A Beautiful Place to Die by Sam Bigglesworth

Sam Bigglesworth's collection A Beautiful Place to Die demonstrates his ability to capture a character's pivotal moment. I often found myself invested in the characters to the point I wished their story continued.

The fourteen stories are quite diverse. Some are open-ended, some have a surprise or shock ending. Characters have a moment of life-altering clarity, lessons are learned, frailties uncovered, alliances made or severed. Shocking conclusions come in several of the stories.

The Watcher Woman is set in a dystopia where starving women living in urban decay encounter a callous, well-fed man.

The Soldier of Luxury is about a competitive, self-satisfied man trusting in the wrong things.

In The Wizard of the Forest a son watches his idolized father wield 'tree magic' but soon learns the limits of influence. A father teaches a life lesson to his daughter in The Coral Tailed Waffle Bird.

A dementia patient challenges her care workers in Where's Amit. A Beautiful Place to Die tells the heartbreaking story of a dying woman endeavoring to control her last days, cast out by a cold world.

The protagonist in The Dog Whisperer needs a purpose in life and adopts a rescue dog. The story recalled my own experience of adopting a troubled but lovable puppy mill rescue dog.

The writing is very descriptive and engages all the senses. Each story is illustrated with quality black and white art.

The stories are set in and around Manchester, England, where Bigglesworth lives.

I asked Bigglesworth to talk about his writing.

My writing career started in 2014 with a blog; in 2015, I decided to commit to writing fiction long term. 

Towards the end of the year, after a few online courses and a great deal of time writing, I self-published my first novella, a character based comedy about one man’s love affair with nature, entitled ‘The Woods, The Jungle, The Sea’. It was inspired by experiences I had visiting remote parts of Patagonia, Bolivia, and Colombia. It has sold one-hundred copies and received generally positive reviews. 

From that experience, I decided to wait longer and take each project through more edits before self-publishing it. I wanted to try writing in different voices, from a variety of characters' perspectives, and develop my writing style, so I began writing this short story collection.

I wrote this collection because I love stories which humanise people and show their flaws. Many people who appear unremarkable from the outside have remarkable stories to tell. Pain and growth are common to all our lives. 

It began as 23 stories, then I picked the very best fourteen stories of those and polished and re-wrote them until I was proud of them. Add a set of illustrations from Henry Boon and editing advice from a professional editor and we have something really special that I am very proud to show the world.

Some of the stories are literal, but most of them have a hidden deeper meaning which take a little thought to understand. I really hope you enjoy them and I would love to hear what you thought and how you interpreted the stories!

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

Find A Beautiful Place to Die at Amazon for $2.99.

Whimsical Wool Applique by Kim Schaefer

Many of my friends LOVE wool applique. When I saw the cover for Kim Schaefer's Whimsical Wool Applique I loved the cheerful and bright flowers and knew my friends would, too.

Whimsical Wool Applique cover

Kim offers seven quilt projects and 50 blocks, all with complete instructions and color photos of each block. Along with her whimsical flowers there are blocks for birds and butterflies, bugs and bees, a snail and caterpillar.

Whimsical flower by Kim Schaefer

On the lower left side of the cover photo is pictured Garden Whimsey, a 32 1/2" x 40 1/2" quilt made with 6" x 6" flower blocks.

Her second project is Sweet Tweets, a wall quilt 36 1/2" x 12 1/2" with a line of six birds, including the one pictured below.

Bird from Sweet Tweets by Kim Schaefer

Snug as a Bug, a 22 1/2" x 32 1/2" wall hanging, features garden denizens with a caterpillar and butterfly, dragonfly, bee, ladybug, and snail, all too cute to resist. Schaefer captures a 70s Mid-Century vibe in her designs.

Bloomin' Beauties, 28 1/2" x 22 1/2", has six floral blocks and a vine leaf border.

Enchanted Garden, below, is 33 1/2" square and includes nine floral blocks with a traditional vibe.

Enchanted Garden by Kim Schaefer

A small one-block project that measures 12 1/2" square is Ring Around the Bluebell, a nice size for beginners. Another good beginner project is the Flower Power Pillow, 14 1/2" square, with nine daisies.

Every one of the fifty blocks has its own page with the pattern and close-up details of the embroidery used to finish the block. The blocks are fusible applique and the embroidery makes them really pop. My wool applique friends enjoy the embroidery part of their projects.

Visit Schaefer at Little Quilt Company and see her other books and patterns at
http://www.littlequiltcompany.com/index.htm

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

WHIMSICAL WOOL APPLIQUÉ: 50 Blocks, 7 Quilt Projects
Kim Schaefer
C&T Publishing
Book ($24.95) eBook ($19.9
ISBN: 978-1-61745-655-8
UPC: 734817-113010
(eISBN: 978-1-61745-656-5)

About Kim from the publisher's website: 

Kim Schaefer began sewing at an early age and was quilting seriously by the late 1980s. Her early quilting career included designing and producing small quilts for craft shows and shops across the country.

In 1986, Kim founded Little Quilt Company, a pattern company focused on designing a variety of small, fun-to-make projects.

In addition to designing quilt patterns, Kim is a best-selling author for C&T Publishing. Kim also designs fabric for Andover/Makower and works with Leo Licensing, which licenses her designs for nonfabric products.

Marlena by Julie Buntin

As a girl, I'd had a friend who died. We were close. I didn't talk about it. When you grow up, who you were as a teenager either takes on a mythical importance or its completely laughable. I wanted to be the kind of person who wipes those years way; instead, I feared, they defined me. from Marlena by Julie Buntin

After reading Ohio by Stephen Markley and Once Upon a River by Bonnie Jo Campbell, books about Midwest small towns, drugs, abuse, and growing up, I decided it was the right time to read Julie Buntin's Marlena. The novel focuses on Marlena, a teenage girl in Northern Michigan caught in a web of poverty and drugs, and the lasting impact Marlena had on the narrator, Cat.

Buntin's novel caught so many things for me. The painful nostalgia for a moment in time, the haunting loss of a loved one, how in youth our naivety blinds us to darker realities.

I want to go home--a phrase that's stuck on a loop, that I hear before falling asleep, waiting in line for my coffee, tapping at the elevator button and rising through the sky to my apartment, worrying the words like a lucky stone, and yet my desire is not attached to a particular places--not to Silver Lake, not to Marlena, not to Mom or Dad or Jimmy. I want to go home, I want to go home, but what I mean, what I'm grasping for, is not a place, it's a feeling. I want to go back. But back where? from Marlena by Julie Buntin

The narrator, Cat, is living in New York City with a good job and a loving husband. She is an alcoholic. Cat tells the story of being the new girl in a small Up North town, looking for a new best friend. She develops a girl crush on a charismatic and beautiful older teen who lives next door. Cat, fifteen, wants to be like Marlena--cool, daring, exciting, experienced.

After her dad left them, Cat's mom moved the family from Pontiac to her childhood vacation spot, Silver Lake. Silver Lake is a half hour away from the school and Walmart and the nearest mall is ninety miles downstate. It is also down the road from the mansions along Lake Michigan where the 1% come to play, and a historic, elite Methodist enclave. Cat's mom has a drinking problem and with no job skills is lucky to get a job cleaning a summer estate.

Catherine had been on scholarship at a private school, a good student, college-bound, a bookish loner. Her older brother walked away from a college scholarship to help take care of his mom. Moving is a chance to reinvent herself as Cat, an edgier and more risk-taking girl.

Marlena's mom disappeared years back and her addict dad has a meth lab in the woods. Marlena cares for her younger brother as best she can, but he is often alone with no food in the house. Already at seventeen Marlena is an alcoholic, she trades sexual favors to obtain drugs, and although smart she skips school.

For eight brief months, Cat became a part of Marlena and her world-- the 'best days ever'-- with a group of friends who accepted her, her life with filled danger and excitement.

****

By July we, like twenty percent of Michigan's population--Mom loved that statistic--were on food stamps. from Marlena by Julie Buntin

Michigan ranks 4th in the country for drug problems, with heroin and cocaine in Detroit and opioids everywhere else. An estimated 20% of Michigan adults drink to excess and 24% of young men are binge drinkers. Beer is everywhere; the state ranks number 10 in the number of IPA breweries in the country.

The Pere Marquette River in Baldwin, Lakes County, the poorest county in Michigan

Michigan has its urban centers mired in job loss and poverty, the racist legacy of redlining and 'urban renewal' with its wholesale destruction of African American neighborhoods. Pontiac, Cat's hometown before they move to Silver Lake, has a poverty rate of 34%.

But the rural Up North communities also are impoverished. I just returned from a trip to Lake, Roscommon, and Ogemaw Counties with poverty rates over 28%, higher than the state average of 24%. Michigan ranks as one of the worst six states in the nation for the number of children living in poverty--one in five.

There are also pockets of great wealth located in Oakland County where I live, including Bloomfield Hills, one of the top 20 richest cities in the country.

Meadowbrook Hall, the second largest private home in America, built in Oakland Co, MI by the heir to the Dodge fortune

The city where my grandparents lived in the 1960s is now one of the ten wealthiest cities in the state, where I grew up is number 15, and my current city is number 30. These suburbs were built to house workers in the auto industry, from the top brass to the union workers like my dad. Their playground became the small 'Up North' towns--modest cabins for the middle class, posh resort homes and yachts in a marina for the 1%.

My dad's cabin

These remote villages and towns became dependant on tourism, the hunters and fishers and snowmobilers and skiers and family vacationers. So that side by side, for a few weeks each year, the very wealthy live amongst the local poor. And then the economy plummeted, and the working and middle classes could not afford the cabins and vacations Up North.

Summertime transformed northern Michigan. Kewaunee swelled to twice its normal size. from Marlena by Julie Buntin

Pentwater Lake

We spent two years in a resort community on Lake Michigan. Between July 1 and the end of August the town was filled with campers at the state park and the Methodist campground, cottagers, bed and breakfast tourists, and people living on their sailboats in the marina. At summer's end, everything closed. Anyone who had enough money left town for their winter homes in Texas or Arizona or Florida or even Metro Detroit. Several bars were open, and the bank and post office. The one grocery store that catered to the marina kept half the store open for basics. In winter 193 inches of snow fell.

Years before we lived there, we used to go to the Methodist family camp. We were impressed by the beauty of the lake and marina, the channel feeding into Lake Michigan with its gorgeous sand beaches.

The beach at Pentwater

One day when I was in town checking out the tourist shops and ice cream parlors I remarked to a teenager that it must be a beautiful place to live. He scowled in answer. It wasn't until we lived there that I realized how isolated and boring a place it had to be to grow up in. Graduation class sizes were in the teens, the entire K-12 school system had about 260 students.

Lake Michigan at Pentwater

When we left Philadelphia when our son was two I thought a small town would be a wonderful place to raise our son. It turns out that Mayberry doesn't exist. Maybe it never did exist.

*****

As I read Marlena I wondered how much I had missed, all the different places we had moved and stayed a few years, never really understanding the community that deeply. I worked with teens but what did I know about their lives? One boy in the inner city of Philadelphia told me I did not understand real life. Pacifism did not work on the streets where one didn't get mad, one got even. In a small rural town, our son would ask why classmates could not read, had no telephones or books at home, or why their dads were in jail.

I remembered 'my' Marlena, a gregarious and confident girl from a well-to-do family who took the 14-year-old me under her wing--I was the new girl in school--and encouraged me to be outgoing, lose weight, have fun. She dropped me, age 15, and a year later I saw her going through the school hallway, her books held close against her chest, eyes straight ahead, slightly leaning forward in a fast walk. She put purple chalk on her eyelids in the restroom before school. She had changed. Years later I stopped by her home. Her brother told me she had married three times and lived in an Up North small town; her mother didn't remember which one, but it started with an M.

Cat is filled with nostalgia for that moment in time when she first felt alive and a part of something. And she is filled with survivor's guilt and regret. She struggles with alcoholism which might destroy the life she has built. What she experienced was horrendous; she saw the destruction of a smart and beautiful and courageous girl, a girl she wanted to be.

Just one girl, one fictional girl.

How many thousands across Michigan are we losing today? To human trafficking. To opioid addiction, meth, heroin, alcohol. To poverty, sexual abuse... How many across the country, the world?

What impressed me about Marlena was the story and the voice and the Michigan places and the heartbreaking REALNESS of it all. I am glad I finally read it.

The Man Who Wrote the Perfect Novel--John Williams, Stoner, and the Writing Life

I was fascinated by the life of author John Williams as told by Charles J. Shields in The Man Who Wrote the Perfect Novel. Learning about William's life and influences helps me to better understand and appreciate his work. 

I discovered William's book Stoner after purchasing a Kindle when I received an email of ebooks on sale. I was drawn to the novel by the cover, a detail of Thomas Eakins's painting The Thinker, Portrait of Louis H. Kenton. And I was drawn by the description of the novel.

I loved Stoner and it became one of my all-time favorite novels. It was about this time in 2013 that Stoner was labeled "The Greatest American Novel You've Never Heard Of" by Tim Krieder in the New York Times.

On December 23, 2013, I reviewed Stoner on my blog and this past winter I reread the book with my local library book club. I raved about Stoner so much that my son bought me Augustus as a Christmas gift, the book for which Williams won the National Book Award in conjunction with John Barth's Chimera.

Who was this man, this John-Williams-not-the-composer, this writer who I never heard about? I read Barth in an undergraduate college class, including his Chimera. Why had I not heard of Williams before?

I was very pleased to read the e-galley of The Man Who Wrote the Perfect Novel by Charles J. Shields, which answered my questions, how Williams was overlooked and later rediscovered, and how readers and book clubs have brought Stoner to its proper place in the canon.

Williams shared attributes with his protagonist Stoner; they both came from humble roots and grew up poor and worked in academia. Both were smitten with language and poetry. Both had unhappy marriages and an affair (or more, for Williams). Both stayed true to their ideals. Both died without the recognition they deserved.

But in other ways, Williams was very different from his character. Stoner stuck with his one, failed, unhappy marriage; Williams married multiple times. Williams thrived in an academic network based on alcohol and drinking. Williams's father abandoned his family and his stepfather was a drinker who was lucky to snag a New Deal job. And whereas Stoner never completed his thesis, Williams published three novels after several failed attempts.

The literary influences on Williams were diverse, from pulp magazines filled with adventure and romance to Thomas Wolfe. Williams was inspired by Eugene Gant in Look Homeward, Angel. (Wolfe was my favorite as well when I first read him at age 16.)

Seeing the movie A Tale of Two Cities starring Ronald Coleman impacted Williams also, and he tried to channel Coleman's style and panache, down to the thin mustache.

Williams became involved with theater (as did Wolfe before he turned to novels). He then discovered Conrad Aiken and psychological fiction, and then Proust, altering his writing style.

Dropping out of college, Williams became a radio announcer and jack of all trades in radio broadcasting. A whirlwind romance sped into marriage. Then, in 1942, faced with the draft, Williams enlisted in the air corps and became a radio technician. He ended up on planes flying over the Himalayas to bring supplies to General Chaing Kai-shek. He received a 'Dear John' letter.

In 1945 Wiliams returned to the States and found work at a radio station in Key West, Florida. Here he wrote his first novel, Nothing But the Night, "steeped in psychological realism" and filled with pathologies. He sent the manuscript to Wolfe's last editor Edward Aswell of Harper and Brothers, who rejected it.

Alan Swallow of Swallow Press in Denver, CO also found much to critique in the novel but also saw in Williams a spark of genius. Swallow was part of the New Criticism movement. He suggested that Williams come to the University of Denver. Williams was admitted and then was married a second time. His writing still suffered from "a lag between thought and emotion." Marriage No. 2 also ended and soon after Williams married a third time.

The work and philosophy of Yvor Winters, who held to a classical style of writing over the modern tendency of self-expression and obscurity, influenced Williams and he declared himself a 'Winterarian." Williams realized his writing was "overwrought" and embellished.

Williams turned his attention to the myth of the West and began researching for a novel about a young Romantic who experiences the real West. The book was promoted as a Western, a dismal and fatal choice that upset Williams. It never found its proper audience.

John had several affairs, including a woman who became his next, and last, wife. Meanwhile, he was working on the novel that became Stoner. The literary world was going in other directions, but Williams stuck to his ideals. Bestsellers included The Moon-Spinners by Mary Stewart and Daphne du Maurier's The Glass Blowers. Up and comers included Saul Bellow, Ken Kesey, and Thomas Pynchon. Stoner was "unfashionable." It lacked emotion, was too understated.  Williams's agent warned his book would never sell well. That wasn't his goal. The novel was quite overlooked for a year when a review finally hailed it.

Williams began thinking about "the paradoxes of power" and about Cesar Augustus. By this time, in the late 60s, the counterculture was making its mark on academia. In 1971 Stoner was republished. In 1972 Augustus was finally published and won the National Book Award in 1973. Williams' drinking was becoming a problem but he started on a new novel set during the Nixon years. A lifelong smoker, he was on oxygen. He won awards and his books were brought back into print. In 1986 at a farewell dinner Williams read from his manuscript, a book he couldn't finish. In 1994 Williams died of respiratory failure.

But his novels kept popping up as new readers discovered them. In 2006 the New York Review of Books Classics reprinted Stoner and "Stonermania" took the literary world. The novel was first popular in Europe, Waterson named it Book of the Year in 2013. In America, readers began sharing the book with each other.

Williams was a complicated man with a complicated personal life. Like his protagonist, he stuck to his ideals. He learned to write the hard way, by writing unsellable novels before writing the novel that would sell a million copies worldwide.

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

*****

from the publisher:

Charles J. Shields is the author of Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee, a New York Times bestseller, a Literary Guild Selection, and a Book-of-the-Month Club Alternate. His young adult biography of Harper Lee, I Am Scout, was chosen an ALA Best Book for Young Adults, a Bank Street Best Children's Book of the Year, and a Junior Literary Guild Selection. In 2011, Shields published And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut, A Life, a New York Times and Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of the Year.

The Man Who Wrote the Perfect Novel is an expert uncovering of an American master who deserves the larger audience this biography will help give him. With his characteristic insight into the ligatures between life and art, and in his own enviable prose, Shields brings Williams into full-color relief. This is a major accomplishment by a major biographer, a gift for which Williams’s admirers will be most grateful." -William Giraldi, author of Hold the Dark and The Hero’s Body

"Charles Shields’s biography of John Williams is every bit as impressive as his subject’s book, the not-so-underground classic (and international bestseller) Stoner, a gripping and compulsively readable tale of an ‘unremarkable man.’ Shields brilliantly recreates Williams’s outwardly ordinary life as an English professor eager to balance his scholarship with a creative writing career, revealing fascinating psychological depths in a man who on the surface doesn’t seem to have any. The reader is carried along by this masterful, finely honed biography."-Mary V. Dearborn, author of#xA0;Hemingway: A Biography

"A masterful depiction of the generation of burnt-out alcoholic American writers who survived WWII. Shields comes about as close as humanly possible to recreating the crucible of chance, devotion, genius, and circumstance that produced ‘the greatest novel you have never read.’ His brisk, fluent biography will change this." -J. Michael Lennon, author of Norman Mailer: A Double Life

The Man Who Wrote the Perfect Novel
by Charles J. Shields
University of Texas Press
Publication Date: October 15, 2018
ISBN: 9781477317365, 1477317368
Hardcover $29.95 USD

The Library Book by Susan Orlean

I remember when I first heard there was a place where one could borrow all the books one wanted to read.

My elementary school, Philip Sheridan, was brand new and filled with recently published children's books. There was a small library in my second-grade classroom and after the teacher read a book out loud to the class I would borrow it and read the book myself. Then I started to pick up other books, like the biography of Robert Louis Stevenson which I read over and over. I knew his book of children's poetry A Child's Garden of Verses--now I knew there was a man behind the words.

When the teacher said there was a whole building of books called a library I went home and asked my mother if she would take me to the library.

She said I was too young and a year passed before we walked down the road to the Sheridan Parkside Library and I got my first library card. It was so hard to choose my three books! I borrowed Follow My Leader, which our teacher had read to the class, a history of Australia because I had an Australian pen pal, and D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths.

Wherever we moved, I continued to frequent libraries. And when our son was born, I would put him in the stroller and walk to the local library. As a preschooler, he would borrow 15 books a week. As a high schooler, he volunteered at the library resale bookstore. I joined book clubs at the local library wherever we moved. I made friends with librarians at the smaller libraries and the staff would know us. But I had never given much thought about everything that goes on to make a library run.

I had enjoyed Susan Orlean's book Rin Tin Tin: The Life and Legend and that motivated me to want to read The Library Book. As I read it I found myself thinking about the many libraries in my life, appreciating them more and more.

Orlean begins with stories of libraries in her life growing up and how she wanted her son to have the same experience. Going to the Los Angeles Central Library, one of the most beautiful buildings she had ever seen, she learned about the April 29, 1986 fire that destroyed a million books.

Why don't we remember this event? Chernobyl took over the news that week.

Orlean's book is a history of the Los Angeles Central Library, the investigation into the fire, the extraordinary work to save the books, and an exploration into the role of libraries in society today.

When investigators can't determine the cause of a fire it is considered arson, and then comes the search for the person who started the fire. The case centered on Harry Peak, a fabulist with a deep need for attention.

We meet the memorable people who make the library run and see how the library functions in today's society as a democratic, open, public space. The LA library has developed outreach programs to the homeless and unemployed and offers a safe place for teenagers.

Libraries everywhere are changing to meet the needs of its community. Digital books audiobooks are available to download to electronic devices. In our small suburban city full of young families the library has intergenerational coloring days, reading to pets, speakers and concerts, Lego days, movies, card making, scrapbooking, magic shows, and of course book clubs and summer reading programs.

I enjoyed the book as history and for its insights into an institution sometimes considered outdated, but which the Millennial generation has embraced. Most of all, I am grateful that Orlean has made me better appreciate librarians and library staff for their contributions.

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

The Library Book
by Susan Orlean
Simon & Schuster
Pub Date 16 Oct 2018 
ISBN 9781476740188
PRICE $28.00 (USD)

Up North and Back

This past week we took a trip 'Up North', which is an area in Michigan demarked by an invisible line but which is universally agreed (by Michiganders) to be where there is more wilderness than shopping malls. 

We traveled about four hours from Metro Detroit to Baldwin, in the middle of a state forest. We stayed overnight at the Red Moose Lodge on the Pere Marquette River, perhaps the only visitors not there for the Salmon fishing.

The Pere Marquette River in Baldwin, MI

We spent a few minutes sitting beside the river, from which a fish now and then jumped with a splash.

We dropped off the innards of my husband's Victrolia and Edison Disk Player with the only repairman in the state. I stopped at the Fabric Peddler quilt shop in Baldwin and picked up a panel and matching fabric. My sudden interest in panels is from reviewing Creating Art Quilts with Panels by Joyce Hughes. I can't wait to try her techniques out on these large flowers!

Next, we stopped in Farwell at the Elm Creek craft and garden shop. We bought a patio set of two chairs and a table that fold up. Perfect for our front yard garden! I found another panel I had to get.

At the Surry Road quilt shop in Clare, I bought some fabric for a special project.

We then headed to West Branch where my brother has a log cabin, complete with Indian, outside of town.

The trees were coming into full color when we arrived.

 Every day we headed into town to the West Branch library for the WIFI.

The cozy sitting area in the West Branch library

And of course, we shopped at their fantastic used bookstore. I found some goodies. I had Armor Towle's Rules of Civility on ebook but prefer to read 'real' books. Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann has been on my TBR list, and I have heard a lot about Elena Ferrante's My Brillant Friend, and I love Andrea Barrett's writing. The Val McDermid rewrite of Northanger Abbey just looked like fun. And the William Maxwell stories was on the FREE shelf!

I stopped at Aunt Effie's Craft Closet in downtown West Branch, where I found friendly service and terrific selections.

This wall was just the SALES fabrics! There are tables of fat quarters and precuts and walls of bolds of fabric. They offer machine quilting and classes. One group is working on the Bee-autiful quilt from MODA, which I made last year.

I saw the cutest fabric on sale. I snapped a pic and sent it to my Gamemaster son, who also loved it. So the next day I returned and bought fabric to make him a quilt.

 We also stopped at the wine store.

We had rainy days, and after our daily treks into town, we stayed in the cabin reading books. We ate out for lunch and then had soup for dinner.

At the Lumber Jack restaurant, we had the most delicious bread pudding after a pot roast. The decor is quite Up North, down to the vestibule greeter.

 We love the food at the China Inn.

We hit a few of the antique shops. In the Potato Barn Anqitue Store, I found sheet music for One Meat Ball, a song my mother used to sing! It came out when she was thirteen years old.
I did not know that it was sung by Josh White and was from Cafe Society.

The lyrics go like this:

A little man walked up and down

and found an eating place in town.

He looked the menu thru and thru

To see what fifteen cents could do.

One meat ball, one meat ball, 

He could afford by one mean ball.

He told a waiter near at hand

The simple dinner he had planned,

The folks were startled one and all

To hear that waiter loudly all,

One meat ball, one meat ball,

Hey! This here gent wants one met ball!

The little man felt ill at ease

And said, "Some bread, sir, if you please!"

The waiter's voice roared down the hall,

"You get no bread with one meat ball!

One meat ball, one meat ball,

You get no bread with one meat ball!

The little man felt very bad,

But one meat ball was all he had.

Now in his dreams he hears that call,

"You get no bread with one meat ball,

One meat ball, one meat ball,

You get no bread with one meat ball.

It was very quiet at the cabin, but one day deer ran through the yard. Every day the colors grew more intense.

We bought bread at the bakery in town, successfully avoiding the doughnuts and sticky buns and blueberry pie. Outside, we met the local vet.

South of town, coming off the expressway, one can see the water tower which is painted yellow with a Smiley face, the most popular tourist attraction seen on the road Up North.

The land is hilly with fields and farms and pockets of trees and open land.

While driving we listened to a book on tape, Siracusa by Delia Ephron.

When I got home I had two books waiting for me. One was Haruki Murakami's newest novel, Killing Commendatore-- a surprise package from A. A. Knopf! I must have won some giveaway.

 And Dover Publications sent me My First Book of Sewing, which I requested for review.

I read non-review books while away: Marlena by Julie Buntin while away (review to come!), Stephen Fried's book on restauranteer Fred Harvey, Appetite for America, and started Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann.

While away, NetGalley informed me that I was approved for In the Eye of the Hurricane by Nathaniel Philbrick! I have enjoyed all his books. Also on my NetGalley shelf are All the Lives I Never Lived by Anuradha Roy, The Perilous Adventures of the Cowboy King by Jerome Charyn, Big Bang by David Bowman, and Daughter of Molokai by Alan Brennert. I read Brennert's Honolulu years ago and have Molokai on my Kindle to read before the new book. From Edelweiss I have Learning to See by Elise Hooper.

Also, while away I got the good news that I had won a special Book Club win: A Skype visit with author Wiley Cash to discuss his novel The Last Ballad. My feet were hardly touching the ground for a whole day! WILEY CASH! You can read my reviews on The Last Ballad here, and A Land More Kind Than Home here.

Coming home we drove out of the clouds and into the sunshine! The trees had some color, but mostly we saw green. We stopped for lunch in my husband's hometown, driving by his childhood homes and school.

It was nice to be away for six days, but even nicer to be home again! I have some sewing to do!

WWI Vintage Sheet Music: Mostly Comic Songs About Army Life

Many WWI songs were about the boys leaving home, family and girls, and adjusting to army life. Some are sentimental, but most are comic songs.

They Were All Out of Step But Jim by Irving Berlin, 1918, has a marvelous cover by Barbelle and was sung by Blanche King. Hear it sung by Billy Murray here.

Jimmy's mother went to see her son

Marching along on parade

In his uniform and with his gun

What a lovely picture he made

She came home that evening

Filled up with delight

And to all the neighbors

She would yell with all her might

[Chorus]

"Did you see my little Jimmy marching

With the soldiers up the avenue?

There was Jimmy just as stiff as starch

Just like his father on the seventeenth o' March

Did you notice all the lovely ladies

Casting their eyes at him?

Away he went

To live in a tent

Over in France with his regiment

Were you there, and tell me, did you notice?

They were all out of step but Jim"

That night little Jimmy's father stood

Buying the drinks for the crowd

You could tell that he was feeling good

He was talking terribly loud

Twenty times he treated

My, but he was dry

When his glass was empty

He would treat again and cry

[Chorus]

***

There's a Vacant Chair in Every Home Tonight. 1917, by Alfred Bryan and Ernest Breuer, was illustrated by Barbelle. I am sure it brought tears to many a mother. Listen to a recording here.

In ev’ry mansion, ev’ry cottage all throughout the land, 
There’s a mother heart that’s feeling blue. 
Her darling boy is missing, he was gone with sword in hand, 
To make our country safe for me and you. 
In ev’ry mother’s eye there is a tear. 
And on her lips a prayer could you but hear. 

Refrain: 
There’s a vacant chair that’s waiting there in ev’ry home tonight. 
And a lonesome mother’s dreaming by the fire burning bright. 
She is thinking of her gallant boy who is fighting for the right. 
There’s a vacant chair in ev’ry home tonight. 

Verse: 
She fondly gazes at his picture hanging on the wall, 
Seems but yesterday he went away. 
Her dear lips keep repeating he’s the bravest boy of all. 
I’m lonely but I’m proud of him today, 
And oft she murmurs to herself alone, 
I hope that I’ll be here when he comes home.

 Refrain

***

This comedy song makes fun of the Irish. Where Do We Go From Here by Howard Johnson and Percy Wenrich, 1917 was performed by the Klein Brothers. The Klein brothers had a vaudeville act in which one spoke gibberish. Asked what it meant he replied, who cares as long as they laugh? 

I can't identify the illustrator, but it shows a smiling soldier coming through a broken wall with the war behind him. Listen to a recording here.

Pad-dy Mack drove a hack up and down Broad-way,

Pat had one ex-pres-sion and he'd use it ev-'ry day,

An-y time he'd grab a fare, to take them for a ride,

Pad-dy jumped up-on the seat, - cracked his whip and cried:

Chorus:

"Where do we go from here, boys? Where do we go from here?"

An-y-where from Har-lem to a Jer-sey Cit-y pier,

When Pat would spy a pret-ty girl, he'd whis-per in her ear:

"Oh, joy! Oh, boy! Where do we go from here?"

One fine day, on Broad-way, Pat was driv-ing fast,

When the street was blown to pie-ces by a sub-way blast,

Down the hole poor Pad-dy went, a-think-ing of his past,

Then he says, says he, I think these words will be my last:

Chorus

"Where do we go from here, boys? Where do we go from here?"

Pad-dy's neck was in the wreck, but still he had no fear,

He saw a dead man next to him and whis-pered in his ear:

"Oh, joy! Oh, boy! Where do we go from here?"

First of all, at the call, when the war be-gan,

Pat en-list-ed in the ar-my as a fight-ing man,

When the drills be-gan they'd walk a hun-dred miles a day,

Tho' the rest got tir-ed, Pad-dy al-ways used to say:

Chorus

"Where do we go from here, boys? Where do we go from here?"

Slip a pill to Kai-ser Bill and make him shed a tear,

And when we see the en-e-my we'll shoot them in the rear,

"Oh, joy! Oh, boy! Where do we go from here?"

***

It's a Long, Long Way to Tipperary is one of the most well known WWI songs. Written by Jack Judge and Harry Williams, 1912, it came out of the British Music Hall. "The Sensational Irish March Song Success" also features Paddy. Listen to a recording by John McCormick here.

Up to mighty London
Came an Irishman one day.
As the streets are paved with gold
Sure, everyone was gay,
Singing songs of Piccadilly,
Strand and Leicester Square,
Till Paddy got excited,
Then he shouted to them there:

Chorus
It's a long way to Tipperary,
It's a long way to go.
It's a long way to Tipperary,
To the sweetest girl I know!
Goodbye, Piccadilly,
Farewell, Leicester Square!
It's a long long way to Tipperary,
But my heart's right there.

Paddy wrote a letter
To his Irish Molly-O,
Saying, "Should you not receive it,
Write and let me know!"
"If I make mistakes in spelling,
Molly, dear," said he,
"Remember, it's the pen that's bad,
Don't lay the blame on me!"

Chorus

Molly wrote a neat reply
To Irish Paddy-O,
Saying "Mike Maloney
Wants to marry me, and so
Leave the Strand and Piccadilly
Or you'll be to blame,
For love has fairly drove me silly:
Hoping you're the same!"

Chorus

***

A popular Canadian WWI song was K-K-K-Katy, 1918, by Geoffrey O'Hara, Army Song Leader. Hear Billy Murray sing it here. Read about the composer here.

Jimmy was a soldier brave and bold
Katy was a maid with hair of gold
Like an act of fate, Kate was standing at the gate
Watching all the boys file on parade
Kate smiled with a twinkle in her eye
Jim said "M-m-meet you by-and-by!"
That same night at eight
Jim was at the garden gate
Stuttering this song to K-K-K-Kate

[Chorus
K-K-K-Katy, beautiful Katy
You're the only g-g-g-girl that I adore
When the m-m-m-moon shines over the cow shed
I'll be waiting at the k-k-k-kitchen door

K-K-K-Katy, beautiful Katy
You're the only g-g-g-girl that I adore
When the m-m-m-moon shines over the cow shed
I'll be waiting at the k-k-k-kitchen door

[Verse 2]
"No one ever looked so nice and neat!"
"No one could be just as cute and sweet!"
That's what Jimmy thought
When the wedding ring he bought
Now he's off to France the foe to meet
Jimmy thought he'd like to take a chance
See if he could make the Kaiser dance
Stepping to a tune all about the silv'ry moon
This is what they hear in far off France

[Chorus]
K-K-K-Katy, beautiful Katy
You're the only g-g-g-girl that I adore
When the m-m-m-moon shines over the cow shed
I'll be waiting at the k-k-k-kitchen door

K-K-K-Katy, beautiful Katy
You're the only g-g-g-girl that I adore
When the m-m-m-moon shines over the cow shed
I'll be waiting at the k-k-k-kitchen door

***

Another well-known WWI comic song is Irving Berlin's Oh! How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning, 1918, with another Barbelle cover. It was performed by Bob Hall.

Berlin wrote the comic song after he was conscripted into the army as part of a fund-raising show. He never saw combat. Listen to a recording by Arthur Fields here.

The other day I chanced to meet a soldier friend of mine, 
He’d been in camp for sev’ral weeks and he was looking fine, 
His muscles had developed and his cheeks were rosy red, 
I asked him how he liked the life, 
And this is what he said:

[Chorus] 
“Oh! how I hate to get up in the morning, 
Oh! How I’d love to remain in bed; 
For the hardest blow of all, 
is to hear the bugler call; 
You’ve got to get up, 
You’ve got to get up, 
You’ve got to get up this morning!

Someday I’m going to murder the bugler, 
Someday they’re going to find him dead; 
I’ll amputate his reveille, 
and step upon it heavily,

And spend, the rest of my life in bed.

[Verse 2] 
A bugler in the army is the luckiest of men,
he wakes the boys at five and then goes back to bed again; 
He doesn’t have to blow again until the afternoon, 
If ev’ry thing goes well with me I’ll be a bugler soon.

[Chorus] 
“Oh! how I hate to get up in the morning, 
Oh! How I’d love to remain in bed; 
For the hardest blow of all, is to hear the bugler call; 
You’ve got to get up, 
You’ve got to get up, 
You’ve got to get up this morning!

Oh! boy the minute the battle is over, 
Oh! boy the minute the foe is dead, 
I’ll put my uniform away and move to Philadelphia,

And spend the rest of my life in bed.

***

I Don't Want to Get Well by Harry Pease and Howard Johnson, music by Harry Jentes, 1917, is another comic song about army life. The cover shows a wounded soldier cared for by a pretty nurse while out the window combat ensues. Listen to a recording by Van & Schneck here and by Eddie Cantor here.

 I just received an answer to a letter that I wrote, 
From a pal who marched away. 
He was wounded in the trenches somewhere in France 
And I worried about him night and day. 
“Are you getting well,” was what I wrote. 
This is what he answered in his note: 

Refrain: 
“I don’t want to get well. I don’t want to get well. 
I’m in love with a beautiful nurse. 
Early ev’ry morning night and noon, 
The cutest little girlie comes and feeds me with the spoon
I don’t want to get well. 
I don’t want to get well. 
I’m glad they shot me on the fighting line fine. 
The doctor says that I’m in bad condition 
But oh oh oh I’ve got so much ambition. 
I don’t want to get well. I don’t want to get well 
For I’m having a wonderful time."

Verse: I showed this letter to a friend who lives next door to me 
And I heard him quickly say “Goodbye, pal, I must be going.
 I’m off to war, And I hope that I’m wounded right away.
 If what’s in this letter here is true,
 I’ll get shot and then I’ll write: (chorus)

***

Come On Papa by Edgar Leslie and Harry Ruby, 1918, with another great Barbelle cover. Eddie Cantor may be pictured on the cover but he may not have performed it. Hear an orchestral version here.

Another comic song that again portrays war as a fun adventure. Meet nurses. Meet girls. 

Sweet Marie in gay Paree 
Had a motor car;
It filled her heart with joy,
To drive a Yankee boy;
On the sly, shed wink her eye,
If one came her way,
She'd stop her motor car
And then she'd say:

chorus:
Come on papa
Hop in ze motor car
Sit by mama
And hold ze hand
You start to raise for me
What zay call ze deuce
I'll be so sweet to you
Like ze Charlotte Russe
Come on papa
Beneath the shining star
Bounce your babe upon your knee
I'll give you a kiss like ze mademoiselles do
Each time you ask for one
I'll give you two
Comme ci comme ca
And when you're in ze car
You love mama
Oo-la-la, Oo-la-la
Come on papa

Yankee boys make lots of noise,
When they're in Paree;
They like to promenade
Up on ze Boul-e-vard;
They all know Marie and so,
Any time she's near,
They knock each other down,
Each time they hear: (chorus)