“O Fortuna” in the Carmina Burana manuscript
Time for one last plug of the performance of Carmina Burana by the Des Moines Symphony and about 225 singers from Drake University choirs (including me, in the Drake University Chorus) this weekend at the Civic Center downtown. The Saturday show is at 7:30 p.m.; the Sunday show at 2:30 p.m. And as Ed Sullivan would say, it’s going to be “a realllly biiigggg show!”
Filed under Des Moines, music
Hard to believe that Margaret Thatcher has died, although she has been long gone from the public stage and eye. I wasn’t a fan of her policies – I worked for the rival Labour Party in 1980 as an intern for a young MP named Jack Straw who went on to become a household name himself. And back then, we used to march through the streets during one rally or another chanting ” Maggie, Maggie, Maggie, Out, out, out.” But I did admire her courage and determination. And this photo (below) of Maggie berating Jack has hung on my office wall for some 30 years.
Filed under England and U.K.
Haven’t been to Elk Horn, an all things Danish town in western Iowa for years. When we lasted visited, we had young kids interested in touring the town’s famous windmill. Now there’s an exhibit of Danish Modern furniture at Elk Horn’s Danish Immigrant Museum that looks well worth a visit. We have some remnants of my parents’ Danish Modern stuff from my childhood home in Michigan here in Iowa – but some of the choicer pieces, that now go for big bucks, are long gone, sadly. Used to love spinning around in our Arne Jacobsen swan chairs, which I didn’t know at the time were destined to be design classics. As Mad Men’s next season approaches, we’re all being primed to see more Danish Modern 1960’s classics. The show Danish Modern: Design for Living runs thorugh Jan. 5 so there’s plenty of time. see dkmuseum.org. We just watched a very good Danish movie last night, as fate would have it, “A Royal Affair” which was about a very interesting period in Danish history during the late 1770’s.
Filed under Iowa, museum exhibit
I am hoping this will work and you can click here and see the travel story I did about our recent trip to Peru for Delta Sky Magazine! Unfortunately there isn’t an online version and this copy is black and white, not in full color. You can find the story if you have an iPad, using the Fly Delta iPad app.
Filed under Peru
It looks like we’re going to Poland in July – yes, Poland. Three years ago, two Polish teenagers from Gdansk stayed with us in Des Moines and our son later stayed with one teen’s family in the northern seaport of Gdansk. They were a lot of fun and we promised we’d visit some day. So when my husband got word that he’ll be going on a business trip to tour farms in the Ukraine-Moldova-Romania, we looked at map to see where I could meet up with him after his trip and there was POLAND! We’re very excited to see our friends and the gorgeous city they live in – which we’ve heard so much about. We’re also going to Krakow – which was one of our son’s favorite places when he visited Poland. And on to Prague – where we hope to rendezvous with friends from London. I may also throw in a solo trip before all this to…another place I’ve never been: Berlin. (We went to Munich and Bavaria to visit American friends living there in 1989 and I distinctly remember taking a train on a day trip to Saltzburg that was later going on to Prague. Prague! That sounded interesting but it wasn’t an option back then because this was just before the wall came down and as I recall we still needed some special documents to travel to Eastern Europe. No more.)
So far I’ve found two good small hotels, reasonably priced:
Gotyk House in Gdansk – a small b&b in what’s reportedly this seaport city’s oldest house, built in 1541. (see illustration above)
Karmel hotel in Krakow – in Kazimierez, the former Jewish quarter/ghetto dating back to the 1500’s. (I should feel right at home…although the Jewish ghetto has been replaced by what is now a trendy area, I’m told. And of course, the vast majority of the 60,000 Jews in the ghetto were murdered by the Nazis.) In addition to Auschwitz, we plan to visit Oskar Schindler’s factory. Apparently the nearby concentration camp Birkenau is even worse than Auschwitz. We visited Dachau years ago in Munich.
Royal Capital City of Kraków
Stołeczne Królewskie Miasto Kraków
Main Market Square, Wawel Castle, Barbican, St. Mary’s Basilica, St. Peter and Paul Church, Collegium Maius
Filed under Poland
The Civic Center of Greater Des Moines has done it again – it’s bringing some great shows to the city starting in fall 2013 and into 2014. This year, in February, we got the national traveling tour of the “Book of Mormon.” In 2014 we’re getting the one musical I REALLY wanted to see – “Once” – which comes April 22-27, 2014 (maybe I’ll go for my birthday on the 26th…I took my husband for his Feb. birthday to Book of Mormon). “Once” is the stage adaptation of the 2006 movie, which had such great songs by Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová – Thank you thank you! Friends who saw it on Broadway raved!
Other great shows:
– Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater – March 18, 2014 (photo below)
– Matthew Bourne’s Sleeping Beauty – sept. 27-28, 2013
– Porgy and Bess – april 1-6, 2014
– American Idiot (the Green Day -inspired rock opera) Jan. 24-25, 2014
Filed under dance, Des Moines, theater
After hearing about good reviews for Wasabi Chi – an Asian restaurant specializing in sushi in Des Moines – we gave it a try last Saturday night. The place was very busy at about 7 p.m. and our server was very good. The tempura was good – crispy, quality ingredients – vegetables and shrimp, piping hot. We tried two sushi roles that our server said were popular – and they came out quickly and were huge (about 8 pieces each). But they both were not what we expected, way too busy with too many competing flavors, and the fish itself seems strange – almost ground and not cold like we’ve come to expect sushi. Neither seemed very fresh or raw – one roll (King Crab Crunch) appeared to be cooked fish although the menu indicated it featured raw fish. (Since it’s a tempura roll it was presumably somewhat cooked.) We didn’t like the taste of the other one with tuna much either (Marilyn Monroll).
Maybe we ordered the wrong things but we both felt vaguely ill after the meal and aren’t likely to return. Oh well. Fortunately there are other good sushi options in Des Moines – Miyabi remains our favorite. We also liked Haiku near Drake during a recent visit.
Filed under Des Moines, DINING
If the Jayhawks couldn’t be in the Final Four (much to the dismay of the huge Kansas basketball fans in this Iowa household), there is some consolation in seeing the Wichita State Shockers make it to the Final Four – along with one of the sports world’s stranger mascots WUShock – which for the uninitiated is a figure based on a shock (or bundle) of wheat!! (“What is THAT?” I remember thinking when I first moved to Wichita in the late 1980’s for a job on the local newspaper.)
Go Shockers!
Filed under Kansas misc
So I’d never heard of Toluca Lake, a neighborhood of Los Angeles until about a month ago when my brother and his family moved there. Now I’m noticing it more – along with all things L.A. – and according to the latest issue of People Mag – Miley Cyrus lives there. Golly. And fun fact: The oldest Bob’s Big Boy in America is just across the border in Burbank! (Wonder how it stacks up against the Big Boy of our youth in Royal Oak, Michigan?)
Decided to see what other celebs have lived there and here’s what the internet tells me – I’m pretty sure some of these people are no longer alive (Frank Sinatra, Lawrence Welk?):
Statue in front of Bob’s Big Boy restaurant in Burbank, California.
Others:
* Steve Abbott,actor
* Julie Andrews, actress and singer
* Jonathan Antin, hairstylist
* Drake Bell, actor and singer
* Jack Black, actor
* Brooke Burns, actress
* Ann Blyth, actress and singer
* Steve Carell, actor
* Peter Casey, television writer
* Bing Crosby, singer and actor
* Billy Ray Cyrus, actor and singer
* Doris Day, singer and actress; animal rights advocate
* Kat Dennings, actress
* Rick Dees, radio personality
* Roy E. Disney, director and producer
* Hilary Duff, actress and singer
* Kirsten Dunst, actress
* Amelia Earhart, aviatrix
* Zac Efron, actor
* W. C. Fields, actor
* Larry Fine, actor
* Redd Foxx, comedian and actor
* Andy García, actor
* Jenny Garth, actress
* Harold Greene, news anchorman
* Andy Griffith. actor
* Christopher J. Harrell, musician, philanthropist
* Brett R. Henry, photographer and writer
* Steve Hofstetter, comedian and radio personality
* Vanessa Hudgens, actess,singers
* Jennifer Love Hewitt, actress
* William Holden, actor
* Bob Hope, actor
* Moe Howard, actor
* Wayne Knight, actor
* George Lopez, actor, comedian
* Leonard Maltin, film critic
* Garry Marshall, director and producer
* Eric McCormack, actor
* Roger Miller, song writer and singer
* Jeffrey Dean Morgan, actor
* José Offerman, Major League baseball player
* Jonas Brothers, singers (Joe, Nick, and Kevin)
* Markie Post, actress
* Brenda Song, actress, singer, model
* Frank Sinatra, singer, actor
* Kelly Sweet, singer
* Alan Thicke, actor
* Ashley Tisdale, actress, singer
* Forrest Tucker, actor
* Jim Tully, author
* Denzel Washington, actor
* Scott Weiland, singer, lyricist
* Lawrence Welk, band leader
* Dawn Wells, actress
* Eric West, Cinematographer
* Henry Winkler, actor
* Cary Woodworth, actor, musician
* Joanne Worley, actress, comedian
Filed under Los Angeles
News that there is now someone producing vodka in Ferndale, a Detroit suburb near where I grew up, first struck me as odd, then as amusing and then I thought, well why not? Ferndale was a worn out place in the 1970’s, when I lived in Michigan, but when I’ve returned home of late, I’ve found it emerging as a hipster haven, with interesting boutiques and restaurants. So vodka production – bring it on. The company is called Valentine Vodka and according to a recent story in Midwest Living mag, it was started by a former Wall Street trader who suddenly felt inspired to return to his native Detroit and start producing domestic vodka (to save us from having to drink that Russian stuff, perhaps.) Apparently Valentine Vodka also has a “speakeasy-esque lounge” for visitors. (If only I liked vodka.) It’s good to see people producing stuff in Detroit – more encouraging than the depressing documentary I watched recently about the city (Detropia).
Other made-in-(or near)-Detroit products launched by entrepreneurs (and mentioned in this same Midwest Living story) include:
– Peteet’s Famous Cheesecakes in Oak Park (started by a guy after his real estate business crashed).
– Corridor Sausage, producing artisanal sausages near Eastern Market downtown
– Love’s Custard Pies – another Eastern Market hotspot serving southern-style custard and fruit pies
– City Bird – a “hip housewares and gift shop” near Wayne State’s downtown campus.
TakeBetsywithyou
TakeBetsywithyou 