p.s.

Late last night, I printed the first page of chpt 7 (part of my book writing process is: after completing a page of text, I print it out and put it in a three-ring notebook (with a carefully chosen cover color). Suddenly another sentence popped into my brain--one with voice in it! I entered it, reread it, and loved it; so did Linda when she heard both versions. Let me repeat: I love revising--the mystery and thrill of it is exhilarating!

On Writing

Part I of Stirring up the World is finished! Today I started on Part II and spent the entire day--hours!!--bringing Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony together (Part I is alternating chapters from 1815-1850.) ECS, of course, has described it best, but I needed to neatly set up her quote! That's what's on my computer screen. From there, back and forth, and around I went trying to figure out where to go. I thought about a segue re bloomers (ECS was wearing bloomers). Then why SBA wasn't invited for dinner. Etc. But--1. I write what seems to me to be a finished draft (probably be easier if I could write rough drafts, but I don't); 2. what I write has to allow me to keep moving forward (if I can't, how can the reader?)--and nothing worked. All day nothing worked! When that happens, the reasons are typically because: I don't know enough, i.e. I need to do more research; and/or I haven't thoroughly answered my key question: "What's your point, Penny?" All day, I resisted distracting myself and stuck with my misery. I thought I had it when Linda arrived home. But it wasn't clear enough to her--a fatal flaw. Happily we were able to talk it through--more like word-wrestled each sentence into shape!

On Writing

I find it so interesting that I can write something I really like one day, but end up deleting it the next. Why? What makes me decide to delete material that delights me? Because I can't write beyond that material. That's an irrefutable sign that I have to delete it, no matter how much I love it. That's what I did today. Happily the new material I wrote worked--onward!! Hurrah!!!!

Catching up and Corpses, Coffins, and Crypts

Between my last entry and now, here are some highlights: I finished chpt 6 for Stirring Up The World: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, A Biography of a Friendship; agreed to return to Queens College as a distinguished lecturer for another year; spent a couple days at the Jersey Shore; and talked to Sophie who is spending the summer with her Swiss relatives.

Also I've been wanting to post the great news from my editor Christy Ottaviano that Corpses, Coffins, and Crypts: A History of Burial (Henry Holt, 1997) is "back for a reprint . . . this makes number 12!" Christy is also my editor for Thanksgiving: The True Story (preorders available at www.barnesandnoble.com and www.amazon.com) and Adventurous Women: Eight True Stories About Women Who Made a Difference.

Women's History

Yesterday we attended a terrific program at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art. It opened with a screening of the documentary by Kay Sloan, "Suffragettes in the Silent Cinema," with extremely rare footage of anti- and pro- suffrage silent films. Then Coline Jenkins, the great, great granddaughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, spoke. She's standing in the first picture holding a replica of a street sign that is near City Hall in New York City. Melissa Messina, curator of the excellent exhibit "Votes for Women" at the museum is seated in the corner of the picture. Coline set up the other picture for me to take. It features Rachel Milano, a fashion designer for Donna Karan, communing with a bust of Susan B. Anthony. Rachel styled her hair for the program in the fashion of some young suffragists. Our conversations with young, middle-age, and beyond middle-age feminists before, during, and after the program were lively, stimulating and fun. Coline, Linda and I extended the fun by "hanging out" together, including a just-before-closing-time trip to the Rose Garden in the next door Brooklyn Botanical Garden.

It was early evening when Linda and I headed back to retrieve the car that we had parked on the upper West Side (We thought it would be easier to take the subway to Brooklyn, but it wasn't because of the weekend construction on the subway. Oh, well.) Along the way, we stopped to eat and check out the craft fair at Lincoln Center where we ended up buying early birthday presents for each other--a handcrafted handbag for her & a handcrafted backpack with a super convenient side zipper into the main pouch for me.

Our Road Trip: Thanksgiving and Women's History

We're back from our 10-day research road trip that included several days in Minneapolis, MN where we attended the 14th Berkshire Conference on the History of Women.

Before a road trip, I highlight all the women's history sites on our maps. (I use a variety of sources to identify the sites.) What we visit depends on many things--our timing, relevance (since I'm currently writing about suffrage those sites were #1), distance, etc. The first day we zigzagged off Route 80 to Salem, Ohio, site of the first Women's Rights Convention in Ohio, held on April 19 and 20, 1850. On the way, we serendipitously discovered another Thanksgiving claim on a sign in front of a shop in Berlin Center, Ohio. The shop was closed, but I found Joseph Donnelly, the proprietor, artist, and claim-maker working in his garden. The illustration on the sign are a Missaugua Native and Garrett Packard, the first white settler in what was Connecticut's "Western Reserve," now northeast Ohio, cooking a turkey. According to Joseph, "Garrett Packard was said to have shot a turkey at the central creek, now called "Turkey Broth" Creek. Because "peaceful relations" had been established between the Packard family and local natives Joseph felt he could imagine the scene and make the claim. Tragically, the "peaceful relations" did not last, and Joseph is an eloquent storyteller of that history. After lingering for an hour or more, we resumed our drive, but only for a short time because there on a large road sign beside a cemetery I spied--after almost twenty years of photographing women's history sites--the first explicitely grandmother women's history site!

Reader Response Thanksgiving: The True Story

Today I checked my email from a motel in Michigan City, IN--we're on a ten-day research road trip--and found a response from Jan Kristo, professor, Reading and Language Arts, the University of Maine, who just received the extraordinary honor of being named the Distinguished Maine Professor! She is the author of important books about using nonfiction in classrooms. Jan and I and Sandip Wilson co-authored a chapter,"Bold New Perspectives in Selecting and Using Nonfiction" in Shattering the Looking Class:Challenge, Risk & Controversy in Children's Literature edited by Susan Lehr (Christopher-Gordon, 2008). On page 111, of Thanksgiving, I quoted Jan's descriptions of the foods tied to her cultural identity--"Lithuanian (Full Blood)"-- that were included in her family's Thanksgiving menu: "headcheese . . . horseradish and herring and 'potato fudge' and ausakes."

Here is Jan Kristo's response after reading Thanksgiving: The True Story:
Thanks for the galley of Thanksgiving. I've started it and can't put it down. I love the writing and feel your voice come through the pages. . . .Your book is going to be required reading for my students and has all the makings of being a landmark text!!!

My brother and Thanksgiving: The True Story

Recently my brother Kip and his family--Lisa, Julia and Ford--spent a few days with us. I showed them the galley of Thanksgiving: The True Story and where I quoted Lisa about Thanksgiving Day football games. (p. 100) Later in their visit, Kip walked by me and simply said "St. Augustine."
"Huh," I replied.
"St. Augustine" he said and walked away.
What is he talking about? I wondered.
Suddenly I got it.
"Kip," I called after him. "Did you just read chapter 1 in Thanksgiving?"
(St. Augustine, Florida is one of the 12 competing claims for the location of "first" Thanksgiving that I write about in chapter 1.)
"St. Augustine," he said.

My sister and Alaska

My sister Cam and I are years apart in age (she was born the year I graduated from high school) but we're soul mates. (For those of you with a copy of my book Girls: A History of Growing Up Female in America, there's a picture of Cam on p. 71 and on the back cover.) She and her husband have been driving and camping from their home in Hemet, CA, to Alaska since early May. Cam's been keeping us updated with vivid emails and spectacular pictures. At this point, they are on the return trip. Here's an excerpt from yesterday's email: From Jasper we continued south through Lake Louise and Banff. This highway is called the Icefields Parkway and is described as one of North America's most scenic drives. Photos of this majestic area do not come close to describing the beauty. Huge snow-capped mountains, rivers running bank to bank, crystal clear lakes varying from gray to blue to green, thick forests of tall pine trees, abundant wildlife and more waterfalls than we could count. A number of glacier fingers connected to the Columbia Icefields were visible from time to time. . . .Tonight we are in Lethbridge, Alberta, about 63 miles from the border. Tomorrow we will cross into the U.S. and head for Glacier National Park. Wildlife has been abundant. So far, 15 bears, one wolf, one pheasant, lost count of the many moose, elk, caribou and deer. Eagles, hawks, geese, swans, ducks, loons and ptarmigan.

Reader's Response to Thanksgiving: The True Story

Your work is incredible . . . . The whole time I was reading I was marveling over your research . . . . I plan to give a copy to our 7th grade history teacher. . . . She can devise some really good lessons using the book. I like the way you use original sources with this age group. I was never taught to do that until I got to college! Dot Emer, middle school librarian, Saint Andrew's School, Boca Raton, Florida

Readers Responses to Thanksgiving: The True Story

Mollie Hoben, co-founder with Glenda Martin, of Minnesota Women's Press that publishes a bi-weekly newspaper and, my favorite literary magazine, bookwomen (www.womenspress.com), and who leads "Reading-on-the-Road adventures (books@womenspress.com): Congratulations for another great achievement! I enjoyed reading it, and especially liked the way you make the actual doing of history so much a part of the story, describing how you did the research and what that entails. That seems really important for young readers (or readers of any age, actually!) and may intrigue some into the whole idea of the engaging challenges and satisfactions of research.

Julie Hemming Savage, co-author with Heidi Hemming of the terrific forthcoming book, Women Making America, (www.womenmakingamerica.com): I'm enjoying your book! We will make it a part of our living, evolving Thanksgiving tradition.

Jackie Marshall Arnold, a professor in the Department of Teacher Education, University of Dayton, Dayton, Ohio: I can't wait to use it with my Middle School preservice students!

Reader Response to Thanksgiving: The True Story

This response is from Linda Levstik, a professor of social studies at the University of Kentucky, and the author with Keith C. Barton of the excellent book Doing History: Investigating with Children in Elementary and Middle School. With her permission, here is her email:
Hi Penny,
The semester is over and I've finally had a chance to catch up (sort of!). I loved Thanksgiving: The True Story. I am always nervous when anyone uses the word "true" in relation to history, but this is an excellent example of the kind of truth historical inquiry might inform--tentative based on available evidence, open to new information, inviting new information, going for complexity and ambiguity. How lovely. I'm doing a workshop in Connecticut in July and will recommend this one (along with your other books) to the elementary teachers who are the most likely to be teaching about Thanksgiving.

I particularly like the chart of claims and sources--what an example for teachers who might do the same with other historical stories/myths. In Doing History we included a similar example for Christopher Columbus and one for Johnny Appleseed. The charts really helped younger students make sense out of conflicting information. I was also thinking about the "harvest home" origins and how often that festival ends up in children's fantasy literature (Susan Cooper's work especially). It would be interesting to have children search out the holiday connections used across genres and drawing on ancient as well as more modern interpretations/celebrations.

Anyway--good food for thought (thank you!), good sources to explore, and information I didn't know about other claims to be "first" at giving thanks. We are a funny people with our concern about firsts, aren't we?!

Catching Up, including the answer to our frog questions

Yikes, I realized I've neglected my blog; so, here's a catching up post. We were in Spain for a week & highlights included day-trips to Segovia & finally seeing the spectacular Roman aqueduct. (I included a picture of it in my book Toilets, Bathtubs, Sinks and Sewers: A History of the Bathroom, and was thrilled to finally see it.); and Cordoba, and visits in Madrid to the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum (where the art is displayed on gorgeous salmon-colored walls as per the instructions of Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza) and the Sophia Reina Museum (where I spent considerable time viewing Pablo Picasso's Guernica and the display of Picasso's process for creating it).

I've also been occupied finishing the semester at Queens College, the last of my five-year term as a Distinguished Lecturer. It was fun sorting through my library and deciding which books to take home and which to give away to my students. What's next, some of my students asked?
Writing, writing, writing, I replied.

I just wrote two guides for Thanksgiving: The True Story: a Reading Guide and a Classroom Connections Across the Curriculum Guide. Email me if you want copies. I'll also be posting them on my web site.

On our Sophie/Grammie Day this week, we took a long hike through the woods. Sophie was the scout who kept us on the "red" trail. The path was a maze of tree roots, some big enough for Sophie to use as a balance beam. We arrived at a pond and spent 1/2 hour observing frogs that were sitting close to the shore with their heads and backs above water. They were motionless, even when a gaggle of noisy kids appeared, motionless even when one kid poked a frog with a stick, which, of course, I stopped. ("Grammie," Sophie whispered, "Why did she do that?" My impulse was to say, "Because she's mean!" but that did not seem like a helpful explanation for Sophie; instead I said, "Perhaps she hasn't learned how to treat animals. What do you think?" Sophie thought that she should learn. We were perplexed by the frog's behavior & I speculated that perhaps they were guarding eggs, but we agreed that we needed to do research.
Part of our research was for me to consulted via email with a dear, long-time friend, Dr. Judy Brook, who is a marine biologist: Here's her reply: Dear Penny and Sophie, First of all, you two get the Patience Prize for watching a frog for almost 1/2 an hour. That's what makes a good scientist--being patient and observant.
About your observations and questions: Our northern frogs don't guard their eggs. There are few tropical frogs that glue their eggs to the mates' back and let the dads carry around the tadpoles until the young hop off on their own. Our frogs lay their eggs and that's the last they see or care for their young. I think your frogs were cold. When frogs (and other amphibians) get cold they don't move. In fact, they can't move. They have no energy. Do you remember if the frogs were facing or had their backs to the sun? (They were.) Amphibians and reptiles tend to orient their bodies, when they are cold, to expose the most amount of their skin to the sun. That warms them up. Turtles will even turn their backs to the sun, extend their back legs, fan their toes, and act like solar collectors.

Judy lives in Vermont and she ended with this lovely description: We are in the throughs of spring--apple and cherry trees in full bloom, forget-me-nots making sure we don't, tulips almost over the hill, and thousands of shades of green on the hillsides. I love it!!!!!!!!!
Me, too!

Reader Response to Thanksgiving: The True Story

Patty Murphy, a graduate student in education, wrote: Penny Colman's book made me smile when she described the various ways we Americans celebrate Thanksgiving from watching or playing football games to adding our own ethnic foods to the usual Thanksgiving feast. . . . I loved her chapter "Turkey and Lasagna." This is exactly what we do in my family, as I am Italian. We dress the table with a lovely table cloth, fine china and silverware, and crystal water and wine goblets. We have a floral centerpiece and the best salt and pepper shakers. I never set up a children's table. The children have the same place settings as the adults and participate fully in this family feast. (They have never broken anything, not like some of the adults.) We start off the meal with salad and lasagna. Then we bring out the turkey, ham, potatoes, sweet potatoes, spinach stuffing (it's delicious), green bean casserole, and don't forget the cranberry sauce. We pray and have a toast. We talk about what we are thankful for. Later we bring out the coffee, tea, homemade Bavarian shortbread, and an assortment of pies, such as pumpkin, apple, blueberry, and coconut. Sometimes we have chocolate and vanilla pudding with real whipped cream and Jell-O. We talk, play piano and enjoy our loved ones' company. We laugh a lot. The day is magical. Penny Colman's book made me remember all of the things I love about Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving: The True Story Readers' Responses

A group of graduate students in education at Queens College, the City University of New York, read a galley of Thanksgiving: The True Story. If so motivated, I asked them to write their response to the book and classroom connections. With their permission, I will continue to post their responses/ideas on my blog: Here are the first two:

Trina Gasper-Miller wrote 7 pages of chapter-by-chapter ideas and a response! First here is an excerpt from her response (I'll start posting her classroom connections in my next blog entry.)
The book allows readers to reflect on the different claims as well as the different activities surrounding the holiday. It gives readers the opportunity to understand the changes in America. . . .The book, written as a narrative, allows readers to reflect on their cultural celebrations as well as the American holiday of Thanksgiving. . . . The book is hard to put down once you start reading it. I would recommend this book for teachers to read anytime of year and for older students to read on their own.

Michele Nicholas wrote: Thank you for writing a book which enables the reader to truly look beyond the 1621 Pilgrim and Indian version of Thanksgiving. From Sarah Hale's relentless pursuit of an official day of Thanksgiving, the Native Americans' National Day of Mourning, pageants (with and without Indians), as well as Lydia Maria Child's classic poem, my favorite holiday has and always will be Thanksgiving! I look forward to the release of Thanksgiving: The True Story.

Thanksgiving: The True Story

Recently I received a box with 20 copies of galley proofs of Thanksgiving: The True Story with this printed on the cover: "UNCORRECTED PROOF
NOT FOR SALE." So what is a galley proof? It is an almost-but-not-final version of a book that is bound with a soft cover. It does not include the final corrections or all of the material, e.g. this galley proof is missing the map that shows the 12 competing claims for the "first" Thanksgiving and the index, etc. It also has a revised jacket image clipped to the jacket image on the galley proof. (The revised image resulted from concerns I raised about the original image). In addition it is printed on inferior paper stock so the pictures aren't crisp and clear.

Many publishers, including mine, send galley proofs to reviewers, bookstores, media outlets between three and six months before a book is officially released--that date, known as the publication "pub" date--is September 16, 2008, for Thanksgiving: The True Story. The point is to create "buzz," or excitement about a book.

I distributed my copies to teachers, librarians, and academics because I am eager to get their responses and ideas. I'll be posting their comments. First, here is what Myra Zarnowski, a professor of education and my colleague at Queens College, the City University of New York and author of Making Sense of History emailed me: "I finished Thanksgiving last night. It reads so smoothly! I just kept moving along until I finished. BUT the most important thing about the book is how you speak to the reader about your own thinking. I don't know of any author who reveals to children the process of raising and answering questions, searching for answers, who gives the reasons for thinking one way rather than another, who integrates comments of so many contemporaries, and who makes puzzling about the past both fun and important. The whole book is about historical interpretation.

Parts I and Parts II work well together. The first part will introduce children to thinking about the "truth" of competing stories. It can easily be extended in the classroom. The second part will likely get children thinking about Thanksgiving as they experience it. Again, easily extended in the classroom.

So Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah! As a teacher, I see this book as being about Thanksgiving, but also about historical thinking. This is a great contribution."

Note: Myra is one of the many people who answered my Thanksgiving survey whom I quoted. She's in chapter 7, Food: Turkey and Lasagna--"Myra Zarnowski remembered the first time she spent Thanksgiving with her Polish American husband's family. 'After we ate the turkey and stuffing and all the side dishes, I thought we were through. But we were just getting started because then they started bringing out all the Polish dishes--kielbasa, pierogi, etc.'" (pp. 113-114)

Speaking at the Philadelphia VA Medical Center and Picatinny Arsenal

March is fun & interesting because I'm invited to speak to a variety of audiences who are celebrating National Women's History Month. The first image is the cover of the program for a terrific event at the Philadelphia VA Medical Center. Before I spoke, five staff members gave presentations that were fabulous! What a treat to see them in action. Fern Billet showed glass beads she had made, Eileen Cox discussed her mosaic art, Marge Franklin sang her original composition, LaTonya Gibson read her poem, Pamela Jackson-Malik discussed her art work, and Martha Trudeau read a poem AND gave a karate demonstration. The next two pictures are from the women's history event at the Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey. A slide from my PowerPoint presentation is on the screen in the first picture. In the second picture, Sergeant Major Graves is presenting me with his military coin. Brigadier General Phillip also presented me with his military coin. It is an honor given for excellence that I greatly appreciate. In the last picture, I'm autographing books for Marilyn Phillips.

Adventurous Women and Borders Bookstore

Linda Crooks, the sales manger of Borders in Stroudsburg, PA, and Tina Zaragoza, business & educational sales account rep, greeted me as I walked into the store: "You must be our author," said Linda.
"Yes, " I replied. "How did you know?"
"You have that author-ly walk," she said. (Tina spelled "author-ly" for me.)
"And what does that look like?"
"You're comfortable walking into a bookstore, but you're not sure about where we've set you up to sign books."
And she was correct because sometimes authors are relegated to a far away corner. But not here--Linda had a table and terrific display of Adventurous Women right by the front door. For two hours, I had fun talking to people as they streamed into this great bookstore. There was the boy who asked his mother to buy Adventurous Women for me to autograph to his step-Nanny as a gift for Mothers' Day, a father who bought a copy for his teenage daughters Rachel and Alia because he wants them to "achieve their full potential," and the twin girls who zipped over to the display and grabbed a copy that their dad bought for them. He said he was glad that they wanted to read a book because he hadn't read one in three months. Jeanmarie was particularly interested in one of the women in my book--Alice Hamilton, a scientist who undertook hazardous adventures and established the field of industrial toxicology. Carol bought a copy to donate along with a quilt for a raffle at a breast cancer event in the Fall. We collaborated to come up with just the right dedication: "To all courageous women who are traveling down their own adventurous road."

Gardening and Narrative Arc

Sophie and I spent a full day gardening. Here she is digging a hole in which to plant the French pink pussy willow tree that was loaded with plumb catkins (in the foreground). As always, my various writing projects were subminally at work in my mind. Also consciously gardening reminds me of writing--designing, digging, planting, tending, anticipating, and the arc of the seasons. The narrative arc for Stirring Up the World: Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B. Anthony, A Biography of a Powerful Friendship is divided into Part I and II: intimacy, adversity, friction, renewal, distance, heartbreak. Part III is: the story continues. That narrative arc could sort of describe gardening too, couldn't it.

Sophie/Grammie Day--Art and Butterflies, etc.

Yesterday we started our Sophie/Grammie day with a long subway ride to Lafayette Street and the Children's Museum of Art, a great space with activity stations where children can do everything from drawing a self-portrait, making a boat, playing with flubber, bouncing on big multi-colored rubber balls, etc. On our way back uptown, we stopped at New York University to visit our friend Sue Kirch, who is a science educator at New York University (Sophie's Daddy's alma mater). Sue took us to her classroom to see butterflies and plants with eggs and caterpillars. In the picture Sue and Sophie are looking through a magnifying glass to scrutinize a piece of leaf that broke off from one of the plants in the foreground that has caterpillar eggs and newborn caterpillars. Behind Sophie, is a stand covered with netting with trays of plants and butterflies. On our way back to the subway, Sophie spotted a baby robin under a bush!
Sue's classroom is in the building at the corner of Washington Place and Greene Street, the site of the memorial to the 146 victims, mostly young women, who died in the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire, March 25, 1911. For many years, ceremonies commemorating that horrific event have been held around that date. In the picture, Sophie and I are reading the banner marking this year--the 97th year since the tragedy. Each stem of the white carnations has a label with a person's name. I learned about the Triangle fire during my research for my biography of Frances Perkins who witnessed the fire. The scene, she later explained "struck at the pit of my stomach. I felt I must sear it not only on my mind but on my heart as a never-to-be-forgotten reminder of why I had to spend my life fighting conditions that could permit such a tragedy." As secretary of labor, throughout the administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Perkins did just that as the architect of far-reaching reforms and social legislation--safer working conditions, reasonable working hours, unemployment insurance, and, the establishment of Social Security.

We ended our day in Englewood coloring Easter eggs, playing a game, and eating pasta. Then it was back across the George Washington Bridge--home for Sophie & a trip to Teachers College for Linda to pick-up and drop off work. It was a fun, fascinating on-the-go day!