I don’t know how many of you remember the great flood of ‘93. My guess? Not many. It sticks out strongly in my mind, though, despite being 11 years old at the time.

I grew up in Iowa City, which is cut down the middle by the Iowa River. Most of the time, things work out ok. The river behaves, and you can boat on it. Everyone wins. Occasionally, though, it can out of hand.

This year we’re flooding again. My parents, luckily, live on high land, and are not affected by this, however, large portions of the performing arts center, the city park, and several main streets are. My Dad, who tends to know something about the performing arts scene in Iowa City, took these photos yesterday:

I’ve heard that the flooding this year may be worse than ‘93. Hopefully this will not be the case.

And to think, last year was a drought.

If you’ve noticed the relative lack of posts these days, it’s because we’ve been making some big changes at AWP, which will be unveiled for the Tompkins County Showcase, on Wednesday, June 11th.

The general public is welcome, nay, encouraged to come and see our booth.  We’ll be sporting some pretty cool stuff.  You’ll be able to spot us by our (new!) T-shirts.  

Also, I wanted to publicly welcome our hard-working summer intern, Anna, to the AWP crew.  She just started on Monday, but she’s already doing some great work for us.  Stay tuned to the blog and you’ll be seeing her posts before too long.

One last thing. If you’ve seen our YouTube clips of the office band, and have wondered to yourself: “Where is Casey’s musical talent?”  Well, it went mostly into my brother, Derek (on drums):

Pretty flippin’ sweet.

Anyway, keep an eye on http://www.ancientwisdompro.com/ over the next few days. It’s an exciting time.
 

My love affair with JQuery continues with my new article about using JQuery for easy Ajax pagination at the CakePHP Bakery.  Go ahead and check it out, it’s pretty slick.

People may call us a crunchy, liberal folk, but my heart leapt with pride to be an Ithacan at the annual Earth Day celebration at the Ithaca Farmers’ Market this Sunday.  It’s not what you might expect.  Sure, there’s the bellydancing vegans, the solar powered folk band performance, and the ubiquitous drum circle (all admittedly a bit granola), but you’ll also find some of coolest people you’ll have a chance to meet doing some pretty awesome things!  Like Marlo of Garden Gate Delivery who was doing a blind milk taste test (Evan’s non-homogenized milk vs. Wegman’s organic milk) Benj and Julie of Dovetail Builders who were showing off all of the beautiful, sustainable carpentry work they do, or Jennifer Dotson, the brain behind Ithaca CarShare, who was taking her very first enrollments!  Not to mention all the cool stuff I learned about the composting with worms, humanure, the Locavore project, compact fluorescents, etc.  And to top it all off, I had the pleasure of witnessing the 4-H rubber ducky race down Fall Creek on my way down to the event.  Nothing like seeing kids jumping into the creek after those little yellow guys and seeing real ducks get very, very confused by a swarm of rubber ones.  There’s no place like Ithaca.

So I’ve been keeping my eye (and ears) on Portishead’s new upcoming album for a while now, and I’m beyond excited. Giddy, would be the best word to describe it.

All Things Considered had a super interview with Geoff and Adrian (and amazing clips from the album) over the weekend. It was so fascinating while I was driving home that when I finally got home, I stayed in the car to listen to the whole thing.

Last night I was all over YouTube looking for clips from last weekend’s Coachella, which would have been pretty nice to attend. I found a lot of other stuff, and Casey chatted Prince’s version of “Creep” over to me this morning, which was in my opinion, alright.

But the new Portishead album is already giving me the chills. I don’t care if it sounds completely new, or if it is re-hashing the same old (which, doesn’t seem to be the case). Sadly, their only US show this year happened on Saturday, but who knows, maybe they’ll hit Roseland again sometime. Get that video if you are even remotely familiar with them. I still have my VHS copy from 8 years ago. Yeah, they’re that good.