Thursday, April 23, 2009
In Iowa City
Behold the view from my window on the fourth floor of the Marriott in Coralville, Iowa, the bit of sprawl outside of Iowa City. It is a surprisingly impressive hotel with an almost absurdly grandiose driveway.
The Coralville Marriott has a number of other distinguishing features, including a permanent display of Iowa arts and crafts behind glass. For instance, here is a work (or works) titled "Iowa Corn and Beaded Iowa", Mixed media with beads, by Thomas Wegman, Iowa City (via cellphone camera):
There is also a lovely library devoted to "Iowa authors" -- meaning the many big guns who have studied or taught at the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop -- that is so impressive it will almost certainly be the subject of another post. Everybody from John Irving to Donald Justice to Kurt Vonnegut to John Cheever to Z.Z. Packer. It is fairly obvious that if you want to write fiction or poetry this is a great place to be.
Anyway, I had a very nice dinner tonight with one of our local readers at a sports bar and restaurant on the Coralville strip called "The Vine." It is, of course, festooned with "TigerHawk" banners, which made me very happy. But the fun did not stop there. Only when I arrived at the place did I realize that it had been built virtually on the spot of the Alama Friendship Inn, the motel at which I had my first real job (running the night desk, doing odd jobs, and occasionally cleaning rooms, but that's another blog post). The Vine is a great improvement.
More Iowa excitement tomorrow, after I retrieve the TigerHawk Teenager from his overnight stay at Cornell College.
MORE: Disturbing and entirely predictable local news.
5 Comments:
By 
, at
Fri Apr 24, 01:04:00 AM:
The Great Plains are amazing. Years ago a co-worker flew into a big city on the plains at night. He took a cab to the hotel and got up to the 10 floor where his room was and fell asleep. In the morning he woke up, looked out his window and the entire city had disappeared. There wasn't a building to be seen. It shocked him so much he fell down. After a few minutes he realized his room was on the opposite wall of the lobby he had entered the night before, and the city he has been driven through was behind him. The hotel was build right on the edge of farmland that stretched to the horizon.
Have a nice visit. Iowa is wonderful.
By , at
Fri Apr 24, 01:14:00 AM:
Thanks for visiting us here in Iowa City! Hope the TigerHawk Teenager had a good time at Cornell!
John S.
By 
The Conservative Wahoo, at
Fri Apr 24, 07:01:00 AM:
"...almost absurdly grandiose driveway". One shudders to think what truly absurdly grandiose would look like.
By , at
Fri Apr 24, 07:46:00 AM:
Son, we're not in Kansas anymore.
Link
By , at
Fri Apr 24, 10:52:00 AM:
"...almost absurdly grandiose driveway" What a waste of fine cornfield real estate!
Just think how much atmospheric carbon could be sequestered by a few dozen more rows of ethanol feedstock!
