You never know what we'll churn up in cleaning a stall
As I reacted somewhere recently, Endless Prairie, broken into what? Ghosts?
Most of my journals along these lines simply broke off.
Maybe I’ll revisit what I had and issue it later as a chapbook at Thistle Finch. There are limits to everything, after all.
Please stay tuned to see what else I turn up in this review of my past.
Prairie as a symbol of America [make that U.S. and Canada], the middle or bread basket or heartland. I kept trying to envision the openness, wonder, even terror when white pioneers found her, back before she was ripped apart for farming. Even the Interstate highways coast-to-coast. The middle land of Protestants without heritage, too blind to see clearly the potential of balance and healing before them.
Somehow, that poetry project never found root.
In the Southern literary tradition was a linkage with Scotland, a love of Walter Scott and, unsaid, its Presbyterian literal Bible, clans becoming klans, some of the same intonations and expressions, a shared rebellious nature, plus the repulsion of Quakers in general.
Yet many of its young writers in the ‘50s devoured Jewish influences (Mailer, Malamud, Bellow) and then the Calvinist Congregationalists of New England (Updike, in particular) and then their own Thomas Wolfe and Faulkner. So I’ve read.
Their own writers had been presenting the Dixie heritage as all happy and macho, which did not fit what they observed. The Jews and Congregationalists, on the other hand, were presenting something hard and ugly about themselves.
From that, I’ve wondered: where and how my Midwestern heritage was being addressed or examined. I saw escape but no reality being addressed. Things that ought to be said but weren’t, at least in the mainstream view.
The best I’ve come up with is Jeffrey Eugenides, Greek-American of Detroit. And, my, how he delivers.
A snowy winter like the one we’re having reminds me of Upstate New York and the Poconos back then. The season’s longer and more intense than what I had growing up in southern Ohio and later in college in southern Indiana.
Here, though, I also have the Atlantic, as Passamaquoddy Bay, and Canada beyond it in the mix.
Welcome to my world, now and back then.
How about your winter?
Bob Stratton tells of driving home from work in Lordstown when a thunderstorm rolled up:
“One of the fellas in the car said, ‘Hey, the car behind us is sure coming comin’ up fast with its brights on.’
“It was no car. It was rolling lightnin’ that hit us.”
They drove on to a diner. “I smell something singed,” the waitress said.
“If that’s all it is, we’re lucky,” they laughed, and then told her what had happened.
Several weeks later, stopping there during another storm, the waitress was now telling them their story.
“You must not recognize us,” they laughed. “We’re the fellas it happened to.”
The prolific inventor, entrepreneur, and civic influence Charles F. Kettering was still alive in the Dayton community when I was an aspiring chemist in my youth.
My career in science never materialized, but his influence as an inspired ideal of leadership remains.
You may recognize the name from the famed Sloan-Kettering cancer research hospital in Manhattan or from the city in southwest Ohio named in his honor. He also led the research teams that invented the electric cash register, the automobile electrical self-starter, and no-knock gasoline. Other work made the diesel engine practicable as well as the refrigerator and, in time, air conditioning. In all, he had 186 patents, second to fellow Ohioan Thomas Edison. He was a founder of Delco (Dayton Electrical Laboratory Company) and from 1920 to 1947 was head of research for General Motors.
As a power in the new General Motors corporation, he aligned with management pioneer Alfred Sloan – as in that Sloan-Kettering Hospital in Manhattan,.
Let me repeat, there’s even a city named in his honor.
Today we have another Double Tendrils.
Get ready to know him better. Let’s start with his perspectives on the creative process and problem-solving, especially as they apply to engineering and invention. Here’s what he said:
And now for his perspective on life itself.
He really was one who made America great.
I remember when he had a Willy’s Jeep
cool, like a square dance
I’m excited to announce that my lineup of ebooks is available as part of a promotion on Smashwords for the month of July as part of their Annual Summer/Winter Sale. This is a chance to get my novels, poetry collections, and Quaker volumes, along with volumes from many other indy authors, at a discount so you can get right to reading. Some of mine are even free, as you’ll see.
The sale begins today, so save the link:
https://www.smashwords.com/shelves/promos/
Please share this promo with friends and family. You can even forward the news to the avid readers in your life.
Thank you for your help and support.
And happy summer reading!
Indiana sometimes shows up as a symbolic state. It’s not just a “crossroads of America,” as it likes to tout itself, a blending of North and South or balancing East versus West. It’s an anomaly even in the Midwest, where it’s the only state not bearing an Indigenous name yet it’s named in supposed homage to the Original Peoples – INDIAN-a.
With a capital called INDIAN-apolis. Or Naptown, as it’s known in other parts of the state.
Not that there are any tribes remaining within its boundaries.
It’s not as industrial as Ohio or Illinois nor as agricultural as, say, Iowa or Minnesota – feel free to counter that with hard data, I’m just running on gut feeling here.
And just what is a Hoosier, anyway? There are theories, but it’s certainly not like a buckeye or hawkeye or badger or the Bluegrass State bordering its south or Prairie State on its west or Great Lakes State on its north. You can get a picture in your mind with those.
In short, it rather strives to appear just average, or maybe a level just below. Somehow, that’s what fuels its role as a symbol of America itself, especially the Bread Basket sprawling largely westward, even though it’s rarely in the spotlight, except for Indy 500 week, and even that reflects an earlier glory.
That wasn’t always the case, though. The place gave birth to some leftist progressives over the years as well as some vital inventors. It also gave us the likes of journalist Ernie Pyle, jazz lyricist Hoagie Carmichael, actor James Dean, radio storyteller Jean Shepherd, basketball great Larry Bird, rocker John Mellencamp, late-night host David Letterman. But no U.S. president.
Early on, it had a heavy Southern influence, especially as Quaker families fled the slaveholding economy of North Carolina, as I learned after taking up genealogy and uncovering my roots.
It also has some distinctly different regions, including the once dominant steelmaking crescent along Lake Michigan adjacent to Chicago; the hardscrabble rolling forests and quarries of southern Indiana; and the flat agricultural belt in the middle.
I got to know it first by family camping trips and Boy Scout overnight hiking excursions. Yes, in the southern tracts of the state. We also had journeys when my great-grandmother decided to visit from Missouri or central Illinois; her son and his wife lived in a dreadful corner of Indianapolis and served as the relay point. Later, I finished college, again in the rustic south, and returned four years after as a political science research associate.
I must admit my angst at what’s been happening politically and socially, even though the Indianapolis Star was always a pretty dreadful archconservative voice, proof for me that “liberal” journalism has always been in the minority.
~*~
Not that the state hasn’t had an artistic presence. Just think of the artist Robert Indiana of the iconic LOVE image (born in New Castle).
Novelist Kurt Vonnegut nailed the state for me, though other writers of note include Booth Tarkington, Theodore Dreiser, Ward Just, New Yorker regular Janet Flanner (from Paris), and young-adult superstar John Green. The poets Clayton Eshelman, with his collection Indiana, and Etheridge Knight also have had strong careers.
For my part, my novels Daffodil Uprising and What’s Left are both based in an imaginative reworking of Bloomington – I do play with geography, making the Ohio River a lot closer to Indianapolis, for one thing. My novel Hometown News could also be placed in the upper half of the state, though its setting is more generalized.
My poetry chapbook Leonard Springs definitely reflects the cave country around Bloomington.
I anticipated remaining there much longer than I did, but fate intervened. And after that, I’ve never been back, except in my memories.
Celebrity writer Tom Wolfe lamented that nobody had written the big hippie novel, something akin to the Great American Novel, but he was wrong. I’ve said so in some previous postings here.
For my part, let me invite you to Daffodil, Indiana, as its tranquil – some might even say dopy – campus goes radical. No outside agitators are needed in the face of the ongoing repression. The Revolution of Peace & Love is its own calling.
Daffodil Uprising is one of five novels I’m making available to you for FREE during Smashword’s annual end-of-the-year sale. The ebook is available to you in the platform of your choice.
Think of this as my Christmas present to you. Or, as we used to say, If it feels good, do it!
For details, go to the book at Smashwords.com.
Jnana's Red Barn 