I sat shrinking and did not notice the dusk,
Till falling petals filled the folds of my dress.
Drunken I rose and walked to the moonlit stream;
The birds were gone, and men also few.
As I prepare to leave North Dakota, I find it a place Li Po the great Taoist poet would have liked. Flickertail heaven is a place where a person can breathe, a place where you can abandon yourself to nature, a place where you can see the stars. It is a place where the great Taoist poet could have lived and, more importantly, written.
This seminar has given me a sense of North Dakota as place. Concurrently, it has intensified my feeling for the place most important to me, Hawai'i. It gave me precious time and needed distance to see my place from another perspective. Despite what may be a popular perception on the part of mainlanders, Oahu, the place where I live is only in part a tourist Mecca. Rather it is more a busy, vital, noisy place with lots of people, over 800,000 of them on a small island. The people where I live differ markedly from North Dakota's people. My German, Irish, English heritage puts me in a minority there. The majority is Asian: Chinese, Filipino, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, Thai and more. Caucasians and Polynesians are minorities. The people of Hawai'i have not blended as well as the people of North Dakota. We do not have a sense of regional identity, we do not see ourselves as Islandfolk.
I now have some small idea of who Plainsfolk are. They are strongly individualist like Elaine Elijah, Mary Thompson, Bart Popowski, Chuck Suchy, Jurgeon Haugen, John Hegleland, and Tom Isern. They value their freedom and their space. They are not easily amenable to outside influences. They are Daoist in the sense of having respect for the land. They adapt to the land rather than trying to bend the land to their own ends. They understand the following:
For one's dwelling, choose ground well.
In cultivating one's mind/heart search the wells deep.
In dealing with people treat them well.
In speaking know how to keep one's word.
Lao Tzu's words resonate with Plainsfolk, particularly those in North Dakota. Whether there was an actual Lao Tzu is uncertain, he may be mythical. However, one legend has it that as Lao Tzu left China toward the end of his life, he headed for the West. I'd like to think that he got to Norway and found his way to the Sheyenne River with those brave Norsemen who legend holds were among the first inhabitants of North Dakota.
As I leave the Plains, Li Po again seems appropriate.
Blue mountains to the north of the walls,
White river winding about them;
Here we must make separation
And go out through a thousand miles of dead grass.Mind like a floating wide cloud,
Sunset like the parting of old acquaintances
Who bow over their clasped hands at a distance.
Our horses neigh to each other's as we are departing.
Perhaps out of a sense of obligation to the purposes of the NEH Summer Seminars for teachers, I add that the experience of the quest for knowledge and a more perfect understanding of what it is that so attracts me to the plains is really a manifestation of the questions that all students should have--the questions that produce intellectual activity and maybe even concrete action that leads to more meaningful lives for all of us. My quest will help my students as I challenge them more forcefully to begin or continue their own.
I recognized him as soon as he entered the lobby. I introduced myself. We shook hands. He looked at me for fully 10 seconds without saying anything else. Taking measure? The discussion was fruitful, Dr. Johnson volunteered to furnish me a file of print information about elevators, and our conversation will likely be continued next week when we hope to do site visits to several elevators. The encounter was businesslike, but I felt a connection with a gentleman who empathizes with people and place.
I tried hard to quickly familiarize Dr. Johnson with the NEH Great Plains seminar and my goals concerning the elevator study. We moved through a series of questions about the construction of the structures, their purpose and use, and their connection to the land and people as artifacts of the landscape. Dr. Johnson is also very knowledgable about the design of early twentieth century farmsteads and indicated a sensitivity toward farmers and the place of their livelihood and home--the farm and farmstead. I showed him an aerial photograph of our old family farmstead in Nebraska and explained how I used the photo in a presentation about the Pavelka farmstead as a model for the Cuzak place in Willa Cather's My Antonia. I explained the idea as farmstead as enclosure and sanctuary and the connected idea of sense of movement of a farmer from field to farmyard to house (especially the kitchen). I added that the barn in the photo had burned about seven years ago. He returned to my comments about sanctuary and looking at me said, "You want to see that barn from the kitchen." Of course he knew--how many farmers had he known with the same sentiments? Of course he understood the concept of personal identity as a function of place.
Dr. Johnson was lean, his hands were the hands of a working man. He spoke deliberately and always with reserve. I walked him to the door of the Pavek Hall lobby. I was profuse in my thanks; he teased me, "You haven't got my bill yet." We shook hands and he got on his bike. Professor Emeritus Dexter Johnson was impressive--a man of knowledge and feeling. He wore a plaid shirt and jeans.
The Roman Meal flour mill on 12th Avenue caught my eye when I first exited I-29 and began looking for the NDSU campus and Pavek Hall in early July. The big Roman Meal sign beckoned with a familiar logo that heretofore came from neat rows of bread at Dorothy Lane Market in Dayton, Ohio. I parked my Jeep in front of the nondescript office which is really a part of the mill proper, walked in, stuck my head in the only open doorway and met Daryll. We talked about the industry; I explained the NEH seminar and my final paper on three old wooden grain elevators. He showed me aerial photos of the Fargo mill and one other. Emboldened, I asked about hats. Without hesitation Daryll reached into a plain brown cardboard box beneath his desk and handed me a fine ballcap with a wheat sheaf and "Roman Meal" embroidered across the crown. I grinned from ear to ear and pointed out that I'd wear the hat for my elevator presentation. He laughed and enjoyed my thrill. Outside the elevator and wearing my new hat, I talked to young David Lundquist by his big Kenworth-powered hopper trailer as he emptied a load of wheat bran into a grain dump. David is from north of Grand Forks and his dad runs a big wheat operation near the Canadian border. David, a graduate of the University of North Dakota, said it's hard to make a living in wheat and was glad to be driving the truck.
The Kenworth truck was another part of Fargo that pulled on me. Western town, big distances, the road west wide open and ready, push that Ken-bopper down the road. Or so goes the jingle in my mind as the Kenworths, Peterbuilts, and Freightliners blow by me on the interstates. With this image in mind I walked into the big Kenworth dealer building at the I-29/12th Avenue interchange. The secretary pointed me towards the parts department. In the parts display area, along with huge mudflaps, replacement turn signal lamps, cables, tarps, and other truck gear was a clothing display--plenty of shirts and caps with the Kenworth logo, but not good in my view. Too easy to say "no" to my special request. We talked. I met young _____, a counter man in parts. He listened intently to my description of the plains seminar and elevator project. My question about the hats brought a gesture of "We only have what's there," as he indicated the the hats for sale. I said, "But what about your agency logo?" He thought and began a search. "We had hundreds of those a while back," he said. He walked to a small adjoining room and quickly returned with a bright orange and white hat. Across the crown was printed "Wallwork Truck Center-Fargo-Bismarck, ND." As I boarded my Jeep images of Kenworths and Peterbuilts, jake brakes popping, diesel clattering and supercharger whining mixed filled me with the prospect of a long haul. But Pavek Hall was only minutes away, and plenty of work for seminar brought me back to earth. Still, I backed my dinky "rig" into its parking place, set the brake, and adjusted the truck hat on my head. My grin was as bright as the sun overhead. Fargo-north country-open road and some pretty decent folks. Good place to be.
But the house--Stegner's little cottage--moved me. I suppose it registered that this is where the formative years occurred. This town in this far away place, these geographical features right up to this yard, this house unfolded like a drama. I was on the porch, in the tiny entry hall, the living and dining rooms and small kitchen. In the private areas, the bedrooms upstairs, I sensed the spirit of the time, the struggle to make a workable life through the hardships of the plains and the family.
Sharon Butala and Tom Isern stood together on the upstairs landing--little Sharon, tall Tom--a very solicitous man hoping his students understood the importance of this place, this author, this moment when serendipity was on our side. Sharon was happy to tell the story of the place; there was a domestic tone in her language and she just liked the house. Sharon relaxed with time, always courteous and friendly and willing to field questions ranging from the literary to the mundane. Her equanimity won me over.
Later in the day we followed Sharon south of Eastend to her ranch. Then behind her, around her, we walked the pasture to her special hill--the place of the burial ground, turtle formation or prayer ring, and row of stones apparently long ago placed by the aborigines for solar observation. The weather was as it should be in such sacred places--clouds darkening the skies, with little pellet-like droplets of a rain that never could really develop. But there was just enough moisture in the air to be eucharistic; some kind of sacredness was in those cold droplets. Standing by the ring of stones, I was buffeted by the fine fresh clean wind. My hat blew off--we were all startled. Good omen, I immediately felt, or a horrible one. If still a little disquieted, I willed it to be good. The wind was showing me how precarious everything is, how we must rmember that some forces are whimsical at best, otherwise frighteningly powerful and arbitrary. Sharon entered the ring of stones, retrieved my hat and handed it to me. I think she liked what had happened--those spirits she has so often felt had spoken again.
I arrived to find friendly and solicitous people. I felt comfortable early on, and felt, at least initially, that there were a number of people whom I might wish to invite into my home one day. I knew within a few days that this would be closer to my North Carolina experience than my Virginia. But there was one more question that loomed large, a question that actually was far more important to me than one of friends or comfort.
For years I've wanted to do some writing. I never did get started; at least in part because I never could come up with what it was I wanted to write about. My hope was that I might return from Fargo with a topic or plan that would set me on my course. What could I write about?
First stop Chautauqua. I got my hands on about a half dozen books pertaining to the old Chautauqua circuits. I was hoping I might find a diary of a Chautauqua performer who traveled from town to town and wrote about it. My hope of hopes was that this diary would be that of a Shakespearean actor. I would get this diary and retrace the route of my spiritual fellow traveler. I would describe the towns as I found them and note how my predecessor had found them as well. Toss in an occasional quote from the Bard, and I might be on to something. Of such stuff my dreams were made on. But no such diary was to be had.
Next stop, the journals of the fur trade era, perhaps that of a fur trader, or that of a visiting artist or naturalist. I might canoe the same trip, or hike the same route, but I wanted it to be somewhere on the upper plains, preferably in or near western South Dakota. These journals could be had. I secured several, and found the names of several more that were out of print, but would not have been difficult to acquire should I have felt they were right for me. I read through several, and while they were indeed fascinating, they did not speak to me. I did not hear myself exclaim Eureka!
At the same time I was searching for my muse, I was involved in a personal quest as well as the business of the seminar. I was involved in searching the university archives and visiting three small towns a couple of hours north in order to learn what I could about the man I was named after, my great-great-grandfather. I was also writing reports to present before my colleagues, three of which pertained to the work of people with which I felt an especial bond: Niels Hansen, an explorer naturalist, the Burbank of the plains, a man who knew and mastered the plant world of the plains; Willa Cather, a woman who captured the aesthetic and spiritual world of plains dwellers; and Joseph Campbell, the man who understood that God was a mask, who climbed up into religion from the psychic underside, and freed the shaman. Along the way a curious thing happened.
I met with a good deal of approval. It seemed that here among this group there were those who felt that I had spoken their thoughts. Certainly I was delighted with the praise, but that was not what mattered most, no, not at all. What happened was that my self-confidence as an aspiring writer was boosted, and most important of all, I figured out where to look for my muse; within my own experiences. Perhaps one day I will do some writing using the journal of a fur man, but first I need to write about what I have seen and felt in my own lifetime, before I go trying to crawl into somebody else's skin.
I have met with success, I got what I came for, and I owe it all to others much more than I do to myself.
"At least it's July and August, not January and February. Plus, there's a check involved – you know me--the educational mercenary."
I must have had this conversation, or at least some variation thereof, with at least ten different people during April and May of this year when I talked about coming west for this NEH seminar. But something happened when I came out here. It became more than just another educational seminar--it became an adventure that opened my eyes as to just how differently some people view the world.
Now up front, I've got to tell you that I can list my major priorities fairly easily--God, my family, my personal interests, and my job--just about in that order. My perfect afternoon would be lying in bed on a Sunday afternoon, with a Phillies game on the radio, a new Stephen Ambrose book across my lap, and a cooler with an iced six-pack within easy reach. I figured to come West, go with the flow for five weeks, catch a couple of baseball games, visit some national parks with the kids, and get ready to start school as soon as I returned to the Scranton area. All of this worked pretty well except for going with the flow. I've had my eyes opened so many times by people in this seminar that it's been incredible. The appreciation that people have for the land--an almost religious oneness with the land is something that I just can't fathom yet people speak of the land as if it's the be-all and end-all. As I've participated in the seminar, listening to many of them proselytize as to how man needs to go back to a more natural state, I've developed a greater appreciation for not only the Great Plains, but also for the forests, lakes, and hills of Pennsylvania.
It's this view that seems so foreign to me, and that I've come to appreciate, although it still isn't me. I've always seen relationships with people, social contexts, and simply gathering information as more important than becoming a more natural human being and getting back to the land. My wife sometimes accuses me of being a "human doing" rather than a "human being," and I must say that often she does have a point.
My goal in coming out here was to learn more about the history of the Great Plains, and how the land and people impacted to form that history. Walter Webb was a good starting point here, but again, his was a biased viewpoint. By looking at Great Plains writers, I began to appreciate the different cultures--Native American, German, Irish, Norwegian, Swedish, Ukrainian, Czech, Russian, and a multitude of others--that developed the culture of the Great Plains. Yet this still didn't give me the real history. It's in reading about why some groups stayed and some groups didn't, and differences between "stickers" and "leavers," that I began to better understand the Plains culture. It was in listening to North Dakota teachers like Mary that I began to get a feeling for what people appreciated (and didn't appreciate) here in the Plains. Even reading people like Kathleen Norris, who takes a more modern, urban view of the problems and beauties of the Plains helped me better understand just how unique the problems of the Plains are.
I need to see things up close and personal to better appreciate them and the trips every weekend made a deep impression on me. I thought that what I saw on these trips was really impressive, and were things I'd never see in Pennsylvania, but that didn't mean I fell in love with the land. Land to me is my little piece of the world--the one that I have to mow, shovel in the winter, and take care of the rest of the year. Parks are nice for enjoyment, and other land is there for someone to use for either enjoyment or profit. I now understand that for those people who have farmed the land for decades, or who grew up in families that had farmed the land for decades, land is much more important than it will ever be for me. I understand that they worry more about how land is to be utilized, and they debate the best kinds of utilization for specific types of land. They also have a greater love for the land, and truly worry about environmental questions concerning land use much more than I ever will.
Did I succeed in my quest? Yes. I learned so much more about the Plains that I'll be able to use in my American History and geography classes, and I truly enjoyed the camaraderie of this group. I made friends from around the country, and I truly appreciate the opportunity to share my viewpoints with other teaching professionals. Did I develop the true love of the land that many Plains natives have? No, and I don't think I ever will. But that's OK. Because what I did learn was to appreciate where these people are coming from, and to at least better hear the voices that cry out for a proper stewardship of our nation's environment.
It's hard to know now what brought my whole family together, week after week, to watch The Lawrence Welk Show. It was partly, no doubt, because very little else was happening in Blackstone: the town movie (20˘ adults, 10˘ children) kept the same feature for weeks at a time; Grove's Drive-In was closed in winter; the bowling alley at Camp Pickett was not family entertainment on Saturday night; a trip to Petersburg (35 miles) or Richmond (60) was too extravagant.
Perhaps we sat in front of accordion players, a family of girls singing in close harmony, a grinning woman beating the heck out of piano keys because they seemed more provincial, more small-town than even we were. Though a Forrester might play trumpet or trombone in the school band, no one of us had ever picked up an accordion, that weird-to-us-contraption that blended an organ keyboard with big braille dots and fireplace bellows.
I do not believe that I have thought about Lawrence Welk for at least 35 years. But on our first week in Fargo, on a visit to the temporary headquarters of the Institute for Regional Studies, I saw a color pamphlet for a Welk collection (or perhaps a theme park: I never saw it again, though I looked for it on later visits). Locating his hometown of Strasburg on my visitor's map, looking through a few clippings in the NDSU archives, and eventually reading a little of his "autobiography" at the Fargo Public Library filled in some missing pieces from my childhood--pieces I did not even know were missing.
As weird as it seems, since I have no ties at all to North Dakota, this five weeks for me has been a series of found pieces that I didn't know were missing. I have come home to myself, and I didn't even know I was away.
I have learned from listening to colleagues who have maintained vital ties to their land that my parents' farm is too important to me to let it just slip into some developer's hands when Dad and Mom, who turn 80 and 78 this fall, cannot drive the tractors, cultivate the garden, mow the huge lawn. The taciturn Joe and Sandy and Mike have demonstrated that silence is not to be feared but welcomed, and from Sharon Butala's writing I have some words to help me understand why I think talking things through is therapeutic when in fact it might just be dangerous to community. Karen has taught me to look around me and to learn the names of what I see. Alex has challenged me to confess to myself my at least 1 or 2 or 25% agreement with statements of startling candor. My history friends have shown me that I have a terribly narrow focus on life when I read only "literature," and the elementary teachers revealed a depth of interest and ability that is in no way elementary. I am amazed at what my colleagues eat and drink and find interesting: grain elevators, fishing, Roman Catholicism, water, one-room schoolhouses, sacristans of country churches. I have learned when to brake (pheasants in the roadway: they're slow) and when to release the brake (before putting the van into drive, at least next time).
I have been surprised at the depth of my emotions. A heartfelt report on a family farmstead fairly tore me in two: I couldn't bear to see the reverence with which Mike held the aerial shot of his family's Nebraska farm. The crank telephone on the wall of the Stegner house was not like any I'd ever used, but when I rang the two longs, two shorts of my childhood phone number I felt a rush of longing for the days when I knew a simple joy in making and getting phone calls, always from friends.
Best of all, I have dozens of new paths to follow when I return home. Partly-read books alone are worth a page in my Commonplace Book, and recommendations from other good readers have me set for years. I have chances to teach books in common with someone in Kansas and another in California, a documentary filmmaker's career to catch up on and follow. And in a few hours I will have time for real reflection: the pace has been exciting, involving, and almost too much. I need a heavy dose of silence.
While I expected much of this physical and intellectual journey to study the Great Plains in Fargo, North Dakota, I find myself smiling at the end of each day, thinking that once again, it has been better than I imagined. Now, I find myself examining what exactly has made this such a satisfying experience.
First, I love the subject matter defining the intellectual journey. I suppose someone could mess up the topic with endless, monotone lectures, but it would take some work to ruin this subject for me. The fact that the facilitator knows not only about the history of the Great Plains, but also about its literature, politics, ecology, biology, sociology, music, and so on certainly added an extra component I did not expect. This ability to link the enhancement reports to the texts helped me see relationships I struggled to understand prior to the seminar. Sometimes, I gained an entirely new understanding of something I had not questioned previously. An example would be the discussion concerning the development of the Canadian West versus the settlement of the United States West. Probably the best part of the seminar is not the fact that I got a lot of answers, but the fact I go home with a lot of questions and a good bibliography to guide further study. It is kind of like warming myself twice by chopping wood. I will warm my intellect twice by pursuing these interests triggered during the discussions.
In addition to a well-prepared leader, the other participants were terrific co-travelers. Like all learning experiences, we get as much from our fellow learners as we do from text and instructor. Every person in the room, including the leader, was a receptive learner. I loved listening to other opinions and other questions I had not considered myself. My mind bulges with analytical, poetic, political, economic, social, historic, musical, and literary thoughts with which I did not arrive. This is good luggage to carry home.
Fun is an important component of any trip, and we had some original fun! I had never thought about tick picking as a hoot, but it can be in the right crowd. Mountain climbing has never been my forte either, but hiking up Mt. Snorri with this group was great. Each field trip revealed one more aspect of the Great Plains to add to my box of treasured memories. I will never forget Chuck Suchy singing “Dakota Dreamer” against a perfect North Dakota sunset. Chasing Deb as she shot the East End parade goes right up there on my time good times list. It only got better when Sharon Butala shared her sacred Indian sites. In almost every instance, the fun played out against a backdrop of cloud punctuated blue Great Plains sky.
I expected to read and listen a lot, write some, and go on a few excursions. Well, I got everything I expected. In addition, I made connections and loops into my past I did not expect. Somehow, everything seems to circle back to previous experiences. As we studied Momaday, I realized I had lived in the midst of Kiowa country without knowing it. My research on the Kiowa clarified some of my college experiences, years after the fact. Stegner’s book makes me wonder about the life of an intellectual in a small town. I refuse to accept defeat, so I plan to go home to start a reading circle.
I had just finished the novel Texas a few months ago, and I recognized much of Webb in Michener’s work. In addition, I have loved McMurtry novels for years, and he links to Webb and Stegner. The ripples keep widening. Antonia has always been a favorite, but our group discussions broadened the interpretations I previously held. Whose story is it any way? Through this study of the Great Plains, I connected to authors I have always loved and learned of new authors I want to read. What a gift!
And the food. . . . For a person who relieves stress by cooking, five weeks of eating out could have been a punishment. Instead, we visited eating establishments with personality. As Mike said, this was an epicurean delight. Knoephle suppe is good, but wild rice soup is better. North Dakota kuchen defies Volga-German description, but it is every bit as good. I love to travel and eat, so combining the two became an art form.
Going home will be difficult. I will miss the conversations and explorations the group has shared. But I will take so much with me that I have not yet digested. I figure this seminar is good for at least six to twelve solid months of walking in deep thought through miles and miles of pasture. What will come of this I do not know yet, but I feel confident that I will find the words eventually to share this experience and what it has meant to me with others, perhaps through poetry, essays, or maybe a novel. The fact that I attended this seminar at a turning point in my life suggests possibilities I had not previously considered. I am eager to see where this journey ends.
Tom, ya done good! You did an amazing balancing act between guidance and freedom. This group took the freedom you offered and ran with it. It will be hard to repeat for those of us who experienced the magic moments. I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up, but odds are it will have something to do with history. You added some fuel to the fire.
I'll cite Webb and Cather to explain my conviction.
Webb's thesis--that Western history can best be understood as the result of environment--is problematic.
Yes, we do respond to our environments--sometimes we prevail, sometimes we succumb--but respond we must. However, this seminar has reminded me that environment is not the only component in defining who and what we are.
I'll pose this question to my students when next we study Neihardt's Song of Three Friends: Do Mike Fink and Frank Talbeau fall from innocence because of environment or because of character? In other words, does the environment of the West contribute to their undoing, or are their deaths the result of some personal (perhaps universal) flaw, say jealousy, anger, or pride? What other factors explain why this story ends tragically? Similar questions are relevant to other works of Western literature that I teach.
In sum, reading and discussing The Great Plains has taught me to consider multiple perspectives, including Webb's, when teaching history or literature.
Rereading Cather's My Antonia was the high mark of the seminar for me.
I've taught the novel several times, but my focus has shifted over the years. At first, I put most of my attention on Antonia or on ways that Cather captures the spirit of the Plains experience. In the past five or six years, I have shifted my attention toward Jim Burden's role, particularly on his use of the past. When I wrote my essay for Dakota Monographs, I had an opportunity to explore Jim Burden's development in greater detail. I now see Jim as the central character of the novel.
Once I finished my paper, other questions arose. Why does Cather create a narrator who reconciles himself to his past but who must return to an unsatisfactory present--a childless marriage, a wife with whom he shares no passion, a job as legal counsel for a railway? What is Cather suggesting by this tension? Proust notwithstanding, can that tension ever be resolved?
These are a few of the questions generated by our group that I plan to share with my students. Although I have some answers in mind, I want to hear what my first-time readers of My Antonia have to say.
So how has this seminar helped me to become a better teacher?
For one, it has compelled me to reconsider the ways I teach Western literature. For another, it has introduced me to writers on the West whose books I have not read, or have not read closely enough. Finally, this seminar has confirmed what Mildred Bennett told me over twenty years ago. Glaring at me with her penetrating blue eyes, she said, "Joe, the literature of the Plains is important, and it belongs in your classroom. You ought to be teaching more of it." In my youthful arrogance, I hesitated at first to teach Cather, Neihardt, and other writers of the West. Then I gave them a try. Now I'm hooked--and glad of it.
Trips to the surrounding area were not altogether encouraging. On one trip our group learned about the prairie and met local ranchers. I enjoyed listening to the ranchers but would have settled for a briefer account of leafy spurge. On another trip we visited a false-front town and learned how one family adapted to life on the Plains by raising bison. I liked this part of the day but did not find Fort Ransom's Black Viking to be particularly impressive until I read our guide's article on the statue. Then I understood how important a sense of place is to people on the Plains, for it is part of their identity. I had been coming to an appreciation of place and identity from my recent reading and from conversations with traveling companions. Our trip to Canada heightened that appreciation.
The first impressions I had of the region centered on its vastness, sameness, and emptiness. Traveling through Saskatchewan in particular reminded me of my initial reaction to the Great Plains. Yet I began to see exceptions to the sameness of the terrain in the hills of western North Dakota and the Cypess Hills. Our visit to Sharon Butala's made me aware of the stark beauty of the area. Our stop in the eminently livable city of Winnipeg altered my perception of Manitoba. The visit to the Hudson's Bay Company exhibit was quite informative. I began to see how the region is not so uniform as it seems. I have learned that, and much more, about the Plains. After all, by the second week I changed my descriptors of the region to dry, open, and complex. Now I would replace "open" with "vast." If I stayed here longer, I would probably have to find a new descriptor. I realize that what I knew before is not so certain as it once seemed.
Let's start with its impact on me. Firstly, it is important to note that I've not been in a classroom for a 5 week consecutive classroom series of sessions for 25 years. It has been a long time! Yes, I've participated on a yearly basis in 2 to 3 professional conferences in that 25 year span. However, each conference was a one day session with 30 to hundreds of participants. Individual expression was extremely limited. What a difference we have here! Fourteen colleagues, all well experienced, well read, extremely articulate, and every one highly motivated became my peer group, and, perhaps became the strongest element in the Seminar. It is this setting which produced the focal point for my thinking and scholarship.
I'll remember the morning sessions the most because it was at these sessions where each of us had to apply our best thinking and where each of us had to be well prepared because of the pride we have in ourselves. None of us wanted to face embarrassement. In short, it was peer pressure which drove us to excellence, not the habit or prospects of grades. It was this "excellence" that prepared an entre for me to the nuances and subtleties each of us brought to our daily morning "round table." I thought Cather's My Antonia was merely a good story. My peers gave me an education here. I thank them.
After spending a week of preparations and discussions I find that Cather wrote a most profound book, rich in culture and steeped in Great Plains tradition and lore. It is now truly a complete book.
Similar transformations occurred as we completed Wolf Willow and immersed ourselves in Momaday's works. My center of gravity, my core and my point of reference constantly was directed and spun by our fourteen member peer group. They turned Stegner, Cather, Webb and especially Momaday (a personal challange for me) in many directions. And, above all, this ‘Group" made me think and express myself as I have not done for quite some time. This was one of the reasons for wanting to participate. My goal has been achieved.
A word about the speakers and field trips. With the exception of one, day long adventure and even it contained positive aspects, the speakers and our field experiences enhanced and broadened the academic phase of the Seminar more so than my expectations. Visiting ranches and meeting Dakotans was enlightening. My cataract vision of pre-Seminar Dakota country and Northern Great Plains has clarity now. I can "see" a bit clearer now! I use field trips in my school. I've found them to be the best teachers.
The specific souvenirs are not as important as how this seminar will change me, my perceptions of both myself and my county, and how I apply those changes to my classroom. The impacts are bone-jarring. First, I am not nearly as adaptable as I once was, or thought I once was. Being without touchable books and tied to a network of information is amazingly sterile. Yet, that is the world my students will develop. In many ways, all the efforts I have made to open technological doors for them are peachy keen. But books don't short out, and it's not comfortable to curl up in bed with a monitor. That's a lack of adaptation. And not because I'm stuck in the past, either; my style of discovery just needs a book. Second, I have learned that I and those like me raised in a free-roaming social order just don't fit into an urban population well. That's a huge, change-making discovery. And this is an area requiring much reflection. Third, I am struck by how much ethnicity is rampant. We don't have a diverse ethnic population, but we don t make a big issue about identifying ourselves as Germans, Irish, or Norwegian so much. We're just mongrels. Our labels are there, certainly, but not based on that. I can understand more and more how we may develop stereotype based on ethnicity because when people focus so strongly on that element of themselves, it's pretty hard to ignore it and focus on the human wearing the tag. Figuring out how to learn about groups which do have tags, drawing conclusions, and then discussing them without giving offense and still providing fact will haunt me for a long time. Another impact I'll feel for a long time pertains to Stegner's wilderness. I'll need to figure out how knowing a wilderness is there will be any more helpful than knowing food is there while I'm starving. It's not enough. Environment is imporant but it's more than wallpaper surrounding us.
Now the expecteds. Most useful, is gathering up some new stuff to liven up 20+ years of teaching.
After a while, it's hard to think of new ways to deliver the goods, bait the hook, and hand out keys.
Naturally, the fish fed me and the river trips offered biteless time to create some tolerable verse.
Bringing Al and the vehicle gave me a grand exploring time that I had not gotten from previous seminars. The bottom line is that I wanted to find something different to do this summer, something complicated to think about, and something that would help me address the needs of a small population of students who will live in a different world than I. I got it, but I'm not quite sure what I'll do with all of it. I know I will develop a local project with my students using interviews with a rich database of old folks, creative projection into a dramatic form, and public performance . . . kind of an "OUR STORY OF THE PLAINS EXPERIENCE" sort of thing. And, if I live long enough and can go to another NEH seminar, I'll pack along bits and parts of Fargo, just as I brought Rochester and Gambler this time.
To calm myself, I pulled out the NEH Great Plains Seminar materials to revisit the text titles we'd study. I'd already bought two of the four books: Webb's Great Plains and Cather's My Antonia, figuring that even if I didn't get selected, the reading wouldn't harm me. Stegner's was the next book I bought, and the first one I read . . . after all, he dedicated the story to his mother, so I knew he couldn't be bad. As I devoured Wolf Willow, I was caught up in the glories of his descriptions, and my eyes almost hurt as I tried to take in the Canadian expanse . . . my toes almost froze as I survived the blizzard with the cowboys.
July arrived, and I escaped the Texas heat in a plane crossing the Plains where I had a birds-eye view of our study topic. The vista was decorated by millions of acres of flat. Section-line roads divided the farmland, not always in perfect squares, but rectangular with big bites taken out of corners, and often as not, unique curves, curls, and rolls where the farmers displayed their art of mowing and cutting.
Touchdown at the airport heightened anticipation and trepidation. All my plans had looked good on paper, but now it was time for the real deal. Halfway through the security arch in the airport, I saw a red-haired, freckle-faced "gal" heading through the opposite side. Stretched between Pam's two hands was one piece of lined notebook paper, with my name, written in simple blue ink across the 8 ˝" expanse. She beamed a smile in my direction, and don'tcha knowit, through happy fortune, I was in Fargo.
After hoisting five weeks worth of books, papers, clothes, and shampoo into the trunk of Pam's car, I was transported to the front of Pavek Hall. Our arrival coincided with the emergence of a herd of seminarians from the decorative brush, with our illustrious leader bravely in the fore, returning from a tour of the campus. There was a lot of back-slapping and hat-waving going on, but everyone seemed good-natured despite the evil mosquitoes they battled.
We strangers became fast and permanent friends, united by a thirst for learning and sharing and adventuring. With gentle nurturing we discovered history, geography, topography, and ethnicity; we sampled the strengths and weaknesses of the people who settled the Great Plains Region, and we watched massive buffalo stir up the dust and our imaginings. If I could return to North Dakota, I would pack in a flash. The places our seminar group had visited would be the haunts to which I'd treat myself. First stop: way into nowhere to see the pelicans. I would sit in the whispering grass, with the wind blowing in my face, and sketch the water, the waist-high blades, the glittering birds.
I'd head back to Buffalo and spend time at the grotto. If I sat there quietly enough, maybe some of the stories would filter through me . . . and I'd wait for Suchy to wander by with his guitar, singing of dancing in the kitchen and motorcycle rides. I would relax in the pub, drawing and writing of farmers and fishermen, waving away flies while downing a Grain Belt Beer. I would finger-trace the carvings in the tables and the benches outside and even on the walls of the bathroom. Grain elevators, windmills and fringed orchids, old barns and potato plows, maybe even a cow and a sugar beet would enter my sketchbook and commonplace.
Before leaving, I would once more travel the campus sidewalks. I might try to find a book in the library! I'd sit by the fountain and listen to the gurgle and splash. I'd wave if a familiar professor passed by. I'd wiggle my toes in the grass and soak up the sun's rays while a cool Dakota breeze blows over me. And I would envision the Antonias and Lenas, the Lakotas and Norwegians, the Momadays and Stegners who held dear this same earth beneath their feet.