Fashion photos by Karla Monroe, featuring Natalie Lawrence and Lexi Wells at the Robert A. Lee Community Recreation Center pool in Iowa City. Update: As a result of construction delays, the new City Park pool will not open until 2027, the Iowa City Parks and Recreation Department announced on June 5, 2026. The last time […]
Iowa history
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Plain Spoken: This ever-evolving American anthem recalls Iowa’s abolitionist glory days
In keeping with tradition, one dramatic beat of the presidential inauguration in January was the Naval Academy Glee Club’s performance of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” While it was standard inaugural fare, it was also, of course, a nauseating co-optation. A song of solidarity, bravery and liberation — an alternative national anthem — was […]
Posted inCentral Iowa
Des Moines locals fight to save Birdland Pool and prove the North Side isn’t ‘a path of least resistance’
Generations of Des Moines residents have flocked to their neighborhood swimming pools for fun and to find relief from the heat, especially during potentially deadly heat waves. For almost 90 years, destinations have included the historic Birdland Pool at 300 Holcomb Ave in Highland Park, which opened to the general public on May 31, 1936. The […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
David Lynch’s Iowa odyssey
David Lynch, who was called “America’s first surrealist filmmaker” by actor Dennis Hopper, died in Los Angeles at age 78 on Jan. 16, four days shy of his 79th birthday. Known for films such as Mulholland Drive (2001), he gained a new audience during the COVID pandemic as the internet’s favorite weatherman, streaming daily reports from “Here in sunny L.A.” on his YouTube channel.
Posted inCommunity/News
Peak Iowa: ‘Meteor excitement’ brought a small fortune to the Amana area in the 1870s
On Friday, Feb. 12, 1875, shortly before 10:30 p.m., “one of the most brilliant meteors of modern times illuminated the entire State of Iowa, and adjacent parts of the States of Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.” “The meteor, in rapidly moving through the atmosphere, produced a great variety of sounds — rolling, rumbling, and detonations […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Peak Iowa: Getting his Phill of freedom
In the summer of 1820, as he led an army expedition across the territory that became Iowa, Capt. Stephen Kearney spotted “a large drove of Buffaloe … probably 5 thousand.” Of course, the animals weren’t buffalo. The big, shaggy beasts were bison. It doesn’t feel quite so pedantic to make that distinction now that Iowans […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Peak Iowa: Drink deep from the Devil’s Punchbowl at Wildcat Den State Park
Wildcat Den State Park is located just a few miles from the Mississippi River between Davenport and Muscatine. The modern history of the park starts in the year 1848, when a settler by the name of Benjamin Nye — who established Muscatine County’s first store and post office a decade earlier — built the Pine […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Peak Iowa: Poet John Berryman’s brief, troubled time in Iowa City
Content warning: Suicide The poet John Berryman’s chance to have a quiet, uneventful life ended early one morning in 1926 when he was 11. It ended when his father walked into the backyard with a gun and committed suicide. John was in his bedroom when it happened. The bedroom’s windows faced the backyard. It wasn’t […]
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 inCommunity/News
Peak Iowa: Caitlyn Jenner’s alma mater in Lamoni
What do Mormon pioneers and Caitlyn Jenner have in common? Besides a tendency towards backwards beliefs and manslaughter, they share a deep connection to the southwestern Iowa city of Lamoni (pop. 1,974). Though she grew up in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, Jenner was recruited to Lamoni’s Graceland University, a small, private religious school, in 1969 — […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Peak Iowa: A Hollywood legend lost in Davenport
On Nov. 29, 1986, Cary Grant died in the city of Davenport at the age of 82. Grant was a star of stage, screen and that one image of him running away from a crop duster that shows up in every #menswear blog at one point or another. He was preparing a one-man show at […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Peak Iowa: How two UI scientists bred the first sperm bank
In the mid-1970s, as his retirement from the University of Iowa College of Medicine approached, Dr. Raymond Bunge recalled how some people reacted to the biggest scientific breakthrough of his career. “I received many letters, some of them signed, asserting that I was a scientific monster, un-Christian, and a disgrace to medicine,” Bunge, a physician […]
