Picture-Perfect Time Travel with Nellie Bly

I read Cay Gibson's book, Picture-Perfect Chilhood, and have begun to take her advice. I checked out a children's book from the library: Nellie Bly's Book: Around the World in 72 Days. It is Nellie's account of her race around the world to beat the record of fictional character, Phileas Fogg, who was the protagonist in Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne. Nellie traveled as a reporter for the New York World newspaper.

Emma scarfed up Nellie's book. She read her favorite passages aloud to me, the first being,

Someone suggested that a revolver would be a good companion piece for the passsport, but I had such a strong belief in the world's greeting me as I greeted it, that I refused to arm myself. I knew if my conduct was proper I should always find men ready to protect me, let them be Americans, English, French, German or anything else.

This quote led us into a great discussion on how the definition of feminism must have changed since Nellie's time. From there we talked about the corresponding destruction of a culture that used to be counted on to protect women. Herb told me that he stopped recently to help a lady change a flat tire. She was all dressed up in heels and everything and had already started loosening the lug nuts. She told Herb that he was the only person who had stopped.

Back to Nellie's book. . .Reading it in July was perfect: Emma was getting ready to go to Camp Olmstead in Pennsylvania for ten days.

Can you guess which trip required more luggage--a trip around the world or a trip to Pennsylvania?

Before you guess, let me quote Nellie:

I bought one hand-bag with the determination to confine my baggage to its limit. . .Packing that bag was the most difficult undertaking of my life; there was so much to go into such little space.

I got everything in at last except the extra dress. Then the question resolved itself into this: I must either add a parcel to my baggage or go around the world in one dress. I always hated parcels, so I sacrificed the dress. But I brought out a last summer's silk bodice and after considerable squeezing managed to crush it into the hand-bag.

One never knows the capacity of an ordinary satchel until dire necessity compels the exercise of all one's ingenuity to reduce everything to the smallest possible compass. In mine I was able to pack: two traveling caps, three veils, a pair of slippers, a complete outfit of toilet articles, ink-stand, pens, pencils, copypaper, pins, needles and thread, a dressing gown, a tennis blazer, a small flask and a drinking cup, several complete changes of underwear, a liberal supply of handkerchiefs and, most bulk and uncompromising of all, a jar of cold cream to keep my face from chapping in the varied climates I should encounter.

Emma hauled a large suitcase, a smaller carry-on, and a purse, and she worried that she wouldn't have enough clothes to make it through the ten days.

This Sweet Intermezzo

I am overcome daily with a quiet joy, immersed in luxury, wrapped in security, supported with strength. Herb is home and has been home with me for two weeks now.

No, he is not retired, but I have a foretaste of what it will be like, and it is good.

I read a book once that talked about the role that husbands played in family life before the Industrial Revolution, when the majority of men worked at home as farmers or craftsmen. Their role and resulting impact was huge. Before I read that book I was sure that if we could just get mothers back home, we could restore the family and then the culture. Now I know that the loss of mothers was the second blow to the family. First the fathers were lost to the factories.

I don’t know how much longer Herb will be home while we search for alternative treatments for the chronic pain he has from nerve damage in his shoulder. But while he is here I will treasure each moment and thank God for this sweet intermezzo.

My Dad Got a Wake-up Call From Someone Asleep

Yesterday morning early, Dad left to prowl the roads and see if he could see why the power was off at the house. After cruising eastbound down Hwy. 90, he decided to turn and go back home. He had slowed to about 30 mph when BLAM! he got hit from behind.

The gentleman who was driving this Mazda pick-up had fallen asleep at the wheel. Thanks to seatbelts and an airbag, he walked away from the accident. My Dad's only injury was a cut on his wrist from his watchband when it broke. Unfortunately, both vehicles are totaled.

Cycling into Empty Nesthood with Too Many Gears

Beverly is my big sister. She is 51, and I am 48. When I became a mom in 1991, I was totally clueless about what to expect. I began watching Bev to prepare me for the upcoming dips in the thrilling roller coaster ride that they call "motherhood".

Bev recently entered the infamous Empty Nest stage. It is not a dip in the roller coaster ride but a hair-stands-on-end loop-the-loop. The really dangerous thing about the Empty Nest stage is that you may have an intense desire to release your seatbelt at the top of the inside loop, causing you to freefall into the dreaded Empty Nest Syndrome. Your husband can not save you because he can't hear your screams over the roar of his new Harley Davidson.

Clearly, the Empty Nest stage is not for the unprepared. I have started preparing already. Three times daily I close my eyes tightly, throw wide my arms, clench my fists, and suck in my breath while moaning loud and long from the dark and putrid depths of my grieving gut. It's the opposite of the Lamaze method. Instead of trying to push the child out, you are hoping to suck him back in. If you have a Shop Vac, you'll grasp this concept immediately.

How is Bev dealing with it? She has started a blog and taken up bicycling. Read about it here: http://gardensloth.wordpress.com/

LyondellBasell Refinery Accident is Call to Prayer and Reflection

Please join me in praying for the souls of the men who died yesterday afternoon at the LyondellBasell refinery in Houston where Herb works. He was at home when the accident occurred. A crane, one of the largest in the world, collapsed. Owned and operated by Deep South, it was on-site in preparation for LyondellBasell's turnaround on a coker unit. Coke, the product of this unit, is used for fuel in some power plants and other fuel-burning processes. Black mountains of coke can be seen along the shores of the Houston ship channel waiting to be transported by ship.

In the midst of tragedy there are still things for which I am thankful. I am thankful that an alarm sounded when the crane got into trouble, allowing most people to get out of the way. I am thankful that the crane did not fall in the opposite direction onto the coker unit where approximately 1,700 people were working. I am thankful for the new appreciation I have for the crane operators. In my ignorance, I never considered them when Herb tried to communicate to me the awesomeness of the crane. He told me that it took more than 250 flatbed 18-wheelers to deliver it to the site. He had wanted to take me to see it after Mass last Sunday, but I wanted to take a nap instead. I wish now I had gone.

Eternal rest grant unto them O Lord.
And may perpetual light shine upon them.

May the souls of all the faithful departed
Through the mercy of God rest in peace.

VT Contra Dance

We contra danced for the first time last Saturday night. Read my post below: Entranced with Contra Dance.

Entranced with Contra Dance

“I’ve never seen so many happy, smiling faces,” I commented to my young friend, Kyrie, as we sat watching the dancers whirl about the room.

“They’re not smiling, Miss Wendy; it’s the G-force,!” Kyrie contradicted.

She had a point. We had both been whirled and twirled through our first experience at a Contra Dance--a group folk dance in two lines that shares some steps with square dancing--until we were quite dizzy. To make matters worse, I could not stop laughing through the entire first dance. Luckily my experienced dance partner was patient and kind.

The dance was one of the regularly scheduled ones sponsored by the Houston Area Traditional Dance Society, an organization that promotes contra dancing and other traditional American folk dances. HATDS sponsors a contra dance most 2nd and 4th Saturdays, always with a live band. The music is mostly Celtic jigs and reels. The beauty of contra is that each dance is taught and called, so you can have a fabulous time even as a beginner. Best of all, it is courtship friendly, giving my teenagers a way to gain experience interacting with members of the opposite sex without one-on-one dating.

It was truly an enchanted evening, complete with a great band called Evil Genius and a short and wide little dancing man who could have been a character from a fairy tale. Herb and I had brought Nathaniel and Emma and Emma's weekend company, Kyrie and Mary Catherine. Kyrie and Nathaniel had been reluctant to come but were quickly won over once they started dancing. Nathaniel had to literally be dragged to the floor by one of the ladies but his joyful countenance during the dance betrayed his true feelings.

We found out about contra dancing from Debbie Hesche, wife of Brice Hesche, the square dance caller at May Community Center where Nathaniel and Emma are taking lessons. I told Debbie that Emma and I wanted to learn how to do the kind of dancing that you see in a Jane Austen movie like Pride and Prejudice. She told me about the Houston Area Traditional Dance Society, and I looked them up on the internet. From their site I also learned about English Country Dancing, the direct ancestor of contra, which is actually the kind of dancing that Jane Austen characters enjoyed. We look forward to learning more about it.

In the meantime, though, we are eager to attend more contra dances and be whirled into joyful abandon, forgetting the world outside of two rhythmic, moving lines of smiling faces.

Lake Charles Diocese Working to Restore Christendom

We lived in the Lake Charles Diocese from 1997 to 2004, so I was so happy to read on Rorate-Caeli this morning about the Solemn High Mass that was celebrated in the cathedral there last week. I don't know who wrote the article, but they did a fine job. What a blessing Bishop Glen John Provost has been for that diocese! Luckily I had already had a heads-up on this great news from my friend Cathy. She had e-mailed me promptly to let me know how beautiful the Mass was. She said that afterward several people asked her where they could attend a Latin Mass on a regular basis.

That was how it worked for my family. We attended one Latin Mass four and a half years ago and were smitten with the reverence, the beauty, the pure Catholicity, the unabashed masculinity. I was deeply shocked that the Church had given up this treasure for the new Mass. Since then we have been back to the new Mass only three times. At first, we saved and nurtured our faith by driving two hours each week to assist at the Latin Mass. When we moved to Texas, we were able to cut that time in half.

I pray that the Bishop Provost's welcoming of Tradition back to Lake Charles will heal a lot of the painful division that existed in the past. My own dear Catholic homeschool group there was torn apart over this issue. It was very, very painful--a tragic loss. It was actually a relief for us when we moved and joined a non-denominational homeschool group. We are the only Catholics, and the Protestants are so welcoming. They don't care which Mass you attend!

May Bishop Provost's example be emulated everywhere, and may God bless him abundantly!

You Can't Beet This

Lew Rockwell has a link to a Telegraph article on beet juice as an alternative to prescription blood pressure medicine. My mother has been taking cinnamon pills to control her blood sugar. Maybe now she'll stir the cinnamon into a glass of beet juice each morning.

My uncle is taking the same blood pressure medicine as my mom, but he is living on a sailboat in the Caribbean and does not need a prescription to get it. He says that you can also get pain relievers with codeine in them over the counter. He and my aunt report that they have had good medical care at cheap rates.

Happy 1st Anniversary, Summorum Pontificum!

Thank you, Pope Benedict, for freeing the traditional Mass, the "most beautiful thing this side of heaven!"

I am also grateful to New Catholic at the Rorate Caeli blog for his consistently exceptional reporting on traditional Catholic news. Read his Summorum Pontificum tribute.

Nelly Bly

I was not familiar with Stephen Foster's "Nelly Bly" until Emma started playing and singing it on the piano. We both giggle at the line describing how Nelly "wakens up".

Foster wrote the song in 1850 as one of his "Ethiopian" songs. Although he wrote it in black dialect, Foster's instruction to minstrel singers was to sing it with sympathy, not derision. He thought that a song describing a loving black couple would humanize them in the eyes of the white population.

Curiously, the title of a song whose lyrics described domestic bliss became the pen name for a woman who is now an icon of the feminist movement. Elizabeth Jane Cochran took "Nellie Bly" as her pen name when she began her first newspaper job in 1880 with The Pittsburgh Dispatch. At 19 she was offered the job after she wrote a letter to the editor challenging a column that said that women who worked outside the home were "a monstrosity". Bly became famous as an investigative reporter. She is most well-known for working undercover in a women's insane asylum and for traveling around the world in 72 days--a feat PBS featured in one of its American Experience history programs.

Nellie Bly
by Stephen Foster

music clip

Nelly Bly ! Nelly Bly! Bring the broom along,
We'll sweep the kitchen clean, my dear,
And have a little song.

Poke the wood, my lady love,
And make the fire burn,
And while I take the banjo down,
Just give the mush a turn.

Heigh, Nelly! Ho, Nelly!
Listen, love, to me,
I'll sing for you, play for you
A dulcet melody.

Nelly Bly has a voice like a turtle dove,
I hear it in the meadow and I hear it in the grove.
Nelly Bly has a heart warm as a cup of tea,
And bigger than the sweet potatoes down in Tennessee.

Nelly Bly shuts her eye when she goes to sleep.
And when she wakens up again her eyeballs 'gin to peep.
The way she walks, she lifts her foot,
and then she puts it down,
And when it falls, there's music there
in that part of the town.

Nelly Bly! Nelly Bly! Never, never sigh;
Never bring the tear drop to the corner of your eye.
For the pie is made of pumpkins
and the mush is made of corn,
And there's corn and pumpkins plenty, love,
a-lyin' in the barn.

Hatty Birthday

We celebrated Herb and Nathaniel's June 30th birthday for two days. On Sunday we brunched elegantly at the Hotel Galvez in Galveston with Herb and Nathaniel's Schola buddy, Mickey. Mickey's birthday was June 27th. The champagne was scrumptious, the piano playing divine.

Monday, Herb and Nathaniel golfed at Tour 18, then returned home in time for Oreo ice cream cake and presents. Nathaniel and Emma presented Herb with a hat, and he loved it! The hat is a Stetson "Andover". Here is the description from DelMonico Hatter: "A Florentine Milan Straw Hat from Stetson. The brim on the hat shown is Sand color and the crown is Beige. The Stetson Andover is also available in Grey/Black which is a Grey crown and a Black brim. The hat has a sculptured hat band that goes perfectly with the brim and crown colors. The brim width is 2 1/4" and the crown has a pinch in it. We think that this is a very handsome straw hat, it looks well on our customers."

Emma had Herb review the hat etiquette graphic that I had posted on the refrigerator.


After he got it back from Nathaniel, he wore it the rest of the night, and that included going to the May Community Center to watch Nathaniel and Emma square dance. It was their second night of lessons.