that I began my writing career at The Gazette in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. A winter blizzard over the weekend drifted roads shut and made me an hour late. But, I finally arrived and, despite a four-year hiatus from 1986 to 1990, have been here since.
Ah, 1979. I drove a 1973 Plymouth Satellite Sebring Plus, rented an apartment [...]
Posts Tagged as ‘Music’
January 23, 2009
It Was 30 Years Ago Today
May 28, 2008
Top 40, 40 Years Ago
Music always brings back memories for me. It was purely by accident I ran across a Web site that features those old fliers you used to pick up in stores beside the 45-rpm record racks listing the day’s Top 40 tunes.
So, for those of you who are fans of music from the late 60s, here’s a stroll [...]
May 5, 2008
Merrill Sparks a Fascinating Man
What a joy to spend a couple of hours with a man of Merrill Sparks’ caliber.
Merrill, 85, a native Iowan who retired to Iowa City about four years ago (See today’s Ramblin’ column in The Gazette), has performed all around the United States and has known some really famous people including actor James Cagney, “April [...]
April 18, 2008
Youth Centers and Christian Rock
Through the years I’ve written about several youth centers that opened in Eastern Iowa, only to close in a year or two because the kids quit coming or enough volunteers couldn’t be found to run the place.
Today’s Ramblin’ in The Gazette takes a look at another attempt at establishing a place where kids, sixth grade to [...]
April 15, 2008
MTV’s “The Paper” Not Reality
There’s no reality like your job, so with more than 30 years of experience in the newspaper business I couldn’t resist tuning into MTV (it used to stand for Music Television) last night to see its latest reality show – “The Paper.”
If newspapers of the future operate like “The Circuit” at Cypress Bay High School [...]
March 13, 2008
Rumble at What Cheer
If you read Wednesday’s “Ramblin’ ” column in The Gazette about David Haupt, a Cedar Rapids anesthesiologist who wrote the “What Cheer Rumble” for its debut performance this weekend during the “Sousa Returns to Iowa” concert at the What Cheer Opera House, you know all about David.
I didn’t have room to talk about the group [...]
