'In the End, Being There Was All She Ever Wanted'

Just finished reading the Pulitzer Prize-winning book Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser (2017).The title is provocative, but she only really answers it in the epilogue, when she writes, "In the end, being there was all she ever wanted." I haven't read the Little House books, but I just ordered the first one, Little House in the Big Woods. There are nine in the series, but I'm going to start with one. I read part of a 28-page excerpt online earlier, and thought I had better read at least one of these books. I have not watched one episode of the "Little House on the Prairie" television series. In the early 1970s I had about as much interest in watching TV as the mouse I saw scurrying down the hall this afternoon at school. I was interested in playing music then, and I really didn't even own a television until 1990 when I went to Oklahoma to pursue a Master's degree in Child and Family Studies. My father bought me the television so I could "know what was going on in the world," which I find a bit strange for someone going to graduate school, because when was I going to have time to watch television, but I say all that to say this. I didn't watch any television in the entire decade of the 1970s. I just didn't. I can't write very much tonight again because I had to finish reading that book. I have also been watching very little news lately. I am beginning to despise watching the news, actually. I would rather be reading. I have a T-shirt that has that on it, and I would, but I have gotten awfully addicted to social media since I got my first "smartphone" in 2020, an I-Phone 11, to be exact. All I really want to record tonight is that the book is amazing, well written, well researched, and goes into detail about Laura Ingalls Wilder and her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane and just the whole history of the Little House Books that was irresistible to me, even though I have not as yet read a single one of those books. What I see in them, however, and the whole phenomenon of the popularity of the books and the television series, is the desire for a "simple life." I usually come straight home after work at school as a literacy tutor and turn on my conservative news program on my antenna TV, even though lately I have been less and less interested in it, at least in the idea of watching the entirety of the programs, for example. I have decided they are mostly a huge waste of time, and really, I do have too many books to read than to sit around and listen to people opine about politics. Anyway, today I stayed in my car and read while waiting to go to a coworker's retirement reception at the school. It was wonderful. It is still not too hot to read in my car, and it was entirely pleasant, and I just finished the book a few minutes ago. Next, I'm going to read a book about the Plains Indians that I ordered a couple of weeks ago. That is, I think that is what I'm going to tackle next. This all started when I discovered the book about Cynthia Ann Parker that I wrote about earlier and a lot of people read that blog. I had read a children's book about her that I found in a classroom I go into for lunchtime readaloud (that's where I theoretically read to children for ten minutes and then take them to the cafeteria, although that's a subject for another blog). I am going to simply conclude this by saying Happy Reading if you are a reader. If you're not, well, that's okay, too, whatever you like to do, Happy Whatever You Like to Do! I have to retire. Tomorrow is Field Day!!!