I spent April in residence as a Presidential Fellow at Cornell College, in Mt. Vernon, Iowa. Before I went, I had these fantasies of writing lots of blogs from Cornell. In fact, the one-course-at-a-time model kept me hopping constantly, especially since I adjusted to the farm life and went to sleep every night at 9. So instead of writing at Cornell, I just shot pictures of telling signs that I found around Mt. Vernon. And here they are.
Before I get to the photos: There are two pictures I regret that I missed taking. One would have been of a handmade public notice to a bike thief. The owner of the bike said that it wasn’t so much the loss of his bike that bothered him, but the loss of his innocence. Well, he said something like that. It was the kind of sign I could relate to, especially when I came home to find my own front yard birdbath stolen. Again.
The second would have been a wordless image. It would have been a picture of the hand of Trish Varnum holding the hand of her wife, Kate Varnum. Kate and Trish were the lead plaintiffs in the Iowa Supreme Court marriage case. They came to talk at Cornell as part of my course. I’ll write another time about why I understand now why Iowa was the first place in the country to have the state supreme court recognize same-sex marriage as a right. For now, I’ll just say I wish I had taken the opportunity to include here some visual signal of the oh-so-subtle plate tectonic shift that shook Iowa. Like a shot of Mrs. Varnum holding Mrs. Varnum’s hand.
Enjoy these images. And then go to Mt. Vernon. A place that takes its sledding, its children, its chain saws, its barn art, and its asteroids seriously is a good place. And when you are there, absolutely positively get dinner and dessert at the Lincoln Cafe.
“City Trouble”? Only on Sundays and Mondays, when the Lincoln is closed. I can’t imagine what else that warning light is for.
(May 8, 2010)
