Special Summer Event In Malone

Been meaning to take that trip to Malone? This just might be your year. If I were you, I’d keep the third weekend in June free. Sources are telling us it looks like more than one very special guest will be on hand. As soon as the word is official, we’ll let you know.

In the meantime, here’s what Farmer Boy‘s Trout River looks like in the 21st Century:

De Smet Offers New Travel Itineraries

Check out Sarah’s Notebook at Trundlebed Tales for new info on what’s up in De Smet. In De Smet, the Laura Ingalls Wilder Memorial Society (not to be confused with Ingalls Homestead, owned and operated separately from the holdings of the Memorial Society) has posted new travel itineraries on their web site, DiscoverLaura.org, directed at folks visiting De Smet for a Laura experience.

She’s also got some new info on Keystone, SD — Carrie Ingalls’ longtime home.

“Second Reading” of Big Woods

I always love seeing Laura coverage in the mainstream press. I am particularly tickled to read about her in publications I admire, for example, this story in the Washington Post.

The author is a onetime Pulitzer winner and a longtime book critic for the Post. He was born the same year as my mother, which puts him in his late sixties—of the age to read the Little House series almost as it was released.  His piece is part of “Second Readings,” a “series in which The Post’s book critic reconsiders notable and/or neglected books from the past.”

Though it’s not said explicitly, the impetus for choosing a Little House book seems to be the release of the horrifying, photographic “adventure” edition of the series, devoid of Garth Williams’ essential illustrations. (Check out the final sentence for why.)

The story was printed in November 2007 and picked up by newspapers across the country, particularly in the Midwest. I love his perspective:

“[H]istorians of the frontier …insist that life was a lot harder and a lot less sunny than Wilder portrays it. They’re right, but they also miss the pioint. As was made plain to me by my first rereading of “Little House in the Big Woods” after more years than I care to contemplate, Wilder’s books are not so much about pure historical accuracy, of which they probably don’t have all that much, as about more elemental things; familial love and loyalty, learning how to come with whatever life brings you, treating animals kindly, passing from innocence toward maturity.”

He also defends Laura’s “for children only” apporoach by noting her age at the time of her authorship, tellingly similar to his own: “She was at a point when the temptation of nostalgia is strong, and she did not resist it.” 

The piece is basically centered around his reread of Little House in the Big Woods, which I’m particularly enjoying since I’m mired in that right now. Aside from his claim that “the best of her books unquestionably is Little House on the Prairie” – mmmkay – this is one of my favorite pieces of writing about Laura I’ve seen in a while. 

Go on. Read it if you haven’t yet.

-sandra hume

On ostrich feathers …

I’ve been reminded just how valuable and supportive a community like this can be—an online meeting place, a hub of common interest and support. In my introductory post and on the “About” page, I had the audacity to claim that Laura’s poke bonnet had ostrich feathers on it. The lovely and talented Diana Birchall quickly corrected me – it was the cream-colored hat, not the poke bonnet, that Laura re-sewed the ostrich feathers onto so tightly. 

There are hundreds of details between the covers of all the Little House books. We can’t memorize them all. We can only collect them in the place in our hearts and minds that pulls Laura in. We can share them and laugh over them, weave them into our spoken and written sentences, pull them from our memory when the time is right. Perhaps we can try to get every fact correct, to memorize every detail so that we never misspeak. I can’t. What’s more, I don’t want to. I want to rely on my imperfect memory, as Laura did when she sat down to write her life story. I want my own experiences to color how I see the world of Little House and how I remember it. Stories are only as big as the people who read them. I want Little House to remain amorphous and out there, not contained—or constrained—between two covers, or even within my mind. 

It’s so much bigger than that.

-sandra hume

“I’ll wear my delaine.”

Right now my daughter and I are midway through Little House in the Big Woods, which we read a little bit of each night before bed. Tonight we got to this: 

Pa’s blue eyes twinkled; he had been saving the best for the last, and he said to Ma: 

“Hey Caroline! There’ll be a dance!”

Ma smiled. She looked very happy, and she laid down her mending for a minute. “Oh Charles!” she said.

Then she went on with her mending, but she kept on smiling. She said:

“I’ll wear my delaine.”

In all my years and all my reading, I’m not sure that in the whole series I’ve ever come across a line that I like more.

-sandra hume

The Play’s the Thing

As was recently covered in the Homesteader, this summer will see a “Little House on the Prairie” stage premiere at the renowned Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota. And it’s a musical.

I ran across a blog post about this production written by Esther, a theater aficionado-slash-Little House fan. Click on through for links to the play’s logo, the director’s web site (the only source to mention a premiere date of August 15), a few interesting news stories (one of which claims the show will come to Broadway) and some background on some of the key players in the production. The post is well worth visiting.

I really, really, really want to go to Minneapolis this summer to catch this show. Anyone else trying to make it happen?

-sandra hume

This book review is kind of hilarious

This past weekend I listened to Little House on the Prairie on CD for the very first time. (I know, what took me so long?) I’ll have more to say in the future about my amazement at how much more I noticed hearing it read aloud, but for now, all I’ll do is admit that since reading this review, when considering the Ingalls’ travails in Kansas I can’t help but have a slightly different view of Pa.

-sandra hume

“And there’s where I used to buy my Nellie wigs …”

I just ran across this Nellie Oleson tour. An elite tour agency (they’re even unabashedly called “Elite Adventure Tours”) will set you up with a private tour led by Alison Arngrim. On the burned-out, blown-up Little House set, you ask? No, for four hours, TV’s favorite pioneer princess will show you the sights of Hollywood, which is where she grew up. (Who knew she lived at the Chateau Marmont during the “swinging sixties”?)

I’d love to hang out with Alison –- something tells me she’d be rather like Rose, a great entertainer and storyteller –- but if I’ve got an extra three grand to burn I’d rather book a flight to South Dakota, drive over to Walnut Grove, swing down to Burr Oak, then head back north to Pepin.

How often do these tours actually run? Maybe I’ll try to get in touch with her sometime for an interview. I know she does standup, and I’ve seen references to her show “Confessions of a Prairie Bitch.” I wonder if she still performs that.

-sandra hume

Welcome to Only Laura

Laura Ingalls Wilder passed away 50 years ago last year. It’s been even longer since the phrase “The end of the Little House series” first appeared on the last page of the last book she wrote. But her community of fans has never been more robust. They span generations. Even today, in the empty era of Britney and Paris, Laura Ingalls is still a heroine. Children who discover her through TV reruns or sliced-and-diced picture books still find their way to her timeless book series. The world of Little House is just that: timeless.

These fans mirror each other. They know that the feathers on Laura’s poke bonnet cream-colored hat were ostrich. [Whoops! And these fans make mistakes, apparently. The correction and reminder are much appreciated.] They know what Ma’s favorite hymn was. They imagine the taste of oyster soup on New Year’s Day and of sizzling ham and apples’n’onions in a nineteenth-century kitchen in New York State.

They go where Laura went. They collect pebbles at Lake Pepin, as five-year-old Laura did. They visit Almanzo’s boyhood home in New York and search immediately for the black splotch on the parlor wall. They wade in Plum Creek in Minnesota and watch the sunset in South Dakota. They imagine what it was like to be Laura, if only for a moment.

Most of all, they know Laura. Thanks to independent research and the almighty Google, these fans probably know more of the truth than the Little House series revealed. But they also know that the magic of Little House is so much more than that. After all the reading, all the travels, all the commisseration with fellow fans, they continue to come back to the simple, comforting fact that Laura Ingalls wasn’t just a book or TV character. She was real.

This blog is for them.