LINES OF THE DAY

". . . But the past does not exist independently from the present. Indeed, the past is only past because there is a present, just as I can point to something over there only because I am here. But nothing is inherently over there or here. In that sense, the past has no content. The past -- or more accurately, pastness -- is a position. Thus, in no way can we identify the past as past." p. 15

". . . But we may want to keep in mind that deeds and words are not as distinguishable as often we presume. History does not belong only to its narrators, professional or amateur. While some of us debate what history is or was, others take it into their own hands." p. 153

Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (1995) by Michel-Rolph Trouillot

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

*The Betsy-Tacy Treasury* Published Today - HarperCollins

Betsy-Tacy and Tib, Deep Valley, Minnesota, 10 books in all, culminating in 1955 with Betsy's Wedding.

I didn't discover these books until about age 10 or 11, and when I did they were already in high school -- Betsy Was a Junior. It immediately became one of my most re-read volumes on our tiny rural school library's shelves. So the young girls -- age 5 when the first book comes out in 1945 -- never much interested me. It was teenage Betsy, Tacy and Tib, in their somehow wondrous lives in my recognizable midwest -- but o, so sophisticated! they lived in Town, not on a farm like I did! -- and also fantastical because they lived so long ago, in a different world that happened before World War I, a war I hardly knew other than my paternal grandfather had been a part of it. Who were these people? I didn't know anyone like them, but now I did, inside these books.

[ "But there may be no world that provokes such profound girlish longing as the bucolic century-old Minnesota of “Betsy-Tacy.” " ]

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