Feb 06

The story of Albert the Bull

Posted on Tuesday, February 6, 2018, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

The world’s largest anatomically correct Hereford was featured in a Super Bowl ad and got a mini-documentary. Story, Sioux City Journal; video (below), Cenex (the ad’s sponsor).

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Feb 05

Hampton-Dumont, CAL finalize sharing

Posted on Monday, February 5, 2018, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

Last month, CAL officially agreed to send grades 7-12 to Hampton-Dumont, the Hampton Chronicle reported in multiple articles. (One of the articles was by Greg Forbes, who was laid off from the Sioux City Journal a while back and was named the editor [!] of the Chronicle nine weeks ago.)

An editorial last week disclosed more terms: The combined district will be HD-CAL, but presentation (uniforms etc.) will be phased in to save money. The mascot will remain H-D’s. CAL is moving forward with building improvements with the intention of staying open for a long time.

CAL is one-fifth the size of HD, so the name agreement at least is a boon for CAL. A new name would have been tricky because “Central Franklin” could be interpreted as a slight to Dumont (and Aredale, which is also on the Butler County side of the district but unmentioned). The combined high school in Hampton will take in students along IA 3 from the south end of former IA 107 to the south end of former IA 326, about 30 miles.

Meanwhile, tomorrow, Waukee is likely to give the go-ahead for a second high school and Ankeny is chasing its 11th elementary.

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Feb 04

Yet for some reason I STILL haven’t gotten the call

Posted on Sunday, February 4, 2018, at 10:10 AM by Jeff

‘Jeopardy!’ Contestants Fumble Entire Football Category, To Coach Trebek’s Dismay (NPR)

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Feb 02

Old Cherokee, Lansing schools on ‘Endangered’ list

Posted on Friday, February 2, 2018, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

April 17, 2015: The Stone Schoolhouse in Lansing was in use from 1863 to 1973.

Preservation Iowa’s list of “Most Endangered Properties” includes two old school buildings.

First, as found in the tipoff for this blog post (Sioux City Journal), Wilson High School in Cherokee. The “Simplified Classical Revival Style”* building one block from the central intersection of the city has been abandoned for a decade. The photo with the Journal story shows a light pole with shields for three highways on it — US 59, IA 5, and IA 3, before the middle was truncated and the latter rerouted around.

Second, on the other side of the state, the Stone Schoolhouse in Lansing. It is on the same block as today’s Kee High, between that building and the football field. The roof is intact but the building “is basically abandoned with many openings to the elements and wildlife,” according to Preservation Iowa. As you can see in the photo at top, all the windows are boarded up.

*If that’s the term for the classic symmetrical multi-story pre-Depression brick building, I need to use it more.

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Feb 01

Mike Pargeon, 1966-2018

Posted on Thursday, February 1, 2018, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

I mentioned I was at the Traer post office last Friday. That’s because I had jumped over to town to get an oil change on the car. It’s a little extra effort, but I support a local business that way.

Mike Pargeon, AWE’s owner, was there, and we exchanged pleasantries. He had been a big help to me when a different place wanted to charge more (MUCH more) for work on my car. He and his crew knew what I needed and were never less than totally helpful. He was honored in 2013 with an Outstanding Service Award from the town of Traer.

Mike never came home from work Friday night. He died suddenly at the shop. He was so important to the town that the funeral will be Saturday at the school, with visitation the night before at the Memorial Building.

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Jan 31

New galleries of old photos

Posted on Wednesday, January 31, 2018, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

I worry the “Road Trips” page is a neglected section of this website, in no small portion because I haven’t touched it since relocating everything to this address. (In fact, pages still had links to Angelfire and mac.com pages, and no one ever alerted me to a bad link.) So I’m going to do something about that.

The sensible thing to do to catch up to the present is to go in order, calling back the past, with galleries reaching back nearly a decade (ACK). But if you haven’t seen the pictures, they’re new to you!

The first new one is an old one I never put on the list: the family’s 2005 vacation to the Carolinas. It’s done in my old photo gallery style, the one that requires me making my own thumbnails and hand-coding the whole thing. The format does come in handy when I want more than a blurb underneath. Aside from changing planes in Charlotte last year, that trip was my first and only to that part of the country.

The second is a catch-all of assorted trips in the second half of 2007. Most of the photos are related to a two-day trip to Green Bay and a two-day trip to northwest Iowa. These galleries were created with iPhoto. I noticed that the older galleries came from an older version of iPhoto, and the newer ones clean up the folder/link styles a bit. Newer galleries will link to 800×600 images instead of 640×480. (Please “open in new tab” if you want to keep the index.)

I hope to make more of these, because they’re a place I can share photos that are not related to highways or endpoints. When I put more up I will make blog posts alerting you to them.

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Jan 30

‘Bluegrass Queen’ at Iowa’s doorstep

Posted on Tuesday, January 30, 2018, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

Who said Missouri wasn’t Southern?

According to KTVO and Bluegrass Today, a Missouri state legislator has proposed giving the title “Bluegrass Queen Rhonda Vincent Highway” to a portion of US 63 running north from Greentop MO. Greentop, the honoree’s hometown, is at the very bottom of the Iowa state map as US 63 continues south toward Kirksville.

If she’s the queen of her genre, wouldn’t it make sense to run it an additional three miles to Queen City?

Posted in Highway Miscellaneous | Comments Off on ‘Bluegrass Queen’ at Iowa’s doorstep
Jan 29

A milestone without fanfare

Posted on Monday, January 29, 2018, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

If the price of a stamp hits 50 cents and media outlets give it scant coverage, did it happen at all? Is it a sign of how much people aren’t mailing things? Or is it related to the fact that stamps don’t have prices on them anymore?

The price increase, effective Jan. 21, was announced in October. There are scattered stories from smaller TV stations and newspapers; WBBM, perhaps the most prominent place I can find it, rolled it into a story about all price increases in 2018. (Did you know Chicago has an amusement tax?)

I learned about it when I stopped by the Traer post office — “We have the new LOVE stamps.” “Well, I think it would be a little weird to put those on my bills.” — and the price came out evenly.

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Jan 26

Answering 538’s gerrymandering question

Posted on Friday, January 26, 2018, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

Political/statistical analysis website 538 says fixing gerrymandering is hard. At one point it resorts to a computer algorithm that completely ignores all jurisdictional boundaries in a quest to make “competitive” districts.

What if gerrymandering is a problem better solved by mathematicians and computer scientists than politicians and political scientists? What if we could move to a system that didn’t consider race or partisanship at all — one that had no pre-assigned winners and losers, costly litigation or drag-out fights in state capitals?

Yes, what if? What IF? If only we could find some place ordering

districts be convenient and contiguous, preserve the integrity of political subdivisions like counties and cities, and to the extent consistent with other requirements, reasonably compact.


Iowa’s 1980s congressional districts, the first drawn under a nonpartisan process. Complete series of maps here.

At this point, asking “how do we avoid gerrymandering” without saying “IOWA DOES IT” is journalistic malpractice.

Posted in Iowa Miscellaneous | Comments Off on Answering 538’s gerrymandering question
Jan 25

Photo 32,000

Posted on Thursday, January 25, 2018, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

Finding my 32,000th photo was more complicated than it should have been. It turns out that I accidentally mis-set the time on the camera (yes, you youths, there was such as thing as “manually setting date and time”) and so on my Great Plains trip, the file names were not aligned with the dates they were taken. Plus, I had to integrate photos from a backup camera.

It ended up that the milestone-holder (bottom) was rather pedestrian, so I also have one that I first thought was #32,000.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
August 5, 2016: Wyoming welcome sign on I-80 at the Nebraska/Wyoming state line. From here, it’s only slightly farther to Salt Lake City than it is to Council Bluffs.


August 6, 2016: Historical marker east of Sidney, Nebraska, on US 30. Irrigation is vital to Nebraska agriculture, especially west of the 100th meridian.

Posted in Sequences | Comments Off on Photo 32,000