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I joined Wikipedia to add content to articles about American history, language and more broadly American culture, including film, folklore and literature, a topic about which I am deeply interested and have studied in detail for many years. My current interest is rivers and plains lands and the often under-studied, and somewhat neglected, Great American Desert which was seen for many years as a dry and barren region better avoided and left to Indians as settlers searched for more fertile lands until the mid-19th century farming success gave rise to the belief that rain follows the plow (summarized as "[the plow] is the instrument which separates civilization from savagery; and converts a desert into a farm or garden") though climatologists now consider this to be superstitious bunk.