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"We must include Knopp among those whom Barry Lopez calls our
'local geniuses of the American landscape, '" Fran Shaw remarks in
the journal "Parabola," And, indeed, in this new book, Lisa Knopp's
singular genius burrows deep into that landscape in showing us what
it is to know, feel, and inhabit unique yet quintessentially
American places. A collection of essays embracing nonfiction from
memoir and biography to travel writing and natural history,
"Interior Places" offers a curiously detailed group photograph of
the Midwest's interior landscape. Here is an essay about the
origin, history, and influence of corn. Here we find an exploration
of a childhood meeting with Frederick Leopold, youngest brother of
the great naturalist Aldo. Here also are a chronicle of the
146-year alliance between Burlington, Iowa, and the Burlington
Route (later the CB&O, the BN, and finally, the BNSF) and a
pilgrimage to Amelia Earhart's Kansas hometown. Whether writing
about the lives of two of P. T. Barnum's giants or the "secret"
nuclear weapons plant in southeastern Iowa, about hunger in
Lincoln, Nebraska, or bird banding on the Platte River, Knopp
captures the inner character of the Midwest as Nature dictates it,
people live it, and history reveals it.
For Lisa Knopp, homesickness is a literal sickness. During a
lengthy sojourn away from the Nebraska prairie, she fell ill, and
only when she decided to return home did she recover. Homesickness
is the triggering event for this collection of essays concerned
with nothing less than what it means to feel at home. Knopp writes
masterfully about ecology, place, and the values and beliefs that
sustain the individual within an impersonal world. She is
passionate about her subject whether it be an endangered beetle in
the salt marshes near Lincoln, Nebraska, a forgotten Nebraska
inventor, a museum muralist, a paleontologist, or Arbor Day as the
misguided attempt of Eastern settlers to "correct" a perceived
deficiency in the Great Plains landscape. Here is a writer who has
read widely and judiciously and for whom everything resonates
within the intricately structured definition of home.
When she was 54, Lisa Knopp's weight dropped to a number on the
scale that she hadn't seen since seventh grade. The severe food
restricting that left her thin and sick when she was 15 and 25 had
returned. This time, she was determined to understand the causes of
her malady and how she could heal from a condition that is caused
by a tangle of genetic, biological, familial, psychological,
cultural, and spiritual factors. This compelling memoir, at once a
food and illness narrative, explores the forces that cause eating
disorders and disordered eating, including the link between those
conditions in women, middle-aged and older, and the fear of aging
and ageism.
In this informed and lyrical collection of interwoven essays, Lisa
Knopp explores the physical and cultural geography of the
Mississippi, Missouri, and Platte, rivers she has come to
understand and cherish. At the same time, she contemplates how
people experience landscape, identifying three primary roles of
environmental perception: the insider, the outsider, and the
outsider seeking to become an insider. Viewing the waterways
through these approaches, she searches for knowledge and meaning.
Because Knopp was born and raised just a few blocks away, she
considers the Mississippi from the perspective of a native
resident, a 'dweller in the land.' She revisits places she has long
known: Nauvoo, Illinois, the site of two nineteenth-century
utopias, one Mormon, one Icarian; Muscatine, Iowa, once the world's
largest manufacturer of pearl (mussel shell) buttons; and the
mysterious prehistoric bird- and bear-shaped effigy mounds of
northeastern Iowa. On a downriver trip between the Twin Cities and
St. Louis, she meditates on what can be found in Mississippi river
water - state lines, dissolved oxygen, smallmouth bass, corpses,
family history, wrecked steamboats, mayfly nymphs, toxic
perfluorinated chemicals, philosophies. Knopp first encountered the
Missouri as a tourist and became acquainted with it through
literary and historical documents, as well as stories told by
longtime residents. Her journey includes stops at Fort
Bellefontaine, where Lewis and Clark first slept on their sojourn
to the Pacific; Little Dixie, Missouri's slaveholding, hemp-growing
region, as revealed through the life of Jesse James's mother; Fort
Randall Dam and Lake Francis Case, the construction of which
destroyed White Swan on the Yankton Sioux Reservation; and places
that produced unique musical responses to the river, including
Native American courting flutes, indie rock, Missouri River valley
fiddling, Prohibition-era jazz jam sessions, and German folk music.
Knopp's relationship with the Platte is marked by intentionality:
she settled nearby and chose to develop deep and lasting
connections over twenty years' residence. On this adventure, she
ponders the half-million sandhill cranes that pass through Nebraska
each spring, the ancient varieties of Pawnee corn growing at the
Great Platte River Road Archway Monument, a never-broken tract of
tallgrass prairie, the sugar beet industry, and the changes in the
river brought about by the demands of irrigation. In the final
essay, Knopp undertakes the science of river meanders, consecutive
loops of water moving in opposite directions, which form around
obstacles but also develop in the absence of them. What initiates
the turning that results in a meander remains a mystery. Such is
the subtle and interior process of knowing and loving a place. What
the River Carries asks readers to consider their own relationships
with landscape and how one can most meaningfully and responsibly
dwell on the earth's surface.
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