The format is appealing — roughly the same as Reader’s Digest, but with a lower grade of paper, both for the cover and inside pages. It’s basically a flimsy cardboard for the cover and slightly better than newsprint inside. Also, the text is divided into two columns on each page, for ease of reading. Art and graphics are minimal. It’s a tidy little package, easy to handle, cart around, store, etc.

Looking through the old copies, it’s interesting to find all the prominent authors from the fantasy and science fiction genres. Nobody, it seemed, was too good to appear in F&SF or one of the other very similar magazines with the same format that were so popular in the ’60s and ’70s. Even the top writers couldn’t have gotten much money for their contributions, but they wrote for the magazine anyway. It was the place to see and be seen.

Today, in an antiques mall, I picked up the October 1968 issue, which contains writings by Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Harlan Ellison, Robert Silverberg, Gahan Wilson, Larry Niven, D.F. Jones and Ron Goulart. These were/are prominent names in fantasy and science fiction. I was especially drawn to the Ellison short story, “Try a Dull Knife.” Besides being a longtime fan of Ellison, I was fascinated by the fact that he submitted this piece to the magazine at a time when he was at or near the peak of his career. In fact, the editor’s note introducing the story indicates how busy Ellison was at that time:

“Harlan Ellison’s current projects include the following: scripting an sf film, Esper, for Universal Pictures (it is projected as a film-for-TV and later a series); putting together a second volume of Dangerous Visions; completing two novels, Demon with a Glass Hand (based on his award-winning ‘Outer Limits’ television script, and Dial 9 to Get Out, a contemporary novel ‘more than slightly autobiographical.’ Ellison is presently crossing the country making TV and radio appearances to promote his new collection Love Ain’t Nothing But Sex Misspelled. . . .”

I checked my shelf of Ellison books, and the story in the magazine later appeared in his collection The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World. I just read the story, and it’s pretty good, an allegory about the vampiric codependence between celebrities and their fans. Classic Ellison, in that he no doubt was thinking autobiographically as he conceived this story.

Another fun piece is a column called “The Dark Corner” by the cartoonist Gahan Wilson in which he reviews new horror releases. He has an interesting take on a new edition of an Arthur Machen novel, arguing that the young people experimenting with psychedelic drugs would be wise to read the old British horror master.

“The more naive among the psychedelic set and the pot lot appear to believe that they have stumbled on a New Thing,” Wilson writes. “They style themselves Columbuses, treading an undiscovered continent, making first contact with the angels and demons which dwell therein. They are, of course, quite wrong. Those lands have been explored by previous voyagers, and we have the maps and logs of their journeys. Some of these bold cartographers left encouraging reports, others did not. Among those with less happy news stood — we can say towered — the figure of Arthur Machen. His cautionary essays on what may happen to those who meddle with that which we laughingly call reality should be required reading for those who are tempted to dip their toe into the acid pool or go out with Mary Jane.”

I haven’t read Machen, but my interest surely is piqued now. (Taking a quick look at the Wikipedia entry for Machen, I note that Stephen King, no slouch in the horror field, believes Machen’s novella The Great God Pan may be the best horror story ever.)

The October 1968 issue also includes Clarke’s response to a nonfiction piece by Asimov from a previous issue. Clarke and Asimov apparently were old friends, or at least very respectful colleagues, but the Clarke piece offers a strong disagreement with Asimov about an arcane aspect of science: whether anything is impossible. The dialogue between Asimov and Clarke happened many moons before the advent of the Internet, but F&SF at times had the feel of being an interactive experience within the tight-knit community of writers who contributed to it. It was something like a blog in which a handful of people are contributing and playing off one another’s posts.

The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction is still publishing, bimonthly these days, in roughly the same format. I haven’t been inclined to pick up the more recent issues, in part because I don’t recognize most of the contributors. But I think I’ll get a new one sometime soon and see what’s changed and what’s stayed the same. The compact and unpretentious format is hard to resist.

One striking feature of downtown Des Moines is the vast matrix of skywalks connecting the high-rise buildings and parking garages. It’s not just a couple of them: Altogether, there are about four miles’ worth of skywalks. The first stretch of skywalk opened in 1969 but it’s not part of the four-mile system that got under way in 1982.

The skywalks have two obvious reasons to exist: 1) to allow workers to walk from one building to another with the greatest of ease and 2) to do so without having to suffer the discomforts of winter and, I suppose, the more modest discomforts of summer. It’s a cool thing. It’s new to me, but I realize it’s not unique to Des Moines.

It’s not all good news. Apparently things once were more vibrant in parts of the skywalks than they are today. The big insurance companies Wellmark and Aviva left the downtown area in 2010, dramatically cutting pedestrian traffic in parts of the skywalk system. Some skywalk-level restaurants closed.

“Instead of the skywalks teeming with activity, parts of the system had begun to look like a rundown shopping mall with empty store fronts,” wrote David Elbert for the Des Moines Register, which, by the way, is located in a downtown high-rise and is served by the skywalk system.

Elbert wrote about the skywalks this week because they recently benefited from a $15,000 makeover in advance of the Iowa caucus.

My main problem, I think, is that I’m a journalist — have been for many years — and so I’m not accustomed to the idea of sitting down and cranking out something if I don’t have a “news peg” — something newsworthy, such as an event or a pressing issue, on which to base a piece of writing. But a person can blog successfully without knowing exactly what the news peg is when he sits down in front of the computer. Blogging is more like thinking out loud, like the first draft of a personal essay rather than the end product. Gotta get used to that.

I read several books at once. I’m not proud of this, but it’s how I roll, as the young people say. I’ll tell you about some of them.

The book sitting next to my bed is, typically, a work of fiction. The one sitting there now is Under the Dome by Stephen King. I recently finished his latest novel, 11/22/63, and liked it. It’s a long book, a little longer than it needed to be, frankly, but still pretty good. But when I finished it, I realized I had not yet read his other recent long book, Under the Dome, which got good reviews. So I started reading it right away, and I’m enjoying it. I’m about a quarter of the way through it, which means I’ve read 250 pages! When I’m done in a couple of weeks, probably, I’ll have had my Stephen King fix for a while, probably a year at least.

The book that I take with me to work, which is the one I read over breakfast and/or lunch, is God’s Jury: The Inquisition and the Making of the Modern World by Cullen Murphy. Just published. For the most part, it’s a history of the three Inquisitions that menaced non-Christians for hundreds of years. But it also looks at how the Inquisition mindset has continued to be part of history to the present day. Interesting book so far. I really like picking up the history of the Inquisitions. We should learn more about this as part of our basic history education.

Another book I’m working my way through is Iowa Boy: Ten Years of Columns by Chuck Offenburger. This is the first collection of Offenburger’s columns for the Des Moines Register. It was published by Iowa State University Press in 1987. I also have the second collection and will get to it soon. Offenburger was a fine columnist whose specialty was small-town Iowa. He would travel all over the state to find offbeat and quirky people and situations to write about. I’ve learned a lot about Iowa from reading his columns. Offenburger left the Register several years ago. He taught journalism for a while, I understand, but then settled in the country outside Jefferson, Iowa, about 40 miles west of Ames, where he continues to write, particularly for his popular website, www.offenburger.com. I know someone who knows him, and I’m hoping to get a chance to meet him sometime soon.

Here are some of the other books on the shelf where the “currently reading” books are kept: Backward Ran Sentences: The Best of Wolcott Gibbs from The New Yorker, Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Civilization: The West and the Rest by Niall Ferguson, Alfred Kazin’s Journals, Deadline Artists: America’s Greatest Newspaper Columns, A Moment in the Sun by John Sayles and Distrust That Particular Flavor by William Gibson. There are more.

The irony of this shelf is that, on the shelf below it, there are certainly some better books than I am excited to dive into as soon as possible, such as Hemingway’s Boat: Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost, 1934-61 by Paul Hendrickson, Sweet Heaven When I Die: Faith, Faithlessness, and the Country in Between by Jeff Sharlet, Love Goes to Buildings on Fire: Five Years in New York That Changed Music Forever by Will Hermes, and The Ecstasy of Influence: Nonfictions, Etc. by Jonathan Lethem. These, along with many others, all hold major promise, but I can’t bring myself to start them when I have more than a dozen books that already contain bookmarks.

Sara and Erin

This is a picture of our daughters, Sara and Erin, probably taken in 1996. They are 21 and 17 today, and doing great.

Nov. 9: Woke up to about an inch of snow in the yard and on my car. Yesterday’s rain turned to snow overnight. The roads were wet but not particularly slick. The snow is expected to melt off later today. This aspect of our adventure has started a little earlier than we had hoped or expected, but maybe there’ll be another period of clear weather before winter arrives in earnest.

Nov. 14: We had great weather the past few days while we moved into our new house on Clemens Boulevard. Highs in the low 50s, lows in the low 30s, and no rain. Anybody can cope with those numbers. We’re really pleased with our new house. It’s big, comfortable and in a great neighborhood. Two different neighbors have brought over cookies. Lots of kids playing outside. The only downside is we’re quite a bit farther away from work and school than we were in the rental house.

Nov. 23: It’s the day before Thanksgiving. Overall, the weather since the Nov. 9 snowfall has been really quite good. Very little precipitation. Just a few cold days. One morning I got into my car to go to work and it was 20 degrees. That’s pretty cold. A few evenings ago, Tammy and I attended the city’s Christmas tree lighting downtown and a bitterly cold wind put a damper on the festivities. But there have been many other days, like today, when the daytime temps have been in the high 40s and even low 50s, while it barely dropped below freezing at night. There has been talk of snow next week, but as far as November is concerned, I can’t complain.

Dec. 1: It snowed today. Nothing serious. It didn’t stick, at least not in Ames. Tammy and I drove in to Des Moines this evening, and we did see some lingering snow on the patches of grass in the shopping centers and on some of the cars driving around. Must have snowed a bit more there. Significant precip (rain or snow, or both) is forecast for Saturday.

Dec. 3: It rained all day, finally turning to snow about 10 p.m. But the snow came at the tail end of the storm, so Ames got, at most, half an inch. Northern Iowa got a lot more. I hardly needed to shovel anything, but I did anyway because it was easy.

Dec. 5: Bitterly cold today. High in low 20s, but wind making it feel like mid-teens.

Dec. 6: Even colder today. It is 9:22 p.m., and the temperature is 9 degrees Fahrenheit.

Dec. 8: Snow this evening. We saw little rabbit footprints in the snow covering the back porch.

Dec. 9: Shoveled driveway and sidewalk this morning. About half an inch, so pretty easy work. Sara drove to and from school today without incident. Although it didn’t get above freezing today, the sun managed to melt a lot of the snow. Very cold this evening at 12 degrees. Supposed to get down to 3 or 4 overnight but warm up considerably in the next two days.  A high of 40 is considered to be quite warm.

Dec. 11: It warmed up, as expected, and most of the snow melted today. I leave for Las Vegas tomorrow evening, so I won’t be here for a few days. We’re supposed to get some precipitation while I’m gone, but the good news for Tammy is it likely will be rain, not snow, so no shoveling will be required.

Dec. 18: Fifty degrees, sunny and no wind today. Beautiful day. We sure have been lucky. December has been a little colder overall than our mild November, but the snow has been minimal so far. We leave this evening for a week in Las Vegas, and the forecast for Ames is mostly clear and not too cold while we’re gone. There’s a chance of rain/snow in a few days, but it doesn’t look like much, especially if it’s all rain. It’ll be just a little warmer in Las Vegas!

Dec. 25: No white Christmas in Iowa this year. It’s been unseasonably warm, and the big holiday was no exception.

Jan. 1: Very windy overnight. We were supposed to get a quick shot of snow but it never materialized in Ames. Just big wind gusts that kept on through the day. Cold today but it was the wind that made it uncomfortable. The warmer, drier fall and winter are being attributed to the La Nina weather pattern in the Pacific Ocean. The Des Moines Register reported yesterday: “Almost no snow has fallen. The ground is bare, and winter seems an abstract concept. Ice melting tools crowd the shelves of Porter Hardware in Des Moines. The store’s snow blower inventory is full, and shovels are plentiful.” And guess what: Dry conditions are forecast throughout this week, with temperatures warming back to 50 or so by Thursday. Some winter!

Jan. 5: It was warm and sunny today. Wait, that’s hardly a worthy description of this deep-winter day in Iowa. It was 63 degrees in Ames, and 65 in  Des Moines! High-temp records were set all over the state. People didn’t wear jackets in the afternoon. They golfed. Kids played outside. Longtime Iowans marveled at the highly unusual weather pattern. Some cynics figure this means that when winter finally comes, it will extend into April or May. Certainly hope not.

Jan. 16: Winter finally arrived last week. We got several quite cold days and two moderate snowfalls. However, a warm day (in the 40s) over the weekend melted all the snow. Today was pretty decent but it’s supposed to get cold again tomorrow and maybe snow. Still an unusually warm, dry winter overall.

Jan. 19: It is 7 a.m., and the temperature is minus-1. The wind chill is minus-17. This is the point where the TV weathermen warn people about the grim prospect of frostbite if their skin is exposed to the elements for more than five minutes. Significant snowfall is expected here tomorrow. If so, it would be the first time we’ve gotten more than an inch or so this season.

Bitterly cold in the early morning.

Jan. 22: It was a fairly warm day today, with a high of about 35. But it wasn’t sunny at all. So some of the snow melted but not a lot. Today’s relatively balmy conditions followed several days of bitterly cold temps. We got up early one Saturday morning and it was minus-6. With the wind chill, it felt like minus-20. I think the high that day was about 8 or 10. So it’s late in the evening right now and it’s raining. The rain is likely to convert to snow sometime in the night. Recipe for slippery conditions in the morning, I expect.

Jan. 23: Yep, we got a pretty good dose of snow overnight. Major shoveling in the morning. Quite a workout. Some neighbors used their snow blowers. The roads were a little slippery in the morning. At a four-way stop near the high school, Sara’s car was bumped from behind. No damage or injuries. It turned out it was Sara’s friend who slid into her car. Then, the snowplow nicked our garbage can and knocked it over, spilling garbage. I had to go pick it up.

Feb. 2: We have been having phenomenal weather. Record-setting warm temperatures. The high a couple of days this week was around 60. Almost no precipitation and little wind. It has been such a mild winter here and across the Midwest that it’s big news. According to USA Today, “the jet stream has cut off the cold air for much of the winter, shoving it north of the USA.” Despite the unusual warmth, an elderly couple near Des Moines went ice fishing. They drowned. We’re supposed to get some rain and snow this weekend, but already the forecasters are pulling back on their predictions about the storm’s severity.

Feb. 13: Awakened to a pretty healthy snowfall. Continued to snow during much of the day. Probably about 2 1/2 inches total.

Feb. 14: Warmed up nicely, and most of the snow melted today.

Feb. 19: Very nice today, sunny with the high in the low 40s. Can’t complain.

March 7: We got more than three inches of snow a few days ago, probably the most we’ve had in one day this winter. But then, the past couple of days, we’ve had wonderfully warm spring weather that melted the snow. It was about 70 yesterday and 65 today. It’ll be maybe 50 tomorrow but then warm up again, hitting the 60s by Monday. So this Iowa winter, which we dreaded, has been remarkably mild, and it’s almost over.

March 25: Let’s put a bow on this endless blog post. It’s been warm and nice, if a little breezy, since that snowfall almost three weeks ago. Highs in the 70s. Some rain, but no thunderstorms yet. The grass is green. The trees have buds on them. Birds everywhere. On March 20th, the Des Moines Register had a headline declaring, “One More Freeze Remains a Possibility,” with the state’s climatologist saying it would happen by the second week of April. A hard freeze is defined as 28 degrees or lower. I would bet against it. The Register article also offered some interesting statistics about this winter past. It’s been the warmest winter in a decade, and the ninth warmest winter in 139 years of Iowa climate records. Snowfall was well below normal. We set records for warm days in March.

Long story short, we survived our first Midwest winter. We’re very grateful it was a mild one. No car accidents. No painful falls. It could have been a whole different story if it had been a lot colder and snowier.

The next installment will be a little different. I intend to document the experience of winter day by day. All of this material will be contained in one blog post, so I will update it as often as I can.

It is not winter yet, thank goodness, but fall is in the air. The leaves are turning and falling to the ground. The mornings are cool. However, we still are seeing some warm days. It’s expected to hit 80 again early next week.

The Des Moines Register had a front-page story the other day looking at the long-range forecasts, trying to determine what kind of winter we will have. Long-range weather forecasts are notoriously difficult but there are legitimate climatological signs that can be read. This is what we know:

- Iowa has had five straight winters with more snow than usual. Iowa received 40.8 inches of snow last winter, and 49.2 inches the year before.

- Iowa has had four straight winters with below-normal temperatures. The average temperature last winter was 18.7 degrees. It was 16.6 the year before.

The forecasts are for these trends to continue. That’s not great news for this thin-blooded family.

Maybe we’ll get lucky and have a winter like Iowa enjoyed in 2005-6, when the average temperature was a balmy 25.4 degrees and there was only 26.3 inches of snow.

Of course, the winter experience can differ depending on where you are in Iowa. The state’s northern half tends to see a little more severe winter than the southern half. But not always. It depends on where the jet stream is flowing. Ames is right in the middle of the state, so it could go either way.

I will post the first part of #9 as soon as signs of winter emerge.

Tammy puts the final touches on the Las Vegas house in preparation for our new tenants.

Lots to catch up on. After the Allied moving truck packed up our house, Tammy and I departed Las Vegas in late July. We drove Sara’s Ford Focus 1,500 miles to Ames. We took our time, especially at first, but it was a fairly smooth and uneventful trip. We slept over in Beaver, Utah, Glenwood Springs, Colorado, and Kearney, Nebraska. The mountains of Colorado were beautiful. We made good time through the flatlands of Nebraska. Tammy was dismayed that not a single place we stopped had disposable toilet seat covers.

The moving truck leaves Las Vegas.

We had just one cat with us, Brett, and he was quiet as a mouse most of the trip. Unfortunately, our other cat, Reggie, Brett’s brother, was put to sleep just two days before we left. Long story short, he suddenly couldn’t walk. We took him to the vet and after several tests,  it was clear that at his age, there was no certainty any treatment would be effective. Nerve damage in his spine. He was put to sleep after more than 13 years of good living. He could be feisty with visitors but Reggie brought our family a great deal of enjoyment and companionship.

Brett relaxes in the back seat during drive to Iowa.

We arrived in Ames several days before we could take possession of the house. We got the keys on the morning of July 31st. The moving truck arrived that same morning and unloaded our stuff. It went quickly and they did a good job. Sara, our younger daughter, flew in to Des Moines a few days later.

Ron Paul works the media at Ames Straw Poll.

I attended the Ames Straw Poll as a reporter. I was there for about three hours, and tweeted my observations for our paper, the Ames Tribune, and later filed a short story. It was sort of a county fair for the politically minded, with all sorts of things going on in addition to voting for your favorite Republican candidate. About midday, the social media record will show, I predicted Michele Bachmann would win, and she did. Her tent had the longest lines. But Herman Cain had the most popular food: Godfather’s Pizza.

Tammy starts in on a deep-fried Snickers.

The next day, Tammy, Sara and I attended the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines. It was good weather and we had a lot of fun. We got the full flavor of the event, including seeing the biggest bull, biggest pig and biggest sheep. We also saw some really big and really small horses, and all kinds of frilly chickens. The standard fair fare. We didn’t go into the snake tent. We ate lots of stuff on sticks, including a deep-fried Snickers. We took a gander at the fair’s most famous attraction, the butter cow, and bought a butter cow Christmas ornament to honor the occasion.

Geoff tackles some fresh sweet corn at the Iowa State Fair.

Homework already? Sara digs in to her homework after two days of school.

Sara started school yesterday at Ames High. She drives about half a mile to school. She’s a junior. She really likes some of her teachers.

Tammy started a new job. She is an administrative assistant in an American Family Insurance office. She enjoys her four-minute commute, and her office is just two blocks from the newspaper office.

Tonight, Tammy and I attended Ames High’s first football game. It was packed with fans. All the parking spaces were filled, and most of the bleachers on the Ames High side were full. The Little Cyclones led 24-0 midway through the second quarter. They seem to have a pretty good team, though it’s also true that the team they played, Des Moines North, was not good at all. Ames will have tougher challenges ahead.

An extremely large bull at the Iowa State Fair.

An extremely large sheep at the Iowa State Fair.

Our older daughter, Erin, will be coming home from her summer in Europe early next week. She lands in Las Vegas and then almost immediately turns around and flies here to visit us for a couple of days. We’re looking forward to seeing her and hearing about her European adventures. Then she returns to Las Vegas, and she and her husband, David, will drive to Reno to resume their lives as college students there.

Big crowd for Ames High's first football game of the season.