Untold Stories of Black Homesteaders in South Dakota

On By VickieIn WritingLeave a comment
Home on Blair Homestead

A large part of Clara’s Journal focused on women whose lives defy the popular narrative, whose stories of bravery, resilience, talent, and success are so often left out of our national discourse. 

And it turns out that a story I missed, a story also ignored, was that of the thousands of African Americans who homesteaded in the Great Plains in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

One of my favorite parts about writing Clara’s Journal was the research: the books, the websites, the journals, the newspapers, ancestry.com, the phone calls, the emails, the family papers. And one of my favorite parts of the research, of reanimating lives from the past, was discovering how many of our assumptions about the lives of so many people are simplified to an inaccurate caricature.

Continue reading “Untold Stories of Black Homesteaders in South Dakota” →

A Dad’s Message to His Daughter

On By VickieIn WritingLeave a comment

She married young. She was only 19. But she was in love. And it was the 60s. Women married young. Her husband was handsome, charismatic, and talented. And in the 60s, women had children right away. Four children in six years – three girls and then finally, the boy. By all accounts, society smiled on her.

They were good years. Boy, were they good years. She enjoyed looking back on them.

They bought a six-bedroom house in the best midwestern suburb, surrounded by a neighborhood of manicured lawns, multi-car garages, and bikes abandoned in driveways. The ladies often gathered at her house, sipping wine amid bursts of uproarious laughter, while all their kids freely roamed the neighborhood seeking adventure.

Continue reading “A Dad’s Message to His Daughter” →

Taking a Chance on Life… Again

On By VickieIn Writing1 Comment

It was the summer of 2001. There were five states that I had yet to visit: Hawaii, Alaska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Maine. Growing up, our family took a yearly two-week vacation, camping in the tent trailer my dad proudly bought at Sears for $800, as he would brag to anyone who would listen. So I was able to knock off a lot of states before I reached 18. 

Travel was in my bones, and just like I assumed I would go to college, that I would get married, and that I would have kids, I always assumed I would travel with my family. I had decided long before I had my children that I was not going to be someone who couldn’t go anywhere or do anything because they had kids.

The man I married was not a traveler. As a couple, we had travelled very little since we met and married. He was born and raised in Los Angeles and truly believed it was such a great city that there was no need to go anywhere else. How I made the decision to marry someone who did not share such an important part of how I saw life is a question I’ll have to explore another time.

Continue reading “Taking a Chance on Life… Again” →

1970s Adventures with Cats

On By VickieIn WritingLeave a comment
Our cat Sockie

Pets were a huge part of my children’s lives. We were the proud owners of, over time, lizards, frogs, fish, tortoises, rabbits, birds, a snake, a dog, and, of course, a cat.

During my own childhood, my family had two calico cats, both of whom lived for 18 years. The first joined our household when I was only two or three years old, before my sister was born. Her name was Pannie. Fairly obviously, my parents gave me the honor of naming her. Considering that when my own daughter was three she wanted to name her newborn brother “Swimming,” I don’t think Pannie was such a terrible choice. 

Once my sister was born, the story I recall is that she pulled Pannie’s tail or inflicted some other injustice on her, and Pannie turned around and scratched her, as cats will do. Pannie’s punishment was to have her front claws removed, a procedure many today would consider cruel but one that she did absolutely fine with. In fact, for her entire life, she was an indoor/outdoor cat, and she never had a problem. So I’m glad my parents made that decision rather than to get rid of her. I cannot imagine my childhood without Pannie.

Continue reading “1970s Adventures with Cats” →

Thoughts on the Importance of Studying Theme

On By VickieIn Current Events, Education, teaching1 Comment

I recently took a road trip over several days. On the first day’s drive, the interior of my car was filled with the sounds of a wide variety of music, from Cat Stevens to The Shins to Elton John. But on day two, I was really looking for some silence. And that silence gave my mind space to wander.

I’m reminded of a story relayed in the biography of Charles Lindbergh, the famed pilot of the Spirit of St, Louis who flew from New York to Paris. Early in his career, he was a US Air Mail pilot travelling back and forth between St. Louis and Kansas City. In those days, before radios and complete music libraries tucked away in your back pocket, Lindbergh flew in silence. To ward off the boredom, he gave himself difficult problems to solve. One of those problems was determining how to fly across the Atlantic. And on one of his flights, he solved it and went to work.

I certainly did not go about solving such problems on my drive! But I did find some clarity that explained my confusion around how people discuss literature. Maybe not as sexy as being the first to complete a transatlantic flight, but in my corner of the world as a college professor, I appreciated the revelation.

Continue reading “Thoughts on the Importance of Studying Theme” →

Memorial Day Tribute

On By VickieIn Clara's JournalLeave a comment

This Memorial Day I remember 25-year-old Private Charles A Newell of Cresbard, South Dakota, who died on October 17, 1918 at Camp Lee in Virginia. He was part of the Veterinary Training School preparing to serve overseas in World War I. Rather than one of the 53,000 US soldiers who died in combat, he was one of the 45,000 who died of influenza after being drafted (see his registration card on the right).

Two weeks before he died, he wrote to his parents: “I am in the horse doctors corps and don’t have much drilling to do. They say we won’t be up on the front line, the nearest hospital is 25 miles from the front. We don’t get any guns at all, so our life is as safe as at home. I expect to go over sometime but don’t know when; not for a couple of months anyway. I don’t care much. I have given up caring since I got in the army; it wouldn’t do any good.”

Learn more about him and others in Cresbard through the writings of Clara Mae Horen in my book Clara’s Journal: And the Story of Two Pandemics…which comes out TOMORROW!!

Thoughts on the Cover of My New Book: Clara’s Journal

On By VickieIn Clara's Journal, Current Events, politics, WritingLeave a comment

Clara’s Journal: And the Story of Two Pandemics explores a year in the life of Clara Mae Horen, an 18-year-old living in Cresbard, South Dakota, in 1918, at the beginning of one of the world’s deadliest pandemics. And Clara is my grandaunt (the sister of my paternal grandfather)!

One of the pleasures of studying Clara’s journal has been learning how different life was 100 years ago, but maybe even more importantly, another has been discovering the similarities we have with a 1918 teenager and with a 1918 country coping with a pandemic.

Now how to convey that in a cover?

Continue reading “Thoughts on the Cover of My New Book: Clara’s Journal” →

Thoughts on Simplistic Thinking

On By VickieIn Current Events, Education, politics, WritingLeave a comment
Goby the Fish

I can think specifically of a few times when teachers worked to indoctrinate me.

The first time was in elementary school. Those were the days when anti-littering propaganda… well, littered school hallways and classrooms. And yes, I was one of those kids who, under the age of ten, was out in the streets lecturing people for littering, yelling out the car window from the backseat at passersby who dropped cigarette butts or napkins on the sidewalk, picking up pieces of trash and railing at the ilk of those ruining our world. I must have been adorable.

Continue reading “Thoughts on Simplistic Thinking” →

Oh boy. Dare I? Thoughts on Abortion

On By VickieIn Current Events, politics, WritingLeave a comment

Wow. Abortion has certainly topped the news cycle lately, thanks to a law just passed in New York and a bill in Virginia that prompted a controversial comment by the governor of that state, who is now embroiled in a blackface controversy that has put his future at stake. 

Needless to say, my Facebook newsfeed is filled with opinions, from both pro-lifers and pro-choicers, on the topic along with countless links to support this point or that point.

Continue reading “Oh boy. Dare I? Thoughts on Abortion” →

Thoughts on What We Say to Young Adults about the Future

On By VickieIn Current Events, Education, politics, Self DevelopmentLeave a comment

Screen Shot 2019-01-23 at 3.19.17 PMYou can accomplish great things in this life.

That’s it. Now you just have to believe it. Unfortunately, it seems that our media and our educational system is hell bent on convincing you otherwise. And so many of you are taking that to heart. I want to say “Stop that.”

I’d been a college professor (with a brief stint of teaching middle school thrown in for fun) for 25 years when I quit last year. I am not sure if I will ever go back. I’m not sure I want to. But I know academia. It’s my niche. I lived it, and I follow academic news stories in the media somewhat obsessively. One of the reasons I am so interested is that much of what is occurring on a national scale at colleges and universities today are things that already happened at a small community college in Los Angeles, where I was a tenured English professor. I taught there for a total of 16 years, back in the nineties and in the first decade of the 2000s. So what I am witnessing is not all that surprising.

Continue reading “Thoughts on What We Say to Young Adults about the Future” →