Celebration in Brass is a must-see in Ankeny
If you’ve never attended Ankeny’s Celebration in Brass event, you’ve been missing out on the big, can’t-help-but-stomp-your-feet sound of the nation’s best youth drum-and-bugle corps. Check out this brief history in the June 19 Register, and be sure to check out this year’s five performing corps on June 22, 7:30 p.m. at Ankeny High School Stadium. Tickets [...]
Privatize public-run recreation facilities?
I like Polk County’s plan to privatize the operation of Jester Park Golf Course. According to reports, the $84,000 the county will receive from their selected course management company is more than the course earned for the County last year - and the revenues have been on the decline. So it seems that perhaps the County is [...]
Stone hunting for Bardricks in Adair County
Larry Lehmer has a great post about rural cemeteries this week, and it got me thinking about one of my favorite stone-hunting stories.
Grandma Verdie told me that her mother’s parents were buried “in Pitzer Cemetery” in the general vicinity of Winterset and Earlham, Iowa. Wanting to find the gravestone and see the burial site of [...]
Veering off the main road
I learned one of the core lessons of genealogy very early on: it’s easy to get distracted.
In a moment, you can wander off the main path (looking for direct blood-line ancestors) and start down any number of secondary trails that lead to aunts, uncles, cousins, skeletons-in-closet, or just historical context. One of my primary distractions [...]
Interviewing relatives is difficult for me
One of the things that’s really hard for me to do in genealogy is to “interview” relatives. I’m actually an experienced interviewer of other people, having been a radio show host and a freelance business writer in previous decades. But those situations are different - you’re expected to get right to the point because everyone’s [...]
Park Fair will face challenges with renovation
A report that Park Fair Mall on Des Moines’ north side will get a $2.5 million facelift in hopes of attracting a big-box retailer is great news, but frankly seems overly optimistic to me.
Just down the street, at Des Moines’ second-busiest intersection, a Florida developer has been working for more than ten years to get a [...]
Rob Lowe… paging Rob Lowe…
Rob Lowe: You’re Needed in East DavenportEast Davenport, Iowa is having a problem with at least one blackbird aggressively defending the perimeter around its nest. The bird attacks people who walk past its tree (which is located near the entrance of a busy office building), protecting its young from human “predators.” Meanwhile, in West Des [...]
BEAR robot rescues human casualties when humans can’t
Oh dear God - I can’t believe I just found this today. This is one of those ideas that sounds good when you dream it up at 3 a.m., but in the light of day it just starts to look crazier and crazier. The idea is, actually, quite sound: create a robot that can be [...]
Must-haves for the Dad on your list
… assuming, of course, that he still goes around rehashing his alien abduction incident to anyone who will listen.
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Hopeless dependence shouldn’t be a way of life
The Delaware Curmudgeon has a great quote from Cal Thomas posted on her blog this week:
I am not robbed by people who have more money than I. I am robbed by a government that wants to penalize my industry and give increasing portions of what I earn to people who do not emulate my principles, [...]
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