Nature supports and nature taketh away... http://journalstar.com/special-section/epilogue/article_2d4b8d0e-aecf-11df-8bd3-001cc4c03286.html
The Prairie Peace Park opened in 1994. Interstate 80 travelers often dropped in to view the unique, peace-oriented artwork and exhibits. Annual visitation averaged about 600. Faced with financial problems, the Prairie Peace Park Board sold the park in 2005 to a transcendental meditation group based in Fairfield, Iowa. PLEASANT DALE -- The Prairie Peace Park has fallen on hard times. Old tires and shattered glass and an empty Jim Beam bottle litter the entrance. Weeds grow in the cracks of the parking lot, which is scattered with asphalt shingles and debris from an abandoned house nearby. There are no welcome banners to greet visitors -- only a big "for sale" sign and a colorful mural on the side of the house, featuring flowers, sun, people, music symbols and a globe supported by hands. It wasn't always this way. The Prairie Peace Park once was a place where the seeds of peace were sown by a group of visionaries who wanted a venue where people could meditate about ways to change a violent world. The park opened June 11, 1994. More than 1,500 people attended, including actor Ed Asner, children's singer Raffi and the late U.S. Sen. J.J. Exon. Sixteen years later, the park is about to be sold, its mission of fostering world peace lost in 27 acres of weeds and trees and neglected sculptures and exhibits. Marc Snow with NAI FMA Realty in Lincoln has been working with a buyer interested in the land and has a contract under review. Don Tilley, president of the Prairie Peace Park Board, was not surprised by the news. "We were expecting it to happen," he said. Tilley, one of the park's founders, had high hopes its peace mission would live on after the board sold it in 2005 to Global Country World Peace, based in Maharishi Vedic City, Iowa. The group, affiliated with Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa, planned to build a 12,000-square-foot "peace palace" on site to teach transcendental meditation and host public lectures. "We always had some hope," Tilley said. "When they tried to sell the property, we kind of guessed it (the peace palace) wasn't going to happen." (...)
