Home Care In Denver, IA

After Pueblo-based designer Jason Allen used the artificial intelligence software Midjourney to help create the sci-fi-tinged “Théâtre D’opéra Spatial” last year, the art world took notice.

The twist? Judges for the Colorado State Fair’s annual art competition didn’t learn about Allen’s use of AI until after the piece had won the Blue Ribbon in the amateur division of the digital art category last September. This time around — the fair wraps up its two-week run on Monday, Sept. 4 — the rules will be a little different. Artists will be required to say whether they are using AI.

“Last year was new to us, and new to the world,” said Scott Stoller, general manager of the 151-year-old fair. “We got to be ground zero for that debate, because it’s a much bigger dialogue than the state fair, and an emerging issue in the art world.”

Allen said he made his use of AI clear when he submitted his work. But either way, the win created a global stir that has yet to settle. Artists, critics and news media — including The New York Times and The Smithsonian — have over the last 12 months used the painting to explore the ethical and copyright issues around AI art, and its “machine-learning” from existing copyrighted works. Some have criticized AI artists, including Allen, as digital opportunists and thieves.

Last week, the subject got renewed attention when a U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., decided that AI-generated art could not be copyrighted, ostensibly setting a precedent for future cases on the subject. (The case concerned Stephen Thaler and his AI-generated image made with the Creativity Machine algorithm).

This year’s State Fair rule changes are intended to give judges all the information they need, Stoller said, such as disclosing the media artists use in traditional paintings, like acrylic paints, and whether or not they used AI capabilities in software such as Adobe Photoshop.

“I get where the (State Fair) is coming from,” Allen said. “But this has always happened in all art movements, that there needs to be special clarification for anything challenging the status quo.

“It was the decision they made in order to keep AI art eligible for inclusion in the digital category, and in the competition as a whole,” he continued. “So I asked them, ‘What is the purpose of having this knowledge?’ And they said, ‘Well, so judges can be informed whether or not you used AI to produce it.’ That is the wrong answer. You’re literally just saying we’re putting a discriminatory mark on their artwork before it can even be judged.”

It didn’t stop Allen, a game designer by trade, from submitting another piece in 2023, though. This one, called “Grand Finale,” was created with the help of AI software and was placed in the digital competition. Allen took things up a notch, too, by giving it the appearance of a framed, physical work. It was also printed and given a surface patina to make its canvas look painted. “Grand Finale” was awarded the select professional artist award from the Pueblo Arts Alliance.

Allen has used his notoriety over the past year to launch a new AI art company and speak at symposiums and conferences about AI, including an upcoming visit to the headquarters of UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) in Paris on Sept. 7 for a 15-minute presentation titled “AI Alchemy.”

He has also been twice denied protection for his artwork by the U.S. Copyright Office, which attributed its decision to a lack of human authorship. Allen and his lawyer are in the process of a second appeal, with a decision expected in November, he said.

In Pueblo, though, it’s clear that Allen has generated increased attention for the fair’s art competition, Stoller said, with intrigue and conversations swirling around the displays.

“Our art show has been around for a century, and didn’t used to include digital art at all,” Stoller said. “AI art has only been (at the fair) for two years, and digital art for a couple decades. Who knows what’s next? The fair will have to make its way toward who to incorporate or exclude.

“If AI grows, like digital art, then it will become its own category of competition,” he added. “But right now, we don’t have enough entries to warrant it.”

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DENVER, Colo. – No. 22 Iowa State (3-4, 1-1 Big 12) placed 2^nd in today's tri-meet against No. 9 Denver (9-2, 1-2 Big 12) and SE Missouri State (5-8-1, 0-0 MIC).

"We fought through some things this week. We had a great opportunity coming into this meet. What I saw out there was us fighting though and trying to figure out those pieces. I am really happy with the way the team finished the meet, but we know we have to put all four together." Head Coach Ashley Miles Greig said.

Iowa State placed second today with their score of 195.800. Josie Bergstrom continues to be consistent on vault with her having yet another great score of 9.875. This led the way for the Cyclones on this event. Rachel Wilke stepped in to anchor the floor today. This marked her season debut on the floor, and she was able to round out the event with a 9.85 to help ISU see their second highest score on the floor this season.

Noelle Adams continues to show out for ISU. The freshman picked up her ninth 9.9 of the year coming from her floor routine. She followed that right up with a 9.85 on the vault. Adams also opened her night on the beam with her routine scoring a 9.8.

Vault (49.150)

Iowa State ended the night with a solid showing on vault. Josie Bergstrom and Noelle Adams continue to be extremely consistent for the Cyclones with Bergstrom scoring a 9.875 and Adams right behind her with a 9.85. Emilie Hong anchored ISU and finished the night with a 9.85 as well.

Paige Wills- 9.775 Hannah Loyim- 9.775 Noelle Adams- 9.850 Josie Bergstrom- 9.875 Kaia Parker- 9.800 Emilie Hong- 9.850

Bars (48.650)

The Cyclones opened the afternoon on bars. The Cyclones had freshman Ella Schell lead off their night with a 9.775 followed up by Loganne Basuel's 9.775 to top ISU on this event.

Ella Schell- 9.775 Loganne Basuel- 9.775 Paige Wills- 9.750 Lauren Thomas- 9.750 Hannah Loyim- 9.600

Beam (48.700)

ISU was on the beam for the second rotation. Lauren Thomas led the way for the Cyclones, picking up yet another 9.85. She was followed closely behind by Hannah Loyim as well as Noelle Adams both garnering a 9.8 score.

Hannah Loyim- 9.800 Lauren O'Brochta- 9.650 Noelle Adams- 9.800 Lauren Thomas- 9.850 Rachel Wilke- 9.600

Floor (49.300)

The Cyclones had their best showing on the floor this evening with five gymnasts scoring 9.800 and higher. The was topped by Noelle Adams who picked up her ninth 9.9 of the year. Hannah Loyim picked up a 9.85 from her routine, and Rachel Wilke in her season debut in this event also scored a 9.85.

Emilie Hong- 9.825 Kaia Parker- 9.800 Hannah Loyim- 9.850 Noelle Adams- 9.900 Rachel Wilke- 9.850

Final Result

Iowa State: 195.800 (VT: 49.150, UB: 48.650, BB: 48.700, FX: 49.300) Denver: 197.775 (VT: 49.350, UB: 49.475, BB: 49.400, FX: 49.550) SEMO: 194.675 (VT: 48.850, UB: 48.250, BB: 48.625, FX: 48.850)

Vault (VT): Jessica Hutchinson (DU) | 9.975 Bars (UB): Mia Hebink (DU) | 9.925 Beam (BB): Jessica Hutchinson (DU) | 9.950 Floor (FX): Jessica Hutchinson (DU) | 10.000 All-Around (AA): Jessica Hutchinson (DU) | 39.825

DENVER, Iowa – The Bremer County community of Denver, which has dubbed itself “The Mile Wide City,” in contrast to its altitudinally enhanced Colorado counterpart, had quite a mountain to climb out of the pandemic, business, school and community leaders said.

But it climbed out.

“Denver was fortunate,” said Gene Leonhart, a former longtime mayor, who still serves on the city Planning and Zoning Commission.

Leonhart and others who were interviewed for the IowaWatch project, “Small Town Solutions,” said the city had a lot going for it headed into the pandemic. IowaWatch spent four months checking into towns that buck the declining trend of other rural areas and show signs of a growing population, a strong sense of community, activities and schools.

Voters in the Denver Community School District, on the cusp of that pandemic, approved a bond referendum for a new high school and middle school building — just a few years after building a new community recreation, arts and events center, called the Cyclone Center, so named after the school teams’ mascot. District officials and their contractors have adjusted accordingly in the building’s construction, moving away from a central air handling system during construction to safeguard against the spread of another pandemic, to keep kids in school and healthy.

While COVID-19 also posed challenges for care facilities in town, nearby residential additions continued to fill in with homes.

Restaurants, which pivoted to carryout business, have adjusted again, opening back up for dine-in business, but cautioning folks about waiting times as they gear back up for that while maintaining carryout service.

COVID-19 posed a double whammy of sorts for Matt and Allyson McLaughlin, who opened AlleyCatz Grubhouse about three years ago, and adjacent AllyCatz Firehouse Pizzas & Wings just before the pandemic. The pandemic shut down dine-in business just as they were hitting their stride, so they converted to carry-out business.

“The great part of that was it’s a pizza business, so the majority of our business is out the door. So that was good in itself,” Matt McLaughlin said.

Now, it’s a challenge to keep pace with the recovering dine-in business they’re receiving, they said.

“The community has been our number one supporters,” Allyson said. “They just really made sure to make us feel loved. We just adapted. We adapted quickly.”

But, adding a new business last year crimped their ability to get business assistance loans because their two businesses were organized under one limited liability company. The process didn’t consider startup costs for the second establishment. With a little less than 40 employees, they feared what could happen, they said.

Keeping up with staffing demands is a challenge. The McLaughlins said they have normal worker turnover but not as many job applicants to replenish the staff.

“We went for probably just over a year without receiving an application,” Matt said. “That’s our struggle, We never had issues with the first two, two and a half years, hiring people.” Now, he said, “we’re probably looking at two years to get back to where we were,” Matt said. Even the couple’s triplet wrestling teenage sons are working.

The restaurant is donating a portion of proceeds from a special menu item to a new wrestling room at the middle and high school building now under construction. They’ve also provided pizza by the slice for the local athletic booster club, sharing a limited markup with the booster club.

“We really want the community to know we’re here for them, like they’re here for us,” Allyson said. “Even though we weren’t raised here, this is our home. We feel it.”

Both being natives of Cedar Falls, they bring in additional customers from outside Denver by word of mouth. AllyCatz Grubhouse also made the Top 10 list of the Best Burgers in Iowa of the Iowa Beef Industry Council and the Iowa Cattlemen’s Association.

While small business owners like the McLaughlins had to adjust for the pandemic, so, too, did those in charge of major capital projects, like the construction of the new Denver public high school and middle school building.

In early March 2020, just two weeks before a state-ordered coronavirus shutdown, voters in the Denver Community Schools District approved a $7.75 million bond referendum for a new middle/high school addition to the Cyclone Center arts and athletics facility. The Cyclone Center was built after a similar vote in 2016.

The middle/high school addition measure passed with more than 85% of the vote; 60% was required for passage. The addition is anticipated to be open next school year.

“I’m glad we had our vote when we did,” Denver school board President Scott Krebsbach said. ” A month or two later, folks would have probably either not even turned out to vote or been really nervous about proceeding.”

The pandemic offered a chance to take a second look at the building plans “and think through, if we had to do this again in two years or three years, what can we put in this building that will make it substantially different and better for us to be able to respond to this?” Krebsbach said.

The air handling system will be segmented into handling different parts of the building instead of the system handling it all. Another example: walk-in bathrooms with no doors.

Increased costs of building materials forced the district to work with the general contractor and architect to trim some costs, and raise funds in the community to make up the difference. Bids came in $500,000 over what was expected.

The district had $350,000 in savings and a community group was raising about $275,000 to help out, Krebsbach said.

Krebsbach said Denver benefits from being near a diverse base of major employers in the Waterloo-Cedar Falls-Waverly area, such as John Deere, UnityPoint Health, MercyOne, the University of Northern Iowa, Rada Manufacturing and CUNA Mutual Group, and Denver-based Schumacher Elevator Co.

“A lot of folks I spoke to during the course of the pandemic really did not see their workflow slow down,” in construction, healthcare, agriculture, and food services, Krebsbach said.

Jeff Schumacher, CEO of Schumacher Elevator in Denver, said his business went through a small blip in the past year but that his business is growing again. His company employs 250 people, with nearly half of those workers in town.

“We were having difficulty hiring, as a matter of fact,” Schumacher said. “The people we lose are typically to retirement.”

He and Krebsbach said many people are working remotely and dining and shopping closer to home as a result of the pandemic.

“If you look at Main Street in Denver, I don’t think it’s ever been better as far as the number of businesses,” Leonhart, the former mayor, said. “The storefronts of Denver are full.”

While downtowns might be dying in other communities, Denver is adding medical and dental offices. Yhere are new housing starts, in spite of the rising costs of building materials. Some people in town will continue to work from home beyond the pandemic.

The community also has an opportunity with Butler-Bremer Communications of Plainfield for fiber optic high-speed internet access.

Dave Larson, a former city council and school board member, grew up in Denver. He became a property developer and revitalized a former hardware store building with multiple businesses a few years ago. He also owns and operates Willow Wind, an assisted living facility on the south end of town, which opened about five years ago. It is managed by Western Home Communities of Cedar Falls.

“We’ve got wonderful facilities here,” Larson said, referring to the Cyclone Center and schools. “You go anywhere and compare ours to theirs and it’s pretty impressive for a small town.”

As far as the pandemic’s impact on the local economy, “you just put your head down and you work through it,” Larson said.

READ MORE: HOW A HANDFUL OF IOWA TOWNS THRIVE, RISE ABOVE RURAL DECLINE

IowaWatch reporting in this project was made possible by support from the Solutions Journalism Network, a nonprofit organization dedicated to rigorous and compelling reporting about responses to social problems.

Type of work:

WASHINGTON (AP) — First lady Jill Biden said Monday that she wants the defeated Iowa women’s basketball team to be invited to the White House in addition to the national title winner Louisiana State University. She watched LSU’s 102-85 victory over Iowa from the stands on Sunday night.

Biden, speaking at the Colorado state capital in Denver, praised Iowa’s sportsmanship and congratulated both teams on their performance.

“I know we’ll have the champions come to the White House, we always do. So, we hope LSU will come,” she said. “But, you know, I’m going to tell Joe I think Iowa should come, too, because they played such a good game.”

The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about whether President Joe Biden would also extend a White House invite to Iowa — and whether it would be a joint visit with LSU or a separate engagement.

Following LSU’s victory, Tigers coach Kim Mulkey said she would go to the White House if the team was invited.

LSU star Angel Reese tweeted a link to a story on Jill Biden’s remarks on Monday. “ A JOKE,” she wrote, along with three rolling-on-floor-laughing emojis.

READ MORE

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Reese — the Final Four’s Most Outstanding Player — has gotten a lot of attention on social media during the past 24 hours, ever since she waved her hand in front of her face while staring down Iowa star Caitlin Clark in the final moments of LSU’s win, then pointed toward her finger as if to say a ring was coming.

Clark set the record for points scored in an NCAA Tournament with 191 in six games. If she saw Reese’s gestures, Clark didn’t seem concerned about them.

Social media lit up in the aftermath, with some believing it was trash talk that’s just part of the game while others condemned her for lacking grace in victory. Reese was unapologetic.

“All year, I was critiqued about who I was,” Reese said. “I don’t fit in a box that y’all want me to be in. I’m too hood. I’m too ghetto. But when other people do it, y’all say nothing. So this was for the girls that look like me, that’s going to speak up on what they believe in. It’s unapologetically you.”

Reese is Black while Clark is white.

Clark, the scoring sensation who was the first with consecutive 40-point games in an NCAA Tournament, made a similar face-waving gesture to no one in particular during Iowa’s Elite Eight victory over Louisville.

Iowa did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the invitation.

In her remarks, Biden also marveled at how far women’s sports in the U.S. have come since Title IX in 1972 gave women equal rights in sports at schools that receive federal funding.

“It was so exciting, wasn’t it,” the first lady said. “It was such a great game. I’m old enough that I remember when we got Title IX. We fought so hard, right? We fought so hard. And look at where women’s sports have come today.”

___

AP Sports Writers David Brandt, Schuyler Dixon and Eric Olson contributed to this story.

The archery club, which was started just two years ago at Denver, has exceeded hopes.

The National Archery in the Schools Program (NASP) was created by the Iowa Department of Natural Resource and Department of Education for athletes between the grades of 4th-12th. The goal of the program is to teach archery as a form of physical education and promote lifelong participation in the sport.

Kala and Tyson Trunkhill are the head coaches and creators of the Denver club. A year before the Denver program’s implementation, the Trunkhills started talking about the possibility of starting a club at Denver. Kala and Tyson are active in the archery community. They own Sticks and Stones Archery, a full-service archery shop located in Denver, and are members of the Black Hawk Archers. Tyson serves as vice-president of the club. The two are also brand ambassadors for HHA USA and staff shooters for Xpedition Archery.

The Trunkhills know firsthand the wholistic benefits archery can bring. In addition to their archery shop, the two run a non-profit called the Dust-Off Project which collects archery equipment and donates it to military veterans, law enforcement, and first responders. Tyson, a retired military veteran, started the project as a way to help others combat PTSD and develop friendships and comradery.

When the couple’s oldest daughter entered high school, the Trunkhills saw an opportunity to bring the benefits of archery to kids in their community too.

“We had brought it up briefly in a conversation with the superintendent (Brad Laures), but it wasn't until a year later when our oldest daughter had high school orientation that we had brought the idea up to the high school principal (Taylor Anderson),” said Kala. “We wanted to start the Denver NASP archery club because it is important to us to get the younger generation into a sport that can include everyone.”

When the Denver program kicked off, the Trunkhills soon found that they were quickly surpassing the number of members from other like-size schools. They had a roster of 87 shooters their first season, more than 30 above their closest size school Dike-New Hartford. In their second year, they have over 107 officially on the roster.

“We realized last year that we were much bigger than anticipated during the first practice when students started showing up with registration forms,” said Kala. “We also learned this year that we had students move into our school district due to the fact we offered NASP and trap shooting at Denver High School.”

Word of mouth has worked wonders for the program. “After we got the okay from Brad and Taylor to move forward with the program, Tyson and I started announcing it on our Facebook pages, telling our friends, and just getting them to spread the word,” said Kala. “We also had returning archers who recruited many new students for the 23/24 archery season.”

Denver seniors Aubrey Decker and Joe Smeltser, who returned for their second year on the team, were an instrumental part in spreading the word for the upper grade levels of the high school. Smeltser is the first student in the program to earn a spot at the state tournament. To qualify for state, an archer must have two combined scores that meet the state's minimum requirement. Smeltser has now done that for both the Bullseye state tournament (hitting 540, eight points above the minimum qualifier) and the 3D state tournament (hitting 528, two points above the minimum qualifier).

First-time competitor Henry Marcotte also earned his spot at state. The elementary student qualified for the state Bullseye tournament after hitting a 224 at Dike-New Hartford and a 250 at Aplington-Parkersburg, surpassing the elementary state qualifying score of 470.

Three more elementary archers have earned their spot at the state tournament. Gunner Widdel will move to state with a combined score of 472, Brody Sanderson, 520, and Coy Munson, 527.

But the excitement for the program goes beyond the number of athletes competing at state.

“The feedback we have received has been amazing,” said Kala. “The archers and parents are loving the program. We have been told by numerous parents that they are excited that their child has finally become part of a team. Parents have started shooting archery themselves because they do a parent vs archer night and they got to witness firsthand how fun archery can be, and it gives them a sport that they can connect with their kids while doing together.”

“Archery is a sport for everyone,” continued Kala. “It does not matter your athletic ability, if you have a disability, or if you are male or female. Archery is a sport that anyone can do.”

The state tournaments will take place at the Iowa State Fairgrounds on March 1-3, 2024.