Last Friday marked the beginning of reunion weekend at Grinnell College and also the arrival of 2,000 copies of A Portrait of Grinnell: The Architecture and Landscape of Grinnell College. Their arrival was somewhat unexpected: I had resigned myself to a delayed shipment that would miss reunion weekend and the 1,100+ people registered to congregate in the middle of the cornfields of Iowa.  Of course Friday had to be the hottest day during that entire week, with temperatures spiking to 90 degrees, but with a little lot of help from my friends the books made it from the loading dock at the Faulconer Gallery to the shelves of the Grinnell College Bookstore (641.269.3424) and Saints Rest Coffee House (641.236.6014).

 

Without Lesley Wright’s generosity the books would not have had such a convenient loading dock to come home to, nor would two pallets of the books have such a nice climate-controlled home for the next year.  A chance encounter with Russ Motta, Grinnell’s most gregarious security officer, gave me the opportunity to deliver books to Saints Rest Coffee House in a pickup truck with a professional hand-truck delivery man.  Motta said that in a past life he worked for a beer distributor: he loaded that hand truck down and never once bumped into anything, and it was amazing.

 

Bekka Merrill and Emily Zdyrko rounded out the team with their  loading, dragging, and unloading 40 more boxes of my books onto a large cart headed to the Grinnell College Bookstore.  By the time all was said and done I think everyone was ready for a break…and a lot of water!