Thursday, November 10, 2016

Betty MacDonald, America, women and jealousy



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Betty Bard MacDonald's photo. 

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Betty MacDonald's sister Alison Bard Burnett

Bildergebnis für Betty MacDonald Wolfgang Hampel
Betty MacDonald's mother Sydney Bard with granddaughter
Alison Beck
Betty MacDonald in the living room at Vashon on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post.
Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle author Betty MacDonald on Vashon Island
<p>Time Out of Mind (1947) - avec Betty et Don MacDonald et Phyllis Calvert</p>

Betty and Don MacDonald in Hollywood

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Betty MacDonald fan club fans,

Betty MacDonald was extremely successful in her literary career.

She got some very hateful comments mostly from women.

Betty MacDonald mentioned this fact in several letters.

Is it because women are more jealous than men?

Do women hate very successful women?

Is this one of the reasons Hillary Clinton lost the election?






Late Monica Sone, author of Nisei Daughter, Betty MacDonald fan club honor member and described as Kimi in Betty MacDonald's The Plague and I talked about feeling jealous some years ago:

So sorry to be slow about discussion on jealousy".

It's a complex subject. For now, I would define " jealousy " as a very common feeling. Each one of us feels it, one time or another.

One feels jealous when you see someone has something you value a great deal but you don't have it. Feeling jealous can be handled in a positive or negative way. It can stimulate you to work hard to get what you want or one could hold on to jealousy and feel emotionally unhappy.

My definition may be disappointing because it's so simple. 
Jealousy can be hidden so one's behavior does not show jealousy. One could go on and on about this subject.

A book can be written about it but I won't.

Love,

Monica Sone


Don't miss the very interesting article below entitled 'Never underestimate how much America hates women', please.


Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel and Betty MacDonald fan club research team are going to share very interesting info on ' Betty MacDonald and the movie The Egg and I '. 

Another rare episode (from March 21 1952) of the short-lived comedy soap opera, "The Egg and I," based on best selling book by Betty MacDonald which also became a popular film.

The series premiered on September 3, 1951, the same day as "Search for Tomorrow," and ended on August 1, 1952. 

Although it did well in the ratings, it had difficulty attracting a steady sponsor. This episode features Betty Lynn (later known for her work on "The Andy Griffith Show") as Betty MacDonald, John Craven as Bob MacDonald, Doris Rich as Ma Kettle, and Frank Twedell as Pa Kettle.



Betty MacDonald fan club exhibition will be fascinating with the international book editions and letters by Betty MacDonald.

 
I can't wait to see the new Betty MacDonald documentary.

Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel is going to present Betty MacDonald fan club honor member, artist and author Letizia Mancino in Vita Magica November. 


Letizia Mancino is reading from her delightful book  ' The cat in Goethe's bed '.

I hope beloved Betty MacDonald fan club honor member Mr. Tigerli will be there too.  

We'd like to meet our beloved darling. 



Wishing you great Thursday,


Greta


Don't miss this very special book, please.

 

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Don't miss this very special book, please.

 

Vita Magica 

Betty MacDonald 

Betty MacDonald fan club

Betty MacDonald forum  

Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( English ) 

Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( English ) - The Egg and I 

Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( Polski)   

Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( German )

Wolfgang Hampel - LinkFang ( German ) 

Wolfgang Hampel - Academic ( German )

Wolfgang Hampel -   

Wolfgang Hampel - DBpedia  ( English / German )

Wolfgang Hampel - people check ( English ) 

Wolfgang Hampel - Memim ( English )

Vashon Island - Wikipedia ( German )

Wolfgang Hampel - Monica Sone - Wikipedia ( English )

Wolfgang Hampel - Ma and Pa Kettle - Wikipedia ( English )

Wolfgang Hampel - Ma and Pa Kettle - Wikipedia ( French ) 


Wolfgang Hampel - Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle - Wikipedia ( English)

Wolfgang Hampel in Florida State University 

Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel 

Betty MacDonald fan club interviews on CD/DVD

Betty MacDonald fan club items 

Betty MacDonald fan club items  - comments

Betty MacDonald fan club - The Stove and I  

Betty MacDonald fan club groups 

Betty MacDonald fan club organizer Linde Lund  


Heide Rose and Betty MacDonald   



Rita Knobel Ulrich - Islam in Germany - a very interesting ZDF  ( 2nd German Television ) documentary with English subtitles 

Never underestimate how much America hates women




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When it became nightmarishly clear on Tuesday night that Donald Trump was going to become our next president, a startling amount of women in my social media feeds posted a version of this phrase: “Never underestimate how much America hates women.”
The tone wasn’t angry, exactly. It was posted with the same seething resignation we had when we clocked the outrageous entitlement of a man who groped women whether they wanted it or not. Or every time someone called Hillary Clinton a bitch. The sheer number of Americans who would vote for Donald Trump caught progressives by surprise, but the onslaught of misogyny this election season appears to have reached an utterly logical conclusion.
It all boils down to: Misogynists are fine by Americans. Women in power are not.

We can’t say we didn’t see this coming. We saw it in 1992, when Clinton got dragged for defending her choice to work, when voters thought of her as the “overbearing yuppie wife from hell.” We saw it in 2008, the last time Clinton ran for president, when Hillary nutcrackers appeared in airport gift shops even as she was criticized for tearing up at a campaign stop (once! She cried once!). We saw it in the way people—both men and women, both conservatives and progressives—have always scrutinized her voice, her laugh, her clothes. We saw it in the jarring invective of Trump voters talking about Hillary in those videos roiling with the raw anger of a Trump rally; they wanted to jail her, beat her, assassinate her.









It all boils down to: Misogynists are fine by Americans. Women in power are not.
I watched all of this carefully, and even I was taken aback by the ability of my country to so heartily affirm a cartoonishly sexist man at the expense of an ambitious, formidable woman. I actually felt relief during Pussygate, when even some of the most far-right Republicans denounced Trump’s comments as deeply offensive. But there were moments during the same week that gnawed at me, when my most liberal, caring guy friends sheepishly said, Hate to break it to you, Nona, but Trump’s “locker room talk” isn’t all that far off from the stuff in our group texts. If beta Brooklyn men were admitting this, what were men across America doing? On Tuesday, a staggering amount of them were voting for Trump. All kinds of men—educated men, young men, even men in states that went for Obama in 2008. Men who were supposed to know better.
Many of these men (and women, too) would never admit that their hatred of Clinton was linked to her gender. She’s untrustworthy, they said—more so than a candidate who openly, compulsively lies more than any other candidate in recent memory. She’s corrupt, she has baggage, she’s shrill, she’s cold. Clinton was far from a perfect candidate, and there were lots of level-headed reasons to disagree with her. But it’s hard to look at the surplus of pure contempt lobbed at her over the years and not attribute it at least partly to the fact that she’s a woman.
Many of us were fired up by this swirling hatred. Feminists gleefully warned bigoted relatives on Facebook: “Donald Trump will feel the rage of women on November 8.” Clinton used Trump’s words against him in debates and on the stump, again and again and again. But for every outraged woman, there were others—especially white women, a majority of whom who voted for Trump on Election Day—who bent over backwards to make excuses for their candidate. New York magazine quoted a woman as saying, “I like getting groped! I’m heterosexual. I’m a woman, and when a guy gropes me, I get groping on them!” Another woman featured in the same article was turned off by Bill Clinton’s affairs; the voter didn’t “understand how [Hillary] can say she respects women when she doesn’t respect herself.”
Many of us weren’t surprised that a certain type of white man losing his footing in a new America would rather not vote a woman into power, the type of white man whose racism is so strong that they’d support a candidate beloved by white supremacists over one who embraced the melting pot. But this election reminded us that women are deeply entrenched in sexism and racism, too.
A Donald Trump presidency will have real-world consequences for women if he keeps his campaign promises, starting with the appointment of a right-wing Supreme Court justice who would overturn Roe v. Wade. But there’s a far less tangible insult here, too. It’s not just that Americans are willing to overlook unfathomable depths of misogyny. It’s that they actively rejected a woman who represents the opposite. Until the very last minute, we all underestimated just how far we haven’t come.

New York Times, November 9, 2016:

To the surprise of many on the left, white voters who had helped elect the nation’s first black president, appeared more reluctant to line up behind a white woman.
From Pennsylvania to Wisconsin, industrial towns once full of union voters who for decades offered their votes to Democratic presidential candidates, even in the party’s lean years, shifted to Mr. Trump’s Republican Party. One county in the Mahoning Valley of Ohio, Trumbull, went to Mr. Trump by a six-point margin. Four years ago, Mr. Obama won there by 22 points.
Mrs. Clinton’s loss was especially crushing to millions who had cheered her march toward history as, they hoped, the nation’s first female president. For supporters, the election often felt like a referendum on gender progress: an opportunity to elevate a woman to the nation’s top job and to repudiate a man whose remarkably boorish behavior toward women had assumed center stage during much of the campaign.
Mr. Trump boasted, in a 2005 video released last month, about using his public profile to commit sexual assault. He suggested that female political rivals lacked a presidential “look.” He ranked women on a scale of one to 10, even holding forth on the desirability of his own daughter — the kind of throwback male behavior that many in the country assumed would disqualify a candidate for high office.



I love Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle by Betty MacDonald
The Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle won't take a bath cure is my favourite one.
www.bettymacdonaldfanclub.blogspot.com/



Podcast read aloud.
youtube.com


Linda White I just finished again ,for not sure of how many times,All of Betty's books except for the Mrs Piggle Wiggle.I only have one of those.I adore Betty.
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Linde Lund Dear Linda do you have a personal favourite? I know it's a very difficult question because all of Betty MacDonald's books are simply great!

Linda White

Linda White My favorite is still the Egg and I but I so enjoy Onions In The Stew. She lived life so fully and made such a mark.I always hate to finish them.I read The Egg And I,The Plague and I and Onions In The Stew, all in a row and wish there were more. Someone should have written about her life from her success books until her death.
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Linde Lund

Linde Lund Dear Linda you didn't mention Anybody can do anything.

Linda White

Linda White I knew I left one out,I read it in order also.I actually like it better than Onions In The Stew.My second favorite.Thanks for reminding me
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Linde Lund

Linde Lund Dear Linda did you ever read Nisei Daughter by Monica Sone? She was Kimi in The Plague and I.

Linda White

Linda White It was so very descriptive and it makes one feel that we are there with her,experiencing her life too.
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Linda White

Linda White I have read it and I plan to read again tomorrow,now that I am through Betty's again.
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Linde Lund

Linde Lund It's a very sad that Monica Sone only wrote one book. She was a great writer.

Linda White

Linda White Just think how they turned a bad experience,of having tb, into such a good thing.Betty made a difference in Kimi's life by encouraging her.We never know when we are influencing others.
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Linde Lund

Linde Lund Dear Linda did you ever hear Betty MacDonald's voice and the interview with Betty MacDonald's very witty sister Alison Bard Burnett? It's really so funny and interesting to listen.

Linda White

Linda White no,never heard her voice but I can imagine,she was so witty.
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Linde Lund

Linde Lund There are wonderful CD's and DVD's with Betty MacDonald and Alison Bard Burnett. We'll have a special offer during October. I'll keep you posted.

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Ein lyrisches Portrait von Hilde Domin
Anne MacDonald Canham

 


 




 






Following in Betty’s footsteps in Seattle:

or some small talk with Betty

Copyright 2011/2016 by Letizia Mancino
All rights reserved
translated by Mary Holmes


We were going to Canada in the summer. “When we are in Edmonton”, I said to Christoph Cremer, “let’s make a quick trip to Seattle”. And that’s how it happened. At Edmonton Airport we climbed into a plane and two hours later we landed in the city where Betty had lived. I was so happy to be in Seattle at last and to be able to trace Betty’s tracks!

Wolfgang Hampel had told Betty’s friends about our arrival.
They were happy to plan a small marathon through the town and it’s surroundings with us. We only had a few days free. One should not underestimate Wolfgang’s talent in speedily mobilizing Betty’s friends, even though it was holiday time. E-mails flew backwards and forwards between Heidelberg and Seattle, and soon a well prepared itinerary was ready for us. Shortly before my departure Wolfgang handed me several parcels, presents for Betty MacDonald's friends. I rushed to pack the heavy gifts in my luggage but because of the extra weight had to throw out a pair of pajamas!

After we had landed we took a taxi to the Hotel in downtown Seattle. I was so curious to see everything. I turned my head in all directions like one of the hungry hens from Betty’s farm searching for food! Fortunately it was quite a short journey otherwise I would have lost my head like a loose screw!
Our hotel room was on the 22nd floor and looked directly out onto the 16-lane highway. There might have been even more than 16 but it made me too giddy to count! It was like a glimpse of hell! “And is this Seattle?” I asked myself. I was horrified! The cars racing by were enough to drive one mad. The traffic roared by day and night.
We immediately contacted Betty MacDonald's friends and let them know we had arrived and they confirmed the times when we should see them.

On the next morning I planned my first excursion tracing Betty’s tracks. I spread out the map of Seattle. “Oh dear” I realized “the Olympic Peninsula is much too far away for me to get there.”
Betty nodded to me! “Very difficult, Letizia, without a car.”

“But I so much wanted to see your chicken farm”

“My chickens are no longer there and you can admire the mountains from a distance”


But I wanted to go there. I left the hotel and walked to the waterfront where the State Ferry terminal is. Mamma mia, the streets in Seattle are so steep! I couldn’t prevent my feet from running down the hill. Why hadn’t I asked for brakes to be fixed on my shoes? I looked at the drivers. How incredibly good they must be to accelerate away from the red traffic lights. The people were walking uphill towards me as briskly as agile salmon. Good heavens, these Americans! I tried to keep my balance. The force of gravity is relentless. I grasped hold of objects where I could and staggered down.
In Canada a friend had warned me that in Seattle I would see a lot of people with crutches.

Betty laughed. “ It’s not surprising, Letizia, walking salmon don’t fall directly into the soft mouth of a bear!”
“ Betty, stop making these gruesome remarks. We are not in Firlands!”

I went further. Like a small deranged ant at the foot of a palace monster I came to a tunnel. The noise was unbearable. On the motorway, “The Alaskan Way Viaduct”, cars, busses and trucks were driving at the speed of light right over my head. They puffed out their poisonous gas into the open balconies and cultivated terraces of the luxurious sky- scrapers without a thought in the world. America! You are crazy!
“Betty, are all people in Seattle deaf? Or is it perhaps a privilege for wealthy people to be able to enjoy having cars so near to their eyes and noses to save them from boredom?”

“When the fog democratically allows everything to disappear into nothing, it makes a bit of a change, Letizia”

“ Your irony is incorrigible, Betty, but tell me, Seattle is meant to be a beautiful city, But where?”

I had at last reached the State Ferry terminal.

“No Madam, the ferry for Vashon Island doesn’t start from here,” one of the men in the ticket office tells me. ”Take a buss and go to the ferry terminal in West Seattle.”
Betty explained to me “The island lies in Puget Sound and not in Elliott Bay! It is opposite the airport. You must have seen it when you were landing!”
“Betty, when I am landing I shut my eyes and pray!”

It’s time for lunch. The weather is beautiful and warm. Who said to me that it always rains here?
“Sure to be some envious man who wanted to frighten you away from coming to Seattle. The city is really beautiful, you’ll see. Stay by the waterfront, choose the best restaurant with a view of Elliott Bay and enjoy it.”
“Thank you Betty!”

I find a table on the terrace of “Elliott’s Oyster House”. The view of the island is wonderful. It lies quietly in the sun like a green fleecy cushion on the blue water.
Betty plays with my words:
“Vashon Island is a big cushion, even bigger than Bainbridge which you see in front of your eyes, Letizia. The islands look similar. They have well kept houses and beautiful gardens”.

I relax during this introduction, “Bainbridge” you are Vashon Island, and order a mineral water.

“At one time the hotel belonging to the parents of Monica Sone stood on the waterfront.”
“Oh, of your friend Kimi!” Unfortunately I forget to ask Betty exactly where it was.

My mind wanders and I think of my mountain hike back to the hotel! “Why is there no donkey for tourists?” Betty laughs:

“I’m sure you can walk back to the hotel. “Letizia can do everything.””

“Yes, Betty, I am my own donkey!”

But I don’t remember that San Francisco is so steep. It doesn’t matter, I sit and wait. The waiter comes and brings me the menu. I almost fall off my chair!
“ What, you have geoduck on the menu! I have to try it” (I confess I hate the look of geoduck meat. Betty’s recipe with the pieces made me feel quite sick – I must try Betty’s favourite dish!)
“Proof that you love me!” said Betty enthusiastically “ Isn’t the way to the heart through the stomach?”

I order the geoduck. The waiter looks at me. He would have liked to recommend oysters.
“Geoduck no good for you!”
Had he perhaps read my deepest thoughts? Fate! Then no geoduck. “No good for me.”

“Neither geoduck nor tuberculosis in Seattle” whispered Betty in my ear!
“Oh Betty, my best friend, you take such good care of me!”

I order salmon with salad.

“Which salmon? Those that swim in water or those that run through Seattle?”

“Betty, I believe you want me to have a taste of your black humour.”

“Enjoy it then, Letizia.”

During lunch we talked about tuberculosis, and that quite spoilt our appetite.

“Have you read my book “The Plague and I”?”

“Oh Betty, I’ve started to read it twice but both times I felt so sad I had to stop again!”

“But why?” asked Betty “Nearly everybody has tuberculosis! I recovered very quickly and put on 20 pounds! There was no talk of me wasting away! What did you think of my jokes in the book?”

“Those would have been a good reason for choosing another sanitorium. I would have been afraid of becoming a victim of your humour! You would have certainly given me a nickname! You always thought up such amusing names!” Betty laughed.

“You’re right. I would have called you “Roman nose”. I would have said to Urbi and Orbi “ Early this morning “Roman nose” was brought here. She speaks broken English, doesn’t eat geoduck but she does love cats.”

“Oh Betty, I would have felt so ashamed to cough. To cough in your presence, how embarrassing! You would have talked about how I coughed, how many coughs!”

“It depends on that “how”, Letizia!”

“Please, leave Goethe quotations out of it. You have certainly learnt from the Indians how to differentiate between noises. It’s incredible how you can distinguish between so many sorts of cough! At least 10!”

“So few?”

”And also your descriptions of the patients and the nurses were pitiless. An artistic revenge! The smallest pimple on their face didn’t escape your notice! Amazing.”

“ I was also pitiless to myself. Don’t forget my irony against myself!”

Betty was silent. She was thinking about Kimi, the “Princess” from Japan! No, she had only written good things about her best friend, Monica Sone, in her book “The Plague and I”. A deep friendship had started in the hospital. The pearl that developed from the illness.
“Isn’t it wonderful, Betty, that an unknown seed can make its way into a mollusk in the sea and develop into a beautiful jewel?” Betty is paying attention.

“Betty, the friendship between you and Monica reminds me of Goethe’s poem “Gingo-Biloba”. You must know it?” Betty nods and I begin to recite it:

The leaf of this Eastern tree
Which has been entrusted to my garden
Offers a feast of secret significance,
For the edification of the initiate.

Is it one living thing.
That has become divided within itself?
Are these two who have chosen each other,
So that we know them as one?

The friendship with Monica is like the wonderful gingo-biloba leaf, the tree from the east. Betty was touched. There was a deep feeling of trust between us.
“Our friendship never broke up, partly because she was in distress, endangered by the deadly illness. We understood and supplemented each other. We were like one lung with two lobes, one from the east and one from the west!”
“A beautiful picture, Betty. You were like two red gingo-biloba leaves!”

Betty was sad and said ” Monica, although Japanese, before she really knew me felt she was also an American. But she was interned in America, Letizia, during the second world war. Isn’t that terrible?”

“Betty, I never knew her personally. I have only seen her on a video, but what dignity in her face, and she speaks and moves so gracefully!”

“Fate could not change her”

“Yes, Betty, like the gingo-biloba tree in Hiroshima. It was the only tree that blossomed again after the atom bomb!”

The bill came and I paid at once. In America one is urged away from the table when one has finished eating. If one wants to go on chatting one has to order something else.
“That’s why all those people gossiping at the tables are so fat!” Betty remarks. “Haven’t you seen how many massively obese people walk around in the streets of America. Like dustbins that have never been emptied!” With this typically unsentimental remark Betty ended our conversation.

Ciao! I so enjoyed the talk; the humour, the irony and the empathy. I waved to her and now I too felt like moving! I take a lovely walk along the waterfront.

Now I am back in Heidelberg and when I think about how Betty’s “Princessin” left this world on September 5th and that in August I was speaking about her with Betty in Seattle I feel very sad. The readers who knew her well (we feel that every author and hero of a book is nearer to us than our fleeting neighbours next door) yes we, who thought of her as immortal, cannot believe that even she would die after 92 years. How unforeseen and unexpected that her death should come four days after her birthday on September 1th. On September 5th I was on my way to Turkey, once again in seventh heaven, looking back on the unforgettable days in Seattle. I was flying from west to east towards the rising sun.




photos and graphics betty family betty and friend

Is this Mr. Tigerli?





Dare we face the question of just how much of the darkness around us is of our own making? - Betty MacDonald
Betty MacDonald ART Photos of ICONS Amazing Ladies Pinter Betty MacDonald Quotes Famous Quotes by Betty MacDonald Quoteswave 1950s showing Betty MacDonald descending a staircase and other images  betty macdonald betty bard macdonald wurde 1908 in boulder colorado  photos and graphics betty family betty and friend photos and graphics betty family betty grandchild photo of Betty MacDonald and two children in 1950 costumes Click images for alternate views BETTY MacDONALD PHOTOGRAPH SIGNED DOCUMENT 281143  photos and graphics betty family betty and don on vashon  
          



Betty MacDonald














Take an illustrated day trip through Washington state’s largest city with artist Candace Rose Rardon.
gadventures.com




Linda White yes,if my health allows.I have a few problems but is something I have always wanted to do,especially as I reread her books.


Linde Lund


Linde Lund Dear Linda I'll keep you posted.


Bella Dillon


Bella Dillon · Friends with Darsie Beck
I still read Mrs Piggle Wiggle books to this day. I love her farm on vashon.




Lila Taylor


Lila Taylor Good morning...Linde Lund
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