Dave Leshtz is the editor of The Prairie Progressive.

The mind is its own place, and in itself

Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.

–John Milton, Paradise Lost

It was a beautiful day for a drive, with big clouds billowing in a vast Iowa sky.  My destination was the town of Toledo, where an “Iowa 99 County Bible Reading Marathon” was taking place on September 16.

Iowa’s past two governors have signed annual proclamations encouraging Iowans to read the entire Bible at the state capitol building and at all of Iowa’s county courthouses.

When I arrived at the Tama County Courthouse, a balding man in overalls and a white t-shirt stood at a podium in the center of a large concrete platform about five feet off the ground. He was reading from a bible: “God sent not his son into the world to condemn the world but that the world through him might be saved.”

But the man in overalls was not the only one reading.

Dave Leshtz is the editor of The Prairie Progressive.

In August 2023, Bleeding Heartland published my memories of the Hamburg Inn. The venerable Iowa City diner that I had patronized for more than five decades was on the verge of going out of business. Michael Lee, the absentee owner, had returned to his home in China when COVID-19 struck, leaving the restaurant in the hands of inexperienced staff who struggled to keep it alive, even after the pandemic subsided.

My memoir was a eulogy to a dying business, and to my own youth. The Hamburg Inn was a touchstone in college, a regular stop as an adult, and finally a frequent destination while I worked for political candidates and a U.S. Congressman. The diner’s travails seemed to embody the loss of local culture nationwide, as franchises and chains relentlessly took over family-owned establishments that had endured economic ups and downs for years.

Dave Leshtz is the editor of The Prairie Progressive, where this essay first appeared.

Earlier this year, State Representative Josh Turek wrote an excellent Des Moines Register guest column on why “Iowa is not a good place to be disabled.” He cited long waiting lists for in-home and community-based care, severe restrictions on Medicaid eligibility, legislative efforts to dismantle services for special education provided by our Area Education Agencies, and more. Yet this is only the tip of the iceberg.

Iowa also lags in providing community services.

From left: State Representative Dick Myers, Chip Carter, and Tim Kraft in December 2003. Photo by Dave Leshtz, published with permission.

Dave Leshtz is the editor of The Prairie Progressive.

The first sentence of Tim Kraft’s obituary in the Albuquerque newspapers last month labeled him as the manager of Jimmy Carter’s 1976 Iowa caucus campaign and, later, “a top aide to President Carter.”

Not a bad legacy for a kid from Noblesville, Indiana. It gives a hint of the extraordinary, suggesting that the deceased man was smart, talented, and deserving of recognition for helping to elevate a nationally unknown politician and farmer from the South to the presidency.

For those of us who have worked the caucuses or on campaigns, we know just how remarkable of a feat that was—and why, almost 50 years later, it’s worth the lede in his obituary. We also know just how far out of the norm it is for the person who orchestrated that win to be so humble and down to earth.

Dave Leshtz is the editor of The Prairie Progressive.

228 E. Bloomington Street in Iowa City was a battered old duplex across the street from Tweedy’s grocery store, the future site of Pagliai’s Pizza. The elderly landlady lived in one half of the duplex. I lived in the other half with a married couple and their baby, plus whoever needed a bed for the night or the week or the month. 

A block south on Linn Street was the Hamburg Inn #2. The year was 1967, and the Burg was in its pre-caucuses heyday. I ate breakfast, lunch, or dinner there almost every day.

The customers were vividly eclectic: hungover fraternity brothers, young couples who obviously had spent the night together, lawyers with nearby offices, small-time gamblers, alcoholics who had trouble lifting that first cup of coffee to their lips without spilling, poets, and house painters.

Dave Leshtz is a member of AFT Local 716 and editor of The Prairie Progressive.

As a crowd gathered for a rally by Lucita’s Diner in Cedar Rapids on a hot September 1, two people in Union Yes! t-shirts shaded their eyes while looking up at the top of the Ingredion plant across the street.

“See that dust coming off the roof?” said one. “Yeah,” said the other, “that’s what happens when you have people inside who don’t know what they’re doing.”

The “people inside” are management personnel replacing the 120 workers on strike at one of the oldest and biggest factories in this city of 140,000 on the banks of the Cedar River.