Editor’s Letter
LOCAL COLOR I’ve lived in Des Moines for four years now as editor in chief of this magazine, and though there are many special things about my new community, one of my favorites is the charmingly idiosyncratic way Iowa’s capital city celebrates Halloween. We don’t. In the late 1930s Kathryn Krieg, recreation director for the city’s playgrounds, came up with a novel idea to discourage the recent outbreak of petty vandalism. By replacing Halloween with a holiday that occurs one day earlier (on October 30), Krieg hoped to decrease the destructive behavior that had grown up around the holiday by substituting something more manageable—bad jokes. By the ’40s, the holiday known as Beggar’s Night had become widespread, with school leaders and the local media helping to establish the tradition. For years The…