Little Village issue 335 - December 2024

A L W A Y S

ISSUE 335 December 2024

F R E E

Independent Iowa News, Culture & Events

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8 TOC 8 Top Stories 11 Ad Index A cell at the Squirrel Cage Jail in Council Bluffs. Jessica Doolittle / Little Village

13 Letters & Interactions 19 Fully Booked 22 PEAK IOWA 50 Prairie Pop 55 Events Calendar 67 Dear Kiki 69 Astrology Forecast 70 Distribution Locations 73 Album Reviews 75 Book Reviews 77 Crossword 79 Reader Survey

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INDEPENDENT NEWS, CULTURE & EVENTS Since 2001 LittleVillageMag.com

EDITORIAL

PRODUCTION

Issue 335

Publisher

Digital Director

December 2024

Matthew Steele

Drew Bulman

matt@littlevillagemag.com

drewb@littlevillagemag.com

Cover by Nic Roth

Editor-in-Chief

Production Manager

For the third time, LV is capping

Emma McClatchey

Jordan Sellergren

off the year with Peak Iowa:

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stories of the strange, fascinating,

Arts Editor

SALES & ADMINISTRATION

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Chuy Renteria

President, Little Village, LLC

this state. Clip on a tie, lasso your

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Matthew Steele

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Benjamin McElroy is a writer based in

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known for vibrant picture books,

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of all things creative, tasty, and weird.

whimsical murals, and character-driven,

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Casey Maynard, an ICPL librarian,

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623 S Dubuque St

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Iowa City, IA 52240

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publishes the comic zines Voyage Into

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producing a weekly KFMG radio show,

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The Culture Buzz, since 2007.

out over 50 music albums.

December Contributors

detail-rich artwork.

Andrea Truitt, Benjamin McElroy,

charge of dinner too. Buy her art at

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Ramonamuselambert.com.

Sam Locke Ward is a cartoonist and

Williams, Sarah Elgatian, Steven

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Sara Williams is a multidisciplinary

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artist who was raised in Bondurant,

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Communication Studies at the University

Iowa. She currently resides near

of Iowa.

Amana.

Lauren Haldeman is a graphic novelist

Sarah Elgatian is a writer, activist

and poet, she has received an Iowa

and educator living in Iowa. She likes

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photographer living in Cedar Rapids.

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Top Stories Catch up on some of Little Village’s most-viewed headlines from last month,and get the latest news sent to your inbox every afternoon: littlevillagemag.com/subscribe

Racist flyers from neo-Nazi group distributed in Waterloo

By Paul Brennan, Nov. 12 Some Waterloo residents woke up on Sunday morning

Bohannan calls for a recount in the 1st Congressional District, as unofficial totals show Miller-Meeks ahead by 801 votes

By Paul Brennan, Nov. 15

to find flyers from a neo-Nazi group on their lawns or

Democrat Christina Bohannan announced on Thursday

doorsteps. The one-page flyers, packaged from the Texas-based Aryan

she will request a recount of the vote in all 20 counties of Iowa’s 1st

Freedom Network, were placed in zip-lock plastic sandwich bags. The

Congressional District. According to current vote totals reported by the

flyers call for people to join the white-supremacist, antisemitic and anti-

AP, incumbent Republican Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks leads Bohannan

LGBTQ group.

by 801 votes out of the 413,079 votes cast in the district.

Under a near-total abortion ban, crisis pregnancy centers peddling free, phony care are even more dangerous

By Amy Zine, Nov. 15

Sen. Joni Ernst tells Storm Lake students not to worry about Trump’s plans for mass deportations and detention camps

By Paul Brennan, Nov. 20

Chances are, you’ve seen a crisis pregnancy center (CPC)

Days before Trump confirmed he will use the military

without realizing it. They market themselves as clinics for women

to enforce his deportation and detention plans, Sen. Ernst, a combat

facing unintended pregnancies, comparable to Planned Parenthood.

veteran, assured high school students the policies will only affect

Once you walk inside the door, however, it becomes clear their mission

criminals, and not Iowa’s companies or communities. Ernst’s loyalty to

is to persuade you to continue your pregnancy no matter what.

Trump did not help her last week when Republican senators selected a leadership team that did not include her.

Until we see you again in print next month, subscribe to LV newsletters to stay up to date: LittleVillageMag.com/newsletters 8 December 2024 LITTLEVILLAGEMAG.COM/LV335

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Letters & Interactions 11 LIVE FIRST-CLASS CONCERTS 6 at the Paramount in Cedar Rapids and 5 bonus Concerts at the Gallagher Bluedorn in Cedar Falls

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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.

Notes from the Nov. 11, 2024 event featuring conservative commentator Michael Knowles, hosted by the University of Iowa chapter of YAF at the Iowa Memorial Union.

THERE WAS A LOT OF SECURITY at the entrance—at least 12 police officers and hired security personnel. To enter the main hall, people had to walk through a metal detector, show their hands and take off their hats.

I sat near the back of the totally packed room. I estimate there were 250-300 people. The people behind me, before the event started, were talking about their investments in “dogecoin” stock and being “broke” from recent trends. Jasmyn Jordan, the national chairman of Young Americans for Freedom and the only nonwhite person I saw, gave the introduction for the main speaker, Michael Knowles.

Knowles started with basic crowd-pleasing: “haha we’re so hated by the libs.” He spent a while recounting the multiple Trump assassination attempts, attributing the shootings to Democrats and claiming “the press” is monopolized by “the left” and doesn’t report on what’s actually newsworthy.

He did work to refute the common portrayal of Republicans as stupid and as people that can be reduced to their nasty emotionality. The message: don’t think about how it looks. Think about the chaos and disorder that needs repair—repair that only Trump is capable of providing. Somehow conservative rights were in danger of being taken away, and the left’s endgame is for Americans to be subject to mass “humiliation rituals.”

Throughout his time on stage, he had a playful and upbeat attitude, making fun of Elon Musk and calling Joe Biden demented.

HAVE AN OPINION?

F U T I L E W R A T H

S A M LO C K E WA R D

Better write about it!

Send letters to: Editor@LittleVillageMag.com He was able to make people laugh. As a skilled debater, he was careful to not say too much that could be taken out of context and used to prove hypocrisy, but instead he would point to things that conservatives tend to find upsetting, and then assure the crowd that it’s not actually complicated and this is how libs are trying to make themselves seem better than them.

The biggest argument Knowles made against “transgenderism” was castration, that the transgender agenda functions to castrate boys. At one point during the Q&A section, he simplified being gay as being “kind of eccentric, like cross-dressing for fun.” He said, in such a practiced way, put so basically that you wouldn’t think he actually felt strongly about it, that the purpose of our sexualities is solely in child-bearing.

Something about the way he said this made me think he actually knows that gay sex is awesome, but that he’s concluded that that kind of liberatory pleasure is too scary and therefore must be banned from the public.

P U B L I C N U I S A N C E

SARA WILLIAMS

LITTLEVILLAGEMAG.COM/LV335 December 2024 13

MOMBOY

LAUREN HALDEMAN

LETTERS & INTERACTIONS He says nothing about the violence that results from criminalizing and socially alienating queer and trans people. He is patriarchal and paternalistic in such a normalized way. He aligns himself with “family values” while denying the validity of LGBT parenting, saying the “social cost” is too high and can only result in “great suffering,” with no specificity given regarding what that suffering is due to.

A few people challenged him in the Q&A. One person primarily addressed the audience, telling them that trans people are just like you, they’re not scary, they’re cool, and suggested they actually meet and connect with these people that they feel entitled to make decisions for. Another person questioned Knowles’ views on the rest of the LGBT community and asked what place gays have in this new/old America that the right wants. This person also brought up Knowles’ role in a college film where he played a gay man. Another person who went to the mic complicated the idea that transition is mutilation by trolling him and asking if he was circumcised himself.

One of the sincere questions had to do with staying strong as a conservative who was surrounded by leftists. Knowles advised

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www.tamarackschool.org

T R U E L O V E

RAMONA MUSE LAMBERT

Answers on Pg. 18

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LETTERS & INTERACTIONS Arctic Monkeys The Nadas Portugal. The Man Bella Moss Spoon Pieta Brown Modest Mouse not only fierce participation in “the crusade,” Phantogram Hozier Shovels & Rope Alvvays but also to “live life,” meaning make conservative living look appealing and natural.

Jimmy Eat World Father John Misty Bright Eyes The maybe 40 protesters outside, with Leon Bridges Best Coast Weary Ramblers drums, buckets, and tambourines, chanted “fuck you fascists” and “trans right are human Jason Isbell The Smiths Death Cab for Cutie rights” as people left the IMU. Some of the Jack White St. Vincent Brother Trucker conservatives yelled back “Trump is your president” and “Jesus loves you,” to which Goth Babe Elvis Costello Dr. Dog Maggie Rose someone replied, “Suck my dick.”

—Sarahann Kolder, Iowa City Radiohead Elliott Smith New Order Blondsh State universities reallocate more than The Killers Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats $2 million from DEI programs (Oct. 30) Vampire Weekend Beck Karen Meat Avett Bro lament the sustained loss of House of Large Sizes Bad Religion Mt. Joy They’ll qualified professionals in the state with The Black Keys Dickie Pixies Young The Giant one hand, and undermine any hope of attracting and retaining that deCage The Elephant B. Well The Replacements mographic with the other. —Ben C. Cold War Kids Allegra Hernandez Beastie Boys Diane Finnerty, powerhouse 1960-2019, is The Smashing Pumpkins Echo & The Bunnymen The Police Talking Heads Frank Turner A C C O L A D E S of Iowa student Paras Bassuk is Interpol The Cure Briston Maroney Devo University among the 32 Rhodes Scholars for 2025, selected King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard Flaming Lips from across the U.S. Graduating in May with a psychology degree, Bassuk is a researcher and The Clash Surf Zombies Black Pumas Weezer professional portrait photographer as well as a jazz

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drummer, bass guitarist and classical bassist. Their faculty mentor, Ethan Kutlu, praised their ability to bridge the arts and sciences.

Bassuk is also a graduate of West High School in Iowa City, where they first took part in statelevel advocacy and learned to “leverage my understanding of political systems to support and uplift unheard voices ... including young people and young queer and trans people in the state,” they say in a UI press release.

Bassuk is the 23rd UI student to receive the Rhodes Scholarship since 1905, the most recent Marissa Mueller in 2021. Bassuk will study for two years at Oxford, fully funded, pursuing degrees in comparative social policy and socio-legal research.

The Grinnell College Museum of Art celebrated its 25th anniversary this fall, originally opening in 1999 as the Faulconer Gallery. Their collection includes works by Rembrandt and Picasso. A timely exhibition titled “And Gladly Teach: The Museum as a Classroom” is on display through Dec. 15. Admission to the museum is always free.

With a score of 87-75, the University of Northern Iowa women’s basketball team upset the eighth-ranked Iowa State Cyclones on Nov. 20, marking the Panthers’ first win against a top 10 opponent in program history.

I N T E R AC T I O N S haunting the Board of Regents. —Jackie L. New Iowa Poll shows Harris with an edge ahead of Election Day; Trump calls poll ‘fake,’ says it ‘should be illegal’ (Nov. 4) She didn’t even predict a slamdunk for Harris (a Trump victory is still within the margin of error) and this is how he’s reacting. —P.S. She predicted Trump prior lol. This is just the typical sore loser bullshit commonplace with Trump and his dipshits. Funny it was all fine when she was “with” him…. —S.P. Watching the GOP hyperventilate over this poll is both hilarious and sad. They are simply incapable of accepting anything they don’t like with even a sliver of grace or objectivity. They can’t just say “Oh well. No poll methodology is perfect.

Seems like it’s probably an outlier. We’ll see come election day.” No, it’s gotta be a personal attack against them. —Teek R. Jeff Kauffman needs to hurry up and have that coronary you just know is building up on him. —C.F.

PERSONALS

The shelter is full of cats, but this one was here first—or at least, longer than most. Four-year-old Currier is getting senioritis after being in this bright, noisy building since July. This orange lady likes laps and naps, preferably at the same time.

Sweet and even-keeled, she also has a frisky side she’ll show you after a spell. If you want to have Currier on your lap this Christmas, visit the Iowa City Animal Center, 3910 Napoleon Lane and icanimalcenter.org.

Send your personals for consideration to editor@littlevillagemag.com with subject line “Personals.”

LITTLEVILLAGEMAG.COM/LV335 December 2024 17

I N T E R AC T I O N S

CEDAR RAPIDS, NOV. 26 To the elderly lady in the hyvee pharmacy line, I need to know if your daughter was able to make a soup that passed her mother in law’s muster. That woman is my enemy, and I would fight for your daughter’s honor to the death.

CEDAR RAPIDS, NOV. 26 To the lesbian I invited over to help set up my

Jeff Kaufmann was my professor at community college. He taught world history and psychology and was a really enjoyable professor, probably my favorite one there.

He had a great sense of humor back then.

Too bad he went all MAGA. —D. Jones The importance of being Colleen Ernst (Nov. 22)

12’ Home Depot skeleton. I wish that we had talked more about boning instead of bones.

The coolest person. —Jayne B.

EASTERN IOWA, NOV. 26

Dr. Art was the best. —Eric C.

Dear man on Hinge who responded to my prompt about interests by saying your hobby was building ChatGPT models: I didn’t match with you because I didn’t want to ever talk to you. This is a missed connection I thank a god I don’t believe in for every day.

Submit to Missed Connections! Questions may be edited for clarity and length, and may appear in print or online. Think you’re the subject of one? Reach out: littlevillagemag.com/ missed-connections

I really enjoyed her work, and even brought an old deep set frame to her to install one of her works in it. I only have one of her works, a piece called ‘Mass Murmer.’ It is a group of 7 Barbie dolls ‘wrapped’ like mummies in canvas and painted a bright and opalescent pink.

They represented the 7 people affected by the shooting by a U.of I. physics student named Gang Lu. Five people killed, one paralysed then he killed himself. It is a dark but poignant piece. Her work was ahead of its time. —Michael B.

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Fully Booked

Where is your Little Village?

2024 Kids’ Books They Won’t Tire of Re-reading

T

he holiday seasons here, and if you’re like me and have yet to get all of your shopping done, there’s still time! Below is a short list with brief

reviews of some children’s books published in 2024 that would make great holiday gift

Little Village is a community supported monthly alternative magazine and digital media channel offering an independent perspective on Iowa news, culture and events. The magazine is widely available for free, with a distribution focus on the state’s cultural centers of Iowa City, Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, Ames, Cedar Falls/ Waterloo, Dubuque and the Quad Cities. Scan here to find which one of LV’s 800 distribution locations is nearest to you >>

considerations.

Let’s start with the youngest “readers.”

Who Laid These Eggs? by Laura Gehl is an interactive board book with a simple premise, complete with sturdy flaps and adorable illustrations both babies and adults will savor over and over (and over) again.

I Hear a Búho by Iowa City’s own Raquel MacKay is a beautiful debut picture book that would make a lovely gift for littles, whether they’re learning English, Spanish or both. The rhythm, rhyme scheme and pacing of this title make it a perfect contender for repeat reads, especially at bedtime.

Mikey Please’s debut solo picture book, The

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Café at the Edge of the Woods is hilarious.

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The reprint of Roald Dahl’s Marvelously Revolting Recipes is another notable release from this fall, and it’s just as gross and wonderful as you likely remember from childhood. It even features a few new recipes that were not in the 1994 edition!

Pokémon Timelines, the latest ultimate visual guide to the history of the animated series, would make an apt gift for the Pokémon trainer

To request copies in your area, or to add

in your life, while Travis Dandro’s incredible retelling of Winnie the Pooh should please new and old fans of the Hundred Acre Wood. This retelling honors the original Milne stories, and Dandro’s illustrations are a delightful take on the classic pen-and-ink drawings by E. H. Shepard.

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own trail.

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Forecast from Stonehenge, would be great for kids eager to blaze their Preview these titles, find more fabulous potential gifts, and check out the complete 2024 kids book gift list at the Iowa City Public Library’s website, icpl.org. Happy holiday reading!

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PEAK IOWA Fascinating Hawkeye State history and culture across three categories: the good, the weird and the ugly.

THE GOOD The Outlaw Who (Almost) Got Credit as the First Cedar Rapidian

C

edar Rapids celebrated its 175th birthday in 2024. Iowa had been a state for barely two years when the new city was incorporated on Jan. 15, 1849. Of course, people had been living in the area for thousands of years before that happened.

Archeologists have found evidence of habitation dating back 9,500 years. At least 26 different Indigenous communities were present before the first American settlers arrived. The name of the Cedar River—or Red Cedar River, as it was also known—is the English translation of the Meskawki

name for the river.

What became Cedar Rapids was first platted in 1838 and given the name Columbus, but the plans for Columbus died quickly. In 1841, it was platted again, and this time it was named Rapids City. That also fizzled. But the location was desirable, with the river providing both transportation and power to drive water wheels.

A year after its incorporation, the growing city had water-powered mills, as well as a woolen factory and a growing population. According to the 1850 census, there were 341 people living in Cedar Rapids. Ten years later, the 1860 census found the population had more than quintupled, reaching 1,830. By the start of the 20th century, the census recorded 25,656 Cedar Rapidians.

In 1895, Rev. George R. Carroll published a memoir about life in Cedar Rapids before there was a Cedar Rapids. Carroll was 8 years old when his family moved to the area in 1839, the year after the first failed attempt to stake out a city on the site. In chapter 10 of his book, Carroll related his memories of “Mr. Osgood Shepherd, who occupied the only human habitation on what was afterwards the

The 175-year-old city seen from the top of Mt. Trashmore Jordan Sellergren / Little Village

22 December 2024 LITTLEVILLAGEMAG.COM/LV335

Illustration of Shepherd’s Tavern, the first house in Cedar Rapids, originally published in Pioneer Life In and Around Cedar Rapids, Iowa from 1839 to 1849 by Rev. George R. Carroll.

Public Domain

original plat of Cedar Rapids.”

Carroll recalled Shepherd as “quite a large man, of sandy complexion” living with “his wife, and two or three children, and his aged father” in a log house that was “a somewhat squatty looking structure, about 16 x 20, covered with clapboards.”

“This being the only house on the east bank of the river, it became per force of circumstances, the stopping-place of the newcomers, and the few travelers that came this way. And so, naturally enough, it became known as ‘Shepherd’s Tavern’” (The tavern was located at about the same spot where the Tree of Five Seasons monument is today.)

Carroll called Shepherd the “First Settler in Cedar Rapids.” That’s certainly what Shepherd always claimed. But he was lying; he didn’t even build the house he lived in.

William Stone arrived at that spot on the Cedar River in 1838, before Shepherd showed up. It was Stone who platted the never-to-be city of Columbus, Iowa where downtown Cedar Rapids is now. And it was Stone who built the log house that became known as Shepherd’s Tavern.

The Guide, Gazetteer and Directory of the Dubuque & Sioux City Railroad published in 1868 gives a concise account of what happened next.

Shortly after Stone “erected a log cabin” in 1838, “Osgood Shepherd, a supposed leader of a band of outlaws, jumped Stone’s claim and took possession of the cabin, and held it until the year 1841, when he sold three-fourths of his interest to N. B. Brown and George Greene, H. W. Gray, A. L. Roach, and S. H. Tryon, for the sum of $3,000.”

“In 1842 he sold the remainder and soon after disappeared from the country.”

By the time Carroll and his family arrived in 1839, Stone was living on the west side of the river to avoid any further encounters with Shepherd.

Decades later, Carroll recalled Shepherd in a more favorable light than the author of the railroad guide, calling him “good-natured in his disposition” and saying he was considered “an accommodating and agreeable” tavern keeper. But the reverend was not entirely naive about Shepherd’s character.

“Unfortunately, however, his morals were of a low

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order,” Carroll wrote. “While many good people were temporarily sheltered under his roof, and fed at his table, everybody believed that he also entertained horse-thieves, and these latter seemed to be his special favorites, and he showed himself ready to shield and encourage them in their villainous work.”

Carroll added, “It was afterwards currently reported here, that he himself, was finally convicted of horse-stealing in a neighboring state, and sent to the penitentiary.”

Perhaps because of his profession, Carroll believed a story he heard about Shepherd redeeming himself after getting out of prison. The reverend wrote, “word has come to me from a source that I regard as trustworthy, that in the latter part of his life he became a professor of religion and was active in church work.”

According to Carroll, Shepherd spent his final days in Wisconsin, where he was “accidentally run over by the cars and killed.” Carroll didn’t know when it happened, just that it happened “many years ago.”

—Paul Brennan

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The Places Ana Mendieta Wasn’t

n Árbol de la Vida (1976) Ana Mendieta covered herself in mud and foliage and pressed her body against a tree, blending into it as if becoming part of it. It is simultaneously body art, sculpture and performance. I am stunned by the absolute physicality of her work, the bodily engagement with the land itself: the viscosity of mud, the hardness of tree bark, the foliage on the bottoms of her feet.

Truthfully, I am more comfortable with the artist’s work that shows evidence of her presence having been there, rather than being there. I think this is tied to her untimely death—the fact that she should still be here, but isn’t, having died in 1985 at the age of 36. Árbol also reminds me that she was here in Iowa for almost two decades.

In 1961, Mendieta and her older sister landed in Dubuque as part of Operation Peter Pan, a Catholic Charities and U.S. government initiative that brought thousands of Cuban children to the country based on an unfounded fear that Fidel Castro’s government would separate children from their parents and place them in communist indoctrination centers. She and her sister lived in foster homes around the state for five years until her mother and brother emigrated in 1966, her father in 1979.

She spent approximately a decade at the University of Iowa, earning a BA in art (1969), an MA in painting (1972), and an MFA in intermedia

LittleVillageMag.com

(1977). She flourished in conjunction with the intermedia program, founded in 1968, which she worked around and in for eight years. Mendieta exhibited and performed work on campus every year between 1971 and 1977. She was already performing and showing in New York and abroad before she left, creating some of her most well-known works, including the Silueta series, while still based in Iowa.

Since 2022, the artist’s connection to UI is more apparent, with a named gallery in the Visual Arts Building and works on view at the Stanley Museum of Art. The museum owns five works, some purchased in preparation for opening and two gifted by the Mendieta Family and Galerie Lelong, which represents the Estate of Ana Mendieta.

“We are deeply grateful for these gifts and for the family’s partnership on future Mendieta projects,” Stanley Museum Director Lauren Lessing said.

“Mendieta is an incredibly important alumna of this university, and highlighting her work and career is a priority here.”

The use of her body, her deeply personal connections to and interactions with the earth— Mendieta’s works remain powerful and politically relevant in an age of climate change and continual attacks on bodily autonomy, despite the artist’s aching, unsettling absence.

—Andrea Truitt

Arthur Russell of Oskaloosa

about him in school. Now, whenever I find myself overwhelmed by some stretch of two-lane highway, I make up for lost time. Coming from the speakers, his music sounds simpatico with the world outside the windshield.

“Will the corn be growing tonight / As I wait in the fields for you,” Russell sings on a song called “Close My Eyes.” “Who knows what grows in the morning light / When we can feel the watery dew.”

––Benjamin McElroy

The album cover for Russell’s Iowa Dream.

extraterrestrial transmissions, like World of Echo, which bounced voice and cello off the walls and into a place where past and present seem like petty things.

Most Arthur Russell music, though, has been shepherded posthumously by his partner, Tom Lee, and fan turned record label head Steve Knutson.

These free-range releases, collected from those cassettes, reels, betas, DATs and VHSs, cover endless ground and genre. The Iowa of it all can be heard on Russell’s strummed-and-sung ditties— idylls somehow richer than the soil from which they sprouted.

I grew up in the same area code that Russell did, but embarrassingly enough, didn’t learn

Getting his Phill of Freedom

I

n 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 have gotten to know Phill, an actual buffalo who jumped over a fence and into headlines this summer.

Phill is an Asian buffalo, and farmers in Asia use the buffalo like farmers here use oxen—to pull plows and other things, and sometimes as meat. Phill was one of four young Asian buffalo purchased by a Des

T

ape hung like curtains in Arthur Russell’s apartment. The recording devices responsible were powered by an extension cord that ran out the window and down a few floors to Allen Ginsberg’s.

Russell left behind 166 feet of tape when he died, only 40 years old, of AIDS-related illness in 1992.

And if you’ll let me tell it as I hear it in my head, the words need to be as big and bold as any headline: This 166 Feet Of Tape Will Restore Your Faith In All That Is Good (And Weird) In The World.

Russell, a cellist, composer and Billboardminded Buddhist, was born in Oskaloosa, Iowa. He ran away from home at 16, and by the early ’70s, had landed in that East Village apartment—New York City, not Des Moines. Columbia Records producer/kingmaker John Hammond evidently said, “When they write my legacy, they’re going to say, ‘John Hammond discovered Billie Holiday, Charlie Christian, George Benson, and then Dylan, Springsteen and Arthur Russell.’”

It didn’t work out that way. Russell tinkered toward the divine and only released a few finished products in his lifetime. There were the disco-clubs to the face, like “Kiss Me Again,” with David Byrne guesting on guitar. And then there were the

Phill the water buffalo recovers in safety. via the Iowa Farm Sanctuary LITTLEVILLAGEMAG.COM/LV335 December 2024 25

LittleVillageMag.com

Moines resident from a breeder in Kansas earlier this year, but he wasn’t looking for animals to plow his rented property in Pleasant Hill. He wanted meat.

One of the four had already been butchered when Phill jumped the fence in August and ran for his life. Remarkably, he managed to evade capture for five days in Pleasant Hill, attracting national media attention and an online cheering section who named the fugitive Phill, a contraction of “Pleasant Hill.”

The police almost had Phill cornered early on, but he managed to escape, even though he was wounded when an officer shot him in the flank.

The police eventually caught up with Phill again, and with the help of the Animal Rescue League, tranquilized him. Phill was transported to ISU’s Large Animal Hospital for treatment before reaching the happily-ever-after stage of his story.

Jared and Shawn Camp, who run Iowa Farm Sanctuary, the state’s only vegan farm sanctuary, had gotten the buffalo owner to turn over Phill and the other two—one male, one female—to the sanctuary. When Phill got out of the hospital, he went straight to the sanctuary in Oxford and was reunited with the newly named Sal and Jane. The three have been dubbed “the Moo Crew,” and are now enjoying life next to other IFS residents, like Henry the one-eyed turkey.

Shortly after Iowa’s most famous buffalo arrived at his new home, IFS posted a video of a very contented-looking Phill cuddling with Shawn Camp.

Buffalo cuddle? Who knew? Not me, and definitely not Capt. Kearney who didn’t know the difference between a bison and a buffalo 204 years ago.

—Paul Brennan

S

The Clown Prince of Heavy Metal

ince the release of their eponymous debut studio album in 1999, and the even more hellacious follow-up Iowa in 2001, the music and masked musicians of metal band Slipknot have resonated with irrefutable musical defiance for millions of “maggots,” as their fans proudly call themselves, the world over.

It all started in Des Moines, hometown of founding members Shawn Crahan, a percussionist better known as Clown, and bassist Paul Gray.

Slipknot played its first show with current lead vocalist Corey Taylor on Aug. 24, 1997 at the Safari Club in Des Moines; today, the venue houses Lefty’s Live Music.

“The performance is pretty bonkers, featuring an emcee in a ski mask, someone tossing out stuffed animals and a spray of sparks that begins once the band starts playing. And from there the band 26 December 2024 LITTLEVILLAGEMAG.COM/LV335

Wildcat Den State Park Steven A. Arts (above); Dawn Frary (right) / Little Village

rips into three minutes of explosive energy and pummeling rhythms, as Taylor growls through his mop of hair and X-ed out eyes,” Revolver Magazine describes the performance, which is on YouTube.

The comment section is full of maggots noting none of the current band members look or sound quite like themselves yet—except Clown.

In 2009, Crahan began responding to a quieter artistic muse when the nationally acclaimed Des Moines Moberg Gallery agreed to curate an exhibit for him at the Hotel Kirkwood. This was an immersive experience featuring a variety of synergistic artists, all centered around Crahan’s acrylic-on-canvas paintings, framed photography, prints and Polaroids—many of the latter featured in his 2012 photo book The Apocalyptic Nightmare Journey. That year, Crahan also appeared in his first feature film, Darren Lynn Bousman’s The Devil’s Carnival.

Crahan directed a concert film in 2015, Day of the Gusano, documenting Slipknot’s first concert in Mexico City. (“Gusano” means “maggot” in Spanish.) This other-disciplines creative flow seems to keep feeding itself back into his work with Slipknot.

The band’s most recent album was released in 2022, just as COVID had firmly locked out maggots from the visceral realism of an in-person concert.

Slipknot’s tour schedule has now resumed, with shows in Europe and Australia taking them into 2025.

The basics and each band member’s bond to each other is what continues to drive Slipknot into their next quarter century of creativity. As Crahan said in 2017,“I’m only listening to the other guys in Slipknot, and we’ll make what we want with our middle fingers in the air.”

—John Busbee

Drink Deep from the Devil’s Punchbowl

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ildcat 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 Creek Grist Mill, now part of the 500-acre site. Powered by a water turbine, the mill ground various grains for

residents until production ceased in 1923.

In 1905, sisters Emma and Clara Brandt purchased the site, then 67 acres. They sought to preserve the area for its beauty, even hiring guards to make sure that no one defaced the fragile limestone cliffs. In 1921, they added 141 acres nearby. Later that same year, the state of Iowa added another 70 acres.

In September 1935, the land was officially dedicated as a state park by then-Gov. Clyde L. Herring. After that, more land was added to the site, including Melpine Schoolhouse during the 1980s.

“Wildcat Den is classified as a ‘classic’ state park in the Iowa State Park system,” explained Iowa State Ranger Ben Marcus. “This means park staff tried to keep it the way it was originally designed to showcase how parks were started, outside of necessary upgrades such as paved roads, modern restroom facilities, electricity and ADA compliance in state parks, to increase our accessibility for all user groups and to provide more experiences.”

Hikers in Wildcat Den can seek out the Pine Creek Overlook, Steamboat Rock and the Devil’s Punch Bowl, natural bluffs and formations in the 300 million-year-old sandstone bluffs. Despite its seeming proximity to the Mississippi River, Marcus said Wildcat Den has never had to close for flooding.

“The park is located far enough and high enough away from the river to be affected. The Grist Mill, however, has been affected by the flood waters in the past due to Pine Creek flooding, where the mill sits along, being backed up by the river.”

Marcus said Wildcat Den State Park saw roughly 88,000 visitors in 2023 from Iowa, Illinois and beyond.

Around 2,600 stayed to camp at the campground.

“This past summer our friends group, the Friends of the Pine Creek Grist Mill who operate the historical mill located in the park, provided several tours to the Cruiseliner that goes up and down the Mississippi River. These tours increased our reach for visitors coming from across the nation with some that came from the New England area, others from New Orleans and from all the way from Los Angeles,” he said. “We also have visitors stop by from Canada, and we did have a group that were driving across the nation from Sweden.”

—Steven A. Arts

Y

Return of the King of Condiments

ears ago, Cedar Rapids was a real deli town.

You could pop out of work or school to grab a good sandwich at any number of locally owned shops peppered throughout the quadrants.

But the city looks different after decades of

IOWA CITY DOWNTOWN DISTRICT LITTLEVILLAGEMAG.COM/LV335 December 2024 27

LittleVillageMag.com

restaurant closures––Cork ‘n Fork in 2014, Sub City and Emil’s Delicatessen in 2017, and prior to those, Club Deli, the Souper, the Little King Deli, Deli Natural and Alfalfa’s.

Since the scene shifted from mostly local to corporate (Subway, Firehouse, Quizno’s), lunch breakers have yearned for places to order a proper Eastern Iowa sandwich––cold cuts, sliced cheese, raw vegetables, black olives, alfalfa sprouts, oil and vinegar, a dash of oregano and, of course, the sauce that binds them all together: dill spread.

A staple to Cedar Rapids delis of yore, dill spread is also a phenomenon unique to the eastern half of Iowa. Many travelers have reported that once you hit a 100-mile radius of the city, nobody knows what the hell you’re talking about if you request it on your sub.

Common lore points dill spread’s origins to Alfalfa’s Deli, a beloved restaurant opened in 1978

by Debbie and Warren Wood––parents of Cedar Rapids-born actor Elijah Wood––where secret ingredients were forged into a precious regional treasure, a delectable topping produced deep underground within the lower level of Lindale Mall.

Elijah knows the secret; Bon Appetit quoted him on his mother’s recipe in 2012: “She also did these vegetable sandwiches topped with a spread that I still make to this day. It’s sour cream, dill and Beau

Elijah Wood stands outside a fan-built replica of a Hobbit hole from the Lord of the Rings films at Comic Con Northern Ireland 2023.

Public Domain

THURSDAY

NIGHTS AT THE

A photo on the wall of Sub City recalls its ribbon-cutting in 1989. Jordan Sellergren / Little Village

Monde seasoning.”

If it’s true that the Woods developed the original recipe, several other delis declared allegiance and followed suit during Alfalfa’s benevolent reign, and well past its change of ownership around 1990 when the family sold the restaurant and moved to L.A. with their famous son. Even corporate spots like Subway and New Jerseybased Blimpie kept dill spread on hand, lest they lose their Eastern Iowa customer base. And they served it well––according to former Cedar Rapids restauranteur Adam Hadjis, “Blimpie’s dill spread just hit different.”

Today, though CR’s deli scene is quieter than it was during the heyday of the ’80s and ’90s, you can still find the cherished condiment at a couple of classic eateries––Deb’s Ice Cream and Deli, opened downtown in 1987, and Nelson’s Meat Market, which opened on Old Marion Road

in 1990 (consolidating the family’s citywide butcheries dating back to 1935). And there’s more hope on the horizon: in August of 2024, former Alfalfa’s regular Tim Palmer opened The Salsa Guy, reintroducing the Woods’ most notable sandwich that many Cedar Rapidians feared they’d lost forever. Dill spread squishes between alfalfa sprouts and whole wheat once again, in a little shop on Mt. Vernon Road on the city’s southeast side.

You can find it at a few spots outside CR, too–– as far away as PJ’s Deli on the main square in Newton, northward in Manchester at Olive That Sub, and at the original Sub City in downtown Waterloo. Anywhere else it can be found, you’ll have to tell us: editor@littlevillagemag.com.

—Jordan Sellergren

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Macabre Chess History

I

The Iowans Who Poked the LDS Church

owa can also claim an entry in the notinsignificant list of chess-related deaths throughout history. In this case, a

murder. In October 2008, an Iowa City man killed his roommate and frequent chess

Still from Heretic via A24

opponent over a late-night game gone bad. A Daily Iowan article relayed that an acquaintance of the guilty party said they “...discussed his hobby, talking about the iconic chess player Bobby Fischer.” Perhaps they took Fischer’s famous “chess is life,” quote a bit too far.

Buckle up for this bit of chess info. In 2016, Grand Master Timur Gareyev broke the world record for most consecutively played blindfold games at the Coralville Marriott Hotel. Gareyev, known as the Blindfold King, played 64 consecutive games while pedaling on an exercise bicycle. He won 54, lost eight and drew to two players.

Unfortunately for everyone involved, if you search Gareyev, it’s not long before you find the recent scandals involving multiple sexual misconduct complaints. In June 2022, Gareyev was banned from even attending U.S. Chess national events for two years.

The allegations against Gareyev, among other scandals, led to lawsuits, resignations and an infamous social media exchange in which USCF president Randy Bauer responded to a comment that stated, “It is amazing to me that you do not think U.S. Chess deserves criticism,” with, in part, “I don’t give a rats behind about your amazement.” Bauer also happens to have served as Iowa’s state budget director for seven years under Gov. Tom Vilsack.

—Chuy Renteria

Queens of the 64 Squares

C

hess, like most discernible parts of human society, saw its usage affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Fortunately, in this case, the 550-year-old game saw a marked rise in interest.

Between October 2020 to April 2022, Chess.com

said they saw their active monthly users double to nearly 17 million.

We can’t give all the credit to quarantining; a not insignificant part of the chess boom was thanks to Netflix’s hit series The Queen’s Gambit, released in October 2020 and adapted from Walter Tevis’s 1983 novel. The book and series follow a fictional chess prodigy, orphan Beth Harmon (played by Anya Taylor-Joy), as she battles trauma, grief, sexism and addiction in a Bobby Fischer-like rise to chess dominance (minus Fischer’s rampant racism and antisemitism).

Netflix reported a then-record 62 million households watched Gambit in its first 28 days. “Not since an American [Fischer] became world champion in 1972 had there been such a surge of interest in chess,” the New York Times noted in June 2022.

Did you know that Walter Tevis graduated from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 1960?

The story goes that Tevis published his first novel while at the Workshop and sold the film rights to help pay for his MFA studies. That novel was The Hustler, and those film rights resulted in the Paul Newman flick of the same name.

The author of a fictional chess story isn’t Iowa’s only claim to chess fame. One of the highestrated American Chess players resides in Iowa City. Michael Takahashi is a United States Chess Federation (USCF) National Master; less than 1 percent of rated chess players in the United States hold that title. The 22-year-old Takahashi offers online and in-person lessons for those wanting to learn from the Master.

Meanwhile, 11-year-old Iowan Irene Fei is a Women FIDE Master, having won gold in October in the 2024 Pan-American School Chess Championship, held in Asunción, Paraguay. Fei won the Under-13 Girls section and is currently the top-rated women’s chess player in Iowa. Not bad for a sixth-grader.

“It’s beautiful sometimes, like when you’re in difficult positions, and you must find your way out of them to win,” she told the Ames Tribune. “It’s like art to me.”

Asked how she feels about facing opponents much older than her, Fei offered a very Beth Harmon response: “Winning is winning, and it always feels good to win.”

—Chuy Renteria

T

he 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 and well-being of missionaries.” Utah outlet St. George News reported that LDS Director of Media Relations Doug Anderson “decried the film.”

The plot centers on two LDS missionaries (Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East) who endure intense torment in the home of Mr. Reed, played by Hugh Grant (gone full Ray Wise in his transformation from hearththrob to villain). Heretic is the 11th feature film from Bettendorf-raised filmmakers Scott Beck and Bryan Woods. The pair are best known for A Quiet Place and 65.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of two films made while the childhood friends were studying at the University of Iowa. The Beckdirected film University Heights won the second annual MTVU Best Film on Campus competition.

Her Summer, directed by Woods, was also entered in the competition, underscoring the “healthy, friendly competition of ideas” that Beck cited as a backbone of their partnership in an interview with Iowa Now in 2017.

Also in memorable anniversaries, this month marks one year since Beck and Woods opened the Last Picture House in Davenport, an independent cinema that also houses a cozy cocktail lounge and a rare art collection of posters and props.

—Genevieve Trainor

THE WEIRD Pinball Bans & the Des Moines Mafia

T

here was never an amendment to the Constitution prohibiting pinball, but that didn’t stop some major cities from banning the game from the 1930s through the mid-’70s. In fact, Oakland, California still had a ban

BUMPER CROPS

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$30

on pinball machines as recently as 2014.

I first learned about pinball’s checkered history after trying to cajole my mom into buying a machine; you know, for the nieces and nephews to enjoy. I didn’t expect a yes, but her no was more extreme than I expected.

“My father would be horrified if he knew I had a pinball machine in my house,” she replied. “He called it the devil’s workshop and associated pinball with the mafia, as something only degenerates partook in.”

While I can’t disprove the second half of Grampa’s claims, it turns out pinball does in fact have shockingly seedy historic ties to organized crime—ties that even extended throughout this fair state.

The crusade against pinball in 1942 was spearheaded by New York mayor Fiorello La Guardia, who described manufacturers as “slimy crews of tinhorns, well dressed and living in luxury on penny thievery.” In fairness, these original machines were undoubtedly legal workarounds for

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A Mini-Guide to Des Moines Pinball

O

ne of the benefits of having family living in the Des Moines area is that it has afforded me ample opportunities

to frequent some of the very fine, very nonmafia-connected pinball venues in the area.

I’ll dive deeper into each of these venues in future editions of my pinball column Bumper Crops, but for now, here are three of the best places in the Des Moines area to ’ball.

Up/Down (500 E Locust St, Des Moines) Clip of an FBI document about Louis Fratto. Public Domain

slot machine bans.

While they shared the same design and feel of modern pinball machines, they had one crucial difference: no flippers. A person would plug in a coin then launch the ball down the playfield, where it would bounce around through an outlay of nails (or “pins”) in the board, and eventually (hopefully) land on one of several scoring areas. Similar to scratch tickets, any prizes won could then be redeemed by the person tending the shop.

During this time, roughly 90 percent of machines were manufactured in Chicago, which was a hotbed for organized crime under infamous boss Al Capone.

profits in exchange for protection. Fratto moved to Des Moines in 1936 to act as a point man for the Chicago mob, and it wasn’t long before he began “managing” several taverns and restaurants, including Babe’s Taproom on 6th Street and Johnnie Critelli’s Spaghetti on Harding Road, which illicitly provided its patrons with booze and, you guessed it, pinball and gambling.

In later years, Fratto would be the subject of several federal investigations, some of which directly involved his connection with Al Capone and Jimmy Hoffa. But Fratto remained relatively untouched through it all, thanks largely to his many friends in politics, justice and law enforcement.

Fratto was even “MY FATHER WOULD BE HORRIFIED IF HE granted an honorary KNEW I HAD A PINBALL MACHINE IN MY lifetime membership with the Des Moines HOUSE. HE CALLED IT THE DEVIL’S WORKSHOP Junior Chamber of AND ASSOCIATED IT WITH THE MAFIA, AS Commerce, and has a plaque dedicated for his SOMETHING ONLY DEGENERATES PARTOOK IN. —LUCAS BENSON’S MOM outstanding service to the community.

Although Fratto It’s reported that from the 1930s through the early was never convicted of any crime, he was under a ’60s, these machines generated more revenue than federal indictment for racketeering at the time of his the movies. No surprise, then, that gangsters wanted death in 1967. It would be another decade before the a piece of the action, and pinball machines were ban against pinball was finally overturned, thanks surprisingly easy methods for laundering money. All to pinball royalty Roger Sharpe, who successfully it took was disabling the coin counter that kept track demonstrated in front of the American Association of the number of plays to turn them into coin-operated of New York that, thanks to the inclusion of flippers, piggy banks that guaranteed a consistent payola. pinball had evolved from a game of chance to one Given its geographic proximity to the City of of skill.

Big Shoulders, it’s little surprise that some schemes Pinball has shed most of its stigma through the spilled into Iowa. Luigi Tommaso Guiuseppe years. These days, it’s more likely to be condemned Fratto—or, as he was better known in crime circles, by a parent for depicting Elvira’s cleavage than for “Cockeyed Louie”—led a satellite mafia in the Des laundering mob money, exploiting working class Moines area. gamblers or providing a workshop for the devil.

Fratto was Chicago-born and a member of the Unless, of course, you were raised by Grampa.

Fiore mob, which had a reputation for shaking down —Lucas Benson speakeasies and similar establishments for half their

Up-Down is an ideal spot for those who prefer a more retro arcade and pinball experience. In addition to serving drinks and delicious pizza, Up-Down also features more than 50 arcade games and 11 pinball machines, including iconic classics like Addams Family, Attack From Mars, and Simpson’s Pinball Party, as well as the most recent release, X-Men from Stern.

Monsterama (3108 SW 9th St, Des Moines) Born in 2022, Monsterama is an absolute hidden gem of good food, kitschy vibes and an eclectic mix of pinball machines from a wide swatch of manufacturers, including Data East, Stern, Gottlieb, Midway and Williams. Limitless game play can be enjoyed for a one-time fee of $10.99. Do note: Monsterama is currently undergoing renovations and a reimagining of its space, with plans to reopen as Mosterama Pubcade towards the end of November/ beginning of December. I for one can’t wait!

The Operating Room (5515 Mills Civic Pkwy #130, West Des Moines; 1631 SW Main St. Suite 105 in Ankeny) Both Operating Room locations have an energetic vibe with perfect pinball accommodations for the whole family or a large group of friends. In addition to plentiful drink, food and gaming options, O.R. also offers the option of renting their pinball machines for short- and long-term use.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to plug another 20 bucks in the token machine. O.R. has a new Godfather machine from Jersey Jack, and I’m not going to quit until I set the high score. As it says in The Godfather, “Great men are not born great, they grow great.”

—Lucas Benson

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Clip of a newspaper headline from the Gazette dated April 4, 1954. Fair Use

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How Iowa Bred the First Sperm Bank

n 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 and professor of urology, told the Daily Iowan.

Bunge’s monstrous accomplishment came in 1953, when he collaborated with UI grad student Jerome Sherman on a new method of freezing and thawing human semen, and in the process created the world’s first sperm bank.

Scientists had been attempting to preserve sperm by freezing for almost 100 years by the time Sherman and Bunge started their work. There had been some success in extending the viability of animal sperm by refrigerating semen collected for artificial insemination—in the 1930s, it became common to funnel the semen into thermoses that were then packed in ice—but the sperm remained viable only very briefly.

While farmers were busy breeding better cows, bigger pigs and faster horses by the thermosful, medical professionals were paying increasing

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attention to the problem of human infertility. There had been scattered attempts to overcome infertility by using artificial insemination dating back to the late 18th century, but the first professional association of doctors and researchers focused on infertility wasn’t formed until 1944.

In 1952, the UI College of Medicine opened an infertility clinic, where patients could receive artificial insemination, among other treatments, to help them have children. Dr. Bunge, then an associate professor, was the staff urologist. At that same time, a recently arrived grad student began working for the urology department.

Jerome Sherman grew up in Brooklyn, and earned his undergraduate degree at Brown University, a master’s at Case Western, before coming to UI to work on his Ph.D. in zoology. Then, as now, grad students lived on little money, so he took a job in the urology department preparing tissue samples to be frozen for later study.

As he was reading up on tissue sample freezing, Sherman came across the story of Frosty the calf in a U.K. scientific journal. Frosty’s mother had been inseminated with sperm frozen and thawed using a new method that added glycerol to a semen sample. (Glycerol is a sugar-based alcohol found naturally in cells and unnaturally in automotive antifreeze.) Sherman wondered if the process would work on humans.

“Enthused by the possibilities and the challenge, Sherman began to experiment with his own sperm after hours, testing freezing protocols in search of a technique that would maximize

BUT JUST BECAUSE THAWED SPERMATOZOA WRIGGLE VIGOROUSLY ON A MICROSCOPE SLIDE, IT DOESN’T MEAN THEY ARE VIABLE. TO DETERMINE IF THIS NEW METHOD REALLY WORKED FOR HUMANS, IT WAS NECESSARY TO FIND SOME HUMANS TO TRY IT. the percentage of viable sperm after thawing,” Kara W. Swanson wrote in her 2013 monograph, The Birth of the Sperm Bank.

Bunge and Sherman had encountered each other around the UI Urology Department, but never really talked until Sherman did some outside work for the doctor.

“Bunge hired Sherman… to paint his house,” Swanson wrote. “When Sherman shared his excitement about his after-hours experiments with Bunge, the senior faculty member was intrigued.”

Sherman did most of the work in determining the correct glycerol-to-semen ratio for optimal freezing.

But just because thawed spermatozoa wriggle vigorously on a microscope slide, it doesn’t mean they are viable. To determine if this new method really worked for humans, it was necessary to find some humans to try it.

Working with his colleagues at the infertility

clinic, Bunge found three willing couples who were infertile and already married. That last qualification was very important, given ’50s moral standards. In the spring of 1953, all three women underwent artificial insemination using frozen-then-thawed sperm from their lawfully wed spouses. All three became pregnant.

The question then became how to share the news.

Sherman, Bunge and their colleagues understood that many people considered artificial insemination immoral (thwarting God’s will, etc.). Sherman and Bunge co-authored a short, restrained article on their breakthrough that was published in a scientific journal in October 1953. A New York Times reporter noticed, and wrote an even shorter, more restrained story on the journal article. That’s when the hate mail started.

Some of the hate came from a member of the Iowa Legislature, who denounced the scientists for creating “a pagan device,” as Sherman later recalled.

(Calling the process a “device” showed the lawmaker didn’t understand what he was condemning, which is

Jerome Sherman, originally published in the Gazette. Fair Use

still standard practice among Iowa legislators.)

After all three babies were delivered, another short, restrained scientific article was written. The Gazette, on the other hand, felt no need for restraint when it broke the news of the births to the general public on April 4, 1954.

“Fatherhood After Death Has Now Been Proven Possible,” the banner headline blared, even though no one involved had brought up posthumous parenting.

“The history-making birth of the first normal babies resulting from conception by means of stored frozen semen has taken place, according to an informed source here,” the story dateline Iowa City began.

That “normal” was unnecessary, since these were no other types of babies born after defrosting, but it was still probably reassuring to readers.

Later in the story, the Gazette reported, “there is a laboratory at the university for collection of semen from childless fathers. There exists a bank for storage of this semen, following the method discovered by Dr. Sherman, for cases in which the use of the semen is warranted.”

Leaving aside whether one can be a childless father, the fact that Sherman hadn’t received his Ph.D. yet and whatever was meant by “is warranted,” the Gazette did get one thing right. The first sperm bank was open for business.

Bunge was promoted to full professor and remained at UI for the rest of his career, retiring in 1976. He died in 1999.

Sherman left UI almost immediately. He had a long and distinguished career as a professor at the University of Arkansas Medical School. He helped found the Society for Cryobiology and the American Association of Tissue Banks.

Sherman was, by all accounts, a much beloved figure in Little Rock, affectionately known to generations of students as “Spermin’ Sherman.” He died in 2023.

—Paul Brennan

Stills of Thomas Collins skating at Super Skate via @andruwjonesrichar on TikTok

The Most Immaculate Vibes on TikTok

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ho will you really miss if TikTok is banned? Not the Hawk Tuah girl, surely.

Not watching oversized Stanley cups fill with colorful liquids. Certainly not the clipped content from Jubilee, Logan Paul and Andrew Tate. No, you’ll miss those moments of magic

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captured by everyday people: A Boston cop plunging down on a metal slide. A squirrel named Squishy fitting eight hazelnuts into its cheeks.

Tornado sirens in Iowa City harmonizing like a choir of angels.

Another local in the pantheon of TikTok darlings: Thomas Hack Collins, a 60-year-old rollerskater with a dirty-blonde mullet and even dirtier moves in the rink. If you liked that guy riding his skateboard to work while listening to Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” and drinking Ocean Spray, you’ll love the videos from user @andruwjonesrichar, shot at the Super Skate in Cedar Rapids and posted in March 2023.

The star of the show is Collins, a blue-collar skater who spends the majority of the vids skating backwards and doing tricks in a style one commenter aptly describes as gracefully chaotic. It’s a fever dream of a video series, the most popular of which is a gestalt of Collins’ moves, slow-motion camera work and Super Skate off-kilterness. A woman in a sparkling sequined bodysuit. A teen in a shirt that is almost too self-aware in its aesthetic allusion to Napoleon Dynamite that reads “I LIKE OLDER WOMEN.” Another kid absolutely fuckin’ biffing it in-time with the video’s soundtrack, a mashup of Metallica, Megadeth and The Who by Bill McClintock. (As the kid drops, James Hetfield’s voice screams out “Die!”) “I’m not cool enough to be watching this,” one TikTok commenter admits. “How did this not win Best Picture,” asks another. “If this doesn’t go violently viral I’m quitting this app,” reads a top comment. (Despite critical acclaim, @ andruwjonesrichar’s top video has amassed less than a million views—still a better box office than many indie films.)

The cinematography, editing, subjects, setting, soundtrack—there’s an almost uncanny, anachronistic quality to them that no Netflix production set in the ’80s or ’90s has quite captured, full of shades of brown, gratuitous amounts of smoking and little to no fear that at any moment your clumsy ass might be filmed and immortalized on a social media app.

I could go on and on. But like all truly viral videos, you just have to find it and watch it yourself.

Collins has his own TikTok account, @ thcollins, and his bio states that he “helps friends. skates, uses chucks. works his ass off.” In my latest hyper-fixated deep dive into the matter, I found that Collins and @andruwjonesrichar met each other at Super Skate. Collins wrote of the encounter, “all it took was him to ask to vid me… bring ur cam and ask…I’m all about the show.”

And what a show it is. As one viewer perfectly assessed, “This feels so violently midwest, mesmerizing.”

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Register reporter wrote in ’74, before waxing poetic: “Their sleek knots can be found under starched or ruffled collars in far-flung places. Clinton is their home town, Iowa their home state; here they are, and will be, a success.”

—Malcolm MacDougall

Fast Fashion for the Jazz Age

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ften maligned by fashionheads but never completely exorcized from the wardrobe of surly young boys forced to attend weddings, bar mitzvahs and funerals, the clip-on tie was created in Clinton, Iowa amid the rip-roaring excess of 1928. Presumably, chaps were so busy attending various Gatsby-adjacent parties that it became necessary to save tie-tying time—which is where Joseph Less, an orchestra leader for MGM and Loews theaters, came in.

The original iteration of the clip-on tie was the One-In-Hand Tie, a tie with a pre-made knot and a slot in the back to insert the narrow end. This reduced the multiple steps of tying a four-in-hand knot (the traditional narrow one-loop tie) to a single operation.

He discovered the knot “quite by accident,” according to a 1972 Des Moines Register retrospective. “He tried crossing the neckband of his tie one morning. He pulled the tie up to his collar and found it would not loosen. This was the knot that launched an industry.”

He shared his perma-knot with other musicians and actors in his social circle. When a member of his band put a joke ad in the paper with the headline “Crazy Inventor Invents Not-So-Crazy Necktie,” Less found himself so flooded with calls that he and his brother started to manufacture the readymades on an industrial scale.

Later, Less developed the clip-on tie, skipping the neck-wrapping step altogether. In his patent, he

Iowa Words for Iowa Storms

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Figures from J.W. Less’ 1957 Patent for “Pretied neckties and methods for making the same.” Public Domain

said that the neckband of the tie was “useless and uncomfortable in warm weather”; that hasn’t stopped the ties becoming a staple of police uniforms and child formal wear—both cases in which a traditional tie can pose a strangulation hazard.

“The Less brothers just smile at the contention of competitors that they can’t sell fashionable neckwear from the country’s leading corn-and-hog state,” the

t’s probably best not to dwell on what it says about life in Iowa that the names of two fearsome types of weather originated here. But in 1870, a northwest Iowa newspaper attached an already violence-laced word to the most violent sort of snowstorm, and 18 years later, a former UI professor borrowed the Spanish word for “straight,” to describe a devastating storm that ripped through Iowa in 1877.

O.C. Bates, editor of Estherville’s Northern Vindicator, was not a man to be restrained by the rules of grammar or limit his vocabulary to the conventional. He was also not the sort of person to let another newspaper besmirch the reputation of an Emmett County neighbor.

Following a report in the Algona Upper Des Moines, a Kossuth County newspaper, about an Emmett County resident almost dying in a massive snowstorm in March 1870, Bates decided to respond. In the April 23, 1870 edition of his weekly paper, Bates wrote, “Campbell has had too much experience with northwestern ‘blizards’ to be caught in such a trap, in order to make sensational paragraphs for the Upper Des Moines.”

A week later, the word got a second “z,” when Bates wrote about a local doctor who had gone to Dickinson County to treat an “unfortunate victim of the March ‘blizzard.’”

O.C. BATES... WAS NOT A MAN TO BE RESTRAINED BY THE RULES OF GRAMMAR OR LIMIT HIS VOCABULARY TO THE CONVENTIONAL.

Damage from the 2020 derecho in Iowa City. Jason Smith / Little Village

Bliz(z)ard had those quotation marks in its first appearances, not because Bates was introducing a new word, but because he was using an old one in a new way. Americans had long used “blizzard” and “blizz” to describe sudden blows or volleys of gunfire, but Bates was the first one to use it for a sustained fusillade of snow.

The new use spread quickly throughout the Midwest, and in 1888 it reached the New York Times, which called blizzard “an American word LITTLEVILLAGEMAG.COM/LV335 December 2024 35

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for an American storm.”

Over the years, people from Texas to Minnesota have claimed to have been the first to use blizzard as a weather word, but there’s no evidence of anyone doing so before Bates.

As for the state’s other entry in the badweather lexicon—derecho—there’s no question about its parentage. In an 1888 paper published in the American Meteorological Journal, Gustavus Hinrichs used it in his description of a thunderstorm with devastating straight-line winds that struck Iowa in July 1877. The storm had windspeeds equivalent to a powerful tornado, and since “tornado” is a 16th-century mangling of the Spanish for thunderstorm (tronada) modified by the mangling of the Spanish verb for twist (tornar), Henrichs used Spanish again. But this time the word wasn’t mangled.

The Danish-born Hinrichs was one of the leading U.S. scientists at the time, with an international reputation for his work in chemistry, physics, geology, mineralogy and meteorology.

He was part of the University of Iowa faculty for more than two decades, but by the time his derecho paper was published, he’d been fired by the university and left the state in disgust.

Hinrichs immigrated to the United States in 1861, and after a year teaching high school in Davenport, he was hired by UI (known then as SUI, the State University of Iowa, which is still its legal name) as an instructor for modern languages.

In addition to Danish and English, Hinrichs was fluent in French, German and Italian. He began teaching science the next year.

Hinrichs set up chemistry and physics labs that garnered international attention. The chart of elements he devised became the foundation for the periodic table of elements. He was a leader of the campaign to found the UI College of Medicine, and served on its faculty after it opened in 1870.

Then in 1871, UI got a new president. George Thacher was a graduate of the Yale Divinity School and had spent 30 years as a minister before being appointed president. Thacher didn’t think science was an important part of a university education, and slashed funding for it. Thacher and Hinrichs had a hostile relationship for all six years of Thacher’s presidency. Most of the faculty and, more importantly, the Iowa Board of Regents sided with Thacher.

It wasn’t just the university where Hinrichs faced a lack of funding. In 1875, he took the initiative to create the Iowa Weather Service, the country’s first state weather bureau. For the first three years, he paid all the expenses out of his pocket and relied on volunteers. In 1878, the Iowa Legislature finally provided some money for equipment, but none for salaries.

Hinrichs’ relationship with the university and the board of regents didn’t improve much under the next president. Josiah Pickard was a little less conservative than Thacher, but still underfunded

science at UI. The fight over funding became increasingly bitter, and in 1886 the regents fired Hinrichs from the university for “general obstreperousness.” The next year, they fired him from the College of Medicine.

Hinrichs continued to run the Iowa Weather Service without being paid, and in 1888 he published his study of the 1877 derecho. In 1889, he gave up on Iowa and moved to Missouri. Hinrichs started his own laboratory, where he invented, among other things, Universal Embalming Fluid.

It was quickly embraced as the industry standard, and it was probably used on Hinrichs after his death in 1923.

Parts of Hinrichs’ story may seem familiar.

Conservatives undermining science and education, state lawmakers not funding a vital public service, a talented person leaving the state because of a lack of opportunity here. Probably best not to dwell on what all this says about life in Iowa.

—Paul Brennan

Honey, I Shrunk the Dunk

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or the homecoming parade in October, folks with the University of Iowa’s 160-year-old Museum of Natural History (UIMNH) made

A mural behind Elray’s Live and Dive in downtown Iowa City depicts a Dunkleosteus in a prehistoric shallow sea, painted by Jonathan Sims in 2020.

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Dunkleosteus fossil. Public Domain

a paper mache model of a nearly 400-millionyear-old fish species. Held above the heads of two people by three wooden poles, the prop was about six feet long with a flat head and piercing round eyes, painted a dark gray.

“Shark!” some parade-watchers shouted.

“Dunky!” cried the more enlightened.

Second only to Rusty the Giant Ground Sloth— another mid-’80s arrival to the museum—Dunky the Dunkleosteus is the most iconic exhibit inside Macbride Hall. The extinct sea dweller is likely one of Earth’s first apex predators, ruling the late Devonian Period (also dubbed the Age of Fishes).

The Dunk’s absolute tank of a skull produced one of the highest bite forces of any animal to ever live. Rather than teeth, it used the selfsharpening blades in its jaw bones to dispatch fish and even shelled creatures such as ammonites.

Paleontologists believe it could open its jaw within a fraction of a second, creating a vacuum to suck in prey like an underwater Kirby.

“He’s a really exciting version of a species that would have existed in the ocean that was here, and was at the top of the food chain,” said Jessica Smith, communications and engagement director at UIMNH. “Most of Iowa was a shallow tropical sea, so the sunlight could really reach down.

There was a really diverse sea floor, and Dunky is definitely part of that story.”

Unlike modern fish, placoderms like Dunkleosteus only had bones in their head: a series of thick plates that, when assembled, form a skull that looks hauntingly similar to the face of the dead-eyed killer in life. Since the cartilage and tissues of its body couldn’t fossilize, scientists have only been able to estimate what the rest looked like. For generations, they’ve referenced other Devonian fish species with fossilized hind quarters, in particular the much smaller Coccosteus, for comparison. The largest and most

popular Dunk species, Dunkleosteus terrelli, was thought to be between 13 and 30 feet long.

In a practical use of space—and also, perhaps, to sidestep the lack of consensus about length— the Dunky exhibit in Iowa Hall is a combination sculpture and mural, utilizing perspective to make the mildly terrifying 3D placoderm head emerging from the wall appear connected to several yards of body behind it, extending into a murky sea.

The exhibit is also rich with smaller fish, crinoids, trilobites and other Devonian fauna you can find encased in limestone in Coralville’s Fossil Gorge.

On Feb. 21, 2023, Case Western Reserve University Ph.D. student Russell K. Engleman published a paper in the scientific journal Diversity called “A Devonian Fish Tale: A New Method of Body Length Estimation Suggests Much Smaller Sizes for Dunkleosteus terrelli.” In it, Engleman proposed a formula for determining the length of any fish from any era based on the orbit-opercular length, or the distance from the front of the eye

IT’S UNLIKELY A PAPER MACHE EFFIGY WOULD BE MISTAKEN FOR A SHARK; MORE LIKE A GIANT, SCALELESS, DEMONIC GOLDFISH. socket to the back of the skull. Tested on thousands of species whose body length is known, Engleman’s equation is so consistently, meticulously accurate, it’s bound to become the standard.

This new formula halves common estimates for the Dunk, proposing the largest were 10 to 12 feet long. But still thicc. So thicc, it’s unlikely a paper mache effigy would be mistaken for a shark; more like a giant, scaleless, demonic goldfish.

It’s a little like finding the skull of a pitbull and assuming it has the body of a mastiff. It’s still a bulky breed, just in a smaller package.

This relatively new discovery is unlikely to cause Dunkleosteous exhibits—which appear in almost all museums with Devonian galleries—to undergo emergency resculptings and repaintings.

But at UIMNH, as elsewhere, it offers a fascinating new talking point for tours. And perhaps some inspiration for short kings everywhere.

“Something tells me that if Dunky were here today, he would be just fine with us overestimating his size,” Smith said. “He wouldn’t take it too personally.”

—Emma McClatchey

Yellowjacket Jenner

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hat 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—on a football scholarship. A knee injury ended her football career with the Graceland Yellowjackets, but track and field coaches took an interest in the promising athlete. Jenner, for her part, loved and excelled at the decathlon, qualifying for the 1972 Munich Olympics at the Drake Relays. She came in 10th, but returned to the Olympics in 1976 to win gold and set a world record 8,618 points in the decathlon in Montreal.

The rest is sports and pop culture history. Jenner wasn’t just inducted into Graceland’s hall of fame in the mid-’80s, but had a building named in her honor: the Bruce Jenner Sports Complex. Jenner would marry her third wife, Kris Kardashian, in 1991, and come out as a transgender woman named Caitlyn on the cover of Vanity Fair in 2015.

Jenner’s former coaches at Graceland did a few interviews in the wake of her public transition, expressing surprise but support for Jenner’s new life.

Their church doesn’t condemn LGBTQ+ people, nor limit its clergy to men—despite the common misconception that Graceland is affiliated with the staunchly patriarchal Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS; colloquially, “Mormons”).

Let’s wind back to the mid-19th century. The LDS Church faced a succession crisis after the murder of their founder and prophet Joseph Smith in 1844. Like they had in New York, Ohio and Missouri, the Mormons were being driven out of Illinois by opponents of the fledgling faith and its increasingly violent defenders. Perhaps the most militant of the Mormons, Brigham Young, promised to lead Smith’s persecuted followers to a promised land in the Salt Lake Valley.

Young’s nephew died in southeast Iowa just days after crossing the frozen Mississippi River, but Young pressed on. This religious exodus crossed the entire length of Iowa, and several cities, landmarks and cemeteries established along the Mormon Trail remain to this day.

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WHILE BRIGHAM YOUNG FORMED MILITIAS AND TOOK DOZENS OF WIVES, SOME CHILDREN, IN THE TRADITION OF JOSEPH SMITH I, SMITH III NEVER CONDONED OR PRACTICED PLURAL MARRIAGE, NOR ANY EXTRALEGAL DOCTRINE. Take the city of Lamoni, named by Joseph Smith’s eldest son, Joseph Smith III, after an ancient king mentioned in the Book of Mormon. Not far from the Mormon Trail settlement of Garden Grove, Iowa, Lamoni was chosen by Smith as the headquarters of his rightful church. The Reformed Church of Latter-Day Saints was established in 1870; Graceland College followed in 1895.

The Reformed LDS immediately began distinguishing itself from its larger counterpart out west. While Brigham Young formed militias and took dozens of wives, some children, in the tradition of Joseph Smith I, Smith III never condoned or practiced plural marriage, nor any extralegal doctrine.

In 1920, church HQ moved 100 miles south to Independence, Missouri.

In 2001, they changed their name to Community of Christ, reflecting a centuryand-a-half of divergent evolution. Today, the Book of Mormon is rarely if ever used in sermons, nor read by many members, according to Pastor Rob Heverling of Council Bluffs’ 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.”

After Caitlyn Jenner came out as a trans woman (and, later, gradually, a transphobe), there was never a meaningful movement to strip her name from campus—nor to update the sports complex and online materials with her new first name and pronouns. “I would fight the college taking his name off,” former coach Jerry Hampton told the Kansas City Star in rather clumsy support of Jenner in 2015.

“He’s one who stood up to be counted.”

For her part, Jenner hasn’t been much of a donor, and hasn’t returned or discussed her alma mater often. She did, however, swing through Lamoni during the filming of her 2015 reality series I Am Cait. In season two, episode four, Jenner and a few friends stop at a lingerie store in Dubuque, meet her nemesis Hillary Clinton after the Dem debates in Des Moines, then hit the Graceland campus for a pleasant visit with former track coaches Hampton, Rich Harrop and Bill “Duke” Dudek.

Despite her nerves, Jenner is well received by the student body during a Q&A inside her namesake building. She struggles to answer students’ earnest questions about balancing gender identity and religion. Luckily, she brought some insightful trans and nonbinary friends with her, including writer Kate Bornstein, whose estranged daughter is a highranking Scientologist.

“Look for the heart of the doctrine you’re following, and if it’s at all mean, think twice before following it any further,” Bornstein says to much applause from the Yellowjackets.

—Emma McClatchey

Hobby Horsin’ Around

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or those who love the idea of sports played with an extraneous stick-like object between their legs but find Quidditch too ideologically freighted, hobby horsing is the new trend sweeping Hobby horse. through a very Public Domain specific subset of the nation.

This year marked the inaugural U.S. Hobby Horse Championships in Almont, Michigan, where Dubuque teen Gwen Maiers took home two first-place ribbons.

The sport of hobby horsing originated in Finland and was popularized by the 2017 documentary Keppihevosten vallankumous (Hobbyhorse Revolution). It found a following in the States—small, but dedicated and close-knit. At the championships, 11-year-old Ava Apodaca, who has a YouTube channel devoted to hobby horsing with more than 30,000 subscribers, was swamped by starstruck hobbyists looking for autographs.

If you didn’t know, a hobby horse is that timeless toy consisting of a stick with a plush,

wood or plastic horse head at the top. At first blush, hobby horsing appears odd, if not downright silly.

But aesthetics aside, the athleticism is surprisingly rigorous. Contestants must smoothly clear hurdles that are sometimes over half their height while still holding their hobby horse between their legs, swapping hands after every jump.

Hobby horsing competitions follow many traditional forms of equestrian competition, from dressage (the odd, stiff horse-dance one) to hunter/jumper, wherein competitors guide their horse, hobby or standard, through a course, jumping over fences without knocking down the rails. This was the event in which Maiers took first place, beating out 47 competitors.

So if you happen to be in Dubuque, keep an ear out for the sound of two feet clopping along the sidewalk. You might be in the presence of a national champion.

—Malcolm MacDougall

Thinking of Getting into Pun Comedy?

Here’s Your Sign.

L

ong 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 an added incentive to abide by the lowered speed limit as 380 crosses into the city limits.

The source of the best daily groans in Iowa is gearing up to mark its centennial in 2025.

Founded by Walter Nesper in 1925, the company has remained a small endeavor with an outsized impact. It was purchased by the Sovern family in the mid 20th century, and it was under them the regular jokes began. The Soverns co-owned Nesper Sign with the Garland family from 1990 until the Garlands took sole ownership in 2000, ushering it into the 21st century.

Pun pundits, finger-gun deployers and dad-joke connoisseurs have been yukking it up now for 45 years of Nesper’s history. Some classic knee-slappers have included: “How could you get hit on the head with a book? You would only have your shelf to blame!” and “A few puns make me numb but math puns make me number!”

LITTLEVILLAGEMAG.COM/LV335 December 2024 39

The company serves the entire state, so it’s highly likely that you’ve seen their handiwork—but it’s more than worth it to make a pilgrimage to CR to see Nesper’s own sign and pay homage to this hub of crackin’ wise.

—Genevieve Trainor

S

The Starship Urbandale

also worked a large rec center into the plans.

The circular home sits on more than 24 acres of land, protected by a moat. Yes, a moat. It’s also built to last: the 16 sturdy piers of its construction can withstand even the wildest of Iowa windstorms. No word on whether it could hold up against the solar wind in space.

—Genevieve Trainor

Easy Kum, Easy Go

ucker for a spiral staircase? Look no further than Des Moines suburb Urbandale and LeMar Koethe’s Spaceship House! A gorgeous o you really have gas stations called Kum one curves around a central pillar rising 35 feet— & Go?!” –A half-whispered quote from from the ground-floor garages to the main living multiple out-of-state visitors of mine area, with an elevator as well—in this stunner of a Sadly, the window of opportunity to scandalize mansion. Koethke had the home built in 1993, far the uninitiated is quickly closing. In April 2023, from the urban center but with a clear and enviable Kyle Krause, the Des Moines-based owner of view of the city skyline.

Jizz & Jet, announced that he would be selling Koethe, a Dubuque native, began his career the company to Utah-based Maverik, whose CEO, selling cookware door-to-door and cemented Chuck Maggelet, announced at that time that the it in real estate. When he had a “vision” of this branding would not change. Since then, they’ve unexpected design (“the Lord guided me in reassessed. everything,” he said in an interview with Megan “If you’re growing cross-regionally, which Hill Mitchum of Century 21 Signature Real Estate), brand do you think will have more appeal to a new he knew exactly what he wanted to achieve, down audience: Maverik or Kum & Go?” a (notably to the smallest detail. He made his vision a realty anonymous) source told trade publication CSP. reality, working closely with a series of different “No disrespect to Kum & Go, but the answer is designers and a cobbled-together construction pretty clear.” Already the replacement of Smash crew moonlighting on the project from various & Dash signs has begun around the region, with companies. the single-entendre MAVERIK logo replacing the The Spaceship House totals 8,100 square feet. one Iowans have known and loved (or, at least, and includes a 360-degree balcony, a car wash and tolerated) for nearly 60 years. an art gallery. Unsurprisingly, Koethe (who founded The famous/infamous Ejaculate & Evacuate 7 Flags Fitness Center, a health club that served logo was designed by Michael Phelan, a Cedar Clive and the surrounding area from 1987 to 2014) Rapids music teacher, freelance designer and a

The UFO House in Urbandale © 2024 Google

“D

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Von Maur piano player for Lindale and Westdale malls for 25 years. I never met him in person, but a little gesture from him a couple of years ago has made Phelan someone I’ll never entirely forget.

At my previous job, one of my duties was to write and send birthday cards to customers on behalf of the business. It was a simple process: Boilerplate message written in my pinched, vaguely tortured handwriting. Pair with a gift card. Send them out weekly.

One day, I received a card back from Phelan with his family crest on the front, and inside, in beautiful, near-machine-perfect calligraphy, he thanked me for the gesture. Regrettably, over the course of a couple of moves, I’ve lost track of his thank-you card, but I never forgot the way that it had shocked me—the idea that he had taken the time to write this meticulous little note of gratitude to me. I couldn’t even remember writing the card to him.

Phelan passed away in May of 2024. I found that out when I started writing this piece, which was initially going to consist primarily of various alternative names for Kum & Go. But really, there are Reddit threads full of the most innovative minds in obscene puns for that.

In fact, it was probably inevitable, given the fountain of online jokes and memes about Kum & Go, that the name would be changed. It would always be replaced with something so corporatefriendly that it will slither comfortably across the frontal lobe and whip away into oblivion. Soon our highways and streets will be blessedly clear for any who may clutch so firmly at their pearls that they veer across the lanes into oncoming traffic. So it goes.

I drove past a Kum & Go this morning. For the first time, I deeply examined the logo, the custom-drawn lettering, the connecting line that underlines the whole thing and connects the K and the G. I thought about the hand that had drawn the logo, the same one that played the organ at the church down the street from my house, the same one that at 81 had written a thank-you card to me with such deft precision I’d thought it was a font.

Soon the signs will be gone, and all that will be left will be another fun little fact about the Way Things Were When I Was Young that I’ll tell my daughter. But for the moment, some still stand, cherry red and white against the gray winter skies.

—Malcolm MacDougall

Michael Phelan’s original drawings of the first Kum & Go store. Courtesy of the Phelan family LITTLEVILLAGEMAG.COM/LV335 December 2024 41

THE UGLY John Berryman’s Brief, DreamLike Time in Iowa Content warning: Suicide

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WINTER

READING PROGRAM DEC. 21 - FEB 15

December 7, 10am-3pm | Meeting Room A

icpl.org 42 December 2024 LITTLEVILLAGEMAG.COM/LV335

he 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 the only upheaval in his childhood, and it was far from the only traumatic event that would happen to him, but that morning probably goes a long way in explaining the addiction to alcohol he struggled with his entire adult life.

Berryman worked through the chaos he and his addiction created, and the pain he caused himself and others and the pain others caused him, to create some of the most significant American poetry of the 20th century. He felt compelled to do so.

“I don’t write these damn things willingly, you know,” Berryman said in a 1963 letter to his friend Allen Tate, a once prominent, but now largely forgotten, poet.

At the time, Berryman was finishing his first volume of poems known collectively as the Dream Songs. Those poems occupied much of his later years and are widely considered his best work.

In his introduction to the complete collection of Dream Songs published in 2014 to mark the centenary of Berryman’s birth, the poet and critic Michael Hofmann said, “no one writes like that, no one dares, no one would have the wild imagination or the obsession.”

Berryman’s path to those poems detoured through Iowa City in 1954, when he taught briefly—very briefly—at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

Berryman was in a particularly dark place when he came to the Writers’ Workshop 70 years ago.

His marriage had collapsed; he was having legal problems leaving one publishing house for another; his friend Dylan Thomas, a poet he admired, had just died after lapsing into a coma during a drinking bout, and Berryman was worried the same could happen to him, but he kept drinking; he was plagued by suicidal thoughts. Berryman was so broke he had to wait until his agent advanced him some money before he could buy his train ticket to Iowa City.

He arrived at the University of Iowa having

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published one book of poetry he felt disappointed by, and best known as a Shakespeare scholar. For his first semester, he was assigned a seminar teaching poetry. “It was the first time in his life and for the last” Berryman taught such a course, one of his students, Philip Levine, noted in his memoir.

The seminar had 30 students at the beginning, but only 13 by the end. “Nearly all [of the 13] would go on to publish serious books, and at least three would become part of the American pantheon in the next generation of poetry,” Paul Mariani wrote in his biography of Berryman. Philip Levine was one of those three. Levine and others from the seminar credited it as a transformative experience.

The next semester Berryman was assigned to coteach a course on the novel instead of continuing his poetry work. He wasn’t happy about the change, and he developed a corrosive dislike for his co-teacher.

His co-teacher felt the same way.

Berryman was still drinking heavily and still acting out while drinking, which wasn’t uncommon for academics of the era. But on Sept. 29, things went beyond what folks in the ‘50s were willing to tolerate, because it ended with Berryman in the newspaper.

He started drinking heavily after a particularly annoying day, and when he finally got back to his apartment after midnight, he couldn’t find his key.

Berryman pounded on the door, but the landlord refused to let him in. He shouted and pleaded that he desperately needed to get to the toilet. The landlord still refused. Unable to hold back, Berryman dropped his pants and defecated on the porch. The landlord called the cops.

Berryman was arrested and spent the night in jail. According to Mariani, Iowa City police officers taunted Berryman throughout the night, as he was having a breakdown in his cell. The next morning, a judge fined him $7.50 for public intoxication and charged him $5 in court costs.

On Oct. 1, the Daily Iowan column on police and court activities listed Berryman as being fined, but didn’t include further details.

He was summoned to meetings with the dean and the provost the next day, and at the end of those meetings, Berryman was fired. He had no idea what he’d do next, but Allen Tate quickly secured him a position at the University of Minnesota. It remained his academic home until one morning in January 1972, when he stopped while walking across the Washington Avenue Bridge in Minneapolis, waved to passersby and then jumped. Berryman was 57 years old when he killed himself.

“No matter what you hear or read about his drinking, his madness, his unreliability as a person, I am here to tell you that in the winter and spring of 1954, living in isolation and loneliness in one of the bleakest towns of our difficult Midwest, John Berryman never failed his obligations as a teacher,” Philip Levine wrote in his memoir, published 21 years after Berryman’s death. “... At a time when he was struggling with his own self-doubts and failings, he awakened us to our singular gifts as people and writers. He gave all he had to us and asked no special thanks. He did it for the love of poetry.”

—Paul Brennan

Dillinger’s Last Stand (Almost)

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hether or not John Dillinger actually ate at the Lighthouse Inn and accidentally blasted a

hole in the wall, there is one building in Iowa we can be sure he visited. Although it’s now known as Kent Apartments and City

Center,

the

six-and-a-half-story

building in downtown Mason City started life in 1911 as the First National Bank of Mason City. And in 1934, Dillinger robbed that bank.

Dillinger and his gang were headed for Minnesota when they barrelled into Mason City on March 13, 1934. At the time, Dillinger was listed as “Public Enemy Number One” by the Justice Department’s Bureau of Investigation. (The BOI didn’t get its name upgraded to the FBI until 1935.) Already the most famous bank robber in America, he had escaped from prison in Crown Point, Indiana by intimidating guards with

A Supper Club for the Ages

T

he fire that destroyed the Lighthouse Inn last August didn’t just reduce one of Linn County’s most iconic eateries to an unsalvageable wreck.

It also erased an important connection to Prohibition era lawlessness in Iowa.

The Lighthouse Inn had already been open for

a gun (possibly a real one smuggled in, possibly a fake carved from wood) only 10 days before the Mason City job.

While Dillinger and three members of his gang were inside the bank, news of the robbery began to spread and a crowd gathered to get a glimpse of the famous outlaw in action. According to a story published by The New Republic in June 1934, “the people had a good show.”

“Some of them had never seen a bank robbery. Some liked the looks of the boys doing the robbing. They were young. [One of the robbers was Baby Face Nelson.]

Some were handsome. They had a lot of nerve. You had to give them credit. They had everything planned out and it worked slick, like clockwork.”

There was a brief shootout with the police. Dillinger was wounded, but the gang reportedly got away with roughly $50,000, the equivalent of $1.2 million today.

The Mason City bank robbery was one of Dillinger’s last crimes. Four months after giving the people a good show in Mason City, Dillinger was shot dead by BOI agents outside the Biograph Theater in Chicago. ­ —Paul Brennan

The Lighthouse Inn fire on Aug. 14, 2024. Linn County Sheriff’s Office Photo

LITTLEVILLAGEMAG.COM/LV335 December 2024 43

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eight years when the 18th Amendment took effect beach enforced whites-only swimming. in 1920 and made it illegal to produce, transport or Rev. I.W. Bess, who founded Waterloo’s first sell alcoholic beverages in the United States, except African Methodist Episcopal Church, led the for limited religious or medical purposes. (Until the opposition to restricting the beach, but in 1914 the 18th was repealed in 1933, a surprising number of city council voted to impose racial segregation.

Americans developed a spiritual need for ceremonial In 1916, Waterloo’s Board of Realtors asked the wine or suffered from an ailment requiring a boozy city council to prohibit the sale of homes to Black tonic.) Located in what was then a rural area on people in white neighborhoods. The realtors were Mount Vernon Road outside Cedar Rapids, the rejected, but enforced the ban anyway, informally.

Lighthouse Inn was well-situated to accommodate Race-based housing covenants and redlining diners looking for something stronger than a cup of abounded. Racism fueled segregation, and coffee with their meal. segregation fueled racism.

The supper club-style restaurant wasn’t the “In the 1920s, city planners intentionally confined Lighthouse’s main focus when it opened in 1912— Waterloo’s vice district, ‘Smokey Row,’ to Black the cabins where the inn’s guests stayed were. neighborhoods north of the river,” according to Located just beyond the reach of Cedar Rapids’ the University of Iowa’s Mapping Segregation in taxing authority, budget-minded travelers could stay Iowa research project. “White residents, following there without paying the city’s motel tax. The number the lead of local newspapers, used this to sustain of those visitors increased when Mount Vernon Road a stereotype of Black criminality and immorality. was incorporated into the Lincoln Highway.

Such stereotypes, in turn, heightened white fears, Like the Lighthouse, the Lincoln Highway including the conviction that African American launched in 1912. It was among the earliest occupancy destroyed property values.” transcontinental routes created for automobiles, and Smokey Row, also called the Black Triangle, encompassed existing roads wherever possible. The was located in east Waterloo, with Sumner Street highway entered eastern Iowa at Clinton, and in Linn to the north (expanded to Newell Street in the County, it ran right past the Lighthouse. ’50s), Mobile to the east (later Linden) and the According to local lore, in the ’20s and ’30s, the Illinois Central rail lines to the southwest. The area Lighthouse’s convenient location on a major road and already contained the city’s pool halls, brothels near a major city attracted a new sort of clientele— and speakeasies when it was designated as the only gangsters. It’s said that both Al Capone and John neighborhood for Black residents.

Dillinger both patronized the Lighthouse, and the Despite institutionalized discrimination—a restaurant had a hole in one wall from an incident legacy that haunts Waterloo to this day, and saw in which Dillinger’s gun accidentally went off one it top the list of “worst cities for Black Americans” night as he was eating dinner. The wall was repaired, by 24/7 Wall Street in 2018—Triangle neighbors and the gangsters, like the guest cabins, eventually were able to blow some of the smoke away from the disappeared. But the supper club continued to serve, Row, building churches, political clubs, fraternal until it was consumed by a fire on Aug. 14. organizations and other centers of culture and ­—Paul Brennan activism. In the 1940s, Dr. Lee Furgerson, the only Black doctor in Waterloo for many years, Milton Fields, the city’s most prominent Black attorney and founder of the Waterloo chapter of the NAACP, and Judge William Parker, the county’s first elected Black judge, worked together to establish the Black Hawk Savings and Loan Association to encourage homeownership in the Black community.

A large, integrated chapter of the United Packinghouse Workers of America (UPWA) union, Local 46, formed among the multiracial bluecollar population. A massive strike of Rath Packing esponding to the prospect of decent jobs Company workers in 1948 escalated after the fatal in the booming railroad, manufacturing shooting of a Black scab by a white striker, a riot and meatpacking industries, many Black after his arrest, and the deployment of 800 National Southerners migrated north at the start of the 20th Guardsmen on Waterloo by Iowa Gov. Robert Blue. century, hoping to escape Jim Crow—only to see a The strike failed. The shooter was found not Midwestern mutation of that racist system take hold. guilty of manslaughter by a jury, but several union Between 1910 to 1950, Black Hawk County’s officials were charged with criminal conspiracy for Black population grew from 29 to 2,623, or roughly the strike and riot, including local organizer Russell 2.5 percent of all county residents. Almost from the R. Lasley. That didn’t stop him from being elected beginning, many business owners excluded Black vice president of the UPWA international union less customers, while public pools and the Cedar River than a month later.

The Black Triangle and the Fight for Waterloo’s Soul

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From that position of power, Lasley, a white man, continued to fight for fair contracts for Rath workers in Waterloo, and went on to head an antidiscrimination department in UPWA. He was part of the 1957 meeting that formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, led by Martin Luther King Jr., and went on to serve on its board of directors.

Anna Mae Weems, another union organizer at Rath, emerged as an important civil rights leader in and beyond the Cedar Valley. When she died in September this year at age 98, Weems was hailed as an iconic leader for racial justice and an outspoken idealist. She personally broke many barriers, becoming the first Black woman to work in several previously all-white spaces, and was also the first Black woman to serve as director of the Iowa Workforce Center.

For more information on the Black Triangle/ Smokey Row and redlining in Iowa, explore the UI Mapping Segregation project and the University of Northern Iowa’s African-American Voices of the Cedar Valley Oral History Project, both online and free to access. Other rich sources: the African American History Museum of Iowa, newly renovated in Cedar Rapids’ Czech Village/New Bohemia; the African American Historical and Cultural Museum in Waterloo; and, for local 4th and 5th graders, the 1619 Freedom School program.

For more background on Lasley and the UPWA strike, see local historian Pat Kinney’s writing at groutmuseumdistrict.org.

—Emma McClatchey

A

A Spinning Panopticon of Misery

rotating steel drum of pie-shaped prison cells inside a cylindrical cage. On each of three floors, there’s only one way in, one way out. Is this a pitch for a Saw trap? Nah, this is the Squirrel Cage Jail in Council Bluffs.

The Squirrel Cage Jail operated as the Pottawattamie County jail from 1885 to 1969, 84 years too long. Of 18 rotary jails ever built in the U.S., only three are still standing: A one-story jail in Gallatin, Missouri; a two-story jail in Crawfordsville, Indiana, which was the first rotary jail ever built and the only one that still turns today; and the Pottawattamie County Squirrel Cage Jail—the only three-story rotary jail ever built. All three nightmarish prison whirligigs have been preserved as museums.

The Squirrel Cage in Council Bluffs is owned and operated by The Pottawattamie County Historical Society. These days, they do elementary school field

Solitary confinement at The Squirrel Cage Jail in Council Bluffs. Jessica Doolittle / Little Village

trips and let kids take pictures in solitary—which, by the way, is a 2’-by-2’ metal closet.

As if caging human beings wasn’t already depraved enough, William Brown and Benjamin Haugh of Indianapolis, Indiana patented their carceral carousel in July of 1881. In their own words, “The object of our invention is to produce a jail in which prisoners can be controlled without the necessity of a personal contact between them and the jailer.”

The following year, galvanized by this revolutionary (in the worst sense) design, the Pottawattamie County Board of Supervisors commissioned architects Edmond Eckel and

George Mann to build a rotary jail in Council Bluffs.

Construction began in 1885 and ended five months later. The congenial Victorian exterior is a stark contrast to the cold metal cell block inside, a literal and metaphorical façade for the horror within.

The rotary jail, also nicknamed a lazy Susan, was lauded as escape-proof. However, delinquent ingenuity never fails to impress. Myriad escape attempts were made through the ceiling, walls, toilet system, and once, through the front door. In 1951, an inmate dove headfirst through a frontoffice window.

One group of escapees even left a note hoping their jailbreak would convince the county to build a new jail—no wonder, given the unparalleled brutality of the cage. Limbs often got caught up in the bars while the cell-block was turning. One legendary jailbird jammed the mechanism with his prosthetic wooden leg to piss off the jailer. Some people stuck arms out on purpose for a chance at the relative luxury of the infirmary.

During the jail’s eight-decade run, it was condemned 22 times. And kept running.

First built with no power, no water and no heat except buckets of coal, it was hot in the summer and cold in the winter. Not every cell had window access, depending on where it fell in the rotation.

The cell-block, weighing 90,000 pounds when it was empty, was rotated by hand crank, and because it was built on a water table, the gears often fell out of alignment. The final wrench in the cog of the machine came in 1960 when someone died in their cell and their body couldn’t be retrieved for two days because the turning mechanism was broken.

Even though the jail quit turning, it didn’t close for good for another nine years.

The Pottawattamie County Squirrel Cage Jail. Public Domain LITTLEVILLAGEMAG.COM/LV335 December 2024 45

LittleVillageMag.com

My fascination with this morbid bit of Iowa history began in third grade, when I took a field trip to the jail as part of a unit on Council Bluffs Historical Landmarks. In my reminiscing, one thing stood out to me as an appropriately sardonic conclusion to the story: my clearest memory from that day is looking up to see a prop arm sticking through the cell bars.

—Kate Doolittle

Cary’d Away in Davenport

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n 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 the Adler Theatre called A Conversation with Cary Grant, featuring clips from his most iconic movies. Grant had just made it through rehearsal that Saturday when he began to feel unwell. An hour later, he was so ill that he had to cancel the appearance, and after getting rushed to St. Luke’s Hospital in a comatose state, passed away before the day was out. Doctors

charges of “unlawful assembly.”

Lock ‘em up Lainson did, as he crammed 50 to 60 farmers into a jail that could hardly hold them. He said, “If the Pottawattamie County Jail bulges with picketers, it’ll just have to bulge. I’m going to see that law and order are maintained.”

Riotous crowds were already forming around the Squirrel Cage, but soon rumors spread of A prop arm sticks through the cage surrounding the cylindrical cell block. Jessica Doolittle / Little Village

A Mob Descends on Squirrel Cage Jail

L

In the summer of 1932, a 1,000-person

1,000 men on their way to bust the farmers out.

Lainson armed his new hires with submachine and riot guns, stating they would handle a

woes of U.S. farmers by withholding wares and

mobbing “in the best possible manner.” He

refusing to buy. The movement spread through

instructed his deputies to shoot to kill.

Iowa and into neighboring states, but scabs do

With the number of marchers at the Highway

what scabs do, and aside from gaining media

34 blockade rising, an “emergency peace

attention, the effectiveness of the strike was

conference” was put on by the Chamber of

questionable at best. So, the striking farmers in

Commerce, in which a few strikers negotiated

Sioux City, Council Bluffs and elsewhere turned

with Mayor John Myrtue, the sheriff, and the

to direct action.

chief of police. The delegation of farmers agreed

march of striking farmers made their way

With torn-down telephone poles, hay bales,

to disperse under the condition that the sheriff

to Council Bluffs to attempt a jailbreak of

makeshift road spikes and picket lines, the

support a small group of “peaceful” protesters.

the “escape-proof” Squirrel Cage. Though they

protesters blockaded all roads into CB and stood

A handful of wealthy farmers raised enough

didn’t actually pull it off—or even make it to

guard with baseball bats to keep scabs from

money for bail, and the mayor talked down the

town before being intercepted by the mayor—

bringing their goods to town. When the blockade

out-of-towners.

the story is worth knowing and the details are

on Highway 34 refused a deputy’s orders to stand

Despite high tensions, the only casualty of the

as disorderly as you might expect.

down, Sheriff Lainson hired 98 “special” deputies

whole affair was a special deputy with three days

In the midst of the Great Depression, the

in an effort to break the road block. He promised

of service, killed when a riot gun accidentally

Iowa Farmer’s Union initiated the Farmer’s

to “fight it out if it took 5,000 deputies.” Orders

discharged during a weapons test.

Holiday: a strike calling attention to the financial

were to lock up every person found picketing on

46 December 2024 LITTLEVILLAGEMAG.COM/LV335

—Kate Doolittle

determined that he had died of a massive stroke.

Grant was the quintessential Handsome Man of the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s, often co-starring with four-time Best Actress winner and fellow virtuoso of the mid-Atlantic accent Katharine Hepburn. A true rags-to-riches tale, he moved to the States from Bristol, England at the age of 16, getting his start in vaudeville. He’d go on to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1941, then again in 1944.

Later, he starred in several iconic Hitchcock movies, including To Catch a Thief (1955) and North by Northwest (1959, in which he runs, well dressed, from a crop duster). He was also at one point a prolific user of LSD—so prolific, in fact, that when Carrie Fisher’s mother found out that she was also using LSD, she put her in touch with Grant.

They would subsequently bond over a mutual hatred of Chevy Chase, a popular pastime of Chase acquaintances for the better part of 60 years.

In a December 1986 article in the QC Times, Grant joked that he was “[highly regarded] because [he had] lived so long and didn’t kick the cat.” It seemed his impact was deeper than that; cardiologist James Grant, one of the doctors who had tried to save his life in Davenport, spoke to it that fateful night.

“Guys like Cary Grant are supposed to live forever,” he said.

—Malcolm MacDougall

Freedom of Information Acts

“O

rganized 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 Stephen Blumberg.

The 23,600 volumes he accumulated between the 1970s and his arrest in March of 1990 were all stashed in his 17-room home—wall to wall, floor to ceiling, in hallways, closets and bathrooms. But the FBI didn’t walk into a scene from Hoarders, says a 2023 article from Creighton University. They were carefully arranged, primarily geographically.

Some of the notable works that Blumberg liberated included first editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Paradise Lost, as well as a handprinted Bible from 1480. Many of his hundreds of targets weren’t even aware their items were missing, or

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LITTLEVILLAGEMAG.COM/LV335 December 2024 47

didn’t understand the extent of his heists.

The Omaha college got involved with Blumberg as part of the FBI’s efforts to return the stolen manuscripts and rare books to their museums and libraries. Referred to as the Omaha Project, the information science proving ground involved four weeks, 44 cataloguers and reference librarians and 600 volunteer hours, centered around deploying the database of the Online Computer Library Center (the Ohio-based nonprofit responsible for WorldCat) to determine who might be the rightful owners. Creighton’s Reinert-Alumni Memorial Library provided nearly a quarter of the team for the project.

It’s appropriate that librarians are the heroes of this tale, because Blumberg’s contempt for them and their work was a large factor in his thievery. Forensic psychiatrist William S. Logan testified at the 1991 trial that Blumberg, who had been hospitalized multiple times in his youth for diagnoses including delusion and paranoia, was stealing the materials to thwart what he believed was a government plot to prevent the public from accessing them.

In a 1994 interview with Harper’s Magazine, Blumberg bemoaned what he felt was the arbitrary nature of library collections. “Let’s say you have a time machine and you’re living back in 1890, and these beautiful periodicals come out,” he said to journalist Philip Weiss. “Well, 1920s, the style changes, and you’ve got all these magazines and a limited amount of space. So stuff gets thrown out then, 60, 70 years later.”

Later in that article, he queried, “Who really has the right to possess knowledge?”

Blumberg was methodical in his eradication of evidence: He removed identifying stamps and other markers from the volumes by any means necessary, including razor blades, sandpaper, even licking off stickers with his tongue. Luckily for the librarian-detectives, he kept scrapbooks with many of the bookplates and catalog pockets he’d removed.

His first arrest for library theft was in 1974, but

48 December 2024 LITTLEVILLAGEMAG.COM/LV335

A video still of Stephen Blumberg following his arrest in Ottumwa. via KCCI archive footage

LittleVillageMag.com

Still of a songbook from the year 800, collected as evidence. via KCCI archive footage

despite several others subsequent, the case against him ultimately rested on the testimony of a friend and former accomplice who turned him in for a negotiated $56,000 bounty.

—Genevieve Trainor

When A Poll was Right About a Woman Winning in Iowa

I

f you’re feeling burnt by the previously reliable Iowa Poll showing Harris winning Iowa by 3 points just days before Trump carried the state by the biggest margin since Nixon in 1972, you probably don’t want to talk about polls. But it’s still an election year, and worth acknowledging that modern election polling was born in Iowa.

So was the man whose name used to be synonymous with it. George Gallup was born in Jefferson, Iowa in 1901. He attended the University of Iowa, where George Gallup he played football and edited Public Domain the Daily Iowan, earning his bachelor’s in 1923, a master’s in 1925 and a Ph.D. in psychology in 1928. His dissertation was titled “An Objective Method for Determining Reader Interest in the Content of a Newspaper.”

Gallup continued working on his objective method as he taught journalism at UI, Drake and Northwestern University. Then everything changed in 1932. He ditched academia for a job as director of research at a major advertising firm in New York City. Even more

importantly for his polling future, Gallup’s mother-inlaw decided to run for Secretary of State in Iowa.

Eunice Viola Babcock Miller, known to everyone as Ola, was no stranger to politics when launched her first campaign in 1932. Ola Babcock grew up on a farm in Washington County in 1871, and graduated from Iowa Wesleyan College. She taught school before marrying Alex Miller at the age of 24. Miller was the editor of the Washington Democrat and very active in state and local politics. In 1926, he ran for governor. Miller lost, and the following year, he died unexpectedly from a heart attack.

Despite her loss, Ola stayed active in politics. She had been a suffragette, and fought for other causes as a member of various women’s groups. In 1928, she worked on behalf of Al Smith, the Democratic candidate for president. Smith was always a longshot in Iowa. Many Midwesterners distrusted Smith, the governor of New York and the first Catholic presidential candidate. He had an additional problem here—Smith was running against West Branch-born Herbert Hoover. Hoover crushed Smith in Iowa, winning the state by 24 percentage points.

Four years later, Iowa Democrats were having trouble finding anyone to run for secretary of state.

Babcock Miller stepped forward. She didn’t expect to win, but she did expect a little help from her sonin-law.

Babcock Miller’s 1932 campaign was Gallup’s first test of his polling methods in a political race. At the time, the dominant political polling method was to survey as many people as possible and simply tally their replies. Using demographic data and statistical modeling, Gallup tried to select a small group of voters whose characteristics matched those of the wider public for his surveys. His polls tracked voter sentiment, and accurately predicted Babcock Miller’s victory.

Having gained that experience, in 1935 Gallup started his own polling company, the American Institute of Public Opinion (later renamed the Gallup Organization and now just called Gallup). In 1936, he

was ready for the big time and polled voters in the presidential election between incumbent Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Republican Alf Landon, the governor of Kansas.

Two other national pollsters who used similar methods, Elmo Roper and Archibald Crossley, also launched their careers with the 1936 election. The Literary Digest, a national weekly magazine that had correctly predicted the results of the previous two presidential elections, stuck with its approach of mailing out millions of questionnaires and counting the answers on the ones that were returned.

Shortly before the election, The Literary Digest announced the results of its poll: Landon wins in a landslide. Actually, Roosevelt won in a landslide that the polls by Gallup, Roper and Crossley correctly predicted. Their reputations were established; the modern era of political polling had begun.

Gallup and his two rivals correctly predicted the presidential election results in 1940 and 1944, when FDR ran for his third and fourth term. Then came 1948, Dewey vs. Truman. All three big pollsters got that race very wrong, resulting in the famous photo of the victorious Harry Truman grinning as he holds up a newspaper with the poll-inspired headline, “Dewey Defeats Truman.”

In his 2020 book, Lost in a Gallup: Polling Failures in U.S. President Elections, political scientist W. Joseph Campbell showed 1948 wasn’t a oneoff. Big polling firms also had big problems in the elections of 1952, 1980, 2000, 2004, 2012 and 2016.

Gallup would not have liked the title of Campbell’s book. He remained touchy about 1948 and other polling failures until his death in 1984. After it got the results of the 2012 presidential election wrong, the company George Gallup founded announced it would no longer do horse-race political polling.

Ola Babcock Miller’s victory in 1932 had more to do with FDR than her son-in-law. FDR defeated the local boy in the White House, Hoover, by 18 percentage points in Iowa, winning all but six of the 99 counties. That tidal wave helped Democrat Clyde Herring oust the incumbent Republican governor, and Ola Babcock Miller make history as the first woman elected Secretary of State.

Like FDR, Babcock Miller proved very popular once in office and was easily reelected in 1934 and 1936. When she died in 1937 at the age of 65, more than 3,000 people attended her funeral in her hometown of Washington. Among the mourners were all 55 members of the Iowa State Highway Patrol.

Babcock Miller was largely responsible for the creation of the state patrol in 1935.

According to historian Kevin Mason, at the time of Ola Babcock Miller’s death in January 1937, “polls showed the State Highway Patrol stood second only to God in Iowa’s public esteem.” Of course as we’ve all been forcibly reminded by recent events, sometimes poll results have little to do with reality.

—Paul Brennan LITTLEVILLAGEMAG.COM/LV335 December 2024 49

CULTURE Wall featuring work from TNR (of which PHATE is a member) and LETTER CRUSHERS in El Paso 2023.

Courtesy of Innocent Display

The Avatar Prairie Pop

With a command of the four foundation elements of hip hop, Des Moines artist ASPHATE is harnessing them for a noble pursuit: making a magazine.

"C

BY KEMBREW MCLEOD

oming from Iowa, we sometimes have a bit of a chip on our shoulder,” the Des Moines hip-hop artist ASPHATE told me, “but, you know, magic can occur anywhere.”

“When it comes to graffiti right now, we’re

rocking,” he continued. “I think the [Iowa] scene is energized in the street, both legally and underground. These days, I’m happy to see and hear people taking more pride and more ownership in the scene and representing our own history and our own development in it.”

ASPHATE dove headfirst into graffiti writing after his first clandestine bombing mission one snowy night in 2007, when he was 25. It was a relatively late age to embrace an illicit artform that occasionally requires running from railyard dogs or security officers assigned to guard freight trains, which often serve as canvases for writers, but he didn’t care.

“I went really hard at it,” ASPHATE recalled.

“I wanted to cut my teeth, to pay my dues, and so I was bombing every other night, even though I’m getting up early in the morning and working at a corporate job. But I went so hard at it that, somewhere within the first two years, I had a slew of photos of myself, rival crews, neighboring crews, things of that sort. I ended up reaching out to a lot of OGs and said, ‘Man, if you got any old photos, send them to me because I want to preserve the history.’”

One way ASPHATE achieves this is with Innocent Display, a new magazine produced in partnership with Mayday Collective, that is bursting with eye-popping color photos documenting and celebrating the work of Iowa’s finest crews and individual writers. The first issue sports a laundry list of, often abbreviated, crew names and artist nom de plumes—crews like NTC, LKD, Scarce Elements and TKO; graff heads like GAGE1, SINZTER, WOLF and MONE. You’re forgiven if these names don’t ring a bell.

Part of the point of the art of graffiti is maintaining Des Moines artist ASPHATE. Clear Haze Creative

50 December 2024 LITTLEVILLAGEMAG.COM/LV335

LittleVillageMag.com anonymity to the masses while creating in ways that other writers will appreciate. Real recognize real, and Innocent Display makes no attempt to hold the hands of pedestrians. This is a graff magazine for graff writers and others already steeped in Iowa’s hip-hop scene.

Which speaks to ASPHATE’s embodiment of hip hop’s four founding elements—DJing, breaking, graffiti writing and rhyming—and the responsibility he feels representing Iowa, his adopted home.

“If someone were to ask me where I’m from when I travel abroad,” he said, “I’ll say that I am from Iowa with pride. At this point, I’ve lived here longer than I have anywhere else.”

He and his mother moved to Fort Dodge in 1999. After receiving a basketball scholarship to attend Grand View High School, he wound up in Des Moines. ASPHATE had already cut his teeth battling other emcees in cyphers, and he also had some experience on the turntables, but it wasn’t

REAL RECOGNIZE REAL, AND INNOCENT DISPLAY MAKES NO ATTEMPT TO HOLD THE HANDS OF PEDESTRIANS. THIS IS A GRAFF MAGAZINE FOR GRAFF WRITERS AND OTHERS ALREADY STEEPED IN IOWA’S HIP-HOP SCENE. until he moved to Iowa that hip hop’s four elements came into focus for him.

ASPHATE’s love of music was stoked early on by his mother, who had a massive CD collection and was into everything from Nina Simone and Tracy Chapman to Simon & Garfunkel. His uncle was just a few years older than him and was a kind of big brother who also happened to be a partyrockin’ DJ well versed in hip-hop history.

“My uncle would always come around with vinyl,” ASPHATE said, “and when De La Soul Is Dead came out, he dropped it on me one day, which imprinted upon me this love for De La and that sort of vibe that comes from the whole Native Tongues era.”

“So, between my uncle being a DJ and playing music for people and always bringing home vinyl, and my mother’s musical tastes, I started to develop my own eclectic love for music in general.

Later on, when I started to get into rhyming, it was just natural. I loved hip hop because I loved the music that was being sampled, because it sounded like all that stuff that I’d been turned onto earlier.”

ASPHATE got his start as an emcee in 10th grade at Indianapolis’s North Central High School, where dozens of kids gathered in the gym to go head-to-head in cyphers. Emcees were chewed

Reduce waste this holiday season

1

2

Recycle old holiday lights.

Find a drop-off location near you: icgov.org/Recycle

Compost your natural holiday tree at the curb.

3

Choose sustainable gifts & gift wrap.

Remove all decorations first.

4

Properly dispose of old batteries.

Learn how: icgov.org/HHM

These items are not recyclable: -Wrapping paper -Metallic or glitter coated paper or greeting cards -Tissue paper -Plastic bags/film/wrap -Styrofoam Learn more:

icgov.org/Recycle

CULTURE

Courtesy of Innocent Display

The Innocent Display photo above, according to PHATE, is a rare action shot of the late SUREM7 wrapping up his contribution to what’s known in the graff world as a “production.”

This production from VETO, PROSE and SUREM7 was finished before all three of them were chased out of an abandoned slaughterhouse by security patrolling the adjacent property.

PHATE goes on to define a production “as an artistic effort where there are multiple graffiti writers involved.

Quite often there is background and characters. At the very least there are multiple pieces from multiple graff writers, all with matching colors and schemes. Everything is cohesive. That’s why you see all three of the pieces, from VETO, PROSE and SUREM7, and you see SUREM7 still in action. That’s why all their colors are matching, because they approached it that day thinking to themselves, ‘Hey, we’re about to rock a production.’ They just ended up getting chased out of there before they could add any additional elements.”

INDEPENDENT

Cedar Rapids om tourismcedarrapids.c

52 December 2024 LITTLEVILLAGEMAG.COM/LV335

up and spit out if they didn’t bring their A-game, so he began approaching hip hop from a place of aggressive competition. By the time he was in his early 20s and settled in Des Moines, ASPHATE had become well known around town for his rhyme skills.

“Around 2006, my group Maxilla Blue came together,” he said. “There was a producer here named Aeon Grey, and one day, Aeon said, ‘Man, we should just do a project where it’s all my beats, all your rhymes, and we just come up with a name for it.’

“We eventually added DJ TouchNice, because both of us were big about having turntablism involved in what we were doing,” he continued.

“2007-08 is when we released the first Maxilla Blue album, and that’s when we go on our first little mini tour.”

A couple years earlier, ASPHATE had connected with the Floor Spiders Crew, where he met his future wife, known as ESNCE. During this time, he began to master the fundamentals of breaking, something he loved because it reminded him of the in-yourface competition of emcee battles. Meanwhile, he also got an education from the OG hip-hop heads, who taught him the rules of the game and held discipline over him, whether it was the flow of his floor technique, his rhymes or the lines he sprayed

on walls—all the while inspiring him to connect the dots between the four core elements.

“At the time, people would show up in my house to break every week, and eventually graffiti writers around the town would show up for what we called Writers Anonymous, like a writer’s bench sort of thing. So, suffice it to say, I started to get really deep into all of the elements. By this point, my wife got me my own turntables and I’m deep into that. I am now involved in graffiti writing. I’m a b-boy, and my first love, emceeing, is what’s taken me in and out of state, setting up different shows.”

Some youth organizations in Des Moines such as Run-DSM and Minorities On the Move had been doing a lot of progressive programming, and one day ASPHATE was contacted by a teacher who wanted to incorporate hip hop into classes. Versing someone in the art of 16 bars is hard to do in an afternoon workshop, especially given how much skill goes into spitting rhymes: language, cadence, flow, and so on. It’s tricky to rock a rhyme that’s right on time, but putting a can of paint in a kid’s hand can make the uninitiated feel a sense of visual triumph after just a couple hours.

This inspired ASPHATE to begin throwing

LittleVillageMag.com events around Des Moines known as Color Codes, where writers painted and exhibited their work.

He also launched what he called Mentor Mashups, where he’d take an established graffiti writer and pair them with one of his students to create a wall.

In addition to the workshops and other events he does for youth organizations, the most recent way that ASPHATE has contributed to the regional hip-hop scene is by documenting graffiti writing.

“I had been wanting to do something like a magazine,” he said, “and long story short, it’s been over 10 years in the making, but here we are now.

We just dropped issue one of *Innocent Display* on Halloween. The first 12 issues will focus on work that was produced by Iowan graffiti writers, so it can be in or out of state, as long as they’re from Iowa or it’s something that’s occurred on our soil.”

A call for photo submissions for the second issue reinforces quality control with a disclaimer that “we are not accepting backyard practice pieces or street art with no ties or background in actual WRITING…Your penis painted in public will be p-p-prohibited.”

On top of having a civilian occupation that pays the rent, being a hip-hop artist who needs to stay sharp and on-point is a full-time job. With limited hours in the day, what keeps ASPHATE going?

“One day I realized, ‘Damn dude, out of all my life experiences, it was little ole’ Iowa that taught me all the elements.’ So now I kind of owe it to the scene to keep pushing and help younger heads that might be interested in it and let them know that they can find it here without having to go elsewhere because, you know, I didn’t start putting the other elements together until I was in Des Moines.”

Left-to-right from top: Des Moines graffiti legend GAGE1, B-boys from the Floor Spiders Crew: Rekloose, GAGE and Lou Mega, Piece by ASPHATE, Rahmaan Statik of RK crew, Piece by PHOR from CMK. Courtesy of Innocent Display

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I’m not a robot

AND NEITHER ARE WE!

Real Instruments Real People Real Music

L i s t e n e r- S u p p o r t e d P u b l i c R a d i o f r o m K i r k w o o d C o m m u n i t y C o l l e g e w w w. k c c k . o r g

54 December 2024 LITTLEVILLAGEMAG.COM/LV335

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PRESENTED BY PERFORMING ARTS AT IOWA

A-LIST: December 2024 Planning an event? Add it to littlevillagemag.com/calendar! Please include event name, date, time, venue name/address, admission price (or range) and a brief description (no all-caps, exclamation points or advertising verbiage, please). Contact calendar@littlevillagemag.com with any questions.

Iowa City Visual Art

Dada Prom,

Dec. 7, Public Space One, Iowa City PS1 celebrates their fundraiser party only way they know how, with festive absurdity. The party takes place within Surreal House, an immersive installation conceptualized by artist Kelly Moore in collaboration with local artists. There will be dancing, snacks, absurd activities and, as always, immersive art. Surreal and/or absurd outfits encouraged but not required.

Des Moines

Sunday, Dec. 8, 5, 7 p.m., 15th Annual Home for the Holidays, Noce, Des Moines

MUSIC Tuesday, Dec. 3, 7 p.m., Lauren

Monday, Dec. 8, 7 p.m., A Charlie

Vilmain: Meet Me Under the

Brown Christmas w/ The Tanner

Mistletoe, Noce, Des Moines

Taylor Trio, Noce, Des Moines

Wednesday, Dec. 4, 7 p.m., Sounds

Tuesday, Dec. 10, 7 p.m., A Charlie

of the Season w/ The Des Moines

Brown Christmas w/ The Tanner

Big Band, Noce, Des Moines

Taylor Trio, Noce, Des Moines

Friday, Dec. 5, 7 p.m.,

Wednesday, Dec. 11, 6 p.m.,

Christmas With Lorie Line, Hoyt

Clayton Ryan w/ Kelsie

Sherman Place, Des Moines

James, xBk, Des Moines

Thursday, Dec. 5, 7 p.m., All

Wednesday, Dec. 11, 7 p.m.,

I Want for Christmas: Gina

Sounds of the Season w/ The Des

Gedler, Noce, Des Moines

Moines Big Band, Noce, Des Moines

Friday, Dec. 6, 7 p.m.,

Thursday, Dec. 12, 6 p.m.,

Dickie EP Release w/ Dan

Them Coulee Boys w/ Simon

Tedesco, xBk, Des Moines

Cropp, xBk, Des Moines

Friday, Dec. 6, 7 p.m., Drew

Thursday, Dec. 12, 7 p.m., Lauren

Baldrige, Wooly’s, Des Moines

Vilmain: Meet Me Under the Mistletoe, Noce, Des Moines

Sunday, Dec. 7, 2, 7 p.m., Des Moines Gay Men’s Chorus: Thankful,

Friday, Dec. 13, 7 p.m.,

Hoyt Sherman Place, Des Moines

Flashforce University Graduation Show, xBk, Des Moines

Saturday, Dec. 7, 8 p.m., Petrock: A Tribute to the Smooth Rock of

Friday, Dec. 13, 7 p.m., Will

the 70’s, Wooly’s, Des Moines

Mosely & Colin Stough,

via Public Space One

Wooly’s, Des Moines Saturday, Dec. 7, 10:30 p.m., Standard Time w/ Max

Friday, Dec. 13, 7, 9 p.m., All

Wellman, Noce, Des Moines

I Want for Christmas: Gina Gedler, Noce, Des Moines

LITTLEVILLAGEMAG.COM/LV335 December 2024 55

LITTLEVILLAGEMAG.COM/CALENDAR

PRESENTED BY PERFORMING ARTS AT IOWA Friday, Dec. 20, 7:30 p.m.,

Saturday, Dec. 28, 8 p.m.,

Diamond Rio, Hoyt Sherman

Not Quite New Years Eve

Place, Des Moines

with Not Quite Brothers, Wooly’s, Des Moines

Friday, Dec. 20, 8:30 p.m., Elton & Billy: A Tribute to Billy Joel &

Saturday, Dec. 28, 7, 9 p.m.,

Elton John, Wooly’s, Des Moines

Andrew Walesch Sings Tony Bennett w/ His Orchestra,

Friday, Dec. 20, 7, 9 p.m., A Charlie

Noce, Des Moines

Brown Christmas w/ The Tanner Taylor Trio, Noce, Des Moines

Saturday, Dec. 28, 10:30 p.m., Standard Time w/ Max

Saturday, Dec. 21, 6 p.m., A Nella

Wellman, Noce, Des Moines

Thomas Christmas, xBk, Des Moines via Crooked Path Theatre

Tuesday, Dec. 31, 8 p.m., New Saturday, Dec. 21, 7:30

Year’s Eve Pops, Des Moines

p.m., Shaun Johnson & The

Civic Center, Des Moines

Big Band Experience, Hoyt Sherman Place, Des Moines

Tuesday, Dec. 31, 9 p.m., NYE Party with Pianopalooza,

Saturday, Dec. 21, 2, 7:30

Wooly’s, Des Moines

p.m., Mannheim Steamroller

Iowa City Performance

The Naughty List: A Crooked Path Holiday Cabaret, Dec. 8, The James Theatre, Iowa City

The Crooked Path Holiday Cabaret returns to The James Theatre!

Directed by Patrick Du Laney with music direction by Jason Sifford, a cast of 19 local performers prove why they’re on Santa’s Naughty List in this night of music, laughter and general nonsense.

Christmas, Des Moines Civic

Tuesday, Dec. 31, 5 p.m., The

Center, Des Moines

Early Show: Max Wellman, Andrew Walesch & Napoleon

Saturday, Dec. 21, 9:45 p.m.,

Douglas, Noce, Des Moines

Emo Nite, Wooly’s, Des Moines Dec. 6-7, 7 p.m., Noce Christmas Saturday, Dec. 21, 7 p.m.,

w/ Nate Sparks, Gina Gedler,

Christmas w/ The Nate Sparks

& More, Noce, Des Moines

Big Band, Noce, Des Moines

PERFORMANCE

Saturday, Dec. 21, 9:30

Dec. 3-21, Various Times,

Saturday, Dec. 14, 7 p.m.,

Monday, Dec. 16, 7 p.m.,

p.m., Standard Time w/ Max

Erma Vombeck: At Wit’s End,

Queercore ft Early Girl and

15th Annual Home for the

Wellman, Noce, Des Moines

Temple Theater, Des Moines

Mars Hojilla, xBk, Des Moines

Holidays, Noce, Des Moines Sunday, Dec. 22, 6 p.m., A Charlie

Thursday, Dec. 5, 7 p.m., Chelsea

Saturday, Dec. 14, 8 p.m., The

Tuesday, Dec. 17, 7:30 p.m.,

Brown Christmas ft The Peter

Handler: Live, Des Moines

Nadas, Wooly’s, Des Moines

Christmas With C.S. Lewis, Hoyt

Roberts Band, xBk, Des Moines

Civic Center, Des Moines

Sherman Place, Des Moines Sunday, Dec. 22, 7 p.m., In

Sunday, Dec. 8, 2 p.m.,

p.m., A NOLA Christmas!,

Tuesday, Dec. 17, 7 p.m., A Charlie

The Christmas Mood with the

6 p.m., A Charlie Brown

Noce, Des Moines

Brown Christmas w/ The Tanner

Glenn Miller Orchestra, Hoyt

Christmas ft The Peter Roberts

Taylor Trio, Noce, Des Moines

Sherman Place, Des Moines

Band, xBk, Des Moines

p.m., Standard Time w/ Max

Wednesday, Dec. 18, 6 p.m.,

Sunday, Dec. 22, 5 p.m.,

Friday, Dec. 13, 9:30, 10:45,

Wellman, Noce, Des Moines

Rifflord w/ Green Death and

Christmas w/ The Nate Sparks

1:30 p.m., Adventure Clubhouse:

Glass Ox, xBk, Des Moines

Big Band, Noce, Des Moines

The Elves & The Shoemaker,

The Holiday Special ft The

Wednesday, Dec. 18, 7 p.m.,

Monday, Dec. 23, 7 p.m., A NOLA

Finesse, xBk, Des Moines

Sounds of the Season w/ The Des

Christmas!, Noce, Des Moines

Saturday, Dec. 14, 7, 9

Saturday, Dec. 14, 10:30

Sunday, Dec. 15, 4 p.m.,

The Playhouse, Des Moines

Moines Big Band, Noce, Des Moines

Ensemble: 2024 Holiday Show, Thursday, Dec. 26, 7 p.m.,

Sunday, Dec. 15, 5, 7 p.m., Noce Christmas w/ Nate Sparks, Gina

Thursday, Dec. 19, 7 p.m.,

Hannah Marks w/ Aviana Gedler

Gedler, & More, Noce, Des Moines

Matt Wilson’s Christmas

& Co., Noce, Des Moines

Tree-o, Noce, Des Moines Monday Night Live: The Misery

Friday, Dec. 20, 7 p.m., Merry

Heatbox and The Spooklights,

Club, xBk, Des Moines

Synthmas ft Electronidoll,

xBk, Des Moines

xBk, Des Moines 56 December 2024 LITTLEVILLAGEMAG.COM/LV335

The Playhouse, Des Moines Sunday, Dec. 22, 4 p.m., A Magical Cirque Christmas, Des

Saturday, Dec. 28, 7 p.m.,

Monday, Dec. 16, 6 p.m.,

Tuesday, Dec. 17, 7 p.m., Final Act

Moines Civic Center, Des Moines Monday, Dec. 23, 6:30 p.m., Pop N’ Jolly, Temple Theater, Des Moines

LITTLEVILLAGEMAG.COM/CALENDAR

PRESENTED BY PERFORMING ARTS AT IOWA

Tuesday, Dec. 31, 8:30 p.m.,

Thursday, Dec. 5, 10 p.m.,

COMMUNITY

The Pork Tornadoes, Val Air

Silent Night, Deadly Night

Tuesday, Dec. 3, 6 p.m.,

Ballroom, Des Moines

— 40th Anniversary, Varsity

Contemporary with Thomas,

Sunday, Dec. 8, 1:15 p.m.,

Cinema, Des Moines

Ballet Des Moines, Des Moines

Modern-Horten with Morgan,

Chicago, Des Moines Civic

Saturday, Dec. 7, 1 p.m., Elf:

Through Dec., 10 a.m., The Faces

Center, Des Moines

Kids Holiday Movie & Santa,

I’ve Seen Solo Exhibition, Octagon

Thursday, Dec. 12, 9 p.m.,

Varsity Cinema, Des Moines

Center for the Arts, Ames

Iowa Drag Awards 2024,

Beauty and the Beast, The

Wednesday, Dec. 11, 7 p.m., Maria

Through Dec. 7, Scott Charles Ross

Playhouse, Des Moines

+ Q&A with Des Moines Metro

Exhibit, Moberg Gallery, Des Moines

Ballet Des Moines, Des Moines

Dec. 6-8, Various Times,

Ballet Des Moines, Des Moines

Dec. 6-29, Various Times,

Wooly’s, Des Moines

Opera, Varsity Cinema, Des Moines Dec. 12-15, Various Times,

Tuesday, Dec. 31, 8 p.m., Erf New Year’s Eve Party, xBk, Des Moines

Friday, Dec. 6, Teo Nguyen

Ballet Des Moines Presents

Thursday, Dec. 12, 10

Exhibit Opening, Moberg

Tuesday, Dec. 31, 9 p.m.,

The Nutcracker, Hoyt Sherman

p.m., Gremlins, Varsity

Gallery, Des Moines

Noce’s 10 Annual Wild

Place, Des Moines

Cinema, Des Moines

Party!, Noce, Des Moines Friday, Dec. 6, 5 p.m., First Friday,

Dec. 13-14, Various Times,

Saturday, Dec. 14, 1 p.m.,

The Nutcracker, Des Moines

A Christmas Story, Varsity

Civic Center, Des Moines

Cinema, Des Moines

FILM

Thursday, Dec. 19, 10 p.m.,

Tuesday, Dec. 3, 7 p.m., Elf,

AGFA’s Special Christmas Special,

Varsity Cinema, Des Moines

Varsity Cinema, Des Moines

Thursday, Dec. 5, 7 p.m.,

Saturday, Dec. 21, 1 p.m.,

Hundreds of Beavers—

The Muppet Christmas Carol,

Holiday Special Event, Varsity

Varsity Cinema, Des Moines

Cinema, Des Moines

Mainframe Studios, Des Moines Friday, Dec. 6, 6 p.m., Jazz

Iowa City MUSIC

Funk with Cora, Ballet Des

Dec. 6-8, 7:30 p.m., Winterland,

Moines, Des Moines

The Englert Theatre, Iowa City

Sunday, Dec. 8, 10 a.m., Ballet

Dec. 6-8, 7:30 p.m., Josh Ritter:

Body Burn with Megan, Ballet

Great to Small, Small to Grand Tour,

Des Moines, Des Moines

The Englert Theatre, Iowa City

Sunday, Dec. 8, 11:30 a.m.,

Dec. 6-8, 7 p.m., Burlington

Open Int/Adv Ballet with Noah,

Street Bluegrass Band, Wildwood Saloon, Iowa City Friday, Dec. 6, 8 p.m., Linc Henriksen & The Drifters, Wildwood Saloon, Iowa City Saturday, Dec. 7, 7 p.m., Denny’s Bday Show ft. Lou Sherry, Jim Swim & Grave Posture, Gabe’s, Iowa City Sunday, Dec. 8, 7:30 p.m., JACK Quartet, Hancher Auditorium, Iowa City Thursday, Dec. 12, 7 p.m., Burlington Street Bluegrass Band,

via Iowa Drag Awards

Wildwood Saloon, Iowa City Friday, Dec. 13, 7:30 p.m., Joe Pug & Robert Ellis, The James Theater, Iowa City Friday, Dec. 13, 6 p.m., Pattyo w/ The Zeffsterr, Gabe’s, Iowa City

Des Moines Performance

Iowa Drag Awards 2024, Dec. 12, Wooly’s, Des Moines

The fourth annual Iowa Drag Awards had a tall task this year, having to narrow down over 11,000 nominations for its categories. The culmination of that process can be seen at the awards ceremony at Wooly’s. Hosted by Minneapolis-based performer Crystal Belle, the evening aims to celebrate drag performers and crown victors from all around the state.

Dec. 13-15, 6 p.m., Every Avenue w/ The Forty Twos & half catholic, Gabe’s, Iowa City

LITTLEVILLAGEMAG.COM/LV335 December 2024 57

A-LIST: December 2024 Dec. 13-15, 8 p.m., Plastic Relations, This Years Girl, pesos, Wildwood Saloon, Iowa City Saturday, Dec. 14, 7:30 p.m., Jeffrey Foucault, The James Theater, Iowa City Saturday, Dec. 14, 8 p.m., Deerborn, Leg Room Otros Outros, Gabe’s, Iowa City Sunday, Dec. 15, 9 p.m., Emo Nite, Gabe’s, Iowa City Wednesday, Dec. 18, 7:30 p.m., Cedar County Cobras & Awful Purdies, The James Theater, Iowa City Wednesday, Dec. 18, 8 p.m., Trophy Dads w/ Camp Cardinal, Wildwood Saloon, Iowa City Friday, Dec. 20, 8 p.m., Smells Like Nirvana w/ Dead Original, Gabe’s, Iowa City Dec. 20-22, 6 p.m., Heavy Xmas, Wildwood Saloon, Iowa City Dec. 20-22, 8 p.m., Wax Cannon, 10 Watt Robot, Holiday Innards, Gabe’s, Iowa City Saturday, Dec. 21, 4 p.m., River Glen & Band, The James Theater, Iowa City Saturday, Dec. 21, 6 p.m., MAUL, Deterioration, Gored Embrace, Toxic Hell, PAINS, Gabe’s, Iowa City Saturday, Dec. 21, 7 p.m., Music Show Fundraiser, Public Space One, Iowa City Tuesday, Dec. 31, 8 p.m., Stone Age Queens, Audiowaves and Nirvomit, Wildwood Saloon, Iowa City

PERFORMANCE Friday, Dec. 6, 8 p.m., Live Band Burlesque Show, The Englert Theatre, Iowa City Saturday, Dec. 7, Various times, Dear Evan Hansen, Hancher Auditorium, Iowa City Saturday, Dec. 7, Various times, The Nutcracker, The Englert Theatre, Iowa City Sunday, Dec. 8, Various times, The Madrigal: A Winter Event, The James Theater, Iowa City Sunday, Dec. 8, Various times, The Naughty List: A Crooked Path Holiday Cabaret, The James Theater, Iowa City

58 December 2024 LITTLEVILLAGEMAG.COM/LV335

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PRESENTED BY PERFORMING ARTS AT IOWA

Iowa City Performance

Live Band Burlesque Show, Dec.

14, The Englert Theatre, Iowa City

via Bawdy Bawdy Ha Ha

Iowa City Burlesque troupe Bawdy Bawdy Ha Ha continues to push the local burlesque scene to new frontiers in this performance at The Englert. The group joins forces with the 2024 Queen of Burlesque Ms B La Rose and Miss Burlesque World 2022 Shimmy LaRoux, among other guest performers from across the Midwest. To elevate things even further, the evening’s soundtrack will be provided

by The Blake Shaw Quintet.

FILM

Wednesday, Dec. 4, 6:30 p.m., It’s A

Friday, Dec. 6, 3:30 p.m., It’s A

Tuesday, Dec. 3, 7 p.m., Show Me

Wonderful Life, FilmScene, Iowa City

Wonderful Life, FilmScene, Iowa City

Thursday, Dec. 5, 1 p.m., Remember

Friday, Dec. 6, 6:30 p.m., Eyes Wide

the Night, FilmScene, Iowa City

Shut, FilmScene, Iowa City

Thursday, Dec. 5, 6:30 p.m., Eyes

Saturday, Dec. 7, 5 p.m., Ninotchka,

Wide Shut, FilmScene, Iowa City

FilmScene, Iowa City

Love, FilmScene, Iowa City Wednesday, Dec. 4, 1 p.m,. The Muppet Christmas Carol, FilmScene, Iowa City

Quad Cities Music

Amateur Selectors Series: Sad Girl Songs | Mad Girl Songs, Dec.

14, Rozz-Tox, Rock Island

via Rozz-Tox

Come celebrate, among other things, Rozz-Tox reaching its current fundraising goal to keep Rock Island weird and buy the building they’ve occupied for 13 years. The Amateur Selectors Series sees the venue’s music curated by a different group or individual. This iteration hosts DJs Mayhem and Josie, who promise a round of post-election feminine rage with songs by and for women.

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PRESENTED BY PERFORMING ARTS AT IOWA

Saturday, Dec. 7, 11 a.m.,

Friday, Dec. 20, 7 p.m.,

Wednesday, Dec. 4, 5:30 p.m.,

Saturday, Dec. 14, 6 p.m.,

Paddington 2, FilmScene, Iowa City

Pickpocket, FilmScene, Iowa City

Open House: Brushwork: Ink

Art & Write Night, Stanley

Art in the Stanley, Stanley

Museum of Art, Iowa City

Dec. 14,15 3:30 p.m., Paddington

Friday, Dec. 20, 4 p.m., Remember

2, FilmScene, Iowa City

the Night, FilmScene, Iowa City

Museum of Art, Iowa City Sunday, Dec. 15, 11 a.m., Claudia Friday, Dec. 6, 6 p.m.,

McGehee’s Iowa River Frost Fair, Prairie Lights Books, Iowa City

Saturday, Dec. 14, 7

Saturday, Dec. 21, 9:30 p.m.,

Big Field Fund grantee

p.m., Aristotle’s Plot,

Die Hard, FilmScene, Iowa City

celebration + Soupmeet, Public Space One, Iowa City

FilmScene, Iowa City Saturday, Dec. 21, 12 p.m.,

Slonneger book signing, Prairie

Saturday, Dec. 14, 7 p.m.,

Ernest Saves Christmas,

Saturday, Dec. 7, 3 p.m., Winter

The Pruitt-Igoe Myth,

FilmScene, Iowa City

Art Market at Big Grove, Big

Sunday, Dec. 22, 7 p.m., Die Sunday, Dec. 15, 10 p.m.,

Hard, FilmScene, Iowa City

FilmScene, Iowa City Monday, Dec. 16, 10 p.m., Get

Haring’s Enduring Legacy, Stanley Dec. 7, 7 p.m., Dada Prom, Public Space One, Iowa City

A Christmas Horror Story, Monday, Dec. 23, 7 p.m., Ernest Saves Christmas,

Sunday, Dec. 8, 2 p.m., Drawing

FilmScene, Iowa City

Salon with Robert Caputo, Stanley Museum of Art, Iowa City

Away, FilmScene, Iowa City Tuesday, Dec. 31, 4 p.m., The Muppet Christmas Carol,

Wednesday, Dec. 11, 6:30

Phantom of the Paradise,

FilmScene, Iowa City

p.m., Emerald Ball, The

COMMUNITY

Museum of Art, Iowa City

CR/CF/Waterloo MUSIC

Tuesday, Dec. 3, 7 p.m., The Mesa Duo Concert, Hearst

Tuesday, Dec. 17, 10 p.m., FilmScene, Iowa City

Lights Books, Iowa City Saturday, Dec. 28, 2 p.m., Keith

Grove Brewery, Iowa City

FilmScene, Iowa City

Friday, Dec. 20, 2 p.m., Marybeth

Englert Theatre, Iowa City

Center for the Arts, Cedar Falls Saturday, Dec. 6, 8 p.m., Stoned Crow and Amuck,

Wednesday, Dec. 18, 4

Tuesday, Dec. 3, 1 p.m., Prints

Wednesday, Dec. 11, 1:30

p.m., The Eye Opener 2024,

& Cocoa at ICPC, Public

p.m., Alternative Drawing

FilmScene, Iowa City

Space One, Iowa City

& Composition Techniques,

Friday, Dec. 6, 8 p.m., The

Public Space One, Iowa City

4th Annual Tribute Night:

Octopus, Cedar Falls

Thursday, Dec. 19, 10 p.m., Get

Wednesday, Dec. 4, 5 p.m.,

Away, FilmScene, Iowa City

Second Sunday Sessions,

Thursday, Dec. 12, 10 a.m.,

Press Coffee, Iowa City

Study at Stanley, Stanley

Thursday, Dec. 19, 7 p.m., The Negro Artist, FilmScene, Iowa City

Fresh Fighters, The Ideal

Museum of Art, Iowa City

Theater, Cedar Rapids Friday-Sunday, Dec. 6-8, Various times, Christmas Pajama Party Concert, CSPS Hall, Cedar Rapids

Cedar Falls Community

STEBS Holiday Get Together!, Dec. 15, Octopus, Cedar Falls

Octopus College Hill is a multigenerational gathering place for music-lovers and locals. Jonathan Taiber / Little Village

For those not in the know, STEBS Amusement was a bar in Cedar Falls known for keeping it weird.

Octopus keeps the STEBS spirit going with this community potluck, reunion and get together. Octopus co-owner Dave Deibler states that all are welcome and to please bring a dish!

LITTLEVILLAGEMAG.COM/LV335 December 2024 61

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PRESENTED BY PERFORMING ARTS AT IOWA

COMMUNITY Thursday, Dec. 5, 6 p.m., Classic & Modern Czech & Slovak Cuisine XVI, National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library, Cedar Rapids Friday, Dec. 6, 5:30 p.m., Winter Artists’ Reception, Waterloo Center for the Arts, Waterloo Friday, Dec. 6, 1 p.m., Coffee and Kolach, National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library, Cedar Rapids Dec. 7-9, Various times, Old World Christmas Market 2024, National Czech &

via Waterloo Community Playhouse

Slovak Museum & Library, Cedar Rapids Saturday, Dec. 7, 4 p.m., Timeless Traditions: An American Girl Christmas Celebration, African American Museum of Iowa, Cedar Rapids Thursday, Dec. 12, 6 p.m., Classic & Modern Czech & Slovak Cuisine XVI, National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library, Cedar Rapids Saturday, Dec. 14, 3 p.m., Classic & Modern

Waterloo Performance

A Seussified Christmas Carol,

Dec. 18-22, Waterloo Community Playhouse: Hope Martin Stage, Waterloo

Black Hawk Children’s Theatre presents this Seussified take on the Dickens classic holiday tale. Helmed by playwright Peter Bloedel, this play mashes up Christmas Past, Present and Future with the likes of Timmy Loo Hoo and Bed-Headed Fred.

Czech & Slovak Cuisine XVI, National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library, Cedar Rapids Monday, Dec. 16, 1 p.m., Czech’em Out Book Club, National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library, Cedar Rapids Thursday, Dec. 19, 6 p.m., Classic & Modern Czech & Slovak Cuisine XVI, National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library, Cedar Rapids

Sunday, Dec. 7, 8 p.m., Bell Yard and the

Sunday, Dec. 15, 3 p.m., Stebs Holiday

Thursday, Dec. 26, 1 p.m., Embroiderers’

Value of Human Life, Octopus, Cedar Falls

Get Together, Octopus, Cedar Falls

Gild Demonstrations, National Czech &

Saturday, Dec. 7, 3 p.m., Joy to the

Tuesday, Dec. 17, 7 p.m., Hearst

World, CSPS Hall, Cedar Rapids

Center Annual Holiday Concert, Hearst

Tuesday, Dec. 31, 7 p.m., The Great Gatsby New

Center for the Arts, Cedar Falls

Year’s Eve Ball, The Ideal Theater, Cedar Rapids

Wednesday, Dec. 18, 6 p.m., B2wins,

PERFORMANCE

Trinity Lutheran Church, Cedar Falls

Dec. 6-8, Various times, The Best Christmas

Slovak Museum & Library, Cedar Rapids

Thursday, Dec. 12, 6:30 p.m., Bob Dorr’s Blues Jam, Octopus, Cedar Falls Thursday, Dec. 12, 7 p.m., A Carol Christmas, CSPS Hall, Cedar Rapids

Pageant Ever, Giving Tree Theater, Marion Wednesday, Dec. 18, 7 p.m., Matt Wilson’s Christmas Tree-o, CSPS Hall, Cedar Rapids

Friday, Dec. 13, 8 p.m., Boogie Rx, Octopus, Cedar Falls Friday, Dec. 13, 8 p.m., Michael

Sunday, Dec. 7, 7:30 p.m., Nathan Timmel, The Ideal Theater, Cedar Rapids

Friday, Dec. 20, 4 p.m., 8 p.m., Mannheim Steamroller Christmas by Chip Davis,

Dec. 13-15, Various times, The Best Christmas

Gallagher Bluedorn, Cedar Falls

Pageant Ever, Giving Tree Theater, Marion

Charles, CSPS Hall, Cedar Rapids Saturday, Dec. 28, 8 p.m., Molly Nova

Saturday, Dec. 14, 8 p.m., Octopus

Saturday, Dec. 14, 2 p.m., A Bel Canto

& The Hawks, The Weary Ramblers,

Comedy Event, Octopus, Cedar Falls

Christmas, Gallagher Bluedorn, Cedar Falls

The Ideal Theater, Cedar Rapids Saturday, Dec. 14, 8 p.m., Eddie Piccard’s Holiday Dinner Show, The

62 December 2024 LITTLEVILLAGEMAG.COM/LV335

Ideal Theater, Cedar Rapids

A-LIST: December 2024 Wednesday, Dec. 18, 8 p.m., Octopus Comedy Open Mic, Octopus, Cedar Falls Dec. 20-22, Various times, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, Giving Tree Theater, Marion

QUAD CITIES MUSIC

Friday, Dec. 6, 7 p.m., Wolves of Glendale w/ Rachel Scanlon, Raccoon Motel, Davenport Saturday, Dec. 7, 7 p.m., Johnny Delaware w/ Theo Lawrence & Willy Tea Taylor, Raccoon Motel, Davenport Thursday, Dec. 10, 6 p.m., American Aquarium w/ Justin Bloss, Raccoon Motel, Davenport Wednesday, Dec. 11, 6 p.m., Palmyra w/ Emily How, Raccoon Motel, Davenport Friday, Dec. 13, 7 p.m., Them Coulee Boys w/ Simon Cropp, Raccoon Motel, Davenport Sunday, Dec. 15, 6 p.m., The Keystones w/ The Forty Twos, Five AM & Alley Eyes, Raccoon Motel, Davenport Wednesday, Dec. 18, 6 p.m., Angela Meyer’s Very Merry Christmas Show, Raccoon Motel, Davenport

COMMUNITY Saturday, Dec. 7, 6 p.m., Spectra Reading Series ft Jacob Saenz, Rozz-Tox, Rock Island Thursday, Dec. 12, 6:30 p.m., Free Film at the Figge: Shoplifters, Figge Art Museum, Davenport

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If you test positive for an STI, work with your healthcare provider to get the right treatment.

Talk about when you were last tested and suggest getting tested together.

Talk to your healthcare provider about your sex life. Ask them about HIV and STI testing: including what tests you need and how often.

Many STIs don’t cause any symptoms, so you could have one and not know.

If you’re not comfortable asking your regular provider for an HIV or STI test, find a clinic that provides confidential testing that is free or low cost.

If you test positive for HIV, your provider or testing location will help connect you to treatment & resources!

Ask about partner services to get your partner tested and treated.

Avoid having sex until you and your sex partner both complete treatment.

OLD WORLD CHRISTMAS MARKET December 7 - 8, 2024

ncsml.org/old-world

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Local handcrafted items, delicious treats, entertainment, and more!

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PRESENTED BY PERFORMING ARTS AT IOWA

Saturday, Dec. 14, 8 p.m., Amateur Selectors Series: Sad Girl Songs, Rozz-Tox, Rock Island Friday, Dec. 20, 7 p.m., It’s A Wonderful Life, Rozz-Tox, Rock Island Saturday, Dec. 21, 6 p.m., Winter Solstice Spectacular II, Rozz-Tox, Rock Island Tuesday, Dec. 31, 12 p.m., Noon via The Ideal Theater adn Bar

Year’s Party, Waterloo Center for the Arts, Waterloo

PERFORMANCE Sunday, Dec. 8, 2 p.m., Frosty & Friends, Waterloo Center for the Arts, Waterloo Sunday, Dec. 8, 6 p.m., John Crist, The Adler Theatre, Davenport

Cedar Rapids Community Dec. 5-8, Various times, Beauty and the Beast, Waterloo Community Playhouse: Hope Martin Stage, Waterloo Dec. 18-22, Various times, A Seussified Christmas Carol, Waterloo Community Playhouse: Hope Martin Stage, Waterloo

The Great Gatsby New Year’s Eve Ball,

Dec. 31, The Ideal Theater, Cedar Rapids

“And I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy.” So says Jordan in The Great Gatsby. It’s a line that The Ideal Theater seems to embrace in their 3rd annual Great Gatsby New Year’s Eve Ball. The Des Moines based 10-piece brass band BYOBrass rings in the new year for guests of this literary themed event.

global flavors. local values. u n r i v a l e d h o s p i ta l i t y .

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DJANGO 1420 Locust Street, DSM djangodesmoines.com

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LIBERTY STREET KITCHEN 705 E. 1st Street. Pella libertystreetkitchen.com

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ZOMBIE BURGER 300 E. Grand Avenue, DSM zombieburgerdm.com

MAIN STREET MARKT 503 Main Street, Pella mainstreetmarkt.com

O H O S P I TA L I T Y. C O M

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Mon-Th: 10:00 am - 7:00 pm Fri: 10:00 am - 6:00 pm Sat: 10:00 am - 4:00 pm Sun: 12:00 - 4:00 pm Closed Dec. 24-25, Jan. 1

CORALVILLE 1401 Fifth Street, Coralville  319-248-1850  www.CoralvillePublicLibrary.org

Mock Tales: Spooky Stories for the Holidays with guest Watermill Kitchen + Bar

It’s a Mystery Book Club

Thursday, Dec 5, 6:45 pm

Be sure to arrive before the Library closes at 7. We will tell stories by the Hearth, after hours!

Wednesday, Dec 11 10:00 am, Room A

Movie Night for Adults

Furoshiki Wrapping Cloth 101

Thursday, Dec 12 6:00 pm, Schwab Aud

Saturday, Dec 14 12:30 pm, Discovery Corner

Novel Conversations

Thursday, Dec 19 6:00 pm, Board Rm

Winter Break Reading Programs Busy Bears: ages 0-5 Chilly Challenge: K-12 Dec 20 - Jan 20

66 December 2024 LITTLEVILLAGEMAG.COM/LV335

DEAR KIKI

D

ear Kiki, I’m worried about a few people in my life, because I think they might be lonely.

I would really like to help them find love and companionship, but I know that’s not up to me— it’s their job to put themselves out there and meet people. I’m not exactly close enough with them to discuss our love lives, either, so I’m reluctant to even bring it up and offer advice on how to meet people (even if I think I would be a really good matchmaker). It seems a bit inappropriate. Should I bring it up or just let it lie? Should I sneakily schedule meet-cute scenarios? Should I create a phony Tinder profile? Just kidding about the last one. But really, how do I find my lonely loved ones some boots to knock? Some people just don’t seem driven to get out there and make things happen and I want them to be happy!!

––Eleanor Rigby’s Concerned Friend

D

ear Concerned, Wanting our friends to be happy is the most natural urge there is! It’s kind of you see their situations and want to help. And I definitely appreciate you laying out all the things you should not do—not only does it make my job easier, but it shows you’ve given this a lot of thought and are truly coming from a place of concern, not just

LittleVillageMag.com/DearKiki

chasing the thrill of meddling.

Still, before you start the set-ups, examine your own motivation a bit more closely. Make sure you’re neither projecting your own loneliness onto them nor trying to find someone to foist them off on because you’re finding them clingy at the moment.

There’s nothing to be ashamed of in either case, but be certain of what’s driving you. Otherwise, you’re doomed to fail, no matter how good your matchmaking skills may be.

Then, Concerned, the big question you should ponder is this: Are they truly lonely? What hints have you gotten? You’re right that some people “just don’t seem driven,” but some people are also happy alone. Or, if not happy per se, they could be in a period of introspection, hoping to know themselves better before pursuing romance.

They could be stressed or depressed for reasons totally independent of their sex life and not want to add another person to the mix. They could simply be broke and unable to afford to take someone out, or even cover their own way. There are near endless possibilities that would make matchmaking irrelevant.

One way to discover the answer to these questions? Ask. It would give you deeper insight into how your mediation could best be applied, if

it is wanted. Maybe they are desperate for a date but loathe the formality. They could be interested in a set-up for a good time, but not a long time. They might be thrilled to get some advice but have no desire to have you actually step in.

More importantly, if your friends do indeed crave human connection, a night of companionable conversation would go a long way toward scratching that itch. After all, Concerned: All the lonely people, where do they all come from? From our collective unwillingness to build lasting, meaningful relationships, both romantic and platonic.

Pretty sure Eleanor Rigby and Father McKenzie wouldn’t have been best served by jumping into bed together; knocking boots, while a fun pass time, is not a cure-all for loneliness. ––xoxo, Kiki

KIKI WANTS QUESTIONS! Submit questions anonymously at littlevillagemag.com/dearkiki or non-anonymously to dearkiki@littlevillagemag.com.

Questions may be edited for clarity and length, and may appear either in print or online at littlevillagemag.com.

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68 December 2024 LITTLEVILLAGEMAG.COM/LV335

AST R O LO GY

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): I invite you to get a head start on formulating your New Year’s resolutions. January 1 is a good time to instigate robust new approaches to living your life, but the coming weeks will be an even better time for you Sagittarians. To get yourself in the mood, imagine you have arrived at Day Zero, Year One. Simulate the feeling of being empty and open and fertile. Imagine that nothing binds you or inhibits you. Assume that the whole world is eager to know what you want. Act as if you have nothing to prove to anyone and everything to gain by being audacious and adventurous.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): There was a long period when many popular songs didn’t come to a distinct end. Instead, they faded out. The volume would gradually diminish as a catchy riff repeated over and over again. As you approach a natural climax to one of your cycles, Capricorn, I recommend that you borrow the fade-out as a metaphorical strategy. In my astrological opinion, it’s best not to finish abruptly. See if you can create a slow, artful ebb or a gradual, graceful dissolution.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): When he was young, Aquarian musician and sound engineer Norio Ohga wrote a critical letter to the electronics company now known as Sony. He complained in detail about the failings of their products.

Instead of being defensive, executives at the company heeded Ohga’s suggestions for improvement. They even hired him as an employee and ultimately made him president of the company at age 40. He went on to have a stellar career as an innovator. In the spirit of the Sony executives, I recommend that you seek feedback and advice from potential helpers who are the caliber of Norio Ohga.

The information you gather in the coming weeks could prove to be highly beneficial.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): What would your paradise look and feel like? If you could remake the world to suit your precise needs for maximum freedom, well-being, and inspiration, what changes would you instigate? Now is an excellent time to ponder these possibilities, Pisces.

You have more ability than usual to shape and influence the environments where you hang out. And a good way to rouse this power is to imagine your ideal conditions.

Be bold and vivid. Amuse yourself with extravagant and ebullient fantasies as you envision your perfect world.

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Renowned composer Mozart had a sister nicknamed Nannerl. During their childhoods, she was as much a musical prodigy as he. They toured Europe doing performances together, playing harpsichord and piano. Some critics regarded her as the superior talent. But her parents ultimately decided it was unseemly for her, as a female, to continue her development as a genius. She was forcibly retired so she could learn housekeeping and prepare for marriage. Is there a part of your destiny, Aries, that resembles Nannerl’s? Has some of your brilliance been suppressed or denied? The coming months will be an excellent time to recover and revive it.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Do you know if you have any doppelgangers, Taurus? I bet you will meet one in the coming weeks. How about soul friends, alter egos, or evil twins? If there’s no one like that in your life right now, they may arrive soon. And if you already know such people, I suspect your relationships will grow richer. Mirror magic and shadow vision are in the works! I’m guessing you will experience the best, most healing kind of double trouble. Substitutes and stand-ins will have useful offers and tempting alternatives. Parallel realities may come leaking through into your reality. Opportunities for symbiosis

By Rob Brezsny

and synergy will be at an all-time high. Sounds like wild fun!

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Humans have been eating a wide range of oranges since ancient times. Among the most popular types in modern times is the navel orange. It’s large, seedless, sweet, juicy and easy to peel. But it didn’t exist until the 1820s, when a genetic mutation on a single tree in Brazil spawned this new variety. Eventually, the navel became a revolutionary addition to the orange family. I foresee a metaphorically comparable development in your life during the coming months, Gemini. An odd tweak or interesting glitch could lead to a highly favorable expansion of possibilities. Be alert for it.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): Cancerian, you are a finalist for our “Most Resourceful and Successful Survivor of the Year” trophy.

And if you take a brief trip to hell in the next two weeks, you could assure your victory. But wait! Let me be more exact: “Hell” is an incorrect terminology; I just used it for shock effect. The fact is that “hell” is a religious invention that mischaracterizes the true nature of the realm of mystery, shadows, and fertile darkness. In reality, the nether regions can be quite entertaining and enriching if you cultivate righteous attitudes. And what are those attitudes?

A frisky curiosity to learn truths you have been ignorant about; a brave resolve to unearth repressed feelings and hidden yearnings; and a drive to rouse spiritual epiphanies that aren’t available when you’re in the trance of everyday consciousness.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): In my astrological opinion, you need and deserve big doses of fun, play, pleasure and love. Amusement and enchantment, too. As well as excitement, hilarity and delight. I trust you will schedule a series of encounters and adventures that provide you with a surplus of these necessary resources. Can you afford a new toy or two? Or a romantic getaway to a sanctuary of adoration? Or a smart gamble that will attract into your vicinity a stream of rosy luck? I suggest that you be audacious in seeking the sweet, rich feelings you require.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): December will be Home Enhancement Month for you Virgos. Get started immediately! I’ll offer tips for how to proceed and ask you to dream up your own ideas. 1. Phase out décor or accessories that no longer embody the style of who you have become. 2. Add new décor and accessories that will inspire outbreaks of domestic bliss. 3. Encourage everyone in your household to contribute creative ideas to generate mutual enhancement. 4. Do a blessing ritual that will raise the spiritual vibes. 5. Invite your favorite people over and ask them to shower your abode with blessings.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Libran songwriter and producer Kevin MacLeod has composed over 2,000 pieces of music—and given all of them away for free. That’s why his work is so widespread. It has been featured in thousands of films and millions of YouTube videos. His composition “Monkeys Spinning Monkeys” has been played on TikTok over 31 billion times. (P.S.: He has plenty of money, in part because so many appreciative people give him free-will donations through his Patreon page.) I propose we make him your inspirational role model in the coming weeks and months, Libra. How could you parlay your generosity and gifts into huge benefits for yourself?

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): According to my grandmother, I have such a mellifluous voice I should have pursued a career as a newscaster or dj on the radio. In eighth grade, my science teacher admired my work and urged me to become a professional biologist. When I attended Duke University, my religious studies professor advised me to follow his path. Over the years, many others have offered their opinions about who I should be. As much as I appreciated their suggestions, I have always trusted one authority: my muses. In the coming weeks and months, Scorpio, you may, too, receive abundant advice about your best possible path. You may be pressured to live up to others’ expectations. But I encourage you to do as I have done. Trust your inner advisors.

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Not sure what to get for someone special?

Treat them to a gift certificate and let them choose! Gift certificates can be purchased in any denomination and used for any show.

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ALBUM REVIEWS

RUNNING MAN Running Man RUNNINGMAN1.BANDCAMP.COM

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uad Cities’ Running Man are the local antithesis to aging out. These guys have been steady putting work into the QC DIY scene, playing in bands like Meth & Goats, Lord Green, Tambourine, The Multiple Cat, Mondo Drag and more.

The group formed when ex Dead Kennedys and The Wynona Riders front man “Skip” Greer came to the QC and wanted to continue making music. Now, a little over a year since

Submit albums for review: Little Village, 623 S Dubuque St., Iowa City, IA 54420 and krautrock sensibilities, plays out like a soundtrack to a doomed road trip. “Fatal Flaw,” likewise showcases nods to Television and Elvis Costello.

There are many artists that can be picked out as inspiration for Running Man, but even as the album unfolds each new foray into distinct sounds, the band moves in their own way, crafting a sound that is as familiar as it is exciting. The bouncy Meatloaf-meets-Richard Hell “Second Skin” would sound corny in less experienced hands. Album closer “The Art Of Letting Go” is the standout track, capturing the perfect mix of nostalgia, lamentation and resolve to move forward from the past. The chorus is a hooky earworm complete with “whoa-oohs” while the bass line counters the upbeat guitars like a nagging memory that you could smile about before moving on.

The album feels familiar musically, but its production is a big

GUITAR SOLOS, BASS BREAKDOWNS, SNEERING VOCALS, BEACH BOYS-ESQUE BACKING VOCALS ALL MAKE APPEARANCES HERE, ESCHEWING THE MODERN POST-PUNK TREND IN FAVOR OF A SERIES OF HOMAGES TO SOUNDS THAT HAVE SHAPED THE PUNK SCENE OVER THE YEARS. their first shows, their debut album resonates with a punk ethos formed from decades of experience.

“Kismet Gold” opens the affair with its toe-tapping classic punk aura, setting the tone for the album.

Running Man are classicists in the punk and alternative landscape.

Guitar solos, bass breakdowns, sneering vocals, Beach Boys-esque backing vocals all make appearances here, eschewing the modern postpunk trend in favor of a series of homages to sounds that have shaped the punk scene over the years.

“Chosen One,” for instance, opens with a synth swell before shifting into a motorik beat and jabbing guitars that Gang of Four would be proud of. The delivery of the song, while touched by post-punk classics

part of that, sounding like a vintage punk record lost in the crowd of late 70s and early 80s releases.

In some ways, this is like a warm hug, a nugget of the past tempting you to reminisce about your punk days. However, as thrilling and bright as their musicianship is, this vintage feel nullifies some of the more thrilling parts. The addition of synthesizers is almost lost in some of the tracks, the drums and the backing vocals could shine a bit more as well. Despite this minor complaint, Running Man have released a collection of thoughtful, catchy and endearing songs, at home in today’s world as much as they would be 40 years ago.

—Broc Nelson

SALT FOX Miss You, Kyle/Love Ya, Boys!

SALTFOXMUSIC.COM

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n January 2024, the Cedar Falls indie pop trio Salt Fox found themselves heading to Texas for a gig. Right before departing, Kyle, a friend of a friend that the band had never met, showed up to be the roadie for the trip and became the inspiration for the title of the band’s new album.

“Over the course of the week long trip, Kyle laid out the most beautiful framework of friendship, loyalty, happiness and never-ending optimism,” the band explained in an email. “He sat way in the back of the tour van, so every hour or so we’d yell, ‘Miss ya, Kyle!’

Without hesitation, he’d yell back with a cheerful, ‘Love you, boys!’

It became our motto. We talked about him constantly following the trip, and the motto seemed like a perfect fit to this new album. Insane optimism.”

A feature by IPR’s Tony Dehner last year describes the band’s beginnings transitioning from an acoustic outfit to their current electronic beats-and-guitars format.

Jacob Pauli, who plays synths, beats and backing vocals, brought some MIDI demos to the rest of the band and, armed with a scrawled manifesto guitarist Andy Fuchtman found while cleaning a vacated apartment, the band started working on songs that would become their 2022 EP Places.

Salt Fox continued the tradition of focusing on creating music videos for their new songs with the first of these being “Oak Tree.” The signature reaching, seductive vocals from Michael Rogers ride over a bubbling bass and drum, darting

analog synth and clean guitar riffs hitting on the half beat. The chorus nicks a bit of Black Eyed Peas: “We got that boom boom now / We got that honey out / Back at the oak tree / That was the old me.” Which isn’t to say that Salt Fox is somehow “two-thousand and late.” On the contrary, Miss You, Kyle/Love Ya, Boys! achieves a balance of catchy and current pop hooks with a nod to ’90s R&B. The fact that the band primarily works with the intention of releasing songs as videos speaks to their confidence in them as singles.

The album opener “Get Down” skates towards a retro disco funk vibe. Rogers’ high-reaching tenor that shifts to falsetto recalls sweaty club nights of the past. The next song “Leave It On” has a great opening segue from the minimal end of the previous track. In the left channel there is a percussion loop with pulsing analog synth leading to a bass synth. Chillwave acts like Tame Impala or Toro y Moi are simpatico pairing suggestions for Salt Fox, and any party playlist should include them.

The videos that came out this summer for “Oak Tree,” “Get Down,” “Stars,” and “Soldier” served as an appetizer for the full album, and Since Miss You, Kyle/ Love Ya, Boys! was posted to streaming services last month, it has been in constant rotation for me.

Even though this release is partially a compilation of these songs, the album works as a start-to-finish listen.

It’s difficult to compartmentalize Salt Fox. Rogers quotes from the manifesto he found early in the band’s formation: “We have two #1 rules. Have fun at all times and always go with your first mind.”

It’s this way of thinking and acting that has had strong creative yields.

In addition to the songs, the videos and live performances, the band spearheads the Lost Woods festival in Cedar Falls, which was covered in Little Village, and out of that came a short film shot by noted director Ben Hagarty. I have no idea what direction the band is taking next, but I’m anxious to see it.

—Michael Roeder

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BOOK REVIEWS

VINCE GOTERA Dragons & Rayguns FINAL THURSDAY PRESS

I

remember learning about the concept of allusion in childhood, as a burgeoning nerd. Kids these days would grok it best as the Captain America “I understood that reference” meme, which itself is basically the very notion of metacommentary collapsing in on itself, and would honestly be an appropriate stand-alone review of this book.

Appropriate, but insufficient.

Although Iowa Poet Laureate Vince Gotera’s collection of speculative poetry, Dragons & Rayguns, 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, thoughtprovoking and tender. It’s deeply immersive, drawing the reader deeper and deeper into the author’s scattershot, cross-section, pop culture world with every page.

The cover of the collection, credited to Gotera’s son Marty, is a delightful riff on Silver Age comics covers, setting up an expectation of nostalgia paired with possibility.

“We just don’t imagine the future like we used to,” it seems to imply (I would agree). It also underscores the way in which the book acts as a crash course in speculative fiction, emphasizing how fantasy, science fiction and horror all serve to scratch the same itch inside our hearts.

One consistent thread woven throughout the poems (many of

Submit books for review: Little Village, 623 S Dubuque St., Iowa City, IA 54420 which were previously published elsewhere) is the voice of the creature: Poems like “Dragon Flight,” “Bakunawa the Sea Dragon Desires the Seven Moons in High Heaven” and many of the selections included in Scifaiku and Curious Candy Hearts give voice to gods and cryptids and horrors; “Xenobot Speaks” and “Warrior” personify scientific reactions and technologies.

It’s a skillful use of the persistent way that speculative fiction subverts societal “othering” by insisting that humanity is not the sole purview of humans.

Gotera plays throughout with established poetic forms, using them as a bridge—between past and future, between tradition and conjecture, between mythology and exploration. He draws heavily on Filipino folklore and digs deeply into esoteric science facts, inviting the reader to dive into stories that may be less familiar to some. Every reference is a rabbit hole that rewards the curious; it’s a collection best read phone in hand, searching everything you don’t understand to open up worlds of delight.

Because of this, one apparent typo was more glaring than it might have been otherwise. In the beautifully dark poem “Horror Story,” the second word is spelled “manananngal” rather than manananggal (it is spelled correctly in the end notes).

In a volume so dedicated to realigning the ideas, creatures and cultures that we typically center, this feels unfortunately careless, and it stands out in such a thoughtfully, gorgeously designed book.

It’s a small distraction, though, in a work filled with beauty. Concrete poems like “Space Opera” and “The Raygun’s Plea for Understanding” jump lightheartedly off the page.

“Sestina: Dragon” is irreverent and playful in its train-of-thought meandering. And stanzas like this section from “Fantasia” will linger long after they are read, encouraging readers to return again and again: Pearly lovebirds sing Into periwinkle or indigo skies, Delicate blue cantatas.

—Genevieve Trainor

BEN MILLER Pandemonium Logs RUTGERS UNIVERSITY PRESS

L

life became more complicated, more fraught. Throughout Miller’s logs (a short, heady book at only 189 pages) he returns the reader to a near past, during which we all struggled to navigate our daily lives. The exception for Miller, though, is that he had a real-time view (if somewhat removed) of the lives lost. In a telehealth ICU, he was responsible for discharging patients when they died.

“Trying to make the process feel more humane, I had that habit of looking up the patient’s age and full name during the wait, but it did not much help alter the vibe of callousness. Bright sophisticated screens were very good at taking the uniqueness out of a life, reducing it to fields of data that all looked the same.”

The beginning of Pandemonium Logs was the hardest to read because it starts in early March 2020 and slides us slowly into the chaos that month would be—and it felt very much like living in that moment, gradually and then suddenly existing in a different reality. I didn’t want to go back there. It was a dark period and it lasted a long time. We all worried, whatever our background or views, and we were all isolated. Somehow,

ockdown isn’t a happy memory for most of us, and navigating the topic of COVID-19 somehow hasn’t become easier in the months and years since. We don’t talk about the tolls the pandemic has taken on each of us. In Ben Miller’s new book Pandemonium Logs: Sioux Falls, South Dakota, 2020-2022 (November 2024) he says the quiet part aloud.

Reading this book was sort of a scary healing experience. In it, Miller MAYBE BECAUSE THE TEXT IS transcribes and builds SO HONEST, SO FORTHCOMING, narrative from his work IT BECOMES A BIT OF A SALVE notes—taken as an employee of a hospital FOR THE WOUNDS WE’VE system in a state that ASSUMED ARE GONE. managed to bungle any meaningful public safety precautions. while not ever breaking the fourth Miller’s story is different from wall or pausing to reflect (to say most people’s, because he was something like “this was four years working with medicine, but nearly ago”), Miller also doesn’t punish every entry rings with universality. the reader for coming to this text.

Regarding vaccines and masking, Maybe because the text is so honest, “It’s been the same story for months. so forthcoming, it becomes a bit of a Tellers are inevitably bewildered salve for the wounds we’ve assumed and/or anguished. To be incapable of are gone because we’ve ignored them uniting to deal with an epidemic points as we’ve “returned to normal.” to a painful, dizzying phenomenon: Pandemonium Logs is a frank and concepts of family, and of country, gentle reminder that we have all been are so widely varied from individual changed by COVID-19 that allows to individual that often the outcome is and encourages readers to care for indecipherability on all levels of the ourselves, however we are today. “To social unit.” me the core of being a writer is the There just isn’t a better way to say willingness to start over. It’s never a it: everything about our conversations negative thing. It’s an occasion for and the ways we engage with public —Sarah Elgatian renewal.”

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ACROSS Lancaster County group 6. Nighttime breathing issue 11. Aunt played by Marisa Tomei 14. Around 15. Mortgages, for example 16. From ___ Z 17. World War I-era hawk Root 18. “Oh, boo-hoo” 20. Offer, as tickets on StubHub 22. Sch. about 30 minutes

south of Providence 23. It’s not gross 24. Law firm practice area dealing with corporate takeovers, for short 25. Big name in soundbars 27. “Tik Tok” singer, earlier in her career 29. “Concrete jungle where dreams are made of” locale 33. Japanese honorific suffix 35. Tag for a nostalgiainducing Instagram post 37. ___ the Dragon (classic

1973 martial arts film) 38. Nickname for the Bell UH-1 helicopter 40. Ilhan Omar’s faith 43. ___ tea (term meaning “tea tea”) 44. ’80s TV squad that drove around in a black van with a sweet red stripe 46. What a fatberg can cause 48. They’re in the middle of consummation 49. Where you might run into

someone at a punk show 52. It peels the skin 54. “Ugh, not again ...”

56. ___ Geo 57. Cultural Revolution figure 59. Letters indicating “no more seats” 60. For an unspecified amount of time 64. Friend with benefits, bluntly 67. Tied up, as skates 68. Sport in which BJJ

moves are often used 69. Monastery figure 70. Combined 71. Unproven sixth sense, for short 72. Fan followings?

73. Gas that can be used as a general anesthetic

33. Bogus 34. The “A” in GTA 36. T-Boz, Left Eye and Chilli, together 39. Google competitor, bless their heart 41. Mont Blanc, e.g.

42. Restorer of the heart of Te Fiti 45. Exit velocity letters 47. Fig-leaf comics string found three times in this puzzle 50. Likely response to, “Are you certain you want to pass on the extended warranty?”

51. The Doctor’s time machine 53. Component of natural gas 55. Greet with some body language 57. Candies that melt in your mouth, not in your hand 58. Rap’s Rocky 61. Trash can on a dock, e.g.

62. Erstwhile latenight host Jay 63. Apple location that was closed and then flooded 64. “Don’t ___” (“I’m not looking for responses to this post”) 65. Ride-or-die, for short 66. What the spots on a ladybug do not indicate, contra legend: Abbr.

DOWN 1. Taiwanese laptop maker 2. Distance in which Faith Kipyegon is the women’s world record–holding runner (by a lot) 3. Goo Goo Dolls song that starts with the lyric “And I’d give up forever to touch you” 4. Endeavor for Charles Ponzi 5. Move really fast 6. Non-mainstream lead-in 7. Devout 8. It gets fired for thinking 9. Device with cylinder blocks 10. Butt residue 11. Biggie’s collaborator on “Mo Money Mo Problems,” as stylized 12. Verizon competitor 13. ___ MTV Raps 19. No Strings Attached band, on their album covers 21. Actress Christine of The Blacklist 26. Be beholden to creditors 27. Powerful Muay Thai strikes NOVEMBER ANSWERS 28. Muscles worked MA S C A R A A S H A P E D by flutter kicks I GA T H E R N EON A T E L O W R E N T N E RDR A P 30. “Something E L A N OS S A else,” on a survey P S Y D E A J U T CNN A T E S L E E T HU E 31. 500-count N I T RO I P A B L UR T sheet set?

MOUN T A I NGOA T S QU E NCH RU P E E S 32. Singer E L Y D I D A S E T I R E Kristofferson, D I E T M I N C E WN Y C S U B S T A N C E whose first name B E F A L L S R E A L MA N is right there in T R A I N E E A RMD A Y S WE B A S S B Y E Y E A “Kristofferson”

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