See videos of both pro- and anti- health care rallies after the jump.

Susan Moore, a supporter of health care reform legislation, got into a shouting match with a tea party protester who declined to give his name. Moore is a cancer survivor who believes the recently passed health care reform legislation needs to be “tweaked.”

Supporters of health care reform gather in downtown Iowa City, and promise not to engage with the tea partiers when they come into contact with them later in the day.

Roger Vester, a pastor at New Life Baptist Church in Davenport, discussing why he opposes health care reform legislation, including his belief that it will “provide for federal funding for killing babies.”

Brad Silken, who supports health care reform, talks about his experience at President Obama’s speech and the next steps for progressives.

Tea party organizer Randy Smith brought a crew from Des Moines to protest President Obama’s health care speech, which he calls a “Trojan Horse.”

Johnston is also no stranger to remodeling. He has written an award-winning book: “Green Remodeling: Changing the World One Room at a Time” (2005). He was also named one of Remodeling Magazine’s Top 50 Contractors.

Johnston will present his ideas in a seminar, “Green From the Ground Up: Green Building Education for Residential Contractors,” at Grinnell College on Thursday, May 8.

He spoke with the Iowa Independent last week about how green practices are being mainstreamed into the building industry.

Iowa Independent: Oakland activist Van Jones has said that “In the future there won’t be any such thing called ‘green building,’ it will just be called building. And there won’t be green technology, it will just be the way we do things.” Do you agree?

David Johnston: “Exactly. Van is a good friend of mine; I know him well.

In the green building world, in the last five years, we’ve seen green building hit the tipping point and beyond.

The National Association of Home Builders and their market research division have declared green building is becoming mainstream. A few years ago the president of the NAHB said that if you’re not building green in the next decade then you probably won’t be in the building industry, and I think that’s where we are right now.

And the same thing with renewable, the same thing with most green technologies as we call them today. Solar is becoming more and more common. We will see more and more homes have some solar component to them — so Van is absolutely right.

We’re at a point of no return socially and globally, meaning that we’re never going to have $50 barrels of oil again; we’re not growing any more old-growth trees; we’re using more and more synthetic materials for buildings in particular but in every aspect of our lives, and those are the drivers for green building.

We’re not making more water; we’re going to run into water crises literally all over the planet. We’re getting food riots across the planet right now because we’re turning corn into fuel in Iowa.

We need to stop burning our food and start feeding the poor. All of these drivers are leading towards the inevitable, and I’m looking at the series of technologies in my work that are inevitable: social, cultural and technological transformations. Green buildings are the tip of that iceberg.

Solar is another inevitability because we are the only species on the planet that does not live on its income lives, on its stored capital. The stored capital are the dead dinosaurs that we burn, the fossil fuels. Solar and wind are absolutely inevitable.

I’m working with a number of developers who are looking into the crystal ball of their own future and seeing that they need to be building far more sustainable communities than they have ever considered in the past whether they be wind-powered where possible … just place after place industry after industry we’re seeing the conversions starting to happen in a dramatic fashion.

I’m working on a sustainable dairy right now in Idaho.”

II: In Iowa City I noticed a house in my old neighborhood that had been torn down and rebuilt completely. The new building has solar panels and other environmentally friendly features. Is that the way to do it? Should we dump all the old, inefficient homes and start over?

DJ: “One of the greenest things we do in the housing industry is remodel existing buildings. There are lots of considerations that go into it. Was it an appropriate building for that place? Was it going to be harder to insulate it than you’d ever get a return from?

Was there already existing mold to the point where remediation becomes challenging and can absolutely compromise the livability of the home? Mold is one of our biggest issues today that we’re facing countrywide. It’s almost an epidemic. Some black mold is nontoxic, and some will kill you, and it’s hard to know which is which until it’s analyzed.

So there are a lot of considerations in exactly the situation you’re talking about. It’s hard to say.

Boulder, Colorado, where I live is looking at a new law that would make it virtually impossible to do what you’re talking about, which is commonly known as a “scrape-off.”

The embodied energy in an existing building, if it’s at all possible to re-use that building, then we, in the long term, are not requiring not much more fossil fuel to modify it to contemporary purposes. But a lot of developers see a home as a vacant lot waiting to razed, and that to me is a tremendous waste of resources on all levels.”

II: Can you tell me about your book “Green from the Ground Up: A Builder’s Guide to Sustainable, Healthy, and Energy-efficient Construction”?

DJ: “I look at the carbon situation as a huge driver on the planet. I’m talking about climate change.

There are those who have done studies that show that the building industry represents 48 percent of the carbon that’s being generated in the atmosphere. It’s considerably higher than transportation even. The building industry has to take the lead in transforming itself into a much more carbon-friendly industry, and this mainstreaming of green building that I’m talking about is a step in that direction, but it’s merely a step.

What I’m really looking at are zero-energy homes that do not require a variety of fossil fuels to allow them to function to provide comfort for us. That’s the only reason we live in homes is comfort. Otherwise we’d live outside if we could.

The book is literally a step-by-step process from thinking the very first thought about houses as an architect, as a builder and as a homeowner to the building science which we’ve lost touch with.

In other words, when we invented air conditioning we didn’t realize that we were antagonizing nature and requiring a ton of fossil fuels per year per house or more.

The building science is: how water moves, how air moves and how the building actually functions because it does function as a system.

So the book is predicated on that assumption that the house is a system and we need to understand the system if we’re going to impact it.

To answer your question, it might, in the long run, be efficient to tear down and build a very energy-efficient solar energy home.

The book goes step-by-step through every sequence of construction from foundations, framing roofing, windows, electrics, plumbing, all of that step-by-step. What do you do. What are the considerations. What are the components that each stage or sub-contractor represents.

In the overall system that’s being constructed and the endnotes of the book literally are a synopsis of the book saying if you do all of these things it will get you to a zero-energy home. That is the target of opportunity in our industry today: getting ourselves into increasingly close to zero-energy homes.”

II: How do you make green technology and building techniques accessible for everyone? Has green become an economic wedge where those with the means are able to build sustainably and the rest of us are stuck in moldy, drafty, inefficient dwellings?

DJ: “There are two answers to that question. One, there’s an awful lot of green affordable housing being built today and so it’s not elitist in that regard at all.

The industry, from the city standpoint or the affordable housing developers standpoint or the builders themselves, are working on both sides: the upper crust of green building in 6,000-square-foot McMansions and to the affordable housing multi-family communities that are being developed.

I think there’s a lot of activity in the affordable housing arena, so I don’t think there’s necessarily a divide per se.

Having said that, where I perceive the divide is, for example, there are primarily Spanish-speaking Hispanic workers all over the country and no blueprints are ever written in Spanish. No green guidelines that I know of are in Spanish, and what we need to be doing right now is retrofitting 123 million homes in this country.

We can’t outsource those jobs, and what we need to do is train the economically challenged folks in this country to do this kind of energy retrofit (and that’s where Van Jones and I are cohorts in crime).

What’s the best way to get nonviolent prisoners back to work? What’s the best way to get high school dropouts back to work? What’s the best way to do economic redevelopment in city centers?

Money spent on energy goes right back to Saudi Arabia or Houston or someplace. It’s not staying in the community. And if we can create a job ecosystem that improves the quality of life in the inner cities and rural areas where jobs are disappearing as well then we start to create a new economy.

What we need in this country is a new economic paradigm that brings everyone along in this green transition, this sustainable transition, that we’re in the middle of whether people acknowledge it or not.

It’s happening, and it’s irreversible, and we want everyone to benefit from that.”

The Minnesota author was in Iowa City on Monday to read from her new book, “The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir.”Background: A so-called “Secret War” was being waged by the CIA in Laos and Cambodia during the more public Vietnam War. In 1975, when the U.S. withdrew its military forces from Vietnam, the “Secret War” in Laos was also abandoned.

Why the secret? In 1962, a Geneva Accord was signed that forbade U.S. troop presence in Laos. To circumvent the agreement, the CIA was ordered to train and support an army of people known as the Hmong.

The secret Hmong army in Laos has since been largely forgotten by the U.S. government, but more than 100,000 Hmong people were killed. Their systematic persecution continues today in Laos.

Originally they lived in the mountainous jungles of Laos, Vietnam and Thailand. After the war, many fled to refugee camps and eventually made their way to the U.S., France and Australia.

Today about half of Hmong immigrants in the U.S. live in the Midwest.

Before Kao Kalia Yang was born, her family crossed the Mekong River to the Ban Vinai Refugee Camp. At age 6, Yang and her immediate family immigrated to St. Paul, Minn.

By age 12, Yang was teaching English as a second language to adults. She continues to teach at colleges and universities. With her mother and sister, she runs a writing and translation business, Words Wanted, in St. Paul.

“The Latehomecomer” started as a series of love letters to her grandmother, who was the family leader and a shamanistic healer. Her spirit permeates much of Yang’s writing.

The book is filled with her family’s stories, scenes from the refugee camp where she was born, the move to America and growing up in Minnesota.

She said she began her life in English “on the page,” meaning that her first storytelling wasn’t spoken, but written.

In this video, Yang talks about her grandmother and writing her first book:

Yang was at Prairie Lights Bookstore for a reading on Monday night. Her book is available from Coffee House Press.

Seventy-five years ago, corn was fetching less than 10 cents a bushel and pork was at three cents a pound. A migrant class of American workers was being created. These were the desperate times of the 1930s known as the Great Depression.

And just like today, mortgage foreclosures were taking land and homes away from citizens.In Iowa, angry mobs violently fought judicial decisions that foreclosed their farms. Just 55 days after President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s inauguration, a group of farmers in northwest Iowa angrily shook the foundations of civilized law when they seized Plymouth County District Judge Charles Bradley from his courtroom, dragged him outside to the courthouse lawn and punched, kicked and slapped him.

The mob, part of the Farmer’s Holiday Association, had been organized the previous year to protest the dire financial situation that was ruining family farms throughout the nation. At their first meeting on May 3, 1932, some 3,000 farmers met to form the bloc.

The “holiday” officially called for a farmer’s strike of withholding produce for sale. They sang:

  Let’s call a Farmers’ Holiday
  A Holiday let’s hold
  We’ll eat our wheat and ham and eggs
  And let them eat their gold.

The association’s leader, Milo Reno, called the strike “the last stand of American agriculture in defense of their rights and their homes.” He claimed the United States had found itself in “the most amazing and confounding situation in the history of the world — people starving in a land with an abundance of food; naked, because of a surplus of clothing; people bankrupt in the richest nation in the world.”

Roads were blocked and fresh milk dumped into ditches during 1932′s infamous “Cow Wars” (also known as the “Milk Wars”) outside Sioux City and Council Bluffs.

In September of that year, the Farmer’s Holiday movement prescribed actions in Tipton to block veterinarians from diagnosing bovine tuberculosis and condemning animals.

With a foreclosure moratorium law in February 1933, the Iowa Legislature attempted to calm violence in rural Iowa by stopping banks from foreclosing on farms unable to cover their mortgages.

The constitutionality of that law was to be challenged in Judge Bradley’s court in Le Mars on that day, April 27, 1933. But before he could hear any arguments, he was charged by more than 100 men in his courtroom.

According to accounts from “A Judge and a Rope” (by George Mills, 1994), “A History of Iowa” (by Leland L. Sage, 1979) and the Chicago Tribune (in the days following the event), Bradley was dragged from the Plymouth County courthouse and refused repeated demands to ignore foreclosure edicts. He was surrounded by an angry and violent mob.

In that public square, he was struck in the face and fell to his knees. The crowd demanded that he agree to stop signing foreclosures, but he refused to disobey his office.

Roughly, the judge was hauled by the mob into the back of a truck and blindfolded. The crowd would be thinned by a change of locale, but unfortunately for the judge, the terror was multiplied.

Dumped a half-mile outside of town, he had a noose placed around his neck. The rope was tossed over an electric light pole, tightened and for an instant the judge was lifted off the ground by his neck.

Again he was asked not to sign foreclosures on farms and this time when he refused his pants were removed, smeared with grease and filled with dirt and gravel.

The 54-year-old judge was crowned with a greasy hubcap and told to get on his knees and pray. Aloud he prayed, “Oh, Lord, I pray thee, do justice to all men.”

Miraculously, this brave prayer seemed to break the will of the mob, and some of the masked men who held the rope got in a car and drove away.

While walking back to town, he was picked up by Rev. J.J. Depree who drove the judge the rest of the way back to town. Judge Charles Bradley escaped with only minor injuries and the need for a wash-up and a change of clothes.

Dr. Thomas Starzl, son of Le Mars Globe Post editor Roman Starzl, was only 7 years old at the time of the almost-lynching. His father was a correspondent for the Chicago Tribune and wrote front-page accounts of the incident for the Trib.

In recalling the incident, Starzl told the Iowa Independent:

“The farmers were on a rampage because they couldn’t get properly paid for milk and for their meat from pigs they were raising, so they had gone on a rampage … They were pouring all their milk out and they had vigilantes on all the roads around Le Mars and any scabs trying to break through and sell the milk had to be roughed up.”

After the incident, Gov. Clyde Herring sent hundreds of troops to quell the farm strikes in Le Mars and Denison. Martial law was imposed in several counties until May 17, only five days after the enactment of the New Deal farm bill, the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA). Considered the first farm bill, the AAA paid farmers a subsidy to leave their fields empty.

Starzl again:

“There was a huge National Guard encampment and the city was put under martial law. I remember that extremely distinctly because I had toy soldiers and there were these real soldiers running around with real guns. I was 7 years old.

What was going on was mortgage closings just the same as going on today and ruthless people were coming along buying up these farms for pennies.

This was a dangerous time in this country. It was a dangerous time in Le Mars because it was the center of a real revolt … It was a real uprising.”

Today, the crossroads where Judge Bradley was brutalized is now a housing addition named in his honor by the real estate developer.

Starzl is widely regarded as a pioneer in the field of organ transplantation. The University of Pittsburgh has named the Thomas Starzl Transplantation Institute in his honor and he remains one of the most cited physicians in the world. Now retired, he lives in Pittsburgh, Pa.

Nuclear proliferation and disarmament; United Nations strategy and planning; Middle East and Asian security; emergent powers; U.S. security; all of it. Ready for download and available from one policy research think-tank that is nonpartisan and stresses a multilateral approach to issues.

And what if this public policy resource with a world-wide reach was an independent foundation located not in the D.C. beltway but in the eastern Iowa river-town of Muscatine?The Stanley Foundation (TSF), Muscatine’s internationally focused think-tank, stresses a multi-lateral approach to its research. For over fifty years, the group has been envisioning a peaceful future through realistic parameters and wide-ranging voices. Even more importantly, they are committed to promoting education of both the public through media outreach and the policymakers through conferences, collaboration and advising.

The private-operating foundation has been located in Muscatine, Ia. since 1956, when it was founded by engineer C. Maxwell Stanley and his wife, Elizabeth. They don’t offer grants and subsist entirely on an endowment fund that provides an annual budget of about $5.5 million.

Stanley’s son, Richard, has run the foundation since his father’s death in 1984. The Stanley family runs several other foundations and was in the news recently when David Stanley, a former state legislator, was accused of raiding E & M Charities to the tune of $24 million to fund his New Hope Foundation. A lawsuit brought by other Stanley family members was settled out of court in January.

Describing their mission as active global citizenship and TSF has influenced foreign policy decision-making through media production and collaboration with a range of groups.

TSF director of policy analysis and dialog Dr. Michael R. Kraig was in Iowa City last week to moderate a panel on “Civil Society and Terrorism” at the University of Iowa Provost’s Forum on International Affairs. He sat down for a video interview with the Iowa Independent where he explained his views on three different types of terrorism: local, state-sponsored, and transnational.

Kraig believes there’s a gap between “what the public believes our foreign policy should look like in broad terms and the specifics of what our legislators are doing on capitol hill.”

He also talked about the some of the foundation’s programming and mission:

From 1980 to 2004, TSF produced “Common Ground,” a radio program that aired on over 200 NPR stations. They still produce radio documentaries, but have also started to do multi-media work.

A radio documentary called “Brazil Rising” will be released in June as part of their project “Rising Powers: The New Global Reality.”

According to Keith Porter, who is TSF’s director of communication and outreach, “Rising Powers” is designed to “spark discussion among Americans about the way the world order is changing and what it means for the United States.” TSF partners with KQED on radio projects. They will launch a “Rising Powers” website that will grow as more countries are profiled. India and Turkey are in line for coverage after Brazil.

Last year, TSF’s series of dialogues called “Bridging the Foreign Policy Divide” brought together emergent liberal and conservative thinkers. In one pairing, unpaid advisers for Senators McCain and Obama co-wrote “The Next Intervention,” an editorial in the Washington Post. A longer version of their collaboration, “America and the Use of Force: Sources of Legitimacy,” was collected with nine other liberal/conservative conversations in a book. The series was described as “an alternative to the distortions and oversimplifications of today’s polarizing political environment” and largely succeeded in painting otherwise polemical arguments into workable solutions.

Porter said that the detailed policy work usually comes first and is followed by public outreach and a media campaign. Currently, the foundation is conducting a U.S. nuclear policy review to be ready for the next president’s administration. When the policy plan and report is complete, TSF will produce information to be disseminated through media channels, public speakers, citizen groups and other communications.

Another project will form a basis for a northeast Asian security group where none currently exists. Porter said, “There is no permanent security alliance like ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations).” So TSF will “take what happening in the Six-Party Talks and turn that into a regional association like ASEAN.” He said this project is typical of the TSF mission of “trying to get countries to talk to each other [through] multilateral solutions.”

Porter said he’d like to see:

“American leaders and American media take our global connections more seriously. People who work on foreign policy issues all the time can look at main street in Anytown USA and find a dozen connections between that and the rest of the world …  that doesn’t get reflected very often in what our political leaders tell us. It doesn’t get reflected very often in what we see in the media and I think, regardless of that, its starting to make an impression on average Americans.

People are beginning to see how their fates are connected to the rest of the world … there is a direct one-to-one connection between U.S. national security and global security … we ought to be doing everything we can around the world to promote security, stability, better lives for people and, beyond being just the right thing to do, it will have good, positive influence and effects on us.

I do see recognition of that among people. I don’t see it necessarily among political leaders. I don’t necessarily see it among the media but its an idea that the public just grasps immediately. I find that encouraging.”

He summarized the Stanley Foundation mission: “We really believe that both the policy community and the public have to be engaged in these issues to bring about the change that we want in the world.”

TSF distributes a monthly e-mail newsletter, “think.” about their current program work. They also publish a quarterly magazine “Courier” that has TSF papers and policy analysis. Both are available at the Stanley Foundation website.

Nuclear proliferation and disarmament; United Nations strategy and planning; Middle East and Asian security; emergent powers; U.S. security; all of it. Ready for download and available from one policy research think-tank that is nonpartisan and stresses a multilateral approach to issues.

And what if this public policy resource with a worldwide reach was an independent foundation located not in the D.C. beltway but in the eastern Iowa river-town of Muscatine?The Stanley Foundation (TSF), Muscatine’s internationally focused think-tank, stresses a multilateral approach to its research. For over 50 years, the group has been envisioning a peaceful future through realistic parameters and wide-ranging voices. Even more importantly, they are committed to promoting education of both the public through media outreach as well as the policymakers through conferences, collaboration and advising.

The foundation has been located in Muscatine, Ia. since 1956, when it was founded by engineer C. Maxwell Stanley and his wife, Elizabeth. They don’t offer grants and subsist entirely on an endowment fund that provides an annual budget of about $5.5 million.

Stanley’s son, Richard, has run the foundation since his father’s death in 1984. The Stanley family runs several other foundations and was in the news recently when David Stanley, a former state legislator, was accused of raiding E & M Charities to the tune of $24 million to fund his New Hope Foundation. A lawsuit brought by other Stanley family members was settled out of court in January.

Describing their mission as active global citizenship and TSF has influenced foreign policy decision-making through media production and collaboration with a range of groups.

TSF director of policy analysis and dialog Dr. Michael R. Kraig was in Iowa City last week to moderate a panel on “Civil Society and Terrorism” at the University of Iowa Provost’s Forum on International Affairs. He sat down for a video interview with the Iowa Independent where he explained his views on three different types of terrorism: local, state-sponsored, and transnational.

Kraig believes there’s a gap between “what the public believes our foreign policy should look like in broad terms and the specifics of what our legislators are doing on Capitol Hill.”

He also talked about the some of the foundation’s programming and mission:

From 1980 to 2004, TSF produced “Common Ground,” a radio program that aired on over 200 NPR stations. They still produce radio documentaries, but have also started to do multimedia work.

A radio documentary called “Brazil Rising” will be released in June as part of their project “Rising Powers: The New Global Reality.”

According to Keith Porter, who is TSF’s director of communication and outreach, “Rising Powers” is designed to “spark discussion among Americans about the way the world order is changing and what it means for the United States.” TSF partners with KQED on radio projects. They will launch a “Rising Powers” Web site that will grow as more countries are profiled. India and Turkey are in line for coverage after Brazil.

Last year, TSF’s series of dialogues called “Bridging the Foreign Policy Divide” brought together emergent liberal and conservative thinkers. In one pairing, unpaid advisers for Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama co-wrote “The Next Intervention,” an editorial in the Washington Post. A longer version of their collaboration, “America and the Use of Force: Sources of Legitimacy,” was collected with nine other liberal/conservative conversations in a book. The series was described as “an alternative to the distortions and oversimplifications of today’s polarizing political environment” and largely succeeded in painting otherwise polemical arguments into workable solutions.

Porter said that the detailed policy work usually comes first and is followed by public outreach and a media campaign. Currently, the foundation is conducting a U.S. nuclear policy review to be ready for the next president’s administration. When the policy plan and report is complete, TSF will produce information to be disseminated through media channels, public speakers, citizen groups and other communications.

Another project will form a basis for a northeast Asian security group where none currently exists. Porter said, “There is no permanent security alliance like ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations).” So TSF will “take what happening in the Six-Party Talks and turn that into a regional association like ASEAN.” He said this project is typical of the TSF mission of “trying to get countries to talk to each other [through] multilateral solutions.”

Porter said he’d like to see:

“American leaders and American media take our global connections more seriously. People who work on foreign policy issues all the time can look at Main Street in Anytown, U.S.A. and find a dozen connections between that and the rest of the world …  that doesn’t get reflected very often in what our political leaders tell us. It doesn’t get reflected very often in what we see in the media and I think, regardless of that, it’s starting to make an impression on average Americans.

People are beginning to see how their fates are connected to the rest of the world … there is a direct one-to-one connection between U.S. national security and global security … we ought to be doing everything we can around the world to promote security, stability, better lives for people and, beyond being just the right thing to do, it will have good, positive influence and effects on us.

I do see recognition of that among people. I don’t see it necessarily among political leaders. I don’t necessarily see it among the media but it’s an idea that the public just grasps immediately. I find that encouraging.”

He summarized the Stanley Foundation mission: “We really believe that both the policy community and the public have to be engaged in these issues to bring about the change that we want in the world.”

TSF distributes a monthly e-mail newsletter, “think.” about their current program work. They also publish a quarterly magazine “Courier” that has TSF papers and policy analysis. Both are available at the Stanley Foundation Web site.

Unless you are one of the hearty and fearless year-round bicyclists, now is the time to clean up your ten-speed, balloon-tire cruiser, mountain bike, or other two-wheeled people-powered vehicle and hit the trail and/or pavement.

No bike to refurbish? Have no fear!

Community bike programs have recently sprouted in several cities, including an ambitious Des Moines Bike Kollective set to open this week.

Below the fold: interviews with organizers from Iowa City’s Bike Library and the DMBK.Bikes and bicyclists come in all colors and shapes (and fitness levels). Today’s pedalers are not only riding for the fun of it. Pedaling commuters can skip the spin class at the fitness gym when they’ve burned calories on the way to and from work. As gas prices continue to climb, people-powered transportation becomes increasingly enticing.

The Iowa City Bike Library has been fixing and distributing bikes for several years. The volunteer-run organization often sells out of their showroom stock each Saturday morning.

Last week was no exception, over ten people waited up to a half-hour in line for the chance to find a bike that fit, take a test spin, and lay down a small deposit ($30-$60).

All of the bikes at the ICBL are pre-owned and a deposit is required because, according to volunteer Jen Bedet, “if you put some value on a bike, people will take better care of them.” The deposit is refundable if the bike is returned in good condition before six months or riders can keep the bike and forfeit the deposit.

Bedet started volunteering at the library three years ago and has gained considerable skill in bike repair and technical knowledge. She said she learned first how to fix a flat and can now tear down a hub, clean and rebuild it.

In this video, Bedet discusses the ICBL:

Eugene, a library customer who returned a bike he had gotten the week before (it didn’t quite fit) was very pleased with his new ride. He talked about his check-out before biking off into the morning sun.

Calling Kim West of Des Moines a bike enthusiast would be putting it lightly. The biker and blogger has a radio show dedicated to discussing bicycles and has been cycling for over fifty years.

He bad-mouthed free bike programs that began in Amsterdam in the 1960s and released spray-painted bikes throughout the city. Similar programs have been tried in other cities around the world, often with poor results.

“I prefer the notion that bikes have value, have worth, and are worthy of use and reuse, but NOT being subjected to denigration by rattle-can paint schemes.  It’s like covering the pieta with happy face stickers.  That’s why the motto — the theme — of the Des Moines Bike Kollective is ‘An old bike is a good friend.’ You would NEVER paint an old friend yellow and leave them out for anyone to use and abuse.”

He set up the DMBK in downtown Des Moines and wants to make it much more than Iowa City’s library. West is building a bike hang-out and has already secured a stereo system with a turntable and donated LP records for the downtown spot.

“Since we specialize in old bikes, I figured it only correct that we play only vinyl.  Kids gotta learn somewhere, eh?  And the albums we have are VERY cool, too,” he explained.

“Bikies need a place to hang out, to create a place where a bike culture can flourish, and the Kollective intends to provide that agar. This is not going to be a shiny titanium and carbon fiber bike shop.  It’s where folks can gather and share stories, feel at home, and help new people ride old bikes.”

He has planned workshops for the homeless and under-housed as well as family workshops so that Mom, Dad, Sis, and little brother can all maintain their chain, tires, and bike frame.

West also wants to start bike clubs in local schools and has planned some community bike rides around the city.

“Bikes are not just toys, but a lifestyle that promotes cheap, healthy fun.  But they ARE toys too, and we want everyone to know how to enjoy and appreciate that.”

West was interviewed recently for KCCI as the DMBK got cleaned up and ready for “bikies.”

The Kollective is being funded by the sale of t-shirts available from T-Shirt Graphix at 3629 Beaver Avenue in Des Moines.

Bicycle donations at both community programs are welcome. If you’ve got a bike gathering dust and/or rust, bring your old two-wheeler in and let the DMBK or the ICBL refurbish them and find your old friend a new home.

Happy riding!

Final note: Don’t wait for Bike to Work Week to get in gear! BTWW is May 10-16 across the country and many bike events are planned all over the state.