ALMANZO WILDER - An Inspiration
Tuesday, February 26th, 2008
So much has been going on this month that I have found too little time to make blog entries here. As those of you who check in regularly know we announced a revised release date for Almanzo Wilder: Life Before Laura on the 13th of February. The 13th was Almanzo’s 151st birthday, so the timing was excellent. This year also marks the 75th anniversary of the publication of Farmer Boy, so this is one of Almanzo’s big years. Our new release window of September 2008 will allow us to shoot more footage in Malone NY this summer focusing on Morgan horses and other life stock which populated the Wilder farm during Almanzo’s youth. With those animals again in residence, if only briefly, we will be able to capture for audiences the way it really was there during Almanzo’s youth. In addition to the animals, today we got word from Malone that the local historic society will be making their collections of historic photographs available to us for inclusion in the program. This is great news and will enhance the authenticity of visual storytelling enormously. Having grown up myself in a country setting I remember all too well the daily rituals of feeding horses, repairing fences, cutting trees, watering plants…it was stuff that my brother and I did with our father and grandfather and it was meaningful. On the surface it was meaningful because the work had to be done and it made sense to focus our energies on activities that actually produced positive results and got things done. We didn’t always do things as well as our older relations would’ve liked, but we were always encouraged to participate. This was the greatest gift of all and it served an enormously important purpose because through our efforts we became bonded us to our family and to the land on which we lived. My life experience through the decades tells me that this was one of the really great things our parents did for us as kids…they made us participate and that participation led to commitment. In Almanzo’s time, as in ours, shared participation in family related tasks is essential to the creation of family bonds and connectedness. In my opinion its not enough to simply be a member of a family. For a young person to become truly part of a family it is essential that they be called upon and counted on to give something of themselves for the shared benefit of all. In reading Farmer Boy I was deeply impressed and touched by how much was expected of Almanzo and his siblings from a very early age. It wasn’t a game for James and Angeline Wilder. They needed their children to be contributors. From sun-up to sun down and into the night there were things to do and it never stopped…except on Sundays. For all the things that fill our days now, very few of us living in this country today will ever experience the all encompassing effort required by Almanzo and his family to simply survive. Isn’t it amazing what they did? Like many readers I’m sure…I found myself filled with with awe and appreciation as I read about the endless chores, season by season, that were required to keep the farm successful and productive. The Wilder’s had their priorities squarely in order. Deviation from those priorities of feeding, plowing, or planting, or threshing for even a day would have a ripple effect that could be unrecoverable. Today, when we don’t have something we need, we just go to the store and get it. Back in the 1860s if Almanzo and his family didn’t have what they needed they could only look to themselves to know why or why not. It was a much simpler, less ambiguous time. That being said, I don’t think many of us would choose to return to those years…we like our cars and our appliances, our TVs, computers, and cellular telephones, but reading Farmer Boy and Laura’s other wonderful books inspires a romantic connection to the simple reality that people held their fates in their own hands and they survived or failed based on their own efforts. As we prepare our program for release this coming September we will be focused on putting the simple truths Almanzo’s youth on the screen knowing that his boyhood experiences and the lessons he learned from his parents have an eternal ring of truth that can positively impact the lives of people living in any age. Dean