Putting Down Roots -- Adventures in Genealogy and other Storytelling Endeavors

This is supposed to be a writing blog, and as I look back at the last few posts, many of them don’t have a thing to do with writing. To be perfectly honest, there hasn’t been a lot of writing going on at my computer in the last few months. My time is being spent in a lot of other places, and while I may not have been writing, I am finding out a lot of different ways to tell stories.

Since graduation, I’ve started volunteering (and then working) at two different historic houses. One of them was built and inhabited by famous rich people and the other, built at about the same time about ten miles down the road, was built by non-famous, nonrich people. The purpose of both museums is to tell a story – for the famous house, it is a very specific story of a very specific person, while at the other, the story is supposed to be more general, a picture of what life would have been like for hundreds of families working on farms in Northern Illinois in the 1890s. 

But in both houses, the object of giving a tour is to tell a story – using objects in the home and facts about daily life. The tours I give for both houses are vastly different, but I believe one of my strengths as a tour guide comes from my knowledge of story-telling – having the ability to draw people in with objects or events that are of interest to them, and bringing to their attention parts of the houses’ story that they can connect with. At the big house, I had to give a tour yesterday to a group of fifth grade boys. I skipped talking about the influential women in the house’s history (and they were all characters, let me tell you!) and focused instead on the military service of the man who left us the house.

The other project I’ve been working on a lot in the past several weeks is my family genealogy. Unfortunately for me, my family (both sides) does not seem to be one who believed in saving photographs or death records or anything material that would help me learn about the kind of people my great grandcesters were. All I’ve been looking at are digitized census records, but, when read in chronological order, they form their own little black and white narrative, playing out like the best reel-to-reel melodrama. Every ten years, there is an update to their lives. What children have moved out of the house? Have they finally paid their mortgage? Has someone’s job situation changed? 

As strange as it sounds, I feel like I know these people now. I mourned for the women who listed '3 children birthed, 1 surviving' on the 1910 census return. I practically stood up in the library and cheered when I found naturalization records for my great-great grandfather and his two brothers. After twenty years of living in the United States, they were finally citizens. They owned their houses. Their children were thriving. Three young men who came from Bremen, Germany, to the port of Baltimore in 1886 and 1889 with nothing more than a piece of luggage each were making their way in the world.

In many of the stories I write, as well as the stories I read, a great deal of emphasis is placed on family trees – on where people have come from, what their parentage and connection is. I don’t have anyone famous or well-connected in my family tree – my grandcesters were carpenters and masons, seamstresses and cooks, farmers and textile mill workers, mothers and fathers. But the fact that the story is there – and that I can find it, and read it, and share it with my family – is comforting. I’m proud of my great-great grandfather the carpenter and his wife with no occupation except raising her 12 children. To me, they are famous – I want to tell everyone all about them! I come from the library and tell my parents all about these relations of ours like I just sat down for coffee and got an update from them on how the family’s doing.

Another one of my projects in the coming days is to make a new skirt and shirtwaist for my costume for the non-famous house museum. As I’m making it, I’ll be thinking a lot about the stories I’ll tell while wearing it, but I’ll also be thinking a lot about the women in my family who would have dressed similarly while going to their own jobs. And in a small way, even though they lived hundreds of miles and a hundred years away, I’ll be telling their story, too.

Hello, 1920! Surviving after the Downton Abbey Season Finale.

By 9 PM Central Standard time tonight, my family and myself will be in a state of heavy sadness. Why? Because Downton Abbey is done for the season. No longer will we be able to sit around the TV and watch the Crawley family be brilliantly troubled, or shout at the TV when our favorite characters do something we dislike, or discuss over breakfast just why O'Brien is so evil or why Mary is still insisting she marry Carlisle even though we all agree he's a total creep and Matthew is so much better for her.

My mother, in particular, is practically up at arms that she has to wait for season three, and has even proposed a trip to England so we can watch it before everyone else. No joke. So, to make sure she and I do not go stir crazy during our Downton Abbey-less downtime, I've come up with a list of things that we (and you guys reading at home!) can do to tide yourselves over until season three.

1. Read a good book.
If you're me, you've been doing this all season long, but since most people don't voraciously research their costume dramas, our hiatus between seasons is a perfect time to catch up on the historical nuances that inform this show. You could read more about the Buccaneers, the generation of young american women who went over to England, like Cora, to marry the English for their titles, by picking up Edith Wharton's book of the same name, or by checking out Marion Fowler's In A Gilded Cage: From Heiress to Duchess, which details the lives of 5 American women who married dukes. (It comes highly recommended by me!)

If you're interested in learning a little bit more about the real life events inspiring the shenanigans of the Crawley Sisters and women like them, try reading Fruits of Victory: The Women's Land Army of America in the Great War (for Edith fans especially) American Women in World War One (Which I am in the middle of reading for the second time right now, it is so good) or a more general book like Juliet Nicolson's The Great Silence: Britain from the Shadow of the First World War to the Dawn of the Jazz Age.

I'm really excited about the next season because we're heading into the 20s! Yes, the Decade that Roared will be coming full force to Downton, and it should be fantastic. You could read about the new direction of high society by delving into Bright Young People, a biography of the jazz babies and flappers that really  made the older generation role their eyes in the late twenties. (I really liked Bright Young People, and I recommend it highly.) If you're not one for nonfiction, try Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies, the novel that inspired Stephen Fry's 2004 movie about the Bright Young Things. I myself will be reading Anything Goes: A Biography of the Roaring Twenties in the next couple of days, which looks like it will be a real treat.





2. Make something.

Do Mrs. Patmore proud and try your hand at baking a period recipe or hosting a teaparty for all your nearest and dearest fellow Downton fans. There are a number of articles (like this one from the Huffington Post) and blogs like Downton Cooks which would help a fan find a recipe or menu to serve.

I myself will be spending time making a teacake stand for my viewing parties next season.  What's a teacake stand, you ask? Well, here's Molesley holding a very sculptural example in season one --

Mine will not look nearly as nice (I'm taking the DIY approach suggested in this tutorial and using sherry glasses and plates from Goodwill) but it will be a conversation piece, I hope.

3. Revamp your closet.

You know your  favorite TV show is a big deal when Ralph Lauren rolls out a collection inspired by it at New York  Fashion Week.

Maybe we all don't have an RL compatible budget, but we can certainly take some design elements out of the DA book as easily as Mr. Lauren does. Cloche hats, wide legged pants, oxford shoes or french/spool heels, opera length gloves and long necklaces are all fairly easy to find in stores today. Indulge your inner Sybil and go find a frock that flatters and makes a bold statement. Polyvore is great for seeing what others have in mind when they think of Downton. There's a great tumblr out there, too -- Downton Abbey Fashion.

Oh, and if you're feeling really ambitions, the folks over at Reconstructing History have a number of patterns for you.

4. Watch another show in the meantime.

Sacrilege, some of you cry! Don't worry, it's just until next season.

The House of Eliott -- two sisters whose father has just died become couturiers and deal with the crazy world of fashion design in the twenties. Lots of beautiful dresses.

The Grand -- follows the life of the rich and famous living at a hotel in Manchester. Contains more drama than a busload of high school girls, but interesting to watch.

Birdsong -- Based on a novel by Sebastian Faulks, is going to be on Masterpiece Contemporary in the near future.

Titanic -- It's the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic in April. Where will you be? (I'd hate to be trying to fill a cruiseship in April of this year. Such bad press, that is.)


Casulty 1900 -- It's like Gray's Anatomy without the comforting idea that science will prevail by the end of the episode. I wasn't able to watch this show on account of period medicine being beyond my comfort zone, but I hear good things about it.

The Forsyte Saga -- I reread the book recently, but Soames isn't quite the same as when Damien Lewis is brooding over Irene's departure on my television screen.

Iron-Jawed Angels -- Go make Sybil proud and learn about Alice Paul and the women's movement.

5. Go read some fanfic. 

There's some really great pieces of fic out there on the internets, and fanfiction.net is as good a place to start as any. If you are thinking there are plot points you would like to tie up, if you think all of Thomas' problems will be solved if he meets a nice boy, if you think you'd just like to read a little fluffy story where Robert and Cora muse some more about their children, or grandchildren, go make some fanfiction writer happy and read (and review!) their story. If my mother were a writer, this is totally where she would be.



Well, Downton Fans, there are your marching orders. Scamper off and invade tumblr.  Lend out your DVDs to your coworkers. Make #downtonabbey and #downtonPBS the trending hashtags on Twitter. Go be the crazy, outrageous people we know you are. And have fun with it! See you for Season Three!

You Can't Put Nothing Past William Howard Taft: A Review of Jason Heller's "Taft 2012"

Those of you that know me could tell a lot of anecdotes relating to how much I like free stuff. It’s a bit of an obsession, really. But better than your everyday tradeshow swag (Stuff We All Get) is the free stuff I have to work a little for – answering a trivia question, or giving my opinion, or playing a game of bingo. One of my new favorite free things is the books I receive from Quirk Books when they nicely ask for internet denizens to review them. Two things occur when I get those emails – one, I get to help the enterprising and creative people at Quirk sell more product, and two, free book!

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not as in-tune with the political process as I should be. As a self-identified Democrat living with a very conservative Republican father, it’s probably safer for me this way. That said, I was a little leery of any book identifying itself as a satire of the political process. However, I figured that any book about the guy who inspired this song was worth looking into:

Yup. The Two Man Gentleman Band got me to read “Taft 2012” and strongly encourage friends, family, and co-workers to DRAFT TAFT. In my defense, I’ve read more serious books for sillier reasons, but in the long run, I’m glad I read this quirky and surprisingly insightful look at the American political process and the absolute circus it inspires every four years.

The premise of Jason Heller’s novel is fairly simple – William Howard Taft disappears from the past without any reason whatever and re-appears in the future – our future – just as election season is beginning. After reacquainting himself with the world, getting in touch with his great-granddaughter and her family, and doing a few rounds of the talk show circuit, Taft finds himself in the middle of a grassroots movement focused on getting him re-elected as president, a movement that forces him (and the reader) to examine what the American political process has become.

At a volunteer dinner several weeks ago,  one of my dining companions turned to me and said, “Now, I know we’re not supposed to talk about politics at dinner, but who are you thinking of voting for in the next election?” This was a hard question for me to answer, since the place where I am volunteering was founded by a very staunch Republican and I am, as mentioned above, of the Democratic persuasion. I told her the honest truth – “Well, I voted Democrat in the last election, but I really don’t know. It seems to me that politicians promise a lot of things during campaign season and never follow up on them, so is it fair to say, ‘He promised this and didn’t deliver’ when we know that always happens?”

My dining companion seemed to view this as an acceptable answer, and the matter was dropped, but the same situation came up in “Taft 2012.” Throughout the book, Heller uses a mixed media format, drawing in poll numbers, twitter conversations, and plain old prose to tell his story, and one of those ‘mixed media’ pieces is a transcript of a political analyst’s TV coverage of Taft. The  excerpt explains that the groundswell of Taft support is because he’s an ideal candidate who will bring us back to the good old days of yore, as this campaign advertisement will attest.

Taft is billed, in the beginning of the book and the marketing campaign for the candidate/book, as the candidate who always delivered on his promises and stuck to his morals, two things modern political candidates seem to lack.  Yet as the story progresses, he finds himself being sucked into the circus just like the rest of us, giving up on things he values to help his cause.

John Cass, an op-ed writer for the Chicago Tribune (a strongly Republican leaning newspaper, interestingly enough, run  way back when by the same man whose house I was volunteering at for that volunteer dinner) wrote a piece about a week ago about why he thinks Obama will win the election. Simply put, Cass says that Obama knows who he is and what he stands for, and the Republican candidates running against him are so busy infighting amongst themselves that they’ve forgotten to show the American public who  they are and what they’re about. Heller suggests at the end of his book that this is the only way candidates can win in politics – when Taft realizes that he’s forgotten who he was, he begins to work as a force for real change in society.

If you, like I do, come from a family of mixed political views, I think that “Taft 2012” is a great piece of writing to share with your family. It provides a (somewhat surreal) way to talk about how crazy the political process is, and it’s pretty amusing to boot. And even if you don’t, Taft 2012 is still an amazing piece of literature, and one I’m grateful to have read.

So, gentle citizens, get out and vote this November – and remember, DRAFT TAFT.

You can buy Taft 2012 directly from Quirk Books, from your local independent bookstore, or  from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or, if you’re lucky, you can try getting a copy from a site like PaperbackSwap.

Downton Recommends: An Edwardian Trip back in Time

This will probably be very obvious to anyone who knows me, but it bears putting down on paper: I am a very plugged in person. I read a lot of books, I follow a lot of blogs, I keep up with a number of news outlets, and I watch a lot – A LOT – of television and movies. I do this because I think it makes me a more interesting person, and also because I love having things to recommend to other people. Lately at my house the focus has been on – what else? – Downton Abbey.

 I love PBS and the work they put on TV, because it is usually fun to watch and also because, unlike much of mainstream television, their shows can usually be counted on to be something I can watch with my parents. (A lessening commodity, let me assure you.) My parents – my mother in particular – are very selective about what they will and won’t watch, and in an era where swearing and sex are becoming more commonplace on broadcast television, PBS usually pulls through for me with something that has no swearing, no sex, and no dubious scenes in dubious places like dark allies, strip clubs or seedy bars. It helps that my mom likes period dramas, too. So, after I dragged my sister through the first season of Downton Abbey (which I think she likes – she could just be putting up with me) and declared that I would have the TV Sunday night to watch the second season or perish without, my mom came down and watched the season opener with us. And, in a fashion true to my mother, when the whole thing was over, she asked, “So, when’s the next one?”

 Picture me at this point beaming in joy.

Of course, when the second season is over and we have to go back to our lives without the shenanigans of Matthew, Mary, and the rest of the Crawleys, I will have to find something else for my mother to watch. (She and my father complained at the end of the first season of Cranford, and the second season couldn’t come fast enough for them.) And being the plugged-in person I am, I’m compiling a list of (PBS approved) shows that I’ve watched in the past and wouldn’t mind watching again. So, without further ado, the list!

1. (The Original) Upstairs Downstairs (ITV/PBS, 1971-1975)

There has been much dirt thrown between the Upstairs Downstairs reboot people and the Downton Abbey folks, but it does bear saying that Downton Abbey is cast from the same clay as the 1970s PBS series. That fact cannot be denied. I still maintain that Downton is much more interesting that the recent remake of this beloved show, but the original is definitely worth watching at least once, if not two or three times. Upstairs Downstairs follows the adventures of the Bellamy family upstairs at 165 Eaton Place, London, and the lives of their servants downstairs as they deal with the turn of the century, the end of Victorian England and the beginning of the Edwardian age. (Interestingly enough, the Earl of Grantham’s sister Lady Rosamund Painswick is said to have a house in Eaton Square. I smell an imminent crossover fanfic.)

My mother claims that when this show was first on in the 70s her mother refused to let her watch it on the grounds that it held some scenes of a dubious nature. I watched it all several summers ago and was not at all fazed by the plot, but I am not my grandmother, and a servant getting with child out of wedlock, broken engagements, the first World War, and shell shock do not shake me. The cast was wonderful, the stories were alive and engaging, and there were some really first rate performances throughoutthe show’s run. I shall forever love David Langton’s Richard Bellamy, who gave a new meaning to the idea of the silver fox and who deserves a lot of really ravishing fanfiction, and Gordon Jackson’s Mr. Hudson, the loveable and peppery butler, was the type of character I should have loved to have spent time under as a housemaid, a demanding taskmaster but truly compassionate besides.

 2. The Duchess of Duke Street (BBC/PBS, 1976-77)

When it first came out, this series was accused of trying to ride on the success of Upstairs Downstairs, and to be sure, both shows feature a similar format – a house with servants below and a family of sorts upstairs, trying to deal with life in the Edwardian period. The title character, Louisa Leyton, enters the series as a lowly assistant cook with high ambitions – to become the best chef in London. A big goal in an era when it is universally acknowledged that while women can be cooks, only men have the artistic flair and panache required to be chefs. Through a series of complicated events, she becomes the proprietor of a hotel with its own ménage of interesting guests, servants, and family. The series was based on the life of Rosa Lewis, the proprietor of the famous Cavendish Hotel, a woman who was sometimes titled ‘the Duchess of Jermyn Street’ for the way she held court over the men who came to admire her cooking (and her good looks). I watched this before seeing Upstairs Downstairs, and the memories of it are a bit hazy, but I do remember liking the passionate and spunky performance put in by Gemma Jones as Louisa.

 3. To Serve Them All My Days (BBC/PBS, 1980)

If the end of World War One does for Matthew Crawley what it does for David Powlett-Jones, the protagonist of To Serve Them All My Days, I will be a happy fangirl indeed. I watched this miniseries several years ago and loved it so much I went and found the book by R.L. Delderfield upon which it was based. My copy, interestingly enough, is the tie-in version published for the series on “Mobil Masterpiece” as it was then called. (My, how times have changed.) TSTAMD follows the life of young Mr. Powlett-Jones as he returns from World War One a shell-shocked wreck of a twenty-two year old whose doctor has recommended fresh air and an enclosed community as the best hope for recovery. He begins teaching at a public school in Devon called Bamfylde under the auspices of a wonderfully jolly headmaster, Herries, and shepherds several generations of troublemakers and brownnosers alike through the joys of studying and examining history.

Delderfield was criticized for his flat characterizations in the novel, but I’ve never found any of his cast wanting in any respect of character. The miniseries was excellent, with top-notch performances by Alan MacNaughton as Mr. Howarth, the crusty and proud English professor and Frank Middlemass as Mr. Herries, as well as a particularly good bit of casting for the parts of several of the students who make up PJ’s cadre at school. (My favorite is always Boyer, a scoundrel with a good deal of charm who, just missing the action of World War One at the beginning of the series as a troublemaker in the 4th form, ends up enlisting at the end of the series in World War Two as a well-rounded young man of nearly 30.) This show also introduced me to the sound of spoken Welsh. Watch it for nothing else than that, if you must. John Duttine’s simple, scared young PJ is absolutely adorable rambling on in Welsh cadence. As is the terribly British and schoolmastery Carter, played by Neil Stacy.

Many of these shows are Edwardian in word and deed, but PBS has a treasure trove more set in the 1920s that I intend to preview for you! Any suggestions from the peanut gallery would be appreciated as well!

Resolved -- Excelsior!

Excelsior -- From Latin excelsior, comparative of excelsus (“high”) (archaic) (1) Loftier, yet higher; ever upward.  (2) title of poem by H.W. Longfellow, which reads 

The shades of night were falling fast,

As through an Alpine village passed
A youth, who bore, 'mid snow and ice,
A banner with the strange device,
"Excelsior!"

Today we are eleven days into the new year. Eleven days. Today I had a job interview, and in order to prepare for that interview, I cleaned out my portfolio. I printed out a new copy of my resume, and threw out the ten copies that were still in my portfolio from the Education Job fair I attended in Minneapolis last April. And my, what a lot has changed since then! My old resumes bear witness to a distinct shift in goals – the objective on the old ones reads “To obtain a position as a mid-level language arts teacher.” The new one no longer has an objective on it, because I needed space to list my many myriad qualifications for being a museum tour guide.

It turns out I didn’t need the resume – the job I was interviewing for is at a museum where I’ve been training as a volunteer since August, so my meeting today was less of an interview and more of a pre-hire meeting where they offer you the job and you fill out paperwork. I just need to get clearance and name badges and a drug test done, and I will officially have a second job, for which I am very grateful.

If you had told me at this time last year that in twelve months I’d have two jobs, I probably would have kicked you. But a lot changes in twelve months. In the last year, I’ve taught five classes of middle school students, four classes of high school students, and written I don’t even want to remember how many lesson plans. I dealt with workplace bullying drama and the sudden death of a mentor. I graduated from college with honors. I moved home and read a lot of articles about how this seems to be the new normal of my generation. I taught camp for the second summer and learned I’m much better at dealing with crisis and crying children than I ever gave myself credit for before.

 I decided (probably before the screaming children) that I wasn’t going to become a teacher. I interviewed at a number of different places, and found out I was not unemployable. I received my first real job offer, and gave my first job refusal. I entered the work force. I began volunteering at two different museums and learned a great deal about the nature of the museum visitor and the direction of museums in general. I tried to handle all three of my living grandparents having serious health problems throughout the year. I celebrated the birth of two new cousins (once removed.)

I look at that list, and I can’t believe that all those things happened in twelve short months. I managed to pack, intentionally or unintentionally, a lot of meaningful, life-changing experiences into twelve months, and I’m not sure that another year of my life will ever be so filled again. Some of them were wonderful experiences, and some of them were very far from wonderful, but all of them, I hope, have made me a better, brighter, stronger person.

In the last four years, I’ve seen the amount of writing I do for this blog slowly taper off, and for all that I know not too many people are reading this, that dwindling number still saddens me. At the beginning of a new year, it is customary to make a resolution regarding these sorts of things, but try as I might, I can’t bring myself to promise that I’ll write on this blog more. My resolutions are different – broader, in some ways. I resolve to make better use of my time. I resolve to be kinder and more welcoming with everyone. I resolve to care for my body more. I resolve to be a good steward of my money. I resolve to move myself higher as a human being. 

Perhaps a better resolution than ‘write more’ would be ‘be a better steward of my talents.’ In addition to invoking the Roman meaning of talent as a unit of money, this phrase brings together everything I want to strive for in the coming year. Use my time better by finding causes, places and people that need my help or my skills as a teacher, as a speaker, as a mover of boxes or a purveyor of useless facts. Become healthier, happier and more content with my life and my place in the world by helping others and enjoying the natural world around me.

It’s a lofty list of goals, to be sure, but I think that I can do it. After all, I’m writing another blog post, aren’t I?

Two Roads and Dark Woods -- or, When Fandoms Collide

Random things that make me happy:

1. The Hobbit trailer came out yesterday. I watched it six times and shared it on facebook and squee'd with all my freinds.

2. I found out one of my former roommates is now into Downton Abbey. Now I have someone else to squee with.

3. I got Christmas letters and Christmas packages from friends far and near, including one from a lady I work with that I wasn't expecting at all.

4. A freind from high school randomly called to go see a movie.

5. I found tea that says "Keep Calm and Have a Cup of Tea" at the store. I proceeded to buy said tea so I can keep the box.

6. I have two books to review for Quirk, and both of them look amazing.

7. I've read so much good fanfic in the last week my head might explode.

8. I just finished reading John Keegan's The First World War, which was excellent, and am now working my way through Bright Young People, which is so far also excellent.

8. The cute intern at work asked if I was going to be in on Thursday. I am. I'm trying not to read too much into it.

9. And oh, by the way, it's Christmas next sunday.


There's been such a lot of stuff happening in my life lately that I haven't really been giving any time to blogging. Heck, I haven't even given a lot of thought to the fact that Christmas is next week, but that could be because we don't have any decorations up at my house. I've been thinking about writing blogs a lot, but never actually writing anything. Probably becuase no one was reading for a while. But enough fannish stuff has happened in the last week that not to blog about it would seem a little funny.

For starters, that Hobbit trailer! Could it have BEEN any more perfect?  Let's watch it again, shall we?

I love everything about this trailer. I love the slightly Arthur Dentish moment Bilbo has in the trailer when they tell him they're recruiting for an adventure and he says "I am a Baggins of Bag End"  as if trying to reassure himself that Ford has NOT just said the world will end in eleven minutes. (Yeah, like this.) I love Richard Armitage's smoldering Thorin (this movie is going to make dwarf-centric fanfic explode, let me tell you) and the odd and kind of endearing Gandalf/Galadriel moment. I also really love all the dwarves, all thirteen of them with their rhyming names and their hoods and their plate-rolling antics.

But the thing I like best and most of all the lyric quality they gave the "Over the  Misty Mountains Old" song that the dwarves sing in Bag End to explain to Bilbo why it is they have to go to the Lonely Mountain. It's one of my favorite poems in the books (and one of the only ones I always read, which you can do here) and I never heard it in my head like it's sung here. But in the book, Tolkien says "And suddenly, first one and then another began to sing as they played, deep-throated singing of the dwarves in the deep places of thier ancient homes; an this is like a fragment of thier song, if it can be their song without their music." (Hobbit, p. 26) And that's what it is, plain and simple. You could have lifted it right off the page.

As I was going around like a madwoman last night listening to the trailer, I went to go check my Google reader and find a  load of Downton Abbey pictures from this awesome Tumblr I started following -- fuckyesdowntonabbey -- and suddenly my Hobbit trailer euphoria pulled up short. It was an odd moment -- suddenly my two fandoms seemed totally incompatible.

I've figured that for a while now -- I've shelved further work on A Rose Among the Briars to work on a Downton Abbey christmas fic for a freind because I just couldn't keep my mind in two places. But the more I thought about it, the more these two fandoms have a lot in common, working through the person of JRR Tolkien.

Like several of the characters at Downton, JRRT served in World War one with the Lancashire Fusiliers. It was a harrowing expericne for him, (I read somewhere that he was in one of the 'pals' regiments and of the six freinds that he went out with, only one -- him -- came back) and one that would impact him for the rest of his life. I like to think that it's his experience with the merciless way of war on the Western Front that drove him deeper into his studies and appreciation for epic literature, the kind of literature that couldn't (and wouldn't) be written about his own conflict except by jingoists and propaganists.


If any question why we died
Tell them, because our fathers lied.


That's Rudyard Kipling right there, one of the more nationalist poets at the end of the war after his own son had died in the fighting, and let's face it -- epic and honorable and rosy it isn't.


 And even though he didn't want parallels to be drawn that way, it's not hard to find a sort of crossing-over between the expereince Frodo -- and Bilbo, really -- and Tolkien, and millions of other young men, have when they return from thier adventures. The tired soldier comes home from war expecting to find his home as he left it, and finds instead that home has irrepairably changed, and, perhaps more sadly, so has he. For Frodo, it's coming home and finding an industrialized menace in his hometown, just as JRRT found in Oxford. For Bilbo, the changes have more to do with him personally-- he's no longer content with life in his cozy hobbit hole, and spends the rest of his life longing for the adventures of his youth, all the while holding on to a very small ring that is almost like shell-shock; it changes his disposition, changes his values, and at the end, makes him push away some of the people he loves the most, like Gandalf.

So JRRT comes back, forever changed, and instead of writing poetry about the war the way the rest of his generation seem to have done, he writes a piece of epic fantasy (with lots of really great poetry in) that harkens back to the fairy stories of our childhoods and the epic poetry of another time, a place where wars still have meaning, enemies don't have to have human faces, and death in battle is honorable and valuable to the cause and valued by all.

Since I've already watched season two of Downton (Thank you, internet denizens of YouTube) I won't give away the ending for the characters there in the War to End All Wars. But it will be interesting to watch those that are left deal with the scars the war has dealt them. For Bilbo and Frodo, the real closure on the War of the Ring (and the Ring inself) comes when they go into the West. Somehow, I don't think the same will be true for the Crawley Family -- a trip to America just doesn't have the same allure.

But hey, one of them could always write a novel.

Cinematic Sunday AND Musical Monday -- Oh, What a Lovely War!

Mercury apologizes for a lack of posts last week. Her internet connection wasn't working, and she didn't feel these blog posts were quite important enough to merit a trip to a library for public acces internet.

Today's offering functions as both a Cinematic Sunday and a Musical Monday because it is a film filled with music!

Oh, What a Lovely War (1969)

Based on a stage musical of the same name created in 1963,

Richard Attenborough's 1969 movie provides a semi-allegorical journey through the life of a soldier in World War One, beginning

with a trip to Kitchener, French and Haig's seaside pier, (named for three of the major players in the British high command) the jumping off point for their exciting foray into soldiering. What was supposed to be as easy as a day at the seashore, however, turns into something much, much worse, and the songs used in the musical reflect that.

I haven't gotten a chance to see the whole film yet, but the bits I have seen make me extremely excited about the prospect. I like the idea of using 'musical artifact' songs for a production

instead of making up new ones, and I also like that the songs used in this production are a mix of both popular published music and the unofficial, unpublished 'barracks room ballads' that the soldiers made up themselves. Both types of music can inform us about sentiment during the conflict, and how the two types of music play off of each other can also help us understand the views of the people consuming this music. Setting music to an already well known tune helps people learn new lyrics (church hymns are great for this) but also pokes fun at the original lyrics at the same time.

I also include this film because it features a dazzling array of Hollywood's finest on its cast list --Ian Holm, John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier, Michael and Vanessa Redgrave, and, best of all, one very foxy looking Maggie Smith.

Yup, that's right -- in her youth, Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham, was a music hall star. It is so excellent I do not have words.

I've made a playlist of all the songs I could find on YouTube in the order they appear in the film. My personal favorites are 'Gassed Last Night' and 'The Bells of Hell Go Ting-A-Ling-A-Ling'. Call me macabre.

Musical Monday -- Pack All Your Troubles (In Your Old Kit Bag)

Pack All Your Troubles (In Your Old Kit Bag), written 1915 by George Powell and Felix Powell. Published by Chappell and Company, 1915, recorded by Murray Johnson, 1916, Reinald Werrenrath, 1917.

Pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag,
And smile, smile, smile,
While you've a lucifer to light your fag,
Smile, boys, that's the style.
What's the use of worrying?
It never was worth while, so
Pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag,
And smile, smile, smile.

This is one of the songs that will define World War One for generations to come. Just like "Keep the Home Fires Burning" it comes from the beginning of the war, and one can see the pop culture aversion to talking about the real problems of war in every note. the song is itself a small narrative poem, following the hijinks of Private Perks, who was " a funny little codger
With a smile a funny smile. Five feet none, he's and artful little dodger, with a smile, a funny smile" who keeps telling the other men in his unit to simply pack up their troubles and smile.

It's interesting that this song comes from the beginning of the war because the essential message of this song, without the bouncy beat, is to keep the terrible experiences of war all to yourself, something that veterans from all wars in all times and all places still struggle with. What's also interesting about this song is that at the end, Private Perks doesn't seem to be changed by his experience at all -- "Round his home he then set about recruiting/With his smile his funny smile." This is the best possible face of war -- we liked it so much we're sending others to do the same.

Like man World War One ballads, this one also saw service in World War Two. And let's face it, if you're letting Judy Garland sing your song in the midst of Hollywood's version of a bombed out village to rally the troops to another blockbuster ending, how much more patriotic can you get?

Cinematic Sunday -- Edwardian Farm

Cinematic Sunday No.2 – Edwardian Farm, BBC, 2010-11

As I mentioned last week, it is my goal in life to one day be in a place where I get to teach people about history using historical costume and historical artifacts. There are many reasons for why I have this aspiration; my new place of employment being one, and this TV show is another. And believe you me, the team of hosts on this show is a hard, hard act to follow.

The BBC has done a series of costumed history shows that are all very good, (last week’s Manor House being one) and Edwardian Farm is the latest of these offerings. A trio of three very talented reenactors – Alex Langlands and Peter Ginn, archeologists, and Ruth Goodwin, domestic historian – took a trip back in time for Edwardian Farm by living and working in Morwellham Quay, a historical property in Devon. They fix up the property to historical specifications, make the place generally livable, bring in livestock, put in provisions, and live on the farm for twelve months -- a whole farm year with each season's varied tasks.

Each episode is centered around two or three period appropriate tasks, like getting a field ready for planting, shearing sheep, or learning how to cook dinner in the Edwardian style, and is filled with facts about life on the farm in the Edwardian period. Aided by experts, archival material, and their own not inconsiderable personal experience, the three hosts do an excellent job of explaining how the typical farmer of the period lived, worked, dressed and carried out his daily existence. While farm life might be a little far away from the hallowed halls of Downton, I still think the show is a must-watch for fans of the period. One could also consider that there are several characters in Downton -- Gwen the maid and Mrs. Hughes the housekeeper -- that come from farming backgrounds themselves. Given the lifestyle this show displays, it's not hard to see why the both of them thought going into service a much better option than remaining to work the land.

Edwardian Farm differs greatly from some of the other historical reality shows that the BBC’s done because the people presenting and living this time period are experts – believe it or not, they actually enjoy feeding chickens and forking hay and eating dishes made with cuts of meat most of us wouldn’t touch. (Sheep’s head, anyone?) Additionally, Alex, Peter and Ruth are all really funny and do a wonderful job of connecting the past to elements of today’s world.

All of the show's twelve episodes (and four additional episodes for the Christmas special) are available on YouTube. And, if you enjoy the show, the same team of experts have done a few other shows for BBC as well, including Victorian Farm and Tales from the Green Valley, a show on life in Wales in the 1600s.

Also, in case you haven't heard, PBS has put all first season episodes of Downton up on their website! I went and had a marathon the other day. It was grand.

Fictional Friday -- No Graves as Yet

Last spring while I was just getting over the first series of Downton and looking for something, anything, to read regarding World War One, I discovered Anne Perry’s Joseph Reavley books, beginning with the first in the series, No Graves as Yet. Beginning Perry was a daunting prospect – the woman commands two and a half library shelves and a sizable fan following from her Victorian mysteries.

Please don’t let the extremely mixed reviews on Amazon fool you – I’m not a murder mystery fan at all and I enjoyed these books. Regarding No Graves As Yet, I agree with what some reviewers have called the ‘glacial pace’ of the first half of the novel, but I think that, for someone whose fans are incredibly familiar with another set of characters, a glacial pace is almost acceptable. Both author and reader need a little more time to grow into writing and reading for new voices and faces. Glaciations aside, I grew to like the main characters Joseph and Matthew and their family very much over the course of all five books.

No Graves As Yet begins at Cambridge in 1914, where Joseph Reavley, man of the cloth and tutor at Saint James College, has just received the shocking news that his parents have died in a traffic accident – and from the looks of things, it may not have been much of an accident. Together with his brother Matthew, who happens to work for Secret Intelligence, Joseph begins trying to put together the story around their father’s death, a complicated affair that involves several of Joseph’s students, ties to groups supporting pacifism and German nationalism, jilted lovers, jealous husbands, blackmail, secret documents, and the growing threat of a war with Germany that England is not ready to fight.

I also like Perry’s books because each one takes its title from a poetic epigram – the first book’s comes by way of G.K. Chesterton’s Elegy in a County Churchyard, which I include here.

Elegy in a Country Churchyard

The men that worked for England
They have their graves at home:
And bees and birds of England
About the cross can roam.

But they that fought for England,
Following a falling star,
Alas, alas for England
They have their graves afar.

And they that rule in England,
In stately conclave met,
Alas, alas for England,
They have no graves as yet.

Poetry Promenade -- Julian Grenfell

I had a hard time picking a poet to start our Poetry Promenade series. I wanted someone who had written a good ‘beginning of the war’ poem, but not someone so well known that you’d all be rolling your eyes in front of your computer screens going “Merc, really, we already know about him!” Rest assured, we’ll have time for the Brookes and the Sassoons and the Owens later – I think they’re famous for a reason, and I want to share them with you again because they’ve all got poems that I really enjoy.


Poetry Promenade -- Julian Grenfell

Julian Grenfell is fairly well known among academics who study the poetry of the Great War, but I’d never heard of him before picking up several anthologies on the subject. He’s also interesting to me because the two poems that he’s best known for are so very different – one of them, “Into Spring” is a romantic, optimistic portrait of the mortality and oneness with the Earth that death brings, and the other a cynical, sniping remark on the aristocratic, toffee-nosed –and-useless General Staff that he refused to join called “Prayer for those on Staff.”

Grenfell was born in 1888 to a fairly aristocratic family. His father, William Henry Grenfell, later became Baron Desborough for his political contributions after a long career in the house of Commons as a conservative member for Salisbury. Julian was educated at Eton and later at Balliol College, and was apparently writing poetry from a very young age. He joined the army in 1910 as a member of the Royal Dragoons and served in both South Africa and India before being assigned to the French front as the war began in 1914. (Several sources report that by 1914 Grenfell was dissatisfied with life in the Army, and was considering leaving just before war was suddenly declared.) He won several commendations and was mentioned in dispatches, earning him a promotion to Captain.

So well liked and respected was Grenfell that he was also earmarked for promotion to the General Staff as an Aide-de-Camp, a promotion that he refused, writing the satirical “Prayer” after the incident. He died on the 27th of May in 1915 after 13 days in hospital, following a wound to his skull from flying shrapnel. Interestingly, his poem “Into Battle” was published in the Times on the same day as his obituary.

From what I've heard of the first episode of Downton, it sounds as though Matthew is following the same meteoric rise that Grenfell experienced. I wonder also if he would have been inspired to write a poem like "Prayer," and what he would have thought of "Into Battle" given what he experiences at the Somme.

Into Battle

The naked earth is warm with Spring,
And with green grass and bursting trees
Leans to the sun's gaze glorying,
And quivers in the sunny breeze;
And Life is Colour and Warmth and Light,
And a striving evermore for these;
And he is dead who will not fight;
And who dies fighting has increase.


The fighting man shall from the sun
Take warmth, and life from the glowing earth;
Speed with the light-foot winds to run,
And with the trees to newer birth;
And find, when fighting shall be done,
Great rest, and fullness after dearth.


All the bright company of Heaven
Hold him in their high comradeship,
The Dog-star and the Sisters Seven,
Orion's Belt and sworded hip.


The woodland trees that stand together,
They stand to him each one a friend,
They gently speak in the windy weather;
They guide to valley and ridges' end.


The kestrel hovering by day,
And the little owls that call by night,
Bid him be swift and keen as they,
As keen of ear, as swift of sight.


The blackbird sings to him, "Brother, brother,
If this be the last song you shall sing
Sing well, for you may not sing another;
Brother, sing."


In dreary, doubtful, waiting hours,
Before the brazen frenzy starts,
The horses show him nobler powers;
O patient eyes, courageous hearts!


And when the burning moment breaks,
And all things else are out of mind,
And only Joy of Battle takes
Him by the throat, and makes him blind—


Though joy and blindness he shall know,
Not caring much to know, that still,
Nor lead nor steel shall reach him, so
That it be not the Destined Will.


The thundering line of battle stands,
And in the air Death moans and sings;
But Day shall clasp him with strong hands,
And Night shall fold him in soft wings.

------

Prayer for Those On Staff

Fighting in mud, we turn to Thee
In these dread times of battle, Lord,
To keep us safe, if so may be,
From shrapnel snipers, shell and sword.

Yet not on us - (for we are men
Of meaner clay, who fight in clay) -
But on the Staff, the Upper Ten,
Depends the issue of the day.

The Staff is working with its brains
While we are sitting in the trench;
The Staff the universe ordains
(Subject to Thee and General French).

God, help the Staff - especially
The young ones, many of them sprung
From our high aristocracy;
Their task is hard, and they are young.

O lord, who mad'st all things to be
And madest some things very good
Please keep the extra ADC
From horrid scenes, and sights of blood.

Musical Monday -- Keep the Home Fires Burning

Aw, heck. My first musical Monday will just have to be put up on a Tuesday. Oh well.

Patriotic music from all periods has a special place in my heart – I spent the second semester of freshman year listening to nothing but World War Two musical propaganda for a twenty page paper and wrote another essay sophomore year on Irish Nationalism in song. The way people talk about the way they love their country or how they think we should deal with war in music has always been fascinating to me, and let me tell you, while World War Two has some real eye-rollers (Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition comes to mind) it has absolutely nothing on World War One. (George Cohan, I am looking at you.) So, without further delay, our first

Musical Monday!

Keep the Home Fires Burning, written by Ivor Novello with lyrics by Lena Guilbert Ford, published 1914, republished 1915.

Today’s Musical Monday selection was chosen for two purposes. The first, because it is a song written early on in the war and contains its own special brand of home front patriotism, and the second, because it was written by a character in another Julian Fellowes production -- wartime song writer, actor and playwright Ivor Novello, played superbly by Jeremy Northam in the Oscar winning Gosford Park.

The song is better known by the title I’ve given it here, but it was originally published as Till The Boys Come Home. Over the course of the war, it was recorded by James F. Harrison, Stanley Kirkby, and one of my personal favorite recording artists from the period, John McCormack. Apparently the popularity of the song was one of the reasons Novello went on to become such a big star after the war.

The lyrics are almost absurdly sentimental by our standards, and yet, one can see why this would have been a popular song at home throughout the war – no mention is made of war’s difficulties except in an offhand way, saying only that to cry for them would only add to their soldierly burdens.

They were summoned from the hillside,

They were called in from the glen,

And the country found them ready

At the stirring call for men.

Let no tears add to their hardships

As the soldiers pass along,

And although your heart is breaking,

Make it sing this cheery song:

Keep the Home Fires Burning,

While your hearts are yearning.

Though your lads are far away

They dream of home.

There's a silver lining

Through the dark clouds shining,

Turn the dark cloud inside out

Till the boys come home.

The song was also included in the 1969 musical ‘Oh, What a Lovely War,’ which I’ll be featuring on another of my Cinematic Sundays. I include both that movie’s treatment of the song and McCormack’s here.

Further reading:

On Wikipedia and First World War.com

Downton Daze Introduction

Today, as many of you may know, is the premiere of the second season of ITV’s smash hit, Downton Abbey. How fortunate for the UK…and unfortunate for the rest of the world, who must now wait until networks in their own countries pick up the broadcasting rights. You can be sure I’ll be hounding the PBS website until January, when they tell me they shall finally be broadcasting.

Until then, for those of us without immediate gratification for our Downton fix, I’m devoting the next several months to trawling through period appropriate costumes, music, poetry, and other relevant media here on my blog. I’m calling this temporary change-over ‘Downton Daze’ and I hope you all enjoy it as much as I’m going to.

Starting off our series will be Cinematic Sundays, a review series of various TV and movies set in the 1900s. Next we’ll have Musical Mondays, where I’ll be featuring various popular tunes of the period, as well as several of the more well known composers. Poetry Promenade will probably float throughout, as I love poetry and I have a lot of poems and poets I’d like to feature, and Fictional Fridays will round out our offerings by discussing written fiction around the Great War Period. I’ve got a stack of books beside my bed just waiting to be read, and I can’t wait to bring them all to your attention. I’ll also be highlighting a lot of great websites throughout the internet world who are also covering Downton and the world it embodies.

Historical fanaticists, take note – I’m more of what you would probably call a popular historical type. I will mainly be reading the kinds of history texts you can buy at your local bookstore, not the more academically minded University press offerings. I apologize in advance for any misdirections on my part and will gladly and joyfully take suggestions and feedback.

So, without more ado --

Cinematic Sunday No. 1 – Manor House, BBC, 2002

Those of you who read this blog already know it is my life’s dream to be able to dress up in period clothing and teach people stuff. What would be only slightly better than that is to dress up in period clothing and teach people stuff on national TV.

Adding to a series of shows that included Colonial House, Regency House Party, Pioneer House and 1940s House, BBC and PBS put together Manor House, a show where 21 members of the general history loving population (like myself) signed up to dress, work, and behave just like their Edwardian counterparts might have done in the years leading up to the Great War.

One family, the Oliff-Coopers, were the ‘Upstairs’ while 15 other cast members formed the ‘Downstairs’ of this historical reality show. The show was filmed at Manderston House in the North of England, where all 21 members of the cast lived just as their counterparts would have nearly a hundred years before. Guiding them on the show were carefully written rule books, patterned after commonly followed advice books of the period, which outlined standards of dress and behavior for each person and their station.

The Upstairs had a pretty easy run of it, so most of the show’s drama focuses instead on the doings of the Downstairs. It turns out living as a maid in the 1900s was a lot harder than some of the cast members anticipated, and partway through the series several members of the cast actually handed in their notice because they were tired – of the long hours, of the regulations placed on the staff, and of the feeling, very strange to our modern sensibilities, that they had suddenly become so much less than the people they were serving upstairs. I don’t usually go for reality shows, but BBC’s production was well-made and very, very accessible. As someone who’s said a number of times that I was born in the wrong period, shows like this always help me put in perspective that, while time travel would be extremely fun, it does help to have been born and brought up with those expectations and social norms.

View the show’s companion page here at PBS! Be sure to check out the page’s ‘You in 1905’ feature – according to their estimates, I would have been running a lodging house with my family. I wouldn’t have married and would have lived a somewhat miserable existence in a shabby dormitory. How’s that for prospects?

You can watch the entire series on YouTube or check it out from your local library. (There's also a companion book that goes with the series.)

Happy watching!

Watchman Says "All's Well!"

Well, all's well that ends well, I think.

Since my last post, I declined the school job in the city that I really didn't want, accepted and started a job at a local museum that actually pays better than the city job would have in the long run, and began one of my two volunteer opportunities. Last weekend I attended a local Revolutionary War reenactment event and decided those were the people I would really like to be spending my time with, so I've got paperwork out to join the Northwest Territory Alliance so I can join their artillery unit and learn how to properly load and fire a nine-pound cannon, what Jack Aubrey might call a bow-chaser (were it on one of his ships.)

Revolutionary War Days was, in a word, amazing. I was struck at this event, as I have never been before, by the hospitality and openness shown by the reenactors and their families. The willingness to speak about their costumes, historical personalities, campsites, and all things in between was wonderful and welcoming. My dad and I spent ten minutes talking to a guy from Indiana with the Brunswicker regiment about German immigration and settlement patterns. This guy didn’t know us from Adam, but just by dint of us taking two steps into the campsite to admire some folding camp stools, he came over (abandoning his lunch) to talk to us. I’ve been to a lot of these events, but that’s never happened before, and it gave me a really good feeling about joining the reenactment game.

I’ve wanted to join a reenactment society for a long time. A LONG time. But there’s something really, really intimidating about approaching people in costume (people who look like they have made these events their life’s work) with the intent of asking them if you can join their party. I’ve always felt so very, very underqualified. No, I don’t already practice a historic trade. I can’t sew. I can’t even give you more than a grade-school level time-line of this war and some names and apocryphical anecdotes that are probably wrong anyway. I’d still like to join your club.

It’s a hard question for someone like me, who has a genetic need to go into an endeavor knowing everything, to ask, both because I know I know next to nothing and I hate having to admit that. I’ve long felt that in order to join one of these communities, I needed an in – someone already in the group with whom I could latch on, barnacle-like, and sneak into club meetings. Pretty much what I need is a reenactment apprenticeship. Actually, I need a sewing apprenticeship first, but I’ll take what I can get. And reenactment friends are not exactly a dime a dozen. The reason I was attending Revolutionary War days was because I had finally found such a person – a co-worker from my summer job, Jack, a retired teacher and sergeant for Hamilton’s Own Artillery, the local arm of the Northwest Territory Alliance specializing in artillery. Jack was just where I knew I would find him – right next to the guns, explaining his heart out. (Jack and I are very much alike in this way – we put ourselves wherever we will probably have a chance to lecture someone.) We talked for a while about this and that, and he said that when I was ready I should shoot him an email (pun not intended) to get in touch with their group commander instead of going through the NWTA’s website.

But in the midst of this bounty of blessings, something inside me is still reticent about the whole reenactment business. Maybe it’s the feeling of outsider-ness. Maybe it’s the horror stories I’m hearing from the educators at the museum where I work. What if I’m a total Revolutionary war failure? What if I want to join the local World War Two reenactment group (when I find it) or the SCA? Is that considered defecting? Do I get court-martialed for that? Drummed out of the army? Or, god forbid, tarred, feathered, and run out of town on a rail? (If they’re the super-serious types my co-workers warned me about, option three sounds the most likely, in the interest of continuing historical accuracy.)

Quandry: Noun Meaning "I'm in over my head here."

Well, here’s a comfortable dilemma. I go in for a job interview this morning, and this afternoon a possible employer from an interview a month and a half ago calls up offering me a different job. Decisions, decisions.

There is something wonderful and terrifying about being called in for interviews, being called back for interviews, being, after all this running around and printing resumes and posturing, employable. Now I have to make a decision. Do I wait for the interviewer from this morning to call me back next week (to say, possibly, that they’ve found someone else, thank you for your time) or wait for the interview tomorrow to do the same thing, or do I call the HR woman back and say that yes, I’d love to come in for this job I’m really not going to enjoy because you’ll pay me a salary, unlike the other two jobs I’m interviewing for?

I think it is time to make a list of pros and cons for this job in the city.

Positives:

1. There is a salary involved. It is a small salary, but it will sit comfortably between me, my student loans, the gas I will need to put in my car, and the breadline.

2. There will be benefits like medical and dental.

3. It will be something else for me to put on my resume, and I will be there for at least two years barring major embarrassments, catastrophes, or acts of God.

4. I would be working in a building full of younger people like myself, and I would not be full time teaching. I would not be planning my own lessons, writing my own worksheets, or fielding angry phone calls from parents. Big bonuses there.

5. I could still live at home.

6. I could be close enough to the city to start doing something about grad school.

7. I would be working in a building full of British people. (Huge plus.)

And now, the negatives.

1. There is a very small salary involved. It is not large enough for me to move into the city, and gas is ruinously expensive. (See #2)

2. There is an hour long commute involved, and I’m not sure I want to go into the city every day. See #1 about gas money. Also, Chicago winters and snow removal. Eeeyeah.

3. There are no immediately feasible public transport options available.

4. I would be working with 7-8 year olds (of whom I am not fond) in a classroom (of which I am also not fond.)

5. I would be far outside my comfort zone.

6. I would be very limited with grad school. (Like, limited to one school limited. Only one university in the Chicago area has an ALA accredited library science program.)

7. They want me to start training tomorrow.

8. ...Mostly the tomorrow bit is what worries me.

I put the question to Facebook, and almost instantly, one of my teachers from high school (a wise and very no-nonsense person I trust a lot) reminds me that a salary is a salary, and at least 7 year olds can take care of themselves in the bathroom. Very true, and things that bear consideration. The job I originally interviewed for was working with their kindergarten, which I now know I would be rubbish at, so second grade might not be so bad. It's a private school, so the parents are all paying an arm and a leg to send their children there. They're invested. They care. Can that be a problem, parents who care too much? The headmaster mentioned that in the interview. He also mentioned the job is pretty temporary -- after two or three years, they want new people. I guess I could handle that.

But, seven year olds!

So, do I call the HR lady back tomorrow after my other job interview and tell her I’ll take the job, sorry for missing the first day of training? Or do I call her back and tell her that I’m definitely not interested?

Making New Friends (I Hope.)

One of the wonderful things about summer vacation is that one finally has time to do fun things with fun people.

Unless, of course, one has all the time in the world…and no people to spend it with.

Now that I’ve finished college, I feel like the next several months of my life, hot or not, are going to be like one long summer break – friends in distant climes, family busy elsewhere, and little old me, stuck with nothing to do and no one to do it with.

I tried really hard to find something to do with my time. I checked out a boatload of books from the library. I bought 20 feet of rope and tried to learn how to do decorative knotwork. I started watching the birdfeeder in my backyard and identifying birds. But all these activities are things I can do alone, and after a month, I’m bored. I have one friend within driving distance of my house, and to be honest, we’ve been friends for so long I’m not sure how we’re still friends with each other. Our tastes are totally different.

So, in order to solve this problem, I took it first to the person to whom I present all my problems – my mother. She told me to join a book group. Easy enough. Now I have to FIND a book group, so I turn on my computer and google “Book Groups Near REDACTED HOMETOWN.”

What I discover is a lovely little site called Meetup, an online forum/water cooler of sorts for people who want to find (or start) groups of their own to, you know, meet up, and do things. And to be sure, I found a few I thought would be cool. (Renaissance dance? Sure, I want to learn renaissance dance! Sign me up!)

Unfortunately for me, one of the perks of living near a big city is also a problem – you live NEAR a big city, not IN the big city. I can’t drive 45 minutes to a strange part of Chicago to go to Renaissance dance practice, and it’s far enough away from downtown that I can’t take the train, either. I was finding all sorts of meetups left, right and center, and every single one of them was in the CITY, right where I couldn’t get. Get me an apprenticeship with someone who can help me navigate the city bus system, and that might change, but for now, I’m marooned out in the suburbs and I still don’t have anything to do.

I also seem to have proved that nothing ever happens in the suburbs. My life is full of fail and loserness.

So I took my problem to the other person to whom I present all my problems – my dad. My ever-so-helpful father was amazed that I hadn’t heard of Meetup before. ( I lived on a college campus, Dad – if I wanted to meet people I shouted down the hall or baked a loaf of bread and left the door open.) He suggested that if I couldn’t find a group, I should just start one of my own instead.

A brilliant idea, to be sure – but what did I want a group about? Birdwatching? Science fiction? Women’s issues? Writing fanfiction? A steampunk discussion group? I can’t start a group based on something I WANT to learn about. I feel like I have to chose a topic I already know a little about and move from there.

I’ve been trolling around and one of the ideas I keep coming back to is the Book and Movie club, where every month (or whatever) you read a book and then get together to watch the film adaptation and discuss the book and the movie. I can do that. I like books. I like movies. I like comparing the two, and I'm sure some other people do, too. I'd even take suggestions from other people. We could host it on a rota.

Does anyone have any other ideas? My hobbies seem to be brilliantly idiosyncratic.

Found: Old Memories, Slightly Dusty

Last week I got two important documents in the mail. The first, my Minnesota teaching license, assured me that the second, my degree from CSB, was, in fact, in the post. Two pieces of paper that now mean I have officially left childhood behind. Now, it seems, I have to go and be a real person out in the real world with real bills, real worries, and a real job hunt.

And yet, coming home has been strange for me. I don’t feel any older or any wiser. I don’t feel prepared for any of those ‘real world’ challenges yet and, as the job hunt has gone so far, I don’t think I’m going to be moving out of the room of my parent’s house I’ve lived in for the past six years any time soon. However, I was, to use the 19^th century advertising euphemism, “desirous of change” and since I obviously wasn’t changing spaces, I decided a revision of my current room was in order. My mother being the saint that she is helped me move my furniture, vacuum my floor and give the place a general going over. (When one only lives in a room for 4 months out of the year, dust does tend to accumulate.)

While I was giving my room the old rub down, a lot of curious items emerged from cabinets, bookshelves, and file cabinets, relics from past friendships and activities that once defined me. Acres and acres of a slowly developing writing talent, tracing both the developing penmanship as well as a grasp of character development and plot. (Oh, lord, character development and plot. How far you have come.) As I look at these items, I see the people who gave them to me, and I wonder, even after having relinquished their friendship for four years, if they still occasionally look at something and think of me. I am a different person now than I was then, of that I am sure. Would they still be friends with me? And for my newer friends, whose additions to my room have not gathered quite as much dust: Will you still be with me four years from now?

Found:

Numerous notebooks, inscribed to me from Morgan, Katie, and others, in the hope that I would fill them and become a famous writer. To date, they are all empty, a testament to how frightened I was to fill such beautiful pages and live up to such high expectations.

Wooden animals, given to my siblings by my great aunt Alice on her return from an African safari. The cheetah is missing a leg, but they are still beautiful.

One wooden paddle, the duffer paddle my group carried for a week throughout Collegebound, our canoe trip through the Boundary Waters.

One manual typewriter, given posthumously by my grandmother, who never knew I would have liked to hear about the time she used such things.

One long white feather, alternatively called a panache, from Sabrina to complete the four Musketeers Costumes we wore to Bowling one Halloween. Used as a Harry Potter prop for Wingardium Leviosa spells. Also, four wands made out of wooden dowel, created 2010 for Harry Potter premiere party.

One folder of World War Two party notes, reminding me of several happy hours planning with Meredith, Mallory, and Katie.

One rather old picture from 10^th grade Achieve class with the group I built a desk with.

One really old picture from fourth grade Challenge class, occasion unknown.

One Harry Potter cookie jar, missing head, given as a birthday present by Meagan.

Two large scrapbooks, filled with pictures from Ireland and many happy wishes for the people who went there with me.

One small volume, “Crusades and the Holy Land” inscribed from my dear friend Helen.

Two long yellow posters decorated with Michelle and Shannon for the hallway of our freshman dorm.

Many textbooks from English literature classes shared with all my fellow English majors and especially my fellow English education friends, whose books will probably know more use than mine will in the future.

Cupcake paper flowers from Sarah, Emily and Katie, on the occasion of my date with the next door neighbor’s grandson.

One reproduction Beatles Poster from Rachel, given without the knowledge that one day I would find the fact that it was letterpressed more interesting than the band it describes.

Numerous copies of “The Bible Says Be Bold” made in my Book Arts class among many fine souls. Also miniature books from the same.

To Vaughn, on the Death of Your Father: A Reflection on Endings

This last week has been, for me, a time for extensive reflection on endings.

As my friends were partying away the end of another school year, and celebrating the end of our years as college students, I received the unwelcome and unanticipated news that my cooperating teacher from my high school student teaching experience had died. I began reflecting a great deal not on the end of eras, but on the end of a life.

My teacher (I will call him ‘my teacher’ because that is what he was, in a number of respects) took his own life last Monday. No one will say why, but it has been speculated that he was dealing with a number of personal demons of great magnitude. As a colleague of only two scant months, I could not point to any one thing in his life and say with certainty, “This was what troubled him most.” In fact, from what I could see, there was so much in his life pointing away from suicide – his teaching license had just been renewed, his master’s thesis was well underway, and it was finally warm enough to take his two year old son outside to play, something he had been looking forward to for months.

And yet, here we are, and I am writing a blog post about endings, and not beginnings.

As I moved out of the dorms yesterday, saying goodbye to people I have spent the better part of four wonderful years with, it seemed to me that I was almost sealing them into coffins. “These are the people I will not ever see again. These are the laughs I will not hear, the voices I will not listen for, the door knocks that will not sound.” I think part of the reason I did not grieve as much as some at the passing of my teacher was that I had already done the same for him. He was a part of my life that I was finished with, and I was moving on.

Yet now something strange has happened. Instead of remaining in that closed part of my life, as he would have done had he lived, he is now more a part of my thoughts than ever. Listening to his funeral, and watching the hundreds of students both he and his wife had mentored, I wondered if I was making a bad decision not to stay in teaching, if I was somehow dishonoring him by not remaining in education. He was described by his brother as a humble man, a sentiment I concurred with, and yet my most vivid memory of him remains what he told our students on my last day at the high school – “Miss G is extremely smart, and she could do pretty much anything in the world. We are extremely lucky that she has chosen to go into teaching.”

High praise, especially for a man of few words and no mean intellect himself.

My immediate thought after hearing about his death was that I should write about it. I tried this several times, each poem sounding more terrible than the last. This, I decided, was because I was trying to write a poem about him and instead writing a poem about my personal experience with the news of his death, which didn't make for a very interesting poem topic. None of the poems I started begged to be finished.

While I was walking around campus last week on one of the final sunny days of the semester, I couldn't help realizing how green the grass was. Monday morning had been incredibly and vividly sunny, a welcome break after several dismal days, and as I was walking, I realized that he had missed seeing that sunny day, taking advantage of the first real opportunity to go outside with his son. And the first line came to me.

He died in springtime, as the grass was greening.

Here, finally, was the poem begging to be born. I decided to write a poem, not addressed to him, but to his son, a boy of only two years who is, by all accounts, the child who will grow up to be his father.

So, here it is—the celebration of the end of a year, an era, a life. If I were teaching this in our creative writing class, I would remind everyone that this is an elegy, a poem of praise for the dead, and ask everyone to look for poetic elements. I might also ask them to compare it to WH Auden's In Memory of W.B. Yeats, and explain that Auden's poem influenced the poet. I can still hear him telling me about the different poetic techniques I should be sure to cover in class.

I ask you all only to read it.

--

To Vaughn, on the Death of Your Father

He died in springtime, as the grass was greening.
The birds were singing, and the wind was blowing,
and the breath of the universe blew him away,
overwhelming.

Let me tell you what I knew of him, in the way that heroes are told of their long-dead kin,
so that you will know of his greatness, and remember him well by it.
You do not know it now, but you were a hero to him.

He was tall in the way that trees are tall (and that all fathers are tall to their sons)
in the way that reached up to the sky with confidence and grace
and walked his ways in such a manner that said, to those that knew him, I will take my time with this, and it will be time sweetly taken.

He was a man of few words, carefully said, painstakingly spoken, and yet a man extravagant in praise.
Often he praised you. Praised your smile, your laugh, your walks and child’s ways.

He was a man of great love.

I did not know this as others did, did not see this as others saw, but I saw he loved you.
His desk was filled with pictures of you, and he had,
on a keyring already heavy with responsibility, a huge picture of you, taken at Easter,
one more reminder of you, his greatest joy.

And you brought him great joy.
When you are older, and you wish to have known him, and you hate him for leaving you so soon,
know that it was not your fault that he left, that he took away what was only his to give.
Know that he loved you, as the wind loves the branches of the trees,
inseparable.
Know that he was loved by his students, his far-sons and far-daughters.
Many there were of them, and yet only one of you.
He was father to them as he did not have a chance to be to you,
his only son.

Other things I wish you would know about him were small things, things that will not matter.
Yet I will say them.

Every day he ate a peanut butter sandwich for lunch,
Quietly chewing, grading papers.
Silence was his golden time.
He golfed and was good at it.
Laughter was not his enemy, and his smile was wide.
He wore brightly colored shirts, and was uncomfortable in ties.
He read the New Yorker religiously, and John Updike’s writing brought him to rapturous attention.
Determination comforted him,
Irreverence and studied ignorance tried his patience.
His counsel was good, and he was reckoned among the wise.

He wished that you would know the sunshine, and the wild winter he waited out to bring you into the sun.

So, son of your father, go out into the sunshine.
Listen for his voice in the hallways of his school, in the fairways of his game, in the simple pleasure of a sunny day, shared.

He died in springtime, as the grass was greening.
the leaves were budding, and the flowers were blooming,
and at his passing, the universe paused to grieve him.