Poems for the Very Young Child: Thanksgiving

This year I have been sharing from Poems for the Very Young Child compiled by Dolores Knippel and illustrated by Mary Ellsworth and published by Whitman Publishing Co, 1932.

Here are Thanksgiving poems from the book.

Temptation Rag by Elizabeth Hutchison Bernard

Temptation Rag is the story of the people who brought Ragtime to the mainstream, fueled its epic rise, and for a while glided on the coattails of faddism until the next big thing came along--Jazz.

It is the story of racism and Anti-semitism, the quest for fame and the fickleness of the public, the entertainment industry's birth, and the growing power of women over the early 20th c.

In the Gay Nineties, no one knew how big Ragtime would become, how Tin Pan Alley would be filled with white songwriters cashing in, appropriating African Americans' music that sprang right out of the rhythms of Africa.

Southern and white, Ben Harney was credited as the originator of Ragtime. Tom Strong gave Ben his talisman ring; soon afterward Ben saw Tom hanging from a tree. Ben took the sounds he heard and brought them to Tony Pastor's New York City vaudeville house where respectable white audiences soon embraced this new sound.

"Said I was the only whitey he ever knew who could play music to stir a black man's soul." ~from Temptation Rag

When classically trained, nineteen-year-old pianist Mike Bernard was hired as Pastor's music director and heard Harney perform he imitated his sound and perfected it, his fame eventually outshining Harney.

Mike always wanted Harney's ring. Sure, he was the Ragtime King, but he knew he copied from Harney. Mike wanted everything Ben had--his girl, his career, his fame, and that ring.

Readers met the forgotten stars of a hundred years ago, like Will Marion Cook, a classically trained black violinist. "No black man ever got what he got on account of luck," Cook tells Strap who is hoping to ride Harney's coattails to fame. J. Rosamond Johnson's African American operas caused rioting in the streets. Mentioned are the early sheet music publishers like E. T. Paull and Waterson, Berlin, and Snyder (Yes, THAT Berlin--Irving). Scott Joplin, today famous, was only known by a few musicians as the  authentic 'real deal.'

Then there are the women who loved these men, who were betrayed by these men. The wealthy May who loved and lost Mike and went on to become a suffragette and to challenge racism. The Ziegfield star Dolly who slept her way to the top. The long-suffering and loyal Jessie.

Elizabeth Hutchison Bernard has written a terrific read in terms of plot and characters that also incorporates the great American themes of class, race, and the fleeting nature of fame.

And if you love music, it's a must-read.

"...the first thing you need is a good, strong, left hand. That's important, 'cause the bass is what draws the listener in, makes him feel that powerful rhythm all the way down in his bones."..."The Melody accents fall between the beats" ~from Temptation Rag

I purchased an ebook.

Temptation Rag
by Elizabeth Hutchison Bernard
Publisher: Belle Epoque Publishing (December 3, 2018)
Publication Date: December 3, 2018
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services LLC
Language: English
ASIN: B07HYJMTXX

It's Never Too Late To Anti-Diet

I don't usually review books about health, diet, and fitness. Oh, I've read quite a few in my life. As a matter of fact, what don't I know about diets? Mom put me on my first diet when I was twelve years old!  I was at that growth spurt time when kids get chubby and then, seemingly overnight, reach their full height and become teenagers. I recall the diet involved not having fruit, and I loved fruit.

At fourteen I was dieting again. Twiggy was in; curves were out. The charts said I was overweight. A friend gave me an exercise book with calories to count. I lost thirty pounds, gained it back; tried Weight Watchers, lost nothing; gained more weight at college; got married and went on a diet and lost thirty pounds again.

I was twenty-one and eating 1000 calories a day and couldn't lose more weight. The weight charts said I was twenty-five-pound overweight! Looking back, I realize I had an eating problem and I was at a healthy weight.

The rest of my life went like that. Calorie counting. Eat Well, Be Well, The Zone. Vegetarian diets. Liquid supplements. All I accomplished was to get bigger on fewer calories.

A year ago, I committed to losing weight. I had gained 40 pounds in five years. I had my Fitbit and my Lose It app and my scale. I was prepared.

I underwent extensive testing and discovered my heart is great and committed to 30 minutes of cardio a day. A nutritionist told me to cut animal fats, meat, and dairy. We eat red meat at most once or twice a month, but I do I love butter on my toast. Goodbye, butter.

I lost thirty-four pounds and then plateaued even though I was burning more calories a day than I was eating.

I joined Silver and Fit and went to the fitness center to use machines for muscle tone and balance. The counselor said I was starving myself and told me to eat 6 meals a day. And more protein.

I am gaining strength and balance with the fitness plan. My bad knee can take the stairs better than they have in years.

But I had vertigo. The treadmill made me dizzy. I walked down the street like a drunk. So I went to the doctor. She saw me bend to tie my shoe and asked, "Can you DO that? It's not vertigo, it's your blood pressure." So she reduced my blood pressure meds. My BP is still in the good zone.

She is the first doctor to NOT tell me I was risking my life and to "Join a gym," or "Have you considered bariatric surgery?" or even, "I know it's hard to lose weight but keep trying."

Instead, she told me, "I'm not concerned about weight. There are more important things, like the quality of life."

WHAT???? I am 67 years old and a doctor told me what---that endless dieting and exercise is not supposed to be the goal of life?

So I saw this book, Anti-Diet, and thought, I need to know more about this.

Harrison had a food obsession. She was a life-long dieter and a journalist who wrote for Gourmet Magazine. She earned a degree as a nutritionist. Her personal journey led to exactly what millions of us have experienced: Diets. Don't. Work.

Harrison pushes back against the Diet Culture--the paradigm we have been sold that tells us there are good and bad foods, that weight is a moral and life-threatening issue, and if we don't look like some media ideal we are unloveable, ignorant, lazy, and dispensible.

Studies show that diets don't work, people gain the weight back, and in fact, diets seem to cause, not alleviate, health issues.

The bulk of the book traces our food attitudes through history and the rise of the diet culture and its human cost. Although well presented and interesting, I quickly read through this section--I'd come across it all before, in bits and pieces over 60 years. I was eager to get to her alternative.

Setting boundaries "might mean putting a moratorium on diet talk with your mother" set alarms off in my head! In my late 20s, when I had reached what I now know is my ideal weight, my mother fell into her old habit of saying, "you'd be...if only you lost weight." I shot back, "I like myself." "You like yourself fat?" she marveled. "I like who I am regardless of what weight I am." That night, Mom had a self-reckoning. She came to me in tears the next morning, apologetic, realizing she was imitating her own mother's behavior when she was growing up.

I also was glad to read Harrison's support of strength-building for all sizes as an alternative to blaming joint problems on weight alone. I keep up my cardio exercise of walking and am working with a fitness coach to improve muscle tone and balance. Thankfully, the fitness center is filled with older people like me and people of all body sizes. Sure, there are the buff men around and matchstick thin gals, but I don't stand out as much as I feared I would.

The idea of intuitive eating is simple. Listen to your body. My husband grew up with a dad who encouraged over-eating. He never developed a recognition to stop eating when he was full. It's his biggest challenge as an adult because he doesn't recognize 'full'.

She promotes the goal of "Health at Every Size" and liberation from an obsession on body size. Her mantra is "self-care, not self-control." Trying to control our body size is self-defeating, physically and mentally. But, she dismisses my FitBit and Lose-It app and fitness center visits and advises to just move.

Harrison quotes scads of scientific research. Still, I would love to read about specific and detailed case studies of how people like me, whose metabolism has been impacted by weight-loss diets over decades, can use this approach successfully.

I'll see what happens over the next year as I endeavor to not eat more than I burn while eating thoughtfully and working on strength and muscle building.

I made apple pies this week. There are no 'good' or 'bad' foods according to Harrison. But, boy, that pie was GOOD.

I was given access to a free egalley by the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Anti-Diet: Reclaim Your Time, Money, Well-Being, and Happiness Through Intuitive Eating
by Christy Harrison, MPH, RD
Little, Brown Spark
Pub Date 24 Dec 2019
ISBN 9780316420358
PRICE $28.00 (USD)

Helen Korngold Diary: November 17-23, 1919

Helen Korngold, Dec. 1919, New York City

Helen is teaching at Harrison Elementary and enjoying it. She loves the children.

November
Monday 17
Pretty tired.

Tuesday 18
Robert Rife is darling – so is Jo Fuchs the crook artist – little with black shining hair & eyes.

Wednesday 19
I like this school. All teachers are so nice.

Thursday 20
Teacher’s Convention. Dry & uninteresting.

Friday 21
Teacher’s Convention.

Saturday 22
Downtown – Grand Central in evening

Sunday 23
Fooled around. Out with Si.

Notes:
Sat. 22
Grand Central was a movie theater. The Nov. 22 ad in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch showed "beautiful living models in a pageant of fashions" and the "Powerful Drama, Some One Must Pay."



Sun. 23
Si Russack and Helen have been going out a lot.

In the news:

11-23-1919 St Louis Post-Dispatch

St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Nov. 22, 1919

St. Louis Star and Times, Nov. 22, 1919

The Dutch House by Ann Patchett

Glowing reviews of Ann Patchett's newest novel The Dutch House impelled me to snatch it up as soon as it appeared on the new release shelf at the public library.

The story of siblings Maeve and Danny Conroy whose mother disappears and is replaced by an evil stepmother is like a fairy tale, especially when after their father's death their stepmom exiles them from their home to fend for themselves. The abandoned children, like Hanzel and Gretel, have only each other.

The story of family trauma and the inability to move on resolves into a kind of Howard's End moment, and it all centers on the Dutch House. The house is what divided the family. There are those who belong to the house, those who lust for it, those who love it, and those who desire it. Who controls the house is central to the novel.

The Dutch House is a historic mansion in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, built in 1922 as a country refuge for a wealthy Dutch family. WWII veteran Cyril Conroy was a frustrated architect who became a real estate tycoon. He bought the Dutch House and all its contents, planning to surprise his wife Elna.

Elna was unable to accept a life of leisure, living in a mansion. Cyril had pulled her from a convent to be his wife, dividing her from the vocation that kept calling her back. Elna had to make a choice. It wasn't Cyril and her family.

Andrea wanted the house, and married Cyril for the house--and Cyril married Andrea because she loved it as much as he did. The siblings bond with Andrea's young children. Andrea begins the process of disenfranchising Cyril's children, appropriating Maeve's bedroom for her own daughter.

Upon Cyril's early death, the children learn that their father left Andrea his business, house, and money. Andrea proclaims that she never signed on to raise Danny and sends him to live with his Maeve.

There are a few times in life when we leap up and the past you'd been standing on falls away behind you, and the future you mean to land on is not yet in place, and for a moment you're suspended, knowing nothing and no one, not even yourself.~fron The Dutch House by Ann Patchett

Cyril left a trust fund for the children's education as well as Andrea's daughter's education. Maeve had already finished college and was ineligible, so she encouraged Danny to use up as much of the money as possible, attending private school and then going to medical school. Danny had dreamt of taking over his father's business; he loved repairing the buildings and the tenants. Maeve had planned on grad school but now had to support herself.

The siblings held their anger and resentment close, a deep bond between them.

We'd made a fetish out of our misfortune, fallen in love with it.~from The Dutch House by Ann Patchett

Danny asks his sister, what kind of person leaves their kids? And Maeve replies,
"Men! Men leave their children all the time and the world celebrates them for it. The Buddha left and Odysseus left and no none gave a shit about their sons. They set out on their noble journeys to do whatever the hell they wanted to do and thousands of years later we're still singing about it."

Each character in the book, including the caretaker's daughter who became Danny's nanny and the housemaid and cook, has a relationship to the Dutch House. It is the house that bonds them.

I connected with the characters' attachment to a house; after moving as a girl, for years I hoped to grow up and be able to retrieve my first home for myself. I also appreciated how Elna's vocation disrupted her family life; I have seen several clergy marriages crushed by the conflict of family vs. pastoral obligations. And--for seven years we lived near Elkins Park, our son born in the hospital there.

Patchett has given us another fantastic book, filled with memorable characters.

Mercy Road by Ann Howard Creel, a Story About Volunteer Female Ambulance Drivers During WWI

Ann Howard Creel's books are inspired by history and her female characters face life-changing challenges.

Her newest novel Mercy Road was inspired by a photograph of a female ambulance driver in France during WWI. Female doctors and nurses were banned from serving in the U. S. Army so they formed the American Women's Hospital and raised funds to send a volunteer team to France.

Creel's novel begins with a tragedy that leaves Arlene Favier aware of how life can change in an instant. A fire takes her home and father and the family's source of income. Desperate to find a job to support her mother and brother, and with dreams of rebuilding her father's stud farm, Arlene stumbles into an opportunity that will use her few employable skills--as a chauffeuses driving an ambulance for doctors volunteering in France.

With most French doctors serving at the front, there was a lack of medical services for civilians and refugees. With her command of French and experience with machines, Arlene is the perfect volunteer. With the lure of a cash bonus at the end of the war which would allow her to rebuild the family home, Arlene joins the American Women's Hospital service, formed to aid citizens and refugees.

To go to France in May 1918 required great courage and fortitude. The war had destroyed the land and the infrastructure. By September 1918, there were 1.85 million refugees. Food shortages and the lack of housing and clean water contributed to illness including typhus, tuberculosis, dysentery, and influenza. The Hospital Service also assisted men wounded at the front. The women were exposed to the horrors of battlefield wounds, the dead, and the dying.

Now I not only knew death; I knew the shade and scent of human blood and the charred appearance and stench of burnt human bodies. I knew the look of what lay beneath our skin. from Mercy Road by Ann Howard Creel 

Arlene was excited to arrive in Paris, her father's birthplace. With restrictions against seeing soldiers, she rebuffs the attention of the handsome but oversure Captain Brohammer. He takes it as a challenge, pursuing her throughout the war even though Arlene makes clear she is not interested. But when she meets up with a childhood friend once employed by her father, her hesitancy to become romanticly involved is challenged.

Hospital 1 in Luzancy . Note the uniforms of the female ambulance drivers.

The plot involves intrigue, accusations with devastating implications, and personal growth that challenges old ideas and the embracing of possibilities.

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

I read Creel's previous novel The River Widow. Read my review here.

Read more about the American Women's Hospital Service here.

Mercy Road
by Ann Howard Creel
Lake Union Publishing
Publication Date: November 21, 2019
$3.99 Kindle, $10.99 paperback, $14.99 Audio CD

From the author's website: 

When I stumbled upon a story of truly unsung female heroes during World War I, I knew I’d found the inspiration for my next historical novel.  Banned for service in the US Army, a group of female physicians and surgeons formed the American Women’s Hospital and independently sent an all-female team of doctors, nurses, ambulance drivers, and aides to war-torn France in 1918.  Soon after I’d discovered this almost unknown piece of history, a character began to form and take on shape and dimension in my mind. 

Arlene Favier, a young French-speaking horsewoman from Paris, Kentucky, joins the first team of the American Women’s Hospital as an ambulance driver, passes through Paris, France, and ends up serving soldiers and civilians alike on the front lines.  Amid the chaos of war, she never expects to find romantic attention from two very different soldiers, and not only does she find herself in physical danger every day, her heart and belief in the human spirit become endangered, too.  Because even during the days of life and death, things are not always as they appear to be, and not all soldiers are heroes. 

Broke: Hardship and Resilience in a City of Broken Promises by Jodie Adams Kirshner

My family moved to Metro Detroit in 1963 for a better life. My folks did achieve their dreams--a blue-collar job, a home of their own, medical insurance, a decent income, and a pension to retire on. Dad loved his job at Chrysler.

Just a few years later my friends and I watched as planes with National Guard troops flew overhead and tanks lumbered along Woodward Ave., heading to Detroit. The city's legacy of racist policies had birthed rebellion.

Over my lifetime the once-great city plummeted into bankruptcy and stretches of 'urban prairie'.

Why do we remove people from homes, leaving the houses empty to scrappers and decay and the bulldozers? Isn't it better for all to have the houses occupied, assist with their improvement, to have neighborhoods filled?

Jodie Adams Kirshner's Broke relates the series of events and decisions that brought Detroit from vibrancy to bankruptcy. But Kirshner doesn't just give a history of racist housing discrimination and government policy decisions. We experience Detroit through the stories of real people and their struggles to achieve their dreams.

Homeownership is the American Dream. Detroit's homeownership rate was once one of the highest in the nation. Then, African American neighborhoods were razed for 'urban renewal' projects while redlining curtailed housing options.

Kirshner shows how governmental decisions on the federal, state and local level disenfranchised Detroit residents who valiantly endeavor to remain in their homes and neighborhoods.

Bankruptcy, we come to understand, is not just a fiscal issue but hugely impacts individuals' lives.

These six people's stories are moving and devastating. They dream of owning the home in which they live. They purchase houses, repair them, and discover back taxes and water bills follow the house, not the resident, and they can't pay them. Investors purchase houses and let them stand empty while the family who had been living there are forced out.

They can't afford the $6000 a year car insurance they need to work--and to get their kids to school as Detroit has no school buses.

Some are native Detroiters but others were drawn to Detroit's atmosphere and sense of possibility. They are unable to obtain mortgages to purchase empty buildings for development.

They are never sure if rent payments are actually getting to the landlord, or if the discount car insurance they purchase is legit.

House damage remains unrepaired by distant landlords, jeopardizing the safety of a woman and her child.

Meanwhile, Midtown and Downtown development draws suburbanites at the price of huge tax breaks while neighborhood needs are ignored.

Kirshner is a journalist and bankruptcy lawyer and teaches at Columbia Law School. Broke offers deep insight through compelling narrative writing that illuminates and reaches our hearts.

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

Read how Kirshner came to write this book here.

“As a resident and business owner in Detroit, I think Broke captures the complexity and heartbreak here. Clear, accessible, and to the point, it’s so readable that I sped through it and then read it again to take notes.” —Susan Murphy, Pages Bookshop, Detroit

Broke: Hardship and Resilience in a City of Broken Promises
by Jodie Adams Kirshner
St. Martin's Press
Pub Date 19 Nov 2019
ISBN 9781250220639
PRICE $28.99 (USD)

*****

Read More:

Detroit 1967
https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2017/06/we-hope-for-better-things-detroit-1967.html
Once in a Great City by David Maraniss
https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2015/09/once-in-great-city-detroit-story-by.html
The $500 House in Detroit by Drew Philp
https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2017/04/building-new-world-order-500-house-in.html
Arc of Justice by Kevin Boyle
https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2012/03/legacy-of-racism.html
Lost Detroit: Stories Behind the Motor Cities Majestic Ruins by Dan Austin and photos by Sean Doerr
https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2014/01/detroit-city.html
The World According to Fannie Davis by Bridgitt M. Davis
https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-world-according-to-fannie-davis-my.html