Book Women

Thanks to Barbara McFadden for sending this vintage
photo of a reading, writing, bicycle - riding
Book Woman with Typewriter

Reading The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek [Kentucky] will open your eyes to a few things. First of all, you must brace yourelf to the nearly incomprehensible reality that this story takes place in 1936. The desperate living conditions for so many of the characters seem more like 1836. One way you know it's the 20th Century is the Pack Horse Library WPA Project.

These devoted librarians and their amazing steeds traveled to remote but inhabited areas, delivering novels, magazines, almanacs, newspapers, picture books, scrapbooks, recipes, medicinal advice, and even occasional treats of special food, such as herbs, teas, and fruit for the school children.

Thanks to my sister Diane for recommending this very inspiring historical novel which is introducing a new generation of readers to the Pack Horse Librarians -- and to the Blue People of Kentucky. We had no idea!

You would be a well on your way to completing a Great Books Course if you devoted a summer or a semester to reading all of the classic titles that nineteen - year - old Cussy Mary Carter delivers to her patrons -- Peter Pan, Peter Rabbit, Robinson Crusoe, Brave New World. Despite her own tough road in life, Cussy (named after her great - grandfather's birthplace in France) is determined to raise the consciousness and the literacy of the citizens of Troublesome Creek. She distributes not only the standards but also creates scrapbooks of unique selections from her own eclectic reading:

"The poetry section I'd made filled several pages, and I paused to reread one of my favorites, 'In a Restaurant' by Wilfrid Wilson Gibson. I loved how I could hear the music of the violin he'd written into it. Beside it, I'd pasted 'Trees in a Garden' by D. H. Lawrence. The poem was a pretty one about trees, and I could almost smell the naked scents of woody barks, budding leaves, and fruits." (52)

Out of curiosity, I just had to look these poems up and share them here:

Trees In The Garden

Ah in the thunder air
how still the trees are!

nd the lime-tree, lovely and tall, every leaf silent
hardly looses even a last breath of perfume.

And the ghostly, creamy coloured little tree of leaves
white, ivory white among the rambling greens
how evanescent, variegated elder, she hesitates on the green grass
as if, in another moment, she would disappear
with all her grace of foam!

And the larch that is only a column, it goes up too tall to see:
and the balsam-pines that are blue with the grey-blue blueness of things from the sea,
and the young copper beech, its leaves red-rosy at the ends
how still they are together, they stand so still
in the thunder air, all strangers to one another
as the green grass glows upwards, strangers in the silent garden.

Lichtental

D. H. Lawrence (1885 - 1930)


***************
In a Restaurant

He wears a red rose in his buttonhole,
A city-clerk on Sunday dining out:
And as the music surges over the din
The heady quavering of the violin
Sings through his blood, and puts old cares to rout,
And tingles, quickening, through his shrunken soul,

Till he forgets he ledgers, and the prim
Black, crabbèd figures, and the qualmy smell
Of ink and musty leather and leadglaze,
As, in eternities of Summer days,
He dives through shivering waves, or rides the swell
On rose-red seas of melody aswim.

Wilfrid Wilson Gibson (1878 – 1962)

***************
I learened that Gibson was best known for his poem "Flannen Isle," based on a true story of the mysterious disappearance of three lighthouse workers. My first thought was, Hey, that sounds like it would make a good movie! Sure enough that show exists: The Vanishing, a 2018 psychological thriller that I only came across because of reading The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek.

After viewing the movie, we followed up with a documentary that gave additional background, perhaps more factual, though much remains unknown. For example, the three lighthouse keepers probably did not kill each other; more likely, they were swept away in the storm. Still, you never know what facts or fictions may be revealed, or how one title will lead on to another, when you are being guided by the reading list of a learned Book Woman!

All - loving, tender - hearted Book Woman
Photo by Jay Beets

Me as Book Woman:
Likes to read aloud!

P.S. Try to find later:
Book Woman link
Read aloud link