We Izzies are happy that SHE's happy!

Deedy is all a-twitter today because she got a great review for her OTHER KIND OF WRITING. She said she has something BIG in store for us, so once again we have yielded to her blandishments and let her put something here on OUR blog. (See below.) Love, the Izzy Elves.

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A Buss From Lafayette is a historical fiction novel that takes the reader through a week in the life of 14-year old Clara. The year is 1825 and Clara lives in the small town of Hopkinton, New Hampshire with her father, stepmother, and brother. The story centers on the town’s excitement surrounding the upcoming visit from General Lafayette, a hero and famous French aristocrat from the Revolutionary War.
The book is written from quick-witted Clara’s perspective, and each new day’s adventures are prefaced by an entry from her diary, which provides a clever preview of the events to come. Clara feels life is unfair because of her family life, her lack of traditional schooling, and her red hair, which she is plotting to try to change to “a beautiful shade of black.” Weaved through her story are the events leading up to General Lafayette’s visit, who is known for delivering to his many admirers a “buss”, which, at the time, was the word used for a playful kiss on the cheek.
The vivid descriptions of clothing, family relationships, period-specific customs, and daily routines create a charming picture of life in 1825, and these elements inform the senses while reminding readers that the scene is from a different era.

“How I loved the smells: cloves and nutmeg from the Spice Islands, cinnamon from Ceylon, ginger and pepper from South America, and coffee from the West Indies. It seemed to me that the general store smelt strongly of worldly adventure.”

As a historical piece, the book dives into rich detail on Revolutionary War tales. The characters retell stories of General Lafayette, General Washington, and others, providing readers with a thorough backdrop of history to accompany the book’s main story line about Clara. Ms. Jensen also weaves throughout the story many words and objects that are common to the era, but are likely unfamiliar to the modern reader. A glossary included in the book provides a useful way for the reader to look up historical words, thus not having to rely upon context alone to interpret.
Recommended for teen readers that have an interest in history, this book is an enjoyable introduction to the post-Revolutionary War period in America, and provides a lovely story about family, determination, and how perspective can change everything." -The Children's Book Review

Come hear Deedy speak about Lafayette's Farewell Tour! (It's an Elf-Free Event, however.)

Register to attend here! (It's free.)


This will be at the New England Genealogical Society in Boston!

Salute to Amazon!

Another post from Deedy (Dorothea Jensen to you). At least she's mostly talking about us. For a change.
Love,
The Izzy Elves

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Amazon is doing a special month-long salute featuring independent authors, and I would like to salute Amazon in return, for inspiring me to write again after a long "fallow" period.

Until I discovered CreateSpace, Kindle Direct Publishing, and ACX, my last published work had been The Riddle of Penncroft Farm, released by Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich in 1989. Although it won a number of awards and great reviews (and has stayed in print ever since), I felt paralyzed at the thought of finding a publisher for anything else I wrote.

So I stopped writing. For more than twenty years.

Then my dad decided to write his memoirs, and I found out that he had paid some sleazy "agent" something like $20,000 to "shop" his book. Needless to say, no publisher was found. It was then that I found out that there were ways to self-publish that did not cost anything. That led me to CreateSpace and KDP. Once I learned that I could get my work into print without finding a traditional publisher willing to do it, I was off and running!

Tizzy Honors and Reviews

Blizzy Honors and Reviews

Since then, I have written four illustrated modern Christmas stories in verse (for kids 4 and up) about some very techy 21st century elves who work at the North Pole. Called the Santa's Izzy Elves series, all four  books have received honors of one sort or another.  I released these through CreateSpace (as paperbacks), Kindle Direct Publishing (as e-books) and ACX (as audio books).  I am also about to start releasing them in yet another guise - illustrated audio books - through the new Video Direct program on Amazon.

Dizzy Honors and Reviews

Frizzy Honors and Reviews

I plan to write four more of these, one for each of the remaining Izzy Elves, Bizzy,  Quizzy, Whizzy, and Fizzy.

In my next blog post, I'll tell you the story of how the cheeky little Izzy Elves wrote to Jeff Bezos, the head of Amazon, and got an immediate response!


Cheers!

Dorothea

And Now for Something COMPLETELY Different: A New Way to Record History!

Another message from Deedy. But at least it's not about her OTHER KIND OF WRITING for a change. Love, the Izzy Elves

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As some of you might know, I usually write posts about historical events, historical fiction, and the like about the 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. Today I am writing about an exciting new form of recording history in the 21st century to be done by Smock Media Holdings, a film production company based in Venice Beach, CA. This is a company created and run by my sons, Hawk and Nate Jensen.

Hawk is an experienced, award-winning documentary film-maker. He has come up with a groundbreaking idea for recording historical occurrences using VR360 (for an explanation, read the text below).

 To put this into practice, Hawk and his Managing Producer bro, Nate, need some help.

Please click on the following link to watch a video explaining what Hawk and Nate want to accomplish, and to connect to the crowdfunding campaign to make this happen. 
Support this 21st Century History Project!

Thanks!

Dorothea Jensen (Proud Mother)

P.S. Even  a dollar helps!


 

The award-winning documentary filmmakers at Smock Media in Venice Beach, CA are raising $57,500 for a virtual reality project called PRIME OBSERVER®.  Our goal is to build Camerasuits® for our team of zany photojournalist / documentarian / adventurers to capture full 360 degree footage of spectacular cultural and historical moments that place you INSIDE
these events as we experience them.
 
Ever wanted to go back to relive Burning Man or Coachella? Wanted to know what it's really like to be in the middle of a floor fight at a political convention? Wanted to stand between rival protest marches and form your own opinion of what happened? Wanted to surround yourself by all the glitz, glamour and glitterati at Fashion Week but couldn't get on the red carpet?  Prime Observers® Hawk, Ramblin' Tom, Kalia, Ben, Dakota, Nathaniel, Andylee and Abba Austin will put you there.     
 
Virtual reality is a whole new medium to record history.  With over 150 years of combined documentary production experience we know where to place the camera to capture "the moment" but now we ourselves will become that camera inside that moment.  Filmmaking will never be the same.  Come step into the scene with us!

Going to School, 1820s-30s Style

When we were visiting Monadnock History and Culture Center in Peterborough, NH, last weekend, we checked out the one-room schoolhouse, made of brick. Posed in front are re-enactors Lorraine Walker and Brigham Boice, in the roles of Mrs. Prescott and her son, Augustus Prescott.

Just for contrast, here's a one-room school house in Davisville, very close to Hopkinton, NH, where A Buss from Lafayette  is set. Note the separate entrances for boys and girls. By the way, my 8th grade teacher (the one who met Geronimo as a little girl) started her teaching career at one room school houses very much like this one.

Meanwhile, back at Peterborough, at the Monadnock Center for Culture and History, here are exterior bricks on the outside of the school.  Notice the grafitti, possibly carved by misbehaving students who were sent outside for punishment!

 Here is "Mrs. Prescott" showing us the interior of the school. She told us that the shorter benches in the front were for the youngest kids. Sher added that sometimes students who occupied the back row of benches went directly from there to being teachers, as no formal training was required.

 Here is "Augustus Prescott" modeling a dunce cap for us. This was one of the punishments common in 19th century schools. (At least the dunce cap didn't hurt as much physically as the reticule, featured in A Buss from Lafayette, that was used by teachers to hit unruly children on the hand.)

Here is "Augustus Prescott" showing us a slate board, used by pupils to write classroom exercises.

Here's what Clara says about slate tablets like this one:

"I liked everything about school, right down to the
sound of the pencils scritching on our slate tablets."
- A Buss from Lafayette © 2016 by Dorothea Jensen

 The re-enactors at the Monadnock Center for History and Culture said that in the winter, children would bring a potato from home to bake in the stove that heated the classroom. Each potato would be marked with the child's name.

Deedy's Been Visiting 1830

Here's another post from Deedy, who is apparently gallivanting about reveling in historical stuff. We all wish she'd get back to us Izzy Elves!

* * *

Today we spent a couple of hours visiting 1830 via the Monadnock History and Culture Center in Peterborough, New Hampshire. There we met re-enactors Lorraine Walker, John Patterson, and Brigham Boice, who portrayed Nancy, Samuel and Augustus Prescott. This was the family who, in the 1820s-30s, actually lived in the house that visited.

 The demonstration we watched was of hearth cooking, foraging and preserving food. Here is the garden planted and cared for by "Mr. Prescott". Much of the food prepared inside the house (on the right) comes from this garden.

You can see that "Mrs. Prescott" is wearing a mobcap, just like Clara's stepmother does in A Buss from Lafayette. She is also wearing a kind of pinafore over her dress to keep it clean while working in the kitchen.

Just as at Clara's house in my story, sugar comes in large, cone-shaped, rock hard loaves. One of such loaves can be seen (wrapped in blue paper) on the shelf over the fireplace. You might remember my writing somewhere that the color of the paper wrapping was used because it made the sugar itself look whiter!

                                                                                     

Here is the fireplace, with the beehive oven on the left side, being readied for baking loaves of bread.

"Mr. and Mrs. Prescott" explained that no matter how careful the cook was in baking bread, there were always some ashes on the bottom. Apparently richer people could afford to buy the non-ashy top part of the bread, leaving the lower, ashy bottom bits for poorer people.  This is the origin of the term "upper crust."



Of course, in A Buss from Lafayette, the Hargraves family has an "ultra modern" Rumford Range, such as the one shown below, and did very little cooking in the fireplace.




The Rumford Range is on the right under the window. It is a brick structure with holes that have fitted pots, underneath which are levels for burning charcoal, and then cleaning out the ashes from the bottom level. The advantage was that cooks could stand up, not bend over, and smoke did not get in their eyes.

To Be Continued. . .

Deedy's Writing Lyrics Again!

When oh when will she start paying attention to us Izzy Elves???  Here's what she just wrote about Lafayette again. Sigh.

* * *

Why did a rich young man with the title Marquis

Shiver in the cold in a place called Valley Forge?

He’d fallen in love with the thought of liberty

And had come to give a hand to a man named George.