Dave Elbert

This may not be the best time to bring up the subject of assisted dying, given the recent success of the anti-abortion movement in Iowa and other parts of the country. But the concept is increasingly on my mind and of many friends as we creep ever closer to becoming octogenarians. It’s an issue that…

Santa Claus will miss the Iowa Poll. While it may be premature to write off the 81-year-old Iowa Poll, its future is clearly in doubt. Poll director Ann Selzer announced she is stepping back from the Des Moines Register’s Iowa Poll after more than three decades; Register Executive Editor Carol Hunter, who championed the poll…

Many people assume the Nike Swoosh, created in 1971 for $35, was responsible for turning consumers into walking billboards by placing corporate logos on popular fashion choices.  The real credit goes to an Iowan. And it had nothing to do with farmers wearing John Deere or Pioneer Hi-Bred caps, because that didn’t happen until even…

My friend Jo Kline, who writes and speaks about the difficulties of health care in Iowa, sent an email recently titled: “Every Iowan recognizes the odor of fertilizer.” The subject was Gov. Kim Reynolds’ proclamation of Nov. 21 as “Rural Health Day.” I’ll get to the specifics of what Kline said in a bit, but…

I was intrigued by the title on David Brooks’ cover story in the December issue of The Atlantic: “How the Ivy League Broke America.” In it, he traces the history of college admission standards and credits James Conant, Harvard University president from 1933 to 1953, for a system that moved from bloodlines to brain power. …

Iowa was the nation’s sixth-largest producer of apples a century ago before an unexpected blizzard on Nov. 11, 1940, froze the sap in trees, virtually eliminating the state’s apple industry. The Armistice Day storm 84 years ago this week caught Iowa’s apple trees “totally unprepared because the weather had been warm,” the Des Moines Register’s…

In the summer of 1961, my transistor radio, turned to full volume, played “Runaway” by Del Shannon, “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” by the Shirelles, and “Raindrops” (my favorite) by Dee Clark.  While the radio played, my cousin Mike and I painted a two-story duplex owned by our Great-Aunt Gussie in Ames. Without the…

Valerie Van Kooten has a weird and wonderful backstory about how she came to lead the State Historical Society of Iowa, and it helps explain the society’s new project: “Weird & Wonderful Iowa.” “Coming from Pella,” Van Kooten told me, “I knew that people were really hungry for history, particularly if you package it in…

I was passing the John and Mary Pappajohn Sculpture Park when I saw my friend K.C. standing under artist Ai Weiwei’s “Iron Tree Trunk.”  The 16-foot-tall sculpture is cast from individual pieces of wood united to replicate a centuries-old tree from the dissident artist’s native Jiangxi Province in southeast China. “Weiwei wanted to show how…

An uncomfortable connection between interest rate cuts and recessions was explored by Minneapolis-based economist James Paulsen in a recent Paulsen Perspectives newsletter.   Seven of eight recessions between 1969 and 2020 were preceded by Federal Reserve change-of-direction rate cuts, Paulsen wrote. The only exception was the brief, and unique, two-month COVID-19 recession in 2020. To…