From the Washington Post‘s Petula Dvorak, “A brown feminist Easter Bunny’s inspiring triumph“:
… Daffodils are blooming, the days are finally warmer and it’s time to sit my boys down to read my favorite feminist, racially enlightened manifesto. It’s an Easter book: “The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes.”
I know, this sounds kooky, but stay with me.
It’s the brilliant story of “a little country girl bunny with a brown skin” who longed to crack the glass warren and have the most coveted job in all of bunnydom: to be one of the five exalted Easter Bunnies.
The white, patrician bunnies laughed at her. And when she had 21 babies (rabbits, you know), the male bunnies mocked her: “What did we tell you! Only a country rabbit would go and have all those babies. Now take care of them and leave Easter eggs to great big male bunnies like us.”
You see where I’m going with this, right?
Here’s my favorite part of the book: It was written in 1939…
I remember reading The Country Bunny at the public library, but for some reason my book-mad English-teacher feminist mother didn’t include it on our home shelves. Possibly she thought it was a little bit ‘precious’ — her term for Thorton Burgess’ books, which I adored. (It seemed particularly unfair, since she kept trying to get me to love the unbearably twee Eloise books, possibly since she fantasized herself as Kay Thompson. Is there any Eloise admirer who didn’t fantasize themselves as Kay Thompson, including Hilary Knight?)
The White House Easter Egg Roll isn’t till tomorrow afternoon, so there’s still a good chance of creepy/funny WH Bunny stories…
***********
Apart from all that, what’s on the agenda as we wrap up the weekend?
Omnes Omnibus
Almost time for Wolf Hall.
Frankensteinbeck
I call your Pasaach video and raise you Dark Lord funk you up.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
As I mentioned last night in one of those overnight threads that no one reads, I’m getting close to launching the Kickstarter for my book. Hopefully it goes live on April 15th but the woman I’m consulting with on it is completely booked for five days starting next Wednesday with a book publishers’ convention. So if there are any glitches then it may result in a slight delay. But I’ve got the reward levels figured out, I’ve got a back cover style blurb about the novel and I’ve sent copies of a brief bio and three paragraphs about how the story came about to Beth for review, along with an edited version of a recommendation Schlemazel wrote as a comment here; I don’t trust my evaluation of marketing prose AT ALL so I’m having her review everything before it goes up. That’s what consultants are for, right?
I need to revise the prologue and first chapter as well as find a webpage to put them up because I want a link to them on the Kickstarter page.
As for the Risks section and the expected dates for delivery, I’m going really conservative since I’ve never published a novel before and I have no idea how long the various bits will actually take.
Having a job has made a big difference for me. Not only is it a source of income but I’m feeling a lot more productive in general. After months of just thinking that I should be working on this or that, I actually am working this and that.
Omnes Omnibus
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: Let us know when it goes live.
lamh36
The White House posted an new family portrait of the Obamas.
Wow, the Obama girls have grown sooo much. Malia is as tall as FLOTUS!
@WhiteHouse Happy Easter!
BET’s Black Girls Rock telecast was aired tonight (recorded last month I think). FLOTUS gave a great speech. That should be empowering not just for Black girls, but also all girls.
If there is any video of it, check it out.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m planning on alerting Anne Laurie and hoping she’ll front page it, but I’m sure I’ll mention a few more times in the next several weeks.
Tree With Water
I’m watching baseball’s opener at Wrigley, and ESPN’s announcers are driving me crazy. Their dramatically tinged commentary make it sound like a war game, instead of a lighthearted inaugural game when every team is in first place and hopes are high. ESPN should buy their announcers a sense of humor and/or tell them to lighten up. They should also immediately cease interviewing players and managers during the game.. the conversations are invariably and predictably dull, and never fail distract from the game itself. In other words, “get off my lawn, ESPN”.
Violet
@lamh36: Awww, that is a gorgeous photo. The girls are so grown up. And look at the two First Dogs in it as well. So cute.
I adore Thornton Burgess books too.
Hill Dweller
The final season of Mad Men starts tonight.
Frankensteinbeck
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym:
I wish you all the luck in the world. Becoming a successful writer is super hard. If you’re going the self-publishing route, I hope you’re a good salesperson, too! That was what I could never do.
ThresherK (GPad)
Woohoo for Thornton Burgess! Can’t believe my wife got thru childhood without the Mother west Wind Stories.
We have been to the museum in Sandwich MA, before it closed a few years ago, and his Society’s new place in a nature center there. Bonus: Jam kitchen on premises!
lamh36
Time for my yearly celebration of Yul Brynner as Pharoah Rameses in Ten Commandments!
Mike E
@Omnes Omnibus: Good, I’ll catch it… I’m gonna need a palate cleanser after tonight’s The Good Wife, a bit of a dull clunker.
Omnes Omnibus
@lamh36: I think it is important to have holiday traditions.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
I have a Facebook page for the novel, though I’m not sure exactly what to do with it yet.
raven
Selfridge going deep into WWI PTSD and unemployed vets. Boardwalk, Peaky Blinders and even, to some extent, Dowton soaper.
lamh36
I love seeing the parade of nations scene after Moses has come down from Mount Sinai and the fact that all the actors except Yul Brynner are basically white people wearing tans
Except the “Nubians”
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Tree With Water: Hell, “get offa my lawn MLB” as well. Opening day of the baseball season should be in Cincinnati, home of the first professional baseball team, where it belongs. And stay the hell off my lawn, if you please.
sharl
Well I am late to the news that last night’s SNL did a parody of an apparently rather (in)famous 1990 Scientology promotional video. If the ex- and anti-Scientologists commenting in this post are representative of folks who know that awful organization from the inside, it was wickedly spot on. [Standalone YouTube video here (for now), 3m23s.]
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
In the middle of a 12 day stretch of work. I’ll have 107 hours on my paycheck.
I’ll have a nine day week under my belt when I start my new job on wednesday.
Oy.
Suzanne
So despite having an exceedingly tenuous hold on belief, Mr. Suzanne and I have been looking for a church in the neighborhood we have now lived in for almost five years. We have a small UU congregation, as well as a small UCC church nearby, but I haven’t been thrilled by either group. Both are very small. The UU group is not the most inspiring and the music is meh, and the UCC church has a interim pastor who hasn’t impressed me much, and the congregation trends very senior. They’re both very nice, but we are looking as much for people our age and our kids’ ages. So we went to a liberal Methodist church today, and we both quite liked it. And there were people our age and they were super-welcoming to their LGBT population, and the pastors seemed very positive and thoughtful. There is an AWESOME UU group in Phoenix, and the Methodist pastor who married us and is just fabulous, but they are not convenient.
I have basically come to being deeply agnostic about God, and being very okay with that, but being super-cool with Jesus.
Gin & Tonic
@lamh36: My wife adores Yul Brynner, especially in The King and I. I’m grateful that we got to see him on Broadway during the farewell run, as he knew he was dying.
Steeplejack
@Omnes Omnibus:
Gonna watch it tomorrow. Too tired tonight. Still a little out of it after my trip.
Pleasant drone of opening-day (night) baseball in the background instead.
Steeplejack
@Mike E:
I am liking Battle Creek. The promos made it look unpromising, but I had faith in Vince Gilligan, and it has been perking along quite nicely.
sharl
@Suzanne: For the most part I liked the Methodist church I grew up with – and before the merger, the Evangelical United Brethern (EUB) church that it once was – even as I started to have major doubts about the existence of a deity in my early teen years. It was the original pastor who earned most of my respect; he didn’t talk down to us kids, and the catechism was a truly educational process. Gutsy guy too – his support of the Civil Rights laws enacted in the 60s got him called n*gger-lover behind his back in my all-white neighborhood. Eventually he was replaced by someone I thought of as Pastor Pablum, for his make-no-waves dull sermons and his general cautious approach to running the church. By then I was ready to leave the church anyway, and my parents were OK with that; Pastor Pablum just made it a whole lot easier.
Good luck on finding a suitable church.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
Making some arroz con pollo for dinner — it gets finished in the oven, so I’m waiting for that part to finish. It doesn’t taste very traditional, but it tastes pretty good.
Suzanne
@sharl: Thanks. Like I said, I am deeply unsure about the entire God business, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing, but I do think there is value in kids learning about the structures and traditions and rituals of faith, so they can embrace or reject or interpret as they see fit. My elder Spawn has had a lot of questions as of late, and she is very sharp, with the same eagle eye for contradictions and hypocrisy and bullshit. So I want to expose her to a variety of traditions so she can have material from her journey.
My ex-husband just calls it “zombie Jesus day”, which is not helpful.
sharl
@Suzanne: As a component of a journey to adulthood, that sounds like a pretty good plan.
jacel
Yes! That Country Bunny book is fantastic. The author also was the creator of the novel and play of “Porgy & Bess” and collaborated with the Gershwins on the opera version. I wish that he and George Gershwin both lived long enough to collaborate again on a “Country Bunny” opera.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steeplejack: No spoilers, but I thought it was quite good and fairly faithful to the book.
Steeplejack
@Omnes Omnibus:
Cool. The only thing I’ve read is that someone didn’t like the look of the actor playing the main character.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steeplejack: The actor has the basic look of Holbein’s portrait of Cromwell.
Interrobang
I’m an Eloise admirer who never fantasised herself as Kay Thompson, whom I know absolutely nothing about, save that she wrote the Eloise books. Eloise in Moscow (publication date 1958) is a scream, and should be the textbook example of the literary trope called “naive narrator.” Case in point, when she and Nanny are collecting their mail at the Moscow hotel, she casually remarks, “All of our letters had come unglued.” Funny!