And then I wrote...

by Dick Schilling, "Editor Emeritus"

... about night noises.

The forecast was for high winds overnight the night before trash collection day, and I knew if winds blew that strongly, my smaller “garbage” container with its light load would not stand. But I figured the larger “recyclables” container, with four sacks of newspapers and magazines accumulated over two weeks, was heavy enough to make it, so I put it out.

Just one thing wrong. The wind blew the yellow lid off. Same thing happened to another resident not far away. My prostate acts like the bladder with the lady in the TV commercial, leading me to the bathroom anywhere from three to six times a night, which interrupts sleep. But I am used to that. What I am not used to is the syncopated drum beat banging of two trash container lids following the baton of the wind all night long!

A night before that, I woke to an unexpected December sound, thunder.

It did not sound the same as a summer thundershower. Would the absence of leaves on trees make a difference, I wondered? It sounded more hollow or something.

It did not make any noise, but the appearance of the “super” moon could be seen through thin clouds, and it was a Halloween-ish sight with its “complexion dimmed,” as Shakespeare might have written.

It isn’t the famed Toilet Bowl, but weather conditions could make it close. Iowa will be in the Pinstripe Bowl after Christmas. The game is played in Yankee Stadium. That’s outdoors. In New York City. Average temperature at that time of the year is around 32 degrees, I read. And sometimes there is snow.

Iowa State gets to play in Memphis. Where it almost certainly will be warmer.

Purdue, which finished with a worse record than Iowa, goes to the Foster Farms Bowl in suburban San Francisco. Even when it isn’t good, northern California weather isn’t bad.

Even though I truly “lost my heart in San Francisco” as Tony Bennett or Frank Sinatra sang, I now wonder. The loss of the innocent life of Kate Steinle on a pier there at the hands of an often deported illegal alien with a “rap sheet” a yard long went essentially un-avenged. A jury in that sanctuary city did not find the killer guilty of murder, and not even of manslaughter, although the facts proved the latter beyond a reasonable doubt.

The problem was the judge would not allow the jury to be informed of the accused’s past.

Shades of another California jury, which acquitted O.J. Simpson.