here's a firsthand account of a trip to iowa city (today, just got back), a city that has changed incredibly in the forty or so years i've been gone.

to get where i was going, i had to travel well-known streets but go way over from the northeast side of town to the far southern edge, and the main road that got there was closed due to a bridge down. diverted into near-southside roads that used to be my walking haunts, i noticed that every single block had apartment buildings built up upon all its lots, so that the streets were now caverns and always surrounded by buidings at every side. the town didn't grow that much on its edges, but it seemed to add a few thousand people right in its middle as apartment buildings, and office and store buildings, seemed to now take up every inch. it was truly citified.

it's true that the places where i'd go and hang out, like alandoni's bookstore, were often in older houses or buildings which, though downtown, were doomed to destruction eventually anyway. one house i lived in, ancient, i was given a stipend upon my removal (or the person after me was) simply because they had eyes on tearing that one down right away; my ninety-some landlady was not going to be easy to move but it's possible they were just waiting for her to give up the fight and go to some home somewhere so they could tear it all down. these places and more were now modern-looking apartment complexes, so that every block was now full, and you got the distinct impression of being in a large city.

and did this help it? out in the neighborhoods, it seemed much more friendly, calm, radical. lots of houses with major deco or naturally overgrown. lots of people out walking their dogs and such; i looked at them wondering if i knew them. lots of bicycles making traffic a little lively.

i didn't answer my own question; i guess it's for those who live there to decide. maybe they like that city feeling, especially since so much of it was just carrying on as usual. i saw lots of people getting groceries or carrying on their usual life in a kind of glow of being in a libertine place that we just don't have here in galesburg. it reminded me that iowa city is a collecting place for the rebels as well as the bright people who don't fit into the more dull towns that dot the state, whereas galesburg, my present home, is more like the place they left. it made me miss the place as it was fun to live in a place like that.

it's no wonder that the college towns are gaining population whereas towns like galesburg are steadily losing it. a town that allows for diversity is going to get the diversity that the other towns can't handle, and people want to live in a place where they're allowed to be who they are. in iowa city's case it seems to have put these people in the center of town.

lots of hawkeye decor around too although i expect that from the town itself. we saw three young girls with caitlin's 22 jersey, three out of maybe only a dozen girls that i saw altogether. pretty good turnout.

 

on the eve of a big trip to iowa - going to see my daughter and two grandchildren in iowa city - and i'm a little excited because a little incident happened while i was dashing late at night. You can read about it here; basically I was stopped by a policeman while dashing, because i was parked wrong probably, but he basically left me alone; I have nothing to complain about. in fact i didn't even know what was happening until he was gone, and it's only now that i'm sitting here ruminating over the causes and effects.

it was a wild night out there - i think maybe a knox college graduation, and a number of other things; it was hopping. as far as the dashing went, they dashed me all over town for a couple of hours and i easily made enough money, although i had waited all day for the opportunity. once i had the chance i couldn't get enough, and stayed out there until it was after ten and then of course they're going to stop you.

it reminds me of a time long ago when i ran newspapers around iowa city and coralville in the middle of the night - about two or three a m, or later, i'd get in the habit of driving on the wrong side of the street or wherever, even weaving a little if i felt like it, and one night i got stopped. that policeman was nice to me - basically if you're a working person, just doing your job, they have a lot of sympathy, but they don't have to, if you are breaking the law flagrantly. in my case tonight i could argue that i wasn't even parked, which was true. i was just pulled over in my car, looking at the app. but even then, i suppose i should be on the right side of the road.

dashing a lot, i'm out more. i see a lot of police actions. i take a general tour of the whole town almost every night. i get a sense of the neighborhoods and where kids are hanging out a lot on their bicycles. the weather is beautiful. it's a nice town, peaceful. lots of people are getting door dash late at night.

and that's the upshot of it. i can wait around all day, hanging on my phone, if i want, but most of the action is at night - after eight, after nine really, going right on through until midnight. might as well get used to the night shift - it may be a long summer.

big old storm rolling in - we are in the midst of clearing out broken furniture and getting it on the curb, but the storm is due to last all day and i'm not sure how it will affect the process. in addition i'm tired and don't even like hauling old broken furniture out onto the curb.

but i did finish the mowing, and that was no small feat. my wife was taken in by the no-mow movement, which i intended to read about and give some meaningful commentary on, but instead i'll do that here, since i really don't know what i'm talking about, and it's all personal because of the pain of lugging an undersized electric mower around to three houses doing the best i could to catch every corner. our own house was the worst - the grass in back was higher than the two smaller puppies - but i set the mower on high and it seemed to handle it ok without constnntly stalling. the one spot that got it was in the drivewy where it had been no-mow since the very beginning.

the grass came up rich and lush where we let it and my impression is that all that grass going to seed was good for at least the propagation of more grass if not for the ecosystem in general. In general I would say, why give the bugs and snakes the impression that this will be a wild no-mow territory when you're just going to cut it inevitably anyway? it turns out that bugs and snakes are pretty versatile and when they know you're mowing they're already gone to better jungles. they're pretty good at settling in for a temporary gig bacause their life is like that anyway. so the sum total is, more grass, about the same population of transient bugs & critters, and a generally healthier ecosystem.

but i ended up a little sore and tired from fighting the hard grass resistance to my quiet electric mower. it just wasn't meant for such dense undergrowth. out at the academy house, yard turns into weed on railroad property and i have to decide how far to go with it - i already have some of the railroad land going back to the wild where it came from. in other places it's dense nettles growing over junk, junk that will hurt the mower because i can't even see it when i mow out there. i try to keep the bugs down in most places; mowing helps the birds pick off your average bug nest. but i let that railroad right-of-way protect the snakes and the other critters.

i sit here at noon practically falling asleep while my wife begs for five more minutes to work on dinner before i get in there and work on my own lunch. i'll give her five and maybe ten - she makes good dinners but needs the space to do it - and in the mean time i'll tell you why i might nod off. last night, ten to eleven, the door dash from hell - it was a double order, a wendy's out to the far east side, and sandwiched between the pickup and the delivery, a couple of shakes from steak & shake to a nearby house. in the steak & shake they had the shakes almost made when something happened at the window that required all their attention, and they made me stand there maybe ten or fifteen minutes, with the wendy's order already in my car cooling off. but worse, when i finally got the shakes and took them to the house, the house had its lights on, cats standing there, but nobody answered the bell, nobody answered the phone. it was a "hand it to me" order which meant i didn't feel good just leaving it there. but after another ten minutes what could i do? i think the woman was in bed with someone. that's what the cats were trying to tell me. i left the order. but way over on the east side, the map function could not work on my app and i got lost. it just wouldn't tell me where this apartment was. the poor womoan; she just wanted a wendy's. finally i got it to her. she must have been starving!

ten fifty i rolled home, a long night, but i made my money. now i'm tired and might nod off before i get this furniture moved. and the rain is really rolling in.

it's hard to make it truly interesting. i wish i was more excited about what i'm reading, but it's mostly crap. one is about sailing the waters around scotland's western isles - at least it has a good topic. i'll stick with that one, but only after i have another cup of coffee.

absolutely glorious weather out there, and the dashing has been good - maybe it's payday, or maybe the college is approaching finals time, but the nights are hopping, and i'm doing a lot of running around. most of the time i drive around with windows open. and the phone keeps dinging.

but that's just temporary, the way i see it, and dash has a built-in way of making sure it covers all the orders - it shoots for having a few too many dashers so there are always people sitting around. that will be me, much of the time; i'm tricked into signing up for hours or logging on at times when it slows down dramatically. i have a theory that there's plenty of dashing around, but the problem is more that there are way too many pikers like me out there trying to pick up the orders.

so i should be working on my novel = one of several that i've started and let go, or better yet, a new one, but i've had trouble in that department. it's partly the traveling frame of mind keeps me from concentrating while i'm sitting here. i can do blogs, i can do marketing, i can do anything interruptable, but i don't seem to want to apply myself to any of the novels. the three most needing to be finished are 1) a texas one, involving guns and red-dirt musicians; 2) an esl one, set in carbondale; and 3) one set in dedham, mass., revealing some of what i've learned in historical studies. i'm beginning to think what i ought to do is just plan and write, straight up, a fourth one. perhaps the reason i'm stuck on these three is something personal, like an unwillingness to reveal aspects of the past, or uncomfortability with reliving it.

i don't even write much haiku these days, though dash is the perfect place to do it. i'm sitting in my car, paper down in the door beside me, and waiting for an order, having put myself in a place where i'm most likely to get it. sometimes things are slow; you can't force an order out of thin air. i could be writing haiku, as that's what i used to do - but i'm not. even home here, i'm hesitant. i don't know what's going on.

if we can get our house going that will free up some of my time, and i can get going. i have history and biography books to write too.