Iowa opportunities are yours to take

If something doesn't taste good, you don't have to eat it. If you don't like the state of Iowa, there are 49 others to choose from. It's too bad it took Stephen Bloom, the disgruntled writer, 20 years to figure it out.

When my son was trying to decide where to go to college, he asked to visit Oberlin College in Ohio. I agreed to drive him there, hoping there would be a blizzard or something awful to make the campus as unattractive as possible. I got my wish. It was 13 hours of the worst winter road conditions I've ever encountered.

Early the next morning, after shoveling our car out of a motel lot, we went to the administration building to meet a graduating senior who would be our guide. When asked what his plans were after graduating, excitedly he told us he was a writer and that only minutes earlier he found out he'd been accepted at the Creative Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa. I couldn't believe it. The first person we meet can't wait to get to Iowa City. Unlike Bloom, he was a writer who thought Iowa had something good to offer.

Gary Anderson

Cedar Rapids