It’s hard to believe that it’s already back-to-school time!! And, time for the results of the last Summer Giveaway (#5). The computer at random.org picked these two lucky winners: Jennie and Amie. Please email [email removed] with your mailing address. Thanks to all who took the time to comment and congratulations to all the winners.
Little House Traveler
Re-reading Little House Traveler this weekend, I was struck by two particular things:
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.
The Prairie is a Dangerous Place
What image comes to your mind when you hear the word prairie?
I wonder if sometimes we have a tendency to romanticize our view, choosing to remember Laura’ s vivid descriptions of that large empty flat land with the enormous sky and beautiful lakes and extraordinary sunrises, instead of the truly dangerous place that the prairie could be.
It’s certainly not Laura’s fault that we do this; she described the hazards of prairie life right alongside the beauty. Images that quickly spring to mind — even ignoring weather conditions such as blizzards and tornadoes — are little Grace lost on the prairie and the horrors that she might be in the Big Slough where they would never find her; Mary, Laura and Carrie walking along the lake shore toward the Big Slough and Laura’s shout to Carrie to turn back, she’ll mire down, the lake is among the grasses; and how quickly and easily Laura and Carrie got lost when taking the shortcut across the slough after buying Pa’s mowing machine part.
But somehow it’s so easy to forget about that, or think it can never happen to you, when you’re out on the prairie yourself.
My friend and I with our two little girls were out on the Dakota prairie last month, and spotted a lovely photo op. We pulled off the road, got out of the car, and told the girls to stand by the prairie grasses, with the train in the distance behind them.
My seven-year-old niece, who has a tendency to want to fully experience everything, immediately asked, “Can we go IN the prairie grass?”
We were far far away from any lake or slough, and the prairie stretched flat as flat could be for literally miles. What danger could there possibly be? “You can go in just a little ways,” I said.
My friend felt that more specificity was needed. “Take three steps,” she said. “Just three steps.” And together, we counted as she stepped: “One… two…”
On three, she was gone. She simply vanished right before our eyes. Panic seized my heart as I screamed and ran to the place we had last seen her. How could she be gone? Whatever could have happened to her?
The prairie that appeared to be so flat actually had a sudden drop-off. (My friend speculated that it’s a long lost buffalo wallow.) The grass grew to the same height as the grass on the higher ground so there was no way to tell it was there until she stepped into it. I looked down into the large “wallow” and there she lay on the ground several feet below me, stunned but thankfully unharmed, feeling much like her other favorite literary heroine, Alice, when she fell down the rabbit-hole.
In the terror of that moment, I knew just how Laura felt when Baby Grace disappeared. And I wondered if Ma must have worried every time her girls went off for their walk across the prairie, knowing the secret pitfalls it held.
How about you? Have you had any misadventures on the prairie? Do you view the prairie as a beautiful place, or a frightening one? Which of Laura’s prairie descriptions stand out in your mind?
Three steps in, the prairie drops off dramatically. Would you have guessed?
LauraPalooza 2010 News
Folks, we’ve got some exciting news on the LP 2010 front.
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.
A Rose in December
All this talk about Rose has again made me reflect on her life. Since I am, indeed, in the researching-and-writing stage of working on a biography of Rose, it’s not hard for me to settle in to thinking about her. As a woman, Rose seemed tense, conflicted, inwardly struggling with depression and outwardly maintaining the pleasant, gregarious face she was trained to show.
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.
Why Little House is Purple
I like purple. I like it a lot. It’s my favorite color, in fact.
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.
Rose Wilder Lane … Who Knew?
Well, we did. But apparently, now that the venerable New Yorker has run an article about Rose and Laura–containing no new information, and just a lot of commentary based on recycled sources–cyberspace is whirling with debate about Rose’s politics, the expressed values in the Little House series, and even Christian doctrine as expressed in the books.
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.
Summer Giveaway #5
If you could go back and meet someone from Laura’s world, who would you visit? What would you talk about? Share your thoughts in the comment section and be entered in a drawing for a copy of my book Rose Wilder Lane’s San Francisco. In approximately two weeks I will let the computer at random.org pick the winners. This is the last opportunity this summer to win a copy but it’s always available for sale on PrairieMania.com. Feel free to enter the drawing, even if you already have a copy of the book. Win one for a friend or for your local library. Most of all have fun! (For more information on Rose Wilder Lane’s San Francisco visit www.PrairieMania.com.)
Pie Plant
One of the key questions I had about The First Four Years had nothing to do with the plot, the relationships, or Laura.
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.
Cat’s Cradle
It was the spring of 1987, and Cat’s Cradle was all the rage in Iowa my elementary school. It was the first and only fad I ever had the privilege of starting. And of course, it was all because of Laura.
My best friend and I had each received copies of Barbara Walker’s “The Little House Diary” for Christmas. This was a fabulous publication and I wish they still printed it. One of the treasures contained in its pages was an instruction sheet for how to play Cat’s Cradle, a string game played by Mary and Laura, mentioned in Little House on the Prairie and On the Banks of Plum Creek.
We got some string, learned to play, and occupied our lunchtime with the game, unwittingly attracting the curiosity of every other child at that table. Before we knew it, we were teaching them to play, and suddenly there was an entire school full of children playing Cat’s Cradle at any spare moment they had.
A couple of weeks ago, this same friend and I took the next generation (my niece and her daughter) to the Little House sites, and I knew we would need some things to keep the girls occupied on the plane. So I pulled out my old weatherbeaten Little House Diary and packed a bit of string. We could teach them to play Cat’s Cradle.
We hadn’t played it in twenty years, and suddenly here we were together again with string on our fingers, teaching the little girls to play. Apparently Cat’s Cradle is much like learning to ride a bicycle — though I thought I didn’t remember how to make each figure, my fingers seemed to know just what to do!
We had such a good time. Do you know how to play Cat’s Cradle? Would you like to learn?
Maybe I can start a new trend again.