My Secret Public Journal

We came to Missouri Western State University for football—but stayed for everything else. It was the Kansas City Chi...

The Nodaway County Courthouse rises with a kind of plain dignity from the square in Maryville, Missouri—a courthouse that doesn’...

We arrived in Maryville after sunset, the kind of soft Midwestern twilight that turns brick into shadow and lamplight into invit...

The Roseman Covered Bridge doesn’t need to be famous to be beautiful—but it is. Quietly. Accidentally. Almost reluctantly. It’s ...

John Wayne was born in Winterset, Iowa on May 26, 1907—not yet “The Duke,” not yet an icon, just Marion Robert Morrison, the son...

Completed in 1876, the Madison County Courthouse rises in limestone and brick, its four symmetrical wings leading to a central t...

The Iowa Cubs are a reminder that baseball’s soul still lives below the surface—below the glitz of the big leagues, below the ES...

Principal Park sits at the confluence of two rivers—the Des Moines and the Raccoon—as if it were always meant to be there, where...

She’s smaller than you expect—tucked into a quiet green just across from the Iowa State Capitol, dwarfed by the dome behind her ...