Cultural English 470 - James Fenimore Cooper; The Farmer’s Almanac; Q&A

Complete Transcript

You’re listening ESL Podcast’s English Café number 470.

This is English as a Second Language Podcast’s English Café episode 470. I’m your host, Dr. Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.

On this Café, we’re going to talk about another famous American, this time a writer by the name of James Fenimore Cooper. We’re also going to talk about a magazine that most Americans have heard of, although many of them have never read, called the Farmers’ Almanac. And, as always, we’ll answer a few of your questions. Let’s get started.

We begin this Café with a discussion of a famous American writer by the name of James Fenimore Cooper. James Fenimore Cooper was born in the state of New Jersey, which is located on the eastern coast of the United States, in 1789. The year 1789 is important because that’s when the current U.S. Constitution was approved and we elected our first president, George Washington. So, James Fenimore Cooper was of the first generation that was born into this new country called the United States of America.

Cooper is probably the most famous American author who is associated with novels about the American frontier. The word “frontier” (frontier) is very important in American history. In general, a frontier is an area that is at the very edge or the very limit of the land that you now occupy or that your country owns. The frontier would be areas that are outside of your current area where you own land now, if you will, but are areas that you might want to move into.

The word “frontier” is also used to describe a “border” – a dividing line between two countries. In the early part of American history, the frontier was the western part of the continent of North America. It was all of the land that was west of the eastern seaboard (the states that are along the Atlantic Ocean). As the United States began to grow in population, more and more people moved to the western part of United States and the territories that were next to those states. This area was called the “frontier.”

Cooper was born in New Jersey, but when he was only a year old his father, Judge William Cooper, moved the entire family to some land that he had purchased up in northern New York, about two hundred miles or so from New York City. It was a new town, a very small town at the time, where Cooper moved his family. It was what we would call a “pioneer settlement.” A “pioneer” (pioneer) is a person who is among the first to go into a new area or a new region. We don’t think about New York as being part of the frontier where pioneers would go, but back in the late seventeenth century, it definitely was a pioneer settlement.

Cooper grew up in this frontier town, but he also got a very good education. His father, who had some money, sent him to Yale University beginning in 1803. Unfortunately, Cooper was a person who liked to have fun, and in 1805 he was expelled from Yale because of a prank. “To be expelled” (expelled) from some group, such as a school, means that you are no longer a member of that group – or in this case, you’re no longer a student at that school. You can’t go back.

Cooper had apparently pulled a prank when he was at Yale. A “prank” (prank) is some sort of joke, usually a joke that is meant to embarrass someone. A prank often involves some sort of physical action as part of the joke. You do something that’s funny, or you make someone else do something that’s funny. This is also sometimes called a “practical joke” because it involves some action, typically.

We’re not sure exactly what the prank was that Cooper pulled (and notice we use the verb “pull” when we’re talking about performing some prank). But whatever he did, it was enough to get him expelled from one of the best universities in the United States, at that time and still today. Cooper decided at this point to join the Navy, where he served for four or five years. He finally left the Navy in 1809 because his father died and left him some money.

A few years after his father died, the village where Cooper grew up was named for his father. It became Cooperstown, New York. Now, Cooperstown, New York, is famous now for another completely different reason that has nothing to do with James Fenimore Cooper. Cooperstown is considered the birthplace of the game of baseball. In fact, there is a national museum of baseball located in Cooperstown, New York, and many people who go to Cooperstown nowadays go to visit that museum, called the “Hall of Fame.” But back to our story with James Fenimore Cooper.

His father died in 1809, and Cooper was able to leave the Navy. He married a woman in 1811 and they would later have five children – a son and four girls. Between 1811 and 1820, Cooper didn’t really have much of a career, much of a profession. He got involved in politics. He did a little farming. He was interested in the arts and in writing. Finally, in 1820, he wrote his first novel. Some say Cooper wrote the novel because his wife had dared him to do it. “To dare” (dare) someone is to challenge a person to do something that you don’t think the person wants to do or would likely do.

That first novel that Cooper wrote was called Precaution, and it wasn’t a very good novel. It wasn’t very successful. Cooper tried to write in the style of the great British writer Jane Austen, but many of the critics – the people who get paid to tell people how bad they write – didn’t like the book.

Cooper tried again the next year. In 1821, he published a very different novel, called The Spy. This was written in the style of the British writer Sir Walter Scott and took place during the American Revolutionary War. The characters in the novel were very typical of the political personalities that existed during this time. In addition, this time the novel was very well written, unlike his first novel. For that reason, it became very popular, and Cooper began to earn some money.

In 1823, he published The Pioneers, which was the first book in what would later become his best known series of books, The Leather Stocking Tales. The Leather Stocking Tales were all books about a single character by the name of Natty Bumppo. Natty Bumppo was also known in the novels as “Hawkeye.” Natty was a white man who had been raised by Native Americans – by American Indians. He was a warrior. He was a fighter. He was a hunter. And more importantly, he was an interpreter.

Because he spoke the language of the local Indians as well as English, he was a person who could translate what people were saying from one language to another. That’s what an “interpreter” does. An interpreter translates what someone is saying to another person. Natty was friends with the Native Americans in the novels, but he also loved the life of the Native Americans and tried to prevent, in many cases, new settlers from coming to the area, from taking the land from the Native Americans.

The Pioneers is actually the story of Natty Bumppo as an older man. Many of the characters in the book were based on people that Cooper knew, including his own father. One of the characters in the book is named Judge Temple, who lives in Templeton. This of course is similar to Cooper’s father, Judge Cooper, who started the town that later became known as Cooperstown. Natty Bumppo, however, was not based on any single person that Cooper knew. It was more of a combination of personalities that Cooper grew up with.

In the novel, Natty Bumppo works to keep the frontier as it is, to try to prevent the white people from changing things. This was a basic tension on the frontier, in these frontier settlements. You had some people who wanted to keep life the way it was and other people who wanted to change it, to bring more people into a certain area. Obviously, the American Indians, the Native Americans, wanted to keep things the way they were, but the white settlers had other plans.

Cooper’s book The Pioneers was financially successful much in the way that his first book was – his first book of this series, that is – and this gave Cooper some money and the freedom to continue writing. He wrote another book in the series – probably the most famous book of the series – in 1826. That book was called The Last of the Mohicans. The “Mohicans” were an Indian tribe, and the book is about basically the end of this Indian tribe.

Most Americans probably haven’t read that book, but they’ve heard of it because there was a well-known movie made based on the book that starred the great Irish actor Daniel Day Lewis. The movie is now more than 20 years old, but it is really an excellent way of learning about the way life was back on the frontier back during the early nineteenth century in the United States.

Cooper wrote a total of five books as part of this Leather Stocking Tales series. The other books were called The Prairie, and then The Pathfinder, and The Deerslayer. Each novel deals with a different part of Natty’s life. The novels were not written in order, however. The first novel is not about when Natty was young and the last novel about when Natty was old. Many people consider Cooper to be the first great American novelist. Certainly, his books were popular during his lifetime and were successful and influenced other generations of writers.

Cooper didn’t write just about Natty Bumpo, however. He wrote other books as well, including books about the sea, about going off on a ship into the ocean. Remember that Cooper was in the Navy himself, and so had been on ships and knew ships very well. So, he decided to write some books about the experience of being on the sea, books that eventually influenced other writers such as Herman Melville and Joseph Conrad. Cooper also got interested in politics. He went to New York City in 1822 and started a club for people who work in the arts.

He moved to Europe from 1826 until 1833. This was in part because he wanted to raise his family, his children, in Europe – give them a different sort of political and cultural experience. He was a great supporter in Europe of the new democratic movements, but he was not really a supporter of social equality. “Social equality” is the idea that every person, no matter what his background or how much money he has, should have the same rights as everyone else. Cooper wasn’t quite that radical.

Cooper died in 1851 in Cooperstown, New York. He is still remembered as one of the great American novelists, and his work is still read in American schools. And more importantly, a lot of people saw the movie The Last of the Mohicans, based on his novel.

Let’s turn now briefly to our second topic on this Café, which is a publication called the Old Farmer’s Almanac. I’m just going to call it the Farmers’ Almanac, but when I say that, I’m referring to the Old Farmers’ Almanac. Confusingly, there has been more than one publication with that title, but we’ll just refer to the Old Farmers’ Almanac for now as the Farmers’ Almanac.

You don’t see the word “almanac” used very much anymore. It’s an old word that refers to something that is published usually once a year, with important dates. It could be important dates in the history of an organization. It could be information about events or meetings or holidays for that particular year.

The Farmers’ Almanac is about information related to what would be important to farmers, including the weather. The Farmers’ Almanac actually contains predictions about what the weather will be like this year. A “prediction” is a statement about something that will probably happen in the future. It’s basically a guess about what will happen. The Farmers’ Almanac includes not just information about the weather, but also suggestions for farmers about when to plant their seeds for the food. It includes recipes. It includes stories that might be interesting to people who are farmers.

The Farmers’ Almanac was first published back in 1792. So, it has a very long history, and it continues to be published every year. It contains information that would be useful to farmers, especially about the crops that farmers plant. A “crop” (crop) is something that you grow in order to eat and, usually, to sell to someone else to eat. There’s information in the Farmers’ Almanac about the best times to plant certain kinds of food, as well as the best times to harvest crops. The verb “to harvest” (harvest) means to go out and collect the food from the plants and bring it in so that you can either eat it or sell it.

When the almanac was first published, more than 200 years ago, a lot of people believed that the predictions that it made about the weather were accurate. In fact, some people said that the predictions about what the weather was going to be like in the following year were up to 80 percent accurate. I don’t know if that’s true, but certainly, once farmers heard about the Farmers’ Almanac, they themselves were interested in buying it, and because of that fact, circulation for the almanac grew very quickly. “Circulation” refers to the number of copies of a magazine or a newspaper that people buy.

Only once has the accuracy of the Farmers’ Almanac been problem. In 1942, during World War II, a German U-Boat – a German warship submarine – was captured off the coast of the United States. The captain of the U-Boat had a Farmers’ Almanac with him. The United States military believed that the German Navy was using the Farmers’ Almanac to predict the weather and to plan their attacks on the United States. Fortunately, the government decided that the Farmers’ Almanac itself was not to blame, and it was allowed to continue publishing.

Many people wondered how the original publisher of the almanac, Robert B. Thomas, was able to be so accurate in his predictions. Well, Thomas said that he based his predictions on the movement of the planets and the weather cycles. Even today, his exact formula is kept a secret and is only known to a few people at the Farmers’ Almanac. Thomas was in charge of the Farmers’ Almanac until 1846. Since then, there have been 12 more editors. It is still published today – you can go out and buy a copy.

I bought a copy when I was in grade school just because I was interested in it, and it really is quite an interesting little booklet, with all sorts of information that is interesting to farmers, to be sure, but also to the average person. So, if you want to know what the weather is going to be like next year, you can just buy the Old Farmer’s Almanac. It is, by the way, the oldest continuously published magazine or journal in American history. It has been published, as of 2014, for the past 222 years.

Now let’s answer some of the questions you have sent to us.

Our first question comes from Colin (Colin) in China. Colin wants to know the meaning of the phrase “in favor of,” as well as “in one’s favor.” Both of these expressions have in common, of course, the word “favor” (favor), so let’s start with that.

As a noun, a “favor” is usually something nice you do for another person, something that someone has asked you to do. “Could you do me a favor?” means “Could you do something for me that would help me?” “Favor” as a verb refers to approving or liking something. “I favor ice cream over cake” – I prefer ice cream over cake. Or, “The teacher favored the smart students over the dumb students” – the teacher preferred and treated the smart students better than the dumb students.

The expression “in favor of” means “in support of.” “I am in favor of changing our taxes so that I don’t have to pay taxes anymore.” That’s what I’m in favor of. Some people are in favor of changing the laws to do one thing or another. They are in support of that position. They approve of that position. The expression “in one’s favor,” however, means to be to your advantage, to be to your benefit. “The decision was in my favor,” meaning I won or I benefited from that decision.

We sometimes use an expression, “the odds are in my favor.” “Odds” (odds) refers to the possibility that something will happen. If you say, “The odds are in my favor,” you’re saying that it’s likely or probable that this thing will happen, whatever it is that you’re talking about. If you are playing poker, a card game, and you have four aces and a king, the “odds are in your favor” that you will win that particular game – that particular “hand,” we would say of poker. If you say, “The odds are not in my favor,” that means you probably will lose.

Our second question comes from Taewan (Taewan) in Korea. The question has to do with three different expressions: “feats of strength,” “raw human strength,” and “forced against the table’s edge.” What are we talking about here? Well, let’s start with the first expression, “feats (feats) of strength.”

The word “feat” refers to an accomplishment – something great that you did. Notice that it’s pronounced the same as the word we use to describe what’s at the end of our legs, but it’s spelled differently. The “feet” on your body are spelled (feet). This is (feat). “Feats of strength,” then, would be things that you do that require a lot of physical strength – some sort of achievement or accomplishment that would require you to be very strong.

“Raw human strength” would just refer to the strength or power that you have using your own body, not using any sort of machines or any other thing that might help you do what you’re trying to do.

The expression “forced against the table’s edge” is not a common one in English, but I’ll explain what it means, or what I think it means. “To force” (force) someone is to make someone do something they don’t want to do. The “edge” (edge) of the table is the end of the table. If you have a square table, the edge would go around the perimeter of the table, around the very ends of the table. That is the “edge of the table.”

So, “to be forced against the table’s edge” would be to have someone push you or physically move you to the edge of the table, perhaps because they’re going to punch you, or perhaps because they’re going to make you fall. I’m not sure what the exact meaning is in this particular example, but that’s how I would define it.

Finally, Jaydee (Jaydee) in the country of the Philippines wants to know the meaning of the word “multitasking.” “Multitasking” (multitasking) means doing more than one thing at the same time. The prefix “multi-” means “many.” A “task” is something that you’re doing. So, “multitasking” is doing many different things at the same time.

Unfortunately multitasking is, for many people, not a very efficient way of using time. In fact, some scientific studies suggest that people who multitask – who try to, say, check their email while eating their breakfast and talking to their brother on the phone – are not very efficient with their time and often make mistakes. My wife says that women are very good at multitasking and men are very bad at it. I don’t know if that’s true, but my wife is usually right. And even if she isn’t right, she’s right.

From Los Angeles, California, I’m Jeff McQuillan. Thank you for listening. Come back and listen to us again right here on the English Café.

Glossary

frontier – the edge of the land between areas where people lived and the wilderness in the American West

* People who lived on the frontier had to know how to take care of themselves because help was not readily available.

pioneer – a person who is among the first to explore a new area or region, or a new field of study

* The pioneers who explored this area saw animals no Asians had seen before.

to be expelled from – to no longer be allowed to attend a school; for a club to end one’s membership; to be forced to leave a place

* Pierre was expelled from his university after being discovered cheating on a final exam.

prank – a joke or an action that is intended to be funny and involves embarrassing someone or causing minor damage to property

* On Halloween, some teenagers like to play pranks, such as throwing eggs at houses or cars.

to dare someone – to challenge a person to do something they would not normally do, as a test of courage and/or for fun

* Suki dared Amir to swim across the river to the other side even though Amir isn’t a very good swimmer.

interpreter – a person who translates speech; a person who explains what one person is saying in one language to another person in a different language

* When government officials from different counties meet, they often use interpreters to help them communicate.

social equality – the idea that every person, regardless of background, social position, or wealth, is the same and has the same rights as every other person

* In most countries, there is no social equality between the rich and the poor.

prediction – a statement about what is likely to happen in the future; a guess about the future based on information

* Jane’s prediction that it would rain today came true.

crops – plants that are grown to produce food and other useful products

* Corn and potatoes are the main crops in this area of the state.

harvest – the process of collecting plants grown for food and other useful products

* Each fall, farmers work long hours to harvest fields full of crops.

accurate – correct; exact

* These train schedules are accurate, as long as there are no problems.

circulation – the number of copies of a magazine or newspaper that are available to readers

* There are many newspapers in the U.S., but few have wider circulations than the New York Times.

In favor of – in support of; approving of

* How many of you are in favor of staying and how many in favor of leaving?

in (one’s) favor – to one’s advantage; to one’s benefit

* The judge decided the case in Liam’s favor and he was released from jail.

feat of strength – accomplishment or achievement that requires a great amount of power from one’s body

* This TV competition show has contestants compete in feats of strength, such as trying to push a small car over a hill.

raw human strength – one’s strength (power from one’s body) that does not rely on technique, skill, or tools

* In a show of raw human strength, the man lifted the fallen tree all by himself so that the boy trapped below could get out.

to be forced against table’s edge – to be compel to do something to defend oneself or to fight against someone or something else so that one can survive or not be defeated

* When forced against table’s edge, she’d do anything to protect her children.

to multitask – to do more than one thing at a time; to work on several tasks at the same time

* We’re looking for a receptionist who can multitask: answer phones, greet guests, and organize appointments.

What Insiders Know

The Farmers’ Alliance

The Farmer’s Alliance was an “agrarian” (relating to farming) movement among American farmers in the 1870’s and 1880’s. The Alliance worked to influence government policy to help farmers.

The alliance consisted of three major organizations:

The National Farmers’ Alliance, also known as the “Northern Alliance,” was a group “made up of” (consisting of; having) white and black farmers from New York. The group was established on March 21, 1877 to fight what they believed were the unfair “practices” (actions) of railroad transportation, and to “reform” (improve laws or policies) of the tax system.

The Southern Alliance, also known as the National Farmer’s Alliance and Industrial Union, was a group of white farmers in the South. It was originally formed as a way to work together against “horse thieves” (people who stole horses). The group then moved to other issues such as protecting small farmers that have been “targeted” (made the focus of some action) by “land speculators” (people who buy land at low prices to resell at higher prices).

The Colored Alliance, also known as the Colored Farmer’s National Alliance and Cooperative Union, was a group consisting of African American farmers in the South. It’s purpose was to create “cooperative stores” (stores owned and operated by buyers working together) where members could purchase goods at reduced prices, as well as educating members about new farming techniques.

Unfortunately, the success of the Farmers’ Alliance was “short-lived” (lasting only a short time), but they did have more influence in politics. In the 1890s under the People’s Party, also known as the “Populists,” the group had their own “candidates” (person who could win an award or election) in the 1892 election.