Let's pretend that the reason I haven't been updating is because I've been reading so very much. Just reading and reading, building my knowledge, not looking at design blogs and eating pizza on my front porch. Yes, let's.
Recently I started what is shaping up to be a wonderful book, Way Down Yonder in the Indian Nation by Michael Wallis. It's a collection of sixteen essays about Oklahoma and its notables. I've so far read the introductions (there are two; one is specific to the Oklahoma edition); the first essay, which is sort of an entertaining overview of Oklahoma history and some pretty great insight into its identity; and the second essay, about Woody Guthrie, his life, and his legacy.
In the first essay, "Searching for Hidden Rhythms", Wallis eloquently illuminates things I've been clumsily stammering about Oklahoma for years. I'd like to memorize the first two paragraphs to recite to people when they ask me what Oklahoma is like, and why I would possibly love living there:
Oklahoma is a tallgrass prairie and everlasting mountains. It is secret patches of ancient earth tromped smooth and hard by generations of dancing feet. It is the cycle of song and heroic deed. It is calloused hands. It is the aroma of rich crude oil fused with the scent of sweat and sacred smoke. It is the progeny of an oil-field whore wed to a deacon; the sire of a cow pony bred with a racehorse. It is a stampede, a pie supper, a revival. It is a wildcat gusher coming in. It is a million-dollar deal cemented with a handshake.
Oklahoma is dark rivers snaking through red, furrowed soil; lakes rimmed with stone bluffs. It is the ghosts of proud Native Americans, crusading Socialists, ambitious cattle kings, extravagant oil tycoons, wily bandits. It is impetuous and it is wise. A land of opportunists, resilient pioneers, and vanquished souls, the state is a crazy quilt of contradictions and controversies, travails and triumphs. It has been exploited and abused, cherished and fought over. It is a puzzling place.
[From page 2, "Searching for Hidden Rhythm" by Michael Wallis, from the book Way Down Yonder in the Indian Nation: Writings from America's Heartland, published by the University of Oklahoma Press, 2007.]
Indeed. If word that that's who we are gets out, I'm afraid we may have an overpopulation crisis on our hands.
Wallis also shows incredible insight into why we as Oklahomans may lack an accurate or indeed any understand of who we are by others outside the state. It is evident to most in Oklahoma that we have a problem with pride in our heritage, a deficit that is not warranted, rich as our state's history is. Wallis identifies it thusly:
"Ironically, a great deal of the adverse image problem Oklahoma suffers from actually begins at home. Oklahomans do not have a proper sense of themselves or their state's history. Critical eras from the past, such as the Dust Bowl years, have been blurred or forgotten or, even worse, shunned because they seem to cast a poor light on the land and its people. There is a wholesale denial of history. At times it seems to be a conspiracy. [P. 5]
I am not alone in wishing that I had paid more attention in my requisite high school Oklahoma history course, or taken further such courses in college. I wish now, though, that the state made more of an effort to illuminate that history on a larger scale, to imbue it into our consciousness (whoa, creepy) in the same way that President Boren and others at the University of Oklahoma made us so proud to attend that university, to know its ins and outs and ups and downs. I wish that we were proud of what and who we have rather than simply wishing for things other states have that we don't.
We as Oklahomans have an amazing and unique history, and if we allow that history to inform our future it will be rich and wonderful as well. If we don't, well, that would make my heart hurt, and not in an "I just ate a whole fried chicken at Eischen's" kind of way.
1 comments:
oh, i've missed your words.
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