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In the Mood for Munsingwear

Posted byAlison Aten on 24 Mar 2011 | Tagged as: Authors, Event, History, MHS press, Videos

Sneak a peek under the fabric of American life with the new book In the Mood for Munsingwear: Minnesota’s Claim to Underwear Fame by Susan Marks.

This richly illustrated book is not just a history of the company but an intimate look at the changing mores of America. The exhibit Underwear: A Brief History, based on the book, opens Saturday, May 7 (Mother’s Day weekend), at the Minnesota History Center.

Explore Minnesota’s racy side with author Susan Marks at the History of Hip event, Minnesota Naughty, next Tuesday, March 29, from 7:30 to 9:00 p.m.

Susan will also cohost the May 12 RetroRama fashion show with Anna Lee of MNfashion. Local designers including Project Runway’s Christopher Straub will present a collection based on Minnesota-made foundation garments. Plus, pick up something frilly at a vintage boutique courtesy of Blacklist Vintage, learn how to mix a cocktail from Iron Bartender Jasmine Poland, dance to the music of the Southside Aces, and make a pair of Munsingwear boxer shorts to take home.

Learn more about Munsingwear’s labor relations and corporate culture at the Mill City Museum on May 18 as Susan Marks talks about the company’s working conditions. Former Munsingwear employees are invited to attend and share their own stories. For more information, join the Facebook group “I Worked for Munsingwear.”

Can’t get enough of the fabulous print Munsingwear advertisements? Visit the MHS Flickr Munsingwear Vintage Advertising Set. Share your comments here, or join us on Twitter @MHSPress, #mnundies!

Listen to Susan Marks talk with MPR’s Cathy Wurzer: From long johns to sexy lingerie: The Munsingwear story

In the Works: A Digital Encyclopedia of Minnesota History

Posted byhartmanel on 17 Mar 2011 | Tagged as: Authors, History, MHS press

Last time you had a quick question—about multivitamins or anti-virus software or Kafka—where did you look for the answer? Odds are you pulled up Wikipedia or your favorite search engine.

The Web has become the place to get a question answered quickly or a head start on research.

(In January 2011, 153.6 million unique U.S. people visited Google using PCs or laptops from home and work, according to The Nielsen Company. Wikipedia saw 65.7 million unique visitors.)

That’s why MHS Press is creating a digital encyclopedia of Minnesota history in partnership with other divisions and departments at the Minnesota Historical Society. It’s a way to share relevant, reliable information about Minnesota where students, teachers, researchers, and others are looking to find it—online.

We launched the project in February 2010 with support from the state’s Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund. Now we’re creating content and building a website prototype, slated to launch this summer.

MHS Press authors including Annette Atkins, Rhoda Gilman, Larry Millett, and Thomas Peacock have signed on to contribute. We’re also writing encyclopedia entries in-house, taking advantage of the rich resources housed at the Minnesota History Center, from historic photos and maps to back issues of Minnesota History magazine.

You can help us make important decisions about the direction of the encyclopedia project by taking this quick, five-question survey: http://www.mnhs.org/EncyclopediaSurvey.

Tell us what you think, and we’ll keep you posted on our progress!

Interview with Sarah Stonich, Part 2

Posted byAlison Aten on 10 Mar 2011 | Tagged as: Authors, Interview, Literary, MHS press

Sarah StonichShelterQ. It’s been ten years between your first book and this one. How has publishing changed for you as an author in that span?

A. Publishing as it was no longer exists: far fewer books are being published, the business is slow to embrace technology, and the old model has worn out. Editors and marketers don’t seem aware that the entire next reading generation of twenty- and thirty-somethings will inevitably do most of their reading on devices and won’t necessarily want long novels by debut authors. They will likely read e-books first; then, if they love it, they might buy the physical book.

Q.  Shelter is available as an e-book. How do you feel about readers experiencing your book on an electronic device?

A.  I have mixed feelings. One of my sisters had been in Mexico over this month as Shelter is released, so she ordered the Kindle edition. I wished she’d waited for the physical volume, since it’s a lovely little book to hold and I think it would have added to the experience. That said, I don’t generally have any problems with e-books—they are the future, and while my first book is no longer in print, at least it’s available as an e-book. The Ice Chorus is also out in e-book. If done right, the author gets a better percentage of sales.

Q. In finding land and building a retreat, did you achieve your goal of bridging some connection between your father and son?

A.  Sam never had the chance to bond with a grandparent the way so many of us have. But I think observing me write this book and building our little place, he began to appreciate the land and learn more about his grandfather. So, yes, mostly, just not in the way I’d imagined.

Q.  At the end of Shelter your son was in Tokyo. Where is he now?

A. After some visa problems in Japan, he’s back in the Twin Cities, a full-time student with a double major in art and design. We have lunch; it’s great.

Q. What’s next?

A.  I’m hoping to find a publisher for my latest book, Vacationland, set in a remote resort in (where else?) northern Minnesota. The bulk of the story is told by visitors over the sixty-year life of the place and by the granddaughter who returns as an adult decades after being raised there.

Q.  Sounds a little like Shelter. Is it at all biographical?

A.  No, just set on similar ground. I’m also halfway through writing a novel based on a screenplay I recently finished, Fishing With RayAnne, about the camera-shy host of the first all-women fishing/talk show on public television. It’s a dark comedy, really fun to write.

Q. What is the status of your land now? Is it safe, or will the road project go through?

A.  I still don’t know—just have to deal with not knowing. The cabin is on shaky ground, but at least for now we still have our place in the woods. Thankfully, my family is rock solid. I’m thinking of getting a dog . . . it’s all good.

Book Trailer for Shelter and Q&A with Author Sarah Stonich

Posted byAlison Aten on 08 Mar 2011 | Tagged as: Authors, Interview, Literary, MHS press, Videos

We are pleased to announce the publication of  Shelter by internationally acclaimed author Sarah Stonich.

Stonich shares her new book trailer for Shelter and, in part one of a two-part interview, talks about family tradition in Minnesota’s north country.

Q.  What most surprised you while writing this book?

A.  In doing research, I realized how much I’d romanticized the past with a sort of soft-focus vision. In reality, the Minnesota my grandparents settled in was pretty harsh. I was reminded how difficult daily life was--laundry day alone for a family of twelve in 1903? The dozens of conveniences I don’t give a thought to, like flipping on a light, would have been ultimate luxury to them.

Q. You’ve written about your grandmother’s era in northern Minnesota before as the setting for These Granite Islands. And you mentioned your next novel is contemporary and also set there. Now, in Shelter, you’re writing about the very real place in the present. What about it keeps providing material for you?

A. A lot of writers, I suspect, find that places once thought boring or plain actually become inspiration for a lot of work, once you get far enough away from them.

Q. Most who write about the north tend to be very reverent of “God’s Country,” but you seem to have a love-hate relationship with it. Do you?

A. To a degree. If I could go back in time and convince my grandparents to keep traveling west to the Pacific Coast, I would. I pine for the ocean. I love Minnesota in spring and fall, but not during those six months I hardly ever see my feet. I don’t believe surviving the climate builds character and can’t get excited that the town down the road holds the record cold temp. Then again, you can’t beat Lake Superior in July. So, yes, a little love-hate.

Q. In Shelter the theme of land providing solace and retreat plays heavily for you as an adult. Has it always been so for you?

A.  Growing up, the lake often felt the safest, calmest place to be, especially during the years of my parents’ divorce. I went to a Catholic school, where I found the religion frightening and my studies difficult. Our cabin was a haven from all that--not the building, which wasn’t much, but the woods and water. A rowboat is as good a place as any for an awkward, introverted kid.

Q. You wrestle with how you “fit” on the Iron Range and with the political divisions there--are those still issues?

A. Well, not quite wrestle. But politics is really a toxic topic for a lot of folks up here--especially around the real land issues that make my own little dilemma a trifle. There has been a historic, constant tug-of-war over land and its ultimate best uses--it’s all about mining and money versus conservation. If the natural resources were left alone, they would become the most valuable, as a legacy. There are a lot of mines in the world, and plenty of places to jet ski, but there’s only one Boundary Waters.

Q. If there was one principal message in the book, what would you say it is?

A.  I never intended a message and can’t predict what readers will take away from it, but for me, the meaningful bit would be that material things and land only set the stages we live on, that family and the people we choose to live with are the real deal. The land, no matter how well we tend it or how badly we screw it up, will be there long after we aren’t.

Reading and Signings with Sarah Stonich:

Wednesday, March 23, at 7:30 p.m. at Common Good Books

and

Thursday, April 14, at Micawber’s Books, with author and poet Kate Kysar, editor of Riding Shotgun.

 

A Taste of Summertime at the Loft

Posted byMary Poggione on 25 Feb 2011 | Tagged as: Authors, Event, MHS press, Nature/Enviroment

WIldflowers of the Boundary Waters CoverAt least, summertime is what I think of when I think about the Boundary Waters. And boy, could I use a little sunshine and warmth right now.

Authors of three MHS Press books will be reading and speaking about the BWCAW region at the Loft this Tuesday, March 1, at 7:00 PM: Betty Hemstad, author of Wildflowers of the Boundary Waters; Greg Breining, co-author of Paddle North; and Joe Paddock, author of Keeper of the Wild. Also, poet Stephen Wilbers will read from his chapbook, This Northern Nonsense, and his forthcoming Canoeing Across Time: A Boundary Waters History. Hope to see you there!

For your viewing pleasure, here’s a quintessential summertime image from Greg Breining and Layne Kennedy’s book, Paddle North:

Paddle North: Canoeing the Boundary Waters-Quetico Wilderness

Photo by Layne Kennedy

 

Anishinaabe Syndicated

Posted byAlison Aten on 22 Feb 2011 | Tagged as: Authors, History, MHS press, Native American

Anishinaabe SyndicatedJim Northrup’s newest book, Anishinaabe Syndicated: A View from the Rez, chronicles the years 1989-2001, a time when Indian Country saw enormous changes in treaty rights, casino gambling, language renewal, and tribal sovereignty. Northrup wrote about all these changes while he lived them, making observations and jokes and telling stories in his syndicated column, The Fond du Lac Follies.

Northrup recently appeared on Duluth’s WDIO-TV, talking about his book and upcoming event at the Fond du Lac Community Center on Saturday, February 26, from 7:00 to 8:00 p.m.  Jim will also be in the Twin Cities for a book signing and reading on Tuesday. March 15, at 7:00 p.m. at Birchbark Books.

For a taste of Jim’s writing, check out an excerpt here.

Gordon Parks, photographer, composer, writer, filmmaker, activist

Posted byPamela McClanahan on 18 Feb 2011 | Tagged as: African American, Book Excerpt, MHS press

php7hvpXEIn 1928, sixteen-year-old Gordon Parks arrived alone on a train in St. Paul with plans to live with his sister after his mother’s untimely death. In St. Paul, homeless and hungry, he began his fight to survive, to educate himself, and to fulfill his dreams.

In his compelling autobiography, A Choice of Weapons, Parks, who went on to fame as the first African American to work at Life magazine and the first to write, direct, and score a Hollywood film, reported that he told an interviewer in 1999, “I saw that the camera could be a weapon against poverty, against racism, against all sorts of social wrongs. I knew at that point I had to have a camera.”

In a new foreword to the book, contemporary photographer Wing Young Huie writes, “St. Paul served as an incubator for us [Parks and Huie] both. I had dreamed of becoming a photographer in my early twenties, but it wasn’t until fifteen years later that I finally committed to the idea and set about doing it. I made many excuses along the way, but none of my barriers–real or self-imposed–were even as remotely challenging as the obstacles Gordon faced. His spectacular rise from poverty, personal hardships, and outright racism is astounding and inspiring.”

The MHS Press is proud to publish Parks’s poignant coming-of-age memoir, which has been embraced by many throughout the United States, from high schools in Los Angeles to community centers in New York City.

Enjoy this excerpt from an early chapter in the book, set during Parks’s first months in St. Paul.

“Eelpout looks like Jesse Ventura with fins”

Posted byAlison Aten on 15 Feb 2011 | Tagged as: Book Excerpt, Event, MHS press

The 32nd Annual International Eelpout Festival on Leech Lake in Walker, MN, is this weekend, February 18-20. The recent thaw has improved travel conditions on the lake, and temperatures expected in the mid-twenties are perfect for this annual tradition.

Greg Breining and Layne Kennedy, author and photographer, respectively, of A Hard-Water World: Ice Fishing and Why We Do It, capture the festival in all its comic and ironic glory. Check out Layne and Greg’s images and words, below.

photo by Layne Kennedy photo by Layne Kennedy photo by Layne Kennedy photo by Layne Kennedy

Really, what makes the festival so promising from the get-go is the subject—not simply a fish, or a game fish, or a prized fish, or any fish that under other circumstances someone might actually try to catch. No, this festival celebrates the eelpout, or burbot, a fresh-water cousin of cod whose most notable trait is its appearance. Potbellied and barbeled, the eelpout looks like Jesse Ventura with fins. Its second-most notable trait: it’s covered with slime, a quality that perhaps gave rise to one of its many other names, “lawyer.” Which brings up its third-most notable trait, its spawning habits, as described by a fisheries biologist in 1936: “A dark shadow was noted at the edge of the ice, some­thing which appeared to be a large ball. Eventually this moved out into view and it was seen to be indeed a ball—a tangled, nearly globular mass of moving, writhing lawyers.”

The festival—that is, the international festival—is timed for mid-February, when the burbot bacchanalia is just beginning. The fish are staging and heading for shallower water. When the event started in 1980, the fes­tival was doing well to attract 500 people. Now 10,000 show up.

There are distractions, to be sure: a snowmo­bile race, a car race (it would mean something if the cars towed ice houses), a polar plunge, and a rugby match. Still, the festival remains true to its origi­nal intent—catching eelpout. In fact, the tournament awards prizes for the ten largest eelpout. In 2007, the prize for biggest went to a young woman for a fish that weighed 14.62 pounds. (Note that the serious­ness of this endeavor is carried to two decimal places.) But it doesn’t stop there. Awards are given for Puni­est Pout (0.36 pounds), Individual Tonnage (114.52 pounds), and Team Tonnage (431.98 pounds by Floyd’s Barber Shop). Total tonnage classes are enhanced by the fact that the only limit on eelpout, in the words of one competitor, is “all you can stand.” Finally, awards are given on style points, the élan, if you will, with which individuals and teams pursue their sport: Most Lavish Burbot Bivouac, and the Greatest Distance Traveled (from Anchorage in 2007).

There may not be limits. But there are rules. The most important is that eligible fish must not be frozen through and through—to prevent anglers from stock­piling eelpout throughout the winter. And if there is any doubt, according to the organizers, “a lie-detector test will . . . be used and if the eelpout fails, one will be administered to the angler.”

The festival acknowledges that someone who takes ice fishing seriously is someone who can’t quite be trusted. Perhaps his morals are questionable. Perhaps, by the nature of what she does, she can’t be entirely sane. At the very least, he or she is a kidder and can’t be assumed to be on the square. For all these shortcom­ings, the ice fisherman/woman isn’t quite fit for polite society. Not that this is anything to be ashamed of. It may even be cause for celebration.

It’s noteworthy that not least among the Eelpout Festival awards is the prize given for Hairiest Back. The winner of said award shall remain nameless, though nota­bly it is a man. And he won for the second time running.

Race and Justice on the Minnesota Frontier

Posted byregana on 04 Feb 2011 | Tagged as: African American, Book Excerpt, MHS press, Native American

A Peculiar ImbalanceIn honor of Black History Month, we bring you an amazing story of early Minnesota told by historian William Green in his book, A Peculiar Imbalance: The Fall and Rise of Racial Equality in Early Minnesota.

In 1827 a military officer brought Jim Thompson, born a slave on the Virginia plantation of James Monroe, to Fort Snelling. There the young Thompson became fluent in French and Dakota. Methodists in Ohio purchased his liberty in 1837 so he could work as a translator for a missionary at Little Crow’s village of Kaposia. The mission lasted just two years. Thompson married a daughter of the Dakota leader Cloud Man, was briefly one of the whiskey sellers in what would become St. Paul, ran the first ferry across the Mississippi, and was a major donor to the construction of the city’s First Methodist Church. But his efforts to protect a girl from rape and his testimony at her assailant’s trial left the best clues to his character and his position in the community.

“The Story of Jim Thompson” is just one of many surprising tales told in this fine book.

“The Problem with Memoirs” from The New York Times

Posted byAlison Aten on 01 Feb 2011 | Tagged as: Authors, MHS press

Tell Me TrueJudging by the comments on Neil Genzlinger’s roundup review of four recent memoirs in this past Sunday’s New York Times Book Review, many readers have a visceral reaction to the genre. Genzingler concluded:

“Three of the four did not need to be written, a ratio that probably applies to all memoirs published over the last two decades. Sorry to be so harsh, but this flood just has to be stopped. We don’t have that many trees left.”

Several years ago, the veracity of memoirs was under scrutiny; now it seems everyone thinks their life merits a memoir. The reviewer’s advice to would-be memoirists is, “if you still must write a memoir, consider making yourself the least important character in it.” What happens when you make “history” the main character?

Tell Me True: Memoir, History, and Writing a Life, edited by Patricia Hampl and Elaine Tyler May, gathers essays from award-winning memoirists and historians wrestling with the gray area where memory intersects with history and where the necessities of narrative collide with mundane facts. Read the intro here.

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