This post originally published on Nov. 13, 2022.
Vol. 17
November 11, 2022
Intro | Essay | Locally Sourced | Now Read This | Final Frame
Hello. It’s been…awhile. I’d apologize, but honestly I think we can all relate to what a bastard of a year it’s been and how time is a flat circle and late-stage capitalism tries to force us to chase a feeling of productivity that is unhealthy and unsustainable.
Also I’ve been using social media too much and it rots my writing brain. So there’s that, too.
Anyway, here we are, with another edition of my little newsletter. This suddenly feels more important to utilize now that Twitter appears to be imploding under the genius guidance of Elon Musk, world’s richest fuckboi.
(Still there, fiddling as Rome burns, though)
I’m going to try to keep these up more regularly again, but with a shorter/tighter format and more focus on allowing myself to write short essays about pretty much anything. Buckle up or feel free to do other things with your time! Of course, I hope you stick around and also send me your own recommendations for good things/people you’re reading, places you’re exploring, and so on. The point of this thing isn’t for me to shout into a void–it is, as with just about everything I do, an attempt at connection of some kind.
Anyway, yeah, it’s been a fucking weird year of extreme highs and lows, much of it deeply personal, though plenty of it coming from, you know, everything. I sincerely hope you all are taking good care of yourselves and each other, and getting whatever rest and/or support you need. If not, well, further motivation to fuck shit up until we get that better world we so desperately need.
Essay: This Land Is Our/Your/Their Land
On Madison’s near west side, hugging the wide black ribbon of the Beltline Highway just before it begins to curve north as though magnetically pulled toward Middleton, car dealerships and shiny new mixed-use buildings suddenly and briefly give way to a wall of trees.
The UW-Madison Arboretum, at 1,260 acres of mixed prairie, oak savanna, and woodland, is a natural gem, smack dab in the middle of the city. Most Madisonians are familiar with the larger, main section where the preserve borders Lake Wingra to the north and the highway to the south. That’s where the main visitor center is located, as well as the Longenecker Horticultural Garden, where cherry trees blossom in the spring and more than a few wedding and graduation portrait sessions happen.
It’s a wonderful place and we’re lucky to have such an accessible space to enjoy nature. The lesser known and perhaps not as heavily trafficked part of the Arboretum–the Grady Tract–lies just to the south of where the Beltline bisects the property. It’s accessible via a narrow, dark tunnel that connects walking trails on either side, or a small parking lot just off Seminole Highway where it crosses the Beltline.
I went hiking there for the first time not long ago. The Grady tract is itself another beautiful spot–pine forest giving way to oak savanna and prairie, with a marshland along the southern border that was, at the time anyway, a winter bird sanctuary filled with boisterous starlings, cedar waxwings, bluejays, chickadees, and juncos.
As I made the loop back around to where I’d begun my walk, though, I came across something that made me stop in my tracks and begin to think of the place through a very different lens. An interpretive sign at the side of the trail outlines the history of the people who’d once settled and farmed the land where this peaceful nature preserve now stands.
I was pleasantly surprised to read about Notley Henderson, a formerly enslaved Black man from Kentucky who moved to Madison in the 1860s to work for the white man who had a farm on the land that now largely makes up the northern parcel of the Arboretum. Henderson eventually earned enough money to buy and farm his own land–now part of the Grady tract. He and his wife, Martha, had three children, one of whom–Allen–eventually took over the farm and ran it with his wife and two sons.
As I read on, however, the story took a tragic and all-too familiar turn:
“The Hendersons raised chickens and sold eggs until 1927 when tragedy struck. Allen Henderson (Notley’s son) and his son Walter were shot by neighbor Harvey Nelson, who had returned from WWI shell-shocked. Ida Henderson and son Paul continued on at the farm for another 13 years. The Arboretum acquired part of the farm and planted pines and spruce in 1954. Most of the Henderson homestead was destroyed when the Department of Transportation built and expanded the Beltline in 1949 and 1969.”
I was immediately struck by how much was surely left unsaid in that short text. To know anything of Madison’s history (or the history of most American cities) is to understand the legacy of racism via both personal interactions and official policies. In the story of the Henderson farm, it seems, all the highs and lows of America’s history played out in an intensely intimate manner: the promise and then defeat of Reconstruction, Jim Crow-era racism and resentments (yes, even in the North), the human fallout from war, redlining and so-called “urban renewal” that often saw the breaking up of Black and Brown communities via highway and interstate projects.
Curious, I turned to a recently published book on Madison’s Black history: “Settlin’: Stories of Madison’s Early African American Families” by Muriel Simms offers a fairly exhaustive look back at the Black people who came to the capitol city and built a community here.
Sure enough, Notley and Allen Henderson’s story is included, and Simms provides more detail than the interpretive sign. Rather than writing off Nelson’s murder of father and son as the results of PTSD from the war, Simms notes that the white neighbor was “known to be upset about what he believed were slanderous words he heard one of the Hendersons say about White people.” After being confronted by police about the murders, Nelson died by suicide.
We can go even further back, too: Indigenous people have called the area in and around Madison home for at least 12,000 years. The Ho-Chunk, still very much a present and thriving nation today, are some of the decendants of those earliest settlers and the mound builders who left their mark all across the state, including within the Arboretum.
~*~
I’m glad there are signs that at least touch on this longer, more complex history. It’s a small thing, in the end, and seemingly miles better than the erasure that took place for too long. But I’m left with a feeling of incompleteness. In losing important details and nuances, what and whose narrative is ultimately being served? Who gets to decide what goes on the signs, or into the walking tours, or on the websites? I’m sure I don’t have the answers.
Regardless, I do believe it’s important for us to know these histories. They help remind us that we are all temporary caretakers of the land and water, never owners. And that we have the wherewithal to avoid and make meaningful reparations for the mistakes of the past–if we want to.
Wanting to, I think, comes from feeling truly connected to a place and its people, past and present. Taking a walk and really looking helps. Learning the names and stories of things helps, too. I’m trying to spend more time listening and learning, remembering, and asking questions. I believe our hearts and minds have infinite capacity for all of it, if we open ourselves to it.
~*~
Locally Sourced
“The relief and troubling lessons of Wisconsin’s midterm election”
Christina Lieffring continues to be an important voice–and Tone a vital resource–for insightful political commentary in Madison/Wisconsin.
The long-awaited Madison Public Market may be dead in the water. I really hope it’s not.
Now Read This
adrienne marie brown has a wonderful, regular column for Yes! Magazine
"We must become accountable to our time, our earth, our species, our people, and our loved ones, from the inside out."
Final Frame.
‘Til Next Time.
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