All posts filed under: Conversations

The Best Steak at Mrs T’s

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Tama Sundquist runs Mrs. T’s in Loomis, NE, a town of less than 400 people. I confess to my embarrassment that I nearly passed straight through Loomis, even though it was a scheduled stop on my four-week project. A quick drive through the town, which was indeed a quick drive, revealed few places to stop and fewer people to speak with. However, I stumbled across Mrs. T’s and encountered a vibrant personality in Tama. Exuding warm assurance, she welcomed by name all the patrons that came into her convenience store and lunch stop. I am ashamed to say that I assumed that the lunch would be mediocre and said I would stop just for coffee. Once the steak lunch special started sizzling on the grill, however, I rapidly succumbed. It was the best steak I have had for years. Tama is the kind of person that fills a room with energy and she was a highlight of this project. In this audio vignette, she touches a little on how she came to be in Loomis, …

Exhibition at Michael Phipps Gallery – Opens Jan. 8

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A set of 20 images drawn from the project have been selected for exhibition at the Michael Phipps Gallery situated on the first floor of the W. Dale Clark main branch of the Omaha Public Library. Accompanying the images will be audio vignettes drawn from the conversations I had with people during the project. These audio vignettes are downloaded on MP3 players that can be checked out from the library! It is an intriguing interactive experience for exhibit attendees and I am grateful for the insightful curation of Alex Priest and the support of Omaha Public Library. The exhibition is on display from January 8 through February 28 with an opening night reception from 4 – 6pm this Friday January 8. At around 5pm I shall deliver a short presentation regarding the project. I hope to see you there!

Highway 27

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Making my way from Chadron to Alliance and Scottsbluff on the western fringes of the state, I visited Tom and Aleisha at a large ranch in the middle of the Sandhills. Their ranch is along Highway 27 amid the landscape and its people famously and notoriously rendered in the writings of Mari Sandoz. Despite comprising over a quarter of Nebraska and being designated a National Natural Landmark in 1984, Tom said that many Nebraskans know little about the Sandhills. Out east, we are unaware of this vast expanse and its place in our social, economic and historic narrative. The ranch house was several miles west of the highway along a track acceptable for trucks though somewhat less comfortable in an RV. With people and animals so dispersed, I asked Tom what community means to him. He observed, “You can live in Omaha and hardly know your neighbors at all, and when you live out here there is a whole lot more opportunity to get to know and work with your neighbors. Your neighbors are miles …

KIOS Dispatches

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I am collaborating with Michael Lyon the Local Anchor, Morning Edition at KIOS, Omaha’s NPR affiliate. I shall be submitting dispatches from the road which KIOS shall play on the air. The first one was broadcast this week and you can listen again on the project web page at KIOS here. Click on the Neligh post to listen.

Everyone has a voice

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I had felt the responsibility before I departed upon this project to give it my all and that anticipation has only magnified. It isn’t just my duty to be fully committed and to honor the personal and fiscal support the project has received. Rather, it is that I am inviting people to talk with me in a mutually open, vulnerable and candid manner. Listening attentively is only one feature of this arrangement. More noticeably we are actively committing to each other emotionally and psychologically. On occasion this has been viscerally moving. In discussing her work in community, Lisa in Hastings asserted that “Everyone has a voice.” That reminded me of John in Dannebrog who did not have a physical voice because of an ailment, yet he was expressive in so many ways. It also painfully reminded me of Owen in St. Paul who recounted that, “I kinda felt like I might have had some brain damage when I almost drowned. That that’s part of the reason why I’m an introvert. That there are just certain …

Dannebrog

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John thrilled me, as did so many of the people that I met in Dannebrog. I don’t know what ailment John has suffered, but signs of surgery to his throat and an inability to speak were apparent. What I treasure about John, though, was his face-wrinkling, leg extending laughter as the men in the Danish Baker bantered and boasted. After we talked for a while and I had given some insight around my travels into conversations, John got up to leave. A hand like an anvil weighed on my shoulder while his other hand thrust an affirming thumb up gesture. His face lit up with earnest appreciation as he shook my hand. In many ways John reminded me of my father, who died five years ago of throat cancer. Perhaps my affection for the men of Dannebrog is because their earnestness, humility, humor and sense of community is exactly what my father would have relished about this place. It could also be because of people like Tom Schroeder, the owner of the Danish Baker. Alone …

A word on process

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When I conceived the approach to a couple of 830 mile long conversations, I had anticipated setting up a table, a couple of chairs and a canopy in a public space in the towns that I visited and then inviting people to talk with me. It was always apparent, though, that the context of each engagement, the vagaries of the weather and the circumstances of the moment would influence this approach. So it has proven. In Omaha, my set up was outside Millard branch library with the planned arrangement. As I moved into rural Nebraska, however, the heat of the day, the locational footfall or paths people took in their daily lives, and timing all affected the set up of the conversation space. In Pender, the public park was entirely empty, but the pool was full of children. Pender’s Main Street was also quiet and would stay that way until the pizza place and bars got busier in the evening. In Wayne, I was able to set up on Main Street outside a popular retail …