Many years ago I traveled to Iowa to attend law school at the Univesity of Iowa and have felt a connection to the place ever since. It is an incredibly beautiful place and its residents are remarkably resilient people.
This past week the people in Iowa, including those who live in Iowa City, where my alma mater is located, have been suffering through a deluge. Not only have people had to evacuate downtown Cedar Rapids, but evacuation orders have gone out to residents in Des Moines, Cedar Falls and Iowa City, as well as other smaller communities.
When I was in law school, some of my friends had a map of the United States that showed the west coast and the east coast as really large and the midwest and central part of the country as a sliver. They loved to show me the map because they knew I was from the Boston area and they believed that the map was a good illustration of how people living on the east coast and the west coast viewed every other place in the country, especially the midwest; i.e., as insignificant. In the coming weeks, I hope my former law school classmates are proven wrong and the people of Iowa and the other flooded miswestern states get the help they are going to need to recover from this horrible disaster.
Thank you Bob. The NYT has information on how to donate to flood relief.
The Obama for America site has links to American Red Cross which offers several methods to help flood and tornado victims in Iowa, Nebraska, Illinois and Indiana.
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p>Here are a few:
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p>1. Products sold locally with portion of purchase price going to Red Cross
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p>2. You can also mail direct donations for disaster relief:
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p>
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p>3. or donate online
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p>4. To volunteer to help out with Red Cross disaster relief, here is the link.
and I’m keeping my fingers crossed and hoping that things’ll be straightened out and tlhings’ll return to normal in a reasonable amount of time. The river is supposed to crest and peak on Tuesday. Again, keeping my fingers crossed.
that those rivers flow to New Orleans. We may be in for quite a bit more of this story.
Having been born in Iowa and most recently there 3 weeks ago for a wedding in Des Moines, strikes me hard. Found it incredible to see a picture on the news of DT Des Moines featuring the hotel where we attended the wedding across from Mercy Hospital. Water has to be at least 25-30 feet up from when we there.
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p>My elderly grandmother up in Mason City lost water along with everyone else when a levee broke and flooded the water treatment plant. Think that they are back up and running at this point, but not sure of drinking water.
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p>After talking to my dad, this should give some pause: Northern Iowa/Southern Minnesota is probably about the best farmland in the US, with a ton of corn grown in that area. The floods aren’t also wiping out downtowns, they’re taking out a ton of planted crops. Just another economic catastrophe to throw onto the pile (just waiting for the plagues of locusts to start showing up).
but this is year 17. Though I guess they don’t show up in Iowa.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06…
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p>Forget the politics for a second, this will be a real body blow to our economy (and to the world); not like grain prices are low right now…
My first exposure to cicadas was in Iowa. I think it was the second summer I was there. Ahhhh the memory of trying to study in the heat and to the loud racket of the cicadas doing God knows what. Apparently, the 17 year cicadas emerged in eastern Iowa in 2007, although that would mean that the cicadas I heard when I was there had bad clocks or were on some other time cycle.