Could Iowa become the 14th state to legalize medical marijuana? In 1990, Carl Olsen tells me, he had an epiphany. It’s the year that he met George McMahon at a rally outside the state Capitol building, and McMahon was smoking pot. “I had never met a person that was legally smoking marijuana before,” Olsen recalls. [...]

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Jordan Mayland is one of the most active musicians and recording artists in Ames. In the past decade, he has played in a number of popular Ames bands, including Keepers of the Carpet, Nuclear Rodeo, Electronidoll, The Thermal Detonators, and Organ Donor, and this year Mayland has launched a new project called Volcano Boys. Both [...]

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Ames martial arts instructor Jack Shilkaitis has taken thousands of punches over the past decade, but he remembers none more fondly than the one he took from Vladimir Vasiliev. Vasiliev delivered the blow over four years ago, as part of a demonstration at a seminar in Chicago, but when Shilkaitis told me about it this [...]

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I’m sitting in a third-class train compartment. This is a situation I’ve been in a few times before. Old women hawking iced tea and mango slices traipse up and down the car, while a 12-year-old with a Dragon Ball Z backpack stares out the window. Across the aisle, a few school kids are giggling at [...]

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For the record, I am a liberal: someone who loves Bernie Sanders and the late Paul Wellstone. However, I am convinced that many who share my ideals and convictions are unhappy with Obama. If you fall under this category, I hate to say it, but I do not think you fully understand what Obama was [...]

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During Obama’s presidential campaign, he repeatedly promised that he would “change the culture of Washington” by fostering an attitude of shared legislative labor across party lines. And in the early months of his presidency, Obama has made a well-meaning, Lincoln-inspired effort to incorporate Republicans into his cabinet and to seek the counsel of moderate conservatives [...]

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I think it is a great piece, very professionally researched and written. Nice to see that there is an outlet for a more in-depth treatment. My only comment is with the one statement you made about the Ames ordinance after the Supreme Court decision: “After the ruling, Ames kept the unenforceable ordinance on its books, [...]

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Knitting is many things to many people: self expression, a way to keep busy, a way to “do it yourself.” One constant throughout history is that knitting has always been about warmth and love. Handmade items take time and dedication – to receive a handmade gift is to know you are cared for by the [...]

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But you like forests better. How, in the same breath that passes through the crooked bloom of your mouth, can you sigh exhausted, “Oh Christ!” and then ask if I ever wonder what sound a deer makes as it’s dying? You feel roots ruining proof of humanity: The mattress rots beneath trees, its white cover [...]

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Curtains Closed like blinds on an afternoon of what Is going on beyond, could be a musical, Could be a massacre, or an opportunity To fall in love with one or two selves That illusion best kept in place By a velvet rope that frames That heavy, satin curtain, collecting Splices of memories, condensed With [...]

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