Iowa, Cedar Rapids | featured news

IOWA CITY — Students and teachers will not have to report to school on the Muslim holiday Eid al-Fitr next year after the Iowa City school board agreed to recognize it as a holiday on the school calendar.

Tom Milligan counted the deaths.As the pandemic swept through the country and new COVID-19 cases began to rise across the state last year, Milligan found himself tallying each death that resulted from the virus. He figured out his older brother, Lonny, who died this past spring, was the 297th death to occur in Iowa.

Monsters are mysterious creatures, known for eating the strangest things. A famous one with a sweet tooth fills his belly with cookies. Monsters from the Iowa Children’s Museum, however, are filling their bellies with toys, reused materials and whatever else they can find in their specific color, so their insides match their outsides.

CEDAR RAPIDS — The Cedar Rapids City Council on Tuesday unanimously adopted a fiscal 2022 budget to support recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and Aug. 10 derecho, as well as advance racial justice priorities.

CEDAR RAPIDS — VenuWorks, the company that revamped the local tourism bureau after the 2018 “newbo evolve” music and cultural festival left more than $2 million in debts, will continue to manage the Cedar Rapids Tourism Office.

Some people were born to teach. For others, a passion for teaching comes slowly or all at once. “I can still remember where I was standing with my mom when I decided to change my major in college and go into teaching,” said Breanna Oxley, an eighth-grade social studies teacher at Roosevelt Creative Corridor Business Academy in northwest Cedar Rapids.

When Dr. Pat Winokur was in college, molecular biology was an emerging science that appealed to Winokur’s desire to work with patients — and viruses — and use her investigative skills.“I really like the detective work of being an infectious disease specialist, and the fact that infections can involve any part of the body,” she said.

Two Cedar Rapids women had years of experience creating fun family parties together. To turn their ideas into a moneymaker, they enrolled in a program that guides entrepreneurs through developing and growing a business. They learned enough to hit the ground running, then pivot when the COVID-19 pandemic hit a little more than a year later.

“Heartbreaking” is the word arborist Virginia Hayes-Miller uses to describe the tree damage the Aug. 10 derecho left behind in Cedar Rapids and much of Iowa.“It will take 30 years or more of consistent work to rebuild the tree cover that was lost in one storm,” she said.

Three years into her post as director of business development at NewBo City Market in Cedar Rapids, Julie Parisi knows she has a valuable perspective to offer budding entrepreneurs.It didn’t come from studying business management — Parisi graduated from the University of Iowa with degrees in political science and Italian studies.