Iowa Girl on the Go

When I was working on a story about Iowa wineries for the magazine a few years ago, I traveled all over Iowa to visit vineyards that had Iowa State connections. The first person I met was Collette Hill of Sugar Grove Vineyards and Gathering Place near Newton. At that time, in 2006, Iowa was just starting to see huge growth in both growing grapes and producing wine.

One of the offshoots of the grape and wine industry has been the event business that now surrounds many of the wineries. It’s a natural, when you think about it. They have all that yummy wine and those gorgeous rolling hills and picturesque grapevines – why not have weddings there? Or brunch? Or concerts?

There are three wineries close to Ames that hold regular weekend concerts during the summer and fall. White Oak Winery (near Cambridge) offers “Wine Down” every Friday night; the aforementioned Sugar Grove hosts sunset concerts each Saturday night; and Prairie Moon (just north of Ames) is open on Sunday afternoons, offering wine and music.

At the time I was working on the magazine story, I attended a “Sunsets” concert and vowed to go back as a full-fledged wine-drinking guest. That, again, was in 2006 and I hadn’t been to one until last night. Nor have I been to either of the other wineries’ music events.

This weekend I was actually planning to complete a trifecta: White Oak on Friday, Sugar Grove on Saturday, and Prairie Moon on Sunday. But bad weather kept me away Friday night and I, um, drank quite a bit of wine last night, so now I’m thinking it’s probably best to do these one at a time.

The setting at Sugar Grove was as lovely as I remembered. Situated on top of one of the rolling hills in Jasper County, Sugar Grove features a grange building built in the 1870s, flower gardens, and a wide, mowed lawn area for events. By the time we got there last night, the sun had already dropped low in the sky and the band (Loose Neutral, a local classic rock/pop cover band) was already rocking.

I bought a bottle of dry Tassel Ridge Candleglow white and we dug into the picnic supper I’d made earlier in the day: a fresh mozzarella/basil/heirloom cherry tomato salad (made entirely from ingredients I’d bought at the Des Moines Downtown Farmers Market yesterday morning) and a loaf of South Union ciabatta (also from the market).

If you don’t count the mosquitoes, it was a perfect evening. I got tipsy from the wine since I drank most of the bottle myself. The sunset was fabulous. The band was fun. The crowd was cheerful – mostly middle-aged couples like us, plus quite a few young couples with children. At least half of us were wearing either Iowa State or Iowa gear since yesterday was the Big Football Game. I’d venture a guess that this crowd was better behaved and more cheerful than the one at the actual game, which suits me just fine.

A note about the wine itself: Sugar Grove used to produce its own wine but recently became a vineyard-only production, in which it grows grapes but sells them to other wineries. Sugar Grove sells most of its grapes to Jasper Winery, but it also offers wines from Tassel Ridge, Summerset, and Snus Hill in the tasting room, which is open during events and by appointment. It also serves Millstream beer made in the Amana Colonies.

There’s one more concert this summer at Sugar Grove (http://www.sugargrove.com/). “Wine Downs” at White Oak go on each Friday into the fall and winter (http://whiteoakvineyards.com/). Prairie Moon offers live music each Sunday through the end of September (http://www.prairiemoonwinery.com/)

Central Iowa is a good place to live if you like theatre. Iowa State’s Stephens Auditorium in Ames and the Civic Center in Des Moines both bring in a wide assortment of touring musicals and plays, not to mention the strong regional theatre offerings in Des Moines and student productions in Ames. In past years I’ve also traveled east to see shows in Hancher Auditorium on the University of Iowa campus in Iowa City.

So there really isn’t a good reason to leave the state to catch a show, unless you want to go all the way to New York. Except, sometimes there is.

Sometimes there’s a great reason to venture to Chicago or Minneapolis – because a lot of Broadway productions have an out-of-town run before they launch their show in New York. The Lion King, for example, played in Minneapolis for eight weeks before it opened on Broadway in 1997. Last fall, The Addams Family premiered in Chicago before it opened in New York. I saw that show in early December (smack dab between giant snow storms) and although I wasn’t crazy about the show, it was pretty cool to see Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth in a brand new production.

Such is the opportunity right now at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. The Scottsboro Boys, a musical by the writing team of John Kander and the late Fred Ebb (most famous for Cabaret, Chicago, and Kiss of the Spider Woman), is doing its out-of-town run now through Sept. 25 before it opens on Broadway Oct. 7. The cast is the real Broadway cast (with the exception of one actor), so it’s a wonderful opportunity to catch this show in its fresh, enthusiastic infancy – at a fraction of the cost of a trip to New York.

The Scottsboro Boys is based on the notorious “Scottsboro” case in the 1930s in which nine African American men and boys were unjustly accused of raping two white women in Alabama. The show is structured as a minstrel show – which is something I’ve never seen and I’m guessing most other people haven’t, either. It’s a gutsy show, telling the story of a sickening miscarriage of justice in which the young men are convicted by an all-white jury. The Scottsboro cases actually reached the U.S. Supreme Court three times and dragged on for nearly 10 years.

It’s hard to believe this could happen in America. But it’s a story that reminds us of our not-so-distant shameful past. As a theatrical experience, it’s very powerful.

Tickets are still available. Find out more at http://www.guthrietheater.org/scottsboroboys

Call me a skeptic, but when Lisha, our tour guide at the Villisca Axe Murder House, told my daughter and me that the last visitors had just run screaming from the house, I just could not imagine why.

It was a beautiful, sunny day. The house is just an old house. Granted, 8 people were violently murdered there in 1912 and the killer was never brought to justice, but still.

The Axe Murder House – clearly the most happening thing in Villisca, a small town in southwest Iowa (not far from the intersection of Hwy. 71 and Hwy. 34, if that helps you locate it on the map) – has been featured many times on television channels that cater to viewers who like programs called “Scariest Places on Earth” and “Most Terrifying Places.” I am not one of their loyal viewers. But this quiet little house in Villisca has recently topped the list of best places to hunt for ghosts.

I have to admit that paranormal activity intrigues me. Or maybe it’s the fact that so many people take it seriously that intrigues me. Anyway, we paid our 5 dollars and followed Lisha in her car to The House and took our tour. (You can pay 5 more bucks and go to the cemetery if you want. There’s also a museum on the town square.) Lisha explained that the four Moore children and their parents, plus two overnight visitors with exceedingly poor timing, the Stillinger sisters, were brutally hacked to death by an axe–wielding maniac while they slept in their beds shortly after midnight on the evening of June 9, 1912.

Lisha showed us the interior of the home, restored in 1994 and furnished with items dating from the early 20th century. (She explained that in the interim – between the murders and the paranormal feeding frenzy – the house had been lived in like a regular house). On the small iron bed downstairs, tiny dresses had been laid out to show where the two Stillinger girls had been killed with the blunt end of an axe. She also pointed out where the bloody murder weapon had been left, propped up near the door.

Apparently the upstairs is where all the paranormal action is. Lisha said the prevailing opinion is that when the house was renovated, some of the spirits got stirred up. And with film crews tromping in and out, folks holding séances and trying to communicate with the dead through Ouija boards, and groups spending the night for $300 bucks a pop, some of the spirits are not amused. Lisha said, with a straight face, that there have been a lot of growling sounds and scratching coming from the house lately. She says she, personally, avoids the house at night.

So up the stairs we went. Lisha showed us the bedroom where the childrens’ ghosts play games with the TV crews (there’s a ball-rolling video on YouTube if you want to see it). She reported that a full-body apparition had recently been filmed by a crew in the home’s tiny attic (reportedly the location where the killer hid, waiting for the Moore family and their guests to fall asleep). Lisha herself won’t go into the attic, but I did, and I didn’t see a thing.

But as Lisha and Katie and I stood in the children’s bedroom – the one with a crib and dolls and photos of the family – a very strange thing happened. We were just standing there talking when the closet door closed by itself. I’m not attributing this to the undead, but believe me when I tell you that there was no wind, and nobody (human) touched the door. I’m just saying.

Find out more about the Villisca Axe Murder House at www.villiscaiowa.com/. The website has links to pretty much everything you’d ever want to know. (Can I just say that the thing about the website that makes my skin crawl is not the gruesome crime details but rather the misuse of the word its/it’s? That said, it’s a very thorough site and I recommend it.)

And I should also mention in all seriousness that Villisca is a very pretty little town. I fell in love with some of the big old (presumably unhaunted) houses with wrap-around porches and shade trees. Sweet dreams!

Let me start by telling you about the National Balloon Classic, the spark that ignited this blog. The Balloon Classic is held in a field east of Indianola, a small town just southeast of Des Moines. Indianola is literally only about 45 minutes from my home in Ames and yet, although I’ve lived here for 14 summers, I had never been to the Balloon Classic.

It turns out it was the best three bucks I ever spent.

I went on Friday, Aug. 6 for the evening balloon flight. I wasn’t really sure what to expect. The best thing about that evening was the weather – cool, calm, and hardly any humidity. A perfect night for ballooning. We sat in our chairs, listened to a great oldies band called Hold On, and watched the balloons inflate, take off, and land. Some of the balloons started from another rural location, and one of my favorite parts of the evening was watching all those balloons appear on the horizon, looking like a school of distant jellyfish, then slowly becoming more distinctive and colorful as they came closer. I loved that there were so many of them! I took about 300 pictures.

The Balloon Classic lasts about a week, and there are different things to do every day. This year, there were concerts most days, balloon flights every morning and evening, a few fireworks displays, state fair-style food (read: fried stuff), and other activities.

Next year, I definitely want to go to see the morning balloon flight. The idea of sitting there in my lawn chair with a cup of coffee, watching the sun come up and the balloons take off makes me smile. Next year’s National Balloon Classic is July 29 through August 6, 2011.
http://www.nationalballoonclassic.com/

A few weeks ago, as I was lounging in a bag chair watching balloon enthusiasts do their thing at the National Balloon Classic in Indianola, I had an epiphany.

Going to the Balloon Classic is just one of SO MANY fun, uniquely Iowa things to do – why not find something interesting to do each week and blog about it? Whoa! A lightbulb as big as a hot-air balloon went on in my head.

It’s not that I hadn’t had similar ideas before. I had fantasized about starting a magazine about Iowa or the Midwest, but competing magazines and my utter lack of start-up capital made that idea seem fairly ridiculous. I had toyed with the idea of writing freelance stories about local topics and trying to sell them to media outlets, but that didn’t really wow me.

I’m already a magazine editor – I work for the Alumni Association at Iowa State University, and I edit the alumni magazine VISIONS. So I’ve done my fair share of stories about Iowa and Iowans. But those stories always have an Iowa State connection. I longed to do my own thing without any restrictions.

THIS IS IT!

Now that I’ve had my ah-ha moment, it surprises me that I hadn’t thought of an Iowa blog before. I have been sort of jealous of people who (kept? wrote? posted?) blogs because that’s a style of writing I really enjoy. I have always been a big journal-keeper, and the idea of doing something like the Julie & Julia blog really intrigued me.

Well, think of this Iowa project as a blog like that, except without the rich sauces.

It’s not so different, really. Instead of creating all the recipes in Julia Childs’ Mastering the Art of French Cooking and blogging about it, I am challenging myself to find something fun to do in Iowa every week of the year – indefinitely.

That’s not going to be difficult in the summer and fall. The winter will be a challenge. I might have to cheat once in a while. But really, I usually don’t find myself lacking ideas for things to do. What I DO find is that I have a lack of time, or more often a lack of motivation. I am hoping this blog will light a fire under my butt and get me out there doing all the things I SAY on Monday I want to do but that by the time the weekend rolls around I reject in favor of sleeping late or watching old movies on TV.

I’m not going to establish rules for myself, just goals:
•    Celebrate Iowa’s uniqueness and charm
•    Showcase the small towns and agri-tourism that people expect to find in Iowa (it’s not a cliché when it’s real)
•    Explore the unexpected side of Iowa: the cultural offerings, the cities, the really fabulous food that’s NOT on a stick
•    Visit some of my favorite places, do some of my favorite things, and discover new things to do in Iowa
•    Venture outside the state once in a while, and blog about that, too
•    Post something at least once a week

Here I go!