Via a KTIV story I learned of a 15-minute documentary about funeral directors who responded to the crash of United Flight 232 in Sioux City in 1989. It’s worth a watch.
Last week was the 35th anniversary of the crash. There is an exhibit at the Mid America Museum of Aviation and Transportation at the Sioux City airport.
I did my annual look at RAGBRAI on my Substack site. This year, I concentrated more on the issue of mapping out routes in southern Iowa. The plain fact is, there are fewer options to choose from.
July 9, 2024: A poster promoting the appearance of Robert Yeltman at the Ripley United Church of Christ parsonage was near the entrance to North Tama Veterinary Clinic.
I was back home last week for the district semifinal baseball game — North Tama lost to Maquoketa Valley — and I took a walk beforehand. Along the way I saw a name from my past, one I hadn’t thought of in a long time.
Robert Yeltman, a 2000 North Tama graduate, has a music career. His website says he “is a passionate singer and guitarist who is well known for his crowd-work and melodic voice with a lifetime of performance experience.”
Ripley United Church of Christ in Traer has started hosting musical events at its parsonage next door to the church. It’s a house that will be having “open mic nights.” According to a recent piece in the North Tama Telegraph, “each month of this series will also bring a regional talent … to offer both inspiration and a taste of what a great songwriter can feel like in a real ‘listening room’ environment.”
The location now known as the Iowa 80 Truckstop, or the “World’s Largest Truckstop”, opened at the Walcott exit on I-80 six decades ago. It is also the 45th anniversary of the Truckers Jamboree there. Stories: Quad-City Times via Cedar Rapids Gazette, “The Trucker” news website, KWQC, WQAD, WHBF.
The 897th-largest town in Iowa isn’t a town anymore.
KCRG reports that Randalia, in Fayette County, officially unincorporated on June 30. The town’s population was 84 in 2000, but had fallen to 50 in 2020. The story said that to settle the city’s debts, the clerk had to sell the town’s playground equipment.
Now we know what the “D” stands for in the City Development Board’s agendas. “D24-01 Randalia” was taken up in the June meeting.
Iowa Highway 267, formerly a piece of Iowa Highway 93, served Randalia from 1934 to 1980.
As of this month, Iowa has 940 incorporated places.
This isn’t an Iowa story, obviously, but it’s important for the interstate system as a whole. The Nevada DOT is replacing Interstate 515, which ran southeast from Las Vegas toward the Hoover Dam area, with Interstate 11. The I-11 designation starts at the Arizona-Nevada border with the bridge that was built to bypass Hoover Dam and for a while has ended at the I-215/I-515 interchange. Now it will go through to the northwest end of the Las Vegas sprawl.
Beyond that, future plans would take I-11 up the US 95 corridor somehow, past a WHOLE LOT of nothing, to the Reno area. The news story says the Nevada DOT says “Canada to Mexico” but getting to Reno alone is a pipe dream. Did you know there are only three highways, total, that cross between Nevada and Oregon?
(Notice that the Las Vegas newscasters use the “the” terminology for freeways one typically experiences only in the Los Angeles area.)
My annual breakdown of the big stuff planned for construction in the Iowa DOT’s five-year plan is on Substack.
The Associated Press needs someone to copy-edit its news alerts, especially on weekends. That should be “formerly incarcerated” not “formally incarcerated.” If anyone is being informally incarcerated something strange is going on.
(note: the author’s work schedule has always included weekends)
(especially in the time period before one year ago Saturday)
(nope, totally not dwelling on it at all)
A case earlier this school year where a public school district refused to sell a closed building to a private school led to a bill late in the first part of the Iowa legislative session. That bill mandated that if a private school is the highest bidder for a closed school building, the public school district must sell it to the private school. That language was later incorporated into Senate File 2368, which dealt heavily with charter schools and was signed into law at a charter school.
Unlike many other recent bills, however, it was not declared “of immediate importance” and thus is to take effect July 1.
That gave the Cedar Rapids school district just enough time to avoid being forced to sell Garfield Elementary School to Isaac Newton Christian Academy. Instead, the district accepted a bid from a real estate developer half the size of Isaac Newton’s.
Cedar Rapids schools’ chief financial officer said at the June 24 board meeting, as reported by KCRG, “a loss of $1.5 million from our general fund was attributed to the 196 students choosing Isaac Newton Christian Academy.”
My Substack piece looks at the history of the Goldfield school building and neighboring Boone Valley school district. It takes in the building’s current state as an alumna tours the building. Of course Mom recorded everything.
