Learn about entertaining in the Gilded Age from this excellent video.
Category Archives: 19th century
Sepia Saturday
This week Sepia Saturday challenges bloggers to share images from way back when inspired by the photo above. So this week I’ve found some photos of tennis players.
State Library of New South Wales, 1899
Hales Family Tennis Party
Library of Congress, circa 1920
Actress Priscilla Dean ready for tennis.
Library of Congress, circa 1925
Kumagae and Johnson (Flickr Commons had no information on Mr. Johnson, hence no link.)
How would you like to play tennis in the outfits worn in the first two
The Young Adventurer
Another Horatio Alger book read. I’m catching up on my Good Reads 2020 Reading Challenge deficit.
In Alger’s The Young Adventurer, teenage Ben’s a new orphan at 14. His mother died when he was young and now his father’s just died. The $400 he inherited won’t last forever and there aren’t many opportunities in his hometown so though his uncle would like him to stay with him, Ben sets off to New York to make some money. He plans to earn enough to get passage to California where he can make a fortune mining gold.
Like a lot of Alger’s heroes, Ben encounters some swindlers, and luckily manages to avoid them with his funds in tact. Then he lucks out and meets and heiress in distress who asks him to accompany her to California and pays him to locate her fiancé. The adventure continues.
While the story offers a likable hero and plenty of villains, I wasn’t as enthralled as usual. The Young Adventurer is dated in its treatment of a Chinese character. The language of the era came off the way old Charlie Chan stereotypes do. Alger isn’t on the side of the bigots and those bigots probably were presented authentically, but I couldn’t stomach those chapters even though King Si, the Chinese miner, ends up doing well. For this reason, I wouldn’t recommend this book to kids. Now maybe they should read about how people people discriminated and hurt others as that is the real history, but I’d find another book to recommend.
Sepia Saturday
Time for this week’s Sepia Saturday post and a time to take a look back in history. Sepia Saturday challenges bloggers to share images and posts of bygone days. This week we’re inspired to find photos based on the photo above, photos that show healthcare workers.
Source LOC, Washington, DC, 1918
Above Red Cross nurses in Washington, DC
If you’d like to see more of the week’s Sepia Saturday posts, click here to get to the main page.
Internet Archives, p 607 of Industrial Medicine and Surgery, 1919
LOC, nurse working in Walter Reed Hospital’s Influenza Ward, 1918
LOC, Seattle, circa 1918
No mask, no streetcar. In Seattle during the Spanish flu one had to have a face mask if you wanted to get on a streetcar.
Compulsory mask – State Library of New South Wales, 1919
The Flickr Commons entry has this note:
The skull and crossbones on the mask was a joke, not part of the mask as issued, in an attempt to halt the disease. 12,000 died in Australia and between 20-100 million around the world, more than were killed in the War
LOC, Flu Fighters, Montenegro, 1918
Healthcare workers with the American Red Cross. They went to Montenegro to care for small pox and typhus patients. Then the Spanish Flu broke out and brought them more patients.
Sepia Saturday
Time for another Sepia Saturday post, time to take a look back in history. Sepia Saturday challenges bloggers to share images and posts of bygone days. This week we’re inspired to find photos based on the photo above.
I accept this challenge and sought out photos of libraries. This prompt is fitting as it in the US we’re finishing National Library Week.
Stitt Library at BUMED, 1902
From the Navy Medicine Flickr Commons collection, this library had a telescope inside. That’s where the stairs must lead to.
National Library of Ireland, circa 1900
Dallas Public Library, circa 1910
From the SMU Library Digital Collection
In Mudgee, Gulgong, Australia, 1878
From State Library of New South Wales – While I admit I love the elegant, stately libraries of city centers, this simple, rustic library tugs at my heartstrings. I love how this man started a library out in the wilderness.
Carnegie Library, Greenville, Texas, 1904
During the late 19th and early 20th century, tycoon Andrew Carnegie built libraries in the US and around the world. If a town applied for the program and promised to maintain a library staff and collection, they could receive funds to build what was then known as a Carnegie Library. Above and below are two examples of the grand libraries.
Carnegie Library, Dallas, 1920
Sepia Saturday
A portrait of a lady. That’s how I see this week’s prompt. So I searched through the archives and my own photos of portraits of ladies.
From Flickr Commons:
US National Archives, 1863
SMU Archives, 1970
US National Archives, 1863
Library of Congress – Lady Conan Doyle, 1920
From my archives:
Lady with a Hat looking left
Poem of the Week
In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter
Long ago.
By Christina Rossetti
Arcadia
Clever, but sterile, Tom Stoppard’s play Arcadia didn’t grab me. I could appreciate the weaving together of characters from the 19th and 20th century, but the play never grabbed me or carried me away. One part of the play focuses on a precocious young lady who exasperates both her lascivious tutor and her mother; the other looks at a small group of annoyed and annoying modern intellectuals who bicker about Lord Byron and their professions. While the play won awards, I wouldn’t run to a theater to see it. In fact I’ve never seen it advertised so I assume it’s not going to be a classic.
St. John Cantius
Today’s the last day of the Christmas when we heard the gospel about when Christ was baptized before he began his public life. I went to St. John Cantius for mass (in Latin no less) so I could see some Christmas decorations before they’re put in storage for another 11 months.
It’s another one of the 11 recommended Chicago churches to visit. I agree wholeheartedly. Visiting St. John Cantius is like taking a trip to Europe. The Baroque architecture is glorious. This mass had a professional level cantor and choir. The organ music was wonderful.
Participating in a Latin mass was like a trip back in time. They have missals with both Latin and English. The homily was meaningful and memorable. What more can you ask for?
Joffrey’s The Nutcracker
I’m blown away by Joffrey Ballet’s The Nutcracker. What makes this version stand out is that it’s set in Chicago, on Christmas Eve before the Columbian Exposition of 1893.
The shift from Germany to old Chicago was a brilliant idea. Clara’s family is poor and she lives with her family in a (very large) cabin for construction workers. The story remains essentially the same. For Christmas, Clara (aka Marie in some versions) receives a beloved nutcracker, which is broken by her rambunctious brother Fritz. Drama ensues and when Clara finally goes to sleep she has fantastic dreams of the Columbian Exhibition’s White City with Buffalo Bill dancing and a slew of performers from all corners of the globe.
Tchaikovsky’s music is among my most favorite and is well known even to people who don’t follow classical music. It’s played beautifully by the Chicago Symphony.
The setting and special effects were magical using projected archival images from the actual World’s Fair. The sets in both acts were creative and captivating.
I loved seeing all the young girls dressed up to see this ballet. Their excitement rubbed off on me.
This is a must-see show.
Ruined for Life: Phoenix Edition 