Julene Bair is "Out in the cold"

During the years she lived in Laramie, writer Julene Bair won a National Endowment for the Arts creative writing fellowship, a Willa Award from Women Writing the West, a Mid-List Press First Series Award, the Wyoming Arts Council’s Blanchan Award, the Adler Short Story Award and an Individual Artist Professional Development grant. She also served as a mentor to other writers, and helped found Laramie’s Silver Sage writers group.

Alas, Julene moved south to Colorado. She’s as busy as ever. Her essay, “Out in the Cold: Selling the family farm severs connection with place and past,” is featured in the Dec. 8 issue of High Country News. Julene says that her original title was "Selling Out, Buying In." That's the way it goes sometimes. Her essay focuses on her decision to sell the family farm in western Kansas.

Here’s an excerpt:

Several inches of month-old snow sheathed the fields, and there'd been a fresh dusting the night before. Ground blizzards swirled across the interstate. I dialed in my hometown radio station. The man who'd owned it for as long as I could remember listed the closings caused by ice and near-zero March cold: livestock auctions, a senior get-together, even I-70. Had I left my home in Longmont, Colo., 10 minutes later, I would not have gotten through.

"But once again, folks," continued the voice from my childhood, "if you're looking for some good farm equipment, drive on out to the Harold Bair farm sale. We had a call from the manager out there and the roads are not bad."

There I was in one of the most anonymous places on earth, inside a car driving down the interstate, and I'd been accosted by the public announcement of an intimate betrayal. My betrayal, of my father. I imagined him bolting upright in his grave. If strangers traveling to places like New York and Chicago had heard that announcement, surely he had too.

Read the entire article at www.hcn.org/issues/40.22/out-in-the-cold

Julene’s web site is at www.julenebair.com/

Photo: Sale day at the Bair family farm in Kansas. Photo by Julene Bair.