Diversity Factoids:(from diversityinc.com)

Growth of Travel Volume for People of Color Outpaces U.S. Average
The travel volume of Latinos increased 20 percent from 2000 to 2002. According to the Travel Industry Association of America, Asian-American travel volume increased 10 percent and African-American travel volume increased 4 percent . (June 2004)

People of Color Spend Billions on Domestic Travel
People of color spent about $90 billion on domestic travel in 2002, according to the Travel Industry Association of America. (June 2004)

Consumers With Disabilities May Fuel Hospitality Growth
Since the implementation of the access provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act 11 years ago, the hotel-and-hospitality industry has experienced a 12 percent increase in revenue, attributable in part to consumers with disabilities, according to General Accounting Office. (July 1, 2004)

Images of the Midwest

In God We Trust, Main Street, Kansas

Population 200, Main Street

Baumgardner's Grocery Store

Multiracial Populations Higher Than National Average in several states

While multiracial people made up 2.4 percent of the nation's population in 2000, 21 percent of Hawaii's population was multiracial.

Other states with larger-than-average multiracial populations included Alaska (5.4 percent) , California (4.7 percent) and Oklahoma (4.5 percent) . (diversityinc.com)

Big Scoop

Selected links:

• Changing face of rural America
• Gathering Remnants: Tribute to the working cowboy
• Immigrants Transform Midwest Towns
• Rural Challenges for the Upper Midwest

Featured article: From The Washington Post, August 9, 2004

Iowa Town Booms On Eastern Ways: Meditation, business draw residents

Vedic City, Iowa was incorporated in 2001 by the followers of he Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the Beatles' meditation guru. It has become an entrepreneurial mecca of the Midwest.

Practitioners of transcendental meditation, from investment bankers to artists and importers, run their profitable business from spacious Vedic style homes and buildings.

Most of the TM practitioners moved here to study meditation and related practices at Maharishi University or to send their children to Maharishi School, an elementary and high school that includes meditation, Sanskrit and ayurvedic medicine in its regular curriculum.

Vedic City bans the sale of non-organic foods and runs an organic farming operation. New projects include a housing project powered by solar energy. The city has received government grants for developing renewable energy sources and running recycling and composting programs.

Not only are the residents of Vedic city known for their entrepreneurship, they are now involved in a study of the National Institute of Health on how meditation can benefit people with hypertension and heart disease.

Vedic City, Iowa:http://maharishivediccity.net/index.html