Lutie Eugenia Stearns--Intrepid Woman

Quite by accident I tripped over this lady and was immediately intrigued. No, unlike my other Intrepid Women, she didn’t save people from death or become the first at something on the national level. She didn’t travel around the world or risk her life. Or unravel and right a social wrong. Oh, she did speak out on issues, but that’s not what makes her my most recent Intrepid Woman.

Lutie Euegenia Stearns enriched peoples’ brains. She’s been called the Johnny Appleseed of books. She built community pride and a common goal of creating free and numerous public libraries. She envisioned traveling libraries before there were book mobiles.

I would posit her actions were as important and influential, albeit in a different realm, as those of other women I’ve spotlighted in this blog.

You may have heard of another literacy initiative, pack horse librarians, who brought a horse version of the bookmobile to the residents of the hills of Kentucky from 1935-1943. I’ve wondered if they knew of and were inspired by Lutie’s actions in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries.

Born in 1866 in Stoughton, Massachusetts, Lutie’s family moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin when she was five years old. She became a teacher at age 20 in the Milwaukee Public Schools. Lutie became known for her innovative gathering of books for her students to supplement the meager school district offerings.

Through her efforts, she came to the attention of Milwaukee Public Library System and took over from the head of that institution, Minnie Oakley, when she died. Some of my sources indicate she helped found that institution in 1891.

Despite her stuttering condition, Lutie became a speaker on women’s rights issues, the League of Nations, industrial reform, peace, education, and providing free libraries for all. She wrote a newspaper column titled, “As a Woman Sees It” from 1932-1935 as she continued focusing on issues.

One of her ideas, not implemented in Wisconsin but later picked up in Maryland, was traveling libraries on wagons. Here’s what The Machinists’ Monthly Journal (July, 1904) reported:

"These crazy Socialists in Wisconsin are going too far. A book wagon, the first public library on wheels to be sent out in the United States, is contemplated in a plan just completed by the Wisconsin Free Library Commission. It will invade the State next October. As the wagon passes through the counties the farmers will be invited to select their winter's reading. There will be books for the old and young, and each family will be allowed to make as large a selection as is desired. The following Spring the wagon will make another trip through the same territory to gather up the books and return them to the central library."

Why the opposition? Who knows?

From 1895 to 1914, Luties worked tirelessly with the Wisconsin Free Library Commission to provide books in 1500 locations in Wisconsin through a different kind of traveling library. A town would agree to provide space, and book boxes to fill the shelves would be delivered and then swapped out for new ones.

She helped organize a cooperative library serving 30 counties and helped in the creation of 150 permanent buildings for local libraries.

Here is a map of Wisconsin showing her impact.

In 1951, she was included in a “Library Hall of Fame”, and in 2008 (why so long?) she was inducted into the Wisconsin Library Hall of Fame.

Lutie died on Christmas Day in 1943, but she left the state of Wisconsin much richer for her presence. And her ideas spread to other states affecting them as well.

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Book Review: BEFORE ANNE AFTER

I’m a sucker for time travel books for a number of reasons. Traveling to the past to observe history is just such an incredible notion. Literally incredible. Not credible. But, boy, how I’d love to do it! The paradoxes and how authors deal with them (or not) make for entertaining reading all on their own.

Another reason I like time travel books is the science of it. I’m a science fan and love learning new things in the various fields. Additionally, and relatedly, I read a lot of science fiction. I especially like so-called “hard science fiction” with an emphasis on scientific accuracy. I like my historical fiction that way as well, as I’ve stated before on this blog. This book is a cross-over book; fans of both genres will enjoy it.

Before Anne After by James Paddock meets my criteria for historical fiction and science fiction. Anne is inadvertently transported nearly 45 years into the past in the same location. What in 1987 is a top-secret time travel research facility, in 1943 was a Navy barracks in South Carolina.

Anne, annoyed with her husband’s lateness and hot and sweaty on this July day, arrives at her husband’s work site and invades an area she not allowed in. Of course, right? That’s how these things often happen. Vastly pregnant, her arrival on the floor of the Naval barracks, surprises everyone, including Anne. She has no idea of her husband’s research (I found that piece the least credible part of the story, by the way), and cannot reconcile where she clearly is with what her rational mind can explain. She must be crazy or suffering from amnesia but with vivid, detailed memories of a life in a different place.

Anne is among the last to know she is a time traveler. The German spy knows. The woman she is living with knows. The man who has fallen in love with her knows. Again, I realize the author did this for the story he wanted to tell, but with her background and what we know of her father’s and husband’s research interests, I didn’t buy it.

Still, the machinations to get her back to 1987 and the plot point time travel twists held my attention to the very end. And an unexpected ending it is. Satisfying and wholly appropriate to the story.

While the book needed a better editor, it was engaging enough that I continued reading this very interesting and unique time travel tale. As to the science, the hobgoblins of time travel stories is paradoxes and the how of it all. Paddock confronted both and presented credible explanations. I love the pseudo-science explanations that make you think, well . . . maybe.

As to the history, the author does a great job of setting us down in war-time Charlestown, South Carolina. There is enough real history and people to make the historical fiction credible as well. The setting and the times, the fears and paranoia, the fashions and daily routines are presented well. The tie from 1943 to 1987, right before her disappearance, is a nice touch.

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Columbus Day? Really?

Columbus Day was a day off from school when I was a kid. I never questioned how or why a vacation was connected to a man accidentally finding “The New World”. But now I wonder, given the more transparent aspects of his discovery and the devastating aftermath for the indigenous peoples, how we could honor him.

As I recall, in my little farming community in Ohio, there were no special speeches or parades or events on this day. Perhaps back in the 19^th century it was different, but not in mid-century Ohio. We just got out of school for the day. Hooray! Columbus Day sales came along later.

Having holidays as days off from work or school is a relatively new phenomenon. Puritans didn’t even “take off” Christmas Day. In fact, from 1659-1681, the celebration of Christmas was outlawed in Boston. They argued there was no scriptural directive to recognize the birth of Jesus and that the holiday celebration was rife with pagan symbols and rituals. The official federal recognition of Christmas as a day “off” came in 1870 and has morphed into commercialism and nostalgia tinged with spirituality.

The Pilgrims had one meal of thanksgiving that they did not repeat the following year. George Washington called for a day of thanksgiving in 1789, but never again. Thanksviging wasn’t a regular holiday until Abraham Lincoln set the fourth Thursday in November in 1863. It remained there until 1939 when Franklin Roosevelt moved the day to the third Thursday. That lasted two years, and then it went back to the fourth Thursday.

Giving people a day off to spend with family and friends makes some sense. But Columbus Day? Interestingly, many countries in the Americas do celebrate the date of Columbus’ discovery as a national holiday, including the United States. However, as federal holidays have proliferated, fewer schools take Columbus Day off.

Instead many schools opt to take part of the day to talk about Christopher Columbus and his three small ships happening onto an unfamiliar-to-them land mass. Amongst all the hagiography, however, is a continued neglect of the ramifications of the landing on native peoples.

There were thriving indigenous peoples all over what came to be known as the two continents of North and South America. Some estimates were that under his direct leadership several hundred thousand, and maybe up to a million native people, died. Some were enslaved and died under harsh work conditions. Wars took some lives. Some committed suicide. Many died of European diseases they had no immunity for. And this was just in the islands, not even yet the mainland where the devastation would be magnified.

One monk of the time, Bartolome de las Casas, wrote that between 1494 and 1508 under the system set up by Columbus, more than three million people died. He said, “Who in future generations will believe this? I, myself as an eyewitness, can scarce believe it.”

And that is not even close to accounting for the millions upon millions who would die across the two continents because of the explorations opened up to Spain and England.

It happened. Columbus stumbled onto lands unknown to Europe or Asia. But the cultures, so different from European ones, were considered barbaric and deserving of conquering from civilized Christian nations. By what logic do we honor that with a federal holiday?

But this momentous event did happen, so what is the answer?

Maybe it’s time to set aside the Columbus-worship in schools and society and strip the day of federal holiday status. Let’s insist that kids be taught the truth of the invaders, because that’s what they were. They believed that “might makes right,” but we know better. Don’t we?

Most Americans, I bet, give the holiday or the man little thought beyond the holiday sales ads and the ditty we all learned. “In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” It’s sad, though, that we know or care so little for this piece of history and, more importantly, the ramifications.

Maybe someone could write an alternative history novel in which peaceful co-existence and trade was the result of Columbus’ accidental discovery. Not so dramatic, but such a happening would have enriched everyone culturally and financially.

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Guest Post: Margaret Brazear

I am so pleased to have Margaret Brazear visiting today to share her inspiration and research for THE LOVES OF THE LIONHEART. Be sure to also check out her newest book, THE CAVALIER’S PACT about the restoration of Charles II to the throne. Please comment below to welcome her here.

As an author and historian, I am drawn to historical fiction, but I have a peeve about inaccuracies and always try to be sure my history is authentic. I have, in the past, shied away from fictionalising real historical characters, as none of us know what they were really like nor ever will. Even contemporary chronicles tend to be biased in favour of their own opinions.

For a long time I have been fascinated by Queen Berengaria, the wife of Richard I. I wanted to write a novel about her, and I entitled it ‘The Love of the Lionheart’. But as I began to research Berengaria and her relationship with Richard, I found that his former betrothed, Princess Alys, deserved more than a mention.

Princess Alys was the daughter of the King of France and was betrothed to Richard at the age of only 8. She was sent to England to be raised with his family, as was the custom, but the tangle of relationships during the period is quite fascinating in itself.

Whenever Alys is mentioned in fiction, she seems always to be portrayed as a scarlet woman type of character, but the more I read about her, and not much is written, the more I came to believe that she was badly used by both her own family and Richard’s.

When she should have married Richard, he chose instead to follow his real love, that of being a soldier. He was a military genius, given the nickname of The Lionheart during his lifetime for his bravery and skill. But he left Alys alone with his father, a known lecher, and he seduced her, giving Richard the ideal excuse to reject her.

Chronicles of the time state that he was in love with Berengaria, the daughter of King Sancho of Navarre, and it seems she was certainly in love with him. She mourned him for thirty years after his death and even gifted a lucrative vineyard to a monastery in return for prayers for Richard’s soul. This, at a time when she was still trying to get her rightful pension from King John and having to borrow money from her sister.

The couple were married in Cyprus, and Richard took time out of his journey to the Holy Land to host a three-day celebration for the marriage. He took her, along with his sister Joanna, to Palestine with him, but it seems his wife saw little of him while there and when the crusade ended in a truce, instead of accompanying him to England, she seems to have made her way, with Joanna, to Rome to visit the Pope. Why, we can only speculate.

What we do know is that Richard disguised himself as a pilgrim for his journey to England, probably fearing some danger from his enemies, and that his fears were justified. He was captured and held to ransom by the Emperor of Austria and was imprisoned for two years, before his wife and his mother raised the enormous ransom of 150,000 marks for his release.

Thereafter, he returned to England, again without his Queen, got himself crowned again, then returned to Europe to regain some of the territories his hapless brother, John, had lost during his absence.

His exploits and his debauchery reached the ears of Berengaria, but they also reached the ears of the Pope, who sent the Bishop of Lincoln to tell him to return to his marriage.

I hope my readers will enjoy my own interpretation of these princesses who lived more than 800 years ago, but should not be forgotten.

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Website: http://www.historical-romance.com

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Buy THE LOVES OF THE LIONHEART

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 I was born in London, England in 1948, and have studied English history since I was able to read. My last employment before retiring was as a driving instructor, and I have some funny stories about that, but I love writing, so historical fiction is the way to go. I have had some success and gathered some regular readers.

I love animals of all shapes and sizes, but my special love is for dogs. I have had the privilege of owning dogs all my life, including three Newfoundlands, the gentle giant of the canine world.

Should anyone wish to read some of my books for free, all they need do is to visit http://www.historical-romance-readers.com where they can subscribe to my mailing list and receive links to download three of my most popular books.