The New Rambler: Journalism

I started out in 1999 writing reviews (books, art, theatre, restaurants, you name it) and eventually a fortnightly column for the sadly now defunct Iowa City/Cedar Rapids ICON. A long time ago they had a web site, but it is now gone. You can read part of a review of a show by Marilyn Kirsch. Eventually I hope to scan more of the old ICON material up, but don't hold your breath.

Then I spent a year writing a more or less weekly column for the Daily Iowan. For reasons that are not clear to me, the DI seems to change their permalinks (which I guess makes them not permalinks) a lot, so not all of the links below lead to the columns they say they do. You can try searching the archives for "crossett" if you can't find a column via its link. Sometimes that works, but not always.

Imagining a Little Place for the People Like Us
Rhetorical Muddle--Renaming the Right-to-Work Law
Rallying to Save Affordable Public Education
In My Own Little Corner--There Are Wasps
Burning Words, Killing Thoughts
Plywood and Grafitti: This World Uncertain Is
Buying Space to Own the Sky
Of Malcolm X and Lindh: the Tales of Two Conversions
The Moot Point of the Perennial Abortion Punching Match [Embarassing pre-librarian career] Correction: Laura Crossett's Jan. 23 column ("The moot point of the perennial abortion punching match") mistakenly stated that 144,211,000 women in the United States were not covered by health insurance in 2001 and that 139,846,000 were living below the poverty level. The actual number of women lacking health insurance that year was 18,552,000 and women living below the poverty level numbered 17,701,000. The Daily Iowan regrets the error.
The Sky Is Falling--Send Rice
Knowledge From the Hallways of High School
A Message From the Middle of Wyoming: Tolerance
In a Prozac Nation, Men as Men, Not Tools
Same Plot, New Players
Students at Sit-Ins, Homeless in the Hallways
Reprinted in Counterpoise
To Have or Not to Have $: One Writer's Conundrum
Activism and Religion, But. . .
Learning How to be Humble: Lessons from Charlotte's Web
Making It Uncomfortable: My Political Cervix
The Right to Drink Rally--the Legacy of the '60s
Back Living Life on the Mšbius Strip of History
A Coca-Column: the Truth Behind the UI's Contract
The Bus, the Library, and the Mill: a Native Reflects
Contacts Made Through "Stuff" of Activism
Virtually Electable: the Net and Grassroots Politics
And Justice for All
Openhanded Like the Wolf

Here's a piece that started out as a post to Portside and ended up, somewhat revised, in The Witness Magazine. The photo was taken my friend and comrade, Mike Evces.

'I want to organize and agitate, but I also want to pray'

In 2004-2005 I wrote for Third Coast Press, once a newspaper, now a web site. You can download .pdf files [warning--very large] of back issues.

I did an interview with Fran Hawthorne about her bookInside the FDA that sadly never made it into the printed paper./p>

I used to contribute occasionally to Chicago Indymedia, when I lived in Chicago. Here are a couple of pieces--sorry about the formatting glitches, which appeared around the time of a server failure in late 2004.

by Laura Crossett, 1998-2008