May 20

My trivia night with Iowa PBS

Posted on Monday, May 20, 2024, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

Where are both Captain James T. Kirk and Thomas Jefferson key to a trivia quest? In Iowa, of course!

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May 17

Iowa Valley Scenic Byway episode now online

Posted on Friday, May 17, 2024, at 12:00 PM by Jeff

Iowa PBS’ “Road Trip Iowa” series rolls on with an episode that visits Tama County, the Lincoln Cafe in Belle Plaine, and the Amana Colonies. It’s the Iowa Valley Scenic Byway and more.

There’s even a segment in Vining, where residents give a guide in pronouncing their Bohemian names.

Watch to the very end.

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May 14

Goodbye to Garfield, Arthur schools in CR

Posted on Tuesday, May 14, 2024, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

I went to open houses for two elementary schools in Cedar Rapids that are closing at the end of the school year. The Gazette ended up interviewing some of the same people, but I ran into someone no one else got: Iowa basketball player Hannah Stuelke’s mother.

KWWL also had a story about the open houses, and I think my hat made it on TV.

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May 10

Jeopardy Masters? More like Jeopardy minors

Posted on Friday, May 10, 2024, at 10:06 AM by Jeff

James Holzhauer, the worst Jeopardy villain of all time, and Matt Amodio, possibly the third-worst Jeopardy villain of all time, both had no answer for this clue last week:

This state is not famous as a source of jazz talent, but Bix Beiderbecke was born there

The third contestant, Mattea Roach, also didn’t buzz in, making it a triple stumper.

Few episodes are complete without me yelling “you’re all fired” at the screen at least once, and this was the clue for that game.

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May 08

Greenhill Road exit plan a roundabout mess

Posted on Wednesday, May 8, 2024, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

There are two intersections left on IA 27/58 between US 20 and US 218. As with Viking Road (a SPUI), the Iowa DOT wants to convert the Greenhill Road intersection into an interchange. Once again (AAAARRRRGGGHHHH), the presentation is a narrated slideshow rather than a PDF.

It will not be a SPUI, an option explicitly dismissed in the slideshow. It won’t be a diverging diamond either. It will be, instead, what the slideshow calls a “dogbone”, a stoplight-less mess of curves like what happened with the University Avenue exit to the north. It is not a true double roundabout. Instead, it’s a hideous hybrid that’s a nightmare in regular conditions, let alone snow.

A visual is here; the map is here. Like with Viking Road, IA 27/58 will be reconstructed to go below ground level while Greenhill will be raised slightly.

The land around the future interchange is owned by either the University of Northern Iowa or the city of Cedar Falls. There is no reason this could not be a SPUI or a diverging diamond.

According to the slideshow, work won’t begin until early 2028 at the earliest and take 2.5 years. It will cost $61.1 million in 2024 dollars.

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May 06

Closure year for Newburg school found

Posted on Monday, May 6, 2024, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

Grinnell-Newburg is the most lopsided school district name in terms of population disparity: one near 10,000, and the other unincorporated. Newburg, just east of the intersection of F17 and T38 in Jasper County, is typically ignored in the sports team names.

Newburg has been a part of the district since 1958, and it had a school. However, nailing down the year the building was shut down has been hard. The gymnasium was destroyed in a fire in July 1978. Voters did not approve a sale of the building, which dates to 1925, until September 1982. The school was the subject of a Des Moines Register article in July 1992, when the new owners were restoring the building. Or I should say were attempting to restore, because it … isn’t.

A concrete answer on the closure comes from an unattributed history of the Grinnell-Newburg district that was compiled around the turn of the century and resurfaced while the school district was seeking a bond issue two separate times in 2018 (it failed both times).

This history also reveals that the oldest school currently in use in Grinnell is Davis Elementary, from 1917, and it was completely renovated in 1998. A time capsule was found in the cornerstone in 2017. That 2018 bond issue would have replaced Davis and two other elementaries at one combined site.

I came across most of this information through reading an article originally at Grinnell College’s student newspaper and then reprinted at the Iowa Capital Dispatch about Grinnell-Newburg’s struggles with finances and morale.

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May 03

ISU and the Lincoln Highway

Posted on Friday, May 3, 2024, at 10:30 AM by Jeff

Here’s my investigation into the Lincoln Highway’s history as it relates to the Iowa State campus in Ames.

(whoops, forgot to set a draft to live)

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Apr 29

US 218 detoured through Garrison for month

Posted on Monday, April 29, 2024, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

Part of US 218 in Benton County will be closed for a culvert replacement for the next month, a press release from the Iowa DOT says.

The highway through Vinton will be closed to through traffic and detoured on E22 and V66, the release says, needlessly including “and U.S. 218/Iowa 8” in there for some reason.

My guess is that this is going on north of downtown, since otherwise a much smaller detour could be had via IA 150 and 4th Street.

West of Dysart, IA 21 and US 30 will make a better route to get to Cedar Rapids while 218 is closed, even with the construction going on on 30.

UPDATE: Delayed until May 13.

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Apr 26

Iowa border history, with a focus on the Iowa Great Lakes

Posted on Friday, April 26, 2024, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

Arnold Garson of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative wrote a Substack post last week about how the Iowa Great Lakes almost didn’t figure in to the state of Iowa. His writeup touches on the paired-states issue before the Civil War (slave state Florida, free state Iowa; slave state Texas, free state Wisconsin) and how the Des Moines Register promoted and covered the region in the 20th century.

The eagle-eyed reader will spot an uncredited map in the piece. That map would be from a page on this very website created more than 15 years ago about the different proposed Iowa borders.

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Apr 24

Ellen Young, 1944-2024

Posted on Wednesday, April 24, 2024, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

Ellen Young, former editor of the Traer Star-Clipper and longtime booster of the town of Traer, died April 11. Her obituary was printed last week in the North Tama Telegraph, which replaced the TSC in 2020. Here is an excerpt:

She was a driver in many community functions including the creation of the Salt and Pepper Shaker Gallery, coordinating the alumni class reunion dinners and often helped with the Winding Stairs Festival. Ellen was a founding member of the Tama County Development Board and Traer Development Corporation. Ellen also attended Iowa Tourism meetings promoting Traer and Tama County. Ellen had served on the Community Foundation of NE Iowa for several years. Ellen was a prolific grant writer bringing lots of funds to a lot of organizations in Traer over the years.

Ellen was editor of the Star-Clipper for nearly 20 years, retiring in 2002. The Waterloo Courier did a profile of her in 1994.

She didn’t mind a high school student combing through the bound volume archives looking for the town’s top stories of the 20th century — or dropping in just because. Her gift to graduating seniors was a year’s subscription to the paper at their new college address.

Now who’s going to relentlessly promote the town of Traer?

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