Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive by Stephanie Land

"Poverty was like a stagnant pool of mud that pulled at our feet and refused to let go." from Maid by Stephanie Land

I'll be brutally honest, and you can "unfollow" me if you want, I don't care, but ever since Presidents Roosevelt and Johnson created social programs to help the poor there have been politicians determined to slash, limit, and end them. And one of their methods is to vilify the poor as blood-sucking, lazy, ignorant, "self-entitled" criminals who live off the hard earned tax dollars squeezed from hard-working, honest, salt-of-the-earth, red-blooded Americans.

I have known some of "those people," and yes, they sometimes made bad choices, but they also worked to improve their lives. Like my cousin who ran away at sixteen and returned, pregnant, without a high school degree. She was on welfare and food stamps. She also got a GED and learned to drive and found a job...which was eliminated by budget cuts. After floundering for some time, she found work again, and even love. Then died young of a horrible autoimmune disease.

Or the couple who worked abroad to teach English as a second language to pay off their school debts, then returned to America and could not find jobs. The wife returned to school for an advanced degree. She graduated after the economy tanked and still could not find work in her area. They relied on WIC when their child was born. They have lived in poverty their entire marriage, the woman working for ETS and online tutoring.

Stephanie Land had dreams, hoping some day to go to college. Her parents had split up, her mom's husband resentful and her dad broke because of the recession. She was self-supporting when she became pregnant. When she decided to keep her baby her boyfriend became abusive. She was driven to take her daughter and leave him. 

And so began her descent into the world of homelessness, poverty, the red-tape web of government programs. She worked as a maid, even though she suffered from a pinched nerve and back pain and allergies. The pay was miserable, her travel expenses uncovered. She found housing that was inadequate, unsafe, and unhealthy. Black mold kept her daughter perpetually sick with sinus and ear infections.

I know about that. Our infant son was ill most of the year with allergies, sinus infections, ad ear infections. It made him fussy and overactive and every time he was sick it made his development lag. We were lucky. We could address the environmental causes. We found a specialist who treated him throughout his childhood.

Maid is Stephanie Land's story of those years when she struggled to provide for her daughter. She documents how hard it is to obtain assistance and even the knowledge of what aid is available, the everlasting exhaustion of having to work full time, taking her daughter to and from daycare, and raise her child on a razor-thin budget. All while cleaning the large homes of strangers.

And that is the other side of the book, the people who hire help at less than minimum wage, some who show consideration and others who like her invisible. How a maid knows more about her clients than they can imagine. 

Land worked hard. Really hard. She had to. Finally, she was able to go to school and write this book. She crawled out of the mire. What is amazing is that anyone can escape poverty. You earn a few dollars more and you lose benefits. 

Land is an excellent writer. She created scenes that broke my heart, such as when her mother and her new husband come to help Land move. Her mom suggests they go out to lunch, then expects Land to pay for the meal. Land had $10 left until the end of the month. Even knowing this, they accepted it. Then, her mom's husband complained Land acted 'entitled'. I was so angry! I felt heartbroken that Land and her daughter were shown so little charity. 

I think about the Universal Basic Income idea that I have read about. How if Land received $1,000 a month she would have been able to provide her daughter with quality daycare or healthy housing. She would have been able to spend more time on her degree and work fewer weekends. She would have been off government assistance years sooner.

But that's not how the system works. Because we don't trust poor people to do the right thing. We don't trust them to want to have a better life. We don't believe they are willing to work hard--work at all.

Remember The Ghost of Christmas Present who shows Scrooge the children hiding under his robes, Ignorance and

Want? We have the power to end ignorance and want. We choose not to. Instead, we tell people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, even when they are without shoes.

That's my rant. Yes, progressive liberal stuff. But also in the spirit of the Christ who told us that if we have two shirts, give one to the poor. The Christ who said not to judge other's faults and ignore your larger ones--judging being the larger one. The Christ who taught mercy to strangers. 

Perhaps Land's memoir will make people take a second look at mothers on assistance. Under the cinders is a princess striving to blossom. 

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

Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive

by Stephanie Land

Hachette Books

Pub Date 22 Jan 2019 

ISBN 9780316505116

PRICE $27.00 (USD)

Marmee & Louisa by Eve LaPlante

Marmee & Louisa by Eve LaPlante
Little Women quilt by Nancy A. Bekofske
pattern by Marion Cheever Whiteside Newton

Marmee & Louisa by Eve LaPlante was the perfect book to read after reading the ARC Louisa on the Front Lines by Samantha Seiple and Meg Jo Beth Amy by Anne Boyd Rioux. LaPlante, who is a distant cousin to Louisa May Alcott, had access to family documents and letters. Her book concentrates on the relationship between mother Abigail May Alcott and daughter Louisa while also covering the entire family and Louisa's career.

I very much enjoyed the book, but I didn't always like all the characters...okay, one character...Bronson Alcott, the patriarch.

The March girls, Little Women quilt

Abigail May worked her entire life for women's rights and equality and abolition. Her brother was a leader in the Unitarian church, suffrage movement, and an ardent abolitionist.

Abigail was unable to have the formal education her brother  Samuel enjoyed, but read his books and educated herself with his help. She aspired to be a teacher, someone who contributed to the world.

Then she met the charismatic Bronson, a self-educated man with big ideas and a golden tongue. They fell in love and Abigail hitched her wagon to his star. Samuel was smitten, too, as eventually was all the Transcendentalists who later supported Bronson...even when they became weary of him.

That support was not just in philosophy and friendship but financial. Bronson was too radical to keep his teaching positions and too intent on "higher things" to worry about how to put food on the table or a roof over the heads of his growing family. And he traveled--a lot--leaving his family to fend for themselves.

Marmee learning her husband is in a prisoner of war camp
Little Women quilt

Abigail relied on the compassion of their friends and family but also found any work she could--sewing, teaching, social work, nursing. Young Louisa felt for her mother and pledged to aid the family. She took jobs she disliked but also as a teenager started to write stories for magazines. They were sensational, Gothic thrillers that brought in quick cash. She was particularly adept at imagining these tales.

Perhaps because she was so familiar with the powerlessness of women from watching her mother's toil, hardships, physical exhaustion and decline, mental anguish, while also indulging in acts of charity and working for abolition and women's right to vote.

Louisa was an active girl and young woman, wary of love and thirsting for the wider world, when at thirty she signed up to work as a nurse caring for the wounded men of the Civil War. Within six weeks she became ill and was near to death when Bronson came to take her home. Abigail nursed Louisa back to life, if not health; for the rest of Louisa's 56 years, she suffered from ill health, perhaps from Lupus.

Marmee and Louisa packing for Louisa's trip
Little Women quilt

Louisa kept writing and when Little Women was published became a sensation. She was able to finally support her family as she had always wanted, taking the burden off Abigail.

For the rest of her life, Louisa took care of her mother and family. She fulfilled her mother's dream by voting in an election.

The love and care between these women, Abigail and Louisa, is touching and inspiring, their strength of will humbling, their story timeless.

Learn more about the book and author and discover reading guides at
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Marmee-Louisa/Eve-LaPlante/9781451620672

A Ruby McKim Bird Life Quilt Top

I was thrilled when a Ruby McKim pattern showed up at my quilt group's weekly show and tell. I perked up as soon as I saw that red, and when I saw one of the embroidered blocks I knew right off what my friend had: Bird Life, also called the Audubon Quilt.

The pattern was published in newspapers in 1928. This quilt top is a family heirloom made by a woman who passed in the 1950s. So she likely saved the pattern and made this quilt in the late 20s or early 30s.

The embroidery is amazing. For the penguin, the artist used a strand of white and a strand of black and the iceberg in blue and white.

You can find the pattern newly issued at McKims Studios:
http://www.mckimstudios.com/04treasures/quiltspecial/quiltspecial.shtml

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.