lazy and lousy... and long
A member of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Literary Society discussion group posted today that they were reading a book (it was A.S. Byatt's Unruly Times: Wordsworth and Coleridge in their Time, published in 1997) in which there was mention of "Lazy, lousy Liverpool" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge to describe travel by coach back in 1812. And wouldn't it be interesting if the children who had chanted "Lazy, lousy Lizy Jane" around Eliza Jane in her unfortunate childhood (see Little Town on the Prairie, Chapter 15, "The School Board's Visit") were actually copying a much earlier catch-phrase? Of course it would!

I always thought the reference was to "Long, lazy, lousy Lewisham" (I didn't know about the Coleridge one) - the appropriately-shaped village within the larger London borough of Lewisham, which had been a horribly poor area in the eighteenth century (I haven't a clue about today).

"Long, lazy, lousy Lewisham" can be found in provincial glossaries prior to Coleridge's use of it to describe Liverpool. Understandably, too, it was said to be the alliteration of the proverb - rather than the truth of it - that guaranteed its preservation. It's certainly been preserved to the present time, thanks to the "Little House" books!

HERE is an interesting article by Ann Weller Dahl about the use of language in the "Little House" books. Dahl is author of the "'Little House' Reading Guides" published by the Calvert School.
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:59 PM

 
peaks of shala

For the person who needs everything, there's John B. Allcock and Antonia Young's Black Lambs and Grey Falcons: Women Travelling in the Balkans (University of Bradford, 2000, an update of the 1991 edition). In addition to a chapter about Rose Wilder Lane, there is another about Rebecca West and her book, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (Vail-Ballou Press, 1940), although West's book is more about Yugoslavia and next-to-nothing about Albania.

After dipping into those, I wanted to read Peaks of Shala again, or maybe I should say I wanted to read again while actually paying attention. I started searching for reviews of Peaks of Shala and was surprised to find quite a bit of newspaper coverage of Rose's time in Albania, especially her interview with a bandit (shown above). Rose writes: "...He was ragged... and incredibly whiskered. But he carried besides his rifle on his back an old beautifully made musical instrument somewhat resembling a mandolin." He sang for Rose and her friend. And although Rose took no notes, she remembered "lyrical words about life on the mountains, camp fires and stars [and] freedom..." which the bandit called "the only life for a man." I can't help but wonder if the bandit's whiskers reminded Rose just the tiniest bit of Grandpa Ingalls.

In 2002, Michael Galaty, professor of anthropology at Millsaps College in Mississippi, along with filmmaker Robert Schon, retraced Rose Wilder Lane's journey as outlined in Peaks of Shala, studying the few echoes of the tribal system - so fascinating to Rose - not destroyed during Communist takeover. They were even able to recreate several of the photos Annette Marquis took for Rose's book.

Galaty returned to Albania this past January, and blogged about his trip, which you can read HERE. Galaty really brings Rose's book to life for me, and I look forward to his film about the Shala Valley Project.
- posted by pioneergirl at 9:34 PM

 
abraham lincoln looks west
I just received an email about the 2009 DAKOTA CONFERENCE, scheduled for April 24-25, 2009, at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. I've spoken at the Dakota Conference in the past and I highly recommend the event to anyone interested in South Dakota history, literary, art, and archeology.

I'm submitting a proposal (of course it will be about Laura Ingalls Wilder), and even if I don't end up presenting a paper, I plan on attending. The next conference, in conjunction with the observance of the Lincoln Bicentennial across the country (events are already taking place!), should be fantastic. Check it out.
- posted by pioneergirl at 4:58 PM

 
fishhooks and hammer handles
It has rained almost nonstop for the past two days. I'm blaming it on Tropical Storm Fay, which may or not be the reason, but all this rain and wind did make me wonder about the weather during the Wilders' time in Florida in 1891.

No worries; it seems that the hurricane season was a mild one that year.
- posted by pioneergirl at 10:22 PM

 
root hog, or die
The Presidency, from The Wisconsin State Journal, October 1936.

On November 3, the people of the United States will make the most momentous decision that has come to their suffrage since the establishment of the American form of democratic government. The presidential debate thus far, with public information that furnishes its background, shows conclusively that we are to decide temporarily between democracy and collectivism. Should we decide for collectivism, the blazing of new trails indicates that we shall eventually have to decide for or against communism.

The Roosevelt program has departed further from the groundwork of the democratic party than from that of the republican party, because in the early days the Hamiltonians were for a strong central government, while the Jeffersonians were for states' rights and for as little government as possible. Having fled from despotisms, the American colonists shrewdly invested the national government with only such powers as the states relinquished to them, providing in the constitution itself a means of amending that fundamental law whenever two-thirds of the states approved.

Immediately upon his acquisition of office, President Roosevelt ignored his ledge to stand by the democratic national platform "100 per cent", and plunged into collectivist methods administered, not by statesmen, but by theorists, many of whom by more than implication were known as communist sympathizers.

That the president "followed along" is shown by his urgent advice to congress to pass the Guffey bill in spite of constitutional obstacles "however reasonable."

We have Sec. of Agriculture Wallace publicly hoping for the day when the supreme court can be abolished.

Notwithstanding such sound proceedings, in the circumstances, as the bank moratorium and the setting up of FDIC, many of the experiments tried proved utterly futile to solve the problems of the country to which they applied. The reemployment program has left roughly 11 millions unemployed. The slaughter of meat products, and the fallow land program to reduce acreage, at a time when millions of Americans needed food, reduces itself to an absurdity.

Father Coughlin has been taken greatly to task for publicly questioning the veracity of a president of the United States, but if the president is to escape conviction for mendacity, he cannot be acquitted of a poor memory and a vacillating mind.

The far background of communism is the condition created by the advent of machinery to reduce hand production. A high authority says it was founded in the French revolutionary instinct, British economics, and German philosophy. Russia, at the moment a country practically without machinery, was stupidly the first to adopt it. Within a year Lenin knew he had failed, and turned to collectivism. Following Lenin, Stalin is passing through collectivism back to capitalism. There are few real shreds of communism left in Russia. In fact, should Roosevelt win, and make the almost inevitable turn further to the left, this country might reach communism about the time Russia attained democracy.

This remains the only country in which human liberty in a true sense still exists. Our pioneers ran away from despotism and class regimentation. As Rose Wilder Lane, using an early day phrase, puts it, they came here to "root hog, or die". That was the price they paid, and it is the price that always must be paid for the freedom of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness", for the freedom of men and women to speak, write, publish, and worship as they like, and to pursue their individual inclinations in enterprise so long as they do no damage to the general run of people.

Gov. Landon, republican nominee for the presidency, is a happy choice in such a situation. He is typical of the American who found his own way. He has been reared in the atmosphere, the wind and sun of great mid-western America. He is free from any encumbrances to our predatory individuals and institutions. He knows the farm and the farmer. He knows self-sustaining industry. He has a clear conception of the true Americanism, the real meaning of liberty.

Gov. Landon has made a most significant campaign. He has caused the fireside crooner of Hyde Park to lose his temper and change his tone. He knows and acknowledges that America, within the American roadways, must reach the goal of sufficiency for all without depriving the citizen of those rights which are "self-evident facts".

We shall not go into the details of spoilsmen and incompetents who have been maladministering the New Deal. Every community knows that. Neither are we convinced that the principles and ends sought by President Roosevelt are not honest. But we doubt that he possesses insight, farsightedness or cogency of mind. We believe that the sum total of his efforts thus far are destructive of the very principles that within a hundred years have permitted a wilderness to become the wealthiest nation in the world with the highest average of living conditions. Admittedly we had come upon times distressing to many of our people and unsatisfactory to most of them, but that is no reason to adopt the ideas and methods of nations whose highest moments of prosperity have been far inferior to our worst depressions.

Two years ago a great Englishman, visiting in America, said: "We British would like to borrow your depression."

Landon, level-headed, instinctively democratic, walks with his feet on the ground. He is one of us. He pretends no magic wand, essays so "seven-league boots". With him we can walk safely to still higher ground in the development of the American people.
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:49 PM

 
devotionals with laura

Dan White has just published a Bible study book using Laura Ingalls Wilder's Bible verses, a handwritten list found in Laura's Bible after her death and believed to be her quick reference in times of trouble or stress. A copy of Laura's handwritten list is available for purchase at the Laura Ingalls Wilder homesite museums.

Devotionals With Laura is White's interpretation of these verses, what they meant in Laura's life and what they might mean in ours. The booklet - 137 letter-sized pages - is available to download for $9 (paypal or credit card accepted) as a pdf file HERE. I bought it tonight, and I'm in the process of printing it out, glancing over the pages as they are printed. Although I've noticed a few historical inaccuracies so far, it should be an interesting study. Not only does White present his own interpretation of the Bible verses, he uses Laura's "Little House" books, articles, letters, and local Mansfield history in his anaylsis of them.

Dan White isn't new to writing about Laura Ingalls Wilder. In 1992, he published Laura's Friends Remember: Close Friends Recall Laura Ingalls Wilder. This 40-page booklet contains interviews with Nava Austin, Erman Dennis, Peggy Dennis, Emogene Fuge, Neta Seal, Anna Gutschke, and Carl Hartley. It's now available as an e-book HERE, re-titled Laura Ingalls' Friends Remember Her.
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:40 PM

 
to the unknown
by Rose Wilder Lane, 1920

Where are you wandering? By what windy hollow
Did I miss your footprints in the morning-dew?
Where have you gone that I may never follow
Down all the world's bewildering ways to you?

Ah men but you are empty faces
All my life without you, empty hours.
There is no rest for me in quiet places,
There is no honey in the flowers.

Where are you wandering? Shall my seeking never
Disclose your unseen face, hidden and apart?
Still I must search for you, lonely forever,
Hearing your silent voice always in my heart.

- posted by pioneergirl at 11:14 PM

 
some things change
In 1933, Rose Wilder Lane had this to say about gardening: "No thoughtful gardener believes in God, nor in the mechanistically reasonable universe. Use Black Flag for aphis, arsenate of lead for beetles, corrosive sublimate for root-rot, keep your fingers crossed, pray for rain, and peppergrass will still eat up your yard."

In 1917, Rose had viewed gardening a bit differently. Here's the beginning of a story-article published in the Oakland Tribune titled Garden---the Giver of Life:

My little neighbor came and leaned over the trim green-painted fence and said:

"While I was working in my garden today I realized suddenly that I have found the secret of happiness.

"And a year ago I thought I would never be happy again.

"So few of us know how to be happy! We learn so many things--how to add sums, and how to make money, and how to serve dinners, and how to dress--and all these things mean nothing at all when we haven't learned happiness.

"Now that I have learned it at last, I know that living will never be so hard for me again, though none of the things that hurt me are changed. Being happy, after all, is not a matter of environment, it is a matter of adjustment. I never saw that until today.

"A soft mist was falling. It covered the hills, and the live-oaks in the glen behind the house, with a thin gray veil. My white fleur-de-lys shimmered like delicate silver gauze through the tiny raindrops on their petals.

"The breeze against my cheeks was cool and damp, but the brown earth was warm. I felt the warmth of it through my gardening gloves, as I turned it with my trowel, and patted it down around the little roots. I was humming to myself.

"Suddenly I stopped, cuddling a baby lobelia in my hand. I almost said the words aloud in my surprise, 'Why, I'm happy!'"

I uploaded a scan of the entire article HERE. Doesn't it sound like it could have been ghost-written by Laura Ingalls Wilder?
- posted by pioneergirl at 10:23 PM

 
"how about you, ida? are you going to teach for a while?"

Teaching McConnells Meet Today
Union Valley Service, California - The Elmer McConnell family runs to teaching school. Mr. McConnell, 76, whose family will honor him at a reunion here tomorrow, was a school teacher. So was his wife, now deceased. So were two of his sons. So were both his daughters.

One of the daughters is still a teacher. Her husband is a retired college professor.
The McConnell family, 35 strong, will gather from all over California tomorrow to pay homage to the father, who came out from Wisconsin* and settled on the ranch where he still lives.

There will be a picnic and barbecue at the ranch, and in the afternoon neighbors will be invited in for open house.

In These Happy Golden Years, Mary Power asks Ida Wright if she is going to teach school. Ida laughed, "No, indeed! I never did want to teach. I'd rather keep house. Why do you suppose I got this ring?" (See Chapter 24, "Almanzo Goes Away")

Ida may not have wanted to teach, but teach she did. While Laura Ingalls taught in the Wilkins School north of De Smet, Ida was teaching the Langdon School in Manchester Township to the west. Ida had earned only a probational teaching certificate; it allowed her to teach for six months or one school term. Had Ida wanted to teach again, she would have had to take the teaching exam and pass with at least a third grade certificate. There is no record of Ida being re-certified in Kingsbury County. Elmer had taught school prior to moving to Dakota Territory; he also taught school after he and Ida were married.

*Wisconsin?
Ida and Elmer left De Smet after Reverend Brown died and moved to northern Wisconsin, where they lived until 1914. They followed a daughter and her husband to California and spent the rest of their lives on a ranch near Sacramento.
- posted by pioneergirl at 9:31 PM

 
mabel o'donnell introduces me to laura ingalls wilder

I've been feeling all nostalgic after reading Singing Wheels for the billionteenth time since 1962.

Singing Wheels was my 4th grade reader in the Alice and Jery Basic Reading Program, first published in 1940 by Row, Peterson and Company. It was written by Mabel O'Donnell with beautiful illustrations by Florence and Margaret Hoopes (surely you recognize Star and Bright in the picture above). I know I've blogged about the book before, because it was my introduction to Laura Ingalls Wilder. Chapters from Little House in the Big Woods (1, 7, and 8) and Farmer Boy (22 and 23) were adapted for use in Singing Wheels, yet even more than those chapters of the two "Little House" books can be found as inspiration for bits and pieces throughout Singing Wheels.

See if THIS doesn't sound like an old friend, and make you want to read more.
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:25 PM

 
one of these things is not like the others...

The above pictures are all of Rose Wilder Lane. Or are they?

One of the things I found in a box of George Cooley's photographs was an addressed but unstamped or cancelled photo postcard of a young woman in foreign costume. The face looked a bit familiar. There was nothing else even remotely similar in the collection. The postcard was addressed to Rev. George Cooley, Hope, N.J. It read: This is just the way I looked one Sunday. [signed] A Hindoo. Underneath was written: Guess who. Was it a photograph of Rose Wilder Lane?

George Cooley's first church out of Seminary was in Hope, New Jersey, where he served from late 1910 to June 1913. At that time, Rose would have been 23-26 years old, married, and living anywhere from Kansas City to New York City to San Francisco. I do know that she visited George in New York at another of his churches. I know they kept in touch until Rose's death.

After a lot of photoshopping around with every known picture of Rose I could find, I have come to the sad conclusion that the hindoo woman is probably not Rose. While there are similar features, and the handwriting on the card is suggestive of Rose's but not a perfect match, there's a major problem. When you cut/paste half of Rose's face from any known photo over the face of any other known photo, Rose's features remain lined up in the same horizontal relationship to each other. The hindoo woman's face can only be lined up as to mouth and nose, or nose and eyes of the Rose photos; it's just a weird match that I don't think can be totally the fault of camera angles. I also do realize that a person's handwriting can change over the years, and since this card said "Guess who," it's possible that the handwriting was purposefully disguised. I will mention that the ring on the woman's hand in my photo looks very much like a ring worn in a known photo of Rose. Rose rarely showed her teeth in photographs, but did so in one taken in Kansas City. In both that one and the hindoo woman one, there are gaps between the teeth that are similar. Lips? Eyes? Chin? Hmmm...

I'll leave it with you.
- posted by pioneergirl at 10:29 PM

 
a house... or the house?

Someone on the Laura Ingalls Wilder yahoogroup that I belong to (the link will let you email and ask to join) wondered if the house in the photographs Garth Williams took in 1947 is actually the Ingallses' house from their homestead claim, i.e. the one Laura lived in. You can see the above photo and others in William T. Anderson's Laura Ingalls Wilder Country; I include the amazon.com link because you can peek inside the book there. Do a search for Garth Williams; the house photo is on page 56. If you don't own this book, you should.


I've been told by several people in De Smet that house on the homestead and photographed by Garth Williams wasn't the one from Laura's day, but that that one had been moved to another farm, and parts of it were possibly hidden in the existing house there. I don't know if this is true or not. I do notice that Anderson only wrote that the house photographed by Williams was on the Ingalls homestead, not that it was indeed the house. Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote after a visit to De Smet in the 1930s that there was a fine farmhouse on their former land, which implies that it wasn't the one Laura remembered.

According to Charles Ingalls' homestead file, he built a frame house 14 x 20 feet, and an addition measuring 12 x 16 feet in size. In By the Shores of Silver Lake, Wilder described the shanty on the claim as looking "like half a woodshed that has been split in two," with the roof slanting all one way, no windows, and no door in the doorway. Pa said it was "a little house only half built, and that half unfinished." (See Chapter 28, "Moving Day") This half-house was either 7 x 20 feet or 10 x 14 feet in size. In the next chapter, Wilder describes the placement of furniture and windows. I must have studied this in depth at some point, because I found this drawing I did in 2003 of how I think the shanty was laid out. In it, the door opens on the west wall. You can see another interpretation of the layout on page 101 of The World of Little House by Carolyn Strom Collins and Christina Wyss Eriksson.

The original frame house of the homestead file would have probably meant the half-shanty after the bedrooms were added; see Little Town on the Prairie, Chapter 2, "Springtime on the Claim." The parlor addition was supposedly built to the east of the existing structure; see These Happy Golden Years, Chapter 19, "The Brown Poplin." This addition had a door to the north (towards the town of De Smet), and windows on the east and south walls.

Looking at my drawing and others, and at the Garth Williams photos, I can't really make anything fit unless I mirror the GW photographs and change my thinking about window and door placement. I've manipulated two rectangles of graph paper in the proper proportions until my head hurts. No doubt I've missed some LH descriptions somewhere, and I always assumed that the half-house was long and skinny in configuration, while I drew it exactly the other way. It's fairly easy to draw Wilder's layout of the interior of the original shanty the way I drew it, and make everything fit.

I did just notice that in By the Shores of Silver Lake, Wilder mentions a back door. I always pictured the shanty as only having the one door, and I don't often think of having a back door unless there is also a front one. Btw, in the top photo, if you assume that the door is a standard 3-feet in width, then that wall is 14 feet wide. Fourteen feet? Sound familiar? Add some fuel to the long and skinny shanty argument fire, please.

No wonder I walked away from all this back in 2003; I'm about to do it again!
- posted by pioneergirl at 3:11 PM

 
after almanzo lived there

Main Street, Burke, New York.
Taken at the intersection of Main (23) and Mill (34) Streets, looking west towards Malone. The building at right is still standing. Uncle Andrew's starch factory? Go straight into the photo and turn left just before you get to Trout River. Father Wilder's farm in Burke? It's a good bit northwest. Where Almanzo grew up? That's a good bit southwest.
- posted by pioneergirl at 5:30 PM

 
a story of a lincolnesque figure in stirring conflict

"Something of the instinctive antagonism which the Highland Scot feels for his Lowland countryman is inherent in the character of our own native mountain men. Perhaps this antagonism is partly a survival of primitive clan spirit, but certainly it has been strengthened and developed by the different conditions under which hill men and plain men have lived their lives. This factor of environment in the evolution of human character is strikingly illustrated in the Ozark Mountain story of Rose Wilder Lane which she calls Hill-Billy.

"Abimelech Baird, a hill man of the Missouri Ozarks, at the age of 20 quits his father's cabin on Baird's Peak and descends on the plain town of Millersville. Here he begins the practice of law, with scant learning but much native hill wisdom and no little native shrewdness. His rise in the community is sure and swift until he becomes infatuated with Bessie Miller, a "little scrap of prettiness, an' no more." Bessie precipitates a devastating situation which promises to be his undoing. The solution of this unhappy entanglement carries the tale to a triumphant close, which leaves this hill-billy the happy husband of a hill woman, while the weak and deceitful Bessie is awarded to Baird's chief enemy, the devious prosecuting attorney of the town." - New York Times, June 13, 1926, page BR9.

I give you (from another NYT review) "a rugged lawyer and a deceitful woman... a novel that thunders to a crashing climax" - Rose Wilder Lane's HILL-BILLY. This is a scan of my own copy; if anyone has a dust jacket they would like scan and share with me, I can edit the pdf file to include it. Feel free to download, save, and/or print for your own personal and non-profit use. By all means, feel free to read the book. The reviews are so glowing; I always thought the "thundering crash" was when you fell asleep while reading and the book fell to the floor...
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:47 PM

 
come back tomorrow
This is not a blog entry about Laura Ingalls Wilder or Little House on the Prairie. This is a blog entry about the statistics I receive about people visiting my blog and/or pages on my domain.

I hardly ever look at some of the stats, but from them I have learned that more people visit my site in the winter than summer (which makes sense - people spend more time at the computer when it's cold outside). For some reason, I get more visits during the middle of a month than early or late in the month. I also get more visits in the evening than in the morning or middle of the night. And I tend to get more foreign visitors from Japan than anywhere else on the globe, followed by Denmark.

Since I haven't really added anything much to the pioneergirl.com site in the past few years (I've removed more pages than I've added), it stands to reason that people visit my blog more than my other pages. And more people enter my site by going directly to my blog than by following a link to it. If you want to see the blog without the pioneergirl.com header, use this: http://www.pioneergirl.com/blog.htm .

One thing I get a kick out of looking at - statistics-wise - is the list of search strings that point people in my direction. Somebody is always looking for information about Tay Pay Pryor, Ida B. Wright, or Stella Gilbert. I get emails asking "Little House" characters all the time. I also get lots of people searching for Missouri Ruralist article titles and songs from the "Little House" books. Duh. Those are pages that are still on my site. Some search strings fascinate me, though. Who was looking for information about "Charles Ingalls murderers" yesterday, and what were they after? Were they looking for information about "Mr. Hunter" from SSL?

What amazes me most, though, is that there are people out there who go to my blog ten to twenty times every single day. Trust me. I can almost guarantee I'm not going to blog about anything so important that you have to keep checking back to see "Is it there yet?"

Seriously, dude. You need to get a life. Or at the very least, come back tomorrow. I'll even make it easier for you to stay away; I promise not to blog until close to midnight (Eastern time) tomorrow, okay?
- posted by pioneergirl at 5:04 PM

 
when laura was twenty-three
The latest issue of Pepin Notes, the newsletter from the Laura Ingalls Wilder Memorial Society, Inc., Pepin, Wisconsin, contains a transcription of a 1933 letter Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote to a teacher and fan of Little House in the Big Woods.

Laura wrote that after leaving the Big Woods, she never went to Pepin again as a child, but "...when I was twenty-three years old I went back from South Dakota and took my little girl to the town of Pepin." (Do you think Almanzo went, too?) A note in the newsletter adds that Laura, Almanzo, and Rose were living in Spring Valley, Minnesota, when Laura was 23. Laura had relatives in the area, so it's not hard to imagine the Wilders paying a visit. The Pepin newsletter also points out that Peter Ingalls, Perley Wilder, and Joseph Carpenter began their Mississippi River journey in the sailing craft Edith on October 1 of that year - another possible reason for a visit.

According to the De Smet News, the Wilders left De Smet on May 30, 1890. An earlier article reported that "Wilder and Ingalls" (that would be Laura and her cousin Peter) had sold their sheep on May 10 (see The First Four Years).

You know what's sad? The first Old Settler's Day in De Smet was held on June 10. It's a shame that Laura and Almanzo weren't there to attend.
- posted by pioneergirl at 6:25 PM