Pioneering 2013: A no-electricity adventure

When my husband and I lived on the prairies of Illinois, we were without power occasionally, but never for very long. 

Normally, when we lived near Galesburg, we could hear the transformer “pop” or look out our family room window and see it hanging askew. A call to the power company with the exact location of the problem would bring the sound of a power truck to the road outside our home without much delay.

Later, when we lived south of Bloomington, our power was supplied by a main feeder line that apparently ran somewhere along Historic Route 66 near Lincoln. We were without power once for 36 hours in the dead of winter. It was COLD out. 

We retreated for a while to my brother’s house almost an hour away, and returned home a few hours later to see if the power was back on. Just as we were to head back to my brother’s, the house lit up. 

Believe me, electricity is something we take for granted. Go without it for 75 and three-quarters hours sometime, and you’ll know what I mean. 

That’s how long it took our rural Missouri electric co-op to get to our outage and repair it last week. We were lucky. Some were without power for a day or so longer than we were. 

You know what, though? 

I don’t regret the experience. It brought out the tough in me and in my husband. We survived and we learned from our adventure. Still, we’re not ready to relive it anytime soon. 

I’m a farm kid, so I grew up with occasional power outages, times when the pump on the well malfunctioned, or snows that had us housebound for several days. You learn to prepare if you have time, adapt whether you have warning or not, do without the things you want, and get by with the things you have on hand. 

The culprit responsible for this power outage was a winter storm. It dumped several inches of very wet snow and a bit of ice on mid-Missouri and was accompanied, in some instances, by nasty winds. It knocked out more than half of the power in the 2,300-square-mile area served by our rural electric cooperative. 

In the five days the power company worked to repair all the storm’s damage, its linemen were joined by workers from nearly 20 other utility companies, some who had completed repairs in their own areas before coming to ours. Through it all, the communications team from the coop used social media to keep us apprised of the status, inject a little humor, exude a lot of compassion. 

What did we do to survive, to stay in our home without freezing, suffering the potty woes of the passengers on the recent cruise ship disaster, dehydrating, or starving? 

We planned for it—thanks to the advice of some farm-bred neighbors, my experience as a country kid, a bit of good old common sense, and a dose of Girl Scout preparedness. We had the right stuff—from water and batteries to muscle and persistence. 

Our home has a gas furnace, stove, and water heater, but each of them works in conjunction with electricity. Fortunately, we have a wood burning cast iron stove in our living room, too. 

Our home overlooks a really big lake, but our running water comes from a community well with its pump powered by—you guessed it—electricity. 

So, not only were we without heat and lights, we were without water. 

We had a plan, though. 

For heat, we’d use our wood burning stove. We had some wood cut, split and ready, and more that could be firebox-size with just a little work. We had plenty of matches and, even better, several of those lighters designed for gas or charcoal grills, candles and the like. 

We had a stockpile of candles, several flashlights and a battery-operated camp light or two. We also had extra batteries. 

To cook our food, although the electronic igniter on our stove wouldn’t work, we could turn the burner switches to “ignite” and use a match or lighter. We did. 

Thanks to the advice of a neighbor, we filled our bathtub with water, which we used to flush the toilets. We also had several gallons of drinking water and a little more than a case of individual bottles of water. 

I had books to read and hubby, though he much prefers television, spent time watching the flames in the fire and reading magazines—when he wasn’t splitting or carrying in wood. 

There are a couple things we now have in the house that we didn’t before—larger bottles of hand sanitizer and a tub of diaper wipes for sponge baths. 

This time, we were fortunate that the roads were cleared after a couple days so that we could leave our neighborhood. We were able to shower at a friends’ home and to eat some warm meals at local restaurants when our refrigerated and frozen food began to go bad. Though we had plenty of things like peanut butter, canned foods, crackers and chips, after a couple days, we were longing for a warm meal. 

By the third day, our originally half-filled bath tub was running low, so I’d begun to melt snow on the stove so we could flush toilets. 

The best thing about our adventure was that it gave me a chance to read—an entire book. I chose “Tales from Two Rivers I,” a collection of nostalgic essays written by Illinoisans who were born and grew up in the late 19^th and early 20^th century. 

As I read of young school teachers traipsing through snow, mud and wetlands to get to school in time to fire up the furnace for their students, of people traveling by horse-drawn carriages or in Model T automobiles on rut-filled roads, sometimes overturning or having tires explode, and of all the other trials and tribulations people like my grandparents faced, our little power outage seemed more like an adventure or minor inconvenience than like a catastrophe. 

I realized I had a lot to be thankful for—a roof over my head, a warm home, a hubby willing to split wood and keep the fire stoked, water for flushing and for drinking, and friends who opened their home for a warm shower on a cold day. 

They offered a bedroom, too, but even when the conditions aren’t optimal, there’s just no place quite like home. 

© Ann Tracy Mueller 2013

(Image via)

About that Lincoln movie

Other bloggers, Lincoln scholars and movie critics wrote about Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln months ago. 

 

So, why didn’t I?

Good question. Life, I guess—or maybe I just needed time to think about what I wanted to say. 

As with any book or movie which I plan to review, though, I did not read a review—not a single one. Oh, I listened to a couple of question and answer-type sessions—one with Spielberg and Daniel Day-Lewis, one with Sally Field, and another, a Google+ Hangout with Team of Rivals author Doris Kearns Goodwin, but I kept my vow of letting no one else’s opinion of the movie influence mine. 

By way of introduction, here’s my role in the Lincoln world. 

Not a scholar

 I’m not a trained academic scholar. I’m not a published author. 

I have, though, admired the 16^th President since I was a small child, for as long as I can remember. I was born a block from the site of his Galesburg, Ill. Lincoln-Douglas Debate, held at Knox College’s Old Main. As a child I soaked up all I could learn on field trips to Lincoln sites; as a parent I was excited when my children had the same experiences.

 

As a late-in-life college student, I studied Lincoln and his force on the history and literature of Illinois in as many courses as I could. Upon graduation, I reviewed several Lincoln-related books for the Springfield, Ill. newspaper. 

I was the seventh person in line to see the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum on the day it opened to paying customers. In the Lincoln Bicentennial year, I attended Lincoln scholarly events and visited Lincoln sites in Springfield, Washington, D.C. and Gettysburg. I met most of the leading Lincoln scholars, reviewed books and events, and wrote more than 200 blog posts related to the Bicentennial. 

Though I’m not a Lincoln scholar, I am a Lincoln enthusiast. I’m not an expert on Lincoln and politics, Lincoln and the Civil War, or Lincoln and his presidency. But I can say that I know an awful lot about young Lincoln, Lincoln’s Illinois years, and his wife and family. Few who know me will dispute that.

In looking at the film, I’ll speak to the things on which I’m most qualified to comment and leave the things that are beyond me to the experts who understand those things. 

Not much for movies

I’m not much of a movie watcher either. 

I’m a reader and a student. Give me a good book any day and leave the film viewing to people who like those sorts of things—that is unless it’s a Steven Spielberg film. He can make me put my books down for a couple hours—and, even better, can make me glad I did. 

I remember hearing years ago that Spielberg was planning to make a movie about Lincoln. As did the rest of the Lincoln world and movie lovers, I waited … and waited … and waited. 

It was worth the wait. 

A well-woven work

In Spielberg’s Lincoln we see a story carefully woven, images powerfully presented, directing and acting done as none but Spielberg and crew could have done. 

In selecting Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals as the foundation for his film, Spielberg got off on the right foot. There are many scholars in the Lincoln world, some good, some not-so-much; there are poetic writers and ever-so-boring scribes; there are narrators and there are storytellers. Goodwin is a storyteller. Few equal her gifts in that realm. 

How, though, do you take a book like hers, and condense its more than 900 pages into a film of a couple hours or so? 

Thank goodness, Spielberg got Tony Kushner to do the job. 

I can’t help but think back to Lincoln and his early days in Illinois. Imagine the legendary railsplitter, turning a huge tree into rails to make a fence. Then, imagine that same tree again, but whittled into a likeness of that railsplitter, a spitting image, not too large, not too small, a statue that captured a man so real that the wooden image appeared as the man himself.  

That’s what Kushner did. He took that massive tree of Goodwin’s, whittled and whittled and whittled just so, painstakingly, for years, until he gave us a Lincoln story so real we felt as if we’d stepped back in time and were there watching it unfold in person before our very eyes. 

Again and again as I watched the movie, I had to stop and remind myself, “Ann, this is not the 1860s, you aren’t sitting in that room or walking down those streets. These aren’t the people of Lincoln’s times. They’re actors.” 

Perfect casting

The right actors, in the right roles, directed by only director who could pull it off so well—Steven Spielberg. 

When I heard Daniel Day-Lewis was to play Lincoln I thought, “Last of the Mohicans, yes. Lincoln—really? I just don’t know about that one!” 

Boy, was I ever wrong. From his in-depth study of the man and his mannerisms to the way Day-Lewis brought a voice quieted nearly 150 years ago to life as no one has ever before, Daniel Day-Lewis was Abraham Lincoln. He brought the storyteller, the father, the worry-worn, grieving commander-in-chief to life so well that I often forgot the actor was not the 16^th President himself. 

And, as for Sally Field—I’ve admired the woman since I was a youngster watching that nun fly across the tiny black-and-white screen in my parents’ living room. When I heard she was to play Mary Todd Lincoln, I was sure she’d nail the role, and it’s not an easy role to play. Yet, Field played it with a passion, intensity, and believability that will long sear Mrs. Lincoln in the memory of those who watched her. I am convinced no one could have played that role as well as Field—or interacted as well with Day-Lewis.

If there were one thing Kushner and Spielberg could have done better, it would have been to give us a better portrayal of Robert Todd Lincoln. His character seemed rather shallow and his relationships portrayed only as they were known until recent years. 

After publication of Goodwin’s book and as Kushner worked on the screenplay, author Jason Emerson was wrapping up his seminal work, a biography of Robert Todd Lincoln that shows us Lincoln’s oldest son in a depth previously unexplored.

What a shame Emerson’s work wasn’t done earlier or Spielberg’s project later. I would have loved to see the depth this would have added to the story. 

The good news is that we can still study Robert and Mary and the President—and, if we’re so driven, the Civil War, the politics of the day, the presidency, and more. 

It’s a winner

And when we do, whether this film gathers to it every Oscar for which it is nominated, or not, it is a success, nonetheless. It has achieved all that Spielberg, Goodwin, Kushner, the cast, and all of us who study Lincoln wish for—it has awakened in its viewers a desire to learn more about Lincoln, his life and his legacy. 

Doing so, this film and all who helped to create it truly are the winners.

© Ann Tracy Mueller 2013

(Image via)

I’d love to see the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile …

… ‘Cause everyone would wish that they were me. 

C’mon. Admit it. You know it’s one of those things you never put on your bucket list because you didn’t think it would happen. Neither did I, but guess what—it did!

A few years ago, as my husband and I were driving on an Interstate highway, in the oncoming traffic we saw it—a 27-foot-long hot dog in a bun. 

I figured that was as close as I’d ever come to the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile. 

I was wrong.

Earlier this week, I saw a post on my regional electric coop’s Facebook page. Rural Missouri’s note read, “The Wienermobile, Oscar Mayer's Hot Dog of a Car, is coming to central Missouri…” 

That was all I needed to hear. My bucket list is fluid, and at that moment a new item was added. 

Isn’t it something every kid wishes for, after all—to see the Wienermobile and get his or her own whistle shaped like the magnificent machine? 

The kid in me held that wish from the time I learned there was such a thing and put the likelihood at “highly improbable.”

Yet, here it was—the opportunity of a lifetime. 

I was certain my husband would be on board for the trip, until he uttered these words: “I’ve already seen it.” 

My otherwise not-so-privileged-child hubby had done what other kids only dream of. He’d not only seen the Wienermobile as a youngster in Chicago in the 1950s, but he even had a hot dog-shaped whistle all his own. 

If you’re a Baby Boomer, you remember how cherished those whistles were. They were right up there with Daniel Boone coonskin hats, Betsy Wetsy dolls, and Hopalong Cassidy cap guns and holsters. 

At first when hubby told me of his childhood adventure, I felt pangs of jealousy, then a bit of excitement. 

Wow, was my man ever a lucky little boy!

At first, he led me to believe that once was enough for that lucky boy. All evening and part of the next morning, he had me thinking his child heart was packed in a box someplace with a tattered cherished baseball card of the same era, that he had no desire to join me in seeing the vehicle again. 

Up early getting ready on Saturday morning, though, I heard sounds coming from the shower. 

“What are you doing?” I yelled. 

“I may as well go with you,” came the water-garbled answer. 

We rounded curves, drove through hills and hollows, and crossed a few bridges on our way to the capital city. After more than an hour and fifteen minutes on the road, we came around one more curve and there it was—a six-month-old gargantuan hot-dog-on-wheels proudly sporting license plates that read, “Our Dog.”

Climbing the steps beneath the open door of the Weinermobile that morning was a 60-year-old woman turned six-year-old girl again, looking longingly into the bag of whistles Hotdogger Cookout Kelly held in her hands. 

“Do I get a whistle?” I asked. 

“You know what you have to do, don’t you? Can you sing the jingle?” was Kelly’s reply.

As I began to sing with Kelly and her fellow Hotdogger Deli Eliot, I heard another male voice chiming in behind me. 

Hubby and I both earned our Wienermobile whistles that day. 

As we stepped back out of the vessel that took us back more than half a century without firing up its engine or moving a foot, I think we both grew a little younger.

On the way home, I blew the whistle and sang this little ditty: 

“I’m glad I saw the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile, ‘cause all my friends will wish that they are me.”

And from the number of “Likes” on my Facebook post when I shared the picture, where I was holding my cherished treasure in front of a jumbo–sized dog in a bun, I’m pretty sure that they really do. 

© Ann Tracy Mueller 2013

Sal Litvak’s 'Saving Lincoln': Innovative and entertaining

When you want to make a movie about a big topic, but have a small budget, how do you do it?

You get innovative. 

If you do it right, it works. 

“Saving Lincoln” works.  Director Salvador Litvak got innovative.  

Litvak and his wife, Nina Davidovich, have long wanted to create a film about Abraham Lincoln. They faced a couple of obstacles, though. Another filmmaker, a little better known, was also working on a movie about the 16^th president—and Steven Spielberg had just a few more financial resources to work with than the Litvaks. 

As Litvak and Davidovich did their research for the film, they were drawn into photographs from the period. Knowing that shooting on location was probably not financially feasible given their budget, Litvak wondered if he couldn’t use the photos as the setting —and that’s exactly what he did. 

The movie’s scenes were shot against a green screen, and Litvak used a process he calls CineCollage to make the scenes come to life against real 19^th century backdrops. It works, and I suspect we’ll see more of this process over time.

“Saving Lincoln” tells a Lincoln story that has not yet been told on the big screen—the tale of the relationship between Lincoln and his colleague, a fellow attorney and business partner from the Illinois Eighth Judicial Circuit, Ward Hill Lamon. 

In the days when the two practiced together in the Danville, Ill. area, they bonded in the courts by day and the taverns by night, where Lincoln’s storytelling and Lamon’s banjo picking helped to fill the long dark evenings and mesmerize the prairie folk. 

In actor Tom Amandes, we see a Lincoln, young at first, worry-worn toward his final days, and actor consistent in his depiction of a man who could cackle from the depths of his being at a good joke, including his own, and carry the burdens of a nation upon his shoulders. We see a father’s relationship with his children and his mourning at the loss of one during the White House years. We see the power of the president’s relationship with his complex wife, Mary Todd Lincoln. 

Because this film is not as much about Lincoln’s relationship with his wife as it is with Lamon, in Penelope Ann Miller’s portrayal of Mrs. Lincoln, we see a mother’s love for her children, a wife’s worries about her husband. One of the strongest bits of writing in the play is not in the script itself, but the way Mrs. Lincoln’s anguish is portrayed from a distance. 

I don’t remember seeing Lea Coco, who plays Lamon, on screen before, but he’s got a new fan.

Every once in a while you met someone whose eyes help to capture the essence of their character, who pierce you, saying, “I am this character and all he represents.” Lea Coco does that with Ward Hill Lamon. Many times in the film what he doesn’t say is as powerful as what he does. It takes a knack as a film writer to create those scenes and a gift as an actor to pull it off. 

In addition to these three key characters, I can’t fail to mention Bruce Davison’s portrayal of William H. Seward. Though I’ve always enjoyed his work and loved his role as Nick Anderson in the 2009 film, “Christmas Angel,” Davison was Seward come to life in this film. I like the actor even more now than I did before. 

And, as for Saidah Arrika Ekulona as Mrs. Lincoln’s dressmaker Elizabeth (Lizzie) Keckley—she had me so spellbound that I forgot she wasn’t really Lizzie. 

Over the past few years, I’ve been as anxious to see this film completed and showing as I was to see that other Lincoln movie—and in different ways I liked each as much as the other. 

Anyone comparing Litvak’s film with Spielberg’s does both artists an injustice. The films aren’t the same, as either director will attest—yet Litvak and his wife and Spielberg and his writer have some things in common in creating these film, and the films themselves share a commonality. 

Like Lincoln screenwriter Tony Kushner’s, the Litvaks’ writing is engaging, enlightening, and entertaining.

The filmmakers/writers share a thirst for knowledge about Abraham Lincoln, and they share a desire to create that thirst in others. 

In this respect, both films are spot on. Just as “Lincoln” does, “Saving Lincoln” leaves its viewers with questions about Lincoln and his legacy. 

If those of us who study Lincoln or share his story in our work or artistic endeavors can light a spark of interest about Lincoln in others, we’ve been successful. 

Because it does this, “Saving Lincoln” gets my accolades. 

See the film: I had the joy of seeing the inaugural public screening of “Saving Lincoln” on Feb. 11. The viewing was sponsored by the Abraham Lincoln Association and shown at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum. 

Don’t miss your chance to see the film this weekend (Feb. 15-16) and next week at select theatres throughout the country. If it doesn’t come to your city, watch for the release of the film soon on iTunes and DVD.

Blogger’s note: I also had the privilege from early on to serve as an historical advisor and to help to connect Nina Davidovich and Sal Litvak with others who could answer their questions about Lincoln and Lamon. I loved their excitement. 

I expected them to deliver a project worth paying attention to. 

They did. 

© Ann Tracy Mueller 2013