The Obsessive Reader's Cultured Ghetto

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Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Allensworth In Memoriam: Parnell Lovelace

Col. Allen Allensworth, founder

The Obsessive Reader, as you know, is also an obsessive writer. Take a look at my essay, "Black Utopia," on historic Allensworth, California and the little known black town movement on the Dr. Pop blog, part of an edition that explores Utopia.

Mrs. Josephine Allensworth

I post it in memory of my dear friend and comrade-in-arms, Parnell Lovelace, the most effective advocate for Col. Allensworth State Historic Park. Parnell died on February 27. His memorial service is tomorrow, March 3, in San Diego. I am honored to be making remarks at the service. Well done, Parnell, well done. Rest in peace.

Allenworth was founded in 1908, forty miles north of Bakersfield in the San Joaquin Valley. The first black independent town, Brooklyn Illinois was established in 1830, the last in 1910, Dearfield, Colorado. Some of the more famous settlements were Boley, Oklahoma, founded 1903, and Nicodemus, Kansas, now a National Park, started in 1878.

2 comments:

Eric Coyne, Visalia, CA said...: Susan:

You are right, Parnell will be greatly missed. I miss him terribly. I know you were close and you loved him, too. I so enjoyed my long conversations with him over the years. I can never think of Allensworth without thinking of Parnell. And you.; March 3, 2011 at 10:40 AM
The Obsessive Reader said...: So great to hear from you, Eric. I've sent you and email. Let's stay in touch.

Susan; March 3, 2011 at 9:27 PM

A COMMON READER

If this is so, if to read a book as it should be read calls for the rarest qualities of imagination, insight, and judgment, you may perhaps conclude that literature is a very complex art and that it is unlikely that we shall be able, even after a lifetime of reading, to make any valuable contribution to its criticism. We must remain readers; we shall not put on the further glory that belongs to those rare beings who are also critics. But still we have our responsibilities as readers and even our importance. The standards we raise and the judgments we pass steal into the air and become part of the atmosphere which writers breathe as they work. An influence is created which tells upon them even if it never finds its way into print. And that influence, if it were well instructed, vigorous and individual and sincere, might be of great value now when criticism is necessarily in abeyance; when books pass in review like the procession of animals in a shooting gallery, and the critic has only one second in which to load and aim and shoot and may well be pardoned if he mistakes rabbits for tigers, eagles for barndoor fowls, or misses altogether and wastes his shot upon some peaceful cow grazing in a further field.If behind the erratic gunfire of the press the author felt that there was another kind of criticism, the opinion of people reading for the love of reading, slowly and unprofessionally, and judging with great sympathy and yet with great severity, might this not improve the quality of his work? And if by our means books were to become stronger, richer, and more varied, that would be an end worth reaching.

Virginia Woolf, A Common Reader, Second Series, How Should One Read a Book?

I can read in red. I can read in blue.
I can read in pickle color too.
I can read in bed, and in purple, and in brown.
I can read in a circle and upside down!
I can read with my left eye. I can read with my right.
I can read Mississippi with my eyes shut tight!

There are so many things you can learn about.
But…you'll miss the best things
If you keep your eyes shut.
The more that you read, the more things you will know
The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.

If you read with your eyes shut you're likely to find
That the place where you're going is far, far behind
SO…that's why I tell you to keep your eyes wide.
Keep them wide open…at least on one side.

Dr. Seuss

The Obsessive Reader's Cultured Ghetto

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Allensworth In Memoriam: Parnell Lovelace

2 comments:

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