The King Sits in Dumfermline Town

Tags

art, music, narration, Sir Patrick Spens, writing

Stained glass window from the Abbot House at Dumfermline

I’ve had the opening lines of “Sir Patrick Spens” running through my head for the last few days, probably because I’ve been thinking about narrative economy. And rarely will you find a more economical opening than this:

The king sits in Dumfermline town, drinking the blood-red wine.

“Where can I find a good captain to sail this ship of mine?”

Then up and spoke a sailor boy sitting at the king’s right knee:

“Sir Patrick Spens is the best captain that ever sailed the sea.”

And there you have it. We know that king. He’s idling away his time, he’s contracted for a new bride from Norway, and he’s eager to get to the business of siring heirs. With the wine in his blood, he’s growing impatient. But why won’t anybody sail over to fetch her? We know the reason. It’s a crazy mission this time of year to cross the North Sea. But he will not be brooked; he’s the king, and his word is law.

And we know that sailor boy, too. Eager to please, the little underling. Eager to show off his knowledge. So he “up and speaks,” and from that foolish remark the tragedy unfolds. Sir Patrick, his frightened crew, and “all the lords and noblemen” sail off to their doom. The blood-red wine foreshadows their fate.

A chance exchange of words sets off a chain of events, unforeseen by those who speak the words but inevitable as death itself. Now that’s narrative economy.

Now Comes the Hard Part

Tags

Bagnell Dam, Big River, Black River, Bourbeuse River, Clearwater Lake, economics, flooding, Huzzah Creek, Jacks Fork, Marble Hill, Meramec, Missouri, Mountain View, Neosho, Ozarks, Piedmont, rivers, Seneca Mo, Steelville, Table Rock, Wappapello Lake, West Plains

Ozarkers, and those who follow the Ozarks, have been stunned by the widespread flooding that occurred after the past weekend’s heavy rains – more than 10 inches in many areas – and the road and bridge washouts that have happened as a result. (Follow “Love My Ozarks” on Facebook if you want to see the latest crowd-sourced photos and videos.)

The Black River near Hendrickson, photo by Peggy Carlstrom posted to the Love My Ozarks Facebook group.

If you live in a region of narrow valleys and steep hills, you get used to occasional washouts, and even the occasions when the little creek that runs through town gets out of its banks and floods Main Street. That creek, after all, is usually why the town was there in the first place. But this “rain event,” as the TV people like to call it, was historic. Instead of one town getting the big flood from an intense storm cell, as is usually the case, this time the whole region suffered. Seneca, Neosho, Mountain View, West Plains, Steelville, Marble Hill – towns from one side of the state to the other took the hit.

The flood-control dams at Clearwater and Wappapello, and the combo flood control/power generation dams like Table Rock and Bagnell, did what they were designed to do and held back the floodwater until they reached maximum capacity, and then had to begin releasing water through their floodgates and spillways. The resulting downstream flooding will no doubt be less than it would have been had the dams not been there, but creeping development in downstream areas also means that the damage to property will be more costly.

Meanwhile, as the Big, Bourbeuse, and Huzzah all pour their waters into the Meramec, folks in the lower regions of that river gear up their sandbags to protect as much of its valley as they can, a valiant effort regardless of whether the flooding on the Meramec is exacerbated by earlier human actions. The governor has already had his mandatory photo-op filling some sandbags and has activated the National Guard,  but the real work – and by that I mean the work that will tell the difference whether the towns of the Ozarks will survive in the long term – will begin in a few weeks.

The Jacks Fork near Eminence, photo by Morgan Paige Nash in the Love My Ozarks Facebook group.

Most of the small towns of the Ozarks have a tenuous hold on prosperity to begin with. One economic blow can have immense consequences for the people who live there. When the Wal-Mart in Piedmont closed recently, that closure took more than $200,000 out of local tax revenue, a blow that cannot be remedied in any short or medium term. And in a region that is already disproportionately populated by poor folks and retirees, one can’t just fix the shortfall by raising taxes. All over the region, governments and businesses will be cleaning up the mess, and then they’ll be faced with the decision of whether to try to start over or just give up.

But Ozarkers are not good at giving up. They are, as the saying goes, three kinds of stubborn. So over the next months and years, I hope to do my part to help the region the only way I can, and the only way that makes a long-term difference: by visiting the area and spending some money down there, particularly with those mom-and-pop businesses that don’t send away a chunk of their earnings to the National Headquarters in some distant location, but recycle it into their community as small businesses everywhere do.

 

The Art of the Rural

Tags

Anais Mitchell, art, Home Burial, Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain, Robert Frost, rural life, Shepherd, Song of Myself, The Art of the Rural, Walt Whitman

I’ve been a follower of the Art of the Rural group for quite a while now, and it’s heartening to read about the many endeavors across the country that bring vitality to rural life through the arts.

And, I might add, rural life brings vitality to the arts as well. In an increasingly suburbanized country, being versed in country things gives a dimension to one’s work that is inaccessible to those who are not so fortunate. I think of Huckleberry Finn’s intimacy with the rhythms of the river, Whitman’s “plumb in the uprights, well entretied, braced in the beams, stout as a horse,” and of course, work after work by Robert Frost. You don’t have to know the rural to appreciate these works, but it certainly helps.

This subject has been on my mind recently because I’ve had Anais Mitchell’s “Young Man in America” album in my car. I know next to nothing about Mitchell, but did read somewhere that she grew up on a farm. This upbringing seems particularly relevant in a song like “Shepherd,” where an understanding of the needs of farm life adds both complexity and pathos to what is already an infinitely sad song.

Reading comments about “Shepherd” on YouTube, I was struck by the disparity between those who saw the shepherd as heartless, or at least clueless, at the end of the song, and those who saw the song as a re-enactment of a familiar rural tragedy. The song reminds me of Frost’s “Home Burial,” in which the sensitive wife cannot bear the farmer’s return to labor:

“You could sit there with the stains on your shoes / Of the fresh earth from your own baby’s grave / And talk about your everyday concerns.”

Likewise, after the immense tragedy of the song, the shepherd “held the cleaver and the plow / and the shepherd’s work was never done.”

If you grew up on a farm, or if you know what it’s like to live on a farm, you know that human tragedy only interrupts the work of the farm, and that the labor must continue. Feelings may be buried, or repressed, or let out in some other way, but the cattle must be milked and the hay must be brought into the barn. The beauty and tragedy of rural life are particular in their application, and I wonder if the knowledge of these things will become lost to the coming generations.

Favorite Ozarks Places – 16

Tags

Annapolis, Big Creek, folklife, folkways, grist mill, Robinson Mill

Robinson Mill

You have to be a true old-timer to know about this one, as Robinson Mill, near Annapolis, burned down about 45 years ago. That’s a view of it from the Annapolis side of Big Creek; it sat on the west side of the creek, a little upstream from town.

Nowadays it’s commemorated only by the name of the road that once passed it; even photographs of it are hard to find, and I had to dig these out from the 1971 Annapolis centennial brochure. The mill was operated by Elmer Robinson and his son Homer, about whom I recall very little. They also smoked and sold hams and bacon. I remember visiting the mill and occasionally having some of their corn meal around the house; the mill was operated by a water wheel that turned from a long millrace that diverted water from the creek. Whenever the Robinsons wanted to grind some grain, they would crank up the sluice gates at the head of the millrace, and down would come the water. I believe it used a horizontal turbine underneath the mill—not as picturesque as an external water wheel, but more efficient.

Elmer and Homer Robinson grinding corn

A few mills still exist across the Ozarks, and I’ve been heartened to follow the progress of the restoration of the old mill at Greer. Not so long ago, having a mill nearby was essential to the economic life of a region, one of the first steps in moving from a life of strict subsistence to one where extra cash could be obtained. These structures link past to present in a tangible and physical way that brings folkways to life. I’ve never believed in nostalgia for its own sake; things of the past don’t necessarily gain value just because they’re old. But watching a grist mill grind corn is a wonderful window into a way of life—and a way of living—that is both surprisingly near and astonishingly distant.

 

 

Favorite Ozarks People – 13

Tags

Bud Schuller, Lesterville, nature, Piedmont, Taum Sauk

Bud Schuller (and me)

I got to know Bud Schuller when I was in high school, and had landed a summer job as a counselor at Camp Taum Sauk up the river from me. I still don’t know how I got that job; I think the owner, George Smith, hearing that I was a farm boy, thought I would be good with the horses, when in fact I have never been fond of horses and was quickly dispatched to other duties. In any event, I got the job, and that’s where I met this guy.

Bud (he acquired that nickname later) was the nature counselor, and while I fancied myself to be woods-wise, I quickly learned that there were people far more attuned to natural world than I was. A devotee of John Muir and Aldo Leopold, Bud went on to teach in the Clearwater school district for many years, imparting his love of nature and appreciation for its complexity to hundreds of young people in the region. And he continued his involvement with the camp, introducing many more hundreds of kids, mostly from the St. Louis area, to the pleasures of life in the Ozarks.

Kids are usually pretty quick to spot a fake, and I think that’s one of the reasons kids always take to Bud. They recognize that he is the genuine article and that his interest in them is real. He’s a master storyteller whose tales are usually about as tall as he is. But there’s always something worth paying attention to in his tales, even if they don’t get it at the time. He’s an indelible personality who leaves a lasting impact, and it was an absolute delight to reconnect with him while I was on a book-promotion trip to Poplar Bluff last weekend.

A Great Year for Reading

Tags

C.D. Albin, criticism, Daniel Green, literature, short stories

Hard Toward Home

Beyond the Blurb

Looking back over the past year, I realize what a great year I had for reading. (I know, it’s already the end of February, but I’m still digesting work from 2016.) Two books that I read toward the end of the year were C.D. Albin’s excellent collection of short stories Hard Toward Home and Daniel Green’s literary critical essays in Beyond the Blurb.

The stories in Hard Toward Home are brief and rather jaggedly structured, with characters we often find mid-crisis and for whom the crisis remains unresolved at the end of the story. They’re mainly set in the Arkansas Ozarks, in the contemporary era, with a few excursions out. The stories are beautifully written, but what I like best about them is that they take characters often overlooked or stereotyped in rural fiction–the angry middle-aged male, the frustrated professional man’s wife, for example–and find depth and humanity in those people.

Many of the characters in Hard Toward Home are poor, or nearly so. Even those who are not poor are pushed by economic necessity. I appreciate this element of the stories; the contemporary short story has so often been taken over by characters whose concerns are more ethereal, and (in my view) thus often less interesting. Albin’s stories explore and humanize overlooked people, and to me that’s a great thing.

Daniel Green’s book does a wonderful job of surveying the current landscape in literary criticism and evaluating those who practice it. It’s not a book for the general reader (I confess, I don’t consider myself qualified to evaluate the book entirely, as I’m not familiar with some of the critics he discusses), but for the literary scholar it’s a valuable addition. Green writes with great precision, and in a  time when much literary analysis seems more interested in advancing a theoretical perspective than actually engaging with the work, it’s refreshing to read a book that returns the focus squarely onto the workings of the literary work. I read it in little bits, as it consists largely of a sequence of essays, and I tend to take my literary criticism in small doses.

Both are well worth reading!

 

Favorite Ozarks People – 12

Tags

Arcadia, art, books, Frenzel, Ironton, libraries, literature

Stained glass window by Milton Frenzel

When I was a cub reporter, fresh out of college, many years ago in southern Missouri, I was looking for something to keep my mind active. I started attending a Great Books Club at the Ozarks Regional Library in Ironton, about an hour away.

And although I was a college graduate who had aced a couple of literature courses, and a working writer, Milton and Virginia Frenzel, who led the book discussions, were so deeply engaged with what we read, and on such a different level than most of my college professors, that they changed the way I thought about books for good. They didn’t just study them. They looked at them as living things, argued with them, demanded more from them. And by changing the way I thought about literature, they changed the way I thought about myself. And they weren’t even trying to do that. They were just being themselves, authentically and unselfconsciously, and in doing so opened up a new way of defining myself.

Milton and Virginia were an unlikely pair of Ozarkers: intellectual and urbane, they were among several artists who had emigrated from the St. Louis area to the Arcadia Valley, (others included Robert Harmon and Michael Chomyk). Milton and Bob Harmon designed stained glass windows for the Emil Frei Company of St. Louis, and Milton also painted. As I recall, Milton taught some art classes at the high school, although I don’t remember if he taught there full-time. I think they were largely in retirement by then. Virginia later served on the AV School Board.

That book group attracted some remarkable people, both natives and transplants. I may write about more of that group later. But for now, I’ll content myself by observing that if I ever dare to call myself an educated person, it’s a term that first began to become clear to me in a monthly book group at the Ironton library.

— Another Frenzel window.

 

A Writer’s Thanks

Tags

books, Thanks, Thanksgiving, writing

Here are a few things I am thankful for today:

• Readers who like what I do and who post reviews on Amazon, Goodreads, and elsewhere.
• Readers who have comments, questions, or criticism and post them or e-mail them to me. Honest criticism is always appreciated, believe it or not.
• Book clubs! Some of the best times of my writing life have happened at book clubs.
• A publisher and editor who collaborate, respond, and always keep the best results for the book in mind.
• Organizations and civic groups that ask me to come speak to them. And especially libraries. Libraries are the secret weapon of democracy.
• Those who quietly and unfailingly support me as I work. God bless them, and God bless you all.

Deer Season

Tags

culture, deer, hunting, Reynolds County, weapons

I am of the generation that got a couple of days off school every year for the opening of deer season. I don’t know how many schools in the Ozarks do that nowadays, if any, but it was common practice when I was growing up. For me, though, the opening of firearm deer season still carries with it an air of sanctioned hooky-playing, of hours spent in the woods in watchful silence.

My dad was an accomplished hunter and always took us boys out. I was never an especially good shot, and as a kid didn’t have the necessary patience to be a hunter. I recall one particular year after my restlessness had scared off at least two deer, I asked my dad what they were (meaning buck or doe). His reply, with controlled exasperation, was: “Well, they had white tails.”

Growing up in a hunting culture teaches a different sort of relationship between human and nature, one that can be less romanticized about the beauties of nature, although it has its own romantic notions as well. But it’s part of me, and I recognize that.

Another memory of deer season. The angriest I ever saw my dad get was when a carload of hunters parked on our farm (we were renting it at the time) and started to stroll across the field without asking permission. That was a violation of the fundamental rule of hunting on people’s land, and he confronted them. Their response didn’t suit him; even though we were on our way to church at the time, he wasn’t about to let it go, and things got heated in a hurry. To see that small, gentle man in his Sunday suit getting more and more furious as he robustly cussed out four armed strangers in hunting gear was something to behold, and ever after that we recalled it as “the day Dad got mad.”

Good times at Washington U.

Tags

Alpha Delta Phi, books, Eliot, Missouri, St. Louis, Washington University

Every year, the men of Alpha Delta Phi at Washington University choose a Missouri author to read and discuss. This year I was happy to be selected, and here’s a picture of us after my talk! They are aptly known as the Eliot Chapter of their fraternity. We talked for more than an hour, and they had some great comments and questions. Thanks especially to Tarun Chally (third from left), who was my contact person/organizer for the event. And despite the general glow, we aren’t about to be transported into a spaceship . . . just standing in a brightly lit foyer.