In today’s Gazette, I talk to Roy Porterfield who found a Bible in the middle of First Avenue East in Cedar Rapids on that unlucky Friday, June 13, at the height of the flood. That’s when the Cedar River hit its crest, when it flowed through thousands of city homes and businesses sweeping whatever lay in its path [...]
With the recent comparison of the 2008 flood in Cedar Rapids and the 1997 flood in Grand Forks, ND, I can’t resist running this Ramblin’ column I wrote for the April 29, 1997, Gazette. It ran with the headline “Cedar’s serenity a welcome contrast to raging Red River”
The Cedar River is a whisper to the Red River’s [...]
If it hasn’t been high winds, it seems to be high waters that are plaguing Iowans this year. Certainly a spring for the ages, bringing back memories of tornadoes that hit Oelwein and Charles City 40 years ago and the floods that swept through river communities 15 years ago.
Having been been to Charles City after [...]
The Dewey Decimators of the Coralville Public Library, featured in today’s Ramblin’ column in The Gazette, may not have an original name but they were certainly original by featuring numbers from the Dewey Decimal System on the backs of their softball team T-shirts. The numbers coincide with the wearer’s favorite reading topic. Other Dewey Decimators [...]
It’s Election Day in Iowa. But it’s a primary election. So, while it’s encouraging to see that Linn County has had an unusually high number of absentee ballots taken out, no doubt because of the new way it’s electing county supervisors from districts, there’s no guarantee that voters will turn out in record numbers. In fact, [...]
Mike Chasar, the subject of today’s Ramblin’ column in The Gazette, had a fun time collecting old scrapbooks for his award-winning dissertation about how poetry influenced Americans from 1880 to 1945. While I was able to cover a lot of what he wrote about in that column, there’s no way to everything from a 225-page scholarly paper. [...]
While chatting with Blair Frank of Bertram about his Peace Garden, featured in today’s Ramblin’ column in The Gazette, he said something about graduating from the University of South Dakota in Vermillion.
Ah, hah. That’s where I graduated, in 1975. Blair earned a degree in biology in 1973. Since each of us finished college in four straight years, that means [...]
I have to agree with Jason Whitlock, columnist for the Kansas City Star. In a story that ran in this morning’s Gazette sports page, he said officials should have allowed Danica Patrick to confront Ryan Briscoe after they crashed 29 laps from the end of Sunday’s Indianapolis 500. He apparently jumped lanes as the leaders [...]
Four West Branch buddies will be among the 400,000 spectators at the Indianapolis 500 automobile race Sunday. They’re reliving their youth, with three of them, David “Vid” Johnson, James “Boo” (now “Butch” 
Pederson, and Jeff “Whitey” Lathrop having gone in 1968 and a fourth, Glenn “Hink” Hinkhouse, joining them in 1969. (See today’s Ramblin’ column in The Gazette.)
I’m [...]
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