stories of the moorland
I'm reading a copy of the book Carrie received the Christmas Laura received Tennyson's Poems (see Little Town on the Prairie, Chapter 19, "The Whirl of Gaiety"). Or Scott's Poems, if you go by what the manuscript says. I had never heard of these Moorland stories, and I bought the book sight unseen.

It's about a young child who is part of a loving family. There is the daily stuff -- cooking and cleaning and going for the sheep, and snowstorms and cosy surroundings and school and preparing for winter and descriptions of warm clothes and all that. And every now and then, the patriarch of the family tells a story -- about when he was a little boy or about other family members or about Sunday.

The book has a rather familiar ring to it.
- posted by pioneergirl at 1:53 AM

 
rules for teachers
Be warned. This is a RANT. Out there somewhere in prairie land, people are discussing the "rules for teachers" and how hard it must have been to be Laura, or Eliza Jane, or anybody else who taught "back then."

You know what I'm talking about. The "rules for teachers" dated 1872 and 1915 that nobody seems to know the source of, but for some reason people still swear must be THE rules, which of course must have applied to Eliza Jane, or Laura, or whoever we're talking about at the moment.

I googled and found:
Rules for Teachers - 1872
1. Teachers each day will fill lamps, clean chimneys.
2. Each teacher will bring a bucket of water and a scuttle of coal for the daily session.
3. Make your pens carefully. You whittle nibs to the individual taste of the pupils.
4. Men teachers may take one evening each week for courting purposes, or two evenings a week if they go to church regularly.
5. After ten hours in school, the teachers may spend the remaining time reading the Bible or other good books.
6. Women teachers who marry or engage in unseemly conduct will be dismissed.
7. Every teacher should lay aside from each pay a goodly sum of this earnings for his benefit during his declining years so that he will not become a burden on society.
8. Any teacher who smokes, uses liquor in any form, frequents pool or public halls, or gets shaved in a barber shop will give good reason to suspect his worth, intention, integrity and honest.
9. The teacher who performs his labor faithfully and without fault for five years will be given an increase of twenty cents per week in his pay, providing the Board of Education approves.

Rules for Teachers - 1915
1. You will not marry during the term of your contract.
2. You are not to keep company with men.
3. You must be home between the hours of 8 p.m. and 6 a.m. unless attending a school function.
4. You may not loiter downtown in ice cream stores.
5. You may not travel beyond city limits unless you have the permission of the chairman of the board.
6. You may not ride in a carriage or automobile with any man unless he is your father or brother.
7. You may not smoke cigarettes.
8. You may not dress in bright colors.
9. You may under no circumstances dye your hair.
10. You must wear at least two petticoats. (Gee, and on that prairie site I just looked at, it was nine petticoats...)
11. Your dresses must not be any shorter than two inches above the ankle.
12. To keep the school room neat and clean, you must:
* sweep the floor at least once daily
* scrub the floor at least once a week with hot, soapy water
* clean the blackboards at least once a day
* start the fire at 7 a.m. so the room will be warm by 8 a.m.

Fast forward to 2005, please. What are the "rules for teachers" today? All male teachers must wear coat and tie? All women must wear pantyhose? No teacher may date another teacher in the school? No teacher may date a student in the school?

There is no one set of rules for all teachers that applies today, any more than there was one set of rules for teachers that applied "back then." Today, the governing body of your school sets and enforces the laws, same as it has always been. And I dare say that today, as then, the governing body might possibly be influenced in the way they interpreted these laws by people, same as back then (think about Mrs. Oleson in the LH television show).

If you're going to tell how it was when Laura taught in Kingsbury County - or when Eliza Jane taught in Kingsbury County - then the only thing that matters is what was going on in Kingsbury County during the years in question.

I spent a lot of years researching education and school law in Kingsbury County. And here's what I've found so far in the way of "rules" for the De Smet school, which Laura attended and Eliza Jane taught --- culled from various sources and numbered by me.

1. Only a person of good moral character shall be hired as teacher.

2. At any time, a teacher's certificate may be revoked or refused, or a teacher's contract terminated, due to incompetency, immorality, intemperance, crime against territorial law, cruelty, or neglect, as determined by the County Superintendent.

3. No public school in session shall be disturbed by any person, teacher or student, by acts of violence, boisterous conduct or threatening language.

4. The Bible shall not be excluded from any school, and may be read silently or aloud for ten minutes daily, although no student shall be required to read it contrary to the wishes of his parent or guardian.

5. All teachers shall attend teachers' institutes for two weeks if offered during their term of employment.

By the way, I'll say it again. Both married men and women were allowed to teach in Kingsbury County from day one. And there was not a petticoat code in sight.
- posted by pioneergirl at 8:38 PM

 
what happened?
I am simply not going to blog tonight, because the template is messed up. And that's all I've got to say about that!

UPDATE: It's a problem with blogger, thank goodness. So I'm taking a vacation until it's fixed. Or I'll back-blog after it's fixed. Whatever.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Thank goodness for the people at bloggerforum who know what they're doing. Somebody came up with code to de-glitch the glitch, and I managed to sneak it into my template. But I decided to take the weekend off anyway.
- posted by pioneergirl at 1:07 AM

 
kathleen wolverine
Mavourneen, mavourneen, my sad tears are falling, / To think that from Erin and thee I must part! / It may be for years, and it may be forever, / Then why art thou silent, thou voice of my heart? / It may be for years and it may be forever, / Then why art thou silent, Kathleen, mavourneen?

Yes, it's really "Kathleen Mavourneen," but that's an impossible word to spell correctly. It's the name of a "Little House" song you won't read about in any "Little House" book. I may just do a song page on it anyway...

Mary Power sang the lead in "Kathleen Mavourneen," performed by the De Smet Dramatic Company in the 1880s. Mary was supposedly rather gifted, and she was highly praised for her part in the production.

I ran across another LH reference to the song last night. I'm reading Millbank (yes, I'm reading Ivanhoe too), and the main character, Magdelene, sings "Kathleen Mavourneen" at her graduation from finishing school. And if you needed another reason to seek out and read Millbank if you haven't already, there you have it.

Mauvourneen isn't a name; it's the Irish equivalent of "my darling." The hauntingly sentimental song was popular during the Civil War. It was composed by Frederick Nichols Crouch in 1837.

I read Millbank years ago when I first got a copy. I may have read it more than once, but when I realized recently that I couldn't remember a thing about it, I decided to read it again. Millbank is mentioned in On the Banks of Plum Creek as a book that Laura can recite the beginning of because she's heard Ma read it aloud to Pa so many times.

It seems awfully racy to have a treasured place in the little houses -- full of romance, abandoning children, flirting, marrying one when you love another, etc. It has all the basics of a good soap opera today, in fact. It's about as un-Little-Housey as you can get, which makes it all the more interesting to read. You just have to stop every now and then and think about the fact that this was something Charles and Caroline Ingalls obviously enjoyed... hmmmm....
- posted by pioneergirl at 1:10 AM

 
mother goose

Finally! I've done enough on the page(s) about literature in the "Little House" books to have just uploaded it. I should have included newspapers; I should have included Godey's; I probably missed a few things. But I'm tired of working on this and I need to move on to something else for a while, because - as usual - what I thought would take an afternoon, I've already spent five days on.

In On the Banks of Plum Creek, at Nellie's "Town Party" (Chapter 22), Mrs. Oleson gives Laura two books to look at. One is a Mother Goose book, and Laura Ingalls Wilder describes the cover picture as being of "an old woman wearing a peaked cap and riding on a broom across a huge yellow moon."

You wouldn't believe the information out there about Mother Goose! Books and books and books... What I discovered was that there aren't that many LH-era cover illustrations of Mother Goose with her actually riding on a broom. Sometimes she's riding on a goose and holding a broom, though, and the illustration above is about the closest I could find to what I think Laura is describing, especially since it has a large moon in the picture, too.

There is a common illustration for one of the Mother Goose rhymes, though, that does show an old woman with a peaked hat and a broom (no goose) above a large moon. It's the illustration for "Old Woman, Old Woman," which goes: There was an old woman tossed in a basket, / Seventeen times as high as the moon; / But where she was going no mortal could tell, / For under her arm she carried a broom. 'Old woman, old woman, old woman,' said I / 'Whither, oh whither, oh whither so high?' / 'To sweep the cobwebs from the sky; / And I'll be with you by-and-by.' Of course, in this drawing, the old woman isn't actually riding the broom...

Was Laura looking at a particular copy of Mother Goose when she wrote her manuscript for On the Banks of Plum Creek? She doesn't mention the cover at all in the manuscript, only that Mrs. Oleson gave her "Mother Goose, just full of pictures and funny rhymes. Some of them Laura could read."

The manuscript also mentions a book about Aladdin's Lamp, "telling about a man with a wonderful lamp that would cause whatever he wished for to come true." It also mentions "a magazine for little folks." I'm not quite sure what this magazine could have been, because there were a lot of possibilities. Gina has just about convinced me that it was a copy of "St. Nicholas."

One has to wonder, too, if young-Laura knew that it was a magazine she was given, or was author-Laura merely putting those words in her mouth because she, of course, knew what one was? Laura would have had to have seen actual magazines prior to the one Mrs. Oleson showed her in order to name them correctly, right?
- posted by pioneergirl at 1:58 AM

 
waverly novels

"On a day when she was particularly blue and unhappy, the neighbor to the west, a bachelor living alone, stopped as he was driving by and brought a partly filled grain sack to the house. When Laura opened the door, Mr. Sheldon stepped inside, and taking the sack by the bottom, poured the contents out on the floor. It was a paper-backed set of Waverly novels." --The First Four Years

Quick. Who wrote the Waverly novels? When? Can you name some of them? Can you name all of them?

Laura Ingalls Wilder mentions Sir Walter Scott in the next paragraph (he wrote 'em), and she mentions that the Waverly novels were "tales of brave knights and ladies fair beside lakes and waters of Scotland." Except some of them take place in England, and there's even one that takes place in India.

All I wanted to do yesterday was compile a list of Waverly novels. No problem, right? Except here it is the next night and I'm still not sure if I have a complete list or not. The internet has been no real help. The public library has been no help. Are there 25 or 29 Waverly novels? More? Less? Beats me.

I almost bought a set of Waverly novels once - an 1860s set bound in leather. Now I wish I had. There are sets and Sets and SETS for sale online, but not one seller lists the titles. And a "set" can be anywhere from 12 volumes to over 40. And expect to pay a few hundred to several thousand dollars or more, depending on the publishing date and other bookish things.

Sir Walter Scott, who was a lawyer and wrote poetry, wrote his first novels using pseudonyms: Jebediah Cleisbotham, Crystal Croftangry, and Malachi Malagrowther are a few. His first novel was titled Waverly, so the others were by "the author of Waverly," hence, the Waverly novels.

While I was at the library, I checked out Ivanhoe, and I'll be starting it tonight.
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:22 PM

 
four weeks in the trenches

I was reading parts of West From Home tonight... Laura's letter dated October 6, 1915, tells Almanzo about Rose's interview with Austrian violinist Fritz Kreisler. I had never heard of Fritz Kreisler before West From Home, and I'll admit that I hadn't yet bothered to try to find out anything much about him.

Interestingly enough, Kreisler's 1915 publication: Four Weeks in the Trenches, The War Story of a Violinist is online in its entirety. You can google to find it. Interesting reading! There are also online music files of Kreisler playing the violin, also interesting.

Laura wrote: "Rose says both Fritz Kreisler and his wife are the loveliest people she has ever met." Since the Kreislers lived in Manhattan while Rose was living in New York, I wonder if she ever looked them up?
- posted by pioneergirl at 1:44 AM

 
trust me; i know what i'm talking about here
In the June 8, 2005 De Smet News, one of the front page articles is: "School history stretches back to De Smet's beginning." I quote:

The De Smet School District isn't quite as old as the town.

The school celebrates its 117th year as an independent district this year; the city is celebrating its 125th birthday...

By 1883, according to history written by former Superintendent Lyle Lester, there was a formal school organization.

The school here was originally established on May 7, 1883, as a subdistrict of the De Smet Township School District. When the city incorporated under general law in 1888, an independent school district was automatically formed within the town's boundaries...

I don't know where people come up with this stuff, but I've already written to the editor of the News about it. It's not like the organization of schools wasn't recorded at the local, county, and territorial level at the time!

March 9, 1880, Amos Whiting was appointed the first superintendent of Kingsbury County. June 14, Whiting authorized the formation of two school districts: Number 1 was in Nordland (now Arlington), and Number 2 comprised 18 sections of land surrounding the village of De Smet. The first meeting of School District Number 2 was held at the Ingalls building in town. At that time, they elected a board, and decided where the school was to be built.

The first three teachers in Kingsbury County were certified on October 28, 1880. One of these was Florence Garland, and she was hired to teach District 1 school. This was an independent district; at that time, the schools were a law unto themselves (meaning that each school had its own school board), but they strictly followed Dakota Territory School Law.

The reason 1888 is such an important year is because in 1883, Dakota Territory abandoned the district school system in favor of the township one. Under this system, multiple schools in a "school township" (which might or might not have had the same boundaries as the civil township) became under the jurisdiction of a single school board. This system didn't last long in Kingsbury County, because the school board found that it was too hard to travel to multiple schools that might be miles apart, so they went back to the system in place before, but this time they called the schools "independent" - meaning they were independent of each other and independent of the township, which, gee, was exactly what they had been in the first place.

Sorry, folks, but the De Smet school was established on June 14, 1880, and both De Smet and the town school should be celebrating their 125th anniversaries this year.
- posted by pioneergirl at 1:04 AM

 
uncle hosie: the yankee salesman
What you hear about Laura Ingalls Wilder is that she wrote her manuscripts "on lined school tablets in soft pencil." She also wrote on the backs of envelopes, insides of greeting cards, mostly blank order forms, and what seems like whatever else had been saved because of its white spaces. I'm pretty sure I've blogged about this before.

There were two recycled scraps in the manuscripts for Little House on the Prairie that I found interesting. One was the inside of an undated Christmas card from "Mr. and Mrs. Frink." I know that the Wilders were friends with the Frinks, but it was interesting to see that the handwritten greeting was signed the way it was, not with their given names (which were Harvey and Emma, by the way).

On another page - upside down - was the following: "Uncle Hosie: The Yankee Salesman, Phillips H. Lord, for Manly." Uncle Hosie was written by Lord and published by Simon & Schuster in 1930. It's about a salesman from Maine who "sells things nobody wants to buy." Was this a note to remind Laura to buy the book for Almanzo? To check it out of the library for him? That he wanted to read it, or that someone else wanted him to?
- posted by pioneergirl at 4:09 PM

 
a nubia of soft white wool
I was lured into the local yarn shop yesterday and came away with enough black mohair lace-weight yarn for a scarf. What was I thinking? Black is almost impossible to see when knitting, especially at night. Knitting mohair lace weight yarn is like knitting sewing thread made of dryer lint.

I actually made EIGHT attempts to knit with the black mohair yesterday, and I usually got fewer than ten rows in before making some horrible mistake. Eight piles of false starts, because every time I tried to unravel, the yarn either broke or pulled apart so much that I was afraid to use it again.

It was quite the learning experience. I still want to knit this particular lace scarf, but I think I'll try it in something without fuzz and in white.

For some reason, I had it in my mind that the nubia Laura made for Mary's Christmas present was knitted. It was what I had in mind when at the yarn shop and the pretty mohair and angora yarns caught my eye. But look! "Laura was crocheting a nubia of soft white wool, for Mary's Christmas present in college." (Little Town on the Prairie, Chapter 15, "The School Board's Visit") Hmmm, I can do that. I can crochet like the wind, even with fuzzy, tiny mohair!

I'm not sure I know exactly what a nubia is, though -- some sort of scarf with long ends that can tie under the chin, right?
- posted by pioneergirl at 1:12 AM

 
edging number 8

Not exactly research, but every now and then you have to stop and have some fun (in a LIW sort of way, of course). Today I finished crocheting two pieces of "Crocheted Edging No. 8" from Rose Wilder Lane's Woman's Day Book of American Needlework, and I sewed them on two 100% cotton pillowcases I've had forever.

The pattern calls for size 70 cotton for 1-5/8" wide lace using a size 13 crochet hook, but I used a size 8 hook and cotton without a label that worked well with that size hook, so I'm not sure what size it was. My lace is about 2.5 inches wide.

From These Happy Golden Years (Chapter 30, "Sunset on the Hill"): Laura brought out the dozens of yards of white thread lace that she had knitted and crocheted, and like magic the machine's flashing needle stitched the lace edgings to the open ends of the pillow cases....

And from the manuscript for These Happy Golden Years (Chapter 40): As pick up work, Laura would sew her crocheted and knitted lace around the open ends of the pillow cases...

Why the sudden interest in edgings? I have been looking lovingly and longingly at Nicky Epstein's Knitting on the Edge (the essential collection of 350 decorative knitted borders) since it came out last year. But I never could quite justify paying $30 for something that contained a dozen or fewer edgings that I might realistically ever use - especially when I have a perfectly good source of yet-to-be knitted and crocheted laces from RWL's book. But lo, if the public library didn't have a copy of Epstein's book on the shelf yesterday, so I checked it out.

I noticed that the "Irish lace" on page 75 in Epstein's book is almost the same as "Knitted Edging No. 7" from RWL's. Since Epstein "collected" her patterns from various sources, it very well may be based on the RWL pattern, which Rose got from Witte Museum in San Antonio, Texas. Maybe No. 7 should be my next project?
- posted by pioneergirl at 1:14 AM

 
fiddle dee dee
Never finish tonight what is driving you to distraction and you can just as well put off until tomorrow or the next day.

Over the weekend, I got bored and dragged out the "High Prairie" manuscript (that's Little House on the Prairie's working title), counted to see how many pages there were left to transcribe (68), and then sat down at the computer determined to finish transcribing it. A few minutes in, I remembered why I packed the thing up months ago and never finished: it was microfilmed in one heck of a screwy order, imho. Even if that's how the pile was discovered among Laura's papers, the story starts and stops and picks up midstream so many times, it boggles the mind. And the fact that pages are on all sorts of mismatched paper and the filming is lousy doesn't exactly make for fun "Ooo, let's read along as we go" transcribing, either. I must have typed the words "[can't read]" fifty times before I gave it up for tonight.

I noticed a few things as I pecked away yesterday afternoon. The main one was that Laura wrote that the Indians camping near the cabin were Cherokees. And it sure sounded like the tall Indian who appeared in the doorway was the first Osage Indian they had seen. The part I'm working on now is one where Laura obviously didn't know the name of the Osage chief, so she left blanks where his name was to go. I'm at the end of the stuff on microfilming and it looks like it's an early version because LIW used the name Soldat du Chene in other places.

I also noticed that in some versions, the log cabin only had one window. No big deal, but there were lots of cross-outs and corrections to add a second window in some of the stories, such as when Pa shows Laura the wolves out of windows on both sides of the cabin. And the cabin is repeatedly said to have been built near the river, and there are trees everywhere -- and lots of firewood, which (A) doesn't really matter since LIW was so young when she lived in Indian Territory that she couldn't have been relying on her own memory of the surroundings when describing them, because (B) the original survey for the area around Walnut Creek where the Wayside cabin now stands sure didn't mention trees everywhere.

Probably the most interesting thing I don't remember paying attention to before is the fact that there are a few "dated" pieces of paper which Laura wrote the manuscript on, and the dates on them are all around 1909. One of the arguments for The First Four Years having been written early in Laura's career was the fact that some of the pages it was written on were from much earlier manuscripts (this one, in fact) and earlier dated pieces of paper. People questioned whether Laura would have kept scrap paper from decades earlier.

Looks like you can start pondering the same question about Little House on the Prairie. And since all of the manuscripts except for one (which is very, very similar to the published version) include Carrie's birth, you have to wonder if this book was attempted - and abandoned - prior to Laura writing Little House in the Big Woods. Especially since Pioneer Girl begins with Indian Territory...
- posted by pioneergirl at 1:59 AM

 
the indians
Affairs of the Osages - Encroachments of Whites on Their Reservations - Unjust Course of the Settlers and Congress. [New York Times, 11 July 1870]

Washington, July 10.- Official advices have been received at the Indian Office concerning the present condition of things along the borders of the Indian Territory, and explaining in part the causes of the difficulties. Whether the Osage Indians are mixed up with it remains to be seen; but, certainly, the condition of affairs on their reservation is deplorable. The large body of white settlers who have taken forcible possession of the lands of those Indians, without a shadow of legal right, continue to hold possession of them, and include them in their claims. On the eastern part of the Osage reservation, these squatters have organized three counties, appointed judges and other county officers, surveyed and formally allotted the larger part of the lands, with all the assurance of honest people. They have stolen within the last three years several thousand of the Indian's ponies. In 1865 the Osages were persuaded to allow the Government to dispose of a strip of their lands, twenty miles wide, along the whole southern border of Kansas. They were told that in two years much of it would be paid for, and they would have some means of support. They consented. The lands were surveyed and thousands of settlers entered upon, took possession, and are now occupying them, and yet, though it is five years ago, the Indians have not received one cent from the sale of these lands. The reason given for this is that at the end of three years the settlers did not find it convenient to pay: so they got their Representative in Congress to introduce a bill, which was passed, granting them an extension of two years more in which to pay for the lands. The Indians were not consulted, and to this day do not understand it and have no faith in the Government's ever dealing fairly with them. The effect of these outrages has been to drive the Osages into the Cherokee country, where a portion of them are huddled along the banks of the little Coma River, or as outlaws to wander on the Southern plains. Nothing whatever has been done by the Government in the way of feeding them, and scores of them have died this Spring from the want of medical treatment. The present agent is a Quaker and has done what he could, without means to ameliorate their condition. In 1865 they sold to the Government a strip of land from which the two counties of Neohso and Labette have been constructed, from which and other sources they receive about $5 per capita annually. This is the only compensation which they get in return for their magnificent reservation of 8,000,000 acres of land. This Spring the Government sent down a small company of infantry to prevent hostilities, which has done what little it could. But as the reservation is over 270 miles long by thirty wide, it will be seen that some other remedy than this must be applied if we would have peace, security and fair dealing, or uphold the honor of our country along that border. The Osages are intensely anxious to turn their attention to agriculture, and if they had but the least show of justice, would soon have cabins erected, fields fenced, and crops planted. It is to be wondered at that we hear of attacks on trains at Camp Supply, or raids on the border settlers. The marvel is that the Indians have been peaceful as long as they have.
- posted by pioneergirl at 2:12 AM

 
ad astra per aspera

This is all because I purchased a photo of John James Ingalls... It seems like every time there's a discussion of why the Charles Ingalls family went to (Kansas) Indian Territory in the late 1860s, someone mentions that Charles Ingalls must have heard from his cousin, Senator John J. Ingalls, that Osage Indian land was going to soon be available for settlement. In Little House on the Prairie (Chapter 4, "Prairie Day") LIW wrote: Pa had word from a man in Washington that the Indian Territory would be open to settlement soon. It might already be open to settlement. They could not know, because Washington was so far away. In the existing manuscripts, Pa calls them "durned politicians in Washington" and "blasted politicians in Washington," which you'll note doesn't refer to one man at all.

I figured I'd spend a bit of time seeing if John J. Ingalls was mentioned in anything I have. I looked at all four Pioneer Girl manuscripts today, and that little tidbit isn't in there. I didn't see it in the LIW-RWL letters, but I didn't read past Plum Creek letters. And of course I got bogged down reading newspaper accounts of the Sturgis Treaty and the plight of the Osages in Kansas and their removal.

Suddenly four hours have gone by.

One thing's obvious, though. If Charles Ingalls had word from "far off Washington" about the Osage land, it didn't come from John J. Ingalls, who wasn't elected to the United States Senate until 1873. He had earlier been a Kansas state senator, but he certainly wasn't living in Washington at the time the Ingallses were thinking about leaving Wisconsin for parts unknown. He was busy being quite wealthy and practicing law in Atchison.

It's hard to imagine that Charles Ingalls and John J. Ingalls even knew of each other. They weren't exactly "cousins," but fifth cousins once removed. Their common ancestor was seven generations back in Charles' lineage and six in John's.

The subject line above is the Kansas state motto, which was coined by John J. Ingalls. It means "to the stars with difficulty." (Btw, one of the early De Smet graduating classes selected that saying as their class motto.) I found a saying about John J. Ingalls I want to include here, but I'll leave it to you to research and figure out why it was said of him: Up was he stuck, and in the very upness of his stuckitude he fell.
- posted by pioneergirl at 1:19 AM

 
little house in the big woods...
...has been mentioned twice recently in Oprah magazine. I don't read or watch Oprah, but that fact showed up in a LIW email so I followed the link. Someone named Hope Davis (turns out she's an actress, but I've never heard of her) listed Little House in the Big Woods as a favorite book or inspirational book or something. I followed a few links to writers or actors I recognized to see what books they loved or were inspired by, but the way the Oprah site is set up, you spend most of your time clicking on links to read very little text. What you mostly notice is the advertisements and Other Stuff littering the screen, so I'm not quite sure if the point was to discover what books were inspiring, or loved, or mentioned simply because they sure seem important and would make the owner of the bookshelf in question seem smart.

I constantly had the feeling that somebody was trying to sell me something, and it wasn't a book.

Or maybe it's just to try to get the point across that "Oh, look! These people read!" Which, of course, has often been the theme on everything from posters still hanging in libraries across the nation, to the bulletin board I did when I taught sixth grade language arts. I roamed the halls during my free period one week and took pictures of students, faculty, and staff who were reading something. I imagine I was inspired by the library posters, come to think of it.

What struck me about Davis's blurb about Little House in the Big Woods was that it made me wonder if she actually read and knew the book or just listed it because it's a children's classic. She wrote: "It's about how the Ingalls family spends the days just trying to obtain food and shelter and how the hardships they endure bring them closer together."

Which isn't what the book is about at all. In both the first and last paragraphs of the book, Wilder refers to the cosy and comfortable log house. It's always there; it's always a constant in Laura's life, safe and protecting. The book was written to showcase Pa's stories and is all about everything that is warm, fuzzy, goodness, and love in Laura's life - no hardships whatsoever! The attic is fairly groaning with things to eat. No difficulty "obtaining" food. There are wild animals in abundance and harvesting is way more prevalent than planting.

I think every time you ask someone about books that inspire them, though, you're setting yourself up for an impressive list more than an honest list. One thing that wandering around the Oprah site made me do was stop and think about books that I simply can't imagine living without, even for a little while. Not that I read them constantly, but I want them close by just in case. Since we're living in rented digs with most of my books in storage, this is something I've dealt with recently. Here's the ones I immediately thought of:

1. All the "Little House" books. I was introduced to these in the fourth grade and haven't put them down yet. It was only after decades of reading and reading that I wanted to know anything about people and places in the book. I read them to discover what things I had to know how to do in order to have lived in pioneer times - knitting, gardening, hat-making, harnessing a horse, etc. Then I set out to learn them.

2. Scuppers the Sailor Dog - This is a Little Golden Book illustrated by Garth Williams, although I was an adult before I paid attention to who illustrated it. I could look at those pictures for hours.

3. Miss Jellytot's Visit - What a great story, and the cookies aren't too shabby either.

4. All the "Harry Potter" books. Duh. I have to fight with every fiber of my being not to become as obsessed with these as with the "Little House" books. I keep telling myself that I can speculate, discuss, and analyze until the cows come home, but the stories are ultimately J.K. Rowling's and J.K. Rowling's only, and she can change the outcome at whim. So I just enjoy.

5. The Chicago Manual of Style, the Dictionary (Webster's), and Grammar of the English Language (by William T. Wynn) - I'm constantly grabbing one or the other, whether I'm actually writing at the moment or not.

6. The Sod-House Frontier - always looking something up here, too, and I get caught up in the reading.

7. Beard on Bread - because I bake.
- posted by pioneergirl at 1:18 AM

 
the twenty dollar bill
In The Long Winter (Chapter 11, "Pa Goes to Volga"), Pa brings Mr. Edwards back to De Smet with him and Mr. Edwards deposits a twenty dollar bill in Mary's lap and makes his escape before the family knows it's there.

According to an online currency converter (westegg.com/inflation/), that twenty dollars would be worth $396.03 in 2005. During the hard winter, you could supposedly buy for about a dollar what you can get for twenty today. I don't know if the currency converter is accurate, and it's hard to worry too much about that twenty dollars anyway since it's highly unlikely that Mr. Edwards was a single character (even in Little House on the Prairie) who actually was in De Smet in 1879, and it turns out that Laura Ingalls Wilder told the story a bit differently in her Hard Winter manuscript.

In the manuscript, there is a whole chapter edited out in which Pa and Mr. Edwards have met up in Volga and are spending the night in the hotel. Mr. Edwards decides to join a poker game, asking the men if poker is played "anything like 7-up." Of course this implies that Mr. Edwards doesn't know a thing about poker, and he is invited to join the game. Pa figures Mr. Edwards has little money to lose, so he doesn't say a thing.

Turns out that Mr. Edwards is a card shark with more tricks up his sleeve than cards in the deck. He ends up winning over $500 in the game, and the next morning, he decides to accompany Pa back to De Smet on the handcar to avoid the other poker players finding him.

In De Smet, Mr. Edwards tells Ma and the girls about his gambling winnings, but it's stressed that Pa didn't drink (Mr. Edwards did) and he didn't gamble. So Ma and the others know full well where the twenty dollars came from. It was no great sacrifice for Mr. Edwards to part with the money because he still had the 2005 equivalent of almost ten thousand dollars in his pocket.
- posted by pioneergirl at 12:56 PM

 
poems by mumpsmaster
1.
What did they do,
So long ago,
When they were on the rag?

Where did they go?
Behind a bush?
There were no plastic bags.

No pottery throne that they could flush,
No super-absorbent fibers.
Instead they sat moist and damp
On torn up cotton diapers.

2.
Who is that woman's picture,
On dear Nancy's daily blog?
Who is that little woman,
Curled up like a log?
I know it isn't Carrie.
I know it isn't Grace.
But something's sure familiar
About that pruney face.
- posted by pioneergirl at 1:27 AM

 
harsh reality
Why is it that reality always has to come between you and your dreams? Because it looks like the harsh reality is that we won't be sinking a pot of money into the bank building in Walnut Grove. Why? Because a couple of things were "fixed" in such a way that it would simply be too costly and too risky to Re-Do Them Right. And it's hard to justify sinking a couple of six figure bundles into the rest of the building without those being fixed first.

Reality sucks.
- posted by pioneergirl at 12:24 AM

 
congratulations, ginny!

In addition to the hurried trip to Walnut Grove this past week, today was daughter Ginny's graduation from high school. In case you hadn't heard, she graduated a year early - with honors - and will be heading to the University of Montana this fall.
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:01 PM

 
rose wilder lane's san francisco
Since I sort of have an unwritten vow to never set foot in the state of California (come on, I think Bozeman is too populated), I doubt I'll ever explore Rose's San Francisco on my own. Since I had to draw the research line somewhere, I'll just go ahead and admit that I've never even researched anything that has to do with West From Home. That ought to be pretty obvious, since there's no link to anything for that title on pioneergirl.com.

But Trini Wenninger has researched Rose's SF and she's just published a booklet about it. (Now, if I could just persuade her to write something for pioneergirl about West From Home...) The booklet is for sale on ebay; her seller ID is prairiemania, so let the buy-it-now-ing begin.

Bravo, Trini - can't wait to read it!
- posted by pioneergirl at 1:58 AM

 
hopps and leitches
One thing you'll find when you start researching "Little House" families is that a lot of them turn out to be related somehow. Not necessarily by blood or marriage, but by proximity. That wave of settlers constantly moving west carried families from here to there, and in many cases, the families knew each other before homesteading in Dakota Territory and probably were involved in each other's decision to make the move in the first place.

One of the prominent land agents in De Smet was Alfred Waters. He came from Green County, New York. A lot of early De Smetians came from Green County, too. Why? Because Waters heavily advertised the virtues of De Smet in Green County. The Cooleys were old Green County residents, for one.

A lot of De Smet families came from the counties along the railroad in Minnesota. That makes perfect sense, because news and families traveled along the railroad. Lots of Redwood County Minnesota families ended up in De Smet - not only the Ingallses, and not only the ones you read about in the "Little House" books.

The Owens and Seelye families were related. The Hopps and Powers were related. The Dows and Cooleys were related. The Boasts and Bouchies were related.

I didn't go into the Hopp/Leitch connection when I did the "Jake Hopp" page. Maybe there's somebody out there other than Gina who salivates at the thought of this stuff. When writing about her friend Mary Power's family, Laura Ingalls Wilder only mentioned Mary's parents. She didn't mention that Mary had three brothers and two sisters. Mary's sister Susie married Jake Hopp. Mary's sister Lizzie married Sam Leitch. When Susie Hopp died, Jake married Alice Leitch, Sam's sister.

Now you know.
- posted by pioneergirl at 1:46 AM

 
why we went to walnut grove

This is the former First State Bank building in Walnut Grove, Minnesota. It was built in 1903. It is on the site of William Owens' store. We are thinking about buying it.

Donations gratefully accepted.
- posted by pioneergirl at 1:55 AM

 
home again, home again
I was going to title this entry, "There's no place like home," except that as far as I'm concerned, there's no place like any "Little House" site; just pick one. I only saw two of them this trip: Walnut Grove and the Ingalls Homestead. Both were fantastic; both visits were too short.

I drove thirteen plus hours to meet The Man of The Place in Sioux Falls on Sunday. I am once again very thankful for Harry Potter books on cd. No, I do not yet have any LH books on cd. I've heard a good bit of On the Banks of Plum Creek, though, and for some reason Cherry Jones's voice reminds me a bit of Karen Lynn Gorney's voice in "Saturday Night Fever" - and it somehow grates on my listening nerve. I can't imagine not owning the LH books on cd, so I'll simply have to get over it.

I remember one LH trip, I listened to Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire all the way from South Dakota to my house. I arrived home about the time Voldemort was rising from his cauldron and even though I had been on the road over fifteen hours at that point, I seriously considered sitting in the driveway until I finished listening to the book. Then I came to my senses and realized I could simply go inside and finish listening, which I did. Yes, I have a bit of a Harry Potter obsession going on as well.

This trip I listened to Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix on the way to South Dakota. I only got as far as ten cds in, and I was a little perturbed with myself that I hadn't remembered to bring the book so I could continue reading once I checked into the hotel. I did laugh out loud at one point while listening after thinking that there are a few "Little House" research questions I have and that I'd like to "put Mr. Tibbles on the case."

I also realized why I don't invite my husband to go on more LH trips. It's really hard to buy everything you need at a LH bookstore (and, believe me, you need everything) while your husband is sitting there waiting patiently. I managed to make a few hurried purchases in Walnut Grove when John stepped outside, but I made a longer list of items I'll be buying when I return in July. There's a new "bobble head" Laura (why?????) and a mug I won't be living without, a charm bracelet of little LH houses, some cute dolls, and a wagonload of other stuff.

The Ingalls Homestead has boxed sets of LH books in homemade crates, which is a really clever idea and really, really cute. They also had a week-old colt (not for sale, just new, and really, really cute) with three white stockings and one white foot. Its name is Anklet. The new displays at the Homestead are fantastic; if you visit, be sure to go upstairs in the barn and see what's up there. It has to do with horses and it's fun.

Of course, when I mentioned that I could have stayed at least a week longer, John said he would have flown home and left me there. MEN. Tell me that sooner next time, not after I've already driven eight hundred miles.
- posted by pioneergirl at 12:45 AM