Local Still Trumps

Last night during the moving tribute to Peter Jennings on ABC a technique called "mapping" was mentioned. You got a local map, closed your eyes, pointed at a spot, and then went there to find and film whatever story was present at that location.

The OFTA (Old Friends Talk Arts) group used a variation of that technique yesterday and found gold literally right outside of the door of the Buchanan Center for the Arts. Led by an accomplished local historial we simply walked around our own town square and learned a fair amount about local history and architecture. Jeff Rankin, Monmouth College's Director of College Communications, was our leader and over thirty hearty seniors braved the heat and humidity to learn about the cigar factory that used to occupy the 2nd floor of the Arts Center, the financial shenanigans in 19th century banking, the various styles of commercial architecture, and why the small stone disk over the door of a building had been sandblasted to obscure its original image. (The building was once a Pabst Blue Ribbon owned bar and when the town went dry it was not thought to be an appropriate symbol to display on the main square.) It was a delightful hour right here at home--no cost yet full of fascination. Heartfelt thanks to Jeff Rankin for reminding us all of the importance of our roots. Here's hoping that some of what we heard will be transferred to friends, extended families, and visitors to our community.

New Lincoln Presidential Museum in Springfield 

TJ Brown Visits

Grandson TJ Brown visited us this week. We played golf twice and traveled to Springfield, IL to see some of the Lincoln sites. Most impressive was the new Lincoln presidential museum and the old State Capital. That's Jan and TJ on the right with Abe and family. Some folks have complained that the new museum is too Disneyfied, but those were the parts our nine year old liked best.

Lincoln's Home 

Weekend at W's

That's W's not Dubyas. We took a pleasant drive up to LaCrosse to visit old colleagues George and Cindy. The farm is perched on a knoll. In front is a flower bedecked prairie, then a row of trees, and in the far background bands of corn fields . The atmosphere is about as relaxing as it can get.

The conversation was splendid and I had the chance once more to take lots of flower and bird pictures. Sunday we went from a little bit of paradise in Wisconsin to Paradise Valley in Iowa where we picked up our grandson. He'll spend a few days with us before we return him to Cedar Rapids.

Taking a deep breath

We are now breathing more easily again as the 100 degree heat and high humidity has moved westward leaving us with two fine days of pleasant golfing weather. Work is progressing on the Japan slides. We'll whet your appetite a bit below. When you see those kites flying around a Japanese home, it means that there are sons in the family. One difference from the midwest is that most fields are quite small. You can see a fairly large rice paddy here, surrounded by fairly small wheat plots. Rice paddies actually come in many sizes. Not too many are larger than this and often they are barely the size of a modest garden.

Monmouth Melts

Hades might be cooler than the midwest this weekend. The so called heat index hit 110 here today. Other than to get a paper, it has been an indoor scene. We ventured out last night to see the Coffee Bean Theatre's production of Ken Ludwig's Moon over Buffalo. It was done in our old downtown movie house. Coffee Bean is primarily populated with Galesburg people and they give it the old energetic community theatre try. There is plenty of mugging, and tons of shouting, falling down, and slamming doors. The show doesn't have near the charm of Lend Me a Tenor with a good deal of the humor depending on not so politically correct laghter at falling down drunks and deaf old ladies. But the energy is there and live theatre beats a movie or video hands down. At ten bucks it was a pleasant evening.