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.
