This week on the Thomas Jefferson Hour, Clay Jenkinson visits with Pat Brodowski, formerly the head gardener at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello. Pat explains how she found her way to Monticello, what she learned about Thomas Jefferson from working every day in his extensive garden, and how she is occupying her time now as a retiree. Plus, Pat gives tips to our listeners about how to grow something in the next year.
Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky and Clay Jenkinson discuss Jefferson's daughters. Thomas Jefferson was highly expectant of their behavior and let them know it through a series of letters. When he died in bankruptcy, his daughter Martha was left nearly penniless and had to deal with the aftermath of Jefferson's poor money management.
Clay Jenkinson speaks with David Swenson about the ethnomusicologist Frances Densmore and her work with the Lakota in the Dakotas beginning in 1911. David has spent the last year working on The Densmore Repatriation Project, re-cataloging and restoring her wax cylinder recordings.
At Standing Rock in 1911, Frances Densmore met with dozens of tribal elders and recorded traditional songs on wax cylinder. Densmore documented this work in her book Teton Sioux Music which became a touchstone for learning about Lakota/Dakota culture. The Densmore Repatriation Project reintroduces the songs with new recordings made by contemporary Native singers.
The Densmore Project’s website: lakotasongs.com
The Densmore Project on YouTube
KX News: Re-introducing Lakota Songs
Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky and Clay Jenkinson discuss King George III and his effect on the American Revolution. According to the British historian George Otto Trevelyan, the King was determined to "keep the rebels harassed, anxious, and poor, until the day when, by a natural and inevitable process, discontent and disappointment were converted into penitence and remorse."
In the continuing series of Jefferson biographical shows about President Thomas Jefferson, Clay S. Jenkinson and David Swenson present part one of a discussion about Jefferson’s published work, “Notes on the State of Virginia”, often called the greatest book written in America before 1800. In this episode, Jefferson’s positions on race are discussed at length.
It's sex, drugs and... puritanical Jefferson on this week's 1776 Club exclusive broadcast. Clay tells a story about going onstage after a band to explain how to grow hemp to an audience of angry heavy metal fans. After you hear the show, let us know — are you as excited about those t-shirts as we are? If anyone finds one, we want to see! Apparently there are still 4,992 lying around waiting to be sold!
Clay is back in the barn again today to speak with David for this 1776 Club broadcast. Rome wasn't built in a day — but now, as Clay tells us after his flight, you can get from Rome to Bismarck, ND in less than 24 hours. Clay talks about his history in radio and the stack of tapes in his basement that contain his early days on the air.
This week, part two of the Jefferson Hour in front of a live studio audience in Norfolk, Virginia at the studios of WHRO/WHRV-FM with host Barbara Hamm Lee.
Clay wonders why Jefferson never made it to Rome considering that it would have been a high point of Jefferson's life. David lists three character traits that Clay has in common with Jefferson — both good and bad! Finally, the hosts discuss listener questions and international views on the presidential elections of the Unites States.
Sheila (shy-leh) Schafer died quietly in her sleep on Tuesday March 15, 2016, in Bismarck, North Dakota. She was 90 years old.
She was the most life-affirming person I ever met in the whole course of my life. I met her ten years ago when I moved back to North Dakota. We became friends, then good friends, then extremely close friends. But I was merely one of hundreds of Sheila's friends.
“Sheila Schafer was always the youngest person in every room.”
She was the wife of North Dakota's first great millionaire, Harold Schafer, the founder of the Gold Seal Company (Mr. Bubble, Snowy Bleach, Glass Wax), and the philanthropist and visionary who turned the sleepy little town of Medora into North Dakota's premier tourist destination. She was the mother of eight children, five of Harold's, three of her own. One of those children, Ed Schafer, was the governor of North Dakota between 1992-2000 and later George W. Bush's Secretary of Agriculture.
She was the center of attention no matter where she went or what she did, and she delighted virtually everyone she ever met. She was a master raconteur, a natural comic, and her heart was as large as the American West. She was on a first name basis with Presidents, governors, ambassadors, rock stars, and thousands of people whose names she always remembered but you and I have never met.
The famous Medora Musical, which was largely her creation, entertains more than 100,000 people per summer in a town of about 108 permanent citizens. To see the Musical with Sheila was to watch two shows: the Musical, and Sheila watching the Musical. Sheila's Musical was almost a contact sport: she whooped, hollered, cheered, teared up, clutched her heart during fireworks, shouted "Hi, Band!" when the musicians first took the stage, and then stayed afterwards to give words of encouragement to the cast and crew. Countless times sitting next to her in the fifth or sixth row, I have watched people come up to kneel before her--to say, "You probably don't remember me, but when my father was ill, you and Harold helped us out. . . . You may not remember me, but when I was working in Medora one summer, you brought me a ice cream bar on the hottest day of July, and said, good work, keep it up, and enjoy Medora!"
She pleased multitudes without ever seeming insincere. She laughed easily, often, and hard, and was able to laugh at herself without the slightest pride or reluctance.
The longer I knew her the more amazed I was: to be counted among her hundreds of friends; to witness her amazing anonymous acts of kindness and thoughtfulness; to observe her high intelligence and savvy analysis of situations near and far away; and to see what willful optimism can do to turn virtually any situation into joy and possibility.
Three times since I met her I have been told that she would die in the next 48 hours, and each time when Death came for her she sent him packing: not yet, not now. The last of these moments came more than five years ago! I had come to think of her as immortal, for her mighty and youthful spirit kept her alive long after her body had broken down. Finally, not even Sheila Schafer could prevail against the fragility of old age. She died with dignity.
I will miss her more than I could ever say. She made the difference in my life these last ten years. My live would have been so much less without her. And though her legacy--adventures, stories, style, laughter, generosity of spirit--will live on in all who knew her, the simple fact is that my life will be so much less without her.
A number of years ago I wrote a short book called Becoming Jefferson’s People: Re-Inventing the American Republic in the Twenty-First Century. It is my attempt to describe what it is to be a Jeffersonian, and how a more Jeffersonian America would re-invigorate our national politics and culture.
A few weeks ago I recorded an audio edition of the book at Makoché Recording Studios in Bismarck, North Dakota. We are doing the last of the post-production of the book now. It will soon be available on audible.com.
By “Jeffersonian,” I mean something like the following combination. A citizenry that reads books for pleasure and enlightenment; a more emphatic and committed public education system; a belief that “reason is our only oracle,” and that science should be permitted to shape (even dictate) public policy; a deep commitment to civility, generosity of spirit, epistolary correspondence, and harmony; growing some of one’s own food, if only a tomato and a patch of peas; a preference for temperance (wine) over intoxication; a deep and abiding curiosity; a commitment to international peace and non-violence; and an insistence that government should only do such things as it alone can do.
Read more here.
The most frequently asked question by people who come into my house is, “Have you read all these books?” And even though it is a natural and inevitable question, it is a question that so fundamentally misunderstands the life of the mind, the life of the reader, that I have a hard time not responding in sarcasm.
Review my list of primary texts here.
March 22 & 24
I cannot wait to return to Norfolk, Virginia, where I have performed Jefferson and other historical characters for the past decade or more. I love our east-coast flagship station WHRV/WHRO, and the people there who do so much for public radio and the humanities. I have close friends in the lower Chesapeake. The Roper Theater has been the venue of some of my favorite public performances. I hope you can attend one of two performances coming up in March 22 & 24.
For details, visit WHRO.
Rough draft from the Library of Congress.
“We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable...”
This week on The Thomas Jefferson Hour, the semi-permanent guest host David Swenson and I discuss Jefferson’s original text of the Declaration of Independence. It's part of our 20-episode out of character biography of Thomas Jefferson. Stay tuned as we work our way through the life of one of America's greatest individuals.
Whatever one thinks of the politics of the Reagans, they had class. They brought decorum to all that they did. They took themselves seriously because they took America seriously. President Reagan understood Jefferson's principle that to be president of the United States you have to sing the Song of America. How appalled Reagan would be by the antics of the 2016 Republican candidates for president.
To read my short essay on the legacy of Nancy Reagan, click here.
I’ve been watching with great amusement the Republican establishment’s attempts to stop Donald Trump from winning the nomination. Something very similar happened in 1912, when former President Theodore challenged the incumbent, his former friend William Howard Taft for the Republican nomination. it is never a good idea to thwart the will of the people. Are you listening (or reading your history) Republican establishment?
Read more here.
You may know that we are building a magnificent national Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in Dickinson, North Dakota. Our design committee met out on the Oregon coast last weekend to discuss the stories we want to tell at the TR National Presidential Library and Museum. The weekend ended with a propitious sign tossed up by the Pacific Ocean. Read more here.
For more information on this exciting project, visit the Theodore Roosevelt Center.
Sunday, March 13, 2016 at 3 pm CST
Conversations at Bismarck State College occur five times per academic year, led by BSC President Larry Skogen and humanities scholar Clay S. Jenkinson.
This Sunday, March 13, President Skogen and I will explore the life and achievement of Buffalo Bill Cody, his relations with American Indians, and the way in which he depicted Indians in his shows both in the United States and Europe. We will base our conversations on Cody's autobiography (1920), and Louis S. Warren's Buffalo Bill's America: William Cody and the Wild West Show.
Our discussion will try to make sense of what has been called the "inauthentic authenticity" of Buffalo Bill's life and career. What was it about America in the 1880s and 90s that packed his arenas with audiences hungry to make sense of our frontier history? To what extent did Cody "represent" frontier history and to what extent did he "invent" it?
Later this spring (BSCtalk.org) we will explore North Dakota's Dust Bowl Years, and George Armstrong Custer's 1874 reconnaissance of the Black Hills.
You can watch live online. For information and the live stream link at 3 pm CST on Sunday, click here.
Thanks to my friend Robin for the photo from last summer's trip.
July 17-26, 2016
Every summer I lead 20-30 individuals through the White Cliffs section of the Missouri River in Montana, and then up on the Lolo Trail in Idaho west of Missoula. We follow precisely in the footsteps of Lewis and Clark. It's the highlight of my travel year. If you listen to the Thomas Jefferson Hour, you have heard of the infamous "Wendover Death March." For many, this is a life-changing adventure.
Jefferson would have loved to go on this journey, if he could have brought a keel-boat of wine, another of books, writing instruments, scientific devices--and Madison to do the heavy lifting!. Space is limited, reserve your spot here.
I hope you will find these stories uplifting as well as funny. I’m a Jeffersonian. I believe we are all on a quest to become our best selves. I’m always delighted when I can be funny, but my mission in life is to provide valuable perspective, lucidity, historical context, and good sense in every room I find myself.
In the course of my long strange trip through life I have had the chance to do some really satisfying things. One of my favorites is to do a varied series of public presentations in a short space of time.
"You think I'm joking, but I wanted a square America."
— Clay S. Jenkinson portraying Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson goes on the road this week to Pittsburg State University in Pittsburg, Kansas. The performance was taped live at the Bicknell Family Center for the Arts on September 15, 2018 in front of an audience of over 500 people. The event was hosted by Dustin Treiber, the program director of Four States Public Radio station KRPS.
The subject of this episode was the Louisiana Purchase. Jefferson, to begin the conversation, pointed out to the citizens of Kansas that he bought the state for three cents per acre from Napoleon Bonaparte.
I am so mighty privileged to have this responsibility, to play this role, to get to look at the universe through the eyes of one of the most fascinating individuals ever to walk the face of the earth.