Unfortunately not slash-related question

[resonant]

Any of my imaginary friends in (or otherwise intimately familiar with) Dubuque, Iowa?

Comments

[fox]

I was about to suggest ellen_fremedon, but I don't actually know what bit of Iowa she's from (or where the different bits are with respect to one another). How varied can Iowa be, though, really? ... said the girl who's never lived anywhere smaller than a suburb of a (I don't care what you say) major city in her life. I don't know. Don't mind me. But Ellen might be able to help.

[quinfirefrorefiddle]

Very varied, as someone who lived there in the past for about a decade in various rural and urban contexts, thanks.

[ellen_fremedon]

I've been to Dubuque, but I don't know it well. (Grew up a little over an hour to the west, outside Waterloo.) It's very Catholic, bizarrely devoid of good restaurants, and smack in the middle of the Driftless Zone.

[resonant]

I love the name Driftless Zone. Like -- everyone there must be brisk and full of purpose.

[ellen_fremedon]

:-D

It's the area that missed the last glaciation.

[unfinishedidea]

Uh, I stayed in a hotel there once for a friend of a friend's wedding. I don't think that counts as being intimately familiar, though.

[resonant]

Me, too, actually. I remember that we came up from the flatlands and went, "Hills!"

[quinfirefrorefiddle]

I lived there for a few years, most recently about two years ago, and am now just a few hours away.

[carolyn_claire]

I'm just an hour away, have driven through it on occasion for years--I wish I'd known you were there at the time. I was always impressed by the houses on the bluffs; those streets are effing steep. How do the people who live on them manage when it snows? Harrowing!

[resonant]

Cool! What's your opinion of the spirit of the town -- what's the feel of the place? Did you like it? Are creative people likely to be happy there?

We may wind up moving there, either permanently or temporarily, for the spouse to get the education he needs to change careers, and I want to have an idea of what I'm in for.

Do you have any knowledge of the high schools? (In related news, is it possible that in a little over a year the kidlet will be starting high school? no/no way/no fucking way)

[quinfirefrorefiddle]

I went to seminary there, and some of my friends worked with high school students, who seemed happy enough. I don't have any knowledge of the high schools, but there are lots of colleges in town, so yes to the creative bit and stuff going on. The hills are really irritating in winter. You're near to Galena and in decent day trip range to Iowa City, Rockford, and Waterloo. A lot of jokes get told about East Dubuque, but practically none of them are true anymore- Iowa and Illinois used to have slightly different laws about strip clubs and liquor sales. They had some very serious racial tensions and clashes in the early nineties, including burning Crosses, but the town has done some intentional work on diversity since and is in much better shape. I seem to remember you work at a church, so I'll also mention the town is mostly Catholic but has a presbyterian and a Lutheran seminary, both with excellent libraries, a convent across the river that offers spiritual direction, and an Abbey nearby that has a labyrinth.

Personally, I was pretty unhappy while I was there, but that had nothing to do with the town itself. My favorite restaurant closed, but the Coldstone Creamery is still there, and coffee shops. It doesn't have a very strong personality, I would say it isn't as nice as Iowa City but nicer than Rockford.

[resonant]

Wow -- the spouse is applying to the presb seminary. If that's where you went, he may have further questions, if you're willing. Esp if the seminary was the reason for your misery.

It definitely sounds nicer than Corntown.

[quinfirefrorefiddle]

Nope, I went to the other one, and while they do share classes, I didn't take any of the shared ones. I was jealous of their library, though, and the campus is really pretty. The students there that I met were very happy with the school, as were the alumni I met.

[shrewreader]

Ask Sheafrotherdon of 'Farm in Iowa' on LJ? IIRC, she went to grad school in IA, but I don't know where.

All I know of Iowa is that (a) my great grandfather left Davenport for Pasadena, CA during the Depression, (b) his father sent my great grandfather and his large quantity of siblings to Grinnell, which bought the house my great-great grandfather and his family lived in to put the French department into and (c) to which my grandparents left the soybean farm, and (d) evidence from this past Christmas' road trip up to I-80 from I-70 along the MO / KS / IA / NE borders suggests that while IA may be where all the food -comes- from, there doesn't appear to be any available to users of I-35. YMMV.

[resonant]

You're about the third person to mention the restaurant problem. Making a virtue of necessity: if the spouse is going to be in seminary, we're not going to have the money to eat out anyway!