To love Iowa, you must maintain a balance of hope and grief. To stay or to return here, to deepen your roots, to be here at all, you must operate from a place of unconditional love.
A lot has changed in this state since I started working at Little Village in 2014. Public school funding is being diverted to private schools. Civil rights, especially LGBTQ rights, have been undermined. Bureaucratic hurdles for unemployment assistance have been raised. New hurdles for Medicaid access have been proposed. Science is disregarded and environmental disasters are ignored, causing horrendous, toxic water quality issues from the Missouri to the Mississippi. Iowa’s cancer rates have increased to second-in-the-nation, while the national Democratic Party has revoked our first-in-the-nation caucus — quite understandably! It seems like the only things that haven’t changed in Iowa have been our antiquated cannabis laws.
Things change, that’s for sure, but in this publisher’s opinion, they don’t only have to get worse. Just the other night, I fell into watching one Instagram reel after another from a couple rehabilitating a dilapidated, moldy hoarder house they’d purchased on the brink of disrepair. Caught in a 90-minute-long trance, I witnessed this house evolve from a dangerous, ugly and uninhabitable structure to a sturdy, elegant home that the owners were very proud of.
Did the hopeful couple have to do that work? No. But they knew there was beauty there, and they were determined to live in it.
I know that Little Village — a wet/dry Shop-Vac, perhaps, in this allegorical house rehab — can and will play a role in restoring our dilapidated state. I know that so well that on the first of January, I willingly and enthusiastically became the owner and publisher of this magazine after over 10 years on staff. Let me put it this way: I have invested because I am invested — in the place that raised me, and the place I chose to return to raise my own. I love it here and I want Iowa to get better.
Through the elevation of the arts, focused environmental reporting, and delightfully subversive journalism from and about our communities, I do believe that we can help bring this beautiful, beloved state back from the brink. The evolution of Iowa will take effort, expertise, education, a lot of editing, open-mindedness, patience, a very good sense of humor and, perhaps more than anything, hope.
For many years now, every single staff member, contributor, reader, advertiser and financial supporter of Little Village has given me that hope. So thank you for advertising in, writing for, supporting and reading this magazine. Here’s to you all, and to the future of Iowa.
This letter was originally published in Little Village’s February 2025 issue.
