Highlights Archives
Summer Magazine: Paul Bunyan to Bookmobiles
Summer is here and along with the sunshine, long days and warm nights, comes the summer issue of the Wisconsin Magazine of History. Inside, you'll learn the history of the original Paul Bunyan tales, see the photography of Dr. Edward A. Bass, and explore the illustrated log book of a 1903 canoeing adventure on the Wisconsin, Mississippi, Rock and Yahara rivers. A subscription to the quarterly magazine is just one benefit of membership in the Wisconsin Historical Society.
In "On the Trail of Paul Bunyan," author Michael Edmonds describes how Bernice Stewart, a young University of Wisconsin-Madison student, worked to preserve the tales of the best-known character in American folklore that circulated among the Great Lakes logging camps between the mid-1800s and 1900. The daughter of a timber cruiser in northern Wisconsin and Michigan, Stewart spent several winters in lumber camps as a child and became interested in the fantastic yarns she heard. Stewart, along with her professor, Homer A. Watt, preserved the tales of the heroic logger as they had been improvised aloud in conversations among illiterate loggers in isolated forest bunkhouses.
"The Wisconsin Idea in Action," by Christine Pawley, explores how the concept of the Wisconsin Idea — that the university's influence should be felt throughout the state — led to the creation of a bookmobile service to increase literacy rates among citizens in rural areas. Serving both Door and Kewaunee counties, the bookmobile was used by more than 90 percent of grade-school children in rural schools.
Housed at the Society, the log book of Preston "Pick" Reynolds is a small leather-bound volume filled with reminiscences of the adventures Reynolds undertook with three friends as they traveled in two canoes in 1903. Marguerite Helmers presents excerpts of Reynolds' numerous detailed drawings and showcases his droll wit in a diary that provides a vivid glimpse of the way life was changing at the turn of the 20th century.
In the image essay, "The Photography of Dr. Edward A. Bass," author Jim Slattery describes the work of the talented amateur photographer whose work offers a rare look at family, social and political events in Wisconsin between 1892 and 1911. Dr. Bass' photographs are also the subject of this month's featured gallery from Wisconsin Historical Images, the Society's online image database.
And get a sneak peak at the new book from the Wisconsin Historical Society Press, Finding Josie by Wendy Bilen.
:: Posted June 27, 2008
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