Nine years ago at Thanksgiving I returned a stolen tombstone to a rural homesteading cemetery around 125 miles west of Omaha, NE. The story of how I came to own Lena Davis’s tombstone and all the people I met returning it became the documentary, Taking Lena Home (2015).

Thanksgiving seems like a good time to share this project -- Amelia Peterson, Taking Lena Home’s editor and I have just put it up on Reelhouse and YouTube. I recently returned to Polk County, NE, and saw the stone placed back on Lena Davis’s grave where it was stolen in 1945 and felt incredible gratitude for how my relationship to this object, the tombstone of a baby girl who died in 1880, had affected my life. I would never have met Bob Carey, the Deputy Sherriff of Polk County, NE, or jokingly been called a felon by him. I would never have understood the impact returning a stolen artwork or artifact can have on a community (check out the article written about it in the Omaha World Herald). And I would never have made the friends I have across Nebraska, who have expanded my own sense of home.

As an artist, I do believe in the power that objects – whether recognized artworks or personal treasures – can have in connecting us more deeply to the people we know well and those that we might not have met if it weren’t for our curiosity. It seems to me that in this day and age, not only are we hungry for better news, but not-so-secretly yearn for the opportunity to expand our communities and to get to know those who are different than we are.

So this is a little story about meeting up with the people in Nebraska – and quite unexpectedly, the police! – that I first encountered through EBay. Returning Lena Davis’s tombstone lead me to being a resident at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, NE, where I’ve joined their Board of Directors. (Artist friends, apply for a residency there!).

Wishing you all a very happy Thanksgiving, and if you’re receiving this, thank you for being a part of my community.

Warmly, Alexandra