The Atlantic Police Department, Friday, said three people were arrested last week on drug charges. Taken into custody on Dec. 17th for Possession of a Controlled Substance and Possession of Drug Paraphernalia, was 59-year old Douglas Howard and 26-year old James Howard, both of Atlantic, along with 30-year old Joshua Namanny, of Storm Lake. The trio were booked into the Cass County Jail.

On Dec. 16th, Atlantic Police arrested 38-year old Severiano Batalla-Castillo, of Lewis, for OWI/1st offense. And, on Dec. 21st, 39-year old Julie Luetje, of Atlantic, was arrested for Violation of a No Contact Order, and Driving While Revoked.

The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office reports a Pottawattamie County man was arrested Friday morning on a theft charge and four warrants. Deputies arrested 32-year old Justin Curtis Hanshaw, of Oakland at around 11:20-a.m., on a charge of 2nd Degree Theft associated with a stolen 1997 Dodge Ram pickup he was driving. Hanshaw was also wanted on warrants out of Pott. County for 3rd Degree Burglary, 4th Degree Criminal Mischief, and Theft in the 3rd- and 4th- Degrees. He was being held in the Montgomery County Jail on a $5,000 bond for the Montgomery County charge, and $7,000 bond for the charges out of Pott. County.

Firefighters from Harlan are on the scene of a residential structure fire this evening. They were paged-out to 1510 Erie Drive at around 5:25-p.m. Westphalia Fire was dispatched for mutual aid at around 5:38-p.m.

According to realty sites, the structure is a 1,220 square foot three-bedroom, ranch-style home, with a basement. Reports on social media indicated the home was vacant. No other details are currently available

An author who grew up in the noisy New York City borough of Brooklyn says he found his writing voice by coming to the quiet woods of rural eastern Iowa. Marc Nieson calls his memoir, “Schoolhouse,” a modern-day “Walden,” but with a love story. In the early 1990s, Nieson attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop as he was “on the lam” from a failing relationship and took up residence in an old schoolhouse some 15 miles from Iowa City.

“I ended up finding myself there,” Nieson says. “It was really the woodlands and the pasture and the fields of corn and soybeans that somehow stabilized me and gave me a sense of roots that I’d never had before.”The full title of the book is: “Schoolhouse, Lessons on Love and Landscape.” The book is about nature and -human- nature, he says. The nature part is the focus on his daily “woods walks” on the 500-acre plot of forestland that surrounded the Johnson County schoolhouse.

“The human nature was just really starting to learn about myself and learn about why I had difficulties creating a lasting relationship with someone and why I was on the run,” Nieson says, “and why I was hiding out ultimately in a little schoolhouse on the top of a hill in what, for me, was not just the middle of the country but the middle of nowhere.”

Nieson is 56 and while he says the word “memoir” may have once conjured an image of an octogenarian, that’s no longer the case. “There’s all ages of people writing memoirs these days and the period I’m writing about was when I was even younger, I was around 32 or so,” Nieson says. “It’s just a question of whether you have a piece of a story or a swath of your life that, hopefully, has something to say to other people and has some kind of communal exchange that can happen.”

The book is being published by North Liberty-based Ice Cube Press. Each chapter is named for a subject in school, like Geography, History and Social Studies. He notes: “In school they give you the lessons before the test, in life, it’s the other way around.” Nieson is on the faculty at Chatham University in Pittsburgh.

(Radio Iowa)

WASHINGTON (AP) — A buying spree in the Midwest spurred new U.S. home sales last month to the fastest pace since July. The Commerce Department says new-home sales in November rose 5.2 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate 592,000. It was the fastest pace since July’s 622,000. Sales were up 16.5 percent from November 2015.

Utility officials who serve small town Iowa are lobbying legislators to keep money for their towns in any water quality plan that may emerge in 2017. Tim Whipple, the general counsel for the Iowa Association of Municipal Utilities, say “With all the talk about farmers and drainage districts, lawsuits and nitrates, it’s easy to forget that our state also has a multi-billion dollar municipal infrastructure problem as well and right now that burden is falling squarely on rate-payers and taxpayers in our small, rural communities.”

The plan to finance water quality projects that was approved by House Republicans nearly a year ago included money to help small communities finance required improvements to sewage systems and water treatment plants. “As the legislature moves forward with water quality funding, I hope you will remember that small communities need funding assistance every bit as much as farmers for the costly infrastructure upgrades that they need to remain attractive places to live and work,” Whipple says.

Whipple grew up in rural Franklin County. He went to elementary school in Hampton. In addition to lobbying for more state money to city-owned water treatment plants, the Iowa Association of Municipal Utilities has been seeking more options in how cities are allowed to finance waste-water projects.

(Radio Iowa)