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So, another episode in a not-at-all regular, but sometimes recurring series I like to call "an outsider's guide to insider Iowa City"

There's this constant tension between the burnt out hippie faction and the doctor/lawyer faction of Iowa City residents. The Dr/Lawyer folks need to feel more important, and so want Iowa City to be this mini-Chicago (the number of former Chicago residents probably plays in here) with skyscrapers, sidewalk bistros selling $50 plates with 3 bites of foofy food on them, etc. The burnt out hippies want Iowa City to be this hippie mecca, with open arms to homeless folks, a 'living wage,' etc.

For years, the hippies were in control, and limited growth to the extent that the needed growth all shifted to Coralville...the mall, the Iowa River Landing, etc. Some doctors and lawyers gave up and went to CV, but some fought back and took control of the council. They opened arms and pocketbooks to one big developer, along with folks like Kaeding and Tim Dwight to develop downtown Iowa City.

A perfect example of this tension is the Chauncey development. This site is near the Police Station, City Hall, Rec center, and a parking ramp. It's also near the hippie food store. The hippie food store sits in a flood plain, so they can't do much updating without spending a mint to bring it up out of the flood plain, so they were looking for a new downtown location. This site was slated for re-development, it formerly held a sporting goods store that became the 'bike library', a hippie project where people would donate bikes, volunteers would fix them up, and basically 'give' them out to people.

The final submissions contained I think 2 or 3 projects that had space for the hippie food store, and one that didn't...from this one developer that's been doing everything in downtown...and using TIF money to do it. Well, the developer's project won...and the hippies freaked out, suing the city, suing the developer, suing everyone. The hippie food store was offered an 'olive branch' in a space in the old Sycamore mall...that was left open when the only relevant store left moved to Coralville and the IRL. But that spot didn't really work for the hippie food store, since they wanted to be downtown, so they passed, and a different hippie food-ish store opened there.

In last night's elections, a 'core of 4', including the hippie-sympathetic lawyer who sued everyone over this development, was elected to the city council.

So, you can all expect all of the development in Johnson County to be in Coralville and North Liberty once again.
 
And I just noticed this

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We had the high school girls tennis team banquet last night. What a neat group of girls. The coach had to chide the team for letting their cumulative grade point slip from 4.02 last year to 4.01 this year. Not bad when you consider that there are 62 girls on the team. I know I shouldn't brag about my kids but I'm pretty proud of this. Three years ago it seems like she could barely walk without tripping over her own feet. Now she has a very real chance of playing varsity as a Sophomore on a pretty good tennis team. #sorry,prouddad
 
jcyclonee said:
We had the high school girls tennis team banquet last night. What a neat group of girls. The coach had to chide the team for letting their cumulative grade point slip from 4.02 last year to 4.01 this year. Not bad when you consider that there are 62 girls on the team. I know I shouldn't brag about my kids but I'm pretty proud of this. Three years ago it seems like she could barely walk without tripping over her own feet. Now she has a very real chance of playing varsity as a Sophomore on a pretty good tennis team. #sorry,prouddad
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That's awesome. And as far as the tripping over her own feet, some of us still have that problem in our thirties.
 
cstrunk said:
Oh and I hate GPA systems that go over 4.0.
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Just like in HS with A.P. classes. That along with a different idea of valedictorian and salutatorian is now a couple of CR high schools end up with 25%+ of each graduating class falling into one of those categories.
 
wxman1 said:
Just like in HS with A.P. classes. That along with a different idea of valedictorian and salutatorian is now a couple of CR high schools end up with 25%+ of each graduating class falling into one of those categories.
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I've never understood the whole over 4.0 thing. At my high school it was another girl and I that both ended up with 4.0s and they made me the valedictorian because I had the higher ACT. Probably not the fairest way to do things, but I didn't complain.
 
My random question for the morning: When you say "home", are you referring to your current residence, where your parents are, where you grew up, some place that is special to you, all of the above? At what point did your definition change?

I was remembering a convo with my wife a few years back. We were heading back to my hometown for a funeral and I had one of those moments when I crested a hill, saw the open farmland and just let my worries go. I casually muttered 'It's nice coming home". Well, my wife went off on me about how she considers home to be where we (her,me, little Cooler) live.

It seemed like a really trivial argument at the time, but I've never forgotten that moment. My wife moved around a lot and put a lot more value in the idea of "home". I guess I never placed that great of a significance on the word since my parents have been in the same town my entire life. Heck, I rarely go back there since my parents are retired and make several trips to KC a year.

Anyhoo, just curious to some other opinions.
 
CloneFan4 said:
I've never understood the whole over 4.0 thing. At my high school it was another girl and I that both ended up with 4.0s and they made me the valedictorian because I had the higher ACT. Probably not the fairest way to do things, but I didn't complain.
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they did the over 4.0 thing at DH's high school. Think like wxman said, it was to reward those who took and did well in AP classes. They had 5-7 who ended up with a GPA over 4.0
 
coolerifyoudid said:
My random question for the morning: When you say "home", are you referring to your current residence, where your parents are, where you grew up, some place that is special to you, all of the above? At what point did your definition change?

I was remembering a convo with my wife a few years back. We were heading back to my hometown for a funeral and I had one of those moments when I crested a hill, saw the open farmland and just let my worries go. I casually muttered 'It's nice coming home". Well, my wife went off on me about how she considers home to be where we (her,me, little Cooler) live.

It seemed like a really trivial argument at the time, but I've never forgotten that moment. My wife moved around a lot and put a lot more value in the idea of "home". I guess I never placed that great of a significance on the word since my parents have been in the same town my entire life. Heck, I rarely go back there since my parents are retired and make several trips to KC a year.

Anyhoo, just curious to some other opinions.
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after we got up here after college, I noticed that us referring to "home" didn't always mean "our parents'" anymore. We still go back and forth, but I think it's probably 60% when we say "home" (not just, hey I'm heading home from work type of thing), we mean our house here.
 
I considered my mom's place of residence home. Maybe if I lived in Iowa then it would be different, but in my current apartment in the Twin Cities, I view it as a temporary living situation.
 
cstrunk said:
Oh and I hate GPA systems that go over 4.0.
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It is kind of goofy. However, it does give the kids that are willing to take the more difficult classes a small reward. No system is totally fair unless everybody takes the exact same classes. Anyway, whether the GPA is 4.01 or 3.81, it's still a pretty good accomplishment for that size of team.
 
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