SLOAN, Robin - Sourdough

Sourdough by Robin Sloan

QUOTES FOR DISCUSSION

Especially at a time when programming was taking on a sheet of dynamism and computer science departments were wooing young women aggressively. It's nice to be wooed.

Pg. 4

It helped that I was good at it.

Pg. 4

I drove west through the narrow pass in the Rockies, crossed the dusty nothing of Nevada, and crashed into the verdant, vertical shock of California.

Pg. 6

I would pay rent fully four times larger than my mortgage in Michigan. The broker dropped the keys into my hand and said, "It's not a lot of space, but you won't be spending much time there!"

Pg. 7

Greatest among us are those who can deploy "my friend" to total strangers in a way that is not hollow, but somehow real and deeply felt; those who can make you, within seconds of first contact, believe it.

Pg. 10

We possess no stock of recipes, no traditions, no ancestral affinities. There was a lot of migration and drama in our history; our line had been broken not once, but six times, like one of those gruesome accident reports, the bone shattered in six places. When they put my family back together, they left out the food.

Pg. 28

There was one exception. My grandma Lois, for whom I was named, did not deign to cook - she was my mother's mother in that regard - but she did, on special occasions, baked bread. Specifically, she baked Chicago Prison Loaf, a comically hard and dense but apparently nutritious substance that she had learned to produce working part-time at an industrial bakery that served the Illinois Department of Corrections.

Pg. 28

Armed with a dormitory plan, I consumed the equivalent of nine meals a day, all of them shaded brown,  textured crispy.

Pg. 29

I might not have been so eager to meet the Loises if I hadn't been spending all day with the cold-eyed wraiths at General Dexterity.  By comparison, hanging out with a bunch of middle-aged ladies with the same name as me sounded pretty alluring.

Pg 32

If you ever wonder about the difference between Metro Detroit and the San Francisco Bay Area: compare their Louis Clubs.

Pg. 33

I worried that I've been too quiet - too boring. The other Loises had sharp opinions. They took up space.

Pg. 34

As I walk through Golden Gate Park, it struck me: the mystery of that woman's life  I hadn't ever known her, not really.

Pg. 34

A baking stone, to absorb and emit heat in a loose simulation of Broom's brick oven (even though he counseled that there was, in fact, no substitute that, basically, he pitied us)

Pg. 38

There were detailed instructions. I love detailed instructions. My whole career was detailed instructions. Precisely specified actions, executed in order. A serene confidence settled over me.

Pg. 39

There was dough on the cupboards. Dough on the faucet. Dough on the floor. It looked like the scene of a glutenous murder committed by a careless killer.

Pg. 39

On top of the city with my Loises all around me, I felt a tremor of something. Was it possible? I had become interesting.

Pg. 78

Finally you sell your company to Starbucks for nineteen million dollars. And remember: You began with the cart at the outermost corner.  You began here, in this line.

Pg. 82

Our CEO was accessible and approachable. He ate his lunch in the cafeteria with the rest of us, sitting with a different group everyday.  You could tell where he was without looking because Andrei's table always laughed a little too loud.

Pg. 111

Andrei's knew everyone's name and role. Everyone's. It was said he used flash cards.

Pg. 112

Is it strange that a sourdough starter sings?  It didn't seem strange when I was a child.

Pg. 115

He was beaming. The book looked very old. I didn't want to take it.

"Oh, you must, you must!" he said. "It is an absolutely foundational document."

I squinted at the text below the illustration. "I can't read Latin."

 He sobered. "All right. I'll keep this one. But take the rest."

Pg. 119

I was offering sourdough made from a starter strange and potent that had come into my possession unexpectedly. I explained that I found the birth of the dishes and also mood-stabilizing. I explained that the faces for a trade secret.

Pg. 129

I rose earlier than ever before and experienced a portion of the morning that was new to me. I heard the chirping of unfamiliar bird species -negotiations that had, until now, been concluded long before I woke.

Pg. 130

Even in those hours, the depot was never empty.  There was always someone - multiple some ones - who had spent the night working.

Pg. 131

The amount was not staggering - barely a tenth of my General Dexterity paycheck for the same amount of time - but this money felt more truly or mine somehow.

Pg. 134

There were whoops and groans, smiles and nods, high fives that snagged the branches if the lemon tree.

 Across the picnic table, Jaina Mitra looked stricken.

To no one in particular, she said, "I'm not ready yet."

Pg. 183

"I'd like to study your starter."

Pg. 229

She was suddenly sweet and solicitous, and it was very strange. She should have stayed sharp and brusque.

Pg. 229

My Dear Aunt Martha by Barbara J. Shave

MY DEAR AUNT MARTHA by Barbara J. Shave

QUOTES FOR DISCUSSION

Among the McConnell Papers is a rare, first-person account of tensions with Mormon neighbors, which escalated into the mob murder of that religion's founder, Joseph Smith (1805 to 1844). Mary Emma's Illinois relatives wrote some of the last letters of the combined collection.

Pg. xiv

My passion was always history, particularly family history. I believe that we are the composite of those who went before us in values as well as genetics. An understanding of our heritage gives us a better sense of our own place and purpose within the continuum.

Pg. xv

In the 17th century, they emigrated from the Scotland's lowlands to Plantation of Ulster (present Northern Ireland), in the 18th century, they relocated to Pennsylvania in the New World where they worshipped in the same church, and in the 19th century, they moved in tandem to where the new state of Illinois met the Mississippi River. Because of isolation in their successive frontier communities, inter marriage was the norm and the necessity. First-cousin marriages were common. Furthermore, couples produced huge families and gave their children plain names in tribute to other plain-named kin. In consequence of the intermarriages and repetitious naming, it is now exceedingly difficult to distinguish which James did what to whom.

Pg. xvi

Aunt Martha McConnell Walker (1801 to 1871)

Robert Connell (1818 - 1894)

John Denny Walker (1825 - 1892)

Alexander Walker Jr (1814 - 1879)

Colonel Thomas Geddes (1805 - 1892)

WINGATE, Lisa - Before We Were Yours

Before We Were Yours

By Lisa Wingate

QUOTES FOR DISCUSSION

pg. 3

Outside, the breeze is weary, and the cicadas throb in the tall trees, their verdant hiding places just below the window frames.

Pg. 3

In my multi-fold years of life, I have learned that most people get along as best they can. They don't intend to hurt anyone. It is merely a terrible byproduct of surviving.

Pg.8

I do anything for him, but I hope it's many more years before we're forced to reverse the roles of parent and child. I've learned how hard that is while watching my father struggle to make decisions for his mother.

Pg. 8

We are heartsick about where this cruel descent into dementia might end. Before we moved her to the nursing home, my grandmother escaped from her caretaker and her household staff. She called a cab and vanished for an entire day only to find they be found wandering in a business complex that was once her favorite shopping mall. How she managed this when she can't remember our names is a mystery.

Pg. 10

Anger and blame are powerful weapons.

Pg. 10

Technically, they've known him longer than I have, and they are almost as devoted.

pg. 11

This is what it's possible when love is real and strong, when people are devoted to one another, when those sacrifice anything to be together. This is what I want for myself, but I sometimes wonder if it's possible for our modern generation. We're so distracted so... busy.

Pg. 14

On occasion, it is as if the latches in my mind have gone rusty and worn. The doors fall open and close at will.

Pg. 22

There's such a sense if recognition there. She's certain she knows who I am. 

For a second, I want to be Fern, just to make her happy -

Pg. 24

...rolling her eyes to let me know that, while this little joke may have been cute when she was nine, it's lame now that she has officially reached the double digits.

Pg. 26

One of the best things a father can do for his daughter is to let her know that she has met his expectations. My father did that for me, and no amount of effort on my part can ever repay the debt.

Pg. 32

I remember May Crandall's blue eyes, the way she regarded me with such desperation.

Pg. 32

I'm still thinking about May Crandall and remembering the plethora of newspaper stories about nursing home abuse. Perhaps I just wanted to make sure that May didn't come to me because she is in some so sort of trouble.

Pg. 36

Only Camellia would use something like that to try to get her way. It makes me sick just thinking about it.

Pg. 36

Queenie begged Bring to go up to the shore and take care of the body, but Bring wouldn't. We got the kids to think about, Queen, he said. No tellin' who did that to him or who's watchin'. We best get on down the river.

Pg. 37

Camillia's eaten enough soap to clean up the inside of a whale in her ten years. She's practically been raised on it. It's a wonder bubbles don't pour out her ears.

Pg. 54

"Well, good mornin' to you, Miss Rosy Ray a' Sunshine." Zede calls Camellia that all the time on account of she's the exact opposite of that very thing.

Pg. 57

"Be glad if you got a nice Mama and Daddy." Silas looks hard at her. "Don't ever get it in your head to leave them behind, if they're good to you. Some sure enough ain't."

Pg. 78

From behind the iron fence, boys and girls of all sizes watch. Not a single one smiles. 

Pg. 79

"Aren't they a pitiful lot?" Miss Tann says. "I do believe we removed them just in time."

Pg. 92

"It's kinda creepy, Aunt Aves. Nobody's there, but all Grandma Judy's stuff is still around."

Pg. 93

Blunt- force grief strikes me as I pull into the drive and step from the car. Everywhere I look, there's a memory.

Pg. 93

The floorboards crackle beneath me, and I jump, even though it's an old familiar sound.

Pg. 94

Never week passed that she didn't care for a document that details of her days, keeping track of everyone she saw, what she wore, what was served at meals. 

Pg. 94

"Someday you'll read these and know all my secrets," she told me once when I asked her why she was so meticulous about writing everything down.

Pg. 96

"Not the slightest bit of doubt." Did she really feel that way? Did you really just... know it was right when she met my grandfather? 

Pg. 112

She's a pillar of the community and a fixture at the Methodist church. She would never, ever keep a secret from the family. Unless that secret is something that could hurt us.  And that's exactly what scares me.

Pg. 161

But when Granddad learned he'd been lied to all of his life, that was the last straw. He joined the army the next day and never talk to his adoptive parents again. He looked for his birth family for years but never found them.

Pg. 260

Instantly, I'm back in the thick of it. I smell pipe tobacco, old newspaper clippings, dried-out bulletin boards, peeling paint, faded photos.

Pg. 316

I always wondered what he might have become. Perhaps it was for the best that I never knew. I was growing into a different life, different world, different name.

Pg. 316

May's story had made Arney and Silas and all the people of the river real to me.

Pg. 317

People don't come into our lives by accident.

Pg. 317

A woman's past need not predict her future. She can dance to new music if she chooses.

WILDER, Laura Ingalls - PIONEER GIRL

PIONEER GIRL
by Laura Ingalls Wilder

QUOTES FOR DISCUSSION

Her marginal notes reveal that from the beginning she intended Pioneer Girl as both a private family narrative written from a mother to her daughter, and as a rough manuscript that would ultimately be edited for publication. In other words, Wilder imagined both an intimate, private audience and a much larger public one. Just four pages into the manuscript, for example, Wilder wrote the words "Not to be used" at the top of page, and from the context of the scene that followed and the sentence that introduced it, Wilder worried that the general public might not find the episode credible. Yet she wrote it anyway -

Introduction, pg. xviii

In 1903, Wilder drafted a short sketch based on memories of her family's experiences on Silver Lake in Dakota Territory and saved it in a file called "Ideas for Work." Her father Charles Ingalls had died the previous year, and this unpublished fragment appears to be a response to his death, her first attempt at retelling family stories for a larger audience.

Introduction, pg. xxv

In an undated letter written between 1911 and 1914, name refer to her mother's life story and Gabe Wilder this advice, "just think [that] you're a writing a diary that no one anywhere will ever see, and put down all the things that you think, regardless."

Introduction, pg. xxv

She returned to the idea again in 1925, a year after her mother, Caroline Ingalls, died.

Introduction, pg. xxv

In urging her aunt to write, she echoed the advice she had received from Lane: "Just tell it in your own words as you would tell about those times if only you could talk to me... As you begin to tell it so many things will come back to you about the little everyday happenings and what you and mother and Aunt Eliza and Uncle Tom and Uncle Henry did as children and young folks, going to parties and sleigh rides and spelling schools and dancing schools."

Introduction, pg. xxv

But when Wilder's sister Mary died at the age of sixty-three on October 17, 1928, Wilder apparently decided it was finally time to write your life story losing her sister may have increased her own sense of mortality.

Introduction, pg. xxvi

It is important to point out that Lane had built her professional career by fictionalizing what she published as nonfiction. ... Lane wrote what was presented to her audience as "true stories," but they were loosely based on the interviews and factual material that Lane  embellished or re-imagined to heighten their market appeal.

Introduction, pg. xxx

After the Sunset series had run its course in the magazine, Charmian London expressed how "hurt" and "enraged" she was that a writer as talented as Lane had set so many "misleading" and "false impressions" in print without first "taking the trouble to find out their truth." Yet, for Lane, mixing fiction with fact with simply good business.

Introduction, pg. xxxii

In other words, Lane hoped to sell Pioneer Girl as a magazine serial before selling the rights again to a book publisher.
Introduction, pg. xxxix

In the summer of 1931, as Wilder awaited a verdict on her revised juvenile Pioneer Girl  - and perhaps a contract - she seemed to have pushed concerns about selling the adult version of Pioneer Girl aside.  ... She and Manly left Mansfield with their dog Nero... for the trip to South Dakota... Wilder have not been back to South Dakota since her father's death in 1902. ... She and Manly stopped in Manchester, South Dakota, where Wilder's sister Grace and her husband were living. "Grace seems like a stranger now," Wilder wrote, "only now and then something familiar about her face. I suppose it is the same with me."
Introduction, pg. xlv

Little House in the Big Woods was the first Wilder's novels based on Pioneer Girl. Harper & Brothers published it in the spring of 1932.
Introduction, pg. xlviii

Instead, Wilder used the original draft of Pioneer Girl as a foundation for one novel after another, beginning in 1935 with the publication of Little House on the Prairie and continuing until 1943, when she published the last novel in the series, These Happy Golden Years.
Introduction, pg. xlix

Pa would come in from his tramp to his traps, with icles [icicles] on the ends of his whiskers, hang his gun over the door, throw off his coat and cap and mittens and call "Where's my little half pint of cider half drank up?" That was me because I was so small. Mary and I would, climb on his knees while he warmed a bit, then he would put on his coat and cap again and do the chores and bring in wood to keep a good fire.  We were very warm and snug and happy and art of log house in the woods...

Pg. 29

Footnote: "little half pint of cider half drank up?" A form of this endearment appears in all versions of Pioneer Girl, as well as in the Little House novels. Wilder introduced it in the second chapter Little House in the Big Woods, (pg. 33), where it is rendered "little half-pint of sweet cider half drank up." Throughout the rest of the novels Pa often calls Laura "Half Pint."

Pg. 30

Sometimes Pa would make bullets for the rifle to take with him in his hunting next day. He would melt bits of lead in a large spoon over the coals of fire. While it was hot as hot he would pour it through a little hole into the bullet molds and after minute he would open the molds and drop out a bright, shiny new bullet onto the hearth.

Pg. 31

Several days afterward I heard Pa tell Ma that the man and the woman who sang the Whippoorwill song had run away together. I wondered why they had run away and what from.

Pg. 78

We usually had time to play anti-over or ring-around-the-rosie awhile before school.

Pg.87

Mary and I liked to go to school this winter. I learned to sing the multiplication table and was put in the fifth reader. We liked our reading lessons very much and used to practice reading them aloud at home nights.  Pa knew, but did not tell us until later, that a crowd used to gather in the store beneath to hear us read.

Pg. 106

That was a delightful summer! Work and play was so mixed that I could not tell them apart.  Of course it was work helping Ma take care of Grace but it was the best kind of played too. Going after the cow is work but it was a best part of the day. Even if it rained the wet was nice on my feet and the rain felt good on my face and on my body through my thin summer clothes.

Pg. 110

The graveyard was a beautiful place. The grass was so soft and green and short like velvet; there were mossy places in little hollows and growing on some of the tombstones; and there were tall, dark, evergreen trees and lovely flowers everywhere. We might look at the flowers and smell them but never, never pick them.

The white stones standing among all this beauty didn't look lonesome. We could wander for a whole afternoon looking at them and reading the names and verses on them. It seemed a very pleasant place to lie and sleep forever. But we always went away before sundown.

Pg. 110

 I am sure Pa was happy to be going back west. He said the air was fresher where there were not so many people and he played his fiddle by the campfires.

Pg.112

Anti-over, Pullaway, Prisoner's Base, and handball.

All these children games except handball involved variations on the game of tag in anti-over or anti-i-over, two teams gathered on opposite sides of a small building, and a designated player from one team threw the ball over the roof shouting into over as warning. Players on the opposite side of the building tried to catch the ball before it hit the ground. When someone caught it, the entire team dashed around building, and the person with the ball tried to tag his or her opponents. The team that captured the most players won. Pullaway, also known as Pom-Pom Pullaway, Pump Pump  Pullaway, or similar variations, was also a chasing game. A player usually stood in the center of a field, with a group of children lined up on the other side of the school yard. When the player in the center called out "pom pom pullaway," the remaining players raced toward her. Those she tagged became her teammates, who tried to catch the remaining players when she next called out. The game was over when everyone had been tagged. Prisoner's Base was a similar running and chasing game. Opposing teams tried to catch each other's players and bring them to designated base or prison. Handball, as Wilder might have played it, probably involved hitting a ball against the schoolhouse wall, although she could be referring to baseball, or a catching game.

Pg.120

Howard Ensign joined the Congregational church after their revival and would testify at prayer meeting every Wednesday night. It's some way offended my sense of privacy. It seemed to me that the things between one and God should be between him and God like loving ones mother. One didn't go around saying 'I love my mother, she's been so good to me.' One just loved her and did things that she liked to do.

Pg. 136

One night while saying my prayers, as I always did before going to bed, this feeling of homesickness and worried was worse than usual, but gradually I had a feeling ever hovering, encompassing Presence of a Power, comforting and sustaining and thought and surprised 'That is what men call God!'

Pg. 137

An old Bachelor lived alone six miles away at Lake Thompson. We never saw him all winter. Other than that our neighbors were forty miles away to the east and sixty miles to the west.

Pg. 181

At night we heard wolves howl and coyotes slipped around and picked up the crumbs where we shook the tablecloth from the door.
Pg. 181

Pa bought two business lots diagonally across the street from each other and sent out for lumber to build… When the rough sheathing of the building was on the frame and the roof over it, we moved in…

Pg. 189

We move don April 3^rd a nice, warm day but it turned cold in the night and the wind blew through the cracks between the boards. I felt uncomfortable and waked just enough to know I was cold, so I pulled the covers higher to shelter my head and snuggled closer to Mary and Carrie. The next thing I knew, I hear Pa singing,

I peeped out. Everything was covered with snow and Pa was standing barefoot in it pulling on his pants. “Lie still all of you,” he said, “don’t move and mix the snow up! I’ll shovel it off in a minute.”

Pg. 191

There was a nice spell of weather after it, but an old Indian passing through town warned the people that a terrible winter was coming. He said the seventh winter was always harder than those before; then the winter would be mild again until another seven, which would be harder than the first. Mild winters would follow again until the third seven which would be much worse than either of the others. He said it had always been so; that the winter coming was the third seven and there would be “heap big snow” and the wind would blow and blow.

Pg. 203

Just after the party the aid society gave a social at Mrs. Tinkham's where she lived over their furniture store. It cost 10 ¢ to go and each one was served a dish of ice cream, home made of course and frozen with the natural ice of which of there was plenty out doors  Mary Power and I went together, but it was a very stupid time and we wished and we left early wishing we had saved our 10¢.

Pg. 252

The grown people organized a literary society that met at the school house every Friday night. They spelled down, spoke pieces and had debates.

Pg. 252

On one of these entertainment nights a young lawyer named Alfred Thomas came in and stayed and kept on staying for no reason that I could see, until I was afraid Pa and I would be late. At last he asked Pa if he were going to the meeting and to my surprise Pa said "No!" Then he asked me if I were going and I thinking if Pa didn't go of course I wouldn't and said 'No!' too. So Mr. Thomas went away alone and then Pa laughed at me and said all Thomas had come for was to take me. I had refused my first offer of an escort and I was indignant.  If he wanted to take me why couldn't he say "Come go with me!" and not be such a coward. Not that I wanted to go with him, but I hated to miss the fun and now Pa and I couldn't go, but sat home all evening.

Pg. 256

The church women mad at mrs. Brown's in organized a Women's Christian Temperance Union (W.C.T.U.). Their next meeting was at our house and the[y] insisted I should join. Ida Brown had joined and because of that they urged me harder, but I refused for no very good reason. I just had a distaste for everyone at the meeting except Ma.

Pg. 256

Footnote:

A Women's Christian Temperance Union was formed in the mid-1870s is American women took a stand against alcohol and the personal and social problems it created. Initially organized in Ohio, the movement spread across the United States. Among the group's defining principles for the concepts of moderation in all things and total abstinence from alcohol.

Pg. 256

One week Mr. Barnes was away and didn't get back on Saturday. Sunday morning at Sunday-school Ma said to Mrs. Barnes that perhaps Mr. Barnes would come on the morning train. Mrs. Barnes was horrified and said "On No!" She was sure he would not. He would never do so wicked a thing as to travel on Sunday. And just then Mr. Barnes came from the depot off the morning train.

Pg. 257

Mr. Louis Bouchie was looking for someone to teach the little school in his district and Mr. Boast had recommended me. Two months was all their district could afford to have and $20 a month all they could pay. Papa told him I was not old enough to get a certificate. One must be sixteen and I could not be that hold until February. But Mr. Boast and Mr Bouchie said they could fix that with the county superintendent if I would go and I promised to teach this school if I could get a certificate. When I went to the superintendent I passed the examination and he did not ask my age. So I got my certificate and went out to Mr. Bouchie's the first of December to begin the first school in their District. There were five scholars.

Pg. 260

I did think of how she lay in bed in the morning and let her father get the breakfast, of how she was often too sick to work and lay in bed all day, but would get up at night and go to a dance.

Pg. 299

Never, thought I, did I try to hold any one that wanted to go and I'm not enter into any competition for Manley.

Pg. 301

I started hopefully to teach him his letters and found that he could not learn them. He seemed to try, but form his first lesson in the morning to the next before noon couldn't remember to tell A from B.

Then I remembered Ven Owen and the boy everyone called a fool and I brought a switch to school one morning.

I said, meanwhile toying with the switch in my hand, 'Now Georgie, we will try again the first four letters. If you don't learn them so you can tell them to me the next time, I will whip you. Just after recess, I called him up again. There was a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomache. I didn't want to whip the poor little rat. But glory be! He knew them!

Pg. 318

Ma and I made my wedding dress of black cashmere,

Pg. 320

Footnote,

In 1885, white had not yet become the standard color for a wedding gown in the United States, nor was dress to be worn just once. By 1943, however, when These Happy Golden Years first appeared, white had become traditional, and Wilder used the hasty wedding scenario to explain the black dress to her readers.

Pg. 321

We were at Mr.Brown's at eleven and were married at once with Ida Brown and Elmer McConnell as witnesses. Mr. Brown had promised not to use the word "obey" in the ceremony and he kept his word.

Pg. 320

NAUVOO PANORAMA: Views of Nauvoo before, during, and after its rise by JANATH R. CANNON (Author)

NAUVOO PANORAMA: Views of Nauvoo before, during, and after its rise

by Janath R. Cannon

QUOTES FOR DISCUSSION

The Algonquins (some say the Ojibwas) gave the river its name - "Father of Waters" - Mississippi.

Pg. 2

Two Indian chiefs, Black Hawk and Keokuk, left their names to history;

Pg. 2

The Democratic Association of Quincy, for example, appointed committee to help them, stating that "the strangers recently arrived here from the state of Missouri, known by the name of the 'Latter-day Saints,' are entitled to our sympathy and kindest regard." The kindness of the Quincy citizens would be remembered with gratitude by the Saints and their descendants.

Pg. 17

On another occasion a hundred chiefs and their families came across the river from their encampment near Montrose to see Joseph. He addressed them in the grove:

 I advised them to cease killing each other and warring with other tribes; also to keep peace with the whites; all of which was interpreted to them.

 [Chief] Keokuk replied that he had a Book of Mormon at his wigwam.... "I believe," he said, "you are a great and good man... I also am a son of the Great Spirit. I have heard your advice - we intend to quit fighting, and follow the good talk you have given us."

Pg. 29

The first week in October 1845 the Saints met in the Nauvoo Temple, in the first and last official General Conference ever held there.

Pg. 44

"One small nursery may produce many thousands of fruit trees, while they are small. But as they expand towards maturity, they must needs be transplanted, in order to have room to grow and produce the natural fruits. So it is with us." -Parley P. Pratt, October 1845 General Conference, Nauvoo Temple.

Pg. 44

In the mid-1900's a local "Grape Festival" began to celebrate the two tasty foods with a pageant, a parade, and other traditional festivities.

Pg. 59

Seven years later the congregation moved into their own church, a simple one-story building on Mulholland Street. Stoutly constructed of limestone blocks - at least some of them from the ruined Nauvoo Temple - it is still standing as the American Legion Hall.

Pg. 61

On the morning of 19 February 1937 two men stood in a drenching rain on the Nauvoo Temple block. They stepped off of the frontage of the lot Hampton noted that "an old ice barn was back in the Lot not far from the old Well that fed the font in the Temple." Then Jack Smith and Wilford Wood went to the bank to meet with the cashier Mr. Reinhardt, and the vice-president of the bank Mr. Anton. There they tried to purchase the lot they had examined. At first they had no success. Mr. Wood recorded:

It seemed as though no agreement could be made as I was limited to the price I could pay. An influence came to me and I said, "Are you going to try and make me pay an exhorbant [sic] price for the blood of a martyred prophet when you know this property rightfully belongs to the Mormon people?" I felt the spirit of the Prophet Joseph in that place. Mr. Anton said we will sell the lot for $900. I grasped his hand and then the hand of the Cashier of the Bank and the agreement was made and signed. We parted the best of friends.

The next day at the bank sale in Carthage The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints became the legal owner of the first piece of temple property to return to the church. Wilford Wood a furrier from Bountiful, Utah, was a visionary man as well as a persistent bargainer. For nearly a quarter of a century he bought historical properties he thought his church should own, often paying for them himself. In Nauvoo he purchased three-fourths the temple block properties, the Snow-Ashby duplex, the Times and Seasons Building, and the John Taylor home next to it. His correspondence with the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints clearly expressed his vision:

I would like to see the old trail so well preserved that each point would be a landing field with a beacon light to guide the old as well as the young along their way... How lasting it would be if men were trained the same as they are for seminary work and stand at each one of these important spots prepared to tell the whole truth of those wonderful events with a spirit that would tarry with both stranger and friend. They would know they had been on sacred ground.

Pg. 71

Frequent visitors swelled the attendance, especially during such festive times as the annual performance of the pageant, the City of Joseph. Starting in 1976, thousands of spectators came from the West and around the country to sit on the hillside below the chapel and view the musical story of Old Nauvoo.

Pg. 86

THE PERFECT TRIBUTE by Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

The Perfect Tribute by Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

1915 edition, (First Edition, 1906)

QUOTES FOR DISCUSSION

There was, moreover, a speech to be made tomorrow to thousands  who would expect their President to say something to them worth the listening of a people who were making history; something brilliant, eloquent, strong.

Pg. 3

He glanced across the car. Edward Everett sat there, the orator of the following day, the finished gentleman, the careful student, the heir of traditions of learning and breeding, of scholarly instincts and resources.

Pg. 4

-of what use was it for such a one to try to fashion a speech fit to take a place by the side of Everett's silver sentences?

Pg. 4

Most of the men in that group of honor are now passed over to the majority, but their names are not dead in American history - great ghosts who walk still in the annals of their country,

Pg. 10

For two hours Everett spoke and the throng listened untired, fascinated by the dignity of his hybrid look and manner almost as much, perhaps, as by the speech which has taken a place in literature.

Pg. 10

That these were his people was his only thought. He had something to say to them; what did it matter about him or his voice?

Pg. 14

The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or to detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.

Pg. 15

Not a hand was lifted in applause. Slowly the big awkward man slouch back across the platform and sank into his seat, and yet there was no sound of approval, of recognition from the audience;

Pg. 17

We'll manage not to talk about my speech, Mr. Everett," he said. "This isn't the first time I felt that my dignity hot not to permit me to be a public speaker."

Pg. 18

"I want to lawyer," he said  impulsively, looking up anxiously into the deep-lined face inches above him. "I don't know where to find a lawyer in this horrible city, and I must have one - I can't wait - it may be too late - I want a lawyer now,"

Pg. 23

"Is it very expensive to draw a will?" he asked wistfully.

"No, sonny; it's one of the cheapest things a man can do," was the hurry answer, and the child's tone showed a lighter heart.

Pg. 29

They had arrived at the prison. "I can get you through all right. They know me here," he spoke over his shoulder reassuringly to the President with a friendly glance. Dashing down the corridors in front, he didn't see the guards salute the tall figure which follow him;

Pg. 30