Move over, David McCullough. Make room for another Pulitzer Prize winner, Barbara Tuchman, to stand next to you on the pedestal of my high esteem.
Folks, I have found an Important New Author. (“New to me,” she shrugs and grins.) I’ve only read the preface, the introduction and the first paragraph, but I am twitterpated. Tuchman’s success in writing, given in the preface, is “hard work, a good ear, and continued practice.”
…hard work, a good ear and continued practice…
What does that look like, fleshed out? It took Tuchman eight hours (!) to write this opening paragraph, all five sentences, of The Guns of August.
So gorgeous was the spectacle on the May morning of 1910 when nine kings rode in the funeral of Edward VII of England that the crowd, waiting in hushed and black-clad awe, could not keep back gasps of adminration. In scarlet and blue and green and purple, three by three the sovereigns rode through the palace gates, with plumed helmets, gold braid, crimson sashes, and jeweled orders flashing in the sun. After them came five heirs apparent, forty more imperial or royal highnesses, seven queens–four dowager and three regnant–and a scattering of special ambassadors from uncrowned countries. Together they represented seventy nations in the greatest assemblage of royalty and rank ever gathered in one place and, of its kind, the last. The muffled tongue of Big Ben tolled nine by the clock as the cortege left the palace, but on history’s clock it was sunset, and the sun of the old world was setting in a dying blaze of splendor never to be seen again.
The Shield Ring is a story of the Vikings and the Normans in the Lake District of England in the eleventh century. The reader is rooting for the Vikings (for a change!) who keep a secret stronghold from whence they repel the Norman northern onslaught. Sutcliff weaves the elements–a boy with a harp, an orphan Saxon girl, a sword called the Fire-drake, the Road to Nowhere, intrigue and espionage–into a vivid and vibrant story.
Sutcliff is the master of historical fiction. Her prose lifts you from your modern surroundings like a hot air balloon. You land in a place and time and culture that is very Other but also faintly familiar. Sutcliff does not explain every cultural reference; she lets the reader to work it out. However, when I read Sutcliff, it is always her prose which delights me: her bright shining, shimmering prose.
There has been a revival of interest in G. A. Henty’s books; I have a bookcase full, myself. But if I had a choice between a Henty and a Sutcliff, I would take Sutcliff every time.
It was a curlew that they were watching now, a curlew at his mating flight, weaving, it seemed to Frytha, a kind of garland of flight round the place where his chosen mate must be, among the heather. He skimmed low over the ground, then suddenly swerved upward, up and up, hung a moment poised on quivering wings, and then came planing down, his wings arched back to show the white beneath, skimmed low again, and again leapt skyward. And all the while he was calling, calling; a lovely spiral of sound bubbling and rippling with delight. But his whole dance, undulating, floating, swerving, with always that flash of underwing silver on the downward swoop, was a dance of sheer delight. p.16
Today is the birthday of the Spanish painter, Diego Velázquez (1599). I love pictures of ordinary people fixing food. What astounds me is that he painted this when he was 19!
Notice the self-portrait on the left, the blurred image of the king and queen reflected in the mirror. The Infanta Margarita became the empress of Austria at 15, but died at 22.
The day we arrived home from our trip to Scotland and England we got a phone call. Carson and Taryn are expecting their first baby!
The next day, before we sat down to eat dinner with Chris and Jessie, they told us that they were expecting another child. Big brother Gavin, my favorite three year old, is overjoyed.
Two new hearts are beating! One is due December 25th and one is due December 26th!
Blessings are abounding. Prayers are being answered. Really answered. In real time.
This great news energizes me to continue praying, to keep asking. You know who you are…I’m praying for you, too!
In the sweetness of life, there is still a yearning…
a longing…
I’m a poor wayfaring stranger
While traveling thru this world of woe
Yet there’s no sickness, toil, or danger
In that bright world to which I go
I’m going there to see my Father
I’m going there no more to roam
I’m only going over Jordan
I’m only going over home
Kiyo Sato tells her family’s remarkable story of endurance and perseverance in Dandelion Through the Crack. Sato’s father and mother emigrated from Japan to the Sacramento area, grew strawberries on a twenty acre farm, and raised nine children. Ordered to evacuate, in May, 1942 the family, carrying what they could, were sent to the Poston internment camp.
Kiyo was allowed to leave internment in the fall to go to Hillsdale College. Every free space in her schedule is filled with a job to help pay her tuition. After the war is over, the family returns to their farm, beginning the arduous process of rebuilding and replanting.
It’s been a while since I’ve stayed up into the single digit hours reading a book I Could Not Put Down. The writing is good, but not cracking good. The graphics and layout of the book have a feel of self-publishing. The cover doesn’t call out, “Read me. Read me. Read me.” But the story carries all the baggage and propels you through the pages.
Sato family
I can’t help but love Tochan (Japanese for father) and Mama, the strong, hard-working, long-suffering parents whose daily graces and passions infuse their family with love and devotion. Tochan loved books, plants, music (he began violin lessons while he was interned), his children. Mama loved cleanliness, working, making food for her family, nurturing her children. Kiyo, a youthful 85 year old, writes with the fidelity and love of a very thankful daughter. Her words remind me of George Dawson in Life is So Good who remarked that if he could give anyone in the world this gift, he would give him the experience of having his (George’s) father as his own.
If you want more first-hand accounts of the Japanese internment, you can find them here. You can also watch fourteen short video clips of Kiyo Sato talking about her experiences.
I find homesteading stories fascinating. The challenge of housing, feeding and clothing a family, working the land, tending animals, and nurturing souls continually captures my imagination. There is grace in the stories of daily life. The first book I ever owned was Little House in the Big Woods. Each birthday and Christmas my parents gave me the next book in the series until I had my first collection of books. I thrilled in the details: a pig’s bladder for a balloon, homemade bullets, Pa’s fiddle, trips to town, maple syrup. When I read the stories to my sons, I was shocked to realize that Laura’s family subsisted an entire year (!) on the fish from the creek. Looking at the stories through adult eyes gave me a clear-eyed view of the hardships. It is, however, the simple joys of life which linger in your thoughts after reading these.
When my boys and I started reading Ralph Moody’s Little Britches series, my first thought was, “Why, these are the Little House books from a boy’s point of view.” Set in a Colorado town, the Moody family eked out a living however they could. They heated their house from coal picked up by three miles of railroad tracks, sold chicken droppings to the neighbors for their gardens, grew and canned vegetables, delivered their mother’s home-baked goods to folks around town. Life was a series of problems to be solved. Everyone worked hard, doing what they could to contribute to the family.
While this book is primarily about the internment of Japanese in relocation camps, the first third of the book recounts the Sato family’s life building a berry farm near Sacramento. They would harvest wild spinach leaves, cut shoe bottoms from old tires, buy two thousand pounds of rice (stored in 100 pound sacks) after the check from the strawberry growers arrived. The mother kept the clothes mended; the father kept the tools repaired and engineered ingenious solutions from the raw materials in the barn.
When I read that Susanna Moodie’s 1852 book, Roughing It in the Bush, was as well known to Canadian children as the Little House books are to American children, I put this on my stack of “must read”s. Where it still resides, unread.
From the back cover: This frank and fascinating chronicle details her harsh –and humorous– experiences in homesteading with her family in the woods of Upper Canada. Part documentary, part psychological parable, Roughing It in the Bush is, above all, an honest account of how one woman coped not only in a new world, but, more importantly, with herself.
Now I want to cancel my plans for today and read this book. [This title is a work in progress at Librivox..yay!]
Story-telling is a strong motif in each of these books. The father or mother picked up some hand work in the evening and told stories, quoted poems, and read books aloud. I think these authors write so well because they grew up in an atmosphere saturated with the spoken word. The Bible, Shakespeare, Longfellow were companions during the dark nights. The authors marinated in turns of phrase, rotating them over the fire of their imaginations, eating them bit by bit.
I am always inspired by the hard work. I can work hard in a spurt of energy (then collapse the next day), but these people worked with daily diligence over the long haul. When the children rose, their parents were at work, and when they went to bed their parents were working. Reading these stories revs up my engines, makes me long for the ache of sore muscles after a good day’s work.
What books or movies about homesteading do you recommend? Have you read any books above?
[The learning life is a happy life: After I wrote about homesteading, I found this video of urban homesteaders.]
A Living Pencil 