Community Engagement: A Timeline

Friday, Aug. 17: An Iowa City resident drives his car into tents housing people who are homeless outside of Shelter House in Iowa City. Five people are injured.

Saturday, Aug. 16, 2:02 a.m.: The driver is booked into the Johnson County jail.

Monday, Aug. 18, 5:05 p.m.: Shelter House issues a public statement about the incident.

Wednesday, Aug. 20, 6:35 p.m: KCRG, the market’s leading TV news, reports the driver is facing 14 charges and an ICE detainer

Wednesday, Aug. 20, 7:15 p.m.: KCRG posts a social media version of the story onto Facebook, with the copy “A 29-year-old male resident of the Hilltop Mobile Home Park is in jail facing 14 charges and under an ICE detainer after police say he intentionally drove into a group of five homeless people on Friday.” Typically toxic social media comments follow.

Wednesday, Aug. 20, 7:27 p.m.: A Facebook user under the name Andrew Patterson comments: “Oh man illegal vs homeless… whose side do we take?”

Sometime in the following 24 hours: Cade Burma of the Iowa City Police Department laugh reacts to the Patterson comment.

Not All Beds Are Equal, I Guess

Shelter House:

Put another way, of the 70 beds at Emergency Shelter, only 25 shelter beds are funded. In all of Johnson County, Iowa—12 cities and the entire rural area—public dollars pay for only 25 beds.

Twenty-five shelter beds in a community where even households who earn at or above the median income struggle to find housing they can afford.

Number of beds in the proposal for a new $100,000,000 to $110,000,000 Johnson County jail, 100 percent publicly funded: 140.

Loose Lips Sink Transgender Kids

A hed in The Des Moines Register:

Urbandale school board refuses to remove gender identity protection despite new Iowa law

This is sloppy and dangerous. 

There is no law requiring Iowa’s cities, counties or school districts to remove gender identity protections in the same way the State of Iowa did when we became the first state in the nation to remove civil rights protections from a previously protected class. Doing so is pre-compliance. 

It’s dangerous because plenty of entities were confused and removed protections anyway before restoring them, including the Iowa City Community School District, the City of Dubuque and the Dubuque School District, and this framing only reinforces this misconception.

The University of Iowa Cares Deeply About Writing Unless It Costs Money

Emma McClatchey for The Little Village:

Months after the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program was forced to make drastic cuts following the loss of its federal funding, two other writing programs on the UI campus are coming to an end. The UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS) announced Monday the Iowa Summer Writing Festival and the Iowa Youth Writing Project will not continue in 2026.

The two announcements were brief. In both cases, “ongoing funding challenges” were blamed for the “difficult decision” to end the programs.

University of Iowa Executive Vice President and Provost Kevin Kregel announcing a new Office of Writing and Communication, less than three weeks ago:

Writing and communication are at the core of what we do and who we are. This new office reflects our commitment to investing in excellence, fostering collaboration, and advancing innovative programming that prepares our students for success.

Every Advice Column Ever

Q: I’ve had it up to here with my [boss / partner / neighbor / child / sibling / parent / friend / coworker / in-law] and would do anything to make this better!

A: You didn’t say you’ve actually talked to them — maybe try that?

Two Quotes on Arguments

“Never argue with a man whose job depends on not being convinced.”

— H. L. Mencken

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!”

— Upton Sinclair

You, Too, Can Own a Nick Bergus Original

For the longest time, my dream was to move to a cabin in the woods that was big enough for a comfortable bed, a simple kitchen, a reasonable bathroom and a studio for letterpress printing.

Not that I knew how to set type or print with a letterpress, but the hands-on monotony was appealing.

The fantasy also presupposed the cabin had clean running water, electricity, internet and was accessible all year round.

Flash forward, and I discover Public Space One and the Iowa City Press Co-op offer workshops, including letterpress and found a joy of making art.

And now you can buy some of my prints on Etsy. All proceeds will go to Iowa City Mutual Aid.

It’s not a hermit cabin in the woods, but it’ll do.

Shop on Etsy

Reminder for Pride

If you’re making a sign or chalking on the sidewalk or spray painting 500 South Clinton Street to remind the community that the elected Johnson County Attorney chose to prosecute seven trans people for protesting an anti-trans speaker and shouldn’t be at pride, a quick reminder:

It’s Rachel Zimmermann Smith with two Ns and no hyphen.

Zuri

The dog we’d come to adopt was already spoken for, but we got a better one.

Zuri was athletic: a jumper of fences, a chaser of squirrels, and an eater of rabbits. Once she chased a herd of deer through Iowa City’s alphabet streets, collapsing in ecstatic exhaustion when she got home.

She escaped from the yard, from the house, and, once, her latched kennel. She loved running and diving into the snow after voles and cricking her neck at impossible angles to rest her head against chair legs and wall edges. 

One time she ate rat poison at an Airbnb. Another time she surreptitiously ate a large gingerbread house in the middle of the night until she was surprised by a sleepy, suspicious human. Once she ate her own bed. And in her final days, she ate ice cream, a peanut butter and banana sandwich, a bacon cheeseburger, and cake. 

When she first moved in, Zuri wasn’t supposed to get on the brand-new dog-fur-free couches, but we let her curl up there after a single day. 

Zuri loved walks and could hike for miles. She loved car rides. She hated thunderstorms, fireworks, and going through the car wash. 

She was a looker. Kids loved her one brown eye and one clear blue eye. She also shed a lot of fur. 

When she started to limp, we guessed she was getting old and had maybe pulled a muscle. When it didn’t go away, the vet thought maybe it was arthritis. A scan revealed it was cancer and inoperable. 

As the cancer progressed, she didn’t let it faze her. She was almost as good on three legs as four, and, even as she continued to atrophy through the late spring, Zuri caught a rabbit in the backyard.

All good things come to an end, and Zuri was a good dog.