North Maple Rag

A few years ago, I bought the book, These United States. It's a compilation of essays, by a number of accomplished authors on their home states. Kathleen Norris, one of my favorite South Dakotans, wrote one of them, so I bought it.

I first read the essays on the states with which I was most familiar: South Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, Virginia, Maryland and D.C. A few months later, I prepared for my cross country road trip by reading my way across America from West Virginia to Northern California (some of the states have more than one essay). I prepared for the move to Manhattan by reading about New York City, Long Island, and New Jersey. Lately, I've been satisfying a bit of my wanderlust by filling in some of the blanks: New Mexico, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio. I love this book.

While I was home for Christmas, I noticed in the cover that this book is a remake of a similar book of essays that had been compiled in the mid-1920's entitled These United States: Portraits of America from the 1920's. I ordered it online and it arrived today.

The 1920's version also boasts a number of impressive contributors. W.E.B. Du Bois writes about Georgia; Theodore Dreiser about Indiana, H. L. Mencken about Maryland; Sinclair Lewis about Minnesota; and Willa Cather about Nebraska.

So far, I've only read the South Dakota essay (by columnist Hayden Carruth) and already, I'm smitten. Carruth's essay is entitled, South Dakota: State without End, which I like. It reminds me of the ending of the Glory Be prayer ( . . . as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end . . .). As I've been selecting other essays to read, I've been struck by some of the titles the other writers chose.

A few of the best:

Iowa: A Mortgaged Eldorado

Maryland: Apex of Normalcy

Missouri: Doesn't Want to Be Shown

New Hampshire: Not Yet Abandoned (which implies abandonement is inevitable)

North Carolina: A Militant Mediocracy

Tennessee: Three-Quarters of Bewilderment

Texas: The Big Southwestern Specimen (ew.)


And, my favorite:

Ohio: I'll Say We've Done Well


Indeed.

I just realized it's been a little while since I last posted. My five-day weekend turned into a one-day weekend. I worked on my paper Friday, Saturday, and pretty much every minute of Sunday. I then slept obscenely late on Monday and had a make-up class on Tuesday. I'd be disappointed except that this week and next are pretty lax. Between the two weeks, I have five cancelled classes, so I've been sleeping, reading, and watching tv more than usual. Next week I'll start looking for something productive to fill my free time, but for this week I'm enjoying cable.

I guess there are things that've happened in the last week or so that I could've posted about, but they were either too mundane or too personal. All in all, I think this blog has become too much of a diary -- "today I did this and tomorrow I'm doing that." I'm not sure what that means for its future other than I don't think I'll ever post as much as I did last year.

If this post has been less-than-entertaining, I recommend watching this clip of Will Arnett on Conan. The season finale of Arrested Development is scheduled for February 10. Oh, Gob.

I never have Friday classes, Monday is a holiday and my Tuesday class has been cancelled. Of course, when the Tuesday professor told us about the cancellation and his trip to Europe, he didn't say, "I have to go to Europe." Instead, he said "I have to be in Europe," with a tone that implied the people of Europe need or demand his presence. And actually, with this particular professor, I wouldn't be entirely surprised if that's the case.

I kind of wish I'd known about this mini-vacation in advance. I'd have made travel plans or something. As it is, a fair part of the weekend will be dedicated to finally finishing the paper that's been hanging over my head for the last month. Hopefully that'll only take up a day or two. Then, I can spend the rest of the weekend doing what I do best: sleeping and watching tv. I think there's also a keg party in the works. Luckily, I do those pretty well, too.

The even better news of the week is that I have a grrrreat spring schedule. I'm excited about my classes and I'm excited about feeling that way. Motivation hasn't exactly been my strength lately. I'm a bit nervous about finals, though. I'm going to have three of them within 6 days. All will be heavy on the case-law (and case memorization). It's the exact opposite of my Fall finals which were take-home and statute heavy. Oh well, just don't talk to me after April 15.

and while I'm genuinely happy with my classes for the semester, I'm really going to miss all the fiction-reading and tv-watching from break. I realized recently that I hadn't had a real break since last year at Christmas. During my week at home at the beginning of the summer, I was busy with the law review writing competition and packing for my move to Berkeley. At the end of the summer, my mom and I had a great road trip back to SoDak, but I was also working on job stuff. My parents took me to the airport Thursday evening and I volunteered to take this semester off to just chill on their couch (I even offered to do some cooking and run errands for them) but they didn't seem all that interested in my proposal. Oh well.

Well, I'm headed back to NYC tomorrow and I'm kind of sad to go. My time at home has been consistently mellow and I'm going to miss it. Not much has happened since my last post. I've finished a bit more of my paper. I thought for a day that my computer had been stolen, but it hadn't. I finished watching the second season of Arrested Development (oh, Motherboy). I made some pad thai. I did some great bargain shopping at my hometown mall.

Oh, and of the books I've been reading, I've found two that I'm willing to recommend. The first one is The Work of Wolves by Kent Meyers. It was South Dakota's "One Book" last year and so far, it's great. The second is Slouching Toward Fargo by Neal Karlen. The author followed the St. Paul Saints baseball team around a few years ago and the book is surprisingly good. The Saints are co-owned by Bill Murray and the season that Neal writes about features Darryl Strawberry during his "blackballed" hiatus from the major leagues. The Saints play in the somewhat kooky Northern League, of which the Sioux Falls Canaries are a part. Anyway, it's a fun book.

And that's that. I've got about 27 hours until I head to the airport and I expect it will be filled with research and laundry. Cheers!