regatta, Cedar Rapids, Free-$40

Saturday, June 8 at 10 a.m. Great Iowa River Race, Sturgis Ferry Park, Iowa City, $40

Wednesday, June 12 at 9 a.m. River Rats, Jester Park, $135

Friday, June 14 at 10:30 a.m. Canoe Basics, Jester Park, $5

Monday-Thursday, June 24-27 at 9 a.m. Junior Learn to Row, Beckwith Boathouse, $200

Julia DeSpain / Little Village

Look Over There!

The eyes, ears and expertise of hundreds of Iowans have kept this statewide bird club soaring for a century.

BY DAWN FrArY

Founded in 1923, the Iowa Ornithologists’ Union (IOU) has endured for a century as one of Iowa’s most prominent organizations dedicated to avian wildlife. Through organizing field trips to participating in the Christmas Bird Count to partnerships with the Iowa Audubon and Iowa Young Birders, the IOU wants people to care about birds.

“I’m not saying you need to be a hardcore birdwatcher or even watch birds at all,” current IOU President Tyler Harms said via email. “But I do encourage folks to notice birds. Care about birds. Recognize the role that birds play in our natural world.”

With a membership of approximately 400 Iowans, the IOU’s mission is to encourage interest in the identification, study and protection of birds, as well as to unite bird lovers, collect and preserve knowledge on Iowa’s feathered population.

The IOU also provides funding for natural history projects, be it research, habitat restoration or land acquisition. In the last few years the IOU funded projects like the construction of new outdoor aviaries at Iowa Bird Rehabilitation in Des Moines, and nesting pads to observe and survey nighthawks in Grinnell, as well as a grant to study effects of the August 2020 derecho on breeding birds in Palisades-Kepler State Park.

A treasure trove of valuable information, the IOU website features birding guides, checklists for Iowa birds, breeding atlases, rare bird sighting information, Iowa birding hotspots by county, an archive of Iowa bird species and digitized back issues of Iowa Bird Life, the IOU’s quarterly journal.

Many members, including Harms, point to Iowa Bird Life as one of the IOU’s most significant accomplishments. Published annually since the org’s start, Iowa Bird Life includes scientific and special-interest articles, contributed photos and seasonal field reports of notable sightings from across the state.

“Except for the layout and printing, every part of publishing the journal, including the writing and editing, has been done by volunteers since 1931,” Harms said. “That is a monumental accomplishment, in my opinion, and demonstrates the passion and commitment of our members who have helped make it happen over the years.”

In addition to the study and collection of data, the IOU recognizes the importance of nesting a community around birds, from casual admirers to avid birders. While some members are degree-holding scientists, the IOU website points out “the vast majority of our members are ‘ornithologists’ in the broader sense only — amateur birders who are passionate about the wild birds of Iowa.”

Groups like the IOU help to build networks of birders, connecting folks online and IRL, sharing sightings, tips and information. Local bird clubs and other conservation organizations often offer free bird walks or other bird-centric events like lectures and festivals. It’s almost impossible to not learn something while birding with others; more birders means more eyes, more ears and more knowledge.

While birding provides a social outlet for some, others prefer to go it alone and immerse themselves in the peaceful solitude of nature, which

has its own benefits. “Evidence is there to support the conclusion that contact with nature benefits our mood, our psychological well-being, our mental health, and our cognitive functioning,” University of Washington environmental psychologist Gregory Bratman wrote in an article for Audubon.org.

We are perhaps more disconnected from the natural world than we have ever been, and birding is a really simple but satisfying way to get reacquainted with nature. It is an activity that invites stillness, patience, quiet and connection. It requires communion with the environment, which can be grounding and centering.

Birding rouses our curiosity. It engages our senses and stimulates our brains. We begin to remember the names and habits of different birds, to recognize songs and calls, to observe their movement and flight. It requires that we sharpen our awareness and develop an ability to hone in on the tiniest details.

After a while, a birder starts paying attention to more than just the birds themselves. The simple activity of birding can connect us with nature on a much broader, ecological scale.

The basics of birding

Fortunately, birding is one of the easiest recreational activities to get into. It’s accessible to many and relatively inexpensive, because birds are literally everywhere—all we have to do is begin to notice them. Look! There’s a black-capped

An egret in its habitat in Eastern Iowa. Dawn Frary

EDITORS’ PICKS

Tuesday, July 9 at 5:30 p.m. LGBTQ+ OUTside Adult Meetup: Kayaking & Paddleboarding, Raccoon River Park, Des Moines, $15

Friday, July 12 at 1 p.m. Shinrin Yoku & Kayaking Combo, Jester Park, $35

Saturday, July 13 at 7 a.m. Diving, Iowa Summer Games, Beyer Hall Pool, Ames, $27-37

Monday-Thursday, July 29-Aug.1 at 9 a.m. Junior Learn to Row, Beckwith Boathouse, $200

Monday-Thursday, Aug. 12-15 at 9 a.m. Junior Learn to Row, Beckwith Boathouse, $200

On Wheels

Saturday, April 13 at 10 a.m. Ephemeral Wildflower Tour, Iowa City Bike Library, Free w/registration

Saturday, May 4 at 8 a.m. granGABLE, Coralville, $45-150

Saturday, May 4 at 10 a.m. Mayor’s Annual Ride, Des Moines Parks and Recreation Admin Office, $35-50

Friday-Saturday, May 10-11. Kalona Horseshoe, $10-100

Saturday, May 11 at 10:30 a.m. New Pi Annual Co-op 2 Co-op Bike Ride, Iowa City, Free

Monday, May 13 at 6:30 p.m. Gravel Curious, World of Bikes, Iowa City, Free

Julia DeSpain / Little Village

chickadee right now.

There is no “right” way to observe birds, nor are there any gear or training requirements. (That said, a decent pair of binoculars is certainly helpful.) Some birders prefer to trek into the field prepared to collect data using professional-grade equipment while others are content to appreciate what goes on in their own backyard.

Whatever your birding style, be respectful: of the land/environment, of other birders and, of course, of the birds. Check local thrift shops for optics like scopes or binoculars and hit the trails. Or, put out a bird feeder, grab a guide*, and start identifying who shows up. That’s it; that’s birding.

(*This author recommends Stan Tekiela’s Birds of Iowa and/or The Kaufman Field Guide to Nature of the Midwest.)

Hundreds of birds in Iowa are common year-round residents while others occur only during seasonal migration. Iowa lies within the Mississippi Flyway migratory route, which sees thousands of seasonal visitors from massive pods of pelicans to colorful warblers to the occasional snowy owl.

Locate birding hotspots in your area, which may vary depending on the time of year. Get to know Iowa’s songbirds, raptors, shorebirds and waterfowl. Learn to identify our frequent fliers by sight and sound. Take note of their habits, movement and behavior—recording your observations helps to identify patterns. Being able to recognize the regulars makes it easier to notice when something unusual or unexpected shows up, which can be exhilarating. Have you ever spotted an elusive pileated woodpecker? It is a RUSH.

Notice which birds do or don’t appear each season. Hundreds of birds in Iowa are common year-round residents while others occur only during seasonal migration. Iowa lies within the Mississippi Flyway migratory route, which sees thousands of seasonal visitors from massive pods of pelicans to colorful warblers to the occasional snowy owl. Understanding migration patterns and behavior leads to an understanding of how our larger seasonal cycles affect birding, and birds themselves.

Once a birder starts noticing birds they don’t really stop, which is beneficial to both parties.

“I think our birds suffer from lack of awareness, or lack of being seen,” Harms said. “Some may argue [with] this because birdwatching has increased in popularity as an outdoor recreation activity in recent years. However, I don’t believe this increase in awareness and popularity is sufficiently matching the rate of loss our birds are facing. To make a difference, to reverse nearly across-the-board population declines in our birds, we need many more people to notice and care about our birds.”

When asked what he views as some of the most prominent challenges currently facing Iowa birds and their habitats, Harms replied, “Where do I start? Our birds navigate myriad challenges each year, many of which are caused by people. Habitat loss and degradation has been and continues to be a major threat to birds and other wildlife in Iowa and across North America. For birds to find a safe place to nest or to stop to refuel along a migratory journey is an increasingly challenging feat.”

Being a bird is difficult. Most wild birds face an almost 70 percent mortality rate in their first year of life alone. Many are vulnerable to predators in the wild but we, humans, are their greatest threat.

“If you want to do a bit more, consider planting native plants in your yard. Volunteer for or contribute financially to a local nature center or conservation nonprofit to help raise awareness and support for bird conservation,” Harms advised. “But perhaps most important—help others care about birds. Tell them about your favorite bird, about what birds mean to you, and how caring about birds not only helps the birds, but it helps us too.”

An ospry spotted in Eastern Iowa Dawn Frary

$39 FEEDS A

FOR ONE WEEK

EDITORS’ PICKS

Thursdays, May 16, June 20, July 18,

Aug 15 and Sept. 19 at 6 p.m. South Side Leisure Bike Ride, Broadway Neighborhood Center, Iowa City, Free

Saturday, May 18 at 7:30 a.m. Pigtails Ride, High Trestle Trail, Ankeny, $62-100

Saturday, May 18 at 10 a.m. Sugar Cubed Marathon, Sugar Bottom Bike Trail, Solon, $30-100

Sunday, May 19, 9:30 a.m., Skate DSM

Push Start Beginner Clinic, Lauridsen Skate Park, Des Moines, $40 (advance registration required)

Sunday, May 19 at 1 p.m. Pedal Power, Terry Trueblood Recreation Area, Iowa City, Free

Sunday, May 26, 9:30 a.m., Skate DSM

Push Start Beginner Clinic, Lauridsen Skate Park, Des Moines, $40 (advance registration required)

Saturday, June 1 at 8 a.m. Iowa Scholastic Mountain Bike Series, Sugar Bottom Bike Trail, $10

Sunday, June 9, 9:30 a.m., Skate DSM

Push Start Beginner Clinic, Lauridsen Skate Park, Des Moines, $40 (advance registration required)

Saturday, June 29 at 10 a.m. Bikes, Brews & Blues, Toppling Goliath Brewing Co., Decorah, Free

Saturday-Saturday, July 20-27. RAGBRAI, Glenwood-Burlington, $50275

Saturday, July 20 at 11:30 a.m. Cycling Time Trial, Summer Iowa Games, Cambridge, $40-77

Sunday, July 21 at 8:30 a.m. Cycling Road Race, Summer Iowa Games, Ames, $40-77

Sunday, June 23, 9:30 a.m., Skate DSM

Push Start Beginner Clinic, Lauridsen Skate Park, Des Moines, $40 (advance registration required)

Friends Who Float Together

Paddling enthusiasts hope to harness community power to advocate on behalf of clean water.

BY ACHILLES FERGUS SEASTROM

Everything in nature is connected, including us. Humans have been struggling with this concept since Alexander von Humboldt, in the mid-19th century and somewhat radically for the time, suggested that all of nature is an interconnected ecosystem. Even if this idea may seem obvious to us in the 21st century, we still struggle with it, and for good reason. Recognizing our connection to all of nature means we have to keep all of nature in mind when considering how to best manage our resources and make decisions. That, if nothing else, is just a lot of responsibility.

But for one group of Iowans, the solution is relatively simple: a floating trip down your nearest Iowa waterway.

On a chilly Saturday in January, a local retail store, CrawDaddy Outdoors, hosted its seventh annual Paddle Fest in Waverly, Iowa. Paddle Fest is a small conference organized by and for the paddling sport enthusiasts of northeastern Iowa. This year’s conference featured talks on subjects like whitewater paddling trips and paddling safety. However, Paddle Fest also concerns itself deeply with conservation and Iowa water quality. Interspersed with the expected paddling fare, the schedule of events included talks on Iowa water quality, watershed restoration and the impacts of dams on safety and conservation.

Water conservation is a fundamental focus of the paddling community, and has been central to CrawDaddy Outdoors’ ethos since Darrin and Janeen Siesken first opened the store in 2005. After growing it into one of Iowa’s most celebrated Main Street businesses and one of the Midwest’s largest kayak stores, the Sieskens passed the torch to Jamie Borglum and wife Renee on Jan. 1, 2024, who share the Sieskens’ mindset.

“Our basic belief about conservation and environmentalism,” Jamie Borglum said, “is that you teach someone to love something and they’ll take care of it.”

Vern Fish, a recreational paddler and co-chair of Paddle Fest with Darrin Siesken, completely agrees. “This group [of paddling enthusiasts] has always wanted to protect waterways,” he said.

The most recent testing by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR) found just 24 percent of stream segments and 30 percent of lakes tested

“Our basic belief about conservation and environmentalism is that you teach someone to love something and they’ll take care of it.” —Jamie Borglum

in the state could be considered healthy. That’s actually a slight improvement from the DNR’s 2022 statewide testing, but the ongoing drought is likely a major factor in that improvement.

Much of Iowa has been experiencing a drought since July 2020, and the meager amount of rain has reduced the amount of fertilizer runoff from farm fields that pollutes waterways with nitrates. But those nitrates remain on the fields and an increase in rainfall could result in a massive increase in runoff.

That’s what happened in 2013, when an exceptionally wet spring followed years of drought and nitrate levels in Iowa waterways increased by more than 400 percent. Some forecasts predict a warmer spring with increased rainfall this year.

The importance of conservation runs deep with Fish. Fish is the former executive director of the Black Hawk County Conservation Board as well as the current president of the conservation group Friends of Wabakimi. He also serves on the Board of Directors for the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation and the Conservation Corps of Iowa & Minnesota.

Where the average Iowan is concerned, he sees a personal connection with water as fundamental to successful conservation. “Go out and play in the water! See what’s happening and be an advocate,” Fish urged.

Fish has dedicated his career to Iowa conservation and believes firmly that meaningful improvements have been made, but the Iowa water quality issues that Paddle Fest addresses are still many and complex. First, of course, is the excessive fertilizer use in Iowa’s extensive agricultural system. That causes nitrate and phosphorus buildup in our water systems. Iowa municipalities must then remove them to keep drinking water safe. Even then, some of the buildup filters out of the state and contributes to problems like the Gulf of

Mexico’s oxygen-deprived dead zone.

Erosion and sediment loss are also concerns, as are other long-term ecological changes. Precolonial Iowa once housed vast wetlands that helped prevent catastrophic floods. However, they were drained to make more room for agriculture, causing difficulties for Iowa’s flood management systems, evidenced by the devastating floods of 2008.

“If we’d had all our wetlands,” Fish said of the historic event, “we would have had a big rain, but not a flood like that.”

So why do the hosts of Paddle Fest think a paddling conference is the appropriate place to raise these concerns? It comes back to connection and community. Borglum, Fish, and other supporters of Paddle Fest operate with the assumption that connection and community allow us to care about the environment. Paddling sport enthusiasts, because they spend time with the water, will likely be receptive to concerns about Iowa’s waterways and want to advocate for solutions.

Clark Porter, a farm manager and environmental specialist with the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship, works mostly with farmers, advocating for sustainability and supporting farmers making changes. Though his work is in the agricultural field, Porter was at Paddle Fest too, presenting on agricultural impacts on Iowa’s water quality.

“Anyone who recreates in the outdoors has an ethical responsibility to advocate for conservation,” Porter said.

If you’d like to experience the close connection and dedication of Paddle Fest’s community and engage personally with the larger connections water makes in our world, you could take advice from Vern Fish.

“Iowa is lucky to have so many state-designated water trails. Go floating.”

Julia DeSpain / Little Village

EDITORS’ PICKS

Saturday, Aug. 10 at 8 a.m. Courage Ride, Big Grove Brewery, Iowa City, $75

Saturday, Aug. 10 at 7 p.m. core4, Wilson’s Orchard & Farm, Iowa City, $114

Sunday, Sept. 8 at 9:30 a.m. Sugar Bottom Scramble, Sugar Bottom Bike Trail, $30

Sunday, Sept. 15 at 3 p.m. Ride 4 Youth, Terry Trueblood Recreation Area, Iowa City

Saturday-Sunday, Sept. 21-22. Capital City Cross, Mullets, Des Moines

Ball/Disc Games

Friday, April 19 at 7 p.m. Intramural Kickball, Hawkeye Recreation Fields, Iowa City, Free

Friday-Saturday, April 19-20. Summit League Tennis Championships, Roger Knapp Tennis Center, Des Moines

Saturday, April 27 at 11 a.m. Intramural Disc Golf, Peninsula Disc Golf Course, Iowa City

Saturday and Sunday, April 27 and 28. Intramural Sand Volleyball, Hawkeye Recreation Fields

Sunday, May 5 at 7 p.m. Peninsula Singles, Peninsula Disc Golf Course, Iowa City, $45-65

Tuesday, June 11 at 5:30 p.m. LGTBQ+ OUTside Adult Meetup: Intro to Disc Golf, Southwoods Park, West Des Moines, $5

The Long Game

A brief history of a pivotal era in women’s basketball: six-on-six.

BY PAUL BRENNAN

More than 50 years before number 22 of the Iowa Hawkeyes was amazing basketball fans and creating new ones, number 55 on the girls basketball team of Union-Whitten High School in Harden County was doing the same. The six-onsix era of girls basketball in Iowa had a lot of dynamic players and high scorers, but even among them, Denise Long stood out. A forward who scored more than 100 points in four games in her high school career, Long would go on to make history as the first woman drafted by the NBA.

Not the WNBA, the NBA. Even Long was surprised by that.

But if a six-on-six player was going to be thrust into the national spotlight, it’s no surprise it would be an Iowan. Because Iowa high schools embraced this style of girls basketball more enthusiastically than almost anyone else. It was mainly played in small, rural schools like UnionWhitten High, where Long was one of 34 seniors who graduated in 1969. In small towns with a team, the girls basketball games were an important part of the community’s social life, from the first six-on-six high school games in the state in 1920 to the final ones in 1993.

It was inevitable that girls would want to play basketball after the game invented by James Naismith in a Massachusetts gym in 1891 gained popularity around the country. It was also inevitable that in early 20th century America there would be worries that girls playing a “boy’s game” would lead to un-ladylike behavior. So rules were devised and uniforms designed for a female version of basketball.

The original six-on-six uniforms were long socks, voluminous bloomers and long sleeve blouses. They concealed all skin south of the neck, except for the hands. The rules of the game were almost as restrictive. The uniform evolved with the times, eventually looking like the gear used today. The rules did not evolve.

It was a half-court game. Three forwards from one team trying to score, three guards from the other team playing defense. The reverse lineup on the other side of the centerline. No crossing the centerline, you stayed on one side.

You couldn’t dribble the ball more than twice in one possession. When not dribbling, you couldn’t hold the ball for more than three seconds. Any physical contact was a foul. Committing a breach of decorum by failing to

raise your hand when called for a foul got you a technical foul.

Playing within these strict limitations, the girls and their coaches developed a fast game with lots of passing and shooting. And when it came to shooting, Denise Long was a sensation.

In 1968, the 5’11” forward set a record by scoring 111 points in a regular season game. She also set records for most points in a state tournament game (93 points), most points in a state tournament (282 points), most points in a season (1,986 points) and most career points (6,250 points). Even though Long was a long-distance shooter, all field goals counted for two points, because the three-point line didn’t exist yet.

In February 1969, Sports Illustrated featured Long in a story. The writer reached deep into his bag of incoherent Iowa cliches to describe her: “Like a Grant Wood portrait until she moves, then she’s all swiftness and grace.”

Two months later, Long got a phone call informing her she had been selected in the NBA draft. Franklin Mieuli, the owner of the San Francisco Warriors (now the Golden State Warriors) had used his last pick in the 13th round of that year’s draft to choose Long. Mieuli, who was often politely described as “eccentric” (because he was rich), had never spoken to Long and didn’t give her any advance warning. Long would later tell reporters that when she got the call saying she’d been drafted, she was confused and for a moment thought the caller was telling her she’d been drafted into the military.

No woman had ever been drafted before, and NBA Commissioner Walter Kennedy wasn’t about to let such a change happen. He immediately voided the Warrior’s pick on the grounds women didn’t play professional basketball.

Long did fly out to San Francisco to meet with Mieuli and the Warriors, unaware it was basically a publicity stunt. Mieuli wanted to start his own women’s basketball league to play exhibition matches before Warriors games. Eccentric but cheap, Mieuli expected the women in his league to play for free. The league, which he tried to build around Long—paying her $5,000—failed.

The WNBA wouldn’t be founded until 1996. There were no professional playing opportunities for Long to pursue. College opportunities weren’t much better. Before Title IX became law in 1972 the money available for women’s college athletics was meager, and few colleges had a women’s basketball team. The University of Iowa didn’t field a women’s team until 1974.

Long did get some college offers, but scholarship amounts were so low, she wasn’t able to accept them. In 1975, she earned a degree in Bible theology at Faith Baptist Bible College in Ankeny. In the ’90s, Long attended Drake University, graduating with a pharmacy degree,

before going on to a long and successful career as a pharmacist in Kansas.

The push for greater equality between men’s and women’s sports jumpstarted by Title IX led to the demise of six-on-six. High school girls were increasingly interested in playing full-court fiveon-five, with all the normal rules boys played under instead of the six-on-six restrictions. Starting in 1984, Iowa schools were allowed to choose between five-on-five or six-on-six for their girls basketball teams. Nine years later, the last school playing six-on-six switched to five-on-five.

Although it’s been 31 years since the last high school six-on-six game was played, there’s still a strong connection between that older style and the current UI women’s basketball team that is transforming college basketball.

Hawkeye Head Coach Lisa Bluder played six-on-six growing up in Linn County. Associate Head Coach Jan Jensen not only played six-onsix at Elk Horn-Kimballton High School in rural Shelby County, her grandmother Lottie was a star on the Audubon High School team that won the Iowa state championship in 1921. Lottie’s real name was Dorcas Andersen, but she was given her nickname because she scored “a lot of” points.

Caitlin Clark was born nine years after the last six-on-six high school game in Iowa, but the record-smashing star has made it clear she respects the players of that very different game.

“When I hear from a lot of people that played basketball, whether it was six-on-six however many years ago, I think they’re blown away at where women’s basketball is now and the platform we get to play on,” Clark told reporters earlier this season. “That doesn’t come if it’s not for the people who came before us.”

Denise long sets up for a free throw in 1968. Iowa PBS

EDITORS’ PICKS

Americana rock band with Jobi Riccio

Martha Redbone

Blues & roots singer

Co-Presented by: Natural Talent Music

Ratboys

Indie rock band with Ducks Ltd. and Early Girl

Willy

Alt-country singer/songwriter with the Turkey Buzzards

Oumou

Suzanne

Singer of “Tom’s Diner” & “Luka”

Co-Presented by: True Endeavors Freddie

TikTok

Hip-hop

Sunday, June 16 at 8 a.m. Peninsula Triples, Peninsula Disc Golf Course, $35-45

Monday, June 17 at 9 a.m. JoCo County I-Club Golf Outing, Finkbine Golf Course, $500-600

Friday-Sunday, July 12-14. Soccer, Iowa Summer Games, Southeast Recreation Complex, Ames, $280-435

Thursday, July 18 at 8 a.m. Iowa PGA: Pee Wee, Iowa Summer Games, Veenker Memorial Golf Course, Ames, $40

Saturday, July 20. Sand Volleyball, Iowa Summer Games, The Sands Volleyball Club, Des Moines, $55-175

Saturday and Sunday, July 20 and 21. Pickleball, Iowa Summer Games, State Gym, Ames, $30-40

Saturday and Sunday, July 20 and 21. Tennis, Iowa Summer Games, Site TBD, Ames, $25-35

Saturday and Sunday, July 20 and 21. Racquetball, Iowa Summer Games, Lied Recreation Athletic Center, Ames, $25-35

Yoga

Sundays, April 7, 14, 21, 28 at 8 a.m. Yoga at The Highlander, The Highlander Hotel, Iowa City, Free

Sundays, April 7-June 30 at 10:15 a.m Ecstatic Dance, Des Moines Ballroom Studio, Free-$20

Monday, April 8 at 6 p.m. Crystals & Yoga, James Theater, Iowa City, $35

Tuesday, April 9 at 6:30 p.m.

Mindfulness and Movement, Jester Park Nature Center, Granger, $15

Thursday, May 16 at 10 a.m. Beach Yoga, Lake Macbride Beach, Solon, $15

Monday, May 20 at 7:30 p.m. Sunset Yoga, Jester Park Nature Center, Granger, $15

Saturdays, June 1-Sept. 28 at 9 a.m. Yoga in the Park, Gray’s Lake Park, Des Moines, Free

Thursday, June 13 at 10 a.m.

Beach Yoga, Lake Macbride Beach, Solon, $15

Monday, June 24 at 8 p.m.

Sunset Yoga, Jester Park Nature Center, $15

Thursday, July 11 at 10 a.m.

Beach Yoga, Lake Macbride Beach, Solon, $15

Tuesday, July 23 at 7:30 p.m.

Sunset Yoga, Jester Park Nature Center, $15

Thursday, Aug. 15 at 10 a.m.

Beach Yoga, Lake Macbride Beach, Solon, $15

Monday, Aug. 19 at 7 p.m.

Sunset Yoga, Jester Park Nature Center, $15

Running/Hiking

Saturday, April 13 at 8 a.m. Iowa

Trail Run Series: Sugar Bottom, Sugar Bottom Public Use, Solon, $38-48

Saturday, April 13 at 8 a.m. Live Healthy 5k, WinnMed, Decorah, $30

Saturday, April 13 at 9 a.m.

Loop the Lake, Gray’s Lake Park, Des Moines, $50-60

Saturday, April 20 at 8 a.m. Donut Run, Ada Hayden Heritage Park, Ames, $25-30

Sunday, April 21 at 7:30 a.m. Drake Road Races, Drake Stadium, Des Moines, $35-110

Thursdays, April 25 and May 23 at 7 p.m. Night Hike, Prairie Rose State Park, Harlan, Free

Saturday, April 27 at 8 a.m. Fleet Feet Social Run, Fleet Feet, Des Moines, Free

Saturday, April 27 at 12 p.m. 5k Beer Run, Alluvial Brewing Company, Ames, $35-50

Saturday, May 4 at 8 a.m. Palisades Punisher/Promenade, Palisades Kepler State Park, Mt. Vernon, $25-55

Sunday, May 5 at 6:30 a.m. Des Moines Women’s Half Marathon, Jasper Winery, $60-180

Sunday, May 5 at 10 a.m. 40th Annual Red Shoe Run/Walk, Lower City Park, Iowa City, $45

Thursday, May 16 at 5 p.m. Amazing FundRacer, Confluence Brewing Company, Des Moines

Saturday, May 18 at 7:30 a.m. Buzz Run + Stylin Paws Downtown Dog Walk, Fleet Feet, Des Moines,

Saturday, May 18 at 8 a.m.

Central Iowa Heart Walk, Iowa State Capitol, Des Moines

Sunday, May 19 at 10 a.m. Girls on the Run 5K, Iowa State Capitol, Des Moines, $25-35

Monday, May 27 at 7 a.m. Quad Cities Running Festival, The Rust Belt, East Moline, $

Saturday, June 8 at 8 a.m. Capital City Pride Stride 5K, Brenton Skating Plaza, $30

Saturday, June 8 at 8 a.m. Iowa Trail Run Series: Ledges, Ledges State Park, Madrid, $38

Saturday, June 15 at 7 a.m. Quad Cities Triathlon, West Lake Park, Davenport, $90-170

Saturday, June 22 at 4 p.m. Balloon Glow 5K & 10K, Jones Park Disc Golf Course, Cedar Rapids

Saturday, June 22 at 7:30 p.m. Iowa Trail Run Series: A Midsummer’s Night Run, Ames, $38

Sunday, June 23 at 8 a.m. Ames Triathlon, Ada Hayden Park, Ames, $50-175

Sunday, July 7 at 9 a.m. Ditmars Wine Run 5k, Council Bluffs, $60

Cedar Rapids

tourismcedarrapids.com

Julia DeSpain / Little Village

Saturday, July 13 at 8 a.m. Adult

Cross Country Race, ISU Cross Country Course, Ames, $27-40

Saturday, July 13 at 3 p.m.

Midnight Madness, Ames Fitness Center, $30-50

Saturday, July 20 at 7 a.m.

Summer Sizzler, Des Moines, $19-40

Saturday, Aug. 3 at 7 a.m. Iowa

Trail Run Series: Waubonsie, Hamburg, $33-50

Sunday, Aug. 4 at 12 p.m. Iowa

Brewery Running Series: 5k Beer Run Confluence Brewing Company, Des Moines, $35-50

Saturday, Aug. 10 at 6:15 a.m.

Mines of Spain Trail Races, Dubuque, $35-60

Saturday, Sept. 7 at 9 a.m.

YMCA Triathlon, George Wyth State Park, Waterloo, $60

Sunday, Sept. 15 at 7 a.m. Iowa

Trail Run Series: Yellow River State Park, Harpers Ferry

Sunday, Sept. 22 at 9 a.m. Iowa

Trail Run Series: Jester Park, Granger, $35

Sunday, Oct. 6 at 8 a.m. Run for the Schools, Downtown Iowa City, $25-45

Sunday, Oct. 6 at 9 a.m. Iowa

Trail Run Series: Annett Nature Center, Indianola, $38

Saturday, Oct. 12 at 8:30 a.m.

Hot Cider Hustle, Cedar River Trail, Cedar Rapids, $12.99-110

Saturday, Oct. 26 at 12 p.m. Boos & Brews 5k Beer Run, 515 Brewing Company, Clive, $35-50

Community/Cultural

Sunday, April 14 at 2 p.m. Simple Campfire Cooking, Prairie Rose State Park, Harlan, Free

Friday, April 19 at 10 a.m. Earth Day in Action, Jester Park, Granger, Free

Friday-Sunday, April 19-21. Becoming an Outdoors Woman Workshop, Camp lo-Dis-E-Ca, Solon, $144-320

Saturday, April 20 at 10 a.m. Spring Cleanup, PalisadesKepler State Park, Mount Vernon, Free

Saturday, April 20 at 11 a.m. University of Iowa Powwow, Johnson County Fairgrounds, Iowa City, Free

Saturday, April 20 at 12 p.m. Special Olympics Polar Plunge, George Wyth Lake, Waterloo

Saturday, April 20 at 7:30 p.m.

Freddie Old Soul, Wright House of Fashion, Englert Theatre, Iowa City, $10-15

Fridays, May 10-Sept. 20 at 6:30 p.m. Friday Night Concert Series, Ped Mall Stage, Iowa City, Free

Sundays, May 25-Sept. 28 at 6:30 p.m. Rhythms at Riverfront Crossing, Iowa City, Free

Tuesdays, June 4-Aug. 20 at 6:30 p.m. Music on the Move, Various Venues, Iowa City, Free

Friday-Sunday, June 7-9. Des Moines Pride, Historic East Village, Des Moines, Free

Saturday, June 15 at 12 p.m. Iowa City Pride, Downtown Iowa City, Free

Friday-Sunday, July 5-7. Iowa City Jazz Festival, Downtown Iowa City, Free

Friday and Saturday, July 12 and 13. 80/35 Music Festival, Water Works Park, Des Moines

Saturday, July 13 at 6 p.m. North Liberty Blues & BBQ, Centennial Park, Free

Friday, July 26 at 6 p.m. Adult Recess, Captain Roy’s, Des Moines, Free

Friday-Sunday, Aug. 2-4. Hinterland Music Festival, Avenue of the Saints Amphitheater, Saint Charles

Thursday-Sunday, Aug. 8-18. Iowa State Fair, Iowa State Fairgrounds, Des Moines

Saturday, Aug. 10 at 9 a.m. Adult Summer Camp Retreat, Easter Lake, Des Moines, $50

Friday-Sunday, Aug. 23-25. World Food & Music Festival, Western Gateway Park, Des Moines, Free

Saturday, Aug. 24 at 10 a.m. Paddle & Pick Up, Gray’s Lake, Des Moines, $5

Sing-Along

SAT APR 13 | 7:30 PM | THE IDEAL THEATER AND BAR

“Sit, drink, listen, and sing along with beloved jazz standards, Broadway tunes, and opera selections led by some of the area’s finest singers. With the beautiful ambience of the Ideal Theater and Bar, custom opera-themed cocktails, Hangry Lady charcuterie boards, and all your favorite standards from Sinatra to Scarlatti, this premium event is sure to be a feast for all the senses.”

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Aries author Eric G. Wilson claims, “Darker emotional states—doubt, confusion, alienation, despair—inspire a deeper and more durable experience of the sacred than contentment does.” I disagree. I know for a fact that an exquisite embrace of life’s holiness is equally possible through luminous joy and boisterous triumph and exultant breakthroughs. Propagandists of the supposed potency of misery like Wilson are stuck in a habit of mind that’s endemic to the part of civilization that’s rotting and dying. In any case, Aries, I’m pleased to tell you that in the coming weeks, you will have abundant opportunities to glide into sacred awareness on the strength of your lust for life and joie de vivre.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Will China and Russia remain stifling authoritarian states for many more decades? Will our grandchildren fear tyrannical leaders who want to impose their brutal anti-democratic ideas on everyone alive? In a related matter, do you wonder if humans will succeed in halting the destruction of the environment? Or will our descendants struggle to survive on a hot, polluted, damaged planet? Sorry I’m asking you to think about such sad realities. But now is a time when it’s personally important for you to ponder the future of the earth—and resolve to do something, in your own small ways, in loving service to that future. Meditate on the riddle from Lewis Carroll’s book Through the Looking Glass: “It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards.”

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): The genius polymath Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) contributed much treasure to science and engineering. One encyclopedia sums up his legacy: “the father of observational astronomy, modern-era classical physics, the scientific method and modern science.” Unfortunately, many of Galileo’s ideas conflicted with the teachings of Catholicism. The church fathers hounded him for years, even arresting him and putting him on trial. The Vatican eventually apologized—but not until 1992, 350 years after Galileo died. I expect that you, too, will generate many new approaches and possibilities in the coming months, Gemini—not Galileo level, of course, but still: sufficiently unprecedented to rouse the resistance of conventional wisdom. I don’t believe you will have to wait long to be vindicated, though.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): Now would be a perfect time to prove your love. How? You might begin by being nice, considerate, sensitive, sweet and tender. Then I hope you will add sublime, scintillating touches. Maybe you will tell your beloved allies beautiful truths about themselves—revelations that make them feel deeply understood and appreciated. Maybe you will give them gifts or blessings they have wanted for a long time but never managed to get for themselves. Maybe you will serenade them with their favorite songs, or write a poem or story about them, or buy them a symbol that inspires their spiritual quest. And perhaps you will describe the ways they have changed your life for the better.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Leo naturalist and ornithologist William Henry Hudson (1841-1922) said, “I am not a lover of lawns. Rather would I see daisies in their thousands, ground ivy, hawkweed, and even the hated plantain with tall stems, and dandelions with splendid flowers and fairy down, than the toowell-tended lawn.” I encourage you to adopt his attitude toward everything in your life for the next few weeks. Always opt for unruly beauty over tidy regimentation. Choose lush vitality over pruned efficiency. Blend your fate with influences that exult in creative expressiveness, genial fertility and deep feelings. (P.S.: Michael Pollan says, “A lawn is nature under totalitarian rule.”)

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): I praise and celebrate you for your skills at helping other people access their resources and activate their potential. I hope you are rewarded well for your gorgeous

By Rob Brezsny

service. If you are not, please figure out how to correct the problem in the coming months. I will add two more assignments: 1. Upgrade your skills at helping yourself access your own resources and activate your potential. 2. Be forthright and straightforward in asking the people you help to help you.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): I don’t regard a solar eclipse as a bad omen. On the contrary, I believe it may purge and cleanse stale old karma. On some occasions, I have seen it flush away emotional debts and debris that have been accumulating for years. So how shall we interpret the total solar eclipse that will electrify your astrological house of intimate togetherness in the coming days? I think it’s a favorable time to be brave and daring as you upgrade your best relationships. What habits and patterns are you ready to reinvent and reconfigure? What new approaches are you willing to experiment with?

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): At your best, you Scorpios are not invasive manipulators. Rather, you are catalysts. You are instigators of transformation, resurrectors of dead energy, awakeners of numb minds. The people you influence may not be aware that they long for and draw on your influence. They may think you are somehow imposing it on them, when, in fact, you are simply being your genuine, intense self and they are reaching out to absorb your unruly healing. In the coming weeks, please keep in mind what I’ve said here.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): In my astrological opinion, it’s prime time for you to shower big wild favors on your beautiful self. Get the fun underway with a period of rigorous self-care: a physical check-up, perhaps, and visits with the dentist, therapist, hairstylist and acupuncturist. Try new healing agents. Then move on to luxurious indulgences like a massage, a psychic reading, gourmet meals, an emotionally potent movie, exciting new music and long, slow love-making. Anything else, Sagittarius? Make a list and carry out these tasks with the same verve and determination you would give to any important task.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): The coming days will be a favorable time for you to wrestle with an angel or play chess with a devil. You will have extraordinary power in any showdown or collaboration with spiritual forces. Your practical intelligence will serve you well in encounters with enigmas. Here’s a hot tip: Never assume that any being, human or divine, is holier or wiser than you. You will have a special knack for finding compassionate solutions to address even the knottiest dilemmas.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Your featured organ of the month is your nose. This may sound beyond the scope of predictable possibilities, but I’m serious: You will make robust decisions and discriminating choices if you get your sniffer fully involved. So I advise you to favor and explore whatever smells good. Cultivate a nuanced appreciation for what aromas can reveal. If there’s a hint of a stink or an odd tang, go elsewhere. The saying “follow your nose” is especially applicable. P.S.: I recommend you take steps to expose yourself to a wide array of scents that energize you and boost your mood.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): When is the best time to ask for a raise or an increase in benefits? Can astrology reveal favorable periods for being aggressive about getting more of what we want? In the system I use, the time that’s 30 to 60 days after your birthday is most likely to generate good results. Another phase is 210 to 240 days after your birthday. Keep in mind these estimates may be partly fanciful and playful and mythical. But then in my system, fanciful and playful and mythical actions have an honored place. Self-fulfilling prophecies are more likely to be fulfilled if you regard them as fun experiments rather than serious, literal rules.

MONYS A. HAGEN

The Worldly Game: The Story of Baseball in the Amana Colonies

PENFIELD BOOKS

In “The Obvious Child”—the lead single from Paul Simon’s 1990 Rhythm of the Saints album—the iconic songwriter sings “The cross is in the ballpark.” It’s a striking and unexpected image in the flow of the song, and it has always seemed to me a sharp encapsulation of several intertwined threads of American life, including religion, race and, of course, baseball.

In The Worldly Game: The Story of Baseball in the Amana Colonies (January 2024), Dr. Monys A. Hagen offers an in-depth look at the intersection of religion and baseball (and, to a lesser extent, race) in the Amanas.

Making extensive use of oral histories, Hagen follows the history of the American Pastime in the Amana Colonies from its days as an activity declared verboten by the Elders of the Community of True Inspiration (the German religious order that founded what was then called Amana Colony in 1855) to the game’s irrepressible and important role in building community pride and connection.

Along the way, we meet a range of individuals, from a pair of doctors who advocated for the game despite the Elders misgivings to Bill Zuber, the most famous ballplayer to hail from Amanas. Zuber pitched for the Cleveland Indians, the Washington Senators, the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox during a Major League Baseball career that stretched from 1936 to 1947.

Hagan’s research certainly

demonstrates the ways in which baseball served as a conduit to “the world” the Elders so disapproved of. The research also turned up examples of the ways in which the community’s religious views impacted its approach to baseball— perhaps most notably in a passage about George Clark, a Black man from outside the community who became a player/manager of an Amana team with great success in 1935. Hagan argues that the community’s religious and communal underpinnings made this possible.

“The Amana Church and its people genuinely embraced the Christian principles of love, respect for others, and charity toward all; racial discrimination stood antithetical to their belief system. Furthermore, racism with its social hierarchy and explicit view

Baseball in Iowa

PROFESSIONAL

Triple A

Iowa Cubs (affiliate Major: Chicago Cubs)

Est. 1969 as the Iowa Oaks

International League

Ballpark: Principal Park, Des Moines

Mascot: Cubbie Bear

Home opener: Tuesday, April 2

High A

Cedar rapids Kernels (affiliate

Major: Minnesota Twins)

Est. 1949 as the Cedar Rapids Rockets

Midwest League (2023 league champions!)

Ballpark: Veterans Memorial Stadium

Mascot: Mr. Shucks

Home opener: Tuesday, April 9 at 6:35 p.m.

Quad Cities river Bandits (affiliate

Major: Kansas City Royals)

Est. 1960

Midwest League

Ballpark: Modern Woodmen Park, Davenport (voted Best Minor League Ballpark in America, in the 2024 USA Today 10 Best Readers Choice Awards)

Mascot: Rascal the Racoon

of superiority and inferiority ran counter to the society’s communal foundation. Amana people also understood the sting of prejudice.”

It perhaps goes without saying that the Amanas—like the whole of American society then and now— were not free from racial prejudice, but the story of George Clark still stands out as a powerful moment of members of two marginalized communities finding common ground in baseball.

The Worldly Game is published by Iowa City’s Penfield Books, which was founded in 1979 to distribute books of interest to people of a range of ethnicities, including those of German descent. The book may well be of interest to those who trace their roots to Germany, but it is also a treat for any reader interested in Iowa history, baseball

Home opener: Friday, April 5 at 6:30 p.m.

Independent

Sioux City Explorers

Est. 1993

American Association of Professional Baseball

Ballpark: Lewis & Clark Park

Mascot: Slider the Dog

Home opener: Friday, May 10 at 7:05 p.m.

COLLEGIATE SUMMER LEAGUE TEAMS

Corn Belt League

All teams are formally based in Omaha, but game locations include Council Bluffs Sports Complex, Dodge Riverside Country Club and Iowa Western CC, all in Council Bluffs, Iowa.

MINK League

Carroll Merchants

Ballpark: Merchants Park

Home opener: Tuesday, May 28 at 6:30 p.m.

Clarinda A’s

Ballpark: Clarinda Municipal Stadium, Eberly Field

Home opener: Saturday, June 1 at 7 p.m.

history, or the truly robust history of baseball in Iowa.

The text might have benefited from another round of proofreading, and Hagen does have a tendency to write in a somewhat circular manner, which leads to some repetitive passages that slow the book’s forward momentum. Given the book’s grounding in oral histories, I expected deeper dives into the individual personalities Hagan mentions; the book is much more of a tick-tock than it is a collection of profiles. More of the latter might have helped draw readers into the book’s account of the community and its love of baseball.

While The Worldly Game may not be a home run, but it is, at the very least, a line drive single up the middle.

—Rob Cline

Des Moines peak prospects

Ballpark: McBride Field at Simpson College, Indianola

Northwoods League

Waterloo Bucks

Ballpark: Riverfront Stadium

Home opener: Monday, May 27 at 3:35 p.m.

Prospect League

Burlington Bees

Ballpark: Community Field

Home opener: Wednesday, May 29 at 6:30 p.m.

Clinton lumberKings

Ballpark: NelsonCorp Field

Home opener: Tuesday, May 28 at 6:30 p.m.

AMATEUR ADULT BASEBALL LEAGUES

• Eastern Iowa Adult Baseball league

• Iowa Amateur Baseball Association

• Iowa Valley league

• Mid-Iowa Baseball league

• Sioux Amateur Baseball league

Centro 1003 Locust St. 515.248.1780 centrodesmoines.com

Gateway Market 2002 Woodland 515.243.1754 gatewaymarket.com

Django 1420 Locust St. 515.288.0268 djangodesmoines.com

Bubba 200 10th St. 515.257.4744 bubbadsm.com

Malo 900 Mulberry St. 515.244.5000 malodesmoines.com

Zombie Burger 300 E. Grand, DSM Jordan Creek, WDM zombieburgerdm.com

AUSTIN FRERICK

Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry

ISLAND PRESS

Austin Frerick’s captivating and necessary book Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry (March 2024, Island Press), is a road trip through America’s heartland— but not the one depicted in Grant Wood’s paintings of rural Iowa. Where Wood depicted an early 20th century lush with rolling fields of green, Frerick’s contemporary America details manure lagoons, algae-bloomed lakes and windowless buildings overflowing with cattle.

For many Iowans, these depictions won’t be new. Even for those of us who haven’t visited our local concentrated animal feeding operation, or CAFO, the fetid stench and filthy water are a daily reality here (one University of Iowa professor described their source as a “Mt. Everest of waste”). But the byproducts of industrial ag are only background in Frerick’s Barons, which focuses instead on the cause of these terrors—corporate consolidation and abuse of power in the U.S. food system.

Through engaging and richly researched storytelling, each chapter centers around “barons”—the individuals and their companies—that monopolize different food sectors: pork, grain, coffee, dairy, berries, beef and grocery. In these captivating vignettes, Frerick shows how agriculture, which once featured an abundance of family farms, robust competing businesses and thriving small towns, has been decimated

and replaced by single corporate behemoths like Cargill, founded in Conover, Iowa and today the country’s largest private company.

As the book unfolds, Frerick deftly illuminates how decades of big-business-friendly government officials have worked to undermine and reverse labor, environmental and other laws. In particular, Frerick focuses on years of erosion of the U.S. antitrust laws, which were enacted to ensure robust competition and impede consolidation of power through accumulation of capital. Interestingly, the nation’s first antitrust law was enacted in the 1800s right here in Iowa, and it was farmers—reacting to abusive business practices by monopolistic grain elevators and railroads—that led the effort for fair markets and competition.

It is ironic then that 150 years later, underenforcement of antitrust laws has allowed ag companies to merge and concentrate market and financial power, at the expense of regular Americans. Frerick shows how, through this power, big ag has been able to raise prices, lower quality and undermine workers’ rights.

For example, Frerick explains how, early in the COVID-19 pandemic, as beef prices soared (increasing 25 percent in June 2020, year-over-year) supposedly due to supply chain and inflation issues,

Frerick’s Barons Road Trip

Cargill Grain Elevator (next to Frerick’s old soccer field): 1110 12th Ave, Cedar Rapids, IA 52404

Cargill Corn Milling (next to Frerick’s old church): 1710 16th St SE, Cedar Rapids, IA 52401

Cargill Soybean Mill (by where Frerick was born): 410 C Ave NE, Cedar Rapids, IA 52401

pine lake State park: 22620 Co Hwy S56, Eldora, IA 50627

river Valley Campground And Cabin rentals (where Frerick’s folks park their camper): 1075 147th St, Wadena, IA 52169

meatpacking monopolists “paid out more than $3 billion in dividends to shareholders” while “exporting record amounts of meat.” Meanwhile, slaughterhouse jobs, once a path to the middle class, continue to be among the lowest paying and most dangerous in the country.

Amassed political power also paved the way for the degradation of local communities and the environment: When Iowans’ popular

I met Frerick in 2022 at an antitrust conference, when he was a fellow at Yale’s Thurman Arnold Project (an organization named after the former trustbusting assistant attorney general of the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division). Prior to Yale, Frerick worked at the U.S. Department of Treasury and Open Markets Institute, an antimonopoly nonprofit.

Although this road trip through

FRERICK DEFTLY ILLUMINATES HOW DECADES OF BIG-BUSINESS-FRIENDLY GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS HAVE WORKED TO UNDERMINE AND REVERSE LABOR, ENVIRONMENTAL AND OTHER LAWS.

opposition to CAFOs threatened construction plans, Frerick says agricultural monopolists used their power to influence government officials, while cutting local communities out of the permit approval process. Today, CAFOs can be constructed closer to streams and homes, with devastating consequences to Iowa’s waterways and human health.

Frerick is a Cedar Rapids native whose career has been in agricultural competition policy, so his choice here to examine corporate abuse of power in American ag makes sense.

Iowa and beyond is a far cry from the green hills of Grant Wood’s paintings, it is not all corruption and greed. Frerick’s book shines light on the commonality among us that is so often lost in these dark times. Iowans are more similar than we would otherwise be made to believe. In Frerick’s world, the true division is between the corporate elite, extracting as much from our state as they can, and Iowans who just want to drink clean water and live in a town where community, opportunity, and hope exist.

—Kate M. Conlow

Schera’s Algerian American restaurant (Frerick’s favorite Driftless area restaurant): 107 S Main St, Elkader, IA 52043

Caribou Coffee (JAB chain near where Frerick’s mom’s store used to be): 2870 Edgewood Rd SW Suite 100, Cedar Rapids, IA 52404

Iowa Select Administrative

Headquarters: 5034 Grand Ridge Drive West Des Moines, IA 50265

Conover, Iowa (where Cargill was founded)

Commemorative marker for president Truman’s 1948 Speech: 34400 Dexfield Road Dexter, Iowa

Herrick Chapel (speech location where Sen. Harkin warned about the Wall Street Farm Bill): 1128 Park St, Grinnell, IA 50112

JBS pork Slaughterhouse (near the waterpark Frerick used to go to as a kid): 600 S Iowa Ave, Ottumwa, IA 52501

location of multistory CAFOs: 3868 110th St, Malcom, IA 50157

Tight Combos

BECCA GOrMAN & ADAM SIMpSON, EDITED BY BEN TAUSIG

69. Shifty one

70. Joker portrayer

71. Communicates manually

72. Alex Morgan won one for Best Female Athlete following her 2019 World Cup performance

73. Game of Thrones surname

DOWN

1. Dance style common at HBCUs

2. Unwelcome Christmas present

3. Location of a noted mausoleum

4. Afikomen contents

5. Fraternity follower?

6. Hieroglyphic bird

7. Trebuchet, for one

8. Porkpie cousin

9. Bleep out

10. Oft-discarded piece of bread

11. Furniture item in the Simpsons opening credits

12. Landed, as a bird or a plane

13. Hard to find

ACROSS

1.Robocall, quite possibly

5. Ad lib

9. Chavez influenced by Gandhi

14. Frat party costume

15. Double reed in some Ennio Morricone tunes

16. TV sleuth Holmes

17. Soul group with a Christmas album about climate change?

20. Aubrey on the second season of White Lotus

21. Opts not to check, maybe

22. Took seconds?

23. Mentions directly on social media

25. Origin, as of a problem

27. Pop-punk group with a song about their favorite recreational drug user during the reign of Trajan?

35. Contraction in Francis Scott Key’s “Defence of Fort M’Henry”

36. The first D in “DINKWAD”

37. ___ Santo (medicinal wood)

38. Type of tide

40. Member of a diminutive fantasy race

43. Sing like Betty Carter

44. Dirección on a map

45. “Voilá!”

47. Nickname in the song “thank u, next”

48. Rock group with lyrics about an ace dress shoe?

53. Dip a toe into, maybe

54. IPA component

55. Supreme Court justice Fortas

58. Units of laundry

61. Crunchy ice cream cake ingredients

65. Insufficient time and energy, metaphorically, or what led to this puzzle’s theme entries

68. Xenomorph, e.g.

18. Didn’t enjoy at all

19. Off base, in a way

24. Self-satisfied

26. Bests

27. ___ X Change (drag queen who shares their name with a noted Impressionist)

28. “Egads!”

29. Common video game breakable

30. Patrick Stewart bestie McKellen

31. Fancy napkin

material

32. Chinese gambling mecca

33. It can be a real wakeup call

34. What a jerk might leave at a restaurant

39. Little sibling, perhaps

41. ___ tai (tropical cocktail)

42. Mode from The Incredibles

46. Luminous, as faces

49. Certain entendre-laden emojis

50. Since

51. Nonreactive

52. Things signaled by red flags

55. “Sigh ...”

56. Indonesian province with an active volcano

57. Vaping apparatus

59. Soapbox cousin

60. First act of a play?

62. Ribbing site?

63. Name in the Englishlanguage movie adaptation of Fredrik Backman’s A Man Called Ove

64. Put on display

66. Figure whose job is beach

67. Like some pet food