{"id":8006,"date":"2020-04-22T08:55:27","date_gmt":"2020-04-22T14:55:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=8006"},"modified":"2020-04-22T08:55:28","modified_gmt":"2020-04-22T14:55:28","slug":"when-dvorak-went-to-iowa-to-meet-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=8006","title":{"rendered":"When Dvo?\u00e1k Went to Iowa to Meet God"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nathan Beacom<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

One of the first things that struck Dvo?\u00e1k about Iowa was its emptiness. If he had come looking for the cheerfulness of home, what he found was this expanse of prairie, this sea of grass and grain that went on forever. \u201cIt is wild here,\u201d he said, \u201cand sometimes very sad.\u201d In the bigness of it all, he felt further from home than ever, but, when taken with a closer view \u2013 when chatting with the people, when playing organ at St. Wenceslaus, when walking in the fields in the early morning \u2013 he felt restored by a deep belonging. Iowa had for him that immense nostalgia, sad and hopeful all at once, when the familiar and the alien mingle, as when we revisit the childhood streets where our friends are no more, or when we return all alone to the site of some joyful memory.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

But Dvo?\u00e1k quickly made friends here; the town was populated almost entirely by other Czechs, immigrants who came from the \u201cpoorest of the poor\u201d in the old country. If he was struck by the lonesomeness of the place, he soon found also the welcome that he had come in search of. He was delighted by Father Bily, the parish priest, and by all the wonderful \u201cgranddads and grannies.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nathan Beacom: One of the first things that struck Dvo?\u00e1k about Iowa was its emptiness. If he had come looking for the cheerfulness of home, what he found was this expanse of prairie, this sea of grass and grain that went on forever. \u201cIt is wild here,\u201d he said, \u201cand sometimes very sad.\u201d In the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8006"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8006"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8006\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8007,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8006\/revisions\/8007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}