/tags/interview/ Recent content in interview on Rootstalk Hugo -- gohugo.io en-us Fri, 11 Dec 2020 22:31:00 +0000 /past-issues/volume-v-issue-1/jumping-into-the-void/ Fri, 11 Dec 2020 22:31:00 +0000 /past-issues/volume-v-issue-1/jumping-into-the-void/ Sarah Kargol was born in Colorado and raised in eastern Iowa. She received her bachelor’s degree in studio art from the University of Northern Iowa in 2000, and is an award-winning mixed media artist with artwork in permanent collections throughout the Midwest and Southeast United States and Canada. Speaking about her process, she says: “In developing my own voice through art, my love for ephemera and all things dusty, forgotten, vintage, and quirky has grown. /past-issues/volume-v-issue-2/boyce/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 /past-issues/volume-v-issue-2/boyce/ Bryan Boyce was a middle schooler when he spent a typical summer with his brother and his friends in a cabin in Minnesota. They would spend whole days swimming out in the lake, waging squirt gun wars against each other, and walking downtown to buy Little Debbie snacks. However, this time of childhood bliss was interrupted one day when a girl quietly pulled Boyce aside and conspiratorially whispered, “Hey, do you realize we are the only normal people here? /past-issues/volume-iii-issue-2/abdulkarim/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 /past-issues/volume-iii-issue-2/abdulkarim/ TIBBETTS: To you, what does it mean to be a Syrian-American living in the Midwest? What is a defining aspect of that identity. ABDULKARIM: I guess I have two answers to that question. My instinctive answer is that it’s just like asking any person what it’s like growing up in the Midwest, but the reality is that it’s like, yeah, I wear two pairs of socks in January, I have a really bad Minnesotan accent, and sometimes I get death glares depending on what the headlines have been like recently. /past-issues/volume-iv-issue-1/dunham/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 /past-issues/volume-iv-issue-1/dunham/ The Monsanto Corporation, a multinational agrochemical and agricultural biotechnology corporation headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri, is a looming presence on the American industrial landscape. Since its founding as a pharmaceutical firm in 1901, Monsanto has had a hand in many advances which have literally shaped the modern world. Among the products Monsanto or its subsidiaries have developed or produced are the artificial sweetener saccharin, vanillin, aspirin (and its raw ingredient salicylic acid) and such basic industrial chemicals such as sulfuric acid and PCBs. /past-issues/volume-iii-issue-2/gaunt/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 /past-issues/volume-iii-issue-2/gaunt/ Many of our readers, on learning that someone is a farmer, might automatically assume that person is conservative. Chris Gaunt turns this notion on its head. She is both an Iowa farmer and a dedicated activist for social justice. For this issue of Rootstalk, editor Tapiwa Zvidzwa interviewed her to trace the arc of her career as an activist. Rootstalk: How did you initially became an activist? Gaunt: I didn’t do much of anything until after 9/11/01. /past-issues/volume-v-issue-2/brandt/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 /past-issues/volume-v-issue-2/brandt/ Since the middle of the 19th century, farm families in the Midwest have aspired to improve their situation through education. Our current school system, and frankly our society as a whole, is based on the premise that if you work hard enough you can achieve what you set your mind to. This belief may provide people with hope—it suggests individuals control their destiny—but embedded in the rhetoric is the subtext that failure to succeed must mean personal inadequacy. /past-issues/volume-iii-issue-2/schwartz/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 /past-issues/volume-iii-issue-2/schwartz/ The prairie region is a hub for mushroom lovers. As the weather starts to warm up, thousands of Iowans gather their wicker baskets and walking sticks and hit their favorite parks and wooded areas. The Midwest is a goldmine for popular edibles like morels, oysters, and boletes, yet this subculture of mushroom enthusiasts is still underground and unfamiliar to most of the public. For some, mushrooms are an acquired taste and the idea of eating anything that was found on a tree stump is gag-inducing. /past-issues/volume-v-issue-2/podcast/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 /past-issues/volume-v-issue-2/podcast/ In the sixth RootsTalk! Podcast, audio producer Maya Dru interviews Heather Swan, author of Where Honeybees Thrive: Stories from the Field concerning her love for pollinators. Her nonfiction has appeared in places like Aeon, ISLE, Belt Magazine, Minding Nature, About Place and Resilience Magazine. Her chapbook The Edge of Damage was published by Parallel Press. She teaches writing and environmental literature at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. To hear an audio recording of this issue’s podcast use the link at the bottom of the web page to download the fully interactive PDF of Episode 6 of RootsTalk! /past-issues/volume-iii-issue-2/stowe/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 /past-issues/volume-iii-issue-2/stowe/ In this inaugural podcast, Rootstalk audio producer Noah Herbin interviews Bill Stowe, the CEO of Des Moines Water Works (DMWW) and a Grinnell alumnus, class of 1981. Stowe gave a talk at Drake Community Library in Grinnell last March, in which he discussed the need to bring about cleaner water in Iowa, and outlined DMWW’s ongoing court case. Under Stowe’s leadership, the DMWW filed suit against three county boards of supervisors in north-central Iowa for failing to adequately regulate the use of farm chemicals, particularly nitrates, resulting in enormous expense to DMWW to remove the nitrates from the city’s drinking water. /past-issues/volume-iv-issue-1/mutel/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 /past-issues/volume-iv-issue-1/mutel/ For the Fall 2017 podcast, Rootstalk editors Marie Kolaric and Sonia Chulaki, assisted by audio producer Noah Herbin, interviewed Cornelia Mutel, a Senior Science Writer at the University of Iowa’s Iowa Institute of Hydraulic Research—Hydroscience and Engineering. Mutel has written and lectured extensively on Midwestern natural history and environmental issues. Her books include The Emerald Horizon: The History of Nature in Iowa, Fragile Giants: A Natural History of the Loess Hills, and The Tallgrass Restoration Handbook for Prairies, Savannas, and Woodlands. /past-issues/volume-v-issue-2/stowe/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 /past-issues/volume-v-issue-2/stowe/ Rootstalk: I read the court ruling on Des Moines Water Works versus the counties [DWWW brought suit against three agricultural counties upstream from Des Moines, in which the agency held that the counties should be considered to be point-source polluters, and should pay damages for the negative effects their practices had on Iowans living downstream]. I was wondering what you thought of the ruling, and if you were to respond to it, what you would say. /past-issues/volume-v-issue-2/hanson/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 /past-issues/volume-v-issue-2/hanson/ When I think of music, I think of place. When I hear a song I associate with my past, I see the scenery of that past come alive again. When I think of Seth Hanson’s music, I think of dormitory basements. I’ve seen lots of musicians play in basements. Most of them got drunk and yelled. Seth was different; his show was both subdued and exciting, each song featuring new guest vocalists and musicians who helped make an enlivening performance of a bunch of melancholy, introspective songs. /past-issues/volume-vii-issue-2/taylor/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 /past-issues/volume-vii-issue-2/taylor/ The North American prairie extends from southern Canada all the way down into Central Texas. Texas’s prairie includes the Hill Country, which is a very dry shortgrass prairie and, a little farther to the east, the Blackland Prairie, a very rich, dark-soiled, temperate shrubland. The city of San Marcos sits on, and I-35 runs along, the fault line that divides those two types of prairie. Craig Taylor, our Associate Editor Zeke Taylor’s uncle, has lived outside of San Marcos and watched the area change for nearly 30 years. /past-issues/volume-v-issue-2/jain/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 /past-issues/volume-v-issue-2/jain/ *See glossary at the article’s end When my Dada, my paternal grandfather, moved to Iowa City in 1967, there were approximately one hundred Indian students at the University of Iowa, and only five Indian families in Iowa City. My Dada was one of those students, and my family one of those families. Iowa in 1967 was not equipped to, nor was it conscious of, maintaining space for Indian food, lifestyles, and culture.