"Thinking of Iowa"

Tom Swick, travel writer for the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, notes in his blog that news of the flood triggered memories of a trip to Iowa:

"I skipped through Cedar Rapids but stopped in Iowa City, which quickly became one of my favorite college towns, with one of my favorite independent bookstores, Prairie Lights. I assume the bookstore's OK, but I heard about the people forming a chain to move books out of the first floor of the university library, where I spent a quiet June afternoon just three summers ago.

Everywhere I went in Iowa, on both my trips, people lived up to their reputation as friendly, considerate, decent - the kind of folks you'd like to have as neighbors. I always thought that if foreigners really wanted to learn about this country, they should visit Iowa."

"The earth silvers like a river we're in"

The American Public Media show "Weekend America" this weekend features an account of the flood and reflections on nature by James Galvin, poet and faculty member at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, including his poem "Testimony":

You can't step into the same
River even once,
And why would you want to? You can't
Lie down without turning your back
On someone. The sun slips
Like butter in a pan.

The eastern sky arrives
On the back stoop in its dark
Suit. It draws itself up
Full height to present its double
Rainbow like an armful of flowers.
Thank you, they're lovely.

I step outside where the wind
Lifts my hair and it's just
Beginning to rain in the sun,
And the earth silvers like a river
We're in, I swear to God,
And you can't step out of a river

Either. Not once.

"Neighbor helping neighbor"

UI alumnus, Iowa City resident, and Wall Street Journal editor-at-large Michael Judge published a column about the eastern Iowa floods in the Journal's June 17 edition. He wrote:

"Even as we mourn, we prepare for the flood's aftermath and continue to salvage what we can. Among the thousands of stories of neighbor helping neighbor, volunteers sandbagging night and day to protect property that belongs to others, perhaps the most inspiring was the effort made to save the University of Iowa and its classrooms, libraries and museums.

Last week and through the weekend, hundreds of volunteers gathered on campus to reinforce the in some places 10-feet high sandbag walls erected to hold back the Iowa River. Students, teachers and townspeople formed a human chain to relay books from the basement and lower floors of the UI Main Library to higher floors, moving thousands of titles, one-of-a-kind dissertations and rare books out of harm's way."