Iowa – Page 5 – Go Retire Psychiatrist

Bigfoot Snow Removal Service!

We got about 9 inches of snow over the weekend and we’re set to get a few more inches today. People have to work pretty hard to get the snow off their sidewalks because Iowa City has some pretty strict rules about it. If you don’t get that snow removed from your sidewalk “down to the concrete” the city will do it for you—for a stiff price.

You got 24 hours’ notice for your first violation. If you don’t get it done in 24 hours, the city will fine you a penalty of however much it costs to remove the snow plus a $100 administrative fee.

You’ll be glad to know there’s a way to prevent this from happening to you. All you need to do is contact Bigfoot Snow Removal Service. They don’t have a phone number because they don’t technically exist, but that’s only what the city will tell you.

Bigfoot Snow Removal does not have a telephone connection nor a website but there’s a way to get around that. All you need to do is find a big stick and knock really hard on a nearby tree. You have to knock 3 times just like Tony Orlando and Dawn sang the song and do it like you mean it.

Then grab a big bucket and fill it up with a lot of meat. Beef jerky is good but if you don’t have it, use anything you got on hand, even Wagyu beef. I can’t help it if you paid a lot of money for it, just be glad you can get it in America. Even though 10 pounds of it can set you back over $1000, just keep thinking about how much the city will charge you to clear your sidewalk.

Set the bucket of Wagyu or whatever out in your front yard. You can set up a critter cam if you want to make sure it’s Bigfoot fetching it and not your neighbor. However, it’s only fair to warn you that because Bigfoot is an interdimensional creature (that’s why nobody’s ever found fossils or seen baby Bigfoots) you’ll never capture any footage of Bigfoot. Oh, people pass off amateur videos claiming Bigfoot posed for them and you’ll see them on TV shows, but that’s just a government plot to distract you from the price of Wagyu beef.

The nice thing about Bigfoot Snow Removal is that they bring their own snow shovels. None of them have snow blowers because they would have to go to the hardware store and buy them. That would just cause a panic because people would faint and have to go to the emergency room and then Bigfoot hunters would start setting traps, looking for tracks and making plaster casts of them which invariably turn out to be bear or collecting animal poop that is always from raccoons, playing practical jokes and whatnot.

Just shovel your walks.

The Snow Looked Gentle This Morning

The snowfall this morning looked pretty gentle out in our backyard—and then the storm hit the gas. Around 7:30 a.m. the wind was barely blowing and the first snow looked slow.

A half hour later, it was blowing sideways and the plow had just plugged our driveway (Thank you so much!).

Across the street, kids came out to play while the snow was blowing. The neighborhood is still pretty new and pretty much under construction, so not much of a place to play yet.

Sena and I remember going to an outdoor skating area at East Park in Mason City when we were kids. It was really just a pond. Park staff pushed the snow away when the ice was thick enough to skate on. Lots of kids skated there and it was free.

It’s not like nowadays. The ice skating rink at the mall not far from us charges you just to fall down on the ice. I think they charge $7 admission and $3 to rent skates. Skating coaches charge $6—I don’t know if that’s an hourly rate or flat fee.

Anyway, at East Park back in the day you could fall down on the ice for free.

Snow Storm vs Electric Snow Shovel: The Rematch!

Well, now that we’re getting this big snowstorm, this will be the second season Sena breaks out the Voltask battery-powered 48V 16-inch snow shovel! It’s up to the task! I manned the snow plow shovel as usual-but Sena deserves all the glory.

We got outside around 8:00 a.m. and finished up at 10:00 a.m. It’s still snowing, but we’ll tackle the rest of it tomorrow. We’re pooped.

Snowstorm Barreling Toward Iowa!

We’re going to get about a foot of snow starting tonight according to the weather report. There are webcams about Iowa that will document the storm, which will occur across most of the state.

We’ve charged up the batteries in the Voltask electric snow shovel, which got quite a workout last winter. We took videos of using it that racked up over 5,200 views. Search my site with the term “electric snow shovel.”

Breaking News: Hands-Free Driving Law in Iowa!

Sena saw a news headline about the new hands-free driving law in Iowa that’s going to be enforced in 2026 (passed in July of this year). Guilty drivers are going to get socked with a $100 fine if they’re caught messing with their cell phones with their hands off the wheel because they might think “hands-free” means you can’t touch the steering wheel.

Drivers have been getting off with a warning for now. Hundreds of people in Iowa die every year because they fool with their cell phones while driving.

You can download a variety of free materials from the Iowa Dept. of Public Safety.

And of course, this reminds me of a Men in Black 3 quote (why not?):

Agent J: Okay! You know how you’re on a airplane and the flight attendant asks you to turn your cell-phone off. And you’re like, I ain’t turning my cell-phone off, that don’t have nothing to do with no damn airplane. Well, [Showing the crowd a crashed spaceship] this is what we get, that’s what happens. It gets up there, bounces around on the satellites, then blam! Just turn your damn cell-phone off. Now you’re gonna drive off a cliff tonight because your GPS don’t work.

The thing about GPS reminds me of a Garmin Nuvi navigator we used years ago. We could plug it into the cigarette lighter power outlet. I had to update the map data from the internet although the Garmin used satellite-based GPS signals to manage the turn-by-turn route instructions.

It worked just fine except when airplane passengers used their cell phones to play Men in Black movies after the flight attendants instructed everybody to turn them off. Most people don’t know that kind of behavior also automatically releases the frozen block of blue ice (waste) from the toilet right over Area 51 (just kidding—actually the wings just fall off!).

I’ve used my old cell phone to get directions driving once or twice but not recently. I set it in the cup holder and never took my hands off the wheel—even when I drove through the front window of Pizza Hut.

So, if you happen to be driving through Iowa in the near future, remember to abide by the new law, which doesn’t mean you can get hands for free at the discount store.

Big Mo Pod Show: “Garage Blues”

I heard the Big Mo Blues Show last night and the Big Mo Pod Show today. I can say that the Garage Show title refers to a get together during the Covid pandemic that Big Mo threw and held in his garage and featured local Blues artists including Bryce Janey, who is number 5 on the list of songs with “Down Home Blues.”

Big Mo Pod Show 084 – “Garage Blues”

Anyway, the most interesting part of the podcast was the 3^rd song, “Coal Black Mare” (misspelled as “Cold Black Mare”) which was produced by Bob Corritore and released as part of historical album released October 17, 2025 entitled “Bob Corritore and Friends—Early Blues Sessions.” It includes songs recorded between 1984 and 2007. Corritore was on harmonica and blues artist Clarence Edwards sang the song (he died in 1993).

I looked up Clarence Edwards on Wikipedia and he was born in Louisiana in 1933 and became more widely known in the 1980s when he performed on a national blues festival circuit. I found a version of Coal Black Mare recorded in 1961 by Edwards.

The song “Coal Black Mare” has a very interesting history all by itself. Most internet articles say Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup, was probably best known for writing the song “That’s All Right” in 1946 which Elvis Presley make famous later. Some say “That’s All Right” was the first rock and roll song. The Blues Hall of Fame says that Crudup was the “The Father of Rock ‘n’ Roll.”

I found references that say Crudup wrote “Coal Black Mare” and released it in 1962 or 1965 (the Fire Sessions) depending on which web site you read. I also found a song entitled “Black Pony Blues” which on most web sites is the same as “Coal Black Mare” and was recorded in 1941 under Crudup’s name. They both sound like the same song.

Opinions differ about the meaning of the song “Coal Black Mare.” While I think most would say that it’s about a black race horse that won a lot of races, I think the “gold earrings” and “gold teeth” lyrics could make some people wonder if this is a metaphor for a woman. I found a web reference hinting at this, speculating that Charley Patton’s 1929 “Pony Blues” might have inspired the song and say that in all versions, including Crudup’s, the black mare stands for “…a black lover.”

I got lost in the internet forest on this one and I’ll be the first to admit I don’t have the first idea of whether or not “Coal Black Mare” was inspired by Charley Patton’s “Pony Blues.” And while I think gold earrings and teeth would look odd on a horse; I also suspect Crudup was probably singing about a race horse.

Your thoughts?

Pennies from Heaven to Coin Rolls

We recently found out that pennies are being take out of circulation. In fact, the last day they stopped minting them was on our 48th wedding Anniversary this month, November 12, 2025! There may be a reason to save the 2025 pennies, according to some folks.

We have a piggy bank and I rolled up our saved coins last year. We had $55 worth. It feels fairly heavy now and we wondered if we had any 2025 pennies.

I wasn’t eager for the task, but there was another reason to tackle it again—we wondered if we had any pennies from 1977.

I forgot how tedious this chore was. I spent a long time peering at the pennies with a magnifying glass hunting for any minted in 2025 before I ever got busy rolling the coins into those pesky little sleeves.

I found one from 1969 which reminded me of the Men in Black 3 movie (what doesn’t remind me of MIB movies?). The scene is Agent J and Jeffrey Price on top of the Chrysler building when Agent J is about to do the time jump thing:

Jeffrey Price: Do not lose that time device or you will be stuck in 1969! It wasn’t the best time for your people. I’m just saying; it’s like a lot cooler now.

As if in confirmation, I found a few from the mid-late 20^th century and beyond as well as a few marking other important historical events:

Source: Historydotcom; A Year in History series

1959: Alaska becomes the 49^th state; Hawaii becomes the 50^th state

1960: Greensboro sit-in by 4 black college students at a whites-only lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, starting a nationwide civil rights movement

1964: President Johnson signs Civil Rights Act; Martin Luther King Jr. wins the Nobel Peace Prize

1975: Microsoft founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen; Arthur Ashe becomes the first black man to win at Wimbledon tennis championship

1976: First women inducted into the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis and at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point

2001: 9/11 attack on America

I found one from 1985 when I graduated from Iowa State University with a Bachelor’s Degree in 1985. I found another from 1988; the year I started medical school in Iowa City. I accidentally broke the arm of our cadaver in gross anatomy. I also found one from 1996, when I graduated from the psychiatry residency program at University of Iowa. Dr. George Winokur had just stepped down from being department of psychiatry chair and he encouraged me to apply for a position at Iowa.

But the best penny find was the one from 1977, when Sena and I got married. What a coincidence that the U.S. Mint stopped making pennies on November 12, 1977—the anniversary day of our wedding.

I rolled $16.50 in coins this time, but there was plenty left over (including pennies) that wouldn’t fill the sleeves.

Penny for your thoughts?

Big Mo Pod Show: “Tribute”

I’m writing about the Big Mo Pod Show from Big Mo’s blues show that was aired on November 7, 2025. I’m a little late, but it doesn’t matter that much because Big Mo will be recorded tonight (Friday, November 14, 2025). He’ll be at the Beaker Street Live show instead.

Big Mo Pod Show 082 – “Tribute”

I think I might have dozed off while listening to his blues show last Friday night because I didn’t remember 3 songs from the list on the pod show:

Luther Dickinson & Datrian Johnson – “Sitting on Top of the World”

John “papa” Gros – “Crazy”

Dr. John – “Food For Thot”

Contributing to my memory loss is this: the 3 songs are not on the list of the songs played that night. So, I can’t say much about the discussion Big Mo and Noah had about the songs, based on what I don’t remember hearing. However, I can take it on faith in Big Mo’s extensive blues knowledge about his idea that the broad spectrum of American music has more blues in it than not.

On the other hand, I can say from reminiscence that I think I first heard Mississippi John Hurt’s song “Make Me a Pallet On Your Floor” many years ago when I first started listening to Friday night blues show. I tried to recall what I was doing in 1966 when Hurt died. I was just a kid.

While I can say I think I wasn’t listening to the blues, I think I can pick out popular songs from 1967 that tend to confirm Big Mo’s statement about most music having threads of the blues: “When a Man Loves a Woman” is just one example I think might fit.

I think I found a Wikipedia article about Mississippi John Hurt that might fit nicely with Big Mo saying he read the story about how Hurt was rediscovered back in the early 1960s. The detail of Avalon being his hometown is mentioned in the section “Rediscovery and death.” Just like Big Mo says, he wasn’t making it up.

This is World Kindness Day 2025!

Sena saw something on the web about World Kindness Day this morning and alerted me to it right away. World Kindness Day is an international movement which started in 1998 by the World Kindness Movement. It’s observed on November 13^th annually.

This made me look through my blog posts and I found a short announcement about the event from a couple of years ago. Wouldn’t it be great if this were more than an annual event? What if this were a way of life, a way of being?

There are many ways to observe World Kindness Day, limited only by imagination.There are many ways to observe World Kindness Day. Sena suggested we donate to one of Iowa City’s local food pantries.

So, she headed over to the grocery store and bought several bags of non-perishable items and delivered them to the CommUnity Crisis Services Food Bank.