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29Feb 2016 by Lynda Waddington

Study shows wisdom of Cedar Rapids’ Hy-Vee incentive

Gazette Column

A decision by Cedar Rapids city leaders to use taxpayer dollars to keep a Hy-Vee neighborhood grocery store drew significant ire, but a new sociology study proves the funds were well spent. There are several similarities between Topeka, Kansas — the focus of the study — and Cedar Rapids. Census figures for 2013 show the cities with a population of roughly 128,000, with a population density of about 2,000 people per square mile. Both cities are predominantly white, although Topeka is more quickly moving toward diversity. Median income levels are similar, as is the percentage of residents living at or below the poverty line. Given the similar demographics and geographic proximity, it shouldn’t be surprising the communities are also wrestling with similar cultural issues. Both are, for instance, searching for…

01Feb 2016 by Lynda Waddington

Wendell Willkie is a 2016 cautionary tale

Gazette Column

This is what happened in 1940 when Republicans opted for a political outsider National pundits pondering what a Donald Trump nomination means for the Republican Party and the nation have been reading the tea leaves. They’d be better off reading history books. This isn’t the first time party activists have engaged in friendly fire or looked beyond political loyalists for a savior. Seventy-five years ago Repubicans decided a businessman was their best presidential bet. Like Trump, Wendell Willkie, the GOP’s 1940 presidential nominee, once considered himself more left than right. Less than a year before he was named the GOP nominee, Willkie was registered as a Democrat. And he too bucked the establishment. Willkie didn’t run for the nomination, instead taking a stand at the party’s national convention in Philadelphia.…

18Jan 2016 by Lynda Waddington

Small, determined group can make a difference

Gazette Column

Sometimes, when confronted with big challenges, people freeze. But not always. Brandon Carleton is a resident of the Quad Cities who, last May, attended a conference in California and heard from an organizer of Laundry Love. The project began on the West Coast when a homeless man — Eric, who went by the nickname of T-Bone — was asked what would make a difference in his life. “If I had clean clothes,” Eric responded, “I think people would treat me like a human being.” That was 12 years ago and, in the wake of that conversation, Laundry Love was born. At its most basic level, it provides free laundry services to those in need, but the benefits hardly stop there. When Carleton, who also runs a small church out of…

16Nov 2015 by Lynda Waddington

Missouri professor no longer deserves position

Gazette Column

Communication department professor should uphold First Amendment University of Missouri Assistant Professor of Communication Melissa Click must be fired. If you’ve watched the video, then you are hereby excused from reading this rest of the column. If not, let me set the stage for you. The video, shot by MU junior Mark Schierbecker, begins by focusing on MU senior Tim Tai, who is holding a camera and being surrounded by a crowd of people who want him, and all other journalists, to leave Carnahan Quad where a temporary encampment was set up by student activists. Students, who had been actively and peacefully protesting the university’s lack of response to ongoing incidents of discrimination and racism, were celebrating the resignation of university system president Tim Wolfe and the decision by MU…

05Jul 2015 by Lynda Waddington

Let’s not forget the ladies

Gazette Column

Thanks to Schoolhouse Rock, I can no longer read the preamble to the Constitution. I must sing it. “We the People … in order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” As a child, I was quite addicted to the various Schoolhouse Rock videos that aired on Saturday morning television. In fact, “Conjunction Junction” and “Three Is a Magic Number” can be found in my playlists. Still, it wasn’t until they were repackaged in the late 1990s that I realized some of their more subtle lessons. In the “Preamble” video there is a line…

19Apr 2015 by Lynda Waddington

And how will they know us?

Gazette Column

This column was filed late. You see, I’d planned to begin it with a prayer for the harm of another person. Seriously. I considered being a copycat and praying for physical harm of a person. After writing the prayer and making sure readers knew it was offered from a place of love, I planned to include some little jokes to soften it. After all, everyone appreciates light reading on a Saturday. But as I sat down and placed fingertips to keyboard, the prayer wouldn’t come. I couldn’t bring myself expend the energy necessary to actively pray for someone’s harm. I spent some time thinking about that, about why I couldn’t do what I planned. Obviously, like most humans, I’m capable of anger, and there have been moments I’ve wanted to…

17Mar 2015 by Lynda Waddington

Max Villatoro closer to deportation

Gazette Column

An Iowa City pastor swept up in a federal initiative to arrest and expel migrant criminals from the country has been relocated to a detention facility in Louisiana, and is likely to be placed on plane later today and sent back to his birth country of Honduras. Max Villatoro, 41, was arrested by Immigration and Custom Enforcement agents on March 3. He and his wife, Gloria, founded Iglesia Torre Fuerte (First Mennonite Church) in Iowa City about five years ago. But, after entering the country illegally in 1995, the man known locally as Pastor Max had two skirmishes with the law — a drunk driving charge and aggravated misdemeanor related to the use of false documents to obtain a driver’s license in 1999. Villatoro completed probation and paid fines related…

09Feb 2015 by Lynda Waddington

There’s still time to be brave

Gazette Column

Those living with mental illness asked to speak up, break stigma Sit down and have a conversation with Iowa City blogger Brook Easton and you won’t walk away with the impression that she is a person coping with health challenges. And, frankly, that’s the point. Easton, a wife and mom of two boys, is like so many others — a quarter of all Americans, according to national studies — who live with a mental illness. It’s a challenge she knows well, one that she shares with her father and a son. “So many times, to a person seeing only the outside, it is invisible,” she said. “People see someone holding down a job or going to school. What they can’t see is what is happening inside that person’s head.” And,…

25Jan 2015 by Lynda Waddington

Let’s drop the SOTU responses

Gazette Column

Let’s be honest: the state of the union response is not strong, nor is it necessary. This is not a slam against newly minted U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst. In fact, I’m just following her lead. “It wasn’t about responding to the State of the Union or President [Barack] Obama as it was responding to the concerns of Iowans and other Americans,” Ernst told reporters on a conference call the morning after she delivered the official 2015 Republican speech. I say “official” response because Ernst was chosen by Republican Congressional leadership. But there were at least four additional GOP responses to President Barack Obama’s address. Carlos Cubelo, a newly elected Republican congressman from Miami, Fla., was supposed to offer Ernst’s speech in Spanish, inserting his personal details in place of hers.…

01Oct 2014 by Lynda Waddington

There’s a lesson in Atlantic City

Gazette Column

I wandered aimlessly for hours, the quintessential tourist wanting to hold and press each experience between the pages of a mental travel memoir. I spent the better part of a day walking the historic boardwalk in Atlantic City, N.J., having been drawn there by my desire to see a Monopoly board come to life and visions of the 1964 political convention that aimed to heal a party, if not the nation, following the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Forget that reality TV Jersey shore garbage and Iowa Caucus speculation — this was where Frank Sinatra had crooned in the Copa Room of the Sands Casino and Marilyn Monroe had judged the Miss American Pageant in the Depression-era Claridge Hotel. [caption id="attachment_1654" align="alignleft" width="450"] Trump Plaza, the white structure with red…