Category Archives: Weekly Updates

Plant strawberries!

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In 2018, City of Des Moines staff did something bold and unique. They planted strawberries all around City Hall. Then they planted them at another city building on the east side of Des Moines, and at Gray’s Lake on the City’s south side.

Thousands of plants. Probably millions of strawberries. Hugely popular. Each year has seen more and more Des Moines residents picking, eating, and preserving.

Oh, and strawberries are an excellent ground cover — a delicious alternative to grass. They also provide pollen and nectar for bees. And the color-combo of red berries and green leaves makes it feel like Christmas in June. 

Sadly, some City officials in Des Moines are citing budget constraints as a reason not to establish new plantings, and to ignore maintenance needs at existing plantings. Continue Reading →

Building arks

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Mary Reynolds is a renowned Irish landscape designer, author, and nature activist. She advocates for re-wilding gardens, encouraging biodiversity, and returning land to its native state. She calls these places arks — nooks and crannies where life can continue to flourish despite the tumult in the world around us.

Here’s a beautiful and inspiring clip from Reynolds work that I share on this week’s program.

With so much damage being done to local ecosystems and the planet itself, Reynolds argues that creating safe spaces for plants and animals is crucial.

Kathy and I try to do that at Birds & Bees Urban Farm. We raise half the food we eat, yet leave plenty of room for wildlife to flourish in and around our space. Sure, we don’t want insects, birds, and small mammals gobbling up everything we grow. But we don’t mind sharing a bit of our chemical-free bounty with other creatures. Continue Reading →

An Irish-American’s brush with sainthood

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Kevin’s my guest during the first segment of this week’s program. We touch on the shared experience of being doused with mosquito spray by a truck, in his case, and by a helicopter, in my case — both in small towns on opposite sides of Massachusetts.

Yes, back in the day, they indiscriminately sprayed DDT! During the day! When kids were out playing! I remember feeling the sticky stuff on my skin. Kevin and his friends would actually run after the spray truck, breathing in the fumes until they felt light-headed.

It’s kind of shocking that we’re still alive.

Most of my conversation with Kevin is about his brush with sainthood as a ten-year-old boy. It’s a delightful story. Continue Reading →

Protest is not enough

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We’re going bullet-point style this week, starting with:

PEACE AND JUSTICE AWARD
For my Iowa audience, the Bishop Dingman Award Celebration is this Saturday, March 7 at 6:00 p.m. at Holy Trinity Catholic Church, 2926 Beaver Ave in Des Moines. This year’s award goes to Humanitarian Operations and Public Education Foundation, a non-profit focused on human rights and providing aide to Gaza. Suggested ticket price is $50. Contact catholicpeaceministry@gmail.com for details.

(RELATED: Check out my conversations with DMACC poli-sci prof Jeffrey Weiss about Iran and building a new peace movement.

THE SEAGULL
Again, if you’re in central Iowa, the Iowa Stage Theater’s production of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull runs from March 13 – 22. Director Alex Wendel and I discuss the play’s edgy political commentary when it was first released in Russia in the late 1800s, and its relevance for the mess we find ourselves in today. Details and tickets here.
Continue Reading →

Did Trump just give up on the farm vote?

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IS TRUMP WRITING OFF FARMERS?
Back in 2018, Trump said this about farmers: “I love them, and they voted for me, and they love me. … And they said, ‘We don’t care if we get hurt, he’s doing the right thing.’”

I wonder how many farmers actually told Trump “we don’t care if we get hurt.” There’s already enough hurt in farm country.

Climate change. Floods and droughts are measurably worse than they used to be. Besides outright crop loss, climate change impacts crop and livestock viability, meaning some farmers are having to invest in new equipment, find new markets, and figure out how to deal with new pests and diseases.

Costs vs profits. Input costs are consistently higher than market prices. According to a story last month in Farm Policy News, in 2025 “production costs were more than 50% higher than in 2011, while prices farmers received were only about 21% higher.”

Bankruptcy. According to the American Farm Bureau Federation, “Chapter 12 bankruptcies increased for the second year in a row, reaching 315 filings in 2025. This is a 46% increase from 2024.”

Suicide. According to the National Rural Health Association, the suicide rate among farmers is 3.5 times higher than that of the general population.

The challenges facing farmers are already overwhelming. Add to that Trump’s tariffs, his $40 billion bailout of Argentina (our second biggest competitor in the soybean market), and his 80,000 metric ton purchase of beef from Argentina, and “farmers who love Trump” is a shrinking universe. Continue Reading →

Tapping the peace nerve

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When it comes to peace, we desperately need more people — especially American-flavored people — pushing for an end to the nuclear arms race, an end to regime-change wars, and the urgency of diplomacy over armed conflict.

That said, most of us also need more peace in our lives. Yet working to avert the many horrors of war while nurturing the inner peace necessary to remain happy, healthy, and productive is a real challenge.

There are all kinds of ways to instill inner peace. Meditation. Music (some, not all). A walk in the forest (which I guess fancy-folk now call forest-bathing). Sunsets and moonrises.

For me, this morning’s ticket to inner peace involved taking a few moments to admire the beautiful, fresh-fallen snow covering our garden beds.

I suspect most of us don’t realize how desperately we crave inner peace. That’s one reason the Buddhist monks who recently walked 2,300 miles drew literally millions of followers, admirers, and fellow walkers. Continue Reading →

Three things you can do

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Instead of my usual blog, I’ve got three asks for you:

ONE. Listen to at least one segment of this week’s program. Share it on social media or in an email message to friends. Spread the word. With so-called “Legacy Media” in free-fall and increasingly dominated by large corporate interests, local and independent alternatives are more important than ever. Ours is one of them. Please support it.

TWO. Support local businesses owned and operated by people in your community. I can’t emphasize this enough. The dominance of national chains is a plague on our economy, entrepreneurship, and the land itself.

If you live in the greater Des Moines area, patronize the small, locally-owned businesses that help make this platform possible Continue Reading →

The congresswoman who could save the Democratic Party

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What do blinding headlights have to do with saving the Democratic Party? A lot, if you heard Congresswoman Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-WA) speak about it during a committee meeting last year. Maybe you’ve noticed that headlights have become significantly brighter, creating a hazard for oncoming drivers.

Gluesenkamp Perez refers to the problem as a “plague in this country of headlight brightness.”

I love the drama in that statement. Sure, when you consider the pressing, even existential, threats we face, headlights seem trivial.

But Gluesenkamp Perez’s point is that there’s a pervasive sense among Americans that our overall quality of life is declining and government doesn’t give a flying darn. Continue Reading →

I get thrown out of a Trump rally

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When I learned that Trump was planning a rally in Clive this week, I felt I had to attend and make a statement. Kathy was unable to join me, as she’s recovering from foot surgery. But she designed a shirt for me that was bold, concise, and called out what might prove to be Trump’s most damaging liability: his near constant stream of lies.

My friend Helen agreed to join me and take photos. We arrived at the venue early and nabbed excellent seats.

The event dragged on and on (Trump was 90 minutes late), with the music so loud I had to put in earplugs — and a hat pulled down over my ears for added protection.

The hat doubled as my half-hearted, humorous effort to fit in as Helen and I entered the venue. And while I hope the Patriots win the Super Bowl, it should go without saying that I’m absolutely not serious about a Trump-Brady ticket in 2028. Continue Reading →

Violent protest is counterproductive

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This week, many of us (not President Trump, it seems) celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The holiday is promoted as a day of public service. Planting trees, picking up litter, tutoring kids, volunteering at senior centers, serving meals at homeless shelters, that sort of thing.

All important. But if we ignore the reality that King’s holiday is, first and foremost, about his role in the 1960s struggle for racial justice and equality, we’ve missed the main point.

And the Civil Rights movement was emphatically nonviolent. Black people and their White allies got clubbed and arrested for peacefully protesting. Continue Reading →