We have more than 100 Laura scholars, fans and researchers now registered to attend LauraPalooza 2010: Legacies in July. If you want to join us, you have until May 31 to pre-register.
Depending upon the number of seats available after that date, we will likely offer a limited amount of day passes at the door for admission to the speakers and panels. No meals or housing will be available after May 31.
Are we excited??
Have you ever noticed you come back from a Laura trip full of stuff, ideas, and photos, but it takes you awhile to absorb it all or get around to finishing all those projects that popped in your head on site? Well, I finally got around to working with some of the raw footage I took with my trusty pocket video camera last summer. I played around with editing it a bit and the first thing I came up with is this report on visiting the Laura Ingalls Wilder Memorial Site in De Smet, South Dakota. Please take a look.
Cottonwood Memorial Site
I’m sure that many fans who come to Laurapaloza will decide to go on to Walnut Grove, Minnesota and De Smet, South Dakota. This is just one of the many sites to see in De Smet. This Memorial Site around the cottonwoods was one of the first things they did to memorialize Laura’s memory in De Smet and is a must see for all Wilder visitors. It is directly behind the pageant grounds and surrounded on two sides by the Ingalls Homestead.
Sarah S. Uthoff, http://trundlebedtales.wordpress.com
Have you ever wondered what it was like in Walnut Grove after the grasshoppers fell for the shimmering cloud? Well, you can take a look at a modern day attack. It’s the worst invasion of grasshoppers in Australia in 30 years.
Locusts Attack Australia
This will give you a better idea of what Walnut Grove and a lot of the Midwest looked like in the 1870s. Check out a selection of news reports on it below.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/03/30/2859884.htm
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/03/17/2848176.htm?section=justin
Sarah S. Uthoff, http://trundlebedtales.wordpress.com
This summer construction will be going on on De Smet’s Third Street, where the Ingalls family lived after they moved to town once and for all. It’s also the street that houses Prairie House Manor. Water mains in the center of the street are being replaced, and the gutters, curbs, and sidewalks are being redone as well. Work will progress in sections and the area in front of the Ingalls house won’t be altered until after pageant season, but be aware that it could be an issue this summer if De Smet is on your itinerary.
Sarah S. Uthoff, Trundle Bed Tales
I find it somewhat ironic that first Laura’s books were converted to television — and now the stars of that television series are all writing books.
We told you about Melissa Gilbert’s Prairie Tale: A Memoir last year. Melissa played the part of “Laura” on the popular television series Little House on the Prairie.
Alison Arngrim, better known as Nellie Oleson, has written Confessions of a Prairie Bitch: How I Survived Nellie Oleson and Learned to Love Being Hated. The book will be released next month, and Alison will be signing copies at Walnut Grove, Minnesota, on July 24, 2010.
And Melissa Sue Anderson (Mary) has just released her own autobiography, The Way I See It: A Look Back at my Life on Little House. Little House fans won’t want to miss her interview on the Today Show.
If the embedded video does not work, visit the Today Show website here, and scroll forward to 8:44 am.
Hi there,
I was wondering whether you would be able to help me. I have been looking around for a biography about Laura Ingalls Wilder, but there seem to be so many. I was wondering if you would be able to recommend one (or two) that I should definitely read?
Also, I have read here and there that Laura wrote an autobiography that was rejected by publishers. Do you know if there are any plans to publish this now, as this is something I would dearly love to read?
Many thanks for your help.
Kind regards,
Estelle
Dear Estelle,
Many biographical accounts of Laura’s life have been written, from booklet to book form. Gift shops atLaura’s homesites sell various William Anderson-penned booklets relating to different aspects of Laura’s life, among them “The Story of the Ingalls” and “Laura Wilder of Mansfield.”
The first book-length biography was Donald Zochert’s Laura: The Life of Laura Ingalls Wilder, published in the early 1970s. It contains a lot of previously unknown details about her life behind what she revealed in the Little House series and is heavily based on the “Pioneer Girl” manuscript.
Becoming Laura Ingalls Wilder: The Woman Behind the Legend, by John Miller (who will be speaking at 2010’s LauraPalooza), investigates Laura’s emergence as a writer in Mansfield, Missouri, where she lived from age 27 until her death.
Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Writer’s Life by Pamela Smith Hill (also a keynote speaker at this year’s LauraPalooza) is the most recent biography published about Laura. It takes a literary standpoint, exploring the writer-editor relationship between Laura and her journalist daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, as Laura began to make a name for herself in children’s fiction.
Although somewhat dense and academic, William Holtz’s The Ghost in the Little House, a biography of Rose, is exhaustively researched and contains quite a bit of information about Laura that hadn’t been previously published.
“Pioneer Girl” is the unpublished manuscript you’ve heard about that was rejected by publishers (though at one point The Saturday Evening Post considered publishing it in serial form). A version of it is available for research and study purposes at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum in West Branch, Iowa. You can go to the Hoover’s research center yourself to read it (and reams of other Wilder/Lane documents housed there) or you can contact them and they can copy it and mail it to you. This is not cheap: the copy fees alone will run you over a hundred dollars.
Given the expense, you may want to wait. We’ve recently learned of definite plans for an official publication of “Pioneer Girl” at last. We’ll keep you posted as we learn more
As for which published biography is better than the others, I think it’s best to leave it to the readers.
LIW fans, let’s help Estelle out. What’s your opinion on Laura’s biographies? When you really feel like sitting down and reading about Laura, which one do you pick up? Make sure to tell us why.
If he had Mr. Edwards to talk him into it?
What do you think?
Me, I think Pa wouldn’t go for it. But that young cuss, Almanzo? As drawn to debt as he was? Maybe …
(I love how the writer is so obviously a fan of the books.)
This year marks the ten-year anniversary of my marriage. Even all these years later, I’m still regularly asked to tell the story of how my husband and I met. I’m forever explaining how on earth a farmer from Kansas could have met a writer from Boston (the Internet), whether I was scared to move so far away (not really) or how much of a culture shock it was (freakishly huge). But the one story I don’t have is an engagement story. We met; we got married. As to how we got there, I couldn’t say. At the time it didn’t bother me, because being married mattered more than getting married. And I did have a ring–albeit one I picked out, a couple weeks before I moved. “I found a ring,” I told my now-husband on the phone. Great, he said, and gave me his credit card number. There was no getting down on one knee, no deep gaze into my eyes as he asked me to be with him forever. It was as if we already knew the answer, so the question didn’t need to be asked.
Maybe that’s why I treasure Laura’s engagement story. First, it exists. Beyond that, it’s just enough off-kilter to be interesting, which I think beats traditional any day.
“I was wondering …” Almanzo paused. Then he picked up Laura’s hand that shone white in the starlight, and his sun-browned hand closed gently over it. He had never done that before. “Your hand is so small,” he said. Another pause. Then quickly, “I was wondering if you would like an engagement ring.”
“That would depend on who offered it to me,” Laura told him.
“If I should?” Almanzo asked.
“Then it would depend on the ring,” Laura answered, and drew her hand away.
Then there’s the song. Do you remember, the one Laura sings? (And which you can listen to here — thankfully for me, since I’d always sung it in my head to the tune of “My Darling Clementine” and apparently needed to be corrected.)
Finally, there’s the ring, which has nothing whatsoever to do with diamonds. (Neither does mine. It’s a sapphire.)
What’s your engagement story? Does it compare to Laura’s?
I’m pleased to announce a partnership with the Betsy-Tacy Society in Mankato that will allow folks who come to LauraPalooza this summer to get a taste of Deep Valley!
Costumed volunteers will join our residential attendees for Wednesday nights ice cream social, and Julie Shrader, executive director of the Betsy-Tacy Society, is planning family activities for Friday morning, July 16, of the conference, to run concurrently with educator and craft workshops. In the works? A walking tour of Betsy’s neighborhood, with young Betsy escorting her new friend Laura around her town, storytelling, and other surprises.
Additionally, the Betsy-Tacy houses will be open for tours and other activities, including a visit from illustrator Cheryl Harness, on Saturday afternoon.
Betsy and Tacy, the two little girls at the heart of the series of books written by Mankato native Maud Hart Lovelace, were based on Maud and her childhood best friend, Bick. The two lived across the street from each other in Mankato, and these houses have been lovingly restored by the society. A third friend, known as Tib in the books, lived around the corner and down the street from Betsy and Tacy. Her childhood home is currently for sale, and the society hopes to purchase it.
The Betsy-Tacy books are all currently in print, and the final six books were recently reissued in new editions with forewards from famous fans of the books such as Anna Quindlen.
Since Maud wrote her books just after Laura wrote hers, Maud is said to have refused to read the Little House books in order to avoid any accusations of plagiarism. Both women wrote about young girls and women growing up in the Midwest. One story suggests that Maud, then living in California, waited until she was completely finished with the series, then went to her library to say, “NOW I can read the Wilder books.”
I can only hope she enjoyed them!
Join us in Deep Valley this summer.
Well, the Hard Winter is over — for most of us, anyway — and spring has arrived in all its glory. As we celebrated winter’s end with the Ingalls family in our final chapters of The Long Winter discussion, so I have been celebrating the coming of spring in my own life, as well.
It is well-known that Laura referred to her windows as “pictures” — that she enjoyed the beauty of nature so much she couldn’t bear to cover it up with curtains. She spent much of her day at home, and so could gaze often at her pictures. In today’s busy hustle and bustle, I’m not afforded that same opportunity. However, it occurred to me this week that I have pictures of a different sort.
Moving pictures.
I’m on the road a lot, for my job, and as I drive the roads of rural West Virginia, my car windows become my ever-moving, yet beautiful, pictures. I so enjoy spring. The world is bathed once more in green after the dead browns of winter. The dogwoods and the redbuds sprinkle the view with pinks and purples and whites. Shafts of sunlight streak through the trees and brighten the path ahead.
Our pictures are all different, as we live in various parts of the country, even the world. I challenge you this week to look at the world through your own pictures, whether still or moving, and delight in them as Laura once did in her own. Then share them with the rest of us, so we can enjoy them too.
