To the Editor:
In the July 16, 2025 issue of the Holstein Advance, the administration of the town of Holstein, Iowa, had a legal notice about a Variance of Zoning Hearing for the address of 1500 S. Kiel Street.
August will be an interesting month in the sky. For the first time in a long time, the evening sky will be almost devoid of planets. Mars will be a dying ember that will soon be lost in the twilight glow, and Saturn will not come into view until the late evening. With the absence of planets, it is a good time to visit the bright stars of summer. To make sure that we get our bearings, we will start with the Big Dipper. During August, it will hang diagonally in the northwestern sky.
On Wednesday, July 23, I spoke at a House Agriculture Committee hearing to discuss the harmful impacts of California’s Proposition 12, or Prop 12, on Iowa hog farmers and our rural communities. Enacted in 2018, this notorious state measure is incredibly detrimental to producers in Iowa and nationwide. Since I was elected to Congress, I have been fighting back against this dangerous regulation of our agricultural economy and way of life.
My phone buzzed. It was Cindy. “What’s wrong?” she wanted to know.
I was in the emergency room at Great River Medical Center in West Burlington. I had just been told I had bilateral pulmonary embolisms, i.e., blood clots in both lungs, lots of them. The physician assistant who told me let me hold his hand. It was comforting. “You’ll be on blood thinner the rest of your life,” he said.
