Born on This Day: Eric P. Kelly, Lover of the Polish People

Mar16

Eric P. Kelly was an American newspaperman and later professor of English at Dartmouth, but his heart was with the Polish people during and after both World War I and World War II. He worked with Polish refugees after World War I, and he came to love Warsaw, writing to his mother, “Warsaw is a beautiful city, reminds me in some ways of Denver.” Then, in 1925-26, Mr. Kelly was a lecturer at a polish university in Warsaw where he heard the legend of the trumpeter of Krakow who, in 1241, was pierced by a Tartar arrow before he could finish a song called the Heyna? Mariacki (aka St. Mary’s Song or the Krakow Anthem). Ever since then, the song has always been played every hour four times from the tower of the Church of Our Lady St. Mary, but abruptly cut short before it is finished.

I’ve never managed to finish Mr. Kelly’s 1928 novel, The Trumpeter of Krakow, either, even though it won the Newbery Medal in 1929 and even though I’ve started it several times. However, I’m working on it now (again), and I’ll let you know what I think when I finish.

Eric P. Kelly also wrote the following books, a few of which I would really like to check out:

The Blacksmith of Vilno (1930) Also set in Poland, one of Kelly’s three “Polish novels.”
The Golden Star of Halicz (1931) The third of the Polish novels.
Christmas Nightingale (1932) Christmas stories of Poland, illustrated by Marguerite De Angeli.
The Girl Who Would be Queen (1934) Biography of the Countess Franciszka Corvin-Krasi?ska who lived during the 18th century in Poland and who sounds as if she might have been a fascinating person. A Polish writer of children’s literature, Klementyna Ta?ska, wrote a novel in 1825 about Countess Krasinska, The Diary of Countess Francoise Krasinska (children’s or adult?).
Three Sides of Angiochook (1935)
Treasure Mountain (1937)
At the Sign of the Golden Compass (1938) A tale of the printing house of Christopher Plantin in Antwerp, 1576.
On the Staked Plain (1940) Maybe a cowboy story?
From Star to Star (1940) A story of Krakow in 1493.
In Clean Hay (1940) Christmas story, illustrated by Maud and Miska Petersham.
Land of the Polish People (1943) The Portraits of the Nations Series.
The Hand in the Picture (1947) Another fiction book set in Poland.
The Amazing Journey of David Ingram (1949) This one sounds amazing. Did you know that there was a young man, David Ingram, who claimed to have walked from Tampico, Mexico to Nova Scotia in 1568, the first European to have traveled across the continent. He also claimed to have seen silver, gold, elephants, and penguins on his journey, which makes some people doubt his story. Nevertheless, a book about the journey of David Ingram would be fun to read, I think.
Polish Legends and Tales (1971)

So, Eric P. Kelly, born March 16, 1884, died in 1960 after 33 years of teaching English at Dartmouth. The Trumpeter of Krakow was his first published book, and it remains his most well-known. If you happen to run across any of his other books, grab them for me.

On the Blue Comet by Rosemary Wells

Apr19

Another boy’s book in which time travel makes my head hurt. “Time is a river in which we can travel both forward into the future and back into the past.” The urchins watched Back to the Future 2 last night, and it made my head hurt, too. With The Blue Comet I just gave up on trying to understand the river of time and enjoyed the story.

Eleven year old Oscar Ogilvie lives with his dad in a little house in Cairo, Illinois. Mom is dead, but Dad and Oscar are happy with Oscar doing the cooking, Dad working as a salesman for the John Deere Tractor COmpany, and the two of them enjoying the Lionel train layout that they have in the basement. Then, the stock market crashes, and the depression hits, and Oscar’s dad loses is job and has to go to California to look for work, leaving Oscar behind to live with his crabby Aunt Carmen. All of this and a little more happens in chapters 1-4, before the time travel/magic part of the book begins. It’s a little slow, and some kids may give up before they get to the good part.

But they shouldn’t. The Blue Comet is deceptively dull at first, but the pace picks up in chapter 5 with a bank robbery, a jump into that River of Time, and some cameo appearances by famous stars and celebrities of the 1940’s such as “Dutch” Reagan, A. Hitchcock, and even a very young Jack Kennedy. It was fun to try to pick out the celebs, and it was enjoyable just to follow the story of our boy-hero, Oscar, as he worked his way from one side of the country to the other and from one era to the next and then back to the past where he came from.

The illustrations in this book by Bagram Ibatoulline deserve, indeed require, a mention. I wish I could show you an example. The pictures are full-color painting in a sort of Norman Rockwell-style. They’re just beautiful and quite evocative of the time period. I guess the cover illustration will have to do to give you an idea, but the pictures inside the book are even better.

So time travel. Electric trains. Depression-era. A boy and his dad. Oh, and Rudyard Kipling’s “If” and a disappearing math teacher. Bank robbers foiled. Surely, one or more of those will capture your interest in this well-told tale of historical adventure.

Fabulous Fashions of the 1920’s by Felicia Lowenstein Niven

Oct30

This book is one in a series of books called Fabulous Fashions of the Decades, published by Enslow Publishers. I found it on the “new books” shelf at my library in the children’s section, and thought I’d give it a try as a part of my ongoing twentieth century history studies this year.

The book includes lots of good information and photographs, and I learned a few things. I already knew about bobbed haircuts and cloche hats and flapper beads and raccoon coats. But I never connected “bobby pins” with bobbed hair.

“The bobby pin was invented to keep bobbed hair looking neat.”

And did you know that one actress in particular was famous for her “Dutch boy” haircut?

“Actress Louise Brooks was famous for her Dutch boy haircut.”

It also never occurred to me to connect the silky, Egyptian tunic-like fashions of the twenties with the discovery of King Tut’s tomb in 1922.

“People became fascinated with all things Egyptian. There were clothes and shoes with heiroglyphics. Women wore Cleopatra earrings, snake bracelets, and scarab-shaped jewelry.”

There’s a bibliography in the back of the book for the purpose of more research, and there are addresses in the back of the book for a couple of websites where readers can see more fashions of the twenties:

Fashion-Era, Flapper Fashion 1920’s
1920-30.com, Women’s Fashions 1920s

This book, and others in the series, provide a good introduction to fashion history in the twentieth century.

This post is linked to Nonfiction Monday, hosted this week at Jean Little Library.

1929: Events and Inventions

Oct25

January 6, 1929. The Albanian missionary sister Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, later known as Mother Teresa, arrives in Calcutta from Ireland to begin her work among India’s poorest and sickest.

'Mother-Teresa-collage' photo (c) 2009, Peta-de-Aztlan - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

February 14, 1929. St. Valentines Day Massacre. Seven gangsters are gunned down in Chicago in a gangland shooting. Police believe the killing is the work of Al “Scarface” Capone and his gang and is a result of the deadly war for control of the illegal alcohol trade and other illegal activities in and around Chicago.

March, 1929. Benito Mussolini’s Fascist Party wins a rigged election in Italy and forms Italy’s first fascist government. All secondary school teachers are required to take an oath of loyalty to Fascism, and children are taught that they owe the same loyalty to Fascism as they do to God.

May, 1929. Joseph Stalin consolidates his power in the Soviet Union by sending Leon Trotsky into exile. The only country that will grant Trotsky asylum is Turkey, in return for his help in their civil war. Stalin continues to institute communist reforms. Millions of Soviet farmers are removed from their private farms, their property is collected, and they are moved to state-owned farms.

August 16, 1929. In Jerusalem, Arabs and Jews fight over access to the Wailing Wall, a Jewish holy place. The rioting, initiated in part when British police tore down a screen the Jews had constructed in front of the Wall, continues until the end of the month. Over 200 Jews and Arabs are killed in the rioting.

August 29, 1929. The German-built airship Graf Zeppelin lands in New Jersey, having circled the world in twenty-one days, seven hours, and twenty-six minutes.

October 3, 1929. The Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes is renamed Yugoslavia to be ruled over by the present King Alexander. King Alexander has abolished the old constitution of the Kingdom, and he is now dictator and sole ruler of the country of Yugoslavia.

October 24, 1929. The New York Stock Exchange collapses, with terrified investors selling more than 13 million shares in one day. Experts say that stocks have been overpriced for a while, and now suddenly investors in the stock market agree. Millions face financial ruin in the U.S. and around the world as stock prices re-adjust.

December 29, 1929. The All India Congress in Lahore, India demands Indian independence from Britain, something it had threatened to do if Britain did not grant India dominion status as a self-governing part of the British Empire.

Late in 1929: The French begin work on the Maginot line, as a defense against a possible German attack. The Maginot Line is a line of concrete fortifications, tank obstacles, artillery casemates, machine gun posts, and other defences, which France constructs along its borders with Germany.

Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction Set during the 1920’s

Oct24

The Night of the Burning: Devorah’s Story by Linda Press Wulf. Haunted by the loss of her parents to war and typhus, and driven from her Polish shtetl during the murderous anti-Semitic pogroms of 1921, Devorah, 12, and her younger sister, Nechama, are taken with 200 other Jewish orphans to safety in South Africa’s Jewish community.

An Ocean Apart, a World Away by Lensey Namioka. (Laurel Leaf, 2003) Xueyan, a privileged Chinese girl, is given the opportunity in 1921 to attend Cornell University in the United States. A sequel to Ties That Bind, Ties That Break by the same author.

Celesteâ€™s Harlem Renaissance by Eleanora E. Tate. Celeste goes to visit her almost mythical Aunt Valentina who lives in a mansion in Harlem, an actress who drives a big car and wears fancy clothes.Semicolon review here.

Witness by Karen Hesse. (2001) In a small Vermont town in 1924, the Ku Klux Klan moves in, and citizens are reluctant to do anything about the Klan until a shooting occurs.

Jake’s Orphan by Peggy Brooke. (2000) A twelve-year-old boy takes a job on a North Dakota tree farm in 1926 to escape the Minnesota orphanage where he lives. Recommended for ages 9-12.

Dave at Night by Gail Carson Levine. (1999), An orphaned boy sneaks out of the Hebrew Home for Boys and discovers Harlem’s world of jazz in 1926. Recommended for ages 8-12.

Moonshiner’s Gold by John Erickson. A mystery/adventure novel set in the Texas Panhandle in 1925-27. Fourteen-year-old Riley McDaniels’s father has just died, and he and his mother struggle to keep their ranch going. Riding home from school one afternoon, Riley discovers that moonshiners have built a still in a nearby deserted canyon on their property and are making whiskey.

Black Duck by Janet Taylor Lisle. (2006) A fourteen-year-old boy who discovers a dead body on the beach in 1929 and suspects it has something to do with bootlegging.

Bright Young Things by Anna Godberson. YA, probably skews older. Letty Larkspur and Cordelia Grey leave their Midwestern home for the bright lights of Manhattan.

Vixen by Jillima Larkin. Also looks as if it would be best for older teens and twenty-somethings. 17-year-old Gloria Carmody wants to live it up as a flapper in Jazz Age Chicago.

Choosing Up Sides by John Ritter. (1998) An athletically talented thirteen-year-old boy in 1920s Ohio whose father, a fundamentalist preacher, opposes his wish to play baseball. Recommended for ages 10-14.

The Storyteller’s Daughter by Jean Thesman. (1997) A fifteen-year-old girl in Seattle during Prohibition suspects her father may be illegally smuggling rum into the country, just before he disappears.

Chief Sunrise, John McGraw, and Me by Timothy Tocher. (2004) A fifteen-year-old boy leaves his abusive father and goes to New York in to try out for the New York Giants baseball team.

Crossing the Tracks by Barbara Stuber. In the 1920s, Iris’ emotionally distant father sends her to rural Missouri to act as a companion to an elderly woman while he heads to Kansas City with his fiance. Iris’ mother died when she was five, and it takes her some time to learn to care for Mrs. Nesbitt and see her own future with optimism.

The River by Rumer Godden. YA before there was YA, The River tells the story of a young British girl coming of age in India.

More suggestions?

Hymn #63: I’ll Fly Away

Jul11

Lyrics: Albert E. Brumley, 1929.

Music: Albert E. Brumley

Theme: For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. I Thessalonians 4:16-17

Here’s Allison Krauss singing with scenes from the movie O Brother Where Art Thou.

My brother-in-law loved that movie; I was and am completely unable to share his enthusiasm, except for the music which is worth enduring the tediousness of the movie.

Some bright morning when this life is over
I’ll fly away
To that home on God’s celestial shore
I’ll fly away

Chorus
I’ll fly away oh glory
I’ll fly away (in the morning)
When I die hallelujah by and by
I’ll fly away

When the shadows of this life have gone
I’ll fly away
Like a bird from prison bars has flown
I’ll fly away

Oh how glad and happy when we meet
I’ll fly away
No more cold iron shackles on my feet
I’ll fly away

Just a few more weary days and then
I’ll fly away
To a land where joys will never end
I’ll fly away

Albert E. Brumley, the author and composer of this famous gospel hit, was the son of an Oklahoma share-cropper, and at the age of sixteen he decided to write gospel music.

“In 1926 Albert made a life-altering decision. He left the family farm and traveled east toward Hartford, Arkansas, searching for a “Good Samaritan.” His name was Eugene Monroe Bartlett, owner of the Hartford Music Company and director of the Hartford Musical Institute. . . . Throwing back his frail shoulders, Albert found the Institute and soon located Mr. Bartlett in his office. He introduced himself and said, “Mr. Bartlett, I hear that you’ll teach a fella how to sing and how to write music. I’ve come to learn and I understand I don’t have to have any money.”
Mr. Bartlett asked Albert if he at least had money for tuition, which was five dollars. Albert answered, “No, sir.” Bartlett then asked if he had any money for his room and board. Again the answer came, “No sir, Mr. Bartlett, I don’t have any money period.”
Albert never forgot what happened next. The “Good Samaritan” looked the frail young man up and down and said, “Well, in that case you better go over to my house and board.”

Brumley spent the rest of his life writing music,and he eventually bought Eugene Bartlett’s music publishing company after Bartlett’s death.

You can listen to this gospel favorite sung by almost any country or folk or gospel artist you want to hear. They’ve all recorded it: Wynona Judd, Johnny Cash, Jars of Clay, Merle Haggard, Charley Pride, Nickel Creek, Hank Williams, Alan Jackson, Loretta Lynn, Kanye West, WIllie Nelson, Plainsong, Ronnie Milsap, Aretha Franklin, George Jones, Avalon, and Jerry Lee Lewis, just to link and name a few.

Sources:
Biographical Sketch on the Life of Albert E. Brumley.

Semicolon