[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 105 (Thursday, June 15, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2120-S2121]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     WILLA CATHER STATUE UNVEILING

  Mrs. FISCHER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
following speech be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

[[Page S2121]]

  


              Sen. Fischer Willa Cather Unveiling Remarks

       When we are here in Statuary Hall, I like to remind people 
     that we are not alone.
       If you look above the door leading into the Rotunda, you'll 
     see a figure. It is Clio, the muse of history.
       For generations, she served as a constant reminder that our 
     words and actions--the good and the bad--would be judged by 
     time and leave a lasting mark on the nation.
       Today Clio welcomes one of Nebraska's finest literary 
     artists, Willa Cather.
       ``Let your fiction grow out of the land beneath your 
     feet.''
       This quote, attributed to Cather, is an apt summation of 
     the author's life and work.
       Cather's vivid, reflective writing has become synonymous 
     with the pioneer spirit of Nebraska.
       Her fiction--epitomized by the Great Plains novels O 
     Pioneers!, The Song of the Lark, and My Antonia--truly feels 
     like it grew from the soil of Nebraska.
       Cather herself grew from that land. Her family settled in 
     Red Cloud while she was still a child, and her imaginative 
     mind put its roots down there in Webster County.
       For decades until her death in 1947, Cather was unable to 
     shake her creative spirit away from its home in the open 
     plains of the heartland.
       The unveiling of Cather's statue is especially poignant for 
     me, because Cather's fiction is not the only art to grow out 
     of the land beneath her feet.
       In 2006, my sister-in-law Nadine McHenry's art was selected 
     as part of the annual Willa Cather Conference organized by 
     the Cather Foundation.
       ``I am a Nebraska painter and my feet stand on the same 
     prairie grasses that Cather stood on,'' Nadine wrote of her 
     painting exhibition.
       Nadine's impressionistic paintings are a blend. They blend 
     an imaginative representation of Cather's prose with Nadine's 
     own personal experience on our family's ranch in the Nebraska 
     Sandhills.
       Four of the paintings--``Longing,'' ``Isolation,'' 
     ``Pioneering the Way,'' and ``Way Ahead''--draw new vigor out 
     of Cather's century-old works, each created as an expression 
     of a different quote by the novelist.
       Nadine's art illustrates the profound resonance of Cather's 
     writing for those of us who call Nebraska home.
       That resonance--the talent and imagination immortalized in 
     Cather's indelible novels--is what endows her with the 
     significance to be placed in the U.S. Capitol as a 
     representation of Nebraska's best.
       I'll end with words from Cather's ``Song of the Lark,'' 
     words that strike a sense of understanding into the heart of 
     any Nebraskan who has read her work.
       ``What was any art but a mold to imprison for a moment the 
     shining, elusive element which is life itself?''

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