2 posts tagged “dubuque”
Autumn is just past peak here in Dubuque, but there are still some nice colors to be found. I took these pictures while walking home from an appointment downtown this morning.
This is an old stone wall (with a newer garage door!) on a hillside just off Fenelon Place.
And here's the street itself. The buildings here are a mixture of apartments, duplexes, single family homes and bed-and breakfasts.
One of my favorite houses on this street. It is currently a bed-and-breakfast. For those interested, this house IS for sale! Unfortunately, I can't afford it!
This is an older one-family home that hasn't been restored, but it has an interesting quality to it, I think.
This is an apartment house, which actually was built as an apartment house. (Many of the apartments in this part of town are part of older single-family homes.) I couldn't get everything in the picture, but you can get a sense of the nice brickwork.
A stone lion with a bit of Halloween decor left over. It used to have a matching partner on the other side, but someone broke it a few years ago, so this guy is left all on his lonesome.
Here's a nice duplex (also for sale, IIRC). I like the red brick with the green trim!
You know, yesterday, that tree had all its leaves!
And across the street, you can see the fallen leaves in huge piles. I wanted to take a picture with my foot in there to show how deep these piles are, but I couldn't manage the right angle with my wimpy camera-phone.
Fire-engine Red House! I love it! If I ever have another chance to get a house, I want one this color!
I didn't take a full picture of this house because there is construction work going on. The owners have been restoring this house for YEARS and doing a great job of it. I like the play of the leaves against the blue backdrop.
This house is on the corner of my street. It's one of the few houses on this street that has a decent-sized yard. During the summer, you can't see the place at all because it is hidden by all the landscaping.
Detail of the burning bush shown in the previous picture.
Again, dark skies, dark picture. This house was restored 5 or 6 years ago and is very cute. At some point, I'll get a pic with a better camera and light so you can see the details.
Home, sweet home! The view of my house as I'm walking up towards it from the street. Those bushes actually belong to our neighbor (our yard is tiny and ends at the edge of the house itself).
Yes, my husband and I both voted yesterday. Our precinct didn't have the fancy new machines that everyone has been bitching about, nor was there much of a wait. We had the same machines as always and it took the same amount of time. I'm wondering if Iowa got new machines, or if they were just put in the bigger urban areas?
Yay, almost all the people we voted for won, except Denise O'Brien for Iowa Secretary of Agriculture. I think she may have been just a tad too liberal for the folks here. Plus, I think the guy running against her actually was a working farmer.
Races here were close, but the democrats dominated. Before, Iowa had 4 Republicans and 1 Democrat in the House of Representative, but now it's 3 Democrats and 2 Republicans. (Our senators are split: 1 Republican, 1 Democrat, so they always end up cancelling each other out. Neither one of them were up this year, though.) So we've gone "blue".
The new governor is also a democrat, but the old one was a democrat, too, so nothing new there. There are noises he (the old gov) will make a run for the presidency in 2008. Not sure yet. Watch for him. His name is Tom Vilsack. He's good, but not very charismatic. He does have a dramatic history, though. His political life started when some crazy guy ran into a town council meeting in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa (Vilsack's hometown) and shot a few people, including the mayor. Afterwards, the former mayor's father and other townspeople encouraged Vilsack to run for Mayor. He won, and went forward from there.
The new governor, Chet Culver, has been Iowa Secretary of State for several years. He knows his stuff, so I think he'll work out well. The democrats also made progress in the Iowa Legislature--perhaps a majority, but I'm not sure on that yet.
Local political offices were also dominated by the dems, but that's not unusual. Dubuque is a democrat stronghold and has been for many years. People here are conservative, but they're also very strongly pro-union, even after most of the unionized jobs have left the area for foreign climates. The voters did vote down a small property tax increase to assist the Dubuque County Extension (that runs 4H, and a number of other educational programs on a teeny-tiny budget). That's sad, because it only worked out to @$3.00/yr on a $150,000 house. People spend more on coffee than on that. I guess the public wasn't educated enough about the measure. It's sad.
A lot of Iowans did come out to vote. The weather was good, but I think the main reason was that people were pissed off about Iraq, and that they felt betrayed by our current administration. A lot of Iowans join the military, and at one point, our state had the highest number of fatalities in the war (but that was last spring, not sure what the numbers say now). Also, Iowa has lost a lot of good jobs because corporations are shipping them to sweatshops overseas. Certainly, our precinct here in Dubuque was hopping. Very busy. The volunteer ladies who work the polls were delighted. It was all very exciting.
So, let's hope some change starts occuring!
