Holiday Musings

I posted a draft of my ebook Biology and Ambition a few days ago and within minutes the Googlebot came around and it was available on Google, second when a person enters Biology and Ambition.

Pretty fast.

Biology and Ambition is the follow up to Threshhold Girl and Diary of a Confirmed Spinster, to make the omnibus School Marms and Suffragettes.

About 3 young women in 1910 Canadian, their hopes, dreams, disappointments. Middle Class Women. Pretty much like Middle Class Women today.

I’m watching the Djokavic Nadal final in the Spanish Open or something and just missed Nadal winning the second set.. Gotta pay attention.

My husband asks why I watching in French. I like the French commentary, that’s why.

The colour commentator whoever she is uses eloquent language, much different from hockey commentators.

Something to do on a nice Monday holiday, Victoria Day but not here in Quebec, where my husband is so bored he is cleaning out the BBQ.

The bugs get you outside and if we put the mosquito netting around our little shelter the idiot dogs run through it every time they hear a noise – and they don’t learn.

We live in a suburb and suburbs now are dead quiet, except on Saturday morning when the neighbourhood men (yes, men) do the lawn.

Two days ago we went Costco and bought an instant garden, a few ready made pots for next to nothing, 10 to 15 dollars.

I usually buy the flats, but this spring I am injured, I can’t use my arm.

Instant garden, like instant pudding or instant mashed potatoes. I usually don’t like instant things, but in this case, why not.

My magnolia. Just blooming now. Last year I rolled these potted trees out into the family room and they blossomed inside in April. But the aroma was disgusting!! The thought the cat had peed on the carpet.

Love Letters and the Epistolary Form

 

I’ve posted my first draft of Biology and Ambition, the follow up to Threshold Girl and Diary of a Confirmed Spinster, which is finished but not yet posted as this book requires a lot of typing and I’m injured.

 

Biology and Ambition is about Marion Nicholson, a teacher in 1910 and is in epistolary form. Sort of cut and paste for me. Easier on the hands, but not on the brain. It is HARD to edit letters! Very hard. Even if you know your subject backwards and forwards like I do.

 

Threshold Girl is in narrative prose form and is about Marion’s young sister Flora, a college girl in 1911/12.  Diary of a Confirmed Spinster is about her older sister Edith and is a murder/mystery. I play with history here, filling in blanks, missing information with the most audacious explanation.

 

All stories in the School Marms and Suffragettes series are based on the letters of Tighsolas.

 

The ebooks complement each other and are meant to be read together, with Flora’s story first, Edith’s second and Marion’s third.

 

My stories are about teachers in the Edwardian Era, or the Laurier Era in Canada.  But, these letters cover the issues that are relevant to all middle class women, but I add  eugenics, child welfare, suffragettes, etc.

 

The story of the Edwardian or Laurier Middle Class has not been especially well told. Upstairs Downstairs, Downton Abbey etc. like to contrast the rich and the poor and leave out the middle class.  Not enough drama.

 

But the Nicholson family saga is a story that resonates today. The Middle Class never really changes. It’s a class full of people who aspire to be high class but fear falling into the lower class, a much much MUCH easier thing to do, especially in a bad economy. Hence, it’s a nervous class. An antsy class. And as GB Shaw said, it’s a moral class, I mean sanctimonious. The Nicholsons, who are experiencing financial problems, are all these things. They are also terribly fun loving. They want to eek the most out of existence.

 

 

 

 

Freedom 1910 Style

In a 1911 letter home Marion Nicholson describes catching up with the Montgomerys who are in town to buy a new car, their second in two years. This may be a pic from that event. They are at Atwater Street.

I am writing Diary of a Confirmed Spinster, the follow up to Threshold Girl and I’ve got to the part where Edith Nicholson goes on a 6 hour car trip from Richmond, Quebec to Montreal in June 1911.

In a letter she describes all the places she passed through.

My job is to describe the experience.

Now, today, 6 hours on bumpy hills in a car with no shocks (I don’t think) and in a tight corset would be torture, but for Edith it is euphoric.

That’s the word I’ll use.

The freedom of it! Before long trips were taken by train or by horse carriage. This car, going 14 miles an hour over the hills and dales of the Eastern Townships, must have thrilled the passengers, much like a long long ride at Dominion Park. And there was always the danger of breaking down to add spice to the occasion.

14 miles an hour is the speed limit in the country. 7 miles an hour in the city. (Horse drawn vehicles and autos were beginning here to fight over the road space, a fight which would continue until the late 1920′s, when cars WON.

Ad for Piece Arrow. Car Rides were classy thing! No kidding, cars cost as much as a house.

A recent Salon.com article claims that statistics show that Americans at least are driving much less. The author of the article ascribed this to the Internet, saying young people would rather surf than drive.

(I thought maybe GPS’s had something to do with it. Or Google maps. No getting lost. No spending hours driving all over town looking to buy some item. Etc ete.

Whatever the reason, the thrill is gone. The high price of gasoline doesn’t help either, I’m sure.

In the 60′s I went for a lot of car drives with my dad. It was his recreation. Cheap and he got out of the house. We had a little Austen Cambridge, but my father, a former ferry command pilot, drove fast, 80 miles an hour on the highway.

As his daughter, I wasn’t afraid, although I do distinctly remember almost getting killed by an oncoming 16 wheeler as he passed a car on the highway.

But he swerved in on time, obviously.

Marion sits in her Uncle Clayton’s car.It broke down a lot.

The T Can wasn’t as crowded with trucks as it is today.

I liked looking out the window.  On long distance treks to the US for vacation, my Dad had a game. He had great long distance eyesight (Pilot!) so we called out the state or province of the licence plates ahead,the minute we could guess them. And then there was I Spy..

Today kids don’t look out the window. They are too busy playing or communicating on their iPads, etc. Or watching movies.

We experience the world second hand today. Technology changes us.

Free at Last: In the 1910 era, men drove the cars, but by the 1920′s women went it alone! Here’s Flora second from last. Cars gave women and teens unprecedented freedom.

SHAME SHAME SHAME 24th installment

1910 Fashions from the Pictorial Review.

When Flora returned to Richmond, in mid August, Mother seemed calmer. Some kind of weight, the weight of worry, most likely, had been lifted from her strong, stoical shoulders. Flora assumed that having seen Norman’s railway digs at end of line near La Tuque, she now was convinced her husband was safe, or at least safe enough.

She spoke of her adventures on the railroad at length: I walked with Father from end of steel to the Camp, three miles. Very hilly and hot. I had dinner on the line, tomato soup, roast lamb and roast pork with potatoes and for dessert cake with preserves. So Father is getting his food all right. I stayed at the camp and Father walked five miles further down the line.

Edith, too, seemed to walk with less weary a step. She had had some weight lifted off herself, lately, the weight of guilt. She had received a letter from a fellow teacher at Radnor, Dede Miller, saying the school had closed down for lack of pupils.”The eldest boy Stuart, is going to Grande Ligne and the little boys from Douglasburg are leaving in September so that leaves only the little girl of 10, Eleanor. But I have enjoyed my stay and learned so much French that I have been offered a tutoring position in Montreal, in a family of a functionaire at City Hall. They are the Crepeaus and they have a son at school and a daughter, Alice, who is ten but speaks no English. They are related in some way to Senator Rodolphe Forget, so my parents are agreeable. Ps. The Marceau family are leaving for Ste. Agathe next week. Three of them are threatened with the tuberculosis. Is it true that Charlie went to parties last winter?

Edith had read it out to Marion and Flora then said, “So I need not feel so bad. I would not have had a job anyway this September. My French has greatly improved as well, so it was not a waste of time.”

Today, Edith was out of the house, visiting the Watters’ in Melbourne. Marion was standing on a kitchen chair having the hem of the skirt of blue serge suit shortened, just a bit to the ankle, by Margaret, who had suggested in her definitive way, that Marion ought to have one new suit made and keep the blue for the spring.

The subtext was clear to all: Marion might have to lend the family some money from her giddy new salary of 600 a year. But Margaret articulated another excuse. She said, “You have not found a place yet, so you do not know how much your room and board will cost. And if you refuse to live at the Y, you may have to take your meals out, which I really do not want.”
I wouldn’t worry. There are tea rooms exclusively for women in town. At least I know of one on Notre Dame.

Marion didn’t like the Y. She had boarded there in 1905 and despised the rules. Besides, some people looked down upon the YWCA on Dorchester, beside the Windsor Hotel, thinking it too grand as establishment for itinerant types. “And I want to make Flora a new pinafore for school, ”Margaret had added. As per usual she had her work cut out for her, for it was coming on September and the start of school and it didn’t matter whether her daughters were students or teachers, they still needed to look smart.

“Flora, you are so spoiled, “ teased Marion. And after that new skirt for the trip to Boston where you one-upped me by visiting Norumbega Park before I could get to Dominion Park in the fall.

Flora had bragged to Marion about all her Massachusetts excursions, by boat to Norumbega Park, by the brand new subway to the theatre to see the Walls of Jericho, and by trolley car to Filene’s department store where she rode the moving stair and almost caught the hem of her long skirt in its hungry silvery teeth. With her mother listening she decided she had to qualify her earlier remarks. “But Norumbega isn’t so much the modern thrill park, as it is a cross between Lafontaine Park and Dominion. It has a zoo, and an outdoor theatre and a carrousel, but no Fun House.”

Then Marion stirred up the pot again by saying: “And did you tell Mother about the boy and girl in the canoe? Flora saw a couple getting ticketed by the police at Norumbega after a tour on the river. They’d been making a spectacle of themselves. Shame on them. ” Margaret looked warily at Flora but said nothing, as she had some pins pressed between her lips. “That’s not all, Mother, “Marion continued, “Flora went to the beach at Nantucket with some nurses from the hospital and drank sodas at… Where did you say?”

Congdon’s Pharmacy, Flora replied, softly.

Tell Mummy about all the flavours they had, Flora.

But Flora was still thinking of the young lovers in the boat. They hadn’t seemed at all ashamed. The man had removed his straw boater and bowed in a broad sweeping gesture as the policeman walked away. His girl, all in pink with sparkling sprays of butter-coloured organza on her small, angular shoulders, only smiled up at her handsome beau and then she bent over a bit and began, of all things, to shake those little shoulders and to laugh out loud luxuriously. She had hardly seemed older than Flora.