Dust, Drought, and Dreams Gone Dry

dust bowlDust, Drought, and Dreams Gone Dry is a nationally traveling exhibit sponsored by the American Library Association and the National Endowment for the Humanities that will be at the Rifle Branch Library from March 6 until April 17. The traveling exhibition features twenty colorful, illustrated panels about the Plains area before, during, and after the Dust Bowl occurred. The exhibit will use images and quotations from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, memories of the Dust Bowl from oral histories and writing, and recent scholarly analysis. QR codes on the panels lead to selections from the OSU oral histories, the writings of Caroline Henderson, and other primary sources.

The Rifle Branch Library will be hosting scholars on the Dust Bowl, drought in the west, and oral histories as part of the exhibition. There will also be a two-part screening of Ken Burn's PBS documentary "The Dust Bowl" and copies of the book, "The Worst Hard Time" available to book clubs and individuals for discussion. All programs are free. 

Image courtesy of the U. S. Department of Agriculture

Companion Titles

The Worst Hard TimeThe Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan 

"The Worst Hard Time" is an epic story of blind hope and endurance almost beyond belief; it is also, as Tim Egan has told it, a riveting tale of bumptious charlatans, conmen, and tricksters, environmental arrogance and hubris, political chicanery, and a ruinous ignorance of nature's ways. Egan has reached across the generations and brought us the people who played out the drama in this devastated land, and uses their voices to tell the story as well as it could ever be told." -- Marq de Villiers, author of Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource

 

Out of the Dust

Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse

 Youth Selection

A terrible accident has transformed Billie Jo's life, scarring her inside and out. Her mother is gone. Her father can't talk about it. And the one thing that might make her feel better - playing the piano - is impossible with her wounded hands. To make matters worse, dust storms are devastating the family farm and all the farms nearby. 

 

letters from the dust bowlLetters from the Dust Bowl by Caroline Henderson

Caroline Henderson was a Mount Holyoke graduate who moved to Oklahoma's panhandle to homestead and teach in 1907. This collection of Henderson's letters and articles published from 1908 to1966 presents an intimate portrait of a woman's life in the Great Plains. Her writing mirrors her love of the land and the literature that sustained her as she struggled for survival.