Is This Idaho or Iowa?

Someone made the wrong choice.  This arrived in my old fashioned snail mail on Tuesday.  It was on my desk when I arrived Wednesday morning.  It’s about National School Choice Week.  Which I support.  I had been attempting to book a guest from the organization since last weekend but nobody returned my messages.  Possibly, someone at the national office in Washington, D.C. is embarrassed.  By what?  Take a close look at the flyer I found in the envelope.  I had two people pick it up right away at the office this morning.

I emailed a picture of it to friends around the country.  Some also found the mistake.  And it’s a big one.  Look at the upper left hand corner.  There is a state map.  It’s not Idaho! 

It’s Iowa!

This is a common mistake among people unfamiliar with flyover country.  It should tell us also someone made the wrong choice when it came to education.

One of my former office mates took a job at the radio stations several years ago.  He drove across country from Massachusetts.  He likely drove Route 80 across Iowa.  I’ve done the same.  It may have a couple of small hills and it doesn’t in any way resemble high desert, mountains or forests.  Flatland and cornfields describes Iowa.

At some point after leaving Iowa he walked into a gas station.  There was a map of the United States on a wall.  Someone had decided to write the names of all the states on the map.  They got Iowa right.  Then the writer wrote it a second time over Idaho.  Apparently, two Iowa’s didn’t appear unusual.

Hey, the Canadian Football League had two teams with the same name for decades.  The Rough Riders and the Roughriders.  I guess we’re West Iowa.  Or Io-Wa.