def to_ascii(text):
    """
    Force a string or other to ASCII text ignoring errors.

    Parameters
    -----------
    text : any
      Input to be converted to ASCII string

    Returns
    -----------
    ascii : str
      Input as an ASCII string
    """
    if hasattr(text, 'encode'):
        # case for existing strings
        return text.encode(
            'ascii', errors='ignore').decode('ascii')
    elif hasattr(text, 'decode'):
        # case for bytes
        return text.decode('ascii', errors='ignore')
    # otherwise just wrap as a string
    return str(text)