Sunday, October 30, 2011

Living The Long Winter

Last year, Western Massachusetts got hit with snowstorm after snowstorm. We had record breaking snowfall in 2010, and spring couldn't come fast enough for any of us.

This year looks like it's going to shape up to be the same. As an unusually early Nor'easter blew through here yesterday, dumping 10 inches of snow in our area, downing power lines and falling trees, I couldn't help but think of The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Without power and with many roads impassable, I felt like Laura stranded in her house in town on the Dakota prairie.

Tonight's temperatures are going to drop down into the teens, freezing anything left on the ground. Luckily, daytime temperatures this week will be in the mid-40's or higher, so it should melt quickly.

I don't think I'm ready for seven months of winter.

Thursday, October 27, 2011

Can't We All Be Friends?

I'm in the midst of reading a memoir of a person who followed the travels of Laura Ingalls Wilder. I'm enjoying it. Every "Laurafan" seems to have his/her own story and I like learning of how others discovered Wilder and how that impacted their lives.

Spend enough time in Lauradom and you'll find distinct camps of "Laurafans"--those who love the classic family television show, Little House on the Prairie, and those who wish it never happened. At some point, I wish we could all shake hands and get along.

Why do those who don't care for Little House on the Prairie and how Michael Landon and his producers portrayed historical figures and events feel the need to rip it to shreds? Isn't the show just one more way to honor the legacy that Wilder left behind? Despite its historical inaccuracies, didn't the show capture the romantic, little girl view that Wilder portrayed in her books? I feel it did.

The book I'm reading has so far spent two pages decrying how television Laura wasn't anything like real Laura. Reverend Alden, Mr. Edwards and Charles didn't look like the real people any more than TV Laura did, and there was too much "histrionics and tragedy." Maybe the author gets it right about the histrionics, but I'm fairly sure the life in which the historical Laura lived had tragedy up the ying-yang, so is the problem with the show that it's not authentic enough or that it's too authentic? The author compares Little House on the Prairie to a soap opera. I've watched both genres of television. They are only alike in the fact that television allows you to suspend common sense if you're creating a great storyline. Remember in Season 9, Royal Wilder returns to Walnut Grove with a daughter named Jenny in tow and Almanzo tells Laura he hasn't seen his brother in 10 years. I guess he forgot that time right after Laura and he were married when Royal and his wife Millie dropped off their two sons (or should I say monsters) for the newlyweds to watch while they went off on a trip? But, Millie was dead by Season 9 and Royal was dying and they needed somewhere for daughter Jenny who no longer will have any family once Royal passes away (I guess Myron and Rupert died too) to live. Look at all that tragedy.

Perhaps it's because I discovered the books after the show and those books sparked my interest in Laura and Almanzo's real life that it doesn't matter to me that Little House on the Prairie and its creators went off into their own world to celebrate Wilder. Maybe I'm too forgiving of a medium that depends on action more than description and internal thought to propel the plot forward. I think they'll have to figure out peace in the Middle East before we can expect it in Laura World.

Friday, October 14, 2011

Book Spotlight: My Life As Laura by Kelly Kathleen Ferguson


Kelly Kathleen Ferguson needed to know—was connecting with her lifelong heroine the key to knowing herself? She decided to find out. She donned a prairie dress and retraced the pioneer journey of Laura Ingalls Wilder. From Wisconsin to Minnesota, South Dakota to Missouri, Kelly explored Laura’s past and her own. Part travelogue, part memoir and part social commentary, Kelly discovered how an adult relationship with a little girl, who lived in little houses long ago, can give a sense of purpose for today.

Read an excerpt!

I admit that the origin of the dress mandate was fuzzy at best. All I can say is the instant I decided to retrace the pioneer journey of Laura Ingalls Wilder, I knew I would wear a Laura dress. When I first envisioned this costume, my intention had been to browse online, haunt thrift stores, contact a seamstress, research historical garb, etc. What happened: I was leaving the next day and needed a dress.

That afternoon I scouted the local Goodwill, hoping for a miracle in the racks. Nope. I resigned myself to a vintage shop. As a general rule I dislike shopping in a place where a bored employee has nothing to do but stare me down. Help galls me, as I possess a toddlerlike insistence that I can do it myself. A poorling, I do not belong in the specialty spending bracket, and I hate telling people no, so I rank boutique shopping on the comfort par of wool sheets. Waiting until the final hour, I barreled into Mr. Higgins’Vintage Clothing & Costumes of Missoula, Montana, all bluster and little intention

Which explains why I was unprepared for this challenge posed by the owner.

“Do you want to dress like Laura the little girl,” she asked, scrunching up her face and tilting her head, “or Laura the adult?”

The proprietor folded antique bandannas on a display case while I processed. She looked somewhere between forty and eighty, youthful despite the crinkles. I had met her type a few times now, the western woman who could charge an alpine escarpment, dragging her giant dog while I clutched a scrubby tree and panted.

Her unexpected question, and inescapable inflection, made me realize that a thirty-eight-year-old woman dressing like a little pioneer girl was odd. And not odd in a quirky, adorable way, but odd in a Whatever Happened to Baby Jane way.

I inhaled the aroma of antique, steam-pressed sweat and rolled the dilemma around on my tongue, as though contemplating a flavor. This Laura dress issue was getting complicated. A basic getup began with the red calico worn by little girl Laura, but as Laura became a young woman, her wardrobe expanded. Passages detail her outfits—the brown poplin with her ostrich-feathered poke bonnet, her pink lawn, the black cashmere that became her wedding dress, but even if I chose an “adult” Laura dress, I would only be fifteen. At my age the real Laura was a farmer’s wife in Mansfield, and those clothes were not part of the Books.

To my relief, the owner had not asked why I needed a Laura dress, a question way too involved for me to answer right then. She didn’t even blink. As it turned out, my request was routine—in Missoula, Montana, people needed Laura dresses all the time. There were Frontier Days, reenactments of homestead life, and you never knew when Hellgate High might rally for another production of Oklahoma! The more we discussed options, I found myself grateful for professional help. A prairie newbie, I had not considered that I would need a bonnet and apron, or even known that the nineteenth-century style was Victorian. The owner said she was usually buried in calico and gingham, except she had just made a huge donation to the historical society.

Yesterday.

We leafed through her back stock of cowgirl outfits and flapper dresses with fringe. When I saw the rack of clown costumes, I began to panic a little. After an extensive search, we were able to roust out three dresses remotely suitable, not one of them a red calico or brown poplin with an ostrich-feathered poke bonnet. I took my options into the dressing room and drew the flowered curtain

Number One was a tiny yellow calico that had the girth of a sock. Number Two, brown with vanilla piping, looked doubtful (size and style-wise), but I tried anyway. It reached an impasse at my knees. I remembered yet another reason why I dislike vintage clothing stores: nothing ever fits. I confronted Number Three, my last chance—the floor-length, turquoise-blue-flowered dress with a scooped neck trimmed in ribbon and lace, cap sleeves, and a fluorescent-orange dust ruffle. Blue was Mary’s color, not Laura’s, but I rationalized that Laura had always wished she could wear blue. I chanted Laura’s mantra when facing the unavoidable—it couldn’t be helped.

In the end, the primary selling point of the blue dress was this: it zipped.

Read the reviews!

“Hilarious, perceptive and true, a homespun story as genuine as the ones that inspired it.”

—Judy Blunt, bestselling author of Breaking Clean

"You won’t detect any drawl in this Southerner’s voice. Ferguson is witty and edgy in a way that feels entirely fresh. This is stunningly, sharp, pitch-perfect writing."

—Neely Harris Lohmann, editor-in-chief of mental_floss magazine

"Grab your bonnet and plunk down in the sunny grass. Ferguson captures the high spirits and struggles of life on the prairie, then and now. A tribute to Wilder, a search for truer self, a twenty-first pioneer journey, My Life as Laura shows us how the books we love lead us to the life we need."

—Eric LeMay, author of Immortal Milk: Adventures in Cheese

PURCHASE MY LIFE AS LAURA AT:

AMAZON.COM

PRESS53.COM

BARNESANDNOBLE.COM

Kelly Kathleen Ferguson is the author of My Life as Laura: How I Searched for Laura Ingalls Wilder and Found Myself, a humorous memoir in which she retraces the pioneer journey of her lifelong heroine—in a prairie dress. Her work has appeared in mental_floss magazine, Poets & Writers, the Gettysburg Review, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and Brevity, among other publications. She has an MFA from the University of Montana, and is working on a PhD in creative nonfiction at Ohio University. Kelly is a Libra, Cancer rising, Aquarian moon. She is Irish/French/German, lapsed Roman Catholic, and right-brained. Kelly once received a minority scholarship for a machinist certification program at Durham Technical Community College. When she was four, she ate a mothball and had to have her stomach pumped, or she would have died.

Visit her online at www.kellykathleenferguson.com.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Survey Results - Beyond the Prairie



Wow! We had a four-way tie for this last survey question. We asked, "Did you purchase Beyond the Prairie on DVD?" Two said yes. Two said no. Two said not yet, and two others said they hoped Santa would bring it.

I don't know if my review changed your mind for or against. Feel free to let me know.