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The World According to Fannie Davis: My Mother's Life in the Detroit Numbers

I don't gamble. I don't buy raffle tickets or lottery tickets or visit the casinos. To me, it's throwing money away. I harbor no dreams of "hitting it big." I don't find it intriguing and it doesn't sound like fun. Then, I'm not motivated by money, although I never had much either.

That made me standoffish about Bridgett M. Davis' memoir about her mother who for 34 years was a numbers runner working out of her Detroit home. But...it's Detroit...and I had to at least take a look at this book.

The book is a paen to Fannie Davis who used her wits and charisma--and a lot of hard work--to ensure that her children had a comfortable home and a good life.

The Davis family had moved to Detroit for the same reason as my family did: the dream of a job in the auto industry. Davis loved her father, but with frail health no regular work, he was unable to support his family.

Fannie didn't want her kids growing up in a vermin-ridden slum house. So, Davis's mom had a choice: work in the home of a white person, for little pay, and away from her own family all day, or get creative.

She got creative. And built a business.

This memoir offers a good understanding of Detroit in the 1950s and 1960s, filled with specifics and local color. One learns the history of numbers in the African American community, it's economic importance, and how it works.

Davis talks about the secretiveness about her mom's work, how the legal lottery impacted the numbers, and her desire to get away from Detroit for college and work.

Above all, Fannie Davis shines as her daughter paints a larger-than-life image of her mom.

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

The World According to Fannie Davis: My Mother's Life in the Detroit Numbers
by Bridgett M. Davis
Little, Brown and Company
Pub Date 29 Jan 2019
ISBN 9780316558730
PRICE $28.00 (USD)

WIP Quilts, Books, and News

Winter arrived in Michigan! It has been bitter cold. It's perfect weather to quilt and read.

I completed a project from my weekly quilt group's "free table" exchange. Another quilter had started a twelve block quilt in wool and flannel. The incomplete blocks were given up. I finished the embroidery, cobbled together pieces to complete one block, and machine quilted the project.

I finished the Little Red Riding Hood quilt top. I set the seven 1919 Redwork patterns with other vintage patterns that seemed to fit the story: a basket, strawberries, Grandma's house, bunnies hiding in the woods.

I loved the Little Red Riding Hood prints from Riley Blake. I used two from the collection for the top and have another for the backing. I'll bind the quilt with the red fabric.

 I used perle emrboidery thread for the Redwork.

I decided the Thistle fabric quilt needed a border. Now it is ready!

I won a wonderful gift on American Historical Fiction Facebook Group! The giveaway from Anne Howard Creel included a signed first edition of her new book, a lovely tote bag, and pretty coasters. Anne's book is about a flood, an abused wife, and her step-daughter.

The Sunday paper's Parade magazine highlighted two memoirs I have read and reviewed. The World According to Fannie Davis by Bridgitt Davis (my review will appear tomorrow) and Maid by Stephanie Land, which I reviewed last week.

Books I have on my table include the memoir Lost Without the River by Barbara Hoffbeck Scobie, courtesy of Caitlin Hamiton Marketing & Publicity,

and Make Me A City by Jonathan Carr, a LibraryThing win.

painting by Joyce Gochenour, my mother

For some reason, I have won a record number of books on giveaways! From Goodreads I won That Churchill Woman, Camelot's End by Jon Ward on Kennedy and Carter, Unmarriageable by Sonia Kamal based on Pride and Prejudice, and Northward by Chuck Radda. And I won Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? by Bill McKibben from LibraryThing. 

I just read and reviewed The Last Romantics by Tara Conklin, a LibraryThing win; look for my review next month. I an also reading an ebook win from Goodreads, Imagine That! by ark Finn about an eight-year-old boy with an active imagination.

My NetGalley shelf is thin because I am going to have cataract surgery in February and March! No more trifocals! I know I won't be able to hand as much reading for a while. I am excited because I am going to get a special lens to correct the astigmatism that has plagued me all my life! 

I am reading The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books about Christopher Columbus's son and his quest to build the largest library; Three Sheets to the Wind about nautical terms that have come into our every day language; and The Road to Grantchester, a prequel to the Grantchester series. 

TBR is The Editor by Stephen Rowley author of Lily and the Octopus, The Life and Death of Aida Hernandez: A Border Story, and The Electric Hotel by Dominic Smith whose The Last Painting of Sara DeVos I read.

We have been dog sitting our grandpuppy Ellie! Our son had long days at the office and dropped her off before work and picked her up at the end of the day. 

Ellie is only four months out of the puppy mill. She was dropped off at a vet for putting down! Safe Harbor Animal Rescue in Vermillion Ohio was contacted and now Ellie is a pampered pooch.

She is blossoming into a lovely girl. 

Rescues make the BEST PETS.

The Falconer by Dana Czapnik

Sometimes a book finds me that I would not have found by myself. That is how The Falconer by Dana Czapnik came into my life--as an unexpected package from the publisher.

Reading it was about a seventeen-year-old girl in 1993 New York City whose passion was basketball and who has a crush on her best friend Percy, I wondered if I would care for the book. Sure, there was advance praise from Column McCann, Salmon Rushdie, Chloe Benjamin--but could I relate to the story?

I opened the book and started reading. The opening scene finds the protagonist, "pizza bagel" Lucy, playing basketball with Percy. I've seen basketball games. Only when the tickets were free. But the writing was so good, I found myself drawn into the scene, turning pages. There was something about this book, about Lucy's voice.

On the surface, I had nothing in common with Lucy. And yet Lucy felt familiar, her concerns and fears universal.

In telling the story of one particular girl from a particular place and time, the author probes the eternal challenges of growing up female: conformity and acceptance by one's peer group while staying true to oneself; crushes on boys who don't see you; concerns about our attractiveness; what we give up for love; is the world is chaotic and without order, or can we find joy and hope?

There was a multitude of lines and paragraphs that I noted for their wisdom, beauty, and insight. I reread sections, scenes that elicited emotion or thoughtfulness.

I felt Lucy was channeling Holden Caulfield, who I met as a fourteen-year-old in Freshman English class in 1967. The Catcher in the Rye was life-changing for me, a voice unlike any I had encountered in a novel. The New York City setting, the wandering across the city, the characters met, the rejection of the parental values and lifestyle, Lucy's misunderstanding of a song line--Lucy is a female Holden, updated to the 1990s.

Lucy tells us that in Central Park is a statue of a boy releasing a falcon. She loves this statue but resents that only boys are portrayed in the way of the statue, that girls are shown nude or as children like the Alice in Wonderland statue. She sees in the joy and hope in The Falconer.

The Falconer, Central Park

Lucy experiences many things in the novel, including some pretty bad stuff. But she is resilient, holding to the joy and beauty she finds around her, the "the perfect jump shot" moments. She will inspire young readers and offer those of us whose choices were made long ago a journey of recollection and the affirmation of mutually shared experience.

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

The Falconer
by Dana Czapnik
Atria Books
Publication: January 29, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-9322
$25 hardbound

The Peacock Feast by Lisa Gornick

Lisa Gornick's The Peacock Feast is a multi-generational historical fiction novel with a deep and universal theme that can speak across the generations. Gornick's characters take the burden of the past into their futures, cutting them off from a full life. Suppressed memories are as constricting as those which consume us; neither allow us to risk a full life.

The Peacock Feast was Louis Tiffany's "performance art" dinner for a select group of top-tier society men, every minutia controlled by him. Prudence is in her nineties and the event is her earliest memory, watching the parade of girls carrying the cooked fowl redressed in their gaudy feathers. She recalls her hand over the mouth of a small boy.

Prudence's parents were employed by the Tiffany family at Laurelton Hall, the Oyster Bay home Tiffany designed. Her father was his gardener and her mother worked as a housekeeper. After Tiffany blew up the breakwater that created what he believed was his private beach, and which the town insisted was for all, Prudence's family left. Her older brother Randall couldn't stand their father's drinking and ran away from home, never to see Prudence again.

Prudence made a career, married a man because she'd be crazy to say no to, and later in life fell in love but was afraid to say yes. Now, in her last months, Randall's granddaughter Grace has sought Prudence out and together they piece the mystery of their family's history and the traumatic incident that divided them.

The story skips back and forth in time between generations; a family tree on your bookmark may be helpful to keep track of them. Reoccuring choices appear in the family, generations unwittingly mirroring each other. 

Gornick has given us a beautifully written book, complex with characters' stories across four generations. For all the sorrow and heartbreak in her character's lives, we are left with understanding and hope.

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

Read an excerpt and find a reading guide here.

The Peacock Feast
by Lisa Gornick
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Sarah Crichton Books
Pub Date 05 Feb 2019
ISBN 9780374230548
PRICE $26.00 (USD)

The Diary of Helen Korngold: January 20-26, 1919

Helen Korngold, December 1919, New York City

January

Monday 20
Up—eat—Wellston—good lesson. Class—Dr. McKenzie is too sweet for words. Suggested that we indulge in Shakespeare a few minutes after wasting almost whole hour. Home. Folks all gone. To bed early.

Tuesday 21
Up—dressed—eat.
Wellston—kids act awfully cute. Met Ruth on car—nice conversation. Classes. Wells & I had argument over possibility of being blind and not knowing it. He’s too dogmatic about it. Basket ball. Senior luncheon—good. Refreshing shower—tease Paul. Home—dinner—Kroeger lecture. Summer came, loves McKitrick! Uncle Sam & home.

Wednesday 22
Up—dressed-eat. 8 a.m. Dan phones—made a date for a party at Orpheum on Sat. eve. Dates so easy—popular—oh gee! Wellston school—best pupil is absent—arms  broken. Too bad. School all day—Senior meeting—discuss caps & gowns. Home—practice—Study—date with Falstaff! Dr. [Hubler/Huebler] called up 9:30 P.M.! He knows my late hours!

Thursday 23
Wellston—pretty good—Class—topic in Ed. 12 O.K. home with sore throat. I have to write a theme, but oh gee! Such excitement! Kale & pop have just tried on their handsome robes! I’ll say they’re good-looking! Summer just phoned—Dewey located—K.C. Kale & I have a little tête-à-tête over Dewey. Karol looks cute in his robe—We’re in his rooms.

Friday 24
Wellston—rotten lesson. Class. Dr. McKenzie has yet to settle class hour. Dancing. Morris, Sam & Summer came over in evening. Played penny-ante. Summer brought me a variety of cotton samples. He’s a good kid. Morris is so clever. Sam’s a regular kid. Loaned Summer my copy of Return of the Native.

Saturday 25
First morning I slept until 8:30 this week. Pictures of kids party good. Class—home—a good bath and a refreshing nap. Box party at Orpheum. Harris girls and Anson K., Phil J., Dan Wolf & myself. Chop Suey and dancing at Ciardi’s. Home at 3 A.M. oh, boy! But we had one swell little time! I wish it on myself again—getting ambitious.

Sunday 26
Up at 10:30. Fool around—dinner and study. Expect to go to concert this evening. Rose R. going with us. Karol [her brother] says I’m stepping out—poor boy complains that he isn’t in my class anymore! Well, Annette Kellerman certainly thrilled me last night. I’m trying to imitate her—K. says I’m deluded!

*****

Notes:

January 20

McKitrick perhaps the John Collins McKitterick in Helen's class at Washington University. In 1915 as a freshman he was on the interclass football team. He was also in the Obelisk honors society.

January 21

Wesley Raymond Wells, Ph.D., Asst. Prof. of Education


1913 U of Vermont. 


From the 1927 Lake Forest yearbook

Earnest R Kroeger was the head of Kroeger School of Music. He talked on The Emotional and the Picturesque in Music that day.

Unc Lou was Louis Lieberstein (Dec. 18,1879-1931), husband of Helen's Aunt Beryl. He was a pharmacist. His parents were Max and Bertha, first-generation immigrants. His WWI draft card shows he lived at 4720 Newberry Terrace in St. Louis. His work address was on Euclid. He was stout, of medium height, with brown hair and brown eyes.

January 22 (Washington’s Birthday; school holiday)

The Orpheum Theatre was built in 1918 at the corner of 9th and St. Charles Sts. It was a vaudeville theater built in the Parisian style at a cost of $500,000. Annette Kellerman was playing there.
http://www.robertsorpheum.com/about.php

Dr. Huebner may be the Gustavus A. Huebner who appears in the 1887 City Directory as a teacher.

January 23

Kale may be a family nickname for her brother Karol Korngold. 

January 26

Annette Kellerman (1886-1975) was an Australian competitive swimmer, vaudeville star, and movie actress whose movie Queen of the Sea (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0445807/ ) was just out.  

According to a Reno, NV newspaper article on January 14, 1919, Kellerman played a naiad in a ‘submarine fairy story’ that was ‘packed with thrilling stunts’ and ended in a high-wire act with an 85-foot plunge into the sea. 

Her 1907 performance in the Hippodrome’s glass tank led to the popularity of synchronized swimming.  

Kellerman ’s movies include The Mermaid in 1907, in which she was the first to wear a swimmable mermaid costume, and A Daughter of the Gods in 1916 which included the first filmed nude scene. She is on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. 

Kellerman was the first to design and wear a one-piece bathing suit, which led to her arrest.  She marketed her swimwear. 
http://thehairpin.com/2011/05/bathing-suit-shopping-with-annette-kellerman-the-australian-mermaid

She never used a double but did all her own stunts. She was a vegetarian and a writer about fitness and beauty. She has a star on the
http://au.lifestyle.yahoo.com/marie-claire/features/society-celeb/article/-/5887692/em-annette-em-em-kellerman-en-australias-forgotten-icon/
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0445807/
https://wfpp.cdrs.columbia.edu/pioneer/ccp-annette-kellerman/

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)