The Elbert Files

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 …

“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 …

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 …

“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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

The downy woodpecker outside our family room performs an elfin-like dance every morning before he eats. He lands on the redbud tree about 8 to 12 inches above a suet feeder and hops backwards until …

When I read about the recent renovation of Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalarie art museum, it brought to mind three downtown Des Moines buildings – each is an architectural jewel, and all can be seen during a …

Tax cuts don’t always turn out the way we’re led to believe.

A friend who makes a comfortable income noted recently that the last big Iowa tax cut – the one that does away …