Free Speech Wins in Des Moines!
Aug 08, 2009
Categories: des moines, religion
Now that everyone has gotten all pissed off about my last post, my bitching has once again been vindicated by a reversal of the bad idea at hand (see also: the Tropicana redesign and subsequent reversal after my complaint). The Des Moines Register reported today that DART will replace the Iowa Atheists & Freethinkers’ ad campaign on their buses as a result of meeting with the group earlier this week, getting a lot of complaints from people like me and being pestered by the The American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa about the legality of removing the signs.
So Iowa is still a pretty cool place i guess, except for our governor Culver, who unfortunately sided with the people who were “disturbed” by the ads. That’s probably the most disappointing part of this whole controversy.
[Welcome] Home
Aug 06, 2009
Categories: des moines, religion
I’ll write later about the vacation i just took, but i’d like to first talk about what i have perceived to be a very cold “welcome back to Iowa.” I was feeling quite proud of my state when gay marriage became legalized a few months back, but today i feel pretty ashamed of this place. How backward are we that we have to silence a certain group’s point of view even when it doesn’t threaten another’s?
The Des Moines Register reported yesterday that some signs which had been commissioned by the Iowa Atheists & Freethinkers to appear on local DART buses were taken down on Tuesday after being up for only three days because so many people were calling DART to complain about them. The signs simply read, “Don’t believe in God? You are not alone.”
I want someone to tell me how that message is offensive in any way. It’s as if believers are tortured by the mere notion that non-believers exist and might have the HUMAN emotion of loneliness, or the desire to identify with other people who feel the same way. Do you just want to think of us as inhuman or deny our existence altogether? Because that’s the only explanation i can fathom for someone wanting these signs to be taken down.
I see the “-God” billboards all the time. I see the “Babies are a gift from God!” signs all over the place. There are church marquees and hand-made “Jesus Loves You!” signs by the Iowa roadsides and bible verses on my shopping bags and cross necklaces on everyone and “In God We Trust” on my money, but i don’t have the audacity to demand that it all be removed from my sight. It’s obvious that i’m a member of a minority, and i think it’s sad that atheists can’t even reach out to one another and talk amongst ourselves because believers see that sort of public communication as an attempt to convert EVERYONE to our way of thinking. As if believers weren’t trying to do just that!
Look, i would love to be able to express the way i see things clearly enough to open someone’s eyes to it, but that is something i don’t really attempt because i feel it’s beyond my reach. Atheists aren’t trying to convert people, we are merely standing up to be counted, mainly to feel a little less alienated and alone. We just want to know that other people like us exist and let them know that they are accepted, if only by the others like us. Some groups in other states have attempted to also let the general public know that “atheist” does not necessarily mean “immoral person” (see photo above), and their efforts have been met with an identical outpouring of fear and blindness. It’s not an anti-Christian or anti-God or anti-anything message. It’s just a statement! “You don’t have to believe in God to be a good person” – how is that threatening?? Most people don’t even believe it, so why can’t they just laugh it off and go about their charmed, eternal lives?
80/35 Festival
Jul 08, 2009
Categories: des moines, music
My 4th of July weekend was a lot of fun. Nathan and i walked down to Des Moines’s second-annual 80/35 music festival, so named for the intersection of those two major interstates in the city. There were three stages, two of them free to the public and the main stage requiring tickets, lots of food vendors, street performers, and a fireworks display at the end on Saturday night.
Here are some photos of my favorite performances:
Tilly & The Wall, photo by Matt Sorensen for Rock Iowa
Girl In A Coma, photo by Laura Lou09
The Envy Corps, photo by britrockatthetop
In all, we saw:
Tilly And The Wall
Modern Skirts
Maps And Atlases
Girl In A Coma
Man Man (Nathan loved this one 
)
Wild Sweet Orange (disappointing)
Margo and the Nuclear So-And-Sos
Broken Social Scene (I was most looking forward to this one – pretty sweet)
The Envy Corps
Ben Harper (from afar)
Girl In A Coma took me by surprise. They’ve got a punk-y*/’90s alternative sound that i loved, and a lead vocalist with such a great voice.
To say nothing of the rain, the festival was full of people so colorful that for a moment i felt like i was back in Eugene, Oregon. There was a booth selling tie-dye, an all-vegetarian food vendor from whom i bought the most delightful coffee frappe, and a bunch of girls walking around wearing nothing but denim shorts and paint. These “painted ladies” were meant, as the artist herself said, to be “living decorations”, which i found to be terribly demeaning, but i guess it takes all kinds.
It rained lightly all day Friday and continued to be overcast on Independence Day, but by the end of The Envy Corps’s set all the dreariness had been chased away. That band never disappoints me. The crowd really got into it at this show, which can be partly attributed to the fact that by 8pm when they played, most patrons were half-saturated with Old Main beer. They put a few bars of “I Want You Back” into “Story Time” in honor, of course, of Michael Jackson, and that made me pretty happy. The fireworks display after Ben Harper was decent, and a vast improvement over the blunder last year which caused me to miss all fireworks displays altogether on the 4th.
*BTW – by “punk” i mean the original genre which arose underground in the eighties and all that sort of thing, not the whiny bands who flaunt too much eyeliner and feign a damn-the-man attitude while selling records on major RIAA-controlled labels which some people for whatever reason use the term to refer to. 
The moment you’ve all been waiting for!
Mar 16, 2009
Categories: apartments, des moines
Without further ado, i give you an abbreviated tour of the new loft. To see more photos, click on any one of them and you’ll be taken to my flickr photo stream. Enjoy!
This is what you see when you first step inside. Immediately to your right is the guest bathroom:
Nathan laid claim to this bathroom immediately, dubbing it the Man Space. Since it’s also the guest bathroom, i’m actually the only person who’s not allowed to use it. 
Down the hall a bit and on the right we have the washer & dryer:
This is one of my favorite things about living here. No quarters, no waiting for neighbors to move their shit, no embarrassment when i accidentally leave underwear in one of the machines. Our own washer & dryer – hallelujah!
Keep going down the small hallway opposite the w&d, and you’ll see the walk-in closet, the bedroom and the wash room & second bathroom.
The closet is nice and big, but a trifle messy.
Here you can see how the rooms flow together – and my Oregon rainbow.
The sink here has its own separate room, which i call the wash room
Exiting the bedroom area and continuing down the main hallway, we come upon the common area:
Which consists of the dining area, the kitchen, a small built-in granite desk just to the right of the view in the above photo, and these two sitting areas:
Then we head outside to the terrace:
We need some outdoor furniture. And maybe a few more plants.
We spent a lot of time cleaning the place up yesterday, and now just have a few things to hang on the walls before we will have completely put it together. I feel so much more at ease now – more so than i have in a good month or two, i’d say. Despite how lovely it is, though, the best thing about this place by far is that i’m here with the love of my life and get to share the space and my time with him.
No Place Like It
Dec 16, 2008
Categories: apartment hunting, apartments, des moines
My current lease is up in March. Here’s a photo of what may very well be my next home:
This is a photo of one of the 111 City Lofts in downtown Des Moines. I went and looked at them last weekend and definitely fell in love…
About Me
I'm Steph Adamo, a professional web designer and experienced photographer. This is where i blog about life in general. Thanks for visiting, and please take a look at my portfolio before you go.
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