Around Des Moines

E for Excellence! Our site has been recognized by Catherine Morgan at The Political Voices of Women. We’re one of her ten blog picks to receive this award. What an honor! Thanks from all the writers at AroundDesMoines!

It’s customary that award recipients pay it forward to ten other worthy bloggers. Even though it’s difficult to narrow it down to just ten, here are our picks for the “E for Excellence” Award, in no particular order.

• Lynda at Essential Estrogen
• Evelyn at Homespun Honolulu
• Bernie at F-f-fifty Something
• Jennifer at Goodness Graciousness
• Genevieve at Prairie Bluestem
• Peter at St. Vincent’s Hospital Darlinghurst Male Nurses
• Pasticcera at Bella Baita View
• Nedra at Spare Change
• Christine at Christine Kane’s Blog
• Mark at Wishful Thinking

March 1 marks the start of Spring in terms of meteorology. The weather in Des Moines will help make it seem like the season is coming. Get outside and clean off the sidewalks, take an inventory of work that needs done, and then go eat.

The Friends of the Forest Avenue Library (1326 Forest Avenue) will hold its annual soul food fundraiser at the library on Saturday from 11:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. (Bus: #5, #3 couple blocks walk)

If a relaxing coffee is more your speed, Mars Cafe (2318 University Avenue) will celebrate its two years of business on Saturday with free coffee throughout the day. There will be drink specials starting at 8:00 p.m. (Bus: #3)

Get ready for spring cleaning at the third annual Living Naturally Expo. It will be held on Saturday, March 1, 2008, at the Animal Learning Center at the Fairgrounds from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Over 60 vendors will offer information and products for such items as cars, food, pet care, child care, and general living. (Bus: #1)

With this being the first weekend of the month, there is a flea market in the 4H building of the fairgrounds. I’ve found hours for Saturday (9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.) but not for Sunday.

Young professionals interested in keeping up their literacy habit can participate in a book discussion at the North Side Library (on East 5th Street) at 2:00 p.m. on Saturday. The book scheduled for discussion is A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah. (Bus: #3, #5 and a few blocks walk)

The state’s girls high school basketball championships are being played through Saturday at Wells Fargo Arena. (Bus: #3 closest, any downtown bus plus a walk)

For all the activities on my calendar for Saturday, there is scant happening on Sunday. Botanical Blues features Saylor Hillsliders. Adult tickets are $4.00 and the performance is from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. The Botanical Center also will have an exhibit of copper garden art sculpture by Ann Allison scattered throughout the conservatory.

A fundraiser for AMOS will be the Stage West performance of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Trial by Jury. The show will be performed in Des Moines this weekend, Friday, February 29th through Sunday, March 2nd. It will be presented in Ames next Thursday and Friday, March 7th and 8th. The Des Moines performance will be held at the First Unitarian Church at 1800 Bell Avenue. The Ames performances will be at the Actors Theater, 120 Abraham Drive. Shows are at 8:00 p.m. Tickets ($20) may be purchased by phone at (515) 279-3658 or at www.iowatix.com.An e-mail was received from a reader with another activity.

Check out the nascent Des Moines Rehabbers Club. It is a group of people who gather once a month for the purpose of preservation, restoration, and maintenance of Des Moines’ “unique built environment.” This month’s meeting will be on Saturday from 9:30 to 11:00 a.m. at 1711 East 8th Street. The topic will be renovation for profit. M.R. Field encourages organizations and performers to send news about their upcoming events to events@AroundDesMoines.com. 

At the Des Moines Public Schools School Board meeting of February 26, 2008, there was considerable board discussion on what a new committee for looking at an in-district diversity plan should look like. Ultimately, instructions were given to Superintendent Dr. Nancy Sebring to draft a committee concept and return to the board with it. People attending diversity forums earlier in February were asked to submit their names if they were interested in serving. In addition, recommendations were made by board members to utilize ethnic and racial school advisory groups to suggest people and for board members themselves to offer names, in addition to members of the public volunteering themselves directly. The consensus was that the committee should be large and diversified, not only by social and racial qualifiers but also by expertise, e.g., in creating processes and in addressing scholastic needs. Board Member Connie Boesen said she had been at a Head Start meeting recently and people were asking her how they could apply to serve on the committee.

Repeated stress was put upon recognition that the committee would have a long, hard task ahead of it, with considerable time commitment needed. People serving on the committee would be expected to serve on subcommittees and to reach out to the larger community for additional input. The school district would have a liaison to the committee but also make available staff familiar with specific aspects of the district, such as busing. Board Member Ginny Strong recommended that input also be included from those currently in a choice school.

There was concern that the scope, purpose, and function of the committee needs to be clearly defined. The board is willing to give the committee a large slate on which to draw creative designs. Ideas might include redrawing school boundaries, identifying school boundaries by regions, adding choice schools, and addressing transportation issues. A timetable for implementation and the cost to maintain new choice schools or other resources were concerns raised by board members and echoed by others on the board. Sebring said implementation would not be immediate so as to avoid disruption for current students. Boesen said she knew of one person who took a child from the east side of Des Moines to the west side for a Montessori school and suggested that regional Montessori schools might be an idea the committee could consider.

Sebring said she would like to have the committee start working after the district’s spring break. The committee would need to assure equity and quality of choice for students and to consider the structure of out-of-district open enrollment. Board President Dick Murphy suggested that people interested in serving on the committee might want to listen to a tape of the board meeting to understand exactly how much work will be involved and the amount of expectation being placed upon the committee.

If you are interested in serving on the committee, contact Phil Roder in DMPS community relations at (515) 242-7603, 901 Walnut Street, Des Moines, IA 50309, or at phillip.roeder@dmps.k12.ia.us.

M.R. Field covers the school board for AroundDesMoines.com. 

The Des Moines Public Schools School Board approved an out-of-district diversity plan at a special meeting on February 26, 2008. There was little discussion and no new issues raised. There were four public speakers, three of whom had spoken at other meetings on their opinions about the plan. One speaker talked about generic technicalities and two spoke about the injustice of including only free- or reduced-price lunch as the definition of minority student. The fourth public speaker was Kevin Dwire who is running for the Iowa House 65th District seat on the Socialist Workers Party ticket. Dwire said segregation is taking place again and that “we know what this re-segregation means because we saw it before, ” i.e., unequal education. He commented that “working people have been beaten back” and “all this hits Blacks the hardest.”

The new diversity plan will operate very similarly to the old desegregation plan. The main difference, on paper, is that the definition of minority student is changing. Open enrollment to any school will still be closed if there is no room in the school. This is in addition to denying open enrollment releases (out of district) or enrollments (into district) based on the balance of minority and non-minority students. March 1 of the spring before the start of the autumn school year start is the deadline for applying for open enrollment. The date for identifying the percentage of minority students in the district will be October 1 of each year. This is the date on which enrollment figures are determined for reporting to the state’s Department of Education.

What the new diversity plan will mean for individual students, families, and the district was a noticeable part of the board discussion. Beth Nigut, general counsel for the district, said that 175 applications for open enrollment for the 2008-2009 school year have been received so far. The number of those applicants that would meet the new definition of minority was a concern for Board Member Jon Narcisse. Because only one student who does not receive subsidized lunches will be permitted to leave for every two students receiving subsidized meals who are released from the district, the percentage of minority students in the 175 applications matters. If two-thirds of the 175 applicants are part of the new minority, then all students may leave the district. However, if only 20 students are in the minority, only 10 non-minority students may leave. Those 10 non-minority students would be selected out of the 155 non-minority applicants by a computer-generated random process. The remaining 145 students would not be permitted to enroll out, unless they move out of the district. There would be similar calculations for determining which and how many students could enroll into the district from their home districts.

Narcisse also asked if non-minority students would be asked to be moved out of their school to a minority-abundent school. Mary Lynne Jones, deputy director of student affairs for DMPS, said it is inaccurate to assume that all requests for open enrollment are from non-minority students. She gave an example of a student who lives on the edge of a district and finds the out-of-district school more convenient to attend.

Board Member Teree Caldwell-Johnson said that she remained uncomfortable with economic status being the only definition of minority. Neither is she comfortable with an in-district definition of minority being significantly different from the out-of-district definition. Board Member Ginny Strong echoed Caldwell-Johnson in saying that she is looking forward the year ahead and a new in-district diversity committee. Board Member Patty Link was unable to attend due to a conflict with events at her children’s school but Board President Dick Murphy read a message from Link after the vote expressing her opinion that plenty had already been said and that she supported the plan. The vote to adopt the diversity plan was 5-1 with Narcisse voting nay.

In other action, the board met in closed session to discuss a personnel matter. The board also approved a $25,000 contract with Hurdles, INC., a business of Kim Carson, a former DMPS student. The Hurdles, INC. child obesity program will be paid for with funding from an Iowa Department of Public Health grant.

M.R. Field covers the school board for AroundDesMoines.com.

Why do you use your car or take the bus? What would you do if you did not have a car or if there were no bus? These are questions being asked at four Transportation Open Houses hosted by the Des Moines Area Metropolitan Planning Organization (DMAMPO). The first meeting was held in Des Moines on February 25, 2008, during another winter snowfall, when about twenty people gathered at the United Way of Central Iowa building on Ninth Street to talk with Dylan Mullenix of the DMAMPO.

Speaking with Mullenix by phone for this article, I asked him why people should care about these meetings. He said that the state and federal funding for the Des Moines Area Transit Authority (DART) must go through the DMAMPO’s Transportation Improvement Program (TIP). The TIP is a four-year plan that is updated annually. It covers roads, bridges, and transit. However, for a DART item to be included in TIP, it must now also be included in the Passenger Transportation Development Plan (PTDP). It is this PTDP that is being discussed at the meetings that are being held in Des Moines, Indianola, and Boone.

In addition to being a prerequisite for government-funded transit services, the PTDP is intended to increase coordination of all passenger transportation services, including inter-city buses, taxis, paratransit, and regularly-scheduled local bus routes. The area covered in the plan includes Boone, Dallas, Jasper, Marion, Madison, Polk, Story, and Warren Counties, excluding the Ames metropolitan area. These counties include the planning region for the DMAMPO and for the Central Iowa Regional Transportation Planning Alliance (CIRTPA).

Another acronym important to this report is the Transportation Advisory Group (TAG). TAG is a subcommittee of the DMAMPO’s Transit Roundtable. The roundtable is composed of representatives from local and state governments, transit organizations, human services groups, and other interested persons. TAG assisted in developing the federally-required plan.

In the region there are approximately 80 organizations offering transportation services, many of them merely providing funding. for physically- or financially-challenged clientele. A survey the TAG conducted revealed that 75% of organizations offering transportation do not do so as their primary service. In addition, if other transportation resources were available, 70% of the organizations providing transportation would stop their passenger services. (Last year I was in a meeting where a service provider said it costs $25 plus travel expenses every time her agency uses its passenger van.) Funding can come through state or federal departments such as the Departments of Health and Human Services, Transportation, and Veterans Affairs.

This is the second year for the PTDP. Like the TIP, it is a four-year plan updated annually. The PTDP is a result of two actions. In 2004, the Federal Interagency Coordinating Council on Access and Mobility was created by executive order and in 2005 legislation was signed with the similar intent of encouraging coordination of transportation services. Although the federal actions were taken with the intention of making better use of limited resources for helping the disabled and the poor, the result is that any service any individual wants provided by public transportation needs to be included in the PTDP.

Highlights of the PTDP for Fiscal Years 2009-2012 include retaining the current level of service through funding for vehicles, facilities, and equipment; increasing marketing and public relations efforts to educate people about transit options; increasing access to jobs; and, increasing access to medical services. Goals for greater job access include adding a service to the Tyson Foods facility in Perry, adding a service from Boone to Jefferson, and increasing the reverse commute from Indianola to Des Moines to five days a week from the current semi-weekly schedule. The recommendation for medical care access is to have a bus run a few times a week from Ames through Des Moines to Iowa City. A mobility manager was also identified as a resource to create. The mobility manager would be a phone-based and/or web-based resource, that could provide information on all transportation options, including by disability or other selective factor, that might provide greater options than those offered to the general public. A phone-based system might be made available through the 211 resource number.

As is common with such meetings, only a few people traveled to the event by bus. One woman asked how there could be better involvement early in the planning process rather than just presenting plans to people near the end of the process. Some people suggested presenting information about the transit options on local cable access; however, in the TAG survey some respondents noted that many of their clients cannot even afford a $35 monthly bus pass. One woman suggested providing information via Hispanic-language radio stations and TAG survey responses suggested having information in languages for refugees. Including projects in the PTDP does not guarantee funding for them.

M.R. Field is editor of Leading Voices: Iowa. 

At a campaign rally in Wisconsin last week, Michelle Obama stated that she is proud of her country for the first time in her adult life. She added that she said that not only because her husband is leading in the contest to be nominated as the presidential candidate of a major political party but also because people are pushing for change. She did not specify what change means to her and there have been a variety of interpretations. Some people claim that it means African Americans will be given more respect and they cite how the federal government responded when the levees broke in New Orleans. Other people accept that Michelle meant political change and they cite the presidents who have been in office since she was 18 years old in 1982, starting with Ronald Reagan. Still other people have decided that change refers to the number of youth who are flocking to the Obama campaign. I interpreted the statement as meaning that Americans have not been working for change over the last quarter of a century.

Many Americans, including a large number of Iowans, have been and are working for change. They may do this as members of the Peace Corps or as Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA). They may do it as elected officials or as appointees to a governmental commission. They may do it as mentors to boys and girls.

People can lead an effort for change or they can participate in some other capacity. We need thinkers who come up with new ideas. We need laborers who can donate a bit of their time. We need bankers to help keep the people working for change from starving. We need managers who can coordinate the various parts. We need politicians to codify policies. Even the critic is important for change as he or she can help people think about why there should or should not be change.

A country is both its government and its people. Change can be a massive event such as World War II or Social Security but it can also be something smaller such as countering urban sprawl or growing organic food. Rep. Wayne Ford (D-Polk County) ran for office because he wanted to change the high rate of incarceration for African Americans in Iowa’s prisons. Katy Flynn started Des Moines for Darfur because nobody else had. Sue Dinsdale switched jobs to push withdrawal from Iraq as a campaign issue. The list of individual Iowans working for change goes on and on.

Often I disagree with individuals about specific changes and have written about the harm some supposedly good changes have wrought. In addition, I oppose change just to have change and oppose maintaining the status quo just because that’s the way things are. Nevertheless, I take pride in the number of Americans I have observed giving of their time, their money, and their lives to bring change to our communities and to our country.

M.R. Field is editor of Leading Voices: Iowa. 

Long before I knew it was made in Iowa, I had a steel snow shovel made by Yeoman & Co. in Monticello, Iowa. I am holding the 04017 Steel Shovel. You’d better be looking for some of those bright yellow (and other colors), made-in-Iowa products in your local hardware store.

Besides being sturdy and durable, one of the best things about my Yo-Ho snow shovel is that I know John Yeoman, the great grandson of the founder; he is one of my chemistry students at Grinnell College, and John’s dad is CEO of Yeoman & Co. Isn’t it fun to live in Iowa? John and I (You’d better give John the credit here.) have done some research together, and he presented it at the Spring 2007 National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in Chicago. You will find John in three pictures from that meeting including the one at Vong’s Thai Kitchen where John is on the left. He also presented a different project at the 7th Annual Howard Hughes Medical Institute Symposium on Saturday February 23rd at Grinnell College.

One of the nice qualities we have in Iowa and the Midwest in general is that we value knowing each other and being connected.

Guest Writer: James G. Lindberg (Jim) is the Purple Wren’s sweetie and is a visiting chemistry professor at Grinnell College and retired from Drake University.

Technorati Tags: Iowa, Des Moines, Central Iowa News, Snow Shovels, Quality Tools, Cutting Tools, Ag Tools, Iowa Manufacturer

Health

Never buy asbestos quarry slaves. They die young.

Those words are attributed to Pliny the Elder (who walked the earth at the same time as Jesus); he was cautioning against buying the slaves used in asbestos mining. Thus, the hazards of asbestos were suspected 2,000 years ago. The 20th century has revealed supporting medical evidence and legislative actions with each decade bringing a more sophisticated understanding.

Asbestos exposure causes disease. How likely a person is to acquire disease as the result of exposure is highly dependent on the amount of exposure. Asbestos-related diseases have been seen particularly in workers with extended exposure to asbestos: shipbuilders, pipe fitters, those in construction and building trades, miners, auto service technicians, and their families. Many asbestos attorneys have gathered convenient lists of the professions most at risk.

You will find a summary of a 2007 peer-reviewed article in Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health that reviews historical exposures to asbestos among skilled craftsmen from 1940-2006. You can find the complete article at Drake and read it free, but it will cost you $35 to access it on-line. It’s dry and technical but it is thorough, and it will tell you who has been exposed and to what extent.

A fairly short article from the Medical College of Wisconsin summarizes the health effects, extensively quoting Medical Professor Richard M. Effros. Here are some other links:

• Asbestos is toxic
• Asbestos causes cancer (human carcinogen)
• Asbestos causes asbestosis
• Asbestosis causes most mesothelioma
• Risk of asbestos related disease is compounded by smoking

The diseases caused by asbestos have a long period of latency. In medicine latency is the time delay between the beginning of a disease and the appearance of symptoms.

The issues of levels, exposure, and consequence are for the medical community, scientists, the Department of Labor, OSHA, EPA, legislators, and attorneys to sort out. I’d rather look at a little of the science.

How can asbestos be harmful?
Earlier we looked at two properties of asbestos that should be revisited when we talk about the potential harm of asbestos: friability (crushability) and steel-like durability. To these two properties we should add low density. Scientists define density as mass per unit of volume, but let’s try for something that gives us a physical picture of the low density of asbestos and how it can behave. Arizona road dust is about three times more dense than asbestos fibers.

With that picture in mind it is not hard to imagine asbestos fibers becoming airborne and not settling, which is what they do when disturbed by drafts, movement, crushing, breaking, foot traffic, sanding, etc. And the final property - the fibers are sharp, spiky little critters; about 1000 fit in the width of a human hair. (Photo 1, Photo 2 search for hair)

Now let’s bring back this idea of respirable - capable of being inhaled. Once airborne these microscopic fibers align themselves as air is breathed and go deep into the lungs.

To see a picture of what an asbestos fiber looks like when it becomes imbedded in the lung, go to an article called Clearing the Air in Harvard Magazine and find “asbestos fibers.”

The body has a pretty good set of trash incinerators with which it can get rid of most anything. One of them, a structure called a macrophage (the body’s own Pac-Man) will normally completely surround and enclose an undesirable material then release some pretty potent chemicals. These chemicals break down the undesirable material into small pieces that are carried away and excreted. Asbestos is problematic because many fibers are too long to be surrounded. The macrophage partially surrounds the fiber, releases its chemicals anyway and then the body’s own chemicals begin to act on normal healthy lung as well and begin to break down healthy lung tissue. The body can accommodate a certain amount of this type of chemical insult, but if there has been too much asbestos taken in, too much lung tissue is destroyed and disease results; that is something I don’t want to think too long or too hard about.

Is there any good news here? Sure. These are all questions open to medical and legal interpretation, but broadly interpreted: 1) It takes a long time to be affected by asbestos-related diseases. 2) One short intense exposure probably won’t harm you. 3) If you don’t disturb asbestos, you will be fine. 4) If you do disturb asbestos, your protection depends on following the recommendations.

In Part 4 we will see how our government tries to protect us as workers and individuals from exposure to asbestos.Related posts: Asbestos and the Equitable Building - Part One: What’s All the Excitement?, Part Two: A Short History of Asbestos

Credits: Photo on flickr by AndyRamdin

Guest Writer: James G. Lindberg (Jim) is the Purple Wren’s sweetie and is a visiting chemistry professor at Grinnell College and retired from Drake University.

Technorati Tags: Iowa, Des Moines, Central Iowa News, Asbestos

When I take my Sunday morning hike to retrieve the Des Moines Register, I am reminded that there is a box labeled “Carrier Tip” on my subscription renewal notice. Invariably I think, “Yeah, I’ve got a tip for you.” The USPS letter carrier comes six days a week, always leaves the mail in the same place, and never asks for extra money.

Editor’s note from the Purple Wren: Sometimes my sweetie is a little cranky on Sunday morning.

Guest Writer: James G. Lindberg (Jim) is the Purple Wren’s sweetie and is a visiting chemistry professor at Grinnell College and retired from Drake University.

Technorati Tags: Iowa, Des Moines, Central Iowa News, Des Moines Register, Home Delivery

(Des Moines, IA) A bit of history was found in this week’s legislative record in the form of SR105. Winnebago Industries was started on February 12, 1958, in Winnebago County. The resolution notes the company’s history, beginning as a travel trailer factory, manufacturing its first motor home in 1966, going public in 1970, and reaching vehicle number 500,000 in its 50th year. Winnebago County is located on the Minnesota border approximately halfway between the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers.

There were several items at the Capitol that I had on my agenda for the week. Last Sunday’s winter storm and the week’s cold weather adjusted my schedule somewhat. Other people were similarly persuaded to forego certain activities and meetings.

Cultural Advocacy Day was on Monday, but I missed it. I also had planned to attend a committee meeting on proposed changes to the state’s open meeting law. At last year’s Cultural Advocacy Day legislative reception I made some interesting contacts. I met Tom Wheeler, who heads Iowa’s film office, and promoted film industry work as a means for small women-owned businesses to generate income. I also met someone on staff at the Vesterheim Museum in Decorah and learned about Norwegian settlers in Iowa. That encounter led me to include Decorah in my eastern Iowa photo series. On Tuesday I made it to the Capitol and planned to listen to Dr. Heather MacDonald, an associate professor at the University of Iowa, talk to the Senate Economic Committee about housing and the economy in the state. Unfortunately, the speaker was not able to attend. On that day there were several tables set up to share information on the Iowa Housing Finance Authority and assorted housing trust funds throughout the state.

In the House Journal for February 19th is the speech given by Major General Ron Dardis on the condition of the Iowa National Guard. Dardis spent much of the speech talking about the stories of individual soldiers. His other big themes were that the National Guard is stretched thin but the military is still preeminent in the world, soldiers serve on the prairie helping with storm response and help with reconstruction in a foreign country, and decisions made about military readiness post-Cold War that ran into the Global War on Terror have increased the demand upon the National Guard.

HF2194 passed the House 100-0. This replaced HF2002 which was withdrawn upon passage of HF2194 which exempts certain retail businesses doing less than $300,000 in sales from the law on minimum wage. Generating more fire on the House floor was HF2212, an act for creating a smokefree air Act. After several amendments and even amendments to amendments, some of which lost on a 50-50 vote, the bill itself passed the House on a vote of 56-44.

Under the Fiscal heading on the left side of the General Assembly’s web site is a comparison of the current local school sales tax option and the proposed statewide tax. The page also has historical per-pupil spending.

M.R. Field is editor of Leading Voices: Iowa.