Thankfulness in Difficult Times

The illustrations of Norman Rockwell captured American traditions so perfectly that they continue to resonate with us today, but Thanksgiving 2020 for most of us is going to be different.  Perhaps we will roast the turkey just as we do every Thanksgiving, but for many of us, family will not be gathered around the table.  Even so, we have reasons to be thankful.  This week's blog will share some of the reasons I have to be thankful, and I hope my abbreviated list of gratitude will remind us that although 2020 has brought loss and disharmony, there are also reasons to give thanks.

Credit:  Lyn Fenwick

If you are searching for a reason to be thankful, one reason is obvious.  Many people are making our lives easier by their sacrifices and volunteering, from those who continue to go to work every day so that we can buy products we need to those who volunteer at food distribution locations, to thousands in between.  But perhaps those for whom we must be most thankful are the health care providers who put their lives at risk, disrupt their own families, and break their hearts with the suffering they see around them--doing their jobs to help the rest of us.

 

In a time during which Covid-19 reminds us how fragile life can be, the importance of family and friends become more apparent.  A decade and a half ago, descendants of the first occupants to live in the house behind them gathered at the farm where we had often celebrated holidays.  Today, several of those in the photograph are gone, but the memories of good times together at this place with family and friends remain, and those memories are another reason to be thankful.

 This year, although tragedy and need will fill our memories, I have many reasons to be particularly thankful to many people.  To Fort Hays State University, for special recognition at Homecoming (celebrated virtually) and to the upcoming zoom celebration they are hosting Dec. 1st for the release of my book, "Prairie Bachelor, The Story of a Kansas Homesteader and the Populist Movement."  Too many people have been part of those two events to recognize them individually!  To the University Press of Kansas and the many people who played an important role in publishing my book in the middle of a pandemic.  To Lucille M. Hall, and those who keep her dream of a museum in St. John, Kansas alive--the museum in which Isaac Werner's journal was found.  To so many others that I cannot name, who loaned family images for the book, who encouraged me not to give up on the manuscript for over a decade, who followed my blog, who aided my research in museums and libraries, who welcomed me in a church in Wernersville and introduced me to a Werner descendant, who helped me find Werner graves, who ordered the book months ago and continue to place orders, who were strangers who shared information on Ancestry.com and face book.  I was inspired to write the book because a stranger who died decades ago recorded the stories of his neighbors.  I wrote the book with his journal at its heart because I wanted to preserve the history of the struggles and courage of those early settlers for another generation to read.

Credit:  Lyn Fenwick

Each day, as I sit at my computer to write this blog and as I sat at the computer sharing Isaac Werner's story, this photograph at left is my view.  The lumber in the old part of the building you see came from the tenant house my grandfather built for his fulltime farm worker, which my father recycled to build their garage, and which my husband and I used to expand the building.  All of us build on top of what was left to us by those who came before us, and we leave behind what future generations will build upon.

I hope "Prairie Bachelor" will share with young readers today and in the future the struggles and achievements of those who came before them, and the hopes and dreams those forefathers and foremothers had for their descendants to come.  It is a pattern repeated generation after generation all around the world, and it is important to remind ourselves to be thankful of what those ancestors, and the choices and sacrifices they made,   did for us.  We should not forget people like Isaac Werner, and countless other forgotten men and women, who left no descendants but made a difference, whether large or small, documented or not, for those of us who followed.

  

Thank you to so many people who have made this a remarkable year for so many, facing difficult times  with courage and generosity. 

A Publishing Dilemma



Reading the County Capital

Recently, visiting the online newsletter Biographile, Discover the World Through Biography and Memoir, I spotted an intriguing article titled, "No Such Thing as Objective History."  As you know from reading my earlier blog, "What is History, An Update on my Manuscript," posted 5/23/13, one of the issues I have faced in writing my manuscript about Isaac Werner has been--"When documentary material is inadequate to supply every detail, can an author write legitimate history or biography?"  Writers of history and biography who are researching famous people often have a great deal of documentary material available.  With Isaac, I was fortunate to have his journal, his newspaper articles, and his probate documents, but I did not have personal letters, interviews, news reports, speeches, and other documentary material of the sort someone writing about Thomas Jefferson or Marilyn Monroe might have.

Visiting Rossville, IL

I have not read Reza Aslan's best-selling book about the "life and times of Jesus," but the Biographile article questioning "Objective History" was based on an interview of that author, who discussed his approach to writing about the life of Jesus.  Aslan's method for writing about more than the Biblical account was, "[to] rely on the world in which Jesus lived, a world that--thanks to the Romans--we know a great deal about.  By placing Jesus firmly within his time and place, we can fill in the holes of his life and create a picture of him..."  What I found so relevant from the interview of Aslan was how he used the information that was available from that historic period in his book.

Transcribing & Annotating Isaac's Journal

My  manuscript about Isaac Werner also uses what Aslan called research about my subject's "time and place" to "fill in the holes of his life and create a picture" of him.  In addition, I benefitted from getting to know Isaac from the emotions and opinions expressed in his journal.  (Thank goodness he did not always follow the advice of Henry Ward Beecher to keep personal feelings out of his journal.  Blog of 12-7-2012.)




Marketing my manuscript, I am asked to define it.  Biography?...history?...narrative nonfiction?...historic fiction?  That definition is difficult, and it has created a publishing dilemma for me.  Am I prohibited from imagining dialogue if I know from Isaac's journal when, where, and with whom Isaac had a conversation and the likely subjects they discussed?  Does it make a difference that I document in a footnote what I have done, distinguishing the sourced information from the imagined?

Reading books Isaac read

In his interview, Aslan insists, "There's no such thing as objective history:  a scholar cannot help but bring his own impressions and perceptions into his study, no matter how hard he tries."  Aslan argues that his approach in describing Jesus by "immers[ing] readers in the social, political, and religious context of the first century" allows a reader to "figure out for yourself the larger implication of what he [Jesus] was saying or doing."

Here is what I have done:  I have studied Isaac from his daily journal, (Blog of 10-23-11), his published writings, newspaper and other accounts of events he attended and organizations he joined (Blog of 4-12-12 & 4-17-12).  I have traveled to the town his father founded where Isaac was born and raised, (Blog of 2-16-12 & 2-23-12), visited the town where he was a young druggist, (Blog of 1-20-12 & 1-27-12), walked the land he homesteaded (Blog of 5-16-13), and found his forgotten grave (Blog of 1-13-12).  I have read specific books he read, as well as books by speakers and performers he saw in person and with whom he corresponded (Blog of 2-2-12, 5-30-13, & 4-11-13).  I have done genealogy research of his ancestry and descendants of his siblings, as well as searching the ancestry of each of his neighbors, also learning from interviews with descendants and public documents as much about Isaac's neighbors as I could.  I have immersed myself in the history of the period, reading original documents and scholarly books (Blogs of 8-30-12, 9-13-12, & 10-18-12).  I often felt I knew those people and their lives better than I know the people living in Isaac's community today.

Researching Isaac's Neighbors (Doc Dix)

What is important to me is not writing another scholarly book but rather bringing Isaac, his community, and the Populist movement of the Gilded Age alive to readers, whether they are reading for pleasure or for academic information.  Isaac's journal and the other research I have done is valuable to scholars, but it is also incredibly interesting for general readers.  Is there not some way I can present Isaac's story that is accessible to both?

In the interview with Biographile, Aslan addresses this issue:  "The biggest criticism I have of my [academic] colleagues is that they spend all their time talking to each other, that they rarely bother to synthesize their ideas and their research to make it accessible and appealing to a wider audience.  ... There is a culture in academia that tends to look down on those who try to reach a wider audience--we're immediately tagged as not serious."



Interviewing Isaac's cousin in Wernersville

I have successfully published two non-fiction books, Should the Children Pray?  A Historical, Political, and Judicial Examination of School Prayer, published by Baylor University Press, and Private Choices, Public Consequences, Reproductive Technology and the New Ethics of Conception, Pregnancy, and Family, published by Dutton, a division of Penguin.  You can learn more about those books at my author's website, www.lynfenwick.com.  I sought with both of those books to bridge the gap between writing for general readers and academics, or as Aslan said, to reach a wider audience, although both books were carefully researched and documented.  I was chosen the Georgia Non-fiction Author of the Year for Should the Children Pray?

Visit to town founded by his father

In telling Isaac's story, with a bachelor homesteader at the center of the Populist Movement in his community and events throughout the nation impacting Isaac and other laborers, I am again seeking to bridge the gap between general readers and academics.  By footnoting imagined conversations and describing events based on research and newspaper accounts, I feel that general readers will find the story more involving and accessible while academics will be warned to consult the references provided in the footnote without assuming that the conversation or description is an accurate account of that particular conversation or that the description of the event was exactly as Isaac experienced it, although Isaac's journal does reference the meeting or event.  I may not have an easy label for what I have chosen to do, but as Katherine Hepburn said, "If you obey all of the rules, you miss all of the fun."  I believe trying to fit my manuscript into either an academic mold or reducing it to historical fiction would make it less than what it is as I have written it.  The challenge is to find a publisher that agrees!