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Chp 47: I was afraid to take this job. Before now I was able to call upon reserves of courage. But this was a fear that I could not grapple with. Not merely a fear of failure a fear of leaving behind a terrible legacy in my wake. Every mistake I make will be used to attack me for getting above my place as a woman. They will blacken my name and sully all of my good work. Why should I open myself up to that?

I know how they will treat the first woman Cabinet member. I won’t be taken as an individual. I’ll be a lightning rod simply because I am a woman. If ever I do anything the least bit out of step, if I make some error about my political responsibilities, there will be a terrible public hysteria about me.

I was afraid to take this job.

F: all my daughter wants in the world is a normal mother.
M: then she should’ve been born to someone else! Do you really want Susanna growing up to believe it is normal for women to play no part in the highest levels of their own government? Would a man, any man, turn down this opportunity?

If I said no, the door might close on other women. Is that reason enough to agree? I cannot go just to be a symbol for women. FDR will have a cabinet full of national figures. Powerful and accomplished men will be vying for his attention and they will edge me out.

Mary: Oh, men have been trying to edge you out your entire life and it hasn’t worked yet.

Chp 47: Francis: I’d make a mess of it in the federal government. I know who to trust in New York. I haven’t any idea how to manage in Washington.
Mary: Francis, if you don’t take this appointment, it might be another hundred years before another woman is asked. You’ve been the first to do so many things. So the other women could follow in your footsteps.

Chapter 1: James Hinckley

Martha Ballard (1735–1812) was a pioneering Maine midwife and diarist, Clara Barton (1821–1912) was her grandniece and founder of the American Red Cross.

Ballard recorded over 800 births and Barton provided medical aid during the Civil War. Ballard kept a detailed 30-year diary (The Frozen River), Another descendant Mary Hobart, became one of the first female physicians in the US.

Epilogue: no man should be judged only for his best act or his worst, by only his greatness or his flaws. And no woman either.

Chp 98: Fort Benton mention

Chp 93: Miles City mention

Chp 68: “…Well, I’d rather rob banks,” Little Eddie said. “Then you’ve got the money right in your hands. And you don’t have to sell no cows.”
“Well, you are lazy, Ed,” Dan said, looking at his brothers as if he were mad enough to shoot them. In fact, the Suggs brothers seemed to live on the edge of fratricidal warfare.”

“fratricidal warfare” 😂

Chp 37: Louisa the farmer to Deputy Roscoe: I won’t have no pigs around. Too smart. I won’t bother with animals that I have to outwit. I’d rather just farm.

Chp 28: “‘If I ain’t back in a month, you girls feel free to start without me!’ Augustus said. Then he drove off, amused that Dish Boggett’s looks so out of sorts just for being in love with a woman who didn’t want him. It was a peril too common to take seriously.

Chp 8: “Non sibi sed aliis”

It translates to:

“Not for oneself, but for others.”

Cp 6: Jake Spoon: I was up to Montana two years ago. You ought to see it! A prettier country there never was. [I went up] Way up past the Yellowstone. I was near to the Milk River. You can smell Canada from there.

Chp 1: “… took a swig just to rinse the dry from his mouth”
That’s a fun sentence to imagine

Cho 62: …timidity passes for folly, and gentleness for dullness, and silence, which is but timid denial of the unwelcome assertion of ruling folks, and tacit Protestantism above all finds no mercy at the hands of the female inquisition.

Chp 62:I like to dwell upon this period of her life that she was cheerful and happy, you see she has not much of that existence and has not fallen in the way of means to educate her tastes or intelligence. She has been domineered over hitherto by vulgar intellects. It is a lot of many a woman, and as every one of the dear sex is a rival of the rest of her kind timidity passes for folly in their charitable judgments.

Chp 59: Nobody had ever heard of these grieves which had been part of our poor little woman’s [Amelia Sedley] life, she kept them secret from her father, who’s improvidence was the cause of much of her misery. She had to bare all the blame of his misdoings. And indeed was so utterly gentle and humble as to be made by nature for a victim.

Chapter 56: What do men know about women’s martyrdoms? We should go mad if we had to endure the 1/100th part of those daily pains that are meekly born by so many women. Constant gentleness and kindness met by cruelty. Love, labor, patience, watchfulness, without so much as even the acknowledgment of a good word. All this how many of them have to bear in quiet and appear with cheerful faces as if they felt nothing.

Chapter 33: wounds tingle most when they are about to heal

Chapter 13: a horse named Greased Lightning

Excellent book! This is a book I will want to read again. There are so many examples included about how language can be used on a wide spectrum of healthy-helpful, and all the way to really bad, and, most interestingly, the middle (I would wager we all have our favorite cults we have joined 🙃). Shining the light on the language patterns that all cults use is very interesting.

This scene is great for teaching POV:

Before the doctor had finished, Shorty came in with coffee and biscuits on a bent silver tray. He stayed a little longer that was altogether necessary, constantly glancing at Marigold in a way the doctor saw as indicating concern and Marigold herself as pretended concern hiding utter indifference, but in fact amounted to pretended concern hiding hostile curiosity. (p.79)

3// Shorty: The servant and former lover of Bernard, who spends his time looking for hidden bottles of alcohol.
4// George: A distinguished former history professor who is largely bedridden and quiet, though intellectually sharp.
5// Marigold: A frail, forgetful woman who struggles with her failing memory and is often the target of the others' malice

1// Adela: A miserly woman who dominates the household and is obsessed with saving money.
2// Bernard: Adela’s brother, a former military man who plays malicious, cruel pranks on his housemates.

Ending Up (1974) by Kingsley Amis features five elderly residents in a shared countryside home, who are navigating old age with rancorous humor and petty malice.

Chp 27: Such is the strength of men. We who live forever can know no courage nor do we love enough to give our lives. But your father could.

Chp 27: K: I gave everything for you.
V: not everything. Since clearly, your pride is intact as well as your illusions. Where is my stepmother?
K: No. I gave everything. I thought the voice was God, but it was not.

Chp 25: V: did you change the straw? Was that magic?!
Morozko: you are too attached to things as they are. You must allow things to be what best suits your purpose, and then they will. You can’t change it to a brush, because that would be to believe it is now straw. Just allow it now to be a brush.
Nothing changes. Things are or they are not. Magic is forgetting that anything ever was other than as you willed it.