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Leisure World in Kirksville. Most of us know it as a small bowling alley, roller rink, and bar that acts as a venue for local bands. The music scene at Leisure World is broadening its horizons though. No longer will they host just local bands. No, Leisure World is going worldwide.
Carusella, a heavy rock duo from Tel Aviv, Israel, will be playing at Leisure World on March 27.
 Photo from: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_kzIYVFMaGQ0/Sr65GGHr4tI/AAAAAAAAAio/dCUG1TNgcec/s400/Carusella+-+Carusella.jpg Tamar Aphek, guitar and vocals, and Guy Shechter, drums and vocals, are well known in the Israeli alternative music scene. They recorded and toured together for three years with the band ‘ED’ before Carusella was formed. Read More...
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I heard we will have a Pirate Party in Illinois. Being a pirate is not a bad idea at all. Still, what can be more awesome than being able to travel to anywhere you'd like to with a boat or a ship, seeing the horizon everyday wherever you go? In comparison to Southeast Asian students, doing anything related to seas and even rivers is a luxury to Midwestern students, as they are surrounded mostly by land. But in some regions of Southeast Asia such as Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam, people spend their life on floating boats. And to make a living, they form floating markets to trade merchandise and fruits on those boats. A trip to those blessed regions, I find, is worth a blog post.
 Photo from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/poorfish/1144092663/sizes/o/ Rivers are the best thing that Mother Nature gives to the regions surrounding floating markets as they bring sediments to the land. The surrounding land is naturally fertilized every day. There, fruit being grown is plentiful, colorful and delicious. Whether it may be coconuts, bananas, mangos, sweet pitayas, jackfruits, watermelons, sapodillas, rambutans, longans; they are literally sweeter than anything in this world. Best of all, the weather somehow also blesses the land so it allows people to grow fruit year-round, so they are always sold fresh.
Being able to produce an excessive amount of fruit, people find ways to trade for other things they need. Once again, rivers do help. A boat can help local people carry much more than any other mean of transportation. Fruit being carried on the boats makes the whole market a show of colorful colors and tasteful smells. Read More...
Tags: Culture, Environment, Food and Drink, International
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On Saturday, March 13, the Round lake Park District, located at the Robert W. Rolek Community Center in Round Lake, Ill., will be hosting its annual mother-son night for 2010. The theme for this year is pirates. Now, young sons and their moms can hop aboard the Black Pearl, featured prominently in the Disney film Pirates of the Caribbean, for a night of high sea adventure, also known as a pirate party. There are a variety of things to do, including arts and crafts, dancing to some awesome music, and even producing their own ice cream creation.
 Photo from: http://www.eventective.com/provider/webthumbview.aspx?NUM=166443 There will also be many events, programs, and recreational activities that the Round Lake Area Park District, the organization hosting the pirate night, puts on every year for the Round Lake community.
But, I’m going to be honest with you. Round Lake, Ill. is a small town. According to its official website, Round Lake is described fittingly as a “village,” with a total population of 5,842. So, I like the fact that there are a series of events like these to entertain the families living in the area, such as this pirate night for moms and their sons. This seems to be a norm for most small towns throughout the Midwest. The town needs quirky events like pirate night that can keep these small-town folks entertained. Read More...
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The smell of bacon was wafting under the door to my room.
No … not bacon … then what was it? Of course. Not bacon, but incense.
 Photo from: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3213/2981760738_4213f6f91c.jpg I smothered my face with my pillow in repulsive defeat. The eastern sun penetrated the thick, tan drapes and pervaded my eyelids. The clock ticked 8 a.m., and I had to get up. Darn sunlight. Read More...
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Haven’t had enough of the Olympics? If you couldn’t stop watching the speed skaters slicing through sheets of ice and leaving the rest of us in the dust, then maybe you should stop by Wisconsin to see the US National Short Track Championship and the American Cup Final, which starts today. The city of Weston has been preparing for this big deal—the final annual speed skating and short track meet—for over a year.
 Photo from: http://www.wausauspeedskating.com/nationalsamericancup.htm Short track speed skating involves four to six skaters racing around an oval ice rink, and its smaller rink and shorter races than long track speed skating have gained popularity for the sport over the years. It has been an Olympic sport since 1992.
Check out this video for one of the races in 2007. Here, the skaters are cutting through the ice at practically 30 degree angles! Read More...
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March is coming, which means the weather in Kirksville is getting warmer. In March a tropical country like Vietnam, it's pretty hot, like a summer day in Kirksville. Anything opportunity to cool down is greatly appreciated. If there is one piece that I miss I've enjoyed so much beginning on March, it is going out to eat Che with my friends. Che in Vietnam as popular as Sonic drinks in the US. Except you don't really drink it (and it doesn't have a brand name attached, either.)
 Photo from: http://www.tamarind-cafe.com/images/little_hanoi/che Che is a traditional Vietnamese dessert soup or pudding that is usually sweet, and comes with a thousand of different variants. Some of them are prepared by cooking water with beans (azuki beans, black beans, mung beans and some of them are with lotus seeds, then sweetened with sugar.
Fruit Che is like mixed fruit drinks, but with less ice, more fruit and some magic dressings from the maker. It's also common to find a variant with rice dumplings. To make your bowl of Che more interesting, you can order tapioca starch, pandan leaf extract, coconut creme or sesame seeds as dressings. Che can be served hot or with ice, but I personally prefer Che with more ice. It's like Statistics class- with so many
options you can really make a whole bunch of different combinations and experimenting, but it's much more fun than doing Statistics homework. After a long and hot day, having a fifty-cent small bowl of Che is just the perfect way to relieve stress and get ready for the dinner. Read More...
Tags: Culture, Food and Drink, International
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The sixth annual Sock Monkey Madness Festival is this weekend in Rockford, IL.
 Photo from: http://photos.amazingsocks.com/500/6851-2-original-rockford-2-pr-pk-red-heel-monkey-socks-13335 This odd sounding event takes the people of Rockford back to the city’s roots by celebrating the once thriving knitting industry of Rockford.
The Nelson Knitting Company of Rockford produced and sold Rockford Red Heel work socks from 1932-1992. During the Great Depression, these socks were transformed into dolls, and the sock monkey was born. In fact, the company even began putting monkey patterns in with each pair of socks sold starting in the 1950s. This part of America’s pop culture has not died though. You can still find sock monkeys at department and specialty stores all over the world, or you can head to Rockford this weekend to enjoy all the wacky sock monkey festivities you can handle. Read More...
Tags: Events, Clothing
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The city of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, holds a maple syrup festival every year during the first weekend of March. Events featured at the festival include tapping a tree, gathering sap, and boiling sap into delicious maple syrup. There’s also a delicious pancake breakfast which includes sausage, juice, milk, and coffee. When I read about this festival, I was a little confused. Maple syrup? The Midwest? Things just didn’t seem to add up.
 Photo from: http://www.roadfooddigest.com/image.axd?picture=WindowsLiveWriter/ParkeCountyMapleSyrupFair_6D5/spile_3 Whenever I think about maple syrup, I think the dense, rich forests of the New England country side, not the middle of the flat farmlands of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. I discovered there is actually a rich history of maple syrup in the Midwest. Many Midwestern Native American tribes produced maple syrup and even today, many Midwestern states such as Ohio, Indiana, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan host maple syrup festivals on an annual basis. Though it is primarily produced in the Northeast because of the high concentration of maple trees in the region, maple syrup can be produced anywhere there is maple trees and good weather conditions, which clarifies why there is still a high amount of maple syrup produced in the Midwest.
Maple syrup is usually harvested by tapping a maple tree through the bark and into the wood, letting the sap run into a bucket. It is required that sap collection (which takes places daily) occurs primarily during the months of February, March and April. This would explain why the maple syrup festival in Cedar Rapids is held every year in early March. Anyway, this festival looks like a good way to learn about an unorthodox Midwest export. If nothing else, you can enlighten people from other regions about another exciting Midwest entity about which they might not have known. Read More...
Tags: Food and Drink, Events, Culture
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It’s a mystical sort of a night in Kansas City for me, though simply a run-of-the-mill Tuesday. Nothing is open past nine, save a few bars, gas stations and select coffee shops. My friend and I linger in one of these coffee shops (Westport Coffeeshop) until the employees start shuffling around with their closing duties. But our conversations are riveting and soulful tonight, and we aren’t ready to stop talking. Alas, the city is starting to go to sleep and there’s no place open. He suggests a place I haven’t heard of before, an outdoor overlook.
 Photo from: http://www.kciionline.com/Nighttime%20Downtown We get there (take the first right turn after Broadway Bridge, going south) and walk up a ramp toward a mini-oasis of light foliage, beige stone stairs, and sculptures. There’s something comfortable and serene about this random getaway in the midst of Kansas City’s endless apartments and streetlights. An atmosphere edged with soft and silent calm subtly accompanied the stunning view of night-time Kansas City sprawled in all directions.
This photo was not my precise view. Someone seems to have added some glows and touch-ups here and there. But there you are, Kansas City from above! Read More...
Tags: Culture, Environment, Urban
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Ernest Hemingway, a well-known journalist and novelist became a legend in American literature in the 20th century through his extensive global travels, but it is the Midwest where he had his start.
 Photo from: http://www-tc.pbs.org/wnet/americannovel/timeline/images/hemingway_pic Ernest Miller Hemingway was born in Oak Park, Illinois on the 21st of July, 1899. He was hired as a journalist for The Kansas City Star after graduating high school. While working for the newspaper in early 1918, he volunteered for the Red Cross and was shipped off to the Italian Front where he was severely wounded. He returned home America only to fall in love and go back to Paris. He received a Nobel Prize for Literature in the October of 1954 while in Cuba. After his experience in various jobs and locations, he finally returned and settled in Ketchum, Idaho before he died.
Ernest Hemingway’s legacy is the manner in which he changed writing. Hemingway’s introduced what is called the Iceberg Theory. Just as the name suggests, this theory explains that only some facts are written but a deeper meaning is lurking out of sight. The Iceberg Theory is unmistakable in Hemingway’s writing. Read More...
Tags: Historical figures, Culture, Environment
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