Dubuque Street

      For those interested in new weekend tour spots, places
where violence has affected neighborhood tranquility, spots
once not reported, locations known to neighbors and others...
 through a failure of complete reporting, previously unknown;
 note that both Central Avenue and Windsor were the scenes of
police convergence and arrests Saturday and Sunday.
     Sunday's violence began about 3:30 and ended with police arrests
after a fight across from the Bar X. Saturday's event includes a rumor

I've been honored twice by The University of Iowa as a
featured Iowa writer for their Daily Palette.
Many Iowa papers have flattered my work
with publication, most recently The Cedar Rapids
Gazette in an essay about trusting the mental
health profession with diagnoses.
Currently, I'm working on a Dubuque story
 for The DesMoines Register.

 March 19 at 8 A.M. starts a new chapter
with Y105, Cumulus Broadcasting in Dubuque.
Each Friday at eight  Chris Farber
and I will review Dubuque stories from

  A strong earhquake about magnitude six rocked the ground
three hundred fifty miles east of Turkey's capital city of
Ankara early this morning killing at least fifty, shaking
buildings to rubble.
     More than thirty aftershocks, some as strong as 5.5
were reported following the quake. It shook Turkey about
nine P.M. EST.
     "Everything has been knocked down, there is not a stone
in place," reported an administrator of the village of Yukari

     Drop a tire into the wide Missouri, turn around and roll. Next
 river stop and drop, the Father of Waters, at Dubuque, Iowa, first city
and port.
     The ramble and gawk and wonder of two lane stretches of sky
lifting into forever. Small towns where Borlaug and Chrysler and Twain,
Smith and Hoover and tractor and computer science, born and given.
 Iowa small town is where main street matters, discipline still works,
 and hardware stores leave their lawnmowers out on the parking lot

     Each pawn is different. One shoulders the steel mesh and
wide window; another an iron door; a third the scale emblem
of the trade, its northern wall shown in The Field of Dreams;
one gleams a golden hue, another stands under a purple
awning and one shows guns on its marquee. Each owner
holsters firepower for safety.
      "I've got a gun to protect myself," an owner says.
     People trade their heirlooms, their jewels, their computers