Here it is! The new site is launched!

The sparkly new web site is finally here!

It’s called Beyond Little House, and you can get to it this way.

Stay Tuned!

Sorry for the long hiatus, but the wait will be worth it. A new and improved blog is on the way!

The Friendly Complaint

Nancy at Pioneer Girl strikes again — and in a big way. She’s sleuthed out the legal complaint filed by Friendly Family Productions against Independence and has posted it on her web site. It’s 31 pages, and it’s eye-opening. Thank you, Nancy.

Bill Kurtis Featured in Chicago Tribune

Bill Kurtis is a class act. Bill Kurtis is funny. Bill Kurtis is the subject of this article in the Chicago Tribune. It’s a good read anyway, but make sure you read until the end for Info on the lawsuit tucked on the second page. Excerpt:

“The Kansas museum is flouting the law,” says Trip Friendly, head of Friendly Family Productions. “They will tell you they are only operating a small museum in Kansas, but the fact is that Mr. Kurtis and his sister are running a vigorous retail store on the Internet … selling a wide variety of unauthorized merchandise bearing the Little House on the Prairie mark.”

Mmmmmm kay.

Little House Musical Web Site Is Up!

Psst … there’s a new Little House website out there. The national tour of “Little House on the Prairie: The Musical” begins next fall and it’s got a companion web site. Check this space as content is added to the musical’s website. Right now it’s sparse and temporary, but enter your email address and they’ll send you updates.

Dad Doesn’t Always Know Everything

Now that I have a son, I think about the Little House books from the male point of view more and more. Every once in a while, I even think about asking the Man of the Place to read them. But I don’t, because I know he’d do it. And I know he doesn’t have the time. But I do have a little internal chuckle thinking of him reading about Laura and Almanzo’s courtship or Ma’s delaine.

So I was tickled to read this post by a guy reading Little Town on the Prairie to his kids. Oh no, it’s time for Mary to go to college? What does he know about making clothes? As his kids found out, not all that much.

The Long Winter Knows Narrative Arc

The imminent recession seems to have brought out the Little House reader in all of us. Especially readers of The Long Winter.

First Lizzie Skurnick dedicates a Fine Lines column to The Long Winter and its parallels to today’s financial atmosphere.

Now here’s the latest, an essay from the Globe and Mail. It’s a finely crafted piece on appreciating the narrative arc in The Long Winter — arguably the only book in the series with a genuine plot — and lamenting the media advising us on how best to exist in this financial landscape before we’re truly mired in the worst of it.

Plus there’s cool stuff about dollhouses.

More on Laura’s Ruralist Columns

Stephen Hines stopped by to share this with Only Laura’s readers:

For those who want to continue their biographical readings on Laura and get a personal picture of her adult years in the Ozarks from 1911 through 1925, they can find Laura Ingalls Wilder, Farm Journalist from the University of Missouri Press on Amazon. I put together this collection which presents her columns from that time, before she began her children’s books, exactly as they appeared in the old Missouri Ruralist newspaper. The “voice” your read is somewhat different from what you might expect, but it is the same wonderful Laura.

Thanks, Stephen. My guess is that a good number of Only Laura’s regular readers already have a copy of Laura Ingalls Wilder, Farm Journalist* — present company included. The general consensus is it belongs on the shelf of every Laura Ingalls Wilder fan. Having the columns organized chronologically rather than thematically is particularly compelling.

We hope you’ll come back and visit. We love hearing from various LIW authors and scholars.

* Link goes to Walnut Grove’s gift shop — scroll towards the bottom — but the book is sold at other homesites as well.

This Just In — 2010 Conference In The Works!

Amy Mattson Lauters, editor/author of The Rediscovered Writings of Rose Wilder Lane, Literary Journalist, reports that Minnesota State University, Mankato, her academic home, has agreed to host a summer 2010 conference dedicated to Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane.

Specific dates have yet to be finalized. MSU is located in Mankato, Minn., just an hour and a half from Walnut Grove, Minn., site of On the Banks of Plum Creek, and three and half hours from De Smet, S.D., site of the final five Little House books. It’s an hour southeast of Minneapolis, and the regional shopping and commerce hub for south central Minnesota.

Planning for the conference rests in the hands of fans and volunteers, some of whom are meeting for a “Laurapalooza” event in July 2009 in De Smet.

“I’m really excited that my university and my department, Mass Communications, was willing and able to provide space for our summer 2010 meeting,” Lauters said. “Hopefully, this means we can have a large, fan-and-academic meeting that will be fun and fruitful for everyone who participates.”

I Want This Glass Box

Last issue of the Homesteader mentioned a new glass box with Laura Ingalls Wilder’s image for sale in Ingalls Homestead‘s gift shop. Book Hunter’s Holiday picked one up. Click on the loink for a detailed look at this gorgeous Little House trinket.

Have any of you bought one yet? It’s first on my shopping list when I’m in De Smet next summer.