I Have Reached the Pinnacle of Summer Achievement, for Wilbear Wright is Mine

Oh, Happy Day, for I have achieved the dream that I have dreamed since March 14.

Wilbear Wright is MINE!

To earn Wilbear Wright, you have to visit at least eight sites on the Dayton Aviation Trail.

For me, Sites 1 and 2 were the Wright-Dunbar Interpretive Center and Paul Laurence Dunbar's house.

Site 3 was the graves of Wilbur and Orville Wright.

Sites 4 and 5 were the National Museum of the United States Air Force and the Aviation Hall of Fame.

Sites 6 and 7 were the Butler County Warbirds and the Wright "B" Flyer, Inc.

And Site 8 is Carillon Historical Park, home of an excellent museum about the Wright brothers, including an actual 1905 Wright Flyer in a display that was partly designed by Orville Wright himself!

Also this unrestored part of a 1905 Wright Flyer, which is actually outside the paid part of the park, so you can just go see it whenever you want:

I had to rely on my shitty cell phone camera because the flash on my Canon is even worse, but still, there's so much fascinating detail to see:

The fabric looks like a linen or a cotton--if there was proper signage that said, then I missed it--which is interesting, because the earliest glider that the Wright brothers tested at Kitty Hawk was sateen. Wilbur had to alter it on a local woman's hand-cranked treadle sewing machine because he wasn't able to find the lengths of wood on-site that he needed, and when the brothers were finished with that year's experiments they abandoned their glider, so that same woman scavenged the sateen to sew dresses for her two daughters. 

The stitching was certainly done by machine, probably another hand-operated treadle, and the stitches are VERY tidy--that's what sewing slowly will do for you!

We had come to the park specifically to see the Wright brothers stuff, so were a little baffled at first by the other historical displays. I don't know much about Ohio history other than the Mississippians and the Wright brothers, so we just sort of wandered into old buildings and absorbed random content.

This place had so many animatronics! Well, to my knowledge it actually has TWO animatronics, but two feels like a lot. One of them is this guy, and spoiler alert, yes, he IS related to Ichabod Crane, lol!

We wandered through this old wooden two-story building--

--while learning fun facts like the community's first jail was a literal pit in the ground. I would not want to await trial in a pit!

The buildings were moved to this site, though, so that boarded up well there isn't the pit, I don't think.

You know I have to snoop around every historical vegetable garden I see!

There was a whole building to display a CRAZY flood that the town had on Easter 1913, including this adorable old-timey Weather Channel report:

And there was another whole building full of Wright brothers merch!

The mock-up of the Wright Cycle Company and the print shop was a little weird, since you can see the real versions of both for free about a five-minute drive from here, but I never get tired of looking at these old-timey bicycles with cork hand grips:

Way back at the Wright "B" Flyer, Inc., we overheard a random guy trying to bait the docent into a "gotcha" moment by informing her that in Brazil, they lauded a Brazilian guy for having invented the airplane first. This museum had a whole wall for various pioneers of aviation, including their specific accomplishments, and I'm guessing that guy was talking about this dude:

To be fair, the wording on that display *does* sound a little defensive, so there might be more to the controversy than they're stating. Interesting!

I was genuinely surprised/impressed by how many cool artifacts Carillon Historical Park has scored. Check out some actual fragments of the Wright Flyer II!

AND they've got the camera, THE camera that took the historic photo of the first successful sustained flight:

This guy is my favorite brother. He used to get easily overstimulated and lash out at people, and SAME!

The Wright Flyer III has a terrific gallery all to itself, in which you can walk all the way around the plane and see it at a level that Orville Wright himself specified as the best level to see all the details:

As my older kid and I were standing at the barrier and discussing some detail or other--I will not be convinced that the Wright Flyers do not look backwards, but my kid refuses to agree--all of a sudden out of absolutely nowhere a man started speaking to me from just beside my other shoulder, where there had been literally nobody a second before, and I was so startled that I screamed. 

I turned to him and tried to apologize and tell him he'd just startled me because I hadn't known he was there, but he WOULD NOT STOP INTERRUPTING ME or acknowledge my apology and explanation and instead insisted on talking over me to tell me that if I stood up on the bench at the back of the gallery I could take a picture of the whole plane at once.

For Pete's sake, Dude! But also, he was correct, and I love my photo of the whole plane all at once:

Huzzah to probably our 300th image/recreation of a Wright Flyer at this point! We're earning those Wilbears!

Also, Wilbur Wright's favorite satchel that he apparently took everywhere. I'm obsessed and I want one just like it:

There was an excellent #womensupportingwomen moment in this gallery. My partner and I were sitting on a bench watching early footage of the design and construction of Carillon Park, and in the footage was a video of Orville Wright walking arm-in-arm with Edith Deeds, the wealthy woman who once saw a really cool carillon while she was on vacation and decided that Dayton, Ohio, needed a really cool carillon, too, and if she was going to the trouble to have a carillon built she might as well go to some more trouble and build a whole entire park about it.

ME: "Huh. I wonder when that video was taken?"
PARTNER: "In the early 1950s."

ME: "I thought Orville Wright died in 1948?"

And before my partner could even respond to that--and it would have been in a reasonable manner, because he's not a mansplainer!--a completely random woman looking at a display to our left said, "Orville Wright did die in 1948."

Thank you, Anonymous Woman! She was NOT going to settle for even the smallest chance that my man might double down or act like an ass in the face of my objective correctness. It's also super baller, because whenever I hear a man being vocally incorrect in a museum I just rant about it to my companions while they attempt to get me to rant a little more quietly. 

Should I be confronting more incorrect men?

Anyway, the timeline *is* kind of unclear, because in the Wright Flyer display they make a big deal about the fact that Orville Wright helped with the restoration of the plane for display and then they show him walking with the founder of the park through what looks like some kind of opening ceremony-type festival and THEN they tell you that the museum part of the park opened in 1950 but they kind of elide the fact that by 1950 both Orville Wright and Edith Deeds were dead.

Tangent, but check out this game that Orville Wright patented and sold. It looks bananas, and I want to see it in action. 

On our way out of the park we stopped at the gift shop to collect our very last Dayton Aviation Trail stamp, then have our stamps tallied, and finally receive our very own Wilbear Wright for each of us.

I LOVE HIM. He is ready for adventure, with his little aviation jacket and goggles, and he's the perfect size to pop in my backpack without taking up too much room, so from now on, I'm taking him with me on all my travels. 

Just me and my little old Wilbear, traveling the world and having adventures and counting every Wright Flyer recreation we see!

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P.P.S. I'm currently reading this excellent biography of the Wright brothers, so be prepared for a summer FULL of Wright brothers fun facts!

Dragon Rider Smut Book Report: Iron Flame is Stupid But I Read It Anyway

 

Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Welcome to the second meeting of the Dragon Rider Smut Book Club! Here's what happened in the first book. 

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In the second book, Violet and Xaden are still having the same fight over and over again.

Awesome.

@romantasysociety 🤦‍♀️ Did you prefer Vi in Book 1 or Book 2? Im seriously looking forward to who she’ll be in Book 3!🤷‍♀️ 🎥 @Tiaslibrary 🥰 📚 @Rebecca Yarros ’s Empyrean Series 🥳 __________________________ #ironflame #ironflamebook #ironflametheories #ironflametheory #ironflamebooktok #ironflamememe #ironflamemerch #ironflamespoilers #rebeccayarrosironflame #ironflame🔥 ♬ original sound - Fourth Wing

Sometimes in a book, a character will make me feel like a literal space alien thanks to relational choices that they make that are so normalized within the book. Like, am *I* the crazy one for thinking that You Must Tell Me Everything is a crazy rule to set for your partner, AND that You Must Ask Me Anything You Want to Know And I’ll Only Tell You Something If You Ask Me is a crazy boundary? This is such a stupid fight to have for most of two books, because these are such stupid relationship rules!

Or am I actually literally a space alien?

I also think Violet doesn’t need to keep the secrets that she’s keeping from her friends, but Fucking Malek, Rhiannon, you are as bad as Violet with wanting to know everything going on inside people’s heads! Can you not give Violet a little space, please? Am I a literal space alien for thinking that it’s crazy for friends who are older than twelve to be this wrapped up in OMG I can tell something’s wrong what is it, um I’m good nothing’s wrong, no seriously tell me I know something’s wrong, etc. etc. ad infinitum.

@emfunnsbooks now you can be all caught up for the emotional devastation that will be onyx storm!!! xoxoxo — #booktokfyp #booksoftiktok #onyxstorm #fourthwingrebeccayarros #ironflamespoilers ♬ original sound - em :)📖💭

Violet really started to also get on my nerves with how often she’s got a tummy ache in this book. Every time someone says something emotionally charged, or she can’t tell her bestie a secret, or there’s a lick of tension in the air her stomach hurts, or it drops, or it squeezes, or sometimes for a change of pace her throat might tighten or she might feel nauseated. I’d have to go back and check, which I really don’t want to do, to see if this is true, but it would be marginally cool and an interesting-ish authorial move if this only started to happen after Varrish tortures her. Like, Yarros has always made a point about how Violet lives in her body, with her constant pain and joint issues (she learned the word “subluxate” for this book, so that’s fun), but it would be interesting if the experience being tortured for several days has caused her to hold that trauma in her body and express it through the one place Varrish couldn’t physically hurt, her tum-tum. It’s very possible that I’m wrong, though, and her tummy hurt throughout the entire book and I only noticed it in the latter half when it started getting on my nerves.

Side note, but I’m glad that we’re not raping people here, even during torture. Yarros gets a bonus star from me for that. Also the torture scene was genuinely good! I mean, it's so sad that Violet was tortured, I guess, but it's amazing how the quality of the book jumps up when she's genuinely in peril and not overpowered and also continually pandered to.

@myproseandcons Be a good friend. Save this to send to your bestie after she’s done with her Iron Flame read through 👯‍♀️ #IronFlame #Booktok ♬ Originalton - 🥀 verenarenafee 🥀

The book’s big climactic battle is stupid, but I’m also giving Yarros a bonus star because it was so stupid but simultaneously fast-paced that I was able to relate it beat by beat to my entire family, who have not read this series, with much hilarity. It was a lot of “okay, so in the first book Violet had this enemy and she killed him, but then the administration secretly brought him back to life and he’d totally changed and was a super good guy, so you’re not going to BELIEVE what happened when they went to check on the ward stone,” and “okay remember how Andarna is the most special because she’s a baby, well it turns out that she’s actually the MOST most special,” and “so then Xaden couldn’t hold out and he was about to die and that means that Violet was going to die and THAT means that everyone in Basgiath was going to die before they could repair the ward stone and THAT means that everyone in Navarre was going to die so you are not going to BELIEVE what he did!” My audience was rolling with laughter. It was awesome.

And after all that the only super important character who died was Violet’s mother, who was underutilized anyway so whatever. I did not buy her redemption arc that she was only being the world’s worst parent so she could secretly be the world’s best parent blech. I wish Yarros had really leaned in and made her some kind of secret venin or venin collaborator--I am so sad to give up my headcanon that she murdered Violet’s father to keep the venin secret, but I guess I can still keep my theory that *something* suss happened regarding his death.

@the.booktok.girls The best hype dragon in the whole book. #booktok #bookish #fantasy #fantasybooks #fantasybooktok #fourthwingrebeccayarros #fourthwingbook #violetsorrengail #tairn #andarna #bookmeme #ironflame #ironflamebook #Meme #MemeCut ♬ original sound - Iowa_wendy

Onyx Storm predictions:

• Violet and Xaden are going to endlessly fight about Xaden’s venin status. They will fight the same fight every time they’re alone, they will say the same things every time they fight, and it will be boring.
• Violet’s father will turn out to have secretly been… something. A rebel working against her mother? Also a venin but he also never used it so he can be a model for Xaden? I dunno, but Yarros is obsessed with Violet’s entire family so there’s definitely more to the father’s story.
• I still think there’s going to be something weird about Violet’s ancestry. Maybe she was adopted or stolen from venin parents or she was a baby venin but forgot or her parents did experiments on her.

Final thought: the infantry was my favorite, and I don’t understand why they only had one scene together and then fell off the face of the Earth. I hope Onyx Storm has more infantry!

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Do You Want to be in the Dragon Rider Smut Book Club with Me? We're Reading Fourth Wing!

Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

So, based on how partly enjoyable but mostly cringe I’ve found the much-hyped ACOTAR series so far, I’d expected that I’d also snark read my way through dragon rider smut the same way I’m snark reading my way through fairy smut.

But slap my face, because I’m actually genuinely enjoying the Fourth Wing series?

Mind you, it’s still VERY snarkable, but whereas ACOTAR was over-the-top cringe and was done no favors by its writing (HOW many times are you going to say the words “high lord,” FEYRE?!?!?), Fourth Wing has dialed the world-building down juuuuuust enough that it comes out on the right side of cartoonish, and though most of its twists and climactic plot beats are obvious, a couple are, happily, genuine surprises!

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Speaking of obvious plot beats… Basgiath War College’s rules are super draconian, which is how you know that Violet lives in the Evil Empire. You also know pretty much the second Violet whips out her family book of folk tales and starts reciting stories about the evil venin and their wyvern familiars that we’re definitely going to see evil venin and their wyvern familiars at some point, as well as probably all the other stuff in that story that I’m too lazy to look back up right now. Other corny tropes: gosh, y’all aren’t going to believe this, but it turns out that even though Violet is SO SMOL and SO WEAK, she is also the MOST SPECIAL dragon rider, because she gets TWO dragons, including the BEST dragon--gaspeth! Also, she’s got a boy best friend who loves her but is smotheringly too overprotective of her, and y’all. There is a guy who Hates her for Reasons, but also he’s hot. But he’s Troubled, and he’s got a History, so gosh, Violet probably better stay away from him!

But I dunno. Whereas Feyre and Tamlin annoyed the snot out of me, like, immediately, I actually like Violet and Xaden a lot. I’m terrified that they’re going to have this same stupid fight that they keep having over and over and over again for the entire series (Why won’t Xaden tell you every single thing in his mind and heart and all his rebellion plans immediately without you even having to ask? Because that’s stupid! And impossible!), and they have the cheeziest sex scenes, but hey. They also have no chemistry, so they’re working with the tools on hand.

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ANYWAY, other than some cornball elements and obvious plot beats, this is a solid fantasy creation. I love the world-building, clunky as it is, with all its nichey little rules about magic and how to act around dragons, etc. I love the over-the-top deadly boarding school vibe--it’s giving Scholomance, which I also love. I love a crafty heroine who goes morally grey to solve her problems. And although I liked Xaden more when he low-key acted like he hated Violet, he’s still overall an interesting character, and I dig that he’s got “secrets” yet to be revealed.

And yes, fine. I LOVE it when there’s a good tag line, and Fourth Wing has the best tag line I’ve read in a looooong time. I want that shit cross-stitched on a pillow. I want to DIY a Xaden Riorsen flight jacket and stick a homemade Iron Squad patch on it.

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Okay, my predictions for the future books, because I am DEFINITELY going to continue this series:

1. At some point, Xaden will penetrate Violet with his shadow thingies. I’m sure that’s the main tag in a billion fanfics already, so Yarros might as well just lean into it.
2. There has got to be some more shit going down with Violet’s family. Is maybe her mom going to turn out to be a venin? Or… her mom sacrificed her dad to them as part of an alliance? Or maybe her mom had an affair with a venin and Violet is actually a venin’s child and her mom murdered her dad when he found out?
3. Something about Andarna, but I really do not know what because other than stopping time twice she’s pretty useless.

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My Kid Went to SEA and I Read a Book About It

The Robert C. Seamans in Auckland, New Zealand, November 2024

Reading the Glass: A Captain's View of Weather, Water, and Life on Ships by Elliot Rappaport
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I found this book while I was looking for any input about the very odd-sounding study-abroad program my college student told me she’d been accepted into. I mean, my perception of a study-abroad is a semester in Paris, or maybe Australia if you’re feeling really wild. You take some classes, you travel on the weekends, and you come back with a harmless affectation having to do with Vegemite or macarons or something. But, like… a study-abroad doing oceanographic research while sailing in a tall ship in the South Pacific? Does that honestly sound real to you? As for me, I low-key thought my kid was getting set up to be human trafficked.

Well, apparently the Sea Education Association IS real, and Elliot Rappaport captained for them for several years. So while everyone else was reading this book for the weather, which, to be fair, IS interesting content, I was reading to learn more about what life is like on a tall ship/oceanographic research vessel crewed primarily by college students.

I love how respectfully Rappaport writes about these student crews, while still telling cute and funny stories about them. On their first day at sea, he writes about them, “Stunned and eager, they rush to help, faces bearing the telltale signs of sensory overload and the glaze of freshly applied sunscreen.” Sounds about right, especially for my student, who in her one call home from a port in Tuvalu informed me of her realization that she “really needed to reapply sunscreen every two hours to keep from burning.” It’s not as if her mother has been telling her that her entire life or anything! Ah, well--everyone knows that experience is the best teacher.

In Rappaport’s writing, you see the benefit of experience, as the students transform from seasick and hapless students to competent sailors over the course of their couple of months together, and you get the idea that even when they’re leaving frowny-face Post-its on the navigational log or asking uncomfortable questions about colonialism in the South Pacific, Rappaport appreciates them and his valuable role in their education. I was especially interested to read his anecdote about seasickness and how it’s overcome, and to learn that even Rappaport occasionally suffers from it. I enjoyed his anecdotes of atypical adventures, the cyclones and storms, the occasional medical emergency on board, the time that they came upon a ship in distress in French Polynesia and the college student who happened to be a French minor was called upon to translate, but I’m also VERY happy to report that my student claims her own sailing was wonderful but fairly adventure-free.

At least, that’s the story she’s telling her mother…

My college student sailed on the Robert C. Seamans. Rappaport has this to say about the ship:

“The Robert C. Seamans is forty-two meters long, a sailing school ship built of steel and certified to carry a crew of thirty-eight on any of the world’s oceans. She has white topsides, tan spars, her gear well-kept but with the characteristic patina of working vessels. Her name is displayed on trailboards at the bow, raised wooden plaques that have from time to time been lost to the sea in severe weather.”

All of his stories and descriptions are equally as vivid as this description. I won’t lie and say that I was always following his meteorology explanations, because I really wasn’t, but his authorial voice is very real, both conversational and competent, if that makes sense. He’ll be telling you an interesting story about meeting a guy in a bar during a blizzard, and the guy telling him about being a rescue pilot and what his voice sounded like and how young he looked, and then he’ll hit you with, “On some days without warning you meet the people you most aspire to resemble, and in following can only strive after their example.”

Damn, Rappaport. That hit hard.

Even though I wasn’t reading for the science and geography lore as much as the “this is what it’s like to sail on a tall ship” lore, some proper facts did get pounded into my head. For instance, this fact I had to look up later to truly believe it: “The Hawaiian chain begins amid molten pyrotechnics at the eponymous (and geologically brand-new) Big Island and then runs northwest, farther than most people realize--a row of diminishing dots strung nearly to the 180th meridian, halfway to Japan.” There’s a really cool map on Wikipedia that shows the full archipelago! I also researched his brief anecdote about Moruroa and the nuclear weapons testing that the French did there, and OMG it’s so bad. And I found a new citizen science project in Old Weather, which transcribes old ship logs to collate the scientific data hidden inside. His section on Cook Strait also reassured me that I was justified in being miserable seasick on the ferry from Wellington to Picton, ahem. What else would one expect from “a giant funnel, set to amplify whatever wind exists into something more powerful”?

I’d love to read more histories by people with unusual career paths like this, especially sailors, which I honestly didn’t really think was still a career until my kid told me she was going to spend the semester being one. She’s an environmental scientist, and although she did proper scientific research on her trip, imagine the value of a thousand-plus years of ocean data that we’ve lost every time a sailor died without passing on their stories. The Old Weather database is unlocking the valuable information hidden in those ship logs, but imagine all the casual anecdotes we’ve missed that would have provided datasets about flora and fauna, ocean currents and weather, just from mining the lived experience of historical sailors.

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I Read Prairie Fires, and I'm Pretty Mad about Rose Wilder Lane

paying my respects (with awful white balance) in 2012

Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

So you know how I’ve mentioned before that if Pa Ingalls has no haters in this world, then it’s time to plan my funeral?

Well, if Rose Wilder Lane has no haters left in this world, then it’s because I’ve discovered time travel and gone back in time just to experience the joy of smacking her across the back of the head. Christ, what an asshole!

This book made 21 hours of the approximately 35-hour road trip I took to visit my kids at college fly by, and meant that I could also profitably use every bathroom break to text the family group chat bitching about Pa and Rose… at least until I hit up the Roger Williams National Memorial on my way from Falmouth to Philadelphia, after which I started obsessively texting everyone all about how we’d all still be living under the thumb of extremist Puritan theocracy if it hadn’t been for Roger Williams, but that’s a whole different review.

There are certain historical figures/famous people whose life stories I can’t get enough of, and honestly, the more gossipy the information is, the better. I will read about Vincent Van Gogh, Louisa May Alcott, and Britney Spears FOREVER, just like I am always thirsty for more info about Laura Ingalls Wilder and her family. The lure is that they’re all complicated people with complicated familial relationships, and I get to play armchair psychologist while satisfying all my looky-loo urges. I may have finally met my perfect match in Caroline Fraser, as this massive, sweeping history of America and biography of not just Laura, but also Rose and Pa and Ma and, to a lesser extent, a dozen other people, FINALLY contains the bounty of information that I want to know when I want to know about someone. Like, Darling, don’t just tell me your life story, also tell me the life story of your three-times great-grandfather and how the Dakotas became separate states and the timeline of legislation that moved the native peoples off their lands and something or other about Albania--to be honest, I’m still a little lost about most of the Albania stuff. As I was driving through a mountain range in a downpour, avoiding the toll roads per usual, there was a giant sign that said “Reduced Visibility When Flashing,” with the lights flashing, and then all of a sudden I was in a fog bank in a downpour on a terrifying bridge between two mountainy bits and I was pretty sure I was about to die. But I didn’t! But I also didn’t absorb too much about what the deal was with Albania, either. Something something houses. Something something another creepy relationship between Rose and a young man she told to pretend to be her son.

paying my respects to Ma--but NEVER Pa!--in 2014

Because I’ve read Wilder’s works so avidly, a lot of the material about Wilder, herself, was actually less interesting to me, because Wilder, herself, was the ultimate source material. It was sort of like Fraser was retelling Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography to me, then The First Four Years, then On the Way Home, then West from Home: Letters of Laura Ingalls Wilder, San Francisco, 1915. But the biographies of Pa’s ancestors were a genuine revelation, more fun because I was driving into New England while I listened--they were PURITANS! THAT explains his insane stories about how his great-grandfather wouldn’t let anyone have any fun on the Sabbath, which by the way began at sundown the night before and you had to walk soberly and sit in several hours of church, etc. One of Charles’ ancestors was even executed as a witch during the Salem Witch Trials, maintaining to the moment she was hanged a stubbornness/independent spirit that wouldn’t have looked out of place on Pa, Laura, or even that asshole Rose.

Another person with an “independent spirit” who also used it for evil was Eliza Jane Wilder. I don’t know if it’s bias, exactly, because Fraser is definitely correct in her evaluations, but when one of these figures in Laura’s life is not the good guy, Fraser definitely lets you know it! AND she brings the receipts to prove it! Like Eliza Jane: Laura clearly didn’t like her, and made it clear that Almanzo didn’t like her either, and made it equally clear in every book in which she shows up exactly why. Eliza Jane is bossy and high-handed, stuck-up and often high-key incompetent. But in case you think that Laura was just being mean in her books, Fraser literally quotes sections of Eliza Jane’s diary in which she is SO MEAN about Almanzo, and paints herself as the hero of the day in such a cringey, over-the-top, unbelievable way that I immediately added her to my haters club. Also, she bankrupted her parents, for Christ’s sake. And I am very suspicious about that time that she took teenaged Rose to live with her, because whatever Rose got up to under Eliza Jane’s supervision, it certainly didn’t improve her personality.

So. You guys. I am sure that Laura was a shit parent, because hurt people hurt people, you know? And trauma gonna trauma. And not only had Laura been parentified since at least the age of 11, and likely earlier, and had just a wagon-load of her own childhood trauma that she definitely didn’t work through, but hoo-boy, were Laura’s first years of marriage, including all of Rose’s early childhood, just an absolute shitshow all around. Almanzo, too, was likely depressed (that little survey he filled out for Rose in later years, in which he wrote to his own child that “My life has been mostly disappointments,” is just… whoa), likely had a wet dishrag for a backbone, and was physically disabled to the point that Laura, who during their courtship could have seen him as a strong, capable partner who could finally free her from this life of labor and privation, instead found herself within two years his caretaker as well as her children’s, and forced back into that same damn life of privation and labor. More labor, even, because she now had to do many of Almanzo's chores, too.

So yes. She was probably a shit parent. And she had a stubborn kid, which, just between us, does not improve one’s patience. Fraser really doesn’t go into this part a ton, but reading between the lines of writing about the family, I’m guessing Laura was a screamer, and a shamer, and Almanzo was the parent who showed his love better but also didn’t do any of the discipline and didn’t curb any of Laura’s harmful methods. And yes, I’m describing my own childhood here, as well, which is why I picked up on it so well.

Laura and Almanzo's sweet little Missouri house

So that sucked for Rose. I know it must have been painful, and I know she must have been thrilled the first time she moved away. But, like, get away and go low- or no-contact, or don’t get away and show some fucking compassion. Rose, though, chose the third option, which is absolute batshit toxic nasty behavior both to and about her mother, while never letting go/letting her mother go or giving her so much as the slightest benefit of the doubt. Imagine someone always in your life who clearly dislikes you, someone who invites you on a once-in-a-lifetime trip and then while you’re on it writes your husband to make fun of you and tell him how fat you’re getting (and ooh, that one pissed me off the most, because seriously? Fat shaming? That’s what we’ve sunk to?). Someone who insists on giving you money you didn’t ask for and then asks YOU for even more money, repeatedly. Someone who helps you write your life story and then steals part of your story and writes her own book with it, then hides it from you, then gets pissed at you when you find out and you’re upset.

And we don’t know any of this from Laura, because Laura, in all writings that we know of, only ever expressed pride and love for her daughter. She held a birthday party in her daughter’s honor while Rose was in Albania, passing around all of the letters Rose had sent her and getting all the guests to write her letters in return--people apparently thought it was kind of dumb but super sweet. She wrote to people to brag about Rose’s books, and tell them how they could buy them. And in return, Rose wrote just the most vile, mean-hearted shit about her mother in her own letters to her friends. In every instance she painted Laura in the worst possible light. She’s pretty much the first recorded instance of Bitch Eating Crackers.

To be fair, it’s pretty obvious that Rose was mentally ill throughout much of her life, untreated and unmedicated, of course. She had to deal with chronic depression and suicidal tendencies and what were probably episodes of mania, as well, all on her own, however she could figure out to do so. Unfortunately, her symptoms/coping mechanisms included narcissism, blaming others for all perceived injustices, suspicious and very questionable relationships with teen boys, including bringing them to live with her, giving them money and expensive gifts, instructing them to pretend to be her sons/grandsons, and cutting them off in adulthood. She had weird issues with money, constantly overspending and then borrowing from her parents; with houses, constantly overspending to build and remodel them; and with individualism, partly founding the libertarian party and lying about her grandparents’ history of government aid to bolster her philosophy. The most heartbreaking thing she did, though, was leave her entire estate to her “adopted grandson,” Roger Lea MacBride, a guy with mercenary sociopathic tendencies to equal her own, who courted her with yet more overtly cringy pandering letters and little gifts and solicitations until he got exactly what he wanted, which was the rights to all of Laura’s books. Rose’s body was barely cold by the time he transferred all the copyrights to himself, completely dismissing Laura’s will, which had read that Rose could have the rights and profits until her own death, at which point it should all go to her favorite public library. Instead, MacBride, and then his daughter after him, are millionaires.

the back of Rose's headstone, in 2012

And that’s how a biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder also became a pretty extensive biography of Rose Wilder Lane, too, because that’s how it goes with enmeshed folks. It would have been interesting to have seen what Laura would have been like, and could have accomplished, if she’d been given the opportunity to be an independent young woman like Rose was--would she still have been a writer without Rose’s help, with a longer career and no material wants to weigh her down? I wish both Laura and Rose could have gone to college. I wish they both could have gotten some excellent therapy, parenting classes for Laura, mental health care for Rose, and a mentor who could explain the importance of journalistic integrity and the role of authorship.

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