115-415: Obscure Destinies is a collection of three short stories by Willa Cather , published in 1932. Each story deals with the death of a central character and asks how the ordinary lives of these characters can be valued and how "beauty was found or created in seemingly ordinary circumstances". This collection contains the following stories: This article about a collection of short stories published in
230-427: A Greek Revival -style home on 130 acres given to them by her paternal grandparents. Mary Cather had six more children after Willa: Roscoe, Douglass, Jessica, James, John, and Elsie. Cather was closer to her brothers than to her sisters whom, according to biographer Hermione Lee , she "seems not to have liked very much." At the urging of Charles Cather's parents, the family moved to Nebraska in 1883 when Willa
345-461: A child, she visited immigrant families in her area and returned home in "the most unreasonable state of excitement," feeling that she "had got inside another person's skin." After a trip to Red Cloud in 1916, Cather decided to write a novel based on the events in the life of her childhood friend Annie Sadilek Pavelka , a Bohemian girl who became the model for the title character in My Ántonia . Cather
460-501: A growing high-tech sector. The region makes up a part of what is known as the Midwest Silicon Prairie . Designated as a "refugee-friendly" city by the U.S. Department of State in the 1970s, the city was the 12th-largest resettlement site per capita in the country by 2000. Refugee Vietnamese , Karen (Burmese ethnic minority), Sudanese and Yazidi (Iraqi ethnic minority) people, as well as refugees from Iraq ,
575-485: A heart attack. Cather was too grief-stricken to attend the funeral. Four months later, Isabelle McClung died. Cather and McClung had lived together when Cather first arrived in Pittsburgh, and while McClung eventually married the musician Jan Hambourg and moved with her husband to Toronto, the two women remained devoted friends. Cather wrote that Isabelle was the person for whom she wrote all her books. During
690-535: A lesbian is rooted in treating same-sex desire "as an insult to Cather and her reputation", rather than a neutral historical perspective. Melissa Homestead has argued that Cather was attracted to Edith Lewis, and in so doing, asked: "What kind of evidence is needed to establish this as a lesbian relationship? Photographs of the two of them in bed together? She was an integral part of Cather's life, creatively and personally." Beyond her own relationships with women, Cather's reliance on male characters has been used to support
805-434: A margin of error of +/- $ 1,248) and the median family income $ 79,395 (+/- $ 1,992). Males had a median income of $ 37,646 (+/- $ 1,251) versus $ 27,411 (+/- $ 805) for females. The median income for those above 16 years old was $ 31,869 (+/- $ 455). Approximately, 7.5% of families and 12.8% of the population were below the poverty line , including 13.4% of those under the age of 18 and 6.2% of those ages 65 or over. Lincoln's economy
920-451: A middle ground, selecting facts from experience on the basis of feeling and then presenting the experience in a lucid, objective style. The English novelist A. S. Byatt has written that with each work Cather reinvented the novel form to investigate the changes in the human condition over time. Particularly in her frontier novels, Cather wrote of both the beauty and terror of life. Like the exiled characters of Henry James, an author who had
1035-512: A novel set during World War I . Willa Cather and her family moved from Virginia to Webster County , Nebraska, when she was nine years old. The family later settled in the town of Red Cloud . Shortly after graduating from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln , Cather moved to Pittsburgh for ten years, supporting herself as a magazine editor and high school English teacher. At the age of 33, she moved to New York City, her primary home for
1150-524: A novel set in Avignon , France. She had titled it Hard Punishments and placed it in the 14th century during the reign of Antipope Benedict XIV . She was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1943. The same year, she executed a will that prohibited the publication of her letters and dramatization of her works. In 1944, she received the gold medal for fiction from
1265-457: A novel. She had no more reason to follow Gertrude Stein and James Joyce , whose work she respected, than they did to follow her. Her style solves the problems in which she was interested. She wanted to stand midway between the journalists whose omniscient objectivity accumulate more fact than any character could notice and the psychological novelist whose use of subjective point of view stories distorts objective reality. She developed her theory on
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#17327986328391380-498: A novelist of the frontier and pioneer experience. She wrote of the spirit of those settlers moving into the western states , many of them European immigrants in the nineteenth century. Common themes in her work include nostalgia and exile. A sense of place is an important element in Cather's fiction: physical landscapes and domestic spaces are for Cather dynamic presences against which her characters struggle and find community. Cather
1495-577: A part of what is known as the greater Midwest Silicon Prairie . The city is also a part of a rapidly growing craft brewing industry. In 2013, Lincoln ranked no. 4 on Forbes 's list of the Best Places for Business and Careers, no. 1 on NerdWallet 's Best Cities for Job Seekers in 2015, and no. 2 on SmartAsset's Cities with the Best Work-life Balance in 2019. According to the city's 2023 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report,
1610-544: A popular writer whose novels and short story collections continued to sell well; in 1931 Shadows on the Rock was the most widely read novel in the United States, and Lucy Gayheart became a bestseller in 1935. Although Cather made her last trip to Red Cloud in 1931 for a family gathering after her mother's death, she stayed in touch with her Red Cloud friends and sent money to Annie Pavelka and other families during
1725-734: A rail hub. As automobile travel became more common, so did the need for better roads in Nebraska and throughout the U.S. In 1911, the Omaha-Denver Trans-Continental Route Association, with support from the Good Roads Movement , established the Omaha-Lincoln-Denver Highway (O-L-D) through Lincoln. The goal was to have the most efficient highway for travel throughout Nebraska, from Omaha to Denver. In 1920,
1840-642: A regular contributor to the Journal . In addition to her work with the local paper, Cather served as the main editor of The Hesperian , the university's student newspaper, and became a writer for the Lincoln Courier . While at the university, she learned mathematics from and was befriended by John J. Pershing , who later became General of the Armies and, like Cather, earned a Pulitzer Prize for his writing. She changed her plans from studying science with
1955-523: A significant influence on the author, most of Cather's major characters live as exiled immigrants, identifying with the immigrants' "sense of homelessness and exile" following her own feelings of exile living on the frontier. It is through their engagement with their environment that they gain their community. Susan J. Rosowski wrote that Cather was perhaps the first to grant immigrants a respectable position in American literature. In 1962, Willa Cather
2070-494: A third capitol building in 1922. Bertram G. Goodhue was selected in a national competition as its architect. By 1924, the first phase of construction was completed and state offices moved into the new building. In 1925, the Willcox-designed capitol building was razed. The Goodhue-designed capitol was constructed in four phases, with the completion of the fourth phase in 1932. It is the second-tallest capitol building in
2185-602: A women's magazine, Home Monthly , and moved to Pittsburgh . There, she wrote journalistic pieces, short stories, and poetry. A year later, after the magazine was sold, she became a telegraph editor and critic for the Pittsburgh Leader and frequently contributed poetry and short fiction to The Library , another local publication. In Pittsburgh, she taught Latin, algebra, and English composition at Central High School for one year; she then taught English and Latin at Allegheny High School , where she came to head
2300-854: Is Bryan Health , which consists of two major hospitals and several large outpatient facilities across the city. Healthcare and medical jobs account for a large portion of Lincoln's employment: as of 2009, full-time healthcare employees in the city included 9,010 healthcare practitioners in technical occupations, 4,610 workers in healthcare support positions, 780 licensed and vocational nurses, and 150 medical and clinical laboratory technicians. Several national business were originally established in Lincoln; these include student lender Nelnet , Ameritas , Assurity , Fort Western Stores , CliffsNotes and HobbyTown USA . Several regional restaurant chains began in Lincoln, including Amigos/Kings Classic , Runza Restaurants , and Valentino's . The Lincoln area makes up
2415-578: Is October 7 thru April 25, allowing a growing season of 164 days. The monthly daily average temperature ranges from 25.0 °F (−3.9 °C) in January to 78.1 °F (25.6 °C) in July. However, the city is subject both to episodes of bitter cold in winter and heat waves during summer, with 10.1 nights of 0 °F (−18 °C) or lower lows, 41.8 days of 90 °F (32 °C)+ highs, and 3.5 days of 100 °F (38 °C)+ highs. The city straddles
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#17327986328392530-476: Is concentrated in the warmer months, when thunderstorms frequently roll in, often producing tornadoes. Snow averages 26.0 inches (66 cm) per season but seasonal accumulation has ranged from 7.2 in (18 cm) in 1967–1968 to 55.5 in (141 cm) in 2018–2019. Snow tends to fall in light amounts, though blizzards are possible. There is an average of 38 days with a snow depth of 1 in (2.5 cm) or more. The average window for freezing temperatures
2645-466: Is fairly typical of a mid-sized American city; most economic activity is derived from the service and manufacturing industries. Government and the University of Nebraska are both large contributors to the local economy. Other prominent industries in Lincoln include finance, insurance, publishing, manufacturing, pharmaceutical, telecommunications, railroads, high technology, information technology, medical, education and truck transport. For October 2021,
2760-533: Is home to 363,733 people (2021 estimate) making it the 104th-largest combined statistical area in the United States. Lincoln's neighborhoods include both old and new development. Some neighborhoods in Lincoln were formerly small towns that Lincoln later annexed , including University Place in 1926, Belmont, Bethany (Bethany Heights) in 1922, College View in 1929, Havelock in 1930, and West Lincoln in 1966. A number of Historic Districts are near downtown Lincoln, while newer neighborhoods have appeared primarily in
2875-453: Is not universal; some critics have charged Cather with being out of touch with her times and failing to use more experimental techniques in her writing, such as stream of consciousness . At the same time, others have sought to place Cather alongside modernists by either pointing to the extreme effects of her apparently simple Romanticism or acknowledging her own "middle ground": She had formed and matured her ideas on art before she wrote
2990-416: Is often marked by—and criticized for —its nostalgic tone and themes drawn from memories of her early years on the American plains. Consequently, a sense of place is integral to her work: notions of land, the frontier, pioneering and relationships with western landscapes are recurrent. Even when her heroines were placed in an urban environment, the influence of place was critical, and the way that power
3105-600: Is one of Lincoln's largest private employers with over 2,400 employees, and it has the largest square footage of manufacturing space. Newer product lines are rail cars and aircraft cargo doors. The Nebraska Air and Army National Guard's Joint Force Headquarters are in Lincoln along with other major units of the Nebraska National Guard. During the early years of the Cold War , the Lincoln Airport
3220-581: Is the state's second-most populous city and the 71st-largest in the United States . Lincoln is the economic and cultural anchor of the Lincoln Metropolitan and Lincoln- Beatrice Combined Statistical Areas, home to 361,921 people. Lincoln was founded in 1856 as the village of Lancaster on the wild salt marshes and arroyos of what became Lancaster County. Renamed after President Abraham Lincoln , it became Nebraska's state capital in 1869. The Bertram G. Goodhue –designed state capitol building
3335-424: Is this succession of plains-based novels for which Cather was celebrated for her use of plainspoken language about ordinary people. Sinclair Lewis , for example, praised her work for making Nebraska available to the wider world for the first time. After writing The Great Gatsby , F. Scott Fitzgerald lamented that it was a failure in comparison to My Ántonia . As late as 1920, Cather became dissatisfied with
3450-688: Is water, according to the United States Census Bureau in 2020. Lincoln is one of the few large cities of Nebraska not along either the Platte River or the Missouri River . The city was originally laid out near Salt Creek and among the nearly flat saline wetlands of northern Lancaster County. The city's growth has led to development of the surrounding land, much of which is composed of gently rolling hills. In recent years, Lincoln's northward growth has encroached on
3565-586: The Great Depression in which her work was seen as lacking social relevance. Similarly, critics—and Cather herself —were disappointed when her novel A Lost Lady was made into a film ; the film had little resemblance to the novel. Cather's lifelong conservative politics, appealing to critics such as Mencken, Randolph Bourne , and Carl Van Doren , soured her reputation with younger, often left-leaning critics like Hicks and Edmund Wilson . Despite this critical opposition to her work, Cather remained
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3680-657: The National Institute of Arts and Letters , a prestigious award given for an author's total accomplishments. Cather was diagnosed with breast cancer in December 1945 and underwent a mastectomy on January 14, 1946. By early 1947, her cancer had metastasized to her liver, becoming stage IV cancer . On April 24, 1947, Cather died of a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 73 in her home at 570 Park Avenue in Manhattan . After Cather's death, Edith Lewis destroyed
3795-641: The Platte River . The Great Sioux Nation , including the Ihanktowan-Ihanktowana and the Lakota , to the north and west, used Nebraska as a hunting and skirmish ground, but did not have any long-term settlements in the state. An occasional buffalo could still be seen in the plat of Lincoln in the 1860s. Lincoln was founded in 1856 as the village of Lancaster and became the county seat of the newly created Lancaster County in 1859. The village
3910-620: The Pulitzer Prize in 1923 for her World War I-based novel, One of Ours . She followed this up with the popular Death Comes for the Archbishop in 1927, selling 86,500 copies in just two years, and which has been included on the Modern Library 100 Best Novels of the twentieth century. Two of her three other novels of the decade— A Lost Lady and The Professor's House —elevated her literary status dramatically. She
4025-476: The University of Nebraska was established in Lincoln by the state with a land grant of about 130,000 acres. Construction of University Hall, the first building, began the same year. Nebraska was granted statehood on March 1, 1867. The capital of the Nebraska Territory had been Omaha since the creation of the territory in 1854. Most of its population lived south of the Platte River. After much of
4140-865: The Virginia Women in History . In 2023, the U.S. state of Nebraska donated a bronze sculpture of Cather by Littleton Alston to the National Statuary Hall Collection . The statue is installed in the United States Capitol 's Capitol Visitors Center , in Washington, D.C. Lincoln, Nebraska Lincoln is the capital of the U.S. state of Nebraska and the county seat of Lancaster County . The city covers 100.4 square miles (260.035 km ) and had an estimated population of 294,757 in 2023. It
4255-675: The Weather Channel ranked Lincoln the seventh-coldest major U.S. city in a 2014 article. In 2014, the Lincoln- Beatrice area was among the "Cleanest U.S. Cities for Ozone Air Pollution" in the American Lung Association 's "State of the Air 2014" report. On May 5, 2019, an EF2 tornado hit parts of western Lincoln, although no major injuries occurred. Lincoln is Nebraska's second-most-populous city. In
4370-531: The 1930s is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Willa Cather Willa Sibert Cather ( / ˈ k æ ð ər / ; born Wilella Sibert Cather ; December 7, 1873 – April 24, 1947) was an American writer known for her novels of life on the Great Plains , including O Pioneers! , The Song of the Lark , and My Ántonia . In 1923, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours ,
4485-523: The 1970s, The U.S. government designated Lincoln a refugee-friendly city due to its stable economy, educational institutions, and size. Since then, refugees from Vietnam settled in Lincoln, and more came from other countries. In 2013, Lincoln was named one of the "Top Ten Most Welcoming Cities in America" by Welcoming America. The 2020 United States census counted 291,082 people, 115,930 households, and 67,277 families in Lincoln. The population density
4600-686: The Depression years. In 1932, Cather published Obscure Destinies , her final collection of short fiction, which contained " Neighbour Rosicky ," one of her most highly regarded stories. That same summer, she moved into a new apartment on Park Avenue with Edith Lewis, and during a visit on Grand Manan, she probably began working on her next novel, Lucy Gayheart . She was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1934. Cather suffered two devastating losses in 1938. In June, her favorite brother, Douglass, died of
4715-668: The English department. Shortly after moving to Pittsburgh, Cather wrote short stories, including publishing " Tommy, the Unsentimental " in the Home Monthly , about a Nebraskan girl with a masculine name who looks like a boy and saves her father's bank business. Janis P. Stout calls this story one of several Cather works that "demonstrate the speciousness of rigid gender roles and give favorable treatment to characters who undermine conventions." Cather resigned from her job at
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4830-682: The First National Bank Building and the National Bank of Commerce Building designed by I.M. Pei . In 1971, an expansion of Gateway Mall was completed. 1974 marked a new assembly facility in Lincoln, a subsidiary of Kawasaki Heavy Industries in Japan to produce motorcycles for the North American market. Lincoln's first woman mayor, Helen Boosalis , was elected in 1975. Mayor Boosalis was a strong supporter of
4945-539: The Harris Overpass, commemorating the history of the D-L-D. After the fall of Saigon in 1975, Vietnamese refugees created a large residential and business community along the 27th Street corridor alongside Mexican eateries and African markets. Lincoln was designated as a "Refugee Friendly" city by the U.S. Department of State in the 1970s. In 2000, Lincoln was the twelfth-largest resettlement site per capita in
5060-467: The Lincoln Airport's main passenger terminal. As train, automobile, and air travel increased, business flourished and the city prospered. Lincoln's population increased 38.2% from 1920 to a population of 75,933 in 1930. In 1930, the city's small municipal airfield was dedicated to Charles Lindbergh and named Lindbergh Field for a short period as another airfield was named Lindbergh in California. It
5175-498: The Lincoln Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) preliminary unemployment rate was 1.3% (not seasonally adjusted). With a tight labor market, Lincoln has seen rapid wage growth. From the summer of 2014 to the summer of 2015, the average hourly pay for both public and private employees have increased by 11%. From October 2014 to October 2015, wages were also up by 8.4%. One of the largest employers
5290-567: The Middle East and Afghanistan, have resettled in the city. During the 2018–19 school year, Lincoln Public Schools provided support for about 3,000 students from 150 countries, who spoke 125 different languages. Before the expansion westward of settlers, the prairie was covered with buffalo grass . Plains Indians , descendants of indigenous peoples who occupied the area for thousands of years, lived in and hunted along Salt Creek. The Pawnee , which included four tribes, lived in villages along
5405-443: The Nebraska National Guard, who continued to own parts of the old Air Force base. In 1966, Lincoln annexed the township of West Lincoln, incorporated in 1887. West Lincoln voters rejected Lincoln's annexation until the state legislature passed a bill in 1965 that allowed cities to annex surrounding areas without a vote. The downtown core retail district from 1959 to 1984 saw profound changes as retail shopping moved from downtown to
5520-803: The Omaha-Denver Association merged with the Detroit-Lincoln-Denver Highway Association. As a result, the O-L-D was renamed the Detroit-Lincoln-Denver Highway (D-L-D) with the goal of having a continuous highway from Detroit to Denver . The goal was eventually realized by the mid-1920s; 1,700 mi (2,700 km) of constantly improved highway through six states. The auto route's success in attracting tourists led entrepreneurs to build businesses and facilities in towns along
5635-553: The Pittsburgh Leader in the late spring of 1900 before relocating to Washington, D.C. that fall. In April 1902, Cather published her final contribution to the Lincoln Courier before going abroad with Isabelle McClung that summer. Her first book, a collection of poetry called April Twilights , was published in 1903. Shortly after this, in 1905, Cather's first collection of short stories, The Troll Garden ,
5750-467: The United States. The worldwide economic depression of 1890 saw Lincoln's population fall from 55,000 to 40,169 by 1900 (per the 1900 census). Volga-German immigrants from Russia settled in the North Bottoms neighborhood and as Lincoln expanded with the growth in population, the city began to annex nearby towns. Normal was the first town annexed in 1919. Bethany Heights, incorporated in 1890,
5865-544: The age of sixteen, Cather graduated from Red Cloud High School. She moved to Lincoln, Nebraska to enroll at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln . In her first year, her essay on Thomas Carlyle was published in the Nebraska State Journal without her knowledge. After this, she published columns for $ 1 apiece, saying that seeing her words printed on the page had "a kind of hypnotic effect", pushing her to continue writing. After this experience, she became
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#17327986328395980-505: The apartment was scheduled for demolition during the construction of the Broadway–Seventh Avenue New York City Subway line (now the 1 , 2 , and 3 trains). While Lewis was selected as the literary trustee for Cather's estate, she was not merely a secretary for Cather's documents but an integral part of Cather's creative process. Beginning in 1922, Cather spent summers on
6095-720: The base in 1945, but the Air Force reactivated it in 1952 during the Korean War. In 1966, after the Air Force closed the base, Lincoln annexed the airfield and the base's housing units. The base became the Lincoln Municipal Airport , and later the Lincoln Airport, under the Lincoln Airport Authority's ownership. The two main airlines that served the airport were United Airlines and Frontier Airlines . The Authority shared facilities with
6210-429: The boundary of USDA Plant Hardiness Zones 5b and 6a. Temperature extremes have ranged from −33 °F (−36.1 °C) on January 12, 1974, up to 115 °F (46.1 °C) on July 25, 1936. Readings as high as 105 °F (41 °C) or as low as −20 °F (−29 °C) occur somewhat rarely; the last occurrence of each was August 24, 2023 and February 16, 2021. The second lowest temperature ever recorded in Lincoln
6325-526: The city. The Burlington and Missouri River Railroad 's first train arrived in Lincoln on June 26, 1870, and the Midland Pacific (1871) and the Atchison and Nebraska (1872) soon followed. The Union Pacific began service in 1877. The Chicago and North Western and Missouri Pacific began service in 1886. The Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific extended service to Lincoln in 1892. Lincoln became
6440-432: The committee, which included Donovan, selected Lancaster as the county seat. The county was named Lancaster. After the passage of the 1862 Homestead Act , homesteaders began to inhabit the area. The first plat was dated August 6, 1864. By the end of 1868, Lancaster had a population of approximately 500. The township of Lancaster was renamed Lincoln, with the incorporation of the city of Lincoln on April 1, 1869. In 1869,
6555-443: The country. As of 2011, Lincoln had the second largest Karen (Burmese ethnic minority) population in the United States (behind Omaha), with an estimated 1,500 in 2019. As of the same year, Nebraska was one of the largest resettlement sites for the people of Sudan, mostly in Lincoln and Omaha. In 2014, some social service organizations estimated that up to 10,000 Iraqi refugees had resettled in Lincoln. In recent years, Lincoln had
6670-618: The death of Cather's nephew and second literary executor, Charles Cather. Willa Cather's correspondence revealed the complexity of her character and inner world. The letters do not disclose any intimate details about Cather's personal life, but they do "make clear that [her] primary emotional attachments were to women." The Willa Cather Archive at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln works to digitize her complete body of writing, including private correspondence and published work. As of 2021, about 2,100 letters have been made freely available to
6785-446: The downtown core to decline and deteriorate. In 1969, the Nebraska legislature legislated laws for urban renewal. Soon afterward, Lincoln began a program of revitalization and beautification. Most of the urban renewal projects focused on downtown and the near South areas. Many ideas were considered and not implemented. Successes included Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, designed by Philip Johnson ; new branch libraries, new street lighting,
6900-421: The first quarter of 2015 to the first quarter of 2016; rent prices rose 30% from 2007 to 2017 with a 5–8% increase in 2016 alone. Located in the Great Plains far from the moderating influence of mountains or large bodies of water, Lincoln has a highly variable four season humid continental climate ( Köppen Dfa ): winters are cold and summers are hot. With little precipitation during winter, precipitation
7015-410: The goal of becoming a physician, instead graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in English in 1895. Cather's time in Nebraska, still considered a frontier state, was a formative experience for her: She was moved by the dramatic environment and weather, the vastness of the prairie, and the various cultures of the immigrant and Native American families in the area. In 1896, Cather was hired to write for
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#17327986328397130-570: The habitat of the endangered Salt Creek tiger beetle . The Lincoln Metropolitan Statistical Area consists of Lancaster County and Seward County . Seward County was added to the metropolitan area in 2003. Lincoln is also in the Lincoln-Beatrice Combined Statistical Area which consists of the Lincoln metropolitan area and the micropolitan area of Beatrice . The city of Beatrice is the county seat of Gage County . The Lincoln-Beatrice combined statistical area
7245-414: The idea of her same-sex attraction. Harold Bloom calls her "erotically evasive in her art" due to prevailing "societal taboos". In any event, throughout Cather's adult life, her closest relationships were with women. These included her college friend Louise Pound ; the Pittsburgh socialite Isabelle McClung, with whom Cather traveled to Europe and at whose Toronto home she stayed for prolonged visits;
7360-616: The island of Grand Manan in New Brunswick, where she bought a cottage in Whale Cove on the Bay of Fundy . This is where her short story "Before Breakfast" is set. She valued the seclusion of the island and did not mind that her cottage had neither indoor plumbing nor electricity. Anyone wishing to reach her could do so by telegraph or mail. In 1940, she stopped visiting Grand Manan after Canada's entrance to World War II , as travel
7475-690: The largest Yazidi (Iraqi ethnic minority) population in the U.S., with over 2,000–3,000 having settled within the city (as of late 2017). In a three-year period, the immigrant and refugee student population at Lincoln Public Schools increased 52% - from 1,606 students in 2014, to 2,445 in 2017. The decade from 1990 to 2000 saw a significant rise in population from 191,972 to 225,581. North 27th Street and Cornhusker Highway were redeveloped with new housing and businesses built. The boom housing market in south Lincoln created new housing developments including high end housing in areas like Cripple Creek, Willamsburg and The Ridge. The shopping center Southpointe Pavilions
7590-470: The look of its books and had been impressed with its edition of Green Mansions by William Henry Hudson . She so enjoyed their style that all her Knopf books of the 1920s—save for one printing of her short story collection Youth and the Bright Medusa —matched in design on their second and subsequent printings. By this time, Cather was firmly established as a major American writer , receiving
7705-454: The mall's name from Westfield Gateway to Gateway Mall and has made incremental expansions and renovations. In 2015, ALLO Communications announced it would bring ultra-high speed fiber internet to the city. Speeds up to 1 Gigabit per second were available for business and households by building off of the city's existing fiber network. Construction on the citywide network began in March 2016 and
7820-718: The manuscript of Hard Punishments according to Cather's instructions. She is buried at the southwest corner of Jaffrey, New Hampshire 's Old Burying Ground, a place she first visited when joining Isabelle McClung and her husband, violinist Jan Hambourg , at the Shattuck Inn. Lewis was buried alongside Cather some 25 years later. Novels Short fiction Poetry Nonfiction and Prose Collections Scholars disagree about Cather's sexual identity. Some believe it impossible or anachronistic to determine whether she had same-sex attraction, while others disagree. Researcher Deborah Carlin suggests that denial of Cather being
7935-581: The novel as a betrayal of the realities of war, not understanding how to "bridge the gap between [Cather's] idealized war vision ... and my own stark impressions of war as lived ." Similarly, Ernest Hemingway took issue with her portrayal of war, writing in a 1923 letter: "Wasn't [the novel's] last scene in the lines wonderful? Do you know where it came from? The battle scene in Birth of a Nation . I identified episode after episode, Catherized. Poor woman, she had to get her war experience somewhere." In 1929, she
8050-532: The opera singer Olive Fremstad ; and most notably, the editor Edith Lewis, with whom Cather lived the last 39 years of her life. Cather's relationship with Lewis began in the early 1900s. They lived together in a series of apartments in New York City from 1908 until Cather's death in 1947. From 1913 to 1927, Cather and Lewis lived at No. 5 Bank Street in Greenwich Village . They moved when
8165-410: The original plat of the village of Lancaster, Kennard platted Lincoln on a broader scale. The plat of the village of Lancaster was not dissolved nor abandoned; it became Lincoln when the Lincoln plat files were finished on September 6, 1867. To raise money for the construction of a capital, an auction of lots was held. Newcomers began to arrive and Lincoln's population grew. The Nebraska State Capitol
8280-591: The passage of the Removal Act in 1867. The Removal Act called for the formation of a Capital Commission to site the capital on state-owned land. On July 18, 1867, the Commission, composed of Governor David Butler , Secretary of State Thomas Kennard , and State Auditor John Gillespie , began to tour sites for the new capital. The village of Lancaster was chosen, in part due to its salt flats and marshes. Lancaster had approximately 30 residents. Disregarding
8395-531: The people south of the Platte had been sympathetic to the Confederate cause in the recently concluded Civil War . It was assumed that senators south of the river would not vote to pass the measure if the future capital was named after Lincoln. In the end, the motion to name the future capital Lincoln was ineffective in blocking the measure and the vote to move the capital south of the Platte was successful, with
8510-450: The performance of her publisher, Houghton Mifflin , which devoted an advertising budget of only $ 300 to My Ántonia , and refused to pay for all the illustrations she commissioned for the book from Władysław T. Benda . What's more, the physical quality of the books was poor. That year, she turned to the young publishing house, Alfred A. Knopf , which had a reputation for supporting its authors through advertising campaigns. She also liked
8625-415: The population was under the age of 18, 15.7% from 18 to 24, 26.8% from 25 to 44, 20.8% from 45 to 64, and 13.2% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 32.9 years. For every 100 females, the population had 100.8 males. For every 100 females ages 18 and older, there were 99.4 males. The 2016-2020 5-year American Community Survey estimates show that the median household income was $ 60,063 (with
8740-694: The principal employers of the city are: 1974 saw the establishment of a Kawasaki motorcycles assembly facility named the American Kawasaki Motors Corporation (KMC), to complete Japan-produced components into finished products for the North American market. Incorporated in 1981, Kawasaki Motors Manufacturing Corp. (KMM) and assumed control of KMC. As of 2022, their webpresence named tallies "All-Terrain Vehicles, Utility Vehicles, Personal Watercraft, Recreation Utility Vehicles, and Passenger Rail Cars" as their range. Kawasaki
8855-667: The public, in addition to transcription of her own published writing. Cather admired Henry James 's use of language and characterization. While Cather enjoyed the novels of several women—including George Eliot , the Brontës , and Jane Austen —she regarded most women writers with disdain, judging them overly sentimental. One contemporary exception was Sarah Orne Jewett , who became Cather's friend and mentor. Jewett advised Cather of several things: to use female narrators in her fiction (even though Cather preferred using male perspectives), to write about her " own country " ( O Pioneers!
8970-460: The rest of her life, though she also traveled widely and spent considerable time at her summer residence on Grand Manan Island, New Brunswick . She spent the last 39 years of her life with her domestic partner, Edith Lewis , before being diagnosed with breast cancer and dying of a cerebral hemorrhage. Cather and Lewis are buried together in Jaffrey, New Hampshire . Cather achieved recognition as
9085-484: The revitalization of Lincoln with the downtown beautification project being completed in 1978. In 1979, the square-block downtown Centrum was opened and connected to buildings with a skywalk. The Centrum was a two-level shopping mall with a garage for 1,038 cars. With the beautification and urban renewal projects, many historic buildings were razed in the city. In 2007 and 2009, the city of Lincoln received beautification grants for improvements on O and West O Streets, west of
9200-493: The route to keep up with the demand. In 1924, the D-L-D was designated as Nebraska State Highway 6 . In 1926, the highway became part of the Federal Highway System and was renumbered U.S. Route 38. In 1931, U.S. 38 was renumbered as a U.S. 6 /U.S. 38 overlap and in 1933, the U.S. 38 route designation was dropped. In the early years of air travel, Lincoln had three airports and one airfield. Union Airport ,
9315-471: The skyline of Lincoln as he drove into Lincoln. He also drew inspiration from both art deco, and native artwork inside the Capitol building. The contest was organized by American Marketing Association - Lincoln and Lincoln Young Professionals Group . Lincoln has an area of 99.050 square miles (256.538 km ), of which 97.689 square miles (253.013 km ) is land and 1.361 square miles (3.525 km )
9430-581: The south and east. As of December 2013, Lincoln had 45 registered neighborhood associations within the city limits . One core neighborhood that has seen rapid residential growth in recent years is the downtown Lincoln area. In 2010, there were 1,200 downtown Lincoln residents; in 2016, there were 3,000 (an increase of 140%). Around the middle of the same decade, demand for housing and rent units began outpacing supply. With Lincoln's population expected to grow to more than 311,000 people by 2020, prices for homes and rent costs have risen. Home prices rose 10% from
9545-495: The suburban Gateway Shopping Mall. In 1956, Bankers Life Insurance Company of Nebraska announced plans to build a $ 6 million shopping center next to their new campus on Lincoln's eastern outskirts. Gateway Shopping Center, now called Gateway Mall , opened at 60th and O streets in 1960. By 1984, 75% of Lincoln's revenue from retail sales tax came from within a one-mile radius of the Mall. The exodus of retail and service businesses led
9660-476: The summer of 1940, Cather and Lewis went to Grand Manan for the last time, and Cather finished her final novel, Sapphira and the Slave Girl , a book much darker in tone and subject matter than her previous works. While Sapphira is understood by readers as lacking a moral sense and failing to evoke empathy, the novel was a great critical and commercial success, with an advance printing of 25,000 copies. It
9775-401: The territory south of the Platte was considered annexation to Kansas, the territorial legislature voted to place the capital south of the river and as far west as possible. Before the vote to remove the capital from Omaha, Omaha Senator J. N. H. Patrick made a last-ditch effort to derail the move by having the future capital named after recently assassinated President Abraham Lincoln . Many of
9890-419: The town of Quebec, Willa Cather was not merely stirred and charmed—she was overwhelmed by the flood of memories, recognition, surmise it called up; by the sense of its extraordinary French character, isolated and kept intact through hundreds of years, as if by a miracle, on this great un-French continent." Cather finished her novel Shadows on the Rock , a historical novel set in 17th-century Quebec, in 1931; it
10005-462: The writing "deft and skillful," Cather herself soon saw the novel as weak and shallow. Cather followed Alexander's Bridge with her three novels set in the Great Plains, which eventually became both popular and critical successes: O Pioneers! (1913), The Song of the Lark (1915), and My Ántonia (1918), which are—taken together—sometimes referred to as her "Prairie Trilogy." It
10120-430: Was 2,937.6 per square mile (1,134.2/km ). There were 122,048 housing units at an average density of 1,231.7 per square mile (475.6/km ). The racial makeup was 78.66% (228,956) white , 4.67% (13,605) black or African-American , 0.89% (2,589) Native American , 4.77% (13,871) Asian , 0.07% (196) Pacific Islander , 3.5% (10,175) from other races , and 7.45% (21,690) from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race
10235-401: Was 7.0% (22,321) of the population. Of the 115,930 households, 26.9% had children under the age of 18; 43.8% were married couples living together; 27.1% had a female householder with no husband present. 31.0% of households consisted of individuals and 9.6% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.4 and the average family size was 3.0. 21.9% of
10350-549: Was annexed in 1922. In 1926, the town of University Place was annexed. College View, incorporated in 1892, was annexed in 1929. Union College , a Seventh Day Adventist institution, was founded in College View in 1891. In 1930, Lincoln annexed the town of Havelock. Havelock actively opposed annexation to Lincoln and only relented due to a strike by the Burlington railroad shop workers which halted progress and growth for
10465-520: Was born in 1873 on her maternal grandmother's farm in the Back Creek Valley near Winchester, Virginia . Her father was Charles Fectigue Cather. The Cather family originated in Wales, the name deriving from Cadair Idris , a Gwynedd mountain. Her mother was Mary Virginia Boak, a former school teacher. By the time Cather turned twelve months old, the family had moved to Willow Shade ,
10580-441: Was completed in 1932, and is the nation's second-tallest capitol. As the city is the seat of government for the state of Nebraska, the state and the U.S. government are major employers. The University of Nebraska was founded in Lincoln in 1869. The university is Nebraska's largest, with 26,079 students enrolled, and the city's third-largest employer. Other primary employers fall into the service and manufacturing industries, including
10695-603: Was completed in competition of Gateway Mall. In 2001, Westfield America Trust purchased the Gateway Mall and named it Westfield Shoppingtown Gateway. In 2005, the company renamed it the Westfield Gateway. Westfield made a $ 45 million makeover of the mall in 2005 including an expanded food court, a new west-side entrance and installation of an Italian carousel. In 2012, Westfield America Trust sold Westfield Gateway to Starwood Capital Group . Starwood reverted
10810-443: Was completed on December 1, 1868, a two-story building constructed with native limestone with a central cupola. The Kennard house , built in 1869, is the oldest remaining building in the original plat of Lincoln. In 1888, a new capitol building was constructed on the site of the first to replace the structurally unsound former capitol. The second building was a classical design by architect William H. Willcox . Construction began on
10925-658: Was considerably more difficult; she also began a long recuperation from gallbladder surgery in 1942 that restricted travel. A resolutely private person, Cather destroyed many drafts, personal papers, and letters, asking others to do the same. While many complied, some did not. Her will restricted the ability of scholars to quote from the personal papers that remain. But in April 2013, The Selected Letters of Willa Cather —a collection of 566 letters Cather wrote to friends, family, and literary acquaintances such as Thornton Wilder and F. Scott Fitzgerald—was published, two years after
11040-532: Was credited as the author. A 1993 letter discovered in the Christian Science church archives by Eddy biographer Gillian Gill disclosed that Cather had (perhaps reluctantly) written articles 2 through 14 of the 14-part series. Milmine had performed copious amounts of research, but she had been unable to produce a manuscript independently, and McClure's employed Cather and a few other editors including Burton J. Hendrick to assist her. This biography
11155-605: Was dedicated to Jewett), and to write fiction that explicitly represented romantic attraction between women. Cather was also influenced by the work of Katherine Mansfield , praising in an essay Mansfield's ability "to throw a luminous streak out onto the shadowy realm of personal relationships." Cather's high regard for the immigrant families forging lives and enduring hardships on the Nebraska plains shaped much of her fiction. The Burlington Depot in Red Cloud brought in many strange and wonderful people to her small town. As
11270-540: Was displayed through room layout and furniture is evident in her novels like My Mortal Enemy . Though she hardly confined herself to writing exclusively about the Midwest, Cather is virtually inseparable from the Midwestern identity that she actively cultivated (even though she was not a "native" Midwesterner). While Cather is said to have significantly altered her literary approach in each of her novels, this stance
11385-410: Was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters . By the 1930s, an increasingly large share of critics began to dismiss her as overly romantic and nostalgic, unable to grapple with contemporary issues: Granville Hicks , for instance, charged Cather with escaping into an idealized past to avoid confronting the problems of the present. And it was particularly in the context of the hardships of
11500-530: Was established around 1925 as a manufacturing and test facility for Arrow Aircraft and Motors Corporation, primarily the Arrow Sport . The airfield was near Havelock; or to the west of where the North 48th Street Small Vehicle Transfer Station is today. Arrow Aircraft and Motors declared bankruptcy in 1939 and Arrow Airport closed roughly several decades later. An Arrow Sport is on permanent display, hanging in
11615-483: Was established northeast of Lincoln in 1920. The Lincoln Flying School was founded by E.J. Sias in a building he built at 2145 O Street. Charles Lindbergh was a student at the flying school in 1922. The flying school closed in 1947. Some remnants of the Union Airport are still visible between N. 56th and N. 70th Streets, north of Fletcher Avenue; mangled within a slowly developing industrial zone. Arrow Airport
11730-481: Was estimated to be complete by 2019, making it one of the largest infrastructure projects in the United States. Telephone and cable TV service were also included, making it the third company to compete for such services within the same Lincoln footprint. In April 2016, Windstream Communications announced that 2,300 customers in Lincoln had 1 Gigabit per second fiber internet with an expected expansion of services to 25,000 customers by 2017. On November 29, 2017, Lincoln
11845-554: Was first published in the Red Cloud Chief, the city's local paper, and Cather read widely, having made friends with a Jewish couple, the Wieners, who offered her free access to their extensive library in Red Cloud. At the same time, she made house calls with the local physician and decided to become a surgeon. For a short while, she signed her name as William, but this was quickly abandoned for Willa instead. In 1890, at
11960-733: Was inducted into the Nebraska Hall of Fame . In 1973, the United States Postal Service issued a postage stamp honoring her. In 1974, she was inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners . In 1986, she was inducted into the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame ’s Hall of Fame. In 1988, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame . In 2000, she was named as one of
12075-495: Was invited to give several hundred lectures to the public, earned significant royalties, and sold the movie rights to A Lost Lady . Her other novel of the decade, the 1926 My Mortal Enemy , received no widespread acclaim—and in fact, neither she nor her life partner, Edith Lewis , made significant mention of it later in their lives. Despite her success, she was the subject of much criticism, particularly surrounding One of Ours . Her close friend, Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant , saw
12190-529: Was later included in Life magazine's list of the 100 outstanding books of 1924–1944. The French influence is found in many other Cather works, including Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) and her final, unfinished novel set in Avignon , Hard Punishments . Although Cather began her writing career as a journalist, she made a distinction between journalism, which she saw as being primarily informative, and literature, which she saw as an art form. Cather's work
12305-540: Was likewise fascinated by the French-Canadian pioneers from Quebec who had settled in the Red Cloud area while she was a girl. During a brief stopover in Quebec with Edith Lewis in 1927, Cather was inspired to write a novel set in that French-Canadian city. Lewis recalled: "From the first moment that she looked down from the windows of the [Chateau] Frontenac [Hotel] on the pointed roofs and Norman outlines of
12420-408: Was named a Smart Gigabit Community by U.S. Ignite Inc. and in early 2018, Spectrum joined the ranks of internet service providers providing 1 gigabit internet within the city. In 2022, the city government of Lincoln adopted a new flag, called "All Roads Lead to Lincoln." The flag was created by Ed Mejia, a local art director and graphic designer, who came from El Salvador. The design was inspired by
12535-465: Was nine years old. The farmland appealed to Charles' father, and the family wished to escape the tuberculosis outbreaks that were rampant in Virginia. Willa's father tried his hand at farming for eighteen months, then moved the family into the town of Red Cloud , where he opened a real estate and insurance business, and the children attended school for the first time. Some of Cather's earliest work
12650-624: Was north of Salt Lake, in an area known over the years as Huskerville, Arnold Heights and Air Park; and was approximately within the western half of the West Lincoln Township. The air field was a stop for United Airlines in 1927 and a mail stop in 1928. In 1942, the Lincoln Army Airfield was established at the site. During World War II, the U.S. Army used the facility to train over 25,000 aviation mechanics and process over 40,000 troopers for combat. The Army closed
12765-504: Was published. It contained some of her most famous stories, including " A Wagner Matinee ," " The Sculptor's Funeral ," and " Paul's Case ." After Cather was offered an editorial position at McClure's Magazine in 1906, she moved to New York City. Cather spent most of 1907 living in Boston, while working at McClure's , writing a series of exposés about the religious leader Mary Baker Eddy , although freelance journalist Georgine Milmine
12880-468: Was serialized in McClure's over the next eighteen months and then published in book form as The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy and the History of Christian Science (attributed to author Georgina Milmine, only confirmed decades later as really Willa Cather). McClure's also serialized Cather's first novel, Alexander's Bridge (1912). While most reviews were favorable, such as The Atlantic calling
12995-464: Was sited on the east bank of Salt Creek . The first settlers were attracted to the area due to the abundance of salt. Once J. Sterling Morton developed his salt mines in Kansas , salt in the village was no longer a viable commodity. Captain W. T. Donovan, a former steamer captain, and his family settled on Salt Creek in 1856. In 1859, the village settlers met to form a county. A caucus was formed and
13110-594: Was then adopted by the Book of the Month Club , which bought more than 200,000 copies. Her final story, " The Best Years ", intended as a gift for her brother, was retrospective. It contained images or "keepsakes" from each of her twelve published novels and the short stories in Obscure Destinies . Although an inflamed tendon in her hand hampered her writing, Cather managed to finish a substantial part of
13225-478: Was −31 °F (−35.0 °C) on February 16, 2021, which broke the monthly record of −26 °F (−32.2 °C) last set a day earlier. It occurred during the wider February 13–17, 2021 North American winter storm , which impacted the Midwestern and Northeastern United States as a whole. Based on 30-year averages obtained from NOAA 's National Climatic Data Center for December, January and February,
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