Pencil Sharpener Poster | Heidi Schmidt

Exhibition poster © Heidi Schmidt 2015

Above Poster by graphic designer Heidi Schmidt for an exhibition of student posters about historic pencil sharpeners from the P.D. Whitson Collection. Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa.

•••

Bernard Wolfe, Memoirs of a Not Altogether Shy Pornographer (Garden City NY: Doubleday and Company, 1972), p. 157—

[There is a Law of Laws] that says, it’s not the paycheck you get that determines the value of the work you do, it’s the inspired and organized energy you put into the project, the invention, inner direction, personal thrust; no matter what payroll you’re on, the best payrolls are your own, the best jobs are free-lance. That says, the difference between those who do and those who get done to and in is what’s hungered for, the life on your feet or the life flat on your back. That says, there are the active ones, the makers; then there are the passive ones, the made. That says, work ethic be damned, what we’re talking about is the nature and direction of hunger, whether your need is to stiff the world a little or be steamrollered.

Pencil Sharpener Poster | Tad Klenske

Exhibition poster © Tad Klenske 2015

Above Poster by graphic designer Tad Klenske for an exhibition of student posters about historic pencil sharpeners from the P.D. Whitson Collection. Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa.

•••

Bernard Wolfe, Memoirs of a Not Altogether Shy Pornographer (Garden City NY: Doubleday and Company, 1972), p. 47-48—

Paradox: the more you comb through your insides the less you come up with to write about. Besides, there’s more to look at out there than in here, and it’s less fogged over. You’ve go to learn more from three billion people than from one, it’s a matter of arithmetic. Again, it’s the writers who keep their eyes on the world about who tell us the most about themselves. What’s a man after all but his vision? Blinders and all? What’s he going to convey to us about his vision if he keeps it trained on his own insides, which he’ll never see? But I suppose every writer has to do this me-myself-and-I softshoe one time out, to show how versatile he is and that he hasn’t got two left feet.
   

Pencil Sharpener Poster | Amber Claus

Exhibition poster © Amber Claus 2015

Above Poster by graphic designer Amber Claus for an exhibition of student posters about historic pencil sharpeners from the P.D. Whitson Collection. Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa.

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J.J. Oppenheimer, quoted in Robert Bruce Williams, ed., John Dewey, Recollections (Washington DC: University Press of America, 1970), pp. 123-124—

At the dinner table one evening [in the 1920s at Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri, at the college president’s home], our famous guest [Count Hermann Keyserling] suddenly asked all of us who in the American scene would make a distinct contribution to culture in the next fifty to one hundred years. A number of nominations were made. When it came my turn, I said “John Dewey.” At that, the huge (rather tall than huge) Count said: “I met John Dewey last week at my lecture at Columbia University. Surely that ‘little shrimp’ couldn’t add anything to human knowledge.”…Later by several weeks, Time magazine had a short article on the Count’s departure in which a reporter asked him what three things had the United States [contributed] to civilization. The Count replied: “Jazz, skyscrapers and John Dewey.”  

Pencil Sharpener Poster | Rachel Bartholomay

Exhibition poster © Rachel Bartholomay 2015

Above Poster by graphic designer Rachel Bartholomay for an exhibition of student posters about historic pencil sharpeners from the P.D. Whitson Collection. Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa.

•••

John C. Thirlwall, quoted in Robert Bruce Williams, ed., John Dewey, Recollections (Washington DC: University Press of America, 1970), p. 157.

In 1932 I was an English graduate student at Columbia [University]. Ashley Thorndike was then Chairman of the English Department, and every graduate student took his Shakespeare course, which [began] at 2:00 pm in a lecture room holding over one hundred [students], on the sixth floor of Philosophy Hall. One day, promptly at 2:00 pm, Professor [John] Dewey shambled in, sat down at the desk and proceeded to read a long list, marking absent each one, since there was no reply from a crowded room. At 2:10 [Professor] Thorndike strode into the room, gawped at Dewey at moment, then tapped him on the shoulder, saying: “John, you are one flight up.” None of us laughed as Thorndike proceeded to read the proof sheets of his Shakespearian Comedy.  

Pencil Sharpener Poster | Reilly Stratton

Exhibition poster © Reilly Stratton 2015

Above Poster by graphic designer Reilly Stratton for an exhibition of student posters about historic pencil sharpeners from the P.D. Whitson Collection. Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa.

•••

Ginu Kamani, “Code Switching” in Meri Nana-Ama Danquah, ed., Becoming American: Personal Essays by First Generation Immigrant Women (New York: Hyperion, 2000), p. 99—

I grew up surrounded by big, dark, animated eyes capable of conveying the greatest subtlety. Recently I was reminded again of the exquisite power of Indian eyes during a Satyajit Ray retrospective. As I watched his films, I realized what one of my biggest confusions must have been as a young immigrant to the US—my American peers appeared cold even when trying to be friendly. I depended so much on eyes to magnify both silent and verbal transmissions, that communication with my American peers often left me in a dissatisfied limbo. I had to adjust to a different sort of communication, all talk and less than expressive glances.

Pencil Sharpener Poster | Dallas Guffey

Exhibition poster © Dallas Guffey 2015

Above Poster by graphic designer Dallas Guffey for an exhibition of student posters about historic pencil sharpeners from the P.D. Whitson Collection. Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa.

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Violette de Mazia, quoted in Robert Bruce Williams, ed., John Dewey, Recollections (Washington DC: University Press of America, 1970), p. 9.

[American philosopher John] Dewey’s observations on art were sometimes characterized by a remarkable spontaneous insight. On one of his frequent visits to The Barnes Foundation during Dr. [Albert C.] Barnes and I were looking at the collection with him, he stopped in front of a [painting by Paul] Cézanne, The Bibemus Quarry, and said with the air of tossing off an incidental remark, “If you were to explode a bomb in the middle of this landscape you would have a [painting by Chaim] Soutine.”

Pencil Sharpener Poster | Joseph Burgus

Exhibiti0n poster © Joseph Burgus 2015

Above Poster by graphic designer Joseph Burgus for an exhibition of student posters about historic pencil sharpeners from the P.D. Whitson Collection. Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa.

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George A. Wolf, Jr., quoted in Robert Bruce Williams, ed., John Dewey, Recollections (Washington DC: University Press of America, 1970), pp. 172-173—

[In 1947 or 1948, George A. Wolf, Jr. was a young physician in New York. One weekend he was asked to take the emergency calls of one of his professors, who was John Dewey’s doctor. The American philosopher, who was in his late eighties] had gone for a walk on Fifth Avenue, slipped and hurt his shoulder. I was called to see him which I did in his apartment. The old gentleman was literally quivering in pain and his new wife was most apprehensive…I am an internalist but I remembered from medical school orthopedics a maneuver, somewhat old fashioned, said to reduce such dislocations occasionally.

The patient was in so much pain that I decided to try the maneuver. It consisted of taking off my shoe, sitting on the foot of Dr. Dewey’s bed, placing my sock covered foot in Dr. Dewey’s armpit, grasping his hand and forearm on the affected side and gently pulling…Suddenly, there was a feeling that the bone had slipped back into place. My memory tells me that it was a loud satisfying crack but my biological training tells me that both Dr. Dewey and I were so relieved, he of his pain and I of my apprehension, that the event was really very quiet. He stopped shaking, looked at me gratefully, and smiled a little smile. He said the appropriate thank you’s, as did his wife.

The amusing part was that as I put my foot in the suffering gentleman’s armpit (axilla), I said, “Pardon me, Dr. Dewey.”  

Pencil Sharpener Poster Exhibit Ends Today

Poster © Roy R. Behrens 2015

Above Poster for an exhibition of graphic design student posters about historic pencil sharpeners, from the P.D. Whitson Collection. Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa. The exhibit ends today.

Exhibit of Pencil Sharpener Posters

Poster © Roy R. Behrens 2015

Above Poster for an exhibition of graphic design student posters about historic pencil sharpeners, from the P.D. Whitson Collection. Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa.

•••

From Bernard Wolfe, Memoirs of a Not Altogether Shy Pornographer (Garden City NY: Doubleday and Company, 1972), p. 43-44—

Art makes order out of chaos, do they still teach that hogwash in the schools? It’s liars who give order to chaos, then go around calling themselves artists and in this way gave art a bad name. Here high up on their cerebral peaks are all the artists sifting and sorting out the facts and pasting them together any old way to show how neat it all is and how they’re at the controls of the whole works, and there under their feet the facts go on tulmulting and pitching them on their asses over and over, and what’s the whole demonstration worth? Don’t tell me the real artists are tidiers. Céline is in the grand spatter business. Henry Miller spatters too, though a good part of the time by plan, by program, and that’s his tension. Hemingway held it all in his tight hand and pretended it was one packed ball of wax till the end, then his true spewing self came out and he spattered all right, spattered all his order-making brains over the livingroom, and the lie of having it all together was done for, he arrived at the moment of going at his authenticity, his one moment of truth. When do you see Dostoevsky laying out his reality with a T-square?  

The Problems of Poets as Poets

Digital montage © Roy R. Behrens (2015)

William H. Gass, "The Soul Inside the Sentence" in Habitations of the Word (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984), p. 119—

People call themselves poets and painters, and seek help for their failures, as I might come to a psychiatrist to discover the causes of my vaulter's block or to find out why I can't get anywhere in nuclear physics. Indeed, regularly people push through the turnstiles of the critic's day who feel very strongly the need to pass as poets, to be called "creative," to fit into a certain niche, acquire an identity the way one acquires plants there's no time to tend or goldfish that can't be kept alive, and their problems are important and interesting and genuine enough; but they are not the problems of poets as poets, any more than the child who tiptoes to school on the tops of fences has the steelworker's nerves or nervousness or rightly deserves his wage.

 

Shunting, Hooting and Milking the Bull

Montage © Roy R. Behrens 2015

Elias Canetti (The Human Province)—

He lays sentences like eggs, but he forgets to incubate them.

•••

Samuel Johnson—

Truth, Sir, is a cow which will yield such people no more milk, and so they are gone to milk the bull. 

•••

Sir Frederick John Burrows—

Unlike my predecessors, I have devoted more of my life to shunting and hooting than to hunting and shooting [alluding to his former career as a railway man].

Brushed by the Grasses of Self-Reproach

Montage | Roy R. Behrens 2015 | Puffin Wikipedia

Mae West—

You're a fine woman, Lou. One of the finest women that ever walked the streets.

•••

Pierre-Jules Renard—

It should not be thought that laziness is unproductive. Within it, you live intensely, like a hare listening. You swim in it like water; and are brushed by the grasses of self-reproach.

•••

Charles Dickens (The Pickwick Papers)—

Miss Bolo rose from the table considerably agitated, and went straight home, in a flood of tears and a sedan chair.

Guy Davenport's Mushrooms

Roy R. Behrens © illustrations for Guy Davenport (1979)

In speaking with students, I am increasingly puzzled by how quickly and completely society's past has been effaced by popular culture. They've all read Harry Potter of course, but are totally unfamiliar with Charles Dickens or H.L. Mencken ("old white guys," as one explained). They are thoroughly acquainted with the Mario Brothers, but have never heard of the James brothers, William (the writer) and Henry (the psychologist). Not even the Marx Brothers.

Above are stages in illustrations I designed in 1979 (full-color cover and six interior collages) to complement a short story by American fiction writer, essayist and scholar Guy Davenport, with whom I was then corresponding. Each day, increasingly few can understand what the imagery refers to, since education now rarely includes such peripheral gems of history as Paolo Ucello, Albrecht Dürer, Thomas Eakins, William Hogarth's line of beauty, Stanley Spencer—and Guy Davenport.

•••

Guy Davenport, in "Pleasant Hill," an interview by Bernard Hoepffner—

I am a minor writer because I deal in mere frissons and adventitious insights, and with things peripheral.…

•••

I'm not a novelist. Paul Klee was not a muralist. My ambition is to write as little as possible, in the smallest possible space.
     All my discrete paragraphing is to force the reader to read. Most narrative prose can be read by running one's eye down the page. If I've worked one hour on a sentence, I want the reader to pay attention to it. I hope there's a web of symbols and themes running through all the stories.

•••

The major writers in whose shadows I grow my mushrooms are Osip Mandelstam, Donald Barthelme, Robert Walser, and Walter Savage Landor.

See also this.

Talk by Robert Abbott | Context Digital

Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa

Talk by Red Bull Filmmaker Nick Schrunk

Explorations of Type | Chase Murphy

all images © Chase Murphy 2015

On a recent somber autumn day, my spirits were lifted by running across the work from last semester of Chase Murphy, who earned a BA in Graphic Design at the University of Northern Iowa in May of 2015.

In that semester, he was enrolled in a class I taught on the History of Design. When asked to take on related research, he created a stunningly beautiful book about historical typefaces. Each typeface was assigned a spread in which its finest attributes were described in a brief narrative and then visually conveyed by a fresh and engaging arrangement of type. Shown here are examples of only one side of a few of the spreads, but the spreads in full are online here.

Grout Museum Annual Report | Rachael Bair

A hearty congratulations to Rachael Bair, current graphic design student, Department of Art at the University of Northern Iowa, for her design of the Annual Report for Fiscal Year 2014-2015 for the Grout Museum District (Waterloo IA). Rachael completed the project while working as an intern with Jacquie Colvin (former UNI student designer), who is now that organization's marketing coordinator and graphic designer. As confirmed by the sample pages above and below on this blog post, it's really an excellent layout, by one of our most extraordinary students. The entire annual report is also available online as a pdf. 

Earlier this year, Rachael earned another distinction when one of her woodcut illustrations, titled Carry a Light with You, received a Best of Category Award at the annual competition by the Art Directors Association of Iowa (ADAI). This was just the latest in the ever-growing list of Rachael's well-deserved graphic design prizes.

Space Suit Design Booklet | Austin Montelius

Space Suit Booklet © Austin Montelius 2015

Above Last semester in the Department of Art at the University of Northern Iowa, students in a course about the history of modern design (graphic, industrial and architectural) were assigned a major end-of-term project. They chose a research subject from the widest range of possibilities, with the aim of producing a formal research paper, an illustrated booklet, an information graphic (such as a chronological chart), and so on. The results were impressive to say the least. Among the finest was an exactly written and designed 32-page booklet on "the evolution of space suits in fiction and reality," produced by senior graphic designer Austin Montelius. The printed cover is above, with one of the opening spreads below. It was both flawless and ambitious, an admirable achievement in every regard.

Space Suit Booklet spread © Austin Montelius 2015

 The history of space exploration is one of Austin's many interests. He is especially knowledgeable of the development of the Russian space program, which he used as the subject for a stunning chronological chart which he designed for an earlier studio class (see below).

Comic Art Exhibit | Jared Rogness

Poster for Jared Rogness exhibit (2015)

Above Beginning tomorrow and continuing for two weeks (August 23 through September 5, 2015) is an exhibition of about twenty large-sized pages of exquisitely drawn and constructed comic art by Jared Rogness, an Iowa-born (and now California-based) illustrator.

We've blogged about him once before in reference to his magazine short story illustrations. For a better sense of the quality of his current work, see the detail posted below. We've known about and admired Jared's work for a long time, and in fact had the pleasure to work with him in the late 1990s and later, when he was a student in the Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa.

In his student days, he was known on campus as e-Chicken, by which pseudonym he published in the student newspaper some of the most biting (and hilarious) captioned cartoons about the ills of American life. Our nation being more sickly now than perhaps ever before (recall the recent Republican Presidential Primary Debate), we wonder what e-Chicken's insights would be.

Drawing detail © Jared Rogness (2015)

Postscript: Below also are photos of some of the students who came to look at Jared's work. One indication of  the popularity of an exhibit is the number of exhibit posters that disappear from the hallways, and end up on students' walls. This one set a record.

Typographic Poster | Stephanie Berry

Typeface Poster © Stephanie Berry 2015

Above Poster by Stephanie Berry, graphic design student, Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa, in celebration of the typeface Futura (2015)

•••

Kate Learson, quoted in Remar Sutton and Mary Abbott Waite, eds., The Common Ground Book: A Circle of Friends. Latham NY: British American Publishing, 1992, p. 181—

So many people who say they are artists are just technicians who are trying to capture the PR wave of something avant-garde; the work may be different, but the intention sometimes looks so shallow. So many people now, not only in painting and sculpture but in music and probably literature, seem to be producing cheap knockoffs and are into just promoting themselves.

Lincoln Infographic | Jordon Deutmeyer

Lincoln Infographic © Jordon Deutmeyer 2015

A large-format interpretative chronology of the assassination of US President Abraham Lincoln, designed by Jordon Deutmeyer, graphic design student, Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa, 2015.

 •••

Richard Critchfield, Those Days: An American Album (New York: Dell, 1986), p. 342—

Just after we moved to Fargo [ND], the summer of 1932, Mother took Grandma Critchfield down to Knoxville, Iowa, to visit McLain in the veterans hospital. He'd been there ever since his brain was injured in that plane crash during World War I. Mom took the three boys along with her. We'd moved into a house on the north side of town and the Hopes were visiting… Mr. Hope had fallen asleep at the wheel and woke up when his car hit a passing train at a crossing. He walked for help with a shattered kneecap. Anyway, the whole family of Hopes came to our house in Fargo to recuperate. When Mom got back from Iowa, she hunted all over for the toilet brush and found it in the kitchen. Helen had been using it to scrub vegetables.

In that first house in Fargo, a family named Hilliard lived next door… Mr. Hilliard wore shorts and a goatee. The shorts came below his stomach and one day his little girl stuck a nasturtium in his navel and he left it there all day. Mr. Hilliard was very congenial. He'd call over, "Yoo hoo! Let's all come out! I've got a good dirty story!" Daddy was always joking too. One time, a man had been chasing girls in the park and Daddy said, "I just wish he'd jump out of the bushes at Betty. She'd scare 'im." Another time, when Aunt Helen was visiting from Iowa with her two-year-old and a newborn baby, Daddy said, "You people in Iowa breed just like rabbits." That didn't go down so well.

Lincoln Infographic | Stephanie Berry

Lincoln Infographic © Stephanie Berry 2015

A large-format interpretative chronology of the assassination of US President Abraham Lincoln, designed by Stephanie Berry, graphic design student, Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa, 2015.

•••

Slim Collier (bartender), quoted in Studs Terkel, Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression. NY: Random House, 1970, p. 119—

I was born in Waterloo [IA]. A great deal of Iowa, southern Iowa, particularly, didn't have electricity until the end of World War II. I was eleven years old before I lived in a house with running water.

•••

Kitty McCulloch, quoted by Studs Terkel, ibid., p. 55—

[One day during the Depression] This one man came in—it was right before Christmas. My husband had a very nice suit, tailored. It was a black suit with a fine white pin-stripe in it. He put it to one side. I thought he didn't like the suit. I said to this man, "Your clothes are all ragged. I think I have a nice suit for you." So I gave him the suit.

The following Sunday my husband was to go to a wake. He said, "Where's my good suit?" And I said, "Well, Daddy, you never wore it. I—well, it's gone." He said, "Where is it gone to?" I said, "I gave it to a man who had such shabby clothes. Anyway, you got three other suits and he didn't have any. So I gave it to him." He said, "You're the limit, Mother."

Lincoln Infographic | Gina Hamer

Lincoln Infographic © Gina Hamer 2015

A large-format interpretative chronology of the assassination of US President Abraham Lincoln, designed by Gina Hamer, graphic design student, Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa, 2015.

•••

Robert Graves, Goodbye to All That [his famous autobiography] (Penguin Books, 2000), recalling the eccentricity of Greek scholar Gilbert Murray—

Once, as I sat talking to him in his study about Aristotle's Poetics, while he walked up and down, I suddenly asked: "Exactly what is the principle of that walk of yours? Are you trying to avoid the flowers on the rug, or are you trying to keep to the squares?" My own compulsion-neuroses [OCD] made it easy for me to notice them in others. He wheeled around sharply: "You're the first person who has caught me out," he said. "No, it's not the flowers or the squares; it's a habit that I have got into of doing things in sevens. I take seven steps, you see, then I change direction and go another seven steps, then I turn around. I consulted Browne, the Professor of Psychology, about it the other day, but he assured me it isn't a dangerous habit. He said: "When you find yourself getting into multiples of seven, come to me again."
 

Lincoln Infographic | Bailey Higgins

Lincoln Infographic © Bailey Higgins 2015

A large-format interpretative chronology of the assassination of US President Abraham Lincoln, designed by Bailey Higgins, graphic design student, Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa, 2015.

•••

Eugene V. Debs, American union leader, quoted in E.J. Hughes, The Ordeal of Power: A Political Memoir of the Eisenhower Years. NY: Macmillan, 1975—

I am not a leader. I don't want you to follow me or anything else. If you are looking for a Moses to lead you out of the wilderness, you will stay right where you are. I would not lead you into this promised land if I could, because if I could lead you in, someone else could lead you out.
 

Buffalo Bill Cody in Cedar Falls IA in 1912

Greetings from Buffalo Bill

In an earlier post on William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody, we shared the story of his only visit to Cedar Falls IA, in 1912, as recalled by Stella Robinson Wynegar. Below is a different account by her son.

Claud R. Wynegar, The Century and I: Memories of Cedar Falls and Beyond. Pacific Palisades CA: Seamount Publications, 1999, p. 51—

I do not remember the year [it was 1912], but I was a small boy when the Buffalo Bill and Pawnee Bill Circus came to town. They put up their tents out West First Street in Mularkey's pasture [sic, Mullarky's pasture, now called Riverview Park, at Ellen Street and South Park Road]. It was in the summer. I was alone and I got to the grounds early. I had a seat in the open air tent to watch the "battles" between the white men and the Indians, and a lot of fancy riding and roping of horses.

Buffalo Bill was on a horse with a shotgun. Someone ahead of him would throw a glass ball into the air and he would shoot at it and break it into small pieces. There was number of tents. I looked into all of them. It was a show a bit difficult to describe. There were a few wild bison, quite a few cowboys, Indians in native costumes, a few concessions where souvenirs were sold and food stands. It was the first circus I ever saw.

Later in the afternoon my mother drove out in our buggy to get me. While looking for me she met Buffalo Bill and had a nice visit with him. No doubt that was the beginning of my interest in the American West, and it has always stayed with me. I own some Remington bronzes, some western pictures and books about the people who were part of that era.
 

Frank Lloyd Wright Rescues Einstein

Albert Einstein (Public Domain)

Physicist Albert Einstein and architect Frank Lloyd Wright apparently met for the first time in 1931, at the house called La Miniatura, in Pasadena CA, which Wright had designed for Alice Millard, a rare-book dealer. According to an essay by Milton Cameron—

When Albert Einstein first met Frank Lloyd Wright, he mistook the architect for a musician. Leaping from his chair, Einstein announced that he was returning home to fetch his violin and would be back shortly to perform a duet. Only upon his return did he learn that Wright was not a pianist.

Frank Lloyd Wright (Public Domain)

That same year, a news article reported that when Einstein stopped in Chicago on his return from Pasadena, Wright was standing beside him when the famous physicist was mobbed by a crowd of 2000 women, who were Chicago-area peace advocates. The story is told in the following excerpts from FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT SAVES EINSTEIN FROM FRIENDLY MOB, Scientist Greeted by 2000 Chicago Pacifists at Station; Wright Draws Him Up Train Steps in Capital Times (Madison WI), March 4, 1931—

The world-famous physicist, who has been the guest of scientists in Pasadena, was all but mowed down by 2000 women, representing every peace organization in Chicago, as he stepped off the Manhattan Limited in the Pennsylvania station…

Smiling and undaunted, the gentle little man,• himself an ardent peace advocate, stepped down among the milling mob of women, shaking hands and listening wordlessly as each volunteered a hurried greeting.

Finally Frank Lloyd Wright, the architect, and Dr. Carl Beck, both long-time friends,•• fearing for the limb if not the life of the distinguished scientist, drew him up the train steps and back to the observation platform, where he talked briefly in his own language.

•  I'm not sure I understand. Einstein is described here as a "gentle little man," yet a quick online search finds that he was apparently 5 foot 9 inches. Wright, on the other hand, claimed to be 5 foot 8.5 inches, but people often speculate that he may have been even shorter, thereby accounting for the lower ceiling heights in some of his buildings. Yet, in this account, it is the diminutive Wright who hoists the larger Einstein onto the railroad platform.

•• If Einstein and Wright had met for the first time at that same meeting in Pasadena, how could they have been "long-time friends"?

See also: Roy R. Behrens, FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT and Mason City: Architectural Heart of the Prairie (2016).

 

Suite of Posters | Kellie Heath

copyright © Kellie Heath

Above and below A suite of three posters by graphic designer Kellie Heath (2015 graduate), Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa. Designed as promotional posters for the university's College of Humanities, Arts and Sciences (CHAS), c2014. Copyright © Kellie Heath.

•••

James Geary (recalling US Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.) in Geary's Guide to the World's Great Aphorists. New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2007, p. 90—

Once, while in his nineties, he passed a beautiful young woman on the street and sighed to his companion, "Oh, to be seventy again!"

copyright © Kellie Heath

copyright © Kellie Heath

Buffalo Bill in Cedar Falls IA | 1917 Double Bill

William F. Cody shaking hands

Above Looped film footage of William F. Cody, aka Buffalo Bill, possibly filmed by the Edison Company, which recorded a series of brief films pertaining to Cody's Wild West performances. We have no explanation for the vigor of his handshake.

•••

My father was born in northeastern Iowa in 1901. Buffalo Bill was still touring the country in those years, appearing with his traveling show. He performed in Cresco and Decorah, one time each, which may account for my father's memory of having actually attended a Wild West performance. Cody died in January 1917, two months before the following news article appeared in an Iowa newspaper—

Anon, BILL CODY'S DOUBLE: Col. Curt L. Alexander, of Nebraska, Startles Cedar Falls Lads in the Marshalltown Times-Republican (Marshalltown IA), March 6, 1917—

"Gee! Buffalo Bill ain't dead! Look, fellers!"

That's the way a small boy directed a bunch of his fellows to Col. Curt L. Alexander, of Hastings, Neb., walking the streets of Cedar Falls (IA) today. And a small army of boys greeted him every time he appeared.

Colonel Alexander is an exact "double" of the late Col. W.F. Cody, from his flowing hair, moustache, goatee and big sombrero to the tips of his cowboy boots. He is here visiting his nephew, Lloyd Alexander,  a prominent clothing merchant, while en route home from Chicago.

Besides looking enough like the famous "Buffalo Bill" to have been his twin brother, Colonel Alexander is an old plainsman and scout and as much like Colonel Cody in his habits. In fact, he was a lifelong intimate friend of "Buffalo Bill," working with him as a freighter across the plains when the west was young and in later years traveling for weeks at a time with Colonel Cody's great wild west show, where his remarkable likeness to his friend caused many amusing situations to arise.

•••

Since first posting the above news excerpt, we have also found an article by David Whitsett, titled A CEDAR FALLS STOP: Four US Presidents, MLK Among Famous Visitors to Town, in the Cedar Falls Times (May 1, 2013), which is online here. It tells the story of the one occasion in which Buffalo Bill performed with the Wild West in Cedar Falls on August 31, 1912. Here is the excerpt pertaining to that—

[Cedar Falls resident] Stella Wynegar recalled that his [Cody's] crew set up their tents in “Mullarkey’s pasture,” which was on the northwest corner of Cedar Falls. She says that she and her son, Claude, did not attend the show but that they “were wandering around the grounds after his show, and Buffalo Bill came up and talked with us. He asked about our family and told us about his life and where he’d been. He was very interesting and very nice.”

Another Cedar Falls resident, Marie Cook, also recalled Buffalo Bill’s visit. She remembered that she and her family were living on West First Street near where his show was set up, “He came walking along and saw the chickens in our yard. He offered my grandma $1.50 to cook a chicken dinner for his troupe and she did it!” 

Both Marie and Stella also remembered that Annie Oakley was one of the stars of the Wild West Show when it was here. She was, perhaps, America’s first female superstar. She was a true sharp shooter who could split a playing card edge-on with her .22 rifle and put several holes in it before it hit the ground.

NOTE: There is a Wynegar Oral History Collection (Manuscript Record Series MsC-18) in the Special Collections and University Archives holdings at the Rod Library, University of Northern Iowa.