Category: Writing

LAKE MACBRIDE— Just before running my mobile phone through the washing machine, I searched the Internet for Hyemeyohsts Storm.

There were a few search results— what little information there was full of controversy. It was 2 a.m. and I hadn’t turned the lights on.

The year Seven Arrows was published, Chuck Storm was a lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Iowa, where he taught a course titled, “American Indian Signs and Symbols.” His wife Swan accompanied him everywhere he went, and would roll cigarettes for him as he told stories once a week for a couple of hours. That was before smoking was banned in classrooms.

I got an A in the course. Everyone did. Storm confronted the administration and made a case for the grade, and got his way. A lot of people who attended the classes weren’t registered. To call it a “class” was a stretch, as the curriculum was disjointed and sometimes incoherent, if one existed at all. What happened each week just happened, and I suppose that was part of the learning.

Storm welcomed us to visit their apartment, and one evening I did. Unannounced, and perhaps a little rude, I appeared at their door, and Swan welcomed me in. They were working with someone who had a issue with film. He was wrapped in celluloid from which he broke free. Afterward, Swan used a hand sweeper—the kind I use to pick up pine needles after the Christmas tree is removed—to clean the carpet, then we dispersed for the evening.

Seven Arrows was a work of fiction, and as such, it was easy to accept. While it claimed to be “the first book about the Ways of the Plains People to be written entirely by an Indian,” it was sometimes uncertain which stories were part of oral tradition, and which were fictionalized.

A number of modern writers have called Storm a fake Indian.

“Hyemeyohsts Storm, whose first name is hard to spell and to say, was another faker who made a minor fortune with his fake Indian book, Seven Arrows,” Dr. Dean Chavers wrote in the Native American Times. “It tried to be a genuine representation of the ceremonies of the Cheyenne people, but it came out as hippie mish-mash, just right for the 1970s.”

Storm has been accused of exploiting native traditions, of selling spirituality, and of being a plastic shaman and plastic Indian. I don’t know about that, and when I knew him he seemed genuine enough—as genuine as any writer I met during my undergraduate studies.

Why life would lead me here is uncertain. A whim from the beyond, as Meyer Baba might call it. What I know is I wasn’t ready to replace my mobile phone, or to consider negativity clouding the view of life as I knew it four decades ago. Perhaps it was just a night storm.

LAKE MACBRIDE— Intermittent rain fell throughout yesterday. Fallen leaves were dampened, and for a while, runoff flowed in the ditch. Apples clung to the tree, waiting another day to be picked.

We needed rain, but then we didn’t as crops stood in the field drying before harvest. It was a writer’s day, one for gathering material. Today will be the crafting of stories—a rarified trip into the imagination to produce more tangible results.

There are two hard parts about writing.

The first is finding meaningful venues. My process began with keeping a journal, writing letters to the editor, and commenting on a local radio station. When I look back at this work from the 1970s, it was raw, and rough, and in many cases, stylistically challenged. But there were venues, and I made something of them.

My first article outside public forums was written after a trip to Belgium and published in the newsletter of the Center for Belgian Culture of Western Illinois. I published a series of three articles after a vacation while serving in the U.S. Army in Europe, the first appearing on Nov. 27, 1977. A friend who was editor patiently waited as I drafted, typed and mailed the copy from my apartment near the Mainz railway station. As busy as I was in a mechanized infantry battalion, it is a wonder these articles were even produced.

My current work appears here, on Blog for Iowa, and in three newspapers for whom I am a part time correspondent. The newest freelance job, for the Iowa City Press Citizen, was added to the mix yesterday. 2014 has been a year of learning the peculiar requirements of writing for a newspaper, and doing it. By year’s end, I will have written about 50 newspaper articles. Between journal writing, blogging and newspaper writing there are venues enough to find meaningful expression, at least for now.

The second hard part about writing is staying focused. Sitting at the work station and crafting words and phrases on the computer screen or on paper. This takes discipline, and a willingness to avoid distraction. Some days it goes well, and others less so.

By design, today will be a day of writing. There are four articles in the works, and with a full slate of part time jobs to pay bills, it has to be. The rain left last night, and the chance of precipitation is zero throughout today. There will be a temptation to head outside to pick apples and peppers, or to work in the garage on a dozen projects, but it must be resisted. Even now I procrastinate—the writer’s natural inclination.

Yet when inspiration comes from a mysterious source, the words flow, almost automatically. It is those times we treasure as we write. Yet they don’t come without discipline and work.

To get to today took work, and some persistence. When I began writing four decades ago, I didn’t know how it would turn out. Now that I am here I can see the sacrifices that were necessary in the form of an unconventional approach to paying the bills, and a willingness to make sacrifices to see the world and gain understanding of part of it.

Was it worth it? I’m still here to tell the tale.