I’ve written so many posts about Laura Ingalls Wilder this week that perhaps you might be wondering what has happened to my other passion — Dante. I have re-scanned all of the images the graphic designer needed to complete the catalogue and I gave them to her late Tuesday. At the moment, it’s all in her hands. I’ve done what I can do. I can neither move forward nor backward until I hear from her.
I guess you could say I’m in Limbo. 
(Sorry that’s a Dante joke, recognizable only if you’re familiar with Divine Comedy, and it’s a rather lame joke at that.)
Diagram of Dante’s Inferno, depicting the various levels of Hell, including Limbo
There’s a new post up over at the Beyond Little House blog, and it resonates with me so much that I wanted to direct you over there to read it. It’s called “Why Laura?” and it answers the question that I am sure must have occurred to those of you who are not (yet) fans of Laura Ingalls Wilder. You know who you are. You’re the ones wondering why a grown woman like me reads “childrens books” like the Little House series and and laughing at my suburban obsession with the details of a life in the prairie wilderness over 120 years ago. And if you are already a LIW fan, read the article. I suspect you’ll recognize yourself in the author’s comments. In any case, her essay speaks to the elegance and endurance of Wilder’s classic and simple books, originally written in her spare time and on humble notebooks.
I like all kinds of literature. Just because Dante and Laura don’t appear to have much in common — he was a medieval poet and she was a wanderer of the wild frontier — doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy them both. As Walt Whitman once said, “I am large. I contain multitudes.” That pretty much sums up my taste in literature and most of the other arts.
Now click on over and read that post.
See you in the stacks!
