Dear readers, It is with no small amount of regret that I announce that this will be the last ever Brock About Town column. I’ll be leaving Iowa City soon, and while I would love to keep this column running until my editors wise up and stop accepting my emails, I can’t very well be […]
Brock About Town
Posted inEastern Iowa
Brock About Town: Kidspo
I don’t talk about kids very often in this column, because I don’t have any and I don’t know anybody who has any and I have so little maternal instinct that when I was in high school and our next-door neighbors asked me to babysit for them, my dad laughed, as if they had asked […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Brock About Town: Fight, fight, fight for Iowa? No thanks, I’m good.
Summer is drawing to its close. The students have returned, shattering the temporary illusion of peace and quiet, and the very first signs of fall have appeared in the form of days with a humidity index below 80 percent. That can mean only one thing — football season is upon us once more. For many […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Brock About Town: Fleeing a library fire? Child’s play.
One thing that I think is really funny about kids is how little they care about dying. I have a younger brother who, when cautioned not to drive to the gym in the middle of a historically unprecedented blizzard because of the possibility of sliding off the road into a ravine, said, “Yeah, whatever. Gotta […]
Posted inEastern Iowa
Brock About Town: Hippie tips
One of the things I love about living in Iowa City is its commitment to reducing, reusing and recycling. Most American towns this size don’t have electric buses, multiple vegan restaurants or such a strong cultural predilection toward preserving the environment. That predilection does occasionally result in things like being late to work because a […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Brock About Town: Reading is fun-damental
While I’m sure some of you imagine me as a Baba Yaga-type figure that sits in a tree on College Street, judging people and collecting Natty Light cans for the five-cent redemption fee, I actually do have a day job. Every morning, I drive almost an hour to a public library which will here remain […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Brock About Town: Upgrade your small talk
Hello, dear readers, and welcome to the weather issue. An apt theme, I think, as we barrel into what we here in Iowa very generously refer to as spring. In reality, it’s two months of light snow showers, punctuated with false hope. It’s particularly stressful for people like me, who do not and will never […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Brock About Town: Reject modernity, embrace tradition
This month I, along with millions of other directionless 20-somethings with liberal arts degrees our stepdads warned us against getting, am applying to grad schools. (Third degree’s a charm, Dad!) It’s a demoralizing process that makes you question everything you thought you knew about yourself. For example, I used to think I was an engaged, […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Brock About Town: New Year’s resolutions you may actually, maybe, achieve
I’ve mentioned before that I simply don’t approve of the whole “New Year’s resolution” concept. In my opinion, it’s unnecessarily cruel. It’s freezing cold; we get, like, 45 minutes of sun exposure per day; I just blew all my money on the month-long bacchanalia American culture tries to pass off as a religious holiday, and […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Brock About Town: How to do holidays with the family of the person with whom you’re living in sin
The holiday season is upon us once more, and for the very first time in my life, I spent it at my boyfriend’s parents’ house. I won’t lie, I was a little nervous at first. These are people who make a ham for Christmas dinner and spend the day sharing carefully chosen gifts and precious […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Brock About Town: The common cold? So passé.
Gentle readers, it is with deep sorrow that I write you this missive, because it is from my deathbed. I’ve spent the last few weeks getting my affairs in order — informing that guy I met on spring break 2016 that we have a child in the workhouse, dividing my collection of Buffy the Vampire […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Brock About Town: Iowa City’s five smells
Last weekend, I took my boyfriend to Cedar Rapids to meet the home folks. It was a beautiful afternoon, so we rolled the windows down as we passed through the scenic downtown area, and then he instantly rolled them back up. Now, I’ll be honest: I lived in Cedar Rapids for so long, I hardly […]
