Chapter 142 How I Know My Husband is Crazy (About Me)

Thoughtful Husband and I both have big birthdays this year, ones that end in a “0″. We wanted to do something to mark the occasion. Throw a party? We could, but that could get expensive. We both grew up in the Bay Area, along with many of our friends, and we both have good sized families, so there would be a lot of people to invite. A party would be fun, but would only last for one night.

I thought about taking a special trip with Thoughtful Husband and Tom and Huck, one that would make a great family memory. I tried to think of something that might be especially enjoyable to Thoughtful Husband yet still kid friendly. I secretly planned to take him to a hotel in Oregon where a friend of ours stayed with his family. They had a great time and highly recommended that we take our family there.

What’s the big deal about a hotel in Oregon, you’re probably wondering?

Well, this hotel is made entirely of tree houses.

That’s right. Tree houses.

I can just see the pure joy on Tom and Huck’s faces when they learn that, much as their namesakes Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn might have, they will spend a night in a tree house fort. Thoughtful Husband, being basically a grown up boy himself, has wanted to travel here since his friend told us about it a few years ago.

I hesitated in mentioning my idea to Thoughtful Husband. What if he really just wanted to bask in the sun and relax in a hammock in some tropical clime like Hawaii? Fun, but too expensive in our case. Would playing treehouse fort with me and the kids be exciting enough for a __0th birthday gift/celebration?

One day, Thoughtful Husband, said, “What do you want to do for our __0th birthdays?”

“I don’t know,” I said, secretly hoping he’d come up with something amazing.

“I know you’d probably like to go somewhere fabulous, like London, or Paris, or Rome,” he said, frowning.

“Yes, but I don’t think that’s realistic right now.” (I’ll admit it I would like to go any of these places, but like Hawaii, it’s just not a possibility at this time, and I know it.)

“Well,” said Thoughtful Husband, “I’ve been trying to think of something meaningful and fun, even if it’s not exotic. And I thought of something, but I didn’t want to mention it because I worried that you wouldn’t think it was good enough.”

“Guess what?” I interrupted. “I thought of something we could do, too, but I wasn’t sure it was good enough for you either.”

“What is it?”

I told him all about the tree house. He thought it sounded like a great family trip. “I can’t believe you are agreeing to camp in a treehouse,” he said. (He knows I like pioneer women, but I don’t actually want to live like one. I’m afraid of snakes, bugs, and too much dirt.)

Next, he told me his plan.

“I know you collect books by and about pioneer women, and I know how much you like Laura Ingalls Wilder. I thought we could rent an RV, drive across the country and see a few of her old homesites. I figure if you visit places like Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, and South Dakota, it will help your knowledge of Western Americana in particular. You never know, you might find some good books along the way! We can drive home through Oregon and stay at the tree house hotel. There is a Laura Ingalls Wilder homesite in DeSmet, South Dakota and another just over the Minnesota state line in Walnut Grove.”

Stunned silence. Thoughtful Husband is not a bookish sort. I cannot believe he has taken into consideration my love of books and Laura Ingalls Wilder in planning our family vacation. Wow! I love this man. How many husbands would indulge their wife’s amassing of books in the dining room, the bedroom, the hallway? And then still want to take her on a book-related vacation? Oh, yeah! He’s a keeper.

“I didn’t want to tell you at first because I was afraid you wouldn’t want to drive in an RV and I thought you might want to go somewhere more glamorous than South Dakota.”

“When I aspire to be a bookseller specializing in the history of the west and the people who settled there in the past 200 years, where else could possibly be more glamorous than South Dakota? I love this idea! Thank you, thank you for thinking of it!”

I’m going to be a pioneer woman this summer. I’ll be headed East instead of West, but since I’ve spent my whole life in the West, going East will open a whole new world to me!

I’ve gotten varied responses from friends and family here in the cosmopolitan Bay Area. The general consensus is, “Two weeks in an RV with kids and dog driving through flyover country? You guys are crazy!”

I realize this isn’t everyone’s idea of fun. But it’s not everone else’s __0th birthday. It’s ours.

Yes, we’re crazy. About each other.

Tomorrow: One bookseller’s advice to those new in the book business

Chapter 141 Little House in the Suburbs

Guess what this is?

Though I realize it may not look like it to you, this is a little piece of paradise to me.

Any guesses as to where this is? Need another hint?

I’ll be fulfilling a childhood dream and travelling here sometime this summer.

Still can’t guess what it is? It belonged to this woman’s family.

Don’t know who she is? If you were a kid in the 1970s, you will be able to tell from the next image, I am sure:

That’s right. It’s Laura Ingalls Wilder. That last photo is from the Little House on the Prairie television show from the 1970s. While the show does not compare to the books, I must say that I learned that there were books to read from watching the show as a kid. Then I read each and every book. And loved them!

Sometime this summer we will be driving ourselves and Tom and Huck across the country to see Wilder’s real-life homes in DeSmet, South Dakota and Walnut Grove, Minnesota. Why? That’s a story for another post.

See you in the stacks!

Chapter 136 An Apt Metaphor

I don’t keep a commonplace book, a place for writing down the words of others that I admire or want to remember. I find absolute joy in the well-turned phrase, the complex thought made incarnate in its articulation, and, yes, the imposition of order and elegance brought about by a few well-placed punctuation marks. I should keep a commonplace book, but I think the last time I actually did I was in high school. Time is a precious commodity, especially when your time is demanded by others, and I must admit that the idea of a commonplace book, while appealing, has fallen by the wayside due to time constraints right now.

From (cringe at the source, but my time is limited today) Wikipedia: “Commonplace books (or commonplaces) emerged in the 15th century with the availability of cheap paper for writing, mainly in England. They were a way to compile knowledge, usually by writing information into books. They were essentially scrapbooks filled with items of every kind: medical recipes, quotes, letters, poems, tables of weights and measures, proverbs, prayers, legal formulas. Commonplaces were used by readers, writers, students, and humanists as an aid for remembering useful concepts or facts they had learned. Each commonplace book was unique to its creator’s particular interests.”

If you’ll allow me, I’d like to make this post a bit of a commonplace book. As I read the Sunday paper, the Parade Magazine insert had an interview with Frank McCourt, former English teacher and author of the well-known Angela’s Ashes and several other books. The title of the article was “We All Can Have Second Acts (& Third!)” McCourt discusses how he made the transition from writing teacher to published author. He says a few things that I think are worth remembering, whether one is a writer, a teacher, or a bookseller. Here are a couple of favorite phrases and an apt metaphor I found to be both true and inspiring:

“Pen and paper. That’s what I loved. You make little marks on paper, and if you make enough of them, you have a story, and isn’t that pure magic?”

And,

“And that’s it. No matter how long you live, you have stories to tell, and nestling in each one there may be a nugget of wisdom.”

And, my personal favorite, since it is a metaphor involving a reference to my beloved Western Americana:

“Dreams come with tremendous energy, with shimmering horizons. What else is there to do but head off on the Conestoga wagon of the soul?”

When you find what you love, what else is there to do indeed? Amen, brother.

Chapter 132 Literary Influences — Richard Osberg

Every year near the start of spring, I am reminded of an English professor I had in college who made us memorize and recite the first 18 lines of the General Prologue to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in Middle English. Middle English, for those who are not literary scholars, is the language written and spoken in England from the early 1100s until about 1500. Geoffrey Chaucer is the best-known English poet to write in Middle English, the vernacular of his time.

If you don’t care to read the Middle English version of Chaucer’s Prologue below, I’ve also included a more modern version. If you don’t care to read that either, Chaucer’s general premise is that the arrival of spring makes people long to go on a road trip, the primary road trip of the time he was writing (sometime between 1387 and 1400) being a religious pilgrimage. Those road trip books and movies everyone likes, the ones that celebrate the journey over the destination — their origins are in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. If you’ve never read it, I encourage you to check it out for yourself.

I’m reminded of Chaucer and my professor this week because Spring is in the air here in the Bay Area. It’s been sunny, and flowers are beginning to bloom. A fresh breeze (as opposed to a howling winter wind) blows through the air. I look out the window and see the daffodils bloom, and my mind thinks, “Whan that Aprill. . .” For some reason, I can still recite most of the lines from Chaucer’s Prologue in Middle English, and nearly two decades later, so can those friends of mine who studied under Mr. Osberg. In fact, in our nerdy, English-major ways, we have been known to greet each other with the lines, “Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote…” even though many years have passed since those happy school days.

I was also reminded of Chaucer today because I received the alumni magazine from my college in the mail and, sadly, learned that the professor who taught me those 18 lines and helped me to appreciate their beauty died of brain cancer in October. Mr. Richard Osberg (he had a Ph.D. in Middle English, but always wanted to be called “Mister” as opposed to “Doctor”) had a great teaching style that made seemingly dusty, ancient works like Canterbury Tales (written even before Gutenberg’s printing press) seem like new discoveries for his students. He even looked the part of the academic — full mustache, Chaucer tie, vest, tweed jacket with elbow patches, and — though perhaps it is a trick of my memory, I can’t be certain — a pipe. I took Mr. Osberg’s Chaucer class, and then his Critical Composition class, and, as a senior, wrote my thesis on Arthurian legend under his direction. Being an English major at a university in the middle of the then up and coming Silicon Valley, surrounded by technology and the idea that worth was defined only by IPOs and stock options, I found it comforting to know that this man made a good life being a prominent Medievalist and a splendid teacher.

I didn’t keep in close touch with Mr. Osberg after graduation, but I did enjoy the end-of-quarter potluck dinners at his and his wife’s house, his wonderful poetic ability, his championing of the Oxford English Dictionary, and his amazing powers of making the old new for us students. He’ll be much missed, and he’ll also be fondly remembered as one of the people who showed me that a life spent studying old books and sharing their lessons is a life of great value indeed.

Obituary here.

THE GENERAL PROLOGUE TO THE CANTERBURY TALES
MIDDLE ENGLISH
Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open eye-
(So priketh hem Nature in hir corages);
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for to seke
That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seeke.

MODERN ENGLISH
When in April the sweet showers fall
That pierce March’s drought to the root and all
And bathed every vein in liquor that has power
To generate therein and sire the flower;
When Zephyr also has with his sweet breath,
Filled again, in every holt and heath,
The tender shoots and leaves, and the young sun
His half-course in the sign of the Ram has run,
And many little birds make melody
That sleep through all the night with open eye
(So Nature pricks them on to ramp and rage)
Then folk do long to go on pilgrimage,
And palmers to go seeking out strange strands,
To distant shrines well known in distant lands.
And specially from every shire’s end
Of England they to Canterbury went,
The holy blessed martyr there to seek
Who helped them when they lay so ill and weak.

In memory of Mr. Richard Osberg, teacher of Chaucer to all Santa Clara University English majors from 1982-2007.