Brisco added that the support of communities touches the athletes.

The City of Anamosa and the LETR participants exchanged gifts. The city gave the runners a framed print of Grant Wood’s Stone City and a polo shirt from the National Motorcycle Museum. The runners gave city officials shirts, hats, keychains and Special Olympic medals.

The runners left WapsiAna Park and ran down Main Street with the torch. Their next stop was an overnight in Cedar Rapids.

Carol Fairbanks is the Chairperson for the Cass Cemetery Committee, and she became involved with the church years ago because her family has relatives buried at the cemetery behind the church, including her son.

“It’s a place of reverence for me. It’s unique and beautiful and special to the people of Cass Township,” she said.

The first renovations to the church came in 1976 when a group of area residents decided to try to save the old building, which was in disrepair. In 1991 additional repairs were made to the building and in 2002 it received new siding and a new roof.

For many years the law has been clear in Iowa that adults of legal age need to be cautious if purchasing kegs of alcohol or buying alcohol in any form for receptions or parties where those under 21 are present. The penalty for providing alcohol to minors in Iowa is $500. If an accident happens and someone is injured or injures someone else, Iowa’s law includes a criminal penalty of up to $7500 or 5 years imprisonment. The civil liability of being sued can be a much higher dollar amount. Jones County has gone a step further in protecting minors and reducing their access to alcohol.

On July 1, Jones County becomes one of ten counties in the state and a few other cities that have a keg registration ordinance. Polk County’s ordinance goes into effect July 15. Johnson County is looking into passing an ordinance this summer. Story County passed their ordinance this spring.
Keokuk County was the first to pass their keg registration in December, 2004. More than half of the states now in the nation have state-wide keg registration. Most bordering states have state-wide keg registration and the others are similar to Iowa, with some counties and cities passing local ordinances.

The Jones County Communities Mobilizing for Change on Alcohol (CMCA) groups worked earlier this year writing e-mails and letters to the state legislators encouraging them to support the keg registration bill. Senator Tom Hancock worked very hard trying to help pass the state-wide keg registration and the other components of the Keeping Young Drivers’ Safe Initiative, but in the end none of it passed. The CMCA groups decided to work on a county ordinance at that time.

As of July 1, kegs of 2 gallons or more of alcohol purchased in Jones County must be registered and a corresponding sticker must be attached to the keg. The type of sticker chosen was researched by the University of Iowa to be durable for keg use and is being used in some of the other counties in Iowa. It is illegal for anyone to remove, destroy, or damage the keg sticker (except the seller will remove it when the keg is returned). The penalty for not complying with this ordinance is up to $500 and up to 30 days in jail.

The goal of this ordinance for the CMCA group is to send a message to adults not to supply alcohol to minors and to send a message to the state that Jones County is serious about reducing underage drinking. The group hopes that soon the state will have a keg registration law so that going over the border to neighboring counties without an ordinance is not an option for those who are determined to provide alcohol to minors.

You may not think of Oreo cookies when someone brings up the subject of the National Budget. A non-partisan group, Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities and their affiliate, Sensible Iowans, would like to change that association.

The group was started by Ben Cohen, of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream, and the aim is to make people understand Federal budget spending by using a brightly colored van and a trailer with stacks of giant plastic Oreos to represent wasteful spending.

On June 20 the Oreomobile, as it is dubbed, rolled into Anamosa to give the message of wasteful Pentagon spending.

Aaron Rubin, who drives the Oreomobile, stops in towns throughout Iowa and New Hampshire, the primary and caucus state, to give a demonstration on how money could be reappropriated to fund education, children’s healthcare and alternative energy. Armed with Oreo cookies, paper fans and pins he explains the group’s mission.

“Everybody I’ve talked to in Anamosa understood the message, gets a good picture and wants to change budget priorities,” he said.

The group contends that $60 billion of the budget each year is spent to fund obsolete Cold War Weapons. They feel that the money for those weapons should be redistributed and Rubin gives the following statistics:

• $10 billion over 10 years would rebuild and repair every public school in America.

• $10 billion would provide healthcare for the 9 million kids that currently have no healthcare in the United States.

• $10 billion invested in alternative energy and energy efficiency techniques, over 10 years, would reduce American use of oil by 50%.

• $13 billion spent to help countries grow their own food would prevent the deaths of more than six million children a year.

“The good news is that this is money we’ve already appropriated. We can go a long way to solve this countries problems with the money that is being wasted by the Pentagon,’ added Rubin. “The money for cold war weapons doesn’t help our troops. They never get used.’

Each Oreo on the Oreomobile represents $1 billion. The Oreos are stacked in front of budget items that make up a huge bar chart on the Oreomobile’s trailer.

“You don’t have to preach–people understand that you can take one Oreo off athe stack and move it to another area,” Rubin explained. “Almost everybody that sees it wants to spread it out and spend it on other things besides the Pentagon.”

Rubin said a bill called the Common Sense Budget Act was presented to Congress three months ago. The bill calls for a shift in the Cold War Weapons budget.

“We want people to understand budget priorities and how the budget works. Then we shut up because everyone who sees it uses their own common sense,” Rubin said.

The Oreomobile is here to stay, at least through 2012, in Iowa and New Hampshire. Rubin said the Oreomobile would spend three months in Iowa and three months in New Hampshire, alternating between the two states.

The group Sensible Iowans has a website in which you can sign up to receive information as well as contact your legislators. The website is: www.sensibleiowans.org.