I have read a seemingly unending stream of open letters to the President-Elect, each doling out copious amounts of advice and admonition for the new administration. While I realize that President-Elect Obama has a lot on his plate, I hope he’ll consider the metaphor a bit more literally. Many of the issues we face can [...]

The economy is in shambles. Prices of everything are going up. K-Mart has brought back layaway plans. KFC is advertising that you can’t make their seven-piece “meal deal” at home for as cheap as you can get it at their place. I beg to differ. As I recently told my children as they headed off [...]

It’s going to take me a long time to fully understand the effects and implications of the first Slow Food Nation, held in San Francisco over Labor Day weekend. The brain power on display was impressive enough: Wendell Berry, Vandana Shiva, Michael Pollan, Winona LaDuke, Carlo Petrini, Raj Patel, Eric Schlosser, and other luminaries took [...]

This is the time of year that we flatlanders pine for during the snows of January, when it’s a full 100 degrees colder than it is right now, and all the humidity is frozen to our windshields. September in Iowa is what makes things grow so well here – the hot, sticky dog days that [...]

Too many people in this country, I have learned, have been sold a bill of goods. They’ve been tricked. Flim-flammed. Conned. Hussled. Bamboozled into believing that food comes wrapped in plastic from a freezer in the nearest Wal-Mart and that cooking is a chore, like laundry or washing windows, to be avoided if at all [...]

Iowa experienced the flood of the century 15 years ago. That, of course, was a different century.
Last month Iowans saw floods unlike any in living memory. Fourteen hundred city blocks in Cedar Rapids were inundated with water up to 11 feet deep. Twenty University of Iowa buildings were flooded. Interstates 80 and 380 were closed [...]