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The History of Comfort

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serious crayons:

--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on June 03, 2017, 12:20:45 pm ---I found it interesting to read about what life was like for an ordinary family in the time and places where Laura Ingalls grew up. I guess that was the burgeoning historian in me; the books were like historical documents.
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I wish more historians would focus on what life was like for an ordinary family in their era as opposed to the larger and ostensibly more "important" activities of royalty and armies and whatnot.

Sidenote: I've always wanted to write a book about the history of comfort. The idea would be to look at what life was like for people before all the things we take for granted that make our lives comfortable -- streetlights, comfy beds, Advil, a variety of food from one day to the next, etc., etc. I would try to go beyond the obvious things like indoor plumbing and central heating. But it would get back to my idea that the average middle-class American family lives far, far better than a king from the Middle Ages.

My only roadblocks are: 1) I don't really know how to do historical research and 2) Millions of people around the world still experience this pre-comfort life (and even in this country, some people lack some of the things).

I think the only way to do the book would be to find a coauthor who knows historical research (my ex is pretty good at it -- if only I could get him interested in undertaking such a major project). The other thing is I'd have to spend some time in a place where these ordinary comforts are unknown. For example, I interviewed a guy who has for years been raising money and leading travel groups to some little village in, I think, Ghana, where he spent time during his Peace Corps years. The people there were living on <$1 a day, which is some international measure of acceptable standard of living, and this guy I interviewed managed to bring them up to $2 a day. That meant the difference between families having secure tin roofs on their homes versus having the family get up in the middle of the night during monsoon season to go out in the storm and hang onto the tarp that was serving as their roof to keep it from blowing away. It also provided people with malaria shots and mosquito netting. When I talked to him, a woman had started a rudimentary "restaurant" (selling bowls from big pot of beans she cooked in her yard) and someone else had set up a TV and satellite and would charge villagers some small amount to watch.

But a medicine chest full of OTC medications to help with minor aches and pains? Chicken one night and steak the next? Forget it.

I see the book structure as alternating chapters between the experiences of people in a village like that (so and so suffered a terrible toothache but had to just endure the pain until someone yanked it out, rather than do whatever dentisty thing they might do here) with chapters about the accumulation of comforts in developed countries and their histories (Louis Pasteur invented Advil in 1980, or whatever).


--- Quote ---I've never read Pippi Longstocking, or Little Women (though I've thought I ought to read Louisa May Alcott because I think she's an important figure in literature, and, again, Little Women takes place in the 1860s)
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You'd want to read LMA if you'd ever visited her home in Concord. One thing you'll learn there: She had no particular interest in writing a YA book for girls but her publisher talked her into it so she churned out Little Women in about six weeks. She did the whole thing on a flip-down desk about the size of a cafeteria tray.

P.S. I wanted to double-check LMA's hometown and found she was actually born in Germantown, PA -- so all the more interest for you!


--- Quote --- I've never even heard of Maude Hart Lovelace.
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She's probably more famous in Minnesota because she was born here and her series (following a group of girls from age 5 through high school and beyond; reading difficulty increases with the age of the characters) is set here. But she's nationally famous. I once went to see the columnist-turned-novelist Anna Quinlen speak, and she happened to mention that those were her favorite books.

They're fictionalized, but very closely based on her own girlhood -- literally, character X in the novels = person Y in real life -- and are set between about 1900 and 1920. She also had a daughter to whom she told the stories, but unlike Rose Wilder Lane, I doubt anyone suspects her of writing them. Maude's character is portrayed as being fascinating with telling stories and loving to write from an early age, and all through school. She went to the University of Minnesota for a while but dropped out, I think because she got married -- typical back then. But then she went on to write these books.


--- Quote ---I've never read any Nancy Drew, but I've also never read any Hardy Boys.
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Me neither. I was trying to think of more boy books!


--- Quote ---Of course, there is a controversy over whether the books were actually written by Rose Wilder Lane, Laura's daughter (you should look her up; she was quite an interesting character).
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I've read about it. My suspicion is that Rose wrote them but based on her mother's actual memories. Arguably they could share a byline but shrewd Rose probably knew they'd be more marketable with Laura as the sole author.

 

serious crayons:

--- Quote from: Front-Ranger on June 04, 2017, 09:32:27 am ---I read about a dozen Nancy Drew books and Little Women, but not the others. As an adult I read Girl of the Limberlost, by Gene Stratton-Porter, and also My Ántonia by Willa Cather when my son had to read it for school. My children's reading was dominated by Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, so was rather masculine dominated.
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I think Jack might have read the Tolkien books at some point. Neither of my kids liked Harry Potter, thankfully. I read the first book aloud to them -- English accents for the dialogue and all! -- but none of us were interested in continuing beyond that.

Cy loved A Series of Unfortunate Events, which is a tongue-in-cheek-sinister book series featuring a set of brothers and sisters, so it's neither especially masculine or feminine. The author is a man, but I'd guess he's now in his early 40s at most and very cognizant of today's gender standards.

Jack never voluntarily read a book until fourth grade, when his friend's dad took the boys to No Country for Old Men -- without asking my permission, which I would not have granted because I knew it was super-violent. But he loved it so much he read the Cormac McCarthy book, plus one or two others of McCarthy's. So the forbidden film turned out to be a success after all.

It was about this time that I met another mom on the sidelines of a youth baseball game who said she was constantly arguing with her son over his being allowed to see PG-13 movies. She adamantly forbade them because he was 12.  :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

Jeff Wrangler:

--- Quote from: serious crayons on June 04, 2017, 10:30:31 am ---My only roadblocks are: 1) I don't really know how to do historical research
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That was a notable lack in both my undergraduate and graduate education as a history major: No "how to" course when it came to research. There was no such thing. From somewhere I seem to recall a course called "Historical Methods and Historiography," but it wasn't a nuts-and-bolts course on how to research.


--- Quote ---You'd want to read LMA if you'd ever visited her home in Concord. One thing you'll learn there: She had no particular interest in writing a YA book for girls but her publisher talked her into it so she churned out Little Women in about six weeks. She did the whole thing on a flip-down desk about the size of a cafeteria tray.
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Somewhere I'd heard or read that about LMA.


--- Quote ---I've read about it. My suspicion is that Rose wrote them but based on her mother's actual memories. Arguably they could share a byline but shrewd Rose probably knew they'd be more marketable with Laura as the sole author.

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I recall reading something about Rose Wilder Lane some time ago--couldn't say if it was in (where else?) The New Yorker, or if I just got bored one day and looked her or Laura up on the Internet. But I do recall some writer's conclusion that at the very least, Rose was her mother's editor.

Front-Ranger:
I googled "How to do historical research" and got approximately one zillion pings. Here's one from the Minnesota Historical Society:

http://www.mnhs.org/legacy/grants/docs_pdfs/Historical_Research_Guidelines.pdf

I would imagine that a couple of points to keep in mind are to go for the primary sources first, then secondary and so on, and, keep good notes about where you find your facts and know how to write a proper footnote.

A friend of mine wrote a book recently about social permaculture, I contributed to his kickstarter campaign and when I got a copy of the book, I was overjoyed to find not only a well stocked appendix with footnotes and documentation on his sources, but also a comprehensive index!!

Jeff Wrangler:

--- Quote from: Front-Ranger on June 04, 2017, 08:16:06 pm ---I googled "How to do historical research" and got approximately one zillion pings. Here's one from the Minnesota Historical Society:

http://www.mnhs.org/legacy/grants/docs_pdfs/Historical_Research_Guidelines.pdf

I would imagine that a couple of points to keep in mind are to go for the primary sources first, then secondary and so on, and, keep good notes about where you find your facts and know how to write a proper footnote.

A friend of mine wrote a book recently about social permaculture, I contributed to his kickstarter campaign and when I got a copy of the book, I was overjoyed to find not only a well stocked appendix with footnotes and documentation on his sources, but also a comprehensive index!!

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Absolutely you should base your work on primary sources, and when you use secondary, be very careful with your quotations and attributions.

You might say what I feel was lacking in my education wasn't instruction to use primary sources but how to find sources in the first place. I had to teach myself, long after the fact, that sometimes other writers' sources can clue you in on what's available and where it might be.

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