It's become a particular pet peeve of mine, from both an architectural history perspective and a feminist history perspective, when people present Sarah Winchester, of Mystery House fame, as a fear-driven madwoman, building to escape the ghosts that haunted her.

She was a single woman at the turn of the 20th century, with a lot of money. She could ( Read more... )

Kate's recent comment and my electronics tinkering reminded me of great-grandfather and his ham radio interests. Some years ago I wondered if I could find his call sign, but cursory searching did not turn it up. I looked again today, and then Miriam did some looking too. Together we found him!

She found this Caltech Newsletter: https://campuspubs. ( Read more... )

A talk with a professor reminded me of this 1858 ad for the Kenosha Water-Cure that I turned up while researching Pike Creek.

The ad notes that that "invalids will bring six crash towels, two cotton or linen sheets, a flannel blanket, and two comfortables."

What are comfortables in this context? Underwear? Something else?


( Read more... )

I just saw an image of Macaulay Culkin wearing a shirt that has Marcel Duchamp's "R. Mutt" signature from his piece called "Fountain." Suddenly, I like him a lot more! I think that takes a particular kind of bent sense of humor and history that I appreciate.

The more I think about this, the more I wish I could ask him whether the potential layers of ( Read more... )

I found an error in the text I'm transcribing at work from that Civil War exhibit I mentioned. Nathan Bedford Forrest's last name is used with only a single 'r'. However, the misspelling occurs in a quotation of a diary from the period. I don't know whether it's an error by the original transcriber, or if it's actually a correct quotation of an ( Read more... )

Today is Casimir Pulaski day! I'm not very interested in in military history and historical figures (sorry
( Read more... )

On a related note, a couple sources suggest that one early Rush luminary, Dr. Nicholas Senn, conducted experiments on himself. He implanted material from a patient's cancerous tumour into his body to prove that cancer is not transmissible, and had an assistant use a rubber tube and bladder to squeeze hydrogen into his intestines through his anus as ( Read more... )

In an interview on NPR, Carol Gluck, professor of Japanese History at Columbia, made a statement whose profundity struck me immediately. Politicians, she said, don't deal with history; they deal with memory. There's so very much there to think about and apply to numerous areas of interest.

I have this really visceral, negative reaction to slavery that I didn't have before going back to undergrad. Not to say I was pro-slavery before; c'mon. But having read both 3rd person and 1st person accounts more in depth, I have a more emotional response to it than I did ( Read more... )

My class tomorrow was cancelled (or more accurately, rescheduled into dinner this past Wednesday), so I don't have to leave the apartment tomorrow. I do have to get back to my daily four hours of RA research, and there are weekly class assignments I need to spend time on too. But it will be nice to have another day to work without being interrupted ( Read more... )