My apologies for the lack of recent posts on my blog but due to family business last week I had to travel from Minnesota to my home town are in Northwest Iowa -- "where God vacations" -- as we used to say when we were kids.
While Governor Culver of Iowa did indeed declare 65 of Iowa's 99 counties to be disaster zones my home county was untouched by the flooding. As I have told friends over the years, "Iowa is not just flat land filled with corn, while Minnesota got the lakes, Iowa was given all the rivers........" so the recent flooding should come as no surprise to those of us who know this part of the country. My own hometown is located at the confluence of the Maple River and Odebolt Creek so there is plenty of potential for flooding. However, years ago these two bodies of water were engineered with wide flood plains to minimize flooding.
So as I completed my first road trip with our 4 month old son -- he is a great travel companion since he agrees with everything I say, currently that is!! -- the only thing that caught my attention was the extremely green, pastoral setting that is rural northwest Iowa. The fields and trees are really in great shape in this area of the state.
Speaking of trees here is some advice -- if you ever find yourself lost on some road in Iowa simply walk to the nearest stand of trees since it is very likely there is a farm house there because the original pioneers planted trees around the homes to serve as a windbreak and eventually as a source of fire wood once the trees matured. So no Al Gore humans have not cut down every tree because we hate Mother Earth - in fact we improved the treeless prairies of Iowa.
Best wishes to the flood victims as you recover from this recent disaster.
Todd
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SpaceBeagle is my personal web log dedicated to -- archiving my travel experiences; communicating my reflections on the world around me; providing commentary on culture, restaurants, films, books, politics; and serving as a "missionary for freedom" by educating my readers and myself via your feedback.
1 comment:
Well, as would be no surprise since our hometowns are in the same county, we have had no flooding at home either. Oddly, Holstein DID get a lot of flooding in people's basements last year. A semi-strange phenomenon considering there is no real water near by.
The thing that strikes me about this, and was a conversation I was just having with the devil... er... my lobbyist friend ;-) ... is that people don't really seem to understand what this means for them. Most people only seem to understand that their food comes from the local Hy-Vee or Piggly Wiggly or Walmart. They don't seem to realize that there is going to be a serious economic impact in this flooding. People seem to have already forgotten because the news has moved on, for the most part. I have to think that the impact of this on the country and the world is going to be far greater than that of Katrina. However, because there is little human tragedy comparatively, the news HAS moved on and people are forgetting.
I don't have a solution, or a real point I guess. Just the venting of a Holstein Girl I guess. ;-)
Holstein Girl
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