School redistricting—sometimes called the “R word”—can get ugly. New lines drawn on a map can change the trajectory of a child’s school career, friendships…
David Henderson
Posted inCommunity/News
Midwest League Part III: Covering their bases
On a Thursday evening in June, Patrick Wisdom of the visiting Peoria Chiefs hit an opposite field home run just beyond the reach of Cedar Rapids Kernels right fielder Adam Brett Walker. Walker leaped and knocked against a section of the padded outfield wall sponsored by the insurance and investment provider Transamerica.
Posted inCommunity/News
Clinton Baseball Mann
You can’t see the Mississippi River from Riverview Stadium, the original name for the home of the Clinton LumberKings. A flood wall blocks the view, but the sight of an occasional gull or pelican reminds you the river is near. “LumberKings” harkens to a time when the timber trade along the Mississippi was big business […]
Posted inCommunity/News
The new crop: Midwest League baseball
Witness! Players with incredible names like Colton Cain, Damien Magnifico and Rock Shoulders (really!) as they fight for their baseball lives! (And to avoid an alternative career or another plan B they don’t even want to consider.) Here you can sit close enough to home plate to track the break on a breaking ball and […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Homelessness and Shelter: Part Two
Read Part One The old Black Hawk Mini Park on the Iowa City pedestrian mall was the distribution point, the place for the drop. It was mid-November and a mild autumn was giving way to winter. About a dozen men milled around waiting to get a bag. There were a lot of sweatshirts, flannel and […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Renovating Lives
The official ribbon cutting was still a few weeks out, but activity swirled around Shelter House Executive Director Chrissi Canganelli on this mid-November morning. We sat at a table in the common area, then made a “walk through” as she enumerated the assets of this new facility on Southgate Avenue. Staff was busy on the […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Roosevelt Part 3: The Shuttering
Despite months of public protest, the Iowa City School Board voted unanimously during their June 9 meeting to close Roosevelt Elementary and build a new school on the west edge of town. But many in the community never accepted the administration’s premise, much less conclusion, if that meant ignoring the “how” and “why” questions behind […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Closing Arguments
Superintendent Lane Plugge’s office on Dubuque Street is in the three-story brick building that used to be Henry Sabin Elementary School. The elementary school closed in 1979. Now it’s the Iowa City Community School District’s administration building, and site of increasingly fractious school board meetings on the second and fourth Tuesdays of the month. Plugge […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
The REAL Irish Pubs of Iowa City
St. Paddy’s Day in Iowa City can easily devolve into a grotesque debacle, a cavalcade of fake accents, leprechaun abuse, green beer and vomit — the traditional parade of stereotypes. Did St. Patrick go to the trouble of ridding Ireland of snakes (even if he really didn’t) for this? But in spite of it all, […]
