The Round Barn: A Biography of an American Farm, Volume 2, by Jacqueline Dougan Jackson. Beloit City Press, 2012. 487 pages, $24.95 Imagine you’ve discovered a box of jumbled old black and white photographs of good-natured folks going about their work. Further down are personal letters, ledgers, then clippings from newspapers and farm journals. There […]
Lola Lucas
Posted inOpinion
What scares me at Halloween
A recent Chris Britt editorial cartoon in the State Journal-Register showed two kids anxiously peering through the window at a stranger standing outside their home. “Dad, who’s that on the front walk?” It’s not a vampire, it’s a dark-cloaked man labeled “Poverty.” All too many children have picked up their parents’ justified fear of sliding […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Rounding out her career
Jacqueline Jackson still tends a herd of cows but nowadays they’re figurines on her mantle. Raised on the Dougan Guernsey Dairy Farm near Beloit, Wis., in the 1930s and 40s, Jackie decided at age 14 to chronicle her family’s business. In the decades since, she’s published more than a dozen books, had several plays and […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Out of darkness come Needles of Light
Needles of Light doesn’t claim to be an easy book to read. “Many of these poems are dark, darker than the reader will be comfortable with; but I believe the path to light must include acknowledging the darkness that lives within us all and coming to terms with it,” writes Ann Hartsfield in its introduction. […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Quite a rush
Some college literary magazines exist primarily to publish the scribblings of a group of friends. I edited — OK, perpetrated — a couple of them back in the day. Then there are those with higher goals. SCOPE, published by the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, is in its 15th year (go to www.siumed.edu/oec/SCOPE/index.htm to […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The sensuality of everyday life
Untitled Document Imagine sitting in your favorite coffeehouse, surrounded by paintings done in a riot of color. A wise friend is sharing a latte, along with stories from her life that make you smile in recognition. Subtract the caffeine and you’ve got the experience of reading Celia Wesle’s Light: Paintings and Poems. Now retired from […]
