CEDAR RAPIDS – Demonstrators braved sweltering heat Wednesday to protest Vice President Mike Pence’s visit to Rockwell Collins in Cedar Rapids. Nearly 100 people stood across the street from the headquarters of the largest employer in the city while Pence, accompanied by U.S. Rep. Rod Blum (R-IA,) spoke to workers inside. Less than a handful […]
Many young Iowans, and others, have spent time catching lightning bugs during steamy summer nights. Also known as fireflies, lightning bugs are among the insects that fascinate young and old alike. Like many of our beloved creatures in recent decades, firefly populations appear on the decline, due to pesticide use, loss of habitat and other […]
The Linn County Master Gardeners annual Garden Walk, set for Saturday, July 7, 2018, will feature something new. A “garden crawl” will allow visitors to have a card stamped at each garden on the tour for a chance to win a beautiful garden bench. Admission for the garden tour, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. […]
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa – Czech School students learned how to bake kolaches today, with help from the expert kolache-makers from St. Monica’s Circle at St. Wenceslaus Church. Students rolled balls of the dough, used a glass to form a perfect circle in the center and filled the dough with poppyseed, cherry, apricot and prune filling, […]
By Cindy Hadish/for Lure magazine Josh Spece, co-owner of In the Country Garden & Gifts, was on the cutting edge of a garden trend when his shop in rural Independence opened seven years ago. Fairy gardens were coming in vogue at the time and have since seen their popularity soar, moving into the mainstream with […]
Hopes for a late appearance of the Japanese beetle were dashed when I saw the first cluster of the voracious pests on June 22, a few days to more than a week earlier than I’ve spotted them in the past. The excruciatingly late winter weather in Iowa, which dragged well into April, was followed by […]
Master Czech Folk Artist, Marj Nejdl of Cedar Rapids, led the older division Czech School students through the steps of kraslice, the art of decorating eggs. Students learned how to use wax and dye to create designs and layers of color and even how to blow the yolk out of the eggs, at the Glovik […]
By Cindy Hadish/for Lure magazine Chris and Eryn Cronbaugh had multiple reasons to “go solar” with their home in Cedar Rapids. The two cited their concern for the environment, a stewardship of the Earth’s resources and economics behind their decision to retrofit the 1929 home with a ground mount system. “It seemed like a good […]
By Cindy Hadish/Homegrown Iowan The coming week begins a retrospective on the 10 years that have passed since the epic 2008 floods in Eastern Iowa, including Cedar Rapids. For those who say the June 11-13 disaster was the best thing to ever happen to this city, it’s not a stretch to guess what they did, […]
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — The Kolach Festival has been an annual tradition at St. Ludmila’s Catholic Church for decades, first getting its start in 1938. This year’s festival, from June 8-10, 2018, was particularly poignant, as St. Ludmila’s School closed at the end of this school year, due to declining enrollment. Part of the Holy […]