cc >> Good evening.
My name is Jason A. Smith. I am the editor of Wisconsin
People and Ideas Magazine, and the communications director
for the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences Arts and Letters.
I'd like to welcome you to the 2011,
yes, 2011 Wisconsin Book Festival here in Madison.
This is the 10th year of the Wisconsin Book Festival.
We're pretty lucky to have it. I'm proud to be here introducing
our panel of esteemed authors. First, I have to take care of a
little Book Festival business. I wanted to thank our sponsors,
Wisconsin People and Ideas, that's me!
[laughter and applause] Yeah, thank you.
Madison Magazine, Friends of the Libraries
at the University of Wisconsin-Madison,
and of course, Wisconsin Humanities Council
for sponsoring this event. It's wonderful stuff.
Tonight, and tonight only, you will experience Wisconsin's
literary tradition through this interactive presentation of the
lives, legends, humor and surprises from some of the
state's greatest writers. From Zona Gale
to Thornton Wilder, August Derleth to John Muir,
he's a Wisconsin guy, well-- This performance will bring
to life Wisconsin authors who changed the world.
You'll also learn about acclaimed Wisconsin poet,
Lorine Niedecker, and how Margot Peters, author
of Niedecker's new biography, approached her
for researching the book. Let's introduce our presenters
for this evening. We'll start on this side
with my colleague and friend John Lehman.
John Lehman is the founder of Rosebud Magazine, and the
literary editor of Wisconsin People and Ideas,
hold your applause, as well as managing partner
of Zelda Wilde Publishing. John was a finalist for the
Wisconsin Poet Laureate position in 2004, and again in 2008,
which means in 2012... [laughter]
Eh, he gave up. Dramatic readings of John's
plays have been presented in Milwaukee, Madison
and in St. Petersburg, Florida. Yes.
His collection of poetry includes "Acting Lessons,"
"Shrine of the Tooth Fairy ," "Dogs Dream of Running,"
"Shorts: 101 Brief Poems of Wonder and Surprise,"
and my personal favorite, "The Village Poet."
Every village has a poet. John is the village poet
of Cambridge. Jumping over to the
far side, we have Margot Peters. Her new biography of Lorine
Niedecker is called "Lorine Niedecker:
A Poet's Life." Margot is an accomplished
biographer, whose many books include "Unquiet Soul: A
Biography of Charlotte Bronte ," "The House of Barrymore,"
"Design for Living: Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne,"
"May Sarton: A Biography ," and "Bernard Shaw
and the Actresses." And "Summers: A True Love
Story," which is currently being read on Wisconsin Public Radio's
A Chapter A Day. Tune in for that.
Good stuff. Margot lives in Lake Mills,
Wisconsin. And finally, my colleague,
Ronnie Hess, last but not least, my dear friend and colleague
Ronnie. Her book is entitled
"Eat Smart In France." Everything I learned about
eating in France, I learned from Ronnie.
Ronnie is an award-winning journalist and poet who has had
a long and passionate interest in food, especially French food.
She has lived and worked in France as a reporter
for CBS News and as an English teacher.
Her food and travel writing has appeared in national
and regional publications. Ronnie studied cooking with--
I'm going to butcher this-- Liane Kuony, thank you,
at the Postilion Restaurant and the School of Culinary Arts
in, I'm going to butcher this, too, Fond du Lac!
[laughter] She is the author of "Eat Smart
in France," as I said, a culinary travel guide;
and a poetry chapbook, called "Whole Cloth," which
I read from cover to cover. It's great.
Ronnie is the coordinator of two of the Wisconsin Academy's
statewide Academy Evenings lecture series, which enlightens
and engages Wisconsinites on the important issues of today.
Ronnie lives here in Madison, where she is at work on another
poetry manuscript called, I love this,
"A Woman in Vegetable ." Is that right?
Nice. Lovely.
Well, I'm going to turn the podium over to John.
Are you starting? Okay.
So please, okay, well, they're both starting.
Let's welcome John Lehman and Ronnie Hess.
[applause]
Thanks, Jason. And to think just six or seven
years ago, I was selling t-shirts out in the lobby.
[light laughter] Maybe after this,
we'll get back to that. This is "Bragging Rights,"
ten past authors in whom Wisconsin is especially proud.
Most people in our state don't realize that Wisconsin has
a soaring literary tradition. Here's a brief introduction to
the lives, legends, humor and surprises of this state's
greatest writers, from early feminist Zona Gale to gay
playwright Thornton Wilder, from horror story writer August
Derleth to environmentalist John Muir, you'll discover
we've got a lot to be proud of. >> And the next time your son
or daughter asks you if Wisconsin has ever had
any writers, you can answer... >> We've had at least ten
who have changed the world. Zona Gale, number one.
She was born in Portage, in 1874.
She wrote her first novel, "Romance Island," in 1906;
and in 1920 she published the novel "Miss Lulu Bett,"
which she adapted as a play. It was awarded the Pulitzer
Prize for Drama. In addition to her fiction
writing, Zona Gale was an active supporter of the
La Follettes, both Robert M. La Follette
and Philip La Follette, and progressive causes.
She was an active member of the National Women's Party, and she
lobbied extensively for the 1921 Wisconsin Equal Rights Law.
Her activism on behalf of women was her way to help solve
"a problem she returned to repeatedly in her novels:
women's frustration at their lack of opportunities."
She died in Chicago, of pneumonia, in 1938.
This is from her short story, "Friendship Village,"
published in 1908. We put new wine in old
bottles, but also we use new bottles to hold our old wine.
For, consider the name of our main street: is this Main or
Clark or Cook or Grand Street, according to the register
of the main streets of town? Instead, for its half-mile of
village life, the plank road, macadamized and arc-lighted,
is called Daphne Street. Daphne Street!
I love to wonder why. Did our dear Doctor June's
father name it when he set the five hundred elms and oaks
which glorify us? Or did Daphne herself take this
way on the day of her flight. Already some of us smile with
a secret nod at something when we direct a stranger, "You will
find the Telegraph and Cable Office two blocks down,
on Daphne Street." "The Commercial Travelers'
House, the Abigail Arnold Home Bakery, the Post Office and
Armory are in the same block on Daphne Street."
Or, "The Electric Light Office is at the corner of Dunn and
Daphne." Is it not wonderful that Daphne
herself, at seeing these things, did not stay,
but lifted her laurels somewhat nearer Tempe-
although there are those of us who like to fancy that she
is here all the time in our Daphne-Street magic:
the fire bell, the tulip beds, and the twilight bonfires.
For how else, in all reason, has the name persisted?
Number two is August Derleth, 1909-1971.
He was best known for his horror stories.
After his first 40 were rejected he finally sold one,
"Bat's Belfry" to Weird Tales magazine.
But he also went on to publish the writings of the great
American supernatural writer, H.P. Lovecraft,
and the first book by science-fiction king,
Ray Bradbury. He was the literary editor of
the Capital Times for 20 years and won a Guggenheim
Fellowship. He used the funds to bind his
comic book collection, most recently valued in the millions
of dollars, rather than to travel abroad
as the award intended. But his true avocation
was hiking the terrain of his native Sauk-Prairie.
This is from "Walden West," part of the Sac Prairie Saga.
Lolly Denham was thin and faded at fifty, a stooped woman
with pale gray eyes that stared at you earnestly
from behind her spectacles. She wore her graying hair drawn
severely back and knotted high on her neck, parted in the
middle, and on every clouded day, wore overshoes.
She had strange habits. She used to come into the post
office and industriously empty the wastebasket into her
handbag. On winter nights during and
after snowfalls, she went out and shoveled snow, not only
before her own door, but all around the block.
Sometimes on autumn nights, she raked leaves as erratically.
She stopped people on the street and asked mysteriously
what they had done with her "divorce papers."
She walked alone at night, talking to herself, and she
went through the darkness to lighted windows, moth-like,
and looked steadfastly into the lit room, as if to satisfy
some hunger for life she did not have.
Of what went on within her mind no one knew for certain.
Her private world allowed of no invasion, though I often
wondered what secret drive she satisfied by her addiction to
wastepaper and the work properly done by others.
Did the circulars and folders, the discarded newspapers and
advertisements she found in the post office wastebasket assuage
some remote wish for escape? Did the ceaseless nocturnal
labor so secretly assumed offer a panacea for inner torment?
The wastepaper vanished into her house, and there it was
stored in the basement, together with twigs
and fragments of wood, as against some need,
though there was no necessity for it to heat the house, since
there was central heating, and there was nothing
in which to burn the paper and twigs she collected but one
small range in the kitchen. The paper was never used; the
twigs were stacked away until the basement under the house
was filled from floor to ceiling with paper and twigs.
Number three, John Muir. Muir's biographer,
Steven J. Holmes, states that Muir has become "one of the
patron saints of 20th-century American environmental
activity," both political and recreational.
As a result, his writings are commonly discussed in books and
journals, and he is often been quoted by nature photographers
such as Ansel Adams. Holmes writes, "Muir has
profoundly shaped the very categories through which
Americans understand and envision their relationships
with the natural world." Muir was noted for being
an ecological thinker, political spokesman,
and religious prophet, whose writings became a personal guide
into nature for countless individuals, making his name
"almost ubiquitous" in the modern environmental
consciousness. According to author
William Anderson, Muir exemplified "the archetype
of our oneness with the earth," while biographer Donald Worster
says he understood his mission to be, "saving the American
soul from total surrender to materialism."
Born in Scotland, in 1838, Muir's family emigrated
to the United States, starting a farm near Portage, Wisconsin.
By age 11, young Muir had learned to recite
by heart and by sore flesh all of the New Testament
and most of the Old Testament. Muir remained, a deeply
religious man, writing, "We all flow from one fountain,
Soul. All are expressions of one love.
God does not appear, and flow out, only from narrow
chinks and round bored wells here and there in favored races
and places, but He flows in grand undivided currents,
shoreless and boundless over creeds and forms and
all kinds of civilization and people and beasts, saturating
all and fountainizing all." >> At age 22, Muir enrolled at
the University of Wisconsin-Madison, paying
his own way for several years. There, under a towering black
locust tree beside North Hall, Muir took his first botany
lesson. A fellow student plucked a
flower from the tree and used it to explain how the grand locust
is a member of the pea family, related to the straggling
pea plant. Fifty years later, the
naturalist Muir described the day in his autobiography.
"This fine lesson charmed me and sent me flying to the woods and
meadows in wild enthusiasm ." In September 1867, he
undertook a walk of about 1,000 miles from Indiana to Florida,
which he recounted in his book, "A Thousand-Mile Walk
to the Gulf." He had no specific route, except
to go by the "wildest, leafiest, and least trodden way
I could find," he wrote. Upon reaching Florida, he hoped
to board a ship to South America and continue his wandering
there. After contracting malaria
on Florida's Gulf Coast, he abandoned those plans,
and instead, he sailed to New York and booked passage
to California. >> He wrote, In writing,
we can do but little more than to give a few names,
as they come to mind, beaver, squirrel, coon, fox,
marten, fisher, otter, ermine, wildcat, only this instead of
full descriptions of the bright-eyed furry throng,
their snug home nests, their fears and fights and loves,
how they get their food, rear their young,
escape their enemies, and keep themselves warm and well,
exquisitely clean, through all of this the pitiless weather.
And here are some personal impressions and recollections
of John Muir as a student in Madison from a fellow classmate
at the University. >> My acquaintance with
John Muir began when a tutor, John D. Parkinson, took me in
tow and led me to the northeast corner room of North Hall
on the first floor. A young man was busily engaged
sawing boards and presently the tutor introduced him
as John Muir. I was much younger than he, and
was entering the preparatory department, but it was the
beginning of a close and delightful college friendship.
When telling me stories of his early life, or reading Burns,
he often dropped into a rich Scotch brogue, although he
wrote and spoke English perfectly.
The only books which I remember seeing him read were his Bible,
the poems of Robert Burns, and his college textbooks.
It was a very hard and dreary life which he had been
compelled to live on his father's farm,
but in spite of all, he was the most cheerful, happy-hearted
man I ever knew. Muir died of pneumonia
in California, in 1914. >> Number four,
Lorine Niedecker. >> She was born in 1903,
on Blackhawk Island near Fort Atkinson, where she lived
virtually all her life in relative obscurity and poverty.
She scrubbed floors in the Fort Atkinson Hospital and, unknown
to those who came in contact with her, wrote relentless
poetry which today is included in the "Norton Anthology"
alongside such literary giants as Emily Dickinson
and William Carlos Williams. >> Fog-thick morning
I see only where I now walk.
I carry my clarity
with me. >> Niedecker tells us,
I had set my sights beyond Blackhawk Island, and my
connection to that other world was Louis Zukofsky,
a young intellectual making waves.
She began a regular correspondence with him and
eventually visited Zukofsky in New York.
She became pregnant. Zukofsky insisted that
she terminate the pregnancy. She did, and returned forever
to Wisconsin where she wrote about her life beside
a flooding river, in a barren cottage without electricity
or running water. And Zukofsky who thought that
she, at most, might be a footnote in his life, has now
become a footnote in hers. She died in 1970 from a stroke.
My Life by Water My life
by water- Hear
spring's first frog
or board out on the cold
ground giving
Muskrats gnawing
doors to wild green
arts and letters Rabbits
raided my lettuce
One boat two-
pointed toward my shore
thru birdstart wingdrip
weed-drift of the soft
and serious- Water.
At this point, we're going to turn over the program
to Margot Peters, who has just written this wonderful biography
on Lorine Niedecker, to talk about that in more detail.
Thank you, John and Ronnie. How many of you, before this
evening, had heard the name Lorine Niedecker?
That's pretty good, but not good enough.
[laughter] Can you hear me all right?
As John said, Lorine Niedecker died when she was 67,
in a hospital in Madison, at University Hospital,
after a month-long illness of a cerebral hemorrhage.
That was in 1970, December 31. 1970.
Her publisher, Jonathan Williams, who was head of the
Jargon Press, was infuriated that nobody seemed to notice
the passing. Sure, she got an obituary notice
in Fort Atkinson, because she lived close to Fort Atkinson.
But where was this broader notice of the passing of a poet
that he considered one of the great poets of the 20th century.
This is a letter, I'll just quote from briefly, that he
wrote to the "New York Times" in protest about ignoring
Lorine's death. "Dear Sir," and he quotes now
from the poet Basil Bunting, a British poet who admired
Lorine. It says, "Dear Sir,
'Lorine Niedecker is the best living poetess.
No one is so subtle with so few words.'
Basil Bunting." And in another quote.
"'Lorine Niedecker is the most absolute poetess in our language
since Emily Dickinson .' Peter Yates."
You have to forgive the word poetess, they didn't know
any better back then. [laughter]
Miss Niedecker died in her home, Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin.
That's wrong. She lived on Blackhawk Island.
On December 30. It was the 31st.
1970. She was 68.
She was 67. But let's forget those details,
because this man is truly a fan. Deeper than a fan.
He published Niedecker. He felt that she was one of the
most important poets in America. It strikes me as fairly dim
on the part of the "New York Times,"
and what few other responsible journals there still are that
not one of them has managed in the intervening weeks to inform
the public of this loss. During the four decades Lorine
Niedecker wrote the savory, laponic, superbly crafted
poems, she commanded the admiration
of William Carlos Williams, Louis Zukofsky,
Basil Bunting, Edward Dahlberg, Kenneth Rexroth, Herbert Read,
James Laughlin, Robert Duncan, Cid Corman, Robert Creeley,
Hamilton Finley, Gilbert Sorrentino,
Ronald Johnson, and a small audience capable
of telling real peony bushes from the plastic hydrangea
plants. Her work is in print on both
sides of the Atlantic, and we propose to keep it that way
until journals, critics and readers become re-cultivated.
Well, the Times did not print Jonathan Williams' letter
to the Times. And Lorine did seem to be in
danger of what she feared most, and that was going to Earth,
giving her phosphorus, as she said, to the soil,
without ever being remembered as a great poet, or a poet.
She didn't think of herself as great.
So, 1970. Emily Dickinson, to whom
she's most often compared, died in 1886.
It took 49 years before Emily Dickinson
was recognized as a poet. That's due to the publication
of her complete poetic works. So it didn't take that long with
Lorine, but you know, the world has speeded up considerably
since the 19th century. Let's think when Lorine started
appearing on the literary map. Obviously, she was known in her
lifetime by poets, chiefly other poets who loved her work, and
who taught her, and who mimeographed her poems, because
her poems were published in tiny editions.
They handed them around to friends.
She was appreciative. But the wider world,
where was that? Well, I dated it in my biography
from the '80s. That, oddly enough, is when
people start to tell me that they began to be aware
of Lorine Niedecker. In 1985, her book,
a collection of her poetry called "The Granite Pail,"
was published posthumously by Cid Corman.
That was 1985. Well, that book and also
a collection of her poetry that was published
by Jonathan Williams called "From This Condensory,"
was published in 1986. She gets a review, her first
review in the "New York Times ." It does take the Times to
put a writer on the map. This is when the pot starts to
be stirred, when people start hearing about Lorine Niedecker.
In 1986, also a scholar named Lisa Pater Faranda publishes the
collective letters of Lorine Niedecker to Cid Corman.
Cid Corman was a poet. Am I speaking too closely
to that mic? Yeah? Okay.
So, Corman was a poet and the publisher of a magazine
called "Origin," located in Kyoto, Japan.
He published Lorine constantly, many, many, 45 at least,
of her poems. So he published
"The Granite Pail." I remember buying that,
walking into the University Bookstore and seeing this book.
I was always in the poetry department, and wondering
who Lorine Niedecker was. I had no idea.
So I bought "The Granite Pail," and became absolutely enchanted
with her poetry. Enchanted is probably not the
right word. She grabbed you by the throat.
She was a tough poet. Anyway, so 1986.
Then, by let's see, 1993, Lorine Niedecker's letters
to Louis Zukofsky, an objectivist poet,
were published. So you have that added to the
pot that's stirring, and you get her correspondence, what's left
of it, because Zukofsky insisted that she destroy everything that
was personal in his letters. She did that.
She took scissors and cut letters to pieces.
If you go to where they are in the University of Austin's
Humanities Research Center, what you find are these fragments,
these heartbreaking fragments of a correspondence that could've
been, if they had kept the letters, could've been one of
the great, great correspondences of all time.
As it is, it's fascinating. But one mourns what's not there.
Anyway, so that got published. Then the scholars started to get
interested in her, and you have a book called "Lorine Niedecker:
Woman and Poet," in 1996. "Blue Chicory," a collection of
her poetry is published in 1975. Then another scholarly work by
Elizabeth Willis in 2008. Still, however, in 2003, John
Lehman here, could call Lorine, he titled his book on Lorine--
How would you describe that book, John?
A book for high school... >> A book for high school
students. >> Because I taught high school.
But it was using a context of the letters to Corman and
Zukofsky to try to get below the surface of some of her work.
Yes, it's a really fine introduction,
more than an introduction to Lorine's poetry and her life.
John titled his book in 2003, "America's Greatest Unknown
Poet," so John is saying she's still unknown to most
people. I think the crucial breakthrough
came, if you're not anthologized as a poet, you're not going to
be read. And lo and behold, Norton took
Lorine in, and she has now 16 pages in the latest
"Norton Anthology." Louis Zukofsky has one poem.
[light laughter] No, we don't dislike Louis.
We just feel that-- "Oh yes, we do,"
Ann Engelman says. [laughter]
We have the president of the Friends of Lorine Niedecker
here in this audience tonight. Stand up, Ann.
Yay! [applause]
So, she's in anthologies. She's taught.
And I was delighted to hear that a professor at UW-Madison is
teaching her in a course this fall, because the drive has been
to get this woman published and in anthologies, and to be taught
and known, because she's a magnificent poet.
Her poetry can be so simple. She writes,
My friend tree I sawed you down
but I must attend an older friend
the sun That's how simple she can be,
and yet she can be as lyrical as the poem that Ronnie read.
You read "My Life By Water ." So I didn't really plan
on writing a biography of Lorine Niedecker.
I had written six long biographies, and I was a little
burned out. But I went to see a play--
It keeps imploding into the microphone.
I'm sorry. I'm a teacher!
I always talk loudly! I'm an ex-teacher.
I went to a play about Lorine Niedecker
in Fort Atkinson. It was wonderful.
I walked out and there was a woman staffing a desk
with information on it and bookmarks, etc.
I kind of waved at her and said, oh, I've always wanted to write
a biography of Lorine Niedecker. Well, I went home and forgot
that, because what I had meant was, if I were 20 years younger,
and if I hadn't already written six biographies, that would be
a wonderful project. But this woman took me very
seriously and I was called and told that they had a biographer,
that the Friends of Lorine Niedecker had a biographer
for Lorine. So, I said give me a few days
to think this over. I just said, oh, yes, why not.
I've loved her ever since 1986 when I bought
"The Granite Pail." I undertook this life.
She's different from all my other subjects, because all my
other subjects were very famous when they lived.
At one point, there was no one more famous in the world than
George Bernard Shaw. You could just write a letter
and say, "George Bernard Shaw, The World," and it would get to
him. That's how famous this
playwright was. Charlotte Bronte's "Jane Eyre"
was probably the most popular book in 19th century England.
The Barrymore family that I wrote about, John Barrymore,
Ethel Barrymore, Lionel Barrymore, were icons of the
theater and later of film. So I'm used to writing about
people who really made a splash in their lifetimes, and carried
fame with them and all its burdens.
With Lorine Niedecker, you have someone who is writing without
any real idea that she will ever, ever be published,
first of all. And then, if she is published,
and she is published in the most minute magazines, small poetry
magazines with circulations of 100 people, for example, whether
these will survive, whether anything will survive.
Yet, nothing deters her from the lifetime, which,
as John and Ronnie said, was full of hardship.
Nothing deterred her from writing.
She wrote. She had three or four books
published during her lifetime, some posthumously.
With no idea that she would ever really, really take hold as a
poet, yet nothing could stop her from writing.
She called her workplace her condensory, because she was
a poet that distills emotion. I think with Lorine Niedecker,
what you had was ecstasy, because she calls poetry
ecstasy, "the ecstasy that came to me," yet ecstasy under
rigorous control. And nothing makes a more tense
and beautiful poem, to me, than that.
That's the kind of poet she is. So, anyway, it was an adventure.
I met people I never dreamed of meeting.
Somebody said, oh, it must be hard to find information about
Lorine, I mean, she lived so obscure a life.
Most people in Fort Atkinson had no idea that she was a poet.
No idea whatsoever. She didn't want them to know.
You must have had a scramble for evidence.
I said I not only turned over every stone, I turned over
every piece of gravel. And I did.
I just researched and researched and tried to find things.
I went to the Jefferson County Courthouse and pulled out old
birth certificates, and death certificates, and marriage
certificates, and divorce certificates, because there's so
much missing from her life. But on the other hand, here is
a book and it's about 300 pages long.
It does tell her story. It's a wonderful story.
It's full of triumph and loneliness, heartbreak,
and the utmost courage. This is a woman I admire
almost more than any other that I have written about.
So that was my adventure with Lorine.
She is a Wisconsin writer. I think we should embrace her.
Thank you very much. [applause]
We'll come back to Margot at the end of the program.
Our number five is Sterling North, born on
a farm near Edgerton in 1906, he died in 1974.
After attending the University of Chicago, North worked as
a reporter, eventually becoming literary editor for
the "Chicago Daily News," the "New York World-Telegram,"
and the "New York Sun." One of North's first books,
"The Pedro Gorino," published in 1929, was a narrative
of the life of Harry Dean, an African-American sea captain.
A 1934 North novel, "Plowing on Sunday," featured
a rare dust jacket illustration by Iowa artist Grant Wood.
North's book, "Midnight and Jeremiah" was made into
a Disney movie, "So Dear to My Heart," in 1949.
In 1957, he became the general editor of Houghton Mifflin's
North Star Books. North published his most famous
work, "Rascal," in 1963. The book is a remembrance
of a year in his childhood when he raised a baby raccoon
which he named Rascal. It received a Newbery Honor
in 1964, a Sequoyah Book Award and a Young Reader's Choice
Award in 1966. It was made into the Disney
movie of the same name in 1969. Subtitled "A Memoir of a Better
Era", North's book is a prose poem to adolescent angst.
"Rascal" chronicles young Sterling's loving, troubled
relationship with his father, dreamer David Willard North,
and the aching loss represented by the death of his mother,
Elizabeth Nelson North. The boy reconnects with society
through the unlikely intervention of his pet raccoon,
a "ring-tailed charmer" that dominates almost every page
of the book. The book has sold more than
2.5 million copies since, and has been translated into
18 other languages. I just finished reading it
about two hours ago. Here's a critic's reaction to
Rascal. >> And I just lost my copy
in the women's bathroom. [laughter]
Don't everyone go! >> Skunks, woodchucks,
a crow named Poe, an absent-minded father,
an eighteen foot, half-finished canoe in the living room,
welcome to the North home! Nothing is surprising
at the North residence. Not even eleven-year-old
Sterling's pet raccoon. Rascal is only a baby when
young Sterling brings him home to join his unusual family.
The raccoon and Sterling are partners and best friends
for a perfect year of adventure, swimming, fishing,
exploring the countryside together, until the spring day
when everything suddenly changes and Sterling realizes
he must let Rascal go. This heartwarming memoir
of a boy's friendship with a wild animal,
and his growing awareness of the world around him, has
become a treasured classic. >> Number six is Aldo Leopold.
Here are some words of Leopold.
These are from "Round River." Conservation is a state of
harmony between men and land. By land is meant all of the
things on, over, or in the earth.
Harmony with land is like harmony with a friend; you
cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his left.
That is to say, you cannot love game and hate predators;
you cannot conserve the waters and waste the ranges;
you cannot build the forest and mine the farm.
The land is one organism. Its parts, like our own parts,
compete with each other, and co-operate with each other.
The competitions are as much a part of the inner workings
as the co-operations. You can regulate them,
cautiously, but not abolish them.
The outstanding scientific discovery of the 20th century
is not television, or radio, but rather the complexity
of the land organism. Only those who know the most
about it can appreciate how little we know about it.
The last word in ignorance is the man who says
of an animal or plant, "What good is it?"
If the land mechanism as a whole is good,
then every part is good, whether we understand it
or not. If the biota, in the course
of eons, has built something we like but do not understand,
then who but a fool would discard
the seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel
is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.
He also wrote: >> Why is it that conservation
is so rarely practiced by those who must extract
a living from the land? It is said to boil down,
in the last analysis, to economic obstacles.
Take forestry as an example: the lumberman says he will
crop his timber when stumpage values rise high enough,
and when wood substitutes quit underselling him.
He said this decades ago. In the interim, stumpage
values have gone down, not up; substitutes have increased,
not decreased. Forest devastation goes on
as before. I admit the reality
of this predicament. I suspect that the forces
inherent in unguided economic evolution
are not all beneficent. Like the forces inside our
own bodies, they may become malignant, pathogenic.
I believe that many of the economic forces inside
the modern body-politic are pathogenic in respect
to harmony with land. >> Aldo Leopold was born
in Burlington, Iowa, in 1887. As a boy, he developed a lively
interest in field ornithology and natural history.
In 1924, he accepted the position of Associate Director
of the U.S. Forest Products Laboratory in Madison, the
principal research institution of the Forest Service
at that time. In 1933, he was appointed to
the newly created chair in Game Management
at the University of Wisconsin, a position he held
until his death. He was co-founder
of The Wilderness Society. Leopold was throughout his life
at the forefront of the conservation movement.
He is widely acknowledged as the father of wildlife
conservation in America. Though perhaps best known for
"A Sand County Almanac," he was also an internationally
respected scientist and was an advisor on conservation
to the United Nations. He died of a heart attack
on April 21, 1948, while helping his neighbors
fight a grass fire. >> Number seven is Edna Ferber.
What? Edna Ferber was a Wisconsin
writer? Ferber was born in Michigan,
in 1885. At the age 12, she moved
with her family to Appleton, Wisconsin,
where she graduated from high school and briefly
attended Lawrence University. She took newspaper jobs
at the "Appleton Daily Crescent" and the "Milwaukee Journal"
before publishing her first novel.
Due to her skill in crafting scene, characterization
and plot, several theatrical and film productions have been
based on her works, including "Show Boat,"
"Giant," "Ice Palace," "Saratoga Trunk" and "Cimarron,"
which won an Oscar. Ferber was a member
of the Algonquin Round Table, a group of wits who met
for lunch every day at the Algonquin Hotel in New York.
She died in New York City of stomach cancer,
at the age of 82. >> Edna Ferber said,
"A closed mind is a dying mind ." "A woman can look both moral
and exciting... if she also looks as if it was
quite a struggle." [laughter]
"Big doesn't necessarily mean better.
Sunflowers aren't better than violets."
"If American politics are too dirty for women to take part in,
there's something wrong with American politics."
"Life can't defeat a writer who is in love with writing,
for life itself is a writer's lover
until death." >> Number eight
is Hamlin Garland. >> Hannibal Hamlin Garland
was born in 1860 on a farm near West Salem.
A prolific writer, he published novels, short fiction,
and essays. In 1917, he published his
popular autobiography, "A Son of the Middle Border."
After moving to Hollywood, California, in 1929, he devoted
his remaining years to investigating psychic phenomena.
In his final book, "The Mystery of the Buried Crosses," in 1939,
he tried to defend such phenomena and prove the
legitimacy of psychic mediums. After he died in 1940,
his ashes were buried in the West Salem cemetery.
The Hamlin Garland House in that town is now honored
as an historic site. >> This is from
"Boy Life on the Prairie ," published in 1899.
Life on a Wisconsin farm, even for the older lads,
has its compensations. There were times when
the daily routine of lonely and monotonous life gave place
to an agreeable bustle for a few days, and human
intercourse lightened the toil. In the midst of the dull,
slow progress of fall's ploughing, the gathering
of the threshing crew was a most dramatic event.
All through the months of October and November, the
ceaseless ringing hum and the bow-ouw, ouw-woo booee-oom
of the great balance wheel of the threshing-machine,
and the deep bass hum of the whirling cylinder,
as the motion rose and fell, could be heard
on every side like the singing of some sullen and gigantic
autumnal insect. The air was sharp, and the
boys, having taken off their boots, could only stand at the
window and watch their father as he went out to show the men
where to the power was, the dim light throwing
fantastic shadows here and there, lighting up
a face now and then, and bringing out the thresher,
which seemed a silent monster to the children,
who flattened their noses against the window-panes
to be sure that nothing should escape them.
The men's voices sounded cheerfully in the still night,
and the roused turkeys in the oaks peered about on their
perches, black silhouettes against the sky.
Number nine, Laura Ingalls Wilder
Laura Ingalls Wilder was the creator of the much-loved
children's series "Little House" books
that recounted her life as a young girl on the western
frontier during the late 1800s. >> She was born in 1867,
near Pepin, the second of four children.
As a child, Laura moved with her family from place to place
across America's heartland. In 1879, the family
finally settled in what would become De Smet, South Dakota,
which remained her parent's home until they died.
Their second winter in De Smet was one of the worst on record.
Numerous blizzards prevented trains from delivering any
supplies, essentially cutting off the town from December
until May. Years later, Laura wrote about
her experiences as a young teenager trying to survive
the cold temperatures and lack of food, firewood,
and other necessities. >> Wilder completed her first
autobiographical work in the late 1920s.
Entitled "Pioneer Girl," it was a first-person account
of her childhood on the frontier from the time she was three
until she reached the age of eighteen.
Wilder submitted it to various publishers under the name
Laura Ingalls Wilder. But no one was interested in her
chronicle, which contained plenty of historical facts about
her childhood, but little in the way of character development.
But refusing to become discouraged, she changed
her approach. The "I" in her stories
became "Laura," and the focus moved from the story
of one little girl to the experiences of an entire
family on the new frontier. Wilder also decided to direct
her writing specifically to children.
In 1931, at the age of 65, Wilder published the first of
her eight "Little House" books, "Little House in the Big Woods."
It was a huge hit with readers. Ten years later, she finished
the final book in her "Little House" series.
She was 90 when she died in 1957.
This is from "Little House on the Prairie,"
published in 1935. The wind was rising
and wildly screaming... Thousands of rabbits
were running... Snakes rippled across
the yard. Prairie hens ran silently,
their necks outstretched and their wings spread.
Birds screamed in the screaming wind...
Great flames came roaring, flaring and twisting high.
Twists of flame broke loose and came down on the wind
to blaze up in the grasses far ahead
of the roaring wall of fire. A red light came
from the rolling black clouds of smoke overhead.
And finally there's 10, Thornton Wilder
Playwright and novelist Thornton Wilder
was born in Madison, in 1897. As a youth, Wilder was teased
by others as being overly intellectual.
A classmate said, "We left him alone, and he would retire to
the library, his hideaway, learning to distance himself
from humiliation and indifference."
Among Wilder's best-known novels, he wrote seven,
is "The Bridge of San Luis Rey."
In it, Wilder explored the question why unfortunate events
happen to people who seem undeserving of them.
It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1928.
And in 1998, it was selected by the editorial board of the
American Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels
of the twentieth century. British Prime Minister
Tony Blair quoted from the book, about a bridge collapse in Peru,
at a memorial service for victims of the September 11
attacks in 2001. Here's the quote.
"But soon we will die, and all memories of the victims
will have left earth, and we ourselves shall be loved
for a while and forgotten. But the love
will have been enough; all those impulses of love
return to the love that made them.
Even memory is not necessary for love.
There is a land of the living and a land of the dead,
and the bridge is love. The only survival,
the only meaning." >> Two of Wilder's plays
also won Pulitzers, including "Our Town" in 1938.
The play employs a narrator called the "Stage Manager,"
a role Wilder played himself on Broadway for several weeks.
His other Pulitzer-prize winning play, "The Skin of Our Teeth,"
opened in New York on November 18, 1942,
with Fredric March and Tallulah Bankhead
in the leading roles. In 1955, Tyrone Guthrie
encouraged Wilder to rework "The Merchant of Yonkers"
into "The Matchmaker," which later became the basis
for the hit 1964 musical "Hello, Dolly!"
Wilder continues to be read and performed around the world.
And it is estimated that "Our Town" is performed
at least once each day somewhere in around country.
Wilder died in 1975. Here's from "Our Town."
We all know that something is eternal.
And it ain't houses and it ain't names,
and it ain't earth, and it ain't even the stars...
Everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal,
and that something has to do with human beings.
All the greatest people ever lived have been
telling us that for five thousand years,
and yet you'd be surprised how people are always
losing hold of it. There's something
way down deep that's eternal about every human being.
>> Good-bye. Good-bye, world.
Good-bye, Grover's Corners.. . Mama and Papa.
Good-bye to clocks ticking.. . And Mama's sunflowers.
And food and coffee. And new-ironed dresses
and hot baths... And sleeping and waking up.
Oh, earth, you're too wonderful
for anybody to realize you. >> Wisconsin People & Ideas
has decided to highlight essays and excerpts from these ten
authors over the next few years, as well as introduce works by
contemporary Wisconsin writers. >> We're going to call it ABC,
the Academy Book Club. I'm Ronnie Hess.
I'm John Lehman. The first meeting
will be held in April. Check Isthmus or the Academy
website or for details: wisconsinacademy.org/bookclub.
Wisconsin has a rich literary tradition.
It's not only a great place to live, but a state that
appreciates writers and artists who bring cultural depth
to all of our lives. Thank you for coming
and celebrating these wonderful writers with us.
Good night. [applause]