Now I understand

Now I understand what my parents were feeling when they would talk about Kennedy's assassination. They would say, "I'll never forget what I was doing when I heard Kennedy had been shot."

For me, 9-11 is one such moment. I'll never forget when I first heard about it. I had just arrived at work around 10 to 8 Iowa time, and a co-worker said a plane had just hit the World Trade Center. We happened to have a satellite based training system in our conference room, and it had Bloomberg on it, so we turned that up and watched for the next hour, transfixed by events.

I remember thinking and talking about how it was such a freak accident. We were all pretty complacent, and could not even conceive of being attacked. In fact, until the second plane hit, we didn't even have an inkling that it was an attack. And we questioned it then. That tells you something about how America felt about itself at the time.

I remember feeling sad later that day, when I realized what had happened. The terrorists had used our own planes, and our own freedoms, against us as a weapon.

They had entered our country, trained as pilots, bought plane tickets, then hijacked the planes and turned them into weapons. I felt sad that our freedoms had been perverted in such a way.

Until 9-11 I didn't really understand my parents. Now I understand them better.

Can Iowa Catch A Break?

Here are some of the challenges that have faced our state in the past year:

1) a winter with near record high snowfalls, and
2) a flood that damaged hundreds of city blocks in Cedar Rapids, and
3) widespread flooding that damaged crops throughout the state
4) high oil prices that doubled and in some cases tripled fertilizer and other costs for farmers

So, guess what?

Tonight's low temperature is predicted to be nearly freezing.

This is at least four weeks early, and is likely to stunt crops that are already expected to be later than normal at reaching maturity.

Can we catch a break?