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A writer for all seasons

By Loren Keller

Thomas Dean has always enjoyed the month of November, even on its grayest of days.

“It can be physically uncomfortable but I think you have to see beyond that,” Dean says in an interview in his cozy, well-appointed office tucked away on the second floor of Jessup Hall overlooking the south lawn of the University of Iowa Pentacrest.

“In some ways the gray days are even better than the bright sunny ones, because there is something subtly beautiful about the pale tones of gray and brown,” he says. “I kind of liken it to old black-and-white movies. In some ways there’s a real artistry to it. It’s got its own aesthetic.”

So too do the not-so-popular Iowa months of February and August, Dean writes in a section titled “The Bad Months” from his new collection of essays titled Under a Midland Sky. Dean will read from his book at Prairie Lights Books, 15 S. Dubuque St., at 7 p.m. Dec. 4.

These are the months “when we’re tired of certain types of weather, when we’re anxious for what comes next,” he writes. “But one’s appreciation, even affection, for the bad months, can, I think, grow out of genuine joy in what they have to offer.”

When he makes this case to his students – Dean, 49, teaches as an adjunct professor at the UI in addition to his full-time job as special assistant to UI President Sally Mason – he tends to get one of two reactions.

“Students will say ‘I never realized we could see our place and our landscape as beautiful,’” he says. “The other reaction is, ‘this is how I feel,’ but it’s almost like a secret, because so many other people slam the Midwest as boring.”

Born and raised in Rockford, Ill., Dean says he has always felt a connection to the Midwest and has never felt the need to escape. He attended Northern Illinois University for seven years and later earned his doctorate in English from the UI. He’s also taught at Minnesota State University at Moorhead and since childhood has spent vacations in the North Woods of Wisconsin and Minnesota.

At the UI, Dean teaches an interdisciplinary course called “Introduction to Place Studies” and another called “The Good Society,” which he says is the UI’s oldest course offering on the books.

Dean defines place as “an interconnected web of environments,” including the natural, built, social and cultural environments.

“Our connection to where we are is an important part of our identity,” he says. “There’s a fundamental, deep something that goes on with us that makes place important. We build relationships for anchors and connections in our lives, with people and families. Spirituality is a major anchor, so is the professional.”

Another anchor for Dean is community involvement – he is president of the Iowa City Public Library Board of Trustees and serves on the Humanities Iowa Board of Directors. And in his job at the UI, which includes writing speeches for the UI president, Dean is able to put his ideas on place to good use.

“Part of the function of the president is to connect the university to the state. So it’s kind of an outlet for me to exercise that idea of place,” he says.

Dean’s definition of place has little to do with the arbitrary lines of a map.

“What globalization is doing is pointing out the meaninglessness and arbitrariness of borders,” he says. “The advantage of dispensing with these artificial state lines and national lines is that it refocuses our attention to the local.”

Putting roots down locally, he says, is also best for the natural environment.

“It works best when it’s a sustained relationship, not just something that you bounce around upon,” Dean says. “Knowing about something and caring about something is really the best avenue toward taking care of something, be it the natural environment or community relationships.”

Many of the pieces in Under a Midland Sky began as columns Dean wrote for The Little Village magazine, which he decided to collect in one volume after noticing a thematic connection of “weather, seasons and things in the skies.”

This is the second Dean-related book released by North Liberty's Ice Cube Press; Dean has also edited a collection of essays about writer Paul Gruchow called The Grace of Grass and Water.