Maybe Nellie Oleson was really a sweet girl

My cyberfriend Frances Garrood over there in Jolly Olde Englande has indicated in a post that she is is outraged over...well, here, just read it for yourself:

“I’m Outraged” by Frances Garrood.

I left the following comment (more or less; I have expanded it a little for this post) :

I know just how you feel, but with me it’s Little House on the Prairie. Mrs. RWP and I have been watching reruns of it every evening for several months now, just before reruns of The Waltons.

I know. It’s sad, isn’t it?

This week I decided to look online for some information about the real Laura Ingalls Wilder and Charles and Caroline and Mary and Almanzo and discovered that their names may have been used in the series but not much else in it is true. I am outraged, just like Frances. The last time this happened was when Mrs. RWP and I saw the film made of John Gresham’s book The Firm and the whole second half of the film had Tom Cruise running around Memphis, Tennessee, instead of fleeing all the way to Florida one step ahead of the bad guys, and it was filled with F-bombs galore when not one curse word appeared in Gresham’s book. I understand about literary license and all that, but I prefer that films at least try to resemble the original works. To Kill A Mockingbird did a good job of that, in my opinion.

Even in Zefferelli’s Romeo and Juliet (which Frances mentioned in her post), Romeo said, “But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?” but DID NOT THEN SAY, “It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.” No, he didn’t. The film may have “stuck faithfully to the original words” but it inexplicably left out a few I was expecting.

That’s the real Charles and Caroline Ingalls in that photo. He doesn’t remind me in the least of Michael Landon.

And here’s the real Mary Ingalls:

She doesn’t look a thing like Melissa Sue Anderson. And although she did attend the Iowa Braille and Sight Saving School in Vinton, Iowa, between 1881 and 1889 and graduated, there is no evidence whatever that she ever married a blind teacher named Adam. She returned home and lived with her parents until their deaths, and then with her younger sister Carrie, and then with her even younger sister Grace. At least they got the names right. Wikipedia reports that Mary was able to contribute to the family income by making fly nets for horses.

And the annual Laura Ingalls Wilder pageant that has been held annually since 1971? Is it held in Walnut Grove, Minnesota?

No, it is not.

DeSmet, South Dakota.

I simply can’t go on.

The rant is ended. Long live the rant.

A double whammy and some trivia for October 31st

Rather than linking you to Wikipedia (at least until the last paragraph), my post today uses information from The Writer’s Almanac entry for Friday, October 31, 2008:

“Today is Halloween. Halloween’s origins date back about 2,000 years, to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain. The Celts lived in the cold parts of Northern Europe -- in Britain, Ireland, and the north of France -- and so for them, the new year began on November 1st, the end of the fall harvest and the beginning of winter. The night before the new year, on October 31st, the division between the world of the living and the world of the dead dissolved, and the dead could come to earth again. This was partly bad and partly good -- these spirits would damage crops and cause sickness, but they also helped the Celtic priests, the druids, to tell the future, to make predictions about the coming year. The druids built huge bonfires, and regular people put out their own fires in their homes and crowded together around these fires, where they burned sacrifices for the gods, told each other’s fortunes, and dressed in costumes -- usually animal skins and heads. At the end of the celebration, they took a piece of the sacred bonfire and relit their own fires at home with this new flame, which was meant to help them stay warm through the long winter ahead.

“First the Romans co-opted Samhain and combined it with their festivals, and then the Christians co-opted both the Celtic and Roman celebrations. In the ninth century, the pope decided that these pagan festivals needed to be replaced with a Christian holiday, so he just moved the holiday called All Saints’ Day from May 13 to November 1. All Saints’ Day was a time for Christians to honor all the saints and martyrs of their religion. The term for All Saints’ Day in Middle English was Alholowmesse, or All-hallowmass. This became All-hallows, and so the night before was referred to as All-hallows Eve, and finally, Halloween [or, more accurately, Hallowe’en --RWP].

“It was on this day in 1517 that Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses on a church door in Wittenberg, Germany. Martin Luther was a monk who disagreed with the Catholic Church’s practice of selling indulgences, which forgave the punishment for sins. Luther thought that God offered forgiveness freely without having to pay for it, and he wanted to reform the Catholic Church. He posted the theses as points to be argued in a public debate. He had no intention of creating a new branch of the Church, but that is what he did, more or less. He set in motion a huge rift within the Church, which eventually led to the Reformation.”

Now for the trivia (and the Wikipedia links). October 31st also happens to be the birthday of Chiang Kai-shek (1887), Dale Evans (1912), Barbara Bel Geddes (1922), Dan Rather (1931), Michael Landon (1936), and Vanilla Ice (1967).

If that isn’t enough trivia for you, here’s a little more. Dale Evans’s real name was Frances Octavia Smith, and her fourth husband, Roy Rogers, was really Leonard Sly from Ohio. Michael Landon’s real name was Eugene Maurice Orowitz. Vanilla Ice’s real name is Robert Van Winkle.

Just how many lists have you ever read that began with Chiang Kai-shek, included Dale Evans, and ended with Vanilla Ice?