Thomas D. Isern's Blog: Willow Creek: A Writing Journal
March 15, 2025
Reading with Tuck
I used to read to Angie the History Dog, especially when a new issue of Ducks Unlimited arrived. Since Tuck is now 6 months old, I figured she would enjoy the same exercise, and I was right. Her attention span needs development, though. From my own point of view, I got two things from the reading this morning.
1. The publisher's column, "Where the Ducks Are," resonated with a short essay I have drafted for use in an edited work, Thinking About the Great Plains, a collection of think pieces that generated historic understandings about life on the plains. One of these is the underground classic by John Lynch, "Escape from Mediocrity," about wildlife management on the prairies. In my introduction, I use waterfowl management as an example of how people living outside the region have deep vested interests in matters within the region. The publisher says of DU, "up here, where the prairie looks more like an ocean and the wind is never still, is where it really counts. We were founded to conserve the prairie wetlands, and it is our highest priority to this day." I'll probably use that quote.
2. Ducks Unlimited, against all odds in the declensionist world of American letters, remains a splendid magazine, in the tradition of Field and Stream in its heyday. It has lots of advertising, and newsy notes, but still has real feature articles, often narrative in form, articles that fill pages and run for four or more. It has regular features, too--wetland reports, culinary matters. Expository pieces about conservation work. Once in the while a humorous piece. The editors and authors know their public and do not assume the least common denominator. They tell stories, build a knowledge base, and build community.
I'm thinking this might be a model for a magazine of the northern plains.
1. The publisher's column, "Where the Ducks Are," resonated with a short essay I have drafted for use in an edited work, Thinking About the Great Plains, a collection of think pieces that generated historic understandings about life on the plains. One of these is the underground classic by John Lynch, "Escape from Mediocrity," about wildlife management on the prairies. In my introduction, I use waterfowl management as an example of how people living outside the region have deep vested interests in matters within the region. The publisher says of DU, "up here, where the prairie looks more like an ocean and the wind is never still, is where it really counts. We were founded to conserve the prairie wetlands, and it is our highest priority to this day." I'll probably use that quote.
2. Ducks Unlimited, against all odds in the declensionist world of American letters, remains a splendid magazine, in the tradition of Field and Stream in its heyday. It has lots of advertising, and newsy notes, but still has real feature articles, often narrative in form, articles that fill pages and run for four or more. It has regular features, too--wetland reports, culinary matters. Expository pieces about conservation work. Once in the while a humorous piece. The editors and authors know their public and do not assume the least common denominator. They tell stories, build a knowledge base, and build community.
I'm thinking this might be a model for a magazine of the northern plains.
December 31, 2024
Great Plains Book Club
Commencing in January, I'll offer, for the first time, my combined seminar 710+730, readings and research, rural and regional. This prompts me to get various of my affairs in order, including my profile and functions in Goodreads. These include the Great Plains Book Club. I'm encouraging my seminar students to join the group and make use of the Coffee Klatch Annex therein as a forum in which to tease their reports and discussions for the seminar. The group overall, however, is open to all, or anyone who wants to talk about Great Plains books. Come on in.
December 10, 2024
On Point
Got up early to write a book review for Roundup, magazine of the Western Writers Association. People say academics can't write to word count. The editor called for 175 words. I just pushed SEND on 174. So there.
March 1, 2024
Old Paint
I've spent this Friday in the home office (except for a brief excursion to give the dogs a run). Some would say I decided to commence spring break a day early. I would say I chose to spend the day engaged in reading and writing. In particular, I was doing preps for tonight's Willow Creek Folk School (No. 163). This involved not only follow-up research on the featured ballads, running through the songs, and scripting, but most particularly, working out a new method for organizing content. Over the past few weeks the keeping of a journal has been a habit I have deployed for furthering and improving my writing and, in general, stirring the intellect. I like the results. This week I extended use of the journal to organizing content and commentary for the folk school. The black book will appear on camera tonight.
The middle of the session will be devoted to the cowboy ballad, "Goodbye Old Paint." I've always been a little confued about the lineage of the song, but today's work sorted it out for me. A remarkable story of migration and tradition--an English song dating from the early 1700s that traveled to the American South, was absorbed and appropriated by African-American slaves, and was taught by one of them to the son of his ranch boss--who, in turn, embedded it in the country dance culture of the southern plains. And who recorded it for John Lomax and the Library of Congress.
The more I sing and reflect on the ballad, the more haunting it becomes, and the more I am reminded of the privilege of working with such material. It's like serving a sacrament.
The commencement of the Willow Creek Folk School nearly four years ago, and the more recent commencement of journal-keeping, are, I now realize, similar initiatives. Approaching and then surpassing my three-score and ten, I sensed the need to pursue new endeavors and new methods in order to maintain accuity. As I read on the subject of mental abilities among people my age, I learn that my inchoate sense touched a confirmed reality, that the exercise of new things--mental processes, physical manipulations, imaginative pursuits--is essential to retaining, even restoring and improving, mental accuity. So, I still can't remember the words to my songs, but I suspect I now know more about them than anyone else in the world, and I have lots of fresh insights about them. I give thanks for this every day.
The depth of gratitude for such things--this is new knowledge, too. One thing I haven't learned, however, is what "retirement" means. And it's not anything I'm investigating.
The middle of the session will be devoted to the cowboy ballad, "Goodbye Old Paint." I've always been a little confued about the lineage of the song, but today's work sorted it out for me. A remarkable story of migration and tradition--an English song dating from the early 1700s that traveled to the American South, was absorbed and appropriated by African-American slaves, and was taught by one of them to the son of his ranch boss--who, in turn, embedded it in the country dance culture of the southern plains. And who recorded it for John Lomax and the Library of Congress.
The more I sing and reflect on the ballad, the more haunting it becomes, and the more I am reminded of the privilege of working with such material. It's like serving a sacrament.
The commencement of the Willow Creek Folk School nearly four years ago, and the more recent commencement of journal-keeping, are, I now realize, similar initiatives. Approaching and then surpassing my three-score and ten, I sensed the need to pursue new endeavors and new methods in order to maintain accuity. As I read on the subject of mental abilities among people my age, I learn that my inchoate sense touched a confirmed reality, that the exercise of new things--mental processes, physical manipulations, imaginative pursuits--is essential to retaining, even restoring and improving, mental accuity. So, I still can't remember the words to my songs, but I suspect I now know more about them than anyone else in the world, and I have lots of fresh insights about them. I give thanks for this every day.
The depth of gratitude for such things--this is new knowledge, too. One thing I haven't learned, however, is what "retirement" means. And it's not anything I'm investigating.
My foot in the stirrup, my pony won't stand
Goodbye, little Annie, I'm off for Montan'
Goodbye, Old Paint, I'm a-leavin' Cheyenne
January 23, 2024
Methods
Been up since way before dark-thirty scoring student exercises in HIST 390, the methods of research and writing course. This blog is devoted to writing interests, and early-morning grading may seem far from those, but there is a connection.
Now, most faculty in all disciplines are chary of teaching the required methods course. It's a thankless task, it puts your work on exhibit to peers who don't or won't teach it (yes, Bill Caraher, I read what you said!), and it's a time sink. Done right, it requires countless hours like those of this morning and unending student consultations in order to shepherd the flock through to the green pastures. (I like to see every one finish successfully.) It scores you no points in the profession.
I do teach the methods course, I require an unusual quantity of work, and I labor to bring it up to professional standard. While still trying to convey the joy (what W. P. Webb called the "high adventure") of doing History. I'm stuck, it seems, and sometimes discouraged, but never ambivalent about this teaching assignment.
As a scholar who writes for scholarly and public consumption every day, and, like all such, bemoans the dearth of time to concentrate on that, I might try to get out of this assignment. As the senior teaching faculty member in my college, not to mention my department, I might try to pull rank. On the other hand, as an old guy who writes--writes a lot--and a great-grandfather to boot, I may have peculiar qualifications to teach rising historians how to research and write. I have walked the walk for five decades, have seen a lot of students, and now possess, I hope, the modicum of patience required to bring initiates along. Yes, I'm busy, and yes, I'm absent-minded. There are trade-offs. I also get up at five in the morning, which made it possible to get the grading done this morning.
None of this addresses what is the main consideration for me in this particular enterprise, which is its place in the larger enterprises of History and learning. The methods course situates me to do good, to have a positive role in the preparation of teachers and historians. History, like the other liberal arts, is in eclipse in this country now, with results obvious not only in the academy but also, and moreso, in the public sphere. Every historian has to look to the restoration of the profession, for the good of the country, and I want to do my part. Every educator, at whatever level, has to strive to reverse the decline in public intelligence (yes, it's documented) in our country, has to labor for the elevation of learning, and I want to do my part toward that, too.
This labor is not without joy. My students, as the old song says, don't know much about History, but they are good people, good to spend time with. They possess their own intelligences and latent abilities, which now and then spring forth as remarkable insights and felicitous phrases. There is hope. And satisfaction.
Better check up on me in April, when the paper drafts come in.
Now, most faculty in all disciplines are chary of teaching the required methods course. It's a thankless task, it puts your work on exhibit to peers who don't or won't teach it (yes, Bill Caraher, I read what you said!), and it's a time sink. Done right, it requires countless hours like those of this morning and unending student consultations in order to shepherd the flock through to the green pastures. (I like to see every one finish successfully.) It scores you no points in the profession.
I do teach the methods course, I require an unusual quantity of work, and I labor to bring it up to professional standard. While still trying to convey the joy (what W. P. Webb called the "high adventure") of doing History. I'm stuck, it seems, and sometimes discouraged, but never ambivalent about this teaching assignment.
As a scholar who writes for scholarly and public consumption every day, and, like all such, bemoans the dearth of time to concentrate on that, I might try to get out of this assignment. As the senior teaching faculty member in my college, not to mention my department, I might try to pull rank. On the other hand, as an old guy who writes--writes a lot--and a great-grandfather to boot, I may have peculiar qualifications to teach rising historians how to research and write. I have walked the walk for five decades, have seen a lot of students, and now possess, I hope, the modicum of patience required to bring initiates along. Yes, I'm busy, and yes, I'm absent-minded. There are trade-offs. I also get up at five in the morning, which made it possible to get the grading done this morning.
None of this addresses what is the main consideration for me in this particular enterprise, which is its place in the larger enterprises of History and learning. The methods course situates me to do good, to have a positive role in the preparation of teachers and historians. History, like the other liberal arts, is in eclipse in this country now, with results obvious not only in the academy but also, and moreso, in the public sphere. Every historian has to look to the restoration of the profession, for the good of the country, and I want to do my part. Every educator, at whatever level, has to strive to reverse the decline in public intelligence (yes, it's documented) in our country, has to labor for the elevation of learning, and I want to do my part toward that, too.
This labor is not without joy. My students, as the old song says, don't know much about History, but they are good people, good to spend time with. They possess their own intelligences and latent abilities, which now and then spring forth as remarkable insights and felicitous phrases. There is hope. And satisfaction.
Better check up on me in April, when the paper drafts come in.
November 26, 2023
A Republic of Prairie Dogs
Last week on Prairie Public - https://news.prairiepublic.org/podcas...
November 5, 2023
Oh Give Me a Home
Last week on Prairie Public - https://news.prairiepublic.org/podcas...
October 30, 2023
No Place Else to Go
Last week on Prairie Public - https://news.prairiepublic.org/podcas...
October 22, 2023
Partridge Redux
Last week on Prairie Public - finishing up a series of three Plains Folk essays on the Hungarian partridge in North Dakota
https://news.prairiepublic.org/podcas...
https://news.prairiepublic.org/podcas...
October 15, 2023
A Game Bird in the Best Sense
Last week on Prairie Public - https://news.prairiepublic.org/podcas...
Willow Creek: A Writing Journal
From the home office on Willow Creek, in the Red River Valley of North Dakota, historian Tom Isern blogs about his (literary) life on the plains.
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