Fan Mail Friday

Pretty light week, mail-wise.

My Sunday column offering praise for New Bohemia revitalization efforts along Third Street southeast of downtown drew criticism from reader William H. Dahlsten. I saw a neighborhood with potential, like Des Moines' once dead, now thriving East Village. Dahlsten, instead, sees a taxpayer-funded, flood-threatened "New Sudetenland."

If you pay them, they will come. If you pay them, their wealth will make entrepenuers cater to their tastes. Why is it my problem that local employers are unwilling to pay what it takes to recruit the top 3% out of graduate schools.

It is bad enough that time clockers like yours truly are being taxed for a yuppie playground. What makes it go from larceny to lunacy is taxation for development on a flood plain...

...I hope I live long enough to see the big one. With the water over the ice bar in the Chrome Horse, the Peace Center and all those BMWs will be washed into the big river below Wapello.

Glad I drive a beat up Honda.

I did get a few phone calls on my second column addressing prime time TV viewers who complain about interruptions caused by tornado warnings. I said the warnings, even if they're annoying, are necessary and part of the Midwestern landscape. Live with it.

Most folks disagreed with me. But Jean Vopalka of Belle Plaine took my side.

Vopalka said when warnings pop up for her area, family members gather around the TV to watch the weather and talk. They also get phone calls from friends and relatives in Cedar Rapids and elsewhere, asking if they're all right.

"It's more of a family thing than we have all week long," Vopalka said in a voice mail message. "There's not that much good on television that we're worried about missing."

Twister togetherness. How can anyone complain about that?