Poet Czeslaw Milosz (1911-2004) lived through some of the most tumultuous events of the 20th century. His Polish parents having fled Poland during a political upheaval, he was born in Lithuania when it was ruled by tsarist Russia. Then came the Great War, the Russian Revolution, and the Russian Civil War. His family returned to Poland, and life seemed to settle down.
He was 21 when he published his first poetry collection, Poem of the Frozen Time, in 1932. The next year, Hitler became dictator of Germany. When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Milosz became part of the underground resistance. After the war, he joined the new communist government’s diplomatic corps and was stationed in Paris and then Washington, D.C. In 1951, he defected to the West.
The spring issue of Cultivating Oaks Press is online, and I have a short story, entitled “The Stamp of Generosity,” included with all the other articles that explore the topic of generosity. My story is based on an event from my own experience, when I was about 12 or 13 years old. A stamp store really did exist in that location, but it was known under another name.
Grace Bennett travels to London with her best friend Viv. The two young women are determined to leave their small town behind and find work in the big city. They already have a place to live – with the best friend of Grace’s deceased mother. And it’s their landlady who helps Grace find a job – with an East End bookseller who doesn’t seem to want the help.
And Grace knows nothing about books; she’s not even a regular reader. But she does know marketing, and she will soon set about transforming the bookstore, even if it’s not one of the better know bookshops like those on Paternoster Row near St. Paul’s Cathedral.
But it’s August 1939. War is declared within less of a month of the women’s arrival. They watch the children transported to safety in the countryside, the sandbags being positioned, the rules and regulations for blackout curtains and lights. At first, little changes; the first nine months are often referred to as the “phony war.” After France surrenders in June of 1940, they all know the Germans will be coming for London and Britain.
Madeline Martin
Grace meets a rather charming customer who suggests she read The Count of Monte Cristo. She puts it off until she hears he’s being assigned for duty. She soon finds that books aren’t just about marketing but also about visiting and becoming part of entirely new worlds. And she can’t wait to share what she knows with the customer, assuming he survives the war. So she finds another way to share what she’s reading – during the great London Blitz.
The Last Bookshop in London by Madeline Martin is Grace’s story. Based on what happened in London during the famous Blitz, it’s a story of resilience, bookstores, books, and the courage to keep going on in spite of what look like insurmountable conditions.
Martin has published more than 40 books in the historical novel and historical romance genres. Her series includes Borderland Ladies (six books), Borderland Rebels (five books), Highland Passions (four books), Wedding a Wallflower (several series), Matchmaker of Mayfair (six books), The London School for Ladies (three books), Heart of the Highlands (three books), and The Mercenary Maidens (three books), as well as several standalone works. She lives in Florida with her family.
For a very long time, schools and education in the Deep South were always ranked near or at the bottom of test score rankings and literacy rates. Times have changed. Public schools in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama are now ranking higher than their counterparts in states like Oregon, Maryland, and Illinois. Tim Daly at The Free Press looks into why schools in politically red states are now outperforming those in politically blue states.
Most fans of Charles Dickens know that the child worker scene in David Copperfield was based on the author’s own experience, although it was never known during his lifetime. But his troubled childhood had more effects than that one scene, writes Peter Conrad at Literary Hub, in an excerpt from his recent book Dickens the Enchanter: Inside the Explosive Imagination of the Great Storyteller.
At Real Clear History, Robert Curry describes how the three pillars of the American idea were forged and fused during the American Revolution. The three are unalienable rights, self-evident truths, and free market economics. Collectively, they’ve come to be known as “common sense realism.”
We’ve visited and thoroughly enjoyed what Anglotopia Magazine calls “a bit of Britain in the American Heartland.” The “bit” is St. Mary Aldermanbury Church, designed by Sir Christopher Wren and bombed during the German blitz of London in World War II. The church’s ruins were transported and rebuilt at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. The basement houses America’s National Churchill Museum, as is fitting for the college’s historical status as the site where Churchill gave the “Iron Curtain” speech.
When you’re born and raised in New Orleans, you soon learn that one holiday frames and defines the city. The Mardi Gras season stretches for some three weeks before the final day of Shrove Tuesday. It’s filled with parades of floats with their masked revelers tossing beads and other trinkets to the crowds, marching bands, costumed balls, and (at night) the flambeaux carriers walking with the parades.
My mother, also a native New Orleanian, always referred to Mardi Gras as “Carnival,” like its Brazilian counterpart.
Mardi Gras culminated on the Tuesday before Lent, with what seemed a series of endless parades beginning with the Krewe of Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club. It was followed by the parade of the Krewe of Rex, King of Carnival, and the “truck” parades of Crescent City and Elks. ending with the nighttime parade of the Krewe of Comus (now discontinued). The balls of Rex and Comus were held at Municipal Auditorium, and at midnight, the two courts would meet and officially end the Mardi Gras season.
After carnival came Lent. Tuesday was excess in all of its varied forms; Wednesday was restraint and ashes on the forehead. Experiencing Mardi Gras in New Orleans was like experiencing a cultural theology, moving from riotous sin to humble repentance.
