1952 Good Housekeeping

I have collected vintage magazines for years. I enjoy them for the nostalgia of remembering Mom buying magazines at the grocery lane checkout, and how I read the stories included for children and cutting out Betsy McCall paper dolls. Plus, they offer a glimpse into the world of my birth and childhood, providing an insight into women's history.

Recently I picked up this 1952 Good Housekeeping magazine. The cover is so cute and family friendly.

Then you find the fiction section...

Yes! this issue included Daphne DuMaurier's short story The Birds, the inspiration for the famous movie by Alfred Hitchcock!

I remember Mom had a ponytail when I was a tot and she was in her early twenties. And when soda pop only came in bottles and was a reasonable size.

Beauty Counselors, Inc, from Grosse Point, MI suggests using Q-tips for trying cosmetics. The company was founded in 1931.

Canned veggies, especially peas, never appealed to me. But the idea of a giant man in the kitchen to do the cooking? I'm cool with that.

 As if a bride didn't have enough to worry about. She had to use up a cake of Camay beauty soap before the wedding.

Beauty was hard work and involved discomfort. I wore a girdle and stockings for a year before pantyhose came along. Worse year of my life--Seventh Grade.

Celebrities were used to sell products, same as today. Betty Hutton appeared in two ads.

Mamie bangs or a pompadour?

 The classic 50s face: dark, arched eyebrows, red lips, white face.

 My mother-in-law only ever used Noxema to cleanse her skin, into her nineties.

Co-ed reveals all: she broke the rules at a football game...forgetting her GLOVES.

But Jergen saved the day!

May all your problems be so easily solved.

The Italian Party: No One is What They Appear To Be

The Italian Party is a smart, sharp, and satiric take on 1950s American culture and politics.

The newlyweds were picture perfect American ideals in the flesh: Michael, twenty-four, a handsome, well-dressed man who shaved four times a day, and twenty-year-old Scottie, Vassar educated, beautiful, blond haired, and dressed in pearls, heels, gloves, hat-- and girdle and underarm perspiration guards.

Their whirlwind courtship and quick marriage was secretly a marriage of convenience for them both. The bride was pregnant and the husband was told a wife was good for his new job. Neither knew much about the other, and they liked it that way.

They are beginning their lives together in Siena, Italy.

"They seemed to have stepped right out of an advertisement for Betty Crocker, Wonder Bread or capitalism itself."

Post-war Italy was still rebuilding after WWII--both its infrastructure and its political structure. American cultural imperialism was in full swing, hoping to lure Italy away from the Communist Party and Soviet influence. The CIA and the Communists covert operations have converged on Siena's mayoral election.

Michael works for Ford and has been sent to Siena to sell tractors, hoping to lure farmers into modernization, but the locals are not very receptive.

The newlyweds try to live up to the glossy ideals of advertising, being the kind of husband and wife seen in on a magazine cover. But each is living a lie.

Glamor in 1958

Meanwhile, they are surrounded and befriended by people with hidden agendas, secret liaisons, and complicated backgrounds.

All that is hidden eventually is outed, taking the newlyweds into surprising and very non-Norman Rockwell territory.

I enjoyed the satire and the historical background. The story had lots of twists and complications. The ending felt far-fetched to me in terms of how Michael and Scottie resolve their marital challenges. But the characters are quite happy and eager for new adventures.

I received a free e-book from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The Italian Party
by Christina Lynch
St. Martin's Press
Pub Date 20 Mar 2018
ISBN: 9781250147837
PRICE: $25.99

Jingle Bell Jack Comes to My House

A few weeks ago I picked up a vintage Ding Dong School book, Jingle Bell Jack. I was nostalgic for a toy I never had.

This past weekend I went to the Royal Oak Flea Market and right off came across a vintage Jingle Bell Jack yo-yo doll. He came home with me.

My doll has a children's sock head with an embroidered face. The yo-yos are all midcentury.

 He is only missing the bell on his hat.

When I saw this kitten fabric I sure wished to see more of the original!

 I think there is a hint of bunny ears and nose on this fabric!

 It may  be sixty years late, but I now have my own yo-yo doll.

Read about the book Jingle Bell Jack at
https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2018/03/jingle-bell-jack-1955-yo-yo-clown-doll.html

The Italian Teacher by Tom Rachman

The Italian Teacher is destined to be one of my favorite reads of the year.

Tom Rachman's character Pinch is the son of a philandering, larger-than-life artist, Bear Bavinsky. Bear is charming and unreliable.

Pinch spends his entire life trying to get his dad's attention and approval. He imitates his dad, smoking a pipe early. In a one day lesson Bear teachers Pinch the fundamentals of painting and Pinch dreams of following in his father's footsteps.

Bear abandons Pinch and his mother, once his model, for the next model to pose for him; he leaves a string of women behind him and seventeen neglected children.

Bear routinely destroys any canvas he deems subpar. And he decides to stop selling or showing his art, a plan to drive up the values of his canvases. He becomes a legend, a tantalizing mystery in the art world.

Pinch feels a failure, unable to get what he needs from Bear. He flounders through his life, searching for an achievement that would finally elicit real love and approval from his father. His dissertation is on Caravaggio because his father once praised him; his dad doesn't remember doing so. Pinch ends up teaching Italian and foreign languages in London.

Not only is he unable to settle on a career, he loses his college girlfriend when she agrees to pose nude for Bear, which drives Pinch crazy: he knows his dad too well. He later marries a woman and again is too possessive and loses her. He finally moves in with a coworker, sharing a house.

His college friend Marsden comes in and out of his life, but is always reliable and can be counted on.

Too late, Bear corrects Pinch: he never said Pinch was a bad artist, just that he didn't have the personality and selfishness to BE an artist.

Pinch's life is sad, miserable, and heartbreaking. So, you ask me, why would you ever want to read this book about a loser? The story has an unexpected turn and a truly comedic ending

Of all his children, Bear chooses Pinch to be his confidence man, even leaving his estate and paintings to him. He believes Pinch understands and supports his intention.

 Pinch hatches a scheme that is the greatest scam of all time, a joke on the whole world of art, a way to keep his seventeen half-siblings happy, and still keep his promise to his dad.

And then...another reversal gives Pinch a place in the art world he so desperately desired. The novel left me laughing. It is a brilliant reversal.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The Italian Teacher
by Tom Rachman
Viking
Publication Date: March 20. 2018
ISBN: 9780735222694
Hardcover $27.00

Solving Life's Mysteries: theMystery.doc and My Dead Parents

Matthew McIntosh's novel theMystery.doc is not for every reader. It is unconventional and on the surface without form. But in the end, I found the experience strangely moving and haunting.

Writers today are pushing the limits of the Novel form, as they were a century ago with James Joyce and The Wasteland by T. S. Eliot. More recently, non-traditional, award-winning novels like Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders and The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton are often confusing or off-putting to the general reader.

I was caught by theMystery.doc, enjoying its crazy ride and trusting it would offer me something to grasp onto at the end.

In a series of story clips, we learn about the death of a father who was a pastor, and that of a newborn child. There is a man who has lost his memory, a writer with an unfinished book of eleven years toil, who is captured as a spy. There is a man trying to determine if a customer service helper on the phone is human or computer generated. There is a young couple at a lake. There are photograph clips from old movies. A phone discussion with someone trapped in a burning building on 9-11. The impressions build upon each other.

What I got out of the novel is this: The artist is a spy, observing other's lives, and turning what he sees into words, making symbols that--hopefully-- say something useful about life. The biggest mystery is death and if our lives have any meaning or are part of any higher order.

Kindle told me it would take me 9 hours to read this book, but there are so many photos, lines without words, and dead space that it the book read a lot faster.

I received a free book from the publisher through a direct email regarding a contest.

Read an excerpt of the novel at
https://www.npr.org/books/titles/554211429/themystery-doc

Read reviews at
https://www.npr.org/2017/10/07/553975641/youre-going-to-hate-themystery-doc-and-thats-okay
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/dec/08/themysterydoc-matthew-mcintosh-review
***************************************************************
Anya Yurchyshyn's book My Dead Parents takes us on her journey from a child's view of her parents, and after their deaths, discovering their secret history of love and loss.

The author begins with telling us her experience growing up in a dysfunctional family. Her parents were brilliant, yet her father was judgemental and often angry, and her mother was often distant and disapproving. She was a teenager when her father moved abroad to start businesses in the Ukraine, land of his birth, and her mother's drinking became more obvious.

The latter part of the book describes the author's journey in search of her parents, reading their love letters and interviewing friends and family to learn their past history. This is an experience we all must go through--the acceptance of our parents are flawed human beings, and that we don't know the experiences that created the people we remember.

The most intriguing part of the book is when the author travels to the Ukraine to untangle the mystery of her father's death in a car accident. Conflicting reports leave open the possibility that her father's death was not accidental.

Learning about post-Soviet Ukrainian history was very interesting to me. As a family history researcher, I also found the author's journey interesting.

I received a free ebook from First to Read.

My Dead Parents
by Anya Yurchyshyn
Crown
$27 hardcover
ISBN 978-0-553-44704-0
Publication Date: March 27, 2018

The Last of the Old-Fashioned Heroes

One hundred years ago the world was reeling from WWI. Every value and belief once the foundation of civilization was called into question by the war.

But before the 'War to End All Wars' didn't end war, men were going on quests to conquer the unknown regions of ice. They faced gruesome suffering--loss of body parts that had frozen, physical exertion in extreme conditions, starvation, threats of crevasses that appeared out of nowhere and thin ice over frigid water.

For what? For glory.

The polar regions offered no gold or marketable flora or fauna, no open land for civilization to claim, no sunny beaches for tourism.

The men who raced to the poles or up the tallest mountains did it for fame and pride and for God and Country. They had something to prove and overwhelming ambition.

To The Edges of the Earth 1909, The Race for the Three Poles, and the Climax of the Age of Exploration recounts the explorers of 1909: Peary's expedition to reach the North Pole, Shackleton's expedition to reach the South Magnetic Pole, and the Duke of Abruzzo's reach for the 'Third Pole' in the Himalayas-- the dangerous K2.

I have loved exciting, thrilling, and horrifying adventure narratives since girlhood. One of my first heroes was Robert Falcon Scott after I read The Great White South about his failed expedition to the South Pole. I have also read books about mountain climbing and K2. I haven't a thread of adventure myself, preferring a comfy chair and a cup of tea while reading about someone else risking their life.

Edward J. Larson's account strips away myths about these men. Peary especially, who may have falsely claimed to have reached the North Pole and whose treatment of Inuit, including his teenage concubine, was by our standards appalling and predatory. And the poor Inuit dogs that Peary 'borrowed,' worked to death, then fed to the other dogs (or his men, as needed.)

Shackleton was better, but there was grumbling over his leadership skills, and he did decide to take ponies to the South Pole as well as an early gasoline engine car, both quite useless.

The rich, handsome Italian Duke seems to come off the best, with few negative stories about him, and his later siding with the Allied forces during WWII.

The explorers needed to raise money to fund the trips. Money was given by rich Gilded Age barons and in exchange, they could have landmarks named after them. Their stories were sold to newspapers and magazines and printed in books. They went on the Lyceum lecture circuit with magic lantern photographs.

Peary brought back Inuit for scientific study; when they died their bones were put on display! And he stole three, huge meteorites which the natives used for iron making.

Oh, the frozen toes! The shards of frozen snow that sliced through good English Gabardine! The suffering described is horrifying. (And to think, I don't read horror stories, or at least that is what I had thought. Turns out--I do!)

Shackleton failed to reach the pole, but he was knighted anyway. Scott was already planning his expedition to the South Pole, as was Admunson, and in 1911 Scott perished while Amundsen reached the pole. Shackleton was old news but still returned in 1914-16 on the Endurance. By then WWI had consumed the world and no one had interest in men fooling around in icy realms. Shackleton died of a heart attack on his way to try one more time to reach the pole.

No one really knows if it was Cook or Peary, or Peary's companion Henson, who reached the North Pole. Or if either reached it. With no solid land, the ice over open water offered huge challenges. There were ongoing battles over their claims and bad feelings which sullied Peary's reputation.

"The time was when the search for the North Pole stood for the very acme of uncommercialized heroism," wrote Dean Shailer Mathews of the University of Chicago divinity school. Those were the days, indeed. Today, the opening of the Arctic waters brings dreams of drilling for oil and dollar signs.

The Icebergs by Frederick Church

The 19th c saw the rise of the romanticizing of the Arctic-- the barren, uncharted expanses of ice captivating the imagination. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein retreats to the North Pole, Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins wrote the play The Frozen Deep, Frederick Church painted icebergs and Albert Bierstadt glaciers.

Could anyone then have imagined the aqua lung enabling men to view the ocean's bottom or an Endeavor that went into space? Or that the Arctic glaciers would be melting, the Arctic Ocean open and iceless?

I received a free e-book from the publisher through Edelweiss in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

To the Edges of the Earth
by Edward J. Larson
William Morrow
$29.99 hardcover
ISBN: 9780062564474

For more books on Polar expeditions:

Ice Ghosts: The Epic Hunt for the Lost Franklin Expedition
https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2017/03/ice-ghosts-200-years-searching-for-lost.html

Marooned in the Arctic: Ada Blackwell's Extraordinary Life
https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2016/03/marooned-in-arctic-ada-blackjacks.html

White Eskimo: Knud Rasmussen's Fearless Journey into the Heart of the Arctic
https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2015/11/an-explorer-of-people-knud-rasmussens.html

The Great White South by Herbert Ponting

Fiction about the Arctic and Antarctica:

My Last Continent by Midge Raymond
https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2016/06/my-last-continent-by-midge-raymond.html

The Birthday Boys by Beryl Bainbridge
https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-birthday-boys-by-beryl-bainbridge.html

To the Bright Edge of the World
https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2016/09/to-bright-edge-of-world-by-eowyn-ivey.html

The Terror by Dan Simmons

High Noon in Hollywood by Warren Adler

Once in a while, I like to read something completely outside of my usual choices.

Which explains why I fell for a call for book reviewers for a book described as, "A clever look into the machinations of Hollywood from the bestselling author of the blockbuster hit The War of the Roses," in which "Hollywood producer Zane Galvin’s failed movie leaves him with a $5 million debt and thirty days to pay it off." Zane "goes to unpredictable extremes to raise the money. Joining in on his scheme are Zane’s girlfriend, his gardener, the film’s writer, and the director. The plan quickly turns into a wicked game of switching sides, blackmail, betrayal, and greed."

It sounded wacky and fun and completely opposite of what I had been reading.

I was at first disoriented, the Hollywoodese talk like a foreign language, the nasty and rude comments, demeaning view of women, and sex talk a turn-off. This is no idealization of Tinseltown. This is Harvey Weinstein world. A place where money rules,  sex is a commodity, and alliances are tenuous and dependant on what you can offer. It is no place for art for art's sake.

"I wanted the audience to feel the contagiousness of evil...How happily ever after is a myth" from High Noon in Hollywood ARC

Zane Galvin, named for his father's favorite writer Zane Grey, and his writer and director had imaged a film that spoke the truth. The film's ending was not marketable, killing off a dog, for goodness sake. He can't pay his debt, or his writer or director. And, his girl's career was dependent on that film. Even his illegal immigrant gardener is being stiffed his meager salary.

Together they hatch a ridiculous plan. What they have on their side is the artistic vision and imagination to turn their bad luck around.

The dialogue and story are studded with film references. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Errol Flynn in Robin Hood, "all for one and one for all," Cagney's voice saying "You dirty double-crossing skirt," Murphy's Law, "I never promised you a rose garden," Macbeth, El Norte, "this one for the Gipper," "somebody up there likes us" recalling the Story of Rocky Graziano.

Stereotypes abound. A taxi driver comments, "who's got time for that shit" about the movies. And no one in Hollywood reads. Actresses forgo love for men who can get them roles. And stereotypes are broken; the illegal Mexican gardener  Oneismo ends us being the man knows how to get things done, while the producer and writer and director do the grunt work and are mistaken for Mexican illegals.

I did enjoy the story. It made me laugh (and flinch) and the plot twists were fun.  I can see it as a movie.

I received a free ebook from the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Available now $5.99 on Kindle, $11 paperback

Oh, Scrap! Fabulous Quilts That Make the Most of Your Stash

Seen on the cover is Izzy Squared, a Granny Square block that I just love

If there is one thing quilters abound in, it is scraps, fabrics left over from projects and set aside as too precious to toss, hopefully to be utilized in a project. Someday.

Well, that day has come!

Lissa Alexander's new book Oh, Scrap! has a dozen of the yummiest projects utilizing scraps. 

Awesome Land, 701.2" x 93", is made up of 6" blocks. It even has a scrappy binding.

Premier quilt historian Barbara Brackman offers a preface, Musings on the History of Scrap Quilting, which is well worth reading. Lissa addresses her background as a quilter and marketing director for Moda Fabrics before offering basics of color theory as it relates to scrap quilting.

This gorgeous Burgoyne Surrounded finishes at 75 1/2" x 93 1/2"'
"It's all about the value", Lissa says.

Lissa suggests pulling out all your favorite scraps and making a swatch card to envision how the colors go together. Or, you can use precuts.

Sherbert Stars is so beautiful. The 81 3/4" x 82 3/4" quilt is easier than it looks.

How do you store your scraps? Lissa has suggestions. I have two towers meant to store shoes, filled with my fat quarters and folded scraps, stored by color. I cut smaller scraps into various squares and store them in baggies by size. Lissa uses refrigerator bins.

Each Bock in Splendid Scraps is made of four Starting Point blocks, her contribution to
Pat Sloan's Splendid Sampler project.

These quilts will inspire you. I love the bright, clear pastels and medium colors she used.

Kismet is a Courthouse Steps version created by Melissa Corry

Indian Blanket is all about light and dark value contrast. It is constructed
with half-square triangles.

The instructions are excellent, with great color photos and drawings and alternative colorways and sizes.

Fireworks was constructed with Cake Mix triangle papers and 10" Layer Cake squares.

Are you inspired to get our your scraps? I am!

I received a free ebook from the publisher through Edelweiss in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Laura & Emma by Kate Greathead

Laura & Emma by Kate Greathead follows the relationship between mothers and daughters, told in vignettes against the changing times between 1980 and 1995. It is a comedy of manners novel with loads of laugh out loud moments.

Laura comes from a wealthy New York City family descended from a Robber Baron whose inherited wealth supports her. She has a degree in English and a job through the family. She envies self-made people.

Laura has never been in love. Her mother's favorite saying is that it doesn't matter who you marry--you will end up thinking, "Anything would be better than this!"

The book begins with Laura pondering that a husband would be nice to have around the apartment if the window were swollen or the fire detector battery needed replacing. She wouldn't have to wait until morning to call the super.

She dresses in Fry boots and a flowered Laura Ashley skirt and turtleneck sweater--a uniform she wears all of her life. (I had those fry boots and made a Ralph Lauren full skirt. Unlike Laura, they went to the Goodwill long before the 1980s were over!) She has no intention of having children, no interest in marrying. She is concerned about the environment. She has The Enchanted Broccoli Forest and Moosewood cookbooks but rarely cooks.

In 1980 while her parents are away, she stays at their home for a week. She is surprised that a man is also staying there. She assumes he is a friend of her brothers, and he does tell her stories of their time together in boarding school. Before the week is out, he charms her into bed with him. The next day he is gone.

He was not a friend of her brother's but a house-crashing burglar. The one-night stand leaves her pregnant. Laura makes up a story of artificial insemination with donated Swedish sperm. Emma is born, and Laura does her best as a mother, hoping to give Emma a life different from hers, apart from artificial high society values. She finds an apartment on the border of Harlem--but on the 'right side' of the street.

I laughed out loud so many times. Laura goes on a date and notices the man has earrings. She decides they aren't meant to be, but the earrings turn out to be his daughter's stickers.

Laura's friend Margaret explains she has joined "the club", seeing a "shrink." After years of marriage, she sometimes looks at her sleeping husband, whose snoring keeps her awake, and thinks that it is a good thing she didn't have a gun in her bedside table.

Don't worry, things turn out fine for the marriage. But what a clever scene to talk about the idea that "it doesn't matter who you marry, one day you'll be sitting across the table from him, thinking, Anything would be better than this." I'm pretty sure husbands think the same thing about wives. I'll ask mine the next time I am wearing sweatpants and a sweatshirt to keep warm--my Oompa Loompa look according to him.

The book was promoted in terms of, "if you liked Ladybird or Gilmore Girls." Gilmore Girls included a single mom at odds with her wealthy parents, and Ladybird showed a teenager wanting the freedom to find her own way. The themes are similar.

We learn about Laura by her actions and passivity. She is the least self-aware character imaginable. Her inner conflicts are hinted at without an overt authorial voice. We make connections about Laura by implication.

Emma, on the other hand, is sharp as a tack. As a preschooler she asks Laura why they don't live "in their neighborhood," that is where their friends and stores are.

I know readers who do not like this book because 1) it is episodic, without a strong linear plot; 2) it is character-driven without a lot of inner dialogue; and, 3) it is open-ended.

But I enjoyed it. I love a good comedy of manners. Laura's inability to deal with adult intimate relationships, Emma's zeroing in on the inconsistencies of their lives, and the gaps between mothers and daughters all feel real.

I received an ARC from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Laura & Emma
by Kate Greathead
Simon & Schuster
Publication Date: March 13, 2018
$25 hardcover
ISBN: 9781501182402

Waking Lions: The Complexity of Our Choices

While driving in the desert at night, distracted by the most beautiful moon he has ever seen, Dr. Eitan Green hits a man. A brain surgeon, he knows the man will not live. He makes the decision to drive on, leaving the dying man. He won't risk his career by reporting the accident.

He does not know he left behind a clue or that the dying man's wife Sirkit witnessed the accident. She blackmails the doctor: he will spend his nights at a makeshift clinic caring for her fellow Eritrean refugees.

A man who prefers to live in order, who shuns the blood and shit of human frailty, the doctor is thrust into the dirty, ugly side of life. But as he works with the tall, proud woman, he comes to admire her skill and to secretly lust for her.

Dr. Green's wife is a detective on the case of the hit-and-run victim. She struggles with her husband's absence, sure he is not cheating on her, yet sensing something is not right.

Waking Lions by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen, beautifully translated from the Hebrew by Sondra Silverston, is a remarkable novel that probes the complexity of our moral choices. People do bad things or good things, for bad reasons or good ones, culminating in earned or unearned outcomes. It is about power shifts, the prejudice between Israelis, Bedouins, and African Eritreans, the refugee experience, the mystery of never really knowing one another, and how the privileged class can turn away from the uncomfortable and live in a sterile world of their own making.

The story is told by an omniscient narrator who knows the thoughts of the characters, without dialogue. Twists create an unexpectedly propulsive, action plot line. It is a memorable novel.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Waking Lions
Ayelet Gundar-Goshen
Little, Brown, and Company
$9.99 paperback
ISBN: 9780316395403

Tomorrow Will Be Different: Love, Loss and the Fight for Trans Equality

"I'm twenty-four, transgender, and a widow...that's a lot for someone in this society to handle." Sarah McBride

In Tomorrow Will Be Different, Sarah McBride shares her personal story as inspiration and to put a face on what it is to be transgender.

Imagine being unable to go into a public restroom in North Carolina without breaking the law. Imagine being unable to change your sex on your state ID, or being unable to keep a job or find housing. Imagine being vilified, ostracized, beaten up, an object of fear.

Nearly fifty years ago my husband 's father's best friend disowned his son when he became a woman. Over the years I heard snippets of the story, how as a child their son loved to play dolls and dress up with his older sisters, how blame was assigned for causing their son's 'problem', the resulting divorce and alienation.

In the 1990s my husband was approached by a teen from his church, an unhappy and angry child. Some thought she was presenting 'butch' because she was not conventionally pretty, assuming she was a 'pretend lesbian'. My husband affirmed her, but the support she needed from the community was not there. She changed her name and moved away. Today I know he was transgender, and I see on his Facebook page a happy, confident, burly guy with a successful career and a sparkle in his eye. I am so happy for him.

I wanted to read Tomorrow Will Be Different by Sarah McBride because I had seen her on television and knew she was an intelligent and lovely person. And I wanted to better understand her experience and the work toward equality for all persons.

The book's preface by Joe Biden is a must read. I recently read his Promise Me, Dad and I heard the same compassion and love in this preface.

McBride was fascinated by American politics since childhood. Meeting Joe Biden was an unforgettable moment. She interned on Beau Biden's first race. McBride was fifteen when she introduced Jack Markell at the launch for his 2006 race for reelection as state treasurer, and at age eighteen when he ran for governor.

During these years, McBride outwardly conformed to the gender role socially acceptable, presenting masculine and even dating. She did not want to let anyone down. But she was miserable.

McBride ran for student president at college to great success and was very popular and led a push to end gender exclusive housing.  In her junior year, with great trepidation, McBride announced being transsexual.

She describes the scene when she came out to her family, her mother in tears. McBride had a gay brother, and her other brother tried to break the ice by announcing, "I'm heterosexual." In a heartwarming scene, McBride tells her fraternity brothers, who enveloped her in an embrace. Beau Biden called her to offer his love and support, as did Joe Biden. The Biden family confirmed her belief that there are still good people in politics.

McBride repeats how lucky and privileged she has been, knowing that most trans persons lack a support system and her advantages. Throughout the book, she shares the devastating statistics behind the transgender experience: high rates of suicide; verbal harassment and physical assault in public restrooms; legal exemptions that allow discrimination; inability to find housing or keep a job.

McBride met the love of her life, Andy, who was a few years older and also trans. Tragedy struck when Andy was diagnosed with cancer and underwent surgery and treatment with McBride providing care and support.

I can't imagine the burden of being twenty-three and watching your beloved struggle with a terminal illness. Both my parents died of cancer, and I was at my Dad's side in the hospital for over two months. My heart broke as I read McBride's story.

Trans rights advanced under President Obama,  then 2016 saw the election of President Trump and Vice President Pence. The gains for equality under the law are being threatened. But McBride has found hope in the young people of our country, those who have been accepted as children for who they are, and who assume that the doors are open to them.

I pray it is so.

I received a free ebook from First to Read in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Tomorrow Will Be Different: Love, Loss, and the Fight for Trans Equality
Sarah McBride

Jingle Bell Jack, a 1955 Yo-Yo Clown Doll

I remember Ding Dong School on television. And I remember owning this book when I was a girl. What I don't remember is ever making or having a yo-yo doll. Every girl had a yo-yo doll and a sock monkey, and I wanted them, too.

This Rand McNally book dates from 1955. It tells the story of a girl who loved the circus clown she had seen, who had been wearing bells. Her mother shows the girl how to make her own circus clown, a yo-yo doll with bells.

Yo-yos are very simple to make. Circles are cut from fabric scraps. A basting thread is sewn along the edge so that when the thread is drawn the fabric forms a circle.

I found a tutorial online at
http://sunshinescreations.vintagethreads.com/2006/10/how-to-make-yo-yo-friend.html

The yo-yo circles are sewn together with a heavier thread to make the arms and legs of the doll.

 At the end of each unit is a bell. The head, collar, and a hat is added.

 The girl has her own clown with bells, Jingle Bell Jack.

A quick search online shows various ways of making the clown's face. In the book, the girl uses crayons to add the features. Many dolls have premade plastic faces. The tutorial shows how to make the head with fabric.

I found this copy of Jingle Bell Jack at the Royal Oak Farmer's Market from Acron Books. The owner, Jim Deak, told me a story about Miss Frances--Dr. Frances R. Horwich--whose program I watched as a preschooler. The Ding Dong School program was never expected to succeed, and when it took off Miss Frances was asked to turn it into an hour-long show. She said children should not be watching that much television! Then she was pressured to allow advertising for a BB gun, which she declined to do. She resigned over this issue, but her resignation was not accepted.

Miss Frances paved the way for children's television programming that was educational while considering the needs of children, including Mr. Rogers.

You can see an episode of Ding Dong School in which Miss Frances turns a handkerchief into a bunny on Youtube at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ad6UxxL4yi8

***See the Jingle Bell Jack I later found at a flea market! I finally have my doll!
https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2018/03/jingle-bell-jack-comes-to-my-house.html

First Ladies of the Republic: Creating a Democratic Style

I began reading about the First Ladies while designing my quilt Remember the Ladies. I have read many biographies and general books on these amazing women.

The wives of our presidents are not elected. They have no job description. Some come to the White House unwillingly, although some did push their spouse into office. They face the deepest public scrutiny and share with their husbands both fame and criticism.

The first First Ladies had the hardest (unpaid) job: everything about the office of the presidency had to be invented. And a lot of it fell on the ladies, for they handled the social networking. If the president and his lady appeared to ape European courtly traditions they were accused of being monarchists and anti-Democratic. But we could not appear to be backwoods rubes to the foreign ambassadors, either.

First Ladies of the Republic: Martha Washington, Abigail Adams, Dolley Madison, and the Creation of an Iconic American Role by Jeanne E. Abrams shows how these women responded to the challenge of creating a Democratic social style for the presidency.

Martha and George Washington were revered figures when George became the first president. Don't think they were exempt from criticism! The political in-fighting and party politics started up right away. Like many presidential couples, the Washington's personalities balanced each other. George could be stiff, but Martha was beloved by everyone, America's sweetheart-- "the mother of our country."

As the wife of the first Vice President, Abigail Adams became very close to Martha. When John Adams became president, Abigail followed Martha's pared-down, understated formality. Abigail was a very different personality, of the highest intelligence and not afraid to speak her mind. She was an important sounding board for John. Frail health plagued her and when her health required her to retire to the Adam's home in Quincy, John sorely missed her counsel.

Thomas Jefferson's wife had tragically died during the war after she fled from their plantation shortly after giving birth. His daughter Patsy sometimes played hostess. Sometimes his Secretary of State's wife Dolley Madison stepped in. Jefferson downplayed his elegant and sophisticated taste with a forceful display of anti-elitism, welcoming guests in bedroom slippers.

With the intellectual James Madison's election, his younger wife Dolley Madison took the capital by storm. A brilliant extrovert with a high social IQ, she notched the style up a few ratchets. Her 'squeezes' included all of Washington, bringing together political enemies, men and women. Dolley had high style, refined and dignified but with real bling. Well, she wore pearls instead of diamonds, so we give her that. When Dolley died her funeral rivaled that of George Washington's!

Each woman advanced the role of First Lady, politically for their influence on the president and their ability to tweak the granting of political office, and by promoting causes. All three valued the traditional role of women but also understood that it was women who determined social manners.

This book is a nice introduction to these ladies and their influence.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

First Ladies of the Republic: Martha Washington, Abigail Adams, Dolley Madison, and the Creation of an Iconic American Role
by Jeanne E. Abrams
NYU Press
Pub Date: 06 Mar 2018
ISBN: 9781479886531
Hardcover $28.95

Remember the Ladies: The President's Wives in Redwork
by Nancy A. Bekofske

Remember the Ladies from Quilts Presidential and Patriotic
by Susan Reich