Here are two images that may seem incongruous, but I’m about to link them.
First, driving into Ellendale Sunday afternoon, we espy, at the corner of Main & 281, a sandwich sign on wheels - the kind they use for posting notice of a ball game upcoming on a summer night. The sign reads, “Book Fair at the Opera House / 2:00-5:00 Today / Free and Open to the Public.”
Second, and here I’m getting a little professor-wonky, I’m going to cite a book I make my graduate students read, by the historian Benedict Anderson. Entitled, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism - you see, I told you this would get a little professor-wonky - but anyway Professor Anderson identifies the elements that made it possible for nations to emerge, with national identities, in the modern world.
Central to the making of a constructive identity is what we call a “print culture.” A nation, a community, a people needs writers, publishers, hard copy in print in order to rally and ground its constituents. Books, periodicals, newspapers. Print culture. Which brings us back to Ellendale on Sunday afternoon.
They have a lot of fine cultural events at the historic opera house in Ellendale. This book fair was chiefly organized by our friend Ken Schmierer, with support from Humanities North Dakota. To his and our delight, it was standing room only.
I say “our” delight, because I was carrying bags for my wife, Dr. Suzzanne Kelley, Editor of North Dakota State University Press, who was MC for the afternoon. I had a speaking part, bottom of the order for a line-up of twelve authors.
What would I say in the bottom of the ninth for such an affair? It was Sunday, so I preached.
I said, at this point in my life, approaching my appointed three-score and ten, and at this time in the history of the Great Plains, there are three things that matter to me in our public life.
The first is country. I use that term in the sense by which I have learned to use it in Australia, meaning land invested with human experience. Space becomes place, land becomes country when watered by tears of joy and sorrow. In my country, these Great Plains, I attend to the details of the landscape.
Second, heritage. When we reflect on our experience here, when we make landmarks on the country, when we tell stories about it, that is, when we become conscious of it and make something of it, then we have a heritage, which is essential to community.
Community is my third touchstone. Community is grounded in country, and it is defined by heritage, shared experience. And community, in the modern world, requires a thriving print culture.
So I close with a shout to our authors, who mostly labor in isolation, and seldom are subjects on sandwich boards. To our publishers, anchors of the moral economy of community building. To our print journalists, most esteemed members of the Fourth Estate. To our independent booksellers, who serve as nodes of print culture and prairie community - Zandbroz, Main Street Books, Books on Broadway, Ferguson’s, Western Edge - you know who you are. Long may you thrive, and serve.
~Tom Isern
