I’ve made three visits in the last couple of months to one particular exhibit at the Art Gallery of Alberta (AGA) and I suspect I will be good for at least two more visits before the show closes on February 20 2012. The show is State of Nature, Western Canadian Landscape Painting in the AGA collection, 1980 to the present. This exhibit is running concurrently with a couple of other complementary painting exhibitions Prairie Life: Settlement and the Last Best West 1930-1955 (just until 2012 January 29) and a Passion for Nature, Landscape Painting from 19th Century France.

While the Passion for Nature exhibit is larger and with some big names would probably be considered the more prestigious exhibit, I must say that State of Nature is my favorite! State of Nature features nine large works by Alberta and Saskatchewan artists. The paintings are bold and strong, some tending towards abstraction but all recognizable as landscapes and certainly capturing the essence of the landscape from the Western Canadian prairie and parkland. There were a couple of paintings that really connected with me, invited me to sit down in front of them, to absorb the atmosphere and be transported to a different place. One of these was David Alexander’s Swags in a Northern Swamp. This large (approximately 3 by 4 meters) piece features a dominant foreground swamp with reflections in the mid-ground.

My favorite piece in this exhibit is Rockface, Quiet Bay 2008 by Gregory Hardy. This large work dominates one’s field of vision with a rocky landscape refelcted in a lake. the colors are rather subdued but with a few exciting dabs of orange.

If you happen to be in Edmonton, with an opportunity to visit the AGA before February 20th be sure not to miss this exhibit. It is interesting in its own right but especially so when seen against the 20th Century French paintings and the other current AGA exhibits.

I’m not even entirely joking. I’ve recently been re-reading The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder with my 9 year old sister as a part the book club at our local indie bookstore and let me tell you… Prairie Life will kill you a thousands times faster than anything else. Let me explain in list form…

Ways People Almost Die in The Long Winter

1. Getting lost in the slough. The grass is so tall, you can’t see over it and you have to hope to God that you don’t fall in a hole, get lost and die of thirst, or get eaten by some kind of wild animal.

2. Getting lost in a blizzard because it is snowing so hard you can’t see & one wrong turn leaves you lost in the prairie freezing to death. If you do make it home, your eyelids are bleeding from the snow.

3. You starve to death. Forget that rush to the grocery store for bread and milk at the hint of a storm. The only bread you have is what you make… assuming you don’t run out of flour. You did remember to make flour, right? And milk? You better hope the cow doesn’t run dry. Oh wait… it did. You’ll just ask the neighbors? Clearly you are not taking into account that EVERYONE is cold and starving and that even if there was enough to go around, you would get lost and die in the prairie in a blizzard before you could make it anywhere useful.

4. I did forget to mention that the prairie is pretty advanced and has a train depot to bring supplies to help get through the long winter… except the continual blizzards have rendered the tracks useless, so no one has seen a train in months. Hope you weren’t counting on ANYTHING to make it through.

5. Not even the coal you need to heat your house and cook your food will last. I hope you have a back up plan because if you burn too much of the hay, your horses will starve and you won’t be able to plow your fields come spring.

6. You know what happens if you can’t plow your fields, right? You die. Why? Because then you will have no crop and without a crop you have no food or profit to buy what you can’t make, so good luck getting through the next winter even if you make it through this one. So whatever you do, make sure your horses survive!

7.  I bet you thought that you could supplement your meager first-year prairie sod harvest (most of which died due to the unseasonably early frost) by hunting.  Nope.  The animals know what kind of winter is in store, and they have high-tailed it out of there.  Didn’t you notice that huge muskrat house?  They know what’s up.  You can sit out in the cold rain all day long, and no ducks or geese will fly low enough for you to shoot them.  They’re not stopping for a drink, either.  You’re going to have to have a serious think about whether your cattle are more valuable alive or as meat.

8. When you do happen to see the one herd of antelope that actually still exists within several miles of you, DON’T bring the one inexperienced hunter with you. He will get excited and shoot too soon, ruining everyone chances of actually eating any kind of meat all winter AND will lose your best horse in the process. You can go out looking for it, but there is a high probability that you will be far from home when you find your horse, have a blizzard sneak up on you and almost die.

9. Claim jumpers.  They might be waiting for you when you return to your abandoned-for-the-winter farm to haul more hay to town so that you can twist it into sticks and burn it for warmth now that you’ve run out of coal.  You don’t even have your gun with you because of the aforementioned lack of wildlife.

10. Don’t try to make a profit off of starving people by selling the only wheat in town at an astronomical price.  Hungry people will cut you.  It’s a good thing that Mr. Ingalls, who incidentally has no food at all for his family of six with a good two months of winter left, can control an angry mob. Otherwise they’d be lynching you and stealing your wheat.

11. Cabin Fever. Just saying. Someone is bound to snap eventually. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

The moral of the story is that if you live on the prairie, everything can kill you and your only job in life if to survive. When you wake up and the nails poking through the roof are frosted over and you look out your window on the second story and the snow drifts have covered your house… well… you better start digging a tunnel from the door to the barn if you don’t want your horses to die or for your family to freeze to death.

]]> http://michelleule.com/2011/11/06/the-dogtrot-christmas-bonus-features-chapter-one/ Sun, 06 Nov 2011 23:21:30 +0000 michelle http://michelleule.com/2011/11/06/the-dogtrot-christmas-bonus-features-chapter-one/ Starting Friday, the nine novella authors of A Log Cabin Christmas Collection will be blog hopping around the Internet for two weeks. In honor of my participation, I’m going to post the three chapters I originally wrote for what became my story The Dogtrot Christmas.

Once written, I sent the three short chapters to my agent, Janet Grant, who kindly wrote back to say, “you’ve written a novel, not a novella.” I had to shorten my story considerably.

To that end, I just moved forward 18 months in the story line and that became The Dogtrot Christmas. But these three early chapters provide insight and powerful backstory to the person Molly Faires became in the published novella. Here’s chapter one, with chapters two and three coming in the next couple days.

(This is the bonus feature, as if our book was a DVD . . . )

Enjoy!

The Dogtrot Christmas

(original chapters)

Chapter One

            Molly Faires tossed a thick golden braid over her shoulder as she walked through the two- room homestead one last time. She stood on the puncheon floor and remembered her pa laying down the boards and her ma fashioning a new broom to sweep them.

            She pulled the shutters closed and in the darkened room strained to remember the laughter and voices now long dead and gone. Surely she could smell the corn pone cooking on the fire, the salty deer jerky they ate in the winter? But it was time to move on and she was ready to go. She hungered for her parents, her big brothers, and especially her sister. The youngest in the family never got enough time.

            “Time to go. Are you ready?” The sweet voice of her new sister, one year married to Molly’s lone remaining brother, drifted between the two rooms and found her melancholy ear.

            Molly walked out of the sleeping half of the dog-trot to meet Syntha Faires, whose ruddy cheeks gleamed with exertion on that surprisingly warm day. “I took my knife and I cut you these.” Syntha held out a dozen twigs from the lilac bush pa planted back near the outhouse when he first built the homestead. “I don’t know if they will grow inTexas, but we can try.”

            Syntha had the gift of encouragement and a surge of thankfulness made Molly hug her close. Against her middle, she could feel the soft push of her niece or nephew responding with Syntha to Molly’s hug.  “Thank you. I’m so glad you thought to take the slips.”

            “We’re going to make us a home, just like this one.” Syntha gestured to the house. “I want Jamie to make a me a dog-trot just like your Pa built for your Ma. Pappy says it gets right hot inTexasand we need to keep the cookhouse separated from the living spaces. We’ll find a piece of land in that hill country and place the dog-trot just so it catches the breeze. We’ll put the sleeping space on the right and the kitchen far enough away that two people and a dog can walk between.”

            “With a roof on top covering it all.” Molly admired the style with her.

            “Point of fact yes.” Syntha patted her expanding belly. “And that’s where I’ll raise my young’en and you can live over the rise with yours.”

            “I’ll like that,” Molly said.

            “Good. That’s why we’re going with Pappy. Here comes Jamie now, we need to join the wagon train.”

            They’d sold all the livestock, save the oxen and the last milk cow Jamie tied to the back of the tidy wagon. “We’re ready to go. They’ve already started crossing the ford.”  The lanky 22 year-old scrutinized his younger wife. “Are you going to ride or walk?”

            Syntha set the lilac twigs into the back of the wagon. “Ma says I should walk, so Molly and I will stroll fromTennesseetoTexas.”

            Jamie grinned. “You will? You gonna stop somewhere along the way to have your baby?”

            “Only if we don’t make good time.”  She took Molly’s arm and they sashayed down the road in front of Jamie’s “gee-haw” to the two oxen.

            Down the road they could see a dozen wagons fording shallowMauryCreek. “We better hope the stepping stones are high today or we’re gonna get our feet wet before we even start,” Syntha said.

            “You’re braver today than I am.” Molly looked back to the only home she had ever known.

            “There’s no choice. My whole family is going toTexas, there’s nothing left for me here inTennessee. And you’re my family now. Everything is ahead of you. You’ll find some handsome man to settle down with and love and have a new family of your own.” Syntha put a dimple in her left cheek. “This is our adventure. We need to enjoy it.”

            A young man in deerskins spurred his bay horse across the creek in one jump and rode toward them, the horse’s hooves sparking up chinks of mud. Molly leaned to protect Syntha, but Eli Parker had his mount under control.

            “Isn’t it exciting Molly? We’re finally on our way.  To a place where we can claim new land, fight off the Injuns and put together a life they way we want. What do you think?”

            “I think you’re still wild Eli Parker,” Molly said, but she leavened her words with a tilt of her chin and a smile.

            He reached down and ran his gloved index finger along her chin. “Wild enough to protect you out there, Miss Molly.”

            “You be on your way,” Syntha ordered. “I see Pappy is waving for you.”

            Eli narrowed his eyes. “I’m good enough for her, Miz Faires.”

            “Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb yet? I ain’t seen no baptism. I’ll be waiting for it and rejoicing with all the angels when you go under the water, Eli Parker.”

            He wheeled his horse and tossed his head toward the woods, then clenched his knees to pause the animal. Eli leaned forward to stare.

            Molly shivered. The Indians were still seen in these woods, and the stories from her family always made her nervous. Ma had warned her many times, you never saw them until it was too late.

            They watched him ride like a scout, wide to the north, as they continued to the ford. “You be careful with him. Don’t lead him on. There be plenty of good men in search of wives inTexas. Pappy knows plenty of Hardshells, you don’t need to be mooning over someone whose following religion of the mild kind.”

            Molly nodded. Eli may not be the right man for her, but he sure was good looking.

            When the reached the ford, John Stewart and his wife Katrina were urging the oxen into the water. Katrina’s red face looked fit to burst.

            “Let me help you.”  Molly reached for the lead rope.

            “Thank ye.” Katrina gave her the rope and hurried to the side where she retched into the pokeweed.

            Syntha took the hands of the two Stewart toddlers. “Ye be in the family way?”

            Molly saw the woman nod before she bent over again.

            “Thank ye, Miss Molly,” John boomed. A hulking genial Scot who wore a ginger beard, he urged his oxen forward with a firm and loud voice. The creek water spilt over the tops of Molly’s boots and her skirts got wet, but she focused on the job. Her face felt the gust of oxen breath as they lumbered across the rocky bottom of the creek and then climbed the bank beyond.    “The first one creek crossed, hundreds to go. Hey, Johnny!”

            Stewart’s five-year old son leaped from stepping stone to stone, nimbly crossing without a splatter. He grinned when he reached their side and swatted his father’s muddy leg. Together they led the oxen down the road following the rest of the wagon train. When they reached a wide spot, Stewart spoke to the boy. “You stay here with Miss Molly while I help your ma across.”

            Molly gazed to the woods. She thought she caught the flash of movement behind some of the leafy trees. She pulled Johnny close to her, though he squirmed away. The oxen lowed, the dust rose to clog her nose and Molly wondered just where this adventure would lead.

            The Colwell wagon came next and Syntha’s confident sister Kizzie strode up the road, one babe in arms and three trailing behind. Willie drove his oxen from the wagon seat, assured the well-trained animals would obey.  Kizzie showed a rueful smile when she reached Molly.

            “He always has show Pappy he can be in control. We’ll see what he does when we hit real water. Are you looking forward toTexas?”

            “Yes, ma’am.” Molly stood as upright as she knew how.

            Kizzie’s eyes bored into her. “Pappy’s made some converts on the other side of theBrazos. Some of those Mexican-American believers have got some nice spreads.  Make sure you keep your options open until you get toTexas.”

            “Yes, ma’am.”

            The older woman’s face turned sober. “But don’t leave my sister just yet. She may need help with a babe on the road.”

            “I won’t. I love Syntha like my own sister.”

            Kizzie’s face trembled, just a tic, but she patted Molly’s shoulders. “I miss your sister, too. Come along children.” The Colwell family moved up the road.

            Molly watched after them and then remembered the little boy who wanted to get away. “I don’t want a husband yet, Johnny.”

            He squinted at her. “Why not, Miss Molly? Everybody needs a man to protect ‘em in the newRepublicofTexas. ”

            “Don’t you believe in God, Johnny?”

            “Yes, ‘em. But I like him best with skin on and a gun.”

            Molly laughed. “We’re going to need both where we’re going.”

Image by Runner Jenny via Flickr

I love the country, and can’t wait for moving day.  Yes, I love the rural life and the solitude of green acres, the fresh morning scent, and the scent of fresh dirt that just got digged up … I can go on and on.  There is one WordPress blog that reminds me of that and is candy to my eyes – The Simple Life of a Country Man’s Wife

I have followed this blog and love its candor but also that every day is a little surprise for the reader.  Just as the blogger expresses it “A prairie woman choosing to enjoy each season, in weather and in life.”  This describes the blog well.  Here you will find farm life photos, inspirational scenery, the practical, the adorable, the useful, the real country life challenges in modern times, poetry, and anything that Country Man’s Wife wants to share that day.  You will also meet Country Man and all his country adventures and tasks.  The format is simple and uncomplicated, easy to the eyes and serene.  I will describe this blog as very refreshing.

If you love the country life, thinking about it, or just like a fresh approach to everyday life in the country, head to The Simple Life of a Country Man’s Wife and take a look.  It is certainly worth a visit and a following.

One of the things that excited me most about this exhibit is that it includes  works by Eugene Atget, one of my favorite photographers. Truth be told, the half a dozen Atget prints were not as great as I would have hoped. He has captured some excellent depictions of French life in that era but I found the subject matter on the photos in this show to be just average.

This exhibit runs through to January 29th on the main floor of the AGA and I will definitely be back for a second look and especially to pay more attention to the photo technologies displayed

Also on display and worth a visit, on the main floor until January 29th is the Prairie Life exhibit, a display of two-dimensional works from the AGA’s collection.

I also made a second visit to the UP NORTH exhibit on the 3rd floor. It is interesting but I can’t say the installation pieces (a number of videos and found objects) really appeals to me like the photographs and paintings do. It is however worth a visit if you are at the AGA  before it closes on January 8th 2012.

I get asked all the time …. “Bliss, you beautiful fashionista you, what the heck are those farmers doing?” And I got tired of getting the puppets out so this is for all of you who wanted to know.

In the fall we have the big “combine off” on the farm. If you have never combined …. wow are you missing out. (get out the family diary and write in… head to Canada .. drive a combine .. on your list of things to do before you die …) Every family should have a combine sitting in the driveway … talk about status symbols .. come on people. BUT before you combine you need to understand…

Basically “farm work” is the biggest “safe excuse” in country schools for boys everywhere. If a girl misses school cause she needed to stay home and bake brownies – well let’s expel her sorry ass … but a boy for farmwork… they kiss his tosseled hair and the herald angels sing. But it is not just in fall that boys are excused .. they are excused all year long preparing for the big combine-off.

In the spring, you haul the troops out to pick rocks. This is the prairie equivalent of the beach gathering of shells – only the rocks weigh 5 gabazillion tons, no-one cares if they are “pretty” and no-one lays them on coffee tables and “oohs” and “ahhs” over them. It is the same as gathering acorns and leaves in the forest only no one glue guns those puppies into wreaths or spray paints over them to make stationary. Then someone gets on a tractor and drives around and around the field from the outside in, creating neat little patterns in the dirt and plowing the field so it is ready for planting. They make these neat patterns so that other people can get tourists to pay for a plane ride and they can fly low and the tourists can squeal with delight when he points out “look at the cool patterns – it looks like a quilt down there right?” And the men, members of the agricultural quilting bee, … well their lives are now complete. If they happen to be serving champaigne on these flights … some of the tourists may squeal over the fact they have seen crop circles – because the first thing that goes with champaigne and altitude is your ability to do geometry and all life becomes one big circle. If the guy driving the tractor was drunk however, the geometric patterns can be very intricate because the lower you are to ground when drunk, the smarter you are and hence your ability to perform geometry increases.

The men who plow come in to the house with blackened faces and hands. If they smile a lot then their teeth are also black. When they close their eyes, if they are standing next to the black flock wall paper … they disappear. We lost a lot of hired men that way.

After they plow and seed, the stuff begins to grow. Now usually they have to go out at some point and spray. If you are rich you have airplanes that do this … and the drunken hired hand takes to the skies, maybe slaps a hand written, “tourist tours – the prairie quilt ” on the side of the plane, loads in some tourists, and goes up and sprays horric smelling chemical all over everything so that people everywhere can have chemicals on their food instead of finding a nasty grasshopper amongst their cereal. He just tells people to ignore the green fungus growing on his hands and neck. If you are poor you go out with the tractor and a bandana tied over your mouth, cause that is what the docs use in the hospital right? Also if there are any toursits on the cheaper, driving tour, they will think they saw Jesse James and you can charge them to have their picture taken with you, the tractor, the fungus and the dead grasshoppers. These farm hands often grow third legs and an extra eye which makes them highly dateable in that they are sort of “different.”

Sometimes the tractor breaks down and the hired hand/farmer disappears in a sea of wheat … some have never been heard from again. If you have a big farm the field could be miles away from anything else …. just like the farm is … miles … away … from … everything ……Some of these men are found when Aardvark does his evening “let’s go look at the wheat” drive (see http://wouldntthatriptheforkoutofyournightie.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=356&action=edit) which would make the drive somewhat more interesting.

“Look at that wheat Humpydora….” (you need to make this sucking in sound like your breath has just been taken away from the awe and splendoridness that is … wheat …)

“Oh golly gosh Aardvark…” (clicking of false teeth ensues)

“Oh my … looks like Billy Bobtail broke down out there … I wondered why we hadn’t seen him for the past 3 days. What is he doing out there?? I can just see his head …”(peeing of course … that’s what you do when you are guy on the farm and there is an open field .. mark your territory ….)

“Don’t look Humpydora, children, cover your eyes ….”

“Oh my…..”

Then comes harvesting time … and no .. the farmers don’t run around and create little vignettes of rolled pumpkins, dried corn, and baskets of apples. Neither do they worry about the new fashion lines. Farmers throw on whatever is on the floor or heaped in a corner of their room – as long as it covers the naughty bits … it works. Colours and materials matter not and wrinkled … pffft … ironing is for sissies! In the fall the farmers are swearing and praying … sometimes both .. at the same time …. because machinery breaks down, it is going to be a late harvest, the wheat is not going to provide a good yield, the markets are down, Biff is a retard, the weather will not hold .. .etc.

So someone has to go out and cut the wheat – called swathing (unless you are rich and have a super duper “do everything combine” and can swath and combine at the same time) Now you wear the bandana again because you probably have hay fever and this one is going to kill you. Round and round you drive in the field laying down neat rows for the combine to come and pick up. Many farmers go crazy from doing this … just go visit some you will see what I mean. Once that stuff dries all bunched up on the ground in heaps, then they go in with the combines. In a combine you sit in a nice little box and this machine goes round and round picking up the wheat thrashing it around so the wheat kernels go in the catcher and the stalks get spewed out the back in a neat line so that later the baler can come along and pick it up and make straw … probably for some city folk to buy and sit on so they can pretend they are “at the farm” having a “ho down” … even though I had never seen, nor attended a “ho down” until I left the farm and was living in the city. Once the hopper is full, a truck pulls up – the wheat is loaded there and the truck takes the wheat to the grainery where, using an auger, they put it in for later sale, or for cattle feed, or some of those nifty little wheat pillows you heat in the microwave.

Sometimes a city person offers to help drive the truck, or to take lunch out to the men in the field. When men are in the field they like the world to come to them ….the field is self sustaining… and besides they just marked their territory and they have to be vigilant about interlopers trying to pee willy nilly on their wheat. Sooo… a city person gets in a vehicle and instead of driving in between the swathed lanes – parallel to the wheat – they take the shortest distance and drive across. This is pretty funny ’cause the combiner guy slams on the brakes and almost stands the combine on end, leaps out of the combine and runs towards the oncoming vehicle waving and screaming and swearing. If you are in the tourist plane when this happens the guide can say .. “Hey look, that’s the friendly prairies for you .. see the farmer waving at y’all?” ( we get a lot of American TV and besides the tourists feel safer flying with an American – the BS is alot more believable) But the farmer is actually steaming mad because now the city guy wrecked all the neat rows and the combine will be confused (not to mention the men’s quilting club that spent weeks planning and now has to unpick some of those “stitches”)

After harvest and all the bales have been made … the farmers go out on the tractor to spread manure and to just get away from their wives. They wear lots of clothes and come in coated with snow and ice, icicles dripping from their nose and chin and a band of red frostbite across where their eyes were exposed … like a mask. Whoooeeee don’t they get dates! It is just another excuse that the boys will use for why they can’t be at school again, and why we all have to make “get unfrostbitten soon” cards to send home with his sister. Men are large and in charge out on the farm. There are more pigs out in the country than government agriculture figures show you know …

Oh and later when you go to a city school cause you want to be allowed to miss school once in awhile too – there is a teacher who tells the city kids that country kids are more mature because they have more responsibility and get up earlier and combine and stuff. That’s when the city kids who just got up and stumbled into class and it is afternoon, whines and says … “no way man .. anyone who dresses in coveralls and drives a pick-up truck is not better than me ….” It is fun to agree with the teacher and tell all the city kids they are immature babies and have no idea about the “way of the wheat fields” and what that can teach you …. and sell tickets to the farm. I like to take them in the winter when it is about 40 below and the combine is standing out in a field amongst the snow drifts somewhere. I always encourage those city folks to lick it ….

We had triplets that came to our school for like half a year. On the prairies that is like almost as good as the circus coming to town or one of the farmers having a two headed calf. Any of those above events are reason to have a “social” where you bring food and discuss life … as it relates to these strange phenomenomenonemon …..

I was frankly disappointed because I felt that had the mother concentrated a little more she might have had quads .. and while triplets were ok .. .quads would have been outstanding.

I set up a little lemonade stand at recess and charged people a buck for a cool lemonade and a look. They would pay their money and then I would point them towards the sidewalk where the three girls were skipping. People complained a lot. Things like … “I could have seen them there by myself, why did I have to pay you? I always tried to guess for them, “Not sure .. I guess you are just really stupid?” And then they would go … “this is just water .. it isn’t lemonade …” and I would say … “ya, the prairie does that to you .. sucks the taste buds right outta your mouth .. ” Then they would want their money back and I would quote the SSTT rule of retail. “You Saw, you Swallowed, Tough Titties.”

The triplets moved away after about 6 months. We had weeks of “special classes” on acceptance and how profiteering off others is not kind. They gave us all little handbooks and special buttons to wear that said “Celebrate our Differences.” I learned so much and really felt ashamed at what I had done .. not enough to return the new baseball bat and glove I managed to buy with the earnings, but before every game I looked at them and said a special prayer for the triplets. It taught me a valuable lesson and so at the next two headed calf strawberry social I did a little play on how the mother of the calf feels every time the farmers point at her two headed calf. Cows have feelings too.

They said I ruined the social, was banned from coming to anymore and then they fired up the barbeque. On the prairies … when people are at a loss for words .. they roast weinies.

Writing a review of a memoir is always difficult. If you don’t like a memoir, does that mean you don’t like a person? Of course not, but sometimes it feels like you are reviewing a person’s life rather than an author’s book. I want to make it clear that for the most part, I really enjoyed The Wilder Life and what McClure did with the premise, but the ending felt rushed and some of the connections McClure made to her personal life were tenuous. I wanted more reflection about where her journey had taken her, rather than a tidy wrap-up at the end.

One day, when her father and mother are cleaning out their house, McClure rediscovers her childhood favorites: the Laura Ingalls Wilder books. She rereads them and finds herself obsessed with the books and living “the Wilder life”. She peruses message boards, does research, purchases a butter churn. She wants to find any facet of prairie life that she can in the modern world, so she decides to visit all of the existing Wilder museums and homesteads.

As someone who read the books as a child, but was not obsessed with them, it was fun to read about someone who was. I understood completely this kind of obsession. There’s one moment when McClure says she “felt like a fan girl”. I wanted to sit her down and say “Honey, you are a fan girl. Let that flag fly.” And for the most part, she does. McClure is funny, she is intelligent and she asks all the questions you would want someone analyzing the Little House books in 2011 to ask. For example, she asks if Laura is a feminist. She asks if Laura is racist. She examines the questions of poverty and homesteading and anything you would want to know about prairie life.

Beyond that, she also provides and extensive bibliography. If there is anything you could possibly want to know about Laura Ingalls Wilder, her family or her history, you can be sure that McClure has already read it for you. Anywhere you could possibly want to go to learn about Laura, McClure has been there. And she has talked about it in an entirely honest way. Not all Laura exhibits are created equal and McClure is honest about that.

I really liked living in McClure’s world. She’s a candid narrator and I’d love to meet her one day and talk about what it means to be a fan. I feel like Wendy McClure and Melissa Anelli would really get along. I’m certainly happy to have found McClure and her writing and will be picking up her memoir I’m Not the New Me, so if that’s not a recommendation for The Wilder Life,  I’m not sure what is.

So go read this!:  now| tomorrow | next week | next month | next year | when you’ve exhausted your TBR

Do you have a review of The Wilder Life? Link to it in the comments and I’ll add it here.

what -42 looks like. i kid you not.

ok, i’m not done talking about the weather yet. lame, i know, but it was -42 here yesterday. and it was march 1st. yes, i live in what most of the world would refer to as the canadian arctic. but i really don’t live that far north – i’m within a few hundred miles of the american border like the majority of canucks, so -42 unfuckingreal.

never the less i ventured to the city. it might have been minus a million but the weather was clear and the roads were good and the hubby had the day off, so i was going shopping kidless. we are in desperate need of a new couch, and a few other items of domestic bliss (re: chair, curtain rods, etc). and shopping for things like that suck when you have to drag the boy (almost 5) and the girl (closer to 4 than 3) into sixty different stores over eight hours.

it was eleven hours of driving, shopping, and driving, but i’ll venture to call the day success. i picked out a couch, bought a chair (that was kinda spur of the moment and my husband says it’s the ugliest chair he’s ever seen. but this is a house of hyperboles, and i don’t really care what he thinks about the new chair i bought for my little seating area in our bedroom.)

and i bought some frames for the vintage tourism posters  i ordered. i can’t wait for them to come in the mail. i have a feeling they’re going to be my new favourite art in the house.

ok, tomorrow is march. time for winter to fuck right off already.