Bon Jovi’s “You Give Love a Bad Name”? 1986. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ “Free Fallin’”? 1989. The process to create small-diameter lead shot by allowing molten lead to free-fall through a copper sieve in a tall tower into water? Patented in 1782 by plumber William Watts, who built the first shot tower as an […]
Genevieve Trainor
Genevieve Trainor lives in Iowa City, Iowa. Passions include heavy music, hoppy beer, and hidden rooms.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Composer Bart Howard, born in Burlington, wrote the definitive song of the space program
From Mount Pleasant’s James Van Allen (“Father of Space Science”) to Beaconsfield’s Peggy Whitson (who holds the U.S. endurance record for most cumulative time in space at 695 days) to the July 2025 TRACERS mission to study space weather, developed and tested at the University of Iowa, our state has had a long and fruitful […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Peak Iowa: A far-out suburban mansion
Sucker for a spiral staircase? Look no further than Des Moines suburb Urbandale and LeMar Koethe’s Spaceship House! A gorgeous one curves around a central pillar rising 35 feet—from the ground-floor garages to the main living area, with an elevator as well—in this stunner of a mansion. Koethke had the home built in 1993, far […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Peak Iowa: The LDS Church is not happy about ‘Heretic,’ the latest film from Scott Beck and Bryan Woods
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been on damage control recently. A Nov. 4 news release on the Church’s site, posted just days before the opening of A24 film Heretic, doesn’t mention the psychological thriller by name, but aims to “assist journalists and the public with questions and concerns regarding the safety […]
Posted inBook Reviews
Book Review: Vince Gotera — ‘Dragons & Rayguns’
Although Iowa Poet Laureate Vince Gotera’s collection of speculative poetry, Dragons & Rayguns (Final Thursday Press), is a panoply of allusions (and although I’d boldly state that I understood many of them), it is also in turns sincere, self-deprecating, thought-provoking and tender.
Posted inCommunity/News
Peak Iowa: Nesper Sign celebrates 100 years and a jillion jests
Long before the Iowa DOT began bombarding our senses with messaging tortured enough to ensure that drivers’ eyes stay on the road, travelers along I-380 had just one source of entertainment to liven up their route: the Nesper sign. Cedar Rapids mainstay Nesper Sign Advertising sits just past the Highway 30 interchange, offering northbound drivers […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Peak Iowa: History’s most prolific book bandit is an Ottumwa man. Librarians helped bring him down.
“Organized crime” usually refers to illegal activity as a collaborative enterprise, involving large networks of people and undertaken for profit or power. That’s too damned bad, really, because there is no better turn of phrase to lean on when discussing the wild work of the Guinness World Record holder for Most Prolific Book Thief: Ottumwa’s […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Can she get an amen? Flamy Grant, Christian drag musician, is set to perform at St. Andrew in Iowa City
There’s no shortage of drag shows or performers in Eastern Iowa, and with Pride Month on the horizon, they’ll no doubt be busy as can be. But North Carolina’s Flamy Grant isn’t like the rest. For one thing, her June 4 performance will be at St. Andrew Presbyterian Church. Jeff Charis-Carlson, director of communication and […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
‘The you is a door’: Abdurraqib sets high bar for Mission Creek 2024
Iowa City’s Mission Creek Festival (which just kicked off its 19th year) has always fundamentally been about two things: creative place-making and wild moments of synchronicity. As such, it could have had no better opening than Thursday night’s reading by author and cultural critic Hanif Abdurraqib.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Culture critic and Mission Creek Festival presenter Hanif Abdurraqib is examining an American obsession: basketball
At just 40 years old, poet and essayist Hanif Abdurraqib has covered a hell of a lot of ground in his career. A 2021 MacArthur fellow, his work has earned him an Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence (for A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance) as well as landed him on […]
Posted inBook Reviews
Book Review: ‘The Renegade Nuns on Wheels MC, Post Apocalypse, Lost Nation, Iowa’ by Jason Thomas Smith
The newest book by Jason Thomas Smith was released on Sept. 24, 2023. That’s just four days before my most recent birthday, and even reading it now, months later, it feels like a present, gift-wrapped and handed to me on a silver platter. It starts with a desolate town and one lone priest out of […]
Posted inBook Reviews
Book Review: ‘Black Punk Now’ edited by James Spooner and Chris L. Terry
I’m a sucker for an anthology. Short work requires a certain balance of delicacy and force that long-form writing can work around, and the curation process of selecting, collecting and presenting those pieces is its own truly under-discussed art form. It’s something that I love to do, and I especially enjoy experiencing thoughtful examples of […]
