By Sabrina Völz

For those of you who missed it, the 2013 con­fer­ence theme of the Amer­i­can Stud­ies Asso­ci­a­tion of Ger­many held in Erlan­gen was “Rur­al Amer­i­ca.” As some­one from Iowa, I thought I might be the only one attend­ing. Luck­i­ly I wasn’t, and lucky for you there is so much more to say about such a hot top­ic: hot as in chili pow­der, the kind used in authen­tic Mex­i­can restau­rants pop­ping up all over Iowa, and hot as in a sun­ny, humid August after­noon. Oh, there’s no place like home.

If you don’t know where Iowa is, you are, unfor­tu­nate­ly, not alone. Many peo­ple con­fuse our state with Ida­ho. In fact, my favorite bumper stick­er reads: “Iowa—And, no, we don’t grow pota­toes.” So, yes, we Iowans do have a bit of pub­lic rela­tions to do. Besides, some of you might be plan­ning a vaca­tion or class trip to the U.S. and might want to con­sid­er a new des­ti­na­tion. Why go to Cal­i­for­nia, New York, or Flori­da like every­one else? Dare to be dif­fer­ent, and you just might have fun in the process. Iowa and fun are def­i­nite­ly not mutu­al­ly exclusive.

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By Christiane Steckenbiller

If you read beyond news sto­ries about the after­math of Fer­gu­son, the killing of two NYPD police offi­cers, and con­jec­tures about the 2016 pres­i­den­tial race, some­thing excit­ing and refresh­ing­ly dif­fer­ent has been grip­ping the Unit­ed States since Octo­ber last year: pub­lic radio. Ser­i­al, a new pod­cast pro­duced by the team behind Nation­al Pub­lic Radio’s This Amer­i­can Life, just fin­ished air­ing its first sea­son. The show sheds new light on a mys­te­ri­ous mur­der case 15 years ago in Mary­land. On serialpodcast.org, this is how the pro­duc­ers adver­tised the first episode:

It’s Bal­ti­more, 1999. Hae Min Lee, a pop­u­lar high school senior, dis­ap­pears after school one day. Six weeks lat­er, detec­tives arrest her class­mate and ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed, for her mur­der. He says he’s inno­cent – though he can’t exact­ly remem­ber what he was doing on that Jan­u­ary after­noon. But some­one can. A class­mate at Wood­lawn High School says she knows where Adnan was. The trou­ble is, she’s nowhere to be found.

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By Shana Kennedy-Salchow

Pres­i­dent Oba­ma has pro­posed to make the first two years of com­mu­ni­ty col­leges (CC) free, and Tom Han­ks thinks it’s a good idea. His New York Times op-ed takes us back to his Chabot Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege days when he joined “vet­er­ans back from Viet­nam, women of every mar­i­tal and mater­nal sta­tus return­ing to school, mid­dle-aged men want­i­ng to improve their employ­ment prospects and pay­checks.” Back then edu­ca­tion at a com­mu­ni­ty col­lege was free, but since then tuition has gone through the roof, mak­ing it out of reach for mil­lions of Americans.

Although we have yet to see the details of Pres­i­dent Obama’s pro­pos­al and are already start­ing to won­der if it has any chance with Con­gress giv­en its esti­mat­ed $60 bil­lion price tag, we should cel­e­brate the thought and the impact it could have. We should also pay spe­cial atten­tion to how this pro­pos­al or state-lev­el imi­ta­tions of it can be used to bet­ter sup­port the mil­lions of stu­dents who strug­gle aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly in com­mu­ni­ty col­leges and nev­er graduate.

After grad­u­at­ing from Chabot Col­lege, Han­ks went on to attend the State Uni­ver­si­ty in Sacra­men­to – a four-year col­lege – but did not fin­ish. Read more »

By Michael Lederer

You know what tribe I belong to? Put your hand on a table. Now hit it with a rock. If it hurts, then you and I belong to the same tribe. The Hit-my-hand-with-a-rock-and-it-hurts tribe.

Ide­al­ism 101.

Want­i­ng to believe a thing is the first and biggest step. From that to believ­ing is as easy as land­ing in the water after you’ve already jumped.

I want to believe, and there­fore I do believe, that – as politi­cians like to tell us – America’s best days are ahead. Roman­ti­cized peri­ods of our past – the Old West, the 1950s – still saw whole swaths of Amer­i­cans denied their shot at the dream. Lib­er­ty for some! But in this still-dawn of a new mil­len­ni­um we have the chance, as Oprah put it, to “turn our wounds into wisdom.”

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By Maryann Henck

Drew Hay­den Tay­lor is an award-win­ning Cana­di­an Ojib­way author of plays, short sto­ries, nov­els, and crit­i­cal essays. He has lec­tured world­wide on a vari­ety of Native issues and earned the rep­u­ta­tion of a true cul­tur­al medi­a­tor versed in con­fronting cul­tur­al mis­un­der­stand­ings, stereo­types, and prej­u­dices – prefer­ably with humor. Recent­ly, I con­duct­ed a Skype inter­view with him that I’d like to refer to it as the “chat(ter) box inter­view” since it all began with some infor­mal chat­ting and turned into a bona fide inter­view. Curi­ous? Then read on.
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By Corey Hutchins

Ear­li­er this week, a state appeals court in Michi­gan ruled that a pros­e­cu­tor’s “per­son­al dia­tribe” in court against that state’s med­ical mar­i­jua­na law spoiled a con­vic­tion in a pot-grow­ing case where the evi­dence had oth­er­wise appeared sol­id. In New York City, the may­or and police com­mis­sion­er recent­ly announced they’ll stop arrest­ing peo­ple for pot pos­ses­sion and instead mere­ly issue tick­ets. In Maine, pro-mar­i­jua­na advo­cates believe their state could become the first in the North­east where weed is legal.

When I read news like that, as a recent Col­orado trans­plant, it’s hard not to let out a smug and self-sat­is­fied yawn. I hear the voice of the first per­son I met behind the counter at a legal mar­i­jua­na shop just out­side Col­orado Springs as he scanned my ID with a con­spir­a­to­r­i­al grin: “Wel­come to the future.”

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