At long last the Marfa Mondays podcast #21 has been uploaded. It’s my reading of my longform essay, Great Power in One: Miss Charles Emily Wilson. Listen in anytime here, and read the longform essay here. It’s a true and important story about a Texas schoolteacher who was also an oral historian. I think her story will profoundly change how you think about US history and the borderlands. Certainly it did for me.
UPDATE: The transcript of this podcast is now available here.
(For those interested in my sources, I’ll posting the version of essay with the footnotes and bibliography shortly.)
UPDATE: The PDF of the complete paper with footnotes, bibliography and acknowledgements is now available for download:
My warmest thanks to SISCA President Augusta (Gigi) Pines and Secretary Windy Goodloe for so generously receiving me in Brackettville, taking the time to show me around, and all through the museum, and to so patiently answer my many questions. They urged me to carefully read Jeff Guinn’s Our Land Before We Die: The Proud Story of the Seminole Negro, which I found to be most excellent advice, for it is not only deeply-researched but splendidly well-written, a genuine pleasure to read. My thanks to Rocío Gil for her welcome in Brackettville and copy of her paper. And thanks to Doug Sivad, who provided a copy of his book, with its wealth of personal recollections and photographs. I found J.B. Bird’s www.johnhorse.com an invaluable resource. Chris Hale generously went through my first draft of this essay with his eagle legal eye, catching many errors and making numerous suggestions for which I am especially grateful. (I am of course responsible for any errors that may remain.) Thanks to my readers Cecilia Autrique and Sara Mansfield Taber for their critique and encouragement, as well. And finally, my thanks to Bruce A. Glasrud, for the prompt I needed to find my way into telling this multi-faceted, transnational story that covers thousands of miles and no less than five wars.
The Marfa Mondays Podcasting Project is a projected 24 podcasts apropos of my book in-process on Far West Texas. Most are interviews; a few are readings of my essays. Some of this material will appear in my book, some of it will not. We’ll see.
P.S. If you’d like to be alerted when the next Marfa Mondays podcast is live, just send me an email and I’ll add you to my mailing list.
John Bigelow, Jr. in the Journal of Big Bend Studies
A Review of Patrick Dearen’s
Bitter Waters: The Struggles of the Pecos River