Who more than the Southwesterners who’ve boldly claimed their home under the same tornado skies could have more cause to celebrate the millennium? And a celebration is exactly what Neugebauer and McDonald have forged in the historic photographs and poems they’ve paired to tell the story of the settlement and so much more.Eighty-three photographs from Texas Tech University’s Southwest Collection’s bounty of more than 500,000 reflect needs basic to all humankind: food, clothing, shelter, government, recreation, and spirituality.McDonald’s new and selected poems connect to the moments in time that the photographs preserve, but evoke stories that focus on the scope and quality of life both then and in the century since ranching and farming came to the region."By yoking together those people separated by decades,” the authors say, “we hoped to show more harmony than contrasts between generations, between bold pioneers and their blessed inheritors—at risk, but singing on the same wide plains, under the same tornado skies, the same vast thousand miles of stars.”This millennial masterpiece is actually a prequel to their earlier collaboration All That Matters: The Texas Plains in Photographs and Poems and the culmination of a vision the authors say they’ve shared for almost a decade.The Price They Paid for RangeBone white caliche undercuts our dust.Most trees dry up, stunted on starving roots.To save imported stumps, we ditch the fieldswith peat imported from swamps,tamp bone meal into dirt for roses.Cactus rode here as burrs with soldiers,their Spanish ponies stumblingunder the sun, dumping knobs of seedsfrom weed fields miles away.Wind taught our fathers how to surviveso far from forests: build low and far apartand ration water. Let stallions and cattlebe enough, rough bunks and windmillsthe way to pray, cow chips for fire, cactusand rattlers the price they paid for rangeand a thousand miles of stars.
