Piedmont North Carolina has been my permanent home since 1967, when I moved to Durham to enter Duke University Law School. But as I get older I appreciate with increasing clarity how much I was shaped by being born and raised in Iowa and how proud I am to be an Iowan. I made a couple trips back in 2003, so it seems a good time to comment on my relationship with the state. 
The Clinton Public Library, October 2003
In 1955, when I was ten, we moved 70 miles south along the river to Clinton. I was already a voracious reader, but in Clinton I was old enough to go to the public library on my own. At the time, patrons weren’t allowed to check out books from the adult section till they were 13, but the library staff made an exception for me. When I went into the library on my 12th birthday, they presented me with an adult card. continue reading…
The 4th Street Elevator: Now (and for many years) a tourist attraction, but originally built by a banker in 1883 to commute between his home on top of of the bluff and his office in the floodplain.
My parents graduated from the U of Dubuque, and my mother’s family all lived in Dubuque. Mom came home from Boca Raton where my folks were living during the war (Dad worked for the Navy) to have me. When the war ended before she could return, Dad came back also to find a civilian job.
Dubuque, on the Mississippi, is the oldest settlement in Iowa. Indeed, it’s older than white settlement in the region: the bluffs overlooking the river are full of lead ore, which Amerinds were mining before voyageur Julian Dubuque settled among them.
For a few years in the 1880s, Dubuque was the wealthiest community in the US with more millionaires and more telephones per capita than anywhere else in the country. The boom (from sawmills) was brief, but it led to some lovely High Victorian buildings. continue reading…
Like many other bright Iowans, I never took the SAT. The U of Iowa accepts scores from the American College Test (based in Iowa City, like the U of I itself) for enrollment–and you could go a long way without finding a better university than Iowa. (Incidentally, ‘educators’ in states like North Carolina claim Iowa’s low rate of taking the SAT means that the state’s ranking is artificially raised. The evidence is that the 5% of Iowans who do take the SAT are in fact a fully representative sample; but if you’re an education bureaucrat from NC, you grasp at straws.)
I had wonderful teachers at Iowa. They taught me not only how to learn but to love learning. Moreover, I worked in the Main Library as a book page, an education in itself. In the course of reshelving everything that came through the library, I learned of the existence of all sorts of subjects that I’d never have run into in my normal classwork. I pursued some of them, on my own and in classes, and broadened my range of knowledge and interests enormously. continue reading…