My View from the Porch

When you’re craving a little intellectual lift, you can indeed find it close by here in rural Iowa

By CARLA OFFENBURGER
November 12, 2007
PERRY, IOWA

When my husband Chuck and I traveled to New Haven, Connecticut, and Yale University earlier this fall to spend time with our son Andrew, daughter-in-law Maria, and new little granddaughter Lindsay Lee, we were enthralled with the life this young family leads.

We were also a bit more than excited about life so near a university setting. I think I had almost forgotten. It is as if the air you breathe is fresher, more alive and vibrant. Diversity, debate, opportunities abound. It’s intoxicating, really.

Chuck and I found ourselves a bit regretful that we had traded in a university setting in Storm Lake, Iowa, where we were at Buena Vista University for five years, for our life in the country here at Simple Serenity Farm in Greene County. Oh, for sure, it’s hard to compare the environment at Yale with that at Buena Vista. But there’s something invigorating about being around young eager learners and intellectual faculty, anywhere. The buzz is wonderful. And for the most part, it’s all free.

And so, while at Yale, we soaked in as much as we could between holding and playing with little Lindsay Lee. We attended a few lectures, an ecumenical church service at Yale’s Battell Chapel, and we sneaked in to watch the Yale Glee Club rehearse for an upcoming concert. I told Chuck that if we lived in New Haven and planned our life around all the opportunities Yale gives New Haven residents, we could nearly have a Yale degree without paying a dime.

Ted Kooser, poet laureate of the United States from 2004-’06, is shown here during his reading on November 8 in Perry, Iowa.

When we got on the plane to come home, Chuck and I talked about how we needed to seek out similar academic-type events closer to home and take advantage of all that we can find in our neck of the woods to keep this invigorating feeling alive.

That’s saying a lot for Chuck and I, who rarely miss whatever Greene County has to offer in way of plays, concerts and other entertainment. But I was thinking more about academic-like lectures and speakers of national or world prominence. We decided to do our best to not miss out on any opportunity that came knocking at our doors.

It was easy getting started because, well, it’s political season in Iowa and the Caucuses are a mere six weeks away. So we started watching the schedules of the presidential candidates, and going to hear them when they are reasonably close. We’ve heard all the Democrats, except Senator Hillary Clinton, who seems to be skipping over Greene County. We’ve heard a few of the Republicans, but they too seem to be skipping Greene County.

But it will probably be Perry, Iowa, and the offerings of “Hometown Perry, Iowa” that will take care of many of our intellectual cravings in the long term.

Launched by philanthropists Roberta Ahmanson, a native of Perry, and her husband Howard Ahmanson in the 1990s, “Hometown Perry, Iowa” organizes programs, events and exhibitions “to study, understand, communicate and celebrate the vital contribution small towns have made to American life as seen through the prism of the immigrant experience in Perry, Iowa, and other small towns across the Midwest.” Many of the programs are in the restored Carnegie Library Museum in downtown Perry, or across Willis Avenue at the new Town/Craft Center, or in other locations around town.

They have wonderful events covering topics of every kind – we’ve known of them having a public conversation with a leading Iowa business owner and another program on the importance of high school sports in Iowa – and they have a lot of them. And, yes, most of the Perry events are free. You can help support them by buying a membership in “Hometown Perry, Iowa,” and then you get early notice of all events. You can also follow their activities and get more information on their Internet site www.hometownperryiowa.org.

We can get in our car and be in Perry in 20 minutes – the same amount of time it might take to walk across the Yale campus to get to an event.

I started my new round of Perry trips last week, when friend Nancy Teusch and I went over to hear Ted Kooser, America’s Poet Laureate for 2004-2006, a native of Ames, Iowa, who now lives near Lincoln, Nebraska.

Oh, he was wonderful. He’s a little guy, but his words are fun and powerful. Mostly he read from his book, “The Blizzard Voices,” which really features voices from those who experienced the Great Plains blizzard of January 12, 1888. He read some other favorites – one particularly good one was about his mother’s passing, and then he read one he called the “Widow Lester,” which had us all laughing.


Poet laureate Ted Kooser autographs a book of his poems for Hollie Roberts, of Jefferson, at the right, with Helen Dewey, of Perry, next in line.

I knew I would like listening to this man when, on the display board that showed his books and told some of his life story, I read what he said in a Barnes & Noble interview in 1993. “I love living in rural America, away from the noise and clamor of the city, and I am completely content to go all week without speaking to anyone but my wife and my dog,” he said in that interview. “My wife, Kathleen Rutledge, is the editor of the Lincoln Journal Star, the daily newspaper in Lincoln, Nebraska, and she helps keep me up on the news. I rarely leave home unless I can’t find a good excuse not to go.”

Kooser, 68, is still on the faculty at the University of Nebraska. Oh, what an experience it must be, attending one of his occasional classes! He took some questions from the audience in Perry, and one woman asked him, “What makes a good poem?” His answer was much like his work – quick and to the point. He said something to the effect that, “After much revision, when you are finished with a poem, you should not be able to move anything – a verb, a punctuation mark, a word, anything, without changing the meaning.”

Afterward, Nancy and I made a night of it and walked over to the fabulous Mexican restaurant, Casa De Oro, on Second Street in Perry. We talked about Kooser, poetry and other things you think about after you’ve spent an evening like we had. And then we drove home. The only thing that would have made it better would have been a hot cup of cocoa and a walk across campus on a crisp fall night.

Next on my calendar is a trip back to Perry to see the display “In Focus: National Geographic Greatest Portraits,” which will be on display from November 13 thru December 31 at the Carnegie Library Museum that is part of Hometown Perry, Iowa’s
“campus.”

I can begin to see that there are a whole lot of things to do near this country life I’ve chosen, and I’m going try not to miss much of it.

And, now, let me close this column about my evening with a fine poet, in an appropriate way – with a poem:


In honor of a night in Perry, Iowa with Ted Kooser

“Kooser who?” Some would ask.
Poet Laureate.
How do you spell that, they’d ask?
K-o-o-s-e-r.
No, I mean Laureate?
Oh no matter.
He stood in his green corduroy jacket and matching tie.
His khaki pants were bunched around his ankles and shoes
because he is, well, pretty short.
He moved his foot in an awkward way as he read.
His smile created wrinkles not where you’d expect around his eyes,
although there were some there too,
but there were more down each side of his chin, which
made me smile the more I sat and stared at him
taking it all in.
A great tonic for my soul.
If I closed my eyes I could have been at Yale, or Buena Vista U
but I was in Perry, Iowa with a room full of folks who must be thinking like me
and that made it seem very, very cool.


Ted Kooser with one of his fans, Lynda Holtz, of Jefferson.


You can write the columnist at carla@Offenburger.com.