Patricia Henley's HUMMINGBIRD HOUSE

Up now at The Millions, my interview with Patricia Henley, whose acclaimed novel HUMMINGBIRD HOUSE is being re-released by Haywire Books as a special 20th anniversary edition.

Says Patricia: "It took 10 years from the original idea to holding the book in my hand. I went through two agents. Neither liked the story or thought it had a chance. I made five trips to Central America. I was obsessed. It was a heady time. I was still young and had so much energy. I felt I could do it all. I was completely obsessed with the novel, the travel, the research. I dreamed about it.

When it came out in 1999 that was validation. When it became a finalist for The National Book Award that seemed almost secondary, after all I’d been through. Then it went out of print. It’s been out of print for a decade at least. Jon Sealy bringing a new edition into the world feels like recovering from a long illness, a generalized malaise. I’m not exaggerating."

Read the rest here, and find Patricia's website here. 

Please welcome, uh, MY favorite band

I have spent a good portion of the summer enmeshed in books and music, thinking and recharging.  Recently I've given a re-listen to "Across a Wire," a live album by Counting Crows. It opens with a man saying, "Please welcome, uh, MY favorite band, Counting Crows." I know his voice so well from repeated listenings, but I don't know who he is.

Perhaps his name is in the liner notes, but the disc is somewhere in a ginormous CD changer, sans accoutrement. Someday I'll organize my music (or so I tell myself every so often, in fits of optimism. I've been listening on Hoopla via the library.) It's a great double album: slowed-down acoustic versions of many of their songs, and a second disc with rock/electric versions.

The first time I saw Counting Crows ("uh, MY favorite band") was twenty-five years ago in Indianapolis, at a little club on the east side called 2nd Avenue. All ages show, as the ticket attests. When I posted this on Facebook awhile ago, another friend said he was there, too, and helped fill in my memory: the power went out, and the band gathered around one working microphone to complete the set. I wouldn't have called that image up in my mind without help, but now I can see it all over again. I was there.

Saw the band at Woodstock '99 in Rome, N.Y., and in Ithaca, N.Y. around the same era. My last CC show was winter 2014, the Somewhere Under Wonderland tour in Indianapolis, which was  phenomenal. "They're going to open with 'Round Here,'" I told my husband, and they did, and I promptly burst into tears. Music! Feelings!

There was a guy in the front row holding his camera phone up the whole time. Lead singer Adam Duritz had enough and asked him what he was doing, man. They handshaked it out later. What was he doing, man? There's a strong impulse to prove you were there rather than just being there. Says the woman with piles of saved ticket stubs, proof I was there, a thing to post on Facebook, which didn't exist in 1994. But tickets don't obstruct the view or distract from the concert itself. I took a couple short videos, too, and replayed them once or twice, especially for my kids, who loved that album, especially "Earthquake Driver," "Elvis Went to Hollywood," and "Scarecrow." And then the videos were lost when I dropped my phone and broke it and hadn't backed up all the stuff you're supposed to back up. Is Front Row Guy still watching his full concert footage? Somehow I doubt it.

None of this was on my mind when I started thinking about the introducer on "Across a Wire." When I click publish on this short post, my query into the void on "Please welcome, uh, MY favorite band, Counting Crows," I fully anticipate someone will respond, "u could just google it." And so I did google it, pre-emptive googling, and did not learn a thing except that Rolling Stone gave pretty low ratings on many CC albums that I love in their big almanac o' ratings. (u can google it, but y? Like wut u like. Rolling Stone don't know all.) And if I'd googled and found it, then I wouldn't have had a moment to think about this band, this music, that has existed throughout 25 years of my life, a soundtrack for college ("August and Everything After") and work and marriage and kids and teaching and writing books and the rest of it.

I like when something isn't so easy to find; I like to work for my trivia. Though I would love to know what that announcer is doing now, and if his briefly stated sentiment, still imprinted on my brain, remains true.

Sleuthing

All this family and historical research I've been doing made me remember a short story I wrote in sixth grade, called "Sarah Sleuth," which was most certainly NOT autobiographical, and most certainly WAS filled with mystery and drama. Finally tracked down the original in a box of school papers my mom saved for me. A sampling:

Who doesn't enjoy relaxing in a thick recliner after getting back from the last case?

 

I don't remember watching a lot of soap operas as a kid. But perhaps I watched a lot of soap operas as a kid?

Missing Newspapers

In our quest to learn more about an event in our family history (see previous post: The Mysteries of Family History: Naming Names), my Dad and I have done quite a bit of research in libraries, archives, and online.

Newspaper accounts of the event in question have been indispensable: the first big find on microfiche blew up long-held family myths about what happened and how. Over time, stories get exaggerated, changed, embellished. And then eventually the stories are wrong, a shadow of the truth.

The news reports set the record straight. The articles we found from the 1870s gave names, dates, and facts, and shared the public opinion in the matter. This is from the Indiana State Sentinel in 1874: 

"Adverse to the accused"

Naturally, we are eager to read the Attica Ledger's account of what happened. Public sentiment seems to be a huge factor in this case, and that feeling appeared to change over time. But there a gap in the archives: it seems that at least ten years’ worth of newspapers are missing from the records, specifically the Attica Ledger from Fountain County, Indiana. We're trying to track down newspapers from the years 1874-1876. (There's a single issue of the Attica Herald - which apparently published from 1873-1874 -- somewhere in the Boston Public Library; they know it exists in their archives, but a recent move and reorganization has made it hard to locate, and they're still searching.)

Hoosier State Chronicles, Indiana's historic digital newspaper program, has been a fantastic resource. But the Chronicles don't have these issues, either. Newspapers.com and NewspaperArchive.com add new papers every day, but they have to have the papers to add. I'm told that libraries are their primary resource, and none of the local or regional libraries have the Ledger from this time period. A very helpful genealogist went so far as to contact a private collector on my behalf. No luck on those missing issues. "They're gone," he told me. 

We've heard that the Attica Ledger archives were housed in a storage facility during a move, then lost or forgotten about. 

It happens easily enough. One of our own relatives loaned a small collection of newspapers and documents to a curious friend who never returned them. Another showed me two of three precious photo albums with family history documented inside. The third he loaned to a family member decades ago. "I never got it back," he told me last fall, his face full of regret.

How do we get back what's been lost? A friend and colleague pointed out that the story of the missing newspapers is also a family story. In addition to sending letters to potential relatives of the jurors and community members involved in the trial and subsequent pardon, I recently sent letters to people who share a name with one of the newspaper proprietors in Attica at the time. Maybe someone knows what happened to the missing papers. Maybe someone has a stash in their attic. What can I say? I lean toward optimism, most of the time. 

Attica Ledger classifieds invoice 

 
And yet: it's a pessimistic time for newspapers. With the current decline of print newspapers and the constant reorganization of digital journalism, what will happen to the public record? Who will tell the stories of communities and individuals? 

Librarians have been like helpful detectives throughout this process. I'm in awe of how much I've learned from them as we try to piece together the past. I'm trying to imagine the processes involved in archiving and cataloging so much information. Stacks and stacks of deteriorating documents. The storing and housing of paper that could be digitized and shared, if only we could find it.