herbert hoover

poor guy. what a bum rap he's given.

I like to go out to the museum and homestead in west branch and read about the bootstrap boy, the self-made man. what tragic timing-- blamed for the Depression. as if one man might singlehandedly effect so much. but we have historically granted our public figures such inhuman stature. lionized and demonized.

I like to drive into the farmland and look at the hair wreath woven by his mother. artifact of an entirely other age. think of it! to build a decorative object out of one's own hair. and I understand it was not an uncommon craft. such a dark and tangled object, so suggestive.

and, golly, what and age to live in, and through. to draw yourself up out of, to stride across wide, low-slung hills-- to step across the slow mississippi and on into the East where the world begins, where America in fact got made. to take an active and determined role in all of that, by choice.

unfathomable from here.