So last week I returned from five days reporting on the massive federal raid of the country’s largest kosher slaughterhouse. As always, I came home totally beat, and now, Sunday afternoon, I’m more or less back to myself, except for this nagging pain in my back that seems connected to, well, nothing. Doesn’t matter what I do, what position, what stretch, I even got a massage, and to no effect. Literally, no effect — the pain comes, it goes, with no apparent rhyme or reason. I must have a little demon living in my back who keeps odd hours.
But I digress. Iowa — wow! There’s like totally nothing there. Farms, and corn, and grain silos, but that’s pretty much it. Even the “cities” are pretty sad. My last night, I was drinking alone in what passes for a swanky establishment in Cedar Rapids, when I asked the bartender if there was any part of town that was “happening.” Guffaws all around. He suggested a piano lounge across the street, but when I ducked my head in there a few minutes later, there was a dude belting out Elton John on stage and more bartenders than patrons. Um, yeah.
Anyway, here’s what I did.
Article on on the raid’s aftermath here.
Article on emerging details on working conditions here (sexual harassment, underage workers, all real nice stuff).
Postcast interview with Ami about criminal proceedings here.
Podcast interview with Des Moines Register reporter on the raid itself here.
