American writer William Carlos Williams is known for his staccato-short poems. One called “So much depends upon” gives two images: a red wheelbarrow glazed with rain water, and several white chickens beside it.
Why these barnyard items and nothing more? To remind us of beauty
in what is very ordinary, taken for granted without a second thought.
The poem clicked in my memory when I read Roger Digges’ guest commentary (“News-Gazette,” September 1, 2020) on the upcoming referendum to increase taxpayer funding for The Champaign County Forest Preserve. Digges briefly spotlighted elemental gifts in the county Nature preserves that have helped him and other visitors to weather the pandemic: running water, ancient trees with rough bark, spring blooms, a soaring bald eagle.
I was moved.
I would like to do something similar for another Champaign County Forest Preserve treasure: the Museum of the Grand Prairie at Lake of the Woods in Mahomet.
How fortunate we are to have in this beautiful, contemporary building a preservation of local history through interactive exhibits, lectures, and varied-arts performances. The subjects range from Native Americans and
settlers to farmers, city folk, and later immigrants.
I am an enthusiastic fan of the Sunday afternoon lecture/performance series. Director Barbara Garvey is a whiz who puts her doctorate in art history to work in selecting academics, actors, or other relevant professionals. Most frequently their material will relate to President Lincoln. And it will not be dry and dull; there will be screened visuals or physical objects.
Examples jump to mind. I recall the fully costumed re-enactment of Mrs. Elizabeth Keckley, Mrs. Lincoln’s seamstress and friend in the White House; her dramatic monologue gave insights not only to Mary Todd Lincoln’s mercurial temperament but also to the slavery from which Mrs.
Keckley had been freed. Harriet Tubman was another fascinating, informative visitor from the past.
Lectures? One in the past year given by a Springfield lawyer-researcher showed us the age and ethnic make-up of residents in Lincoln’s Springfield. He displayed what he had gleaned from U.S. census figures, along with other local records. The populace was relatively young, with few above middle-age. Immigration information showed backgrounds from Ireland,
Germany and elsewhere. He had also discovered that there were several African-American families who resided within the three square blocks around Lincoln’s own home; the wage- earner of one was a drayman, who drove the Lincolns to the railroad station when they historically departed for Washington, D.C., in 1861.
Film lovers—isn’t that all of us?—were treated to one professor’s compilation of clips of different actors portraying Lincoln in movies. There were about seven, and the audience agreed that the best was Daniel Day-Lewis in the 2012 “Lincoln” (about the passage of the Thirteenth
Amendment). Henry Fonda did a creditable interpretation in “Young Mr. Lincoln” in 1939.
On April 14, 2015, Director Garvey held “A Farewell to Lincoln” to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the President’s assassination. I saved the program. On vintage instruments the University of Illinois Civil War Brass Quintet played songs from the era including “Lilly Bell
Quickstep,” “Shenandoah,” “Dead March,” “Dixie,” “Minstrel Boy,” and “Battle Cry of Freedom.”
Excerpts from texts were read such as Lincoln’s farewell to Illinois at Tolono where he changed trains, Sandburg’s “The War Years,” Whitman’s “O Captain, My Captain,” and coverage from “The Central Illinois News Gazette” on April 21, 1865. Readers were from a variety of local
backgrounds in education, journalism, politics, and civil administration.
I am proud that Champaign County owns a rich, authoritative, and ongoing record of its history and cultures. It needs support badly at this moment.
The tax increase proposed in the referendum will be the first since 1948 when the Champaign County Forest Preserve District was created.
Currently, the District takes less than 1% of property tax dollars. An increase will represent about FIVE DOLLARS on a $100,00 house. It will allow badly needed deferred maintenance repairs and meet demands for truly high quality programming.
Rosemary Laughlin
-Writer, a retired English teacher from University High School, and
occasional “Voices” contributor to “The News-Gazette.”
