voices
from
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A Publication Of Humanities Iowa • Volume XI, Number 1
Volume XI Number 1
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Contents Iowa History Prize page 3 9th Annual Iowa Writers Celebration page 6 Flood Relief Initiatives page 10
About the Cover Iowa was the nation’s No. 2 wheat producing state through the Civil War. Here two men cut or “cradle” the wheat while the two that follow tie the grain into bundles. Photo courtesy of the State Historical Society of Iowa-Iowa City. Voices from the Prairie is published three times a year and distributed to the friends of Humanities Iowa and interested Iowans. To subscribe please contact us: Humanities Iowa 100 Oakdale Campus N310 OH Iowa City, IA 52242-5000 phone: (319) 335-4153 fax: (319) 335-4154 info@humanitiesiowa.org www.humanitiesiowa.org
HI Board of Directors
President Valentina Fominykh, Des Moines Vice-President Moudy S. Nabulsi, Fort Madison Secretary Fiona Valentine, Sioux City Treasurer Tim Johnson, Washington Past President Rosemarie Ward, Des Moines Directors Harry Brod, Cedar Falls Michael Carey, Farragut Faye Clow, Bettendorf Judy Combs, Bloomfield Thomas Dean, Iowa City Kate Gronstal, Council Bluffs Janell Hansen, Elk Horn Tom Morain, Lamoni Neil Nakadate, Ames Barb O’Hea, Peosta Dick Ramsay, Spirit Lake Mary Ann Reiter, Ottumwa Dorothy Simpson-Taylor, Iowa City Ralph Swain, Sioux City Tracy Vance, Fort Madison
HI Staff Christopher Rossi, Executive Director Cheryl Walsh, Grants Director Susan Foster, Fiscal Officer Dana McGillin, Public Affairs/ Administrative Officer Michael Knock, Program Officer/Editor
Mission Statement The mission of Humanities Iowa is to promote understanding and appreciation of the people, communities, cultures and stories of importance to Iowa and the nation. Humanities Iowa is a non-profit organization funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Join other Iowans and become a member of Humanities Iowa. We offer a variety of membership levels starting at just $45. Benefits include the option of a subscription to Humanities magazine, a publication of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Members also receive a subscription to Voices from the Prairie. Membership is tax-deductible, minus the cost of Humanities magazine, should you opt to receive it. The magazine has an annual renewal cost of $24. Humanities Iowa also accepts gifts of stock or securities. To become a member, make a donation or receive more information, please contact our office by phone or via our website. 2
It’s Good to Be Back! This is the first issue of Voices from the Prairie since Spring 2007. In our absence, we’ve made a few changes. The most obvious change is the new format that took us from a tabloid newspaper layout to more of a traditional magazine look. The change was made to update the look of the publication and to make it easier to read. Along with that change, we’ve upgraded the paper and added a distinct cover. Humanities Iowa has hardly been idle in the absence of Voices from the Prairie. In the past year, HI added three new board members, Thomas Dean, Ralph Swain and Richard “Dick” Ramsay as well as two new staff members, fiscal officer Susan Foster and program officer Michael Knock. Nor has HI programming stopped. This fall HI has partnered with Trees Forever to sponsor the ninth annual Iowa Writers’ Celebration: Voices from the Prairie on Sept. 23 at 7 p.m. at Hoyt Sherman Place in Des Moines. This year’s event featured the writers John T. Price, author of Man Killed by Pheasant and Other Kinships, and Debra Marquart, a poet and author of the memoir The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere. Voices from the Prairie readers can read profiles of each author inside this publication. Also exciting is a new award created by Humanities Iowa to celebrate Iowa history. The Iowa History Prize, a biennial award of up to $90,000, will honor an Iowa history scholar and promote a general public conversation about the history of the Hawkeye state. A winner will be announced in November. Inside Voices from the Prairie, readers can learn more about the prize and listen in on a conversation about public history from three of the state’s leading public historians. Let us know what you think about our new publication. Michael Knock HI program officer and editor, Voices from the Prairie Voices from the Prairie
Humanities Iowa Announces New
Iowa History Prize
Can you name Iowa’s first elected governor? Dr. Timothy Walch, the director of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum in West Branch, said that his friend John Liepa, the current chair of the Iowa Historical Foundation and a longtime trustee of the State Historical Society, asks his history students at Des Moines Area Community College every semester. Liepa promises an “A” to any student who can answer it correctly. He has yet to find a student who is able to take him up on the offer. Humanities Iowa aims to change that, or at least to spark new interest in Iowa history with the creation of a new Iowa History Prize. The prize is a biennial award of up to $90,000 to honor an Iowa history scholar and to promote a general public conversation about Iowa history. The public component to the prize is important. Rather than a purely academic award, the Iowa History Prize is all about public history. But what is public history? According to Dr. Loren Horton, the former senior historian for the State Historical Society of Iowa, it’s all about audience. “Public history assumes a wider audience, with (perhaps) less specialized knowledge,” Horton said. “Public history is a relating of what people have thought and done in the past, to the present, with hopes that it may be a guide to what people think and do now.” Dorothy Schwieder, professor emeritus of history at Iowa State, agreed, adding that just because the audience for public history is more general, it is no less rigorous in terms of research than other areas of the discipline. The Iowa History Prize winner will face a number of challenges. Like many Americans, Iowans show a lack of interest in history, especially their own. A recent study found that 40 percent of American college students could Volume XI Number 1
not place the Civil War in the correct half-century; only 37 percent knew the Battle of the Bulge took place during World War II; and 57 percent of high school seniors flunked a basic test of American history. Both Walch and Horton said that a big problem is the way history is presented to students. When history is just words on the pages of a dry textbook or facts and figures written on the board, it’s no wonder that people lose interest. However, when history is presented as dynamic and relevant, people find that they want to know more. “When history comes alive, as it does on public television in the films of Ken Burns or in the popular works by David McCullough, the public responds,” Walch said. “The key to making history more appealing is to combine the best in recent scholarship with the skills of storytelling.”
That’s the point of the Iowa History Prize— to get Iowans to become curious about their past and to show
That’s the point of the Iowa History them that their own Prize—to get Iowans to become state has an amazing curious about their past and to show them that their own state has story to tell. an amazing story to tell. Because of that, Schwieder said she thinks it is important to find someone who is extremely knowledgeable and excited about Iowa history as well as someone who is able to communicate that knowledge and excitement to groups. Anyone who has experience in the study of Iowa history will be considered. That means history instructors in Iowa’s universities, private colleges and community colleges as well as museum directors, librarians, high school teachers, and independent scholars can apply. Applications will be evaluated by a blue-ribbon panel chaired by Humanities Iowa board president Dr. Valentina Fominykh of Des Moines. Both Walch and Horton will be on that panel along with Dr. Leslie Schwalm, an associate professor of history, women’s studies and African-American studies at the University of Iowa. Other members will include representatives from HI. As for Iowa’s first elected governor, it was Ansel Briggs. For the rest of Iowa’s story, hopefully the Iowa History Prize winner will be able to generate more questions to get people talking about the past. The application deadline was Oct. 1, 2008 with a decision to be made by the following November. h 3
A Conversation About
Public History
and the Iowa
Timothy Walch
History Prize
As HI prepares to award its first Iowa History Prize this fall, three leading historians sat down to discuss the importance and general condition of Iowa history studies. Dr. Loren Horton is the former senior historian for the State Historical Society of Iowa. Dr. Timothy Walch is the director of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum in West Branch. Dr. Dorothy Schwieder is a professor emeritus of history at Iowa State University. Both Horton and Walch are members of the panel that will select the Iowa History Prize winner.
Humanities Iowa: How would you describe “public history” as a field of study?
Dorothy Schwieder
Timothy Walch: “Public history” is a relatively new concept. It is, in fact, a bridge between the work being done by scholars—academic historians—and the popular understanding of the past that is held by the general public. We find “public history” in many different places—in classrooms, public parks, conferences, museums, on the stage, in film, and on television to name just a few venues. At its core, public history is a quest to help the largest number of citizens to better understand the contours of the past. Dorothy Schwieder: This is not to imply that public history is less rigorous in terms of research and processing. It is history done for a different audience—all facets of the general public—than for the college classroom. Of necessity, it is, therefore, probably more general than academic courses.
Loren Horton
HI: Students often say they hate history. How does the way history is presented affect the public’s interest in it? Loren Horton: I do agree that many people dislike history, or did while they were attending school. That is the fault of the teachers, the textbooks, the school administrators and
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governing boards, and the parents. Since history is simply the story of the past, it is inevitably interesting. Textbooks, in general, are not interesting because of faulty selections of what stories to present. School administrators and governing boards are at fault for not supporting and encouraging teachers who have enough imagination to depart from dependence upon textbooks and find other source materials and activities that will make history the lively story that it is. Teachers are not innocent in the matter. There are too many instances of teachers reading the textbook to students, or students reading to the class from the textbook, and never explaining that written history tends to be the triumphant story of the winners…. Explore alternative points of view, search for suppressed evidence, and allow students to read varying points of view and come to conclusions about them. TW: Without question the manner and method of presentation has helped to shape our understanding and appreciation for the past. When history comes alive—as it does on public television in the films of Ken Burns or in the popular works by David McCullough—the public responds. The key to making history more appealing is to combine the best in recent scholarship with the skills of storytelling. We all hunger to know more about our own ancestors—this perspective helps us understand who we are; that is what has precipitated the sustained interest in history and genealogy by so many of our citizens.
HI: Texans seem to live and breathe their state’s history. Do Iowans lack such intensity and pride with regard to their past? DS: Texans are proud of their history because they hear constantly how important Texas is and how important their past has been. Iowans do not hear that. Rather, Iowa history is often denigrated, rather than being emphasized and Voices from the Prairie
being presented in an enthusiastic way. I feel it is vital that Iowans (at all levels) hear more about Iowa history. Learning about the state’s past, generates pride in that state. TW: What I have learned about this state since coming here is that Iowa is all about the relationship between families, communities, and the land. Our history is not about great battles or political contests, or industrial development; it about how we have worked together to respond to the land. I still recommend that folks read Joseph Frazier Wall’s 1978 book, Iowa: A History, which does an excellent job of developing that theme. Perhaps the biggest challenge we face as a culture is our self-effacing attitude toward our past. We do not boast about all our state has achieved as the breadbasket of the nation. We do not congratulate ourselves on the quality of our governance and our educational system. In a way we suffer from a modesty that has undermined our appreciation for all that we have been, are now and will become in the future.
HI: What can historians do to get Iowans excited about Iowa and its past? LH: History can be presented as a series of stories, as a series of biographies, as a series of questions and problems to be solved, and as a sequence of cause/effect relationships. As a teacher and lecturer, I have never found it to be difficult to interest people in the past. Begin with an engaging story about a person or situation. That captures attention immediately. Build upon that already existing interest to expand and flesh out the context of the original story or person. Presto! You have an interested and attentive audience. Written history can be presented in the same way. DS: Do what [Humanities Iowa] is doing with the Iowa History Prize. Select someone who is extremely knowledgeable in Iowa history, one who is excited about Iowa history, and one who is able to communicate effectively to groups (both large and small) in presenting Iowa history. Secondly, urge colleges and universities to teach courses in Iowa history so that students (including prospective teachers) understand their own heritage. That is an important step in getting Iowans excited about Iowa history.
Volume XI Number 1
HI: How can the Iowa History Prize enhance the appreciation of Iowa history? TW: An Iowa History Prize cannot but help to advance the average Iowan’s appreciation for the history of this state. The prize will encourage historians to develop innovative ideas into practical programs. The prize will provide a monetary grant and that money will generate momentum. I like to think that the momentum will be infectious and lead to more ideas and more competition for the prize. It is my hope that the prize will be something of a “blasting cap” that will trigger an explosion of interest in the history of our state. LH: The person who is awarded the Iowa History Prize should either do original research on a topic that needs more attention, or should develop a methodology that helps ill-prepared teachers present Iowa history in a more accurate and interesting fashion. Models of using local community resources work well for this, and what students and adults see around them every day can become a “classroom on the wall”. More pride in local community, more pride in Iowa, and more understanding about what has happened and how it affects what is happening.
HI: Name something significant about Iowa’s past that most Iowans don’t know but should. DS: In the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan was highly visible in Iowa with local organizations (klaverns) present in every part of the state, in both large and small communities. LH: Most Iowans have no idea of the prominence this state and its officials had in the last decade of the 19th century and the first decade of the 20th century. The only Iowan to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court did not die until 1890. Two Iowans held significant positions in the presidential cabinets, an Iowan was one of the four most powerful members of the U.S. Senate, Iowa congressmen chaired many important committees in the House of Representatives, an Iowan was Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, and an Iowan keynoted a national political party convention. An Iowan was a third party candidate for President of the United States, and won electoral votes in the campaign of 1892. Iowa was important in national politics for those two decades, in ways that it never was before and has not been since. TW: I challenge Iowans to name the first elected governor of the State of Iowa without going to a reference book. My friend John Liepa, the current chair of the Iowa Historical Foundation and a longtime trustee of the State Historical Society, has been teaching Iowa history at the Des Moines Area Community College for more than 30 years. Each year, in the first session of the course, he tells his students that he will give an “A” to any student in that class who can name the first elected governor of the State of Iowa. Not one of the students in 30 years has been able to identify that man without further research. Clearly we have work to do! h
Iowa History Prize Selection Committee Valentina Fominykh (Chair) Thomas Dean Harry Brod Loren N. Horton Faye Clow Michael Knock
Christopher Rossi Leslie A. Schwalm Tim Walch
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The 9th Annual Iowa Writers Celebration: Voices from the Prairie featured the theme “Mixing Sun and Shade.” It featured two writers with strong Iowa ties.
John T. Price’s literary memoirs celebrate the prairie landscape
Man Killed by Pheasant: And Other Kinships Not Just Any Land: A Personal and Literary Journey into the American Grasslands 6
John T. Price does not hate trees. No, really.
Price, who lives in the Loess Hills of western Iowa, is the author of two literary memoirs including Man Killed by Pheasant: And Other Kinships (2008) and Not Just Any Land: A Personal and Literary Journey into the American Grasslands (2004). Both books celebrate the beauty of the Midwest’s prairie landscape in a way that often crosses over into the spiritual. But trees? In the essay, “Moon Kitty” from Man Killed by Pheasant, he admits to calling the hackberry trees that grow in his yard “junk,” something that led neighbors to criticize him as a “prairie snob.” On Sept. 23, Iowans had a chance to meet this “prairie snob” at the ninth annual Iowa Writers Celebration: Voices from the Prairie. The event, which is a celebration of Iowa writers, was co-sponsored by Humanities Iowa and Trees Forever and was held at Hoyt-Sherman Place in Des Moines. This year’s theme was “Mixing Sun and Shade.” You can guess where Price’s sympathies lie. “It’s not trees I have a problem with, it’s the prioritization of the trees…the celebration of the trees to the expense of the prairie,” Price said when we sat down for coffee one day in July in downtown Iowa City. “Arbor Day was invented just down the road from Omaha out of the belief that if you planted more trees, you would create more rain, and you’ll make a more beautiful landscape. So it’s that aesthetic element that somehow prairie isn’t beautiful and trees are that I have a problem with and have tried to write against.” Actually, it’s a fluke that Price is writing about anything at all. The Fort Dodge native came to the University of Iowa intending to study medicine. He even got a part time job working as a nurse’s assistant while living in Iowa City. Writing hadn’t yet entered his mind.
Photo by Stephanie Strine Price
But then while completing his undergraduate work, the future author “accidentally” took a course in non-fiction writing, and he realized it was something that he kind of liked. He was also good at it. He took another class and then another. He kept getting good feedback on his pieces, and then he realized that this was something he might want to pursue. He received his MFA in non-fiction from the Iowa Nonfiction Writing program and later earned a Ph.D. in English. Like it or not, he was a writer. Of course, he still had to contend with his family. His grandmother, for one, was convinced that his future lay in medicine. Even after he told her that he was going to be a writer, she kept after him. “She thought I was selling myself short. She thought that if you can be a doctor why not be a doctor. She used to drive me around to doctor’s houses. She’d point to a house and say, ‘Do you like that one?’ I’d say, ‘Yeah, it’s a beautiful house.’ She’d say, ‘Well, you could have had that. There’s still time.’” Voices from the Prairie
His grandmother came around. Today, in addition to his two books, Price is one of the most respected nature writers in the country. His work has appeared in Orion, the Christian Science Monitor, Creative Nonfiction, and Best Spiritual Writing. He was also awarded a 200405 fellowship by the National Endowment for the Arts, and in 1998 was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Throughout much of that time, his muse has been the prairie. It infuses his essays and seems to haunt many of his thoughts. In the essay, “On Kalsow Prairie,” for example, in Man Killed by Pheasant, he describes a small scrap of native grassland in Pocahontas County referred to as a postage stamp prairie due to its small size. Price sees it in a slightly different way: “I’ve always been intrigued by that metaphor,” Price writes, “the idea that such places convey messages across space and time, which is true in a way. To those trying to restore prairie on cultivated or otherwise disturbed ground, these postage stamps are the guardians of heritage, the deliverers of seed and ancient knowledge. If they disappear, as many do, then it may not be possible for the land to go home again.”
Price said stories like Tillie’s resonate for him by illustrating the complicated feelings “place” can evoke. On the one hand, there’s the feeling of comfort and of home. On the other, there’s the desire to move on to somewhere, anywhere else. “I think those stories provided for me some sense that I wasn’t alone with my feelings towards place and my feelings of disconnection…my desire to be somewhere else and to move on. I think that is why Tillie was so fascinating for me. Being in a place where you did not want to be, but maybe finding a reason to care for the community and living a life within the embrace of that place.”
Man Killed by Pheasant: And Other Kinships, Da Capo Press
Price has found that embrace. Something that comes through Man Killed by Pheasant is the author’s own complicated relationship with Iowa. In some chapters he seems completely ambivalent towards his home state. Yet, he chooses to live here with his wife and two sons.
Still, Price admits that he hasn’t always been a “prairie snob.” Growing up in Iowa, he never gave the land much thought. But when he went to college and began to struggle with who and what he wanted to be, he said that he developed a kinship with a landscape that also seemed to be going through some kind of identity crisis. That land, long tamed from wild tall grass prairie into fields for corn and soybean, was struggling too, especially when in 1993 it was submerged beneath acre after acre of floodwater.
“In general, any commitment to place is a lot like a commitment to another human being. A lot of it is accident. It’s spiritual. It’s beyond our articulation. It’s about what has been given to you, what’s out of control. There’s also a choice involved in it. It’s not always good. It’s not always perfect.”
“I sense that I had a sort of kindred spirit with that land…a land whose identity had been largely hidden. I realized that I had a lot of empathy for the land. I saw myself in its history.”
“In Idaho, you can see what is missing…you feel that pain. [Iowans] feel the pain too, I think. But it’s spiritual…it’s emotional. It chases people away to seek out that connection with wildness elsewhere. We just don’t know what that pain is coming from because we can’t see it.”
And as Price began to find himself in the land, he found his family too. The story of his great-great-grandmother Tillie seems especially important. The Swedish immigrant arrived in America in 1902 and got on a train bound for the west. In the essay, “On Kalsow Prairie,” Price describes his attempt to find the precise spot where Tillie got off the train in Iowa for the first time at an obscure and nowabandoned train station called Tara. Volume XI Number 1
And because the prairie was gone within 40 years of settlement with native grasses plowed under and wetlands drained for crops, what’s been given to Iowans is a landscape that they don’t even know. They can’t see the beauty of the land because it has been hidden from them. Price contrasts this with his wife’s home in Idaho where clear-cut forests stand next to old growth, illustrating the environmental change in big bold letters.
And that’s one of the reasons why he chooses to stay here writing about postage stamp prairies, the annual migration of the geese and the importance of the land. It’s why he teaches his children about the native flora and fauna of Iowa’s tall grass prairie and it’s why he regularly takes his classes on field trips to places like the DeSoto Bend Wildlife Refuge just north of Council Bluffs. These lessons and these trips show others the beauty that still lingers in Iowa’s landscape. It’s something he describes as a form of stewardship to the land, building kinships between people and the Iowa environment one person at a time. h 7
Napoleon,
North Dakota
is no Walnut Grove
The Horizontal World Debra Marquart’s memoir of the rural Midwest
Author Debra Marquart grew up on a farm near the small North Dakota town southeast of the westward bend in the Missouri River. Life there was pretty ordinary. She did chores, learned how to drive the tractor, secretly smoked cigarettes, and quit college to join a rock band. Still, when Marquart sent a draft of the first 50 pages of her memoir of farm life, The Horizontal Photo by Richard Koenig World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere, to a literary agent, the agent had one complaint. “She liked the writing, but she said there wasn’t enough going on,” Marquart remembered. “She said that in those Little House on the Prairie books there was always something happening.” At that moment, Marquart said she realized what she was up against in trying to tell a story of life in the rural Midwest. People wanted stories of grasshopper plagues and prairie fires. They wanted blizzards and families struggling to keep their homestead against all odds. In short, they wanted Laura Ingalls Wilder. But Marquart is no Laura Ingalls Wilder. And, contrary to popular knowledge, the Midwest is not an area that can be easily defined through cliche or stereotype. That’s something Marquart makes clear in The Horizontal World. “This was no little house on the prairie,” she writes in the prologue to the book. “We
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smeared musky blue shadow on our eyelids and raspberry gloss on our lips. We wore platform shoes and bell-bottom jeans. It was the times. We were hip-huggered, and tightsweatered, and navel-exposed. We walked around town like the James gang, tossing this and flashing that.” Marquart addressed the many personalities of the Midwest in the ninth annual Iowa Writers’ Celebration: Voices from the Prairie on Sept. 23 at Hoyt Sherman Place in Des Moines. The theme for this year’s event, which was co-sponsored by Humanities Iowa and Trees Forever, was “Mixing Sun and Shade,” a nod to a region of the country that defies easy classification. Marquart has tried to tell at least her part of the Midwestern story through her writing. The coordinator of the Creative Writing Program at Iowa State University, she is the author of The Hunger Bone: Rock & Roll Short Stories (2001) and two poetry collections, From Sweetness (2002) and Everything’s a Verb (1995) as well as The Horizontal World (2006). In The Horizontal World, she describes scenes of town girls and farm girls, Lawrence Welk Saturday nights and underground rivers. It’s a world where people fight to stay close to the land and to family. Marquart said the latter is no accident. The region around Napoleon was settled by Germans who first immigrated to the steppes of Russia in 1803 to escape the French Revolution. After a half-century of farming in the czar’s empire, they moved again to the fertile plains of North Dakota. It wasn’t always easy. She describes her greatgrandmother, who, legend has it, upon seeing her new American home for the first time in 1885, fell to the ground and cried, “It’s all earth and sky.” Voices from the Prairie
Still, despite the hardships of beginning life anew in such a wide, hostile world, the immigrants persisted. Like the alfalfa plant that Marquart describes in the chapter “Signs and Wonders,” these people put down deep roots so that they might stay on the land. For some like Marquart’s brother Nick, those roots are physical. Nick returned to the farm after his father retired so that the land could stay in the family. For others like Marquart the roots are emotional. Even though she lives 500 miles away, she said that the land still holds her. That feeling is not unusual. “I have a friend who is very successful and lives in Minneapolis. Whenever a quarter section of his family’s land comes up for sale, he buys it up. He hasn’t even told his wife about it.” Marquart said this is something people who grew up in urban areas—even midwestern cities—don’t understand. While such people might have an attachment to individual houses or streets, they didn’t grow up on the land surrounded by aunts, uncles and grandparents who tended them when they were sick and helped with harvest every fall. It is a land that draws people back, even when it means sacrificing an easier existence in the city. That gravitational pull worked on her father who announced on Christmas Eve 1956 that he was moving his wife and children back to the family farm. The move meant the family would have to leave their home in Bismarck, which as Marquart describes in the chapter “The Land Husband,” prompted the biggest argument her mother and father ever had. Marquart, who had not yet been born, did not hear this story until her mother told it to her 40 years later. When she asked how they resolved the argument, her mother looked at her and said, “Oh, I just gave in.” “With that simple answer I understood more about my mother than I’d known in an entire lifetime of being her daughter,” Marquart writes. “I remember her frustration with us when we were children, the slamming cupboard doors, the rushing about, the preoccupation with polished floors. Now I realize she had been in the middle of the hardest job of her life. Every time she looked around, there was another one of us to care for. The work on the farm was endless, the stakes were unbearably high, and none of it had been her decision.” Volume XI Number 1
Still, unlike her mother and father, Marquart managed to escape the pull of the land, at least for a little while. While in her 20s, she hit the road with a rock band. She started to write poems and song lyrics too. She also became intrigued with recording the stories of some of the characters she encountered while on the road. Some of those ultimately made it into her short-story collection, The Hunger Bone: Rock & Roll Stories. When she left touring and went back to college a few years later, Marquart studied social work. Ultimately, however, she went back to writing and eventually teaching. As she describes in her memoir, her family did not initially understand her new career. Her parents were concerned that her summer breaks from teaching meant she was “unemployed.” Her father even suggested that she ask Iowa State to give her more classes after she told him she was teaching two courses a semester. Even after her first book of poetry, Everything’s a Verb, was published, her family remained unimpressed. In the chapter “To Kill a Deer,” she talks about how the first time she visited home after that book was released, she looked for it on the coffee table in the living room or in the magazine rack. Instead, she found it in her mother’s sewing room “wedged on the shelf between the town centennial book and the Betty Crocker cookbook.” The Horizontal World, Counterpoint
Since then, her family has come to understand her work better. Her mother even drove to the Bismarck Barnes & Noble to look for a copy of The Hunger Bone when it was published in 2000, and she was especially interested in The Horizontal World because it told the story of her family. “My father didn’t really get to see what I’ve done in terms of my literary production. But my mother has really paid attention to it and has become very interested in it; she’s become a pretty sophisticated reader.” As for the land, it continues to exert a draw on those who have left it behind. Marquart said that when The Horizontal World came out, she heard from people all over the world who had left the Midwest. “They remembered the place and wanted to be back among family. They could find better jobs somewhere else, but they remembered the landscape. They remembered the privacy and the solitude. I think that’s what probably makes people want to come back.” And to want to stay. “Observing my niece and nephew growing up on the same farm I grew up on, they are having a completely different experience than the one I had. But they really love that place. I feel fairly certain that the future of the place is secure.” h 9
HI Helps Communities Damaged by
Record Flooding Humanities Iowa awarded $30,000 in relief to humanities institutions across eastern Iowa following record flooding that swept the area in June. Especially hard hit was Cedar Rapids where the swollen Cedar River swallowed much of downtown beneath more than 10 feet of water. Included in the disaster area were several humanities-based organizations including the National Czech and Slovak Museum and Library. Damage at the museum was typical with crumbling interior walls, broken windows and sludge wreaking havoc with exhibit space.
To help alleviate some of the clean-up costs in Cedar Rapids and other river communities, June’s record flooding affected 20 buildings at the HI established a special $30,000 University of Iowa causing more than $231 million flood relief fund. That money in damages. Especially hard hit was the school’s was divided up in grants of up arts campus where Hancher Auditorium, the UI to $5,000 among the National Art Building, Art Building West, the UI Theatre Czech and Slovak Museum and Building, and Voxman Music Building were flooded. Library ($5,000), the Cedar This photo shows the UI’s two-year-old Art Building Rapids Museum of Art ($5,000), West surrounded by floodwaters. Photo by Tom the African-American Historical Jorgensen/University of Iowa Museum and Cultural Center of Iowa ($5,000) and the Science Station ($5,000), all in Cedar Rapids. Other institutions that received relief funds were Old Fort Madison ($4,000) and the Northern Lee Historical Society ($2,000) in Fort Madison and the Cedar Falls Historical Society ($4,000). “We worked hard to secure expedited review and relief from the National Endowment for the Humanities in order to safeguard invaluable historical documents detailing our cultural heritage,” said Christopher Rossi, executive director of Humanities Iowa. “We understand that this money is just beginning to meet needs. Nevertheless providing early relief can also provide critical relief as is so evident by the community’s collective response to this disaster.” h 10
HI adds new staff members Humanities Iowa added two new staff members in 2008, fiscal officer Sue Foster and program officer Michael Knock. Foster, a UI grad, started work at Humanities Iowa in February. Previously, she served as the health services administrator at University Hospitals in Iowa City. In all, Foster worked for more than 31 years at UIHC. Among her many duties at HI, Foster oversees all of the fiscal activities including the monthly reports to the fiscal committee of the HI Board of Directors. She also handles expenditure reports and ensures that federal regulations are being followed. Foster said she finds her new role at HI to be challenging but enjoyable. “I really enjoy what the program has to offer,” Foster said. “I think we have a unique role to play that most Iowans aren’t aware of.” New program officer Michael Knock comes to Humanities Iowa from Muscatine Community College where he taught journalism, composition and American history. He also previously worked as a reporter for the Iowa City Press-Citizen and continues to write the newspaper’s weekly food column. Knock has an MA in journalism from the University of Iowa and received his Ph.D. in American history from the University of Notre Dame in 1996. He has taught courses in the history of the American West and Native American history at Notre Dame and Indiana University – South Bend and has been an adjunct in the UI journalism school. h Voices from the Prairie
HI welcomes three new board members Humanities Iowa welcomed three new board members in June 2008 and bid farewell to past president Jeff Heland. Gov. Tom Vilsack appointed Heland, a member of the Des Moines County Board of Supervisors, to the HI board in 2002. University of Iowa president Sally Mason appointed Thomas Dean, one of Iowa’s foremost experts on place studies, to the board. Dean, who also works as special assistant to the president for communications and research at the University of Iowa, created and teaches a course entitled “Introduction to Place Studies” through the Leisure Studies Program in the Division of Interdisciplinary Programs in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. He is the author of the forthcoming book of essays titled, Under a Midland Sky from Ice Cube Press. He also is the editor of The Grace of Grass and Water: Writing in Honor of Paul Gruchow and Live Well, Live Wild, a collection of essays by Stephanie Mills and Bill McKibben. Dick Ramsay of Spirit Lake also joined the board in June as a public appointment. Ramsay has a good record of public service in the Iowa Great Lakes region. He is a member of the Spirit Lake Protective Association and serves as counsel for the Dickinson County Water Quality Commission. He also serves on the Historic Arnolds Park Board, the Orleans Board of Adjustment, and the Steering Committee of the Dickinson County Clean Water Alliance. Finally, he is a past member of the Pearson Lakes Art Center Board. Gov. Chet Culver appointed Ralph Swain of Sioux City to the board. Swain is the humanities division chair at Western Iowa Tech Community College. He also teaches online courses for Northwest Iowa Community College in Sheldon and Southwestern Community College in Creston. In addition, Swain has an extensive record of public service. He serves on boards for La Casa, a service agency for new immigrants in Sioux City, the Siouxland Film Institute, and the Sioux City Museum History Day Committee. He is also on the planning committee for the Iowa Latino Conference and is president of the Great Plains Radio Theatre Project. h Volume XI Number 1
Humanities Iowa awards $119,282 in Major Grants during June meeting Humanities Iowa awarded $119,282 to 11 cultural organizations following a June 13-14 meeting of the board of directors in Arnolds Park. Grants went to 10 organizations located in Iowa and one in Moline, Ill. The awards were selected through a competitive application and review process and are made possible through Humanities Iowa and the National Endowment for the Humanities. The grants awarded are:
Dallas County Conservation Board Project Title: Prairie Awakening—A Journey into Indigenous Learning Workshop Grant: $5,100 Drake University, Anderson Gallery Project Title: Building a Modern Campus—Eliel and Eero Saarinen at Drake University Grant: $10,750 Iowa State University Center for Excellence in the Arts and Humanities Project Title: Sustaining the Earth: Public Scholarship in the Arts and Humanities Grant: $13,063 Fourth Wall Films/Kansas Public Telecommunications Services, Inc. Project Title: Country School: One Room—One Nation Grant: $15,000 Loras College Department of Communication Arts Project Title: Man of Deeds: Mathias Loras and the Iowa Frontier Grant: $15,000
National Czech and Slovak Museum and Library Project Title: Iowa’s Czech Immigrant Experience: Documenting and Disseminating the Stories Grant: $3,815 The Sparks Fly Upward Foundation Project Title: The Sparks Fly Upward Grant: $15,000 Town and Country Arts Project Title: From the Archives of Harrison County: Uncle Tom’s Cabin Grant: $8,293 Trees Forever Project Title: 20 Stories Grant: $14,795 University of Iowa School of Art and Art History Project Title: Introducing the Stumptown Shooters Grant: $7,500 Waterloo Center for the Arts Project Title: Inception, Intersection, Connection, Directions: Examining Haitian and Afro-Caribbean Art Grant: $10,965 11
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Humanities Iowa 100 Oakdale Campus N310 OH Iowa City, IA 52242-5000
2008 Mini-Grants through August Adel
Recipient: Main Street Adel Chamber of Commerce Amount: $3,000 Project: Iowa Book Festival 2008
Belle Plaine
Recipient: Belle Plaine Community Development Corp. Amount: $500 Project: Civil War Days
Bloomfield
Recipient: Davis Co. Civil War Guerrilla Raid Society Amount: $1,000 Project: Civil War Days
Boone
Clarinda
Recipient: Nodaway Valley Historical Society Amount: $459 Project: Quilting—Every Woman’s Story
Columbus Junction
Recipient: City of Columbus Junction Amount: $2,000 Project: Hispanic Cultural Festival Recipient: City of Columbus Junction Amount: $1,910 Project: 2008 Flood Stories
Corning
Recipient: Boone Co. Historical Society Amount: $2,300 Project: Celebrate Suffrage
Recipient: French Icarian Colony Foundation. Amount: $1,265 Project: Collecting the Stories of Icaria
Burlington
Council Bluffs
Recipient: City of Burlington Amount: $400 Project: Diversity in Burlington Recipient: Partners for Conservation Foundation Amount: $2,780 Project: Inspired by Aldo Leopold
Recipient: Historic General Dodge House Amount: $1,245 Project: Emily Dickinson Recipient: Bluffs Arts Council Amount: $1,000 Project: Studio & Vine
Recipient: Western Historic Trails Center Amount: $500 Project: Negro League Baseball and Civil Rights
Dubuque
Recipient: Loras College Amount: $1,340 Project: Book Art Recipient: Alexander Levi Heritage Project Amount: $3,000 Project: From Distant Places to Dubuque’s Shores
Iowa City
Recipient: Office of the State Archaeologist Amount: $3,000 Project: Iowa Archaeology on the Road Recipient: UI Center for Human Rights Amount: $1,250 Project: One Community, One Book
Okoboji
Recipient: Iowa Lakes RC&D Amount: $825 Project: Portraits of the Land
Orange City
Recipient: Northwestern College Amount: $3,000 Project: Storytelling with Antonio Sacre
Ottumwa
Recipient: Indian Hills Community College Amount: $1,000 Project: Many Faces, One Vision Recipient: Ottumwa Area Arts Council Amount: $1,500 Project: Ordinary People Doing Extraordinary Things
Preston
Recipient: Luxembourg Society of Iowa Amount: $2,600 Project: Luxembourgers in the New World
Paullina
Recipient: Paullina Quasquicentennial Committee Amount: $1,000 Project: Gem of the Prairie
Rippey
Recipient: Friends of Rippey Amount: $3,000 Project: Greene County Reads
Rock Island, Illinois
Recipient: Genesius Theatre Foundation, Inc. Amount: $3,000 Project: Classical Play Preludes
St. Donatus
Recipient: St. Donatus Catholic Church Amount: $1,000 Project: 160th Anniversary Celebration
Sidney
Recipient: Fremont Co. Historical Society Amount: $682 Project: The Story of George Washington Carver
Sioux City
Recipient: Briar Cliff University Amount: $1,700 Project: Hector Galan
West Burlington
Recipient: Grade A Plus Amount: $500 Project: Celebrate Diversity