It is hard not to think of Nebraska without thinking of its greatest writer. Here is a marvelous piece by Capote, Remembering Willa Cather . I remember seeing a stage production of O Pioneers! and being deeply moved by its raw emotions. I had read My Antonia before, and soon found myself hooked, like Capote was by the simple elegance of her prose and the way she was able to evoke so many feelings through her characters. Much of it came from the fact that she had lived those experiences herself. Her father dragged the family from Virginia to Nebraska in 1883, when it was still a young state, settling in the town of Red Cloud. named after one of the great Oglala chiefs. Red Cloud was still alive at the time, living on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, in the aftermath of the "Great Sioux Wars" of 1876-77. I don't know whether Cather took any interest in the famous chief, although it is hard to imagine not. Upon his death in 1909, he was eulogi
Thanks for the link, Gintaras.
ReplyDeleteI love these posters -- the ranger naturalists were the topic of my MA thesis and will probably make some sort of appearance in my dissertation. That's what I was copying yesterday in the archives -- the early letters of assignment under Albright.
Did you know that many of the earliest naturalists in Yellowstone were women? A couple in Yosemite as well. Then they passed a regulation that naturalists are men and that's that (although the botanist in Yellowstone refuses to go away).
I was just looking back through this link and realized that this is the book on park architecture I read a few years back. I need to buy this one at some point.
ReplyDeleteAv, here's a wonderful site where you can shop for all kinds of cool NP retro stuff, including WPA posters,
ReplyDeletehttp://www.theparksco.com/
Very cool!
ReplyDeleteI have a friend in Livingston who designed some 30s-style luggage tags etc for tourists. I love that period, but then those were my people. I'm a New Dealer at heart (although I have to always assure my younger colleagues that I'm not _that_ old!).