if they think i am crazy, i will open for a dollar

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Above Roy R. Behrens, Taking Liberties: No Regrets (© 2021). Digital montage.

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Daniel W. Humphrey, quoted in Steven J. Zeitlin, et al., A Celebration of American Family Folklore (New York: Pantheon, 1982), pp. 39-40—

One day my dad got hurt on the job and, as a result, he said he couldn’t bear to put any weight on his heel. The doctors, however, said it was all in his mind, and they sent him to a psychiatrist. This irked him, so my dad said, “If they want to think I'm crazy, I'll make them think I'm crazy.” So he goes to the doctor's office, and the doctor brings out the Rorschach inkblot tests. The doctor laid these cards down in front of my father, and Dad reached over, picked them up, shuffled them and dealt them out for a hand of Five Card Draw and said, “I'll open for a dollar.”

Salvador Dali's Dreams of Iowa Fields in 1952

Few people know the story about the visit of surrealist artist Salvador Dali to the University of Northern Iowa campus (Iowa State Teachers College at the time) in February 1952. Not surprisingly, it has moments of hilarity. An updated version (enlarged and redesigned) is now available online at this link.

Art History Poster | Shane Rumpza

Symposium Poster © Shane Rumpza (2015)

Above Poster by Shane Rumpza, graphic design student, Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa (2015), announcing a Call for Papers for the 5th Annual Art History Symposium at the same school on April 10, 2015.

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Sigmund Freud (Jokes and Their Relationship to the Unconscious)—

The bridegroom was most disagreeably surprised when the bride was introduced to him, and drew the broker to one side and whispered his remonstrances: "Why have you brought me here?" he asked reproachfully. "She's ugly and old, she squints and has bad teeth and bleary eyes…" "You needn't lower your voice," interrupted the broker, "she's deaf as well."

Postage & Currency | Andrew Struik

Block of stamps © Andrew Struik (2014)

Above and below Proposals for postage stamps and currency for an imaginary country called Fiasco, designed by Andrew Struik, graphic design student at the University of Northern Iowa, in a class called Graphic Design I, as taught by Roy R. Behrens.

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Thomas Berger, "Touring Western Europe, 1956: Excerpts from a Journal" in an issue of Antaeus devoted to journals, notebooks and diaries. No 61, Autumn 1988, p. 43—

Taken by Dr. Haas to find [Sigmund] Freud's house. He was not sure of the number and stopped at one point on the Berggasse to ask a woman who is sweeping the sidewalk, "Could you tell us which of these houses was Freud's?" She had no idea. "Doctor Freud?" No, sorry. She went on sweeping. "I'm sure it's along here somewhere," Dr. Haas told me. We were about to return to the car when he had a bright idea. "Actually," he said to the woman, "it was Professor Freud." "Ja!" said she. "Professor Freud lived just there," pointing.

Currency © Andrew Struik (2014)

Sigmund Freud | Collage Portrait

Roy R. Behrens ©, Sigmund Freud (1981). Collage & colored pencil. Private collection.

Josephine Baker

From Alice T. Friedman, Women and the Making of the Modern House (New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 2007)—

Much has been written about the house that [Austrian architect] Adolf Loos designed in 1928 for Josephine Baker, the African-American dancer and star of the Paris stage. By now it is quite clear that the unbuilt project, which exists only as a model and a set of drawings, had everything to do with Loos's desires and nothing to do with Baker's. Having met Baker at "Chez Josephine," her Paris nightclub, the architect boasted that he could design a beautiful home for her: the result was a passionate displacement of desire, an architectural reverie in which Loos imagined a series of spaces in which Baker was displayed for his private entertainment, including a deep indoor swimming pool with windows below water level.

And from the autobiography of Richard F. Sterba, titled Reminiscences of a Viennese Psychoanalyst (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1982)—

A group of us went with [Hungarian psychiatrist Sandor] Ferenczi to a nightclub at which the famous American dancer Josephine Baker was performing. We all enjoyed the graceful, supple movement of her beautiful body and were enthusiastic about her performance. After her appearance on stage, Josephine joined the audience. I have  no idea what made her pick out Ferenczi for an enchanting little scene. She came to our table and in a most natural fashion sat on Ferenczi's lap. She glided her hand through her own black hair, which was smoothly and tightly glued to her scalp by a heavy pomade. Then she stroked the bald center of Ferenczi's head and, rubbing the pomade on his hairless scalp, said, "So, that will your hair grow."

A few years, while browsing through a reference book on Modern writers, we came across a statement by Nebraska-born writer Virgil Geddes (an expatriate in Paris in the 1920s), in which he claimed that it was he who, as an English-speaking backstage assistant at the Folies Bergere, was responsible for helping Josephine Baker with the outfit for her famous banana dance (or Danse sauvage). She was, according to Geddes, "cavorting, clad only in a string of bananas fastened around her waist. My job was to clasp the bananas from behind her on two hooks before the stage curtain parted for her act out front."