plant me

Although today is National Arbor Day, it's not Arbor Day where I live. That was on February 16. Two perfectly good (but wasted) opportunities to plant my "rooted from a cutting from one of Pa's cottonwood trees" tree, which is still thriving in a pot.

The first Arbor Day was celebrated in 1872 in Nebraska. It was the brainchild of Julius Sterling Morton (1832-1902), a Nebraska journalist and politician originally from Michigan. Throughout his long and productive career, Morton worked to improve agricultural techniques in his adopted state and throughout the United States when he served as President Grover Cleveland's Secretary of Agriculture. But his most important legacy is Arbor Day.

Morton felt that Nebraska's landscape and economy would benefit from the wide-scale planting of trees. He set an example himself planting orchards, shade trees and wind breaks on his own farm and he urged his neighbours to follow suit. Morton's real opportunity, though, arrived when he became a member of Nebraska's state board of agriculture. He proposed that a special day be set aside dedicated to tree planting and increasing awareness of the importance of trees. Nebraska's first Arbor Day was an amazing success. More than one million trees were planted. A second Arbor Day took place in 1884 and the young state made it an annual legal holiday in 1885, using April 22nd to coincide with Morton's birthday. [arbor-day.net]

Arbor Day was celebrated in April 1885 in De Smet, with planting of trees on the new graded school grounds. The plan was to have each scholar plant a tree and care for it in the future. Trees do appear in some early school photographs like the one at right, but not in later photos. One has to wonder if Laura and friends planted and tended trees at the school grounds, or if this was a project carried out by the younger school children?

Arbor Day 1905 saw two hundred trees planted at the De Smet Cemetery, thanks to the efforts of Charles Tinkham and Robert Boast.
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:22 PM

 
jumping-jack?

In On the Banks of Plum Creek (Chapter 22, "Town Party"), Laura and the other girls "laughed until they cried" at Nellie's jumping-jack toy. He was cut out of thin, flat wood; striped paper trousers and jacket were pasted on him, and his face was painted white with red cheeks and circles around his eyes, and his tall cap was pointed. He hung between two thin red strips of wood, and when you squeezed them he danced. His hands held on to twisted strings. He would turn a somersault over the strings; he would stand on his head with his toe on his nose.

Later, in The Long Winter, Grace received a double jumping-jack toy for Christmas (Chapter 18, "Merry Christmas"). Two little, flat wooden men stood on a platform between two flat red posts. Their hands held onto two strings twisted tightly together above their heads. They wore peaked red caps and blue coats with gold buttons. Their trousers were red-and-green stripes. Their boots were black with turned-up toes. / Ma gently pressed the bottoms of the posts inward. One of the men somersaulted up and the other swung into his place. Then the first came down while the second went up and they nodded their heads and jerked their arms and swung their legs, dancing and somersaulting.

The Plum Creek manuscript only says that they all played with Willie's jumping-jack... In The Long Winter manuscript, Wilder wrote: Two funny faced little men with peaked red caps on their heads stood on a platform between two painted posts. Their coats were blue with gold buttons. Their trousers were red and green stripes. Their boots were black with turned up toes. / Ma reached across and pulled a string that hung from the top of the posts. One of the men went up and the other swung around to his place. Then the first came down and the second went up and they nodded their heads and jerked their arms as they danced around and around. "Oh look! Oh look!" Grace shouted while everyone laughed. "A double jumping jack," Laura said and Ma added, "The first I ever saw."

The toy described is usually called an acrobat or squeeze toy, not a jumping-jack. Note that in one version Ma "pulled a string that hung from the top of the posts" to animate the toy. There were acrobat toys that operated by pulling on a string that hung at the top of a single post, but usually these were one-stick toys, in contrast to the two-stick toys that required you to push the sticks together in order to make the acrobat(s) move. A traditional jumping-jack featured moving arms and legs, strung so that a single pull of a string hanging from the bottom would cause the arms and legs to raise.

The acrobat toy pictured above is of painted wood and has an 1876 patent date.
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:18 PM

 
silence is golden

- posted by pioneergirl at 1:19 AM

 
almanzo100.com
You'll be "near" where Almanzo Wilder lived, but you'll go right through where Mary Power lived.

From the Rochester, Minnesota, Post-Bulletin, April 11, 2007:

Bike race will be for do-it-yourselfers
By Jason Feldman, The Post-Bulletin

Chris Skogen likes to bring people together for a common cause, especially if that cause results in people feeling better about themselves in the end.

That's why the 29-year-old Rochester man ran for mayor in November.

The election didn't fall his way, but Skogen wasn't deterred or discouraged.

He's in the final stages of organizing a large gathering of like-minded athletes for an event that will test them physically and mentally, and will result only in personal satisfaction for each participant.

Skogen's vision -- a 100-mile bike ride, primarily on gravel roads, from Rochester to Mankato -- will come to fruition on May 19.

The Almanzo 100 is named after the husband of Laura Ingalls Wilder, who once lived near the area that the ride will pass through.

The idea came to Skogen after hearing of other similar races.

"There's a group in Iowa who puts together the Trans-Iowa ride; it's about 300 miles, completely self-supported and runs about 36 hours on gravel and dirt roads," Skogen said. "There's also the Great Divide Race, which is about 2,500 miles -- it's the length of the Rocky Mountains from Canada to New Mexico.

"There are people putting these things on all over the country, so why not here?"

Another reason Skogen organized this ride is just because of his passion for bike riding. He bought his first "nice bike" when he was 16 and said he soon learned that "biking is a very efficient way to get around and fun to do."

He and his wife have just one car, and he rides his bike wherever he needs to go -- work, shopping, etc. -- whether it's the middle of July or the middle of February.

The Almanzo 100 is a completely self-supported ride, meaning riders must fend for themselves at all times. If a rider's bike breaks down, it's his or her issue to deal with. If a rider needs food or water, he will have to pack it and carry it himself, or wait until the trail goes through a town.

The ride is scheduled to begin at Central Park in Rochester. It will continue through Medford, about 50 miles away, then through Waseca and finally to Mankato.

And if a rider needs to get back to Rochester? They either will have to have someone scheduled to pick them up in Mankato, or they'll be riding in the Almanzo 200.

"People are completely responsible for themselves," Skogen said, "which I think adds to the fun aspect of it. A lot of times with cycling races they can seem very official.

"When you take the formal rules and regulations, and the entry money out of it ... it brings it down to, if you like to ride and just have fun, then this is the ride for you."

Skogen said he has spoken briefly with law enforcement officials, who told him that, since the riders are fully self-supported, they have no problems with the event as long as riders follow state laws and regulations.

Skogen said he will have a map and other information, such as nearby hospitals along the route, available for riders on the day of the event.

The ride is open to all cyclists ages 18 and older, and though it's a self-supported ride, Skogen said he will award trophies to the first riders to complete the 100-mile journey in four classes.

"I wanted to bring people together just to get together and have a fun time," Skogen said. "No one really benefits from this ride, except for their own personal accomplishment."
- posted by pioneergirl at 10:01 PM

 
hardly a man is now alive...
April is National Poetry month. From The Long Winter, (Chapter 22, "Cold and Dark"):

In the afternoons Mary and Laura and Carrie recited. Even Grace knew "Mary's Little Lamb," and "Bo-Peep Has Lost Her Sheep." Laura liked to see Grace's blue eyes and Carrie's shine with excitement when she told them:

"Listen, my children, and you shall hear,
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year..."

April 18 is the perfect time to brush up on your Paul Revere's Ride recitation skills. In the eighth grade, I memorized it for history class; I can still get a few verses in before fumbling.

Here is a poem you won't have read anywhere before. It was written by Paul Cooley (1884-1981); see On the Way Home and a Lore article and a Rocky Ridge Review article written by moi. George Cooley's son, Frank, shared this poem back in 1998 with my son Pearce, who memorized it on the spot. Printed here with permission, so copyrights apply.

Spring Has Came to Arkansas

Spring has came, winter has went,
It was not did by accident.
The birds have sang, the grass has grew,
The sun it showed on I and you.

The creeks have ran with melting snow,
St. Francis River done overflow;
The ducks have flew as you have saw,
And spring has came to Arkansas.
- posted by pioneergirl at 12:15 AM

 
like vanity cakes without the lard

One of the celebrated food items in the "Little House" books is vanity cakes, mentioned in On the Banks of Plum Creek, Chapter 23, "Country Party" - Ma made vanity cakes. She made them with beaten eggs and white flour. She dropped them into a kettle of sizzling fat. Each one came up bobbing, and floated till it turned itself over, lifting up its honey-brown, puffy bottom. Then it swelled underneath till it was round, and Ma lifted it out with a fork.

Many old cookbooks have recipes for "vanities," and I've blogged about them before. The Little House Cookbook lists the ingredients as egg, salt, white flour. Fry in lard and sprinkle with powdered sugar. Only Laura Ingalls Wilder said that they weren't sweet, so you have to wonder why Barbara Walker included the sugar dusting.

Anyone who knows me well knows that I have eaten a lot of lunches in the tea-room at Neiman Marcus. One of their celebrated food items is the popovers they serve with every meal. I recently broke down and bought the Neiman Marcus Cookbook and a popover pan, but you can find the recipe online if you google "Neiman Marcus popovers." I just made a batch of popovers, and it occurred to me that popovers are like vanity cakes in a lot of ways.

They are a honey-brown, puffy, made of eggs and white flour. Popovers also call for milk, which is used to provide the steam which inflates them into delicious hollowness. Because you steam them instead of fry them, you can cook them so that they are soft, or you can puncture them when done and allow them to become crisper, more like vanity cakes.

Not that popovers are any less trouble to make than vanity cakes. Or any less temperamental. I just like them better. [Note: In the photo above, the image on the front of the cookbook is of monkey bread. My popovers are in front.]
- posted by pioneergirl at 10:56 PM

 
town is that way
In The Long Winter, Almanzo Wilder rode after runaway Lady and lost sight of town. It didn't matter, though: "As long as the sun was in the sky or the moon or stars he could not be lost." (Chapter 20, "Antelope")

Almanzo didn't mean that he could pinpoint his latitude or longitude (or township or range) using no clock or instruments; he meant that he had enough working knowledge of the day and night sky to be able to tell cardinal directions: north, south, east, and west.

Figuring out latitude and longitude thrills me. I'm pretty good with maps, but I hate to admit that I tend to get turned around in real life, even when the sun is shining - or worse - setting. "Yes, I see the sun setting in front of me, but I also think I need to turn left to go north."

I recently checked Longitude (by Dava Sobel) out of the library, and I loved it so much, I bought The Illustrated Longitude, by Dava Sobel and William J.H. Andrews (New York: Walker & Company, 1998).

Latitude, longitude, township, range. Fascinating! Somebody asked me recently if you could convert latitude and longitude to township and range. You can, but it's easier to do it HERE (plus there's a link to go in the other direction). Gotta love the Environmental Statistics Group at Montana State University.

This is useful and fun if you're in Kingsbury County with your GPS device and want a photo of yourself standing on Minnie Johnson's homestead. It will only get you to the center of the proper section, though. You'll have to use the sun or moon or stars to know which which way to go to be standing in the proper quarter section.
- posted by pioneergirl at 10:36 PM

 
ndsw.org

National Dark Sky Week is this week, the week of the new moon.
- posted by pioneergirl at 8:02 PM

 
kingsbury county
Donald Parker, in George A. Hall's Kingsbury County: A County to Behold, In a State to Behold (Freeman, S. Dak.: Pine Hill Press, 1993), recounted a chronology of events in the area that became Kingsbury County which had been published in a De Smet newspaper over fifty years ago. Here's the condensed version:

1492 - claimed by Spain
1671 - claimed by France
1742 - granted to Anthony Crozat by the King of France
1747 - Crozat relinquished his claim to the King
1750 - the Sioux Indians begin to migrate into the area that became South Dakota
1762 - claimed by Spain until 1800
1800 - sold to France
1803 - France sold the Louisiana Purchase to the U.S.
1804 - part of the Louisiana District until 1805
1812 - part of Missouri Territory until 1821
1821 - unorganized until 1834
1834 - part of Michigan Territory until 1836
1836 - part of Wisconsin Territory until 1838
1837 - part of Fayette County, Wisconsin, largest county in the U.S.
1838 - part of Iowa Territory until 1846
1846 - part of an unorganized region until 1849
1849 - part of Wabashaw County, Minnesota Territory
1853 - part of Blue Earth County, Minnesota Territory
1855 - part of Brown County, Minnesota Territory
1857 - Settlements made at Medary, Flandreau, and Sioux Falls
1858 - Sioux drove settlers from Medary, Flandreau, and Sioux Falls
1861 - Dakota Territory created by an act of congress
1862 - Sioux uprising killed 500 or so and emptied the Big Sioux Valley
1862 - Brookings and Minnehaha Counties created
1863 - Indians occupied Lake County
1865 - Fort Dakota started at Sioux Falls; abandoned in 1869
1866 - First permanent white settlement began again in Minnehaha County
1867 - An Indian reservation included much of the area until 1869
1869 - About 150 Christian Sioux began to reside in or near Flandreau
1869 - First permanent settlement began again near Medary
1869 - Surveying of eastern Lake County began (Lake County joins Kingsbury to the south)
1870 - First permanent white settlement in Lake County
1873 - Kingsbury County created. First settled by Jacob Hanson, near Lake Albert
1879 - County was named. In the fall of 1879, the railroad had reached Volga, east of Kingsbury County.
1880 - First meeting to organize county government in Kingsbury.
- posted by pioneergirl at 10:29 PM

 
pigeon wing
In Little House in the Big Woods (Chapter 8, "Dance at Grandpa's"), Uncle George "did a pigeon wing" and bowed low before Grandma before he started to jig.

Someone on one of my listservs posted that they had finally discovered what a pigeon wing was (in relation to something totally non-"Little House"); it was when a person jumped up and clapped their heels together. Pigeon wing isn't something I'd researched. It's not in my 1883 Webster's or my 1892 one. It's in the 1913 edition, though: "A fancy step executed by jumping and striking the legs together; as, to cut a pigeonwing."

Weird. I always pictured Uncle George doing the "exit stage right" thing with his elbows, not jumping up and clicking his heels.
- posted by pioneergirl at 1:06 AM

 
trail drivers of texas
Reading assignment: The Trail Drivers of Texas: Interesting Sketches of Early Cowboys and Their Experiences on the Range and on the Trail during the Days That Tried Men's Souls -- True Narratives Related by real Cowpunchers and Men Who Fathered the Cattle Industry in Texas. Compiled and edited by J. Marvin Hunter. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1924).

Read it HERE.
- posted by pioneergirl at 9:54 PM

 
there were four cows on the ark
When naturally polled (hornless) cows are bred with any other cow, the offspring are all hornless because the polledness gene is dominant. Unless horned cattle such as Texas Longhorns (Little House on the Prairie, Chapter 13, "Texas Longhorns") are a mutation, when the animals went on the ark two by two, there were four cows, one pair with horns, the other polled.

Laura Ingalls Wilder only mentions "polled" cattle once in the "Little House" books, in Little Town on the Prairie, Chapter 2, "Springtime on the Claim." Ellen's calf - and Ellen, obviously - were without horns.

It's interesting to note that Wilder correctly described both the Scots and the Hispanic way of raising cattle in the "Little House" books. Sukey was turned loose in clement seasons and brought into a barn or fenced yard to be fed (or fattened for sale or slaughter) once winter set in. In the manuscript for Little House in the Big Woods, Wilder wrote:

The grass was dry and brown and the cows must be taken out of the woods and fed. Pa said Sukey was too old to be kept another year, he must sell her.

The butcher came from town to get her just before milking time when the cows always came home. But old Sukey didn't come, so Pa told Mary and Laura to go find her in the brush across the road.

They went, but Laura cried and dug her toes in the dust and said she wouldn't drive Sukey up for the butcher to kill. And when she saw Sukey where she was hiding in the brush she said nothing about it. But Mary saw her at last and started her home, while Laura lagged behind, and cried as the butcher drove Sukey away.

In Scotland, with its cold, short summers, cattle were allowed to roam in mild weather and were winter fed thanks to the introduction of turnips as cattle feed, a crop which the Ingallses also grow for animal feed.

The Hispanic / Texas style of raising cattle was a system without agriculture - no irrigation, no haying, no growing of feed. The animals were left on their own and rounded up for sale or slaughter. Although Wilder mentions cowboys in Little House on the Prairie, there is no mention of cowboys in the manuscript. There are only "strange men herding cattle from Texas north to market." One wonders if cowboys were added to the story because Laura herself was fond of reading "cowboy stories" as an adult.

In Indian Territory, the Ingallses can hear cattle being herded to Fort Dodge, and Pa is given the gift of a cow and calf. The poor cow is "wild as a deer," as is to be expected in cattle having minimum human contact.

Charles Ingalls, of course, was used to the Scots method of cattle raising; he built a barn and cut enough buffalo grass for feed during bad weather. Otherwise, the cattle could "mow their own hay" all winter (Chapter 16, "Fire in the Chimney"). He let the cattle fend for themselves, but with only the one cow and calf, he couldn't trust them to the Hispanic system of leaving them to range year round.

Apparently, translating Little House on the Prairie into Spanish presented some problems in historical accuracy, because in the years after the Civil War, the Spanish didn't have a word that meant the same as the American "barn." They had a choice of words that meant granary, haystack, hay or olive bin, or carriage house. When all else failed, they used cuadra (as in quadrangle), best translated as "that four-sided thing over there."

While homesteading in Dakota Territory, Charles Ingalls says that he is going to forget farming and raise cattle. "This giving a mortgage on everything he owns, to buy a two-hundred-dollar machine, and paying ten per cent interest on the debt, will ruin a man," he said. "Let these brash young fellows go into debt for machinery and break up all their land. I'm going to let the grass keep on growing, and raise cattle." (These Happy Golden Years, Chapter 21, "Barnum and Skip")

The trouble with open ranging was that it didn't stand a chance in areas removed from the semi-tropics along the Gulf of Mexico where it originated. The winter after the Ingallses left Indian Territory, 50-75% of cattle already running in open range land in Nebraska and Kansas, died.

And Wilder tells it like it was during the hard winter of 1880-1881, when even larger numbers of local cattle perished in Dakota Territory and elsewhere.
- posted by pioneergirl at 10:08 PM

 
the ghost and mr. macbride

I'm sure most "readers" do it. When you're flipping through a magazine or newspaper and see a bookcase in the background of a photograph, you look closely to see if you can read any of the titles on the shelves.

It was the Roger Lea MacBride "The Rose Years" books in the photograph that caught my eye before the story itself; I'd know those spines anywhere. Only, as everyone ought to know by now, the Rose books weren't written by Roger Lea MacBride; they were ghostwritten by R. Foster Winans.

Fortune magazine, April 16, 2007, page 102: "Where Are They Now?"

R. Foster Winans, 58
Wall Street Journal

Years before Martha Stewart, Foster Winans was the public face of insider trading. As co-author of the Wall Street Journal's influential Heard on the Street column in the early 1980s, he sometimes told stockbroker Peter Brant and others what he was going to write, allowing them to get a jump on ordinary readers and the market. Winan's tips made his co-conspirators almost $1 million. His cut was only $31,000. He served about eight months in prison and paid a $5,000 fine. A few years after getting out of jail, he moved back to his homestown of Doylestown, Pa., and began ghostwriting books - sometimes up to eight a year... (article by Barney Gimbel, only a portion of the full-page photograph in the scan above)

The dedication in the final "Rose" book, Bachelor Girl (published in 1999), reads: To Foster Winans, builder of his own little house, with profound gratitude and respect

Who do you suppose wrote the dedication?
- posted by pioneergirl at 7:25 PM

 
rocky ridge farm?

Is it or isn't it? Click HERE for a closer look.
- posted by pioneergirl at 12:07 PM

 
the secret
A March issue of Newsweek magazine says of "The Secret" that: "Oprah lives by it. Millions are reading it. The latest self-help sensation claims we can change our lives by thinking. But this 'new thought' may just be new marketing."

I remember Norman Vincent Peale's The Power of Positive Thinking, published in 1952. I don't remember back much farther than that, but I know that the "ask, believe, receive" train of thought has been around since long before there were trains.

In These Happy Golden Years (Chapter 26, "Teachers Examinations"), Caroline Ingalls says to Laura: "A body makes his own luck, be it bad or good.... I have no doubt that you will get as good as you deserve."

Laura thought about what she wanted. She thought about it all night, and the next morning, she was offered the Wilkins School.

There you go.
- posted by pioneergirl at 10:27 AM

 
happy birthday
What I bought myself for my birthday: (1) Jeffrey A. Lockwood, Locust: The Devastating Rise and Mysterious Disappearance of the Insect That Shaped the American Frontier (New York: Basic Books), 2004; (2) Dava Sobel and William J.H. Andrews, The Illustrated Longitude (New York: Walker Publishing), 1998; (3) Kevin Garvin and John Harrison, The Neiman Marcus Cookbook (New York: Clarkson Potter), 2003.

I've eaten a lot of lunches at Zodiac Tearooms over the years. I would look longingly at the cookbook while there, but never could bring myself to buy it. The Atlanta N-M tearoom closed for renovations this month; now I'll be able to fix my own dainty lunch of orange souffle, cheese biscuits, fresh fruit, chicken salad, etc. Best served at midnight, of course, in true Mary Power style. And popovers aren't all that far removed from vanity cakes, you know.

Two out of three books are "Little House" related. There are almost a dozen juvenile Laura Ingalls Wilder biographies on my amazon.com wishlist, but I'm tired of collecting books that are the same old, same old. I usually try to pick up one or two at a homesite museum while visiting. The next book two books on my wishlist are Simon Winchester's The Map that Changed the World: William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology and John M. Barry's The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History.
- posted by pioneergirl at 2:59 AM