Beyond Little House » Random Little House Sightings

Going to see Laura

Laura Welser — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 14:10:44 +0000

Last Saturday, my daughter and I enjoyed the ArtsPower touring musical production of Laura Ingalls Wilder: Growing Up on the Prairie at the Macomb Center for the Performing Arts in Clinton Township, Michigan. I must first say that I went in with an open mind. I was not expecting it to follow the Little House books exactly, but I was hoping it would come close.

The set was simple, but clever. They arranged the props (that stayed the same and always on stage) a little differently for each scene. There were only four actors – Pa, Ma, Mary (who also played a small part as Nellie Owens), and Laura…unless you count the bundle they called Baby Carrie who made an appearance toward the end. They played a little with the timeline, but followed the Ingalls family to Independence, Walnut Grove and De Smet (and Burr Oak was mentioned in a song). The mention of Burr Oak and Nellie’s last name being Owens leads me to believe that someone who knew Laura beyond the Little House books had their hand in this. It was not even an hour long, but in that 55 minutes, Laura evolved from a young girl into a young woman who would someday become a writer.

You know what I enjoyed the most though? I saw lots of little Lauras (and probably Marys too) with their sunbonnets hanging down their backs. I saw families and a handful of men. I saw boys with their grandmother. I saw grown women like my daughter and me. And we were there for one reason – we all love Laura. Those little girls weren’t going to pick apart the details. They were there because they’d read Laura’s stories and they wanted more.

Laura’s legacy lives on. That reason alone made me enjoy this little musical more than anything.

Laura Ingalls Wilder: Growing Up on the Prairie

Laura Welser — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 18:37:42 +0000

I always keep an eye out for any Laura-related event going on close to home. Not that there’s a lot going on in my part of Michigan far away from any Little House homesite. However, I did hit the jackpot last year with the Laura’s Enduring Tale: Celebrating the 75th Anniversary of “Little House on the Prairie” exhibit that took place at University of Michigan-Dearborn. I went twice.

A few months ago, a google search lead me to find out about ArtsPower National Touring Theatre’s production of “Laura Ingalls Wilder: Growing Up on the Prairie” that would be stopping at the Macomb Center for the Performing Arts on October 22. Happily this is local, being only about a 30 minute drive from my home. It is only 55 minutes long and aimed at grades 2 – 6 (it would make a great field trip). The fact that it is aimed at a (much) younger audience did not deter me from wanting to go see it. I bought two tickets hoping that I could convince either my husband or daughter to go with me. I think I may have been successful in bribing convincing my daughter to enjoy it with me.

I will report back!

A Blast from the Past

Laura Welser — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 14:55:51 +0000

If you grew up in the ’60s and ’70s (like me), you might remember the book series, The Best In Children’s Books. It was published by Doubleday Book Clubs and was a 42 volume set as I learned here. Each volume introduced a mix of children’s literature by including chapters or excerpts from classics, fairy tales and folk tales. I remember it well. I’m not sure if my family owned any, but I know I read several of them…perhaps in our school library.

I was gandering through some books at an antique store recently when I saw this:

Of course, the first thing I noticed was the cover art! Do you see what I saw there above the word “BOOKS”?
When I opened it up, there was the title page telling me that this particular volume, which happens to be Volume 28 from 1959, contains the Christmas chapter (complete with Garth Williams illustrations) from Little House in the Big Woods. The entire volume had several other stories, many having to do with Christmas.

The price was right and the book became mine!

Does anyone else remember these?

Can you find the Little House connection?

Laura Welser — Wed, 18 May 2011 11:50:18 +0000

We tap maple trees here on our property in Michigan and have a very small scale maple syrup processing operation. In my never ending quest for knowledge , I was recently reading Maple Sugar (a history, lore, and how-to of sap and syrup) by Tim Herd.

While reading the page below, I came across a word that gave this very book its connection to the Little House books.

Can you pick it out?

You'll have to click on the photo to enlarge.

Little House Meets the Sound of Music

Sandra Hume — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 23:04:31 +0000

If my Facebook friends are any proof, it seems that the worlds of Little House fandom and Sound of Music fandom have some overlap. I’ve loved the Sound of Music since I used to wait breathlessly for its one annual appearance on network television — usually on a major holiday like Thanksgiving, Christmas, or Easter. (The other holidays were for The Wizard of Oz.) Since my kids have recently watched and (thankfully) fallen in love with the story of the Von Trapps, I’ve been on a bit of a Sound of Music kick. I watched the rerun of the Oprah 45th-year reunion special over winter break, and in the midst of the holidays I read two books: The Story of the Trapp Family Singers: The Story That Inspired The Sound of Music, by Maria Augusta Trapp, and her oldest adopted daughter Agathe Von Trapp’s Memories Before And After the Sound of Music. (For the record, Maria is a much better writer than her daughter.)

I know that the Laura Ingalls Wilder world’s own Bill Anderson is also a Trapp expert and has written a few books about the family, so drawing a connection between the two is nothing very new or challenging. But although I’ve been a fan of both, I confess I’ve never read any of Anderson’s Trapp family work, though I have now committed myself to doing so. And even though I lived in New England for 31 years, I never have visited the Trapp Family Lodge in Stowe, Vermont. Oh, the humanity.

But in the vein of worlds colliding, I did want to share one piece of info that made me smile. Perhaps this is old news to folks who are familiar with all of Bill Anderson’s work; if it is, please comment and tell me so. In Maria’s book, on page 238, she describes the aftermath of almost accidentally buying a new horse, Topsy. She puts Topsy in the barn next to the two-horse team.

The two-horse team, Prince and Lady.

Way.

New Photo Group, and A New Contributor, Too!

Wendy McClure — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 17:33:34 +0000

Wendy McClure here, your newest contributor at Beyond Little House! I’m a writer from Chicago currently finishing a book about my year revisiting the world of Laura Ingalls Wilder. When I’m not agonizing over my rough draft (I know the plural of “Ingalls” is “Ingallses,” but I keep forgetting to type it that way) I’ll be posting here periodically about my own fields of Laura obsession, which include stories about the making of the Little House books (I’m a children’s book editor) and Laura in pop culture.

I’m also here to introduce the Beyond Little House group at Flickr. There’s a photo group for the Little House TV show on Flickr and even a group about little houses, but until now, there hasn’t been a group for photos of the homesites, festivals and other Little House- and Laura-related stuff. And there’s a LOT of those to be found.

I’ve added some of my photos from my homesite trips this summer, and I’ve been searching Flickr for other photos and inviting folks to put them in the group. Some images are of places you may have seen before—like the dugout and Almanzo’s home—and some are a bit more unusual, like Pa’s homestead permit, a modern-art piece based on an Ingalls family photo, and a self-portrait of a Little House fan geeking out. And that’s just for starters.

If you’re already on Flickr, you can simply join the group and add your photos, and if you have Little House photos that you’d like to share, consider becoming a Flickr member! (It’s free, unless you want a “pro” account.) We’d also love to be able to use some of these images here on Beyond Little House, so if you’d like your pictures to be considered, just drop us a line on this discussion page to give permission (we won’t use your photos unless you say it’s OK). And keep visiting the group to see what kind of new photos show up…

Capable Girl Books

Sarah Uthoff — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 03:01:15 +0000

A recent book by Elaine Showalter has an interesting mention of Laura in a section called Story Belongs to the People.

“One cultural contribution of the 1930s was the radio soap opera; daytime radio offered a rich choice of serial dramas about women, stories to brighten the lives of lonely housewives. Their shared theme, one historian notes, was women’s strength in the face of male weakness. “The men in their lives were handsome, but unreliable. They had affairs… they failed in business… or they were left helpless by blindness, amnesia, or some crippling trauma.” Women had to step into the breach, save the family, and take over as breadwinners. These drastic solutions to female fantasies were deplored by male writers, as they had in the days of Fanny Fern’s Ruth Hall. James Thurber complained that ‘the man in the wheelchair’ has come to bet he standard Soapland symbol.” and William Faulkner described the era in Hollywood soap and weepie movies as ‘the Kotex age.’

The popular fiction of the thirties and even children’s literature by women also provided resourceful women characters to overcome the anxieties of the decade, or told stories of survival in hard times. Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867-1957) began in 1932 to publish her fictionalized memoirs of homesteading as a girl with her beloved family in the woods of Wisconsin and the Dakota Indian Territory. Little House in the Big Woods (1932) and its sequels became favorites with children, teachers, and librarians.”

(pp. 356-357)

Showalter, Elaine. A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx. New York: Knopf, 2008. Print.

When I was growing up, I read a lot of my grandmother’s books from when she was growing up in the 1920s and 1930s. I loved not only Nancy Drew and the related series the Dana girls, but also “Helen in the Editor’s Chair” and the “Dorothy Dixon Earns Her Wings” series. These were all stories with active girls. I got so disgusted with the popular “girls” books of when I was growing up because all these girls seemed to do was worry about how to get a boy or to scheme against each other. The girl heroines of my grandmother’s old books were active, had goals, had plans and did things. They solved mysteries, righted wrongs, flew planes, and ran newspapers. I loved them. Like Laura’s books they provided resourceful women characters to model myself on. It never occurred to me that Laura’s resourcefulness was part of a literary trend in the 1930s, but it certainly is an interesting angle.

Like these other capable girls, Laura did things. She got scared, faced her fears and persevered. I hope in reading these books I learned to do the same.

Sarah Uthoff

http://trundlebedtales.wordpress.com

Little House on Facebook

Sandra Hume — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 11:51:59 +0000

Heh. This just in from Facebook, where a pilot friend of mine shared his opinion on flying a two-engine plane.

The first comment?

“God hates a coward.”

(Can you identify the quote?)

Little House Makes the Huffington Post

Sandra Hume — Wed, 06 May 2009 04:28:48 +0000

Yep, there’s Almanzo and his appetite over at the Huffington Post. It’s a poignant entry, actually, written by the founder of Morgan Freeman-shilled donation site DonorsChoose.org, about the value of experiences over material objects.

And apples’n'onions. Check it out.

Little House in Strange Places

Sandra Hume — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 18:00:02 +0000

In the oddest Little House sighting of the day, I was reading Megan McArdle’s blog on the Atlantic Monthly’s web site regarding Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter’s defection from the GOP to the Democratic Party. And lo and behold …

Can you spot the Little House reference?