Things in Books

in Little House in the Big Woods, the Ingalls live in rural squalor, at subsistence levels. Ma has a single ornament, a little china woman – a shepherdess –  with a china bonnet, china curls that hang against her china neck, a china dress laced across in front, a pale china apron and little gilt china shoes.

The rapturous description of this chimeric object, a prized possession and an indication of Ma’s classiness, seemed more desirable than anything I ever owned.

About kara

We know our letters just fine, and we know our numbers to a certain point, but books were always the realm of four-eyed poindexters with bowler hats and cravats. That’s why it pleases us so that America’s proud illiterates are finally stepping up and pushing back against the crushing tide of education that threatens to swallow us all into its gaping maw of checked facts. Champions of the Ignorantiat will not like it here.
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