Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Ray E. Boomhower @rboomhower.bsky.social · 14h

For John Lennon's birthday (OTD 1940), here's an article I did for the "Indiana Daily Student" about a memorial service for him following his murder in December 1980. I remember the piece as one of the best I produced during my three years at the student newspaper.

2 5

Ray E. Boomhower @rboomhower.bsky.social · 14h

Did you know? In addition to winning two Pulitzer Prizes for his fiction, Hoosier author Booth Tarkington served a term in office as an Indiana legislator--a good one at that.
rayboomhower.blogspot.com/2019/07/penr...

Penrod and Politics: Booth Tarkington in the Indiana Legislature

Marion County voters faced a dizzying array of choices in the March 1902 Republican primary. Nineteen GOP candidates were vying for the se...

rayboomhower.blogspot.com

3

Ray E. Boomhower @rboomhower.bsky.social · 14h

I will be part of a panel talking about Hoosier author Booth Tarkington this Saturday as part of the @indianahumanities.bsky.social's Proof Midwest Literary Fest.
indianahumanities.org/event/the-le...

The Legacies of Booth Tarkington - Indiana Humanities

Booth Tarkington is one of just four authors to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction twice, putting him in a category with William Faulkner, John Updike, and Colson Whitehead. However,...

indianahumanities.org

2 8

Ray E. Boomhower @rboomhower.bsky.social · 14h

"If a demonstration must be planned, a speech delivered, a parade led, a picket line established, and the authorities were frowning on the act, it was Mary Donovan who accomplished it. She feared neither the policeman’s club, the trooper’s horse, nor the jailer’s cell.”

1 2

Ray E. Boomhower @rboomhower.bsky.social · 16h

During a Sacco and Vanzetti demonstration at Boston Common, a man came up to her, identified himself as a policeman, and said he wanted to be where the trouble was. "Stick with me brother," Donovan told him, "and you'll be where the trouble is."

1 3

Ray E. Boomhower @rboomhower.bsky.social · 16h

Donovan, who married labor organizer Powers Hapgood, was heavily involved in trying to save the lives of anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, winning, from Upton Sinclair, the designation of being the "Irish ex-Catholic Joan of Arc of the labor movement."

1 1 4

Ray E. Boomhower @rboomhower.bsky.social · 16h

"We were always poor," she recalled of her childhood. "I didn't have to 'get interested' in the underdog--I was one myself."

1 1 3

Ray E. Boomhower @rboomhower.bsky.social · 16h

Here's to one of this country's original antifa activists, Mary Donovan Hapgood, the first woman to run for governor in Massachusetts (1928) and Indiana (1940), both times as the candidate of the Socialist Party.

1 9 46

Ray E. Boomhower @rboomhower.bsky.social · 16h

“You write for the people in high school who ignored you. We all do.”
Carolyn Kizer

1

Reposted by Ray E. Boomhower

Emily Hopkins is reporting for Mirror Indy @emilyhopkins.bsky.social · 17h

Heartland Film Festival AND Proof: A Midwest Lit Fest? Truly a blessed month for the arts in Indy.

mirrorindy.org/heartland-in...

What to watch at Heartland International Festival

The film festival will screen local and national movies and documentaries Oct. 9-19, including big names like Will Ferrell, America Ferrera and Natalie Portman.

mirrorindy.org

4 5

Ray E. Boomhower @rboomhower.bsky.social · 17h

On this day in 2010 Scott Russell Sanders (center) won the national award in the Indiana Authors Award. Greg Schwipps (right), from Milan, received the emerging author award. And I was fortunate enough to be named the regional honoree. Quite a day.

3

Ray E. Boomhower @rboomhower.bsky.social · 17h

"A certain combination of incompetence and indifference can cause almost as much suffering as the most acute malevolence."
Bruce Catton

3

Ray E. Boomhower @rboomhower.bsky.social · 17h

“Our masks, always in peril of smearing or cracking,
In need of continuous check in the mirror or silverware,
Keep us in thrall to ourselves, concerned with our surfaces."
Carolyn Kizer, who died on this day in 2014

1 1

Ray E. Boomhower @rboomhower.bsky.social · 19h

"Even the most painstaking history is a bridge across an eternal mystery."
Bruce Catton, born on this day in 1899

1 4

Ray E. Boomhower @rboomhower.bsky.social · 1d

"The constitution does not provide for first and second class citizens."
Wendell Willkie

3

Ray E. Boomhower @rboomhower.bsky.social · 1d

"I began to work in shifts, working a few hours, sleeping a few hours, going out of my room only to buy some eggs, bread, coffee and cans of tomato juice. Jesus, the stuff I turned out. Sometimes only a thousand words, but often as many as 10,000 a day."
rayboomhower.blogspot.com/2019/04/the-...

The Codebreaker and the Book: Hoosier Herbert O. Yardley

As American retailers prepared for a grim holiday shopping season in December 1930 during the early economic trials of the Great Depression,...

rayboomhower.blogspot.com

1 1

Ray E. Boomhower @rboomhower.bsky.social · 1d

“You don't write for success. That takes part of your attention away from the writing. If you're really doing it, that's all you're doing: writing.”
Frank Herbert, born on this day in 1920

1 1 7

Ray E. Boomhower @rboomhower.bsky.social · 1d

“Now more than ever we must keep in the forefront of our minds the fact that whenever we take away the liberties of those we hate, we are opening the way to loss of liberty for those we love.”
Wendell Willkie

2 41 130

Ray E. Boomhower @rboomhower.bsky.social · 1d

"Read. Read. Read. Just don't read one type of book. Read different books by various authors so that you develop different styles."
R. L. Stine, born on this day in 1943

1 28 150

Ray E. Boomhower @rboomhower.bsky.social · 1d

“a man wholly natural in manner . . . a good, sturdy, able, plain Hoosier . . . a man as American as the courthouse yard in the square of an Indiana county seat.”
rayboomhower.blogspot.com/2019/06/the-...

The Dark Horse: Wendell Willkie and the 1940 Election

In late June 1940, just days after France had fallen to Nazi Germany, delegates to the Republican Party’s national convention gathered in...

rayboomhower.blogspot.com

1 4

Ray E. Boomhower @rboomhower.bsky.social · 1d

"Freedom is an indivisible word. If we want to enjoy it, and fight for it, we must be prepared to extend it to everyone, whether they are rich or poor, whether they agree with us or not, no matter what their race or the color of their skin."
Wendell Willkie, Indiana's own, who died OTD in 1944

5 32 140

Ray E. Boomhower @rboomhower.bsky.social · 2d

“. . . the relationship between the biographer and his subject is the most intimate one in the world of letters, both affectionate and adversarial, as delicately strung with tensions as a long marriage.”
William Zinsser #biography

1 1

Ray E. Boomhower @rboomhower.bsky.social · 2d

Still amazed that William Zinsser took only a few months during the summer of 1974 (June to Labor Day) to finish 85 percent of what became a book that has sold more than 1.5 million copies--"On Writing Well." The idea for the book came from his wife Carolyn.

3

Ray E. Boomhower @rboomhower.bsky.social · 2d

“Good biographers, like good reporters, make their own luck.”
William Zinsser #biography

1

Ray E. Boomhower @rboomhower.bsky.social · 2d

"One of underestimated tasks in nonfiction writing is to impose narrative shape on an unwieldy mass of material."
William Zinsser
(True!)

1 6 15