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From Lansing Community College, this is LCC Connect and this is Land Stories with me, David Sewick. Each episode explores a different topic, such as the people, business, neighborhoods, communities, buildings and other phenomena that make up the history of our college and our region. We tell stories and in doing so, we connect the past to the present. In this episode of Land Stories, we are going to look at lines. Lines in the plural. And that is correct. You heard me as you thought your ears just did. I am talking about the line as in the straight object that demarcates something. You mathematicians listening will probably correct me on my just offered definition of a line. L, I, N, E. That type of a line. That's what we're talking about in this episode of Land Stories. Two lines in particular, one of which we will spend a considerable more time discussing than the other. Those two lines, the baseline and the meridian. The second of those two lines, the meridian line, second only in the order I just listed them, is going to be the one that we spend the majority of our time considering on this lovely episode of Land Stories. And the reason for that is because the base and meridian lines for form the basis by which all land in Michigan would be surveyed from the point forward after those two lines were established. And for that reason is very important to know all about those two lines. And as this show is definitely devoted to mostly stuff related to Lansing, Michigan history and the history of the capital region of the Wolverine State, our connection to that purpose is indeed in Meridian Township. Meridian Township is one of the more populated municipalities in the Michigan Capital region and it is indeed named after the Michigan Meridian. So we will spend some time focusing on that Michigan Meridian, considering how Meridian Township got that name, why that line was established to begin with, what that line does, why it appears on a map, and why, even if you don't realize it right now, actually there is a pretty good chance that, yes, right now, right now, whatever time right now happens to be and whatever day right now happens to be, there is a very good chance that if you are listening to this podcast, you are participating in a long term significant holdover of the Michigan Land Survey that that line, the meridian line comes from. So let's get into it. Ever think about land? Yeah, land. Hey, another word that begins with the letter L. We started out considering the word line. Now we're going to consider the word land and where those two come together. And here's why. And this is where the activity that you are participating in right now comes in to the picture here. It's all about land. If you are listening to this program right now, there's a very good chance that you are on land. Yeah, that's right. You could be in a building that sits on land. You could be driving in a car that's going over a road that was placed down on land. That building you might be sitting in could even be your house. And as it turns out, all land in Michigan, all land everywhere in the United States for that matter, or most of it anyways. For the purposes of this program, we will accept that all in this case includes about 99.99% of the land. But most of the land in the United States is surveyed. And the reason why land is surveyed is because most of the land United States is either owned or claimed by somebody. And that is absolutely the case of land here in the Michigan Capital region. And, and all of that land had to be surveyed in order for people to figure out where it's actually located. And if you're going to do something with land, something like make farm on it, build a building, build a house, start a business, make a road, make other features using the land, you need to know where that land is, what features that land has on it and other aspects of that area that you are about to begin developing before you can actually develop that land. So that is why land and where land exists is a very important aspect to consider when we are examining any episode in history. And as it turns out, the land that Meridian Township and that the city of Lansing sit on, the land that all municipalities in Michigan sits on, for that matter, it's all been surveyed. And most of that surveying actually took place way back almost 200 years ago. Now, actually, it was 200 years ago, some of it as this great land survey of all of the lands of Michigan took place between the 18 teens in the 1840s, and as I am recording this episode in the 2020s, that means the math of this historian informs us that this great land survey took place between 180 and 200 years ago. So quite some time ago. And if you think about things that happened way back then, well, I don't know if you actually spend that much time on your daily momentary basis thinking about things that happened 180 or 200 years ago. Most people don't, but the fact is this land was surveyed all the way back then, and we still, we meaning people who are alive nowadays and live in Michigan, still use the very survey method that the Meridian Line, and the Meridian Line is what Meridian Township is named after, established way back when, actually even Before Michigan became a state. So the reason why all of this land surveying took place to begin with is actually very overarching historical, and it is rooted very much in the founding of the United States. So we already are into overarching history, connecting something seemingly as innocuous as a line established on a map to. To something as fundamentally and in some ways philosophical as the founding of the United States. And here's how and why the United States comes into existence, really, in the 1770s and 1780s, right? 1770s is when the leaders of what would become the American revolution declared their independence from Britain. That would be the colonial power that had established the colonies to begin with, that were seeking independence beginning in the 1770s. And they declared independence 1776, fought a war over the next several years to gain independence from the United Kingdom. And part of the reason why that war started out, actually, is because back in the 1750s, colonists living in the what would become the United States, back then it was British North America had fought a war in the middle part of the country, the middle part of North America, including the lands of the Great Lakes region, including the two peninsulas that would later become Michigan. And this war that was fought in the 1750s was called the French and Indian war. And the British won that war. They won it to the extent that all of the lands the French had claimed in the middle part of North America up to that point, well, many of them, I should say, ended up becoming lands the British could claim, including the land that we now call Michigan, those two peninsulas, those very peninsulas that I referenced just moments ago. All of that land was included in the lands that the British Empire acquired as a result of winning the French and Indian war. And immediately after acquiring claim to those lands, the people that were already living on those lands, that would be the indigenous Anishinaabe and others, allied to form a resistance against the British, encroaching further upon their lands then what they had already established by acquiring the settlements that the French had built in the centuries prior to this. So now we are Talking about the 1760s in what we now call Michigan. And all of this land has been acquired by the British, or at least they have acquired a claim to it as a result of the French and Indian war. And immediately after this happens, actually, right during the process of this happening, the indigenous peoples attack the British to try to claim, or try to establish, I should say, their long standing claims over the right to occupy their lands. And the attacks are sufficient that places that the British had claimed to be their Own, and that would include settlements in places like the Straits of Mackinac, ended up falling out of their possession into the hands of the indigenous alliance that had attacked and laid siege to dozens of British locations all around the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley regions of North North America. So what happens is the British try to prevent settlers from moving on to these lands that they had just been attacked on by the indigenous peoples as a way of attempting to achieve peace. The British entered into peace negotiations with the indigenous folks. And in the summer of 1763, as a result of the attacks that had been launched against the British, the British and the indigenous peoples reached agreement of peace that is really centered around the British promising to restrict settlement into the Great Lakes area. So this ends up angering the people that had fought that war in North America on the side of the British. And it angers them because they had believed that they were fighting a war for that very land that they were now denied settlement onto. And this motivates a certain amount of people who are living in the British colonies of North America to begin thinking about, well, seeking independence from the colonial powers that were restricting their settlement into the area. And the other very important element that I need to mention in here is that their resistance to the British government's policy of trying to restrict settlement into the Great Lakes region also was a resistance and a opposition to this policy based on the fact that the British started levying taxes on the American colonists to pay the debts that the British government incurred in fighting that very French and Indian war. So from the mindset of the colonists who would eventually seek independence, hey, we just fought a war for a bunch of land, and now not only are we denied settlement onto that land, they just fought a war for it, but we're actually being taxed to pay for that very war. And so this created in the minds of the colonists who would eventually seek independence, lots of very legitimate motivations for breaking from the United Kingdom, which they do. And the revolutionary war happens. And as a result of the Revolutionary war, American independence is recognized. And in the early 1780s, after independence was formally recognized and formalized into the Paris treaty. That would be the Treaty of Paris, 1783. And after that treaty was ratified, Paris, the United States of America, was a brand new nation that was fully recognized internationally and sought to govern its own affairs very differently than the way the British government had when those states that were now part of the United States had been colonies that were part of the United Kingdom. And one of the biggest differences in the way the new American Government wanted to govern the lands of North America that it now controlled, as opposed to the British government prior is by very much encouraging settlement into the exact part of North America that the British had reached a peace agreement with the indigenous peoples based on restricting settlement into that area. So what we have historically is a situation where this area of land that would become Michigan had been restricted of settlement prior to American independence. After American independence, the exact opposite thing happens. The American government wants settlers to move into this area. Now, in order to get settlers to move into that area, they, meaning the government had to make that land that could be settled. And in one of the earlier episodes of land stories, so definitely go back and give it a listen if you haven't already. I did several episodes that looked at indigenous land appropriation because during the early Republic of the United States period and into the territorial and early statehood days of Michigan, those programs cover the acquisition of all of those lands in much more detail than I'm going to even attempt to do now. This episode, what we will do is suffice to say that between American independence being formally recognized and then put into legal code through the Treaty of Paris in 1783 and the 1840s, so that's a long period of time. We're talking roughly 60 years, the American government entered into hundreds of treaties with the indigenous peoples all around what had become the United States to, to attempt to legally gain claim over their lands, and that included the lands of Michigan. And during that treaty making process, Congress sought itself to foster settlement into these areas, again, including the two peninsulas that would become Michigan, through passing legislation that theoretically would have enabled people to sell the land and to govern it much more easily. So that selling the land and governing it then turns out to be the big motivating factors in the series of laws that Congress passed to try to force foster exactly that, people moving into the Great Lakes region. And one of the very first things Congress does is seek to establish by law a survey method, because land must be surveyed before it was sold. At least by the time we get to the 1780s, that was the mindset that was starting to percolate into people's way of thinking. Up to that point, it had not been uncommon to sell land in various places in the United States, but before a formal survey had been done to it. And what that usually entailed was the seller having obviously a general, well, maybe not so obviously, but the seller having a good idea of the boundaries of his property, explaining it to the potential buyer, and the buyer having to either do Some inspection of the property himself, or take the seller on his faith that that land that he was buying was actually a all there and B, in the form that the settler explained it was. And keep in mind, back in the 1700s when land purchases were made, almost always the purchaser looked at that land as either land he could or could not farm. And if it was land that he could not farm, he was not typically at all interested in it. If it was land that he could farm, he looked at that land as his money making opportunity and what was going to sustain himself. So the description of land before it was sold turned out to be a very important part of the land sale process before pre sale surveys were done. But when American independence was established and the new Congress met, there were other ideas that had been percolating around American society at the time as to how land could be sold. And one of them was the pre survey, that is to survey the land before it sold, establish a very clear definition of the boundaries of the land that's being transacted upon, and then sell it after that. That's the mindset that eventually would make its way into Congress, as the new Congress met and debated what to do in order to encourage settlement into this area. So out of that mindset, we get two ordinances, two laws that were passed, one in 1784 and one in 1785. The 1785 ordinance is the one that eventually, eventually leads to the meridian line being established along with another line that was established, called the baseline. And these were lines that land surveyors drew on maps, but they did not draw them arbitrarily. They actually got on the ground. And they use surveying equipment, the tools of these surveyors trade at the time to determine where their survey point would begin. And from that point, located physically on the ground and then represented on a map that at that point would be deemed very accurate, the land survey of Michigan would commence. So getting everything set up to the point where people could actually physically start walking on the lands of Michigan and finding where they would create these lines on a map to survey from was quite the process, as you might imagine. And these ordinances I made reference to a couple minutes ago are really how that process starts. In 1784, Congress met and they passed an ordinance that contained several clauses that sought to deal with the land that would include the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley area in a more formal and organized way than had been when the British government had controlled that area and attempted to restrict settlement into it. And what that ordinance of 1704 saw it really to do was to create a way that all that land could eventually become states in the United States. And those would be states that would kind of look like and function like the existing 13 states that had formed as part of the original 13 colonies of the United States. So Congress passes this law in 1784. And it stipulates that eventually all this land in the area will be surveyed and that governments will will be formed out of them. And those governments will form the basis of the states that would eventually emerge. And then after a while those states would get enough people into them that that area would look like the eastern part of what we now call the eastern part of the United States. That was the idea behind these ordinances that were passed early on in 1785. Then Congress passes the land ordinance. This becomes the much more consequent sequential of the two. The two being the ordinance of 1784 and the land ordinance of 1785. Because the 1785 ordinance is the one that created in code in law the land survey that would eventually lead to a place like Meridian Township being named. So, and here's how this worked. The land Ordinance of 1785 stipulated that the lands that were to be surveyed out of the the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley area would be surveyed before they were sold. And that survey system would be devised based on what at the time is called the New England land survey system. And again that pre survey is the most important part here. Prior to this point, land in the south in the United States had tend to be sold before it was surveyed. Whereas land in New England was typically surveyed, surveyed and then sold. However, the New England land survey system was not as precise as what would be established under the land ordinance of 1785. So this 1785 ordinance really created a brand new system. And it was a system based on a unit called a township. Here's how it worked. The land survey would start by land surveyors establishing on the ground and represented on a highly accurate map and principal meridian and a principal baseline. Those two lines would be the north, south and east west axis at which all the survey of the state would commence from it would commence from the point where those two axis meet. And in the land orders of 1785, the unit that the survey was to be conducted was a 6 mile square unit that was to be called a township. Most of the townships in Michigan to this day still are six miles long and six miles north to south in their dimension meeting their 36 square miles. That is the unit, the square unit that the great land Survey that would eventually impact Michigan and many other parts of the United States would commence from and what it would be based on within that township unit of six miles east to west and six miles north to south, there would be 36 miles square. And within each of those square mile units, the land could be further subdivided and sold. So that is exactly what happened under the land Ordinance of 1785. The first part of the United States that was surveyed using this method was what was called the Connecticut Reserve. And that was an area of the western part of what is now the state of Ohio. And it was called so because Connecticut laid claim to lands on the other side of the Appalachian Mountains. It would eventually form what would become part of the state of Ohio. And there were other states along the eastern seaboard that had in their original charters, rather nebulous boundaries that seemed stated. Their western extent would be the border of the British land claims in North America. And even though decades, in some cases centuries had passed between when those original clonal charters were drawn up with those very nebulous boundary distinctions and American independence, nothing had ever been done to update those boundary definitions on those colonial charters. And those colonial charters became the basis of early state constitutions. So when American independence happened, one of the first things Congress had to do was clarify where the boundaries of the eastern seaboard states were located. And in the land survey system being established, those boundaries would be formally drawn on a map based on where the township system demarcated. The new territories eventually becoming new states would be located. So the state of Connecticut relinquished some of its land claims in the western part of Ohio, or, excuse me, the eastern part of Ohio. And that is what eventually became the first part of the United States. It was surveyed under the township system of the land Ordinance of 1785. When it came time to Michigan, then the survey had to begin after the establishment of a meridian and a baseline, just like it had in the Connecticut reserve area of Ohio. So in Michigan, the very first step of the survey was establishing where those lines were located. And that is where the term meridian and meridian township, which bears its name, comes into the picture here. Because the land surveyors drew those very two lines, the meridian and the baseline. And then the meridian, just like a longitudinal meridian on a map, is in reference to a north south line. The Michigan survey meridian was the. The north south line by which all the land surveying would be based on, including the east west baseline, that was called that, the base line. And where those two intersected the meridian and the baseline, that would be the point where the survey would take place, and that is exactly then what ends up happening. However, in Michigan, there were many, many developments that delayed the commencing of the land survey. So it would be many, many years until Meridian township would actually be named Meridian township, Because it was many years after the ordinance of 1785 that was established before the meridian was even drawn in Michigan. But that point finally comes in the 18 teens. On January 11, 1804, the Michigan Territory was officially established, and theoretically, the land survey would begin shortly thereafter. However, the War of 1812 happened, and that delayed everything. So what actually ends up happening is in 1815, beginning in Defiance, Ohio, the Michigan survey begins. And you had two surveyors who did some of the very official work or very initial work. One gentleman by the name of Benjamin ho, and the other a gentleman by the name of Joseph Wampler. Now, those two land surveyors also had to deal with the fact that in between their work, a third surveyor was introduced into the project. When Benjamin ho and the second land surveyor both were charged with locating initial points where the base of meridian lines would meet, they actually identified different points. They were located several hundred feet from one another. In 1824, Joseph Wampler attempted to identify those survey points. And when he did so and determined that they were 700ft off of one another, he made the decision that the Michigan land survey would have to begin not from one, but but from two points. And those two points would be the point where the baseline intersects the north south Michigan meridian. Meridian road in Meridian township near Lansing, Michigan, to this day takes its name from that land survey line. Because after the land surveyors walked the land and made the determination where that line would be located, they then were able to survey out from the that point over the next decades. And eventually that line, the meridian line, became well known on all kinds of maps. And from that point on, once meridian township became established, it became logical to name the township after the line that bisected its land. And there are many roads throughout Michigan and even into northern Ohio that actually run right along that meridian line, including Meridian road in Ingham county, Michigan, thus bearing the name. So I bet you didn't ever think that much about why something like Meridian township was named as such. But it is indeed named from the line, probably the most important line in Michigan history, actually, from which all of Michigan would be surveyed. From that line starts in Sault Ste. Marie, actually, and it extends south to the Michigan Ohio border. And the point at which that line was established actually is in Defiance, Ohio. There's a historical marker there nowadays. So even though this is Land Stories and Land Stories makes reference to Lansing, Michigan and the Capital Region surrounds it, this episode concludes with a reference to a Ohio historical marker. You've been listening to Land Stories with me, David Siewic. For more information on this program and to stream past episodes, visit lccconnect.org LCC Connect is the official home of the Voices, Vibes and Vision of Lansing Community College. Offering hours of original and exciting programming. Hosted by faculty, staff and community members, LCC Connect explores our college's work in the community, important topic topics in higher education, and our vision for the future. Catch the vibe on 89.7 FM or online@lccconnect.org until next time. 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Washington Square on air is the audio town square for the Washington Square Review. Lansing Community College's literary journal. Writers, readers, scholars, publishing professionals, citizens of the world, gather here and chat about all things writing. Hey there. This is Melissa Ford Luckin, Editor for the Washington Square Review. I'm here today with Jack Johnson, whose story the Gardeners appears in the Summer 24 issue. Hey there, Jack. How are you doing?

Good.

Awesome, thank you.

How are you doing?

I'm doing good. I'm here talking to you, which is pretty awesome. So tell us about your story. How did you come to write it?

The story is actually part of a triptych that I've been farming around about the Black Lives Matter movement. We're in Richmond, Virginia. It's centered in Richmond, Virginia. And about 2020, some of the statues around here started coming down and they were putting up essentially community centers. If you take a look at what in 2020, what was the Robert E. Lee statue? It became the Marcus Davis Peters Circle, which was kind of an amazing thing. And there were gardens that blossomed around the monument, or the pedestal at any rate, for the monument. And I knew some of the folks that were involved with that and I knew some of the backstories about what was going on. And so I, I took a little bit of that and a little bit of fiction and developed a story called the Gardeners.

When you wrote the story, did it come to you pretty quickly or how long did it take to write?

Frankly, I had to beat the heck out of that story. And the reason is it actually has sort of three parts. One part is the actual gardening effort itself, which actually is substantially less than it was originally. Right. And then there's another part which was the dog, and the dog actually became the centerpiece for the story, sort of the hook that everything else comes off of. And then finally there was the relationship between the young lady and her father. That is what kind of resolves the story at the end.

Which part? Which one of those three parts came to you first?

The story about the gardeners, actually, the gardening and so forth. That was the real concrete detail that I really wanted to capture and get down because there was a lot of stuff going on around the BLM movement. Very different kinds of stories. I've got another story out, I'll just mention it briefly, called How they do, which is published in the Welliston Literary Journal. And it was about a fellow who essentially drags a Confederate flag out of the back of a pickup of a bunch of Trump supporters that are driving through the encampment there. And that ended up being its own story, which I couldn't really incorporate into the Gardeners, but I always knew I wanted to do the Gardeners, so I had that. That story. And then there was another story, actually, that came out of that whole series of events around the BLM movement called the Judge, which was about a judge who was less than safe, based loosely on some other judges that you might be familiar with. And it has a really dark ending to it, actually. So that became the middle story. And then the Gardeners, which has, I think, a very upbeat ending, or at least to my mind, it seems upbeat, became the final piece for the triptych.

That was my book club question to you was to me. I can see why you'd say the ending was upbeat, but it does have a little bit of a sad note to it. Bittersweet.

Yeah. The father isn't there, for obvious reasons. He's kind of a. Frankly, a low life. He's a drunkard, so forth. But his relationship with his daughter had always been strong, and he wanted to maintain that. And he thought very highly of his daughter and tried to, as best he could, impart his wisdom and his gardening ability.

So he's a very human character.

Yeah.

It's interesting that a character can have such a strong impact on the story but not be present in the story themselves.

Yeah. And I think that's the way a lot of life is, frankly. We do things, whether consciously or not, and we're influenced by narratives that have preceded us. As you know, Faulkner said, the past isn't really dead. It's never really passed. Even I mutilated that quote. But I'm sure you can get it right. At any rate, that's the idea. Is that the narratives or the stories that we see us continue, and they form us as well.

Mm. But I would think. Well, I don't know. You tell me if you agree. But she is not quite the same at the end of the story. So her narrative does change a little bit.

Yeah, I think so. I think she goes through a bit of despondency, and actually, it's one of those stories where the resolution isn't so much, you know, it's not in the plot. It's just in the way the character is going to face lot of kind of, you know, downside events. There's. There's the woman, the dog who gets taken away by the woman. And the woman is, you know, she's kind of accusing them of theft, which isn't entirely wrong. You know, I mean, there's. There's this ambiguity, and she has to deal with that. She has to deal with the fact that she's been in jail and got bailed out. But, you know, it's in the recalling of what she's trying to do, I think, and what her father has told her that she can do. That that lets her kind of revisit maybe some poor decisions and still keep going. And maybe the word resilience is appropriate in this context. I'm not sure.

Yeah. I'm gonna take a little sidestep and ask. Do you do much gardening yourself?

I do. That's a great story. A great question.

The.

Yeah, I've got. In fact, I was working in the garden today. I telework, so don't tell anyone, but on the days that I telework, I spend about an hour and a half on my breaks and lunches and so forth out putzing in the garden. I put in some cucumbers, made sure my plants were watered. It's about 90 degrees here, close to 90 and, you know, really kind of steamy hot, but getting dried out, so I have to make sure everything gets watered. I also have chickens and ducks, so I've got practically a farm, even though I live in the city.

Okay. Do the chickens get into the garden at all?

No, because I have a fence.

Okay, good.

It's not a big black fence like in the Gardeners, but I do have a fence that keeps the chickens out.

Yeah. Because. Yeah. Chickens and gardens don't always work well together.

No. And ducks. Ducks are actually even worse sometimes because they go in with their noses looking for, you know, insects, and they like to get into the mud and dig around there for worms.

And so, yeah, they'll make quite a mess and not be sorry. Yeah. All right, so let's talk. Let's talk about some of your other writing. I know that you work for a couple of magazines. You're a regular contributor to two magazines. So tell us a little bit about that.

Yeah. The first magazine we'll talk about, I guess, is north of James. I do a column for them called Hidden Histories. And what I do is I. Well, what I try to do is try to take, let's say, current events and apply, you know, an antidote from an historical context or put it in an historical context for the readers. They're not long. That's about a thousand words each column. For example, this month's issue is going to run a short piece on the Central Park Five. And of course, this is related at least tangentially to Donald Trump, you know, getting a felony conviction. So that's what is going on with north of James. And I've been doing that for, oh my God, probably about 10 years now, on and off. And then I also then that evolved out of a radio show that I had at WRAR called Hidden History, which is basically the same thing. It just kind of grew up and grew legs and became a regular column feature on north of James. And the other magazine that I occasionally contributed contribute to is Style magazine. That's a little bit more ad hoc. If I have a piece that I'm interested in running or an artist or somebody in town I want to interview and kind of get out there, I'll usually do a piece and send it to Style. And Style's pretty good about, you know, running things that have local interest for the Richmond community.

Kind of loop back to the hidden histories. How do you decide what piece of history you're going to cover?

That's a monthly question, and it's actually a really good question. But I mean, what I tend to do. And Charles, who's the editor of north of James, a very good writer as well, he and I kind of converge about the middle of the month, you know, prior to the next issue's publication, and we chit chat about what's happening in the news and where the hook might lie. As an example, the week or the month? Excuse me, before the piece on the Central Park Five, I did a piece on presidential immunity for obvious reasons. Right. So, and then, and it's not all like Donald Trump centric or anything like that. I've done lots of different pieces and some of the stuff is kind of new news to some people, but is not really hidden. For example, we did a piece on the lovings of Virginia, who, you know, were the first interracial couple that broke sort of the miscegenation laws in Virginia way back, I think 1950 or so their case was. And they finally at the Supreme Court overturned the miscegenation laws based on their story. They made a movie out of that. And I went ahead and did a Hidden History on that in part so that people would understand the backstory and in part because I just hadn't done it before. And I thought, that's really interesting. Let's see, you know, what the roots of the story are.

How do you usually do your research?

I have books. You can see them over here maybe, or let me see. I guess you can. I can move this a little bit. And you can see my books. They're all over that way. But I also, of course, use the Internet, which is, you know, a fantastic tool, I guess.

I was wondering if you ever do any interviews with people that are related to the. What you're covering?

Yeah, occasionally. Here's a good example. I. I did a piece for Hidden Histories a while back on the community.

Hospital.

Which was going to get torn down by Virginia State University. It was a community hospital. Been around since, actually almost since reconstruction or a little bit after reconstruction in one form or another. And it was on VSU's property. And they were just, you know, we don't need this anymore. We're going to tear it down. And people got really up in arms about that because it was an historical building. And he thought, you know, we don't need to lose much more history, especially black history in Richmond. They've done a pretty good job of wiping out a lot of the black history in Richmond already. So we want to preserve what we can. And so there were some protests around that. And I interviewed a couple of those folks and talked to the Free Press in town, which is actually a really good local community effort to cover stories that are central to Richmond City, and got some good quotes there, and also did some corresponding research, found out some interesting stuff about Bonaire Hospital and their use of the community hospital to rake in some money without actually funding the community hospital. But I'll leave that for another day.

I was just wondering if you ever come up with so much from your research that you have to split it off into.

Well, what happened in this particular story is I ran with what I thought was the hot story, and Charles, I think, agreed. He ran it. The hot story was that Bonaire, the corporate headquarters for Bonaire, was using, had purchased the community hospital and was using it as essentially a way to poverty wash the Medicaid recipients. So what would happen is they get funding from the federal government for Medicare payments, and they would use those in a limited degree to fund the folks at the community hospital. And what was going on is the Medicare recipients would get a discount, but they would buy these drugs in bulk, saying they were for these Medicare recipients, and they were getting discounted prices all across the board. And it's a huge Corporation. So there are like five or six different hospitals that fall under Bon Secur. So they were able to essentially, you know, make millions of dollars off this federal program. But the community hospital itself didn't even have an icu. So the community hospital was not benefiting, benefiting from all the money they were raking in because it was a community hospital, if that makes sense.

I hear what you're saying. I don't know that it makes sense.

I guess that's not the right question, is it? Yeah, it makes sense from a profit, I guess.

Yes.

From a human perspective, it seems pretty warped.

Yeah. The other thing I was thinking about when I was listening to you talk about your research and trying to figure out like which, which area to put your focus, it reminded me I teach composition. And so when students start doing their research, sometimes they can wander off into, you know, unexpected places. They think they're going to research one thing and then next thing you know, they're uncovering a bunch of other stuff that's more cool and more interesting. Yeah. So.

But the question at the end of the day is, does the piece actually hold together when they do that? Right.

Yes. Sometimes you don't know until you try to write it. And I guess you, you probably find that out too. You can get excited about something that you're finding, but you just can't make it happen sometimes.

Yeah, there's an awful lot of rabbit holes, particularly in American history, or probably any kind of history. And when you go down them, it's great. But you have to, if you're trying to get a thousand word piece together and you're on deadline, you have to jettison some stuff sometimes.

Yeah, but I guess you probably just save it somewhere.

Oh, yeah, yeah. You know, I. I can look back at the old stories that are, you know, on the editing room floor, so to speak, and pick up some odds and ends and sometimes put something together. I've got. This is a little brag, not a big brag, but I've got a couple of historical novels that were kind of put together because of a hidden history that went too far. One that I'm working on right now, I'm putting the finishing touches on is called Colfax, and it's about the colfax massacre of 1873. And the more I dug into it, the more it just astonished me. It was actually one of the. Ended up being a Supreme Court decision about the Enforcement act that got overturned or partially overturned, and as a consequence, the federal government was not able to basically run down like White supremacists, the Ku Klux Klan and some of the other folks that were very active during the Jim Crow era. And that's basically one of the things that made the transition from Reconstruction, where freedmen had schools and nice things like that, to, you know, what we have come to know as the Jim Crow era.

That's fascinating. How long have you been working on that?

It's a novel when it comes out.

Okay. Yes. How long have you been working on it?

About three years now.

It sounds like that kind of project is.

Yeah, I haven't been to Colfax yet, but that's on the agenda for this summer. I'm going to go down there. Of all things, in August, let's go to Louisiana, in sort of the northwest corner of Louisiana, which is where Colfax is, and check out. Just check out the area, get a hotel and camp out a little bit and see what's what with the people there. I don't imagine it's that. That similar vibe, but I imagine there are some things that are going to be consistent too.

Yeah, it would be interesting just to casually talk to people about what you're researching and see how they respond.

And see how they respond. Yeah. I might get a haircut before I go down there.

Okay. Talk about some of the writing you do for Style magazine.

Like I said, that's basically mostly kind of promotional stuff. I like to interview artists around town, artists and musicians around town and find out what their projects are, what they're engaged in, and write about that. And Style is a really good venue for those kind of pieces. My sort of harder hitting journalistic efforts I've done primarily with north of James. I also edit a blog, the alliance for Progressive Virginia Blog. And so sometimes if I've stumbled on something that seems especially egregious and relevant to progressives around town, I'll post it there as well.

It sounds like a lot of that work is research based nonfiction, right?

Yeah.

Okay, so talk a little bit about your creative writing. What have you done in addition to this short story that we're going to have and the other ones you described?

Wow, there's a lot out there. I just got published in Oxford Magazine, so I was really happy about that. A short story called Beat, which was. My wife will tell you that you should not read it. It's that kind of story. It's about a young boy who makes some bad choices, ends up dropping acid and pushing a car into a quarry and then having menage a trois and a hotel where they break in and then finally coming around to the girl he'd been romancing for years during his adolescence. So it's actually. I think of it as kind of a funny love story, actually. So that's one story that is out now in Oxford Magazine. I've got another one, slightly different, that's supposed to be coming out with Cosmic Double, which is another magazine out there. There's a lot of small magazines out there nowadays called Watch the Curb. And this is a little bit of a history lesson, but not much. It's about a veteran who's come back from Vietnam and he has been wounded in the buttocks. And so he is. He's been chosen by the Veterans Administration to attend a party at, basically a socialite, a Washington socialite, where the French ambassador is going to be in some other big wigs. And he has an incident in which he gets tossed into a koi pond and gets rescued by the General of Westmoreland, General Westmoreland, who was the commanding general for Vietnam. And the. The newspapers interview him for Veterans Day, and he goes on about flying out of Vietnam was much better than his trip across the Coia Pond or something like that. And they cut it entirely because it's. It's not. It's not appropriate to Veterans Day. It's not patriotic enough. So his. His one quote in this entire story is, yeah, it was okay, and that's it. And that's sort of the ending of the story. And I got one other thing which is out now, or it was out in 23 or 24. Late 24, early 24, I should say. It's got nominated for a Pushcart Award. It's called Fighting Ghost. I was really happy about that. That just recently came out.

How much of your research do you think shows up in the short stories? Do you think it floats around in the back of your mind? Because each one of the ones you described does seems to me to have some little bit of political history in it.

Yeah, I think that's. That's accurate. I think I. I'm intrigued by history and. And I don't know a lot of it, honestly. I mean. Well, I guess it's one of those things where the more you learn, the.

More you read, the more you realize.

You realize you don't know. And so I am in this incredible ocean of unknowing about our history. And so I want to learn about it. And my assumption is if you make it interesting enough and vibrant enough and present enough, people will be interested, too. Or I hope that's kind of the game plan.

Right, right. It sounds like you invent people and put them in the context of the history, but the way you describe the stories are very much about the people with the sociology and the.

You should never say that fiction writers invented people. That's not true. They're real people.

All right, I understand what you're saying.

No, that. No, that's actually a really good description. I think that's. That's true. We. We kind of populate the historical incident with persons who have elements of people that we actually know.

Yeah. It's interesting always to think about how if you took characters and put them in a different setting, how they would or wouldn't behave differently in a different setting. How much does that time period affect the way that they are.

Yeah, I think that's actually really true. There are. There are, you know, people. Well, here's an example I'm going to talk a little bit about in Black and White, which is a novel I hope to have coming out shortly. And the. There's a beginning chapter called Sustenance, in which a. A young black man is. Has advertently or inadvertently killed his master with a site. You know, a Reaping Wheat site. Right. Cut him in half almost. This is based on a true story, by the way. I say that just because I don't want you to think I'm a cob or something like that. Anyhow, he spends his time running away from the incident because he knows he has to escape. And he's praying the whole time that the Lord will forgive him for what he has done. And I think in that context, during that period, that's very appropriate. I think there was a lot stronger sense of spirituality and religiosity throughout that era. And I'm saying 1800s, 1900s, early 1900s, and so forth. I think if that same incident were to happen today, even with, let's say, the central part five, you know, one of them inadvertently killed a cop or whatever, I don't think you would have him praying. Right. I think it would be something else, maybe equally traumatic or dramatic, but not. Not the religiosity. So there's certainly a context that changes the character, what the character is concerned about, based on their own, you know, sense of. Of culture and where they are and what they mean in.

Yeah. What they're surrounded by. That's pretty fascinating to think about. All right, well, what are you working on right now, this week, aside from. From whatever's due?

I'm working on a short story that, quite frankly, been bugging the heck out of me. Called Wilding Montana. And I can't get the ending right. So I'm banging it and banging it. I let it sit for a week or two. I come back and Andy kind of falls flat. Doesn't really hold together. So it's about a girl who. Whose brother has overdosed and she goes to a. She goes to a rehab place which is not altogether kosher. They're essentially. I think they're essentially kidnapping kids because all they need is parental consent without the kids actually, you know, being on board with this in order to go through the drug rehabilitation process. And the main character, Liz, doesn't think that's kosher. And she helps a boy escape by letting him have his shoe so that you can run across Montana. All of which I think works pretty well. But then the ending, I've got the father and I've got this other thing going on with the brother's death, and it's just a mess. Still working on it.

All right. Probably need to go out in the garden.

You think?

Yeah.

Yeah. Well, they say if you put your hands in the soil, it'll make you happy because little microbes are supposed to help you out.

Makes sense to me. I totally buy that. Yeah. All right. Well, I think that you gave me a link for a website so people can follow up and look for future work from you. Is that correct?

Yeah, it's JackR JohnsonWriter blog, if you want to check that out. It's got, I think, all of the published works. Most. Not all of it, but most the published works that's available. So you can check that out. You can always check out north of James magazine. That's NorthOfJames.com or Style Weekly. Style Weekly.com. i'll have stuff there. And if you happen to be listening to wrir, I also do occasionally a radio show called either Open Source or WR RIR Presents. And next week I'm hoping to do some interviews with Palestinians who were holding court at VCU and were subsequently chased away, as well as Jewish. What's the word? I'm looking for peace activists who are concerned with the plight of the Palestinians in Gaza right now. So we're going to do a little interview bringing those two together.

Awesome. Well, I'll be sure to include the links in the show notes so people can come and find you and stay in touch.

All right. Excellent.

Yeah.

Thank you, Melissa.

Yeah, thank you. Thanks for stopping by the audio Town Square of the Washington Square Review. Until next time, this has been the Washington Square on air from Lansing Community College. To find out more about our writers, community and literary journal, visit lcc.edu.wm us up writing is messy, but do it anyway.

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