Chuck Berry statue in the Delmar Loop in St. Louis, MO
In the spirit of giving credit where credit is due, no one deserves the title “The Father of Rock-n-Roll” more than Chuck Berry. So many of the legends of the genre revered him and covered his hits, including The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. Keith Richards said if rock-n-roll had a name, it would have to be Chuck Berry. Even that white boy from Tupelo, referred so often to as the “King” of rock-n-roll, covered Berry’s tunes.
Chuck Berry’s life is not really a rags-to-riches story as he was born into a middle-class family in St. Louis where he lived his whole life. Growing up just beyond the eastern boundary of the Ozarks region, Berry was heavily influenced by rock-a-billy and country music, elements of which would end up in many of his greatest hits. Of course, Berry also grew up during the era of Jim Crow in a part of the country that had a dark past with race relations. Sadly, according to R. J. Smith in his brutally honest biography (Chuck Berry: An American Life, Hachette Books, 2022), Berry apparently carried his response of anger, resentment, and frustration to extremes at times, taking opportunities to insult and humiliate people, even those who adored him, and telling them, “Now you know how it feels to be black.”
Smith does a good job of balancing the artistry, intelligence, talent, and even the charm of Berry with the ugly side of his personality. Some of the stories about Berry make me think that he may have had some kind of serious psychological illness, like bipolar disorder. To say he was a womanizer would be to let him off the hook. He demonstrated signs of being what many folks in the post-MeToo era would define as a sexual predator and even a pedophile. At the very least, it is fair to say he had strong sexual appetites that wandered into the realm of the taboo and even aberrant.
His sexual deviance, along with his violent tendencies and his resistance to authority, including the IRS and government in general, got him into legal trouble on several occasions. He was sentenced to jail time more than once. One could argue that he shared this path with many of the outlaw country stars like Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, and many others. Some rap and hip-hop performers who were no doubt influenced by Berry on some level would also be plagued with legal problems and prison terms.
No matter how bad the news was for Berry, he was still highly respected by the biggest names in the music business, including Bruce Springsteen. He was an early cross-over musician, infiltrating white homes with his unique style of playing and singing long before black performers were even allowed to eat in many restaurants or stay in hotels when they were on tour. He was beloved by millions of fans all over the world, even when he continued to attempt to perform in his 80s as dementia began to claim his mind and memory. His impact on 20th century music and beyond cannot be overemphasized, complete with his flaws and his brilliance.
I had the privilege of being directly involved in the planning and implementation of the 2023 Smithsonian Folklife Festival, an annual event that takes place on the National Mall in Washington, DC. With a history going back over fifty years, the festival is usually scheduled over a ten-day period roughly encompassing the last week in June and the first week of July. It is produced by the Smithsonian’s Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage and honors living cultural traditions while celebrating those who practice and sustain them. One of the programs selected for the 2023 festival was focused on the Ozarks, a region of the U.S. that is centered in southern Missouri and northwest Arkansas but also includes small portions of northeast Oklahoma, southeast Kansas, and extreme southwest Illinois.
Smithsonian Folklife Festival 2023
I began working in 2019 for Missouri State University Libraries on a part time basis, assisting with projects sponsored by the Ozarks Studies Institute, an initiative of the Libraries. A fortunate turn of events led to the Smithsonian partnering with the Libraries for the Ozarks program of the 2023 festival, with the Dean of Libraries serving as a curator. The Dean offered me a full-time position eighteen months prior to the event to serve as an associate director for the university’s participation in the festival.
The Dean and I teamed up with another part-time employee of the Libraries who has written two books about the Ozarks and has extensive cultural knowledge of the region. Our trio served as the core planning committee for the university to collaborate with the festival organizers from the Smithsonian. One of the first jobs we tackled was coming up with a name for the program. After considerable deliberation, we decided on “The Ozarks: Faces and Facets of a Region.” Our trio made numerous trips to visit with people and organizations throughout the region, in all five states, to spread the word and generate excitement about the festival. A small group of Ozarkers, including our planning trio, visited the National Mall in the summer of 2022 to get a clearer picture of how the event looks and works. We took two musical acts with us to perform as a preview of the 2023 Ozarks program.
Smithsonian Folklife Festival 2023
Over the course of a year, we worked with the Smithsonian staff to identify key stakeholders from the Ozarks who could assist with fundraising, program content, identifying other curators and participants, and overall planning of the festival. We had Zoom meetings almost every week for over a year to hammer out all the details, and several festival organizers from the Smithsonian visited the Ozarks multiple times to get a better sense of the region and to meet with our team.
Using artists from the Ozarks and from the DC area, the larger planning team came up with design features for the festival that would reflect the natural beauty of the region. We had to decide on color schemes, fonts for signage, layout of the festival grounds, daily schedules of events, and a whole host of other elements. In early 2023 we began meeting with the festival logistics staff to work on structural and mechanical requirements for the site. We also met with interns and volunteers who are brought on each year to help the Smithsonian with festival participants’ needs regarding transportation, lodging, meals, and a wide variety of other accommodations. By the time June arrived, there were over 150 people involved in either planning or implementation. It is a massive effort.
Smithsonian Folklife Festival 2023
The festival was open each day, June 29 through July 9 (with the exception of July 5), from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., followed by evening concerts most nights running from around 6:30 to 8:00 p.m. The Ozarks program site was situated under the trees on the south side of the Mall, just east of 14th Street SW. On the opposite north side of the Mall was the other program for the 2023 festival, which was called “Creative Encounters: Living Religions in the U.S.” Each year the festival is open on Independence Day, where people gather by the hundreds of thousands along the corridors, paths, and grassy fields extending from the Potomac River all the way to the Capitol to await the spectacular fireworks display at dusk between the Lincoln and Washington Memorials. I don’t typically go out of my way to see firework displays, but the colorful explosions that serve as a backdrop for the imposing Washington Monument are mighty impressive.
Smithsonian Folklife Festival 2023
The Ozarks program was divided into four major themes: celebrations and gatherings; stories, sounds, and show business; migrations, movements, and pathways; and connections to land and place. The site featured large-scale murals and a mountain-bike trail build, music jam sessions and performances, dance and plant-knowledge workshops, food and craft demonstrations, and curated discussions. The Ozarks program included multiple theaters. There was a theater for discussions and demonstrations of plant knowledge, one for cooking demonstrations, one called the “Pickin’ Porch” mostly for music during the day, and one called “The Front Porch” for panel discussions. Both festival programs shared a large main stage out in the middle of the Mall that was reserved for musical workshops and performances during the day and for the larger evening concerts.
Smithsonian Folklife Festival 2023Smithsonian Folklife Festival 2023
The Ozarks program brought close to 60 musicians to the festival, which is a clear indication of how important musical traditions are to the culture of the region. There were at least eleven different ensembles of varying sizes, along with many individual musicians, specializing in several different genres including Native American music, traditional old time music, bluegrass, folk, country, gospel, and contemporary. Foodways, plant knowledge, arts, crafts, and storytelling were demonstrated by white Ozarkers but also by many other ethnic groups that call the Ozarks home, including Native Americans, African Americans, people of Hispanic and Latino heritage, Marshallese, Hmong, Khmer, and Syrian. Contrary to much of its history over the last 200 years, some of the “faces and facets” of the Ozarks show remarkable diversity in race, ethnicity, and culture.
Smithsonian Folklife Festival 2023Smithsonian Folklife Festival 2023
The largest and most recognizable musical group that the Ozarks program sponsored played on the main stage for the July 4 evening concert. The Ozark Mountain Daredevils is a band that originated out of Springfield, Missouri, in 1972. The group had several hits in their early years including “Jackie Blue” and “If You Want to Get to Heaven.” The band has evolved over the decades, losing and replacing band members and even going into a type of semi-retirement in the early 21st century. In recent years the Daredevils have enjoyed a bit of a resurgence, appearing on the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville on two occasions in 2023. They put on a hell of a show for the DC festival and for hundreds of people within earshot of the main stage that evening.
Ozark Mountain Daredevils
My primary job during the days of the festival was to occupy the Missouri State University Libraries table set up near the main entrance of the Ozarks program. With the help of one of our student workers, I was selling several books about the Ozarks and answering questions about the festival program and the region in general. I was surprised by how many festival visitors told us they were either from the Ozarks, had lived in the Ozarks, or had fond memories of visiting the region. Many of these folks have lived and worked in the DC area for years, and they were so happy to see the Ozarks featured on the National Mall. We could definitely detect a sense of pride in their voices when they talked about their connection to the region.
Smithsonian Folklife Festival 2023
Perhaps the most enjoyable connection I made during the time of the festival was with the two guys representing mountain biking, one of the fastest-growing forms of recreation in the Ozarks, especially in northwest Arkansas and Missouri. Seth Gebel is a young entrepreneur who owns Backyard Trail Builds. He goes out into the forest armed with only hand tools and cuts down cedar trees, trimming them out to create bridges, ramps, and runs for biking trails. He designed and built a short, curved and banked track at the entrance to the Ozarks site at the festival. Dave Schulz works within a nonprofit organization to help community leaders in revitalizing their towns by developing bicycle-focused public parks and sustainable trail systems, preserving natural environments while drawing tourism from around the world. Both of these guys gave daily riding demonstrations on the track that Seth built for the festival.
Smithsonian Folklife Festival 2023
The most magical moment for me came on the final evening of the festival in the dining room of the host hotel. A group of Ukranian vocalists from the Creative Encounters program stood up and began singing a traditional folk song in their native tongue. They were followed by several other individuals and groups from both programs, standing to sing and inviting others in the room to participate through responsive chanting, vocalizations, and clapping. As I witnessed what happened, I recognized that this festival offers us a snapshot of the best of humanity, the wonders we are capable of producing when we embrace our differences and come together to learn from each other.
The reason I can get away with such a derogatory title for this post is because I am a librarian, or at least I am by training, and for much of my career, by practice as well. Over the last few years, I have picked up several books, both fiction and nonfiction, that feature libraries or librarians as the primary subject. Here is an annotated list of these books, which I highly recommend to librarians, library patrons, or bibliophiles in general. Enjoy!
Library stacks
Nonfiction
The Library: A Fragile History by Andrew Pettigrew
In this dense and comprehensive history of libraries, the author also tells the story of the evolution of the book: its creation, distribution, preservation, and impact on civilization. He devotes considerable time discussing how private collections were the norm for libraries during most of recorded history and that public access is a relatively new phenomenon.
The fragile part of the history is illustrated by the many threats to books and the libraries that contain them, from natural disasters to warfare, from censorship to reduced support by private and government sources. The book begins and ends with perhaps the most famous library of the ancient world at Alexandria, which in some ways serves as a model for all libraries that followed. Written language is one of the hallmarks that separates our species from all the rest; therefore, the institutions that serve as repositories of written language must be considered as instrumental in documenting and preserving that distinction.
One of the more interesting takeaways from this book is how, at least until the modern era, fiction was held with such little regard by the literate elite of western society (and this book focuses on libraries of western civilization). Novels were even considered a corruptive force, especially as they were in such demand by women as a form of escape from the drudgery of living in subservience to their husbands, taking care of children, and maintaining the home.
The author contemplates the impact the digital age will have on books, which could be perceived as another threat to the library. It is reassuring that he observes how radio, movies, television, and computers may have competed for the attention of readers, but books and libraries continue to survive and at times even thrive in the age of mass media.
Overdue: Reckoning with the Public Library by Amanda Oliver
Public libraries and the services they provide usually reflect the communities where they are located. The public library where I was the director was medium sized in a county of about 43,000. We had our share of quirky folks, unruly adolescents, crusty curmudgeons, and houseless citizens among the day-to-day users who came in regularly to check out books or bring their children to story time. Also, our town had the state’s mental institution, which had been decentralized in the 1960s resulting in plenty of mentally ill people in government subsidized houses, or sometimes, just wandering the streets. As expected, many of them found their way to the library.
My public library was probably typical for a rural community in central Georgia — plenty of challenges but nothing too much out of the ordinary. By contrast, Amanda Oliver spent several years working in a public library in one of the toughest trenches a government employee can work: Washington DC. If there is a common thread running through her book, it is a sense of conflict the author feels about knowing how desperate many of her patrons were for help just to survive and trying to preserve her own mental health and physical safety while trying to assist them with their needs. She bemoans the fact that this country is woefully unable to take care of the poor and mentally ill, who have to rely on help wherever they can find it.
By their very nature, public libraries are places of refuge for the marginalized, and librarians are first responders, sometimes in the most literal sense. Oliver shares stories of having to administer first aid and other medical procedures for people with addiction and a whole host of health problems. She calls into question the role of the public library in a society that has abandoned those who are at most risk from economic insecurity and mental illness, including those with violent tendencies. She offers some chilling reports about librarians who have been injured or killed by crazed individuals who come through their doors. She reports how installing security equipment and hiring public safety personnel have become top priorities in many public libraries around the country.
On the bright side, it is clear that Oliver believes strongly in the mission of the public library to provide information services, very broadly defined, and to assist patrons with needs that have little or nothing to do with reading. In spite of how difficult her job was, she stayed committed to directing people to information, resources, and agencies they needed, sometimes just to survive. She effectively offers her readers a healthy, though not copious, collection of statistics to drive home her points. Perhaps the most encouraging stat of all for me was that the number of public libraries in America is greater than the number of Starbucks. We must be doing something right here.
The World’s Strongest Librarian by Josh Hanagarne
Hanagarne managed to write the funniest and the saddest book in this category at the same time. It is sad because the author has struggled so many years with a disorder that is so misunderstood and at times terribly debilitating. It is funny because Hanagarne manages to find humor even in the worst circumstances. His comic timing is quite good, with prose that reminds me so much of David Sedaris. Hanagarne makes his father sound remarkably similar to the way Sedaris makes his father sound. They both come off as crusty, no-nonsense guys who were forever trying to toughen up their children to face the “real world.”
Hanagarne’s memoir doesn’t focus nearly as much attention on his work as a librarian as it does his upbringing in a Mormon family facing the embarrassing and humiliating symptoms of Tourette Syndrome, which he personified by giving it a name – Misty (as in Miss T). His determination and tenacity in wrestling with his condition is inspiring. He never gave up. On the contrary, he often pushed himself into situations that anyone else with Tourette Syndrome would avoid, like choosing a profession that is traditionally associated with being quiet. And then he continued to bust open stereotypes by being a librarian AND a fitness enthusiast. It is not surprising that Hanagarne has found fitness regimens to be among the most successful tools in battling Tourettes.
From a confused childhood to the discovery and love of reading, from the awkwardness of making friends and dating to pushing through as a high school athlete, from pulling away from the faith of his parents to finding happiness in marriage and being a father, Hanagarne’s story is touching, heart wrenching, fascinating, and funny. And his use of Dewey Decimal System call numbers and subject headings as chapter leads is brilliant. Josh Hanagarne is a remarkable human being.
The Library Book by Susan Orlean
The author cleverly uses the Los Angeles Central Library fire in 1986 as her main hub to explore the history and culture of libraries. Her focus is generally on the Los Angeles system, but throughout the book she takes a few side roads to include libraries, past and present, in other locations in this country and around the world. Her deep appreciation of this ancient institution is abundantly evident throughout the book. She manages to take what so many people would consider a deadly boring topic and make it intriguing, fascinating even. Although at times the chapters read more like separate essays, some of which could easily stand alone, Orlean manages to make them flow together and connect as she unravels the mysteries surrounding the disaster in L.A. However, the real reason the book is a bestseller is because Orlean is such a good writer. The Library Book is a wonderful combination of biography, history, mystery, and investigative reporting.
I Was a Stripper Librarian by Kristy Cooper
Okay, yes, the title is titillating, the cover looks just a tad risque, and this is a self-published book. But, let’s immediately set aside our bibliographic elitism, decide we are NOT going to judge a book by its cover, and take an honest look at this memoir from someone who worked in two professions that, at least on the surface, seem like polar opposites. Kristy Cooper argues that being a stripper and a librarian are not nearly as different than most of us would think, and she provides enough examples to be convincing. Admittedly, this book cannot be taken as seriously as some of the other titles in this list — the authors are not trying to do the same thing here.
I suspect most Americans would be surprised to learn how many women and men enter the sex industry, as the author labels it (although stripping seems to stretch the definition to my way of thinking), in order to make ends meet or to get out of debt, especially student loans. A simple Google search on the topic brings up numerous TV spots and articles posted over the last few years about young folks who pay their way through college by stripping. Cooper is unapologetic about her decision to do the same — it was simply pragmatic. She tried other more conventional jobs, but none paid as well for the amount of time and labor required.
This book is well-written and interesting. Cooper does not come across as some bubble-headed babe trying to impress us with her lap-dancing talents, although some of the stories she shares are fascinating, troubling, and at times hilarious. Her vocabulary is impressive. Her writing style is rather simple and straightforward, but it works fine for this type of book. She assures her readers that there are plenty of people in the adult entertainment industry who are extremely intelligent, some of whom have advanced degrees like she does. Although she is no longer in the industry, she certainly advocates for it. She is also a remarkable champion for the library profession and has even established a nonprofit organization to facilitate her philanthropic work, especially for librarians.
Ultimately, readers will either approve or disapprove of Cooper’s dual occupational choice, but no one can deny that she made it work for her circumstances. She implies that stripping never made her feel dirty or immoral, but I have to wonder if the objectification factor eventually did a number on her. The best example, and perhaps the saddest to me, was when she was considering whether or not to get implants because her breasts were smaller than that of the average female strippers with whom she worked. Even though some of her male customers recommended she leave them alone, she knew that a bigger chest in a topless bar translated to more income. At one point she decided that her breasts were not really a part of her body as much as they were a commodity or resource for her craft. As true as that may be, I hated to hear it.
Fiction
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
I read this book for an online book club I helped moderate for the university where I work, but I was intrigued by it when I first saw it reviewed in the New York Times Book Review. My honest assessment of this novel is that it is entertaining, but it still has more of a juvenile style to it, probably because Haig has written several books for children. The subject matter and language are clearly for an adult audience, but the plot and rhythm still feel more like a fairy tale to me, perhaps like a C. S. Lewis children’s novel.
The premise of The Midnight Library is very similar to the film “It’s a Wonderful Life.” The name of the town in the timeless holiday classic film is Bedford Falls; Nora’s album is called Pottersville; a character in the novel has the last name Bailey. (The author tweeted about this to a fan.) If we give too much thought to the mechanics behind the story – the impossible challenges presented by being inserted into the middle of an unfamiliar life – the novel doesn’t exactly “work” so well. I had to employ a type of dissociation to make it through.
Nora and Hugo discuss Schrödinger’s cat, the popular thought experiment that illustrates an apparent paradox of quantum superposition – alternate possibilities happening simultaneously. Is there a deeper meaning that Haig is trying to get at with this novel or is it just supposed to be an entertaining read? Is this a story that explores the concept of quantum mechanics and string theory? At any rate, Haig’s novel prompts readers to think (or rethink) how different their lives might have been had they made different choices along the way.
I am surprised at how much attention it received from major review sources, but then again, Haig is a journalist too, so there could be some professional courtesy going on as well. Haig does a good job of pulling the reader into the story. Most of us can imagine ourselves in Nora’s shoes and are compelled to speculate what decisions we would make given the circumstances.
The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray
This may not be a great novel, but it is a good story based on the life of a real person. Belle da Costa Greene was J. P. Morgan’s personal librarian, an amazing African-American woman who was forced to hide her true identity and pass as white in order to succeed at an incredibly important job. Using biographies, personal papers, and secondary sources, the authors attempt to recreate the life and accomplishments of Greene, complete with her romantic relationships, her hardships, her family life, her savvy business dealings, and the struggles she faced through it all in keeping such a huge secret. In the category of historical fiction, this novel ranks among the best I have read.
My wife and I spent a weekend in Springfield, Illinois, over the 2023 Memorial Day weekend. This town of just over 113,000 people may be the smallest state capital I have ever visited. I wouldn’t describe it as spectacular, but it does have a certain charm. There are several good restaurants and pubs downtown, and the hotel where we stayed was comfortable, clean, and convenient. The architecture of the state government buildings is impressive, especially the restored Old State Capitol that served as the state house from 1840 to 1876. On February 10, 2007, Barack Obama announced his candidacy for President of the United States on the southeast lawn of the building. The new State Capitol was completed in 1888, although the legislature began meeting in the building a decade earlier while it was under construction. Designed in the shape of a Greek cross, the capitol features a magnificent dome that carries the structure to a greater height than the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.
Old State Capitol, Springfield, IllinoisNew State Capitol, Springfield, Illinois
The major tourist draw for Springfield is a collection of attractions associated with the town’s most famous citizen, President Abraham Lincoln, who practiced law and started a family here. The Lincolns resided in the city from 1837 to 1847, the year Lincoln was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. Though his most memorable years were spent in the nation’s capital, he built his legal and political career in Springfield and was buried there after his assassination in 1865. The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield is a first-class destination for people of all ages interested in history, presidents, or politics. The museum’s interactive exhibits and video presentations are joined by lifelike replicas of Lincoln, his family, and his associates to tell the story of the president’s early childhood in Kentucky and follow his path to the White House and on to his tragic death.
Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, Springfield, IllinoisAbraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, Springfield, IllinoisAbraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, Springfield, Illinois
We also took a stroll around the Lincoln Home National Historic Site in Springfield, which is made up of a restored and/or replicated section of the town dating back to the 1840s and includes the actual house where Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln raised their family. There are exhibits about the Lincolns and their neighbors in several of the other homes and buildings at the site, and visitors can book tours of the Lincoln home too. There is an interpretive center filled with information about the 16th President and what life was life in Springfield in the mid-19th century.
Lincoln Home National Historic Site, Springfield, Illinois
The Lincoln Tomb and War Memorials State Historic Site is also located in Springfield in Oak Ridge Cemetery. It is a massive granite structure crowned with a towering obelisk. Tours of the tomb are self-guided, and we were lucky enough to be the only people inside during our visit. The hallway leading back to the actual tombs of Lincoln and his family is filled with bronze statues of the President, including a miniature replica of the Lincoln Memorial Monument at the National Mall in Washington, D.C. It is a solemn place worthy of such a celebrated and significant leader of the nation. It is a humbling experience to see it in person.
During our vacation in 2022 to San Diego, my wife and I spent a morning strolling around Balboa Park. Named for the Spanish-born explorer and perhaps the first European to witness the Pacific Ocean, this 1,200-acre site has a long, rich history going back to 1868 when San Diego’s leaders set aside the scrappy undeveloped area for public use. It didn’t really begin to take shape as a recognizable park until 1892 when a schoolteacher turned botanist and entrepreneur named Kate Sessions leased 32 acres of the property for her growing nursery’s propagation. She also agreed to plant trees annually in the park and in other public spaces around the city. The species included cypress, pine, oak, and eucalyptus. Some of the oldest specimens in the park today were part of the original plantings. She also introduced exotic plant species such as bird of paradise, Queen palm, and poinsettia. Her efforts eventually earned Sessions the honorary title “The Mother of Balboa Park.”
Balboa Park, San Diego, California
By the early 20th century, the City of San Diego had installed water systems, roads, and other infrastructural elements to Balboa Park. The origin of the elaborate Spanish Colonial architecture dates to 1915 when the park was selected as the site for the Panama-California Exposition. The Cabrillo Bridge and the buildings along El Prado date to this event, along with the Spreckels Organ Pavilion. More buildings were added for the California Pacific International Exposition of 1935-36, especially in the Southern Palisades area. These structures have a much more Southwestern look in the tradition of Pueblo Indian architecture and even Mayan designs.
Balboa Park, San Diego, California
After World War II, several of the main buildings were converted to museums and other cultural institutions. Today, visitors to the park can enjoy the San Diego History Center, San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego Natural History Museum, Fleet Science Center, Institute of Contemporary Art, Museum of Photographic Arts, Women’s Museum of California, Veterans Museum, WorldBeat Center, Museum of Us, San Diego Air and Space Museum, San Diego Mineral and Gem Society, San Diego Automotive Museum, San Diego Model Railroad Museum, Mingei International Museum, the Marston House (early 20th-century Arts & Crafts design), Comic-Con Museum, and Timken Museum of Art.
Balboa Park, San Diego, California
There are fountains and gardens throughout the park, along with the Japanese Friendship Garden (subject of an earlier post). There are restaurants and coffee shops. There are statues (especially in Sefton Plaza), the impressive California Tower, the Spanish Village Art Center, a beautiful carousel, and a miniature train. The park’s visitors center is the best place to start exploring the site. If we return to San Diego, I plan to devote more time to wandering through some of these museums. The Botanical Building and Lily Pond were undergoing major renovation work when we were there, so I definitely want to see those if we go back to Balboa Park, and I hope we do.
Balboa Park, San Diego, CaliforniaBalboa Park, San Diego, CaliforniaBalboa Park, San Diego, CaliforniaBalboa Park, San Diego, California
In 1909, famed American architect Frank Lloyd Wright began constructing a house on the brow of a hill near Spring Green, Wisconsin. He had grown up in the hills of the state and was inspired by the landscape. His mother was of Welsh descent, and he named the 800-acre estate Taliesin, which is a personal name rooted in Welsh mythology that translates to radiant or shining brow. This was not Wright’s first home, nor would it be his last. He had completed a small two-story residence in Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago, in 1889. Fire almost completely destroyed Taliesin in 1914 and again in 1925, but Wright rebuilt both times.
In the early 1930s, Wright and his third wife, Olgivanna, established an architectural apprentice program at his Wisconsin home called the Taliesin Fellowship, which provided students with an immersive experience that integrated design and construction with growing and preparing food and the study of the arts. The term the Wrights used was “organic architecture.” Wright would continue to make changes and additions to Taliesin over the years after the fires, including converting a chicken coop into a dormitory for his architectural apprentices!
Wright and his students needed seasonal respite from the harsh winters of Wisconsin and found one in 1934 when he rented space for the Fellowship in sunny Arizona. The change in climate was so welcoming that Wright decided to create a winter location for his school. He purchased property in the rugged Sonoran Desert at the base of the McDowell Mountains in Scottsdale, northeast of Phoenix, where he and his apprentices would construct Taliesin West. This winter camp would become a study in how to blend architecture into a stark landscape incorporating water, shade, foliage, and indigenous materials to create a desert oasis. Wright’s architectural school used both Taliesin locations depending upon the season, even after the master’s death in 1959 in Phoenix at the age of 91. Although the Wisconsin program at Taliesin East finally closed in 2020, the tradition continues to this day with the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture in two locations in Arizona. Both Taliesin East and West are now historical sites open to the public, with guided or self-guided tours available.
Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona
During the week following Christmas in 2022, my wife and I returned to the Phoenix area for a vacation. It is one of our favorite destinations in the country and where we hope to spend considerable time during retirement. On this trip we visited Taliesin West, which was my first time seeing the site. We took a self-guided tour, using a mobile phone app with earplugs to listen to a virtual guide describe the structures and surrounding grounds as we walked through a series of numbered stations over the course of about an hour. The whole setup was quite slick – impressive and informative. Along with other visitors taking the same tour, we were able to stroll through the various rooms and outdoor spaces. It is understandable why Andrew Pielage decided to call his photographic exhibition of Wright’s work “Sacred Spaces,” showcasing how the architect skillfully designed structures that seem almost sanctified.
Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona
Several design elements of Taliesin West stand out in my mind. A common theme throughout is the use of sharp angles for roof lines, steps, walkways, and water features. This collection of points is reminiscent of the McDowell Mountain peaks visible to the east of the property. The stone and plaster walls, interior and exterior, imitate the rocky outcroppings around Scottsdale and throughout the Phoenix valley. Red, orange, brown, and blue are dominant colors for painted surfaces and fabric, reflecting the palette of the Sonoran Desert floor and the skies above that remain clear most of the time. Although rare in the desert, water is present in the form of rivers, such as the Salt, Gila, and the Agua Fria in Phoenix. Also, the Sonoran Desert gets more rainfall than any other desert in North America. Wright and his apprentices included several modest water features at Taliesin West. Some people have speculated that Wright may have become paranoid after suffering through multiple devastating fires and wanted water nearby as a safeguard. In any case, the presence of water created a literal oasis at Taliesin West.
Taliesin West in Scottsdale, ArizonaTaliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona
The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation that owns and operates Taliesin West does a fine job of managing the site as a historically-preserved house museum. The rooms are presented in a fashion that makes them look as if Wright and his students have left for the summer but will return next winter. Spaces are appointed with original (or at least period) art pieces, artifacts, furniture, and furnishings. The story the curators are telling is as much about Wright’s apprentices and their accomplishments as it is about the master architect himself. There are various places where people could gather together, including a small theatre. There are at least three pianos in the buildings, implying how important music was to the general atmosphere the Wrights were producing. Toward the end of his life, Frank Lloyd Wright was hosting cocktail parties with Olgivanna at Taliesin West for select groups of people in the greater Phoenix area. What fascinating conversations must have occurred at such gatherings, no doubt dominated by the celebrity architect who had grown so fond of his sacred space in Arizona.
Taliesin West in Scottsdale, ArizonaTaliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona
In late 2018, my wife and I moved from Georgia to Springfield, a town of about 170,000 people in southwest Missouri. It’s a great location for us because we have family and close friends in Georgia, Kansas, Texas, and Arizona. We really enjoy traveling, especially to the desert southwest, but we like the Florida beaches and places like New York City, Chicago, and Nashville. Living in Springfield strategically positions us near the center of the country and makes it easier to get to family, friends, and fun destinations. The icing on the cake is the small national airport that is a mere twenty minutes from our house, which is serviced by three major airlines and a few budget carriers.
Southern Missouri and northern Arkansas make up the bulk of the region known as the Ozarks. It as an area of the country defined by a variety of factors, from geology and topography to culture and customs. It is also quite beautiful. It is rich in natural resources, especially water, minerals, and forests. It is a complicated region in almost every category imaginable. Although it boasts no major cities, it does have some bustling urban centers. There are some wealthy people in the Ozarks, but there are far more families living in serious poverty. On the political spectrum, it is largely conservative with pockets of progressivism mostly in and around the cities.
Admittedly, I knew very little about the Ozarks. I had never set foot in Missouri and only visited once just a few months before we moved here. To get “learned up” about our new home, I did what I always do when encountering something new and unfamiliar. I started reading. The following is an annotated list of books I have read about the Ozarks over the last three years or so. My bibliography is in no way intended to be comprehensive or even representative; however, these books have given me greater insight into the history, culture, and people of the Ozarks. All of these titles are nonfiction, but I have also read fiction by Ozarks writers or stories set in the region. Perhaps sometime I will write a post reviewing those books as well.
A History of the Ozarks, Volume 3 by Brooks Blevins
A History of the Ozarks, Volume 3: The Ozarkers by Brooks Blevins Brooks Blevins is the uncontested authority on the history of the Ozarks. He is a professor at Missouri State University in Springfield, where I am also employed. But his full-time residence is in northern Arkansas, so he has his feet planted in the two main states of the Ozarks. He is a fine writer, a serious scholar, a respected teacher, and an all-round nice fellow. I have only read this 3rd volume of his trilogy, but I intend to at least go back and read the 1st volume covering the early history of the region.
Blevins is at his best when he is dispelling many of the misconceptions and over-generalizations of the Ozarks as a place full of backwoods hillbillies with no connection to the modern world. He also does a great job of pointing out the most attractive features of the region without romanticizing or falling into the trap of exceptionalism, which is always tempting to do if you are so identified with a place, which I believe he is.
The chapters on “Ozarks Society” and “Putting on a Show,” along with his “Conclusion,” were the most interesting to me because they highlight how much the Ozarks have changed over the last 150 years and are continuing to evolve. I’m not sure I agree with Blevins that the specific location of the Ozarks, a topic of serious debate for generations, is best defined by where the Ozarkers live; however, there seems to be a strong sense of place appreciated by so many people who live here, quite similar to sentiments held by many people in the Deep South about their region. This is a solid historical overview of a complex and fascinating part of the country in the modern period.
Living Waters: The Springs of Missouri by Loring Bullard This book is well documented and researched. The photographs of the springs and streams they feed are stunningly beautiful. The layout of the book makes it easy and enjoyable to read. However, aside from the technical aspects of the book, Bullard clearly has a passion for his subject that is both personal and professional, which is demonstrated in the text of every page.
The organization of the book is especially fine, with chapters focusing on features and functions of springs rather than on individual locations. Bullard incorporates a considerable amount of history to offer context and appreciation of how past generations have understood and valued springs in the state and have taken advantage of them as valuable natural resources. Of course, the environmental message throughout is of paramount importance — we must take good care of our state’s springs because of the vital role they play in providing clean water for the ecosystems they feed.
White Man’s Heaven: The Lynching and Expulsion of Blacks in the Southern Ozarks, 1894-1909 by Kimberly Harper Harper presents a thoroughly researched and well documented scholarly study that helps explain why the southwestern Ozarks is such a white region of the country. Lynching occurred in many places across the South, and obviously, into the Midwest. Many white people who had lived during the time of slavery, whether they actually owned slaves or not, resented the new autonomy of black people in their communities during Restoration. Over the decades, resentment evolved into a fear. “While blacks may not have been true economic, social, or even political competitors in the region, whites viewed blacks as a threat to their wives, daughters, and police officers.” Obviously, much of the fear centered on the perceived sexual predation of black men. “It was believed that women were not safe in the country or the city, so long as African American men roamed free.”
However, Harper goes beyond the acts of horrible white mob violence to explore why African Americans were driven out of communities, often at the same time lynching took place. Similar action was taken in other parts of the country — Forsyth County in north central Georgia comes to mind. Other areas of north Georgia, especially in the Appalachian foothills, still have small black populations to this day.
In the Ozarks and in the north Georgia mountains, the economy in the early 20th century was primarily subsistence farming, which did not require much labor outside the extended family of the farmer. As Harper observes, “This was in contrast to the black-majority regions of the South, where inexpensive and readily available black labor composed a significant segment of the local economy, making African Americans indispensable to local white employers.” One could easily make the same argument in recent decades for why white farmers have not been so anxious to deport undocumented Latinos from regions of the South where industrial agriculture is dominant and depends on vast numbers of inexpensive laborers.
This is a fine addition to American history and African American studies. Harper’s book joins more recent work on lynching by prominent African American scholars. Highly recommended.
Hipbillies: Deep Revolution in the Arkansas Ozarks by Jared M. Phillips I had the opportunity to hear the author speak on a panel with two people who were involved in the Back To Land movement in the Arkansas Ozarks at a conference in West Plains, Missouri, in September, 2019. The people who decided beginning back in the 1970s to trade in urban dwelling for a rural, subsistence lifestyle among the hills and “hollers” of the Ozarks are often referred to as Hipbillies — a hybrid of hippies and hillbillies.
Phillips does a good job of placing this movement in the context of 20th century back-to-the-land and counter-culture philosophy characterized by the works of people like Wendell Berry and Gary Snyder. He gives proper credit to the successes of the Hipbillies while also recognizing their failures and some of their less-than-pure intentions. He credits them for fighting for environmental health, sustainable agricultural practices, and social justice issues. One of their greatest accomplishments was succeeding in modest changes to how the US Forest Service approached the management of timber.
Phillips admires how the Hipbillies, especially the pioneers from the early 1970s, faced overwhelming odds and even life-threatening circumstances yet still persevered to make it as homesteaders in a part of the country where the land is not so forgiving. He dispels some of the myths about how native Ozarkers rejected the Hipbillies. Instead, they often embraced them and even saved their lives during harsh winters and unpredictable farming seasons. There were clashes in places like Eureka Springs, but that was more a conflict between counter-culturists and town leadership.
The Hipbillies had big dreams when they landed in the Ozarks. “What was sought, then, was a rehabilitation of American culture — one that began in the dirt and grew over time like the forest that slowly reclaims and heals a ruined field,” Phillips writes. He contends that the Hipbillies took themselves seriously as revolutionaries. They “came to the Ozarks seeking refuge and a place in which they might build a new world for themselves, and hopefully, all of humanity . . . . While they did not always succeed, the story is not over — they are still alive and are still powerful cultural, political, and economic forces in the Arkansas highlands.”
Hillbilly Hellraisers: Federal Power and Populist Defiance in the Ozarks by J. Blake Perkins The myths and stereotypes about the Ozarks are deeply ingrained in our consciousness, but they never have painted a true picture of the people and their culture, desires, needs, problems, etc. Perkins’s book reinforces one essential truth about Ozarks people: they tend be proud and fiercely independent, even in the face of long-term adversity.
There is a strong tradition of tension between individual rural families and individuals and/or institutions in authority. Poverty has always been a dark shadow hanging over the Ozarks, even when other parts of the country were climbing out of it. Although many people here petitioned for government assistance in the past, there is a history in this region of distrust of government programs, which ended up being administered and exploited by local and state officials. Law enforcement was fine as long as it didn’t try to stop individuals from scraping out a living, even through illegal means. More than anything, native Ozarkers have always just wanted to be left alone. When their autonomy was threatened, especially by outside forces, they sometime became violent.
Ozarks Hillbilly by Tom Koob and Curtis Copeland Koob and Copeland do a good job here of presenting the stereotypes of the Hillbilly as the term has been used in literature and other art forms to describe many of the rural folk in the Ozarks. The authors argue that, contrary to the traditional image of a lazy, shiftless, ignorant, depraved character, the Ozarks Hillbilly is quite industrious, shrewd, and highly skilled. Hillbillies are survivalists and generations of them have struggled to provide for themselves and their families in a harsh and unforgiving environment.
I found it odd in a book about the Ozarks how much time the authors spent on discussing Appalachian Hillbillies. They seem to have keen interest in the way Hillbillies were presented in Deliverance, the novel by James Dickey and the popular film adaptation starring Burt Reynolds and Ned Beatty. There are definitely similarities between the two regions of the country, which have been explored by numerous scholars. The stereotypes of the rural residents of both areas also share commonalities. Perhaps a comparison/contrast book would have been even more helpful and intriguing.
Where Misfits Fit: Counterculture and Influence in the Ozarks by Thomas Michael Kersen For Kersen, the town of Eureka Springs, Arkansas, serves as an archetype for his thesis of how counterculture distinguishes the Ozarks and is among its more charming and sustaining features. As he states it, “The magic of Eureka Springs is that the town is a mass of contradictions and microconflicts that breed [sic] creativity.” No wonder that the book’s title is also the semi-official motto of the town: Where Misfits Fit.
Kersen does a good job of weaving the eccentricities of the people who occupy the Ozarks into the history of the region. He first offers his identification of the region, defining it by geography and culture. He then proceeds to outline its countercultural characteristics through popular myths, artistic expression, supernatural fixations, cult activity, musical influence and inspiration, and the back-to-the-land movements primarily of the 1970s (the author’s parents brought him to the Ozarks from Texas as part of this larger movement).
A thread running throughout the book is Kersen’s use of the adjective “liminal” to describe the Ozarks – a place that is difficult to box in and that continually crosses lines. He writes that “the Ozarks defies boundaries of all sorts — it is a work in progress.” Here again, the contradictions of the area come into play. For instance UFO enthusiasts that have been drawn here for decades rely on scientific knowledge about astronomy and space exploration but scorn scientists who fail to validate their paranormal claims. Kersen recognizes that “eccentric places attract eccentric people — people willing to live and think in the margins.” He also believes the Ozarks “offers something unique for its inhabitants and even American culture at large.”
I found some of the most valuable information in the Conclusions chapter, especially about the impact of in-migration into the Ozarks from countries around the world. The author wonders how Ozark identity will change as the racial and ethnic profile of the region continues to change. The book has extensive end notes, an impressive bibliography for further reading and study, and a decent index. Just a few points of criticism: the book could have benefited from skillful editing. There are too many typo kind of errors for an academic press book. Also, I suspect this book is a collection of separately-written essays because there is considerable repetition of information in the chapters. Otherwise, it is a fine book that is both accessible and informative.
Lake of the Ozarks: My Surreal Summers in a Vanishing America by Bill Geist I was drawn to this book primarily because I visited the Lake of the Ozarks just a few months after settling here. I didn’t know anything about Bill Geist as I never watch Sunday Morning on CBS. I may have read his columns before but am not aware if I have. I can relate to many of the references Geist makes to growing up in the 1960s and 70s, although he is a bit older than I am. Some readers will no doubt be put off by the political incorrectness of the author’s perspectives, language, and the circumstances from his adolescence, but I suspect he is being perfectly honest and straightforward with his recollections and descriptions of his life and times working for his uncle and aunt at their lakeside lodge. There are some really laugh-out-loud passages in this book, which made it an enjoyable read.
Footprints in the Ozarks: A Memoir by Ellen Gray Massey This is a pleasant read. It isn’t challenging; the text is straightforward; it doesn’t reveal anything new about the Ozarks region; it gets a bit sentimental in places; and it is so bucolic that the reader can almost smell the cow manure on the farm where Massey lived and raised her family. She also worked as a high school English teacher, and apparently quite a good one. She supervised her students over a ten-year period as they produced a quarterly journal titled Bittersweet. The value of this book lies in Massey’s descriptions of the social mores of her community, the relationships of family and friends, the tragedies her family faced (including the death of her husband), and how life in the rural Ozarks was fulfilling and rewarding to her, as it has been for so many others for many generations.
Ty Seidule has written a book that immediately and unequivocally transforms him into a turncoat in the eyes of many southerners. Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner’s Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause (St. Martin’s Press, 2021) is not the first book to challenge Confederacy sympathizers, but it offers a unique perspective from an author who has made the journey from apologist to critic and is completely forthright about a subject that is still extremely sensitive for so many Americans.
I am about the same age as the author, and I was raised in Georgia, the state where he spent many of his formative years. I know the landscape. I understand the vocabulary. I am keenly aware of how a horrible war that the rebellious Confederacy lost over 150 years ago left wounds that in many circles have yet to heal. I have seen the battle flag of that failed insurrection flying in the bed of pickup trucks, hung in windows of trailers and houses, proudly displayed on government property, and waved through the halls of the U.S. Capitol by modern-day insurrectionists. I have seen the long, dark shadow cast by the iconic and mythical leader of those Confederate forces – a man who is still revered and memorialized all over the South with language usually reserved for Biblical characters described in Sunday School lessons and from pulpits.
Confederate Response to Juneteenth in Graham
Anthony Crider, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
It takes amazing courage for a southerner who is also a decorated officer of the U.S. Army and a retired history professor at West Point to openly and very publicly admit that Robert E. Lee committed treason and should be viewed as a traitor to his country. And that’s exactly what Ty Seidule has done. I applaud his bravery and the extensive research he has completed to make that claim. This is a damn fine book, not because it covers new ground or reveals any real hidden truths, but because someone in a position of authority and respect is making a form of confession that deserves serious consideration.
Seidule has heard every excuse in the book for why the Civil War wasn’t about slavery, for why the Confederacy didn’t really lose the war, and for why Robert E. Lee was such an honorable man. For the first twenty years of his life, he believed the excuses too. He probably doesn’t give quite enough credit to his wife for finally helping him escape the vortex of Confederate mythology. She forced him to question what it means to be a “Christian Southern Gentleman,” something he had aspired to from childhood through his graduation from Washington and Lee University, an institution that has been responsible more than any other place for perpetuating the cult of Robert E. Lee. His thoughts about what it means to be a Christian and a gentleman have drastically changed through the years, and his perception of the South is much clearer than it was when he was a young man.
Robert E Lee Memorial, Richmond, VA
Hal Jespersen at en.wikipedia, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
This book should be required reading in just about every college and university in the South, and even in many other parts of the country where the Civil War is still romanticized beyond recognition for what it truly was: a rebellious uprising against the United States of America. Seidule spends a lot of time talking about the impact of the novel and movie “Gone with the Wind,” which is appropriate; however, I wish he had given some attention to the earlier movie, “Birth of a Nation,” especially in his discussions of the Ku Klux Klan. One of the most striking arguments he makes concerns the inaccurate terminology that has been used for generations to describe the Civil War, including the ridiculous names for the conflict itself, from “the recent unpleasantness” to “the war of northern aggression.”
Seidule also makes a convincing point about how using the term “Union” is an inappropriate way to describe the U.S. Armed Forces while they fought against the Confederacy, as if the Union were some entity separate from the United States. That distinction brings us back to the problem with Robert E. Lee, who abandoned his commission as an officer of the U.S. Army and chose to side with a rebellious confederacy of states – a domestic enemy against whom Lee had sworn to protect his country. In the end, Lee was more loyal to the State of Virginia and the other southern states than he was to the United States, and that makes him a traitor. And it’s about time southerners and the rest of the nation came to terms with that stinging but absolutely honest indictment.
My wife and I took a trip to Santa Fe, New Mexico, during the summer of 2014. She had been to the town several times, but I had not. We both love art, culture, and the southwest, and Santa Fe is one of those places where all three intersect. We stayed in a lovely, rambling casita just off Canyon Road, which placed us in walking distance from the historic downtown attractions and more art galleries than anyone could possibly explore in a year’s time — alas, we were there for less than a week.
Native-American settlement in this area of the state goes back at least to the mid-11th century, with Pueblo Indian villages occupying the site for about a hundred years. Spanish explorers created a small village here thirteen years before the Mayflower Pilgrims established the Plymouth Colony. Santa Fe is the oldest capital city in the U.S. and still holds the record for the oldest public building in America, the Palace of the Governors. The city was captured and claimed by the U.S. in 1846 during the Mexican-American War. After New Mexico gained statehood in 1912, Santa Fe began to attract even more visitors from across the country who were drawn to the city’s dry climate and rich history.
Art and architecture have been among Santa Fe’s most valuable commodities from its early beginnings as a settlement for indigenous people. During the 20th century, the leadership and citizens of Santa Fe took measures to preserve the city’s ancient landmarks and maintain its multicultural traditions. Zoning codes are in place to protect the city’s distinctive Spanish-Pueblo architectural style of adobe and wood construction. Of course, other styles are fully represented in Santa Fe, including Greek Revival, Victorian, and Spanish Mission Revival.
Dragon sculpture over Ellsworth Gallery in Santa Fe
The historic district of Santa Fe is packed with galleries and museums, but the variety and abundance of public art on display transforms this southwestern village into a huge open-air exhibit. Galleries and other businesses often have interesting artwork on the exterior of their buildings that range from traditional to whimsical, like the pounded-copper dragon sculpture by artist Ilan Ashkenazi atop the Ellsworth Gallery, reflecting the gallery’s Japanese antiques and Samurai armor collections. The “Rock Paper Scissors” stainless steel and bronze sculpture by artist Kevin Box at a nearby gallery is another example.
“Rock, paper, scissors” sculpture in Santa Fe
Public art abounds in Santa Fe, and it comes in all shapes, sizes, and media. If you’re looking for garden art, there are plenty of public green spaces decorated with a variety of individual and collective installations. However, there are also outdoor garden galleries selling a whole host of fascinating pieces, including the mesmerizing whirligigs and the startling face sculptures. Public buildings also get in on the act. The “Santa Fe Current” is an installation by artist Colette Hosmer of sculpted fish “swimming” through pebbles in the garden area just outside Santa Fe’s Community Convention Center.
Whirligig garden in Santa FeSculpted garden faces in Santa Fe“Santa Fe Current” sculpture by Colette Hosmer
Bronze statues are almost ubiquitous in Santa Fe, scattered throughout the town on public and private property. I was especially enamored with the statues of children playing, but there are many other subjects by artists like Native-American sculptor Roxanne Swentzell. Statues of cowboys and animals are plentiful too. One of the most beloved statues resides in Thomas Macaione Park, named after a Santa Fe artist the locals affectionately called “El Diferente.” The statue depicts Macaione holding a paint brush and standing at his easel with a wooden crate at his feet holding his palette. There is also a statue of a dog resting a couple of feet away on the flagstones where Macaione stands. The piece was created by Mac Vaughan.
Thomas Macaione “el Diferente” bronze sculpture in Santa FeSculpture of children playing in Santa FeSculpture of a child reading in Santa Fe
One of the highlights of this trip was the opportunity I had to get up each morning just after sunrise and head down Canyon Road, which includes a half-mile section with over a hundred galleries, boutiques, and restaurants. From there I wandered around the old historic section of Santa Fe taking photos of art, architecture, gardens, wildlife, and the landscape. Some of the best shots I took of the surrounding countryside were from the hilltop ruins of Fort Marcy, which dates to the Mexican-American War. While I was roaming around the streets and alleys of Santa Fe in the cool of the early morning, there were very few people out and about at all. I could walk several blocks without seeing a soul. It felt like I had been given an exclusive pass to a museum that was closed for the day, and I was the only visitor. How unusual. How wonderful.
Sculpture of two Native-Americans in Santa FeSculpture of nude couple kissing in Santa FeSculpture of man and boy fishing in Santa Fe
In an earlier blog post, I wrote about the day I accepted an offer from the lawyer representing the executors of the estate of the late author, Flannery O’Connor, to work for the executors to establish the Flannery O’Connor-Andalusia Foundation. Among other objectives, this nonprofit organization would be charged with preserving Andalusia, the farm where O’Connor lived the last 13 years of her life and where she completed her published books. The year was 2000, and I was serving as the director of the local public library. I had been a devoted fan of O’Connor from the time I had studied her work as an undergraduate English major at her alma mater, Georgia College. The institution was called Georgia State College for Women during the time Mary Flannery O’Connor was there in the 1940s. She was larger than life, as so many writers of fine literature are to me. I was in complete awe that someone could write a novel like Wise Blood at the age of 27. She is considered an artistic genius by critics, an intellectual force by most scholars, and even a candidate for sainthood by some of her fellow Catholics. She was almost mythical in my imagination.
Flannery O’Connor
I spent most of 2001 working with memorabilia and artifacts associated with O’Connor’s life and career as a writer. O’Connor’s mother, Regina Cline O’Connor, donated a collection of material to Georgia College six years after the author died. This gift included many of the manuscripts from O’Connor’s published works, along with much of her personal library. However, Regina O’Connor held onto a considerable archive of books, manuscripts, published and unpublished letters, photographs, visual art, cartoons, sketches, journals, notebooks, business and personal records, and juvenilia. I was charged with sorting through and organizing the archive, creating an inventory, and preserving the items using archival containers and methods of storage. The vast majority of that remaining archive is now reposited at Emory University in Atlanta.
I sifted through hundreds of images of O’Connor in posed and candid photographs from infancy to shortly before her death from lupus at age 39. Particularly touching were pictures of her as a young child with her father, Edward, who also died from lupus when she was only 15 years old. I held in my hands the cartoons and sketches that O’Connor created while she was in high school and college, with characters and captions that foreshadowed the wicked humor so central to her fiction as a seasoned writer. I read every letter to her mother when O’Connor was away at graduate school in Iowa, some of which revealed strong emotions as she seemed to be searching for her own voice and an identity independent of the Cline family based in Georgia and Massachusetts. I read through her personal journals where she articulated deep feelings, thoughts, and struggles. I suspect she would be more than embarrassed to know that one of those journals has been published as a monograph.
When the Flannery O’Connor-Andalusia Foundation was officially established in 2002, the board of directors hired me as the organization’s executive director. I collaborated with professionals to design plans for restoring and preserving the farm and launched a campaign to raise money for the work ahead, which was monumental considering the farm was 544 acres with a main house that was not exactly in stellar shape and a dozen outbuildings in various stages of serious deterioration. While preparing the main house for public tours, I touched or picked up almost every object in the two-story 19th century structure, including many of Flannery O’Connor’s personal effects that had been left in the house for over three decades: medicine bottles, paint brushes, clothing, furniture, furnishings, Catholic paraphernalia, and of course, her crutches.
Main house at Andalusia
Honestly, I felt a bit uncomfortable at times in O’Connor’s private space, even decades after her death. I always tried to be respectful and mindful of the intrusion, necessary as it was. I arranged her bedroom/study as much as possible to the way Robert Fitzgerald described it in his introduction to O’Connor’s posthumous short story collection, Everything That Rises Must Converge. He had visited Andalusia shortly after the author died. He described the austere conditions under which O’Connor had written some of the best fiction of the 20th century. Indeed, I always sensed a certain ascetic atmosphere whenever I walked into that room.
Sadly enough, when a diagnosis of lupus forced her back from Connecticut to live at Andalusia with her mother, Flannery O’Connor faced a situation where privacy was almost impossible. A plaster wall with a connecting door separated her bedroom from her mother’s. The young writer had to adapt the first-floor sitting room on the main floor into her bedroom/study because the steep steps would have made walking upstairs an insurmountable challenge for her. The two women shared the only bathroom on the first floor. They ate almost every meal together, many of which were at the kitchen table. During the time I was working at the property, the kitchen was still equipped with the same table, sink, stove, cupboard, and the Hotpoint refrigerator O’Connor purchased with proceeds from the sale of the television rights to her short story, “The Life You Save May Be Your Own.”
Andalusia Farm kitchen
The house still contained much of what the O’Connors had when they lived there. The curtains that her mother had sewn while O’Connor was away on a speaking engagement were still covering the tall windows, clearly a hasty job performed by an otherwise gifted seamstress to avoid objections by the room’s unamenable occupant. On the mantle above the room’s fireplace, small photographs of grandparents in tarnished frames were nestled in with an assortment of novelties and knickknacks, several of which may have been gifts from some of her more unconventional long-distance friends.
Still hanging precariously in the bedroom window was the heavy air conditioner that O’Connor told one of her correspondents was an office supply, which she intended to write off her taxes. If the IRS questioned her, she had decided to argue that it “supplied” her office with cool air and was therefore a legitimate deduction. The humid summers of middle Georgia can be brutal and oppressive without air conditioning. Installed at the opening of the fireplace was a propane gas heater, which likely produced insufficient warmth on the coldest nights of the year to comfort O’Connor’s aching joints, under constant assault from disease and the effect of steroid treatments. She hated bitter cold temperatures, not only because of the physical pain they brought, but because they often resulted in frozen and burst pipes – no water, no plumbing. I can personally attest to the inadequacy of space heaters, which we were still using to heat the drafty old house while I was working there. The frigid air seeping in around the windows and doors and up through the hardwood floors chilled me to the bone. On some days, I wore two pairs of socks and thermal underwear in my office, formerly Regina O’Connor’s bedroom.
Mrs. O’Connor moved back into the Cline family home in town shortly after her daughter’s death, and the main house at Andalusia was never fully occupied again. No one was attempting to keep it clean or regulate the temperature. Regular maintenance was no longer a priority, although family members renovated the back portion of the house, replaced the roof, and rebuilt the front porch in the 1990s. The two-over-two spacious front rooms of the house, which included O’Connor’s bedroom, were mostly closed off for about 35 years. Time was not kind to the interior. Paint peeled and chipped away from the surfaces. The walls cracked, and in some places chunks of the horsehair plaster fell on furniture or to the floor. Insects took up permanent residence, along with the spiders who fed upon them and filled curtains and corners with cobwebs.
Flannery O’Connor’s bed
I worked at Andalusia for 13 years, the same amount of time that Flannery O’Connor lived there. I was alone in the main house a lot of that time, especially before the visitor traffic picked up and the foundation hired a part-time staff member to assist with tours and other tasks. His name is Mark Jurgensen, and he was a lifesaver. During those 13 years, I don’t know how many times, probably hundreds, I paused at the doorway of O’Connor’s bedroom and contemplated what her life must have been like at Andalusia. My eyes wandered around that room with its small bed, beautiful barrister bookcases, reading chair, and the crutches leaning against the wardrobe. O’Connor stared at the back panels of that piece of wooden furniture that served as her closet for several hours each morning at her typewriter, with only a brilliant imagination to assist her in crafting such powerful stories, letters, essays, and speeches.
I thought about the physical challenges she faced, the emotional and mental anguish she must have endured, perhaps the occasional sense of despair, the hopes and dreams she shared with no one, the doubts that surely surfaced, and the questions that remained unanswered to the very end. I am not superstitious. I tend to discount the metaphysical. I could never embrace the faith that was central to O’Connor’s understanding of the universe. And yet, there were moments when I genuinely sensed her presence in that place, not as a spirit or a ghost as so many visitors to Andalusia were ever hopeful to encounter. For me, the presence was a memory of someone I had never met. It was the manifestation of a courageous woman with an unusual name whose fictional characters were so bizarre, yet I recognized them immediately. It was the reflection of a living, breathing person, with all the flaws and imperfections inherent in our species, but one with a remarkable gift that is rarely exhibited or nurtured. For so many of us who have trouble hearing and seeing clearly, what she left behind is extraordinary.
Note: Andalusia is now one of several historic properties of Georgia College, which is responsible for its preservation and interpretation. Learn more at https://www.gcsu.edu/andalusia
Georgia College is also host to the Andalusia Institute, a public arts and humanities center that supports Flannery O’Connor scholarship, nourishes writing and the creative arts, and engages community members with the arts and humanities. Learn more at https://www.gcsu.edu/andalusiainstitute
If You Want My Opinion 