authorship, place, time, and culture

I received an email from amazon.com this morning that John Miller's Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane: Authorship, Place, Time and Culture has shipped! Since it wasn't supposed to be out until December, this was a nice surprise. It will be here tomorrow!!

The book is published by University of Missouri Press and can also be purchased directly from them. Cost is $39.95.

[update: Miller writes that P.T.L. did the most thorough Indian Territory research. Well, duh.]
- posted by pioneergirl at 3:02 PM

 
legacy documentaries' "almanzo wilder: life before laura"
If you had a remembrance book, you could write in it that the typically cynical and always picky pioneergirl had only nice things to say about the documentary, Almanzo Wilder: Life Before Laura.

Wilder family and other historical photographs, footage shot at the Wilder farm, live action, and animated and colorized Garth Williams and Helen Sewell illustrations are interwoven with narration by Dean Butler, scholarly commentary by William Anderson and others, and text from Farmer Boy. Katherine Cannon's read-aloud style is the very best I've heard, and I found myself wishing that I could listen to her read all the books while their illustrations moved along with the story, too. It was if the drawings were finally doing what I always pictured them doing in my mind, anyway. (Mr. Thompson cringing was perfection!)

The manipulation of actual photographs - and the use of music and sound effects with them - really made me pay attention. I must have seen that picture of Laura and Almanzo at Old Settlers' Day a hundred times, but this time I noticed something. Right over Laura's head are the old "hat / no hat" photographs that include Mary Power, Jake Hopp, and Florence Garland, among others. Look carefully; I bet you can pick out some other old favorites hanging on the wall.

The young men who portrayed Almanzo did a great job. The music was engaging. It was nice to see Morgan horses and oxen at the Wilder farm, and that so many different activities take place there during the year. The photos taken during restoration of the Wilder home are an added bonus in the feature about "The Wilder Homestead Today", as is hearing about all the hard work involved.

Dean Butler and Legacy Documentaries have done an excellent job of bringing both Almanzo's history and Farmer Boy to life. All the other Laura Ingalls Wilder heritage homesites should be demanding equal time!
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:54 PM

 
prairie pumpkins

When I saw the above issue of Hallmark Magazine, I knew I had to buy it based on the cover alone (click HERE for biggie view).

I can't wait to make my own. It's like a pumpkin decided to dress up as a log cabin for Halloween! The magazine shows little stuffed mice living in their pumpkins. Maybe the mouse that cut Pa's hair in Little Town on the Prairie would like to live in mine.
- posted by pioneergirl at 10:56 PM

 
hurry, de smet, hurry
"Little Town on the Prairie" is not a registered trademark. Somebody needs to tell De Smet that they really ought to do something about that. Soon.

THIS story is coming through on news alerts, and will no doubt have people in an uproar. It boils down to this: the "Little House" (touch wood, turn around, curse & spit) site near Independence, Kansas, owns the registered trademark, Little House on the Prairie™. The heirs of Edwin Samson Friendly, Jr. (1922-2007) want it. Bad enough to sue when $$$ couldn't buy it.

October 7, 1992, Stacy J. Grossman, Esq., attorney for HarperCollins Publishers Inc. of New York, filed for trademark registration of Little House to cover "books published from time to time in a series." Trademark was duly registered May 18, 1993. Remember when the gingham covers came out with the cabin logo in a golden oval?

February 25, 2003, Eric H. Weimers, attorney for Little House on the Prairie, Inc., a non-profit corporation in Kansas, filed for trademark registration of Little House on the Prairie to cover "clothing, namely, pants, trousers, jeans, shorts, jackets, coats, shirts, sweatshirts, T-shirts, sweaters, hats, caps, skirts, dresses, and blouses." Trademark was duly registered August 23, 2005.

March 4, 2005, Eric H. Weimers, attorney for Little House on the Prairie, Inc., a non-profit corporation in Kansas, filed for trademark registration of Little House on the Prairie to cover "puzzles, dolls, stuffed toy animals, soft sculpture toys, modeled plastic toy figurines, collectable toy figures, reproduction historical dolls; games, namely board games, card games, bingo games and party games; and toys, namely mechanical action toys, plush toys, toy banks and toy snow globes." Trademark was duly registered April 18, 2006.

August 27, 2008, Alexandra Nicholson, Esq., attorney for Friendly Family Productions, LLC, a company based in California, filed for trademark registration of Little House on the Prairie to cover "video recordings and DVDs." Trademark has not been registered.

August 27, 2008, Alexandra Nicholson, Esq., attorney for Friendly Family Productions, LLC, a company based in California, filed for trademark registration of Little House on the Prairie to cover "entertainment services, namely an ongoing television series." Trademark has not been registered.

Friendly Family Productions turned not so friendly after their offer of $40,000 to LHOP, Inc. to hand over their registered trademarks to them was politely refused. Bravo, Little House on the Prairie™!!
- posted by pioneergirl at 9:51 PM

 
you can't sow complex derivatives...
...and I am a square root.

One of the LIW members mentioned THIS review of Laura Ingalls Wilder's The Long Winter. I really should applaud anything that celebrates Laura Ingalls Wilder (but I'm an elitist snob, so I don't), but it was interesting to read the 78 comments so far in which practically everyone waxes nostalgic about the "Little House" books and how much they love them. Bravo! The review itself? It didn't do a thing for me.

I think the writer spent more time trying to come up with cute, catchy, and wordy sentences and analogies than she did on understanding the book itself. Lord knows she doesn't understand the Hard Winter or the Homestead Act. (At least somebody pointed out that De Smet is in South Dakota, not North, and she made the correction.)

The review and book both open with Wilder's "The mowing machine's whirring sounded cheerfully from the old buffalo wallow south of the claim shanty, where bluestem grass stood thick and tall and Pa was cutting it for hay." Contrary to the reviewer, I don't see a bit of dread foreboding, abject harm, pathos and heartache OR misery in this sentence. I see waving grasses and I hear Pa on the mowing machine, hard at work in those grasses; that's all. If we're playing freshman English and you made me find something foreboding in the first sentence of The Long Winter, I'd probably predict that there was going to be some sort of mowing machine accident, but I've read "Little House" often enough to know that those sort of things don't happen. And btw, the sun above did restore [the grass] the next season; nature has a way of doing just that. I also got the impression that the writer thought bluestem was a crop Pa planted. It wasn't.

As for The Claim, we're told in the same paragraph that the Ingallses are living on a homestead, which means that "in exchange for breaking and settling the land, the settlers will own it." We're also told that "Pa worked on the railroad in order to earn the money to buy the claim in the first place." Which is it? And how is it that the townspeople "have houses waiting for them" when they decide to move to town, yet most of them have never lived in a town before? And what "regulations" exactly made the settlers "have" to build houses in town?

Does the reviewer really believe that the Ingallses are better off on their "break-and-settle-and-you-will-own-it" homestead than they were in the Big Woods on the farm they sold for $1000? Or on their homestead instead of the farm on Plum Creek that they sold for $500? They "used to depend utterly on themselves.... [and] they're now... linked to the railroad." How do you think those goods got to Oleson's Store in Walnut Grove?

One can predict what will happen to the Ingallses because, as Dr. Phil says: The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. Pa moves the family to Indian Territory to get a jump on settlers. How did that work out for them? Pa takes a farm on Plum Creek during grasshopper weather, but doesn't bother to find out what that means. He uproots the family to help run a hotel and is somehow cheated out of his share. Pa keeps the family in De Smet after everyone else has left in order to be the first to get a homestead. Then he's kept so busy boarding other settlers arriving to get a jump on the railroad that he almost misses out on filing his own claim. ("How's that working for you, Charles?")

The reason the Ingalls family faces such hardships during the Hard Winter is that they didn't arrive with the railroad and the emigrant cars full of provisions that the other settlers knew not to leave home without. Why do you think the Ingalls family is living on brown bread with nothing on it while Royal and Almanzo are sitting down to country ham, pancakes, brown sugar syrup, and coffee? Who do you think the starving "women and children" really are? They're Caroline Ingalls and her daughters. Pa provides for his family with pails of wheat, not emigrant cars full of provisions.

I'd like to stop and point out that when Pa sold his homestead in 1891, it was with a net profit of less than $400. It's no wonder that Rose Wilder Lane later took a less than charitable view of the attempts in the 1930s to imbue the pioneers with mythic qualities. The fact that we all love "Little House" is a testimony to Laura's writing skill, not the subject matter.

But I digress about the review. There's then some blather about "the gummint" and the rules that don't work "as they were intended to." What about Almanzo's blatant disregard for the rules? Maybe the trains quit running because somebody back east lied about his qualifications for a job he thought he could do, hang the resume and references. And is there really anybody out there who doesn't question why Almanzo is a hero for talking Mr. Anderson out of his seed wheat using the same arguments he used to refuse sell his own? Makes you wonder what the townspeople thought about Almanzo when he was out there sowing that hoarded wheat in April, before the train arrived with seed for everybody else to be sowing.

What a perfect opportunity missed, not to point out how racist Laura was when writing about the Indian warning. "You white men," he said. "I tell-um you."

Does anybody else feel like they must have missed something, the way the review ended? What the hell does "You can't sow complex derivatives" mean, and what does calculus have to do with The Long Winter in the first place? Is the point to end with a catchy phrase? I'm tired of ripping apart that lousy review, but how's this?

You can't produce crap and then wonder why flies are hatching.
- posted by pioneergirl at 7:21 PM

 
"almanzo wilder: life before laura"

While you're ordering Almanzo Wilder: Life Before Laura, Dean Butler's documentary DVD about Almanzo Wilder's life on the family farm in Burke, New York, why not order a second copy, and donate it to your local public library?

That's what I did.
- posted by pioneergirl at 4:52 PM

 
wilder feed
On January 9, 1883, Royal purchased Lot 17, Block 1 of the original town of De Smet from Western Town Lots Company.

Why is it that the first recorded deed for the Wilder Feed Store location is dated in 1883? If Royal was really in business during the Hard Winter, doesn't it seem likely that he would have purchased his business lot prior to that time? Or purchased prior to building?

There were two men selling feed and grain in De Smet prior to the Hard Winter, and Royal Wilder was not one of them.

Mr. Anderson was not the other.
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:36 PM

 
a conversation with dean butler
Cheryl at Laura's Little Houses has a great interview with Dean Butler on her blog. Read the interview (in three parts) starting HERE.

Butler's Legacy Documentaries has just released a documentary about Almanzo Wilder. Titled Almanzo Wilder: Life Before Laura, it's available only from the Wilder Homestead in Burke, New York. Click HERE to order yours.

There's a "Laura" documentary in the works!
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:59 PM

 
le cadeau du cheval

The Horse Gift mural has been completed! It will tour the world for two years before being donated to a permanent public viewing spot. Taking 18 months to complete, the mural consists of 238 panels by 174 artists.

See the completed mural HERE. Mouse over the grid to see panel numbers, then click on each for more information about that particular panel and the artist who painted it. Panel 101 is of Almanzo Wilder's horses, Prince and Lady, from Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House" books. It was painted by artist Lee Mitchelson.
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:59 PM