t turns out that Thanksgiving is more of a holiday than I thought.  The Pilgrims that migrated to America practiced many days of fasting and thanksgiving in response to “internal and external threats and blessings” according to Martha L. Finch’s essay in  Eating in Eden: Food & American Utopias, edited by Etta M. Madden & Martha L. Finch.  The chapter begins with a recounting of a two month long drought in 1623 Plymouth.  The colonists called a fast for God’s mercy and broke their fast with a day of Thanksgiving when it finally rained. A Pokanoket named
Hobomok, who lived with the colonists, said that the colonists’ god “‘is a good God, for he hath heard you, and sent rain.’” 

Included in this chapter is an account of the thanksgiving on which we base our Thanksgiving Holiday.  The Pilgrims were only in New England for about a year in 1621. 

Continue reading “Happy 385th Thanksgiving”

Since its inception in 1998, Whale and Star has been publishing meaningful books as well as commissioning graphic and sculpture editions and encouraging collaborations between artists and writers. Visit us online at http://www.whaleandstar.com Enrique Martínez Celaya’s work revives and reinterprets the classic Western metaphysical tradition that relates aesthetics to ethics, the Beautiful to the Good and the True. His aesthetic project embodies his belief that being a certain kind of artist means being a certain kind of person and that it is in and through art that he gains clarity about himself and his relationship to the world. Curator Daniel … Continue reading Announcing Martinez Celaya: Early Work

Article and interview by Liz Lorang

hose of us who
had childhood dreams of working for
National Geographic Magazine might be surprised to learn that National Geographic photographer Joel Sartore’s
favorite assignment is the time he spent traveling and photographing Nebraska.
Where we might have dreamed of something more exotic, Sartore, a Nebraska
native who began working for the magazine in 1991, sees being close to home,
mingling among the state’s people, and sleeping in his own bed at the end of
the day—all while capturing compelling images—as the perfect assignment.

A number of
Sartore’s photographs from this perfect assignment first appeared in a National Geographic feature on the state in November 1998, and he later collected more Nebraska
photos for the book Nebraska: Under a Big Red Sky, published by Nebraska Book Company in 1999. Described by Robert Nelson of the Omaha World-Herald as “a photographic celebration of
everything good about life in this state” and “a lasting document on why
somebody would choose to live here,” Under a Big Red Sky illustrates the quintessential Nebraska.

Continue reading “Assignment: Nebraska”

Save 25% on a selection of books by John G. Neihardt and Hilda Neihardt during the month of November. Black Elk SpeaksBy John G. Neihardt Black Elk Speaks is the story of the Lakota visionary and healer Nicholas Black Elk (1863–1950) and his people during the momentous twilight years of the nineteenth century. All Is But a Beginning: Youth Remembered, 1881–1901By John G. NeihardtIntroducion by Dick Cavett All Is But a Beginning describes the people and events instrumental in shaping John G. Neihardt’s later distinguished career as poet, historian, and authority on Native Americans. A Cycle of the West: The … Continue reading Neihardt Sale!

The Black Stranger and Other American Tales By Robert E. Howard Edited and with an introduction by Steven TompkinsIn Howard’s Gothic America, dominion goes hand in hand with damnation and the present never ceases to writhe in the grip of the past. The Mystery of Hunting’s End By Mignon G. Eberhart The Sand Hills of Nebraska, where Mignon G. Eberhart lived as a newlywed, inspired the setting of this 1930 chiller. The Nightmare and Other Tales of Dark Fantasy By Francis StevensEdited and with an introduction by Gary HoppenstandIllustrations by Thomas Floyd Slithering from these pages are never-before-collected tales of … Continue reading Happy Halloween

The Blizzard Voices by Ted Kooser “It’s the little details that make the stories vivid. . . . In just 64 pages, Kooser brings the people of the great blizzard back to life. You can feel the chill in these pages, hear the voices as if you and the speaker are huddled next to the stove, talking of recent events while the windows rattle in the January wind.”—Nebraska Life Read More Praise for The Blizzard Voices. Continue reading More Praise for The Blizzard Voices