Monday, August 15, 2016

Betty MacDonald, Kimi's birthday and The plague and I


plague_dutch_1949_hardcover - cleaned_FRONT

The Egg and I Film Illustration


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Betty MacDonald's sister Alison Bard Burnett

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Betty MacDonald's mother Sydney with grandchild Alison Beck
Betty MacDonald in the living room at Vashon on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post.
Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle author Betty MacDonald on Vashon Island



Betty MacDonald fan club fans,

many greetings from International Betty MacDonald Olympics 2016 event in Rio.

We are going to organize a Betty MacDonald fan club Olympics contest. 


Betty MacDonald's The Plague and I is one of my favourites.

( see very interesting info with photos below )

Do you know Kimi's birthday?

If so let us know, please.

You might be the winner of several new Betty MacDonald fan club items.

Deadline: August 31, 2016


If you'd like to share some of your letters by Betty MacDonald, Mary Bard Jensen and other family members join our Betty MacDonald fan club letter research team, please. 


Betty MacDonald fan club letter research team got some very important letters by Betty MacDonald, Mary Bard Jensen and other family members.

Betty MacDonald, her sister Mary Bard Jensen and the other family members wrote very witty and interesting letters.

We are going to present some of best ones at Betty MacDonald fan club Olympics 2016 event entitled ' The pen and I '. 

We got several new outstanding letters from Betty MacDonald fan club fans whose relatives had been in contact with Betty MacDonald and other family members.  

Thank you so much for your outstanding support.

Betty MacDonald fan club event team is very happy to hear from you and they got some really great ideas for the next International event. 

Thanks a lot!



It would be great to meet Betty MacDonald fan club honor member Mr. Tigerli in Rio. 

We enjoy the new Mr. Tigerli adventure very much.

Thanks a million for sharing it. 


Betty MacDonald fan club honor member Mr. Tigerli  and our 'Italian Betty MacDonald' - Betty MacDonald fan club honor member author and artist Letizia Mancino belong to the most popular Betty MacDonald fan club teams in our history.

Letizia Mancino's  magical Betty MacDonald Gallery  is a special gift for our Betty MacDonald fan club fans.  


Greta is going to share new info on her latest Betty MacDonald fan club project ' Betty MacDonald on Vashon Island '. 


We are looking for signed or dedicated first editions in great condition with dust jackets by Betty MacDonald and Mary Bard Jensen for our fans.

Betty MacDonald Memorial Award Winner Wolfgang Hampel  and Betty MacDonald fan club research team are working on an updated Betty MacDonald biography and new Betty MacDonald documentary.

Dearest new Betty MacDonald fan club fans you'll receive a very important message by Betty MacDonald fan club event team.

This message includes a very nice Betty MacDonald fan club surprise and many info on our current Betty MacDonald fan club projects.

Join one of our Betty MacDonald fan club research teams, please. 

Thanks a million in advance for your outstanding support.

Enjoy a new breakfast at the bookstore with Brad and Nick, please.

Wolfgang Hampel and his famous guests had lots of fun and joy at Vita Magica July 2016.

Betty MacDonald fan club honor member Thomas Bödigheimer did a great job.

His voice and music are outstanding! 

Thank you so much dearest Thomas! 

Don't miss fascinating Vita Magica program August - December 2016, please. 

Vita Magica was celebrating its 1st anniversary.   


Jamie-Lee with Ghost got over 8 million views and more than 67.000 people like the song.

This is our Betty MacDonald fan club ESC 2016 TOP 5 according to Betty MacDonald fan club ESC fans in 40 countries. 

Betty MacDonald's very beautiful Vashon Island is a magical place.

Yours,



Simon
 



Don't miss this very special book, please.


Vita Magica 

Betty MacDonald fan club

Betty MacDonald forum  

Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( English ) 

Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( English ) - The Egg and I 

Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( German )


Wolfgang Hampel - Memim ( English )

Vashon Island - Wikipedia ( German )

Wolfgang Hampel - Monica Sone - Wikipedia ( English )

Wolfgang Hampel - Ma and Pa Kettle - Wikipedia ( English )

Wolfgang Hampel - Ma and Pa Kettle - Wikipedia ( French ) 


Wolfgang Hampel - Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle - Wikipedia ( English)

Wolfgang Hampel in Florida State University 

Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel 

Betty MacDonald fan club interviews on CD/DVD

Betty MacDonald fan club items 

Betty MacDonald fan club items  - comments

Betty MacDonald fan club - The Stove and I  

Betty MacDonald fan club groups 

Betty MacDonald fan club organizer Linde Lund  
 


 





Rita Knobel Ulrich - Islam in Germany - a very interesting ZDF  ( 2nd German Television ) documentary with English subtitles 







Dawid Brueckner It´s a beautiful reconstruction. Thank you Linde .


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Bernd Kunze


Bernd Kunze we will be there, one year vita magica, congratulations Wolfgang Hampel and Rita Kocher.





 
Linde Lund Dearst Rita Kocher und Wolfgang Hampel Congratulations!!!! Happy Birthday Vita Magica and all the best for the future! All our love and best wishes from Linde, Astrid and Lund family
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Thomas Bödigheimer




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Rita Knobel Ulrich - Islam in Germany - a very interesting ZDF  ( 2nd German Television ) documentary with English subtitles.  



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‘Anybody can have tuberculosis…’

THE PLAGUE AND I, by Betty MacDonald, originally published in in the UK in 1948, my edition 1959

 (boy, do I love old Penguins)… cover  One of my favourites, for years and years. I can’t remember when I first encountered The Plague and I, but certain expressions and catchphrases from it have passed into our family shorthand, so my guess is that my parents loved it too.’Toecover’, for instance, a word that describes a hand-made object of uncertain usage and all-too-certain unpleasantness. Ideally, a toecover should have no discernible function, and – in my opinion – involve limp crochet in some respect. Then there’s ‘Hush ma mouth, what have ah said?’, delivered in a clichéd Southern accent. This should be deployed after the ostensibly inadvertent revelation of some fact that has got the speaker into trouble, and is ironically directed at the person who has given the game away. Then – no, enough already. You get the idea. This should not be a funny book. Absolutely not, no way, it’s about a stay in a 1930s tuberculosis sanatorium, for heaven’s sake – and yet it is. Hilarious, even laugh-out-loud funny in parts, and yet those parts are interspersed with more serious stuff. I recently lent it to a friend who had to spend some time in hospital, and she not only loved it, finding it funny too, but also found it relevant. As she said, ‘times change, but people don’t.’

betty macdonald  

In the late 1930s Betty MacDonald – who had led a slightly unconventional life but who had, as yet, not committed any of it to paper (her best-known book is probably The Egg and I, about her first marriage to a chicken farmer and which came out in 1945) – developed a series of colds, then a cough, then extreme tiredness… But, ‘operating under the impression that I was healthy and that everyone who worked felt the same as I did’, failed to put two and two together. In all fairness, so did a series of doctors (largely because she consulted each specialist about his – and I mean his – own area), until she was finally diagnosed with TB. Tuberculosis, of course, could be tantamount to a death sentence. As it can now, sometimes – but then there were no drugs which worked against it and it was horribly prevalent. It’s also highly contaigious and MacDonald caught hers from a co-worker who managed to infect several other people as well. As a single mother with two small children and a negligible income, she was luckily admitted to a charitable sanatorium in Seattle, which she calls ‘The Pines’ in the book. She was to stay at Firland Sanatorium for nine months, in 1937-8, and emerged cured.

Firland ward 

 The picture she creates is so vivid that this is one of those books where the mental images generated are so strong that they dominate even when you see contradictory pictures of the place that inspired them. The echoing, draughty corridors, the never-ending cold, the sound of invisible footsteps approaching, passing and then fading into the distance… but it’s not depressing, even in the serious phases. It’s populated by a cast of characters, all of whom I find exceptionally well drawn and entertaining. They range from Betty’s family and her near-constant companion in The Pines, Kimi Sanbo, to the miscellaneous array of nurses and other patients such as Gravy Face and Granite Eyes (two nurses); Charlie who loved to pass on depressing news of deaths and disasters; Minna of the Southern drawl and ability to dump people in the cacky… there are so many of them, so well delineated, that picking just a few to mention here was difficult. But space has to be made for Miss Gillespie of the Ambulant Hospital’s occupational therapy shop, generator of many a toecover:

‘Miss Gillespie was physically and mentally exactly what you’d expect the producer of hand-painted paper plates to be. She had a mouth so crowded with false teeth it looked as if she had put in two sets … and her own set of rules. One of these rules was that women patients could not use the basement lavatory because “the men will see you go in there and know what you go in there for”. Another forbade the pressing of men’s trousers by women, on the grounds that such intimate contact with male garments was unseemly.’
 
Betty MacDonald is extremely good at expressing the life of any closed institution. The way the world narrows down; the way rumours (‘all based on a little bit of truth’) start, expand and spread; the effect of being thrown into involuntary contact with people you would normally avoid, and the intensity of the resulting reactions. (‘…the major irritation of all was my room-mate, who was so damned happy all the time, so well adjusted. She loved the institution and the institution loved her. She loved all the nurses and the nurses loved her. She loved all the other patients and all the other patients, but one, loved her. That one used to lie awake in the long dark cold winter nights and listen hopefully for her breathing to stop.’) It was a tough regime, but it had to be – no drugs, remember. TB was essentially treated by rest and some basic chest operations; there had to be rules. But there was also the pointless expression of power indulged in by some: ‘ “We do not tell the patients the rules, Mrs Bard. We find that trial and error method is the best way to learn them.” I said, “But how can I be obedient, co-operative, and helpful if I don’t know what I’m supposed to do?” She said, “We don’t allow arguing, Mrs Bard”…‘ She is also very good on how difficult it is to adapt to life afterwards, describing what could almost be a type of Stockholm Syndrome. But she did shake herself free, and the TB didn’t reappear. So yes, a sort of happy ending. ‘Sort of’ because Betty MacDonald died in 1958, from cancer, at the age of only 49.  I’m sure she would have been surprised and possibly flattered to know that people were still enjoying her books over fifty years later. I most certainly am. Great book.

2 thoughts on “‘Anybody can have tuberculosis…’”



  1. biblioglobal
    I hadn’t heard of Egg and I, but the name Betty MacDonald sounded familiar. Looking her up, it turns out she wrote the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books that I loved as a kid!
    Reply
  2. Caroline Counihan
    Betty MacDonald’s hilarious chronicles of frightful experiences were huge favourites in our house too. Making fun of personal horrors is out of fashion now, one is expected to bare one’s soul in full but poker-faced, and there is almost a feeling that to make others laugh at any aspect of one’s tragic story is to belittle oneself or the t s. To my mind nothing is more admirable than to seek out and present the funny side of one’s experiences, it can only help others in the same fix to cope, surely? As well as oneself
    Reply



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    Wolfgang Hampel - Memim ( English )

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    Wolfgang Hampel - Monica Sone - Wikipedia ( English )

    Wolfgang Hampel - Ma and Pa Kettle - Wikipedia ( English )

    Wolfgang Hampel - Ma and Pa Kettle - Wikipedia ( French ) 


    Wolfgang Hampel - Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle - Wikipedia ( English)

    Wolfgang Hampel in Florida State University 

    Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel 

    Betty MacDonald fan club interviews on CD/DVD

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    Betty MacDonald fan club items  - comments

    Betty MacDonald fan club - The Stove and I  

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    Betty MacDonald fan club organizer Linde Lund  
     


     




    Rita Knobel Ulrich - Islam in Germany - a very interesting ZDF  ( 2nd German Television ) documentary with English subtitles 










    Linde Lund Dearst Rita Kocher und Wolfgang Hampel Congratulations!!!! Happy Birthday Vita Magica and all the best for the future! All our love and best wishes from Linde, Astrid and Lund family
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    Thomas Bödigheimer


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    Rita Knobel Ulrich - Islam in Germany - a very interesting ZDF  ( 2nd German Television ) documentary with English subtitles.
     



    Ein lyrisches Portrait von Hilde Domin
    Anne MacDonald Canham

     




     







    Beijing Airpot


    Mr. Tigerli in China

    Copyright 2016 by Letizia Mancino
    translation by Mary Holmes
    All rights reserved  


    Yes Betty, either or it seems he wanted to fly only with Singapore Airways.

    Boeing or Airbus, it’s just the same isn’t it? Aren’t they both just fat birds with 500 passengers?

    Yes, but Singapore Airlines has the most beautiful airhostesses: delicate, fine, graceful…  Mr. Tigerli had looked forward to the flight so much!

    So the little man was disappointed?

    You just can’t imagine how disappointed he was.
     But thank God one of the hostesses was a pretty Chinese girl. Mr. Tigerli purred loudly but she didn’t hear him because the purring of the Airbus 380 was even louder.

    The poor cat!

    You’ve said it Betty. Mr. Tigerli was in a very bad mood and asked me for a loud speaker.

    I’m sure you can get one in 1st Class.

    “”Russian Girl” had even heard you over the roar of the Niagara Falls” I said to Mr. Tigerli. “You are a very unfaithful cat. You wanted to get to know Asiatic girls. That’s how it is when one leaves one’s first love”.

    And what did he say to that?

    “Men are hunters” was his answer.

    Yes, my dear cat, a mouse hunter. And what else did he say?

    Not another word. He behaved as if he hadn’t heard me.

    The Airbus is very loud.

    I told him shortly “Don’t trouble yourself about “Chinese Girl”. There will be enough even prettier girls in China. Wait till we land in Guilin”.

    Did he understand you?

    Naturally Mr. Tigerli understood me immediately. Yes, sweetheart, don’t worry. They will find you something sweet to eat.

    And he?

    He was so happy.

    No problem going through the immigration control?

    Naturally!  Lots of problems. How could I explain to customs that the cat had come as a tourist to China to buy shoes?

    Fur in exchange for shoes…

    Don’t be so cynical Betty!

    Cat meat in exchange for shoes?

    I said to the officials. He isn’t a cat, he is Casanova.


    He came through the pass control with no trouble!

    photos and graphics betty family betty and friend
    Is this Mr. Tigerli?





    Betty MacDonald ART Photos of ICONS Amazing Ladies Pinter Betty MacDonald Quotes Famous Quotes by Betty MacDonald Quoteswave 1950s showing Betty MacDonald descending a staircase and other images  betty macdonald betty bard macdonald wurde 1908 in boulder colorado  photos and graphics betty family betty and friend photos and graphics betty family betty grandchild photo of Betty MacDonald and two children in 1950 costumes Click images for alternate views BETTY MacDONALD PHOTOGRAPH SIGNED DOCUMENT 281143 Betty MacDonald 39 s The Egg and I is published on October 3 1945 photos and graphics betty family betty and don on vashon MacDonald Betty I Biography 
              




    Betty MacDonald




    Take an illustrated day trip through Washington state’s largest city with artist Candace Rose Rardon.
    gadventures.com
    Linda White yes,if my health allows.I have a few problems but is something I have always wanted to do,especially as I reread her books.
    Linde Lund
    Linde Lund Dear Linda I'll keep you posted.
    Bella Dillon
    Bella Dillon · Friends with Darsie Beck
    I still read Mrs Piggle Wiggle books to this day. I love her farm on vashon.
    Lila Taylor
    Lila Taylor Good morning...Linde Lund
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