Archive for July 2007

I owe you the end of the story. Fact is, our twenty-four hours in Des Moines constitute a long, wonderful story. We had a ball, and — from the Arts Festival to KFMG to People’s to the Walsmith’s to the Authentic Records brunch — wrung out every last bit of awesomeness the city had to…

For some fifteen hours yesterday, I was at — well, near, actually — Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, covering Al Gore’s globalwarmingapalooza, Live Earth. As always, I didn’t see the show. I mean, I could hear it playing on the flat screens down the hall, but from the one-on-one interview rooms backstage —…

I boycotted the fireworks tonight. They couldn’t possibly have been more excellent than Saturday’s. It takes a certain amount of masochism, a three a.m. wake up call, great weather, seemless airline connections, an hour of time zone savings, and about 15 milligrams of Xanax to make it to Eastern Iowa Airport before nine a.m., but…

I waded into the shoulder high corn, looked into the sun, and dropped to my knees. My grandparents are buried in Mount Olivet Cemetery on the western edge of Waterloo. When we laid my grandmother, Mildred Bolster, to rest beside her husband, William, in the summer of 1998, the view was a classic, unfettered Iowa…