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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 Avocado restaurant, Defunct Books, and the Golden Haug Bed and Breakfast may very well be dust. Yet another multi-story apartment building with ground-floor retail space will soon arise. At deadline, Defunct Books announced they were moving to Sycamore Mall. The fate of the Red Avocado is still highly questionable.
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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 […]
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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. […]
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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 […]
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UR Here: The Cat & The Commons
One of the best things to happen to Iowa City this fall has been the mountain lion. I know, I know. There may not even be a mountain lion. Maybe people saw a big kitty, or a deer, or, heck, even a dog. It doesn’t matter. Whether ol’ Snagglepuss is as real as a downtown parking ticket or as imaginary as the white-cuffed-and-collared, pink-hued cartoon cat who just wants to exit stage left, it doesn’t matter. He (or she) has contributed much to the sense of the commons in Iowa City.
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UR Here: And So, Summer Ends…When, Exactly?
The end of summer is a peculiar time. For no other season are we so compelled to define “the end.” For the last month or so I have found myself […]
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UR Here: Blowing the Place Down
The spring and summer of 2011 have been historically devastating. An earthquake and tsunami in Japan rival Hiroshima and Nagasaki. EF5 tornadoes in Joplin, Missouri, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and throughout much […]
