Welcome to Forgotonia

Midnight Assassin: A Murder in America’s Heartland by Patricia L. Bryan and Thomas Wolf

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

My holiday/vacation/part-time-employment-status reading blitz continues!

I was intrigued by this book from the moment I heard about it, not only because it takes place in Iowa (where I just moved) and on a farm (which is the way I grew up), but also because I discovered that I have a few small things in common with one of the authors, (namely that we both once lived and worked in the same small-ish town, and we graduated from liberal arts colleges located a stone’s throw from one another).

Anyway, in addition to having the true-crime hook, the story ends up being quite moving and creates a human picture of the alleged assassin, who, you begin to realize, was in many ways a victim. I appreciate the huge amount of work on the part of the authors’ having worked-in the social and historical research from the time, creating a rich picture of what life must have been like for people (especially farm women) involved in the story.

After the initial draw of the true-crime element, I did start to feel that, in the section of the alleged assassin’s trial, there was less of a hook-y mystery than maybe I had been hoping for. But it was still a compelling read.

And on top of the personal/local connections I mentioned above, it turned out that part of what inspired the research on this story was that it had been reported on (for a Des Moines newspaper) by a young woman who went on to become an award-winning author who was a contemporary of Eugene O’Neill–and she was from Davenport.
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I just learned from picking up the free River Cities Reader during our trip to Hy-Vee that Freedy Johnston is playing in town tonight. The show is sponsored by the amazing Daytrotter outfit, and I don’t think the tickets are too expensive.

(For my imaginary readers-who-are-not-my-friends, it’s my weekend to be in the Quad Cities; my bf, C-Nor, and I have to commute 2 hours one way each weekend to see each other.)

I don’t know much about Freedy Johnston, other than I remember his weird name, and that I seemed to like a song of his at some point in the late-ish 90s. (With help from the article above, I remembered it: the catchy, tuneful “Bad Reputation.”)

Upon reading this information about tonight’s gig, I went through the following mental process, which I thought I would try to describe for you, since I seem to go through it on a weekly basis or more:

“Cool, that’s a somewhat decent event for where we live!”

or

“Hey, here’s an example of the arts that I should go out and support.”

But, this is then followed by,

“If it’s more than 10 bucks, can I really justify it? After all, I already paid for ______ that I haven’t read/watched/listened to yet” (in this case, it’s 500 Days of Summer that’s been sitting in C-Nor’s Netflix queue for weeks now).

Which is then followed by,

“But hey, you always complain about how there’s nothing cool to do around here…”

Which is then followed by:

“But…is it really worth going to? I mean, if I’m gonna purchase tickets to something, shouldn’t it be to some show/band/singer-songwriter/comedian/speaker I really wanna see? I should save up for that.”

Which is then followed by,

“Yeah, but the shows you really wanna see are always in Chicago, and even if the tickets are cheap for the small clubs, they require an overnight stay in a hotel, and a 3-hour drive one-way…”

Which is then followed by,

“Aw, man, you used to be so cool. What about how ‘you were gonna live in a city so you could  go to shows every night of the week,’ huh? Remember that?”

Which is then followed by,

“Aw shut up, teenaged-self-in-my-head. You don’t have to work in the morning.”

Which was, then, in this particular case, was followed by,

“Sorry, Freedy-with-two-e’s, I’d like to support you but I only get 2 days off and 1.5 of those to see my guy. So we’re staying in.”

Yeah.

That goes through my head. A lot. What’s in yours?

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(P.S. Freedy has a connection to the QCs other than playing here tonight. He was married to a woman from here and lived here in the early 00s, according to the article linked above.

The article above, though, also has him mentioning that he had “a relationship go south,” which contributed to his lack of output in recent years.

Maybe that’s why he didn’t feel too talkative with the reporter from the QCs, eh?)

P.P.S. Just found out/was reminded of the fact that (according to Wikipedia) that “Bad Reputation” was featured in the movie Kicking and Screaming from 1995–one of my favorite movies of all time. Aha! Anyone remember this song yet?)

The story of how a spat between the local cops and a record store owner in Macomb—a spat that indirectly involved a certain Lollapalooza-founding band member—caused a controversy that got the attention of the ACLU and apparently some national news outlets.

Stay tuned!

(*oh and um “soon” may mean “after the holidays.” But do stay tuned!)

I’ve been trying for quite some time now to tell you the strange story about what happened to the old Carthage College campus.

I’ve tried to tell you–in words–why the story is kind of a big deal, and just how drastic things had become at the former college in my tiny hometown (Carthage, IL). But lo and behold, the cliche comes true: a picture tells a thousand words. Or in this case, a set of photos.

The shots below were taken inside the old Carthage College auditorium, which is finally being restored after having been left for dead in the 1990′s, a fact which I have blogged about rather extensively.)

I recently discovered (via Flickr) this set taken inside the abandoned auditorium building (quite awhile before the restoration was being planned). They tell, on their own, the destruction that was allowed to happen at this once-prosperous place: (please check out this slideshow below)

Like I said, the pix say it all. But here’s a super-quick re-cap:

1. Carthage College (now located in Kenosha, WI), was originally located in my hometown (Carthage IL), but picked up and left town because the existing location was so out-of-the-way (so deep in the Forgotonia region) that Chicago students couldn’t get there easily.
2. Carthage College had been a fairly prestigious little school. Interestingly, (as this week’s news story says), the first-ever chapter of Circle K was started there. Most people who know of the liberal arts school now located near Chicago have no idea where its name comes from.
3. After the campus closed, Robert Morris moved in and then left, and then a strange, strange saga began (including the “Carthage International College” chapter), eventually ending in the campus being left to rot and crumble for many years. There’s even a photo in this set of a luggage tag left behind by the seemingly on-the-lam Korean “owner,” who virtually disappeared after buying—and abandoning—the campus property.

The photos were taken by Craig Finlay, one of my  fellow WIU English-program graduate students.

Craig has a hobby of, um… trespassing in abandoning buildings to shoot the decadent art that lies inside. If you haven’t already watched the slideshow above, check out the set here (to read the cutlines and get some details).

I am so that happy that leaders in my hometown are investing the time, money, and concern into fixing the place up. Last week’s Hancock County Journal-Pilot (my hometown paper) featured an update on the progress of restoring the old auditorium building.

Do you remember the old Carthage College, or Robert Morris, or Carthage International College, or made-up-university-that-solicited-funds-via-the-Internet? Tell me in the comments below!

Soap star and MC graduate Helen Wagner

To misquote that Midnight Oil song, how do we sleep if the World‘s not Turning?

Today, I learned from a story on NPR that it’s the end of the world as we know it for As the World Turns, which was canceled Dec. 8. So it’s probably also the end of a record-breaking career. Helen Wagner, aka Nancy Hughes,  is known as the longest-working actress on television.

My interview with a soap star.
In 2006, I got the opportunity to interview Wagner, who began her career in theatre and started on the soap when it was still a radio show. She and I share an alma mater. I chronicled her career as a freelance piece (for Monmouth Magazine) and I got to hear about some of her favorite showbiz memories, what it’s like to memorize those lines, and what happens when you goof up on air.

You can check out it the article here: “Leading Lady.” (But yes, sorry, it’s a PDF.) Here’s a quick excerpt:

“When I first started [in the 1950's, my character] Nancy was ‘mother.’ She was in charge of things. She told people what to do and how to do it. And she never left home. In no way am I like Nancy. My husband and I always have tickets to broadway….”

Virginia Cherill

Yesterday, side-by-side on the obituary page of my hometown paper, were two un-related women who, by all appearances, were just everyday members of this tiny, rural community. But these two senior citizens—who died on the same day—were relatives of some noteworthy Hollywood stars.

Six Degrees from Charlie Chaplin
Mary Agnes Habben, 91, of Carthage, was born on March 19, 1918, at the family home in Carthage, a daughter of Lawrence C. and Stella (Paris) Cherrill.

…which means she is a direct relative, one of the last remaining in the area, of Virginia Cherrill, who was Charlie Chaplain‘s leading lady in the classic silent movie City Lights. Virginia Cherill, who played the blind ingenue in the film, was originally from Carthage, and was just profiled in a new biography by British writer Miranda Seyour.

I had never met Mary Agnes Habben, but I think she was a pretty well-known lady in the community (especially because, well, everyone is.)

One Degree from Frasier’s Father
Vera A. Jones, 82, of Carthage “….is survived by [among many others] two brothers, John Mahoney of Oak Park and Bernard Mahoney of England….” making her the sister of “Frasier’s dad” John Mahoney. (Or for you 80′s film fans, that would be the father of Lloyd Dobler’s girlfriend).

I didn’t really know Vera, but she was one of my regular customers during my five years as a cashier at the grocery store in Carthage during my high school days and college breaks. I will always remember her because she was the only person I ever knew in Carthage with a British accent.

But I also probably took a bit more notice of her than other customers once I heard the rumor that she had a famous brother.

In the era when her brother was on NBC’s “Must See TV” every week during “Frasier,” this little lady would come in to the store for her Pall-Malls and to get quarters for the paper machine outside, never giving away a single clue to her status as the sibling of someone famous.

For a long time I thought it might just be a rural legend. I mean, John Mahoney doesn’t appear to have a British accent. And even if he did have one but controls it in his acting, how did he and his sister end up in rural Illinois?

I still don’t know the answer to those questions, but I do know that John was a master’s degree student here at WIU in Macomb, and that he got his first break in the Midwest (during his theatre days in Chicago).

Makes you wonder…
Looking back, Vera now reminds me a bit of Louise Harrison, (the sister of the Quiet Beatle), who was also a British lady in small-town Illinois, (Galesburg) and who (as I discovered while researching for my newspaper column) was also quiet about her ties to fame.

R.I.P., Vera and Mary Agnes; Carthage will miss you!

A new photo essay about small-town America,

“Empty places. Empty spaces”

by my good friend and amazing photojournalist Kent Kreigshauser,
(a former colleague from my days as a reporter for the Galesburg Register-Mail, where Kent continues to rock.)

This photo at right shows the former Wal-Mart, which sits gapingly empty right on the main drag (Henderson Street). The new Super Center is just a mile or so away, on the edge of town. This building has been empty for several years now.)

For my non-local readers:  Galesburg was the birthplace of poet Carl Sandburg. If you own a Maytag appliance, it was more than likely built in Galesburg, before the town lost the major Maytag plant to Mexico several years back.

This photo essay gives a bleak but honest picture of what’s going on in a lot of Forgotonia (and the country in general).

Check out Kent’s photo essay here.

As you might remember, I blogged awhile back about endangered sites in the area, which include the “Bernie Dot” bridge in Fulton County.

Unfortunately, things are not looking good for this structure on the famed Spoon River, which you might have heard of because of its eponymous Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters.

At least some citizens are expressing concern about its future. (But, apparently, not so much about the side of beef a-floatin‘ on by!)

Linked to story from the PJ Star, and copied below:

Spoon River bridge gets a reprieve Fulton County Board approves structural analysis of historic span

LEWISTOWN — Instead of having one of its trusses removed, the historic Bernadotte Bridge received a stay of execution Tuesday night from the Fulton County Board.

But engineers warn the bridge is so far gone because of flooding and debris piling against it, a collapse into the Spoon River is very likely.
“The bridge is going to fall into the river,” Fulton County Engineer Bill Kuhn told board members. “It’s just a matter of when. We’re pretty much at the end.”

Several county residents spoke in favor of restoring the bridge and against the county’s agenda item to remove a “pony truss” to allow debris and water to flow past. Dawn Stambaugh, who serves as chairwoman of a committee formed to save the bridge, said removing the truss not only would make the bridge useless but would make it unstable and the rest would soon fall.

“The bridge would be less likely to stand if the pony truss is removed,” she said of the structure that is used for foot traffic and bicycles.

The board heard from six residents who urged members to pay for a study that would examine the structure before making a decision.

“That bridge is important to me,” said Bernadotte resident Tyrel Belless, who lives next to the bridge. “I don’t want to see it go.”
Bernadotte is about 23 miles southwest of Canton.

The board voted to pay $7,000 for a structural analysis of the bridge before deciding what to do next.

Kuhn said the bridge is supported by stacks of unreinforced blocks, which are getting knocked away each time the river floods.

Debris, including tree branches, logs and currently a dead cow, floats down the river and gets pushed against the already weakened structure.

“I was afraid we were going to lose it last winter,” Kuhn said. “A big ice jam came through and almost took it out.”

Casting the only vote against the survey was board member Don Zessin. Member Mat Fletcher abstained.

The board will take up the issue again once the study is complete.

In the meantime, Stambaugh said she is happy for now that the board decided to wait. “They’ll have some knowledge about what they’re looking at,” she said.

Oops!

Check out this snafu in this article about the Vishnu tour in the Western Courier on Friday:

(I try not to be too harsh in poking fun at any newspaper, student or professional, because I’ve been in their shoes. But this one made me truly LOL. Couldn’t resist!)

The Friends of Vishnu want to respect the wishes of Ira Post and keep it a wildlife sanctuary, where no animals are harmed. The current caretaker of Vishnu Springs is Morris Wells, who helped get people to and from the parking area.

McDonough County sheriff Johnny Carson was also on site to help. He estimated that throughout the six hours that Vishnu was open to the public, roughly 1,000 people attended.

Former WIU archivist Marla Vizdal has started a Facebook group for Vishnu Springs.

Check it out to see pictures of the size of the crowd from last Sunday!

(Something like 1,500 people got to go inside the old hotel. I’m so jealous!)