Maybe money can buy you love...but it can’t buy fun
Dan Brawner
October 17, 2007
These days, developers and other nice folks are constantly thinking up new ways for us to have fun. When I was a kid, we made our own fun. We didn’t need waterslides–we played in the creek or mud puddles. That was good enough for us. We didn’t have “nature parks”–we walked around in the woods, collecting interesting specimens of burrs in our clothes and wood tics in our hair until we got tired and hungry and dragged home to the horror of our mothers. Okay, so it wasn’t all that much fun. But it was cheap.
Today, fun is safer, but incredibly expensive. In 2004, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-IA, was worried that Iowans weren’t having enough fun, so he obtained a $50 million federal grant to build an indoor rainforest in Eastern Iowa. It was going to have monkeys and orchids and exotic reptiles hanging from steamy Tarzan vines–all inside a big glass building.
You’d think that $50 million would buy a lot of fun–especially in Iowa. But it turns out that although a rainforest may be free in many parts of the world, in Iowa, even a little indoor rainforest costs around $300 million. And we wouldn’t get the 50 million taxpayer dollars from Washington until we matched it with $50 million of our own, actual money. But nobody wanted to do that. I guess having a big greenhouse full of humid monkeys didn’t sound like $250 million worth of fun.
So Grassley’s rainforest grant was tossed around from one Iowa town to the next like a rugby ball, each figuring out that whoever held it last would get creamed. It ended up in Pella, home of the famous tulip festival. Pella has until Dec. 1 to come up with the matching money or Grassley’s dream of an Iowa rainforest dies there. At least, in Pella, there will be some nice flowers for the grave.
The original rainforest site was Coralville. They even bought the land for it and are now wondering how they are going to make it pay for itself. After much deliberation, the 26-member committee hit on the idea of creating a fabulous and unique theme park to–get ready for this...literacy. Whoa! Does that sound like fun or what? Grab the kids and pack a picnic lunch. We’re all going to Reader World! Yeah!
I have to confess, it they build it, I will come. I was a nerdy, bookish kid and I love that stuff. But I know it puts me in the same camp as math geeks wishing for an amusement park devoted to great moments in algebra.
It could have been worse. The other two choices the committee dreamed up were a historical attraction about space researcher James Van Allen and one spotlighting the Devonian Fossil Gorge. Which sounds like more fun to you, a writers’ hall of fame or a collection of 400 million-year-old fossil fish?
It’s sad, really. Fun shouldn’t be such hard work. To quote one of my favorite literary masterpieces, (which certainly belongs in our hall of fame) The Cat in the Hat, “It’s fun to have fun, but you have to know how!”
Today, fun is safer, but incredibly expensive. In 2004, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-IA, was worried that Iowans weren’t having enough fun, so he obtained a $50 million federal grant to build an indoor rainforest in Eastern Iowa. It was going to have monkeys and orchids and exotic reptiles hanging from steamy Tarzan vines–all inside a big glass building.
You’d think that $50 million would buy a lot of fun–especially in Iowa. But it turns out that although a rainforest may be free in many parts of the world, in Iowa, even a little indoor rainforest costs around $300 million. And we wouldn’t get the 50 million taxpayer dollars from Washington until we matched it with $50 million of our own, actual money. But nobody wanted to do that. I guess having a big greenhouse full of humid monkeys didn’t sound like $250 million worth of fun.
So Grassley’s rainforest grant was tossed around from one Iowa town to the next like a rugby ball, each figuring out that whoever held it last would get creamed. It ended up in Pella, home of the famous tulip festival. Pella has until Dec. 1 to come up with the matching money or Grassley’s dream of an Iowa rainforest dies there. At least, in Pella, there will be some nice flowers for the grave.
The original rainforest site was Coralville. They even bought the land for it and are now wondering how they are going to make it pay for itself. After much deliberation, the 26-member committee hit on the idea of creating a fabulous and unique theme park to–get ready for this...literacy. Whoa! Does that sound like fun or what? Grab the kids and pack a picnic lunch. We’re all going to Reader World! Yeah!
I have to confess, it they build it, I will come. I was a nerdy, bookish kid and I love that stuff. But I know it puts me in the same camp as math geeks wishing for an amusement park devoted to great moments in algebra.
It could have been worse. The other two choices the committee dreamed up were a historical attraction about space researcher James Van Allen and one spotlighting the Devonian Fossil Gorge. Which sounds like more fun to you, a writers’ hall of fame or a collection of 400 million-year-old fossil fish?
It’s sad, really. Fun shouldn’t be such hard work. To quote one of my favorite literary masterpieces, (which certainly belongs in our hall of fame) The Cat in the Hat, “It’s fun to have fun, but you have to know how!”
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