Leaving Nebraska. Twenty-five years ago, before fleeing again, this time for good, I wanted to say goodbye. Goodbye to all the places in Nebraska that were, in my mind at least, quintessentially Nebraskan. And make them mine. Make them belong to me, instead of me belonging to them. The places that contained everyone, held everyone, together and apart. Some were places of ritual, like Chicken Days in Wayne. Most were simple gathering places, a friend of a friend's Tupperware party, a summer softball tournament, a batting cage business, a drive-in movie, a miniature golf course, a band setting up one afternoon outside Gateway Mall. Some came with, a singular status: Ole's in Paxton, which I could never do justice in photographs, or Lee's at the edge of town, and the rural Polka Festival with its own runway for private planes. Those places still stand, even more regionally regal-kitsch. Some, like the El Rancho on Highway 6, even the YWCA downtown pool, are boarded up and gone. Pool halls, dance halls, games, movies, restaurants in which to eat, night clubs in which to drink while an organist amplifies a singer's song, roadhouses that hung Elvis on velvet next to a confederate flag, places everyone played and stayed, together and apart. Now I've come back. Being back, I can see that I've lost more than I've gained, looking at these pictures again, I can see just how much, of each. The look of these pictures has to do with something as a young woman I was sure I was sure about, and I was sure sure about a lot of things then. Now, I'm not sure I could explain it, just that I still feel the feeling I wanted to make happen inside the camera. Form and content all one thing, gathered together for a picture. Casting back, I can see that these images hold the great plain shadow cast over my past here, my present here, maybe, my future here. It is a shadow that I longed to slip out from under, a shadow I ran from, a shadow I thought I had left behind. Now that I'm back I can see that the shadow – and I – never escaped. For as long as I can remember, I have been dreaming of where home can become. These images were and are a dream, a dream of home that would never come true. The images carried on the dream. They carry the ominous quality, the nightmare, home can make come true, instead. Being here then, leaving here behind, being back here now, the shadow and I, we are together. We can be each other's form, each other's content. This time, picture this. Until it's time to leave dreaming a home and home's nightmare, behind. Then, the great plain shadow and I will be able to part ways, or mend our way, for good.

Rita Ann Cihlar Hermann
Lincoln, Nebraska, February 2, 2012