This is another in my series of small poems honoring some of the forgotten women of the Wild West. You can see poems about Stagecoach Annie, Etta Place and Cathay Williams, too. The poems are my attempt to capture the voice and story of these women. This one is about Belle Starr, known as the Bandit Queen. She was associated with Jesse James and his gang.
Peace (in remembering the past),
Kevin
This is my third poetic “discovery” from the historical archives of a famous woman of the “Wild West.” I have been writing a digital poem for each, trying to capture their voice and their story, with the writing superimposed on an image of the woman (I can’t 100 percent vouch for the historical accuracy of each photo).
I have explored the lives of Etta Place and Stagecoach Mary.
Today, I look at Cathay Williams, a former slave who pretended to be man so that she could fight in the Civil War, and then was discovered to be a man, so she went West to continue to make a life for herself in the White Man’s World (my emphasis).
Peace (in the forgotten),
Kevin
I brought the idea of a Folded Story to my Western106 folks, hoping to create a 25-fold story (one piece at a time, as exquisite corpse) with a Western theme. I had a good handful of folks participate, so I was happy to be collaborating.
Here is what we ended up with. Strange, yes? But centered on a sort of Western theme? Yes. Success! (The word cloud is the text of the story. I guess we like our coffee, and the sheriff made a late but regular appearance.)
Everything is West of Here (A folded story of the West) by KevinHodgson
Funny how it ended on a cliffhanger … Where does it go from here?
Peace (beyond the fold),
Kevin
I’m just exploring some famous women of the West who may have been lost to the history books (written by us white men). I’m using some biographical material to write poems, layering the poems on an image (as best as I can verify), and hoping to expand the narrative of the Wild West. The other day I wrote about Stagecoach Mary.
Here is a poem for Etta Place. She apparently was part of Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid and all them others, but when they were either captured or killed, Etta disappeared.
Peace (in the shift),
Kevin
My editor at Middleweb, John, saw some of my tweets about #Western106, so he sent me a collection of Western magazines (how cool is that?) and an interesting book by Stephanie Bearce entitled Top Secret Files: The Wild West. It’s a non-fiction book for middle school readers that has some cool information in it and some fine myth debunking, too. Bearce also gives over quite a few pages to the forgotten Women of the West. As I read these profiles, I got inspired to write some poems about these woman. I used Canva to create these as digital static poems.
I intend to share one every day or two this week. The first poem is about Stagecoach Mary (Fields), a black woman who worked hard to gain respect and used her physical strength to silence those who would question her.
I gathered the images online, and given the time period we are talking about and muddy history of these women (a mix of those who followed the law and those who broke the law), I can’t vouch for the accuracy. I did my best to use the pictures of these woman from Top Secret Files with the images I found online.
Peace (in the rememberin’),
Kevbin
We’re still hoping to do a Tall Tale radio project for some of us stragglers on the open range of #Western106 but, as Alan Levine noted, since we are A Course with No Course, there’s no time rush on it.
Still, I was listening to a Tall Tale the other day, and thinking of the narrative arc that such a story of hyperbole often follows. The diagram above is my attempt to make sense of the story form, knowing that not every Tall Tale follows this pattern.
If you want to join in on the collaborative Tall Tale story venture we aim to cook up, add your name to this open document. We’re going to keep entry point low and simple, but hope to have fun spinning a tale or two around the campfire.
Head to Tellin’ Tales (a working title for now) to get involved. We’ll be in touch.
Peace (everywhere, all the time, and that’s not telling tales),
Kevin
The other day, I shared out the song that I wrote and recorded as part of inquiry with #Western106 open storytelling adventure. I thought it might be interesting to share out my notebook page, showing the scribbles as the song took shape. I can read it. Can you? (I did a little filtering in Flickr, to spice up the image).
This is pretty typical for me, crossing out words and using arrows to show where things might go. I’m working out structure with my pencil as I play the guitar and sing.
Peace (in the writing),
Kevin
The Carolina Panther’s star quarterback Cam Newton is called a “gunslinger.”
The meeting between Patriots (Tom Brady) and Broncos (Peyton Manning) was a “showdown” or predicated to be a “shoot-out” (it wasn’t) between the two great athletes.
Manning says his visit to the Superbowl might be his “last rodeo.”
Reading the sports page these days under the lens of the #Western106 reminds us how the National Football League has co-opted the violent language of the Wild West for entertainment value. Just think of some of the team names: Cowboys, Broncos, and more.
Even when team owners meet, the media uses the Wild West as its central anchor point.
I get why this language has seeped into the culture of the National Football League. It is a violent sport, and the violence is part of the entertainment value. By connecting the language and rhetoric of the Wild West to the NFL, the media and NFL support a narrative, particularly that of the Lone Quarterback who leads his team/town to Victory over the Enemy in a time of great need.
It’s Clint on the football field. Or Shane. Or ….(insert hero) The language creates a story that people can connect with, and that the NFL can “sell” as a brand to its audience and the world.
I get it, but I remain fascinated by it, and worried about the violent nature of the rhetoric, too, and I know I will be more attuned to it now.
Peace (on the field),
Kevin
With all the inquiry of the symbolic meaning of “The West” in our #Western106 open course, I started to wonder if I could write a song that might capture the essence of moving West. I struggled with the writing of a song, though. I am no Western singer, so I began to rethink the narrative. Maybe the narrator is giving up on the East and heading West, and maybe the time period is rather elusive. It could be set today, or yesterday, or years ago.
The phrase “Everything is West of Here” began to settle into my mind, and as I heard the drum track — the loping, clip-clopping rhythm — I found the heart of the song, particularly when the chorus of “I’m moving out West, into the break of day” arrived on my paper in my handwritten scrabble (I guess I wrote it, right?) A variation is “I’m heading out West” in the second verse.
So, this song is about leaving a life behind and moving West to start anew, with all the struggles and hardship both the leaving and renewal will bring. And hope, too. There’s hope on that pony as our rider head up over the mountains.
This is one of the slowest songs I have written. My bandmates often chide me for bringing in songs that I write that fall under the 3 minute mark. “Give it another chorus” or “Where’s the break” or “Write another verse” — this is what they tell me. I don’t often listen to them (they know this). I’m from the Elvis Costello School of Songwriting: Say it under three minutes, or risk boredom or repetition. But I kept myself patient here, letting the horse amble its way forward towards the last verse in this one.
I recorded the song first a scratch demo on the day I wrote it, but it sounded awful. (I’m no singer, so that doesn’t help). I then found time to use Soundtrap (my fav recording platform right now) to re-record, adding the drums, and then using some synth sounds to capture the twangy guitar chords and the slide-guitar-ish lead. I was trying to use some of the tropes of Western songs to give mine the same feel, even if it isn’t really a Western song.
Peace (in the muse),
Kevin
I’m past 20 now. Twenty-odd daily comics for The Wild West Adventures of the Internet Kid, an idea that was sparked by my participation in the open Western106 story adventure. I thought I would take a breather here to reflect on how it’s going for me, the writer (I make an appearance now and then in the comic, usually for criticism for not writing better comics or not paying attention to equity issues. Guilty as charged!).
Well, breather, plus today’s comic:
So far, so good with my idea of a daily comic, although I have very little idea if anyone is reading them. A few comments and reactions trickle in now and then. I’m still more focused on the question for myself: Am I having fun making the comics? I am and so, I keep on going forward. In fact, I have at least another 15 comics in the bank, set to go forth, including one story arc that will invite readers to play a game. I also have an ending comic, for when I get there.
The way I have been writing them is in bursts. In fact, the first weekend when I had the idea for the Internet Kid, I had a deluge of comic making. I cranked out about 15 of them in a three-day weekend, just keeping up with the ideas. I won’t claim that every comic every day is great, but I hope they add a little entertainment chuckle value for folks now and then.
What I am really trying to with The Wild West Adventures of the Internet Kid is to combine some of the elements of the Western genre (the cowboy, the horse, the villain) with some insights into the modern culture of technology. It’s trickier than it seems to pull that off in an entertaining way. I am often trying to make fun at the stereotypes of gender, making the so-called villain — Anarchist Annie — an interesting character, or so I hope. Her goal is to poke holes in the bias of our world. Sometimes, she blows things up to make her point crystal clear.
In fact, a few of the storylines and comics are pulled directly from my reading of Participatory Culture in a Networked Era, a slow-read in the Digital Writing Month community. If you have read that book (and you should), and if you read The Internet Kid (which, of course, I hope you do), you will start to see some parallels of ideas around technology and learning and young people’s interactions in the Digital Age that surfaced there in that study of participatory culture by Henry Jenkins, Mimi Ito and danah boyd, and then got woven here into this comic.
The app I used to make comics — Comics Head — has limits, particularly to expressions of characters (although an upgrade this weekend with a ton of new art seems to open the door for adding more elements .. still checking that out). But I do appreciate the flexibility of the Comics Head app for what I am doing as a comic strip writer. (And I have not yet used the Audio element on The Internet Kid … which allows you to layer in audio tracks on top of the comic .. on my list)
I am purposefully posting the comics in different places — on Twitter with the #western106 hashtag, in Flickr in an album, and on a Tumblr site that I set up just for the comics (it turns out Tumblr is a perfect space for daily comics). Sometimes, I share on Google Plus. I also have the feed of the Tumblr site spilling into the DS106 course. I wonder if anyone else other than me uses an RSS Reader to peruse the posts going there and make comments?
Can I just give a shout-out to my favorite character in my comic?
The Horse with No Name just cracks me up. I hadn’t even thought of a horse until I had the Kid in mind, and then .. of course he needed a horse. The Kid is a cowboy. But not just any horse. The Horse with No Name (cue: America song) has his own personality.
He refuses to let The Kid ride him and the Horse even negotiates an agreement with the Kid on this matter (The Kid agrees but worries what other cowboys will think of him). Yet, the Horse with No Name remains a funny and insightful sidekick to The Kid.
I think, as the writer, I am the Horse with No Name more than I am The Internet Kid. (Maybe I have some Anarchist Annie in me, too.) This particular comic of the animals having a farmyard chat about The Kid, in particular, still makes me giggle. I love how the Horse has the tablet and the image of The Kid on it. Look at The Kid’s posture and expression. Priceless. We know who is really in charge of their partnership.
Peace (more comics to come),
Kevin