Randy Evans's blog

The word for today is optics — but not the kind where your eye doctor is an expert.

Instead of eyeglasses, I am thinking about the kind of optics that result when the perception of some person’s or some institution’s values are contradicted by the reality of the actions they take.

Here's an example. This involves poor optics.

Librarians across Iowa have been put on the defensive by parents and grandparents who criticize some of the thousands of books that fill a community library or school library. This criticism has been especially sharp toward books intended for teenage readers that contain content with homosexual or transsexual themes or that include descriptions of sexual encounters that some people believe are too explicit for these readers.

Librarians have stepped forward to explain that it is not proper for people to force the removal of challenged books, thereby taking away other people’s ability to choose what they want to read or what they want their children to read. Library administrators have informed parents how they can limit the books their children have access to in the library or in the classroom.

Veterans Day is around the corner. For John and Bob, the day will be for remembering the men and women who serve in the United States military — and for two service members, in particular.

For John, it will be his son, Robert, a Marine lieutenant who will forever be 29 years old. For Bob, it will be his father, Karl, forever the face on treasured family photographs of a handsome 26-year-old Army captain.

John and Bob are patriots through and through. They are not big-government fanatics. They have something else in common, too. They both believe the American people should never forget the ultimate sacrifice paid by members of the U.S. military, and that is a reason they are disappointed with a decision made by the government they love.

They believe the federal government has made a terrible, insensitive mistake by walking away from a pledge to the families of our war dead after World War II — to make it convenient for Gold Star families to remember their 234,000 loved ones who are interred or commemorated in 26 military cemeteries and memorials in more than a dozen foreign countries.

The rationale behind Iowa’s professional licensing laws is simple:

People in certain professions and skilled occupations are required to hold state licenses to work in Iowa. This is to ensure they meet the minimum standard of training and skill necessary to serve consumers safely and effectively.

But a state government policy change leads me to wonder whether our state officials have lost sight of their obligation to act in the best interests of the public. If officials follow through with the new policy in the coming months, then members of the Legislature should step in next session and correct this ill-conceived policy change —and concerned citizens should encourage their lawmakers stick up for the public.

This policy change was disclosed last week by Iowa Capital Dispatch, an independent, nonprofit news site, and its dogged investigative reporter Clark Kauffman. The change, in effect, will keep the public in the dark about the factual circumstances that lead Iowa licensing boards to discipline license holders for violating professional and ethical standards.

For many years, an Iowa State University political science professor and I met several times a year for coffee and conversation.

During our coffee klatches, I probed my friend’s thinking on world affairs, on government issues, and on politics in Iowa and across the United States. I suspect he tried to use these get-togethers to give me a something of a graduate-level seminar in American government, absent any lectures.

Educators these days are frequently accused of trying to indoctrinate their students with a particular point of view. But what I came to realize during those sessions at the Stomping Grounds coffee shop in Ames was fundamental to excellence in teaching: The professor did not tell me what to think. He tried to get me to think more clearly and to analyze with more sophistication and depth. He helped me spot weaknesses in my own opinions and develop a better understanding of factors that may lead other people to see things differently than I did.

Back where I came from, you do not expect to have a bomb-sniffing dog circle your car when you pull into the parking lot for Sunday church services.

But that is what occurred. After the dog’s sensitive nose checked our car, a man on the front step gave us a quick once-over with his hand-held metal detector. Then an usher directed my wife, our youngest daughter and me into a pew in the second row of the sanctuary of the simple brick building with a thin spire.

Of course, until that day in April 2011 I had never been to church when a former president of the United States was teaching the Sunday School lesson. It is easy to become flummoxed — even for an editor who has conversed with presidents and quizzed many wanna-be’s — when Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter slide into the pew beside you.

Many decades ago, Mrs. Gentry and Mr. Halferty put up with an inquisitive kid’s classroom questions about American democracy and the workings of government.

I did not imagine back then how the meaning of some words could take on such importance in government. Take, for example, a much-talked-about word in Iowa last week, vexatious. It means abrasive, aggravating, annoying, irritating or nettlesome.

Whether you vote for Democrats, Republicans or Whigs, everyone should have access to government records that are not confidential. That is a way for you to understand what your state and local government is doing.

Iowa’s open records law says succinctly: “Every person shall have the right to examine and copy a public record and to publish or otherwise disseminate a public record or the information contained in a public record.”

Deanna Mahoney was like countless Iowa women through the years. She nurtured three children. She worked outside the home to supplement the family income. She loved bowling and mushroom hunting.

That is how she lived.

How she died tells us so much about the way some business owners, and too many government leaders in Iowa, have pushed aside their legal, moral and humanitarian obligations, especially to vulnerable Iowans.

The death of the 83-year-old Newton woman was tragic. Two photographs made that so horribly clear.

In spite of the statements and pledges about the sanctity of every human life, Mahoney’s death illustrates that too many members of the Iowa Legislature, and our governor, too, show too little concern for the sanctity of the lives of people in Iowa’s nursing homes.

Silly me. I thought I had been paying attention to the issues about which Iowans feel strongly.

You know, things like inflation, taxes, government spending, the war in Ukraine, a new farm bill, water quality, immigration, the federal debt. Those sorts of issues.

But I have spaced off a vital issue in the minds of some in Congress — an issue that apparently has been flying under the radar of Iowans: That issue is aliens from another world.

One of the photographs of my father that I clearly remember appeared on the pages of the Bloomfield Democrat about 60 years ago.

Pop was standing chest-deep in a hole that had been hastily dug in the street on the Bloomfield city square. His face was grim. There was urgent work to be done, because much of Bloomfield was without water.

An underground main had broken a block from the city’s water tower. Water was gushing into the street and flooding basements of nearby businesses.

There, in that hole with water pooled at his ankles, Pop shoveled muck and mud to expose the leaking pipe so it could be repaired.

In contrast with my dad, I had a soft working life. I spent much of my career in an air-conditioned office. The old photo shows Pop was not so lucky. He was a working stiff for the City of Bloomfield water department, wielding a shovel or hanging onto a jackhammer, before later moving up to operate the city’s water treatment plant.

His work days ranged from freezing, to sweltering, to all manner of conditions in between. He usually could take time for a few gulps of water from a jug during scorchers or for some hot coffee from a Thermos when he needed to thaw out.

But in Texas, not all working stiffs are not as fortunate as Pop was. We have the Texas Legislature and Gov. Greg Abbott to thank for that.

My late friend Paul was a fine Des Moines teacher. I wish the Evans girls had him for history and government.

Judging from his ability to entertain me with descriptions of his interactions with students, parents and administrators, I am confident he could make the Peloponnesian War come alive for his history students and hold their attention.

If I live to be 100, I will never forget him relating anecdotes from parent-teacher conferences. He described one student sitting next to Mom, listening as Paul expressed concern about the kid’s sluggishness many mornings.