This last week was Halloween. The little goblins were out in force. On the telly the campaign ads continued, evidence the big goblins were out in force as well.

Iowa is a key battleground this year, making our responsibility to get to the polls as crucial as ever. My perennial message to my fellow citizens is always the same – do your homework, make up your own mind, and VOTE.

But there is more to being a good citizen in a great country like ours than voting on who will represent us in Washington. There is much work to be done here at home.

I’ve been known to follow politics – an occupational hazard – but I admit I’ve never been much of a fan of Halloween. I guess I find the real ghouls scary enough.

Oh, I get candy and open the door to the kiddos. Continue reading →

On my afternoon walk the other day, the sun glistened off the backs of the sheep grazing in the nearby pasture, giving them the eerie glow of iridescent haloed silhouettes. They barely acknowledged me as they stuck to their lunch – the last of the season’s green grass.

It’s fall in the heartland – that magical time of year when gold and orange take over the landscape.

I had a friend move here several years ago from the western plains. She commented she was ready for the colorful trees, but she had no idea there would be so much color at ground level: mums, flaming bushes, huge orange spheres of pumpkin on every doorstep.

If you look closely, you will also see bits of blue and purple in the road ditch as the stray clover or cornflower holds on to the autumn warmth. We’ve had a freeze, but not a long freeze, so the grass is still green, the garden is still offering up a fall radish or two, and the heartiest of prairie flowers are still claiming their right to be part of the color wheel. Continue reading →

Most days I sit at my desk beneath the open window with the sights, sounds and smells of the world around me wafting through. These days there’s a hue of gold on the other side of the screen, the last hurrah of the flowering crab and ash trees in my yard. The sounds are of combines passing by on their way from one field to another, and wagonloads of golden grain headed into town to the co-op. It’s harvest season – time to reap the bounty of another year of blood, sweat and tears. We grow corn and soybeans here, in quantities and with efficiencies that boggle the human mind.

It’s a good harvest this year. Prices could be better, but yields are strong. And even as the grain flows through the mighty machines, prayers focus on the thing that matters most in Iowa – good weather.

In between phone interviews I crank out copy and sift through news feeds in hope of soliciting even more work. Occasionally, I stop off at my email address and Facebook page to keep up on friends and family and other assorted personalities.

Other days I venture out, camera and notebook in hand, to meet interesting folks and see interesting sights, and learn more about a host of subjects.

I am a reporter by trade and by nature – observing and recording what I experience in the world around me. Continue reading →