my heart goes out to everyone in iowa city, a precious place, a place that embraced me with all my vanities at a young age, took me in, and passed me along after eleven beautiful years. i can't imagine what it would be like to have my life torn into as happened to these folks on iowa avenue, home of the old capitol, hamburg inn #1, & a number of old friends' houses. i'll just tell one of a billion stories & hope it lifts a sense of whatever you feel after a disaster like this.

was living in a house with a small yard on muscatine one spring & decided to grow some corn; little did i know that dogs had lived in the yard earlier, & the corn shot up like a rocket. walked by a church every day with a big sign that said, "is there a god?" and ruminated on that on my way home usually. but a killer storm knocked down the corn one day (it was too high for early may) & i was mad at god. until i got to the church and saw that a tree had fallen on someone's car.

but when i was coming home, it had gotten even worse. apparently an artist asked that, rather than cut up the tree as they usually do, they try to save it; they had obliged, but then the tree tipped over the crane, crushed yet another car, and ruined the crane (or at least so they feared.

and i always teach the importance of punctuation...