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A vast, barren landscape or a place of subtle natural beauty; the middle of nowhere or the gateway to the cultural and historical riches of the West; many things to many people and a cipher to many more—the great state of Nebraska is by force of circumstances a place of possibilities. What these possibilities are and what they promise are precisely what the writers of The Big Empty tell us.

Exploring the state from its rural reaches to its urban engines, from its marvelous ecosystems to its myriad historical and cultural offerings, these narratives evoke Nebraska in all its facets. Writers as diverse as Ron Hansen, Ted Kooser, Michael Anania, Bob Kerrey, Mary Pipher, Delphine Red Shirt, and William Kloefkorn, among many others, bring a wealth of perspectives and styles to topics such as the Oregon Trail and the Cheyenne Exodus, farming and Internet cafés, politics, weather, and family secrets. The result is a portrait whose broad strokes and rich detail capture the mysterious character of Nebraska.

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Publié par	Bison Books
Date de parution	01 mai 2007
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9780803207400
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	2 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0950€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Contemporary Nebraska Nonﬁction Writers

Edited by Ladette Randolph and

Nina ShevchukMurray

University of Nebraska Press | Lincoln and London

Publication of this book was assisted by a grant from the Nebraska Arts Council.

Acknowledgments for the use of previously published material appear on pages293–95, which constitute an extension of the copyright page.

Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data The big empty : contemporary Nebraska nonﬁction writers / edited by Ladette Randolph and Nina ShevchukMurray. p.cm. isbn13: 9780803290112(pbk. : alk. paper) isbn10: 080329011x(pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Nebraska—Description and travel. 2. Nebraska—Social life and customs. 3. Nebraska—History, Local.4. Natural history—Nebraska.5. Nebraska— Biography. I. Randolph, Ladette. II. ShevchukMurray, Nina.f666.5.b54 2007 978.2'034—dc22 2006025175

Set in Minion. Designed by A. Shahan.

For the young writers of Nebraska

ron hansen michael anania

ted ko oser

john pr ice lisa knopp bob ross

robert v iv ian bryan jones w il liam kloefkor n

ro ger welsch kem luther john janovy jr. paul johnsgard michael r ips

Contents

ixPreface

1The Land That Time Forgot 8Myths of the American West: Two Views of the Oregon Trail 15 Preface fromLocal Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps 21 Nuts 31 Far Brought 46from Excerpt In the Kingdom of Grass 56in Fields Hereafter 62Organic Vertegration 66Excerpt fromThis Death by Drowning 81Uncle Vic’s Mule 88Solomon Butcher 96Two Wrens 110The Missouri and I 114The Factory

bob g ibson 122Excerpt fromStranger to the Game kenneth lincoln 147Excerpts from “Prairie Homeboys” mar k monroe 159An Indian Candidate for Public Ofﬁce delphine red shirt 181Weighed Down by Buckskin joe star ita 188Excerpt from “From Pine Ridge to Paris” al an boye 205In the Time of the Buffalo mer r il l g ilfil l an 217Excerpt fromMagpie Rising: Sketches from the Great Plains jack todd 226Excerpt from “Tending to Ruin” bob ker rey 241Excerpt fromWhen I Was a Young Man: A Memoir ruth r ay mond thone 249Excerpt fromBeing Home mary pipher 252Excerpt from “Children of Hope, Children of Tears” eamonn wal l 262Immigration, Technology, and Sense of Place ron blo ck 271Concerning Freaks, Book Clubs, and the Unbearable Distances of the Plains

293Source Acknowledgments 297Contributors

Preface

Nebraska, depending on your perspective, is either an empty place or a place teeming with life and history. Its geography is of no distinction or it is home to one of the most unique of ecosystems: the sandhills, an area covering much of the west central section of the state. Either Nebraska’s inhabitants are as normal as they in sist they are or their very insistence leads to the conclu sion that Nebraskans are anything but normal. Nebraska is rarely a destination unless you come for the sandhill crane migration in the fall and spring, or you have tickets to see the Cornhuskers play football, or you have a particular interest in American Indian cul ture and wish to visit the important sites of the Plains tribes. Nebraska is a state outsiders readily admit to driving through or ﬂying over. By chance, the two women who helped compile this volume, my coeditor, Nina ShevchukMurray, and a re markable student intern, Elisabeth Chretien, consider themselves outsiders to Nebraska. Nina tells me,

I did not even know where Nebraska was until May22,1999, when the phone rang in my parents’

x฀Preface apartment in Lviv, Ukraine, and we were told that I would be studying at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, courtesy of the U.S. Department of State. We pulled out an atlas and an encyclopedia, which helpfully informed us that Lincoln, Nebraska, was a strategic railroad station and Omaha was home to an airbase we’d need to blast off the face of the earth in a hurry if ever an opportunity presented itself. It was, after all, an old Soviet encyclopedia we were using.

Both Nina and Elisabeth still feel like outsiders to Nebraska and the state’s culture: Nina, for the reasons stated above, and Elisabeth because her family only arbitrarily settled in Omaha after many years following her father’s military career. Neither of them has trav eled west of Lincoln. I was intrigued by their sense that Nebraskans seem to have an inordinate desire to ﬁll the ﬂatness of the state with the contours of its history, or knowledge of its ﬂora and fauna, or the details of its unique characteristics and famous past residents. I am hardly objective in my understanding of the place I have lived all of my life, but I wondered if they were right about this impulse. Nina again:

This ontological tug [to understand the state] is best felt “out there”—in the inﬁnite spaces of the sparsely populated eight tenths of the state. There, it exerts its power in truly mytho logical proportions, forcing one to undertake the archetypal task of naming the smallest things, much like the ﬁrst humans must have had to do, to combat the vertigo of the mandwarf ing plains’ horizons.

The writers we have brought together in this volume seem vital to this process of naming. To start, Ron Hansen writes an over view of the state’s attributes. John Janovy Jr. describes in minute detail the story of a wren and its increasingly endangered habitat in western Nebraska. Ted Kooser creates a memorable portrait of

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