The Elbert Files

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The Elbert Files: Water

Water is one of those commodities, like dirt, that we Iowans have always had, but until relatively recently, we rarely questioned.

We treat it like air and expect every tap to provide clean water, in …

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The Elbert Files: Starving education

Iowa State University is sending mixed messages.

At a time when ISU’s major-sport athletic teams have shown they can play at the highest levels, its academics appear to be sinking. 

The contrast was obvious in …

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The Elbert Files: A Des Moines treasure

Mariann Clark accomplished a lot in her 93 years as a nurse, executive, mentor, mother, wife and shoe model.  

Four years ago when she retired from Iowa Methodist Medical Center, “it took about five people …

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The Elbert Files: Saving daylight

I thought all the talk about year-round daylight saving time was much ado about nothing, until I met my friend K.C. just off the sidewalk near Terrace Hill on Grand Avenue.

I say off the …

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The Elbert Files: What we don’t know

“We don’t know what we don’t know.” 

That’s the crux of a recent essay by Jonathan Wilson in the Des Moines Register.  

Wilson, a longtime Des Moines lawyer and former school board member, said the …

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The Elbert Files: Faulty towers

The University of Iowa’s Stead Family Children’s Hospital in Iowa City and the Neal Smith Federal Building in Des Moines are faulty towers.

Both were erected with fanfare that dissipated into disappointment as flaws were …

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The Elbert Files: Chasing rainbows

“They’re chasing rainbows,” my friend K.C. said when our paths crossed near Terrace Hill on an unseasonably cold day.

I was rubbing my hands together to stay warm and the idea of chasing rainbows sounded …

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The Elbert Files: Cornography and ethanol

A recent blog by University of Iowa hydrologist Christopher S. Jones is titled: “Iowa is addicted to Cornography.”


The blog appeared days before the National Academy of Sciences published a new study that shows ethanol …

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The Elbert Files: Six amazing buildings

The Drake Observatory, located between the 17th and 18th holes on Waveland Golf Course, is perhaps the most unusual of six local buildings featured in three-minute videos produced by the Iowa Architectural Foundation. 

The videos …

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The Elbert Files: RAGBRAI and soccer

Midwinter musings about this year’s RAGBRAI route and Kyle Krause’s soccer stadium:

 

I’ve never ridden the Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa, but for many years retired Register writer Larry Fruhling and I …