âVisionâ
An endowment of $3,200 per man woman and child in Shenandoah to seed a local currency as transferable property tax credits, inducing local governments to âget itâ is a vision that could actually do something about total fertility rates instead of being yet another project in âcommunity prideâ pouring money down a 10,000 year rat hole.

A slide from my 2014 presentation to SW Iowa community leaders on countycurrency.org:
âthe people perishâ
Where there is no vision, âEverybody has problemsâ.
So I sent this:
Dear Margaret Brady,
Attached is an email I sent to the Lakin Foundation describing my career-long history addressing the intent of the endowment now being spent to revitalize SW Iowa. I no longer live in Shenandoah so obviously I have no business involving myself in the decisions regarding the $3,200/person now available to revitalize rural culture in and around that town. But perhaps I do have some business appealing to your heart, if not on the basis of my passion for rural culture as the canary in the coal mine called âcivilizationâ, then on the basis of an anecdote that may help you, a veterinarian, better-empathize with we great apes of rural SW Iowa:
During my sojourn out of Iowa, I lived next to the San Diego Zoo. My membership permitted me to go jogging there every morning before it opened to the public. During these morning jogs I sometimes stopped by the cage of a gibbon. He was alone in the cage while other gibbons were free to braciate through the elaborate habitats. I stood there looking at him. Feelings welled up for him. He pressed his back up against the cage and looking over his shoulder at me. I got the message, climbed over the barrier to the cage where I groomed him. Of course, a zookeeper caught me and threatened me with loss of my membership if I didnât comply with the barrier. So my gibbon friend and I could only look at each other. One day, I saw another gibbon in the cage with him. A female!!! I was really happy to see that my friend had what he needed! But then as the days wore on, something strange happened: The female began beating up on my friend. She almost seemed to lose her mind in rage at him. I voiced my concern to the zookeepers. Eventually they sent those gibbons to a spacious habitat in rural San Diego County where such pathological behaviors were less likely to emerge and occasionally the gibbons could mate and produce the next generation.
You may have noticed a pathological situation arising between the genders of the great apes of rural SW Iowa that, although it is not perhaps as obvious, is, nevertheless, distressing to those of us who are in a position of responsibility for the great apes of SW Iowa.
From the 2014 presentation I made to the Fremont county board of supervisors while I was living just outside Shen:
<âGlobal Economy vs Rural Cultureâ slide>
An endowment of $3,200 per man woman and child in Shenandoah to seed a local currency as transferable property tax credits, inducing local governments to âget itâ is a vision that could actually do something about total fertility rates instead of being yet another project in âcommunity prideâ pouring money down a 10,000 year rat hole.
Indeed, it could spark a revival of humanityâs sense of itself world wide.
Sincerely,
James Bowery
---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: James Bowery <jabowery@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, May 2, 2025 at 5:36 PM
Subject: âBack to the Countryside Via Technologyâ by William C. Norris
To: <JGreen@lakinfdn.org>
Dear Jennifer Green,
Please find attached the 1978 essay by William C. Norris âBack to the Countryside Via Technologyâ where he talks about computer networking as a way to revitalize the rural midwest. Norris was a Nebraska farm boy who grew up to become the chairman of Control Data Corporation: the first supercomputer company. 1978 was also the year I went to work on Norrisâs vision of using computer networks to bring people back to the countryside. After a lifetime of pioneering mass market computer networking I moved back to Iowa.
When I first heard about the $168M Lakin initiative for SW Iowa rural communities, I was a bit skeptical due to the long history of institutions saying they were going to help rural culture, and failing. So I went to the website to investigate the grant history. Although the front page pictures a bucolic scene, the recent grant history appeared to bear out my skepticism as can be seen in this spreadsheet showing the per capita amounts going to the SW Iowa counties to be out of line with the news reports of the initiative.
You may wish to update the website to prominently link to the press release so you donât get old curmudgeons like myself reacting negatively due to our lifelong accumulation of battle scars.
Sincerely,
James Bowery