The holidays are a wonderful time to celebrate moments of joy and gratitude with our friends and family. This also includes the friends and family who are joining together to support the latest WTIU documentary film production, Gene Stratton-Porter: Music of the Wild. The documentary, written and directed by WTIU’s Emmy Award-winning production team, premieres in November 2026 on WTIU and on PBS stations around the country.
This new documentary film showcases the life and works of Gene Stratton-Porter, one of Indiana’s and the country’s most successful and popular authors (novelist, poet and nonfiction nature writer), a nationally renowned environmentalist, celebrated nature photographer and Hollywood studio owner/producer – a woman who defied the social norms of her day to become one of the most powerful cultural icons and financially successful women in American history.
Over the past couple weeks, we have been visiting the two Indiana State Historic Sites in Rome City and Geneva, Indiana (Fun Fact: Gene Stratton-Porter is the only Hoosier to have two state historic sites dedicated to her life and works.) There we have been researching and scanning hundreds of very rare and historically significant photographs, letters and writings that help retrace her remarkable life and legacy. Many of these images have never been shared widely with the American public before, and they will be showcased for the first time nationally in this PBS production. Funding for this program not only offers WTIU to carefully document and share these images with a larger PBS audience. This financial support also helps to preserve these rare images and letters and share them with archivists and historians in the state and throughout the world.
Also, thanks to the help of Eric Grayson, a highly respected film historian and film preservation expert, we have uncovered rare film footage from a couple movies that her film company, Gene Stratton-Porter Productions, produced during the early 1920s. Funding will help pay to restore this extremely rare film footage and allow our production team to share these films with our national PBS audience.
As we prepare for the New Year ahead, we are scheduling interviews with leading experts in American literature, environmental science and activism, modern-day nature photographers and female film directors, each of whom reflects on how Stratton-Porter blazed new opportunities for women in business, science and the arts. We are also scheduling times to travel to many of America’s most scenic destinations – not only the marshlands of northeastern Indiana, but also the Teton Mountain range in Wyoming, Muir Woods and San Juan Capistrano in California, the Upper Mississippi River Basin in Minnesota and the white pine forests in the Adirondacks in upstate New York. Gene Stratton-Porter’s life and experiences are entwined with many of these scenic vistas – breathtaking landscapes we Americans can enjoy with our families to this very day.
Funding for this project not only helps WTIU produce and distribute important documentary films about Indiana’s most remarkable Hoosiers. It also allows us to share these Indiana stories with a national PBS audience. As you are most-likely aware, national and state funding for these types of projects has been eliminated. Therefore, financial support from foundations and corporate and individual donors is vital. These funds ensure that the mission of WTIU and PBS will continue in the coming years. WTIU is proud to proclaim that we are “Here for You. Here for Good.” Your financial support helps ensure that we can continue to provide quality PBS programming in the coming years. Thank you for your support.
Christmas at the Cabin
The Christmas season was always one of Gene Stratton-Porter’s favorite times of the year. Photographs from the era clearly illustrated how Gene decked the halls of her Geneva home (a place she always called “the Cabin,” which was, indeed, designed to look like a log cabin, even though the home featured 14 rooms and many modern conveniences of the era.) These historical photographs highlighted her holiday decorations, and memories from her daughter Jeannette often noted how Gene would joyously decorate for the season.
According to Barbara Olenyik Morrow in her biography of Gene Stratton-Porter, daughter Jeannette recalled how Gene would expand her holiday decorations into the front yard by also creating an outdoor Christmas tree – a tree she could view and enjoy from her panoramic window in her living room. Jeannette wrote, “The outdoor tree was for birds and squirrels. She hung little wire containers on the branches and filled them with scraped beef, seeds, nuts and bits of gristle, yards of strung popcorn and pieces of apple and orange…There was no lovelier sight than the brilliantly colored birds as they chirped to each other while they ate greedily.” (Nature’s Storyteller, Barbara Olenyik Morrow, © 2016)
Best wishes for a wonderful holiday season and a joyous and prosperous New Year.
Cheers!
