Review page

A wonderful review page for Tall Corn State...

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Caitlin Clark

I would be remiss not to put some kind of tribute to Caitlin Clark and the Iowa Hawkeyes here. They gave us a wonderful season and changed women's basketball forever.

As a Hawkeye fan, I got drawn in early and got special notice that Hannah Stuelke is a relative of mine (second step-cousins, twice removed, to be exact). I wasn't able to actually watch any games so didn't get drawn in so much by the live-action angle of it; I just read about them afterward and occasionally posted using home-made pop art.

There are many reasons Caitlin got a wide range of fans, intense national interest, and status as a huge star. Yes, this was in spite of the fact that the South Carolina team was actually way better than the Hawkeyes. Caitlin kind of just drew in her audience with her way of being. She's a kind of combination of very competitive and super-polite, self-effacing Iowa farm girl, and people just responded to that, or maybe they were just ready for that new kind of hero. Girls especially, and I mean young white ones mostly here, especially respondsed to it, in Iowa in particular.

Some say that Iowa's theocratic backward state politics have led Iowans into despair and self-loathing, which made the state itself ripe for a hero who is strong, competent, and still clearly Iowan to the core. The fact that Caitlin is from West Des Moines and Hannah is from Cedar Rapids made me at least feel that the team was home-state Iowan, unlike many basketball teams today that are a product of super-effective national recruiting machines. Iowa had to pay a premium probably to ensure they stuck with the team and didn't wander off to some lucrative transfer option. But they wanted to play for Iowa. And they made the season for everyone.

She said all the right things when she was interviewed and she gave proper credit to her teammates who have indeed carried a lot of the weight. I like how she's humble when she needs to be, and she's pretty in a natural, confident, strong kind of way. It's hard to define exactly what about her attracted fans' adulation. On the court, it appeared that it was that she could always make threes, and often did, and this made her a threat every minute that she had the ball. That also put her in the class of male athletes like Stephen Curry who can make baskets from anywhere on the court.

I still have an old feud with the ugly Hawkeye logo, of course, but I'm finding it a lot more fun to be a loyal fan of my alma mater (one of them anyway - I went to Iowa twice) - and proud to be associated with this team. I'm a huge Caitlin fan.

What a year

I had to laugh when I saw Caitlin in my local HyVee (Galesburg, Illinois); I laughed, then I took this picture. As a role-model, hero, and record-setting athlete, she's interesting and is having a fabulous year.

But then there's Hannah Stuelke, my second step-cousin twice removed, and she's having quite a year too. Hannah is only a sophomore, but she has good chemistry with Caitlin - they each know what each other is doing, so that when Caitlin passes to Hannah Hannah can score. And this she did to the tune of 47 points the other night, setting a Hawkeye-Carver Arena record for both men's and women's. When Caitlin won the record for assists, she was passing it to Hannah. Caitlin, it seems, is much more focused on winning than on setting the scoring record herself, which she will undoubtedly do. Hannah is getting a lifetime opportunity to play beside one of basketball's best.

Sometimes I wonder if it's just a very insular state making a big fuss out of something that really isn't that big a deal. To me, it is a big deal inasmuch as we don't often see women basketball players get such press, and Caitlin at least is worth the press coverage. She's worth it because she's so good. And I like the fact that both women are Iowans, grew up Hawkeyes and now giving them some good press.

I'm still mad about the ugly logo though. Forty or fifty years of being an Iowa fan, and it just doesn't go away.

Trip to Iowa City

I set out for Iowa yesterday morning at about breakfast time; I had an ENT appointment at the UI Hospitals, a place which I have gotten to know better since I got old. From Galesburg it is 40 minutes up to Quad Cities and from there about 60 west to Iowa City; there has been snow and ice but the roads seemed to be ok and it was sunny.

The first indication that there had been trouble was outside of Galesburg, where a truck cargo crate lay open on the shoulder, the truck itself not there. But the real trouble was in Iowa, west of Davenport, where I saw trucks pulled over and abandoned; cars in the ditch; cars on the shoulder, abandoned; cars in the median abandoned; a truck facing the wrong way on the shoulder, abandoned; I even saw cars abandoned on the shoulder, that had been plowed on top of - not going anywhere soon, I guess?

This carried on all the way into Iowa City, where I found the ramp, and the ENT, after getting lost a couple of times. I was curious about why they would have so much trouble towing anything out of there. The roads, as I drove, were ok, and it was only about twenty. The drifts of plowed snow were packed solid I'm sure, so that once you went off the road you'd have trouble getting back on, and I'm sure the tow trucks were aware of that. There was evidence that some cars had gone down in the low spots and driven around for a while trying to get back on the road, unsuccessfully. My guess was that they'd been told to abandon out of concern for their personal safety in fifteen-below weather, and that the IDOT would rather have their cars sit there three or four days, as long as they weren't in the road itself, and let the cold snap pass through.

In the hospital the ENT had got their signals crossed and a bunch of tests and surgery preparation that I'd been promised never took place. In fact, because of some problems, they said, it took them two hours just to see me. They did however confirm that I was ready for my cochlear implant, and they promised to call and set up appointments soon. I ended up somewhat disappointed, with hree hours waiting with not much to show for it.

And, the whole time, I worked my phone, where weather reports showed another snow coming through. Great. I read the reports over and over until I found out that it would come any minute; it would only be an inch or two total; it would blow around in high winds all evening; and it would never really get below zero though eight or ten is cold enough. When I left (I'd missed lunch) I was spit out of the hospital back on Melrose, in a part of Iowa City I don't know very well, and I ended up back on 218 and getting straight on the interstate back home. I was starving but anxious and I decided to hightail it before the snow got worse.

But now I had another problem. My car chose this particular day to run out of wiper fluid, and it was a day I really needed it. The snow was not very wet but had disrupted visibility. The salt and dust kicked up by the trucks quickly made my windshield hard to see out of. I squinted as hard as I could to stay behind whatever truck was immediately in front of me.

It occurred to me, as I was driving, that there had to be a reason that I-80 from Iowa City to Davenport has become bumper-to-bumper over the last thirty years since I was up here last. My theories are 1) popularity of world's biggest truck stop in Wolcott; 2) high road taxes or weight restrictions in southern Minnesota, or whatever would be the east-west competition for 80, or some combination of the above. Is it mostly trucks? And if not, is there a reason ordinary people like myself want to be on the road? My friend in Iowa City says locals have begun to take the back roads (6) even though I can tell you it's not exactly a straight shot.

Going back, the same thing. Two cars, up on two wheels, belly facing traffic. A truck backwards on the shoulder, facing traffic. Cars off in the shoulder or way off the road. Abandoned. In one case, I saw a tow truck working on ssomething. One. There were about fifty others, abandoned.

There had been one good thing that happened that gave me hope. UI Hosps in general hadn't come out looking good. But as I pulled down the icy parking ramp, and pulled a little too far at the machine where I'd have to insert my ticket and scan my code, the woman working there noticed that I was on the edge of tears, and offered to just do it for me. My hands shaking, I gave her the ticket and scan code and she did it. I was so grateful! It saved me from backing up on icy pavement, with a car right behind me.

On 80, I had to pull over twice to use snow to wash my windshield. I needed gas, and considered buying antifreeze and putting it in myself, but I held out until Illinois and by then the roads were much clearer; one more snow-wash of the windhield at the Casey's in Andover, and I made it home ok. With fewer trucks on the road, less traffic in general, I can see just fine out a dirty window. But I have trouble at home trying to read anything. My eyes are just plain worn out.

Caucuses

I have an interesting story about the caucusess whicsh I'll share in a bit, but first I want to say that of course I'm disappointed in Iowa Republicans for voting for a pedophile, rapist, thief, fraud, liar, sore loser, and country-destroyer. My political feelings are here.

But this post is not really about how bad Iowans are at judging character, as I believe they're not really all that different from other folks, and everyone is getting a little desperate these days. White folks, anyway, are getting desperate to lock in white privilege, lock out Mexicans, make abortion illegal, and outlaw GBTLQ, which they are still somewhat stuck on. I'm more concerned now with the way Iowa is portrayed in the national media. And, if it's such a bastion of moral Christianity, what's it doing voting for a guy like Trump?

Here's my story: in 1980, I was living in a hovel on East Benton street, near the Armory, in Iowa City. The caucuses were not part of the national news cycle, but Jimmy Carter's boys were determined to make them that way. The Democratic caucus was wide open that year, with Carter, Fred Harris, and Jerry Brown; I was for Brown. But I was the only one for Brown, so they told me to pick one of the others. I picked Harris but rather quickly and ambivalently. Both sides were appealing to me.

But later, I found out that Carter won my precinct. How could that have happened? I voted the deciding vote against him! I was outraged and ended up voting third party in that election and the following one; I refused to support Carter after that.

It was my understanding that Carter had an operative, Hamilton Jordan, who was very smart but somewhat unethical. This Jordan guy was charged with moving in, ensuring that Carter won Iowa, and then showing on the national press circuit that this was a sign that he was the up-and-coming guy and was on a roll. The strategy worked, and from then on, the Iowa caucus was a thing. An important thing. The Hamburg Inn was never the same.

This year, I doubt if Trump fixed the caucuses; he didn't need to. He's got plenty of money that can do that very thing, and he can use it to buy what he wants. Although you can call buying voters "fixing," it's different from what happened to me in Iowa City that year. What bothers me is when the people vote for one person, and another one wins. I have no evidence of that at the moment, although I'm sure it's possible. A thief and a fraud will be that way no matter what he does and where he applies his interest; he's already demonstrated a total lack of morality, as far as I'm concerned.

But can Iowans see it? I'm not sure people are looking at the same picture. Or maybe Biden, in his aging, befuddled representation of the steamroller of the modern "woke" world, makes them so mad that they see what they want.

I find myself thinking Iowa might have been better off if they'd just skipped it altogether. People are blasting Iowa, a if it's a state of cornfed ignormamuses, but I think most states would give you about the same result. And it's not all bad, given that 1) only about half of Repubs voted for Trump, and far fewer will drift toward him than away from him as it becomes clear what a fraud he's been; 2) Iowa doesn't generally pick the winner these days, but rather sets the table with the midwest view of what's available. It's just a starting point, in other words.

These days I'm just about forty minutes from Iowa; we have all the snow, the bitter cold, and the farm country politics. The western part of the state (of Illinois) would for sure have voted just like Iowa. I feel like it's a modern war-time Germany: "Hey people - they're killing children just out of sight!" Not that I have any idea what to do about the Israeli-Hamas war.

Kindle Special

Tall Corn State: An Iowa Story
KINDLE SPECIAL TU-FRI Aug. 22-25
https://www.amazon.com/Tall-Corn-State-Iowa-Story-ebook/dp/B08XQ9612R