UR Here: Where is the wonder?
When astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson spoke to a capacity crowd at The University of Iowa in April, he said that through his teaching of the marvels of the universe he tries “to reignite some sense...
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UR Here: Home is where the hygge is
Hygge (roughly pronounced hö-geh, though with a little more “oo” on that umlauted o) is a Danish word that defies English translation. Its closest Anglo analogue is probably cozy, but that doesn’t fu...
UR Here: There’s something a little bit extra about Eble Music
Last week at Eble Music, I picked up the next piece my daughter, Sylvia, will be working on for her saxophone lessons, Alfred Desenclos’s “Prélude, cadence, et finale.” As I walked down Linn Street a...
UR Here: Valuing the Faraway
I like to think of this time of year as “in deep.” As I write in late January, no snow is on the ground, and we have had our share of warmth this year. Yet, even though the winter of 2013 has so far ...
UR Here: Objects of my Admiration
I went to Wisconsin, and all I brought back were a bunch of bark shavings from a red pine tree. This fall, I attended a “Land Ethic Leader” workshop at the Aldo Leopold Center near Baraboo, Wisconsin...
UR Here: Open Spaces
In the days when prairies stretched from river to river across the expanse of what we now call Iowa, bison disturbance was essential to the health of the ecosystem. As the herds thundered across the ...
UR Here: Phasebook Update
I’m kind of an almanac-y guy. I like a day’s statistics—what the high and low temperatures were, the average temperatures, the precipitation. I like to note where a day is in the annual round—solstic...
UR Here: Summer of Fire
Fire came early this year. Before the summer solstice brought its long light to North America, Colorado was ablaze. This spring, I wrote about multiple 90-degree days in Iowa in March. And in May, Jo...
UR Here: Is There a Place for Quiet in Iowa City?
When I was in junior high and high school in the ‘70s (ulp!), there was kind of a dippy prose poem from the 1920s by Max Ehrmann called “Desiderata” making the rounds. It became somewhat popular afte...
Lost in Transition
When you read this, presumably sometime in May, who knows what the weather will be like? You might be covering your plants for tonight’s frost, or you might be heading out for ice cream because you’r...
Spelling T-R-A-D-I-T-I-O-N
This spring marks the end of an era in Iowa City. Iowa City Spells, the annual adult spelling bee sponsored by the Iowa City Public Library Friends Foundation as a benefit for the library, held its f...
UR Here: Death by 1,000 Razings
For the last month or so, the talk of the town has moved on from Stephen Bloom to Washington Street. By the time you read this, the houses in the 500 block of Washington Street that housed The Red Av...
UR Here: Aunt Millie Knows
Last month’s Stephen Bloom Atlantic essay about Iowa set off a firestorm, to say the least. This is not a column about Stephen Bloom’s essay. But it bounces off of it. A common reaction to the essay ...
UR Here: What’s a Three-Legged Dog Got to Do With It?
Last month’s visit to Iowa City by Jay Walljasper, author of All That We Share: A Field Guide to the Commons, was by all accounts–including, admittedly, my own–a great success. I once aga...
UR Here: The Community, the Crises and the Commons
A lot of people think something is really wrong with our country–indeed our whole world. Last winter and spring, mass protests throughout the Middle East swept long-standing regimes out of powe...
