However, we in Minnesota had snow two weeks ago, and the Dakotas had a blizzard.

In October.

Sound familiar?

No one’s been reduced to twisting hay yet; there’s plenty of food in the grocery and other “big-box” stores. The railroads are running. Heck, I’ll go one further and point out the snowplows and salt trucks are all in working order.

But a blizzard in October doesn’t bode well, and it never has.

Old-timers are shaking their heads at the prospect. “It’s gonna be a loonggg winter, you betcha,” say the locals.

The Man of the Place ponders the feasibility of buying a snowblower. “I know it’s not a big driveway, but we don’t have the best shovel in the world.”

(Note: We could just buy a new shovel. What is it about the need for gadgets that make noise? I digress.)

The two days of sunshine we had over the weekend–in a period of at least three weeks without even a smattering of sun–drove us out of the house, to bare as much skin as humanly possible to soak it up.

In October.

It’s much too early for this.

Get ready to enjoy a long winter, Minnesota-style. I’ll keep you posted.

1. Despite the fact that she presumably had a decent income by the time she made her trip back to South Dakota with Almanzo, Laura was compelled to track her finances in her journal.

2. She and Almanzo were farmers to the bone; their primary observations on the long ride up and back dealt with crop conditions.

Now that I’ve lived in Kansas, wandered through Nebraska, and visited the Dakotas, it was easy for me to picture the route they took back to that “Land of Used to Be.” After the week of hot, humid weather we’ve had here in the Upper Midwest, I could empathize with their need to constantly cool the car and the dog. It was a hot, hot ride north, and the hot winds blew them back out of Dakota–for the last time, Manly said.

For those who’d like to know, in Laura’s own words, some of their life after the closing pages of The First Four Years, I’d recommend reading this volume.

First, we’ve confirmed John E. Miller and Pamela Smith Hill as guest speakers.

Miller is the author of at least three books and numerous articles about the Wilder-Lane women and their legacies. And Hill recently published the first new biography of Laura in quite some time. Both will be featured speakers at next summer’s convention.

In other news, we’re talking to HarperCollins about sponsoring one portion of the conference. One of their New York Times-bestselling authors, Wendy Corsi Straub, is a fellow Laura-lover who will include LP as a stop on her book tour next summer, speaking about her passion and travels with her sons to the Little House sites. Additionally, Alison Arngrim has a new book through HC out next summer; if our dates line up, and the stars align, she’ll stop here, not just for a book-signing, but to perform her one-woman show.

Finally, I’ve arranged for housing for next summer. Attendees have a choice between securing their own hotels–we’ve reserved room blocks at the nearby AmericInn as well as secured special rates at the Microtel Inn and Suites in Mankato–or staying right on campus. For $110 per person, attendees can have one bed in a four-bed suite in our new Julia A. Sears residence hall for all three nights of the conference. This price includes all meals, so it’s a steal. (I’d start talking to three close friends about sharing NOW though. We’ll try to coordinate roommates as closely as we possibly can.) Each suite shares one bathroom.

What do you think, folks?

As always, leave your comments so we can incorporate your ideas into summer planning.

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.

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.

It had to do with pie plant.

You may remember the scene: Laura was cooking for the threshers, the first dinner in her very own little house, and was running through the menu: “There was pie plant in the garden; she must make a couple of pies.”

Later, when the homesteaders at the meal started their dessert, one takes a bite of the pie, then lifts the top crust and coats it with sugar. He appreciated it when the cook let him sweeten his own pie, he told the new wife.

Pie plant was so sour, Laura thought, that the first bite must have been horrible.

I puzzled over this for years, until I finally asked my grandmother. “Have you ever heard of pie plant?”

“Pie plant,” she repeated, and thought about it for a minute. “Do you think she means rhubarb?”

Of course! Rhubarb is a sour plant best known for its use in pie and cake. When I was small, I’d grab a whole stalk out of the patch in the back yard, and peel and suck it for the sourness. Sometimes, Grandma would give us a small bowl of sugar to dip it in as we licked it.

Years later, mystery nearly solved (it was logical, but was it true?), I went to Old Cowtown in Wichita, Kansas, a living history village in the heart of the city. Near the train depot, a small shanty with a large heritage garden stands. In the garden, herbs and heirloom vegetables of all sorts beckon visitors closer, to see these living legacies of another time.

In one corner of the garden, I spied a large plant, clearly labeled “Pie Plant.”

It looked like a slim, pale version of rhubarb. Smaller than the large plants of my memory, pie plant had thinner, green stalks. But the keeper of the garden assured me that it was, indeed, sour–and that it was a staple in homesteader gardens because it was a ready source of vitamin C, preventing scurvy on the plains.

Huh.

As I savored a piece of rhubarb cake for breakfast this morning–my mother stocked me with stalks from her thriving patch last weekend–I thought of the great benefits of the humble plant. And I remembered Grandma’s garden.

Rhubarb Cake

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Cream half a cup of shortening with 1 1/2 cups sugar.

Add one cup buttermilk (or sour milk), one egg, one teaspoon of vanilla, 1 teaspoon of soda, 1/2 teaspoon of salt, and two cups of flour. Mix well. Fold in two cups of diced rhubarb.

Spread in greased 9 by 13 pan. Sprinkle with 1/4 cup of cinnamon-sugar (made with 1/4 cup sugar and 1 teaspoon cinnamon). Bake for 35 to 45 minutes, or until knife in the center of the cake comes out clean.

Now, Nic is one of the cousins, along with her sister Sara, who regularly played with my sister, Tracy, and I when we were small. Games often included long-ranging arguments over who would make the best Mary, who should be Laura, and why Sara (the youngest) should be Grace–even though Grace rarely got to do anything. I also remember distinctly asking their maternal grandmother (we’re related through our fathers) how to pronounce “challis,” in order to more accurately portray going to town while playing “Plum Creek” in her farm house.

Nic now has two sons, both reaching that “tween” stage, and each of whom has a distinct personality. The older, Nathan, loves his books and games, drama, music, and Scouting. Tim, the younger, has a sturdy build suited to athleticism. He enjoys the outdoors, and he likes to go running with his father. He’s sort of a boy’s boy, destined to be a man’s man.

This past winter, Tim’s reading teacher asked the children to read a book of their choice that could be considered historical fiction. The long-term project involved a final presentation/book report in which the child had to dress as the primary character in the story.

Tim had to think about his book choice. In a discussion with him, Nic suggested something from the Little House series. What do you think about Little House in the Big Woods? she’d ask. Or Little House on the Prairie?

He thought about it. “Mom,” he said. “I don’t want to dress up like a girl.”

That’s why he chose to read Farmer Boy.

For his presentation, Nic helped him find homespun brown pants at a local thrift store; a red-striped dress shirt; suspenders; straw hat; and boots. Tim wanted to go barefoot, but in a Wisconsin February, bare feet are ill-advised. They also came up with a whip, using a handle made of bamboo fishing pole with a braided, black yarn tail.

He was a hit.

And it turns out, he likes the other books in the series, too.

He just won’t dress up like a girl.

Tiny minnows swum up and down the creek bed, easily seen in crystal clear water just a few inches deep. From the bank on which I stood, I could look up and directly at the site of the dugout featured in On the Banks of Plum Creek. I remembered the spring freshet, and I tried to see this calm, gently moving creek as an enraged, engorged creek bed, soaring so high that it almost reached that same dugout, several feet above me. I could see Laura jumping out of the dugout, into the spring rains, drenched as she was dragged back into the house by Ma.

I had several moments like this over the weekend, as we at Beyond Little House met with other friends in De Smet, S.D., to connect with Laura and each other, and to establish programming and other details for next summer’s LauraPalooza 2010 conference.

My first moment? Finally seeing the De Smet pageant, which I attended with my 13-year-old niece Saturday night. As we watched the story of The Long Winter unfold, it struck me: Just across the road to the west is the Big Slough, where Pa and Laura first saw the muskrat house as they made hay, and where Laura first met Almanzo, according to the book, as she and Carrie got lost in the Slough on their way home from town. The high ridge of prairie across the road to north marked the Ingalls Homestead, and though this wasn’ t my first sight of the homestead, I marveled again at the brilliance of Laura’s description. It looked exactly as she describes it.

Another moment occurred with a special treat: Marian Cramer, a long-time South Dakota historian who visited with a number of people who knew the Ingalls family personally, met with our group to tell us those stories. One story I hadn’t heard, which made Caroline Ingalls seem even more “real” to me, was that of Caroline’s work in town. She was very discreet, but anyone who wanted a dinner party could contract with her for the cooking–and claim credit for the delicious food. Another? A homesteader with a claim adjacent to Almanzo’s recalled seeing him go out every morning with horses that needed to run. Almanzo would stand with his team and drive them at a break-neck pace across the prairie, and would return, 20 minutes later, with tired, quiet horses. It was then that he could release one hand from the reins to say hello.

Many other such moments filled this weekend, and I’ll let others tell their stories. But I will say just this: The entire experience inspired some great programming for next summer. Stay tuned!

Some things we have already on the docket:

* Panels and papers from scholars who research the legacies of Laura and her daughter, Rose. A call for papers will go out by the end of the month.

* Authors of books associated with Laura’s legacies, including myself, Pamela Smith Hill, John Miller, and others.

* A Saturday closing field trip to Walnut Grove, Minn., just 1 1/2 hours from Mankato on the Laura Ingalls Wilder Memorial Highway, which should include the annual pageant.

Some things we’re working on:

* A Friday night entertainment! We’re in talks with a name star from the original television series. Cross your fingers.

* A screening of Dean Butler’s documentary about Almanzo Wilder.

* A craft circle event.

* Book discussion roundtables.

* Educators’ workshops.

It seems like a lot to cram into three days, so we’d love your input on what you’d like to see.

I’m also working with my campus, Minnesota State University, Mankato, to arrange for inexpensive accommodations in our new, air-conditioned, Julia A. Sears Residence Hall, steps from the Centennial Student Union, which is where most of our activity will take place. These would be open on a first-come, first-served basis. There are also a number of reasonably priced hotels and motels in the area; Mankato is a college town, after all.

Post your comments below!