Wisconsin Public Television University Place Wisconsin Book Festival  Margot Peters, Ronnie Hess and John Lehman Bragging Writes: Ten Great Wisconsin Writers  October 22, 2011 UP647  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]