A Midwestern kid who was a big-city kid at heart.

Jason Kottke: My name is Jason Kottke. I’m a blogger.

I grew up in rural Wisconsin. I lived on a farm. I moved there when I was about two. I was born in the Twin Cities, in Minnesota. And I lived there from about two until I was about 18 and went off to college and things like that. It wasn’t a working farm. It was a place in the country, and my dad rented out the farmland to other people and they farmed it. But I basically grew up on a farm without the cows. And I don’t know.

I currently live in New York, and I think New York is sort of full of people who’ve come from the Midwest to sort of seek their fortune – whether that’s financial or cultural or whatever – seek their fortune in New York City. And you know I think I feel a little out of kinship with those people in that growing up I was sort of curious and interested in a lot of things. And you sort of . . . I don’t know. I had a city sort of temperament even though I lived in a rural area. I went to . . . I went to college in Cedar Rapids, Iowa – ___________ College which is one of those small liberal arts schools that sort of litter Iowa. And I had this friend and he was from the Twin Cities, and he said, “You, you seem to be sort of a city guy to me. It doesn’t seem like you belong in the country.”

I think my dad was a big influence. He’s had a billion different jobs, you know. I think when he got out of college he was . . . Or he actually didn’t finish college. Sometime around that time he was in the Navy and he wanted to fly airplanes, so he eventually became a pilot and ran his own company – his own airline, like, cargo, commuter, freight business.

And he was an engineer, and he just did a lot of different things. He had a lot of different interests, and a lot of different things that he could do. And he always . . . I don’t know. He made sure that my sister and I took an interest in sort of the world around us, and you know explained to us why the sky was blue.

And he bought us a World Book Encyclopedia when we were young. And I used to just sit for hours, and hours, and hours and read the encyclopedia – like just pick out a volume at random and just start reading – and like reading through. It just always kept me interesting, particularly in science and things like that. I was a physics major in college, and you know I think that interest comes right from him.

October 9, 2007