Fine Arts Friday: The Legend of the Foundation of the Hospital

 Legend of the Founding of the Hospital, by Lorenza Cecchietta, 1441.

(Click on the painting to see it in a larger size.)

This fresco stands in the Sala Pellegrinaio in the Spedale di Santa Maria della Scala, in Siena, Italy. The Spedale di Santa Maria was a hospital founded in the ninth century. In the center of the fresco is an usual sight: infants are climbing a ladder to heaven where they receive a helping hand from the Blessed Mother. According to legend, the hospital was founded by a cobbler named Sorore. The hospital was a way station for pilgrims, until Sorore's mother had a dream that infants were ascending heaven from a ladder at the site of the hospital. This dream spurred the transformation of the hospital from a pilgrim station to a foundling hospital. In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, a building called a hospital could serve many functions, all offering protection or aid. On the right side of the fresco, a young child enters the hospital as a man offers money to the hospital attendant for the child's care.

Earlier, this hospital's walls were adorned with frescos by the great Sienese painter of the 14th-century painter, Simone Martini, but they have since disappeared. The building served as a hospital until 1996.

I read about this hospital and this story in Richard Cork's The Healing Presence of Art: A History of Western Art in Hospital.

 Spedale di Santa Maria della Scala, Siena. The Virgin Mary was the city's patron saint, and the lost frescoes by Martini depicted scenes from her life.

Children and Work

A little friend who loves to do the dishes. She and my daughter (r) had just made a cake.  

 

More from Living with Children by Mrs. Lillian Gilbreth

Mr. and Mrs. Gilbreth were big believers in encouraging and allowing children to work in service to the family at a very young age. In fact Mr. Gilbreth had even "marked places on the closet floor with chalk where his slippers should go and nailed down a paper circle where his wastebasket was to stand, and allowed the baby, even before she could walk, to feel that she could help by putting away the slippers and pushing back the wastebasket.... The parents who have allowed their boys and girls this opportunity and privilege [to serve and contribute to the family] not only know their own joy in teaching the childrn but the children's delight in learning to be of service."

"Children learn to work best on real live projects. This is one reason why the children of pioneers were so admirably trained. There was no need to invent jobs to keep them busy or to think up chores to make them believe the work they actually did was actually needed. It is very difficult today, especially in the apartment-house life which is all that some families ever have, to find live projects."

Mrs. Gilbreth then relates how she and her husband chose their home because it needed love and care to bring it up to snuff and maintain--a large project full of many little projects and chores that they did as a family, with all children participating. The same with the summer house, which was little better than an empty shack in the beginning. "To rescue, repair, and reinstate every old piece of furniture on the place and never to buy anything that one could make became a matter of pride with the children.... A very young child, especially if his efforts are appreciated, will form ties with the places where he has accomplished something worthwhile that will always remain sources of satisfaction."

"Once the work projects have been thought through, an efficient workplace must be planned for. Again and again I have heard my husband say to some child who had started to sort stamps, polish silver, or do his homework, 'Here that is no place to work.' He would then rearrange work and worker till the light was right, the clutter removed, and the room or desk or table established as a workplace that not only made the work easier but gave the small person that attitude of good work. The child was made to feel, too, that a well-arranged workplace was not prescribed for him alone. He was allowed to criticize the workplace of the older members of the family, and any suggestions he could make for betterment were rewarded."

To read more of the ideas of Mrs. Lillian Gilbreth, in addition to Living with Children, there is her fascinating autobiography, As I Remember, and The Home-Maker and Her Job. Mrs. Gilbreth invented the three-sided kitchen geared to efficiency and the step-lid-up trash can.

An Old (and Successful) Method Comes Back Around

The Kidder Family, profiled in the Wall Street Journal for its use of workplace methods to make their family life happier and still productive. 

 

Parents are borrowing methods from the workplace to help run their households and raise their children, the Wall Street Journal reported in a feature article February 9. The large spread featured a fun graphic with photo mugs of a family of five with their family-company titles, plus the cat (Rodent Removal Engineer) and the dog (Security Officer).

The author is Bruce Feiler, whose new book The Secrets of Happy Families: Improve Your Marriage, Rethink Family Dinner, Fight Smarter, Go Out and Play, and Much More is being released this month. Mr. Feiler reports that families are starting to take some pages from the workplace to manage their hectic family lives: weekly family meetings, accountability sheets in the kitchen for daily and weekly chores, a family mission statement, and much freer back and forth between children and parents (borrowed from agile development methods), all in the interests of building the enterprise--a happy and productive family.

This is not a new idea. As many of us have known since we enjoyed Cheaper by the Dozen as children, Mr. and Mrs. Frank Gilbreth applied their efficiency methods--in-depth studies on how to reduce fatigue and increase productivity--to the daily lives of their house full of children. Unlike their contemporary and rival efficiency expert Frederick Taylor, the Gilbreths believed that people who enjoyed their work were far more productive than those who didn't, and so were keenly interested in all the subjective aspects of creating a human and productive workplace. For instance, they studied the causes of stress (in which  they included clutter) and how to remove them.

 

Mrs. Lillian Gilbreth

Nevertheless, one might well ponder how Mr. and Mrs. Gilbreth, both of whom worked full time professionally, albeit at home, were able to maintain their large family of 12 youngsters with the help of one cook and one adored but feckless handyman, and then after Frank Gilbreth died, without a father and without the cook. Family councils, where chores were assigned with much back and forth on skill levels by age and likes and dislikes, routines, family meals, fun outings, a stripped down and lean vacation home to go to each summer, were among the ways the Gilbreths kept their children happy and productive in their endeavors, while as mother and father blazed new trails in the industrialized workplace.

Underlying their success, I believe, were two secret ingredients. First, the marriage between the Gilbreths was a partnership in every sense of the word. Although Mrs. Gilbreth                        
was willing to take a second place next to her husband, she held nothing back in bringing her excellent education, intelligence and thoughtfulness, self-discipline, and energy for the use of her husband and her family--and found great joy in doing so. Second, radiating from their mutual respect for each other, the Gilbreths showed great respect for their children. "Each member of the home must not only be able to express himself but be urged to do so and given not only the opportunity but the rewards of expression," she wrote in her 1928 book, Living with Children.

Expectations and standards were high. Children were not harshly disciplined nor were they coddled:

"It is better, too, for children to enter the family life as sharing rather than receiving members. They should not be allowed needlessly to change the entire method of living or to feel that they are to be the center of interest and the real reason for the existence of the family. This is no kindness to them. All their lives long they will have to learn to adjust themselves to the needs of others; the family may not continue to make them the most important members of the household, and even if it does, the world will not follow its example.... It may be beneficial for parents and family 'to give up everything for the baby,' but it is most undesirable for the baby....

"If a satisfying life is one full of experiences, then it is our job to expose the child to experiences, not to shield him from them; to help him overcome difficulties, not move them out of his way; to teach him to achieve successes, not hand him the results of successes we have achieved for him....
As often and as early as possible, he should become an active participant in every home problem in order to derive creative experience from it....

"Nothing better generates self-confidence than being effective. While the child in a home consciously governed by laws which hold good everywhere may have a little harder time learning to be effective, he has a much better chance to be so when he later steps out in the world than if he had to learn a new technique of handling situations when faced with the difficulties of a more complex life."

The Gilbreth family on the see-saw outside their vacation home.

By the same reasoning, "as a part of his effectiveness in the world, we want the child to learn to make his own decisions wisely and quickly and having made them, to be satisfied with the results. We may start with letting him decide on the color, design, and cut of his clothes. This is a personal problem that is sure to interest him and on which he will have opinions at a very early age. I have known youngsters to point out in a very decided manner which dress they wanted to wear before they were old enough to ask for the dress or discuss the matter."

I found Mr. Feiler's article right in the spirit of Mrs. Gilbreth's child-raising philosophy. In Living with Children, Mrs. Gilbreth opined that it is far more difficult to raise one child than many. I have seen articles recently in which women have spent so much energy on being mothers that there is little time for anything else, so great is their obsession with their youngster and doing everything "right." I think Mrs. Gilbreth would laugh at such an attitude. I hope that Mr. Feiler's book helps demystify some of the current views of raising children.

Can Civic Duty Replace the Golden Rule?

The Golden Rule by Norman Rockwell

In today's Wall Street Journal today Laura Kreutzer, assistant managing editor of private equity in the newsletter group at Dow Jones, writes about how she has a hard time convincing her seven-year-old daughter to perform acts of civic-minded charity. When her Girl Scout troop was planning to help with a neighborhood cleanup, her daughter wanted nothing to do with it. "Although we have tried to raise Neva to be kind to others, I don't think we've done enough to instill a sense of commitment to the community around her. I don't necessarily need to raise the next Mother Teresa, but I also don't want to raise the next Gordon Gekko."

After discussing this conundrum with her husband and a friend, Ms. Kreutzer decides that "we are going to try to do a better job of getting the family active in community-service activities. For starters, we plan to contribute to local relief efforts for areas of the Northeast, including our own state, hardest hit by the recent hurricane. As the holidays approach, I'm also signing us up for a local charity drive that provides clothing and other items for people in need."

I applaud Ms. Kreutzer for trying to induce her child to be less selfish and for providing a role model for giving to the community, but I am deeply saddened by the paucity of intellectual and emotional equipment she has to do the job of inducing charity in her daughter. Ms. Kreutzer makes no reference to religion of any kind. Without access to the rich mine of religious thought that links individual acts of charity and goodness to the goodness of the universe as created by a loving Father, Ms. Kreutzer is left encouraging the abstraction of civic duty. To the question of Why, she has no real explanation and takes the option of offering carrots to reward charitable behavior.

But charity for the sake of a reward, at least in this world, is not the point of charity in the Judeo-Christian tradition, one of the bedrocks upon which our civilization was founded. In a Christian household, for example, at a very early age one learns the Golden Rule--do unto others as you would have others do unto you. Embedded in this rule is the assumption that each individual person is made in the living image of God. Love thy neighbor as thyself. We have the story of the Good Samaritan as an example of what being a good neighbor means and of who the neighbor is--the stranger lying on the side of the road. We have Christ saying to Peter, "If you love me, feed my sheep."  This Christian emphasis on charity was rooted in Judaism.

The Good Samaritan by Rembrandt van Rijn, 1644--the neighbor is the stranger lying on the side of the road.

For this reason, within Judeo-Christian culture, young children are taught that they must share their toys, that being "selfish" is not a good, and are brought into habits of charitable giving. This is not because our parents simply want us to be this way, but, we are taught, because this is the way in which we take our place as a contributing part of God's moral order of the universe. This is the way we participate in God's love, how we return His love. Love of God and of others is the force within us that compels charity.

There is nothing unscientific about this view. Charity, as Ms. Kreutzer recognizes, is necessary for the cohesion of society. A society which loses the concept of charity as a norm runs the grave risk of producing psychopaths and of human beings for whom "the other" as a concrete being like oneself, and not a utopian abstraction,  is a nonexistent. Charity is essential to nurturing the capacity for empathy, without which our society descends into increasingly harsh cruelty.

Ms. Kreutzer's article makes me fear that, without religion--now considered by so many as irrelevant, retrograde, and unscientific--our civilization is skating on very thin ice indeed.

Fine Arts Friday: It's Summer!

A Clambake.

(As always, click on the painting to see it in a larger size.)

The spirit of summer--fun!--led to me thinking about Winslow Homer's watercolors of children. In 1873, Homer went to live in the fishing town of Gloucester, Massachusetts, and began his forays into watercolors, painting of children, in quick strokes, in the Gloucester environs during the summer. Boys are out of school and seeking fun--boating, hunting, playing games, and watching the shoreline. When they're hungry, they dig clams, collect wood, build a fire, and have a clambake. They seem totally at ease in their pursuits, even in occasional boredom or rest on a rock. Undoubtedly, they did not have to be urged by their mothers to go outside, since outside is their preferred habitat--outside to freedom and conspiracy with confreres. Some of these boys are undoubtedly the sons of fishermen; others might be here on vacation. We know that at night they go home to their mothers, their dinners, and their beds, but out here they assume an air of self-sufficiency and self-confidence.

Toys are at a minimum, and there's no playground in sight. Here some boys fashion a seesaw from a board and rocks--which may be an element in a game.


The Seesaw

Boys have found a kitten down by the shore. The mama cat sits patiently as they handle her offspring. Each boy sports a different kind of hat: one white bowler with a blue ribbon pointing to wealth; a straw hat of a farmer; and the navy blue Union cap of a soldier--the imagined futures of these three?

\
Boys and a Kitten

I don't know what kind of eggs the boy is hunting, but the flying gulls, sand, and shells show that these boys are close to the shore. What will they do with the eggs--sell them, eat them, or take them home?

How Many Eggs?

I like how the boys in this painting are totally relaxed on a glassy sea on a windless day. They do not seem bored--water is mesmerizing after all--and their eyes seem fastened on the horizon. The painting evokes longing for the future--"What is beyond there?" is the implied question and "When can I go there?"


Seven Boys in a Dory

I like the self-confidence these boys exude on the catboat which is commanded by the seated adult. Homer later worked this watercolor into the famous Breezing Up (also called Fair Wind) of 1876. Unlike Homer's great oil paintings of later years, such as The Fog Warning and The Gulf Stream, the emphasis in not on the elemental struggle of man and sea but on the unity of purpose of the boaters and the wind as the sailboat cuts through the water. The relaxed pose of the boys indicates that they are already old hands at boating.


Sailing the Catboat

These boys may be waiting for a boat to come in or just lying around til they think up what they are going to do next. But it is summer and there is no hurry.


Three Boys on the Shore

Play's the Thing: Under the Lilacs by Louisa May Alcott

This is close to the way I imagine the bower of lilacs near the Victorian mansion in Alcott's book.

Louisa May Alcott is rightly renowned for Little Women, but as a child and later as an adult reading out loud to my young daughter, I found Alcott's Under the Lilacs to be the most charming "chapter book" for children--rivaled only by Anne of Green Gables. The story concerns two little girls, Bab and Betty, who live with their widowed mother in a small house next to an empty mansion, and what happens one spring when a runaway circus boy, Ben, and his trick dog, Sancho, are found in the carriage house and a lovely young woman, Miss Celia, and her sick younger brother, Thorny, come to spend the summer in the mansion. What happens is tons of fun for all!

Miss Celia's mission is to bring her convalescing brother back to life. She espies in Ben, Bab, and Betty just the right sort of people to help her do it, and Under the Lilacs offers a glimpse of how children created their own fun in the time before summer day camps and organized sports for children, not to mention television, video games, phones, movies, and all the other hyper-stimulative gadgets and toys that youngsters have at their disposal today.

Bab tugged away at the bow Miss Celia gave her.

She hands over one of the rooms of the mansion to the kids and gives them her rag bag and needles and thread, after which they designing and sewing flags to festoon the house's big porch. "A spell of ship building and rigging followed the flag fit," as Thorny let the children use his array of large toy ships and boats. "These gifts led to out-of-door waterworks, for the brook had to be dammed up that a shallow ocean might be made....

Thorny, from his chair, was chief engineer, and directed his gang of one how to dig the basin, throw up the embankment, and finally let in the water till the mimic ocean was full; then regulate the little water gate, lest it should overflow and wreck the pretty squadron of ships, boats, canoes, and rafts, which soon rode at anchor there. Digging and paddling in mud and water proved such a delightful pastime that the boys kept it up, til a series of a waterwheels, little mills and cataracts made the once quiet brook look as if a manufacturing town was about to spring up where hitherto minnows had played in peace and the retiring frog had chanted his serenade unmolested.

Miss Celia also organized jaunts to unknown spots in the countryside: "It really was quite exciting to start off on a bright morning with a roll of wraps and cushions, lunch, books, and drawing materials packed into the phaeton, and drive at random about the shady roads and lanes, pausing when and where they liked. Wonderful discoveries were made, pretty places were named, plans were drawn, and all sorts of merry adventures befell the pilgrims."

In the midst of all these adventures, each child enjoyed growth and development as part of the process of encountering obstacles, losses, or new challenges.



Louisa May Alcott--child delighter.

There is evidence from Harriet Reisen's Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women that Alcott modeled Miss Celia on herself. It was the recollection of one of Louisa's schoolmates that "Louisa was the foremost of her sisters and the ringleader of the group," Reisen reports. The schoolmate also recounted a performance Louisa put together for one of her sister's birthdays. "She concocted a satisfying bill of fare out of dubious romantic legends--vaguely Gaelic, Germanic, and Native American.... Louisa stole the show as Alfarata, an Indian girl who like Louisa 'was swift as an antelope through the forest going.'"

Another playmate of Louisa's recalls that in the summer that he was 14 years old, he and the Alcott sisters played outside all day, blissfully unsupervised. "We christened a favorite nook, a beautiful rocky glen carpeted with moss and adorned with ferns opening upon the water's edge, 'Spiderland.' I was the King of the realm, Anna [Alcott] was the Queen, and Louisa the Princess Royal." He also noted that Louisa's mother Abby Alcott also participated in their play, "No matter how weary she might be with the washing and ironing, the baking and cleaning, it was all hidden from the group of girls with whom she was always ready to enter into fun and frolic, as if she never had a care."

Louisa May Alcott's childhood, we know and as Reisen relates, was not blissful but rife with poverty that served up brown bread, oatmeal, and apples for most meals. But Louisa May Alcott surely remembered the best of her playtimes and re-created them in her novels, albeit properly embellished. She, as did other authors of beloved children's books such as L. M. Montgomery, wrote her dreams so that we could dream them too... and hopefully give our children a taste of such marvels.

It takes so little to make a child happy, it is a pity grown people do not oftener remember it and scatter little bits of pleasure before the small people, as they throw crumbs to the hungry sparrows.
Under the Lilacs, by Louisa May Alcott

Dancing in the Rain

Who's Minding the Kitchen While Mom Is Out Working?

Holy Family at Supper, from the Book of Hours of Catherine of Cleves.

In the United States, most mothers work: In 2007, the labor force participation rate for mothers with children under 18 was 71%, and this figure must be rising as women have gone to work as their husbands were laid off in the Great Recession.

Now, researchers at American University, Cornell University, and the University of Chicago studied 900 school-aged children and found a mother's employment outside the home correlates with a small but measurable increase in the child's body mass index (BMI). The researchappears in the January/February issue of the journal Child Development.

[A]mong sixth graders, a mother’s entry into employment was associated with an increase in BMI of about two fifths (40%) of a standard deviation, and those children were about 6 times more likely to be overweight. Additionally, among fifth and sixth graders, entry into employment was associated with an increase in the likelihood of being overweight of 8 and 11 times, respectively. However, there was no evidence that TV time or physical activity mediated this relation at either fifth or sixth grade, or that total HOME score, time spent unsupervised, in structured settings, or with parents mediated this relation at fifth grade (the HOME scale and time-use data were available at third and fifth grades only)....

Our FE results provide evidence for a cumulative influence of maternal employment; every period (averaging 5.3 months) a mother was employed was associated with an increase in her child’s BMI of 10% of a standard deviation. For a child of average height, this is equivalent to a gain in weight of nearly 1 lb every 5 months above and beyond what would typically be gained as a child ages. This link between maternal employment (vs. nonemployment) and children’s BMI is consistent with a growing body of evidence on this question (e.g., Anderson et al., 2003), including studies that have adopted comparable analytic approaches....

The results of this study have implications for policy and practice. We find that maternal employment has a cumulative influence on children’s BMI that, over time, could lead to an increase in the likelihood that a child is overweight or obese. We also find evidence that, among older children in particular, maternal employment status is linked to an increased likelihood of being overweight. Excess weight in childhood is a risk factor for excess weight in adulthood (Strauss, 1999), and the effects of obesity on chronic conditions have been found to be even larger than those of current or past smoking and problem drinking (Sturm, 2002). On average, in 2002, an obese adult and an overweight adult spent an additional $395 and $125 in health care costs per year, respectively, than healthy-weight individuals (Sturm, 2002).

In addition to the physical health and economic consequences as adults, being overweight as a child has social-emotional implications. During the early elementary school years, higher BMIs are associated with greater internalizing problems (Bradley et al., 2008). In adolescence, overweight status is associated with an increase in depression among girls (Needham & Crosnoe, 2005). Additionally, overweight teens have lower academic achievement, especially in contexts in which being overweight is stigmatized (e.g., schools with high rates of dating or lower average BMI; Crosnoe & Muller, 2004). For girls, higher BMIs are also associated with a reduction in dating (but not in having sex; Cawley, 2001; Cawley, Joyner, & Sobal, 2006). Overall, research suggests that stigma against overweight individuals is commonplace, including in the workplace, in the health care system, and in schools (reviewed in Puhl & Brownell, 2001).

Since many of the other factors measured in this study--such as TV time, sedentary life styles--did not budge the overall statistic, it appears that the culprit is the actual food consumed--its quantity and quality. A working mother is also simply less able to monitor her child's food intake and teach good eating habits throughout the day. My sister-in-law, who was a stay-at-home mom, did a great job of this with her children.

As a working single mom for more than half of the years that my daughter was growing up, I know that it is fatiguing to come home from a long day of work to make a decent dinner, set the table, and clean up after. In the days when I had a long commute, I resorted to feeding my daughter and myself like the mother in Little Miss Sunshine--fast food and ready-made frozen food. Since the food is basically unsatisfying and also heavy in salt or sugar (not to mention expensive), the tendency is to eat more.

Finally, I decided this was not fair at all. Why shouldn't my daughter be able to smell a good dinner cooking or be able to enjoy fresh homemade baked goods? So I tried to clean up my act.


Marion Cunningham -- to the rescue.

My cooking savior was Lost Recipes: Meals to Share with Family and Friends by Marion Cunningham. You can read about this wonderful book at Letters from a Hill Farm. I also used Mrs. Cunningham's The Supper Book, which has more easy recipes for preparing an easy and fast evening meal. A lot of her recipes can be created straight from the pantry and don't require a hunt for expensive exotics. Some recipes appear in both books. I especially savored her descriptions of the recipes and how she found them and her exhortations to revive the ritual of the family meal. For working mothers, who may be harried people, we need this kind of encouragement.

I also started baking with these books and Mrs. Cunningham's Fannie Farmer Baking Book.

When my daughter was in 10th grade and had her Humane Letters seminar for the first two hours of school every morning, I took a lot of pleasure in sending her off with a loaf of freshly made quick bread or muffins for her teacher and classmates to enjoy with their seminar coffee. (She went to Trinity School at Meadowview.) I rearranged my kitchen counter so that all the measuring cups, measuring spoons, and mixing spoons along with the flour and sugar canisters were alwayson the counter in front of me with baking powder, baking soda, spices and herbs, and oil in the cabinet above. In this way, I was able to whip up these morning items in no time flat.

I started using the crock pot. My daughter likes meat and potatoes, and it was easy to make a stew or a pot roast with potatoes in the morning and have the meal ready when we got home. I also made salmon or cod cakes that I could freeze and take out at the end of the day to cook. Mrs. Cunningham's cobb salad was a big favorite with my daughter and her friends.


Beef stew in a crock pot compliments of Audrey's Favorite Recipes.

Soon of course my daughter was off to college, and home cooking is more humdrum. Even so, yesterday morning I made a shrimp and rice dish based on Margaret Cunningham's "Sara Tyson Rorer's Spanish Rice with Chicken" in The Supper Book and looked forward all day to coming home, scooping some on to a plate, zapping it in the microwave, and sitting down to a decent home meal.

Lost Book: Booth Tarkington's Gentle Julia

Summer Girl by Robert Lewis Reid, 1896 (Julia spent a lot of time on the front porch.)

I intermittently read lost American books, which pleasant pursuit brought me to Gentle Julia by Booth Tarkington (1869-1946). I remembered Tarkington as the author of the Penrod books--Penrod and Penrod and Sam--that herald the antics of a boy of 10 or 11 and his buddies in a suburban neighborhood in the 1910s. I laughed hard at these books, which were read out loud in our classroom by my fifth-grade teacher, Miss Doolan (and a great teacher she was). Tarkington also wrote the books upon which the movies Alice Adams and The Magnificent Ambersons were based. So I picked up Gentle Julia, which is about a young woman who lives in a small city in Indiana, thinking that perhaps it would involve domesticity as well.

In fact, Julia is just the foil for a story about her niece, 11-year-old Florence Atwater, a very active young lady, who is constantly sneaking around and trying to bend Julia's marital outcome to her (Florence's) own will. The sweet and beautiful Julia has many suitors.

A sad note in this entertaining book, written in 1922, is the character of the maid at Florence's house, Kitty Silver, who is portrayed in the stereotypical way that many African Americans were in the twenties and thirties of the last century: uneducated, good-hearted, and funny, and often consorting with children, with whom they apparently have so much in common.

Otherwise, as in this scene, Tarkington is a precision writer of comic dialogue:

(From the window of her home, Florence is watching her cousin Herbert and his friend who are sitting on a fence down the lane writing in notebooks.)

And seldom in the history of the world have any such sessions been invested by their participants [Herbert and friend] with so intentional an appearance of importance. The important importance of Herbert and his friend was so extreme as to be all too plainly visible across four intervening broad back yards; in fact, there was sometimes reason to suspect that the two performers were aware of their audience and even of her goaded condition; and that they deliberately increased the outrageousness of their importance on her account. And upon the Saturday of that week, when the notebook writers were upon the fence the greater part of the afternoon, Florence's fascinated indignation became vocal.

"Vile Things," she said.

Her mother, sewing beside another window of the room, looked up inquiringly.

"What are, Florence?"

"Cousin Herbert and that nasty little Henry Rooter."

"Are you watching them again?" her mother asked.

"Yes, I am," said Florence; and added tartly, "Not because I care to, but merely to amuse myself at their expense."

Mrs. Atwater murmured, "Couldn't you find some other way to amuse yourself, Florence?"

"I don't call this amusement," the inconsistent girl responded, not without chagrin. "Think I'd spend all my days starin' at Herbert Illingsworth Atwater, Junior, and that nasty little Henry Rooter, and call it amusement?"

"Then why do you do it?"

"Why do I do what, mamma?" Florence inquired, as in despair of Mrs. Atwater's ever learning to put things clearly.

"Why do you 'spend all your days' watching them? You don't seem to be able to keep away from the window, and it appears to make you irritable. I should think if they wouldn't let you play with them you'd be too proud----"

"Oh good heavens, mamma!"

"Don't use such expressions, Florence, please."

"Well," said Florence, "I got to use some expression when you accuse me of wantin' to 'play' with those two vile things! My goodness mercy, mamma, I don't want to 'play' with 'em! I'm more than four years old, I guess; though you don't ever seem willing to give me credit for it. I don't haf to 'play' all the time, mamma; and anyway, Herbert and that nasty little Henry Rooter aren't playing either!"

"Aren't they?" Mrs. Atwater inquired. "I thought the other day you said you wanted them to let you play with them at being a newspaper reporter or editor or something like that, and they were rude and told you go away. Wasn't that it?"

"No, Mamma, it cert'nly wasn't."

"They weren't rude to you?"

"Yes, they cert'nly were!"

"Well, then--"

"Mamma, can't you understand?" Florence turned from the window to beseech Mrs. Atwater's concentration upon the matter. "It isn't 'playing'! I didn't want to play being a reporter; they ain't 'playing'---"

"Aren't playing, Florence."

"Yes'm. They're not. Herbert's got a real printing press; Uncle Joseph gave it to him. It's a real one, mamma, can't you understand?"

"I'll try," said Mrs. Atwater. "You mustn't get so excited about it, Florence."

"I'm not!" Florence returned vehemently. "I guess it'd take more than those two vile things and their old printing press to get me excited! I don't care what they do; it's far less than nothing to me! All I wish is they'd fall off the fence and break their vile ole necks!"

Having a Problem with the "Tiger Mother" Debate

Yale University professor Amy Chua stirred up a lot of controversy in the last month with her January 8 article in the Wall Street Journal under the headline "Chinese Mothers Are Superior," an excerpt of her new book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.

Chua berates American mothers for a lackadaisical attitude toward their children's levels of achievement, in contrast to Chinese mothers, who harshly (by American standards) harangue their children into meeting standards of perfection in academics and musical performance. Because of the time and energy that the Chinese tiger mother invests in keeping her child marching to the dictates of competition and achievement, Chinese children are getting into the best colleges and universities and far outstripping their American competitors in the field of classical music. Western mothers, wimps that they are, want their children to have fun and they reap the reward: children who cannot compete with Chinese children. I suppose a subtext is that the United States will soon be eclipsed by the expansive People's Republic of China.

Since the article appeared, there have been answers forthcoming from various quarters praising American ways as superior in fostering creativity, among other arguments.

I'd like to address the underlying assumption of the debate that I have read in the secular press: the major goal of child rearing is the high achievement of the child in society and the world.

To me raising a child involves a sacred trust to raise children who become good people. The questions that nag me are not Will my child win the next piano competition? Will my child get an 800 on the SAT? Will my child get into an Ivy League college? or even Will my child be happy?

What worries me is Will my child be a force for good in the world? Will my child have the courage to stand up for the truth under pressure? Will my child have charity and serve and give to others less fortunate? Will my child raise children who are good? Will my child be willing to sacrifice for others? Will my child keep their faith? Will my child be a beacon of hope to those in despair? Will my child have the character--an old-fashioned word--to do what is right under pressure? Will my child have the courage to stand up to evil? Will my child always love God?

These are the questions we never stop worrying about not only for our children, but for ourselves.

I assume that if my child knows and fights for the goodness within them, they will know that they are required to do their best in whatever vocation they choose, since they will understand that one's life is a precious gift not to be wasted--another problem that is posed constantly throughout one's life.

Fine Arts Friday: Painters Painting Their Children

My Little Daughter Dorothy by William Merritt Chase, 1894.

William Merritt Chase has once again inspired me, thanks to this painting in which he (the unseen artist) and his daughter take such delight in each other. Chase has set her before a heavy frame for a large artwork--art being the backdrop to her young life. But her stance is not languid in any way as if she were a mere art appendage or adornment of scenery. She is dressed for going out--to be her own self and make her own world, as I imagine, given her plucky expression, she did.


Jean Renoir Drawing by Auguste Renoir, 1901

I saw this painting this past year at an exhibition of Renoir's late works at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The Internet does not do it justice, as Renoir's brushstrokes in the painting are almost like caresses, giving the painting a soft effect although the substance and weight of the subject remain. The son became the great movie director. Through the close juxtaposition of Jean's face and hands with the drawing, Renoir captures the intensity of thought in his son--a celebration of childhood creative tension and concentration.


Portrait of the Artist's Daughter, Julie by Berthe Morisot, 1886

Julie Manet was the daughter of the French impressionist Berthe Morisot and the niece of the ground-breaking French painter, Eduard Manet, who also painted portraits of Morisot and Julie. This portrait was done with pastels. Here, although Julie looks like she is peacefully reading a book, the frenetic lines in the dress suggest that she is a lively soul and at any moment might leap up from the chair and skip out to the garden.


The Fairy Tale aka Tanis Seated by Daniel Garber, 1917

This young girl, on the other hand, is absorbed and will not be moving til the story (or painting) is finished. I like this portrait for the beautiful light that Daniel Garber, a Pennsylvania impressionist, wraps his daughter in against a wall softened by its texture and fawn-like color. Her pose and concentration tell me that Tanis feels perfectly safe and secure in her chair as her father watches and paints.


Portrait of a Boy in Fancy Dress aka "Titus" by Rembrandt van Rijn, 1655.

This is an early and lesser-known portrait of the great master's son, Titus. The National Gallery of Art in Washington says that evidence suggests that this might not be Titus, but does not say what the evidence is. It looks like Titus to me--the apple of his father's eye.


A Daughter by Carl Larsson, 1897

Carl Larsson delighted in painting his children. I chose this painting because of the ambiguity in his daughter's face and in her position alone at the table, which suggests that she is in the middle of a situation. Clearly there is someone sitting on the other side of the table outside of our view, or through the door out to the kitchen, who has captured this child's attention. Is she fascinated but doubtful of a conversation between two other children at the table? Is an adult gently reprimanding her? Or is she just patiently watching through the kitchen door for the food to come to the table?

"An Ordered Plan of Love"

Karin Larsson, by Carl Larsson, 1909

The genesis of this blog was a search on the Internet to investigate the effects on children of a physically and emotionally chaotic home, which led to Homeliving Helper and eventually to Under the Gables.

However, none of the explanations I read about the importance of maintaining a loving and clean and orderly home for children was satisfying. But at last, in Lift Up Your Hearts to Mary, Peace, Prayer, Love, by Caryll Houselander, I have found an explanation that makes complete and perfect sense to me. Here is what this most poetic writer says in her essay, "The House on the Rock," in this book:

To a young child home stands for God. In it he learns to see and touch the gifts of God. If his mother is wise she will make his home beautiful. She will copy the world's creator and make a tiny new Eden. She will bring in flowers and give the child animals and feed the birds. The food on the table will be clean and simple and good. It will not only taste nice, it will look nice....

It is in his home that the child should assimilate the Sermon on the Mount, not as if it were being drilled in his brain by words, but as if he were breathing it in his whole being like the air....

The ordering of time, which seems so simple, really requires great skill and energy from the mother. It has tremendous importance, above all if it is related (as it obviously should be) to the rhythm of day and night and is interwoven with prayer.

The child should wake to the singing of the birds (and they sing in the cities as well as in the woods). Give his heart to God, when light is young, play for long hours when the world is awake and lively. He should form habits of regular hunger and thirst, so that food and hunger come together, and his grace is a real thanking. With twilight there should come stillness in the house and he should be lit to bed by the stars.

From such ordering of time he will learn unconsciously, though it may be years before he thinks this out, that he is not part of that chaos that man has made of this world, with its fearful abuse of time, but part of an ordered plan of love.

Illustration for her book Bright April by Marguerite di Angeli.

Reading Charles Dickens with Young Teens

"The pilgrimage begins." Two wayfaring strangers, Nell and her grandfather, from The Old Curiosity Shop.

Recently, I picked up The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens, where I had left off a few years ago at page 265, and after looking at the book's first sentence--"Night is generally my time for walking."--decided to start again at the beginning. I am glad that I did, because there is no haziness in my head as the story of Nell and her grandfather unfolds before me in vivid color.

When I came to the descriptions in chapter 15 of Nell and her grandfather working their way toward the outskirts of London through the night into dawn and how life slowly awakens in the streets, I was surprised by the beauty of the prose and then saddened that so few people read Dickens today and that his books are often missing form high school reading lists. Although Dickens' descriptions do not make you feel as if you are in the scene, as with Flaubert, they are so rich in the minuteness of telling detail, the lush depiction of human behavior, and evocations of mood, that, in comparison, the descriptions I have read recently in late 20th century American literature seem paltry and starved in comparison.

So I was happy when I found Sunday in the Wall Street Journal that Oprah Winfrey has chosen two Dickens novels--A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations--for her book club. I think the more that people read Dickens the better. Especially, I hope that children in their early teens read Dickens. Here are some of my reasons:

Reading Dickens takes us into a different world, and there is nothing wrong with that. Although the torments of poverty, especially for children, are depicted starkly and that may not be our experience, children in such straits are not far away, even in America. Although the Victorian morality may differ from today's standards, it is a morality that is recognizable to almost anyone. In short, there is nothing so vastly different in Dickens' world from ours that makes any of Dickens' world irrelevant.

Within this world, we get a glimpse of just about everything--we see extraordinary goodness and kindness, we see eccentricity, we see hilarity, we see evil, and all shades in between. We see this in great detail. It is not just that Dickens paints an unforgettable character. Like a great painter or a great actor, he reports the character's gestures--the tip of the head, the pause before entering the door, the scratching of the nose, the deep bow--all at the service to the moment at hand. Sometimes the narration is so nuanced, we feel that if we stretched our hand from the pages of the book, we might bump right into a character!


Mrs. Jarley, queen of the waxworks, a kind-hearted soul who regularly quenches her thirst from a "suspicious bottle."--The Old Curiosity Shop

This embracing of the distinctness of human beings--no matter how brief the encounter--let's us know that Dickens loves everything about the world he has created--even its evil characters. Life is the subject and within that circumference, everyone, good and bad, has something to contribute to the story, to guiding the reader through the glories and pitfalls of human existence.

Hence, I find in Dickens a benign introduction for young teens into a world that is far more complex than the world in the mind, say, of a sixth grader. Here in Dickens' world, we meet all kinds of gradations, even within the same character--as with Nell's grandfather, a kind-hearted man devoted to his grandchild yet ready to squander every penny away in his gambling addiction, which brings her nothing but torment. We see the consequences of action and inaction; the intended and unintended consequences of cruelty and of kindness; and the great inability of everyone to control their lives as they like.

I am reminded that Anne Frank's father read Dickens constantly during the years in their hiding place, a time when Anne was in her early teens, and regaled everyone with a reading of The Pickwick Papers. Love of life is Dickens' central theme, and life, as Dickens' books, has many lessons to teach.

In David Copperfield, Dickens portrays his vision of the best life has to offer: love within a safe and secure family in a home that expresses this love in gardens, neatness, and orderliness. I am not deterred by the fact that Dickens forswore his own wife for a far younger woman; I am not recommending that young teens read Dickens' biography; many writers paint their dreams, not their far frailer realities. But when David Copperfield is a young boy living with his beloved mother and Peggoty, and at Peggoty's brother's home on the beach, we see that the close-knit family is the center, the very fire, of life--a life all children deserve.


"I am hospitably received by Mr. Peggoty." -- David Copperfield

Fine Arts Friday: Just a Reminder

Children on the Shore by Mary Cassatt, 1885

This is a favorite painting of Americans, undoubtedly of those, like myself, that spent summer vacations at "the shore." It reminds me of the happiest playtimes that children can have in freedom at the beach. Of course, parents need to keep a watchful eye that children don't stray or get into trouble in the water, but for the most part, unless a parent wants to join in the fun and assist in creating an ocean castle, fortification, or living burial ground, it is best that adults stay out of the way (applying sun lotion only and otherwise not worrying about clothes or sand or wet).

These two charming little girls are equipped with shovels and a bucket. A bucket is useful for carrying water and also for shaping sand for fortifications, but no other equipment is needed; clam shells are good shovels. My brother's family and I plunked our kids at a beach one afternoon with absolutely nothing, and they managed to play for four hours in perfect bliss.

There is so much going on at the beach--sand crabs, shells, the constant motion of the waves and whatever they bring up, the eating away of the sand around your toes and your castles as the tide comes up ever closer and then recedes, the seaweed, the clouds, the invitation to skitter and slide in the shallow surf, gulls catching fish, gull political conventions, sandpipers fretting, instant relief from heat in an ocean that always surprises, skate and fish remains, boats going by, holes that fill up with water from the bottom, sand sharks, fishermen, mud pies that need to be made, the ocean breeze, and constant noise of surf and animals and wind and jabbering with friends about what you will build and how, with improvisation along the way.

And the beach accommodates children of all ages together in an ensemble of play. Here are photos of my brothers and two friends playing on the shore. The littlest one there (on the right), my youngest brother, never left it, living his adulthood on the Florida eastern coast. At the beach he was always and thoroughly absorbed. If you have access to a beach and young kids, take advantage. They have a ball--you have a rest. Mother beach takes over.





Happy summer, everyone!

Fine Arts Friday: "I Am Going to See Grandma"

I Am Going to See Grandma by William Merritt Chase, 1889

American impressionist painter William Merritt Chase created this pastel of his two-year-old daughter, Dorothy, as her mother buttons her coat in preparation for a visit to her grandmother, who lives cross-river in Brooklyn.

Needless to say, this is a beautifully rendered image. The room's furniture and rug both frame and point us to the mother and her child. The beautifully harmonized colors unify the well-established but cheerful surroundings that lack the oppressive darkness one often associates with Victorian interiors.

Click on the painting to see it in a larger size and get a good look at little Dorothy's expression. Although she is excited, as the title tells us, Dorothy is patiently standing still while her mother primps her coat so all is in order for grandma's inspection. But the tilt of her head and her half-smile show she's also enjoying the joke: "I see you drawing me getting ready to see Grandma, Daddy!"

Some People Struggle Very Hard to Keep Their Families Together

Winter's Bone 17-year-old heroine, Ree Dolly, with her younger brother and sister.

Winter's Bone, based on the novel of the same title by Daniel Woodrell, won the Sundance Festival Grand Jury Prize this year. Set in the Ozarks of southeastern Missouri, the film, directed by Debra Granik, tells the story of Ree Dolly, daughter in a family heavily involved in producing the highly addictive drug, crystal methamphetamine, or "crank." Because her father has jumped bail and signed over title to the family's land and house to pay his bond, the 17-year-old Ree vows to find him to keep a roof over the head of her remaining family: her brother and sister and her mother who has slipped into catatonic mental illness.

The sacrifice Ree is willing to bear, her determination, and the pain she suffers in her search are difficult to comprehend. One wonders that she has not followed her mother's road into obliviousness.

I suspect that the cruel codes of a criminal drug culture are the same everywhere, no matter who is involved, and no matter what the drug. The story could have been taken place in any city in the U.S.A.

What distinguishes Winter's Bone is that the setting is one most Americans are not familiar with and have seen little of in film; we have not been inured to it. Far from milking the sterotype of "hillbilly" though, the film forces us to confront real human beings, their faces taut with conflicting emotions--compassion and cruelty--who are trapped. We are forced to take in this reality in a profound way because there is no Hollywood gloss, no stylization, no pulling back from the harshness, no attempt to draw attention to acting, no artistic flourishes for the sake of artistic flourishes--the film is entirely at the service of the subject. While Winter's Bone revolves around violence-- both the threats and the results of it, we do not see much violent action per se. The removal of violent acts from the film eliminates, it became clear as I thought about it, a major method of Hollywood gloss that functions to anaesthetize the audience. There is also no unrelenting drive to doom--another Hollywood method to distance us from what we are seeing.

I have seen many films, some of which changed my life. I have seen many sad films, the postwar Italian realist films being among the saddest. No movie has ever moved me as much as Winter's Bone. The only film that it calls to my mind is Charles Burnett's independent sleeper of 1977, Killer of Sheep, which explores the life of an African American family in Watts.

I know that Winter's Bone reflects a harshness that is the life for a sizable swath of rural Americans. For a documentary glimpse of this world, which proves that Winter's Bone is not "stretching things," you can see on You Tube Diane Sawyers' "Hidden America: Children of the Mountains," which first aired in February 2009.

Books in the House Benefit Children, Study Shows

Nurse Reading to a Little Girl, Mary Cassatt, 1895

A fascinating international study shows that children who grow up in homes that have home libraries are much more likely to do well in school. The study encompassed 27 countries. “Home library size has a very substantial effect on educational attainment, even adjusting for parents’ education, father’s occupational status and other family background characteristics,” reports the study, recently published in the journal Research in Social Stratification and Mobility. “A child from a family rich in books is 19 percentage points more likely to complete university than a comparable child growing up without a home library.”

As noted by a report on the study by Tom Jacobs: "This effect holds true regardless of a nation’s wealth, culture or political system, but its intensity varies from country to country. In China, a child whose parents own 500 books will average 6.6 more years of education than a comparable child from a bookless home. In the U.S., the figure is 2.4 years — which is still highly significant when you consider it’s the difference between two years of college and a full four-year degree."

This research relates somewhat to my hunch that the higher the quality of books a child reads the more productive they may be in later life.

You can read the abstract of the home library study here, and I first learned about it here.

City by the Sea

City by the Sea with Robert de Niro should perhaps be mandatory watching for all prospective fathers. The role of the father, especially for a boy, is so crucial that abandonment, as this film shows in painful realism, wreaks havoc with the life of the son left behind.

The story involves a detective in New York City (de Niro) who works on a murder case that eventually leads him to his own son, now a young man, whom he had abandoned long ago when he had divorced the boy’s mother. Left with a poor and demoralized woman, the son has since become a junkie, is in with a very wrong crowd, and is now, as the film opens, entrapped in a spiral of violence from which he is unlikely to escape.

What makes the film unforgettably poignant is its setting: Asbury Park, New Jersey (called Long Beach in the film), where the son roams the streets. Here at the boardwalk by the sea―where we would normally conjure up images of vacations, family fun, beautiful sunrises, sand, children playing, families frolicking and laughing in the water—here lies a nearly abandoned city. Once proud hotels reduced to ruins and gigantic boardwalk fun parlors scarily empty—the haunts of very lost children and the evil-doers that prey on them.

Such can be the inside of the child abandoned by a father.

Two Little Sisters

It has occurred to me that the films Atonement and Bright Star mirror each other in many ways. Both center on the doomed relationship between two young women and their unsuitable lovers, although John Keats and Fanny Brawne's relationship was never consummated. In both, a sub-theme is the relationship between an older sister and a younger sister, and the younger girl's growing awareness of the relationship between her sister and lover. Both of the young girls love the older sister's beloved.

But the similarity stops there, as the characters of the two younger sisters are nearly opposites. Briony in Atonement is controlling, curious almost to the point of prurience, which is partially understandable in a girl thirteen, but also highly suspicious. Her mis-apprehensions and her willfulness lead her to actions that are not-so-inadvertently destructive.

Toots, in Bright Star, is a sweetheart, and as I listen to this movie while I am ironing or knitting, I always pause to watch her every line. I could eat her with a spoon. Far from standing outside and judging wrongly, she helps her sister, most poignantly when she hands Fanny the pillowcase to give John Keats upon the death of the poet's brother. "She stayed up all night sewing it," Toots proudly tells Mr. Keats.

The contrast between these two girls matches the differences in their home life. The fathers are absent; in Atonement, he is held up in London by work; in Bright Star he is deceased. The difference is with the mothers.

Mrs. Brawne is intimately involved with the lives of her daughters. She is readily at hand, with sympathy but also cautioning. Mrs. Brawne insists that her children "stick together," as Toots chides Fanny. They take dance lessons together. Toots and Fanny sew together. The family visits friends together; the children go for walks together. The Brawne family lives a shared life.

In this ambiance, Fanny and Toots understand and trust each other. In one scene Toots asks Fanny to "check her stitching," but a love-sick Fanny grumpily shoos her away with harsh words: "No. I don't give a damn for your stitching, Toots!" Toots patiently walks back outside, sits down on the stoop, and resumes her sewing. She is secure enough in her sister's love to feel disappointment but not insecurity and not anger. She knows that when Fanny feels better, she will be loving again--as happens. And Fanny brings Toots into her relationship with Mr. Keats. When Toots goes a-searching for Fanny when the two lovers are lying in a wood, they hear her voice, get up, make themselves known, and follow her out. But they play a charming game with her during this walk--a reassurance to the younger girl that she is within their circle of love.

Atonement opens with Briony searching--up and down and all around and down to the servants in the kitchen--for her mother in the family's English country house. Briony wants her mother to read the play she has just authored to celebrate her brother Leon's visit home from university. Briony basks in her mother's sincere praise. Next we see Briony and her older sister Cecilia lying on the lawn talking, with Briony asking questions and Cecilia answering evasively.


Later, when Briony intrudes on the lovers--first by reading the letter and then interrupting their love making in the library--Cecilia recovers herself and stalks out of the room, leaving her stricken younger sister to her own devices. No reassurances here. Except for dinner that evening, Briony's mother is out of sight, lying upstairs with a headache. Each person in the family goes their own way--Briony, on her own and alone, spins her dramatic fantasies. My heart goes out to her.