Why these fields of dreams lead to the White House

When the iconic baseball movie Field of Dreams was filmed in 1989, Dyersville, Iowa, provided the field, and director/screenwriter Phil Alden Robinson provided the dreams.

The movie was based on the book Shoeless Joe by University of Iowa Writer's Workshop graduate W. P. Kinsella. The flick was an Academy Award nominee for Best Picture, and also picked up a few other accolades. And the baseball field that featured in the film upped the ante on the state's tourism offerings. Almost 20 years after the film's release, many people passing through make the trip there to play ball.

It seems as if the famous "if you build it, they will come" line from the film became a real-life self-fulfilling prophecy.

Many visitors to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, travel to the field coming to or leaving from the city of 122,542.

Visitors also enjoy the handful of casinos, museums and art galleries in the city, but many passers-by make it their home base for the trip to the National Historic Site honoring the most famous Iowan, the 31st president of the United States, Herbert Hoover. The museum honoring the former leader is warehoused in a 1903 home near his birthplace and the small knoll in which he and his wife are buried in West Branch, Iowa.

Other famous political personalities from the Hawkeye State include former Vice President Henry A. Wallace, former First Lady Mamie Doud Eisenhower and suffragist Carrie Chapman Catt, whose struggle is credited with winning women's rights to vote.

Certainly, politicians and dreams remain a big part of Iowan life - especially now, with the Iowan caucus starting Thursday, 6:30 pm local time. Recognized as "the first in the nation", the caucus - in addition to the New Hampshire Caucus - helps the major parties separate the wheat from the chaff in their candidate fields and is regarded as a starting gun for presidential campaigns.

Presidential-hopefuls have been zigzagging across the state's 99 counties this month, news cameras and reporters in tow, in the run up to the big event. Iowan economist Harvey Siegelman estimated the economic impact of the 2004 caucus to be about $60 million, and many expect this year's caucus will be worth much more.

It's the most attention the world gives to the mostly agricultural state of about 3 million people, where 88 percent of the area is farmland and pigs outnumber people 5.5 to one.

The state, which ranked second in national total agricultural exports at $4.02 billion in 2005 according to the United States Department of Agriculture, produces a total of $16.1 billion in agricultural products annually. It ranks first among the US states in production of pork, eggs, soybean, red meat and corn - so presidential candidates opposed to ethanol subsidies sometimes skip over the crucial campaign launch pad state.

Non-political Iowans of fame include William "Buffalo Bill" Cody, actor John Wayne, actor Elijah Wood and Olympic wrestling champion Dan Gable, after whom the Dan Gable International Wrestling Institute and Museum in Waterloo, Iowa, is named.

(China Daily 01/04/2008 page19)