I wonder if school children are still as misinformed as my generation was about the discovery of America - why our native people are called Indians, and a number of other mysterious inconsistencies. In...

Thirty-three years ago on a snowy Friday in November, the nightmare of mass school shootings shocked Iowa like it has never been shocked before. It was 3:40 p.m. A former University of Iowa graduate...

I guess I've known for most of my life that time is relative. To a four-year-old, four years is in fact a lifetime. To a college student, it's the fleeting memories of high school days. To the couple...

If you've read this column for more than a few weeks, you must be aware that I blame the advertising community for some of the things that are going wrong in this world. Some of the reasons I do that...

Mrs. Cotter was one of the teachers who profoundly influenced my life. She was my homeroom teacher during the confusing first days of junior high, which began with sixth grade in our own. She rigidly enforced...

Bobby and Beverly were twins, a few years older than I was. They lived in a large Victorian house at the end of our street. Because of the age difference, I seldom played with them, but often joined...

Here we go again. Don’t be surprised if there is a hard-fought campaign between now and the November election over a guy named David May. You may not recognize his name. But you will in the weeks...

I always looked forward to the unstructured days of summer, though I was reluctant to give up the pleasures of school. For some reason, except for the children who lived in our immediate neighborhood,...

By mid-August, Mother would have dug out the boxes of stored school dresses, raincoats, boots and the wool mittens, scarves and sweaters stored in her three cedar chests. One, a plain but lovely “hope...

From the time I was about eight or nine years old, I spent a week or two every summer at my grandparents' farm. They lived in Clarke County, south of Indianola. Aside from my grandparents, there were three...

When I first met my husband, he seemed older than most of the young men I knew from college. Actually, he was much the same age as most of the other young veterans who were then attending school on the...

During the 1940's and '50's, Norman Rockwell's Saturday Evening Post covers were eagerly awaited by just about everybody. We couldn't wait to see what bit of Americana he had chosen to depict for the latest...