Author Archives: Jennie

The Louisa Challenge: February Prompts

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“Sorry you could find nothing better to read. I write that rubbish because it sells, and ordinary people like it.”  ~~ Louisa May Alcott

Image via victoriantradingco.com

Louisa May Alcott was a woman of her time yet manages to remain a contemporary woman of our time. She knew the difference between reality and dreams, and she did what she needed to do to keep her family fed, clothed, and sheltered. In that respect, she isn’t much different from any of us.

Alcott’s best known book, Little Women, still inspires dollhouse dolls, paper dolls, and her childhood home, Orchard House, was celebrated by Department 56 in their Literary Classic Series of porcelain replicas. Given my love of all things Alcott, I’m not quite sure why I don’t own this…

Image via http://www.dept56retirees.com

In 1868, she put aside writing her beloved mysteries and thrillers to write Little Women, which is loosely based on her own family life with her three sisters. After having read Little Women, the Louisa Challenge asks you to respond to one or more of these prompts — or make up your own. There are no rules in this literary challenge!

P.S. There are spoilers here…

  1. Which is your favorite character in Little Women? Why?
  2. Do you find it surprising that once Laurie is rejected by Jo, he falls in love with Amy? Do you feel his characterization is complete and he is acting within the “norm” of the personality Alcott has created for him, or does Alcott simply dispose of him once our heroine rejects him?
  3.  Some critics argue that the characters are masochistic. Meg is the perfect little wife, Amy is the social gold digger, and Beth is the eternally loving and patient woman. Do you believe these characterizations are masochistic? If so, do you think Alcott could have characterized them any other way while maintaining the realism of the society she lived in? And if this is true, what of Jo’s character?
  4.  The last two chapters find Jo setting aside her budding literary career to run a school with her husband. Why do you think Alcott made her strongest feminine figure sacrifice her own life plans for her husband’s?
  5. Do you believe this is a feminine or a feminist piece of work?
  6. Who would you cast in the next movie adaptation?

Join us on Sunday, February 13, as we celebrate Little Women in the Louisa Challenge. I look forward to hearing what you have to say!

Prompts via Lit Lovers

Downton Abbey: Team Batanna

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Just in case you’re living under a costume drama rock, there’s some mighty fine television happening on Sunday nights on PBS.

Which team are you on? Are you for Branson and Sybil? Matthew and Mary? Bates and Anna?

Image credit: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/index.html

I’m Team Batanna, although tonight’s episode puts some possible changes in the wind…

There has been a wonderful series on the Jane Austen’s World blog about Highclere Castle where Downton Abbey is filmed. I encourage you to check it out!

Image credit: skewenhistoricalsociety.org.uk

My Life Plan (at least for today)

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Today’s plan is ambitious.

  1. Put away Christmas decorations. Yes, we ARE that family, and in our defense, it’s not February yet.
  2. Grade a stack of papers. It’s the weekend; what else would a busy teacher be doing on the weekend?
  3. Pick up good friend at the airport and feed her with both bodily and emotional sustenance. She’s got a long road ahead of her as she navigates the death of her father.
  4. Grade another stack of papers. I think I need a sarcasm font (thanks for that one, Suzanne).
  5. Finish reading Bright Lights, Big Ass by Jen Lancaster.
  6. Grade a stack of papers. Oh, yay!
  7. Read all of Dancing at the Rascal Fair by Ivan Doig.

The idea of a reading mini-marathon came from Jillian at A Room of My Own, but I don’t think the mountains of student essays were part of her game plan when she did it last weekend. I’m also not a Tweeter, so I don’t think anyone will notice if I don’t actually get my reading done today. It’s at least a plan…we’ll see how I do. 🙂

Happy weekend!

P.S. If you’re on Facebook, please “like” my page. I’m feeling lonely and no one will ever want to advertise with me without at least 50 “likes.”

Lancaster image credit, Doig image credit

Writers’ Workshop: Guilty Pleasures and Hero(ines)

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I have guilty secret from my past that I’d really love to reinstate in all its splendor.

Image via naplesnews.com

ICE SHOWS.

My love of ice skaters and ice shows was probably formulated while watching the 1960 Olympics. Broadcast from Squaw Valley, California, I got to see Carol Heiss win the gold medal for the United States. Although the 1956 Olympics were also broadcast on television, I was too young to remember it, but watching the beauty of Heiss’s freestyle on youtube brings back those warm fuzzy memories.

Growing up, we had two local ice arenas where we could see touring ice show companies. Since we were not rollin’ in the dough, it must have been hard for my parents to come up with five admissions to the ice shows. I know my mother was as enamored of the flashy costumes and choreography as I was; I’m not so sure about the men in our family. Every winter we would create a frozen spot in our backyard and create a skating rink, and when I was a teenager, my girlfriends and I would go skating at the arena in big bad Dayton. Trust me when I say that skating was combined with a lot of boy watching and flirting.

By that time, I was worshipping Peggy Fleming, who won the 1968 Olympic gold in women’s ice skating. Her win was poignant, as she had lost her coach, along with the rest of the American figure skating team, in a plane crash in 1961. After strong American showings in 1952, 1956, and 1960, the devastating loss to the American figure skating program was reflected on the medal platform at the 1964 Olympics. There were no American women in the top three, and David Allen came in third among the men.

The ethereal Peggy Fleming was impossibly beautiful on the ice. I know this video still looks weird, but it’s an old film that has been digitalized —  it’s worth watching to see Fleming’s medal-winning performance.

Between 1960 and 1976, only Fleming won ice skating gold for the United States until Dorothy Hamill charmed both the judges and the audience in Innsbruck, Austria.

Needless to say, I had my hair cut in the Hamill wedge.

Image via blog.salonbuzz.com

For those of you who grew up in the age of the Nancy Kerrigan versus Tonya Harding debacle or the flinty perfection of Michelle Kwan, it’s probably hard to imagine the innocence of these early ice skating queens. They were charming, polite, ladylike, and for a little girl from a small town, it almost seemed attainable to become a figure skating star if I practiced my jumps in the back yard enough times. I knew nothing, of course, of the pressures of the elite-class skating world.

Somehow, as an adult, I stopped going to ice shows. They were expensive and my kids weren’t really into either the skating or the pageantry. Unlike me and my mom, they weren’t transfixed by the television presentations of the Olympic ice skating events every four years, and they didn’t care who was going to emerge as the reining champions. I will have to admit that now both my daughter and I love Johnny Weir, but that’s because he’s so talented while also being so fabulously out there. He’s coming out of “retirement” to compete again in the 2014 Olympics!

Right now, Disney on Ice is in town and I want to go. I need a beard — a little girl who I can pretend to be taking to see the skating Disney princesses. Miss H___, are you available?

For my grownup friends, I wouldn’t mind going to Peggy Fleming’s winery some time (just in case she was available for an autograph for a fan.)

This post is linked up to Mama Kat’s Writer’s Workshop. Stop by and give some comment love to other friends.

Wordless Wednesday: Playing with My iPhone Camera

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What did I learn about using HDR Pro after my iPhone camera class on Saturday? One needs to have a steady hand — and apparently I don’t. When the two photos merge together the edges need to match. If your hands shake, you get shaky edges. You can see them in the original photo I took. I chose this one because of the cute little snow nipple. 🙂

The other thing I learned at class is that if I take a shaky photo, I can tart it up with effects. Using Picnik, I added the Heat Map 2.0 effect. It certainly takes your mind off of my shaky edges and gives a whole new dimension to the snow nipple!

And I’m heartbroken that Picnik is “merging” with Google. I tried it, and it doesn’t have the effects and framing capabilities that the original Picnik does. Picnik was just so darn easy — who’s got a recommendation for a busy teacher?

This post is linked up to Wordless Wednesday at Project Alicia, Angry Julie Monday, Live and Love Out Loud, Naptime Momtog, and And Then She Snapped.

Paperwhites in a Punch Bowl

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Paperwhites. The sign of spring. Who doesn’t want dirt in her punch bowl? It can be washed out and sterilized, after all. When I read  this at the Reluctant Entertainer, I pulled out my dear deceased neighbor’s lead crystal punchbowl and I planted paperwhites in it.

My neighbor is definitely turning over in her grave while her beloved house and garden is dying a slow death because it has been ignored and abandoned by her children and then her mortgage company for almost four years.

The local police tell me that since the house is probably uninhabitable at this point and occupies a large, valuable suburban lot, one day I will come home from school and find it demolished. I’m determined to keep her legacy alive through her treasured belongings and I’ve worked to save them from the bulldozer.

The neighbors and many of my friends have harvested perennials out of her award-winning garden. She had well over 100 varieties of hosta in her backyard. They are living a new life in new gardens and she would have loved that.

My brother and I have two sets of her formal dishes (that NO ONE bought at the sales, so we got permission from her children to take them). I don’t ever need to use paper plates. Combined with my other sets of dishes, I have enough bread and butter plates to serve well over a hundred people for appetizers, and they go into the dishwasher and will be used for many events over my lifetime. This is my concept of living green and then living green again.

Many of her silver platters (that no one bought at multiple estate and garage sales) were purchased by my friend and are proudly displayed throughout her house in their polished glory.

My darling Oksana, who survived a concentration camp along with both her parents and her baby sister, is remembered in my house. The bulbs sprouting new growth in her punchbowl tell us that life goes on — we who survive carry the stories of those who have gone before us.

When I come home this spring, and her house is gone because the economy is picking up and the lender has decided to sell the property, I’ll welcome the new neighbors and tell them about who came before them. And I’m likely to give them something to remember her by.

RENEWing My Photography

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It’s a good day when I can learn something new. When we go to teacher’s in-service presentations and courses, we demand a “take-away” — something that we can go back to our classrooms and use the next day. Today I learned a lot about the capabilities of my iPhone and its camera. I’ll give you a little teaser, but there will be more in upcoming posts.

Armed with my new app, HDR Pro, I took my trusty iPhone to the floral section at Costco. HDR Pro tells my camera to take two pictures, then merges them together. My only problem is holding still so that there are crisp edges on the merged photos. At home, I loaded up the photo to Picasa, used the HRDish function, the fade function, and the vignette function to get rid of the edges. I don’t like Picasa’s fonts because my favorite’s not there, but this will do for the purposes of copyrighting this photo. The color in these chrysanthemums just knocks my socks off and warms my heart on this snowy Chicago weekend.

And look what a double dose of HDR did for my trellis!

Thanks for joining me as I RENEW my life.

Saturday Linky Love: Book Challenges and Reading Dreams

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My recent foray into The Louisa Challenge has introduced me to some interesting new online friends. I had no idea that I had not created something original — there are LOTS of book challenges out there among the book bloggers. It makes me feel kind of naive; I’ve just been poking along in my little 4th bedroom/office, writing about my life and the places to which I travel and dishes and catalog dreaming and the books I read.

My son, the social media guru and recently published e-book author, has told me that I need to isolate my niche. Contentedly blathering away about the things that touch my heart, I’ve been blogging for about 2 1/2 years, but I’ve yet to gain a widespread following. My loyal friends and family comment regularly, and I love them for that. Frankly, I’m satisfied with a small group of online friends, because it fills a gap in my soul to just write about what’s on my mind. Many of you probably feel this same need in our busy society; expressing one’s self is difficult because very few people actually take the time to listen. After all, we can always read about it later… or look at the video online. But who doesn’t want to be Pioneer Woman deep in one’s private soul?

Recently I got one and then another email from a medical malpractice attorney (???) who apparently stalks blogs to see if she can convince someone to allow her to do a guest post along with a link-up in return. I’ve always figured this was a scam, but surely many bloggers get unsolicited requests to promote a product. I have assumed I was small potatoes and there was no way I could ever “monetize my blog.” And did I want to? When Illinois no longer allowed amazon.com to pay me referrals, I kind of gave up. Do I actually have a niche, or am I just writing an online diary for the world to see about being an empty nester and woman in her latent prime?

Miraculously, I’ve been saved from these difficult questions by finding a bunch of kindred spirits. I immediately recognized the reconstructed shack on the shore of Walden Pond and the allusion in Jillian’s A Room of One’s Own. I’ve been intrigued by the reviews and challenges provided by Jenner at Life With Books. I’ve been inspired by the photography and creativity of  Michele at The Great Read. I was absolutely thrilled to find out that someone loves Louisa May Alcott as much as I do by meeting Susan at Louisa May Alcott is My Passion. I’ve met Merrick at Elf Paper who’s reading along with us on The Louisa Challenge. I love that my niece, Vanderbilt Wife, who is raising two toddlers, editing other people’s books, cooking, and reading and writing as much as her busy life will allow, connects up with The Louisa Challenge.  She also loves Gwendolyn Brooks and March, the fictional biography of Bronson Alcott, while he’s “off at the Civil War.” Who else is lurking out there? I’ve yet to meet her or him, but I’m looking forward to it.

Linking up with my new online friends,  I was obsessed with the layers of book challenges:

My students are currently deciding which book to read in literature circles for the Holocaust unit. I’ve recommended Night by Elie Wiesel if they’ve never read it; it’s a classic and belongs in the current canon, in my opinion. What’s in your canon? Many of the writers I’ve linked here have ideas about what should be in a modern-day list of must-read books.

To paraphrase one of my favorite movies, what’s your dream? What do you wish you had time to read?

“Welcome to Hollywood! What’s your dream? Everybody comes here; this is Hollywood, land of dreams. Some dreams come true, some don’t; but keep on dreamin’ – this is Hollywood. Always time to dream, so keep on dreamin’.”

My Dad Would Have Loved Facebook

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My father was a man ahead of his time. I’ve talked about him here and here and here. Sadly, he passed away in 2009, and got rid of his computer about 2004 when he could no longer see the monitor clearly because he had macular degeneration.

P.S. My mom wasn’t particularly happy about that but she wasn’t in charge. That’s another story for another day.

He would have loved Facebook. He was desperate to share his ideas with the world and he would have been thrilled to see everyone’s photos. He would have figured out a way to convert his slides to digital images so he could post them on Facebook.

And then he would have stalked and commented. Can you image what a man of 80 years old who had no filters might say? I shudder to think about it. Would people be kind, or would they block him?

I really wish I could teach my daddy how to use Facebook. He would have been the best stalker ever and the best poster any of us have ever known.

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