Right now is my buddy Hannah’s birthday. She’s an actual gem. I’m so lucky to have her in my life. Hannah works exhausting at all the pieces she does and has a youthful spirit that makes her a boatload of enjoyable, too. Gosh does that gal know the best way to snicker!
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| Taking part in Go Fish outdoors Hannah’s little, off-grid home in southwestern Montana throughout the annual Star Social gathering camp out for the Perseid Meteor Shower. 8/14/2022 |
In honor of her birthday I assumed I might one thing she stated to me a couple of years again.
We have been studying our approach by means of the Little Home collection in our
book-club-of-two. I had learn nearlly all of them as a kid–Little Home within the Large Woods and Little Home on the Prairie
repeatedly. They have been amongst my childhood favorites. I’d recycle and modify the storylines for my yard play, envisioning myself homesteading and driving horses on the wild, open prarie. Hannah cannot particularly bear in mind studying them as a child, however suspects she in all probability got here throughout not less than one. From February to June 2019 we learn
the nince books in the Little House series, having fun with this nostalgic romp by means of a “less complicated time” collectively*.
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| A clothes swap we co-hosted at my place when Hannah got here again for a go to this summer season. 5/30/2022 |
At one level throughout our ebook dialogue, Hannah remarked:
“What occurred to that world!? I really feel like we must always stay in a world of Lauras and we stay in a world filled with Verrucas.”
She was contrasting the understated, make-do, resourcefulness of the Ingalls clan with the “
I want the world, I want the whole world,” entitlement of the extravagant Verruca household from Charlie and the Chocolate Manufacturing facility, one other ebook that we had beforehand learn collectively. It it was a part of a dialog involving the Ingalls’ homey and modest Christmas celebrations amongst different issues.
Studying with Hannah is womderful as a result of it brings us nearer collectively and since she broadens my expertise of the ebook. I like getting her perspective. We see issues differntly, we hone in on various things. These Little home books impressed a lot considerate, interdiscinplinary dialog. Girls’s rights and lack there of. Cash, poverty, and what it means to be rich. The worth of a supportive household setting. Overcoming adversity. Marriage, friendship, and loyalty. Globalization and inhabitants. Culinary historical past. Incapacity rights. Love. Drugs and well being. And so forth. Being a narrative a few life I suppose it’s only pure that the dialog could be so broad ranging.
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| Three faculty buddies reunite (me, Brittany, and Hannah) for a Yonder Mountain String Band live performance. Fully oblivious to Jeramy’s photobombing shinanigens or the cute huggers within the again. 1/21/2022 |
Hannah would quickly comply with up that remark with one other:
I assumed that was such a singular approach of claiming “Do not be a egocentric jerk.” I loved each of those statements strongly sufficient that I recorded them for posterity in my journal. It an superior illustration of how studying provides an individual new language, new methods of expressing themselves. Studying modifications you! I like that.
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| Hannah, Chels, and me |
*I used to be pressured to understand it wasn’t as wholly bucolic as it would really feel in my childhood reminiscence although, particularly in relation to race and relations with the Native American population. Yeeesh. There are a couple of dreadful, shudder-worthy moments when considered from my grownup perspective right here within the 2020s. It led to considerate dialogue with Hannah although which I believe is a really helpful byproduct of studying literature that grinds in opposition to our ever-evolving cultural values and norms.
