It's Been A Fun Ride

A Book of Friends: May it include the wise, the witty, and the shrewd…- introductory line to the scrapbook of Louise Elizabeth Roemer in the year 1920 (she circled the word wise and wrote “that’s me”)

To my friends who taught me to relax and have fun; to my professor who cared enough to push me beyond my self-set limits; to God who gives me strength; to my family and everyone else who never let me give up- Anonymous Senior Reflection in the yearbook “Royal Purple” 2008-2009

Friendship is the only cement that will hold the world together- Woodrow Wilson

-and [to] all my friends whose kindness helped me maintain my sanity- Anonymous Senior Reflection in the yearbook “Royal Purple” 2008-2009

Dr. Betts to Harold Johnson: “And what is your field for study”
Harold: “Insanity.”
Dr. Betts: “Oh yes, yours is insanity”
-Royal Purple yearbook 1918

Ambition: To learn to wink to roll down campus hill, to bomb ye faculty- entries in Roemer’s scrapbook

Keep serene worry is the foe of health. Cultivate the companionship of your fellow man.- “Keep Well!” pamphlet in Roemer’s scrapbook

Work, play, rest, sleep in moderation-“Keep Well!” pamphlet in Roemer’s scrapbook

Ambition: Sleep,sleep,sleep,sleep- entry in Roemer’s scrapbook

Young women should be in their rooms at the beginning of the evening study hours (8 o’clock) unless special permission is granted by the Dean of Women. Lights should be out at 10 p.m.-General College and House Rules in Roemer’s scrapbook

Ambition: to break B.H. (Bowman Hall) rules (at least I was caught last nite staying out of the hall)- entry from Roemer’s scrapbook

It would appear that someone had a little too much fun, I returned home last night only to learn that that someone had vomited all over the hallway. - e-mail from current R.A. in Bowman

Avoid self-drugging. Beware the plausible humbug of the patent medicine faker.- “Keep Well!” pamphlet in Roemer’s scrapbook

Our cover has been blown- Royal Purple yearbook 2003-2004

Personality-n [Pur-suh-nal-i-tee] The quality of being a person; existence as a self-concious human being; personal identity- introduction of Royal Purple yearbook 2010-2011

To the girls of Suite 120 for memories that were funny enough for reality tv- Anonymous Senior Reflection in the yearbook “Royal Purple” 2008-2009

Life’s a garden, dig it. And I dug a pretty phenomenal hole.- Anonymous Senior Reflection in the yearbook “Royal Purple” 2008-2009

The College is fortunate in that the attendance, although large, is not too large to afford every student individual attention in the classroom- description under a picture of Cornell’s 1920 student body in Roemer’s scrapbook

Baughman: “Are you going to teach?” Helen: “I suppose I’ll have to.”-Royal Purple yearbook 1918

Cornell College is a private, four-year liberal arts college offering students an extraordinary array of opportunities.—- from www.cornellcollege.edu

Ambition: to be a ballet dancer, to be a cabaret dancer, to be a model, to be a songster, to be an angel, to be an artist in drawing! Ahem!, to be an actress- entries from Roemer’s scrapbook

Music Mondays: Quartet San Francisco
Grammy-nominated Quartet San Francisco will open the 14th season of Music Mondays…As crossover specialists they excel in multiple styles from jazz to tango, pop to funk, blues to bluegrass, gypsy swing to big band and beyond.- Cornell College e-letter

Ambition: to eat sleep and dance enough, to make Dolly see that I’m not really so bad even if she did catch me dancing in the parlor, to always have a peppy time- entries in Roemer’s scrapbook

HvZ: The Wild Happened! This Sunday, much running about in the Pal was done, and many humans were struck down by a ravenous and quickly growing horde of zombies. Thanks for coming, everyone!- from Cornell student organization Z.O.M.F.G

“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.” Mark Twain

Ambition: to never be tired of working, to learn to love math. to get an A once in my life- entries in Roemer’s scrapbook

Gentleman callers are to be entertained only in the reception room and only at the calling hours (Young women are not allowed to visit in the parlors of the men’s rooming houses)- General House and College Rules in Roemer’s scrapbook

Mike H.: “May I kiss you?”
Ernestine S. “Isn’t that just like a man! Trying to put all the responsibility on me.”
-Royal Purple yearbook 1923

Ambition: to be a suffragette, to be an old maid- entries in Roemer’s scrapbook

Ed: “I think the world of you.”
Co-ed: “The world isn’t so very hard to get around nowadays”
-Royal Purple yearbook 1923

Ambition: to have you love me as much as I love you- entry in Roemer’s scrapbook

Bridegroom not given away-he is sold- Royal Purple Yearbook 1918

“I’m so glad you’ve come. We’re going to have a young married couple for dinner.”
“I’m glad, too. They ought to be tender”- Royal Purple yearbook 1923

Do not overeat. This applies especially to meats and eggs
Eat some hard and some bulky foods; some fruits
Eat slowly—chew thoroughly
-“Keep Well!” pamphlet in Roemer’s scrapbook

Ambition: to learn to eat B. Hall Hash with equanimity- entry in Roemer scrapbook

We’ve finally reached the same level as prison food!- overheard conversation

Evacuate thoroughly—regularly- “Keep Well!” pamphlet in Roemer’s scrapbook

Professor Norton- “My digestive apparatus has turned Bolsheviki.”- Royal Purple Yearbook 1918

Located at the heart of campus, Bowman-Carter is the oldest residence hall at Cornell and home to approximately 110 women. Bowman-Carter Hall stands out on campus due to its distinctive architecture and decor.- www.cornellcollege.edu website

The home of “our gang”- Roemer’s scrapbook description of Bowman-Carter Hall

It looks like a Harry Potter building.- overheard on moving day

-for my Bowman girls for the breathless laughter and flying pumpkins- Anonymous Senior Reflection in the yearbook “Royal Purple” 2008-2009

If you live on the fourth floor of Bowman-Carter you will always know when the wind is strong, because the room shakes- Bowman resident

Unpredictable winds can change local temperatures 50 degrees F in a 24-hour period.- page 27 of Art of the State Iowa The Spirit of America; text by Diana Landau

On the coldest of days I think back to those who came and founded my Cornell and am assured they were Tough souls to have survived the bitter howling wind- Royal Purple yearbook 2003-2004 by Jessica L Rundlett

To those whose book of life is prematurely closed because they saw beyond the limits of their own lives, this volume of the Royal Purple is loyally dedicated- introduction to Royal Purple yearbook 1918

Dearest Louise- I am going to surprise you by writing in here tonight. You don’t know how much I am going to miss you next year. I hate to have you go away, but for your sake, I am glad you are going to attend Minnesota U., because you will have such a good time. Our loss will be somebody else’s gain. Your friendship has certainly meant a lot to me. I’m sorry that I didn’t know you sooner. With lots of love to you and success for next year- Maude E. Beeman- entry in Roemer’s scrapbook

We love you. It’s been a fun ride- end of Senior Reflections in Royal Purple 2008-2009

Leaves by Ginny Boyles

It’s not a day to be alone; even the trees know it, long limbs reaching out for each other, leaves flirting with the wind. I can see it everywhere; the grass smiles at the sun, the fence posts hold hands. It’s spring in October. Alone, I know what those who share my condition must be thinking as they rush across campus, heads down, minds off. On days like today, you can’t look up; if you look up, you’ll never get to class, you’ll collapse in the grass and worship the sun, you’ll call that guy you are supposed to be forgetting about. You’ll see that couple over there, and you’ll know how they look at each other without even seeing their faces, and you’ll wonder if maybe love does exists, it just doesn’t exist for you. You must look down, do not engage, caution, danger! Do not look up. It’s a day that will tempt you to forget everything else.

That couple, they’ve seen days like this before. They sit facing the sun, their almost-forgotten friend. The tree behind them blushes valentine red. Her knees flap together with joy as he reaches for her, her arms curl around his arm, enveloping this piece of him because it is something to be saved. They linger in this moment; even when they stand to go, they hold each other briefly, arms around his neck like a middle school dance. They leave, fingers laced, the shortest daisy chain I’ve ever seen.

“Christie?” The name breaks the air, breaks the thought. I look up to see a face full of familiarity. In a strange city, it is almost disorienting; it takes me a moment to realize her mistake. I am not Christie, but I cannot correct her; I want to be her. I don’t want to see the disappointment flood out the warmth. I smile as it does.

“I’m sorry!” She says, and scurries away, embarrassed.

“It’s okay!” I reply. Alone again, the silence seems so much louder.

Live Better (audio version)

'Layers' by Maggie Schlundt

This is a multimedia posting that combines images with the written word to take the reader on a tour of Cornell's Armstrong Hall and Kimmel Theatre....

Layers

Listen to the never quiet. Sounds curl into the corners, slide across the marble floors, clean the cool glass, they make the air vibrate, echoing the operatic warm up, the screaming actors performing the end of act 2 scene 3, the trill of the sewing machines threading through olive brocade, the bang! hammers and buzz! saws, the directors’wise, frustrated voices. Frantic creation. Change.

Step outside where the noise is less passionate.We’ll begin where I began: homesick, desperate, gazing at the glaring glass walls, unable to see inside. My eyes were big, brimming with stupid tears that squirted out when I remembered how far away my red door was, how long it would be until I felt the short silky hairs behind my dog’s ears, how bad I was at phone calls.

My tear ducts calmed and evaporated when someone left that sleek door open a crack, a smile. I, shaking, timid, approached. Now Iyank the metal handle with the gentle confidence that accompanies belonging. It recognizes my grip.Slip inside and shiver. It’s always too cold.

I met two best friends on these slippery marble steps; I still talk to one of them.

Go down.

Enter the Black Box Theatre.

Oh! take off your shoes first.

The floor has been abused, pounded and scratched. Every year, someone pops open a paint can and spreads glossy black thickly over the damage, to start fresh. But the paint peels back no matter how many layers and we remember…

Here is where I let go. Here is where a bald man in a colorful sweater vest

transformed me. Here is where I ripped my favorite yoga pants. Here is where a good joke jiggled my stomach folds. Here is where a curtain was a cape, a stairwell was a prison, a yellow sheet was pure gold. Here is where I grew, in a thirty minute acting exercise, from a fetus to a 95 year old. And then I died.

Down the concrete hallway is the stage; the imposing, exposing stage.I was naked in my first production here. I slept with my cast mate. He was charming. He had a girlfriend.

I got better.

The dressing room is bright, but your eyes will adjust.

People will be changing, people are always

changing here: putting on corsets, taking off wigs, closing shows, opening them. The years start with parties , shots, beer, fights, misunderstandings, falling outs, giving up, with inside jokes, love that felt real, with all-nighters, death. And they end with graduations, with goodbyes and ‘I miss you’s, and ‘I can’t talk right now, I ‘m really busy'.

With emptiness.

Nothing’s the same. The thin lines around my mouth have deepened. A tired grayish purple cushions the pillows of skin beneath my eyes. When I smile my face folds and contorts in unexpected places. My hair hasn’t been this long since I was a virgin. My shoulders cave.

Peel back the black paint. Find me.

Photo essay of Palisades-Kepler park

Palisades: 1920s and Yesterday

These are old photos of the Palisades, from the Cornell College archives. Mostly they are from the 1920s, although some are of earlier provenance, and some are a decade later. Of all the things that existed in those years, It seems like only the river has survived. All the activities, all the buildings, all the fun...where did it go?

…

I don’t recall ever seeing that sort of building anywhere near the water. Well, it’s been 90 years – I can’t imagine it would have been preserved. But where is this seemingly flat place along the river? What's accessible from the main entrance is very hilly indeed. And if I'm not mistaken, the water in the photo is closer to the riverbank than what I saw yesterday.

…

See that building at the top of the stairs? The stairs remain. The building is gone.

…

Yesterday, there was a sign posted just above the road: TREE FARM. I didn’t ask who farms, or why. Or how. Do they harvest trees for re-planting on lawns, or do they just chop them down for wood?

…

When I came to the park yesterday, I saw a riverbank extensively silted along the entirety of the Palisades, with very wide beaches. Springy red bushes grow there, and low tough grasses, but the bushes seem impermanent and the grasses seem like they won’t amount to much. So where is the beach in this picture? Come to think of it, I don't know where exactly this was taken...there are areas of the park up and downriver that are not attached to the main body.

…

But wherever the previous photo was taken, it had to be on the near shore, because the far shore is mostly limestone cliffs.

There's a building close to shore in the background, though it be hard to see.

Yesterday, The largest building close to shore was a public bathroom built of stone. Perhaps it’s the one in the photo? But the one in the photo is just a bit too large for that. Where have all the old shoreline buildings gone?

…

This photo is from when Cornell still held Pal Day (up until the 1970s). Everyone would skip class and go to the Palisades, teachers included – this was in response to the first year it occurred, which was done with no approval. Flunk day, they called it that first year, in 1920. There was, once, a commuter rail line between Cedar Rapids and Mount Vernon,

and it passed within a mile of the Palisades – so getting there was easy. So people went.

Of course, if you had the money to pay for a car (and it cost a lot back then), you could get there on your own.

…

The trees are curiously absent from the riverbank, as if they’ve only grown since then. Also curiously absent is a steep hill rising behind them, which may mean that this photo was taken in a different area than the main part of the park. There are some smaller sections up river and downriver.

…

This is the dam, newly-made. Is that a tree planted on it? Or is that where the dam meets the shore? Either way, it’s certainly not hydroelectric. In fact, I wonder why they built the thing in the first place. It may have been a make-work project, given that this is CCC handiwork. Maybe it was meant to control flooding, somehow? But no-one is sure what purpose it serves, or served.

Yesterday, I saw the dam, or what’s left of it. It’s mostly a pile of rocks and worn concrete, with whole trees on top. What hasn’t broken already is crumbling, and the corrugated sheets of metal stand mostly exposed. Rivers are not kind to manmade things. Rivers are not kind to that which refuses to yield.

…

The cliffs on the far shore slope down to meet the water, here and there.

Last November, my geology class went to the Palisades to observe the cliff on the far shore. we noticed a house atop the cliff, and the fact that the cliff is limestone, and we wondered how long it would take for the cliff to wear away and drop the house into the river. But limestone doesn't erode that fast. As a matter of fact, the average rate is something like 1/20 mm every hundred years. Still, it seemed funny to think about. It's usually a bad idea to build an expensive structure close to a river. This house and the house we saw are way up high, so they might be safe...but only because it's solid rock.

Perhaps a few years ago, the Hartford Courant had a front-page article about a man’s house on a raised bank of the Connecticut River. This was a spot where the water sped up and wore away at the shore, such that his house was doomed to fall into the river within a few years. It was a bank of dirt, though, not limestone.

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Old inn. It was built in the 1890s. Does it still exist? The only structures given any mention in online descriptions of the park are the ones built by the CCC. But maybe it’s closer to the entrance, and I never noticed. How well is it maintained, if it does exist?

Yesterday, at a picnicking area above the stairs to the dam, I espied a water fountain. It’s missing a certain circular plate just above the handle, so when I turned the handle, the fountain spat out water at my hand and none of it reached the faucet. I expect that a building would have better maintenance. I hope.

…

Painting, early 20^th century. Moonlight on Cedar River, where the water meets the cliff. It’s all purple and red and blue, instead of the blueish-silver that is actual moonlight. But it’s pretty enough. Note the absence of a beach. Why do I keep going on about that?

…

This one is, I believe, of an old mill. I never saw it. Does it still exist? I'm leaning more and more strongly towards no -- no, there's nothing here but the lodge, and the dam, and some small things. There's little trace of what was.

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Canoes. There aren't any canoes at the Palisades now, only a concrete ramp for motorboats. The structure is a wooden dock. This photo is actually from 1980, for Alumni weekend.

…

Now we have a larger beach. Perhaps it is natural, then, and nothing to do with the dam. It is in the nature of a river to carry silt and sand and deposit it wherever, especially in a flood. The dam hasn’t done much besides catch a lot of rocks and trees, and someday it will all be swept away.

…

I found this spot yesterday, although the lawn is smaller now that there’s a paved road.

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There is a beach, if you look closely, but it's not nearly as wide as what I saw. Where is this lovely spot along the Cedar River?

…

Now there's an idea.

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Yesterday. A sign is posted at various points: WARNING. CEDAR RIVER HAS DANGEROUS CURRENTS.

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Probably Pal Day; they are doing a weenie roast. I prefer s’mores, if only because you can roast the marshmallows more quickly with a judicious application of burning.

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The smoke makes me think that they’re doing a weenie roast – possibly the same one. But where is this? The place where it might have taken place is all overgrown with bushes beneath the trees now, but there are other spots…just not many along the river itself.

…

I have probably passed by these two buildings many times without giving them much thought. Or are they still there? The definite change is that the road in this photo is unpaved. Nearly all the roads in the Palisades are paved, now. It proved convenient yesterday. Not exactly quiet, especially when the motor-bikes are going by, but more convenient.

…

Pal Day again.

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Yesterday. The area is full of underbrush now. Assuming, of course, that it’s the same area. But the park is only so large. Where else could they have been? There’s a walking trail at the north end of the paved road, but it’s all bumpy and rooty and twisty – they can’t have gone that way, right? So where did they go? Where did everything go?

Pal Day ended in 1971. I’m not sure why. Maybe the logistics of getting the entire campus to the park became too much. But Whatever the reason, it seems like there’s not as much going on at the park as the photos show. Granted, the photos showed an all-campus excursion. But the canoes, the tug-of-war, the picnic areas – none of it remains.

…

What the Palisades is now is something like this:

It's a bright bit of nature, and though it be a bit ragged, it is still beautiful. People don't come to the Palisades to see what was. They come to see what is.

What is is a place to walk in forest shade and sunlight

and down ravines

in a land of mostly farm fields. In that sense, though the buildings be gone,

the fun remains.

Revision Process

I was asked to tell what I did for the Iowa City revision. It ended up being completely different from the draft, a complete rewrite. The biggest change was the structure. I wanted to focus more on the emotion of the piece and the theme of music. The two major parts of the story would be about the homeless man and the pianist. I needed to tie them together somehow and the music theme would work for that. I ended up cutting or condensing alot of what I'd already written and focusing on the parts that would offer the most "sound". I made a list of the parts I wanted.

Intro

Relaxing plaza

Homeless man

Old man music

Young guy music

Missed homeless man

Alleyway

Then I wanted to keep with the theme, make it seem like each part was part of a song so I gave each part a letter and a number of notes.

Intro

Relaxing plaza A 4 notes baby one of them

Homeless man B 4 notes

Old man music C 4 notes

Young guy music D 2 notes

Missed homeless man E missed note

Alleyway F break

Then I marked down the emotion or idea each note would have.

A

-Harsh traffic 1

-Rise and fall people 2

-Nature sounds 3

-Baby 4

B

-Good natured 1

-Uncomfortable, sweet 2

-Scary 3

-Evocative 4

C

-Distant 1

-Busy 2

-Enjoy 3

-End 4

D

-Funny

-Sad

Then, based on how I wanted the emotions/ideas to go, I started making an order using the note symbols

A1 E B1 C1 A2 B2 C2 C3 B3 F A3 B4 D2 A4 C4

I used the symbol order to start the structure of the piece and then I changed it when I felt I needed to. I also wrote it out by hand which I think helped since this was basically a completely new piece and I think handwriting it gave me a better feel for what I was saying. The whole process took a while but I think it helped in the long run. Charting the emotions was probably the most useful part and having something like a map made writing a little easier.