Lynne O. Ramer "Gab Fest" of Mifflin Memories

My grandfather Lynne O. Ramer wrote hundreds of letters to his hometown newspaper which were shared by Ben Meyers in his We Notice That column. Today I am sharing his letter published on  January 13, 1960.

We Notice That

by Ben Meyers

The Heights Phone 8-8430

Dinkey Pix

Dear Ben: Here’s a letter from Lynne Ramer that’s chockfull of interesting memories which many WNT readers will enjoy. Got it after he read my letter in your column. He requested use of a couple old-time pictures such as the dinkeys and logging scenes in Seven Mountains. Intends to use them to illustrate a story he wrote for Steel Facts magazine. Seems we formed a friendship through the We Notice That column, for which I must say “Thanks!” With best wishes, sincerely,

Reed W. Fultz

Mifflintown R. D. 1

[Editor’s note: handwritten by LOR: “Died 1962”]

Gabfest by Mail

Dear Reed: As chances of getting together for a personal gabfest are remote, how about doing it by mail? So you’re one of the Fultz family? Yeah, boy!—there’s a family name deeply seated in memory.

Fred Fultz was my S[unday] S[school] teacher and our Sunday School superintendent for years at St. Paul’s Lutheran. His brother Rob (Baker) Fultz sneaked me many a baker’s dozen of cinnamon rolls, so I could eat the 13^th without Nammie Ramer or Aunt Annie Smithers catching on.

I can recall when Fred ran a grocery store in the old Campbell Funeral Parlors building. And how Uncle Charles Smithers used to tell me how he and Andy McClintic* put a wooden casket together in short order.

I remember innumerable visits to the old plaster house next to the Methodist Episcopal Church where my cousin Stella Diemer [Deamer]* lived. In the doctor’s office [that is] still there now, a doctor saved one of our twin sons, Donald, at the age of 10, from dying of jaundice. Donald and his twin David are now 24. David’s been serving aboard a U. S. sub at Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Down your way, Reed, I have got a college classmate, Alice M. Rearick*, who teaches either in Mifflin or Mifflintown schools. Please do me a big favor. Steel Facts that goes out to 175,000 readers will publish my article on “Iron Rails and Dinkeys on Appalachian Summits.” Won’t you let me borrow your photos with the dinkey and the Milroy loggers to illustrate it? Gilbert Shirk*, McVeytown R. D. 2, supplied me with many facts for the write-up.

As for Buzzie Peters, I knew him well. Also James (Fatty) Crissman* and the stagecoach. I set the coach on fire one day while smoking dried leaves and corn silk at the age of 8. He kicked my posterior and Nammie [Grandmother Rachel Reed Ramer] strapped the same place. We used to pasture our cow in Jimmy’s meadow.

I remember C. W. Peters and Sons laid almost every concrete sidewalk in Milroy, Reedsville, and elsewhere in the valley. You can still walk all over the Peters name!

Up on the flats in the a. m., picking huckleberries and picnic, then down on the logs, with dinkey whistle screaming across the Hartman Bottom, “Get supper ready--will be home soon!”

The old acetylene headlamps *like a ghost in the dark! “Them days is gone forever,” but not from memory. I just “loved” your letter in the WNT column. Do write some more.

Along with John Benjamin Boyer* of Milroy High I can never forget Miss Mary Barefoot*, who gave me the classics in Latin and English. She was just out of this world, and not easily forgotten.

Also the Rev. Martin Fansold, principal during World War I. He sent me off to Susquehanna University and the ministry, else I might never have gotten away from K. V. [Kishacoquillas Valley]. Probably would be working at SSW [Standard Steel Works] yet, as do Boozer Bobb [Gramp's cousin Lee Sidney Bobb], George and Walter Smithers [Gramp's cousins], etc. alia. Not a bad life either.

I can still recall Reikley Bros. Sawmill, the dam, the log chutes and the whirling saws. Also uncle Charles Smither’s planing mill and cider press.

wnt

Underground Honeycomb

Laurel Run sinks into the hill just below where Uncle Charles’s plum orchard reached. And again down behind the Winegardner farm above Naginey. There it plumb disappears. And a third place is the Big Sink just below the bridge in Milroy, opposite the old gristmill and below Rudy’s blacksmith shop.

There it sings in the summer. At Winegartner’s it sinks in the spring when waters are high. At the spot below the old plum orchard, the hole is almost plugged up. The water goes in with a sucking noise.

Up the valley, innumerable streams disappear. All come out at Honey Creek. That means Big Valley is a veritable honeycomb. That’s why the early settlers called it Honey Creek, i.e., honey out of the honeycomb!

Uncle Clyde Ramer and I used to sit and freeze all day Saturdays just to catch a few mullet out of Honey Creek above Reedsville. I can remember two old cable suspension bridges between Reedsville and Honey Creek, which we used to ride on as kids.

We also fished in Tea Creek above the mill which I hear just recently was burned. I remember the old tollgate at a point near the mill. And when cars couldn’t get around that corner to go towards Belleville.

Just to see what kids miss today: Towpaths, log chutes, sinks, huckleberry-picking, wild turkeys, “kettles” and “kitchens” in the mountains, dinkeys, jackasses, whirling saws, literary societies, cakewalks, Fourth of July and Decoration Day parades, Barnum & Bailey’s circus parades, trolleys, Bird Rock. Now all they have is TV!

Orris Pecht*, the school teacher, farmer Charles McLelland*, and I used to pitch hay together on Charlie’s farm on the Back Mountain road beyond the Klinger farm. Charlie used to say, “The farmer, the school teacher, and the preacher—three in one!” I saw Charles just a few days before he died. Orris, as far as I know, is still around. Anne Burkins, Charlie’s daughter, was my High School flame. (One of them!) Best regards to all the Fultz clan.

*****

NOTES:

*The Fultz family records show that my grandfather's pen pal, Reed William Fultz was born in February 1904 and died March 1962 in Mifflintown, Juanita, Pennsylvania. At the time of his death, he worked for the American Viscose Corporation. Reed married Jessie Shotzberger.

The 1910 Census shows Reed living with his family: Harry R, age 25, a lumberman; Bessie J, age 24; Reed W. age 6; Arthur A. age 4; Charles age 3. Son Miles Forrest was born in Milroy, PA in 1909. 

In 1919 Bessie died and the 1920 Census shows the children living with their maternal Ramsey grandparents on Treaster Valley Rd. in Milroy, PA. James R. Ramsey was a farmer married to Nancy M. Nellie, age one, and grandchildren Charles, Miles, and William lived with them.

The 1920 Census shows Reed living with wife Bessie M., age 25, and their daughter Olive M., age one and a half. Their home was valued at $1,800.

*Fred Cleveland Fulz (7/1888-10/1976) appears on the 1930 Armagh Census as a grocer, married to Blanche M. and father to children Geraldine P, age 17, and Elizabeth M, age 10. On the 1910 Census he appears working as a store clerk and living with his parents David Fultz, 48, and mother Catherine 48, and siblings Milton, 28, a baker, sister Ruth, and Bertha, a grandchild to David and Catherine.

*Stella Deamer (born July 31, 1883) was the daughter of Charles Ramsey and Emma Reed (1851-1909) who was his grandmother's ('Nammie' Rachel Reed Ramer) sister.

Stella married Nevin Ellsworth Deamer. His WWI Draft Card showed he worked for Standard Steel. They had two children, Perry and Francis. Nevin died on October 8, 1919, the first Mifflin County victim of the Influenza Epidemic.


The 1920 census shows Stella was a dressmaker.

Stella later married Thomas Peter Fultz who died in 1948. Stella died July 25, 1945, in Burnham, Mifflin County, PA.

The Methodist Episcopal Church (now United Methodist) is located at 91 S. Main St, Milroy PA.

*Andrew 'Andy' Felix  McClintock (b. 10/9/1948, d.9/26/1915) appears on the 1910 Armagh, Milroy Census with his wife Ada Jane Crissman (1861-1921). Find A Grave had the entire family including Andy's parents Rosanna (1811-1890) and father Felix (1802-1883) and his siblings. Andy's grandfather James (1782-1834) served in the American Revolution.

*Alice M. Rearick was Gramp's Susquehanna University classmate in the class of 1924.

Alice was in the Y.W.C.A. in 1923.

She appears in the 1922 Lanthorn as Omega Delta Sigman member.

Alice was on the Lanthorn Staff when Gramps was editor-in-chief.

*Gilbert M. Shirk began writing to my grandfather after reading his articles in the Lewiston Sentinel. He was a 'relation' through Gramp's natural father. Gil and Gramps met once when they were children.

* James Meade Crissman (1863-1923), son of John McDowell Crissman and Mary Jane Aikens, owned a stable in Milroy and the 1920 census shows he was a "drayman" and mail carrier. James married Mary Sterrett in 1895.

*Acetylene gas headlamps on trains and automobiles were used beginning around 1901. Learn more here.

*John Benjamin Boyer (1883-) was a 1908 graduate of Bucknell University.

I found his WWI registration card.

*Mary Margaret Barefoot, my grandfather's teacher, was born April 12, 1890, to William and Mary Sterrett Barefoot. On October 11, 2910, the forty-year-old Mary married Albert Vincent Landgren, an electrical engineer. She died on July 16, 1981 in Canton, OH.

*Orris Wilmot Pecht (1873-1964) was a farmer on 1910 census and a schoolteacher on his WWI Draft Card and the 1920 census.

*There is a  Charles Edward McLelland (1875-1941) whose death certificate shows he was a retired farmer and married Hannah Pecht.

But I can't find a daughter Anne in the records.

*Anna M. Burkins (1900-1993) appears in the records as a schoolteacher. On Find A Grave, her parents appear as David Riley Burkins and Mary McLenahen.
Anna taught history in Lewistown High School.

I find a *Charles McClenahen (1807-1849) who married Agnes Wingate who had son John Ambrose McClenahen (1846-1901) who married Anna Bertha Geer and they had daughter Anna Mae. Either Gramps was misremembering names or his handwriting was misunderstood when the newspaper printed his letter.

The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich

Last summer my husband and I met with the Blue Water Indigenous Alliance to donate an heirloom bible given to my husband's fourth-great-grandmother by John Riley, Ojibwe chief of the Black River Band. The bible is currently on display in the Port Huron Museum and will become part of a new museum highlighting native heritage in the Port Huron area.

The 1826 New Testament had been published by the American Bible Society without a binding. Someone encased it in thick, rich brown leather held together with coarse thread. The book has a gentle curve as if kept in a back pocket for a long time, the edge of the book worn away.

My husband's great-great-grandmother read that volume daily until the day of her death, and that made it special to her family, but to hold an artifact that once was in the pocket of their ancestor and kin was even more sacred to those of Native heritage gathered to accept it.

I have often thought about that meeting. For all my research on John Riley and my reading about Native American history, after that meeting I felt my otherness and my ignorance. I read the white man's histories and think I know Riley. What arrogance.

Reading The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich reinforced my awareness of ignorance born of privilege in a European dominated society. I had never heard of the Indian Termination Policy being carried out just after the time of my birth. Natives were to be assimilated with all the rights of an American citizen. It was intended that individuals find work and become self-supporting and pay taxes. Reservations were taken out of Native control, health care and education no longer provided. Life was harsh before termination; it got worse after termination. It was 'extermination' under a new name.

Erdrich's novel is based on her grandfather's life and his successful endeavor to block the termination of the Turtle Mountain Reservation.

The night watchman is the hardworking hero of the story, a family man who works nights at the new factory that employs Ojibwe women to perform the delicate job of creating jewel bearings. He is determined to protect their reservation and people from termination, working around the clock and raising money to travel to Washington, D. C. to present their case before Congress. Their way of life, their community is threatened. They feel a deep connection to the land that supported their ancestors since time immemorial.

Patrice is one of the young Ojibwe women working at the factory. The job allows her to support her mother and brother. She dreams of going to university to study law. She tries to blend into European society but encounters racism and sexual harassment. Two men vie for her attention, unaware of her naivety about relationships and sex and desire.

When Patrice's sister Vera goes to the city disappears, she goes takes all her savings to look for her. It is a nightmarish trip into the depravity of the underside of the city, a place where young native women are vulnerable prey. She returns with Vera's baby.

It is hard to write about this novel. It left me with strong feelings, including deep shame for how the prevalent European society has treated Native Americans since we landed on these shores. Erdrich does not exploit our feelings, there is no melodramatic writing when describing chilling scenes of exploitation and abuse.

The courage and strength of the characters is inspirational. I loved how one love storyline was handled, showing that true love is communal and not about personal desire.

Fiction can educate and enlarge our limited experience. And I thank Erdrich for furthering my understanding.

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

The Night Watchman
by Louise Erdrich
HarperCollins Publishers
Pub Date 03 Mar 2020
ISBN: 9780062671189
PRICE: $28.99 (USD) hard cover

Frida Kahlo in America; The Creative Awakening of a Great Artist by Celia Stahr

In 2015, I saw the Detroit Institute of Art (DAI) exhibition Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in Detroit. I knew Diego Rivera from the DIA court murals but I had known little about Frida Kahol. Reading Frida Kahol in America by Celia Stahr, specifically about Kahlo's time in Detroit, I could clearly remember her painting of her miscarriage in Henry Ford Hospital. We listened to the story on headphones and studied the unforgettable painting. 

Although the exhibit included works by Rivera, it was Kahlo's that stuck in my mind. Rivera's painting of a flower seller was more accessible, 'prettier', but Kahlo's self-portraits grabbed my attention--those eyes, so direct and almost challenging, her self-confidence and self-acceptance revealed. 

Stahr shares that many who knew both Rivera and Kahlo said Kahlo was the better artist. She stood in the shadow of her husband's charismatic personality, diminished by the press, struggling to develop her artistic voice. 

Kahlo was in her early twenties when she married the older, famous artist, only twenty-three when they arrived in America. Her life had already been eventful, suffering polio, scoliosis, spina bifida, and the life-threatening bus accident when she was a teenager. Pain accompanied her every day. She was a Communist, she challenged society's prescribed sex roles, and had suffered heartbreak as a spurned lover. 

It was so interesting to see American during the Depression through Kahlo's eyes. The wealthy industrialists were her husband's patrons--they paid the bills. They also represented a privileged class Kahlo who found revolting. 

Kahlo wrote to her mother, "Witnessing the horrible poverty here and the millions of people who have no work, food, or home, who are cold and have no hope in this country of scumbag millionaires, who greedily grab everything, has profoundly shocked [us]."

Of course, I was very interested in the artists' time in Detroit. The city had been one of the hardest hit by the Depression, 50% unemployed. I was shocked to read about the Ford Hunger March. Ford had reduced salaries and laid off workers, and since the workers lived in Ford housing they became homeless as well. Four thousand marched in freezing weather to the gate of the Rouge River plant to be met by bullets and fire hoses, killing four people. River and Kahlo arrived a month after the event.

Stahr addresses each painting created by Kahlo, explaining the work and its symbolism in detail, including the self-portrait made for her estranged lover, the groundbreaking paintings about her abortion and the miscarriage that spurred a traumatic 'rebirth' as had her bus accident when she was eighteen years old.

Stahr addresses the duality "at the root of Frida's sense of self," part of her "search for a unification of opposites, as the Aztecs and alchemists espoused."

Kahlo's deeply personal art defied convention, delving into female experiences never depicted in art before. In comparison, Rivera's masterpiece murals at the Detroit Institute of Art look to the past, glorifying the pre-Depression industrial worker and the scientists and entrepreneurs who created industry.

Memorialized in Rivera's mural, Edsel Ford and William Valentiner
chose Rivera to paint the walls of the DIA courtyard 

These same industrialist millionaires were aiding Hitler, Ford a known anti-semite, and oil companies supplying fuel and poisonous gasses to the Nazis.

After Detroit, they went to New York City where Rivera was to create a mural for the new Rockefeller Center and a battle over a patron's control of an artist's content played itself out. It could have happened in Detroit, but the scandalous murals drew record crowds to the DIA and turned around their finances.

"Love is the basis of all life," Stahr quotes Kahlo. Love of country, for friends and family, sexual love, for home. Her relationship with Rivera was conflicted, their love affairs rending their marriage, resulting in divorce and remarriage.

This is a revealing and deep study of Kahlo that truly educated me while engaging me emotionally with its subject.

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

Frida Kahlo in America: The Creative Awakening of a Great Artist
by Celia Stahr
St. Martin's Press
On Sale: 03/03/2020
ISBN: 9781250113382
hardcover $29.99; $14.99 ebook

Frida Kahlo, Self-Portrait on the Borderline between Mexico and the United States of America (1932) 

Learn more about the DIA exhibit at
https://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/2015/03/diego_rivera_and_frida_kahlo_i.html

The Story of Frida Kahlo by Susan B. Katz

Born with a birth defect, a polio victim as a child, her body smashed in a tragic accident, Frida Kahlo's indomitable spirit overcame everything that life had thrown at her. The eclipsed wife of a larger-than-life artist, those who knew them both believed she was the better artist. 

Katz took on a big job in writing a children's book about a woman who contended with society, love, and the art world to reap world recognition in her brief 47 years. 

Katz's Frida is vulnerable yet strong and young readers will find her life romantically tragic and inspirational. 

The story of Frida's final exhibition is especially moving. A bed was brought into the exhibition hall so she could attend the opening days before her death.

detail of illustration from The Story of Frida Kahlo by Susan B. Katz

The book focuses on the use of art as therapy, self-expression, and connecting to the female experience, showing how creativity can give us strength and a voice.

Katz includes teaching aids including a glossary, timelines, content questions, and discussion starters.

Ana Sanfelippo's colorful illustrations enrich the volume, bringing Frida's life alive to young readers.

The Story of Frida Kahlo: A Biography for New Readers
by Susan B. Katz
Rockridge Press
$6.99 paperback
ISBN-10: 1646111605
ISBN-13: 978-1646111602
Grades 1-3

Susan B. Katz is a teacher, educational consultant, and author. She has also written The Story of Ruth Bader Ginsberg.

Fannie Lou Hamer: America's Freedom Fighting Woman by Maegan Parker Brooks

Nobody's free until everybody's free. ~ Fannie Lou Hamer

I first heard of Fannie Lou Hamer when I was struggling to find a focus for a quilt celebrating women's contributions to freedom. I contacted a professor of African American Studies at our son's school who referred me to Freedom's DaughtersThe Unsung Heroines of the Civil Rights Movement from 1830 to 1970  by Lynn Olson. It was just the inspiration I needed.

Fannie Lou Hamer, I Will Life My Voice Like a Trumpet by Nancy A. Bekofske

After completing my quilt I Will Lift My Voice Like a Trumpet, which appeared in two national juried quilt shows, I continued reading biographies of leaders in the abolitionist movement and Civil Rights, which brings me to Brook's new biography of Hamer, subtitled America's Freedom Fighting Woman.

At the heart of Hamer's story is the fight to end voter discrimination, a battle that is ongoing to this very day. People in power are afraid of the power of the people and use every method possible to limit their voice.

For Hamer, seeking to vote in Mississippi in the 1960s, that fight included huge sacrifices. Arrested, beaten, and raped, the attack permanently destroyed her health.

Hamer could not be stopped. She knew first hand the suffering of the people. Her own daughter was a victim of malnutrition and the lack of affordable and available health care. Hamer saw her beloved community starving when the cotton jobs disappeared. White Supremacists literally blocked governmental assistance. Without a political voice, the poor--white and black--were powerless victims.

quotation from Fannie Lou Hamer on I Will Lift My Voice Like a Trumpet by Nancy A. Bekofske

Hamer's crusade was born in her Christian faith and she raised her voice in hymns and speeches across the country, working with all the important leaders from Malcolm X and Stokley Carmichael to Martin Luther King, Jr. and John Lewis.

Hamer was broadly a human rights activist. As a Black Feminist, she appeared with Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan. Hamer was pro-life, distraught over a forced hysterectomy. She was an anti-war voice.

Hamer didn't only talk and sing, she ran for political office and created the Freedom Farm Collective to provide food to thousands in her starving county.

Give us food and it will be gone tomorrow. Give us land and the tools to work it and we'll feed ourselves forever.~ Fannie Lou Hamer

Hamer's life demonstrates the power of 'ordinary people.' As a nation, we remember Martin Luther King, Jr. and other African American leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, especially the martyrs who gave their lives. It is important that we remember women like Hamer who rose up from the most powerless class in America and relentlessly stood up to power.

Brooks has given us a heroine whose example is much needed in these troubling times.

Fannie Lou Hamer on I Will Lift My Voice Like a Trumpet by Nancy A. Bekofske

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

Fannie Lou Hamer: America's Freedom Fighting Woman
by Maegan Parker Brooks
Rowman & Littlefield
Pub Date: March 1, 2020
ISBN: 9781538115947
PRICE: $34.00 (USD)

With my quilt I Will Lift My Voice Like A Trumpet at AQS Grand Rapid 2013

Ruth Ellen Church's Career as Mary Meade and Her Tragic End

Last week I shared from the vintage recipe book Pancakes Aplenty by Ruth Ellen Church, who wrote for the Chicago Tribune as Mary Meade. This week I will share more about Ruth's career and life.

Born Ruth Ellen Lovrien in Humbolt, Iowa, to George Washington Lovrien (1880-1918) and Jessie Marilla Carter (1876-1959), her ancestor John Loveringe was born in England in 1635 and died in New Hampshire in 1668. Samuel Lovrien fought in the 1812 Revolutionary War and his son Peter was a veteran of the war of 1812.

Sixteen-year-old Ruth Ellen Lovrien

 Ruth graduated from Iowa State University.

Ruth Ellen Lovrien

In 1942, Ruth married Freeman Sylvester Church (1908-1968), who graduated from the Univesity of Illinois and became VP and art director of Chicago ad agency Dancer-Fitzgerald-Sample.

Freeman Sylvester Church

Freeman's father was Charles Freeman Church (1874-1959) and Anna May Dogherty (1880-1971). His father was an artist and art director for Lord & Taylor.

Charles F. Church obit

Freeman served in WWII.

Lt Church

During the War, Ruth engaged in projects to support service men.

 Freeman's died in 1968 of heart disease.

Freeman S. Church obit

ad for Mary Meade

Ruth had a long career as a staff writer, editor, and food critic for the Chicago Tribune and published numerous cookbooks, all under the pseudonym of Mary Meade.

Ruth wrote as Mary Meade for the Chicago Tribune

Mary Meade 1931

Mary Meade proved to be hugely popular. There were Mary Meade recipe booklets, recipe cards, and books published.

Mary Meade wrote numerous cookbooks

Mary Meade kept up with the times. Ruth won the 1971 Wine and Health Writing Award.

1971

In 1991, Ruth was murdered in her home. From the New York Times obituary:

Ruth Ellen Church, an author of books on cooking and wine who was a longtime food critic for The Chicago Tribune, was found slain Tuesday in her Chicago home. She was 81 years old.

The police said Ms. Church had been strangled, apparently by a burglar.

Ms. Church, who wrote under the name Mary Meade, was food editor, cooking editor and a columnist for The Tribune for 38 years before retiring from the newspaper in 1974. She guided the development of The Tribune's test kitchen, one of the first at a newspaper, and in 1962 became the first American writing a regular wine column.

Among her books were "The Indispensable Guide for the Modern Cook" (1955), "The Burger Cookbook" (1967), "Entertaining With Wine" (1970) and "Mary Meade's Sausage Cookbook" (1967).

Surviving are two sons, Carter of Chicago and Charles of Montello, Wis., and five grandchildren.

It was a horrible crime. Ruth suffocated while bound and gagged. A friend's sixteen-year-old daughter who was in the home and sexually abused by the man identified him. In January 1992, it was reported that the police had identified the murderer. 

January 1992 

I never thought that a vintage cookbook would lead me to such a horrible and tragic story.

Emily Dickinson Part Two A Loaded Gun by Jerome Charyn

This February I began reading books about Emily Dickinson and  The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson in preparation for making a quilt for the author.

I had this quilt in mind for several years as part of my series that has included William Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, and T. S. Eliot, and the Bronte sisters. My original idea seemed a horrible cliche'--the poet hidden behind a curtained window--and I stalled. I needed a new vision for my quilt.

I was finally set back into motion after reviewing the galley of These Fevered Days: Ten Pivotal Moments in the Making of Emily Dickinson by Martha Ackmann.

Next, I ordered A Loaded Gun: Emily Dickinson for the 21st Century by Jerome Charyn (The Perilous Adventures of the Cowboy King, Cesare). Charyn's essays draw from Dickinson's writings and scholarly studies in a search to finally pin down the slippery poet. Every time we think we have her pegged we find we are holding a void. She will not, can not, be categorized and shelved.

I couldn't let it go. I'd spent two years writing a novel about her, vaporizing her letters and poems, sucking the blood out of her bones, like some hunter of lost souls.~ Author's Note, A Loaded Gun by Jerome Charyn

Charyn's novel The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson (on my TBR pile) did not offer him a sense of closure. "I knew less and less the more I learned about her," he admits.

In this book, he begins with my first encounter with Dickinson: Julie Harris's performance as The Belle of Amherst which I watched many times on a small black and white television. It was my first impression of the poet.

Charyn considers all the poet's relationships, from her companion Carlo, a Newfoundland dog, to her late in life love affair with Judge Otis, with all the thunderstruck men and heartbreaking women in between.

Emily's letters and poems show her deep passions. The spinster was no prude. She had strong loves, earth shattering heartbreaks, and was more than acquainted with despair.

Some chapters take us into roundabout side trips as Charyon explores the multiple influences of the poet. Relax, enjoy the ride.

I loved the chapter Ballerinas in a Box, beginning with the early 20th c poets who discovered Dickinson, to her love affair with Kate Scott, to the art of Joseph I. Cornell, to ballerinas, exploring the nature of art.

Charyn casts his net deep and wide, considering psychology and biography and retellings and imaginings.

Only to conclude that Emily wears too many masks to truly know her. She remains a mystery beyond our ken.

And we, like ghouls, try to toy with her biography, to link her language with her life. We cannot master her, never will, as if her own words skates on some torrid ice that is permanently beyond our pale, yet we seek and seek, as if somehow that soothes us, as if we might crack a certain code, when all we will ever have is "A Woe/of Ecstasy."~ from A Loaded Gun by Jerome Charyn

A Loaded Gun: Emily Dickinson for the 21st Century
by Jerome Charyn
Bellevue Literary Press
Trade Paper US $19.95
ISBN: 9781934137987
Ebook
ISBN: 9781934137994

Read the 'missing chapter' at Stay Thirsty magazine
https://www.staythirstymedia.com/201601-091/html/201601-charyn-emily.html

*****

Previously I had skipped around the Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. I decided to start from the beginning of the volume. I noted her use of flowers, nature, and color in the early poems, sources to be considered for use in my quilt. 

I read into some of my favorites, such as this poem segment I shared on #SundaySentence hosted by @ImDavidAbrams on Twitter:

I got so I could take his name--
Without--Tremendous gain--

That Stop sensation--on my Soul--
And Thunder--in the Room--

I got so I could walk across
That Angle in the floor,

Where he turned so, and I turned--how-
And all our Sinew tore--

*****

I have decided to use a fusible collage technique on my quilt to make multiple portrait blocks, inspired by Charyn's comment about Dickinson's many masks. I can see the Victorian ideal of the retiring spinster writing about flowers, the mad woman dressed in white who would not leave her home, the dark woman who challenged convention and religion, the passionate woman of many loves, and the poet obsessed with words.

A poet with so many sides can't be contained in one image.

These Fevered Days: Ten Pivotal Moments in the Making of Emily Dickinson

In her Author's Note, Martha Ackmann tells of her first encounter with Emily Dickinson's poetry in high school English when she read, "After great pain, a formal feeling comes--"* Ackmann said she "woke up" and spent a lifetime trying to understand the poem and its effect on her. It's one of my favorite Dickinson poems.

Sadly, the selections in my high school American Lit textbook did nothing for me. When a college friend said he liked Dickinson, I shuddered.

It was Steve Allen's Meeting of Minds that changed my mind. The 1977 episode paired the poet with Charles Darwin, Atilla the Hun, and Galileo. Emily Dickinson recited, "I cannot live with You--" ending with, "So We must meet apart--/You there--I--here--/With just the Door ajar/That oceans are--and Prayer--/And that White Sustenance, Despair."** I stood up to attention. Wait! This couldn't be Dickinson! This was amazing stuff.

I bought her complete poems and soon became a fan.

Ackmann's These Fevered Days condescends Emily's life into ten moments that give insight into her life and work. Drawing from Emily's letters and poems, photographs and new understandings, she creates a vivid and fresh portrait of the poet.

Readers encounter Emily's strong, original, and independent mind.

She preferred the struggle of doubt over unexamined certainty, unwilling to profess her faith, regardless of social pressure at Mount Holyoke Seminary.

I loved learning that Emily dove into learning to play the piano, which taught her "style", and how she played late into the night, inventing her own "weird and beautiful melodies."

The vision of a girl with dandelions in her hair taught her how "one image could change everything."

We come to understand Emily's ambition, her life-long love affair with words, her dedication to perfecting her art. She strove to understand the impact of words on others, the responsibility of the writer, and how to remain anonymous while sharing her work. She created fascicles, hand sewn booklets of her poems, kept in her maid's room, unknown until revealed her death.

She enjoyed her costly Mount Holyoke education--$60 a year--learning algebra, astronomy, and botany. When other girls hoped to teach or become missionaries, and of course marry and raise a family, Emily had no vocation but poetry. She was summoned back to Amherst and became mired in deadly household duties. She did enjoy bread making.

Duty is black and brown.~Emily Dickinson

Amherst is not portrayed as a back-water safe zone during the Civil War; we see how the war impacted the community, the shared losses, and Emily's deep anxiety.

I had not known about the vision issue that threatened her sight that brought Emily to Boston for treatment.

Emily's friendships are there: Sue, who married Emily's brother, Austin Dickinson; her school friend and fellow author Helen Hunt Jackson; Samuel Bowles who published Emily's poems clandestinely shared with him; Carlo, her beloved dog.

Emily died a spinster, but she loved the special men in her life.

There was the Rev. Charles Wadsworth, the brilliant preacher Emily met in Philadelphia, "my closest earthly friend" she wrote, who one day unexpectedly came to her door.

Emily sent poems to Thomas Wentworth Higginson (who with Mabel Loomis Todd, a family friend and Austin's lover, would publish the first volume of Emily's poetry.) During the Civil War, Col. Higginson lead the first Negro regiment of Union soldiers and when wounded was returned home by Louisa May Alcott. When they finally met, Emily talked and a dazzled Higginson listened.

Other relationships are cloaked in mystery: the secret love between Emily and her father's peer Otis Phillips Lord, and the mysterious Master to whom she wrote unsent letters.

After Emily's early death at age 55, her family discovered her fascicles of nearly 2,000 poems--and the unsent Master letters. Emily had instructed her papers be burned after her death, but her sister Vinnie could not do that.

Emily comes alive through these ten moments, along with her family and friends and her beloved Amherst.

The book is illustrated with photographs of Emily's family, friends, and homes.

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

These Fevered Days: Ten Pivotal Moments in the Making of Emily Dickinson
by Martha Ackmann
W. W. Norton & Company
Publication: Feb. 25, 2020
ISBN 9780393609301
PRICE $26.95 (USD)

The poems:

*After Great Pain- 341

After great pain, a formal feeling comes –
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs –
The stiff Heart questions ‘was it He, that bore,’
And ‘Yesterday, or Centuries before’?

The Feet, mechanical, go round –
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought--
A Wooden way
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone –

This is the Hour of Lead –
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow –
First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go –


**I cannot live with You (640)
Emily Dickinson - 1830-1886

I cannot live with You –
It would be Life –
And Life is over there –
Behind the Shelf

The Sexton keeps the Key to –
Putting up
Our Life – His Porcelain –
Like a Cup –

Discarded of the Housewife –
Quaint – or Broke –
A newer Sevres pleases –
Old Ones crack –

I could not die – with You –
For One must wait
To shut the Other's Gaze down –
You – could not –

And I – Could I stand by
And see You – freeze –
Without my Right of Frost –
Death's privilege?

Nor could I rise – with You –
Because Your Face
Would put out Jesus' –
That New Grace

Glow plain – and foreign
On my homesick Eye –
Except that You than He
Shone closer by –

They'd judge Us – How –
For You – served Heaven – You know,
Or sought to –
I could not –

Because You saturated Sight –
And I had no more Eyes
For sordid excellence
As Paradise

And were You lost, I would be –
Though My Name
Rang loudest
On the Heavenly fame –

And were You – saved –
And I – condemned to be
Where You were not –
That self – were Hell to Me –

So We must meet apart –
You there – I – here –
With just the Door ajar
That Oceans are – and Prayer –
And that White Sustenance –
Despair –

News, TBR, WIP

It's been another busy month. 

I have read 27 books so far in 2020. I finished a wall hanging this month and my yellow roses sampler quilt top is ready to be sent to the machine quilter. I finally started on an Emily Dickinson quilt.

The Wednesday Afternoon Book Club at our local library read The Marsh King's Daughter, a psychological suspense story set in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

Author Karen Dionne lives in Metro Detroit and we were thrilled to have her at our meeting to tell us about the book and her writing.

Before book club, my husband and I took Karen to Frittata, Clawson's wonderful breakfast and brunch restaurant.

We had a great turn out. Karen was an engaging speaker. Our meeting lasted twice as long as usual with a question and answer time and book signing after Karen's talk.

The Marsh King's Daughter has been translated into many languages; some of the foreign editions are shown below.

The next book club pick is Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. I haven't read it since I was a teenager. 

I was thrilled to get a different kind of 'book mail' when Lenore Riegel, author Jerome Charyn's partner, sent me the DVD My Letter to the World about Emily Dickinson. Charyn is interviewed in the film. More about it later.

Lenore also sent me Charyn's novel Johnny One-Eye set during the American Revolution!

I used a Christmas gift card to purchase the newest book by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. I read the introduction to Tightrope at the library and was hooked. The story of Kristof's hometown peers whose lives ended in poverty and tragedy is moving and offers deep insight into the conditions that have created today's political landscape.

A LibraryThing giveaway arrived, Simon The Fiddler by Paulette Jiles. I read her Stormy Weather some years ago and have News of the World on my Kindle TBR pile.

Currently Reading:

• Coming to Age: Growing Older with Poetry by Mary Ann Hoberman and Carolyn Hopley; the poems are hitting me in a personal way
• A Registry of My Passage upon the Earth: Stories by Daniel Mason whose novel The Winter Soldier I enjoyed
• Square Haunting: Five Writers in London Between the Wars by Francesca Wade about the London square once home to poet H. D., detective novelist Dorothy L. Sayers, classicist Jane Harrison, economic historian Eileen Power, and author and publisher Virginia Woolf 
• The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
• The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson by Jerome Charyn

Books on my review shelf include:

• Simon the Fiddler by Paulette Jiles
• Country by Michael Hughes
• The Jane Austen Society by Natalie Jenner
• Night. Sleep. Death. by Joyce Carol Oates
• How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue whose debut novel Behold the Dreamers I read
• The Lost Pianos of Siberia by Sophy Roberts
• Bronte's Mistress by Finola Austin about Branwell Bronte
• American Follies by Norman Lock from his American Novel series which I have enjoyed (The Wreckage of Eden, The Feast Day of the Cannibals, A Boy in His Winter)

I made this wall hanging from Gingiber's Thicket prints for my son.

My husband celebrated his 70th birthday in February. His older brother gifted him a Charlie Harper signed print. It's been traveling through the family as another brother first owned it!

And just for fun, here is my intrepid brother with a new friend.

Shades of Karen Dionne's upcoming psychological suspense novel, The Wicked Sister! Bears are an important theme in the novel.

The Girl in White Gloves by Keri Maher: A Novel of Grace Kelley

I am a life-long lover of classic films.

It started when I was a girl watching old movies on our black and white television. In those days, I preferred Gene Autry, Andy Hardy, and Ma and Pa Kettle. When we moved to Detroit I discovered Bill Kennedy's Showtime. I was hooked all summer long. Jimmy Stewart became my favorite actor, but I watched swashbucklers, too.

My folks didn't have money to take us to movie theaters but we did go to the drive-in theater. When the sun went down, I was supposed to fall asleep on the back seat. Instead, I was riveted to the movie. The Incredible Shrinking Man, The Birds, and Marnie were some of the most memorable.

I became a Hitchcock fan, watching his television series, and I even had a book of scary stories with Hitch on the cover. Later in life, I watched every television broadcast of his movies. And that is how I first saw Grace Kelley--in Rear Window and To Catch a Thief.

My husband's favorite movie is High Noon, starring Kelley in her first movie role. And he was a Clark Gable fan back in the day, so I saw Kelley in Mogambo.

It was not until a few years ago that I saw Kelley in her Oscar-winning performance in The Country Girl. There was this beautiful, young actress made up plain and dowdy, her emotion so concentrated I could see the flames shooting from her eyes. Wowzer! This was not the elegant model offering Cary Grant a chance to handle her jewels.

I knew that Kelley was from Philadelphia. We had driven on Kelley Drive. And I knew that Kelley had died in a tragic car accident of unknown origin. And that she had married a prince and had two beautiful daughters who were sometimes the news.

That's it, folks. That was all I knew. And what better way to learn more than by reading Wikipedia and IMBD---kidding. What better way to learn more than by reading a historical fiction novel that imagines the hidden stories?

Several times I skipped over The Girl in White Gloves (PLEASE--no more 'girl' titles, people!) by Keri Maher when I saw it on NetGalley, but each time it caught my attention. I try hard to keep my requests in line as I am committed to doing justice to every title I get. I caved--what's one more book to the pile?

In the first chapter, I learned that Kelley had been offered the title role in Hitchcock's Marnie and was unable to accept! MARNIE! The movie that I watched from the back seat of the car, that disturbed me and made me return to it again and again to 'get it'. I read Winston Graham's Marnie a few years back after a chance to see the movie at a local repertoire theater when Tippi Hendron visited and told the audience about the movie. How could a princess accept a role about a troubled woman leading a double life, with a hatred of men and a penchant for theft? Who was made love to by a young Sean Connery?

Okay. That was enough to keep me turning pages.

In a few chapters, I learned that Kelley had played Tracy Lord in a musical remake of The Philadelphia Story! One of my very favorite movies! How did I get to be in my sixth decade without having seen High Society? Arrggh!

At the end of the story, I learned that at age forty-seven, Kelley became involved with poetry festivals, reciting poems! Including Maya Angelou.

I might also mention that Kelley was a knitter.

Maher admits to a dearth of sources for critical times in Kelley's life, like her long correspondence with Prince Rainier after their first meeting in Monaco. She 'took many liberties' for 'dramatic compression', which translates to providing a 'good read', and she speculates on the details of her relationships with men, her family, and the cause of her death. Hey, it's fiction. Get over it.

The story hits on all of the major events and films of Kelley's career. It also portrays Kelley as a woman driven to achieve excellence but conflicted by parental expectations that a woman's goal is to marry and bear children. You've had a bit of freedom, played make-believe, now it's time to grow up and become a responsible adult as a real June Cleaver, supporting your husband and bearing his children. Well, that role did not suit Kelley; Maher takes us into the marriage bed and it was positively Arctic.

Well, I gave up wanting to be a princess before I was five years old. Between Kelley and Princesses Diana and Sarah, it is quite clear the downsides far outweigh the perks.

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

The Girl in White Gloves: A NOVEL OF GRACE KELLY
By KERRI MAHER
Feb 25, 2020
ISBN 9780451492074

Phantoms by Christian Kiefer

Gorgeous writing, foreshadowing that draws the reader to turn pages, wonderful characters, and an exploration of deeply American themes propelled me to read

Phantoms  by Christian Kiefer in two sittings.

John Frazier returns from Vietnam a shattered man. He moves in with his grandmother and takes a job pumping gas. He becomes involved with two formidable women whose husbands were once best friends--a confidence man, becoming the bearer of the secrets of their entwined family histories dating to the 1940s.

Aunt Evelyn Wilson's husband ran an orchard. Kimiko Takahashi was a Japanese picture bride. Their husband worked together, friends over their shared love of the orchard. Their children grew up together.

The ugliness of racism underlies the story of star-crossed lovers separated by WWII and the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the Japanese Removal Act, a story that ends in tragedy.

They would love each other. In secrecy and in silence. And then all of it would blown away, not only because of history but because of their very lives, adrift as they were in the swirling spinning sea between one continent and another.~ from Phantoms by Christian Kiefer

John has struggled for years to contain his experiences through his writing. His early promise as a 'war writer' has not been fulfilled. It is time to tell this other story, Ray Takahashi's story.

If the kind of experiences I had in Vietnam have already become a tired American myth, over told, overanalyzed, then perhaps this is a good enough reason to justify what I am trying to do in these pages, returning to the 1969 of my memory not to write about Vietnam at long last but instead to narrate the story of someone I did not know but whose time in Place County has come to feel inextricably tied to my own. ~from Phantom by Christian Kiefer

I love the language of this book. John notes that he had read Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe twice,"its sentences consuming me. O Lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again," and was reading it again after the war. I believe I have read it four times! I discovered Wolfe at sixteen in 1969, and fell in love with his language.

This grim story also is a celebration of life. The ending is a beautiful affirmation that brought strong emotions and a catch in my throat.

There are days--many of them--when golden light seems to pour forth from the very soil.~from Phantoms by Christian Kiefer

I purchased an ebook.

Phantoms
by Christian Kiefer
Liveright
ISBN: 978-0-87140-481-7
$26.95 hard cover; $14.55 Kindle
published April, 2019

from the publisher:
In the panoramic tradition of Charles Frazier’s fiction, Phantoms is a fierce saga of American culpability. A Vietnam vet still reeling from war, John Frazier finds himself an unwitting witness to a confrontation, decades in the making, between two steely matriarchs: his aunt, Evelyn Wilson, and her former neighbor, Kimiko Takahashi. John comes to learn that in the onslaught of World War II, the Takahashis had been displaced as once-beloved tenants of the Wilson orchard and sent to an internment camp. One question has always plagued both families: What happened to the Takahashi son, Ray, when he returned from service and found that Placer County was no longer home—that nowhere was home for a Japanese American? As layers of family secrets unravel, the harrowing truth forces John to examine his own guilt.

In prose recalling Thomas Wolfe, Phantoms is a stunning exploration of the ghosts of American exceptionalism that haunt us today.