I made a bit of progress on revisions, still working through some history of World War I as it pertains to Jane Grant’s experiences. I read up on the 1916 Council of National Defense and the Woman’s Committee it created in April 1917. Once the United States entered the war, the government decided it needed the support of women and tapped into the well-established network of female organizations that had been around for decades.
Then I looked to see what kinds of articles the New York Times published about these developments to better understand the atmosphere at the newspaper where Jane worked. And I started considering how press coverage of the conflict and the existence of the Woman’s Committee (run locally by the upper-class women she covered for the Society Department) influenced the choices she made about what to do during the war.
Writing occupies a significant chunk of time almost every day, yet there are always other things going on, too. I used to think that I would have more time for writing in retirement, but I’ve found more flexibility in my schedule rather than more time. And that’s okay. This past week I met a friend for a leisurely lunch, wrote an endorsement (blurb) for a forthcoming book about the Philippines during World War II, and spent a lot of time getting ready for a weekend with family centering on a baby shower.
What I’m Reading
Gayle Feldman’s Nothing Random: Bennett Cerf and the Publishing House He Built remains absorbing. It’s due back at the library in five days and can’t be renewed, so I’ll have to finish it some other time. It’s a remarkable achievement.
What I’m Watching
Only one episode left to finish this season of The Forsytes (PBS).
Watched the first episode of the new Dan Levy comedy, Big Mistakes, on Netflix. Very unsure about it. The cast is great and I get the premise, but the execution didn’t quite land during that first episode. Still, with Levy, it’s probably worth watching at least one more episode. (I had to try Schitt’s Creek twice before I stuck with it, but that was mostly because of the presence of Chris Elliott.)
Nearing the end of all the available episodes of Animal Control on Netflix.
Finished the Netflix series, Detective Hole and the first season of Helsinki Crimes (PBS). I think we started Helsinki Crimes last week, but I forgot about it. Not that it’s bad, but it’s a pretty routine police procedural. It’s set in Helsinki, though, which gives it a little something special.
During one of the several family gatherings over the weekend, conversation turned to one of our favorite good bad movies: VelociPastor. I don’t know if any synopsis can do it justice.
What Else Is Happening
Slightly better bowling this week. There were gutter balls again during the first game, but the second game had a strike and a few spares. And afterward—ice cream!
The two pear trees and the mulberry tree survived a week of rain and winds, so that bodes well. There are more buds on all. A most welcome sight is the rapid growth of the peony bushes. Peonies are my favorite spring flower, and every year I closely watch their progress.
(not our peony bushes)
Have a good week. Hope you stop by for the next installment.
Another new month of revisions, and Jane Grant is still trying to get off to war. It was a big one, first called the Great War or the European War, later to be eclipsed by an even more cataclysmic one that necessitated the numbering of them: World War I and World War II.
Jane played a small part in that first war, but it took a lot of dogged determination before she found a way to get over to France. Her time there is pretty well documented, mostly because it was where she met Harold Ross, which is considered a big, important event in her life because of what their meeting led to.
Yet Jane never explained that was behind her drive to go overseas. Maybe she thought that should be evident. Her country was at war in 1917 and as a citizen of that country, she should support the war. But Americans had been deeply divided over the war since it had broken out in 1914. It was not a foregone conclusion that a citizen would be in favor of U.S. participation.
During this round of revisions, I’ve been bringing into sharper focus the ideas and events that may have influenced Jane. And I think a lot of it comes down to location: living in New York City (and forming romantic attachments to men who lived there, too) and working at the New York Times.
John Purroy Mitchel, the city’s mayor, initially embraced the neutrality that President Woodrow Wilson promoted in 1914, well before the United States joined the European conflict. A year later, Mitchel advocated preparedness and created the Mayor’s Committee on National Defense. (Jane met the mayor at least once, at a social occasion, and the only question she had the opportunity to ask him was the kind that reflected how she received her workplace nickname, Fluff.)
(Illustration by James Montgomery Flagg, 1917)
The Times backed Mitchel’s efforts, as did many of the upper-class people Jane covered for the Society Department. She was not an overtly political person, but she was aware, attentive, and thoughtful. She worked at the Times and she socialized with her colleagues. She could not avoid conversations about the war. But the only thing Jane gave voice to, backed by action, was her desire to go overseas when the United States entered the war in 1917. More than a year passed before she could make it happen.
It’s been hard to move on from this section before I’m satisfied with my understanding of what was happening with Jane during these war years. It may also have something to do with a failed book proposal of mine from several years ago about various America women like Jane who went overseas to play a role in the war. I found the subject fascinating and there was no other book quite like it, so I wanted to write it. Despite a proposal that both me and my then-agent were excited about, no editor shared that excitement. I abandoned the project and moved on to another. It’s just something that sometimes happens in the writing life.
What I’m Reading
I’ve been catching up on recent issues of The New Yorker. I usually don’t let them pile up, but when I’m reading library books with due dates, something has to give.
I finished Ocean Vuong’s novel The Emperor of Gladness. Beautiful and sad.
I finished The Typewriter and the Guillotine: An American Journalist, a German Serial Killer, and Paris on the Eve of WWII by Mark Braude. The journalist is Janet Flanner, who Jane Grant recruited in 1925 as the Paris correspondent for The New Yorker. The book, unfortunately, didn’t work for me. I didn’t find the connection between Flanner and the serial killer to be important or even interesting enough to support a book-length narrative.
I still have Gayle Feldman’s Nothing Random: Bennett Cerf and the Publishing House He Built waiting for me to do more than skim. But I get kind of overwhelmed just looking at it.
What I’m Watching
Another couple of episodes of The Forsytes (PBS). This new version has altered some of the characters and the circumstances, and it’s too early in the series to see the point.
More of the Netflix series, Detective Hole, set in contemporary Oslo, Norway, and it’s rather bleak.
Another weekly episode of Mudtown (BritBox), a crime series set in Wales, featuring a female magistrate. Lots of people in lots of trouble.
Finished Young Sherlock (Prime) and it was enjoyable enough, though I think the plot was over-stuffed.
Animal Control (Netflix), an amusing workplace comedy, continues as filler watching.
What Else Is Happening
No bowling! There was a big ice storm, and just when I thought we would get through it relatively unscathed (the shotgun-like popping sounds of tree branches snapping was heartbreaking), the power went out. We were lucky overall. Our inconvenience was small: no electricity or internet for a few hours. Our flora damage was small, too, with all of Southfork’s big trees keeping their branches. We will find out soon enough if our apples trees got too frozen. Other houses in the neighborhood had bigger problems with lots of branches down and longer stretches without power.
Yet new, small greenery has popped up. I think we have tulips and daffodils arriving. Unless the deer get overly interested.
This past Tuesday, I enjoyed presenting “She Defied Them All.” This talk about Dr. Mary Walker is now available on John Heckman’s YouTube channel, The Tattooed Historian, for you to watch at your leisure. You can also find The Tattooed Historian page on Facebook, Instagram, this podcast, and on Substack. A lot of good history content is there.
Any presentation I give is the result of several days of preparation. I start with a basic set of PowerPoint slides and corresponding notecards (to keep me from wandering from my point) that I created back in 2020, when Dr. Mary Walker’s Civil War first came out. Then I tailor it for each individual event. This time, the talk revolved around the theme of defiance, and plenty of it was in evidence throughout Walker’s life.
That tailoring means I reread portions of my own book to reacquaint myself with the details of Mary Walker’s experiences and beliefs. And that’s hard for me to do because I always, always find sentences, paragraphs, and even entire pages that I wish I could rewrite to make them better. It’s less about historical facts and analysis and more about style.
I have yet to find the sweet spot where historical analysis meets elegant narrative. I have to keep working at it. I do this by doing: writing and rewriting. I also read books on craft written by very accomplished people. I take workshops with very accomplished people. I read and reread books that I admire.
Right now, I’m in awe of Julia Cooke’s style. I finished reading Starry and Restless: Three Women Who Changed Work, Writing, and the World this week, and it’s one of the best books I’ve read so far this year. That’s the way I wish I could write. It’s something to aim for.
And this may be one of the reasons why I’ve been drawn to Jane Grant’s story. She tried to do so many things with her life and rarely achieved the success she envisioned. In writing about her life, I am trying to uncover the source(s) of her motivation, how she handled disappointments, and what she marked as achievements.
These are the things I think about as I continue with this new draft of the Jane Grant book. It seems about as rough as the last one. But I’m still at it every day, still sticking with my decision to carve out a whole separate chapter about Jane’s determination to get the France during World War I. I think it’s crucial for understanding her aspirations for her career and her personal life. And it was a pivotal time for thousands of American women who, like Jane, felt compelled to decide how (or if) they were going to support the war effort.
Women’s History Month
It’s almost over for 2026. Pamela Toler’s annual WHM blog series on History in the Margins ends today, but you can always read the pieces any time. Be sure to take a look.
What I’m Reading
My leisure reading book is Ocean Vuong’s luminous novel, The Emperor of Gladness. I had to skip the section about the hogs.
I’ve started The Typewriter and the Guillotine: An American Journalist, a German Serial Killer, and Paris on the Eve of WWII by Mark Braude. Not that you would know it from the title (I know title and cover design are about marketing and selling books), but it’s about the great writer Janet Flanner, who Jane Grant recruited in 1925 as the Paris correspondent for The New Yorker.
I probably would never have picked up this book if I hadn’t read a review of it that actually identified Flanner as that American journalist. For me, that’s the book’s biggest draw. So far, I’ve been enjoying the sections about her life in France and her writing career. I’m curious about how and why a serial killer becomes important to Flanner. So, I keep reading.
I also have Gayle Feldman’s magisterial Nothing Random: Bennett Cerf and the Publishing House He Built. I’ve only looked through the table of contents, index, bibliography, and skimmed some of the 800+ pages of text. I don’t know how much of it I’ll have the time to read.
What I’m Watching
One episode in on each of the new PBS dramas, The Forsytes and The Count of Monte Cristo.
Started the new Netflix series, Detective Hole, set in contemporary Oslo, Norway.
Another weekly episode of Mudtown (BritBox), a crime series set in Wales, featuring a female magistrate. It’s intense.
Only one episode left of Young Sherlock (Prime)
The filler sitcom has been Animal Control (Netflix), an amusing workplace comedy.
Still haven’t been back to Hope Street (BritBox) or Scarpetta (Prime).
What Else Is Happening
Back to two games of mediocre bowling for me. But it was still fun.
Almost all the snow from the big blizzard is gone. The birds are singing again in the morning. I watched a young buck saunter through the back forty here at Southfork. But I haven’t seen any new greenery popping up yet.
1. In revisionland, it was another week of digging into primary sources. This time I was examining a pair of letters that Alexander Woollcott sent to Jane Grant while he was in France during World War I. They were colleagues at the New York Times where he worked as a drama critic before he enlisted, and they exchanged gossip about co-workers and other people they knew in New York.
I fell down a bit of a research rabbit hole trying to fill in the details about one of the subjects of their gossip whose important position with the newspaper was tied directly to the war. And I kept coming up with almost nothing. I searched through the Times as well as the Newspapers.com database, both of which returned scant information. Ancestry returned to many hits that sorting through them would have taken much more time than I wanted to devote to a short scene. But I had to know something more about this person.
Turns out I had been misspelling the name. It all came down to the placement of one “e,” which actually belonged someplace else. That threw everything off in the searches. Once I corrected that I found what I needed, finished writing the section, and moved on.
2. I’ve been thinking a lot about Jennifer Szalai’s review of Julia Cooke’s Starry and Restless: Three Women Who Changed Work, Writing, and the World in the March 15 issue of the New York Times Book Review. It is a positive review. Szalai pronounces the book “a vibrant triple biography” of the writers Rebecca West, Martha Gellhorn, and Emily Hahn, appreciating how Cooke writes with “verve and expansiveness.” Although I haven’t finished reading Starry and Restless yet, I agree. Cooke is a wonderful writer, and I get totally immersed in these women’s lives whenever I sit down with the book.
Then there is Szalai’s final paragraph:
“Apparently the cultural imperative to wrest salutary lessons, even from the most audacious and defiant women is strong: ‘Maybe they offer a new compass by which a person may orient herself within her own choices.’ Maybe. Or maybe the idiosyncratic lives of these peregrinating writers invite a simpler, but no less significant, proposal: Read this book and be enthralled.”
That’s the part that has stuck with me all week as I think about the subject of my book and the very different worlds of writing (i.e. Toni Morrison’s advice: “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.”) and publishing (i.e. who is going to read and buy this book?)
And how many times do you think I checked the spelling of Szalai’s name?
Women’s History Month
Final reminder that I will appear live on John Heckman’s YouTube channel on March 24 at 2:00 p.m. Central to talk about Dr. Mary Walker. The installment bears the bold title, “She Defied Them All.” You can find The Tattooed Historian’s page on Facebook, follow him on Instagram, listen to his podcast, read him on Substack, and/or watch his YouTube channel.
Pamela Toler’s annual WHM blog series on History in the Margins is still posting new Q&As. Be sure to take a look.
What I’m Reading
As mentioned above, I’m still reading Starry and Restless: Three Women Who Changed Work, Writing, and the World by Julia Cooke. I’ve found Emily Hahn’s life particularly fascinating, plus it’s been interesting to see Alexander Woollcott make an appearance. He was one of Jane Grant’s first friends when she joined the New York Times.
Finished Dinner at the Night Library, a novel by Hika Harada, translated by Philip Gabriel, which was lovely.
Kind of hurriedly finished Mike Pitts’s Island at the Edge of the World: The Forgotten History of Easter Island because it was due back at the library and was non-renewable.
What I’m Watching
Finished How to Get to Heaven from Belfast (Netflix) and liked it. Not sure what will come next.
Sticking with Mudtown (BritBox), a crime series set in Wales, featuring a female magistrate, with episodes that drop once a week. That’s okay. We’ve never done binge-watching.
Also continuing Young Sherlock (Prime) but haven’t been back to Hope Street (BritBox) yet because of its unevenness and soapiness. And haven’t felt at all compelled to return to Scarpetta (Prime) after that first episode.
What Else I’ve Been Doing
This was the first time in over three weeks that bowling went very well, this despite a bigger crowd because of spring break, one lane that stopped properly resetting the pins, and another lane that only periodically returned the balls. Yet one of us had their highest lifetime score and the other one had no trouble breaking 100 in each game. Then we went for ice cream.
I finally hemmed a pair of black jeans, just in time to get a few more wears out of them before I do my seasonal closet changeover.
We got through an actual blizzard. More than 20 inches fell here at Southfork over last weekend. But thanks to prompt and excellent snow removal (especially by the foreman) plus moderate to mild temperatures, right now it looks like only an average amount of snow on the ground for early spring.
So, happy spring and thanks for reading. See you next week.
I became totally engrossed with archival sources when I decided to look more closely at Jane’s pre-World War I romances. I spent the whole week not only piecing together her love life but also thinking about how and why people choose which documents to keep with them throughout their lives and how those items end up in boxes in archives for researchers to later scrutinize.
The papers in this particular box of Jane’s papers that are held at the University of Oregon comprise her correspondence from 1911-1918, but it is one-sided, made up of letters she received. Sometimes they provide clues about what Jane had written to prompt a response, sometimes they don’t. It’s up to the historian to figure out what was going on.
For example, one letter, undated (which adds another layer of difficulty), was addressed to “My Dear Little Jeanette” (Jane’s legal first name) and signed “Geo.” Someone had penciled in a date range of 1912-1915 at the top of the first page, which confirmed a year referred to by “Geo” within the letter.
The letterhead was printed with “Newton Farm, Los Gatos, California.” It was easy to conclude that the letter was written by George Newton. Supplied with a date range, location, and name, I turned to Ancestry and Newspapers.com, two online library databases. A few hours of searching enabled me to make some informed assumptions.
George F. Newton, born in Iowa and in the mid-1910s somewhere in his middling forties, owned the eponymous farm, but used it as a country getaway. He and his new wife Avis, some twelve years his junior, lived most of the year in the San Francisco/Oakland area where he ran a fireworks company.
Newton wrote to Jane to thank her for her “sweet little birthday letter.” Because he told her he couldn’t spend much time on the farm until after the Fourth of July (a big day for fireworks) and because he encouraged her to come visit in 1915, I think the letter was written in the spring or early summer of 1914.
But it’s not clear how Jane knew Newton. At one point, when he was young, his family lived in Kansas, so it’s possible he was an old family friend or even a relative. In the opening salutation, he called her Jeanette, the name she tried to put behind her when she moved to New York.
I’m still trying to figure out if this sentence provides a clue about their relationship: “I have the limousine in the city and think of you every time I ride in it.” Did Newton know about Jane’s career ambitions, and did he pick up on her desire to have fine things?
Newton wasn’t angling for an affair, though. Twice in the letter he mentioned his wife, and he explained the reason behind his invitation to visit. “I am sure you could get along better here than in that big cold city of N.Y. Mrs. Newton says for you to come out here and call us Father and Mother and see how you like this country. If I can find you a position in advance will you come?” Newton understood that Jane’s career was important to her.
And here’s the connection to Jane’s love life. Newton tried to sweeten the offer in his P.S.: “I have a dandy handsome fellow picked out here for you his name is Billie.” Apparently, he knew about how she socialized with young men and wanted to assure her that she would have plenty of options in California. But maybe Jane worried that Newton’s main purpose was to get her married and settled. That was not what she wanted.
It’s not surprising that Jane didn’t take Newton up on his offer. His letter only indirectly refers to Jane’s dating. There are no other letters in the collection from Newton, but there are some from men that provide more evidence about her relationships. These men were involved with her, and thought they knew her and knew how she felt about them. But it seemed they were very wrong.
For some reason, these letters ended up with all of Jane’s other papers at the University of Oregon. It’s hard to know if she kept them on purpose because they brought back particular memories, or if they just got stuck in a folder somewhere and never got tossed out. This may all become clearer after I conduct another round of research. Or it may not.
Women’s History Month
A reminder that I will appear live on John Heckman’s YouTube channel on March 24 at 2:00 p.m. Central to talk about Dr. Mary Walker. The installment bears the bold title, “She Defied Them All.” You can find The Tattooed Historian’s page on Facebook, follow him on Instagram, listen to his podcast, read him on Substack, and/or watch his YouTube channel.
Also remember to check out Pamela Toler’s annual WHM series on her blog, History in the Margins. She runs the best Q&As with people who write women’s history.
What I’m Reading
I picked up my library copy of Starry and Restless: Three Women Who Changed Work, Writing, and the World by Julia Cooke. I’ve been particularly interested to read about Emily Hahn, one of the women I wrote about in my very first book, Prisoners in Paradise. I’m pleased to see that Jane Grant’s name pops up a few times in Starry and Restless, and the book had got me thinking about some of the choices Jane made during the 1930s, after she’d been shut out of The New Yorker and she left her job at the New York Times. Jane was restless then, but not, I think, starry.
I’m continuing with Mike Pitts’s Island at the Edge of the World: The Forgotten History of Easter Island. It still holds my interest.
For pure leisure reading, I’ve been enjoying Dinner at the Night Library, a novel by Hika Harada, translated by Philip Gabriel.
What I’m Watching
Started Mudtown (BritBox), a crime series set in Wales, featuring a female magistrate, and it’s good so far. Better though—at least based on the first two episodes—is Young Sherlock (Prime). I always like a good reimagining of Sherlock Holmes.
I’m much more on the fence after watching the first episode of Scarpetta (Prime). I don’t mind the dual timeline, but the portion that takes place in the present day (with Nicole Kidman as Kay Scarpetta) reminds me of why I stopped reading the novels by Patricia Cornwell that the series is based on.
Hope Street (BritBox) has been a bit uneven, but I’ve been enjoying How to Get to Heaven from Belfast (Netflix).
Finished Starfleet Academy (Paramount+) and The Lincoln Lawyer (Netflix). The season finale of Starfleet displayed the qualities I’d hoped to see in all of the episodes but didn’t.
What Else I’ve Been Doing
Weekly bowling, two games. The first was abysmal, the second mediocre. So, progress, I guess.
Almost finished another very small sewing project: hemming a pair of jeans, something I’ve been meaning to do ever since I bought them two or three years ago. No matter how much I measure and pin and try them on, I keep thinking I’m going to make them too short.
Thanks for reading. I’m not sure what’s more ferocious than a March lion, but whatever it is, it’s barreling into the upper Midwest. Between Saturday night and Monday morning there might be at least twenty inches of snow, accompanied by high winds. Here at Southfork, we’re under a blizzard warning, and there is ample gasoline for the snowblower and a fully stocked refrigerator, both courtesy of the foreman (who is also my bowling partner and my partner in everything, especially life).
Theresa Kaminski 
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