![]() ![]() All I had to do after that (with my late brilliant colleague, Mike Brody) was to nurture that legacy and let it grow. When I came to Iowa, I received a legacy, a legacy of academic excellence that started me on my research career. What I was given was an opportunity to live and grow with a number of extraordinary people in a field of corn and dreams. Life is Beautiful because of What we Make Happen with What we are Given The richness of the Iowa soil ( Figure 19) reflects the essence of life, great challenges, and strong basic values ( Figure 20). It is a peaceful place as the river winds through it ( Figure 18) under covered bridges, where hogs are gentle and sweet, where high culture and good topsoil, the two fragile bases of civilization ( 4) exist in abundance. It is a place where on Saturday afternoon ( Figure 12) football is king and 75,000 fans ( Figure 13) can cheer the Hawkeyes when they beat Michigan 26-0 a place where the Medical Center is a billion dollar enterprise ( Figure 14) a place where art flourishes ( Figure 15), famous for creative writing ( Figure 16), where an International Writers Program ( Figure 17) has hosted generations of some of the best writers in the world a place that refutes categorically the ill advised and unwise statement of the secretary general of the Nobel Academy who said recently that literature in the US is too insular and isolated ( 3). So Kevin's daughter asks him whether this is heaven and his answer is “No, it's Iowa” ( 2). ![]() It is a place where miracles happen a place where Shoeless Joe Jackson can reappear from another world to play baseball with Kevin Costner in the Field of Dreams ( Figure 11). Iowa City as you see is the heaven of the heartland ( Figure 10). Let me tell you why! With your indulgence a brief geographic orientation to what we call home is now appropriate. Here he is telling me “Frank, my good friend, this is how it all ends!” Once my mentor, always my mentor!! To Jack Eckstein ( Figure 9), my mentor, my dean for 20 years, and my friend of 48 years, I owe so much of what I am. Our kids loved the spaghetti and therein started a mentor-mentee relationship that would last a lifetime. Jack and Jean Eckstein invited us for a spaghetti dinner at their home on Grant Street. We came in June of 1960, in a blue Ford station wagon with all our belongings and three beautiful daughters. ![]() A chance meeting with Jack Eckstein in an elevator at American Heart Association scientific sessions in November 1959 led to our move from Milwaukee to Iowa City. Three years later, serendipity strikes again with its good fortune. Now move the clock forward two years for another miraculous blessing-a fateful Presidential Act by Dwight Eisenhower as a result of the turmoil in the Middle East in 1956 declared us immigrants. On JI became a Resident in Internal Medicine at Milwaukee County Hospital. Her determination, her connection with Marquette University in Milwaukee where she sent her best graduates, and her deep friendship with our parents led a newly married couple, Doris and I, to leave the discrimination and prejudice of an old world and step into the glorious freedom of a new one. It’s been an interesting and learning experience for me, and I will continue to write.It all started over 53 years ago-a chance encounter with an American Fulbright scholar and a teacher from Manitowoc, Wisconsin, who was teaching in Cairo. What has kept me writing? Honestly, it’s just something I really enjoy. Weiss would be imperialistic but tactically sound. Yang would be an aggressive, Alexander-esque conqueror. Immediately after that, I had a conversation with vnixxir in her chatroom, and the inspiration just struck me. This desire to tell stories culminated into writing for me.Īs for RWBY, I was playing Risk and always got annoyed with expanding from North America into Asia, and Kamchatka was always a mess. I had a creative imagination, and with my vast collection of Legos I told myself stories that would span for months at a time, characters going from good to bad and back to good, then bad, then good again, with crossovers galore. Even as a kid, I started shipping characters and wanting them to do things (7 year old me thought kissing was so dirty) that they didn’t do in the show. Writing in general, or writing RWBY related fiction?įor the former, I just always had ideas. ![]()
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