travel

New Essay on Lit Hub

| Ted Wheeler

I’m excited to share this new essay that I published on on Lit Hub last month–“Natasha, Pierre, and Surviving Together”–about listening to musicals with my daughters during Covid lockdown.

Below is a sample. Read the whole thing here. I hope you enjoy it!

One of my favorite moments from our road trips to nowhere happened on a gravel road outside Brownville, Nebraska. We were a bit lost out in the middle of cornfields, at a time of late summer when the corn was high. On either side there were only walls of corn stalks. We could only see ahead because dust clouds blocked the view behind us. Since we couldn’t turn, the only choice was by what speed we moved forward. At that moment, we decided to go fast.

Anne queued up the theme song of crazed troika driver Balaga, an up-tempo, comical ensemble singalong that comes right before an attempted elopement. This is the point in the musical when audience members had been encouraged to use their egg-shaped shakers. There’s chanting, soaring clarinets. It was the perfect “hold onto your seats” kind of song.

So off we flew, outside Brownville, banging out percussion by punching the roof of the car, bounding over the rolling hills, leaving a column of dust in our wake. Even adrenaline-hungry Lynne called from the backseat to me slow down at the moment in the song when Balaga brags that he has, more than once, jumped my troika right into the air!

After months of being exercising an abundance of caution in every aspect of our lives, how good it felt to mash the pedal to the floor, to shout with abandon out an open window.

National Memorial for Peace and Justice

| Ted Wheeler

A few weeks ago I went down to Montgomery, Alabama to visit the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which educates about lynching in America and how its legacy of racial violence echoes through our society today. Unsurprisingly, the visit was such a powerful experience. As a result of the research I’ve done over the past decade, some of which is posted here, I arrived knowing many of the facts about lynching in America, but the memorial is an effecting piece of art in the way your physical perspective changes while walking through, so that the hanging casks (each of which represents a county where a lynching was committed, and which features the names and dates of those murdered) start off at eye-level and are hanging above you by the end. It’s a devastating piece, in a necessary way. Here are some photos I took:

 

For almost a year now I’ve had the privilege of working with a coalition of folks here in Omaha to bring a replica of the Douglas County cask that’s on display in Montgomery. Thanks to the tireless work of people like Vickie Young, Chris Whitt, Franklin Thompson, the Kingfisher Institute at Creighton, and many others with the Omaha Community Council for Racial Justice and Reconciliation, there will hopefully be a dedication of the cask near the site of the Will Brown lynching this September, which of course is the centenary. Keep an ear out for that.

Here is the poem “Invocation” by Elizabeth Alexander, which is featured at the end of the memorial and is of an emotional coda for the experience.

The wind brings your names.
We will never dissever your names
nor your shadows beneath each branch and tree.

The truth comes in on the wind, is carried by water.
There is such a thing as the truth. Tell us
how you got over. Say, Soul I look back in wonder.

Your names were never lost,
each name a holy word.
The rocks cry out—

call out each name to sanctify this place.
Sounds in human voices, silver or soil,
a moan, a sorrow song,

a keen, a cackle, harmony,
a hymnal, handbook, chart,
a sacred text, a stomp, an exhortation.

Ancestors, you will find us still in cages,
despised and disciplined.
You will find us still mis-named.

Here you will find us despite.
You will not find us extinct.
You will find us here memoried and storied.

You will find us here mighty.
You will find us here divine.
You will find us where you left us, but not as you left us.

Here you endure and are luminous.
You are not lost to us.
The wind carries sorrows, sighs, and shouts.

The wind brings everything. Nothing is lost.

Lost in Iberia

| Ted Wheeler

Here are some choice photos from my last couple weeks hanging out in Portugal and Spain! The Disquiet International Literary Program is what brought me to Lisbon–and I had a blast with the other participants with all the events and bar nights–but I was also able to fit in a couple side trips too. It’s been pretty great to recharge spiritually before my first novel comes out in a few weeks. (Have I mentioned Kings of Broken Things yet? Order now!) On the spiritual restoration score, mission accomplished! But my body is a little beat up. So much fun though.

 

Alfama, Lisbon.
Green sea rocks, Cascais.
Beautiful views in Cascais.
Mural in Bairro Alto, Lisbon.
Cais das colunas, Lisbon.
On the Tagus River with Amina Gautier.
Miradouro de São Pedro de Alcantara, just around the corner from my place in Lisbon.
2D sculpture, Barcelona.
Sardine tapas at Sol e Pesce, Lisbon.
Miradouro breakfast, Lisbon.
Lisbon.
Crazy sea boulders, Cascais.
Beach in Cascais.
Golden Gate Bridge, sort of, Lisbon.
Tapas, Lisbon.
At Sole e Pesce with CCB, Lisbon.
The rocky outcrop we sunned on at Cascais.
Bookmobile parked outside our visit to the US Embassy, Lisbon.
Jamón in Barcelona.
Beach drinks, Barcelona.
Gótico, Barcelona.
Sagrada Família, Barcelona.
Church at Miradouro Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen, Lisbon.
Gótico, Barcelona.
Praça do Comércio, Lisbon.
View from Aljube, Lisbon.

About Writing and Politics in Six Parts

| Ted Wheeler

1-4-00-courtesy-of-the-durham-museum-600x491Somehow I missed when this essay was posted in September, but it seems so much more appropriate to post here on the eve of Election Day anyway–an essay on the relation of politics and art within my work. So please finds my contribution–“About Writing and Politics in Six Parts”–in Schlossghost #1, a year book for the 2014-16 fellows of Akademie Schloss Solitude.

The essay is a response to two questions posed by the editors of Schlossghost, Paula Kohlmann and  Clara Herrmann. “Would you say that your (artistic) practice is political? If so, how would you describe its political dimension?”

Find the whole response at the link above, and here’s a sample for now:

In May, earlier this year, I covered a Donald Trump rally that took place in an aircraft hangar near the Omaha airport. At first I was a little worried about even going, as there had been quite a bit of violence at Trump rallies the month before and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be a party to all that ugliness. But, on the other hand, of course I did. That’s a big part of my job description, the part of the job I like, to be witness to these things.

The rally itself was mostly dull. Trump spoke for a long time about Japanese tariffs without much insight, and the biggest part of his speech was a 20-minute anecdote about this time he handed out trophies at a charity golf tournament. During the rally a few protestors were thrown out. His supporters for the most part looked bored throughout, except at the beginning and end, when his helicopter landed and when they could chant »build that wall.«

I wondered about my feelings of disappointment after the rally. What was I expecting? Wasn’t xenophobia on display enough? Were the protestors dragged out too peacefully? Or did I miss something, the feeling of the event, the undercurrent? Did I feel the way I did because I wasn’t in the crowd? I sat up in the press section – a platform with tables where journalists were corralled behind a fence. By accident I sat between a Fox News anchor and his producer, to comic effect. Seeing their frustration with having to follow Donald Trump made me a little grateful for my obscure lot, for not having to spend all day working a story and then being told to reduce it to a ten-second clip of a long-haired young man shouting »fuck you« at the police.

Photos from the Road: Bad Faith Book Tour ’16

| Ted Wheeler

The summer photo dump spectacular continues! Here are a bunch of photos from the bookstore readings I was a party to this summer while out promoting Bad Faith, my debut collection of short fiction.

On to the photos in a second, but first, thanks to all the booksellers, book buyers, and bookstores along the way for your hospitality and hard work. And a special thanks to Dave Madden, Amina Gautier, and Tyrone Jaeger, my compatriots out on the road. This was such an amazing experience and I couldn’t have found any better people to share it with.

Dave reading at Boswell Book Co.
Ty reading at Boswell Book Co.
The flyer Pegasus made up for our reading in downtown Berkeley.
My turn to read at Indigo Bridge Books in Lincoln.
The front window at Magers & Quinn in Minneapolis
Stained glass beer ad inside Vesuvio’s, San Francisco.
Signing books at the Bookworm in Omaha.
Pegasus Books Downtown in Berkeley.
Leg 2 begins at Green Apple Books on the Park in San Francisco.
Our introduction at the Book Cellar in Chicago.
A dear old friend, Mr. Jake Hoppe Esq.
A life ambition fulfilled, reading at Prairie Lights in Iowa City.
Group photo from our last night of leg 1, at Beaverdale Books in Des Moines.
“Yes, I actually do this for a living,” at Pegasus Books Downtown in Berkeley.
A great crowd at Beaverdale Books in Des Moines.
The marquee at Green Apple Books on the Park in San Francisco.
On stage at the incredible Mother Foucault’s antiquarian bookshop in Portland.
Boswell Book Co. in Milwaukee.
Me, Amina, and Dave at Pegasus Books Downtown in Berkeley.

Photos of Trains

| Ted Wheeler

Amid all the great news lately about my forthcoming book publications, I’ve still been hard at work on my next novel. The novel is something I’ve mentioned a few times here and read some work-in-progress excerpts at Solitude Nacht and Fair Use reading events. This novel is set mostly in 2008. This makes research a little easier than it was for Kings of Broken Things, of course, which is set during World War I, so we’ve taken advantage of this mild Midwestern autumn to head outside and scout some locations that figure in the book. Railroad bridges in Plattsmouth, Nebr., various eateries and locales in Chicago. Fun stuff! It’s been a while since I did a travel post and I like some of these shots. Here you go.