Poet, writer and musician Joy Harjo — a member of the Muskogee Creek Nation — often draws on Native American stories, languages and myths. But she says that she's not self-consciously trying to bring that material into her work. If anything, it's the other way around.
For Douglas Clark, the darkest part of working for Nike in the 1980s was watching American shoe manufacturing "evaporate" in the Northeast in a mass exodus to Asia in pursuit of cheaper labor.
"As a true Yankee — and my father was a Colonial historian — you know, it was heartbreaking," he said.
Clark would go on to a long career in footwear, at Converse, Reebok, Timberland, then his own line of shoes at New England Footwear. And there, he would devote eight years to one mission: creating a model to make shoemaking in America profitable again.
