I have lived in New Zealand all my life – except for two weeks in 2005. I spent those two weeks visiting three cities in the United States of America. Two of the cities are smaller than my own city, one larger, and I thought them all wonderful in different ways. This particular post recalls memories from my five day visit to Iowa City in Iowa, USA. Although nothing to do with science this is probably my favourite essay that I have written for the science communication course. I believe it caught the essence of Iowa City better than any of my photos did.
For the record, according to google, the population of Iowa City is just under 74,000 people in 2021. The population of Dunedin in 2021 is about 134,000, although this number does seem to vary a little according to the source. Part of the reason for this variation might be that Dunedin, like Iowa City, is a university city and I’m not sure whether the 134,000 includes the over 20,000 Otago University students who live in the city during the academic year.
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Flying by night across the North American continent is amazing. Isolated pools of city light emphasize the huge size of the darkened country below. We think of the United States as a land full of people, and it is, in the huge urban sprawls of the cities. But there is another America, one of small cities and even smaller towns, the places the young leave behind as they rush to find adventure in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and the other monster cities. Ten U.S, cities have over one million residents. But there are also over ninety cities in America about the same size as Dunedin, give or take a few thousand. On this clear evening, early July, in 2005, I am on my way to stay for a week in a city even smaller than Dunedin, Iowa City, the second largest city in the state of Iowa, U.S.A.
I leave just as the rest of the hotel’s guests are wandering in. I smile and nod at these friendly people who look no different to those I would greet at home. There is, however, one clue that I am not at home, some of the guests are being towed out the hotel door by their dogs, eager for an early morning walk.
There is a moment of disorientation as I step outside and I feel as if I have just walked through some peculiar Alice-Through- The-Looking -Glass portal although I can’t immediately identify the reason for the feeling. Then the light hits me. The foot path is white, not black. The road is also blessed with that same lack of blackness. The midsummer early sunlight hitting the white concrete of road and pavement has dazzled me for a moment. No wonder I feel like I’ve fallen into an alternate dimension, I’m seeing my normal world reversed like a photographic negative.
As I stand and look around I notice other looking-glass peculiarities. An ordinary blackbird flies by, there’s a flash of red-orange on its wing. Near me on the pavement is a quaint, metallic cylinder standing at attention like a large, red, toy soldier. I’ve seen these in cartoons, dogs raising their legs against them – fire hydrants. Another, bigger, bird flies past, peat black and glossy, a crow or raven, I don’t know which. And then, the real looking-glass moment is when I look over to the opposite pavement at dusty trees preparing for another heatwave of a day. On neatly trimmed, yellow green lawns, I see a grey-brown, bushy tailed little fellow staring curiously at me before scampering up one of the nearby trees. I am half a world away from my midwinter, frosty home of dark coloured roads, proper black blackbirds, and furry beasts that are not squirrels.
Over the following week there are other snapshots. Iowa City is a university town and the university sits in the middle of a web of very long, very straight streets that have no names, only numbers. These streets are invariably litter-free, and are lined with neat bungalows and villas with short lawns, well-behaved trees, and no fences. Many of the municipal buildings are built in the Georgian style of light coloured stone or concrete. On a sunny day during high summer, the buildings glow. Everywhere I go I can smell midsummer flowers although I never see where the flowers are. Once outside the city boundary, from horizon to horizon, all I can see are flat fields. By the end of the week I am surprised at how badly I miss seeing hills.
My favourite snapshots, however, are those of the people. The hotel manager, a kindly, soft-spoken man who calms me down when we discover that his machine won’t accept my NZ credit card.
Here are the two receptionists, one black and one white, who are delighted to discover that I am from the land where hobbits lived. Each day I return to the hotel they ask me about my adventures. They are intensely curious about New Zealand and about my reactions to their country. Neither of them will ever make enough money to be able to come over and see New Zealand for themselves.
There is the young man who opens the door of the store for me and says, “After you, ma’am,” without the slightest trace of irony.
Then there is the other young man in the Subway store who is getting annoyed at me when he can’t understand what I am saying.
‘What is a ‘toe-mar– toe? ’
Next to him is the young woman who glares at him and says, “She means ‘toe-may-toe’!”
And there is one more snapshot. It is captioned ‘Thursday, July 21, 2005’. There are tables laden with breakfast offerings but no one is eating. A dozen Americans of different hues and one New Zealander, browned by a week under a northern sun, are standing in front of a television on the wall. No one speaks as we watch the news coverage of a second attempted bombing of the London public transport system that had occurred while we had slept. Only two weeks earlier I had been in NZ watching the news coverage of the first set of July London bombings. Now I am on the other side of the world feeling like I am in some strange time warp. Once the initial shock and empathy with the Londoners fades a little I know we are all remembering another terror incident, four years ago. For these few moments I am not a visitor with a funny accent from a distant, exotic land, I am one of them. Culture and language may change from land to land but the things that make us human are the same wherever we may go.
The Science Attic 