January grab bag and Office Lounge
Short takes and a paid subscriber perk
Well, it’s been a month. Or a week. Or a week with a month’s worth of news.
On the Office Lounge
Paid subscribers to this Substack or any in the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative can join in a monthly Zoom meeting called the Office Lounge. The link is at the bottom of this post.
On the Iowa State women resetting the shot calendar
On Feb. 10, 1995, the Iowa State women’s basketball team, coached by Theresa Becker, upset No. 24 Oklahoma 69-62 in Hilton Coliseum, where the official attendance was 606. It was the Cyclones’ only Big Eight — yes, Big Eight — win of the season. Bill Fennelly wouldn’t be hired for months. Fred Hoiberg was still on the men’s team.
The streak began three games later, on Feb. 19. Tara Gunderson and Jenny Hobbs made one 3-point basket each while No. 3 Colorado shellacked ISU in Boulder. The 3-point line, which was only in its ninth season, was still at high school range. The line has been moved backward twice, but no matter what, Iowa State made at least one 3-point shot each game.
The midpoint was in ISU’s February 2010 off-week, between the Cyclones putting on shooting clinics against Missouri and Baylor. By then, it was a team trademark.
The streak was three decades long — 945 consecutive games, enough for one for every town in Iowa. Then on Jan. 14 in Ames, ISU beat Texas Tech by 13 points — and went 0-for-7 from beyond the arc.
The most reliable statistic in college basketball was over. Perhaps, in the new-new-look Big 12, the end of a tradition was inevitable.
“We only shot seven of them, so we really didn’t care,” Fennelly said after the game. “If we were really worried about (the record) we probably would have run about 15 more plays to get one.”
I wish they would have. Streaks like that don’t come around every day.
On the passing of David Lynch
Filmmaker David Lynch, who died Jan. 15, had two notable connections to Iowa. First, the state was the setting for the only G-rated movie the auteur ever directed: The Straight Story. The critically acclaimed film was based on the real-life story of Alvin Straight, who drove hundreds of miles across Iowa on his lawn mower to go see his brother.
The other was his interest in Transcendental Meditation. In September 2004, Lynch attended a peace conference in Fairfield. He credited TM with calming his anger and giving him “bliss and consciousness and happiness and intelligence, creativity,” he told the Gazette. In 2008, Lynch announced a $1 million donation to Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield “for scholarships to learn TM and attend the university.”
On inauguration vexillology
For Donald Trump’s second inauguration Jan. 20, two of the large flags forming the backdrop of the outdoor Capitol stage had 27 stars. That’s because this time around, his official state of residence is Florida, vs. New York in 2017. The 27-star flag, for the admission of Florida, was official between July 4, 1845, and July 4, 1846. It would be replaced by a 28-star flag, adding Texas, between July 4, 1846, and July 4, 1847. Then the 29-star flag, adding Iowa, would also be flown for only one year — July 4, 1847, to July 4, 1848 — until a 30-star flag for Wisconsin became official for three years.
Although Florida and Iowa were paired in the admission process, delays over Iowa’s final shape let Texas jump the line.
Pictures of the 2025 stage with the flags won’t be numerous, though, since the inauguration was moved inside because of cold weather.
