Rats! My Buss Bubbles have Burst!

For the last two and a half years, I have been writing interesting bits about A Buss from Lafayette on the website, Bublish.com. It has been great fun, thinking and writing about the source of my ideas as I wrote the story, or giving more background information about subjects that come up in the book. I believe I wrote several hundred of these "Book Bubbles". Unfortunately, I did not back up what I wrote, believing it as safely stowed on Bublish.com.

In April, I had reached 125,125 hits. Just before everything disappeared (!), I saw that my total had hit just under 130,000 hits.

Here's what the total is now:

The people at Bublish say this has never happened before. I was editing the book description, to let people know that the audiobook of A Buss from Lafayette is now available. As I was typing, the screen, the book itself, all its bubbles and something like 70,000 hits disappeared.

I am not happy. And I am feeling really stupid for not making copies of all the bubbles.

Oh, well.

That's the way the Bubbles burst!

Sincerely,

Dorothea

Proclaiming Lafayette Day (in Massachusetts)

Recently I had the honor to read the official proclamation issued by Governor Baker of Massachusetts declaring Lafayette day in that commonwealth. This was during the annual Lafayette Day meeting of the Massachusetts Lafayette Society, at the Atheneum in Boston.

Here is am with the dignitaries. (I'm on the left end of the table.)

(If you are watching on a mobile device and cannot view this, check it out here on Youtube.)

The Riddle of Penncroft Farm: Decade-Old Deletions!

My first historical novel for young readers, The Riddle of Penncroft Farm, was published by Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich in 1989 and has been in print ever since. Yesterday, I went by an apple orchard in bloom up on top of the hill where I live in New Hampshire. "Ah," thought I, this reminds me of the passage in Riddle in which Aunt Cass talks about how beautiful it was when the apple trees were blossoming on Penncroft Farm, and how wonderful it smelled.

Because of this, I stopped to take a movie of the scene, which is below:

When I got back home, I got out Riddle to find the descriptive passage I was thinking of.
You may imagine my surprise when I discovered that it is not in the book! The HBJ editor must have removed it when I wasn't looking! Here is all that's left:

 (Aunt Cass is showing Lars around Penncroft Farm)

"Here's the orchard. It doesn’t look like much now, but generations back it was a working orchard with more than a thousand fruit trees— apples and pears and peaches.” 

“Are these Seek-no-further apple trees?” I asked. Aunt Cass sighed. “No, those all died and were hopped up for firewood years ago."      -The Riddle of Penncroft Farm © 1989 by Dorothea Jensen

I cannot believe that I didn't notice this was gone for almost thirty years. Oh well. Enjoy the video and imagine Aunt Cass describing it to Lars.