a Rose in December is much rarer than a rose in June.

Here is a message that appeared on another forum:

…there is some discussion about how much of the works are actually [Laura Ingalls Wilder's] or her younger sister’s memories, and how much/what exactly was edited by her daughter. I was at a National Endowment for the Humanities class last year and one of the fellow teachers remarked that there is discussion among “Little House” researchers that it may even be that Laura’s daughter pressured her mother to write during the Depression as a source of income; the implication being that some sort of “elder abuse” was occuring to get the writing done. This is why I approach them with a bit of caution.

Can you comment on these points, and if true, how they may have affected the reliability of the contents?

What say you, Laura folk?

Watch Johnson talk about the lapdesk in Sarah’s video.

Incidentally, a replica just like this one was offered for sale at LauraPalooza 2010. It sold immediately.

They’ve also introduced an interactive timeline, but personally I think it’s more likely to induce motion sickness than learning.

Sarah S. Uthoff blogs at TrundleBed Tales; look for her on Twitter and YouTube and Blog Talk Radio

But what do prairie roses look like?

I took this picture Sunday, during a trip to see the Pipestone quarries at Pipestone, Minn., now a national park. The quarries, which are accessible only to American Indians, yield the stone that many consider sacred to their religions. They use the stone to create pipes and other materials.

The quarries sit in the middle of the prairie, and a long trail takes one through the quarries, to surprising sites such as Winnewissa Falls and the initials of the Nicollet expedition engraved in rock. Along the route, different plants are identified by signs, and this plant was clearly identified.

Prairie Rose.

In its beauty, we can see the love Laura had for her daughter.

…a Rose in December (is) much rarer than a rose in June, and must be paid for accordingly.

~Laura Ingalls Wilder, in The First Four Years

This quotation has been going through my head for the last month, every time I go in or out my front door and see the beautiful rosebushes still in full bloom after an unseasonably warm November.

“Well, nobody has told MY rosebushes apparently,” I smugly thought, and decided to photograph them on December 5, Rose’s birthday, just to show that roses aren’t always so rare in December!

But as usual, Laura was right. For after six months of gorgeous pink, white, and red roses sprinkled across the bushes lining the front of my home, I awoke the morning of December 1 to a frost… a frost which had killed each and every rose.

So as usual, Laura is right. A rose in December was simply not to be, and Laura’s Rose retains her status as a rare December rose.

Happy birthday, Rose!

P.S. My roses were photographed November 29 in the knowledge that Laura may have known what she was talking about and the roses may not last until December. For I never lose faith in Laura’s wisdom!

In her childhood, the Wilder family was desperately poor. It’s one of the facts about the Ingalls and Wilder experiences we don’t dwell on much, but it’s clear from the historical record and from their writings that they did not have much money or property, and that at times, even daily food was a struggle–and not just during the hard winter.

Today, we know more about the effects of desperate poverty on the cognitive and emotional development of children who face such poverty in their childhoods. Many of these children struggle in school, missing days or weeks at a time. Early nutritional deficiencies lead to problems with brain, bone and muscle development, and vitamin D deficiency–a current problem in the news–leads to biochemical problems including depression. Physically, cognitively, and emotionally, early childhood poverty takes its toll.

Rose would have felt the burden she seemed to be to her parents at an early age. In The First Four Years, Laura writes that a “Rose in December was more rare than a rose in June, and must be paid for accordingly.” As much as Laura dwells on finances in that book, it seems clear that the couple struggled significantly, and that money worried Laura deeply. Children aren’t stupid; they pick up on these things, and certainly, Rose did, too.

In On the Way Home, Rose writes in the setting that she felt humiliated by her mother’s need to protect her–a big girl, going on eight years old. I re-read that this morning, in the wake of a visit from my own eight-year-old niece, and marveled that Rose could think anyone would leave a young seven-year-old girl alone to play, unsupervised, in an unfamiliar setting. It led me to think about another factor in her development: birth order.

As an oldest-and-only child, research tells us that Rose likely would have been a type-A personality, forced to be independent at an early age, and forced, too, to act more maturely than her brain was ready for. As much as we note Rose’s intelligence and precociousness, we need to understand that her circumstances forced her to grow up earlier than she’d have liked.

So how did this play out? Why is this important?

Because as a young adult, Rose acted out against the restraints of her upbringing, and became a bit of a wild child, indulging her every whim, spending freely, traveling where the wind took her, and living life to the fullest. She married a kindred spirit in this regard, but divorced him when she realized she couldn’t depend on him.

Rose had discovered she could only depend on herself.

And we know where that discovery led her.

I remember when I first learned how purple came to be. During those carefree childhood days of summer, my grandparents kept all of us kids well supplied with freeze pops. My cousin and I would each eat half of our popsicle, then let the rest melt into colored sugar water in its long narrow plastic sleeve. Then we’d combine the juice to make new colors. How exciting to discover that red and blue, both perfectly good colors in and of themselves, combined to form a deliciously delightful purple.

The New Yorker article and the discussion it has created has us all thinking — yet again — about the writing relationship between Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane.

I’m not sure why this comes up again and again, nor why each time it does, it’s treated as if it’s breaking news. In 1978, when Rosa Ann Moore first published her findings after studying the manuscripts and correspondence between Wilder and Lane* it was big news. But that was more than thirty years ago.

Certainly further study was and still is warranted, but I believe the majority of Little House readers are ready to stop arguing about whether Laura wrote the books or Rose did, and agree that a collaboration took place. Yes, Rose played a role in the creation of the Little House series. Got it. Let’s move on.

Move on to what?

I would love to see someone with expertise in writing as an art form, someone skilled in literary critique, thoroughly analyze not only the existing manuscripts and correspondence, but also the fiction of Rose Wilder Lane (specifically Let the Hurricane Roar and/or Free Land, as these books deal with the same family pioneering stories told in the Little House books) and the other writings of Laura Ingalls Wilder (especially The First Four Years, the writing of which opens up a whole ‘nother can of worms that I’ll save for another day…).

Wouldn’t it be a fascinating study, to attempt to extricate each woman’s contribution to the final product? To examine the writings of both women on their own for style, for use of imagery, for thematic construction, etc, and compare this to the style, imagery, theme, etc. of the Little House books?

Although I do feel this would be an excellent research project for just the right person to explore, I think I already know what the conclusion would be. I think that, although the study would have great value in creating an understanding of the underlying strengths that each woman brought to the team, actually determining who did what would be impossible.

Because I think “Little House” is like purple. Just as two good colors combined to produce a new (and in my opinion, better) color, so two good writers combined to produce a new and far superior literary work than what either of them could have created on their own. A work with a style of its very own.

My cousin and I could never have separated our newly created purple popsicle juice back into her red and my blue. Nor would we ever have thought to argue about whether it was the red or the blue that was responsible for creating the beauty of the purple. We simply enjoyed the purple for what it was.

So it is with the symbiotic relationship between Laura and Rose. There should be no argument about who was responsible for this masterpiece, about whose literary genius resulted in the success of the series. Obviously, the two women joined forces in just the right combination to create an exceptional and timeless classic.

I don’t know about you, but I think I’ll just enjoy “Little House” for what it is.

*Rosa Ann Moore. “The Little House Books: Rose-Colored Classics.” Children’s Literature 7 (1978): 7-16.

The original piece, written by Judith Thurman, focuses on material most of us already know: Rose was an early Libertarian who influenced the early conservative movement; Rose heavily edited the Little House books before they went to print; the relationship between Rose and Laura was both tense and symbiotic; and Rose led well-traveled, cosmopolitan life. Thurman cites William Holtz’s Ghost in the Little House as “ the work of a fastidious stylist, and, in its way, a minor masterpiece of insight and research.”

She also calls the rest of the available scholarly research about the Wilders “pedestrian,” scoffs at the themes of self-reliance in the books, applauds herself for being liberal, and pooh-poohs the idea and practice of rugged individualism.

For someone who’s merely recycling others’ research, Thurman is remarkably arrogant in her assumptions about the Midwest and Wilder enthusiasts.

For Thurman does not offer any new information about Rose and Laura. The only thing this article does is to bring this story to an elite East Coast literary audience, in effect raising the issue of Rose’s influence on national politics to national debate. In that, she has succeeded.

Just in the last two days, response to the Thurman piece has run the gamut from enthusiastic praise to righteous fury, and everything in between. The conservative take comes from a blog called “Reason” and from “Right Wing News.” Pastor Chris Brauns chooses to discuss Christian doctrine in the books in his blog. And Mediaite.com weighs in with a gush about the fact that the Wilder women are getting recognition at all.

But my favorite take on the subject comes from Kate Harding at Salon.com. As a newcomer to understanding the enthusiasm for the Wilder women, Harding writes an enthusiastic piece praising Rose Wilder Lane, and calling for a general interest biography of her story. She writes: ”Rose Wilder Lane, please come back from the dead and be my BFF.”

My sentiments exactly, Kate.