Before Holy Mountain

Originally published as a Facebook Note July 15, 2014. It was my last-but-one Facebook Note, the last being my 2016 All-Star votes. City Lights Bookstore, San Francisco CA I had odd feelings about this vacation. I brought my own anxieties along, to which were added the inevitable uncertainties of traveling, long periods in the car on difficult roads, and then news that our home had sustained some storm damage. It seemed like every time I started to relax and enjoy myself this giant foot of anxiety would stomp me back to reality. Nevertheless, thanks to Jane's astute planning we were able to see a healthy swath of the Golden State in a relatively short time. Friday, June 27 Staying at: Days Inn, Fountain Valley CA Coffee: Brewed Awakenings, Cedar Rapids, before our plane left Dinner: grilled chicken at the Proodians', Huntington Beach CA "This is L.A.": California's impact on pop music is obvious once you start traveling around and realize every place reminds y...

Originally published as a Facebook Note in 2011; revised June 25, 2014. As of current date only two of these remain: Coffee Emporium and Roasters.   Perhaps because we possess an extra portion of the entrepreneurial initiative that has made this country great, or perhaps because the multinational corporations were late moving in, Cedar Rapids has an excellent variety of local coffeehouses. Your humble correspondent now undertakes to introduce you to them; even local residents may not know about all of these. However, you’re not going to get the nuanced descriptions of a discriminating palate, at least not from me. I am only qualified to rate them for ambience, accessibility, and information, as well as size and density of baked goods, and this is what I’m going to proceed to do.                 Fortunately I got my introduction to the coffeehouse world through one of the best: Brewed Awakenings, 1271 1st Av...

  Originally published as a Facebook Note March 23, 2013. The Lost Cuban closed in 2020. They now operate a takeout only place down the street. The Lost Cuban in 2016 (Google Earth screenshot) The boys were on spring break, and I'm on sabbatical leave, so there was no good reason not to go out to lunch Friday. I'd been wanting to check out the Lost Cuban, which has moved into the space at 209 3rd St SE that has been a number of things in recent years. We did the downtown parking thing without too much difficulty, then wended our way through the skywalks which wasn't really necessary but I do have a thing for the skywalks. (For the record, the Lost Cuban is near the Armstrong's Building, so the nearest Skywalk entrance is by Hills Bank and the temporary library.) There weren't too many people there, which made figuring things out easy, but I'm here to tell you the place should be packed. Eli and I went with the Cuban sandwich, which features pork and ham and chee...

  Originally posted as a Facebook Note October 21, 2012. Th e Rev. Billy Graham, the justly venerated patriarch of Christian evangelism, and one of the true giants of his generation, took out a full-page ad in Section A of the Cedar Rapids Gazette today. If you don't live in Cedar Rapids, I imagine it made it into your Sunday paper as well. In it Dr. Graham hopes you will support candidates that oppose gay marriage, support banning abortion, and support allowing employers to decide whether their employees will have access to prescription contraceptives. He does this without using the words "gay," "abortion," or "contraceptive," which means you have to cut through a thicket of politically-correct euphemisms to get there, but there's where you get. Since these three positions (and their attendant euphemisms) are associated with the Republican party, that's what he's asking, and he'll have a happier birthday on Wednesday the 7th if enough ...

  Originally published as a Facebook Note August 30, 2012. Weirdest political moment of 2012? ...in which our intrepid author braves six hours of political propaganda because, well, it's sort of his job, and anyway would make a good note, he guesses. About me: I'm old enough to remember conventions that actually chose candidates. I followed both the 1968 Republican and Democratic conventions, mostly on the radio. I've seen the parties and the media struggle with what the role of conventions should be in the era of primaries and caucuses. I think they remain publicly valuable, even though they're infomercials, because what a party or candidate is trying to sell you, and how they're trying to sell it, say a lot about that party or candidate. I have my political preferences, of course, but this is not a forum to support either candidate or party. There are enough "fan boys" on the Internet, and I don't need to be another one. This is more of a detached m...