borrowed names

Borrowed Names: Poems About Laura Ingalls Wilder, Madam C.J. Walker, Marie Curie, and Their Daughters. By Jeannine Atkins, to be released in March. If you haven't done so already, pre-ordering is a great way to celebrate Laura Ingalls Wilder's birthday! CLICK HERE for a preview.
- posted by pioneergirl at 1:05 PM

 
it's hard to be humble
The March 2010 issue ofCountry Living ™ magazine mentions Pepin and Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House in the Big Woods in their "It's Hard to be Humble When You're From Wisconsin" story, a feature in each issue about attractions in a different state. It's not the first time "Little House" has been included. Check it out!
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:51 PM

 
ida and laura would have nothing to do

[Mr. Owen] told Laura and Ida that their part in the Exhibition would be to recite the whole of American history, from memory... "I'm glad you've got the longer part, anyway," said Ida. "I've only got to remember from John Quincy Adams to Rutherford B. Hayes, but you've got all that about the discoveries and the map and the battles, and the Western Reserve and the Constitution. My! I don't know how you ever can!" -- Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little Town on the Prairie, Chapter 23, "Schooltime Begins Again"

Had Laura and Ida been in school in North Carolina today instead of 1880s Dakota Territory, Mr. Owen would have had to change their parts in the School Exhibition. North Carolina schools propose to begin the teaching of American history at the high school level (in the eleventh grade) with the presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes, 1877-1881; President Hayes is shown above.

Educators in North Carolina say that by throwing a significant chunk of American history out of the curriculum, students would be able to spend their time in high school focusing on more recent history. After all, a lot has gone on since 1877, and it's not like earlier American history wouldn't have been covered in grammar and middle school. Can it only follow that the next step would be to make sure that no later American history is covered in grammar or middle school?

When you heard the story on the news tonight, did you, too, immediately think of Laura Ingalls and Ida Wright and their recitation of the whole of American history? Did you remember enough American history on your own to realize that Ida's part should have also covered James Garfield and mentioned Chester A. Arthur?
- posted by pioneergirl at 10:35 PM

 
snakeoil is snakeoil, even if the salesman calls himself 'professor'

"An intellectual is one of the intelligentsia. One of the intelligentsia is one whose head is full of ideas derived from * (repeat X times from asterisk) Plato and on mythilical prehistoric Lycurgus.

"While an intellectual may be mistaken, at a distance, or while in rapid flight, or by an inexperienced intellectual-watcher, for a specimen of the human species, he or she may easily be distinguished by a number of typical characteristics. The intellectual, male or female, is incapable of obtaining food by direct effort and is invariably parasitic. Habitats are foundations, colleges, governments, non-profit organizations.

"Absence of mind may be noted. An intellectual may often be heard twittering, in self-congratulatory tones, 'I'm not absent-minded!' or sounds to that effect. Another frequent note is 'I forgot.' An alert ear will hear these in the intellectual's stream of chattering; no intellectual is ever silent when awake and none has yet been observed sleeping. The eye appears normal but is able to see nothing but print; an intellectual sees nothing before his nose unless it be a book.

"Mr. Walter Lipmann, a typical intellectual, recorded in 1933 the fact that he had learned in college 20 years earlier that there are no more opportunities in America since there is no more free land (Note: Cherokees Run, last large tract of land thrown open to homesteading, 1879. Greatest number of homesteaders in late 1920s; largest number of acres homesteaded in the year 1932. Homestead act repealed, 1933) and added, 'I have seen nothing since then to lead me to modify the view then formed that nothing remains to be done but to divide more equitably the wealth already created.'

"This unusually coherent statement by an intellectual himself verifies the general observation of the intellectuals' inability to see anything but print... The intellectual believes any printed statement.

"Intellectuals never are seen singly; they live, read and speak in compact groups and move in flocks. If one goes to Paris, all go to Paris; if one goes to Taos, all go to Taos. Their unanimity in twittering is striking, and it is observed that frequently, and always simultaneously, the flock changes its twitter. So far as is known, a twitter once discarded is never again repeated...

"An eagerness to be in print is also characteristic, presumably derived from the peculiar structure of the eye; hence the common name of the species, often heard in the vulgate as apply to a single specimen, 'publicity hound.'"

-Rose Wilder Lane, 1949
- posted by pioneergirl at 1:14 PM

 
the great american buffer zone
In Laura Ingalls Wilder's Farmer Boy, Almanzo Wilder questions a conversation between his father and Mr. Paddock at the 4th of July celebration, during which Father says, "It was axes and plows that made this country." Father Wilder later explains:

"We fought for Independence, son," Father said. "But all the land our forefathers had was a little strip of country, here between the mountains and the ocean. All the way from here west was Indian country, and Spanish and French country. It was farmers that took all that country and made it America...

"...the Spaniards were soldiers, and high-and-mighty gentlemen that only wanted gold. And the French were fur-traders, wanting to make quick money. And England was busy fighting wars. But we were farmers, son; we wanted land. It was farmers that went over the mountains, and cleared the land, and settled it, and farmed it, and hung onto their farms.

"This country goes three thousand miles west, now. It goes 'way out beyond Kansas, and beyond the Great American Desert, over mountains bigger than these mountains, and down to the Pacific Ocean. It's the biggest country in the world, and it was farmers who took all that country and made it America, son. Don't you ever forget that." --Farmer Boy, Chapter 16, "Independence Day"

I've read this exchange hundreds of times, and this reading, what made me stop and think was the phrase: Great American Desert. This is the only "Little House" book that includes it. It's not in the Farmer Boy manuscript; in fact, Almanzo's only thought about Independence in the manuscript is that he didn't remember seeing either the lion that got its tail twisted or the eagle that screamed. He liked the drums and he liked the fifes, but that was about it. And I'm guessing that a lot of readers plow straight through Father Wilder's speech (added, I suspect, by Rose Wilder Lane) without giving it much thought.

Pop quiz: On the map shown, locate the boundaries of the Great American Desert at the time of Farmer Boy (circa 1866, if that makes a difference).

General George Armstrong Custer writes about the Great American Desert in his My Life on the Plains (published in 1876):

There was a time that every schoolboy, supposed to possess the rudiments of a knowledge of the geography of the United States, could give the boundaries and a general description of the Great American Desert.

As to the boundary the knowledge seemed to be quite explicit: on the north bounded by the Upper Missouri, on the east by the Lower Missouri and Mississippi, on the south by Texas, and on the west by the Rocky Mountains. The boundaries on the northwest and south remained undisturbed, while on the east civilization, propelled and directed by Yankee enterprise, adopted the motto, "Westward the star of empire makes its way." Countless throngs of emigrants crossed the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, selecting homes in the rich and fertile territories lying beyond. Each year this tide of emigration, strentghened and increased by the flow from foreign shores, advanced toward the setting sun, slowly but surely narrowing the preconceived limits of the Great American Desert, and correspondingly enlarging the limits of civilization.

At last the geographical myth was dispelled. It was gradually discerned that the Great Americcan Desert did not exist, that it had no abiding place, but that within its supposed limits, and instead of what had been regarded as a sterile and unfruitful tract of land, incapable of sustaining either man or beast, there existed the fairest and richest portion of the national domain, blessed with a climate pure, bracing, and healthful, while its undeveloped soil rivalled if it did not surpass the most productive portions of the Eastern, Middle, or Southern States.

Discarding the name Great American Desert, this immense tract of country, with its eastern boundary moved back by civilization to a distance of nearly three hundred miles west of the Missouri river, is now known as The Plains...

The Great American Desert first appeared as the Great Desert on an 1820 map by Stephen Long (1784-1864), American engineer, explorer, and inventor. You can see Long's map HERE.

After several mapping expeditions through land acquired as the Louisiana Purchase, Long declared that a large portion of it was unfit for habitation and was only useful as a "buffer" between the eastern (wooded) part of the country and the lands held by the Spanish, British, and Russians. It was also where hostile Indians lived, tribes Long had run into a time or two during his own exploration. In 1820, Long wrote that the Great Plains region:

"...is almost wholly unfit for cultivation, and of course uninhabitable by a people depending upon agriculture for their subsistence. Although tracts of fertile land considerably extensive are occasionally met with, yet the scarcity of wood and water, almost uniformly prevalent, will prove an insuperable obstacle in the way of settling the country. This region, however, may prove of infinite importance to the United States, inasmuch as it is calculated to serve as a barrier to prevent too great an extension of our population westward, and secure us against the machinations or incursions of an enemy."

Long's label kept settlers from the area for a while, but his misconceptions about the area were soon noted. After all, Long came from New Hampshire, and his idea of what "desirable" land looked like was based on his home state. Note that Father Wilder's definition of the Great American Desert is slightly broader than Custer's.

Westward the star of empire made its way...
- posted by pioneergirl at 4:56 PM

 
can we keep it, pa?
A rare bird was spotted at nearby West Point Lake (Georgia) this week, just a mile or so from where I live. Usually a bird of the Arctic and Canada's maritime provinces, this Ivory Gull is the first ever in Georgia and the first sighting in the south in over a decade. Hundreds of people have flocked to see it.

Suspected to be an adventurous teen (in bird years), the gull delights camera-snapping bird-watchers simply by hanging around in plain sight, flying overhead and then settling on the water. Today comes word that the bird is lethargic and appears to have a broken wing, and everybody wonders what is to be done more than they wonder how and when the injury happened. Some people wonder what the bird eats, and if it is able to find proper food at the lake.

Should the gull be captured? Should it be rehabilitated, relocated, and released?

It's a story straight out of The Long Winter, by Laura Ingalls Wilder (see Chapter 5, "After the Storm"). Charles Ingalls finds an unusual bird - described as looking like a little auk (possibly a dovekie) - on a solitary romp around Silver Lake. Pa doesn't have the internet, a cell phone, or a newspaper to spread the word about his find, and nobody is around to flock to the lake to take pictures, so he puts the bird in his pocket and takes it home as a novelty to show his family. There's a debate about what to do because the bird won't eat, and finally Pa and the girls return the bird to the lake and release it.

The West Point Lake bird story is still unfolding.
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:11 PM

 
"which do you like best, aunt lotty?"

In Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House in the Big Woods (Chapter 10, "Summertime"), Laura's and Mary's "Aunt Lotty" comes to visit. Where Lotty comes from is not said, but Charlotte Holbrook never lived in Pepin County, Wisconsin, but grew up in Jefferson County, over 200 miles away. If she was visiting her half-siblings in Pepin and Pierce Counties, how did she get there? Were her parents visiting as well?

Ma's father, Henry Quiner, died in 1845; Ma's mother married Frederick Holbrook four years later. Charlotte Elizabeth Holbrook was their only child together, born in January 1854. In the published Little House in the Big Woods, Laura doesn't tell us how old Lotty is when she visits, but in the manuscript, she is said to be "twelve years old."

Lotty was twelve the year before Laura was born.

Did an older Lotty actually visit the family prior to her marriage in 1874 and the Ingallses move to Minnesota? Was her visit a convenient plot device, a timely weighing in on the Great Hair Color debate that was still unsettled when Laura herself was twelve? Did Lotty know about the publication of Big Woods, and did any of her children or grandchildren get in touch with Laura about the story?

William Anderson's Laura's Album (HarperCollins, 1998) includes a photograph of Lotty as a young girl. The photograph above is of Lotty, taken many decades later.
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:12 PM