I headed west to Dickinson last Friday
to attend the annual Theodore Roosevelt symposium. This year's topic
was “Theodore Roosevelt and American Culture.” An attendee could
get three days of it, but I always just take in Friday's; it doesn't
cost anything that way.
The most appealing topic was “TR and
John Lomax: The Preservation of Cowboy Culture,” conducted by Hal
Cannon of Elko, NV. Cannon is the founding director of the Cowboy
Poetry Gathering held every winter in Elko. The main subject of his
talk dealt with the work of John Lomax who traveled the country with
a heavy voice recorder and collected the old poems and music that
made up the cowboy vocabulary of a time gone past. Theodore
Roosevelt endorsed Lomax's work feeling it represented something
worth preserving.
The more we hear about old TR, the
more fascinating he becomes. I recently purchased Doris Kearns
Goodwin's new book - The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William
Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism.
It's a long one, but I'll do some picking and choosing of sections
that interest me most.
Dickinson State
University counts their blessings that they jumped into the arena and
got named as the depository for TR's digital records. It's a huge
undertaking, but people will be able to become TR scholars from their
kitchen tables using a laptop. Now they want to build a new library
to house their efforts. The state legislature approved $13 million
for them provided they raise $3 million on their own.
TR's
reading habits intrigue people. He claims to have read a book a day
– who's to argue. The one great story about his reading habits has
to do when he tracked down three thieves who stole a boat belonging
to him from the Little Missouri River. He made them walk for three
days to reach Dickinson where they could be charged and jailed. As
he walked along behind, he read Tolstoy's Anna Karenina.
Doris
Kearns Goodwin's book tells of an incident early on in his political
career. It was a rough and tumble time controlled by political
bosses. He got bullied by three goons one day and promptly decked
two of them with his fists and watched the third one run away.
A
similar incident occurred in Wibaux, Montana when he established
residency in the Badlands. He went into a saloon looking for
something to eat. A drunk bully accosted him in there saying he
looked like a sissy. He then tried to get Roosevelt to buy him a
drink and pulled his pistols. TR knocked him out. The next morning
saw the bad guy jumping into a boxcar and getting a ride out of town.
… … …
