Iowa Girl on the Go

If you’re a Monty Python fan, you already know that you enjoy a bit of silliness. Monty Python’s Spamalot – basically the classic 1974 film Monty Python and the Holy Grail set to music – has counted on this to fill theaters since it opened on Broadway. The show, created by Python great Eric Idle, won the best musical Tony in 2005 and is now enjoying a successful national tour. I saw it last night at Stephens Auditorium in Ames, and the theater was packed all the way up to the third balcony.

The musical story of King Arthur and his hodge-podge Knights of the Round Table is at its best when it sticks to the original film plot. Fans of the Holy Grail will love the “bring out your dead” scene and its accompanying “I’m Not Dead Yet” number, the clickety-clacking of coconut hoofbeats, the Knights who Say “Ni,” the Black Night, the taunting Frenchman, the killer rabbit, and all the rest.

Not as successful are all the new characters, especially the Lady of the Lake, a diva who shows up way too much and pretty much drags down the plot whenever she’s on stage. There are lots of dancing girls and colorful numbers that don’t seem to belong in this show, and it makes me wonder if Spamalot wouldn’t have been a lot better if it had been staged as a male-only cast like its founding group of Pythons. In fact, one of the funniest scenes takes place as Arthur is starting to gather his Knights and he meets Dennis (Sir Galahad) and his mother, hilariously played by Thomas DeMarcus. Nobody does female impersonation like the Monty Python troupe.

I did enjoy a couple of “extraneous” numbers, most especially “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” but also the hilarious “You Won’t Succeed On Broadway,” both in the second act.

The current national touring company is excellent. I saw this show a few years ago in Chicago, and I think the production in Ames was actually better. The cast seems to be having a great time, and the audience loved them.

Now I want to sit back and watch the movie.

Spending the holidays in New York City is a little bit like spending the holidays at Disney World. If you can stand the crowds, it’s a great time to be there.

Me, I don’t like crowds. So I would have never chosen to go to New York between Christmas and New Year’s – the busiest tourist week of the year in the Big Apple. But I was assigned to cover Iowa State’s participation in the New Era Pinstripe Bowl (played Dec. 30 at Yankee Stadium) – so I embraced the adventure.

Much of my time was spent with football team and alumni events – and, of course, the game itself – but I managed to squeeze in a few other activities.

We arrived in New York on Dec. 28, and I was shocked. I’ve been to New York many times and I’ve been there right before Christmas, but I was not prepared for the crush of people in Midtown Manhattan. Traffic and pedestrians were totally gridlocked around Rockefeller Center, Times Square, and other popular tourist areas. I mean, gridlocked to the point that at one intersection (I think it was 6th Ave. and 50th St.) a traffic cop was stationed at each corner and it took us THREE LIGHTS to cross on foot.

Our hotel was located on 44th St. between 6th and 7th. If you walked out the door and headed to 7th, you landed right in the middle of the Times Square craziness. Trying to turn (I’m still on foot here) onto 7th was like walking into a wall.

Rockefeller Center was the worst. And the best, in a way. It was incredibly crowded but very festive. People were taking polite turns at all the best photography overlooks, taking pictures of strangers with their cameras, and enjoying watching the people who stood in the blocks-long line to ice skate.

We went with the football team to the newly opened 9/11 Memorial at the World Trade Center site on Wednesday night. It was very sobering. The National September 11 Memorial is a tribute of remembrance and honor to the nearly 3,000 people killed in the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The memorial’s twin reflecting pools are each nearly an acre in size and feature the largest manmade waterfalls in the North America. The pools sit within the footprints where the Twin Towers once stood. The names of every person who died in the attacks are inscribed into bronze panels edging the memorial pools.

Be aware if you go that although the memorial is free to visit, you must reserve a visitor pass in advance.

As many times as I’ve been to New York, I had never been inside the huge main building of the New York Public Library, an architectural masterpiece on 5th Ave. The Beaux-Arts building took 16 years to design and construct, and it’s a wonderful place to wander, far from the madding crowd.

Nearby at 42nd St. and Park Ave. is Grand Central Station (technically called Grand Central Terminal). It’s the largest train station in the world if you’re counting the number of platforms, and the terminal covers an area of 48 acres. The main concourse is cavernous, ornate, beautiful, and very busy.

Bryant Park, located at 42nd and 6th Ave., is a small city park if you compare it to Central Park, but it’s a great little tree-lined park to visit in any season. From Oct. 27 through Jan. 8 the park is turned into a holiday shop filled with small kiosks. And throughout the winter season the park features “Citi Pond,” a wonderful outdoor ice skating rink. The park also features a variety of dining options.

I took the subway to Yankee Stadium (161st and River in the Bronx) twice on this trip – once to do a story on an Iowa State alum and once to attend the football game. I had never seen the old Yankee Stadium (built in 1923), and this was my first visit to the new one, which opened in 2009. I’m not much of a sports fan, but for some reason I’ve always liked the Yankees. Being in the stadium, especially when it was essentially empty, was a thrill. Someday I’d like to go back to watch a baseball game.

One thing I always like to do in New York is go to Zabar’s – a one-of-a-kind grocery/deli/coffee shop at 80th and Broadway on the Upper West Side. It’s a great place to grab food (they have the best cheese counter and bakery I’ve ever seen) for a picnic in nearby Central Park. Of course, December isn’t the best time for a picnic, despite the fact that the highs this week were in the 50s, so I had to settle for coffee and a (best in the world) sesame bagel in the crowded coffee shop, and a loaf of Jewish rye for later.

When I was there Friday morning I sat at the counter next to a nice woman from the West Village who came to Zabar’s to buy cheese for her New Year’s Eve party (she was tasting it before committing to a full-fledged purchase). We bonded because we overheard a pretentious diner saying to his companion, “Nobody needs to go into therapy if they just have common sense…unless they have a psychological problem.” We snorted in unison, then laughed out loud and decided this guy was master of the obvious.

One I didn’t get to do that I ALWAYS do in New York is go to a Broadway show. I normally buy tickets in advance, but I didn’t know what my work schedule would be so I thought I’d just stand in the TKTS line for half-price day-of-show tickets. Well, I thought wrong. The aforementioned crowds had mostly obliterated all the theatre seats this week. What few shows were left were certainly scooped up by the people who got in the TKTS line hours before it opened. I stood in the line on Thursday for about 45 minutes before reality set in and I abandoned the line. I then had a moment of temporary insanity and walked to the Stephen Sondheim Theater on 43rd St. to see what full-price tickets to “Anything Goes” would cost. ($142 for upper balcony.) After that I stood around making a sad face. This billboard is the closest I got to Sutton Foster.

After three days of enormous, impossible crowds, I figured New Year’s Eve day would be the worst yet. We headed to Times Square early in the morning just to satisfy our curiosity and were completely surprised to find that the crowd was smallish and well-behaved.

There were nearly as many (young, good-looking) cops on the street as early party-goers – and most of the revelers-to-be were chilling out and drinking coffee or else screaming at the big screen that was showing some kind of Korean music festival performance. Vendors were out en masse, selling party hats, horns, and 2012 glasses. It was a blast taking pictures and talking to people. Everyone was friendly and in a good mood (including the police). In a few hours, all the streets would be closed off, more than a million people would be in Times Square, Lady Gaga would be performing, and the crowd would ring in the new year.

We flew out of Laguardia to Minneapolis at 2 p.m., took a connecting flight to Omaha, and drove home in a blinding snowstorm.

I walked into my house right at 11 p.m., just in time to see the ball drop. Happy New Year.

I snagged some last-minute tickets to the Dec. 20 Mannheim Steamroller concert in Stephens Auditorium in Ames, and I was expecting to love this show. It’s not the kind of music I would normally listen to — I guess it’s considered New Age — but it’s great at the holidays. Kind of like Christmas carols on crack.

But I was terribly disappointed in the concert, especially the first half. To start with, right after the opening number, the band’s leader gave a rather lengthy commercial for purchasing the group’s CDs, which put me off. And about half of the first section of songs reminded me of the music played at the Madrigal Feast I used to go to every year. Not exactly rousing numbers. Lots of sleepy, creepy recorder solos, if you get what I’m saying.

But I could live with that. What I really couldn’t stand were the visual effects. During most of the songs, cheesy videos ran on a large screen behind the band. I think Mannheim Steamroller celebrated its 25th anniversary last year, and I would say some of these videos were with them at the beginning. At least they looked like the 1980s. They were so distracting that I had to close my eyes.

As I was sitting there, I was thinking, holy cow, we’re in this beautiful auditorium and we can SEE the band performing and HEAR the band performing, and they have a light show going on, and — oh, what the heck, let’s show a movie at the same time. Do our senses need to be totally assaulted? I think I would have been distracted and annoyed even if the visuals were better quality. Do they think we all have attention deficit disorder?

Well, it really ruined the concert for me. That and the kid behind me who talked through the WHOLE THING.

The second part of the show was considerably more upbeat, starting with a rousing version of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen and ending with the wonderful Carol of the Bells. After a standing ovation (during which I grumpily remained seated) they came back to play two more numbers, including Deck the Halls (on crack — gotta love it). But even then, they ruined it for me by showing a nasty-looking montage of self-serving media clips and album covers.

I closed my eyes.

Those of us lucky enough to live in Ames and work at Iowa State often take for granted the special places on campus.

Reiman Gardens is one of those places. I go there often enough, mostly in the spring and summer, that I don’t think to visit there in the winter. But that’s a mistake, because there’s plenty to see there right now. Garden hours are 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. daily (closed on Christmas and New Year’s Day); each Thursday in December the Gardens are open until 8 p.m., and admission is free after 4:30.

Now is a great time to see the holiday display “Snug as a Bug” in the Conservatory and shop for unique holiday gifts in the gift shop. The butterfly wing is another great place to visit during the winter because it’s toasty warm in there! The Conservatory displays change frequently. The current holiday display features oversized luna moths, orchids, poinsettias, decorated evergreens, lilies, and other spectacular blooms.

Farm House Museum is another interesting place on campus to visit during the holidays. This year the theme was “Greenery Galore: An 1880s Farm House Christmas.” The exhibit featured 19th Century Santa Claus prints, vintage Christmas trees, and other yuletide decorations.

Living History Farms is a family-friendly destination during the summer and fall months – and, sometimes, in the winter.

This weekend marked the living museum’s “Prairie Christmas” event. The visitor center was all decked out with activities for the kids: an old-fashioned taffy pull, crafts, cookies, and Santa’s workshop.

Throughout the 1875 town of Walnut Hill, children and adults could experience costumed reinactors in the Tangen home, the church, and in many shops and businesses.

Carolers from the Walnut Hill Choral Society entertained inside the church, where kids were offered cups of popcorn mixed with gumdrops.

A horse-drawn wagon provided rides throughout the town.

Inside the house, ginger cookies were being rolled and cut out, and popcorn was being strung to decorate the family’s Christmas tree.

At the General Store, kids could write and mail a letter to Santa and buy penny candy. At the print shop, kids could print their own gift tag. In the drug store, they could make old-fashioned peppermint toothpaste.

And everywhere you looked, there was Santa.

The event was held from noon to 4 p.m. today and cost $5.50 for admission. Following an afternoon of stepping back in time, visitors could buy all kinds of cool things at the museum store: old-fashioned candy, books, dishes, cookie and biscuit cutters, toys, dishcloths, straw brooms, and more.

Living History Farms operates regular hours May 1 through October 14, and a farm site is available in addition to the town of Walnut Hill. A “historic dinner” season runs from October through March. Dinners are served in the 1875 Tangen Home and in the 1900 farmhouse. Living History Farms is located at 11121 Hickman Road, Urbandale.

Another holiday season has arrived like a steamroller, and I find myself in the same situation as I do every year: Unless I quit my full-time job, I absolutely cannot find time to shop and decorate and bake and wrap and send Christmas cards and attend mandatory holiday parties AND find time to enjoy all the wonderful events that are scheduled exclusively at this time of year.

I find it terribly frustrating. This weekend, for example, I wanted to attend Iowa State’s WinterFest activities Friday night but instead opted to get a jump on decorating my house. On Saturday, I finished decorating, did my usual weekend chores, and attended my husband’s office party. What I would have preferred to do was attend Prelude to Christmas in the Amana Colonies, but there was no way I had time to do that.

On Sunday, I had the best of intentions. I was headed with my daughter to the Holly & Ivy Christmas open house at Salisbury House and Terrace Hill, plus Christmas shopping in Des Moines. As we drove into downtown Des Moines, I ran through my list of places I needed to shop and it became clear that we didn’t have time to do everything. So we shopped. Holly & Ivy just wasn’t as much of a priority.

I haven’t started my Christmas cards yet – I’m about a week behind on that. I haven’t wrapped a single gift or baked a single cookie. I’d say that right about the time I get caught up, it will be Christmas weekend and all the holiday events will be over for the year. That sounds about right.

I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: Thanksgiving and Christmas need to be moved farther apart. And all the holiday events need to happen in January so normal (busy) people can enjoy them.

It seems impossible that this Thursday is Thanksgiving. It’s been a warm fall, I’ve been traveling, and, well, it just seems way too early for Thanksgiving. But here we are, five days out.

As is tradition, the Downtown Des Moines Farmers’ Market held its first of two winter markets this weekend. My daughter Lauren was home from Kansas City with her roommate Aquila. They spent most of the weekend with my other daughter Katie, but the four of us went to the market on Saturday morning.

Happily, it was not as crowded as usual. Perhaps everyone got there early? We did not.

The market is held inside at Capital Square (400 Locust) and a little bit outdoors at Nollen Plaza. The market website says there were 120 vendors, but I didn’t do an official count. I just know I found everything I was looking for and more: fresh spinach, basil, and onions; garlic foccacia bread from South Union Bakery; mixes to make dips and cheeseballs for holiday family gatherings from Two Sisters Pantry; and a nice-looking butternut squash.

The girls bought crab rangoon from an outdoor food vendor, popcorn from Brandmeyer Popcorn Company, and jars of jelly from The Jelly Lady. Katie and I drooled over the beautiful handcrafted mittens and scarves.

I generally eat a Dutch letter from Strudl Haus and buy at least a couple of chunks of cheese (from Reichert’s Dairy Air, Maytag Dairy Farms, and Frisian Farms), but becoming a vegan has cut these things out of my diet. I opted for a wheatgrass shot from Fresh Cafe. (Um, definitely not as good as a Dutch letter.)

The next winter market will be held in the same location on Dec. 16-17 (Friday 11 a.m. – 2 p.m. and Saturday 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.)

Yes, I know it’s been THREE WEEKS since I posted anything. I’ve really been “on the go.” I just completed my first trip for VISIONS magazine’s “VISIONS Across America” project. I’m traveling with photographer Jim Heemstra to all 50 states for a special issue that will be published in early 2014. We hope to have all our travel completed by fall 2013. That’s a lot of states to cover in two years when you figure I also have to put out all the regular issues of VISIONS at the same time. “Iowa Girl” may suffer a bit for awhile…but something’s gotta give.

I’m happy with the results of the first trip. We traveled to Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Arkansas Nov. 6-15. If you’re interested in reading about the Iowa State alumni we met, you can follow my new blog at www.visionsacrossamerica.com.

Working on the road is hard work. We spent way too much time in the car. And we’re trying to stay on a budget, so we ate grocery-store-deli take-out a lot…at rest stops, in hotel rooms, even in a parking lot of one of our appointments. We definitely are not traveling in luxury! (Yes, that is a banana riding atop the atlas on our dashboard.) But, having said that, we’ve managed to squeeze in a few tourist opportunities at most of our destinations.

Our first stop was Austin, Texas. We arrived in town at dusk the night before our first appointment. Jim wanted to photograph the sunset from the bridges in downtown. His pictures are a lot better than mine, but I tried. (That’s the Stevie Ray Vaughn statue with the Austin skyline.) Austin, as it turns out, is a great city. We walked, ate, and listened to live music on 6^th Street. This was a Monday night, so it wasn’t a real happenin’ place, but I enjoyed the light crowds. I’m told Austin has live music all over the city, and it’s every kind of music you’d want to hear.

What I also liked about Austin was the food. This is a very vegan-friendly city. I posted a message on a vegan blog before we left Iowa, asking for recommendations for vegan-friendly restaurants, and I got some great advice. We ate breakfast the next day at one of the best ones: Bouldin Creek Café. Here’s a picture of my meal. I ordered something called The Renedict (pictured above), which I assume is a takeoff on eggs benedict. This amazing dish consisted of “tofu scramble,” tofu “bacon,” spinach, tomatoes, and homemade vegan Hollandaise on grilled ciabatta bread. I wasn’t sure I would like it…that’s an awful lot of weird tofu, right? But it was perhaps the most amazing thing I’ve ever tasted. (Can we get one of these restaurants in Ames, Iowa, please?)

The next day we headed to Houston, which is not a city I enjoy. It’s sprawly and industrial and really rather icky. But we went to Johnson Space Center for a very cool interview with one of our alumni and got to shoot inside the coveted Building 9, the space vehicle mockup facility. Afterwards, we went to Rocket Park, which houses a restored Saturn V (above), on loan from the Smithsonian. It’s enormous and very impressive.

Our next stop was New Orleans. This was one of the highlights of our trip. I’ve had a long-time love affair with this city ever since I visited for a conference in 2002 and spent a couple of extra days there. If I remember correctly, I walked 18 miles in one day. That was during my power-walking period. During that trip, I got my first (and only) tattoo at a place called Electric Ladyland (above) by a tattoo artist named Mark the Shark; I fell in love with the music scene on Frenchmen Street; I explored the City Park and the cemeteries and the Garden District and, of course, the French Quarter on foot; I ate my first beignets and café au lait at Café Du Monde and drank my first Abita. It was, to say the least, a wonderful trip.

Since that time, I’d visited twice more. Once was post-Katrina. Both times I’d returned to Frenchmen Street (above) and Café Du Monde and checked to see if Electric Ladyland was still in business. It was.

During this most recent trip, I made my usual rounds. The beignets and café au lait at Café Du Monde were well worth going off my all-vegan diet. (That’s me, eating my weight in powdered sugar.) Frenchmen Street hadn’t changed a bit. All the clubs and cafes looked just the same. The music vibe was outstanding. We spent one full evening drifting from club to club, listening to the best, most authentic New Orleans music you can imagine. (This is as opposed to Bourbon Street, which I can’t stand.)

We went back to Frenchmen the next morning and shot photos in the daylight. I found out that Mark the Shark is now working as a tattoo artist in Seattle. Maybe I’ll look him up if VISIONS Across America ever takes me to that city.

The highlight of our New Orleans stay was meeting with an Iowa State alum who lived – and still lives – in the Lower 9^th Ward and is still experiencing the after-effects of Hurricane Katrina and the resulting flood. She showed us around her neighborhood and then we went to the French Quarter for dinner at the Gumbo Shop. I had the gumbo z’herbes (a vegetarian gumbo) and the vegetarian dish of the day, Creole style. That day’s dish was rice and beans, which sounds boring but was anything but. My dining partners ordered blackened redfish and crab cakes – and Jim said my rice and beans dish was the best food he tasted on the whole trip.

We hated to leave New Orleans, but we had to be in Oklahoma City for an interview on Sunday. It’s about a 12-hour drive. We made it to Ardmore, Okla., in one day (with a stop in Baton Rouge to buy a bagful of delicious deli salads and a loaf of cranberry-walnut bread at Whole Foods Market). The next morning we drove the remaining 90 minutes to Oklahoma City. Our interview and photo shoot was at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, which I highly recommend if you’re ever in Oklahoma City. It’s a huge museum – a beautiful place, really – and was far more interesting to me than I had imagined it would be. We spent about five hours there. We also visited the Oklahoma City Memorial site (above), and I wish we would’ve had time to tour the adjacent museum. This is another must-see site if you get to this city.

No offense to Arkansas, but it was my least favorite state on this trip. In fairness, we were very tired by the time we got there, and we only saw the extreme northwest corner of the state. We had time to do our work and quickly walk through the Walmart Visitor Center (featuring old-fashioned candy, pictured above) in Bentonville before heading north toward home.

In all, we were gone 10 days and put 3,067 miles on the rental car.

I’m back in Iowa now until February, so I’ll try to get focused again on the state of Iowa.

Today’s East Village Sunday Bazaar was both the last bazaar of the season and the site of a Halloween dog parade. I have to admit I enjoyed the dogs the most.

The temperature was perfectly nice this afternoon — cool and sunny. But it was also very windy, and that made outdoor vendors scramble to batten down the hatches, so to speak. Displays were crashing down, textiles were weighted with heavy objects, plants were dumping over.

The event, held on Sunday afternoons in September and October, reminds me a lot of Market Day held once a month on Saturday mornings in downtown Des Moines. The main difference is that one is indoors and one is outside. The vendors seem similar. Today there were vendors selling antiques and vintage finds, jewelry, knitted hats, scarves, bags made from rice sacks in Cambodia, journals made from old books, furniture, and the like. My daughter bought a scarf; I was tempted by some of the jewelry and really liked the rice bags (pictured) — but I already have too many bags.

I was hoping for food vendors and maybe a bit of live music, but none was to be had. Some of the East Village shops and restaurants were open, but not all.

The surprise of the day was the dog parade — dogs dressed in their Halloween best with their people handing out candy and other treats to onlookers. I scored a fine plastic spider ring, a purple plastic necklace, and a handful of candy that I gave to Katie.

Dogs were dressed as hotdogs, bears, insects, dinosaurs, ballerinas, cowboys, and Santa Claus. A few, apparently too dignified (or too large) for such nonsense wore bandannas around their necks or no costumes at all.

Just three miles west of Boone is a unique bridge with a fascinating history.

The Kate Shelley High Bridge was the highest double-track railroad bridge in the United States. The bridge was designed by George S. Morison for the Chicago and Northwestern Railway and was constructed from 1899 to 1901. It stands 185 ft above the Des Moines River with a length of 2,685 ft. The bridge was renamed in 1912 to honor Kate Shelley.

The story of Kate Shelly is one of bravery and heroism. Kate was a teenager when, in 1881, a huge storm knocked out the Honey Creek bridge. One train, carrying four men, plunged into the creek. Kate knew that another train would be coming soon. Through the fierce storm and total blackness of night, she crawled across the Des Moines River bridge to warn the station master.

Her heroism saved many lives that night.

Today the original double track steel bridge is aging and trains were forced to reduce their speeds to 25 mph while crossing it. A new concrete bridge was constructed, beginning in 2006 and completed in 2009. The new bridge is slightly larger than the old bridge. The new bridge spans 2,813 feet long and is 190 feet high. The bridge is designed for two trains to travel across it at the same time traveling 70 mph. The new bridge also carries the Kate Shelley name.

To view the bridges, take Hwy. 30 west past Boone about three miles. Follow the signs that will take you north and slightly back to the east along narrow gravel roads.