The End of an Ice Age

Not to point out the obvious, but the big thaw has arrived.  Now get ready for the mud!

If you haven’t seen it yet, head over to the alley directly south of the court house and check out the massive ice dams in the process of calving off the top and sides of the two buildings on either side of the alley. Make sure you say behind the barricades!

Your Best of Fairfield Winners Receive Their Awards

Individuals who won our readers poll received their mugs last week. Each mug has enough capacity to keep these winners caffeinated (or hydrated) for a full day of continued greatness. Their name and award titles are printed on the mug for all to see at those water cooler gatherings. Pictured below is your biggest winner (with over 2,000 votes), Mayor Ed Malloy, receiving his mug from Mark Cohen at Revelations (your Best Restaurant Winner).

We’re still in the process of getting out our window stickers to the venues that won the readers poll. Congratulations to your Best of Fairfield Winners!

Francis Thicke Opens Campaign Office

Dan Walker offered to let Francis Thicke, candidate for Iowa Secretary of Agriculture use his front office space as his campaign headquarters. It’s an excellent site: in the Walker Group office on the square and with a lot of front window space. Francis explains that he’s, “trying to not clutter the front window too much right now because they are going to be starting some plants in that window space.”

Along with the new office space Francis has a new campaign manager. Rob Hubler, a 40-year veteran of managing political campaigns, started with the campaign about two weeks ago. Rob Hubler was the 2008 candidate for U.S. Congress in Iowa’s fifth district. This week the campaign team is growing with the addition of Keith Dinsmore, a veteran campaign media specialist. Keith has connections with press across Iowa and will be organizing Francis Thicke’s state-wide media work.

“In the next few weeks I will be traveling to a number of Democratic Party county conventions to speak to audiences about my campaign platform. I also have upcoming appearances at Grinnell College and Iowa State University. I do have one out-of-state event planned for next month, to speak at a national organic farming policy conference in Washington, D.C.”

“We have a local event planned for Fairfield on Saturday, March 27: Blues musician Bill Lupkin will be performing at Morning Star Studio as a fundraiser for our campaign.”

MUM students & staff enjoy all-organic, vegetarian, fresh-cooked meals everyday

If you want a healthy fresh-cooked meal, a college cafeteria isn’t the first place that comes to mind.

Anyone who’s subsisted on college cuisine for extended periods of time probably doesn’t consider those days a culinary high point. Heck, coupled with late-night pizza runs, a standard university diet is partly to blame for the infamous “freshman fifteen” (i.e. those extra 15 pounds that seemingly appear out of nowhere during your first year on campus).

Yet at MUM, students and staff enjoy all-organic, vegetarian, fresh-cooked meals daily. While many campuses are starting to offer healthier menu options, MUM is the first U.S. college to serve exclusively organic, vegetarian food in its dining hall (officially, Annapurna Dining Commons). It’s part of the university’s commitment to inner and outer sustainability (for the record, many students aren’t vegetarian).

Local ingredients are used whenever possible, including produce grown right on campus at MUM’s greenhouses and nearby organic farms. It’s not uncommon for food to be picked and served the same day. Milk, yogurt, and ice cream come from Radiance Dairy right here in Fairfield. Everything is made from scratch, and the kitchens participate in a composting program. Meals are also prepared according to Ayurvedic principles, an ancient science of health and natural medicine. Thanks to these efforts, the MUM dining hall was a finalist in the “Best Local Food” category of Iowa Source magazine’s annual restaurant contest.

As student enrollment has increased—MUM now serves over 1,600 meals per day—the university brought in Aladdin Food Management Services to handle operations. Aladdin has been so inspired by MUM’s program that the company decided to make organic food service its niche, leveraging its experience with MUM to extend organic offerings at other accounts. Food Management magazine wrote a good article about the collaboration.

“I’m happy this worked out, and frankly, MUM was the catalyst to make it happen,” said Jim McKee, Aladdin’s regional VP of operations. “MUM’s 100% organic program is 10 years ahead of where the rest of the world needs to be. It is the right thing to do, and I’m glad to be a part of it.”

Anyone is welcome to eat at the dining hall, and you’ll find people of all ages—not just students. It’s located upstairs in the new Argiro Student Center (the big building on 4th street that looks like a cruise ship). The walk-in price is $8 flat, though it’s less if you buy a multi-meal punch card. Lunch is served everyday from 11:45-1:30, and dinner from 6:30-8:00. There’s a pretty big line at lunch by about 12:15, so I recommend getting there at noon or after 12:30 (though you’re almost certain to be standing next to a nice, interesting person in the queue). You can also check the menu online before you come. Happy dining!

Did you see us on last night’s episode of the Iowa Journal on PBS? If you didn’t have a chance to see it, you can go here to watch the full episode. Before I go any further, I just want to thank Paul Yeager for his time, and for helping shed light on our story.

Yesterday was a fairly big day for us. Along with our episode of Iowa Journal airing, Shawn also got back his Student Aid Report from FAFSA, and we found out he is getting a pretty sizable Pell Grant! AND?? He’s getting a scholarship! We’re not exactly sure of the details, but between WIA, the scholarship, and the Pell Grant, not only will school not cost us a penny, but we should have enough money left over to help cover some of our living expenses!!

Plus?? I did our taxes, and we should get back a pretty decent refund…twice. It turns out, in order to claim a child as your dependent, the IRS insists you have a social security number for them! And, sense we had Ella at home rather than at a hospital, we are responsible for filling out all that paperwork…and well, we haven’t done that yet! We’re so behind, we still haven’t sent in her birth certificate paperwork! So, we’re going to file taxes twice; once now, and then we’ll file an amendment once we have her social security number in. Which means TWO refunds! Thank you Uncle Sam!

It’s strange, but it feels like we’re more financially stable since Shawn lost his job, than we were before. I think it’s because we’re on SUCH a tight budget that there is just no money to waste on things we don’t need. It’s made us painfully aware of how much money we COULD have saved when we had a steady paycheck coming in. Now, we’re in a situation where the moment a paycheck comes in, it gets divided up between the bills that we have due. I’ve made a weekly budget and we have stuck to it religiously. Bills are getting paid in a more timely manner now than they were when we had a job.

I’m feeling really hopeful about where the next year-and-a-half is going to take us. Shawn is going to get another degree, and from the looks of things, he’s going to come out of college without a single student loan. Our tax return should be enough to pay off our car, which would mean we’d break even every month, rather than being in the red by a few hundred dollars. That would be fantastic! Clearly, our definition of success has had to evolve. Over the next year-and-a-half, if we can pay our bills and put food on the table, and get Shawn through school, I will feel like we have been successful. And so far, I think we’re on the right track.

[Tech Tips is a new column I am introducing on Fairfield Voice. Please let me know if there are any specific tech topics you'd like to see covered.]

The problem: dozens of websites manage calendars listing Fairfield Iowa related events. There is a lot of duplication of efforts between these calendars, and an event organizer that needs to get an event published/updated needs to work with all this duplication of efforts in order to promote the event to the widest audience.

The solution: Google Calendar, a free service (requires a free gmail account) allows multiple websites to share a single calendar of events.

Let me give an example. Glen Keenan, owner of Chickadee, a local consignment store for women and kids, publishes a calendar of family activities using Google Calendar. He manages the calendar from his Google account by adding the time, location and description of family friendly activities in the Fairfield area. Nothing new here – he’s doing what dozens of other businesses and organizations in town are doing – creating and publishing events to a calendar.

However the difference here is that the calendar Glen created:

• Can be easily shared on any website.
• Users can add this calendar to their own calendars (Google, Outlook, iCal).
• Glenn can give permissions to other users to help manage (publish/edit) events on his calendar.
• Users can add reminders, so that they are emailed or text messaged as the event nears.
• Events can be assigned to a location in Google Maps – directions anyone?
• Attach files/documents to events.

Glen published his calendar to his store’s website, by simply copying a bit of html code, and pasting it into a page on Chickadee’s website. Visitors to his site can go to that calendar, browse family oriented events, add reminders for specific events they like, and/or click a button to add the entire calendar to their own online Calender. So for those using Gmail, they would have their Google Calendar updated in real time with all the events listed in Glen’s Family Activities Calendar.

Additionally, other website admins, like myself, can copy the same bit of html, and paste it into our websites, like I did here on FairfieldVoice. Each time Glen updates the Family Event Calendar in his Google account (publishing new, or editing existing events), the calendars on FairfieldVoice, Chickadee, and my personal Google Calendar (I am subscribing to the Family Activities Calendar) are all simultaneously updated with those new events. Publish once – update everywhere!

Imagine if the Fairfield Arts and Convention Center published their events in a Google Calendar. The Fairfield Voice, The Fairfield Ledger, The Iowa Source, and of course the FACC’s website, could all display a current version of the same event listing for the FACC. The creator of the FACC events calendar could promote others, like people who run organizations that run events at the FACC, to manage their events on the FACC calendar, and therefore spreading the workload of managing calendar updates. That calendar could then be easily added to any website interested in providing real time event listings for the Fairfield Arts and Convention Center.

In edition to a full event description, each event could include links to ticketing, files and documents, contact number and emails, show times, and directions (for those driving from out of town) powered by Google Maps.

What I would love to see is a ring of Fairfield calendars powered by Google and shared across websites and subscribed to by residents. Anyone can start a Google Calendar, just pick a theme – Chamber of Commerce, City Council, Music, FACC, Public Schools, Yoga, Sports, Workshops – and invite other people to help manage and promote, publish your events and ask to have the Calendar “hosted” on Fairfield Voice and other sites.

Got questions to help get you started? I’m happy to help, just post your question below.

In the summer of 1974, Fairfield was forever changed. A long line of yellow buses pulled into town from California, carrying scores of college students. Maharishi International University—now Maharishi University of Management (MUM)—had outgrown its Santa Barbara facility, purchased the former campus of Parson’s college, and relocated here to Iowa.

MUM has never been a conventional university, but in a 1970s small-town Midwest setting its differences were even more pronounced. Back then, a college where all students & faculty did Transcendental Meditation (TM) seemed downright radical.

Today, meditation and yoga have gone mainstream, and MUM has broad appeal among progressive-minded students of all ages from around the world. Enrollment has steadily climbed for the last 4 years, and new programs like Sustainable Living are flourishing. MUM has moved beyond its reputation as simply “Meditation U” and yet… people in Fairfield hear very little about what’s actually happening on campus, whether they meditate or not.

Hence, this new column called “On Campus.” As a graduate of MUM, I’m obviously biased—I had a great college experience, made friends from different countries, and believe in the value of the unique knowledge available here. But don’t worry, this isn’t a sales pitch or public relations ploy. As a lifelong Fairfield resident, my desire is simply to share the cool stuff going on at MUM with our community. Things have changed so much in recent years—even since I graduated in 2003—that it’s tough to keep up if you’re not around campus day-to-day.

Feel free to comment or ask questions on things you’d like to hear about. I’ll do my best to answer in a straightforward way, without hype or spin. Coming up in my next installment: MUM’s commitment to organic, vegetarian dining—a college cafeteria that non-students choose to eat at!

[Note: this article was originally posted in July 2009.  It is now updated with the complete recipe - include at the end of the article - for making the Artisan Free-Form Loaf.]

My bread habits have come a long way in the past forty years. I started with Wonder Bread. In the 80s I moved on to a Whole Wheat bread which was basically the brown version of Wonder Bread from a nutritional standpoint. In the 90s I discovered real Whole Wheat breads (thanks to local co-op grocery stores) and explored the tastes of fresh baked artisan breads. And now, thanks to my wife, my family is learning that sliced bread isn’t the greatest invention after all. Instead, our family is now baking all of our bread ourselves, and what may surprise most people is that it’s relatively easy to bake enough healthy, great tasting bread to feed your family.

Over the past several months we’ve been buying fewer and fewer loaves of sliced bread, and baking more and more bread at home. Two weeks ago we decided to stop buying bread at all, and switch entirely to baking our own bread. So far it’s going well and I don’t miss store bought sliced loaves. Our routine is to prepare a high moisture no knead dough once a week, store that dough in the fridge, and use portions of it to bake bread (or pizzas) as needed throughout the week.

Baking all of your own bread may sound like a lot of work, and while it is more work than putting a loaf of bread in your cart at the grocery store, it isn’t as labor intensive as you might imagine (as I thought until recently).  Of course we were helped greatly by a book that was featured on The Splendid Table titled Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day.  The book provides detailed instructions and techniques on how to bake an Artisan Free-Form Loaf.  It’s what they call their “master recipe”, which once mastered contains all the skills required to bake the dozens of other recipes in the book.

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Fairfield is filled with interesting people, many of whom you may recognize but can never put your finger on exactly who they are.

One of those people may be Buddy Biancalana, this week’s Fairfield Story.

Buddy grew up in California where he was a baseball prodigy.  He attended High School in Larkspur and was drafted by the Royals in the first round (25th overall pick) of the 1978 June Regular Phase draft. Biancalana made his Major League Baseball debut on September 12, 1982, and played his final game on October 4, 1987.

After playing for a few years in the minors, Buddy got the call to “the show”, as a member of the Royals team that won the World Series in 1985, where he was an adept fielder but didn’t hit well for average. Yet he managed to win himself an everyday job.  Despite having started only 35 games all season, manager Dick Howser benched regular Onix Concepcion in favor of Biancalana on September 20.  Biancalana started 13 of the next 15 games as the Royals won the American League West division by one game over the California Angels.

Unbeknown to Buddy, or his team, something about that experience enabled Buddy to get into the “zone” – that fabled place that professional athletes talk about where time slows down and they can do no wrong.  He was the starting shortstop for the Royals in all 14 post-season games, playing error-free defense in every game, and was an integral part in several run-scoring innings for the Royals in the World Series. He batted .278 in the series with an on base percentage of .435, both well above his career numbers.

Buddy and his family moved to Fairfield three years ago, attracted by what he had heard about the many opportunities we offer for personal growth – including TM. He had also become familiar with the discovery of Steve Yellin, to quantify the processes in the mind that enable athletes to find and consistently be in the “zone.”  Buddy and Steve formed Perfect Mind-Perfect Motion shortly after his arrival.

What they now teach to athletes in Major League Baseball, the PGA, tennis, and the NBA, is how to consistently find the zone – where time slows down, the intellect shuts down, and the motion becomes more fluid and effortless. Through a three step program, they’ve helped numerous athletes affect the processes in their minds and have built the business strictly by word of mouth.

One such success story is pro golfer Lee Janzen. After winning two US Opens, Lee lost his stride and languished near the middle of the pack. After working with Buddy, Lee came bounding back – making $800,000 last year and is showing signs of his old self. Another recent story involves major league baseball’s Bobby Keppel, the 2001 1^st round pick by the NY Mets who had a 5.50 ERA in AAA. After working with Buddy,  he lowered his ERA to 2.43 pitching 14 scoreless innings in his big league debut, and helping the Minnesota Twins win game 163  – a tie-breaker – that got then into the playoffs in 2009

Very few athletes are naturals like Michael Jordan, or can perform at high levels with the consistency of a Brett Favre. What comes naturally to some is the biggest challenge for most athletes who don’t know how to get back mind body coordination when it breaks down and this, according to Buddy, is the secret to consistency. Through a series of drills and concepts, Buddy asserts that athletes who use this proprietary methodology will avoid slumps. The Perfect Mind-Perfect Motion method is not a philosophy, rather, it implies that Steve and Buddy have uncovered how the mind-body connection works and they can teach it to athletes in any sport.

Buddy, his wife and his boys Alex and Gavin love all that Fairfield has to offer, most notably going to Revelations for Pizza and bike rides on the Jefferson County trails.  He feels that Fairfield is a very powerful place for those who take advantage of its resources. He encourages all of our local athletes to learn more about the benefits of meditation as it is his belief that it strengthens mind-body coordination and any time you can quiet your mind you will be more successful at anything you do.

Forever grateful for “Fairfield’s existence” as Buddy put it, and the way the community has embraced he and his family, he is available to help the community in any way he can. In fact, welcomes the opportunity to help kids in town interested in becoming better at Baseball.

A little known fact about Buddy is what happened during the countdown to Pete Rose breaking Ty Cob hits record in 1985. David Letterman instituted a Buddy Biancalana countdown calendar. Biancalana later appeared as a guest on Late Night with David Letterman, quipping “I’m closer to Cobb than you are to Carson” ( Buddy finished his big-league career with 113 base hits, over four thousand short of Cobb or Rose.)

My friends know the story: when my wife proposed that we move back to South East Iowa to live near her family, I could not conceive of making the move unless we found a town that had access to good quality, healthy, natural foods. When we identified that the small town of Fairfield Iowa was home to an established natural foods store, Everybody’s Whole Foods Store, we began packing.

During one of my first shopping experiences in Everybody’s I could not find pepperoni (for pizza) or grass fed ground beef. I asked an employee something close to “where’s the beef?” I can recall his reaction of shock, as if I had just walked up to him and spoken in tongues, “beazula mira mira azzzzkanam feed mew deeevil BEEEEEEF!”

Grass-fed roasted tenderloin with crab meat, by MJ Rehm

As with most of the common knowledge in this town, I was slow to understand that Everybody’s isn’t your average Natural Foods store, because after all, this is Fairfield, which isn’t your average town. While Everybody’s does attract non-meditator customers like myself, the store exists because it has primarily served the meditator community since opening it’s doors 1995. And the meditator community is largely vegetarian, and for reasons I have never been able to figure out, those that do eat some meats, are OK with chicken, turkey and fish.

When asked why Everybody’s doesn’t carry natural beef products, Manager Adam Pohlman explains, “The number one answer is the demand for beef and pork is greatly lacking especially for frozen. We have considered carrying a few items but found there to be push back by a number of customers when we conducted surveys. The combination of not having a lot of demand and the fact that those who did not want, really did not want it and were adamant in there comments on the idea.”

But there is hope for other Fairfield residents who enjoy the taste, and the ethics, of naturally raised, grass-fed beef – Yoder’s Natural Farm. Located in nearby Bloomfield, Iowa, Yoder’s Natural Farm offers grass-fed beef, pastured broilers and eggs, and pork. You can get an order form from them (call 641-664-2060) and have your meats/eggs delivered to the Farmer’s Market right here in town.

Raised on the family farm in Southern Iowa, Robert Yoder started Yoder’s Natural Farm in 2006. “It is my goal to maintain a farm that provides a superior natural product for my customers while still caring for the land, animals, and the environment in a positive and natural way.” I’ve ordered steaks, hamburgers and bacon from Yoder’s several times and their meats are delicious and affordable.

Why should meat eaters choose grass-fed beef? Read this article at FoodRevolution.org by John Robbins. In short, it tastes better, is healthier for you, and healthier for the environment.

Would you like to see more access to grass-fed meats at Everybody’s and Hy-Vee? Let us know along with any other thoughts (both omnivores and vegetarians welcome).

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