The Ride of Her Life by Elizabeth Letts

Fact is stranger than fiction. Consider the story of a woman who lost everything and was given a diagnosis of four years to live and decides to mount a horse for the first time in thirty years to ride across the entirety of America. She wanted to see the Pacific Ocean.  

She had never seen a movie or lived with electricity and indoor plumbing. She had an arthritis and a cough. She had little money. She had no map of the country, no flashlight, no cell phone, or GPS. She had no knowledge of the world. She had never traveled. Never seen a thruway. She didn't know how far south she had to travel to find warm weather.

She did have a sturdy Maine Morgan horse named Tarzan and a perky dachshund mix named Depeche Toi. And along the way, was gifted Rex, a Tennessee Walker.

Donning men's clothes, she packed up her bedroll, and with a few dollars set off in the autumn of 1954. 

What Annie Wilkins did have was faith and persistence and a dream--and the love of her four-footed companions. 

Annie found a country filled with people who believed in hospitality to strangers, people willing to care for her and her animals. She found the helpers. 

Annie also found a country on the cusp of huge changes. Cars whizzed by without consideration, people were leery of strangers, a gang harassed her, and newspapers and celebrities lionized her.

Elizabeth Letts has written beloved books including The Perfect Horse, The Eighty-Dollar Champion, and Finding Dorothy. The Ride of Her Life is another triumph, a much needed inspiration in an America that has lost its sense of community. It was a joy to read.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

The Ride of Her Life: The True Story of a Woman, Her Horse, and Their Last-Chance Journey Across America
by Elizabeth Letts
Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine
Pub Date  June 1, 2021  
ISBN: 9780525619321
hardcover $28.00 (USD)

from the publisher

The triumphant true story of a woman who rode her horse across America in the 1950s, fulfilling her dying wish to see the Pacific Ocean, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Perfect Horse and The Eighty-Dollar Champion

“The gift Elizabeth Letts has is that she makes you feel you are the one taking this trip. This is a book we can enjoy always but especially need now.”—Elizabeth Berg, author of The Story of Arthur Truluv

In 1954, sixty-three-year-old Maine farmer Annie Wilkins embarked on an impossible journey. She had no money and no family, she had just lost her farm, and her doctor had given her only two years to live. But Annie wanted to see the Pacific Ocean before she died. She ignored her doctor’s advice to move into the county charity home. Instead, she bought a cast-off brown gelding named Tarzan, donned men’s dungarees, and headed south in mid-November, hoping to beat the snow. Annie had little idea what to expect beyond her rural crossroads; she didn’t even have a map. But she did have her ex-racehorse, her faithful mutt, and her own unfailing belief that Americans would treat a stranger with kindness.

Annie, Tarzan, and her dog, Depeche Toi, rode straight into a world transformed by the rapid construction of modern highways. Between 1954 and 1956, they pushed through blizzards, forded rivers, climbed mountains, and clung to the narrow shoulder as cars whipped by them at terrifying speeds. Annie rode more than four thousand miles, through America’s big cities and small towns. Along the way, she met ordinary people and celebrities—from Andrew Wyeth (who sketched Tarzan) to Art Linkletter and Groucho Marx. She received many offers—a permanent home at a riding stable in New Jersey, a job at a gas station in rural Kentucky, even a marriage proposal from a Wyoming rancher. In a decade when car ownership nearly tripled, when television’s influence was expanding fast, when homeowners began locking their doors, Annie and her four-footed companions inspired an outpouring of neighborliness in a rapidly changing world.

The Secret History of Home Economics: How Trailblazing Women Harnessed the Power of Home and Changed the Way We Live

The Secret History of Home Economics promised to be interesting, but I had no idea how radical this history was, ot how pervasive its impact on society and politics. Danielle Drelinger's history is full of surprises. 

When I was in junior high, girls were required to take a semester of Home Economics classes. In cooking, I learned how to use displacement to accurately measure shortening. In sewing, we used the Bishop method to make an apron and an A-line skirt. 

I admit, I thought that Home Ec was pretty lame and meant for future housewives. And yet...I taught myself to cook from scratch and to sew, how to organic garden and bake bread, and how to follow a pattern and to make quilts. 

It turns out that there was a reason I felt that way. In the 1960s when I had those classes, the concept of home economics had been diminished from it's roots when scientists and feminists founded home economics studies. I was unaware of the impact on society the home economics had during wartime or in promoting social and advancing racial equity. And I certainly did not know that home economics also enforced a middle class, American, white life style on immigrants, people of color, and the rural poor.

As society changed, the use of home economics reflected the times. 

Drelinger introduces us to a series of intelligent women who were barred from male-dominated careers. Their used their skills in science to study nutrition to help the war effort, support government control to enforce pure foods and temperance, and they created the first nutritional guidelines.

They worked with business to promote new electronic appliances and created recipes for food companies. They wrote pamphlets to support food conservation and the remaking of clothes during the war.

On the dark side, some supported Eugenics and immigrants traditional heritage was ignored as they were pressured to assimilate.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

The Secret History of Home Economics: How Trailblazing Women Harnessed the Power of Home and Changed the Way We Live
by Danielle Dreilinger
W. W. Norton & Company
Pub Date May 4, 2021   
ISBN: 9781324004493
hardcover $27.95 (USD)

from the publisher

The surprising, often fiercely feminist, always fascinating, yet barely known, history of home economics.

The term “home economics” may conjure traumatic memories of lopsided hand-sewn pillows or sunken muffins. But common conception obscures the story of the revolutionary science of better living. The field exploded opportunities for women in the twentieth century by reducing domestic work and providing jobs as professors, engineers, chemists, and business-people. And it has something to teach us today.

In the surprising, often fiercely feminist and always fascinating The Secret History of Home Economics, Danielle Dreilinger traces the field’s history from Black colleges to Eleanor Roosevelt to Okinawa, from a Betty Crocker brigade to DIY techies. These women—and they were mostly women—became chemists and marketers, studied nutrition, health, and exercise, tested parachutes, created astronaut food, and took bold steps in childhood development and education.

Home economics followed the currents of American culture even as it shaped them. Dreilinger brings forward the racism within the movement along with the strides taken by women of color who were influential leaders and innovators. She also looks at the personal lives of home economics’ women, as they chose to be single, share lives with other women, or try for egalitarian marriages.

This groundbreaking and engaging history restores a denigrated subject to its rightful importance, as it reminds us that everyone should learn how to cook a meal, balance their account, and fight for a better world.

About the Author: Danielle Dreilinger is a former New Orleans Times-Picayune education reporter and a Knight-Wallace Journalism Fellow. She also wrote for the Boston Globe and worked at the Boston NPR station WGBH.

***** 

In this book I learned about an item in my collection, a J. C. Penney's publication Fashions and Fabrics that was sold for home ec teacher's use. Read about it here.

I have written about recipe books published by corporations to promote their products

• 1954 Sealtest Recipes
• American Advertising Cookbooks
• Coconut Dishes Everyone Loves
• Big Boy Barbecue Book
• Pies Men Like

Eleanor in the Village: Eleanor Roosevelt's Search for Freedom and Identity in New York's Greenwich Village by Jan Jarboe Ruseell

 

Eleanor in the Village contends that Eleanor Roosevelt's association with New York's Greenwich Village and the friends she made there had a major impact on the formation of her personal identity outside of her marriage to Franklin. I had hoped to learn details about her activities in the Village.

Jan Jarboe Russell gives readers a brief biography of Eleanor's entire life, which for a reader like myself who has read numerous books on Eleanor and Franklin was a recap of known history. She does give space to the many friendships Eleanor made with Village friends, particularly lesbian friends who were very special to her. She shared her private getaway Val Kill with one lesbian couple, and taught in a school opened one of the partners. A female journalist became her close friend and lived in the White House for a time.

Russell mentions the activities that spurred Hoover to open a secret FBI file on her: support of unions and workers and civil rights activities considered communist or socialist in those days. Pages of those files are still unlocked.

I wanted to know more about her activities in the village. I was disappointed by the lack of depth. Russell mentions that Eleanor knew writers living in the Village, like Thomas Wolfe. I sure wanted to know more about this!

An interesting point is Russell's interpretation of Eleanor's relationships with both lesbian friends, like Lorena Hick, and men she loved, including her body guard, doctor, and Joe Lash. As she does also with Franklin's relationship with Missy LeHand, his 'office wife'. Most biographers admit there is no concrete evidence that any of these relationships were sexual in nature or romantic on the Roosevelts' side. Russell is surer.

What is clear is that after Eleanor discovered her husband's affair with her personal secretary, she formed her own 'families' to love, becoming closer to these people than her own children. 

Eleanor's story of personal growth is inspiring. That the 'ugly' child from a dysfunctional family, whose mother-in-law ruled her home and life, and whose husband betrayed her, turned out to be a respected, world renowned humanitarian leader could be a fairy tale. But there was no magic involved. With dear friends and strength of will, Eleanor transformed her life.

I would recommend this biography to those who are not familiar with Eleanor Roosevelt. In fact, it would be a good first biography for young adults.

I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Eleanor in the Village: Eleanor Roosevelt's Search for Freedom and Identity in New York's Greenwich Village
by Jan Jarboe Russell
Scribner
Pub Date March 30, 2021 
ISBN: 9781501198151
hardcover $28.00 (USD)

from the publisher

A vivid and incisive account of a mostly unknown yet critical chapter in the life of Eleanor Roosevelt—when she moved to New York’s Greenwich Village, shed her high-born conformity, and became the progressive leader who pushed for change as America’s First Lady.

Hundreds of books have been written about FDR and Eleanor, both together and separately, but yet she remains a compelling and elusive figure. And, not much is known about why in 1920, Eleanor suddenly abandoned her duties as a mother of five and moved to Greenwich Village, then the symbol of all forms of transgressive freedom—communism, homosexuality, interracial relationships, and subversive political activity. Now, in this fascinating, in-depth portrait, Jan Russell pulls back the curtain on Eleanor’s life to reveal the motivations and desires that drew her to the Village and how her time there changed her political outlook.

A captivating blend of personal history detailing Eleanor’s struggle with issues of marriage, motherhood, financial independence, and femininity, and a vibrant portrait of one of the most famous neighborhoods in the world, this unique work examines the ways that the sensibility, mood, and various inhabitants of the neighborhood influenced the First Lady’s perception of herself and shaped her political views over four decades, up to her death in 1962.

When Eleanor moved there, the Village was a neighborhood of rogues and outcasts, a zone of Bohemians, misfits, and artists. But there was also freedom there, a miniature society where personal idiosyncrasy could flourish. Eleanor joined the cohort of what then was called “The New Women” in Greenwich Village. Unlike the flappers in the 1920s, the New Women had a much more serious agenda, organizing for social change—unions for workers, equal pay, protection for child workers—and they insisted on their own sexual freedom. These women often disagreed about politics—some, like Eleanor, were Democrats, others Republicans, Socialists, and Communists. Even after moving into the White House, Eleanor retained connections to the Village, ultimately purchasing an apartment in Washington Square where she lived during World War II and in the aftermath of Roosevelt’s death in 1945.

Including the major historical moments that served as a backdrop for Eleanor’s time in the Village, this remarkable work offers new insights into Eleanor’s transformation—emotionally, politically, and sexually—and provides us with the missing chapter in an extraordinary life.

A View From Abroad: The Story of John and Abigail Adams in Europe by Jeanne E. Abrams

A scholarly presentation, well presented, with the main ideas and insights easily grasped, The View from Abroad is a vivid study of the Adams, their time, and the formation of the American system of government.

John Adams lived in Europe over ten years, his wife Abigail joining him his last four years. The experience gave Adams insight into the social and economic implications of monarchical governments, helping to form his ideal American political system with a balance of power to contain both oligarchy and mobs. 

John and Abigail remained staunchly attached to their homeland, rejecting the 'fripperies' and attachment to entertainment of the wealthy court and aristocratic life styles. 

America would thrive, they believed, if the good New England values of virtue, cooperation, faith, and thrift remained foundational. Virtue was necessary for good government.

John had no idealistic view of human nature. He knew that people could be rallied by self-promoting, charismatic leaders, and that the lure of luxury would seduce many.

Revolutionary friends parted ways over the Constitution. Mercy Warren and Thomas Jefferson was critical of John Adams' views.

As a Federalist, Adams believed that a strong federal government was required to make trade agreements that would ensure America's economic growth and levy taxes to support an army. Anti-Federalist Jefferson was influenced by the radial enlightenment view of humanity progressing toward perfection, and he feared the loss of individual and states rights.

Abrams highlights Adams concerns about America. He worried that short terms of office that might create instability, especially interference by foreign nations.

I especially enjoyed the excerpts from letters written by John and Abigail, hearing their opinions in their own voices.

I received a free galley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

A View from Abroad: The Story of John and Abigail Adams in Europe
by Jeanne E. Abrams
NYU Press
Pub Date: January 26, 2021
ISBN: 9781479802876
hardcover $27.95 (USD)

from the publisher:

From 1778 to 1788, the Founding Father and later President John Adams lived in Europe as a diplomat. Joined by his wife, Abigail, in 1784, the two shared rich encounters with famous heads of the European royal courts, including the ill-fated King Louis XVI and Queen Marie-Antoinette, and the staid British Monarchs King George III and Queen Charlotte.

In this engaging narrative, A View from Abroad takes us on the first full exploration of the Adams’s lives abroad. Jeanne E. Abrams reveals how the journeys of John and Abigail Adams not only changed the course of their intellectual, political, and cultural development—transforming the couple from provincials to sophisticated world travelers—but most importantly served to strengthen their loyalty to America.

Abrams shines a new light on how the Adamses and their American contemporaries set about supplanting their British origins with a new American identity. They and their fellow Americans grappled with how to reorder their society as the new nation took its place in the international transatlantic world. After just a short time abroad, Abigail maintained that, “My Heart and Soul is more American than ever. We are a family by ourselves.” The Adamses’ quest to define what it means to be an American, and the answers they discovered in their time abroad, still resonate with us to this day.

The Truth About Baked Beans: An Edible History of New England by Meg Muckenhoupt

The history of food has interested me for a long time. I wrote a paper at Temple University on the roots of American cooking, how the first Europeans adapted their traditions to the foods available in the New World.

Meg Muckenhoupt's The Truth About Baked Beans: An Edible History of New England caught my eye a looked like a fun read. I expected it to cover regional and social history and regional foods and cooking.

I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the author goes further--considering the wide variety of immigrants whose contributions to American cooking have been overlooked and eclipsed.

The first European settlers did not have sweeteners available. They imported honey bees! Later, maple syrup and molasses were added to the kitchen basics, and plain recipes using cornmeal and baked beans became sweetened--and sweetened!

Corn, squash, and beans are considered essential New England foods...and they all came from Central America.

Mythic idealizations of historical New England cooking arose during the Centennial and 'scientific' movements promoted non-ethnic foods in favor of white, bland foods.

Readers learn of the real first Thanksgiving foods and how the traditional eating holiday developed over time. And, finally, settled the question of what are 'real' New England foods; would you believe it includes Marshmallow Fluff and Whoopie Pies?

The book includes recipes for those mentioned in the book, including historic, updated, regional favorites, and restaurant favorites.

I found the book to be as enjoyable to read as I had hoped.

I was given a free egalley by the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The Truth about Baked Beans: An Edible New England History
by Meg Muckenhoupt
NYU Press
Pub Date August 25, 2020 
ISBN: 9781479882762
hardcover $29.95 (USD)

Meg Muckenhoupt begins with a simple question: When did Bostonians start making Boston Baked Beans? Storekeepers in Faneuil Hall and Duck Tour guides may tell you that the Pilgrims learned a recipe for beans with maple syrup and bear fat from Native Americans, but in fact, the recipe for Boston Baked Beans is the result of a conscious effort in the late nineteenth century to create New England foods. 

New England foods were selected and resourcefully reinvented from fanciful stories about what English colonists cooked prior to the American revolution—while pointedly ignoring the foods cooked by contemporary New Englanders, especially the large immigrant populations who were powering industry and taking over farms around the region.

The Truth about Baked Beans explores New England’s culinary myths and reality through some of the region’s most famous foods: baked beans, brown bread, clams, cod and lobster, maple syrup, pies, and Yankee pot roast. 

From 1870 to 1920, the idea of New England food was carefully constructed in magazines, newspapers, and cookbooks, often through fictitious and sometimes bizarre origin stories touted as time-honored American legends. 

This toothsome volume reveals the effort that went into the creation of these foods, and lets us begin to reclaim the culinary heritage of immigrant New England—the French Canadians, Irish, Italians, Portuguese, Polish, indigenous people, African-Americans, and other New Englanders whose culinary contributions were erased from this version of New England food. 

Complete with historic and contemporary recipes, The Truth about Baked Beans delves into the surprising history of this curious cuisine, explaining why and how “New England food” actually came to be.

Chasing Chopin: A Musical Journey Across Three Centuries, Four Countries, and a Half-Dozen Revolutions

Hooray for Annik LaFarge for giving us Chasing Chopin! I was transported into another time and place, immersed in gorgeous piano music, and enthralled by the unlikely romance story.

LaFarge uses Frédéric Chopin's music to reveal the history of his beloved home country of Poland, a country only in spirit during his lifetime.

Plagued by tuberculosis, Chopin preferred to play in small venues and publish his music. At a time when Berlioz's bellicose works for large orchestras and opera were esteemed as the highest musical art forms, Chopin remained true to writing for the piano, an instrument still in development.

On first sight, Chopin thought George Sand unattractive. Their next meeting they fell in love. Their relationship traversed from lovers to estrangement.

Frédéric Chopin par Luigi Calamatta 1838, collection particulière.

After every chapter I turned to the companion site WhyChopin  where I listened to the music discussed in that chapter. LaFarge offers a variety of artists on instruments contemporary and from Chopin's time. I personally loved hearing the music on Chopin's preferred  Pleyel pianos.

I loved this book for so many reasons: because I love piano music; for learning more about author George Sand; for the insight into the history of Poland; and the portrait of the Romantic Era.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Chasing Chopin: A Musical Journey Across Three Centuries, Four Countries, and a Half-Dozen Revolutions
by Annik LaFarge
Simon & Schuster
Pub Date: August 11,  2020 
ISBN: 9781501188718
hard cover $27.00 (USD)

from the publisher

The Frédéric Chopin Annik LaFarge presents here is not the melancholy, sickly, romantic figure so often portrayed. The artist she discovered is, instead, a purely independent spirit: an innovator who created a new musical language, an autodidact who became a spiritually generous, trailblazing teacher, a stalwart patriot during a time of revolution and exile.

In Chasing Chopin she follows in his footsteps during the three years, 1837–1840, when he composed his iconic “Funeral March”—dum dum da dum—using its composition story to illuminate the key themes of his life: a deep attachment to his Polish homeland; his complex relationship with writer George Sand; their harrowing but consequential sojourn on Majorca; the rapidly developing technology of the piano, which enabled his unique tone and voice; social and political revolution in 1830s Paris; friendship with other artists, from the famous Eugène Delacroix to the lesser known, yet notorious in his time, Marquis de Custine. Each of these threads—musical, political, social, personal—is woven through the “Funeral March” in Chopin’s Opus 35 sonata, a melody so famous it’s known around the world even to people who know nothing about classical music. But it is not, as LaFarge discovered, the piece of music we think we know.

As part of her research into Chopin’s world, then and now, LaFarge visited piano makers, monuments, churches, and archives; she talked to scholars, jazz musicians, video game makers, software developers, music teachers, theater directors, and of course dozens of pianists.

The result is extraordinary: an engrossing, page-turning work of musical discovery and an artful portrayal of a man whose work and life continue to inspire artists and cultural innovators in astonishing ways.

A companion website, WhyChopin, presents links to each piece of music mentioned in the book, organized by chapter in the order in which it appears, along with photos, resources, videos, and more.

Helen Korngold Diary: December 8-14, 1919

Helen Korngold, Dec. 1919, New York City

Christmas break is coming and Helen is preparing for a trip to New York City, which requires a new wardrobe!

Monday 8
School – Monday is always such a bright day. Mama bought a black tricolette for me also a darling blue velvet.

Tuesday 9
Working hard – comparatively. This is a good time to spur them on.

Wednesday 10
Letter from Ruth [Pawling] in which she asks me to come to N.Y. Thrilling.

Thursday 11
Coming along fine

Friday 12
Last day of school until Monday. I’m crazy about this bunch of youngsters.

Saturday 13
Downtown – Did some shopping

Over at Isenkramers for a party. Had a good time.

Sunday 14
Sunday School – children were so sad to hear that I was leaving for New York. I am happy as a bee. B’nai – El Dance. Met Milton Breschel. A regular hero – traveled all over the world.

Notes:

Dec 8

Is Helen wearing the blue velvet dress in her New York City photograph? It looks like it could be velvet!

Tricolette is a silk or rayon knitted fabric for women’s wear.

St Louis Post-Dispatch ad Dec. 7, 1919, showing Tricolette dress at $19

1919 winter fashions

Dec 13

Isenkramers is perhaps the family of Ludwig Eisenkramer (1877-1942) who on the 1920 St. Louis Census was a draftsman and engineer living on Evans St. His wife was Frieda (nee’ Brasch) and they had three children, Florence, Charles and Henry, all in their teens or younger. Ludwig arrived in the U.S. in 1904 from Alsace Lorraine, of German heritage, and became a citizen in 1925. His 1918 WWI Draft registration show he was stout, of medium height, with black hair and brown eyes. In 1938 he is an engineer/salesman in the St. Louis City Directory. A very good genealogy can be found on ancestry.com.



Dec 14

El Dance was held at B’nai El in St. Louis, a founding member of the Union for Reform Judaism. 

Milton D. Breschel, according to The War Record of American Jews, was on born July 8, 1892, in Milwaukee, MN. He was a commissioned officer in WWI. He was a student living in St. Louis at 5001 Gates Ave. when he entered the war. His mother was born in New York and his father was Czechoslovakian/Russian/Polish. On January 18, 1915, he was promoted to 2 Lt. He worked with heavy tanks. He appears in the 1914 Scranton, PA City Directory. In the 1920s and 1930s, Milton D. Breschel appears in Jacksonville, FL city directories, working as a salesman and married to Fay.



In the News:

The Dec 12, 1919, The Jewish Voice had an article on the movement to keep children in school. To keep teachers there was a movement to raise their salary. Helen's career choice was very important.







Money was being raised for the Jewish Hospital Fund. This week's contributions came from people in Helen's life including S. J. Russack of United Hebrew Temple and Prof. Langsdorf of Washington University.



The Dec. 13, 1919, St. Louis Star and Times ran this editorial cartoon:


A St. Louis war hero was in the news. Miss Julia Stimson was the head of Army Nurses during WWI.

Labyrinth of Ice: The Triumphant and Tragic Greely Polar Expedition by Buddy Levy

In 1881, American Lt. A. W. Greely and a team of scientists went on a journey to pass the record of reaching furthest North. Buddy Levy's new book Labyrinth of Ice takes readers on their journey of glory and horror. The men accomplished their mission of reaching furthest North and contributing important scientific data. They were also stranded over two winters with dwindling supplies.

Anyone who knows me or follows my book reviews will know that I am a life-long fan of Polar expedition literature. It started with reading The Great White South by Herbert Ponting when I was eleven years old. I read and reread the tattered, discarded library book  about the failed Scott Expedition to the South Pole. Scott and his team were such romantic, tragic heroes.

In recent years I have enjoyed the opportunity to continue reading outstanding books sharing the tales of Arctic and Antarctic expeditions, an armchair adventurer. Before the astronauts and space exploration, men of courage and vision took on the vast frozen spaces of ice, seeking fame, glory, short-cut passages, and scientific knowledge. They were the heroes of their day.

Labyrinth of Ice was a bone-chilling read. I felt I knew these men and suffered with them. The bravery and selflessness of some were offset by a self-seeking thief. Madness and despair were found alongside clear-thinking and innovative thinkers. When their supply and rescue ships failed to arrive, Greely struggled to keep the team disciplined, in good spirits--and alive as they suffered life-threatening conditions and starvation. Lady Greely, extremely self-educated in Arctic literature, pressured the government to send out rescue ships.

Eleven men had died before they were finally found. Public opinion turned from adulation to revulsion when rumors of cannibalism circulated the newspapers. The survivors went on to illustrious careers.

I was given access to a free ebook by the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Labyrinth of Ice: The Triumphant and Tragic Greely Polar Expedition
by Buddy Levy
St. Martin's Press
Pub Date 03 Dec 2019
ISBN: 9781250182197
hardcover $29.99 (USD)

Helen Korngold Diary: November 10-16, 1919

Helen Korngold, Dec. 1919, New York City

Helen is still teaching at Harrison Elementary.

November

Monday 10

Back at work – the children ask such funny questions, such as –how old are you?

Tuesday 11

Robert is cute. Holiday.

Armistice Day ad in the Nov. 11, 1919, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Wednesday 12

Back again. Stephens comes in a dozen times a day.

Thursday 13

Mr. Miller is so cute.

Friday 14

Gee, that teacher’s meeting – Mr. Miller certainly handed me some bouquets.

Saturday 15

Downtown.

Sunday 16

Out with Si Russek all day after Sunday School. Saw 5 [uniforms?] had a dandy time

Helen's Diary

Notes:


The Nov. 10, 1919 St. Louis Post-Dispatch: The coal miner's strike was ordered to come to an end.


Hoover warns that the U.S. may close the door to people born in Europe while the American Legion opposed leniency towards war objectors, both attitudes rooted in fear of Red agitators.
St. Louis Star and Times, Nov.12, 1919.



"We are becoming an age on wheels," with deaths by automobiles soaring.


Uncle Wiggly dressed dolls entered into the St. Louis Star and Times contest:

Fur Coats on sale. The $2500 one would be $38000 today! The $169 coat today would be $2500.

The man who would choose a woman over being king.

The Queens of Animation by Nathalia Holt

It was the 1956 rerelease of Fantasia that rocked my world. I was four years old and Mom took me to a Buffalo, NY theater to see my first movie. The images and the music made a lasting impression, driving a lifelong love for symphonic music.

I already was in love with illustrative art, thanks to the Little Golden Books that my mother brought home from her weekly grocery shopping trips. My favorite was I Can Fly, illustrated by Mary Blair. And on my wall were Vacu-Form Nursery Rhyme characters including Little Bo Peep, Little Boy Blue--which I later discovered were also designed by Mary Blair! And even later in life, I learned that Mary Blair had worked for Walt Disney. And of course, growing up in the 1950s, anything Disney was a favorite.

Especially the 1959 release of Sleeping Beauty. I was still in my 'princess' phase, which came after my 'cowboy gunslinger' phase. Mom took me to see the film. I had the Disney Sleeping Beauty coloring book. I had the Little Golden Book. And I had the Madame Alexander Sleeping Beauty doll! Sadly, my dog chewed it up but in my 40s I purchased one on eBay to satisfy my inner child.

Fast forward to the late 1980s and my husband and I were buying up Disney videotapes for our son, raising another generation of Disney fandom. His first theatrical movie was The Little Mermaid.

My fandom never took me as far as to read books about the Disney franchise or Walt. Until The Queens of Animation: The Untold Story of the Women Who Transformed the World of Disney and Made Cinematic History. I remembered my love of Mary Blair and thought, Nathalia Holt has something here. I wanted to know the names and the contributions of these unknown women.

It was a joyful read, at once a nostalgic trip into the films that charmed and inspired my childhood-- and our son's --and a revealing and entertaining read about the development of animation and the rise of women in a male-dominated culture. I put aside all other books.

Holt concentrates on the women's careers but includes enough biographical information to make them real and sympathetic. I was so moved to read about Mary Blair's abusive marriage.

Holt also does a stellar job of explaining the rising technologies that would impact animation, eventually eliminating the jobs of hundreds of artists. We learn about Walt's interest in each story that inspired the animated movies and the hard work to develop the story, art, and music, along with the conflicts and competition behind the scenes.

I learned so many interesting facts! Like how Felix Salten's novel Bambi: A Life in the Woods was banned in Nazi Germany because it was a metaphor for Anti-Semitism! How Mary Louise Weiser originated the grease pencil, one of the many technologies Disney developed and perfected or quickly adapted.

And I loved the story of Fantasia. Bianca Majolie presented the music selections to Walt, including The Nutcracker Suite's Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy and the Waltz of the Flowers. Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker ballet had never yet been produced in the United States at the time! The male animators did not want to work on illustrating fairies (they instead created the Pastoral Symphony's centaurs and oversexualized centaurettes, including an African-American servant who was part mule instead of horse).

Choreographer George Balanchine was touring the studio with Igor Stravinsky, whose The Rite of Spring was included in Fantasia, and he loved the faires in the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies. Fifteen years later he debuted The Nutcracker at the new Lincoln Center and it became a Christmastime annual tradition.

I just loved this book for so many reasons! Thank you, Nathalia Holt!

I was given access to a free egalley by the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

The Queens of Animation: The Untold Story of the Women Who Transformed the World of Disney and Made Cinematic History
by Nathalia Holt
Little, Brown and Company
Pub Date 22 Oct 2019
ISBN 9780316439152
PRICE $29.00 (USD)

The Winter Army by Maurice Isserman: The WWII Odyssey of the 10th Mountain Division

Over twenty years ago I met Floyd Erickson, born in the Upper Penninsula Michigan. During WWII Floyd served in the 10th Mountain Division. His life-altering experience under fire on Mt. Belvedere was legendary; everyone knew of his bargain with God which led to his becoming a well-beloved patriarch of the church.

I recall how Floyd, still trim, proudly donned his uniform to join his fellow soldiers at a reunion. And the stories his wife Elizabeth told of how Floyd supported his large U.P. family and the alteration in his character when he returned from war.

Maurice Isserman quotes Floyd in his history of the 10th Mountain Division, The Winter Army, in the chapter concerning the Allied invasion of Kiska. After months of training in extreme conditions, the Army was uncertain of what to do with this 'winter army' of men trained for mountain snow and ice. Their first deployment was to oust the Japanese from Kiska in the Aleutian archipelago.

"It was a terrible night, that first one," Floyd said, recalling the twelve-hour ascent carrying his gear and machine gun ammunition, then digging a foxhole in the pouring rain. The Americans did not know that the Japanese army had already abandoned Kiska. Nineteen mountain troopers died from 'friendly fire'. It was a demoralizing blow.

Floyd Erickson in Italy

Isserman narrates the history of this legendary division with details drawn from oral histories that bring the story to life.

Toward the end of the war, the 10th Mountain was sent to the Italian Alps. They were there to keep the German army busy. Climbing the iced mountains, crossing the open Po Valley the Po River, and the final battle was horrific.

Floyd saw his best friend killed in action and suffered permanent hearing loss from a blast.

Isserman's book focuses on the extraordinary men, the "mix of Ivy League students, park rangers, Olympic skiers, and European refugees," who "formed the first specialized alpine fighting force in US history."

After the war, these men impacted the ski industry. One became the first executive director of the Sierra Club; another co-found The Village Voice. One co-founded Nike; another became a renowned historian. And there was Bob Dole, US senator, and presidential candidate.

And there were men like Floyd, an ardent skier from a small town with a large impoverished family, a good man whose life was dedicated to his family and church and community.

I was given access to a free book by the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

The Winter Army: The World War II Odyssey of the 10th Mountain Division, America's Elite Alpine Warriors
by Maurice Isserman
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Pub Date 05 Nov 2019 
ISBN:9781328871435
hardcover $28.00 (USD)

Helen Korngold Diary: October 27-November 2, 1919

Helen Korngold, December 1919, New York City

Helen's father has been ill for some time. After graduating from Washington University, Helen quit one teaching position and was a temp at a school she loved. She has been home doing housework and worrying about her father. He is finally rallying.

October
Monday 27
Up & around

Tuesday 28
May get up tomorrow

Wednesday 29
Up & around quite a bit. I don’t like this housekeeping.

Thursday 30
Pop is much better

Friday 31
Up for the most part

November
Saturday 1
Junior Council meeting – Pop is all right. We went to grandma’s today.

Sunday 2
We all feel relieved Pop ate dinner with us.

*****

In the news:

An army surplus store was opened in the city.

The coal workers have gone on strike and the newspapers report limited supplies at local dealers.



GOMPERS SAYS INJUNCTION ONLY INCREASES BITTERNESS President of Federation Asserts Court Order Raises New Issues and Won't Fill Empty Stomachs. By the Aneiated Press, WASHINGTON, Nov. 1.
Samuel Gompers, speaking for organized labor last night, declared the injunction in the coal strike case "can I'nly result in creating new and more disturbing issues, which may not be confined solely to the miners."

The statement, issued jointly by Gompers, Vice President Woll and Secretary Morrison of the Federation, after they had protested to Attorney-General Palmer against the-action of the Federal Court at Indianapolis, follows: "Throughout the period of the war and during the nation's time of stress the miners of America labored patiently, patriotically and arduously, in order that the principles of freedom and democracy might triumph over the forces of arbitrary authority, dictatorship and despotism.

"When armed hostilities ceased to undertake to suppress the legitimate last November the miners found themselves in the paradoxical position where their intensive labors were being used to further enrich the owners of coal mines and merchants dealing in coal by the immediate reduction of the mining of the coal."

Of course, the mine owners readily conceived that an overabundance of mined coal would seriously disturb the high prices of coal and endanger their large margin of profits.

On the other hand, the miners found that with the constantly rising cost of necessaries of life and with their income reduced more than 50 per cent because of idleness, they had reached the limit of human endurance.

Orderly and improved processes were invoked to negotiate a new understanding with the mine owners and which would enable the miners to work at least five days during each week throughout the entire year, and allow them a wage sufficient to enable them to live decently and free from any of the pressing uncertainties of life.

In attempting to negotiate this new understanding and relation, the miners found that their plea for continuous employment would destroy the mine owners' arrangement to curtail the mining of coal so as to continue exploiting the public with high and exorbitant prices.

The mine owners very cleverly met the Issue by appearing willing and anxious to negotiate, but only if the miners would first throw aside the only power at their command to gain a respectful hearing and fair consideration the decision to strike whenever it was demonstrated fair dealings did not prevail.

We are now faced with a coal strike of vast magnitude. The Government now proposes to intervene because of a possible coal shortage. Apparently, the Government is not concerned with the manipulation by the mine owners which has made for present coal shortage and undue unemployment of the miners for the last 11 months.

Instead of dealing with those responsible for this grave menace to the public welfare, it now proposes to punish those who by force of circumstances have been the victims of the coal barons' exploitation. The miners are now told the war is not over and that all war legislation is still in force, and if reports received here are correct the Government intends to apply existing war measures, not against the owners of the coal mines, but against the coal miners.

The Government has taken steps to enforce war measures by an injunction and it lias restrained the officials of the United Mine Workers from counseling, aiding or in any way assisting the members of this organization for relief against previous conditions of life and employment.

It is almost, inconceivable that a Government which is proud of its participation in a great war to liberate suppressed peoples should now undertake to suppress the legitimate aims, hopes, and aspirations of its own people. It is still more strange that a nation which may justly be proud of its Abraham Lincoln should now reverse the application of the great truth be enunciated when lie said that as between capital and labor, labor should receive first and foremost consideration.

The injunction against the United Mine Workers bodes for ill. An injunction of this nature will not prevent the strike, it will not fill the empty stomachs of the miners, it may restrain sane leadership, but will give added strength to unwise counsel and increase bitterness and friction. This injunction can only result n creating new and more disturbing issues, which may not be confined solely to the miners.

These views were presented to Attorney-General Palmer in a conference lasting nearly two hours by President Gompers. Secretary Morrison and Vice President Woll, of the American Federation of Labor.

Palmer said he told the union men that they were at liberty to say to either side in the strike that the President is ready to act immediately to have the controversy settled amicably whenever the strike is called off.

"I explained the necessity for the action," Palmer said, "and the manner in which this case must be differentiated on its facts from all other cases in which injunctions have been used. I have been opposed and the administration has been opposed to government by injunction, were by employers might use the processes of the courts on an ex-parte hearing to force their employees into submission.

This is the Government itself, using its own courts to protect itself from paralysis. It is not an injunction obtained by employers, not for the benefit of employers, not to settle the controversy, but to save the people of the entire country from disaster. It doesn't affect the right of a man to work when he pleases.
CLIPPED FROM
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
St. Louis, Missouri
01 Nov 1919, Sat  •  Page 2

St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Nov. 2, 1919



St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Nov. 2, 1919
My husband owns this machine!

Threads of Life by Claire Hunter

"Sewing has a visual language. It has a voice. It has been used by people to communicate something of themselves--their history, beliefs, prayers and protests."~ from Threads of Life by Claire Hunter

Twenty-eight years ago I made my first quilt and it changed my life. As I honed my skills I was inspired by historic and traditional quilts but also by art quilts.

Early on I dreamed of being able to make quilts that represented my values, interests, and views. I eagerly learned new skills, from hand embroidery and hand quilting to surface design, machine thread work, and fusible applique. I have been making a series of quilts on authors I love. I have created a Pride and Prejudice storybook quilt, an Apollo 11 quilt, and embroidered quilts of the First Ladies, Green Heros, and women abolitionists and Civil Rights leaders.

With my quilt I Will Life My Voice Like A Trumpet,
2013 AQS Grand Rapids quilt show

I was excited to be given an egalley of Claire Hunter's book Threads of Life: A History of the World Through the Eye of a Needle. 

Hunter identifies themes in needlecraft including power, frailty, captivity, identity, connection, protest, loss, community, and voice. She shares a breathtaking number of stories that span history and from across the world.

Hunter begins with the history of the Bayeux Tapestry, a panel of wool embroidery showing scenes from the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Its history illustrates the ups and downs in cultural attitudes toward needlework.

detail from Bayeux Tapestry 

It was forgotten, nearly upcycled, and used for a carnival float backdrop. Napoleon put it in a museum until it fell out of fashion and was again relegated to storage here and there. Himmler got a hold of it during WWII and publicized the artifact and saved it from destruction. Then the French Resistance took possession of the Louvre and the tapestry.

900 years later, the tapestry attracts thousands of viewers every year, a worldwide cultural icon, and inspired The Games of Thrones Tapestry.

Yet, we don't know who designed the tapestry or embroidered it, the challenges and tragedies they faced. They remain anonymous.

I was familiar with the Changi prison camp quilts created during WWII by women POWs in Japanese camps. Hunter explains how the women created images with personal and political meaning to tell loved ones they survived.

quilt made in the Changi Prison Camp

I have seen Mola reverse applique but did not know it was an invention of necessity. Spanish colonists in Panama and Columbia insisted the indigenous women cover their chests. Traditionally, the women sported tattoos with spiritual symbols which they transferred to fabric. In many cultures, cloth has a spiritual element.

Mola Blouse, c. 1990, from the International Quilt Museum

Hunter also touches on Harriet Power's Bible Quilt, Gees Bend quilters, the Glasgow School of Art Department of Needlework, and Suffragists banners.

There was much that was new to me. How  Ukrainian embroidery was forbidden under Soviet rule as they systematically dismantled cultural traditions. Or how the Nazis used Jewish slave labor to sew German uniforms and luxury clothing.

Hunter tells stories from history and also how needle and thread are employed today as therapy and as community engagement and to voice political and feminist statements. She tells the memorable story of guiding male prisoners in the making of curtains for a common room and how she worked with groups, Austrian Aboriginies and Gaelic women, to make banners addressing displacement and community disruption.

We also read about the history of sewing, the impact of industrialization and the rise of factory production, the home sewing machine, the shift from skilled craft to homemade decorative arts.

Art quilters and textile artists like Faith Ringgold and Judy Chicago are discussed.

Social awareness needlework included the quite well known Aids Quilt but also the little known banner The Ribbon, created to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Justine Merritt organized the sewing of peace panels to be stitched together. 25,000 panels were made. 20,000 people collected on August 4, 1985, to wrap the 15-mile long Ribbon around the Pentagon, the Arlington Memorial Bridge, the Lincoln Memorial, and to the Capital and back to the Pentagon. The media and President Reagen ignored it.

Threads of Life may seem an unusual book, a niche book, but I do think it has a wide appeal that will interest many readers.

I was given access to a free egalley through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Threads of Life: A History of the World Through the Eye of a Needle
by Clare Hunter
ABRAMS
Pub Date 01 Oct 2019
ISBN 9781419739538
PRICE $26.00 (USD)

from the publisher

A globe-spanning history of sewing, embroidery, and the people who have used a needle and thread to make their voices heard 

In 1970s Argentina, mothers marched in headscarves embroidered with the names of their “disappeared” children. In Tudor, England, when Mary, Queen of Scots, was under house arrest, her needlework carried her messages to the outside world. From the political propaganda of the Bayeux Tapestry, World War I soldiers coping with PTSD, and the maps sewn by schoolgirls in the New World, to the AIDS quilt, Hmong story clothes, and pink pussyhats, women and men have used the language of sewing to make their voices heard, even in the most desperate of circumstances. 

Threads of Life is a chronicle of identity, protest, memory, power, and politics told through the stories of needlework. Clare Hunter, master of the craft, threads her own narrative as she takes us over centuries and across continents—from medieval France to contemporary Mexico and the United States, and from a POW camp in Singapore to a family attic in Scotland—to celebrate the age-old, universal, and underexplored beauty and power of sewing. Threads of Life is an evocative and moving book about the need we have to tell our story. 

Jane Austen's Inspiration: Beloved Friend Anne Lefroy

Jane Austen's Inspiration: Beloved Friend Anne Lefroy by Judith Stove is a deeply researched look into Jane Austen's dear friend Anne Bridges Lefroy (1747-1804).

Anne was an interesting and intelligent woman, a clergyman's wife and a writer, a mother and a promotor of smallpox vaccination. Anne's husband's nephew was Tom Lefroy, notorious for Jane Austen's mentions of their"profligate and shocking" behavior of "dancing and sitting down together." Their flirtation came to an end with Jane writing, "My tears flow as I write."

We don't really know what occurred between Tom and Jane, but Ben Lefroy's wife Anna Austen wrote that Tom's mother Anne disliked him for "he had behaved so ill to Jane Austen." Was Jane's heart wounded? Were the pair separated by Anne Lefroy, as in the story of Persuasion? Yet at her death, Jane wrote a heartfelt poem for Anne Lefroy.

Stover combs through first sources for clues to their relationship--including Austen's letters and Anne Lefroy's letters--in the first chapter, The Austen Connection. In part two, Anne Before Jane, she covers Anne's family history. Part three, Through a Glass Darkly, considers Anne's life and family and the events and society of her time. Your Angel Mother tells of Anne's death, Jane's memorial poem, and concludes the stories of her children. The book includes illustrations.

I do not recommend this book for the casual Austen reader. This is not a narrow focus on the relationship between two women. The scholarship is detailed and broad, offering an understanding of Anne's heritage and times.

I received access to a free ebook through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

from the publisher:In the first biography of Anne Lefroy, Judith Stove investigates the life of a writer who had was a key influence on the life and works of Jane Austen.
As a female writer of both prose and verse, Anne was a source of inspiration to Jane as she developed her own talents. Jane was closer in age to Anne’s children, yet despite their age difference, they developed a mutual respect and admiration for each other over many years.
Judith Stove brings a wealth of insight to this illuminating history of a literary friendship. She has uncovered a rich background of information relating to Anne Lefroy’s circle, and her book addresses developments across a period of great social and political change. Setting Lefroy’s life in context, she looks at the war against Napoleon and illustrates evolutions in healthcare as well as changes in religious beliefs and practices that impacted upon the lives of Lefroy and her circle.

Jane Austen's Inspiration: Beloved Friend Anne Lefroy
by Judith Stove
Pen & Sword
Pub Date 31 Jul 2019 
EDITION: Hardcover
ISBN: 9781526734204
PRICE: £25.00 (GBP)

Helen Korngold Diary: August 4-10, 1919

Helen Korngold, December 1919, New York City

Continuing to share Helen Korngold's 1919 diary, early August found Helen back home after her Colorado vacation.

August
Monday 4
Hung up clothes. Went to Darlene Young’s in evening. Clarence Hirsch went. Had a nice time. Tired.

Tuesday 5
All tired. Ironed until 3. Played at Aunt B[Beryl Fry] with kids. Home. Flora Siegfried came over in the evening. Talked a lot. Went to bed.

Wednesday 6
Lazy.

Thursday 7
Quite the same

Friday 8
Cleaned up. Temple. Met some nice people.

Saturday 9
Fooled around. Went over to Grandma’s – Driving in the evening.

Sunday 10
All-day picnic at [illegible, Pickers?] with Choral Club- had a wonderful time.

Helen's diary pages

NOTES:

Aug 5

Flora Siegfried (1890) on the 1900 St. Louis Census was at school, daughter of clothing merchant Joseph Siegfried (Austria/German-born in 1860) and his wife Fanny. Other siblings were Minnie, Jennie, and Celia. They had a servant Mary. By 1910 Flora was a bookkeeper. In 1920 Flora was still a bookkeeper and her sisters were stenographers, all employed in clothing manufacturing. By 1930 Joseph had passed and Flora was a stenographer still living at home.

*****

In the news:

August 10, 1919, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Dr. M. M. Madden, a "negro attorney" of Oklahoma City, OK, was a delegate to a conference at the Free Will Methodist Episcopal Church in St. Louis, MO, which proposed the creation of a "negro state" as a way to end race problems.


Page one article in August 10, 1919, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Solution of Negro Question




Perhaps less controversial was the battle of the cursives.