Alas, I only have 200 words.*

So I’ll focus on what I saw as the three bravest moves of the author, Erika Bolstad.**

Brave move #1: Centering women and Indigenous stories. The experience of women in the northern prairie and towns got star treatment — not usually the case in stories of Plains settlers. It made me want to cheer every time she brought a scene of women’s lives to life.

Furthermore, every story of a place reached back to a precise Indigenous history. I sense it was sometimes harder to find accurate information about people lost to genocide as it was to find records of individuals, and I know it must have been a challenge to write Indigenous stories smoothly into a generations-spanning memoir about Scandinavian settlers. Yet she did it. And yes, in a book about land rights published in 2023, an absence of land acknowledgement would have been loud. But I always felt like Erika was giving words to the often-overlooked people because it’s important and makes the story better, not because she had to.

You know, I started this book in the spring, then let a friend borrow it in June to review it for a One Reads opportunity, and then finally got it back in October. I realize it was meant to be, that for some reason cats and cozy blankets flock to this book. Now’s the time to read it, folks!

Brave move #2: Erika’s vulnerability. She is present in the book not only as a professional journalist, but also a woman who is maturing and learning over the course of a decade. The same heart that pursued her ancestor’s story and her family’s mineral rights was simultaneously trying hard to make a family. Heartbreak and complications were real all around. Erika’s personal story set Windfall apart from so many environmental books out there and placed it firmly in the league of my favorites such as Terry Tempest Williams and Jon Krakauer.

Brave move #3: The way she wrote about Anna in the years before the insane asylum and inside of it made my heart break so much for every person, but especially my great-grandmother whose own miscarriages and ill treatment in psych wards in the 60s had more parallels to Anna than I would have expected. Erika found empathy and love for this woman she’d never met — and all women of this earlier time, really. Reading this was an act of healing for me and my recently deceased mother figure, and an inspiration for tackling my family’s own story someday.

I’ve often wondered how I would handle weighty issues, whether writing about place or myself. When I’m ready, I’ll study Windfall: The prairie woman who lost her way and the great-granddaughter who found her.

*Fortunately, I made the 200-word rule for Last Words, and now I have broken it, and I feel no guilt.

**It doesn’t surprise me at all that Erika showed bravery. I met her during an Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources trip in North Dakota. She was a force then, she’s a force now, I’m proud to say we’re friends, and you should definitely sign up for her newsletter.

Diana Moxon had been making a delightful, intelligent show — focused on Missouri art! — for half a decade, and it ended six months ago. Gah! Why was I listening to British journalists interview international artists on Monocle Radio when I could have listened to a British journalist interview artists close to home on KOPN?!

Alas.

At least it’s all archived online.

Eminently binge-able, the 55-minute episodes kept me company in the kitchen through the whole preparation of a fall-vegetable-ricotta galette (see photo above). In order of listening:

• A chat with visual artist and sculptor, Nick Cave
• A once-a-year art show, some dance, x-acto knife art, and a flutist
• A fictional Utopian Ozark settlement and abstract metal horses

The variety, optimism, eloquent introductions and sharp questions of SOTA (can I call it that?) reminded me of why I started The New Territory: there is cool sh*t happening here! There are creative people here! Right here!

The wave of guests also reminded me, “Oh yeah, life/art is all a process and a journey” (I need to be reminded of this often), and, “There is nothing stopping you from making cool art too, Tina.” (Hmm.)

Audio accesses these gentle nudges in an intimate way, I think, and I’m glad there’s a local archive to turn for inspiration. I can’t wait to hear what Diana does next.

Pocast Specs

Official webpage of Speaking of the Arts
1:1 interviews
55 minutes weekly
2018-2023

This reflection is part of my new project, Last Words.

Despite its bleak overtones, My Volcano is an absolute joy to read! The chapters are paced and placed like choose-your-own adventure books, never lingering on each character for more than about four pages (often much shorter!), and THOSE CHARACTERS, my god, were all so different and thrust into whimsical, mythical, extraordinary scenarios that were just simply fun to imagine. A current of hope and salvation carries each story.

All hail speculative fiction for helping readers process complex realities. This book made me want to spend time with friends in person and create more art.

I read the last pages last week after a hike at Painted Rock Conservation Area near Folk, Missouri. The day was warm, the leaves vibrant, and a gentle rain tempered the book’s fever pitch at the end. I read through the rain. Nothing could stop me.

Book Specs:

Official webpage for My Volcano
Speculative fiction
330 pages
Published in March 2022 by Two Dollar Radio

This reflection is part of my new project, Last Words.

“Through attention and curiosity, we can suspend our tendency toward instrumental understanding — seeing things or people one-dimensionally as the products of their functions — and instead sit with the unfathomable fact of their existence, which opens up toward us but can never be fully grasped our known.”

“Our holiday has been simply a friendly sign of the survival of the love of letters amongst a people too busy to give to letters any more.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The American Scholar,” 1837

“Last Words” is something I want to try here. A winter project, a practice of imperfection, a tribute to my friends and “paper mentors” (a phrase I am borrowing from my friend Sarah).

Project guidelines:

1. Read a book or other media I’ve been meaning to get to for ages.
2. On this blog, in 200 words or less, reflect on:
   • Where I was reading or listening to the final pages or words.
   • Other things/past experiences I associated with this reading.
   • What action this text inspires.
3. Publish reflections here November 1, 2023 through February 29, 2024.

Why?

I’m starting “Last Words” on the heels of a busy season in 2023. The first six months of leading a new nonprofit, with a milestone first fundraising event to cap it off in late October. Whew!

I’m also on the heels of a busy decade. The end of university life, a move, deaths of my parental figures, helping raise kids into teenagers, the first seven years of starting a publication while also establishing a career. A marriage.

For many reasons many books have sat unread and podcasts unlistened-to.

I look forward to a course correction.