Posts Tagged ‘Clyde (Ohio)’
A High School Teaching Plan for “Winesburg, Ohio”
Recently I completed some coursework to renew my license to teach English language arts to grades seven through twelve in the state of Ohio. One of the courses I completed was on teaching American fiction, which involved assignments centered on two books. The books I chose were Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio and Willa Cather’s My Antonia.…
Read More“Winesburg, Ohio” at 100
In the fall of 1915, Sherwood Anderson was working as a copywriter in Chicago and living in a rented room that overlooked the Loop. Anderson enjoyed the view from his window and had moved his bed closer to it so he could see the vista of Chicago below him—the great Midwestern city where he had…
Read MoreThe Undeveloped Man: Sherwood Anderson in Elyria, Ohio–Part One of a Series
Thanksgiving Day—November 28, 1912. In St. Louis, Missouri, Holy Cross and St. Louis University square off on the football field, while elsewhere in the city 4,000 pounds of turkey are provided to the city’s poor. Back east in New York City, Governor John Dix pardons Albert Patrick, one of the two men who in 1900…
Read More“Autumn” from Sherwood Anderson’s “Home Town”
Autumn—the mellow golden time of falling leaves, cider, apples, and pumpkins. The year’s decline and a farewell to summer’s heat and languor. Long hazy days, the time of “mist and mellow fruitfulness.” In the great Midwest the trees are in color and the corn and soy are harvested, leaving bare fields full of stubble to…
Read More“Winter” from Sherwood Anderson’s “Home Town”
Winter: the quiet time. A season of stillness after the autumn and the holidays. A time for snow, for cold, for long hours indoors as we await the spring’s return. Sometimes it’s raw and rainy. At other times the earth is blanketed with silence and snowfall, and some winters are mild, sometimes mild enough that…
Read More“Summer” From Sherwood Anderson’s “Home Town”
Summertime. The good ol’ summertime. Time for vacation, barbecues, long hours by the water. Corn on the cob and homegrown tomatoes, hot dogs and hamburgers, root beer and iced tea. The sounds of lawnmowers, kids splashing in the pool, a crowd at a baseball game. In my part of the midwest–southwestern Ohio– it can start…
Read More“Spring” from Sherwood Anderson’s “Home Town”
Sherwood Anderson published a book called Home Town shortly before departing for Latin America in March of 1941 to write articles for Reader’s Digest about Latin American nations and people. He was also traveling as a kind of unofficial goodwill ambassador for the U.S. State Department as the threat of war intensified for the United States. It…
Read MoreGoing Home To Winesburg: Sherwood Anderson’s Clyde, Ohio
A woman, yearning for a lover who left years ago, sheds her clothes one night and walks in the rain. A man living alone, near the ravine at the edge of town, fears the expressive power of his own hands. A bearded minister smashes his fist through a stained glass window when he sees a…
Read MoreRodger Young and the Mystery of the “Common Man”
In the McPherson Cemetery in Clyde, Ohio, Rodger Young’s grave is a humble kind of space when measured against the monuments to two other military heroes on the same ground. At the cemetery’s entrance is an imposing monument to General James McPherson, the second highest-ranking Union officer killed during the Civil War. A statue of…
Read MorePublished 90 Years Ago: Sherwood Anderson’s “A Story Teller’s Story.”
Sherwood Anderson was born 138 years ago on this day in Camden, Ohio: September 13, 1876. I’d like to mark the occasion by noting that the first of three autobiographical works that Anderson composed—A Story Teller’s Story—came out ninety years ago. The two other autobiographical volumes are Tar: A Midwest Childhood (1926), and the posthumously…
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