Wintering, 2021 - Galena IL & Davenport IA

 

I am writing this on a Sunday morning from a room on the 4th floor of a Hampton Inn in Davenport, Iowa.  The window overlooks the parking lot of a shopping center.  Because of the Covid-19 crisis, the parking lot is empty.  Davenport has had quite a lot of snow recently, and now the temperature has plunged - currently sitting at 15 degrees below zero, Fahrenheit. The parking lot looks deadly in the thin grey morning light.  I saw a couple of burly guys struggle to free a tow truck stuck in that parking lot last night.

About a week ago, I was in Galena and rented a cabin in the woods.  The snow hit, and I took a picture of the deck off the kitchen - the pic is at the top of this post.  I couldn't get out of the joint for several hours - a snowdrift blocked the door and there was no snow shovel. The managers of the property cleared it away around lunchtime.  I was happy to be trapped, surrounded by the winter's hush in the woods.

I am now visiting one of my adult children who is currently staying in Davenport.  It isn't a bad place - the pace is a lot slower than Chicago, and the folks here see things much differently than us urbanites.  The good citizens of Davenport have declared that the pandemic is over - the restaurants and bars were packed last night, and mask discipline is pretty weak.  That's why I split a take-out pizza with my kid in the hotel room last night.

Lots of mid-sized cities have interesting histories, and Davenport is no exception.  Davenport is a river town; the Mississippi is its major geographic feature.  River towns tend to be kind of racy.  Davenport had a lot of bordellos and speakeasies during the Prohibition years, and once was called "the wickedest city in America" by the national press.  It is also Bix Beiderbecke's hometown.  If you have never heard of Bix, that's OK - he is not well-known to the general public.   He was a giant of the jazz cornet in the 1920's.  You may have heard Royal Garden Blues, considered one of the most important jazz recordings in history.  Bix was a tragic character.  He drank himself to death in his Queens, New York apartment in the summer of 1931.  He was only 28 years old when he died. So Davenport has the Bix Beiderbecke Museum downtown near the Mississippi River.  There is a Bix festival and many other Bix-related organizations and events here.  Davenport also was the location of America's first college of chiropractic medicine. You can lay factoid that on your chiropractor when you visit for your next adjustment.

I am here to spend time with my adult offspring.  I won't bore you with the details, but this child of mine has been struggling.  I love this young person to death and I am here to help if possible.  I have no idea how things will turn out.  I know if I force an outcome, things probably won't improve.

I have no power over anyone else's actions or reactions.  I only have control over my own actions and reactions.  Even that is sometimes more than I can handle.

The sun is breaking through the cloud cover now, so I will head out to see what Davenport has in store for me today.