Cinnamon chicken & babies as battering rams: Or the LHOTP thread

[Alex Forrest]

I was always so scared when I was little that I'd get Scarlet Fever and end up blind. Such bull. Like the article, or the one I read today said, it was likely 'brain fever' (or bran flavor, or brake fluid...) that caused her blindness, aka meningitis with extremely high fever.

But poor Mary never got a break did she? Poor Mary...

[Moto Guzzi]

The Museum of the American Printing House for the Blind has details about Mary's life at the Iowa College for the Blind and afterward. After college, she lived with her parents. Grace married, Laura and Almanzo moved first to Florida and then to Missouri, and Pa died. Carrie's income was the sole support of the family until she married and moved away. Ma and Mary rented out rooms, Ma took in laundry, and Mary wove fly nets for horses.

Here's an excerpt from a poem Mary wrote about the prairie:

The prairie rose is blushing
The sun's kiss on her cheek:
The wind with glee is rushing
In merry hide-and-seek.
The tiger lily's stalking
The gaudy goldenrod,
The meadowlark is talking
Of shadows on the sod . . .

[Wyliefan]

Hmm, I wonder what made Helen Keller go blind and deaf, then. I'd always heard that was scarlet fever too!

[judiz]

Hmm, I wonder what made Helen Keller go blind and deaf, then. I'd always heard that was scarlet fever too!

I heard meningitis

[Alex Forrest]

Hmm, I wonder what made Helen Keller go blind and deaf, then. I'd always heard that was scarlet fever too!

Seriously? After all this? Yes, let's just get out that poor Mary and her friends in blindness all got blind because they jacked off. Masturbated for the weak eyed. She masturbated until she went blind, and Michael Landon wanted to film it but was told it wouldn't work on NBC. So he threw in bran flavor or brake fluid to make her blind. Sheesh.

[Jenny]

What on earth is your problem? It was a perfectly legitimate question, and your response is nothing but another offensive rant filled with nonsense. Post reported.

[Alex Forrest]

What on earth is your problem? It was a perfectly legitimate question, and your response is nothing but another offensive rant filled with nonsense. Post reported.

Oh "Jenny".... You think a thread on LHOP with the title including babies as battering rams was going to be smooth as silk??? Lighten up, please. Or maybe Jeb Carter should have just let you go into the river like Virginia Woolf. You crack me up "Jenny". You do know there are other options than reading things that offend or displease you, right? Report me, fine, it's all in fun, something you seem to have trouble with.

[AnnieBgood]

Anyways, back on subject.

[leesaleesa]

I once made vanity cakes, which Ma served at a party in the new house on Plum Creek. Found the recipe in a newspaper. The girls at the party couldn't get enough of them, but mine tasted pretty crappy.

[jenniferlyon]

I once made vanity cakes, which Ma served at a party in the new house on Plum Creek. Found the recipe in a newspaper. The girls at the party couldn't get enough of them, but mine tasted pretty crappy.

The people on this blog made some and theirs didn't turn out quite right, either. But they said the cakes tasted OK. recipe and instructions included: http://homesteadwannabes.blogspot.co...es-recipe.html

[Skittl1321]

I'm guessing their idea of a treat and a current one are very different (an orange being expensive and exotic). I bet vanity cakes were quite plain tasting.

[judiz]

Watching the snow fall here in Bergen County reminded me of the episode where all the children got lost in a blizzard on the way home from school. Any guesses how far away the Ingalls home was from the town?

[MacMadame]

Hmm, I wonder what made Helen Keller go blind and deaf, then. I'd always heard that was scarlet fever too!

This is what Wiki says:

Helen Keller was not born blind and deaf; it was not until she was 19 months old that she contracted an illness described by doctors as "an acute congestion of the stomach and the brain", which might have been scarlet fever or meningitis. The illness did not last for a particularly long time, but it left the child deaf and blind.

Btw, another website quotes the part up until "an acute congestion of the stomach and brain" and then says "That is gibberish, which suggests that he had no clue what was wrong with her or how to treat her."

It's hard to argue with that!

Deafness in children that age was often caused by meningitis, mumps, cytomegalovirus, or chicken pox. Meningitis causes deafness if the inflammation around the brain causes the inner ear to also become inflamed. There are 50 billion causes of blindness in children but the only one associated with fever that I know of is meningitis and since that's also on the list for deafness, I'm going to vote for that as the cause of Keller's blindness.

[jenniferlyon]

Watching the snow fall here in Bergen County reminded me of the episode where all the children got lost in a blizzard on the way home from school. Any guesses how far away the Ingalls home was from the town?

On the TV show, I think the Ingalls family lived about a mile or two from town. It didn't seem to take them long to get there and back even if they were walking. In that episode where Carrie has an imaginary friend who looks exactly like her, she walked to town all by herself at the age of seven or eight.

In terms of the books, there is a chapter in "The Long Winter" where a blizzard starts up while Laura and Carrie are in school. The family was living in town at the time and the school was only a few blocks away. But visibility was so poor that everyone feared the schoolchildren would walk around in circles or make a wrong turn and end up lost on the prairie. They all made it home OK.

[Jenny]

For those interested in cooking, here's a roundup of youtube segments of favourite Little House meal scenes.

[mag]

The blizzard on the way home from school was when they were living De Smet South Dakota. The TV show takes place in Plum Creek - Walnut Grove - Minnisota. If anyone has kids who enjoy the books, it is well worth a trip to De Smet. The homestead is open for viewing and it is a fabulous place.

Oh, in real life, Mary went blind while living in a City (can't remember the name) where the family moved for a while during the Plum Creek years. It is the only travel not documented by the books. Apparently it wasn't scarlet fever, but some sort of stroke.

[Karina1974]

^^^Burr Oak, Iowa. Speaking of which, you have to give the TV show credit - the show included the fact that for a time Pa did manage a hotel (the Masters Hotel) , a little fact that Laura left out of the books.

[Skittl1321]

I think she left out Burr Oak, because in her other writings she says it was the worst part of her life. In the end, her books were fiction, and they did tell about hard times- but with a happy slant. Burr Oak didn't have much happy at all (dead brother, blind sister, etc)

mag- I don't think it was a stroke. The register in the Blind school of Iowa says "brain fever". Latest research is that it was meningoencephalitis.

[judiz]

Was Charles Ingalls really a hotel manager or was that just written into the show to introduce Albert and give the show some fresh storylines away from Walnut Grove?

[escaflowne9282]

Hmmm ,so Bandana's been deep-sixed yet again.