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Memorial Day: A Day to Mourn

Posted on by Rebecca Brammer

“Happy Memorial Day!” I hear everyone saying today.

Happy?  Really?

“It’s just another day to me,” someone shrugged.

“The pool’s open!” exclaimed another jubilantly. “We’re having a picnic,” still others remarked.

Memorial Day, or Decoration Day, began as a day of remembrance for soldiers who were killed in the Civil War. It was later expanded to include fallen American soldiers from every war. It is a national day of mourning for those whose lives have been lost to keep our country free. But as I look around me, I don’t see much mourning.  It’s a holiday, a day to celebrate — it seems to have become a cross between Independence Day and Veterans Day, as we celebrate our country’s freedom and throw out phrases of thanks to our men who have served or are serving in the military, amidst feasting and fun.

But we already have an Independence Day to celebrate our freedom. And we already have a Veterans Day to honor our veterans.

As long as I can remember, Memorial Day in our family was a day to be sober… a day to pay our respects to the dead — particularly those who died in service to our country, but really, all of our family members who have died were remembered and respected on this day. In those days, decades ago, the cemeteries were full of others doing the same thing. There were lines upon lines of cars parked all over the cemetery, and people everywhere.

Today I was at several cemeteries where we were the only ones there. Only one, the largest cemetery we visited, had a handful of other people there.

What has happened to paying tribute to the dead?

Regardless of how you spent your day, I issue you a challenge in this moment. Take a moment to remember our fallen soldiers, who gave their lives for our freedom. If you don’t know a fallen soldier, I will give you one to remember.

Laura doesn’t talk about Memorial Day in the Little House books, so we don’t know whether they commemorated the day or not, but if they did, I know who would have been on their minds on this day: Ma’s brother, Joseph Quiner, who died on April 28, 1862,  from wounds incurred during the Battle of Shiloh. What thoughts do you think would have been going through Ma’s mind on Memorial Day?

Let’s honor Laura’s Uncle Joseph and all of the other men and women who have lost their lives in service to our country with a time of solemn remembrance and mourning.

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Victory May Depend on You

Posted on by Laura Ingalls Wilder

“It is a war in each man’s heart. Each man is fighting as the spirit moves him,” said Hira Singh, speaking of the war, in the absorbing story of author Talbot Mundy.

Every day is showing more plainly that Hira Singh was right and that his statement is true in more ways than the author meant. It is a fact that not only is it a “war in each man’s heart,” but that the issues of this war are being fought over in the hearts of all the people—men, women and children.

The keynote of the statement of the nation’s war aims, made by President Wilson recently, was unselfishness, an unselfish championing of the rights of nations too small to defend themselves and of people who have been oppressed so long they are helpless.

As a nation we stand for unselfishness, courage and self-sacrifice in defence of the right. Our soldiers are fighting on the battlefields that these principles shall be recognized as governing the nations of the world. And our hearts are the battlefields where these same qualities strive to become rulers of our actions.

It is indeed a “war in each man’s heart,” and as the battles go in these hearts of ours so will be the victory or defeat of the armies in the field, for a nation can be no greater than the sum of the greatness of its people. There never before has been a war where the action of each individual had such a direct bearing on the whole world.

One of the liveliest skirmishes of which I know takes place when our spirit of patriotism and duty comes in conflict with our instinct of hospitality, for here a seeming generosity to those near at hand blinds us to the fact that in these days when we feed those who are not hungry we are stealing from those who are starving, even tho the food is our own.

We are all in the habit of feeding our friends when we entertain them and we feel we have failed as hosts if we do not offer our guests the usual feast of good things. Now is our opportunity to substitute for this the “feast of reason and the flow of soul” which is the only thing that makes the meeting of friends worth while. Now is our chance to see that the food and the companionship are placed in their proper relation to each other, with the food, of course, secondary.

The refreshments at an evening gathering during the holidays were brown bread sandwiches and coffee. The entertainment is an annual affair and altho elaborate refreshments always were served in previous years, the evening was a bigger success this year than ever before.

“Victory May Depend on You,” by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Published in the Missouri Ruralist, February 20, 1918
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Oh, baby sister…

Posted on by Rebecca Brammer

Today is the birthday of Grace Ingalls, Laura’s youngest sister.

One of my favorite passages in the Little House books concerns Grace. It is found in chapter 30 of By the Shores of Silver Lake. Grace has disappeared on the prairie and Pa, Ma, and Laura are searching for her frantically, fearful that she may be lost in the Big Slough. Join me for a moment in Laura’s search.

She ran on and on. “Grace must have gone this way. Maybe she chased a butterfly. She didn’t go into Big Slough! She didn’t climb the hill, she wasn’t there. Oh, baby sister, I couldn’t see you anywhere east or south on this hateful prairie.” “Grace!”

The horrible, sunny prairie was so large. No lost baby could ever be found on it. Ma’s calling and Pa’s shouts came from Big Slough. They were thin cries, lost in wind, lost on the enormous bigness of the prairie.

Why does this passage draw me in? That fascinating first person usage, found nowhere else in the series — “Oh, baby sister, I couldn’t see you anywhere east or south on this hateful prairie.” That one simple line which surely must have been mistakenly put into the first person (or else, the first person was intentional due to the way Laura’s thoughts are being shown, but then the verb tense doesn’t fit) and missed by editors speaks volumes to me. It yanks me out of a fictional story and into a real and vivid memory, the memory of an elderly lady who, just for this moment, forgot she was writing a story and became her teenage self again, frightened and desperate to find her baby sister. It connects me to the real Laura and offers a brief glimpse into her heart.

I’m so glad she found you, baby sister. Happy birthday, Grace.

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Too Good To Be True?

Posted on by Jonni Craven

Sandra’s excellent post last week about Rose’s contributions to On The Way Home made me think about our expectations of Laura.  Not Laura the book character but Laura, the real woman.

Most people probably think of Laura as the embodiment of sweet, simple, old-fashioned things.  I often see her quote –  ”I am beginning to learn that it is the sweet, simple things of life which are the real ones after all” –  in blogs that have nothing to do with LIW herself.  It’s a great quote and it comes from an even greater Ruralist article but sometimes I think if I see it one more time, I’ll throw up.   Please don’t misunderstand me, I like the quote too but I think the overuse of it epitomizes many people’s very one-dimensional view of Laura.  We think of her as good and sweet, representing everything that’s lovely in the world and we forget that she was a very human woman with all the contradictions and complexities that exist in each one of us.

We know Laura had a bit of a temper in the books as a young girl but she seemed to grow out of that as she matured, learning to curb her tongue while she absorbed the lessons that Ma and Pa taught her about how a young woman should act.  Yet she admits to a temper as an adult in her Ruralist articles and at least one memorable first person interview, with a woman whose mother was friends with Laura and Almanzo, talks about the fact that Laura had a flaring temper.  I must admit I was a little shocked the first time I read this, I tended to think of Laura as a sweet, quiet lady – more like Ma.

Yet another contradiction – who among us hasn’t been inspired to cook, clean, bake or garden because of Laura’s writings but the truth is that Laura didn’t really like doing any of these things.  I had such an obsession with baking bread as a teenager, trying to connect with my “inner Laura” so it was a shock to learn that Laura never enjoyed baking bread, hating the feel of the dry flour on her hands.

One thing that many Laura fans discuss is her relationship with her daughter Rose.  To say it was complicated appears to be an understatement.   When I was younger, I blamed Rose, thinking that she twisted and exaggerated everything in order to justify feeling sorry for herself.  Now, as an adult survivor of complicated mother/daughter relationships I realize there’s probably some truth on both sides and that Laura might not have been a perfect mother any more than Rose was a perfect daughter.

Do we need Laura to be “good” or could we handle finding out information that contradicts our mental picture?  As a fan, would you be shocked to find out something about Laura that was less than favorable?  Does finding out more about the real woman take away your enjoyment of the books at all?  I know for me, it’s been a journey and sometimes I find it hard to give up my own ideas of who Laura was.   I guess we’ll never really know, all we have left is what she wrote and what others wrote about her, but I’d love to hear how you feel about it.

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Laura Ingalls Wilder Family Letters Go Online

Posted on by Beyond Little House

We are pleased to share the following announcement from Michael Edmonds, head of Digital Collections at the Wisconsin Historical Society.

The Wisconsin Historical Society has recently published on its website more than a dozen original letters written during the Civil War by relatives of Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867-1957), author of Little House on the Prairie and other popular books for young readers.

Wilder’s famous novels are thinly disguised recollections of her childhood, and these private letters between her mother, uncles and an aunt shed light on the real-world adults whom she fictionalized. They include a four-page letter written by her mother, Caroline Quiner Ingalls, shortly after being married and others written by various uncles* while fighting in the Civil War.

The original handwritten documents are presented in color, accompanied by typed transcriptions, in the Society’s Turning Points in Wisconsin History digital collection. A lesson plan based on them has also been provided for the use of elementary school teachers who use the Little House books in the classroom.

*Please note: Although the Wisconsin Historical Society website refers several times to the Civil War letters being written by Laura’s uncles, these letters were actually written by the brothers of Laura’s uncle, Charles Carpenter, who was married to Caroline’s (Ma’s) sister Martha. One of the Civil War letters is written by Laura’s aunt, Nancy Quiner, who married Ma’s brother Joseph.

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Making Memories Together

Posted on by Rebecca Brammer

I can only think of one thing more enjoyable than reading a Little House book — sharing a Little House book.

Working in the early education field, I see a common trend among parents who read to their children. When the children learn to read, the parents tend to stop reading to them. I can understand the reasoning… after all, when your child learns to feed himself, you stop feeding him; when your child learns to give himself a bath, you stop bathing him. But the same does not apply to reading! Children benefit greatly from being read to, long after they’ve learned to read themselves.

And might I even venture to say that adults may benefit also?

I grew up in a family that read together. We all learned to read at an early age, but that didn’t matter, our parents read to us every evening anyway. My mother was still reading Little House books to my sister and me (and the family cat, who always came to listen when Little House was being read — proof that cats have good taste!) when we were teenagers!  There’s just something about sharing a book together that makes a good book even better.

But reading the Little House books to your older children won’t simply form pleasant memories that will stay with them the rest of their lives — it’s a delightful experience for the one reading aloud too. I know, because I’ve now become the reader.

My six-year-old niece and I are reading through the Little House books together. Last week we finished Little House on the Prairie, and I can’t wait to see how much she enjoys On the Banks of Plum Creek. And as many times as I have read Little House on the Prairie in my lifetime, do you know that reading it to her made it an entirely new experience? When reading a familiar beloved book to a child, you see it from a different perspective — instead of seeing the book through my own eyes as I always have before, I now see it through hers.

Of course, my niece isn’t the only one listening. My mother can often be found on the listening end this time, and my sister too, so here we are experiencing Little House together once more, with the next generation. Sharing Little House together is a family tradition I hope will be passed down for many generations yet to come.

Are we alone in this? Are we the only family who reads Little House together, long after the children are able to read themselves? I hope not, but if your family doesn’t read together, and if you have children of any age, I would highly recommend it as a tradition to start right now. And if you don’t have children, borrow some. That’s what I do!

Families used to read together, you know. The Ingalls family is the perfect example. Just think of Ma reading Millbank so often that Laura could recite its beginning in On the Banks of Plum Creek, and of the family gathering together eagerly to read the stories in The Youth’s Companion. If reading together as a family was good enough for the Ingalls family, isn’t it good enough for you?

Now get out those books and start making some memories!

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Those Sweet, Simple Things Of Life

Posted on by Sandra Hume

“It is so hot,” Ma said. “I believe I will have cottage cheese balls with onions in them, and the cold creamed peas. Suppose you bring some lettuce and tomatoes from the garden, Laura.”
~Little Town on the Prairie, “Mary Goes to College”

I had a long talk today with a kindred spirit. Since childhood she’s been sensitive to chemicals, including—and especially—preservatives. She grew up in the 70s like me, the Golden Age of Preservatives, but it wasn’t until 10 years ago that she finally figured out what was causing all her allergic reactions.

She and I got into a spirited conversation about food. She’s new in town, and I first met her last summer as we both pored over the offerings from our town’s “farmer’s market” (read: one guy selling his produce on the street). She’s a stickler about the kind of food she serves at home. She has to be; her health depends on it. She has to watch not only what she eats, but what makeup, shampoo, and lotion she uses, sometimes driving several hours or placing many online orders to make sure she has exactly what she needs.

I listened with a mixture of admiration and envy. Admiration because what she does is by no means easy; envy because I’d like to do that too. But it’s expensive. And time-consuming. And inconvenient. Sometimes you just want to open a box of something and call it a day. (And that’s why they’re called “convenience” foods.) But my goal, particularly for my kids, is always to at least try to shorten the process of “real food” to consumption. The more steps it takes to get the food into the form I eat it, the less likely I am to want it. And chances are, the more steps it takes, the longer the ingredient list grows of things I can neither identify nor pronounce. But our society does not make it easy to eschew these foods, particularly if–like me–your location limits your choices. (Believe me, the irony of living in a farming community and not having enough access to fresh food is not lost on me!)

I don’t know about the rest of you, but whenever I get into a conversation or a thought process surrounding food consumption and wishing for simpler choices, I think of Laura. Specifically, I think of Ma. Feeding her girls (and her husband) cannot have been easy. But it was healthy. Number of steps from food source to food consumption? Zero. Her family—as did, I’d venture to guess, all families of that time period—appreciated the simple things they had. They appreciated them not because they were simple, but because they were good. I don’t eat raw onions, but honestly, those cottage cheese and onion balls in Little Town on the Prairie? I want them. Every time I read about them, I want them bad. I even want the creamed peas.

Even though I know it’s folly, I can’t always escape the thought that the Ingalls family had it easy. They and their contemporaries knew sweetness only sparingly; cake was reserved for weddings and borne of sore arms. Fruit was scarce. Candy was for very special occasions. In good years meat and milk were plentiful, as were vegetables when they could support a garden. And although she was diabetic later in life, Laura did live past 90 years old. (Although it bears mentioning that she did outlive the rest of her family, who were raised on, presumably, the same diet.)

It doesn’t make sense right now for me to keep my own hens, and gardening is unfortunately out of the question due to my snake phobia. But I still want to do what I can to make our food simpler. I want my kids to appreciate that simplicity and to develop a taste for it. Every time I think of simplifying our food and figuring out how to make something from scratch, two themes emerge. First, I’m challenging myself to feed my kids the best ways I know how. Whether that means teaching myself to make bread from scratch or convincing my daughter to dye her homemade frosting with pureed strawberries rather than green food coloring, it’s all baby steps toward the same goal.

Secondly, I’ve got Laura on the brain. I can’t crack an egg or measure flour without picturing her gathering her own basketful of eggs or kneading her own bread in front of her kitchen’s picture windows. I may not be great at simplifying, but if I continue to keep Laura in mind, I hope to someday be good.

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The Nine-Patch Quilt

Posted on by Amy Lauters

One of the first of the Laura crafts I tried was the nine-patch quilt.

I belong to a family of quilters, so that choice may have been pre-ordained. It’s a simple pattern: nine squares of fabric stitched together in a grid, three squares across and three down. Quilters can make them in any size, as long as they’re consistent, and the finished blocks can take on a kind of checkerboard character. Several ways to put the finished blocks together into a quilt top also exist; quilters can simply stitch them all together and be done with it, or can link them with lattice strips, add borders, and essentially make them as complicated as they like. It’s all up to the individual.

I’ve been thinking about this particular quilt a lot lately, ever since the comment by Zoie that she’d never realized how long Mary worked on her nine-patch quilt, through three books. It makes me think that Mary  attempted to make a more complicated variation of the quilt. And since it’s time for me to make a new quilt–I just bought a twin bed for our guest-kid room, and it’s “naked”–my first thought took me to the nine-patch.

I don’t have a rag bag, like Ma did, but I do have a box full of what quilters call “fat quarters.” They’re lengths of fabric cut to 18 by 22 inches. I like to buy fat quarters when I fall in love with a fabric. They’re small, and I can tuck them into my box to look at.

When we brought that twin bed home this weekend, we set it up. Then, I dug out my box of fat quarters. I found calicos in navy, plum, and patterns on cream, brown, and pink. I saw some whites, and many, many blues. (I must have a thing for blue.) Since I want to keep this room sort of gender-neutral in tone, I isolated the navy, plum, and cream-pattered pieces with those colors out of the box, and I washed and dried them.

Cutting and sewing those quilt blocks will be a big project for my summer. But thanks to a sewing machine and electricity, it won’t take me years to make it!

What kind of projects have you been inspired to make?

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A Dog’s a Dog for A’ That

Posted on by Laura Ingalls Wilder

It is surprising how like human beings animals seem when they are treated with consideration. Did you ever notice the sense of humor animals have? Ever see a dog apologize — not a cringing fawning for favor, but a frank apology as one gentleman to another?

Shep was trying to learn to sit up and shake hands, but try as he would he could not seem to get the knack of keeping his balance in the upright position. He was an old dog and you know it has been said that, “It is hard to teach an old dog new tricks.” No sympathy has ever been wasted on the dog but I can assure you that it also is hard for the old dog. After a particularly disheartening session one day, we saw him out on the back porch alone and not knowing that he was observed he was practicing his lesson without a teacher. We watched while he tried and failed several times, then finally got the trick of it and sat up with his paw extended. The next time we said, “How do you do, Shep,” he had his lesson perfectly. After that it was easy to teach him to fold his paws and be a “Teddy Bear” and to tell us what he said to tramps. We never asked him to lie down and roll over. He was not that kind of a character. Shep never would do his tricks for any one but us, tho he would shake hands with others when we told him to do so. His eyesight became poor as he grew older and he did not always recognize his friends. Once he made a mistake and barked savagely at an old friend whom he really regarded as one of the family tho he had not seen him for some time. Later as we all sat in the door yard, Shep seemed uneasy. Evidently there was something on his mind. At last he walked deliberately to the visitor, sat up and held out his paw. It was so plainly an apology that our friend said: “That’s all right Shep old fellow! Shake and forget it!” Shep shook hands and walked away perfectly satisfied.

My little French Poodle, Incubus, is blind. He used to be very active and run about the farm; but his chief duty, as he saw it, was to protect me. Altho he cannot see, he still performs that duty, guarding me at night and flying at any stranger who comes too near me during the day. Of what he is thinking, when he sits for long periods in the yard, with his face to the sun, I am too stupid to understand perfectly, but I feel that in his little doggy heart, he is asking the eternal, “Why?” as we all do at times. After awhile he seemingly decides to make the best of it and takes a walk around the familiar places, or comes in the house and does his little tricks for candy with a cheery good will. If patience and cheerfulness and courage, if being faithful to our trust and doing our duty under difficulties count for so much in man that he expects to be rewarded for them, both here and hereafter, how are they any less in the life of my little blind dog? Surely such virtues in animals are worth counting in the sum total of good in the universe.

Excerpt from “A Dog’s a Dog for A’ That,” by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Published in the Missouri Ruralist, August 20, 1916
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Laura and her dogs

Posted on by Jonni Craven

One of my favorite characters in the Little House books is Jack, the brindle bulldog, Laura’s loyal friend and companion through the first 3 books. Even though Laura is surrounded by a loving family, there are times when it seems like Jack is the only one that truly understands her. Having been blessed with a couple of canine soulmates in my time, I nod my head in understanding every time a special look passes between Jack and Laura and I still tear up when I read about Jack’s passing at the beginning of By the Shores of Silver Lake…truth be told, I still haven’t forgiven Pa for not letting Jack ride on the wagon when they crossed the river in Little House on the Prairie.

I don’t know how long Jack really lived with the family or whether little Laura really had a special relationship with her bulldog but it’s no surprise to find out that Laura loved dogs and that several became members of her family when she was an adult. She writes about Shep and Inky in Ruralist articles, drawing life lessons from the actions of her dogs. My favorite passages in West From Home (letters from Laura to Almanzo while on a trip to San Francisco in 1915) are the ones where she seems to be just as concerned about Inky’s health as she is about Almanzo’s. Anyone eavesdropping on phone conversations between my husband and me when one of us is traveling would hear similar concerns about Jasper, our beloved 13 year old Golden Retriever.

Recently I had a chance to read notes Laura kept on a trip she took to South Dakota with Almanzo in 1931. They brought along Nero, their Airedale, and a good portion of Laura’s notes had to do with how Nero felt about the trip. Apparently he was not fond of Kansas and he really didn’t enjoy the heat and wind of the South Dakota summer. Nero also got nervous when Almanzo drove in traffic; clearly he was a dog of discernment. He ate well on the journey, Laura writes about Nero’s meals of hamburgers and snacks of ice cream when the heat got to be too much. It sounds to me like Nero had himself a dandy time on the trip. My Jasper is the veteran of several cross-country road trips but he rarely eats when traveling so I’m amazed at the amount (and variety) of food that Nero seems to have put away.

It amuses me that Laura wrote so much about Nero’s experiences on the South Dakota trip but it also reminds me of why I love her so. My dogs have been a big part of my life. I know what it’s like to love a dog as much as any other member of my family and Laura did too. I always knew we were kindred spirits.

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