Writings
Ohio and Ohio Valley writers and writing, literary and cultural history with occasional ventures into the greater Midwest and Upper South.
A Quiet Place of Powerful Tribute: The Ernie Pyle World War II Museum in Dana, Indiana
Dana, Indiana is farm country, the kind of Midwestern land where fields stretch to the horizon, where a state route below the blazing summer sun feels like it’s going to roll forever through endless rows of corn and soy all the way to the Pacific, and when you stop the car and pull over you…
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July 8, 1918: Ernest Hemingway Is Severely Wounded In Italy
What a difference a year makes. In June of 1917, Ernest Hemingway had just graduated high school, a kid enjoying the rounds of parties and celebrations and hijinks that marked the conclusion of his secondary education, an event that was the subject of a post here on Buckeyemuse. By October of the year he would…
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A Free Soul Bound For Jail: Eugene Debs Speaks in Canton, Ohio–June 16, 1918
June 16, 1918 was a warm summer day in Canton, Ohio. The Socialist Party of Ohio had gathered in the city for its yearly convention. On this day, in Nimisilla Park, the speaker was arguably the best-known Socialist in America: Eugene Debs of Terre Haute, Indiana. Debs’ progressive credentials were impeccable. By this time he…
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A Better Book There Never Was: Jim Tully’s “Shanty Irish”
If you ever watched Ken Burns’ PBS documentary series about the Civil War, you might recall hearing excerpts read from a book called “Co. Aytch.” “Co. Aytch”: A Side Show of the Big Show (the title refers to the author’s unit–Company H) is the memoir of an eloquent and perceptive Confederate soldier named Sam Watkins. Margaret…
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“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…
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Some Books of 1917
1917 was a watershed year for the United States. In April of that year the United States finally entered the First World War, which transformed the nation. By the war’s end 4,743,829 men and women were mobilized into service, 53,513 were killed in combat, and 63,195 were dead from disease and other causes. There were…
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A Treasure Trove of History: The Eugene Debs House in Terre Haute, Indiana
Debs. Eugene Debs, the legend…… Debs the labor leader, rallying the boys to the cause, standing by the men of the Great Northern Railway, the men who built the Pullman cars, the miners in the Colorado coalfields, always ready to fight for the American worker. Debs jailed in Woodstock, Illinois in 1894, convicted of impeding…
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James Whitcomb Riley’s “Little Orphant Annie”
James Whitcomb Riley’s “Little Orphant Annie” is one of the Hoosier poet’s most beloved and well-known poems, one which has endured and become part of the folk memory of generations of Americans. “Little Orphant Annie” stands alongside “Out to Old Aunt Mary’s,” “The Ol’ Swimmin’ Hole,” and “When The Frost Is On The Punkin” as…
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John Dos Passos on Eugene Debs: “Lover of Mankind”
The novelist John Dos Passos (1896-1970) gave us one of the great fictional treatments of the United States coming of age during the early twentieth century in his trilogy U.S.A., which consists of The 42nd Parallel (1930), 1919 (1932), and The Big Money (1936). The trilogy follows a series of characters through the early years…
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