Getting to Know Willa

Photo Credit:  Larry Fenwick

Last Monday evening was an Art Walk in Pratt, Kansas, and although it is primarily for artists, photographers, and crafts persons with things to sell, I was invited to share some of my work.  While I paint and draw for my personal enjoyment, and occasionally to do portraits for friends, I had a good reason to attend.

The centennial celebration of Willa Cather's My Antonia was last year, and for a special edition of the Willa Cather Review, Vol. 61, No.2 I did a series of six portraits of the main characters.  The original pastel portraits and a copy of the Journal are on the table in the photograph.

I am a stickler for illustrations that respect the text of the author.  If L. Frank Baum says that Dorothy wore a blue and white checked dress, that is what I expect the illustrators of the Wizard of Oz series of books to depict. 

So, naturally, before selecting which characters from My Antonia I wanted to portray, I read passages written by Willa Cather to learn how she had described them.  The portraits displayed on the table included cards with descriptive passages taken from Cather's novel that I used in deciding how to portray each of the six characters.

Photo Credit:  Larry Fenwick

I didn't have any art to sell, but instead, I sold Willa!  I shared how she was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize, how she grew up just a few miles from the Kansas border, what a wonderful place to visit Red Cloud, NE is with so many recognizable sites from Cather's novels and short stories, and how much in common her stories have with Kansas during that era.  

I recommended my favorites, in addition to My Antonia--O Pioneers! and One of Ours, as well as a favorite short story set in Kansas, The Sculptor's Funeral.  I had checked the Pratt Library shelves with the librarian, and I told visitors that there are several of Cather's books available at the library.  One young couple that stopped by were intrigued by what I shared, and he took a photo on his phone to help him remember Cather's name, while his wife pondered which of Cather's books to recommend for her book club.

Photo Credit:  Larry Fenwick

We are very fortunate in our region to have several local libraries that are wonderful, in addition to the recently remodeled Pratt Library.  Among those I visit are the libraries in Macksville, St. John, Stafford, Kinsley, and others a bit further from our home.

When I participate in the Art Walk and Plein Aire at the state fair, I always enjoy the children.  Because the Art Walk was in the evening, only a few children visited, but they were curious about the portraits.  One little boy was particularly proud of himself when he recognized that I was the woman in the drawing on the stand.

Thank you to the Library and other sites for hosting us, to those who organized the evening, and to those who came out on a calm but chilly winter's evening to support the Arts.  Remember, you can click on the images to enlarge them,

Threshing Machines

Although we have often visited Red Cloud, Nebraska for the Willa Cather gatherings, we have always been too busy with the Cather events to take the time to visit the local Museum  in Red Cloud.  During the 2019 visit we decided to correct that omission.

I am always on the lookout for information related to the era of the Populist Movement, and while the Thrashing Machine pictured in this blog is a bit later than Isaac's time, it is an example of the advances in farming equipment occurring during Isaac's lifetime.  In the late 1800s, wheat was being harvested by machine in Isaac's community.

You may see the verb thresh as well as thrash  used in reference to the process of harvesting, and Thrashing Machine as used in the label shown above is actually the less common spelling, although both are used.

The process of threshing removes the seeds from the stalks and husks by beating the plant to make the seeds fall.  Isaac mentions using a buffalo wallow (apparently with some kind of canvas over the sandy soil) and walking his horses over the stalks to  remove the grain he raised.

At the museum in Red Cloud we had the opportunity to stand beside the giant thrasher in these photographs, so massive it dwarfed everything around it.

With the early threshing machines of the 1880s the grain had to be harvested separately, by hand or machine, and then fed into the thresher.  Isaac described the mowers that might have been used to cut the wheat.  Until threshing machines were invented, the threshing process was primitive.

The equipment was a simple flail, a stick with a shorter stick attached to the end which was capable of flexing or flailing about as the laborer beat the grain out of the stalks.

Threshing Flail

Obviously, the process was very strenuous for the laborers.  However hard the work was, and despite the low wages and high taxes workers paid, the arrival of the mechanized threshing machines led farm workers to strike.  Thousands of men who had been employed as farm laborers were put out of work, which put these former workers on the brink of starvation, resulting in what was called the Swing Riots.  Despite the obvious suffering of the laborers, the English government dealt harshly with the strikers, hanging nine of them and transporting 450 to Australia.

As with many new inventions, what was seen as a welcome mechanical advance for humanity was for others the end of their means of livelihood.  The improvements to the early threshing machines led to steam powered machines that could harvest the crops in the fields, and the threshing process advanced from a pile of grain, straw and chaff to belts and blowers that separated the waste from the grain.  

Now the monster machines that harvest the crop can pour the cleaned grain into a bin pulled along beside the combine, while men in air conditioned cabs move around the field, the harvesting guided by GPS.  Although far fewer farm laborers are needed, hiring those workers capable of managing the technology can be a challenge.  So far, humans are still needed in our technologically advancing world!  

Remember, you can enlarge the images by clicking on them.  

A Lost Lady's Husband

Among my favorite places when we travel are the homes of authors.  Our road trip may have a different ultimate destination, but I will check to see if our route passes near the former home of a writer I admire.  Many of the homes of America's greatest authors have been preserved for visitors, and it is fun to see how they lived and where they wrote.

But perhaps no place is more interesting than the town of Red Cloud, Nebraska, where Willa Cather spent her youth and to which she often returned for visits as an adult.  This blog has shared pictures of the many buildings in Red Cloud that have a direct relationship with her stories and novels.  For serious Cather fans, however, there is also the opportunity to learn about the actual residents of her time that Cather used as inspiration for her characters.  An obvious example is Annie Pavelka, the model for Antonia.

Our most recent trip allowed me to focus on the character of Captain Daniel Forrester in A Lost Lady, described in the novel as a contractor of railroad construction for Burlington.  Rather than describing the plot of the novel, I will use details about Forrester and his lovely younger wife as examples of how Cather built characters and plots from actual residents and events in her home town. Items displayed in the Webster County Museum provide direct references to Cather's practice.

Chapter three describes the arrival at the Episcopal Church of Mrs. Forrester:  "...a low carriage drove up to the door.  Ben Keezer was on the front seat, and on the back seat was a lady, alone, all puffs and ruffles, and a black hat carrying a parasol with a carved ivory handle. As the carriage stopped she lifted her dress to alight; out of a swirl of foamy white petticoats she thrust a black, shiny slipper."

Cather's local inspiration for Captain Forrester was Captain Silas Garber, and the carriage pictured above is the carriage that once belonged to Garber.  How easy it was for me to imagine Mrs. Forrester stepping gracefully from this carriage just a Cather wrote.  "She stepped lightly to the ground and with a nod to the driver went into the church."

Her husband was described by Cather as looking like "the pictures of Grover Cleveland.  His clumsy dignity covered a deep nature, and a conscience that had never been juggled with.  His repose was like that of a mountain.  When he laid his fleshy, thick-fingered hand upon a frantic horse, an hysterical woman, an Irish workman out for blood, he brought them peace; something they could not resist.  His sanity asked nothing, claimed nothing; it was so simple that it brought a hush over distracted creatures."  The portrait at right is of Capt. Silas Garber, Cather's inspiration for Forrester and one of the founders of Red Cloud.  When Webster County celebrated its 80th year, he was among those men honored as past and present leaders.  (See the framed newspaper page displayed below.)

Although it is generally accepted that Garber was Cather's inspiration, his is a good example to illustrate that her depictions were not direct portraits.  Silas Garber served in the Union Army, following which he moved to California and engaged in livestock trading.  He arrived in Webster County, Nebraska in 1870 as a homesteader and general store proprietor, quickly becoming involved in politics.  In 1871 he became Webster's first Probate Judge, and the next year he was elected to the Nebraska House of Representatives.   In 1873 he was named Registrar of the United States Land Office in Lincoln, a powerful position.  In 1875 he was elected as a Republican to the first of his two terms as Governor.  A distinguished man, but never a contractor building railroads for Burlington as his fictional counterpart was.

The novel is titled A Lost Lady, and while Mrs. Forrester is the central character, the relationship she had with Capt. Forrester is pivotal to the story.  "Curiously enough, it was as Captain Forrester's wife that she most interested Niel, and it was in her relation to her husband that he most admired her.  Given her other charming attributes, her comprehension of a man like the railroad-builder, her loyalty to him, stamped her more than anything else.  That, he felt, was quality; something that could never become worn or shabby; steel of Damascus.  His admiration of Mrs. Forrester went back to that, just as, he felt, she herself went back to it." (Conclusion of Ch. VI)

Although I have sometimes referred to Red Cloud as a Cather fan's Disneyland, it is not a false place of artificial reality.  It is a real town that nurtured the development of Willa Cather as a great American author and that gave her memories of real people and places around which to craft her stories, not to write in a historically accurate depiction but rather to capture the time and place using her memories but employing her imagination and her gift for writing to create something greater.  The sources for her imagination are what remain for visitors to explore in Red Cloud today.  

If you haven't read A Lost Lady, I recommend it.  And if you have read it in the past, I recommend reading it again.  The thing about great writing is that it remains fresh and reveals something new each time you read it.  

(Sword belonging to Capt. Silas Garber, Union Soldier, and inspiration for Capt. Forrester in A Lost Lady.)   Remember, you can click on the images to enlarge them.  

My Antonia Belongs to Many of Us

Anna Pavelka

My Antonia was first published in 1918, and this is the year of its centennial.  As I often have done after our return from the annual Cather Conference in Red Cloud, Nebraska, I share some of our experiences on my blog.  This year is no exception, especially because it is the centennial year of many people's favorite Cather book.

Those of you familiar with Willa Cather know that many of her characters are based on real people, and the settings for many of her stories are actually Red Cloud, Nebraska given different names.  Antonia Shimerda was inspired by a real person named Anna Pavelka, who is pictured at right.  Cather's admiration and respect for Anna is obvious from the quote accompanying the photograph, for she describes the character she plans to create from Anna as being "like a rare object in the middle of a table which one may examine from all sides."  (Image from display in the Red Cloud Opera House, Cather Foundation.)

I first read My Antonia one summer when I would have been about the same age Antonia was when she arrived in Red Cloud with her family, immigrants from Bohemia.  My older brother had read My Antonia in a college class and had brought the book home with him when he retuned for the summer.  Willa Cather became one of my favorite authors that summer and remains so today.

I recall that I struggled with the idea that when Jim Burden returned to Red Cloud and visited Antonia at the close of the novel, she was the mother of a large family, "a stalwart, brown woman, flat-chested, her curly brown hair a little grizzled," lacking most of her teeth.  I wanted her to be the pretty girl Jim had loved as a boy, but Jim taught me a lesson about beauty.  "I know so many women who have kept all the things that she had lost, but whose inner glow has faded.  Whatever else was gone, Antonia had not lost the fire of life."  As he lay awake that night, sleeping in the haymow with two of Antonia's boys sleeping nearby, Jim realized, "She was a battered woman now, not a lovely girl; but she still had that something which fires the imagination, could still stop one's breath for a moment by a look or gesture that somehow revealed the meaning in common things.  ...All the strong things of her heart came out in her body, that had been so tireless in serving generous emotions."

How amazing that this fictional character that had so impressed me when I was such a young girl was so closely based upon a real person.

Willa Cather, born on December 7, 1873 arrived in Webster County, Nebraska in 1883, a ten-year-old from the South adjusting to life on the prairie, just as the fictional Jim Burden arrives in the novel from the South as a ten year old.  Most of the Cathers' neighbors are European immigrants, just as Jim Burden's neighbors were.  When Cather enrolls in Red Cloud High School in 1884, she meets Annie Sadilek Pavelka, the girl that she transforms into the fictional Antonia.  In 1915, while on a visit to her old hometown of Red Cloud, Cather visits her childhood friend, Annie Pavelka, and in 1917 she writes My Antonia.

When I read a fine novel, the characters often come alive for me, and in the case of My Antonia, Cather truly placed her childhood friend, "a rare object," at the heart of her novel for us to appreciate "from all sides."

History in Everyday Places

Recently we attended the annual Willa Cather Conference in Red Cloud, Nebraska, and I was reminded how everyday we have occasions to learn more about the history of our nation and our region.  One of the speakers, Bob Ferguson, a stamp collector, spoke about images on stamps which share history.  Among the images he displayed during his talk was the one to the right, showing the stamp recognizing The Homestead Act.

The image shows a dugout which may very well resemble the type of dwelling Isaac B. Werner built when he first arrived in Stafford County, Kansas.  Partly dug into the earth and partly created with blocks of sod stacked to create walls, it would have been suitable for land like Isaac's where the terrain was less satisfactory for creating a cave.

Mr. Ferguson also showed the first day cover of the stamp honoring Nebraska's first homesteader.  With stamps from his own collection and images taken from the internet, he used stamps to share the history that is to be found in everyday places.  Even the more commonplace stamps we use can remind us of our past, not only historic events but also memorable people--politicians, sports figures, scientists, authors, and movie stars to suggest a few.

We also stepped inside the Red Cloud post office to enjoy another example of history in everyday places.  The paintings on the walls of the post office remind visitors of history in two ways.  First, the subjects of the paintings depict "Loading Cattle," "Stockade Builders," and "Moving Westward."

Second, the paintings also remind visitors of the 1930s and 1940s when they were created.  I had mistakenly believed that the post office art was the result of the Work Projects (WPA) initiated during the Depression to provide employment of various kinds, including the employment of artists to decorate government buildings with murals.  However, the post office art was created under the authority of the Procurement Division of the Treasury Department.  Artists of respected talent were selected by the Section of Fine Arts to decorate public buildings--if funding was available.

The art in the Red Cloud Post Office is oil on canvas created by artist Archie Musick in 1941.  He is considered a Regionalist, and he studied with Thomas Hart Benton.  He developed a particular technique using egg tempera and colored pencil, which technique he employed the remaining years of his career for smaller paintings.  He also authored the book Musick Medley:  Intimate Memories of a Rocky Mountain Art Colony, which described the art world of the Colorado Springs area from the 1920s to the 1950s.

So, while I have chosen to share history through my writing, there are places for us to be made aware of history all around us, including while doing such every-day tasks as adhering a stamp to an envelope and entering a post office to mail a letter.

Trains Settle the West

The theme of the 2017 Willa Cather Conference, held recently in Red Cloud, Nebraska, was "Picturing the American West, The Railroad and Popular Imagination."  Linked with the subject of railroads were the Opera Houses that were built in prairie towns served by railroad lines.  Not only did visitors coming to see performances in the Opera Houses sometimes arrive by train, more importantly, the trains allowed performers to travel from town to town, easily transporting their costumes and scenery. 

The image at left is from the County Capital in St. John to which Isaac Werner subscribed.  You will notice that the advertisement is dated June 4, 1890, but the railroad had arrived in St. John earlier than that date.

Sharing his stories about abandoned rail lines was James Reisdorff, who spoke to us from the Burlington Depot on the southern edge of Red Cloud.  His program was titled "Pulling Up Stakes:  When Trains Leave Town," and he shared the impact on towns that lose their railroads.  He also described how others like himself go in search of abandoned sites, some still having evidence of the old rails while others are discernible only from the elevated grade.

James Reisdorff at the Red Cloud Depot

The last morning of the conference a panel of Dr. Ann Tschetter, Dr. Elissa Sartwell, city planner and author Ann Satterthwaite, and Dr. Mark Facknitz discussed 'Railroads:  Myth & Metaphor.'  Dr. Sartwell addressed the tragic mistreatment of Chinese workers laying the transcontinental lines, using references from plays performed in the Opera Houses and cartoons belittling the Chinese to illustrate the era.  Particularly illuminating was the work of Dr. Facknitz, pointing out the significance of the railroad in Cather's writings.  I do hope their papers are published so that I can study them further.

Dining one evening at the Red Cloud Depot

A special treat was the performance of The Red Cloud Cannonball, a vaudeville-inspired performance of classic railroad tunes and humor.  Seated in the Red Cloud Opera House Auditorium, we felt as if we were experiencing exactly the sort of show Willa Cather might have seen.

For Isaac Werner and his contemporaries in Kansas, the railroads represented a love-hate relationship.  On the one hand, populists blamed the railroads for the unfair shipping costs charged struggling farmers to ship produce to the East, compounded by the distrust and resentment felt for the wealthy and powerful exerting unfair political influence concerning railroad regulation.  On the other hand, they sought railroad lines near their communities for transportation and shipping, and they desired the prestige of being a local director for the advancing railroads.  Isaac wrote in his journal about the stimulus to growth of the small prairie towns when the railroad arrived. 

I will never again take for granted the role of the railroad when I read a Willa Cather novel or short story, and I will reflect more closely on the role of the railroad in my manuscript about Isaac and the Populist Movement.   

Preserving the Old with Something New

Dedication speakers and honorees with Rev. Charles Peek

Laura Bush delivering keynote

In 1932 a young teacher arrived in Webster County and was introduced to the writing of a former resident,  Willa Cather.  Cather could not have inspired a more devoted fan!  That young teacher was Mildred Bennett, and she is considered the founder of the Willa Cather Foundation, although it should be recognized that every leader must have those who share her vision and follow her.  When Mildred Bennett died, her vision was well established, but equally important, others have carried on the dreams she imagined, which include championing the arts and humanities.

Bennett's gift for dreaming big must have inspired the Foundation Board when they undertook the restoration of the Moon Block, a 2-story collection of commercial buildings stretching north from the beautiful Opera House all the way to the end of the block.  In 2015 my husband and I attended the ground breaking ceremony for the project and toured the interior.  Oh, my!  It took real vision to imagine that the neglected building could ever become the structure that was planned.

Ribbon Cutting at Cather Foundation Dedication

Yet, it has.  Because Mildred Bennett was a teacher who came to love the writings of Willa Cather and who asked, "What better way would there be for us to understand each other than through the fields of humanities and the arts?" who better to deliver the keynote address at the dedication of the National Willa Cather Center than a former teacher and librarian who as our nation's first lady stressed the importance of reading, and who just happens to be a great Willa Cather fan herself.  Fortunately, just such a person exists and agreed to speak at the Dedication!   On June 3, 2017, former First Lady Laura Bush presented the Dedication Address and joined other key individuals in cutting the ribbon opening the Willa Cather Foundation expansion into the Moon Block.

The Foundation carries on the mission envisioned by Mildred Bennett, not only preserving structures identifiable as the models for Cather's novels and short stories so fans from around the world can literally step back in time to experience sites described in her work, but also welcoming researchers to the ever-growing archives, hosting plays and lectures and other performances in the Opera House, providing writing seminars, hosting working retreats for visiting artists, and awarding scholarships to young scholars.  The back-stage facilities had been inadequate for performances in the Opera House, and some of the Moon Block space has remedied that.  The archives available to researchers, both in person and to fulfill requests sent from distant places, make preservation and access possible.  The hosting of events, the office space, the display of objects and information are now adequate to the Foundation's mission.

At street level, the renovations have created beautiful commercial spaces, which will be leased to business tenants.  In that way, the Moon Block renovation not only serves the Cather mission but also serves the entire community commercially.

I hope my blog posts over the years have made some of you curious to visit Red Cloud, and to hike the 612-acre native prairie just south of town.  To learn more details, visit the Foundation website at www.willacather.org.   Remember, you may click on the images to enlarge them. 

2016 Cather Conference

W.W. I inspired painting

Detail of the above painting

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Since my blog post of March 17, 2016 titled "Occupying My Time" (which you can find in the blog archives) shared that my  proposal for a paper had been accepted, I thought you might enjoy a follow up blog about the conference.  This year's Cather Conference in Red Cloud, NE focused on Cather's Pulitzer Prize winning novel One of Ours, in which the main character struggles with finding a purposeful life until he becomes a soldier in W.W. I.  My paper, titled "The Road Not Taken:  Comparing Cather's One of Ours with W.W. I Poetry," began with the Robert Frost poem by that name, a well-known poem which is rarely recognized as being related to W.W. I.  Twenty-one different poets were referenced in my paper, many of whom were soldier poets.  Did you notice that the cloud behind the farmer in the above painting was created from images of soldiers?  Farmers were considered very important to the war effort, as were the frugal cooking efforts of women and the plot gardens growing food for families so commodities needed for the soldiers were not consumed. 





American poet Alan Seeger

Perhaps the poem that best describes struggles most similar to what Cather's hero Claude Wheeler faced is "Sonnet 10" by Alan Seeger.  Seeger lived a bohemian life in Greenwich Village and the Latin Quarter of Paris before enlisting in the French Foreign Legion in 1914, well before his own country entered the war.  The sonnet begins, "I have sought Happiness, but it has been a lovely rainbow, baffling all pursuit..." and concludes "...Amid the clash of arms I was at peace."  Seeger is best known for his poem I Have a Rendezvous with Death, but it is Sonnet 10 that expresses the purposefulness of fighting for a cause in which you believe, which Seeger shared with the fictional Claude.  Seeger was killed in action on July 4, 1916, before the American troops arrived.

 



Der Tag from the exhibition

My paper was well received and I was pleased when several of the friends we have made at earlier conferences came to hear me read.  I had great fun preparing the paper, and I actually enjoyed presenting it.  I'm not sure whether I will ever have the opportunity to read it anywhere again nor whether I will publish it, but the days I spent exploring the wealth of W.W. I poetry, writing the paper, and preparing the slide presentation that accompanied my reading (with the power-point training from my nephew Darin Beck and my 'presentation assistant' Larry Fenwick), was time well spent for all of the things I learned.

 

On display in the Opera House was a wonderful exhibit curated by Tracy Tucker.  The painting at the top of this blog is from the collection of the Herbert Hoover Museum, one of six paintings loaned to the Cather Foundation for the conference.  It was the first time the Hoover Museum had allowed the paintings to travel--quite a privilege for the Cather Foundation.  Also on display was a W.W. I uniform, as well as many other interesting objects, including a copy of Der Tag from the collection of Cather's youngest brother. 

 

The cast of Der Tag

Der Tag is a 1-act play written by Sir J.M. Barrie (author of Peter Pan) as part of an effort by England to utilize the talents of its famous writers to create propaganda.  Barrie's concept was to show the political and military pressure imposed on the Kaiser to declare war through the characters of Chancellor and Officer, who exit the scene to allow the Kaiser time to reflect on what he is about to do.  He dreams, and The Spirit of Culture enters to urge against war, and the Kaiser (called Emperor in the play) tears up the declaration of war in front of Chancellor and Officer.  Again, he falls asleep and Culture reappears, wearing a bloody wound.  The Kaiser awakens believing his earlier dream had been real and war had been avoided, only to be told by Culture that he had brought the war upon his now devastated people.  The play was performed with high expectations in England and America but was not successfully received, perhaps because the Kaiser was depicted too sympathetically. 

 

Culture offers the Kaiser a dagger to end his regret 

Because of the illness of the woman intended to portray Culture, I was asked to assume the role.  To my surprise, I had a great time!  The play was performed twice in the lovely Red Cloud Episcopal Chapel to a nearly full house both times, and apparently we received more cheers than the actors did in the W.W. I productions of 1915!  (Notice my bleeding wound, a red scarf.)

 

 

 

Learning W.W. I dance steps

As always, we had a great time in Red Cloud enjoying speakers, the papers that were read, author Karen Gettert Shoemaker reading from her book The Meaning of Names, the singing and playing of popular W.W. I music by Kansans Dr. Sarah Young and Judy Chadwick, and learning a few dance steps from the era.  That's my partner stand-in-male-dancer Nancy and me just to the right of the support beam.  We were short of men eager to dance but certainly not short of eager dancers!

 

It is no surprise to any of you who follow my blog that I am a great fan of Willa Cather.  She is not only a great American author but also is among the few great authors to depict the central region of America, and many would say that she is the greatest among them.  You may want to revisit "What If Isaac had met Alexandra Bergson?," 5-2-2013, and "My Steadfast Tin Soldier," 9-25-2014, and the sequel 10-2-2014 for more W.W. I history.  I hope my love of Cather makes at least some of you curious to read her novels and short stories, and perhaps even to visit Red Cloud, NE!

 

 

 

Impossible Things

I only want impossible things.

The others don't matter.

--Willa Cather



Willa Cather

Mildred R. Bennett was not born in Red Cloud, Nebraska, and perhaps it took the awareness of an outsider to recognize what long-time residents had come to take for granted.  Whatever the explanation, it was Mildred who became the driving force behind the foundation established to keep the heritage of being the home town of Willa Cather alive, a legacy enhanced by Cather's practice of using citizens and locations from her hometown in her writing.  Cather died in 1947, and in 1955 Mildred Bennett had collected enough other residents to establish the Cather foundation.

Sometimes it is amazing what small towns can do, and the growth of the foundation's mission over the 60 years of its existence is an amazing success story.

My husband and I visited Red Cloud not long after the Opera House had been restored.  Built in 1885 and restored in 2003 after having been closed in 1920, the Opera House is the heart of the collection of buildings in Red Cloud that were important to Cather's life and her writing.

Christine Lesiak, Andrew Jewell & Janis Stout

It is no secret that Cather is one of my favorite authors and that O! Pioneers is my favorite of her novels.  (See "What If Isaac Had Met Alexandra Bergston?" in the blog archives at 5-2-2013.)  I have shared the importance of opera houses in many early communities on the prairie.  (See "St. John (KS) Convention Hall & Opera House," 6-26-2014; "Stafford (KS) Opera House," 8-7-2014; and "Saving the Old Opera Houses of the Prairie," 12-11-2014)  However, saving Red Cloud's magnificent opera house and returning it to life with ongoing performances and exhibitions must have seemed one of those "impossible things" that most people would never have attempted.

The current exhibit in the Opera House is Regional Works of Grant Reynard, a Nebraska artist who met Willa Cather at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire.  He was a familiar illustrator to those who read The Saturday Evening Post, Redbook, Ladies' Home Journal, Harper's Bazaar, McCall's, and Scribner's Magazine.

This blogger somewhere among the crowd

The annual gathering in Red Cloud has been something my husband and I have come to enjoy, but this year we were only able to attend one day.  Because it was the 60th anniversary and especially because it was the dedication of yet another "impossible thing" that the foundation has achieved, we felt we had to attend!  It was a day filled with the usual excellent sessions and great conversations with other attendees.

We arrived in time to hear high school senior scholarship recipients reading their winning essays.  That was followed by a wonderful panel discussion, "Awakening Young Artists:  Arts Education Then and Now."  The Cather Conference always attracts outstanding scholars, but this panel was exceptional.  The informal conversations among attendees are also an interesting part of every conference and seminar.  After lunch we enjoyed an excellent lecture by Kenneth Be, art conservator, on the subject of restoring damaged art, with an example of a restored oil painting mentioned in one of Cather's novels on display.

Co-Chair Jay Yost & new Cather Center

Next was the informal presentation at the Miner House (known as the Harling House in My Antonia) by filmmaker Christine Lesiak and editors of Selected Letters of Willa Cather, Andrew Jewell and Janis Stout.  That was followed by the premiere of NET Television documentary at the Opera House of Lesiak's Yours, Willa Cather based on Cather's letters.  The opportunity to hear the filmmaker and the two editors discussing their extensive research and their personal feelings after working with the letters, and then to see the documentary was worth the trip!  The documentary was followed by the address of keynote speaker, Richard Norton Smith, an author and historian widely known by viewers of PBS NewsHour and C-Span.

Next came another one of those "impossible things"...worth doing!--the dedication of the nearly complete Cather Center.  We had the privilege of walking through the building with Jay Yost and his sister at a previous conference when the construction project was just beginning.  It certainly seemed like a monumental, if not impossible, undertaking.  Yet, with the support of 463 individuals, businesses, foundations, and public grantors the Willa Cather Foundation raised $6,390,060 to establish the National Willa Cather Center in the restored Moon Block Building.  Jay's co-chair is Ruth H. Keene, and the Honorary National Chair is Ken Burns, whose television programs have done so much to bring history to life.

Toasting the Cather Center!

A celebratory dinner followed the dedication, and we had the great fortune of sharing our table with Steven B. Shively, a member of the Cather Center Campaign Steering Committee; Andrew Jewel, co-editor of Selected Letters; Christine Lesiak, filmmaker; fellow Cather fans Deanna and Michael; and my special friend with whom I share book titles, Becky.

As wonderful as the programs and exhibits at the Cather Conference and Seminars we have attended are, the thing that draws us back year after year is meeting such wonderful people.  If you love Cather and you attend once, you will want to attend every year.  You will be welcomed into a large circle of interesting and accomplished people, and as my husband said as we drove home, "The Cather gatherings have become like an annual family reunion!"

You may learn more by visiting www.willacather.org and you may keep up with current happenings at The Willa Cather Foundation on face book.

What if Isaac had met Alexandra Bergson?

Cabin at Homestead Park in Nebraska

I have already shared my love for Willa Cather's books and short stories in this blog.  (See "Writer of the Prairie" in the blog archives at October 4, 2012.)  It is difficult for me to narrow down a single favorite among her wonderful short stories, but I have a definite favorite novel.  It is probably because I identify with Alexandra Bergson's feelings for the land, among other reasons, that explains my love for the novel, O Pioneers!

 

This quote near the end of the book, as Alexandra expresses her feelings to her life-long friend Carl Linstrum, is explanation enough for my emotional connection to the book:  "The land belongs to the future, Carl; that's the way it seems to me.  How many of the names on the county clerk's plat will be there in fifty years?  ...  We come and go, but the land is always here.  And the people who love it and understand it are the people who own it--for a little while." 

 

I was raised in the house my paternal grandfather and his mother built.  The timber claim house on the creek and the big Victorian house built later by my maternal great grandparents were both standing and owned by decendants back then.  My father told me, "Always hold onto the land," and I have.  With so many ancestral farms around me, and the advice of my father emphasizing the point, it was natural that I saw land as part of a family's heritage, to be passed from generation to generation.

 

Cover from early edition

Yet, doing the research for Isaac's story, I came to know the names of so many early pioneers whose family surnames have disappeared from the community.  My maternal grandparents' homes remain, but they are no longer owned by family.  While I may value the idea of families staying on the farm for generations, that is no longer the norm.  "We come and go...and the people who love it...own it--for a little while." 

 

O Pioneers! was published in 1913.  It tells the story of a Swedish family that settles on the Nebraska prairie and struggles to survive.  When the father is dying, he entrusts the management of the farm to his daughter, Alexandra, instructing her brothers to follow her advice and leaving specific instructions for how the land is to be divided when the boys are old enough to marry and have farms of their own. 

 

Alexandra succeeds, surviving the years when times are hard and many other settlers sell the land and leave the prairie.  Her brothers are not always supportive of her decisions, although they honor their father's wishes to follow Alexandra's advice.  The two older brothers marry and have families, but Alexandra gives her labor and love to the land, and it rewards her well.  Cather describes the results of Alexandra's efforts with these words:  "When you go out of the house into the flower garden, there you feel again the order and fine arrangement manifest all over the great farm; in the fencing and hedging, in the windbreaks and sheds, in the symmetrical pasture ponds, planted with scrub willows to give shade to the cattle in fly-time.  There is even a white row of beehives in the orchard, under the walnut trees.  You feel that properly, Alexandra's house is the big out-of-doors, and that it is in the soil that she expresses herself best."

 

Image from movie starring Jessica Lange

In 1992 O Pioneers! was made into a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie, with Jessica Lange cast as Alexandra, Heather Graham playing the young Alexandra, and David Strathaim cast as Carl.  The DVD is still available for purchase, although I would always suggest that you read the book first and watch the movie later.

 

The annual Spring Conference held at Red Cloud, Nebraska, Willa Cather's hometown, selects a particular piece of Cather's writings to study each year.  This year's choice is O Pioneers!.  I will enjoy hearing the Cather scholars deliver their lectures about this novel that I love, but I doubt that anything I learn will increase the way Cather's own words draw me into this book.  "She had never known before how much the country meant to her.  The chirping of the insects down in the long grass had been like the sweetest music.  She had felt as if her heart were hiding down there, somewhere, with the quail and the plover and all the little wild things that crooned or buzzed in the sun.  Under the long shaggy ridges, she felt the future stirring."

 

If Isaac Werner could have met the fictional Alexandra Bergson, how they would have loved sharing farming advice!  I think they would have made great friends, but they were both too devoted to making a success of their farms to take the time for romance.  Besides, Carl and Alexandra were destined to be together, from the time they were children.

(Visit http://www.willacather.org for more information about Willa Cather and her writing.)

Postscript:  As I am about to post this blog, I have discovered a link to an NPR review of the new book, The Selected Letters of Willa Cather, including an interview with one of the editors, Andrew Jewell.  I recommend that you open this link to enjoy the review and Andy's comments.  Be sure to read the excerpt from the Introduction that is attached.  One of Ours, for which Cather won the Pulitzer, is another of my favorites, and I can hardly wait to read her letters about her cousin and her family connection to characters in that novel.  The new book will certainly be a treasure for fans and scholars!   http://www.npr.org/2013/04/30/178647158/wonderful-words-in-willa-cathers-no-longer-secret-letters?utm_source=share