Betty in the Wild

Betty Debbie heads East. When you live near the Northwest corner of the contiguous 48 states, nearly everything is East. Even "The West". After a rocky start (see: The Hitchiker's Guide to...Montana), the van der Stevejinck family had a lovely vacation. Especially if you disregard the rented red Chevy HHR (jokingly referred to as "The Clown Car" in reference to stuffing one seven passenger minivan's worth of luggage and passengers into a five passenger car).

A sadly missed opportunity. Someday this Betty will get to see all of the Tetons at once...not just the lower slopes. Unfortunately, this was not that day.

Betty and the Bison.

With so many geysers and hot springs to choose from, Heart Spring just seemed the obvious choice for a Betty in the Wild. Especially since I forgot to snap a picture with Old Faithful.

Back-to-School

Our Araminta Rose Caroline Comelys always seem to have their hands full with children--either little sisters in need of the always-in-short-supply field hockey sticks or a dorm full of girl's school live-ins that they have to shepherd into good mental health.

Betty Keira has had her own hands full these days. Happily, I finished our school shopping and now all that's left is waiting (with bated breath) until I scoot my fledgelings back into the world.

What preparation have the rest of you engaged in? Homeschooling Bettys? Any field hockey sticks bought?

Cinema Betty

I have no really good defense of my Cinema Betty pick this week. A Match for Sister Maggy has Maggy, a large, strapping Amazon. Amazon? Why that's just the littlest, tiniest leap to Hawk Men and inter-galactic bad-guys, yes?:

Flash Gordon (1980)

Dearest, darling Max von Sydow, I don't care how high they've tortured
your eyebrows. I don't care that you sold your soul to make this film. I love you, Betty Keira

The plot makes zero sense but it has my favorite Danish actor (mmmmm...) as Ming the Merciless and a not-too-shabby Timothy Dalton (fielding the Amazon warrior pictured above).
P.S. You may all thank me for not choosing Red Sonja.
P.P.S. Okay, here's some hot Timothy Dalton

The Best of Betty

Betty Keira and I have managed to plow through and review roughly (very roughly) half of The Great Betty's novels so far. I don't know about you, but I'm amazed. We knew going in, that reviewing all of La Neel's novels would be a big undertaking (definitely), we hoped that it would be fun (it is!), and we really hoped that we'd stick it out and finish...(so far, so good).

And now, in the spirit that has made The Uncrushable Jersey Dress so wildly popular in countries such as India, Spain and Australia...the spirit that says: "I was painting the outside of my house last week and now I'm on vacation"...we bring you:

Henrietta's Own Castle!

(reviewed March 4, 2010)

The Great Betty managed to cram a lot of action into this book without it seeming too episodic. There is a back story that includes an unconsummated love affair! Carnage! A very capable and self sufficient heroine who can give as good as she gets, a car with it's own name, shades of noblesse oblige and helping a horse to foal in a field.

If you don't feel like reading the entire review, here's an excerpt from the end:

To sum it all up: Every time Henrietta and Marnix meet they start fencing. Verbally. She is irritated, annoyed and intrigued by Marnix...sparks fly. Marnix doesn't help matters much. He is dictatorial, brusque, ill-mannered and has more than a bit of a temper - he is also often helpful and generous. Shall we mention chemistry and tension? Henrietta's Own Castle has got to be one of the top ten Neels books when it comes to *ahem* "tension". At this point I would love to insert a montage clip of David and Maddie from the old tv show Moonlighting, slamming doors. If only I could have found one. The Venerable Betty wasn't always able to balance her arguing couples well. At times the ladies just come off shrill and unappealing. She manages to make Henrietta likeable in spite of her yelling at Marnix and Marnix is appealing (though a bit dim about Loes being what Loes was) even though he has more than his fair share of "Lord of the Manor" attitude (which could so be a deal breaker in my book). I love it when they get together at the end, I practically cheer when Marnix climbs the kitchen wall to declare his love. You just know that Marnix and Henrietta will have a lively marriage - lots of fighting, and lots of making up...the good kind. I give this book a good solid boeuf en croute. (If you skip the references to Oh Noes Loes being 18 it might even bump up to a queen of puddings)

Bettysday T-Shirt Teaser

Here's some that I didn't use:

Make custom t-shirts at CustomInk.com

Make custom t-shirts at CustomInk.com

Betty and the Real World

This week our Real World only involved A Match for Sister Maggy:

Maggy is a large Scots lass who gets called an Amazon (there's Katherine Hepburn doing her level best to imitate one--see right.) from time to time:
Among Classical Greeks, amazon was given a popular etymology as from a-mazos, "without breast", connected with an etiological tradition that Amazons had their right breast cut off or burnt out, so they would be able to use a bow more freely and throw spears without the physical limitation and obstruction; there is no indication of such a practice in works of art, in which the Amazons are always represented with both breasts, although the right is frequently covered.
I know what you're thinking. TMI, right? But, seriously, this sounds like one of those urban legends that a man might come up with. Obstruction? Physical limitation? Trust me. Cha-chas don't work that way.

When Paul wants to marry Maggy out of hand he calls his uncle who has an in with the Archbishop of Canterbury. This will expedite a Special License:
There were two kinds of marriage licences that could be issued: the usual was known as a common licence and named one or two parishes where the wedding could take place, within the jurisdiction of the person who issued the licence. The other was the special licence, which could only be granted by the Archbishop of Canterbury or his officials and allowed the marriage to take place in any church. Marriage law and practice in Scotland differs from that in England and Wales. Historically, it was always considered legal and binding for a couple to marry by making public promises, without a formal ceremony.
I think the Marriage Act of 1939 put an end to the fast and loose nature of a Gretna Green wedding. What a pity that by the time Paul was running Maggy to ground in Scotland he could no longer just take her back to her parent's house, round up some 'public' and do that thing.

At one point, Maggy retorts forcefully in Gaelic. I had previously supposed that only the Irish spoke Gaelic but there is, evidently, a Scottish dialect. Even though people still speak it, the numbers of people who speak it have plummeted from millions (two hundred years ago) to, maybe, 58,000 today:

Year	Number of students in Gaelic medium education	Percentage of all students in Scotland
2005	2,480	0.35%
2006	2,535	0.36% [30]
2007	2,601	0.38%
2008	2,766	± 0.4% [31]
2009	2,638	0.39% [32]

Question of the Week

A Match for Sister Maggy has a written accent. (Ach, wee, dinna!) La Neels does a fair job at making Maggy clearly Scots but her accent not too terribly broad. But this puts me in mind of all the other books I've read wherein the author's devotion to authenticity was not sacrificed one whit on the alter of readability.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was wonderfully done (accent-wise) but I did have some trouble with certain passages and had to go over them by sounding them out.

The worst for me is Grace Livingston Hill. Italians, nefarious Germans (is there any other kind?) and Irish cops get the worst treatment but at least they tend to be peripheral characters. My all time most hated GLH is Miranda--where the main character is a lower-class serving girl. We follow Miranda's travails for twenty years all is an awful, unreadable accent.

My question is: What are some of your funner Adventures in Accent Reading?