I am a freelance musician with a degree in music therapy from The University of Iowa.
My professional interests include traditional Irish music, original folk music, jazz, recreational music making, theatre, and celebrating neurodivergence.
You can most often find me playing original folk-rock with Jeffrey C. Capps in The Soft and Low and creating beautiful stringscapes in Freegrass with Blake Shaw and Dan Padley.
Offstage, I work for Coralville Center for the Performing Arts as an arts assistant and house manager and at The Iowa Children’s Museum as a Playologist.
Tara McGovern 
Excellent article in little village. You nailed the Rapson vibe spot on.
Fascinating blog entry, if that’s what people call it, at https://taramcgovern.com/2021/06/18/esteban-and-the-children-of-the-sun/ I’m now a “follower.” Being a 20th-century refugee with no Twitter account, I’ll sign up with an email address.
I found out last night from an Iowa friend about the musical suite titled “Esteban & The Children of the Sun” to be performed Oct. 3 at the Englert Theatre. I noticed that you will be one of the musicians.
My wife and I published the weekly newspaper in Mount Vernon for 12 years until selling it in 1997 and moving to New Mexico. I was thrilled to hear about this musical suite and wished I still lived in Iowa so I could attend.
My interest is rooted in my last book, a biography of Esteban published in 2018 by University of New Mexico Press titled “Esteban: The African Slave Who Explored America.” It’s been slow gathering traction because the publisher put a price of $39.95 on both the hardback and the ebook. Sigh….
Can you think of any way we can tie my book in with the musical suite?
–Dennis Herrick
I read your story, or recent “skirmish” with the law yesterday on an NBCnews article. It did get my attention. On the specific issue your were protesting against I must say I stand on the opposite side. I believe that children should not be medicated as they are in Gender Care. But I hope one day you will get to accept that this doesn’t make of me a transphobic. I believe these children don’t nee these medication to explore their own gender. Free to them to make the choices they want.
But I am contacting you this morning specifically on the freedom of speech issue, on which if events are related as they happened, I am on your side. Their is a desire to “cancel culture” on each side of the aisle, and this is why I believe politicizing the issue ends up putting the children in a “Caucasian Chalk Circle” (Bertolt Brecht) dilemma…
NBC news put a link to the recent laws past in your state, as support to your positioning. I went through it quickly (sadly I am not sure the copy is the final print as signed by the governor or an interim one). But what I can say is that definitely, the legislators want to redefine free speech in an unconstitutional constrained way. In this way of shows a pattern and intent to assault Freedom of speech.
In it, they make it a criminal offense to disrespect the US Flag. Yet the law, as written in what I have with me is absolutely in contradiction of the US Supreme Court precedent Texas (University of) vs Johnson (1989) on the exact same issue. EvenJustice Scalia joined the majority, with the specific confession that he did it against his own personal convictions, as the act of defamation of burning the flag is something he could not accept personally, yet, as the majority explained, it is part of Freedom of Speech as it is speech and protected.
From the opinion: “” The Government may not prohibit the verbal or nonverbal expression of an idea merely because society finds the idea offensive or disagreeable, even where our flag is involved. Nor may a State foster its own view of the flag by prohibiting expressive conduct relating to it, since the Government may not permit designated symbols to be used to communicate a limited set of messages. Moreover, this Court will not create an exception to these principles protected by the First Amendment for the American flag alone…” Affirmed.”
I’ve seen other weaknesses in the IOWA text of law (Senate File 243, 2021) which your lawyer is surely aware of… but fighting for freedom of speech is at the core of any democracy, its a perpetual fight.
Good Luck, may our Freedoms win.