FHSU Homecoming 2021

When my husband and I attended Fort Hays State University, we scheduled all of our classes in the morning so that we could work 30 hours a week--afternoons, late Thursday evenings, and all day Saturday.  We watched the Homecoming Parade through the Duckwall and J.C. Penny plate glass windows.  This year we rode in the parade!

Because the recipients of the 2020 Alumni Achievement Award were honored virtually, we were invited to participate in the festivities for the 2021 recipients at Homecoming, including the parade.  What fun, and what support from the people who lined the street, despite the rain.  Mother Nature must be a FHSU fan, since the rain stopped just as the parade began.  I waved and smiled so much that my face hurt, and people waved back, even the children I disappointed by failing to remember to buy candy to throw.  I even got a hand bump from someone who ran out to tell me he was going to buy my book.

We were kept busy for three days, with more high lights than I can share, but among them was the ribbon cutting for the new Fischli-Wills Center for Student Success, a state of the art building located next to the Union, with a connecting walkway on the second level.

Those of us whose college days go back a few decades know that changes on campus are not just the new buildings.  The book stores we remember from our youth have changed with students using the internet to buy their books, and the former book store in the FHSU Union is now a wonderful shop filled with clothing and other collectibles.  

However, for one afternoon during Homecoming it was once again a place to buy books, as they hosted "Prairie Bachelor" for a book signing!  Thank you to everyone who stopped by to buy a book or just to say "hi."  There are still some books there available for purchase, and I signed some book plates in case you would like one for your book.

Those of you who are FHSUers, whether as graduates or as spouses, parents, or 'adoption by choice,' already know that once a Tiger, always a Tiger, even if you live far away and return to campus in retirement.  FHSU continues to grow and change, but the Tiger Pact that appears as you enter the new Fischli-Wills Center makes clear the goals the University strives to instill.   

 

Isaac & the Populist Movement Coming Soon!

In September of 2011 I began this blog.  I had found Isaac's journal in February of 2010 and had spent nearly a year transcribing it, as well as continuing with genealogy searches for every person mentioned in the journal and beginning the research that would continue for a decade.  My first two books, published by Baylor University Press and Dutton, a division of Penguin, had been published fairly quickly, and I assumed the same for my third book.  I continued doing research--traveling to the places where Isaac had lived, interviewing descendants of Isaac's neighbors, walking through cemeteries where people Isaac knew were buried, searching records at the courthouse, reading books Isaac had read, spending days turning the fragile, yellowed pages of the County Capital newspaper available at the Stafford County Historical Museum, reading biographies and autobiographies of famous people of Isaac's era, as well as reading other books of all kinds--academic, local histories and centennial editions, and government documents among others.  I even walked the route between Isaac's claim and Doc Dix's claim where the local post office was located.

Instructions for easier reading once you reach the University Press of Kansas at bottom of this blog.
www.kansaspress.ku.edu

My research was traditionally academic but also a personal immersion into the place and era when Isaac Werner staked his homestead and timber claims and when his community became involved in the Populist Movement of the late 1800s.  I wanted my book to be academically sound but I also wanted it to tell the story of Isaac and his neighbors in a nearly forgotten but extremely important time in American history.  I was raised in Isaac's community and my husband and I returned to the community in retirement, but I knew little about the importance of the Populist Movement and the People's Party that grew out of the movement.  Yet, the People's Party is the most successful 3rd party in American history, and many of their goals were adopted by our present political parties.  I wanted to share that story with ordinary readers, not just scholars.  Isaac had the personal library of a scholar but he was an ordinary man who valued the importance of reading.  I wanted to write for people like Isaac, living today.

In doing the depth of research I have done to immerse myself in Isaac's time, I have discovered many things that informed me but do not appear directly in the book.  I began the blog to share those things.  My interest in exploring the era and places relevant to that time provided much of the content I have shared with followers of this blog over the years.  I will continue the blog and already have some wonderful blogs about surrounding communities to share week by week.  Thank you for your continued interest and support!  I never expected for it to take so long to produce the published book.  There were periods when I laid the manuscript aside, but many of you encouraged me not to give up on finding the right publisher for Isaac.

And I have!  Right now I am doing the final proof reading and the indexing for the book.  It is being published by the University Press of Kansas.  They have supported my goal of writing in a narrative style that makes it enjoyable for general readers to immerse themselves in Isaac's story and be taken back into the years when Kansas and other states like Texas and other western and midwestern states, and post Civil War Southern states challenged the two established political parties, marched for Prohibition and Women's Rights, confronted the power of wealth during the so-called Golden Age, and played their role in transforming the nation during a period of a growing middle class.

Soon, I will finish the proofing and indexing and will be like the rest of you, awaiting the arrival of the published book.  Thank you again.  The image I have attached is from the University Press of Kansas Fall Catalogue.  Most of you who follow this blog will recognize the journal that appears on the cover of the book.  I think Isaac would be pleased.

To see the page above for easier reading, go to www.kansaspress.ku.edu and in the search box top left of the page enter Lynda Beck Fenwick.  That will take you to the page shown above with lettering much easier to read.  At the bottom line following the first two reviews, (rather hard to see), you can click to read the reviews by two more reviewers.  I am very honored by the four reviewers and by their comments.  I especially like how each reviewer brought out different perspectives about the book.