Des Moines, des merrier.

Oh yes, I DID just make a pun. My papa would be so proud. This week has been jam-packed and fun-filled. I'm sure this post will be incredibly long too, so if you don't like nerdy stuff, skip the part in asterisks.

On Tuesday our entire cast went to one site for Community Impact. This is a rarity, as there are usually a number of sites we split between. We were working with Kids Against Hunger, our beneficiary in Des Moines. We worked packaging meals (basically making a chicken and vegetable rice casserole dry mix) to send to those in need not only in Des Moines, but in Haiti and Tanzania. Our goal was to package 200,000 meals throughout the day. My host family even came for a bit to help out. I was part of the mini-shows we did - there were 5 scheduled, as the non-Uppie volunteers came in 5 shifts, but we ended up doing 8. We only did two songs, just a teaser for the show, but the 3 extra shows were due to media being there. According to a castmate, I was on the news dancing. There's no t.v. here, so I didn't have to watch.

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Yesterday we visited Pioneer, an agricultural company that produces different varieties of seeds to farmers around the world. They do everything from conventional hybrids to genetic manipulation, with their main products being soybeans and corn. Our visit was truly fascinating and brought up so many questions that they were more than happy to answer.

Basically, they create different varieties to make crops yield more acre or to be resistant to bugs or drought. It was interesting to hear some of the European opinions on the company, as many came in with closed minds as soon as they heard that the company produces GMOs. Since GMOs are illegal in Europe, some of them had never even thought about there being positive sides to creating new varieties of crops. Others had never really thought about it since it was never brought up aside from the fact that it was illegal. Genetic manipulation of crops comes with positive and negative aspects, but that was not the part that fascinated me.

The most interesting part to me was the concept of corn as intellectual property. Pioneer signs contracts with their customers saying that the seed they provide will only be used for one year and will not be re-planted in following years. Due to the specific genetic compositions of the plants, the company has the right to sue a farm for using the seed again because of a breach of intellectual property law. For this reason, Pioneer will only do business in countries that have strong intellectual property protections. When questioned further about it, they said that they would use older varieties in those countries, but that the newest ones "probably wouldn't be useful to them anyway." Their quote, not mine.

Clearly, corn is the moneymaker since farmers have to buy it again every year. The seed will generally lose 15-20% of its yield the second year due to different genetic combinations (not all of your kids are going to have your charm AND good looks), which is actually the amount gained by using Pioneer seed. We talked mostly about corn, and upon looking it up (I told you I was a nerd) I found that corn IS protected by IP laws, but soybeans are not. Why? Corn is the result of cross-pollination, whereas soybeans are self-pollinating (http://www.choicesmagazine.org/2003-3/2003-3-05.htm). Therefore, planting the soybeans a second year would not have any significant effect on the crop yield. Crazy.

We got to tour some of the laboratory and saw corn in all the different stages of experimental development. We talked to one of the genetic engineers, who actually is a co-creator of a certain type of "gene gun." Gene guns are what they use to insert the gene into the plant DNA to create the new variety. Smart guy, that one.

While at Pioneer we also spoke to the president of the World Food Prize, which is pretty much the agricultural equivalent of the Nobel Prize. We got a nice history of the prize and why it was created. It's quite an interesting idea.

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After visiting Pioneer, most of the cast went roller skating. I, however, was in the group that went to the mall to do a mini-show. We did about 6 songs in this one to an audience of maybe a dozen people. I sang a certain song for the first time and it was quite frightening. This morning, one of the tech staff came up to me and told me to have confidence in it, because she could see what I was feeling as my face cringed before I got to the parts I'm uncomfortable with. I am not good at ad-libbing and adding flourishes to songs that someone else wrote, and that was what I had to do at my cringe-worthy parts. At least I got through it.

When we got back to our meeting place, we were finally let in on the secret "cast activity" that was planned for the evening... karaoke! There was lots of dance music played near the beginning, so I danced my little heart out. Karaoke brought about lots of interpretive dance from me. I also managed to enlist some co-conspirators for most songs. We laughed so hard, it was a nice break from the usual scheduled activities.

This morning I worked at the Des Moines Area Religious Council in what was a storage house for their emergency food pantries. There were 8 of us and we had to check dates on donated goods, count and properly sort the items, then box and tape them for distribution. We were supposed to be there from 9-3, but my plans got changed. I was told that our music coordinator was sick, so they needed me to go to the school where they had another mini-show planned. When it came to lunch time off I went to, you guessed it, sing the cringe-worthy song once again. I don't think my face showed it as much today, but I'm still horribly frightened of the song.

Oh, the show. Insane. Incredible. The show was for a bunch of middle school students and from the moment we greeted them at the door with high-fives they were into it. We had kids dancing in the aisles and up front with us before the show even started. Once we started, the response was overwhelming - the pitch of the screams is unmatched. They went nuts over the parts that had any kind of hip-hop dancing. At the end of the mini-show, we ran out into the audience to close. The kids once again joined us in the aisles clapping to the music being played over the speakers. Two kids ran over to me to dance, which was really sweet. After a while, they began filtering onto the stage. Eventually, they were ALL on the stage and it was an all-out dance party. People were taking pictures, dancing, getting autographs, you name it. Finally, the classes started to filter out until there were only a few left. One of those left had a really enthusiastic teacher (he was up on stage, too) and the whole class started a "Thank you" chant. We replied back with the same. Our show manager said he'd NEVER seen a school audience react that much to us. I'm sure they'll remember us as much as we'll remember them. Did I mention it was insane?

~Molly