A Birthday for Baum

Come celebrate L. Frank Baum’s 157th birthday with us on Wednesday, May 15, 2013, at the Cultural Heritage Center. The festivities will begin at 7:00 p.m. at the center, located at 900 Governors Drive in Pierre.

Author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Baum is one of the world’s most popular children’s writers. From 1888 until 1891, he lived in Aberdeen where he operated Baum’s Bazaar, a variety store, and took an active part in community affairs. As editor of the Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer, Baum offered controversial opinions on various topics.

Nancy Tystad Koupal, an expert on Baum, will present a program that includes a documentary film produced for the Smithsonian Institution featuring Koupal and other Baum historians.

For further information on Baum, the ebook short, “The Politics of Oz” by Nancy Tystad Koupal, can be ordered through the South Dakota State Historical Society Press website (sdshspress.com) for $.99.

L. Frank Baum historian Nancy Tystad Koupal delves into the true meaning of Baum’s The Wizard of Oz, refuting old ideas of Populist allegory, while establishing a new paradigm for considering this most famous piece of American children’s literature.

This ebook short sets the tone for further discussion of the meaning of Baum’s work, as well, providing new insight and historical background on both the author and the state of South Dakota.

Spring reading

We’ve had a long winter here in South Dakota! With all the late snowfall, I can’t yet think about Spring Cleaning . . . but the snow puts me in the mood for some great Spring Reading. I’ve noticed during my order fulfillment duties here at the South Dakota State Historical Society Press that others are in the mood for some spring reading also. I’ve decided to put our books into a few categories and let you know the most popular for the month of April.

Our most popular titles for a good spring read seem to be our memoirs and biographies; Laura Ingalls Wilder (both the print book and the ebook) were popular in April, but you were also interested in reading great books about Black Hills history. Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane was in high demand, as were the new paperback releases of Ho! For the Black Hills and Cowboy Life. Come into the Water is also attracting many readers with its riveting account of the Rapid City Flood of 1972.

This month also brought sales of our books about travel in South Dakota and the development of Black Hills tourism. A Marvelous Hundred Square Miles was interesting to you, as was Infinite West, rightfully called a “thoughtful, tender, and funny guide . . . an arresting journey at the center of a nation” by Tim Dee, chief producer of BBC Radio. I find it fun and interesting to read about an area’s history and local flavor before I visit, and I wonder if that is why these titles were so popular with you this month.

With school coming to a close for the summer and the opportunity to take time to read aloud with those we love, many of us are wanting to gift our kids and grandkids with fun and educational South Dakota reads. Our new children’s titles: Greet the Dawn and The Mystery of the Pheasants were popular this spring. I was also excited to see that of our classic Prairie Tales sold well this month, as did Tatanka and Walking Along – all great books for reading aloud.

As most South Dakotans are, I am more than ready for the winter to be behind me. However, with all these great books to read, I might just keep on right through the summer!

LN

A Dispatch from the Illustration Trail

Coming up with images to illustrate our books or journal articles can pose something of a dilemma at times. Take, for instance, the latest issue of South Dakota History. For starters, it was a bit unusual in that the entire issue consisted of one long piece, a previously unpublished narrative by Colonel Richard Irving Dodge detailing a scouting expedition sent out from Fort Fred Steele in Wyoming Territory in 1868. Dodge had been charged with locating a supply of wood for constructing buildings at the post, created to protect workers on the Union Pacific railroad as the line advanced westward.  His scout took place over a fairly nondescript expanse of land, and he notes countless creeks, mountains, draws, dead-end canyons, and the problems he and his men encountered in navigating the little-known territory.  Unfortunately, he took no camera along on his journey to document the scenery or wildlife he describes or to give us images of the men who accompanied him. There was the colorful post sutler Beall, a tenderfoot who begged to be included and then neglected to bring along even the most basic supplies, such as a coat. Then there were the conniving soldiers who hoarded the expedition’s bacon so that they could abscond with it when they went AWOL shortly before the group was to return to post. Finally, there was Dodge’s faithful orderly, Private Freilinger, who overheard the malcontents talking about the plot and fearfully informed his superior.

Colonel Richard Irving Dodge reminds you to pack a camera.

Dodge painted great word pictures, but in order to create a visually pleasing layout, we always look for interesting images to draw in those who might just be skimming the issue, as well as to break up long passages of monotonous-looking type. The Denver Public Library, Library of Congress, and other sources supplied good historical photographs of the military men and posts described by the editor of the narrative, Wayne R. Kime, in his introduction, but illustrating Dodge’s work itself was more challenging. In this case, we were lucky to have the resources of the South Dakota State Historical Society’s research library. Thanks to our predecessors who began a hundred or more years ago building a collection of books related to the history of the state and region, we have a good number of obscure volumes whose copyright is no longer active that we can scour for little-seen and often desperately needed illustrations.  One such work is one of Dodge’s own books, Our Wild Indians (1882), whose frontispiece supplied the engraving used on the journal’s cover. Another is his The Plains of the Great West and Their Inhabitants (1877), which carried an image of the Laramie Plains. A search of our library records for items pertaining to the Union Pacific Railroad quickly brought up several railroad travel guides published not long after the transcontinental line was completed. Designed to promote western tourism through descriptions of the region’s majestic scenery and superb sporting opportunities, one of these books, published in 1886, yielded engravings of a few of the geographical places and some hunting scenes that meshed nicely with what Dodge described. Lucky finds—but they also made me wonder just what we should be collecting today that will come in handy for whoever is here fifty or one hundred years from now.

JKO

Talk about the weather

Earlier this week, state agencies were shut down for half a day after two nights of heavy snowfall, and the possibility of more looming ahead. Such a thing is almost unheard of in Pierre. In my youth, in the long-ago 1990s, I could count the number of snow days we received on the fingers of one hand, or so it seemed. The roads have to be pretty treacherous before we throw in the towel for even a few hours.

The weather is proverbially the thing you talk about when you have nothing else to talk about. But sometimes, and particularly in a state whose two most important industries are agriculture and tourism, the weather is much more than conversation filler. As we were not-so-gently reminded this week, sometimes the weather can really have a large-scale effect on daily life as people go about their business—or are prevented from going about it.

These guys had it so much worse.

But how bad does the weather have to be before it becomes a historical event? This week, appropriately, Carol Olson has been checking quotations from Laura Ingalls Wilder’s The Long Winter, which took place in the winter of 1880–1881. It’s one thing when you’re annoyed because you’re running out of toilet paper and the landlord hasn’t arrived with his skid loader to clear the parking lot; it’s another when the trains can’t get through and you have to twist hay into knots to keep the fire going. For my part, I’ve been looking at meteorological data from Wilder’s time in Minnesota. Particularly chilling were the records for the winter of 1874–1875, when the average temperature in St. Paul in January and February was below zero degrees Fahrenheit. This is not average daily low, mind you, but absolute average temperature, sustained over two months. It kind of puts things in perspective.

Summer is surely coming; our frozen April showers are already beginning to melt. It won’t be long before we all are complaining about the Dakota summer heat. When you find yourself doing that, go online and read this article from South Dakota History. Then pour yourself a lemonade and enjoy the weather.

RGH

Questions

One of the unexpected pleasures of interviewing people for jobs is the questions they ask you—questions that get you to thinking about things you haven’t thought about. Some people want to know about the town—how big, what does it have to offer, and so forth. But sometimes they ask such questions in ways that put you on the spot. “What do you, personally, like and dislike about Pierre?” someone asked. Um—I had to puzzle about that the first time, and when I told my staff what I had replied, they told me that I hadn’t done a good job answering. So I’ve had to stop and weigh the pros and cons of the town I have lived in for more than thirty years, and in the process, I started to appreciate something that I hadn’t really given much thought to. Pierre is a river town—on a significant U.S. river, the Missouri River—and the huge dam and reservoir within seven miles of the town offer some of the most outstanding water-related activities in the region. I have always known this fact, but somehow I didn’t consider what it meant. Mark Twain appreciated rivers and river towns, and I venerated Mark Twain, but the fact that I lived in a river town—well, it just didn’t seem like the same thing, somehow.

Someone else asked me, “What do you like about your job?” This one I had thought about before, so I felt more confident in my reply. I like the fact that my job allows me to use all my talents and skills. It stretches me. And because the South Dakota State Historical Society Press is small, every employee is allowed to be a generalist; nobody gets pigeonholed into specialties, but at the same time, everyone can work to their greatest strengths. The job offers little opportunity for boredom and endless possibilities for reinventing yourself through your work.

Other interviewees’ questions related to the future directions of the Press, the office culture, and the day-to-day work. I have ideas about those topics, of course, but in many ways the new people coming in will help to reshape those things as we go forward. And I am looking forward to that.

NTK

A memory rekindled

As an Editorial Assistant with the South Dakota State Historical Society Press, I enjoy many aspects of my job. One of the things I like the best is working with the editors here at the Press, whether on an article for South Dakota History or on a book. When the Press began the process of publishing Laura Ingalls Wilder’s autobiography, Pioneer Girl, I worked with another staff member to transcribe Wilder’s handwritten story into typewritten text that we could easily work with on computer. I must admit that I did not read the Little House books as a child (I am in the minority, I have discovered), so having the opportunity to read her autobiography first and then compare that to the Little House books has been one of the projects I have enjoyed most.

Today I came across this passage from By the Shores of Silver Lake, in which Laura describes the southern migration of birds: “All those golden autumn days the sky was full of wings. Wings beating low over the blue water of Silver Lake, wings beating high in the blue air far above it. . . . The wings and the golden weather and the tang of frost in the mornings made Laura want to go somewhere. She did not know where. She wanted only to go.” Having grown up in eastern South Dakota, I know what she saw and how she felt, but I hadn’t recalled that fond memory in years.

I find Wilder’s memories of her childhood amazing—especially as I get older and my own memories fade. I am regretting not reading the Little House books when I was younger. But now that I know what I missed, I look forward to giving the books as gifts to my grandchildren (someday), and reading them together will be something I know we will both enjoy.

CO

Putting a face on history

While I’m not sure of the exact count, the Spring 2013 issue of South Dakota History, now at the printer, carries what is probably close to the 170th individual profiled in “Dakota Images,” the journal’s longest-running feature. “Dakota Images,” the 375-word biographical sketch that appears at the end of every issue, has been a standard fixture since Volume 1, number 1 came off the press in 1970. The Lakota leader John Grass has the distinction of being the first individual highlighted, and since then movers and shakers in the state’s history from all walks of life have been memorialized on the journal’s back page.

Researching and writing “Dakota Images” was one of my first assigned tasks when I started working with the journal as a just-out-of-college kid.  It was a fun assignment, for I got to pick the subject. Anyone was fair game, as long as they were (1) interesting; (2) deceased; and (3) had had their photograph taken or portrait painted.  It was a great way to become familiar with the State Historical Society’s research library and photograph collection, and digging into the stories of the real people behind historical events had a way of breathing life into topics that could be deadly dry. The compact size of the feature posed its own challenge, serving as a good exercise in determining what to cut when the available material exceeded the word limit, or, on the other hand, how to “puff” when the information was more sparse.

Coe I. Crawford, South Dakota’s sixth governor, is the “Dakota Images” subject for the Spring 2013 issue of South Dakota History, due out next month. Dan Brosz, museum curator with the South Dakota State Historical Society, compiled the profile as part of the recently released The Governors’ Portraits chapbook, which features the collection of governors’ portraits that hangs in the halls of the South Dakota capitol.

For a comprehensive listing of all the “Dakota Images” profiles from the first forty years of South Dakota History, see the online cumulative index. For more on the state’s governors and their capitol portraits, order a copy of The Governors’ Portraits chapbook.  

JKO

How do you read?

Each week here at the South Dakota State Historical Society Press, we look at numbers. The number of copies sold for each book shows what aspect of South Dakota history is attracting your attention and making you curious. We publish everything from scholarly works to memoirs to biographies to books kids love. Our aim is to interest every reader (and even those too young to read for themselves) in some facet of our state’s history. And now, with the addition of e-books, there is a new dimension to our numbers—not just what type of reading you do, but what medium you choose for your reading. I decided to survey my own family members, who range in age from their teens to their seventies, to see how they prefer to read their books. The answers were a bit surprising.

The fourteen-year-old definitely prefers paper-cover books, which she finds easier to hold. She likes our new e-reader, but not for reading; she uses it for games. In fact, she finds reading on an e-reader “annoying” (her word of choice about many things these days). The sixteen-year-old does not like e-books and is very specific about what she does like. She showed me our 1920s-era copy of Two Little Confederates by Thomas Nelson Page and says she loves this book because of the “sounds” and the “words” and, especially, the “feel” of it. She liked that the binding has real thread and that the book looks very old. This was surprising, coming from a girl who enjoys Christopher Paolini and James Patterson, as well—but NOT in e-book form.

The twenty-somethings like both formats. My son enjoys having an e-reader but says that lately he uses it for magazines with short articles, which are all he has time to read right now, while my older daughter likes e-books for the ease of carrying the e-reader in her purse. However, she adds that she will usually own a good book in both forms because, like her sisters, she likes the feel of a book in her hands when she reads at home.

The forty-something (that’s me) is getting hooked on e-books! What’s not to like ? I’m constantly running here and there, waiting somewhere to pick someone up from something. With one touch on my e-reader, I’m right back where I left off the last time I had five minutes to spare. Last night, I spent ten dollars on an e-book that I already have in hardcover. A Stephen King novel, it is so thick that I can’t hold it while reading in bed, and it is cumbersome to travel with. Now I can read both, depending on where I am—perfect.

My survey ended with the seventy-somethings, my in-laws, who responded, “A what kind of book?” The next time I visit them, I plan to take along an e-reader loaded with some books that I know they’ll like and teach them how to use it. I predict they’ll enjoy it, just like my own mom does.

No matter how you choose to enjoy your books, the SDSHS Press can provide you with great reading. Currently, twelve of our books are available as e-books, and six more are soon to be released. We also have several e-book “shorts.” Check them out at our website, sdshspress.com. Some of your old favorites just might be available for you to read in a new way.

LN

A Matter of Timing

In 2012, the South Dakota State Historical Society Press announced that it would publish Laura Ingalls Wilder’s previously unpublished autobiography, Pioneer Girl, in the summer of 2013.

Since that time, the Press has worked hard to keep its interested followers up to date with each step in the process. We knew that work on this book would be involved and deep, but we were unaware exactly how involved and how deep we, and principal editor/annotator Pamela Smith Hill, would find ourselves as the project progressed.

Time and again during the researching, writing, and editing of this book, we have found ourselves making new discoveries about Wilder and her early work. We have constantly been surprised at where we ended up when research led us in unexpected directions. Each twist and turn has been exciting, but unfortunately, it has also been time consuming.

So, it is with great regret that the Press is forced to announce a delay in the publication of Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Edition. At this time, we are working hard to expedite the process. However, we believe that all of our books deserve the highest possible level of research, writing, and production. With this in mind, we will strive for the earliest possible release date but will not shortchange the standards by which we have made our reputation.

The South Dakota State Historical Society Press thanks all those who have shown interest in Pioneer Girl. We will continue to update our progress on the book’s website, pioneergirlproject.org, and we will be announcing a revised publication date as soon as we can.

Nancy Tystad Koupal

Director  

Paper or plastic—I mean cloth?

Two of the South Dakota State Historical Society Press’s most popular titles about the cowboy culture of South Dakota and the Black Hills Gold Rush will soon be released in paperback.

Cowboy Life: The Letters of George Philip will be available in paperback in March of 2013 for $17.95. Illustrated by Mick B. Harrison and edited by Cathie Draine, this entertaining collection won a 2008 Award of Merit from the American Association for State and Local History. “Within the large body of autobiographies, letters, and memoirs of cowboy life, George Philip’s recollections rank among the best,” Richard W. Slatta writes in the afterword.

Choices, choices…

Ho! For the Black Hills: Captain Jack Crawford Reports the Gold Rush and Great Sioux War will also be available in paperback in April of 2013 for $18.95. Award-winning historian Paul L. Hedren has compiled these little-known reports to the Omaha Bee, writing an introduction and essays that place the correspondence in the greater context of the Black Hills Gold Rush and the Great Sioux War.

Both books may be pre-ordered on-line or by calling the Press at 605-773-6009.