Jul 31

‘Largest ice cream cone in the world’?

Posted on Friday, July 31, 2015, at 10:05 AM by Jeff

IF
July 22, 2015: Downtown Ackley during RAGBRAI. Anyone for ice cream?

One highlight from last week’s RAGBRAI on Wednesday was a giant ice cream cone in Ackley. Inside, the owners serve, what else, ice cream!

I don’t know what it would take to get an official “state’s/nation’s/world’s largest” title, but the creator said on KCCI he’s going with a self-proclaimed title. At least, until someone says otherwise.

IF
Ackley’s theme was “I Like Pig Butts and I Cannot Lie” and these costumed characters helped spread the word.

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Jul 30

Wilton uniting campuses, will close former high school building

Posted on Thursday, July 30, 2015, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

From the Muscatine Journal: Wilton is building an elementary addition onto its junior/senior high school. Completion will be in 2016. The current elementary, which was the town’s only school building decades ago, will be demolished.

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Jul 29

Titanic newsreel among historic footage in AP archive

Posted on Wednesday, July 29, 2015, at 10:12 AM by Jeff

The Associated Press announced July 23 that it and British Movietone have recently posted over a million minutes of historic film and video news footage to YouTube. All have an AP watermark, but the bulk of the clips are newsreels.

The Washington Post asked an AP archivist to pick out some of the most memorable films. The #1 selection was about the sinking of the Titanic — but the ship in the newsreel footage is not the Titanic.

Because the Titanic sank on its maiden voyage, there is very little photographic record, save for invaluable amateur photographs taken before final departure from the British Isles. However, there was footage of the Olympic, its sister ship. On the Titanic, the forward section of the A deck promenade (below the Boat Deck) is enclosed. It was not so on the Olympic. Since this is the only immediately identifiable difference save for the printed names themselves, footage of the Olympic was rushed into service as substitute Titanic footage, fooling audiences of 1912 and still vexing all except hardcore Titanic buffs* a century later. The port side of the ship without the enclosed A deck is clearly visible from 1:15-1:25.

The nine-minute newsreel about the disaster shows how the world saw what happened, and the rest of the footage including the Carpathia’s arrival in New York is accurate.

Reminder: A Titanic artifact exhibition is in Dubuque this summer at the National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium.

*Including yours truly, if that wasn’t obvious.

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Jul 27

Can we PLEASE do something about Iowa’s postseason trophies?

Posted on Monday, July 27, 2015, at 10:00 AM by Jeff


November 19, 2010: What do you want on your tombstone trophy? (Center: Sara Stoakes, one-woman championship.)

The state high school softball tournament was last week — AGWSR won its first title in that sport — and the baseball tournament is this week. (Actually, it started at the end of last week, with Mason City Newman routing Gladbrook-Reinbeck.) While state tournament memories last a lifetime and the participation is about more than the hardware, Iowa’s postseason trophies are now universally generic and lack the luster they used to have.

On the girls’ side, the trophies at best look like wooden J.D. Power awards but also bear a striking similarity to tombstones. This has been the case since 2007-08, when styles in use for decades were supplanted by rectangular slabs dominated by the IGHSAU logo*. It wasn’t always like this; Everly’s girls’ basketball trophy from 1968** is half the height of the participants themselves and the following style wasn’t bad at all.

Starting this past year, the boys followed suit. They have gone from this and this and this and this, large and regal pieces that leave no question about what sport they’re from, to trapezoidal slabs that say “State Participant” for everyone except the top two teams and a champion’s trophy just like a quarterfinalist’s. No matter the sport, they ALL look the same.

I can only guess that this move was done for financial purposes, that bulk-ordering trophies that are entirely identical except maybe for one line and placing a thin sheet of metal on them with the specifics is cheaper than trophies of different shapes with different figures on them. I want to believe that because otherwise the change — even or especially for the sake of change — doesn’t make sense.

This needs to be fixed, and I think I have an idea on how to make it happen. Read on. Continue reading →

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Jul 24

License Plate Letters — DPK

Posted on Friday, July 24, 2015, at 10:06 AM by Jeff

[insert witty acronym joke here]

(No, what you’re thinking of is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, not to be confused with the People’s Republic of Johnson County.)

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Jul 23

Norway takes ownership of baseball diamond

Posted on Thursday, July 23, 2015, at 10:19 AM by Jeff

The baseball diamond in the town of Norway, the former perennial high school power in that sport, will become city property for $1, KCRG reports. Benton Community has not played games for years at the diamond on the south side of town (near the south end of old IA 201, in fact). The school remains in use as an elementary.

Now it’s up to the town to keep the diamond in condition benefiting such a rich history.

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Jul 22

Where ‘7 million kinds of pie’ is an understatement

Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2015, at 10:08 AM by Jeff


July 21, 2015: Please do not lick your screen.

The traveling celebration of Iowa on wheels otherwise known as RAGBRAI rolled into Eldora last night, and heads to Cedar Falls via Ackley and Parkersburg today. Pictures from the ride in 2004, which hit Steamboat Rock and Eldora in late morning, are included on my IA 118 page.

The headline comes from a rider’s rave review of the Eldora United Methodist Church spaghetti supper that I heard on the shuttle bus. The work it took to make that supper happen is highlighted in the Waterloo Courier. Part of the result is shown above.

Thursday, the ride will stairstep southeastward to Hiawatha, passing the intersection of Dysart Road and Tama Road but missing Tama County. It will go through Eagle Center before that — the official map omitted the unincorporated town while including Cleves, which consists of an elevator and maybe half a dozen houses.

UPDATE: One more kind of pie in Ackley — cow pie.

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Jul 21

CAL unable to continue football

Posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2015, at 10:08 AM by Jeff

The tiny Coulter-Alexander-Latimer school district, known as CAL, has played its last football game. The numbers were no longer there to support a varsity team, KLMJ Radio reports. (Thanks to Austin Draude for the report.)

The district will be sharing football with Clarion-Goldfield-Dows. Going in with a different area school would bump up that program’s classification and make it ineligible for the 2015 postseason, CAL’s coach said.*

The Cadets had not had any success on the gridiron recently at all. CAL has been winless since October 26, 2007, when it beat Janesville 24-18 to create a three-way tie for last in the six-team district that year. The Cadets have lost all 63 games played since then.

Of the eight districts that comprised Class A District 3 in 2010, two have lost their football teams and two no longer exist.

*Any earlier and I likely wouldn’t have found the last win, because online records before 2007 were 404’d in the IHSAA’s website redesign and even some after that require some ingenuity to find.

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Jul 20

Design for IA 141, NW 100th Street interchanges selected

Posted on Monday, July 20, 2015, at 10:06 AM by Jeff


May 7, 2006: This loop ramp from eastbound I-80/northbound I-35 to IA 141/Urbandale Avenue will be removed by the end of the 2010s.

KCCI reports that the Iowa DOT last week selected Alternative 2 for the IA 141 interchange at I-35/80. (That’s Rider Corner, not Ryder, where the interstate turns from north-south to east-west.) The selection comes with a 500-page, 25-megabyte (!) PDF about it.

A diamond interchange will be built to the east, at NW 100th Street, and two ramps will be added to the south, at Meredith Drive (northbound off/southbound on). As for IA 141 itself, the folded diamond/parclo will be removed. The westbound off/on ramps will remain substantially the same, but the northbound ramp will become a flyover ramp with bridge. However, there will not be any ramp from southbound 141 to eastbound 35/80; traffic will have to make a left turn at the stoplight at Grimes’ 37th Avenue half a mile north of the interchange and then a right turn onto 100th Street to that new interchange. Alternative 2 also adds a lane to most of each side of the interstate between Douglas Avenue and 86th Street, but as a non-merging onramp lane that becomes exit-only, not a through lane.

All the work on this interchange, the east end of IA 141, would occur later this decade.

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Jul 18

That time of year already?

Posted on Saturday, July 18, 2015, at 10:24 AM by Jeff

On Thursday, Grundy Center beat GMG, 24-17. In GMG’s previous game, the Wolverines beat AGWSR 14-10. In baseball.

GC plays Monday today in Traer, but not against North Tama. In an unfortunate twist that mirrored the one that befell the girls’ basketball team, the Redhawk baseball team lost early in the postseason to one of the handful of teams that had also beaten it during the season. In this case, it was 15-11 Gladbrook-Reinbeck ending the 23-4 Iowa Star Conference co-champions’ season.

EDIT/CORRECTION 7/20: Wrong date. GC played Saturday in Traer and lost to GR, meaning the Rebels are an upset away from the state tournament.

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