David Fenimore
Lecturer
Department of English Mail Stop 0098
University of Nevada, Reno NV 89557-0098 USA
1.775.682.6374 FAX: 1.775.784.6266

Bicycling Across America | Woody Guthrie | John Sutter | Zane Grey | Horace Greeley | Lewis Keseberg
 Teilhard | E.O. Wilson | University Distinguished Professor of the Humanities | John Muir Trail 2000 | Contact Me

These pages describe a bunch of stuff I do, including "Chautauqua" portrayals of historical characters like Woody Guthrie. Contact me for further details.

November 2nd, 2012: 1872 US Presidential candidate Horace Greeley gives a campaign speech at Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, Reno, Nevada.

October 13th, 2012: Captain John Sutter welcomes the latest batch of overland emigrants at the annual Donner Party Hike at Sugar Bowl's Mt. Judah Lodge, 1:00 PM.

July 14th, 2012: Woody's 100th Birthday Sing-along at Sundance Books in Reno.

July 20th, 2012: Annual Hootenanny with Woody and friends Pete & Cisco at Sorensen's Resort, a benefit for the Food Bank of Northern Nevada. Come sing along around the campfire in beautiful Hope Valley, California.

• With his old road buddies Pete & Cisco, Woody Guthrie rassles up support every summer for the Food Bank of Northern Nevada down at Sorensen's Resort. These boys is doing what they can to separate the money from the rich folks and spreadin' it around among the neediest among us, just like a feller in Galilee once said to do. You say it's socialism? We say it's the secret of all religions: give away all the stuff you don't need. And we'll do it again next summer, sure as I'm typin' this! See photos of past years here.

BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND! 

FRIDAY, JULY 20th, 2012
7:00 pm at SORENSEN'S RESORT in HOPE VALLEY, CALIFORNIA

A Hootenanny for the Food Bank Of Northern Nevada

with

WOODY GUTHRIE, DUST BOWL TROUBADOUR
and his good-time road buddies
PETE SEEGER and CISCO HOUSTON

•  

•  

• Crusaders against high rents, low wages, loan sharks, greedy bankers and lying politicians

• Straight from the Oklahoma dust bowl, the Texas oil boom towns gone bust, the long lonesome Lincoln Highway, and the migrant worker camps of California

• Braving dust storms, rain storms, hot deserts, cold mountains, farm foreclosures, railroad bulls and vigilante thugs to deliver their homemade songs, poems, jokes, stories, and no-nonsense wisdom

(NOTE: all songs are protected by US copyright law #1776-IWW and anyone singing them without our permission is a good friend of ours)

Admission $10/person, matched by Sorensen's, with all proceeds benefiting the Food Bank of Northern Nevada, who are feeding more hungry folks than ever before. Bring a jacket, bring the kids, and sing along around the campfire. Lyrics will be provided, and hot chocolate & cookies will be served. Communist literature will not be available, but most of us are already in the red.

Sorensen's Resort offers picturesque lodging, good food and fine drink in an idyllic mountain meadow setting. Public as well as private campgrounds are located nearby.

For more information go to http://www.sorensensresort.com/

__________________________

 Woody sez, "I've found that in America they won't let you starve to death. They will let you get mighty hungry, though.
Down in Oklahoma we're on grocery savings time, when we can get 'em, that is."

_____________________________

• Woody & Pete also showed up at the annual Teaching American History Summer Institute in Elko NV on June 10th, 2012.

__________________________

• Woody's doings last years:
  • July 22nd, 2011: Annual hootenanny with new improved sing-along songbook at Sorensen's -- thanks to you, we made over $1200 for the Food Bank of Northern Nevada! And the next day, a glorious bike ride up Monitor Pass!
  • April 9th, 2010: Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, Reno NV
  • April 16th, 2010: Estes Park CO Public Library
  • June 18th, 2010: Annual benefit with "Pete" for the Food Bank of Northern Nevada at Sorensen's Resort in Hope Valley CA -- and a ride up Carson Pass the next day!
  • June 25th, 2010: Hawkins Amphitheatre, Reno NV for the Nevada Humanities Chautauqua
  • August 15th, 2010: Woody 'n' Pete Benefit for Sierra Services Meals on Wheels program at Northstar-at-Tahoe CA
  • October 8th, 2010: 2nd International American Literary West conference, University of the Basque Country, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain
• And let's not forget Uncle Horace:
  • Lincoln's Birthday 2010: Horace Greeley addressed an "Experts and Insights" gathering at Sierra College in Truckee, reminiscing about the Great Emancipator and promoting his own 1872 run at the US Presidency.
     

Other days, other characters:

• January 10th, 2012. John Sutter defended his settlement of California and "taming" of the Indians at the Museum on Main, Pleasanton CA.
• September 19th, 2009: Zane Grey appeared at the irrepressible Desi Arnaz Jr's historic Boulder Theatre for a day of Chautauqua presentations with Tyler Stewart as Annie Oakley (below left) and Anita Watson as Mary McNair Mathews.
• 27 March 2009: Horace Greeley continued stumping for his 1872 candicacy with a visit to the Fort Collins Regional Library along Colorado's Front Range.
• 6 May 2009: Lewis Keseberg stood before the tribunal at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute in Reno, Nevada, and invited the members to judge whether he was guilty of the horrible and inhuman crimes of which he has been accused in connection with the unfortunate history of the Donner Party.
• 25 June 2009: Zane Grey explained to the audience at the Great Basin Chautauqua at Bartley Ranch, Reno, Nevada how he invented the western novel while setting numerous deep-sea fishing records.
•  

LOOKING BACK: I spent the first half of 2008 as a visiting professor at the University of the Basque Country in Donostia-San Sebastian, Spain. Read all about it here

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The flysch, along the Basque coast of northern Spain

Horace Greeley
Learn about Horace Greeley (that's me at left, as him). Horace returned this summer at the High Plains Chautauqua in -- of all places -- Greeley, Colorado!

•     You can see photos here.

Contact me if you'd like me to bring Uncle Horace to your neck of the woods. He's quite a character, as a perusal of his mid-nineteenth century editorials in the New York Daily Tribune will reveal, with something to say about almost anything. It's been over 10 years since I portrayed Horace, who was the second character I developed, and so I'm looking forward to reconstructing him using the techniques I've honed with my later characters.

Hear a radio interview with Horace Greeley recorded for Public Radio's Radio Curious by Mendocino County producer/host Barry Vogel.

• In the summer of 1997, Greeley joined Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Carnegie, Frederick Douglass, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Louisa May Alcott at the Democracy Challenged Chautauqua in Portsmouth NH, sponsored by the New Hampshire Humanities Council. Over 400 citizens thronged the tent each night, with overflow crowds at most of the daytime workshops. Every summer since then, the NHHC has produced a tent Chautauqua and associated workshops, including a Young Chautauqua program, at Portsmouth and other sites around the Granite State.

• Woody Guthrie! My portrayal of America's Dust Bowl balladeer debuted in June 2004 at Sand Harbor on Tahoe's East Shore. The ol' Restless Rambler has occasionally been part of a traveling exhibit on California labor history, and done benefits for Arts for the Schools and the Truckee Library in cooperation with our old friends Shiloh. Here's a list of not-so-recent appearances:

   

  • November 20th, 2009: Lunchtime program for the City of Las Vegas Downtown Cultural Series
  • with Tim Gorelangton (formerly of Shiloh) as "Pete," in a pair of benefits: at Northstar, for Sierra Senior Services's Meals-on-Wheels program (26 July 2009); and at the Cedar House for the Mountain Area Preservation Foundation (14 August 2009).
  • with Eleanor Roosevelt and Jackie Robinson on tour for the Maryland Humanities Council (5-10 July 2009)
  • Sorensen's Resort, Hope Valley CA. (July 2008) A benefit for the Food Bank of Northern Nevada. (We raised over $800!) Thanks to Tim Gorelangton ("Pete") and his trusty banjo. Not to mention his PA system. See photos here.
  • Arkansas Chautauqua, Smackover AR (June 2008)
  • at the Community Memorial Museum in Yuba City, California (29 September 2006)
  • at the Big Bear Valley Library in Big Bear Lake, California (29 July 2006)
  • at the Eco-Farm Conference, Asilomar, California (26 January 2006)
  • with Shiloh, Truckee Library Benefit, West End Pavilion, Donner Lake CA (29 July 2005)
  • with Utah Phillips and Gerald Gough as John L. Lewis, at Nevada County Library, Nevada City CA (22 July 2005)
  • Los Angeles Maritime Museum (29 March 2005)
  • Arts for the Schools Benefit w/Shiloh (19 March 2005)
  • San Diego Public Library (12 March 2005)
  • Oxnard Library
  • Boulder City Chautauqua
  • High Plains Chautauqua
  • Great Basin Chautauqua
    • Reno Gazette-Journal article about this event
  • Lake Tahoe Chautauqua [where my Woody had his debut, at right]

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  Woody's Columbia River episode: a paper I gave to the Western Literature Association in Tacoma, Washington (October 2007)

  • "Folk Songs for Sale: Woody Guthrie's Columbia River Compromise"

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  Captain John A. Sutter [at left] appeared at the 2006 Great Basin Chautauqua in Reno with Donner Party survivor Margaret Breen as portrayed by Doris Dwyer. He showed up again on 7 October 2006 at the 14th annual Donner Party Hike in Truckee, California. Captain Sutter also appeared on Sunday 23 September 2007 at The Emigrant Experience, a fundraiser for the Nevada County Library in Truckee, California, again accompanied by Dr. Dwyer as Margaret Breen.

  John Sutter (1803-1880)
  I developed Sutter (that's the real him, at right) with support from the California Council for the Humanities, which from 1998 to 2001 sponsored History Alive! The Gold Rush Sesquicentennial Chautauqua, featuring Sutter and a dozen other diverse early California characters on tour up and down the state.

   

What is "Chautauqua," anyway? To take Woody Guthrie as an example, I follow the traditional model by presenting a 30-40 minute monologue woven from Woody's own words and snippets of his songs. Woody then takes questions in character. Lastly, I resume my own identity to lead a discussion of Woody and his times from a current perspective. My other characters take a similar approach, all based on primary texts and the latest historical scholarship.

• Historical background of "Chautauqua"
• The Modern or "Humanities" Chautauqua Movement
• Woody Guthrie Foundation & Archives home page.
• Some John Sutter materials.

Zane Grey, DDS, or "Doc," another character of mine, periodically flickers to life as he did in in summer 2009 for the Nevada Humanities Chautauqua and in 2005 for appearances at the Arkansas Museum of Natural Resources and at the University of the Basque Country in  Vitoria-Gastez, Spain. A version of my 1993 play on Doc's life, A Bad Boy Grown Up, was produced in October 2005 by the Readers Theatre at the annual Western Literature Association conference in Los Angeles, and forms the basis for my one-person show.

• Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955)

  Read my review of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: Writings.
  Ed. Ursula King. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1999. Published in ISLE:
  Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment (2001)

       E.O. Wilson (1929- )   

  • "A Globe, Clothing Itself with a Brain" -- a 1995 article from Wired by Jennifer Cobb Kreisberg on Teilhard, a (not so obscure) Jesuit paleontologist and ecophilosopher, who in 1938 foresaw global interconnectivity, but who, a little in the manner of Galileo, was supressed and exiled by the Vatican.
  • E. O. Wilson presentation, centering on Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (1998)

Teaching | Bicycling Across America | Woody Guthrie | John Sutter | Zane Grey | Horace Greeley | Lewis Keseberg
 Teilhard | E.O. Wilson | University Distinguished Professor of the Humanities | John Muir Trail 2000 | Contact Me

Last Updated: 10 October 2012