Siouxland Public Media Interviews and Features

This is Jessi Wakefield from the Sioux City Public Library and you’re listening to Check It Out. 

Today I would like to recommend a high fantasy series, which has gained in popularity and produced many more readers in the past several months. When a prominent streaming service makes a big budget, series based off of a series of books and then spends hundreds of thousands of dollars in marketing, you had better bet that it will create interest in the original source material.  This is what has happened with Andrzej Sapkowoski’s The Witcher Saga. 

This is Kristina Yezdimer from the Sioux City Public Library and you’re listening to Check It Out.  

This is Barb Gross with the Sioux City Public Library, and you’re listening to “Check it Out.” 

Today, I’m recommending Caste: The Origins of our Discontents by Pulitzer-winning writer Isabel Wilkerson. A friend told me this book had “gobsmacked” her, giving her a profound new perspective on the racial constructs that divide America.

This week on The Exchange, we hear from US Senator Joni Earnst about the second impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump.  Ernst says she has constitutional concerns about the process.

Also, we talk with Dennis Todey. He is the director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Midwest Climate Hub in Ames about the possiblity of drought in Iowa this spring and summer.

This is Kelsey Patterson with the Sioux City Public Library and you’re listening to Check It Out.

This week on The Exchange, we talk with a Neligh, Nebraska farmer who has long opposed the Keystone Excel Pipeline about President Joe Biden's vow to stop the project. Former President Barack Obama opposed the pipeline as well, but former President Donald Trump rescinded that order in 2017.  Art Tanderup has spent years organizing and raising funds and awareness to stop the pipeline. Many environmentalists says could pollute the land, water and air.

This is Jessi Wakefield from the Sioux City Public Library and you’re listening to Check It Out. 

Today I would like to recommend the quickly paced 2019 thriller, No Exit by Taylor Adams. 

This week on The Exchange, we hear highlights from Governor Kim Reynolds' Condition of the State Address and critique that speech with Woodbury County Democratic leader Jeremy Dumkrieger and Woodbury County Republican leader Suzan Stewart. 

We also preview the 2021 Legislative session with Sioux City Democratic State Senat0r Jackie Smith and Sioux City Republican Senator Jim Carlin. 

  Gov. Kim Reynolds is taking her annual Condition of the State address from day time to supper time.  She will break with tradition, by addressing a joint convention of the 89th Iowa General Assembly at the Iowa Capitol beginning at 6 p.m. tonight, rather than the typical 10 a.m. Siouxland Public Media will broadcast the speech live and a live stream of the speech will be available at kwit.org. Also, you can hear live reactions to the speech live on Siouxland Public Media as soon as Governor Reynolds is finished her address.  

011121a 3:04 News

 State lawmakers returned to the Iowa Capitol today. Education, taxation, safety are the top priorities for 2021 Iowa legislature. And today they were Joined  inside by hundreds of anti-mask protestors.

Hundreds of people --- few, if any, of them wearing face coverings --- packed into the Iowa Capitol rotunda today and then into the Senate and House chamber galleries. The were protesting mask-wearing and other public health measures designed to slow the spread of the new coronavirus and the COVID-19 pandemic.

This is Barb Gross with the Sioux City Public Library, and you’re listening to “Check it Out.” 

Today, I’m recommending The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel, an author you may remember for Station Eleven, the post apocalyptic novel that soared to the top of critics’ lists when it came out in 2014. In her new work, Mandel goes off in an entirely new direction, but with the same haunting intensity and intricate, interlocking characters and plot lines. 

This week on The Exchange, we remember a Woodbury County teacher who died from COVID-19. Cherie Dandurand taught at Woodbury Central Schools. She was the first teacher in northwest Iowa to die from the coronavirus.

The end of the year, also means the end of almost 4 decades in law enforcement for Woodbury County Sheriff Dave Drew.  The 60-year-old retires at the end of the year after eight-years leading the Sheriff’s Office.  

He reflects on his long career and the evolution of law enforcement with Siouxland Public Media’s Sheila Brummer before incoming Sheriff Chad Sheehan takes office.

This is Kelsey Patterson with the Sioux City Public Library and you’re listening to Check It Out. Today, I’m recommending Little by Edward Carey. 

Though the title is short and sweet, this novel is anything but. Gregory Maguire, New York Times bestselling author of Wicked describes Little as, “An amazing achievement…a compulsively readable novel, so canny and weird and surfeited with the reality of human capacity and ingenuity that I am stymied for comparison. Dickens and David Lynch? Defoe meets Margaret Atwood? Judge for yourself.” 

SPM's Steve Smith had a chance to catch up the Maestro Ryan Haskins to talk about a very different SCSO concert being broadcast tomorrow (Saturday 12/19/20) on KTIV Channel 4 and on the symphony's new app.

This is Jenn Delperdang with the Sioux City Public Library and you’re listening to Check It Out.

Today, I’m recommending a book that has had a lot of ‘buzz’ this year—and has been on several of 2020’s “Best-of” Lists--including the NPR Book Concierge.  The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E Schwab is a sweeping fantasy and an intoxicating story of love and remembrance. 

This is Jessi Wakefield from the Sioux City Public Library and you’re listening to Check It Out.

What do the writings of Charles Dickens, an assassination attempt of Queen Victoria, and Charles Darwin’s On the Origins of Species all have in common? Well, besides all occurring in the mid 19th century in London, these elements are all the driving forces behind Tim Mason’s newest historical murder thriller, The Darwin Affair.

This is Kelsey Patterson with the Sioux City Public Library and you’re listening to Check It Out.

This is Jessi Wakefield from the Sioux City Public Library and you’re listening to Check It Out.

Today I would like to recommend a fantasy that has been highly lauded and awarded over the past year. Author Naomi Novik is making quite a splash in the literary world with her fairy tale retellings, and in Spinning Silver, she has managed to create a magical, somewhat spooky, and very atmospheric loose retelling of Rumpelstiltskin.

This is Jessi Wakefield from the Sioux City Public Library and you’re listening to Check It Out.

This week on The Exchange, we hear the story of Ponca tribe chief Standing Bear. Siouxland Public Media and Small Wonders' Jim Schaap has been telling Standing Bear's story in a four-part series. We will hear that series today.

This is Sarah Enright, with the Sioux City Public Library, and you’re listening to Check It Out. 

Today, I am recommending My Best Friend’s Exorcism by Grady Hendrix. If you can appreciate a heavy dose of the 80s, mixed with everlasting friendship, and pinch of creepiness, this may be the perfect book for you. Although it’s considered “horror”, it’s so much more. The nostalgic vibe reeled me in, the unique plot kept me going, and the unexpected endearing conclusion had me wishing it wasn’t over.

The Morningside Marching Mustangs performed for residents of Sunrise Retirement Community on November 6, 2020.

The group paid tribute to veterans with their song selections with temperatures in the 70s.

Shane Macklin, the Director of Bands at Morningside College shared details of their performance with Siouxland Public Media’s Sheila Brummer.  He also talked about the challenge of playing during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Playlist

Majestic Pomp Fanfare

National Anthem

America- Let Freedom Ring

Battle Cry of Freedom

This is Kelsey Patterson with the Sioux City Public Library and you’re listening to Check It Out. It’s been four long years since Emma Straub published the wildly successful Modern Lovers and I was so ready for her to write another book. Enter All Adults Here. Already a Today Show #ReadWithJenna Book Club Pick, I couldn't wait to get my hands on this book.

This is Sarah Enright, with the Sioux City Public Library, and you’re listening to Check It Out. 

Today, I am recommending Behind Closed Doors by B.A. Paris. Can you picture that perfect couple? You know, the ones that have a flawless marriage and everything in their life seems to be enviable, from their house, yard, the clothes they wear, and even their parties? In Paris’ 2016 debut thriller, she introduces us to newlyweds Jack and Grace, who are exactly such a couple, or so it seems. 

This is Jenn Delperdang with the Sioux City Public Library and you’re listening to Check It Out.

   I recently read an article in Library Journal magazine that the horror genre is trending.  The reasons were simple enough—readers often crave stories about situations and monsters worse than the world outside their doors--that comfort can be found in fiction that explores and even validates our deepest fears. Today, I’m recommending The Remaking by Clay McLeod Chapman—an eerie and disturbing ghost story that’s not quite like anything I’ve read before.  

This weekend more than a dozen artists will join forces for an art show at the Ho-Chunk Center.  Vivian Miller is part of Siouxland Artists Incorporated that is hosting the event.  She provides a preview, updates us on recent gatherings and shares the impact of COVID-19 on the local art scene with SPM’s Sheila Brummer.

On Wednesday, Octobert 7th, Siouxland Public Media held a forum with the candidates for three seats on the Woodbury County Board of Supervisors in the November 3 general election.

This is Kelsey Patterson with the Sioux City Public Library and you’re listening to Check It Out. Today, I’m recommending my newest favorite romance novel, No Judgments by Meg Cabot. 

On a single visit to Lemmon, South Dakota, you can see the whole world. Seriously.

You want joy? Once a summer they put a tent up in Lemmon—a beer tent—for a town festival. A whole lot of people celebrate with a whole lot of beer, so many people and so much beer the town sells souvenir t-shirts with “I got bent in the tent,” across your chest.

You can buy that t-shirt any time of year, too. It’ll stop traffic. Even if people don’t ask, they’ll wonder. “I got bent in the tent.”