Interview with Ladette Randolph, pt. 1

Ladette Randolph is the author of Leaving the Pink House, published just this month. University of Iowa Press acquisitions editor Elisabeth Chretien asked her a few questions about writing her book, growing up and living in Nebraska, and her life in Boston now.

Elisabeth Chretien: What drew you to write about your life through the lens of houses?

Ladette Randolph: The structure of this book arose organically. I kept careful notes throughout the process of our gutting and rebuilding the house in the country, so that formed the core of my inspiration for this book; however, the story of the house project wasn’t quite enough (or so early readers told me). Years before I wrote about the country house, I had written a series of essays, and when I looked back through them I realized many of my memories had been archived through the various moves we’d made in my childhood and later moves in my adulthood. When I started playing with combining the two stories, it seemed the best way to tell what turned out to be a complicated story about the meaning of home.

EC: What was the most difficult thing for you in restoring the country house? What was the most rewarding?

LR: There were a lot of difficult things about restoring the country house. It was financially very risky and the time involved to pull it off was almost inconceivable. It was painful and exhausting work. I still don’t quite know how we (mostly my husband Noel) did it. I would say, though, that the most difficult thing and the most rewarding thing are the same. We jumped into this project (and we aren’t usually such impulsive people) and then came to see how we’d need the help of other people if we were going to meet the deadline for the bridge loan. While it’s true if we hadn’t met that deadline we could have extended it, during the volatile period after 9/11 we were very anxious to lock into a permanent loan. Friends, family, and our neighbors at the country house were wonderfully generous to us, as the book makes clear, and that was incredibly affirming, but it also felt at times like we’d created a burdensome situation. People never made us feel that way, but we were very humbled by the experience.

EC: You’re a native of Nebraska. How has your homeplace influenced your writing?

LR: I’m not sure I have enough perspective to answer this question, but I know that I can’t seem to stop writing about Nebraska. I’m not entirely sure why. It’s a landscape that has shaped me; it’s in my bones, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Nebraska remains imaginatively important to my work (at least so far it has). I keep wondering at what point I’ll start writing about New England with as much familiarity. It’s something of a puzzle to me.

This interview is the just the first part! Check out the rest on Monday, September 8.

Bird of the Month—from THE SCIENTIFIC NOMENCLATURE OF BIRDS IN THE UPPER MIDWEST

ZENAIDA: The genus is named for Zénaïde Letitia Julie Bonaparte (1801-1854) by her husband, Charles Lucien Jules Lauren Bonaparte. Dove family.

asiatica: This Latin word for "Asiatic" is a misnomer, since the type specimen was taken in the West Indies (Jamaica), not India, as Linnaeus believed.

Common name: White-winged Dove for the white patch on the upper wing in flight and the white streak on the folded wing.

Other names: White-wing, singing dove, cactus pigeon

macroura: From Greek makros = big, far reaching + oura = tail. "Long tail" applies to the long, pointed central feathers on the tapering tail.

Common name: Mourning Dove for the plaintive call

Other names: turtledove, wild dove, rain crow

Missing the Iowa State Fair already?

The Iowa State Fair is over, but that doesn't mean you'll have to wait until next year! This Labor Day weekend check out The Iowa State Fair, by Kurt Ullrich, and relive the magic.

"Riding Pretty" from The Iowa State Fair, by Kurt Ullrich

Labor Day on the porch

Need a good read for Labor Day? We suggest Sunday Afternoon on the Porch: Reflections of a Small Town in Iowa 1939-1942, by Everett W. Kuntz.

In 1939, just before graduating from high school in the small town of Ridgeway in northeast Iowa, Everett Kuntz spent his entire savings of $12.50 on a 35mm Argus AF camera. He made a camera case from a worn-out boot, scraps from a tin can, and a clasp from his mother's purse. For the next several years, especially during the summers when he worked on his parents' dairy farm, he clicked the shutter of his trusty Argus all around the quiet town.

Everett bought movie reel film in bulk from a mail-order house, rolled his own film, and developed it in a closet at home, but he never had the money to print his photographs. More than two thousand negatives stayed in a box while he married, raised a family, and worked as an electrical engineer in the Twin Cities. When he became ill with cancer in the fall of 2002—sixty years after he had developed the last of his bulk film—Everett opened his time capsule and printed the images from his youth. He died in 2003, having brought his childhood town back to life just as he was leaving it.

A sense of peace radiates from these images. Whether skinny-dipping in the Turkey River, wheelbarrow-racing, threshing oats, milking cows, visiting with relatives after church, or hanging out at the drugstore or the movies, Ridgeway's hardworking citizens are modest and trusting and luminous in their graceful harmony and their unguarded affection for each other. Visiting the town in 2006 as he was writing the text to accompany these photographs, Jim Heynen crafted vignettes that perfectly complement these rediscovered images by blending fact and fiction to give context and voice to Ridgeway's citizens.

Photo from Sunday Afternoon on the Porch: Reflections of a Small Town in Iowa 1939-1942, by Everett W. Kuntz

Photo from A YEAR OF IOWA NATURE: DISCOVERING WHERE WE LIVE, by Carl Kurtz

In this photo young foxes relax on a mound. See more photos like this in Carl Kurtz's book, A Year of Iowa Nature: Discovering Where We Live.

August Gardening Tip—from GARDENING IN IOWA AND SURROUNDING AREAS

When harvesting onions for storage, let the tops hang below the bulbs on the edge of a table. When the onions have dried, trim them to within one and a half inches of the bulb. Twist the stub very tightly. This helps the onions keep better.
—Martha Shibe, Marshalltown Garden Club

Gardening in Iowa and Surrounding Areas, by Veronica Lorson Fowler with the Federated Garden Clubs of Iowa

Photo from A YEAR OF IOWA NATURE: DISCOVERING WHERE WE LIVE, by Carl Kurtz

In this photo, a whitetail doe and her fawn stand underneath a small tree. See more photos like this in Carl Kurtz's book, A Year of Iowa Nature: Discovering Where We Live.