Category Archives: Iowa Miscellaneous

My Substack column for May 3 questions the utility of the Alliant Energy LightLine bridge south of downtown Cedar Rapids once its original goal, using part of the abandoned Rock Island Railroad bridge, turned out to be infeasible.

Iowa schoolkids, and former schoolkids, want chili and cinnamon rolls. I even looked up old lunch menus for a story about this Marion Historical Society fundraiser.

There are times when newspapers aren’t delivered because of a blizzard, but at least we know where they are? I admit loving that the description on Seymour Herald’s Facebook page is “A weekly OFFICIAL WAYNE COUNTY NEWSPAPER, with hometown local … Continue reading →

OK, so some of the info from this month-old post is outdated, but the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative additions list is important, and it’s another picture from Pi Day in Springville. (Me? A procrastinating mess? Never.)

September 30, 2014: Swan, in far northwest Marion County, was bypassed by the state highway system when what today is IA 5 was realigned in 1928. The IA 316 bridge over the Des Moines River at Runnells was decades in … Continue reading →

Pie is always in season, not just March 14! Pi Day in Springville is a local holiday.

In Sunday’s print Des Moines Register, on the “Around the State” page, there was this curious item: In a page that is about stories from the state of Iowa, the Register ran a brief from a city in ILLINOIS — … Continue reading →

You might think that news about a Des Moines suburb getting another gas station isn’t too notable, but in this case, I found something. Land was cleared last fall for a Casey’s at the northeast corner of University Avenue and … Continue reading →

About a month ago, Mediacom shut off its unencrypted cable signal. That means my favorite way to watch TV — on the computer — couldn’t work with cable anymore. Ironically, even as I write this now, the signal to my … Continue reading →