fandom
Laura Ingalls Wilder was a lesbian who murdered three people, invented meth, and ran with scissors. You read it here, folks. Now spread the word.

There are two statements that pretty much insure that I won't give what I hear(or read) a second thought. One is: "I don't have it in front of me, but..." and the second is: "I read it somewhere." This doesn't mean that those aren't useful and important concepts. In fact, I spent the better part of three hours last night LOOKING for something that I had "read somewhere."

What was it? It was the letter from Grace Ingalls Dow to her sister Laura, saying that she was destitute and asking (?) for a handout. I could find instances where someone else said that such a letter existed, but I was fairly certain (as was Rosebunting) that I owned a copy of the actual hand-written letter. It's been one thing after another since I was reunited with my LIW stuff, and I am ashamed to admit that I haven't organized anything. I found the letter from Laura to Rose in which she mentions that Carrie wants to know if Laura has any old clothes, but that wasn't the one I had in mind.

Anyway, I've been thinking about Laura Ingalls Wilder and Little House "fandom" the past few days. And the observation that it's perfectly okay for there to be misinformation out there, because anything that shows interest in "the tradition" (as Roger Lea MacBride put it) is A Good Thing (as Martha Stewart put it).

But is it? What prompted me to make the statement that "I'm about to the point where I don't give a rat's ass if people think LIW was a lesbian who murdered three people, invented meth, and ran with scissors" was an opposing viewpoint to my comment that I walked away from a LH project because the person I was working for didn't see the importance in making sure that LIW history was presented with the same level of accuracy that I did. To me, it was a big dose of the "it will never be noticed on a trotting horse" mentality, which is fine when you're taking about hair ribbons, but a crying shame when you're talking about history.

That's why the "fandom" statement caused my hackles to raise. More specifically, the comment that "almost anything anyone does to further the Little House reach is commendable." Commendable maybe, but potentially damaging, imho. Because I wasn't taking about hair ribbons or something posted on a fan's website or a fan's book report or a fan's comment at a LH event or a fan's newsletter. I was specifically talking about a nationally-grant-funded scholarly research project which was to result in a definitive (and pricey) volume of LH information. And the fact that there was misinformation included which TPTB didn't have the LH knowledge to know were mistakes, so they didn't understand the importance of them being corrected.

That goes WAY beyond fandom, imho. It crosses the line right over into "I don't give a rat's ass" territory.
- posted by pioneergirl at 1:59 AM

 
rosebunting says

Just a little guest post. I was re-reading newsletters from one of the homesites, and spotted a small blurb. A documentary that was being made. Started me wondering what happened to that documentary. A couple of inquiries, it didn't exist, it was in an unplayable format and all the sorts of thing that dash hopes. Well, it did exist, and it was able to be copied to a dvd format. Went to play it. It was a dedication of a Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Somewhere a vet is puzzling over his dvd with girls in bonnets and William Anderson interviews.
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:56 PM

 
ruralist redux

People ask if the "new" Hines books are worth buying. In a nutshell, no.

Repackaging seems to be popular lately, and that's exactly what these three volumes are: repackagings of three earlier publications: Little House in the Ozarks (1991), Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Family Collection (1993), and I Remember Laura (1994). Very similar to Little House in the Ozarks, LIW: A Family Collection is a compilation of Laura Ingalls Wilder's articles printed in the Missouri Ruralist. This book was published by Barnes & Noble; the others by Thomas Nelson.

For the first two "new" volumes, I went through article-by-article, and found the same article in either the Ozarks or Family Collection as follows:

Volume One: Laura Ingalls Wilder On Wisdom & Virtue contains:
The Helping Hand of Helpfulness (LHitO)
Let Us Be Just (LHitO, LIW:AFC)
If We Only Understood (LHitO, LIW:AFC)
A Dog's a Dog for A'That (LHitO, LIW:AFC)
A Few Minutes With a Poet (LHitO)
Do the Right Thing Always (LHitO, LIW:AFC)
Kind Hearts (LHitO)
Everyday Implications of the Golden Rule (LHitO)
A Man's Word Is All He Has (LHitO)
Just a Question of Tact (LHitO, LIW:AFC)
Swearing (LHitO, LIW:AFC)
Honor and Duty (LHitO)
Troubles Grow as We Talk About Them (LHitO)
Keeping Friends (LHitO)
Lesson from an Irish Fable (LHitO)
The Armor of a Smile (LHitO)
Laura and Mary Quarrel at Thanksgiving (LHitO)
When the Blues Descend (LHitO)
The Creative Chemistry of Life (LHitO)
The Light We Throw (LHitO)
The Blessings of the Year (LHitO)
An Autumm Day (LHitO, LIW:AFC)
Simplify, Simplify (LHitO)
Compensations (LHitO)
To Stand by Ourselves (LHitO)
The Things That Matter (LHitO)
We Keep Right on Eating (LHitO)
The Hidden Cost of Getting What We Want (LHitO)
Make Your Garden! (LHitO)
Opportunity (LHitO, LIW:AFC)
Make Every Minute Count (LHitO, LIW:AFC)
Challenges (LHitO, LIW:AFC)
Make a New Beginning (LHitO, LIW:AFC)
The Source of Improvement (LHitO)
Learning Something New (LHitO)

Volume Two: Laura Ingalls Wilder on Life as a Pioneer Woman contains:
Let's Visit Mrs. Wilder (LIW:AFC)
The Old Dash Churn (LHitO)
My Apple Orchard (LHitO)
On Chickens and Hawks (LHitO)
Rocky Ridge Farm (LHitO)
When Grandma Pioneered (LHitO)
The Hard Winter (LHitO, LIW:AFC)
Pioneering on an Ozark Farm (LHitO)
The March of Progress (LHitO, LIW:AFC)
Shorter Hours for the Farm Home Manager (LHitO)
We Revel in Water (LHitO, LIW:AFC)
The Home Beauty Parlor (LHitO)
This and That - a Neighborly Visit with Laura (LHitO)
New Day for Women (LHitO, LIW:AFC)
Women's Work? (LHitO)
The Woman's Place (LHitO)
Farmers - Need More Wives? (LHitO)
About Work (LHitO)
Two Heads Are Better Than One (LHitO)
Tired to Death with Work (LHitO)
A Day Off Now and Then (LHitO, LIW:AFC)
What Became of the Time We Saved? (LHitO)
How to Furnish a Home (LHitO)
Going After the Cows (LHitO)
Home (LHitO)

Volume Three: Laura Ingalls Wilder As TOld by her Family, Friends & Neighbors contains five sections, about De Smet, Mansfield, Remembering Laura, Mother and Daughter, and Unsolved Mysteries

This volume seems to be almost exactly the same as Hines' I Remember Laura from 1994, but I Remember Laura contains more articles than this one. Trust me. If you've read this far, I will add that if you send me a dollar, I will send you a transcription of a Ruralist article that hasn't ever been reprinted. Why should Hines be making all the money?
- posted by pioneergirl at 9:03 PM

 
i didn't care to know them
During her 1931 visit to De Smet, Laura Ingalls Wilder and Grace Ingalls Dow visited Wilmarth's store. Laura wrote: "They didn't know me of course and I didn't care to know them."

This wouldn't have been the Hard Winter Wilmarths: Mr. Wilmarth was dead, and Mrs. Wilmarth was living in Minnesota with family. The Wilmarth running the grocery store in De Smet was George's brother, Delbert, not to be confused with the Delbert Wilmarth who was (but couldn't have been) one of the "small Wilmarth boys" from The Long Winter (see Chapter 9, "Cap Garland").

What fault in the world could Laura have found in Delbert Wilmarth? He wasn't exactly her school chum, being eleven years older than she. Then again, surely he and Almanzo had reason to cross paths. The Wilders and Wilmarths were married the same year, though. In December 1885, Delbert married Nora Pierson, sister of De Smet liveryman John Pierson.

The Wilmarths were great friends of Mary and E.P. Sanford, the Hopps, Loftuses, and Tinkhams. Maybe that explains it. Once Laura married, she was no longer a town girl, having "married a farmer, who's always in the dirt."
- posted by pioneergirl at 10:12 PM

 
before santa claus came
Hundreds of years ago when our pagan ancestors lived in the great forests of Europe and worshipped the sun, they celebrated Christmas in a somewhat different fashion than we do today.

The sun, they thought, was the giver of all good. He warmed and lighted the earth. He caused the grass to grow for their flocks and herds to eat and the fruits and grains for their own food, but every year after harvest time he became angry with them and started to go away, withderawing his warmth and light farther and still farther from them. The days when he showed them his face became shorter and the periods of darkness ever longer. The farther away he went the colder it grew. The waters turned to ice and snow fell in place of the gentle summer showers.

If their god indeed left them as he seemed to be doing, if he would not become reconciled to them, they must all perish, for nothing would grow upon which they could live and if they did not freeze they would die of starvation. Their priests' prayers availed nothing and something must be done to make the Sun God smile upon them once more. The priests demanded a human sacrifce, the sacrifice of a human child!

What is now our Christmas eve was the night chosen for the ceremony. On that night the door of every hut must be left unfastened that the priests might enter and take a child. No one knew which house would be entered nor what child taken to be sacrificed on the altar of the Sun God.

Perhaps the priests knew that the shortest day of the year had arrived and that the sun would start on its return journey at this time. they may have taken advantage of this knowledge to gain greater control over the people, but it may be that the selection of the right day at first was purely accidental and they believed, with the people, that the Sun God was pleased by the sacrifice. It was, to them, proof of this that he immediately started to return and smiled upon them for another reason.

Do you suppose the children knew and listened in terror for footsteps on Christmas eve? The fathers and mothers must have harkened for the slightest noise and waited in agony, not knowing whether their house would be passed by or whether the priests would enter stealthily and bear away one of their children or perhaps their only child. How happy they must have been when the teachers of Christianity came and told them it was all unnecessary. It is no wonder they celebrated the birth of Christ on the date of that awful night of sacrifice, which was now robbed of its terror, nor that they made it a children's festival.

Instead of the stealthy steps of cruel men, there came now, on Christmas eve, a jolly saint with reindeer and bells, bringing gifts. This new spirit of love and peace and safety that was abroad in the land did not require that the doors be left unbarred. He could come thru locked doors or down the chimney and be everywhere at once on Christmas night, for a spirit can do such things. No wonder the people laughed and danced and rang the joy bells on Christmas day and the celebration with its joy and thankfulness has come on down the years to us. Without all that Christmas means, we might still be dreading the day in the old terrible way instead of listening for the sleigh bells of Santa Claus.

--Mrs. A.J. Wilder. Mansfield, Mo. (Published in The Missouri Ruralist, December 20, 1916.
- posted by pioneergirl at 2:01 AM

 
from my "little house" to yours

MERRY CHRISTMAS!
- posted by pioneergirl at 2:01 AM

 
i'm not so sure, either

http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6396630.html?nid=2788
Little House Under Renovation
by Gabrielle Mitchell-Marell -- Publishers Weekly, 12/4/2006

The prairie landscape of Laura Ingalls Wilder will soon be changing. HarperCollins, in an effort to keep the classic Little House on the Prairie series relevant to a new generation, is repackaging the paperback editions, and will replace the familiar covers by Garth Williams with photographic covers, and remove the inside art, starting in January.

Williams, who died in 1996, had a signature style - whimsical and folksy - that has endeared readers not only to the Ingalls books, but to E.B. White's classics as well, among others. Since 1953 Williams's work has graced the Ingalls series. But according to Tara Weikum, executive editor of HarperCollins Children's Books, sales of backlist properties in the competitive middle-grade market have been lagging. "For readers who view historical novels as old-fashioned," says Weikum, "this offers them an edition that dispels that notion and suggests that these books have all the great qualities of a novel set in a contemporary time."

Before deciding to make the change, Harper consulted its market. It held an informal poll of roughly 100 attendees at the 2004 National Council of Teachers of English conference, which persuaded them that librarians and teachers would welcome the idea of updated covers.

But some booksellers aren't so sure. Leslie Hawkins, owner of Spellbound Children's Bookstore in Asheville, N.C., says she will give the new covers a try, but she worries that parents, who like purchasing beloved titles from their youth, might be put off by the new look.

HarperCollins isn't scrapping the Garth Williams art entirely; his jackets and interior art will still be available in hardcover, as will the colorized paperback editions from 2004. That's good news to Alison Morris, children's book buyer for Wellesley Booksmith in Wellesley, Mass. Morris believes that "when you take a classic book and put a trendy cover on it, it's not a classic anymore." She feels that Harper should have kept the interior illustrations, and won't be buying any copies of the new editions. Instead she's stocking up on the colorized paperbacks.

Kate Jackson, editor-in-chief at HarperCollins Children's Books, understands Morris's point, but believes that Harper's responsibility is to keep the books "relevant and vibrant for kids today. A childhood book is an emotional, tactile object, and you want it to be as it was," she says. "But Laura Ingalls was a real little girl, not a made-up character. Using photographs highlights that these are not history but adventure books."
- posted by pioneergirl at 2:00 PM