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Joe Paddock We proudly present Joe Paddock as the SMAHC Prairie Disciple for 2009. This award is provide awareness and recognition of one individual per year from southwest Minnesota, whose activities have best aided in the development of the arts in the SMAHC region. In the words of Jean Replinger who nominated him, “He has performed his magic in teaching and writing…and encouraged others of all ages in the written and oral arts in nearly every venue imaginable: nursing homes, grade schools, university classes, farm community gatherings, urban and city bookstores, parks, etc. He invested a lifetime of learning, writing and giving his artistic know-how and inspiration to others.” Paddock grew up in Litchfield, Minnesota, to which after a long absence, he has returned. He is living in the house in which he grew up. Litchfield was a thriving community in the 1940s and ‘50s. He was surrounded by grassroots storytellers and the words of those elder tellers still resonate in him and in his writings. He attended public school in Litchfield. The teaching there was substantial, though arts education was limited. His interest in writing came early. When he was in second grade, an older neighborhood kid took him to the old Carnegie library, the first trip of many to come. Amazed by all the books in the stacks, he asked where all these books came from. “People write them”, was his friend’s response.” He thought, what a great way to make a living. He was hooked, and he never deviated from the commitment that took hold of him on that day. Paddock learned to love the environment through his father who was a passionate outdoorsman. He deeply loved the little lakes and hardwood hills of Meeker County. He later spent much of a six-year period living in a primitive cabin on Minnesota’s wild Kettle River. His focus during those years was on nature observation, meditation, and dream-work, and it was then that he first began to regularly publish poetry. He states, “While working with environmental organizations, my approach has always been to educate by way of poetry and story.” This is a strategy he used while working with the American Farm Project and the Land Stewardship Project as well as in giving programs in a great many other environmental settings. Paddock is the Vice President of the Ernest C. Oberholtzer Foundation and wrote the biography of wilderness preservationist Oberholtzer (Keeper of the Wild, Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2001). As such, he sometimes functions as “keeper of the story” for the organization. Paddock has been involved in many arts organizations, including COMPAS, SMAHC, The National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities, The Creative Writing Department of the University of Minnesota, the Minnesota Rural Arts Initiative, Self Expressing Earth. He is currently facilitating the Litchfield Area Writers Group which he founded in 1990. As a long time member of SMAHC, Paddock has been an advocate for the arts in SW Minnesota. He became one of two first National Endowment for the Arts “Poets in the Community” in the town of Olivia. This was a pilot project funded by the NEA with help from SMAHC and administered by COMPAS. This new project met with some fierce resistance by many in the community. He soon found that the project couldn’t be about him as poet, and that it must have to do with enhancing the creativity of people in the community and in digging into and bringing to light the greatness of the community’s own story. It was then that he became an oral historian, and The Things We Know Best, the 140,000 work book that he collected and edited (with the help of a truly dedicated supported committee) won the day for the project. In the end, the city council which had previously been hostile, gave him the keys to the city. Paddock worked on many other projects including two one-year SMAHC-sponsored (NEA funded) regional poetry projects which he shared with his poet wife Nancy. He remembers that during the first of these they worked in 42 different communities, providing readings and workshops and working as poets in the classroom. SMAHC published and distributed a chapbook of his poetry during each of those years. In the following years, while working with the American Farm Project and the Land Stewardship Project, he was often involved with short-term SMAHC projects and programs, including a number of oral history workshops given to communities in the region. After he moved back to Litchfield, SMAHC helped to fund the “Recovering the Story” project which Paddock coordinated and which led to an extensive oral history collection covering much of the 20th Century, a produced play he wrote from this content, and the Litchfield Area Writers Group, the members of which have now published 13 books. He states, “COMPAS published the first, SMAHC provided a grant to publish the second, and from that time on, we’ve sold well enough to become self-sustaining. Paddock has had a great impact on many people over the years. When asked about that impact, he commented, “As for my impact on other people, it may not be appropriate for me to say a lot about this. However, I will say that I have always loved to help enhance the creativity of others, less that they will become professional writers than that they will become more fully aware of and connected to the creative dimension in themselves. In a similar vein, I take real satisfaction in helping others to more fully discover the story in which they are grounded.” We congratulated Joe Paddock on receiving the SMAHC Prairie Disciple Award and thank him for his contribution to the arts in our region. Many thanks to Joe Paddock for contributing to this story. You can read the full Q & A interview with Joe Paddock. You can also read his bio included in his poetry book “Dark Dreaming, Global Dimming” HERE and a Paddock essay, “Local Story and the Power of Art”.
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