John Cowan, a true renaissance man, was put on this earth by John and Marian Faustman on May 17, 1950, in Baltimore, Maryland. Johnâs parents ran a traveling marionette show and even had a patent for a hand puppet approved just a few months after his birth. The family moved to Chicago and then to Appleton, Wisconsin. The marionettes built for their traveling show can still be seen today at the International Puppetry Museum in Pasadena, California. John left Wisconsin to go to the University of Colorado in Boulder, Colorado, where he found a love for geology. John moved to Nebula Farm north of Boulder, where he became a horticulturist building a garden with his wife-to-be and the mother of his only son. Around this time, he also acquired a 1903 Bush and Gerts piano on which he would practice Maple Leaf Rag and other songs by Scott Joplin.