Midwestern writers

 I’m interested in the idea of place, and I’m interested in the way Scott Russell Sanders thinks about it. The notion of place is influenced by writers, and Sanders’s essay “Imagining the Midwest” is a survey of the region’s literature.

Sanders contends that writers from New England and the South tend to stay put, while writers from the Midwest tend to write in exile. Mark Twain wrote about Missouri and the Mississippi from Connecticut. Willa Cather wrote about Nebraska from New York. Ernest Hemingway wrote about Michigan from Paris. Sanders said:

 

Midwestern writers have not been so much lured elsewhere, I suspect, as driven out, by a combination of puritanical religion, utilitarian economics, and anti-intellectualism.

 

That idea is intriguing, but he added this:

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Nowhere was that religion harsher, fiercer, more hostile to sensuality or speculation than in the Midwest — or at least so it has seemed to our writers.

 

I’d say the Midwestern writers might have been astonished at the fierceness of religion in the South, where the practice of handling rattlesnakes as a test of faith is almost extinct. And while Babbitt might have the brand for anti-intellectualism, it was Tennessee that gave us the Snopes monkey trial and Texas that has been legislating what can’t be taught in history class. I’m not an expert, but if you’re looking for a decades-long record of attacks on academic freedom at universities, can anyone really beat the Texas Legislature?

I think that some of the forces that shaped Midwestern writers also are known in other parts of the country. But that’s just a disagreement about one point in a thought-provoking essay.

Sanders’s essays are always thought-provoking. I’m trying to read just about everything this Midwestern writer has written.

• Source: Scott Russell Sanders, Writing from the Center; Bloomington: University of Indiana, 1997. “Imagining the Midwest” is on pp. 22-51. The quotations are on p. 25.

Off the trail

 The Wise Woman was ever so tactful, but she wanted to know whether I had lost the trail.

The leaves have fallen so quickly it’s sometimes hard to know. The leaves are ankle deep on the forest floor. I know there’s a trail of packed earth somewhere out there, but the thick blanket covers everything.

While we were searching, we saw a buck, maybe 10 points, who seemed to be searching too. As we watched, a doe appeared — almost as if by magician’s trick — and the two went on their way.

We found the trail and went on ours.

Saluting a purged admiral

 One of the most interesting new members of Congress is Nancy Lacore of South Carolina, a retired rear admiral who was ousted in the purge of senior commanders by the secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth. The U.S. military is in a mess because Hegseth is a political ideologue — a yes man, rather than a manager and leader. Admiral Lacore strikes me as a person who knows how to clean up a mess.

I’ve complained about the purge of admirals and generals before. In the 1930s, Stalin purged the Red Army of professional commanders, replacing them with politically reliable officers. The Nazis took note. Although Germany was a much smaller country, it pushed the Soviet military around in the early part of the war. Stalin’s political appointments were inept.

In my view, no one has done more to weaken the U.S. military than Hegseth. The process for selecting the nation’s top commanders is selective and competitive. Hegseth forced excellent officers out. He got rid of women, minorities and people with advanced educational credentials.

He seems to have problems with people who can understand things he can’t. The purge was a terrible idea, but the Pentagon, under Hegseth, also is having difficulty managing contracts and overseeing the development of new weapons.

After being fired by Hegseth, Lacore, a Democrat, won a congressional seat in that had been heavily Republican. A lot of people who are interested in the Armed Forces think the Pentagon could do better. No one knows better than Admiral Lacore.

• For an earlier note complaining about the removal of top generals and admirals, see “Everyone knew it was a bad war,” April 16, 2026. It’s here:

https://hebertaylor.blogspot.com/2026/04/everyone-knew-it-was-bad-war.html

Coyotes

 Darwin said that when we’re talking about the survival of the fittest, we’re not talking about the strongest or most intelligent but about those that can adapt to change.

The coyote is an adaptable animal. As the human population has increased, coyotes have spread from the Southwest across the United States and Canada. Coyotes prevailed despite efforts to exterminate them.

You’d think that wolves, being bigger and stronger, would have fared better. But animals don’t just adapt to their environment. They also adapt within groups — within social structures.

Wolves have always been animals of the pack. They live within a rigid social structure. Coyotes are more flexible. They live alone, in pairs, in small groups and in packs.

I would love to better understand how that’s possible — how one species can incorporate greater flexibility in its social life.

I’d like to know whether human beings could do something similar — whether we could reorganize our social structures to do less damage to the environment, the habit we live in and depend on.

I’m reading Dan Flores’s Coyote America with pleasure. Flores loves coyotes as much as I do, although we see them from different points of view. Flores is interested in humanity’s tendency to see itself in the coyote, as I’ve just done with that crack about whether we humans could be as flexible as coyotes.

Flores’s thinking is heavy on history, anthropology and folklore. It’s fascinating, but I’m more interested in the biology — how it’s possible that one species of social animals can adapt when another cannot.

• Source and note: Dan Flores, Coyote America; New York: Basic Books, 2026. And thanks, Christopher, for the recommendation.

The news from Wally

 In 1565, the Spanish were on the coast of what’s now Georgia. They called the place Guale, which later generations of English speakers would pronounce “Wally.”

The place was named for a leader of the Guale people, who were distinct from the Timucua and Apalachee. Spanish Franciscans set up missions.

In 1597, a group of Guale people began killing priests. The match that lit the fire was a dispute over whether a local leader named Juanillo could take a second wife. But this was not a personal quarrel. It was an uprising, a broad dispute about who was going to make the rules, who was in charge. It was an attempt by one group to throw off the influence — the dominance — of another.

The Spanish entrepreneurs of the day were frank about their plans to exploit people for their labor and wealth. It was an age in which Spanish entrepreneurs kidnapped and enslaved native people to work on the sugar plantations in the Caribbean.

Some of the Franciscan fathers were the most outspoken critics of slavery and exploitation. Others went along with the crowd.

All this ancient history is not quite dead.

The Georgia Martyrs are a topic of discussion today Georgia. In 2025, Pope Francis authorized the bureau that examines questions of beatification and sanctification to recognize five priests as martyrs, murdered “in hatred of the faith.” At the cathedral in Savanah last weekend, there was a celebration of the martyrs. It was statewide news.

Two people can witness the same incident and come to different conclusions. That’s true of the events we witness today and true of the events of the past.

I don’t whether I have more sympathy for the massacrers or the massacred. I grieve for both.

In Georgia, 500 years ago

 The first Europeans in what is now Georgia were slave traders led by Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón.

The Spanish in the Caribbean had enslaved Africans but saw even greater possibilities in enslaving the natives of the New World. The plantations on Hispaniola and Cuba needed workers, and the Europeans thought of enslaving, rather than recruiting and paying. Georgia was closer than Africa. It was a shorter supply chain.

In 1526, Ayllón, sailing from Hispaniola with six ships and 600 people, tried to set up a settlement called San Miguel de Gualdape. Historians think it was on Sapelo Sound, between Savannah and Brunswick.

Among the 600 were enslaved Africans. Georgia historians say this is the first recorded instance of enslaved Africans arriving in what is now the United States.

The venture lasted six weeks. The Africans revolted. Native Americans attacked. Supplies ran out. Disease ravaged the Europeans, killing many, including Ayllón. His surviving lieutenants and business associates split into factions.

In November 1526, the colony broke up. Historians say 150 of the 600 made it back to Hispaniola.

I’ve heard people talk about American Exceptionalism all my life. I always wonder whether these folks read much history.

American Exceptionalism stories tend to sound like Disney movies. This story is closer to a Cormac McCarthy novel.

• Source: Christopher C. Meyers and David Williams, Georgia: A Brief History; Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 2023, pp. 4-5. Usage of the name of Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón varies, but I mostly found Ayllón.

Politics and purity

 One of the most intriguing political stories in Georgia was about a fight that involved no Democrats.

All the combatants were Republicans. The case went to the state supreme court.

The question was: Who can be a member of the party?

A handful of candidates in a rural county contended that primary voters should decide.

But the county’s Republican Party Committee declared it had the right to screen candidates and reject those who were not conservative enough.

The supreme court followed the law and allowed primary voters to decide.

The case is funny because this much is obvious: If you wanted to lose an election, an efficient way to go about it would be to conduct an inquisition and exclude all those who were not doctrinally pure enough.

The case is sobering because the tendency toward puritanism runs in all political parties.

I would love to see people who care about the public’s business become more tolerant of diverse ideas so that they could form a broader consensus that is less tolerant of autocracy, corruption and cruelty.