Summitt on the sidelines vs. Baylor, March 26, 2012
My tickets for the 2012 NCAA Women’s Sweet Sixteen and Elite Eight games were right across from the Tennessee bench. I finally had a chance to see coaching legend Pat Summitt on the court in person.
But during that first half against Kansas, when the Lady Vols fell behind, I took a couple more glances than usual at the sidelines. At the end of the game, after Tennessee had pulled it out, I had a sad realization.
Pat Summitt was not coaching that team.
Sure, she was watching attentively, was in the huddle during timeouts, but most of the time, it was assistant Holly Warlick who was getting animated, telling the players what to do, chewing out the ref. If you didn’t know who was who, Warlick was the coach, period. Summitt did much more sitting than standing.
The crowd gave Summitt a standing ovation before and after both games.
Summitt will still be with Tennessee, but as head coach emeritus (emerita?). It is the end of a long and important chapter in the history of college sports.
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WCLT High School sign in Crystal Lake, July 2011. The “Titonka” plank has been removed.
At the end of last school year, the Woden-Crystal Lake and Titonka school districts went their separate ways. WCL started a sharing agreement with Forest City. The expectation was that the districts would eventually merge, but some residents want the district to be dissolved instead.
This KIMT story makes it out to be a tax issue, but there is also geography involved. When the district is centered around one town, a merger often puts part of the reorganized district at a travel disadvantage.
This map shows the WCL and T districts and the surrounding high schools. The Forest City district (PDF) is relatively horizontal, stretching east across Winnebago County all the way over to Fertile. The North Iowa map also puts the highlighted districts in perspective with that one.
The western part of WCL is closer to Titonka than Forest City, but that’s not really an option, because Titonka is sharing with Algona and is elementary-only. Crystal Lake is about equidistant from Britt and Forest City, making West Hancock a viable alternative.
This Globe-Gazette article explains what would happen in the event of a dissolution. It’s not as clean as a straight-up merger. Among the things that would have to be settled then would be what district would take control of the building in Crystal Lake, which would likely fall to whichever district incorporated the town into its borders. The South Clay dissolution earlier this decade drew one line literally across the street from the school building, which went to Spencer, by far the largest district involved.
The FC/WCL reorganization/merger vote has already been scheduled for this year, so dissolution can only advance if it fails. The district has already agreed that second grade and up will go to Forest City next fall. The KIMT story also mentioned the unified district would remain named Forest City.
Keep an eye out for Titonka, as well. I wouldn’t be surprised if a dissolution or split occurred there, with the northern portion going to North Iowa instead.
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With the completion of the Fort Madison bypass and rerouting onto interstates in the Quad Cities, the only two-lane stretches of US 61 in the state are the 32-mile segment between Burlington and the Muscatine/Louisa county line, and the three miles west of Keokuk. (Note that the Dubuque and Burlington pieces still are surface roads in some areas, though.)
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Well, I finally got tired of going through the same 10,000-odd photos (after sorting out inapplicable categories) in search of one more number.
So there aren’t going to be scheduled posts for a little while, until I find something else that I can put sequentially. Maybe something from all 99 counties. Or it may be something else entirely.
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The last 1912 photo of the Titanic, taken by Father Frank Browne
My first encounters with the story of the Titanic were in Robert Ballard’s book Exploring the Titanic in fifth grade and the December 1985 and December 1986 issues of National Geographic. Those two issues detailed Ballard’s discovery of the wreck 73 years after the ship sank.
Since then, my interest has continued nearly unabated. I was a full-fledged buff before The Movie came out and have the History Day project to prove it. At this point, it might be easier to point out which books and videos about the ship I don’t own.
The story has changed subtly in the past 15 years. In the mid-’90s, it was about a technological marvel done in by a cascade of events that all went precisely wrong. Now, it’s about a technological marvel with masked flaws, both mechanical and human, that contributed to and was amplified by that cascade of events.
The Onion’s “Our Dumb Century” went with the headline “World’s Largest Metaphor Hits Ice-Berg” to satirize the event. But it’s really true. The Titanic is one of those things that can be applied to fit many different scenarios, in part or in whole. It has invaded our collective psyche. Think about the political cartoons that always show their ships sinking bow first, even if the ship in question isn’t explicitly intended to evoke the Titanic. (See also my own comparison to the Big 12 Conference’s [second] near-disintegration.)
It is the “thousand If Onlys,” as Walter Lord put it, that help create such a compelling story. The actions of the various groups and classes of people involved throughout the entire story turn into a microcosm of not just the early 20th century, but human nature. There is heroism and cowardice, love and anger, and sacrifice. It’s a parable about misplaced faith in technology and how you never, ever say “God himself could not sink this ship.” If the Titanic did not exist, we would have to invent it.
A YouTube user re-edited parts of the 1997 movie to form a “real-time” version of the ship’s last five minutes. (Some frames are flipped as well, and it’s in black and white.)
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April 9, 2004: Once US 30 was expanded to four lanes around Colo, an exit tab was added to this sign. The interchange was constructed along with the realigned 30 in the 1960s but tapered back to two on either side. Finally, finally, the four-lane 30 was extended east of this interchange in 2010.
When the exit tab was added, though, it was put on the wrong side. As a right-hand exit, the tab should be on the right side. This was eventually corrected.
This sign mentions Des Moines although eastbound 30 traffic headed that way mostly would’ve exited at I-35. Either way, it’s the next major city south.
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September 13, 2011: Mile markers on wooden posts are rare in Iowa, but here’s one, in Appanoose County, at what was an end of IA 142. Just to the south is a short segment of old IA 2, which separated from the current route about a mile behind the camera. Note of middling interest: A driver heading east on 2 across the state would have seen the last McDonald’s more than 100 miles back, with the next one 10 miles ahead in Centerville. The next one after that is another 90-plus miles east in Fort Madison.
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