Dec 04

Traer Theatre needs ten grand

The Traer Theatre is in financial trouble again.

The North Tama Telegraph reports that last month, the sound system went out and has added to the strain. The theater is looking to raise $10,000 to pay for the repairs and keep the lights on.

Movie theaters all over are having trouble. AMC no longer has any locations in the Des Moines area. Those closures include the former Carmike at Southridge Mall, which I used to be able to walk to. The AMC in Cedar Rapids closed for COVID and never reopened.

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Dec 01

Big 12 traitors as Taylor Swift songs

I admit you’ll need to know a little (OK a lot) about college football and a little (OK a lot) about Taylor Swift to fully appreciate my latest Substack post, but those who do get it, I hope you like it.

I wish the preview image would let me control how much of the intro shows up.

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Nov 29

Misspellings and errors since June 29

Just because I haven’t been a professional copy editor for five months doesn’t mean I stopped seeing typos and errors … everywhere.

  • The most galling one, since I saw it every week for months, is that the IowaWORKS pop-up screen at login misspells “reemployment” as “reemployement”.
  • My new health insurance card misspells “benefits” on the back.
  • Before the Iowa State Fair, KWWL offered a “sneak peak” at the butter cow.
  • During the fair, KCCI’s locator map showed Iowa Highway 46, which hasn’t existed since 1998, on East 30th Street.
  • The Associated Press — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS!! — also committed the “sneak peak” error — IN THE HEADLINE!! Too much attention on deleting hyphens, I guess.
  • KWWL misspelled “Old Threshers” as “Old Threshures”.
  • KCRG misspelled “pricier” as “priceier”.
  • KCRG misspelled “September” as “Septempter”.
  • Politico wrote “Authorization for Use of Military Use” instead of “Force” for the AUMF acronym.
  • Both KWWL and KCRG said in their broadcasts that a house fire in Cedar Rapids was on “East Avenue NW” instead of E Avenue NW.
  • Politico wrote “stepped foot” instead of “set foot”.
  • This sentence from the Athletic dropped at least one word: “His successor was Bob Bowlsby left Iowa in 2006.”
  • KCRG’s football score ticker called Loras the Durhawks instead of Duhawks. (Du. Du Hawks. Du Hawks Mich. — Ed.)
  • The Des Moines Register misspelled U.S. Rep. Tom Emmer of Minnesota’s last name as Emmert.
  • KCRG covered a “Mustangs vs. Mustangs” game on Oct. 27, except that on the video board, it was the Mount Vernon “Mustans”.
  • This happened in the Oct. 27 print edition of the Register:
  • KCRG misspelled “antisemitic” as “antisemetic”. (Regarding the lack of a hyphen, see the note at top and an AP Stylebook tweet from April 2021.)
  • KGAN misspelled Fairleigh Dickinson (Iowa WBB’s first opponent) as “Dickenson”.
  • The envelope for Iowa PBS’s monthly newsletter put an apostrophe in “Iowans”.
  • Pinseekers, “Iowa’s first year-round golf entertainment facility” used “sneak peak” in a TV commercial.
  • WQAD wrote “Donaldson” instead of “Donnellson” in a story about top vehicle crash areas in southeast Iowa.

Anyone interested in a proofreader?

UPDATE 1/24/24: In a July story, the Council Bluffs Nonpareil had a sentence where the number of Iowa counties added up to 105 instead of 99 and misspelled Linn as Lynn.

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Nov 27

Early Iowa college football on TV, part 2

I should’ve posted this Friday, since it was on my Substack the week before last. This is the second part of a look at college football on TV pertaining to Iowa, and a game that set the tone for a 30-year relationship between broadcasters and the NCAA.

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Nov 22

Belle Plaine, Reinbeck churches in second wave of UMC disaffiliations

On New Year’s Day 2023, Grundy County had four United Methodist Churches. On New Year’s Eve 2023, it will have one.

Two of the churches, in Conrad and Grundy Center, disaffiliated from the UMC in May (officially June 30) in the church’s slow-motion schism. Reinbeck is one of 59 that’s out at the end of November following a second special meeting. Beaman is the only one left.

In Tama County, five of eight remain part of the UMC, after all three “G” churches — Garwin, Geneseo, and Gladbrook — split in May. The most recent list includes “Gladbrook Chapel”, which is a rural church just over the Marshall County line west of Union Grove State Park (so technically not Tama County). The chapel building was destroyed in a fire in 2020.

Also Tama County-adjacent in the November wave is Belle Plaine. Other places with a notable number of churches leaving are Linn County and about a 50-mile radius around Ottumwa.

The Des Moines Register has a statewide map, although it put Gladbrook Chapel in Gladbrook. (Gladbrook’s Methodist Church was in the previous flight. Its previous Facebook page said it would switch to a new one in July, but I am unable to find it. A message from the pastor on the church’s website said that church would join the splinter Global Methodist Church, but the website hasn’t quite eliminated all UMC markings.)

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Nov 20

Floyd interchange fully opens today

Thanksgiving week traditionally means the end of Iowa’s construction season. This year, that’s being marked with the opening of the US 18/218 interchange in Floyd today and tomorrow. The DOT has a press release and the Charles City Press has a story.

For a year, traffic has been head-to-head using the future eastbound ramps while the other half of the interchange was finished. The opening converts a 2-mile segment to a full freeway, including the closure of Packard Avenue to the southeast.

The eastbound exit sign for US 18 is already up, although the placement of the arrow in the lower right instead of underneath throws off the visual balance of the entire thing. Even though Osage would be a backtrack for eastbound 18 traffic, I think it should have been included as a second destination. It’s nice that T44 is signed but the only place it goes is back to US 18/218 at the north end of the Charles City business route.

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Nov 17

Southeast Warren to close Lacona school

One of the few small districts in Iowa still maintaining buildings in three different communities is closing one of them.

Southeast Warren’s intermediate school in Lacona, which holds grades 4-6, will close at the end of this school year. KCCI had a story October 31. I called the school board secretary to get clarification on the timeline.

There is an elementary in Milo and the high school is in Liberty Center. Football games are played in Lacona, and in January the superintendent said the district would want to keep the gym facility there. (It’s able to be separated from the main building.)

The district held a meeting in February to go over the plans. A drop of 35 students in enrollment translates to a loss of $262,500 in state money. In May, the board voted to close Lacona and move sixth-graders to the high school. The Indianola Independent-Advocate said the closure would be after the 2024-25 school year, but this is incorrect. The minutes from May 10 are fuzzy on the wording.

The district still doesn’t know where it’s going to put some of those students. In October, a board member talked about a walkthrough of the primary (soon to be elementary) and day care buildings “to brainstorm ideas to add classroom space for the 4th and 5th grades next year.” As of Halloween, some parents were worried the school would close its day care in Milo in order to put intermediate students in that building.

Southeast Warren is also considering a different type of cost-saving measure, implementing a four-day school week.

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Nov 15

I-80 bridge meeting today


October 13, 2006: The present I-80 Mississippi River bridge at Le Claire has no shoulders.

The preferred design for the new I-80 Mississippi River bridge is to be revealed this afternoon in an online presentation. Registration is via website. This is the fourth public meeting.

It is rare for the final design to differ from the preferred one, but this will at the least set where the new bridge will be in relation to the present one.

Radio Iowa has more about the background of the project and future timeline. It quotes Steve Robery of the Illinois DOT as saying construction could begin in mid-2028. The existing bridge would be 65 years old in 2031 if not replaced by then.

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Nov 13

Election Day and ballot silliness

My Substack post with a Tama County Election Day hook, that also took a look at the ballot structures for combined city/school elections, made Saturday’s display at the Iowa Capital Dispatch.

If you like, please subscribe! (Better yet, chip in for a paid sub!)

Posted in Iowa Miscellaneous, Tama County | Comments Off on Election Day and ballot silliness
Nov 09

North Tama bond issue passes


August 14, 2010: Cornerstone of Traer School built after the 1917 fire.

It took a second try and a satellite voting station, but nearly two-thirds of North Tama voters approved a $14.85 million bond issue “to provide funds to build, furnish, and equip a new high school addition, including related remodeling and improvements; to remodel, repair, furnish, and equip the existing educational facilities; and to improve the site.” Full coverage in the Telegraph.

By the end of the decade, the building that opened in 1918 will be removed from its place at the center of the school complex. It’s going to be a huge change.

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