Fall 2017

Voices from the Prairie A publication of Humanities Iowa • Fall 2017

Telling Iowa’s Backyard Stories

The Modernization of the Obituary

Humanities and the Legacy of Race and Ethnicity

Voices from the Prairie Fall 2017

Voices from the Prairie Contents Telling Iowa’s Backyard Stories

3

Legacy of Race and Ethnicity

6

The Modernization of the Obituary

8

Grants Awarded in 2017

11

New Board and Staff Members

12

Statement of Activity

14

2017 Donors

15

Cover: Bean Field and House, Grundy County, Iowa Photograph © David Plowden, 2003

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Humanities Iowa Board of Directors & Staff

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Telling Iowa’s Backyard Stories An Interview with Documentary Filmmaker Kevin Kelley

Kevin Kelley has worked as a filmmaker for the University of Iowa for the past thirty years. His most recent documentary, Jackson Pollock’s Mural: The Story of a Modern Masterpiece, won a Mid-American Emmy in September.

Humanities Iowa talked to Kevin about his newly founded non-profit, New Mile Media Arts, and his current project: a documentary about George Stout, an Iowa native who led efforts to recover stolen artworks from the Nazis during World War II. Tentatively called Stout Hearted, New Mile Media Arts received a major grant award from Humanities Iowa in support of this project last spring.

Humanities Iowa: Tell us about this project.

Kevin Kelley: We’re working on a film called Stout Hearted, and it’s about George Stout, who was the leader of The Monuments Men during World War II — and the Monuments Men of course were the unit that was set up by the military to get all the paintings back from Hitler and the Nazis and return them to their owners.

And so George Stout was a Winterset, Iowa resident — so he’s from Iowa. He went to the University of Iowa as an art student, and then later went to the Fogg Art Museum in Boston and got interested in conservation. That means he would conserve paintings — not restore them, but use chemicals and science to bring the artwork back. So, he’s really the father of conservation.

So we’re doing the story of him, but the theme of the film is really about preserving your cultural heritage. In Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan, a lot of cultural icons: temples, religious monuments and so forth, are being destroyed by terrorists, and so we’re working with a group called the Blue

Shield — and they’re in the film as well — and they work with the United States military to help preserve these monuments from terrorists and also destruction from the United States when they’re in conflicts.

And we also have the modern conservators of today. We went to a conference in Chicago last May and talked to a lot of conservators from all over the United States. So that’s kind of where it’s at right now. We’re working with a conservator out in California, and we’ve hooked up with Leslie Stout, who is George Stout’s granddaughter, and she has a painting that George Stout did in 1924, when he was a student at the University of Iowa. And so she’s going to have that conserved and we’re going to film that and that will be a part of the film, too. So I think that’s kind of poetic, that we’re having the father of conservation’s artwork conserved.

Humanities Iowa: Why tell this story now? Why is it important?

Kevin Kelley: I worked on another film called Jackson Pollock’s Mural, and it just won an Emmy Award. And as I was working on that, I learned about conservation, because that painting went to the Getty and was conserved. And the former museum director that was here, he basically told me, your next film is going to be about George Stout. And he was right.

Because the more I looked into it, I just thought, this is such a great story, and it’s such an important story that Iowans need to know about.

Humanities Iowa: What do you hope viewers will take away from this documentary?

Kevin Kelley: I hope that after this film comes out and more people see it and more

Image: Michelangelo’s Madonna of

Bruges was stolen by the Nazis in 1944. It was rescued by The Monuments Men from a salt mine in 1945.

people are interested in it, that they’ll know who George Stout was. I know that there’s a movie called The Monuments Men, but they didn’t even use George’s name, George Clooney changed the name. And there were a lot of fictionalized things that happened, and you have to do that with a Hollywood movie, so I think most people understand that they fictionalized some of it. But, this being a documentary, it’s all authentic and accurate. We have really good authority figures that are speaking, and so that’s my hope — that if you mention George Stout, people will say, oh, he’s the leader of The Monuments Men from Winterset, Iowa.

You know, that’s what I want people to come away with after this film.

Humanities Iowa: How do you start tackling a project of this size? What is the process like?

Kevin Kelley: Every project is different.

This one is historical, so I read a lot — I read three books on George Stout — and also what was going on in World War II, and then just the interviews. It helps to research the people you want to speak Fall 2017 · 3

Kevin Kelley Interview Continued

with, and when you talk to them, you start to learn all sorts of things. We interviewed former Congressman Jim Leach — he was one of our first interviews, and he’s now the director of the art museum — and he said some really incredible things that took us different directions with what to research and what to think about for the film. So you just build on that, and the next person tells you something else, and the next person tells you something else, and it gets bigger and bigger.

The other way documentaries are done is finding a story that you hear about. It may not have an end, but it’s got a beginning, and maybe a middle, and you go, and you follow the individual or group, and the story starts to unfold on its own. Those are sometimes the best documentaries because they’re happening in real time, and they’re full of surprises. So that’s another type of way that I get into working with documentaries.

Humanities Iowa: How did you get started with filmmaking?

Kevin Kelley: I got started making movies when I talked my mother into buying a movie camera instead of a toaster oven. The agreement was that I would film the family, and I said ok, sure. But what I really wanted to do was make monster movies with animation. I played around with that when I was younger than sixteen. I was always interested in the arts, I studied the arts my whole life — I took art lessons when I was a young kid. I’m from Des Moines, so I would take lessons at the Des Moines Art Center every Saturday morning. I got a scholarship, so I started doing that, and then I was just always interested in movies and thinking 4 · Voices from the Prairie

about how do they work, and then every now and again I would see something on TV about the making of this movie, and it would show behind the scenes. I used to get the Encyclopedia Britannica out and they would show you pictures of the studios and the cameras and the lights and all the people who worked on the film, and I just found that to be so fascinating.

That’s what I wanted to do.

I was lucky because I lived in Des Moines and I went to Hoover High School, and when I was in high school they had a film class in the early ‘70s, and the teacher’s name was Bill Springer, and he taught film to kids in high school — and they had a film festival and everything — so I was just on fire there, I loved that. The thing was, well, you go out to Hollywood now, California, and I never did — first of all, I didn’t have the resources, and I decided I would go to school in Iowa, and study art, and teach, and I’d have a film class of my own sometime. But it didn’t work out that way — I worked at the University of Iowa, which is even better, and I’ve been there for 30 years, retiring December 1. I spent three decades, I suppose that’s pretty good. My wife is retiring too, so we’re going to pursue New Mile Media, and that’s going to be what we do for the rest of our lives.

Humanities Iowa: Tell us about New Mile Media Arts. When was it formed, and what kind of projects does it typically tackle?

Kevin Kelley: Last year, we formed a non-profit organization called New Mile Media Arts. We started the board, and we decided that this project would be our first project. We’ve got at least two projects

Image: Kevin Kelley accepting his

Emmy. Photo Courtesy of Kevin Kelley

that we’re going to be starting in the spring while we still are wrapping up the Stout project. The thing about filmmaking I’ve learned is that you always have to have multiple projects going on at the same time because you don’t want to wait around for something to happen while you could be doing post-production and research on another project. So we plan to at least always have three projects going on at the same time.

And we like to make them Iowa-based, or at least connected somehow to us as film editors in Iowa, because I know that the best stories to tell are the ones in your own backyard, and being a small film production company, we can’t do the big stories. But, we can do George Stout, who nobody knows, or somebody that may be a neighbor that’s a phenomenal person and has an incredible story to tell. So that’s how we’re approaching our projects. Our mission statement is about common people in uncommon situations, so that’s kind of what our motto is, is to find people that are

just typical people in incredible situations, and then go on a journey and tell their story.

Humanities Iowa: How has your recent Emmy affected your work?

Kevin Kelley: It really hasn’t affected it at all. It’s nice to have, and I think the thing with the Emmy is I hope people will seek out the film more. It’s not about me, it’s about the work, and I want people to see the film. I believe it’s online, so they’ll maybe seek it out more. It was nice to have my younger [film crew] with me, and go through the process. This is my second Emmy, so I wanted them to experience the excitement too, and motivate them to continue work as filmmakers. It’s a nice pool to shoot for. So that’s pretty much what the Emmy does, and people get excited about it, and when you mention it, people listen a little more, and you know, it helps, especially documentary filmmakers who aren’t well known, to maybe get their foot in the door with other people as they’re making their next film. So it’s a leverage thing or a recognition thing and it helps you with your work. Because again, as long as it helps the next film, that’s all I care about.

Humanities Iowa: What do you think the documentary format can do that other storytelling forms might not be able to do as well?

Kevin Kelley: They’re truthful, mostly.

And they take you into somebody’s world that you may not be able to go into, and you get to see what it’s like to be them, what it’s like to live on their terms, in their space. And, when I was a kid, I hated documentaries, I wanted to make

Image: George Stout and The Monuments Men. Photo Courtesy of Kevin Kelley Hollywood movies: fiction. And as I got older, this was just much more of a natural art form for me, and it reached a national audience.

I think the documentary now more than ever is really important for audiences, and I’m glad that Netflix and these other places make them more accessible for lowerbudget films that don’t have commercial budgets to get the word out about it. And I think the Oscars help, whether you like them or not, the Oscars help and bring recognition to these documentaries. I hope they always keep the category there because it makes people aware of these films.

Humanities Iowa: Where and when will Iowans be able to see the new film?

Kevin Kelley: We’re looking at a release date of fall next year. We’re still hoping to get funding to go to Europe and trace [Stout’s] footsteps through France and Austria. There was a salt mine in Austria where they found thousands of works of art, so we want to document that.

We hope to have it on PBS. My dream would be a national PBS release. It’s that kind of film. There are so many platforms these days with internet and web-based

delivery systems, it could go all kinds of places. Of course locally, and I love to do this, I want to take it around Iowa and show it live and answer questions, so we’ll go to maybe a handful of cities in Iowa, mostly art centers and museums, because they would be maybe more interested and will bring an audience. That’s one of my favorite things to do because as a filmmaker with a film, a lot of times you don’t get to see what the audience thinks, you don’t get to see them laugh or clap or cry or ooo or ahhh, but if you have a live event, you get that gift of the audience that you don’t normally do.

Humanities Iowa: Do you see New Mile Media Arts continuing to tackle similar projects?

Kevin Kelley: Yeah, I think so. We don’t want to be typecast as the “art guys,” you know, but we do want to do stories that are rich human stories, and certainly the arts can be that way. But I’m open to a lot of stories. And they’re going to be rooted locally — we’re not going to tell about something that happened in New York City or Los Angeles, we want people from New York City and Los Angeles to see these stories. And they’re backyard stories — like I said before, you have the jump on the story if it’s in your own backyard. h Fall 2017 · 5

The Legacy of Race and Ethnicity in Iowa Roundtable discussions provide space for challenging topics

In the wake of protests across the country sparked by incidents of police violence, racial tensions and divisions have been at the forefront of social and community issues.

In order to provide a space for public discussion on these incidents and how they relate to Iowa communities, Humanities Iowa received a $15,000 grant from the National Endowment of Humanities last fall to implement Humanities and the Legacy of Race and Ethnicity programs across the state. These programs, which took place this year, included two roundtable discussions: one in Sioux City and the other in Dubuque.

Members of each community, including law enforcement officials, NAACP representatives, clergy, and local community leaders, met to discuss issues of racial tension in the country and how they could alleviate it in their communities.

The Sioux City roundtable was held on June 21 and 22, 2017 at the Sioux City Hilton Garden Inn. Twenty concerned community leaders attended.

“There was no shortage of things to be said,” said Richard Koontz, the moderator of the Sioux City roundtable.

“They really were out to solve something.”

Koontz pointed out that in the past, police forces have had funding that allowed for them to do community police work, which included walking 6 · Voices from the Prairie

around neighborhoods and getting to know people in each community on a personal basis. But since much of that funding is gone, police forces are smaller with more geographical area to cover, and law enforcement officials often don’t have the opportunity to get to know community members in the same way. Events like the roundtables allow for communities to make that kind of personal connection again.

Koontz said he thought it was useful for law enforcement and community leaders to share their fears around issues of violence and racial profiling. He said one of the takeaways in Sioux City was the ability to see that everyone is concerned about the same problems.

“It’s not that we’re all alone in this,” he said.

He said he hopes that there continue to be discussions of this nature across the state, so that more communities have the opportunity to address common concerns.

Humanities Iowa board member Kurt Meyer was the moderator at the Dubuque roundtable, which met June 28 and 29, 2017 at the Dubuque Museum of Art. Sixteen community leaders were in attendance.

Meyer said that he thinks events like these are important because they give people the space to discuss difficult topics and develop a better understanding of what others in their community think about particular issues, such as race and criminal justice.

He said that even though it can seem like simply understanding someone else’s point of view is a small improvement, the long-term effects can have a large impact.

“If better understanding is a takeaway, then better communities is a gain,” he said.

Meyer said that another takeaway from the Dubuque roundtable was the realization that community initiatives to address these issues that are already underway have had a positive impact.

prompt engaged discussions about how this change affects the community’s needs. She said that she hopes the Humanities Iowa events empower people to have important conversations about how their communities can be more inclusive, and that these conversations become the norm.

“Are we doing better than we were three, seven, nine, years ago — the answer was yes,” he said.

Each roundtable discussion group decided to donate their individual honoraria to one local organization, in order to help them to continue these kinds of programs in the future. In Sioux City, the organization chosen was Unity in the Community, and in Dubuque it was Inclusive Dubuque.

Katrina Neely Farren-Eller, the Network Coordinator for Inclusive Dubuque, a network of community partners that promote education around issues of equity in the community, said that these roundtable conversations, even if they spark disagreement, can be crucial in getting people to examine their own perspectives and to grow.

“I thought it was pretty awesome,” she said of the Dubuque roundtable.

She said that in Dubuque, the population has shifted demographically from 98 percent white to 90 percent white in recent years, and it can be difficult to

Going forward, she said Inclusive Dubuque plans to use the donation from the roundtable event to partner with the Julien Dubuque International Film Festival and add a diversity category to their lineup. This will allow them to show films on underrepresented topics, as well as bring directors and stars to the festival to have important dialogues with festival attendees.

Monique Scarlett, founder of Unity in the Community, an organization that aims to provide connections between law enforcement and community members in Sioux City, said that having insight into new perspectives was a crucial part of the roundtable format.

“What I like about the roundtable discussion is that we were able to work through what we were feeling and what we were seeing,” she said.

reason: because she wanted to be proactive in preventing violence in the Sioux City community. To that end, she hosts annual public forums as well as more casual block parties that allow community members to mingle and get to know local law enforcement. The donation from the Sioux City roundtable will go toward expanding these programs in the next few years.

She said that at the Sioux City roundtable, the group tackled difficult subjects like disproportionate numbers in incarceration, racial profiling at traffic stops, and how to be more proactive and have preventative measures in place.

She said the main takeaway from the Legacy of Race and Ethnicity Event for her was how important organizations like hers can be in providing opportunities for communication, and for allowing many perspectives to be heard and understood. Going forward, she hopes to develop educational programs for middle schools and high schools.

Scarlett founded Unity in the Community last year for exactly that

“We want Iowa to be a leader in unity,” she said. h Fall 2017 · 7

The Modernization of the Obituary An Interview with Writer Mary Kay Shanley

Writer Mary K ay Shanley is a best-selling Iowa author and a speaker for the Humanities Iowa Speakers Bureau. This fall she debuted a new presentation called “The Obituary — Yours or Someone Else’s.” We talked to Mary Kay about this new project, and about why obituaries are important to history and to society.

Humanities Iowa: You are developing a new Speakers Bureau presentation on the obituary. Tell us about this project.

Mary Kay Shanley: Seemingly forever, the obituary format has been uniformly standard. Like Christmas, always on December 25th. Like taxes, always due on April 15th. And the Academy Awards, always too long. And Iowa’s four seasons, with one melding into the other, each delivering diversity, beauty and challenge. The obituary was that rock solid. Until it wasn’t.

“The Obituary — Yours or Someone Else’s,” the Humanities Iowa Speakers Bureau presentation, considers the obit’s history. Initially reserved for the prominent in the early 19th century, it eventually found favor with the common man as well. Today, with social media’s penchant for putting everything on the table, we have the Personalized Obituary, often written by a family member or friend. After the presentation, anyone interested can stay longer for a mini-workshop session.

Humanities Iowa: What first sparked 8 · Voices from the Prairie

your interest in obituaries?

Mary Kay Shanley: As a journalist, I’ve always read the newspaper. Almost all obituaries adhered to a standard template, with boundaries and borders set down in a newsroom, supported by a funeral home and tradition. Guidelines were stringent. But today, that’s not the case.

I began to note that shift from stringent to personalization, probably because I’m a journalist.

Humanities Iowa: Tell us a little about the history of obituaries: How have they changed throughout the years?

Mary Kay Shanley: “Obituary” comes from obits, the Latin word for death.

Brief announcements of death were published in America as early as the 16th century. By the 1880s, “death journalism” in England and the U.S. focused on the graphic and morbid details of a person’s demise.

Newspaper obits began appearing with regularity for soldiers, public servants, celebrities and adventurers, often detailing their lives as well as their deaths. Accounts of Civil War soldiers, for example, were often sentimental and religious. But the majority of obituaries remained focused on the aristocracy, and included the basics — name and address; dates of birth and death, with cause; planned services — personal

Image: Writer Mary Kay Shanley history, education, family, career, places lived, accomplishments.

Finally, in the late 1800s, “Common Man” obituaries began to routinely recognize ordinary people as well as the aristocracy. That meant anyone’s life, death and funeral information was worthy of publication.

Humanities Iowa: How do obituaries ref lect the times?

Mary Kay Shanley: Standard procedure into the 21st century was to have family members provide the funeral home with information for the newspaper. A journalist — usually a cub reporter — wrote the obituary, which a copyreader proofed for accuracy. Next it went to the layout editor, and finally to the pressroom.

But the winds of change, fanned by social media’s penchant for putting everything on the table, turned the stoic and static obituary into the Personalized Obituary — a cultural shift that enabled a new form of expression at the end of one’s life journey.

Image:

Obituary Headline from the Denison Review (Denison, IA), January 1916.

The Library of Congress

Image:

Group reading Woodrow Wilson’s Obituary, February 1924.

The Library of Congress

Increasingly, obituaries are written by a family member or friend — or even by the deceased (ahead of time, obviously).

They include not only the factual information, but also insight into a lifejourney.

Initially, the first eight lines of such obits were free. Today, newspapers have a per-line charge to run the obituary.

The submission goes to the advertising department for layout & design, so no proofing before printing. Not surprisingly, obituaries have become a source of revenue for newspapers.

Many newspapers offer a “basic death notice” to every family. Some funeral directors — especially when money is an issue — encourage families to run that in the local newspaper, then print the entire obituary on the funeral home’s website. The funeral home generally pays to have its logo and website added to each obituary, so the family pays nothing in this situation.

Humanities Iowa: What is unique about obituaries as a storytelling form?

Mary Kay Shanley: The f lavor has changed. Now, facts mix with insight, stories, admissions, admonishments and even pleas. Consider the obituary for Wayne Brockey, a retired wood-

plant manager in Klamath, OR (Haze the Dead! More Obit Writers Tell It Like It Was — Warts and All, Wall Street Journal, 2017). It was written by a grandson, who commented on his grandfather’s love of the QVC cable shopping network: “QVC lost a loyal customer on Sept. 28, 2016.”

Or the obit for Allen Franklin, who died in a motorcycle accident in Virginia. It was written by his brother Tony: “His family constantly warned him about the dangers of riding motorcycles but he was incredibly stubborn. Allen was a wonderful young man and was loved by everyone he met, despite his incessant need to argue with anyone about everything. He was probably the biggest tightwad in the mid-Atlantic region” (Haze the Dead! More Obit Writers Tell It Like It Was — Warts and All, Wall Street Journal, 2017).

Dan A. Wilson of Wisconsin wrote his own obituary full of one-liners: “I crammed a four-year education into seven years” — “Morningside College is a Methodist school where I was forced to go to the chapel every week and take one religious course each semester for two years. The religion nearly turned me into an atheist” — “In the late ‘80s/ early ‘90s we transferred to Houston, TX, and became part of the Enron fiasco” — “There will be no interment since

I’m going to be cremated. If you want to see me, you have to come by the house where Donna will have me displayed somewhere” (Des Moines Register, 2017).

Consider these passages excerpted from the obit for Irene Kline, written by her daughter, Robin. Readers learned not only the facts of Mrs. Kline’s life, but also the essence of the woman: “She grew up on the diversified family dairy farm, baking pies for threshing crews, gathering eggs from the hen house and every autumn helping butcher and process hogs and making gallons of apple butter” — “In college she became skilled in the campus bakery, and fondly remembered making doughnuts for student breakfasts in the wee hours of the morning” — “Later, she led a team of foods teachers, introduced international foods classes to students and broke with tradition by teaching boys food preparation classes” (Des Moines Register, 2017).

Humanities Iowa: What else should our readers know about obituaries?

Mary Kay Shanley: Two things. First, an obituary can nudge society forward.

This fall, Iowan Ethan Sergey Neubauer, 18, took his own life after struggling with depression, anxiety, PTSD and survivor’s guilt related to a tumultuous childhood in Russia. His American Fall 2017 · 9

Mary Kay Shanley Interview Continued

New Humanities Iowa Documentary: “The Fort” Now Available on DVD

parents ended his moving obituary with a plea for lawmakers to address mental health crises that are inadequately funded (Des Moines Register, 2017).

Second, when journalists wrote the obituaries, cause of death was required information. Now, with families writing obituaries, including cause of death is up to the family.

Image: Turret at the old Iowa State Penitentiary Facility Humanities Iowa partnered with Documentary Filmmaker Dan Manatt of Democracy Films on a new documentary about the Iowa State Penitentiary.

The film, “The Fort: 177 Years of Crime & Punishment at the Iowa State Penitentiary,” premiered in Fort Madison in September and is now available on DVD. The Iowa State Penitentiary (nicknamed “The Fort”) was founded in 1839. At the time of its closing in 2015, it was the oldest prison west of the Mississippi River.

The documentary chronicles its history, takes a look at the new Iowa State Penitentiary facility and profiles the inmates and staff who make up the penitentiary community. Interviewees include Jack Nutter, who entered “The Fort” in 1956 when he was only 18 and is one of the longest-serving inmates in the country, Nick Ludwick, the warden from 2006-2017, and Edward Love, who works in the prison’s hospice program, among others.

The hospice program is one of the first of its kind in the United States.

Manatt has been a documentary filmmaker for 10 years. His previous films include “The Republic of Baseball: The First MLB Superstars and Civil Rights Heroes” and “Whiskey Cookers: The True History of the Templeton Rye Bootleggers,” which won Best Documentary at the Iowa Independent Film Festival in 2014.

For more information on “The Fort,” visit w w w.thefort.film.

But when no cause of death is listed, an important piece of medical history is missing. Consider: The obituary for Orville Marlow listed cause of death as complications of Parkinson’s disease (Perry Chief, Des Moines Register, 1997). Mr. Marlow had owned a gas station and later worked for an oil company. The funeral director’s wife wondered about a possible link between his work and Parkinson’s, saying such information in obituaries might be useful for research purposes.

After Mr. Marlow had been diagnosed, his children asked the neurologist about hereditary factors with Parkinson’s; the doctor said that wasn’t likely. Later, the family learned that he was probably part of a “cluster” as four of his cousins had Parkinson’s. And even later, his genealogist son-in-law came across an obituary for Mr. Marlow’s half-brother, whom the family never knew. He, too, died of Parkinson’s.

Without listing cause of death, such valuable history may be lost forever. h

10 · Voices from the Prairie

Grants Awarded 2017

Belle Plaine Wallace Winkie Foundation— $500 Cedar Falls Cedar Falls Arts Alive—$1,071 Cedar Rapids African American Museum of Iowa—$7,890 Eastern Iowa Arts Academy—$2,635 Thaler Holocaust Education Trust—$10,000—$10,000 Legion Arts—$10,000 Council Bluffs Pottawattamie County Conservation Board—$1,811 Danville Danville Station—$10,000 Davenport River Action—$10,000 Storytellers International—$9,803 Des Moines Edmundson Art Foundation—$3,000 Des Moines Art Center—$3,000 Des Moines Public Library—$5,000—$5,000 Drake University—$10,000—$7,900 Drake University Anderson Gallery —$10,000 Paws & Effect —$7,500 Dubuque Clarke University—$1,400 Dubuque County Historical Society—$2,696—$4,653 Dubuque Museum of Art—$10,000 Studio Works—$1,500 Elk Horn Museum of Danish America — $8,517

Fairfield Fairfield Arts and Convention Center —$2,055 Fair Field Productions—$9,955 Harlan Shelby County Historical Society — $2,167.72 Iowa City CARTHA —$10,000 New Mile Media Arts—$10,000 Mason City Charles H. MacNider Museum—$2,000 Moline The Moline Foundation—$7,350—$9,000 Muscatine Muscatine Independent Film Festival—$4,050 Ottumwa Indian Hills Community College—$233 Pella Pella Historical Society—$1,050 Central College—$4,100 Rock Island Ballet Quad Cities—$2,800 Living Proof Exhibit —$4,100 Shenandoah Shenandoah Public Library—$2,198 Sioux City Morningside College—$10,000 Tama Sac and Fox Tribe of the Mississippi—$9,180

Council Conducted Partnerships 2016-2017 Boone Boone County History Museum Becoming Boone—$20,00 Cedar R apids National Czech and Slovak Museum and Library — 68.77.89—$55,000 Clinton Midwest Lumber Museum Virtual Raft Simulator Exhibit—$15,000 Des Moines Iowa Business Growth Central Iowa Power Cooperative Wells Fargo CoBank Iowa Area Development Group Iowa Vaudeville Tour—$35,000 Dubuque National Mississippi River Museum Rivers of Innovation—$20,000 Fort Dodge The Blanden Art Museum Daniel Rhodes Exhibit—$14,000 Manning Manning Public Library Everybody on the Same Page — $3,987.24 Okoboji Okoboji Summer Theater On Golden Pond —$13,385.18 Rock Island Genesius Theater Foundation, Murder in the Cathedral—$8,000 Fall 2017 · 11

Humanities Iowa Welcomes New Board and Staff Members

New Board Member: Thomas Dean

from 2003-2015 and on the Board of Directors of Iowa City’s FilmScene from 2011-2013, and was previously a member of the Board of Directors of Humanities Iowa from 2008-2014.

New Board Member: Peter Drahozal

an Educational Representative for Griggs Music Co., the Midwest’s longest running music store, located in Davenport.

In his spare time he enjoys developing his jazz piano skills and performing in Polka and jazz bands. He also enjoys primitive camping with friends in Yellow River Forest and hiking to a remote trout hole for a day out fishing. He is married and is raising a musically-talented son, Joseph.

New Board Member: Marianne Mickelson Thomas Dean (Ph.D., English, University of Iowa) is Senior Presidential Writer/Editor at the UI with primary responsibilities in speechwriting, and he teaches interdisciplinary courses at the university as well. He also teaches with the Iowa Summer Writing Festival and the UI First-Year Seminar Program, and he has taught community education courses through the Iowa City Senior Center and other programs.

Dean received a BA in English, a BM in Music History and Literature, and an MA in English from Northern Illinois University. He has taught writing, literature, and interdisciplinary subjects at Cardinal Stritch College (Milwaukee), Michigan State University, and Moorhead State University (Minnesota).

Peter Drahozal is the seventh of seven kids from a close-knit, musical family hailing from Cedar Rapids. He has pursued many different fields including electronics, railroad hobbies, reading, traveling, carpentry, camping, hunting, fishing, hiking, cycling, foreign languages, politics, religion, history, philosophy, astronomy, his Czech heritage and zymurgy (beer making), but music became his life-long passion. His early musical successes led to his love for performing (on many instruments), arranging, composing and teaching.

Dean has published essays in regional and national publications. Books include The Grace of Grass and Water: Writing in Honor of Paul Gruchow (edited collection, Ice Cube Press, 2007) and Under a Midland Sky (essays, Ice Cube Press, 2008). He served on the Board of Trustees of the Iowa City Public Library (including as president)

Mr. Drahozal earned a BA in Music and Mass Communications at St. Ambrose University, and then headed to the University of Iowa for his MA in Music Education followed by a rewarding tenyear career as a band director in several schools throughout Iowa. He currently assists other band directors and kids as

12 · Voices from the Prairie

Marianne V. Mickelson, Ed.D. lives in West Des Moines, Iowa. She has served on twelve professional boards and committees at the state and national levels, including the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy, National Transportation Research-Intergovernmental Relations in Aviation, the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators-Public Affairs and Consumer Education, where she held leadership as Regional Chair for 12 states.

She started her career at the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater in curriculum instruction, while serving on the Faculty Senate and creating the university’s first employees assistance program. For the next 32 years, she worked in Iowa state government, where she served as an executive officer managing financial and technical projects, and legislative and administrative rules. For the past 35 years, Dr. Mickelson has volunteered thousands of hours dedicated to serving several area non-profit organizations, her church, and the community.

Dr. Mickelson earned her doctorate degree in education and public administration

from Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, and B.S. and M.S. degrees from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois.

New Board Member: Karen Mitchell

Postville, Iowa.

In her forty years as an educator, eleven of which were devoted to teaching high school students, Dr. Mitchell has honed a pedagogical style that emphasizes experiential learning, creative performance, and social justice activism. She is a former president of the organization Pedagogy and Theatre of the Oppressed, is an active member in the Performance Studies division of the National Communication Association, received the Iowa Regents Faculty Excellence Award in 2004, the College of Humanities and Fine Arts Excellence in Teaching Award in 2009, the UNI Diversity Matters award in 2011, and the National Communication Association Leslie Irene Coger Award for Lifetime Achievement in Performance in 2013.

American Gothic Welcome Center in Eldon, Iowa. He currently serves as Chair of its board.

His primary interests are Iowa history, film and music, especially old blues and early rock. He owns over 5,000 vinyl LP records.

He also enjoys the construction of trails and he loves to ride his bicycle. He biked on eight RAGBRAIs, including biking the entire route in 2017.

New Staff Member: Emily Altman

New Board Member: Steve Siegel Karen Mitchell is a Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Northern Iowa where she teaches courses in Performance Studies and Critical Communication Pedagogy. She is the founding director of SAVE (Students Against a Violent Environment) Forum Actors, a peer theatre troupe dedicated to preventing gender violence on campus. Her work with SAVE was originally part of a major grant awarded to the UNI Women’s Studies program by the Department of Justice in 1999.

For 22 years, Dr. Mitchell was the Artistic Director of the UNI Interpreters Theatre. Her directing work includes stage adaptations of novels, investigations of popular cultural phenomenon and hybrid works such as her ethnodrama collaboration with Dr. Jennifer Cooley on Carne viva: Stories of Monarchs and Madres in Postville, based on the 2008 United States immigration raid that took place in

This is Steve Siegel’s second term on the Humanities Iowa board. He has degrees from Grinnell College, University of Kansas, and University of California at Berkeley. He also worked as a social worker and as a union representative. He served 20 years on the Wapello County Board of Supervisors. While there, he was a major in the construction and operation of the

Emily Altman is the new Administrator and Program Officer at Humanities Iowa. She holds an MFA in Poetry from New York University and a BA in English Literature from the University of Michigan. In addition to her background in creative writing, she has worked in journalism, publishing and as an editor for several literary publications.

Prior to joining Humanities Iowa, she worked as a Program Assistant at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. In her spare time, she co-produces a poetry podcast and enjoys hiking with her dog.

Fall 2017 · 13

Donate to Humanities Iowa H u m a n i t i e s I owa public

with

p r ov i d e s

s to r i e s

t h at

the give

meaning to people in I owa through progr ams and gr ants .

I owa

H umanities

cannot provide such without

help from supporters like you .

To

donate , visit our website or mail

H u m a n i t i es I owa to our address : 100 L ibr ary R oom 4039, I owa C it y, IA 52242.

D onations are ta x deductible to the e xtent permit ted by l aw . a c h ec k paya b le to

Humanities Iowa Debuts New Donation Page HI

Statement of Activity for the year ended October 31, 2016

revenues

will now be accep ting online

donations through

G ood . C heck

N e t work F or

out our br and new

donation webpage :

ht tps :// humanitiesiowa . net workforgood . com

Check Out Humanities Iowa’s Website Redesign C onnect

with us on social media ,

NEH & private grants Program income Gifts & membership Dividends & interest Realized and unrealized gain on investments Purpose restrictions accomplished Total Revenues

Unrestricted Temporarily Permanently Restricted Restricted

Total

759,889 0 0 759,889 9,732 247,482 0 257,214 17,778 0 0 17,778 38,310 0 38,310

(20,696) 0 (20,696) 235,240 (235,240) 1,040,253 12,242

0 1,052,495

Functional Expenses

and find out about progr amming and e vents ne ar you :

w w w . humanitiesiowa . org

What are the Humanities?

The H umanities are our culture and int tellectual heritage : the sum of human e xperience , thought and expression . They give us knowledge of the past, insight about the present, and wisdom for the future .

They te ach us about others and help us to know ourselves .

14 · Voices from the Prairie

Program Services Management & general Fundraising, newsletter Total Expenses

941,638 104,602 10,328 1,056,568

0 941,638 0 104,602 0 10,328 0 1,056,568

Increase in Net Assets (16,315) 12,242 0 (4,073) for the year Net Assets—Beginning of Year Net Assets—End of Year

881,705 865,390

14,297 26,539

128,000 1,024,002 128,000 1,019,929

Donors 2016-2017

African American Museum of Iowa Ed and Ethel Barker Terrie Barto G. Galin Berrier Liz and Tom Boyd Willard (Bill) Boyd III Willard (Sandy) and Susan Boyd Margaret Brennan Caplan Family Foundation Hal Chase Edward Cohn Thomas Dean Frances DeJong J.P. Dietrich Devon and Beth Dietz Georgina Dodge Ronald Eckhoff George Eichacker James Erb Daniel Ernst Mark Felderman Susan J. Frye Louise Gately Kathy Good Carol Gronstal Wilfred Groves William Hamm Voanne Hansen Barbara Haring Ellen Hay James Hayes Pam Hazell Patricia Headly Jeff and Cindy Heland John and Jan Hess Beverly Hinds Marsha Hucke Sidney and Elizabeth Huttner

Lee B. Jarvis Doug and Sheila Johnson David Kettner Dr. James and Mary Ellen Kimball Maurice Lee Randall Lengeling Thea Leslie Sherry Lippert Helen Lockwood Marcia Lofdahl Alma Long Esther Mackintosh Michele Manatt Ronald Mavrias Cindy McLaughlin Doug and Tamara McReynolds Charissa Menefee John Menninger Kurt Meyer Tom Milligan Henry Moyer Richard Nelson Gloria Newell Mary Noble Sandra Norvell N.J. Novick Russell and Martha Noyes Armond and Polly Pagliai Mary Patrick David Plath Chris and Heather Plucar Alta Price Steven Price Walter Pyper Richard Ramsay Emily G. Reed Treva Reimer Dale H. Ross

Christopher Rossi RPC, Inc. Charitable Foundation Gerard and Carolyn Rushton Gene and Susan Enzle Savin Robert and Anna Mae Schnucker Steven Siegel Dale Simon Larry Simons Eldon and Mary Snyder Rebecca Soglin Larry Stone Susan T. Strauss Claudia Streeter Elizabeth Swanson Richard and Nancy Thomas Rhonda Vernon Violet Baker Trust Brian and Vicki Walshire Bob Walton Rosemarie Ward Don Wooten

2016-2017 Partners Blanden Art Museum Boone County Historical Society Central Iowa Power Cooperative City of Manning CoBank Genesius Theatre Foundation Iowa Area Development Group Iowa Department of Revenue Main Street Greenfield Midwest Lumber Museum National Czech and Slovak Museum and Library Stephens College Wells Fargo Bank Fall 2017 · 15

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Whitworth’s Hardware, Victor, IA, 1986 Photograph © David Plowden, 2004