Jim Schaap reads "Acknowledgements" There weren't all that many people--three or four dozen. Most, like me, were on the far side of fifty. But a pandemic is raging, and being out at all is something of a risk. In 1870, Luxembourgers came to this corner of the state, the only region of Iowa not yet homesteaded. For the record, forty of them unloaded their wagons and cut through virgin prairie. A month or so ago, Alton dedicated a big, colorful mural right across from the Veterans Memorial, a glorious flutter of butterflies across a darkened prairie landscape. A few ghostly four-leggeds haunt the mural, along with fizzy little yellow bubbles, the artist told us, are--I should have thought of it—fireflies.