dual personalities

I have been slowly reading the essay collection Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino, a staff writer at The New Yorker whose internet presence I also enjoy. (Well, I should say whose internet presence I did enjoy before I left Twitter.) These essays, which largely focus on millennial womanhood, are not exactly groundbreaking, but they are interesting and well written.

Tolentino first endeared herself to me when she Tweeted about attending a Betsy-Tacy convention in Minnesota. The Betsy-Tacy series is very dear to me — perhaps the first series of books I really loved — and I’ve even passed them on to girls I babysat. I also named my study abroad blog (wow–is that a specific genre or what?) after the penultimate book in the series: [SUSIE] AND THE GREAT WORLD. Maud Hart Lovelace seems relatively obscure, so any writer who understands that precise cultural reference is legit in my book.

In one of the essays from Trick Mirror, Tolentino writes about heroines of literature, from girls to young adults to women. She diagnoses that it is in children’s literature that female characters most flourish: there, they are adventurous and brave, their lives are thrilling and pleasurable. (The essay surmises that all literature about women tends towards darkness, though, and that marriage is the worst thing that can happen — to a plot and to a woman. I…don’t agree, but that isn’t my focus today!)

Girls, unlike women, can be unfettered, Tolentino suggests. In these books, the girl heroines are often writers themselves, and they forge spaces of their own in which to find their voice. This certainly applies to Betsy Ray, who Tolentino characterizes as “an unusual type” because she is “happy, popular, and easygoing” on top of being clever. It’s true! I was certainly drawn to Betsy because she was smart and she had friends and at least one boy liked her. Betsy was observant, she kept a journal, she wanted to be a writer, and she had a desk. (It was an old trunk. Very cool.)

I must have read the books in elementary school: probably third, fourth, and fifth grade. It occurs to me now that this must have been around the same time my mother starting writing her own novels, so perhaps my love for such literary girls were wrapped up in my own maternal example. Was it was some combination of wanting to be Betsy and wanting to be my mom that prompted me to write my own novel in a composition notebook? (Let’s not forget that it loosely plagiarized the Mitford series, so Jan Karon receives some credit here, too.)

Well, I certainly did not grow up thinking that marriage, or family, or homemaking, was the end of intelligence and independence, as some contemporary fiction would have you believe. (Tolentino gives far too much credit to Jeffrey Eugenides’s The Marriage Plot, if you ask me.) I find myself really wanting to re-read the Betsy-Tacy series now–perhaps we could all use the earnest optimism of our childhood heroines. After all, Tolentino concedes that children’s literature adheres to its own “wholesome logic” whereby “Laura Ingalls, Betsy Ray, and Anne Shirley all find husbands that respect them.” I guess that’s the trick!

*from Betsy and Tacy Go Over the Big Hill

After months of keeping mum, having been sworn to silence until they made it official with a ring, I am finally at liberty to announce that son #2 and his lady love are engaged! They’ve even set a date, so we know they’re committed 🙂 We are delighted, delirious with joy, thrilled, over the moon, enraptured, and well, you get the idea, we’re really, really happy.  It’s about time!

After all, they have been a couple for nearly ten and a half years, which, if I can do the math correctly, means he was still 16 and she 15 when they started dating. High School sweethearts, indeed! I haven’t heard all the details yet, but I can tell you that they went to New Mexico to find the perfect white gold, turquoise and diamond ring. Here’s a close up:

Chris found a suitably awesome setting to pop the question

and I imagine him quoting his favorite poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley,

Nothing in the world is single
All things by law divine
In one another’s being mingle
Why not I with thine? 

or something similar.

Let’s take a look at the evolution of this adorable couple. They’ve come a long way since that first kiss (I found this among Chris’s Facebook photos).

I’ve never seen that hat — no doubt it was the very height of cool in 2008

They went to proms

and dressed up for Halloween

Why so serious, Ken?

(and let’s not forget this one)

and they attend one another’s graduation ceremonies — I count at least five! They’ve hiked, driven, flown, kayaked, bicycled, danced, snowshoed, boated, and floated together.

I think they’re ready for a lifetime of great adventure and hopefully plenty of downtime too! I can’t wait to see how it all unfolds! Welcome to the clan, Nicole!

*Jane Austin

This week has had a much more positive vibe, and I think the weather has to do with it. We have finally had some “highs in the 70s” days. On Monday, I was in a department-wide staff town hall where the mediator started with an icebreaker question (yes, an icebreaker among pre-existing colleagues) — “What are you excited about for fall?” I always come up with terrible responses for these, but it was notable just how excited everyone was about their answers. I ended up recycling the question for my own meetings with students, and again, there was a surprising amount of excitement to go around!
People (students and staff) are, across the board, excited for chunky sweaters. Campus will be pretty. Thanksgiving. Someone’s twin sister is going to have a baby. THE JOHN MULANEY SHOW. (There’s the only place where I wholeheartedly overlap with the students.) Students are also already quite hyped for Halloween — they’ve already picked out their costumes! This seems like significantly more foresight than is sometimes evidenced in the classroom.Anyway, my point is that it feels nice to focus on what’s ahead, what we’re looking forward to. So — please turn to the person next to you, and let them know: what are you excited for this fall?

Paintings are “Autumn Boulevard in Paris” (Childe Hassam), “Isham Park Steps New York Autumn” (Thor Wickstrom), and “Autumn Woods” (Albert Bierstadt)

Did you know that Saturday was the Harvest Moon?

The moon cycles don’t mean all that much to me, but I do love this song. And it does feel like summer has ended and we are settling into fall. (If only the weather would catch up — we had a couple days in the humid 90s last week!)

Well, I spent Saturday writing. I have been procrastinating an article deadline big time, so I finally set a time to just finish it already.

The essay is about Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, who is one of my absolute favorite nineteenth-century women, and how she depicts domesticity in heaven.

“A happy home is the happiest thing in the world. I do not see why it should not be in any world. I do not believe that all the little tendernesses of family ties are thrown by and lost with this life.”

From The Gates Ajar (1868)

I suppose the delight I take in my happy home is a little nineteenth-century, but I’m cool with that. We continue to make great domestic strides in our new apartment. At this point, all it takes is a bit of puttering around on Sunday afternoon to get another corner or two all set up. Is there anything better than puttering?

Well, the “tendernesses of family ties” are also up there. I am always happy to have a long phone conversation with my mom on Sunday, to think of my sister on her birthday, to see happy photos of the wee babes from each morning when they arrive to school. And earlier this weekend, we got a chance to see some of DN’s out-of-town relatives, which turned into a lovely evening of catching up and sharing stories.

His aunt also brought snapshots! Does it get any cuter than this?

DN always had great hair and a great polo collection

So here’s to a productive workweek — made more manageable by a return to a happy home each evening.

It’s a blustery, rainy morning again. Just so you know, I’m going to start every weekly post with the weather report so I have a record against which I can test my hypothesis that it rains every Saturday. Yikes.

We celebrated three birthdays this week — my niece (left) on Wednesday and my middle son (in the middle) and son #3’s girlfriend (right) on Thursday.

Alas, I could not be with any of the celebrants but did think about them all day! I did get to speak to son #2 as he waited patiently in Salt Lake City airport for a flight to Albaquerque for a few days vacation with his beloved. He reckoned that he would spend less time in the air than waiting for the flight, but he accepted the situation stoically. It seems to be the norm for air travel these days. I’d rather drive.

Aside from the birthdays, my week was tiring but satisfying. Nothing bad happened, classes went surprisingly well, and I only spilled coffee down the front of my white shirt once! Even so, by last night I needed to do some comfort reading, so I settled on John Buchan’s 1927 novel, The Witch Wood, which I have never read. I could tell it was my kind of book right from the prologue (I’m reading the book on Kindle, hence the screen capture):

It’s a good reminder that  long term change is inevitable and usually sad. Most of the book takes place in Scotland during the 17th century and (so far) involves the young Presbyterian minister of the village,  Loyalists (Montrose in his lonely loyalty), and Cromwellians.  I think there may be a little devil worship in there too.  Buchan is always thoughtful and much of what he says resonates today. Take, for example, his observation, “The true definition of a snob is one who craves for what separates men rather than for what unites them.” Hmm… that’s an interesting thought.

Discuss among yourselves and have a wonderful weekend!