MUSE - Inspired by Utah - Spring 2019

Spring 2019 THE JOURNEYS ISSUE

Cover Story: Portrait of a Railroad Poem | 18

MUSE I N S P I R E D B Y U TA H

COVER PRICE $5

APRIL 2019

SPECIAL EDITION FOR SUBSCRIBERS OF DESERET NEWS AND THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE

SPOTLIGHT

In a crowded school hallway, two troubadours rehearse songs of protest as a smartly dressed girl sips her tea. Nearby, “guys and dolls” wearing flapper dresses and zoot suits practice a song-anddance routine while skillfully evading passing soldiers, labor organizers and suffragettes.

Every year, a similar scene repeats itself in the gyms, classrooms and hallways of schools throughout the state as thousands of students compete in Utah History Day. Along with the eye-catching dramatic performance category, students also build exhibits, design websites and even create documentary films that focus on a historical person or event.

Beginning in the fourth grade, students compete locally, while junior high and high school students aim to qualify for the annual state competition. Approximately 50 students from the state competition qualify each year for the National History Day finals, held in Washington, D.C. every June.

Although the competition has an annual theme — “Triumph and Tragedy in History” for 2018-19 — the topics chosen by students vary widely. One stretch of exhibits in the 2018 state competition included the Green Berets, Martin Luther’s doctrinal challenge, Billie Holiday and Claudette Colvin, who was arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white woman months before Rosa Parks.

Utah History Day has been run by the Division of State History since 2014. During that time, Dr. Wendy Rex-Atzett and her team have increased participation in the program by more than 90 percent.

In 2018-19, nearly 8,000 students participated statewide.

— Josh Loftin

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SPOTLIGHT

MUSE

Publishing BRENT LOW Project Manager MEGAN DONIO

| Publisher JOSH LOFTIN | Art Director SARINA V. EHRGOTT | Designer & Staff Photographer TODD ANDERSON | Copy Editor CATHERINE REESE NEWTON

Editor In Chief ELLEN FAGG WEIST Designer KERRY SHAW

UTAH MEDIA GROUP: 4770 S. 5600 W. West Valley City UT 84118 801-204-6300 | utahmediagroup.com This guide is a publication of the Utah Department of Heritage & Arts and published in partnership with Utah Media Group. This publication is distributed by subscription through the Deseret News and The Salt Lake Tribune on a semi-annual basis. Copyright © April 2019. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any format without consent of both the Utah Department of Heritage & Arts and Utah Media Group.

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USERVEUTAH • DIVISION OF STATE HISTORY • OFFICE OF MULTICULTURAL AFFAIRS UTAH STATE LIBRARY • DIVISION OF INDIAN AFFAIRS • DIVISION OF ARTS & MUSEUMS Executive Director JILL REMINGTON LOVE | Deputy Director KERRI NAKAMURA

> heritageandarts.utah.gov

TA B L E O F C O N T E N T S

I N SI DE ABOUT THIS ISSUE

Sometimes, it takes setting out on creative journeys with writers, artists, historians and bookmobile drivers to be reinspired by the place where we live. In this issue of MUSE, we seized the opportunity to tell stories about the journeys of the people who live and create throughout the state. This is just the first chapter of our storytelling look at Utah’s creative communities, a chance to remind ourselves why culture matters. > heritageandarts.utah.gov/muse-spring-19

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Cover Story

PORTRAIT OF A RAILROAD POEM

A commission to write a poem about the Transcontinental Railroad turned into an eightmonth exploration of American and Utah history for Utah Poet Laureate Paisley Rekdal. As she navigated the intersections of race, class, gender, violence and technology that define the railroad then and now, she also learned more about her own Chinese roots.

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SPOTLIGHT: HISTORY DAY

Utah students bring the past to life through dramatic performances, exhibits and films.

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UTAH LOCOMOTIVE ATLAS

Excursions to explore Utah’s railroad history, from Golden Spike to Helper.

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READING BETWEEN THE LINES

Trucks filled with books might sound like a setting for a young adult novel, but for kids (and adults) in Utah’s rural counties, bookmobiles are a real-life adventure.

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It took getting lost in an artistic journey on the shores of the Great Salt Lake for Beth Krensky to find fresh inspiration from the place she’s rooted. Now the artist’s sculpture is part of Utah’s permanent art collection, and she’s found new ways to express her creative passions.

A fused-glass workshop in a rural school represents the latest creative chapter in an ongoing arts education partnership.

ARTIST PROFILE: KITES, HANDCARTS & NIGHTGOWNS

WHEN LEARNING SHINES THROUGH

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utah LOCOMOTIVE ATLAS

by MICHELLE JAMES / illustrations by KERRY SHAW

GOLDEN SPIKE A 90-minute drive northwest of Salt Lake City is the Golden Spike National Historic Park at Promontory Summit. The site, open year-round, offers special demonstrations and re-enactments during the summer months. The re-enactment of the driving of the last spike features replicas of the original Union Pacific No. 119 and Jupiter engines, and visitors are often recruited to take part. For those wanting a closer look at the trains, the park offers tours of its engine house.

T RO L L E Y S Q UA R E Utah’s capital city is full of places to explore the history of railroads and transportation.

East of downtown, visitors can stop at the Trolley Museum in the renovated barns of Trolley Square. An interactive exhibit highlights the first streetcars in Utah, which were owned by the Salt Lake Rail Company and pulled by horses and, eventually, powered by electricity. The centrally located museum includes a gift store and kids’ play area and is close to multiple restaurants.

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Utah | Inspired by Utah

Visiting the Golden Spike National Historic Park is a great way to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the meeting of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads. It’s also a great launch pad for an exploration of Utah’s dynamic railroad history, which can include historic depots, exhibits of old streetcars, firsthand looks at the massive locomotives of yesteryear, and even a ride on a steam-powered train.

FA M I LY

PASSPORT Fun Fact: It’s often said the Transcontinental Railroad

ROA DT R I P 2019

was completed at Promontory Point, a geographic error made by some reporters in 1869 and perpetuated since. In fact, Promontory Point is 35 miles south, at the end of the large peninsula in the Great Salt Lake. The correct name for the location where the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads connected is Promontory Summit.

Visit the places in the Utah Locomotive Atlas and color the stamps to mark your progress!

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Fun Fact: Thanks to a bet, a record 10 miles of railroad track was built across the Utah desert in one day. Union Pacific bosses didn’t think it was possible, but Central Pacific crews took the challenge on April 29, 1869. By 7 p.m., 10 miles and 56 feet of track was laid by a crew of 4,000 Chinese laborers, led by Irish bosses.

The record — which required 25,800 ties, 3,530 rails and 55,000 spikes — has never been broken.

Fun Fact: Helper locomotives were steam engines that helped push trains up a steep mountain grade. Their presence also kept the rear cars from breaking away and sliding back downhill. Helpers could only push long enough to get the train to the summit. Once finished, they were able to disengage easily and coast back down to help the next train.

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Which one is your favorite?

SPOTLIGHT

U N I O N PAC I F I C D E P OT & R I O G R A N D E D E P OT West of downtown, you’ll find two historical train depots, noted for their distinctive architecture. The Salt Lake City Union Pacific Depot, built in 1909, features murals and stained-glass windows telling the history of the state’s pioneers and the Transcontinental Railroad.

Down the street is the Rio Grande Depot, built in 1910. Originally known as the Denver and Rio Grande Western Depot, the building today includes an art gallery, a restaurant and the offices of the Utah Department of Heritage & Arts.

H E B E R VA L L E Y R A I L ROA D Looking for a train-riding experience? Southeast of Salt Lake City you’ll find the Heber Valley Railroad, known as the Heber Creeper, a nickname likely originating from the train’s slow journey through the winding canyons in the 1900s. The railroad offers themed rides along its 16-mile line, such as the Wizard’s Train or Cowboy Train or the North Pole Express, as well as more peaceful rides along Deer Creek Reservoir and through scenic Provo Canyon.

W E ST E R N M I N I N G & R A I L ROA D M U S E U M Helper’s Western Mining and Railroad Museum is about a two-hour drive south of Salt Lake City. The town was established so that “helper” locomotive trains could assist the heavier trains coming up Price Canyon. The museum recounts the history of Helper’s coal mines from the industry’s heyday in the 1800s to the mid- 1900s.

Also on display are stories of immigrants from around the world who were drawn to this small mining town. The museum is open year-round and features model trains, artifacts and a gift shop.

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ARTIST PROFILE

KITES, HANDCARTS & NIGHTGOWNS With wonder, a Utah artist sets off on the artistic journey of a lifetime

by ELLEN FAGG WEIST photography © JOSH BLUMENTAL, 2018

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ARTIST PROFILE

FRACTURED

That’s how Utah artist Beth Krensky felt.

This was a few years ago, when she was burned out juggling artmaking, teaching and parenting. She had written a book, 2009’s “Engaging Classrooms and Communities through Art,” at night, while her young son slept.

Krensky was passionate about the subject, but tired from the hard work of living a creative life. To find herself, she needed to get lost on a metaphysical journey.

She grew up in a Jewish family in Utah, but then left for art school.

After she returned home in 2003 for a job training art teachers at the University of Utah, she started thinking about the metaphoric power of the story of Mormon pioneers in her own artwork.

She was moved by the wide-open expanses of the Great Salt Lake and the Bonneville Salt Flats. She was inspired by the work it takes to believe in a better life.

She thought of the Donner Party and their disastrous shortcut. She thought of the salt of tears and the salt left behind by an inland sea.

Sounding the bells of creativity And so in 2011 she created “Metaphysical Handcart,” a movement piece she performed on the Salt Flats. Last year, the stylized sculpture was acquired as part of Utah’s Alice Art Collection. The state collection was named after visionary arts advocate Alice Merrill Horne, who, as a state representitive, in 1899 drafted a bill to create a first-in-the-nation state arts agency.

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ARTIST PROFILE

Krensky’s artwork joins a collection of some 2,000 pieces with a value of nearly $10 million, says Jim Glenn, visual arts manager for the Utah Division of Arts & Museums.

For the body of the handcart, Krensky recycled a tray her mother used to plant garden starts every spring, then drew upon her sculptural training to create a cart from anodized aluminum. She found recycled steel wheels and made a wooden handle from olive trees that grow between Israel and the Palestinian territories. The handle represents the idea of bridging divides across the shared concerns of Israeli and Palestinian mothers — as well as mothers all over the world, the artist says.

Inside the cart are three kinds of relics: Bronze models of dead birds, which she considers symbols of sadness and hope. A bronze bowl, limned with a Hebrew blessing, filled with dried olive leaves.

And bells she cast or collected from holy sites all over the world.

When Krensky performed the piece on the Salt Flats that summer, it was hot and smelly. Bugs swarmed and bit her. The handcart was bulky and difficult to push across the uneven salt crust.

But when she pushed it, she could hear all those bells ringing, a sound that served as a creative wakeup call for the artist.

That artwork came to represent her own journey of growing up in Utah, going away and then returning. It took a long time, she says, for her to make art consciously inspired by the place she lives.

After the breakthrough of “Metaphysical Handcart,” she has become braver about featuring her body in her work. Now she exhibits her artworks along with videos of her movement performances.

Metaphysical Handcart, 2011

In the store of wishes The materials in her artworks, often found or recycled, are infused with metaphoric weight, Krensky explains on a winter morning in her east Salt Lake backyard studio. She’s inspired by collections, reliquaries and altars, and the idea of transforming discarded things into something precious.

Her studio is awash with natural light, as well as a thriving potted lemon tree. She also has collections of magic wands made from branches and bronze or gold-leaf keys to houses no longer standing.

The artist’s whimsy is evident as she recounts a story of overhearing her then-young son telling a friend not to mind dead things in the backyard. “My mom is a crazy artist and she collects dead birds,” he explained.

That sense of whimsy — or, more particularly, wonder — sets apart Krensky’s work, says Whitney Tassie, the contemporary curator at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts. “It makes me feel like Beth has a view into some secret realm, a view into another realm of the magic or connection that unites us all.”

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ARTIST PROFILE

When I Was Younger I Could Fly, 2018

Float Away, 2018

“When I Was Younger I Could Fly” Krensky, 53, has spent most of her life collecting and making things from fragments. She recalls walking along a beach as a young girl, attracted to the line between water and sand. She roamed outside by herself for hours, and in rainstorms, she walked circles in the mud. “At a very young age, I was doing performance art, although I didn’t call it that,” Krensky says.

During the emotional thunderstorms of her teen years as a student at Holladay’s Olympus High School, she made installations of doll heads in her bedroom. She explored sewing and fashion before she turned to studying art.

In art school, at Boston’s Museum School, at MIT’s Center for Advanced Visual Studies, at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education and then while earning her Ph.D. at University of Colorado-Boulder, she made wearable objects and relics. With her mentor, George Rivera, a sociologist turned art activist, she helped found Artnauts, an international collective aimed at creating change, in 1996.

Krensky has exhibited widely internationally, while collaborating in the local art community. She earned last year’s Alfred Lambourne Prize from Friends of the Great Salt Lake for her art movement work, and earlier this year was named one of Utah’s 15 most influential artists by 15 Bytes, the online arts magazine, in partnership with The Salt Lake Tribune and the Utah Division of Arts & Museums.

As part of the “Utah’s 15: The State’s Most Influential Artists, (Vol. II)” exhibition at Salt Lake City’s Rio Gallery this spring, she exhibited “Make Me a Sanctuary,” a dress and portable tent made from one of her late mother’s tablecloths, embroidered with a scripture from Exodus: “And let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among them.”

Another recent work, “Float Away,” represents another kind of artistic journey. She pieced together a white kite from her mother’s nightgowns, gloves, undershirts and pajamas, and embroidered it with a eulogy to her mother, Doris Krensky, who passed away in November 2018.

At the UMFA last year, Krensky exhibited a video of herself flying that kite near the Saltair beach of the Great Salt Lake, paired with another kite imprinted with her image on it, “When I Was Younger I Could Fly.” In flying the kites, she was sending a message to her mother. And, she hopes, a universal message to art viewers everywhere about what we lose and find at every step along the journey.

VIEW THE ARTIST’S WORK bethkrensky.com ORDER THE BOOK “Utah’s 15: The State’s Most Influential Artists (Vol. II) www.bit.ly/15ArtistsBook READ THE EULOGY OF “FLOAT AWAY” heritageandarts.utah.gov/muse-spring-19

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F E AT U R E

When LEARNING SHINES through The art of making fused-glass tiles connects science lessons to real life

by ELLEN FAGG WEIST

Like any good art project, the fused-glass workshop at Montezuma Creek Elementary School was anchored in careful planning.

Under the direction of glass artist Carrie Trenholm, students first worked out their design ideas on a small square of construction paper. Each class’s art assignments drew upon their grade’s science lessons, ranging from insects and plants to the solar system and the visual effects of the aurora borealis.

“They really integrated stuff kids can touch and feel here,” says Montezuma Creek Principal Connie Todachinnie of the workshop connecting art and science to real life. The rural San Juan County school has a student body that’s made up of 98 percent Navajo students, most of whom live at least a 45-minute bus ride away from campus.

After working and reworking their aesthetic choices in construction paper, students created layered designs from a variety of colored glass pieces, known as frits, stringers and confetti. Then each tile was fired for 24 hours in the Whitehorse High School kiln.

When shown in the front window, the tiles shone like suncatchers, Todachinnie says.

The attributes that set apart Montezuma Creek’s young artists are well-developed

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fine motor skills and creativity, says Trenholm, a retired arts educator based in Cedar City. Many students have learned about traditional Navajo arts from watching their parents or their grandparents.

“All of them were very confident in their artistic abilities,” Trenholm says. “Not once did I hear: ‘Oh I can’t do this.’ Not once did I see someone copy somebody else’s design because it was better. They loved the design they made. They got into it, and they were so careful with the materials.”

The glass workshop was supported in a partnership of the Utah Division of Arts & Museums and the Beverley Taylor Sorenson foundation’s Art Works for Kids. “None of us can afford to invent any new wheels,” says

Jean Tokuda Irwin, UDAM arts education manager and accessibility coordinator. “But we can certainly augment and enhance each other’s efforts.”

The partnership focused on three elementary schools — Foothill in Box Elder County, Flaming Gorge in Daggett County, and Montezuma Creek in San Juan County — and worked with school leaders to create individual arts education plans for each campus.

The Montezuma Creek fused-glass workshop followed a year of arts educational opportunities, beginning with professional development workshops for teachers.

F E AT U R E

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[The students] were very confident in their artistic abilities.”

ARTS EDUCATOR CARRIE TRENHOLM OF THE YOUNG ARTISTS AT MONTEZUMA CREEK ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

Students saw a live theater performance, thanks to Plan-B Theatre Company’s elementary touring show, “Zombie Thoughts,” a play about anxiety written by then 11-year-old Oliver Kokai-Means with his playwright mother, Jennifer A. Kokai.

And students learned about bookmaking in a weeklong workshop led by naturalist Claire Taylor in January.

The arts enrichment programs at the elementary and neighboring Whitehorse High School are part of a long-term focus on enriching Native American arts education around the state, according to Irwin, who successfully began applying for National Endowment for the Arts grants in 1991.

At the Montezuma Creek workshop, teachers were especially charmed by one young artist who observed a black hole in

her friend’s glass tile. “And if you don’t watch out, you’re going to get sucked in and find yourself in another dimension,” the girl said, a nerdy science joke that underscored the learning embedded in the glass.

MORE INFORMATION artsandmuseums.utah.gov/ arts-education-grants

The Montezuma Creek glass workshop followed a year of arts educational opportunities, beginning with professional development workshops for teachers.

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SPOTLIGHT

PROTECT. PRESERVE. PARTICIPATE. HOPI KATSINA SHALAKO MANA EARL DENET, 2001

UTAH’S HISTORY HAS A HISTORY EVERY OBJECT TELLS A STORY

An object has a physical story, an ownership story, a story of history. Facts and fables.

Reminiscence and recollection. Memory and dream.

Utah was a young state, just a year old, when history buffs created the Utah State Historical Society. Two years later, the state launched a first-in-the-nation arts council and started collecting artworks.

Now the Utah Department of Heritage & Arts oversees a collection of some 1.8 million historic artifacts and works of art, with an estimated value of $125 million. And every item helps tell another chapter of the Utah story.

The state’s collections ­— treasured manuscripts, rare books, photographs, sculptures, folk art and paintings — are currently housed in the basement of the historic Rio Grande Depot and an adjacent warehouse. State officials are considering funding a storage and preservation center with public spaces, as well as contemporary climate control and curation facilities.

Object by object, the history of our state’s history is more relevant than ever before.

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> UtahArtifactsAndArt.org #UTArtifactsAndArt | Inspired by Utah

MUSE

SPOTLIGHT

SPECIES OF CONCERN VIRGINIA CATHERALL, 2017

EUGENE JELESNIK DINNER JACKET, 1 OF 13. CA 1950

SHALAKO MANA

SPECIES OF CONCERN

EUGENE JELESNIK DINNER JACKET

Katsina dolls symbolize the spiritual messengers that appear in physical form to Hopi people. Artist Earl Denet created this artwork, “Shalako Mana” or Cloud Girl, from the root of a cottonwood tree.

The doll, presented before a Hopi bride’s wedding, symbolizes rain clouds, lightning and rainbows.

These delicate cacti are knitted paper sculptures created by artist Virginia Catherall. Her “Species of Concern” series features endangered and rare indigenous Utah plants.

This blue rhinestone dinner jacket represents the headlining flair of Eugene Jelesnik, a television host, musician and conductor who promoted local performers — including the Osmond Brothers — on his long-running TV show, “Utah Talent Showcase.”

Learn more about the artist’s work: www.bit.ly/KatsinaDoll

Read more about Catherall’s art: www.bit.ly/SpeciesOfConcern

Read more about his musical legacy: www.bit.ly/EugeneJelesnik

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SPOTLIGHT

Portrait of a Railroad Poem IN THE VOICES OF THE AMBITIOUS “WEST,” UTAH’S POET LAUREATE IS WRITING A SOUNDTRACK TO RAILROAD HISTORY

by ELLEN FAGG WEIST / photography by AUSTEN DIAMOND

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SPOTLIGHT

I

f you know where to look, the ghosts of Chinese workers appear everywhere on Utah’s Transcontinental Railroad byway.

On a warm November morning, I’m standing with poet Paisley Rekdal in the once-bustling town of Terrace in rural Box Elder County. Some 1,000 people lived here during the early 19th century, when this was the largest railroad maintenance town on the Central Pacific’s Promontory Branch line.

We’re scouring the desert for artifacts here where the abandoned railroad route is still etched in the land. Our guide, Dr. Christopher Merritt, an archaeologist with the Division of State History, points to where a thriving Chinatown once was home to as many as 500 people. The history buried here makes this a perfect spot to yield material for Rekdal’s new poem, “West.”

Rekdal, Utah’s poet laureate, was commissioned to write a poem as one of the artistic centerpieces for Spike 150 celebrations. This spring, Utah is throwing a $2 million party, with events, art performances and exhibits all over the state. [See spike150.org/events for dates and times.] Three of the original silver and gold spikes driven at Utah’s Promontory Summit on May 10, 1869 — the capstone of one of America’s most remarkable nation-building and engineering feats — are on display at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts.

“If you’re interested in writing about race, class, gender, violence, sexuality, technology, automatons, labor, capitalism, the environment & genocide, the transcontinental may be your subject.” Paisley Rekdal “I think they were expecting a three- or four-stanza poem,” Rekdal says. “I think that would be great, too, but it’s become a massive project.” A massive project, that is, in the form of a sonnet cycle that she plans to perform with recordings and visual projections.

and amplify — the voices of railroad workers as she mines history to create art. The poem’s themes, rooted in a time when the railroad was built across a divided country in the traumatic aftermath of the Civil War and President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, seems doubly resonant.

this is the sound of a train

In a separate project, Rekdal was invited by composer Tony Solitro to write the libretto for “Burial,” a short opera, one of four commissioned

by Utah Opera to mark the railroad anniversary. It’s a fictionalized version of a contempory story about conflicts in a small Western town after forgotten graves of Chinese railroad workers are uncovered.

The only problem? Just like her students at the University of Utah, she’s got a lot of ideas, the terror of looming deadlines, a day job, another book deadline, and on this morning not yet one finished poem.

The poet is aiming to translate —

But for now, you can set aside talk of building walls or debates about immigration policy. On this morning, Rekdal is chasing the railroad’s shadow history. On this morning, the writer is chasing ghosts.

Nearly a year into the project, Rekdal has accumulated more than 80 pages of research notes and an idea for the structure for her train book, anchored by a spine of 35 sonnets.

“I’ve read every poem written about trains in America,” she says with trademark wry humor. “Believe me, it wasn’t fun.”

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COVER STORY

we cannot count or name all the dead

Earlier, in the SUV as we’re heading north, Rekdal explains she was planning to list the names of the Chinese workers in her poem. But she quickly learned that the railroads hadn’t kept accurate payroll records.

Most of the names of the 10,000 to 15,000 laborers — 9 out of every 10 workers who built the Central Pacific Railroad line were Chinese — have been lost to history. Workers were listed on payroll records under the name John Chinaman, an insult suggesting that all Chinese men looked alike.

So instead of names, Rekdal selected three refrains, including this from Henry David Thoreau: “We do not ride on the railroads; it rides upon us.”

She has recorded those refrains spoken in the languages of the laborers, maintenance workers and indigenous people displaced by the train. She sought Chinese voices and Irish and Polish and Greek and Shoshone and others, as well as the voices of descendants of contract Mormon and African-American railroad workers.

“You’re going to get to hear the dialects and accents,” says Rekdal of

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the recordings she’ll weave through her short performances, in Utah this spring and then in May at the Smithsonian museum in Washington, D.C. She wants the reader to imagine herself part of the railroad’s creation, to feel what the labor demanded of its workers. She hopes these voices will create a soundtrack as distinctive as the clank of a steam engine’s wheels striking iron rails.

It was like a Chinese Ellis Island, but immigrants were forced to stay for weeks or months. And the place was grim, with conditions that might be closer to today’s border detention centers. While awaiting interrogations, people whiled away long, hopeless days carving poems into the walls.

One poem found buried under layers of paint was a lament addressed to a railroad worker who had died by

“This is one of the few times in my life where I feel as if I’m in the right place at the right time. I think I do actually have something to say.” – Paisley Rekdal an elegy for what was lost Graffiti gave Rekdal the structural foundation of her poem.

On the freeway as we pass the exit for Corinne, the town once considered the “Gentile Capital of Utah,” Rekdal explains her literary obsession with Chinese poems found at Angel Island, a squalid early 20th-century San Francisco immigration center.

suicide. The narrator is mourning while considering the ritual of wrapping the worker’s bones to send them back to his homeland for burial.

The poem is an elegy for lost dreams for all the people caught between life and death, ambition and failure, their homeland in China and their adopted homes in America, Rekdal says. She’s using translations of Chinese characters

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from that poem as anchors for each section of “West.” The metaphor of translation — across history, across cultures, across languages — will be one of the main themes of the work.

“I never thought I’d have much to say about a train,” Rekdal posted on Facebook a month later. By February, she has finished a draft of her poem, and by March she is ready for performances. “But it turns out, if you’re interested in writing about race, class, gender, violence, sexuality, technology, automatons, labor, capitalism, the environment & genocide, the transcontinental may be your subject.”

‘minor-key music and cold-eyed analysis’

Rekdal, 48, grew up in Seattle, the daughter of a Chinese-American mother and a Norwegian-American father. She was studying to become a medieval scholar before she found herself, like literary alchemy, transforming her research into poems. Later, she changed focus to earn an MFA in poetry.

Identity, and its shifting, conflicting nature, is one of the themes in her body of work, which includes her sixth poetry collection, “Nightingale,” to be released this spring. (She’s also published three award-winning nonfiction books, “The Night My Mother Met Bruce Lee,” the photo-memoir “Intimate,” and the lyric argument “The Broken Country: On Trauma, a Crime, and the Continuing Legacy of Vietnam.”)

Her poem “Four Marys” was selected for the 2019 edition of Best American Poetry collection, her fifth selection in the annual series, and her work has won Guggenheim, Fulbright and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships.

She moved to Utah in 2003, and was named by Gov. Gary Herbert as the state’s poetry ambassador in 2017.

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SPOTLIGHT

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COVER STORY

Rekdal is a “thinker who can really sing,” says Craig Morgan Teicher, a poet and critic, who calls her “a very, very good poet who should be better known.”

He labels her upcoming “Nightingale” poems as “equal parts gorgeous minorkey music and cold-eyed analysis.”

completed telegraph line threaded alongside the railroad tracks.

Here’s the backstory: American laborers mostly didn’t want to work on the Central Pacific Railroad, because they were more interested in striking it rich

chinese culture, shaped by immigration law

Like most Americans, Rekdal wasn’t taught in history classes about the Chinese laborers who were instrumental in building the West, or about how the Exclusion Act led to decades of discrimination against ChineseAmericans.

Rekdal’s railroad research has helped her understand more about her Americanborn mother and grandmother’s people, who didn’t work on the railroad but were also marginalized in other manual labor fields.

“For me, this is a fairly personal story because so many of my family members on my mom’s side of the family came over looking for work and had so many of the same concerns,” she says.

we do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us

What most Americans remember about the five deadly, expensive years crews spent building the first nation-spanning railroad line are two Hollywood-ready episodes.

There are the dangerous accounts of workers blasting tunnels through Northern California’s Sierra Nevada mountains. And then there are the celebratory tales that led to one of the country’s most famous historic photos.

Union Pacific Railroad photographer Andrew Russell’s camera captured the Champagne-pouring moment when the Union Pacific No. 119 and the Jupiter locomotives met.

Dignitaries and engineers are included in the photo’s frame. Not pictured are the Chinese, Irish and other hardworking laborers who actually laid the rails. In recent decades, their descandents have worked to expand the focus of history books to include their back-breaking contributions.

To understand why the story of the Chinese railroad workers matters, you need to know what happened after the word “DONE” rang across the newly

in the California gold fields. At first, railroad managers were reluctant to hire Chinese crews until the bosses realized they had struck it rich, labor-wise.

Bosses quickly learned that Chinese immigrants, many driven from their homeland due to a devastating civil war, were hard-working and ingenious. Quickly, the railroad companies turned to recruiting more and more Chinese workers.

Rekdal thought her scores of “paper uncles” were based on her mother’s fluid sense of family, until she realized it was “Chinese culture, shaped by immigration law.”

After the Chinese Exclusion Act passed, illegal immigrants turned to buying forged identity papers detailing their blood ties to American relatives.

In the American West, the Chinese lived in segregated camps, and were even charged rent for unheated tents. They stayed healthy on a diet of rice, tea and dried vegetables — in marked contrast to the drunken “Hell on Wheels” camps with brothels and saloons that sprang up along the Union Pacific Railroad line — although they did indulge in smoking opium at private gatherings.

After the Transcontinental was finished, some of the Chinese crews were hired to maintain the route. But their success sparked fears that immigrants were taking American jobs. That threat led to the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which barred Chinese immigrants from citizenship — a discriminatory law that wasn’t repealed until 1943.

Others conveniently claimed their birth certificates were burned in the fires that swept through San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake.

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COVER STORY

SPIKE THIS: For information about Spike 150 performances, art and historical exhibitions, visit spike150.org/events.

“TRANCONTENINTAL: PEOPLE, PLACE, IMPACT” Works by living artists. Through June 14.

Rio Gallery, 300 S. Rio Grande St., Salt Lake City.

“TRANSCEND” A new orchestral work by composer Zhou Tian will be performed by the Utah Symphony May 10 and 11, one of 14 performances by orchestras along the railroad route. Visit https://utahsymphony. org/cultural-festival for tickets.

These transfluences of public and private history offer a backdrop to reconsider what the Transcontinental Railroad means. A railroad route connecting the country didn’t mean just one thing, Rekdal says. It represented freedom of movement. It represented employment and a chance to escape Southern racism. It was a testament to American progress, ingenuity and unity, at the same time it led to the loss of land and loss of game — even genocide — for Native Americans.

the historical shadows of ‘west’

On the ground in this ghost Chinatown, Rekdal and I find china shards, the lid of an opium tin, colored glass and a button. “The archaeological record is like a book,” Merritt says. “These artifacts are really the only text of where they lived, what they ate, what they did for recreation.”

Most of the railroad traffic on this line was rerouted after the Great Salt Lake Causeway was built across the lake in

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“BURIAL” As part of the Transcontinental anniversary, Utah Opera — for the first time ever — has commissioned four short operas, including “Burial” by Utah poet Paisley Rekdal and composer Tony Solitro. “Some ways being a poet helps in writing a libretto, and other ways it does not,” Rekdal says. Solitro adds: “Every draft she sent me, suddenly there was a revelation.”

left out of the historic photograph at the Golden Spike ceremony.

OTHER OPERAS: “NO LADIES IN THE LADY’S BOOK” by composer Lisa Despain and librettist Rachel Peters, about unsung women who contributed to the building of the railroad.

TRAIN THIS: A STORY MAP Read about the historical context behind the construction of the first nationspanning railroad route in this story map (bit.ly/2SSfOZW). The map was created

by Christina Epperson of the Utah State Division of History, with support from the Spike 150 Foundation. (Note: Story maps take some time to load on first viewing.)

“THE STONE, THE TREE AND THE BIRD” by composer Jacob Lee and librettist Christine McDonough, about a campfire conversation between railworkers the night before Golden Spike ceremony.

“COMPLETING THE PICTURE” by composer Michael Ching and librettist/ choreographer Victoria Panella Bourns, about the Chinese laborers who were

1904, while the route’s steel and iron rails were removed before World War II. Yet this area is so undeveloped that the view south to the lake might appear similar to what early train travelers might have seen, Merritt says, after reading a description from a 1872 guidebook.

“When you get people onto the landscape that they built through, the landscape they encountered, you get the real bread-and-butter of the story,” he says. “It shows you what they built, how they lived, what they ate, the weather conditions they were exposed to. To me, the experiential part is as important as the historical narrative. I want you to see the jackrabbits. I want you to hear the silence.”

This morning, we’ve looked inside dugouts anchored with old railroad ties.

We’ve walked under wooden trestles and through stone culverts engineered 150 years ago by railroad workers.

Merritt points to the Grouse Creek Mountains, explaining that maintenance

PREMIERES 7:30 p.m. May 20, Brigham City Fine Arts Center; 7:30 p.m. May 21, Ogden Union Station’s Browning Auditorium; and 7:30 p.m. May 22 at Salt Lake City’s Gallivan Center. Visit utahsymphony.org/cultural-festival for tickets and information.

ALL-UTAH POETRY FESTIVAL Poet Paisley Rekdal, in concert with Natasha Sajé, Lisa Bickmore, Kimberly Johnson and Jennifer Tonge, invite readers to celebrate poetry on Saturday, April 27 at Salt Lake City’s Westminster College.

crews buried trunks of redwood trees deep in the ground to create a 13-mile water aqueduct to feed the steam engines and town residents. Now it’s a ghost pipeline.

These images will show up in Rekdal’s sonnet “Terrace,” the title of the Utah ghost town. In a literary coincidence, “this terrace” also happens to be one of the Chinese words found in the original Angel Island poem as the narrator gazes homeward.

The idea of shadow stories left behind in the landscape seems metaphorically rich, another form of translation. “In Cantonese culture,” Rekdal tells me later, “there are many words for white people, and one of them translates to ghosts.”

Rekdal wants to do the subject justice in the poem. “This is one of the few times in my life where I feel as if I’m in the right place at the right time,” she says.

“I think I do actually have something to say. I really want to do this well.”

PAISLEY REKDAL

TERRACE

SPOTLIGHT

Of this town once built from redwoods trekked

from the cold Sierras, nothing’s left. Just bits

of aqueduct coughed up by the roundhouse,

a ridge of barrows for its knuckled outline, glass chips

burnt violet from a hundred years of sun. Fists

of black clinker, and here, on the berm’s west side,

the ghostly hollows of Chinese dugouts. I trace

their perimeter according to the wreckage: their soy

sauce and ginger bottles ground into a culvert;

and here, thin as a baby’s fingernail, a single

metal trouser button, its rust edges crimped, the holes

clear of dirt so that, when I peer through their slits,

I can catch a whiskered glimpse of jackrabbit,

moving so fast, not even time will catch him.

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SPOTLIGHT

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SPOTLIGHT

READING LINES BETWEEN THE

STOCKING SHELVES, TRUCK WHISPERING AND TECHNICAL SUPPORT ARE ALL PART OF A BOOKMOBILE DRIVER’S JOB IN THE DIGITAL AGE

by ELLEN FAGG WEIST / photography by FAUN JACKSON

U

rban readers — that is, Utahns who live near city

and county library branches — might consider bookmobiles a relic of their childhoods. Or maybe the setting for a “gentle reads” novel, the kind of mystery caper that avoids sex or adult language.

In fact, if the state hadn’t been operating bookmobiles since 1958, it’s likely a perceptive Utah writer might have invented the concept.

A truck stocked with books seems anachronistic and yet essential in a wide-open state like Utah. “Magical” is a word students often use to describe their bookmobile.

“We’re just small enough where I can take care of people,” says Becky Lopshire, who has been driving the Tri-County Bookmobile for 13 years through Sevier, Piute and Wayne counties. “People are so happy to see you, they are so grateful for what you bring.”

On a recent Wednesday morning, driver Shawn Bliss parks a 40-foot diesel truck in the parking lot of a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints meetinghouse in Spanish Fork.

The slogan “Driven to read” is emblazoned on the outside, making this sprawling truck hard to miss.

The open shelves in the carpeted truck make it easy to browse from children’s books to fiction to parenting guides to contemporary novels by Utah authors like Ally Condie and Shannon Hale and the fantastical Brandons — Brandon Sanderson and Brandon Mull.

Bliss and Lopshire are two of the six drivers for the Utah State Library’s Bookmobile fleet, which partners with 10 counties to deliver mobile library services.

“Bookmobiles are as relevant today as ever,” says national consultant Michael Swendrowski.

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SPOTLIGHT

In 2018, Utah bookmobile patrons checked out 562,000 books and downloads, a 23.5 percent increase from the previous year, according to Britton Lund, the bookmobile program manager.

(That’s despite county officials’ decision to eliminate funding for the Cache/Rich bookmobile in 2017.) The program costs $1.2 million annually, funded in partnerships between the state and local counties, with additional grants from the federal Institute of Museum and Library Service.

For information about Utah bookmobile schedules, visit bookmobiles.utah.gov

“Gangbusters” is how he describes the demand, following a downturn in public funding after the Great Recession.

Manufacturers are selling bookmobiles faster than they can build them, with a backlog of orders that stretches three to five years, Swendrowski says.

In rural Utah counties such as Wayne and Piute, bookmobiles offer the only library services. In contrast, Alpine and Vineyard, two of Utah County’s fast-growing young cities, have opted to contract for bookmobile services until they have money to build physical library buildings.

Bookmobile services vary throughout the country, from reading outreach programs targeted at preschools or senior centers to traveling Wi-Fi hotspots to the traditional book-lined buses. Most bookmobiles are operated by city or county library systems.

For most of their workdays, the drivers think about books, about what their regulars might enjoy reading, about what books they should add to the collection.

But the rest of the time, they are truck whisperers, diagnosing the sounds of the diesel engine, fussing over what the mechanical or heating or air conditioning systems might need.

Utah’s state-county funding partnership is unusual, says Swendrowski, a consultant for the Association of Bookmobile and Outreach Services, an arm of the American Library Association.

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When a truck is out of service, schedule updates are posted on the bookmobile’s schedule page, but at some stops,

regulars are just as likely to call their neighbors to spread the word.

Each Utah bookmobile stocks more than 5,000 books and DVDs, and those carefully curated collections can help with what Bliss calls “option paralysis.”

“We try to have a little something at every level” on the truck, Bliss says, supported by an additional collection at each bookmobile’s headquarters library.

In addition, just about any book can be purchased or ordered through the state’s interlibrary loan program.

At the Benjamin stop, patrons discussed local dustups over wells and water rights.

One reader, as he was checking out three Western mysteries by Craig Johnson, labeled himself a “move-in,” as he had only lived in the area for 30 years.

SPOTLIGHT

That conversation underscores the way bookmobiles can serve as a community gathering space, Bliss says, which seems especially important in small towns without public diners or coffee shops.

“You get a feel for what people want,” says Lyle Talbot, who drives Garfield and Kane’s MultiCounty Bookmobile. After 35 years of driving a truck while living along the Wasatch Front, Talbot retired to his native Panguitch eight years ago.

He quickly found out he wasn’t good at retirement.

Now he’s back on the road, driving a bookmobile route that stops at seven schools. Every two weeks, he drives the hairpin curves of the Hell’s Backbone road connecting Escalante to Boulder, considered one of the most scenic drives in the country. He marvels that he gets paid to see such spectacular views.

At first, bookmobile drivers might have to tease out a new patron’s reading interests. Over time, they’re likely to learn the reading tastes of regulars. “And then when a new book comes in, you save it for them,” Lopshire says.

“You get to know them so well you’re considered a friend.”

For longtime bookmobile drivers, it can be a full-circle job. They watch

young readers grow up, settle down, then bring their kids, and later grandkids, to the bookmobile. Sometimes drivers don’t learn one of their regulars has passed away until their kids return their overdue books.

BOOKMOBILES “ARE LIFESAVERS TO ALL OF US COUNTRY FOLK.” Nadene Roberts, who has been coming to the Utah County bookmobile for more than 20 years

SO JUST WHAT ARE UTAHNS READING? Kids’ books Of course. The state’s public libraries, including bookmobile patrons, rank first in the nation for the number of children’s books borrowed per capita. That’s about 16 million children’s books checked out in Utah annually.

Westerns Louis L’Amour stories remain “forever popular,” as do Western adventure novels, says Becky Lopshire, who drives the TriCounty bookmobile in Piute, Sevier and Wayne counties.

Audiobooks Dixon Eliason, of Delta, drove a bookmobile for more than 35 years before he retired from the Millard/Juab County route in 2014.

Notably, government budgets fund life-saving services, like fire and police departments, he says, but “I can’t help but think that libraries and bookmobiles have saved people’s lives also.”

Rural Utah residents are likely to drive long distances for work, shopping or entertainment and like new audiobooks, says Britton Lund, who heads the state’s bookmobile program.

Perennially popular Young adult and fantasy novels. And “gentle read” novels, without swearing or sex.

Hike this way Garfield and Kane’s MultiCounty Bookmobile stocks the largest selection of hiking guides and audiobooks.

In 2018 Last year, Tara Westover’s “Educated,” a memoir about growing up in a survivalist Mormon family in rural Idaho, was one of the most requested books. One Tri-County Bookmobile patron was surprised to get his hands on a copy. His daughter had just placed a hold at the Provo Library and was 45th in line, Lopshire says.

The bookmobiles’ new ride The state’s bookmobile program aims to maintain state and county funding rather than expanding, says Britton Lund, program director. Routes are planned to erase county lines to save time or money. The trucks in Utah’s aging fleet, which are prone to breakdowns, are being replaced, one per year. A new fleet of coach-style vehicles is scheduled to be in place by 2025.

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Congratulations

GOVERNOR GARY R. HERBERT FOR RECEIVING THE 2019 PUBLIC LEADERSHIP IN THE ARTS AWARD FROM AMERICANS FOR THE ARTS

“Governor Herbert understands the important role the arts play in advancing the economy and uniting communities. His leadership and dedication to the arts has yielded boosts in cultural funding, community growth, and economic prosperity, and I applaud him for this well-deserved recognition.”

— Robert L. Lynch, president and CEO of Americans for the Arts

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by President Abraham Lincoln, will be onbe display in Utah. from the National ArchivesArchives and fromand from theoriginal original1862 1862Pacific Pacific Railway signed

by President Abraham Lincoln, will on display in Traveling Utah. Traveling from the National Stanford and other artifacts, have been assembled to educate and inspire millions of Utahns and visitors from across globe.

StanfordUniversity Universitythese, these, and other artifacts, have been assembled to educate and inspire millions of Utahns and visitors fromthe across the globe.

Exhibit is FREE and open to the public.

Exhibit is FREE and open to the public.

May 25th State Capitol, Gold Room May3rd 3rd– –June June 25thUtah Utah State Capitol, Gold Room

Monday – Thursday: 9:00am-8:00pm Friday – Sunday: 9:00am-6:00pm

Monday – Thursday: 9:00am-8:00pm Friday – Sunday: 9:00am-6:00pm

FIND MORE EVENTS

spike150.org spike150.org

FIND MORE EVENTS

> heritageandarts.utah.gov/projects/treasures

> heritageandarts.utah.gov/projects/treasures > heritageandarts.utah.gov/treasures

MAY 9, 10 & 11 | 10 AM - 9 PM | HISTORIC 25TH STREET IN OGDEN CULTURAL PERFORMANCES | HISTORIC PRESENTATIONS| COMMUNITY ACTIVITIES ART | LIVE MUSIC | BEER GARDEN | FOOD | LOCAL VENDORS

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Stop and smell the roses.

Francois Ykens (Flemish, 1601-1693), Flower Still Life, 1644, oil on panel, 37 in. x 23.75 in., gift of Val A. Browning, UMFA1993.034.006