Rain Forest: Monday November 13 Update -- Updates Suspended

I am monitoring, and will continue to monitor, the progress of the Iowa rain forest project, as I have been for the past six years. For three years I have been maintaining what has become what I believe to be the most complete online repository of commentary (over 100 pages) and links to the full text of hundreds of relevant media stories and other material about this project.

Always a questionable project, for the past two years I have felt increasingly confident that it would never be built. However, since December 2005, while there seemed to be a relatively steady stream of news about it of one kind or another, I have been adding to that Web site "weekly updates" every Monday. Since beginning this blog in late June I have included entries every Monday notifying readers when the updates were added to the Web site.

Now, however, not only is there little likelihood it will be built -- at least in anything like the original $300 million conception of Ted Townsend ten years ago -- there is also little or no news about what's happening in the currently chosen site: Pella, Iowa.

If these conditions should change, I will of course resume the regular reporting.

As time went by, my research about the rain forest project, and personal interests and intellectual curiosity, turned to the economics and promotion of attractions generally, and beyond that to economic development generally. It seemed reasonable to include some of that on the rain forest Web site -- in addition to the news and commentary about the rain forest project.

As even a quick perusal of this blog will reveal, those interests continue in the form of blog entries here. But there seems to be less point to continuing to add them to the rain forest Web site once they are the only additions.

So the monitoring, the watchful eye, will continue. But since there seems to be nothing to report at the moment weekly updates -- reporting that there's nothing to report -- will be suspended until there is.

Thank you all who have contributed to these monitoring efforts over the years, and please continue to do so, for you often come up with stories, reports and commentary that I would otherwise have missed.

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[Every Monday since December 2005 there has been a weekly upload to the pre-existing Iowa rain forest Web site I maintain. In all, printed out the entire site would run over 100 single spaced pages; there are, in addition, links to the full text of hundreds of newspaper stories and reports. It is very probably the most complete resource on the topic anywhere on the Web.

It is found at: http://www.nicholasjohnson.org/politics/IaChild.

Over the past few months the scope of the Web site has expanded from the rain forest project to include material related to the broader range of attractions and economic development generally (including gambling casinos) in which the proposed rain forest exists and by which it must be evaluated.

If you are interested in following this subject, you might also want to check in from time to time with the Iowa Pork Forest blog for comments that are often humorous and entertaining as well as insightful.]

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Technorati tags: Iowa Rain Forest, economic development, attractions, tourism, rain forest, pork, Earthpark, Earthpork, Earth Park, Iowa, Pella, Pella rain forest, Iowa Child Foundation, Iowa Environmental Project, David Oman, Ted Townsend.


Nicholas Johnson's Main Web Site www.nicholasjohnson.org
Nicholas Johnson's Iowa Rain Forest ("Earthpark") Web Site
Nicholas Johnson's Blog, FromDC2Iowa
Nicholas Johnson's Blog Index

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