Homestead Living Quotes

There are seasons of our lives when nothing seems to be happening, when no smoke betrays a burned town or homestead and few tears are shed for the newly dead. I have learned not to trust those times, because if the world is at peace then it means someone is planning war.

Plantation justice was mean and constant but the world was indiscriminate. Out in the world, the wicked escaped comeuppance and the decent stood in their stead at the whipping tree. Tennessee's disasters were the fruit of indifferent nature, without connection to the crimes of the homesteaders. To how the Cherokee had lived their lives.

We were going home. The mountains might seem hostile to some people, but they were a shelter and a blessing for me. I lived in their shadows. As they have strength to my ancestors long ago, they gave strength to me now.

Ingenious philosophers tell you, perhaps, that the great work of the steam-engine is to create leisure for mankind. Do not believe them: it only creates a vacuum for eager thought to rush in. Even idleness is eager now—eager for amusement; prone to excursion-trains, art museums, periodical literature, and exciting novels; prone even to scientific theorizing and cursory peeps through microscopes. Old Leisure was quite a different personage. He only read one newspaper, innocent of leaders, and was free from that periodicity of sensations which we call post-time. He was a contemplative, rather stout gentleman, of excellent digestion; of quiet perceptions, undiseased by hypothesis; happy in his inability to know the causes of things, preferring the things themselves. He lived chiefly in the country, among pleasant seats and homesteads, and was fond of sauntering by the fruit-tree wall and scenting the apricots when they were warmed by the morning sunshine, or of sheltering himself under the orchard boughs at noon, when the summer pears were falling. He knew nothing of weekday services, and thought none the worse of the Sunday sermon if it allowed him to sleep from the text to the blessing; liking the afternoon service best, because the prayers were the shortest, and not ashamed to say so; for he had an easy, jolly conscience, broad-backed like himself, and able to carry a great deal of beer or port-wine, not being made squeamish by doubts and qualms and lofty aspirations.

There are seasons of our lives when nothing seems to be happening, when no smoke betrays a burned town or homestead and few tears are shed for the newly dead. I have learned not to trust those times, because if the world is at peace then it means someone is planning war. Spring

...nor do I want to suggest that the Amish are perfect people or that their way of life is perfect. What I want to recommend are some Amish principles: 1) They have preserved their families and communities. 2) They have maintained the practices of neighbourhood. 3) They have maintained the domestic arts of kitchen and garden, household and homestead. 4) They have limited their use of technology so as not to displace or alienate available human labour or available free source of power (the sun, wind, water, and so on). 5) They have their farms to a scale that is compatible both with the practice of neighborhood and with the optimum use of low-power technology. 6) By the practices and limits already mentioned, they have limited their costs. 7) They have educated their children to live at home and serve their communities. 8) They esteem farming as both a practical art and a spiritual discipline. These principles define a world to be lived by human beings, not a world to be exploited by managers, stockholders, and experts.

It seemed as if we were driving through a golden haze. The violet shadows were creeping up between the hills, while away back of us the snow-capped peaks were catching the sun's last rays. On every side of us stretched the poor, hopeless desert, the sage, grim and determined to live in spite of starvation, and the great, bare, desolate buttes. The beautiful colors turned to amber and rose, and then to the general tone, dull gray. Then we stopped to camp, and such a scurrying around to gather brush for the fire and to get supper! Everything tasted so good! Jerrine ate like a man. Then we raised the wagon tongue and spread the wagon sheet over it and made a bedroom for us women.

After her first book was successful and she received pleas from children around the country to continue the story, she said, I began to think what a wonderful childhood I had had. How I had seen the whole frontier, the woods, the Indian country of the great plains, the frontier towns, the building of railroads in wild, unsettled country, homesteading and farmers coming in to take possession. I realized that I had seen and lived it all—all the successive phases of the frontier, first the frontiersman, then the pioneer, then the farmers and the towns. Then I understood that in my own life I represented a whole period of American history. That the frontier was gone, and agricultural settlements had taken its place when I married a farmer. It seemed to me that my childhood had been much richer and more interesting than that of children today, even with all the modern inventions and improvements.

Part of Wordsworth’s complaint was directed towards the smoke, congestion, poverty and ugliness of cities, but clean-air bills and slum clearance would not, by themselves, have eradiated his critique. For it was the effect of cities on our souls, rather than on our health, that concerned him. The poet accused the cities of fostering a family of life-destroying emotions: anxiety about our position in the social hierarchy, envy at the success of others, pride and desire to shine in the eyes of strangers. City dwellers had no perspective, he alleged, they were in thrall of what was spoken of in the street or at the dinner table. However well provided for, they had a relentless desire to new things, which they did not genuinely lack and on which happiness did not depend. And in this crowded, anxious sphere, it seemed harder that it did on an isolated homestead to begin sincere relationships with others. ‘One thought baffled my understanding,’ wrote Wordsworth of his residence in London: ‘How men lived even next-door neighbors, as we say, yet still strangers, and knowing not each other’s names.

In the weeks leading up to his arrival by train in Pittsburgh, Alexander Berkman had been obsessed with the escalating drama at Homestead. He was living with his partner and lover, the anarchist Emma Goldman, in the New England factory town of Worcester, Massachusetts. By day the couple earned a living serving sandwiches and scooping ice cream in a small diner. By night, they made love and dreamed of revolution.

It is only our limited time frame that creates the whole "natives versus exotics" controversy. Wind animals, sea currents, and continental drift have always dispersed species into new environments... The planet has been awash in surging , swarming species movement since life began. The fact that it is not one great homogeneous tangled weed lot is persuasive testimony to the fact that intact ecosystems are very difficult to invade.

There are many more ways we can adapt. For example, instead of using up our energies harping about big farmers (whom of course we need right now to provide enough food for all of us), buy your own little patch of land to turn into an oasis of food and wildlife abundance. More and more people are doing this rather than standing around wringing their hands about global warming. Your little sanctuary will not be prone to disappear when the inevitable financial crises hit the big commercial farms.

TIMELINE OF LAURA INGALLS WILDER’S LIFE 1865-Laura’s sister Mary is born in Pepin, Wisconsin 1867-Laura Ingalls is born in Pepin, Wisconsin 1869-The Ingallses move to Indian Territory, Kansas 1870-Caroline Ingalls, “Carrie,” is born in Kansas 1871-The Ingallses return to the Big Woods of Wisconsin 1874-Lives in a dugout near Walnut Grove, Minnesota 1875-Charles Frederick Ingalls, “Freddy,” is born 1876-Laura’s brother, Freddy, dies at nine months old Laura moves with her family to Burr Oak, Iowa 1877-Grace Ingalls is born in Burr Oak 1879-Mary becomes blind after a fever 1880-The Ingallses begin homesteading in De Smet, Dakota Territory 1885-Almanzo Wilder and Laura Ingalls marry 1886-Rose Wilder born in De Smet 1894-The Wilders move to Mansfield, Missouri 1932-Little House in the Big Woods is published when Laura is sixty-five 1954-Laura awarded the first Laura Ingalls Wilder Award, for her eight-book Little House series 1957-Laura (age ninety) dies at her Rocky Ridge home in Mansfield

[Leslie Bennett] You have a teenager who desperately wants to separate...If you don't have a career, these New Domesticity types are likely to find themselves standing in the kitchen with all these domestic skills and no outlet for them, no way to earn a living.... [A]t that point your kids are not thanking you for having made the hand-pureed baby food and for giving them homemade cookies. They don't feel you've done them a big favor; they say, "Why didn't she ever grow up and take responsibility for her own life?

Algren’s book opens with one of the best historical descriptions of American white trash ever written.* He traces the Linkhorn ancestry back to the first wave of bonded servants to arrive on these shores. These were the dregs of society from all over the British Isles—misfits, criminals, debtors, social bankrupts of every type and description—all of them willing to sign oppressive work contracts with future employers in exchange for ocean passage to the New World. Once here, they endured a form of slavery for a year or two—during which they were fed and sheltered by the boss—and when their time of bondage ended, they were turned loose to make their own way. In theory and in the context of history the setup was mutually advantageous. Any man desperate enough to sell himself into bondage in the first place had pretty well shot his wad in the old country, so a chance for a foothold on a new continent was not to be taken lightly. After a period of hard labor and wretchedness he would then be free to seize whatever he might in a land of seemingly infinite natural wealth. Thousands of bonded servants came over, but by the time they earned their freedom the coastal strip was already settled. The unclaimed land was west, across the Alleghenies. So they drifted into the new states—Kentucky and Tennessee; their sons drifted on to Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma. Drifting became a habit; with dead roots in the Old World and none in the New, the Linkhorns were not of a mind to dig in and cultivate things. Bondage too became a habit, but it was only the temporary kind. They were not pioneers, but sleazy rearguard camp followers of the original westward movement. By the time the Linkhorns arrived anywhere the land was already taken—so they worked for a while and moved on. Their world was a violent, boozing limbo between the pits of despair and the Big Rock Candy Mountain. They kept drifting west, chasing jobs, rumors, homestead grabs or the luck of some front-running kin. They lived off the surface of the land, like army worms, stripping it of whatever they could before moving on. It was a day-to-day existence, and there was always more land to the west. Some stayed behind and their lineal descendants are still there—in the Carolinas, Kentucky, West Virginia and Tennessee. There were dropouts along the way: hillbillies, Okies, Arkies—they’re all the same people. Texas is a living monument to the breed. So is southern California. Algren called them “fierce craving boys” with “a feeling of having been cheated.” Freebooters, armed and drunk—a legion of gamblers, brawlers and whorehoppers. Blowing into town in a junk Model-A with bald tires, no muffler and one headlight … looking for quick work, with no questions asked and preferably no tax deductions. Just get the cash, fill up at a cut-rate gas station and hit the road, with a pint on the seat and Eddy Arnold on the radio moaning good back-country tunes about home sweet home, that Bluegrass sweetheart still waitin, and roses on Mama’s grave. Algren left the Linkhorns in Texas, but anyone who drives the Western highways knows they didn’t stay there either. They kept moving until one day in the late 1930s they stood on the spine of a scrub-oak California hill and looked down on the Pacific Ocean—the end of the road.

In the weeks leading up to his arrival by train in Pittsburgh, Alexander Berkman had been obsessed with the escalating drama at Homestead. He was living with his partner and lover, the anarchist Emma Goldman, in the New England factory town of Worcester, Massachusetts. By day the couple earned a living serving sandwiches and scooping ice cream in a small diner. By night, they made love and dreamed of revolution. By late spring, Homestead was looking like the harbinger they’d been waiting for. “To us,” Goldman said, “it sounded the awakening of the American worker, the long-awaited day of his resurrection.

the headline death and disaster atop the latest dispatch from Homestead. “Capital and labor have met once more on a bloody field,” the article stated. “Never in the history of strikes and riots, since the railroad riots of 1877, have there been so many lives sacrificed, and such fighting between the representatives of the two great social divisions.” Members of the Pennsylvania National Guard were on their way to restore order, the dispatch reported. He and Goldman had been right. It was clear that Frick would soon vanquish the strikers. Exiting the station, Berkman looked to the east. Above him, perched on what locals still called Jenkins Hill, the Capitol dome was bathed in a flood of golden light from the deep red sun rising behind it. “Like a living thing the light palpitates,” Berkman recalled, “trembling with passion to kiss the uppermost peak, striking it with blinding brilliancy, and then spreading in a broadening embrace down the shoulders of the towering giant.

I also worried about her morale. During Linda’s first season working for Amazon, she had seen up close the vast volume of crap Americans were buying and felt disgusted. That experience had planted a seed of disenchantment. After she left the warehouse, it continued to grow. When she had downsized from a large RV to a minuscule trailer, Linda had also been reading about minimalism and the tiny house movement. She had done a lot of thinking about consumer culture and about how much garbage people cram into their short lives. I wondered where all those thoughts would lead. Linda was still grappling with them. Weeks later, after starting work in Kentucky, she would post the following message on Facebook and also text it directly to me: Someone asked why do you want a homestead? To be independent, get out of the rat race, support local businesses, buy only American made. Stop buying stuff I don’t need to impress people I don’t like. Right now I am working in a big warehouse, for a major online supplier. The stuff is crap all made somewhere else in the world where they don’t have child labor laws, where the workers labor fourteen- to sixteen-hour days without meals or bathroom breaks. There is one million square feet in this warehouse packed with stuff that won’t last a month. It is all going to a landfill. This company has hundreds of warehouses. Our economy is built on the backs of slaves we keep in other countries, like China, India, Mexico, any third world country with a cheap labor force where we don’t have to see them but where we can enjoy the fruits of their labor. This American Corp. is probably the biggest slave owner in the world. After sending that, she continued: Radical I know, but this is what goes through my head when I’m at work. There is nothing in that warehouse of substance. It enslaved the buyers who use their credit to purchase that shit. Keeps them in jobs they hate to pay their debts. It’s really depressing to be there. Linda added that she was coping

Then the lively Lemminkainen, Roamed about through every village, For the island-maidens' pleasure, To delight the braidless damsels, And where'er his head was turning, There he found a mouth for kissing, Wheresoe'er his hand was outstretched, There he found a hand to clasp it.230 And at night he went to rest him, Hiding in the darkest corner; There was not a single village Where he did not find ten homesteads, There was not a single homestead Where he did not find ten daughters, There was none among the daughters, None among the mother's children, By whose side he did not stretch him, On whose arm he did not rest him.240 Thus a thousand brides he found there, Rested by a hundred widows; Two in half-a-score remained not, Three in a completed hundred, Whom he left untouched as maidens, Or as widows unmolested. Thus the lively Lemminkainen Lived a life of great enjoyment, For the course of three whole summers In the island's pleasant hamlets, To the island-maidens' rapture, The content of all the widows;

The land was part of a grant made to a minister, Carter, to bring him to the nearby town of Oakfield: five hundred acres, of which, in the past two decades, he’d cleared a bit more than a dozen. How happily he parted with the bosky uplands that rose behind his farm! As to the cabin, we could find no clue to its prior inhabitants. It was not of any form common to the Natives who had lived there before the town had claimed it, while the custom of the recent settlers of the country was to raise a wooden frame. Nor could I find any record of it at the County, where the tract maps showed only a few trees and a fanciful decorative panther. But besides the pacing beast, nothing. Sometimes, said the Register of Deeds, they turned up abandoned homesteads; the land was hard, and few endured upon their errands. But I had no need to worry about another claimant. In the eye of the Great and General Court of Massachusetts, the deed was clear, the cabin did not exist. Perhaps among the Indians there was someone who knew the answer, but most of them were gone

The Christian is the most contented man in the world, but he is the least contented with the world. He is like a traveller in an inn, perfectly satisfied with the inn and its accommodation, considering it as an inn, but putting quite out of all consideration the idea of making it his home. He baits by the way, and is thankful, but his desires lead him ever onward towards that better country where the many mansions are prepared. The believer is like a man in a sailing vessel, well content with the good ship for what it is, and hopeful that it may bear him safely across the sea, willing to put up with all its inconveniences without complaint; but if you ask him whether he would choose to live on board in that narrow cabin, he will tell you that he longs for the time when the harbour shall be in view, and the green fields, and the happy homesteads of his native land. We, my brethren, thank God for all the appointments of providence; whether our portion be large or scant we are content because God has appointed it: yet our portion is not here, nor would we have it here if we might!

His home was a part of him, an externalized expression of his will, for upon his inherited Dutch Manor house he had superimposed the Gothic magnificence which he desired. He had been attracted by the formulations of Andrew Downing, the young landscape architect who lived on the river at Newburgh and whose directions for building "romantic and picturesque villas" were changing the countryside; but it was not in Nicholas to accept another's ideas, and when five years ago he had remodeled the old Van Ryn homestead, he had used Downing simply as a guide. To the original ten rooms he had added twenty more, the gables and turrets, and the one high tower. The result, though reminiscent of a German Schloss on the Rhine, crossed with Tudor English and interwoven with pure fantasy, was nevertheless Hudson River American and not unsuited to its setting. The Dragonwyck gardens were as much as an expression of Nicholas' personality as was the mansion, for here, he had subdued Nature to a stylized ornateness. Between the untouched grove of hemlocks to the south and the slope of a rocky hill half a mile to the north he had created along the river an artificial and exotic beauty. To Miranda it was overpowering, and she felt dazed as they mounted marble steps from the landing. She was but vaguely conscious of the rose gardens and their pervasive scent, of small Greek temples set beneath weeping willows, of rock pavilions, violet-bordered fountains, and waterfalls.

Madness is an insidious disease. We do not see the danger until it is too late. It creeps into the cracks and crevices of the mind and makes itself at home, like carpenter ants in the framing of a home. We do not know the floor has rotted away until one ill-timed step destroys the façade of normalcy. But carpenter ants do not destroy a home. They change it. As matter cannot be destroyed, they consume the structures we have built and rearrange it for their own use. While a home beset by such insects might seem uninhabitable for those who look at the situation from the outside, to the ants it was the intended outcome. We might inspect the foundation and find it derelict and dilapidated. We might scoff and say that anyone who lives within such a place is idiotic, and that they should have not neglected it in such a way. And, in extreme cases, they should move. Consider this metaphor in relation to one’s mind. That place in which we spend the entirety of our mortal lives. What happens when your home is beset by insects then? One cannot move out of one’s own mind, try as we might. We are trapped within these structures of ours, for better or worse and come what may. We must make do with what we are given and what we have left. Whereas you or I in our daily lives might seek a new homestead in such an infestation, in this labyrinth of the psyche, we cannot. There are different ways that a consciousness, once gnawed and riddled with holes, might come to adapt to such a state of being. Consider three men with this dilemma, if you will. The first man may seek to repair the damage—replace the eaten portions and shore up the foundations. This man is pragmatic, but shortsighted. He treats the symptoms, but not the cause. The second may seek to exterminate the infestation—to seek the illness at the root and rip it out. This man is wise, but must need act quickly before the house collapses around him. The third man merely laughs—he accepts his new state of being and does nothing to repair his home. He declares himself King of the Ants, lifts up hammer and sledge, and tears the remaining walls apart with his own two hands. You might think that man the fool. You might think him a harmless, laughing lunatic. It is a mistake that leads to ruin. For that man is the most dangerous of them all. -M. L. Harrow

Reflective nostalgics miss the past and dream about the past. Some of them study the past and even mourn the past, especially their own personal past. But they do not really want the past back. Perhaps this is because, deep down, they know that the old homestead is in ruins, or because it has been gentrified beyond recognition--or because they quietly recognize that they wouldn't much like it now anyway. Once upon a time life might have been sweeter or simpler, but it was also more dangerous, or more boring, or perhaps more unjust. Radically different from the reflective nostalgics are what Boym calls the restorative nostalgics, not all of whom recognize themselves as nostalgics at all. Restorative nostalgics don't just look at old photographs and piece together family stories. They are mythmakers and architects, builders of monuments and founders of nationalist political projects. They do not merely want to contemplate or learn from the past. They want, as Boym puts it, to "rebuild the lost home and patch up the memory gaps." Many of them don't recognize their own fictions about the past for what they are: "They believe their project is about truth." They are not interested in a nuanced past, in a world in which great leaders were flawed men, in which famous military victories had lethal side effects. They don't acknowledge that the past might have had its drawbacks. They want the cartoon version of history, and more importantly, they want to live in it, right now. They don't want to act out roles from the past because it amuses them: they want to behave as think their ancestors did, without irony. It is not by accident that restorative nostalgia often goes hand in hand with conspiracy theories and the medium-sized lies. These needn't be as harsh or crazy as the Smolensk conspiracy theory or the Soros conspiracy theory; they can gently invoke scapegoats rather than a full-fledged alternative reality. At a minimum, they can offer an explanation: The nation is no longer great because someone has attacked us, undermined us, sapped our strength. Someone—the immigrants, the foreigners, the elites, or indeed the EU—has perverted the course of history and reduced the nation to a shadow of its former self. The essential identity that we once had has been taken away and replaced with something cheap and artificial. Eventually, those who seek power on the back of restorative nostalgia will begin to cultivate these conspiracy theories, or alternative histories, or alternative fibs, whether or not they have any basis in fact.

October 5th, 1884, and is over ninety ears of age. Until her memory failed her, a few years ago, she thought the country ruined beyond recovery when the Democratic party lost control in 1860. Her family, which was large, inherited her views, with the exception of one son who settled in Kentucky before the war. He was the only one of the children who entered the volunteer service to suppress the rebellion. Her brother, next of age and now past eighty-eight, is also still living in Clermont County, within a few miles of the old homestead, and is as active in mind as ever. He was a supporter of the Government during the war, and remains a firm believer, that national success by the Democratic party means irretrievable ruin.

Anything they have to advertise is something you don’t need.

For our purposes, the term homesteading simply refers to a lifestyle that promotes greater self-sufficiency and resilience while providing insurance against “the system” by simplifying the complexities of our modern society and our lives down to focus on addressing our basic needs. Think

And relatively self-reliant households are the basic building block of any culture that is viable over the long term without requiring war (stealing of resources) to sustain itself. No democratic civilization can last long if it is built upon a citizenry that consume more than they produce; that's debt and debt is inherently unsustainable and undemocratic. If our goal is a peaceful, just society, self-reliance at the home and community levels must be a central focus of our lives

I had arrived here with my chaperones, Mary and Abner Chandler, who were homesteading to California. I planned to live in Colorado, staying with my sister, until I found a husband. Hannah said there were plenty of miners looking for brides, as the men vastly outnumbered the women in Denver City.

Ava sang to remind them of what was important – the things that mattered in their lives. She sang about the love of hearth and home; the fire at night in the fireplace; dinner warm on the table; a caring wife and hard-working husband who relied on each other for everything; of babies still in their cradles; toddlers climbing on knees wanting to be cuddled; of teenage boys and girls helping their parents run the homestead. She sang of warm summers and cozy winters with lots of heavy blankets; of harmony and love; well-being and gratitude for the harvest - for the bounty by which they all lived. She sang of the joy of a new life; the births of their children; the enduring love in the twilight of old age between a man and his wife - the years behind them like the building blocks of an enormous castle.

Who lived here?” Steven asked, slowing his pace now that they’d reached level ground. Emma reached back to be sure her braid wasn’t coming undone. “Just some homesteaders. I don’t know what their names were.” Steven released her hand and gave the remains of the house a thorough assessment, as though it might be important to remember what he saw. “It must have been nice, living out here—just a man and his wife, and maybe a couple of kids.” “It must have been lonely,” Emma countered. “Besides, you don’t know what this lake is like in winter—it freezes solid in some places. These people might easily have been marooned here for weeks at a time.” She shivered, even though there were bees buzzing in the warm May air. “I imagine they found things to do,” Steven said quietly. He held out a hand to Emma, and she went to him, just as she always did. Emma flushed as she lowered her eyes, unable to help picturing herself and Steven in such a situation. “I imagine,” she conceded. Just

I’m leaving the army,” he said. Lily felt hope leap within her breast. Maybe Caleb had changed his mind; maybe he wanted to be a farmer after all. She held her breath, waiting for him to go on. “I want to go back to Pennsylvania.” Lily’s hopes plummeted. She could only stare at Caleb in misery. “I see,” she said finally, with dignity. Caleb reached into the pocket of his uniform coat and brought out a small box. “I want you to go with me, Lily,” he told her, setting the box in front of her. She opened it, hands trembling, to find an exquisite diamond ring inside. The larger center stone glittered and winked at her from amid the surrounding smaller gems. Her finger fairly burned, waiting to wear that ring. “I can’t,” she said resolutely, snapping the box closed and shoving it back toward Caleb. He leaned forward in his chair and lowered his voice. “Don’t sit there and tell me you don’t care for me, Lily, because I know you do. Yesterday you gave yourself to me in a woodshed, remember?” Lily colored to recall the wanton way she’d behaved, and she lowered her eyes. “I do care,” she answered, “but I don’t want to leave my land, and I don’t want a husband.” “You’d marry me if I agreed to stay and farm that damnable land with you?” Again hope stirred in Lily’s heart. “Yes.” “You just said you didn’t want a husband.” Lily bit her lower lip. “If we were going to live in the same house, we’d have to be married, wouldn’t we?” Caleb pushed the ring box back across the table. “Has it ever occurred to you that I could promise to live on the farm, marry you, and then take you anywhere I damn well please, whether you want to go or not?” “You’re not making a very good case for marriage,” Lily answered, ignoring the ring box and taking a steadying sip of her coffee. The truth was, she had never once considered the possibility Caleb had suggested; she knew he was honest to a fault. “Damn it,” he whispered, “I should have done it. I should have told you I’d homestead with you and then married you!” “I would never have forgiven you, and you know it. It would have soured everything between us.” “Not everything,” Caleb argued, making Lily blush again. “Must every conversation we have come back to that?” Caleb took the ring from the box, and then he lifted Lily’s left hand and shoved the diamond unceremoniously onto her finger. “I think the fact that you would probably let me make love to you damn near anywhere has some bearing on what we’re talking about, yes!” Lily looked around furtively to see if anyone was listening. Fortunately, the restaurant was nearly empty, and the few other diners were sitting some distance away. “There is absolutely no need for you to be so arrogant,” she fretted, trying to pull the ring off. It was just a tiny bit too small and wouldn’t come over her knuckle. Caleb’s amber eyes were glittering with triumph when she looked up at him. “Perfect fit,” he said. Lily pushed back her chair. “I’ll get it off if I have to have my finger amputated,” she replied, preparing to leave. “Get out of that chair and there will be a scene you’ll remember until the day you die,” Caleb promised. Lily sat down again. “I don’t want to marry you, and I don’t want to go to Pennsylvania, so why can’t you just leave me alone?” “Because I love you,” Caleb answered, and he looked as surprised to find himself saying the words as Lily was to hear them. “I beg your pardon?” “You heard me, Lily.” “You said you loved me. Did you mean it?” Caleb drove one hand through his hair. “Yes.” Lily stared at him and stopped trying to get the ring off her finger. “You’re just saying that. It’s a trick of some kind.” Caleb laughed, but there was no humor in the sound. “Believe me, it’s no trick—it’s a fact I’m going to have to live with for the next fifty years.” In

I thought the tribes around here were friendly,” she said, her eyes widening as she looked up at Caleb. His broad shoulders moved in a shrug. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned about the red man, it’s that he’s unpredictable.” Lily bit her lower lip, thinking of all the nights ahead, when she would be alone on her little farm with no one to protect her. Caleb favored her with an indulgent smile. “You don’t need to worry, Lily. You’re safe as long as you don’t go wandering off into the countryside by yourself.” The reassurance didn’t help. How on earth could she run a homestead single-handedly and not be alone? “I’ll just have to buy a rifle and practice my shooting,” she reflected aloud. Even though they hadn’t quite reached the valley, Caleb stopped the rig again. “What did you say?” he asked. Lily sighed. “I want to practice shooting. I used to hunt grouse with Rupert, and—” Caleb was staring at her as though she’d just said she planned to ride to the stars on a moonbeam. “A lady’s got no business fooling with a weapon,” he interrupted. Lily sat up very straight. “You’re certainly entitled to your opinion, Major Halliday,” she said primly, “however antiquated and stupid it might be.” Caleb started the rig rolling again with a lurch, slapping the reins down on the horse’s back. “What would you want with a gun?” he asked after a few moments had passed. Although Lily knew her answer would start more trouble, she could no longer hold it back. “I’ll need it for hunting, of course—and to protect myself, should the need arise. I mean to farm for a living, you see.” “By yourself?” There was a note of marvel in Caleb’s voice. “By myself,” Lily confirmed as the horse and buggy topped a grassy knoll.

Magnar wants to start a livery in Worthington. Horses and oxen. Your animal doctoring would be a big help to him.” Susannah had felt the young man’s blue eyes watching her all morning. She met his gaze. “Good idea. Homesteaders arriving by train will need teams. This is excellent grazing land. Your biggest problem will be keeping your stock from running off. Picketing takes time and fencing takes money.” “See. You know the business. You would be a big help to him. Teach him English too. You could live out here or build a house in town. Norwegians are good people. Dependable, treat their women well—” The Reverend cleared his throat. “I’ve asked Mrs. Mason for her hand.” Blood seemed to pound in her ears, but it was only Ivar pounding the table. “But Magnar wants to marry her!

The buildings had grown up around the old Swift homestead, which, now that so much industry surrounded it, was not the most pleasant place to live in. Tom and his father only made this their stopping place in winter. In the summer they dwelt in a quiet cottage far removed from the scenes of their industry.

One random Friday, the president announced that an asteroid was on a collision course for Earth. My world and everyone else’s—the entire planet—fell into chaos. Everything that was capable of collapsing eventually did. My grandfather showed up the next day as stores were being ransacked and riots were erupting in the streets. He begged us to run. Escape to his survival-adapted cabin in the middle of nowhere where he’d stored up years’ worth of food and provisions. My parents finally agreed, but they insisted on taking the time to pack all their favorite possessions while Grandpa and I waited impatiently in his old truck. The delay was a mistake. Large groups of violent looters were already hitting the wealthy neighborhoods in town, plundering houses and killing anyone who resisted. My mom and dad didn’t resist. Neither of them had ever thrown a punch or loaded a gun in their lives. But they were killed anyway, and Grandpa and I barely made it out of there alive. By then the interstates and highways were impossible, clogged with cars and roadblocked by aggressive militia groups whose day had finally arrived. Grandpa took us on smaller back roads, shooting at or running over anyone who tried to stop us, until we reached his remote cabin and left the remains of civilization behind. We stayed there—living off everything he’d stored up and using the self-sustaining energy and plumbing systems he’d installed—for more than eight years. A couple of years ago, as our supplies were running low, we realized we’d finally have to leave the safe isolation of our home long enough to scavenge for food and provisions. This region of the Ozarks was abandoned a long time ago as the protected forests and uncultivated wildland overtook the former pockets of residents, but there are still plenty of abandoned buildings remaining.

You could go [along the river] where you wanted and homestead—the forest gives you all kinds of fruit and animals, the river gives you fish and plants. That was very important to societies like Marajó. They had to be much less coercive, much more hang-loose, much more socially fluid, or people wouldn’t stay there.” Compared with much of the rest of the world at that time, people in the Amazon “were freer, they were healthier, they were living in a really wonderful civilization.

This has been a story of the buried life after all: Emily and Austin and Vinnie firing up at the spark Mabel touched off when she flirted with Austin’s buried passions and intruded on the Homestead and coveted the shadow-world of Sue and Emily. But to touch off that spark was Austin’s doing as well as Mabel’s. The feud was not wholly something that was done to the Dickinsons but was in some sense a sequel to what they were.

Once The Evergreens and then the Homestead opened their doors to Mabel Todd, emotions—a lethal mix of passion, jealousy and rage—erupted during the last years of the poet’s life, perpetuated by descendants and the authorities they co-opted or persuaded.

Upon arriving in the Azov steppes, the Welshman and his party established themselves in the homestead of Ovechii, a small settlement founded by Zaporozhian Cossacks back in the seventeenth century. But Hughes was hardly interested in the Cossack past of the region. He had bought the land and come to Ovechii for one simple reason—four years earlier, Russian engineers had designated that area as an ideal site for a future metal works, with iron ore, coal, and water all in close proximity. The government had tried to build a plant in that area but failed, lacking expertise in constructing and running metal works. Hughes provided proficiency in both. In January 1872, his newly built iron works produced its first pig iron. In the course of the 1870s, he added more blast furnaces. The works employed close to 1,800 people, becoming the largest metal producer in the empire. The place where the workers lived became known as Yuzivka after the founder’s surname (“Hughesivka”). The steel and mining town would be renamed Staline in 1924 and Donetsk in 1961.

town this time of year and he NEVER visits; if he'd run out of turnip seed he wouldn't dress up and take the buggy to go for more; he wasn't driving fast enough to be going for a doctor. Yet something must have happened since last night to start him off. I'm clean puzzled, that's what, and I won't know a minute's peace of mind or conscience until I know what has taken Matthew Cuthbert out of Avonlea today." Accordingly after tea Mrs. Rachel set out; she had not far to go; the big, rambling, orchard-embowered house where the Cuthberts lived was a scant quarter of a mile up the road from Lynde's Hollow. To be sure, the long lane made it a good deal further. Matthew Cuthbert's father, as shy and silent as his son after him, had got as far away as he possibly could from his fellow men without actually retreating into the woods when he founded his homestead. Green Gables was built at the furthest edge of his cleared land and there it was to this day, barely visible from the main road along which all the other Avonlea houses were so sociably situated. Mrs. Rachel Lynde did not call living in such a place LIVING at all. "It's just STAYING, that's what," she said as she stepped along the deep-rutted, grassy lane

In this turn against Reconstruction we see how the American idea of freedom is a living, evolving thing. Before, Greeley believed that simply ending slavery and providing a background of free labor policies would be enough to ensure that people could be self-sufficient, independent, and removed from the arbitrary domination of others. It led Greeley to promote ideas that were genuine and remarkable in creating this freedom, with free homesteads among the most important. But the challenge of Reconstruction showed Greeley that this wouldn’t be sufficient in a new era.

Skinwalkers were almost always male and wore the pelt of a sacred animal so that they could subvert that animal’s powers to kill people in the community. They could travel impossibly fast across the desert and their eyes glowed like coals and they could supposedly paralyze you with a single look. They were thought to attack remote homesteads at night and kill people and sometimes eat their bodies. People were still scared of skinwalkers when I lived on the Navajo Reservation in 1983, and frankly, by the time I left, I was too. Virtually every culture in the world has its version of the skinwalker myth. In Europe, for example, they are called werewolves (literally “man-wolf” in Old English). The myth addresses a fundamental fear in human society: that you can defend against external enemies but still remain vulnerable to one lone madman in your midst. Anglo-American culture doesn’t recognize the skinwalker threat but has its own version. Starting in the early 1980s, the frequency of rampage shootings in the United States began to rise more and more rapidly until it doubled around 2006.

But words can of course equally well carry a blessing with them. A good word at parting is a gift of strength to the traveller. When the king said “Good luck go with you, my friend,” the man set out carrying a piece of the king's power in him. “Luck on your way to your journey's end, and then I will take my luck again,” is a saying still current among the Danish peasantry. A good word given on coming to a new place meant a real addition to one's luck. When Olaf the Peacock moved into his new homestead, old Hoskuld, his father, stood outside uttering words of good luck; he bade Olaf welcome with luck, and added significantly: “This my mind tells me surely, that his name shall live long.” Orðheill, word-luck, is the Icelandic term for a wish thus charged with power, either for good or evil, according as the speaker put his goodwill into his words and made them a blessing, or inspired them with his hate, so that they acted as a curse. There was man's life in words, just as well as in plans, in counsel. Thoughts and words are simply detached portions of the human soul and thus in full earnest to be regarded as living things.

connection. In April 1855 my great-granduncle Alexander Carter Jr. and his younger brother, Thomas Marion Carter, left their home in Scioto County, Ohio, and headed west. Starting by steamboat, the two brothers floated down the Ohio River until it joined the Mississippi and then traveled upstream to St. Louis. In St. Louis they found little transportation west, so they walked, hitched rides, and rode horseback to reach St. Joseph, Missouri. There they caught a stagecoach to Council Bluffs, Iowa, riding on top of the stage, with seventeen men and women-a three-day ordeal. On May 14, nineteen days after leaving St. Louis, the brothers crossed the Missouri River and landed on the town site of Omaha, then a community of cotton tents and shanties, where lots were being offered to anyone willing to build on them. They refused this offer and pressed on to their final destination, DeSoto, Washington County, Nebraska Territory, where they found only one completed log house and another under construction. There they homesteaded the town of Blair, Nebraska. For three generations there were Carters in Nebraska, first in Blair and then in Omaha, where I was bom. As a native Nebraskan, I feel a particular affinity for William F. Cody, who lived most of his adult life in Nebraska. My father, George W. Carter, could have seen Buffalo Bill's Wild West when it came to Omaha in August 1908. I wish I had known the old scout personally; I am glad I have come to know him better while writing this book. It is also my fond hope that readers will feel as I do, that Buffalo Bill Cody is well worth knowing. Writing a biography of someone long dead is always a challenge. You must come to understand the person, the motivations, the key events that altered the course of history. And there are the records, the letters, the reminiscences of contemporaries. In Bill. Cody's case the documentation is plentiful but sometimes contradictory. Did Buffalo Bill kill Yellow Hand-the "first scalp for Custer"-for example? There are those who say he did and detractors who say he did not. Who are. we . to ' believe? For the most part, if I found two or three accounts that agreed with each other, particularly if there were official government .records supporting him, I felt sure I could give the credit to Cody.

Mamma," she said, "did God really make the baby?" "Yes, dear." "Then He hasn't treated us fairly, and I should like to know why. The puppies could walk when He finished them; the calves can, too. The pigs can, and the colt, and even the chickens. What is the use of giving us a half-finished baby? He has no hair, and no teeth; he can't walk or talk, nor do anything else but squall and sleep." After many days she got the question settled. She began right where she left off. "I know, Mamma, why God gave us such a half-finished baby; so he could learn our ways, and no one else's, since he must live with us, and so we could learn to love him. Every time I stand beside his buggy he laughs and then I love him, but I don't love Stella nor Marvin because they laugh. So that is why." Perhaps that is the reason.