Learning to See by Elise Hooper: A Novel of Dorothea Lange, the Woman who Revealed the Real America

I knew the photography of Dorothea Lange but little about her personal life so I was glad to be given the opportunity to read Learning to See by Elise Hooper.

Hooper's novel offers an accessible narrative of Lange's life from her point of view. Lange's childhood polio left her with a limp from a deformed foot. She established a successful portrait photography career until the Depression when her work dwindled. With two children and an artist husband, Lange had to give up her studio to work for the Farm Security Administration.

Migrant mother photo by Dorothea Lange

Using her portrait experience, Lange created iconic photographs that recorded the devastation of the Dust Bowl and the misery of farm migrants. During WWII she was employed by the Office of War Information to document the internment of Japanese Americans.

Internment camp photo by Dorothea Lange

Through Lange's eyes, readers experience the human suffering of poverty and systemic racism.

Lange's marriage to her first husband, artist Maynard Dixon, was strained. Her extensive traveling meant leaving her sons and the book addresses her son's anger and acting out. While photographing for the OWI she worked with Paul Taylor who became her second husband.

Famous photographers appear in the story's background, including Ansel Adams.

The novel is "inspired" by Lange's life. Hooper offers a woman filled with doubts and remorse while facing up to the authorities who repress the photographs that too honestly recorded atrocities and the forgotten.

Lange's life as an artist and a woman will enthrall readers.

Learning to See
Elise Hooper
William Morrow
On Sale Date: January 22, 2019
ISBN: 9780062686534, 0062686534
$15.99 USD, $19.99 CAD, £9.99 GBP

Learn more about Lange at

American Experience:
http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/dustbowl/bios/dorothea-lange/
MoMA:
https://www.moma.org/artists/3373
The J. Paul Getty Museum
http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/artists/1656/dorothea-lange-american-1895-1965/
The Library of Congress:
https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/wcf/wcf0013.html

A Glad Obedience: Why and What We Sing

As a young minister's wife in an aging congregation, I was asked to play the piano for the weekly pre-worship hymn sing. They handed me a 1930s hymnal and called out hymn titles.
I did not know the hymns that meant something to this older congregation: Trust and Obey, Softly and Tenderly Jesus is Calling, Standing on the Promises, I Need Thee Every Hour.

The people were confounded. I was asked, "If you don't know these hymns what will you think of on your deathbed to bring you comfort!" Other hymns, I responded.

As my husband was moved from church to church there was an adjustment to each congregation's most beloved hymns and the challenge of teaching hymns from the new hymnal.

Hymn singing is a communal act that reinforces a congregation's identity and faith commitment. It is often the highlight of worship for most in the pews. The hymns comfort and they confirm and they spur to be better.

As choral singer since childhood, I have long understood that to sing is to be part of a community, working together toward a common goal. Singing in worship is an act of praise, a confirmation of faith, and can spur a recommitment of intent.

Walter Brueggemann's A Glad Obedience examines the tradition of song in worship, beginning with the Psalms and then considering classic and contemporary hymns including “Blest Be the Ties That Binds,” "Holy Holy Holy,"“God's Eye Is on the Sparrow,” "Love Divine, All Loves Excelling," "O For a Closer Walk With God," “Once to Every Man and Nation,” “Someone Asked the Question,” and “We Are Marching in the Light of God.”

In Part I, he asks, Why do we sing this psalm? Beginning with Psalm 104, a creation hymn, he breaks down its parts to explain what it meant to its original singers. For instance, "the song is sung in an arid climate" and uses water imagery (You make springs gush forth in the valleys) as affirmation that all life, human and plant and animal, "stand together before the life-giving gifts of God."

As Brueggemann walks us through the Psalms he leads readers into a deeper understanding of the text and faith.

"We sing our penultimacy as an act of resistance and as a proposal of alternative. The resistance performed by this singing is against the reduction of creation to a series of commodity transactions because it is all gift...It is the affirmation that we live in a generous context of abundance in which there is enough for all of God's creatures." from A Glad Obedience by Walter Brueggemann

Part Two, What We Sing, Brueggemann considers traditional and contemporary hymns. He "relishes the words, phrases, and images that lie deep in our faith tradition" to show how attentiveness to the hymn lyrics challenge the "dominant worldly ideology" and can lead to"joyous risk-taking obedience."

One of my favorite hymns, God of Grace and God of Glory by Harry Emerson Fosdick, is included. "Grant us wisdom, grant us courage, for the living of these days," "Cure thy children's warring madness, bend our pride to thy control," "Save us from weak resignation to the evils we deplore," are lines that seem to be always relevant.

Brueggemann first presents the hymn's historical context, written in 1930, during the depression and in a time when the world "struggled with systemic disarmament." He considers the theological bent of Fosdick's Social Gospel and how the hymn's theology is related to that of his contemporaries Paul Tillich and Reinhold Niebuhr (author of the well-known Serenity Prayer). Then he breaks the hymn down with a commentary.

A neglected hymn which Brueggemann admires is based on James Russell Lowell's 1845 poem "Once to Every Man and Nation." Lowell wrote the words as a protest against President Polk's expansionist war with Mexico as a way to add slave states to shift the balance of power.

Once to every man and nation
Comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth with falsehood,
For the good or evil side;
Some great cause, God's new Messiah,
Offering each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever
'Twixt that darkness and that light.
            from Once to Every Man and Nation

Brueggemann relates the hymn's time and purpose to the current president's immigration policy. Brueggemann writes, "...when we sing this hymn...we also sing concerning our own moral crisis in which the quality and future of our common humanity is at stake."

Brueggemann prods us to pay attention to what we sing, to let the words deepen our faith and make manifest in our actions the values we proclaim to hold.

The Rev. Dr. Walter Brueggemann is the author of over 100 books. Read a sample of this book at
https://www.wjkbooks.com/Products/0664264646/a-glad-obedience.aspx

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

A Glad Obedience
Why and What We Sing
by Walter Brueggemann
Westminster John Knox Press
Pub Date: 15 Jan 2019
ISBN: 9780664264642
PRICE: $18.00 (USD)

The Diary of Helen Korngold: January 13-19, 1919

Helen Korngold, December 1919, New York City

January

Monday 13
Up—Wellston. Class—Dr. Holmes began her lecture. It sounds good. We all cut Shakespeare. Dr. Mck must be raving! Home. Orchestra—a fine rehearsal. Letter from Ruth—Read.

Tuesday 14
Up—Wellston—Class—Dr. Holmes lecture II. I like her. Miss Cozy Cornors & Mr. Atheltia’s party. Home—Dress—lecture—Everybody treats us fine. Summer came. He’s lots of fun. He’s reading my “Without Benefit of Clergy.” Doesn’t like it. I do. Will educate him! Letter from Jewell. 8 pages. Exciting. Home—Bed.

Wednesday 15
Up—dress—eat—Wellston—Class—nothing exciting. Lecture III. Home—eat—dress. Summer took me to War Exposition. Enjoyed it immensely—He’s a nice fellow! A good teaser. He’s a Bostonian propagandist. I love St. Louis! Home—Bed.

Thursday 16
After breakfast—Wellston—Class—good day. Last of Dr. Home’s lecture on Social Ed.—a very fine woman, best lecture of all. Miss Macauley’s tea—she quite fussed me. However--! I can stand it! Home—study—bed. Letter from Lenna King Connley.

Friday 17
After breakfast—Wellston. Kids had good lesson. The boys are cute, but the girls are dull. Class—dancing—home.

Saturday 18
Up—dress—eat—fool around. School. Dr. McCourt is a peach—showed us telescope. Ed. 12—Sip & Margaret Martin & I enjoy that class. Sip giggles all the time. Dr. Usher gave a fine lecture. Junior Council Board meeting & home. Fool around. Bathe. Made date for pop with E.

Sunday 19
Clean up house after breakfast. Dinner. Dress for pop concert. Ernest E. he liked me too well. He’s all right but I don’t fancy him. I amuse myself while with him. Steindel played wonderfully well. Home—eat—Aunt Beryl’s. Home & to bed.

*****

Notes:

January 13

Professor Holmes Smith, A.M.  taught art education.

Associate Professor of  English William Roy Mackenzie, Ph.D. and Assistant in English Mrs. William Roy (Ethel) Stuart Mackenzie, A.B. both taught at Washington University in McMillan Hall.  The course listing reads:
21. Shakespeare. A close and critical study of six plays: in 1918-19 Twelfth Night, 1 Henry IV, Macbeth, Othello, Winter's Tale, Henry V. Three hours a week. Credit 6 units

January 14

Without Benefit of Clergy by Rudyard Kipling first appeared in MacMillan's Magazine and in Harper's Weekly in June 1890. The story concerns an English Civil Servant in India who falls in love with a Muslim woman. They share a secret life together, outside of society. They have a child, but their happiness ends when the child and ‘wife’ both die. Mixed marriages were not tolerated in Colonial India, and unless the woman converted to Christianity the pair could not have legally married. Thomas Hardy’s novel The Return of the Native was first published in 1878.

The main female character becomes involved in illicit love affairs.

January 15

The War Exposition was a traveling exhibit about Allied efforts during WWI, sponsored by the American Government. An advertisement stated military men could attend free to see “1000s of Relics” from Europe, band music, and a review of the troops. It was held at the Coliseum.

January 16

Martha Gause McCaulley, Ph.D. was Dean of Women and Instructor in English, McMillan Hall, at Washington University.

Lena King Connely was born July 23, 1895, and died Sept. 25, 1989, and is buried in Calvary Cemetery, DeSoto, Jefferson Co., MO.

January 18

Dr. Walter Edward McCourt, A.M. was dean of the School of Architecture and of the School of Engineering. He taught Geography courses and resided at 6060 Berlin avenue. Course description:

General Geology. The principles of geology, including earth structure, forces modifying the surface and structure of the earth, and earth history. Lectures, field trips, and laboratory work. Three hours a week. Open to all students. 6 credits.

Margaret Gray Martin was a student at Washington University

Junior Auxiliary of the Council of Jewish Woman.  Helen attended a national convention of Junior Council while in New York City on December 28.  http://www.ajcarchives.org/AJC_DATA/Files/1916_1917_5_Directories.pdf

January 19

The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra was founded in 1880, the second oldest symphony in the country. Max Zach was the conductor at this time. Information about his career can be found at: http://www.stokowski.org/Principal_Musicians_St_Louis_Symphony.htm

Max Steindel

Max Steindel was born in Germany in 1891 and died in 1964 after forty seasons with the St Louis Symphony.

He became lead cellist in1912 at age 21. He was principal cellist for 41 seasons.

The January 19, 1919, St. Louis Dispatch gives the Pops concert program as Tschaikowsky's Variation on a Rococo Theme, Massenet Two Entr-Actes, Clifton's Adagio for Orchestra, and Berlioz Rakoczy March.
http://www.stokowski.org/Principal_Musicians_St_Louis_Symphony.htm#Cello Index Point_

Memory Quilts the Modern Way!

This is a memory quilt. It's not the kind of memory quilts I made 28 years ago! It is sophisticated and edgy in design while bringing comfort to family separated by distance. 

Otherwise/Autrement, 45" x 60"

Modern Quilting is all the rage. The use of negative space and graphic design suits contemporary tastes influenced by Mid-Century design. Susanne Parquette shows today's quilters how to mix Modern with sentimental in Modern Memory Quilts: A Handbook for Capturing Meaningful Moments. The twelve quilts in the book are actual commissioned memory quilts made by Paquette, who includes the people and stories behind each quilt.

Many of my friends are Hexie addicts. Here is a Hexie quilt that uses a half-hexagon pattern alternating with full hexies that are fussy cut from a child's clothing. 

Paquette includes advice on how much yardage can be gleaned from shirts in various sizes and quilting cotton.

Quilts can be personalized with embroidery or imagery, as in the quilt below. She used the same pattern with a bird silhouette.

Paquette walks us through the process, beginning with Memory Keeping: remembering, documenting, and perspective. She moves on to Empathy+Design on the "collaborative voice" in memory quilt design. Color Stories addresses color basics. She discusses the tools and construction methods needed to work with clothing.

These memory projects aren't like photographs, they are "hidden in plain sight," blending into the decor.

Striped Half-Square Triangle pillows are very cool and functional. A surprise is the strips of a fur coat! A casual visitor may not recognize them as holding a memory, but the family will recall their loved ones with every use.

The Initial quilt was a "leaving home' quilt for a son going off to college. This is an easy half-square triangle pattern.

My first memory quilts were made from my mother's painting smocks after her early death from cancer. I used traditional quilt blocks. Parquette used a beloved father's clothing in Connect the Dots, made with large quarter-circle blocks alternating with solid square blocks.

Intersections can be made with 10-12 adult clothing pieces or 24-36 baby/child pieces. Here, a pet dog's clothing is included.

Other projects included are a pieced apron, Arabesque, Modern Mandela, an easy Mosiac made of rectangles and squares, bed-sized Arrow quilt.

My mind is filled with ideas! I lost a cousin last year and her children are asking about memory quilts. This book couldn't have come at a better time.

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

MODERN MEMORY QUILTS
A Handbook for Capturing Meaningful Moments,12 Projects + The Stories That Inspired Them
by Suzanne Paquette

Stash Books

8" x 10"

128p + pattern pullouts, color

ISBN: 978-1-61745-565-0

UPC: 734817-112662

(eISBN: 978-1-61745-566-7)

 Book ($28.95)
 eBook ($23.99)

*****

Here are memory quilts I have made over the years.

I used my mother-in-law's handkerchiefs and printed family photos on fabric to make this wall hanging.

My first memory quilt used my mother's plaid painting smocks. It was the second quilt I had ever made.

My sister-in-law gave me some lace that had been in her family which I used these two quilts.

Last year I finally finished this quilt made with my father-in-law's shirts.

Another quilt made with mom's painting shirts.

I used my mother-in-law's counted cross stitch embellished clothing to make a dozen pillows for family members. I incuded her handkerchiefs and trims and buttons from her sewing room.

My mother-in-law's niece loved this dress she wore which I turned into a pillow.

The Only Woman in the Room by Marie Benedict

There is nothing new under the sun. It was true in the Third Century B.C. when the writer of Ecclesiastes wrote it and it is true in 2018.

And some of those perennial truths is that women are valued for their beauty and preyed upon for sex and must fight for equality in their vocations and avocations.

Take Hedy Lamarr, the gorgeous Austrian-born star. Marie Benedict's new historical fiction novel The Only Woman in the Room peels back the Hollywood-packaged icon of female physical perfection and offers us a woman who would be in the #MeToo marches and fighting to be taken seriously as an inventor.

I had seen the fascinating American Masters show Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story and was interested to see how Benedict handled Lamarr's exceptional story. Although I have some issues with the writing, I believe that the importance of bringing Lamarr's story to the general public in an accessible venue is more important. The book is a page-turner, quick and easy to read. It hits all the hot-button issues in contemporary society: Antisemitism, abuse and control of women, the power used by Hollywood moguls over starlets, immigration and refugees. Throw in marriage and divorce, adoption, and single moms. And no, the book is not fiction written to address these issues! Hedy Lamarr's life touched on them all.

If all you know about Hedy Lamarr is her films or "It's Hedley!" from Mel Brooks movie Blazing Saddles, you need to read this book.

Benedict's previous books include The Other Einstein and Carnegie's Maid. Learn more about them here.

I received an ARC from bookreporter.com in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The Only Woman in the Room
by Marie Benedict
Sourcebooks
Publication January 15, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4926-6686-8
Hardcover $25.00

Big Bang by David Bowman

My Sixth Grade class was in the library that Friday afternoon when Mr. Saffronoff led us back through Northwood Elementary School's ancient hallways to our classroom. We were being let out of school early. The president had been shot. As I walked home alone down the tree-lined street I was filled with vague and unsettling fears. Was America vulnerable and unprotected without the president? 

It would be years before I revisited the America I grew up in, hoping to understand as an adult the events that had shaken my childhood's sense of security--The Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassinations of President Kennedy and later his brother Robert and Martin Luther King, Jr., the Vietnam War and the daily body count on the television news.

At 600+ pages, I was uncertain I wanted to read Big Bang, but the subject matter was too tempting.

The book begins with Jonathan Lethem's essay on his friend David Bowman, calling Big Bang "docu-fiction," "an epic novel about celebrity and power in the postwar twentieth century," a "mammoth project" about "everything and anything" Bowman knew about postwar America. The Foreword ends by telling readers that all of the people and events are based on "true history."

I found a densely woven correlation of events and personages so intricate as to astonish. Bowen had created a literary, "six degrees" link chart of interconnections that is all-embracing. Of course, the Kennedys are central along with all the necessary Washington figures, but also making appearances are J. D. Salinger, William S. Burroughs, Howard Hunt writing pulp fiction and planning the secret invasion of Guatemala, Richard Nixon and his Checkers speech, Carl Djerassi and Robert McNamara in an Ann Arbor book club, Lucille Ball facing the McCarthy House Un-American Activities Committee...

Just to give you a taste.

Bowen suggests that after the Atom Bomb, the second "big bang" to change the world was the Kennedy assassination. It changed a lot of things, for sure. It set off a chain of other political assassinations.

The novel was a journey into the world that shaped me. I have to wonder what my son's generation will make of Big Bang, Millennials for whom the 1950s and 60s are ancient history?

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

Big Bang
by David Bowman
Little, Brown and Company
Pub Date 15 Jan 2019
ISBN: 9780316560238
PRICE: $32.00 (USD)

The Diary of Helen Korngold: January 6-12, 1919

Helen Korngold, December 1919, New York City

January

Monday 6
Beginning teaching. I suppose I’ll like it—awfully tired. Last night! Class—all OK, Basket ball—lots of fun. Home—orchestra—fellows still discussing Dewey. I should worry. He treated me fine. Eat. Home.

Tuesday 7
Up—Wellston—Class. Things going nicely. Nothing startling. Home. Ellenburg has them bad. But I like Dewey & Summer better. Even M. Block is much more entertaining—on second thought, he’s really a very delightful conversationalist.

Wednesday 8
Rise—eat—Wellston. This is a pretty nice room. Class—Basket ball—it’s awfully rough. Florence F. just naturally tried to bully everyone. Can’t do it. Home.

Thursday 9
Up—Wellston. Kids are funny. I should worry. School. Nothing startling. Home—study—bed. I wish Summer would locate Dewey Pierre Flambert—he won the Distinguished Service Cross & the Legion of Honor, and after doing all that, he actually made a hasty exit out of St. Louis. Poor Dewey. He was so nice.

Friday 10
Up—Wellston. Kids are real enthusiastic—gave them exam. I suppose they flunked. School—unexciting. Home. Summer for dinner. He’s so entertaining—Morris & Sam over in the evening. Very enjoyable. Loaned M. & S. some books. Bed at 11:30.

Saturday 11
Up—eat—School. Dr. U sprang exams. Pretty easy. Why worry—I got an “A” from him! He’s a peach! Nothing special. Home—bath—eat & study & to bed. Party at Cassels house—kids & sophs to Seniors Hockey team. Cute.

Sunday 12
Up—clean up rooms. Study. In afternoon Dan came over. He looks so well. Jewell sent me a beautiful calendar. He’s rather nice I think. But he is too far away from me to be sure about it. Lesson at Aunt Beryl’s. Home.

*****

Notes:

January 6

K.C. is Kansas City

January 7

Wellston High School, originally located at Ella and Evergreen in Wellston, St Louis, had their first graduating class in 1911. http://www.builtstlouis.net/northside/mlk07.html

January 8

Florence Funsten Forbes of 469 Lee Ave, Webster Groves appears on the Freshman class list of the 1916 Washington University Catalog. She graduated from Washington University in 1922.

Genealogies on this family are available at ancestry.com.

Florence was the daughter of the beautiful Hortense Funsten who married Arthur Henry Forbes in 1897. Florence was born on October 26, 1898. Her father died on April 19, 1899, in Waco, TX.  The coroner’s death certificate lists the cause of death as “La Grippe.”

After the death of Arthur, Florence and her mother resided with her maternal grandparents Robert Emmett Funsten (born 12/10/1851 in VA and died 1927 in St. Louis) and Charlotte Elizabeth Cook (6/1852 in VA to 9/1922 in St. Louis). On the St. Louis City Directory Robert appears as President of Webster Groves Dried Fruit Company. Ancestry.com has his family tree and shows three generations of Robert Emmetts.

In 1905 Hortense married author Herbert Durand, born 1858 in New York, who was a famous author of nature guides and travel books. In 1906 Hortense and Herbert had a son Eugene Funsten Durand. They were wealthy enough that the 1940 New York State Census shows they had a butler and a cook. Hortense died in 1950.

Florence's 1922 passport photo

Florence traveled with her mother and step-father numerous times. Her December 12, 1922, passport application shows Florence was 24 years old, 5’ 6 ½” tall, with a low forehead, grey/blue eyes, short retrousse nose, medium mouth, round chin and face, and had light brown hair. Florence reported no occupation. She was born at St. Louis on October 26, 1898. She reported her father Arthur Henry Forbes was diseased. She had resided at the Graniston Hotel in Bronxville, NY. She was going to Italy, Egypt, Portugal, the British Isles, France, Spain, Constantinople, and Morocco, leaving from the port of New York on the S.S. Empress of Scotland on February 3.

Florence’s grandfather Arthur Page Forbes appears in the Book of St. Louisians. He was born in 1840 in Illinois and moved with his family to St. Louis in 1846. His father moved to Massachusetts in 1852 and served in the Civil War. In 1866 he returned to St. Louis with his family and in 1867 joined Forbes Bros and White tea dealers. In 1869 he married Theresa James and they had a daughter Alice Eliza who in 1869 married William Fitzhugh Funsten, born in Virginia in 1855 and was the owner of Funsten & Co. Furs. Their children included Kenneth Mead, Florence, and Arthur Forbes Funsten, who was father to Mary James, Arthur Henry (father of Florence), Helen Francis, Ruth Rogers and Florence Theresa born in 1874.

The family appears in The Ancestors and Descendents of Colonel David Funsten and his wife Susan Everad Meade.

January 11

Washington University history professor Dr. Roland Greene Usher, Ph.D. from Harvard College, was born in 1880 in Lynn, MA to Edward Preston Usher and Adela Louis Payson. His ancestors can be traced back to the Pilgrim Fathers.

At age 30 he became a professor of History at Washington University.

In 1910 he married Florence Wyman Richardson. They were strong supporters of woman’s suffrage. His most famous work is Pan-Germanism, written in 1913. He accurately foretold events leading to WWI and urged the United States to end isolationism and play an active role in world events. He died in 1957 and is buried in St Louis. He is listed as living at 5737 Cates Avenue in St. Louis.

There were many Cassels in St Louis during this time. See this list for a collection: http://www.ancestorstories.org/mom/cassell/Directory.PDF  

January 12

Beryl Frey, Helen’s maternal aunt, was born in 1875 in Germany and at nine months of age arrived with her family in America. She was a music teacher. She married St. Louis pharmacist Louis Lieberstein. She died in 1929.