Sarah Gibbard Cook
  • Home
  • About
  • Writing
  • Contact

Flowers and Remembrance

5/27/2019

2 Comments

 
Poppies shooting up in my garden are almost—not quite—in time for Memorial Day. Since its origins in the American Civil War, this holiday to honor those who died in military service has combined flowers with the sung, spoken, or written word.

John Brown’s body. At the war’s end in April 1865, former slaves in South Carolina exhumed Union soldiers from a prison camp mass grave for reburial. Then in May, ten thousand former slaves paraded at the camp, including members of black Union regiments. Children holding bouquets sang the abolitionist battle hymn, “John Brown’s Body.”

General John Logan’s proclamation. Decorating soldiers’ graves with flowers was common during and after the Civil War. In 1868, Logan called on Union veterans everywhere to strew blossoms on their fallen comrades’ graves on May 30. By 1890, Decoration Day was an official holiday in every Northern state, with similar observances on other dates across the South.

War after war. “In Flanders fields the poppies blow // Between the crosses, row on row.” After World War I, Decoration Day was extended to military personnel killed in all wars, observed on May 30 nationwide. During yet another bloody war, in 1967, it became a federal holiday under the name “Memorial Day.”
2 Comments

Found Sound

5/20/2019

2 Comments

 
​          Noise : Sound : Music :: Weeds : Plants : Garden

Cement mixers growl and trucks beep endlessly as they lay a new driveway next door. If music is organized sound, noise is the sound of chaos. The human brain learns the difference early on. What counts as music varies by culture and once imprinted, rarely changes beyond early adulthood. Sorry, friends, heavy metal is still noise to my ears.

A recent public radio segment featured composers who record and organize sound from the environment, both natural and human-made. Like a wildflower garden or a collage or yard sculpture made from other people’s trash, their artistry depends not on good or bad material but the eye or ear they bring to it. Writers say it’s all grist for the mill.

​How many of life’s irritants might feel less irksome if I searched them for elements to compose into artistry? For a moment, when I shift to a different mindset, the machines and voices next door become more interesting than painful. Perhaps with practice I’ll be able to make this shift for longer at a stretch. To bring a different ear and, if not create music, at least ease the noise.
2 Comments

East on I-94

5/13/2019

3 Comments

 
Picture
Saturday, like this time every year, I drove from Madison east along Interstate 94 to Milwaukee and its beautiful Wisconsin Club, venue for the Council for Wisconsin Writers annual awards banquet. What joy to bask in a roomful of people passionate about writers and to hear readings by some of the best.

Road trips east on I-94 mark the turning of my seasons. In a couple of months, spring green along the highway replaced by verdant summer, we’ll drive on past Milwaukee to the Wisconsin/Illinois state line to revel in historical fantasy at the Bristol Renaissance Faire.

Every fall or early winter, past woodlands brilliant or bare depending on each year’s polio meeting calendar, I-94 takes me on into greater Chicago and the Rotary International headquarters in Evanston. Though a far cry from the escapist fantasy of summer, the current history of global polio eradication holds as much drama and suspense as any fiction.

As winter settles in, I hunker down to writing and look forward to the return of robins, trillium, and the next CWW awards banquet. What annual rituals mark the turning of your seasons?  
3 Comments

Indiana Dunes: Our Newest National Park

5/6/2019

0 Comments

 
Picture
Decades ago, professionally adrift, I visited the Chicago area offices of Robert Jackson & Associates to discuss a project for the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. IDNL needed someone to research and write about local conditions before agriculture and industry encroached. Narrative and landscape, history and geography: What could suit me better?

The ensuing work introduced me to the magic of the duneland. I learned the dynamics of ecological succession, the difference between bogs and fens, and the satisfaction of reporting to  scientists who demanded the facts exactly as we found them.

This past February, the former national lakeshore at the southern tip of Lake Michigan was re-designated a national park. With its miles of beaches and trails, houses dating from the French fur-trading era to the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair, and endless diversity of wildflowers, the new IDNP is calling me for a fresh visit to old haunts.
0 Comments

    Author

    I'm a historian who writes novels and literary nonfiction. My home base is Madison, Wisconsin. 

    Archives

    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016

    RSS Feed


      ​get updates

    Sign up
Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Home
  • About
  • Writing
  • Contact