Wednesday, December 23, 2015

Christmas, Community, and Changed Lives


This month I read A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens and A Redbird Christmas by Fannie Flagg for my book clubs. Carol has been a favorite story of mine since I was Martha in our third grade play. I memorized everyone's lines during rehearsal!
The Christmas Carol play presented by my third grade class!
I grew up watching all of the televised movie versions. In Junior Great books I read the story for the first time. My husband and I used to read it aloud during Christmas time and watch all the movie versions. What new could I learn? Turns out plenty.


I encountered Fannie Flagg when her Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe was made into a movie. I read the book at least twice. A Redbird Christmas was not my favorite read. I found the characterization thin, the relationships sometimes unconvincing, but most readers will enjoy the upbeat, positive message of a small town coming together to change the life of an unloved and abandoned girl. I've lived in a small town, albeit not a Southern one, and the part of the story that I saw most real was the grudges that divided people on opposite sides of one river. Flagg's story finds ways to bridge that gap.

Redbird is about a Chicago man on a self-destructive road to early death who takes the advice of a doctor to winter in the south. He ends up renting a room in a dinky town, making friends and creating new and healthy habits. The townspeople have two pets: an injured Cardinal that lives in the General Store doing tricks and pecking open packages, and an impoverished and crippled girl who is unwanted and unloved. The bird becomes the girl's best friend, and the town adopts her and helps her to family and wholeness. Meantime our Chicagoan finds not only health but purpose and community. A Christmas 'miracle' wraps up the story.

We all know about Dickens's Scrooge, that money-grubbing, cold hearted man. He had a sad childhood, worked his way to wealth, and cut himself off from everyone and everything to nurse his grudges in dimly lit and hardly heated rooms. His business partner Marley returns from the dead with a warning to alter his life before it is too late.

Scrooge is visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past  who shows him that he was loved by his sister Fran and Mr and Mrs Fezziwig and his betrothed Beth. It was Scrooge's choice to alienated everyone by putting capitalistic gain and security over friendship and love.

Christmas Present takes him into the homes of loving families and shows that even the most abject poor and isolated men celebrate Christmas with their fellow men.

And Christmas Future shows Scrooge what the outcome of being separated from humanity brings. The wealthy and successful man of business dies alone and uncared for, while the poor crippled child Tiny Tim leaves a legacy of love behind.

What is Christmas about then? One lesson is that we are to live in community, to share each others burdens and bridge the gaps that divide us. That without relationships with others our lives are nil. That it is only through love that we reach our full humanity, and it is only the legacy of love we leave behind that remains after we have departed.

God bless us, everyone!

*****
A book club member told us about The Man Who Invented Christmas: How Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol Rescued His Career and Revived Our Holiday Spirits by Les Standiford. The book is a little gem. In a few hundred pages we learn about Dickens's life, his career, influences on the book, influences of the book, and the pirating of creative property before copyright laws.

Dickens's comfortable childhood ended when his father's indebtedness landed him in prison and Charles in a humiliating and job. The experience haunted him all his life.

Shortly before writing Carol, along with Disraeli, Dickens appeared before the government to argue for support of the financially failing Manchester Athenaeum. The free institution housed a library and offered classes, lectures, music, and exercise facilities. Dickens had toured Manchester and saw abject poverty, houses unfit for beasts, and streets mired in refuse and ordure. It was a "hellhole". Fifty-five percent of children born in working class families died before age five. Dickens said the children in the free school displayed "profound ignorance and perfect barbarism," were filthy, and resorted to thievery or prostitution to survive.

Dickens was eloquent about education as a way for workers to rise out of poverty and become better citizens. "He proclaimed his belief that with the pursuit and accumulation of knowledge, man had the capacity to change himself and his lot in life," the author tells us. "The more a man learns, Dickens said, "The better, gentler, kinder man he must become." And more tolerant.

Dickens's career was floundering and bankruptcy was a real possibility.  He considered a career change. Instead he worked incessantly and in six weeks wrote the ghost story known as The Christmas Carol. Its influence was huge. Peter Ackroyd credits Dickens for creating the Modern Christmas. Standiford says at least Dickens reinvented it.

For centuries, conservative Christianity had rejected Christmas revelries as pagan. It was a minor holiday at best. Prince Albert brought German traditions that were making their impact, like the lighted tree in the illustration at the beginning of this post. Victorians imitated all the 'Christmas' trimmings described in the tale. Turkey was in, goose was out, for Christmas dinner.

The book is a nice introduction to Dickens through his most well known story.




Tuesday, December 22, 2015

2015 Book Title Answers Meme


Bibliophilpolis blog shared this fun meme: Answer all the questions with the title of a book you have read in 2015.
  • Describe Yourself: The Queen of the Heartbreak Trail
  • How do you Feel: Sometimes I feel Worthy, sometimes Corrupted
  • Describe Where You Currently Live: I've moved a lot: Brooklyn, The Turner House, House of Hawthrone, A Place We Knew Well, The Given World
  • If you could go anywhere, where would you go: At the Water's Edge, or perhaps Station Eleven or even Black River 
  • Your favorite form of transportation: I'm usually The Girl on the Train, but sometimes I prefer flying and Circling the Sun
  • Your best friend is: The Dream Lover and my Everything, Everything
  • You and your friends are: 7 Women, All of Us and Everything
  • What’s the Weather Like: The Color of Water in July can turn to All the Winters After in a snap here in Michigan
  • Favorite time of day: The Longest Night 
  • What is life to you: Same old Same old Five Night Stand; Repeat; Hear My Sad Story
  • Your fear: The Improbability of Love and When We Are No More
  • What is the best advice you have to give: We all must follow The Truth According to Us
  • Thought for the day: The Heart Goes Last
  • How I would like to die:  Fast Into the Night
  • My soul’s present condition: Everybody RiseAnd Still We Rise, Joy!
Into the Woods by Nancy A. Bekofske

Sunday, December 20, 2015

Christmases Past: 1956 and 1957 Photos

Looking at old photographs brings back memories, shows us the world of our past, and reveals things we took for granted.
1956
I had forgotten that Mom decorated the doors and windows with stenciled 'snow' paint. I love the hat with the balls on the ties. The over the shoes snow boots had loads of clasps which I still couldn't manage in kindergarten.

Christmas 1956. My hair was in pigtails. I was five years old. Here I am coloring with stencils. Coloring was one of my favorite activities. The flannel nightgown was a must; our 1830s house had no heating in the upstairs bedrooms!
Skunk and Mouse get an education with my new chalk board. This is one of the few photos that still has good color. Most I converted to black and white. The television was our 'new' one.
Mom was twenty-six years old.
A doll bed. I wonder what doll I put in it? Perhaps the skunk and mouse? Santa on the closet door was Styrofoam with flocked red hat and nose. Mistletoe hung over the door into the kitchen.
Here I am with Dad, aged 27. I have a board game set. A metal doll house is next to Dad. On the left is a 'modern' table holding the creche.
What a mess! I was still an only child and Mom loved Christmas. The toys weren't expensive, but it didn't matter to me.
Mom painted the Tole painted magazine rack next to the chair. Yep, that's real tinsel on a real Christmas tree.
Christmas 1957
I was five years old.

I see a toy ironing board and iron on the right. Next to the chair is a pink suitcase with Tiny Tears and all her clothing and baby things, sitting on a box holding a tea set. Under the tree is my new dress. I am holding my first 'fashion doll', a Miss Revlon. She came with underclothing and two dresses, a belt, a hat, and a purse. I rearranged and made my own style. I liked her in the bra, crinoline, and the belt in her hair, which was perhaps my idea of a ballerina.

A vintage Little Miss Revlon doll with original box
In the photo below you can see Tiny Tears and the tea set.

Miss Revlon and Tiny Tears.
I really liked that fashion doll. Here she has a Pill box hat.
I took the doll with me to visit my aunt and uncle and cousins who lived in the upstairs apartment. Note the old wallpaper border at the top of the wall.
My first dog Pepper sits next to me. I loved that dog! 
Add caption
The little modern coffee table of metal and Formica would be very in demand today. Mom's wedding candy dish sits in the middle of the table. There is a heavy white, scalloped edged, glass dish with green interior to the left, and a clear plastic Christmas tree on the right.
Here I am in the new dress. It was brown print with a white bib. Mom and I had matching permanents in a "Bubble cut" so my straight hair was very Shirley Temple curly.
I see a pile of games and books next to the chair. You can see the Tiny Tears in her pink suitcase on the right. The bottom of my stocking can be seen on the wall.
Dad supported us by running the gas station his dad had built in the 1940s. We didn't have much money. But when I saw the ads on television showing poor children of the world I felt very guilty for having so much. I knew I didn't need, or deserve, it all.

Friday, December 18, 2015

What Mom Wanted For Christmas in 1957

What did our mothers want for Christmas in 1957? Lets look at the ads from the December Good Housekeeping magazine.
I shared this Toastmaster electric fry pan ad on Facebook and quite a few remarked their mom had one, and several people still have one today! My mom made almost all her meals in one. I wish I had it today! It kept the heat so even.
Automatic toasters didn't arrive until the 1940s. What made the Sunbeam special was it's heat sensor that gaged the temperature of the bread, not the toaster. This Sunbeam toaster  was in production from the 1940s until 1996 when its $89.95 price tag couldn't compete with Wal-Mart toasters sold for $9.99. What a shame.
When I shared this Electrolux ad on Facebook I had another rash of people remembering their mom having one. So did my in-laws, but theirs was on gliders and dated before 1955 when the wheels came in.
 Everyone had a Cosco step stool chair. I'd like that rolling table today.

 
 Well, if you had to have a bathroom scale get one with 'jeweled movement.'
My husband's grandmother had a console stereo like this! But look at those prices! $169.99 was a lot of money in 1957!
 Floristic Telegraph Delivery! That's what FTD stands for!
 Lovely Lenox china in 'West Wind" was made from 1953 to 1980.
This Eureka looked like what my mom had. That $49.95 price tag was about a half week's income for us.
I love the idea of baking right at the table! Hopefully the kids or guests didn't touch it and get burned. See more photos and the original pamphlet here.
"Golden Foliage" glasses were the most successful hostess set created by Libby, sold from 1956 until 1977.

The top right ad is for Melamac dishes, which I know Mom had for many years. The fashions on the left are bed jackets. So pretty.  I didn't remember Hawaiian Punch before the classic 1962 ad, "Hey, how about a nice Hawaiian punch?" It was invented in 1934 though.

What did your mom get for Christmas in 1957?

Thursday, December 17, 2015

Christmas Quilts at the Library

We may have green grass here in Metro Detroit but the local library is helping the community get into the Christmas spirit with a display of holiday quilts! Snowmen and Santas have come to town!
Here Comes Santa Claus by Shirley Leja
by Linda Brown

 
Counting the Days by Shirley Leja
 


by Linda Pearce
 









Tuesday, December 15, 2015

An Interview With Jacopo della Quercia

A few weeks ago I gave a brief review of License to Quill, by Jacopo della Quercia. No, not the 15th c sculptor ; Jacopo is the pen name of a respected academic who is also a novelist and writes for Cracked.com.

Jacopo's previous book was The Great Abraham Lincoln Pocket Watch Conspiracy, a steampunk/alternate history/humorous adventure. License to Quill was a fun read following after reading Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606 by James Shapiro which explored how political events (like the Gunpowder Plot) impacted the Bard's plays King Lear, Macbeth, and Antony and Cleopatra.

I was contacted by Jacopo and was able to interview him.

Interviewer: How did you choose your pen name?
Jacopo: Since I was doing political work around the time I started writing for the comedy website, I had no choice but to publish under a pen name. 'Jacopo della Quercia' is one many nicknames I've been called my entire adult life due to my real name, Giacomo, being a bit of a novelty to most people. I love my real name, but I've lived my whole life with people having a hard time pronouncing it, never mind spelling it. 'Jacopo' is my name's Latin equivalent, and I love writing under it if only because it serves as a standard to what my writing is frequently about: history, with a sense of humor to it.

[I sure understand the problem of people not knowing how to pronounce your name; I grew up a Gochenour after all!]

Interviewer: What was the inspiration behind License to Quill?
Jacopo: I was still writing my previous novel The Great Abraham Lincoln Pocket Watch Conspiracy when Skyfall hit theaters and bombarded me with videos and articles celebrating the 50th anniversary of the James Bond franchise. This evidently rubbed off on my as I decided what book to write next! Once I learned that Shakespeare wrote Macbeth around the same time that the Gunpowder Plot took place, I realized that I had all the characters and components I needed to write a James Bond-esque spy-thriller starring the most famous Englishman who ever lived!

Interviewer: Your writing is an unusual blend of genres. I would like to know more about your choice of style.
Jacopo: I try to keep  my novels faithful to their respective eras in history, no matter how outlandish it sounds. If there are science fiction aspects to my story, I consult experts, historians, and research everything I can on science from that particular moment in history. When writing dialogue I read contemporaneous works, including letters and diaries, and use an etymological dictionary to avoid anachronisms and make the language sound real. When creating my characters, I search for real figures from history to cast in my story, even if just for a cameo.

It's a wonderful experience because it lets you leap across genres, which I find somewhat amusing since, in my view of it, this is what history has always been like. World War II was an action movie, a science fiction movies, a comedy, a drama, a full-blown horror, and even a love story for tens of millions of people at the same time. Most writers choose to focus on only one aspect of history in their stories: the adventure, the drama, etc. I find it all fantastic, so I try to include all of it.

Interviewer: What writers influenced you? What writers do you enjoy now?
Jacopo: I think it all depends on whatever I'm writing at the moment. Alexandre Dumas, H. G. Wells, and Edgar Allan Poe influenced The Great Abraham Lincoln Pocket Watch Conspiracy a lot more than License to Quill, which was ultimately more influenced by the life and works of William Shakespeare than by Ian Fleming's James Bond novels. I imagine I'll go on a Jane Austen binge at some point and write a book starring her. The same could go for Charles Dickens or Mark Twain, or maybe Dante, whom I am probably most indebted to as a writer.

[Austen? Dickens? Twain? I'm all for that! But imagine what he could do with Dante!]

Interviewer: What would you like readers to know about your book?
Jacopo: The first thing I would like my readers to know is "thank you." Thank you for taking this moment to give my novel a chance. It's because of readers like you that I can write books designed to make people of all interests and backgrounds more excited about history. License to Quill is a James Bond-esque spy thriller starring William Shakespeare and Guy Fawkes during the Gunpowder Plot. It is the product of years of research and a lifetime of love for William Shakespeare and the Renaissance. It is a thriller, an adventure, a mystery, and much more. I like my stories filled with surprises and License to Quill is no exception! I hope you like it!
Jacopo della Quercia
I thank Jacopo for taking the time to talk to us!

Read my review of License to Quill here. It is available from St. Martin's Griffin.