Thank God for “Nosey” Iowans

In the rural Iowa farm community where I was raised, there’s no such thing as “privacy”; the neighbors know when husband and wife are fighting; they know when the daughter comes home past curfew and they know where every toddler belongs, should he wander away from home. It used to bother me to think that nothing escapes the neighbors. But, after reading about what happened in New York City this week, I’m glad I’m surrounded by helpful, “nosey” Iowans.

In case you haven’t heard about it, a homeless man ran to the aid of a woman who was being mugged. This “Good Samaritan” was stabbed by the mugger, and a brief chase ensued. The “Good Samaritan”, identified as Hugo Tale-Yax, only made it a few steps before crumbling to the sidewalk. While he lay there bleeding to death, 25 New Yorkers walked by. The whole thing was captured on security videotape.

One guy took cell phone pictures of the dying man, then walked away. Another stopped to move him, saw a pool of blood, then scurried away. No one called. No one helped. Two hours later, Hugo was dead. Why? Apparently, no one thought it was “any of their business” to interfere. Equally tragic, it’s not an isolated incident in big cities. These types of crimes, witnessed by crowds who don’t come to the aid of the victim, have happened before.

Doctors, sociologists (and smart people with a lot of letters behind their names) call it “Bystander Syndrome” http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4158880n. It’s apparently a “group think” behavior that immobilizes people, detaches them from the injured person and all sense of human decency. I say it wouldn’t happen here in Iowa; at least, it wouldn’t happen in my home town.

Maybe it’s our agrarian roots that have instilled those timeless values in us, but here in Iowa, we have farmers who work late into the night to help a widow harvest her late husband’s corn crop, or plow out long lanes of snow for stranded school buses. We have strangers who pull an injured teen from a burning car: http://www.ktiv.com/global/story.asp?s=11631392 and construction workers who lower themselves into a raging river to rescue a drowning woman: http://tinyurl.com/28h3g6c. The list goes on and on.

But it’s not just those types of heroics that make me glad I live here. It’s the helpful, honest, straight-shooting, polite, “please with a pickle on top” nature of people who aren’t numbed by living in a crowded city that’s populated with folks who need invisible “space” and don’t make eye contact. When you stroll in downtown Des Moines (the state’s largest city), you can smile at someone and they smile back. You can trip on the sidewalk and someone’s Grandma stops by to see if you’re okay. You can ask for directions at just about any gas station (unless you’re a guy…but that’s another column!).

Yes, Iowans are “nosey”. And we should all thank our lucky stars for that one.

Written by Laurie Johns
Laurie Johns is Public Relations Manager for the Iowa Farm Bureau.

Where Earth Day is everyday

This year’s Earth Day has come and gone. The celebrations, the speeches, the tree plantings and the trash pickups are all over and now most of us in Iowa and around the country have moved on to other spring events, like Mother’s Day and graduations.

But not everybody. On Earth Day, and on every other day of the year, Iowa farmers are voluntarily taking steps to improve the state’s environment. They plant buffer strips to keep streams running clean and clear. They seed grass waterways in fields to stop soil erosion. And they use high-tech testing to determine optimum fertilizer applications, so crops utilize all of the nutrients instead of allowing them to run into streams.

It’s paying off. In his annual update on Iowa’s environment, Department of Natural Resources director Richard Leopold noted that Iowa’s water quality has steadily improved over the past three years thanks, in part, to efforts by farmers and others. There is still room to improve, but Leopold noted that “we are seeing an upward tick.” He also noted that lakes in Iowa are clearer than they have been in several years and that fishing in Iowa has never been better.

There are many examples of farmers working every day to improve the environment in their communities. One is the Hewitt Creek watershed, which is in northeast Iowa and encompasses the famous Field of Dreams near Dyersville. After tests showed problems a few years ago, farmers there, with help from the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation and state programs, voluntarily implemented a series of practices to improve water quality.

The process takes time, but testing has shown significant progress since the Hewitt Creek project was launched. The data shows annual sediment delivery into the watershed’s creeks dropped by more than 4,000 tons and phosphorus delivery declined more than 5,000 pounds per year. That has fostered growth in the populations of macro invertebrates, which are the building blocks for fish and wildlife.

All of the statistical evidence is great. Maybe even better are the signs of a healthier watershed that go beyond the charts and graphs.

A week or so ago, John Rahe noticed a majestic eagle perched on the banks of a creek near his farm. A visit by an eagle at this time of year in the Hewitt Creek area, shows that fish—good-sized fish—are swimming in the creek and indicates that water quality has improved, Rahe figures. “I’ve seen eagles there before, but usually they are gone by this time of year,” he said. “There must be fish in the creek to keep the eagles here.”

Rahe knows that cleaner water is better. And, like a whole lot of Iowa farmers, he’s doing something every day of the year to make that a reality.

Written by Dirck Steimel
Dirck is the news services manager for Iowa Farm Bureau.