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 Trippler for the links.
ReplyDeleteYou bet!
ReplyDeleteI wish that somehow I could go back in time to exchange a few ideas with those brilliant folks in the T's. How would the nation and world have changed if they were aware of what was to come? I think it would be a very different world, indeed.
184-year-old Adams letter found
ReplyDeleteSixth president wrote about parents’ burial
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/04/21/184_year_old_adams_letter_found/?s_campaign=yahoo
"Adams penned the letter, dated Sept. 8, 1826, two months after his father died on the young nation’s Independence Day. He was seeking permission from the supervisors of the church, which he called a “temple,’’ to bury his father and mother there.
“I have considered it a duty devolving upon me to erect a plain and modest monument to his memory: and my wish is that divested of all ostentation it may yet be as durable as the walls of the Temple to the erection of which he has contributed, and as the Rocks of his native Town which are to supply the materials for it,’’ Adams wrote."
I will have to check but I wonder of JQA had any influence upon the T's or vice versa. He was religiously orthodox while most of them were not so this may have had some impact on their exchanges, if any.
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