Rolo's book was named a finalist for the 2013 Minnesota Book Awards in the category of memoir and creative nonfiction. After the reading, you may purchase Rolo's book and have it signed. Please join us for an amazing evening.
Mark Anthony Rolo, author of the remarkable memoir My Mother Is Now Earth, will read at Southwest Minnesota State University, Marshall, Minn., as part of the Visiting Writers Series on Thursday, Feb. 21, 2013 in Charter Hall 201 at 7 p.m. The reading is free and open to the public.
Rolo's book was named a finalist for the 2013 Minnesota Book Awards in the category of memoir and creative nonfiction. After the reading, you may purchase Rolo's book and have it signed. Please join us for an amazing evening.
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One of my favorite events of the year occurred last Saturday, Dec., 15. The Southwest Minnesota State University Music Program gave their holiday performance at the Schwan's Community Center for Performing Arts at Marshall Senior High School.
I'm grateful for the amazing music faculty we have at SMSU. Dr. John Ginocchio, conducted the SMSU/Community Concert Band and the SMSU Jazz Ensemble. Dr. Stephen Kingsbury conducted the Bella Voce and Men's Glee Club and the SMSU Concert Choir. Dr. Daniel Rieppel conducted the Southwest Minnesota Orchestra. Poetry was a new addition this year. In between the great music, SMSU's Dean of Arts and Letters, Dr. Jan Loft, read poems by SMSU English faculty past--Philip Dacey, Leo Dangel and Bill Holm--and present--myself--which I've posted here with permission. It was an honor to have one of my poems read along with these writers who I have admired and who helped to create such a strong tradition of creative writing at SMSU. May you be blessed to find these darkest days of the year brightened by the magic of music and the power of poetry. The Animals' Christmas They are always living in Christmas. Though they walk years through a field they can never step out of the birth of a god. In each dark brain a star sending light through their sinews leads their hooves forward from one miracle to another, the gleams tipping grass like the bright eyes of uncountable millions of babies a field has borne. When they rub a tree, a secret myrrh descends onto their backs. They carry and offer it without even trying. From their nostrils they breathe good news. -Philip Dacey (first published in The New York Times on Dec. 21, 1970 and subsequently reprinted in How I Escaped From the Labyrinth and Other Poems, Carnegie-Mellon University Press, 1977.) One Winter Night A farmer sits on a kitchen floor, building a toy barn for his son. The farmer uses wood from peach boxes and apples crates because it costs nothing. He straightens the old nails and hammers them into the barn, explaining to the boy how a ridgepole will make the roof solid. There's a blizzard outside, the kitchen window looks black, and snow grains brush against the glass. The barn, made of free wood that could easily split and splinter, comes together strong because of the habits in the man's hands. The son's barn on the kitchen floor has the proportions and shape of the man's huge red barn outside, except that, on the small barn, the man uses some gray paint left from painting the porch floor two summers ago. He explains to the boy, there is no leftover red paint, and the boy, because he is the son of this man, knows that the logic of a gray barn is perfect. -Leo Dangel (from Home from the Field--Collected Poems, Spoon River Press, 1997) Christmas Vacation -after Stephen Chbosky and Baz Luhrmann So much bustle, but instead of baking cookies or writing a Christmas letter, I read a book my daughter likes, the one friends are passing around, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, written in the voice of Charlie who is entering that special hell called high school. I'm pulled right inside Charlie's life, like I'm wearing his Chuck Taylor's, trying to survive, trying not to fall in love with that girl who's "beautiful but in an unconventional way," trying to figure out what's wrong with me? Even when I finish Charlie's story, he's still hanging out in my head, even after my daughter and I talk about a movie we've just watched, Strictly Ballroom-- she's seen it a kazillion times, my first time. When I say that Fran, the girl who gets the guy, is beautiful but in an unconventional way, my daughter lifts her eyes from the video box, says she was just thinking the exact same thing. -Marianne Murphy Zarzana (from Fly-over Country, MFA Thesis, Minnesota State University, Mankato) Ever since I started Fly-over Country almost two years ago, I've wanted to invite other writers to share this space and post guest blogs here. Recently, I was thrilled when Dana Yost said "yes" to my request that he write a post about his new book, A Higher Level: Southwest State Women's Tennis 1979-1992. When I read his piece below, it reminded me of the well-crafted editorials Dana wrote as the award-winning editor of The Marshall Independent. In his editorials, when he'd tackle an issue, he always wrote from the head and from the heart. He helped his readers see the bigger picture, the larger meaning, which is what he does so skillfully in his new book. Thanks for telling this story, Dana. No one could tell it better.
~ ~ ~ The other day, a reporter from a daily newspaper in Iowa interviewed me about my new book, A Higher Level: Southwest State Women's Tennis 1979-1992. His first question: "What," he said, "made you write a book about a sport like tennis and a book about a team no one has ever heard about? That seems like a pretty narrow subject area, doesn't it?" I responded quickly: "Well, it's about a lot more than tennis." That's the short answer. It's also the true answer. The book certainly is about tennis, and a small-college women’s program at that. The Southwest State team from Marshall, Minnesota, was an awfully good program during the fourteen seasons I write about — rising from mere scraps (shoddy facilities, no scholarship funds, a remote geographic location) to become one of the nation’s premier small-college women’s tennis teams. The Pintos, as Southwest’s women’s sports teams were called then, produced nine All-Americans in tennis during that time, 135 all-conference or all-NAIA District players, won nine consecutive conference championships and earned important national awards. Coach Hugh Curtler was named the NAIA National Coach of the Year in 1990. Players Sharon DeRemer Williams (1984) and Leslie Jacobsen Bosch (1992) won the Arthur Ashe Award, college tennis’ most prestigious honor. Just chronicling the success of the tennis program — not only did it dominate schools at its level, it played, and sometimes defeated NCAA Division I opponents such as Iowa State, Drake, Creighton and Wichita State — would make for an interesting chapter of southwest Minnesota history. But it is in how the Pintos won, and what we can learn from them by considering their story, that A Higher Level becomes something more than a tennis book Two quick ways in which this is more than a tennis book: It discusses the Pintos’ academic success — they were probably better in the classroom than they even were on the court. Curtler recruited smart players. Many were students in SSU’s Honors Program, reserved for the school’s top students. Curtler, himself a towering academic of national reputation, founded and directed the Honors Program, and therefore was closely involved in tracking and shaping their academic progress. Some became Academic All-Americans or were named their conference’s top scholar-athlete. With all that, they showed there can be a successful balance between academics and athletics. They won while keeping their grades strong, and without cheating or corruption. That plays into a second key theme of the book: Curtler has long been troubled by the scandals and corruption of major-college sports, especially in sports like football and men’s basketball. For years, he has written about the need to do major reform before there is serious damage to the academic mission of America’s universities. Two huge scandals over the past two years — at the football programs at Ohio State and Penn State — increased his sense of urgency for reform. Author of 12 books, Curtler also continues to write a daily blog on the Internet (hughcurtler.word.press.com). In not quite a year, as the Penn State child-molestation scandal turned worse and worse, revealing not just a child predator’s monstrous acts but a football program way out of control, Curtler blogged almost twenty times about the scandal or other college football issues. At one point, he shot me an e-mail that said, ““My goodness, how we could use some real heroes—like the women who played tennis for SSU in the ‘80s!” As essential as academic success is, there is yet another theme that runs throughout the book and which fascinates me, and which I think has much to say to us today. That is the rural prairie itself, and the Pintos’ ability to master it to great advantage. In so many ways, they were 20th-century models of the Midwest pioneer spirit, rising while so much around them — the rural economy, rural population — was falling. It was like standing head-first into a storm of locusts and emerging the better for it. The Pintos were an interesting amalgam of players. Some landed at SSU after suffering major knee injuries that thwarted their hopes of NCAA Division I careers — they had that kind of talent. By the middle of the fourteen-year span, the roster also was dotted with international players — top juniors players from nations such as Colombia, Mexico, The Netherlands and Finland who sought a place to play college tennis in the U.S. Southwest State, and Curtler’s open-minded approach, provided the place. So the team became a mixture of Minnesota farm girls, young women from the Twin Cities suburbs, and players from the lush near-rainforest big cities of Colombia, and players from northern Europe. There was never much scholarship money. The facilities never improved: they had outdoor courts that were constantly vulnerable to the harsh winds and cold of a Minnesota spring, with an asphalt surface hardly suitable to competitive college tennis. Indoors, they played on two makeshift courts drawn with rolls of plastic tape over the slick, hardwood basketball floor in SSU’s Old PE Gym. Opponents openly mocked those courts, and sometimes tried to boycott them. As I write in the book: “Not only did they prove it’s possible to compete on a national level while maintaining personal and program integrity, they provide us with insights into adapting and surviving in a rural Midwest where the economy, loss of population and harsh winter weather all can be unbearable obstacles. They showed how people of diverse backgrounds … can find common purpose and unite around it. They make for an interesting, often insightful study on team-building, leadership and the use of new ideas that cuts across all kinds of disciplines. What Curtler and his players did was probably ahead of its time, and can certainly be applied today by business, government, education and other organizations and institutions looking to improve performance—or remain relevant on the plains of the rural Midwest. And they showed what the human body and mind are capable of with will-power, hard work and a belief in one’s self that, aided by the right kind of leadership and camaraderie, can lead a person back from serious injury or to success in an event where many others would simply be blown off the court.” They were also ground-breakers, maybe not with horse and plow, but by riding the first wave of women’s college athletics that came after the federal law commonly known as Title IX was enacted in 1972. The law required public schools and universities to give females the same opportunities to play sports that males had. While it was years before women’s teams had the same quality facilities as their male counterparts, the tennis team still took the opportunity at full promise — and full throttle. The pioneer comparison is inevitable, and accurate. I wrote: “They became both metaphor for the arc of history in the region, and representative of the qualities needed to make good in today’s rural realities. Just as small towns and small schools today face constant financial struggles, so did the tennis team. Just as small-town businesses face hurdles trying to recruit and retain talented employees, so did the tennis team. Just as small-town leaders and residents alike are often frustrated by the lack of resources and amenities their cities seem to lack, so, too, was the tennis team. Frustrated, but not overcome.” On one of the first pages of A Higher Level, there is an aerial photo that shows the university in its early days in the late 1960s — buildings and a football field on the northeast edge of Marshall, surrounded almost wholly by flat farmland. There has been a lot of development over the years as the university grew, but there also have remained many farmfields and, just two miles to the northwest, one of the nation’s largest corn-ethanol processing plants opened in 1982. Once rural, always rural. While there are harsh conditions and an isolation that drives many off the prairie, others embrace the backdrop of dark-loamed soil and, a slower pace of life, uncrowded spaces, and find it peaceful. Those who embrace it also see it as a place to turn daydream into reality, with room to think, work and build. “[We had] success that was rooted out of nothing more than heart, determination, plus a coach who was invested in us and believed in the raw talent that stood before him. We were coachable, but unbreakable,” former player Jamie Horswell Kidder said. “You tell a bunch of gals who attend a university in Marshall, Minnesota, which many cannot even locate on a map or ever heard of, that they can’t have the success of other large universities or private colleges, and you breed yourself [a team] that doesn’t believe in the words ‘can’t.’ How many other teams have to play on pitted outdoor courts with threadbare nets torn by the winds and gusts that stir in?” Carolina Gomez, a native of the South American country of Colombia, underwent one of the most severe transitions to Marshall and Southwest State. Her home was near the equator, and she’d never experienced a Minnesota winter until December 1985, when she flew to Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. She was transferring from the University of Tennessee to SSU, and Curtler and his wife Linda were going to pick up Gomez at the airport. Her plane landed in the middle of a full-scale Minnesota snowstorm — one that blocked roads, painted the landscape a bleak and opaque white. Gomez thought Minnesota’s bare trees were dead, and as she stared out the window of the Curtlers’ car on the 150-mile drive back to southwest Minnesota, she simply thought, “Oh, my God.” Was she going to be one of those who was quickly driven away by the prairie’s conditions? Or would Gomez find something within her — a pioneer’s spirit, an adventurer’s heart — that would allow her to become like one of those farmers who turned unbroken soil into some of the world’s best farmland? She became the second — overcoming her initial shock at the remoteness and the cold to eventually engage the region wholeheartedly. She married a southwest Minnesota native, became a repeat All-American on the tennis team and in 2011 was inducted into the university’s Athletic Hall of Honor. The prairie didn’t beat her. She, like so many of her teammates, learned to conquer the weather — joking she needed a physics class to adjust to playing outdoors with the wind speeds — and melded quickly, seamlessly with her new teammates. In 1989, Gomez’s last year at SSU, the roster had five players who were or would become All-Americans. That’s not just building a sod house out in the country. That’s building a two-story, sturdy-and-big-framed home, and a barn and a machine shed — and the hardware (trophies galore) — to fill the buildings. “Once I got to know more people at SSU—professors, students, staff—I felt at home,” Gomez told me. “I talked to professors in the hallway, to the secretaries, to the janitorial staff. Everyone was friendly. … “Experiencing at times solitude made me open my eyes and my heart to my inner self. I learned to be alone and okay. I learned to cherish the moment. Also, I discovered a beauty in the openness of the landscape, which at first seemed too flat and uninteresting. I felt the strength of nature in the form of blizzards and the strong winds. “Also having classmates with disabilities [SSU was a leader in making its campus accessible to those with disabilities] made me realize how lucky I was. I respected their tenacity and will to do things. I also read books like [O.E. Rolvaag’s classic immigrant pioneer novel] Giants in the Earth, and other books by local writers and professors like Bill Holm and Leo Dangel, which helped me understand even more the history and culture of the place.” By the end of the run, by 1992, Curtler, Gomez and all the rest of the Pintos who played those fourteen seasons had done their own important bit to shape the history and culture of the place. One of my goals with A Higher Level is to remind readers of the team’s legacy, that its players went around the nation representing southwest Minnesota — and were proud to do so, proud to call the prairie home. The courts may have been pitted, as Horswell Kidder said, and the place hard to find on a map. But it was their home, and they could always find their way there. A Higher Level: Southwest State Women’s Tennis 1979-1992 is available online through www.ellispress.com and, in Kindle form, on amazon.com. The hard-copy book will be available on Amazon after Christmas. The book is sold in Marshall at the downtown Arts Center, Fabrics Plus and the SMSU campus bookstore. It is published by Ellis Press. Dana Yost, an award-winning journalist and an SMSU graduate, has just published a new book, A Higher Level: Southwest State Women's Tennis 1979-1992, "a classic college sports story," according to Dr. Jon Wefald, former SMSU president from 1977-82 who went on to serve as president of Kansas State University for 23 years. In 1989-90, when my family moved to Marshall, Minn., I served as the assistant coach of the team under Dr. Hugh Curtler, SMSU philosophy professor and director of the Honors Program, who won NAIA Coach of the Year in 1990. The women tennis players were from Minnesota as well as all around the world. Having played on the fledgling women's tennis team at the University of Notre Dame during 1974, my freshman year, I appreciated the chance to once again experience the thrill of college level competition, this time from the sidelines helping to coach these outstanding women athletes. If you like tennis and you like a good story about a team winning against all the odds, this is a book you'll want to pick up. Dana will be in Marshall to sign his new book on Saturday, Dec. 15 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Marshall Area Fine Arts Center, 109 N. Third Street, and from 6-10 p.m. at the SMSU Men's Basketball game on campus. Here's a blog post about the book on the Argus Leader website by Jill Callison:
http://arguscallison.tumblr.com/post/35070070444/tennis-in-marshall-minn Here's an article about the book on the website of the United States Tennis Association: http://www.northern.usta.com/news/dana_yost_publishes_new_book_about_sw_state_womens_tennis/ And here's a guest blog by Dana Yost about his book on Holly Michael's Writing Straight website: http://writingstraight.com/ A Higher Level can be purchased online through www.ellispress.com or www.amazon.com and at select local retailers. An e-book version is also available for the Kindle e-reader. Rayme Waters, a gifted storyteller, has created Cinnamon Monday, a feisty girl growing up in northern California with lots of counts against her, including meth addiction. But in The Angels' Share, along the way Cinnamon discovers books with gutsy 19th-century heroines who become her guides. How can an English professor not love a story like that?
To learn more about Waters and her debut novel, here's a story by Cindy Votruba in the Marshall Independent, "A Gutsy Heroine." I hope you can join Rayme Waters tomorrow either at the Marshall-Lyon County Library for a Brown Bag Lunch reading at noon or at 7 p.m., CH 201 at SMSU. Her book, The Angels' Share is available at the SMSU Barnes & Noble Bookstore and at amazon.com in print or e-book format. You may also learn more about Waters and find book discussion questions at her website: www.raymewaters.com. Do you love great music, revelry and poetry? Then join us at Southwest Minnesota State University, Conference Center Ballroom, next Tuesday, Sept. 18, 7-9 p.m. for The Sutter Brothers performance. We're celebrating a new book of poetry by Barton Sutter, The Reindeer Camps and Other Poems. Ross, Bart's brother, is well-known for his baritone voice, mastery of many instruments, and amazing range of beautiful Celtic and Scandinavian music. The event is free and open to the public. Bart has the distinction of being the only Minnesota writer to have won a Minnesota Book Award in three separate genres---poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction. He was also the first Poet Laureate of Duluth. Read more about the event in Jim Tate's story in the Marshall Independent, "An Evening with the Sutter Brothers." And read a review of Bart's new book on Paulette Bates Alden's webpage. Bart's new book may be purchased after the reading, and he'll be available to sign it. We hope to see you next Tuesday at SMSU! My mother and father played tennis on one of their first dates. They went on to teach all of us six kids how to play tennis, and I grew up loving the game. I played on the team at Thornridge High School in Dolton, Illinois, and I was fortunate enough to make the tennis team my freshman year at the University of Notre Dame. ND had just gone co-ed, and our fledgling tennis team fought hard, but we lost to every college we played except the last one--Northwestern University. We celebrated that victory big-time at Diana's Greek Restaurant in Chicago with flaming saganaki, lots of "oompahs!" and a conga line snaking around the other tables.
I'm grateful that as a quiet, bookish girl I had a physical outlet like tennis to channel my energy and intensity. Sports can sometimes take precedence over academics, but they can also be empowering on many levels. Here's a link to a beautiful, courageous essay written by Christine Stark, an award-winning writer (Nickels: A Tale of Dissociation) and friend of mine from grad school at Minnesota State University, Mankato. Please read it and share it with others: http://open.salon.com/blog/ontheissuesmagazine/2012/08/16/becoming_glory_kicking_goals_to_transcend_the_night_a_memo I didn't post much on Fly-over Country during the summer because I needed to get off the grid for a while and write, read, travel and spend time with family. But now I'll get back to posting regularly as classes start at Southwest Minnesota State University next week. I hope you had a wonderful summer too, and that writing and reading gave you much joy! Hungry for poetry? Check out the Spoken Word Summer Slam at the Daily Grind, 316 W. Main St., Marshall, MN, 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Aug. 9. SMSU creative writing student and award-winning slam poet Nick White will host the event. Go to be filled, to be challenged, to be inspired. Just go!
Tomorrow I'm driving north with two other people to Mallard Island on the Canadian border for a week-long writing and nature retreat. Check out the web site at www.eober.org. I'll be working on my screenplay about Sister Jean Lenz, OSF, and other writing projects as well as doing lots of reading and exploring the island.
It's been a summer filled with travels to the Black Hills, Sioux Falls, Brookings, Chicago and Joliet to do research on the screenplay at Sister Jean's motherhouse. My artist's well is getting filled! If you're traveling near Brookings, South Dakota between now and Sept. 15, make a stop at the South Dakota Art Museum. Currently, Betty L. Beer has an art exhibit there titled "Savoring" with her paintings and drawings accompanied by poems that poets wrote in response to her work. On June 1, there was a lovely reception, and I was thrilled to have my mother, Eileen Ahern Murphy, also an artist, fly out from South Bend, Indiana to Sioux Falls, then drive up to Brookings with me for the opening where three of my poems are on display: "The 9-to-5 Blues," "Light-Bearer in the Pediatric Unit," and "Clear Water Woman (mne bleyzela win)". Two writers from my Brookings writing group, Christine Stewart-Nunez and Darla Biel, also have some amazing poems in the exhibit. I hope you're having a wonderful summer, making time for your writing, your reading, and for filling your artist's well! Reading with Sherry Quan Lee, Anya Achtenberg, and Christine Stark, Sunday, May 20, Minneapolis5/16/2012 Three award-winning writers with connections to North Minneapolis will read from their work this Sunday, May 20, 3:00 p.m., at Homewood Studios, 2400 Plymouth Ave. North, Minneapolis.
Sherry Quan Lee, Anya Achtenberg and Christine Stark all are writers who view writing as an act of social consequence. For more information about each of them, click on their names to reach their web sites. This past January Christine Stark read at Southwest Minnesota State University from her new novel, Nickels: A Tale of Dissociation. My freshmen composition students and creative writing students who attended her reading were riveted by her writing as were all of us in the audience. Published by Modern History Press, Christine's novel was recently named as one of the finalists for the 24th Annual Lambda Literary Awards in the category of Lesbian Debut fiction, and the award ceremony will be held this June in New York. * * * The end of my spring semester at SMSU was particularly busy, so I'm happy to be back posting on Fly-over Country now that my time has opened up more. It's good to connect with you and other writers and readers. I've posted two more of my published poems in the Poem Gallery, "Hawks on Guard" and "Bill Holm Joins Us at the Nail Salon." I hope you enjoy them. I'll be getting back to a more regular schedule of posting on my blog several times a week between my summer writing projects, reading, prepping for fall classes and travels. * * * Today on The Writer's Almanac there were two quotes by Adrienne Rich, one of my favorite poets, whose birthday is today, May 16. I liked them so much I've added them to my email signature and share them with you here: Adrienne Rich said, "You must write, and read, as if your life depended on it." And "Poetry is the liquid voice that can wear through stone." |
AuthorI love to play with words. To capture moments on the page. To explore the physical and spiritual geography of what I call "fly-over country." I write from imagination, observation and my own experience of wandering in fly-over country--the literal, physical spaces of my life on the Minnesota prairie and the inner territory of the soul. Archives
December 2019
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