I have never been a big fan of Johnny Cash, which in some circles brands me as a heretic. I didn’t enjoy hearing him sing. No one ever credited him with being a skilled musician, and he likely would not have argued the point. I did not agree with so many musicians, critics, and fans who thought his song lyrics were profound. There were a few that rose to the occasion, but most of them were rather simple. Many of his fans and even a few biographers have painted him as a scholar — I have my doubts. I also thought the whole “man in black” persona was rather cheesy and contrived.
I do, however, recognize the impact he had on so many other musicians and entertainers. It is amazing how many people in the industry collaborated with him, especially later in his life. He helped launch the career of Kris Kristofferson, one of the best songwriters of popular music in the 20th century. I know Cash is a bit of a legend in the entertainment world, a reputation he spent a good deal of time cultivating. He was certainly a man of conviction, and on multiple levels.
Johnny Cash was also very close to evangelist Billy Graham, and the minister apparently admired the entertainer for his public testimony about his faith. Cash devoted much of his creative output to gospel music, often times at the risk of falling out of favor with record labels, producers, television executives, and some of his fans. He loved deeply, believed passionately, and endured incredible heartache and pain at times, including the physical kind. I don’t think he was as much of an outlaw as he portrayed himself to be or as the media depicted him. But he was definitely an outlier.
Most people who know anything about him understand that Johnny Cash had his share of flaws: addictions, infidelities, mental instability. He was also plagued with constant inner struggles. He was a troubled soul who clung to the faith of his Christian upbringing, even though it seemed impossible for him to follow a righteous path. The vices always seemed to get the best of him, even by his own admission. I suspect guilt played a huge role in his religious convictions, especially the death of his brother at a young age and the fact that his father blamed him for the unfortunate accident that took his brother’s life.
In the context of 20th century music, Johnny Cash is a name that is as immediately recognized as Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, or Willie Nelson. He is indeed a legend, a celebrity who crossed multiple genres in the world of entertainment. I have recently started performing a Johnny Cash song in my solo shows. The one I selected is “Ring of Fire,” which has one of the most complicated and imbalanced rhythms of any song ever written in American popular music. I certainly don’t play it in the odd time signature that was produced in the studio. I doubt very seriously if I could even come close. Hmmm. Maybe old Johnny’s music wasn’t as simple as I once thought.
My wife and I are at a point in our careers where we are mostly working because we want to and not out of absolute necessity. We have not reached the age to be eligible for full social security and Medicare, but we’re close. Yes, continuing to work makes sense given how the average life span of Americans has increased for our generation. We all must consider how long we will depend on social security, pensions, retirement savings, investments, and other assets. However, we want to spend fewer hours in the office and more time with each other involved in activities that are rewarding, fulfilling, and fun! So, we have pulled back to part time status and consulting gigs as a way to make this happen. A term we heard a few years back that adequately describes this stage in our lives is “work optional.” We like it.
View of Phoenix, AZ, from South Mountain
I have written in previous posts about several of our trips to Arizona, specifically the Phoenix area, which is where my wife lived for nineteen years of her adult life. She built relationships there that she has maintained over the years, and now, I consider her friends in Arizona my friends as well. They certainly make me feel welcome and embrace me as a life partner to someone they obviously adore. As we made our way through the last quarter of our professional lives, we often dreamed about spending several weeks a year in Arizona, a place that still feels like home to my wife and one that has enchanted me since the first time I felt that soft desert air and radiant sunshine. Starting this year, we took the plunge. We loaded up the car and drove 1,253 miles from our home in Springfield, Missouri to Phoenix, stopping for overnight stays in Amarillo, Texas and Gallup, New Mexico. It was a comfortable pace, and driving allowed us to see the countryside as we made our way through Oklahoma, the Texas Panhandle, New Mexico, and into Arizona. We also made good use of the hours together in the car planning future trips and dreaming about how our days might look once we fully retire.
Camelback Mountain, Phoenix, AZTrails at Dreamy Draw Park, Phoenix, AZ
We intentionally designed this first extended stay in Arizona to be a time of relaxation and restoration, but we ended up fitting in some great side trips and fun excursions around the greater Phoenix area. The location of the house we rented was convenient and close to shopping, restaurants, grocery stores, and hiking trails in the city (and there are plenty). The house was within a few blocks of the base of Camelback Mountain, one of the most recognizable landmarks in the Phoenix valley. We found some fine restaurants, not so much high-end but such good food. We scoped out several different venues that support live music and host open mic nights, and I played at three of those locations. It was a blast. Of course, we entertained ourselves with reading, going to movies, walking, and just being together. Most importantly, we were able to spend quality time with close friends and their families, some of whom we saw several times while we were there. We even went to a youth community theater production with close friends whose daughter was working backstage – it was wonderful.
The following photos illustrate some of the highlights of our time in Arizona this year. We have trips planned to several different locations, domestic and foreign, over the next eighteen months, and we look forward to many more extended vacations in Arizona in the years ahead.
Annexus Pro-Am Phoenix Open in Scottsdale, AZFrontier Town at Cave Creek, AZMusical Instrument Museum, Phoenix, AZChicago Cubs Spring Training at Sloan Park in Mesa, AZKansas City Royals Spring Training in Surprise, AZCattle ranch near Prescott, AZ
(This post is based on an oral history study funded by a 2022 Center for Missouri Studies Fellowship, a program of the State Historical Society of Missouri. It is also adapted from a paper I presented at the 2023 Ozarks Studies Symposium in West Plains, Missouri.)
Carlos Sosa was born in Monterrey, Mexico in 1981. He moved to the United States when he was seventeen to live with his mother who had migrated from Mexico and was working at a poultry processing plant in Noel, Missouri, located in McDonald County. Neither Carlos nor his mother spoke much English. Carlos worked in the plant too. The income and benefits were good, but for Carlos the chicken business was just a job. He wanted something more.
Carlos made friends in Noel, and they helped him learn to speak English. One of his friends suggested he apply for the maintenance supervisor job at the local Housing Authority. The director offered Carlos the position in 2013 and gave him a year to pass his high school equivalency exam, which he did. He went on to become a U.S. citizen too. In 2021, he was recognized for his hard work with a “Maintenance Man of the Year” award from the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials. It was a long journey, but Carlos carved out a new life in the Ozarks for himself and his family. To appreciate his story, it’s essential to understand the monumental changes that occurred at the turn of the twenty-first century in the place Carlos calls home.
McDonald County is at the southwest corner of Missouri. With over a dozen small townships and villages scattered throughout its border, the county in 2020 had a population of just over 23,000. Pineville, one of the smaller towns, is the county seat and is located just east of Interstate 49 that winds its way north to south through the county. Entrepreneurs began to take advantage of the area’s natural beauty in the early twentieth century by opening tourist resorts, an economic driver that was further facilitated by the construction of US Highway 71 in 1926, which brought visitors right to the banks of the Elk River that flows through the county. Local recognition of tourism as a lifeline was clearly and humorously demonstrated in 1961 when a group of citizens announced to the State of Missouri that McDonald County was “seceding” to form an independent territory in response to the state highway department’s decision to omit key tourist spots in the county from a Missouri vacation map.
By the mid-1900s, industry began to emerge in McDonald County, especially large-scale poultry production. Generations of small farmers in the Ozarks had been raising chickens for sustenance, but broader investment for income was a risky proposition because of market uncertainty and production expenses. The nationwide frugality brought on by World War II increased demand for cheaper sources of protein, and chicken quickly became the nation’s top source of meat.
Several industry leaders began to rise in northwest Arkansas in the 1960s and 70s and eventually expanded their operations into Missouri, including Simmons Foods, Lane Processing, Hudson Foods, and Tyson Foods. By the 1990s, Tyson Foods was the top poultry producer in the country after acquiring several of its competitors, including Lane Processing and Hudson Foods. One of the Hudson facilities Tyson took over in 1997 was in Noel. Also, Simmons Foods had been operating a processing plant since the 1980s in Southwest City, a township aptly named for its location at the southwest corner of the county and the state.
Poultry Capital, McDonald County, Missouri
As the poultry industry evolved from farm-based to manufacturing operations, the need to secure labor became paramount. Local workers became increasingly dissatisfied with the grueling demands of high-capacity chicken processing, especially at the prevailing wages. Manufacturers began to look elsewhere for labor, preferably the nonunion variety. High school diplomas, advanced technical skills, and the ability to speak English were not necessary for many of these jobs, attracting immigrants with little formal education. Chicken plants located eight hundred miles from the nearest U.S. border often flew under the radar of immigration officers and were motivated to hire undocumented immigrants who would resist joining labor organizations, endure brutal working conditions, and file few workers’ compensation claims.
By the mid-1990s, the huge influx of Latin American immigrants into the U.S. began to reshape the workforce at Tyson Foods. The company aggressively recruited undocumented workers whose questionable legal status made them much more compliant than native-born laborers. Tyson’s hiring practices came under scrutiny in 2001 when the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service charged the company with conspiracy to import and transport illegal workers from the southwest border to fifteen of its processing facilities across the country, including the plant in Noel. Two years later, a jury acquitted Tyson and spared the company penalties that by some estimates would have exceeded $100 million.
In the third volume of his comprehensive study, A History of the Ozarks, Brooks Blevins draws attention to the changing face of the region’s population at the turn of the twenty-first century. He specifically points to the dynamic impact of immigrants that moved into northwest Arkansas and southwest Missouri seeking jobs in the poultry industry. Blevins includes McDonald County as one of four counties at the center of the poultry processing district where the nonwhite and Hispanic population has dramatically increased over the last thirty years. The results of this trend in McDonald County were most acutely exhibited in the two towns where processing plants were located: Tyson in Noel and Simmons in Southwest City.
Between 1990 and 2000, McDonald County had the second-highest growth in Hispanic population in Missouri, an increase from 121 to 2,030. The population distribution for Noel and Southwest City reflected an even starker contrast, which is directly related to in-migration of workers to the chicken plants. With Tyson’s acquisition of Hudson Foods, the operation at the Noel plant continued to expand into the twenty-first century. By 2001, the facility employed about 87 percent of the town’s total population. Over one-third of the town was Hispanic, although many long-time Noel residents were convinced that immigrants accounted for almost half the town’s population.
Tyson Chicken Plant in Noel, Missouri
Noel’s ethnic diversity expanded further in 2008 when the closure of a Tyson beef-processing plant in Kansas prompted a group of Somali refugees working there to find new jobs in the southwest Missouri town. Within four years, Somalis accounted for 20 percent of Noel’s population. Soon they were joined by workers born in other parts of the world also seeking employment at the Noel plant, including Kenya, Sudan, the Pacific Islands, Laos, and Myanmar. Refugees from overseas were a safe bet for Tyson because their legal status was typically already established.
As was the case with Tyson in Noel, Simmons offered year-round jobs with acceptable wages for an area with a low cost of living, which attracted immigrants. Most of the foreign-born people who migrated into Southwest City in the early 21st century were Hispanic or Latin American and worked at the Simmons plant. Although white native-born people became a minority in both Southwest City and Noel, there was much more ethnic diversity among the foreign-born residents in Noel. By hiring liaisons and interpreters, Tyson made it possible for international refugees who didn’t speak or read English to function in their Noel plant.
While a certain amount of resistance to change was clearly present, especially in the 1990s and early 2000s, some business owners saw opportunities to profit from their new neighbors. Established stores were changing inventory to include products that would better appeal to Hispanic shoppers while new businesses were popping up that catered specifically to Spanish speaking customers. Even jukeboxes in the local bar began offering selections from south of the border.
In Noel, sales tax revenue is critically important because it is a primary source of funding for the town’s administration, especially the police department. Therefore, any increase in retail activity contributes to the town’s success. Immigrants and refugees used their wages to pay for goods and services, and many of them shopped locally. Some businesses were owned and operated by people who migrated to the county beginning in the mid-1990s.
Carlos Sosa, introduced at the beginning of this post, continued working for the Noel Housing Authority, but he also became a real estate developer and manager with both commercial and residential properties in McDonald County. His wife, Marlene, opened Sosa’s Hairdressing in Noel, where she built an impressive customer base of multiple races, including white people. The couple purchased several storefronts on Main Street in Noel occupied by successful retailers and were very engaged in the community.
Ann Harmon is a woman with deep family roots in the southwest Missouri Ozarks going back to the nineteenth century. She has owned and managed several businesses and continues to own multiple buildings in Noel. One day a Somali man named Muhammad Abdi approached Harmon and told her he wanted to rent one of her vacant buildings on Main Street. In 2010, Abdi and his wife, Luul Ahkmed, opened the African Grocery Store in Harmon’s building. In addition to specialty foods and household goods, the store also carried traditional attire for its Muslim customers. The owners even served meals in the back of the building. Muhammad and Luul later established the town’s first mosque in another of Harmon’s buildings next door to the store. Unfortunately, tragedy struck on December 28, 2021, when a fire destroyed both the African Grocery Store and the mosque, leaving behind only the stone walls of the structures.
Noel, Missouri – Main Street
Non-native residents have opened several businesses in the county over the last thirty years. A smaller African store opened on Main Street in Noel after the fire, which was also a location for money transfer services for Somali immigrants. Rosa’s Mexican Supermarket located across the road from the Tyson plant in Noel stocked an array of fruits, vegetables, specialty items, baked goods, and prepared foods that most grocery stores in the area didn’t have. Online reviews of Rosa’s were overwhelmingly positive. Another Mexican grocery store located a block off Main Street had one of the most attractive storefronts in town and a beautiful mural painted on the north side of the building. An Hispanic couple owned and operated a convenient store right next to the Tyson plant in Noel.
Although outdoor tourism was an economic pillar for Noel, it took a serious hit in August 1960, when U.S. Highway 71 was rerouted away from town and the recreational spots along the river there. Ann Harmon recalls how important the highway was to Noel. “We had tremendous flow of traffic,” she says. “We had a lot of motels and restaurants. And then the road changed. The motels went out of business; the restaurants diminished. We lost almost all the bars. We used to have more bars than churches.”She said the place went to hell when that ratio reversed.
When immigrants and refugees began to move into Noel, many people were worried that tourism would suffer. However, some longtime residents believed the solution to boosting tourism, perhaps on a year-round basis, could actually be found in the town’s ethnic diversity. Terry Lance, the mayor of Noel, admitted that having a chicken plant next to a major campground on the Elk River isn’t exactly a tourist attraction, but he was convinced the local immigrant population could be an asset. Getting different people from different backgrounds in business would be the best thing that ever happened in the town, in his opinion.
When new workers first began moving into the county, one of the most immediate needs was securing affordable housing, which created both a crisis and an opportunity. Rental houses quickly filled beyond capacity in the late 1990s. Old motels and apartment complexes in poor repair that had struggled to stay open were suddenly packed with fulltime residents. Empty tourist cabins dotted around the area became homes too. Eventually developers would build more apartments, which created work for builders, contractors, and property managers.
The rapid introduction of multiple ethnic groups and languages into McDonald County ushered in issues with law enforcement. Acquiring a driver’s license is one of the hardest things for immigrants to do. Some of them resorted to using fraudulent documents to get a license. Even after getting one, they often had trouble adjusting to traffic laws and were more likely to be stopped than native drivers. Be that as it may, officials reported that non-native residents were no more likely to commit violent crimes than natives, and most of the incidents that did occur were domestic in nature, which sadly included suicide attempts.
Perhaps the biggest barrier that everyone faced as immigrants poured into the county was language, and the situation was most acute in the schools. The problems were compounded by the rapid growth in population, especially in Noel. Construction on a new elementary school began in 1994 with the expectation that the building would be at 65 percent capacity and would accommodate growth over the next decade. When it opened a year later, Noel Elementary was already completely full, and most of the new students were children of Hispanic workers, who spoke limited English. Some teachers left their jobs, too overwhelmed to continue under the new conditions.
Spanish is difficult, but it’s not insurmountable. However, the introduction of language groups from African countries, the Pacific Islands, and Southeast Asia brought even greater challenges. By some accounts, there were close to a dozen different languages, along with multiple dialects, spoken by various ethnic groups and nationalities in McDonald County at one time. Learning a second language, if not several more, became a priority for some people in the county. The schools received assistance from translators hired by Tyson to help students take exams, but there are no words in some of these languages and dialects that identify the concepts covered in standardized tests. Even the context presented serious issues for children coming from cultural backgrounds so different from those in the U.S. Their fathers had been murdered. They survived refugee camps overseas.
Before the mid-1990s, McDonald County folks had little experience with cultural, ethnic, or racial diversity in their community. Longtime residents were exposed to customs and practices they considered strange, even shocking at times. Joyce Short is a local woman with residential property she has rented to immigrants. She recalls receiving a frantic late-night call from a neighbor of one of her renters who told her something terrible was happening. She arrived to find that her renters were preparing to have a barbecue. She asked them what was going on. The men gathered in the yard told her they were cooking a goat. She let them know that cooking a goat in the yard was one thing; slaughtering it on site was quite another. She said, “It’s interesting what a mature woman in pajamas can do at a barbeque or beer party that’s gotten a little too loud in the middle of the night.”
The county’s social services network was not prepared for the myriad needs of these new arrivals. A nonprofit organization called RAISE, an acronym for Refugee and Immigration Services & Education, incorporated in 2017 with offices in a structure on the Noel Housing Authority property. RAISE received financial support through donations and solicited major gifts, including assistance from the Walmart Foundation. The highest priority for RAISE was education in the areas of English literacy, parenting, health and wellness, computer proficiency, finances, and employment.
How well did immigrants integrate into the community? Some immigrants chose the path toward citizenship, and Hispanic residents began running for office in Noel and Southwest City as early as 2002. In 2022, a man named Feliberto Barrientos was the unchallenged candidate elected to represent the North Ward in Noel. He and his wife operated a food truck and had lived in the area for a decade or more. Mayor Lance encouraged him to run for office, thinking he would be an asset to city governance. The mayor said, “He has a perspective that I don’t have, and I’m sure don’t completely understand. And I think that’s important.”
The role religion played in the cultural transformation of McDonald County cannot be overstated. Before the 1990s, the predominant religious identity in the county was Protestantism. By 2001, attendance at the local Catholic church in Noel went from a handful of white people to an overflowing crowd of mostly Hispanic worshippers participating in a Spanish Mass. As people from Latin America began to make their way into the area, the Catholic population continued to expand. St. Nicholas Episcopal Church in Noel also offered Spanish services. With the arrival of refugees originating in Muslim countries of Africa, Islam was introduced into the religious mix. The primary faith tradition of the Pacific Islanders is Christianity, some of whom participated in local Protestant worship services. But it is important to note that religious diversity was not nearly as great as ethnic and linguistic differences in Noel.
After more than a decade of living in Noel, Muslim residents may not have necessarily felt embraced with open arms by everyone, but the circumstances definitely improved. After the fire that destroyed the mosque on Main Street, local and outside fundraising efforts made it possible in 2022 to open a new mosque in a building behind the original one. The ceremony to open the new facility was a public event, and dignitaries invited to speak included Muslim elders and leaders along with the mayor, the city marshal, the fire chief, and a management representative from the local Tyson plant. Other community members worked diligently to dispel myths and clear up misunderstandings about the Muslim people in Noel, especially educators, landlords, and retailers who interacted with these residents.
No other church in the county was more inclusive and welcoming to immigrants than Community Baptist Church in Noel. Joshua Manning became the pastor there in September, 2017, serving a multilingual congregation including Hispanics, Native Americans, and members of the minority Karen population from Myanmar. Eventually the church began offering worship services in at least four different languages. They also established a clothing bank and hosted English classes for nearby Crowder College. During the COVID pandemic, the church began a food pantry ministry. Tyson donated $7,000 in 2022 for the purchase of a walk-in freezer for the pantry, which was regularly serving an average of 150-175 families.
McDonald County underwent drastic changes between the early 1990s and 2023. To the outside observer, the county may have looked quite segregated, with ethnic and language groups largely keeping to themselves outside of work and school. But there were a few places where cultural blending was encouraged, such as a few community-wide celebrations and festivals, and some retail establishments. In 2021, Tony and Emily Savage opened The Common Cup, a coffee shop in Noel on Main Street in a building owned by Carlos and Marlene Sosa. Tony and Emily wanted to create an atmosphere where people from vastly different traditions could gather and become acquainted while enjoying a cup of coffee or tea. They served beverages inspired by some of the nationalities represented in Noel, and they built a racially diverse staff for the shop. A sign on the wall in The Common Cup was a visual reminder of the Savages’ business model: “We Filter Coffee, Not People.”
The Common Cup in Noel, Missouri
There were still people in the county who were dissatisfied with the level of diversity where they lived, and some would have been perfectly happy if the chicken plants closed immediately and took their workers with them. Others had a more positive view. Angie Brewer, the principal of McDonald County High School, embraced a theological perspective. “It’s a mission field,” she said. “I always did think when I was a kid, I might be a missionary. But I didn’t have to go to Africa. It came to me. I didn’t have to go to Burma. It came to me.”
What would indeed happen to Noel and Southwest City if the chicken plants closed? As it turns out, this is not a hypothetical question. Tyson shuttered its Noel plant in October, 2023, along with several other locations in the region. Over 70 percent of Noel’s population would have to find work elsewhere. By the end of 2023, many of the immigrants and refugees had left Noel, much in the same way they left other places to come to McDonald County looking for jobs. The impact on the community had a ripple effect. The owners of the Common Cup sold out to new owners who renamed the coffee shop, moved it to a new location, and eliminated the ethnic-inspired beverages from the menu. Community Baptist Church closed in late November as Pastor Manning saw a sizeable portion of his congregation move away from McDonald County.
For people like Carlos Sosa, who left the chicken business behind for what he considers better opportunities, McDonald County is not a placeholder until something else comes along. It is a home for him and his family. Like a few other foreign-born residents, Carlos reshaped the place where he lives in southwest Missouri, from teaching children in his church to being a community activist and building businesses. However, this latest development could have an adverse effect on his family’s financial future in Noel. For the individuals whose sole source of income was the Tyson plant, there were very few options other than to leave the town to find work elsewhere. Local officials are exploring various options for the vacant plant with Tyson and potential buyers in hopes of finding a new employer that can bring back some of the jobs. Even so, the situation in Noel looks mighty bleak in early 2024.
Sources
Interviews
Angie Brewer (Principal, McDonald County High School), in discussion with the author at McDonald County High School in Anderson, Missouri, April 8, 2022
Carey Ellison (Noel branch public library manager), in discussion with the author at the Noel branch public library in Noel, Missouri, April 8, 2022
Kara Gebre (Program Director for RAISE) and Mike Newman (Executive Director for RAISE), in discussion with the author at RAISE office in Joplin, Missouri, November 21, 2022
Ann Harmon (former business owner and property lessor), in discussion with the author at Noel Housing Authority in Noel, Missouri, August 29, 2022
Rosie Hartley (Director, Noel Housing Authority), in discussion with the author at Noel Housing Authority in Noel, Missouri, July 12, 2022
Terry Lance (Mayor, City of Noel), in discussion with the author at Noel City Hall in Noel, Missouri, May 25, 2022
Joshua Manning (Pastor, Community Baptist Church in Noel, Missouri), Facebook direct message to author, February 25, 2022
Mike Newman (Executive Director for RAISE), email messages to author, December 11-12, 2022
Sheila Owens (Media Specialist, Noel Elementary School), in discussion with the author at Noel Elementary School in Noel, Missouri, May 25, 2022
Lisa Reece (Manager, Dollar General), in discussion with the author at Dollar General in Noel, Missouri, July 12, 2022
Hazel Sheets (Director, McDonald County Public Library), in discussion with the author at McDonald County Public Library main branch in Pineville, Missouri, August 29, 2022
Joyce Short (Noel Housing Authority Board), in discussion with the author at Noel Housing Authority in Noel, Missouri, August 10, 2022
Carlos Sosa (maintenance supervisor at Noel Housing Authority), in discussion with author at Noel Housing Authority in Noel, Missouri, July 12, 2022
Randy Wilson (Noel City Marshal) in discussion with the author at Noel City Marshal office in Noel, Missouri, July 12, 2022
Other Sources
Oscar Avila, “Cultures Blend When Ozarks Town has Influx of Hispanic Factory Workers.” Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News, October 27, 1997, Gale Business
Brooks Blevins, A History of the Ozarks, Volume 3: The Ozarkers (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2021) 242
Donald Bradley, “In small-town Missouri, a collision of cultures,” The Kansas City Star, June 10, 2012, A1, A18-A19, Newspapers.com
Gregory Cancelada, “Not everyone is shocked by charges at Tyson Foods,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 23, 2001, 52, Newspapers.com
“Compacts of Free Association: Populations in U.S. Areas Have Grown, with Varying Reported Effects,” United States Government Accountability Office, June 15, 2020 (web page)
“Explore Census Data,” United States Census Bureau (website)
Thomas Gounley, “Somalis Find Safe Refuge,” The Springfield News-Leader, February 6, 2017, A1, A6, Newspapers.com
David Griffith, “Consequences of Immigration Reform for Low-Wage Workers in the Southern U.S.: The Case of the Poultry Industry,” Urban Anthropology and Studies of Cultural Systems and World Economic Development, 19, No. ½, Immigrants in U.S. Cities (Spring-Summer 1990): 161
Frank Griffiths, “Hispanics entering politics in McDonald Co.,” The Springfield News-Leader, March 31, 2002,1,8, Newspapers.com
Perla M. Guerrero, Nuevo South: Latinas/os, Asians, and the Remaking of Place (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2017), 114
Kimberly Harper, “McDonald County,” Missouri Encyclopedia, The State Historical Society of Missouri (web page)
Kimberly Harper, White Man’s Heaven: The Lynching and Expulsion of Blacks in the Southern Ozarks, 1894-1909, (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2010), xxii, 253
Kaylea M. Hutson-Miller, “Noel Church Reaches Out to Immigrants from Around the World,” Joplin Globe, September 1, 2019, joplinglobe.com
Kaitlyn McConnell, “Noel coffee shop starts to bring cultures together,” Ozarks Alive (website), May 23, 2021
Kaitlyn McConnell, “Ozarks Notebook: Tyson, the Grinch Who Upended Christmas City,” The Daily Yonder (website), December 22, 2023
William McQuillen, “Tyson Acquitted of Plotting to Hire Illegal Workers,” Bloomberg, (March 26, 2003), Institute for Agriculture & Trade Policy (web page)
“Noel Approves New Insurance Agency, Passes Ordinance,” McDonald County Press, August 13, 2020, nwaonline.com
“Noel Fire Cause ‘Undetermined,’” McDonald County Press, March 4, 2021, nwaonline.com
Phillip O’Connor, “Hispanics Transform Rural Missouri Town,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 18, 2001, 1, 9, Newspapers.com
Susan Pozo, ed., The Human and Economic Implications of Twenty-first Century Immigration Policy (Kalamazoo, Michigan: W. E. Upjohn Institute, 2018), 110-111, EBSCOhost
“Reporting Terminology and Definitions,” United States Department of Homeland Security (web page)
Brent Riffel, “The Feathered Kingdom: Tyson Foods and the Transformation of American Land, Labor, and Law, 1930-2005” (PhD diss., University of Arkansas, 2008), 259, ProQuest LLC
Steve Striffler, Chicken: The Dangerous Transformation of America’s Favorite Food, Yale Agrarian Studies Series (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2005), 42-45
Karen Testa, “Mexican-American Makes Inroads In Missouri Town,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 5, 1997, 20, Newspapers.com
“Train Explosion Wrecks Noel; One Dies, 40 Hurt,” Moberly Monitor-Index, August 4, 1969, 1, Newspapers.com
Tyson Foods, “Tyson Foods Commits More Than $1 Million to Expand Legal and Citizenship Support for Team Members,” news release, April 12, 2022
Alexus Underwood, “Tyson Donates $7,000 to Community Baptist Church in Noel,” McDonald County Press, July 14, 2022, nwaonline.com
United States Census Bureau (website)
Sylvia R. Lazos Vargas, “Missouri, the War on Terrorism, and Immigrants: Legal Challenges Post 9/11,” Missouri Law Review, 67, no. 4 (Fall 2002): 808
The threats to free speech in the U.S. have been troubling to me for a long time, and the problem seems to be most acute in the very place where free speech should be deeply appreciated and protected – academia. I have spent a good portion of my career in or associated with the academic world and have watched in dismay as both the sanctimonious morality police AND the uber-sensitive progressive warriors have slowly chipped away at one of the fundamental rights we have in this republic. Of course, attacks on free speech extend far beyond the ivory towers to all branches of government, journalism, entertainment, the medical community, and so many other sectors of our society.
One of the worst examples of free speech restriction is the phenomenon of cancel culture, which has spread rapidly and broadly, sometimes inflicting serious damage to individuals and institutions across the political, economic, and social spectrum. Some progressives would argue that cancel culture is a myth, that what we are witnessing is a type of moral correction on a societal level. I must disagree. Of course, I recognize there are attitudes and actions that a society should not tolerate, such as child abuse, sexual harassment, and various forms of discrimination – race, gender, age, etc. However, the concept of “hate speech” as it has evolved in the western world turns the cliché of the slippery slope into a perfect metaphor. The empowerment of the masses through the Internet, particularly social media, has facilitated this toxic environment. To my way of thinking, cancel culture is the result of old-fashioned mob psychology intensified and magnified by more efficient means of communication. It is frightening.
Some of the strongest criticism of cancel culture in recent years has come from unexpected torch bearers, like John McWhorter, an African American academic and linguist who is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. His controversial 2021 book titled Woke Racism calls out what he sees as a pendulum that has swung way too far left, and for many, is stuck there with little chance of tearing itself loose. He argues that a segment of the country’s population has become hypersensitive about race, resulting in a punitive environment where the slightest slip or even perceived slip calls for immediate and total cancellation of the offender. When he identifies this movement as a religion, he isn’t employing a metaphor — he truly believes it IS a religion. Because he is not a religious person himself, he sees no problem comparing woke racism with Christianity or other faiths he perhaps deems oppressive.
I take strong objection to many of McWhorter’s arguments and how he posits that woke racism is an insult to black people’s intelligence because it pressures them into being offended, as if they can’t recognize “real” racism when they see it. His whole book seems to be designed to warn black people about a religious cult that apparently, he believes, they just aren’t smart enough to reject on their own. At the same time, I am deeply concerned how quickly some people have been “cancelled” and had their careers completely sabotaged for virtually no good reason at all because of a generation that seems to be too awake, wielding a moral sledgehammer rather than a compass.
It is going to take a considerable amount of time for the wide-swinging pendulum to settle down and adopt a more reasonable range of motion. We need less judgment and a lot more grace. There is far too much focus on punishment, refusing to admit that at times we all say or write things we regret. All sides must realize that canceling is a zero-sum game, and if history teaches us anything, it is that Americans are slow learners when it comes to social change.
As I write this last blog post of 2023, a new year is only days away. Another Christmas has passed, along with the hopes and wishes every Christmas inspires. I am still hoping for something this year that I thought would never be on my wish list. I hope the American experiment doesn’t fail. I hope the Republic that was the vision of a group of enlightened thinkers almost 250 years ago doesn’t crumble. I hope the U.S. Constitution isn’t replaced with a less representative form of government. I hope the democratic principles that have guided this nation’s trajectory for so many generations aren’t cast aside, even if we have never honestly embraced or implemented them holistically. I hope we don’t give up on the dream of liberty and justice for all.
What concerns me most as we head into 2024, the year of our next presidential election, is the fact that a sizeable minority of our population no longer supports the concept of a limited, restrained government. Oh, they certainly say they do. In fact, they scream it. Some of them think the only function of government should be defense of the borders, so they have no respect for the legislative or judicial branches of government. They constantly espouse the virtue of state’s rights, but that’s only because they don’t believe the federal government has a role in governing the affairs of the population. When it comes down to it, many of them would be perfectly happy if they never heard from their state capitals again, especially in the form of a tax bill every year. Not only is all politics local for them, but just about everything else is too, and that’s the way they prefer it.
However, there is one branch of government that they have decided should be virtually untouchable: the executive branch. They want this branch to be untethered by legislators, judges, law enforcement, or even laws for that matter. They believe this branch should essentially be above the law. They think this branch should have the power and authority to do whatever it deems necessary for the nation to achieve greatness and superiority over all other nations. Most importantly, they want this type of omnipotence concentrated in the hands of one individual, the person they wish to see occupying the White House, and no one else. They are convinced that only one person is qualified for this totalitarian position. They earnestly believe this person has the skills, experience, knowledge, and determination to transform the country into what they want it to be. They just don’t quite understand that authoritarianism is not an example of small government. History has taught us that it is quite the opposite.
This minority of the population has been building, organizing, communicating, and planning for many years. The exact origin of the movement is debatable. It has mostly existed underground and on the fringes of society, and in modern times, it has taken advantage of the Internet, empowered especially through social media. Perhaps it has waxed and waned over most of U.S. history, sweeping across both sides of the political spectrum; however, in the 21st century it surfaced and became extremely vocal among the ultra-conservative right. The movement’s members were like a volatile collection of chemicals, just waiting for the right catalyst to come along and fully activate them.
By definition, a catalyst causes or magnifies a reaction without ever undergoing any permanent change itself. The catalyst in this case had been a larger-than-life personality in American society for decades. Born into wealth, he was groomed to be an entrepreneur, rising to celebrity status while building a commercial empire with the assistance of domestic and foreign credit and always grabbing the attention of mass media. He built relationships with some of the wealthiest and most powerful members of society in the U.S. and around the world. His business ethics and methods were often the target of scrutiny, if not serious accusation of wrongdoing, but his reptilian instinct served him well as he maneuvered through the legal system emerging mostly unscathed. His devoted fans have often admitted that he may not be eloquent, but he always speaks his mind and means what he says, which they really admire. Of course, when he said something that sounded dangerous or immoral, they were quick to backtrack and say that you can’t pay attention to what he says, just focus on what he does. Makes perfect sense.
The qualities and characteristics that made him most appealing to the movement were his apparent great wealth, his arrogance, his boastful nature, his dissatisfaction with the federal government, and his insistence that the nation was on the wrong path primarily because it could not protect its borders and because it repeatedly made bad deals with foreign powers that never put America first. Nevertheless, he promised that he, and he alone, could rescue the country. He would rid the nation’s capital of the corrupt bureaucrats and lobbyists, or “drain the swamp,” a phrase often used by Benito Mussolini as he rose to power in Italy in the 1920s. The catalyst would secure the southern border with Mexico by building a massive wall, promising to make the Mexican government pay for it. He would remove all government regulations and restrictions that hindered business pursuits and the accumulation of wealth. He wanted patriots to join him in the noble cause to Make America Great Again. The catalyst’s name was Donald J. Trump, who ran for President of the United States and was elected in 2016 with the help of this growing political and social movement.
History will judge how successful Trump’s administration was in fulfilling his promises to his base and to the population at large, but there is no real debate about what happened when he was defeated in his attempt to win a second term in office. He didn’t just claim that the election was stolen, which other candidates before him had done (including Hillary Clinton when she lost to Trump). He went much further. He used those claims to support his attempts to stay in office, even to the point of trying to overturn the election results. When Vice-President Mike Pence proceeded to certify the election on January 6, 2021, despite Trump’s demand that the process be halted, a subset of this movement’s members stormed the U.S. Capitol, a mob that had been encouraged by Trump. He publicly praised their efforts to interrupt the peaceful transfer of power from his administration to that of the newly elected President, Joe Biden.
Over 1,100 rioters who invaded and vandalized the Capitol (resulting in several deaths) from all fifty states were charged with a variety of crimes associated with the incident, and close to 400 people were sentenced to prison for their actions. Other indictments and lawsuits have been filed for alleged crimes involving attempts to overthrow the election, some committed by close associates of President Trump. His most loyal supporters still deny that Trump lost the election, including elected and appointed state officials, Republicans in Congress, lawyers, some of Trump’s former cabinet members, journalists, radio talk show personalities, and Fox News program hosts. Thus far, no evidence brought before any state or federal court that I’m aware of has offered conclusive proof of interference, tampering, or fraud sufficient to overthrow or reconsider the election results. And yet, millions of people across the country still believe that Trump actually won his bid for reelection.
Over the last twelve months as individuals began to solidify support for their candidacy for the Republican primary leading up to the next presidential election, it became abundantly clear that Donald Trump was going to be the frontrunner. Now at the end of the year, his numbers across a wide spectrum of polling organizations far exceed any other Republican hopeful. He has been noticeably absent at all Republican debates. He doesn’t need to be there. He is winning by a long shot. And just as he did leading up to the last election, he is pounding a clear message home to his base: if he doesn’t win this election in 2024, then the election will be fraudulent. To his loyal base, there will be only one conclusion if he doesn’t win. The election was stolen. They will accept no alternative outcome other than a victory for Donald Trump, a man who now faces numerous federal and state indictments for alleged crimes associated with the last election and attempts to overthrow it.
Here’s where it gets frightening. Trump’s base, the movement for which he served as a catalyst, has illustrated it is willing to resort to violence to achieve the agenda of overthrowing the government to give Donald Trump total control. They are also likely among the most heavily armed civilians in the country. Over the years, especially during his presidency, Trump demonstrated his admiration and respect for totalitarian leaders around the world, including Vladimir Putin in Russia, Kim Jong Un in North Korea, and Xi Jinping of China. He even committed the embarrassing diplomatic faux pas of saluting Kim Jong Un during an official meeting with the supreme leader. In a recent town hall session hosted by Sean Hannity of Fox News, Trump stated that he would be a dictator for one day once he was reelected. This type of authoritarian rhetoric has become more common for Trump, and his base seems perfectly happy with it. To my way of thinking, these folks are ravenous for a dictator, as long as his name is Donald J. Trump.
So, I am concerned about our Republic’s future. I dread the turbulent political landscape that lies ahead leading up to the 2024 election in November. I am troubled over the lack of conviction among Republican lawmakers who continue to feed into the conspiracies and lies about the last election. I am saddened that the handful of men and women in Congress who had the spine to stand up to Trump and the election deniers were publicly castigated by the former President and their own colleagues, then promptly voted out of office. Most of all, I am worried that no matter the outcome of the election, the system of law and order that distinguishes us as a nation may be threatened.
Chuck Berry statue in the Delmar Loop in St. Louis, MO
In the spirit of giving credit where credit is due, no one deserves the title “The Father of Rock-n-Roll” more than Chuck Berry. So many of the legends of the genre revered him and covered his hits, including The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. Keith Richards said if rock-n-roll had a name, it would have to be Chuck Berry. Even that white boy from Tupelo, referred so often to as the “King” of rock-n-roll, covered Berry’s tunes.
Chuck Berry’s life is not really a rags-to-riches story as he was born into a middle-class family in St. Louis where he lived his whole life. Growing up just beyond the eastern boundary of the Ozarks region, Berry was heavily influenced by rock-a-billy and country music, elements of which would end up in many of his greatest hits. Of course, Berry also grew up during the era of Jim Crow in a part of the country that had a dark past with race relations. Sadly, according to R. J. Smith in his brutally honest biography (Chuck Berry: An American Life, Hachette Books, 2022), Berry apparently carried his response of anger, resentment, and frustration to extremes at times, taking opportunities to insult and humiliate people, even those who adored him, and telling them, “Now you know how it feels to be black.”
Smith does a good job of balancing the artistry, intelligence, talent, and even the charm of Berry with the ugly side of his personality. Some of the stories about Berry make me think that he may have had some kind of serious psychological illness, like bipolar disorder. To say he was a womanizer would be to let him off the hook. He demonstrated signs of being what many folks in the post-MeToo era would define as a sexual predator and even a pedophile. At the very least, it is fair to say he had strong sexual appetites that wandered into the realm of the taboo and even aberrant.
His sexual deviance, along with his violent tendencies and his resistance to authority, including the IRS and government in general, got him into legal trouble on several occasions. He was sentenced to jail time more than once. One could argue that he shared this path with many of the outlaw country stars like Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, and many others. Some rap and hip-hop performers who were no doubt influenced by Berry on some level would also be plagued with legal problems and prison terms.
No matter how bad the news was for Berry, he was still highly respected by the biggest names in the music business, including Bruce Springsteen. He was an early cross-over musician, infiltrating white homes with his unique style of playing and singing long before black performers were even allowed to eat in many restaurants or stay in hotels when they were on tour. He was beloved by millions of fans all over the world, even when he continued to attempt to perform in his 80s as dementia began to claim his mind and memory. His impact on 20th century music and beyond cannot be overemphasized, complete with his flaws and his brilliance.
On several occasions I have written about my strong attraction to the coast, how it grounds me and is so good for my soul. My first love in this regard was the Atlantic along the coasts of Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas, simply because I was raised in the Southeast. Places such as Myrtle Beach, Isle of Palms, Hilton Head, Tybee Island, St. Simons, Jekyll, Sapelo Island, Amelia Island, St. Augustine, Ormond, and Daytona are all popular vacation destinations. I have fond memories from summer and early fall trips to all these locations, from within the last few years and going all the way back to my childhood.
In the last decade or so I have had several opportunities to visit the west coast in San Diego, Huntington Beach, Los Angeles, Laguna Beach, Carmel-by-the-Sea, San Francisco, and multiple locations in northern Oregon. It’s a completely different experience from the Atlantic, but no less enjoyable and with some spectacular landscape features you don’t see in Florida or Georgia.
Growing up, my family sometimes went to beaches along the Gulf Coast, and I even went there with friends in college, places such as Panama City Beach and Clearwater. However, I never found the Gulf Coast beaches as attractive as the Atlantic ones. The waves were usually much smaller, and the beaches were not as wide, both of which were important because I typically spent my days as a child and a young man either body surfing in the breakers or baking my skin on the sand. The atmosphere was probably thicker and provided more protection back in the day, and my skin was much more resilient to the sun’s rays. I tanned well and rarely burned much. Those days are over, even for this generation’s youngsters.
Living in the great state of Missouri now, a quick trip to the Gulf is much more manageable, even when flying. We have short direct flights that get us close to multiple Gulf beaches. We tried out Galveston in Texas a few years back, and I was pleasantly surprised how great it was experiencing the beach from the deck chairs at the house we rented with family and friends. Come to think of it, when we took a pre-Christmas holiday trip to Jamaica in 2015, we spent very little time out on the beach but certainly feasted on the views from the expansive balcony of our hotel room.
One place I had never seen was the stretch of the Gulf known as the Emerald Coast that lies west of Panama City and covers about 100 miles of seashore featuring destinations such as Navarre Beach, Fort Walton Beach, Destin, and Miramar Beach. My wife and I were in Destin for a memorial service in February of 2023, and while we were there, we took a few walks out on the beaches. The contrast of the brilliant white sand against the blue-green water makes for a breathtaking vista that goes on forever. It is magnificent.
Miramar Beach, FL
When I planned a solo trip for September this year, I decided to give the Emerald Coast a try. My wife, who also graciously serves as our ever-resourceful travel planner, was kind enough to book my flight, rent a car for me, and reserve a fourth-floor condo unit at a lovely complex just across the road from the beach called the Mediterranea. It was conveniently located to restaurants, bars, coffee shops, and retailers, many within walking distance. It was a perfect getaway. I was able to take long strolls on the white sand and on paved walkways just across the street. Although I didn’t take advantage of it, the pool was beautiful and added to the overall aesthetic. The view from the balcony was easy on my eyes whenever I looked up from the book I spent so much time reading while smelling the salty air and feeling the constant breeze on my skin.
Mediterranea at Miramar Beach, FL
It’s a good idea to break away from traditions and time-worn habits to explore other possibilities, especially when traveling. We have discovered all kinds of unexpected adventures and curiosities by going in new directions. I am certain we will return to the Emerald Coast, but there are so many other beaches to see, trails to walk, and sights to behold. As we approach the “work optional” stage of our lives, we plan to spend a whole lot more time doing just that.
In November, 2019, I posted about a malady that I have dealt with for twenty years called Mal de Debarquement Syndrome or MDDS. When I first recognized the symptoms, there wasn’t much information widely available about MDDS. There was plenty of published research about travel sickness, post-travel imbalance, jet lag, dizziness, vertigo, and migraines, but it failed to address the specific facets of this strange phenomenon. It wasn’t until 2015 that I even discovered there was a name for it.
In 2021, I experienced my first spontaneous episode of MDDS, meaning that it was not precipitated by air or sea travel. Instead of lasting a couple of weeks like all my other previous bouts, this time it went on for four months. My primary care physician suggested a diuretic, but I wasn’t convinced that an excess of salt and water in my body was the real problem. I scheduled a videonystagmography (VNG) test but wasn’t able to get in until after my symptoms began to subside. The test was negative. Another spontaneous episode occurred in mid-April of 2023 and lasted off and on through mid-July. My next step is to get a referral to a neurologist, and now I have a book to prepare me for my appointment with such a physician.
One of the leading specialists in studying and treating MDDS is Shin C. Beh, M.D., who practices out of his own facility, the Beh Center, in Frisco, Texas. Dr. Beh wrote a book that came out in early 2023 titled Disembark: Overcoming Mal de Debarquement Syndrome. I was lucky enough to discover it because someone posted an announcement of it on a social media MDDS support group page. This is a self published book, probably even a print-on-demand title, but future editions should be picked up by a major press because it really is well written and so informative.
Disembark by Shin C. Beh
Dr. Beh covers just about every aspect of MDDS that I can imagine, given how the research into this syndrome is young and evolving rapidly. He covers the symptoms and diagnosis of MDDS, along with several hypotheses of the underlying causes. I’m sure in the coming years the author will revise this information, and other authors likely will cover new ground as the research expands. The bulk of this book covers the various approaches to treatment that he and other practitioners have developed to help sufferers of MDDS deal with their symptoms. He makes it clear there is no cure, but he offers treatments ranging from natural remedies to an array of chemicals, most of which are formulated to treat other vestibular disorders, depression, anxiety, seizures, and migraines.
Vestibular migraines are actually Dr. Beh’s speciality, so he arrives at the study of MDDS through that gateway. His first book was about vestibular migraines. There are some obvious similarities between the two maladies, so the treatments overlap too. In addition to medications, he also suggests lifestyle pathways to diminish symptoms, including what to avoid and how to actively fight the symptoms through diet, exercise, sleep patterns, prayer/meditation, work habits, and environment control.
I made copious notes in the margins of my copy and intend to keep it as the first, I hope, in a collection of reference guides to MDDS. I also sent an email in gratitude for the book and the supporting research to the Beh Center. I received an answer thanking me for my message within a few hours, which was impressive. Again, there is no cure for MDDS, but this book goes a long way toward helping sufferers deal with this debilitating syndrome and giving hope to those who must live with it.
I had the privilege of being directly involved in the planning and implementation of the 2023 Smithsonian Folklife Festival, an annual event that takes place on the National Mall in Washington, DC. With a history going back over fifty years, the festival is usually scheduled over a ten-day period roughly encompassing the last week in June and the first week of July. It is produced by the Smithsonian’s Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage and honors living cultural traditions while celebrating those who practice and sustain them. One of the programs selected for the 2023 festival was focused on the Ozarks, a region of the U.S. that is centered in southern Missouri and northwest Arkansas but also includes small portions of northeast Oklahoma, southeast Kansas, and extreme southwest Illinois.
Smithsonian Folklife Festival 2023
I began working in 2019 for Missouri State University Libraries on a part time basis, assisting with projects sponsored by the Ozarks Studies Institute, an initiative of the Libraries. A fortunate turn of events led to the Smithsonian partnering with the Libraries for the Ozarks program of the 2023 festival, with the Dean of Libraries serving as a curator. The Dean offered me a full-time position eighteen months prior to the event to serve as an associate director for the university’s participation in the festival.
The Dean and I teamed up with another part-time employee of the Libraries who has written two books about the Ozarks and has extensive cultural knowledge of the region. Our trio served as the core planning committee for the university to collaborate with the festival organizers from the Smithsonian. One of the first jobs we tackled was coming up with a name for the program. After considerable deliberation, we decided on “The Ozarks: Faces and Facets of a Region.” Our trio made numerous trips to visit with people and organizations throughout the region, in all five states, to spread the word and generate excitement about the festival. A small group of Ozarkers, including our planning trio, visited the National Mall in the summer of 2022 to get a clearer picture of how the event looks and works. We took two musical acts with us to perform as a preview of the 2023 Ozarks program.
Smithsonian Folklife Festival 2023
Over the course of a year, we worked with the Smithsonian staff to identify key stakeholders from the Ozarks who could assist with fundraising, program content, identifying other curators and participants, and overall planning of the festival. We had Zoom meetings almost every week for over a year to hammer out all the details, and several festival organizers from the Smithsonian visited the Ozarks multiple times to get a better sense of the region and to meet with our team.
Using artists from the Ozarks and from the DC area, the larger planning team came up with design features for the festival that would reflect the natural beauty of the region. We had to decide on color schemes, fonts for signage, layout of the festival grounds, daily schedules of events, and a whole host of other elements. In early 2023 we began meeting with the festival logistics staff to work on structural and mechanical requirements for the site. We also met with interns and volunteers who are brought on each year to help the Smithsonian with festival participants’ needs regarding transportation, lodging, meals, and a wide variety of other accommodations. By the time June arrived, there were over 150 people involved in either planning or implementation. It is a massive effort.
Smithsonian Folklife Festival 2023
The festival was open each day, June 29 through July 9 (with the exception of July 5), from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., followed by evening concerts most nights running from around 6:30 to 8:00 p.m. The Ozarks program site was situated under the trees on the south side of the Mall, just east of 14th Street SW. On the opposite north side of the Mall was the other program for the 2023 festival, which was called “Creative Encounters: Living Religions in the U.S.” Each year the festival is open on Independence Day, where people gather by the hundreds of thousands along the corridors, paths, and grassy fields extending from the Potomac River all the way to the Capitol to await the spectacular fireworks display at dusk between the Lincoln and Washington Memorials. I don’t typically go out of my way to see firework displays, but the colorful explosions that serve as a backdrop for the imposing Washington Monument are mighty impressive.
Smithsonian Folklife Festival 2023
The Ozarks program was divided into four major themes: celebrations and gatherings; stories, sounds, and show business; migrations, movements, and pathways; and connections to land and place. The site featured large-scale murals and a mountain-bike trail build, music jam sessions and performances, dance and plant-knowledge workshops, food and craft demonstrations, and curated discussions. The Ozarks program included multiple theaters. There was a theater for discussions and demonstrations of plant knowledge, one for cooking demonstrations, one called the “Pickin’ Porch” mostly for music during the day, and one called “The Front Porch” for panel discussions. Both festival programs shared a large main stage out in the middle of the Mall that was reserved for musical workshops and performances during the day and for the larger evening concerts.
Smithsonian Folklife Festival 2023Smithsonian Folklife Festival 2023
The Ozarks program brought close to 60 musicians to the festival, which is a clear indication of how important musical traditions are to the culture of the region. There were at least eleven different ensembles of varying sizes, along with many individual musicians, specializing in several different genres including Native American music, traditional old time music, bluegrass, folk, country, gospel, and contemporary. Foodways, plant knowledge, arts, crafts, and storytelling were demonstrated by white Ozarkers but also by many other ethnic groups that call the Ozarks home, including Native Americans, African Americans, people of Hispanic and Latino heritage, Marshallese, Hmong, Khmer, and Syrian. Contrary to much of its history over the last 200 years, some of the “faces and facets” of the Ozarks show remarkable diversity in race, ethnicity, and culture.
Smithsonian Folklife Festival 2023Smithsonian Folklife Festival 2023
The largest and most recognizable musical group that the Ozarks program sponsored played on the main stage for the July 4 evening concert. The Ozark Mountain Daredevils is a band that originated out of Springfield, Missouri, in 1972. The group had several hits in their early years including “Jackie Blue” and “If You Want to Get to Heaven.” The band has evolved over the decades, losing and replacing band members and even going into a type of semi-retirement in the early 21st century. In recent years the Daredevils have enjoyed a bit of a resurgence, appearing on the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville on two occasions in 2023. They put on a hell of a show for the DC festival and for hundreds of people within earshot of the main stage that evening.
Ozark Mountain Daredevils
My primary job during the days of the festival was to occupy the Missouri State University Libraries table set up near the main entrance of the Ozarks program. With the help of one of our student workers, I was selling several books about the Ozarks and answering questions about the festival program and the region in general. I was surprised by how many festival visitors told us they were either from the Ozarks, had lived in the Ozarks, or had fond memories of visiting the region. Many of these folks have lived and worked in the DC area for years, and they were so happy to see the Ozarks featured on the National Mall. We could definitely detect a sense of pride in their voices when they talked about their connection to the region.
Smithsonian Folklife Festival 2023
Perhaps the most enjoyable connection I made during the time of the festival was with the two guys representing mountain biking, one of the fastest-growing forms of recreation in the Ozarks, especially in northwest Arkansas and Missouri. Seth Gebel is a young entrepreneur who owns Backyard Trail Builds. He goes out into the forest armed with only hand tools and cuts down cedar trees, trimming them out to create bridges, ramps, and runs for biking trails. He designed and built a short, curved and banked track at the entrance to the Ozarks site at the festival. Dave Schulz works within a nonprofit organization to help community leaders in revitalizing their towns by developing bicycle-focused public parks and sustainable trail systems, preserving natural environments while drawing tourism from around the world. Both of these guys gave daily riding demonstrations on the track that Seth built for the festival.
Smithsonian Folklife Festival 2023
The most magical moment for me came on the final evening of the festival in the dining room of the host hotel. A group of Ukranian vocalists from the Creative Encounters program stood up and began singing a traditional folk song in their native tongue. They were followed by several other individuals and groups from both programs, standing to sing and inviting others in the room to participate through responsive chanting, vocalizations, and clapping. As I witnessed what happened, I recognized that this festival offers us a snapshot of the best of humanity, the wonders we are capable of producing when we embrace our differences and come together to learn from each other.
The reason I can get away with such a derogatory title for this post is because I am a librarian, or at least I am by training, and for much of my career, by practice as well. Over the last few years, I have picked up several books, both fiction and nonfiction, that feature libraries or librarians as the primary subject. Here is an annotated list of these books, which I highly recommend to librarians, library patrons, or bibliophiles in general. Enjoy!
Library stacks
Nonfiction
The Library: A Fragile History by Andrew Pettigrew
In this dense and comprehensive history of libraries, the author also tells the story of the evolution of the book: its creation, distribution, preservation, and impact on civilization. He devotes considerable time discussing how private collections were the norm for libraries during most of recorded history and that public access is a relatively new phenomenon.
The fragile part of the history is illustrated by the many threats to books and the libraries that contain them, from natural disasters to warfare, from censorship to reduced support by private and government sources. The book begins and ends with perhaps the most famous library of the ancient world at Alexandria, which in some ways serves as a model for all libraries that followed. Written language is one of the hallmarks that separates our species from all the rest; therefore, the institutions that serve as repositories of written language must be considered as instrumental in documenting and preserving that distinction.
One of the more interesting takeaways from this book is how, at least until the modern era, fiction was held with such little regard by the literate elite of western society (and this book focuses on libraries of western civilization). Novels were even considered a corruptive force, especially as they were in such demand by women as a form of escape from the drudgery of living in subservience to their husbands, taking care of children, and maintaining the home.
The author contemplates the impact the digital age will have on books, which could be perceived as another threat to the library. It is reassuring that he observes how radio, movies, television, and computers may have competed for the attention of readers, but books and libraries continue to survive and at times even thrive in the age of mass media.
Overdue: Reckoning with the Public Library by Amanda Oliver
Public libraries and the services they provide usually reflect the communities where they are located. The public library where I was the director was medium sized in a county of about 43,000. We had our share of quirky folks, unruly adolescents, crusty curmudgeons, and houseless citizens among the day-to-day users who came in regularly to check out books or bring their children to story time. Also, our town had the state’s mental institution, which had been decentralized in the 1960s resulting in plenty of mentally ill people in government subsidized houses, or sometimes, just wandering the streets. As expected, many of them found their way to the library.
My public library was probably typical for a rural community in central Georgia — plenty of challenges but nothing too much out of the ordinary. By contrast, Amanda Oliver spent several years working in a public library in one of the toughest trenches a government employee can work: Washington DC. If there is a common thread running through her book, it is a sense of conflict the author feels about knowing how desperate many of her patrons were for help just to survive and trying to preserve her own mental health and physical safety while trying to assist them with their needs. She bemoans the fact that this country is woefully unable to take care of the poor and mentally ill, who have to rely on help wherever they can find it.
By their very nature, public libraries are places of refuge for the marginalized, and librarians are first responders, sometimes in the most literal sense. Oliver shares stories of having to administer first aid and other medical procedures for people with addiction and a whole host of health problems. She calls into question the role of the public library in a society that has abandoned those who are at most risk from economic insecurity and mental illness, including those with violent tendencies. She offers some chilling reports about librarians who have been injured or killed by crazed individuals who come through their doors. She reports how installing security equipment and hiring public safety personnel have become top priorities in many public libraries around the country.
On the bright side, it is clear that Oliver believes strongly in the mission of the public library to provide information services, very broadly defined, and to assist patrons with needs that have little or nothing to do with reading. In spite of how difficult her job was, she stayed committed to directing people to information, resources, and agencies they needed, sometimes just to survive. She effectively offers her readers a healthy, though not copious, collection of statistics to drive home her points. Perhaps the most encouraging stat of all for me was that the number of public libraries in America is greater than the number of Starbucks. We must be doing something right here.
The World’s Strongest Librarian by Josh Hanagarne
Hanagarne managed to write the funniest and the saddest book in this category at the same time. It is sad because the author has struggled so many years with a disorder that is so misunderstood and at times terribly debilitating. It is funny because Hanagarne manages to find humor even in the worst circumstances. His comic timing is quite good, with prose that reminds me so much of David Sedaris. Hanagarne makes his father sound remarkably similar to the way Sedaris makes his father sound. They both come off as crusty, no-nonsense guys who were forever trying to toughen up their children to face the “real world.”
Hanagarne’s memoir doesn’t focus nearly as much attention on his work as a librarian as it does his upbringing in a Mormon family facing the embarrassing and humiliating symptoms of Tourette Syndrome, which he personified by giving it a name – Misty (as in Miss T). His determination and tenacity in wrestling with his condition is inspiring. He never gave up. On the contrary, he often pushed himself into situations that anyone else with Tourette Syndrome would avoid, like choosing a profession that is traditionally associated with being quiet. And then he continued to bust open stereotypes by being a librarian AND a fitness enthusiast. It is not surprising that Hanagarne has found fitness regimens to be among the most successful tools in battling Tourettes.
From a confused childhood to the discovery and love of reading, from the awkwardness of making friends and dating to pushing through as a high school athlete, from pulling away from the faith of his parents to finding happiness in marriage and being a father, Hanagarne’s story is touching, heart wrenching, fascinating, and funny. And his use of Dewey Decimal System call numbers and subject headings as chapter leads is brilliant. Josh Hanagarne is a remarkable human being.
The Library Book by Susan Orlean
The author cleverly uses the Los Angeles Central Library fire in 1986 as her main hub to explore the history and culture of libraries. Her focus is generally on the Los Angeles system, but throughout the book she takes a few side roads to include libraries, past and present, in other locations in this country and around the world. Her deep appreciation of this ancient institution is abundantly evident throughout the book. She manages to take what so many people would consider a deadly boring topic and make it intriguing, fascinating even. Although at times the chapters read more like separate essays, some of which could easily stand alone, Orlean manages to make them flow together and connect as she unravels the mysteries surrounding the disaster in L.A. However, the real reason the book is a bestseller is because Orlean is such a good writer. The Library Book is a wonderful combination of biography, history, mystery, and investigative reporting.
I Was a Stripper Librarian by Kristy Cooper
Okay, yes, the title is titillating, the cover looks just a tad risque, and this is a self-published book. But, let’s immediately set aside our bibliographic elitism, decide we are NOT going to judge a book by its cover, and take an honest look at this memoir from someone who worked in two professions that, at least on the surface, seem like polar opposites. Kristy Cooper argues that being a stripper and a librarian are not nearly as different than most of us would think, and she provides enough examples to be convincing. Admittedly, this book cannot be taken as seriously as some of the other titles in this list — the authors are not trying to do the same thing here.
I suspect most Americans would be surprised to learn how many women and men enter the sex industry, as the author labels it (although stripping seems to stretch the definition to my way of thinking), in order to make ends meet or to get out of debt, especially student loans. A simple Google search on the topic brings up numerous TV spots and articles posted over the last few years about young folks who pay their way through college by stripping. Cooper is unapologetic about her decision to do the same — it was simply pragmatic. She tried other more conventional jobs, but none paid as well for the amount of time and labor required.
This book is well-written and interesting. Cooper does not come across as some bubble-headed babe trying to impress us with her lap-dancing talents, although some of the stories she shares are fascinating, troubling, and at times hilarious. Her vocabulary is impressive. Her writing style is rather simple and straightforward, but it works fine for this type of book. She assures her readers that there are plenty of people in the adult entertainment industry who are extremely intelligent, some of whom have advanced degrees like she does. Although she is no longer in the industry, she certainly advocates for it. She is also a remarkable champion for the library profession and has even established a nonprofit organization to facilitate her philanthropic work, especially for librarians.
Ultimately, readers will either approve or disapprove of Cooper’s dual occupational choice, but no one can deny that she made it work for her circumstances. She implies that stripping never made her feel dirty or immoral, but I have to wonder if the objectification factor eventually did a number on her. The best example, and perhaps the saddest to me, was when she was considering whether or not to get implants because her breasts were smaller than that of the average female strippers with whom she worked. Even though some of her male customers recommended she leave them alone, she knew that a bigger chest in a topless bar translated to more income. At one point she decided that her breasts were not really a part of her body as much as they were a commodity or resource for her craft. As true as that may be, I hated to hear it.
Fiction
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
I read this book for an online book club I helped moderate for the university where I work, but I was intrigued by it when I first saw it reviewed in the New York Times Book Review. My honest assessment of this novel is that it is entertaining, but it still has more of a juvenile style to it, probably because Haig has written several books for children. The subject matter and language are clearly for an adult audience, but the plot and rhythm still feel more like a fairy tale to me, perhaps like a C. S. Lewis children’s novel.
The premise of The Midnight Library is very similar to the film “It’s a Wonderful Life.” The name of the town in the timeless holiday classic film is Bedford Falls; Nora’s album is called Pottersville; a character in the novel has the last name Bailey. (The author tweeted about this to a fan.) If we give too much thought to the mechanics behind the story – the impossible challenges presented by being inserted into the middle of an unfamiliar life – the novel doesn’t exactly “work” so well. I had to employ a type of dissociation to make it through.
Nora and Hugo discuss Schrödinger’s cat, the popular thought experiment that illustrates an apparent paradox of quantum superposition – alternate possibilities happening simultaneously. Is there a deeper meaning that Haig is trying to get at with this novel or is it just supposed to be an entertaining read? Is this a story that explores the concept of quantum mechanics and string theory? At any rate, Haig’s novel prompts readers to think (or rethink) how different their lives might have been had they made different choices along the way.
I am surprised at how much attention it received from major review sources, but then again, Haig is a journalist too, so there could be some professional courtesy going on as well. Haig does a good job of pulling the reader into the story. Most of us can imagine ourselves in Nora’s shoes and are compelled to speculate what decisions we would make given the circumstances.
The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray
This may not be a great novel, but it is a good story based on the life of a real person. Belle da Costa Greene was J. P. Morgan’s personal librarian, an amazing African-American woman who was forced to hide her true identity and pass as white in order to succeed at an incredibly important job. Using biographies, personal papers, and secondary sources, the authors attempt to recreate the life and accomplishments of Greene, complete with her romantic relationships, her hardships, her family life, her savvy business dealings, and the struggles she faced through it all in keeping such a huge secret. In the category of historical fiction, this novel ranks among the best I have read.
If You Want My Opinion 