Week of February 12, 2007

Chapter 2: In Which I Go Up In The World:

Indians:

Have you ever wondered how the story would have gone if the Indians (Native Americans) had discovered Hitty instead of the crows. Would Hitty have been played with by a little Indian girl or looked at as a religious talisman?

I seriously thought she would let the Indians keep Hitty for a while, which would have been interesting. I think it would have been more played with, as the Indian children did have dolls.

I'm guessing she would be similar to toys that they already played with and would probably have been given to one of the children. Her clothes would probably have been changed.

Just imagine how the book would have been different if a chapter told about her living with the Passamaquoddy Indians. Maybe Phoebe would have found her again anyway, and Hitty's life would have continued with the whaling trip.

I wonder if she didn't do it so she could have the natives in a later chapter. Sometimes one must plan ahead.

Did everyone know the original typed manuscript is on display and available to the public at the Stockbridge Library?

Crows:

I've never seen a crow with yellow eyes. All the crows I've ever seen have black eyes, and if I saw one with yellow eyes it would probably scare me too! I must admit that every crow I've ever met has been an awful thief. When I was in college I was coming out of the cafeteria eating a sandwich and a crow swooped down and stole it right out my hand!

Yes! And their beaks are black too. But if done that way in an illustration, they look way too scary and mean. Plus, poor Dorothy Lathrop would have had a hard time drawing the three baby crows in the nest at night with black eyes and black bills!

They have them both around here. And yes, terrible little thieves! They will take anything they can. I bet that's why she selected them as responsible for stealing Hitty? Must be a big problem where she lived, too.

I've seen a blackbird with yellow eyes. They are smaller and I think the female is brown with brown eyes and the male is black with yellow eyes, could be the other way around, but they are prolific in San Francisco.
There are both blackbirds (also red winged blackbirds) with yellow eyes, but they are Hitty-sized. The starlings are bigger by a couple of inches and have feathers that reflect light like gasoline on a puddle, a dark rainbow. Then there are crows, 17-21", which have black eyes and then ravens, 22-27", also with black eyes.

I have heard from people on the Cranberry Isles in Maine that there are indeed LOTS of crows there.

What do you suppose Field is trying to say when she talks about the crow babies in the nest? Do you think it compares to a real person feeling somewhat overcrowded in his/her own life, and perhaps being 'forced out of the nest' only to discover one in a worse position?

Perhaps she is trying to update the saying "Little birds in their nest agree", which I seem to remember Gene Stratton Porter, in one of her books also putting down. A possible hit as Victorian sentimentality?

Rachel did make Hitty a very practical sort of personality.

Well, it sure is a metaphor for what Hitty experiences throughout the book. She seems to be constantly pushed from the nest to try her wings, one nest after another. It is a metaphor for life as well, but unfortunately, like Hitty, we tend to need to be pushed from "the nest," so to speak, many times throughout life. The nest just tends to be different things at different times for us humans. Does that mean that the fraying dress and the chipping paint is also a metaphor for the human condition? That we become more beautiful on the inside for all of the scratches we take on the outside?

Notice too that Hitty becomes more VALUABLE the older and more scratched she gets. And more sophisticated people appreciate her, like a fine wine. She becomes more complex as she ages.

Stuck in Tree:

I noted where the boy spots Hitty in the tree because the YELLOW of her dress showed. Hitty wears it when she is in crows nest and also in the scene where she is under the pew in church. Funny thing, we just read that her dress was ruined from her time in the tree and a new one needed to be made (even though she couldn't have hung there more then a week), and yet there she is wearing it when she is floating in the water after the boat burns and it looks just fine. And the dress is really much nicer then I would expect from a 7 year old child who didn't like to do needle work. I don’t think Rachel spent much time thinking about some of the details of what she was writing, but then she never expected it to be a book that adults would be studying and fussing over.

How frustrating for Phoebe and her family for Hitty to be stuck up in that tree out of reach. Her dad finally came up with the right tool for the job. I didn't know that they had doughnut forks in that time period.

Doughnuts:

An article on "doughnut history" on Google mentions Elizabeth Gregory. It turns out
she was real, she was born in Portland, Maine, and her family lived in Camden, Maine. As the history relates, Elizabeth made pre-doughnuts in 1847, but then that's pretty close to Hitty's time! Rachel and Dorothy must have done a lot of research on local Maine history! The article follows:

A Hole In One:

There is a very popular half-truth in doughnut lore centered on a very real sea captain and his mother. In 1847, Elizabeth Gregory was known in her New England circle to make a very fine olykoek. Her secret was to add a hint of nutmeg and fill the center with hazelnuts or walnuts. She even had a special name for her creation -- dough-nuts. (A more plausible explanation of the name is far less exciting, early recipes instructed amateur chefs to create "little nuts of dough" and place these balls into the hot oil.)

As legend has it, Mrs. Gregory sent her son Captain Hanson Crockett Gregory on one of his sea voyages with several dough-nuts and her recipe to make more. It is here that one legend branches off into several versions. In one variation, Captain Hanson found himself having difficulty steering his ship and holding his dough-nut at the same time. The quick-thinking swabby impaled his dough-nut on one of the spokes of his steering wheel. Satisfied with his new dough-nut holder, he ordered his cook to henceforth prepare all dough-nuts with holes in the center.

Another variation of the legend might be easier to swallow. Simply stated, the Captain didn't like the nuts and he poked them out. Acting on his Captain's request, the ship's cook created all subsequent doughnuts with the centers removed using the top of a round tin pepper box as a cutter.

Did Captain Gregory invent, as he stated to the Boston Post, "the first dough-nut hole ever seen by mortal eyes"? We may never know. However, we can be sure of the positive changes that happened to the doughnut during the corresponding period in time. Olykoeks with holes in the center cooked far more evenly and the novelty of the new-found "doughnut-shape" would soon propel the doughnut to a popularity deserving of myths and legends.

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