Category: News

“Basic ethical principle that is equally good for everyone” is focus of two-parter

Christine Hawes
doingthework

Please partake of the information in this two-part attempt to close out The Real MainStream‘s commentary and analysis on the topics covered below! It’s been a tough conversation, but one focused (as the “Careless Whispers” blog states) on “a basic ethical principle that is equally good for everyone, including you.” Links provided: “Iowa City, Put Down Those Pitchforks:” Original Jan. 9 editorial Also, for broader context about The Real MainStream, here are links to other recent articles about other topics: • “Kindness Queers,” “queerantine kits” provide relief to LGBTQIA youth…

Read More

“Kindness Queers,” “queerantine kits” brighten LGBTQIA youths’ lives during pandemic

Christine Hawes
kindness queers

CHAMPAIGN, ILL. — When Anna Peters and her business partner at the Art Coop began to think about how the pandemic might affect LGBTQIA children, they became worried. And then, inspired. Peters and co-owner Hilary Pope, along with Pope’s art teacher partner, realized they were already equipped to help with the arts resources all around them in the Coop, founded in 1971. The result, quickly, was 250 “queerantine kits” filled with art supplies out the door to “Kindness Queers,” who are LGBTQIA youngsters who may not have access to arts…

Read More

Social justice pioneer Kesho Scott resumes outreach to small Iowa communities

Christine Hawes
kesho scott cover

CEDAR RAPIDS — It’s been eight months since George Floyd’s death triggered nationwide historic protests against racial injustice and police brutality. But the work of memorializing him, and so many other people victimized by inappropriate policing, isn’t over, says Kesho Scott. Tonight at 7 p.m., from Cedar Rapids, Scott will lead an online memorial of Floyd, resuming a series she began this summer at the invitation of seven small Iowa towns.  The retired Grinnell College professor has worked for decades on behalf of social justice, including on the streets of…

Read More

TRM Blog: Challenging lessons for Iowa City, activists after rumor-post controversy

Christine Hawes
balloons 3696902 1920

An editorial we ran last week turned out to be a grand social experiment. The results, outlined below, aren’t a good look for progressives, liberals and the far left. But before we get to that: for anyone who started, fanned, flamed, continued or belatedly joined the witch hunt against Kelly Stucker and The Konnexion, start planning your “I was wrong” party now. Seriously, make it a party. A light-hearted affair. Enjoy the liberation of contrition. Let yourself laugh about it. Because after all, when you look back, it IS laughable…

Read More

Konnexion controversy: Just the facts!

Christine Hawes
14678811161 3648efe9a8 c e1610674055618

UPDATED JAN. 15: See end of piece for additional Fact #7 We’ll keep this brief: Facts only! Below are six essential facts that hopefully put the Konnexion controversy to bed, once and for all. In addition, we are blanking out the names of all posters in these screen shots, to protect their privacy and to shield them from undue embarrassment. #1: Stucker shared her actual reason for being in Washington, D.C., in a text with her friend three days before the insurrection. “I’m going on my own to protest the…

Read More

Pet Wellness and patient health go hand in hand at The Project of the Quad Cities

Becca Hathaway
mary oliver max e1610271815700

QUAD CITIES — The pandemic has reminded us that having a pet can be important for one’s mental and physical health. It has also revealed that the financial burden of pet ownership is harder for many. The Project of the Quad Cities is tackling this challenge with a fundraising campaign for its Pet Wellness Program. This nonprofit organization, which advocates for health equity and provides health services to people living with HIV and sexually-transmitted diseases, aims to help more of its clients consider adopting a pet by helping with the…

Read More

EDITORIAL: Iowa City, let go of your witch hunt ways

Christine Hawes
Iowa City Witch Hunt

I love how the universe works. Just the other day, over the holidays, I took the time to watch “Richard Jewell.” It’s a movie about the over-zealous, low-self-esteem, naive 30-ish guy whose unusual personal views left him the perfect target to be accused of the 1996 Olympic Park bombing from which he actually saved scores of people. Jewell was manipulated by law enforcement and mistreated by the media; the very cops he idolized and cared for turned on him publicly as an easy scapegoat. We have a slight parallel developing…

Read More

Fresh Feel Fade team brings family feel to contemporary style

Christine Hawes
Fresh Feel Fade family

IOWA CITY – When Johanna Lopez-Velador began receiving chemotherapy in November and needed to accept the temporary loss of all her hair, she knew where to turn. Johanna and her wife Karla immediately texted Angie Corbin and Molly Quast at Fresh Feel Fade Salon and Spa, where they’d been clients for three years. Corbin handled the administrative side, finding an immediate opening somewhere in the packed schedule of her wife Molly Quast, the haircut and color guru behind Fresh Feel Fade. On the big day, Lopez-Velador said, Quast gently walked…

Read More

Poignant live performance from ’90s dream pop Fishmans re-emerges

Christine Hawes
new fishmans cover

In spite of such a difficult COVID-consumed year for all of us, the universe gave us unexpected gifts along the way. Some are bright and shiny; some are dark and stormy. Some are both. One of those dual-sided gifts for me has been discovering a 42-minute concert film that a commenter on RateYourMusic calls a “post-rock/dream pop/neo-psychedelia epic…. absolutely heavenly.” Known officially as “98.12.28 Otokotachi no Wakare” (“A Men’s Farewell”), this concert is, as video game developer Daulton Nelson writes,  “a mastery in progressive pop and psychedelic pop” and “an…

Read More

“POC and Q+T-centered:” new Methodist denomination takes intersectional to new levels

Christine Hawes
lmx cover

“No one is shunned,” announced Rev. Alex Da Silva Souto, a queer native Brazilian Methodist pastor in Connecticut, about halfway through the first-ever Zoom service for LMX. They and Althea Spencer-Miller, a Drew University professor who studied in the West Indies and Jamaica, then began listing just some of the identities beyond LGBTQ+ that LMX is intended to reach. “Subalterns, outliers, speak!” Spencer-Miller said. “Wounded leaders,” said Da Silva Souto. “Mama bears… sis with an s, cis with a c … and if you have no idea what I’m talking…

Read More