Posted February 05, 2014in Joe's Neighborhood
Des Moines really is the center of the universe. I know, I know, there are a few doubters out there. If you are cosmopolitan, or worldly, or perhaps a model for Abercrombie & Fitch standing shirtless outside the store at Jordan Creek, the center of the universe is wherever your
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Posted January 29, 2014in Joe's Neighborhood
New Year’s vows are tricky for most of us. Particularly after that first failed month down the rocky road of virtue and clean living. You probably know what I’m talking about. Vows made over holiday turkey and stuffing are long gone by the time the grey clamminess of February oatmeal
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Posted January 22, 2014in Joe's Neighborhood
Red Light districts and “coffee shops” that sell marijuana are what most folks know of the Netherlands. That’s too bad. Don’t get me wrong, vice sells. But illicit drugs and anonymous sex, even if we include rock ‘n’ roll, seems a little unambitious for a bucket list of things you
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Posted January 15, 2014in Joe's Neighborhood
Swimming seems an activity that evokes an older time, perhaps even a better time, a time of gentle ease. Swimming belongs in a Norman Rockwell painting. There you are, floating on your back in a small pond bordered by Iowa prairie grass, with two dragonflies and a single grasshopper perched
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Posted January 08, 2014in Joe's Neighborhood
The fire blazes nearly seven stories high as the North Sea wind whips the flames from one side of the structure to the other. The crowd of a couple thousand ebbs and flows around the giant wick as techno music throbs to the beat of the burning light show. And
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Posted January 01, 2014in Joe's Neighborhood
Rain is falling in sheets from the North Sea today. It’s a cold rain — so cold that hail periodically bursts down from the heavens in a slushy mix sending ice pellets bouncing across the cobblestones. Shoppers are walking with heads down and umbrellas collapsed inward by the wind. They
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Posted December 26, 2013in Joe's Neighborhood
Skating is a terrifying activity wrapped in a bow-tied package of exhilaration. Certainly there is all that floating and gliding and whooshing-air-past-rosy-cheeks stuff — a giddy time to be sure. But if you look in the dark corner at the edge of your vision, off to the far right, you
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Posted December 18, 2013in Joe's Neighborhood
“Bless me father, for I have sinned, it has been several decades since my last confession.” Primarily out of laziness, and perhaps a lack of creativity, I had a fairly reliable list of sins I would confess to the priest at St. Mary’s Church in Iowa City. I usually warmed
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Posted December 11, 2013in Joe's Neighborhood
Holiday shopping requires a certain level of maturity that I just don’t possess. Let’s take Black Friday. I’ve tried it. My sister-in-law had everything all mapped out for us the year we headed out in the early morning to stand in line at the Target store at Merle Hay Mall.
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Posted December 04, 2013in Joe's Neighborhood
Mazes are fun. I know this, because people pay money to walk into cut-out Iowa corn fields to experience being trapped and lost. Yup, pay money. I’m sure this whole maze-thing started because on some dark autumn night a disgusted Iowa farmer, on a never-ending wait for Congress to pass
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