You think Iowans are nice? Check this out.
Blame Iowa
Posted on January 2, 2012 by riverdaughter
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The Confluence 
I like that guy.
Did he call us wankers when he was eating that cake?
Too funny. They used to have the smartest kids in the country. They probably got to cheat on the Iowa Test.
Iowa still has the best K-12 in the country. I think it’s because, since it’s a small square fly over state it’s ignored by the Feds and the other “very serious people”. Thus they pretty much still do what they have always done with public education.
I’m betting the Iowa test has a lot to do with its reputation in the same way that suburban high schools around Princeton have some stellar SAT scores. The ETS is located in Princeton and our kids have got to be guinea pigs.
Obnoxious does not automatically equal cool or hip; sometimes it just means “asshole.” btw, a requirement for being a hillbilly is a hill.
Ooooo, SNAP!
Have you ever driven through Iowa? The scenery never changes. It’s abnormal.
Perhaps if you don’t get off of I-80. I live one state over and decided one Autumn that we should explore the states around us. We followed the Mississipi to Northern IA, and I’ve never seen so many hills! We stopped at the Seed Saver’s Exchange in Decorah, and had a wonderful time exploring the countryside. They happened to be having art shows that weekend. You followed a map from town to town exploring the art show open houses. (and many WERE houses/art studios)
You’re right, I’ve never been to northern Iowa. My family and I drove through Iowa a couple of times on the way back and forth to California and it seemed mind numbingly uniform. You don’t know what a relief it is to know that Iowans have a place to go.
You comment about hills remind me of the “mountains” we have here in NJ. They’re called the Watchung mountain range and we refer to them as The Mighty Watchungs. So funny, I think there is one of them that actually has enough slope to ski on.
Illinois even has ski slopes!
What about those mighty Sourlands right in your backyard 🙂
Not exactly the Misty Mountains. I went hiking there several years ago. Nothing special, or maybe I didn’t know where I was going.
So, where in Central NJ are you?
I used to live in Hillsborough… corner of Amwell and Longfield.
I know where that is. Do we know each other?
Well it used to be the house with the flowers 🙂 Not sure anymore. I left in late 1999… was there from 1984. I don’t think we know each other… although you may have been on or running for the school board around the time I left.
I was on the board from 1993(4?) to 1996. There is another person on the board now who has the same last name but I don’t know her.
Which is my big problem with Iowa. The people are nice. The state is beautiful. The food is just god awful and there is literally nothing to do there unless you drive to Nebraska. It is definitely a monochromatic state though. It just lacks diversity and therefore is not that interesting.
RD… Definitely did not know you… but you were actually on the board when the infamous River Huston incident occurred. On that day, my wife dropped my son off at school, he then proceded to cut the day… He later indicated that maybe that was the one Diversity Day he should have attended.
I assume that the board must have taken some heat over that incident, I know it was the talk of the town for sure.
Regards
jmac
It’s kind of like Kansas … there’s a lot of boring in the state. And then there’s the Flint Hills. Gorgeous.
My husband took a vacation with several coworkers to the Flint Hills, loved it, and wants to go back.
OMG, YES! I was on the board for the River Huston incident. I came home from work and some reporter from the Courier-News called me and asked me what I thought about education for AIDS prevention and I was like, “Yeah, I think it’s really important that we teach our children to protect themselves against AIDS.” And after he got his little sound bite, he says, “Oh, so you approve of what River Huston did today at the High School for Diversity Day”.
What? I had no idea because I’d just gotten home from work. So he gives me a brief outline, which was bad enough. There was another reporter actually at the scene from the Hillsborough Beacon who got it all down. When I heard all of the details, it was like, WTF?? What the hell was she even doing there? I was really pissed off.
But the Courier-News guy, he got me on the record saying I approved of AIDS education programs. Then I started getting calls from parents.
So, the board decided to hold a special meeting in the Auditorium to accommodate all of the parents and I walked on stage to my seat and faced this wall of klieg lights. I think every news organization in the country was there. That meeting went on for something like 4 hours.
Amazing.
I was so surprised at the number of teachers who had no shame about it. “Oh, these poor kids, what will they do if they can’t put a condom on?” My response was that if they couldn’t read the package instructions, we’ve got quite a different problem in our curriculum. It wasn’t that Huston demonstrated how to put a condom on. She put a condom on a banana– with her mouth.
Are you kidding me?? It was bad enough that Diversity day was mandatory and skipping it would get you an unexcused absence. We still thought it was a worthwhile event. But there were some very religious parents who were already pissed off that the Gay Straight Alliance was participating. And in some respects, I agreed with them. Their religion teaches them that homosexuality is a sin. I happen to think they are wrong and homophobic. But as long as their kids come to school and behave like good citizens, keeping their disdain and religious crap to themselves, I don’t have any issues with fundamentalist parents. But making Diversity Day mandatory and not allowing anyone to opt out and then on top of it having the infamous River Huston incident was just agitating them for no reason. I’m of the opinion that schools should not be in the business of teaching values. Their job is to model good behavior and good citizenship and in this instance, the organizers were arrogant and unwise.
Oh wow, I had almost forgotten about that thing.
Hard to believe you could forget that, although I can certainly understand why you would want to.
But as far as I can see the “If they can’t read the instructions” line you used on them means “you win the debate”.
Not quite grasping that logic there.
They get plenty of instruction on condom use in their health class. My daughter was positively mortified by all of the detail. Why do you need to lead the class in a chant of “Fuck, fuck, fuck”, talk about masturbation fantasies, tell the guys that if they didn’t have a vagina to study they should borrow someone elses and then put a condom on a banana with your mouth? The teachers were whining (oh, god, I hate it when teachers whine) that the children NEEDED this kind of explanatio because it was taught in a way that was accessible to them and how else were they going to learn it? Jeez, with that logic, why don’t we just hand out the Joy of Sex and the Kama Sutra to all freshman and have a discussion of the benefits of each position? How else are they going to learn it? These teachers thought the prurient aspect of AIDS education was necessary and I just don’t agree. You can be taught to put on a condom in class using anatomical models and by reading the package insert, which is what was being done anyways. Why bring in this person who wasn’t a certified health educator of any kind and then proceed to let her turn the class into an X rated movie? Not only that but they were usurping parental authority by making attendance at some of the seminars mandatory. There were several students who signed up late for Diversity Day activities and had no choice but to attend Huston’s talk and some of these kids were not amused.
RD: We are in complete agreement. Sex education good… Sex education that is more titillating than education not so good.
I just remembered something about that presentation. She didn’t put the condom on a banana with her mouth. It was a big purple dildo.
You have to be incredibly stupid to not see a problem with that.
Lots of hills in Iowa.
Shamelessly borrowed this “Thought for the Day” from British radio from Joe Cannon’s. I think it’s quite marvelous.
I’m sinking into my all too routine Iowa Caucus Depression. Why, oh why is this necessary? National Primary anyone?
I wonder when a nominee-wannabe candidate will simply decide and announce ahead of time to boycott the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, and make a point of fighting through those states AND ONLY those states which-if-won would add up to an electoral vote victory?
Such a nominee-wannabe candidate would pick up a lot of support from bitter last-in-line Californians right there, for example.
I have no problem with NH primary. I think/know caucuses are BS. They should be outlawed they are so undemocratic.
I agree about the uselessness of caucuses. Voters should educate themselves and vote in primaries. Whom I vote for is nobodys business and I need not have to defend my choice amongst my neighbors. The demographics of these small states, IO, NH, and SC have little in common with the more urban industrialized states, so I recommend a mix of primaries in January before candidates’ campaign money dries up. At least Florida voters hold their primary now in January. The caucus system should be put out of business and then thankfully this offensive video guy would then have to sth up.
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really, it is not our fault that is the way Iowa is seen. He should be making a video yelling at his elders in the state who have carefully honed that image and sold it to the rest of us.
Semper fi to this girl protesting in Iowa!
A 14-Year-Old Occupier Gets Arrested in Iowa—and Her Dad Approves