"Doge" is Alive and Living In Our Home

I don't often blog about our doggies but today I thought I would share some photos of our Suki and Kamikaze. They both spent the first seven or so years of their lives in a puppy mill as breeders.

Kamikaze is our white Shiba Inu. She is stubborn, vocal, loves attention, and loves sniffing every inch along her walks. Kaze (when she is crazy; Kami when she is sweet) was brought home to be Suki's friend after we lost our Kara, a puppy mill rescue with late stage kidney failure.

Suki is our red Shiba Inu. She is larger than most Shibas, quiet and docile, shy and lazy. Suki was unsocialized when we got her, and she had to learn out-of-cage skills like realizing where the world ends, how to go up and down stairs, and that she did not have to hide in small spaces and corners.

Suki

Kaze can be very alert and playful. Here she is watching to see what we are doing. She will bark just because she is feeling frisky, and will shake a toy and bounce around the house.

Here is Kamikaze looking out the window when the children are being let out of the school across the street.

 Kamikaze likes her soft toys.

And can be very beautiful.

 But Kamikaze thinks everything is "hers," a typical Shiba personality trait. Poor Suki.

 But "Ain't I sweet" she asks.

Suki is a happy dog. She may spend most of her time sleeping in a corner bed, but every night she comes out to snap at her tail, roll on her back, ask to be pet, and beg for a few treats. Her tail is always up now. Her foster family never saw her tail up for most of the year they had her.

Cookies please?

Most of the morning and afternoon the doggies sleep.

We wanted to adopt rescue Shiba Inus as a thank you to the breed. Our first Shiba was Kili, who lived nearly 17 years and was our son's companion as he grew up. She was AKC  registered, home bred, sired by a champion. An alert, playful, happy, and friendly girl. But like most Shibas she would run away when ever she got a chance!

Kili

Puppy mill dogs live a sad life in horrible conditions, with no medical care, often no socialization with humans or dogs. They are treated like "live stock" in a factory farm. It is amazing that with love and care they can overcome their earlier trauma and become such loving and secure companions.

Shibas are now found everywhere, including in the meme Doge. I see them in commercials even.

But Shiba owners warn that as beautiful and cute as Shibas Inus can be, they are not for everyone. They are more cat than dog: as my husband says, "they come when called...when they feel like it."

To read more about Shiba Inus:

http://jezebel.com/for-the-love-of-doge-please-do-not-get-a-shiba-inu-1498277699

http://www.akc.org/breeds/shiba_inu/index.cfm

http://www.shibas.org

http://shibashake.com

From Ensign's Bars to Colonel's Stars: Making Quilts to Honor Those Who Serve

From Ensign's Bars to Colonel's Stars  is the first in a series called Making Quilts to Honor Those Who Serve. The first volume presents original patterns commemorating commissioned officer ranks: Ensign's Bars (O-1); Lieutenant's Platoon (O-2); Captain's Company (O-3); Major's Gold (O-4); Commander's Flags (O-5); and Colonel's Stars (O-6). Quilt designer and retired service person Renelda Peldunas Harter comes from a family with multi-generational military service.

Strip piecing and easy piecing techniques are utilized. The majority of the quilts are geometric-- made up of squares, rectangles, and triangles. Several incorporate appliqué, and some inspiration gallery quilters used appliqué to personalize their quilt interpretation.

Each pattern is shown in several color ways; the author chose colors to represented different branches of the armed services (red, white, blue, khaki, gray, green, gold, brown), while other quilt makers interpreted the patterns in colors such as pinks, gray and black, brights, and green and aquas.

The military rank insignia which inspired the patterns are explained and their history given.

Clear and detailed instructions for cutting, preparing, squaring, and sewing is offered in a general section as well as for individual projects. The author emphasizes squaring as central to quilt making success. I appreciated her illustrated section on squaring.

I have not tried making a pattern. The instructions include lots of illustrations. The process is explained step-by-step.

Although created for honoring active service persons and veterans, the patterns can be adapted for many uses and the gallery of quilts included in each chapter provides inspiration for other applications, like baby or graduation quilts.The author served over 25 years in active duty and the reserve and she tells her story in each chapter's introduction. She has been quilt making her entire adult life. Visit her blog Quilted Cora. She was a McCalls Design Star finalist in 2012. See her free pattern Scribble Me A Quilt at Windham Fabrics. Read her guest blog post for Purrfect Spots here.

I thank Schiffer Publications and NetGalley for access to the e-book for a fair and unbiased review.

From Ensign's Bars to Colonel's Stars: Making Quilts to Honor Those Who Serve
Renelda Peldunas-Harter
Schiffer Publishing Ltd.
ISBN: 9780764347191
$19.99 papberback
Publication Date: November 28, 2014

"Love One Another"; The Life of Fanny Seward

When historical fiction writer Trudy Krisher read Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin she became interested in Fanny Seward, the beloved daughter of William Seward who was Lincoln's rival for the Republican presidential candidate. He became his closest friend politically and personally. She also read James Swanson's book Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer. Learning that Fanny Seward had kept a diary and no biography existed, Krisher began her research that culminated in
Fanny Seward: A Life.

I was thrilled to see this book title offered on NetGalley, because like Krisher I also was captivated by the assassination attempt on William Seward and by the role his daughter Fanny played in his life.

I was disappointed to learn that Krisher's original manuscript reached 600 pages but found no publisher. She had to halve her book. Early on I had wished to hear more of Fanny's voice through incorporation of her diary entries and writing. Happily these source materials do appear later in the book, especially as relating to the assassination attempt on her father's life.

The Seward family was privileged yet unpretentious, progressive and free-thinking. Frances Seward was an intellectual who preferred the introverted and quiet rural life. She was involved in the Underground Railroad. She knew Elizabeth Cady Stanton who described Frances as having "independence of character". Always in frail health Frances used her illnesses to avoid society.

"A cargo of 300 slaves, wild from Africa, has been landed in Georgia by the sloop “Wanderer”—and the nation is quite stirred up about it. I hope the “stealers of men” will be justly punished, and the poor Africans be restored to their native land."  Fanny Seward 1858 diary excerpt

William Seward was outgoing, sanguine, and personable...and "addicted" to politics. Goodwin in Team of Rivals tells how he was the most liberal Abolitionist Republican and assumed he would be nominated for their presidential candidate. He was too liberal, and Lincoln was elected. Seward was offered Secretary of State on Lincoln's Cabinet, and he assumed he would "lead" behind the scenes. Instead Lincoln won Seward's respect and loyalty.


Fanny was plain and conventional, a loving child, an adoring sister. Her family role was that of nurturer. Books were her first love, and writing her second. She wrote plays, poems, and a novel during her short life. Her power of observation and descriptive writing indicates that had she been born in another time perhaps she would have been a journalist.

Her father was publicly conservative about marital happiness, and her mother felt a woman could accomplish more of importance in the world when unmarried. Consequently, Fanny seriously considered writing as a career.

Her parents were often separated, Frances staying in Auburn NY while William lived in Washington D.C. with visits home as he could. Fanny spent a good deal of time with her father and was knowledgeable about all aspects of the Civil War. She visited the camps, the battlefields, and the hospitals. Fanny met national figures, becoming close to Dorothea Dix, superintended of women nurses, and to the renowned actress Charlotte Cushman, an emancipated woman who was also a closeted lesbian.

The biography's climax revolves around the events of April 14, 1865. While John Wilkes Booth and President Lincoln played out their roles in the Ford Theater, embittered Confederate Lewis Powell was lurking outside the Seward home, armed with a gun and a knife. William Seward had suffered massive injuries in a carriage accident, his jaw broken and his arm useless. Fanny had been reading to her father, and had just turned down the light. Seward's nurse Sergeant Robinson was in attendance. Powell was determined to fulfill his role and assassinate the Secretary of State, while a third member of the plot was to murder Vice President Andrew Johnson.

Read the book! I won't give away the story! Except to say that Fanny showed great spirit and selflessness in defending her father, and her actions likely saved his life.

'Blood, blood, my thoughts seemed drenched in it—I seemed to breathe its sickening odor. My dress was stained with it—Mother’s was drabbled with it—it was on everything. The bed had been covered with blood, the blankets & sheet chopped with several blows of the knife.'

Fanny was never in fine health, and tuberculosis brought an early death at age 21. She was not alive when her father died in 1872. His final words were "Love one another."

To read more see:
Civil War Women Blog on Fanny, including photographs:
http://civilwarwomenblog.com/fanny-seward/

This promo for the book includes photographs and the horrendous story o the assassination attempt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aA2ctNH6YjA

Read excerpts from Fanny's diary from the University of Rochester:
http://www.lib.rochester.edu/index.cfm?page=638

Fanny Seward: A Life
Trudy Krisher
Syracuse University Press
ISBN: 9780815610410
$29.95 hardbound
Publication Date: January 15, 2015

I thank Syracuse University Press and NetGalley for providing the e-book in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Woman, Woman Let Go Of Me; I Didn't Want To Grow Up Either.

Last night we watched the new NBC version of  Peter Pan. It was not the Mary Martin version I grew up with, or even the wonderful Cathy Rigby version we saw at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia many years ago. I couldn't pass up a chance to revisit James Barrie's tale of the boy who would not grow up.

The first broadcast of Peter Pan on television was in 1955 when I was a little tyke. I watched it then, and when it reaired in 1956 and 1960 I was glued to the TV screen once again. I always eagerly anticipated Peter Pan, along with televised showings of The Wizard Of Oz and  Gian Carlo Menotti's opera Amahl and The Night Visitors.

In Sixth Grade at Northwood Elementary School I found all the children's classics, including Peter Pan and Wendy and Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens. I became a James Barrie fan.

What struck me reading Peter Pan at age 11 were the insights into the human experience. Peter is stranded on Marooner's Rock and the tide is rising and bravely faces death.

Peter was not quite like other boys; but he was afraid at last. A tremour ran through him, like a shudder passing over the sea; but on the sea one shudder follows another till there are hundreds of them, and Peter felt just the one. Next moment he was standing erect on the rock again, with that smile on his face and a drum beating within him. It was saying, "To die will be an awfully big adventure."

"To die will be an awfully big adventure." It set my attitude for life, that one line, that death is not something to fear. It is one more adventure, another part of life.

Peter is a child and yet a super-hero, a trickster, naive and boyish and yet a savvy and capable welder of a knife.

So, Pan," said Hook at last, "this is all your doing."
"Ay, James Hook," came the stern answer, "it is all my doing."
"Proud and insolent youth," said Hook, "prepare to meet thy doom."
"Dark and sinister man," Peter answered, "have at thee.

During the epic battle between Pan and Hook fifteen pirates perished.

"Seventeen," Slightly sang out; but he was not quite correct in his figures. Fifteen paid the penalty for their crimes that night; but two reached the shore: Starkey to be captured by the redskins, who made him nurse for all their papooses, a melancholy come-down for a pirate; and Smee, who henceforth wandered about the world in his spectacles, making a precarious living by saying he was the only man that Jas. Hook had feared.

Captain Hook I later learned was based on Charles II, with his swarthy good looks, black curled hair, and high 17th c style. Cyril Richard's Hook is my standard; he is large yet graceful, swarthy yet natty, evil without being terrifying.

It broke my heart was when Peter returns for Wendy to find her all grown up.

Then she turned up the light, and Peter saw. He gave a cry of pain; and when the tall beautiful creature stooped to lift him in her arms he drew back sharply.
"What is it?" he cried again.
She had to tell him.
"I am old, Peter. I am ever so much more than twenty. I grew up long ago."
"You promised not to!"
"I couldn't help it.

 I understood Wendy's aching for what she has lost.

It is scary to a child to think of being the adult, the one relied upon instead of being the one protected and cared for.

My Eighth Grade teacher Mrs. Hayden said that adults lost their imagination. That terrified me! My child world was make believe. My Midge doll was a boy from Mars. Nancy Ensminger and I pretended we were Scottish orphans riding ponies across the moors. Janet Leary and I were Gene Autry and Roy Rogers. Mike Randall and I talked about outer space and believed in alien life. In Sixth Grade I invented Homer the Ghost, named for Homer Price of Robert McCloskey's books. Homer was my friend as I navigated a new social world after moving.

I wanted to be a writer. Nothing could be worse than losing one's imagination! If that was adulthood, I wanted to be counted out.

Fourteen came, and high school. I let go and grew up. I listened to rock and roll instead of musicals, put on lipstick, and went through the teenage angst.

But I never left Peter Pan behind.

The Morning and the Evening by Joan Williams: Our Best and Worst Natures

Jake Darby was different. Born a mute, he is unable to communicate and is taken for an idiot. He is self-contained, separate, regimented. His brother has already fled their small Southern town leaving Jake and his mother to struggle alone. When Jake's mother passes the town folk feel pity and Jake becomes theirs to care for. They bring him meals and mend his shirts. Forty-three years old Jake is dependent on their good will.

But one day a lonely misfit reaches for Jake in a desperate need to connect and Jake goes running and screaming into the night. A mad dog has been reported in a neighboring town and people's pity turns to fear.

I finished this book just before Thanksgiving and have contemplated what to say over the past week. What you need to know is that the book has haunted me, lingering past the family gathering and the visitors, the cleaning up, the Black Friday and Cyber Monday buying sprees. What better thing can I say?

Jake becomes a litmus test for the town folk, showing their true colors. Except the color is inconclusive. They have a capacity for altruism, and a self-interested reaction to put away those things perceived as a threat. People seek companionship and love--often in the wrong places. They desire things, often small things, and justify actions that bring about an outcome far from what was expected.

Kirkus Reviews stated that the subject matter may turn people away from this book. There is discomfort and sadness. The hardest part is how it mirrors humanity back to itself, so we are confronted with our many failings and sins but also with our capacity for good.

The Morning and The Evening by Joan Williams was first published as a story in 1952 with a sequel Mademoiselle published four years later. In 1961 Atheneum published the two stories combined as a novel. William Styron wrote that it "is a haunting and beautiful tale, richly infused with humor and sharp insights into the human predicament." The book was a finalist for the National Book Award, which that year went to Walker Percy's The Movie Goer and was up against now classic books including Joseph Heller's Catch 22, J. D. Salinger's Franny and Zoey, and Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates.
http://www.nationalbook.org/nba1962.html#.VH_bBN6wW0w

I thank NetGalley and Open Road Media for access to the e-book for my unbiased review.

The Morning and the Evening
Joan Williams
Open Road Media
Publication December 30, 2014
ISBN 9781497694637

Thanksgiving At My Place

No turkeys are being roasted by me!

The first Thanksgiving since moving permanently into our very own home finds us without a usable oven and with visitors from Finland!

We ordered a new oven but it arrived without racks. A replacement was ordered but the company lost the order! They are now shipping racks and other missing items to us, to arrive by early December at the latest. No baking pies or roasting a turkey for me...And my husband wanted one of those Pies Men Like I blogged about!

No pies will be baked by me!

Luckily we were invited by my aunt to come dine with her and my cousins and their families. Aunt Pat was married to my mother's brother Dave, who was in the navy.

Our exchange student daughter from Finland is back in the states to study and she and her husband came to visit us for the holiday! Marianna lived with us about 17 years ago. Her mother Elina was my exchange student sister in 1969-70! It has been fun catching up.

Marianna and Kimmo

Me, Elina, and my Grandfather Lynne Ramer Christmas 1969

Today I am thankful for:

• Having a home of my own and having the finances to make it ours.We got another bid for the kitchen remodel. I think it will happen early next year!
• Family, those who surround me and those who went before and made it possible for me to live in this country and enjoy the freedoms and security it avails. Our immigrant ancestors were brave people with great hope for a better life. Some of my ancestors wanted religious freedom. Some were escaping war, some persecution. 
• Our two doggies who bring us laughter and love, and make us go on walks when we don't want to.

  

  Our two girls

• The creative possibilities that quilting has brought into my life. I am researching for a Great Gatsby quilt right now.
• The ability to connect with people all over the world because of Internet.
• The wonderful books I can read, bringing me understanding and widening my world. Thanks publishers for NetGalley books! 

The Clever Mill Horse by Jodi Lew-Smith

In 1810 twenty-one year old Ella Kenyon needs to keep her promise to her grandfather and finish designing the first flax mill to strip raw flax into the silky fiber used to weave linen. The invention will provide for her family and assure the entire town of Debroahville in Upstate New York steady employment. But can she trust the man who wants to help her file her patent? The path to Washington, DC is fraught with danger. Just when her dream seems within grasp Ella must make the ultimate decision between familial love and success and fame.

The Clever Mill Horse is historical fiction, a mystery, and a melodrama romance. Jodi Lew-Smith has done impeccable historical research into the places, times, and material culture of 1804-11. I was interested to follow Ella and her companions as they travel down the Susquehanna River to Wilkes Barre, into the Pocono Mountains, down the Delaware River to Camden, to the New Jersey Pine Barrens, to Glassboro, into Philadelphia, and finally to Washington City where President Madison was in office and the Superintendent of Patents Latrobe was designing the Capital building. Having lived in and around Philadelphia these are all familiar places to me.

The story is full of action, suspense, and horrible events. The early part of the novel reads like a book for younger readers, but things turn very dark and Ella suffers kidnapping and physical abuse that gives the book a PG13 rating. Yet I think the story would appeal to many readers.

The first law of writing is "show, not tell." I was frustrated by pages and pages of being told, the author missing opportunities for action. Like many mysteries, one reason why most don't appeal to me, someone has to explain the whole background story to clear up the unknown. Much of the character insight is through long passages of being told their thoughts.

Strong women characters with masculine activities or abilities are trendy right now, the Action Hero Warrior Woman showing up in film, television and movies. I do have trouble with such characters placed in historical settings where they are not 'probable.' The characters act like 21st century thinkers. Some historical fiction captures the time and place with characters that are of that time. As I am finding, some uses the historical setting but tell a more modern tale.

And yet the story does not read modern. The 'Perils of Pauline' aspect of Ella's journey was too much for my taste. Many will love the roller coaster ride of twists and turns. I personally like something deep and transformative to happen as the character grows and struggles with a problem.

The author is horticulturist with a lifelong interest in books and writing. The Clever Mill Horse is the first book about Ella's adventures. Read more about Jodie Lew-Smith at  http://jodilewsmith.com

I received an e-book copy of The Clever Mill Horse through NetGalley and Caspian Press for a fair review.

The Clever Mill Horse
Jodi Lew-Smith
Caspian Press
Publication August 15, 2014
$16.99
ISBN: 9780991341207 paperback
ISBN: 978-0-9913412-1-4 e-book