The Long Winter
The Long Winter, Chapter 1: Make Hay While the Sun Shines
It’s hot. It’s probably August, though the book doesn’t explicitly say. It’s the summer after the first winter near De Smet—the winter of the Surveyors’ House and the oyster-soup New Year’s dinner—and the Ingalls family is out on the claim. Pa’s cutting prairie grass to make hay for the coming winter’s feed. (And fuel. Wait.
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The Long Winter in January? Why Not?
One thing (among many) noticeable on Facebook is that everyone talks about the weather. As in life, I suppose. And winter, it seems, has arrived but good. Everywhere.
Recently, it snowed in Houston. Right now, it’s snowing in Florida and Georgia. There are blizzards blowing through the Dakotas and Minnesota, and where I sit right now
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For Your Download Pleasure: The Long Winter Radio Show
Courtesy of Homeschool Radio Shows via Homeschool Freebie of the Day — this just in:
An audio of a radio show that dramatizes The Long Winter. It’s old-fashioned and lovely. I just finished listening to it.
Here’s what Homeschool Radio Shows has to say about it:
By popular demand, we again present this fine interpretation of Laura Ingalls
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Contemporary Lessons from The Long Winter
Lizzie Skurnick, author of the recently released Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading, used to write a column on Jezebel dissecting the young-adult novels we read as kids–and likely reread as adults. (Her book is based on these columns, and Farmer Boy is the Little House book that’s up for the reread
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Laura the Teacher (on TV)
I like to leave my DVR set to record episodes of Little House on the Prairie — five at a time — and from time to time I check to see which ones it’s got loaded. Today I’m glad I did. The DVR contains what is probably my favorite Little House episode ever: Sweet Sixteen.
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Will 2009-2010 be another Long Winter?
I know; I did the math. This winter is NOT a 21st winter.
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
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Carrie Said … What?
A week and a half ago, on the long ride to the airport, I was reading The Long Winter aloud to my family when I discovered a lifelong error. That is, an error of mine. Remember when Laura and Carrie are walking in the Big Slough, taking a shortcut home from town where they bought
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Notes on a Mini-LauraPalooza
I finally stood in Plum Creek today.
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
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It's Finally Spring
When Laura comes down to breakfast on the first of May after the long, hard winter, she comes down singing, and Pa teases her: ”So you’re to be the Queen of May, are you?”
Those of us who live in the upper Midwest know exactly how Laura felt that first day of May, a sunny, warm day
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