January 25, 2007
Enterprise, Oregon

“Loaded and set out at 7 o’clock. Passed a creek on the larboard with wide cotton willow bottoms, having passed an island and a rapid…” — The Journals of Lewis and Clark, Oct. 10, 1805

To be specific, the journal of Captain William Clark, the concept of team-blogging not having been invented yet. Capt. Clark wrote those words not far from where I’m sitting now, he in a tent near a watercourse temporarily named for his co-captain, me in the business center of the Holiday Inn Express at [Meriwether] Lewiston, Idaho, overlooking what somebody renamed the Snake River. (Clark got his namesake town of Clarkston just across the Snake, in Washington State .)

Sunrise in Enterprise, Oregon. Photo: David Kipen

But enough about Lewis and Clark, two slugabeds who couldn’t be bothered to saddle up until a leisurely 7 o’clock in the morning. Me, I have to be up before the sun, since NEA communications ace Paulette sent out a press release yesterday claiming that “David will blog regularly about the events he attends, the readers and writers he meets, the insights community residents share about the Big Read novels, and much more.” Blogger Mark Sarvas over at The Elegant Variation even deigned to quote the release, and I don’t want to disappoint either of Mark’s readers. With that in mind, and ever dedicated to truth in press releases, herewith a thumbnail account of The Big Read yesterday:

The events I attended: A tour of the idyllic lakeside lodges housing Fishtrap’s summer and winter writing workshops; a radio interview about the Big Read with redoubtable station owner-DJ Lee Perkins and his two faithful Scotties, all while standing in KWVR’s snug one-chair broadcast booth; chicken-fried steak at the Lostine Tavern learning proper use of the word “rig,” which in Eastern Oregon applies equally well to 18-wheelers hauling haybales and the lowliest Geo; Jess Turner’s English classes at Wallowa High School, triple the size of Teah Evans’ AP students at Enterprise High the day before, but no less bemused to find a G-man suddenly in their midst

The readers and writers I met: Too many to add more here now except maybe for Merle Hawkins, who commandeered our table at El Bahio on my first night in Wallowa County to reminisce about the packing into the mountains with Oregonian, conservationist, preserver of the C&O towpath trail dear to generations of Washingtonians, and, in his spare time, Supreme Court Justice William O. “Wild Bill” Douglas.

The insights community residents share about the Big Read novels: Quoth Fishtrap founder Rich Wandschneider: “For me personally, it has been wonderful to rediscover Steinbeck — a man for our times!”

The “much more” will have to wait, since the airport shuttle won’t. But welcome to the blog, and more down the Big Road …

January 23, 2007
Enterprise, Oregon

For, generally, the writer believes that long after the best road of his day has been supplanted by a straighter and wider one, and long after the highest building has crumbled with time or been blown to bits by air bombs, this book will remain. And the makers of this Guide have faith, too, that their book will survive; in the future, when it no longer fills a current need as a handbook for tourists, it will serve as a reference source well-thumbed by school children and cherished by scholars, as a treasure trove of history, a picture of a period, and as a fadeless film of a civilization… — T.J. Edmunds, WPA State Supervisor, Oregon: End of the Trail, 1940

ENTERPRISE, OR — Ah, Wallowa County, where the snow-capped vistas (and the epigraphs, apparently) never quit. Good morning and “Hey,” as my NEA station chief Molly bids me say to all the Big Read coordinators, like Elizabeth Oliver here in Oregon, who make my visits so far such a pleasure. (Maybe “Hey” is related to “Say hey,” which her fellow Alabaman Willie Mays once made famous.)

Alas, no regional idioms catalogued here in Enterprise yet. Just new friends, old pleasures and one pervasive problem, which I’ve never seen better illustrated than yesterday morning in AP English class at Enterprise High. The students themselves were smart, funny, and to all appearances really digging The Grapes of Wrath. There were only nine of them, which was a pity, but that wasn’t the problem. No, the real shame was the ratio of girls to boys: try nine to zero, which pencils out to approximately infinity.

A display of novels by John Steinbeck and Big Read reader’s guides for The Grapes of Wrath at the Wallowa Library.

This, alas, is the dirty secret of America ’s reading statistics. Bad as the general picture is, as enumerated in the NEA’s Reading at Risk report and other places, for teenage boys the stats look even worse. That’s one reason, aside from their unimpeachable literary merit, that Fahrenheit 451 and The Maltese Falcon belong on the Big Read’s list of books for cities and towns to choose from. The American novel has a proud history of terrific genre fiction, and we may need the very best of it — mysteries, science fiction, I hope a sports novel before long — to reach young guys. That, and maybe the news that there’s a 9-to-1 boy-girl ratio awaiting the first guy who gets into AP English.

The anecdotal evidence was considerably more encouraging at Warren Johnson’s new Second Harvest bookstore in Joseph, Oregon, yesterday. That’s where I was busy buying a paperback of Lewis & Clark’s journals and sniffing around for Alvin Josephy first editions when a man walks in and — I swear to this on my oath as a public servant — asks, “Do you have a copy of The Grapes of Wrath?” Turns out it was one Dick Burch, a Wallowa County resident for eight years and, consequently, almost off probation as far as the locals are concerned.

Several hours later (and altogether too many book purchases among friends at Enterprise’s Bookloft and Soroptimists’ Club thrift shop the richer), I fetched up back at Fishtrap for a double feature of two classic Depression-era WPA documentaries: The Plow That Broke the Plains, and The Columbia. The ground floor of Fishtrap’s lovingly converted Coffin House bloomed with the smells of Don Green’s rarebit-like Turkish phyllo pastry as fifty-plus townsfolk, including several making their maiden appearances at the place, jostled for chairs and simulated attention to a visiting bureaucrat’s stemwinder. For all their day and a half’s bountiful good humor and hospitality, which I have to forsake tonight for tomorrow’s early flight out, I’ll just whisper one last wistful “Hey.” More down the big road…

January 22, 2007
Enterprise, Oregon

ENTERPRISE…(3,755 alt., 1,379 pop.), living up to its name, is the bustling trade center for ranchers in the Wallowa Valley. . . — Oregon: End of the Trail, The WPA Guide, 1934

Forgive another dateline opener, but this one’s just too good to pass up: I’m sitting alone before dawn in the darkened reception lounge of the Wilderness Inn, blogging for the Big Read. This would be unremarkable, except that I’m a guest of the Ponderosa Inn across town (i.e., three blocks away). Because the Ponderosa’s wireless internet access isn’t all it might be, I shuffled through the empty streets to its sister hotel to try my luck. That’s where I found the door unlocked, the wireless impeccable and the couch beckoning. The coffee wasn’t on yet, but all the fixings were there if I felt ambitious. For somebody well-acquainted with hotels where the night clerk dozes behind an inch of bulletproof plexiglass, Oregon hospitality suits me down to the ground.

Craig Strobel shows off a traveling exhibit of Dust Bowl-era photos of local workers and families, including works by Lewis Hine, Walker Evans, and other federally-employed photographers of the 1930s. The photos are from the Wallowa County Museum archives; the exhibit is displayed at the museum and in schools, storefronts, libraries, and municipal offices in five local towns. Photo: David Kipen

But I’ve known that since yesterday, when Big Read organizer Rich Wandschneider met me at the Lewiston, Idaho, airport with a handshake like to impair my typing skills. After I put away a 1-lb. Wimpy Burger (2 counting garnish!, per the menu), Rich put the truck in gear and commenced to regale me with stories of shaking hands with old-timers who’d themselves shaken hands with Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce. Rich is the founder of Fishtrap, a literary center the envy of cities a hundred times the size of Enterprise. Fishtrap won a grant last year to do Fahrenheit 451 for the Big Read’s pilot program, and now they’re back for seconds with The Grapes of Wrath.

Bulletin — the night manager just bleared into the office and tactfully suggested that the Wilderness doesn’t open till 7. More down the road, where I hope to use the hand that shook the hand that shook Chief Joseph’s to shake the hands of Enterprise High School’s AP English class…

January 21, 2007
Fergus Falls, Minnesota

The topography of this ancient lake bed presents a seemingly limitless expanse. The prairie winds sweep across its level surface, turning the propellers of generators that provide electric power for rural homes. — The WPA Guide to Minnesota, 1938

Near as I could find out, the ’30s-era propeller-generators are gone. But the energy around here could light up cities a lot bigger than Fergus Falls, Minnesota, population 9,389 souls circa 1938, and (according to its genial Mayor Russell “Q”. Anderson) a few thousand more today. That may not seem like very many people, but when you consider that fully 550 of them turned out to kick off their Big Read of Willa Cather’s My Ántonia, the numbers start to look a mite more impressive. (Of course, everyone agreed that the beautiful weather helped, with the mercury shooting up well into the teens.)

The view from Fergus Falls’s Prairie Wetlands Learning Center, where Fergus Falls, A Center for the Arts hosted a kick-off reading for the community’s Big Read celebration of Willa Cather’s My Ántonia. Photo: David Kipen

Imagine if that same proportion of the population of Washington, DC, where I work, showed up in one place to decorate gingerbread men, go for horsedrawn carriage rides, and read aloud from one of America’s finest novels. Can’t you just picture 23,000 Washingtonians thronging the National Mall (or, as we call it in Minnesota, the “other” Mall of America), circle-dancing to a fiddle combo? Then again, I may have to eat my words this spring, when the Humanities Council of Washington, DC unveils its Big Read of Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God.

Washington seemed another world yesterday (1/20) at the Prairie Wetlands Learning Center, a quondam farm transformed into a spectacular compound of exhibits, classrooms, and bluestem grass vistas under mackerel skies that my poor photographic skills can neither do justice to, nor quite ruin. I did a highly extemporaneous 10-15 minutes on the Big Read and the national reading revival the National Endowment for the Arts hopes to help kindle with it, but Fergus Falls was way ahead of me. From the look of things around here, the NEA may have to start a new program next year designed to get people to leave off reading and do something else for a change — if only to ease demand on the Fergus Falls Library and Lundeen’s Books, which moved more than a hundred copies of My Ántonia yesterday, and have been selling out of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Little House” books and Patricia MacLachlan’s Sarah Plain and Tall in between reorders.

Maybe I’ll work in more later about my invigorating whirlwind day in Fergus Falls –capped by an evening performance with the Fargo-Moorhead Symphony by my gracious host Rebecca Petersen of the F.F. Center for the Arts, who’s something of a whirlwind herself — but for now I have to pick up a newspaper and skedaddle for my flight(s) to Wallowa County, Oregon. More down the big road…

January 19-20, 2007
Baton Rouge, Louisiana

“Busted flat in Baton Rouge, waiting for a train/And I’s feeling nearly as faded as my jeans. . .” — Kris Kristofferson, Me and Bobby McGee, as sung by Janis Joplin

Waiting for a car, actually. Operating on four hours’ sleep, fueled by slushy but surprisingly tasty orange juice, I’m hunched over a keyboard at the Best Western Chateau Louisianne in Baton Rouge, my best resolutions for timely blogging already in rags. But I wouldn’t be anywhere else for all the nutria in Louisiana, because yesterday I saw the future of reading in America, and for a change it doesn’t make me want to crawl back under the covers and weep.

I saw at least 420 people — the library’s indefatigable Mary Stein insists 500 — of all ages, races and religious regalia, gathered in Baton Rouge Community College’s handsome new proscenium theater, all to choke up at a 45-year-old black-and-white movie.

I saw freshly stamped copies of To Kill a Mockingbird donated by HarperCollins flying through the box office window of a makeshift library as fast as the librarian could check them out.

I overheard a librarian say that she was having a devil of a time keeping in stock the Reader’s Guides that my heroic NEA Literature office had created from scratch.

I grazed along a buffet offering such literary delicacies as Scuppernong Grapes from Boo Radley’s Garden, Dill’s Country-Style Sweet Gherkins, and “Gossip Fence Climber” Cucumber and Tomato Salad, returning later to my hotel room to see them all featured on the CBS Baton Rouge news 14 times through the night.

I was petitioned by Rabbi Barry Weinstein and enjoined to visit Renaissance Village, a guarded encampment of FEMA trailers for 3,000 souls who could really use a few hundred new books.

I met a student in the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport reading José Saramago’s Blindness for fun, and a hotel night manager reading Eldridge Cleaver’s Soul on Ice in between cramming for her teaching credential.

I did all this for the Big Read, a new initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts designed to restore reading to its rightful place at the heart of American life by encouraging folks to read and discuss a single book within their cities and towns. The upshot is, I’m going to be blogging my way around the country this year from a ringside seat at one of the most ambitious programs we feds have done for reading since we ran out of states to publish WPA guides for.

An aside here: Laborious writers should never start a letter by describing where they’re sitting, because they’ll probably wind up sitting someplace else before they’re done. So I’m wrapping up this post on the Red River instead of the Mississippi, wondering for the first time about all the other names the Mighty Miss must have had along its course before its Southernmost name prevailed.

But it’s dawn outside this chilly window in Fargo, N.D., just over the river from Minnesota, where just down the road in Fergus Falls an entire town is, with a little help from the NEA, reading Willa Cather’s My Ántonia.

The day manager just huffed into the lobby from outside, and the first words out of his mouth were, I swear, “Langston Hughes!” He says it’s a line from Rent, but as a G-man filing dispatches from the front lines of the NEA’s war for literature and hungry for a little good news, I’ll take it. More down the big road…