Archive for December, 2007
December 3, 2007 – In the News
There have been a couple of recent stories in the news about our neck of the woods. NPR produced a story about immigration and visited with people in Marshalltown, including a woman that went on the trip to Mexico with Linda and Claire’s high school principal. In addition to the audio story, there is a video story link below the story photo from a local coffee shop talking about the caucuses that features some folks we know. The old ladies steal the show in my book!
The New York Times travel writer gushed about the renewed downtown Des Moines. He said in part:
It was not long ago, as most Iowans will tell you, when East Coast stereotypes about this Midwest city were fairly accurate. Bleak and foreboding, a city with a desultory and desolate downtown, few places to eat and little to do once the candidates returned to often dreary hotel rooms. For the hordes of campaign staff members, reporters, television crews who have encamped here for the caucuses over the past 30 years – great story, yes, but suffice it to say that Des Moines wasn’t the draw. But the other night in Des Moines, I had dinner with a colleague and the Iowa state director of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign at a vibrant restaurant, Lucca, in the heart of a gentrified neighborhood called the East Village. The restaurant had more panache and better food than many places I’ve eaten in Washington, D.C. The East Village streets, spread out under the State Capitol, were aglow with lights – lavender, icy blue and, of course, red and green - strung out for Christmas. They were bustling with boutiques, bookstores, coffee shops, culinary stores and Smash, an edgy T-shirt shop where the proprietors were listening to Band of Horses while making slightly off-color T-shirts celebrating the Iowa caucuses.
Although Iowans still can’t quite put them up to talking smack about the improvements in their state, at least there are outsiders who can come in and do it instead.
December 2, 2007 – Make a “Snow Day”
I think we needed a snow day. Yesterday while everything was shut down outside, it was time for something completely different.
It was time to make gingerbread cookies and homemade bread! The tasks that should availed themselves (house cleaning etc,) were just too risky because you just never knew when the power might go out in the middle of vacuuming a rug! Â So, it was cookies and bread. Martin loves the honey wheat bread – so much so he calls it “dessert” and doesn’t want anything on it. He even wanted to bring a PB&J sandwich to school instead of a school lunch of corndogs!
Here Martin shows off his moose and Minnesota cookie with important places in Minnesota for him marked with an X. He’s at the age where he loves cooking. A few days ago we were working in the attic and as soon as we got up, I realized I needed another tool, so asked him to find a good radio station on the dial while I went to fetch it from the garage. When I got up,he had dialed into NPR and was listening to Lynne Rossetto-Kasper on the “Splendid Table” and he was all excited because they were talking about spices and reported that most cinnamon in the stores is fake.
December 1, 2007 – In Like a Lion
December is in like a lion with an ice storm. So far, it isn’t holding a candle to the ice storm that left us without power for 4 days and our neighbors for 8 days. See February 23-March 4 blog entries for the worst 8 days of ice, snow, and wind I’ve ever lived through.
Chelsea doesn’t seem to mind the ice – she’s out running in the pasture this afternoon.
So far the ice accumulation has not brought any trees down, although it did cause some airplanes to slide off the runway in Des Moines.
