Irish Wilderness – where?

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Jan 242019
 

I still get google alerts for key words / concepts from our books on Father John Joseph Hogan and the Irish Wilderness in Missouri’s pre-Civil War Ozarks (Mystery of the Irish Wilderness and On the Mission in Missouri). As we all know, the crawling algorithms that search out those key words can pull up references that have a tenuous link – if any at all – to the topic you’re following.  Such is the case with Google and “Irish Wilderness.”  The combination of those two words has opened my eyes to the fact that the ‘auld sod’, the “emerald isle,” the old home place of myth and (foggy) memory …. has its own still-wild places and its own brand of hardy souls who inhabit said landscape. The most recent alert brought me this from the UK’s Daily Mail:

Widow, 80, who lives an off-grid lifestyle in the Irish wilderness reveals that her late husband is buried in an unmarked grave in her GARDEN– and her only complaint is that she has no one to have sex with anymore

Not quite the alert I was looking for ….but an interesting read nevertheless!

THE LATEST – AND BEST YET – TAKE ON THE OZARKS. Brooks Blevins’ A History of the Ozarks, Vol. 1 The Old Ozarks

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Sep 012018
 

The ability to integrate anecdotes into concepts isn’t universal among novelists, much less historians. Even rarer is the talent for melding personal observations with academic studies. Brooks Blevins is a writer with both these gifts. This first installment of a trilogy on the Ozarks sets a new standard for the region’s history. Provocatively, he challenges the long-held idea that the Ozarks is an “arrested frontier,” but doesn’t yield to the temptation of revisionists to dismiss all earlier thinking on the subject.  Inappropriately applied concepts are part of our human past.

The seeds of Ozark primitivism came from beyond its borders. Some Ozarkers even watered this weed. They did so for complicated reasons—not the least of which was their inability to devise an original, more realistic narrative to explain their sometimes-difficult existence in a place with negligible political power and an original economy based on small-scale agriculture and extractive industries. Lack of originality in matters of identity creation—either individually or collectively, isn’t unique. It’s unlikely by this late date these deep, romantic roots can be ripped out. Occasional pruning is in order and Dr. Blevins has sharp shears.

A History of the Ozarks, Vol. 1: The Old Ozarks is available at Barnes & Noble in Springfield, and on amazon.com in hardcover ($31.45) and in Kindle editions ($14.95)

 

  • ISBN-10: 0252041917
  • ISBN-13: 978-0252041914

 

Styron review of JAMES FORK OF THE WHITE

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Nov 202017
 

We were pleased to see Harry Styron’s write up of our new book, James Fork of the White: Transformation of an Ozark River, on his blog, Ozarks Law and Economy.  We spent five years exploring our own James River, once the preeminent float stream of the Ozarks. Harry understood the depth of the research we put into this book:

“Combining these graphics with a penetrating verbal narrative, the Paytons have given us what we all want and need to know about the White River’s largest Missouri tributary.”

Thank you, Harry Styron!

 

Available now at Barnes & Noble in Springfield, on amazon.com, and from our website, postage paid.

The Ozarks to be Setting for Season 3 of HBO’s TRUE DETECTIVE

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Sep 072017
 
Word is apparently getting out – there are outlaws in the Ozarks. The Ozarks has had a reputation for outlawry for generations.  We’ve all known that. In fact we did a post on that just recently.  But all of a sudden – the Ozarks has been discovered as a not-yet-overused location for major media products.  Netflix even titled their crime/meller ten-part series Ozark. Now HBO is reupping the limited series, “True Detective” and setting it in the Ozarks.
Announcements recently filled the trade papers. All with the same description: “Season 3 of True Detective will tell the story of a macabre crime in the heart of the Ozarks, and a mystery that deepens over decades and plays out in three separate time periods. Ali will play the lead role of Wayne Hays, a state police detective from Northwest Arkansas.”
Mahershala Ali Nic Pizzolatto

HBO’s limited series will officially return for a third season, this time starring Oscar winner Mahershala Ali. Showrunner and creator Nic Pizzolatto is set to direct, along with Jeremy Saulnier (“Green Room,” “Blue Ruin”).

Family Gatherings on the River – an Ozarks Tradition

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Jul 012017
 

Although unmarked, this circa 1890 cabinet photograph of a family gathering was acquired locally, and really looks like it was taken beside an Ozark river. Guitars, guns, and gatherings in riverine settings are Ozark traditions. Our ancestors seem to have dressed up a little more for such outings than we do today, but the strong connection between family kinship and nature remains constant.

In The Ozarks: Land and Life, Milton Rafferty described the relationship of Ozarks people and their landscape:

Generations of the same family often lived in the same community so that family history intermingled with the landscape in an uncommon way. Life is integrated with the landscape in a natural way that is understood by everyone. Thus the Ozarker is a kind of homespun Lockian who thinks of the landscape as an object that penetrates the mind and alters the man.

From Chapter 3, “Gravelly Geography,” of our forthcoming book, James Fork of the White: Transformation of An Ozark River.

 

Hogs and Hillbillies

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Jun 272017
 

Real photo postcard by Hall. Probably taken in Stone County, Missouri, but Arkansas sounded more primitive. The hog’s board collar is to keep it out of fenced gardens. Cattle and hogs were released in the woods to feed themselves. The destructive rooting of feral pigs was, and still is, an environmental problem.

Though the hillbilly icon didn’t emerge for several decades, the Ozarks has been depicted as a primitive place inhabited by people living a pioneer lifestyle since the early 1800s. This mythos was rejected by progressive Springfieldians, but in Galena, and the White River Hills, it was a component of tourism.

Arkansas was held to be slightly more regressive than southern Missouri but only slightly so.

(Page 72 in the forthcoming book, James Fork of the White: Transformation of an Ozark River.)

COMING THIS FALL: JAMES FORK OF THE WHITE

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Jun 102017
 

In 2012 we published a 304-page book about the transformation of a big, muddy river that rises in the tall grass Kansas prairie then cuts into the northern flank of the Ozark uplift before emptying into the even muddier Missouri River. Damming the Osage is a history of engineering interventions justified by questionable hydrologic theories. Human cupidity orchestrated many of these unharmonious projects.

This October, we will publish our second “river book”: James Fork of the White: Transformation of an Ozark River. In this we look at the watershed of the river that rises in Webster County near Marshfield, wends its way to Springfield, running along its eastern edge and then drains south to Table Rock. The James – unlike the Osage – feels the effects of a major metropolitan area on its watershed. The James was a storied Ozark float stream; the Osage, a prairie-born, rich but unspectacular stream, home to a prehistoric fish.

The James is definitely a different river and this is a different book. More pages (352), more illustrations (because we have more pages!) to examine, discuss and showcase that different river and the people who live and recreate along its course.

Look for it this fall!

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Lens & Press Blog Moving to Word Press

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Apr 182017
 

We’re moving our Lens & Pen Press blog from Blogger to Word Press and will consolidate the two current blogs into one for our books–the Beautiful and Enduring Ozarks, the James Fork of the White (coming 2017), Damming the Osage, Mystery of the Irish Wilderness and See the Ozarks–and many other favorite topics of discussion. The archive of L&P posts is still available at http://lensandpen.blogspot.com/ The posts on our separate Damming the Osage website remain available at http://www.dammingtheosage.com/the-blog/

To bridge this move from one platform to another, below is the most recent (Blogger) post about Table Rock and the pre-dam White River landscape:

TABLE ROCK – BLUFF AND DAM

Shortly after Empire District Electric built Powersite Dam across the White River, creating Lake Taneycomo, the big electric company announced plans to build a 200-foot dam upriver at Table Rock Bluff.

“Table Rock Dam will be built across the big sandbar,” reads the handwritten caption.
Real photo postcard, 1920s, by Payne Johnson, Branson, Mo.

Most bluffs along Ozark rivers are named. Table Rock Bluff had a relatively flat top and was accessible by road. A visit to this overlook was on many vacationers’ itinerary.  For decades locals anticipated seeing machinery in the valley below building a huge dam.  That this never occurred frustrated dam supporters and led them to question if the utility really intended to proceed. They didn’t.

The Army Corps would build Table Rock Dam many years later but the Corps didn’t build it at Table Rock. They moved the location two miles upstream to a more stable geological site, but kept the name.  Table Rock Bluff remains a popular scenic overlook, but is now fenced for safety – unlike the past as shown here.

COMING IN 2017: JAMES FORK OF THE WHITE: Transformation of an Ozark River.

Sample pages from this new book can be seen at www.beautifulozarks.com

Our earlier ‘river book,’ DAMMING THE OSAGE, can be seen at www.dammingtheosage.com

RIP David Gilkey – remembering his visit to the Ozarks for NPR

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Jun 072016
 

#NPR mourns the loss of photojournalist #David #Gilkey, who died last week in Afghanistan. He and #Zabihullah Tamanna, journalist and interpreter, were killed when their vehicle was hit by an RPG (sad that we all know what that acronym means).

In 2008, Gilkey had a very different assignment here in the #Ozarks – photographing fiddlers in Mountain View, Arkansas. Gilkey and David Green attended the annual Mountain View folk festival and reported, “In Arkansas, Fiddlers Try To Preserve Local Tunes.” The story and a slide show of Gilkey’s photographs are still online:  http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94076332

 

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