Random thoughts of an Iowa boy

Is it a reality show, a job interview, sports recruiting? No, it's the grad school search.

2012-02-15T12:39:00.000-06:00

As I look out my window at 35 degree weather and a strong north wind blowing nearby flags, Darling Daughter (DD) is about to land in sunny Los Angeles. Yes, I'm jealous.

But, I'm getting ahead of myself.

DD's current search for a graduate school in theatre design is one part job interview, one part sports-like recruiting and one part reality show.

I’ve worked at a college most of my life, have both my bachelor’s and master’s degrees, but her experience is not like any I experienced.

DD graduated from college this past May and after working this year as an intern at the Olney (MD) Theatre she plans to return to graduate school in the fall, majoring in theatre design. She was in Chicago a week-and-a-half ago as a part of her search for a school, attending a recruiting event sponsored by the University/Resident Theatre Association (URTA).

URTA is comprised of universities across the country that have master’s degree theatre programs. It hosts three of these recruiting events on consecutive weekends in New York City, Chicago and San Francisco.

But these aren’t the traditional recruiting fairs where colleges line up with tables packed with their pretty brochures and college reps do their best to convince students to matriculate at their institution. Oh no, very much the opposite is the case.

Instead, these tables are packed with the students' materials and it is the students who are trying to catch the eyes of the colleges.

The Chicago event was held in a large meeting room at the Palmer House Hotel. DD was assigned a six-foot table on which she placed portfolios and display boards showcasing drawings and photos from plays she has been involved in. She also included a model she created of a stage set, her resumes and various other pieces.

The students were allowed into the room at 8 a.m. and had 45 minutes to complete their set up.

That’s when the fun really started. After they set their tables up they were required to leave the room and wait for two hours as faculty from the colleges came in and reviewed their work. Only when the students returned to the room after the two hours did they learn if any of the colleges had expressed interest in them.

As if the two-hour waiting game isn’t stressful enough, keep in mind that the respective colleges will have openings for only one or two students each year so this is a very competitive process.

The goal is to get interviews with the college faculty. After reviewing the student work, the faculty sign up for 15-minute interviews with the students who they are interested in learning more about.

DD was fortunate in that she had 17 colleges and one reperatory theatre sign up for interviews. It's great that she had so much interest but it also made for a very long day of what were essentially 18 individual, 15-minute job interviews. The interviews are held at the student’s table where they review the student’s work, discuss their experience, their goals, their artistic vision and, oh yeah, if they have time, the college.

At the end of the day, a new waiting game begins. I compare it to the national signing day for student athletes, the colleges are not allowed to offer a position to a student until a specified date… February 25. (The colleges offer various levels of assistantships and tuition waivers.)

But that is by no means the end of the process. Once the colleges make their offers, the students are given three weeks of their own to respond back. The jockeying really begins then as students with multiple offers accept one but turn down the others, meaning the colleges will go back to their lists and offer the remaining openings to other students.

This makes it especially intriguing for students who might get offers but possibly not from their top choice. Do they accept an offer from another college, the proverbial bird in the hand, or hold out hope that their top choice college is turned down by one of the original students it offered a position to, and now turns around and offers that position to them?

By the way, though colleges can’t make an offer for another couple of weeks that doesn’t mean they can’t contact the student.

Already she has heard from two or three colleges hinting at some interest in her, and she has told one of them in return that she is not interested in them. In addition, one of DD’s top choices in Los Angeles contacted her last Wednesday, four days after her interviews, inviting her to participate in a special activity this weekend.

That gets me back to explaining why she is about to land in Los Angeles as I write this piece.

The college has invited the students in which it is most interested to spend this Friday and Saturday at the school participating in what it refers to as a "rapid response project." DD will be working with current graduate students at the college. She will be set up with a studio, materials, meals and a creative prompt (something to respond to). She will then participate in a series of work sessions to develop a response.

Meanwhile, the faculty will be dropping in to observe the students work and provide advice.

They make no secret that the top students from the two days are the ones who will be accepted into the program. It has all the makings of a Project Runway-like reality show.

As with any reality show, a competitor (student) may be very talented and do well but not end up at the top on this particular day. With only one or two positions open, not everyone will be a winner.

I don’t know if DD will end up being one of those winners but even if she’s not, what a great experience and opportunity to learn. That alone is worth the trip.

And heck, they’re throwing a bbq on the beach after it’s all over with. I think I’d fly out to LA myself if someone invited me to a party on the beach.

While in Los Angeles she will be visiting another of her top picks. They've even arranged for her to sit in on a couple of their classes. She has a top five list of colleges in which she is interested. I’m both optimistic and confident that she’ll receive an offer from at least one of them and be off to grad school in the fall.

As with high school athletes wondering what colleges (if any) will offer them a scholarship, anyone who has interviewed for a job and is waiting to hear back from the employer, or contestants in a reality show, this is that anxious period for DD and her padre as we check off the days until we find out what colleges will offer her a position.

Keep your fingers crossed... and in the meantime I'm glad at least one of us has an opportunity to be warm and get some sunshine.

It's Tuesday. Get over it.

2012-02-14T12:15:00.000-06:00

It's Tuesday. Get over it

Today is Tuesday. It also happens to be February 14. That makes it no different than next Tuesday, or the Tuesday after that, or the Tuesday after that.

Now, before I am accused of being the February version of Scrooge and have ghosts visited upon me, let me say that I have no concern with happy couples who choose to celebrate this pseudo holiday that comes every 14th day of the second month of each year. I don't even have a problem with unhappy couples who choose to mark the occasion in some fashion. Perhaps it will convert them to happy couples as well.

Over the years I've spent my fair share of currency on cards and chocolates and flowers and cutesy little teddy bears. I've planned romantic dinners, succumbed to creating my own cards and yes, I've committed the sin of burning a mushy cd along the way.

So for those of you who have significant others in your lives, go for it. Have fun. Knock yourselves out.

For the rest of us, the singles of the world, it's Tuesday, get over it.

It is beyond my ability to comprehend why single people choose to allow this make-believe-Hallmark-Brach-AmericanGreetings-Whitman-holiday to rule their emotions.

Yet, they're out there. Single people complaining about how they have no one with whom to share this supposedly special day. Single people moping about as if it's the end of the world. Single people contriving special plans of their own, attempting to fend off the evil emotions of the day.

People! It's not a real holiday. It's Tuesday.

Why get upset because it's February 14? Do these singles get upset every time one of their friends celebrates a wedding anniversary? That would make far more sense. Wedding dates are real days, special days, significant days, honest-to-goodness holidays.

But of course, it makes no sense to be upset about those days. We're happy for our friends who are fortunate enough to celebrate wedding anniversaries. We are not jealous of them, plunging into sadness because we don't have the same. Then why should we do that today, just because it's February 14?

As for me, my alarm went off at the normal time this morning. I put in my 45 minutes on the elliptical machine, ate my eggs and shared them with Bailey-dog, took a shower and left for work. At the end of my work day I will return home, eat dinner, do a load of laundry, maybe read or clean off the papers on the kitchen table. In other words, I'll do exactly what I do on nearly every Tuesday.

It's Tuesday. Get over it.

Stamp that project…. DONE!

2012-02-12T08:56:00.002-06:00

This past year was one of relatively small home projects. After doing a lot of work and completing many projects, large and small, my first two years here, I needed a break.

As I approached 2012 however, I’m re-energized and anxious to put some projects into the “Done” column.

The first was a new front door, I’ll post some photos on that in a bit. The second can now officially be stamped DONE! as well, the downstairs bath.

When I moved in, the bathroom plumbing had been roughed in, drywall was on the ceiling and floor, but that was as far as it went. There was a lightbulb in the ceiling fixture, but the fixture was dangling loose by the wiring and the light did not work.

I built a storage cabinet in the back of the room nearly two years ago. http://www.alansheaven.com/2009/06/place-for-everything.html The plumbing is there for a shower but I have two other bathrooms in the house, with showers, and I needed additional storage far more than a third shower.

That was as far as I had taken the project and every time I looked in that room I felt like it was hanging over my head, unfinished.

But it's hanging there no more.

The flooring is made of DriCore http://www.dricore.com/ and matches in look the rest of the flooring in the basement. DriCore is intended to be used as a subfloor but I sanded it down, stained it in the alternating colors and covered it with five coats of urethane.(It can still be used as a subfloor by a future owner if they wish, putting carpeting or tiling over the top of it.)

At about $6 a square, it’s an affordable option for this size of a room. To save money though, I used traditional press wood in the rest of the basement.

You’ll see I’ve used a leaf theme in the room. I’ve often referred to this house as a Swiss Family Robinson tree house and have slowly been incorporating leaves and branches in the design.

The trim work on the shelving for the photos has leaves in it. I used the same leaf design, enlarged, in the threshold in the doorway. I used a wood burner to burn the design into the wood.

The photos on the shelves are mine. Darling Daughter has chastised me for not putting my photos up around the house so I took this opportunity to do so. By placing them on the shelves, rather than framing and hanging them, I can easily put new ones up whenever I feel like it.

For wainscoting on the one wall I used corrugated metal, matching the look I used in the bar area downstairs. http://www.alansheaven.com/2010/04/party-pub-nears-end.html

The light fixture is a branch with the lights held by leaves. (Bought it at Lowes.) I opted for a fixture with four lights to be able to focus the lights on the photos and elsewhere in the room. Not to mention that I think it looks a whole lot more cool than a traditional bathroom fixture.

The branch over the toilet is a wall art piece from Target. I had to buy two to cover the space properly. The pieces come in white so I painted them black with just a hint of purple. The photos are four different versions of the same photo.

The photo showing the shelving is closest to the true color of the walls. It's a medium/dark blue. Some people will worry about the use of a darker color in a small bathroom. I firmly believe that is tired thinking.

I wanted the darker color to provide a contrasting background for the photos. The corrugated metal and the mirror, both of which reflect a lot of light, and the use of four lights in the ceiling provide more than enough brightness to the room.

I’m very pleased with the way it all came together. And even more pleased to stamp this project DONE!

The parental roller coaster

2012-02-11T13:40:00.000-06:00

Imagine being at the top and bottom of a roller coaster ride simultaneously. I don’t need to imagine it, I’m a parent.

All of you parents know exactly what I’m talking about. It’s those moments when you are so extremely proud, excited and happy for your child but simultaneously saddened about what the next step brings.

Such has been my experience these past few days.

As I mentioned in my previous post I spent the past weekend in Chicago where Darling Daughter had a day-full of meetings. She graduated from the University of Iowa this past May and began a job at the Olney (MD) Theatre the first week of June. She was in Chicago to begin the next big step in her future, searching for a graduate school.

This was the first time we’d seen each other since she had left eight months ago. I drove into Chicago on Friday and met her at the airport. We spent the next couple of days in Chicago and then she came home Sunday night through Tuesday.

The happiest day of my life was and will always be the day my daughter was born. Nothing will ever exceed the feelings I had that evening as I carried her in my arms around the hospital hallways, looking for someone, anyone, to show my “bundle of joy” off to.

The emotional roller coaster you step onto when that little life first comes into the world is one helluva lot more exciting, and treacherous, than any roller coaster man has ever dreamed or created.

There have been many great rides along the way; birthdays, national softball tournaments, high school and college graduations, prom queen, all-state theatre and so much more.

The lows have come as well; broken hearts, a hospital stay as a pre-schooler when the doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her, the death of her mother.

We’ve always been close, two peas in the proverbial pod. I like to think our relationship is something beyond the typical father-daughter. We’re best friends and about as alike as we could possibly be.

That’s what’s made this past year difficult, one of the lows on that emotional roller coaster. This is the first time we have ever been apart for more than a few weeks.

I did pretty well as I watched her drive off last June, knowing that it would be quite some time before we would see each other again. But Christmas was especially difficult. She was unable to come home for the holiday because the theatre was open both the day before and after Christmas Day. That was when I started counting the days until I would see her again.

We had a wonderful time together during those few days she was home, the top of the roller coaster, and then late Tuesday afternoon I delivered her back to the airport and watched her leave once again, back to the bottom of the ride.

I know that she will never be close to home again. There isn’t much call for scenic designers in this part of the world.

That’s where those feelings come in of simultaneously being at the top and bottom of the roller coaster ride.

I am extremely proud of her and what she has accomplished, the top of the roller coaster. I want nothing more in the world than for her to succeed and go where she wants to go. Honestly, I’m a little jealous of what she’s doing and would love to be doing it myself, so I couldn’t be more excited for her.

Two weeks from now she will be in Los Angeles, visiting two of her top schools. While nothing is certain at this point, I’d say there’s a better than 50/50 chance she’ll be go to California for grad school, a three-year commitment. If all goes well, once she graduates she will work either there or back on the east coast. The bottom of the parental roller coaster ride.

But it’s a ride that parents everywhere have taken since the beginning of time. I’ve always loved a good adventure and you can’t get a better one than this.

I could do without the low parts of this ride, but it’s those low parts that make the highs even higher, even more exciting, even more enjoyable.

In the end, let there be no doubt, if I had it to do all over again, I wouldn’t change a thing.This roller coaster ride has been well worth the price of admission. I love this ride.

Not so windy city photos

2012-02-10T19:32:00.001-06:00

My daughter had to be in Chicago this past weekend for meetings so I took the opportunity to meet her there. She was busy most of the day on Saturday so it provided me the opportunity to wander around the city, camera in hand.

Fortunately, for the first weekend in February, it was unseasonably warm and the wind was not blowing on this particular day in the Windy City.

It occurred to me a while ago that I don't mention or post many of my photos in this blog. Part of the reason there are time gaps between blog postings is that I am sometimes spending that time working on photos. I post my photos over on my flickr page... www.flickr.com/alansheaven ... so if you're curious to see more of them just pop on over there.

Here are a half dozen of the 34 photos I have posted on flickr. The link directly to my Chicago photos is www.flickr.com/photos/alansheaven/sets/72157629264769023/show/

I liked the metallic reflections in this building.

Winged gargoyles watch the city library entrance.

I liked both the jagged edges of this building as well as the contrasting blues of it with the red building in the background.

As I was walking down the sidewalk, this guy suddenly smashed a full bag of chips, opened it and scattered it on the ground for the birds.

Typical big city site, the subway steps.

Romeo and Juliet statue in our hotel, the Palmer House. According to the sign by the statue, it's believed that Bertha Palmer wanted guests to pass a significant symbol of romance upon arriving. The bronze statue of Romeo and Juliet, the two most significant romantic figures in literature, installed in 1924, greets all arriving guests.

I don't understand hate

2012-02-01T12:42:00.002-06:00

I don't understand hate.

I don't understand why someone hates another person because...

-- of the color of their skin

-- they are short

-- they are tall

-- they are too heavy

-- they are too skinny

-- of the way they talk

-- they aren't pretty

-- they are pretty

-- of their religion

-- of their politics

-- of where they live

-- of where they are from

-- of how much money they have

-- of how much money they don't have

-- they are handicapped

-- they are not good at sports

-- they are good at sports

-- they are artistic

-- they dress differently

-- they are a boy who likes boys

-- they are a girl who likes girls

NoH8
noh8campaign.com

My (small) role with cameras in the courtroom

2012-01-24T18:54:00.005-06:00

News came out this morning that the Illinois Supreme Court is allowing video and still cameras in the state’s courtrooms. The decision comes after more than 20 years of debate on the subject.

Iowa has allowed still cameras in the courtrooms for 30 years. I’ve always been proud of the, albeit small, part I played when it was first allowed here.

The newspapers around Iowa fought long and hard to earn the right to take photos during trials. I was working at the Oskaloosa Herald, my first job after college, when the Iowa courts finally granted permission.

I reported on the first trial in our judicial district, only the second in the state of Iowa, in which cameras would be present.

The court’s permission to allow cameras came on what was considered a trial basis with strict limits and watchful eyes. The courts were watching to make sure the cameras would not disrupt the judicial process.

All of the newspapers and the state newspaper association were watching to, frankly, make sure that no one screwed it up for everyone else.

Being only the second trial with cameras in the state meant that all of those eyes were on us.

The trial involved three young men who had kidnapped a night manager at the local Pizza Hut, drove her in her vehicle to another part of the town where they dumped her off and then drove away in a second car with the night’s receipts. As it turned out I’d gone to high school with all three defendants, though none of them made it to the graduation ceremonies.

I was not the photographer assigned to the trial but I was charged with making the various arrangements necessary to be granted permission. You couldn’t just show up and start taking photos.

Generally speaking the details involved:

-- The state newspaper association had been charged with coordinating any requests. I had to first contact them and make the case that the trial was worthy of photographic coverage. They, in turn, made the formal request to the courts for permission.

-- Only two photographers were allowed to be in the courtroom so a pool system was used. If more than two newspapers requested permission, two of them would be chosen to take the photos but they had to provide copies to all other newspapers who requested them.

-- The photographers were not assigned to specific areas of the courtroom, but they did have to be in the general audience section and were not allowed to move around once they were seated.

Fortunately for us everything went smoothly and we were able to demonstrate that photos could be successfully taken without disrupting the court.

I’m sure there have been changes in the system in the 30 years since those first photos were taken. Today it has become a fairly common practice and people really don’t think all that much about it.

For those of us in the newspaper business at that time though it was a quite momentous occasion. I’m proud to say that I played a small role in making it happen.

What triggers mind's memories

2012-01-22T19:30:00.000-06:00

Mind’s memories are a wonderful thing. They are so easily triggered by a song, a picture, a scent, whisking us back in time to another place and time.

Friday night, as I watched Tron Legacy, I was transported 30 years back in time to the summer I originally moved to this area.

For those of you unfamiliar with Tron Legacy, it’s the sequel to the original Tron movie starring Jeff Bridges. Out 30 years ago Tron was about a man who created a utopian world, gone wrong, inside a video game. He eventually becomes trapped inside the game, unable to return to the real world.

It became a cult classic, especially among its target market – young men who were into video games, computers and/or other technology. Namely, me.

Tron Legacy is the sequel in which the son of the original lead character goes back into the video game world to save his father. At the moment in the movie that the son stepped from the real world into the video game world my mind’s memories triggered and I went back in time to Muskegon, Michigan.

Thirty years ago I spent four weeks in Muskegon at the Brunswick headquarters learning how to be a bowling machine mechanic. My family had bought the bowling alley in Camanche a couple of months prior to that and I was going to be the mechanic.

The classes were in the evening so when I wasn’t studying I had time to kill. (By the way, you really did have to study because in those four weeks you essentially learn how to completely tear that machine apart and reassemble it. And there is a test at the end you must pass to receive your certification.)

There’s a terrific beach in Muskegon but the weather was cool while I was there so the number of days I could go there were limited.

The afternoon matinees at the theatre were pretty cheap so that was a good alternative. I went to four different movies but Tron is the only one I remember, which is why Tron Legacy suddenly triggered all those memories.

Brunswick paired us up with a roommate and we stayed at the Ramada Inn, a few blocks from the headquarters. I’d already been out of college for a couple of years by this time which made me one of the older students. Most were just a couple of years out of high school, including my roommate. A nice guy who had the unfortunate affliction of being about as bright as a box of rocks.

Our first night we made our way to a nearby drinking establishment where we had a couple of beers, and five kamikaze shots. After returning to our room the next thing I heard was a large crash in the bathroom. My new roommate, attempting to do what men do in bathrooms, had lost his balance, fallen to the floor, taking the towel rack with him. I knew at that moment that this was not going to be a good roommate fit.

Fortunately there was another student in the class who was about my age and felt the same way about sharing a room with someone on the lower end of the maturity level. He found another hotel downtown that was actually cheaper per week, for a single room, than what we were paying at the Ramada for a double. We were required to stay at the Ramada for a week, but by the end of the first week I was moving into the new hotel.

The hotel was decent and it was great to have a room to myself. The only thing I didn’t know until after I moved in was that the other student and I were the only Caucasians in the whole place. Everyone else was black.

This really wasn’t an issue. I mention it only for one reason….

Connie and I had begun seeing each other a few weeks prior to my trip. She decided to make the trip up to Muskegon to visit me at the end of my second week there. (Side note, while cleaning out her dresser drawer after she died I found the letter I wrote her from Michigan. She’d kept it all those years.)

A little background, Connie was born, raised, lived her entire life in Camanche, IA, population 4,200. Other than her family’s annual summer trip to northern Wisconsin she had seldom strayed out of the comforts of small town Iowa. Naïve would be a good word for her.

I didn’t say anything about the situation to her at the hotel because I never gave it a second thought. As we returned to the hotel the first night there was a big dance going on in the hotel and we were greeted by several of the people in attendance. The small town girl suddenly realized we were the minority in the big city.

She managed to keep her mouth from falling open, her eyes on the other hand were quite literally as big as saucers. We were back in the room for several minutes before her face went back to normal and words came out of her mouth. I think it was the only time I ever knew her to be speechless.

I don’t think I stopped laughing until sometime the next afternoon.

I can’t recommend Tron Legacy, it’s really not that good of a movie. But I want to thank it for bringing back some wonderful memories.

A plan for the year ahead

2012-01-18T20:09:00.002-06:00

I spoke in my last post about using the first of the year as a point in time during which we can assess the past year and look toward the year ahead. I do make a list of things for the coming year but I don’t necessarily look at them as resolutions.

Some might fit the classic definition of a New Year’s resolution, and I’m ok with that, but more are closer to goals and others might simply be considered “to do’s.” Regardless, I think it’s important to spend time thinking about what you would like to do in the coming year and having a plan for how you’re going to make those things happen.

It’s a long list and I know some of them might not happen. Life happens. Things happen that can keep us from accomplishing things we would like to do. That’s understandable.

As I look back on this list a year from now I’m not going to beat myself up if I didn’t get some of the things done… as long as the reason I didn’t get them done was because something happened to keep me from doing them, or in some cases, better opportunities come along. The plan isn’t written in stone. It can and should adapt to my life as the year goes on.

On the other hand, I will beat myself up with the only reason something didn’t happen was simply because I got lazy, procrastinated too much and simply lost focus on what it was I wanted to do.

With that, in no particular order, here are some of the things I’d like to do this year. It’s long, so hang on tight:

-- Finish my diet and then keep the weight off. Yep, your typical New Year’s resolution. The only difference is that I’m not starting the diet now, I’ve been on it for some time and I should be done in a couple more weeks. Believe me, being on a diet during the holidays is hell but it feels good now to know I’m almost done.

-- Finish the bathroom downstairs. When I bought the house, the plumbing had been run into the bathroom and drywall was put up on the walls but that was as far as the previous owners had gotten. I’d planned to finish it last year and put it off. Yes, this is one I’ve been beating myself up about.

-- Complete a couple of other home projects. I’m already part of the way down this path. A new front door was installed a couple of weeks ago. I’ll post about that later. I’d also like to find an old buffet to repurpose and/or build an armoire in my bedroom.

-- I have a large number of old albums I’d like to digitize and I want to transfer all of those old home videos over to dvd’s. I may not get both of these done, but I would like to check one off the list.

-- Read more, watch more movies, go to more plays. I don’t know what happen this past year, especially near the end of the year, but I got into a very bad habit of coming home from work and plopping in front of the television. I’d never done that before in my life and I’m really not happy that I allowed it to happen. I’ve always loved going to plays and watching movies, and I’m equally unhappy that I got out of the habit of going to those during the latter half of last year. (I’ve already watched five movies since the first of the year.) I’m a big magazine reader and have a stack of those sitting in the corner that I’ve also fallen behind in reading, so I have plenty to keep me busy.

-- Write more in my blog. In my defense, after I posted the Aha Moment video I really wanted to take a break from the blog and let that one speak for itself for a while. I just hadn’t planned on the break being quite as long as it’s been.

-- Go to see a Minnesota Vikings game at the Metrodome. I used to get to a game almost every year. It wasn’t always in Minnesota, but I did get to one somewhere. I haven’t been to one since Connie died. This one may not happen simply because the Vikings aren’t even sure right now if they’ll be playing in Minnesota next year. They’ve been fighting with the state to get a new stadium for years and now it’s down to the next couple of months in which something has to happen or they’re gone. If they are back in the Metrodome, I’d like to get back one last time just to relive some old memories.

-- Visit Darling Daughter, at least once, wherever she ends up in the fall. She’s looking at grad schools now and doesn’t know if she’ll be east, west or somewhere in between. Wherever she is, I want to go visit.

-- Take another acting class, a glass blowing class and maybe a drawing class. I’d taken an acting class a couple of years ago and planned on taking another, but allowed various conflicts to get in the way. I’m just going to have to commit to making the time for it. I was signed up for a glass blowing class late last fall but the instructor canceled the class. Too bad he didn’t tell anyone. The students showed up for the first day and he wasn’t there. I’ve found another place that gives lessons about an hour-and-a-half from here and hope to take a class there in the spring, when I don’t have to worry about snow getting in the way of driving there.

-- Continue working on my photography, focusing on learning some of the more technical details like how to use Photoshop.

-- I started getting into video a bit last year and I have an idea for a project I’d like to explore. I don’t know if it will work but I at least want to follow it through to the point where I’m either doing it or decide I can’t pull it off. You’ll have to stay tuned to hear more about that one, if it works.

Nope, that’s not everything. There are three or four more things on the list but, frankly, they’re a little more personal and I don’t care to share them with the world. Sorry.

One more thing, I think it’s all doable. Not only that, I'm hoping for some unexpected surprises. How much fun would it be if we didn't have those?

It’s going to be a great year.

Upon further review, it was a pretty good year

2012-01-17T12:46:00.000-06:00

Couple of different thoughts… bear with me as I pull them together.

First thought, many people downplay New Year’s Eve and the whole resolution-making thing. I think they’re mistaken. I agree, making resolutions once every 365 days that you only keep for about 10 of those days is fruitless.

However, the end of the calendar year is an appropriate time for us to assess where we are in our lives. It’s a time during which we can look at the year just passed and determine what we have accomplished, and look forward to the year ahead and what might be accomplished.

Second thought, most of us, especially in American society, all too often fall into the trap of focusing on today, losing sight of the bigger picture. We get so wrapped up with where our lives are and what we are doing now, that we don’t see our place in the broader spectrum of things.

This is particularly true when we are young, when we have lived such a small portion of our lives and so don’t have the many years of experiences we have when we are older. At my age I thought I had become immune to falling into the trap of focusing on today but it snuck up on me and caught me by surprise in the last few weeks of 2011.

There were a variety of reasons for it, the biggest of which was that this was the first Christmas that Darling Daughter and I wouldn’t be together. The only day she had off from her current job was Christmas day, hardly enough time to fly home and back from the east coast.

It wasn’t until New Year’s Eve was within sight on the calendar and I began thinking about where my life was that I realized I had fallen into the trap. I was so focused on today that I thought I hadn’t accomplished anything this past year, that I had wasted 365 days of opportunity.

But as I looked back on the year I realized that wasn’t the case. Some great things happened this past year and I’m thankful for them.

I really got back into my photography, taking a lot of pictures at a wide variety of events throughout this area… one of my goals heading into the year.

I traveled to the northeast part of the country, completing my goal of checking the remaining states off my list that I need to say I’ve seen all 48 of the continental United States. I now just need Alaska and Hawaii to have visited all 50 states.

I drove back to northern Wisconsin, revisiting the area my wife loved so much and reliving some wonderful memories.

I spent quite a bit of time with Darling Daughter in April and May as she graduated from the University of Iowa. I know she’s the one who did all of that classwork but I like to think I had more than a little to do with her success.

I waved goodbye to her in June as she headed off for her internship at the Olney Theatre in Maryland.

I really enjoyed my summer and fall with no end to the day trips throughout the area.

I saw Train and Maroon 5 in concert at the Iowa State Fair. I love the State Fair and was excited to get back there after missing it last year.

I made a Mutual of Omaha Aha Moment video.

It was good year. Now that I look back at it I realize just how much was accomplished, and wonder how I’m going to top that this year.

But I’ll save that for my next post.

My Aha Moment

2011-08-21T14:30:00.000-05:00

Eight weeks ago I received an unexpected e-mail from Olivia Lasky who works for the company producing Mutual of Omaha's "Aha Moment" campaign. She had found my blog and wanted to know if I would participate in the campaign.

"We’re taking our 34-foot Airstream mobile film studio to 25 cities to capture inspirational, life-changing aha moments from folks all over the country," she wrote. " As I came across your website, I couldn’t help but think that you might have an aha moment to share."

She explained that the studio would be stopping in Davenport on August 4 and 5 and she was looking for people to participate. The promotion is open to everyone and I'm guessing Olivia's job is to do the advance work of searching for people in the city the studio is going to and making sure the schedule is at least partially filled before it arrives. That way they don't have to rely on people showing up at random to fill their timeslots.

It seemed like a fun thing to do so I agreed.

The whole thing is pretty simple. The mobile studio was parked outside a local museum. I arrived at my designated time, filled out a short release form with the basic name/address information as well as a short synopsis of my aha moment.

From there they usher you into the studio. It's hot in there. It's essentially a small closed box with no windows or air conditioning; the noise from air conditioning would interfere with the audio recording.

They sit you on a stool and you talk to a young lady who stands directly beside the camera. You start by telling your aha moment, twice, and then she asks you questions related to the aha moment you just shared.

All told it takes about 10 minutes. From there they send it back to the main studio offices where it's all edited together into the finished product.

They just completed it and put it online a couple of days ago. It's not exactly the way I would have done it but they did do a good job so I can't complain.

It was fun to do and I can count it as yet another life experience, another one of those things I have done.

And now, here's my Mutual of Omaha Aha Moment....

You can find the other Davenport Aha Moments on the website.

No apologies, I love the QC

2011-08-18T06:22:00.000-05:00

I am an unapologetic fan of the QC. Not the OC, the QC.

As in that combination of Davenport, Bettendorf, Rock Island, Moline and East Moline that is affectionately referred to as the Quad Cities. (Ok, be picky, yes there's actually five cities in the Quad Cities. We kind of slur Moline and East Moline together, something like Moestline.)

Davenport and Bettendorf are side-by-side on the Iowa side of the Mississippi River. You don't know where one ends and the other begins. The same is true of Rock Island and the Molines on the Illinois side of the river. From the back deck of the building where I work in Davenport, you can look directly across the river at the District of Rock Island, the city's entertainment area.

I also live in Davenport, the largest of the Quad Cities. We just missed topping 100,000 in the current census by a couple of hundred bodies. There's a recount going on to get us over that 100 thou mark. Hopefully Al Gore's people aren't in charge of it. We'd prefer Al Franken's.

The greater QC area probably tops 250,000, depending on which of the small towns around here you want to include.

I won't lie to you, I would be just as happy in a larger city. But if you want that combination of big and small, the QC is hard to beat.

Among the reasons I love the QC are all of the summer events. With a beautiful park right beside the Mississippi River, there are festivals nearly every other weekend here in Davenport. Include the entire QC area and there are events of one kind or another every weekend, and usually more than one.

This past Friday night and Saturday afternoon I had the opportunity to attend Tugfest in LeClaire. (Detailed in a previous post.) LeClaire is one of nearby small towns, just outside the QC. It's located about five miles north of the immediate QC area.

I followed that up Saturday night with Ya Maka My Weekend, a great event in the aformentioned District of Rock Island. This really is a fun time. When and where else can I wear those crazy floral print shirts I'm fond of wearing much of the time anyway, and not have people look at me like I'm the one committing the fashion faux paus? (Can I help it none of you has any sense of true style?)

Ya Maka My Weekend is a two-day event, beginning Friday afternoon and stretching on through Saturday night. They fence off a four block area in the District and have two music stages with reggae bands performing throughout. There are a number of food booths, merchants selling Jamaican-themed items and even a fortune teller. You can't turn around without smelling incense burning or running into a Bob Marley shirt, or both.

By the way, don't picture this as some small town event with only local bands. Of the dozen bands/individuals performing during the festival, only a couple were from the QC.

(More photos are on my flickr page.)

In case any of you in the area are wondering what might be coming up on the horizon, let's look ahead on the calendar. Blues fans cannot beat River Roots Live this Friday and Saturday (August 19 and 20) on the Davenport riverfront. Another commitment will keep me from attending Friday night when the Gin Blossoms are appearing, but I'll be there Saturday night when Blues Traveler and Nikka Costa are performing on two separate stages.

If you're searching for something a bit out of the norm, how about taking in Floatzilla? Held for the first time last year, Floatzilla is the area's Guinness World Record attempt at the largest flotilla of kayaks and canoes. Last year they counted 955 vessels in the flotilla, just short of the record of 1,104.

Floatzilla is held at Lake Potter, on the southwest edge of Rock Island. The world record attempt is scheduled for 2 p.m.

As if that's not enough, it doesn't even include the Antique Tractor Show in the Village of East Davenport. That one is all day, both Saturday and Sunday (August 20 and 21).

If there's not enough going on in the QC to keep you busy, it's only 50 minutes from my house to downtown Iowa City, proud home of the University of Iowa Hawkeyes. Where, by the way, I will be next weekend for the fifth annual Landlocked Film Festival.

I learned about the film festival for the first time just last year and really loved it. I've been planning ever since to spend more time there this year. (Not that there isn't plenty happening here in the QC that weekend as well, I'm just into independent films.)

Even further ahead on the schedule, the Rock Island Grand Prix (go kart racing in the downtown streets) is always a fun time during the Labor Day Weekend.

Finally, though it's not really a festival, the Quad Cities River Bandits minor league baseball team plays throughout the summer in one of the most beautiful ballparks in the entire country. The recently rebuilt stadium overlooks the Mississippi River and Centennial Bridge that crosses between Davenport and Rock Island.

Ok, now where's my check from the visitor's bureau?

Breaking the 10K barrier

2011-08-16T21:03:00.000-05:00

Yeah! I've broken the 10K barrier.

No, this has nothing to do with running. I'm afraid my running days are over.

Nope, that means I just passed 10,000 views on my flickr page.

Since my first photos appeared in July of last year, some combination of 10,000 of them have been viewed by an anonymous individual. Well, presumably, several anonymous individuals.

I know, that and a buck will get me a Diet Coke, but I'm ok with that. It's still fun to know that people have taken the time to look at my photos. I've never sold a photo and don't even have plans to try to do so, so this gives me some feeling that my work is worth something more than my own personal satisfaction. I don't know that anyone likes the photos they've viewed or not, but I at least know someone is looking.

It's always interesting to me to see which photos are the most popular. It's safe to say that their individual artistic values are not the top priority. In fact, that's probably the least of the reasons they have been viewed. Most are viewed by people who are associated with them in some way, shape or form.

Of the Top 20 most viewed photos, 15 of those are from a single University of Iowa theatre production, Eggshell. That includes three of the top five photos.

My daughter designed and built the set for the play and asked me to take photos for her portfolio. She shared the flickr address with the cast and others involved in the play so I have no doubt 90 percent of those views come from them.

(Though I was pretty happy that one of the photos did wind up appearing in the local newspaper.)

Two of the remaining five photos came from a Renaissance Festival I attended last October. One of those, Cobra Belly, is the sixth most viewed photo on my list. Some of the people involved in the festival learned that I had posted the photos so that's where most of those views came from.

That leaves us with three remaining photos.

One of those is at number 11 on my Top 20 list with 55 views. It's a photo of my daughter standing Ankle Deep in mud. I took it when we were exploring the timber area on my grandparent's farm. She had unwittingly stepped in mud that was more like quicksand.

Why that photo has been viewed so many times I really have no clue. I have a very small family, so it's not like a lot of aunts and uncles are looking at it.

That leaves us with two. Coincidentally, these two are the Number 1 and Number 3 photos all time. Both are fairly random shots I took during the Hoover Days parade in West Branch, IA, a couple of weeks ago. My thought in taking them was not that they were great artistic shots but only illustrations of a small town parade.

Number three is of a girl wearing cowboy boots and dancing in the parade. I thought it was cute she was wearing cowboy boots to walk and dance in a parade. (And also kind of matched up with life in small town, Iowa.) I called it These Boots are Made for Dancing.

And Number One, drum roll please, Girl Power. It's a wider shot of the entire dance team that the the girl in the cowboy boots was participating in.

So, you might ask why, of the hundreds of photos I've taken that these are the most popular. I did a little research and think I've figured it out.

Are you ready for this? It seems to be popular among men who like women's shoes.

Uh huh, that's right, I can't tell you how great THAT makes me feel. I work hard to take what I think are some decent photos and the two that become the most popular do so because they are liked by guys who are shoe fetishists.

Wonderful, just wonderful.

When an idea becomes a reality

2011-08-15T20:16:00.000-05:00

I can just imagine the conversation that took place 24 or so years ago...

Ok, let me get this straight. You want to shut down the Mississippi River, one of our nation's main shipping routes, and then pull a 2,400 foot long, 680 pound rope across it, just so you can have a tug of war contest.

Uh huh, sure.

But that's just what they did and with it, the annual Tugfest between the tiny towns of LeClaire, Iowa, (pop. 3,765) and Port Byron, Illinois, (pop. 1,676) was born.

The event was held this past Saturday. It involves 11, 20-member teams, on each side of the river, squaring off against each other in a traditional tug-of-war contest. The primary difference being that you can't see your opponent.

The rope is rigged to a pulley system. Digital clocks in front of the teams count down the last 30-seconds and then the teams pull with all their might for a specified amount of time. The distance the rope is pulled determines the winner.

And that's the deceiving part. The fact is, both teams gain ground so the first time you watch it, it looks like the team on your side of the river is winning because of the amount of ground they are gaining but that may not be the case. There is so much slack in a water-logged, 2,400-foot rope that both teams will gain ground simply tightening up that slack.

Reportedly, more than 35,000 people attend the event each year. It begins Friday night with one of the best fireworks shows in the area (really, if you're into fireworks this one is worth attending) and stretches through Saturday evening. There's musical entertainment both nights, carnivals, parades, a Tugfest Queen contest and everything else you would normally associate with a small town celebration. The actual tug takes place during a two-hour window beginning at 1 p.m. on Saturday.

(By the way, if you're an American Pickers fan, LeClaire is the home base for Mike and Frank.)

Being a lifelong Iowan, I of course was pulling for the LeClaire side of the river to win Tugfest. This year's tug was a thrilling one. Going into the 10th of the 11 tugs, Illinois had forged a 5-4 lead.

The men's team for Iowa that had lost earlier in the day came up for their final match, needing a win to keep their side of the river in the running for the championship. They put their backs, their legs, their arms, their muscles and a good amount of body weight into it and refused to say die, pulling out the victory and sending the battle into the 11th and deciding tug.

The final match was the ladies turn. Coming out of the waiting area, it was obvious this plucky and scrappy group was ready for battle. They had their game faces on and their hands soaked with stick-um so that they would not lose their grip on the mighty rope.

Unfortunately, and quite sadly, I must report that the Iowa ladies weren't quite up to task this day. They pulled the rope 16+ feet but it just wasn't enough as Illinois claimed the match and the title. (I've heard claims of Illinois putting in a ringer, something about a female Clydsdale, but I've haven't been able to substantiate that report.)

The story goes that Tugfest was created when a fella by the name of Scott Verbeckmoes witnessed a similar, albeit smaller, event while vacationing in Michigan. Thinking it was a pretty good idea he brought it back home where he talked others into sharing his vision.

My hat goes off to Mr. Verbeckmoes and all those who joined him in making Tugfest a reality. That idea he brought home from Michigan has now become a huge annual event bringing thousands of dollars into the LeClaire and Port Byron communities.

We need more of those ideas. No, that's not quite true. Those ideas are out there. What we need are more people to listen to those ideas and like those who helped Mr. Verbeckmoes, be willing to take a chance and help them.

Not all of the ideas will take off like Tugfest has. Some will fail miserably. But what is lost in the effort, other than some time and perhaps a rather insignificant amount of money in the bigger picture of things?

But oh, when they succeed, what great things they can become.

(For more Tugfest photos go to my flickr page.)

You know you're from....

2011-08-11T12:15:00.000-05:00

While doing my "surfing about the internet" bit recently I ran across a few of those "You're from (fill in the state/city name) if..." lists about my home state of Iowa.

I have to admit, an awfully lot of them hit pretty closely to home.

You know you're from Iowa if....

If your Dairy Queen is closed November through March.

I didn't know any of them were open longer than that.

If you measure distance in minutes.

Yep. I used to tell people it was about a 50 minute drive to work. (It was 37 miles.)

If you can drive 65 miles an hour though two feet of snow during a raging blizzard without flinching.

I still remember the time the 77-year-old guy got a speeding ticket for doing this just outside of Cedar, on his snowmobile, on the highway.

If your neighbor throws a party to celebrate his new pole shed or larger garage.

Doesn't everyone?

If someone in a store offers to assist you and they don't work there.

Darling Daughter (DD) went into a store in the mall a few years ago to apply for a job. While the manager went to get the form, DD started helping one of the customers in the store. The manager came out and hired her on the spot.

If you get an adrenaline rush by living on the edge and digging your toast out with a fork (while the toaster is still plugged in), and, If you still like to spin on a piano stool and tuck in your arms for extra rpms.

Are you kidding me!?!?! Of course I do! Add to it the merry-go-round at the playground.

If your town has an equal number of bars and churches.

When I moved to Oskaloosa (population 11,000) in junior high, one of the first things my new classmates told me was that someone had gone through the phone book and determined there were exactly the same number of bars as churches.

If your idea of art is a yellow and black garage door with a hawk head on it.

Not something I've done, but I can't tell you how many garages are so decorated. For those of you not so enlightened, this is referring to the Iowa Hawkeye logo.

You know what “walking the beans” means.

I might add "detasseling corn" to that. Walking the beans is walking the rows of beans out in the field, pulling weeds, and detasseling corn is walking the corn rows and pulling the tassels out of the top of the corn stalks. Both are common summer jobs for young people growing up in Iowa. Quite often they are the ONLY jobs for young people growing up in Iowa.

You wave at everyone you meet on the highway, and most of them wave back or beat you to it.
You can tell the smell of a skunk and the smell of a feed lot apart.
You carry jumper cables in your car…and your wife/girlfriend knows how to use them.
There’s a tornado warning and the whole town is outside watching for it.
The local gas station sells live bait.

Yes to all of the above.

You consider being called a “Pork Queen” an honor.

I went out on a couple of dates with the Pork Queen in high school.

Little smokies are something you serve on special occasions.

We call 'em bourbon wienies.

You go to the State Fair for your family vacation.

We used to camp there for two or three nights every year and I still go for at least a day nearly every year, and feel sorry for any of you who haven't. By the way, the only great State Fair in the country is the Iowa State Fair.

You know what 4-H is.

Head, heart, hands and health. 4-H is a farm-based youth organization. It spread its wings many years ago to include town kids.

You ever went to parties at a pasture, barn or in the middle of a dirt road.

One of our senior parties in high school ended up on a dirt road, after we got kicked out of the state park. Not that that was the only time I've been to a party in a pasture, barn or the middle of a dirt road.

Your idea of a fun weekend was riding around parking lots because that was where everybody went.

Oh man, this one really hit home. In Oskaloosa, one parking lot in particular was christened the "Farmers Parking Lot" because that was where all the farm kids hung out when they drove their cars/trucks into town. It was a common hang out spot every Friday and Saturday night during the school year and most every night in the summer.

You ever went cow-tipping or snipe hunting.

I never went cow tipping but I did get chased down one night by the cops when out snipe hunting.

You were ever in the Homecoming parade.

I was not only in a couple of homecoming parades, I chaired the committee my senior year in high school.

You had senior skip day.

Once again, doesn't everyone?

You don't give directions by street names, but something more like, "Turn right by Nelson's house, go two blocks east past Anderson's, and it's four houses left of the track field."

I still do this. I can never remember street names.

You can't help but date a friend's ex-boyfriend/girlfriend.

When DD was in school she never dated much because she was related to about half the kids in her school and the other half she had grown up with since pre-school so they were like cousins to her. ( Graduating class of roughly 70 students.)

Directions are given using "the" stoplight as a reference.

When I was on the city council in Camanche (population 4,250) we voted to take out "the" stoplight. There aren't any there now.

You think it's normal to see an old man riding through town on a riding lawn mower.

One last time, doesn't everyone?

And that folks, is why I love Iowa.

Simple joys of small towns

2011-08-08T19:44:00.000-05:00

Somewhere over the years we've lost touch with the simple joys of small towns in the summer. We've become so consumed with being able to say we took the kids to a mega-amusement park or flew off to lounge about some tropical beach that we don't take the time to enjoy that little slice of Americana known as the community festival.

In my part of the country, namely rural Iowa, there are festivals happening every weekend. Even towns with less than a 1,000 residents will set aside a day or two in the summer to celebrate life.

I had the opportunity to spend time at one of the particularly unique celebrations this past Saturday in West Branch. West Branch with a population of 2,300 people is typical small town Iowa. It's graduating high school class is around 60 students, give or take. It's average age is 36. It's about 10 miles from Iowa City so a lot of people commute there for work. The most common last name among deceased individuals is Pedersen, followed by Anderson.

West Branch, however, has one thing that no other community in Iowa has, large or small. It is the home of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum. Hoover is the only Iowan to ever be elected president. He had the misfortune of being elected just before the stock market crash brought on this country's Great Depression.

What makes West Branch's celebration unique is that it combines the traditional small town festivities in its downtown area with more historically-related activities on the Hoover museum grounds. As a lover of small town festivals and something of a history buff (one of my college majors after all) it was a day made in heaven. Best of all, everything was free of charge. (Compare that to what you'll spend taking the family to an amusement park, or even a major league baseball game.)

Appropriately called Hoover Days, I'd heard about the event several years ago but had never made the time to write the date down on my calendar and make plans to attend. I've been to the museum a couple of different times over the years, but never the celebration.

In my defense, some of the reason for that was I often did not hear about the dates for the event until it was about to happen or had even passed by. Such was not the case this year as I learned about the dates several weeks ago and so I no longer had that excuse for not attending. That being the case I vowed to make this year the year I would be in attendance.

I arrived there in time for the 10 a.m. Mayor's Parade. Well, it was more like the 10:17 a.m. Mayor's Parade but no one gets too excited about a few minutes one way or another in small towns. It just provides more time to check out the bake sales, food tents and craft tables set up around the downtown area by various community and church groups.

The parade had everything you could ask for, tractors, a couple of sheep, the high school cheerleaders performing a dance routine, little baton twirlers and gymnasts, a queen (Mrs. Iowa), and even the Governor of Iowa was there, though you could hardly see him inside his air conditioned car.

I particularly liked the guy who, rather than throwing candy to the little ones waiting by the curb, used a gourd, cut in half and tied to a long stick, to drop the candy in front of the children, all while he sat in the back of a wagon.

In addition to the candy, a couple of the parade entries upped the ante a bit, one passing out bottled water and the other popsicles.

Other community activities on the day included a 5K run, a bike ride, bouncy houses in the park, water ball fights at the fire station, a soap box derby and a country band and fireworks in the evening.

Over on the museum grounds, visitors were entertained by musical performances, several different vendors under their canopies, civil war re-enactors, some sort of medievel theatre combat performance, free admission to the museum, a blacksmith, two broom makers, several needle pointers and Hooverball.

That's right, Hooverball. Believe it or not, the game was invented by then-President Hoover's personal physician as a way to help keep the president in shape for his battles with Congress. (I might have made that last part up.) I'm guessing it accomplished that goal. Hooverball is meant for neither the out-of-shape nor the weak limbed.

Imagine a volleyball court but, instead of hitting a wimpy little white ball, you use a six-pound medicine ball. The medicine ball is thrown back and forth across the net until one team fails to catch it in the air or it is tossed out of bounds.

There are three players to a side. When a player does catch the ball they have to throw it back to the other side. They are supposed to make the throw from where it is caught, though there seem to be some liberties being taken on occasion with players sneaking an extra step or two in as they made their throw.

The main strategy seems to be to throw it as deep as possible into the other team's side so that they are not able to jump up and spike it over the net. I did notice one team had apparently decided to "pick on" one specific player on the opposing team, repeatedly throwing the ball directly at him, time after time after time. I presume they were hoping to wear him down to the point his arms became nothing but Gumby-rubber, hanging uselessly to his side.

I went over to the Hooverball grounds thinking there would be a single court in a somewhat exhibition-style performance. Instead there were five courts with several different teams taking the tournament quite seriously, very much like the sand volleyball tournaments staged at so many community festivals.

I did a little Google search and Hooverball does seem to be catching on a bit elsewhere in the country. Some fitness centers are adopting it as a fun way to get into, or stay in, shape. Somehow though, I don't see it becoming our next great national sport, but who knows?

If you're interested in starting your own game, here's the official rules, courtesy of the Hoover Presidential Library and Museum.

Oh, by the way, before the summer is over do yourself a favor and take in a small town community festival. I know there's at least two coming up this weekend. Camanche Days, in my former hometown, begins this Thursday and runs through Sunday.

Just up the river from the Quad Cities is the annual Tugfest, held simultaneously in LeClaire on the Iowa side of the Mississippi River and Port Byron on the Illinois side. Tugfest has its own unique sporting event, they hold tugrope contests by closing down traffic on the Mississippi River, dragging a rope across it and then teams from both sides of the river square off against each other.

For more Hoover Days photos visit my flickr page.

I complained about having no shoes

2011-08-03T17:27:00.000-05:00

“I complained about having no shoes until I saw a man who had no feet."
-Persian Proverb

I hate negativity. I know, using the word hate when referring to my feelings about negativity is borderline hypocritical, or at least oxymoronic, but I know no other way to express it.

I'm almost phobic about it. I will do anything within reasonable means to avoid it. I left one job largely because the negative atmosphere was so great that I couldn't bear going to work each day. I loved the job, but couldn't deal with the tremendous negativity among both the top management as well as my fellow employees.

I am a tremendous believer in the power of positive thinking. I've seen people accomplish incredible things because they believed they could and wouldn't tolerate the naysayers getting in their way.

This past Saturday was the annual Bix 7 road race in Davenport. For those not from this area, it's a seven mile run over some of the most hilly streets you will find for any race. It draws more than 14,000 runners and walkers including elite runners from all over the world.

I've participated in it nine times over the years, though the last time was more than a decade ago. I've never taken the time to see it as a spectator. Seeming like a great opportunity to work on my photography skills, I decided this was the year to go see it from the outside, so to speak.

I dutifully set the alarm for shortly after 6 a.m. so I could find parking and be on the course by the 8 a.m. race start. (I'd like to take a brief moment from our narrative to point out that I was taking photos at a battle of the bands the previous night and didn't get to bed until 1 a.m., so 6 a.m. came much earlier than it normally does.)

I found a good spot at the top of the Brady Street Hill... the hill stretches northward immediately after the starting line for the race. By northward, I mean elevation wise, as in north, straight up toward the sun.

The number of participants is so large that the four-lane street can barely handle them all. I was nearly run over at one point by runners filtering onto the sidewalk. I quickly hid myself behind a light pole for what little protection it might provide.

Once the final runners and walkers had passed me by, probably 15 minutes or more after the start of the race, I decided to walk further down the course and catch the runners as they began the return trip toward the finish line. The top five finishers, all from Kenya, crossed the line in a time around 32 minutes so they were just starting to come back by the time I had worked my way down the street.

While doing so I was stopped by a thin, white haired gentleman with a heavy tan, wearing a tank top and holding a large mug of coffee. Not too much older than me, he had just walked up to the race and was surprised that the runners were already making their way back.

Having once been a runner I was able to provide him a general overview of the race and the runners. I mentioned that I no longer run the race because my knee just won't allow it.

"Yah, my knee won't let me to run either," he said as he patted his left pants leg.

As I looked down I noticed first that his pants leg was much more loose than normal below the knee, and then I noticed the artificial bare foot that he was standing on. He joked that his knee no longer bothered him, seeing as he didn't have one.

He went onto tell me that he was a swimmer and that he goes deep sea diving. That he's piloted sailboats and traveled all over. He told me the story of sailing a friend's boat from Boston to Miami through extremely rough waters only to have the skies part one evening to reveal the most beautiful night sky anyone would hope to see.

When he learned that I'd gone skydiving he became excited, saying that was something he wanted to do but didn't know if they would allow him. Only having one leg he was unsure about the landing.

I assured him that it shouldn't be a problem because they have you slide in on your rear when you reach the ground, with your feet in front of you.

I have no doubt the he'll soon be up in a plane, preparing to step out of that plane and jump to the earth below.

Rather than spending our time thinking about what we can't accomplish in life, perhaps that time would be better spent thinking of what we can accomplish, and doing it.

Yes, I'm a Space Cadet

2011-07-21T17:54:00.002-05:00

I'm a space cadet, I admit it. Probably not for the same reason my friends would tell you... though I wouldn't deny that one either.

The final space shuttle completed its mission and landed early this morning in Florida.

While I was indeed out of bed at the time, I didn't realize it would be landing that early and missed seeing it. As dark as it was it would have been difficult to see even if I had turned the tv on.

I was in the car driving to Wisconsin when it launched about two weeks ago so I missed that as well, though I did listen to it on the radio.

I'm a bit saddened by that. I would have liked to have seen both the takeoff and landing, or at least one of those.

I've grown up with manned space flight. Yes, I'm that old, and in its own way that makes me a Space Cadet.

I was four years old when the first man in space, Soviet Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, took off in 1961.

I was 12 years old and living my last summer in Boone, IA, when I heard those immortal words, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." I watched as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin bounced around the moon and then splash landed safely back home.

By February, 1977, I'd graduated high school and was in my second year of college when the first shuttle took off. No, not the first one to actual go into space but the first test flight, strapped to the top of an airplane.

The first operational flight came five years later in November, 1982. I was just a couple of weeks shy of my 26th birthday and living in Camanche, IA, by then.

I remember it all. I also remember....

I was 10 when Apollo I failed to lift off the launch pad, killing all aboard; 29 when the Challenger exploded shortly after takeoff taking its crew and teacher Christa McAuliffe with it; 47 when the Columbia fell apart and fell to earth upon re-entry on July 25, 2005.

Over the years I've been fortunate enough to visit the Kennedy Space Center in Florida three times. The first on my honeymoon in 1983, the second in 1996 with my wife and Darling Daughter, and the third in 2001 with a group of people I was meeting with in Orlando.

The first trip was also the first time I ever saw an IMAX movie. At that point in time there weren't many of them in existence so it was pretty exciting to have the chance to see one.

I have to admit though, I was a bit distracted. We were seated in the front row, necks craning upward, and the young lady beside me spent most of the film breast feeding her baby. (You can't make me these things up folks.)

I did try to see a launch once. We made some connections and had parking passes in hand for the launch of the Columbia Space Shuttle in October of 1996. Darling Daughter was eight years old. I was excited that she would get to see a bit of history in the making and also old enough to remember it.

Only one problem, the proverbial inclement weather postponed the flight, more than once, until it finally took off nearly three weeks later. By that time our Florida trip had concluded and we were back home in Iowa.

I don't have strong feelings about the ending of the space shuttle in and of itself. I do have strong feelings about space exploration and sending astronauts into space. We must continue to do so.

Americans are explorers. It's in our blood, at least it should be. It began with those who discovered this country more than 500 years ago and those who first settled here 400 years ago. It continued with those who ventured west and with the first to walk on the moon.

It's a part of our DNA and if it dies, a part of us dies. It's that part of us that allows ourselves to dream and be brave. If it dies it means we've settled for just being ok.

We're better than that, we're so much better than that.

Remembering a hero, 30 years later

2011-07-18T18:15:00.003-05:00

Two framed Harry Chapin album covers hanging in a small town northern Wisconsin restaurant; now there's something you don't expect to see.

Yet there they were as I visited Eagle River, WI, a week ago and stopped for lunch at BBT's; a spot I randomly picked while strolling down the street. Seeing those album covers hanging there was both an interesting coincidence and a pleasant surprise.

It was an interesting coincidence because Harry died 30 years ago this past Saturday. He was killed when a semi ran over his car on the Long Island Expressway. He was 38.

No one really knows for sure what happened other than it wasn’t the truck driver’s fault. Harry had swerved into the truck’s path. There’s reason to believe he’d had a heart attack just before the accident, causing the sudden swerving.

I know this because Harry was my hero, and that is the reason it was a pleasant surprise for me to see those album covers.

I still remember the day he died. Hearing the news was like hearing a member of the family had died. I still have the unused tickets for the concert that was to be held in Iowa just a few days later. I could have gotten a refund but the tickets meant far more to me than the money.

So what makes him a hero? It’s not the music.

Please don't misunderstand, I love his music. Mail Order Annie was one of our wedding songs and I sang my daughter to sleep many, many nights with All My Life’s a Circle. (I really hope that's a memory she will keep with her long after I'm gone.)

He recorded a dozen or more original albums. I have at least two copies of every one of them. Nearly every song on every album felt as if they were either written for me or about me.

Cat's in the Cradle was his only number hit. Interestingly, at least to me, it's not one of my favorite songs of his.

It was said that more of his music didn't make the Top 40 because his songs were too long. Harry was a storyteller. His songs didn't fit neatly within the three or four minute format popular on the radio. You need more time than that to tell a good story.

He told great stories.

Even so, three other songs, the classic Taxi, W*O*L*D* and Sequel did break onto the top 40 chart and three more made the top 100.

In this day and age when we're forever being assaulted with the daily misdeeds of music and movie stars, and athletes who say they aren't role models, it's probably difficult to understand how a musician can be my hero.

You see, Harry was more than a musician. Heck, I could argue that music was just his day job, what he did to earn the money to do what he was truly passionate about.

Harry was on a mission, a mission to end world hunger. If any single person could have accomplished that mission, it was Harry.

He gave away a third of the concert money he earned, an estimated $3 million over the last six years of his life. Keep in mind, that's $3 million dollars in the 1970's. Imagine how much it would be in today's dollars.

He founded World Hunger Year in 1975 with radio DJ Bill Ayres. The organization continues today, now known as WhyHunger, raising thousands of dollars annually to fight hunger around the world. The "Why" in the current name is obviously an acronym for the organization's original name but is also the question Harry repeatedly asked at his concerts and speaking engagements, "Why, why, why...."

He was the chief catalyst behind creation of the Presidential Commission on World Hunger in 1977.

In 1987 he was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal.

The best story I ever heard about Harry was told by the Boss, Bruce Springsteen, at a memorial concert for Harry, shortly after his death. I encourage you to take a look at it on YouTube.

It would take a very long time to list all of my favorite Harry songs. I won't do that.

However, one of them is I Wonder What Would Happen to This World? It wasn't until just a few years ago that I learned that words from that song are engraved on his tombstone:

    Oh if a man tried
    To take his time on Earth
    And prove before he died
    What one man's life could be worth
    I wonder what would happen
    to this world

Nostalgia's Tipping Point

2011-07-17T14:34:00.000-05:00

How long you gonna be here?

Just the weekend.

Where you from?

Iowa

Long way to come just for a weekend.

-------------------------------------

Nostalgia, it’s an interesting thing. There’s a tipping point in our lives, it’s easy to recognize. It’s that point when nostalgia sets in and we begin spending a good share of our time reminiscing about the adventures and stories of our past.

The exact point at which the tipping occurs varies for each of us but generally arrives sometime after the kids have left the nest and the realization sets in that there are fewer years ahead than behind. It’s that point where we know that no matter how many great times lie ahead, they will be fewer than those we’ve left behind.

It’s not a bad thing. It’s certainly not a sad thing. It’s part of the proverbial circle of life. It can be a pleasant, even happy thing.

Youngsters should be jealous. They have nowhere near as many great memories as we old farts. When times are tough and we need a fond memory to help us get to that “happy place” in our heads, we have a whole encyclopedia (remember those?) of memories from which to pull.

Young’ns have only a thin graphic novel.

This past Friday I made a seven hour sojourn to northern Wisconsin and pulled a whole book of memories from my personal encyclopedia of great memories.

My wife and her family trekked to St. Germain, WI, every August for 30 years or more. At one point, 20 years ago, there was quite the contingent of folks from our little town who made that trip with them. So many aunts and uncles, cousins, neighbors and their kids made the trip that I sometimes wondered if they closed our town down when we left.

It was her favorite place in the world.

For a variety of reasons I didn’t make the trip there every summer. As our daughter got older and softball became such a large part of our life, the trips became even fewer and farther between.

Even so, it was always there. It was always the place we knew we would be driving back to from time to time.

When Connie got sick we knew, without her ever saying it, that we would have to try to make one last trip up north. The challenge was not knowing if she would be healthy enough to make the trip. The cancer spread so fast that we questioned if it would even be possible.

But make it we did. We loaded her and her wheelchair in the car and made the trip. She slept most of the way there and back. By then the cancer had spread through her brain so severely that she was really only with us for extremely short periods of time during the day.

Her brother rented the lakefront cabin that he and his wife still go to every year and we spent a long weekend with them. Because of her health we were able to do little more than sit at the cabin but that didn't matter. Just being there was all that she wanted.

And one morning, when she was still feeling strong and before the day had gotten long, we wheeled her down to the dock. It was May in northern Wisconsin so we were all bundled up with winter coats. We gave her a fishing pole and she sat in her wheelchair and threw out a line.

Through the grace of God, she caught a fish. You’ve never seen anyone happier in your life. She was so happy she kissed the darn thing.

On the drive home, as she was sleeping, I told myself that I would make one more trip up north. One more trip where, unlike this one, I could spend a little time seeing the things we saw during better times. One more trip to bring back all those great memories. One more trip to allow nostalgia to have its way with me.

That was five years ago.

Fast forwarding to today, our daughter just graduated from college this past May and has headed off to begin a new life. If I was ever going to make that trip again, now was the time. I knew if I waited another year it probably just wouldn’t happen.

So that’s why I was at a boat ramp, beside a lake in northern Wisconsin, talking to a volunteer who helps to make sure the lake stays clean, telling him I’d made a seven-hour drive for a weekend stay. He shook his head, wondering why anyone would drive such a long way for just a weekend.

It was a good trip, a really good trip. Sure, I spent a little time remembering the circumstances that brought me there five years ago. I spent a lot more time remembering the trips that came before that.

I remembered her mom and dad, our nieces as gangly long-legged middle schoolers, our daughter as a little baby and how I watched her in her stroller as Connie and her dad when out fishing. I always joked that they went out on the lake fishing and I went in the lodge for some fishing of my own. I don’t know about them but I know I always caught what I was fishing for. (For the unenlightened among you, the lodge is the resort’s bar.)

I remembered our first trip up there in that blue Firebird. I loved that car. It was the first one we owned together. I remembered a whole lot more.

Though my daughter wasn’t with me, she remembered too, making her special request that I pick up taffy from the candy store in Eagle River. (By the way Kristin, that should arrive in the mail around Tuesday.)

I’m ok with reaching the tipping point. I’m ok with nostalgia settling in. It’s can be fun having so many memories to relive.

(More photos from my trip up north are available on my flickr page.)

Unrecognized Passions... Fini

2011-07-08T07:42:00.000-05:00

Every artist has a perspective. Regardless of the medium which they employ, whether it be painting, sculpting, photography or some other, they have a very specific viewpoint and method by which they approach their art.

I like to tell a story. That’s probably self-evident by the mere fact that I write this blog.

My photography is much the same. I take photographs to tell a story. True, I enjoy taking the occasional scenery photo at Eagle Point Park or off the coast of Maine but it’s not what I live to do. You’ll probably never see the close-up-of-a-flower shot on my flickr page, it’s just not might thing.

This “photos that tell a story” perspective comes primarily in two forms. First are those photos of things that people pass by every day but never really see: the threads on a loom at the Amana Woolen Mills or what the Korean War Memorial in Atlantic City looks like if you stand as close as you can and look up at the dog tags in the soldier’s outstretched hand.

Hopefully, just hopefully, these images cause the viewer to use their own imaginations.

When someone sees those threads for the first time, my hope is that they don’t instantly know what they are looking at but will pause to determine what it is they are seeing, and then begin to imagine what type of garment might being made from those threads. In the war memorial, when they see those dog tags and the veins on the back of that hand it hopefully brings an emotional response about our soldiers, and war, and commitment.

Stories can come from all sorts of inanimate objects. I have no problem killing off an afternoon by taking my camera and walking around a downtown area, scouting for unique architecture, buildings that have history or what I consider to be unusual character, or what someone else has either intentionally or unintentionally created.

Above all, I love taking people pictures. Especially photos of people out in the world. I know this traces back to my newspaper roots but it’s a bit of a chicken and egg sort of thing. Did my interest in telling stories with photos come from working at a newspaper, or was that interest already in me and was that what lead me into the newspaper business?

I suspect it’s a little of both. The love for writing I discovered and recognized as a grade schooler (I still remember creating my own little neighborhood newsletter), led me into the newspaper business. The newspaper business, in turn, revealed to me my love of photography and how it can be used to tell stories in even better ways.

My calendar is already marked with upcoming events. My schedule doesn’t allow me to get to many of them, but whenever I can I’m there with camera in hand. Renaissance fairs, zombie walks, bike races and even plays (only with permission) are great opportunities for photos that tell a story.

I’ve recently taken to photographing bands. With the lighting and atmosphere of a rock and roll concert, it’s hard not to get a good shot or two. It's very exciting when you get that one shot that brings out the energy of the band and crowd.

Having said all that, I know that I’m not a great photographer. I didn’t realize how much I’d forgotten until I started getting serious about it again last year. I know I have much yet to learn, but I can see improvement, and will continue to improve.

I like to think that I can “see” a good shot and what makes a photograph interesting. That's only half the battle. My challenge is learning the many different technical aspects involved in taking what I see and making that into a great shot.

It’s often said that the best way to learn how to be a great photographer is to take photographs. I believe that’s true. There’s no better way to improve, to get better, than to be taking photographs, a whole lot of photographs.

With digital cameras there’s no excuse not to be doing just that. The only thing it costs is time.

Which leads me back to the beginning of this little trilogy of Unrecognized Passions.

After all these years I think I’ve finally recognized what I really would have loved to have done with my life. It would have been great to have been, to be, a photojournalist.

There’s something magical about being able to draw people into a story with a great photo image and then telling that story with the written word. I have an addiction to magazines. I seldom have time to read a book because I’m sorting through the numerous magazines I get on a weekly and monthly basis.

Putting photographs and words together to tell a story is really what magazines are in the business to do. The classic example of course is National Geographic but most magazines, whether it be Newsweek, Vogue or Sports Illustrated, follow a similar format to one extent or another.

The difference is that in most magazines the photographer and writer are usually two different people. I want to do both.

At this point in the story, if it were my darling daughter telling me this, I would tell her it’s never too late. You're never too old. You can do anything if you want to do it badly enough.

I would be right.

Unrecognized Passions... Part Deux

2011-07-07T08:15:00.001-05:00

I mentioned in my previous post that my fascination with photography became more serious once I began working at a newspaper. I worked part time at the Oskaloosa Herald for most of my time in college, covering some sports and school board and city council meetings in nearby communities, among a variety of other things.

At the time, the Herald did have one full-time photographer on staff. This was the darkroom days, when time was invested not only in taking the photo but also in developing, printing and preparing it for placement in the newspaper.

I suspect in this day and age of digital photography, and dwindling newspaper revenues, few newspapers of that size continue to devote a full-time position to a photographer. While that’s possibly good for the bottom line, you can tell it’s definitely not good for quality, judging by the majority of photos you see in small town newspapers these days. But I digress.

Even with a full-time photographer, he, and later she, could not possibly keep up with the number of photos that needed to be taken. The solution was that the newspaper purchased three Pentax K1000 cameras and turned the reporters loose on their own.

As inexpensive as they were, the K1000s were pretty solid cameras and did a decent job. They certainly took a pounding. I don’t remember one ever having to be repaired.

It was my first experience with an SLR (single lens reflex… essentially one that when you are looking through the view finder you are actually looking through the lens as well) and I was in love. To make a long story short, I never missed an opportunity to take a photograph after that, or to learn as much as I could about the process.

The photographer at the time, who later became my roommate when I graduated from college and began working full time at the paper, introduced me to the magic of developing film and printing photographs. I was fascinated with the darkroom and spent a fair share of time in there experimenting with different techniques.

Due to that enthusiasm, I essentially became the back-up photographer at the Herald and the other newspapers I worked at in later years. I’m even happy to say I won an award for a “spot news” photograph back in the day.

As would have been all too easy to predict, that K1000 wasn’t going to be good enough for me forever. As soon as I could find the money, I purchased my own SLR, a Canon AE-1. The AE-1 was considered one of the better cameras at the time, at least one that was still in an affordable price range.

From there I slowly gathered together the other pieces of the puzzle, a flash, wide angle lens, a long telephoto lens, a mid-range telephoto lens, autodrive and so on. Eventually one camera wasn’t enough, I had to have two so I could grab whichever one had the lens already mounted on it that I wanted for a particular shot.

The new camera arrived sometime in the early 80’s. A Canon F-1, it was a step or two above the AE-1. At the time it probably cost close to $1,000 but I was lucky enough to find one used at the camera store for half of that.

I’ll admit to getting a bit carried away with it all, but those who know me will share with you that that is one of my defining personality traits regardless of whether it’s photography, Christmas decorations or numerous other "hobbies" over the years.

I’m guessing I’m one of the few people you will find who carried a full camera bag with two cameras and assorted lenses on his honeymoon.

I’d converted over to using only slide film by then because it supposedly gave truer color, crisper shots, etc., etc. The result is that I have several slide carousels stored away full of shots from that time period that haven't been out of the boxes for many a year.

After said honeymoon, I walled off a small section of our basement and equipped it as a black and white darkroom. Sadly, I’ve forgotten nearly all of how to do that today. I sold or threw away most of the equipment when I moved three years ago.

As the years rolled on and darling daughter was born and became involved in activities of her own, the big cameras slowly were put away and I was back into the pocket rockets, the point and shoot camera. I was no longer in the newspaper business, requiring me to take photos on a regular basis.

With family, work and other commitments, I no longer had the time for what really was no more than a hobby. Besides the time commitment, the cost of purchasing film, having it developed and then having to pay to have it enlarged had become a little too much to justify.

However, my love didn’t totally fade away.

That small flickr of the photo flame continued to burn inside me, and came bursting back to life in 2006. The kindling for the fire was the release of the Canon Digital Rebel XT. With its eight megapixel pictures and the ability to shoot as many photos as you like at no additional cost, it was like I was back in the newspaper business.

I still didn’t have the time to go off on little photo excursions, taking whatever shots struck my interest, but at my daughter’s events I was THAT father, the shutterbug, shooting dozens and dozens of photos.

Now, a few years later, my daughter is a college graduate and history has begun to repeat itself. Money is again passing from my wallet into the photography world.

A new, bigger, better, digital camera has been purchased, the Canon 7D. The new mid-range telephoto lens has been used many times, the wide angle lens arrived a couple of weeks ago, the new flash is already in the new camera bag, a new tripod is in the trunk and I have my eye on a long-range telephoto lens, though I’m not sure my budget can handle that one quite yet.

Maybe, though, if I can find one on ebay. Hmmmm?

Unrecognized passions.... Part 1

2011-06-29T20:17:00.002-05:00

Most of us go through life blissfully ignorant about ourselves until some years have passed. In some cases, many, many, years.

How different our lives might be had we recognized these things at the time?

I've always thought the lucky ones were those who knew at an early age what they wanted to do with their lives. I've always loved writing and without planning it, nearly all of my jobs over the years have involved writing in one fashion or another.

But there were other things that I loved, other areas for which I had a passion, that I never recognized.

Photography would be, if not at the top, at least very near the top of the list. I’ve long loved photography but did not recognize until quite recently just how long. It occurred to me only recently that I’ve loved photography since I was a child. How differently might my life had been if I had recognized it at the time.

I think it was sixth grade when my Franklin Elementary class in Boone, IA, loaded the bus and went on our big field trip to the state capitol in Des Moines. An hour away, it was the furthest any of us had ever gone on a school trip and I was the only kid toting a camera along for the day.

I don’t know if those photos even exist any more but wouldn’t be surprised if they’re stuffed away in a box in a back storage room. Another project for another day.

I can’t pull out of the dark recesses of my old timers addled brain what that camera looked like. I do, however, remember the ones that followed.

First up was a Kodak Instamatic when I was in Junior High. Thinking about it now, it was one of those kinds of things where you look at it and wonder, “What in the heck were they thinking.”

The Instamatic was a little thicker than a pack of cards and just slightly longer. You held it flat, on its side, and looked through it that way to take photos. Because the viewfinder was about an inch offset from the lens, the closer you were to an object, the more you had to make sure you were lining the subject up with the lens. If not, the subject would be well over into the right side of the picture.

Its film was a small cartridge and, fortunately, I wasn’t into enlarging photos at the time because the negative size was so tiny that any enlargement would have been less than pristine. The flash was a cube with four bulbs in it. The cube rotated a quarter turn after each photo, having to be replaced after four turns.

A couple of years later some off-manufacturer developed a flash attachment that screwed into where the cube went and stuck out from the side of the camera. Now, instead of the camera being an odd contraption that was roughly four inches long on its side, it was an odd contraption that was closer to eight inches long.

I used that camera for several years, on into high school. Somewhere in between though, I was gifted a Polaroid Big Swinger by my parents. Now that was big stuff, being able to take the photo, pull it out of the side of the camera and see it instantly.

It was a big, bulky thing and there were no negatives so enlarging photos was out of the question. The quality was ok, at best. But you could see the photo right away!

The added benefit was that you had this special chemical stick you used to treat the photo, otherwise it would fade away. The stick came in a small round tube, about the size of a lipstick container. It was essentially a sponge filled with the chemical, attached to a piece of plastic running its length with which to grasp it.

The user swiped it over the photo two or three times until it was well covered. The best part, I swear you could get high off the fumes.

After that came the various portable "pocket" cameras and later the disposable versions that you still see floating around today.

Through that time I undoubtedly took more photos than the average person but still far less than even the serious hobbyist. If for no other reason I simply couldn’t afford to do more at the time.

That all began to change when I was in college and began working at the local newspaper.

A project four years in the making

2011-06-26T09:29:00.000-05:00

This is the story of a simple project, that was four years in the making.

I’ve always really liked the style of Adirondack chairs. I still remember my grandparents having a couple of them at their home in Boone back in the sixties when I was but a mere grade schooler. Yes, I am THAT old.

I’d always planned on a constructing one myself but with a multitude of other “to do’s” already in waiting, it just never percolated to the top of the priority list.

But one day I noticed that Ace Hardware was selling kits that included all the wood and hardware needed for the chair, some assembly required. Well, all assembly required.

They were priced at less than 30 bucks a piece. I figured it would cost me that much just to buy the wood to build one on my own, so I went and picked up a pair of them four years ago.

That’s right, four years ago. I purchased them in the fall thinking I would put them together the next spring. But then there was a small hitch in the plans, I made the not-so-minor decision to sell my home and move from Camanche to Davenport.

It didn’t seem to make much sense to assemble them and then have to haul them to Davenport so I left them in their convenient, easy-to-move-from-one-house-to-another, boxes. And there they stayed.

If you know me and what I’ve been up to these past couple of years, or you’ve read earlier posts in this blog, you know that assembling Adirondack chairs was once again not on the priority list.

The time finally came this winter though that I was determined to pull those chairs out from their storage space, put them together, paint them up and get them ready for summer.

The finished product is pictured here. As you can see I wasn’t content to simply splash some white paint on them and call them done. I tend to enjoy being a bit more unique than that.

The image on the blue chair is of my old friend B-rrry Bear. I was the director for the B-rrry Scurry race in Clinton for a number of years and this is my all-time favorite t-shirt design from the race. For the uninitiated among you, the B-rrry Scurry is always held the first Saturday in February when Iowa’s temperatures are not always the warmest.

The idea of B-rrry Bear, and his girlfriend B-rrronda, surfing on a tropical beach somewhere had more than a bit of irony in it. The beach theme seemed perfect for a summertime chair.

The design on the yellow chair is one I pulled together from portions of two or three different pieces of clipart and then painted onto the chair. The saying, “It’s Noon Somewhere” is one that my buddies and I began uttering years ago, long before Jimmy Buffet ever started talking about it being five o’clock somewhere. Heck, he’s five hours behind us.

I’m very happy to report that the chairs are sitting proudly on my deck and yes, I've enjoyed a glass or two of wine while comfortably reclining in them on more than one occasion. I'm pretty sure they will be used much more the during warmer weeks ahead, if it ever decides to stop raining.

Dare to walk around the world

2011-06-23T16:34:00.000-05:00

Darling Daughter moved out four weeks ago. Actually, she moved out four years ago when she left for college, but it seems much more final now.

Four years ago she was heading to Iowa City to attend the University of Iowa, to become a proud member of Hawkeye nation. Before I moved to Davenport that was just 90 minutes from home. After I moved it was a mere 50 minutes from my driveway to her apartment door.

While she wasn’t one of those kids who came home from college every weekend, and I wasn’t one of those fathers who expected it, I always knew she was only a few minutes away. Also, she was a theatre design major, so in addition to the traditional holidays and school breaks I was driving out to see her various productions over the years, further providing us the excuse to be with each other from time to time.

It never felt like we were really apart.

It does now.

She’s 884 minutes away, if you don’t count potty breaks.

She’s working as an intern at the Olney Theatre in Olney, MD., roughly 20 miles north of Washington DC. She started June 6 and will be there for the next year working in their props department.

Where her involvement in theatre provided us with the mechanism by which we saw each other on a fairly frequent basis while she was in college, the opposite is true now. Thanks to the nature of the theatre business, she will be working days, nights and weekends, with only Mondays off, including holidays.

She works a few hours during the day in the shop and then on the crew for the performances each evening. That being the case, it makes little sense for me to make the trip to see her. At best we would only have the one day, Monday, to really be together.

All is not lost. She thinks she will get a few days off in January, after the holiday show ends its run. I will probably travel out that way then. She would lose two of those days in travel time if she tries to come back this way, so it will be better for me being the one traveling, arriving the day before and leaving the day after her days off.

One visit in 12 months; I feel like she’s gone off to some remote island with a goofy looking guy in a sailor cap named Gilligan. Or maybe she’s joined the witness protection program and taken the name of some famous actress, like Heidi Fleiss.

I know all about this being the cycle of life and all that happy horse manure. I knew when she said she was going to pursue a career in theatre that the day would come that she would be moving off to one coast or another.

If only I hadn't done such a good job raising her.

Damn me for raising her to chase her dreams. It’s not often that we get a second chance at those dreams so chase them when you’re young I told her, before mortgages and children and all of those other “responsibilities” mess things up.

Truth be told, I’m bust-my-buttons proud of her. She graduated from Hawkeye-world with high distinction while double majoring in Theatre and Art. She worked one, often two, jobs her whole time through college. She’s earned her chance to chase her dreams and I would kick her you-know-what if I didn’t think she was reaching for the highest star in the sky.

I may have told this story before but I'm going to tell it again. I was invited to speak at the high school honors society induction her senior year. I asked the students if they wanted to be the man who dared to walk to the end of the block and made it the entire way, or the man who dared to walk around the world and only made it halfway?

Let me be the man who dared to walk around the world. Maybe he failed to reach his goal, maybe not, but imagine how many more things he saw, how many more adventures he experienced, than the man who only went to the end of the block. The failing is not in not reaching the goal. The failing is in not reaching high enough in the first place.

That’s what I want for Darling Daughter; to chase that dream however far it takes her, to dare to walk around the world and have a steamer trunk-full of adventures to share with my grandchildren, regardless of how far around the world she makes it.

Is it easy for Padre to be home without his best friend? No.

And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I don't sit still well

2011-04-29T09:18:00.001-05:00

If I know nothing else about myself, it’s that I don’t sit still well. I don’t know when I came to this understanding about myself, but I know it is true.

And if anything it has worsened with age. I swear I have AADD… Adult Attention Deficit Disorder.

At work, even though I have a job that often requires me to be sitting at a desk working on a computer, I can’t sit still. I last maybe an hour, maybe, before I have to get up and walk around a bit.

Friends continuously give me a hard time about my evening adventures. When I go out on a Friday or Saturday evening, I seldom sit in one place for long. It’s much more likely that I will venture to four, five, six different places.

Adventure is probably a good word for my restlessness. I love adventures. I love exploring new places and seeing what’s around the next bend.

I especially enjoy meeting new people and hearing their stories. I really love that. Everyone has a story to tell and most just want the chance to tell it.

That’s why my recent vacation adventure came as no surprise to anyone who knows me well. It was my perfect idea of what a vacation should be…. 3,200 miles and about 10 different states.

The stops along the way included Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Atlantic City, Boston, Portland, ME., Burlintgon, VT., Cooperstown, NY., and State College, PA. And there were people with stories all along the way.

The Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and Boston stops were planned. The rest occurred either as a whim that came to me as I was driving from one place to another, at the suggestion of a stranger I met along the way or simply because I needed a place to stay.

I often took to the back roads and two-lane highways because you really can’t see anything along those four-lane interstates.

Incidentally, there was some method behind the madness of this particular adventure. One of my goals is to see all 50 states. With this trip I have now seen the 48 continental United States. I have just Hawaii and Alaska remaining on that list.

When those will be checked off the list I have no idea. My darling daughter is graduating from college and moving to the Washington DC area in June. So I’m guessing there’s a pretty good chance my next adventure will be back out east.

Both sides are right

2011-02-22T12:13:00.000-06:00

That’s right, both sides are right. Isn’t that a novel idea in this age of political bitterness where it’s win at all cost?

Iowa has been in the news a lot recently, more than this Iowan would prefer to see. But in one case the attention, or at least some of the commentary related to it, is unwarranted.

I’m referring to last week’s incident where one state tournament wrestler forfeited to another, because “he” believed it was wrong to wrestle “her.”

I first heard the story on my local nightly television news and then woke up in the morning to see it blasted across the national news. You can read the details about it here. In short, Joel Northrup forfeited to Cassy Herkelman because he and his family didn’t believe it was appropriate for him to wrestle a girl in a combat sport.

You can imagine how people are picking sides in this one.

As for me, both sides are right.

I applaud Northrup for the courage of his decision. He was favored to contend for the state title but forfeited his opportunity to do so based on his religious beliefs. He didn’t hold a press conference to announce his decision, he didn’t call up reporters and make a spectacle of the occasion. He simply went to the mat as he was schedule to do and told the referee he was forfeiting.

Later, when asked why he simply cited his religious beliefs, gave his explanation and left it at that. Good for him.

Herkelman is also right. She just wants to wrestle and the only way she can do that is to wrestle with the boys. That takes courage as well. Being willing to compete with the boys and risk the embarrassment of snide remarks and behind-the-back innuendo takes courage.

To her further credit, she also has not blown the incident out of proportion. “He had the right to make his own choice, and he made his choice,” she said. Of course, she thinks she could have beaten him but wouldn’t you expect that confidence from every wrestler who made it as far as the state tournament?

Yes, both sides can be right. How about we be proud of these two young people and leave it at that?

A couple of pix of snow

2011-02-03T12:01:00.000-06:00

Mountain of snow after city came through at 4:15 a.m. and plowed street.

Looking back toward my garage. The garage is under the house and out of sight on the left.

Give 'em thanks

2011-02-03T10:10:00.000-06:00

We all too often hear the complaints about public workers so let me take a moment to give 'em thanks.

I live on a cul-de-sac, off a side street. I expected that it would be sometime tonight, or maybe even tomorrow, before I saw a city plow.

Instead, there they were at 4:15 a.m. this morning. I really don't mind being woken. It was quite the pleasant surprise to see them clearing the street. You have to give them credit for being out at that time of the morning.

As the previous post indicated, I cleared as much of the drive as I could yesterday... some of those drifts are just too massive and I have no where left to put the snow. I planned to go out today and finish the end of the drive after the plows came through and bury it under an avalanche of snow.

But to my surprise, the city sent an end loader instead of a plow. The worker spent a good half hour out there clearing the cul-de-sac and rather than a buried drive, I have a minimal amount of snow to clear.... well as minimal as it can be when you had 16 inches of snow fall in roughly 12 hours.

I'm figuring I have about an hour's worth of work to do, far less than I was planning originally.

So, my thanks to the city crews out there doing their best to get us moving again.

16.7 inches of snow

2011-02-02T18:04:00.000-06:00

For the record, we had 16.7 inches of snow between Tuesday afternoon and sometime shortly after midnight, Wednesday morning.

That's on top of the inch-and-a-half we had Monday, on top of the snow we had the previous week, on top of the ice we had on January 17.

Also for the record, I hate cold weather and I'm none too fond of snow.

Most things were closed today. You know it's bad when the malls close. I work for a college so I earned a day off myself.

I ventured out around 2 p.m. to fire up the snow blower and try to clear off the drive. The first thing to greet me when I opened the garage door was a four foot drift of snow that had piled up against it. The winds were quite high overnight and were still blowing their fair share when I was out.

That explains the photo. I can't say that I ever remember having to take a break to come inside from the cold... to break the icicles off my eyebrows.

After about an hour and a half of work I managed to get enough of a path down my drive to get the car out. The drifts were even higher on the opposite side of my drive than they were against the garage door so there was no way I was going to clear the whole drive. Besides that, there's no place to put it all.

One problem remains, there's still over a foot of snow in the street outside my house. I live on a cul-de-sac, off a side street, so the city plows haven't gotten here yet. They say they are going to get everything cleared yet tonight so I know what I'll be doing tomorrow morning... more snow blowing at the end of the drive so I can get the car out and get to work.

Call the boss, I think I'm gonna be late.

Did I mention that I hate cold, and snow?

Stop the presses

2011-01-28T16:05:00.000-06:00

In a previous life, it seems so long ago now, I spent about seven years as a newspaper reporter, editor, etc., etc.

The magic exclamation, "Stop the presses!" really doesn't happen as often as one would be lead to believe from watching various movies and television shows. During my time in the biz, I only heard it used twice, both times by me.

One was when working at the Oskaloosa Herald. We'd had a series of arsons occurring in the community and news about those happened to come just as the newspaper hit the presses.

The second was 25 years ago today. That was the day, as you probably know by now, the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after takeoff from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, FL.

At the time I was working as the Assistant City Editor at the Clinton (IA) Herald.

The deadline for dropping the paper to the press room was 11 a.m. The Challenger exploded just after 10:30 a.m.

As fate would have it, our city editor was on vacation and so I found myself on the desk, putting together the day's paper.

Remember, this was in the days before the internet so news of a tragedy even of this proportion took a bit of time to travel through the news wires. By the time reporters on the scene had time to sort out what was happening and actually file a story we had put the paper to bed and were no longer monitoring the wire.

The call came to my desk shortly after 11 a.m. I received the words in a phone call from one of our reporters at the county courthouse...

"Alan, did you hear the Challenger exploded?!"

"What?"

"The Challenger exploded. I just heard it on the radio here."

"What? Are you kidding?"

"No, it's on the news."

I know, not the most scintillating of discussions but the news was just too unbelievable. Even as we heard about it happening, we still couldn't accept that it was real.

This wasn't supposed to happen. The whole country had been looking forward to this special shuttle lift off. The build-up to it had been going on for weeks as the first teacher in space, Christa McAuliffe, would be participating. Elementary and middle schools were conducting special assemblies, bringing their students into gymnasiums and auditoriums to watch the historic event.

Sadly, it was historic for a whole different set of reasons.

My first move was to the wire machine. The first story, very brief and with few details, had appeared just minutes before my phone conversation.

With that confirmation in hand I picked up the phone and called the press room, "Stop the presses."

Lasts and firsts

2011-01-23T11:56:00.000-06:00

My birthday was last month. I told darling daughter the only thing I wanted from her was for her to come home and have dinner with me at my favorite restaurant.

Of course, I paid the bill. Three-digit meal bills are a little more than she can bear on a college senior’s budget.

That’s right, college senior. Four short months from now she will be a college graduate.

When I dropped Kristin off at her dorm for the first time four years ago I didn’t have those empty nest sentiments I’ve heard so much of; the stories of parents in tears as they drove away after leaving their child behind for the first time.

I sense it was because she was only a 90-minute drive away and with her involvement in theatre I knew I would be seeing her from time to time as I drove out to watch one production or another in which she was involved.

This time it will be different. This time she will be moving much farther away and the number of times I will see her will be limited. She plans on pursuing her master’s degree at a college yet to be determined but undoubtedly it will be at least a couple of state lines away, if not more.

The separation will most likely begin soon after her May graduation as I expect she will be working an internship at some theatre during the summer months before heading off to parts unknown.

Which brings me back to my birthday. I knew this birthday would be a “last.” It would be the last, at least for the foreseeable future, which we would spend together. The odds of her being able to come back for my birthday will now become difficult That is especially true considering that it lies between Thanksgiving and Christmas, holidays for which people traditionally return home anyway.

And it is quite possible that it may have been the last forever. In another three years, after completing her master’s degree, she will enter the working world. Assuming she remains in theatre, that will quite possibly take her even further away, to either the east or west coast.

Before you start believing that I’m feeling sorry for myself, no, that is not the case. At the risk of sounding trite, I understand that life is a circle, constantly moving forward but somehow circling back upon itself. I’ll see her many times and most likely in unusual ways that I cannot now imagine.

Rather, this birthday was significant because it was a “last”. I’ve talked before about how important it is to me to recognize “lasts” when they happen. All too often people don’t see the lasts until after they occur and then it’s too late; too late to spend the time to enjoy them, too late to grab hold of them and make sure they are impermeably etched into their memory banks.

This was the perfect last. It was the first time Kristin had been to this restaurant, and the first time she had been at this high of a quality restaurant since she was really too young to remember. Her joy, the smile in her eyes, her total appreciation of the experience will be memories I cherish forever.

To cap the evening we headed to the IMAX theatre to see the latest Harry Potter installment. We’d begun reading the Potter books when she was probably in middle school. We’ve read them all and attended all of the movies together. They serve as a link, circling back from the present to her childhood.

But just as this was a last, it was also a first, both for her and our relationship. The college years are the transition period from youth to adulthood. When she graduates in May she will be taking that giant leap into adulthood.

Things will change for us, our relationship will evolve. I don’t know what that means, I don’t have that crystal ball. But I do know that we are and always have been best of friends. That will never change.

I also know that she will be my darling daughter and we will forever be in each other’s lives, just new and exciting ways.

Zombies invade downtown Davenport; I live to tell story

2010-11-01T13:44:00.001-05:00

Halloween is a great night for photo taking, especially when there are zombies running loose.

Utter mayhem filled the streets of downtown Davenport Halloween night as more than 100 Zombies terrorized the towns people. Through sheer will, stealth and trickery I was able to take several photos of the zombies and get away with my brains still in tact.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

The Zombie Walk began last year as the brain child of local artist Alexander Iaccarino. The Quad City Times has a good story about the background for the event which was held for the first time a year ago.

You might also want to check out the Quad Cities Department of Biological Sciences website.

By the way, Iaccarino is the grandson of well-known local artist Ralph Iaccarino. Going by the nom de plume, That Kid Who Draws, he does some pretty cool stuff himself.

As I've mentioned in earlier posts, I'm dusting off whatever skills I once had as a photographer and getting back into the hobby after many years away from taking it seriously. One of those things that happens when you get married, have kids, are working for a living and just generally living your life.

John Lennon once said something about Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans. That's kind of what happens to those old hobbies and interests from younger days as you go about raising a family.

Now, however, darling daughter is off in college and I have more time for myself. So I've begun to invest in new camera equipment to catch up with the digital age and I'm out and about taking photos.

I've always preferred to take pictures of people and ones that tell a story in some way. The Zombie Walk was the perfect setting for me to get out do that.

Below are a few shots from that night. There are more available on my flickr page.

Famous quotes from famous(?) people

2010-10-22T20:16:00.000-05:00

The CBS Sunday Morning program this past Sunday told the story of Mark Twain's biography about to be published, 100 years after his death. During the report they displayed numerous Twain quotes including:

Familiarity breeds contempt, and children.

That made me chuckle and also made me think about the many other quotes I've heard over the years that also made me smile. So, I spent a little time, off and on, over the last few days looking up other humorous quotes.

Here, for your enjoyment, are a few of them:

Graduation speeches were invented largely in the belief that college students should never be released into the world until they have been properly sedated.
- Garry Trudeau

Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?
- Mae West

A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married.
- H.L. Mencken

Love makes the world go round? Not at all. Whiskey makes it go round twice as fast.
- Compton Mackenzie

How I see it is that men get one night of pleasure, and we get nine months of putting them through hell and getting away with it.
- Sara Swank

Don't be so humble--you are not that great.
- Golda Meir

God gave men both a penis and a brain, but unfortunately not enough blood supply to run both at the same time.
- Robin Williams

Not all chemicals are bad. Without hydrogen or oxygen, for example, there would be no way to make water, a vital ingredient in beer.
- Dave Berry

Adam and Eve had an ideal marriage. He didn't have to hear about all the men she could have married, and she didn't have to hear about the way his mother cooked.
- Kimberly Broyles

Boys will be boys, and so will a lot of middle-aged men.
- Kin Hubbard

I am not a vegetarian because I love animals. I am a vegetarian because I hate plants.
- A. Whitney Brown

Hard work spotlights the character of people: some turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses, and some don't turn up at all.
- Sam Ewing

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then give up. There's no use in being a damn fool about it.
- W.C. Fields

If the English language made any sense, lackadaisical would have something to do with a shortage of flowers.
- Doug Larson

I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters.
- Frank Lloyd Wright

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
- Albert Einstein

If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?
- Abraham Lincoln

There are terrible temptations which it requires strength and courage to yield to.
- Oscar Wilde

Alimony is like buying hay for a dead horse.
- Groucho Marx

It was a woman who drove me to drink and I never got the chance to thank her.
- W.C. Fields

Yes, madam, I am drunk. But in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly.
- Winston Churchill

Gravitation can not be held responsible for people falling in love.
- Albert Einstein

I told my wife the truth. I told her I was seeing a psychiatrist. Then she told me the truth: that she was seeing a psychiatrist, two plumbers and a bartender.
- Rodney Dangerfield

Age is strictly a case of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn't matter.
- Jack Benny

I don't care what is written about me as long as it isn't true.
- Katherine Hepburn

A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.
- Gloria Steinem

Clinton's Eagle Point Park

2010-10-19T12:16:00.000-05:00

I wandered up to Clinton, IA, the other day to take a few photos at Eagle Point Park. People from the Clinton area are well aware of the park's beauty but people from further out might not know it even exists.

The park is located on the bluffs above what is reported to be the widest part of the Mississippi River. It's easily a mile wide at that point and looks much more like a lake than a river. For fun they have one of those binocular machines that you pop quarters into and can look out over the river.

The park totals 164 acres in size and among its many features includes a dog park, disc golf course, numerous shelters and playground areas, and a lodge that is used for a wide variety of events throughout the year. Its most notable landmark is the approximately two-story-tall tower, one of the New Deal WPA projects. You can still climb the steps inside the tower to its top.

If you've never made the trip, it's well worth a weekend afternoon drive.

The park's biggest event each year is probably the Symphony of Lights, a Christmas time explosion of holiday lights. The display covers roughly half of the park's roadways and often includes activities in the park lodge.

You drive through the display so no walking is required. They only charge $7 per car, so load up the family and take a drive north this holiday season. The event begins November 25 and runs through December 30.

The park is located north of Clinton. If you're driving on the Iowa side, it's easy to take the bypass (going passed the Wild Rose Casino) around town to get there. From the Illinois side you can go through Fulton and cross the north bridge into Clinton.

A few of my photos from the park appear here. One of the challenges in taking these was that they are already beginning to set up for the holiday light show. Electrical boxes and many of the displays themselves are already laying on the ground, ready to be raised and put into place.... so I had to do some strategic positioning to make sure they did not show up in the shots.

The full set of park photos is available on my flickr page.

Darling daughter's first set design

2010-10-14T15:14:00.001-05:00

As I've probably mentioned before, darling daughter is a theatre design major at the University of Iowa.

She's a senior this year and plans to head off to get her master's degree somewhere next year and eventually work in theatre and movies, building sets and prop pieces. Doting dad is pretty proud of her.

She has the opportunity this semester to design sets for two productions. That's something that more often than not falls to a graduate student so she's been very fortunate to have that chance.

The first production was held just a couple of weeks ago and was titled Eggshell. These are new plays, written and produced by students. I've attended nearly every one she has been involved in over the years and, frankly, they can range from pretty good to downright bad.

They all need additional work but that can be said for the work of even more accomplished playwrights. That's the reason most productions spend time appearing off Broadway, often for many years, before making it to the big time.

Eggshell is a bit difficult to explain. Suffice it to be said that it's set in another world where the workers are subservient to a giant eggshell contraption. There is no dialogue, at least not that anyone would understand. All of the characters' lines are spoken in complete gibberish.

Darling daughter's biggest challenge was creating the nine-foot egg that was the centerpiece for the set design. Pictured here, it includes various levers and openings where the actors either put things into the egg or pull them out. At different times, it also plays music and shoots out smoke and snow. An operator inside the egg controlled its various activities.

The student plays are always fun and they are definitely new and different. I encourage anyone who enjoys theatre to check them out. It's not all that far of a drive from here to Iowa City and the admission fee is only $5.

You might also want to look into the college's New Play Festival held the first week in May. It's a full week of these new plays, often with more than one in a night. Plays in the Festival, however, are juried in advance and individually selected for inclusion in the festival, so you're odds of seeing a good one are a bit higher.

Below are a couple of additional photos from Eggshell and if you'd like to see more, head on over to my Flickr page.

Calling the inside strike

2010-10-12T08:11:00.000-05:00

Those of you not into baseball and softball might want to go about your normal business as I rant just a bit.

Watching the recent baseball playoffs brought back some painful memories of darling daughter's (henceforth to be referred to as DD) days as a fastpitch softball pitcher. Well, they weren't painful for me but they certainly were for some of the batters she faced.

In game two of the Minnesota Twins - New York Yankees playoff contest this, the umpire had what could only be called a generous strike zone when it came to the outside portion of the plate. Unfortunately, the same could not be said for the inside portion.

Even the announcers commented at length about how he was calling strikes on pitches that were several inches outside the plate, but not calling strikes on ones that were actually crossing over the plate on the inside.

Not calling the inside strike was one of my great pet peeves during DD's pitching days and, unfortunately, is something you see quite often. What makes this particularly irritating is that it's a recipe for disaster and is entirely on the umpire's shoulders.

In way of illustration, I remember sitting behind home plate during a game at a ballpark in Milan, IL., as DD was toeing the rubber. Pitch after pitch crossed the inside portion of the plate, the batters weren't swinging as the umpire called ball after ball.

To no one in particular, but loud enough so that I was sure the umpire could hear it I said, "If he doesn't start calling that inside pitch, someone's going to get hit."

Sure enough, a couple of batters later, one of them was solidly plunked by a fastball on the inside corner of the plate.

You see, DD wasn't willing to give up that inside corner of the plate to the batter... no pitcher should. But, as pitch after pitch went across that inside corner and wasn't called a strike, the batters knew that they could continue to crowd the plate, more and more. By not calling that inside strike, the umpire takes away half of the strike zone from the pitcher.

More importantly, especially in youth ball, that umpire is putting the batter at risk. A good pitcher, throwing 50 to 60 mph fastballs, isn't going to allow the batter to crowd the plate and take away half of the strike zone.

By the way, if you never been hit by a 55 mph fastball coming at you from 40 feet away, trust me when I say it hurts, a lot. Having spent countless hours catching for DD's practices, and being hit by more than one errant pitch along the way, I know all too well how it feels.

So, no, I don't have telepathic powers that allowed me to see the future and that batter getting plunked, just the ability to see the inevitable. The sad part is that all that has to done to keep it from happening is for umpires to call the strike zone as it's written in the rule book, including the inside corner.

Four Kingdoms Renaissance & Pyrate Faire!

2010-10-11T08:21:00.000-05:00

I am undoubtedly behind in updating my blog so let me get back to work with a quick note about the Four Kingdoms Renaissance & Pyrate Faire!

The Faire was held this past weekend at the Camelot Campground between Andalusia and Milan. It's just down the highway from the Campbell Field softball diamonds for those of you familiar with those.

This is one of those little events in the area that most people probably don't even know about, and that's unfortunate. While not overwhelming in size it is a great step back into time and a lot of fun.

I suspect the reason it isn't bigger is partly due to limited ability to promote the event and largely due to its location. The Camelot Campground isn't the most well known location in the world and many of those who even know about the event might think the location is too far out of the way to travel to.

I've run my fair share of special events over the years so I understand the limitations of small budgets. None-the-less it's too bad the Faire can't be held in a more visible location.

I've posted a few photos from the event here and there are more on my Flickr page if you're curious. I'd also encourage you to mark your calendars now and make an effort to visit next year's Faire.

Landlocked Film Festival

2010-09-06T11:21:00.000-05:00

Ok, my poor blog is feeling neglected, I haven’t been very diligent in my postings recently.

Let me start catching up with a note about Iowa City’s Landlocked Film Festival. There seem to be a number of film festivals in the area and I’ve wanted to attend one for some time but hadn’t made the time to do so.

A week ago I took Friday afternoon off and headed out to Iowa City for Landlocked, and I’m very glad I did. I had the opportunity to see three films, two documentary-style productions and one that would fall into the feature film category.

Darling daughter accompanied me to the documentaries, both held in the afternoon. Perhaps we’ve spent too much time together over the years but we pretty much agreed on our assessment of each.

I won’t go into details regarding the films I saw because that, frankly, isn’t what I want to share with you. In a nutshell, the first, Love & Valor: The Intimate Civil War Letters, was an interesting history lesson which I did like, but it wasn’t a very good film.

The second, Can't Go Native, was a much better production and we both very much enjoyed it. It told the story of a archaeology professor, born in Iowa, who has traveled to and studied the people of the same city in Japan, year after year, for more than 40 years.

That evening I attended Is It Just Me?, the story of a young gay man searching for love. While I don’t expect that it will ever be nominated for an Academy Award, I did like and was happy to have taken the time to see it.


Prior to showing of Is It Just Me? the director is being interviewed in the foreground and lead actor is posing for photos, back left, in front of white screen.

One of the many great things about the film festival is the cost. Most of the films are free of charge. Even the feature presentations such as Is It Just Me? charge only a $5 admission.

A second is that you have the opportunity to meet the people behind the films. The author/director of Love & Valor spoke after that showing, both the director and the archaeology professor who the Can’t Go Native story is about answered questions after that filming and both the director and lead actor for Is It Just Me? were available for questions after that showing.

I really enjoyed having that chance to learn what these people were thinking when making their movies and some of the “behind the scenes” activities that you never learn when attending the big budget movies.

In addition to that, you have an almost countless number of choices. Landlocked is held over four days with films showing simultaneously at anywhere from two to four different locations at once.

If you enjoy movies at all, I highly recommend marking Landlocked on your calendar for next year. I had other plans for the rest of the weekend this year, but next year I’ll make an effort to spend most of the weekend at Landlocked.

Who knows... I see the Wild Rose Film Festival is being held in Des Moines the first weekend in November, maybe I'll make a weekend out of that.

Take what you want, Leave your fair share

2010-08-17T12:51:00.001-05:00

Just a couple of weeks ago I read an article about how Panera Bread had converted one of its stores to a new “pay what you want” model. The motto is Take what you want, Leave your fair share.

Little did I know that I would end up unwittingly walking into that store this past Saturday morning.

The store, one of Panera’s St. Louis Bread Company stores, is located in Clayton, MO., a St. Louis suburb. Customers at the store literally pay what they want, whether that’s nothing at all, $100 for a single bagel, or somewhere in between.

The concept is simply that those who are capable of paying more will do so, those who are more financially hard pressed will pay what they are capable of doing, and hopefully it will all average out in the end. The New York Daily news ran this story announcing the new restaurant opening this past May.

I was in St. Louis over the weekend, staying in a hotel in Clayton. My friend and I walked out of the hotel Saturday morning, looking for a cup of coffee for her/diet Coke for me, and just happened to walk into the St. Louis Bread Company store where the new concept is being tested.

It works quite simply. “Suggested” prices for the items are listed on the big boards behind the counters, just like you would see in the local Panera. When you go to pay, the cashier tells you the suggested amount and you drop whatever amount you like into a container located in front of the register. In that way, the cashier has no idea how much you paid so there is no embarrassment for those who can’t pay as much.

We paid roughly $5 more than what our bill required. Truthfully, if I were a regular customer of the store I would probably leave something closer to a dollar or two each time, but knowing this would be my only trip I was a bit more generous.

I hope the idea works and is a huge success. Wouldn’t it be great if it took off and not only Panera, but all sorts of businesses were able to go down the same path? What a great, and convenient, way for us all to “pay it forward.”

Learning the lessons of life

2010-08-10T12:54:00.000-05:00

The 14-under ASA National Softball Tournament was in town last week and I had the good fortune to volunteer as a scorekeeper and announcer for a couple of nights.

The experience brought back many great memories. My daughter joined her first "travel" team when she was 10 and continued to play through age 17. We spent eight summers at ballparks all over the Midwest, going as far east as the Indianapolis area, west to Denver, north to Minneapolis and south to Kansas City.

She played on some very good teams, winning a number of tournaments and competing in several national tournaments including this same 14-U tournament seven years ago. She also played on some not so good teams that not only did not win any tournaments but were fortunate to even win any games.

Along the way she learned a lot about success and adversity, working with others toward a shared goal and many other valuable traits she will use throughout her life. We made some good friends and had a whole lot of fun. While others were heading to Florida for summer vacations, we were packing the van for another roadtrip to a softball diamond, and we loved every minute of it.

But it was much more than summer vacations that we devoted to the sport. Fastpitch softball, as with any youth sport played at a competitive level, is a year-long endevor. That is especially true for pitchers. For 11 months out of the year we practiced five days a week. The only time we took off was a four - six week period around Christmas.

I say "we" because a pitcher needs a catcher. Pitcher's dads are affectionately referred to as "bucket dads" because we spend most of our time sitting on buckets filled with softballs, dutifully catching the 150 or more pitches our daughters toss at us in a typical practice session. Most nights I would get home from work around 5:30 p.m., eat something cold while changing my clothes and then head back out the door to practice.

In the summer that was easy as we went to the back yard where I had constructed a practice pitching area for her with two truckloads of limestone I hauled from the quarry and a bank of halogen lights that made our yard look like a landing strip at night.

In the winters it was a bit more time consuming. We were fortunate enough to be able to use a machine shop owned by a friend so we had a warm place to go. The downside was that it was 12 miles from our home. By the time we drove there, set things up, and got her practice in, more than two hours had passed by and it was often past 8 p.m. by the time we arrived back at the house.

My daughter decided not to pursue softball in college. She was, admittedly, not quite good enough for Division I ball but she was definitely strong enough to play at the smaller college levels.

No, she didn't "burn out" as sometimes happens with young people. Instead, another love took her heart, theatre.

I will forever remember the day, when she was about to start her sophomore year in high school, that I pointed out to her that she would not be able to play softball and be a theatre major in college. There are simply too many scheduling conflicts between the two to be able to do both.

It was the classic jaw dropping moment and she sat there, staring at me as the news sank in. I told her to think about what she really wanted to do, she didn't need to make a decision at that moment. Less than a week later she came back and shared with me that the choice was theatre. She knew theater was what she wanted to do the rest of her life and as much as she loved softball, there just wouldn't be a career in it after college.

She did play for a couple more summers after that. The following summer she pitched for a highly-competitive team that won that Indianapolis tournament I mentioned earlier and a college exposure tournament in Denver.

The next summer though, prior to her senior year in high school, she changed directions and teams. She decided she wanted her last summer of softball to be more relaxed. She intentionally chose a team that, while not so competitive, certainly knew how to have fun.

As it turned out, fate plays a hand in these decisions. We discovered in late March that year, just a couple months before the season began, that my wife had cancer. She was only able to make it to one of our daughter's games that summer and by the time the state tournament rolled around in July she was gone.

That summer, my daughter's new coaches and teammates took her under their wing. They provided rides to out of town tournaments and roommates in the hotels. They laughed with her and provided her an escape. They were there for the funeral. They gave her an autographed pair of the goofiest looking baby blue and orange Converse shoes that you would ever hope to see. She wore them until she could wear them no more.

She'll be a senior this year at the University of Iowa, double majoring in theatre design and art. She still plans on pursuing a career in theatre when she graduates.

As I said above, the lessons she learned from softball will be with her throughout her life. She learned to set goals, to be a leader, to work with a team, that anything's possible if you're willing to work for it, to overcome the inevitable adversities that we all encounter and that good friends will be there for you during the good times as well as when those adversities are especially harsh.

Flickr and what strikes a chord

2010-07-26T18:43:00.005-05:00

I opened a Flickr account just over a year ago, posted one photo on it and forgot about it.

For those of you unfamiliar with Flickr....it's a social networking site devoted to photography, mostly still photos but there are videos there as well. It's a place where both amateur and professional photographers can share their work with one other as well as anyone else who simply enjoys looking at photographs.

As I mentioned in my previous post, one of my goals this year is to revive my love for photography. Recently, I mentioned that to a former high school classmate who also enjoys photography. She encouraged me to become more active on Flickr and so, over the last couple of weeks, I've added several photos to my Flickr account.

Already I have had people visiting my site and clicking on my photos to take a look. What's interesting to me is what they are interested in, what strikes a chord. My personal favorites are not the ones that appear to spark the most interest.

In fact, the photo that has attracted the most interest is one that happened purely by chance and isn't even taken from a particularly good angle. It's a photo of my daughter, ankle deep in mud, taken when we were hiking through the timber land near my grandparent's farm in Boone, IA.

It had rained quite a bit just before our visit and as we walked near the creek she suddenly found herself being sucked into the mud. With camera in hand, I snapped this shot:

I do understand why that one catches people's attention, especially with that pouty-lip look she has on her face.

What I don't understand is one of the others that seems to have captured interest, a photo of my dog, from behind, that I took just for the heck of it as we were driving down the street in my convertible.

To me it's a pretty boring shot. I included it as part of a few other similar shots which, together, tell a story. Of those shots though, this is the one that people have looked at the most:

Whether it's my favorite or not doesn't matter. If it interests people, that's great. I'm just happy people are taking a look at some of my photos, though I have to admit some curiosity in what they see in that Bailey-dog shot.

If you'd like to take a look at the rest of the photos I've thrown out there, go to www.flickr.com/alansheaven

In and around downtown Iowa City

2010-07-18T10:37:00.004-05:00

In my younger days I really enjoyed photography. But then my daughter came onto the scene, I got busy with other things in life and taking photos just for the sake of taking photos became a thing of the past.

I still take many photos for my job, and enjoy doing that, but it's different from taking photos for purely personal pleasure.

As this new year started I set several goals for myself. One of those was to begin taking my photography more seriously again. That's why you've seen more photos on my blog in the last couple of weeks.

I headed to Iowa City Friday to see the latest theatre production that darling daughter was working on. I had about an hour to spare, took the camera along and snapped these shots in the downtown area. These are just a few of the shots, more are available on my newly-established Flickr account.

Final notes on my Fourth of July trip

2010-07-15T22:09:00.012-05:00

I posted earlier about my Fourth of July trip to see a Minnesota Twins game.

Before the trip gets too far into my rear view mirror, I’d like to take a moment to post a few more photos from the trip.

My journey to Minneapolis came to a sudden halt north of Ames on Interstate 35. Shortly after seeing signs indicating road construction 4 miles ahead, traffic came to a full stop.

We sat for so long that people eventually got out of their vehicles and walked up and down the road discussing the state of affairs.Not to be one to pass up an adventure, after about 20 minutes I determined it was time to take action, got back into my car, made a hard left turn, drove through the median and headed back south to the nearest exit.

From there I headed a short distance to the west and then turned onto the first paved road heading back north. As I did, several emergency vehicles passed me by, in the opposite direction, so it was apparent that an accident was the cause of the interstate traffic stoppage.

You never know what you’re going to find on one of these adventures. One of the sites I happened upon this time was a llama farm… or is it llama ranch? I’ve seen many llamas on farms before, but this one had a relatively large number.

Not wanting to take my shoes off to count while driving, I can’t tell you how many. Just trust me that there were quite a few.

Finally, I found a road back to the interstate but, not so fast my adventurous friend, the on-ramp happened to be the one under construction. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. So back to the county roads I went.

Eventually I did make it back onto the interstate where, to my wondering eyes should appear, but one of the tackiest casino signs known to man, a curved arrow stuck on the side of an old-style water tower. Come on folks, really?

But I did finally make my way to what is affectionately called the Mini-Apple.

Other photos here are sites in and around Minneapolis that I found interesting:

swimmers in a display window,

downtown at night,

a street sign and building,

a parking ramp outside the Twins stadium,

the Minneapolis library,

the cityscape outside my hotel room with the stadium near the top of the photo (I just like the darkness of this photo)

and a sunburst design that I will let you guess as to what it is.

I'm a creatist! Working on CQ, not IQ.

2010-07-12T18:15:00.004-05:00

I just finished reading a piece in Newsweek magazine entitled “The Creativity Crisis.” It made a lot of sense to me and I encourage everyone to take a few minutes to read through it.

In essence, it argues that we should be concerned more with teaching creativity in school, and increasing students’ Creativity Quotient (CQ) rather than focusing on their Intelligence Quotient (IQ). I couldn’t agree more.

As I read through the article, parts of it really struck home to me. From time to time I’ve had people comment to me about my artistic ability. My response has always been that I’m really not artistic, I’m creative. I'm not an artist, I'm a creatist.

I still believe that’s the case.

I like to think I’m a decent photographer but I can’t draw particularly well and I certainly wouldn’t want to have to make a living from my painting abilities, unless you’re talking painting walls. I’ve never tried sculpting but I’m guessing it’s fair to say that’s not where my hidden talents lie.

On the other hand, I’ve designed and built sets for awards shows, I designed, built and painted the area surrounding my fireplace, I've created several furniture pieces around my home, I’ve created many “fun” items such as the clock now hanging in my main room, and so on.

What I do have is the ability to imagine something and then devising a way to create it. I may not be able to make that happen in a traditional manner, but I create other ways to make my ideas a reality.

That’s the Creativity Quotient. It's the ability to dream numerous solutions to a problem, analyzing which are the most workable and likely to succeed, and then organizing the resources and determining how to make them a reality.

The Newsweek article goes on to argue that, regardless of how much our CQ might be at birth, that we all can develop it further. That's why it's so important that schools, not just grade schools but all schools, kindergarten through college, incorporate creativity into their curriculum.

I suspect my CQ was high at birth but there is no doubt it was further developed as I went through my childhood years. You see, I am an only child. There are advantages and disadvantages to being an “only.” Many people wish they were an only but I wanted nothing more than to have a sibling when I was growing up.

One of the advantages to being an only however, is that you are forced to be creative. Both of my parents worked full-time jobs so I was a latch key kid before anyone ever knew what a latch key kid was. Heck, in those days we never locked our doors so I didn’t even have a latch key to carry.

This was before computers and video games. The one television in our home had only four channels and regardless of how many friends I might have had, as an only child I still spent a lot of time alone. That meant I learned to become very creative.

I pretended to be a DJ, sitting in my bedroom spinning my 45 rpm records, I wrote my own little neighborhood newspaper, I made clubhouses out of card tables and blankets, I played both sides in checkers, chess and a variety of other games. Trust me, you don't know what creative is until you play the old Hands Down game solitaire.

We need to change the way we raise and teach our children. Some will say I live in the past, that times have changed and you can't keep children away from their video games and cell phones. My reply is that my 21-year-old daughter grew up during a time when there were computers, video games, cell phones and countless cable television channels.

It's really up to parents to choose how they wish to raise their children. We limited the amount of television our daughter watched, she didn't have a television in her bedroom, the only video games she had were educational ones on the computer, there were no Playstations in our house, and she didn't have a cellphone until she was old enough to drive.

Did it work? She'll be a senior this fall at the University of Iowa, double majoring in Theatre Design and Art. She has far more artistic ability than I will ever have. But before you label her as just an "artsy" person, keep in mind that she has taken honors classes at the university and was valedictorian of her high school class.

I'm thinking it worked.

More from the Truckers Jamboree

2010-07-11T10:18:00.003-05:00

Just a few more shots from the Walcott Truckers Jamboree....

The great truckers jamboree

2010-07-09T15:21:00.006-05:00

The Largest Truckstop in the World is less than 10 miles from my doorstep.

Really. I'm not kidding. It was even on the Travel channel which has to make it official.

Every year the Iowa 80 Truckstop (did I mention it was the Largest Truckstop in the World?) hosts the great Walcott Truckers Jamboree. For 31 years they've taken time out to celebrate all that is Big Truck.

Sadly, I have never attended this "you can only find it here" event. Part of the reason is the old adage, "People don't take time to see what's in their own backyard."

But, in my defense, a big part of it is also because it's held on a Thursday and Friday so you have to take time off from work, or make an effort to go in the evening... there's no stopping by on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon.

Well, as fortune would have it, I had this afternoon off and with it I knew I had no further excuses for not attending the great Walcott Truckers Jamboree at the Largest Truckstop in the World. So with camera in hand, I ventured out to the Largest Truckstop in the World.

And I liked it. It is not at all a stretch to say that these trucks are some of the Largest Artistic Canvases in the world. But what really caught my attention was a relatively small item; the ornaments adorning the hoods of these monster vehicles.

I had never noticed how many different hood ornaments there are, each I'm sure, reflecting the personality of its respective owner.

The limitations of this blog software make it difficult to lay the photos out in a sensible pattern, so bear with me as I attempt to describe a few.

There was an angel with acrylic blue wings, a duck with a stogie, one ornament that not only had a flying horse but also the truck's name...Blue Baron, a flying pig, a basset hound, the official Mack bulldog, one fella who wasn't happy with just one Mack bulldog but had to have three, a pair of longhorns and a bronco.

The test when telling the story of any event or site that we might visit is the simple question, "Would you go again?" In the case of the Walcott Truckers Jamboree at the Largest Truckstop in the World, my answer is Yes.

And if anyone in the Quad Cities area happens to see this blog post yet today (Friday, July 9), I'd suggest you take an hour or two and head out to the Largest Truckstop in the World and see the sites, large and small.

What I did on my summer vacation

2010-07-05T18:30:00.004-05:00

I feel like I’m back in school, writing that “What I did on my summer vacation” report.

I’m a Minnesota Twins fan. I’ve been a Minnesota Twins fan since I was in grade school back in the sixties.

I lived in Boone, IA, at the time, about four hours from Minneapolis. My Little League team was the Dodgers and, other than winning the league, the most exciting thing each summer was our team trip to Minneapolis to see the Twins play.

We would all load up in four or five cars and make the journey to Metropolitan Stadium (most often referred to as the “Met”) where we sat in the outfield bleachers, the Knothole Section. The Twins had some pretty good teams at the time and we had the chance to watch my favorite Twin, Harmon Killebrew, as well as such other greats as Jim Kaat and Tony Olivia.

Years later the Metrodome was built and the Twins and their football counterparts, the Vikings, left the old Met behind for a new home. The land the Met formerly sat on is now home of the Mall of America.

My family moved from Boone in junior high but I never stopped being a Twins fan. After I married and settled in the eastern part of Iowa, my wife and I made a number of trips north to see them play, including all of the 1991 American League playoff and World Series games.

When it was announced the Twins would be moving into another new home this summer, Target Field, I knew I would be making the trip to see them once again.

So there I was on July 3rd, watching the Twins play the Tampa Bay Rays. And there I was as Jim Thome hit not one but two home runs to pass a guy named Harmon Killebrew as the number 10 all time home run hitter.

And there I was as Harmon Killebrew came onto the big screen to congratulate Thome on his accomplishment.

And, just for a moment, I was 12 years old again, sitting in the Knothole Section at Metropolitan Stadium.

The Twins lost the game but it didn't really matter. Explorers for centuries have been search for the ever-elusive Fountain of Youth. Maybe they should look toward the ballparks. Not just the expansive major league parks but the little neighborhood diamond with the makeshift backstop, the high school parks on a July evening, the minor league parks and all of the others that can be found in nearly every community, big and small, all across our nation.

Baseball has this magical way of bringing us back to our youth. Maybe its magic isn't lasting and permanent but for just a little bit of time, from the moment we hear the call of "Play Ball" through to the last out of the game, we can all be young again.

Doing little things makes big things happen

2010-06-21T12:22:00.007-05:00

“If a lot of people come together and do little things, it adds up to big things.” -- Chad Pregracke

A couple of years ago, Living Lands and Waters collected the equivalent of 11 football fields of Styrofoam, more than 14,000 feet of barge rope, 5,200 55-gallon drums, 55,301 tires, 55,752 bags of trash and 12 bowling balls from the Mississippi River and its banks. That's not even the half of it.

I wish I could say that was the end of the story but based on my experience this past Saturday, that is far from the case. I was among the more than 1,000 people in five states and 30 communities up and down the Mississippi River who donated four hours of time to help in their own small way to clean up the river.

During our brief time in a relatively small back woods area of the river we managed to fill a large flat boat with at least a dozen tires, large barrels, duck decoys, and countless bags of garbage.

Living Lands and Waters is Chad Pregracke’s child. Most people in this area know the story but for those of you who do not have the pleasure of living along the Mississippi River, Pregracke spent his high school summers as a commercial diver along the river. He grew tired of the endless, and growing, amounts of garbage he witnessed along the river and decided to do something about it.

And what he decided to do has become an overwhelming success story. The organization he started in 1998 with nothing but a dream in his back pocket has grown to become a year-round effort devoted at cleaning the river. He estimates the group has collected well over four tons of garbage, piece by piece.

For a little more about him, here’s a CBS News story that aired in 2007. Just a couple of weeks ago, the Discovery Channel aired a pilot for a new show, River Warriors, that was narrated by Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs fame and featured Pregracke and his crew. They didn’t give it much promotion ahead of time but it was a great show and we’re hoping that it will be picked up as a series.

This past Saturday was the organization’s first attempt at a simultaneous clean-up along the full length of the river. It will be conducting additional clean ups at individual communities throughout the summer and into the fall.

Purely by coincidence, Pregracke was at the Andalusia, IL, site where I had volunteered. Meeting him, it’s easy to see why he’s been a success. He is a constant ball of energy and has a, shall we say, quirky sense of humor. Many of his jokes fall flat but that in itself is a part of his charm and the reason he so easily endears himself to people.

Volunteers of all ages participate in the clean-up efforts. The people joining me ranged in age from grade school to retirement. No one is asked to do more than they are capable of physically handling. The bigger guys haul out the tires and other heavy objects while the less muscularly gifted fill bags with pop cans, Styrofoam and assorted amounts of small garbage. Unfortunately, there’s plenty of work for everyone.

We were taken to our site in flat boats by commercial fisherman who donated the use of their time and equipment. The fellas at our site trailered their boats up all the way from their homes east of St. Louis, nearly five hours away.

Thanks to the heavy rains we’ve been experiencing, we spent most of our time slogging through two to six inches of water. You definitely want to wear rubber boots and long pants when you're doing this work. Those who wore old tennis shoes undoubtedly discarded them in the trash as soon as they returned home.

And you will smell like a muddy river when you’re done, but that’s a good smell. It’s the smell of being a part of something good, the smell of doing your little part to contribute to something big.

If you’re interested in volunteering in the effort make sure to check out the Living Lands and Waters website. The next clean-up in the Quad Cities area is August 14. They are also doing clean ups on the Ohio and Illinois Rivers, so check it out.

One of the greatest Father's Day gifts of all

2010-06-20T17:25:00.003-05:00

Neither rain, nor 70 mph winds, nor traffic accidents will keep a father from his darling daughter.

The greatest Father’s Day present I ever received came not on the traditional June Father’s Day date but in September. September 17, 1988 to be exact. That was the day darling daughter came into this world.

It was not only the greatest Father’s Day present I ever received… it was greater than all of the presents I’ve ever received for all of the holidays, combined.

That’s why, beginning when my daughter was roughly four years old, we did what she wanted to do on Father’s Day. Without her, I wouldn’t be a father and so the day is really about her.

That’s also why we refer to those years between age 4 and 10 as the Chuck E. Cheese years. With the exception of one year when we switched to Jungle Bungle, we spent every Father’s Day at Chuck E. Cheese. (For those not from this area, Jungle Bungle is a local pizza chain’s… Happy Joe’s… version of Chuck E. Cheese.)

Once darling daughter turned 10 she began playing fastpitch softball and from that point forward every Father’s Day was spent at a softball diamond.

This year’s Father’s Day was once again about what she wanted to do. But this one was not Chuck E. Cheese. Darling daughter is now 21 and the first clue that this was not going to be the Father’s Day adventure of her childhood came when we walked into the front door of the business.

The walls in this particular business were painted in a large, very dark mural on one side. On the other the half-finished artwork featured a half-naked nubile young lady. All the employees were dressed in black with a variety of body piercings and tattooed adornments.

Yes, we were at a tattoo parlor. Darling daughter had decided that she wanted daddy to be at her side as she got her first tattoo.

Daddy was not, and still is not, particularly pleased with this particular turn of events. Daddy would very much like to turn back the clock to a simpler time when his baby girl was enamored with the animatronic Chuck E. Cheese characters.

But that day, and that little girl, is gone. That little girl has grown, has changed, has become a young adult and has a tattoo.

To orchestrate this little adventure I had to make the 50 mile drive to Iowa City. Normally a rather lackadaisical excursion down Interstate 80. Not even that would be the case this time as I was forced to drive into the face of a raging thunderstorm with 70 mph winds.

Eventually I would pull off at an exit and sit for 15 minutes to allow the storm to pass. Even then an accident backed up traffic for more than a mile and I was forced to take old Highway 1 into the city. As I entered it, the storms damage was evident in downed trees, dark storefronts where the power had gone out and police barricades blocking streets which were no longer passable due to the water flowing down them.

Undeterred, I ventured on. After all, this was my darling daughter and she wanted me, needed me, to be with her for this adventure, this Father’s Day adventure. And though I might not favor this particular turn of events, this was my darling daughter and her daddy was going to be there for her, no matter what it took to do so.

Of course, as the proverbial saying goes, the nut falls not far from the tree. Such is the case with darling daughter and her daddy. Once, when she was in high school, she submitted a project and when her teacher informed her that she had done far more than was necessary, darling daughter’s response was simply, “What do you expect? I’m a Campbell.”

So as the tattoo artist began to stencil his work on her back it was no small rose or some other “starter” tattoo. No, darling daughter chose a quite large set of angel wings. In her words, “Go big, or go home.”

The deed took 4½ hours to complete. When I asked her why she chose angel wings her response was a convoluted comment on its representation of the past, the future, strength and hope. It left me wondering what the name was of the new age mystic who had suddenly taken over my daughter’s body.

She didn’t say it but as I drove home that night I arrived in my mind at the belief that those wings represented her mother, who earned her angel wings four years ago, and her daddy. Darling daughter knows as well as anyone how quickly a parent can be taken away. Her mother was gone in just three months.

Nothing in life is forever, even daddies. And when my time on this earth comes to an end, darling daughter will have those wings, and the memory of her daddy being there whenshe earned them.

In the end, I guess that’s a whole lot better than Chuck E. Cheese. Knowing daddy will be with his darling daughter forever is one of the greatest gifts of all.

Not every project is a success

2010-06-15T16:38:00.003-05:00

Though I hate to admit it, not every home project is a success. In fact, some are utter failures. Sadly, such was the case this past Sunday.

As you enter my house from the garage there is a landing from which you either go up the stairs into the main room or down into the basement. Instead of being solid, the wall between the landing and basement has a large window-size hole in it.

My assumption is that it was designed for just that, a window. The basement can easily be converted into a nice large bedroom and I’m guessing the builders didn’t want to completely closing it off from the upstairs. Putting a window here will allow light to flow into the basement, and a simple curtain can be added for privacy.

However, at present it’s just a large hole. Because I’m not using it for a bedroom, I don’t want to completely close it in with a window, however I would like to have something there to fill the space out.

Which brings me back to Sunday. Earlier in the week I purchased an old window from Habitat Restore for five dollars with the intention of removing the decorative glass and hanging it in that space.

(If you’re not familiar with Habitat Restore, they are affiliated with Habitat for Humanity and sell donated construction materials, everything from lumber and sinks to doors and paint.)

I carefully removed the molding from around the glass and pulled the glass from the wood frame. I followed that with close to two hours scraping and cleaning the molding from the glass.

So far so good.

I then took my rotary tool (like a Dremel, just another brand) and cut the two holes in the glass so that I could hang it.

Everything is going smoothly.

Finally, I wanted to clean some of the dirt and grime of several decades off the rest of the glass. I happened to have some stain/paint stripper that I thought would work well. I know, not your usual substance but it was handy.

The stripping solution is pretty thick and so I poured a large quantity into the middle of the glass and picked up the corner and started to tip the glass to allow solution to naturally spread around.

That’s when the glass snapped off in my hand. And not a small piece but a large six to eight inch junk. There was no way to save it.

After uttering a not so pleasant phrase… first two words, “Son of…,” I picked up the glass and disposed of it in the garbage can.

I couldn’t bear to take a picture of the remains but from the couple of photos here you can get an idea of how great of a piece of glass it was.

Oh well. Guess I’ll just have to start making periodic trips back to Habitat Restore until I find something else that I like for that space. It only took me a couple of months of such trips before this one showed up.

Check another one off the list

2010-06-06T15:10:00.003-05:00

As of 30 minutes ago you can check another remodeling project off the list. The deck is officially done. (Well ok, it does need to be stained yet but I can’t do that until this fall after it’s had a chance to “season.” In other words, dry out so that the stain will soak in.)

There are times when remodeling that you need to recognize when something is simply over your head and building the deck was one of them, so I hired it out. I might have been able to do it by myself and I probably would have had it done by 2012. I wasn’t excited about going that route.

The contractor finished his work about six weeks ago. We left the original deck, all 40 square feet of it. You can see it on the right, in front of the sliding door. I look at it as a “landing” area from which you enter the deck.

The deck itself is roughly 12 x 16. By now, if you’ve read other posts in this blog, you know that I like things to be a bit different. I asked for the corners to be cut off and for some pattern in the deck. I also wanted the black metal railing which somewhat mimics the black railing inside the house.

I finished most of my share of the work last weekend with just a few minor details left for today. My share is the brick patio below the deck and the lattice work.

It was no small job. I hauled more than 150 one-foot-square bricks, 800 pounds of sand and roughly the same amount of dirt.

The patio was originally a matter of necessity. The poor sunlight makes it difficult to grow grass there but even worse is that Bailey dog looked at it as another area to dig holes.

As I finished it though, I realized that it’s a great place to sit and relax in the mornings. The back of the house faces east and the sun doesn’t pass over until close to noon. The deck provides plenty of shade during that time of day. It’s a little short, with about 5½ feet from the bricks to the deck rafters, so I do have to watch my head when I stand up but it’s not too bad.

The lattice in the front is simply there to keep Bailey-dog from getting her chain wrapped around the posts. It’s on hooks so that I can take it off if I have people here for a backyard party.

The lattice on the back is also on hooks. You can see in the pictures that the upper part of the house in that particular area extends about two feet out from the main wall, covering the area below. I’m storing some of the outdoor stuff under there (bbq, patio chairs, etc.). The lattice helps to partially hide those things but still provides a bit of an outdoor open feel.

And speaking of Bailey-dog, I’ve noted previously how much of an escape artist she is. Her most recent escape came earlier this week when she broke the chain link fence in her kennel with her teeth, made a hole four feet off the ground and somehow managed to lift herself up and crawl through it. So now she has lattice lining the inside of the kennel.

She always watches nearby as I do these different things designed to keep her in. Why do I get the feeling she’s mocking me?

When life hands you a traffic jam…

2010-06-03T09:41:00.008-05:00

We’ve all been there. You’re driving smoothly down the highways and byway when you make a right turn and bam, you’re stuck dead in your tracks… the traffic jam.

So what do you do? You’re basically presented with two choices, sit and grumble and mumble about the barricade that has been placed in your path, or look at it as life’s little way of slowing you down a bit and giving you time to enjoy the scenery.

Such was the case for my daughter and I this past Memorial Day. After attending the Quad Cities Criterium in Rock Island, IL, we began our way back across the river into Iowa.

Driving through Moline we made the right turn onto the Interstate 74 ramp and everything instantly came to a stop. An accident on the I-74 bridge had backed up traffic for nearly a mile.

What to do? What to do? Other vehicles had pulled in behind me almost as soon as I realized what was happening, so there was no turning around to go across another bridge.

Besides, this bridge was closer to our destination and going back to another bridge would require a driving four miles west, back through Moline and Rock Island, and then four miles back east through Davenport. Sure we would have saved some time, but it was 4 p.m. on Memorial Day, it wasn’t like we were in a hurry to get any where.

That left us with only one alternative, party! The convertible top was already down so we slapped on the suntan lotion and cranked up the tunes. Kid Rock had just finished his set on my cd player and now Sugarland had taken the stage with All I Want to Do

I wish I could say that our dancing in the car caused others to join in the fun, but sadly that was not the case. However, judging by the smiles on the faces of our neighboring motorists, I think everyone’s mood was lightened considerably by our performance.

Once on the bridge we were presented with the great opportunity to take photos of both it and the river. When would we ever have another opportunity to take shots from the middle of the I-74 bridge? You can judge for yourself by the samples here whether or not that was timely wisely spent.

So, the next time life hands you a traffic jam, have some fun, throw a party, and enjoy yourself!

But boy, we sure needed a potty by the time we got off that bridge.

Searching for the field of dreams

2010-06-01T21:02:00.007-05:00

The journey into my new life began Sunday with a wrong turn.

I set off at 10:30 a.m. Sunday morning (Memorial Day weekend) with the intention of visiting the Field of Dreams movie site in Dyersville, IA, roughly 90 miles away. I ended up in Prairie Du Chien, WI, 145 miles, a state or two and a Mississippi River bridge crossing away.

When my daughter Kristin was young we would have tallied it up as another of “Kristin and Dad’s Excellent Adventures.” It was not at all unusual for us to take a wrong turn on a road trip and end up nowhere near our original route or destination.

That drove my wife nuts. She wanted to know our exact route and location, and wasn’t too fond of our misadventures. Of course that added to the fun for Kristin and me, as teasing my wife became a part of the adventure.

For the two of us these excellent adventures were exactly that. We never knew what new and interesting things we might run across and the stories we would then have to tell. We never intentionally took that wrong turn, but we were never disappointed when we did.

Which brings me back to Sunday; shortly after leaving the house it dawned on me that I hadn’t bothered to get the specific directions to Dyersville. I also discovered that I didn’t have an Iowa map in the glove compartment and I had intentionally left my GPS at home. No worry I thought, I know it’s north of Dubuque, I’ll find it.

Based on many previous excellent adventures I should have instantly recognized the faulty logic in that thinking.

As I drove into Dubuque I thought to myself, “I’m ok as long as I don’t cross the river.” About 120 seconds later I was crossing the river. For those of you not familiar with the area, that would be the Mighty Mississippi River.

Ok Alan, you have two choices, cross the river, turn around and figure out how in the heck to get to Dyersville, or go with the flow. The flow in this case was onward into Wisconsin. Our family had taken the initial part of this route many times in years gone by during semi-annual trips to an allergy clinic in LaCrosse, WI. It might be fun to re-live some of the memories of the route as I drove north in search of a bridge back across the river. Little did I know that the next bridge was 60 miles away.

My first stop was a small wayside rest stop. The exact same rest stop, with its rustic unheated “facilities”, that I stopped at one cold winter day because my four-year-old daughter had to go potty. The same rest stop at which, upon completing her business, my little girl looked at me and said,

“Daddy, boys are lucky.”

Oh really, why is that?

“Because they have a thing and they don’t have to sit down to go potty.”

After that memory came rolling back into my mind, I headed back down the highway with the convertible top down. Within just a couple of miles I decided to get off memory lane, heed the advice of John B.L. Soule and turned onto a highway heading back to the west and, hopefully, a bridge.

I didn’t find the bridge but hey, Columbus didn’t find the Indies either so I’m in good company.

What I did discover was the promised land of Potosi, WI, and more importantly the Potosi Brewery. How’s that for terrible luck, making a wrong turn and finding a brewery?

Part of the lore of the brewery is that it was built in front of a cave and above a natural stream that provided water for the beer. The cave provided refrigeration for the brew at a time before refrigeration was available.

The brewery had fallen on hard times, was closed and severely damaged by fire when it was purchased in 1995 and was completely renovated. The new brewery is a pretty cool place and I will probably return some day, if I can find my way.

Back on the journey, I continued north staying on state highways and searching for the elusive bridge. Another 25 miles passed when I saw the sign for Prairie Du Chien, 15 miles, and I knew that Mississippi River crossing was within site.

By now it was closing in on 1 p.m. and hunger pangs were beginning to lurk. I entered Prairie Du Chien in search of an eatery when what to my wondering eyes should appear but Eddie’s Irish Pub. Darn the luck! First a brewery and now an Irish pub, how much more can I be expected to bear?

Eddie’s is a fine place where I enjoyed a turkey Rueben, as a non-pork eater I especially appreciated that, and washed the dust of the road off my parched tongue with a couple of pints of Eddie’s Irish Ale.

Leaving Eddie’s, I found shimmering in the distance the long sought-after goal of my journey, a bridge.

Crossing over from Wisconsin back into my homeland of Iowa, I entered the humble burg of Marquette. It was obvious the community was having a celebration of some sort so I once again diverted my journey.

I have to admit that the Memorial Day weekend flea market they were conducting wasn’t my particular cup of tea but Marquette is great little town.

I had never been there before and it is definitely a place I would like to return someday. For those of you familiar with Galena, IL, it’s similar to that community with many unusual shops and unique restaurants.

At this point it was approaching 3 p.m. and I still had no idea how to get back nor how far I was away from home. All I knew for sure was that it was a long darn ways.

With that thought I pointed my trusty convertible down the first available southerly-headed highway and began the search for a way back to Davenport. I traveled through terrific scenery along the Mississippi River bluffs in and around Guttenberg, IA, and 40 miles down the highway stumbled upon the sign leading to my original destination: Dyersville, 10 miles, and below that, Dubuque, 22 miles.

Deciding this adventure needed to come to an end sometime during that day, if not my lifetime, I decided it would be best to forego my Field of Dreams visit and, instead, made the left turn to Dubuque where the road home would be much more familiar.

My 300-mile excellent adventure never reached the Field of Dreams of movie fame, but in a way I did reach my own field of dreams. This day was all about starting my new life with an open road ahead, the convertible top down and in search of whatever adventure lie ahead.

And that’s just what I found.

Moments in time, a new chapter begins

2010-05-31T11:02:00.003-05:00

There are moments in our lives that mark the passage of time. That’s not a particularly new or revealing thought.

These are the moments at which we know that our lives have forever changed. Some are easy to recognize as they come our way, a marriage, a high school graduation, a death in the family. Others are not nearly as apparent and people often don’t recognize they have even occurred until months and sometimes years later.

I like to think that I recognize these moments more readily than most people. Perhaps it’s because I’m a bit of a romantic. Not in the sleazy paperback novel sense, but in the broader romance that is our lives. Life is a gift that each of us has been granted and the arc that our journey takes as we pass through this life is incredibly romantic.

I passed a “passage of time” moment this past week. One would not often think that finishing a workshop and painting a garage would be such a moment, but for me it most certainly was. To tell the story though, please join me on a quick trip down memory lane.

Four years ago my life irreversibly changed in one of those moments that is easily recognized even by the most unromantic among us. If you know me or have read back in this blog you already know that we discovered my wife had cancer in March of 2006 and she died three months later.

A year later I passed another of those easily recognized moments as my daughter graduated from high school and left for college.

And a year after that another moment took its turn as I chose to sell our home and move to a new city, closer to my office. As I would soon discover this moment affected me in ways I had not anticipated. I knew that moving away from the community I had lived in for roughly 25 years and the home that my daughter went through her middle and high school years in would be significant.

What I did not realize was how it would help me to move on from my wife’s death. People did ask me if that was the reason for the move but the truth is that I got tired of driving 37 miles in the middle of an Iowa winter. The thought of needing to move on from my wife’s death wasn’t something that I thought I needed to do, it was two years after her death and I thought my moving on was complete.

At the time I did not realize how much baggage I was still carrying in that old house and it wasn’t until after I moved into the new home that I realized I had finally broken free. I’ll never leave the memories behind, they will always be with me and I am thankful for that. Living in a new home, however, means that I am no longer living in, surrounded by, the memories.

Which brings us to this past week and the completion of my garage and workshop; if a “start” can have a beginning and an end, this is it. Moving to my new home was the beginning of the start of a new life, this week was the end of that start.

My old home required extensive work before I could put it on the market. It was a combination of our own very unique tastes needing to be undone for potential buyers, and that long list of things that hadn’t been done while we were following our daughter around the country to softball tournaments.

I began working in mid-March 2008. I worked from the moment I got home from work every night until roughly 9 p.m. I painted nine rooms and completed many needed projects. I worked every weekend and took time off only for those things that were absolutely necessary. For 10 weeks I literally worked day and night. On June 1, I was done and the house was officially on the market.

By July 3, I was sitting down with the buyers of my old home as well as the bank selling me my new home. The next weekend family, friends and the moving company helped me transport both my belongings and my life to this new home.

Since that time I have had one project or another, big and small, underway on nearly a constant basis. If you look back through this blog you can get a feeling for much of what has happened.

Don’t misunderstand, I love my home and I’ve loved being able to put my own flair to it. It’s exactly what I asked for. I was hoping for a home that wasn’t quite done so that I could do exactly that.

At the same time though, I feel like I’ve spent the last 26 months doing little but working on houses. It’s been a constant weight on my shoulders, keeping me from genuinely relaxing and enjoying life. While I have gone out and done many things since moving here, there have been countless times I have chosen to stay home and work rather than go out and doing things I would have preferred to do. I know some of that comes from simply owning a home, but this has been well beyond that.

Which brings me back to finishing the workshop and painting the garage; they were the last things on my list of must-do major projects. There are many more projects ahead (I’ll soon be posting on a new brick patio) but they were the last things that I felt just had to be done.

That moment in time means that for the first time in three years I will be enjoying my summer. More than that it means that the page has turned into a new chapter in my life.

The words in that chapter have yet to be written. I have no idea what they will be. But I know I’m free from worrying about major home projects, I’m looking forward to exploring this new chapter and at least for the moment the road is clear and the convertible top is down.

It's finally done!

2010-05-27T12:05:00.003-05:00

I can’t believe it’s finally done. The new workshop, that was supposed to be done last fall, is finally, officially, done.

I say finally because I started this project exactly a year ago. The workshop was part of a two-part project that included building a new deck. (I’ll write about the deck later.)

I called my first contractor in early May of 2009. His price was easily twice what I thought was reasonable. I called a second contractor. He came, said he wanted to do the project, I never heard from him again.

I called a third contractor, he came he saw, also never heard from again. The fourth contractor gave me a price but while doing so was peppering me with questions regarding how the project should be built. I’m not talking aesthetic questions about how it should look, how big it should be and so on. I’m talking actual structural questions.

Needless to say he didn’t instill a great deal of confidence.

The fifth contractor, who had done a previous project for me, never scheduled an appointment after saying he would do so. The sixth contractor was another of those view the project and never hear from again types.

(Why does hiring a contractor feel so much like dating?)

By the way, even though this wasn’t as big as building a house, it was a fairly sizable project. We’re talking a 100-sqaure-foot-plus deck and a 16x24-feet workshop. This wasn’t a little couple thousand dollar bid, it should have been sizable enough to appeal to at least some contractors.

The seventh contractor never showed up after I took time off from work to meet him. This guy is the former president of the local contractors and builders association.

The eighth one was yet another to come to the house, take measurements, say he wanted to do the project, and disappear into Davenport’s version of the Bermuda Triangle.

Finally, on the ninth try, I found a contractor who had some decent ideas and handed me an honest to goodness bid, in writing, on paper, and it was even a reasonable price.

By now we were well into July. My comment to him was that I was flexible on the time schedule but I wanted it done before winter so I could finish it (insulation, put up walls, ceiling, etc.) before it got too cold to do so.

I needed that to happen for a variety of reasons but two in particular. One, I wanted to be able to use the shop to prep things for finishing my basement during the winter months. Two, my garage was packed with tools and miscellaneous assundry other items, and was completely disorganized because I had too many things stuffed into it. Not to mention that I really wanted to get both my vehicles into it before the snow flew.

Long story short, he did indeed get it done before winter, if the start of winter is Christmas day. And your definition of finished doesn’t include having electricity.

He finished the building a week and a half before Christmas and didn’t get the electricity installed until about six weeks ago. Needless to say I didn’t get it finished before winter as there was snow on the ground even as he was putting it up. Of course, I didn’t get the basement done during the winter either and I barely had room to get one of my vehicles into the garage, much less both of them.

Oh, and did I mention, that the shop was supposed to have a garage door on it but the odd zoning ordinances here prevented me from having an opening large enough to drive a vehicle into it. Even though the building is actually a one-car garage, and there was no problem with me constructing a building that size, it couldn’t have a garage door on it.

That’s my very long way of explaining why I say that the workshop is finally done and why I am so happy about it.

The pictures here give you an idea of what it looks like. French doors were installed in place of the garage door which is really just fine, they’re big enough for just about anything I would haul in there.

The walls and ceiling are insulated and instead of drywall I used plywood. This was a suggestion from my contractor and I think it’s a good idea. His point was that it’s harder to put a hole into the plywood if you accidentally hit it with a board or something else you might be swinging around in there.

Because I used wood, I didn’t want to just paint over it so I stained it instead. I did very little sanding or finishing to the wood because I really wanted it to retain that rough look. It is shop and not a bedroom after all.

I lined the back wall with corrugated metal, just as I did with my bar area in the basement. It adds another texture element to the walls and also brightens the room.

I used a dark stain to put the sun on the one wall. The design is from an old metal trellis that had been damaged. I always liked the sun so I cut it off when I threw the rest of the trellis away, thinking I’d use it for something some day.

The tropical scene was created by my daughter. When she was a high school junior she painted it on canvas and it was used as the backdrop for the “official” photographs at her high school prom. She put so much work into it that she couldn’t bare getting rid of it so it’s been rolled up and sitting in the garage ever since.

I suspended it from the ceiling and hidden behind it are two ladders hanging on the wall and an eight-foot table that I take out when I need extra table space for projects.

I put partial flooring in the attic so that I can use it for storage. The flooring keeps the insulation from being flattened, losing its effectiveness. You can see that I’ve put sliding panels in the ceiling to make it easy to get things in and out.

The workbench is also new. It’s similar to one that I had at the old house but couldn’t bring with me because there wasn’t enough room here when I moved. It’s slightly longer than that one and I stained it to match the walls. And, because I’m six foot tall, it’s a bit higher than normal, three-and-a-half feet.

Also, you can’t see it here but in the wall to the left of the workbench (just to the right of the tablesaw) is a doggy door. I have a large kennel built next to the workshop. I can put Bailey-dog in the workshop during cold winter days and particularly stormy spring and summer ones. She go through the doggy door to get fresh air outside in the kennel or huddle inside the workshop, warm and dry. I built doghouses both inside and out, both insulated. And that blanket you see near the French doors is so she can lay there and watch the neighborhood. Tell me again how she's not spoiled.

The final piece of the project, related but unrelated, was painting the garage. The two-car garage was never painted when the house was built and was well past its time. I have to admit this is one of those few times where I did things half-way normally. I painted it with Kilz primer, put up a few odds and ends and declared it done.

Finishing the workshop was a big moment for me. When I was first searching for a new home I wanted a three car garage so that I would have room to work on projects. That was important to me and I was disappointed that I didn’t get that.

Because of that I’ve been unable to get vehicles in the garage, I’ve pulled my hair out trying to find things stuffed into the corners and I’ve traipsed an unbelievable amount of sawdust into the house as I have worked on projects in the garage.

Now things are stored where I can find them and I can work on projects in the shop and simply close the doors and walk away when I run out of time. If I don’t get back to it for a few days it’s not a problem. I can’t tell you how great of a feeling that is.

And yes, I have my first project already lined up that I will do in that new shop; two Adirondack chairs for the new deck. But that will have to wait for the moment. My next and current project is installing a brick patio under the deck.

No rest for the wicked.

Party Pub nears the end

2010-04-25T14:53:00.005-05:00

I’ve been a bit quiet here lately. This living in Iowa during the winter has a tendency to put a damper on things. I hate cold weather, but that’s a story for another time.

Spring has come early for us and we’ve been blessed with some relatively warm weather. Beyond that, there’s nothing like having a party to motivate you to get things done. Last night’s wine party provided the kick to the nether region I required to get back to work on home projects, specifically the basement.

Accompanying this post are the "after" photos. "Before" photos can be found in a previous post but, to put it in the proverbial nutshell, when I arrived on the scene the basement was just a big empty cream colored room. The ceiling was finished and drywall was on the walls but that was it… no doors, no flooring, even the trim work was unfinished.

The bar provided the general theme for its new look. The bar has become something of a family heirloom. Following our marriage, I designed it and a friend built it. My in-laws paid for it as our wedding present. Later, when the wood on the top had dried out and warped, my father took it and refinished it.

When I moved here, I was going to leave it behind. It's eight feet long, large and heavy, and I didn't think it would fit into the house. For sentimental reasons, my daughter said it had to follow us to the new house. It fit into the hole leading into basement with exactly one inch to spare.

With the bar's dark wood tones, I decided on a pub feel for the room but with a contemporary, party twist.

The floor is stained press wood. That is also detailed in a previous post. The cabinets and the Campbell Scottish family crest behind the bar I’ve talked about earlier as well.

The finishing touches on the room have included the metal walls behind the bar, the painting, doors, trim work and decorating.

The metal is your basic corrugated metal available at the local home improvement store. I saw a similar work in a men’s bathroom at a restaurant; inspiration can come from anywhere. It’s fairly easy to do. The most difficult part of it is cutting it. If you try it yourself, the key is to clamp the metal to a table with a piece of wood on top so that it doesn’t bounce around too much.

I wanted a yellow color for the walls with a hint of orange. This was quite a bit brighter than I expected but now that the room is finished I do like it.

The copper paint is a special paint that does have a copper “flake” to it. I had previously used it on the display cases in the cabinet beneath the window.

I would have preferred that the steel I-beam spanning the ceiling was its original color but the previous owners had already painted it so I was left with the choice of trying to strip the paint off or paint it a different color. I opted for the easier path. Using the copper color ties in with the display cases and gives it a metallic look, albeit not the normal silver color.

The copper color also ties back in well with the pub feel and darker wood tones. I used the same paint on all of the trim throughout the room.

With the exception of the Twister and Monopoly games, the large pieces around the room are left over from stage sets I have designed. (And yes, if you want to know more about that, go way back in these blog posts and you’ll find more than you want to know.)

Finally, the empty floating picture frames (near the door/Twister game) are hung from fishing line. You can see the line when standing close to it but not from a distance so it does give that feel that the frames are floating. Behind it is a sheet of Styrofoam, painted similarly to the paint around my fireplace upstairs.

Those piece are covering the hole leading to the home furnace. Whatever I put in this space has to be easily removable because you have to get through this area to reach and change the furnace filter.

So check one more thing off the list. The big projects are getting closer to done. The one major project left inside is a small bathroom in the basement(in the pig picture, it’s behind the door to the right.)

That doesn’t mean I’ll be done, far from it, but the main projects will be out of the way. Slowly but surely, progress continues.

MASH vs Super Bowl XLIV: A Closer Look

2010-02-08T18:42:00.001-06:00

The big news carrying over from last night’s Super Bowl, other than that minor detail about who won the game, is that it set a record for number of viewers watching a single television program.

The ballgame averaged 106.5 million viewers, topping the previous record of 106 million who tuned into watch the final episode of M*A*S*H* in 1986.

While that is an incredible number of viewers there are some obvious factors that need to be taken into consideration to truly put that number in proper context. In comparison, M*A*S*H* is still king of the hill.

For your consideration:

In 1986, there were 218 million television viewers compared to 292 million today.
In 1986, there were 83.3 million television households compared to 114.5 million today.
The average time a television was on in a household was 7.2 hours in 1983 compared to 8.14 in 2006 (and I’m sure that number is greater today).

You get the drift; there are far more television viewers today, watching television for longer periods of time.

Add into that the dramatic changes in technology over that period of time. Cable television came to my small Iowa hometown (and much of the United States) in the mid-1970s, roughly 10 years before 1986. Satellite television wasn’t even on the horizon at that time. Now, cable and satellite are the norm and the majority of homes are connected to one or the other.

Draw your own conclusions but from my perspective M*A*S*H* reached a far larger percentage of television viewers at its time and still reigns supreme.

"Whatever you did for the least of these..."

2010-02-01T17:56:00.006-06:00

HAITI HAITI HAITI!!! What is up with that? HA! I have lost my job, am losing my house and my business! Who is helping me, the American businessman! I GOT IT! If you all would send me $100 instead of HAITI I could save my business! Send it! Save a business! Haiti indeed!

--------------------

The above was posted by a friend on his Facebook page two weeks ago and I haven’t been able to let it go since. I usually avoid commenting on things of a political nature, enough others are doing that and I don’t feel the need to increase the volume. But this is one I just can’t let go.

I know losing a business is a terrible thing. It can emotionally wrack a person in incredible ways. I sympathize with my friend and really wish his challenges weren't the case.

But to equate that with what is happening in Haiti is ludicrous. Not only have these people lost their homes and businesses but more than a quarter million of them have lost their lives. Beyond that, the future for tens of thousands of them is bleak at best.

Now, before anyone says, “Well, you don’t know what it’s like,” let me just establish for the record that I do know what it’s like. I haven’t experienced every great tragedy that can befall a person but I’m old enough to have experienced my fair share, including a couple of those listed in the statement at the top of this post.

One of the great things about this country is that you can experience personal setbacks and still survive. It may take a tremendous measure of patience and perseverance but you can still survive. That will not be true of many of those living in Haiti.

There are countless stories from our country’s past recessions of people who not only survived but flourished; forced to move in a new direction they started new businesses or took new career paths that resulted in them being better off than before.

If I choose to give $10 or $100 or whatever amount to help the people of Haiti, how is that a bad thing?

If the intent of the above comment had been to say that we should help those at home as well as those in Haiti or wherever in this world people are suffering, then I absolutely agree. But sadly it is not.

Occasionally the question is posed in a survey, online forum or other medium: What is wrong with America? I so abhor thinking of the negative in anything that I have never answered. This is my first and quite probably last time to do so.

To quote someone I never dreamt I would be quoting, Spiro Agnew, the biggest problem in this country are the Nattering Nabobs of Negativism. It’s that vocal minority, and I believe a quite small minority, who are incessantly screaming about what’s wrong with our country, what’s wrong with our political leaders, what’s wrong with the people who don’t agree with them, lock, stock and barrel.

Quite frankly I’ve had all I can stands, I can stands no more -- Popeye

The vast majority of people in this country are good, hard working people who want nothing more than the best for everyone, regardless of politics or social standing.

They’re the silent majority who has been referred to numerous times for 40 years or more.

They’re people who are sick and tired of all the negativism coming from politicians, media personalities, and even our friends and neighbors who buy into what the Nattering Nabobs of Negativism talking heads are spewing forth on their constant 24-hour news cycle.

They’re the people who want nothing more than for everyone to stop the yelling and start talking. Stop the knee jerk reflex that causes one to instantly dislike what someone says, before they even say it, simply because their politics are generally different from their own.

They’re the people who, like so many generations before them, think it’s time for people to roll up their sleeves and work together to make things happen again.

They’re the people who believe if you’re not a part of the solution, you’re a part of the problem.

They’re the good and decent people who will always be there for you if you lose your job, your business, your home or someone in your family.

They’re the kind souls who will reach out and contribute $10 to the Red Cross, UNICEF or other organization to help those in need in another country.

They're the charitable neighbors who come by with a casserole or offer to mow the grass when you or a family member is ill; the ones who bring tears to your eyes when you fully understand just how much people can care.

They’re the vast majority of people in this country who lend a helping hand for one of the least of these, regardless of nationality, color or religion; regardless of whether they are down the street or across the globe.

Fosse is Alive and Well

2010-01-31T09:22:00.005-06:00

I was the boy at the college sorority dances who all the girls asked to dance, because I would.

Probably the greatest compliment I received at the time was from an African-American girl who said, “You dance like one of the brothers.”

At least I took it as a compliment.

This is my roundabout way of saying that I love dance. Not just “to” dance but watching others dance, especially contemporary dance.

That’s why last night was so special to me as I had the opportunity to see dancers who actually know what they are doing, Thodos Dance Chicago. The company performed at St. Ambrose University, just a couple of miles from my home.

The highlight of the two-hour performance was their Fosse Trilogy, a tribute to possibly the most famous choreographer of all time, Bob Fosse. Fosse is the man behind the dance scenes in such well-known theatre and film productions as Damn Yankees, Sweet Charity, Cabaret, All That Jazz and Chicago among countless others.

(By the way, for younger people reading this who think Fosse is for old people, do a YouTube search for Fosse and not surprisingly you'll see many cross references to Beyonce's video, Put a Ring on It. Take a close look and you'll see many Fosse-like movements in the Beyonce choreography.)

The trilogy performed by Thodos included three pieces Fosse choreographed for the Ed Sullivan Show. They are trademark Fosse numbers complete with snapping fingers and shimmying hips; and that’s not a bad thing. I love Fosse. I love his work and last night’s performance didn’t let me down.

If you’d like to know more about the trilogy, first view this video featuring Ann Reinking and a few of the Thodus Dancers. Thankfully, this video was also shown last night, prior to the trilogy performance, so that the audience had some idea of what was about to happen.

Reinking, by the way, is a quite accomplished actress and choreographer herself. She appeared as Roxie Hart in the 1996 theatre revival of Chicago (played by Renee Zellweger in the movie version) and as the female lead in the movie, All That Jazz.

Here's links to YouTube videos of the three dances:

Cool Hand Luke
Mexican Shuffle (my favorite)
Mexican Breakfast (a little different than the Thodus Dance version that has only three female dancers)

Thodos Dance also performed six of their own pieces. My favorites were Reflect and Driven. Reflect is a very colorful piece that had a bit of African overtones to it. Driven is choreographed by the company’s namesake, Melissa Thodos, and captures the frenzied pace at which we all seem to be living our lives these days.

One final note, last night’s performance Quad City Arts Visiting Artist Series. For an unbelievable 36 years, QCArts has been bringing performing artists into our community for informal appearances.

The performers are here for one or two weeks and appear at area colleges, schools and other sites. Their appearances are very informal and usually last about an hour. What’s really great about them is that they interact with the audience and those attending have plenty of opportunity to ask questions and learn about the respective performer’s art.

These appearances are free of charge and all too often low attended. I encourage everyone to take greater advantage of these opportunities.

In addition to those informal appearances, QCArts also arranges for the artists to put on a larger performance on the St. Ambrose Galvin Fine Arts Center stage. Last night’s performance cost $8; a small price to pay to see a professional dance company work their magic.

Living life without a net

2010-01-29T17:46:00.003-06:00

Imagine with me for just a moment what life would be without a net.

A few months ago I had the pleasure of spending considerable time with Olympia Dukakis.

Dukakis was appearing as part of Eastern Iowa Community College’s Viewpoint Distinguished Speakers Series. It fell to me, as part of my job duties, to coordinate her appearance and the details of the “show” at the Adler Theatre.

Let me begin by saying Dukakis is a terrific lady. You never know what you’re going to get with celebrities and are always praying that you don’t get one who thinks all we tiny people are merely their servants. Dukakis is far from that. She is extremely personable and I thoroughly enjoyed our time together.

Just in case you’re drawing a blank as to what movies she’s been in think “Steel Magnolias” and “Moonstruck,” for which she won an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress. If those movies aren’t quite to your liking, perhaps “Look Who’s Talking” will refresh your memory.

Of course that’s only an extremely small piece of her work; her movies hardly tell the story of what she has accomplished. Her list of film and theatre credits is extensive.

In addition, she was a founding member and served as Producing Artistic Director of the Whole Theatre in Montclair, NJ, for 19 years. She also taught acting in the graduate school at New York University for 15 years and currently teaches master classes at various universities and colleges throughout the country.

All of that while continuing to act both on the stage and screen.

I spent considerable time with her, picking her up at the airport the night before and escorting her the evening of the event, and returning her to the airport the next morning. That’s a lot of time together and lot of conversation; here’s just a fraction of that:

There was a full moon the night she arrived, very similar to the one climbing the sky outside my window at this very moment. As we crossed over the I-74 bridge into Iowa she was astounded at the beautiful sky was and the moon’s tremendous brightness and size. Much like the moon this evening, it shined so bright you felt you could see within each crater on its surface as it glowed in the night.

We hearty Midwesterners certainly enjoy and appreciate those moons as they come our way but there is a part of us that takes them for all too granted. We gaze upon them for a moment and quickly move on, believing there will always be another one. Perhaps we should all take another look the next time one of those moons comes around, and see it through the eyes of someone who lives in the heart of New York City.

During her presentation and at dinner following the event I was struck by how fiercely proud she is of her Greek heritage. I must sadly admit that I was ignorant of how far the Greeks have come in our country in such a short period of time.

Dukakis’ parents and their family were the first generation in this country. They came here with nothing and were able to establish a successful business. Their daughter has become an award-winning actress and their nephew ran for President of the United States. You might remember his name, Michael Dukakis.

As if that isn’t enough, her grandmother was a slave; which just astounds me. There is little doubt I will soon be learning more about Greek history.

My final note about this fine lady returns to the opening line of this post and was nothing more than an off-hand remark she made as I dropped her off at the airport.

As often happens when you spend so much time with a person, you begin talking about your own life. Of course that takes me to my pride and joy, my daughter Kristin, the college theatre major.

I told her how I tried to talk Kristin into minoring in business, just to give her something to fall back on in case this theatre thing didn’t work out. Of course, as many children do, Kristin hurried to take that parental advice and, instead, added a second major in art.

Dukakis’ response upon hearing this was, “She may be like me; I need to not have a net.”

That simple sentence says so much. I really wonder what my life might have been if I had never had a net; if what I had done in my life wasn’t a choice but a necessity because there was no other choice, no net.

We all too often fail to push ourselves to our limits, always holding back just a bit, afraid to make that full commitment. We always have that backup plan, that security blanket, that net providing a a certain sense of comfort. If we have no net, we have little choice than to lay it all on the line.

We may fail but what a story that will tell. And who knows what a tremendous success we might become.

A horse, a bar, and my DD

2010-01-20T11:41:00.003-06:00

During the evening of January 1 I found myself sitting in a bar, in New Orleans, watching the latter half of what was less than an epic Sugar Bowl game between the Universities of Florida and Cincinnati, when quite to my surprise a mounted police officer road his steed through the door of the establishment, not 10 feet from my perch.

Before I proceed, let me unequivocally say that I’m a lucky father, perhaps the luckiest in the world. My daughter still enjoys going on vacations with me. She doesn’t mind 10-hour road trips or sharing a hotel room for five nights. She even admits to her friends that she goes on those trips with dear old dad.

Darling Daughter (DD) and I spent our New Year’s Eve in New Orleans, a 15-hour road trip from our home. We left on Tuesday, December 29, staying the night in Memphis, resided in New Orleans from Wednesday through Friday, laid over in St. Louis on the return trip and arrived back home on Sunday, January 3.

To tell the full story though, I need to take you back a bit in history. When DD graduated from high school in 2007 we hit the road for a 5,600 mile road trip to Los Angeles and back.

To say we took the scenic route would be putting it mildly. On the way out we hit Amarillo, TX, Roswell, and Santa Fe, NM, and a wide variety of points in between. Leaving LA we visited San Diego and then San Antonio, TX. And with a bit of time on our hands we extended our trip to New Orleans.

While strolling the tranquility that is known as Bourbon Street, my then 18-year-old DD off-handedly remarks that she wants to come to New Orleans for her 21^stbirthday.

(Did I mention that DD and I are huge Gilmore Girls fans?) Her remark was in reference to an episode of the Gilmore Girls where Lorelai (mother) and Rory (daughter) plan to go to Atlantic City when Rory turns 21. The plan includes playing a few rounds of 21, drinking 21 drinks and something about 21 guys, but I digress.

Known for being somewhat impulsive, it would surprise few to discover that my response was, “Ok.”

DD turned 21 this past September. As she is in college it would have been a bit difficult to traipse off to New Orleans at that point so, somewhere early last year, the trip morphed into a New Year’s Eve excursion.

And quite the excursion it was. Beale Street, Bourbon Street, Frenchman Street, Decatur Street and sundry streets, highways and byways in between. We saw a transvestite directing traffic, a three-legged dog chasing a cue ball around a bar, did the limbo under construction barricades in the middle of the street...

And that, my dear friends, explains why I was in a New Orleans bar, on the evening of New Year’s Day, as a horse came crashing through the door.

McGwire pegs the BS Machine

2010-01-18T08:24:00.003-06:00

"I was given a gift to hit home runs," Mark McGwire told Bob Costas on MLB Network. "I truly believe so. I believe I was given this gift. The only reason I took steroids was for health purposes."

And with that statement, the BS Machine just pegged out.

I was among the literally thousands of people cheering for McGwire as he broke Roger Maris' record for home runs in a single season. We all watched as he and Sammy Sosa set chase for the record, wondering which one would get their first. Even as it happened though, many of us believed that Sosa was juicing and we just weren't quite sure about McGwire.

As time went on, and we watched McGwire's embarrassing appearance before Congress, we knew he, too, had used steroids to achieve his tremendous performance. He cheated.

With his recent admission we now know a few other things... McGwire has an ego as big as all outdoors, he is incredibly arrogant and he is either the world's biggest liar or amazingly delusional.

His outsized ego and arrogance was quite apparent in the way in which he said the words at the top of this post. When you actually hear him say it, as opposed to simply reading words on a page, you have the distinct impression that he didn't say them in terms of "I've been blessed by God with this wonderful gift." No it was more like, "God gave me this gift and he didn't give it to you."

I personally detest egotists and do my best not to associate with them, but it goes without saying that I won't be associating with McGwire any time soon. And I'm willing to give him a pass on this one. Anyone involved in professional sports has to have a big ego. They have to believe in themselves to that extent in order to succeed. Whether or not they are arrogant or humble about their talent, however, is their choice.

What I cannot give him a pass on is his claim that he only took steroids for health purposes. In addition to talking about his "gift" he claims (that we simpletons who don't play the game don't understand) that taking steroids doesn't help you hit the ball any better.

BS Mark. Here's where the delusional part comes in. If he really believes this he is fooling no one but himself. Talk about the ultimate in rationalizations, this probably takes the cake. Either that, or the ultimate in splitting hairs, you decide.

No, taking steroids does not improve the hand-to-eye coordination it takes to hit a baseball. What it does do is make you incredibly stronger meaning that when you use that gifted hand-to-eye coordination you will hit the ball further.

How much further is open for debate but let's say for the sake of argument that with his medically-manufactured strength McGwire was able to hit the ball 10 yards further. Suddenly those balls that were long fly ball outs landing near the warning track are home runs into the lower deck.

Over the course of his record-setting season there had to be at least 10 of his home runs that fell into that category. If that's true, instead of hitting 70 homers, he hits just 60, failing to break Maris' record of 61.

Cut the BS Mark, you cheated and now you're lying to yourself and us. You don't deserve the record, you don't deserve to be in the Hall of Fame.

Does the city have a side in this contract?

2009-12-22T18:23:00.002-06:00

I see a note on the nightly news that the city council is considering changes to the parking restrictions in relation to snow fall. Instead of requiring vehicles to be moved when there is two or more inches of snow, it would be left open to the city to determine when the parking restrictions go into effect.

I really don’t have a problem with that. I know of other communities who have “snow emergency” ordinances. To me it’s simple common sense; when there’s a lot of snow coming down and the plows are going to be out, you need to get your vehicle off the street so that the plow operators can do their jobs.

But I do have a question: If we are required to move our vehicles, doesn’t the city have a contract to remove the snow within some timely manner?

I pose that question because the street leading to my home has yet to be plowed from the major snowstorm we had nearly two weeks ago now.

I live on a culdesac. The city has smaller trucks they use to clear out culdesacs and they did clear mine out, but they never cleared the street leading to my culdesac. As wet and icy as that storm was, there are huge ice “ruts” down the full length of the two blocks that lead off the main thoroughfare.

By the way, when they cleared my culdesac they pushed a large amount of the snow in front of my mailbox. I had to shovel out that heavy ice before the mailman would deliver the mail. Thankfully, my mailman has some compassion and is delivering my mail. I did the best I could but I simply could not break through all of the ice that is near my box. I probably shouldn’t complain too much; at least it wasn’t in front of my drive.

So, doesn’t the city have some obligation to actually plow the snow in this implied contract in which we are required to move our vehicles to allow them to do so?

Google: Two out of three ain’t bad

2009-12-07T20:10:00.007-06:00

The search engine behemoth Google recently announced three new things, two of them are pretty cool, the other I’m not so excited about.

The cool things are the inclusion of real time search and Google Goggles. I’m excited about both.

Sometime in the next few days you’ll start seeing real time search when you use Google. In a nutshell, what that means is that you’ll see a section on the results page that continuously changes with related information from such social networking sites such as Twitter.

Yes, there’s a lot of junk on Twitter, but it’s also a great way to see what’s on people’s minds at any given point in time and, frankly, has the potential of providing more up-to-date information than what you might traditionally find in a Google search.

For a quasi-geek like me, Google Goggles is really exciting…. and I don’t even have a phone that can use it. Goggles allows you to use your phone to take a picture of something and instantly get information about what you took the photo of. Google recognizes what’s in that photo and gives you the results, without you having to type anything in.

Imagine standing in front of a restaurant, taking a picture of the restaurant sign, and have information about that restaurant instantly pop up on your phone. Or being on vacation and seeing some landmark that you want more information about. Same thing, take a picture and have the information magically appear on your phone.

I’ve been too cheap to pay for monthly phone service for internet connection but this sort of thing is making it pretty hard to resist.

The change I’m not so excited about is what Google is doing to its search algorithms with what it calls “Web History.” In the future, as you search for various things, Google will monitor those searches, keeping track of what you like. As you search for additional information, Google will rank the results it provides in an order based on your previous history.

The good thing is that, theoretically, this individualizes the search process and will provide you with the information that you most want, reducing the number of pages of search results you have to plow through to find what you want.

However, privacy issues aside, there’s an aspect to this that really bothers me. The same thing that makes this good also makes this bad. From a global view, it excludes “new” information, information that we might not otherwise encounter if we do not step outside our own little world.

There’s far too much of this occurring in our society today.

Far too many people spend their lives inside the safety and security of their own little worlds, never attempting or caring to see what else might be out there. Think of people who only watch a certain “unbiased” cable news network or who read only liberal magazines.

All of this continues to polarize us. We will never agree with each other on absolutely every subject. But this trend to such individualization and isolation is ensuring that we also will not understand each other.

We’re enabling people to maintain a very closed view of the world around them, and that’s not a good thing.

Fa la la la... 'Tis the Season for Song

2009-12-01T13:24:00.007-06:00

I've happened into a couple of conversations recently about favorite Christmas music which got me to thinking about my own favorites. Frankly, it didn't take me long to come up with my top three, they've been my favorites for quite some time.

It's probably no coincidence that Bing Crosby is singing two of them. For anyone growing up in the sixties and early seventies, his voice is the iconic one associated with Christmas. And is it any surprise that White Christmas is number three on my list? It's one of the top five all time favorites in the country.

As a child my favorite Christmas song was Little Drummer Boy. I remember my first Christmas album was feature a little drummer boy on the cover and I played it until the grooves were well worn.

I was in college in 1977 when a rather unusual duet paired up for a Christmas special. At the time David Bowie was known for some outrageous pop/rock performances featuring outlandish costumes. And Bing Crosby, well, he was Bing Crosby.

I still remember my shock when watching Crosby's special that year and thinking there was no way this pair could make great music together. It wasn't the first nor the last time I was dead wrong. Their duet is my second favorite Christmas song and I still think it has the most beautiful sound.

My number one is sung by Natalie Cole. Others have sung it but I still think her version is the best. I'm an adult now, far too rapidly entering the back side of life, and when family asks for my Christmas list I struggle to come up with anything I really want. So I think this song best says what is now my Grown Up Christmas List.

Merry Christmas.

Giving Thanks

2009-11-28T17:34:00.002-06:00

Dear Kristin,

I was delighted to get your lovely note about being this year’s recipient of the scholarship honoring my father. You’re the first in several years to do so. Kudoes on your parents for training you well!

By now you’ve obviously found the book. I hope you find it informative (we tech types have to stick together…)

Take care & have fun!

Michael

-----------------------------------

My daughter is a junior, studying theatre design, at the University of Iowa. She was fortunate enough this year to receive a scholarship designated for students studying in the technical aspects of theatre.

She did what seemed to be the appropriate and natural thing to do; she sent a thank you note to the donor. In return she received the above note from the donor as well as a book on theatre techniques.

Of course I am proud of her and pleased that she took the time to send the thank you but what is more striking is the second sentence of that note: You’re the first in several years to do so.

I’m shocked. Truly, I’m shocked. Every year this donor gives hundreds of dollars to some very fortunate student to assist them in financing their education. In return all he receives is the warm feeling that comes from honoring his father and the satisfaction of knowing he is helping some young person fulfill their dreams of a college education and, perhaps, a career in theatre.

Is it really too much to ask that the student commit the few minutes it takes to write a thank you and mail it in appreciation of his gift?

Frankly, in my book, what Kristin did was no big deal. It was her responsibility to do so and she did it. I don’t give her brownie points for writing a thank you note. I would have been angry with her if she had not.

This isn’t the first time I’ve run across this sort of thing and I doubt that it is new to any of you. Think of the weddings, graduations and other occasions for which you have given someone a gift and not received a simple thank you, verbal or written, in return. To me, what is worse than no thank you is the thank you note that is simply copied off, signed and mailed. Frankly, no thank you is better than the insincerity of a mass-produced thank you.

The first time I encountered this whole issue of not sending thank you's and the insincerity of some thank you's, was following my wife’s death three years ago. My daughter and I split up the duties of writing thank you notes for the many gifts we received. She wrote the notes to her friends and I took care of the rest. The notes were simple enough, thanking the person for the specific gift they gave and personalizing the note with a sentence or two. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?

I can’t tell you how many people thanked me for thanking them. Many, many people commented on how much they appreciated receiving those thank you notes and were surprised that we took the time to personalize them.

Again, we didn’t do anything special. We did what we were supposed to do.

And before I wrap this up, thank you’s should be more than something we reserve for “special” situations. They should be a part of everyday life. When someone holds a door open, picks up something you dropped, lets you go in front of them in line, whatever it is, we should all remember to say thank you.

Yes, I’m a bit old fashioned, but think how much better a world this would be if we all just took a moment to say thank you.

Turning a chapter in history and our lives

2009-08-26T13:14:00.006-05:00

For those of us who are slightly past the half century mark in age, and beyond, a chapter has turned in our lives.

We share a common point in history, November 22, 1963. I was too young to remember John Kennedy’s 1960 election over Richard Nixon, but I was old enough to remember watching his flag draped, horse drawn casket.

Our age group has seen the Kennedy name as an every day part of our lives for as long as we can remember. Eunice Shriver’s death just a couple of weeks ago and now Ted’s yesterday mark the end of an era.

Yes, I know, there is still one surviving sister, but it was John, Bobby, Teddy and Eunice that were the public face of the Kennedy clan. Say what you will about the Kennedys. Agree or disagree with their politics. You still have to recognize that August 25, 2009, in many ways officially marks the passing of a generational torch.

I had the opportunity to meet Senator Kennedy and his first wife, Joan, during his 1980 campaign for president. One of the perks of being a newspaper reporter in small town Iowa during a presidential election year is that you meet a lot of presidential candidates.

While it’s less true today with the mega-million dollar campaigns we now see, it was especially true in 1980. Any presidential candidate passing through Oskaloosa, Iowa, population 12,000, made the effort to meet with the local newspaper.

I rode in the back of the Kennedy limo with Senator and Mrs. Kennedy, just the three of us and the driver up front. I wish I could tell you that I found him terrifically intriguing and charismatic but, to be completely honest, Mrs. Kennedy was far more charming and engaged in the conversation.

The feeling I received from Kennedy was that, by 1980, he had fought so many political wars, with so many high-powered individuals, that he really didn’t see a challenge in meeting with a 20-something reporter from a small town newspaper located out in the middle of a bunch of cornfields.

Kennedy faced many challenges in that campaign. Not the least of which was running against an incumbent President from his own party. But I’ve always had the feeling that one of the reasons he didn’t gain more support was that he failed to understand and connect with Iowans on a personal level. He was accustomed to large campaign rallies and operating at a level 10,000 feet above the ground which wasn’t the grassroots type of campaign that Iowans expected at that time.

Oddly, that is in stark contrast with his political career. He was a dedicated voice for the underclass and a tireless public servant who accomplished many things during his career.

For those of us in the 50-plus age range, his death closes a chapter that began with John Kennedy’s election, and continued through his assassination, the dreams of Bobby Kennedy’s Presidential campaign and his assassination, the joy that Eunice Shriver brought to millions of mentally handicapped individuals via the Special Olympics and other efforts, and through Ted Kennedy’s long and storied career.

A new generation picks up that torch today. They would be well-served to bring with them the dedication and spirit that the Kennedys brought with them.

A little antique prop work

2009-08-22T18:06:00.004-05:00

Ok... here's a quick one. Thought I should get it out before the Harrison Hilltop's current production is over.

My daughter volunteered to do props for the theatre's latest production, Long Day's Journey Into Night.

She was running out of time, and options, and needed an antique phone. I was getting a little tired of building things around the house, so volunteered to help with the project.

Instead of spending upwards to $200 to get a genuine antique phone, we made one.... you can see it in the photo.

I did the woodwork and she did the staining and adding and creation of the additional pieces.

I can honestly say that this was done with blood and sweat. I managed to shoot a nail (nail gun) through the wood and into my finger. Still don't know how that happened.

Finger is a still a bit sore but I'll survive. The inside of the phone has a particularly dark stain. Oh well.

Harrison Hilltop does some interesting work so if you're looking for some good theatre, take it in.

Chalkboards... not just for classrooms

2009-08-12T18:49:00.004-05:00

At the risk of sounding indelicate, I hated the view of my bathroom door as I sat on the toilet.

It wasn't the door as a whole, just the color: Silver. The door is a bifold mirrored door that faces into the master bedroom so the view inside the bathroom was of the back of the door which was just plain ugly.

So I painted it black. Oh, but if you've read the many preceeding posts in this blog, nothing is as it seems.

I used chalkboard paint. So not only is the black much more attractive than the silver, it's also highly functional.

I can use it to draw cartoon images, leave intriguing limericks... "There once was a man from Racine who invented a loving machine....", or other wittiness... "For a good time call 555-....".

Or I can even use it to draw large images to add color and flair to the bathroom walls.

So, if you're ever by the house and have the pleasure 0f using my bathroom, feel free to sign in.

I'm not a plant person

2009-08-10T20:42:00.006-05:00

I'm not a plant person. I take no enjoyment in tending to my yard. That's pretty evident by looking at it.

The mowing gets done. The weeds get whacked every couple of weeks or so. There's one tree on the whole property and it's about eight feet tall. I'm thinking it might be getting too tall.

There are some plants of some kind in a bed that stretches about two-third of the length of the front of the house. They're the kind that don't get very high.

The weeds in the bed were much taller than the plants. I'm not big on pulling weeds. I whack them off with the weed whacker at the same height as the plants.

So it will come as quite the surprise to those who know me that I just spent the last couple of hours re-potting several of my house plants. I know it surprised me.

But, they needed it. The plants were actually my wife's along with a couple that were gifts when she died three years ago.

I tried to kill the plants off last summer when I moved to the new house. I kept them in the garage from July and well into November. I watered them ever couple of weeks, or so, depending on when I remembered.

To my surprise, the darn things lived. At that point I felt sorry for them and decided if they wanted to live that badly I would move them indoors and at least make an effort to care for them.

The biggest problem with them is that they are all in basket-style pots which definitely does not go with the contemporary feel of this house. So I finally broke down and bought some new pots, more in fitting with the style of this abode.

I spare no expense on my pot acquisitions... purchasing them from WalMart, TJ Max and Goodwill.

I had no clue how to go about this task so I do what everyone does in this technological age... I Googled it and found a video on YouTube.

I dutifully went to Wally World and purchased some of that fancy potting soil. I didn't have the rock that the video said to use to cover the hole in the bottom of the pot so I cut some metal up and bent it to fit the bottom of the pot. Hope that works.

I manage to kill the African Violet. Visions of Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall and leaches went through my mind for some odd reason. I really didn't do it on purpose, it just sort of broke off from the roots in my hand. I buried it in a small ceremony... I threw it in the garbage can.

All in all, I think I did an ok job for my first attempt. I suspect that there will be at least one more of the poor fellas that won't survive the procedure.

But, I've watered them, put them in indirect sunlight and will do my best to continue the resuscitation. Say a prayer for the little guys.

Did I tell you that I'm not a plant person?

Reality show fever

2009-08-03T18:51:00.004-05:00

Ok, now I know what it feels like to be on an HGTV reality show.

I scheduled August 1 as the date for an open house party to finally show people this house I've ben living in for a year now. Of course, that meant I had to get projects done.

For the last month I've felt like I was on one of those reality shows, with time running out and the clock about to strike the finishing hour. I was still building things two days before the party and spent the entire day before the party cleaning up the wreckage that had been created from all of the construction.

One of the projects, actually two, I finished up last week were the cabinets in the basement. One is a media center/cabinet and the other stores all of my wine and other bar glasses.

The media cabinet is approximately seven-feet long with a large storage area. The fronts on the two doors are made from styrofoam and cut in a geometric pattern to mimic the fireplace front upstairs.

The area where the television is, is just screaming out for a large flat panel but that's going to have to wait for another day... I already have flat panel upstairs.

The top of the bar glass cabinet is about 12 feet long, extending over a small refrigerator on the right side. It's difficult to see in this photo but there is lighting under the top that lights up the top shelves of glassware.

There are two display cases built into the top of the cabinet. Both are lighted and covered with plexiglass. I liked the idea of having something colorful in the cabinets so we painted the inside of glass ornaments and put them inside the cases. Later, I can always change this out and display some collection, put a theme to go with a specific holiday or any number of things.

The room is far from finished but it is well finished enough to use and has become a very comfortable place... I'll cover that later.

Sleeping under the trees

2009-07-19T15:21:00.007-05:00

With this house's many different levels, lofted ceilings and the catwalk that connects the bedrooms above the main floor, there's a definite feeling of living in a tree house.

When I sit at the computer in my office loft, I look down essentially three levels from the highest point of the house to the kitchen area below. Looking out the windows, I'm parallel to the top of the tallest trees. The height, and the narrow stairs leading up to the loft, just add to that tree house feeling.

I decided to further add to that feeling with the just completed loft railing. Rather than traditional spindles I cut birch plywood out in the silhouette of tree branches. The photo here shows the view I see when laying down in my bed. (The third photo is the "before" view.)

From below, you get the feeling you're looking up through the trees. When sitting in the loft, you feel like you're sitting in the top of a tree looking down through the branches to the ground below.

My daughter was a huge help in creating this piece. She drew out the branches on the plywood for me. I cut the piece out using a Dremmel-like tool.

I had to look several different places to find these newel posts. I was suprised to discover them at Menards because I'm not usually a fan of the store. I liked these because they are much smaller than the traditional posts and don't distract quite as much from the silhouette.

Even at that I cut about 5 inches off the bottom so that the height and overall size of the railing didn't become too overpowering.

In the end, you have the feeling of sleeping outdoors without worrying about getting drenched when it rains.