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RAR TUNE OF THE
WEEK:
Two
More New Tunes This Edition -
This week's RAR originals include one for choreographer Sonya Tayea
and dancer Courtney Galiano (see story on "Your Time Is Running Out"
on Artist News), and one for no good reason at all ("Stupid Things
To Do").
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Additional RAR originals may be heard
from the RAR
MySpace site. Click on the MySpace banner below to go there.
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FEATUREDARTISTS:
Click here to go to the
Featured Artist page:
Photos, streaming MP3s
and more!!!
ESSAYS:
Click here
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MUSIC REVIEWS
(click here):
RAR reviews LPs from
Michael ONeill (Ain't Leavin' Your Love), Sarah Stanley
(Tuesday Girl), Hilary York (In The Dark), Tom
Corwin and Tim Hockenberry (Mostly Dylan), The Boxmasters
(Modbilly), Mad Buffalo (Wilderness), and others.
Also read reviews from RARWRITER contributors Doug Strobel and Diana
Olson.
BOOK
REVIEWS AND MORE
(click here):
This edition, RAR takes a long look at Philip K. Dick, Edgar Allan
Poe, Samuel Clemens and The Iowa Writer's Workshop. Read
earlier RAR reviews, including a look back at David Halberstam's The
Reckoning, and Alan Greenspan's book "The Age of Turbulence."
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ARTIST INDEX:
Click here to go to the
Index page to find the artists profiled on the
Links at RARWRITER.
J. Vermeer - "The Artist In His
Studio"
"THE LINKS AT RARWRITER"
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information on creative communities of the following cities, regions and
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At Large
Austin
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United Kingdom
ARCHIVES:
Selected features
from past editions.
RARADIO:
Click here to go to
the RARadio page to hear innovative acts from across the spectrum of
musical genres.
POLITICAL LINKS
-
points of view not
necessarily endorsed by RARWRITER.com
ATLAS SHRUGS
FACTCHECK.ORG
FEATURED LINKS:
The Gibson guitar folks have a
Lifestyle zine section on their website that is well worth checking.
Click here.
________________
RARWRITER.com
Annual
"State of the Union" Report
2008-2009.
Click here
for information about RARWRITER.com viewership and the further
development of the RARWRITER enterprise.
RARWRITER
CONTRIBUTOR
PROSPECTUS
RARWRITER.com is
exploding with new readers, new artist profiles, and new business
opportunities. Would you like to become involved as an editorial
contributor? If you are a great writer or photographer with particular
knowledge of your creative community, and you are looking for publishing
credits, contact us at Rick@RARWRITER.com for a copy of the
RARWRITER Contributor Prospectus
to learn what involvement can mean for you.-RAR
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PROJECTS
Rice Family
History
My
understanding is that my paternal great-grandparents, Charles Jerome Rice and
Laura Maris Rice, were first generation Americans descended from Irish heritage,
or possibly English on Laura's side. Charles was the son of a pioneering
homesteader who moved to the Nebraska plains when it was still unsettled
territory.
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I
have in my possession leather diaries
that date from 1883 to the early 20th century in which Charles, or C.J. as he
was called, kept meticulous records of his day-to-day activities starting from
the time he was around 20 years of age. These are on gracious loan to me from my
Aunt Lillian Rice, the daughter of C.J.'s youngest son Walter, and they provide
an extraordinary window into life on the plains in the 19th Century.
Left:
C.J. and Laura, photographed in Davenport, Nebraska on their wedding day in
1885.
Laura
was a teacher, whose family had moved west from Pennsylvania to Illinois, where
she attended teacher's college, then on to Missouri. She was teaching in the
Davenport area when she and C.J. met.
After
their wedding, they moved into their first home, a remote "soddy" on
the plains in Nucholls County, Nebraska.
Below
Left: The C.J. and Laura Rice Family's first home in Nucholls County,
Nebraska. Below Right: The Rice's Hays County soddy, established in 1887.
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Above:
The sod house on the left was the house C.J. Rice moved his new bride Laura
Maris into in 1885. It was located in Nucholls County, Nebraska. C.J. and Laura
are pictured, along with their team and various farm animals. In 1887, C.J.
moved by wagon to Hayes County, Nebraska and built the more refined soddy shown
on the right. C.J. and Laura are pictured on the right side of the frame, along
with Roy, their first born to survive. The identity of the other family
pictured, and why they were there at the Rice home, is not known.
I have mentioned elsewhere on this
site that our family experienced a devastating house fire in February 2005. We
lost virtually everything, including several years of work I had done toward
bringing the history of the Rice family to life in a variety of forms. Among
what was lost were hours of interviews I had done with my grandfather Walter
Rice, C.J.'s youngest son. For me, this was the hardest loss to take. Along with
the leather bound diaries, the interviews were serving as the foundation for my
book Up On the Blue, referencing the family's humble beginnings along the
Blue River in Nebraska.
Miraculously, the C.J. Rice diaries
survived that fire, though they were at ground zero of an inferno that began in
my office and took all of my digital files and most of my hard copy manuscripts.
A primary focus of mine these days is rebuilding my oeuvre of unpublished works.
All are dear to me, but none of those "recovery" projects is more dear
than completing the work I started on our family's history. I have the utmost
respect for people who get their stories on paper for future generations to
read, and for the family historians (like my Aunt Lillian Fielding on my
Father's side, Second Cousin Kenny Most and Aunt Lonnie Frick on my Mother's).
How else can we really understand who we are? And how can we begin to relate to
the travails of others unless we have an understanding of from where it is we
came?
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©Rick
Alan Rice (RAR),
August, 2009
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