I was reading some of the news coverage recently about the death of Senator Ted Kennedy, and one of the op-ed pieces had a rather simple statement that stuck with me – it said, “He made a difference, and that’s not something that many of us can say.” And I thought about that. What have I done with my life that I can look back on and say, “that really made a difference?” Here are a few: Raising a child. I’m a father. I’m raising a child. I’m helping to bring a little person up into the world with (hopefully) good sense and good morals and good...

Okay, I’m going to take another shot at writing about “why I live in Iowa.” Iowa doesn’t always get a lot of respect in the national media. We’re not the setting for a lot of movies and TV shows. Iowa doesn’t have a dominant image that immediately comes to mind for most Americans who aren’t already familiar with the Midwest – some of my college friends from the East Coast didn’t even know where Iowa was. (“It’s near Chicago, right?”) Iowa is a small, predominantly rural state. The largest city (Des Moines) has around 200,000 people...

Well first of all, I don’t live here because of the weather. Ah, the weather in Iowa. I saw something once that described Iowa’s weather as “four glorious seasons,” and while it’s true they can be glorious, mid-March pretty much obliterates all of the accumulated glory. The middle of March in Iowa is one of the dreariest, grayest, wettest, slushiest experiences imaginable. Winter hasn’t let up yet, there usually are still one or two heavy snowfalls left to go, and the ground is covered with filthy slush and muck, sand and salt, all the grime of the winter-long...

When people talk about someone who has recently died, they often say that this person “lost the battle.” As in, “he lost his battle with cancer.” I don’t like that phrase. By talking about death in terms of “losing a battle,” it makes it sound as if there’s something the person could have done differently, or done better, in order to stay alive longer. This is not always the case. Sometimes illness comes on quickly, relentlessly, with no time to adjust. Of course, there are always things that each of us can do to live healthy and stave off illness, but you also hear about...