Betty MacDonald's sister Alison Bard Burnett
Betty MacDonald's mother Sydney with grandchild Alison Beck
Wolfgang Hampel - and 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 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
Linde Lund shared Pictures of Heidelberg's photo.
Dear Aashish Bernd Rudi Friedrich Pascale Heiderose Nunzia Pieter Michail Waseem Ursula Thomas Tatjana Theresia Franziska Nicole Ernst Wolf, Michael Sabine Winfried Schwab Immo Sascha Karl Angela Ulrich Wellhöfer Perkeo Thomas Barth Kirsten Birthe Andre Horst Dawid Dr. Karl A. Lamers Europäischer Hof Heidelberg
and all our other friends don't miss Vita Magica on Tuesday 28 th, 2016
please. The subject is magical Heidelberg with Rudi Lerche and other
surprising guests. http://wolfvitamagica.blogspot.de/…/vita-magica-juni-2016-m…
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
Thomas Bödigheimer i am there Linde
Rita Knobel Ulrich - Islam in Germany - a very interesting ZDF ( 2nd German Television ) documentary with English subtitles.
Home
‘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)…
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.’
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.
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:
(boy, do I love old Penguins)…
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.’
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.
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.
Betty MacDonald Quotes
There’s nothing as cozy as a piece of candy and a book.
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
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
Rita Knobel Ulrich - Islam in Germany - a very interesting ZDF ( 2nd German Television ) documentary with English subtitles.
Mr. Tigerli in China
Copyright 2016 by Letizia Mancino
translation by Mary Holmes
All rights reserved
Linde Lund
info to: Sandra Lorinda Traci Petr Dana Jana Michaela Rebekah Swiss Charrd Tru John Darsie Darsie Toby Jeanine Carol Justin Lila Daniel Mo Nika Steve Neal Jitka Jitka Tami Pete Laurie Maia Nancy Kelly Pam Mary Jan and all our other friends
www.bettymacdonaldfanclub.blogspot.com/
Finding Island Time: Vashon from Seattle
Take an illustrated day trip through Washington state’s largest city with artist Candace Rose Rardon.