A Work in Progress

September 17: Reading Notes

Last weekend was a local Lit Fest--it was a most welcome event since author visits tend to be few and far between here.  The last Litfest was years ago, so I've been looking forward to this one for months.  The theme was "Give a Damn: The Difference Literature Makes" and while the festival was fairly small, there was a nice variety of authors with novels and nonfiction writers in the morning and poetry in the afternoon.  I wasn't able to stay for the whole event unfortunately but I was happy to listen to the conversations, readings and Q&As.  Both local and national authors were on hand and as much as I wish I could have bought everyone's books, I managed to restrain myself and took away just two of the most recently published books as well as a couple of copies of a regional literary magazine I had not previously come across.

There were two panel discussions, the first was facilitated by Ilana Masad who has a book coming out in the coming year.  Authors Carson Vaughan, Andrea Wilson (she is an editor now) and Sarah Elgatian spoke about their work, about what influenced their writing and the process they went through in writing and publishing.  I finally got my hands on Carson Vaughan's Zoo Nebraska, which my library bought early on but then went into circulation and hasn't been on the shelf long enough for me to grab it and which has gotten a lot of good reviews.  Now I have my own signed copy.  I believe the book started as a thesis project, which in the end took something like a decade to research and write.  The inspiration for his writing came from a small news event that was covered nationally but only a small mention in the big papers--four chimpanzees escaped a small town roadside menagerie that resulted in three of the animals being killed.  It's the story behind the story that Vaughan undertakes in this book.

The second panel was a discussion between Jennie Melamed and Kassandra Montag facilitated by Lydia Kang, a local YA novelist who has a number of books on her backlist and another coming next year.  Jennie Melamed is an author from Washington and whose book has received a string of awards.  My library has a copy and it would be fun now to read it in tandem with Kassandra's just published, After the Flood which is a dystopian novel set in the near future and in a now flooded Nebraska.  Both books sound somewhat eerie, though appealing with more feminine slants to them.  Lithub published an article last week about the myths that have inspired Kassandra Montag's novel.

Rounding out the weekend was Hamilton, which I have been literally waiting years to see.  I bought my ticket well over a year ago!  And poof, in just a weekend it is over.  I loved it and want to see it again.  Is it a surprise that now I want to read about Hamilton and his wife and that period in general?

Omaha Reads: The Bones of Paradise

The 2017 Omaha Reads book selection has been announced and this year Jonis Agee's The Bones of Paradise won.  Every year or so there is a list of books presented and voted on.  There will be a variety of events offered for readers to take part in and that includes an author talk next month, which hopefully I'll be able to attend.  I have read Jonis Agee before (I think in pre-blogging days, so it has been a while).  She is a local author and teaches at the University (not the same campus where I work, however) and her writing often reflects the local environment and history, and I have heard many good things about The Bones of Paradise. 

I picked up my copy from the library and already two people have seen it in my hands and remarked upon it and how good the story is.

"A kaleidoscopic portrait of misfits, schemers, chancers, and dreamers, Jonis Agee’s bold novel is a panorama of America at the dawn of a new century. A beautiful evocation of this magnificent, blood-soaked land—its sweeping prairies, seas of golden grass, and sandy hills, all at the mercy of two unpredictable and terrifying forces, weather and lawlessness—and the durable men and women who dared to tame it. Intimate and epic, The Bones of Paradise is a remarkable achievement: a mystery, a tragedy, a romance, and an unflagging exploration of the beauty and brutality, tenderness and cruelty that defined the settling of the American West."

Author Stewart O'Nan has called it a "gritty, bloody romance set a decade after Wounded Knee.  Half murder mystery and half family saga, [it] is a spirited reweaving of history". 

I have never properly visited the Nebraska Sandhills, but I think they are a really beautiful and unique geographic region, and I won't even begin to tell you how much I think the Keystone Pipeline that is proposed to run through this area is a really, really, bad (and terribly sad) idea.  It would be wonderful to take a little field trip there after I read the book, but I might have to simply content myself with looking and visiting virtually and through the pages of a book. 

A little taste from the opening pages.  A rancher, J.B. Bennett, (no spoiler as this is noted in the jacket blurb) is about to be murdered, but here he is reflecting on the land.

"A new patch of low-lying prickly pear cactus had sprung up beyond the windmill and water tank.  He'd have the men dig it out.  It was a constant battle to hand on to the grass, the only thing to support the cattle that made his living.  A person had to keep his eye on the smallest detail while the vast emptiness constantly tugged at his vision.  You can get lost in a heartbeat out here, he'd told his wife.  It took him most of his life to realize the significance of his own words.  For some reason this morning every little thought was like a handful of nettles, singing and chiding him as he tried to drop it and move past."

Midweek Apple Harvest Interlude

Autumn has finally arrived!  It has been several days in a row now of coolish weather, even a little brisk on my morning walk to the bus stop.  It feels wonderful, and in celebration I had a very nice mid-week interlude away from work and Omaha.  I was invited to go to Nebraska City (I went there in July, too) to visit a few of the apple orchards.  It was all unexpected but I couldn't pass it up.

This is the time of year when Nebraska City really comes alive.  It is a lovely little town, very picturesque and in the fall very busy with their AppleJack festival.  I am not fond of crowds so it was nice to go during the week after the festival and when things were noticeably quiet.  Normally you can walk down into the orchards and pick your own apples, but as it was midweek and apparently the harvest was smaller than usual, the orchards were closed and you could only buy apples in the attached store/Apple Barn.

The orchard workers were busy making apple cider.  All behind closed doors of course, but you could peek in through the windows and see the machines at work.  Can you see the cider going through the tube into that huge vat?  I couldn't manage to catch the apples being spit out from the conveyor belt.

But from the outside I caught them as they were coming up and being loaded into the machine.

And here is all the stuff that isn't used in the cider.  A massive mound of skin and seeds, I think.

I actually didn't buy any apples to take home as I have a big bag of my favorites (MacIntoshes) that I am working on and I have been buying apples from other local farms at my local farmer's market.

I did, however, partake of some jams.  I found a nice jar of my favorite gooseberry jam that should see me through the fall as well as apple butter.  I managed to resist the apple donuts, but it smelled apple-y sweet inside!

If you drive in the Nebraska countryside, you will see lots of this!  The corn was still on the stalks, so I think this must be feed corn.  It was breezy out and dry corn makes a very particular sound, which is actually kind of cool.  A swish-swish, rustle-y sound.  I like it.  It is very peaceful and calm (though I can do without all the grasshoppers--hate to think what else is hiding in among all that corn in those fields!).

A few festive photos.  Autumn is my favorite season.  I brought home a mini pumpkin and a little green gourd to decorate my desk and bookcase.  Aren't these gnarly fellows interesting-looking?  So nice to enjoy an (unexpected) lovely fall day!

Arbor Lodge: Plant a Tree!

Summer is now officially underway with the fireworks going off as I type and another Fourth of July holiday nearing its close.  I spent my morning visiting Arbor Lodge in Nebraska City for my holiday festivities.  It was nice and quiet, with birds chirping and the sound of a breeze in the tress.  If you listen carefully you can even hear the buzz of insects.  While the day started out cloudy and grey and a little on the cool side, it was a perfect way to spend the morning.  J. Sterling Morton came to the area with his bride, Caroline Joy French, in 1854 before Nebraska was even a territory to stake his claim.  It started as a four room house eventually morphed into what you see above, a 52-room mansion.  What was once just an empty expanse of prairie land was turned into a lush, verdant state park of today.  We have the Mortons to thank for Arbor Day and many of the conservation efforts that are related to tree planting.  The handsome couple in the photo just above are the Mortons when they were young.  From all accounts they were a happy, industrious couple who raised four sons, and if you don't know their relationship with Arbor Day, you likely have heard of Morton Salt company ("when it rains it pours") which their son Joy founded.

They are an interesting family with quite a history and I wouldn't mind reading more about them.  However, on to the visuals.  A few highlights from what the house looks like (sadly not all my photos turned out as I had hoped--lighting wasn't always good for my old camera), but you'll get a good idea.  I think the renovations went on to about 1904 or so.  Much of the furniture is original.

Real tiffany window.

The house was a destination for travelers and former President Grover Cleveland and his wife stayed at the lodge.

Office/study.  I love the typewriter.  (It's a Corona).

I don't believe the dresses belonged to Caroline, but oh  my, were women just tinier then than they are now?  Petite.  And you would definitely need a corset to get into most of these.

His bedroom.

Her bedroom.  Red was Caroline's favorite color.

This, of course, came much later.  It was apparently a very welcome and happy addition and one of the best additions.  The wallpaper is not original but it matches closely what was there.  Very cheery, I think.

What family doesn't need a private bowling alley in the basement?  Balls were made of wood and had only two holes.  The heaviest ball weighed 18 pounds.

And a full carriage house.  Yes, the family started with money and the sons married money.  This was a prosperous family.

I only wish it had not been such a wet and grey day so I could have walked the grounds more.  The trees that surround the house are really amazing.  I will save those for another visit.  I hear the house is quite decked out come the holiday season, so I hope another little mini-day trip will be in order later this year.

Not much reading was accomplished and no stitching.  So it is back to business this week.

Short Story Sunday: I Stand Here Ironing

It's very fitting that on the last day of January, a grey snowy day better spent inside tucked under a blanket with a book, my short story reading was about Depression-era America and Australia.  In both stories young women, girls at the outset, are raised in households were circumstance, attitude or situation mean unhappy childhoods due in great part to their being females.  Melancholy stories for a melancholy day.

I read Tillie Olsen's "I Stand Here Ironing" in Infinite Riches yesterday afternoon followed up by my weekly New Yorker story.  First the Olsen.  Tillie Olsen is a Nebraska author who was born in Wahoo in 1912.  She lived in Omaha for a time but eventually moved to San Francisco.  She knows well of her story topic as she had to work most of her life in order to support her family.  A nod to public libraries as that is where she educated herself.  She was also a political activist and a feminist.

"I Stand Here Ironing" is a story from the collection, Yonnondio: From the Thirties (a Virago Modern Classic by the way, to help you set the tone--I have the book in a different edition). 

"I stand here ironing, and what you asked me moves tormented back and forth with the iron."

"'I wish you would manage the time to come in and talk with me about your daughter.  I'm sure you can help me understand her.  She's a youngster who needs help and whom I'm deeply interested in helping'."

So begins the story.  A mother reflecting on her daughter's life, nineteen years, a difficult life.   "There is all that life that has happened outside of me, beyond me."  Because you see, this mother has had to work outside the home at various times.  She hasn't been there always for her daughter, her eldest child.  Of all her children, Emily was a beautiful baby, though the child was never convinced she was anything but plain.  She nursed her but had to leave her with neighbors when she went out to work or to look for work.  She had no choice since her husband left her and the family.

Even as a child, it showed in her face--her sadness and disappointment.  The pain left its mark in her own somberness.  Unlike other children her age, she never protested or threw fits. 

"I put the iron down.  What in me demanded that goodness in her?  And what the cost, the cost to her of such goodness?"

Circumstances shape the child but shape the mother as well.  What is a single mother, especially during the Depression, to do?  She does only the best she can.  And if that means sending her away to recuperate from illness, then it must be done.  To a place her family never visits and she's not allowed to keep even a single letter from home.  Or to send her away to family in times of difficulty she must go, or stay alone when all she wants is for her mother to refuse to go into work just one day.

The world has not changed so very much in some ways.  Children and parents must still make the best of it.  They will forever view themselves and measure themselves against the perceived beauty of others and find themselves wanting (even if they shouldn't).  As Emily's mother thinks about her daughter as she irons, trying to form her response to the counselor who is worried about this young woman, now nineteen, she knows everything in her daughter will "not bloom--but in how many does it?  There is still enough left to live by."

This is an elegant story yet a sad one.  I wouldn't be surprised if it was heavily used in anthologies and in classrooms, too.  In it, there is much food for thought. 

Next week: Elizabeth Taylor (a favorite of mine).

* * * * *

Elizabeth Harrower's "Alice" appears in the February 2 issue of the New Yorker.  Harrower is an Australian writer who was active in the 1950s and 60s but then abruptly stopped publishing.  Her work went out of print until Text Publishing began reissuing her work (new to me publisher which I am eager to explore).  Alice grows up in Depression-era Australia, but her circumstances differ in that her younger brothers are the beloved of the family. 

"Alice knew only that something was not fair.  Here she was, a good girl, a nice girl, pretty to look at, obedient, kind, clever at school, and with beautiful hair--yet none of it was good enough.  While the boys were somehow perfect.  And not because they didn't try but because they never had to.  They were welcome when they arrived."

The story follows Alice's life from childhood to adulthood through two marriages and motherhood and her own quest for happiness and contentment.  I think I'd like to look for more of Harrower's work.  You can read a Q&A with the author here.  The story appears online here.  Have you read this or any other good stories this week? 

Once Upon a Town by Bob Greene

If Bob Greene's Once Upon a Town was a movie it would be one of those Hallmark Hall of Fame made for TV movies where there may be heartache and loss but you know going into it that all will end well and nothing will be too utterly devastating.  It is not often that I can say that about a book about a war--especially a book about WWII.  Whenever I think about that period and the massive upheaval of people, the suffering and loss of life and the general inhumanity, I truly find it all mind boggling.  Along with the stories of the hopelessness and despair that people endured, the war also brought out the good in so many people, too.  Sometimes it is the worst moments in life that you see just what people are capable of--good and bad.  Once Upon a Time is all about the good.

I'm not sure how I managed to miss this book.  It was originally published in 2002 and was a New York Times besteller.  It's not something I would ordinarily have gone in search of--until, that is, I decided I need to read more Nebraska authors, more stories set here and more books about Nebraska--history, nature, diaries--whatever piques my curiosity and catches my eye.  I came across Once Upon a Town on the very last day of 2013 in a museum gift shop.  The museum is local, a place I often walk past and occasionally visit.  It's only fitting that a book that has as its setting a train station station, be sold in a train station.

"On Interstate 80, three or four hours into the long westward drive across Nebraska, with the sun hovering mercilessly in the midsummer sky on a cloudless and broiling July afternoon, there were moments when I thought there was no way I'd ever find what I had come here to seek":

"The best America there ever was.  Or at least whatever might be left of it."

What Greene was in search of was that elusive quality that makes a country great--a generosity of spirit and goodness just because it is the right thing to do.  Watching the nightly news or reading the newspaper it is easy to lose confidence in your neighbors.  Greene had heard a story about this sort of selflessness that occurred in a tiny little town somewhere in the Midwest during WWII, and he was hoping to find a trace of it.  His destination?  North Platte, Nebraska.

"One Christmas Day in 1941, it began.  A troop train rolled in--and the surprised soldiers on board were greeted by North Platte residents with welcoming words, heartfelt smiles and baskets of food and treats."

"What happened in the years that followed was nothing short of amazing--some would say a miracle.  The railroad depot on Front Street was turned into the North Platte Canteen.  Every day of the year--from 5 A.M. until he last troop train of the night had passed through after midnight--the Canteen was open.  The troop trains were scheduled to stop in North Platte for only ten minutes at a time before resuming their journey.  The people of North Platte made those ten minutes count."

Once Upon a Town is the sort of social history I like reading about best--it is anecdotal in nature filled in with bits of interesting history by Greene as well as descriptions of his travels and time in North Platte.  Greene may narrate what happened, he paints a slightly broader picture, but it is the people who lived it that tell their stories, tell the story of what happened so many years ago in the little town of North Platte.  It's these stories, in first person that are so very important I think--literally, living history.  As each year takes us further and further away from the war, events and reactions are reinterpreted and perceptions sometimes shift.  It's so very important to take note of these happenings, to listen to the people who lived then. 

According to Greene six million soldiers criss crossed the US moving towards the war or returning from it.  Many of them passed through North Platte.  They would not normally have been able to disembark from the train after their journey began until they had arrived at their destination, but they were allowed ten minutes in North Platte.  The people from the town and surrounding communities volunteered their time and offered whatever food they could to make the soldiers moments there count.  They knew they were going to be shipped overseas, some not to return, and they wanted to give them whatever support they could to show their appreciation.  As the area was (is) mostly agricultural, the farms had much to give despite rationing.  Sometimes they simply used their own rations to provide food and treats.  Nearly every day someone would bake a cake--as almost always one of the soldiers would be celebrating a birthday.

The stories Greene shares, he interviewed many residents as well as soldiers, are fascinating.  It's interesting to think of the country as it was then, the living conditions and society.  There was no air conditioning on the trains, and troops were moved back and forth only on trains.  There were no paper recyclables--the men would take cups and plates and leave them at the next depot to be ferried back by a returning train.

There were a number of instances of matches being made that almost always resulted in many, many years of marriage.  Many of the young women would agree to write letters.  One of the local schools put names and addresses in popcorn balls and the soldiers would write back.  Often a young soldier was simply homesick and to see these people who were so welcoming made an impact on them.  Word got around of what was happening--of the food and magazines that the soldiers could look forward to.  Wives and mothers sometimes had their own husbands or sons off fighting and this was their way to offer support and encouragement. 

Here are a few of their 'voices':

"Oh! The different accents, the different colors of skin . . . the men in khaki, the boys in Navy blue, the Air Corpsmen, the Marines, the dogfaces, the ninety-day wonders, and those with ribboned chests.  And all of this for just ten minutes at a time!  I think it was the beginning of opening my eyes to a bigger world."

* * *

"We're seeing more people out on the platform--from what I recall, there was a wide area out there.  We're asking them why they're doing this, and they're telling us that they meet every train, every day, every night . . . and I remember how much I appreciated it, and especially I remember that the sandwiches were so good."

"I found out later that it was pheasant--these delicious pheasant sandwiches, with mayonnaise.  I can still taste it.  Can you imagine that?  Ladies coming onto your train, and they're giving you pheasant sandwiches?"

* * *

"We never ran into anything like that before, or after."

* * *

"That first night, the soldiers on the train were so amazed--way out there in the boonies at eleven o'clock on Christmas night . . . they were quiet as they looked out of the train at us.  We carried the bushel baskets out to the train, gave the men the apples and the candy, wished them a Merry Christmas, and the train left."

Once Upon a Town: The Miracle of the North Platte Canteen was a really lovely read--easy and undemanding and a reminder that good things do happen.  I don't often read 'feel-good' sorts of books, and maybe I should seek them out more often.  This one sort of fell into my lap and was a perfect Nebraska book to kick off my reading year.  I loved Bess Streeter Aldrich, and while they are not Nebraska books per se (am happy to read Western/Plains Lit this year, too), the Little House books are wonderful.  I'm thinking of what to pick up next.  With so many good choices it is a hard decision, but I'll let you know what I settle on!