You have to love fear and its favorite step-child, anxiety. I mean, what’s there not to love? Here you have a basic emotion, fear, which makes all kinds of sense when it comes to keeping you safe from the invading North Koreans, but now you discover you can’t even leave
Read More →Act I The Greenwood Lounge sits shadowed by a marquee on the north side of Ingersoll. Its exterior is reminiscent of an old strip club: ’60’s-style siding with windows covered by blinds so the patrons, who are clearly up to no good, are barely visible to their forsaken families. Entering
Read More →Thirty-two years. That’s a long time even without doing the dog-years calculation. How exactly do we measure 32 years? Let’s see, if you add one year, you’d be old enough to have four gospels written about your teachings and life. If you add eight years, it would be the beginning of all those
Read More →Reading obituaries feels a little like reading the daily racing form at Prairie Meadows. You quickly scan the page to see how many of the departed are your age or younger. If that number is 50 percent or greater, you realize it may not be a good time to double
Read More →When the pain is too great, when it all is just too much, the doctors prescribe morphine. It is an interesting substance — this derivative from opium. In the early 1800s, a German pharmacist named the drug morphine after Morpheus, the Greek god of dreams. No doubt, dreams are what
Read More →Food courts are not the place where most folks go for spiritual renewal. Heck, food courts don’t even count as a location for a date with your special someone — unless, of course, you’re 12. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that caramel popcorn purchased at a food court
Read More →Sometimes something is just missing. It’s weird. You walk into a beautiful building, you are a guest in someone’s gorgeous home or you meet an interesting person for the first time. All good. But some ingredient is missing between you and the architecture, between you and the warmth of the
Read More →Long before you catch sight of the diminutive Thai woman, you’ll hear her voice — loud, strong, a touch of carnival barker in the undertones and leavened with laughter. “Come in, come in, come in — please, sit anywhere,” is heard from the depths of the kitchen. And you obey.
Read More →Have you noticed that the topic of weather is the great equalizer that turns us all into Iowa farmers this time of year? You can be the librarian at the Downtown Library, a CEO at Nationwide or a checker at Hy-Vee, and out of your mouth will come these words:
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Posted February 13, 2013in Joe's Neighborhood
The class is soon to begin. Chairs shuffle, winter coats are thrown to the side, note pads and laptops are carefully balanced on the 12-inches-of-polished-wood for a desk, and low conversation floats through the room. Cell phones are turned off or carefully hidden just out of sight. Murmurs, coughs and
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