Indiana University Press blog

Lee Mandrell reflects on 'The Great Smoky Mountains'

The National Parks Service was founded 100 years ago on August 25, 1916. They have since cared for and protected the national parks, ensuring they remain a place for exploration, education and inspiration. In a guest blog post, Lee Mandrell shares a personal reflection on his new book The Great Smoky Mountains: A Visual Journey in honor of the National Parks Service centennial. Lee is a photographer and author of Indianapolis: The Circle City (IUP 2016) and The Great Smoky Mountains: A Visual Journey (IUP 2017).

---

By Lee Mandrell

For over a quarter of a century now, I have been in pursuit of capturing photos from ‘The Great Smoky Mountains’ and the surrounding areas. I remember my first Smokies trip as well as if I had just taken it yesterday. Young, dumb, and naive about a good many things, I was very much in photographer's shock and visual overload upon arrival, to say the least. Born and raised in Indiana, I had never seen anything like this first hand! I instantly wanted to photograph everything I saw. I knew immediately the mere six rolls of film I had brought for the trip were not going to be enough, nor was the small amount of time that we would be there. I wasn’t even sure where to point the camera first. The visual stimulation was overwhelming and it took a good deal of self discipline to contain my excitement for the photo opportunities that I was seeing, and not to just randomly start shooting and wasting my shots. Remember, film was a whole different beast than digital and careful consideration had to be taken not to waste a single frame. Unlike digital, there are set limits with film, and that was always torture! Trust me, there was always something else you wanted to shoot once you ran out of film. As fate would have it, the camera suffered a shutter malfunction on that very first trip and I instantly learned the importance of having and bringing backup equipment everywhere I went. Fortunately, I was able to get it going once again during the trip, and since then I have never left home without spare equipment. I learned a very valuable lesson that trip the hard way. 

Photo by Lee Mandrell and DeeDee Niederhouse-Mandrell

This particular year and trip was in January and it happened to be 70 degrees and sunny. It was just beautiful even with no leaves or snow. I don’t know how many deer I saw the next few days, but there were certainly lots of them, more than I had ever seen in one place at any given time in my life. And the rivers, the streams, the cascades and the waterfalls! Oh man! Everywhere I looked! The first drive along the Little River Road, amazing! It felt like it took two whole days! The first trip through Cades Cove left me speechless! And the actual mountains! What wonder! What sights to behold! They just kept going on forever it seemed! It was pure happiness! It’s still just as amazing to me all these years later. In fact, I think it’s more beautiful since I have grown more aware and more appreciative of it, nature and conservation, and the feelings I felt that first trip are still there every time. You can’t help but smile. You can’t help but feel at peace. You can’t help but feel the happiness that surrounds you in this place. To me, there is nothing else quite like it. Of course a person is not able to see all of the beauty in one weekend, week, or month and I strongly believe that even people that live there would be hard pressed to ever ‘see it all’ in their lifetime. 25 plus years and countless trips later I am still discovering new things and places there, and still excited about every one of them! One thing was for sure on that first trip though, I was immediately hooked on the Smoky Mountains' beauty then and there, and I have been ever since. There was no turning back because what I had seen couldn’t be unseen.

Photo by Lee Mandrell and DeeDee Niederhouse-Mandrell

Many times we were on the road at 10 p.m., 11 p.m. or midnight in order to get there in time for the sunrise and hopefully capture something inspiring. Lots and lots of coffee has kept us going more times than I can actually recall. I’d guess gallons most likely. There have been miles and miles of hikes throughout the years. Some hikes are easy of course, but some of those hikes can certainly put a person to the test and you have to really push past your limits. The payoff at the end has always been worth it in my opinion. Then there are the bears, and let me tell you about the bears. It’s a bit unnerving to happen across them on trails with no one else in sight, or have one sneak up on you and catch you unaware, and yes they can be sneaky. Luckily, they have only had a passing curiosity as to what we were doing, then quickly moved on about their business. Of course the elk need their distance as well, and also the deer. We have always treated wildlife with great respect, and taken our photos from a distance with very long lenses. With the proper equipment, you can take up close and personal photos of any wildlife and never put yourself in harm's way or be invasive to their personal space. If you don’t have the proper equipment, don’t even try it. It’s just not worth the risk. It never ceases to amaze me to see someone actually chasing after a wild animal and particularly a bear! I realize they look cute and cuddly and in need of some petting between the ears, but they are wild animals and could pose a danger to you or your loved ones if they feel threatened. You wouldn’t want someone to come into your house and chase you around, take a picture with you and try to pet you, would you? Treat them with the respect they deserve and give them their space. 

Photo by Lee Mandrell and DeeDee Niederhouse-Mandrell

Some locations hold sentiment, some hold strong emotional connections, and some are just too beautiful to accurately portray with only a photo, no matter how good the photo is. As awe inspiring as a photograph is or can be, you don’t get the sounds, you don’t get the smells, and you don’t get the feelings you had while with your spouse, kids, friends or family. Trees creaking in gentle winds, leaves rustling, and the sounds of birds chirping reach your ears. Salamanders scurry out of sight. Chipmunks scamper along a fallen tree. Water trickles over and through rocks, and is perhaps the greatest sound nature has ever given us in my opinion. The smells of the damp undergrowth, decaying vegetation, wood, and leaves fill your nostrils. The flickering light levels as you progress up a trail play peek-a-boo with your eyes. The feel of the earth as you make your way up to some unknown, hidden, magical place. The cool, flowing water as you pass through it touches and refreshes your skin. The changes in air temperatures can cool or warm you as you walk. Wildlife peeking through the forest at you with curiosity from a distance. It ignites all of the senses and lets you come alive! I don’t find any of this tiring or boring. I get so caught up in the moment and place and what’s it’s doing to my senses, I sometimes forget I am there to take pictures. There really isn’t anything else quite like it and I will never tire of its endless beauty, sounds and smells. Hopefully this collection of photos will give you as real a sense of place as is possible to do with photos and if I could bottle the smells and add the sounds, I certainly would!

Lee's The Great Smoky Mountains: A Visual Journey will be published February 17, 2017 and is now available for preorder.

 

Bicentennial Book Giveaway: Enter to Win a Copy of 'Indiana: An Interpretation'

We continue our celebration of the Indiana bicentennial with another giveaway of a book about Indiana. This month you can enter to win a copy of Indiana: An Interpretation—Bicentennial Edition. This classic book by John Bartlow Martin now features an afterword by Martin biographer Ray E. Boomhower.

Originally published in 1947, John Bartlow Martin's work sparked controversy in Indiana for challenging Hoosiers' assumptions about their history and how they saw themselves and their state. Although the book only covers the period from the Civil War to just after World War II, Martin's interpretation of the Hoosier character, thought, and way of living is still as relevant today as when it was first written. The new foreword added in honor of the bicentennial contextualizes the book for today's readers and reveals why it has become a modern Indiana classic.

Notes on Bootstraps and Coattails

Bryan Furuness teaches at Butler University and is author of The Lost Episodes of Revie Bryson. In a guest blog post, Bryan gives his thoughts on encouraging and cultivating emerging authors.

---

By Bryan Furuness

IU Press asked me to write a post about an Indiana writer. "Sure!" I said, forgetting to mention that I am not great at following directions.

Instead of writing about a single Indiana author, I'd like to think about a bunch of Indiana writers you've never heard of, writers I've never heard of. Emerging writers.

This is as good a spot as any to say that the views expressed here are my own; they do not reflect the views of the press, etc.

What do I mean by "emerging?" According to the Indiana Authors Award, an emerging author is someone "who has published no more than two books."

Two books? Criminy. Look: If you have two books to your name, you done emerged.

Let's lower that bar. For the purposes of this post, I'll define an emerging writer as anyone serious enough to be working on a book-length project but has not yet published one.

A lot of Hoosiers fall under this designation. How do I know? I've seen them at the IU Writers' Conference, at the Gathering of Writers sponsored by the Writers Center of Indiana, at the Steel Pen Writers' Conference up in the region. I see them in the Butler MFA program in creative writing that grows every year. Empirical evidence abounds.

Why should you care about emerging writers? This is the talent pool, people. If you care about literature and you care about our state (and because you're reading a post on the IU Press blog, I'll assume that you do), then you should care deeply about nurturing this group that is writing the next generation of stories and poems and novels.

The problem is that we don't care. We don't nurture. What we do, in this state, is grab onto the coattails of front-runners.

A few years ago, I was at an Indiana Authors Award reception, where I watched John Green take home the top prize, which came with $10,000. Nothing against John Green—he seems like a deeply decent human and I am glad to count him as a Hoosier—but I walked away thinking, Why give him that award? Who did that help?

Part of the award's stated goal is to "[attract] greater attention to 'home-grown' literary greats," but did anyone really think they could do that for Green? The idea that the award would raise the profile of the guy who wrote the bestselling The Fault in Our Stars is laughable.

The money must have been nice, but it didn't make a bit of difference to Green's writing career. Time is the most important resource to a writer, and that money did not buy him a single second more of writing time than he had before.

So what was the point?

Maybe I'm being churlish here. Maybe the real point of an award is to say HEY WE THINK YOU ARE GREAT. But if you attach money to it, wouldn't it be nice if that money did some good? Otherwise, aren't you missing an opportunity to make an actual difference?

More on difference-making in a moment. First, another example of coattailing.

$10,000 seems like a lot until you put it up against $750,000. That's the amount of money the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library is raising so they can move to nicer digs in downtown Indianapolis. The heart of the library's mission is to champion Vonnegut's legacy.

Vonnegut needs a champion like Oprah needs a publicist. If only Oprah could get her name out there!

On one hand, the Vonnegut Memorial Library is doing no harm and I should just shut up. On the other hand, I'm concerned about opportunity cost. Every dollar donated to the Library is a dollar that won't go to an organization that could nurture the next Vonnegut.

Also, consider the cost/benefit ratio of that $750,000. How much will that money really enhance Vonnegut's legacy? Will it make a difference in how he's viewed?

Probably about as much as the Indiana Authors Award lifted John Green's profile.

So why do we keep throwing ourselves at these frontrunners? My suspicion is that it has less to do with raising their profile, and much more to do with raising our own. Our state is taking selfies with Vonnegut and Green so that everyone will know we're with them. Later we'll probably drop their names loudly at the hotel bar. Which is actually kind of pathetic. Come on, Indiana. Show a little self-esteem.  

But what would happen if we invested those literary dollars where they would actually make a difference?

As I mentioned earlier, time is the most important resource for a writer—and money can buy time in the form of childcare, or a retreat, or to allow someone to go from full-time to part-time employment. Money can pay for schooling or mentoring to hasten an emerging writer's development. Sometimes, it turns out, you can actually throw money at a problem.

Don't coddle the emerging writers, you might say. Ignore them! Hardship will weed out the weaklings, and the truly talented and dedicated ones will rise to the top as they always have. The strong will survive.

It's more likely that the privileged will survive. The ones who make it through the literary thresher won't necessarily be the ones with the most talent or the most interesting stories to tell; it will be the ones with means.

I have about a million other things to say on this subject, but this essay's already too long by Internet standards, so I'll bring my point home. Indiana, level the playing field. Let's support a diverse chorus of developing voices, so writing isn't just a game for the privileged. Let's celebrate our Greens and Vonneguts, but let's also invest in the next generation of luminaries. And if we don't have the time and energy and money to do all of this—if we have to make a hard choice—let's choose bootstraps over coattails.

Four IUP books win INDIEFAB Awards

We are pleased to announce that four of our books received 2015 INDIEFAB Awards and two books were finalists. Thousands of books are entered in the contest sponsored by Foreword Reviews each year to be judged by a select group of librarians and booksellers from across the country. IU Press books won one silver and three honorable mention awards, along with two finalists. Our winners include:

Silver Winner for Political Science
The Snowden Reader
Edited by David P. Fidler
Foreword by Sumit Ganguly

When Edward Snowden began leaking NSA documents in June 2013, his actions sparked impassioned debates about electronic surveillance, national security, and privacy in the digital age. The Snowden Reader looks at Snowden’s disclosures and their aftermath.

Listen to a podcast with the author

Honorable Mention for Regional
Indiana State Parks: A Centennial Celebration
Matt Williams

Stunning photographs mark the centennial of the Hoosier state park system with a visual celebration of the parks’ scenery, wildlife, recreation, and history.

See photos from the book

Honorable Mention for Performing Arts & Music
White Robes, Silver Screens: Movies and the Making of the Ku Klux Klan
Tom Rice

By examining rich archival materials including a film series produced by the Klan and a wealth of documents, newspaper clippings, and manuals, Rice uncovers the fraught history of the Klan as a local force that manipulated the American film industry to extend its reach across the country.

Read an excerpt from the book

Honorable Mention for Biography
John Bartlow Martin: A Voice for the Underdog
Ray E. Boomhower

During the 1940s and 1950s, one name, John Bartlow Martin, dominated the pages of the “big slicks.” Over a career that spanned nearly fifty years, his peers lauded him as “the best living reporter,” the “ablest crime reporter in America,” and “one of America’s premier seekers of fact.”

Listen to a podcast with the author

Finalist for Performing Arts & Music
New York Noise: Radical Jewish Music and the Downtown Scene
Tamar Barzel

Though relatively fleeting in rock history, the "RJC moment" forged a new vision of Jewish identity in the contemporary world, one that sought to restore the bond between past and present, to interrogate the limits of racial and gender categories, and to display the tensions between secularism and observance, traditional values and contemporary concerns.

Listen to a podcast with the author

Finalist for Popular Culture
Letters to Santa Claus
The Elves
Foreword by Pat Koch, Head Elf
Afterword by Emily Weisner Thompson

Over 80 years of letters and envelopes addressed to Santa Claus capture the hopes and dreams of children and adults. “A touching gift book that also offers an unusual window into American history.”—Library Journal

Watch the book trailer

Congratulations to all the winners!

Bicentennial book giveaway: Enter to win a new WWII book by a Hoosier resident

This month's bicentennial giveaway is for a photo book that isn't about Indiana, but has a strong connection to the state through its author, Malcolm Fleming. A native of Oregon, Fleming came to Indiana University in 1949 to get a master's degree and then a doctorate in education.

“I hung around for another 20 years or so and taught. Something about Bloomington keeps people here," said the 97-year-old Indiana resident, who has now lived in the state for nearly seven decades.

Fleming's photography first came to our attention through Bradley Cook, curator of photographs at the IU Archives. A few years ago, Cook was driving to his home in Bloomington when he saw a handmade sign advertising photographs for sale at a nearby assisted living center. Cook followed the sign to Fleming's apartment and discovered a treasure trove of photographs. Initially Cook was interested in Fleming's photography from his time at IU as a fellow in the Audio-Visual Center, but then Fleming pulled out a shoebox of photos he had shot during World War II when he was as an Official Army Photographer.

"These photographs were indeed a surprise and without a doubt the hidden gem of his collection," said Cook.

Shortly after their initial meeting, Fleming decided to donate his entire photo collection, including the World War II photos, to the IU Archives. We worked closely with Fleming and the IU Archives to produce a new book based upon Fleming's World War II photos, From War to Peace in 1945 Germany: A GI's Experience.

Now you have a chance to win a copy of this special World War II book with a Hoosier connection! Fill out the form below by June 27, 2016, to enter our book giveaway. And be sure to check out all of Fleming's World War II photography on the IU Archives website.

The Sacred Spirit of My Indiana Home

This month, we continue the celebration of our state's literary heritage with a new post by Norbert Krapf in our Indiana Bicentennial Bookshelf blog series. This series is written by Hoosier authors about their favorite Indiana books and writers.

---

Norbert Krapf. Photo by Richard Fields.

By Norbert Krapf

When I sat down recently at a table on the second floor of the Indy City Market, where I sometimes write in my journal, I expected to look back quickly through a coffee-table book I brought along. My plan was to make notes for a short essay about my “favorite Indiana book.” What happened instead was that once I started reading and looking at The Spirit of the Place: Indiana Hill Country by photographer Darryl Jones and novelist James Alexander Thom, I read straight through the entire book again without once rising from my chair. I could not stop. I must tell you in personal terms, the only way I can, why this full-color cloth book continues to resonate for me on such a profound level. The words and images everywhere in this beautifully designed and printed book, a collaboration by a photographer and a novelist, are full of the spirit of my native place, full of light, insight, and grace. They continue to inspire and influence my writing and thinking.

While re-reading this book with rapt attention, I was reminded that it includes two of Darryl’s images of the southern Indiana landscape which became the covers for my poetry collection The Country I Come From (2002) and my jazz and poetry CD with pianist and composer Monika Herzig, Imagine: Indiana in Music and Words (2007). I didn’t need to be reminded that a quote from the text by Jim became one of four epigraphs by Indiana authors (the others are Scott Russell Sanders, Susan Neville, and Kurt Vonnegut) for my collection Bloodroot: Indiana Poems (2008):

You have roots in a place, or you don’t; you can’t force them.
It helps to be born there, though that’s not your choice to make.
But there are things you do that feed and strengthen these roots.
The four best root fertilizers you can give in your lifetime are sweat and blood and tears and ashes….
And…you can die in that place, and if that is the place where you want to die, then that’s really where your roots are.

I am sure that these words influenced me, with the approval of my wife Katherine, to purchase a plot in Fairview Cemetery, Jasper, Indiana, my hometown, in the region where so many of my poems have been set for the forty-five years I have been writing and publishing. We also bought a stone which we are designing to have carved marking the salient details of our lives.

As I did not have to be reminded, James Alexander Thom was one of the readers to evaluate for Indiana University Press my Bloodroot proposal. Sponsoring editor Linda Oblack liked his written response so well that we decided to make it the Foreword to this selection of 135 of my poems previously collected, plus forty new ones, set in Indiana. When I read the following observations from what became the Foreword, I was tremendously moved:

When a wide collection of [Krapf’s] poems come forth, all the poems become the context for each one, and the whole work rides on deep undercurrents of time, place, ancestry, and work…. Krapf’s spirit of place can be specifically local and immediate while encompassing centuries and other homelands…. The test of “poetry of place” is whether it feels perfectly familiar to a reader who lives there. This reader is a southern Indiana native who feels right at home in Norbert Krapf’s poems.

Several years before, as I have said in an essay about my collaboration with Darryl Jones in Invisible Presence: A Walk through Indiana in Photographs and Poems (2006), Darryl gave to his IU Press editor, Linda Oblack, a copy of my collection The Country I Come From. The cover is Darryl’s panoramic photograph of “Cornfield at sunset, C.R. 600 S., near Freeman, Owen County.” He had a plan. Linda reported that she liked the poems, whereupon he asked if she would consider inviting me to write poems to accompany his Polaroid manipulations and transfers of Indiana scenes for his forthcoming book. She said, “Let him try!” Darryl delivered a CD with his images for the book and the meditative poems started to come and kept coming. When Darryl then added new Polaroid manipulations and transfers of Indiana scenes and people, more poems came. We have a spiritual connection, without which no collaboration can succeed.

When The Spirit of the Place went out of print, I grieved. I urge any reader who does not own a copy of this 1995 book to search the Internet or go to a book dealer, not enough of whom are left, and order a copy. I hate to think of a world in which anyone who loves Indiana, or someone who would like to find out, from the inside, what makes the spirit of this Midwestern state unique, does not have the opportunity to savor this landmark book.

Two universal and timeless statements from my favorite Indiana book will serve as my conclusion. Darryl Jones says in his Photographer’s Preface: “My response to scenes is still pure and direct, but there is a greater depth now because of an understanding of the metaphysical transparency of phenomena… It is an understanding that the elements of nature participate in and reflect the Divine.” James Alexander Thom, after quoting a Shawnee chief in Ohio insisting that his ancestors were here so long that their remains became part of the land and thus “we are this land,” adds: “Those words were the truest and deepest statement of the spirit of place. That is the very essence of being here. Truly being here is not merely occupying space with one’s physical self. It is something sacred. Your sacred obligation to a place you call yours is not to ruin it.” In my view, the best art is sacred because it reminds us, and keeps us mindful, of our sacred obligations.

Norbert Krapf, Indiana Poet Laureate (2008–2010), is Emeritus Professor of English at Long Island University. He is author of Catholic Boy Blues: A Poet's Journal of Healing, American Dreams: Reveries and Revisitations, and Songs in Sepia and Black and White (IUP, 2012). Most recently he wrote the introduction to our bicentennial edition of Riley-Child Rhymes with Hoosier Pictures.

---

Next month, Bryan Furuness will be blogging for us in the Indiana Bicentennial Bookshelf series. Check back in July for his post!

Michael Martone to receive Mark Twain Award this week

Earlier this year, the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature (SSML) announced that Michael Martone was the recipient of the 2016 Mark Twain Award, which is given to a distinguished Midwestern writer. The award will be presented to Martone this Friday at the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature's Annual Symposium in East Lansing, MI.

Martone is editor of our Break Away Books series and has published several books with us, most recently Winesburg, Indiana: A Fork River Anthology.

Brought to life by a lively group of Indiana writers, Winesburg, Indiana, is a place to discover something of what it means to be alive in our hyperactive century from stories that are deeply human, sometimes melancholy, and often damned funny.

Winesburg, Indiana, along with Martone's other works, will be featured at the SSML's symposium. In addition, several of the contributors to the book will be at the symposium to give a reading from the book.

We congratulate Michael Martone on winning this prestigious award! Learn more about him in this interview he did for our blog last year.

Love small towns? Enter to win a copy of 'Little Indiana'

After six years of traveling Indiana in search of amazing local experiences, blogger and TV host Jessica Nunemaker shares a treasure trove of what to expect in Hoosier small towns in her new book Little Indiana. Featuring towns of 15,000 or fewer inhabitants, Nunemaker's book reveals where to eat, stay, play, and shop in over 90 small towns. Full-color images showcase specialty stores, mouth-watering meals, and exciting attractions tucked off the beaten path—proof that there is always something to do in a small town!

To celebrate the state's bicentennial this year, we want you to get out and explore the Indiana towns that Jessica visited for a chance to win a copy of her book! From now until May 30, we're hosting a Little Indiana photo contest on social media. Go to one of the places in Jessica's book, take a picture, and share it with us on Twitter or Facebook, using the hashtag #winlittleindiana. One entry per person, please.

Have fun discovering the small town Indiana businesses listed below!

Time is running out to take a photo for One Day in May!

Hoosiers, have you taken a photo yet for One Day in May? You have until 11:59 p.m. tonight to snap a picture for a chance to be published in our crowdsourced Indiana bicentennial book!

If you don't have time to upload your photo tonight, no worries! We will continue to accept photo uploads on the IU Press website until Sunday, May 22, at 11:59 p.m. But the photo MUST be taken on May 20, 2016, in order to be considered for publication in the book.

So if you haven't taken a picture yet, get out your camera now and send us your best Indiana shot!

One Day in May photo contest starts today!

Hoosiers, the time has finally come for our One Day in May photo contest! Submit a picture of what you're doing today for a chance to be published in our crowdsourced Indiana bicentennial book.

The photo submission form is now available on the IU Press website. All photo uploads are due by Sunday, May 22, at 11:59 p.m. Photos should include a caption, the time taken, the city and location, a description, and the photographer’s credit.

​If your photo is selected for One Day in May, we will notify you by email, and you will receive a complimentary copy of the book upon publication.

We can't wait to see your photos!