What a difference a century makes. 100 years ago, America was at the beginning of a decade that would become known as the Roaring 20s. The war was over, a woman’s right to vote was realized, the economy was booming and even though Prohibition was enacted, it only served to ignite American’s spirit of independence and led them to roar! Today, 100 years later, we are in…
Category: Gary Kroeger
A Mother’s Touch
I’ve celebrated my mother in this column before. At least once on Mother’s Day and on her 90th birthday (almost 5 years ago). I realize not every child has the same experience with their mother as I did, but I was lucky. Never once did I have a contentious relationship with my parents. Over the course of my life, I’ve known people who’ve had difficult relationships with one parent or the other. Some go years without speaking. I, on the other hand, was the proverbial…
Tweetle Dee and Tweetle Dum
Every time there’s a mass shooting, voices from the right blame the left, citing “gun control” as an obstacle to the solution. Yet, with over 400,000,000 guns in American homes, obviously no serious gun control has ever taken place. We are, in fact, armed to the teeth. The left has this ”crazy” idea that owning deadly force should require comprehensive background checks to limit the access that allowed young murderers in Uvalde and Highland Park to purchase weapons without…
Lost Island
The city of Waterloo and the state of Iowa have so much to offer in terms of quality of life, including quality of activities. One of the most recent additions to the outstanding choices for entertainment here is the new Lost Island Theme Park. The Theme Park is an extension to the very successful (and deservedly…
Time Bandits
Last week I saw a meme that read: “Remember to turn your clocks back 50 years.” It feels like we’re moving back in time to when laws were written from lesser awareness. We’re regressing to virtually no restrictions on owning assault weaponry, to government dictated by the church, and patriarchal control overreproduction. What’s next? Bringing back disembowelment and the rack? Conservatives now have the LGBTQ community in their sights. Emboldened Proud Boys are interrupting “Pride” story-time…
Who’s on Second?
We have this tendency in America to fictionalize the stories of our founders in order to create a shorthand understanding of their great accomplishments. George Washington certainly told a lie, but it inspires us to believe that the Founding Fathers were cut from divine cloth. This has been on my mind as I read positions regarding gun control…
“I Was Standing On The Corner…”
I was standing on the corner of 1st street and Main in Cedar Falls when a flatbed truck with a confederate flag and straight pipes “slowed down to take a look at me.” Then roared through the intersection. The volume from its acceleration and the black smoke that came from its tailpipes stopped everyone in their tracks. I turned…
My Fantastick Voyage
We are in the middle of our run of “The Fantasticks” at the Oster-Regent Theatre and the meaning behind this musical, which first debuted in 1960, strikes me as particularly relevant today. “The Fantasticks” for those who are not familiar with it, is a musical by Tom Jones (no, not the “What’s New Pussycat?” Tom Jones, but the brilliant playwright) with music (“Try To Remember,” “Soon It’s Gonna Rain”) by Harvey Schmidt. It…
Contradiction Junction What’s Your Function?
Aristotle defined “contradiction” in his thesis “Metaphysics” thusly: “It is impossible that the same thing can at the same time both belong and not belong to the same object and in the same respect.” Yet that conflict with reason has become the operating system for the modern Republican Party. What else could lead Republicans, self-described as…
Reynolds’ Rap
What more could Governor Reynolds and Iowa Republicans do to make Iowa less attractive to businesses and students? Under their stewardship Iowa has, according to data from the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. Census Bureau, and S&P Global Market Intelligence, dropped in rank in infrastructure, workforce, access to capital, education, economics, and even “business friendliness.” They’ve lowered corporate taxes, but that’s like…