TITLE: Outer Space, Iowa, and Unexpected Connections
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: November 06, 2010 11:04 AM
DESC:
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BODY:
Poet
Marvin Bell
tells this story in his collection, A Marvin Bell
Reader:
[In Star Trek, Captain] Kirk is eating pizza
in a joint in San Francisco with a woman whose help
he will need, when he decides to fess up about who
he is and where he has come from. The camera
circles the room, then homes in on Kirk and his
companion as she bursts out with, "You mean your
from outer space?"
"No," says Kirk, "I'm from Iowa. I just work in
outer space."
My life is in some ways a complement to Kirk's. I
often feel like I'm from outer space. I just work
in Iowa.
I briefly met Bell, the former poet laureate of Iowa,
when he gave the keynote address at a
camouflage conference
at a few years ago. I gave a talk there on
steganography, which is a form of digital camouflage.
While Bell's quote comes from his own book, I found
it in the front matter of
Cook Book: Gertrude Stein, William Cook,
and Le Corbusier,
a delightful little book by
Roy Behrens.
Longtime readers of this blog will recognize Behrens's
name; his writing has led me to many interesting books
and ideas. I have written also written of Behrens's
own scholarly work several times, most notably
Teaching as Subversive Inactivity,
Feats of Association, and
Reviewing a Career Studying Camouflage.
I am fortunate to have Roy as friend and colleague,
right here in Cedar Falls, Iowa.
Cook Book tells the story of William Cook, a
little known Iowa artist who left America for Europe
as a young man and became a longtime friend of the
celebrated American writer and expatriate Gertrude
Stein. He later used his inheritance to hire a young,
unknown Le Corbusier to design his new home on the
outskirts of Paris. Behrens grew up in Cook's hometown
of Independence, Iowa. If you would like a taste of
the story before reading the book, read this
short essay.
I am no longer surprised to learn of surprising
connections among people, well-known and unknown alike.
Yet I am always surprised at the particular connections
that exist. A forgotten Iowa artist was a dear friend
of one of America's most famous writers of the early
1900s? He commissioned one of the pioneers of modern
architecture before anyone had heard of him? Pope Pius
X makes a small contribution to the expatriate Iowan's
legacy?
Busy, busy, busy.
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