For The Gazette, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, April 27, 2022
Liz Martin/The Gazette
West Des Moines-based retailer Hy-Vee — citing economic challenges and “uncertain times ahead” — said it will ask “up to 500 additional employees” to move from corporate-level jobs to retail positions at its stores.
Hy-Vee in March eliminated 121 corporate-level positions, with 102 of those employees offered retail positions at its stores.
For The Gazette, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Sept. 20, 2022 — one in a series of news stories on the local strike
Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union Local 100G oicket Ingredion in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Sept. 20, 2022. (Jim Slosiarek/The Grazette)
CEDAR RAPIDS — Representatives of Ingredion and the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union Local 100G — now in its seventh week of a strike against the manufacturer’s Cedar Rapids facility — were asked to leave the Hotel at Kirkwood Center Tuesday morning after the two sides became heated over Ingredion officials bringing armed security professionals with them, the union said.
From “A Perfectly Logical Explanation,” published by the Kalamazoo, Mich., Gazette, 2002
My father-in-law has put his hands to many chores in the past 76 years of his life.
He tells me when he was a young boy during the Great Depression he picked cotton by hand, in fields not far from where he lives today — in north central Louisiana. He and my wife’s mother work their subsistence farm of potatoes and peas and other vegetables not near any main roads with traffic lights, but out in the woods.
For most of his adult years Audrey worked for the federal government, marking trees so the timber companies would know whether they legally could be cut.
Timber still is one of the few occupations here in Winn Parish, in some form or another. The Stone Container Company, the major employer, supplies shopping bags to the Wal-Mart in Winnfield and elsewhere in the region. You often can hear the eighteen-wheelers barreling along out on the road, carrying their cut trees to the paper mill.
Tonight my father-in-law, long retired from the tree-marking business, is putting his hands to another chore. Once a week for the past fifteen or so years or so he climbs into his pickup truck and drives over to the Backwoods Inn.
For The Gazette, Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Ending the war in Ukraine could come down to speed — how quickly the White House and Congress can authorize spending on weapons and how fast manufacturers can build them and get them to where they are needed.
The last contract signed with Raytheon Technologies — parent company of Cedar Rapids’ largest employer, Collins Aerospace — from the U.S. Department of Defense for Stinger missiles, for example, was in 2002, according to Greg Hayes, Raytheon CEO and chairman.
Hayes referred to the Stinger and Javelin missile systems — both built by Raytheon — as the “co-MVPs” during the early part of the Ukraine war.
For The Gazette, Cedar Rapids, Iowa
During the busiest times, an average of 500 trucks a day go in and out of the ADM facility in Cedar Rapids, plant manager Brian Mullins says. (Nick Rohlman/The Gazette)
CEDAR RAPIDS — Brian Mullins slowed his pickup truck and waved to allow a hauler to go ahead.
Trucks will line up to have their corn graded. Then they’ll circle around to a scale for weighing.
The drivers then are told by sign where to take their load for drop off.
Mullins explained the strategic traffic flow this past, crisp Tuesday afternoon as he gave an exterior tour of Archer Daniels Midland’s largest corn-grinding facility — 450 acres all told.
During its busiest times, an average of upward of 500 trucks a day go in and out of the southwest Cedar Rapids facility, located just south of Route 30 and west of where the highway meets Interstate 380.
Starting in 2017, The Gazette's Iowa Ideas inititative — along with its annual two-day conference in the autumn — included a glossy, statewide magazine I edit. With the pandemic in 2020, and in keeping with the conference going online only, we decided to publish one, larger edition a year rather than the traditional five. But 2022 presented new challenges that included massive price hikes for paper, in addition to zero guarantee by any printer it'd even have paper for the magazine come August.
So at the beginning of the year, I had an idea: We'd move the 2022 edition of Iowa Ideas magazine online, too — the same quality, long-form reporting and excellent photos and design but without paper, ink or trucks, and with a wider reach. Here is a link to the flip book format of that publication:
https://online.fliphtml5.com/kvud/mkge/index.html?1662555223048
For The Gazette of Cedar Rapids and Iowa City, Iowa, Nov. 18, 2021
(Savannah Blake photo/The Gazette)
CEDAR RAPIDS — “What’s up, boss?” an employee out on the production floor greeted Steve Shriver as the Eco Lips owner led a tour of the manufacturing company’s new-ish facility on a recent Wednesday afternoon.
Shriver waved back.
“How are you doing?” he replied.
The company that produces and packages organic lip balm and other products sold in more than 10,000 retail venues began its move from its previous Marion building — where it had been for only about three years — to 6000 Huntington Ct. NE this spring.
