Moving on up!

 

We’re moving our Lens & Pen Press blog from Blogger to Word Press and will consolidate the two current blogs into one for our books--the Beautiful and Enduring Ozarks, the James Fork of the White (coming 2017), Damming the Osage, Mystery of the Irish Wilderness and See the Ozarks--and many other favorite topics of discussion like the Ozarks or water resources.

The archive of L&P posts is still available at http://lensandpen.blogspot.com/ 

The posts on our separate Damming the Osage website remain available at http://www.dammingtheosage.com/the-blog/

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COMING IN 2017: JAMES FORK OF THE WHITE: Transformation of an Ozark River.
Sample pages from this new book can be seen at www.beautifulozarks.com

Our earlier ‘river book,’ DAMMING THE OSAGE, can be seen at www.dammingtheosage.com

James A. Reed, Legendary "Fighting Senator from Missouri" - Attorney in Ha Ha Tonka Lawsuit

Press Photograph

In Damming the Osage, we began our chapter on Lake of the Ozarks with a discussion of a now-forgotten lawsuit  by the family of Robert McClure Snyder against Union Electric over the destruction of the trout pool at Ha Ha Tonka. This was a huge case that filled the newspapers and went on for years and is now virtually forgotten.

Legendary Missouri politician and attorney for the Snyder family in this lawsuit was James A. Reed, a distinguished former U.S. Senator. In what Time magazine characterized in 1927 as a forest of competing “presidential timber”, he was Missouri’s “tough-fibred, silver-topped sycamore, U. S. Senator James A. Reed”  Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,736900,00.html#ixzz2QTHc0uU8

Reed was one of the rare politicians who got on H. L. Mencken’s good side. When Reed retired from the Senate, Mencken saluted him: http://www.truthbasedlogic.com/ownman.htm 

His skill is founded upon a profound and penetrating intelligence, and informed by what amounts to a great aesthetic passion. There are subtleties in the art he practices, as in any other, and he is the master of all of them. The stone ax is not his weapon, but the rapier; and he knows how to make it go through stone and steel.

The “Fighting Senator from Missouri” was also paramour (and later husband) to Nellie Don, a Kansas City legend in her own right as founder of one of the largest dress manufacturing companies of the first half of the 20th century.

It is perhaps an understatement to say that our research led us to a cast of very interesting characters whose lives touched the Osage River.

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YouTube channel for Lens & Pen

As the publication date approaches for our newest book - DAMMING THE OSAGE: The Conflicted Story of lake of the Ozarks and Truman Reservoir - we're producing and posting new videos to the Lens & Pen YouTube channel ... take a look!

This has inspired us as well to renew the stories of the Irish Wilderness, tourism in the Ozarks and Leland's own vision of the Beautiful and Enduring Ozarks. Watch for videos on these subjects as Lens & Pen celebrates this remarkable region.