University of South Dakota assistant music professor Tracelyn Gesteland will spend most of June serving as an apprentice director at the Harrower Opera Workshop in Atlanta, a gathering of young talent under the instruction of professionals from the Metropolitan Opera and the Juilliard School in New York. Though Gesteland will be working as a director, she has also continues to perform.

Click here for a recording of Gesteland singing “Dopo notte” from the opera Ariodante by George Frideric Handel.

Read more on Gesteland in Nick Hytrek’s Saturday (May 30) column.

Below watch the video “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” a slideshow adaptation produced by Morningside College seniors Alex Rogers and Travis Ward for their film adaptation class. Read the story in the Friday (May 29) Journal online and in print.

The face of the Virgin Mary has been seen on a grilled cheese sandwich and that sandwich purchased for $28,000.

Someone found what appeared to be the resemblance of Jesus on a cornflake.

Now, a woman says she can see the image of Jesus in the lid of a Marmite jar.

Have you seen the resemblance of a religious figure in any of your foods? Feel free to share what you saw and within what type of food.

While you think here are some yummy religious images floating around the Internet.

According to webupon.com and popehatchip.com  in Salem, Massachusetts, the Chadwick family opened up a bag of Doritos to discover a chip that perfectly resembled the Pope’s Mitre or in other word’s, the pope’s “really tall hat”. The same online casino that purchased the Virgin Mary Grilled Cheese bought this cheesy artifact for $1209!

Here’s a list of the top 10 sightings of religious figures in food. 

Some of them include:

*Cadbury’s Dairy Mary

*The father, the son and the holy toast

*Mother Theresa’s buns

*In Cod we trust

We are not making this up – a bacon-flavored, ahem, sexual lubricant.

P.S. The video is clean – just a bunch of bacon lovers taste-testing the new product.

At least one hospitalized after accident at 3rd and Nebraska Streets Tuesday morning.

It’s sure to happen every once in a while – a man sitting out a toilet is bitten in his nether region by a snake crawling through the tubes.

So what other things have emerged through the toilet to haunt us?

- A rat bit this woman, and a snake also bit this woman.

- Here’s a endless list of stories about animals in the sewers – snakes and alligators in toilets, oh my.

- Then there’s this funny video of people emerging from a portable toilet to find they’re in an office meeting. Click play to watch. Let’s just say we’d rather endure this than the snake.

SIOUX CITY — City leaders, clergy and residents bowed their heads, folded their hands, closed their eyes and prayed under sunny skies today as an American flag blew overhead in front of the Law Enforcement Memorial outside of City Hall.

Approximately 100 people attended the hour-long event in observance of National Day of Prayer.

Through the years, presidents have called the nation to prayer, culminating in 1952 when President Harry Truman signed legislation creating the National Day of Prayer. The observance has been held on the first Thursday of May since then.

This year’s National Day of Prayer theme was “Prayer…America’s Hope!”

“Leaders of our nation have relied upon the power of prayer throughout American history. We as a nation give thanks for the freedoms we enjoy, and pray that the state of Iowa and its people will continue to be blessed,” Mayor Mike Hobart read from a National Day of Prayer Proclamation.

Prayers were offered on behalf of the seven centers of power — government, military, media, education, business, churches and family.

– Dolly A. Butz

Read the complete story in Friday’s Journal and at siouxcityjournal.com.

America lost a funny man yesterday when Dom Deluise passed away. He now joins many others who’ve passed in recent years – Richard Pryor, Johnny Carson and George Burns, among them.

So we thought it was in order to present this early clip from the Johnny Carson show. This clip proves why both Carson and Deloise were both huge names in comedy. Click play below to watch video.

The Afternoon Delight returns today just in time for the latest Star Trek film release.

We bring you Cake Wrecks web site and this gem of a find – a Star Trek wedding.

And this isn’t just any wedding cake – you must see it to believe it.

The following is a selection of columns by Dave Yoder, a Journal copy editor who died this weekend. Yoder was a longtime Iowa newspaper columnist and editor.

It’s great to be back and enjoying the little things again
Posted Oct. 09, 2008

In case any of you have wondered where this column has been for the last five weeks, the story starts with a trip to the emergency room on Labor Day and continues with four weeks of treatment for leukemia and pneumonia at St. Luke’s.

I was on this bouillabaisse of drugs for quite a while so I missed the Republican Convention. I’m not sure now whether being chemically altered was actually the proper way to watch a political convention or whether watching a political convention would have saved me a lot of money on drugs.

My room was decorated with a faux marble wallpaper. The first week, due to the illness or drugs, obscene figures popped out of the wallpaper. Every time I looked, a new DaVinci-esque writhing nude would appear. It was just wrong. When I got better and the medication changed, the figures disappeared.

I mention this for one reason. Whatever I was on, it was nothing compared to whatever John McCain was on when he picked Sarah Palin to be his running mate. Of all the Republican women he could have chosen, people with experience in the House or Senate, he picks one who uses PTA membership as a prime qualification to be leader of the free world. He picks one whose husband belonged to a secessionist organization, who belongs to a church whose pastor is wackier than Jeremiah Wright and who is defying a subpoena from her own Legislature on abusing her powers as governor. (more…)