November 2018

Voices from the Prairie A publication of Humanities Iowa • Fall 2018 You Have a Seat at the Table: A Conversation with Pulitzer-Prize Winner Art Cullen The Only Game in Town

Voices from the Prairie Fall 2018

Voices from the Prairie Contents

Humanities Iowa Board of Directors & Staff

Humanities Iowa Mission Statement

You Have a Seat at the Table: A Conversation with Pulitzer Prize - Winner Art Cullen

President Kurt Meyer, St. Ansgar 3

The Only Game in Town

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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.

Grants Awarded in 2018

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New Board and Staff Members

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Statement of Activity

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2018 Donors

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Cover: Carl Lee, Barber Columbus Junction, Iowa Photograph © David Plowden

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You Have a Seat at the Table: A Conversation with Pulitzer Prize - Winner Art Cullen An Interview with Art Cullen

For forty years, Art Cullen has put out a twice-weekly editorial for The Storm Lake Times—the family-run newspaper he co-owns with his brother and publisher, John. Alongside his wife Dolores and son Tom who also write for the paper, Art has become known—even Pulitzer-prize-winning known—for his editorials that voice what others often feel they dare not say and that speak so that all residents in his Buena Vista County have “a seat at the table .” He has just written his first book Storm Lake: A Chronicle of Change, Resilience, and Hope from a Heartland Newspaper. Humanities Iowa recently spoke with Art about writing, immigration, fake news, democracy, and why Storm Lake is a good place from which to speak the straight facts.

but I realized I couldn’t crack in. And so I came back to Storm Lake, and I’m really glad I did. I wouldn’t have won a Pulitzer at The Minneapolis Tribune if I had gotten a job there. They’d have had me covering the County Zoning Commission. Or prep sports. And I wouldn’t have been writing a column every week or editorials every day.

Humanities Iowa: You’re a hometown boy, but you went off to college then worked for newspapers in other towns in Iowa for a number of years. What made you want to come back home to Storm Lake?

Art Cullen: The whole thing with the Iowa Senate is ridiculous, because our newspaper’s been critical of Donald Trump and Steve King, specifically because of their hostility to the immigrant community. And Storm Lake is an immigrant community. And I might add that America is an immigrant nation.

Because of that, they won’t acknowledge that we won a Pulitzer Prize. And I don’t care. But it was sweet justice when a senator from Ireland called, with his brogue, saying that although our state doesn’t stand with us, an entire nation does. So that was a profound moment for me. It went from being silly to serious in that phone call because the Irish do take the diaspora seriously. But I guess the sad part is that that’s the point our conversation’s gotten to, we don’t talk to each other anymore.

Art Cullen: I was a copy boy at The Minneapolis Tribune in college, then I got a job at the Algona newspaper, and I tried for seven years to get a job at The Des Moines Register or The Minneapolis Tribune but they wouldn’t hire people out of weekly newspapers, because they didn’t think we were good enough. Well, you know what? I won a Pulitzer. [laughs] That’s the real honest reason why I’m in Storm Lake. I was in Mason City, and John had come back to Storm Lake from Algona and wanted to start his own newspaper.

And he was real attached to Storm Lake emotionally. This is where he wanted to be.

And I wanted to be in a metropolitan area,

Humanities Iowa: I’m sure that winning a Pulitzer changes things quite a bit. In both good and not-so-good ways. For instance, the Iowa Senate refuses to honor the fact that the newspaper brought home a Pulitzer. But on the flip side, the Irish Senate called you up and told you that they wanted to honor you. Can you speak a bit about the ups and downs of being “the Pulitzer Prize-winning Art Cullen?”

Humanities Iowa: Has winning the

Portrait by Tom Wallace

Pulitzer been detrimental in any way to doing the work of putting out a paper twice a week?

Art Cullen: What’s happened is that the Pulitzer resulted in me writing a book, and I can get to thinking too much about the book and myself and forget about what I’m doing here. And that would be very easy, so I constantly have to remind myself that it’s not about me. But when you get calls from Ireland and stuff like that, it’s easy to begin to think it’s about me. And it’s really about Storm Lake. So I have to maintain that focus, and there’s a certain amount of discipline that goes along with that.

Humanities Iowa: Has the publicity had much of an effect on the day-to-day business of the newspaper?

Art Cullen: The business effect was that we actually saw a little circulation decline after we won the Pulitzer. Then it started to tick up again. So it didn’t impress people in Storm Lake that we won the Pulitzer. And Iowans are kind of curious in that way. You know, the old farmer never drives a sports car into town. He drives an old pickup because he doesn’t want anyone to think he has any success. And if you say that you’re successful or that you’ve achieved something, Iowans think you’re bragging.

Fall 2018 · 3

A Conversation With Art Cullen Continued

For me [the Pulitzer] is all marketing, but I have to be careful that people in Storm Lake don’t think I’ve become too big for my britches. And that’s a very Iowa thing. You do not brag about yourself. We couldn’t make it in Texas.

What the prize has done, is raise the profile of Storm Lake. It’s why Katie Couric came here and portrayed Storm Lake in a pretty glorious light, I’d say.

Also the New York Times contacted us, which is where Katie Couric saw the story, and they did one of the first generous profiles of Storm Lake that’s ever been done. Before that, people came in with hit and run journalism and they’d trash Storm Lake and say it was a hell hole full of armed criminals. When that was the farthest thing from the truth. And that was all happening in 1996. And that’s a fact. National so-called news programs were portraying Storm Lake as some sort of Mexican gang land. And that’s just not the case. So what the Pulitzer has done is given me an opportunity to talk to people about…here’s what the real Storm Lake is like: it’s a place where people welcome Latinos and Africans and Asians. And, sure, there’s some rednecks here, but 90% of the people here are pretty excited about the fact that the school enrollment is growing when every other rural school district is shutting down.

Humanities Iowa: So what’s the response to “hit-and-run” journalism? And accusations of purveying fake news? Both cause damages that erode media literacy…

Art Cullen: And it erodes the credibility of good organizations. You know, we’re going down with Fox News.

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Humanities Iowa: So how do you move forward? Just grin and bear it?

Art Cullen: Yeah, yeah. Because Americans have always been like that, believe it or not, from the days when newspapers were aligned with political parties. Look what they said about Jefferson; they were just vicious. Look what they said about FDR: he was a communist.

Henry Wallace, they were communist sympathizers. The press became objective during the Penny Press Era. And it was actually The Des Moines Register that moved the editorial off the front page and onto the editorial page. Nobody will believe that, but it’s true. The Des Moines Register was one of the leaders in making newspapers modern and objective. So, yes, it’s a phase we’re going through.

And I think now people are starting to turn back to The Washington Post and The New York Times for a version of reality that isn’t grounded in polemics. And it’s great to have an editorial page that’s vigorous and that is grounded in polemics. But we like to think we cover issues straight up regardless of politics. It’s in the editorial page where we get political. So I think that people are migrating back to credible news sources.

But this has been going on a long time.

Steve King’s been our congressman for 16 years, and he perfected the strategy long before Donald Trump of eschewing the mainstream media and creating a different reality. It’s our job to make sure that people know the facts. And the facts do not comport with Steve King’s version of reality. But facts remain facts. And the world is not square. And eventually the

facts will win out. At least that’s what John Milton believed. And John Stuart Mill and the fathers of the Enlightenment. And I still believe in that.

Humanities Iowa: Do you think there’s any inherent good to the polemics?

Art Cullen: Yeah, yeah. I think Trump might be doing us a favor for reminding us where this republic’s roots are. It’s in freedom and liberty. And, despite our history with slavery, it’s not in locking people out. It’s in bringing people in. And eventually we cured our original sin of slavery. We did cure that. We still have a long way to go, but I think it shows that we seem to persevere. Maybe I’m nostalgic about America. But I still think it’s true.

Humanities Iowa: It must be, because it’s inspiring for my generation. You know, we’ve never had to deal with someone like Donald Trump that high up, even though people have been running this playbook for a long time.

Art Cullen: We have to learn, every generation. My generation learned from Richard Nixon, the Vietnam War, Lyndon Johnson. This generation is learning from Donald Trump and these knuckleheads in Congress. But America always redeems itself, it seems. I mean, just when we were turning Jews away and sending them to Cuba, we eventually got into WW II and redeemed ourselves.

Humanities Iowa: A lot of politicians seem to like going on cable news programs to make pronouncements about how nobody can trust the media. Granting the premise, would you say that people should

And that doesn’t mean they’re purveying fake news. I like to read their editorial page because the editorials are so wellwritten. But I don’t agree with anything.

They’re arranging facts in a different way than I do, but I can respect the way they arrange the facts. I don’t think they’re being malicious. I think they’re in a quest for the truth. And, again, that’s what the Enlightenment philosophers were talking about.

The clash of ideas is foundational to an informed electorate. For example, I know that Dorothy Rabinowitz, an opinion writer for The Wall Street Journal, is a tremendous reporter who interprets facts on most issues differently than I do.

Facts are not truth. Each of us is chasing truth with the same set of facts, honestly reported.

Sometimes, we are able to arrive at a truth (that the sky is blue because of refraction) and sometimes we are not (when does life begin, and what to do about that). But when you rely only on your facts that you perceive as a truth (that we have a Manifest Destiny because we landed here and saw bounty; or Jews run German banks, therefore Jews should be exterminated) tragedy always is the result.

Image: by Dolores Cullen be distrustful of the media? And if so, in what ways should that distrust manifest itself?

Art Cullen: Yeah, there is. I think you

should read our newspaper with a grain of salt. I know that my views can color my judgement. I consider The Wall Street Journal to be a credible newspaper, but I certainly read it with a hairy eyeball.

At this moment, I can say that Donald Trump is corrupt in many ways, but I cannot say that he in fact knowingly colluded with Russia to alter the vote in the 2016 election. Others interpret the facts at hand and say that nothing untoward happened, and yet others think that he should be drawn and quartered. I would wait for more facts before drawing and quartering him.

Fall 2018 · 5

A Conversation With Art Cullen Continued

Humanities Iowa: So the goal, then, is for the ideal reader to move quickly beyond an extreme belief in or distrust of facts toward a healthy skepticism.

Art Cullen: Right, that’s what we’re talking about. And I trust The Wall Street Journal is going to tell me the truth about the markets. And I trust that The Washington Post is going to tell me the truth about what’s going on in Washington. Again, I’m not a big fan of The Washington Post‘s editorial page, but I respect it. They’re stating their views honestly.

Humanities Iowa: I know I’m asking you to argue against your existence a little bit here, but do you see any other effective ways that folks can enter into the civic conversation? Aside from the newspaper?

Art Cullen: I really do believe that civic engagement begins with reading the newspaper. [laughs] Because if you don’t know what’s going on, then you can’t be engaged. If you don’t know where to go to be engaged, you can’t be engaged. So I think it starts with reading a newspaper.

Secondly, you have to treat people like they are citizens, even if they technically aren’t. You have to treat everybody like a stakeholder. And you can’t say that the one percent can speak for the ninety-nine percent. Latinos, for example, have been under somebody’s boot for 500 years, so that’s why they develop the que será, será mentality.

You become engaged in time when you see that there’s a place at the table for you. And there’s never been a place at the table for black people in America, and there’s never 6 · Voices from the Prairie

been a place for migrant farm laborers, and there’s never been a place for a Ukrainian guy who can’t speak English working in a meat packing plant in 1920s Chicago.

That’s the American story as well. But when the Ukrainian realizes through a labor union that he does find voice. Or a Latino in contemporary Storm Lake finds that maybe the state government does give a damn about Latinos, or the federal government. Or if you tell a black lady in Flint, “We’re going to get the lead out of your water.” That’s how you make people engaged. You say that you have a seat at the table.

And that’s the ideal that good journalism still pursues--getting everyone a seat at the table and giving them a voice. The problem in Iowa is that they’re taking away that voice because it’s all being controlled by an agri-chemical cabal. And so there’s a little voice out here in Northwest Iowa saying, “Whoa, whoa, everybody. We’ve hit against our limits now. We’re polluting the Gulf of Mexico; rural communities are in decline; we have half as many farmers as we did in 1980. This ain’t working out the way it’s supposed to.” And people think you’re crazy, because they [the agri-chemical cabal] have bought the entire conversation in Iowa. And you can’t operate outside the conversation. Then you become cynical when you think you don’t have a seat at the table. And I’d become pretty cynical and dark if, after these water-quality panels I serve on, people aren’t coming up to me from Iowa State University saying, “Keep it up. I can’t say what you’re saying.”

Humanities Iowa: What do you think is critical to getting young people more involved in the conversation?

Art Cullen: First, there has to be young people here. And increasingly in rural Iowa, there are no young people. What makes Storm Lake unique is that there actually are young people, and they happen to be brown not white. And primarily Latino, secondarily Asian, and thirdly African. Engaging them in the civic conversation of Storm Lake is going to happen because they are in the midst of this “dreamer drama” right now. They realize how important being active and being vocal is, and the dreamers have woken up and come out of the shadows and have been defending themselves.

So they are in the civic arena, and they realize this newspaper is on their side.

And they’re communicating with us.

I think that’s how we engage those younger readers. It also appears to me that millennials anyhow are interested in what we consider fact-based journalism.

But we haven’t been able to translate that into an industry model yet. The answer then becomes, “I don’t know.” Because the newspaper industry doesn’t know how to retain readers with fact-based, balanced journalism that doesn’t advocate a certain ideology.

Humanities Iowa: Do you find it hopeful that millennials are at least interested in fact-based journalism as opposed to complete apathy?

Art Cullen: There was a book written several years ago called Bowling Alone about the decline of civic institutions – Kiwanis clubs, Rotary clubs, or church attendance, or newspaper subscriptions.

This is a phenomenon that’s been going on for a long time. And maybe Trump’s assault on these institutions seems to have

things from a political point of view. We do in the editorial. But everything else about the newspaper is kids in the grade school, obituaries, the county board of supervisors, and the police reports. And what we do in the editorial page is just try to shake things up. And people often mistake that for taking that point-of-view elsewhere in the paper. And we just don’t.

awakened people to the value at least of the New York Times and The Washington Post. So we’re hoping there is indeed a trickle-down effect.

Humanities Iowa: Speaking of civic institutions, I noticed in the newsroom there’s an Elks Lodge certificate hanging on the wall. Are you an Elk? Art Cullen: No, my dad was. Elks, by the way, don’t exist anymore. So, there you go…Bowling Alone. And that’s where people came together. You know, some of these key clubs are certain sects of people, but the Elks Lodge is where people came together from these different classes. You’d have a truck driver next to a banker. And that no longer exists, you know? That was one place that was an egalitarian bar that exists no longer.

Humanities Iowa: With such sensational narratives coming out of Washington so relentlessly, do you ever feel competition with national stories?

Art Cullen: Well, our motto is that if it didn’t happen in Buena Vista County, then it didn’t happen. I don’t write about Afghanistan. But I think that community newspapers have such high household penetration. They’re still valued, at least in Iowa they are. There’s 289 newspapers in Iowa. It’s the highest penetration in the country. There are more subscribers here than in any place in the country. So I think that that is the window to the community and that people are still interested in that. And to me that’s civic engagement.

And I find that almost every newspaper reporter I know is pretty fastidious about being honest and about being accurate.

And almost all of them have some sort of attitude. Usually a bad attitude. [laughs] But that goes with the territory.

Humanities Iowa: What other things would you say the public might not readily understand about journalism? Take us behind the velvet rope for a moment.

Art Cullen: That we don’t approach

Humanities Iowa: So the editorial refrain becomes: These are our facts, but we’re not going to short-change you about the way we think. But you’re also known for expressing a progressive populist viewpoint. And I guess in some respect that seems like an honest difficulty some people might have, you know? With such a strong viewpoint, how can that Cullen guy possibly separate church and state?

Art Cullen: Right. I’m a progressive. But all our readers know I’m an Irish Catholic democrat, and there’s no way around it.

It informs my view: it’s my prism to the world. But I confine it to the editorial page. We don’t really do too many stories on Chuck Grassley. We covered Tom Harkin a lot when he was Chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee because—hello—we’re in agriculture here. So we covered him a lot. But we aren’t political. Dredging the lake was not a democratic or a republican idea, or a conservative or liberal idea. It was just our lake was drying up; we needed to dredge it.

And we’re building King’s Pointe. You could say it’s a socialist enterprise because it’s owned by the city, but everybody in town agreed that we’ve got to have something in this town other than a meat Fall 2018 · 7

A Conversation With Art Cullen Continued

packing plant. So that wasn’t political at all. Republicans and Democrats were behind it. But people think because I won a Pulitzer by bitching about the Farm Bureau that I must be anti-farmer.

Well, no. It’s very difficult for people to understand that. But I’m not going to put out a newspaper without a strong opinion page. What’s the point?

Humanities Iowa: You’ve got the newspaper. You’ve got the Pulitzer. There’s a book on the way. What’s next?

Art Cullen: Well, death probably. [laughs] No, I really did enjoy writing this book. Frankly it’s been a nice source of alternate revenue for the newspaper.

So I hope to write another one and provide more revenue for the newspaper.

It would probably be a book that’s more journalistic. I don’t think I have a fiction book in me, but I would like to do another book. The next thing is to make sure the newspaper comes out next week. That’s the thing for me. And I suspect that John and I will die with our boots on here at the newspaper because we’ve organized our entire lives around it for the past 40 years, so we don’t know what else to do.

We don’t golf.

It’s like being chained to a dairy herd.

You can never leave the farm because the newspaper keeps demanding you.

Tom [Art’s son] will take over eventually.

He’s pretty sharp. He’s committed to journalism as an honorable business. So I’m hoping it will sustain him too. But I don’t know if it will.

Humanities Iowa: Do you like working with family?

8 · Voices from the Prairie

Image: The Storm Lake Times Art Cullen: Yeah, because John and I understand each other—we don’t need have to have arguments about issues or what we should do. Because the shorthand

is there. We don’t need to waste a lot of time. And we respect each other. I also remember that he owns 51%. And I can add and subtract.

The Only Game in Town A conversation with Dr. Jennifer Sterling

Dr. Jennifer Sterling is a Lecturer in the Sport Studies program in the Department of American Studies at the University of Iowa and a speaker for the Humanities Iowa Speakers Bureau. This fall she debuted a new presentation called “6-on6 Girls’ Basketball in Iowa: Traditions, Transitions, and Legacies.” We talked to Jennifer about the development of 6-on-6, gender inequality in the sport, and the significance of Iowa’s contributions to the sport.

Humanities Iowa: Why did girls and women play a different form of basketball than boys?

Jennifer Sterling: Basketball was invented by James Naismith in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1891. A year later and twenty miles away at Smith College, Senda Berenson modified the rules to accommodate prevailing cultural assumptions regarding women and physical activity, including women as less capable of physical activity and physical activity as potentially harmful to women.

Initially played as a three-court game by six (or more) players, the rules were changed to a two-court, six-player game in 1934, then the full-court, five-player game in 1971 - though Iowa and Oklahoma both played 6-on-6 until 1993 and 1995 respectively. Each of these shifts marked changing societal attitudes towards women, and women in sport in particular.

Humanities Iowa: Where was 6-on-6 girls’ basketball popular in Iowa?

Jennifer Sterling: • Basketball was played primarily in rural areas in Iowa. For example, 70% of girls’ basketball teams

Image: Iowa Cornets jacket [Rhonda Penquite papers, Iowa Women’s Archives] in the 1940s were from schools with less than 100 students. Most larger schools in Iowa’s urban centers did not offer any competitive sports for high school girls until the mid-1900s or later, when the passage of Title IX in 1972 mandated their addition.

Humanities Iowa: Why was 6-on-6 girls’ basketball so popular in Iowa?

Image: Three-court girls’ basketball,

Official Basketball Guide for Women and Girls, 1931-32, Spalding’s Athletic Library.

[University of Iowa Department of Physical Education for Women, Women’s Recreation Association records, Iowa Women’s Archives]

Jennifer Sterling: There was less of a concern regarding girls’ suitability for physical activity given the sport’s popularity in Iowa’s rural schools.

Rural families were more accustomed to girls and women taking on physical roles around the house and farm. Also, basketball was embraced early in Iowa the first girls’ state basketball tournament was organized in 1920. The popularity of the sport which eventually generated Iowa’s own professional women’s basketball team, the Iowa Cornets (1978-1981), often eclipsed other sporting Fall 2018 · 9

New Speakers Bureau Program: Hot Tamale Louie Booking Dates Now

Humanities Iowa is pleased to announce the recent addition of critically-acclaimed jazz musician John Rapson to the Speakers Bureau. John Rapson is a composer and recording artist for Realtown Records, MoMu Records, Music and Arts, Sound Aspects and Nine Winds whose work mixes ethnic and experimental elements with more conventional jazz forms. Jazz historian Mark Gridley characterized his music as “extending several trends that were first demonstrated by Charles Mingus and George Russell.” He has been professor of music at the University of Iowa since 1993, where he has collaborated on projects with Billy Higgins, Anthony Braxton, Kenny Wheeler, Carla Bley, Steve Swallow, Bennie Wallace, The Either/Orchestra, David Berkman, Richard Stoltzman, Bobby Watson, Peter Apfelbaum, Dave Pietro and Jimmy Greene. His recordings have been recognized in the Gramaphon Guide to Good CDs, The All-Music Guide, Grove’s Dictionary of American Music as well as magazines such as Downbeat and Cadence.

In 2016, Rapson collaborated with Danyel Gaglione on a composition titled Hot Tamale Louie, which is the subject of his new Speakers Bureau presentation Hot Tamale Louie: Telling Stories Without Words. Sometime between chemo and radiation, he was struck by inspiration in the form of a New Yorker article. The long piece, “Citizen Khan” by Kathryn Schulz, told the story of Zarif Khan, who as a teenager left his home near the Khyber 10 · Voices from the Prairie

Pass in Afghanistan and eventually settled in the Wyoming town of Sheldon in 1907. According to Schulz, the town of 8,000 had blacksmiths, a bicycle shop, two local newspapers, a clairvoyant, coal miners, and an opera house. With the arrival of Khan, it had a tamale purveyor.

Within years of his arrival, Khan was running a small restaurant, Hot Tamale Louie’s, which sold legendary hamburgers in addition to tamales.

As Rapson followed “Louie” through his immigrant’s journey of earning citizenship only to have it stripped, he recognized a story of immigration that echoes today’s political conversation about what it means to be an American and who can stay in the country. Eventually Rapson organized a group of seven musicians whose own interests and specialties range from classical to folk music, and he imagined a thirteen-section musical suite evoking different aspects of Khan’s life, penned with musician Danyel Gaglione. The result is a genre-bending tale of immigrants and citizenship told with lilting Western ballads, gentle Mexican waltzes, folk songs and melodies from the East, evocative tone poems, and raucous ragtime melded together by jazz. His Speakers Bureau presentation uses video clips from the 2016 performance of Hot Tamale Louie to explore how music can give unique expression to the narratives that most compel and captivate us.

For more information, visit www. humanitiesiowa.org/speakers-bureau.

The Only Game In Town Continued

opportunities for girls. The Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union (IGHSAU) did not offer other sanctioned competitive sports until 1955 when it added softball.

Thus, prior to 1955 basketball was literally the only game in town.

Humanities Iowa: How has school consolidation shaped high school girls’ sport in Iowa?

Jennifer Sterling: Prompted bydwindling rural populations and state incentives, Iowa has seen its school districts shrink from 4,652 in 1950, to 453 in 1970, and 353 in 2011. These consolidations have most impacted the small, rural, schools that so often fiercely supported their girls’ basketball teams and players, and the disappearance of these districts mirrors the decline of 6-on-6 basketball.

Humanities Iowa: Why weren’t there more women coaches in 6-on-6 girls’ basketball in Iowa?

Jennifer Sterling: While a lack of women coaches is an ongoing issue in girls’ and women’s sport, the development of girls’ and women’s sport in Iowa has a particular, additional, historical context. The Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union (IGHSAU) was formed in 1927 after splitting from the Iowa High School Athletic Association (IHSAA) - both present-day organizations separately governing girls’ and boys’ interscholastic sport in Iowa. The division occurred over a disagreement about the continued support of 6-on6 girls’ basketball in Iowa. Backed by various national education and sport associations, and Iowa women physical

Grants Awarded 2017 - 2018

Cedar Falls James and Meryl Hearst Center for the Arts—$2,723 Cedar Rapids Eastern Iowa Arts Academy—$2,635 Cedar Rapids African American Museum of Iowa—$8,890 Cedar Rapids Catherine McAuley Center—$1,000 Cedar Rapids Theatre Cedar Rapids—$3,000 Cedar Rapids Thaler Holocaust Education Trust—$10,000

Image: 1952 IGHSAU Iowa Girls

Basketball Yearbook. [Janice Beran papers, Iowa Women’s Archives] educators promoting a ‘sport for all’ model, the IHSAA overwhelmingly voted to discontinue sponsorship of the nascent girls’ state basketball tournament.

A small faction of dissenters made up of male representatives from primarily rural school districts opted to continue to support girls’ basketball and leverage its popularity to grow a new organization.

Girls’ basketball in Iowa moved forward largely organized and coached by men and at odds with the state’s women physical educators; a rift that often played out in the 20th century through the absence of women coaches and administrators. Currently, the Iowa Girls’ Coaches Association Basketball Hall of Fame has only one woman inductee, Pleasant Valley’s Connie Shafar. Though I imagine Gail Hartigan (Treynor) will soon be added.

Columbus Junction Columbus Junction Community Development Center—$2,893 Council Bluffs Pottawattamie County Conservation Board—$1,694 Davenport German American Heritage Center— $2,698 Davenport Putnam Museum of History and Natural Science— $10,000

Dubuque Clarke University Foundation— $1,218 Dubuque Dubuque County Historical Society— $4,653 Dubuque Dubuque Museum of Art— $10,000 Fairfield Fairfield Cultural Alliance Center—$10,060 Fairfield Fair Field Productions—$9,985 Fayette Upper Iowa University—$2,592 Harlan Shebly County Historical Society—$3,000 Iowa City CARTHA—$10,000 Iowa City Iowa Labor History Society—$7,542 Mason City TRACES Center for History and Culture—$3,000 Milford Iowa Lakeside Laboratory—$1,800

Des Moines Camp Fire Heart of Iowa— $2,786

Moline, IL The Moline Foundation—$9,000

Des Moines Des Moines Art Center— $10,230

Oakland Golden Hills RC&D — $1,800

Des Moines Drake University— $17,900 Des Moines Des Moines Public Library Foundation— $5,000 Dubuque Clarke University— $500

Ridgecrest, CA Storytellers International—$3,000 Sac City Sac City Public Library — $1,075 Sioux City NAACP - Sioux City —$1,400 Fall 2018 · 11

Humanities Iowa Welcomes New Board and Staff Members Council Conducted Partnerships 2018 Arnolds Park Iowa Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame History of Rock—$55,000 Dubuque National Mississippi River Museum Rivers of Innovation —$30,000 Dubuque Voices Productions Creative Placemaking Initiative—$20,000 Dubuque National Mississippi River Museum Rivers of Innovation—$20,000 Okoboji Okoboji Summer Theater The Miracle Worker—$9,624 Perry Hometown Heritage Making Space for History—$5,128 Sioux City Siouxland Historical Railroad Association 100th Anniversary History of the Milwaukee Railroad Shops Historic District—$80,000 Sioux City Tolerance Week A Not So Silent Resistance—$40,000 Tipton Cedar County Historical Society Dr. Speer Exhibit—$25,000 12 · Voices from the Prairie

New Board Member: Jose Amaya Jose Amaya is an Associate Professor of English at Marshalltown Community College. He previously taught at Iowa State University and The Ohio State University.

He grew up in southern Colorado on a farm and credits this upbringing with his interest in literature that conveys a sense of place.

When he can, Jose goes home to fly fish in southern Colorado for native trout.

His current research interests include the work of the Cuban poet, Jose Marti. In 2016, Jose conducted research at the Centro Estudios Marti in Havana, Cuba. He is currently a Fulbright Program Specialist, and hopes to conduct future research on Marti in Spain and Argentina.

Jose has served on the White House Commission on Presidential Scholars, the Iowa Governor’s STEM Advisory Board, and the Iowa State University Extension Council. He truly enjoys learning more about Iowa and the influence of the Humanities on our state.

New Board Member: Rick Crowl Rick Crowl was born in Council Bluffs, Iowa, in 1959. He was elected for three consecutive terms as the Pottawattamie County Attorney, 1991 through 2002. In 2002, he was a finalist for nomination as United States Attorney, Southern District of Iowa.

Mr. Crowl has served on a number of local charities and boards. He currently serves on the Iowa West Foundation Board of Directors, Jennie Edmundson Hospital Board of Directors, Frontier Savings Bank Board of Directors, Council Bluffs Airport Authority and Mid-America Arena Commission.

Mr. Crowl maintains his membership in the Pottawattamie County, Southwest Iowa,

Iowa State and American Bar Associations; the Iowa Association for Justice (formerly known as the Iowa Trial Lawyers Association) and the Iowa Association of Workers’ Compensation Attorneys. He has received the highest rating by his peers, AV Preeminent, in Martindale-Hubbell.

New Board Member: Mark Felderman Mark Felderman is married to Rebecca Felderman. He has four children: Marshall (wife Emily), Samuel, William, and Regina; and four grandchildren. His hometown is Bellevue, Iowa, although he has also lived in Chariton, Emmetsburg, Cedar Rapids, Ames and Iowa City, as well as Texas and Nebraska. He earned a BS from Iowa State University, a BGS from the University of Iowa, and a MS-Ed from Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar, Missouri.

Mark is retired, and enjoys part-time work with the Iowa Cubs baseball team, the Iowa Barnstormers football team, and as a substitute teacher. Mark has spent most of his adult life in education. For 29 years Mark was a high school teacher and coach, the most recent 15 years at Chariton High School (economics, government, geography, and speech) and 10 years in Emmetsburg.

He finished his career in education as the Deputy Director of Legislative Affairs for Professional Educators of Iowa. Mark has also enjoyed part-time work as a community college instructor, public speaker, and radio broadcaster. He is active in church, the Foundation for Teaching Economics, the Faith Athletic Booster Club, and is a volunteer at the Governor’s mansion, Terrace Hill. He has been honored as C-SPAN National Champion Teacher, and Iowa National Guard Civilian Supporter of the Year.

New Board Member: Richard Moeller Richard H. Moeller is a partner at Moore Heffernan, Moeller Johnson & Meis,

LLP. His general practice includes, but is not limited to, Litigation, Employment Law, Commercial Law, Banking Law, Bankruptcy, Education Law, Real Estate, and Vaccine Injury Law. Richard is a 1982 graduate of Iowa State University where he earned his Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering, with distinction, and was invited to membership in the Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society. Richard earned his Juris Doctor in 1985 from the University of Iowa where he graduated with distinction. He is admitted to practice in the State and Federal Courts in Iowa and Nebraska, as well as the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the United States Court of Federal Claims.

Richard is a member of the Litigation, Commercial & Bankruptcy Law and Government Practice Sections of The Iowa State Bar Association, a member of the IASB and NSBA Council of School Board Attorneys, a member of the Vaccine Injured Petitioners Bar Association, a member of the Iowa Supreme Court Grievance Commission, a past two-term member of the Iowa Supreme Court Commission on the Unauthorized Practice of Law, and past President for the Woodbury County Bar Association.

New Board Member: Marina Sandquist Marina J. Sandquist was born and raised in Bulgaria before moving to the United States in 2004. She received a BA in economics and a MBA from the University for National & World Economy in Sofia, Bulgaria, as well as a degree in opera. She is fluent in several languages other than her native Bulgarian: English, Italian, Russian, and Serbian. As an opera singer she performed as Violetta in Verdi’s La Traviata and as Susanna in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro. Serving on the Humanities Iowa Board is a chance for her to show her passion for the

humanities, arts and languages.

New Board Member: Linda Shenk Linda Shenk is an Associate Professor in the English Department at Iowa State University where she teaches Shakespeare and early modern literature. Perhaps true to the Renaissance in ways she never expected, Linda’s research spans seemingly disparate worlds. She has written articles and a book on Queen Elizabeth I, Shakespeare, and such key court figures as Sir Philip Sidney and Robert Devereux.

All of these individuals—even Queen Elizabeth herself—produced literary pieces alongside, and connected to, their political work as queen, diplomats, political counselors, and soldiers.

Their movement across our current disciplinary boundaries helped coin the term “Renaissance men” —polymaths who bring together seemingly diverse knowledge sets.

Linda, too, is interested in creating a transdisciplinary (and pragmatic) space as an engaged humanist. She applies her background in storytelling to how we incorporate certain types of simulation models, such as agent-based models, into community engagement. Working with stakeholders, particularly with underrepresented populations, she approaches agent-based models as fellow storytellers, using the models’ “what if ” scenarios to spark agency and action projects. Through this research, she leads the community engagement for a transdisciplinary research team on Big Data and Sustainable Cities Decisionmaking team, which is funded by Iowa State’s Presidential Interdisciplinary Research Initiative. She has also started collaborating on a watershed project with colleagues at Iowa State in partnership with Story County Conservation as well as Prairie Rivers of Iowa, the Iowa DNR, and the Squaw Creek Watershed Coalition—a

project funded by Iowa State’s U-TuRN project.

These connections between the humanities and work in communities is one of the key reasons she is delighted to serve on the Board of Directors for Humanities Iowa.

New Board Member: Rosemarie Ward Rosemarie Ward of Okoboji was born in Fort Dodge, Iowa. She attended public schools in Fort Dodge and in Des Moines, graduated from St. Joseph’s Academy high school in Des Moines and received a BS in education from Drake in 1968.

Ward was past president of the Des Moines League of Women Voters, chair of the City of Des Moines Planning & Zoning Commission and the coordinator of the Great Books Foundation in Des Moines. She served as chair of the Lakes Art Center in Okoboji, where she currently serves as a board member.

New Staff Member: Gary Sheppard Gary Sheppard is the new Grants and Program Officer at Humanities Iowa.

Born and raised in Mississippi, he holds graduate degrees from DePaul University, The University of Mississippi, and The Florida State University. Prior to arriving at Humanities Iowa, he taught American Literature and Creative Writing for eight years at the university level while publishing short fiction in numerous literary journals. In addition to his academic background, Gary is a former disaster recovery professional, communications consultant, and representative for a water-drilling operation in Kenya. He spends his free time working on a novel set in Basque Country (Northern Spain) and he pulls for the New Orleans Saints, Atlanta Braves, and Athletic Club de Bilbao.

Fall 2018 · 13

Donate to Humanities Iowa H umanities I owa provides the public with stories that give meaning to people in

I owa through programs H umanities I owa cannot

and grants .

provide such without help from supporters like you .

To donate , visit

our website or mail a check payable

H umanities I owa to our address : 100 L ibr ary R oom 4039, I owa C it y, IA 52242. D onations are tax to

deductible to the extent permit ted by law.

Humanities Iowa Debuts New Donation Page HI

Statement of Activity for the year ended October 31, 2017

revenues

U nrestric ted

will now be accepting online

donations through

N et work F or

Temporarily R estric ted

P ermanently R estric ted

Total

NEH & private grants 722,204 0 Gifts & membership 16,315 0 Dividends & interest 143,010 0 Fees 7,630 0 In-Kind Contributions 8,302 0

0 722,204 0 16,315 0 143,010 0 7,630 0 8,302

Check Out Humanities Iowa’s Website Redesign

Total Revenues

0 897,461

C onnec t

Functional Expenses

G ood . C heck

out our brand new

donation webpage :

ht tps ://humanitiesiowa . net workforgood . com

with us on social media ,

897,461

0

and find out about programming and events near you :

www. humanitiesiowa . org

Program Services 608,812 Management & general 111,639 Fundraising, newsletter 10,870

0 0 0

0 608,812 0 111,639 0 10,870

and intellectual heritage : the sum

Total Expenses 731,321 0 731,321

Increase in Net Assets 166,140 26,539 0 166,140 for the year

expression .

Net Assets—Beginning of Year 865,390

26,539

128,000 1,019,929

Net Assets—End of Year

26,539

128,000 1,186,069

What are the Humanities?

The H umanities

are our culture

of human experience , thought and

They

give us knowledge

of the past, insight about the present, and wisdom for the future .

They teach us about others and help us to know ourselves .

14 · Voices from the Prairie

1,031,530

Donors 2017-2018

Pat Anderson Anonymous Violet M. Barker Ed and Ethel Barker Sue Berger Liz and Tom Boyd Willard (Bill) Boyd III Margaret Brennan Richard Burton Richard Carlson Hal Chase Edward Cohn Rick Crowl Thomas Dean Frances DeJong J.P. Dietrich DNE Caplan Family Foundation James Dooley Ron and Bard Eckhoff Glenn Ehrstine George and Lois Eichacker James Erb Daniel Ernst Mark Felderman Sonja Ferrell Gary Frost Susan Frye Elizabeth Garst Carol Gronstal Wilfred Groves William Hamm Voanne Hansen Barbara Haring Ellen Hay James P. Hayes Pam Hazell Jeff and Cindy Heland

John and Jan Hess Beverly Hinds Margery Hoppin Marsha Hucke Sidney and Elizabeth Huttner Lee and Nancy Jarvis D.E. and S.M. Johnson Jay Kacena David Kettner Dr. James and Mary Ellen Kimball Robin Kline Denny Lautner Maurice Lee Randall Lengeling Henry and Sherry Lippert Helen Lockwood Cedric and Marcia Lofdahl Alma Long Esther Mackintosh Mary Markwalter Cindy McLaughlin Charissa Menefee John Menninger Kurt Meyer Tom Milligan Ric Nelson Gloria Newell Mary Noble Carrie Z. Norton Sandra Norvell N.J. Novick Russell and Martha Noyes Armond and Polly Pagliai Mary Patrick Shirley Pfeifer Chris and Heather Plucar Alta L. Price

Walter Pyper Treva Reimer Christopher Rossi RPC, Inc. Charitable Foundation Gerard and Carolyn Rushton Marina Sandquist Marilyn Schnittjer Robert and Anna Mae Schnucker William Sherman Steven Siegel Dale Simon Larry Simons Cynthia Smith Eldon and Mary Snyder Rosa Snyder Rebecca Soglin Larry Stone Claudia Streeter Alan Swanson Dr. Richard Thomas Dr. John Van Ness Rhonda Vernon Brian and Vicki Walshire Dennis and Rosemarie Ward Robert Welland Michael Welsh

2017-2018 Partners Cedar County Historical Society Fullhart/Carnegie Charitable Trust Iowa Rock n’ Roll Music Association Voices Productions Stephens College Tolerance Week Woodward Foundation Woodward Communications Foundation Fall 2018 · 15

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Humanities Iowa 100 Main Library Rm 4039 Iowa City, Iowa 52242-1420

Donate today! www.humanitiesiowa.org

Carl Lee’s Barbershop, Columbus Junction, IA, 1984 Photograph © David Plowden