A 1989 interview University of Nebraska Press author José Torres was rebroadcast on NPR’s Fresh Air Friday evening. Torres, author of Sting Like a Bee: The Muhammad Ali Story, died last week of a heart attack at the age of 72. Click here to listen to the interview. Continue reading José Torres on NPR’s Fresh Air
Read from Mary A. DeCredico's introduction to Tad Lincoln's Father by Julia Taft Bayne:
"Abraham Lincoln remains one of this nation's most beloved and revered presidents. His elevation to iconic status came quickly after he was killed prematurely by John Wilkes Booth in April 1865. The man known variously as the Great Emancipator, the Savior of the Union, and Father Abraham did not live to see the end of the war that preserved the nation he held so dear.
Continue reading “Off the Shelf: Tad Lincoln’s Father by Julia Taft Bayne”
University of Nebraska Press author Virginia Driving Hawk Sneve will read from some of her many books at the Great Plains Art Museum (1155 Q Street, Hewit Place, Lincoln) from 3:30 to 5 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 27. Sneve is a well-known Lakota writer and a recipient of the 2000 National Humanities Medal. She is the author of Lana’s Lakota Moons, Grandpa Was a Cowboy and an Indian and Other Stories, Chichi Hoohoo Bogeyman and many other children’s books. Her memoir, Completing the Circle, won the North American Indian Prose Award. The event is free and open to the public. Continue reading Virginia Driving Hawk Sneve at the Great Plains Art Museum
– Fans of Pamela Carter Joern (author of University of Nebraska Press titles The Floor of the Sky and The Plain Sense of Things) will want to check out this post on the Minnesota Women’s Press web site. Joern discusses her rural Nebraska childhood, the themes that inspire her fiction, and why she believes it’s important to write fiction in the first place, among other things. – If the Minnesota Women’s Press post intrigues you, you can read more on Joern’s thoughts on writing here. – And on a completely unrelated note, the New York Times has published the text … Continue reading Extra-credit reading list
New this month from the University of Nebraska Press: The Complete Letters of Henry James, 1872-1876. Henry James was a prolific letter writer, and the University of Nebraska press is publishing the thousands and thousands of letters he wrote in an ongoing series. Volume No. 3 is a collection of letters written between 1872 and 1876, and the letters from those years fill more than 500 pages. Imagine if Henry James had had access to text messaging! Today’s linking in Lincoln is all about a cousin of the letter, the diary, and diary’s kid sister, blog. Ready? 1. In 1660, a … Continue reading Linking in Lincoln: January 22, 2009
José Torres, a boxer who won a silver medal in the 1956 Olympics, and the author of Sting Like a Bee: The Muhammad Ali Story, has died. He was 72 years old. According to his New York Times obituary, Torres achieved a record of 41-3-1 in his 11 years of professional fighting. Later, he served as the chairman of the New York state Athletic Commission, and was also the biographer of Mike Tyson. He was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1997. You can read his full obituary here. Continue reading José Torres, 1936-2009
1. Utah2. Utah and Colorado3. Northern Utes and Southern Utes4. Beadwork5. Light6. When the Legends Die7. Flute8. The Four Corners Motorcycle Rally9. Raoul Trujillo10. Pueblo Continue reading Tuesday Trivia answers
All eyes are on Barack Obama today (or at least on HBO) as the nation’s most famous community organizer prepares to take office. In keeping with his community organizer roots, Obama declared yesterday – Martin Luther King Jr. Day — a day of service. Listening to the news last night, I found the interviews with people who spent the holiday cleaning up parks, volunteering at shelters and even giving haircuts to those in need pretty inspiring. No doubt former Lincoln Mayor Helen Boosalis would find such service inspiring, too. Before she was mayor, Boosalis was a volunteer and community organizer herself. … Continue reading Community organizers in the White House and in Lincoln, too
New this month from the University of Nebraska Press: Southern Ute Women: Autonomy and Assimilation on the Reservation, 1887-1934, by Katherine M. B. Osburn.
After the passage of the Dawes Severalty Act in 1887, the Southern Ute Agency was the scene of an intense federal effort to assimilate the Ute Indians. The Southern Utes were to break up their common land holdings and transform themselves into middle-class patriarchal farm and pastoral families. In this assimilationist scheme, women were to surrender the considerable autonomy they enjoyed in traditional Ute society and become housebound homemakers, the “civilizers” of their fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons. Southern Ute Women shows that these women accommodated Anglo ways that benefited them but refused to give up indigenous culture and ways that gave their lives meaning and bolstered personal autonomy.
This week’s Tuesday Trivia will test your knowledge of Ute history and culture. Ready?
1. Which state derived its name from the word “Ute”?
2. Most Utes today live in two states. Which ones?
Read from the opening essay, "Twentieth-Century Gospel: As the People Moved They Sang a New Song" in If You Don't Go, Don't Hinder Me: The African American Sacred SongTradition by Bernice Johnson Reagon:
"I joined my first and only gospel choir when I joined the church at eleven years of age. It was the first gospel choir at Mt. Early Baptist, a small rural church in Dougherty County pastored by my father, Rev. Jessie Johnson. My sister Fannie, who played the piano, organized the choir. It was 1954—gospelwas everywhere. Most of the Baptist and Pentecostal churches inside the city of Albany, the county seat of Dougherty, already had gospel choirs. However, the country churches were sometimes a decade behind the city churches."
Continue reading “Off the Shelf: If You Don’t Go, Don’t Hinder Me by Bernice Johnson Reagon”
