Northanger Abbey

This month my library book club read Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen. I believe I last read it at university in my year-long course on Austen--in 1978! It is Jane's funniest novel.

Northanger Abbey was written with the title Susan in 1798 and was sold to a publisher in 1803 for 10 pounds. The publisher put it aside...paper had become too expensive...and Jane tried in vain to get the manuscript returned. She wanted to update it. It was not published until 1817, after Jane's death, when Cassandra changed the title to Northanger Abbey.

Jane knew the novel had become dated and wanted to rewrite it. So when it was finally published, it had become a story set in the past instead of a contemporary novel.

I laughed my way through the story. I was glad to hear another reader also laughed. I love Jane's wit and satire of social manners and parody of the popular Gothic novels.

1807 illustration of a gentleman inviting a lady to dance

Several readers felt the first volume was slow, and they hated Isabella's fawning over Catherine. But in the second volume, the readers found their interest piqued and sped through to the end.

"No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy would have supposed her born to be an heroine. Her situation in life, the character of her father and mother, her own person and disposition, were all equally against her."--Northanger Abbey 

Jane parodies the typical novels of her time by presenting Catherine Morland, a seventeen-year-old with nothing 'romantic' about her. She was a tomboy until fifteen and now is 'almost pretty.' She had never had a crush on a boy since she only met those she grew up with. Her father is a clergyman and her mother has birthed ten children. Jane throws Catherine into the exciting social mecca of Bath, hosted by a childless well-off couple, the Allens.

Catherine is truly an innocent abroad. She has never encountered prevarication, flattery, wits, rattles, and gold-diggers. She has no idea of what is socially acceptable for a young lady and the Allens fail to give her advice.

The first people Catherine and the Allens met are the Thorpe family. Isabella Thorpe grabs hold of Catherine, declaring her warmest friendship. Her brother  John, a school friend of Catherine's brother James, endeavors to impress her with his equipage. He curses (d---d) and twice uses the anti-Semite remark "rich as a Jew." He brags and lies and has nothing redeeming about him. Catherine soon gets his number and wearies of him.

“Lord help you! You women are always thinking of men's being in liquor. Why, you do not suppose a man is overset by a bottle? I am sure of this—that if everybody was to drink their bottle a day, there would not be half the disorders in the world there are now. It would be a famous good thing for us all."  (John Thorpe)

“I cannot believe it." (Catherine Morland)

“Oh! Lord, it would be the saving of thousands. There is not the hundredth part of the wine consumed in this kingdom that there ought to be. Our foggy climate wants help." (John)

“And yet I have heard that there is a great deal of wine drunk in Oxford.” (Catherine)

“Oxford! There is no drinking at Oxford now, I assure you. Nobody drinks there. You would hardly meet with a man who goes beyond his four pints at the utmost. Now, for instance, it was reckoned a remarkable thing, at the last party in my rooms, that upon an average we cleared about five pints a head. It was looked upon as something out of the common way. Mine is famous good stuff, to be sure. You would not often meet with anything like it in Oxford—and that may account for it. But this will just give you a notion of the general rate of drinking there.” (John)

“Yes, it does give a notion,” said Catherine warmly, “and that is, that you all drink a great deal more wine than I thought you did.”

Isabella and Catherine are fans of the 'horrid' Gothic novels, especially Maria Radcliff's Mysteries of Udolpho. John, on the other hand, is quite illiterate.

"Have you ever read Udolpho, Mr. Thorpe?” 

“Udolpho! Oh, Lord! Not I; I never read novels; I have something else to do...Novels are all so full of nonsense and stuff; there has not been a tolerably decent one come out since Tom Jones, except The Monk; I read that t'other day; but as for all the others, they are the stupidest things in creation.”

“I think you must like Udolpho, if you were to read it; it is so very interesting.”

“Not I, faith! No, if I read any, it shall be Mrs. Radcliffe's; her novels are amusing enough; they are worth reading; some fun and nature in them.”

“Udolpho was written by Mrs. Radcliffe,” said Catherine, with some hesitation, from the fear of mortifying him.

When James shows up, it becomes clear that Isabella is trying to engage James's affection while her brother is after Catherine. The Thorpes believe the Morlands are well off and will be the Allen's heirs.

Catherine meets a young man destined to be her romantic hero, in the form of Henry Tilney, a clergyman seven years her senior. He is hardly a 'romantic' hero, not quite handsome, a tease who likes to show his superiority of experience at Catherine's expense. He is a reader who esteems the novel.

Henry teases Catherine and teaches Catherine, who does not mind. Her naivety and transparent preference for him engages Henry's attention and he begins to consider her as a likely wife. Miss Tilney befriends Catherine, a sensible friend for her.

Isabella and John do everything they can to keep Catherine and Henry apart. Catherine is 'kidnapped' by the Thorpes for a carriage ride when she was to meet Henry and his sister for a walk. She entreats John to stop, to no avail.

Illustration by C.E. Brock. John 'kidnapping' Catherine

Catherine makes her apologies by going to the Tilney's residence and rushing in, unannounced. It a childish and impetuous act. It also shows her native goodness and honesty and complete lack of pretentiousness.

Catherine is invited to spend several weeks with Henry and Miss Tilney at their family home, Northanger Abbey.

"She was to be their chosen visitor, she was to be for weeks under the same roof with the person whose society she mostly prized—and, in addition to all the rest, this roof was to be the roof of an abbey! Her passion for ancient edifices was next in degree to her passion for Henry Tilney—and castles and abbeys made usually the charm of those reveries which his image did not fill. To see and explore either the ramparts and keep of the one, or the cloisters of the other, had been for many weeks a darling wish, though to be more than the visitor of an hour had seemed too nearly impossible for desire." 

On the journey to the Abbey, Henry fills Catherine's head with 'horrid' visions of the Abbey. Catherine is disappointed to find a modernized home instead of the Medieval ruins she had envisioned. Still, her she works herself into imaging horrid fantasies involving General Tilney and unawares reenacts a scene from Radcliffe's novel and is chastised by Henry for allowing her imagination to run wild.

"Dear Miss Morland, consider the dreadful nature of the suspicions you have entertained. What have you been judging from? Remember the country and the age in which we live. Remember that we are English, that we are Christians. Consult your own understanding, your own sense of the probable, your own observation of what is passing around you."

Illustration by Hugh Thompson; Catherine runs into Henry while investigating the abbey

The real horror is to come.

Mislead by John Thorpe into believing Catherine was a great heiress, General Tilney welcomes her into his home as a prospective daughter-in-law. Meanwhile, Isabella has managed to get engaged to James but discovers he has only a modest income. When the eldest Tilney son and heir flirts with Isabella she sets her cap to secure his affections. Her brother John informs General Tilney that the Morlands were not heirs to great wealth, and the General turns Catherine out. She is sent seventy miles to her home unaccompanied in a public carriage, a brutal and unfeeling slight. She could fall victim to any kind of evil--men abusing her, stealing from her, kidnapping her--

When Catherine arrives home unexpectedly, Mrs. Morland is nonplussed. She comments that Catherine was always such a scatterbrain, perhaps it did her good to have to take care of herself. Like the Allens, the Morlands are not very good parents.

Being an Austen novel, a wish-fulfillment ending brings Catherine her heart's desire.

During the time when Jane had sold her manuscript and was awaiting its publication, she lived in Bath where most of the action takes place. She was formed a deep friendship with her brother's governess, Anne Sharp, who was also an aspiring playwright. Read about their relationship in A Secret Sisterhood by Emily Midorikawa and Emma Claire Sweeney. To learn more about Jane's home in Bath read Jane Austen at Home by Lucy Worsley. See illustrations from Northanger Abbey editions at Molland's Circulating Library. Read about how Austen has been interpreted in illustrations, stage, and screen in The Making of Jane Austen by Devoney Looser.

*****

My son gave me Polite Society: The Jane Austen Board Game for Mother's Day!

Polite Society Board Game against my quilt
Regency Redwork, inspired by Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Teach Me to Machine Quilt from Pat Sloan

I knew the day would come.

In 1991 I learned the quilt stitch and for years enjoyed spending a few hours every evening hand quilting. Now twenty-six years later, instead of quilting a bed-sized quilt in two or four months it took me two winters. TWO WINTERS. In the meantime, I finished six or more quilt tops.

I hauled a pile of quilt tops to a machine quilter in January. It is now May and I have not got one back. And when I do, I know I had better have a wheelbarrow to carry what I am going to owe her.

The day has come...to learn how to machine quilt my quilt projects.

Luckily, the marvelous Pat Sloan has prepared a book for people like me, a step-by-step, illustrated, simplified, marvelous resource! She covers all the bases, including how to quilt with a walking foot and free motion quilting.

And if we still have reservations about tackling machine quilting, Pat includes multiple patterns for quilt projects and then walks us through machine quilting them.

Thank you, Pat! You have thought of everything.

Pat offers the above simple Strippy Table Runner, 16 1/2" x 36 1/2" to learn walking foot quilting. The instructions include hints like how to prevent bowing when joining long strips and using Jelly Rolls.

This adorable Mini Charm Star, 28 1/2" x 28 1/2",  is another walking foot project. Just think of the scraps you could use...the color variations...

I like applique', and am glad that Pat offers applique' projects, too. I know a lot of people who would love My Little Kitty, 12 1/2" x 15 1/2", which uses fusible applique, blanket stitching, and walking foot quilting. SO easy!

Another simple fusible applique project is Winter Bliss, 24 1/2" x 28 1/2", a sweet snowman hanging out with his friend. Pat guides readers in making the bias stems and the free motion quilting.

Larger projects include Cherry Pie, 65 1/2" x 81 1/2", which uses a combination of machine walking foot and free motion quilting. Michigan is known for its cherries and I am imagining a quilt with cherry print fabrics...yum!

Mexican Rose, 56 1/2" x 56 1/2", was inspired by a vintage quilt. I love floral applique quilts! The wide border is a chance to highlight an amazing fabric you can't bear to cut.

Blue Lagoon is a Rail Fence variation, 64 1/2" x 72 1/2". Pat quilted with free motion swirls to counterpoint the straight lines.

See more of the projects at That Patchwork Place here.

I am eager to try my hand at machine quilting again. I have done some projects but without Pat's knowledge under my belt, and I think I will be more pleased with the results after reading Teach Me To Machine Quilt!

I received a free ebook from the publisher through Edelweiss.

from the publisher's website:

Pat Sloan teaches everything a first-time quilter needs to know to machine quilt successfully, going step-by-step through walking foot and free-motion quilting techniques. 

Popular teacher, designer, and online radio host Pat Sloan teaches all you need to know to machine quilt successfully. In this third book of her beginner-friendly "Teach Me" series, Pat guides you step by step through walking-foot and free-motion quilting techniques. First-time quilters will be confidently quilting in no time, and experienced stitchers will discover the joy of finishing their quilts themselves. 

No-fear learning for quilting novices--Pat covers all the information you need to quilt from start to finish. 

Pat guides you through simple and fun practice projects, including a strip-pieced table runner and an easy applique design. 

Collect the entire skill-building library of Pat Sloan's popular "Teach Me" series of books.

That Time When The White House Was Condemned, Gutted, and Sold as Souviniers

The Hidden White House: Harry Truman and the Reconstruction of America’s Most Famous Residence by Robert Klara was is about the 1949-53 rebuilding of the president's mansion, revealing its secrets while offering an interesting view of President Truman's character.

It was fascinating to learn that the building was literally falling apart because earlier restorations had left original beams that had been burned in the 1812 fire! Over the years, modernization to add heating, gas, electric, and plumbing cut into beams and retaining walls. The original footing was never meant to hold the expanding house. The house, after all, was built in a swamp.

President Truman and his family moved into a haunted house, footsteps and noises heard at night. Actually, it was the wood expanding and contracting with temperature changes. And when the president moved his huge desk and books into his study, a few visitors more stressed the floor beams. Truman and his daughter Margaret had their pianos sitting side by side for family musicals. It was all too much for the old house to handle.

It was time to check things out, a fifty-year check up as it were since it was last remodeled under President Teddy Roosevelt.

The structure was found to be so bad that the building had to be gutted to the sandstone outer walls! And even they were falling apart in places.

Meantime, the economy was adjusting from WWII and the Korean conflict was beginning. Getting money out of Congress was a battle, and so was every decision down to the wallpaper. The original wood trim, windows, fireplaces, and wood panels were sent into storage but proved too costly to restore; it was cheaper to make new. Sovineer relics were sold to raise money. And tons of the house were repurposed at other federal buildings--and sent to the dump.

President Truman and his family were relegated to Blair House, which proved insecure when an assassination attempt caused the death of several guards. He drove the security people mad by insisting on walking to work every day.

The president pushed to get the work done quickly, hoping to live a year in the new house. But haste made waste--and mistakes. Three years and $5.8 million later, the house was finished. The sewing room lacked electric outlets. Only four rooms were refitted with their original interiors. Everyone was finding fault.
Eleanor Roosevelt pronounced that the house looked like a Sheridan hotel! The mass-produced furniture was all that could be afforded. No wonder Jackie Kennedy pressed to restore the decor to original pieces.

There is nothing worse than a job coming with a house. You never know what you are going to get. As a clergy wife, for me it was parsonages that flooded, had cockroaches and mice, rattling drafty windows, iced over closets in winter, water that turned whites orange, and an antique pink refrigerator.

For the Trumans, there were rats, worn out carpets and furniture and drapes, and a house in danger of collapse. Plus three years in temporary housing that was inadequate in every way. I had it better.

I enjoyed learning about the people involved and the history and process of the rebuilding. It was an enjoyable read.

I received an ebook as a gift.

https://www.whitehousehistory.org/the-hidden-white-house-the-truman-renovation-1948-1952

David Sederis Does It Again: Calypso

As the Detroit Symphony Orchestra concert was airing on Livestream I opened my ebook and began to read. I was soon laughing out loud. A few paragraphs later I laughed even longer and harder. I had to read out loud to my hubby. And then I knew. I could not read Calypso by David Sedaris while listening to the symphony.

I could not read it in bed. I would laugh my husband awake. When could I read it? During the day, with the windows open to let in the fresh spring air, so inviting after a very, very, long winter? What would the neighbors think?

Sedaris, Sedaris. You are such a problem, I thought.

Then I felt like I was on a roller coaster ride because the next story was about David's youngest sister's suicide. All of the siblings had pulled away from the family to "forge our own identities," he explained; except Tiffany stayed away. And later in the book, he remembers his mother's alcoholism and her early death, his father's eccentricities, living with a defunct stove so his kids could inherit more money.

You laugh, you shudder, you feel slightly ill, and you feel sad. Because Sedaris is ruthless enough to write about life, real life, his life in particular, and we all see our own families and own lives in his stories.

I loved Sedaris's chapter on the terrible tyranny of his Fitbit, and how he was adamant that he got to keep his fatty tumor to feed to a turtle. That crazy moment with his dad drove past a man exposing himself and then u-turned to take another look, his young daughter in the car.

Looking at family photos, Sedaris recalled "that moment in a family's life when everything is golden" and the future held promise. In middle age, looking forward ten years "you're more likely to see a bedpan than a Tony Award."

Ouch. Too close to home, David.

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

Calypso
by David Sedaris
Little, Brown and Company
Pub Date 29 May 2018
ISBN 9780316392389
PRICE $28.00 (USD)

Lighting the Fires of Freedom: African American Women in the Civil Rights Movement

Fifty years ago the Civil Rights Act of 1968 was signed into law.

Most know the name, legacy, and speeches of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King.

And most have heard of his wife Coretta Scott King and activist Rosa Parks. But what about the countless other women involved with the Civil Rights Movement? Those who did the grunt work, who put their lives on the line, who strove to achieve what the culture said they could not do?



Getting Personal

When I made my quilt I Will Lift My Voice Like a Trumpet I was inspired by the Abolitionists and Civil Rights who I encountered in reading Freedom's Daughters by Lynne Olson. My embroidered quilt includes an image and quote from women who made a difference but are not well known. The quilt appeared in several American Quilt Society juried shows.

I Will Lift My Voice Like a Trumpet at the Grand Rapids AQS show

When I saw Lighting the Fires of Freedom: African American Women and the Civil Rights Movement by Janet Dewart Bell on NetGalley I quickly requested it. I was interested in meeting more of these courageous, but lesser-known women.

Going Deeper

The author interviewed and collected oral histories of nine women for this book:

• Leah Chase, whose restaurant was a meeting place for organizers, was a collector of African American art and was commemorated by Pope Benedict XVI for her service.
• Dr. June Jackson Christmas broke race barriers to gain admittance to Vassar, spoke out against the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII, was the only black female student in her medical school class, and fought housing discrimination to change New York City Law. 
• Aileen Hernandez became an activist at Howard University in the 1940s, was the first female and black to serve on the EEOC in 1964, and was the first African American president of NOW.
• Diane Nash chaired the Nashville Sit-In Movement and coordinated important Freedom Rides. 
• Judy Richardson joined the Students for a Democratic Society at Swarthmore College before leaving to join SNCC. She founded a bookstore and press for publishing and promoting black literature and was an associate producer for the acclaimed PBS series Eyes on the Prize.
• Kathleen Cleaver was active in SNCC, the Black Power Movement, the Black Panthers, and the Revolutionary People's Communication Network.
• Gay McDougall was the first to integrate Agnes Scott College; she worked for international human rights and was recognized with a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship.
• Gloria Richardson was an older adult during the movement, with a militant edge; Ebony magazine called her the Lady General of Civil Rights.
• Myrlie Evers's husband Medgar was the first NAACP field secretary in Mississippi. She was officially a secretary, but she 'did everything' and later championed gender equality.

Diane Nash. "Problems lie not as much in our action as in our inaction."

I was familiar with Diane Nash, who appears on my quilt. I only knew Myrlie Evers-Williams by association to her martyred husband Medgar.

For me, Evers' statement was most moving, revealing more about her emotional life and feelings. Her husband Medgar, a war veteran, was the first African American to apply to Ole Miss when he was recruited to work for the NAACP.

Myrlie organized events, researched for speeches, and even wrote some speeches while raising their family and welcoming visitors such as Thurgood Marshall to her home for dinner. It was a lot for a young woman. She is quoted as saying,
"It was an exciting but frightening time, because you stared at death every day...But there was always hope, and there were always people who surrounded you to give you a sense of purpose."

Medgar knew he was a target and encouraged her to believe in her strength.

After her husband was murdered in front of their own home, the NAACP would call on her to rally support and raise money, with no compensation. Meanwhile, she felt anger and outrage at what had happened. Medgar had dreamt about relocating to California some day, so Myrlie and her children moved.

Thinking back on the movement, Myrlie recognizes the struggle women had to be recognized for their work. And she bristles at being pigeonholed as Medgar's widow instead of being recognized for her accomplishments. It is wonderful that Myrlie was asked to deliver the prayer before President Obama's inaugural address.

Faith and trust and believe she ends, possibilities await. Be open. Be adventurous. Have a little fun.

That is good advice to us all. But coming from a woman whose husband made the ultimate sacrifice, it is an affirmation of great importance.

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

Lighting the Fires of Freedom: African American Women in the Civil Rights Movement
by Janet Dewart Bell
The New Press
Pub Date 08 May 2018
ISBN 9781620973356
PRICE $33.99 (CAD)

Warlight by Michael Ondaatje

"In 1945 our parents went away and left us in the care of two men who may have been criminals." Warlight

From the opening line, I fell into under the spell of Nathaniel's story about how he and his sister Rachel were abandoned at ages fourteen and sixteen to the care of relative strangers, their third-floor lodger, whom they called The Moth, and the Pimlico Dancer.

After their father departed, going to Asia for his work, never to be seen again, their mother stayed with them for two more weeks, sharing bits of her history, enough to lure them into understanding there was much more to her than they knew. Then suddenly she left them, too.

The Moth welcomes shady company into their home. The Darter brings a string of women, none of whom last long. The teens are left alone, sometimes for days.

Nathaniel discovers their mother's trunk is in the house. She had not left to join her husband. And The Moth wasn't talking. "He was brilliant," The Moth says of their father, "but he was not stable." Both parents are strangers to the teens.

Over the next years, Nathaniel lives in a complicated and uncertain world, accompanying The Darter on nighttime trips that are perhaps criminal activities, and working odd jobs during the day. He has a secret liaison with a girl in empty houses.

Years later, Nathaniel is approached to work in a government position that allows him access to files which he plumbs for information about his mother's war-related work. He visits people from his past. He pieces together who his mother truly was, the life she kept secret, the fear she lived with, and the lover who brought her into a world of danger.

Warlight is about a man's search for his mother, the story of the deeply etched marks left by a lost childhood, and an exploration of the stories we weave together just to survive.

I received a free ebook from First to Read.

Warlight
by Michael Ondaatje
Hardcover $26.95
Published by Knopf
May 08, 2018
ISBN 9780525521198

Winston Graham's Disturbing Suspense Novel Marnie

A few years ago we went to see Alfred Hitchcock's movie Marnie at the Redford Theater, a historic theater with an organ that shows classic movies. The theater is located in Detroit draws hundreds out for every show.

We went partly because Tippi Hedron was appearing in person, with talks before the movie and during intermission and autographing photos and posters. And we went because when I was ten years old I saw Marnie from the back seat of our family car at the local drive-in movie theater. I was supposed to be asleep. Just like when I was supposed to be asleep during The Birds and The Incredible Shrinking Man. Each movie left me with bad dreams, but it was Marnie that left me struggling to understand it.

So when at a local book sale I saw a battered paperback of Winston Graham's novel Marnie, released in conjunction with Hitchcock's movie, I spent my quarter and picked it up. Perhaps the book would help me to peg down the story.

Graham is best known for the Poldark series which inspired the Masterpiece Theater series of that name, which my husband has been reading. Marnie is set in England not long after WWII, and is told in the first person. We learn that Marnie grew up in a tough neighborhood with a dad lost in the war and a strict but distant mother. Marnie gets into fights and steals and lies. Her mother insists her daughter avoid men.

When Marnie buys a horse she must find a way to support him, and being a smart gal, she plans and executes a series of thefts, assuming false identities to obtain jobs where she can get her hands on money. She is twenty-three when she has finished another heist and her employer Mark Rutland tracks her down.

Mark has fallen in love with the beautiful Marnie. She warns him that she is a liar and thief, but Mark insists he can't control his heart. He offers her an ultimatum: he can turn her in and she will be imprisoned for her crimes, or she can marry him and he will cover for her.

Marnie can't stand to be close to anyone, is unable to love, and hates the thought of men and sex. Her horse is the only creature in the world she cares for. Forced to marry Mark, she won't submit to him as a wife should. Frustrated, he forces himself on her once, then they learn to live together in distant animosity and distrust.

Mark forces Marnie into counseling, but she is too clever for even the psychologist, continuing her habit of lies and false stories. Over time, men recognize Marnie from her past lives. And at the death of her mother, Marnie learns her mother's secret history and double life.

Different from Hitchcock's version, Graham's version of the mother's crisis is not of Marnie's doing. And Graham includes a co-worker of Mark's who tries to cozy up to Marnie, and ends up betraying her.

Marnie is one messed up girl, but Mark is perhaps even sicker. He marries Marnie for her physical beauty in spite of her inability to feel emotion that allows her to plot crimes without a sense of wrongdoing. He entraps Marnie and even rapes her when she is not complicit. He is willing to cover up her crimes and endeavors to even enlist the help of a retired judge to figure out how Marnie can avoid the consequences of her crimes.

Marnie returns to her mother's house to discover she has died.  She finds a newspaper clipping telling that her mother had murdered her newborn baby, which had been kept from Marnie.

Graham offers a moment of hope for Marnie near the end of the book. At a fox hunt, she feels revulsion of the cruelty of those around her, questioning why their killing for pleasure was legal when her crimes would merit jail. She turns from the death scene of the fox, allowing her horse his head, Mark chasing after her. Unfamiliar with the landscape, her horse jumps over a hedge and onto a riverbank, suffering a fatal injury. Marnie also falls, and so does Mark, his face in the mud. Marnie leaves her suffering horse to save Mark, lifting him from the mud and wiping it from his nose. There is a glimmer of morality and compassion in her choice.

She later meets a bereft boy who has lost his mother and she holds him.

"I thought, that's right, be a mother for a change. Bite on somebody else's grief instead of your own. Stop being to heartbroken for yourself and take a look round. Because maybe everybody's griefs arent'that much different after all. I thought, there's only one loneliness, and that's the loneliness of all the world."

Just before the twisted ending, Marnie, feeling all 'emotional and female and hopeless,' wonders if she was in love with Mark.

Marnie is the story of trauma, mental illness, crime, deception, and a man's sick obsession with a woman.

It is little wonder that I have been disturbed by this story for about fifty years. And it is little wonder that the twisted Hitchcock wanted to film it. Poor Tippi-- Hitchcock derailed her career when she rebuffed his sexual advances. Her studio contract gave her no options, including legal ones.

Fifty years later, Tippi at age 87 cheered the actresses standing up against the abuse suffered under Harvey Weinstein, as seen in her Tweet of October 2017:

Now I am filled with compassion and respect for Tippi's standing up to power, speaking out her truth, and for introducing a film that was at once her triumph and secret tragedy.

Pauli Murray: Poet, Protester, Priest

I first read about Pauli Murray while researching women abolitionists and Civil Rights leaders for my quilt I Will Lift My Voice Like A Trumpet. I was pleased to be granted access to the e-galley of Pauli's memoir, first published in 1987, now available in a new edition. The forward is by Patricia Bell-Scott, author of The Firebrand and the First Lady: Portrait of a Friendship: Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Struggle for Justice.

Pauli was born in 1910 and was raised by her school teacher aunt. Pauli was a gifted student who attended Hunter College in New York City. During the Depression, she found employment with the WPA as a teacher and began to publish her poetry and a novel. She found a mentor in Stephen Vincent Benet.

During the war years and early 1950s Pauli became involved with Civil Rights, challenging segregation, and formed a relationship with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. In 1941 she began her law studies at Howard University and helped to form CORE and the development of passive resistance.

Harvard law school would not accept Pauli based on her sex. She attended the University of California Boalt School of Law. Her thesis was on equal opportunity in employment. With her color and sex against her, Pauli had trouble making a living practicing law.

In 1956 she published a book on her family history, Proud Shoes: The Story of an American Family. She taught law in Ghana for several years. Back in the US she resumed work in Civil Rights and became active as a feminist and was an organizer for NOW.

In her later life, Pauli worked for equal opportunity for women as church leaders. She became the first African American woman ordained to the Episcopal priesthood.

Pauli saw huge changes in her lifetime. At her birth, she was labeled colored but chose to use the designation Negro. During the rise of black power movements, she resisted the term black, resenting its lowercase nomenclature. She was a pacifist and anti-segregationist who had trouble with the rise of Black Power movements and the younger generation's demands for separate campus organizations. Early she was attracted to Socialism and spent her last years as in the priesthood.

The memoir is filled with details about the work for Civil Rights prior to the more known stories of Rosa Park and Martin Luther King, Jr. There are vivid descriptions of traveling in the Jim Crow south, the closed doors to her race and her sex, the poverty she and her educated family endured.

Pauli's voice is direct and open. She admits to her ignorance and mistakes, her learning curves and limitations. Her accomplishments speak for her determination and courage.

It was wonderful to hear, in her own voice, Pauli's amazing life.

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

Pauli Murray on my quilt I Will Lift My Voice Like a Trumpet

I Will Lift My Voice Like a Trumpet by Nancy A. Bekofske

From the publisher:

Poet, memoirist, labor organizer, and Episcopal priest, Pauli Murray helped transform the law of the land. Arrested in 1940 for sitting in the whites-only section of a Virginia bus, Murray propelled that life-defining event into a Howard law degree and a fight against “Jane Crow” sexism. Her legal brilliance was pivotal to the overturning of Plessy v. Ferguson, the success of Brown v. Board of Education, and the Supreme Court’s recognition that the equal protection clause applies to women; it also connected her with such progressive leaders as Eleanor Roosevelt, Thurgood Marshall, Betty Friedan, and Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Now Murray is finally getting long-deserved recognition: the first African American woman to receive a doctorate of law at Yale, her name graces one of the university’s new colleges. Handsomely republished with a new introduction, Murray’s remarkable memoir takes its rightful place among the great civil rights autobiographies of the twentieth century.

Learn more about Murray at The Pauli Murray Project at the Duke Human Rights Center.

Song in a Weary Throat: Memoir of an American Pilgrimage
Pauli Murray, Patricia Bell-Scott (Introduction by)
Liveright/W. W. Norton
On Sale Date: May 8, 2018
ISBN: 9781631494581, 1631494589
Paperback $22.95

An Interview with Ellen Notbohm

I had the pleasure of talking to Ellen Notbohm about her first novel The River by Starlight, published by She Writes Press.

from the author's website:

An internationally renowned author, Ellen Notbohm has written award-winning books on autism and her articles and columns on such diverse subjects as history, genealogy, baseball, writing and community affairs have appeared in major publications. Ellen is an avid genealogist, knitter, beachcomber, and thrift store hound who has never knowingly walked by a used bookstore without going in and dropping coin.

Set a hundred years ago and inspired by a mysterious ancestor in Ellen's family tree, The River by Starlight is the story of Annie whose postpartum psychosis ended her first marriage and separated her from her daughter. Her brother invites her to join him in Montana and Annie is eager for a new start.

She meets Adam who is drawn to her fiery strength and quick mind. They marry and settle down to farm, at first prospering but later hit by climate change. Mental health issues follow a series of losses, including miscarriages and the death of a child, resulting in Annie's institutionalization. Yet Annie rises again to cobble together a meaningful life.

The book is a wonderful read, with sympathetic, conflicted. characters, snappy dialogue, and a vivid Montana setting. Through Annie's life, the novel considers how women's health issues have been treated in a patriarchal society. (Read my full review here.)

Annie's love for Adam is represented by a marriage quilt she made for his eyes only. She creates an quilt that displays her independent mind and spirit. Because I am a quilter, I began by asking about the quilt.

Nancy:
The quilt Annie makes Adam is a symbol of their connection and shared life. Please talk about how the quilt came into the story.

Ellen:
This question goes right to the intersection between writing fiction and drawing from true story. You have lots of facts and lots of gaps. You have to listen for direction with your third ear, as I call it.

I don’t know how the quilt came into the story; it just did. Knowing so little about Annie when I decided to write her story, I read extensively about the places she lived and the times during which she lived in those places. Piecing that research together—like a quilt—with the insights and information I was gathering about her and Adam specifically, I began to construct their world.

The quilt grew out of that, and how it grew! It became a touchstone for so many things. A symbol of their intimacy, as Annie won’t let anyone other than Adam see the quilt. A stark representation of gender differences, as Annie and Adam view the quilt’s role in their lives differently, as it exerts a different kind of power over each of them. And ultimately, the quilt becomes a standard bearer for resilience and hope.

Annie’s quilt isn’t the only one in the book. We learn that as a young girl, Annie was dismayed by the traditional wedding quilt made for her sister by friends—the neutral colors and strict symmetry of the tree pattern defied what Annie already knew to be true of life’s uneven trajectory. Her own vibrant quilt would be her counterpoint to that.

Crazy quilts and other quilt patterns Annie dismissed
Quilts from Pentwater, Michigan residents

Later in the book she encounters a very old quilt which also carries a message she needs to hear but almost misses. We also learn that she made her brother a quilt, “no-nonsense patchwork of duck cloth, corduroy, and denim” heavy enough to “keep her in her place” when she uses it.

Nancy:
There are detailed descriptions of the fabrics Annie chooses which are correct to their time, and not all novelists who include quilts in their stories are aware of fabric and quilt history. Is Annie's quilt based on any historic quilts you have seen?  Did you research quilting in the early 1900s?

Ellen:
Yes. The fabrics and colors described are authentic to the day. The traditional patterns Annie rejected—Log Cabin, Bear Paw, Wedding Ring, Crazy Quilt—were also authentic to the period. Annie’s quilt, The River by Starlight, is free-form, which didn’t become popular until much later, perhaps the 1970s.

In fiction, the writer can explore beyond the confines of what is actual, to what is plausible. It felt plausible to me that Annie would have come up with her own design, depicting a moment that would define the rest of her life. In moving to Montana, she broke free of so many of the constrictive elements of her life up to that point, it made sense to me that the quilt she conceived for a wholly unexpected turn of events would be somewhat daring.

She also broke with tradition in buying all new fabric for her quilt. In her time and economic class, quilts were most often pieced from fabric scraps of previous projects—dresses, shirts, curtains, etc. In a passage that, alas, was lost to the editing process,

Annie makes a “decadent” decision:

“She remembers a blouse she made for church in Iowa, in the bottom drawer, never worn. Yellow with tiny wheat sprigs, ideal for the moon. But no, she decides, and taps a bolt of blazing chrome orange. No castoffs, no tailor samples, no dress scraps for this quilt. This will be a quilt without any ties to any past. All new fabric, it’s a decadent splurge, but for what better purpose?”

I thoroughly enjoyed the book Border to Border: Historic Quilts and Quiltmakers of Montana by Annie Hanshew.  It didn’t influence my writing about my Annie’s quilt, as I was already several years deep into the writing about it. But the cover of the book did inspire me to write a scene wherein, at the end of her life, Annie makes a quilt for her daughter as a wedding gift. That one too fell to the editor’s knife, alas. But it lives on in my heart, so who knows where it might show up?

Nancy:
I read that you are a genealogist and that the novel is based on a true story. I would love to know about the inspiration story and how you decided to write about it. Did the actual people 'come to life' in your mind's eye?

Ellen:
Genealogists are familiar with the “brick wall.” Every family has one—the person that no one will talk about. There’s usually an aura of disgrace or taboo hanging around that silence.

Annie was the person behind the brick wall in my family tree. I saw her as a woman and a mother and a person whose blood runs in the veins of my children, and I felt compelled to know her story. I had only one little crumb of information to go on, but I sent that crumb on countless goose chases until I finally broke through the brick wall.

The root of those generations of zipped lips—perinatal and postpartum mental illness in an age of extreme gender disparity and social stigma born of ignorance. It demanded that I tell Annie’s story. The actual people did come vividly to life, not so much in my mind’s eye as in my heart.

Nancy:
I also do genealogy and spent ten years researching a 1919 diary and have more pages of research than diary pages! I have wondered how to present the woman behind the diary. So I am interested in knowing more about your handling of the historical records that became your novel. How do you transform the “cold facts” found on a census or death certificate into a narrative or character?

Ellen:
The common thread in all historical records is that they were recorded by people, and in every era, people have been influenced in their thoughts and actions by the conditions of the moment and of the times in which they live.

The “cold facts” found on censuses or death certificate are frequently not as immutable as we may think—information is only as good as the person who gave it and the person who recorded it, and human fallibility is itself a cold fact. The person giving the information may not have the correct info, and the person recording it may be in a hurry, not feeling well, indifferent to accuracy, distracted by any the things that can distract us on the job.

In the case of older censuses, it wasn’t uncommon for family members or even neighbors to give information about individuals who weren’t at home when the census taker came around. That’s why you’ll find that census info on the same person over several decades of will show a variety of birthdates, birthplaces, spellings of names, immigration dates. Death certificates are also open to bias and error. The informant on a death certificate could be anyone from a close relative who either did or didn’t know the deceased well (children often didn’t know their parents’ origins), to a harried hospital or nursing home staffer who guessed at info or recorded hearsay. Records often contradict one another, so which one is the “cold fact”?

Historical documents are starting points, to which we must always search for context. It’s the context of the events of a life and how it shaped that person, not mere facts, that make a compelling story.

Of course, it’s nigh impossible to reconstruct the context of every event of an entire life. That’s where the author must decide where on the literary spectrum to take the story. I originally conceived Annie’s story as creative nonfiction. But the gaps and contradictions in the historical records shimmered with mirage-like questions of why?  and how? Unexpectedly, fiction became the format through which I could best explore those questions and tell her tale.

Nancy:
Your previous books were nonfiction. The River by Starlight has beautiful writing and delves into intense emotions. What were the challenges and joys of working in fiction?

Ellen:
My nonfiction writing wasn’t without deep emotion and engaging writing, so it was a kind of training ground, especially my history articles for Ancestry magazine, many of which sprang from my research for The River by Starlight.

An editor once groused, “I hate the fact that you hook me all the damn time with your heart-wrenching stuff.” The challenge for me in writing fiction about real people was, am I portraying the message they would have wanted? How do I reconcile that, in the name of literary license, some collateral characters based only loosely on real people may be nothing like those real people, for better or worse?

The joy came from venturing to places previously unimagined, whether in my six research trips across Montana, North Dakota and Alberta, or in the vivid places I went in flights of the mind and heart. The feelings of love, yearning, grief, fear, and hope that saturated my writing were of a different dimension than I’d ever experienced. It was scary and uplifting and staggering and wondrous—sometimes all in the same moment.

Nancy:
Because I am not familiar with your nonfiction books, or know much about the topics you cover, would you like to elucidate? Perhaps how, like River, you deal with misunderstood “differences”?

Ellen:
When you write a book, much of the reading world wants to deem you an expert on your subject matter. I’m no expert on postpartum mental illness, and I was no expert on autism when I wrote my four books based on what I’d learned in raising my son, books that struck a chord and have remained popular through the years.

I believe that connection comes from my having been able to write about a complex and emotionally charged human condition in a timeless and accessible manner, removes the fear and champions hope.

For that, I’m constantly fending off the label of “expert” in a subject for which I have no formal training. So I’ve redefined the label, just as I did for the labels society tried to apply to Annie and my son. They do share the experience of being misunderstood, and often judged, for their neurological differences.

What I do well—my true “expertise”—is to tell a story from perspectives not commonly considered and tell it in a way moves people to shift old, ingrained perspectives, sometimes incrementally, sometimes seismically. It starts conversations. It builds healthier relationships and leads to constructive actions. It can be expansive and thrilling. It’s a privilege that never fails to humble me.

Nancy:
Annie finds great comfort in Emily Dickinson's poems. And of course, Thoreau is quoted. Are they some of Ellen's favorite writers? Dickinson touches on so many things in her poems, from the beauty of nature, to passion, to despair. What poems do you think were Annie's favorites?

Ellen:
I have always loved Thoreau, so that was a piece of myself that I injected into the book.

Dickinson, on the other hand, was not one of my favorite poets, quite the opposite, in fact. I have no idea why she became such an important thread in the story, or why the particular poems excerpted in the book, presumably Annie’s favorites, came to me. It was another one of those things that I heard with my third ear. I didn’t question it or let my own opinion intrude on it. I’ll never know, but perhaps it was a gift to me from Annie, because I certainly came to a far better understanding and appreciation of Dickinson and her work than I had before. Reading Aife Murray’s Maid as Muse: How Servants Changed Emily Dickinson’s Life and Language was both eye-opening and soul-opening.

*****

Quiltmaking In the Early 20th c. and Pictorial Quilts

At the time when Annie made her wedding quilt most quilters used traditional quilt block patterns. Crazy quilts had dominated the late 19th c but were on the wan by WWI.

Typical quilts of the early 19th c were pieced, formal, repetitive blocks placed side by side or separating by sashing. Below is a family heirloom quilt made by my husband's great-great-grandmother, typical of an early 20th c quilt.

Single Wedding Ring quilt, circa 1915, made by Harriet Scoville Nelson
Turkey red and white, machine sewn, tied.

Below is the popular Log Cabin block in a quilt top circa 1890-1915. The fabrics include mourning prints, indigo and cadet blues, a maroon diaper print, and madder brown. The light prints are shirtings in stripe and plaids.

circa 1900 Log Cabin quilt top

But there were a few 'mavericks' who, using applique or inventive use of piecing, created something of their own. These were typically Pictorial Quilts, some of which have become quite famous in the quilt history world.I'd like to share some of these extraordinary quilts.

This 1853 Farm Scene quilt in the Museum of American Folk Art was made by Sarah Ann Garvis of Pennsylvania. Family history told that Sarah made it at the time of her engagement. The background is chrome orange. Photo from American Quilts, A Sample of Quilts and Their Story by Jennifer Regan, Gallery Books, 1989.

1853 Farm Scene

The Iowa Farm Quilt by Marianna Hoffmeister, made in 1880, blends her life with the Rev. Hoffmeister with memories of New Orleans where they met. Note the palm trees and the night sky. Photo from American Quilts, Regan. Quilt from the Hennepin County Historical Society.

The Iowa Farm Quilt 

Bill Volkening has an amazing collection of American quilts. One he acquired is the pieced Pictorial Quilt with American Flag, unknown maker, Ohio, cottons, c. 1930, dimensions: 64" x 75". Collection of Bill Volckening, Portland, Oregon.

Pictorial Quilt with American Flag

See Bill's other quilts at his website The Vockening Collection.

In the 1970s, a revival of traditional quiltmaking was accompanied with artists discovering fiber as a new medium. Pictorial and original quilts became common.

My friend bought a contemporary pictorial quilt made in Caohagan in the Philippines. Read more about it here.

The River by Starlight: A Story of A Woman's Hope and Resilience

"The evening star, multiplied by undulating water, like bright sparks of fire continually ascending." The River by Starlight, from the Journal of Henry David Thoreau, June 15, 1852

Annie made the quilt for her future husband, for his eyes only.

There was a block with a sliver of chrome orange moon and a fabric with a chrome yellow shower of stars. The twilight sky was represented with a dark sapphire with a swirl of white dots and a cadet blue shot with white. At the bottom curved a river in green fabric. She called it River By Starlight.

In 1911 Annie Rushton had received a letter from her older brother Cal, inviting her to come to Montana where he had settled. At age 26, Annie was living with her mother after postpartum psychosis destroyed her marriage and separated her from her baby daughter.

Annie hopes that Montana will bring the freedom she craves and the new beginning she desperately needs. Annie travels light, only taking her ivory knitting needles, her Emily Dickinson inscribed "with everlasting love" by her ex-husband, and her grandmother's rose glass jar.

She never expected that Montana would bring a man who would claim her, body and soul, or imagine the ecstasy and the crippling pain and loss their love would endure, driving Annie to a desperate choice.

Ellen Notbohm's novel The River by Starlight is based on true events which she spent years researching. Notbohm wanted to give voice to the women, who a hundred years ago and with few resources, suffered mental health issues in a male-dominated health and justice system.

Annie is an amazing character, strong and feisty, quick-witted and quick-tempered. I loved the dialogue between the characters. Although Annie suffers many losses, she also is resilient and a survivor. The misunderstandings between men and women and the compromises they make ring true. The writing is gorgeous.

Readers will be swept back in time and won't soon forget the vivid characters.

I received a free book through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The River by Starlight
by Ellen Notbohm
She Writes Press
Publication: May 8, 2018
$16.95
ISBN: 9781631523359

Learn more about the publisher, She Writes Press, at
 https://shewritespress.com/about-swp/

Quilt Projects in Progress & a Vintage and New Singer Sewing Box

My quilting has been on near total hiatus while my poor fingertips recovered from all the abuse of needle and fabric during the winter weather. But now I am up and back at finishing my applique projects.

The Peter Pan quilt, inspired by the Riley Blake fabric Neverland, is also nearing completion. I used some of Marie Cheever Whiteside Newton's vintage applique patterns. I have another outer border of pieced blocks to do--just adding them to the sides of what I have to make the quilt wider. The corner blocks in the border will have embroidery with quotes from Barrie's original book.

There are two blocks left to applique on my yellow rose sampler and then I have to add embroidery on the last six blocks.

I will set the blocks together, perhaps with sashing in the background fabric, and add borders made with the yellow fabric in the matching drapes. Still determining that part!

This week Karen Smiley Morrison visited the weekly quilt group to show her new vintage find--a Singer sewing box from the 1980s.

 The sides fold down...

 ...and it has a place for everything! The box came filled with thread and supplies.

It turned out that our quilt group member Alex has the brand new version of this sewing box!