Monday Morning Love: Edition 1

trying something new, and positive

---

---

A New Adventure Springing From My Recent Pivot

Recently I announced my retirement from writing about politics and culture war issues. Seeing the right justify, and morally defend, the use of cancel culture in an indiscriminate manner—going after people for whom there is no evidence that they’ve ever done anything but say words we don’t like, as opposed to people who’ve done canceling themselves or who, at the very least, have power and influence—made me realize that things have gotten too dangerous. Any tribe that can justify taking revenge against parties who, at best, are allies of those who actually deserve vengeance, is a tribe that will eventually come for anyone who’s morally impure by the orthodoxy.

J. Daniel Sawyer

brilliantly elucidates this in his magnificent essay about the recent brouhaha over the Home Depot Lady.

As a centrist whose views are complex and sometimes contradictory, and particularly as a human who is easy to dislike and difficult to love—frequently needing grace from those closest to me, much less from self-appointed punishers—I no longer belong anywhere near the fight. (Yes, this is cowardly, and yes, I own my cowardice in the retirement post.)

That post quickly became my most-liked post ever and resulted in over 100 emails, of which about sixty were variations on “Thank you for writing that; I feel the same.” And a lot of you had the same question I do — what are you going to fill your time with now? Several asked me: what will I write about now?

As someone who didn’t just write about politics, but also read about it quite a lot in the service of staying ready to write about it, this left me, at first, with quite a conundrum. But I quickly realized two things:

1. Politics is an easy, almost embarrassingly easy, topic to write about. I really and truly did not realize this until I tried to write about something else.

2. Writing about the culture war is emotionally and psychologically exhausting. Paying constant attention to the details of the culture war may be a type of outrage addiction—getting so used to the sense of justified anger that a steady intake of it is required to keep nervous system equilibrium.

Announcing: Monday Morning Love

I have said many times that I only review books I really enjoy (with one exception) because I relish the challenge of saying something interesting and engaging about a topic towards which I feel positively.

In the spirit of embracing that challenge, I’m going to write about something I love every Monday morning. I can’t promise to put something new out every Monday, but I believe I will get something out on almost every Monday.

I’m not going to put these behind the paywall, but if the prospect of a weekly dose of positivity on Monday mornings motivates anyone to become a paid subscriber, my student loan balance would appreciate dwindling a bit in your honor.

---

Edition 1: I love The Great Brain series

and I love the adult books about his family, too

As a little girl, I escaped from difficult circumstances into books. I read constantly, always a combination of fiction and non-fiction. My non-fiction interests were of the “special interest” variety, cycling through obsessions and reading dozens of books on each obsession before moving on to the next. Some of my obsessions included the Titanic, tornadoes, chess, child labor in the early 1900s, the Holocaust, funeral rites, unsolved math problems, and the nature/nurture debate.

My fictional interests were varied, and nearly always below my actual reading level. Comfort reading, I guess. The books I loved the most, and found the most comforting, were the Great Brain series, by John D. Fitzgerald.

I conservatively estimate that I read this series two hundred times as a kid. When I found that Audible had seven of the eight books in the series available on abridged audio, I burned a couple of credits and discovered that much of the books are still implanted in my memory.

Seven of the eight were published during Fitzgerald’s life, with the eighth published from notes found after his death. The books are charmingly illustrated, and they’re very easy to read. Essentially short story collections, with each chapter giving a complete incident in the life of J.D. and his family.

What They’re About

They tell the story of American life in 1890s Utah. He and his family live in Adenville, a little town with about 2,000 Mormons, about 400 Protestants, and about 100 Catholics. J.D. and his family were Catholic in the children’s books. (The adult books told a more complicated story.) The outsider status of his family, being a religious minority, made the books more interesting and complex, adding a layer of trust and distrust to all the conflicts.

The immediate family had six, and later seven, members. Papa was the town’s only college graduate, who published the Adenville Advocate, a weekly newspaper. Mamma was a traditional housewife who kept the home and raised the children. Aunt Bertha was a friend of the family, not a relation, who lived with them and helped out because she was otherwise alone in the world. J.D. was the youngest child. His elder brothers were Sweyn, a normal big brother, who could be pompous at times but was overall a basically good kid; and Tom, the Great Brain of the title. Tom was unusually bright and used his intelligence in the service of conniving, swindling other boys out of their toys, athletic equipment, and other possessions they had that Tom wanted. As the series goes on, eventually the family adopts an orphaned boy, Frankie, and J.D. is no longer the youngest.

As an adult, I discovered that the author wrote books about his family for adults. They’re hard to find, but I have read them all.

Papa Married A Mormon reveals the deeper complexity in his family. His mother was not Catholic, but Mormon, and their mixed marriage created interesting problems in their small town. Mamma’s Boarding House tells the story of how his mother and Aunt Bertha kept themselves busy and productive after the death of his father. Uncle Will and the Fitzgerald Curse is a family history of great color, bringing life to the stories of the wild West in a way nothing has that I had ever read before, or since.

I enjoyed the adult books tremendously, but they didn’t absorb me as the children’s series did. If your local library has them, they’re worth the time, especially if you are interested in American history.

Why I Love Them

The books are a lovely portrait of an American family at a crucial time in American history. The small-town setting offers both pathos and a deeply American ethos. The families in town revel in raising self-reliant, hard-working, independent-minded young men and women who are prepared for the duties of active citizenship.

The relationships between the Fitzgerald boys and their peers is fascinating. These kids are boys, and unapologetically so. They do hard, physical work for chores. They settle differences with fistfights. They go on adventures in the outdoors, doing things like building a raft to take on the river. Their parents trust them to have common sense, to do things like know the signs of a coming flood on the river (which the water turns muddy) and heed the signs by getting out and swimming later.

As the title suggests, Tom is unusually bright. His intelligence and cunning are respected by the other boys, putting Tom at the top of one particular type of dominance hierarchy. But when Tom abuses his implicit authority, they do what American boys should do — they put him on trial in a barn, give him a chance to defend himself, and hold him accountable for changing his behavior.

I hope that the recent Audible release of audiobooks of the series means that they are enjoying a renaissance, as I believe there is a serious dearth of masculine role models in available children’s literature. Boys need to see this, yes. They need permission to be boys. But girls need to see it, too — that boys sometimes settle their differences with a fistfight, and that this is one way that boys and girls are different, with its own consequences and dangers. I benefited tremendously from reading these books as a little girl, and I hope they’re finding new life among boys and girls today.

In a more specific and personal sense, I really love the family setting of the books.

Papa and Mamma are highly unusual parents for their era. Almost every book mentions that other kids in town were punished with a whipping, while Papa and Mamma used “the silent treatment.” For a day, a week, or occasionally longer, they would simply refuse to speak to whichever son was being punished.

By 2024 understanding, most parents would regard this as itself a form of, at best, destructive parenting; if not outright abuse. By the standards of the 1890s, this was extremely enlightened. They regarded their sons as full humans who could be reasoned with, and when they wanted to make an impression they withdrew their attention and affection for a time rather than taking them to the woodshed to train them the way they did their farm animals—with a whip.

J.D. mentions in the books, more than once, that he was jealous of other boys because a whipping lasts a few minutes and then it’s over. When he got in trouble with some friends, their punishments were painful but lasted minutes, whereas he suffered without his parents’ attention for a week or longer. I suppose this indicates that his parents had found something effective, even if it made them the “progressives” of their town in a weird way.

Personal responsibility is the primary message communicated, over and over, from the parents to the sons and thus to the readers of the books. Even as an adult, it doesn’t come across as preachy. That’s a testament to both Fitzgerald’s writing and to the efficacy of the parenting he was writing about.

In one memorable story, Tom publishes a newspaper in competition with his father’s. Being eleven years old, he fails to comprehend the difference between printing gossip and reporting local news. He hurts a lot of people in their community, some of them badly. Papa requires him to take responsibility for what he did, requiring him to go to each person and individually apologize before serving his sentence of “the silent treatment.”

In another story, Tom is running a business when his carelessness causes another boy, Pete, to become injured. Papa skips the silent treatment, instead requiring Tom to turn over all his profits to help pay Pete’s medical bills. Additionally, Tom must report to Pete’s mother every morning and do the chores that Pete used to do, until Pete was ready to do them again. “Running any kind of business is more than just making money,” Papa says to Tom, and the reader learns the lesson, too.

Marriage Modeling

Papa is madly in love with Mamma, and the parents are much more affectionate than in other historical children’s literature that I’ve read. I recall a few complimentary remarks, but no real affection otherwise, between Pa and Ma Ingalls in the Little House books. Papa and Mamma greet each other with kisses and hugs, and J.D. grows up seeing marriage as a worthy goal, a status a man must aspire to and become worthy of attaining.

The parents love their boys deeply and are committed to what’s best for them, even at personal sacrifice. They send the boys to boarding school when they complete the level of education available locally, with tears and care packages and the promise that education is what will give them the freedom to have whatever life they want for themselves as adults.

Brothers

Tom is an affectionate big brother to J.D. in one sense. He’s always willing to help J.D. stand up to a bully, usually by teaching him to fight better. He helps J.D. with his homework and is a natural leader. After winning a bet or otherwise defeating J.D., which he always does, he is a magnanimous victor. In another sense, Tom is the bully. He swindles J.D. out of every good Christmas or birthday present he ever gets, manipulates him shamelessly, and otherwise straddles the line of behavior that we would call narcissistic in an adult—but children are nearly all narcissistic, so we hope they grow out of it and we see eventual signs that Tom starts to do so.

The contrast between how badly Tom treated his brother on the one hand, while also quite obviously loving him very much, gave me a model for male behavior that was helpful as I got older. When I listened to boys call each other vicious names but still remain friends, I understood that boys were different. They related differently. I had a picture in my head of this being normal, and it was consequently not at all alarming.

Books To Get Boys Into Reading

I have often suggested these books to help boys get into reading, and they tend to be successful at that goal. Here is the Amazon page for the series if you have a boy in your house who you would like to encourage to read more, or a girl who could do with some interesting reading about American history, the world of boys, or both.

Coming Next Time

Unless I change my mind, edition 2 of Monday Morning Love will cover LEGO. Or possibly number theory. Or cooking for friends. Or drawing. Or painting.

It’s really amazing how easy it is to find things I love to think about, once politics is removed as a primary focus!